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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Baltimore police officers obtained and executed a warrant to search the person of Lawrence McWebb and “the premises known as 2036 Park Avenue third floor apartment.” When the police applied for the warrant and when they conducted the search pursuant to the warrant, they reasonably believed that there was only one apartment on the premises described in the warrant. In fact, the third floor was divided into two apartments, one occupied by McWebb and one by respondent Garrison. Before the officers executing the warrant became aware that they were in a separate apartment occupied by respondent, they had discovered the contraband that provided the basis for respondent’s conviction for violating Maryland’s Controlled Substances Act. The question presented is whether the seizure of that contraband was prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.
The trial court denied respondent’s motion to suppress the evidence seized from his apartment, App. 46, and the Maryland Court of Special Appeals affirmed. 58 Md. App. 417, 473 A. 2d 514 (1984). The Court of Appeals of Maryland reversed and remanded with instructions to remand the case for a new trial. 303 Md. 385, 494 A. 2d 193 (1985).
There is no question that the warrant was valid and was supported by probable cause. Id., at 392, 494 A. 2d, at 196. The trial court found, and the two appellate courts did not dispute, that after making a reasonable investigation, including a verification of information obtained from a reliable informant, an exterior examination of the three-story building at 2036 Park Avenue, and an inquiry of the utility company, the officer who obtained the warrant reasonably concluded that there was only one apartment on the third floor and that it was occupied by McWebb. App. 41; 58 Md. App., at 433, 473 A. 2d, at 522; 303 Md., at 387-390, 494 A. 2d, at 194-195. When six Baltimore police officers executed the warrant, they fortuitously encountered McWebb in front of the building and used his key to gain admittance to the first-floor hallway and to the locked door at the top of the stairs to the third floor. As they entered the vestibule on the third floor, they encountered respondent, who was standing in the hallway area. The police could see into the interior of both Mc-Webb’s apartment to the left and respondent’s to the right, for the doors to both were open. Only after respondent’s apartment had been entered and heroin, cash, and drug paraphernalia had been found did any of the officers realize that the third floor contained two apartments. App. 41-46. As soon as they became aware of that fact, the search was discontinued. Id., at 32, 39. All of the officers reasonably believed that they were searching McWebb’s apartment. No further search of respondent’s apartment was made.
The matter on which there is a difference of opinion concerns the proper interpretation of the warrant. A literal reading of its plain language, as well as the language used in the application for the warrant, indicates that it was intended to authorize a search of the entire third floor. This is the construction adopted by the intermediate appellate court, see 58 Md. App., at 419, 473 A. 2d, at 515, and it also appears to be the construction adopted by the trial judge. See App. 41. One sentence in the trial judge’s oral opinion, however, lends support to the construction adopted by the Court of Appeals, namely, that the warrant authorized a search of McWebb’s apartment only. Under that interpretation, the Court of Appeals concluded that the warrant did not authorize the search of respondent’s apartment and the police had no justification for making a warrantless entry into his premises.
The opinion of the Maryland Court of Appeals relies on Article 26 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights and Maryland cases as well as the Fourth Amendment to the Federal Constitution and federal cases. Rather than containing any “plain statement” that the decision rests upon adequate and independent state grounds, see Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032, 1042 (1983), the opinion indicates that the Maryland constitutional provision is construed in pari materia with the
Fourth Amendment. We therefore have jurisdiction. Because the result that the Court of Appeals reached did not appear to be required by the Fourth Amendment, we granted certiorari. 475 U. S. 1009 (1986). We reverse.
In our view, the case presents two separate constitutional issues, one concerning the validity of the warrant and the other concerning the reasonableness of the manner in which it was executed. See Dalia v. United States, 441 U. S. 238, 258 (1979). We shall discuss the questions separately.
I-H
The Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment categorically prohibits the issuance of any warrant except one “particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.” The manifest purpose of this particularity requirement was to prevent general searches. By limiting the authorization to search to the specific areas and things for which there is probable cause to search, the requirement ensures that the search will be carefully tailored to its justifications, and will not take on the character of the wide-ranging exploratory searches the Framers intended to prohibit. Thus, the scope of a lawful search is “defined by the object of the search and the places in which there is probable cause to believe that it may be found. Just as probable cause to believe that a stolen lawnmower may be found in a garage will not support a warrant to search an upstairs bedroom, probable cause to believe that undocumented aliens are being transported in a van will not justify a warrantless search of a suitcase.” United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798, 824 (1982).
In this case there is no claim that the “persons or things to be seized” were inadequately described or that there was no probable cause to believe that those things might be found in “the place to be searched” as it was described in the warrant. With the benefit of hindsight, however, we now know that the description of that place was broader than appropriate because it was based on the mistaken belief that there was only one apartment on the third floor of the building at 2036 Park Avenue. The question is whether that factual mistake invalidated a warrant that undoubtedly would have been valid if it had reflected a completely accurate understanding of the building’s floor plan.
Plainly, if the officers had known, or even if they should have known, that there were two separate dwelling units on the third floor of 2036 Park Avenue, they would have been obligated to exclude respondent’s apartment from the scope of the requested warrant. But we must judge the constitutionality of their conduct in light of the information available to them at the time they acted. Those items of evidence that emerge after the warrant is issued have no bearing on whether or not a warrant was validly issued. Just as the discovery of contraband cannot validate a warrant invalid when issued, so is it equally clear that the discovery of facts demonstrating that a valid warrant was unnecessarily broad does not retroactively invalidate the warrant. The validity of the warrant must be assessed on the basis of the information that the officers disclosed, or had a duty to discover and to disclose, to the issuing Magistrate. On the basis of that information, we agree with the conclusion of all three Maryland courts that the warrant, insofar as it authorized a search that turned out to be ambiguous in scope, was valid when it issued.
II
The question whether the execution of the warrant violated respondent’s constitutional right to be secure in his home is somewhat less clear. We have no difficulty concluding that the officers’ entry into the third-floor common area was legal; they carried a warrant for those premises, and they were accompanied by McWebb, who provided the key that they used to open the door giving access to the third-floor common area. If the officers had known, or should have known, that the third floor contained two apartments before they entered the living quarters on the third floor, and thus had been aware of the error in the warrant, they would have been obligated to limit their search to McWebb’s apartment. Moreover, as the officers recognized, they were required to discontinue the search of respondent’s apartment as soon as they discovered that there were two separate units on the third floor and therefore were put on notice of the risk that they might be in a unit erroneously included within the terms of the warrant. The officers’ conduct and the limits of the search were based on the information available as the search proceeded. While the purposes justifying a police search strictly limit the permissible extent of the search, the Court has also recognized the need to allow some latitude for honest mistakes that are made by officers in the dangerous and difficult process of making arrests and executing search warrants.
In Hill v. California, 401 U. S. 797 (1971), we considered the validity of the arrest of a man named Miller based on the mistaken belief that he was Hill. The police had probable cause to arrest Hill and they in good faith believed that Miller was Hill when they found him in Hill’s apartment. As we explained:
“The upshot was that the officers in good faith believed Miller was Hill and arrested him. They Were quite wrong as it turned out, and subjective good-faith belief would not in itself justify either the arrest or the subsequent search. But sufficient probability, not certainty, is the touchstone of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment and on the record before us the officers’ mistake was understandable and the arrest a reasonable response to the situation facing them at the time.” Id., at 803-804.
While Hill involved an arrest without a warrant, its underlying rationale that an officer’s reasonable misidentification of a person does not invalidate a valid arrest is equally applicable to an officer’s reasonable failure to appreciate that a valid warrant describes too broadly the premises to be searched. Under the reasoning in Hill, the validity of the search of respondent’s apartment pursuant to a warrant authorizing the search of the entire third floor depends on whether the officers’ failure to realize the overbreadth of the warrant was objectively understandable and reasonable. Here it unquestionably was. The objective facts available to the officers at the time suggested no distinction between McWebb’s apartment and the third-floor premises.
For that reason, the officers properly responded to the command contained in a valid warrant even if the warrant is interpreted as authorizing a search limited to McWebb’s apartment rather than the entire third floor. Prior to the officers’ discovery of the factual mistake, they perceived McWebb’s apartment and the third-floor premises as one and the same; therefore their execution of the warrant reasonably included the entire third floor. Under either interpretation of the warrant, the officers’ conduct was consistent with a reasonable effort to ascertain and identify the place intended to be searched within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Cf. Steele v. United States, 267 U. S. 498, 503 (1925).
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
App. 9, 41. The warrant was issued and executed on May 21, 1982. It authorized the Baltimore police to search the person of McWebb and “the premises known as 2036 Park Avenue third floor apartment” for “Marihuana, related paraphernalia, minies, books, papers, and photographs pertaining to the illegal distribution of Marihuana . . . .” Id., at 9.
While the search was in progress, an officer in respondent’s apartment answered the telephone. The caller asked for “Red Cross”; that was the name by which McWebb was known to the confidential informant. Id., at 6. Neither respondent nor McWebb indicated to the police during the search that there were two apartments. Id., at 38, 39-40.
The warrant states:
“Affidavit having been made before me by Detective Albert Marcus, Baltimore Police Department, Narcotic Unit, that he has reason to believe that on the person of Lawrence Meril McWebb . . . [and] that on the premises known as 2036 Park Avenue third floor apartment, described as a three story brick dwelling with the numerals 2-0-3-6 affixed to the front of same in the City of Baltimore, there is now being concealed certain property ....
“You are therefor commanded, with the necessary and proper assistants, to search forthwith the person/premises hereinabove described for the property specified, executing this warrant and making the search . . . .” Id., at 9.
Immediately before ruling on the suppression motions made by McWebb and Garrison, the court observed that a search of two or more apartments in the same building must be supported by probable cause for searching each apartment. The court added, “[t]here is an exception to this general rule where the multiple unit character of the premises is not externally apparent and is not known to the officer applying for or executing the warrant.” Id., at 45. The trial court then ruled, “It is clear that the warrant specified the premises to be searched as the third floor apartment of the Defendant McWebb . . . .” Id., at 46. This statement only makes sense as a rejection of Garrison’s claim that “the warrant was a general warrant as it did not specify which apartment was to be searched on the third floor,” id., at 40, and as a recognition that the search was not invalid for lack of specificity in the warrant as to the premises to be searched. We interpret the trial court’s statement as a ruling that the search of a subunit of the building — which he referred to as “the third floor apartment of the Defendant McWebb” — was authorized by the warrant. The court then found on the precise facts of this ease that the search of Garrison’s apartment was valid because “the officers did not know that there was more than one apartment on the third floor and nothing alerted them of such a fact until after the search had been made and the items were [seized].” Id., at 46. The contrary construction adopted by the Court of Appeals fails to take into account the plain language of the warrant, which authorized a search of the person of McWebb and of the premises of 2036 Park Avenue, third floor. Id., at 9.
As the Court of Appeals explained:
“It is undisputed that the police were authorized to search only one apartment, MeWebb’s; the warrant did not authorize the search of Garrison’s apartment. There is no question as to the validity of the search warrant itself. No argument was made in this Court that any of the exceptions to the warrant requirement applied here. It is clear, therefore, that the police had no authority to cross the threshold of Garrison’s apartment and seize evidence.
“Police had a warrant to search MeWebb’s apartment. They had no warrant to search Garrison’s. They had no justification for entering his premises, regardless of appearances.” 303 Md. 386, 392r394, 494 A. 2d, 193, 196-197 (1985).
Article 26 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights provides:
“That all warrants, without oath or affirmation, to search suspected places, or to seize any person or property, are grevious [grievous] and oppressive; and all general warrants to search suspected places, or to apprehend suspected persons, without naming or describing the place, or the person in special, are illegal, and ought not to be granted.”
303 Md., at 391, 494 A. 2d, at 196. This statement indicates that the “state court decision fairly appears to rest primarily on federal law, or to be interwoven with the federal law . . . .” Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S., at 1040.
See Andresen v. Maryland, 427 U. S. 463, 480 (1976); Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U. S. 557, 569-572 (1969) (Stewart, J., concurring in result); Stanford v. Texas, 379 U. S. 476, 481-482, 485 (1965); Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 344, 357 (1931); Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192, 195-196 (1927).
Cf. United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U. S. 109, 115 (1984) (warrantless test of white powder; “[t]he reasonableness of an official invasion of the citizen’s privacy must be appraised on the basis of the facts as they existed at the time that invasion occurred”).
Arguments can certainly be made that the police in this case should have been able to ascertain that there was more than one apartment on the third floor of this building. It contained seven separate dwelling units and it was surely possible that two of them might be on the third floor. But the record also establishes that Officer Marcus made specific inquiries to determine the identity of the occupants of the third-floor premises. The officer went to 2036 Park Avenue and found that it matched the description given by the informant: a three-story brick dwelling with the numerals 2-0-3-6 affixed to the front of the premises. App. 7. The officer “made a cheek with the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company and discovered that the premises of 2036 Park Ave. third floor was in the name of Lawrence McWebb.” Ibid. Officer Marcus testified at the suppression hearing that he inquired of the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company in whose name the third floor apartment was listed: “I asked if there is a front or rear or middle room. They told me, one third floor was only listed to Lawrence McWebb.” Id., at 36-38. The officer also discovered from a check with the Baltimore Police Department that the police records of Lawrence McWebb matched the address and physical description given by the informant. Id., at 7. The Maryland courts that are presumptively familiar with local conditions were unanimous in concluding that the officer reasonably believed McWebb was the only tenant on that floor. Because the evidence supports their conclusion, we accept that conclusion for the purpose of our decision.
“Because many situations which confront officers in the course of executing their duties are more or less ambiguous, room must be allowed for some mistakes on their part. But the mistakes must be those of reasonable men, acting on facts leading sensibly to their conclusions of probability.” Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160, 176 (1949).
Nothing McWebb did or said after he was detained outside 2036 Park Avenue would have suggested to the police that there were two apartments on the third floor. McWebb provided the key that opened the doors on the first floor and on the third floor. The police could reasonably have believed that McWebb was admitting them to an undivided apartment on the third floor. When the officers entered the foyer on the third floor, neither McWebb nor Garrison informed them that they lived in separate apartments. App. 39-40, 42.
We expressly distinguish the facts of this case from a situation in which the police know there are two apartments on a certain floor of a building, and have probable cause to believe that drugs are being sold out of that floor, but do not know in which of the two apartments the illegal transactions are taking place. A search pursuant to a warrant authorizing a search of the entire floor under those circumstances would present quite different issues from the ones before us in this case.
Respondent argued that the execution of the warrant violated the Fourth Amendment at the moment when the officers “walked in through that threshold of that house . . . .” Tr. ofOralArg. 35. At another point respondent argued that the search was illegal at the point when the police went through Garrison’s apartment without probable cause for his apartment. Id., at 43. For the purpose of addressing respondent’s argument, the exact point at which he asserts the search became illegal is not essential. Whether the illegal threshold is viewed as the beginning of the entire premises or as the beginning of those premises that, upon closer examination, turn out to be excluded from the intended scope of the warrant, we cannot accept respondent’s argument. It would brand as illegal the execution of any warrant in which, due to a mistake in fact, the premises intended to be searched vary from their description in the warrant. Yet in this case, in which the mistake in fact does not invalidate the warrant precisely because the police do not know of the mistake in fact when they apply for, receive, and prepare to execute the warrant, the police cannot reasonably know prior to their search that the warrant rests on a mistake in fact. It is only after the police begin to execute the warrant and set foot upon the described premises that they will discover the factual mistake and must reasonably limit their search accordingly.
Respondent proposes that the police conduct a preliminary survey of the premises whenever they search a building in which there are multiple dwelling units, in order to determine the extent of the premises to be searched. Id., at 42. We find no persuasive reason to impose such a burden over and above the bedrock requirement that, with the exceptions we have traced in our cases, the police may conduct searches only pursuant to a reasonably detailed warrant.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
A
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Breyer
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Johnnie Cochran brought a state-law defamation action against petitioner Ulysses Tory. The state trial court determined that Tory (with the help of petitioner Ruth Craft and others) had engaged in unlawful defamatory activity. . It found, for example, that Tory, while claiming falsely that Cochran owed him money, had complained to the local bar association, had written Cochran threatening letters demanding $10 million, had picketed Cochran’s office holding up signs containing various insults and obscenities; and, with a group of associates, had pursued Cochran while chanting similar threats and insults. App. 88,40-41. The court concluded that Tory’s claim that Cochran owed him money was without foundation, that Tory engaged in a continuous pattern of libelous and slanderous activity, and that Tory had used false and defamatory speech to “coerce” Cochran into paying “amounts of money to which Tory was not entitled” as a “tribute” or a “premium” for “desisting” from this libelous and slanderous activity. Id., at 39, 42-48.
After noting that Tory had indicated that he would continue to engage in this activity in the absence of a court order, the Superior Court issued a permanent injunction. The injunction, among other things, prohibited Tory, Craft, and their “agents” or “representatives” from “picketing,” from “displaying signs, placards or other written or printed material,” and from “orally uttering statements” about Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr., and about Cochran’s law firm in “any public forum.” Id., at 34.
Tory and Craft appealed. The California Court of Appeal affirmed. Tory and Craft then filed a petition for a writ of certiorari, raising the following question:
“Whether a permanent injunction as a remedy in a defamation action, preventing all future speech about an admitted public figure, violates the First Amendment.” Pet. for Cert. i.
After oral argument, Cochran’s counsel informed the Court of Johnnie Cochran’s recent death. Counsel also moved to substitute Johnnie Cochran’s widow, Sylvia Dale Mason Cochran, as respondent, and suggested that we dismiss the case as moot. Tory and Craft filed a response agreeing to the substitution of Ms. Cochran. But they denied that the case was moot.
We agree with Tory and Craft that the case is not moot. Despite Johnnie Cochran’s death, the injunction remains in effect. Nothing in its language says to the contrary. Cochran’s counsel tells us that California law does not recognize a “cause of action for an injury to the memory of a deceased person’s reputation,” see Kelly v. Johnson Pub. Co., 160 Cal. App. 2d 718, 325 P. 2d 659 (1958), which circumstance, counsel believes, “moots” a “'portion” of the injunction (the portion “personal to Cochran”). Respondent’s Suggestion of Death, etc., 4 (emphasis added). But counsel adds that “[t]he [injunction continues to be necessary, valid and enforceable.” Id., at 9. The parties have not identified, nor have we found, any source of California law that says the injunction here automatically becomes invalid upon Cochran’s death, not even the portion personal to Cochran. Counsel also points to the “value of” Cochran’s “law practice” and adds that his widow has an interest in enforcing the injunction. Id., at 11-12. And, as we understand California law, a person cannot definitively know whether an injunction is legally void until a court has ruled that it is. See Mason v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co., 60 Cal. App. 2d 587, 591, 141 P. 2d 475, 477-478 (1943) (“[W]here the party served believes” a court order “invalid he should take the proper steps to have it dissolved”); People v. Gonzalez, 12 Cal. 4th 804, 818, 910 P. 2d 1366, 1375 (1996) (“[A] person subject to a court’s injunction may elect whether to challenge the constitutional validity of the injunction when it is issued, or to reserve that claim until a violation of the injunction is charged as a contempt of court”). Given the uncertainty of California law, we take it as a given that the injunction here continues significantly to restrain petitioners’ speech, presenting an ongoing federal controversy. See, e. g., Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U. S. 479, 486-487 (1965); NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 432-433 (1963). Consequently, we need not, and we do not, dismiss this case as moot. Cf. Firefighters v. Stotts, 467 U. S. 561, 569 (1984) (case not moot in part because it appears from “terms” of the injunction that it is “still in force” and “unless set aside must be complied with”).
At the same time, Johnnie Cochran’s death makes it unnecessary, indeed unwarranted, for us to explore petitioners’ basic claims, namely, (1) that the First Amendment forbids the issuance of a permanent injunction in a defamation case, at least when the plaintiff is a public figure, and (2) that the injunction (considered prior to Cochran’s death) was not properly tailored and consequently violated the First Amendment. See Brief for Petitioners ii, iii. Rather, we need only point out that the injunction, as written, has now lost its underlying rationale. Since picketing Cochran and his law offices while engaging in injunction-forbidden speech could no longer achieve the objectives that the trial court had in mind (i. e., coercing Cochran to pay a “tribute” for desisting in this activity), the grounds for the injunction are much diminished, if they have not disappeared altogether. Consequently the injunction, as written, now amounts to an overly broad prior restraint upon speech, lacking plausible justification. See Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart, 427 U. S. 539, 559 (1976) (“[P]rior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights”); Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Comm’n on Human Relations, 413 U. S. 376, 390 (1973) (a prior restraint should not “swee[p]” any “more broadly than necessary”). As such, the Constitution forbids it. See Carroll v. President and Comm’rs of Princess Anne, 393 U. S. 175, 183-184 (1968) (An “order” issued in “the area of First Amendment rights” must be “precis[e]” and narrowly “tailored” to achieve the “pin-pointed objective” of the “needs of the case”); see also Board of Airport Comm’rs of Los Angeles v. Jews for Jesus, Inc., 482 U. S. 569, 575, 577 (1987) (regulation prohibiting “all 'First Amendment activities’ ” substantially overbroad).
We consequently grant the motion to substitute Sylvia Dale Mason Cochran for Johnnie Cochran as respondent. We vacate the judgment of the California Court of Appeal, and we remand the case for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. If, as the Cochran supplemental brief suggests, injunctive relief may still be warranted, any appropriate party remains free to ask for such relief. We express no view on the constitutional validity of any such new relief, tailored to these changed circumstances, should it be entered.
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:
|
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.
Mb. Justice Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question is whether the District Court properly considered, as one factor in imposing sentence, the petitioner’s refusal to cooperate with officials investigating a criminal conspiracy in which he was a confessed participant.
I
Petitioner Winfield Roberts accompanied Cecilia Payne to the office of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia one day in June 1975. Government surveillance previously had revealed that a green Jaguar owned by Payne was used to transport heroin within the District. Payne told investigators that she occasionally lent the Jaguar to petitioner, who was waiting outside in the hall. At Payne’s suggestion, the investigators asked petitioner if he would answer some questions. Although petitioner was present voluntarily, the investigators gave him the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966). They also told him that he was free to leave. When petitioner indicated that he would stay, the investigators asked whether he knew “Boo” Thornton, then the principal target of the heroin investigation. Petitioner admitted that he had delivered heroin to Thornton on several occasions. Confessing also that he had discussed drug transactions with Thornton in certain intercepted telephone conversations, petitioner explained the meaning of code words used in the conversations. When asked to name suppliers, however, petitioner gave evasive answers. Although the investigators warned petitioner that the extent of his cooperation would bear on the charges brought against him, he provided no further information.
Petitioner was indicted on one count of conspiring to distribute heroin, 21 U. S. C. §§ 841, 846, and four counts of using a telephone to facilitate the distribution of heroin, 21 U. S. C. § 843 (b). He retained a lawyer, who rejected the Government’s continued efforts to enlist petitioner’s assistance. In March 1976, petitioner entered a plea of guilty to the conspiracy count and received a sentence of 4 to 15 years’ imprisonment, 3 years’ special parole, and a $5,000 fine. The Court of Appeals vacated the conviction on the ground that the terms of the plea agreement were inadequately disclosed to the District Court. United States v. Roberts, 187 U. S. App. D. C. 90, 570 F. 2d 999 (1977).
On remand, petitioner pleaded guilty to two counts of telephone misuse under an agreement that permitted the Government to seek a substantial sentence. The Government filed a memorandum recommending two consecutive sentences of 16 to 48 months each and a $5,000 fine. The memorandum cited petitioner’s previous conviction for 10 counts of bank robbery, his voluntary confession, and his subsequent refusal to name suppliers. The memorandum also emphasized the tragic social consequences of the heroin trade. Since petitioner was not himself an addict and had no familial responsibilities, the Government theorized that he sold heroin to support his extravagant lifestyle while unemployed and on parole. The Government concluded that stern sentences were necessary to deter those who would traffic in deadly drugs for personal profit.
At the sentencing hearing, defense counsel noted that petitioner had been incarcerated for two years pending appeal and that codefendant Thornton had been sentenced to probation. Counsel argued that petitioner should receive concurrent sentences that would result in his immediate release. He directed the court’s attention to petitioner’s voluntary confession, explaining that petitioner had refused to identify other members of the conspiracy because he “wasn’t that involved in it.” App. 30. The prosecutor responded that the request for probation was “ironic” in light of petitioner’s refusal to cooperate in the investigation over the course of “many, many years, knowing what he faces.” Id., at 36. Thus, the Government could not ask the court “to take into account some extenuating and mitigating circumstances, that the defendant has cooperated. . . .” Ibid. Stressing the seriousness of the offense and the absence of excuse or mitigation, the Government recommended a substantial prison term.
The District Court imposed consecutive sentences of one to four years on each count and a special parole term of three years, but it declined to impose a fine. The court explained that these sentences were appropriate because petitioner was on parole from a bank robbery conviction at the time of the offenses, and because he was a dealer who had refused to cooperate with the Government. Petitioner again appealed, contending for the first time that the sentencing court should not have considered his failure to cooperate. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated the special parole term but otherwise affirmed the judgment. 195 U. S. App. D. C. 1, 600 F. 2d 815 (1979). We granted cer-tiorari, 444 U. S. 822 (1979), and we now affirm.
II
The principles governing criminal sentencing in the United States district courts require no extensive elaboration. Congress has directed that
“[n]o limitation shall be placed on the information concerning the background, character, and conduct of a person convicted of an offense which a court of the United States may receive and consider for the purpose of imposing an appropriate sentence.” 18 U. S. C. § 3577.
See also 21 U. S. C. § 850. This Court has reviewed in detail the history and philosophy of the modern conception that “the punishment should fit the offender and not merely the crime.” Williams v. New York, 337 U. S. 241, 247 (1949); see United States v. Grayson, 438 U. S. 41, 45-50 (1978). Two Terms ago, we reaffirmed the “fundamental sentencing principle” that “ ‘a judge may appropriately conduct an inquiry broad in scope, largely unlimited either as to the kind of information he may consider, or the source from which it may come.’ ” Id., at 50, quoting United States v. Tucker, 404 U. S. 443, 446 (1972). See also Pennsylvania v. Ashe, 302 U. S. 51, 55 (1937). We have, however, sustained due process objections to sentences imposed on the basis of “misinformation of constitutional magnitude.” United States v. Tucker, supra, at 447; see Townsend v. Burke, 334 U. S. 736, 740-741 (1948).
No such misinformation was present in this case. The sentencing court relied upon essentially undisputed facts. There is no question that petitioner rebuffed repeated requests for his cooperation over a period of three years. Nor does petitioner contend that he was unable to provide the requested assistance. Indeed, petitioner concedes that cooperation with the authorities is a “laudable endeavor” that bears a “rational connection to a defendant’s willingness to shape up and change his behavior. . . .” Brief for Petitioner 17. Unless a different explanation is provided, a defendant’s refusal to assist in the investigation of ongoing crimes gives rise to an inference that these laudable attitudes are lacking.
It hardly could be otherwise. Concealment of crime has been condemned throughout our history. The citizen’s duty to “raise the ‘hue and cry’ and report felonies to the authorities,” Branzburg. v. Hayes, 408 U. S. 665, 696 (1972), was an established tenet of Anglo-Saxon law at least as early as the 13th century. 2 W. Holdsworth, History of English Law 101-102 (3d ed. 1927); 4 id., at 521-522; see Statute of Westminster First, 3 Edw. 1, ch. 9, p. 43 (1275); Statute of Westminster Second, 13 Edw. 1, chs. 1, 4, and 6, pp. 112-115 (1285). The first Congress of the United States enacted a statute imposing criminal penalties upon anyone who, “having knowledge of the actual commission of [certain felonies,] shall conceal, and not as soon as may be disclose and make known the same to [the appropriate] authority. . . .” Act of Apr. 30, 1790, § 6, 1 Stat. 113. Although the term “misprision of felony” now has an archaic ring, gross indifference to the duty to report known criminal behavior remains a badge of irresponsible citizenship.
This deeply rooted social obligation is not diminished when the witness to crime is involved in illicit activities himself. Unless his silence is protected by the privilege against self-incrimination, see Part III, infra, the criminal defendant no less than any other citizen is obliged to assist the authorities. The petitioner, for example, was asked to expose the purveyors of heroin in his own community in exchange for a favorable disposition of his case. By declining to cooperate, petitioner rejected an “obligatio[n] of community life” that should be recognized before rehabilitation can begin. See Hart, The Aims of the Criminal Law, 23 Law & Contemp. Prob. 401, 437 (1958). Moreover, petitioner’s refusal to cooperate protected his former partners in crime, thereby preserving his ability to resume criminal activities upon release. Few facts available to a sentencing judge are more relevant to “ 'the likelihood that [a defendant] will transgress no more, the hope that he may respond to rehabilitative efforts to assist with a lawful future career, [and] the degree to which he does or does not deem himself at war with his society.’ ” United States v. Grayson, supra, at 51, quoting United States v. Hendrix, 505 F. 2d 1233, 1236 (CA2 1974).
III
Petitioner does not seriously contend that disregard for the obligation to assist in a criminal investigation is irrelevant, to the determination of an appropriate sentence. He rather contends that his failure to cooperate was justified by legitimate fears of physical retaliation and self-incrimination. In view of these concerns, petitioner asserts that his refusal to act as an informer has no bearing on his prospects for rehabilitation. He also believes that the District Court punished him for exercising his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
These arguments would have merited serious consideration if they had been presented properly to the sentencing judge. But the mere possibility of unarticulated explanations or excuses for antisocial conduct does not make that conduct irrelevant to the sentencing decision. The District Court had no opportunity to consider the theories that petitioner now advances, for each was raised for the first time in petitioner’s appellate brief. Although petitioner knew that his intransi-gency would be used against him, neither he nor his lawyer offered any explanation to the sentencing court. Even after the prosecutor observed that the failure to cooperate could, be viewed as evidence of continuing criminal intent, petitioner remained silent.
Petitioner insists that he. had a constitutional right to remain silent and that no adverse inferences can be drawn from the exercise of that right. We find this argument singularly unpersuasive. The Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination is not self-executing. At least where the Government has no substantial reason to believe that the requested disclosures are likely to be incriminating, the privilege may not be relied upon unless it is invoked in a timely fashion. Garner v. United States, 424 U. S. 648, 653-655 (1976); United States v. Kordel, 397 U. S. 1, 7-10 (1970) ; see United States v. Mandujano, 425 U. S. 564, 574-575 (1976) (opinion of Burgee, C. J.); id., at 591-594 (Brennan, J., concurring in judgment).
In this case, as in Vajtauer v. Commissioner of Immigration, 273 U. S. 103, 113 (1927), petitioner “did not assert his privilege or in any manner suggest that he withheld his testimony because there was any ground for fear of self-incrimination. His assertion of it here is evidently an afterthought.” The Court added in Vajtauer that the privilege “must be deemed waived if not in some manner fairly brought to the attention of the tribunal which must pass upon it.” Ibid. Thus, if petitioner believed that his failure to cooperate was privileged, he should have said so at a time when the sentencing court could have determined whether his claim was legitimate.
Petitioner would avoid the force of this elementary rule by arguing that Miranda warnings supplied additional protection for his right to remain silent. But the right to silence described in those warnings derives from the Fifth Amendment and adds nothing to it. Although Miranda’s requirement of specific warnings creates a limited exception to the rule that the privilege must be claimed, the exception does not apply outside the context of the inherently coercive custodial interrogations for which it was designed. The warnings protect persons who, exposed to such interrogation without the assistance of counsel, otherwise might be unable to make a free and informed choice to remain silent. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S., at 475-476; see Garner v. United States, supra, at 657.
There was no custodial interrogation in this case. Petitioner volunteered his confession at his first interview with investigators in 1975, after Miranda warnings had been given and at a time when he was free to leave. He does not claim that he was coerced. Thereafter, petitioner was represented by counsel who was fully apprised — as was petitioner — that the extent of petitioner’s cooperation could be expected to affect his sentence. Petitioner did not receive the sentence he now challenges until 1978. During this entire period, neither petitioner nor his lawyer ever claimed that petitioner’s unwillingness to provide information vital to law enforcement was based upon the right to remain silent or the fear of self-incrimination.
Petitioner has identified nothing that might have impaired his “ ‘free'choice to admit, to deny, or to refuse to answer.’ ” Garner v. United States, supra, at 657, quoting Lisenba v. California, 314 U. S. 219, 241 (1941). His conduct bears no resemblance to the “insolubly ambiguous” postarrest silence that may be induced by the assurances contained in Miranda warnings. Cf. Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U. S. 610, 617-618 (1976). We conclude that the District Court committed no constitutional error. If we were to invalidate petitioner’s sentence on the record before us, we would sanction an unwarranted interference with a function traditionally vested in the trial courts. See Dorszynski v. United States, 418 U. S. 424, 440-441 (1974). Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
Petitioner’s intercepted conversations with Thornton apparently could have provided the basis for 13 counts of unlawful use of a telephone. App. 36.
The maximum sentence on each count was four years’ imprisonment and a $30,000 fine. 21 U. S. C. § 843 (c). you have had prior involvement with the law. In this case you were clearly a dealer, but you had an opportunity and failed to cooperate with the Government.” App. 40.
Before imposing sentence, the court explained:
“Mr. Roberts, we have considered your case very carefully. We have noted again you were on parole from a bank robbery conviction, which
See, e. g., ABA Project on Standards for Criminal Justice, Pleas of Guilty § 1.8 (a)(v) (App. Draft 1968); id., at 48-49; Lumbard, Sentencing and Law Enforcement, 40 F. R. D. 406, 413-414 (1966); cf. R. Cross, The English Sentencing System 170 (2d ed. 1975).
We doubt that a principled distinction may be drawn between “enhancing” the punishment imposed upon the petitioner and denying him the “leniency” he claims would be appropriate if he had cooperated. The question for decision is simply whether petitioner’s failure to cooperate is relevant to the currently understood goals of sentencing. We do note, however, that Judge MacKinnon, author of the opinion reversing petitioner’s first conviction, observed on the basis of his “complete familiarity with the facts of this entire case” that the petitioner’s current sentence is a “very light” one. 195 U. S. App. D. C. 1, 9, 600 F. 2d 815, 823 (1979) (separate statement on denial of rehearing en banc). The sentence of two to eight years’ imprisonment certainly was not a severe penalty for a “substantial drug distributor,” ibid., who plied his trade while on parole from a prior conviction for bank robbery.
The statute, as amended, is still in effect. 18 U. S. C. § 4. It has been construed to require “both knowledge of a crime and some affirmative act of concealment or participation.” See Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U. S. 665, 696, n. 36 (1972).
The Court recognized in Gamer v. United States, 424 U. S., at 656-657, that this rule is subject to exception when some coercive factor prevents an individual from claiming the privilege or impairs his choice to remain silent. No such factor has been identified in this case. See infra, at 561.
See Gamer v. United States, supra, at 658, n. 11; Hoffman v. United States, 341 V. S. 479, 486 (1951); Mason v. United States, 244 U. S. 362, 364-366 (1917); United States v. Vermeulen, 436 F. 2d 72, 76-77 (CA2 1970), cert. denied, 402 U. S. 911 (1971). It is the duty of a court to determine the legitimacy of a witness’ reliance upon the Fifth Amendment. Rogers v. United States, 340 U. S. 367, 374-375 (1951). A witness may not employ the privilege to avoid giving testimony that he simply would prefer not to give.
In United States v. Washington, 431 U. S. 181, 187, n. 5 (1977), the Court explained that “[a] 11 Miranda’s safeguards, which are designed to avoid the coercive atmosphere, rest on the overbearing compulsion which the Court thought was caused by isolation of a suspect in police custody.”
The District Court found that petitioner freely waived his Miranda rights when he first confessed his involvement in the conspiracy. Tr. 40 (Oct. 17, 1975); see App. 16, n. 4.
The dissenting opinion asserts that the record reflects an “improper involvement of the judicial office in the prosecutorial function.” Post, at 567. We find no basis for this contention. The District Court did not participate in the plea-bargaining process; it merely undertook a retrospective review of petitioner’s character, record, and criminal conduct in accordance with applicable law. 18 U. S. C. § 3577; Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 32 (c). And a defendant who failed even to raise the possibility of self-incrimination or retaliation over a course of three years is hardly in a position to complain that he was “put to an unfair choice.” Post, at 568.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
A
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Unconstitutional as Applied
Fla. Stat. Ann. § 921.137(1)
Validity Called into Doubt
Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 532.130(2); Va. Code Ann. § 19.2-264.3:1.1; Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 13-753(F); 11 West's Del.C. § 4209(d)(3); Kan. Stat. Ann. § 76-12b01; N.C. Gen. Stat. Ann. § 15A-2005; Wash. Rev. Code Ann. § 10.95.030(2)(c)
Syllabus*
After this Court held that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments forbid the execution of persons with intellectual disability, see Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 321, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335, Hall asked a Florida state court to vacate his sentence, presenting evidence that included an IQ test score of 71. The court denied his motion, determining that a Florida statute mandated that he show an IQ score of 70 or below before being permitted to present any additional intellectual disability evidence. The State Supreme Court rejected Hall's appeal, finding the State's 70-point threshold constitutional.
Held : The State's threshold requirement, as interpreted by the Florida Supreme Court, is unconstitutional. Pp. 1992 - 2001.
(a) The Eighth Amendment, which "reaffirms the duty of the government to respect the dignity of all persons," Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 560, 125 S.Ct. 1183, 161 L.Ed.2d 1, prohibits the execution of persons with intellectual disability. No legitimate penological purpose is served by executing the intellectually disabled. Atkins, 536 U.S., at 317, 320, 122 S.Ct. 2242. Prohibiting such executions also protects the integrity of the trial process for individuals who face "a special risk of wrongful execution" because they are more likely to give false confessions, are often poor witnesses, and are less able to give meaningful assistance to their counsel. Id., at 320-321, 122 S.Ct. 2242. In determining whether Florida's intellectual disability definition implements these principles and Atkins' holding, it is proper to consider the psychiatric and professional studies that elaborate on the purpose and meaning of IQ scores and how the scores relate to Atkins, and to consider how the several States have implemented Atkins. Pp. 1992 - 1993.
(b) Florida's rule disregards established medical practice. On its face, Florida's statute could be consistent with the views of the medical community discussed in Atkins and with the conclusions reached here. It defines intellectual disability as the existence of concurrent deficits in intellectual and adaptive functioning, long the defining characteristic of intellectual disability. See Atkins, supra, at 308, 122 S.Ct. 2242 And nothing in the statute precludes Florida from considering an IQ test's standard error of measurement (SEM), a statistical fact reflecting the test's inherent imprecision and acknowledging that an individual score is best understood as a range, e.g., five points on either side of the recorded score. As interpreted by the Florida Supreme Court, however, Florida's rule disregards established medical practice in two interrelated ways: It takes an IQ score as final and conclusive evidence of a defendant's intellectual capacity, when experts would consider other evidence; and it relies on a purportedly scientific measurement of a defendant's abilities, while refusing to recognize that measurement's inherent imprecision. While professionals have long agreed that IQ test scores should be read as a range, Florida uses the test score as a fixed number, thus barring further consideration of other relevant evidence, e.g., deficits in adaptive functioning, including evidence of past performance, environment, and upbringing. Pp. 1993 - 1996.
(c) The rejection of a strict 70-point cutoff in the vast majority of States and a "consistency in the trend," Roper, supra, at 572, 125 S.Ct. 1183, toward recognizing the SEM provide strong evidence of consensus that society does not regard this strict cutoff as proper or humane. At most, nine States mandate a strict IQ score cutoff at 70. Thus, in 41 States, an individual in Hall's position would not be deemed automatically eligible for the death penalty. The direction of change has been consistent. Since Atkins, many States have passed legislation to comply with the constitutional requirement that persons with intellectual disability not be executed. Two of those States appear to set a strict cutoff at 70, but at least 11 others have either abolished the death penalty or passed legislation allowing defendants to present additional intellectual disability evidence when their IQ score is above 70. Every state legislature, save one, to have considered the issue after Atkins and whose law has been interpreted by its courts has taken a position contrary to Florida's. Pp. 1996 - 1998.
(d) Atkins acknowledges the inherent error in IQ testing and provides substantial guidance on the definition of intellectual disability. The States play a critical role in advancing the protections of Atkins and providing this Court with an understanding of how intellectual disability should be measured and assessed, but Atkins did not give them unfettered discretion to define the full scope of the constitutional protection. Clinical definitions for intellectual disability which, by their express terms, rejected a strict IQ test score cutoff at 70, and which have long included the SEM, were a fundamental premise of Atkins. See 536 U.S., at 309, nn. 3, 5, 122 S.Ct. 2242. A fleeting mention of Florida in a citation listing States that had outlawed the execution of the intellectually disabled, id., at 315, 122 S.Ct. 2242, did not signal the Atkins Court's approval of the State's current understanding of its law, which had not yet been interpreted by the Florida Supreme Court to require a strict 70-point cutoff. Pp. 1998 - 1999.
(e) When a defendant's IQ test score falls within the test's acknowledged and inherent margin of error, the defendant must be able to present additional evidence of intellectual disability, including testimony regarding adaptive deficits. This legal determination of intellectual disability is distinct from a medical diagnosis but is informed by the medical community's diagnostic framework, which is of particular help here, where no alternative intellectual disability definition is presented, and where this Court and the States have placed substantial reliance on the medical profession's expertise. Pp. 2000 - 2001.
109 So.3d 704, reversed and remanded.
KENNEDY, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which GINSBURG, BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., joined. ALITO, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which ROBERTS, C.J., and SCALIA and THOMAS, JJ., joined.
Seth P. Waxman, Washington, DC, for Petitioner.
Allen Winsor, Solicitor General, for Respondent.
Eric C. Pinkard, Counsel of Record, Tampa, FL, Mark E. Olive, Law Offices of Mark E. Olive P.A., Tallahassee, FL, Seth P. Waxman, Danielle Spinelli, Megan Barbero, Daniel T. Deacon, Matthew Guarnieri, Thomas G. Sprankling, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, Washington, DC, for Petitioner.
Carolyn M. Snurkowski, Associate Deputy Attorney General, Carol M. Dittmar, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Diane G. DeWolf, Rachel E. Nordby, Leah A. Sevi, Osvaldo Vazquez, Deputy Solicitors General, Pamela Jo Bondi, Attorney General of Florida, Allen Winsor, Solicitor General, Tallahassee, FL, for Respondent.
Justice KENNEDY delivered the opinion of the Court.
This Court has held that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution forbid the execution of persons with intellectual disability. Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 321, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002). Florida law defines intellectual disability to require an IQ test score of 70 or less. If, from test scores, a prisoner is deemed to have an IQ above 70, all further exploration of intellectual disability is foreclosed. This rigid rule, the Court now holds, creates an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed, and thus is unconstitutional.
I
On February 21, 1978, Freddie Lee Hall, petitioner here, and his accomplice, Mark Ruffin, kidnaped, beat, raped, and murdered Karol Hurst, a pregnant, 21-year-old newlywed. Afterward, Hall and Ruffin drove to a convenience store they planned to rob. In the parking lot of the store, they killed Lonnie Coburn, a sheriff's deputy who attempted to apprehend them. Hall received the death penalty for both murders, although his sentence for the Coburn murder was later reduced on account of insufficient evidence of premeditation. Hall v. Florida, 403 So.2d 1319, 1321 (Fla.1981) ( per curiam ).
Hall argues that he cannot be executed because of his intellectual disability. Previous opinions of this Court have employed the term "mental retardation." This opinion uses the term "intellectual disability" to describe the identical phenomenon. See Rosa's Law, 124 Stat. 2643 (changing entries in the U.S. Code from "mental retardation" to "intellectual disability"); Schalock et al., The Renaming of Mental Retardation : Understanding the Change to the Term Intellectual Disability, 45 Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities 116 (2007). This change in terminology is approved and used in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, one of the basic texts used by psychiatrists and other experts; the manual is often referred to by its initials "DSM," followed by its edition number, e.g., "DSM-5." See American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 33 (5th ed. 2013).
When Hall was first sentenced, this Court had not yet ruled that the Eighth Amendment prohibits States from imposing the death penalty on persons with intellectual disability. See Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 340, 109 S.Ct. 2934, 106 L.Ed.2d 256 (1989). And at the time, Florida law did not consider intellectual disability as a statutory mitigating factor.
After this Court held that capital defendants must be permitted to present nonstatutory mitigating evidence in death penalty proceedings, Hitchcock v. Dugger, 481 U.S. 393, 398-399, 107 S.Ct. 1821, 95 L.Ed.2d 347 (1987), Hall was resentenced. Hall then presented substantial and unchallenged evidence of intellectual disability. School records indicated that his teachers identified him on numerous occasions as "[m]entally retarded." App. 482-483. Hall had been prosecuted for a different, earlier crime. His lawyer in that matter later testified that the lawyer "[c]ouldn't really understand anything [Hall] said." Id., at 480. And, with respect to the murder trial given him in this case, Hall's counsel recalled that Hall could not assist in his own defense because he had " 'a mental... level much lower than his age,' " at best comparable to the lawyer's 4-year-old daughter. Brief for Petitioner 11. A number of medical clinicians testified that, in their professional opinion, Hall was "significantly retarded," App. 507; was "mentally retarded," id., at 517; and had levels of understanding "typically [seen] with toddlers," id., at 523.
As explained below in more detail, an individual's ability or lack of ability to adapt or adjust to the requirements of daily life, and success or lack of success in doing so, is central to the framework followed by psychiatrists and other professionals in diagnosing intellectual disability. See DSM-5, at 37. Hall's siblings testified that there was something "very wrong" with him as a child. App. 466. Hall was "slow with speech and... slow to learn." Id., at 490. He "walked and talked long after his other brothers and sisters," id., at 461, and had "great difficulty forming his words," id., at 467.
Hall's upbringing appeared to make his deficits in adaptive functioning all the more severe. Hall was raised-in the words of the sentencing judge-"under the most horrible family circumstances imaginable." Id., at 53. Although "[t]eachers and siblings alike immediately recognized [Hall] to be significantly mentally retarded... [t]his retardation did not garner any sympathy from his mother, but rather caused much scorn to befall him." Id., at 20. Hall was "[c]onstantly beaten because he was'slow' or because he made simple mistakes." Ibid. His mother "would strap [Hall] to his bed at night, with a rope thrown over a rafter. In the morning, she would awaken Hall by hoisting him up and whipping him with a belt, rope, or cord." Ibid. Hall was beaten "ten or fifteen times a week sometimes." Id., at 477. His mother tied him "in a 'croaker' sack, swung it over a fire, and beat him," "buried him in the sand up to his neck to'strengthen his legs,' " and "held a gun on Hall... while she poked [him] with sticks." Hall v. Florida, 614 So.2d 473, 480 (Fla.1993) (Barkett, C.J., dissenting).
The jury, notwithstanding this testimony, voted to sentence Hall to death, and the sentencing court adopted the jury's recommendation. The court found that there was "substantial evidence in the record" to support the finding that "Freddie Lee Hall has been mentally retarded his entire life." App. 46. Yet the court also "suspect[ed] that the defense experts [were] guilty of some professional overkill," because "[n]othing of which the experts testified could explain how a psychotic, mentally-retarded, brain-damaged, learning-disabled, speech-impaired person could formulate a plan whereby a car was stolen and a convenience store was robbed." Id., at 42. The sentencing court went on to state that, even assuming the expert testimony to be accurate, "the learning disabilities, mental retardation, and other mental difficulties... cannot be used to justify, excuse or extenuate the moral culpability of the defendant in this cause." Id., at 56. Hall was again sentenced to death. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed, concluding that "Hall's argument that his mental retardation provided a pretense of moral or legal justification" had "no merit." Hall, 614 So.2d, at 478. Chief Justice Barkett dissented, arguing that executing a person with intellectual disability violated the State Constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Id., at 481-482.
In 2002, this Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment prohibited the execution of persons with intellectual disability. Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S., at 321, 122 S.Ct. 2242. On November 30, 2004, Hall filed a motion claiming that he had intellectual disability and could not be executed. More than five years later, Florida held a hearing to consider Hall's motion. Hall again presented evidence of intellectual disability, including an IQ test score of 71. (Hall had received nine IQ evaluations in 40 years, with scores ranging from 60 to 80, Brief for Respondent 8, but the sentencing court excluded the two scores below 70 for evidentiary reasons, leaving only scores between 71 and 80. See App. 107; 109 So.3d 704, 707 (Fla.2012)). In response, Florida argued that Hall could not be found intellectually disabled because Florida law requires that, as a threshold matter, Hall show an IQ test score of 70 or below before presenting any additional evidence of his intellectual disability. App. 278-279 ("[U]nder the law, if an I.Q. is above 70, a person is not mentally retarded"). The Florida Supreme Court rejected Hall's appeal and held that Florida's 70-point threshold was constitutional. 109 So.3d, at 707-708.
This Court granted certiorari. 571 U.S. ----, 134 S.Ct. 471, 187 L.Ed.2d 316 (2013).
II
The Eighth Amendment provides that "[e]xcessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." The Fourteenth Amendment applies those restrictions to the States. Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 560, 125 S.Ct. 1183, 161 L.Ed.2d 1 (2005); Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 239-240, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972) ( per curiam ). "By protecting even those convicted of heinous crimes, the Eighth Amendment reaffirms the duty of the government to respect the dignity of all persons." Roper, supra, at 572, 125 S.Ct. 1183; see also Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 100, 78 S.Ct. 590, 2 L.Ed.2d 630 (1958) (plurality opinion) ("The basic concept underlying the Eighth Amendment is nothing less than the dignity of man").
The Eighth Amendment "is not fastened to the obsolete but may acquire meaning as public opinion becomes enlightened by a humane justice." Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, 378, 30 S.Ct. 544, 54 L.Ed. 793 (1910). To enforce the Constitution's protection of human dignity, this Court looks to the "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." Trop, supra, at 101, 78 S.Ct. 590. The Eighth Amendment's protection of dignity reflects the Nation we have been, the Nation we are, and the Nation we aspire to be. This is to affirm that the Nation's constant, unyielding purpose must be to transmit the Constitution so that its precepts and guarantees retain their meaning and force.
The Eighth Amendment prohibits certain punishments as a categorical matter. No natural-born citizen may be denaturalized. Ibid. No person may be sentenced to death for a crime committed as a juvenile. Roper, supra, at 572, 125 S.Ct. 1183 And, as relevant for this case, persons with intellectual disability may not be executed. Atkins, 536 U.S., at 321, 122 S.Ct. 2242.
No legitimate penological purpose is served by executing a person with intellectual disability. Id., at 317, 320, 122 S.Ct. 2242. To do so contravenes the Eighth Amendment, for to impose the harshest of punishments on an intellectually disabled person violates his or her inherent dignity as a human being. "[P]unishment is justified under one or more of three principal rationales: rehabilitation, deterrence, and retribution." Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407, 420, 128 S.Ct. 2641, 171 L.Ed.2d 525 (2008). Rehabilitation, it is evident, is not an applicable rationale for the death penalty. See Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 183, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). As for deterrence, those with intellectual disability are, by reason of their condition, likely unable to make the calculated judgments that are the premise for the deterrence rationale. They have a "diminished ability" to "process information, to learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, or to control impulses... [which] make[s] it less likely that they can process the information of the possibility of execution as a penalty and, as a result, control their conduct based upon that information." Atkins, 536 U.S., at 320, 122 S.Ct. 2242. Retributive values are also ill-served by executing those with intellectual disability. The diminished capacity of the intellectually disabled lessens moral culpability and hence the retributive value of the punishment. See id., at 319, 122 S.Ct. 2242 ("If the culpability of the average murderer is insufficient to justify the most extreme sanction available to the State, the lesser culpability of the mentally retarded offender surely does not merit that form of retribution").
A further reason for not imposing the death penalty on a person who is intellectually disabled is to protect the integrity of the trial process. These persons face "a special risk of wrongful execution" because they are more likely to give false confessions, are often poor witnesses, and are less able to give meaningful assistance to their counsel. Id., at 320-321, 122 S.Ct. 2242. This is not to say that under current law persons with intellectual disability who "meet the law's requirements for criminal responsibility" may not be tried and punished. Id., at 306, 122 S.Ct. 2242. They may not, however, receive the law's most severe sentence. Id., at 318, 122 S.Ct. 2242.
The question this case presents is how intellectual disability must be defined in order to implement these principles and the holding of Atkins. To determine if Florida's cutoff rule is valid, it is proper to consider the psychiatric and professional studies that elaborate on the purpose and meaning of IQ scores to determine how the scores relate to the holding of Atkins. This in turn leads to a better understanding of how the legislative policies of various States, and the holdings of state courts, implement the Atkins rule. That understanding informs our determination whether there is a consensus that instructs how to decide the specific issue presented here. And, in conclusion, this Court must express its own independent determination reached in light of the instruction found in those sources and authorities.
III
A
That this Court, state courts, and state legislatures consult and are informed by the work of medical experts in determining intellectual disability is unsurprising. Those professionals use their learning and skills to study and consider the consequences of the classification schemes they devise in the diagnosis of persons with mental or psychiatric disorders or disabilities. Society relies upon medical and professional expertise to define and explain how to diagnose the mental condition at issue. And the definition of intellectual disability by skilled professionals has implications far beyond the confines of the death penalty: for it is relevant to education, access to social programs, and medical treatment plans. In determining who qualifies as intellectually disabled, it is proper to consult the medical community's opinions.
As the Court noted in Atkins, the medical community defines intellectual disability according to three criteria: significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, deficits in adaptive functioning (the inability to learn basic skills and adjust behavior to changing circumstances), and onset of these deficits during the developmental period. See id., at 308, n. 3, 122 S.Ct. 2242; DSM-5, at 33; Brief for American Psychological Association et al. as Amici Curiae 12-13 (hereinafter APA Brief). This last factor, referred to as "age of onset," is not at issue.
The first and second criteria-deficits in intellectual functioning and deficits in adaptive functioning-are central here. In the context of a formal assessment, "[t]he existence of concurrent deficits in intellectual and adaptive functioning has long been the defining characteristic of intellectual disability." Id., at 11.
On its face, the Florida statute could be consistent with the views of the medical community noted and discussed in Atkins. Florida's statute defines intellectual disability for purposes of an Atkins proceeding as "significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the period from conception to age 18." Fla. Stat. § 921.137(1) (2013). The statute further defines "significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning" as "performance that is two or more standard deviations from the mean score on a standardized intelligence test." Ibid. The mean IQ test score is 100. The concept of standard deviation describes how scores are dispersed in a population. Standard deviation is distinct from standard error of measurement, a concept which describes the reliability of a test and is discussed further below. The standard deviation on an IQ test is approximately 15 points, and so two standard deviations is approximately 30 points. Thus a test taker who performs "two or more standard deviations from the mean" will score approximately 30 points below the mean on an IQ test, i.e., a score of approximately 70 points.
On its face this statute could be interpreted consistently with Atkins and with the conclusions this Court reaches in the instant case. Nothing in the statute precludes Florida from taking into account the IQ test's standard error of measurement, and as discussed below there is evidence that Florida's Legislature intended to include the measurement error in the calculation. But the Florida Supreme Court has interpreted the provisions more narrowly. It has held that a person whose test score is above 70, including a score within the margin for measurement error, does not have an intellectual disability and is barred from presenting other evidence that would show his faculties are limited. See Cherry v. State, 959 So.2d 702, 712-713 (Fla.2007) ( per curiam ). That strict IQ test score cutoff of 70 is the issue in this case.
Pursuant to this mandatory cutoff, sentencing courts cannot consider even substantial and weighty evidence of intellectual disability as measured and made manifest by the defendant's failure or inability to adapt to his social and cultural environment, including medical histories, behavioral records, school tests and reports, and testimony regarding past behavior and family circumstances. This is so even though the medical community accepts that all of this evidence can be probative of intellectual disability, including for individuals who have an IQ test score above 70. See APA Brief 15-16 ("[T]he relevant clinical authorities all agree that an individual with an IQ score above 70 may properly be diagnosed with intellectual disability if significant limitations in adaptive functioning also exist"); DSM-5, at 37 ("[A] person with an IQ score above 70 may have such severe adaptive behavior problems... that the person's actual functioning is comparable to that of individuals with a lower IQ score").
Florida's rule disregards established medical practice in two interrelated ways. It takes an IQ score as final and conclusive evidence of a defendant's intellectual capacity, when experts in the field would consider other evidence. It also relies on a purportedly scientific measurement of the defendant's abilities, his IQ score, while refusing to recognize that the score is, on its own terms, imprecise.
The professionals who design, administer, and interpret IQ tests have agreed, for years now, that IQ test scores should be read not as a single fixed number but as a range. See D. Wechsler, The Measurement of Adult Intelligence 133 (3d ed. 1944) (reporting the range of error on an early IQ test). Each IQ test has a "standard error of measurement," ibid., often referred to by the abbreviation "SEM." A test's SEM is a statistical fact, a reflection of the inherent imprecision of the test itself. See R. Furr & V. Bacharach, Psychometrics 118 (2d ed. 2014) (identifying the SEM as "one of the most important concepts in measurement theory"). An individual's IQ test score on any given exam may fluctuate for a variety of reasons. These include the test-taker's health; practice from earlier tests; the environment or location of the test; the examiner's demeanor; the subjective judgment involved in scoring certain questions on the exam; and simple lucky guessing. See American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, R. Schalock et al., User's Guide To Accompany the 11th Edition of Intellectual Disability: Definition, Classification, and Systems of Supports 22 (2012) (hereinafter AAIDD Manual); A. Kaufman, IQ Testing 101, pp. 138-139 (2009).
The SEM reflects the reality that an individual's intellectual functioning cannot be reduced to a single numerical score. For purposes of most IQ tests, the SEM means that an individual's score is best understood as a range of scores on either side of the recorded score. The SEM allows clinicians to calculate a range within which one may say an individual's true IQ score lies. See APA Brief 23 ("SEM is a unit of measurement: 1 SEM equates to a confidence of 68% that the measured score falls within a given score range, while 2 SEM provides a 95% confidence level that the measured score is within a broader range"). A score of 71, for instance, is generally considered to reflect a range between 66 and 76 with 95% confidence and a range of 68.5 and 73.5 with a 68% confidence. See DSM-5, at 37 ("Individuals with intellectual disability have scores of approximately two standard deviations or more below the population mean, including a margin for measurement error (generally +5 points).... [T]his involves a score of 65-75 (70 ± 5)"); APA Brief 23 ("For example, the average SEM for the WAIS-IV is 2.16 IQ test points and the average SEM for the Stanford-Binet 5 is 2.30 IQ test points (test manuals report SEMs by different age groupings; these scores are similar, but not identical, often due to sampling error)"). Even when a person has taken multiple tests, each separate score must be assessed using the SEM, and the analysis of multiple IQ scores jointly is a complicated endeavor. See Schneider, Principles of Assessment of Aptitude and Achievement, in The Oxford Handbook of Child Psychological Assessment 286, 289-291, 318 (D. Saklofske, C. Reynolds, V. Schwean, eds. 2013). In addition, because the test itself may be flawed, or administered in a consistently flawed manner, multiple examinations may result in repeated similar scores, so that even a consistent score is not conclusive evidence of intellectual functioning.
Despite these professional explanations, Florida law used the test score as a fixed number, thus barring further consideration of other evidence bearing on the question of intellectual disability. For professionals to diagnose-and for the law then to determine-whether an intellectual disability exists once the SEM applies and the individual's IQ score is 75 or below the inquiry would consider factors indicating whether the person had deficits in adaptive functioning. These include evidence of past performance, environment, and upbringing.
B
A significant majority of States implement the protections of Atkins by taking the SEM into account, thus acknowledging the error inherent in using a test score without necessary adjustment. This calculation provides "objective indicia of society's standards" in the context of the Eighth Amendment. Roper, 543 U.S., at 563, 125 S.Ct. 1183. Only the Kentucky and Virginia Legislatures have adopted a fixed score cutoff identical to Florida's. Ky.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 532.130(2) (Lexis Supp. 2013); Bowling v. Commonwealth, 163 S.W.3d 361, 375 (Ky.2005); Va.Code Ann. § 19.2-264.3:1.1 (Lexis Supp. 2013); Johnson v. Commonwealth, 267 Va. 53, 75, 591 S.E.2d 47, 59 (2004), vacated and remanded on other grounds, 544 U.S. 901, 125 S.Ct. 1589, 161 L.Ed.2d 270 (2005). Alabama also may use a strict IQ score cutoff at 70, although not as a result of legislative action. See Smith v. State, 71 So.3d 12, 20 (Ala.Crim.App.2008) ("The Alabama Supreme Court... did not adopt any'margin of error' when examining a defendant's IQ score"). Petitioner does not question the rule in States which use a bright-line cutoff at 75 or greater, Tr. of Oral Arg. 9, and so they are not included alongside Florida in this analysis.
In addition to these States, Arizona, Delaware, Kansas, North Carolina, and Washington have statutes which could be interpreted to provide a bright-line cutoff leading to the same result that Florida mandates in its cases. See Ariz.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 13-753(F) (West 2013); Del.Code Ann. Tit. 11, § 4209(d)(3) (2012 Supp.); Kan. Stat. Ann. § 76-12b01 (2013 Supp.); N.C. Gen.Stat. Ann. § 15A-2005 (Lexis 2013); Wash. Rev.Code § 10.95.030(2)(c) (2012). That these state laws might be interpreted to require a bright-line cutoff does not mean that they will be so interpreted, however. See, e.g., State v. Vela, 279 Neb. 94, 126, 137, 777 N.W.2d 266, 292, 299 (2010) (Although Nebraska's statute specifies "[a]n intelligence quotient of seventy or below on a reliably administered intelligence quotient test," "[t]he district court found that [the defendant's] score of 75 on the [IQ test], considered in light of the standard error of measurement, could be considered as subaverage general intellectual functioning for purposes of diagnosing mental retardation").
Arizona's statute appears to set a broad statutory cutoff at 70, Ariz.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 13-753(F) (West 2013), but another provision instructs courts to "take into account the margin of error for a test administered." Id. at § 14-753(K)(5). How courts are meant to interpret the statute in a situation like Hall's is not altogether clear. The principal Arizona case on the matter, State v. Roque, 213 Ariz. 193, 141 P.3d 368, (2006), states that "the statute accounts for margin of error by requiring multiple tests," and that "if the defendant achieves a full-scale score of 70 or below on any one of the tests, then the court proceeds to a hearing." Id. at 403. But that case also notes that the defendant had an IQ score of 80, well outside the margin of error, and that all but one of the sub-parts of the IQ test were "above 75." Id.
Kansas has not had an execution in almost five decades, and so its laws and jurisprudence on this issue are unlikely to receive attention on this specific question. See Atkins, 536 U.S., at 316, 122 S.Ct. 2242 ("[E]ven in those States that allow the execution of mentally retarded offenders, the practice is uncommon. Some States... continue to authorize executions, but none have been carried out in decades. Thus there is little need to pursue legislation barring the execution of the mentally retarded in those States"). Delaware has executed three individuals in the past decade, while Washington has executed one person, and has recently suspended its death penalty. None of the four individuals executed recently in those States appears to have brought a claim similar to that advanced here.
Thus, at most nine States mandate a strict IQ score cutoff at 70. Of these, four States (Delaware, Kansas, North Carolina, and Washington) appear not 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:
|
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 Douglas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This action for death benefits under the Workmen’s Compensation Law of Tennessee (Tenn. Code Ann. 1934, § 6851 et seq.) was commenced in 1945 by plaintiff-respondent in the Chancery Court of Hawkins County, Tennessee. The defendants-petitioners are the former employer of her deceased husband and the employer’s insurance carrier. Service was had on the insurance carrier in Hawkins County, and on the employer in Knox County. Respondent is a citizen of Tennessee, the employer is a North Carolina corporation, and the insurance carrier is a Connecticut corporation. The complaint alleged that respondent’s husband died as the result of an accident occurring in the course of his employment. Burial expenses plus benefits in the amount of $5,000, the maximum under the Tennessee statute, were sought on behalf of respondent and her two minor children, aged twelve and fifteen.
On May 28, 1945, petitioners mailed a notice of intention to file a petition for removal to a federal District Court which was received by respondent’s attorney on the morning of May 29. The petition for removal was filed in the Chancery Court the same day, and on June 5 the removal order issued. In the federal court the petitioners moved for dismissal on the ground that venue was not properly laid in the Hawkins County Court, so that under Tennessee law that court had lacked jurisdiction. Respondent sought a remand of the case to the state court, contending that the requisites of diversity jurisdiction had not been met either as to jurisdictional amount or as to proper notice of filing of the removal petition, and that the suit was not removable because not one of a civil nature in law or equity. The District Court concluded that Hawkins County was not the proper venue. It thereupon dismissed the action without reaching the questions raised by respondent’s motion for a remand.
The judgment was reversed on appeal. 154 F. 2d 881. The Circuit Court of Appeals held that the jurisdictional minimum of $3,000 in controversy (Judicial Code § 24, 28 U. S. C. § 41 (1)) was not present, and therefore ordered the case remanded to the state court. In this disposition the Circuit Court of Appeals reached neither the state venue question raised by petitioners, nor respondent’s contention that the required notice of the filing of the removal petition was lacking. We granted certiorari because of an apparent conflict with Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen v. Pinkston, 293 U. S. 96, as to the jurisdictional minimum requirement.
First. It is suggested that a decision of a Circuit Court of Appeals ordering remand of a case to a state court is not reviewable. And it is also said that we lack power to review the action of the Circuit Court of Appeals, since the mandate of that court has issued and the District Court has remanded the cause to the state court.
An order of a District Court remanding a cause to the state court from whence it came is not appealable, and hence may not be reviewed either in the Circuit Court of Appeals or here. Judicial Code § 28, 28 U. S. C. § 71; Kloeb v. Armour & Co., 311 U. S. 199; Metropolitan Casualty Ins. Co. v. Stevens, 312 U. S. 563; United States v. Rice, 327 U. S. 742. But no such limitation affects our authority to review an action of the Circuit Court of Appeals, directing a remand to a state court. Gay v. Ruff, 292 U. S. 25. Nor does the fact that the mandate of the Circuit Court of Appeals has issued defeat this Court’s jurisdiction. Carr v. Zaja, 283 U. S. 52, and cases cited.
Second. We think that the jurisdictional amount of $3,000 was involved in this suit. The contrary conclusion of the Circuit Court of Appeals was based on the nature of the award under the Tennessee statute. The award may be paid in installments at regular intervals by the employer or by a trustee with whom the amount of the award, reduced to present value, has been deposited. Tenn. Code § 6893. Moreover, the death or remarriage of respondent, plus the death or attainment of the age of eighteen by the children, would terminate all payments. Tenn. Code § 6883. Since an award to respondent would be payable in installments, and by operation of conditions subsequent the total payments might never reach $3,000, the Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the jurisdictional amount was lacking.
If this case were one where judgment could be entered only for the installments due at the commencement of the suit (cf. New York Life Ins. Co. v. Viglas, 297 U. S. 672, 678), future installments could not be considered in determining whether the jurisdictional amount was involved, even though the judgment would be determinative of liability for future installments as they accrued. Wright v. Mutual Life Ins. Co., 19 F. 2d 117, aff’d. 276 U. S. 602. Cf. Button v. Mutual Life Ins. Co., 48 F. Supp. 168. But this is not that type of case. For the Tennessee statute which creates liability for the award contemplates a single action for the determination of claimant’s right to benefits and a single judgment for the award granted. See Tenn. Code §§ 6880, 6881, 6890, 6891, 6893; Shockley v. Morristown Produce & Ice Co., 171 Tenn. 591, 106 S.W. 2d 562.
Nor does the fact that it cannot be known as a matter of absolute certainty that the amount which may ultimately be paid, if respondent prevails, will exceed $3,000, mean that the jurisdictional amount is lacking. This Court has rejected such a restrictive interpretation of the statute creating diversity jurisdiction. It has held that a possibility that payments will terminate before the total reaches the jurisdictional minimum is immaterial if the right to all the payments is in issue. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen v. Pinkston, supra; Thompson v. Thompson, 226 U. S. 551. Future payments are not in any proper sense contingent, although they may be decreased or cut off altogether by the operation of conditions subsequent. Thompson v. Thompson, supra, p. 560. And there is no suggestion that by reason of life expectancy or law of averages the maximum amount recoverable can be expected to fall below the jurisdictional minimum. Cf. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen v. Pinkston, supra, p. 101. Moreover, the computation of the maximum amount recoverable is not complicated by the necessity of determining the life expectancy of respondent. Cf. Thompson v. Thompson, supra, p. 559; Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen v. Pinkston, supra, p. 100.
Third. Respondent, as is her right, United States v. Ballard, 322 U. S. 78, 88, and cases cited, seeks to support the action of the Circuit Court of Appeals on other grounds. But those questions were not passed upon by that court nor adequately presented here. So we deem it more appropriate to remand the case to the Circuit Court of Appeals so it may consider those questions. United States v. Ballard, supra.
Reversed.
Death benefits are provided in the amount of 60% of the average weekly wages of the employee (as computed in accordance with Tenn. Code § 6852 (c)), but payments may not exceed $18 per week, nor continue for more than 400 weeks. §6880; § 6883 (17). In addition there is a ceiling of $5,000 on total benefits exclusive of burial and certain other expenses. § 6881. See Haynes v. Columbia Pictures Corp., 178 Tenn. 648, 162 S. W. 2d 383. The complaint alleged that 60% of the average weekly wages for the statutory period would exceed $5,000.
The contention was that proper venue lay only in Roane County where, it was alleged, the accident occurred and the business of the employer is conducted. It was argued that service on the insurer in Hawkins County did not give the Hawkins County Court jurisdiction of the case.
See note 1, supra.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
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.
At issue in this case are several questions arising from the application of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or Act) to an employer’s treatment of its undocumented alien employees. We first determine whether the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) may properly find that an employer engages in an unfair labor practice by reporting to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) certain employees known to be undocumented aliens in retaliation for their engaging in union activity, thereby causing their immediate departure from the United States. We then address the validity of the Board’s remedial order as modified by the Court of Appeals.
I
Petitioners are two small leather processing firms located in Chicago that, for purposes of the Act, constitute a single integrated employer. In July 1976, a union organization drive was begun. Eight employees signed cards authorizing the Chicago Leather Workers Union, Local 431, Amalgamated Meatcutters and Butcher Workmen of North America (Union), to act as their collective-bargaining representative. Of the 11 employees then employed by petitioners, most were Mexican nationals present illegally in the United States without visas or immigration papers authorizing them to work. The Union ultimately prevailed in a Board election conducted on December 10, 1976.
Two hours after the election, petitioners’ president, John Surak, addressed a group of employees, including some of the undocumented aliens involved in this case. He asked the employees why they had voted for the Union and cursed them for doing so. He then inquired as to whether they had valid immigration papers. Many of the employees indicated that they did not.
Petitioners filed with the Board objections to the election, arguing that six of the seven eligible voters were illegal aliens. Surak executed an accompanying affidavit which stated that he had known about the employees’ illegal presence in this country for several months prior to the election. On January 19, 1977, the Board’s Acting Regional Director notified petitioners that their objections were overruled and that the Union would be certified as the employees’ collective-bargaining representative. The next day, Surak sent a letter to the INS asking that the agency check into the status of a number of petitioners’ employees as soon as possible. In response to the letter, INS agents visited petitioners’ premises on February 18, 1977, to investigate the immigration status of all Spanish-speaking employees. The INS agents discovered that five employees were living and working illegally in the United States and arrested them. Later that day, each employee executed an INS form, acknowledging illegal presence in the country and accepting INS’s grant of voluntary departure as a substitute for deportation. By the end of the day, all five employees were on a bus ultimately bound for Mexico.
On February 22 and March 23, 1977, the Board’s Acting Regional Director issued complaints alleging that petitioners had committed various unfair labor practices. On March 29, 1977, petitioners sent letters to the five employees who had returned to Mexico offering to reinstate them, provided that doing so would not subject Sure-Tan to any violations of United States immigration laws. The offers were to remain open until May 1, 1977.
The unfair labor practice charges were heard by an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ), whose findings and conclusions as to the merits of the complaints were affirmed and adopted by the Board. Specifically, the Board affirmed the ALJ’s conclusion that petitioners had violated §§ 8(a)(1) and (3) by requesting the INS to investigate the status of their Mexican employees “solely because the employees supported the Union” and “with full knowledge that the employees in question had no papers or work permits.” Sure-Tan, Inc., 234 N. L. R. B. 1187 (1978). The Board, therefore, agreed with the ALJ’s finding that “the discriminatees’ subsequent deportation was the proximate result of the discriminatorily motivated action by [petitioners] and constitutes a constructive discharge.” Id., at 1191.
As a remedy for the § 8(a)(3) violations, the Board adopted the ALJ’s recommendation that petitioners be ordered to cease and desist from their various unfair labor practices, including notifying the INS of their employees’ status because of the employees’ support of the Union. However, the Board declined to adopt the ALJ’s specific recommendations as to the appropriate remedy. The ALJ had recommended that petitioners be ordered to offer the discharged employees reinstatement and that the offers be held open for six months. In addition, the ALJ had concluded that since, under past Board precedent, backpay is normally tolled during those periods in which employees are not available for employment, an ordinary backpay award could not be ordered in this case. Nevertheless, the ALJ had invited the Board to consider awarding backpay for a minimum 4-week period both to provide some measure of relief to the illegally discharged employees and to deter future violations of the NLRA.
The Board, however, concluded that the ALJ’s analysis of the remedy was “unnecessarily speculative.” 234 N. L. R. B., at 1187. Since the record contained no evidence that the employees had not since returned to the United States, the Board modified the ALJ’s order by substituting the “conventional remedy of reinstatement with backpay,” thereby leaving until subsequent compliance proceedings the determination whether the employees had in fact been available for work. Ibid.
On appeal, the Court of Appeals enforced the Board’s order. 672 F. 2d 592 (CA7 1982). The court fully agreed that petitioners had violated the NLRA by constructively discharging their undocumented alien employees. It also concurred in the Board’s judgment that the usual remedies of reinstatement and backpay were appropriate in these circumstances. The Court of Appeals did, however, modify the Board’s order in several significant respects. First, it concluded that reinstatement would be proper only if the discharged employees were legally present and free to be employed in the United States when they presented themselves for reinstatement. The court also decided that the reinstatement offers in their present form were deficient since they did not allow a reasonable time for the employees to make arrangements for legal reentry. The court therefore ordered that the offers be left open for a period of four years. It further concluded that the offers must be written in Spanish, and delivered so as to allow for verification of receipt.
As for backpay, the court required that the discharged employees should be deemed unavailable for work during any period when they were not legally entitled to be present and employed in the United States. Recognizing that the discharged employees would most likely not have been lawfully available for employment and so would receive no backpay award at all, the court decided that “it would better effectuate the policies of the Act to set a minimum amount of backpay which the employer must pay in any event, because it was his discriminatory act which caused these employees to lose their jobs.” Id., at 606. Believing that six months' backpay would be the minimum amount appropriate for this purpose, the court suggested that the Board consider this remedy. The Board accepted the court’s suggestion, and the final judgment order approved by the court included the minimum award of six months’ backpay. We granted cer-tiorari, 460 U. S. 1021 (1983). We now affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals insofar as it determined that petitioners violated the Act by constructively discharging their undocumented alien employees, but reverse the judgment as to some of the remedies ordered and direct that the case be remanded to the Board.
A
We first consider the predicate question whether the NLRA should apply to unfair labor practices committed against undocumented aliens. The Board has consistently held that undocumented aliens are “employees” within the meaning of §2(3) of the Act. That provision broadly provides that “[t]he term ‘employee’ shall include any employee,” 29 U. S. C. § 152(3), subject only to certain specifically enumerated exceptions. Ibid. Since the task of defining the term “employee” is one that “has been assigned primarily to the agency created by Congress to administer the Act,” NLRB v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 322 U. S. 111, 130 (1944), the Board’s construction of that term is entitled to considerable deference, and we will uphold any interpretation that is reasonably defensible. See, e. g., Ford Motor Co. v. NLRB, 441 U. S. 488, 496-497 (1979); NLRB v. Iron Workers, 434 U. S. 335, 350 (1978); NLRB v. Erie Resistor Corp., 373 U. S. 221, 236 (1963).
The terms and policies of the Act fully support the Board’s interpretation in this case. The breadth of § 2(3)’s definition is striking: the Act squarely applies to “any employee.” The only limitations are specific exemptions for agricultural laborers, domestic workers, individuals employed by their spouses or parents, individuals employed as independent contractors or supervisors, and individuals employed by a person who is not an employer under the NLRA. See 29 U. S. C. § 152(3). Since undocumented aliens are not among the few groups of workers expressly exempted by Congress, they plainly come within the broad statutory definition of “employee.”
Similarly, extending the coverage of the Act to such workers is consistent with the Act’s avowed purpose of encouraging and protecting the collective-bargaining process. See Hearst Publications, Inc., supra, at 126. As this Court has previously recognized: “[Acceptance by illegal aliens of jobs on substandard terms as to wages and working conditions can seriously depress wage scales and working conditions of citizens and legally admitted aliens; and employment of illegal aliens under such conditions can diminish the effectiveness of labor unions.” De Canas v. Bica, 424 U. S. 351, 356-357 (1976). If undocumented alien employees were excluded from participation in union activities and from protections against employer intimidation, there would be created a subclass of workers without a comparable stake in the collective goals of their legally resident co-workers, thereby eroding the unity of all the employees and impeding effective collective bargaining. See NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1, 33 (1937). Thus, the Board’s categorization of undocumented aliens as protected employees furthers the purposes of the NLRA.
B
Counterintuitive though it may be, we do not find any conflict between application of the NLRA to undocumented aliens and the mandate of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 66 Stat. 163, as amended, 8 U. S. C. § 1101 et seq. This Court has observed that “[t]he central concern of the INA is with the terms and conditions of admission to the country and the subsequent treatment of aliens lawfully in the country.” De Canas v. Bica, 424 U. S., at 359. The INA evinces “at best evidence of a peripheral concern with employment of illegal entrants.” Id., at 360. For whatever reason, Congress has not adopted provisions in the INA making it unlawful for an employer to hire an alien who is present or working in the United States without appropriate authorization. While it is unlawful to “concea[l], harbo[r], or shiel[d] from detection” any alien not lawfully entitled to enter or reside in the United States, see 8 U. S. C. § 1324(a)(3), an explicit proviso to the statute explains that “employment (including the usual and normal practices incident to employment) shall not be deemed to constitute harboring.” Ibid. See De Canas v. Bica, supra, at 360, and n. 9. Moreover, Congress has not made it a separate criminal offense for an alien to accept employment after entering this country illegally. See 119 Cong. Rec. 14184 (1973) (remarks of Rep. Dennis). Since the employment relationship between an employer and an undocumented alien is hence not illegal under the IN A, there is no reason to conclude that application of the NLRA to employment practices affecting such aliens would necessarily conflict with the terms of the IN A.
We find persuasive the Board’s argument that enforcement of the NLRA with respect to undocumented alien employees is compatible with the policies of the IN A. A primary purpose in restricting immigration is to preserve jobs for American workers; immigrant aliens are therefore admitted to work in this country only if they “will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of the workers in the United States similarly employed.” 8 U. S. C. § 1182(a)(14). See S. Rep. No. 748, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 15 (1965). Application of the NLRA helps to assure that the wages and employment conditions of lawful residents are not adversely affected by the competition of illegal alien employees who are not subject to the standard terms of employment. If an employer realizes that there will be no advantage under the NLRA in preferring illegal aliens to legal resident workers, any incentive to hire such illegal aliens is correspondingly lessened. In turn, if the demand for undocumented aliens declines, there may then be fewer incentives for aliens themselves to enter in violation of the federal immigration laws. The Board’s enforcement of the NLRA as to undocumented aliens is therefore clearly reconcilable with and serves the purposes of the immigration laws as presently written.
III
Accepting the premise that the provisions of the NLRA are applicable to undocumented alien employees, we must now address the more difficult issue whether, under the circumstances of this case, petitioners committed an unfair labor practice by reporting their undocumented alien employees to the INS in retaliation for participating in union activities. Section 8(a)(3) makes it an unfair labor practice for an employer “by discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization.” 29 U. S. C. § 158(a)(3). The Board, with the approval of lower courts, has long held that an employer violates this provision not only when, for the purpose of discouraging union activity, it directly dismisses an employee, but also when it purposefully creates working conditions so intolerable that the employee has no option but to resign — a so-called “constructive discharge.” See, e. g., NLRB v. Haberman Construction Co., 641 F. 2d 351, 358 (CA5 1981) (en banc); Cartwright Hardware Co. v. NLRB, 600 F. 2d 268, 270 (CA10 1979); J. P. Stevens & Co. v. NLRB, 461 F. 2d 490, 494 (CA4 1972); NLRB v. Holly Bra of California, Inc., 405 F. 2d 870, 872 (CA9 1969); Atlas Mills, Inc., 3 N. L. R. B. 10, 17 (1937). See also 3 T. Kheel, Labor Law § 12.05[1][a] (1982).
Petitioners do not dispute that the antiunion animus element of this test was, as expressed by the lower court, “flagrantly met.” 672 F. 2d, at 601. “The record is replete with examples of Sure-Tan’s blatantly illegal course of conduct to discourage its employees from supporting the Union.” Id., at 601-602. Petitioners contend, however, that their conduct in reporting the undocumented alien workers did not force the workers’ departure from the country; instead, they argue, it was the employees’ status as illegal aliens that was the actual “proximate cause” of their departure. See Brief for Petitioners 13-15.
This argument is unavailing. According to testimony by an INS agent before the ALJ, petitioners’ letter was the sole cause of the investigation during which the employees were taken into custody. This evidence was undisputed by petitioners and amply supports the ALJ’s conclusion that “but for [petitioners’] letter to Immigration, the discriminatees would have continued to work indefinitely.” 234 N. L. R. B., at 1191. And there can be little doubt that Surak foresaw precisely this result when, having known about the employees’ illegal status for some months, he notified the INS only after the Union’s electoral victory was assured. See supra, at 887; 672 F. 2d, at 601.
We observe that the Board quite properly does not contend that an employer may never report the presence of an illegal alien employee to the INS. See, e. g., Bloom/Art Textiles, Inc., 225 N. L. R. B. 766 (1976) (no violation of Act for employer to discharge illegal alien who was a union activist where the evidence showed that the reason for the discharge was not the employee’s protected collective activities, but the employer’s concern that employment of the undocumented worker violated state law). The reporting of any violation of the criminal laws is conduct which ordinarily should be encouraged, not penalized. See In re Quarles, 158 U. S. 532, 535 (1895). It is only when the evidence establishes that the reporting of the presence of an illegal alien employee is in retaliation for the employee’s protected union activity that the Board finds a violation of § 8(a)(3). Absent this specific finding of antiunion animus, it would not be an unfair labor practice to report or discharge an undocumented alien employee. See Bloom/Art Textiles, Inc., supra. Such a holding is consistent with the policies of both the IN A and the NLRA.
Finally, petitioners claim that this Court’s recent decision in Bill Johnson’s Restaurants, Inc. v. NLRB, 461 U. S. 731 (1983), mandates the conclusion that their request for enforcement of the federal immigration laws is an aspect of their First Amendment right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” and therefore may not be burdened under the guise of enforcing the NLRA. In Bill Johnson’s Restaurants, the Court held that an employer’s filing of a state court suit against its employees seeking damages and injunctive relief for libelous statements and injury to its business is not an enjoinable unfair labor practice unless the suit is filed for retaliatory purposes and lacks a reasonable basis. The Court stressed that the right of access to courts for redress of wrongs is an aspect of the First Amendment right to petition the government, concluding that the NLRA must be construed in such a way as to be “sensitive” to these First Amendment values. Id., at 741. The Court also noted that the States had a compelling interest in maintaining domestic peace by providing employers with such civil remedies for tortious conduct during labor disputes. If the Board were allowed to enjoin a state lawsuit simply because of retaliatory motive, the employer would “be totally deprived of a remedy for an actual injury,” and the strong state interest in providing for such redress would therefore be undermined. Id., at 742.
The reasoning of Bill Johnson’s Restaurants simply does not apply to petitioners’ situation. The employer in that case, though similarly motivated by a desire to discourage the exercise of NLRA rights, was asserting in state court a personal interest in its own reputation that was protected by state law. If the Court had upheld the Board in the case, it would have left the employer with no forum in which to pursue a remedy for an “actual injury.” Id., at 741. The First Amendment right protected in Bill Johnson’s Restaurants is plainly a “right of access to the courts... ‘for redress of alleged wrongs.’” Ibid. Petitioners in this case, however, have not suffered a comparable, legally protected injury at the hands of their employees. Petitioners did not invoke the INS administrative process in order to seek the redress of any wrongs committed against them. Cf. California Motor Transport Co. v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U. S. 508 (1972). Indeed, private persons such as petitioners have no judicially cognizable interest in procuring enforcement of the immigration laws by the INS. Cf. Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U. S. 614, 619 (1973).
Finally, Bill Johnson’s Restaurants was concerned about whether the Board’s interpretation of the NLRA would work to pre-empt the State from providing civil remedies for conduct touching interests “‘deeply rooted in local feeling and responsibility.’” 461 U. S., at 741 (quoting San Diego
Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236, 244 (1959)). Here, where there is no conflict between the Board’s unfair labor practice finding and any asserted state interest, such federalism concerns are simply not at stake. In short, Bill Johnson’s Restaurants will not support petitioners’ efforts to avoid their obligations under the NLRA by reporting their employees to the INS.
I
There remains for us to consider petitioners’ challenges to the remedial order entered in this case. Petitioners attack those portions of the Court of Appeals’ order which modified the Board’s original order by providing for an irreducible minimum of six months’ backpay for each employee and by detailing the language, acceptance period, and verification method of the reinstatement offers. We find that the Court of Appeals exceeded its narrow scope of review in imposing both these modifications.
A
Section 10(c) of the Act empowers the Board, when it finds that an unfair labor practice has been committed, to issue an order requiring the violator to “cease and desist from such unfair labor practice, and to take such affirmative action including reinstatement of employees with or without backpay, as will effectuate the policies” of the NLRA. 29 U. S. C. § 160(c). The Court has repeatedly interpreted this statutory command as vesting in the Board the primary responsibility and broad discretion to devise remedies that effectuate the policies of the Act, subject only to limited judicial review. See, e. g., NLRB v. J. H. Rutber-Rex Mfg. Co., 396 U. S. 258, 262-263 (1969); Fibreboard Paper Products Corp. v. NLRB, 379 U. S. 203, 216 (1964); Phelps Dodge Corp. v. NLRB, 313 U. S. 177, 194 (1941). Although the courts of appeals have power under the Act “to make and enter a decree... modifying, and enforcing as so modified” the orders of the Board, 29 U. S. C. §§ 160(e), (f), they should not substitute their judgment for that of the Board in determining how best to undo the effects of unfair labor practices:
“Because the relation of remedy to policy is peculiarly a matter for administrative competence, courts must not enter the allowable area of the Board’s discretion and must guard against the danger of sliding unconsciously from the narrow confines of law into the more spacious domain of policy.” Phelps Dodge Corp., supra, at 194.
See also NLRB v. Seven-Up Bottling Co., 344 U. S. 344, 346 (1953) (power to fashion remedies “is for the Board to wield, not for the courts”).
Here, the Court of Appeals impermissibly expanded the Board’s original order to provide that each discriminatee would receive backpay for at least six months on the ground that “six months is a reasonable assumption” as to the “minimum [time] during which the discriminatees might reasonably have remained employed without apprehension by INS, but for the employer’s unfair labor practice.” 672 F. 2d, at 606. We agree with petitioners that this remedy ordered by the Court of Appeals exceeds the limits imposed by the NLRA.
Not only did the court overstep the limits of its own reviewing authority, see NLRB v. Seven-Up Bottling Co., supra, at 346-347, but it also effectively compelled the Board to take action that simply does not lie within the Board’s own powers. Under § 10(c), the Board’s authority to remedy unfair labor practices is expressly limited by the requirement that its orders “effectuate the policies of the Act.” Although this rather vague statutory command obviously permits the Board broad discretion, at a minimum it encompasses the requirement that a proposed remedy be tailored to the unfair labor practice it is intended to redress. Quite early on, the Court established that “the relief which the statute empowers the Board to grant is to be adapted to the situation which calls for redress.” NLRB v. MacKay Radio & Telegraph Co., 304 U. S. 333, 348 (1938). See D. McDowell & K. Huhn, NLRB Remedies for Unfair Labor Practices 8-15 (1976). Of course, the general legitimacy of the back-pay order as a means to restore the situation “as nearly as possible, to that which would have obtained but for the illegal discrimination,” Phelps Dodge Corp., 313 U. S., at 194, is by now beyond dispute. Yet, it remains a cardinal, albeit frequently unarticulated assumption, that a backpay remedy-must be sufficiently tailored to expunge only the actual, and not merely speculative, consequences of the unfair labor practices. Id., at 198 (“[0]nly actual losses should be made good.. To this end, we have, for example, required that the Board give due consideration to the employee’s responsibility to mitigate damages in fashioning an equitable backpay award. See, e. g., NLRB v. Seven-Up Bottling Co., supra, at 346; Phelps Dodge Corp. v. NLRB, supra, at 198. Likewise, the Board’s own longstanding practice has been to deduct from the backpay award any wages earned in the interim in another job, see Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, Inc., 1 N. L. R. B. 1, 51 (1935), enf’d, 91 F. 2d 178 (CA3 1937), rev’d on other grounds, 303 U. S. 261 (1938).
By contrast, the Court of Appeals’ award of a minimum amount of backpay in this case is not sufficiently tailored to the actual, compensable injuries suffered by the discharged employees. The court itself admitted that although it sought to recompense the discharged employees for their lost wages, the actual 6-month period selected was “obviously conjectural.” 672 F. 2d, at 606. The court’s imposition of this minimum backpay award in the total absence of record evidence as to the circumstances of the individual employees constitutes pure speculation and does not comport with the general reparative policies of the NLRA.
We generally approve the Board’s original course of action in this case by which it ordered the conventional remedy of reinstatement with backpay, leaving until the compliance proceedings more specific calculations as to the amounts of backpay, if any, due these employees. This Court and other lower courts have long recognized the Board’s normal policy of modifying its general reinstatement and backpay remedy in subsequent compliance proceedings as a means of tailoring the remedy to suit the individual circumstances of each discriminatory discharge. See NLRB v. J. H. Rutter-Rex Mfg. Co., 396 U. S., at 260; Nathanson v. NLRB, 344 U. S. 25, 29-30 (1952); Trico Products Corp. v. NLRB, 489 F. 2d 347, 353-354 (CA2 1973). Cf. Teamsters v. United States, 431 U. S. 324, 371 (1977) (individual Title VII claims to be resolved at remedial hearings held by District Court on remand). These compliance proceedings provide the appropriate forum where the Board and petitioners will be able to offer concrete evidence as to the amounts of backpay, if any, to which the discharged employees are individually entitled. See NLRB v. Mastro Plastics Corp., 354 F. 2d 170 (CA2 1965), cert. denied, 384 U. S. 972 (1966); 3 NLRB Casehandling Manual §10656 et seq. (1977) (preparation of backpay specification).
Nonetheless, as the Court of Appeals recognized, the implementation of the Board’s traditional remedies at the corn-pliance proceedings must be conditioned upon the employees’ legal readmittance to the United States. In devising remedies for unfair labor practices, the Board is obliged to take into account another “equally important Congressional ob-jectiv[e],” Southern S.S. Co. v. NLRB, 316 U. S. 31, 47 (1942) — to wit, the objective of deterring unauthorized immigration that is embodied in the INA. By conditioning, the offers of reinstatement on the employees’ legal reentry, a potential conflict with the INA is thus avoided. Similarly, in computing backpay, the employees must be deemed “unavailable” for work (and the accrual of backpay therefore tolled) during any period when they were not lawfully entitled to be present and employed in the United States. Cf. 3 NLRB Casehandling Manual §§10612, 10656.9 (1977).
The Court of Appeals assumed that, under these circumstances, the employees would receive no backpay, and so awarded a minimum amount of backpay that would effectuate the underlying purposes of the Act by providing some relief to the employees as well as a financial disincentive against the repetition of similar discriminatory acts in the future. 672 F. 2d, at 606. We share the Court of Appeals’ uncertainty concerning whether any of the discharged employees will be able either to enter the country lawfully to accept the reinstatement offers or to establish at the compliance proceedings that they were lawfully available for employment during the backpay period. The probable unavailability of the Act’s more effective remedies in light of the practical workings of the immigration laws, however, simply cannot justify the judicial arrogation of remedial authority not fairly encompassed within the Act. Any perceived deficiencies in the NLRA’s existing remedial arsenal can only be addressed by congressional action. By directing the Board to impose a minimum backpay award without regard to the employees’ actual economic losses or legal availability for work, the Court of Appeals plainly exceeded its limited authority under the Act.
B
The Court of Appeals similarly exceeded its limited authority of judicial review by modifying the Board’s order so as to require petitioners to draft the reinstatement offers in Spanish and to ensure verification of receipt. While such requirements appear unobjectionable in that they constitute a rather trivial burden, they represent just the type of informed judgment which calls for the Board’s superior expertise and long experience in handling specific details of remedial relief. See, e. g., NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U. S. 251, 266-267 (1975); NLRB v. Erie Resistor Corp., 373 U. S., at 236. If the court believed that the Board had erred in failing to impose such requirements, the appropriate course was to remand back to the Board for reconsideration. NLRB v. Food Store Employees, 417 U. S. 1 (1974). Such action “best respects the congressional scheme investing the Board and not the courts with broad powers to fashion remedies that will effectuate national labor policy.” Id., at 10; see 2 T. Kheel, Labor Law §7.04[3][e] (1984).
The court’s requirement that the reinstatement offers be held open for four years is vulnerable to similar attack. The court simply had no justifiable basis for displacing the Board’s discretionary judgment about the proper time period for acceptance of the reinstatement offers. Rather than enlarging the Board’s remedial order in this fashion, the court was required to remand for the Board to consider the alternative grounds on which the court believed the offers to have been deficient and to decide upon new forms for the reinstatement offers. NLRB v. Food Store Employees, supra.
V
For the reasons given above, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals insofar as it imposed a minimum backpay award and mandated certain specifics of the reinstatement offers. We therefore remand the case to the Court of Appeals with instructions to remand it back to the Board to permit formulation of an appropriate remedial order consistent with this Court’s opinion.
It is so ordered.
Sections 8(a)(1) and (3) of the Act, 61 Stat. 140, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §§ 158(a)(1) and (3), make it an “unfair labor practice” for an employer “(1) to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 157 of this title” or “(3) by discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization.” Section 7 grants employees the rights of self-organization, participation in labor organizations and concerted activity, and collective bargaining. See 29 U. S. C. § 157.
The Board also affirmed the findings of the ALJ that petitioners had violated § 8(a)(1) of the Act by (1) threatening employees with less work if they supported the Union and promising more work if they did not; (2) interrogating employees about their Union sentiments; (3) threatening the employees immediately after the election to notify the INS because they had supported the Union; and (4) threatening to go out of business because the Union won the election.
The Board’s General Counsel then filed a motion for clarification in which he suggested that the Board’s remedial order might violate national immigration laws by requiring reinstatement and backpay without explicit regard to the legality of the employees’ immigration status. The Board denied the General Counsel’s motion, over the dissents of two members, who argued that the order’s failure to condition the offers of reinstatement on legal presence within this country would encourage illegal reentry by the employees. See Sure-Tan, Inc., 246 N. L. R. B. 788 (1979).
The Board did not issue a new decision regarding the 6-month minimum backpay award, but merely submitted a proposed judgment order that was evidently intended to incorporate the proposed award. Upon reviewing the Board’s proposed order, the court still remained uncertain whether the Board had in fact adopted its suggestion, and so modified the order to make clear that the employees were entitled to a minimum award of six months’ backpay. App. to Pet. for Cert. 28a. A petition for rehearing with suggestion for rehearing en banc was denied, with three judges dissenting. 677 F. 2d 584 (1982).
In extending the coverage of the Act to undocumented aliens, the Board has included such workers in bargaining units, see Duke City Lumber Co., 251 N. L. R. B. 53 (1980); Sure-Tan, Inc., and Surak Leather Co., 231 N. L. R. B. 138 (1977), enf’d, 583 F. 2d 355 (CA7 1978), and has found violations of the Act both in their discriminatory discharge, see Apollo Tire Co., 236 N. L. R. B. 1627 (1978), enf’d, 604 F. 2d 1180 (CA91979); Army's Bakery & Noodle Co., 227 N. L. R. B. 214 (1976), and in threats of deportation intended to deter their union activities, see Hasa Chemical, Inc., 235 N. L. R. B. 903 (1978).
It is by now well established, however, that if the reason asserted by an
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 unanimously affirms the judgment and decree of the District Court except paragraph XI, and that paragraph is affirmed by an equally divided Court.
Mr. Justice Harlan took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
H
|
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.
Under Georgia law a candidate for elective public office who does not enter and win a political party’s primary election can have his name printed on the ballot at the general election only if he has filed a nominating petition signed by at least 5% of the number of registered voters at the last general election for the office in question. Georgia law also provides that a candidate for elective public office must pay a filing fee equal to 5% of the annual salary of the office he is seeking. This litigation arose when the appellants, who were prospective candidates and registered voters, filed a class action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, attacking the constitutionality of these provisions of the Georgia Election Code, and seeking declaratory and injunctive relief.
A three-judge court was convened pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §§ 2281 and 2284. Thereafter the appellants filed a motion for summary judgment based upon a stipulation as to the relevant facts. The District Court granted the motion and entered an injunction with respect to the filing-fee requirement, holding that this requirement operates to deny equal protection of the laws as applied to those prospective candidates who cannot afford to pay the fees. No appeal was taken from that injunctive order. With respect to the nominating-petition requirement, the District Court -denied the motion and refused to enter an injunction, holding that this statutory provision is constitutionally valid. From that refusal a direct appeal was brought here under 28 U. S. C. § 1253, and we noted probable jurisdiction.
The basic structure of the pertinent provisions of the Georgia Election Code is relatively uncomplicated. Any political organization whose candidate received 20% or more of the vote at the most recent gubernatorial or presidential election is a “political party.” Any other political organization is a “political body.” “Political parties” conduct primary elections, regulated in detail by state law, and only the name of the candidate for each office who wins this primary election is printed on the ballot at the subsequent general election, as his party’s nominee for the office in question. A nominee of a “political body” or an independent candidate, on the other hand, may have his name printed on the ballot at the general election by filing a nominating petition. This petition must be signed by “a number of electors of not less than five per cent, of the total number of electors eligible to vote in the last election for the filling of the office the candidate is seeking . . . .” The total time allowed for circulating a nominating petition is 180 days, and it must be filed on the second Wednesday in June, the same deadline that a candidate filing in a party primary must meet.
It is to be noted that these procedures relate only to the right to have the name of a candidate or the nominee of a “political body” printed on the ballot. There is no limitation whatever, procedural or substantive, on the right of a voter to write in on the ballot the name of the candidate of his choice and to have that write-in vote counted.
In this litigation the appellants have mounted their attack upon Georgia’s nominating-petition requirement on two different but rélated constitutional fronts. First, they say that to require a nonparty candidate to secure the signatures of a certain number of voters before his name may be printed on the ballot is to abridge the freedoms of speech and association guaranteed to that candidate and his supporters by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Secondly, they say that when Georgia requires a nonparty candidate to secure the signatures of 5% of the voters before printing his name on the ballot, yet prints the names of those candidates who have won nomination in party primaries, it violates the Fourteenth Amendment by denying the nonparty candidate the equal protection of the laws. Since both arguments are primarily based upon this Court’s decision in Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U. S. 23, it becomes necessary to examine that case in some detail.
In the Williams case the Court was confronted with a state electoral structure that favored “two particular parties — the Republicans and the Democrats — and in effect tend[ed] to give them a complete monopoly.” Id., at 32. The Court held unconstitutional the election laws of Ohio insofar as in combination they made it “virtually impossible for a new political party, even though it ha[d] hundreds of thousands of members, or an old party, which ha[d] a very small number of members, to be placed on the state ballot” in the 1968 presidential election. Id., at 24. The state laws made “no provision for ballot position for independent. candidates as distinguished from political parties,” id., at 26, and a new political party, in order to be placed on the ballot, had “to obtain petitions signed by qualified electors totaling 15% of the number of ballots cast in the last preceding gubernatorial election.” Id., at 24-25. But this requirement was only a preliminary. For, although the Ohio American Independent Party in the first six months of 1968 had obtained more than 450,000 signature^ — well' over the 15% requirement — Ohio had nonetheless denied the party a place on the ballot, by reason of other statutory “burdensome procedures, requiring extensive organization and other election activities by a very early date,” id., at .33 — “including the early deadline for filing petitions [February 7, 1968] and the requirement of a primary election conforming to detailed and rigorous standards . . . ” Id., at 27.
In a separate opinion Me. Justice Douglas described the then structure of Ohio’s network of election laws in accurate detail:
“Ohio, through an entangling web of election laws, has effectively foreclosed its presidential ballot to all but Republicans and Democrats. It has done so initially by abolishing write-in votes so as to restrict candidacy to names on the ballot; it has eliminated all independent candidates through a requirement that nominees enjoy the endorsement of a political party; it has defined ‘political party’ in such a way as to exclude virtually all but the two major parties.
“A candidate who seeks a place on the Ohio presidential ballot must first compile signatures of qualified voters who total at least 15% of those voting in the last gubernatorial election. In this election year, 1968, a candidate would need 433,100 such signatures. Moreover, he must succeed in gathering them long before the general election, since a nominating petition must be filed with the Secretary, of State in February. That is not all: having compiled those signatures, the candidate must further show that he has received the nomination of a group which qualifies as a ‘political party’ within the meaning of Ohio law. It is not enough to be an independent candidate for President with wide popular support; one must trace his support to a political party.
“To qualify as a party, a group of electors must participate in the state primary, electing one of its members from each county ward or precinct to a county central committee; two of its members from each congressional district to a state central committee; and some of its members as delegates and alternates to. a national convention. Moreover, those of its members who seek a place on the primary ballot as candidates for positions as central committeemen and national convention delegates must demonstrate that they did not vote in any other party primary during the preceding four years; and must present petitions of endorsement on their behalf ■by anywhere from five to 1,000 voters who likewise failed to vote for any other party in the last preceding primary. Thus, to qualify as a third party, a group must first erect elaborate political machinery, and then rest it upon the ranks of those who have proved both unwilling and unable to vote.” 393 U. S., at 35-37.
The Court’s decision with respect to this “entangling web of election laws” was unambiguous and positive. It held that “the totality of the Ohio restrictive laws taken as a whole imposes a burden on voting and associational rights which we hold is an invidious discrimination, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.” Id., at 34.
But the Williams case, it is clear, presented a statutory-scheme vastly different from .the one before us here. Unlike Ohio, Georgia freely provides for write-in votes. Unlike Ohio, Georgia does not require every candidate to be the nominee of a political party, but fully recognizes independent candidacies. Unlike Ohio, Georgia does not fix an unreasonably early filing deadline for candidates not endorsed by established parties. Unlike Ohio, Georgia does not impose upon a small party or a new party the Procrustean requirement of establishing elaborate primary election machinery. Finally, and in sum, Georgia’s election laws, unlike Ohio’s, do not operate to freeze the political status quo. In this setting we cannot say that Georgia’s 5% petition requirement violates the Constitution.
Anyone who wishes, and who is otherwise eligible, may be an independent candidate for any office in Georgia. Any political organization, however new or however small, is free to endorse any otherwise eligible person as its candidate for whatever elective public office it chooses. So far as the Georgia election laws are concerned, independent candidates and members of small or newly formed political organizations are wholly free to associate, to proselytize, to speak, to write, and to organize campaigns for any school of thought they wish. They may confine themselves to an appeal for write-in votes. : Or they may seek, over a six months’ period, the signatures of 5% of the eligible electorate for the office in question. If they choose the latter' course, the way is open. For Georgia imposes no suffocating restrictions whatever upon the free circulation of nominating petitions. A voter may sign a petition even though he has signed others, and a voter who has signed the petition of a nonparty candidate is free thereafter to participate in a party primary. The signer of a petition is not required to state that he intends to vote for that candidate at the election. A person who has previously .voted in a party primary is fully .eligible to sign a petition, and so, on’ the other hand, is a person who was not even registered at the time of the previous election. No signature on a nominating petition need be notarized.
The open quality of the Georgia system is far from merely theoretical. For the stipulation of facts in this record informs us that a candidate for Governor in 1966 and a candidate for President in 1968, gained ballot designation by nominating petitions, and each went on to win a plurality of the votes cast at the general election.
In a word, Georgia in no way freezes the status quo, but implicitly recognizes the potential fluidity of American political life. Thus, any political body that wins as much as 20% support at an election becomes a “political party” with its attendant ballot position rights and primary election' obligations, and any “political party” whose support at the polls falls below that figure reverts to the status of a “political body” with its attendant nominating petition responsibilities and freedom from primary election duties. We can find in' this system nothing that abridges the rights of free speeqh and association secured by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
The appellants’, claim under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment fares no better. ' This claim is necessarily bottomed upon the premise that it is inherently more burdensome for a candidate to gather the signatures of 5% of the'total eligible electorate than it is to win the votes of a majority in a party primary. That is a premise that cannot be uncritically accepted. Although the number of candidates in a party primary election for any particular office will, of course, vary from election to election, the appellee’s brief advises us that in the most recent election year there were 12 candidates for the nomination for the office of Governor in the two party primaries. Only two of these 12, of course, won their party primaries and had their names printed on the ballot at the general election. Surely an argument could as well be made on behalf of the 10 who lost, that it is they who were denied equal protection vis-á-vis a candidate who could have had his name printed on the ballot simply by filing a nominating petition signed by 5% of the total electorate.
The fact is, of course, that from the point of view of one who aspires to elective public office in Georgia, alternative routes are available to getting his .name printed on the ballot. He may eriter the primary of a political party, or he may circulate nominating petitions either as an independent candidate or under the sponsorship of ;a political organization. We cannot see how Georgia has violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by making available these two alternative paths, neither of which can be assumed to be inherently more burdensome than the other.
Insofar as we deal’here with the claims of a “political body,” as contrasted with those of an individual aspirant for public office or an individual voter, the situation is somewhat different. For it is true that a “political party” in Georgia is assured of having the name of its nominee — the primary election winner — printed on the ballot, whereas the name of the nominee of a “political body” will be printed only if nominating petitions have been filed that contain the requisite number of signatures. But we can hardly suppose that a small or a new political organization could seriously urge that its interests would be advanced if it were forced by the State to establish all of the elaborate statewide, county-by-county, organizational paraphernalia required of a “political party” as a condition for conducting a primary election. Indeed, a large reason for the Court's invalidation of the Ohio election laws in Williams v. Rhodes, supra, was precisely that Ohio did impose just such requirements on small and new political organizations.
The fact is that there are obvious differences in kind between the needs and potentials of a political party with historically established broad support, on the one hand, and a new or small political organization on the other. Georgia has not been guilty of invidious discrimination in recognizing these differences and providing different routes to the printed ballot. Sometimes the grossest discrimination can lie in treating things that are different as though they were exactly alike, a truism well illustrated in Williams v. Rhodes, supra.
There is surely an important state interest in requiring some preliminary showing of a significant modicum of support before printing the name of a political organization’s candidate on the ballot — the interest, if no other, in avoiding confusion, deception, and even frustration of the democratic process at the general election. The 5% figure is, to be sure, apparently somewhat higher than the percentage of support required to be shown in many States as a condition for ballot position, but this is balanced by the fact that Georgia has imposed no arbitrary restrictions whatever upon the eligibility of any registered voter to sign as many nominating petitions as he wishes. Georgia in this case has insulated not a single potential voter from the appeal of new political voices within its borders.
The judgment is affirmed.
Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Harlan concur in the result.
Ga. Code Ann. § 34-1010 (1970).
Ga. Code Ann. § 34 — 1013.
One of the appeu*ints was the nominee of the Georgia Socialist Workers Party for Governor in 1970, two others were nominees of that organization for the House of Representatives, and two others were registered voters who sued on behalf of themselves, and “all other registered voters in the State of Georgia desirous of having an opportunity to consider persons on the ballot other than nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties.”
Georgia Socialist Workers Party v. Fortson, 315 F. Supp. 1035.
400 U. S. 877.
Ga. Code Ann. § 34-103 (u).
Ga. Code Ann. § 34-103 (s).
See, e. g., Ga. Code Ann. §§ 34-1004 to 34-1006, 34-1008, 34-1009, 34-1014, 34-1015, 34-1102, 34-1301 to 34-1303; 34-1308, 34-1507, 34-1513.
Ga. Code Ann. § 34-1001.
Ga. Code Ann. § 34-1010 (b).
Ga. Code Ann. § 34-1010 (e).'
Compare Ga. Code Ann. § 34-1002 (b) with Ga. Code Ann. § 34-1005 (b).
In describing these burdens, the Court quoted the description contained in the dissenting opinion of a member of the three-judge District Court from, which the appeal in the Williams case had come:
“Judge Kinneary describes, in his dissenting opinion below, the legal obstacles placed before a would-be third party even after the .15% signature requirement has béen fulfilled:
“ ‘First, at the primary election, the new party, or any political party, is required to elect a state central committee consisting of two members from each congressional district and county central committees for each county in Ohio. [Ohio Rev. Code §§ 3517.02-3517.04.] Second, at the primary election the new party must elect -delegates and alternates to a national convention. [Ohio Rev. Code § 3505.10.] Since Section 3513.19.1, Ohio Rev. Code, prohibits a candidate from seeking the office of delegate to the national convention or committeeman if he voted as a member of a different party at a primary election in the preceding four year period, the new party would be required to have over twelve hundred members who had not previously voted in another party’s primary, and who would be willing to serve as committeemen and delegates. Third,, the candidates for nomination in the primary would have to file petitions signed by qualified electors. [Ohio Rev. Code § 3513.05.] The term “qualified electors” is not adequately defined in the Ohio Revised Code -[§ 3501.01 (H)], but a. related section [§3513.19], provides that a qualified elector at a primary election of a political party is one who, (1) voted for a majority of that party’s candidates at the last election, or, (2) has never voted in any election before. Since neither of the political party plaintiffs had any candidates at the last preceding regular state election, they would, of necessity, have to seek out members who had never voted before to sign the nominating petitions, and it would be only these persons who could vote in the primary election of the new party.’” 393 U. S., at 25 n. 1.
Mr. Justice Douglas, while joining the opinion of the Court, filed a separate opinion giving emphasis to the First Amendment values involved. Id., at 35. Mr. Justice HarlaN filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, explaining why he would have rested decision “entirely on the proposition that Ohio’s statutory scheme violates the basic right of' political association assured by the First Amendment which is protected against state infringement under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Id., at 41.
Contrast, e. g., La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 18:624 (A) (1969); N. Y. Election Law § 138 (6) (1964).
Contrast, e. g., R. I. Gen. Laws Ann. § 17-16-8 (1969).
-Contrast, e. g., N. Y. Election Law § 138 (2) (1964).
Contrast, e. g., Cal. Elections Code § 6830 (c) (1961); Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 49-7-1 (4) (Supp. 1967).
Contrast, e. g., N. Y. Election Law § 138 (2) (1964).
Contrast, e. g., Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 49-7-1 (4) (Supp. 1967).
See Fortson v. Morris, 385 U. S. 231.
This was the candidate whose party Ohio had kept off the bállot in Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U. S. 23.
As a result, the political bodies that endorsed these two candidates have now presumably acquired the status of political parties.
Georgia provides for a second “run-off” primary election in the •event no candidate receives a majority of the votes cast at the original primary election. See Ga. Code Ann. § 34-1513 (a).
The argument that the first alternative route is not realistically open to a candidate with unorthodox or “radical” views is hardly valid in the light of American political history. Time after time established political parties, at local, state, and national levels, have, while retaining their old labels, changed their ideological direction because of the influence and leadership of those with unorthodox or “radical” views.
The Georgia Socialist Workers Party was one of the plaintiffs in the District Court, but is not an appellant here. We may assume, however, without deciding, that the individual appellants can properly assert the interests of that “political body.”
See, e. g., Ga. Code Ann. § 34-1004.
See Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U. S., at 47 n. 10 (Harlan, J., concurring in result).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
This is an action brought by the United States against the executrix of George King, a deceased distributing agent for a debtor in a Chapter XI proceeding, and against his surety. The Government alleged that King was personally liable under R. S. § 3467, 31 U. S. C. § 192 (1958 ed.), because he satisfied claims of nonpriority creditors with knowledge of an outstanding government priority claim, in consequence of which the Government could not be paid in full.
The facts of the case were stipulated and are essentially as follows. On October 1, 1946, Seeley Tube & Box Company, Inc., a New Jersey corporation, filed a petition for reorganization under Chapter XI of the Bankruptcy Act, 30 Stat. 563, as amended, 52 Stat. 905. Soon thereafter, the United States notified Seeley that it intended to terminate, because of Seeley’s default, two federal contracts between Seeley and the Picatinny Arsenal, an installation of the War Department of the United States; the Government further signified its pur-r pose to relet the contracts and to hold Seeley liable for any excess costs. On March 17, 1947, the referee appointed King, who was Seeley’s president, as distributing agent and accepted his surety bond for $10,000. On March 21, 1947, after a hearing, a plan of arrangement submitted by Seeley was confirmed; the Government was not listed as a creditor in Seeley’s petition, but the Picatinny contracts were noted in an annexed schedule as executory. The plan called for Seeley, the debtor corporation, to deposit with the distributing agent $160,193.68 to be distributed pursuant to orders of the court by checks signed by the distributing agent and countersigned by the referee. The plan contained no written provision for payment of the Government’s as yet unliquidated and unfiled claim.
At the hearing, the following colloquy took place between the referee and Mr. Freeman, counsel for Seeley:
“The Referee. Is there a claim ^of the Picatinny Arsenal?
“Mr. Freeman. The Picatinny Arsenal may have some claim.
“The Referee. Have we put up enough money to meet it?
“Mr. Freeman. No.
“The Referee. Is there a problem there?
“Mr. Freeman. We do not owe them any money, and we want to bring them in. I want to state to your Honor further that the debtor company will. deposit any sum of money that is represented by any claim that the Picatinny Arsenal may file in these proceedings within a time that your Honor directs them to file it.
“The Referee.' Have you any notion of what they might claim?
“Mr. Freeman. We think they may claim $20,000.
“The Referee. Have you $20,000 available?
“Mr. Freeman. We have $94,000 available to pay them if necessary, and we represent-to your Honor that there will be at all times $20,000 or more available to dispose of that claim, in cash . . .
The record shows that King was present in the courtroom on the day of the hearing.
Thereafter the court entered an order directing the Government to file its claim on or before May 9, 1947. On May 9 the Government duly filed its preliminary contingent proof of claim in the amount of $26,818.82, later amended to $34,125.03, alleging a priority under § 64 of the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U. S. C. § 104 (1958 ed.), and R. S. § 3466, 31 U. S. C. § 191 (1958 ed.). However, in the seven weeks between the hearing and the filing of this claim, King, as distributing agent, had paid out by checks duly countersigned by the referee, all but $6,085.01 of the $160,193.68 deposited with him; $42,829.76 was paid to King himself as a creditor of the company. A long- litigation then commenced on the issue of whether the Government had timely filed its claim, with an ultimate determination being made in January 1955, in favor of the Government by the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The court stated, “The disclosure by the debtor at the referee’s hearing on confirmation of the plan that the Government had become a creditor was ... in performance of its duty under the Act and amounted to an informal amendment of the list of creditors included in. the debtor’s schedules.” In re Seeley Tube & Box Co., 219 F. 2d 389, 391, cert. denied, 350 U. S. 821.
After King had distributed the $6,085.01 which still remained in his hands ($3,620.39 had gone to the United States) he filed his final report and account. On August 2, 1956, the Bankruptcy Court approved them and discharged King and his surety.
On July 3, 1958, the United States commenced this suit against King for $25,831.08, the balance outstanding on the claim as finally determined, and against the surety for $10,000. The Govérnment’s contention was that King incurred personal liability under § 192 for the unpaid amount by paying the claims of the debtor’s non-priority creditors and thereby so depleting the debtor’s assets that the Government’s § 191 priority claim could not be paid in full. Section 192 provides:
“Every executor, administrator, or assignee, or other person, who pays, in whole or in part, any debt due by the person or estate for whom or for which he acts before he satisfies and pays the debts due to the United States from such person or estate, shall become answerable in his own person and estate to the extent of such payments for the debts so due to the United States, or for so much thereof as may remain due and unpaid.”
The District Court dismissed the complaint on the theory that a distributing agent is not included within § 192 as an “executor, administrator, or assignee, or other person” because he, unlike those fiduciaries mentioned specifically in the statute, is not a personal representative of the debtor but an arm and a representative of the bankruptcy court. 208 F. Supp. 697. The decision was reversed on appeal, 322 F. 2d 317, and, because of a conflict among the circuits on the proper interpretation of § 192, we granted certiorari, 375 U. S. 983.
I.
Section 191, which establishes government priorities on any debts owed by an insolvent debtor to the United States, and § 192, which gives assurance that such debts will be paid, are part of a single statutory structure. The precursor of § 191 first appeared in 1789 in an act establishing customs duties (1 Stat. 29, 42). Section 21, relating to collection on bonds for the payment of duties, provided: “[A]nd in all cases of insolvency, or where any estate in the hands of executors or administrators shall be insufficient to pay all the debts due from the-^deceased, the debt due to the United States on any such bonds shall be first satisfied.” In 1792 the Government’s priority was extended to voluntary assignments for the benefit of creditors and to attachments of the property of “absconding, concealed or absent” debtors as well as to cases in which “an act of legal bankruptcy shall have been committed,” § 18, 1 Stat. 263. Prior to passage of the Act of 1797, “An internal revenue had been established, and extensive transactions had taken place; in the course of which, many persons had necessarily become indebted to the United States.” United States v. Fisher, 2 Cranch 358, 392. By the Act of 1797, the section was extended to cases involving “any revenue officer, or other person hereafter becoming indebted to the United States, by bond or otherwise.” 1 Stat. 515. See Price v. United States, 269 U. S. 492, 501. Then, in 1799, Con-greás took the step which concerns us here by adding the provision now embodied in § 192, establishing personal liability for those who frustrated the Government’s priority:
“. . . and in all cases of insolvency, or where any estate in the hands of the executors, administrators or assignees, shall be insufficient to pay all the debts due from the deceased, the debt or debts due to the United States, on any such bond or bonds, shall be first satisfied; and any executor, administrator, or assignees, or other person, who shall pay any debt due by the person or estate from whom, or for which, they are acting, previous to the debt or debts due to the United States from such person or estate being first duly satisfied and paid, shall become answerable in their own person and estate, for the debt or debts so due to the United States, or so much thereof as may remain due and unpaid . . . .” 1 Stat. 676.
Later, in the same section, the proviso extending the statute to voluntary assignments and absconding debtors is also included,.
Division of the provisions into separate sections in the Revised Statutes “did not'work any change in the purpose or meaning.” Price v. United States, 269 U. S. 492, 501. Thus, it is evident that §§ 191 and 192 must be interpreted in pari materia. The Court so stated in United States v. Butterworth-Judson Corp., 269 U. S. 504, 513, and so interpreted them- in Bramwell v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co., 269 U. S. 483, where it said: 1
“The specification in § 3466 [§ 191] of the ways insolvency may be manifested is aided by the designation in § 3467 [§ 192] of the persons made answerable for failure to pay the United States first from the inadequate estates of deceased debtors or from the insolvent estates of living debtors. The persons held are ‘every executor, administrator, or assignee, or other person.’ The generality of the language is significant. Taken together, these sections mean that a debt due the United States is required first to be satisfied when the possession and control of the estate of the insolvent is given to any person charged with the duty of applying it to the payment of the debts of the insolvent, as the rights and priorities of creditors may be made to appear.” 269 U. S., at 490.
II.
Petitioners, in oral argument, conceded the Government’s priority claim under § 191. Their contention, relying on United States v. Stephens, 208 F. 2d 105, is that distributing agents as a class are nonetheless excluded from the category of fiduciaries covered by § 192 because they are agents of the court rather than personal representatives of the debtor, and the words “or other person” are “limited to those who stand as personal representatives [of the debtor] not.only by the application of the principle of ejusdem generis but by the language qualifying ‘person’ as one ‘who pays in whole or in part any debt due by the person or estate for whom or for which he acts” Id., at 108.
Petitioners’ emphasis on a distinction between a personal representative and an agent of the court is misplaced in the context of §§ 191 and 192. The purpose of § 192, as recognized in Bramwell, is to make those into whose hands control and possession of the debtor’s assets are placed, responsible for seeing that the Government’s priority is paid. Whether or not King falls within the category of fiduciaries on whom such responsibility should be placed depends, not on the title of his position or the mode of his appointment, but, in practical terms, upon the degree of control he is in a position to assert over the allocation among creditors of the debtor’s assets in his possession. That appointment as an officer of the court does not decisively inhibit operation of § 192 -is shown by the express inclusion.within the scope of the statute of court-appointed administrators And Bramwell. showed that others besides personal representatives of the debtor may be included in § 192, for in that case this Court indicated that § 192 would apply to a state official charged with the function of liquidating a bank’s assets, although the official was clearly not acting as the personal representative of the bank. Petitioners would distinguish Bramwell in that the state official had a large measure of control, whereas King did not, but this, on the one hand, does not vitiate the point that one need not be a personal representative to come within the coverage of § 192, and, on the other, emphasizes that it is the element of control over the assets which is decisive.
We agree with Judge Browning, writing in United States v. Crocker, 313 F. 2d 946, 949, that “the debts paid by a liquidating receiver [and, we add, distributing agent], like those paid by an executor,'administrator, or assignee for the benefit of creditors, are primary obligations of the debtor; the phrase ‘for whom, or for which he acts’ should be read as a general acknowledgment of this fact rather than as imposing a restriction upon the reach of Section 192 inconsistent with the overall purpose of this section and Section 191.” • We reject, therefore, the proposition that because distributing agents in Chapter XI proceedings act primarily for the court rather than for the debtor they are categorically excluded from the coverage of § 192.
III.
. It remains to inquire whether King, by acting as an arm of the court under court instruction and approval lacked the degree of control necessary to make § 192 operative as to him. Petitioners argue that distributing agents exercise no discretion in the discharge of their duties, but perform only the ministerial function of paying out the deposited funds in conformity with the court’s orders. Indeed, it is contended that inclusion of distributing agents within the coverage of § 192 would have placed King on the horns of a dilemma, in that he must either have incurred personal liability to the Government or risked being held in contempt by the Bankruptcy Court. But this assumes that the plan of arrangement, once submitted to the court, was immutable. In fact, if King had objected at the confirmation hearing to paying out the deposited funds to nonpriority creditors before the Government’s claim was surely provided for, there can.be little doubt that he would have obtained satisfaction. Even after confirmation it is most unlikely that such an objection would have been ignored. Had it been, responsibility for the frustration of the Government’s claim would have devolved completely upon the court, and we would be faced with a very , different case.
We are not prepared to articulate any general rule defining the responsibility of distributing agents to make and press such objections. We hold only that King, on the facts of this case, did have such a responsibility. As president of the debtor corporation he must have been aware of the Government’s potential claim; most likely he took an active role in the formulation of the plan of arrangement which appended a reference to the Picatinny contracts. He had been appointed distributing agent before the day of the confirmation hearing, and was present in court on that day. In all likelihood, he was present at the time when the possibility of the government claim arose and Mr. Freeman, the company’s counsel, made the representation that $94,000 was available to meet it. Finally, he himself was one of the major distributees in the distribution plan. In these circumstances we think King was possessed of a sufficient degree of control over the allocation among creditors of the assets in his possession to give rise to responsibility under § 192 for seeing that the government priority was paid, a responsibility which King, so far as the record reveals, made no effort to discharge. This is not to say that King acted dishonestly in any way or that he positively intended to thwart the Government’s claim. He may well have relied either on the representation that $94,000 was available, or, as president of the corporation with full knowledge of its finances, on whatever underlying facts led Mr. Freeman to make that representation. But § 192 required more of King than an honest belief that the Government woüld be paid. It imposed upon him a duty to see that this was done.
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Douglas share the views of the Court of Appeals for . the Fifth Circuit, United States v. Stephens, 208 F. 2d 105, as to the construction of the statute, and would therefore reverse the judgment below.
King died testate after commencement of the suit and his executrix was substituted as a party defendant by, court order. An action by the United States against a fiduciary under R. S. § 3467,31U. S. C. §.192 (1958 ed.), survives against his estate. See United States v. Dewey, 39 F. 251.
This-fact, was not stipulated,-but appears in King’s final petition and report, tvhich was attached as Exhibit A to the Government’s complaint. See Brief for Respondent, p. 7, n. 4. .
It was alleged in the Government’s complaint in this action that it received no notice of these events, but this allegation was denied in the answer and is not mentioned in the stipulated facts.
See note 1, supra.
Compare United States v. Stephens, 208 F. 2d 105 (C. A. 5th Cir. 1953), with United States v. Crocker, 313 F. 2d 946 (C. A. 9th Cir. 1963) and the decision of the court below in the present case.
Section 191 provides:
“Whenever any person indebted to the United States is insolvent, or whenever the estate of any deceased debtor, in the hands of the executors or administrators, is insufficient to pay all the debts due from the deceased, the debts due to the United' States shall be first satisfied; and the priority established shall extend as well to cases in which a debtor, not having sufficient property to pay all his debts, makes a voluntary assignment thereof, or in which the estate and effects of an absconding, concealed, or absent debtor are attached by process of law, as to cases in which an act of bankruptcy is committed.”-
A trastee in bankruptcy, an officer of the court, has been included ■ as an “other person,” United States v. Kaplan, 74 F. 2d 664.
See United States v. King, 322 F. 2d 317, at 322.
See generally 8 Collier on Bankruptcy, ¶5.33 (14th ed. 1963).
Cf. Field v. United States, 9 Pet. 182 (1835).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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H
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the issue whether the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico possesses jurisdiction, under 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3), to entertain a suit based upon 42 U. S. C. § 1983, and, if the answer is in the affirmative, the further issue whether Puerto Rico’s restriction, by statute, of licenses for civil engineers to United States citizens is constitutional. The first issue, phrased another way, is whether Puerto Rico is a “State,” for purposes of § 1343 (3), insofar as that statute speaks of deprivation “under color of any State law”; the resolution of that question was reserved in Calero-Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U. S. 663, 677 n. 11 (1974).
I
A. Puerto Rico’s Act of May 10, 1951, No. 399, as amended, now codified as P. R. Laws Ann., Tit. 20, §§ 681-710 (Supp. 1973), relates to the practice of engineering, architecture, and surveying. The administration and enforcement of the statute, by § 683, are committed to the Commonwealth’s Board of Examiners of Engineers, Architects, and Surveyors, an appellant here. Section 689 sets forth the qualifications “for registration as licensed engineer^ architect or surveyor.” For a “licensed engineer or architect,” these qualifications in-elude a specified education, the passing of a written examination, and a stated minimum practical experience. The statute also requires that an applicant for registration be a citizen of the United States. It, however, exempts an otherwise qualified alien from the citizenship requirement if he has “studied the total courses” in the Commonwealth, or if he is employed by an agency or instrumentality of the government of the Commonwealth or by a municipal government or public corporation there; in the case of such employment, the alien receives a conditional license valid only during the time he is employed by the public entity.
B. Maria C. Flores de Otero is a native of Mexico and a legal resident of Puerto Rico. She is, by profession, a civil engineer. She is not a United States citizen. In June 1972 she applied to the Board for registration as a licensed engineer. It is undisputed that the applicant met all the specifications of formal education, examination, and practice required for licensure,- except that of United States citizenship. The Board denied her application until she furnished proof of that citizenship.
In October 1973 Flores instituted an action in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico against the Board and its individual members. She asserted jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3), and alleged that the citizenship requirement was violative of her rights under 42 U. S. C. §§ 1981 and 1983. A declaratory judgment and injunctive relief were requested.
In their answer to Flores’ complaint, the defendants alleged that the United States District Court lacked jurisdiction to entertain the complaint, and that the provisions of § 689 did not contravene rights secured under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments or any rights guaranteed to Flores under the Constitution. They also alleged that Flores had adequate remedies available to her in the courts of Puerto Rico and that she had not exhausted those remedies. They requested that the court “abstain from assuming jurisdiction in this case and allow the Courts of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico the opportunity to pass upon the issues raised by plaintiff.” App. 5.
C. Sergio Perez Nogueiro is a native of Spain and a legal resident of Puerto Rico. He is, by profession, a civil engineer. He possesses degrees from universities in Spain and Colombia and from the University of Puerto Rico. He is not a United States citizen. He, like Flores, met all the specifications of formal education, examination, and practice required for licensure, except that of United States citizenship. He is presently employed as an engineer by the Public Works Department of the municipality of Carolina, Puerto Rico, and holds a conditional license granted by the Board, as authorized by § 689, after he passed the required examination.
In May 1974 Perez instituted an action against the Board in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. He asserted that the citizenship requirement “is repugnant to the Due Process Clause of the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendments.” App. 10. The complaint in all relevant respects was like that filed by Flores, and Perez, too, requested declaratory and in-junctive relief, including a full and unconditional license to practice as an engineer in the Commonwealth.
D. A three-judge court was convened to hear Flores’ case. It determined that it had jurisdiction under §§ 1983 and 1343. It concluded that abstention was unnecessary because § 689 was unambiguous and not susceptible of an interpretation that would obviate the need for reaching the constitutional question. On the merits, with one judge dissenting, it rejected the justifications proffered by the defendants for the citizenship requirement. It found that requirement unconstitutional and directed the defendants to license Flores as an engineer.
In a separate and subsequent judgment the same three-judge court, by the same vote, granted like relief to Perez. It decreed that he, too, be licensed as an engineer. Jurisdictional Statement 7a.
Appeals were taken by the defendants from both judgments, with a single jurisdictional statement pursuant to our Rule 15 (3). We noted probable jurisdiction and granted a stay of the execution and enforcement of the judgments. 421 U. S. 986 (1975).
II
On the jurisdictional issue, the appellants do not contend that the United States Constitution has no application in Puerto Rico or that claims' cognizable under § 1983 may not be enforced there. Instead, they argue that unless a complainant establishes the $10,000 juris•dictional amount prescribed by 28 U. S. C. § 1331 (a), a claim otherwise cognizable under § 1983 must be adjudicated in the courts of Puerto Rico.
In approaching this question we are to examine the language of § 1343, the purposes of Congress in enacting it, “and the circumstances under which the words were employed.” Puerto Rico v. Shell Co. (P. R.), Ltd., 302 U. S. 253, 258 (1937); District of Columbia v. Carter, 409 U. S. 418, 420 (1973). As is so frequently the case, however, the language is not free of ambiguity, the purposes appear to be diverse and sometimes contradictory, and the circumstances are not fully spread upon the record for our instruction.
A. The federal civil rights legislation, with which we are here concerned, was enacted nearly 30 years before the conflict with Spain and the resulting establishment of the ties between Puerto Rico and the United States. Both § 1343 (3) and § 1983 have their origin in the Ku Klux Klan Act of April 20, 1871, § 1, 17 Stat. 13. That statute contained not only the substantive provision protecting against “the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution” by any person acting under color of state law, but, as well, the jurisdictional provision authorizing a proceeding for the enforcement of those rights “to be prosecuted in the several district or circuit courts of the United States.” Jurisdiction was not independently defined; it was given simply to enforce the substantive rights created by the statute. The two aspects, seemingly, were deemed to coincide.
It has been said that the purpose of the legislation was to enforce the provisions of the Fourteenth, not the Thirteenth, Amendment. District of Columbia v. Carter, 409 U. S., at 423; Lynch v. Household Finance Corp., 405 U. S. 538, 545 (1972); Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167, 171 (1961). As originally enacted, § 1 of the 1871 Act applied only to action under color of law of any “State.” In 1874, however, Congress, presumably pursuant to its power to “make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States,” granted by the Constitution’s Art. IV, § 3, cl. 2, added, without explanation, the words “or Territory” in the 1874 codification of United States statutes. Rev. Stat. § 1979 (1874). See District of Columbia v. Carter, 409 U. S., at 424 n. 11. The evident aim was to insure that all persons residing in the Territories not be denied, by persons acting under color of territorial law, rights guaranteed them by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
Although one might say that the purpose of Congress was evident, the method chosen to implement this aim was curious and, indeed, somewhat confusing. In the 1874 codification, only the substantive portion (the predecessor of today’s § 1983) of § 1 of the 1871 Act was redesignated as § 1979. It became separated from the jurisdictional portion (the predecessor of today’s § 1343 (3)) which appeared as § 563 Twelfth and § 629 Sixteenth (concerning, respectively, the district courts and the circuit courts) of the Revised Statutes. But the words “or Territory” appeared only in § 1979; they did not appear in §§ 563 and 629.
Our question, then, is whether, in separately codifying the provisions and in having this discrepancy between them, Congress intended to restrict federal-court jurisdiction in some way. We conclude that it intended no such restriction. First, as stated above, the common origin of §§ 1983 and 1343 (3) in § 1 of the 1871 Act suggests that the two provisions were meant to be, and are, complementary. Lynch v. Household Finance Corp., 405 U. S., at 543 n. 7. There is no indication that Congress intended to prevent federal district and circuit courts from exercising subject-matter jurisdiction of claims of deprivation of rights under color of territorial law if they otherwise had personal jurisdiction of the parties. Second, a contrary interpretation necessarily would lead to the conclusion that persons residing in a Territory were not effectively afforded a federal-court remedy there for a violation of the 1871 Act despite Congress’ obvious intention to afford one. The then existing territorial district courts established by Congress were granted “the same jurisdiction, in all cases arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States, as is vested in the circuit and district courts of the United States.” Rev. Stat. § 1910 (1874) (emphasis added). Thus, if the federal district and circuit courts had jurisdiction to redress deprivations only under color of state (but not territorial) law, the territorial courts were likewise so limited. Further, the United States District Courts for the Districts of California and Oregon, and the territorial District Court for Washington possessed jurisdiction over violations of laws extended to the Territory of Alaska. Rev. Stat. § 1957 (1874). Unless the federal courts had jurisdiction to redress deprivations of rights by persons acting under color of territorial law, Congress’ explicit extension of the 1871 Act to provide a remedy against persons acting under color of territorial law was only theoretical because no forum existed in which these rights might be enforced.
This conclusion that Congress granted territorial courts jurisdiction to enforce the provisions of § 1979 is strengthened by two additional factors. First, Congress explicitly provided: “The Constitution and all laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable shall have the same force and effect within all the organized Territories, and in every Territory hereafter organized as elsewhere within the United States.” Rev. Stat. § 1891 (1874). Section 1979, with its reference to Territories was obviously an applicable statute. Second, it was not until the following year that Congress conferred on United States district courts general federal-question jurisdiction. Act of Mar. 3, 1875, § 1, 18 Stat. 470, now codified as 28 U. S. C. § 1331 (a). See generally Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U. S. 241, 245-247 (1967). Accordingly, unless in 1874 the federal district and circuit courts had jurisdiction to redress deprivations under color of territorial law, Congress, although providing rights and remedies, could be said to have failed to provide a means for their enforcement.
For all these reasons, we conclude that the federal territorial as well as the federal district and circuit courts generally had jurisdiction to redress deprivations of constitutional rights by persons acting under color of territorial law. We turn, then, to the legislation specifically applicable to Puerto Rico.
B. A similar approach was taken by Congress in its establishment of the civil government in Puerto Rico in the exercise of its territorial power under Const., Art. IV, § 3, cl. 2. By the Treaty of Paris, 30 Stat. 1754 (1899), Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States. 30 Stat. 1755. Shortly thereafter, the Foraker Act, being the Act of April 12, 1900, 31 Stat. 77, became law. This legislation established a civil government for Puerto Rico, including provisions for courts. The judicial structure so created consisted of a local court system with a Supreme Court, and, as well, of a Federal District Court. The Act, § 34,31 Stat. 84, provided: “The [federal] district court... shall have, in addition to the ordinary jurisdiction of district courts of the United States, jurisdiction of all cases cognizant in the circuit courts of the United States.”
On its face, this appears to have been a broad grant of jurisdiction similar to that conferred on the United States district courts and comparable to that conferred on the earlier territorial courts. The earlier territorial grants, however, were different. Whereas the Federal District Court for Puerto Rico was to have “the ordinary jurisdiction of district courts of the United States,” the earlier territorial courts had been given explicitly, by Rev. Stat. § 1910 noted above, “the same jurisdiction, in all cases arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States, as is vested in the circuit and district courts of the United States.” One might expect that the grant of jurisdiction in the former necessarily encompassed or was the same as the grant of jurisdiction in the latter. Congress, however, was divided over the question whether the Constitution extended to Puerto Rico by its own force or whether Congress possessed the power to withhold from Puerto Ricans the constitutional guarantees available to all persons within the several States and the earlier Territories. See S. Rep. No. 249, 56th Cong., 1st Sess. (1900); H. R. Rep. No. 249, 56th Cong., 1st Sess. (1900).
The division within Congress was reflected in the legislation governing Puerto Rico. Thus, despite some support for the measure, see S. Rep. No. 249, pp. 12-13, Congress declined to grant citizenship to the inhabitants of Puerto Rico. 33 Cong. Rec. 3690 (1900). And, in contrast to some earlier territorial legislation, Congress did not expressly extend to Puerto Rico the Constitution of the United States or impose on the statutes of Puerto Rico then in effect the condition that they be continued only if consistent with the United States Constitution.
At the same time, however, Congress undoubtedly was aware of the above-mentioned Rev. Stat. § 1891 providing : “The Constitution and all laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable shall have the same force and effect... in every Territory hereafter organized as elsewhere within the United States.” Yet no mention of this statute was made in the Foraker Act. In contrast, two years later, Congress made § 1891 expressly inapplicable when it created a civil government for the Territory of the Philippines. Act of July 1, 1902, c. 1369, § 1, 32 Stat. 692. Moreover, Congress, by § 14 of the Foraker Act, extended to Puerto Rico “the statutory laws [other than the internal revenue laws] of the United States not locally inapplicable,” 31 Stat. 80, and Rev. Stat. § 1979, providing remedies for deprivation of rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States by persons acting under color of territorial law was at least potentially “applicable.”
This review of the For alter Act and its legislative history leads to several conclusions: Congress was uncertain of its own powers respecting Puerto Rico and of the extent to which the Constitution applied there. At the same time, it recognized, at least implicitly, that the ultimate resolution of these questions was the responsibility of this Court. S. Rep. No. 249, pp. 9-12; H. R. Rep. No. 249, pp. 9-15, 25-28. Thus Congress appears to have left the question of the personal rights to be accorded to the inhabitants of Puerto Rico to orderly development by this Court and to whatever further provision Congress itself might make for them. The grant of jurisdiction to the District Court in Puerto Rico, nevertheless, appeared to be sufficiently broad to permit redress of deprivations of those rights by persons acting under color of territorial law. See Insular Police Comm’n v. Lopez, 160 F. 2d 673, 676-677 (CA1), cert. denied, 331 U. S. 855 (1947). Nothing in the language of § 34 of the Foraker Act precluded the grant of jurisdiction accorded the earlier territorial courts by Rev. Stat. § 1910, and its language, containing no limitations, cautions us against reading into it an exception not supported by persuasive evidence in the legislative history.
Subsequent legislation respecting Puerto Rico tends to support the conclusion that uncertainty over the application of the Constitution did not lead Congress to deprive the inhabitants of Puerto Rico of a federal forum for vindication of whatever rights did exist. In the Organic Act of 1917, sometimes known as the Jones Act, 39 Stat. 951, Congress made more explicit the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court by according it “jurisdiction of all cases cognizable in the district courts of the United States,” § 41, 39 Stat. 965; generally granted Puerto Rico citizens United States citizenship, § 5, 39 Stat. 953; and codified for Puerto Rico a bill of rights, § 2, 39 Stat. 951. This bill of rights, which remained in effect until 1952, provided Puerto Ricans with nearly all the personal guarantees found in the United States Constitution. The very first provision, for example, read: “That no law shall be enacted in Porto Rico which shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny to any person therein the equal protection of the laws.” These words are almost identical with the language of the Fourteenth Amendment; and when Congress selected them, it must have done so with the Fourteenth Amendment in mind and with a view to further development by this Court of the doctrines embodied in it. See Kepner v. United States, 195 U. S. 100, 124 (1904). In its passage of the Jones Act, Congress clearly set the stage for the federal court in Puerto Rico to enforce the provisions of § 1983’s predecessor (Rev. Stat. § 1979) which prohibited the deprivation “under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any... Territory... of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws.” See Munoz v. Porto Rico Ry. Light & Power Co., 83 F. 2d 262, 26A-266 (CA1), cert. denied, 298 U. S. 689 (1936).
The jurisdictional provision of the Act, referring to “all cases cognizable in the district courts of the United States,” remained in effect until 1948. At that time Congress, in the course of a major revision of the Judicial Code, placed the nonterritorial jurisdiction of the District Court of Puerto Rico, as well as the District Court of Hawaii, squarely within Title 28 of the United States Code. It provided: “Puerto Rico constitutes one judicial district.” Act of June 25, 1948, c. 646, § 119, 62 Stat. 889. The stated reason for this change was that “Hawaii and Puerto Rico are included as judicial districts of the United States, since in matters of jurisdiction, powers, and procedure, they are in all respects equal to other United States district courts.” H. R. Rep. No. 308, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 6 (1947). This confirms our conclusion that until the establishment of the Commonwealth, the Federal District Court in Puerto Rico had the same jurisdiction to enforce the provisions of 42 U. S. C. § 1983 as that conferred by 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3) and its predecessor statutes on the United States district courts in the several States. See Miranda v. United States, 255 F. 2d 9 (CA1 1958); Insular Police Comm’n v. Lopez, supra.
Only two years later, Congress responded to demands for greater autonomy for Puerto Rico with the Act of July 3, 1950; c. 446, 64 Stat. 319. This legislation, offered, in the “nature of a compact” to “the people of Puerto Rico,” § 1, 48 U. S. C. § 731b, authorized them to draft their own constitution which, however, “shall provide a republican form of government and shall include a bill of rights,” § 2, 48 U. S. C. § 731c. The proposed constitution thereafter submitted declared that it was drafted “within our union with the United States of America,” and that among the “determining factors in our life” were considered “our citizenship of the United States of America” and “our loyalty to the principles of the Federal Constitution.” Preamble of the Constitution of Puerto Rico, 1 P. R. Laws Ann. p. 207 (1965). See note following 48 U. S. C. § 731d. Congress approved the proposed constitution after adding, among other things, a condition that any amendment or revision of the document be consistent with “the applicable provisions of the Constitution of the United States.” 66 Stat. 327. The condition was accepted, the compact became effective, and Puerto Rico assumed “Commonwealth” status. This resulted in the repeal of numerous provisions of the Organic Act of 1917, including the bill of rights that Act contained. Act of July 3, 1950, c. 446, § 5, 64 Stat. 320. The remainder became known as the Puerto Rican Federal Relations Act. § 4, 64 Stat. 319.
The question then arises whether Congress, by entering into the compact, intended to repeal by implication the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court of Puerto Rico to enforce 42 U. S. C. § 1983. We think not. As was observed in Calero-Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U. S., at 671, the purpose of Congress in the 1950 and 1952 legislation was to accord to Puerto Rico the degree of autonomy and independence normally associated with States of the Union, and accordingly, Puerto Rico “now ‘elects its Governor and legislature; appoints its judges, all cabinet officials, and lesser officials in the executive branch; sets its own educational policies; determines its own budget; and amends its own civil and criminal codq.’ ” See generally Leibowitz, The Applicability of Federal Law to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, 56 Geo. L. J. 219, 221 (1967); Magruder, The Commonwealth Status of Puerto Rico, 15 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 1 (1953); Americana of Puerto Rico, Inc. v. Kaplus, 368 F. 2d 431 (CA3 1966), cert. denied, 386 U. S. 943 (1967). More importantly, the provisions relating to the jurisdiction of a Federal District Court in Puerto Rico were left undisturbed, and there is no evidence in the legislative history that would support a determination that Congress intended such a departure. In the absence of a change in the language of the jurisdictional provision or of affirmative evidence in the legislative history, we are unwilling to read into the 1952 legislation a restriction of the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court.
C. Our conclusion not to attribute to Congress an inclination to leave the protection of federal rights exclusively to the local Puerto Rico courts is supported by District of Columbia v. Carter, 409 U. S. 418 (1973). There the Court held that the District was neither a State nor a Territory within the meaning of 42 U. S. C. § 1983. The District, it was observed, occupies a unique status within our system of government. It is the seat of the National Government, and, at the time the Civil Rights Act of 1871 was enacted, Congress exercised plenary power over its activities. These geographical and political considerations, as well as “the absence of any indication in the language, purposes, or history of § 1983 of a legislative intent to include the District within the scope of its coverage,” supported the Court’s conclusion. 409 U. S., at 432.
Appellants, however, focus upon the characterization of the District as “sui generis in our governmental structure,” ibid., and argue that because the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is also sui generis, the conduct of persons acting under color of Commonwealth law is similarly exempted from scrutiny under § 1983. We readily concede that Puerto Rico occupies a relationship to the United States that has no parallel in our history, but we think that it does not follow that Congress intended to relinquish federal enforcement of § 1983 by restricting the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court in Puerto Rico. It was observed in Carter, 409 U. S., at 427, that Congress, in enacting the civil rights legislation with which we are concerned, recognized that it “had neither the means nor the authority to exert any direct control, on a day-to-day basis, over the actions of state officials,” and that the “solution chosen was to involve the federal judiciary.” Congress similarly lacked effective control over actions taken by territorial officials, although its authority to govern was plenary. The same practical limitations on Congress’ effectiveness to protect the federally guaranteed rights of the inhabitants of Puerto Rico existed from the time of its cession and, after 1952, when Congress relinquished its control over the organization of the local affairs of the island and granted Puerto Rico a measure of autonomy comparable to that possessed by the States, the need for federal protection of federal rights was not thereby lessened. Finally, § 1983, by its terms, applies to Territories; Puerto Rico, but not the District of Columbia, obviously was one of these. Whether Puerto Rico is now considered a Territory or a State, for purposes of the specific question before us, makes little difference because each is included within § 1983 and, therefore, 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3).
It fallows that the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico has jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3) to enforce the provisions of 42 U. S. C. § 1983.
Ill
Appellants, however, argue that the District Court should have abstained from reaching the merits of the constitutional claim. Fornaris v. Ridge Tool Co., 400 U. S. 41 (1970), is cited as an example of abstention in a Puerto Rico context. We conclude that the District Court correctly determined that abstention was unnecessary. The case presents no novel question concerning the judicially created abstention doctrine; it requires, instead, only the application of settled principles reviewed just last Term in Harris County Comm’rs Court v. Moore, 420 U. S. 77 (1975).
Appellants urge that abstention was appropriate for two reasons. First, it is said that § 689 should be construed by the commonwealth courts in the light of § 1483 of the Civil Code, P. R. Laws Ann., Tit. 31, § 4124 (1968). This provision imposes liability on a contractor for defective construction of a building. We fail to see, however, how § 4124 in any way could affect the interpretation of § 689 which imposes, with the exceptions that have been noted, a requirement of citizenship for the licensing of an engineer.
Appellants’ second argument is that the commonwealth courts should be permitted to adjudicate the validity of the citizenship requirement in the light of §§ 1 and 7 of Art. II of the Puerto Rico Constitution. 1 P. R. Laws Ann., Const., Art. II, §§ 1, 7 (1965). Section 1 provides: “No discrimination shall be made on account of race, color, sex, birth, social origin or condition, or political or religious ideas.” Section 7 provides: “No person in Puerto Rico shall be denied the equal protection of the laws.” These constitutional provisions are not so interrelated with § 689 that it may be said, as in Harris County, that the law of the Commonwealth is ambiguous. Rather, the abstention issue seems clearly controlled by Wisconsin v. Constantineau, 400 U. S. 433 (1971), where, as it was said in Harris County, 420 U. S., at 8A-85, n. 8, “we declined to order abstention where the federal due process claim was not complicated by an unresolved state-law question, even though the plaintiffs might have sought relief under a similar provision of the state constitution.” Indeed, to hold that abstention is required because § 689 might conflict with the cited broad and sweeping constitutional provisions, would convert abstention from an exception into a general rule.
IV
This takes us, then, to the particular Puerto Rico statute before us. Does Puerto Rico’s prohibition against an alien’s engaging in the private practice of engineering deprive the appellee aliens of “any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws,” within the meaning of 42 U. S. C. § 1983?
A. The Court’s decisions respecting the rights of the inhabitants of Puerto Rico have been neither unambiguous nor exactly uniform. The nature of this country’s relationship to Puerto Rico was vigorously debated within the Court as well as within the Congress. See Coudert, The Evolution of the Doctrine of Territorial Incorporation, 26 Col. L. Rev. 823 (1926). It is clear now, however, that the protections accorded by either the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment or the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment apply to residents of Puerto Rico. The Court recognized the applicability of these guarantees as long ago as its decisions in Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 244, 283-284 (1901), and Balzac v. Porto Rico, 258 U. S. 298, 312-313 (1922). The principle was reaffirmed and strengthened in Reid v. Covert, 354 U. S. 1 (1957), and then again in Calero-Toledo, 416 U. S. 663 (1974), where we held that inhabitants of Puerto Rico are protected, under either the Fifth Amendment or the Fourteenth, from the official taking of property without due process of law.
The Court, however, thus far has declined to say whether it is the Fifth Amendment or the Fourteenth which provides the protection. Calero-Toledo, 416 U. S., at 668-669, n. 5. Once again, we need not resolve that precise question because, irrespective of which Amendment applies, the statutory restriction on the ability of aliens to engage in the otherwise lawful private practice of civil engineering is plainly unconstitutional. If the Fourteenth Amendment is applicable, the Equal Protection Clause nullifies the statutory exclusion. If, on the other hand, it is the Fifth Amendment and its Due Process Clause that apply, the statute’s discrimination is so egregious that it falls within the rule of Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U. S. 497, 499 (1954). See also Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U. S. 163, 168 (1964).
B. In examining the validity of Puerto Rico’s virtually complete ban on the private practice of civil engineering by aliens, we apply the standards of our recent decisions in Graham v. Richardson, 403 U. S. 365 (1971); Sugar man v. Dougall, 413 U. S. 634 (1973); and In re Griffiths, 413 U. S. 717 (1973). These cases establish that state classifications based on alienage are subject to “strict judicial scrutiny.” Graham v. Richardson, 403 U. S., at 376. Statutes containing classifications of this kind will be upheld only if the State or Territory imposing them is able to satisfy the burden of demonstrating “that its purpose or interest is both constitutionally permissible and substantial, and that its use of the classification is 'necessary... to the accomplishment’ of its purpose or the safeguarding of its interest.” In re Griffiths, 413 U. S., at 721-722 (footnotes omitted). These principles are applicable to the Puerto Rico statute now under consideration.
The underpinnings of the Court’s constitutional decisions defining the circumstances under which state and local governments may favor citizens of this country by denying lawfully admitted aliens equal rights and opportunities have been two. The first, based squarely on the concepts embodied in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and in the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, recognizes that “[a]liens as a class are a prime example of a 'discrete and insular’ minority... for whom... heightened judicial solicitude is appropriate.” Graham v. Richardson, 403 U. S., at 372. See also San Antonio School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1, 29 (1973); Sugarman v. Dougall, 413 U. S., at 642. The second, grounded in the Supremacy Clause, Const., Art. VI, cl. 2, and in the naturalization power, Art. I, § 8, cl. 4, recognizes the Federal Government’s primary responsibility in the field of immigration and naturalization. See, e. g., Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U. S. 52, 66 (1941); Truax v. Raich, 239 U. S. 33, 42 (1915). See also Graham v. Richardson, 403 U. S., at 378; Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm’n, 334 U. S. 410, 419 (1948).
Official discrimination against lawfully admitted aliens traditionally has taken several forms. Aliens have been prohibited from enjoying public resources or receiving public benefits on the same basis as citizens. See Graham v. Richardson, supra; Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm’n, supra. Aliens have been excluded from public employment. Sugarman v. Dougall, supra. See M. Konvitz, The Alien and the Asiatic in American Law, c. 6 (1946). And aliens have been restricted from engaging in private enterprises and occupations that are otherwise lawful. See In re Griffiths, supra; Truax v. Raich, supra; Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 concerns two applications for passports, denied by the Secretary of State. One was by Rockwell Kent who desired to visit England and attend a meeting of an organization known as the “World Council of Peace” in Helsinki, Finland. The Director of the Passport Office informed Kent that issuance of a passport was precluded by § 51.135 of the Regulations promulgated by the Secretary of State on two grounds: (1) that he was a Communist and (2) that he had had “a consistent and prolonged adherence to the Communist Party line.” The letter of denial specified in some detail the facts on which those conclusions were based. Kent was also advised of his right to an informal hearing under § 51.137 of the Regulations. But he was also told that whether or not a hearing was requested it would be necessary, before a. passport would be issued, to submit an affidavit as to whether he was then or ever had been a Communist. Kent did not ask for a hearing but filed a new passport application listing several European countries he desired to visit. When advised that a hearing was still available to him, his attorney replied that Kent took the position that the requirement of an affidavit concerning Communist Party membership “is unlawful and that for that reason and as a matter of conscience,” he would not supply one. He did, however, have a hearing at which the principal evidence against him was from his book It's Me 0 Lord, which Kent agreed was accurate. He again refused to submit the affidavit, maintaining that any matters unrelated to the question of his citizenship were irrelevant to the Department’s consideration of his application. The Department advised him that no further consideration of his application would be given until he satisfied the requirements of the Regulations.
Thereupon Kent sued in the District Court for declaratory relief. The District Court granted summary judgment for respondent. On appeal the case of Kent was heard with that of Dr. Walter Briehl, a psychiatrist. When Briehl applied for a passport, the Director of the Passport Office asked him to supply the affidavit covering membership in the- Communist Party. Briehl, like Kent, refused. The1 Director- then tentatively disapproved the application on the following grounds:
“In your case it has been alleged that you were a Communist. Specifically it is alleged that you were a member of the Los Angeles County Communist Party; that you were a member of the Bookshop Association, St. Louis, Missouri; that you held Communist Party meetings; that in 1936 and 1941 you contributed articles to the Communist Publication ‘Social Work Today’; that in 1939, 1940 and 1941 you were a sponsor to raise funds for veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in calling on the President of the United States by a petition to defend the rights of the Communist Party and its members; that you contributed to the Civil Rights Congress bail fund to be used in raising bail on behalf of convicted Communist leaders in New York City; that you were a member of the Hollywood Arts, Sciences and Professions Council and a contact of the Los Angeles Committee for Protection of Foreign Born and a contact of the Freedom Stage, Incorporated.”
The Director advised Briehl of his right to a hearing but stated that whether or not a hearing was held, an affidavit concerning membership in the Communist Party would be necessary. Briehl asked for a hearing and one was held. At that hearing he raised three objections: (1) that his “political affiliations” were irrelevant to his right to a passport; (2) that “every American citizen has the right to travel regardless of politics”; and (3) that the burden was on the Department to prove illegal activities by Briehl. Briehl persisted in his refusal to supply the affidavit. Because of that refusal Briehl was advised that the Board of Passport Appeals could not under the Regulations entertain an appeal.
Briehl filed his complaint in the District Court which held that his case was indistinguishable from Kent’s and dismissed the complaint.
The Court of Appeals heard the two cases en banc and affirmed the District Court by a divided vote. 101 U. S. App. D. C. 278, 239, 248 F. 2d 600, 561. The cases are here on writ of certiorari. 355 U. S. 881.
The Court first noted the function that the passport performed in American law in the case of Urtetiqui v. D’Arbel, 9 Pet. 692, 699, decided in 1835:
“There is no law of the United States, in any manner regulating the issuing of passports, or directing upon what evidence it may be done, or declaring their legal effect. It is understood, as matter of practice, that some evidence of citizenship is required, by the secretary of state, before issuing a passport. This, however, is entirely discretionary with him. No inquiry is instituted by him to ascertain the fact of citizenship, or any proceedings had, that will in any manner bear the character of a judicial inquiry. It is a document, which, from its nature and object, is addressed to foreign powers; purporting only to be a request, that the bearer of it may pass safely and freely; and is to be considered rather in the character of a political document, by which the bearer is recognized, in foreign countries, as an American citizen; and which, by usage and the law of nations, is received as evidence of the fact.”
A passport not only is of great value — indeed necessary — abroad; it is also an aid in establishing citizenship for purposes of re-entry into the United States. See Browder v. United States, 312 U. S. 335, 339; 3 Moore, Digest of International Law (1906), § 512. But throughout most of our history- — -until indeed quite recently — a passport, though a great convenience in foreign travel, was not a legal requirement for leaving or entering the United States. See Jaffe, The Right to Travel: The Passport Problem, 35 Foreign Affairs 17. Apart from minor exceptions to be noted, it was first made a requirement by § 215 of the Act of June 27, 1952, 66 Stat. 190, 8 U. S. C. § 1185, which states that, after a prescribed proclamation by the President, it is “unlawful for any citizen of the United States to depart from or enter, or attempt to depart from or enter, the United States unless he bears a valid passport.” And the Proclamation necessary to make the restrictions of this Act applicable and in force has been made/
Prior to 1952 there were numerous laws enacted by Congress regulating passports and many decisions, rulings, and regulations by the Executive Department concerning them. Thus in 1803 Congress made it unlawful for an official knowingly to issue a passport to an alien certifying that he is a citizen. 2 Stat. 205. In 1815, just prior to the termination of the War of 1812, it made it illegal for a citizen to “cross the frontier” into enemy territory, to board vessels of the enemy on waters of the United States or to visit any of his camps within the limits of the United States, “without a passport first obtained” from the Secretary of State or other designated official. 3 Stat. 199-200. The Secretary of State took similar steps during the Civil War. See Dept, of State, The American Passport (1898), 50. In 1850 Congress ratified a treaty with Switzerland requiring passports from citizens of the two nations. 11 Stat. 587, 589-590. Finally in 1856 Congress enacted what remains today as our basic passport statute. Prior to that time various federal officials, state and local officials, and notaries public had undertaken to issue either certificates of citizenship or other documents in the nature of letters of introduction to foreign officials requesting treatment according to the usages of international law. By the Act of August 18, 1856, 11 Stat. 52, 60-61, 22 U. S. C. .§ 211a, Congress put an end to those practices. This provision, as codified by the Act of July 3, 1926, 44 Stat., Part 2, 887, reads,
“The Secretary of State may grant and issue passports . . . under such rules as the President shall designate and prescribe for and on behalf of the United States, and no other person shall grant, issue, or verify such passports.”
Thus for most of our history a passport was not a condition to entry or exit.
It is true that, at intervals, a passport has been required for travel. Mention has already been made of the restrictions imposed during the War of 1812 and during the Civil War. A like restriction, which was the forerunner of that contained in the 1952 Act, was imposed by Congress in 1918.
The Act of May 22,1918,40 Stat. 559, made it unlawful, while a Presidential Proclamation was in force, for a citizen to leave or enter the United States “unless he bears a valid passport.” See H. R. Rep. No. 485, 65th Cong., 2d Sess. That statute was invoked by Presidential Proclamation No. 1473 on August 8,1918, 40 Stat. 1829, which continued in effect until March 3, 1921. 41 Stat. 1359.
The 1918 Act was effective only in wartime. It was amended in 1941 so that it could be invoked in the then-existing emergency. 55 Stat. 252. See S. Rep. No. 444, 77th Cong., 1st Sess. It was invoked by Presidential Proclamation No. 2523, November 14, 1941, 55 Stat. 1696. That emergency continued until April 28, 1952. Proc. No. 2974, 66 Stat. C31. Congress extended the statutory provisions until April 1, 1953. 66 Stat. 54, 57, 96, 137, 330, 333. It was during this extension period that the Secretary of State issued the Regulations here complained of.
Under the 1926 Act and its predecessor a large body of precedents grew up which repeat over and again that the issuance of passports is “a discretionary act” on the part of the Secretary of State. The scholars, the courts, the Chief Executive, and the Attorneys General, all so said. This long-continued executive construction should be enough, it is said, to warrant the inference that Congress had adopted it. See Allen v. Grand Central Aircraft Co., 347 U. S. 535, 544-545; United States v. Allen-Bradley Co., 352 U. S. 306, 310. But the key to that problem, as we shall see, is in the manner in which the Secretary’s discretion was exercised, not in the bare fact that he had discretion.
The right to travel is a part of the “liberty” of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment. So much is conceded by the Solicitor General. In Anglo-Saxon law that right was emerging at least as early as the Magna Carta. Chafee, Three Human Rights in the Constitution of 1787 (1956), 171-181, 187 et seq., shows how deeply engrained in our history this freedom of movement is. Freedom of movement across frontiers in either direction, and inside frontiers as well, was a part of our heritage. Travel abroad, like travel within the country, may be necessary for a livelihood. It may be as close to the heart of the individual as the choice of what he eats, or wears, or reads. Freedom of movement is basic in our scheme of values. See Crandall v. Nevada, 6 Wall. 35, 44; Williams v. Fears, 179 U. S. 270, 274; Edwards v. California, 314 U. S. 160. “Our nation,” wrote Chafee, “has thrived on the principle that, outside areas of plainly harmful conduct, every American is left to shape his own life as he thinks best, do what he pleases, go where he pleases.” Id., at 197.
Freedom of movement also has large social values. As Chafee put it:
“Foreign correspondents and lecturers on public affairs need first-hand information. Scientists and scholars gain greatly from consultations with colleagues in other countries. Students equip themselves for more fruitful careers in the United States by instruction in foreign universities. Then there are reasons close to the core of personal life — marriage, reuniting families, spending hours with old friends. Finally, travel abroad enables American citizens to understand that people like themselves live in Europe and helps them to be well-informed on public issues. An American who has crossed the ocean is not obliged to form his opinions about our foreign policy merely from what he is told by officials of our government or by a few correspondents of American newspapers. Moreover, his views on domestic questions are enriched by seeing how foreigners are trying to solve similar problems. In many different ways direct contact with other countries contributes to sounder decisions at home.” Id., at 195-196. And see Vestal, Freedom of Movement, 41 Iowa L. Rev. 6, 13-14.
Freedom to travel is, indeed, an important aspect of the citizen's “liberty.” We need not decide the extent to which it can be curtailed. We are first concerned with the extent, if any, to which Congress has authorized its curtailment.
The difficulty is that while the power of the Secretary of State over the issuance of passports is expressed in broad terms, it was apparently long exercised quite narrowly. So far as material here, the cases of refusal of passports generally fell into two categories. First, questions pertinent to the citizenship of the applicant and his allegiance to the United States had to be resolved by the Secretary, for the command of Congress was that “No passport shall be granted or issued to or verified for any other persons than those owing allegiance, whether citizens or not, to the United States.” 32 Stat. 386, 22 U. S. C. § 212. Second, was the question whether the applicant was participating in illegal conduct, trying to escape the toils of the law, promoting passport frauds, or otherwise engaging in conduct which would violate the laws of the United States. See 3 Moore, Digest of International Law (1906), § 512; 3 Hackworth, Digest of International Law (1942), § 268; 2 Hyde, International Law (2d rev. ed.), § 401.
The grounds for refusal asserted here do not relate to citizenship or allegiance on the one hand or to criminal or unlawful conduct on the other. Yet, so far as relevant here, those two are the only ones which it could fairly be argued were adopted by Congress in light of prior administrative practice. One can find in the records of the State Department rulings of subordinates covering a wider range of activities than the two indicated. But as respects Communists these are scattered rulings and not consistently of one pattern. We can say with assurance that whatever may have been the practice after 1926, at the time the Act of July 3, 1926, was adopted, the administrative practice, so far as relevant here, had jelled only around the two categories mentioned. We, therefore, hesitate to impute to Congress, when in 1952 it made a passport necessary for foreign travel and left its issuance to the discretion of the Secretary of State, a purpose to give him unbridled discretion to grant or withhold a passport from a citizen for any substantive reason he may choose.
More restrictive regulations were applied in 1918 and in 1941 as war measures. We are not compelled to equate this present problem of statutory construction with problems that may arise under the war power. Cf. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579.
In a case of comparable magnitude, Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 218, we allowed the Government in time of war to exclude citizens from their homes and restrict their freedom of movement only on a showing of “the gravest imminent danger to the public safety.” There the Congress and the Chief Executive moved in coordinated action; and, as we said, the Nation was then at war. No such condition presently exists. No such showing of extremity, no such showing of joint action by the Chief Executive and the Congress to curtail a constitutional right of the citizen has been made here.
Since we start with an exercise by an American citizen of an activity included in constitutional protection, we will not readily infer that Congress gave the Secretary of State unbridled discretion to grant or withhold it. If we were dealing with political questions entrusted to the Chief Executive by the Constitution we would have a different case. But there is more involved here. In part, of course, the issuance of the passport carries some implication of intention to extend the bearer diplomatic protection, though it does no more than “request all whom it may concern to permit safely and freely to pass, and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection” to this citizen of the United States. But that function of the passport is subordinate. Its crucial function today is control over exit. And, as we have seen, the right of exit is a personal right included within the word “liberty” as used in the Fifth Amendment. If that’ “liberty” is to be regulated, it must be pursuant to the law-making functions of the Congress. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, supra. And if that power is delegated, the standards must be adequate to pass scrutiny by the accepted tests. See Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U. S. 388, 420-430. Cf. Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 307; Niemotko v. Maryland, 340 U. S. 268, 271. Where activities or enjoyment, natural and often necessary to the well-being of an American citizen, such as travel, are involved, we will construe narrowly all delegated powers that curtail or dilute them. See Ex parte Endo, 323 U. S. 283, 301-302. Cf. Hannegan v. Esquire, Inc., 327 U. S. 146, 156; United States v. Rumely, 345 U. S. 41, 46. We hesitate to find in this broad generalized power an authority to trench so heavily on the rights of the citizen.
Thus we do not reach the question of constitutionality. We only conclude that § 1185 and § 211a do not delegate to the Secretary the kind of authority exercised here. We deal with beliefs, with associations, with ideological matters. We must remember that we are dealing here with citizens who have neither been accused of crimes nor found guilty. They are being denied their freedom of movement solely because of their refusal to be subjected to inquiry into their beliefs and associations. They do not seek to escape the law nor to violate it. They may or may not be Communists. But assuming they are, the only law which Congress has passed expressly curtailing the movement of Communists across our borders has not yet become effective. It would therefore be strange to infer that pending the effectiveness of that law, the Secretary has been silently granted by Congress the larger, the more pervasive power to curtail in his discretion the free movement of citizens in order to satisfy himself about their beliefs or associations.
To repeat, we deal here with a constitutional right of the citizen, a right which we must assume Congress will be faithful to respect. We would be faced with important constitutional questions were we to hold that Congress by § 1185 and § 211a had given the Secretary authority to withhold passports to citizens because of their beliefs or associations. Congress has made no such provision in explicit terms; and absent one, the Secretary may not employ that standard to restrict the citizens’ right of free movement.
Reversed.
22 CFR §51.135 provides:
“In order to promote the national interest by assuring that persons who support the world Communist movement of which the Communist Party is an integral unit may not, through use of United States passports, further the purposes of that movement, no passport, except one limited for direct and immediate return to the United States, shall be issued to:
“(a) Persons who are members of the Communist Party or who have recently terminated such membership under such circumstances as to warrant the conclusion — not otherwise rebutted by the evidence — that they continue to act in furtherance of the interests and under the discipline of the Communist Party;
“ (b) Persons, regardless of the formal state of their affiliation with the Communist Party, who engage in activities which support the Communist movement under such circumstances as to warrant the conclusion — not otherwise rebutted by the evidence — that they have engaged in such activities as a result of direction, domination, or control exercised over them by the Communist movement;
“(c) Persons, regardless of the formal state of their affiliation with the Communist Party, as to whom there is reason to believe, on the balance of all the evidence, that they are going abroad to engage in activities which will advance the Communist movement for the purpose, knowingly and wilfully of advancing that movement.”
Section 51.142 of the Regulations provides:
“At any stage of the proceedings in the Passport Division or before the Board, if it is deemed necessary, the applicant may be required, as a part of his application, to subscribe, under oath or affirmation, to a statement with respect to present or past membership in the Communist Party. If applicant states that he is a Communist, refusal of a passport in his case will be without further proceedings.”
Sections 2 and 6 of the Act of September 23, 1950, known as the Internal Security Act of 1950, 64 Stat. 987, 993, 50 U. S. C. §§ 781, 785, provide that it shall be unlawful, when a Communist organization is registered under the Act or when “there is in effect a final order of the Board requiring an organization to register,” for any member having knowledge of such registry and order to apply for a passport or for any official to issue him one. But the conditions precedent have not yet materialized.
That section provides in relevant part:
“(a) When the United States is at war or during the existence of any national emergency proclaimed by the President, . . . and the President shall find that the interests of the United States require that restrictions and prohibitions in addition to those provided otherwise than by this section be imposed upon the departure of persons from and their entry into the United States, and shall make public proclamation thereof, it shall, until otherwise ordered by the President or the Congress, be unlawful—
“(1) for any alien to depart from or enter or attempt to depart from or enter the United States except under such reasonable rules, regulations, and orders, and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may prescribe;
“(3) for any person knowingly to make any false statement in an application for permission to depart from or enter the United States with intent to induce or secure the granting of such permission either for himself or for another;
“(b) After such proclamation as is provided for in subsection (a) has been made and published and while such proclamation is in force, it shall, except as otherwise provided by the President, and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may authorize and prescribe, be unlawful for any citizen of the United States to depart from or enter, or attempt to depart from or enter, the United States unless he bears a valid passport.”
Proc. No. 3004, 67 Stat. C31.
See 9 Op. Atty. Gen. 350, 352.
Dept. Reg. No. 108.162, effective August 28, 1952, 17 Fed. Reg. 8013.
See 2 Hyde, International Law (2d rev. ed. 1945), §399; 3 Hackworth, Digest of International Law (1942), §268.
See Perkins v. Elg, 307 U. S. 325, 350.
Exec. Order No. 654, June 13, 1907; id., No. 2119-A, Jan. 12, 1915; id., No. 2286-A, Dec. 17, 1915; id., No. 2362-A, Apr. 17, 1916; id., No. 2519-A, Jan. 24, 1917; id., No. 4382-A, Feb. 12, 1926; id., No. 4800, Jan. 31, 1928; id., No. 5860, June 22, 1932; id., No. 7856, Mar. 31, 1938, 3 Fed. Reg. 681, 22 CFR § 51.75. The present provision is that last listed and reads in part as follows:
“The Secretary of State is authorized in his discretion to refuse to issue a passport, to restrict a passport for use only in certain countries, to restrict it against use in certain countries, to withdraw or cancel a passport already issued, and to withdraw a passport for the purpose of restricting its validity or use in certain countries.”
The Department, however, did not feel that the Secretary of State could exercise his discretion willfully without cause. Acting Secretary Wilson wrote on April 27, 1907, "The issuance of passports is a discretionary act on the part of the Secretary of State, and he may, for reasons deemed by him to be sufficient, direct the refusal of a passport to an American citizen; but a passport is not to be refused to an American citizen, even if his character is doubtful, unless there is reason to believe that he will put the passports to an improper or unlawful use.” Foreign Relations of the United States, Pt. II (1910), 1083. See 3 Moore, Digest of International Law (1906), § 512. Freund, Administrative Powers over Persons and Property (1928), 97, states . .in practice it is clear that the Department of State acts upon the theory that it must grant the passport unless there is some circumstance making it a duty to refuse it. Any other attitude would indeed be intolerable; it would mean an executive power of a political character over individuals quite out of harmony with traditional American legislative practice.”
13 Op. Atty. Gen. 89, 92; 23 Op. Atty. Gen. 509, 511.
Article 42 reads as follows:
“It shall be lawful to any person, for the future, to go out of our kingdom, and to return, safely and securely, by land or by water, saving his allegiance to us, unless it be in time of war, for some short space, for the common good of the kingdom: excepting prisoners and outlaws, according to the laws of the land, and of the people of the nation at war against us, and Merchants who shall be treated as it is said above.” And see Jaffe, op. cit. supra, 19-20; Sibley, The Passport System, 7 J. Soc. Comp. Leg. (N. S.) 26, 32-33; 1 Blaclcstone Commentaries 134-135.
The use of foreign travel to promote educational interests is reviewed by Francis J. Colligan in 30 Dept. State Bull. 663.
See note 3, supra.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
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, except as to Parts III-B and III-C.
For the second time this Term, we are faced with the question whether federal posteonviction relief is available when a prisoner challenges a current sentence on the ground that it was enhanced based'on an allegedly unconstitutional prior conviction for which the petitioner is no longer in custody. In Daniels v. United States, ante, p. 374, we held that such relief is generally not available to a federal prisoner through a motion to vacate the sentence under 28 U.S. C. §2255 (1994 ed., Supp. V), but left open the possibility that relief might be appropriate in rare circumstances. We now hold that relief is similarly unavailable to state prisoners through a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U. S. C. §2254 (1994 ed. and Supp. V).
I
Respondent Edward R. Coss, Jr., has an extensive criminal record. By the age of 16, he had been adjudged a juvenile delinquent on five separate occasions for offenses including theft, disorderly conduct, assault, and burglary. See Record Doc. No. 101 (PI. Exh. 5, pp. 4-6). By the time he turned 23, Coss had been convicted in adult court of assault, institutional vandalism, criminal mischief, disorderly conduct, and possession of a controlled substance. See id., at 6-7. His record also reveals arrests for assault, making terroristic threats, delivery of controlled substances, reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, retail theft, and criminal conspiracy, although each of those charges was later dropped. See ibid. A report generated by the Lacka-wanna County Adult Probation Office sums up the “one consistent factor in this defendant’s life: criminal behavior, much of it being aggressive.” Id., at 8.
This case revolves around two of the many entries on Coss’ criminal record. In October 1986, Coss was convicted in Pennsylvania state court of simple assault, institutional vandalism, and criminal mischief. He was then sentenced to two consecutive prison terms of six months to one year. He did not file a direct appeal. See App. 54a; see also Tr. of Oral Arg. 28-29.
In June 1987, Coss filed a petition for relief from the 1986 convictions under the Pennsylvania Post Conviction Relief Act, 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 9541 et seq. (1998), alleging that his trial attorney had been constitutionally ineffective. See App. 50a-53a. The Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas promptly appointed counsel for Coss, id., at 57a, and the district attorney filed an answer to the petition, id., at 59a. The court, however, took no further action on the petition for the remainder of Coss’ time in custody. Indeed, it appears that Coss’ state postconviction petition has now been pending for almost 14 years, and has never been the subject of a judicial ruling. Neither petitioners nor respondent is able to explain this lapse. Tr. of Oral Arg. 4,29.
In 1990, after he had served the full sentences for his 1986 convictions, Coss was again convicted in Pennsylvania state court, this time of aggravated assault. He was sentenced to 6 to 12 years in prison, but successfully challenged this sentence on direct appeal because of a possible inaccuracy in the presentence report. App. 62a.
On remand, the court’s first task was to determine the range of sentences for which Coss was eligible. In calculating Coss’ “prior record score” — one of two determinants of the applicable sentencing range, see 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 9721 (1998) (reproducing 204 Pa. Code § 803.9(a) (1998)) — the new presentence report took account of Coss’ most serious juvenile adjudication and Coss’ 1986 misdemeanor convictions, counting the latter as separate offenses. See Record Doc. No. 101 (PI. Exh. 3, at 10). Coss objected, claiming that his 1986 convictions should be counted as one misdemeanor offense because they arose from the same transaction. See ibid. (PI. Exh. 5, at 3-4). The trial court sustained Coss’ objection, finding that the convictions should be “viewfed]... as being one transaction, one incident, one conviction.” Id., at 5. Under the Pennsylvania Sentencing Guidelines, one prior misdemeanor does not affect the prior record score. See id., at 10 (displaying grid for calculating prior record score). Thus, the practical effect of the court’s decision was to eliminate the 1986 convictions from Coss’ prior record score entirely. See ibid.; see also 204 F. 3d 453, 467-468 (CA3 2000) (en banc) (Nygaard, J., dissenting). Consequently, Coss’ 1986 convictions played no part in determining the range of sentences to which Coss was exposed.
The court’s next task was to choose a sentence within that range. In doing so, the trial court considered a number of factors, including “the seriousness and nature of the crime involved here, the well being and protection of the people who live in our community, your criminal disposition, your prior criminal record, the possibility of your rehabilitation, and the testimony that I’ve heard.” Record Doc. No. 101 (PI. Exh. 3, at 26). The court concluded that “it’s indicative that from your actions that you will continue to break the law unless given a period of incarceration.” Ibid. The court then reimposed a 6 to 12 year sentence. Because Coss’ 1986 convictions are a part of his prior criminal record, the Court of Appeals concluded that the state court took those convictions “into consideration” in sentencing Coss. See 204 P. 3d, at 459.
In September 1994, Coss filed a petition for a writ of ha-beas corpus under 28 U. S. C. § 2254 in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. That provision, a postconviction remedy in federal court for state prisoners, provides that a writ of habeas corpus is available to “a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court” if that person “is in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.” § 2254(a). In his petition, Coss contended that his 1986 assault conviction was the product of ineffective assistance of counsel. App. 73a-74a.
In answer to Coss’ §2254 petition, the Lackawanna County District Attorney argued that the District Court could not review the constitutionality of Coss’ 1986 convictions because Coss was no longer in custody on those convictions. Record Doe. No. 55, p. 2. The district attorney, however, indicated his understanding that the crux of Coss’ claim was that his 1986 convictions “may have impact [sic] upon the sentences which have been imposed... upon [Coss] for criminal convictions rendered against him” for his 1990 convictions. Ibid. See also Brief for Petitioners 4 (“[Respondent argues that the sentence for his 1990 conviction was adversely and unconstitutionally affected by the 1986 simple assault conviction”).
The District Court stated that Coss was arguing “that his current sentence [for the 1990 conviction] was adversely affected by the 1986 convictions because the sentencing judge considered these allegedly unconstitutional convictions in computing Goss’s present sentence.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 105a-106a. Finding that “the sentencing judge... did make reference to the 1986 convictions in sentencing Coss,” id., at 107a, the court held that it could properly exercise jurisdiction under §2264, id., at 108a; see also Record Doc. No. 87, p. 3, n. 2. After an evidentiary hearing, the court denied the petition, holding that Coss’ 1986 trial counsel had been ineffective, but that Coss had not been prejudiced by the ineffectiveness. App. to Pet. for Cert. 113a, 116a, 120a.
The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, sitting en bane, agreed that “the sentencing court for the 1990 conviction took into consideration [Coss’ 1986] eonviction[s],” and therefore that the District Court had jurisdiction over Coss’ § 2254 petition. 204 F. 3d, at 459. Citing Circuit precedent and our decisions in Maleng v. Cook, 490 U.S. 488 (1989) (per curiam), and United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S. 443 (1972), the court concluded that §2254 provided a remedy for “an allegedly unconstitutional conviction, even if [the § 2254 petitioner] has served in entirety the sentence resulting from the conviction, if that conviction had an effect on a present sentence.” 204 F. 3d, at 459-460.
The court then found that Coss had received ineffective assistance during his 1986 trial, and that there was “a reasonable probability” that but for the ineffective assistance, Coss “would not have been found guilty of assau[lt].” Id., at 462. The court remanded the case to the District Court, ordering that the Commonwealth be allowed either to retry Coss for the 1986 assault or to resentence him for the 1990 assault without consideration of the 1986 conviction. Id., at 467.
We granted certiorari to consider the threshold question that the District Court and Court of Appeals both resolved in Coss’ favor: whether §2254 provides a remedy where a current sentence was enhanced on the basis of an allegedly unconstitutional prior conviction for which the sentence has fully expired. 531 U. S. 923 (2000).
HH t — (
A
The first showing a § 2254 petitioner must make is that he is “in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court.” 28 U. S. C. § 2254(a). In Maleng v. Cook, supra, we considered a situation quite similar to the one presented here. In that case, the respondent had filed a § 2254 petition listing as the “‘conviction under attack’” a 1958 state conviction for which he had already served the entirety of his sentence. 490 U. S., at 489-490. He also alleged that the 1958 conviction had been “used illegally to enhance his 1978 state sentences” which he had not yet begun to serve because he was at that time in federal custody on an unrelated matter. Ibid. We determined that the respondent was “in custody” on his 1978 sentences because the State had lodged a detainer against him with the federal authorities. Id., at 493.
We held that the respondent was not “in custody” on his 1958 conviction merely because that conviction had been used to enhance a subsequent sentence. Id., at 492. We acknowledged, however, that because his §2254 petition “[could] be read as asserting a challenge to the 1978 sentences, as enhanced by the allegedly invalid prior conviction, ... respondent... satisfied the ‘in custody' requirement for federal habeas jurisdiction.” Id., at 493-494.
Similarly, Coss is no longer serving the sentences imposed pursuant to his 1986 convictions, and therefore cannot bring a federal habeas petition directed solely at those convictions. Coss is, however, currently serving the sentence for his 1990 conviction. Like the respondent in Maleng, Coss’ §2254 petition can be (and has been) construed as “asserting a challenge to the [1990] sentence], as enhanced by the allegedly invalid prior [1986] conviction.” Id., at 493. See also supra, at 399-400. Accordingly, Goss satisfies §2254’s “in custody” requirement. Cf. Daniels, ante, at 383, 384, n. 2 (stating that the text of §2255, which also contains an “in custody” requirement, is broad enough to cover a claim that a current sentence enhanced by an allegedly unconstitutional prior conviction violates due process).
B
More important for our purposes here is the question we explicitly left unanswered in Maleng: “the extent to which the [prior expired] conviction itself may be subject to challenge in the attack upon the [current] sentence] which it was used to enhance.” 490 U. S., at 494. We encountered this same question in the §2255 context in Daniels v. United States, ante, p. 374. We held there that “[i]f ... a prior conviction used to enhance a federal sentence is no longer open to direct or collateral attack in its own right because the defendant failed to pursue those remedies while they were available (or because the defendant did so unsuccessfully), then that defendant... may not collaterally attack his prior conviction through a motion under §2255.” Ante, at 382. We now extend this holding to cover §2254 petitions directed at enhanced state sentences.
We grounded our holding in Daniels on considerations relating to the need for finality of convictions and ease of administration. Those concerns are equally present in the §2254 context. The first and most compelling interest is in the finality of convictions. Once a judgment of conviction is entered in state court, it is subject to review in multiple forums. Specifically, each State has created mechanisms for both direct appeal and state posteonvietion review, see L. Yackle, Posteonvietion Remedies §§1, 13 (1981 and Supp. 2000), even though there is no constitutional mandate that they do so, see Pennsylvania v. Finley, 481 U.S. 551, 557 (1987) (no constitutional right to state posteonvietion review); Abney v. United States, 431 U.S. 651, 656 (1977) (no constitutional right to direct appeal). Moreover, §2254 makes federal courts available to review state criminal proceedings for compliance with federal constitutional mandates.
As we said in Daniels, “[t]hese vehicles for review... are not available indefinitely and without limitation.” Ante, at 381. A defendant may choose not to seek review of his conviction within the prescribed time. Or he may seek review and not prevail, either because he did not comply with procedural rules or because he failed to prove a constitutional violation. In each of these situations, the defendant’s conviction becomes final and the State that secured the conviction obtains a strong interest in preserving the integrity of the judgment. See ante, at 379-380. Other jurisdictions acquire an interest as well, as they may then use that conviction for their own recidivist sentencing purposes, relying on “the ‘presumption of regularity' that attaches to final judgments.” Parke v. Raley, 506 U.S. 20, 29 (1992); see also Daniels, ante, at 380.
An additional concern is ease of administration of challenges to expired state convictions. Federal courts sitting in habeas jurisdiction must consult state court records and transcripts to ensure that challenged convictions were obtained in a manner consistent with constitutional demands. As time passes, and certainly once a state sentence has been served to completion, the likelihood that trial records will be retained by the local courts and will be accessible for review diminishes substantially. See Daniels, ante, at 379.
Accordingly, as in Daniels, we hold that once a state conviction is no longer open to direct or collateral attack in its own right because the defendant failed to pursue those remedies while they were available (or because the defendant did so unsuccessfully), the conviction may be regarded as conclusively valid. See Daniels, ante, at 382. If that conviction is later used to enhance a criminal sentence, the defendant generally may not challenge the enhanced sentence through a petition under §2254 on the ground that the prior conviction was unconstitutionally obtained.
H-i HH
A
As in Daniels, we recognize an exception to the general rule for §2254 petitions that challenge an enhanced sentence on the basis that the prior conviction used to enhance the sentence was obtained where there was a failure to appoint counsel in violation of the Sixth Amendment, as set forth in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963). The special status of Gideon claims in this context is well established in our case law. See, e. g., Custis v. United States, 511 U.S. 485, 496-497 (1994); United States v. Tucker, 404 U.S., at 449; Burgett v. Texas, 389 U.S. 109, 115 (1967). Cf. Daniels, ante, at 382.
As we recognized in Custis, the “failure to appoint counsel for an indigent [is] a unique constitutional defect... ris[ing] to the level of a jurisdictional defect,” which therefore warrants special treatment among alleged constitutional violations. See 511 XJ. S., at 496. Moreover, allowing an exception for Gideon challenges does not implicate our concern about administrative ease, as the “failure to appoint counsel . . . will generally appear from the judgment roll itself, or from an accompanying minute order.” 511 U.S., at 496.
As with any §2254 petition, the petitioner must satisfy the procedural prerequisites for relief including, for example, exhaustion of remedies. See 28 U. S. C. § 2254(b) (1994 ed., Supp. V). When an otherwise qualified § 2254 petitioner can demonstrate that his current sentence was enhanced on the basis of a prior conviction that was obtained where there was a failure to appoint counsel in violation of the Sixth Amendment, the current sentence cannot stand and habeas relief is appropriate. Cf. United States v. Tucker, supra, at 449 (affirming vacatur of sentence that was based in part on prior uneounseled state convictions).
B
We stated in Daniels that another exception to the general rule precluding habeas relief might be available, although the circumstances of that case did not require us to resolve the issue. See ante, at 383-384. We note a similar situation here.
The general rule we have adopted here and in Daniels reflects the notion that a defendant properly bears the consequences of either forgoing otherwise available review of a conviction or failing to successfully demonstrate constitutional error. See supra, at 403-404; Daniels, ante, at 381-383. It is not always the ease, however, that a defendant can be faulted for failing to obtain timely review of a constitutional claim. For example, a state court may, without justification, refuse to rule on a constitutional claim that has been properly presented to it. Cf. 28 U. S. C. § 2244(d)(1)(B) (1994 ed., Supp. V) (tolling 1-year limitations period while petitioner is prevented from filing application by an “impediment ... created by State action in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States”). Alternatively, after the time for direct or collateral review has expired, a defendant may obtain compelling evidence that he is actually innocent of the crime for which he was convicted, and which he could not have uncovered in a timely maimer. Cf. Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963); 28 U. S. C. § 2244(b)(2)(B) (1994 ed., Supp. V) (allowing a second or successive habeas corpus application if “the factual predicate for the claim could not have been discovered previously through the exercise of due diligence; and . . . the facts underlying the claim, if proven and viewed in light of the evidence as a whole, would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that, but for constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would have found the applicant guilty of the underlying offense”).
In such situations, a habeas petition directed at the enhanced sentence may effectively be the first and only forum available for review of the prior conviction. As in Daniels, this case does not require us to determine whether, or under what precise circumstances, a petitioner might be able to use a §2254 petition in this manner.
Whatever such a petitioner must show to be eligible for review, the challenged prior conviction must have adversely affected the sentence that is the subject of the habeas petition. This question was adequately raised and considered below. As the District Court stated, Coss contended “that his current sentence [for the 1990 conviction] was adversely affected by the 1986 convictions because the sentencing judge considered these allegedly unconstitutional convictions in computing Coss’s present sentence.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 105a-106a (emphasis added). The District Court and majority of the Court of Appeals agreed with Coss on this point. See id., at 107a; 204 F. 3d, at 459. Judge Nygaard, joined by Judge Roth, dissented to dispute the conclusion that the 1986 convictions had any effect whatsoever on Coss’ sentence for the 1990 conviction. Id., at 467-469.
C
After a careful examination of the record here, we are satisfied that the findings of the lower courts on this threshold factual point are clearly erroneous. Cf. Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188, 193, n. 3 (1972). We therefore conclude that respondent Coss does not qualify to have his §2254 petition reviewed, even assuming the existence of a limited exception to the general rule barring review of an expired prior conviction. Specifically, it is clear that any “consideration” the trial court may have given to Coss’ 1986 convictions in reimposing sentence for his 1990 conviction did not actually affect that sentence.
As we explain above, see supra, at 398-399, when Coss was resentenced on his 1990 conviction, he objected to the presentence report’s calculation of his prior record score. The court sustained that objection and, in effect, eliminated Coss’ 1986 convictions from the prior record seore entirely. Because the prior record score is one of two determinants of the applicable sentencing range, see 42 Pa. Cons. Stat. §9721 (1998) (reproducing 204 Pa. Code § 303.9(a) (1998)), it is clear that Coss’ 1986 convictions had no role in determining the range of sentences to which Coss was exposed.
In choosing a sentence for Coss within that range, the trial court considered several factors, including “the seriousness and nature of the crime involved here, the well being and protection of the people who live in our community, your criminal disposition, your prior criminal record, the possibility of your rehabilitation, and the testimony that I’ve heard.” Record Doc. No. 101 (PI. Exh. 3, at 26). Coss’ 1986 convictions are, of course, a portion of his criminal record. Thus, it is technically correct to say that the court “considered” those, convictions before sentencing Coss. Cf. 204 F. 3d, at 459.
But it is a different thing entirely to say that the 1986 convictions actually increased the length of the sentence the court ultimately imposed. As the sentencing court told Coss, “I think that it’s indicative that from your actions that you will continue to break the law unless given a period of incarceration.” Record Doc. No. 101 (PI. Exh. 3, at 26). The “actions” to which the judge referred were obviously not limited to Coss’ criminal conduct in 1986, but Coss’ extensive and violent criminal record as a whole. We conclude, as Judge Nygaard did below, that the 1986 convictions are “such a minor component of [Coss’] record that there is no question that the sentencing court, given its concerns, would have imposed exactly the same sentence” had those convictions been omitted from Coss’ record. 204 F. 3d, at 468 (dissenting opinion).
We note that the record does not explain why Coss’ ineffective assistance claim did not receive a timely adjudication in the Pennsylvania courts. While the reason might have been that Goss’ petition "slipped through the cracks,” due to no fault of his own, Tr. of Oral Arg. 4, it might also have been that Coss was responsible for “request[ing] that the matter be brought up for a hearing,” id., at 5. But even if Coss cannot be faulted for that lapse, he would not qualify to have his current §2254 petition reviewed because the 1990 sentence he is challenging was not actually affected by the 1986 convictions.
IV
The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is therefore reversed, and the ease is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
JXJSTiCE ScALXA joins all but Parts III-B and III-C of this opinion. Justice Thomas joins all but Part III-B.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
A
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Opinion of the Court by
Mr. Justice Douglas,
announced by Mr. Justice Black.
These are companion cases to Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp. and Illinois Commerce Commission v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., ante, p. 218, decided this day. Respondent in these cases, the Chicago Board of Trade, was joined as a defendant in the proceeding brought by Rice before the Illinois Commerce Commission. As we have noted in our opinion in the companion cases, the Rice complaint charged the defendant ware-housemen with maintaining excessive, unreasonable and discriminatory rates and practices, with operating inadequate and unsafe facilities and services, and with failure to comply with other requirements of Illinois law. The Board of Trade, organized under a special Act of the Illinois legislature, operates a commercial grain exchange and has adopted rules and regulations governing transactions on the exchange. The complaint of Rice charges (1) that the rules and regulations of the Board are unreasonable and unsatisfactory in that, among other things, they favor warehousemen and sellers of grain and discriminate against grain buyers; and (2) that the Board has from time to time adopted rules and regulations, relating to the warehousing of grain in public warehouses and the custody of grain in private warehouses without securing the prior approval of the Illinois Commission. Under Illinois law, it is alleged, such rules may not become operative without approval by the Commission; and the Commission in turn has authority to adopt and promulgate rules of its own. Ill. Rev. Stat. 1945, ch. 114, § 194b. Relief asked on this phase of the proceeding was a declaration that the Board’s rules, which did not have the prior approval of the Commission, were void; and an order that the Board adopt and submit rules which were fair, equitable, adequate and specific.
The Board moved to dismiss the proceeding before the Commission on the ground that the Commodity Exchange Act, 49 Stat. 1491, as amended, 7 U. S. C. § 1 et seq., and the regulations thereunder superseded the provisions of Illinois law which Rice sought to invoke. That motion was denied. Thereupon, these suits were instituted in the District Court to enjoin the proceedings before the Illinois Commerce Commission. The District Court dismissed the complaints. The Circuit Court of Appeals reversed. 156 F. 2d 33. The cases are here on certiorari.
The Chicago Board of Trade is “the greatest grain market in the world.” Board of Trade v. Olsen, 262 U. S. 1, 33. Its activities have been regulated by Congress by the Future Trading Act, 42 Stat. 187, by the Grain Futures Act, 42 Stat. 998, and by the Commodity Exchange Act. See H. R. Rep. No. 421, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. The Board of Trade claims a status under the Commodity Exchange Act which, it is contended, precludes the Illinois Commission from entertaining the Rice complaint.
The Commodity Exchange Act provides comprehensive regulation of trading in futures on commodity exchanges which are designated as “contract markets” by the Secretary of Agriculture. The Secretary is authorized to designate any board of trade as a contract market on its compliance with prescribed terms and conditions. § 5. The Chicago Board of Trade has been so designated. The Act contemplates that each contract market will adopt rules governing transactions in futures contracts. Approval of a board of trade as a contract market may be made only when “the governing board thereof provides for the prevention of manipulation of prices and the cornering of any commodity by the dealers or operators upon such board.” § 5 (d). The Act contains provisions which prohibit certain types of trading practices (see for example §§ 4b, 4c, 4h) and other provisions (as for example those dealing with excessive speculation, see § 4a) which limit or control buying and selling on contract markets. But we are not particularly concerned with those phases of the federal regulatory scheme. So far as the problem of supersedure is concerned, this Act is unlike the one considered in the companion cases, as we shall see. Moreover, the subject matter of the complaint filed by Rice with the Illinois Commission against the Board of Trade relates only to the warehousing of grain. On that matter the Act has only two specific provisions.
It provides in the first place that receipts issued under the United States Warehouse Act, 39 Stat. 486, as amended, 7 U. S. C. § 241 et seq., shall be accepted without discrimination in satisfaction of futures contracts made on or subject to the rules of the contract market, even though the warehouseman is not also licensed under state law or enjoys different privileges than those accorded by state law, provided inter alia, that “the warehouse in which the commodity is stored meets such reasonable requirements as may be imposed by such contract market on other warehouses as to location, accessibility, and suitability for warehousing and delivery purposes.” § 5a (7). Moreover, each contract market has some control over warehouses in which or out of which any commodity is deliverable on any contract for future delivery made on or subject to the rules of the contract market. Thus the contract market must require the warehouse operators “to make such reports, keep such records, and permit such warehouse visitation” as the Secretary may prescribe. § 5a (3). All rules and regulations of a contract market, and all changes and proposed changes, must be filed with the Secretary. § 5a (1).
Enough of the Act has been summarized to show that it imposes on contract markets, under the supervision of the Secretary, (1) duties of preventing or controlling certain trading practices and of supervising transactions in futures contracts, and (2) some responsibility for standardizing deliverable warehouse receipts and assuring their integrity. The failure or refusal of a board of trade to comply with the provisions of the Act or any of the rules and regulations of the Secretary is cause for suspension or revocation of the authority of the board to act as a contract market. § 5b. And see § 6 (a). Criminal penalties are provided for certain violations of the Act, or of rules or regulations of the Secretary, by a board of trade or any of its directors, officers, agents or employees. § § 6b, 9. The Secretary has the power to “make such investigations as he may deem necessary to ascertain the facts regarding the operations of boards of trade . . . .” § 8. And the Secretary is given broad rule-making powers. § 8a (5).
The Secretary has promulgated numerous rules and regulations covering a variety of subjects pertaining to contract markets and their activities. The following are relevant here, since they relate to the warehousing of grain: (1) a requirement that each contract market file information concerning warehouses in which or out of which commodities are deliverable in satisfaction of futures contracts made on the contract market, § 1.43; and (2) a provision that each contract market shall require operators of warehouses whose receipts are deliverable in satisfaction of futures contracts made on or subject to the rules of the contract market (a) to keep specified records, (b) to furnish information concerning stocks of commodities in warehouses, (c) to permit visitation of the premises and inspection of the books and records by duly authorized representatives of the Federal Government. § 1.44.
In pursuance of the latter regulation of the Secretary, the Board of Trade enacted the rules and regulations which Rice challenged in the proceedings before the Illinois Commission. One rule provides that deliveries shall be made by delivery of warehouse receipts issued by warehouses which have been declared “regular” by the Board. Rule 281. The Board’s regulations relating to warehousing of grain set forth the procedure and standards by which warehouses may be made “regular.”
It is apparent that the federal scheme of regulation of futures trading extends to the whole futures contract— to its satisfaction, as well as to its execution. It is also apparent that the Act provides some control over (1) warehouse receipts which are acceptable in satisfaction of sales and purchases on the contract market, and (2) the qualifications of the warehouses whose receipts will be accepted for such deliveries. But there is not contained in the Commodity Exchange Act, as there is in the United States Warehouse Act, see Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., supra, a declaration by Congress that the system which it has adopted for the regulation of trading on contract markets is exclusive of state regulation. Here Congress has gone no further than to write into the Act prohibitions and controls and to give the force of law both to them and to rules and regulations of the Secretary made within the scope of his statutory authority. With exceptions which we will note, state regulations which conflict with the requirements of the Act or with the rules and regulations of the Secretary would be superseded under the familiar rule.
Congress treated the rules and regulations of the Board of Trade differently from those of the Secretary. It did not undertake to put behind them civil or criminal sanctions. It merely furnished standards (or authorized the Secretary to do so) to which the rules and regulations of the Board were to conform. And while there is provision in some instances for disapproval of the Board’s rules by the Secretary of Agriculture (see § 4c), there is no provision for his approval or disapproval of the rules challenged in the Illinois proceeding. Insofar as those rules are concerned, all that the Act and the regulations of the Secretary do is to define the area in which the Board may provide standards for warehouses whose receipts are acceptable in satisfaction of futures contracts. By the terms of § 5a (7) the requirements fixed by the Board must be “reasonable” and they must relate to “location, accessibility, and suitability for warehousing and delivery purposes.” If the Board transcends those bounds, it violates the Act. See § 6b. But within that area it has considerable discretion.
Hence it seems to us that no action of the Illinois Commission within the zone where the Board has freedom to act would contravene the federal scheme of regulation. It would be quite a different matter if the Illinois Commission adopted rules for the Board which either violated the standards of the Act or collided with rules of the Secretary. But such collision is not necessary; and we cannot assume that the Illinois Commission will take any action which in any way impairs the federal regulatory scheme.
There is other intrinsic evidence that Congress did not preclude state regulation which supplements or bolsters the federal scheme. Sections 4b and 4c of the Act make unlawful a variety of fraudulent and deceptive practices on contract markets. And § 4c provides that “nothing in this section or section 4b shall be construed to impair any State law applicable to any transaction enumerated or described in such sections.” These fraudulent practices, or many of them, have long been the occasion for the exercise by the States of their historic police powers. Federal regulation in those fields would therefore almost certainly conflict with state laws. Thus the provision in § 4c serves the function of preventing supersedure and preserving state control in two areas where state and federal law overlap. Where Congress used such care to preserve specific state authority, even when it duplicated federal regulation, it is a fair inference not only that supersedure was to take its natural course where rights not saved to the States were involved, First Iowa HydroElectric Coop. v. Federal Power Commission, 328 U. S. 152, 175, but also that non-conflicting state authority was left undisturbed. Moreover the provision in § 12 of the Act that the Secretary “may cooperate with any department or agency of the Government, any State ... or political subdivision thereof” supports the inference that Congress did not design a regulatory system which excluded state regulation not in conflict with the federal requirements. See Townsend v. Yeomans, 301 U. S. 441, 454; Union Brokerage Co. v. Jensen, 322 U. S. 202, 209.
Respondents’ claim of supersedure is, therefore, premature. Until it is known what rules the Illinois Commission will approve or adopt, it cannot be known whether there will be any conflict with the federal law. Any claim of supersedure can be preserved in the state proceedings. And the question of supersedure can be determined in light of the impact of a specific order of the state agency on the Federal Act or the regulations of the Secretary thereunder. Only if that procedure is followed can there be preserved intact the whole state domain which in actuality functions harmoniously with the federal system. For even action which seems pregnant with possibilities of conflict may, as consummated, be wholly barren of it.
Reversed.
That section provides: “No rule or regulation of any board of trade or grain exchange which relates to the warehousing of grain in any public grain warehouse, or which relates to the custody of grain in any private warehouse, or the use or negotiation of custodian’s receipts for such grain, shall be or become operative until such rule or regulation is approved by the Illinois Commerce Commission, and the Illinois Commerce Commission may adopt and promulgate reasonable rules and regulations consistent with the provisions of this Act for the purpose of making this Act effective.”
The rules and regulations are to be found in 17 C. F. R., Part 1.
These regulations provide, inter alia, that the warehouses must be “conveniently approachable by vessels of ordinary draft,” have “customary shipping facilities,” and charge rates not exceeding a specified maximum (Reg. 1620); must file a bond satisfactory to the Board (Reg. 1621); must have proprietors or managers in “unquestioned good financial standing and credit” (Reg. 1624); must be “connected by railroad tracks with one or more of the eastern railway lines” (Reg. 1625); and must be “provided with modern improvements and appliances for the convenient and expeditious receiving, handling, and shipping of grain in bulk.” (Reg. 1626.)
Any “regular” warehouse may be declared “irregular” by the Board at any time for violation of the laws of Illinois or the rules and regulations of the Board (Reg. 1623), or because of any important change in the conditions of any warehouse or disregard or evasion of the requirements governing regular warehouses (Reg. 1629).
We therefore have no attempt here to endow private groups with law-making functions. Cf. Schechter Corp. v. United States, 295 U. S. 495; United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U. S. 150, 225-227; Parker v. Brown, 317 U. S. 341, 350-352.
In the present proceeding the question of the validity of the existing rules and regulations of the Board of Trade under the Commodity Exchange Act is not in issue, and we intimate no opinion upon it.
It is suggested that the regulations of the Board of Trade or those which the Illinois Commerce Commission may impose on it are automatically invalid insofar as they relate to warehouses. For in Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., supra, we have held that the United States Warehouse Act excludes all state regulation, no matter how complementary, of those subjects touched by the federal regulatory scheme. But the situation here is quite different. In the first place, we are dealing with a measure of regulation over warehouse receipts not federal warehousemen; and the regulations which the Board of Trade is authorized to formulate do not carry civil or criminal sanctions. In the second place, Congress by granting the Board of Trade freedom to regulate within this narrow field has by that very act negatived any inference that the Federal Government has preempted it by requirements of its own.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
J
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The principal question in dispute between the parties is whether the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 88 Stat. 829, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 1001 et seq. (1976 ed. and Supp. V), permits state tax authorities to collect unpaid state income taxes by levying on funds held in trust for the taxpayers under an ERISA-covered vacation benefit plan. The issue is an important one, which affects thousands of federally regulated trusts and all nonfederal tax collection systems, and it must eventually receive a definitive, uniform resolution. Nevertheless, for reasons involving perhaps more history than logic, we hold that the lower federal courts had no jurisdiction to decide the question in the case before us, and we vacate the judgment and remand the case with instructions to remand it to the state court from which it was removed.
I
None of the relevant facts is in dispute. Appellee Construction Laborers Vacation Trust for Southern California (CLVT) is a trust established by an agreement between four associations of employers active in the construction industry in southern California and the Southern California District Council of Laborers, an arm of the District Council and affiliated locals of the Laborers’ International Union of North America. The purpose of the agreement and trust was to establish a mechanism for administering the provisions of a collective-bargaining agreement that grants construction workers a yearly paid vacation. The trust agreement expressly proscribes any assignment, pledge, or encumbrance of funds held in trust by CLVT. The Plan that CLVT administers is unquestionably an “employee welfare benefit plan” within the meaning of § 3 of ERISA, 29 U. S. C. § 1002(1), and CLVT and its individual trustees are thereby subject to extensive regulation under Titles I and III of ERISA.
Appellant Franchise Tax Board is a California agency charged with enforcement of that State’s personal income tax law. California law authorizes appellant to require any person in possession of “credits or other personal property or other things of value, belonging to a taxpayer” “to withhold... the amount of any tax, interest, or penalties due from the taxpayer... and to transmit the amount withheld to the Franchise Tax Board.” Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code Ann. § 18817 (West Supp. 1983). Any person who, upon notice by the Franchise Tax Board, fails to comply with its request to withhold and to transmit funds becomes personally liable for the amounts identified in the notice. § 18818.
In June 1980, the Franchise Tax Board filed a complaint in state court against CLVT and its trustees. Under the heading “First Cause of Action,” appellant alleged that CLVT had failed to comply with three levies issued under § 18817, con-eluding with the allegation that it had been “damaged in a sum... not to exceed $380.56 plus interest from June 1, 1980.” App. 3-8. Under the heading “Second Cause of Action,” appellant incorporated its previous allegations and added:
“There was at the time of the levies alleged above and continues to be an actual controversy between the parties concerning their respective legal rights and duties. The Board [appellant] contends that defendants [CLVT] are obligated and required by law to pay over to the Board all amounts held... in favor of the Board’s delinquent taxpayers. On the other hand, defendants contend that section 514 of ERISA preempts state law and that the trustees lack the power to honor the levies made upon them by the State of California.
“[Defendants will continue to refuse to honor the Board’s levies in this regard. Accordingly, a declaration by this court of the parties’ respective rights is required to fully and finally resolve this controversy.” Id., at 8-9.
In a prayer for relief, appellant requested damages for defendants’ failure to honor the levies and a declaration that defendants are “legally obligated to honor all future levies by the Board.” Id., at 9.
CLVT removed the case to the United States District Court for the Central District of California, and the court denied the Franchise Tax Board’s motion for remand to the state court. On the merits, the District Court ruled that ERISA did not pre-empt the State’s power to levy on funds held in trust by CLVT. CLVT appealed, and the Court of Appeals reversed. 679 F. 2d 1307 (CA9 1982). On petition for rehearing, the Franchise Tax Board renewed its argument that the District Court lacked jurisdiction over the complaint in this case. The petition for rehearing was denied, and an appeal was taken to this Court. We postponed consideration of our jurisdiction pending argument on the merits. 459 U. S. 1085 (1982). We now hold that this case was not within the removal jurisdiction conferred by 28 U. S. C. § 1441, and therefore we do not reach the merits of the preemption question.
II
The jurisdictional structure at issue in this case has remained basically unchanged for the past century. With exceptions not relevant here, “any civil action brought in a State court of which the district courts of the United States have original jurisdiction, may be removed by the defendant or the defendants, to the district court of the United States for the district and division embracing the place where such action is pending.” Ibid. If it appears before final judgment that a case was not properly removed, because it was not within the original jurisdiction of the United States district courts, the district court must remand it to the state court from which it was removed. See 28 U. S. C. § 1447(c). For this case — as for many cases where there is no diversity of citizenship between the parties — the propriety of removal turns on whether the case falls within the original “federal question” jurisdiction of the United States district courts: “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States.” 28 U. S. C. § 1331 (1976 ed., Supp. V).
Since the first version of § 1331 was enacted, Act of Mar. 3, 1875, ch. 137, § 1, 18 Stat. 470, the statutory phrase “arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States” has resisted all attempts to frame a single, precise definition for determining which cases fall within, and which cases fall outside, the original jurisdiction of the district courts. Especially when considered in light of § 1441’s removal jurisdiction, the phrase “arising under” masks a welter of issues regarding the interrelation of federal and state authority and the proper management of the federal judicial system.
The most familiar definition of the statutory “arising under” limitation is Justice Holmes’ statement, “A suit arises under the law that creates the cause of action.” American Well Works Co. v. Layne & Bowler Co., 241 U. S. 257, 260 (1916). However, it is well settled that Justice Holmes’ test is more useful for describing the vast majority of cases that come within the district courts’ original jurisdiction than it is for describing which cases are beyond district court jurisdiction. We have often held that a case “arose under” federal law where the vindication of a right under state law necessarily turned on some construction of federal law, see, e. g., Smith v. Kansas City Title & Trust Co., 255 U. S. 180 (1921); Hopkins v. Walker, 244 U. S. 486 (1917), and even the most ardent proponent of the Holmes test has admitted that it has been rejected as an exclusionary principle, see Flournoy v. Wiener, 321 U. S. 253, 270-272 (1944) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). See also T. B. Harms Co. v. Eliscu, 339 F. 2d 823, 827 (CA2 1964) (Friendly, J.). Leading commentators have suggested that for purposes of § 1331 an action “arises under” federal law “if in order for the plaintiff to secure the relief sought he will be obliged to establish both the correctness and the applicability to his case of a proposition of federal law.” P. Bator, P. Mishkin, D. Shapiro, & H. Wechsler, Hart and Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal System 889 (2d ed. 1973) (hereinafter Hart & Wechsler); cf. T. B. Harms Co., supra, at 827 (“a case may ‘arise under’ a law of the United States if the complaint discloses a need for determining the meaning or application of such a law”).
One powerful doctrine has emerged, however — the “well-pleaded complaint” rule — which as a practical matter severely limits the number of cases in which state law “creates the cause of action” that may be initiated in or removed to federal district court, thereby avoiding more-or-less automatically a number of potentially serious federal-state conflicts.
“[Wjhether a case is one arising under the Constitution or a law or treaty of the United States, in the sense of the jurisdictional statute,... must be determined from what necessarily appears in the plaintiff’s statement of his own claim in the bill or declaration, unaided by anything alleged in anticipation of avoidance of defenses which it is thought the defendant may interpose.” Taylor v. Anderson, 234 U. S. 74, 75-76 (1914).
Thus, a federal court does not have original jurisdiction over a case in which the complaint presents a state-law cause of action, but also asserts that federal law deprives the defendant of a defense he may raise, Taylor v. Anderson, supra; Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Mottley, 211 U. S. 149 (1908), or that a federal defense the defendant may raise is not sufficient to defeat the claim, Tennessee v. Union & Planters’ Bank, 152 U. S. 454 (1894). “Although such allegations show that very likely, in the course of the litigation, a question under the Constitution would arise, they do not show that the suit, that is, the plaintiff’s original cause of action, arises under the Constitution.” Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Mottley, supra, at 152. For better or worse, under the present statutory scheme as it has existed since 1887, a defendant may not remove a case to federal court unless the plaintiffs complaint establishes that the case “arises under” federal law. “[A] right or immunity created by the Constitution or laws of the United States must be an element, and an essential one, of the plaintiff’s cause of action.” Gully v. First National Bank in Meridian, 299 U. S. 109, 112 (1936).
For many cases in which federal law becomes relevant only insofar as it sets bounds for the operation of state authority, the well-pleaded complaint rule makes sense as a quick rule of thumb. Describing the case before the Court in Gully, Justice Cardozo wrote:
“Petitioner will have to prove that the state law has been obeyed before the question will be reached whether anything in its provisions or in administrative conduct under it is inconsistent with the federal rule. If what was done by the taxing officers in levying the tax in suit did not amount in substance under the law of Mississippi to an assessment of the shareholders, but in substance as well as in form was an assessment of the bank alone, the conclusion will be inescapable that there was neither tax nor debt, apart from any barriers Congress may have built. On the other hand, a finding upon evidence that the Mississippi law has been obeyed may compose the controversy altogether, leaving no room for a contention that the federal law has been infringed. The most that one can say is that a question of federal law is lurking in the background, just as farther in the background there lurks a question of constitutional law, the question of state power in our federal form of government. A dispute so doubtful and conjectural, so far removed from plain necessity, is unavailing to extinguish the jurisdiction of the states.” Id., at 117.
The rule, however, may produce awkward results, especially in cases in which neither the obligation created by state law nor the defendant’s factual failure to comply are in dispute, and both parties admit that the only question for decision is raised by a federal pre-emption defense. Nevertheless, it has been correctly understood to apply in such situations. As we said in Gully: “By unimpeachable authority, a suit brought upon a state statute does not arise under an act of Congress or the Constitution of the United States because prohibited thereby.” Id., at 116.
Simply to state these principles is not to apply them to the case at hand. Appellant’s complaint sets forth two “causes of action,” one of which expressly refers to ERISA; if either comes within the original jurisdiction of the federal courts, removal was proper as to the whole case. See 28 U. S. C. § 1441(c). Although appellant’s complaint does not specifically assert any particular statutory entitlement for the relief it seeks, the language of the complaint suggests (and the parties do not dispute) that appellant’s “first cause of action” states a claim under Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code Ann. §18818 (West Supp. 1983), see swpra, at 5-6, and its “second cause of action” states a claim under California’s Declaratory Judgment Act, Cal. Civ. Proc. Code Ann. § 1060 (West 1980). As an initial proposition, then, the “law that creates the cause of action” is state law, and original federal jurisdiction is unavailable unless it appears that some substantial, disputed question of federal law is a necessary element of one of the well-pleaded state claims, or that one or the other claim is “really” one of federal law.
A
Even though state law creates appellant’s causes of action, its case might still “arise under” the laws of the United States if a well-pleaded complaint established that its right to relief under state law requires resolution of a substantial question of federal law in dispute between the parties. For appellant’s first cause of action — to enforce its levy, under §18818 — a straightforward application of the well-pleaded complaint rule precludes original federal-court jurisdiction. California law establishes a set of conditions, without reference to federal law, under which a tax levy may be enforced; federal law becomes relevant only by way of a defense to an obligation created entirely by state law, and then only if appellant has made out a valid claim for relief under state law. See supra, at 11-12. The well-pleaded complaint rule was framed to deal with precisely such a situation. As we discuss above, since 1887 it has been settled law that a case may not be removed to federal court on the basis of a federal defense, including the defense of pre-emption, even if the defense is anticipated in the plaintiff’s complaint, and even if both parties admit that the defense is the only question truly at issue in the case.
Appellant’s declaratory judgment action poses a more difficult problem. Whereas the question of federal pre-emption is relevant to appellant’s first cause of action only as a potential defense, it is a necessary element of the declaratory judgment claim. Under Cal. Civ. Proc. Code Ann. § 1060 (West 1980), a party with an interest in property may bring an action for a declaration of another party’s legal rights and duties with respect to that property upon showing that there is an “actual controversy relating to the legal rights and duties” of the parties. The only questions in dispute between the parties in this case concern the rights and duties of CLVT and its trustees under ERISA. Not only does appellant’s request for a declaratory judgment under California law clearly encompass questions governed by ERISA, but appellant’s complaint identifies no other questions as a subject of controversy between the parties. Such questions must be raised in a well-pleaded complaint for a declaratory judgment. Therefore, it is clear on the face of its well-pleaded complaint that appellant may not obtain the relief it seeks in its second cause of action (“[t]hat the court declare defendants legally obligated to honor all future levies by the Board upon [CLVT],” App. 9) without a construction of ERISA and/or an adjudication of its pre-emptive effect and constitutionality— all questions of federal law.
Appellant argues that original federal-court jurisdiction over such a complaint is foreclosed by our decision in Skelly Oil Co. v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 339 U. S. 667 (1950). As we shall see, however, Skelly Oil is not directly controlling.
In Skelly Oil, Skelly Oil and Phillips had a contract, for the sale of natural gas, that entitled the seller — Skelly Oil — to terminate the contract at any time after December 1,1946, if the Federal Power Commission had not yet issued a certificate of convenience and necessity to a third party, a pipeline company to whom Phillips intended to resell the gas purchased from Skelly Oil. Their dispute began when the Federal Power Commission informed the pipeline company on November 30 that it would issue a conditional certificate, but did not make its order public until December 2. By this time Skelly Oil had notified Phillips of its decision to terminate their contract. Phillips brought an action in United States District Court under the federal Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U. S. C. §2201, seeking a declaration that the contract was still in effect. 339 U. S., at 669-671.
There was no diversity between the parties, and we held that Phillips’ claim was not within the federal-question jurisdiction conferred by § 1331. We reasoned:
“ ‘[T]he operation of the Declaratory Judgment Act is procedural only.’ Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Haworth, 300 U. S. 227, 240. Congress enlarged the range of remedies available in the federal courts but did not extend their jurisdiction. When concerned as we are with the power of the inferior federal courts to entertain litigation within the restricted area to which the Constitution and Acts of Congress confine them, ‘jurisdiction’ means the kinds of issues which give right of entrance to fedéral courts. Jurisdiction in this sense was not altered by the Declaratory Judgment Act. Prior to that Act, a federal court would entertain a suit on a contract oply if the plaintiff asked for an immediately enforceable remedy like money damages or an injunction, but such relief could only be given if the requisites of jurisdiction, in the sense of a federal right or diversity, provided foundation for resort to the federal courts. The Declaratory Judgment Act allowed relief to be given by way of recognizing the plaintiff’s right even though no immediate enforcement of it was asked. But the requirements of jurisdiction — the limited subject matters which alone Congress had authorized the District Courts to adjudicate — were not impliedly repealed or modified.” 339 U. S., at 671-672.
We then observed that, under the well-pleaded complaint rule, an action by Phillips to enforce its contract would not present a federal question. Id., at 672. Shelly Oil has come to stand for the proposition that “if, but for the availability of the declaratory judgment procedure, the federal claim would arise only as a defense to a state created action, jurisdiction is lacking.” 10A C. Wright, A. Miller, & M. Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure §2767, pp. 744-745 (2d ed. 1983). Cf. Public Service Comm’n of Utah v. Wycoff Co., 344 U. S. 237, 248 (1952) (dictum).
1. As an initial matter, we must decide whether the doctrine of Shelly Oil limits original federal-court jurisdiction under § 1331 — and by extension removal jurisdiction under § 1441 — when a question of federal law appears on the face of a well-pleaded complaint for a state-law declaratory judgment. Apparently, it is a question of first impression. As the passage quoted above makes clear, Shelly Oil relied significantly on the precise contours of the federal Declaratory Judgment Act as well as of §1331. Cf. 339 U. S., at 674 (stressing the need to respect “the limited procedural purpose of the Declaratory Judgment Act”). The Court’s emphasis that the Declaratory Judgment Act was intended to affect only the remedies available in a federal district court, not the court’s jurisdiction, was critical to the Court’s reasoning. Our interpretation of the federal Declaratory Judgment Act in Shelly Oil does not apply of its own force to state declaratory judgment statutes, many of which antedate the federal statute, see Developments in the Law — Declaratory Judgments — 1941-1949, 62 Harv. L. Rev. 787, 790-791 (1949). Cf. Nashville, C. & St. L. R. Co. v. Wallace, 288 U. S. 249, 264-265 (1933) (Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction over federal questions in a state declaratory judgment).
Yet while Shelly Oil itself is limited to the federal Declaratory Judgment Act, fidelity to its spirit leads us to extend it to state declaratory judgment actions as well. If federal district courts could take jurisdiction, either originally or by removal, of state declaratory judgment claims raising questions of federal law, without regard to the doctrine of Shelly Oil, the federal Declaratory Judgment Act — with the limitations Shelly Oil read into it — would become a dead letter. For any case in which a state declaratory judgment action was available, litigants could get into federal court for a declaratory judgment despite our interpretation of §2201, simply by pleading an adequate state claim for a declaration of federal law. Having interpreted the Declaratory Judgment Act of 1934 to include certain limitations on the jurisdiction of federal district courts to entertain declaratory judgment suits, we should be extremely hesitant to interpret the Judiciary Act of 1875 and its 1887 amendments in a way that renders the limitations in the later statute nugatory. Therefore, we hold that under the jurisdictional statutes as they now stand federal courts do not have original jurisdiction, nor do they acquire jurisdiction on removal, when a federal question is presented by a complaint for a state declaratory judgment, but Shelly Oil would bar jurisdiction if the plaintiff had sought a federal declaratory judgment.
2. The question, then, is whether a federal district court could take jurisdiction of appellant’s declaratory judgment claim had it been brought under 28 U. S. C. §2201. The application of Shelly Oil to such a suit is somewhat unclear. Federal courts have regularly taken original jurisdiction over declaratory judgment suits in which, if the declaratory judgment defendant brought a coercive action to enforce its rights, that suit would necessarily present a federal question. Section 502(a)(3) of ERISA specifically grants trustees of ERISA-covered plans like CLVT a cause of action for injunctive relief when their rights and duties under ERISA are at issue, and that action is exclusively governed by federal law. If CLVT could have sought an injunction under ERISA against application to it of state regulations that require acts inconsistent with ERISA, does a declaratory judgment suit by the State “arise under” federal law?
We think not. We have always interpreted what Shelly Oil called “the current of jurisdictional legislation since the Act of March 3, 1875,” 339 U. S., at 673, with an eye to practicality and necessity. “What is needed is something of that common-sense accommodation of judgment to kaleidoscopic situations which characterizes the law in its treatment of problems of causation... a selective process which picks the substantial causes out of the web and lays the other ones aside.” Gully v. First National Bank in Meridian, 299 U. S., at 117-118. There are good reasons why the federal courts should not entertain suits by the States to declare the validity of their regulations despite possibly conflicting federal law. States are not significantly prejudiced by an inability to come to federal court for a declaratory judgment in advance of a possible injunctive suit by a person subject to federal regulation. They have a variety of means by which they can enforce their own laws in their own courts, and they do not suffer if the pre-emption questions such enforcement may raise are tested there. The express grant of federal jurisdiction in ERISA is limited to suits brought by certain parties, see infra, at 25, as to whom Congress presumably determined that a right to enter federal court was necessary to further the statute’s purposes. It did not go so far as to provide that any suit against such parties must also be brought in federal court when they themselves did not choose to sue. The situation presented by a State’s suit for a declaration of the validity of state law is sufficiently removed from the spirit of necessity and careful limitation of district court jurisdiction that informed onr statutory interpretation in Shelly Oil and Gully to convince us that, until Congress informs us otherwise, such a suit is not within the original jurisdiction of the United States district courts. Accordingly, the same suit brought originally in state court is not removable either.
B
CLVT also argues that appellant’s “causes of action” are, in substance, federal claims. Although we have often repeated that “the party who brings a suit is master to decide what law he will rely upon,” The Fair v. Kohler Die & Specialty Co., 228 U. S. 22, 25 (1913), it is an independent corollary of the well-pleaded complaint rale that a plaintiff may not defeat removal by omitting to plead necessary federal questions in a complaint, see Avco Corp. v. Aero Lodge No. 735, Int’l Assn. of Machinists, 376 F. 2d 337, 339-340 (CA6 1967), aff’d, 390 U. S. 557 (1968).
CLVT’s best argument stems from our decision in Avco Corp. v. Aero Lodge No. 735. In that case, the petitioner filed suit in state court alleging simply that it had a valid contract with the respondent, a union, under which the respondent had agreed to submit all grievances to binding arbitration and not to cause or sanction any “work stoppages, strikes, or slowdowns.” The petitioner further alleged that the respondent and its officials had violated the agreement by participating in and sanctioning work stoppages, and it sought temporary and permanent injunctions against further breaches. App., O. T. 1967, No. 445, pp. 2-9. It was clear that, had petitioner invoked it, there would have been a federal cause of action under §301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947 (LMRA), 29 U. S. C. § 185, see Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U. S. 448 (1957), and that, even in state court, any action to enforce an agreement within the scope of § 301 would be controlled by federal law, see Teamsters v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U. S. 95, 103-104 (1962). It was also clear, however, under the law in effect at the time, that independent limits on federal jurisdiction made it impossible for a federal court to grant the injunctive relief petitioner sought. See Sinclair Refining Co. v. Atkinson, 370 U. S. 195 (1962) (later overruled in Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks, 398 U. S. 235 (1970)).
The Court of Appeals held, 376 F. 2d, at 340, and we affirmed, 390 U. S., at 560, that the petitioner’s action “arose under” §301, and thus could be removed to federal court, although the petitioner had undoubtedly pleaded an adequate claim for relief under the state law of contracts and had sought a remedy available only under state law. The necessary ground of decision was that the pre-emptive force of § 301 is so powerful as to displace entirely any state cause of action “for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization.” Any such suit is purely a creature of federal law, notwithstanding the fact that state law would provide a cause of action in the absence of §301. Avco stands for the proposition that if a federal cause of action completely pre-empts a state cause of action any complaint that comes within the scope of the federal cause of action necessarily “arises under” federal law.
CLVT argues by analogy that ERISA, like §301, was meant to create a body of federal common law, and that “any state court action which would require the interpretation or application of ERISA to a plan document ‘arises under’ the laws of the United States.” Brief for Appellees 20-21. ERISA contains provisions creating a series of express causes of action in favor of participants, beneficiaries, and fiduciaries of ERISA-covered plans, as well as the Secretary of Labor. § 502(a), 29 U. S. C. § 1132(a). It may be that, as with § 301 as interpreted in Avco, any state action coming within the scope of § 502(a) of ERISA would be removable to federal district court, even if an otherwise adequate state cause of action were pleaded without reference to federal law. It does not follow, however, that either of appellant’s claims in this case comes within the scope of one of ERISA’s causes of action.
The phrasing of § 502(a) is instructive. Section 502(a) specifies which persons — participants, beneficiaries, fiduciaries, or the Secretary of Labor — may bring actions for particular kinds of relief. It neither creates nor expressly denies any cause of action in favor of state governments, to enforce tax levies or for any other purpose. It does not purport to reach every question relating to plans covered by ERISA. Furthermore, § 514(b)(2)(A) of ERISA, '29 U. S. C. § 1144(b)(2)(A), makes clear that Congress did not intend to pre-empt entirely every state cause of action relating to such plans. With important, but express limitations, it states that “nothing in this subehapter shall be construed to exempt or relieve any person from any law of any State which regulates insurance, banking, or securities.”
Against this background, it is clear that a suit by state tax authorities under a statute like § 18818 does not “arise under” ERISA. Unlike the contract rights at issue in Avco, the State’s right to enforce its tax levies is not of central concern to the federal statute. For that reason, as in Gully, see supra, at 11-12, on the face of a well-pleaded complaint there are many reasons completely unrelated to the provisions and purposes of ERISA why the State may or may not be entitled to the relief it seeks. Furthermore, ERISA does not provide an alternative cause of action in favor of the State to enforce its rights, while § 301 expressly supplied the plaintiff in Avco with a federal cause of action to replace its pre-empted state contract claim. Therefore, even though the Court of Appeals may well be correct that ERISA precludes enforcement of the State’s levy in the circumstances of this case, an action to enforce the levy is not itself pre-empted by ERISA.
Once again, appellant’s declaratory judgment cause of action presents a somewhat more difficult issue. The question on which a declaration is sought — that of the CLVT trustees’ “power to honor the levies made upon them by the State of California,” see supra, at 6 — is undoubtedly a matter of concern under ERISA. It involves the meaning and enforceability of provisions in CLVT’s trust agreement forbidding the trustees to assign or otherwise to alienate funds held in trust, see supra, at 4-5, and n. 3, and thus comes within the class of questions for which Congress intended that federal courts create federal common law. Under § 502(a)(3)(B) of ERISA, a participant, beneficiary, or fiduciary of a plan covered by ERISA may bring a declaratory judgment action in federal court to determine whether the plan’s trustees may comply with a state levy on funds held in trust. Nevertheless, CLVT’s argument that appellant’s second cause of action arises under ERISA fails for the second reason given above. ERISA carefully enumerates the parties entitled to seek relief under § 502; it does not provide anyone other than participants, beneficiaries, or fiduciaries with an express cause of action for a declaratory judgment on the issues in this case. A suit for similar relief by some other party does not “arise under” that provision.
IV
Our concern in this case is consistent application of a system of statutes conferring original federal-court jurisdiction, as they have been interpreted by this Court over many years. Under our interpretations, Congress has given the lower federal courts jurisdiction to hear, originally or by removal from a state court, only those cases in which a well-pleaded complaint establishes either that federal law creates the cause of action or that the plaintiff’s right to relief necessarily depends on resolution of a substantial question of federal law. We hold that a suit by state tax authorities both to enforce its levies against funds held in trust pursuant to an ERISA-covered employee benefit plan, and to declare the validity of the levies notwithstanding ERISA, is neither a creature of ERISA itself nor a suit of which the federal courts will take jurisdiction because it turns on a question of federal law. Accordingly, we vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand so that this case may be remanded to the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles.
It is so ordered.
Along with CLVT itself, CLVT’s individual trustees are also appellees. At various points throughout this opinion, the trust and its trustees are referred to collectively as “CLVT.”
As part of the hourly compensation due bargaining unit members, employers pay a certain amount to CLVT, which places the money in an account for each employee. Once a year, CLVT distributes the money in each account to the employee for whom it is kept, provided the employee complies with CLVT’s application procedures. Any funds held for employees who fail to make a timely application are used to defray CLVT’s administrative expenses. See generally Trust Agreement, Art. IX, App. 45-51 (“The Plan”). This system was set up in large part because union members typically work for several employers during the course of a year.
Article IX, ¶9.08, provides in part:
“[N]o payments due the Fund and no monies in vacation accounts established pursuant to the Plan shall be subject in any manner to anticipation, alienation, sale, transfer, assignment, encumbrance or charge by any employee or any other persons and any such anticipation, alienation, sale, transfer, assignment, pledge, encumbrance or charge shall be void and ineffective. The money credited to a vacation account shall be subject to withdrawal and distribution only at the times, in the manner and for the purposes specified in this Agreement.” Id., at 49.
Section 404(a)(1) of ERISA, 29 U. S. C. § 1104(a)(1) (1976 ed. and Supp. V), requires plan trustees to discharge their duties “solely in the interest of the participants and beneficiaries,” “for the exclusive purpose of... providing benefits... and... defraying reasonable expenses of administering the plan,” and “in accordance with the documents and instruments governing the plan” insofar as they are consistent with ERISA. §
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented is whether an employee who, in the course of his employment, may have access to information considered confidential by his employer is impliedly ex-eluded from the definition of “employee” in §2(3) of the National Labor Relations Act and denied all protections under the Act.
I
We have before us two cases under the same docket number. We shall first state separately the factual and procedural background of each.
The Hendricks case
Mary Weatherman was the personal secretary to the general manager and chief executive officer of respondent Hendricks County Rural Electric Membership Corp. (Hendricks), a rural electric membership cooperative. She had been employed by the cooperative for nine years. In May 1977 she signed a petition seeking reinstatement of a close friend and fellow employee, who had lost his arm in the course of employment with Hendricks, and had been dismissed. Several days later she was discharged.
Weatherman filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board), alleging that the discharge violated § 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or Act), 29 U. S. C. § 158(a)(1). Hendricks’ defense, inter alia, was that Weatherman was denied the Act’s protection because as a “confidential” secretary she was impliedly excluded from the Act’s definition of “employee” in § 2(3). The Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) rejected this argument. He noted that the Board’s decisions had excluded from bargaining units only those “confidential employees... [‘]who assist and act in a confidential capacity to persons who formulate, determine, and effectuate management policies in the field of labor relations.’” 236 N. L. R. B. 1616, 1619 (1978), quoting B. F. Goodrich Co., 115 N. L. R. B. 722, 724 (1956). Applying this “labor nexus” test, the ALJ found that Weatherman was not in any event such a “confidential employee.” He also determined that Hendricks had discharged Weatherman for activity — signing the petition — protected by §7 of the Act, 29 U. S. C. §157. The ALJ thus sustained Weatherman’s unfair labor practice charge. The Board affirmed “the rulings, findings, and conclusions of the Administrative Law Judge,” and ordered that Weatherman be reinstated with backpay. 236 N. L. R. B., at 1616.
Hendricks sought review in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the Board cross-petitioned for enforcement. A divided panel of the court reversed and remanded for further proceedings. 603 F. 2d 25 (1979). Although the majority agreed with the Board’s factual finding that Weatherman did not “assist in a confidential capacity with respect to labor relations policies,” id., at 28, the majority, relying on language in a footnote to NLRB v. Bell Aero-
space Co., 416 U. S. 267, 284, n. 12 (1974), held that “all secretaries working in a confidential capacity, without regard to labor relations, [must] be excluded from the Act.” 603 F. 2d, at 30. The Court of Appeals therefore remanded for a determination whether Weatherman came within this substantially broader definition of confidential secretary.
On remand, the Board found that Weatherman was not privy to the Confidences of her employer and thus concluded that she did not fall within the broader definition of confidential secretary that the Court of Appeals had directed the Board to apply. 247 N. L. R. B. 498 (1980). Hendricks again petitioned for review and the Board cross-petitioned for enforcement. The Court of Appeals, by a divided panel, denied enforcement. 627 F. 2d 766 (1980). The majority held that the Board had “actually reapplie[d] the old standard incorporating the labor nexus,” and that the evidence in the record failed to support a finding that Weatherman did not come within the court’s broader definition of confidential secretary. Id., at 770.
The Malleable case
This case grew out of efforts of the Office and Professional Employees International Union (Union) to represent, as collective-bargaining agent, various employees of respondent Malleable Iron Range Co. (Malleable). In December 1978 the Union sought certification as the collective-bargaining representative for a unit of office clerical, technical, and professional personnel employed at the respondent’s facility in Beaver Dam, Wis. At the subsequent representation hearing, Malleable challenged the inclusion of 18 employees in the unit on the ground that they had access to confidential business information. The Regional Director of the NLRB rejected Malleable’s objection, concluding that none of the challenged 18 employees was a confidential employee under the Board’s “labor nexus” test. App. to Pet. for Cert. 76a-94a. The Union prevailed in a later representation election, and was accordingly certified as the bargaining agent for the unit. Malleable nevertheless refused to bargain with the Union. Seeking relief, the Union filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB. The Board found that Malleable’s refusal to bargain violated §§ 8(a)(5) and (1) of the Act, 29 U. S. C. §§ 158(a)(5) and (1), and issued a bargaining order. 244 N. L. R. B. 485 (1979).
Malleable petitioned the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit for review of the order and the Board cross-petitioned for enforcement. In an unreported opinion, a divided panel of the court denied enforcement. App. to Pet. for Cert. 56a-60a. Order denying enforcement, 681 F. 2d 734 (1980). The majority noted that the Regional Director, in determining that none of the 18 individuals was a confidential employee, had applied the Board’s labor-nexus test which the Seventh Circuit had rejected in the earlier decisions involving Hendricks. The court remanded the case to the Board for reconsideration consistent “with the Hendricks case.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 56a, 59a.
We granted the Board’s petition for certiorari in both cases to resolve the conflict among the Courts of Appeals respecting the propriety of the Board’s practice of excluding from collective-bargaining units only those confidential employees with a “labor nexus,” while rejecting any claim that all employees with access to confidential information are beyond the reach of §2(3)’s definition of “employee.” 450 U. S. 964 (1981). We hold that there is a reasonable basis in law for the Board’s use of the “labor nexus” test. We therefore reverse the judgments of the Court of Appeals, with directions in the Hendricks case to enforce the Board’s order, and with directions in the Malleable case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
II
Section 2(3) of the NLRA provides that the “term ‘employee’ shall include any employee...” (emphasis added), with certain stated exceptions such as “agricultural laborers,” “supervisors” as defined in §2(11), and “independent contractors.” Under a literal reading of the phrase “any employee,” then, the workers in question are “employees.” But for over 40 years, the NLRB, while rejecting any claim that the definition of “employee” in § 2(3) excludes confidential employees, has excluded from the collective-bargaining units determined under the Act those confidential employees satisfying the Board’s labor-nexus test. Respondents Hendricks and Malleable (hereafter respondents) argue that contrary to the Board’s practice, all employees who may have access to confidential business information are impliedly excluded from the definition of employee in § 2(3).
In assessing the respondents’ argument, we must be mindful of the canon that “the construction of a statute by those charged with its execution should be followed unless there are compelling indications that it is wrong, especially where Congress has refused to alter the administrative construction.” Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U. S. 367, 381 (1969) (footnote omitted); see NLRB v. Bell Aerospace Co., 416 U. S., at 274-275; Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U. S. 1, 11-12 (1965). We therefore proceed to review the Board’s determinations from 1940 to 1946 whether confidential employees were “employees” within § 2(3) of the NLRA (Wagner Act), and then determine whether Congress, when it considered those determinations in enacting the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 (Taft-Hartley Act), intended to alter the Board’s practice.
A
In 1935 the Wagner Act became law. 49 Stat. 449. The Act’s broad objectives were to “encourag[e] the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and... protec[t] the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.” Id., at 449-450. The employees covered by the Act were defined in §2(3): “The term ‘employee’ shall include any employee... but shall not include any individual employed as an agricultural laborer, or in the domestic service of any family or person at his home, or any individual employed by his parent or spouse.” Although the Act’s express exclusions did not embrace confidential employees, the Board was soon faced with the argument that all individuals who had access to confidential information of their employers should be excluded, as a policy matter, from the definition of “employee.” The Board rejected such an implied exclusion, finding it to have “no warrant under the Act.” Bull Dog Electric Products Co., 22 N. L. R. B. 1043, 1046 (1940). See also Creamery Package Manufacturing Co., 34 N. L. R. B. 108, 111 (1941). But in fulfilling its statutory obligation to determine appropriate bargaining units under §9 of the Act, 29 U. S. C. §159, for which broad discretion has been vested in the Board, see Packard Motor Car Co. v. NLRB, 330 U. S. 485, 491-492 (1947); Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. v. NLRB, 313 U. S. 146 (1941), the Board adopted special treatment for the narrow group of employees with access to confidential, labor-relations information of the employer. The Board excluded these individuals from bargaining units composed of rank- and-file workers. See, e. g., Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 13 N. L. R. B. 974, 986 (1939); Creamery Package Manufacturing Co., supra, at 110. The Board’s rationale was that “management should not be required to handle labor relations matters through employees who are represented by the union with which the [c]ompany is required to deal and who in the normal performance of their duties may obtain advance information of the [cjompany’s position with regard to contract negotiations, the disposition of grievances, and other labor relations matters.” Hoover Co., 55 N.L.R.B. 1321, 1323 (1944).
Following its formulation, through 1946, the Board routinely applied the labor-nexus test in numerous decisions to identify those individuals who were to be excluded from bargaining units because of their access to confidential information. And in at least one instance in which a Court of Appeals had occasion to review the Board’s application of a labor-nexus test under the Wagner Act, the test was upheld. NLRB v. Poultrymen’s Service Corp., 138 F. 2d 204, 210-211 (CA3 1943). See also NLRB v. Armour & Co., 154 F. 2d 570, 573-574 (CA10 1945); Polish National Alliance v. NLRB, 136 F. 2d 175, 180 (CA7 1943), aff’d, 322 U. S. 643 (1944).
In 1946, in Ford Motor Co., 66 N. L. R. B. 1317, 1322, the Board refined slightly the labor-nexus test because in its view the “definition [was] too inclusive and needlessly preclude[d] many employees from bargaining collectively together with other workers having common interests.” Henceforth, the Board announced, it intended “to limit the term ‘confidential’ so as to embrace only those employees who assist and act in a confidential capacity to persons who exercise ‘managerial’ functions in the field of labor relations.” This was the state of the law in 1947 when Congress amended the NLRA through the enactment of the Taft-Hartley Act. 61 Stat. 136.
B
Although the text of the Taft-Hartley Act also makes no explicit reference to confidential employees, when Congress addressed the scope of the NLRA’s coverage, the status of confidential employees was discussed. But nothing in that legislative discussion supports any inference, let alone conclusion, that Congress intended to alter the Board’s pre-1947 determinations that only confidential employees with a “labor nexus” should be excluded from bargaining units. Indeed, the contrary appears.
The Taft-Hartley Act was in part a response to the Court’s decision in Packard Motor Car Co. v. NLRB, 330 U. S. 485 (1947), which upheld the Board’s certification of a bargaining unit composed of plant foremen. See NLRB v. Bell Aerospace Co., 416 U. S., at 279. Although the House and Senate initially passed differing bills, both Houses explicitly excluded “supervisors” from the definition of “employee” in the NLRA. H. R. 3020, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., § 2(3) (1947); S. 1126, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., §2(3) (1947). In defining the term “supervisor,” however, the bills differed substantially. The House bill defined “supervisor” to include within its scope the confidential employee, broadly defined as one “who by the nature of his duties is given by the employer information that is of a confidential nature, and that is not available to the public, to competitors, or to employees generally, for use in the interest of the employer.” The Senate, on the other hand, did not include the confidential employee within its definition of “supervisor.”
The differing House and Senate bills were submitted to a Conference Committee. In Committee, the Senate definition of “supervisor,” with no reference to confidential employees, prevailed. As described in the statement of the House Managers, appended to the Conference Report:
“The conference agreement, in the definition of ‘supervisor,’ limits such term to those individuals treated as supervisors under the Senate amendment. In the case of persons working in the labor relations, personnel and employment departments, it was not thought necessary to make specific provision, as was done in the House bill, since the Board has treated, and presumably will continue to treat, such persons as outside the scope of the act. This is the prevailing Board practice with respect to such people as confidential secretaries as well, and it was not the intention of the conferees to alter this practice in any respect.” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 510, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 35 (1947).
With this understanding, both Houses adopted the Conference Report, 93 Cong. Rec. 6393 (1947) (House); id., at 6536 (Senate). Although President Truman vetoed the Taft-Hartley bill, see id., at 7485-7488 (veto message), the bill nevertheless became law when Congress successfully overrode the veto, id., at 7489 (House); id., at 7538 (Senate).
The Court of Appeals interpreted the legislative history of Congress’ exclusion of “supervisors” from the definition of “employees” as warranting an implied exclusion for all workers who may have access to confidential business information of their employer. That interpretation must be rejected. It is flatly belied by the Conference Committee’s rejection of the House proposal of an exclusion of all confidential employees — for obviously the House conceded on this issue to the Senate.
Indeed, the Taft-Hartley Act’s express inclusion of “professional employees” under the Act’s coverage negates any reading of the legislative history as excluding confidential employees generally from the definition of employee in § 2(3). The definition of professional employees was intended to cover “such persons as legal, engineering, scientific and medical personnel together with their junior professional assistants.” H. R. Conf. Rep..No. 510, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 36 (1947). But surely almost all such persons would likely be privy to confidential business information and thus would fall within the broad definition of confidential employee excluded under the House bill. It would therefore be extraordinary to read an implied exclusion for confidential employees into the statute that would swallow up and displace almost the entirety of the professional-employee inclusion.
Plainly, too, nothing in the legislative history of the Taft-Hartley Act provides any support for the argument that Congress disapproved the Board’s prior practice of applying a labor-nexus test to identify confidential employees whom the Board excluded from bargaining units. To the contrary, the House Managers’ statement accompanying the Conference Committee Report indicates that Congress intended to leave the Board’s historic practice undisturbed.
HH h-4 h-(
The Court of Appeals, and the respondents here, rely on dictum in a footnote to NLRB v. Bell Aerospace Co., 416 U. S. 267 (1974), to suggest that the 80th Congress believed that all employees with access to confidential business information of their employers had been excluded from the Wagner Act by prior NLRB decisions and that Congress intended to freeze that interpretation of the Wagner Act into law. The Bell Aerospace dictum is:
“In 1946 in Ford Motor Co., 66 N. L. R. B. 1317, 1322, the Board had narrowed its definition of ‘confidential employees’ to embrace only those who exercised ‘“managerial” functions in the field of labor relations.’ The discussion of ‘confidential employees’ in both the House and Conference Committee Reports, however, unmistakably refers to that term as defined in the House bill, which was not limited just to those in ‘labor relations.’ Thus, although Congress may have misconstrued recent Board practice, it clearly thought that the Act did not cover ‘confidential employees’ even under a broad definition of that term.” Id,., at 284, n. 12.
Obviously this statement was unnecessary to the determination whether managerial employees are excluded from the Act, which was the question decided in Bell Aerospace. In any event, the statement that Congress “clearly thought that the Act did not cover ‘confidential employees,’ even under a broad definition of that term,” is error. The error is clear in light of our analysis above of the legislative history of the Taft-Hartley Act pertinent to the question. Moreover, the footnote erroneously implies that Ford Motor Co., 66 N. L. R. B. 1317 (1946), marked a major departure from the Board’s prior practice. To the contrary, that Board decision introduced only a slight refinement of the labor-nexus test which the Board had applied in numerous decisions from 1941 to 1946. See n. 11, supra. Certainly the Conference Committee, in approving the Board’s “prevailing practice,” was aware of the Board’s line of decisions. Cf. Cannon v. Uni versity of Chicago, 441 U. S. 677, 696-699 (1979). Thus the only plausible interpretation of the Report is that, in describing the Board’s prevailing practice of denying certain employees the full benefits of the Wagner Act, the Report referred only to employees involved in labor relations, personnel and employment functions, and confidential secretaries to such persons. For that, in essence, is where the Board law as of 1947 stood. It follows that the dictum in Bell Aerospace, and the Court of Appeals’ reliance upon it, cannot be squared with congressional intent, and should be “recede[d] from” now that the issue of the status of confidential employees is “squarely presented.” NLRB v. Boeing Co., 412 U. S. 67, 72 (1973).
We also find no merit in the respondents’ argument that the Board has applied the labor-nexus test inconsistently. As noted earlier, supra, at 178-181, the Board, in excluding “confidential employees” from bargaining units, routinely applied such a test in the six years preceding the enactment of Taft-Hartley. In the years following the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, the Board continued to apply the labor-nexus criterion in determining whether individuals were to be excluded from bargaining units as confidential employees. In B. F. Goodrich Co., 115 N. L. R. B. 722 (1956), the Board reaffirmed its previous ruling in Ford Motor and underscored its intention “in future cases... to limit the term ‘confidential’ so as to embrace only those employees who assist and act in a confidential capacity to persons who formulate, determine, and effectuate management policies in the field of labor relations.” 115 N. L. R. B., at 724 (footnote omitted) (emphasis deleted). In succeeding years, while continuing to apply the labor-nexus test, the Board has deviated from that stated intention in only one major respect: it has also, on occasion, consistent with the underlying purpose of the labor-nexus test, see supra, at 179, designated as confidential employees persons who, although not assisting persons exercising managerial functions in the labor-relations area, “regularly have access to confidential information concerning anticipated changes which may result from collective-bargaining negotiations.” Pullman Standard Division of Pullman, Inc., 214 N. L. R. B. 762, 762-763 (1974); see Triangle Publications, Inc., 118 N. L. R. B. 595, 596, and nn. 3-4 (1957).
In sum, our review of the Board’s decisions indicates that the Board has never followed a practice of depriving all employees who have access to confidential business information from the full panoply of rights afforded by the Act. Rather, for over 40 years, the Board, while declining to create any implied exclusion from the definition of “employee” for confidential employees, has applied a labor-nexus test in identifying those employees who should be excluded from bargaining units because of access to confidential business information. We cannot ignore this consistent, longstanding interpretation of the NLRA by the Board. See Bell Aerospace, 416 U. S., at 275; Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U. S., at 381.
IV
The Court’s ultimate task here is, of course, to determine whether the Board’s “labor nexus” limitation on the class of confidential employees who, although within the definition of “employee” under § 2(3), may be denied inclusion in bargaining units has “a reasonable basis in law.” See Ford Motor Co. v. NLRB, 441 U. S. 488, 497 (1979); Chemical Workers v. Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., 404 U. S. 157, 166 (1971); NLRB v. Hearst Publications, Inc., 322 U. S. 111, 131 (1944). Clearly the NLRB’s longstanding practice of excluding from bargaining units only those confidential employees satisfying the Board’s labor-nexus test, rooted firmly in the Board’s understanding of the nature of the collective-bargaining process, and Congress’ acceptance of that practice, fairly demonstrates that the Board’s treatment of confidential employees does indeed have “a reasonable basis in law.” We therefore return finally to the disposition of the cases before us.
Hendricks
In Hendricks, the Board determined that the personal secretary, Mary Weatherman, was not a confidential secretary because she “did not act ‘in a confidential capacity’ ” with respect to labor-relations matters. 236 N. L. R. B., at 1619. While the Court of Appeals affirmed this finding, it denied enforcement of the Board’s order on the basis that the evidence failed to support the Board’s additional finding, required by the Court of Appeals, that Weatherman had no access to confidential wow-labor-related information. In approving the Board’s limited labor-nexus exclusion, we have held that such a finding is irrelevant to the determination of whether the secretary was a confidential employee. In this Court respondent Hendricks does not argue that Weatherman came within the labor-nexus test as formulated by the Board, but rather concedes that Weatherman did not have “confidential duties ‘with respect to labor policies.’” Brief for Respondent Hendricks 43. Because there is thus no dispute in this respect, and in any event no suggestion that the Board’s finding regarding labor nexus was not supported by substantial evidence, we conclude that the Court of Appeals erred in holding that the record did not support the Board’s determination that Weatherman was not a confidential employee with a labor nexus. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals in Hendricks insofar as enforcement of the Board’s order was denied, and remand with directions to enter an order enforcing the Board’s order.
Malleable
In Malleable, as well, the respondent makes no argument that the 18 employees in question satisfy the labor-nexus test of the Board. Rather, Malleable argues, and the Court of Appeals held, that the Board should have applied a broader definition of confidential employee to include all employees in possession of confidential business information. Having rejected the broad exclusion on which the Court of Appeals’ judgment relies, we reverse that judgment. But because the Court of Appeals has not yet addressed Malleable’s contentions that some of the 18 employees should have been excluded from the bargaining unit for reasons entirely unrelated to whether they are confidential employees, we remand Malleable for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Section 2(3), 61 Stat. 137, as set forth in 29 U. S. C. § 152(3), provides:
“The term ‘employee’ shall include any employee, and shall not be limited to the employees of a particular employer, unless this subchapter explicitly states otherwise, and shall include any individual whose work has ceased as a consequence of, or in connection with, any current labor dispute or because of any unfair labor practice, and who has not obtained any other regular and substantially equivalent employment, but shall not include any individual employed as an agricultural laborer, or in the domestic service of any family or person at his home, or any individual employed by his parent or spouse, or any individual having the status of an independent contractor, or any individual employed as a supervisor, or any individual employed by an employer subject to the Railway Labor Act, as amended from time to time, or by any other person who is not an employer as herein defined.”
The ALJ held that although the Board excluded confidential employees with a labor nexus from bargaining units, it afforded them the other protections of the NLRA. Therefore, the ALJ held, even if Weatherman were a confidential employee excludable from a bargaining unit, § 8(a)(1) barred Hendricks from discharging Weatherman for engaging in protected concerted activity.
The Board has held that circulation of a petition on behalf of a discharged employee is protected activity under §7. Youngstown Osteopathic Hospital Assn., 224 N. L. R. B. 574 (1976).
Judge Bonsai, sitting by designation, dissented, being of the view that the record established that Weatherman was not a confidential employee.
The Board stated in part:
“Although Weatherman typed all of [general manager] Dillon’s letters, this correspondence apparently did not relate to labor relations or personnel matters other than occasional letters referring to the dates of negotiating meetings with a union. Nor is there any evidence that it concerned confidential matters of any description. Weatherman generally did not place Dillon’s telephone calls, nor did she keep a record of his appointments. Weatherman did share a partitioned office with Dillon, but no personnel records or confidential records of any type were kept there, excluding Dillon’s testimony that he kept some papers concerning labor negotiations in a file behind his desk. Weatherman did not attend meetings of Respondent’s board of directors or other management meetings. However, she did type minutes of meetings of the board of directors and the agenda for such meetings. While these meetings apparently occasionally involved personnel matters, there is no indication that such matters, or any other issues discussed during them, were confidential. Weatherman did not type internal memoranda regarding labor relations or personnel or employment matters. Finally, and most significantly, Dillon conceded at the hearing that the Respondent did not maintain secret or classified papers or documents.” 247 N. L. R. B., at 498-499 (footnotes omitted).
Judge Cudahy dissented. He suggested, inter alia, that there “is abundant evidence in the record to support the Board’s conclusion that Weatherman is not properly classified as a confidential secretary.” 627 F. 2d, at 771.
Cf. Union Oil of California, Inc. v. NLRB, 607 F. 2d 852, 853-854 (CA9 1979); NLRB v. Allied Products Corp., 548 F. 2d 644, 648 (CA6 1977); Westinghouse Electric Corp. v. NLRB, 398 F. 2d 669, 670 (CA6 1968); NLRB v. Quaker City Life Ins. Co., 319 F. 2d 690, 694 (CA4 1963); NLRB v. Armour & Co., 154 F. 2d 570, 573-574 (CA10 1945); NLRB v. Pouttrymen’s Service Corp., 138 F. 2d 204, 210-211 (CA3 1943).
We also granted Hendricks’ cross-petition in No. 80-1103, which presented the question whether the Court of Appeals properly rejected Hendricks’ claim that Weatherman was the functional equivalent of a personnel department employee and therefore excluded from coverage of the Act on that basis as well. After briefing and argument, however, we are persuaded that our grant of certiorari on the cross-petition was improvident. The Court of Appeals held that the evidence in the record supported the Board’s finding that Weatherman was not the functional equivalent of a personnel department employee. As such, we are presented primarily with a question of fact, which does not merit Court review. The writ of certiorari in No. 80-1103 is therefore dismissed as improvidently granted. See Rudolph v. United States, 370 U. S. 269 (1962) (per curiam); Southern Power Co. v. North Carolina Public Service Co., 263 U. S. 508 (1924).
For the full text of the current definition, see n. 1, supra.
Although the early decisions did not explicitly preclude the Board from certifying a bargaining unit composed solely of confidential employees, that possibility was apparently foreclosed in Hoover Co., 55 N. L. R. B. 1321, 1322-1323 (1944), and Electric Boat Co., 57 N. L. R. B. 1348, 1349 (1944), thereby excluding confidential employees, as defined by the Board, from collective-bargaining units.
See Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc., 35 N.L.R.B. 739, 744 (1941); Chrysler Corp., 36 N. L. R. B. 157, 161-162 (1941); Western Union Telegraph Co., 36 N.L.R.B. 1066, 1069 (1941); General Motors Corp., 37 N. L. R. B. 441, 446-447 (1941); Montgomery Ward & Co., 38 N. L. R. B. 297, 300 (1942); Chrysler Detroit Co., 38 N. L. R. B. 313, 321 (1942); Cin cinnati Times-Star Co., 39 N. L. R. B. 39, 42 (1942); Poultrymen’s Service Corp., 41 N. L. R. B. 444, 448 (1942), enf’d, 138 F. 2d 204 (CA3 1943); Polish National Alliance, 42 N. L. R. B. 1375, 1381-1382 (1942), enf'd as modified, 136 F. 2d 175 (CA7 1943), aff’d, 322 U. S. 643 (1944); Bendix Products Division, 43 N. L. R. B. 912, 915-916 (1942); Paramount Pic tures, Inc., 45 N.L.R.B. 116, 122-123 (1942); Murray Corp., 45 N. L. R. B. 854, 856-857 (1942); Puget Sound Bridge & Dredging Co., 46 N.L.R.B. 1071, 1074 (1943); Bohn Aluminum & Brass Corp., 47 N. L. R. B. 1229, 1231 (1943); Armour & Co., 49 N. L. R. B. 688, 690 (1943); Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., 50 N. L. R. B. 679, 682 (1943); Boston Edison Co., 51 N.L.R.B. 118, 123 (1943); Republic Steel Corp., 51 N.L.R.B. 1228, 1230 (1943); St. Johns River Shipbuilding Co., 52 N.L.R.B. 12, 17 (1943); General Motors Corp., 52 N.L.R.B. 649, 653-655 (1943); Babcock & Wilcox Co., 52 N. L. R. B. 900, 903 (1943); U. S. Smelting, Refining & Mining Co., 53 N. L. R. B. 84, 86 (1943); New York Telephone Co., 53 N. L. R. B. 307, 310 (1943); Potash Co., 53 N. L. R. B. 441, 444 (1943); Coolerator Co., 53 N. L. R. B. 461, 462-464 (1943); Colonial Broach Co., 53 N. L. R. B. 846, 848 (1943); General Motors Corp., 53 N. L. R. B. 1096, 1100 (1943); Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corp., 54 N. L. R. B. 103, 112-114 (1943); Armour & Co., 54 N. L. R. B. 1005, 1013 (1944), enf’d as modified, 154 F. 2d 570 (CA10 1945); Armour & Co., 54 N. L. R. B. 1462, 1465 (1944);
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 631-633, as amended in 1942 and 1966, 22 U. S. C. §§ 611-621 (Act), uses the term “political propaganda,” as defined in the Act, to identify those expressive materials that must comply with the Act’s registration, filing, and disclosure requirements. The constitutionality of those underlying requirements and the validity of the characteristics used to define the regulated category of expressive materials are not at issue in this case. The District Court concluded, however, that Congress violated the First Amendment by using the term “political propaganda” as the statutory name for the regulated category of expression.
Appellee, an attorney and a member of the California State Senate, does not want the Department of Justice and the public to regard him as the disseminator of foreign political propaganda, but wishes to exhibit three Canadian motion picture films that have been so identified. The films, distributed by the NFBC, deal with the subjects of nuclear war and acid rain. Appellee brought suit in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of California on March 24, 1983, to enjoin the application of the Act to these three films. On May 23, 1983, the District Court denied appellants’ motion to dismiss and granted appellee’s motion for a preliminary injunction. The injunction prohibited appellants from designating the films as “political propaganda” and from subjecting them to the labeling and reporting requirements of the Act. The court issued findings of fact and conclusions of law on September 7, 1983. Keene v. Smith, 569 F. Supp. 1513. The court held that the risk of damage to Keene’s reputation established his standing to challenge the constitutionality of the statute’s use of the term “propaganda,” and that appellee had established his entitlement to a preliminary injunction.
On September 12, 1985, the District Court granted summary judgment for appellee and a permanent injunction against enforcement of any portion of the Act which incorporates the term “political propaganda.” 619 F. Supp. 1111. The District Court opined that the term “propaganda” is a semantically slanted word of reprobation; that the use of such a denigrating term renders the regulated materials unavailable to American citizens who wish to use them as a means of personal expression; and that since there was no compelling state interest to justify the use of such a pejorative label, it was an unnecessary, and therefore invalid, abridgment of speech. The court amended its judgment on October 29,1985, limiting the permanent injunction against enforcement of the Act to the three films at issue in this case.
We noted probable jurisdiction of the Attorney General’s appeal under 28 U. S. C. § 1252, 475 U. S. 1117 (1986), and we now reverse.
Before we discuss the District Court’s holding on the First Amendment issue, we briefly describe the statutory scheme and determine that appellee has standing to challenge the Act.
I
The statute itself explains the basic purpose of the regulatory scheme. It was enacted:
“[T]o protect the national defense, internal security, and foreign relations of the United States by requiring public disclosure by persons engaging in propaganda activities and other activities for or on behalf of foreign governments, foreign political parties, and other foreign principals so that the Government and the people of the United States may be informed of the identity of such persons and may appraise their statements and actions in the light of their associations and activities.” 56 Stat. 248-249.
See Viereck v. United States, 318 U. S. 236, 244 (1943).
The Act requires all agents of foreign principals to file detailed registration statements, describing the nature of their business and their political activities. The registration requirement is comprehensive, applying equally to agents of friendly, neutral, and unfriendly governments. Thus, the New York office of the NFBC has been registered as a foreign agent since 1947 because it is an agency of the Canadian government. The statute classifies the three films produced by the Film Board as “political propaganda” because they contain political material intended to influence the foreign policies of the United States, or may reasonably be adapted to be so used.
When the agent of a foreign principal disseminates any “political propaganda,” §611(j), in the United States mails or in the channels of interstate commerce, he or she must also provide the Attorney General with a copy of the material and with a report describing the extent of the dissemination. In addition, he or she must provide the recipient of the material with a disclosure statement on a form prescribed by the Attorney General. When an agent seeks to disseminate such political advocacy material, he or she must first label that material with certain information, the agent’s identity, and the identity of the principal for whom he or she acts. The standard form to be used with films reads as follows:
“This material is prepared, edited, issued or circulated by (name and address of registrant) which is registered with the Department of Justice, Washington, D. C. under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as an agent of (name and address of foreign principal). Dissemination reports on this film are filed with the Department of Justice where the required registration statement is available for public inspection. Registration does not indicate approval of the contents of this material by the United States Government.” App. 16, 59.
It should be noted that the term “political propaganda” does not appear on the form.
The statutory definition of that term reads as follows:
“(j) The term ‘political propaganda’ includes any oral, visual, graphic, written, pictorial, or other communication or expression by any person (1) which is reasonably adapted to, or which the person disseminating the same believes will, or which he intends to, prevail upon, indoctrinate, convert, induce, or in any other way influence a recipient or any section of the public within the United States with reference to the political or public interests, policies, or relations of a government or a foreign country or a foreign political party or with reference to the foreign policies of the United States or promote in the United States racial, religious, or social dissensions, or (2) which advocates, advises, instigates, or promotes any racial, social, political, or religious disorder, civil riot, or other conflict involving the use of force or violence in any other American republic or the overthrow of any government or political subdivision of any other American republic by any means involving the use of force or violence.” §611(j).
I — I I — I
In determining whether a litigant has standing to challenge governmental action as a violation of the First Amendment, we have required that the litigant demonstrate “a claim of specific present objective harm or a threat of specific future harm.” Laird v. Tatum, 408 U. S. 1, 14 (1972). In Laird, the plaintiffs alleged that the intelligence-gathering operations of the United States Army “chilled” the exercise of their First Amendment rights because they feared that the defendants might, in the future, make unlawful use of the data gathered. We found that plaintiffs lacked standing; the Army’s intelligence-gathering system did not threaten any cognizable interest of the plaintiffs. While the governmental action need not have a direct effect on the exercise of First Amendment rights, we held, it must have caused or must threaten to cause a direct injury to the plaintiffs. Id., at 12-13. The injury must be “‘distinct and palpable.’” Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 751 (1984) (citations omitted).
Appellee’s allegations and affidavits establish that his situation fits squarely within these guidelines. To be sure, the identification as “political propaganda” of the three films Keene is interested in showing does not have a direct effect on the exercise of his First Amendment rights; it does not prevent him from obtaining or exhibiting the films. As the District Court recognized, however, “[w]hether the statute in fact constitutes an abridgement of the plaintiff’s freedom of speech is, of course, irrelevant to the standing analysis.” 619 F. Supp., at 1118. While Keene did not and could not allege that he was unable to receive or exhibit the films at all, he relies on the circumstance that he wished to exhibit the three films, but was “deterred from exhibiting the films by a statutory characterization of the films as ‘political propaganda.’” 569 F. Supp., at 1515. If Keene had merely alleged that the appellation deterred him by exercising a chilling effect on the exercise of his First Amendment rights, he would not have standing to seek its invalidation. See Laird, supra, at 13-14.
We find, however, that appellee has alleged and demonstrated more than a “subjective chill”; he establishes that the term “political propaganda” threatens to cause him cognizable injury. He stated that “if he were to exhibit the films while they bore such characterization, his personal, political, and professional reputation would suffer and his ability to obtain re-election and to practice his profession would be impaired.” 569 F. Supp., at 1515. In support of this claim, appellee submitted detailed affidavits, including one describing the results of an opinion poll and another containing the views of an experienced political analyst, supporting the conclusion that his exhibition of films that have been classified as “political propaganda” by the Department of Justice would substantially harm his chances for reelection and would adversely affect his reputation in the community. The affidavits were uncontradicted.
In ruling on the motion for summary judgment, the District Court correctly determined that the affidavits supported the conclusion that appellee could not exhibit the films without incurring a risk of injury to his reputation and of an impairment of his political career. The court found that the Act “puts the plaintiff to the Hobson’s choice of foregoing the use of the three Canadian films for the exposition of his own views or suffering an injury to his reputation.” 619 F. Supp., at 1120. While appellee does not allege that the Act reduces the number of people who will attend his film showings, see Brief for Appellee 15, n. 14, he cites “the risk that the much larger audience that is his constituency would be influenced against him because he disseminated what the government characterized as the political propaganda of a foreign power.” Ibid. See also Tr. of Oral Arg. 36 (the label “raises the hackles of suspicion on the part of the audience”). As the affidavits established, this suspicion would be a substantial detriment to Keene’s reputation and candidacy.
It is, of course, possible that appellee could have minimized these risks by providing the viewers of the films with an appropriate statement concerning the quality of the motion pictures — one of them won an “Oscar” award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the best foreign documentary in 1983 — and his reasons for agreeing with the positions advocated by their Canadian producer concerning nuclear war and acid rain. Even on that assumption, however, the need to take such affirmative steps to avoid the risk of harm to his reputation constitutes a cognizable injury in the course of his communication with the public. This case is similar to Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U. S. 301 (1965), in which we did not question that petitioner had standing to challenge a statute requiring the Postmaster General to hold all “communist political propaganda” originating abroad and not release it to the addressee unless that individual made a written request to the Post Office for delivery of the material. Although the statute was directed to the Postmaster General, it affected addressee Lamont just as the Act under consideration affected Keene. The necessity of going on the record as requesting this political literature constituted an injury to Lamont in his exercise of First Amendment rights. Likewise, appellee is not merely an undifferentiated bystander with claims indistinguishable from those of the general public, as the Government argues; he would have to take affirmative steps at each film showing to prevent public formation of an association between “political propaganda” and his reputation. Moreover, while these steps might prevent or mitigate damage to his reputation among those members of the public who do view the films, they would be ineffective among those citizens who shun the film as “political propaganda.”
Our cases recognize that a mere showing of personal injury is not sufficient to establish standing; we have also required that the injury be “fairly traceable to the defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief.” Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S., at 751; see also Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U. S. 464, 472 (1982). Because the alleged injury stems from the Department of Justice’s enforcement of a statute that employs the term “political propaganda,” we conclude that the risk of injury to appellee’s reputation “fairly can be traced” to the defendant’s conduct. Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U. S. 26, 41 (1976).
Moreover, enjoining the application of the words “political propaganda” to the films would at least partially redress the reputational injury of which appellee complains. The Attorney General argues that an injunction would not provide the relief sought, because appellee’s constituents and others may continue to react negatively to his exhibition of films once they have been labeled as “political propaganda.” However, appellee’s alleged harm occurs because the Department of Justice has placed the legitimate force of its criminal enforcement powers behind the label of “political propaganda.” A judgment declaring the Act unconstitutional would eliminate the need to choose between exhibiting the films and incurring the risk that public perception of this criminal enforcement scheme will harm appellee’s reputation. Appellee declared his intent “to continue to exhibit the three films periodically in the future, but only if the defendants are permanently enjoined from classifying the films as ‘political propaganda.’” Declaration of Barry Keene As Regards Having Exhibited the Three Films, App. 110. Thus, the threatened injury alleged in the complaint is “likely to be redressed by a favorable decision.” See Valley Forge, 454 U. S., at 472, and cases cited ibid., at n. 9.
Ill
We begin our examination of the District Court’s ruling on the First Amendment issue by noting that the term “political propaganda” has two meanings. In popular parlance many people assume that propaganda is a form of slanted, misleading speech that does not merit serious attention and that proceeds from a concern for advancing the narrow interests of the speaker rather than from a devotion to the truth. See, e. g., Declaration of Edwin Newman, Correspondent for NBC News, App. 107-108. Casualty reports of enemy belligerents, for example, are often dismissed as nothing more than “propaganda.” As defined in the Act, the term political propaganda includes misleading advocacy of that kind. See 22 U. S. C. § 611(j). But it also includes advocacy materials that are completely accurate and merit the closest attention and the highest respect. Standard reference works include both broad, neutral definitions of the word “propaganda” that are consistent with the way the word is defined in this statute, and also the narrower, pejorative definition.
Appellee argues that the statute would be unconstitutional even if the broad neutral definition of propaganda were the only recognized meaning of the term because the Act is “a Classic Example of Content-Based Government Regulation of Core-Value Protected Speech.” As appellee notes, the Act’s reporting and disclosure requirements are expressly conditioned upon a finding that speech on behalf of a foreign principal has political or public-policy content.
The District Court did not accept this broad argument. It found that the basic purpose of the statute as a whole was “to inform recipients of advocacy materials produced by or under the aegis of a foreign government of the source of such materials” (emphasis deleted), and that it could not be gainsaid that this kind of disclosure serves rather than disserves the First Amendment. The statute itself neither prohibits nor censors the dissemination of advocacy materials by agents of foreign principals.
The argument that the District Court accepted rests not on what the statute actually says, requires, or prohibits, but rather upon a potential misunderstanding of its effect. Simply because the term “political propaganda” is used in the text of the statute to define the regulated materials, the court assumed that the public wall attach an “unsavory connotation,” 619 F. Supp., at 1125, to the term and thus believe that the materials have been “officially censured by the Government.” Ibid. The court further assumed that this denigration makes this material unavailable to people like appellee, who would otherwise distribute such material, because of the risk of being seen in an unfavorable light by the members of the public who misunderstand the statutory scheme. According to the District Court, the denigration of speech to which the label “political propaganda” has been attached constitutes “a conscious attempt to place a whole category of materials beyond the pale of legitimate discourse,” id., at 1126, and is therefore an unconstitutional abridgment of that speech. We find this argument unpersuasive, indeed, untenable, for three reasons.
First, the term “political propaganda” does nothing to place regulated expressive materials “beyond the pale of legitimate discourse.” Ibid. Unlike the scheme in Lamont v. Postmaster General, the Act places no burden on protected expression. We invalidated the statute in Lamont as interfering with the addressee’s First Amendment rights because it required “an official act (viz., returning the reply card) as a limitation on the unfettered exercise of the addressee’s First Amendment rights.” 381 U. S., at 305. The physical detention of the materials, not their mere designation as “communist political propaganda,” was the offending element of the statutory scheme. The Act “se[t] administrative officials astride the flow of mail to inspect it, appraise it, write the addressee about it, and await a response before dispatching the mail.” Id., at 306. The Act in this case, on the other hand, does not pose any obstacle to appellee’s access to the materials he wishes to exhibit. Congress did not prohibit, edit, or restrain the distribution of advocacy materials in an ostensible effort to protect the public from conversion, confusion, or deceit.
To the contrary, Congress simply required the dissemina-tors of such material to make additional disclosures that would better enable the public to evaluate the import of the propaganda. The statute does not prohibit appellee from advising his audience that the films have not been officially censured in any way. Disseminators of propaganda may go beyond the disclosures required by statute and add any further information they think germane to the public’s viewing of the materials. By compelling some disclosure of information and permitting more, the Act’s approach recognizes that the best remedy for misleading or inaccurate speech contained within materials subject to the Act is fair, truthful, and accurate speech. See generally Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357, 377 (1927) (Brandeis, J., concurring) (“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence”). The prospective viewers of the three films at issue may harbor an unreasoning prejudice against arguments that have been identified as the “political propaganda” of foreign principals and their agents, but the Act allows appellee to combat any such bias simply by explaining — before, during, or after the film, or in a wholly separate context —that Canada’s interest in the consequences of nuclear war and acid rain does not necessarily undermine the integrity or the persuasiveness of its advocacy.
Ironically, it is the injunction entered by the District Court that withholds information from the public. The suppressed information is the fact that the films fall within the category of materials that Congress has judged to be “political propaganda.” A similar paternalistic strategy of protecting the public from information was followed by the Virginia Assembly, which enacted a ban on the advertising of prescription drug prices by pharmacists. See Virginia Pharmacy Bd. v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U. S. 748 (1976). The State sought to justify the ban as a means of preventing “the aggressive price competition that will result from unlimited advertising” and the “loss of stable pharmacist-customer relationships” that would result from comparison shopping on the basis of price. We wholly rejected these justifications, finding that the ban was predicated upon assumptions about the reactions the public would have if they obtained the “wrong” kind of information. Although the proscribed information in that case was price advertising of pharmacy items, our rationale applies equally to information that the Congress considers certain expressive materials to be “propaganda”:
“[0]n close inspection it is seen that the State’s protectiveness of its citizens rests in large measure on the advantages of their being kept in ignorance. The advertising ban does not directly affect professional standards one way or the other. It affects them only through the reactions it is assumed people will have to the free flow of drug price information.” Id., at 769.
Likewise, despite the absence of any direct abridgment of speech, the District Court in this case assumed that the reactions of the public to the label “political propaganda” would be such that the label would interfere with freedom of speech. In Virginia Pharmacy Bd., we squarely held that a zeal to protect the public from “too much information” could not withstand First Amendment scrutiny:
“There is, of course, an alternative to this highly paternalistic approach. That alternative is to assume that this information is not in itself harmful, that people will perceive their own best interests if only they are well enough informed, and that the best means to that end is to open the channels of communication rather than to close them.... It is precisely this kind of choice, between the dangers of suppressing information, and the dangers from its misuse if it is freely available, that the First Amendment makes for us.” Id., at 770.
See also Linmark Associates, Inc. v. Willingboro, 431 U. S. 85, 96-97 (1977).
Second, the reasoning of the District Court is contradicted by history. The statutory definition of “political propaganda” has been on the books for over four decades. We should presume that the people who have a sufficient understanding of the law to know that the term “political propaganda” is used to describe the regulated category also know that the definition is a broad, neutral one rather than a pejorative one. Given this long history, it seems obvious that if the fear of misunderstanding had actually interfered with the exhibition of a significant number of foreign-made films, that effect would be disclosed in the record. Although the unrebutted predictions about the potentially adverse consequences of exhibiting these films are sufficient to support appellee’s standing, they fall far short of proving that the public’s perceptions about the word “propaganda” have actually had any adverse impact on the distribution of foreign advocacy materials subject to the statutory scheme. There is a risk that a partially informed audience might believe that a film that must be registered with the Department of Justice is suspect, but there is no evidence that this suspicion— to the degree it exists — has had the effect of Government censorship.
Third, Congress’ use of the term “political propaganda” does not lead us to suspend the respect we normally owe to the Legislature’s power to define the terms that it uses in legislation. We have no occasion here to decide the permissible scope of Congress’ “right to speak”; we simply view this particular choice of language, statutorily defined in a neutral and evenhanded manner, as one that no constitutional provision prohibits the Congress from making. Nor do we agree with the District Court’s assertion that Congress’ use of the term “political propaganda” was “a wholly gratuitous step designed to express the suspicion with which Congress regarded the materials.” 619 F. Supp., at 1125. It is axiomatic that the statutory definition of the term excludes unstated meanings of that term. Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U. S. 379, 392, and n. 10 (1979). Congress’ use of the term “propaganda” in this statute, as indeed in other legislation, has no pejorative connotation. As judges it is our duty to construe legislation as it is written, not as it might be read by a layman, or as it might be understood by someone who has not even read it. If the term “political propaganda” is construed consistently with the neutral definition contained in the text of the statute itself, the constitutional concerns voiced by the District Court completely disappear.
The judgment of the District Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Scalia took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
In a letter dated January 13,1988, the Chief of the Registration Unit of the Internal Security Section of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice notified the National Film Board of Canada (NFBC) that these three films were “political propaganda,” and requested that the NFBC comply with the labeling and reporting requirements imposed by § 4 of the Act, 22 U. S. C. §614. App. 18.
The NFBC (New York office) has been registered with the Attorney General as an agent of a foreign principal, the NFBC, since 1947, pursuant to 22 U. S. C. § 612. Second Declaration of Joseph E. Clarkson ¶4, App. 57.
The films are entitled If You Love This Planet, Acid Rain: Requiem or Recovery, and Acid From Heaven. The first film concerns “the environmental effects of nuclear war.” Complaint ¶1, App. 10. “Acid rain” is formed when nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, products of fossil fuel combustion, are discharged into the atmosphere; converted to sulfates, nitrates, sulfuric acids, and nitric acids through various chemical reactions; and then deposited as precipitation. See 1 F. Grad, Treatise on Environmental Law §2.09, pp. 2-578 to 2-579 (1986).
Keene v. Smith, 569 F. Supp., at 1518, 1522. The District Court found that appellee lacked standing to challenge the labeling requirement that the Act imposes on the agent of the foreign principal. Id., at 1519. That ruling is not now before this Court.
Title 22 U. S. C. § 614(a) provides:
“Every person within the United States who is an agent of a foreign principal and required to register under the provisions of this subchapter and who transmits or causes to be transmitted in the United States mails or by any means or instrumentality of interstate or foreign commerce any political propaganda for or in the interests of such foreign principal (i) in the form of prints, or (ii) in any other form which is reasonably adapted to being, or which he believes will be, or which he intends to be, disseminated or circulated among two or more persons shall, not later than forty-eight hours after the beginning of the transmittal thereof, file with the Attorney General two copies thereof and a statement, duly signed by or on behalf of such agent, setting forth full information as to the places, times, and extent of such transmittal.”
Section 614(b) provides:
“It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States who is an agent of a foreign principal and required to register under the provisions of this subchapter to transmit or cause to be transmitted in the United States mails or by any means or instrumentality of interstate or foreign commerce any political propaganda for or in the interests of such foreign principal (i) in the form of prints, or (ii) in any other form which is reasonably adapted to being, or which he believes will be or which he intends to be, disseminated or circulated among two or more persons, unless such political propaganda is conspicuously marked at its beginning with, or prefaced or accompanied by, a true and accurate statement, in the language or languages used in such political propaganda, setting forth the relationship or connection between the person transmitting the political propaganda or causing it to be transmitted and such propaganda; that the person transmitting such political propaganda or causing it to be transmitted is registered under this subchapter with the Department of Justice, Washington, District of Columbia, as an agent of a foreign principal, together with the name and address of such agent of a foreign principal and of such foreign principal; that, as required by this subchapter, his registration statement is available for inspection at and copies of such political propaganda are being filed with the Department of Justice; and that registration of agents of foreign principals required by the subehapter does not indicate approval by the United States Government of the contents of their political propaganda. The Attorney General, having due regard for the national security and the public interest, may by regulation prescribe the language or languages and the manner and form in which such statement shall be made and require the inclusion of such other information contained in the registration statement identifying such agent of a foreign principal and such political propaganda and its sources as may be appropriate.”
The poll was entitled Gallup Study of The Effect of Campaign Disclosures on Adults’ Attitudes Toward Candidates (July, 1984). App. 78-98. The study was based on a telephone survey, in which five questions were posed to a representative national sample of adults. The questions tested the effect that publicizing various events associated with a candidate running for the state legislature would have on his candidacy. One of the surveyed events was that the political candidate.“arranged to show to [the] public three foreign films that the Justice Dept, had classified as ‘Political Propaganda.’” App. 86. The poll concluded that if this event occurred, 49.1% of the public would be less inclined to vote for the candidate. Ibid,.; see also id., at 93-94 (sampling tolerances; 95% confidence level that sampling error is less than four percentage points).
After examining the survey data, the survey research practitioner who had designed the survey concluded that the charge of showing political propaganda “would have a seriously adverse effect on a California State Legislature candidate’s chances [for election] if this charge were raised during a campaign.” Declaration of Mervin Field ¶5, App. 69. The District Court found that this declaration, “neither rebutted nor impeached by the defendants, establishes beyond peradventure of a doubt that whoever disseminates materials officially found to be ‘political propaganda’ runs the risk of being held in a negative light by members of the general public.” 619 F. Supp. 1111, 1124 (1985) (footnote omitted). In addition, a principal political fundraiser and adviser to appellee, Harry Bistrin, stated: “I have no doubt but that some members of the North Coast [of California] press, present political adversaries, and future opponents, would openly seize upon the opportunity to utilize the government’s reporting, dissemination and label requirements under [the Act] to their benefit by portraying the plaintiff as a disseminator of ‘foreign political propaganda.’ For these reasons the plaintiff has a compelling interest, perhaps more than most citizens, to ensure that the exercise of his first amendment rights does not ‘boomerang’ to be utilized as a deadly weapon against him in his political career.” Declaration in Support of Plaintiff’s Motion for a Preliminary Injunction, App. 30.
“Designating material as ‘political propaganda,’... denigrates the material and stigmatizes those conveying it, in a manner that mere designation of the material as ‘political advocacy’ would not. It is my professional judgment that knowledge of such a designation would be extremely likely to deter persons from viewing or reading such materials and, diminish and/or slant its communicative value, in a manner likely to make the reader or viewer suspicious of the material, far less likely to credit it or accept its conclusions.” Declaration of Leonard W. Doob ¶ 9, App. 103. The declar-ant is Senior Research Associate and Sterling Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University.
See Block v. Meese, 253 U. S. App. D. C. 317, 322, 793 F. 2d 1303, 1308 (1986) (sole distributor of If You Love This Planet has standing to challenge classification of film as “political propaganda”; potential customers declined to take the film because of the classification).
See, e. g., Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1817 (1981 ed.) (“doctrines, ideas, argument, facts, or allegations spread by deliberate effort through any medium of communication in order to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause”).
See, e. g., Webster’s New World Dictionary, College Edition 1167 (1968) (“now often used disparagingly to connote deception or distortion”); The New Columbia Encyclopedia 2226 (1976) (“[A]lmost any attempt to influence public opinion, including lobbying, commercial advertising, and missionary work, can be broadly construed as propaganda. Generally, however, the term is restricted to the manipulation of political beliefs”).
Brief for Appellee 20.
See 619 F. Supp., at 1125.
The risk of this reputational harm, as we have held earlier in this opinion, is sufficient to establish appellee’s standing to litigate the claim on the merits. Whether the risk created by the Act violates the First Amendment is, of course, a separate matter. The crux of the District Court’s analysis of this latter issue is set forth in this paragraph:
“With respect to the evidentiary question — does the phrase ‘political propaganda,’ when officially applied by officials of the United States Department of Justice, abridge speech — the Court has little difficulty. The declaration supplied by Mervin Field, neither rebutted nor impeached by the defendants, establishes beyond peradventure of a doubt that whoever disseminates materials officially found to be ‘political propaganda’ runs the risk of being held in a negative light by members of the general public. See Gallup Study of the Effect of Campaign Disclosures on Adults’ Attitudes Toward Candidates, July, 1984; Plaintiff’s Exhibit A, Declaration of Mervin D. Field, at 3. For this reason, the Court finds that Congress’ use of the phrase ‘political propaganda’ to describe the materials subject to the registration and reporting requirements constitutes a burden on speech by making such materials unavailable to all but the most courageous. Since the exercise of First Amendment rights often requires an act of courage, it is important to note that the courage required by the operation of FARA is not the courage of one’s convictions but the courage to use materials officially censured by the government.” 619 F. Supp., at 1124-1125.
An obvious flaw in this reasoning is that the materials that satisfy the definition of “political propaganda” are not “materials officially censured by the government.” The statutory term is a neutral one, and in any event, the Department of Justice makes no public announcement that the materials are “political propaganda.”
“What emerged from extended Congressional investigations, hearings and deliberations was this Act, intended to provide an appropriate method to obtain information essential for the proper evaluation of political propaganda emanating from hired agents of foreign countries. As the House and Senate Committees considering the Bill said, it ‘does not in any way impair the right of freedom of speech, or of a free press, or other constitutional rights.’ Resting on the fundamental constitutional principle that our people, adequately informed, may be trusted to distinguish between the true and the false, the bill is intended to label information of foreign origin so that hearers and readers may not be deceived by the belief that the information comes from a disinterested source. Such legislation implements rather than detracts from the prized freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. No strained interpretation should frustrate its essential purpose.” Viereck v. United States, 318 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:
|
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 Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question whether States and state agencies are subject to suit in federal court by litigants seeking retroactive monetary relief under § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U. S. C. § 794, or whether such suits are proscribed by the Eleventh Amendment.
I — I
Respondent, Douglas James Scanlon, suffers from diabetes mellitus and has no sight in one eye. In November 1979, he filed this action against petitioners, Atascadero State Hospital and the California Department of Mental Health, in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, alleging that in 1978 the hospital denied him employment as a graduate student assistant recreational therapist solely because of his physical handicaps. Respondent charged that the hospital’s discriminatory refusal to hire him violated § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 87 Stat. 394, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 794, and certain state fair employment laws. Respondent sought compensatory, injunc-tive, and declaratory relief.
Petitioners moved for dismissal of the complaint on the ground that the Eleventh Amendment barred the federal court from entertaining respondent’s claims. Alternatively, petitioners argued that in a suit for employment discrimination under §504 of the Rehabilitation Act, a plaintiff must allege that the primary objective of the federal assistance received by the defendants is to provide employment, and that respondent’s case should be dismissed because he did not so allege. In January 1980, the District Court granted petitioners’ motion to dismiss the complaint on the ground that respondent’s claims were barred by the Eleventh Amendment. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. Scanlon v. Atascadero State Hospital, 677 F. 2d 1271 (1982). It did not reach the question whether the Eleventh Amendment proscribed respondent’s suit. Rather it affirmed the District Court on the ground that respondent failed to allege an essential element of a claim under §504, namely, that a primary objective of the federal funds received by the defendants was to provide employment. Id., at 1272.
Respondent then sought review by this Court. We granted certiorari, 465 U. S. 1095 (1984), vacated the judgment of the Court of Appeals, and remanded the case for further consideration in light of Consolidated Rail Corporation v. Darrone, 465 U. S. 624 (1984), in which we held that §504’s bar on employment discrimination is not limited to programs that receive federal aid for the primary purpose of providing employment. Id., at 632-633. On remand, the Court of Appeals reversed the judgment of the District Court. It held that “the Eleventh Amendment does not bar [respondent’s] action because the State, if it has participated in and received funds from programs under the Rehabilitation Act, has implicitly consented to be sued as a recipient under 29 U. S. C. §794.” 735 F. 2d 359, 362 (1984). Although noting that the Rehabilitation Act did not expressly abrogate the States’ Eleventh Amendment immunity, the court reasoned that a State’s consent to suit in federal court could be inferred from its participation in programs funded by the Act. The court based its view on the fact that the Act provided remedies, procedures, and rights against “any recipient of Federal assistance” while implementing regulations expressly defined the class of recipients to include the States. Quoting our decision in Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651, 672 (1974), the court determined that the “‘threshold fact of congressional authorization to sue a class of defendants which literally includes [the] States’ ” was present in this case. 735 F. 2d, at 361.
The court’s decision in this case is in conflict with those of the Courts of Appeals for the First and Eighth Circuits. See Ciampa v. Massachusetts Rehabilitation Comm’n, 718 F. 2d 1 (CA1 1983); Miener v. Missouri, 673 F. 2d 969 (CA8), cert. denied, 459 U. S. 909 (1982). We granted certiorari to resolve this conflict, 469 U. S. 1032 (1984), and we now reverse.
II
The Eleventh Amendment provides: “The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.” As we have recognized, the significance of this Amendment “lies in its affirmation that the fundamental principle of sovereign immunity limits the grant of judicial authority in Art. Ill” of the Constitution. Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U. S. 89, 98 (1984) (Pennhurst II). Thus, in Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U. S. 1 (1890), the Court held that the Amendment barred a citizen from bringing a suit against his own State in federal court, even though the express terms of the Amendment do not so provide.
There are, however, certain well-established exceptions to the reach of the Eleventh Amendment. For example, if a State waives its immunity and consents to suit in federal court, the Eleventh Amendment does not bar the action. See, e. g., Clark v. Barnard, 108 U. S. 436, 447 (1883). Moreover, the Eleventh Amendment is “necessarily limited by the enforcement provisions of §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment,” that is, by Congress’ power “to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the substantive provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U. S. 445, 456 (1976). As a result, when acting pursuant to § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress can abrogate the Eleventh Amendment without the States’ consent. Ibid.
But because the Eleventh Amendment implicates the fundamental constitutional balance between the Federal Government and the States, this Court consistently has held that these exceptions apply only when certain specific conditions are met. Thus, we have held that a State will be deemed to have waived its immunity “only where stated ‘by the most express language or by such overwhelming implication from the text as [will] leave no room for any other reasonable construction.’” Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S., at 673, quoting Murray v. Wilson Distilling Co., 213 U. S. 151, 171 (1909). Likewise, in determining whether Congress in exercising its Fourteenth Amendment powers has abrogated the States’ Eleventh Amendment immunity, we have required “an unequivocal expression of congressional intent to ‘overturn the constitutionally guaranteed immunity of the several States.’” Pennhurst II, 465 U. S., at 99, quoting Quern v. Jordan, 440 U. S. 332, 342 (1979). Accord, Employees v. Missouri Dept. of Public Health and Welfare, 411 U. S. 279 (1973).
In this case, we are asked to decide whether the State of California is subject to suit in federal court for alleged violations of § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Respondent makes three arguments in support of his view that the Eleventh Amendment does not bar such a suit: first, that the State has waived its immunity by virtue of Art. Ill, § 5, of the California Constitution; second, that in enacting the Rehabilitation Act, Congress has abrogated the constitutional immunity of the States; third, that by accepting federal funds under the Rehabilitation Act, the State has consented to suit in federal court. Under the prior decisions of this Court, none of these claims has merit.
HH HH J — i
Respondent argues that the State of California has waived its immunity to suit in federal court, and thus the Eleventh Amendment does not bar this suit. See Clark v. Barnard, 108 U. S. 486 (1883). Respondent relies on Art. Ill, § 5, of the California Constitution, which provides: “Suits may be brought against the State in such manner and in such courts as shall be directed by law.” In respondent’s view, unless the California Legislature affirmatively imposes sovereign immunity, the State is potentially subject to suit in any court, federal as well as state.
The test for determining whether a State has waived its immunity from federal-court jurisdiction is a stringent one. Although a State’s general waiver of sovereign immunity may subject it to suit in state court, it is not enough to waive the immunity guaranteed by the Eleventh Amendment. Florida Dept. of Health v. Florida Nursing Home Assn., 450 U. S. 147, 150 (1981) (per curiam). As we explained just last Term, “a State’s constitutional interest in immunity encompasses not merely whether it may be sued, but where it may be sued.” Pennhurst II, supra, at 99. Thus, in order for a state statute or constitutional provision to constitute a waiver of Eleventh Amendment immunity, it must specify the State’s intention to subject itself to suit in federal court. See Smith v. Reeves, 178 U. S. 436, 441 (1900); Great Northern Life Insurance Co. v. Read, 322 U. S. 47, 54 (1944). In view of these principles, we do not believe that Art. Ill, § 5, of the California Constitution constitutes a waiver of the State’s constitutional immunity. This provision does not specifically indicate the State’s willingness to be sued in federal court. Indeed, the provision appears simply to authorize the legislature to waive the State’s sovereign immunity. In the absence of an unequivocal waiver specifically applicable to federal-court jurisdiction, we decline to find that California has waived its constitutional immunity.
IV
Respondent also contends that in enacting the Rehabilitation Act, Congress abrogated the States’ constitutional immunity. In making this argument, respondent relies on the pre- and post-enactment legislative history of the Act and inferences from general statutory language. To reach respondent’s conclusion, we would have to temper the requirement, well established in our cases, that Congress unequivocally express its intention to abrogate the Eleventh Amendment bar to suits against the States in federal court. Pennhwrst II, supra, at 99; Quern v. Jordan, supra, at 342-345. We decline to do so, and affirm that Congress may abrogate the States’ constitutionally secured immunity from suit in federal court only by making its intention unmistakably clear in the language of the statute. The fundamental nature of the interests implicated by the Eleventh Amendment dictates this conclusion.
Only recently the Court reiterated that “the States occupy a special and specific position in our constitutional system . . . .” Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U. S. 528, 547 (1985). The “constitutionally mandated balance of power” between the States and the Federal Government was adopted by the Framers to ensure the protection of “our fundamental liberties.” Id., at 572 (Powell, J., dissenting). By guaranteeing the sovereign immunity of the States against suit in federal court, the Eleventh Amendment serves to maintain this balance. “Our reluctance to infer that a State’s immunity from suit .in the federal courts has been negated stems from recognition of the vital role of the doctrine of sovereign immunity in our federal system.” Pennhurst II, supra, at 99.
Congress’ power to abrogate a State’s immunity means that in certain circumstances the usual constitutional balance between the States and the Federal Government does not obtain. “Congress may, in determining what is ‘appropriate legislation’ for the purpose of enforcing the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, provide for private suits against States or state officials which are constitutionally impermissible in other contexts.” Fitzpatrick, 427 U. S., at 456. In view of this fact, it is incumbent upon the federal courts to be certain of Congress’ intent before finding that federal law overrides the guarantees of the Eleventh Amendment. The requirement that Congress unequivocally express this intention in the statutory language ensures such certainty.
It is also significant that in determining whether Congress has abrogated the States’ Eleventh Amendment immunity, the courts themselves must decide whether their own jurisdiction has been expanded. Although it is of course the duty of this Court “to say what the law is,” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803), it is appropriate that we rely only on the clearest indications in holding that Congress has enhanced our power. See American Fire & Cas. Co. v. Finn, 341 U. S. 6, 17 (1951) (“The jurisdiction of the federal courts is carefully guarded against expansion by judicial interpretation . . .”).
For these reasons, we hold — consistent with Quern, Edel-man, and Pennhurst II — that Congress must express its intention to abrogate the Eleventh Amendment in unmistakable language in the statute itself.
In light of this principle, we must determine whether Congress, in adopting the Rehabilitation Act, has chosen to override the Eleventh Amendment. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act provides in pertinent part:
“No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States, as defined in section 706(7) of this title, shall, solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance or under any program or activity conducted by any Executive agency or by the United States Postal Service.” 87 Stat. 394, as amended and as set forth in 29 U. S. C. § 794.
Section 505, which was added to the Act in 1978, as set forth in 29 U. S. C. § 794a, describes the available remedies under the Act, including the provisions pertinent to this case:
“(a)(2) The remedies, procedures, and rights set forth in title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 [42 U. S. C. §2000d et seq.] shall be available to any person aggrieved by any act or failure to act by any recipient of Federal assistance or Federal provider of such assistance under section 794 of this title.
“(b) In any action or proceeding to enforce or charge a violation of a provision of this subchapter, the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the costs.”
The statute thus provides remedies for violations of § 504 by “any recipient of Federal assistance.” There is no claim here that the State of California is not a recipient of federal aid under the statute. But given their constitutional role, the States are not like any other class of recipients of federal aid. A general authorization for suit in federal court is not the kind of unequivocal statutory language sufficient to abrogate the Eleventh Amendment. When Congress chooses to subject the States to federal jurisdiction, it must do so specifically. Pennhurst II, 465 U. S., at 99, citing Quern v. Jordan, 440 U. S. 332 (1979). Accordingly, we hold that the Rehabilitation Act does not abrogate the Eleventh Amendment bar to suits against the States.
V
Finally, we consider the position adopted by the Court of Appeals that the State consented to suit in federal court by accepting funds under the Rehabilitation Act. 735 F. 2d, at 361-362. In reaching this conclusion, the Court of Appeals relied on “the extensive provisions [of the Act] under which the states are the express intended recipients of federal assistance.” Id., at 360. It reasoned that “this is a case in which a ‘congressional enactment... by its terms authorized suit by designated plaintiffs against a general class of defendants which literally included States or state instru-mentalities,’ and ‘the State by its participation in the program authorized by Congress had in effect consented to the abrogation of that immunity,”’ id., at 361, citing Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S., at 672. The Court of Appeals thus concluded that if the State “has participated in and received funds from programs under the Rehabilitation Act, [it] has implicitly consented to be sued as a recipient under 29 U. S. C. §794.” 735 F. 2d, at 362.
The court properly recognized that the mere receipt of federal funds cannot establish that a State has consented to suit in federal court. Ibid., citing Florida Dept. of Health v. Florida Nursing Home Assn., 450 U. S., at 150; Edelman v. Jordan, supra, at 673. The court erred, however, in concluding that because various provisions of the Rehabilitation Act are addressed to the States, a State necessarily consents to suit in federal court by participating in programs funded under the statute. We have decided today that the Rehabilitation Act does not evince an unmistakable congressional purpose, pursuant to § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, to subject unconsenting States to the jurisdiction of the federal courts. The Act likewise falls far short of manifesting a clear intent to condition participation in the programs funded under the Act on a State’s consent to waive its constitutional immunity. Thus, were we to view this statute as an enactment pursuant to the Spending Clause, Art. I, § 8, see n. 4, supra, we would hold that there was no indication that the State of California consented to federal jurisdiction.
<1 I — I
The provisions of the Rehabilitation Act fall far short of expressing an unequivocal congressional intent to abrogate the States’ Eleventh Amendment immunity. Nor has the State of California specifically waived its immunity to suit in federal court. In view of these determinations, the judgment of the Court of Appeals must be reversed.
It is so ordered.
A State may effectuate a waiver of its constitutional immunity by a state statute or constitutional provision, or by otherwise waiving its immunity to suit in the context of a particular federal program. In each of these situations, we require an unequivocal indication that the State intends to consent to federal jurisdiction that otherwise would be barred by the Eleventh Amendment. As we said in Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651, 673 (1974), “[clonstructive consent is not a doctrine commonly associated with the surrender of constitutional rights, and we see no place for it here.”
Justice Brennan’s dissent repeatedly asserts that established Eleventh Amendment doctrine is not “grounded on principles essential to the structure of our federal system or necessary to protect the cherished constitutional liberties of our people . . . Post, at 247-248; see also post, at 258, 302. We believe, however, that our Eleventh Amendment doctrine is necessary to support the view of the federal system held by the Framers of the Constitution. See n. 3, infra. The Framers believed that the States played a vital role in our system and that strong state governments were essential to serve as a “counterpoise” to the power of the Federal Government. See, e. g., The Federalist No. 17, p. 107 (J. Cooke ed. 1961); The Federalist No. 46, p. 316 (J. Cooke ed. 1961). The “new evidence,” discovered by the dissent in The Federalist and in the records of the state ratifying conventions, has been available to historians and Justices of this Court for almost two centuries. Viewed in isolation, some of it is subject to varying interpretations. But none of the Framers questioned that the Constitution created a federal system with some authority expressly granted the Federal Government and the remainder retained by the several States. See, e. g., The Federalist Nos. 39, 45. The Constitution never would have been ratified if the States and their courts were to be stripped of their sovereign authority except as expressly provided by the Constitution itself.
The principle that the jurisdiction of the federal courts is limited by the sovereign immunity of the States “is, without question, a reflection of concern for the sovereignty of the States . . . .” Employees v. Missouri Dept. of Public Health and Welfare, 411 U. S. 279, 293 (1973) (Marshall, J., concurring in result). As the Court explained almost 65 years ago:
“That a State may not be sued without its consent is a fundamental rule of jurisprudence having so important a bearing upon the construction of the Constitution of the United States that it has become established by repeated decisions of this court that the entire judicial power granted by the Constitution does not embrace authority to entertain a suit brought by private parties against the State without consent given: not one brought by citizens of another State, or by citizens or subjects of a foreign State, because of the Eleventh Amendment; and not even one brought by its own citizens, because of the fundamental rule of which the Amendment is but an exemplification.” Ex parte New York, 256 U. S. 490, 497 (1921) (citations omitted).
See also cases cited in n. 3, infra.
Justice Brennan’s dissent also argues that in the absence of jurisdiction in the federal courts, the States are “exemp[t] . . . from compliance with laws that bind every other legal actor in our Nation.” Post, at 248. This claim wholly misconceives our federal system. As Justice Marshall has noted, “the issue is not the general immunity of the States from private suit. . . but merely the susceptibility of the States to suit before federal tribunals.” Employees v. Missouri Dept. of Public Health and Welfare, supra, at 293-294 (concurring in result) (emphasis added). It denigrates the judges who serve on the state courts to suggest that they will not enforce the supreme law of the land. See Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 1 Wheat. 304, 341-344 (1816). See also Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 493, n. 35 (1976), and post, at 256, n. 8.
In a remarkable view of stare decisis, Justice Brennan’s dissent states that our decision today evinces a “lack of respect for precedent.” Post, at 258. Not a single authority is cited for this claim. In fact, adoption of the dissent’s position would require us to overrule numerous decisions of this Court. However one may view the merits of the dissent’s historical argument, the principle of Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U. S. 1 (1890), that “the fundamental principle of sovereign immunity limits the grant of judicial authority in Art. Ill,” Pennhurst II, 465 U. S., at 98, has been affirmed time and time again, up to the present day. E. g., North Carolina v. Temple, 134 U. S. 22, 30 (1890); Fitts v. McGhee, 172 U. S. 516, 524 (1899); Bell v. Mississippi, 177 U. S. 693 (1900); Smith v. Reeves, 178 U. S. 436, 446 (1900); Palmer v. Ohio, 248 U. S. 32, 34 (1918); Duhne v. New Jersey, 251 U. S. 311, 313 (1920); Ex parte New York, 256 U. S., at 497; Missouri v. Fiske, 290 U. S. 18, 26 (1933); Great Northern Life Insurance Co. v. Read, 322 U. S. 47, 51 (1944); Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury of Indiana, 323 U. S. 459, 464 (1945); Georgia Railroad & Banking Co. v. Redwine, 342 U. S. 299, 304, n. 13 (1952); Farden v. Terminal Railway of Ala. Docks Dept., 377 U. S. 184, 186 (1964); United States v. Mississippi, 380 U. S. 128, 140 (1965); Employees v. Missouri Public Health and Welfare Dept., 411 U. S., at 280; Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S., at 662-663; Pennhurst II, supra. Justice Brennan long has maintained that the settled view of Hans v. Louisiana, as established in the holdings and reasoning of the above cited cases, is wrong. See, e. g., County of Oneida v. Oneida Indian Nation, 470 U. S. 226, 254 (1985) (Brennan, J., dissenting in part); Pennhurst II, supra, at 125 (Brennan, J., dissenting); Employees v. Missouri Dept. of Public Health and Welfare, supra, at 298 (Brennan, J., dissenting); Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S., at 687 (Brennan, J., dissenting). It is a view, of course, that he is entitled to hold. But the Court has never accepted it, and we see no reason to make a further response to the scholarly, 55-page elaboration of it today.
In a dissent expressing his willingness to overrule Edelman v. Jordan, supra, as well as at least 16 other Supreme Court decisions that have followed Hans v. Louisiana, see supra, Justice Stevens would “further unrave[l] the doctrine of stare decisis,” Florida Dept. of Health v. Florida Nursing Home Assn., 450 U. S. 147, 155 (1981), because he views the Court’s decision in Pennhurst II as “repudiat[ing] at least 28 cases. ” Post, at 304, citing Pennhurst II, supra, at 165-166, n. 50 (Stevens, J., dissenting). We previously have addressed at length his allegation that the decision in Pennhurst II overruled precedents of this Court, and decline to do so again here. See Pennhurst II, supra, at 109-111, nn. 19, 20, and 21. Justice Stevens would ignore stare decisis in this case because in the view of a minority of the Court two prior decisions of the Court ignored it. This reasoning would indeed “unravel” a doctrine upon which the rule of law depends.
Petitioners assert that the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 does not represent an exercise of Congress’ Fourteenth Amendment authority, but was enacted pursuant to the Spending Clause, Art. I, § 8, cl. 1. Petitioners conceded below, however, that the Rehabilitation Act was passed pursuant to § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, we first analyze § 504 in light of Congress’ power under the Fourteenth Amendment to subject uncon-senting States to federal court jurisdiction. See Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U. S. 445 (1976). In Part V, infra, at 246, we address the reasoning of the Court of Appeals and conclude that by accepting funds under the Act, the State did not “implicitly consen[t] to be sued . . . .” 735 F. 2d 359, 362 (1984).
Although the Court of Appeals seemed to state that the Rehabilitation Act was adopted pursuant to § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, by focusing on whether the State consented to federal jurisdiction it engaged in analysis relevant to Spending Clause enactments.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Challenged here is the legality of an affirmative action plan- — collectively bargained by an employer and a union— that reserves for black employees 50% of the openings in an in-plant craft-training program until the percentage of black craftworkers in the plant is commensurate with the percentage of blacks in the local labor force. The question for decision is whether Congress, in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq., left employers and unions in the private sector free to take such race-conscious steps to eliminate manifest racial imbalances in traditionally segregated job categories. We hold that Title VII does not prohibit such race-conscious affirmative action plans.
I
In 1974, petitioner United Steelworkers of America (USWA) and petitioner Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp. (Kaiser) entered into a master collective-bargaining agreement covering terms and conditions of employment at 15 Kaiser plants. The agreement contained, inter alia, an affirmative action plan designed to eliminate conspicuous racial imbalances in Kaiser’s then almost exclusively white craftwork forces. Black craft-hiring goals were set for each Kaiser plant equal to the percentage of blacks in the respective local labor forces. To enable plants to meet these goals, on-the-job training programs were established to teach unskilled production workers — black and white — -the skills necessary to become craft-workers. The plan reserved for black employees 50% of the openings in these newly created in-plant training programs.
This case arose from the operation of the plan at Kaiser’s plant in Gramercy, La. Until 1974, Kaiser hired as craft-workers for that plant only persons who had had prior craft experience. Because blacks had long been excluded from craft unions, few were able to present such credentials. As a consequence, prior to 1974 only 1.83% (5 out of 273) of the skilled craftworkers at the Gramercy plant were black, even though the work force in the Gramercy area was approximately 39% black.
Pursuant to the national agreement Kaiser altered its craft-hiring practice in the Gramercy plant. Rather than hiring already trained outsiders, Kaiser established a training program to train its production workers to fill craft openings. Selection of craft trainees was made on the basis of seniority, with the proviso that at least 50% of the new trainees were to be black until the percentage of black skilled craftworkers in the Gramercy plant approximated the percentage of blacks in the local labor force. See 415 F. Supp. 761, 764.
During 1974, the first year of the operation of the Kaiser-USWA affirmative action plan, 13 craft trainees were selected from Gramercy’s production work force. Of these, seven were black and six white. The most senior black selected into the program had less seniority than several white production workers whose bids for admission were, rejected. Thereafter one of those white production workers, respondent Brian Weber (hereafter respondent), instituted this class action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
The complaint alleged that the filling of craft trainee positions at the Gramercy plant pursuant to the affirmative action program had resulted in junior black employees’ receiving training in preference to senior white employees, thus discriminating against respondent and other similarly situated white employees in violation of §§703 (a) and (d) of Title VII. The District Court held that the plan violated Title VII, entered a judgment in favor of the plaintiff class, and granted a permanent injunction prohibiting Kaiser and the USWA “from denying plaintiffs, Brian F. Weber and all other members of the class, access to on-the-job training programs on the basis of race.” App.171. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed, holding that all employment preferences based upon race, including those preferences incidental to bona fide affirmative action plans, violated Title VII's prohibition against racial discrimination in employment. 563 F. 2d 216 (1977). We granted certiorari. 439 U. S. 1045 (1978). We reverse.
II
We emphasize at the outset the narrowness of our inquiry. Since the Kaiser-USWA plan does not involve state action, this case does not present an alleged violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Further, since the Kaiser-USWA plan was adopted voluntarily, we are not concerned with what Title VII requires or with what a court might order to remedy a past proved violation of the Act. The only question before us is the narrow statutory issue of whether Title VII forbids private employers and unions from voluntarily agreeing upon bona fide affirmative action plans that accord racial preferences in the manner and for the purpose provided in the Kaiser-USWA plan. That question was expressly left open in McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transp. Co., 427 U. S. 273, 281 n. 8 (1976), which held, in a case not involving affirmative action, that Title YII protects whites as well as blacks from certain forms of racial discrimination.
Respondent argues that Congress intended in Title VII to prohibit all race-conscious affirmative action plans. Respondent’s argument rests upon a literal interpretation of §§ 703 (a) and (d) of the Act. Those sections make it unlawful to “discriminate . . . because of . . . race” in hiring and in the selection of apprentices for- training programs. Since, the argument runs, McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transp. Co., supra, settled that Title YII forbids discrimination against whites as well as blacks, and since the Kaiser-USWA affirmative action plan operates to discriminate against white employees solely because they are white, it follows that the Kaiser-USWA plan violates Title VII.
Respondent’s argument is not without force. But it overlooks the significance of the fact that the Kaiser-USWA plan is an affirmative action plan voluntarily adopted by private parties to eliminate traditional patterns of racial segregation. In this context respondent’s reliance upon a literal construction of §§ 703 (a) and (d) and upon McDonald is misplaced. See McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transp. Co., supra, at 281 n. 8. It is a “familiar rule, that a thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute, because not within its spirit, nor within the intention of its makers.” Holy Trinity Church v. United States, 143 U. S. 457, 459 (1892). The prohibition against racial discrimination in §§ 703 (a) and (d) of Title VII must therefore be read against the background of the legislative history of Title VII and the historical context from which the Act arose. See Train v. Colorado Public Interest Research Group, 426 U. S. 1, 10 (1976); National Woodwork Mfrs. Assn. v. NLRB, 386 U. S. 612, 620 (1967); United States v. American Trucking Assns., 310 U. S. 534, 543-544 (1940). Examination of those sources makes clear that an interpretation of the sections that forbade all race-conscious affirmative action would “bring about an end completely at variance with the purpose of the statute” and must be rejected. United States v. Public Utilities Comm’n, 345 U. S. 295, 315 (1953). See Johansen v. United States, 343 U. S. 427, 431 (1952); Longshoremen v. Juneau Spruce Corp., 342 U. S. 237, 243 (1952); Texas & Pacific R. Co. v. Abilene Cotton Oil Co., 204 U. S. 426 (1907).
Congress’ primary concern in enacting the prohibition against racial discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was with “the plight of the Negro in our economy.” 110 Cong. Rec. 6548 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Humphrey) . Before 1964, blacks were largely relegated to “unskilled and semi-skilled jobs.” Ibid, (remarks of Sen. Humphrey); id., at 7204 (remarks of Sen. Clark); id., at 7379-7380 (remarks of Sen. Kennedy). Because of automation the number of such jobs was rapidly decreasing. See id., at 6548 (remarks of Sen. Humphrey); id., at 7204 (remarks of Sen. Clark). As a consequence, “the relative position of the Negro worker [was] steadily worsening. In 1947 the nonwhite unemployment rate was only 64 percent higher than the white rate; in 1962 it was 124 percent higher.” Id., at 6547 (remarks of Sen. Humphrey). See also id., at 7204 (remarks of Sen. Clark). Congress considered this a serious social problem. As Senator Clark told the Senate:
“The rate of Negro unemployment has gone up consistently as compared with white unemployment for the past 15 years. This is a social malaise and a social situation which we should not tolerate. That is one of the principal reasons why the bill should pass.” Id., at 7220.
Congress feared that the goals of the Civil Rights Act— the integration of blacks into the mainstream of American society — could not be achieved unless this trend were reversed. And Congress recognized that that would not be possible unless blacks were able to secure jobs “which have a future.” Id., at 7204 (remarks of Sen. Clark). See also id., at 7379-7380 (remarks of Sen. Kennedy). As Senator Humphrey explained to the Senate:
“What good does it do a Negro to be able to eat in a fine restaurant if he cannot afford to pay the bill? What good does it do him to be accepted in a hotel that is too expensive for his modest income? How can a Negro child be motivated to take full advantage of integrated educational facilities if he has no hope of getting a job where he can use that education?” Id., at 6547.
“Without a job, one cannot afford public convenience and accommodations. Income from employment may be necessary to further a man’s education, or that of his children. If his children have no hope of getting a good job, what will motivate them to take advantage of educational opportunities?” Id., at 6552.
These remarks echoed President Kennedy’s original message to Congress upon the introduction of the Civil Rights Act in 1963.
“There is little value in a Negro’s obtaining the right to be admitted to hotels and restaurants if he has no cash in his pocket and no job.” 109 Cong. Rec. 11159.
Accordingly, it was clear to Congress that “[t]he crux of the problem [was] to open employment opportunities for Negroes in occupations which have been traditionally closed to them,” 110 Cong. Rec. 6548 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Humphrey), and it was to this problem that Title'VII’s prohibition against racial discrimination in employment was primarily addressed.
It plainly appears from the House Report accompanying the Civil Rights Act that Congress did not intend wholly to prohibit private and voluntary affirmative action efforts as one method of solving this problem. The Report provides:
“No bill can or should lay claim to eliminating all of the causes and consequences of racial and other types of discrimination against minorities. There is reason to believe, however, that national leadership provided by the enactment of Federal legislation dealing with the most troublesome problems will create an atmosphere conducive to voluntary or local resolution of other forms of discrimination." H. R. Rep. No. 914, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1, p. 18 (1963). (Emphasis supplied.)
Given this legislative history, we cannot agree with respondent that Congress intended to prohibit the private sector from taking effective steps to accomplish the goal that Congress designed Title VII to achieve. The very statutory words intended as a spur or catalyst to cause “employers and unions to self-examine and to self-evaluate their employment practices and to endeavor to eliminate, so far as possible, the last vestiges of an unfortunate and ignominious page in this country's history,” Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U. S. 405, 418 (1975), cannot be interpreted as an absolute prohibition against all private, voluntary, race-conscious affirmative action efforts to hasten the elimination of such vestiges. It would be ironic indeed if a law triggered by a Nation's concern over centuries of racial injustice and intended to improve the lot of those who had “been excluded from the American dream for so long,” 110 Cong. Rec. 6552 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Humphrey), constituted the first legislative prohibition of all voluntary, private, race-conscious efforts to abolish traditional patterns of racial segregation and hierarchy.
Our conclusion is further reinforced by examination of the language and legislative history of § 703 (j) of Title VII. Opponents of Title VII raised two related arguments against the bill. First, they argued that the Act would be interpreted to require employers with racially imbalanced work forces to grant preferential treatment to racial minorities in order to integrate. Second, they argued that employers with racially imbalanced work forces would grant preferential treatment to racial minorities, even if not required to do so by the Act. See 110 Cong. Rec. 8618-8619 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Sparkman). Had Congress meant to prohibit all race-conscious affirmative action, as respondent urges, it easily could have answered both objections by providing that Title VII would not require or permit racially preferential integration efforts. But Congress did not choose such a course. Rather, Congress added § 703 (j) which addresses only the first objection. The section provides that nothing contained in Title VII “shall be interpreted to require any employer ... to grant preferential treatment... to any group because of the race ... of such . . . group on account of” a de jacto racial imbalance in the employer’s work force. The section does not state that “nothing in Title VII shall be interpreted to permit” voluntary affirmative efforts to correct racial imbalances. The natural inference is that Congress chose not to forbid all voluntary race-conscious affirmative action.
The reasons for this choice are evident from the legislative record. Title VII could not have been enacted into law without substantial support from legislators in both Houses who traditionally resisted federal regulation of private business. Those legislators demanded as a price for their support that “management prerogatives, and union freedoms ... be left undisturbed to the greatest extent possible.” H. R. Rep. No. 914, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 2, p. 29 (1963). Section 703 (j) was proposed by Senator Dirksen to allay any fears that the Act might be interpreted in such a way as to upset this compromise. The section was designed to prevent § 703 of Title VII from being interpreted in such a way as to lead to undue “Federal Government interference with private businesses because of some Federal employee’s ideas about racial balance or racial imbalance.” 110 Cong. Rec. 14314 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Miller). See also id., at 9881 (remarks of Sen. Allott); id., at 10520 (remarks of Sen. Carlson); id., at 11471 (remarks of Sen. Javits); id., at 12817 (remarks of Sen. Dirksen). Clearly, a prohibition against all voluntary, race-conscious, affirmative action efforts would disserve these ends. Such a prohibition would augment the powers of the Federal Government and diminish traditional management prerogatives while at the same time impeding attainment of the ultimate statutory goals. In view of this legislative history and in view of Congress’ desire to avoid undue federal regulation of private businesses, use of the word “require” rather than the phrase “require or permit” in § 703 (j) fortifies the conclusion that Congress did not intend to limit traditional business freedom to such a degree as to prohibit all voluntary, race-conscious affirmative action.
We therefore hold that Title VIPs prohibition in §§ 703 (a) and (d) against racial discrimination does not condemn all private, voluntary, race-conscious affirmative action plans.
Ill
We need not today define in detail the line of demarcation between permissible and impermissible affirmative action plans. It suffices to hold that the challenged Kaiser-USWA affirmative action plan falls on the permissible side of the line. The purposes of the plan mirror those of the statute. Both were designed to break down old patterns of racial segregation and hierarchy. Both were-structured to “open employment opportunities for Negroes in occupations which have been traditionally closed to them.” 110 Cong. Rec. 6548 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Humphrey).
At the same time, the plan does not unnecessarily trammel the interests of the white employees. The plan does not require the discharge of white workers and their replacement with new black hirees. Cf. McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transp. Co., 427 U. S. 273 (1976). Nor does the plan create an absolute bar to the advancement of white employees; half of those trained in the program will be white. Moreover, the plan is a temporary measure; it is not intended to maintain racial balance, but simply to eliminate a manifest racial imbalance. Preferential selection of craft trainees at the Gramercy plant will end as soon as the percentage of black skilled craftworkers in the Gramercy plant approximates the percentage of blacks in the local labor force. See 415 F. Supp., at 763.
We conclude, therefore, that the adoption of the Kaiser-USWA plan for the Gramercy plant falls within the area of discretion left by Title VII to the private sector voluntarily to adopt affirmative action plans designed to eliminate conspicuous racial imbalance in traditionally segregated job categories. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Powell and Mr. Justice Stevens took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
Judicial findings of exclusion from crafts on racial grounds are so numerous as to make such exclusion a proper subject for judicial notice. See, e. g., United States v. Elevator Constructors, 538 F. 2d 1012 (CA3 1976); Associated General Contractors of Massachusetts v. Altschuler, 490 F. 2d 9 (CA1 1973); Southern Illinois Builders Assn. v. Ogilvie, 471 F. 2d 680 (CA7 1972); Contractors Assn, of Eastern Pennsylvania v. Secretary of Labor, 442 F. 2d 159 (CA3 1971); Insulators & Asbestos Workers v. Vogler, 407 F. 2d 1047 (CA5 1969); Buckner v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 339 F. Supp. 1108 (ND Ala. 1972), aff’d without opinion, 476 F. 2d 1287 (CA5 1973). See also U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, The Challenge Ahead: Equal Opportunity in Referral Unions 58-94 (1976) (summarizing judicial findings of discrimination by craft unions) ; G. Myrdal, An American Dilemma 1079-1124 (1944); F. Marshall & V. Briggs, The Negro and Apprenticeship (1967); S. Spero & A. Harris, The Black Worker (1931); U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, Employment 97 (1961); State Advisory Committees, U. S. Commission on Civil Rights, 50 States Report 209 (1961); Marshall, The Negro in Southern Unions, in The Negro and the American Labor Movement 145 (J. Jacobson ed. 1968); App. 63, 104.
Section 703 (a), 78 Stat. 255, as amended, 86 Stat. 109, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-2 (a), provides:
“(a) ... It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer— “(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or
“(2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.''
Section 703 (d), 78 Stat. 256, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-2 (d), provides:
“It shall be an unlawful employment practice for any employer, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee controlling apprenticeship or other training or retraining, including on-the-job training programs to discriminate against any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in admission to, or employment in, any program established to provide apprenticeship or other training.''
The problem that Congress addressed in 1964 remains with us. In 1962, the nonwhite unemployment rate was 124% higher than the white rate. See 110 Cong. Rec. 6547 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Humphrey). In 1978, the black unemployment rate was 129% higher. See Monthly Labor Review, U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics 78 (Mar. 1979).
Section 703 (j) of Title VII, 78 Stat. 257, 42 U. S. C. §2000e-2 (j), provides:
“Nothing contained in this title shall be interpreted to require any employer, employment agency, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee subject to this title to grant preferential treatment to any individual or to any group because of the race, color, religion, sex, or national origin of such individual or group on account of an imbalance which may exist with respect to the total number or percentage of persons of any race, color, religion, sex, or national origin employed by any employer, referred or classified for employment by any employment agency or labor organization, admitted to membership or classified by any labor organization, or admitted to, or employed in, any apprenticeship or other training program, in comparison with the total number or percentage of persons of such race, color, religiofi sex, or national origin in any community, State, section, or other area, or in the available work force in any community, State, section, or other area.”
Section 703 (j) speaks to substantive liability under Title VII, but it does not preclude courts from considering racial imbalance as evidence of a Title VII violation. See Teamsters v. United States, 431 U. S. 324, 339-340, n. 20 (1977). Remedies for substantive violations are governed by § 706 (g), 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-5 (g).
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, considered in University of California Regents v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265 (1978), contains no provision comparable to §703 (j). This is because Title VI was an exercise of federal power over a matter in which the Federal Government was already directly involved: the prohibitions against race-based conduct contained in Title VI governed “program[s] or activities] receiving Federal financial assistance.” 42 U. S. C. § 2000d. Congress was legislating to assure federal funds would not be used in an improper manner. Title VII, by contrast, was enacted pursuant to the commerce power to regulate purely private decisionmaking and was not intended to incorporate and particularize the commands of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Title VII and Title VI, therefore, cannot be read in pari materia. See 110 Cong. Rec. 8315 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Cooper). See also id., at 11615 (remarks of Sen. Cooper).
Respondent argues that our construction of § 703 conflicts with various remarks in the legislative record. See, e. g., 110 Cong. Rec. 7213 (1964) (Sens. Clark and Case); id., at 7218 (Sens. Clark and Case); id., at 6549 (Sen. Humphrey); id., at 8921 (Sen. Williams). We do not agree. In Senator Humphrey’s words, these comments were intended as assurances that Title VII would not allow establishment of systems “to maintain racial balance in employment.” Id., at 11848 (emphasis added). They were not addressed to temporary, voluntary, affirmative action measures undertaken to eliminate manifest racial imbalance in traditionally segregated job categories. Moreover, the comments referred to by respondent all preceded the adoption of §703 (j), 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-2 (j). After § 703 (j) was adopted, congressional comments were all to the effect that employers would not be required to institute preferential quotas to avoid Title VII liability, see, e. g., 110 Cong. Rec. 12819 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Dirksen); id., at 13079-13080 (remarks of Sen. Clark); id., at 15876 (remarks of Rep. Lindsay). There was no suggestion after the adoption of § 703 (j) that wholly voluntary, race-conscious, affirmative action efforts would in themselves constitute a violation of Title VII. On the contrary, as Representative MacGregor told the House shortly before the final vote on Title VII:
“Important as the scope and extent of this bill is, it is also vitally important that all Americans understand what this bill does not cover.
“Your mail and mine, your contacts and mine with our constituents, indicates a great degree of misunderstanding about this bill. People complain about . . . preferential treatment or quotas in employment. There is a mistaken belief that Congress is legislating in these areas in this bill. When we drafted this bill we excluded these issues largely because the problems raised by these controversial questions are more properly handled at a governmental level closer to the American people and by communities and individuals themselves.” 110 Cong. Rec. 15893 (1964).
See n. 1, supra. This is not to suggest that the freedom of an employer to undertake race-conscious affirmative action efforts depends on whether or not his effort is motivated by fear of liability under Title VII.
Our disposition makes unnecessary consideration of petitioners’ argument that their plan was justified because they feared that black employees would bring suit under Title VII if they did not adopt an affirmative action plan. Nor need we consider petitioners’ contention that their affirmative action plan represented an attempt -to comply with Exec. Order No. 11246, 3 CFR 339 (1964-1965 Comp.).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question, not fully answered in Hamling v. United States, 418 U. S. 87 (1974), whether the standards announced in Miller v. California, 413 U. S. 15 (1973), are to be applied retroactively to the potential detriment of a defendant in a criminal case. We granted certiorari, 424 U. S. 942 (1976), to resolve a conflict in the Circuits.
I
Petitioners were charged with several counts of transporting obscene materials in interstate commerce, in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 1465, and with conspiracy to transport such materials, 18 U. S. C. § 371. The conduct that gave rise to the charges covered a period through February 27, 1973. Trial did not begin until the following October. In the interim, on June 21, 1973, this Court decided Miller v. California, supra, and its companion cases. Miller announced new standards for “isolat[ing] ‘hard core’ pornography from expression protected by the First Amendment.” 413 U. S., at 29. That these new standards would also guide the future interpretation of the federal obscenity laws was clear from United States v. 12 200-ft. Reels of Film, 413 U. S. 123, 129-130, and n. 7 (1973), decided the same day as Miller. See Hamling v. United States, supra, at 105, 113-114.
Petitioners argued in the District Court that they were entitled to jury instructions not under Miller, but under the more favorable formulation of Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U. S. 413 (1966) (plurality opinion). Memoirs, in their view, authoritatively stated the law in effect prior to Miller, by which petitioners charted their course of conduct. They focused in particular on the third part of the Memoirs test. Under it, expressive material is constitutionally protected unless it is “utterly without redeeming social value.” 383 U. S., at 418. Under Miller the comparable test is “whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” 413 U. S., at 24. Miller, petitioners argue, casts a significantly wider net than Memoirs. To apply Miller retroactively, and thereby punish conduct innocent under Memoirs, violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment—much as retroactive application of a new statute to penalize conduct innocent when performed would violate the Constitution’s ban on ex post facto laws, Art. I, § 9, cl. 3; § 10, cl. 1. The District Court overruled these objections and instructed the jury under the Miller standards. Petitioners were convicted, and a divided Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. 520 F. 2d 913 (1975). We now reverse.
II
The Ex Post Facto Clause is a limitation upon the powers of the Legislature, see Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386 (1798), and does not of its own force apply to the Judicial Branch of government. Frank v. Mangum, 237 U. S. 309, 344 (1915). But the principle on which the Clause is based—the notion that persons have a right to fair warning of that conduct which will give rise to criminal penalties—is fundamental to our concept of constitutional liberty. See United States v. Harriss, 347 U. S. 612, 617 (1954); Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U. S. 451, 453 (1939). As such, that right is protected against judicial action by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. In Bouie v. City of Columbia, 378 U. S. 347 (1964), a case involving the cognate provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court reversed trespass convictions, finding that they rested on an unexpected construction of the state trespass statute by the State Supreme Court:
“[A]n unforeseeable judicial enlargement of a criminal statute, applied retroactively, operates precisely like an ex post facto law, such as Art. I, § 10, of the Constitution forbids. . . . If a state legislature is barred by the Ex Post Facto Clause from passing such a law, it must follow that a State Supreme Court is barred by the Due Process Clause from achieving precisely the same result by judicial construction.” Id., at 353-354.
Similarly, in Rabe v. Washington, 405 U. S. 313 (1972), we reversed a conviction under a state obscenity law because it rested on an unforeseeable judicial construction of the statute. We stressed that reversal was mandated because affected citizens lacked fair notice that the statute would be thus applied.
Relying on Bouie, petitioners assert that Miller and its companion cases unforeseeably expanded the reach of the federal obscenity statutes beyond what was punishable under Memoirs. The Court of Appeals rejected this argument. It noted—correctly—that the Memoirs standards never commanded the assent of more than three Justices at any one time, and it apparently concluded from this fact that Memoirs never became the law. By this line of reasoning, one must judge whether Miller expanded criminal liability by looking not to Memoirs but to Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476 (1957), the last comparable plenary decision of this Court prior to Miller in which a majority united in a single opinion announcing the rationale behind the Court’s holding. Although certain language in Roth formed the basis for the plurality’s formulation in Memoirs, Roth’s test for distinguishing obscenity from protected speech was a fairly simple one to articulate: “whether to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest.” 354 U. S., at 489. If indeed Roth, not Memoirs, stated the applicable law prior to Miller, there would be much to commend the apparent view of the Court of Appeals that Miller did not significantly change the law.
But we think the basic premise for this line of reasoning is faulty. When a fragmented Court decides a case and no single rationale explaining the result enjoys the assent of five Justices, “the holding of the Court may be viewed as that position taken by those Members who concurred in the judgments on the narrowest grounds . . . .” Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 169 n. 15 (1976) (opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). Three Justices joined in the controlling opinion in Memoirs. Two others, Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Douglas, concurred on broader grounds in reversing the judgment below. 383 U. S., at 421, 424. They reiterated their well-known position that the First Amendment provides an absolute shield against governmental action aimed at suppressing obscenity. Mr. Justice Stewart also concurred in the judgment, based on his view that only “hardcore pornography” may be suppressed. Id., at 421. See Ginzburg v. United States, 383 U. S. 463, 499 (1966) (Stewart, J., dissenting). The view of the Memoirs plurality therefore constituted the holding of the Court and provided the governing standards. Indeed, every Court of Appeals that considered the question between Memoirs and Miller so read our decisions. Materials were deemed to be constitutionally protected unless the prosecution carried the burden of proving that they were “utterly without redeeming social value,” and otherwise satisfied the stringent Memoirs requirements.
Memoirs therefore was the law. Miller did not simply clarify Roth; it marked a significant departure from Memoirs. And there can be little doubt that the third test announced in Miller—whether the work “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value”—expanded criminal liability. The Court in Miller expressly observed that the “utterly without redeeming social value” test places on the prosecutor “a burden virtually impossible to discharge under our criminal standards of proof.” 413 U. S., at 22. Clearly it was thought that some conduct which would have gone unpunished under Memoirs would result in conviction under Miller.
This case is not strictly analogous to Bouie. The statutory language there was “narrow and precise," 378 U. S., at 352, and that fact was important to our holding that the expansive construction adopted by the State Supreme Court deprived the accused of fair warning. In contrast, the statute involved here always has used sweeping language to describe that which is forbidden. But precisely because the statute is sweeping, its reach necessarily has been confined within the constitutional limits announced by this Court. Memoirs severely restricted its application. Miller also restricts its application beyond what the language might indicate, but Miller undeniably relaxes the Memoirs restrictions. The effect is the same as the new construction in Bouie. Petitioners, engaged in the dicey business of marketing films subject to possible challenge, had no fair warning that their products might be subjected to the new standards.
We have taken special care to insist on fair warning when a statute regulates expression and implicates First Amendment values. See, e. g., Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 40-41 (1976); Smith v. Goguen, 415 U. S. 566, 573 (1974). Section 1465 is such a statute. We therefore hold, in accordance with Bouie, that the Due Process Clause precludes the application to petitioners of the standards announced in Miller v. California, to the extent that those standards may impose criminal liability for conduct not punishable under Memoirs. Specifically, since the petitioners were indicted for conduct occurring prior to our decision in Miller, they are entitled to jury instructions requiring the jury to acquit unless it finds that the materials involved are “utterly without redeeming social value.” At the same time we reaffirm our holding in Hamling v. United States, 418 U. S., at 102, that “any constitutional principle enunciated in Miller which would serve to benefit petitioners must be applied in their case.”
Accordingly, the judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
Two Courts of Appeals have found instructions derived from Miller appropriate in prosecutions based on conduct occurring before the Miller decision came down: United States v. Marks, 520 F. 2d 913 (CA6 1975) (the instant case); and United States v. Friedman, 528 F. 2d 784 (CA10 1976), cert. pending, No. 75-1663. Three Courts of Appeals have reversed convictions where Miller instructions were given by the District Court: United States v. Wasserman, 504 F. 2d 1012 (CA5 1974); United States v. Jacobs, 513 F. 2d 564 (CA9 1974); United States v. Sherpix, Inc., 168 U. S. App. D. C. 121, 512 F. 2d 1361 (1975).
In two earlier cases both conduct and trial occurred prior to Miller, and the jury instructions were derived from Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U. S. 413 (1966) (plurality opinion). United States v. Thevis, 484 F. 2d 1149 (CA5 1973) (Thevis I), cert. denied, 418 U. S. 932 (1974); United States v. Palladino, 490 F. 2d 499 (CA1 1974). The Courts of Appeals there, foreshadowing to some extent our later decision in Hamling v. United States, held that Miller did not void all Memoirs-based convictions, but that on review appellants were entitled to all the benefits of both the Miller and Memoirs standards. See Hamling, 418 U. S., at 102. In later cases presenting similar facts, the Fifth Circuit has applied its holding in Thevis I. See, e. g., United States v. Linetsky, 533 F. 2d 192 (1976); United States v. Thevis, 526 F. 2d 989 (1976) (Thevis II), cert. denied, 429 U. S. 928 (1976). See also United States v. Hill, 500 F. 2d 733 (CA5 1974), cert. denied, 420 U. S. 952 (1975). And the Ninth Circuit, following Hamling, has reached the same result. United States v. Cutting, 538 F. 2d 835 (1976) (en banc), cert. denied, 429 U. S. 1052 (1977).
Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U. S. 49 (1973); Kaplan v. California, 413 U. S. 115 (1973); United States v. 12 200-ft. Reels of Film, 413 U. S. 123 (1973); United States v. Orito, 413 U. S. 139 (1973).
Miller held:
“The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest . . . ; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” 413 U. S., at 24.
Under part (b) of the test, it is adequate if the statute, as written or as judicially construed, specifically defines the sexual conduct, depiction of which is forbidden. The Court in Miller offered examples of what a State might constitutionally choose to regulate:
“(a) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated.
“(b) Patently offensive representations or descriptions of masturbation, excretory functions, and lewd exhibition of the genitals.” Id., at 25.
The plurality in Memoirs held that “three elements must coalesce” if material is to be found obscene and therefore outside the protection of the First Amendment:
"[I]t must be established that (a) the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest in sex; (b) the material is patently offensive because it affronts contemporary community standards relating to the description or representation of sexual matters; and (c) the material is utterly without redeeming social value.” 383 U. S., at 418.
Petitioner American News Co., Inc., was convicted only on the conspiracy charge. The other four petitioners were convicted of conspiracy and also on seven of the eight substantive counts.
Both in its brief and at oral argument in this Court the United States contended that petitioners’ convictions under the Miller standards were improper, and consequently the Government does not defend the judgment of the Court of Appeals on this issue but agrees with petitioners that their convictions should not stand.
Shortly after Memoirs, in response to the divergence of opinion among Members of the Court, the Court began the practice of disposing of obscenity cases in brief per curiam decisions. Redrup v. New York, 386 U. S. 767 (1967), was the first. At least 31 cases were decided in this fashion. They are collected in Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U. S., at 82-83, n. 8 (BRENNAN, J., dissenting).
See, e. g., Books, Inc. v. United States, 358 F. 2d 935 (CA1 1966), rev’d per curiam, 388 U. S. 449 (1967); United States v. 35 Mm. Motion Picture Film, 432 F. 2d 705 (CA2 1970), cert. dismissed sub nom. United States v. Unicorn Enterprises, Inc., 403 U. S. 925 (1971); United States v. Ten Erotic Paintings, 432 F. 2d 420 (CA4 1970); United States v. Groner, 479 F. 2d 577 (CA5) (en banc) (the seven dissenting judges and one judge concurring in the result—constituting a majority on this issue—found that Memoirs stated the governing standard), vacated and remanded for further consideration in light of Miller, 414 U. S. 969 (1973); United States v. Pellegrino, 467 F. 2d 41 (CA9 1972); Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Oklahoma City, 459 F. 2d 282 (CA10 1972); Huffman v. United States, 152 U. S. App. D. C 238, 470 F. 2d 386 (1971), conviction reversed on other grounds upon rehearing after Miller, 163 U. S. App. D. C. 417, 502 F. 2d 419 (1974). Cf. Grove Press, Inc. v. City of Philadelphia, 418 F. 2d 82 (CA3 1969); Cinecom Theaters Midwest States, Inc. v. City of Fort Wayne, 473 F. 2d 1297 (CA7 1973); Luros v. United States, 389 F. 2d 200 (CA8 1968).
The statute provides in pertinent part:
“Whoever knowingly transports in interstate or foreign commerce for the purpose of sale or distribution any obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy book, pamphlet, picture, film, paper, letter, writing, print, silhouette, drawing, figure, image, cast, phonograph recording, electrical transcription or other article capable of producing sound or any other matter of indecent or immoral character, shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.” 18 U. S. C. § 1465.
For this reason, the instant case is different from Rose v. Locke, 423 U. S. 48 (1975), where the broad reading of the statute at issue did not upset a previously established narrower construction.
In Hamling we rejected a challenge based on Bouie v. City of Columbia, ostensibly similar to the challenge that is sustained here. 418 U. S., at 115-116. But the similarity is superficial only. There the petitioners focused on part (b) of the Miller test. See n. 3, supra. They argued that their convictions could not stand because Miller requires that the categories of material punishable under the statute must be specifically enumerated in the statute or in authoritative judicial construction. No such limiting construction had been announced at the time they engaged in the conduct that led to their convictions. We held that this made out no claim under Bouie, for part (b) did not expand the reach of the statute. “[T]he enumeration of specific categories of material in Miller which might be found obscene did not purport to make criminal, for the purpose of 18 U. S. C. § 1461, conduct which had not previously been thought criminal.” 418 U. S., at 116.
For the reasons noted in text, the same cannot be said of part (c) of the Miller test, shifting from “utterly without redeeming social value” to “lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.” This was implicitly recognized by the Court in Harding itself. There the trial took place before Miller, and the jury had been instructed in accordance with Memoirs. Its verdict necessarily meant that it found the materials to be utterly without redeeming social value. This Court examined the record and determined that the jury’s verdict “was supported by the evidence and consistent with the Memoirs formulation of obscenity.” 418 U. S., at 100. We did not avoid that inquiry on the ground that Memoirs had no relevance, as we might have done if Miller applied retroactively in all respects.
The Court of Appeals stated, apparently without viewing the materials, 520 F. 2d, at 923 n. 1 (McCree, J., dissenting), that in its opinion the materials here were obscene under either Memoirs or Miller. 520 F. 2d, at 922. Such a conclusion, absent other dependable means of knowing the character of the materials, is of dubious value. But even if we accept the court’s conclusion, under these circumstances it is not an adequate substitute for the decision in the first instance of a properly instructed jury, as to this important element of the offense under 18 U. S. C. § 1465.
The Court of Appeals apparently thought that our remand in Miller and the companion cases necessarily meant that Miller standards were fully retroactive. 520 F. 2d, at 920. But the passage from Hamling quoted in the text, which simply reaffirms a principle implicit in Miller, makes it clear that the remands carried no such implication. Our 1973 cases were remanded for the courts below to apply the “benefits” of Miller. See n. 3, supra.
In view of our disposition of the case, we have no occasion to reach the other questions presented in the petition.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The issue in this case arises from a postjudgment request for an award of attorney’s fees under the Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act of 1976, 42 U. S. C. § 1988. The question is whether such a request is a “motion to alter or amend the judgment,” subject to the 10-day timeliness standard of Rule 59(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
W
This litigation began in March 1976, when the petitioner Richard White filed suit against respondent New Hampshire Department of Employment Security (NHDES) and its Commissioner. White claimed that the respondent failed to make timely determinations of certain entitlements to unemployment compensation, thereby violating an applicable provision of the Social Security Act, 42 U. S. C. § 503(a)(1), the Due Process Clause of the Constitution of the United States, and 42 U. S. C. § 1983. Alleging federal jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1343, he sought declaratory and injunctive relief and “such other and further relief as may be equitable and just.” App. 15. His complaint did not specifically request attorney’s fees.
Following certification of the case as a class action, the District Court granted relief on petitioner’s claim under the Social Security Act. Pending an appeal by NHDES to the Court of Appeals, however, the parties signed a settlement agreement. The case was then remanded to the District Court, which approved the consent decree and gave judgment accordingly on January 26, 1979.
Five days after the entry of judgment, counsel to White wrote to respondent’s counsel, suggesting that they meet to discuss the petitioner’s entitlement to attorney’s fees as a prevailing party under 42 U. S. C. § 1988. No meeting appears to have been held. On June 7, 1979, approximately four and one-half months after the entry of a final judgment, the petitioner White filed a motion in which an award of fees formally was requested.
In a hearing in the District Court, respondent’s counsel claimed he had been surprised by petitioner’s postjudgment requests for attorney’s fees. He averred he understood that the consent decree, by its silence on the matter, implicitly had waived any claim to a fee award. White’s counsel asserted a different understanding. Apparently determining that the settlement agreement had effected no waiver, the District Court granted attorney’s fees in the sum of $16,644.40.
Shortly thereafter, respondent moved to vacate the consent decree. It argued, in effect, that it had thought its total liability fixed by the consent decree and that it would not have entered a settlement knowing that further liability might still be established. The District Court denied the motion to vacate.
On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed the District Court’s decision to award attorney’s fees under § 1988. 629 F. 2d 697 (1980). The court held that petitioner’s postjudgment motion for attorney’s fees constituted a motion to alter or amend the judgment, governed by Rule 59(e) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and its 10-day time limit. 629 F. 2d, at 699.
In holding as it did, the Court of Appeals recognized that § 1988 provided for the award of attorney’s fees “as part of the costs.” But it declined to follow a recent decision of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that treated a § 1988 fee request as a motion for “costs” under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 54(d) and 58 — Rules that contain no explicit time bars. Despite the language of § 1988, the Court of Appeals reasoned that attorney’s fees could not be the kind of “costs” contemplated by Rules 54(d) and 58. It reached this conclusion by looking to 28 U. S. C. § 1920, which specifies various “costs” that can be assessed by a clerk of court under Rule 54. The court found all -to be “capable of routine computation” on a day’s notice. 629 F. 2d, at 702. By contrast, an award of attorney’s fees must be made by a judge. Further, as in this case, a fee award could affect substantially the total liability of the parties.
The Court of Appeals found this case distinguishable from Hutto v. Finney, 437 U. S. 678 (1978), in which this Court characterized attorney’s fees, under the Fees Act, as “costs” taxable against a State. In Hutto, the Court of Appeals reasoned, the narrow question was whether the States have Eleventh Amendment immunity against liability for attorney’s fees. The question was not whether attorney’s fees are costs under Rule 54. The court also dismissed the argument that a request for attorney’s fees is “a collateral and independent claim” properly adjudicated separately from a claim on the merits.
Because other Courts of Appeals have reached different conclusions about the applicability of Rule 59(e) to post-judgment motions for the award of attorney’s fees, we granted certiorari in this case to resolve the conflict. We now reverse.
II
A
Rule 59(e) was added to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1946. Its draftsmen had a clear and narrow aim. According to the accompanying Advisory Committee Report, the Rule was adopted to “mak[e] clear that the district court possesses the power” to rectify its own mistakes in the period immediately following the entry of judgment. The question of the court’s authority to do so had arisen in Boaz v. Mutual Life Ins. Co. of New York, 146 F. 2d 321, 322 (CA8 1944). According to their report, the draftsmen intended Rule 59(e) specifically “to care for a situation such as that arising in Boaz.”
B
Consistently with this original understanding, the federal courts generally have invoked Rule 59(e) only to support reconsideration of matters properly encompassed in a decision on the merits. E. g., Browder v. Director, Illinois Dept. of Corrections, 434 U. S. 257 (1978). By contrast, a request for attorney’s fees under § 1988 raises legal issues collateral to the main cause of action — issues to which Rule 59(e) was never intended to apply.
Section 1988 provides for awards of attorney’s fees only to a “prevailing party.” Regardless of when attorney’s fees are requested, the court’s decision of entitlement to fees will therefore require an inquiry separate from the decision on the merits — an inquiry that cannot even commence until one party has “prevailed.” Nor can attorney’s fees fairly be characterized as an element of “relief’ indistinguishable from other elements. Unlike other judicial relief, the attorney’s fees allowed under § 1988 are not compensation for the injury giving rise to an action. Their award is uniquely separable from the cause of action to be proved at trial. See Hutto v. Finney, 437 U. S., at 695, n. 24.
As the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently stated:
“[A] motion for attorney’s fees is unlike a motion to alter or amend a judgment. It does not imply a change in the judgment, but merely seeks what is due because of the judgment. It is, therefore, not governed by the provisions of Rule 59(e).” Knighton v. Watkins, 616 F. 2d 795, 797 (1980).
III
In holding Rule 59(e) applicable to the postjudgment fee request in this case, the Court of Appeals emphasized the need to prevent fragmented appellate review and unfair postjudgment surprise to nonprevailing defendants. See 629 F. 2d, at 701-704. These are important concerns. But we do not think that the application of Rule 59(e) to § 1988 fee requests is either necessary or desirable to promote finality, judicial economy, or fairness.
A
The application of Rule 59(e) to postjudgment fee requests could yield harsh and unintended consequences. Section 1988 authorizes the award of attorney’s fees in constitutional and civil rights litigation of various kinds. In civil rights actions, especially in those involving "relief of an injunctive nature that must prove its efficacy only over a period of time,” this Court has recognized that “many final orders may issue in the course of the litigation. ” Bradley v. Richmond School Bd., 416 U. S. 696, 722-723 (1974). Yet sometimes it may be unclear even to counsel which orders are and which are not “final judgments.” If Rule 59(e) were applicable, counsel would forfeit their right to fees if they did not file a request in conjunction with each “final” order. Cautious to protect their own interests, lawyers predictably would respond by entering fee motions in conjunction with nearly every interim ruling. Yet encouragement of this practice would serve no useful purpose. Neither would litigation over the “finality” of various interim orders in connection with which fee requests were not filed within the 10-day period.
The 10-day limit of Rule 59(e) also could deprive counsel of the time necessary to negotiate private settlements of fee questions. If so, the application of Rule 59(e) actually could generate increased litigation of fee questions — a result ironically at odds with the claim that it would promote judicial economy.
B
Section 1988 authorizes the award of attorney’s fees “in [the] discretion” of the court. We believe that this discretion will support a denial of fees in cases in which a postjudgment motion unfairly surprises or prejudices the affected party. Moreover, the district courts remain free to adopt local rules establishing timeliness standards for the filing of claims for attorney’s fees. And of course the district courts generally can avoid piecemeal appeals by promptly hearing and deciding claims to attorney’s fees. Such practice normally will permit appeals from fee awards to be considered together with any appeal from a final judgment on the merits.
IV
For the reasons stated in this opinion, the decision of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for action consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
Rule 59(e) provides:
“(e) Motion to Alter or Amend a Judgment
“A motion to alter or amend the judgment shall be served not later than 10 days after entry of the judgment-.”
Civ. No. 76-71 (NH, Nov. 15, 1977), as amended, Civ. No. 76-71 (NH, Dec. 16, 1977).
Transcript of the District-Court Hearing on Plaintiffs’ Motion for Attorney’s Fees (Aug. 21, 1979), App. 56, 68-69.
The District Court found specifically that the parties’ prejudgment “attempts” to negotiate a waiver of costs and fees had proved “nugatory.” Id., at 75.
The pertinent language of 42 U. S. C. § 1988 provides that
“[i]n any action or proceeding to enforce a provision of sections 1981, 1982, 1983,1985, and 1986 of this title, title IX of Public Law 92-318 [20 U. S. C. 1681 et seq.], ... the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party, other than the United States, a reasonable attorney’s fee as part of the costs.”
Knighton v. Watkins, 616 F. 2d 795 (1980).
Rule 54(d) provides:
“(d) Costs
“Except when express provision therefor is made either in a statute of the United States or in these rules, costs shall be allowed as of course to the prevailing party unless the court otherwise directs .... Costs may be taxed by the clerk on one day’s notice. On motion served within 5 days thereafter, the action of the clerk may be reviewed by the court.”
Unless so defined by statute, attorney’s fees are not generally considered “costs” taxable under Rule 54(d). Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U. S. 240 (1975).
Rule 58 states in pertinent part:
“Entry of the judgment shall not be delayed for taxing of costs.”
Courts of Appeals for the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Circuits have held that postjudgment requests for attorney’s fees are not motions to alter or amend a judgment under Rule 59(e), but rather applications for “costs” under Rules 54(d) and 58. See Johnson v. Snyder, 639 F. 2d 316, 317 (CA6 1981); Bond v. Stanton, 630 F. 2d 1231, 1234 (CA7 1980); Knighton v. Watkins, supra, at 797-798. Like the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in this case, the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has held squarely that postjudgment requests for fees are motions to alter or amend a judgment under Rule 59(e). Glass v. Pfeffer, 657 F. 2d 252 (1981). The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has taken still a third position: that a postjudgment motion for attorney’s fees raises a “collateral and independent claim” that is not governed either by Rule 59(e) or by the “costs” provisions of Rules 54(d) and 58. Obin v. District No. 9, Int’l Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, 651 F. 2d 574, 582 (1981).
451 U. S. 982 (1981).
Notes of Advisory Committee on 1946 Amendment to Rules, 28 U. S. C., p. 491; 5 F. R. D. 433, 476 (1946).
Ibid.
Petitioner argues that the “collateral” and “independent” character of his request for attorney’s fees is conclusively established by Sprague v. Ticonic National Bank, 307 U. S. 161 (1939). In Sprague this Court considered- the power of a federal court to award counsel fees pursuant to an application filed several years after the entry of a judgment on the merits. Rejecting arguments that the request sought an impermissible reopening of the underlying judgment, the Court held that the petition for reimbursement represented “an independent proceeding supplemental to the original proceeding and not a request for a modification of the original decree.” Id., at 170. The passage of time thus presented no bar to an award of fees. Although Sprague was decided under the then-applicable rules of equity, the Court suggested that the same result would follow under the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Id., at 169, n. 9.
This case arises in a posture different from that of Sprague. In Sprague the prevailing plaintiff had produced a “benefit” commonly available to others similarly situated. Although she “neither avowed herself to be the representative of a class nor. . . established] a fund in which others could participate,” id., at 166, her lawsuit had a stare decisis effect that inured to the benefit of others asserting similar claims. It was from the benefits accrued by them — not, as in this case, from the defendant — that the plaintiff sought an equitable award of fees.
Because of this difference between the cases, we cannot agree that Sprague controls the question now before us. Nonetheless, we agree with petitioner to this extent: Sprague at least establishes that fee questions are not inherently or necessarily subsumed by a decision on the merits. See also New York Gaslight Club, Inc. v. Carey, 447 U. S. 54, 66 (1980) (a claimed entitlement to attorney’s fees is sufficiently independent of the merits action under Title VII to support a federal suit “solely to obtain an award of attorney’s fees for legal work done in state and local proceedings”).
There is implicit support for this view in decisions of the Courts of Appeals holding that decisions on the merits may be “final” and “appealable” prior to the entry of a fee award. See, e. g., Memphis Sheraton Corp. v. Kirkley, 614 F. 2d 131, 133 (CA6 1980); Hidell v. International Diversified Investments, 520 F. 2d 529, 532, n. 4 (CA7 1975); see also Obin v. District 9, Int’l Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, 651 F. 2d, at 583-584. If a merits judgment is final and appealable prior to the entry of a fee award, then the remaining fee issue must be “collateral” to the decision on the merits. Conversely, the collateral character of the fee issue establishes that an outstanding fee question does not bar recognition of a merits judgment as “final” and “appealable.” Obin v. District No. 9, Int’l Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, supra, at 584. Although “piecemeal” appeals of merits and fee questions generally are undesirable, district courts have ample authority to deal with this problem. See infra, at 454, and n. 16.
As an additional reason for finding Rule 59(e) inapplicable to postjudgment fee requests, the petitioner and amici have urged that prejudgment fee negotiations could raise an inherent conflict of interest between the attorney and client. Because the defendant is likely to be concerned about his total liability, it is suggested, he may offer a lump-sum settlement, but remain indifferent as to its distribution as “damages” or “attorney’s fees.” In pursuing negotiations, the argument continues, the lawyer must decide what allocation to seek as between lawyer and client. Accordingly, petitioner argues, to avoid this conflict of interest any fee negotiations should routinely be deferred until after the entry of a merits judgment. Although sensitive to the concern that petitioner raises, we decline to rely on this proffered basis. In considering whether to enter a negotiated settlement, a defendant may have good reason to demand to know his total liability from both damages and fees. Although such situations may raise difficult ethical issues for a plaintiffs attorney, we are reluctant to hold that no resolution is ever available to ethical counsel.
See, e. g., Obin v. District No. 9, Int’l Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, supra, at 583 (recommending adoption of “a uniform rule requiring the filing of a claim for attorney’s fees within twenty-one days after entry of judgment”); Knighton v. Watkins, 616 F. 2d, at 798, n. 2 (practices governing requests for attorney’s fees “can be handled best by local rule”). As different jurisdictions have established different procedures for the filing of fee applications, there may be valid local reasons for establishing different time limits.
The petitioner has urged us to hold expressly that the § 1988 provision for attorney’s fees “as part of. . . costs” establishes that postjudgment fee requests constitute motions for “costs” under Rules 54(d) and 58, which specify no time barrier for motions for “costs.” Because this question is unnecessary to our disposition of this case, we do not address it. We note that the district courts would be free to adopt local rules establishing standards for timely filing of requests for costs, even if attorney’s fees were so treated. See Knighton v. Watkins, supra, at 798, n. 2. Further, the district courts retain discretion under Rules 54(d) and 58 to deny even motions for costs that are filed with unreasonable tardiness.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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F
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Chief Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner Leonel Torres Herrera was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in January 1982. He unsuccessfully challenged the conviction on direct appeal and state collateral proceedings in the Texas state courts, and in a federal habeas petition. In February 1992 — 10 years after his conviction — he urged in a second federal habeas petition that he was “actually innocent” of the murder for which he was sentenced to death, and that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process of law therefore forbid his execution. He supported this claim with affidavits tending to show that his now-dead brother, rather than he, had been the perpetrator of the crime. Petitioner urges us to hold that this showing of innocence entitles him to relief in this federal habeas proceeding. We hold that it does not.
Shortly before 11 p.m. on an evening in late September 1981, the body of Texas Department of Public Safety Officer David Rucker was found by a passer-by on a stretch of highway about six miles east of Los Fresnos, Texas, a few miles north of Brownsville in the Rio Grande Valley. Rucker’s body was lying beside his patrol car. He had been shot in the head.
At about the same time, Los Fresnos Police Officer Enrique Carrisalez observed a speeding vehicle traveling west towards Los Fresnos, away from the place where Rucker’s body had been found, along the same road. Carrisalez, who was accompanied in his patrol car by Enrique Hernandez, turned on his flashing red lights and pursued the speeding vehicle. After the car had stopped briefly at a red light, it signaled that it would pull over and did so. The patrol car pulled up behind it. Carrisalez took a flashlight and walked toward the car of the speeder. The driver opened his door and exchanged a few words with Carrisalez before firing at least one shot at Carrisalez’ chest. The officer died nine days later.
Petitioner Herrera was arrested a few days after the shootings and charged with the capital murder of both Carri-salez and Rucker. He was tried and found guilty of the capital murder of Carrisalez in January 1982, and sentenced to death. In July 1982, petitioner pleaded guilty to the murder of Rucker.
At petitioner’s trial for the murder of Carrisalez, Hernandez, who had witnessed Carrisalez’ slaying from the officer’s patrol car, identified petitioner as the person who had wielded the gun. A declaration by Officer Carrisalez to the same effect, made while he was in the hospital, was also admitted. Through a license plate cheek, it was shown that the speeding car involved in Carrisalez’ murder was registered to petitioner’s “live-in” girlfriend. Petitioner was known to drive this car, and he had a set of keys to the car in his pants pocket when he was arrested. Hernandez identified the car as the vehicle from which the murderer had emerged to fire the fatal shot. He also testified that there had been only one person in the car that night.
The evidence showed that Herrera’s Social Security card had been found alongside Rucker’s patrol car on the night he was killed. Splatters of blood on the car identified as the vehicle involved in the shootings, and on petitioner’s blue jeans and wallet were identified as type A blood — the same type which Rucker had. (Herrera has type 0 blood.) Similar evidence with respect to strands of hair found in the car indicated that the hair was Rucker’s and not Herrera’s. A handwritten letter was also found on the person of petitioner
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petition, again challenging the identifications offered against him at trial. This petition was denied, see 904 F. 2d 944 (CA5), and we again denied certiorari, 498 U. S. 925 (1990).
Petitioner next returned to state court and filed a second habeas petition, raising, among other things, a claim of “actual innocence” based on newly discovered evidence. In support of this claim petitioner presented the affidavits of Hector Villarreal, an attorney who had represented petitioner’s brother, Raul Herrera, Sr., and of Juan Franco Palacious, one of Raul, Senior’s former cellmates. Both individuals claimed that Raul, Senior, who died in 1984, had told them that he — and not petitioner — had killed Officers Rucker and Carrisalez. The State District Court denied this application, finding that “no evidence at trial remotely suggested] that anyone other than [petitioner] committed the offense.” Ex parte Herrera, No. 81-CR-672-C (Tex. 197th Jud. Dist., Jan. 14, 1991), ¶ 35. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed, Ex parte Herrera, 819 S. W. 2d 528 (1991), and we denied certiorari, Herrera v. Texas, 502 U. S. 1085 (1992).
In February 1992, petitioner lodged the instant habeas petition — his second — in federal court, alleging, among other things, that he is innocent of the murders of Rucker and Car-risalez, and that his execution would thus violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. In addition to proffering the above affidavits, petitioner presented the affidavits of Raul Herrera, Jr., Raul, Senior’s son, and Jose Ybarra, Jr., a schoolmate of the Herrera brothers. Raul, Junior, averred that he had witnessed his father shoot Officers Rucker and Carrisalez and petitioner was not present. Raul, Junior, was nine years old at the time of the killings. Ybarra alleged that Raul, Senior, told him one summer night in 1983 that he had shot the two police officers. Petitioner alleged that' law enforcement officials were aware of this evidence, and had withheld it in violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83 (1963).
The District Court dismissed most of petitioner’s claims as an abuse of the writ. No. M-92-30 (SD Tex., Feb. 17,1992). However, “in order to ensure that Petitioner can assert his constitutional claims and out of a sense of fairness and due process,” the District Court granted petitioner’s request for a stay of execution so that he could present his claim of actual innocence, along with the Raul, Junior, and Ybarra affidavits, in state court. App. 38-39. Although it initially dismissed petitioner’s Brady claim on the ground that petitioner had failed to present “any evidence of withholding exculpatory material by the prosecution,” App. 37, the District Court also granted an evidentiary hearing on this claim after reconsideration, id., at 54.
The Court of Appeals vacated the stay of execution. 954 F. 2d 1029 (CA5 1992). It agreed with the District Court’s initial conclusion that there was no evidentiary basis for petitioner’s Brady claim, and found disingenuous petitioner’s attempt to couch his claim of actual innocence in Brady terms. 954 F. 2d, at 1032. Absent an accompanying constitutional violation, the Court of Appeals held that petitioner’s claim of actual innocence was not cognizable because, under Townsend v. Sain, 372 U. S. 293, 317 (1963), “the existence merely of newly discovered evidence relevant to the guilt of a state prisoner is not a ground for relief on federal habeas corpus.” See 954 F. 2d, at 1034. We granted certiorari, 502 U. S. 1085 (1992), and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed petitioner’s execution. We now affirm.
Petitioner asserts that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution prohibit the execution of a person who is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. This proposition has an elemental appeal, as would the similar proposition that the Constitution prohibits the imprisonment of one who is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. After all, the central purpose of any system of criminal justice is to convict the guilty and free the innocent. See United States v. Nobles, 422 U. S. 225, 230 (1975). But the evidence upon which petitioner’s claim of innocence rests was not produced at his trial, but rather eight years later. In any system of criminal justice, “innocence” or “guilt” must be determined in some sort of a judicial proceeding. Petitioner’s showing of innocence, and indeed his constitutional claim for relief based upon that showing, must be evaluated in the light of the previous proceedings in this case, which have stretched over a span of 10 years.
A person when first charged with a crime is entitled to a presumption of innocence, and may insist that his guilt be established beyond a reasonable doubt. In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358 (1970). Other constitutional provisions also have the effect of ensuring against the risk of convicting an innocent person. See, e. g., Coy v. Iowa, 487 U. S. 1012 (1988) (right to confront adverse witnesses); Taylor v. Illinois, 484 U. S. 400 (1988) (right to compulsory process); Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984) (right to effective assistance of counsel); Winship, supra (prosecution must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt); Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145 (1968) (right to jury trial); Brady v. Maryland, supra (prosecution must disclose exculpatory evidence); Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963) (right to assistance of counsel); In re Murchison, 349 U. S. 133, 136 (1955) (right to “fair trial in a fair tribunal”). In capital cases, we have required additional protections because of the nature of the penalty at stake. See, e. g., Beck v. Alabama, 447 U. S. 625 (1980) (jury must be given option of convicting the defendant of a lesser offense). All of these constitutional safeguards, of course, make it more difficult for the State to rebut and finally overturn the presumption of innocence which attaches to every criminal defendant. But we have also observed that “[d]ue process does not require that every conceivable step be taken, at whatever cost, to eliminate the possibility of convicting an innocent person.” Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S. 197, 208 (1977). To conclude otherwise would all but paralyze our system for enforcement of the criminal law.
Once a defendant has been afforded a fair trial and convicted of the offense for which he was charged, the presumption of innocence disappears. Cf. Ross v. Moffitt, 417 U. S. 600, 610 (1974) (“The purpose of the trial stage from the State’s point of view is to convert a criminal defendant from a person presumed innocent to one found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt”). Here, it is not disputed that the State met its burden of proving at trial that petitioner was guilty of the capital murder of Officer Carrisalez beyond a reasonable doubt. Thus, in the eyes of the law, petitioner does not come before the Court as one who is “innocent,” but, on the contrary, as one who has been convicted by due process of law of two brutal murders.
Based on affidavits here filed, petitioner claims that evidence never presented to the trial court proves him innocent notwithstanding the verdict reached at his trial. Such a claim is not cognizable in the state courts of Texas. For to obtain a new trial based on newly discovered evidence, a defendant must file a motion within 30 days after imposition or suspension of sentence. Tex. Rule App. Proc. 31(a)(1) (1992). The Texas courts have construed this 30-day time limit as jurisdictional. See Beathard v. State, 767 S. W. 2d 423, 433 (Tex. Crim. App. 1989); Drew v. State, 743 S. W. 2d 207, 222-223 (Tex. Crim. App. 1987).
Claims of actual innocence based on newly discovered evidence have never been held to state a ground for federal habeas relief absent an independent constitutional violation occurring in the underlying state criminal proceeding. Chief Justice Warren made this clear in Townsend v. Sain, supra, at 317 (emphasis added):
“Where newly discovered evidence is alleged in a ha-beas application, evidence which could not reasonably have been presented to the state trier of facts, the federal court must grant an evidentiary hearing. Of course, such evidence must bear upon the constitutionality of the applicant’s detention; the existence merely of newly discovered evidence relevant to the guilt of a state prisoner is not a ground for relief on federal ha-beas corpus.”
This rule is grounded in the principle that federal habeas courts sit to ensure that individuals are not imprisoned in violation of the Constitution — not to correct errors of fact. See, e. g., Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U. S. 86, 87-88 (1923) (Holmes, J.) (“[W]hat we have to deal with [on habeas review] is not the petitioners’ innocence or guilt but solely the question whether their constitutional rights have been preserved”); Hyde v. Shine, 199 U. S. 62, 84 (1905) (“[I]t is well settled that upon habeas corpus the court will not weigh the evidence”) (emphasis in original); Ex parte Terry, 128 U. S. 289, 305 (1888) (“As the writ of habeas corpus does not perform the office of a writ of error or an appeal, [the facts establishing guilt] cannot be re-examined or reviewed in this collateral proceeding”) (emphasis in original).
More recent authority construing federal habeas statutes speaks in a similar vein. “Federal courts are not forums in which to relitigate state trials.” Barefoot v. Estelle, 463 U. S. 880, 887 (1983). The guilt or innocence determination in state criminal trials is “a decisive and portentous event.” Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72, 90 (1977). “Society’s resources have been concentrated at that time and place in order to decide, within the limits of human fallibility, the question of guilt or innocence of one of its citizens.” Ibid. Few rulings would be more disruptive of our federal system than to provide for federal habeas review of freestanding claims of actual innocence.
Our decision in Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U. S. 307 (1979), comes as close to authorizing evidentiary review of a state-court conviction on federal habeas as any of our cases. There, we held that a federal habeas court may review a claim that the evidence adduced at a state trial was not sufficient to convict a criminal defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. But in so holding, we emphasized:
“[T]his inquiry does not require a court to ‘ask itself whether it believes that the evidence at the trial established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.’ Instead, the relevant question is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. This familiar standard gives full play to the responsibility of the trier of fact fairly to resolve conflicts in the testimony, to weigh the evidence, and to draw reasonable inferences from basic facts to ultimate facts.” Id., at 318-319 (citations omitted; emphasis in original).
We specifically noted that “the standard announced... does not permit a court to make its own subjective determination of guilt or innocence.” Id., at 320, n. 13.
The type of federal habeas review sought by petitioner here is different in critical respects than that authorized by Jackson. First, the Jackson inquiry is aimed at determining whether there has been an independent constitutional violation — i. e., a conviction based on evidence that fails to meet the Winship standard. Thus, federal habeas courts act in their historic capacity — to assure that the habeas petitioner is not being held in violation of his or her federal constitutional rights. Second, the sufficiency of the evidence review authorized by Jackson is limited to “record evidence.” 443 U. S., at 318. Jackson does not extend to non-record evidence, including newly discovered evidence. Finally, the Jackson inquiry does not focus on whether the trier of fact made the correct guilt or innocence determination, but rather whether it made a rational decision to convict or acquit.
Petitioner is understandably imprecise in describing the sort of federal relief to which a suitable showing of actual innocence would entitle him. In his brief he states that the federal habeas court should have “an important initial opportunity to hear the evidence and resolve the merits of Petitioner’s claim.” Brief for Petitioner 42. Acceptance of this view would presumably require the habeas court to hear testimony from the witnesses who testified at trial as well as those who made the statements in the affidavits which petitioner has presented, and to determine anew whether or not petitioner is guilty of the murder of Officer Carrisalez. Indeed, the dissent’s approach differs little from that hypothesized here.
The dissent would place the burden on petitioner to show that he is “probably” innocent. Post, at 442. Although petitioner would not be entitled to discovery “as a matter of right,” the District Court would retain its “discretion to order discovery... when it would help the court make a reliable determination with respect to the prisoner’s claim.” Post, at 444. And although the District Court would not be required to hear testimony from the witnesses who testified at trial or the affiants upon whom petitioner relies, the dissent would allow the District Court to do so “if the petition warrants a hearing.” Ibid, At the end of the day, the dissent would have the District Court “make a case-by-case determination about the reliability of the newly discovered evidence under the circumstances,” and then “weigh the evidence in favor of the prisoner against the evidence of his guilt.” Post, at 443.
The dissent fails to articulate the relief that would be available if petitioner were to meets its “probable innocence” standard. Would it be commutation of petitioner’s death sentence, new trial, or unconditional release from imprisonment? The typical relief granted in federal habeas corpus is a conditional order of release unless the State elects to retry the successful habeas petitioner, or in a capital case a similar conditional order vacating the death sentence. Were petitioner to satisfy the dissent’s “probable innocence” standard, therefore, the District Court would presumably be required to grant a conditional order of relief, which would in effect require the State to retry petitioner 10 years after his first trial, not because of any constitutional violation which had occurred at the first trial, but simply because of a belief that in light of petitioner’s new-found evidence a jury might find him not guilty at a second trial.
Yet there is no guarantee that the guilt or innocence determination would be any more exact. To the contrary, the passage of time only diminishes the reliability of criminal adjudications. See McCleskey v. Zant, 499 U. S. 467, 491 (1991) (“[WJhen a habeas petitioner succeeds in obtaining a new trial, the ‘erosion of memory and dispersion of witnesses that occur with the passage of time’ prejudice the government and diminish the chances of a reliable criminal adjudication”) (quoting Kuhlmann v. Wilson, 477 U. S. 436, 453 (1986) (plurality opinion) (internal quotation marks omitted; citation omitted)); United States v. Smith, 331 U. S. 469, 476 (1947). Under the dissent’s approach, the District Court would be placed in the even more difficult position of having to weigh the probative value of “hot” and “cold” evidence on petitioner’s guilt or innocence.
This is not to say that our habeas jurisprudence casts a blind eye toward innocence. In a series of cases culminating with Sawyer v. Whitley, 505 U. S. 333 (1992), decided last Term, we have held that a petitioner otherwise subject to defenses of abusive or successive use of the writ may have his federal constitutional claim considered on the merits if he makes a proper showing of actual innocence. This rule, or fundamental miscarriage of justice exception, is grounded in the “equitable discretion” of habeas courts to see that federal constitutional errors do not result in the incarceration of innocent persons. See McCleskey, supra, at 502. But this body of our habeas jurisprudence makes clear that a claim of “actual innocence” is not itself a constitutional claim, but instead a gateway through which a habeas petitioner must pass to have his otherwise barred constitutional claim considered on the merits.
Petitioner in this case is simply not entitled to habeas relief based on the reasoning of this line of cases. For he does not seek excusal of a procedural error so that he may bring an independent constitutional claim challenging his conviction or sentence, but rather argues that he is entitled to ha-beas relief because newly discovered evidence shows that his conviction is factually incorrect. The fundamental miscarriage of justice exception is available “only where the prisoner supplements his constitutional claim with a colorable showing of factual innocence.” Kuhlmann, supra, at 454 (emphasis added). We have never held that it extends to freestanding claims of actual innocence. Therefore, the exception is inapplicable here.
Petitioner asserts that this case is different because he has been sentenced to death. But we have “refused to hold that the fact that a death sentence has been imposed requires a different standard of review on federal habeas corpus. ” Murray v. Giarratano, 492 U. S. 1, 9 (1989) (plurality opinion). We have, of course, held that the Eighth Amendment requires increased reliability of the process by which capital punishment may be imposed. See, e. g., McKoy v. North Carolina, 494 U. S. 433 (1990) (unanimity requirement imper-missibly limits jurors’ consideration of mitigating evidence); Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982) (jury must be allowed to consider all of a capital defendant’s mitigating character evidence); Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U. S. 586, 604 (1978) (plurality opinion) (same). But petitioner’s claim does not fit well into the doctrine of these cases, since, as we have pointed out, it is far from clear that a second trial 10 years after the first trial would produce a more reliable result.
Perhaps mindful of this, petitioner urges not that he necessarily receive a new trial, but that his death sentence simply be vacated if a federal habeas court deems that a satisfactory showing of “actual innocence” has been made. Tr. of Oral Arg. 19-20. But such a result is scarcely logical; petitioner’s claim is not that some error was made in imposing a capital sentence upon him, but that a fundamental error was made in finding him guilty of the underlying murder in the first place. It would be a rather strange jurisprudence, in these circumstances, which held that under our Constitution he could not be executed, but that he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Petitioner argues that our decision in Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U. S. 399 (1986), supports his position. The plurality in Ford held that, because the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of insane persons, certain procedural protections inhere in the sanity determination. “[I]f the Constitution renders the fact or timing of his execution contingent upon establishment of a further fact,” Justice Marshall wrote, “then that fact must be determined with the high regard for truth that befits a decision affecting the life or death of a human being.” Id., at 411. Because the Florida scheme for determining the sanity of persons sentenced to death failed “to achieve even the minimal degree of reliability,” id., at 413, the plurality concluded that Ford was entitled to an evi-dentiary hearing on his sanity before the District Court.
Unlike petitioner here, Ford did not challenge the validity of his conviction. Rather, he challenged the constitutionality of his death sentence in view of his claim of insanity. Because Ford’s claim went to a matter of punishment — not guilt — it was properly examined within the purview of the Eighth Amendment. Moreover, unlike the question of guilt or innocence, which becomes more uncertain with time for evidentiary reasons, the issue of sanity is properly considered in proximity to the execution. Finally, unlike the sanity determination under the Florida scheme at issue in Ford, the guilt or innocence determination in our system of criminal justice is made “with the high regard for truth that befits a decision affecting the life or death of a human being.” Id., at 411.
Petitioner also relies on Johnson v. Mississippi, 486 U. S. 578 (1988), where we held that the Eighth Amendment requires reexamination of a death sentence based in part on a prior felony conviction which was set aside in the rendering State after the capital sentence was imposed. There, the State insisted that it was too late in the day to raise this point. But we pointed out that the Mississippi Supreme Court had previously considered similar claims by writ of error coram nobis. Thus, there was no need to override state law relating to newly discovered evidence in order to consider Johnson’s claim on the merits. Here, there is no doubt that petitioner seeks additional process — an eviden-tiary hearing on his claim of “actual innocence” based on newly discovered evidence — which is not available under Texas law more than 30 days after imposition or suspension of sentence. Tex. Rule App. Proc. 31(a)(1) (1992).
Alternatively, petitioner invokes the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process of law in support of his claim that his showing of actual innocence entitles him to a new trial, or at least to a vacation of his death sentence. “[Because the States have considerable expertise in matters of criminal procedure and the criminal process is grounded in centuries of common-law tradition,” we have “exercis[ed] substantial deference to legislative judgments in this area.” Medina v. California, 505 U. S. 437, 445-446 (1992). Thus, we have found criminal process lacking only where it “ ‘offends some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.’” Ibid, (quoting Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S. 197, 202 (1977)). “Historical practice is probative of whether a procedural rule can be characterized as fundamental.” 505 U. S., at 446.
The Constitution itself, of course, makes no mention of new trials. New trials in criminal cases were not granted in England until the end of the 17th century. And even then, they were available only in misdemeanor cases, though the writ of error coram nobis was available for some errors of fact in felony cases. Orfield, New Trial in Federal Criminal Cases, 2 Vill. L. Rev. 293, 304 (1957). The First Congress provided for new trials for “reasons for which new trials have usually been granted in courts of law.” Act of Sept. 24, 1789, ch. 20, § 17,1 Stat. 83. This rule was early held to extend to criminal cases. See Sparf v. United States, 156 U. S. 51, 175 (1895) (Gray, J., dissenting) (citing cases). One of the grounds upon which new trials were granted was newly discovered evidence. See F. Wharton, Criminal Pleading and Practice §§854-874, pp. 584-592 (8th ed. 1880).
The early federal cases adhere to the common-law rule that a new trial may be granted only during the term of court in which the final judgment was entered. See, e. g., United States v. Mayer, 235 U. S. 55, 67 (1914); United States v. Simmons, 27 F. Cas. 1080 (No. 16,289) (CC EDNY 1878). Otherwise, “the court at a subsequent term has power to correct inaccuracies in mere matters of form, or clerical errors.” 235 U. S., at 67. In 1934, this Court departed from the common-law rule and adopted a time limit — 60 days after final judgment — for filing new trial motions based on newly discovered evidence. Rule 11(3), Criminal Rules of Practice and Procedure, 292 U. S. 659, 662. Four years later, we amended Rule 11(3) to allow such motions in capital cases “at any time” before the execution took place. 304 U. S. 592 (1938) (codified at 18 U. S. C. §688 (1940)).
There ensued a debate as to whether this Court should abolish the time limit for filing new trial motions based on newly discovered evidence to prevent a miscarriage of justice, or retain a time limit even in capital cases to promote finality. See Orfield, supra, at 299-304. In 1946, we set a 2-year time limit for filing new trial motions based on newly discovered evidence and abolished the exception for capital cases. Rule 33, Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, 327 U. S. 821, 855-856 (“A motion for a new trial based on the ground of newly discovered evidence may be made only before or within two years after final judgment”). We have strictly construed the Rule 33 time limits. Cf. United States v. Smith, 331 U. S. 469, 473 (1947). And the Rule’s treatment of new trials based on newly discovered evidence has not changed since its adoption.
The American Colonies adopted the English common law on new trials. Riddell, New Trial in Present Practice, 27 Yale L. J. 353, 360 (1917). Thus, where new trials were available, motions for such relief typically had to be filed before the expiration of the term during which the trial was held. H. Underhill, Criminal Evidence 579, n. 1 (1898); J. Bassett, Criminal Pleading and Practice 313 (1885). Over time, many States enacted statutes providing for new trials in all types of cases. Some States also extended the time period for filing new trial motions beyond the term of court, but most States required that such motions be made within a few days after the verdict was rendered or before the judgment was entered. See American Law Institute Code of Criminal Procedure 1040-1042 (Official Draft 1931) (reviewing contemporary new trials rules).
The practice in the 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:
|
A
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice ALITOdelivered the opinion of the Court.
A quarter-century after a California jury convicted Hector Ayala of triple murder and sentenced him to death, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted Ayala's application for a writ of habeas corpus and ordered the State to retry or release him. The Ninth Circuit's decision was based on the procedure used by the trial judge in ruling on Ayala's objections under Batson v. Kentucky,476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986), to some of the prosecution's peremptory challenges of prospective jurors. The trial judge allowed the prosecutor to explain the basis for those strikes outside the presence of the defense so as not to disclose trial strategy. On direct appeal, the California Supreme Court found that if this procedure violated any federal constitutional right, the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. The Ninth Circuit, however, held that the error was harmful.
The Ninth Circuit's decision was based on the misapplication of basic rules regarding harmless error. Assuming without deciding that a federal constitutional error occurred, the error was harmless under Brecht v. Abrahamson,507 U.S. 619, 113 S.Ct. 1710, 123 L.Ed.2d 353 (1993), and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d).
I
A
Ayala's conviction resulted from the attempted robbery of an automobile body shop in San Diego, California, in April 1985. The prosecution charged Ayala with three counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, one count of robbery, and three counts of attempted robbery. The prosecution also announced that it would seek the death penalty on the murder counts.
Jury selection lasted more than three months, and during this time the court and the parties interviewed the prospective jurors and then called back a subset for general voir dire. As part of the jury selection process, more than 200 potential jurors completed a 77-question, 17-page questionnaire. Potential jurors were then questioned in court regarding their ability to follow the law. Jurors who were not dismissed for cause were called back in groups for voir dire,and the parties exercised their peremptory challenges.
Each side was allowed 20 peremptories, and the prosecution used 18 of its allotment. It used seven peremptories to strike all of the African-Americans and Hispanics who were available for service. Ayala, who is Hispanic, raised Batsonobjections to those challenges.
Ayala first objected after the prosecution peremptorily challenged two African-Americans, Olanders D. and Galileo S. The trial judge stated that these two strikes failed to establish a prima facie case of racial discrimination, but he nevertheless required the prosecution to reveal the reasons for the strikes. The prosecutor asked to do this outside the presence of the defense so as not to disclose trial strategy, and over Ayala's objection, the judge granted the request. The prosecution then offered several reasons for striking Olanders D., including uncertainty about his willingness to impose the death penalty. The prosecution stated that it dismissed Galileo S. primarily because he had been arrested numerous times and had not informed the court about all his prior arrests. After hearing and evaluating these explanations, the judge concluded that the prosecution had valid, race-neutral reasons for these strikes.
Ayala again raised Batsonobjections when the prosecution used peremptory challenges to dismiss two Hispanics, Gerardo O. and Luis M. As before, the judge found that the defense had not made out a prima facie case, but ordered the prosecution to reveal the reasons for the strikes. This was again done ex parte,but this time the defense did not expressly object. The prosecution explained that it had challenged Gerardo O. and Luis M. in part because it was unsure that they could impose the death penalty. The prosecution also emphasized that Gerardo O.'s English proficiency was limited and that Luis M. had independently investigated the case. The trial court concluded a second time that the prosecution had legitimate race-neutral reasons for the strikes.
Ayala raised Batsonobjections for a third and final time when the prosecution challenged Robert M., who was Hispanic; George S., whose ethnicity was disputed; and Barbara S., who was African-American. At this point, the trial court agreed that Ayala had made a prima facie Batsonshowing. Ayala's counsel argued that the strikes were in fact based on race. Ayala's counsel contended that the challenged jurors were "not significantly different from the white jurors that the prosecution ha[d] chosen to leave on the jury both in terms of their attitudes on the death penalty, their attitudes on the criminal justice system, and their attitudes on the presumption of innocence." App. 306. Ayala's counsel then reviewed the questionnaire answers and voir diretestimony of Barbara S. and Robert M., as well as the statements made by three of the prospective jurors who had been the subject of the prior Batsonobjections, Galileo S., Gerardo O., and Luis M. Counsel argued that their answers showed that they could impose the death penalty. The trial court stated that it would hear the prosecution's response outside the presence of the jury, and Ayala once more did not object to that ruling. The prosecution then explained that it had dismissed the prospective jurors in question for several race-neutral reasons, including uncertainty that Robert M., George S., or Barbara S. would be open to imposing the death penalty. The prosecution also emphasized (among other points) that Robert M. had followed a controversial trial, that George S. had been a holdout on a prior jury, and that Barbara S. had given the impression during voir direthat she was under the influence of drugs. The trial court concluded, for a third time, that the prosecution's peremptory challenges were based on race-neutral criteria.
In August 1989, the jury convicted Ayala of all the charges except one of the three attempted robberies. With respect to the three murder convictions, the jury found two special circumstances: Ayala committed multiple murders, and he killed during the course of an attempted robbery. The jury returned a verdict of death on all three murder counts, and the trial court entered judgment consistent with that verdict.
B
Ayala appealed his conviction and sentence, and counsel was appointed to represent him in January 1993. Between 1993 and 1999, Ayala filed 20 applications for an extension of time, 11 of which requested additional time to file his opening brief. After the California Supreme Court eventually ruled that no further extensions would be granted, Ayala filed his opening brief in April 1998, nine years after he was convicted. The State filed its brief in September 1998, and Ayala then asked for four extensions of time to file his reply brief. After the court declared that it would grant him no further extensions, he filed his reply brief in May 1999.
In August 2000, the California Supreme Court affirmed Ayala's conviction and death sentence. People v. Ayala,24 Cal.4th 243, 99 Cal.Rptr.2d 532, 6 P.3d 193 (2000). In an opinion joined by five justices, the State Supreme Court rejected Ayala's contention that the trial court committed reversible error by excluding the defense from part of the Batsonhearing. The court understood Ayala to challenge the peremptory strikes under both Batsonand its state-law analogue, People v. Wheeler,22 Cal.3d 258, 148 Cal.Rptr. 890, 583 P.2d 748 (1978). The court first concluded that the prosecution had not offered matters of trial strategy at the ex partehearing and that, "as a matter of state law, it was [error]" to bar Ayala's attorney from the hearing. 24 Cal.4th, at 262, 99 Cal.Rptr.2d 532, 6 P.3d, at 203.
Turning to the question of prejudice, the court stated:
"We have concluded that error occurred under state law, and we have noted [the suggestion in United States v. Thompson,827 F.2d 1254 (C.A.9 1987),] that excluding the defense from a Wheeler-type hearing may amount to a denial of due process. We nonetheless conclude that the error was harmless under state law (People v. Watson(1956) 46 Cal.2d 818, 836 [299 P.2d 243]), and that, if federal error occurred, it, too, was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt (Chapman v. California(1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24 [87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705]) as a matter of federal law. On the record before us, we are confident that the challenged jurors were excluded for proper, race-neutral reasons." Id., at 264 [99 Cal.Rptr.2d 532], 6 P.3d, at 204.
The court then reviewed the prosecution's reasons for striking the seven prospective jurors and found that "[o]n this well-developed record,... we are confident that defense counsel could not have argued anything substantial that would have changed the court's rulings. Accordingly, the error was harmless." Id.,at 268, 99 Cal.Rptr.2d 532, 6 P.3d, at 207. The court concluded that the record supported the trial judge's implicit determination that the prosecution's justifications were not fabricated and were instead "grounded in fact." Id.,at 267, 99 Cal.Rptr.2d 532, 6 P.3d, at 206. And the court emphasized that the "trial court's rulings in the ex parte hearing indisputably reflect both its familiarity with the record of voir dire of the challenged prospective jurors and its critical assessment of the prosecutor's proffered justifications."Id.,at 266-267, 99 Cal.Rptr.2d 532, 6 P.3d, at 206.
The California Supreme Court also rejected Ayala's argument that his conviction should be vacated because most of the questionnaires filled out by prospective jurors who did not serve had been lost at some point during the decade that had passed since the end of the trial. The court wrote that "the record is sufficiently complete for us to be able to conclude that [the prospective jurors who were the subject of the contested peremptories] were not challenged and excused on the basis of forbidden group bias." Id.,at 270, 99 Cal.Rptr.2d 532, 6 P.3d, at 208. And even if the loss of the questionnaires was error under federal or state law, the court held, the error was harmless under Chapmanand its state-law analogue. Two justices of the State Supreme Court dissented. We then denied certiorari. 532 U.S. 1029, 121 S.Ct. 1978, 149 L.Ed.2d 770 (2001).
C
After the California Supreme Court summarily denied a habeas petition, Ayala turned to federal court. He filed his initial federal habeas petition in 2002, but then went back to state court to exhaust several claims. In December 2004, he filed the operative federal petition and argued, among other things, that the ex partehearings and loss of the questionnaires violated his rights under the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
In 2006, the District Court denied Ayala relief on those claims. The District Court read the decision of the California Supreme Court to mean that the state court had not decided whether the ex parteproceedings violated federal law, and the District Court expressed doubt "whether the trial court's procedure was constitutionally defective as a matter of clearly established Federal law." App. to Pet. for Cert. 145a. But even if such a violation occurred, the District Court held, the state court's finding of harmlessness was not contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established law and thus could not be overturned under AEDPA. The District Court also rejected Ayala's argument about the lost questionnaires, concluding that, even without them, the record was sufficient to resolve Ayala's other claims.
In 2013, a divided panel of the Ninth Circuit granted Ayala federal habeas corpus relief and required California either to release or retry him. Ayala v. Wong,756 F.3d 656 (2014). Because Ayala's federal petition is subject to the requirements of AEDPA, the panel majority began its analysis by inquiring whether the state court had adjudicated Ayala's claims on the merits. Applying de novoreview,the panel held that the ex parteproceedings violated the Federal Constitution, and that the loss of the questionnaires violated Ayala's federal due process rights if that loss deprived him of "the ability to meaningfully appeal the denial of his Batsonclaim." Id.,at 671. The panel folded this inquiry into its analysis of the question whether the error regarding the ex parteproceedings was harmless.
Turning to the question of harmlessness, the panel identified the applicable standard of review as that set out in Brechtand added: "We apply the Brechttest without regard for the state court's harmlessness determination." 756 F.3d, at 674(internal quotation marks omitted).The panel used the following complicated formulation to express its understanding of Brecht's application to Ayala's claims: "If we cannot say that the exclusion of defense counsel with or without the loss of the questionnaires likely did not prevent Ayala from prevailing on his Batsonclaim, then we must grant the writ." 756 F.3d, at 676. Applying this test, the panel majority found that the error was not harmless, at least with respect to three of the seven prospective jurors. The panel asserted that the absence of Ayala and his counsel had interfered with the trial court's ability to evaluate the prosecution's proffered justifications for those strikes and had impeded appellate review, and that the loss of the questionnaires had compounded this impairment.
Judge Callahan dissented. She explained that the California Supreme Court's decision that any federal error was harmless constituted a merits adjudication of Ayala's federal claims. She then reviewed the prosecution's explanations for its contested peremptory challenges and concluded that federal habeas relief was barred because "fairminded jurists can concur in the California Supreme Court's determination of harmless error." Id.,at 706.
The Ninth Circuit denied rehearing en banc, but Judge Ikuta wrote a dissent from denial that was joined by seven other judges. Like Judge Callahan, Judge Ikuta concluded that the California Supreme Court adjudicated the merits of Ayala's federal claims. Instead of the panel's "de novo review of the record that piles speculation upon speculation," she would have found that the state court's harmlessness determination was not an unreasonable application of Chapman. 756 F.3d, at 723.
We granted certiorari. 574 U.S. ----, 135 S.Ct. 401, 190 L.Ed.2d 288 (2014).
II
Ayala contends that his federal constitutional rights were violated when the trial court heard the prosecution's justifications for its strikes outside the presence of the defense, but we find it unnecessary to decide that question. We assume for the sake of argument that Ayala's federal rights were violated, but that does not necessarily mean that he is entitled to habeas relief. In the absence of "the rare type of error" that requires automatic reversal, relief is appropriate only if the prosecution cannot demonstrate harmlessness. Glebe v. Frost,574 U.S. ----, ----, 135 S.Ct. 429, 429, 190 L.Ed.2d 317 (2014)(per curiam). The Ninth Circuit did not hold-and Ayala does not now contend-that the error here falls into that narrow category, and therefore Ayala is entitled to relief only if the error was not harmless.
The test for whether a federal constitutional error was harmless depends on the procedural posture of the case. On direct appeal, the harmlessness standard is the one prescribed in Chapman,386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705: "[B]efore a federal constitutional error can be held harmless, the court must be able to declare a belief that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt." Id.,at 24, 87 S.Ct. 824.
In a collateral proceeding, the test is different. For reasons of finality, comity, and federalism, habeas petitioners "are not entitled to habeas relief based on trial error unless they can establish that it resulted in 'actual prejudice.' " Brecht,507 U.S., at 637, 113 S.Ct. 1710(quoting United States v. Lane,474 U.S. 438, 449, 106 S.Ct. 725, 88 L.Ed.2d 814 (1986)). Under this test, relief is proper only if the federal court has "grave doubt about whether a trial error of federal law had'substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict.' " O'Neal v. McAninch,513 U.S. 432, 436, 115 S.Ct. 992, 130 L.Ed.2d 947 (1995). There must be more than a "reasonable possibility" that the error was harmful. Brecht, supra,at 637, 113 S.Ct. 1710(internal quotation marks omitted). The Brechtstandard reflects the view that a "State is not to be put to th[e] arduous task [of retrying a defendant] based on mere speculation that the defendant was prejudiced by trial error; the court must find that the defendant was actually prejudiced by the error." Calderon v. Coleman,525 U.S. 141, 146, 119 S.Ct. 500, 142 L.Ed.2d 521 (1998)(per curiam).
Because Ayala seeks federal habeas corpus relief, he must meet the Brechtstandard, but that does not mean, as the Ninth Circuit thought, that a state court's harmlessness determination has no significance under Brecht. In Fry v. Pliler,551 U.S. 112, 120, 127 S.Ct. 2321, 168 L.Ed.2d 16 (2007), we held that the Brechtstandard "subsumes" the requirements that § 2254(d)imposes when a federal habeas petitioner contests a state court's determination that a constitutional error was harmless under Chapman. The FryCourt did not hold-and would have had no possible basis for holding-that Brechtsomehow abrogates the limitation on federal habeas relief that § 2254(d)plainly sets out. While a federal habeas court need not "formal[ly]" apply both Brechtand "AEDPA/Chapman," AEDPA nevertheless "sets forth a precondition to the grant of habeas relief." Fry, supra,at 119-120, 127 S.Ct. 2321.
Under AEDPA, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d):
"An application for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted with respect to any claim that was adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim-
"(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or
"(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding."
Section 2254(d)thus demands an inquiry into whether a prisoner's "claim" has been "adjudicated on the merits" in state court; if it has, AEDPA's highly deferential standards kick in. Harrington v. Richter,562 U.S. 86, 103, 131 S.Ct. 770, 178 L.Ed.2d 624 (2011).
At issue here is Ayala's claim that the ex parteportion of the Batsonhearings violated the Federal Constitution. There is no dispute that the California Supreme Court held that any federal error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt under Chapman,and this decision undoubtedly constitutes an adjudication of Ayala's constitutional claim "on the merits." See, e.g., Mitchell v. Esparza,540 U.S. 12, 17-18, 124 S.Ct. 7, 157 L.Ed.2d 263 (2003)(per curiam). Accordingly, a federal habeas court cannot grant Ayala relief unless the state court's rejection of his claim (1) was contrary to or involved an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law, or (2) was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts. Because the highly deferential AEDPA standard applies, we may not overturn the California Supreme Court's decision unless that court applied Chapman"in an 'objectively unreasonable' manner." Id.,at 18, 124 S.Ct. 7(quoting Lockyer v. Andrade,538 U.S. 63, 75, 123 S.Ct. 1166, 155 L.Ed.2d 144 (2003)). When a Chapmandecision is reviewed under AEDPA, "a federal court may not award habeas relief under § 2254unless the harmlessness determination itselfwas unreasonable." Fry, supra,at 119, 127 S.Ct. 2321(emphasis in original). And a state-court decision is not unreasonable if " 'fairminded jurists could disagree' on [its] correctness." Richter, supra,at 101, 131 S.Ct. 770(quoting Yarborough v. Alvarado,541 U.S. 652, 664, 124 S.Ct. 2140, 158 L.Ed.2d 938 (2004)). Ayala therefore must show that the state court's decision to reject his claim "was so lacking in justification that there was an error well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement." 562 U.S., at 103, 131 S.Ct. 770.
In sum, a prisoner who seeks federal habeas corpus relief must satisfy Brecht,and if the state court adjudicated his claim on the merits, the Brechttest subsumes the limitations imposed by AEDPA. Fry, supra,at 119-120, 127 S.Ct. 2321.
III
With this background in mind, we turn to the question whether Ayala was harmed by the trial court's decision to receive the prosecution's explanation for its challenged strikes without the defense present. In order for this argument to succeed, Ayala must show that he was actually prejudiced by this procedure, a standard that he necessarily cannot satisfy if a fairminded jurist could agree with the California Supreme Court's decision that this procedure met the Chapmanstandard of harmlessness. Evaluation of these questions requires consideration of the trial court's grounds for rejecting Ayala's Batsonchallenges.
A
Batsonheld that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits prosecutors from exercising peremptory challenges on the basis of race. 476 U.S., at 89, 106 S.Ct. 1712. When adjudicating a Batsonclaim, trial courts follow a three-step process:
"First, a defendant must make a prima facie showing that a peremptory challenge has been exercised on the basis of race; second, if that showing has been made, the prosecution must offer a race-neutral basis for striking the juror in question; and third, in light of the parties' submissions, the trial court must determine whether the defendant has shown purposeful discrimination." Snyder v. Louisiana,552 U.S. 472, 476-477 [128 S.Ct. 1203, 170 L.Ed.2d 175] (2008)(internal quotation marks and alterations omitted).
The opponent of the strike bears the burden of persuasion regarding racial motivation, Purkett v. Elem,514 U.S. 765, 768, 115 S.Ct. 1769, 131 L.Ed.2d 834 (1995)(per curiam), and a trial court finding regarding the credibility of an attorney's explanation of the ground for a peremptory challenge is "entitled to 'great deference,' " Felkner v. Jackson,562 U.S. 594, 598, 131 S.Ct. 1305, 179 L.Ed.2d 374 (2011)(per curiam) (quoting Batson,476 U.S., at 98, n. 21, 106 S.Ct. 1712). On direct appeal, those findings may be reversed only if the trial judge is shown to have committed clear error. Rice v. Collins,546 U.S. 333, 338, 126 S.Ct. 969, 163 L.Ed.2d 824 (2006). Under AEDPA, even more must be shown. A federal habeas court must accept a state-court finding unless it was based on "an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding." § 2254(d)(2). "State-court factual findings, moreover, are presumed correct; the petitioner has the burden of rebutting the presumption by 'clear and convincing evidence.' " Collins, supra,at 338-339, 126 S.Ct. 969(quoting § 2254(e)(1)).
In this case, Ayala challenged seven of the prosecution's peremptory challenges. As explained above, the Ninth Circuit granted relief based on the dismissal of three potential jurors. The dissent discusses only one, Olanders D. We will devote most of our analysis to the three individuals discussed by the Ninth Circuit, but we hold that any error was harmless with respect to all seven strikes.
B
1
Ayala first contests the prosecution's decision to challenge Olanders D., an African-American man. The prosecution stated that its "primary" reason for striking Olanders D. was uncertainty about whether he could impose the death penalty, and the prosecutor noted that Olanders D. had written on his questionnaire that he did not "believe in the death penalty." 50 Reporter's Tr. on Appeal 6185 (hereinafter Tr.). Providing additional reasons for this strike, the prosecutor first stated that Olanders D.'s responses "did not make a lot of sense," "were not thought out," and "demonstrate[d] a lack of ability to express himself well." App. 283. The prosecutor also voiced doubt that Olanders D. "could actively participate in a meaningful way in deliberations with other jurors" and might have lacked the "ability to fit in with a cohesive group of 12 people." Ibid.
The trial court concluded that the strike was race-neutral. The judge stated: "Certainly with reference to whether or not he would get along with 12 people, it may well be that he would get along very well with 12 people. I think the other observations of counsel are accurate and borne out by the record." 50 Tr. 6186. The California Supreme Court found that the evidence of Olanders D.'s views on the death penalty provided adequate support for the trial judge's finding that the strike exercised against him was not based on race, and the court further found that defense counsel's presence would not have affected the outcome of the Batsonhearing. The Ninth Circuit reversed, but its decision rested on a misapplication of the applicable harmless-error standards.
2
As the trial court and the State Supreme Court found, Olanders D.'s voir direresponses amply support the prosecution's concern that he might not have been willing to impose the death penalty. During voir dire,Olanders D. acknowledged that he wrote on his questionnaire, " 'I don't believe in the death penalty,' " App. 179, and he agreed that he had at one time "thought that [the death penalty] was completely wrong," id.,at 177. Although he stated during the voir direthat he had reconsidered his views, it was reasonable for the prosecution and the trial court to find that he did not clearly or adequately explain the reason or reasons for this change. When asked about this, Olanders D. gave a vague and rambling reply: "Well, I think it's-one thing would be the-the-I mean, examining it more closely, I think, and becoming more familiar with the laws and the-and the behavior, I mean, the change in the people, I think. All of those things contributed to the changes." Id.,at 178.
The Ninth Circuit reversed because it speculated that defense counsel, if present when the prosecution explained the basis for this strike, "could have pointed to seated white jurors who had expressed similar or greater hesitancy" in imposing the death penalty. 756 F.3d, at 678. The Ninth Circuit wrote that a seated white juror named Ana L. was "indistinguishable from Olanders D. in this regard" and that she had "made almost precisely the same statement in her questionnaire." Ibid.
The responses of Olanders D. and Ana L., however, were by no means "indistinguishable." Olanders D. initially voiced unequivocal opposition to the death penalty, stating flatly: "I don't believe in the death penalty." He also revealed that he had once thought it was "completely wrong." Ana L., by contrast, wrote on the questionnaire that she "probablywould not be able to vote for the death penalty," App. 109 (emphasis added), and she then later said at voir direthat she could vote for a verdict of death.
In a capital case, it is not surprising for prospective jurors to express varying degrees of hesitancy about voting for a death verdict. Few are likely to have experienced a need to make a comparable decision at any prior time in their lives. As a result, both the prosecution and the defense may be required to make fine judgment calls about which jurors are more or less willing to vote for the ultimate punishment. These judgment calls may involve a comparison of responses that differ in only nuanced respects, as well as a sensitive assessment of jurors' demeanor. We have previously recognized that peremptory challenges "are often the subjects of instinct," Miller-El v. Dretke,545 U.S. 231, 252, 125 S.Ct. 2317, 162 L.Ed.2d 196 (2005)(citing Batson,476 U.S., at 106, 106 S.Ct. 1712(Marshall, J., concurring)), and that "race-neutral reasons for peremptory challenges often invoke a juror's demeanor," Snyder,552 U.S., at 477, 128 S.Ct. 1203. A trial court is best situated to evaluate both the words and the demeanor of jurors who are peremptorily challenged, as well as the credibility of the prosecutor who exercised those strikes. As we have said, "these determinations of credibility and demeanor lie peculiarly within a trial judge's province," and "in the absence of exceptional circumstances, we [will] defer to the trial court." Ibid.(alterations and internal quotation marks omitted). "Appellate judges cannot on the basis of a cold record easily second-guess a trial judge's decision about likely motivation." Collins,546 U.S., at 343, 126 S.Ct. 969(BREYER, J., concurring).
The upshot is that even if "[r]easonable minds reviewing the record might disagree about the prosecutor's credibility,... on habeas review that does not suffice to supersede the trial court's credibility determination." Id.,at 341-342, 126 S.Ct. 969(majority opinion). Here, any similarity between the responses of Olanders D. and Ana L. is insufficient to compel an inference of racial discrimination under Brechtor AEDPA.
Ayala contends that the presence of defense counsel might have made a difference because defense counsel might have been able to identify white jurors who were not stricken by the prosecution even though they had "expressed similar or greater hesitancy" about the death penalty. We see no basis for this argument. The questionnaires of all the jurors who sat and all the alternates are in the record, and Ana L., whom we just discussed, is apparently the white juror whose answers come the closest to those of Olanders D. Since neither Ayala nor the Ninth Circuit identified a white juror whose statements better support their argument, there is no reason to think that defense counsel could have pointed to a superior comparator at the ex parteproceeding.
3
In rejecting the argument that the prosecutor peremptorily challenged Olanders D. because of his race, the California Supreme Court appears to have interpreted the prosecutor's explanation of this strike to mean that Olanders D.'s views on the death penalty were alone sufficient to convince him to exercise a strike, see 24 Cal.4th, at 266, 99 Cal.Rptr.2d 532, 6 P.3d, at 206, and this was certainly an interpretation of the record that must be sustained under 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(2). As a result, it is not necessary for us to consider the prosecutor's supplementary reason for this strike-the poor quality of Olanders D.'s responses-but in any event, the Ninth Circuit's evaluation of this reason is also flawed.
The Ninth Circuit wrote that its independent "review of the voir dire transcript reveal[ed] nothing that supports the prosecution's claim: Olanders D.'s answers were responsive and complete." 756 F.3d, at 679. The record, however, provides sufficient support for the trial court's determination. Olanders D.'s incoherent explanation during voir direof the reasons for his change of opinion about the death penalty was quoted above. He also provided a chronology of the evolution of his views on the subject that did not hold together. He stated that he had been "completely against the death sentence" 10 years earlier but seemed to suggest that his views had changed over the course of the intervening decade. See App. 176-177. However, on the questionnaire, which he had completed just a month before the voir dire,he wrote unequivocally: "I don't believe in the death penalty." Id., at 179. And then, at the time of the voir dire,he said that he would be willing to impose the death penalty in some cases. Id., at 180. He explained his answer on the questionnaire as follows: "I answered that kind of fast [.] [N]ormally, I wouldn't answer that question that way, but I mean, I really went through that kind of fast. I should have done better than that." Id.,at 179-180. These answers during voir direprovide more than sufficient support for the prosecutor's observation, which the trial court implicitly credited, that Olanders D.'s statements "did not make a lot of sense," "were not thought out," and "demonstrate[d] a lack of ability to express himself well."
In ordering federal habeas relief based on their assessment of the responsiveness and completeness of Olanders D.'s answers, the members of the panel majority misunderstood the role of a federal court in a habeas case. The role of a federal habeas court is to " 'guard against extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice systems,' " Richter,562 U.S., at 102-103, 131 S.Ct. 770(quoting Jackson v. Virginia,443 U.S. 307, 332, n. 5, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979)(Stevens, J., concurring in judgment)), not to apply de novoreview of factual findings and to substitute its own opinions for the determination made on the scene by the trial judge.
C
Ayala next challenges the prosecution's use of a peremptory challenge to strike Gerardo O., a Hispanic man. The prosecution offered three
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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A
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice GINSBURG delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case concerns a charge that two Secret Service agents, in carrying out their responsibility to protect the President, engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint-based discrimination. The episode in suit occurred in Jacksonville, Oregon, on the evening of October 14, 2004. President George W. Bush, campaigning in the area for a second term, was scheduled to spend the evening at a cottage in Jacksonville. With permission from local law enforcement officials, two groups assembled on opposite sides of the street on which the President's motorcade was to travel to reach the cottage. One group supported the President, the other opposed him.
The President made a last-minute decision to stop in town for dinner before completing the drive to the cottage. His motorcade therefore turned from the planned route and proceeded to the outdoor patio dining area of the Jacksonville Inn's restaurant. Learning of the route change, the protesters moved down the sidewalk to the area in front of the Inn. The President's supporters remained across the street and about a half block away from the Inn. At the direction of the Secret Service agents, state and local police cleared the block on which the Inn was located and moved the protesters some two blocks away to a street beyond handgun or explosive reach of the President. The move placed the protesters a block farther away from the Inn than the supporters.
Officials are sheltered from suit, under a doctrine known as qualified immunity, when their conduct "does not violate clearly established ... constitutional rights" a reasonable official, similarly situated, would have comprehended. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). The First Amendment, our precedent makes plain, disfavors viewpoint-based discrimination. See Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 828, 115 S.Ct. 2510, 132 L.Ed.2d 700 (1995). But safeguarding the President is also of overwhelming importance in our constitutional system. See Watts v. United States, 394 U.S. 705, 707, 89 S.Ct. 1399, 22 L.Ed.2d 664 (1969) ( per curiam ). Faced with the President's sudden decision to stop for dinner, the Secret Service agents had to cope with a security situation not earlier anticipated. No decision of this Court so much as hinted that their on-the-spot action was unlawful because they failed to keep the protesters and supporters, throughout the episode, equidistant from the President.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled otherwise. It found dispositive of the agents' motion to dismiss "the considerable disparity in the distance each group was allowed to stand from the Presiden[t]." Moss v. United States Secret Serv., 711 F.3d 941, 946 (2013). Because no "clearly established law" so controlled the agents' response to the motorcade's detour, we reverse the Ninth Circuit's judgment.
I
A
On October 14, 2004, after a nearby campaign appearance, President George W. Bush was scheduled to spend the night at a cottage in Jacksonville, Oregon. Anticipating the visit, a group of individuals, including respondents (the protesters), organized a demonstration to express their opposition to the President and his policies. At around 6:00 p.m. on the evening the President's motorcade was expected to pass through the town, between 200 and 300 protesters gathered in Jacksonville, on California Street between Third and Fourth Streets. See infra, at 2062 (map depicting the relevant area in Jacksonville). The gathering had been precleared with local law enforcement authorities. On the opposite side of Third Street, a similarly sized group of individuals (the supporters) assembled to show their support for the President. If, as planned, the motorcade had traveled down Third Street to reach the cottage, with no stops along the way, the protesters and supporters would have had equal access to the President throughout in delivering their respective messages.
This situation was unsettled when President Bush made a spur-of-the-moment decision to stop for dinner at the Jacksonville Inn before proceeding to the cottage. The Inn stands on the north side of California Street, on the block where the protesters had assembled. Learning of the President's change in plans, the protesters moved along the block to face the Inn. The respective positions of the protesters and supporters at the time the President arrived at the Inn are shown on the following map, which the protesters attached as an exhibit to their complaint: 1
IMAGE
As the map indicates, the protesters massed on the sidewalk directly in front of the Inn, while the supporters remained assembled on the block west of Third Street, some distance from the Inn. The map also shows an alley running along the east side of the Inn (the California Street alley) leading to an outdoor patio used by the Inn's restaurant as a dining area. A six-foot high wooden fence surrounded the patio. At the location where the President's supporters gathered, a large two-story building, the U.S. Hotel, extended north around the corner of California and Third Streets. That structure blocked sight of, and weapons access to, the patio from points on California Street west of the Inn.
Petitioners are two Secret Service agents (the agents) responsible for the President's security during the Jacksonville visit. Shortly after 7:00 p.m. on the evening in question, the agents enlisted the aid of local police officers to secure the area for the President's unexpected stop at the Inn. Following the agents' instructions, the local officers first cleared the alley running from Third Street to the patio (the Third Street alley), which the President's motorcade would use to access the Inn. The officers then cleared Third Street north of California Street, as well as the California Street alley.
At around 7:15 p.m., the President arrived at the Inn. As the motorcade entered the Third Street alley, both sets of demonstrators were equally within the President's sight and hearing. When the President reached the outdoor patio dining area, the protesters stood on the sidewalk directly in front of the California Street alley, exhibiting signs and chanting slogans critical of the President and his policies. In view of the short distance between California Street and the patio, the protesters no longer contest that they were then within weapons range of the President. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 3-4, 35, 39-40; Brief for Petitioners 44.
Approximately 15 minutes later, the agents directed the officers to clear the protesters from the block in front of the Inn and move them to the east side of Fourth Street. From their new location, the protesters were roughly the same distance from the President as the supporters. But unlike the supporters, whose sight and access were obstructed by the U.S. Hotel, only a parking lot separated the protesters from the patio. The protesters thus remained within weapons range of, and had a direct line of sight to, the President's location. This sight line is illustrated by the broken arrow marked on the map below. 2
IMAGE
After another 15 minutes passed, the agents directed the officers again to move the protesters, this time one block farther away from the Inn, to the east side of Fifth Street. The relocation was necessary, the agents told the local officers, to ensure that no demonstrator would be "within handgun or explosive range of the President." App. to Pet. for Cert. 177a. The agents, however, did not require the guests already inside the Inn to leave, stay clear of the patio, or go through any security screening. The supporters at all times retained their original location on the west side of Third Street.
After the President dined, the motorcade left the Inn by traveling south on Third Street toward the cottage. On its way, the motorcade passed the President's supporters. The protesters remained on Fifth Street, two blocks away from the motorcade's route, thus beyond the President's sight and hearing.
B
The protesters sued the agents for damages in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. The agents' actions, the complaint asserted, violated the protesters' First Amendment rights by the manner in which the agents established a security perimeter around the President during his unscheduled stop for dinner. See Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971) (recognizing claim for damages against federal agents for violations of plaintiff's Fourth Amendment rights). 3 Specifically, the protesters alleged that the agents engaged in viewpoint discrimination when they moved the protesters away from the Inn, while allowing the supporters to remain in their original location.
The agents moved to dismiss the complaint on the ground that the protesters' allegations were insufficient to state a claim for violation of the First Amendment. The agents further maintained that they were sheltered by qualified immunity because the constitutional right alleged by the protesters was not clearly established.
The District Court denied the motion, see Moss v. United States Secret Serv., 2007 WL 2915608, *1, 20 (D.Ore., Oct. 7, 2007), but on interlocutory appeal,4 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. See Moss v. United States Secret Serv., 572 F.3d 962 (2009). The facts alleged in the complaint, the Court of Appeals held, were insufficient to state a First Amendment claim under the pleading standards prescribed in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007), and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009). 572 F.3d, at 974-975.5 Because Twombly and Iqbal were decided after the protesters filed their complaint, however, the Ninth Circuit instructed the District Court to grant the protesters leave to amend. 572 F.3d, at 972.
On remand, the protesters supplemented their complaint with allegations that the agents acted pursuant to an "actual but unwritten" Secret Service policy of "work[ing] with the White House under President Bush to eliminate dissent and protest from presidential appearances." App. to Pet. for Cert. 184a. Relying on published media reports, the protesters' amended complaint cited several instances in which other Secret Service agents allegedly engaged in conduct designed to suppress expression critical of President Bush at his public appearances. The amended complaint also included an excerpt from a White House manual instructing the President's advance team to "work with the Secret Service and have them ask the local police department to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed; preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route." Id., at 219a. See also id., at 183a.
The agents renewed their motion to dismiss the suit for failure to state a claim and on qualified immunity grounds. The District Court denied the motion, holding that the complaint adequately alleged a violation of the First Amendment, and that the constitutional right asserted was clearly established. Moss v. United States Secret Serv., 750 F.Supp.2d 1197, 1216-1228 (Ore.2010). The agents again sought an interlocutory appeal.
This time, the Ninth Circuit affirmed, 711 F.3d 941, satisfied that the amended pleading plausibly alleged that the agents "sought to suppress [the protesters'] political speech" based on the viewpoint they expressed, id., at 958. Viewpoint-driven conduct, the Court of Appeals maintained, could be inferred from the absence of a legitimate security rationale for "the differential treatment" accorded the two groups of demonstrators. See id., at 946. The Court of Appeals further held that the agents were not entitled to qualified immunity because this Court's precedent "make[s] clear ... 'that the government may not regulate speech based on its substantive content or the message it conveys.' " Id., at 963 (quoting Rosenberger, 515 U.S., at 828, 115 S.Ct. 2510).
The agents petitioned for rehearing and rehearing en banc, urging that the panel erred in finding the alleged constitutional violation clearly established. Over the dissent of eight judges, the Ninth Circuit denied the en banc petition. See 711 F.3d, at 947 (O'Scannlain, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). We granted certiorari. 571 U.S. ----, 134 S.Ct. 677, 187 L.Ed.2d 544 (2013).
II
A
It is uncontested and uncontestable that government officials may not exclude from public places persons engaged in peaceful expressive activity solely because the government actor fears, dislikes, or disagrees with the views those persons express. See, e.g., Police Dept. of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U.S. 92, 96, 92 S.Ct. 2286, 33 L.Ed.2d 212 (1972). It is equally plain that the fundamental right to speak secured by the First Amendment does not leave people at liberty to publicize their views " 'whenever and however and wherever they please.' " United States v. Grace, 461 U.S. 171, 177-178, 103 S.Ct. 1702, 75 L.Ed.2d 736 (1983) (quoting Adderley v. Florida, 385 U.S. 39, 48, 87 S.Ct. 242, 17 L.Ed.2d 149 (1966)). Our decision in this case starts from those premises.
The particular question before us is whether the protesters have alleged violation of a clearly established First Amendment right based on the agents' decision to order the protesters moved from their original location in front of the Inn, first to the block just east of the Inn, and then another block farther. We note, initially, an antecedent issue: Does the First Amendment give rise to an implied right of action for damages against federal officers who violate that Amendment's guarantees? In Bivens, cited supra, at 2064, we recognized an implied right of action against federal officers for violations of the Fourth Amendment. Thereafter, we have several times assumed without deciding that Bivens extends to First Amendment claims. See, e.g.,Iqbal, 556 U.S., at 675, 129 S.Ct. 1937. We do so again in this case. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 10-11 (counsel for petitioners observed that the implication of a right to sue derived from the First Amendment itself was an issue "not preserved below" and therefore "not presented" in this Court).
The doctrine of qualified immunity protects government officials from liability for civil damages "unless a plaintiff pleads facts showing (1) that the official violated a statutory or constitutional right, and (2) that the right was 'clearly established' at the time of the challenged conduct." Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. ----, ----, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 2080, 179 L.Ed.2d 1149 (2011). And under the governing pleading standard, the "complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face." Iqbal, 556 U.S., at 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937 (internal quotation marks omitted). Requiring the alleged violation of law to be "clearly established" "balances ... the need to hold public officials accountable when they exercise power irresponsibly and the need to shield officials from harassment, distraction, and liability when they perform their duties reasonably." Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231, 129 S.Ct. 808, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009). The "dispositive inquiry," we have said, "is whether it would [have been] clear to a reasonable officer" in the agents' position "that [their] conduct was unlawful in the situation [they] confronted." Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 202, 121 S.Ct. 2151, 150 L.Ed.2d 272 (2001).
At the time of the Jacksonville incident, this Court had addressed a constitutional challenge to Secret Service actions on only one occasion. 6 In Hunter v. Bryant, 502 U.S. 224, 112 S.Ct. 534, 116 L.Ed.2d 589 (1991) ( per curiam ), the plaintiff sued two Secret Service agents alleging that they arrested him without probable cause for writing and delivering to two University of Southern California offices a letter referring to a plot to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. We held that qualified immunity shielded the agents from claims that the arrest violated the plaintiff's rights under the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments. "[N]owhere," we stated, is "accommodation for reasonable error ... more important than when the specter of Presidential assassination is raised." Id., at 229, 112 S.Ct. 534.
In other contexts, we have similarly recognized the Nation's "valid, even ... overwhelming, interest in protecting the safety of its Chief Executive." Watts, 394 U.S., at 707, 89 S.Ct. 1399. See also Rubin v. United States, 525 U.S. 990, 990-991, 119 S.Ct. 461, 142 L.Ed.2d 413 (1998) (BREYER, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) ("The physical security of the President of the United States has a special legal role to play in our constitutional system."). Mindful that "[o]fficers assigned to protect public officials must make singularly swift, on the spot, decisions whether the safety of the person they are guarding is in jeopardy," Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. ----, ----, 132 S.Ct. 2088, 2097, 182 L.Ed.2d 985 (2012) (GINSBURG, J., concurring in judgment), we address the key question: Should it have been clear to the agents that the security perimeter they established violated the First Amendment?
B
The protesters assert that it violated clearly established First Amendment law to deny them "equal access to the President," App. Pet. for Cert. 175a, during his dinner at the Inn and subsequent drive to the cottage, id., at 185a.7 The Court of Appeals agreed, holding that the agents violated clearly established law by moving the protesters to a location that "was in relevant ways not comparable to the place where the pro- Bush group was allowed to remain." 711 F.3d, at 946 (internal quotation marks and ellipsis omitted). The Ninth Circuit did not deny that security concerns justified "mov[ing] the anti-Bush protesters somewhere." Ibid. But, the court determined, no reason was shown for "the considerable disparity in the distance each group was allowed to stand from the Presidential party." Ibid. The agents thus offended the First Amendment, in the Court of Appeals' view, because their directions to the local officers placed the protesters at a "comparativ[e] disadvantag[e] in expressing their views" to the President. Ibid.
No decision of which we are aware, however, would alert Secret Service agents engaged in crowd control that they bear a First Amendment obligation "to ensure that groups with different viewpoints are at comparable locations at all times." Id., at 952 (O'Scannlain, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). Nor would the maintenance of equal access make sense in the situation the agents confronted.
Recall that at the protesters' location on the north side of California Street, see supra, at 2062, they faced an alley giving them a direct line of sight to the outdoor patio where the President stopped to dine. The first move, to the corner of Fourth and California Streets, proved no solution, for there, only a parking lot stood between the protesters and the patio. True, at both locations, a six-foot wooden fence and an unspecified number of local police officers impeded access to the President. Even so, 200 to 300 protesters were within weapons range, and had a largely unobstructed view, of the President's location. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 41 (counsel for respondents acknowledged that "in hindsight, you could ... conclude" that "proximity [of the protesters to the President] alone ... is enough to create a security [risk]"). See also Eggen & Fletcher, FBI: Grenade Was a Threat to Bush, Washington Post, May 19, 2005, p. A1 (reporting that a live grenade thrown at President Bush in 2005, had it detonated, could have injured him from 100 feet away).
The protesters suggest that the agents could have moved the President's supporters further to the west so that they would not be in range of the President when the motorcade drove from the Inn to the cottage where the President would stay overnight. See App. Pet. for Cert. 178a. As earlier explained, however, see supra, at 2062, there would have been no security rationale for such a move. In contrast to the open alley and parking lot on the east side of the Inn, to the west of the Inn where the supporters stood, a large, two-story building blocked sight of, or weapons access to, the patio the agents endeavored to secure.8 No clearly established law, we agree, required the Secret Service "to interfere with even more speech than security concerns would require in an attempt to keep opposing groups at roughly equal distances from the President." Brief for Petitioners 32. And surely no such law required the agents to attempt to maintain equal distances by "prevail[ing] upon the President not to dine at the Inn." Oral Arg. Audio in No. 10-36152(CA9) 42:22 to 43:36 (argument by protesters' counsel), available at http:// www. ca 9. uscourts. gov/ media/ view. php? pk_ id= 0000008129. (as visited May 19, 2014, and in Clerk of Court's case file) (argument tendered by protesters' counsel).
III
The protesters allege that, when the agents directed their displacement, the agents acted not to ensure the President's safety from handguns or explosive devices. Instead, the protesters urge, the agents had them moved solely to insulate the President from their message, thereby giving the President's supporters greater visibility and audibility. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 35-36. The Ninth Circuit found sufficient the protesters' allegations that the agents "acted with the sole intent to discriminate against [the protesters] because of their viewpoint". 711 F.3d, at 964. Accordingly, the Court of Appeals "allow[ed] the protestors' claim of viewpoint discrimination to proceed." Id., at 962.
It may be, the agents acknowledged, that clearly established law proscribed the Secret Service from disadvantaging one group of speakers in comparison to another if the agents had "no objectively reasonable security rationale" for their conduct, but acted solely to inhibit the expression of disfavored views. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 28-29; Brief for Petitioners 52 (entitlement to relief might have been established if, for example, "the pro-Bush group had ... been allowed to move into the nearer location that the anti-Bush had vacated"). We agree with the agents, however, that the map itself, reproduced supra, at 2062, undermines the protesters' allegations of viewpoint discrimination as the sole reason for the agents' directions. The map corroborates that, because of their location, the protesters posed a potential security risk to the President, while the supporters, because of their location, did not.
The protesters make three arguments to shore up their charge that the agents' asserted security concerns are disingenuous. First, the protesters urge that, had the agents' professed interest in the President's safety been sincere, the agents would have directed all persons present at the Inn to be screened or removed from the premises. See Brief for Respondents 27. But staff, other diners, and Inn guests were there even before the agents themselves knew that the President would dine at the Inn. See Brief for Petitioners 47. Those already at the Inn "could not have had any expectation that they would see the President that evening or any opportunity to premeditate a plan to cause him harm." Reply Brief 16. The Secret Service, moreover, could take measures to ensure that the relatively small number of people already inside the Inn were kept under close watch; no similar surveillance would have been possible for 200 to 300 people congregating in front of the Inn. See ibid.
The protesters also point to a White House manual, which states that the President's advance team should "work with the Secret Service ... to designate a protest area ... preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route." App. to Pet. for Cert. 219a. This manual guides the conduct of the President's political advance team. See id., at 220a (distinguishing between the political role of the advance team and the security mission of the Secret Service).9 As the complaint acknowledges, the Secret Service has its own "written guidelines, directives, instructions and rules." Id., at 184a. Those guides explicitly "prohibit Secret Service agents from discriminating between anti-government and pro-government demonstrators." Ibid.
The protesters maintain that the Secret Service does not adhere to its own written guides. They recite several instances in which Secret Service agents allegedly engaged in viewpoint discrimination. See id., at 189a-194a. Even accepting as true the submission that Secret Service agents, at times, have assisted in shielding the President from political speech, this case is scarcely one in which the agents acted " without a valid security reason." Brief for Respondents 40. We emphasize, again, that the protesters were at least as close to the President as were the supporters when the motorcade arrived at the Jacksonville Inn. See supra, at 2062. And as the map attached to the complaint shows, see supra, at 2062, when the President reached the patio to dine, the protesters, but not the supporters, were within weapons range of his location. See supra, at 2061. Given that situation, the protesters cannot plausibly urge that the agents "had no valid security reason to request or order the[ir] eviction." App. to Pet. for Cert. 186a.
We note, moreover, that individual government officials "cannot be held liable" in a Bivens suit "unless they themselves acted [unconstitutionally]." Iqbal, 556 U.S., at 683, 129 S.Ct. 1937. We therefore decline to infer from alleged instances of misconduct on the part of particular agents an unwritten policy of the Secret Service to suppress disfavored expression, and then to attribute that supposed policy to all field-level operatives. See Reply Brief 20.
* * *
This case comes to us on the agents' petition to review the Ninth Circuit's denial of their qualified immunity defense. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 10 (petitioners' briefing on appeal trained on the issue of qualified immunity). Limiting our decision to that question, we hold, for the reasons stated, that the agents are entitled to qualified immunity. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
It is so ordered.
The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U.S. 321, 337, 26 S.Ct. 282, 50 L.Ed. 499.
App. to Brief for Petitioners (Diagram A).
This map appears as an appendix to the agents' opening brief. See App. to Brief for Petitioners (Diagram B). Except for the arrow, Diagram B is identical to the map included in the protesters' complaint.
The protesters' complaint also asserted claims against local police officers for using excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Those claims were dismissed for failure to state a claim, see Moss v. United States Secret Serv., 711 F.3d 941, 954 (C.A.9 2013), and are not at issue here.
We have repeatedly "stressed the importance of resolving immunity questions at the earliest possible stage [of the] litigation," Hunter v. Bryant, 502 U.S. 224, 227, 112 S.Ct. 534, 116 L.Ed.2d 589 (1991) ( per curiam ).
In ruling on a motion to dismiss, we have instructed, courts "must take all of the factual allegations in the complaint as true," but "are not bound to accept as true a legal conclusion couched as a factual allegation." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Subsequent to the incident at issue here, we held in Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. ----, ----, 132 S.Ct. 2088, 2091, 182 L.Ed.2d 985 (2012), that two Secret Service agents were "immune from suit for allegedly arresting a suspect in retaliation for [negative comments he made about Vice President Cheney], when the agents had probable cause to arrest the suspect for committing a federal crime."
The protesters, however, do not maintain that "the First Amendment entitled them to be returned to their original location after the President's dinner and before his motorcade departed." Brief for Respondents 39-40, n. 7. They urge only that "it was constitutionally improper to move them in the first place." Id., at 40, n. 7; see Tr. of Oral Arg. 50 (same).
Neither side contends that the presence of demonstrators along the President's motorcade route posed an unmanageable security risk, or that there would have been a legitimate security rationale for removing the protesters, but not the supporters, from the motorcade route. The President's detour for dinner, however, set the two groups apart. "[T]he security concerns arising from the presence of a large group of people near the open-air patio where the President was dining were plainly different from those associated with permitting a group ... to remain along Third Street while the President's [armored limousine] traveled by." Brief for Petitioners 46.
"An 'advance man' is '[o]ne who arranges for publicity, protocol, transportation, speaking schedules, conferences with local government officials, and minute details of a visit, smoothing the way for a political figure.' " See 711 F.3d, at 950, n. 2 (O'Scannlain, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc) (quoting W. Safire, Safire's Political Dictionary 8 (5th ed. 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:
|
C
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Since the decision in Virginia Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U. S. 748 (1976), in which the Court held for the first time that the First Amendment precludes certain forms of regulation of purely commercial speech, we have on a number of occasions addressed the constitutionality of restraints on advertising and solicitation by attorneys. See In re R. M. J., 455 U. S. 191 (1982); In re Primus, 436 U. S. 412 (1978); Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., 436 U. S. 447 (1978); Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U. S. 350 (1977). This case presents additional unresolved questions regarding the regulation of commercial speech by attorneys: whether a State may discipline an attorney for soliciting business by running newspaper advertisements containing nondeceptive illustrations and legal advice, and whether a State may seek to prevent potential deception of the public by requiring attorneys to disclose in their advertising certain information regarding fee arrangements.
> — I
Appellant is an attorney practicing in Columbus, Ohio. Late in 1981, he sought to augment his practice by advertising in local newspapers. His first effort was a modest one: he ran a small advertisement in the Columbus Citizen Journal advising its readers that his law firm would represent defendants in drunken driving cases and that his clients’ “[f]ull legal fee [would be] refunded if [they were] convicted of DRUNK DRIVING.” The advertisement appeared in the Journal for two days; on the second day, Charles Kettlewell, an attorney employed by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel of the Supreme Court of Ohio (appellee) telephoned appellant and informed him that the advertisement appeared to be an offer to represent criminal defendants on a contingent-fee basis, a practice prohibited by Disciplinary Rule 2-106(C) of the Ohio Code of Professional Responsibility. Appellant immediately withdrew the advertisement and in a letter to Kettlewell apologized for running it, also stating in the letter that he would decline to accept employment by persons responding to the ad.
Appellant’s second effort was more ambitious. In the spring of 1982, appellant placed an advertisement in 36 Ohio newspapers publicizing his willingness to represent women who had suffered injuries resulting from their use of a contraceptive device known as the Daikon Shield Intrauterine Device. The advertisement featured a line drawing of the Daikon Shield accompanied by the question, “DID YOU USE THIS IUD?” The advertisement then related the following information:
“The Daikon Shield Interuterine [sic] Device is alleged to have caused serious pelvic infections resulting in hospitalizations, tubal damage, infertility, and hysterectomies. It is also alleged to have caused unplanned pregnancies ending in abortions, miscarriages, septic abortions, tubal or ectopic pregnancies, and full-term deliveries. If you or a friend have had a similar experience do not assume it is too late to take legal action against the Shield’s manufacturer. Our law firm is presently representing women on such cases. The cases are handled on a contingent fee basis of the amount recovered. If there is no recovery, no legal fees are owed by our clients.”
The ad concluded with the name of appellant’s law firm, its address, and a phone number that the reader might call for “free information.”
The advertisement was successful in attracting clients: appellant received well over 200 inquiries regarding the advertisement, and he initiated lawsuits on behalf of 106 of the women who contacted him as a result of the advertisement. The ad, however, also aroused the interest of the Office of Disciplinary Counsel. On July 29, 1982, the Office filed a complaint against appellant charging him with a number of disciplinary violations arising out of both the drunken driving and Daikon Shield advertisements.
The complaint, as subsequently amended, alleged that the drunken driving ad violated Ohio Disciplinary Rule 2-101(A) in that it was “false, fraudulent, misleading, and deceptive to the public” because it offered representation on a contingent-fee basis in a criminal case — an offer that could not be carried out under Disciplinary Rule 2-106(C). With respect to the Daikon Shield advertisement, the complaint alleged that in running the ad and accepting employment by women responding to it, appellant had violated the following Disciplinary Rules: DR 2-101(B), which prohibits the use of illustrations in advertisements run by attorneys, requires that ads by attorneys be “dignified,” and limits the information that may be included in such ads to a list of 20 items; DR 2-103(A), which prohibits an attorney from “recommending] employment, as a private practitioner, of himself, his partner, or associate to a non-lawyer who has not sought his advice regarding employment of a lawyer”; and DR 2-104(A), which provides (with certain exceptions not applicable here) that “[a] lawyer who has given unsolicited advice to a layman that he should obtain counsel or take legal action shall not accept employment resulting from that advice.”
The complaint also alleged that the advertisement violated DR 2—101(B)(15), which provides that any advertisement that mentions contingent-fee rates must “disclos[e] whether percentages are computed before or after deduction of court costs and expenses,” and that the ad’s failure to inform clients that they would be liable for costs (as opposed to legal fees) even if their claims were unsuccessful rendered the advertisement “deceptive” in violation of DR 2-101(A). The complaint did not allege that the Daikon Shield advertisement was false or deceptive in any respect other than its omission of information relating to the contingent-fee arrangement; indeed, the Office of Disciplinary Counsel stipulated that the information and advice regarding Daikon Shield litigation was not false, fraudulent, misleading, or deceptive and that the drawing was an accurate representation of the Daikon Shield.
The charges against appellant were heard by a panel of the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline of the Supreme Court of Ohio. Appellant’s primary defense to the charges against him was that Ohio’s rules restricting the content of advertising by attorneys were unconstitutional under this Court’s decisions in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U. S. 350 (1977), and In re R. M. J., 455 U. S. 191 (1982). In support of his contention that the State had not provided justification for its rules sufficient to withstand the First Amendment scrutiny called for by those decisions, appellant proffered the testimony of expert witnesses that unfettered advertising by attorneys was economically beneficial and that appellant’s advertising in particular was socially valuable in that it served to inform members of the public of their legal rights and of the potential health hazards associated with the Daikon Shield. Appellant also put on the stand two of the women who had responded to his advertisements, both of whom testified that they would not have learned of their legal claims had it not been for appellant’s advertisement.
The panel found that appellant’s use of advertising had violated a number of Disciplinary Rules. The panel accepted the contention that the drunken driving advertisement was deceptive, but its reasoning differed from that of the Office of Disciplinary Counsel: the panel concluded that because the advertisement failed to mention the common practice of plea bargaining in drunken driving cases, it might be deceptive to potential clients who would be unaware of the likelihood that they would both be found guilty (of a lesser offense) and be liable for attorney’s fees (because they had not been convicted of drunken driving). The panel also found that the use of an illustration in appellant’s Daikon Shield advertisement violated DR 2-101(B), that the ad’s failure to disclose the client’s potential liability for costs even if her suit were unsuccessful violated both DR 2-101(A) and DR 2-101 (B)(15), that the advertisement constituted self-recommendation in violation of DR 2-103(A), and that appellant’s acceptance of offers of employment resulting from the advertisement violated DR 2-104(A).
The panel rejected appellant’s arguments that Ohio’s regulations regarding the content of attorney advertising were unconstitutional as applied to him. The panel noted that neither Bates nor In re R. M. J. had forbidden all regulation of attorney advertising and that both of those cases had involved advertising regulations substantially more restrictive than Ohio’s. The panel also relied heavily on Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., 436 U. S. 447 (1978), in which this Court upheld Ohio’s imposition of discipline on an attorney who had engaged in in-person solicitation. The panel apparently concluded that the interests served by the application of Ohio’s rules to advertising that contained legal advice and solicited clients to pursue a particular legal claim were as substantial as the interests at stake in Ohralik. Accordingly, the panel rejected appellant’s constitutional defenses and recommended that he be publicly reprimanded for his violations. The Board of Commissioners adopted the panel’s findings in full, but recommended the sanction of indefinite suspension from the practice of law rather than the more lenient punishment proposed by the panel.
The Supreme Court of Ohio, in turn, adopted the Board’s findings that appellant’s advertisements had violated the Disciplinary Rules specified by the hearing panel. 10 Ohio St. 3d 44, 461 N. E. 2d 883 (1984). The court also agreed with the Board that the application of Ohio’s rules to appellant’s advertisements did not offend the First Amendment. The court pointed out that Bates and In re R. M. J. permitted regulations designed to prevent the use of deceptive advertising and that R. M. J. had recognized that even non-deceptive advertising might be restricted if the restriction was narrowly designed to achieve a substantial state interest. The court held that disclosure requirements applicable to advertisements mentioning contingent-fee arrangements served the permissible goal of ensuring that potential clients were not misled regarding the terms of the arrangements. In addition, the court held, it was “allowable” to prevent attorneys from claiming expertise in particular fields of law in the absence of standards by which such claims might be assessed, and it was “reasonable” to preclude the use of illustrations in advertisements and to prevent attorneys from offering legal advice in their advertisements, although the court did not specifically identify the interests served by these restrictions. Having determined that appellant’s advertisements violated Ohio’s Disciplinary Rules and that the First Amendment did not forbid the application of those rules to appellant, the court concluded that appellant’s conduct warranted a public reprimand.
Contending that Ohio’s Disciplinary Rules violate the First Amendment insofar as they authorize the State to discipline him for the content of his Daikon Shield advertisement, appellant filed this appeal. Appellant also claims that the manner in which he was disciplined for running his drunken driving advertisement violated his right to due process. We noted probable jurisdiction, 469 U. S. 813 (1984), and now affirm in part and reverse in part.
HH HH
There is no longer any room to doubt that what has come to be known as “commercial speech” is entitled to the protection of the First Amendment, albeit to protection somewhat less extensive than that afforded “noncommercial speech.” Bolger v. Youngs Drug Products Corp., 463 U. S. 60 (1983); InreR. M. J455 U. S. 191 (1982); Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Comm’n of New York, 447 U. S. 557 (1980). More subject to doubt, perhaps, are the precise bounds of the category of expression that may be termed commercial speech, but it is clear enough that the speech at issue in this case — advertising pure and simple— falls within those bounds. Our commercial speech doctrine rests heavily on “the ‘common-sense’ distinction between speech proposing a commercial transaction... and other varieties of speech,” Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., supra, at 455-456, and appellant’s advertisements undeniably propose a commercial transaction. Whatever else the category of commercial speech may encompass, see Central Hudson Gas & Electric Co. v. Public Service Comm’n of New York, supra, it must include appellant’s advertisements.
Our general approach to restrictions on commercial speech is also by now well settled. The States and the Federal Government are free to prevent the dissemination of commercial speech that is false, deceptive, or misleading, see Friedman v. Rogers, 440 U. S. 1 (1979), or that proposes an illegal transaction, see Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Human Relations Comm’n, 413 U. S. 376 (1973). Commercial speech that is not false or deceptive and does not concern unlawful activities, however, may be restricted only in the service of a substantial governmental interest, and only through means that directly advance that interest. Central Hudson Gas & Electric, supra, at 566. Our application of these principles to the commercial speech of attorneys has led us to conclude that blanket bans on price advertising by attorneys and rules preventing attorneys from using nondeceptive terminology to describe their fields of practice are impermissible, see Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U. S. 350 (1977); In re R. M. J., supra, but that rules prohibiting in-person solicitation of clients by attorneys are, at least under some circumstances, permissible, see Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., 436 U. S. 447 (1978). To resolve this appeal, we must apply the teachings of these cases to three separate forms of regulation Ohio has imposed on advertising by its attorneys: prohibitions on soliciting legal business through advertisements containing advice and information regarding specific legal problems; restrictions on the use of illustrations in advertising by lawyers; and disclosure requirements relating to the terms of contingent fees.
I — I I — I
We turn first to the Ohio Supreme Court’s finding that appellant’s Daikon Shield advertisement (and his acceptance of employment resulting from it) ran afoul of the rules against self-recommendation and accepting employment resulting from unsolicited legal advice. Because all advertising is at least implicitly a plea for its audience’s custom, a broad reading of the rules applied by the Ohio court (and particularly the rule against self-recommendation) might suggest that they forbid all advertising by attorneys — a result obviously not in keeping with our decisions in Bates and In re R. M. J. But the Ohio court did not purport to give its rules such a broad reading: it held only that the rules forbade soliciting or accepting legal employment through advertisements containing information or advice regarding a specific legal problem.
The interest served by the application of the Ohio self-recommendation and solicitation rules to appellant’s advertisement is not apparent from a reading of the opinions of the Ohio Supreme Court and its Board of Commissioners. The advertisement’s information and advice concerning the Daikon Shield were, as the Office of Disciplinary Counsel stipulated, neither false nor deceptive: in fact, they were entirely accurate. The advertisement did not promise readers that lawsuits alleging injuries caused by the Daikon Shield would be successful, nor did it suggest that appellant had any special expertise in handling such lawsuits other than his employment in other such litigation. Rather, the advertisement reported the indisputable fact that the Daikon Shield has spawned an impressive number of lawsuits and advised readers that appellant was currently handling such lawsuits and was willing to represent other women asserting similar claims. In addition, the advertisement advised women that they should not assume that their claims were time-barred— advice that seems completely unobjectionable in light of the trend in many States toward a “discovery rule” for determining when a cause of action for latent injury or disease accrues. The State’s power to prohibit advertising that is “inherently misleading,” see In re R. M. J., 455 U. S., at 203, thus cannot justify Ohio’s decision to discipline appellant for running advertising geared to persons with a specific legal problem.
Because appellant’s statements regarding the Daikon Shield were not false or deceptive, our decisions impose on the State the burden of establishing that prohibiting the use of such statements to solicit or obtain legal business directly advances a substantial governmental interest. The extensive citations in the opinion of the Board of Commissioners to our opinion in Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., 436 U. S. 447 (1978), suggest that the Board believed that the application of the rules to appellant’s advertising served the same interests that this Court found sufficient to justify the ban on in-person solicitation at issue in Ohralik. We cannot agree. Our decision in Ohralik was largely grounded on the substantial differences between face-to-face solicitation and the advertising we had held permissible in Bates. In-person solicitation by a lawyer, we concluded, was a practice rife with possibilities for overreaching, invasion of privacy, the exercise of undue influence, and outright fraud. Ohralik, 436 U. S., at 464-465. In addition, we noted that in-person solicitation presents unique regulatory difficulties because it is “not visible or otherwise open to public scrutiny.” Id., at 466. These unique features of in-person solicitation by lawyers, we held, justified a prophylactic rule prohibiting lawyers from engaging in such solicitation for pecuniary gain, but we were careful to point out that “in-person solicitation of professional employment by a lawyer does not stand on a par with truthful advertising about the availability and terms of routine legal services.” Id., at 455.
It is apparent that the concerns that moved the Court in Ohralik are not present here. Although some sensitive souls may have found appellant’s advertisement in poor taste, it can hardly be said to have invaded the privacy of those who read it. More significantly, appellant’s advertisement — and print advertising generally — poses much less risk of overreaching or undue influence. Print advertising may convey information and ideas more or less effectively, but in most cases, it will lack the coercive force of the personal presence of a trained advocate. In addition, a printed advertisement, unlike a personal encounter initiated by an attorney, is not likely to involve pressure on the potential client for an immediate yes-or-no answer to the offer of representation. Thus, a printed advertisement is a means of conveying information about legal services that is more conducive to reflection and the exercise of choice on the part of the consumer than is personal solicitation by an attorney. Accordingly, the substantial interests that justified the ban on in-person solicitation upheld in Ohralik cannot justify the discipline imposed on appellant for the content of his advertisement.
Nor does the traditional justification for restraints on solicitation — the fear that lawyers will “stir up litigation”— justify the restriction imposed in this case. In evaluating this proffered justification, it is important to think about what it might mean to say that the State has an interest in preventing lawyers from stirring up litigation. It is possible to describe litigation itself as an evil that the State is entitled to combat: after all, litigation consumes vast quantities of social resources to produce little of tangible value but much discord and unpleasantness. “[A]s a litigant,” Judge Learned Hand once observed, “I should dread a lawsuit beyond almost anything else short of sickness and death.” L. Hand, The Deficiencies of Trials to Reach the Heart of the Matter, in 3 Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Lectures on Legal Topics 89, 105 (1926).
But we cannot endorse the proposition that a lawsuit, as such, is an evil. Over the course of centuries, our society has settled upon civil litigation as a means for redressing grievances, resolving disputes, and vindicating rights when other means fail. There is no cause for consternation when a person who believes in good faith and on the basis of accurate information regarding his legal rights that he has suffered a legally cognizable injury turns to the courts for a remedy: “we cannot accept the notion that it is always better for a person to suffer a wrong silently than to redress it by legal action.” Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U. S., at 376. That our citizens have access to their civil courts is not an evil to be regretted; rather, it is an attribute of our system of justice in which we ought to take pride. The State is not entitled to interfere with that access by denying its citizens accurate information about their legal rights. Accordingly, it is not sufficient justification for the discipline imposed on appellant that his truthful and nondeceptive advertising had a tendency to or did in fact encourage others to file lawsuits.
The State does not, however, argue that the encouragement of litigation is inherently evil, nor does it assert an interest in discouraging the particular form of litigation that appellant’s advertising solicited. Rather, the State’s position is that although appellant’s advertising may itself have been harmless — may even have had the salutary effect of informing some persons of rights of which they would otherwise have been unaware — the State’s prohibition on the use of legal advice and information in advertising by attorneys is a prophylactic rule that is needed to ensure that attorneys, in an effort to secure legal business for themselves, do not use false or misleading advertising to stir up meritless litigation against innocent defendants. Advertising by attorneys, the State claims, presents regulatory difficulties that are different in kind from those presented by other forms of advertising. Whereas statements about most consumer products are subject to verification, the indeterminacy of statements about law makes it impractical if not impossible to weed out accurate statements from those that are false or misleading. A prophylactic rule is therefore'essential if the State is to vindicate its substantial interest in ensuring that its citizens are not encouraged to engage in litigation by statements that are at best ambiguous and at worst outright false.
The State’s argument that it may apply a prophylactic rule to punish appellant notwithstanding that his particular advertisement has none of the vices that allegedly justify the rule is in tension with our insistence that restrictions involving commercial speech that is not itself deceptive be narrowly crafted to serve the State’s purposes. See Central Hudson Gas & Electric, 447 U. S., at 565, 569-571. Indeed, in In re R.M. J. we went so far as to state that “the States may not place an absolute prohibition on certain types of potentially misleading information... if the information also may be presented in a way that is not deceptive.” 455 U. S., at 203. The State’s argument, then, must be that this dictum is incorrect — that there are some circumstances in which a prophylactic rule is the least restrictive possible means of achieving a substantial governmental interest. Cf. Ohralik v. Ohio State Bar Assn., 436 U. S., at 467.
We need not, however, address the theoretical question whether a prophylactic rule is ever permissible in this area, for we do not believe that the State has presented a convincing case for its argument that the rule before us is necessary to the achievement of a substantial governmental interest. The State’s contention that the problem of distinguishing deceptive and nondeceptive legal advertising is different in kind from the problems presented by advertising generally is unpersuasive.
The State’s argument proceeds from the premise that it is intrinsically difficult to distinguish advertisements containing legal advice that is false or deceptive from those that are truthful and helpful, much more so than is the case with other goods or services. This notion is belied by the facts before us: appellant’s statements regarding Daikon Shield litigation were in fact easily verifiable and completely accurate. Nor is it true that distinguishing deceptive from nondeceptive claims in advertising involving products other than legal services is a comparatively simple and straightforward process. A brief survey of the body of case law that has developed as a result of the Federal Trade Commission’s efforts to carry out its mandate under § 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act to eliminate “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in... commerce,” 15 U. S. C. § 45(a)(1), reveals that distinguishing deceptive from nondeceptive advertising in virtually any field of commerce may require resolution of exceedingly complex and technical factual issues and the consideration of nice questions of semantics. See, e. g., Warner-Lambert Co. v. FTC, 183 U. S. App. D. C. 230, 562 F. 2d 749 (1977); National Comm’n on Egg Nutrition v. FTC, 570 F. 2d 157 (CA7 1977). In short, assessment of the validity of legal advice and information contained in attorneys’ advertising is not necessarily a matter of great complexity; nor is assessing the accuracy or capacity to deceive of other forms of advertising the simple process the State makes it out to be. The qualitative distinction the State has attempted to draw eludes us.
Were we to accept the State’s argument in this case, we would have little basis for preventing the government from suppressing other forms of truthful and nondeceptive advertising simply to spare itself the trouble of distinguishing such advertising from false or deceptive advertising. The First Amendment protections afforded commercial speech would mean little indeed if such arguments were allowed to prevail. Our recent decisions involving commercial speech have been grounded in the faith that the free flow of commercial information is valuable enough to justify imposing on would-be regulators the costs of distinguishing the truthful from the false, the helpful from the misleading, and the harmless from the harmful. The value of the information presented in appellant’s advertising is no less than that contained in other forms of advertising — indeed, insofar as appellant’s advertising tended to acquaint persons with their legal rights who might otherwise be shut off from effective access to the legal system, it was undoubtedly more valuable than many other forms of advertising. Prophylactic restraints that would be unacceptable as applied to commercial advertising generally are therefore equally unacceptable as applied to appellant’s advertising. An attorney may not be disciplined for soliciting legal business through printed advertising containing truthful and nondeceptive information and advice regarding the legal rights of potential clients.
> I — I
The application of DR 2-101(B)’s restriction on illustrations in advertising by lawyers to appellant’s advertisement fails for much the same reasons as does the application of the self-recommendation and solicitation rules. The use of illustrations or pictures in advertisements serves important communicative functions: it attracts the attention of the audience to the advertiser’s message, and it may also serve to impart information directly. Accordingly, commercial illustrations are entitled to the First Amendment protections afforded verbal commercial speech: restrictions on the use of visual media of expression in advertising must survive scrutiny under the Central Hudson test. Because the illustration for which appellant was disciplined is an accurate representation of the Daikon Shield and has no features that are likely to deceive, mislead, or confuse the reader, the burden is on the State to present a substantial governmental interest justifying the restriction as applied to appellant and to demonstrate that the restriction vindicates that interest through the least restrictive available means.
The text of DR 2-101(B) strongly suggests that the purpose of the restriction on the use of illustrations is to ensure that attorneys advertise “in a dignified manner.” There is, of course, no suggestion that the illustration actually used by appellant was undignified; thus, it is difficult to see how the application of the rule to appellant in this case directly advances the State’s interest in preserving the dignity of attorneys. More fundamentally, although the State undoubtedly has a substantial interest in ensuring that its attorneys behave with dignity and decorum in the courtroom, we are unsure that the State’s desire that attorneys maintain their dignity in their communications with the public is an interest substantial enough to justify the abridgment of their First Amendment rights. Even if that were the case, we are unpersuaded that undignified behavior would tend to recur so often as to warrant a prophylactic rule. As we held in Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U. S. 678, 701 (1977), the mere possibility that some members of the population might find advertising embarrassing or offensive cannot justify suppressing it. The same must hold true for advertising that some members of the bar might find beneath their dignity.
In its arguments before this Court, the State has asserted that the restriction on illustrations serves a somewhat different purpose, akin to that supposedly served by the prohibition on the offering of legal advice in advertising. The use of illustrations in advertising by attorneys, the State suggests, creates unacceptable risks that the public will be misled, manipulated, or confused. Abuses associated with the visual content of advertising are particularly difficult to police, because the advertiser is skilled in subtle uses of illustrations to play on the emotions of his audience and convey false impressions. Because illustrations may produce their effects by operating on a subconscious level, the State argues, it will be difficult for the State to point to any particular illustration and prove that it is misleading or manipulative. Thus, once again, the State’s argument is that its purposes can only be served through a prophylactic rule.
We are not convinced. The State’s arguments amount to little more than unsupported assertions: nowhere does the State cite any evidence or authority of any kind for its contention that the potential abuses associated with the use of illustrations in attorneys’ advertising cannot be combated by any means short of a blanket ban. Moreover, none of the State’s arguments establish that there are particular evils associated with the use of illustrations in attorneys’ advertisements. Indeed, because it is probably rare that decisions regarding consumption of legal services are based on a consumer’s assumptions about qualities of the product that can be represented visually, illustrations in lawyer’s advertisements will probably be less likely to lend themselves to material misrepresentations than illustrations in other forms of advertising.
Thus, acceptance of the State’s argument would be tantamount to adoption of the principle that a State may prohibit the use of pictures or illustrations in connection with advertising of any product or service simply on the strength of the general argument that the visual content of advertisements may, under some circumstances, be deceptive or manipulative. But as we stated above, broad prophylactic rules may not be so lightly justified if the protections afforded commercial speech are to retain their force. We are not persuaded that identifying deceptive or manipulative uses of visual media in advertising is so intrinsically burdensome that the State is entitled to forgo that task in favor of the more convenient but far more restrictive alternative of a blanket ban on the use of illustrations. The experience of the FTC is, again, instructive. Although that agency has not found the elimination of deceptive uses of visual media in advertising to be a simple task, neither has it found the task an impossible one: in many instances, the agency has succeeded in identifying and suppressing visually deceptive advertising. See, e. g., FTC v. Colgate-Palmolive Co., 380 U. S. 374 (1965). See generally E. Kintner, A Primer on the Law of Deceptive Practices 158-173 (2d ed. 1978). Given the possibility of policing the use of illustrations in advertisements on a case-by-case basis, the prophylactic approach taken by Ohio cannot stand; hence, appellant may not be disciplined for his use of an accurate and nondeceptive illustration.
V
Appellant contends that assessing the validity of the Ohio Supreme Court’s decision to discipline him for his failure to include in the Daikon Shield advertisement the information that clients might be liable for significant litigation costs even if their lawsuits were unsuccessful entails precisely the same inquiry as determining the validity of the restrictions on advertising content discussed above. In other words, he suggests that the State must establish either that the advertisement, absent the required disclosure, would be false or deceptive or that the disclosure requirement serves some substantial governmental interest other than preventing deception; moreover, he contends that the State must establish that the disclosure requirement directly advances the relevant governmental interest and that it constitutes the least restrictive means of doing so. Not surprisingly, appellant claims that the State has failed to muster substantial eviden-tiary support for any of the findings required to support the restriction.
Appellant, however, overlooks material differences between disclosure requirements and outright prohibitions on speech. In requiring attorneys who advertise their willingness to represent clients on a contingent-fee basis to state that the client may have to bear certain expenses even if he loses, Ohio has not attempted to prevent attorneys from conveying information to the public; it has only required them to provide somewhat more information than they might otherwise be inclined to present. We have, to be sure, held that in some instances compulsion to speak may be as violative of the First Amendment as prohibitions on speech. See, e. g., Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705 (1977); Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U. S. 241 (1974). Indeed, in West Virginia State Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943), the Court went so far as to state that “involuntary affirmation could be commanded only on even more immediate and urgent grounds than silence.” Id., at 633.
But the interests at stake in this case are not of the same order as those discussed in Wooley, Tornillo, and Barnette. Ohio has not attempted to “prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” 319 U. S., at 642. The State has attempted only to prescribe what shall be orthodox in commercial advertising, and its prescription has taken the form of a requirement that appellant include in his advertising purely factual and uncontroversial information about the terms under which his services will be available. Because the extension of First Amendment protection to commercial speech is justified principally by the value to consumers of the information such speech provides, see Virginia Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U. S. 748 (1976), appellant’s constitutionally protected interest in not providing any particular factual information in his advertising is minimal. Thus, in virtually all our commercial speech decisions to date, we have emphasized that because disclosure requirements trench much more narrowly on an advertiser’s interests than do flat prohibitions on speech, “warning[s] or disclaimer^] might be appropriately required... in order to dissipate the possibility of consumer confusion or deception.” In re R. M. J., 455 U. S., at 201. Accord, Central Hudson Gas & Electric, 447 U. S., at 565; Bates v. State Bar of Arizona, 433 U. S., at 384; Virginia Pharmacy Bd., supra, at 772, n. 24.
We do not suggest that disclosure requirements do not implicate the advertiser’s First Amendment rights at all. We recognize that unjustified or unduly burdensome disclosure requirements might offend the First Amendment by chilling protected commercial speech. But we hold that an advertiser’s rights are adequately protected as long as disclosure requirements are reasonably related to the State’s interest in preventing deception of consumers.
The State’s application to appellant of the requirement that an attorney advertising his availability on a contingent-fee basis disclose that clients will have to pay costs even if their lawsuits are unsuccessful (assuming that to be the case) easily passes muster under this standard. Appellant’s advertisement informed the public that “if there is no recovery, no legal fees are owed by our clients.” The advertisement makes no mention of the distinction between “legal fees” and “costs,” and to a layman not aware of the meaning of these terms of art, the advertisement would suggest that employing appellant would be a no-lose proposition in that his representation in a losing cause would come entirely free of charge. The assumption that substantial numbers of potential clients would be so misled is hardly a speculative one: it is a commonplace that members of the public are often unaware of the technical meanings of such terms as “fees” and “costs” — terms that, in ordinary usage, might well be virtually interchangeable. When the possibility of deception is as self-evident as it is in this case, we need not require the State to “conduct a survey of the... public before it [may] determine that the [advertisement] had a tendency to mislead.” FTC v. Colgate-Palmolive Co., 380 U. S., at 391-392. The State’s position that it is deceptive to employ advertising that refers to contingent-fee arrangements without mentioning the client’s liability for costs is reasonable enough to support a requirement that information regarding the client’s liability for costs be disclosed.
<1 I — I
Finally, we address appellant’s argument that he was denied procedural due process by the manner in which discipline was imposed on him in connection with his drunken driving advertisement. Appellant’s contention is that the theory relied on by the Ohio Supreme Court and its Board of Commissioners as to how the advertisement was deceptive was different from the theory asserted by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel in its complaint. We cannot
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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F
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Chief Justice Burger
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We granted certiorari to determine whether a live, human-made micro-organism is patentable subject matter under 35 U. S. C. § 101.
I
In 1972, respondent Chakrabarty, a microbiologist, filed a patent application, assigned to the General Electric Co. The application asserted 36 claims related to Chakrabarty’s invention of “a bacterium from the genus Pseudomonas containing therein at least two stable energy-generating plasmids, each of said plasmids providing a separate hydrocarbon degradative pathway.” This human-made, genetically engineered bacterium is capable of breaking down multiple components of crude oil. Because of this property, which is possessed by no naturally occurring bacteria, Chakrabarty’s invention is believed to have significant value for the treatment of oil spills.
Chakrabarty’s patent claims were of three types: first, process claims for the method of producing the bacteria; second, claims for an inoculum comprised of a carrier material floating on water, such as straw, and the new bacteria; and third, claims to the bacteria themselves. The patent examiner allowed the claims falling into the first two categories, but rejected claims for the bacteria. His decision rested on two grounds: (1) that micro-organisms are “products of nature,” and (2) that as living things they are not patentable subject matter under 35 U. S. C. § 101.
Chakrabarty appealed the rejection of these claims to the Patent Office Board of Appeals, and the Board affirmed the examiner on the second ground. Relying on the legislative history of the 1930 Plant Patent Act, in which Congress extended patent protection to certain asexually reproduced plants, the Board concluded that § 101 was not intended to cover living things such as these laboratory created micro-organisms.
The Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, by a divided vote, reversed on the authority of its prior decision in In re Bergy, 563 F. 2d 1031, 1038 (1977), which held that “the fact that microorganisms . . . are alive ... [is] without legal significance” for purposes of the patent law. Subsequently, we granted the Acting Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks’ petition for certiorari in Bergy, vacated the judgment, and remanded the case “for further consideration in light of Parker v. Flook, 437 U. S. 584 (1978).” 438 17. S. 902 (1978). The Court of Customs and Patent Appeals then vacated its judgment in Chakrabarty and consolidated the case with Bergy for reconsideration. After re-examining both cases in the light of our holding in Flook, that court, with one dissent, reaffirmed its earlier judgments. 596 F. 2d 952 (1979).
The Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks again sought certiorari, and we granted the writ as to both Bergy and Chakrabarty. 444 U. S. 924 (1979). Since then, Bergy has been dismissed as moot, 444 U. S. 1028 (1980), leaving only Chakrabarty for decision.
II
The Constitution grants Congress broad power to legislate to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Art. I, § 8, cl. 8. The patent laws promote this progress by offering inventors exclusive rights for a limited period as an incentive for their inventiveness and research efforts. Kewanee Oil Co. v. Bicron Corp., 416 U. S. 470, 480-481 (1974); Universal Oil Co. v. Globe Co., 322 U. S. 471, 484 (1944). The authority of Congress is exercised in the hope that “[t]he productive effort thereby fostered will have a positive effect on society through the introduction of new products and processes of manufacture into the economy, and the emanations by way of increased employment and better lives for our citizens.” Kewanee, supra, at 480.
The question before us in this case is a narrow one of statutory interpretation requiring us to construe 35 U. S. C. § 101, which provides:
“Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.”
Specifically, we must determine whether respondent’s microorganism constitutes a “manufacture” or “composition of matter” within the meaning of the statute.
Ill
In cases of statutory construction we begin, of course, with the language of the statute. Southeastern Community College v. Davis, 442 U. S. 397, 405 (1979). And “unless otherwise defined, words will be interpreted as taking their ordinary, contemporary, common meaning.” Perrin v. United States, 444 U. S. 37, 42 (1979). We have also cautioned that courts “should not read into the patent laws limitations and conditions which the legislature has not expressed.” United States v. Dubilier Condenser Corp., 289 U. S. 178, 199 (1933).
Guided by these canons of construction, this Court has read the term “manufacture” in § 101 in accordance with its dictionary definition to mean “the production of articles for use from raw or prepared materials by giving to these materials new forms, qualities, properties, or combinations, whether by hand-labor or by machinery.” American Fruit Growers, Inc. v. Brogdex Co., 283 U. S. 1, 11 (1931). Similarly, “composition of matter” has been construed consistent with its common usage to include “all compositions of two or more substances and ... all composite articles, whether they be the results of chemical union, or of mechanical mixture, or whether they be gases, fluids, powders or solids.” Shell Development Co. v. Watson, 149 F. Supp. 279, 280 (DC 1957) (citing 1 A. Deller, Walker on Patents § 14, p. 55 (1st ed. 1937)). In choosing such expansive terms as “manufacture” and “composition of matter,” modified by the comprehensive “any,” Congress plainly contemplated that the patent laws would be given wide scope.
The relevant legislative history also supports a broad construction. The Patent Act of 1793, authored by Thomas Jefferson, defined statutory subject matter as “any new and useful art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new or useful improvement [thereof].” Act of Feb. 21, 1793, § 1, 1 Stat. 319. The Act embodied Jefferson’s philosophy that “ingenuity should receive a liberal encouragement.” 5 Writings of Thomas Jefferson 75-76 (Washington ed. 1871). See Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U. S. 1, 7-10 (1966). Subsequent patent statutes in 1836, 1870, and 1874 employed this same broad language. In 1952, when the patent laws were recodified, Congress replaced the word “art” with “process,” but otherwise left Jefferson’s language intact. The Committee Reports accompanying the 1952 Act inform us that Congress intended statutory subject matter to “include anything under the sun that is made by man.” S. Rep. No. 1979, 82d Cong., 2d Sess., 5 (1952); H. R. Rep. No. 1923, 82d Cong., 2d Sess., 6 (1952).
This is not to suggest that § 101 has no limits or that it embraces every discovery. The laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas have been held not patentable. See Parker v. Flook, 437 U. S. 584 (1978); Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U. S. 63, 67 (1972); Funk Brothers Seed Co. v. Kalo Inoculant Co., 333 U. S. 127, 130 (1948); O’Reilly v. Morse, 15 How. 62, 112-121 (1854); Le Roy v. Tatham, 14 How. 156, 175 (1853). Thus, a new mineral discovered in the earth or a new plant found in the wild is not patentable subject matter. Likewise, Einstein could not patent his celebrated law that E=mc2; nor could Newton have patented the law of gravity. Such discoveries are “manifestations of . . . nature, free to all men and reserved exclusively to none.” Funk, supra, at 130.
Judged in this light, respondent’s micro-organism plainly qualifies as patentable subject matter. His claim is not to a hitherto unknown natural phenomenon, but to a nonnaturally occurring manufacture or composition of matter — a product of human ingenuity “having a distinctive name, character [and] use.” Hartranft v. Wiegmann, 121 U. S. 609, 615 (1887). The point is underscored dramatically by comparison of the invention here with that in Funk. There, the patentee had discovered that there existed in nature certain species of root-nodule bacteria which did not exert a mutually inhibitive effect on each other. He used that discovery to produce a mixed culture capable of inoculating the seeds of leguminous plants. Concluding that the patentee had discovered "only some of the handiwork of nature,” the Court ruled the product nonpatentable:
“Each of the species of root-nodule bacteria contained in the package infects the same group of leguminous plants which it always infected. No species acquires a different use. The combination of species produces no new bacteria, no change in the six species of bacteria, and no enlargement of the range of their utility. Each species has the same effect it always had. The bacteria perform in their natural way. Their use in combination does not improve in any way their natural functioning. They serve the ends nature originally provided and act quite independently of any effort of the patentee.” 333 TJ. S., at 131.
Here, by contrast, the patentee has produced a new bacterium with markedly different characteristics from any found in nature and one having the potential for significant utility. His discovery is not nature’s handiwork, but his own; accordingly it is patentable subject matter under § 101.
IV
Two contrary arguments are advanced, neither of which we find persuasive.
(A)
The petitioner’s first argument rests on the enactment of the 1930 Plant Patent Act, which afforded patent protection to certain asexually reproduced plants, and the 1970 Plant Variety Protection Act, which authorized protection for certain sexually reproduced plants but excluded bacteria from its protection. In the petitioner’s view, the passage of these Acts evidences congressional understanding that the terms “manufacture” or “composition of matter” do not include living things; if they did, the petitioner argues, neither Act would have been necessary.
We reject this argument. Prior to 1930, two factors were thought to remove plants from patent protection. The first was the belief that plants, even those artificially bred, were products of nature for purposes of the patent law. This position appears to have derived from the decision of the Patent Office in Ex parte Latimer, 1889 Dec. Com. Pat. 123, in which a patent claim for fiber found in the needle of the Pinus australis was rejected. The Commissioner reasoned that a contrary result would permit “patents [to] be obtained upon the trees of the forest and the plants of the earth, which of course would be unreasonable and impossible.” Id., at 126. The Latimer case, it seems, came to “se[t] forth the general stand taken in these matters” that plants were natural products not subject to patent protection. Thorne, Relation of Patent Law to Natural Products, 6 J. Pat. Off. Soc. 23, 24 (1923). The second obstacle to patent protection for plants was the fact that plants were thought not amenable to the “written description” requirement of the patent law. See 35 U. S. C. § 112. Because new plants may differ from old only in color or perfume, differentiation by written description was often impossible. See Hearings on H. R. 11372 before the House Committee on Patents, 71st Cong., 2d Sess., 7 (1930) (memorandum of Patent Commissioner Robertson).
In enacting the Plant Patent Act, Congress addressed both of these concerns. It explained at length its belief that the work of the plant breeder “in aid of nature” was patentable invention. S. Rep. No. 315, 71st Cong., 2d Sess., 6-8 (1930); H. R. Rep. No. 1129, 71st Cong., 2d Sess., 7-9 (1930). And it relaxed the written description requirement in favor of “a description ... as complete as is reasonably possible.” 35 U. S. C. § 162. No Committee or Member of Congress, however, expressed the broader view, now urged by the petitioner, that the terms “manufacture” or “composition of matter” exclude living things. The sole support for that position in the legislative history of the 1930 Act is found in the conclusory statement of Secretary of Agriculture Hyde, in a letter to the Chairmen of the House and Senate Committees considering the 1930 Act, that “the patent laws ... at the present time are understood to cover only inventions or discoveries in the field of inanimate nature.” See S. Rep. No. 315, supra, at Appendix A; H. R. Rep. No. 1129, supra, at Appendix A. Secretary Hyde’s opinion, however, is not entitled to controlling weight. His views were solicited on the administration of the new law and not on the scope of patentable subject matter — an area beyond his competence. Moreover, there is language in the House and Senate Committee' Reports suggesting that to the extent Congress considered the matter it found the Secretary’s dichotomy unpersuasive. The Reports observe:
“There is a clear and logical distinction between the discovery of a new variety of plant and of certain inanimate things, such, for example, as a new and useful natural mineral. The mineral is created wholly by nature unassisted by man. ... On the other hand, a plant discovery resulting from cultivation is unique, isolated, and is not repeated by nature, nor can it be reproduced by nature unaided by man. . . .” S. Rep. No. 315, supra, at 6; H. R. Rep. No. 1129, supra, at 7 (emphasis added).
Congress thus recognized that the relevant distinction was not between living and inanimate things, but between products of nature, whether living or not, and human-made inventions. Here, respondent’s micro-organism is the result of human ingenuity and research. Hence, the passage of the Plant Patent Act affords the Government no support.
Nor does the passage of the 1970 Plant Variety Protection Act support the Government’s position. As the Government acknowledges, sexually reproduced plants were not included under the 1930 Act because new varieties could not be reproduced true-to-type through seedlings.. Brief for Petitioner 27, n. 31. By 1970, however, it was generally recognized that true-to-type reproduction was possible and that plant patent protection was therefore appropriate. The 1970 Act extended that protection. There is nothing in its language or history to suggest that it was enacted because § 101 did not include living things.
In particular, we find nothing in the exclusion of bacteria from plant variety protection to support the petitioner’s position. See n. 7, supra. The legislative history gives no reason for this exclusion. As the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals suggested, it may simply reflect congressional agreement with the result reached by that court in deciding In re Arzberger, 27 C. C. P. A. (Pat.) 1315, 112 F. 2d 834 (1940), which held that bacteria were not plants for the purposes of the 1930 Act. Or it may reflect the fact that prior to 1970 the Patent Office had issued patents for bacteria under § 101. In any event, absent some clear indication that Congress “focused on [the] issues . . . directly related to the one presently before the Court" SEC v. Sloan, 436 U. S. 103, 120-121 (1978), there is no basis for reading into its actions an intent to modify the plain meaning of the words found in § 101. See TV A v. Hill, 437 U. S. 153, 189-193 (1978) ; United States v. Price, 361 U. S. 304, 313 (1960).
(B)
The petitioner’s second argument is that micro-organisms cannot qualify as patentable subject matter until Congress expressly authorizes such protection. His position rests on the fact that genetic technology was unforeseen when Congress enacted § 101. From this it is argued that resolution of the patentability of inventions such as respondent’s should be left to Congress. The legislative process, the petitioner argues, is best equipped to weigh the competing economic, social, and scientific considerations involved, and to determine whether living organisms produced by genetic engineering should receive patent protection. In support of this position, the petitioner relies on our recent holding in Parker v. Flook, 437 U. S. 584 (1978), and the statement that the judiciary “must proceed cautiously when . . . asked to extend patent rights into areas wholly unforeseen by Congress.” Id., at 596.
It is, of course, correct that Congress, not the courts, must define the limits of patentability; but it is equally true that once Congress has spoken it is “the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803). Congress has performed its constitutional role in defining patentable subject matter in § 101; we perform ours in construing the language Congress has employed. In so doing, our obligation is to take statutes as we find them, guided, if ambiguity appears, by the legislative history and statutory purpose. Here, we perceive no ambiguity. The subject-matter provisions of the patent law have been cast in broad terms to fulfill the constitutional and statutory goal of promoting “the Progress of Science and the useful Arts” with all that means for the social and economic benefits envisioned by Jefferson. Broad general language is not necessarily ambiguous when congressional objectives require broad terms.
Nothing in Flook is to the contrary. That case applied our prior precedents to determine that a “claim for an improved method of calculation, even when tied to a specific end use, is unpatentable subject matter under § 101.” 437 U. S., at 595, n. 18. The Court carefully scrutinized the claim at issue to determine whether it was precluded from patent protection under “the principles underlying the prohibition against patents for 'ideas’ or phenomena of nature.” Id., at 593. We have done that here. Flook did not announce a new principle that inventions in areas not contemplated by Congress when the patent laws were enacted are unpatentable per se.
To read that concept into Flook would frustrate the purposes of the patent law. This Court frequently has observed that a statute is not to be confined to the “particular application [s] . . . contemplated by the legislators.” Barr v. United States, 324 U. S. 83, 90 (1945). Accord, Browder v. United States, 312 U. S. 335, 339 (1941); Puerto Rico v. Shell Co., 302 U. S. 253, 257 (1937). This is especially true in the field of patent law. A rule that unanticipated inventions are without protection would conflict with the core concept of the patent law that anticipation undermines patentability. See Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U. S., at 12-17. Mr. Justice Douglas reminded that the inventions most benefiting mankind are those that “push back the frontiers of chemistry, physics, and the like.” Great A. & P. Tea Co. v. Supermarket Corp., 340 U. S. 147, 154 (1950) (concurring opinion). Congress employed broad general language in drafting § 101 precisely because such inventions are often unforeseeable.
To buttress his argument, the petitioner, with the support of amicus, points to grave risks that may be generated by research endeavors such as respondent’s. The briefs present a gruesome parade of horribles. Scientists, among them Nobel laureates, are quoted suggesting that genetic research may pose a serious threat to the human race, or, at the very least, that the dangers are far too substantial to permit such research to proceed apace at this time. We are told that genetic research and related technological developments may spread pollution and disease, that it may result in a loss of genetic diversity, and that its practice may tend to depreciate the value of human life. These arguments are forcefully, even passionately, presented; they remind us that, at times, human ingenuity seems unable to control fully the forces it creates— that, with Hamlet, it is sometimes better “to bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.”
It is argued that this Court should weigh these potential hazards in considering whether respondent’s invention is patentable subject matter under § 101. We disagree. The grant or denial of patents on micro-organisms is not likely to put an end to genetic research or to its attendant risks. The large amount of research that has already occurred when no researcher had sure knowledge that patent protection would be available suggests that legislative or judicial fiat as to patentability will not deter the scientific mind from probing into the unknown any more than Canute could command the tides. Whether respondent's claims are patentable may determine whether research efforts are accelerated by the hope of reward or slowed by want of incentives, but that is all.
What is more important is that we are without competence to entertain these arguments — either to brush them aside as fantasies generated by fear of the unknown, or to act on them. The choice we are urged to make is a matter of high policy for resolution within the legislative process after the kind of investigation, examination, and study that legislative bodies can provide and courts cannot. That process involves the balancing of competing values and interests, which in our democratic system is the business of elected representatives. Whatever their validity, the contentions now pressed on us should be addressed to the political branches of the Government, the Congress and the Executive, and not to the courts
We have emphasized in the recent past that “[o]ur individual appraisal of the wisdom or unwisdom of a particular [legislative] course ... is to be put aside in the process of interpreting a statute.” TV A v. Hill, 437 U. S., at 194. Our task, rather, is the narrow one of determining what Congress meant by the words it used in the statute; once that is done our powers are exhausted. Congress is free to amend § 101 so as to exclude from patent protection organisms produced by genetic engineering. Cf. 42 U. S. C. § 2181 (a), exempting from patent protection inventions “useful solely in the utilization of special nuclear material or atomic energy in an atomic weapon.” Or it may choose to craft a statute specifically designed for such living things. But, until Congress takes such action, this Court must construe the language of § 101 as it is. The language of that section fairly embraces respondent’s invention.
Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals is
Affirmed.
Plasmids are hereditary units physically separate from the chromosomes of the cell. In prior research, Chakrabarty and an associate discovered that plasmids control the oil degradation abilities of certain bacteria. In particular, the two researchers discovered plasmids capable of degrading camphor and octane, two components of crude oil. In the work represented by the patent application at issue here, Chakrabarty discovered a process by which four different plasmids, capable of degrading four different oil components, could be transferred to and maintained stably in a single Pseudomonas bacterum, which itself has no capacity for degrading oil.
At present, biological control of oil spills requires the use of a mixture of naturally occurring bacteria, each capable of degrading one component of the oil complex. In this way, oil is decomposed into simpler substances which can serve as food for aquatic life. However, for various reasons, only a portion of any such mixed culture survives to attack the oil spill. By breaking down multiple components of oil, Chakrabarty’s microorganism promises more efficient and rapid oil-spill control.
The Board concluded that the new bacteria were not “products of nature,” because Pseudomonas bacteria containing two or more different energy-generating plasmids are not naturally occurring.
Bergy involved a patent application for a pure culture of the microorganism Streptomyces vellosus found to be useful in the production of lincomycin, an antibiotic.
This case does not involve the other “conditions and requirements” of the patent laws, such as novelty and nonobviousness. 35 U. S. C. §§ 102, 103.
This same language was employed by P. J. Federico, a principal draftsman of the 1952 reeodification, in his testimony regarding that legislation: “[U]nder section 101 a person may have invented a machine or a manufacture, which may include anything under the sun that is made by man. . . .” Hearings on H. R. 3760 before Subcommittee No. 3 of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 82d Cong., 1st Sess., 37 (1951).
The Plant Patent Act of 1930, 35 U. S. C. § 161, provides in relevant part:
“Whoever invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant, including cultivated sports, mutants, hybrids, and newly found seedlings, other than a tuber propogated plant or a plant found in an uncultivated state, may obtain a patent therefor. . . .”
The Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970, provides in relevant part:
“The breeder of any novel variety of sexually reproduced plant (other than fungi, bacteria, or first generation hybrids) who has so reproduced the variety, or his successor in interest, shall be entitled to plant variety protection therefor. ...” 84 Stat. 1547, 7 U. S. C. § 2402 (a).
See generally, 3 A. Deller, Walker on Patents, ch. EX (2d ed. 1964); R. Allyn, The First Plant Patents (1934).
Writing three years after the passage of the 1930 Act, R. Cook, Editor of the Journal of Heredity, commented: “It is a little hard for plant men to understand why [Art. I, § 8] of the Constitution should not have been earlier construed to include the promotion of the art of plant breeding. The reason for this is probably to be found in the principle that natural products are not patentable.” Florists Exchange and Horticultural Trade World, July 15, 1933, p. 9.
In 1873, the Patent Office granted Louis Pasteur a patent on “yeast, free from organic germs of disease, as an article of manufacture.” And in 1967 and 1968, immediately prior to the passage of the Plant Variety Protection Act, that Office granted two patents which, as the petitioner concedes, state claims for living micro-organisms. See Reply Brief for Petitioner 3, and n. 2.
Even an abbreviated list of patented inventions underscores the point: telegraph (Morse, No. 1,647); telephone (Bell, No. 174,465); electric lamp (Edison, No. 223,898); airplane (the Wrights, No. 821,393); transistor (Bardeen & Brattain, No. 2,524,035); neutronic reactor (Fermi & Szilard, No.. 2,708,656); laser (Schawlow & Townes, No. 2,929,922). See generally Revolutionary Ideas, Patents & Progress in America, United States Patent and Trademark Office (1976).
We are not to be understood as suggesting that the political branches have been laggard in the consideration of the problems related to genetic research and technology. They have already taken action. In 1976, for example, the National Institutes of Health released guidelines for NIH-sponsored genetic research which established conditions under which such research could be performed. 41 Fed. Reg. 27902. In 1978 those guidelines were revised and relaxed. 43 Fed. Reg. 60080, 60108, 60134. And Committees of the Congress have held extensive hearings on these matters. See, e. g., Hearings on Genetic Engineering before the Subcommittee on Health of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. (1975); Hearings before the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. (1977); Hearings on H. R. 4759 et al. before the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 95th Cong., 1st Sess. (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:
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H
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
On March 11, 1964, pursuant to a transfer order issued by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma entered an order temporarily restraining respondents from proceeding with trial of a case in the Mississippi state courts. When respondents, in disregard of the temporary restraining order, proceeded to trial in Mississippi, the District Court on March 14 found them in civil contempt. Undeterred, respondents pressed the state court action to a conclusion and obtained a judgment against petitioner on April 8. But the District Court, on September 1, enjoined respondents from seeking to enforce the Mississippi judgment, required them to compensate petitioner for reasonable expenses in connection with the contempt proceeding, reserved decision as to whether they must also reimburse petitioner for expenses relating to the Mississippi litigation, and ordered the civil suit between the parties retried — this time in Oklahoma and in federal court.
Respondents appealed from this decree to the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit which reversed, holding that at the time the District Court had entered the original restraining order it was without jurisdiction since it had not yet received the case file from the trans-feror court. We are asked to review that determination. We grant the petition and reverse.
The District Court had assumed jurisdiction of the cause and entered its restraining order on March 11, five days before the papers in the case were transferred to it from Mississippi. It acted upon the basis of a certified copy of an order entered the previous day by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. That order provided not only that the District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi had erred in failing to comply with an earlier appellate mandate to transfer the case, but also that “pending the entry of the order of transfer by the District Judge and the physical filing of the record in Oklahoma, this order shall constitute a transfer to enable the parties to present the matter to the District Court of Oklahoma.”
Although a federal appellate court does not ordinarily itself transfer a case to another district, but remands to the District Court for that purpose, the extraordinary action in this case was taken as a result of extraordinary circumstances. These included the fact that the Federal District Court in Mississippi had granted a motion to dismiss despite instructions from the Fifth Circuit to transfer the cause to Oklahoma, and the further fact that trial of a duplicative action in the Mississippi state courts brought by respondent Hyde Construction Company was to commence, and did in fact commence, on March 11 — one day after the Fifth Circuit’s instanter transfer and the very day on which the Federal District Court in Oklahoma entered its order.
In the special circumstances of this case, we conclude that the District Court in Oklahoma had acquired jurisdiction on March 11 in accordance with the Fifth Circuit’s order for instanter transfer and that the Tenth Circuit erred in vacating the District Court’s orders on the stated jurisdictional ground. We do not read 28 U. S. C. § 1404 (a), providing that “a district court may-transfer any civil action/’ as precluding an appellate court, where unusual circumstances indicate the necessity thereof, from effecting a transfer by direct order.
Accordingly, we grant the petition, reverse the judgment, and remand to the District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma for further proceedings consistent with this opinion, reserving to the parties the right to apply to that court to have the case transferred back to the Southern District of Mississippi because of changed conditions.
Criminal contempt charges were also filed, but are not involved in the present petition.
Cf. Platt v. Minnesota Mining Co., 376 U. S. 240 (under Rule 21 (b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure).
The Fifth Circuit suggests that the District Court’s action was the result of misunderstanding over whether an answer had been filed and hence of its duty to grant a voluntary dismissal under Rule 41 (a) (1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, rather than the result of unreadiness to respect appellate instructions.
Drabik v. Murphy, 246 F. 2d 408 (C. A. 2d Cir.), is not authority for the proposition that the transferee court fails to acquire jurisdiction until papers are received from the transferor court. On the contrary, Drabik suggests that the transferor court may lose jurisdiction before that event.
This reservation was made in the opinion of the Fifth Circuit.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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I
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Black
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented is whether under the circumstances of this case reorganization of the respondent railroad under § 77 of the Bankruptcy Act destroyed and barred enforcement of liens which New York City had imposed on specific parcels of the railroad’s real estate for street, sewer and other improvements. The improvements were made and the liens were all laid prior to 1931. Reorganization was begun in the District Court in 1935. Subsequently, acting pursuant to subdivision (c)(7) of § 77 the court issued an order directing “creditors” to file their claims by a prescribed date, after which unfiled claims would be denied participation except for “cause shown.” The railroad was required to mail copies of the order to mortgage trustees or their counsel and to all creditors who had already appeared in court. Other creditors had to depend for their notice on two once-a-week publications of the order in five daily newspapers, one of which was the Wall Street Journal. New York thus received no copy of the bar order. Its lien claims were never filed.
The court’s final decree provided for transfer of the old railroad’s properties to the newly organized company free from the city’s liens. Jurisdiction was reserved to consider and act on future applications for instructions concerning disputes over interpretation and execution of the decree. Pursuant to this reservation the railroad brought the present action alleging that the city in failing to file had forfeited its claims; the railroad prayed for a declaration that the liens were forever barred, void and unen-forcible, and that the real property was discharged and released therefrom. The District Court agreed with the railroad and enjoined enforcement of the liens. 105 F. Supp. 413. The Court of Appeals affirmed, Judge Frank dissenting. 197 F. 2d 428. In both courts the city made several arguments only two of which we need consider here: (1) Since the lien claims were collectible only out of specified parcels of real estate, the city was not a “creditor” of the railroad and consequently was not required to file its claims in bankruptcy court; (2) in the absence of actual service of notice on the city, the court was without power to forfeit its liens because of its failure to appear as a claimant. To consider these questions we granted certiorari. 344 U. S. 809.
(1) We reject the city’s contention that it was not a creditor within the meaning of § 77 of the Bankruptcy Act. Section 77 (b) defines “creditors” as “. . . all holders of claims of whatever character against the debtor or its property . . .” and specifically defines “liens” as “claims.” We had reason to comment recently on the broad coverage of this section in Gardner v. New Jersey, 329 U. S. 565, where we held that state tax liens made states “creditors” for purposes of § 77. True, the state’s liens there were general charges against all railroad assets while the liens here are not. New York can look only to each parcel of property on which its liens are laid. But the reasons for our Gardner holding are equally applicable here. New York is a “creditor” in the statutory sense and consequently was required to file its claims in bankruptcy unless freed from that duty by lack of adequate notice.
(2) Section 77 (c) (8) of the Act states that “The judge shall cause reasonable notice of the period in which claims may be filed, ... by publication or otherwise.” 11 U. S. C. § 205 (c)(8). We hold that publication of the bar order in newspapers cannot be considered “reasonable notice” to New York under the circumstances of this case.
Notice by publication is a poor and sometimes a hopeless substitute for actual service of notice. Its justification is difficult at best. See Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U. S. 306. But when the names, interests and addresses of persons are unknown, plain necessity may cause a resort to publication. See, e. g., Standard Oil Co. v. New Jersey, 341 U. S. 428. The case here is different. No such excuse existed to justify subjecting New York’s claims to the hazard of forfeiture arising from “constructive notice” by newspaper. In the first place subdivision (c) (4) of § 77 is designed to enable the court to serve personal notices on creditors. It provides that “The judge shall require . . .” proper persons to file in the court a list of all known creditors, the amount and character of their claims and their last known post-office addresses. This was not done here. Had the judge complied with the statute’s mandate, it is likely that notice would have been mailed to New York City. Moreover, the railroad and the bankruptcy trustees knew about New York’s asserted liens. And there was at least as much reason to serve a mail notice on New York City as on representatives of the railroad’s mortgagees. Their liens were subordinate to New York’s. There was even more reason to mail notice to the non-appearing known creditor New York City than to the creditors who had actually filed appearances as claimants.
Nor can the bar order against New York be sustained because of the city’s knowledge that reorganization of the railroad was taking place in the court. The argument is that such knowledge puts a duty on creditors to inquire for themselves about possible court orders limiting the time for filing claims. But even creditors who have knowledge of a reorganization have, a right to assume that the statutory “reasonable notice” will be given them before their claims are forever barred. When the judge ordered notice by mail to be given the appearing creditors, New York City acted reasonably in waiting to receive the same treatment.
The statutory command for notice embodies a basic principle of justice — that a reasonable opportunity to be heard must precede judicial denial of a party’s claimed rights. New York City has not been accorded that kind of notice.
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter and Mr. Justice Jackson doubt that a city whose only claim is in rem and which has no standing to participate in the general estate is a creditor in the sense of § 77 (b). But whether New York is or is not such a creditor, they agree with the opinion that the notice in this case is not adequate support for an order destroying the liens.
47 Stat. 1474, as amended, 49 Stat. 911, 11 U. S. C. § 205.
The other newspapers were located in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The city has contended strongly that the decree should not be so construed, but we find it unnecessary to discuss this question.
“. . . The term 'creditors’ shall include, for all purposes of this section all holders of claims of whatever character against the debtor or its property, whether or not such claims would otherwise constitute provable claims under this title, including the holder of a claim under a contract executory in whole or in part including an unexpired lease.
“The term 'claims’ includes debts, whether liquidated or unliqui-dated, securities (other than stock and option warrants to subscribe to stock), liens, or other interests of whatever character.” 11 U. S. C. §205 (b).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In United States v. Holmes, 680 F. 2d 1372, 1373 (1982), cert. denied, 460 U. S. 1015 (1983), the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that “a defendant who flees after conviction, but before sentencing, waives his right to appeal from the conviction unless he can establish that his absence was due to matters completely beyond his control.” Relying on that authority, and without further explanation, the court dismissed petitioner’s appeal. Because we have not previously considered whether a defendant may be deemed to forfeit his right to appeal by fleeing while his case is pending in the district court, though he is recaptured before sentencing and appeal, we granted certiorari. 504 U. S. 984 (1992).
I
In the early evening of November 7,1988, a Customs Service pilot was patrolling the Cay Sal Bank area, located midway between Cuba and the Florida Keys. Approximately 30 miles southwest of Cay Sal, the pilot observed a low-flying aircraft circling over a white boat and dropping bales. The boat, described by the pilot as 40 to 50 feet in length, was circling with the plane and retrieving the bales from the water as they dropped. Because the Customs Service plane was flying at an altitude of 2,500 feet, and visibility was less than optimal, the pilot was unable to identify the name of the boat. United States v. Mieres-Borges, 919 F. 2d 652, 654-655 (CA11 1990), cert. denied, 499 US. 980 (1991); Report and Recommendation in United States v. Ortega-Rodriguez, No. 88-10035-CR-KING (SD Fla., Feb. 23, 1989).
The following morning, another Customs Service pilot found the Wilfred, a boat resembling the one spotted approximately 12 hours earlier. This boat, located just off the beach of Cay Sal, was described as a 30- to 40-foot sport-fishing vessel. Upon making this discovery, the pilot first flew to the drop point identified the night before, 30 miles away, and found no activity. Returning to Cay Sal, he found a number of bales stacked on the beach, and the Wilfred underway and headed toward Cuba.
The pilot alerted the captain of a Coast Guard cutter, who intercepted, boarded, and searched the Wilfred. He found no narcotics, weapons, or other incriminating evidence on the boat. Nevertheless, the three members of the crew failed to convince the Coast Guard that they were fishing for dolphin, although a large number of similar vessels frequently do so in the area. Mieres-Borges, 919 F. 2d, at 655-657, 659-660.
Petitioner is one of the three crew members arrested, tried, and convicted of possession with intent to distribute, and conspiring to possess with intent to distribute, over five kilograms of cocaine. After the trial, the District Court set June 15,1989, as the date for sentencing. Petitioner did not appear and was sentenced in absentia to a prison term of 19 years and 7 months, to be followed by 5 years of supervised release. Though petitioner’s codefendants appealed their convictions and sentences, no appeal from the judgment was filed on petitioner’s behalf.
The District Court issued a warrant for petitioner’s arrest, and 11 months later, on May 24, 1990, he was apprehended. Petitioner was indicted and found guilty of contempt of court and failure to appear. Pursuant to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984, 18 U. S. C. §3551 et seq., the District Court imposed a prison sentence of 21 months, to be served after the completion of the sentence on the cocaine offenses and to be followed by a 3-year term of supervised release.
While petitioner was under indictment after his arrest, the Court of Appeals disposed of his two codefendants’ appeals. The court affirmed one conviction, but reversed the other because the evidence was insufficient to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Also after petitioner was taken into custody, his attorney filed a “motion to vacate sentence and for resentencing,” as well as a motion for judgment of acquittal. The District Court denied the latter but granted the former, vacating the judgment previously entered on the cocaine convictions. The District Court then resentenced
petitioner to a prison term of 15 years and 8 months, to be followed by a 5-year period of supervised release. Petitioner filed a timely appeal from that final judgment.
On appeal, petitioner argued that the same insufficiency of the evidence rationale underlying reversal of his codefend-ant’s conviction should apply in his case, because precisely the same evidence was admitted against the two defendants. Without addressing the merits of this contention, the Government moved to dismiss the appeal. The Government’s motion was based entirely on the fact that petitioner had become a fugitive after his conviction and before his initial sentencing, so that “fujnder the holding in Holmes, he cannot now challenge his 1989 conviction for conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute cocaine.” In a per curiam order, the Court of Appeals granted the motion to dismiss.
II
It has been settled for well over a century that an appellate court may dismiss the appeal of a defendant who is a fugitive from justice during the pendency of his appeal. The Supreme Court applied this rule for the first time in Smith v. United States, 94 U. S. 97 (1876), to an escaped defendant who remained at large when his petition arose before the Court. Under these circumstances, the Court explained, there could be no assurance that any judgment it issued would prove enforceable. The Court concluded that it is “clearly within our discretion to refuse to hear a criminal case in error, unless the convicted party, suing out the writ, is where he can be made to respond to any judgment we may render.” Ibid. On two subsequent occasions, we gave the same rationale for dismissals based on the fugitive status of defendants while their cases were pending before our Court. Bohanan v. Nebraska, 125 U. S. 692 (1887); Eisler v. United States, 338 U. S. 189 (1949).
Enforceability is not, however, the only explanation we have offered for the fugitive dismissal rule. In Molinaro v. New Jersey, 396 U. S. 365, 366 (1970), we identified an additional justification for dismissal of an escaped prisoner’s pending appeal:
“No persuasive reason exists why this Court should proceed to adjudicate the merits of a criminal case after the convicted defendant who has sought review escapes from the restraints placed upon him pursuant to the conviction. While such an escape does not strip the case of its character as an adjudicable case or controversy, we believe it disentitles the defendant to call upon the resources of the Court for determination of his claims.”
As applied by this Court, then, the rule allowing dismissal of fugitives’ appeals has rested in part on enforceability concerns, and in part on a “disentitlement” theory that construes a defendant’s flight during the pendency of his appeal as tantamount to waiver or abandonment.
That ensuring enforceability is not the sole rationale for fugitive dismissals is also evident from our review of state provisions regarding escaped prisoners’ pending appeals. In Allen v. Georgia, 166 U. S. 138 (1897), we upheld not only a state court’s dismissal of a fugitive’s appeal, but also its refusal to reinstate the appeal after the defendant’s recapture, when enforceability would no longer be at issue. We followed Allen in Estelle v. Dorrough, 420 U. S. 534 (1975), upholding the constitutionality of a Texas statute providing for automatic appellate dismissal when a defendant escapes during the pendency of his appeal, unless the defendant voluntarily returns within 10 days. Although the defendant in Estelle had been recaptured before his appeal was considered and dismissed, resolving any enforceability problems, there were, we held, other reasons for dismissal. Referring to our own dismissal in Molinaro, we found that the state statute served “similar ends.... It discourages the felony of escape and encourages voluntary surrenders. It promotes the efficient, dignified operation of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.” 420 U. S., at 537 (footnotes omitted).
Estelle went on to consider whether the Texas statute was irrational because it applied only to prisoners with appeals pending when they fled custody. Citing the “peculiar problems posed by escape of a prisoner during the ongoing appellate process,” id., at 542, n. 11, we concluded that it was not. The distinct concerns implicated by an escape pending appeal justified a special rule for such appeals:
“Texas was free to deal more severely with those who simultaneously invoked the appellate process and escaped from its custody than with those who first escaped from its custody, returned, and then invoked the appellate process within the time permitted by law. While each class of prisoners sought to escape, the first did so in the very midst of their invocation of the appellate process, while the latter did so before returning to custody and commencing that process. If Texas is free to adopt a policy which deters escapes by prisoners, as all of our cases make clear that it is, it is likewise free to impose more severe sanctions on those whose escape is reasonably calculated to disrupt the very appellate process which they themselves have set in motion.” Id., at 541-542.
Thus, our cases consistently and unequivocally approve dismissal as an appropriate sanction when a prisoner is a fugitive during “the ongoing appellate process.” Moreover, this,rule is amply supported by a number of justifications. In addition to addressing the enforceability concerns identified in Smith v. United States, 94 U. S. 97 (1876), and Bohanan v. Nebraska, 125 U. S. 692 (1887), dismissal by an appellate court after a defendant has fled its jurisdiction serves an important deterrent function and advances an interest in efficient, dignified appellate practice. Estelle, 420 U. S., at 537. What remains for our consideration is whether the same rationales support a rule mandating dismissal of an appeal of a defendant who flees the jurisdiction of a district court, and is recaptured before he invokes the jurisdiction of the appellate tribunal.
Ill
In 1982, the Government persuaded the Eleventh Circuit that our reasoning in Molinaro should be extended to the appeal of a “former fugitive,” returned to custody prior to sentencing and notice of appeal. The Court of Appeals recognized in Holmes that all of the cases on which the Government relied were distinguishable, “because each involved a defendant who fled after filing a notice of appeal.” 680 F. 2d, at 1373 (emphasis added). The court was satisfied, however, that the disentitlement rationale of Molinaro “is equally forceful whether the defendant flees before or after sentencing.” 680 F. 2d, at 1374. The Eleventh Circuit also expressed concern that absent dismissal, the Government might be prejudiced by delays in proceedings resulting from presentencing escapes.
The rule of Holmes differs from that applied in Molinaro in three key respects. First, of course, the Holmes rule reaches defendants who flee while their cases are before district courts, as well' as those who flee while their appeals are pending. Second, the Holmes rule, unlike the rule of Molinaro, will not mandate dismissal of an entire appeal whenever it is invoked. As the Eleventh Circuit explained, because flight cannot fairly be construed as a waiver of appeal from errors occurring after recapture, defendants who flee presentencing retain their right to appeal sentencing errors, though they lose the right to appeal their convictions. 680 F. 2d, at 1373. Finally, as announced in Holmes and applied in this case, the Eleventh Circuit rule appears to call for automatic dismissal, rather than an exercise of discretion. See n. 11, supra.
In our view, the rationales that supported dismissal in cases like Molinaro and Estelle should not be extended as far as the Eleventh Circuit has taken them. Our review of rules adopted by the courts of appeals in their supervisory capacity is limited in scope, but it does demand that such rules represent reasoned exercises of the courts’ authority. See Thomas v. Arn, 474 U. S. 140, 146-148 (1985). Accordingly, the justifications we have advanced for allowing appellate courts to dismiss pending fugitive appeals all assume some connection between a defendant’s fugitive status and the appellate process, sufficient to make an appellate sanction a reasonable response. These justifications are necessarily attenuated when applied to a case in which both flight and recapture occur while the case is pending before the district court, so that a defendant’s fugitive status at no time coincides with his appeal.
There is, for instance, no question but that dismissal of a former fugitive’s appeal cannot be justified by reference to the enforceability concerns that animated Smith v. United States, 94 U. S. 97 (1876), and the cases that followed. A defendant returned to custody before he invokes the appellate process presents no risk of unenforceability; he is within control of the appellate court throughout the period of appeal and issuance of judgment. Cf. United States v. Gordon, 538 F. 2d 914, 915 (CA1 1976) (dismissing pending appeal of fugitive because it is “unlikely that [the] convicted party will respond to an unfavorable decision”).
Similarly, in many cases, the “efficient... operation” of the appellate process, identified as an independent concern in Estelle, 420 U. S., at 537, will not be advanced by dismissal of appeals filed after former fugitives are recaptured. It is true that an escape may give rise to a “flurry of extraneous matters,” requiring that a court divert its attention from the merits of the case before it. United States v. Puzzanghera, 820 F. 2d 25, 26 (CA1), cert. denied, 484 U. S. 900 (1987). The court put to this “additional trouble,” 820 F. 2d, at 26, however, at least in the usual course of events, will be the court before which the case is pending at the time of escape. When an appeal is filed after recapture, the “flurry,” along with any concomitant delay, likely will exhaust itself well before the appellate tribunal enters the picture.
Nor does dismissal of appeals filed after recapture operate to protect the “digni[ty]” of an appellate court. Cf. Estelle, 420 U. S., at 537. It is often said that a fugitive “flouts” the authority of the court by escaping, and that dismissal is an appropriate sanction for this act of disrespect. See, e. g., United States v. DeValle, 894 F. 2d 133, 138 (CA5 1990); United States v. Persico, 853 F. 2d 134, 137-138 (CA2 1988); Ali v. Sims, 788 F. 2d 954, 958-959 (CA3 1986); United States v. London, 723 F. 2d 1538, 1539 (CA11), cert. denied, 467 U. S. 1228 (1984). Indeed, the premise of Molinaro’s disentitlement theory is that “the fugitive from justice has demonstrated such disrespect for the legal processes that he. has no right to call upon the court to adjudicate his claim.” Ali v. Sims, 788 F. 2d, at 959; see Molinaro, 396 U. S., at 366. We have no reason here to question the proposition that an appellate court may employ dismissal as a sanction when a defendant’s flight operates as an affront to the dignity of the court’s proceedings.
The problem in this case, of course, is that petitioner, who fled before sentencing and was recaptured before appeal, flouted the authority of the District Court, not the Court of Appeals. The contemptuous disrespect manifested by his flight was directed at the District Court, before which his case was pending during the entirety of his fugitive period. Therefore, under the reasoning of the cases cited above, it is the District Court that has the authority to defend its own dignity, by sanctioning an act of defiance that occurred solely within its domain. See United States v. Anagnos, 853 F. 2d 1, 2 (CA1 1988) (declining to follow Holmes because former fugitive’s “misconduct was in the district court, and should affect consequences in that court, not in ours”).
We cannot accept an expansion of this reasoning that would allow an appellate court to sanction by dismissal any conduct that exhibited disrespect for any aspect of the judicial system, even where such conduct has no connection to the course of appellate proceedings. See supra, at 244, and n. 15. Such a rule would sweep far too broadly, permitting, for instance, this Court to dismiss a petition solely because the petitioner absconded for a day during district court proceedings, or even because the petitioner once violated a condition of parole or probation. None of our cases calls for such a result, and we decline today to adopt such an approach. Accordingly, to the extent that the Holmes rule rests on the premise that Molinaro’s disentitlement theory by itself justifies dismissal of an appeal filed after a former fugitive is returned to custody, see 680 F. 2d, at 1374, it cannot be sustained.
Finally, Estelle’s deterrence rationale, 420 U. S., at 537, offers little support for the Eleventh Circuit rule. Once jurisdiction has vested in the appellate court, as in Estelle, then any deterrent to escape must flow from appellate consequences, and dismissal may be an appropriate sanction by which to deter. Until that time, however, the district court is quite capable of defending its own jurisdiction. While a case is pending before the district court, flight can be deterred with the threat of a wide range of penalties available to the district court judge. See Katz v. United States, 920 F. 2d 610, 613 (CA9 1990) (when defendant is before district court, “disentitlement doctrine does not stand alone as a deterrence to escape”).
Moreover, should this deterrent prove ineffective, and a defendant flee while his case is before a district court, the district court is well situated to impose an appropriate punishment. While an appellate court has access only to the blunderbuss of dismissal, the district court can tailor a more finely calibrated response. Most obviously, because flight is a separate offense punishable under the Criminal Code, see nn. 3-4, swpra, the district court can impose a separate sentence that adequately vindicates the public interest in deterring escape and safeguards the dignity of the court. In this case, for instance, the District Court concluded that a term of imprisonment of 21 months, followed by three years of supervised release, would serve these purposes. If we assume that there is merit to petitioner’s appeal, then the Eleventh Circuit’s dismissal is tantamount to an additional punishment of 15 years for the same offense of flight. Cf. United States v. Snow, 748 F. 2d 928 (CA4 1984). Our reasoning in Molinaro surely does not compel that result.
Indeed, as Justice Stewart noted in his dissenting opinion in Estelle v. Dorrough, 420 U. S., at 544-545, punishment by appellate dismissal introduces an element of arbitrariness and irrationality into sentencing for escape. Use of the dismissal sanction as, in practical effect, a second punishment for a defendant’s flight is almost certain to produce the kind of disparity in sentencing that the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 and the Sentencing Guidelines were intended to eliminate.
Accordingly, we conclude that while dismissal of an appeal pending while the defendant is a fugitive may serve substantial interests, the same interests do not support a rule of dismissal for all appeals filed by former fugitives, returned to custody before invocation of the appellate system. Absent some connection between a defendant’s fugitive status and his appeal, as provided when a defendant is at large during “the ongoing appellate process,” Estelle, 420 U. S., at 542, n. 11, the justifications advanced for dismissal of fugitives’ pending appeals generally will not apply.
We do not ignore the possibility that some actions by a defendant, though they occur while his case is before the district court, might have an impact on the appellate process sufficient to warrant an appellate sanction. For that reason, we do not hold that a court of appeals is entirely without authority to dismiss an appeal because of fugitive status predating the appeal. For example, the Eleventh Circuit, in formulating the Holmes rule, expressed concern that a long escape, even if ended before sentencing and appeal, may so delay the onset of appellate proceedings that the Government would be prejudiced in locating witnesses and presenting evidence at retrial after a successful appeal. Holmes, 680 F. 2d, at 1374; see also United States v. Pérsico, 853 F. 2d, at 137. We recognize that this problem might, in some instances, make dismissal an appropriate response. In the class of appeals premised on insufficiency of the evidence, however, in which petitioner’s appeal falls, retrial is not permitted in the event of reversal, and this type of prejudice to the Government will not serve as a rationale for dismissal.
Similarly, a defendant’s misconduct at the district court level might somehow make “meaningful appeal impossible,” Holmes, 680 F. 2d, at 1374, or otherwise disrupt the appellate process so that an appellate sanction is reasonably imposed. The appellate courts retain the authority to deal with such cases, or classes of cases, as necessary. Here, for instance, petitioner’s flight prevented the Court of Appeals from consolidating his appeal with those of his codefendants, which we assume would be its normal practice. See United States v. Mieres-Borges, 919 F. 2d, at 654, n. 1 (noting that petitioner is absent and not party to appeal). If the Eleventh Circuit deems this consequence of petitioner’s flight a significant interference with the operation of its appellate process, then, under the reasoning we employ today, a dismissal rule could properly be applied.
As this case reaches us, however, there is no reason to believe that the Eleventh Circuit has made such a judgment. Application of the Holmes rule, as formulated by the Eleventh Circuit thus far, does not require the kind of connection between fugitivity and the appellate process that we hold necessary today; instead, it may rest on nothing more than the faulty premise that any act of judicial defiance, whether or not it affects the appellate process, is punishable by appellate dismissal. See Holmes, 680 F. 2d, at 1374; supra, at 246. Accordingly, that the Eleventh Circuit saw fit to dismiss this case under Holmes does not by itself reflect a determination that dismissal would be appropriate under the narrower circumstances we now define.
Nor is there any indication in the record below — either in the Government’s motion to dismiss, or in the Eleventh Circuit’s per curiam order — that petitioner’s former fugitivity was deemed to present an obstacle to orderly appellate review. Thus, we have no reason to assume that the Eleventh Circuit would consider the duplication of resources involved in hearing petitioner’s appeal separately from those of his codefendants — which can of course be minimized by reliance on the earlier panel decision in United States v. Mieres-Borges, see supra, at 238, and n. 6—sufficiently disruptive of the appellate process that dismissal would be a reasonable response, on the facts of this case and under the standard we announce today. We leave that determination to the Court of Appeals on remand.
In short, when a defendant’s flight and recapture occur before appeal, the defendant’s former fugitive status may well lack the kind of connection to the appellate process that would justify an appellate sanction of dismissal. In such cases, fugitivity while a case is pending before a district court, like other contempts of court, is best sanctioned by the district court itself. The contempt for the appellate process manifested by flight while a case is pending on appeal remains subject to the rule of Molinaro.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
The Court of Appeals order merely stated that the Government’s “motion to dismiss is GRANTED,” without actually citing Holmes. App. 78. Because the Government’s motion to dismiss, id., at 68-71, relied entirely on Holmes and on United States v. London, 723 F. 2d 1538 (CA11), cert. denied, 467 U. S. 1228 (1984), which followed Holmes, we construe the Court of Appeals order as a routine application of the Holmes rule.
No. 88-10035-CR-KING (SD Fla., June 23, 1989).
Title.18 U. S. C. § 401(3) provides: “A court of the United States shall have power to punish by fine or imprisonment, at its discretion, such contempt of its authority, and none other, as... [disobedience or resistance to its lawful writ, process, order, rule, decree, or command.”
Title 18 U. S. C. §3146 provides, in relevant part:
“(a) Offense. — Whoever, having been released under this chapter knowingly—
“(1) fails to appear before a court as required by the conditions of release; or
“(2) fails to surrender for service of sentence pursuant to a court order; shall be punished as provided in subsection (b) of this section.
“(b) Punishment. — (1) The punishment for an offense under this section is—
“(A) if the person was released in connection with a charge of, or while awaiting sentence, surrender for service of sentence, or appeal or certio-rari after conviction for—
“(i) an offense punishable by death, life imprisonment, or imprisonment for a term of 15 years or more, a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than ten years, or both;
“(ii) an offense punishable by imprisonment for a term of five years or more, a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both;
“(iii) any other felony, a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than two years, or both; or
“(iv) a misdemeanor, a fine under this chapter or imprisonment for not more than one year, or both; and
“(B) if the person was released for appearance as a material witness, a fine under this chapter or imprisonment for not more than one year, or both.
“(2) A term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be consecutive to the sentence of imprisonment for any other offense.
“(c) AFFIRMATIVE Defense. — It is an affirmative defense to a prosecution under this section that uncontrollable circumstances prevented the person from appearing or surrendering, and that the person did not contribute to the creation of such circumstances in reckless disregard of the requirement to appear or surrender, and that the person appeared or surrendered as soon as such circumstances ceased to exist.”
App. 58-63.
United States v. Mieres-Borges, 919 F. 2d 652 (CA11 1990), cert. denied, 499 U. S. 980 (1991). The difference in dispositions is explained by a post-arrest statement admitted against only one defendant, 919 F. 2d., at 660-661, though the dissenting judge viewed the evidence as insufficient as to both appealing defendants, id., at 663-664. Petitioner represents that he is situated identically to the codefendant whose conviction was reversed, with nothing in the record that would support a distinction between their cases. The Government does not take issue with that representation, but maintains that the evidence is sufficient to support all three convictions. Brief for United States 28, n. 7.
App. 10.
Id., at 51-56.
Id., at 57. This sequence of events makes petitioner’s ease somewhat unusual. Had the District Court denied petitioner’s motion for resentenc-ing, petitioner would have been barred by applicable time limits from appealing his initial sentence and judgment. Petitioner was able to file a timely appeal only because the District Court granted his motion to resen-tenee. Entry of the second sentence and judgment, from which petitioner noticed his appeal, is treated as the relevant “sentencing” for purposes of this opinion. We have no occasion here to comment on the propriety of either the District Court’s initial decision to sentence in absentia, or its subsequent decision to resentence.
Id., at 70-71.
The dissenting Justices in Eisler, noting that the ease was not rendered moot by Eisler’s escape, believed that the Court should have exercised its discretion to decide the merits in light of the importance of the issue presented. See 338 U. S., at 194 (Murphy, J., dissenting); id., at 195 (Jackson, J., dissenting). In United States v. Sharpe, 470 U. S. 675 (1985), despite the respondent’s fugitive status, the Court declined to remand the case to the Court of Appeals with directions to dismiss, and proceeded to decide the merits. Id., at 681, n. 2. See also id., at 688 (Blackmun, J., concurring); id., at 721-723 (Stevens, J., dissenting).
For present purposes, the time of sentencing and the time of appeal may be treated together, as the two dates normally must occur within 10 days of one another. See Fed. Rule App. Proc. 4(b); see also n. 9, supra; Torres v. Oakland Scavenger Co., 487 U. S. 312, 314-315 (1988) (discussing mandatory nature of Rule 4 time limits). Cases in which a defendant flees during that 10-day interval will be resolved easily: If the defendant fails to file a timely appeal, his case concludes; if the defendant’s attorney files an appeal for him in his absence, the appeal will be subject to dismissal under straightforward application of Smith and Molinaro. Should a defendant flee after sentencing but return before appeal — in other words, should his period of fugitivity begin after sentencing and end less than 10 days later — then a timely filed appeal would be subject to the principles we apply today.
The court reasoned that the right of appeal, purely a creature of statute, may be waived by failure to file a timely notice of appeal “or by abandonment through flight which may postpone filing a notice of appeal for years after conviction.” Holmes, 680 F. 2d, at 1373-1374. The court then explained: “Such untimeliness would make a meaningful appeal impossible in many cases. In case of a reversal, the government would obviously be prejudiced in locating witnesses and retrying the case.” Id,., at 1374.
“We hold that a defendant who flees after conviction, but before sentencing, waives his right to appeal from the conviction unless he can establish that his absence was due to matters completely beyond his control. Such a defendant does not waive his right to appeal from any alleged errors connected to his sentencing." Id., at 1373 (emphasis added).
The reasonableness standard of Thomas v. Arn, 474 U. S. 140 (1985), is not, however, the only reason we require some connection between the appellate process and an appellate sanction. As the dissent notes, post, at 254, n. 2, Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 47, which authorizes the promulgation of rules by the courts of appeals, limits that authority to rules “governing [the] practice” before those courts.
This case well illustrates the way in which preappeal flight may delay district court, but not appellate court, proceedings. Petitioner’s sentencing was scheduled for June 1989. Because he fled, however, and because the District Court resentenced him upon his return to custody, his final sentence was not entered until January 1991. Supra, at 237-238. Accordingly, petitioner’s 11-month period of fugitivity delayed culmination of the District Court proceedings by as much as 19 months.
In the appellate court, on the other hand, the timing of proceedings was unaffected by petitioner’s flight. Had petitioner filed his notice of appeal before he fled, of course, then the Court of Appeals might have been required to reschedule an already docketed appeal, causing some delay. But here, petitioner filed his notice of appeal only after he was returned to custody, and the Court of Appeals was therefore free to docket his case pursuant to its regular schedule and at its convenience. In short, a lapse of time that precedes invocation of the appellate process does not translate, by itself, into delay borne by the appellate court.
Even the Eleventh Circuit, we note, seems unprepared to take such an extreme position. If appellate dismissal were indeed an appropriate sanction for all acts of judicial defiance, then there would be no reason to exempt sentencing errors from the scope of the Holmes rule. See 680 F. 2d, at 1373; supra, at 243. Whether or not Holmes’ distinction between appeals from sentencing errors and appeals from convictions is logically supportable, see United States v. Anagnos, 853 F. 2d 1,2 (CA1 1988) (questioning logic of distinction), it reflects an acknowledgment by the Eleventh Circuit that the sanction of appellate dismissal should not be wielded indiscriminately as an all-purpose weapon against defendant misconduct.
See supra, at 237-238.
“The Court is not condoning [defendant’s] flight from justice. However, it presumes his actions constitute an independent crime, i. e., ‘escape from custody.’ We refrain from punishing [defendant] twice by dismissing his appeal.” United States v. Snow, 748 F. 2d, at 930, n. 3.
“[T]he statute imposes totally irrational punishments upon those subject to its application. If an escaped felon has been convicted in violation of law, the loss of his right to appeal results in his serving a sentence that under law was erroneously imposed. If, on the other hand, his trial was free of reversible error, the loss of his right to appeal results in no punishment at all. And those whose appeals would have been reversed if their appeals had not been dismissed serve totally disparate sentences, dependent not upon the circumstances of their escape, but upon whatever sentences may have been meted out under their invalid convictions.” Estelle, 420 U. S., at 544.
18 U. S. C. §3551 et seq.; 28 U. S. C. §§991-998.
See generally Mistretta v. United States, 488 U. S. 361 (1989) (discussing purpose of Sentencing Reform Act and Sentencing Guidelines).
The dissent relies heavily on the legitimate interests in avoiding the “specter of inconsistent judgments,” as well as in preserving “precious appellate resources.” Post, at 255. It must be remembered, however, that the reason appellate resources are precious is that they serve the purpose of administering evenhanded justice. In this case, it is the dissent’s proposed disposition that would produce inconsistent judgments, as petitioner served a 15-year sentence while his codefendant’s conviction was reversed for insufficiency of evidence.
We cannot agree with petitioner that the courts may only consider whether to dismiss the appeal of a former
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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A
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Chief Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In New York, as in most States, it is a crime to aid another to commit or attempt suicide, but patients may refuse even lifesaving medical treatment. The question presented by this case is whether New York’s prohibition on assisting suicide therefore violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. We hold that it does not.
Petitioners are various New York public officials. Respondents Timothy E. Quill, Samuel C. Klagsbrun, and Howard A. Grossman are physicians who practice in New York. They assert that although it would be “consistent with the standards of [their] medical practice^]” to prescribe lethal medication for “mentally competent, terminally ill patients” who are suffering great pain and desire a doctor’s help in taking their own lives, they are deterred from doing so by New York’s ban on assisting suicide. App. 25-26. Respondents, and three gravely ill patients who have since died, sued the State’s Attorney General in the United States District Court. They urged that because New York permits a competent person to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment, and because the refusal of such treatment is “essentially the same thing” as physician-assisted suicide, New York's assisted-suicide ban violates the Equal Protection Clause. Quill v. Koppell, 870 F. Supp. 78, 84-85 (SDNY 1994).
The District Court disagreed: “[I]t is hardly unreasonable or irrational for the State to recognize a difference between allowing nature to take its course, even in the most severe situations, and intentionally using an artificial death-producing device.” Id., at 84. The court noted New York’s “obvious legitimate interests in preserving life, and in protecting vulnerable persons,” and concluded that “[ujnder the United States Constitution and the federal system it establishes, the resolution of this issue is left to the normal democratic processes within the State.” Id., at 84-85.
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed. 80 F. 3d 716 (1996). The court determined that, despite the assisted-suicide ban’s apparent general applicability, “New York law does not treat equally all competent persons who are in the final stages of fatal illness and wish to hasten their deaths,” because “those in the final stages of terminal illness who are on life-support systems are allowed to hasten their deaths by directing the removal of such systems; but those who are similarly situated, except for the previous attachment of life-sustaining equipment, are not allowed to hasten death by self-administering prescribed drugs.” Id., at 727, 729. In the court’s view, “[t]he ending of life by [the withdrawal of life-support systems] is nothing more nor less than assisted suicide.” Id., at 729 (emphasis added). The Court of Appeals then examined whether this supposed unequal treatment was rationally related to any legitimate state interests, and concluded that “to the extent that [New York’s statutes] prohibit a physician from prescribing medications to be self-administered by a mentally competent, terminally-ill person in the final stages of his terminal illness, they are not rationally related to any legitimate state interest.” Id,., at 731. We granted certiorari, 518 U. S. 1055 (1996), and now reverse.
The Equal Protection Clause commands that no State shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This provision creates no substantive rights. San Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1, 33 (1973); id., at 59 (Stewart, J., concurring). Instead, it embodies a general rule that States must treat like cases, alike but may treat unlike cases accordingly. Plyler v. Doe, 457 U. S. 202, 216 (1982) (“ ‘[T]he Constitution does not require things which are different in fact or opinion to be treated in law as though they were the same’ ”) (quoting Tigner v. Texas, 310 U. S. 141, 147 (1940)). If a legislative classification or distinction “neither burdens a fundamental right nor targets a' suspect class, we will uphold [it] so long as it bears a rational relation to some legitimate end.” Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S. 620, 631 (1996).
New York’s statutes outlawing assisting suicide affect and address matters of profound significance to all New Yorkers alike. They neither infringe fundamental rights nor involve suspect classifications. Washington v. Glucksberg, ante, at 719-728; see 80 F. 3d, at 726; San Antonio School Dist., 411 U. S., at 28 (“The system of alleged discrimination and the class it defines have none of the traditional indicia of suspectness”); id., at 33-35 (courts must look to the Constitution, not the “importance” of the asserted right, when deciding whether an asserted right is “fundamental”). These laws are therefore entitled to a “strong presumption of validity.” Heller v. Doe, 509 U. S. 312, 319 (1993).
On their faces, neither New York’s ban on assisting suicide nor its statutes permitting patients to refuse medical treatment treat anyone differently from anyone else or draw any distinctions between persons. Everyone, regardless of physical condition, is entitled, if competent, to refuse unwanted lifesaving medical treatment; no one is permitted to assist a suicide. Generally speaking, laws that apply evenhandedly to all “unquestionably comply” with the Equal Protection Clause. New York City Transit Authority v. Beazer, 440 U. S. 568, 587 (1979); see Personnel Administrator of Mass. v. Feeney, 442 U. S. 256, 271-273 (1979) (“[M]any [laws] affect certain groups unevenly, even though the law itself treats them no differently from all other members of the class described by the law”).
The Court of Appeals, however, concluded that some terminally ill people — those who are on life-support systems— are treated differently from those who are not, in that the former may “hasten death” by ending treatment, but the latter may not “hasten death” through physician-assisted suicide. 80 F. 3d, at 729. This conclusion depends on the submission that ending or refusing lifesaving medical treatment “is nothing more nor less than assisted suicide.” Ibid. Unlike the Court of Appeals, we think the distinction between assisting suicide and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment, a distinction widely recognized and endorsed in the medical profession and in our legal traditions, is both important and logical; it is certainly rational. See Feeney, supra, at 272 (“When the basic classification is rationally based, uneven effects upon particular groups within a class are ordinarily of no constitutional concern”).
The distinction comports with fundamental legal principles of causation and intent. First, when a patient refuses life-sustaining medical treatment, he dies from an underlying fatal disease or pathology; but if a patient ingests lethal medication prescribed by a physician, he is killed by that medication. See, e. g., People v. Kevorkian, 447 Mich. 436, 470-472, 527 N. W. 2d 714, 728 (1994), cert. denied, 514 U. S. 1083 (1995); Matter of Conroy, 98 N. J. 321, 355, 486 A. 2d 1209, 1226 (1985) (when feeding tube is removed, death “result[sj... from [the patient’s] underlying medical condition”); In re Colyer, 99 Wash. 2d 114, 123, 660 P. 2d 738, 743 (1983) (“[D]eath which occurs after the removal of life sustaining systems is from natural causes”); American Medical Association, Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, Physician-Assisted Suicide, 10 Issues in Law & Medicine 91, 93 (1994) (“When a life-sustaining treatment is declined, the patient dies primarily because of an underlying disease”).
Furthermore, a physician who withdraws, or honors a patient’s refusal to begin, life-sustaining medical treatment purposefully intends, or may so intend, only to respect his patient’s wishes and “to cease doing useless and futile or degrading things to the patient when [the patient] no longer stands to benefit from them.” Assisted Suicide in the United States, Hearing before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 104th Cong., 2d Sess., 368 (1996) (testimony of Dr. Leon R. Kass). The same is true when a doctor provides aggressive palliative care; in some cases, painkilling drugs may hasten a patient’s death, but the physician’s purpose and intent is, or may be, only to ease his patient’s pain. A doctor who assists a suicide, however, “must, necessarily and indubitably, intend primarily that the patient be made dead.” Id., at 367. Similarly, a patient who commits suicide with a doctor’s aid necessarily has the specific intent to end his or her own life, while a patient who refuses or discontinues treatment might not. See, e. g., Matter of Conroy, supra, at 351, 486 A. 2d, at 1224 (patients who refuse life-sustaining treatment “may not harbor a specific intent to die” and may instead “fervently wish to live, but to do so free of unwanted medical technology, surgery, or drugs”); Superintendent of Belchertown State School v. Saikewicz, 373 Mass. 728, 743, n. 11, 370 N. E. 2d 417, 426, n. 11 (1977) (“[I]n refusing treatment the patient may not have the specific intent to die”).
The law has long used actors’ intent or purpose to distinguish between two acts that may have the same result. See, e. g., United States v. Bailey, 444 U. S. 394, 403-406 (1980) (“[T]he... common law of homicide often distinguishes... between a person who knows that another person will be killed as the result of his conduct and a person who acts with the specific purpose of taking another’s life”); Morissette v. United States, 342 U. S. 246, 250 (1952) (distinctions based on intent are “universal and persistent in mature systems of law”); M. Hale, 1 Pleas of the Crown 412 (1847) (“If A. with an intent to prevent a gangrene beginning in his hand doth without any advice cut off his hand, by which he dies, he is not thereby felo de se for tho it was a voluntary act, yet it was not with an intent to kill himself”). Put differently, the law distinguishes actions taken “because of” a given end from actions taken “in spite of” their unintended but foreseen consequences. Feeney, 442 U. S., at 279; Compassion in Dying v. Washington, 79 F. 3d 790, 858 (CA9 1996) (Klein-feld, J., dissenting) (“When General Eisenhower ordered American soldiers onto the beaches of Normandy, he knew that he was sending many American soldiers to certain death.... His purpose, though, was to... liberate Europe from the Nazis”).
Given these general principles, it is not surprising that many courts, including New York courts, have carefully distinguished refusing life-sustaining treatment from suicide. See, e. g., Fosmire v. Nicoleau, 75 N. Y. 2d 218, 227, and n. 2, 551 N. E. 2d 77, 82, and n. 2 (1990) (“[Mjerely declining medical care... is not considered a suicidal act”). In fact, the first state-court decision explicitly to authorize withdrawing lifesaving treatment noted the “real distinction between the self-infliction of deadly harm and a self-determination against artificial life support.” In re Quinlan, 70 N. J. 10, 43, 52, and n. 9, 355 A. 2d 647, 665, 670, and n. 9, cert. denied sub nom. Garger v. New Jersey, 429 U. S. 922 (1976). And recently, the Michigan Supreme Court also rejected the argument that the distinction “between acts that artificially sustain life and acts that artificially curtail life” is merely a “distinction without constitutional significance — a meaningless exercise in semantic gymnastics,” insisting that “the Cruzan majority disagreed and so do we.” Kevorkian, 447 Mich., at 471, 527 N. W. 2d, at 728.
Similarly, the overwhelming majority of state legislatures have drawn a clear line between assisting suicide and withdrawing or permitting the refusal of unwanted lifesaving medical treatment by prohibiting the former and permitting the latter. Glucksberg, ante, at 710-711, 716-719. And “nearly all states expressly disapprove of suicide and assisted suicide either in statutes dealing with durable powers of attorney in health-care situations, or in ‘living will’ statutes.” Kevorkian, supra, at 478-479, and nn. 53-54, 527 N. W. 2d, at 731-732, and nn. 53-54. Thus, even as the States move to protect and promote patients’ dignity at the end of life, they remain opposed to physician-assisted suicide.
New York is a case in point. The State enacted its current assisted-suicide statutes in 1965. Since then, New York has acted several times to protect patients’ common-law right to refuse treatment. Act of Aug. 7, 1987, ch. 818, § 1, 1987 N. Y. Laws 3140 (“Do Not Resuscitate Orders”) (codified as amended at N. Y. Pub. Health Law §§ 2960-2979 (McKinney 1993 and Supp. 1997)); Act of July 22, 1990, ch. 752, § 2, 1990 N. Y. Laws 3547 (“Health Care Agents and Proxies”) (codified as amended at N. Y. Pub. Health Law §§2980-2994 (McKinney 1993 and Supp. 1997)). In so doing, however, the State has neither endorsed a general right to “hasten death” nor approved physician-assisted suicide. Quite the opposite: The State has reaffirmed the line between “killing” and “letting die.” See N. Y. Pub. Health Law § 2989(3) (McKinney 1993) (“This article is not intended to permit or promote suicide, assisted suicide, or euthanasia”); New York State Task Force on Life and the Law, Life-Sustaining Treatment: Making Decisions and Appointing a Health Care Agent 36-42 (July 1987); Do Not Resuscitate Orders: The Proposed Legislation and Report of the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law 15 (Apr. 1986). More recently, the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law studied assisted suicide and euthanasia and, in 1994, unanimously recommended against legalization. When Death is Sought: Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia in the Medical Context vii (1994). In the Task Force’s view, “allowing decisions to forgo life-sustaining treatment and allowing assisted suicide or euthanasia have radically different consequences and meanings for public policy.” Id., at 146.
This Court has also recognized, at least implicitly, the distinction between letting a patient die and making that patient die. In Cruzan v. Director, Mo. Dept. of Health, 497 U. S. 261, 278 (1990), we concluded that “[t]he principle that a competent person has a constitutionally protected liberty interest in refusing unwanted medical treatment may be inferred from our prior decisions,” and we assumed the existence of such a right for purposes of that case, id., at 279. But our assumption of a right to refuse treatment was grounded not, as the Court of Appeals supposed, on the proposition that patients have a general and abstract “right to hasten death,” 80 F. 3d, at 727-728, but on well-established, traditional rights to bodily integrity and freedom from unwanted touching, Cruzan, 497 U. S., at 278-279; id., at 287-288 (O’Connor, J., concurring). In fact, we observed that “the majority of States in this country have laws imposing criminal penalties on one who assists another to commit suicide.” Id., at 280. Cruzan therefore provides no support for the notion that refusing life-sustaining medical treatment is “nothing more nor less than suicide.”
For all these reasons, we disagree with respondents’ claim that the distinction between refusing lifesaving medical treatment and assisted suicide is “arbitrary” and “irrational.” Brief for Respondents 44. Granted, in some cases, the line between the two may not be clear, but certainty is not required, even were it possible. Logic and contemporary practice support New York’s judgment that the two acts are different, and New York may therefore, consistent with the Constitution, treat them differently. By permitting everyone to refuse unwanted medical treatment while prohibiting anyone from assisting a suicide, New York law follows a longstanding and rational distinction.
New York’s reasons for recognizing and acting on this distinction — including prohibiting intentional killing and preserving life; preventing suicide; maintaining physicians’ role as their patients’ healers; protecting vulnerable people from indifference, prejudice, and psychological and financial pressure to end their lives; and avoiding a possible slide towards euthanasia — are discussed in greater detail in our opinion in Glucksberg, ante. These valid and important public interests easily satisfy the constitutional requirement that a legislative classification bear a rational relation to some legitimate end.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
It is so ordered.
[For concurring opinion of Justice O’Connor, see ante, p. 736; for opinions concurring in the judgments of Justice Stevens, see ante, p. 738, Justice Ginsburg, see ante, p. 789, and Justice Breyer, see ante, p. 789.]
New York Penal Law § 125.15 (McKinney 1987) (“Manslaughter in the second degree”) provides: “A person is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree when... (3) He intentionally causes or aids another person to commit suicide. Manslaughter in the second degree is a class C felony.” Section 120.30 (“Promoting a suicide attempt”) states: “A person is guilty of promoting a suicide attempt when he intentionally causes or aids another person to attempt suicide. Promoting a suicide attempt is a class E felony.” See generally Washington v. Glucksberg, ante, at 710-719.
“It is established under New York law that a competent person may refuse medical treatment, even if the withdrawal of such treatment will result in death.” Quill v. Koppell, 870 F. Supp. 78, 84 (SDNY 1994); see N. Y. Pub. Health Law, §§ 2960-2979 (McKinney 1993 and Supp. 1997) (“Orders Not to Resuscitate”) (regulating right of “adult with capacity” to direct issuance of orders not to resuscitate); id., §§ 2980-2994 (“Health Care Agents and Proxies”) (allowing appointment of agents “to make... health care decisions on the principal’s behalf,” including decisions to refuse lifesaving treatment).,
Declaration of Timothy E. Quill, M. D., App. 42-49; Declaration of Samuel C. Klagsbrun, M. D., id., at 68-74; Declaration of Howard A. Grossman, M. D., id., at 84-89; 80 F. 3d 716, 719 (CA2 1996).
These three patients stated that they had no chance of recovery, faced the “prospect of progressive loss of bodily function and integrity and increasing pain and suffering,” and desired medical assistance in ending their lives. App. 25-26; Declaration of William A. Barth, id., at 96-98; Declaration of George A. Kingsley, id., at 99-102; Declaration of Jane Doe, id., at 105-109.
The court acknowledged that because New York’s assisted-suieide statutes “do not impinge on any fundamental rights [or] involve suspect classifications,” they were subject only to rational-basis judicial scrutiny. 80 F. 3d, at 726-727.
The American Medical Association emphasizes the “fundamental difference between refusing life-sustaining treatment and demanding a life-ending treatment.” American Medical Association, Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, Physician-Assisted Suicide, 10 Issues in Law & Medicine 91, 93 (1994); see also American Medical Association, Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs, Decisions Near the End of Life, 267 JAMA 2229, 2230-2231, 2233 (1992) (“The withdrawing or withholding of life-sustaining treatment is not inherently contrary to the principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence,” but assisted suicide “is contrary to the prohibition against using the tools of medicine to cause a patient’s death”); New York State Task Force on Life and the Law, When Death is Sought: Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia in the Medical Context 108 (1994) (“[Professional organizations] consistently distinguish assisted suicide and euthanasia from the withdrawing or withholding of treatment, and from the provision of palliative treatments or other medical care that risk fatal side effects”); Brief for American Medical Association et al. as Amici Curiae 18-25. Of course, as respondents’ lawsuit demonstrates, there are differences of opinion within the medical profession on this question. See New York Task Force, supra, at 104-109.
Thus, the Second Circuit erred in reading New York law as creating a “right to hasten death”; instead, the authorities cited by the court recognize a right to refuse treatment, and nowhere equate the exercise of this right with suicide. Schloendorff v. Society of New York Hospital, 211 N. Y. 125, 129-130, 105 N. E. 92,93 (1914), which contains Justice Cardozo’s famous statement that “[e]very human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body,” was simply an informed-consent case. See also Rivers v. Katz, 67 N. Y. 2d 485, 495, 495 N. E. 2d 337, 343 (1986) (right to refuse antipsychotic medication is not absolute, and may be limited when “the patient presents a danger to himself”); Matter of Storar, 52 N. Y. 2d 363, 377, n. 6, 420 N. E. 2d 64, 71, n. 6, cert. denied, 454 U. S. 858 (1981).
Many courts have recognized this distinction. See, e. g., Kevorkian v. Thompson, 947 F. Supp. 1152, 1178, and nn. 20-21 (ED Mich. 1997); In re Fiori, 543 Pa. 592, 602, 673 A. 2d 905, 910 (1996); Singletary v. Costello, 665 So. 2d 1099, 1106 (Fla. App. 1996); Laurie v. Senecal, 666 A. 2d 806, 808-809 (R. I. 1995); State ex rel. Schuetzle v. Vogel, 537 N. W. 2d 358, 360 (N. D. 1995); Thor v. Superior Court, 5 Cal. 4th 725, 741-742, 855 P. 2d 375, 385-386 (1993); DeGrella v. Elston, 858 S. W. 2d 698, 707 (Ky. 1993); People v. Adams, 216 Cal. App. 3d 1431, 1440, 265 Cal. Rptr. 568, 573-574 (1990); Guardianship of Jane Doe, 411 Mass. 512, 522-523, 583 N. E. 2d 1263, 1270, cert. denied sub nom. Doe v. Gross, 503 U. S. 950 (1992); In re L. W., 167 Wis. 2d 53, 83, 482 N. W. 2d 60, 71 (1992); In re Rosebush, 195 Mich. App. 675, 681, n. 2, 491 N. W. 2d 633, 636, n. 2 (1992); Donaldson v. Van de Kamp, 2 Cal. App. 4th 1614, 1619-1625, 4 Cal. Rptr. 2d 59, 61-64 (1992); In re Lawrance, 579 N. E. 2d 32, 40, n. 4 (Ind. 1991); McKay v. Bergstedt, 106 Nev. 808, 822-823, 801 P. 2d 617, 626-627 (1990); In re Browning, 568 So. 2d 4, 14 (Fla. 1990); McConnell v. Beverly Enterprises-Connecticut, Inc., 209 Conn. 692, 710, 553 A. 2d 596, 605 (1989); State v. McAfee, 259 Ga. 579, 581, 385 S. E. 2d 651, 652 (1989); In re Grant, 109 Wash. 2d 545, 563, 747 P. 2d 445, 454-455 (1987); In re Gardner, 534 A. 2d 947, 955-956 (Me. 1987); Matter of Farrell, 108 N. J. 335, 349-350, 529 A. 2d 404, 411 (1987); Rasmussen v. Fleming, 154 Ariz. 207, 218, 741 P. 2d 674, 685 (1987); Bouvia v. Superior Court, 179 Cal. App. 3d 1127, 1144-1145, 225 Cal. Rptr. 297, 306 (1986); Von Holden v. Chapman, 87 App. Div. 2d 66, 70, 450 N. Y. S. 2d 623, 627 (1982); Bartling v. Superior Court, 163 Cal. App. 3d 186, 196-197, 209 Cal. Rptr. 220, 225-226 (1984); Foody v. Manchester Memorial Hospital, 40 Conn. Supp. 127, 137, 482 A. 2d 713, 720 (1984); In re P. V. W., 424 So. 2d 1015, 1022 (La. 1982); Leach v. Akron General Medical Center, 68 Ohio Misc. 1, 10, 426 N. E. 2d 809, 815 (Ohio Comm. Pleas 1980); In re Severns, 425 A. 2d 156, 161 (Del. Ch. 1980); Satz v. Perlmutter, 362 So. 2d 160, 162-163 (Fla. App. 1978); Application of the President and Directors of Georgetown College, 331 F 2d 1000, 1009 (CADC), cert. denied, 377 U. S. 978 (1964); Brophy v. New England Sinai Hospital, 398 Mass. 417, 439, 497 N. E. 2d 626, 638 (1986). The British House of Lords has also recognized the distinction. Airedale N. H. S. Trust v. Bland, 2 W. L. R. 316, 368 (1993).
See Ala. Code §22-8A-10 (1990); Alaska Stat. Ann. §§ 18.12.080(a), (f) (1996); Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 36-3210 (Supp. 1996); Ark. Code Ann. §§ 20-13-905(a), (f), 20-17-210(a), (g) (1991 and Supp. 1995); Cal. Health & Safety Code Ann. §§ 7191.5(a), (g) (West Supp. 1997); Cal. Prob. Code Ann. § 4723 (West Supp. 1997); Colo. Rev. Stat. §§ 15-14-504(4), 15-18-112(1), 15-18.5-101(3), 15-18.6-108 (1987 and Supp. 1996); Conn. Gen. Stat. § 19a-575 (Supp. 1996); Del. Code Ann., Tit. 16, § 2512 (Supp. 1996); D. C. Code Ann. §§ 6-2430, 21-2212 (1995 and Supp. 1996); Fla. Stat. §§ 765.309(1), (2) (Supp. 1997); Ga. Code Ann. §§ 31-32-11(b), 31-36-2(b) (1996); Haw. Rev. Stat. § 327D-13 (1996); Idaho Code § 39-152 (Supp. 1996); Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 755, §§ 35/9(f), 40/5, 40/50, 45/2-1 (1992); Ind. Code §§ 16-36-1-13, 16-36-4-19, 30-5-5-17 (1994 and Supp. 1996); Iowa Code §§ 144A.11.1-144A.11.6, 144B.12.2 (1989 and Supp. 1997); Kan. Stat. Ann. § 65-28,109 (1985); Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 311.638 (Baldwin Supp. 1992); La. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 40:1299.58.10(A), (B) (West 1992); Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 18-A, §§ 5-813(b), (e) (Supp. 1996); Md. Health Code Ann. § 5—611(c) (1994); Mass. Gen. Laws 201D, § 12 (Supp. 1997); Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. § 700.496(20) (West 1995); Minn. Stat. §§ 145B.14, 145C.14 (Supp. 1997); Miss. Code Ann. §§ 41-41-117(2), 41-41-119(1) (Supp. 1992); Mo. Rev. Stat. §§ 459.015.3, 459.055(5) (1992); Mont. Code Ann. §§50-9-205(1), (7), 50-10-104(1), (6) (1995); Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 20-412(1), (7), 30-3401(3) (1995); Nev. Rev. Stat. § 449.670(2) (1996); N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 137-H:10, 137-H:13, 137-J:1 (1996); N. J. Stat. Ann. §§ 26:2H-54(d), (e), 26:2H-77 (West 1996); N. M. Stat. Ann. §§ 24-7A-13(B)(1), (C) (Supp. 1995); N. Y. Pub. Health Law § 2989(3) (McKinney 1993); N. C. Gen. Stat. §§ 90-320(b), 90-321(f) (1993); N. D. Cent. Code §§ 23-06.4-01, 23-06.5-01 (1991); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §§ 2133.12(A), (D) (Supp. 1996); Okla. Stat., Tit. 63, §§ 3101.2(C), 3101.12(A), (G) (1997); 20 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 5402(b) (Supp. 1996); R. I. Gen. Laws §§ 23-4.10-9(a), (f), 23-4.11-10(a), (f) (1996); S. C. Code Ann. §§ 44-77-130, 44-78-50(A), (C), 62-5-504(0) (Supp. 1996); S. D. Codified Laws §§ 34-12D-14, 34-12D-20 (1994); Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 32-11-110(a), 39-13-216 (Supp. 1996); Tex. Health & Safety Code Ann. §§ 672.017, 672.020, 672.021 (1992); Utah Code Ann. §§ 75-2-1116, 75-2-1118 (1993); Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 18, § 5260 (1987); Va. Code Ann. § 54.1-2990 (1994); V. I. Code Ann., Tit. 19, §§ 198(a), (g) (1995); Wash. Rev. Code §§ 70.122.070(1), 70.122.100 (Supp. 1997); W. Va. Code §§ 16-30-10, 16-30A-16(a), 16-30B-2(b), 16-30B-13, 16-30C-14 (1995); Wis. Stat. §§ 154.11(1), (6), 154.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
E
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Souter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 88 Stat. 829, 29 U. S. C. § 1001 et seq., generally obligates administrators to manage ERISA plans “in accordance with the documents and instruments governing” them. § 1104(a)(1)(D). At a more specific level, the Act requires covered pension benefit plans to “provide that benefits... under the plan may not be assigned or alienated,” § 1056(d)(1), but this bar does not apply to qualified domestic relations orders (QDROs), § 1056(d)(3). The question here is whether the terms of the limitation on assignment or alienation invalidated the act of a divorced spouse, the designated beneficiary under her ex-husband’s ERISA pension plan, who purported to waive her entitlement by a federal common law waiver embodied in a divorce decree that was not a QDRO. We hold that such a waiver is not rendered invalid by the text of the antialienation provision, but that the plan administrator properly disregarded the waiver owing to its conflict with the designation made by the former husband in accordance with plan documents.
I
The decedent, William Kennedy, worked for E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Company and was a participant in its savings and investment plan (SIP), with power both to “designate any beneficiary or beneficiaries... to receive all or part” of the funds upon his death, and to “replace or revoke such designation.” App. 48. The plan requires “[a]ll authorizations, designations and requests concerning the Plan [to] be made by employees in the manner prescribed by the [plan administrator],” id., at 52, and provides forms for designating or changing a beneficiary, id., at 34, 56-57. If at the time the participant dies “no surviving spouse exists and no beneficiary designation is in effect, distribution shall be made to, or in accordance with the directions of, the executor or administrator of the decedent’s estate.” Id., at 48.
The SIP is an ERISA “‘employee pension benefit plan,”’ 497 F. 3d 426, 427 (CA5 2007); 29 U. S. C. § 1002(2), and the parties do not dispute that the plan satisfies ERISA’s anti-alienation provision, § 1056(d)(1), which requires it to “provide that benefits provided under the plan may not be assigned or alienated.” The plan does, however, permit a beneficiary to submit a “qualified disclaimer” of benefits as defined under the Tax Code, see 26 U. S. C. § 2518, which has the effect of switching the beneficiary to an “alternate... determined according to a valid beneficiary designation made by the deceased.” Supp. Record 86-87 (Exh. 15).
In 1971, William married Liv Kennedy, and, in 1974, he signed a form designating her to take benefits under the SIP, but naming no contingent beneficiary to take if she disclaimed her interest. 497 F. 3d, at 427. William and Liv divorced in 1994, subject to a decree that Liv “is... divested of all right, title, interest, and claim in and to... [a]ny and all sums... the proceeds [from], and any other rights related to any... retirement plan, pension plan, or like benefit program existing by reason of [William’s] past or present or future employment.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 64-65. William did not, however, execute any documents removing Liv as the SIP beneficiary, 497 F. 3d, at 428, even though he did execute a new beneficiary-designation form naming his daughter, Kari Kennedy, as the beneficiary under DuPont’s Pension and Retirement Plan, also governed by ERISA.
On William’s death in 2001, petitioner Kari Kennedy was named executrix and asked DuPont to distribute the SIP funds to William’s estate (hereinafter Estate). Ibid. DuPont, instead, relied on William’s designation form and paid the balance of some $400,000 to Liv. Ibid. The Estate then sued respondents DuPont and the SIP plan administrator (together, DuPont), claiming that the divorce decree amounted to a waiver of the SIP benefits on Liv’s part, and that DuPont had violated ERISA by paying the benefits to William’s designee.
So far as it matters here, the District Court entered summary judgment for the Estate, to which it ordered DuPont to pay the value of the SIP benefits. The court relied on Fifth Circuit precedent establishing that a beneficiary can waive his rights to the proceeds of an ERISA plan “‘provided that the waiver is explicit, voluntary, and made in good faith.’” App. to Pet. for Cert. 38 (quoting Manning v. Hayes, 212 F. 3d 866, 874 (CA5 2000)).
The Fifth Circuit nonetheless reversed, distinguishing prior decisions enforcing federal common law waivers of ERISA benefits because they involved life-insurance policies, which are considered “ ‘welfare plants]’ ” under ERISA and consequently free of the antialienation provision. 497 F. 3d, at 429. The Court of Appeals held that Liv’s waiver constituted an assignment or alienation of her interest in the SIP benefits to the Estate, and so could not be honored. Id., at 430. The court relied heavily on the ERISA provision for bypassing the antialienation provision when a marriage breaks up: under 29 U. S. C. § 1056(d)(3), a court order that satisfies certain statutory requirements is known as a QDRO, which is exempt from the bar on assignment or alienation. Because the Kennedys’ divorce decree was not a QDRO, the Fifth Circuit reasoned that it could not give effect to Liv’s waiver incorporated in it, given that “ERISA provides a specific mechanism — the QDRO — for addressing the elimination of a spouse’s interest in plan benefits, but that mechanism is not invoked.” 497 F. 3d, at 431.
We granted certiorari to resolve a split among the Courts of Appeals and State Supreme Courts over a divorced spouse’s ability to waive pension plan benefits through a divorce decree not amounting to a QDRO. 552 U. S. 1178 (2008). We subsequently realized that this case implicates the further split over whether a beneficiary’s federal common law waiver of plan benefits is effective where that waiver is inconsistent with plan documents, and after oral argument we invited supplemental briefing on that latter issue, upon which the disposition of this case ultimately turns. We now affirm, albeit on reasoning different from the Fifth Circuit’s rationale.
II
A
By its terms, the antialienation provision, § 1056(d)(1), requires a plan to provide expressly that benefits be neither “assigned” nor “alienated,” the operative verbs having histories of legal meaning: to “assign” is “[t]o transfer; as to assign property, or some interest therein,” Black’s Law Dictionary 152 (4th rev. ed. 1968), and to “alienate” is “[t]o convey; to transfer the title to property,” id., at 96. We think it fair to say that Liv did not assign or alienate anything to William or to the Estate later standing in his shoes.
The Fifth Circuit saw the waiver as an assignment or alienation to the Estate, thinking that Liv’s waiver transferred the SIP benefits to whoever would be next in line; without a designated contingent beneficiary, the Estate would take them. The court found support in the applicable Treasury Department regulation that defines “assignment” and “alienation” to include
“[a]ny direct or indirect arrangement (whether revocable or irrevocable) whereby a party acquires from a participant or beneficiary a right or interest enforceable against the plan in, or to, all or any part of a plan benefit payment which is, or may become, payable to the participant or beneficiary.” 26 CFR § 1.401(a) — 13(c)(l)(ii) (2008).
See Boggs v. Boggs, 520 U. S. 833, 851-852 (1997) (relying upon the regulation to interpret the meaning of “assignment” and “alienation” in § 1056(d)(1)). The Circuit treated Liv’s waiver as an “ ‘indirect arrangement’ ” whereby the Estate gained an “‘interest enforceable against the plan.’” 497 F. 3d, at 430.
Casting the alienation net this far, though, raises questions that leave one in doubt. Although it is possible to speak of the waiver as an “arrangement” having the indirect effect of a transfer to the next possible beneficiary, it would be odd usage to speak of an estate as the transferee of its own decedent’s property, just as it would be to speak of the decedent in his lifetime as his own transferee. And treating the estate or even the ultimate estate beneficiary as the assignee or transferee would be strange under the terms of the regulation: it would be hard to say the estate or future beneficiary “acquires” a right or interest when at the time of the waiver there was no estate and the beneficiary of a future estate might be anyone’s guess. If there were a contingent beneficiary (or the participant made a subsequent designation) the estate would get no interest; as for an estate beneficiary, the identity could ultimately turn on the law of intestacy applied to facts as yet unknown, or on the contents of the participant’s subsequent will, or simply on the participant’s future exercise of (or failure to invoke) the power to designate a new beneficiary directly under the terms of the plan. Thus, if such a waiver created an “arrangement” assigning or transferring anything under the statute, the assignor would be blindfolded, operating, at best, on the fringe of what “assignment” or “alienation” normally suggests.
The questionability of this broad reading is confirmed by exceptions to it that are apparent right off the bat. Take the case of a surviving spouse’s interest in pension benefits, for example. Depending on the circumstances, a surviving spouse has a right to a survivor’s annuity or to a lump-sum payment on the death of the participant, unless the spouse has waived the right and the participant has eliminated the survivor annuity benefit or designated a different beneficiary. See Boggs, supra, at 843; 29 U. S. C. §§ 1055(a), (b)(1)(C), (c)(2). This waiver by a spouse is plainly not barred by the antialienation provision. Likewise, DuPont concedes that a qualified disclaimer under the Tax Code, which allows a party to refuse an interest in property and thereby eliminate federal tax, would not violate the anti-alienation provision. See Brief for Respondents 21-23; 26 U. S. C. § 2518. In each example, though, we fail to see how these waivers would be permissible under the Fifth Circuit’s reading of the statute and regulation.
Our doubts, and the exceptions that call the Fifth Circuit’s reading into question, point us toward authority we have drawn on before, the law of trusts that “serves as ERISA’s backdrop.” Beck v. PACE Int’l Union, 551 U. S. 96, 101 (2007). We explained before that § 1056(d)(1) is much like a spendthrift trust provision barring assignment or alienation of a benefit, see Boggs, supra, at 852, and the cognate trust law is highly suggestive here. Although the beneficiary of a spendthrift trust traditionally lacked the means to transfer his beneficial interest to anyone else, he did have the power to disclaim prior to accepting it, so long as the disclaimer made no attempt to direct the interest to a beneficiary in his stead. See 2 Restatement (Third) of Trusts §58(1), Comment c, p. 359 (2001) (“A designated beneficiary of a spendthrift trust is not required to accept or retain an interest prescribed by the terms of the trust.... On the other hand, a purported disclaimer by which the beneficiary attempts to direct who is to receive the interest is a precluded transfer”); E. Griswold, Spendthrift Trusts §524, p. 603 (2d ed. 1947) (“The American cases, though not entirely clear, generally take the view that the interest under a spendthrift trust may be disclaimed”); Roseberry v. Moncure, 245 Va. 436, 439, 429 S. E. 2d 4, 6 (1993) (“ Tf a trust is created without notice to the beneficiary or the beneficiary has not accepted the beneficial interest under the trust, he can disclaim’” (quoting 1 A. Scott & W. Fratcher, Law of Trusts § 36.1, p. 389 (4th ed. 1987) (hereinafter Fratcher))).
We do not mean that the whole law of spendthrift trusts and disclaimers turns up in § 1056(d)(1), but the general principle that a designated spendthrift can disclaim his trust interest magnifies the improbability that a statute written with an eye on the old law would effectively force a beneficiary to take an interest willy-nilly. Common sense and common law both say that “[t]he law certainly is not so absurd as to force a man to take an estate against his will.” Townson v. Tickell, 3 Barn. & Ald. 31, 36, 106 Eng. Rep. 575, 576-577 (K. B. 1819).
The Treasury is certainly comfortable with the state of the old law, for the way it reads its own regulation “no party ‘acquires from’ a beneficiary a ‘right or interest enforceable against a plan’ pursuant to a beneficiary’s waiver of rights where the beneficiary does not attempt to direct her interest in pension benefits to another person.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 18. And, being neither “plainly erroneous [n]or inconsistent with the regulation,” the Treasury Department’s interpretation of its regulation is controlling. Auer v. Robbins, 519 U. S. 452, 461 (1997) (internal quotation marks omitted).
The Fifth Circuit found “significant support” for its contrary holding in the QDRO subsections, reasoning that “[i]n the marital-dissolution context, the QDRO provisions supply the sole exception to the anti-alienation provision,” 497 F. 3d, at 430, a point that echoes in DuPont’s argument here. But the negative implication of the QDRO language is not that simple. If a QDRO provided a way for a former spouse like Liv merely to waive benefits, this would be powerful evidence that the antialienation provision was meant to deny any effect to a waiver within a divorce decree but not a QDRO, else there would have been no need for the QDRO exception. But this is not so, and DuPont’s argument rests on a false premise. In fact, a beneficiary seeking only to relinquish her right to benefits cannot do this by a QDRO, for a QDRO by definition requires that it be the “creat[ion] or recognition of] the existence of an alternate payee’s right to, or assignment] to an alternate payee [of] the right to, receive all or a portion of the benefits payable with respect to a participant under a plan.” 29 U. S. C. § 1056(d)(3)(B)(i)(I). There is no QDRO for a simple waiver; there must be some succeeding designation of an alternate payee. Not being a mechanism for simply renouncing a claim to benefits, then, the QDRO provisions shed no light on whether a beneficiary may waive by a non-QDRO.
In sum, Liv did not attempt to direct her interest in the SIP benefits to the Estate or any other potential beneficiary, and accordingly we think that the better view is that her waiver did not constitute an assignment or alienation rendered void under the terms of § 1056(d)(1).
B
DuPont has three other reasons for saying that Liv’s waiver was barred by ERISA. They are unavailing.
First, it argues that even if the waiver is not an assignment or alienation barred under the terms of § 1056(d)(1), § 1056(d)(3)(A) still prohibits it, in providing that § 1056(d)(1) “shall apply to the creation, assignment, or recognition of a right to any benefit payable with respect to a participant pursuant to a domestic relations order [that is not a QDRO].” At the very least, DuPont reasons, Liv’s waiver included a “recognition” of William’s rights with respect to the SIP benefits. But DuPont overlooks the point that when subsection (d)(3)(A) provides that the bar to assignments or alienations extends to non-QDROs, it does nothing to expand the scope of prohibited assignment and alienation under subsection (d)(1). Whether Liv’s action is seen as a waiver or as a domestic relations order that incorporated a waiver, subsection (d)(1) does not cover it and § 1056(d)(3)(A) does not independently bar it.
Second, DuPont relies upon •§ 1056(d)(3)(H)(iii)(II), providing that if a domestic relations order is not a QDRO, “the plan administrator shall pay the segregated amounts (including any interest thereon) to the person or persons who would have been entitled to such amounts if there had been no order.” According to DuPont, because the divorce decree was not a QDRO this provision calls for paying benefits as if there had been no order. But DuPont has wrenched this language out of its setting, reading clause (iii) of subparagraph (H) as if there were no clause (i):
“During any period in which the issue of whether a domestic relations order is a qualified [QDRO] domestic relations order is being determined... the plan administrator shall separately account for the amounts (hereinafter in this subparagraph referred to as the ‘segregated amounts’) which would have been payable to the alternate payee during such period if the order had been determined to be a [QDRO].” § 1056(d)(3)(H)®.
Thus it is clear that subparagraph (H) speaks of a domestic relations order that distributes certain benefits (the “segregated amounts”) to an alternate payee, when the question for the plan administrator is whether the order is effective as a QDRO. That is the circumstance in which, for want of a QDRO, clause (iii) tells the plan administrator not to pay the alternate, but to distribute the segregated amounts as if there had been no order. Clause (iii) does not, as DuPont suggests, state a general rule that a non-QDRO is a nullity in any proceeding that would affect the determination of a beneficiary. And of course clause (iii) says nothing here at all; the divorce decree names no alternate payee, and there are consequently no “segregated amounts.”
Third, DuPont claims that a plan cannot recognize a waiver of benefits in a non-QDRO divorce decree because ERISA preempts “any and all State laws insofar as they may now or hereafter relate to any employee benefit plan,” with “State law” being defined to include “decisions” or “other State action having the effect of law.” §§ 1144(a), (c)(1). DuPont says that Liv’s waiver, expressed in a state-court decision and related to an employee benefit plan, is thus preempted. But recognizing a waiver in a divorce decree would not be giving effect to state law; the argument is that the waiver should be treated as a creature of federal common law, in which case its setting in a state divorce decree would be only happenstance. A court would merely be applying federal law to a document that might also have independent significance under state law. See, e. g., Melton v. Melton, 324 F. 3d 941, 945-946 (CA7 2003); Clift v. Clift, 210 F. 3d 268, 271-272 (CA5 2000); Lyman Lumber Co. v. Hill, 877 F. 2d 692, 693-694 (CA8 1989).
Ill
The waiver’s escape from inevitable nullity under the express terms of the antialienation clause does not, however, control the decision of this case, and the question remains whether the plan administrator was required to honor Liv’s waiver with the consequence of distributing the SIP balance to the Estate. We hold that it was not, and that the plan administrator did its statutory ERISA duty by paying the benefits to Liv in conformity with the plan documents.
ERISA requires “[e]very employee benefit plan [to] be established and maintained pursuant to a written instrument,” 29 U. S. C. § 1102(a)(1), “specifying] the basis on which payments are made to and from the plan,” § 1102(b)(4). The plan administrator is obliged to act “in accordance with the documents and instruments governing the plan insofar as such documents and instruments are consistent with the provisions of [Title I] and [Title IV] of [ERISA],” § 1104(a)(1)(D), and ERISA provides no exemption from this duty when it comes time to pay benefits. On the contrary, § 1132(a)(1)(B) (which the Estate happens to invoke against DuPont here) reinforces the directive, with its provision that a participant or beneficiary may bring a cause of action “to recover benefits due to him under the terms of his plan, to enforce his rights under the terms of the plan, or to clarify his rights to future benefits under the terms of the plah.”
The Estate’s claim therefore stands or falls by “the terms of the plan,” § 1132(a)(1)(B), a straightforward rule of hewing to the directives of the plan documents that lets employers “ ‘establish a uniform administrative scheme, [with] a set of standard procedures to guide processing of claims and disbursement of benefits,’ ” Egelhoff v. Egelhoff, 532 U. S. 141, 148 (2001) (quoting Fort Halifax Packing Co. v. Coyne, 482 U. S. 1, 9 (1987)); see also Curtiss-Wright Corp. v. Schoonejongen, 514 U. S. 73, 83 (1995) (ERISA’s statutory scheme “is built around reliance on the face of written plan documents”). The point is that by giving a plan participant a clear set of instructions for making his own instructions clear, ERISA forecloses any justification for enquiries into nice expressions of intent, in favor of the virtues of adhering to an uncomplicated rule: “simple administration, avoiding] double liability, and ensuring] that beneficiaries get what’s coming quickly, without the folderol essential under less-certain rules.” Fox Valley & Vicinity Constr. Workers Pension Fund v. Brown, 897 F. 2d 275, 283 (CA7 1990) (Easterbrook, J., dissenting).
And the cost of less certain rules would be too plain. Plan administrators would be forced “to examine a multitude of external documents that might purport to affect the dispensation of benefits,” Altobelli v. IBM Corp., 77 F. 3d 78, 82-83 (CA4 1996) (Wilkinson, C. J., dissenting), and be drawn into litigation like this over the meaning and enforceability of purported waivers. The Estate’s suggestion that a plan administrator could resolve these sorts of disputes through interpleader actions merely restates the problem with the Estate’s position: it would destroy a plan administrator’s ability to look at the plan documents and records conforming to them to get clear distribution instructions, without going into court.
The Estate of course is right that this guarantee of simplicity is not absolute. The very enforceability of QDROs means that sometimes a plan administrator must look for the beneficiaries outside plan documents notwithstanding § 1104(a)(1)(D); § 1056(d)(3)(J) provides that a “person who is an alternate payee under a [QDRO] shall be considered for purposes of any provision of [ERISA] a beneficiary under the plan.” But this in effect means that a plan administrator who enforces a QDRO must be said to enforce plan documents, not ignore them. In any case, a QDRO enquiry is relatively discrete, given the specific and objective criteria for a domestic relations order that qualifies as a QDRO, see §§ 1056(d)(3)(C), (D), requirements that amount to a statutory checklist working to “spare [an administrator] from litigation-fomenting ambiguities,” Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Wheaton, 42 F. 3d 1080, 1084 (CA7 1994). This is a far cry from asking a plan administrator to figure out whether a claimed federal common law waiver was knowing and voluntary, whether its language addressed the particular benefits at issue, and so forth, on into factually complex and subjective determinations. See, e.g., Altobelli, supra, at 83 (Wilkinson, C. J., dissenting) (“[W]aiver provisions are often sweeping in their terms, leaving their precise effect on plan benefits unclear”); Mohamed v. Kerr, 53 F. 3d 911, 915 (CA8 1995) (making “fact-driven determination” that marriage termination agreement constituted a valid waiver under federal common law).
These are good and sufficient reasons for holding the line, just as we have done in cases of state laws that might blur the bright-line requirement to follow plan documents in distributing benefits. Two recent preemption cases are instructive here. Boggs v. Boggs, 520 U. S. 833, held that ERISA preempted a state law permitting the testamentary transfer of a nonparticipant spouse’s community property interest in undistributed pension plan benefits. We rejected the entreaty to create “through case law... a new class of persons for whom plan assets are to be held and administered,” explaining that “[t]he statute is not amenable to this sweeping extratextual extension.” Id., at 850. And in Egelhoff we held that ERISA preempted a state law providing that the designation of a spouse as the beneficiary of a nonprobate asset is revoked automatically upon divorce. 532 U. S., at 143. We said the law was at fault for standing in the way of making payments “simply by identifying the beneficiary specified by the plan documents,” id., at 148, and thus for purporting to “undermine the congressional goal of ‘minimizing] the administrative and financial burden[s]’ on plan administrators,” id., at 149-150 (quoting Ingersoll-Rand Co. v. McClendon, 498 U. S. 133, 142 (1990)); see Egelhoff, supra, at 147, n. 1 (identifying “the conflict between the plan documents (which require making payments to the named beneficiary) and the statute (which requires making payments to someone else)”).
What goes for inconsistent state law goes for a federal common law of waiver that might obscure a plan administrator’s duty to act “in accordance with the documents and instruments.” See Mertens v. Hewitt Associates, 508 U. S. 248, 259 (1993) (“The authority of courts to develop a ‘federal common law’ under ERISA... is not the authority to revise the text of the statute”). And this case does as well as any other in pointing out the wisdom of protecting the plan documents rule. Under the terms of the SIP Liv was William’s designated beneficiary. The plan provided an easy way for William to change the designation, but for whatever reason he did not. The plan provided a way to disclaim an interest in the SIP account, but Liv did not purport to follow it. The plan administrator therefore did exactly what § 1104(a)(1)(D) required: “the documents control, and those name [the ex-wife].” McMillan v. Parrott, 913 F. 2d 310, 312 (CA6 1990).
It is no answer, as the Estate argues, that William’s beneficiary-designation form should not control because it is not one of the “documents and instruments governing the plan” under § 1104(a)(1)(D) and was not treated as a plan document by the plan administrator. That is beside the point. It is uncontested that the SIP and the summary plan description are “documents and instruments governing the plan.” See Curtiss-Wright Corp., 514 U. S., at 84 (explaining that 29 U. S. C. §§ 1024(b)(2) and (b)(4) require a plan administrator to make available the “governing plan documents”). Those documents provide that the plan administrator will pay benefits to a participant’s designated beneficiary, with designations and changes to be made in a particular way. William’s designation of Liv as his beneficiary was made in the way required; Liv’s waiver was not.
IV
Although Liv’s waiver was not rendered a nullity by the terms of § 1056, the plan administrator properly distributed the SIP benefits to Liv in accordance with the plan documents. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed on the latter ground.
It is so ordered.
The plan states that “[e]xcept as provided by Section 401(a)(13) of the [Internal Revenue] Code, no assignment of the rights or interests of account holders under this Plan will be permitted or recognized, nor shall such rights or interests be subject to attachment or other legal processes for debts.” App. 50-51. Title 26 U. S. C. §401(a)(13)(A), in language substantially tracking the text of § 1056(d)(1), provides that “[a] trust shall not constitute a qualified trust under this section unless the plan of which such trust is a part provides that benefits provided under the plan may not be assigned or alienated.”
The Estate now says that William’s beneficiary-designation form for the Pension and Retirement Plan applied to the SIP as well, but the form on its face applies only to DuPont’s “Pension and Retirement Plan.” App. 62. In the District Court, in fact, the Estate stipulated that William “never executed any forms or documents to remove or replace Liv Kennedy as his sole beneficiary under either the SIP or [a plan that merged into the SIP].” Id., at 28. In any event, the Estate did not raise this argument in the Court of Appeals, and we will not address it in the first instance. See Taylor v. Freeland & Kronz, 503 U. S. 638, 645-646 (1992).
Section 1056(d)(3)(A) provides that the antialienation provision “shall apply to the creation, assignment, or recognition of a right to any benefit payable with respect to a participant pursuant to a domestic relations order, except that paragraph (1) shall not apply if the order is determined to be a qualified domestic relations order.”
Compare Altobelli v. IBM Corp., 77 F. 3d 78 (CA4 1996) (federal common law waiver in divorce decree does not conflict with antialienation provision); Fox Valley & Vicinity Constr. Workers Pension Fund v. Brown, 897 F. 2d 275 (CA7 1990) (en banc) (same); Keen v. Weaver, 121 S. W. 3d 721 (Tex. 2003) (same), with McGowan v. NJR Serv. Corp., 423 F. 3d 241 (CA3 2005) (federal common law waiver in divorce decree barred by antialienation provision).
Compare Altobelli, supra (federal common law waiver controls); Mohamed v. Kerr, 53 F. 3d 911 (CA8 1995) (same); Brandon v. Travelers Ins. Co., 18 F. 3d 1321 (CA5 1994) (same); Fox Valley, supra (same); Strong v. Omaha Constr. Industry Pension Plan, 270 Neb. 1, 701 N. W. 2d 320 (2005) (same); Keen, supra (same), with Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Marsh, 119 F. 3d 415 (CA6 1997) (plan documents control); Krishna v. Colgate Palmolive Co., 7 F. 3d 11 (CA2 1993) (same).
DuPont argues that Liv’s waiver would have been an invalid disclaimer at common law because it was given for consideration in the divorce settlement. But the authorities DuPont cites fail to support the proposition that a beneficiary’s otherwise valid disclaimer was invalid at common law because she received consideration. See Roseberry v. Moncure, 245 Va., at 439, 429 S. E. 2d, at 6; Smith v. Bank of Del., 43 Del. Ch. 124,126-127, 219 A. 2d 576, 577 (1966); Preminger v. Union Bank & Trust Co., 54 Mich. App. 361, 368-369, 220 N. W. 2d 795, 798-799 (1974); 4 Fratcher §337.1 (4th ed. 1989); 1 Restatement (Second) of Trusts §36, Comment c (1957). It is true that the receipt'of consideration prevents a beneficiary from making a qualified disclaimer for gift tax purposes, see 26 CFR §25.2518-2 (2008), and there is common law authority for the proposition that a renunciation by a devisee is ineffective against existing creditors if “it is shown that those who would take such property on renunciation had agreed to pay to the devisee something of value in consideration of such renunciation.” 6 W. Bowe & D. Parker, Page on Law of Wills §49.5, p. 48 (2005); see also Schoonover v. Osborne, 193 Iowa 474, 478-479, 187 N. W. 20, 22 (1922). But at common law the receipt of consideration did not necessarily render a disclaimer invalid. See Commerce Trust Co. v. Fast, 396 S. W. 2d 683, 686-687 (Mo. 1965); Central Nat. Bank v. Eells, 5 Ohio Misc. 187, 189-192, 215 N. E. 2d 77, 80-81 (Ohio P. Ct. 1965); In re Wimperis, [1914] 1 Ch. 502, 508-510; see also In re Estate of Baird, 131 Wash. 2d 514, 519, n. 5, 933 P. 2d 1031, 1034, n. 5 (1997). In any event, our point is not that Liv’s waiver was a valid disclaimer at common law: only that reading the terms of 29 U. S. C. § 1056(d)(1) to bar all non-QDRO waivers is unsound in light of background
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
The National Voter Registration Act requires States to "accept and use" a uniform federal form to register voters for federal elections. The contents of that form (colloquially known as the Federal Form) are prescribed by a federal agency, the Election Assistance Commission. The Federal Form developed by the EAC does not require documentary evidence of citizenship; rather, it requires only that an applicant aver, under penalty of perjury, that he is a citizen. Arizona law requires voter-registration officials to "reject" any application for registration, including a Federal Form, that is not accompanied by concrete evidence of citizenship. The question is whether Arizona's evidence-of-citizenship requirement, as applied to Federal Form applicants, is pre-empted by the Act's mandate that States " accept and use" the Federal Form.
I
Over the past two decades, Congress has erected a complex superstructure of federal regulation atop state voter-registration systems. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), 107 Stat. 77, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg et seq., "requires States to provide simplified systems for registering to vote in federal elections." Young v. Fordice, 520 U.S. 273, 275, 117 S.Ct. 1228, 137 L.Ed.2d 448 (1997). The Act requires each State to permit prospective voters to "register to vote in elections for Federal office" by any of three methods: simultaneously with a driver's license application, in person, or by mail. § 1973gg-2(a).
This case concerns registration by mail. Section 1973gg-2(a)(2) of the Act requires a State to establish procedures for registering to vote in federal elections "by mail application pursuant to section 1973gg-4 of this title." Section 1973gg-4, in turn, requires States to "accept and use" a standard federal registration form. § 1973gg-4(a)(1). The Election Assistance Commission is invested with rulemaking authority to prescribe the contents of that Federal Form. § 1973gg-7(a)(1) ; see § 15329.
The EAC is explicitly instructed, however, to develop the Federal Form "in consultation with the chief election officers of the States." § 1973gg-7(a)(2). The Federal Form thus contains a number of state-specific instructions, which tell residents of each State what additional information they must provide and where they must submit the form. See National Mail Voter Registration Form, pp. 3-20, online at http://www.eac.gov (all Internet materials as visited June 11, 2013, and available in Clerk of Court's case file); 11 CFR § 9428.3 (2012). Each state-specific instruction must be approved by the EAC before it is included on the Federal Form.
To be eligible to vote under Arizona law, a person must be a citizen of the United States. Ariz. Const., Art. VII, § 2 ; Ariz.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 16-101(A) (West 2006). This case concerns Arizona's efforts to enforce that qualification. In 2004, Arizona voters adopted Proposition 200, a ballot initiative designed in part "to combat voter fraud by requiring voters to present proof of citizenship when they register to vote and to present identification when they vote on election day." Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1, 2, 127 S.Ct. 5, 166 L.Ed.2d 1 (2006) (per curiam ). Proposition 200 amended the State's election code to require county recorders to "reject any application for registration that is not accompanied by satisfactory evidence of United States citizenship." Ariz.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 16-166(F) (West Supp.2012). The proof-of-citizenship requirement is satisfied by (1) a photocopy of the applicant's passport or birth certificate, (2) a driver's license number, if the license states that the issuing authority verified the holder's U.S. citizenship, (3) evidence of naturalization, (4) tribal identification, or (5) "[o]ther documents or methods of proof... established pursuant to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986." Ibid. The EAC did not grant Arizona's request to include this new requirement among the state-specific instructions for Arizona on the Federal Form. App. 225. Consequently, the Federal Form includes a statutorily required attestation, subscribed to under penalty of perjury, that an Arizona applicant meets the State's voting requirements (including the citizenship requirement), see § 1973gg-7(b)(2), but does not require concrete evidence of citizenship.
The two groups of plaintiffs represented here-a group of individual Arizona residents (dubbed the Gonzalez plaintiffs, after lead plaintiff Jesus Gonzalez) and a group of nonprofit organizations led by the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona (ITCA)-filed separate suits seeking to enjoin the voting provisions of Proposition 200. The District Court consolidated the cases and denied the plaintiffs' motions for a preliminary injunction. App. to Pet. for Cert. 1g. A two-judge motions panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit then enjoined Proposition 200 pending appeal. Purcell, 549 U.S., at 3, 127 S.Ct. 5. We vacated that order and allowed the impending 2006 election to proceed with the new rules in place. Id., at 5-6, 127 S.Ct. 5. On remand, the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's initial denial of a preliminary injunction as to respondents' claim that the NVRA pre-empts Proposition 200's registration rules. Gonzalez v. Arizona, 485 F.3d 1041, 1050-1051 (2007). The District Court then granted Arizona's motion for summary judgment as to that claim. App. to Pet. for Cert. 1e, 3e. A panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed in part but reversed as relevant here, holding that "Proposition 200's documentary proof of citizenship requirement conflicts with the NVRA's text, structure, and purpose." Gonzalez v. Arizona, 624 F.3d 1162, 1181 (2010). The en banc Court of Appeals agreed. Gonzalez v. Arizona, 677 F.3d 383, 403 (2012). We granted certiorari. 568 U.S. ----, 133 S.Ct. 476, 184 L.Ed.2d 296 (2012).
II
The Elections Clause, Art. I, § 4, cl. 1, provides:
"The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the places of chusing Senators."
The Clause empowers Congress to pre-empt state regulations governing the "Times, Places and Manner" of holding congressional elections. The question here is whether the federal statutory requirement that States "accept and use" the Federal Form pre-empts Arizona's state-law requirement that officials "reject" the application of a prospective voter who submits a completed Federal Form unaccompanied by documentary evidence of citizenship.
A
The Elections Clause has two functions. Upon the States it imposes the duty ("shall be prescribed") to prescribe the time, place, and manner of electing Representatives and Senators; upon Congress it confers the power to alter those regulations or supplant them altogether. See U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779, 804-805, 115 S.Ct. 1842, 131 L.Ed.2d 881 (1995) ; id., at 862, 115 S.Ct. 1842 (THOMAS, J., dissenting). This grant of congressional power was the Framers' insurance against the possibility that a State would refuse to provide for the election of representatives to the Federal Congress. "[E]very government ought to contain in itself the means of its own preservation," and "an exclusive power of regulating elections for the national government, in the hands of the State legislatures, would leave the existence of the Union entirely at their mercy. They could at any moment annihilate it by neglecting to provide for the choice of persons to administer its affairs." The Federalist No. 59, pp. 362-363 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton) (emphasis deleted). That prospect seems fanciful today, but the widespread, vociferous opposition to the proposed Constitution made it a very real concern in the founding era.
The Clause's substantive scope is broad. "Times, Places, and Manner," we have written, are "comprehensive words," which "embrace authority to provide a complete code for congressional elections," including, as relevant here and as petitioners do not contest, regulations relating to "registration." Smiley v. Holm, 285 U.S. 355, 366, 52 S.Ct. 397, 76 L.Ed. 795 (1932) ; see also Roudebush v. Hartke, 405 U.S. 15, 24-25, 92 S.Ct. 804, 31 L.Ed.2d 1 (1972) (recounts); United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 320, 61 S.Ct. 1031, 85 L.Ed. 1368 (1941) (primaries). In practice, the Clause functions as "a default provision; it invests the States with responsibility for the mechanics of congressional elections, but only so far as Congress declines to pre-empt state legislative choices." Foster v. Love, 522 U.S. 67, 69, 118 S.Ct. 464, 139 L.Ed.2d 369 (1997) (citation omitted). The power of Congress over the "Times, Places and Manner" of congressional elections "is paramount, and may be exercised at any time, and to any extent which it deems expedient; and so far as it is exercised, and no farther, the regulations effected supersede those of the State which are inconsistent therewith." Ex parte Siebold, 100 U.S. 371, 392, 25 L.Ed. 717 (1880).
B
The straightforward textual question here is whether Ariz.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 16-166(F), which requires state officials to "reject" a Federal Form unaccompanied by documentary evidence of citizenship, conflicts with the NVRA's mandate that Arizona "accept and use" the Federal Form. If so, the state law, "so far as the conflict extends, ceases to be operative." Siebold, supra, at 384. In Arizona's view, these seemingly incompatible obligations can be read to operate harmoniously: The NVRA, it contends, requires merely that a State receive the Federal Form willingly and use that form as one element in its (perhaps lengthy) transaction with a prospective voter.
Taken in isolation, the mandate that a State "accept and use" the Federal Form is fairly susceptible of two interpretations. It might mean that a State must accept the Federal Form as a complete and sufficient registration application; or it might mean that the State is merely required to receive the form willingly and use it somehow in its voter registration process. Both readings-"receive willingly" and "accept as sufficient"-are compatible with the plain meaning of the word "accept." See 1 Oxford English Dictionary 70 (2d ed. 1989) ("To take or receive (a thing offered) willingly"; "To receive as sufficient or adequate"); Webster's New International Dictionary 14 (2d ed. 1954) ("To receive (a thing offered to or thrust upon one) with a consenting mind"; "To receive with favor; to approve"). And we take it as self-evident that the "elastic" verb "use," read in isolation, is broad enough to encompass Arizona's preferred construction. Smith v. United States, 508 U.S. 223, 241, 113 S.Ct. 2050, 124 L.Ed.2d 138 (1993) (SCALIA, J., dissenting). In common parlance, one might say that a restaurant accepts and uses credit cards even though it requires customers to show matching identification when making a purchase. See also Brief for State Petitioners 40 ("An airline may advertise that it 'accepts and uses' e-tickets..., yet may still require photo identification before one could board the airplane").
"Words that can have more than one meaning are given content, however, by their surroundings." Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U.S. 457, 466, 121 S.Ct. 903, 149 L.Ed.2d 1 (2001) ; see also Smith, supra, at 241, 113 S.Ct. 2050 (SCALIA, J., dissenting). And reading "accept" merely to denote willing receipt seems out of place in the context of an official mandate to accept and use something for a given purpose. The implication of such a mandate is that its object is to be accepted as sufficient for the requirement it is meant to satisfy. For example, a government diktat that "civil servants shall accept government IOUs for payment of salaries" does not invite the response, "sure, we'll accept IOUs-if you pay us a ten percent down payment in cash." Many federal statutes contain similarly phrased commands, and they contemplate more than mere willing receipt. See, e.g., 5 U.S.C. § 8332(b), (m)(3) ("The Office [of Personnel Management] shall accept the certification of" various officials concerning creditable service toward civilian-employee retirement); 12 U.S.C.A. § 2605(l) (2) (Supp.2013)
("A servicer of a federally related mortgage shall accept any reasonable form of written confirmation from a borrower of existing insurance coverage"); 16 U.S.C. § 1536(p) (Endangered Species Committee "shall accept the determinations of the President" with respect to whether a major disaster warrants an exception to the Endangered Species Act's requirements); § 4026(b)(2), 118 Stat. 3725, note following 22 U.S.C. § 2751, p. 925 (FAA Administrator "shall accept the certification of the Department of Homeland Security that a missile defense system is effective and functional to defend commercial aircraft against" man-portable surface-to-air missiles); 25 U.S.C. § 1300h-6(a) ("For the purpose of proceeding with the per capita distribution" of certain funds, "the Secretary of the Interior shall accept the tribe's certification of enrolled membership"); 30 U.S.C. § 923(b) (the Secretary of Labor "shall accept a board certified or board eligible radiologist's interpretation" of a chest X ray used to diagnose black lung disease ); 42 U.S.C. § 1395w-21(e)(6)(A) ("[A] Medicare+Choice organization... shall accept elections or changes to elections during" specified periods).
Arizona's reading is also difficult to reconcile with neighboring provisions of the NVRA. Section 1973gg-6(a)(1)(B) provides that a State shall "ensure that any eligible applicant is registered to vote in an election... if the valid voter registration form of the applicant is postmarked" not later than a specified number of days before the election. (Emphasis added.) Yet Arizona reads the phrase "accept and use" in § 1973gg-4(a)(1) as permitting it to reject a completed Federal Form if the applicant does not submit additional information required by state law. That reading can be squared with Arizona's obligation under § 1973gg-6(a)(1) only if a completed Federal Form is not a "valid voter registration form," which seems unlikely. The statute empowers the EAC to create the Federal Form, § 1973gg-7(a), requires the EAC to prescribe its contents within specified limits, § 1973gg-7(b), and requires States to "accept and use" it, § 1973gg-4(a)(1). It is improbable that the statute envisions a completed copy of the form it takes such pains to create as being anything less than "valid."
The Act also authorizes States, "[i]n addition to accepting and using the" Federal Form, to create their own, state-specific voter-registration forms, which can be used to register voters in both state and federal elections. § 1973gg-4(a)(2) (emphasis added). These state-developed forms may require information the Federal Form does not. (For example, unlike the Federal Form, Arizona's registration form includes Proposition 200's proof-of-citizenship requirement. See Arizona Voter Registration Form, p. 1, online at http://www.azsos.gov.) This permission works in tandem with the requirement that States "accept and use" the Federal Form. States retain the flexibility to design and use their own registration forms, but the Federal Form provides a backstop: No matter what procedural hurdles a State's own form imposes, the Federal Form guarantees that a simple means of registering to vote in federal elections will be available.
Arizona's reading would permit a State to demand of Federal Form applicants every additional piece of information the State requires on its state-specific form. If that is so, the Federal Form ceases to perform any meaningful function, and would be a feeble means of "increas[ing] the number of eligible citizens who register to vote in elections for Federal office." § 1973gg(b).
Finally, Arizona appeals to the presumption against pre-emption sometimes invoked in our Supremacy Clause cases. See, e.g., Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 460-461, 111 S.Ct. 2395, 115 L.Ed.2d 410 (1991). Where it applies, "we start with the assumption that the historic police powers of the States were not to be superseded by the Federal Act unless that was the clear and manifest purpose of Congress." Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U.S. 218, 230, 67 S.Ct. 1146, 91 L.Ed. 1447 (1947). That rule of construction rests on an assumption about congressional intent: that "Congress does not exercise lightly" the "extraordinary power" to "legislate in areas traditionally regulated by the States." Gregory, supra, at 460, 111 S.Ct. 2395. We have never mentioned such a principle in our Elections Clause cases. Siebold, for example, simply said that Elections Clause legislation, "so far as it extends and conflicts with the regulations of the State, necessarily supersedes them." 100 U.S., at 384. There is good reason for treating Elections Clause legislation differently: The assumption that Congress is reluctant to pre-empt does not hold when Congress acts under that constitutional provision, which empowers Congress to "make or alter" state election regulations. Art. I, § 4, cl. 1. When Congress legislates with respect to the "Times, Places and Manner" of holding congressional elections, it necessarily displaces some element of a pre-existing legal regime erected by the States. Because the power the Elections Clause confers is none other than the power to pre-empt, the reasonable assumption is that the statutory text accurately communicates the scope of Congress's pre-emptive intent. Moreover, the federalism concerns underlying the presumption in the Supremacy Clause context are somewhat weaker here. Unlike the States' "historic police powers," Rice, supra, at 230, 67 S.Ct. 1146, the States' role in regulating congressional elections-while weighty and worthy of respect-has always existed subject to the express qualification that it "terminates according to federal law." Buckman Co. v. Plaintiffs' Legal Comm., 531 U.S. 341, 347, 121 S.Ct. 1012, 148 L.Ed.2d 854 (2001). In sum, there is no compelling reason not to read Elections Clause legislation simply to mean what it says.
We conclude that the fairest reading of the statute is that a state-imposed requirement of evidence of citizenship not required by the Federal Form is "inconsistent with" the NVRA's mandate that States "accept and use" the Federal Form. Siebold, supra, at 397. If this reading prevails, the Elections Clause requires that Arizona's rule give way.
We note, however, that while the NVRA forbids States to demand that an applicant submit additional information beyond that required by the Federal Form, it does not preclude States from "deny[ing] registration based on information in their possession establishing the applicant's ineligibility." Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 24. The NVRA clearly contemplates that not every submitted Federal Form will result in registration. See § 1973gg-7(b)(1) (Federal Form "may require only" information "necessary to enable the appropriate State election official to assess the eligibility of the applicant " (emphasis added)); § 1973gg-6(a)(2) (States must require election officials to "send notice to each applicant of the disposition of the application").
III
Arizona contends, however, that its construction of the phrase "accept and use" is necessary to avoid a conflict between the NVRA and Arizona's constitutional authority to establish qualifications (such as citizenship) for voting. Arizona is correct that the Elections Clause empowers Congress to regulate how federal elections are held, but not who may vote in them. The Constitution prescribes a straightforward rule for the composition of the federal electorate. Article I, § 2, cl. 1, provides that electors in each State for the House of Representatives "shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature," and the Seventeenth Amendment adopts the same criterion for senatorial elections. Cf. also Art. II, § 1, cl. 2 ("Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct," presidential electors). One cannot read the Elections Clause as treating implicitly what these other constitutional provisions regulate explicitly. "It is difficult to see how words could be clearer in stating what Congress can control and what it cannot control. Surely nothing in these provisions lends itself to the view that voting qualifications in federal elections are to be set by Congress." Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112, 210, 91 S.Ct. 260, 27 L.Ed.2d 272 (1970) (Harlan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); see also U.S. Term Limits, 514 U.S., at 833-834, 115 S.Ct. 1842; Tashjian v. Republican Party of Conn., 479 U.S. 208, 231-232, 107 S.Ct. 544, 93 L.Ed.2d 514 (1986) (Stevens, J., dissenting). Prescribing voting qualifications, therefore, "forms no part of the power to be conferred upon the national government" by the Elections Clause, which is "expressly restricted to the regulation of the times, the places, and the manner of elections." The Federalist No. 60, at 371 (A. Hamilton); see also id., No. 52, at 326 (J. Madison). This allocation of authority sprang from the Framers' aversion to concentrated power. A Congress empowered to regulate the qualifications of its own electorate, Madison warned, could "by degrees subvert the Constitution." 2 Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, p. 250 (M. Farrand rev. 1966). At the same time, by tying the federal franchise to the state franchise instead of simply placing it within the unfettered discretion of state legislatures, the Framers avoided "render[ing] too dependent on the State governments that branch of the federal government which ought to be dependent on the people alone." The Federalist No. 52, at 326 (J. Madison).
Since the power to establish voting requirements is of little value without the power to enforce those requirements, Arizona is correct that it would raise serious constitutional doubts if a federal statute precluded a State from obtaining the information necessary to enforce its voter qualifications. If, but for Arizona's interpretation of the "accept and use" provision, the State would be precluded from obtaining information necessary for enforcement, we would have to determine whether Arizona's interpretation, though plainly not the best reading, is at least a possible one. Cf. Crowell v. Benson, 285 U.S. 22, 62, 52 S.Ct. 285, 76 L.Ed. 598 (1932) (the Court will "ascertain whether a construction of the statute is fairly possible by which the [constitutional] question may be avoided" (emphasis added)). Happily, we are spared that necessity, since the statute provides another means by which Arizona may obtain information needed for enforcement.
Section 1973gg-7(b)(1) of the Act provides that the Federal Form "may require only such identifying information (including the signature of the applicant) and other information (including data relating to previous registration by the applicant), as is necessary to enable the appropriate State election official to assess the eligibility of the applicant and to administer voter registration and other parts of the election process." At oral argument, the United States expressed the view that the phrase "may require only" in § 1973gg-7(b)(1) means that the EAC "shall require information that's necessary, but may only require that information." Tr. of Oral Arg. 52 (emphasis added); see also Brief for ITCA Respondents 46; Tr. of Oral Arg. 37-39 (ITCA Respondents' counsel). That is to say, § 1973gg-7(b)(1) acts as both a ceiling and a floor with respect to the contents of the Federal Form. We need not consider the Government's contention that despite the statute's statement that the EAC "may" require on the Federal Form information "necessary to enable the appropriate State election official to assess the eligibility of the applicant," other provisions of the Act indicate that such action is statutorily required. That is because we think that-by analogy to the rule of statutory interpretation that avoids questionable constitutionality-validly conferred discretionary executive authority is properly exercised (as the Government has proposed) to avoid serious constitutional doubt. That is to say, it is surely permissible if not requisite for the Government to say that necessary information which may be required will be required.
Since, pursuant to the Government's concession, a State may request that the EAC alter the Federal Form to include information the State deems necessary to determine eligibility, see § 1973gg-7(a)(2) ; Tr. of Oral Arg. 55 (United States), and may challenge the EAC's rejection of that request in a suit under the Administrative Procedure Act, see 5 U.S.C. §§ 701 - 706, no constitutional doubt is raised by giving the "accept and use" provision of the NVRA its fairest reading. That alternative means of enforcing its constitutional power to determine voting qualifications remains open to Arizona here. In 2005, the EAC divided 2-to-2 on the request by Arizona to include the evidence-of-citizenship requirement among the state-specific instructions on the Federal Form, App.
225, which meant that no action could be taken, see 42 U.S.C. § 15328 ("Any action which the Commission is authorized to carry out under this chapter may be carried out only with the approval of at least three of its members"). Arizona did not challenge that agency action (or rather inaction) by seeking APA review in federal court, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 11-12 (Arizona), but we are aware of nothing that prevents Arizona from renewing its request. Should the EAC's inaction persist, Arizona would have the opportunity to establish in a reviewing court that a mere oath will not suffice to effectuate its citizenship requirement and that the EAC is therefore under a nondiscretionary duty to include Arizona's concrete evidence requirement on the Federal Form. See 5 U.S.C. § 706(1). Arizona might also assert (as it has argued here) that it would be arbitrary for the EAC to refuse to include Arizona's instruction when it has accepted a similar instruction requested by Louisiana.
We hold that 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg-4 precludes Arizona from requiring a Federal Form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself. Arizona may, however, request anew that the EAC include such a requirement among the Federal Form's state-specific instructions, and may seek judicial review of the EAC's decision under the Administrative Procedure Act.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Justice KENNEDY, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
The opinion for the Court insists on stating a proposition that, in my respectful view, is unnecessary for the proper disposition of the case and is incorrect in any event. The Court concludes that the normal "starting presumption that Congress does not intend to supplant state law," New York State Conference of Blue Cross & Blue Shield Plans v. Travelers Ins. Co., 514 U.S. 645, 654, 115 S.Ct. 1671, 131 L.Ed.2d 695 (1995), does not apply here because the source of congressional power is the Elections Clause and not some other provision of the Constitution. See ante, at 2256 - 2257.
There is no sound basis for the Court to rule, for the first time, that there exists a hierarchy of federal powers so that some statutes pre-empting state law must be interpreted by different rules than others, all depending upon which power Congress has exercised. If the Court is skeptical of the basic idea of a presumption against pre-emption as a helpful instrument of construction in express pre-emption cases, see Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U.S. 504, 545, 112 S.Ct. 2608, 120 L.Ed.2d 407 (1992) (SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part), it should say so and apply that skepticism across the board.
There are numerous instances in which Congress, in the undoubted exercise of its enumerated powers, has stated its express purpose and intent to pre-empt state law. But the Court has nonetheless recognized that "when the text of a pre-emption clause is susceptible of more than one plausible reading, courts ordinarily 'accept the reading that disfavors pre-emption.' " Altria Group, Inc. v. Good, 555 U.S. 70, 77, 129 S.Ct. 538, 172 L.Ed.2d 398 (2008) (quoting Bates v. Dow Agrosciences LLC, 544 U.S. 431, 449, 125 S.Ct. 1788, 161 L.Ed.2d 687 (2005) ). This principle is best understood, perhaps, not as a presumption but as a cautionary principle to ensure that pre-emption does not go beyond the strict requirements of the statutory command. The principle has two dimensions: Courts must be careful not to give an unduly broad interpretation to ambiguous or imprecise language Congress uses. And they must confine their opinions to avoid overextending a federal statute's pre-emptive reach. Error on either front may put at risk the validity and effectiveness of laws that Congress did not intend to disturb and that a State has deemed important to its scheme of governance. That concern is the same regardless of the power Congress invokes, whether it is, say, the commerce power, the war power, the bankruptcy power, or the power to regulate federal elections under Article I, § 4.
Whether the federal statute concerns congressional regulation of elections or any other subject proper for Congress to address, a court must not lightly infer a congressional directive to negate the States' otherwise proper exercise of their sovereign power. This case illustrates the point. The separate States have a continuing, essential interest in the integrity and accuracy of the process used to select both state and federal officials. The States pay the costs of holding these elections, which for practical reasons often overlap so that the two sets of officials are selected at the same time, on the same ballots, by the same voters. It seems most doubtful to me to suggest that States have some lesser concern when what is involved is their own historic role in the conduct of elections. As already noted, it may be that a presumption against pre-emption is not the best formulation of this principle, but in all events the State's undoubted interest in the regulation and conduct of elections must be taken into account and ought not to be deemed by this Court to be a subject of secondary importance.
Here, in my view, the Court is correct to conclude that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 is unambiguous in its pre-emption of Arizona's statute. For this reason, I concur in the judgment and join all of the Court's opinion except its discussion of the presumption against pre-emption. See ante, at 2256 - 2257.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 transferred this function from the Federal Election Commission to the EAC. See § 802, 116 Stat. 1726, codified at 42 U.S.C. §§ 15532, 1973gg-7(a).
In May 2005, the United States Attorney General precleared under § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 the procedures Arizona adopted to implement Proposition 200. Purcell, 549 U.S., at 3, 127 S.Ct. 5.
The dissent accepts that a State may not impose additional requirements that render the Federal Form entirely superfluous; it would require that the State "us[e] the form as a meaningful part of the registration process." Post, at 2274 (opinion of ALITO, J.). The dissent does not tell us precisely how large a role for the Federal Form suffices to make it "meaningful": One step out of two? Three? Ten? There is no easy answer, for the dissent's "meaningful part" standard is as indeterminate as it is atextual.
In the face of this straightforward explanation, the dissent maintains that it would be "nonsensical" for a less demanding federal form to exist alongside a more demanding state form. Post, at 2274 - 2275 (opinion of ALITO, J.). But it is the dissent's alternative explanation for § 1973gg-4(a)(2) that makes no sense. The "purpose" of the Federal Form, it claims, is "to facilitate interstate voter registration drives. Thanks to the federal form, volunteers distributing voter registration materials at a shopping mall in Yuma can give a copy of the same form to every person they meet without attempting to distinguish between residents of Arizona and California." Post, at 2275. But in the dissent's world, a volunteer in Yuma would have to give every prospective voter not only a Federal Form, but also a separate set of either Arizona- or California-specific instructions detailing the additional information the applicant must submit to the State. In ours, every eligible voter can be assured that if he does what the Federal Form says, he will be registered. The dissent therefore provides yet another compelling reason to interpret the statute our way.
United States v. Gradwell, 243 U.S. 476, 37 S.Ct. 407, 61 L.Ed. 857 (1917), on which the dissent relies, see post, at 2271 - 2272 (opinion of ALITO, J.), is not to the contrary-indeed, it was not even a pre-emption case. In Gradwell
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Warren
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents a constitutional question never addressed by this Court: whether a statutory scheme adopted by the State of Virginia to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. For reasons which seem to us to reflect the central meaning of those constitutional commands, we conclude that these statutes cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment.
In June 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a Negro woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia pursuant to its laws. Shortly after their marriage, the Lovings returned to Virginia and established their marital abode in Caroline County. At the October Term, 1958, of the Circuit Court of Caroline County, a grand jury issued an indictment charging the Lovings with violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages. On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge and were sentenced to one year in jail; however, the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the State and not return to Virginia together for 25 years. He stated in an opinion that:
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
After their convictions, the Lovings took up residence in the District of Columbia. On November 6, 1963, they filed a motion in the state trial court to vacate the judgment and set aside the sentence on the ground that the statutes which they had violated were repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment. The motion not having been decided by October 28, 1964, the Lovings instituted a class action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia requesting that a three-judge court be convened to declare the Virginia antimiscegenation statutes unconstitutional and to enjoin state- officials from enforcing their convictions. On January 22, 1965, the state trial judge denied the motion to vacate the sentences, and the Lovings perfected an appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia. On February 11, 1965, the three-judge District Court continued the case to allow the Lovings to present their constitutional claims to the highest state court.
The Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of the antimiscegenation statutes and, after modifying the sentence, affirmed the convictions. The Lovings appealed this decision, and we noted probable jurisdiction on December 12, 1966, 385 U. S. 986.
The two statutes under which appellants were convicted and sentenced are part of a comprehensive statutory scheme aimed at prohibiting and punishing interracial marriages. The Lovings were convicted of violating § 20-58 of the Virginia Code:
“Leaving State to evade law. — If any white person and colored person shall go out of this State, for the purpose of being married, and with the intention of returning, and be married out of it, and afterwards return to and reside in it, cohabiting as man and wife, they shall be punished as provided in § 20-59, and the marriage shall be governed by the same law as if it had been solemnized in this State. The fact of their cohabitation here as man and wife shall be evidence of their marriage.”
Section 20-59, which defines the penalty for miscegenation, provides:
“Punishment for marriage. — If any white person intermarry with a colored person, or any colored person intermarry with a white person, he shall be guilty of a felony and shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for not less than one nor more than five years.”
Other central provisions in the Virginia statutory scheme are § 20-57, which automatically voids all marriages between “a white person and a colored person” without any judicial proceeding, and §§ 20-54 and 1-14 which, respectively, define “white persons” and “colored persons and Indians” for purposes of the statutory prohibitions. The Lovings have never disputed in the course of this litigation that Mrs. Loving is a “colored person” or that Mr. Loving is a “white person” within the meanings given those terms by the Virginia statutes.
Virginia is now one of 16 States which prohibit and punish marriages on the basis of racial classifications. Penalties for miscegenation arose as an incident to slavery and have been common in Virginia since the colonial period. The present statutory scheme dates from the adoption of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, passed during the period of extreme nativism which followed the end of the First World War. The central features of this Act, and current Virginia law, are the absolute prohibition of a “white person” marrying other than another “white person,” a prohibition against issuing marriage licenses until the issuing official is satisfied that the applicants’ statements as to their race are correct, certificates of “racial composition” to be kept by both local and state registrars, and the carrying forward of earlier prohibitions against racial’ intermarriage.
I.
In upholding the constitutionality of these provisions in the decision below, the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia referred to its 1955 decision in Naim v. Naim, 197 Va. 80, 87 S. E. 2d 749, as stating the reasons supporting the validity of these laws. In Naim, the state court concluded that the State’s legitimate purposes were “to preserve the racial integrity of its citizens,” and to prevent “the corruption of blood,” “a mongrel breed of citizens,” and “the obliteration of racial pride,” obviously an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy. Id., at 90, 87 S. E. 2d, at 756. The court also reasoned that marriage has traditionally been subject to state regulation without federal intervention, and, consequently, the regulation of marriage should be left to exclusive state control by the Tenth Amendment.
While the state court is no doubt correct in asserting that marriage is a social relation subject to the State’s police power, Maynard v. Hill, 125 U. S. 190 (1888), the State does not contend in its argument before this Court that its powers to regulate marriage are un--limited notwithstanding the commands of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nor could it do so in light of Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390 (1923), and Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U. S. 535 (1942). Instead, the State argues that the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause, as illuminated by the statements of the Framers, is only that state penal laws containing an interracial element as part of the definition of the offense must apply equally to whites and Negroes in the sense that members of each race are punished to the same degree. Thus, the State contends that, because its miscegenation statutes punish equally both the white and the Negro participants in an interracial marriage, these statutes, despite their reliance on racial classifications, do not constitute an invidious discrimination based upon race. The second argument advanced by the State assumes the validity of its equal application theory. The argument is that, if the Equal Protection Clause does not outlaw miscegenation statutes because of their reliance on racial classifications, the question of constitutionality would thus become whether there was any rational basis for a State to treat interracial marriages differently from other marriages. On this question, the State argues, the scientific evidence is substantially in doubt and, consequently, this Court should defer to the wisdom of the state legislature in adopting its policy of discouraging interracial marriages.
Because we reject the notion that the mere “equal application” of a statute containing racial classifications is enough to remove the classifications from the Fourteenth Amendment’s proscription of all invidious racial discriminations, we do not accept the State’s contention that these statutes should be upheld if there is any possible basis for concluding that they serve a rational purpose. The mere fact of equal application does not mean that our analysis of these statutes should follow the approach we have taken in cases involving no racial discrimination where the Equal Protection Clause has been arrayed against a statute discriminating between the kinds of advertising which may be displayed on trucks in New York City, Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York, 336 U. S. 106 (1949), or an exemption in Ohio’s ad valorem tax for merchandise owned by a nonresident in a storage warehouse, Allied Stores of Ohio, Inc. v. Bowers, 358 U. S. 522 (1959). In these cases, involving distinctions not drawn according to race, the Court has merely asked whether there is any rational foundation for the discriminations, and has deferred to the wisdom of the state legislatures. In the case at bar, however, we deal with statutes containing racial classifications, and the fact of equal application does not immunize the statute from the very heavy burden of justification which the Fourteenth Amendment has traditionally required of state statutes drawn according to race.
The State argues that statements in the Thirty-ninth Congress about the time of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment indicate that the Framers did not intend the Amendment to make unconstitutional state miscegenation laws. Many of the statements alluded to by the State concern the debates over the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, which President Johnson vetoed, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27, enacted over his veto. While these statements have some relevance to the intention of Congress in submitting the Fourteenth Amendment, it must be understood that they pertained to the passage of specific statutes and not to the broader, organic purpose of a constitutional amendment. As for the various statements directly concerning the Fourteenth Amendment, we have said in connection with a related problem, that although these historical sources “cast some light” they are not sufficient to resolve the problem; “[a]t best, they are inconclusive. The most avid proponents of the post-War Amendments undoubtedly intended them to remove all legal distinctions among 'all persons bom or naturalized in the United States.’ Their opponents, just as certainly, were antagonistic to both the letter and the spirit of the Amendments and wished them to have the most limited effect.” Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483, 489 (1954). See also Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303, 310 (1880). We have rejected the proposition that the debates in the Thirty-ninth Congress or in the state legislatures which ratified the Fourteenth Amendment supported the theory advanced by the State, that the requirement of equal protection of the laws is satisfied by penal laws defining offenses based on racial classifications so long as white and Negro participants in the offense were similarly punished. McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U. S. 184 (1964).
The State finds support for its “equal application'’ theory in the decision of the Court in Pace v. Alabama, 106 U. S. 583 (1883). In that case, the Court upheld a conviction under an Alabama statute forbidding adultery or fornication between a white person and a Negro which imposed a greater penalty than that of a statute proscribing similar conduct by members of the same race. The Court reasoned that the statute could not be said to discriminate against Negroes because the punishment for each participant in the offense was the same. However, as recently as the 1964 Term, in rejecting the reasoning of that case, we stated “Pace represents a limited view of the Equal Protection Clause which has not withstood analysis in the subsequent decisions of this Court.” McLaughlin v. Florida, supra, at 188. As we there demonstrated, the Equal Protection Clause requires the consideration of whether the classifications drawn by any statute constitute an arbitrary and invidious discrimination. The clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination in the States. Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 71 (1873); Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303, 307-308 (1880); Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339, 344-345 (1880); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U. S. 1 (1948); Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U. S. 715 (1961).
There can be no question but that Virginia’s miscegenation statutes rest solely upon distinctions drawn according to race. The statutes proscribe generally accepted conduct if engaged in by members of different races. Over the years, this Court has consistently repudiated “[distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry” as being “odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.” Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U. S. 81, 100 (1943). At the very least, the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications, especially suspect in criminal statutes, be subjected to the “most rigid scrutiny,” Korematsu v. United States, 323 U. S. 214, 216 (1944), and, if they are ever to be upheld, they must be shown to be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective, independent of the racial discrimination which it was the object of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate. Indeed, two members of this Court have already stated that they “cannot conceive of a valid legislative purpose . . . which makes the color of a person’s skin the test of whether his conduct is a criminal offense.” McLaughlin v. Florida, supra, at 198 (Stewart, J., joined by Douglas, J., concurring).
There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.
II.
These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U. S. 535, 541 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U. S. 190 (1888). To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
These convictions must be reversed.
]It is so ordered.
Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides:
“All persons bom or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
206 Va. 924, 147 S. E. 2d 78 (1966).
Section 20-57 of the Virginia Code provides:
“Marriages void without decree. — All marriages between a white person and a colored person shall be absolutely void without any decree of divorce or other legal process.” Va. Code Ann. § 20-57 (1960 Repl. Vol.).
Section 20-54 of the Virginia Code provides:
“Intermarriage ■prohibited; meaning of term ‘white persons.’ — It shall hereafter be unlawful for any white person in this State to marry any save a white person, or a person with no other admixture of blood than white and American Indian. For the purpose of this chapter, the term 'white person’ shall apply only to such person as has no trace whatever of any blood other than Caucasian; but persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons. All laws heretofore passed and now in effect regarding the intermarriage of white and colored persons shall apply to marriages prohibited by this chapter.” Va. Code Ann. §20-54 (1960 Repl. Vol.).
The exception for persons with less than one-sixteenth “of the blood of the American Indian” is apparently accounted for, in the words of a tract issued by the Registrar of the State Bureau of Vital Statistics, by “the desire of all to recognize as an integral and honored part of the white race the descendants of John Rolfe and Pocahontas . . . .” Plecker, The New Family and Race Improvement, 17 Va. Health Bull., Extra No. 12, at 25-26 (New Family Series No. 5, 1925), cited in Wadlington, The Loving Case: Virginia’s Anti-Miscegenation Statute in Historical Perspective, 52 Va. L. Rev. 1189, 1202, n. 93 (1966).
Section 1-14 of the Virginia Code provides:
“Colored persons and Indians defined. — Every person in whom there is ascertainable any Negro blood shall be deemed and taken to be a colored person, and every person not a colored person having one fourth or more of American Indian blood shall be deemed an American Indian; except that members of Indian tribes existing in this Commonwealth having one fourth or more of Indian blood and less than one sixteenth of Negro blood shall be deemed tribal Indians.” Va. Code Ann. § 1-14 (1960 Repl. Vol.).
After the initiation of this litigation, Maryland repealed its prohibitions against interracial marriage, Md. Laws 1967, c. 6, leaving Virginia and 15 other States with statutes outlawing interracial marriage: Alabama, Ala. Const., Art. 4, § 102, Ala. Code, Tit. 14, §360 (1958); Arkansas, Ark. Stat. Ann. §55-104 (1947); Delaware, Del. Code Ann., Tit. 13, § 101 (1953); Florida, Fla. Const., Art. 16, § 24, Fla. Stat. § 741.11 (1965); Georgia, Ga. Code Ann. § 53-106 (1961); Kentucky, Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 402.020 (Supp. 1966); Louisiana, La. Rev. Stat. §14:79 (1950); Mississippi, Miss. Const., Art. 14, §263, Miss. Code Ann. §459 (1956); Missouri, Mo. Rev. Stat. §451.020 (Supp. 1966); North Carolina, N. C. Const., Art. XIV, § 8, N. C. Gen. Stat. § 14-181 (1953); Oklahoma, Okla. Stat., Tit. 43, § 12 (Supp. 1965); South Carolina, S. C. Const., Art. 3, § 33, S. C. Code Ann. §20-7 (1962); Tennessee, Tenn. Const., Art. 11, §14, Tenn. Code Ann. §36-402 (1955); Texas, Tex. Pen. Code, Art. 492 (1952); West Virginia, W. Va. Code Ann. §4697 (1961).
Over the past 15 years, 14 States have repealed laws outlawing interracial marriages: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.
The first state court to recognize that miscegenation statutes violate the Equal Protection Clause was the Supreme Court of California. Perez v. Sharp, 32 Cal. 2d 711, 198 P. 2d 17 (1948).
For a historical discussion of Virginia’s miscegenation statutes, see Wadlington, supra, n. 4.
Va. Code Ann. § 20-54 (1960 Repl. Vol.).
Va. Code Ann. § 20-53 (1960 Repl. Vol.).
Va. Code Ann. § 20-50 (1960 Repl. Vol.).
Va. Code Ann. § 20-54 (1960 Repl. Vol.).
Appellants point out that the State’s concern in these statutes, as expressed in the words of the 1924 Act’s title, “An Act to Preserve Racial Integrity,” extends only to the integrity of the white race. While Virginia prohibits whites from marrying any nonwhite (subject to the exception for the descendants of Pocahontas), Negroes, Orientals, and any other racial class may intermarry without statutory interference. Appellants contend that this distinction renders Virginia’s miscegenation statutes arbitrary and unreasonable even assuming the constitutional validity of an official purpose to preserve “racial integrity.” We need not reach this contention because we find the racial classifications in these statutes repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment, even assuming an even-handed state purpose to protect the “integrity” of all races.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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B
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Marshall
delivered the opinion of the Court.
These cases arise under the Equal Pay Act of 1963, 77 Stat. 56, §3, 29 U. S. C. §206 (d)(1), which added to § 6 of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 the principle of equal pay for equal work regardless of sex. The principal question posed is whether Corning Glass Works violated the Act by paying a higher base wage to male night shift inspectors than it paid to female inspectors performing the same tasks on the day shift, where the higher wage was paid in addition to a separate night shift differential paid to all employees for night work. In No. 73-29, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in a case involving several Corning plants in Corning, New York, held that this practice violated the Act. 474 F. 2d 226 (1973). In'No. 73-695, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in a case involving a Corning plant in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, reached the opposite conclusion. 480 F. 2d 1254 (1973). We granted certiorari and consolidated the cases to resolve this unusually direct conflict between two circuits. 414 U. S. 1110 (1973). Finding ourselves in substantial agreement with the analysis of the Second Circuit, we affirm in No. 73-29 and reverse in No. 73-695.
I
Prior to 1925, Corning operated its plants in Wellsboro and Corning only during the day, and all inspection work was performed by women. Between 1925 and 1930, the company began to introduce automatic production equipment which made it desirable to institute a night shift. During this period, however, both New York and Pennsylvania law prohibited women from working at night. As a result, in order to fill inspector positions on the new night shift, the company had to recruit male employees from among its male dayworkers. The male employees so transferred demanded and received wages substantially higher than those paid to women inspectors engaged on the two day shifts. During this same period, however, no plant-wide shift differential existed and male employees working at night, other than inspectors, received the same wages as their day shift counterparts. Thus a situation developed where the night inspectors were all male, the day inspectors all female, and the male inspectors received significantly higher wages.
In 1944, Corning plants at both locations were organized by a labor union and a collective-bargaining agreement was negotiated for all production and maintenance employees. This agreement for the first time established a plant-wide shift differential, but this change did not eliminate the higher base wage paid to male night inspectors. Rather, the shift differential was superimposed on the existing difference in base wages between male night inspectors and female day inspectors.
Prior to June 11, 1964, the effective date of the Equal Pay Act, the law in both Pennsylvania and New York was amended to permit women to work at night. It was not until some time after the effective date of the Act, however, that Corning initiated efforts to eliminate the differential rates for male and female inspectors. Beginning in June 1966, Corning started to open up jobs on the night shift to women. Previously separate male and female seniority lists were consolidated and women became eligible to exercise their seniority, on the same basis as men, to bid for the higher paid night inspection jobs as vacancies occurred.
On January 20,1969, a new collective-bargaining agreement went into effect, establishing a new “job evaluation” system for setting wage rates. The new agreement abolished for the future the separate base wages for day and night shift inspectors and imposed a uniform base wage for inspectors exceeding the wage rate for the night shift previously in effect. All inspectors hired after January 20, 1969, were to receive the same base wage, whatever their sex or shift. The collective-bargaining agreement further provided, however, for a higher “red circle” rate for employees hired prior to January 20, 1969, when working as inspectors on the night shift. This “red circle” rate served essentially to perpetuate the differential in base wages between day and night inspectors.
The Secretary of Labor brought these cases to enjoin Corning from violating the Equal Pay Act and to collect back wages allegedly due female employees because of past violations. Three distinct questions are presented: (1) Did Corning ever violate the Equal Pay Act by paying male night shift inspectors more than female day shift inspectors? (2) If so, did Corning cure its violation of the Act in 1966 by permitting women to work as night shift inspectors? (3) Finally, if the violation was not remedied in 1966, did Corning cure its violation in 1969 by equalizing day and night inspector wage rates but establishing higher “red circle” rates for existing employees working on the night shift?
II
Congress’ purpose in enacting the Equal Pay Act was to remedy what was perceived to be a serious and endemic problem of employment discrimination in private industry — the fact that the wage structure of “many segments of American industry has been based on an ancient but outmoded belief that a man, because of his role in society, should be paid more than a woman even though his duties are the same.” S. Rep. No. 176, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., 1 (1963). The solution adopted was quite simple in principle: to require that “equal work will be rewarded by equal wages.” Ibid.
The Act’s basic structure and operation are similarly straightforward. In order to make out a case under the Act, the Secretary must show that an employer pays different wages to employees of opposite sexes “for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions.” Although the Act is silent on this point, its legislative history makes plain that the Secretary has the burden of proof on this issue, as both of the courts below recognized.
The Act also establishes four exceptions — three specific and one a general catchall provision — where different payment to employees of opposite sexes “is made pursuant to (i) a seniority system; (ii) a merit system; (iii) a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production; or (iv) a differential based on any other factor other than sex.” Again, while the Act is silent on this question, its structure and history also suggest that once the Secretary has carried his burden of showing that the employer pays workers of one sex more than workers of the opposite sex for equal work, the burden shifts to the employer to show that the differential is justified under one of the Act’s four exceptions. All of the many lower courts that have considered this question have so held, and this view is consistent with the general rule that the application of an exemption under the Fair Labor Standards Act is a matter of affirmative defense on which the employer has the burden of proof.
The contentions of the parties in this case reflect the Act’s underlying framework. Corning argues that the Secretary has failed to prove that Corning ever violated the Act because day shift work is not “performed under similar working conditions” as night shift work. The Secretary maintains that day shift and night shift work are performed under “similar working conditions” within the meaning of the Act. Although the Secretary recognizes that higher wages may be paid for night shift work, the Secretary contends that such a shift differential would be based upon a “factor other than sex” within the catchall exception to the Act and that Corning has failed to carry its burden of proof that its higher base wage for male night inspectors was in fact based on any factor other than sex.
The courts below relied in part on conflicting statements in the legislative history having some bearing on this question of statutory construction. The Third Circuit found particularly significant a statement of Congressman Goodell, a sponsor of the Equal Pay bill, who, in the course of explaining the bill on the floor of the House, commented that “standing as opposed to sitting, pleasantness or unpleasantness of surroundings, periodic rest periods, hours of work, difference in shift, all would logically fall within the working condition factor.” 109 Cong. Rec. 9209 (1963) (emphasis added). The Second Circuit, in contrast, relied on a statement from the House Committee Report which, in describing the broad general exception for differentials “based on any other factor other than sex,” stated: “Thus, among other things, shift differentials... would also be excluded....” H. R. Rep. No. 309, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (1963).
We agree with Judge Friendly, however, that in this case a better understanding of the phrase “performed under similar working conditions” can be obtained from a consideration of the way in which Congress arrived at the statutory language than from trying to reconcile or establish preferences between the conflicting interpretations of the Act by individual legislators or the committee reports. As Mr. Justice Frankfurter remarked in an earlier case involving interpretation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, “regard for the specific history of the legislative process that culminated in the Act now before us affords more solid ground for giving it appropriate meaning.” United States v. Universal C. I. T. Credit Corp., 344 U. S. 218, 222 (1952).
The most notable feature of the history of the Equal Pay Act is that Congress recognized early in the legislative process that the concept of equal pay for equal work was more readily stated in principle than reduced to statutory language which would be meaningful to employers and workable across the broad range of industries covered by the Act. As originally introduced, the Equal Pay bill required equal pay for “equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skills.” There were only two exceptions — for differentials “made pursuant to a seniority or merit increase system which does not discriminate on the basis of sex....”
In both the House and Senate committee hearings, witnesses were highly critical of the Act’s definition of equal work and of its exemptions. Many noted that most of American industry used formal, systematic job evaluation plans to establish equitable wage structures in their plants. Such systems, as explained coincidentally by a representative of Corning Glass Works who testified at both hearings, took into consideration four separate factors in determining job value — skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions — and each of these four components was further systematically divided into various sub-components. Under a job evaluation plan, point values are assigned to each of the subcomponents of a given job, resulting in a total point figure representing a relatively objective measure of the job’s value.
In comparison to the rather complex job evaluation plans used by industry, the definition of equal work used in the first drafts of the Equal Pay bill was criticized as unduly vague and incomplete. Industry representatives feared that as a result of the bill’s definition of equal work, the Secretary of Labor would be cast in the position of second-guessing the validity of a company’s job evaluation system. They repeatedly urged that the bill be amended to include an exception for job classification systems, or otherwise to incorporate the language of job evaluation into the bill. Thus Coming’s own representative testified:
“Job evaluation is an accepted and tested method of attaining equity in wage relationship..
“A great part of industry is committed to job evaluation by past practice and by contractual agreement as the basis for wáge administration.
“ 'Skill’ alone, as a criterion, fails to recognize other aspects of the job situation that affect job worth.
“We sincerely hope that this committee in passing legislation to eliminate wage differences based on sex alone, will recognize in its language the general role of job evaluation in establishing equitable rate relationship.”
We think it plain that in amending the bill’s definition of equal work to its present form, the Congress acted in direct response to these pleas. Spokesmen for the amended bill stated, for example, during the House debates:
“The concept of equal pay for jobs demanding equal skill has been expanded to require also equal effort, responsibility, and similar working conditions. These factors are the core of all job classification systems. They form a legitimate basis for differentials in pay.”
Indeed, the most telling evidence of congressional intent is the fact that the Act’s amended definition of equal work incorporated the specific language of the job evaluation plan described at the hearings by Coming’s own representative — that is, the concepts of “skill,” “effort,” “responsibility,” and “working conditions.”
Congress’ intent, as manifested in this history, was to use these terms to incorporate into the new federal Act the well-defined and well-accepted principles of job evaluation so as to ensure that wage differentials based upon bona fide job evaluation plans would be outside the purview of the Act. The House Report emphasized:
“This language recognizes that there are many factors which may be used to measure the relationships between jobs and which establish a valid basis for a difference in pay. These factors will be found in a majority of the job classification systems. Thus, it is anticipated that a bona fide job classification program that does not discriminate on the basis of sex will serve as a valid defense to a charge of discrimination.” H. R. Rep. No. 309, supra, at 3.
It is in this light that the phrase “working conditions” must be understood, for where Congress has used technical words or terms of art, “it [is] proper to explain them by reference to the art or science to which they [are] appropriate.” Greenleaf v. Goodrich, 101 U. S. 278, 284 (1880). See also NLRB v. Highland Park Mfg. Co., 341 U. S. 322, 326 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). This principle is particularly salutary where, as here, the legislative history reveals that Congress incorporated words having a special meaning within the field regulated by the statute so as to overcome objections by industry representatives that statutory definitions were vague and incomplete.
While a layman might well assume that time of day worked reflects one aspect of a job’s “working conditions,” the term has a different and much more specific meaning in the language of industrial relations. As Coming’s own representative testified at the hearings, the element of working conditions encompasses two subfactors: “surroundings” and “hazards.” “Surroundings” measures the elements, such as toxic chemicals or fumes, regularly encountered by a worker, their intensity, and their frequency. “Hazards” takes into account the physical hazards regularly encountered, their frequency, and the severity of injury they can cause. This definition of “working conditions” is not only manifested in Coming’s own job evaluation plans but is also well accepted across a wide range of American industry.
Nowhere in any of these definitions is time of day worked mentioned as a relevant criterion. The fact of the matter is that the concept of “working conditions,” as used in the specialized language of job evaluation systems, simply does not encompass shift differentials. Indeed, while Coming now argues that night inspection work is not equal to day inspection work, all of its own job evaluation plans, including the one now in effect, have consistently treated them as equal in all respects, including working conditions. And Coming’s Manager of Job Evaluation testified in No. 73-29 that time of day worked was not considered to be a “working condition.” Significantly, it is not the Secretary in this case who is trying to look behind Coming’s bona fide job evaluation system to require equal pay for jobs which Corning has historically viewed as unequal work. Rather, it is Corning which asks us to differentiate between jobs which the company itself has always equated. We agree with the Second Circuit that the inspection work at issue in this case, whether performed during the day or night, is “equal work” as that term is defined in the Act.
This does not mean, of course, that there is no room in the Equal Pay Act for nondiscriminatory shift differentials. Work on a steady night shift no doubt has psychological and physiological impacts making it less attractive than work on a day shift. The Act contemplates that a male night worker may receive a higher wage than a female day worker, just as it contemplates that a male employee with 20 years' seniority can receive a higher wage than a woman with two years' seniority. Factors such as these play a role under the Act’s four exceptions — the seniority differential under the specific seniority exception, the shift differential under the catchall exception for differentials “based on any other factor other than sex.”
The question remains, however, whether Corning carried its burden of proving that the higher rate paid for night inspection work, until 1966 performed solely by men, was in fact intended to serve as compensation for night work, or rather constituted an added payment based upon sex. We agree that the record amply supports the District Court’s conclusion that Corning had not sustained its burden of proof. As its history revealed, “the higher night rate was in large part the product of the generally higher wage level of male workers and the need to compensate them for performing what were regarded as demeaning tasks.” 474 F. 2d, at 233. The differential in base wages originated at a time when no other night employees received higher pay than corresponding day workers, and it was maintained long after the company instituted a separate plant-wide shift differential which was thought to compensate adequately for the additional burdens of night work. The differential arose simply because men would not work at the low rates paid women inspectors, and it reflected a job market in which Corning could pay women less than men for the same work. That the company took advantage of such a situation may be understandable as a matter of economics, but its differential nevertheless became illegal once Congress enacted into law the principle of equal pay for equal work.
Ill
We now must consider whether Corning continued to remain in violation of the Act after 1966 when, without changing the base wage rates for day and night inspectors, it began to permit women to bid for jobs on the night shift as vacancies occurred. It is evident that this was more than a token gesture to end discrimination, as turnover in the night shift inspection jobs was rapid. The record in No. 73-29 shows, for example, that during the two-year period after June 1, 1966, the date women were first permitted to bid for night inspection jobs, women took 152 of the 278 openings, and women with very little seniority were able to obtain positions on the night shift. Relying on these facts, the company argues that it ceased discriminating against women in 1966, and was no longer in violation of the Equal Pay Act.
But the issue before us is not whether the company, in some abstract sense, can be said to have treated men the same as women after 1966. Rather, the question is whether the company remedied the specific violation of the Act which the Secretary proved. We agree with the Second Circuit, as well as with all other circuits that have had occasion to consider this issue, that the company could not cure its violation except by equalizing the base wages of female day inspectors with the higher rates paid the night inspectors. This result is implicit in the Act’s language, its statement of purpose, and its legislative history.
As the Second Circuit noted, Congress enacted the Equal Pay Act “[r]ecognizing the weaker bargaining position of many women and believing that discrimination in wage rates represented unfair employer exploitation of this source of cheap labor.” 474 F. 2d, at 234. In response to evidence of the many families dependent on the income of working women, Congress included in the Act’s statement of purpose a finding that “the existence... of wage differentials based on sex... depresses wages and living standards for employees necessary for their health and efficiency.” Pub. L. 88-38, § 2 (a) (1), 77 Stat. 56 (1963). And Congress declared it to be the policy of the Act to correct this condition. § 2 (b).
To achieve this end, Congress required that employers pay equal pay for equal work and then specified: The purpose of this proviso was to ensure that to remedy violations of the Act, “[t]he lower wage rate must be increased to the level of the higher.” H. R. Rep. No. 309, supra, at 3. Comments of individual legislators are all consistent with this view. Representative Dwyer remarked, for example, “The objective of equal pay legislation... is not to drag down men workers to the wage levels of women, but to raise women to the levels enjoyed by men in cases where discrimination is still practiced.” Representative Griffin also thought it clear that “[t]he only way a violation could be remedied under the bill... is for the lower wages to be raised to the higher.”
“Provided, Thalt an employer who is paying a wage rate differential in violation of this subsection shall not, in order to comply with the provisions of this subsection, reduce the wage rate of any employee.” 29 U. S. C. §206 (d)(1).
By proving that after the effective date of the Equal Pay Act, Corning paid female day inspectors less than male night inspectors for equal work, the Secretary implicitly demonstrated that the wages of female day shift inspectors were unlawfully depressed and that the fair wage for inspection work was the base wage paid to male inspectors on the night shift. The whole purpose of the Act was to require that these depressed wages be raised, in part as a matter of simple justice to the employees themselves, but also as a matter of market economics, since Congress recognized as well that discrimination in wages on the basis of sex “constitutes an unfair method of competition.” Pub. L. 88-38, supra, §2 (a)(5).
We agree with Judge Friendly that
“In light of this apparent congressional understanding, we cannot hold that Corning, by allowing some — or even many — women to move into the higher paid night jobs, achieved full compliance with the Act. Coming’s action still left the inspectors on the day shift — virtually all women — earning a lower base wage than the night shift inspectors because of a differential initially based on sex and still not justified by any other consideration; in effect, Corning was still taking advantage of the availability of female labor to fill its day shift at a differentially low wage rate not justified by any factor other than sex.” 474 F. 2d, at 235.
The Equal Pay Act is broadly remedial, and it should be construed and applied so as to fulfill the underlying purposes which Congress sought to achieve. If, as the Secretary proved, the work performed by women on the day shift was equal to that performed by men on the night shift, the company became obligated to pay the women the same base wage as their male counterparts on the effective date of the Act. To permit the company to escape that obligation by agreeing to allow some women to work on the night shift at a higher rate of pay as vacancies occurred would frustrate, not serve, Congress’ ends. See Shultz v. American Can Co-Dixie Products, 424 F. 2d 356, 359 (CA8 1970); Hodgson v. Miller Brewing Co., 457 F. 2d 221, 227 (CA7 1972); Hodgson v. Square D Co., 459 F. 2d 805, 808-809 (CA6 1972).
The company’s final contention — that it cured its violation of the Act when a new collective-bargaining agreement went into effect on January 20,1969 — need not detain us long. While the new agreement provided for equal base wages for night or day inspectors hired after that date, it continued to provide unequal base wages for employees hired before that date, a discrimination likely to continue for some time into the future because of a large number of laid-off employees who had to be offered re-employment before new inspectors could be hired. After considering the rather complex method in which the new wage rates for employees hired prior to January 1969 were calculated and the company’s stated purpose behind the provisions of the new agreement, the District Court in No. 73-29 concluded that the lower base wage for day inspectors was a direct product of the company’s failure to equalize the base wages for male and female inspectors as of the effective date of the Act. We agree it is clear from the record that had the company equalized the base-wage rates of male and female inspectors on the effective date of the Act, as the law required, the day inspectors in 1969 would have been entitled to the same higher “red circle” rate the company provided for night inspectors. We therefore conclude that on the facts of this case, the company’s continued discrimination in base wages between night and day workers, though phrased in terms of a neutral factor other than sex, nevertheless operated to perpetuate the effects of the company’s prior illegal practice of paying women less than men for equal work. Cf. Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U. S. 424, 430 (1971).
The judgment in No. 73-29 is affirmed. The judgment in No. 73-695 is reversed and the case remanded to the Court of Appeals for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Mr. Justice Stewart took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Blackmun, and Mr. Justice Rehnquist dissent and would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for the reasons stated by Judge Adams in his opinion for the Court of Appeals in Brennan v. Corning Glass Works, 480 F. 2d 1254 (CA3 1973).
“No employer having employees subject to any provisions of this section shall discriminate, within any establishment in which such employees are employed, between employees on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees in such establishment at a rate less than the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such establishment for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions, except where such payment is made pursuant to (i) a seniority system; (ii) a merit system; (iii) a system which measures earnings by quantity or quality of production; or (iv) a differential based on any other factor other than sex: Provided, That an employer who is paying a wage rate differential in violation of this subsection shall not, in order to comply with the provisions of this subsection, reduce the wage rate of any employee.”
New York prohibited the employment of women between 10 p. m. and 6 a. m. See 1927 N. Y. Laws, o. 453; 1930 N. Y. Laws, e. 868. Penns3dvania also prohibited them from working between 10 p. m. and 6 a. m. See Act of July 25, 1913, Act No. 466, Pa. Laws 1913.
Higher wages were demanded in part because the men had been earning more money on their day shift jobs than women were paid for inspection work. Thus, at the time of the creation of the new night shift, female day shift inspectors received wages ranging from 20 to 30 cents per hour. Most of the men designated to fill the newly created night shift positions had been working in the blowing room where the lowest wage rate was 48 cents per hour and where additional incentive pay could be earned. As night shift inspectors these men received 53 cents per hour. There is also some evidence in the record that additional compensation was necessary because the men viewed inspection jobs as “demeaning” and as “women’s work.”
A temporary exception was made during World War II when manpower shortages caused Corning to be permitted to employ women on the steady night shift inspection jobs at both locations. It appears that women night inspectors during this period were paid the same higher night shift wages earned by the men.
The shift differential was originally three cents an hour for the afternoon shift and five cents an hour for the night shift. It has been increased to 10 and 16 cents per hour respectively.
Section 4 of the Equal Pay Act provided that the Act would take effect upon the expiration of one year from June 10, 1963, the date of its enactment, except that in the case of employees covered by a bona fide collective-bargaining agreement in effect at least 30 days prior to the date of enactment, the Act would take effect upon the termination of such collective-bargaining agreement. It is conceded that the Act became effective with respect to the Coming, New York, plants on June 11, 1964, though it is also stipulated that the statute of limitations barred all claims for backpay prior to November 1, 1964. With respect to the Wellsboro plant, there is apparently some dispute between the company and the Secretary as to when the Act took effect. Corning evidently believes the Act took effect on January 20, 1965, because of an outstanding collective-bargaining agreement. The Secretary claims that this agreement was reopened on January 24, 1964, and that the plant therefore became subject to the Act’s requirements on June 11, 1964, one year after enactment. We see no need to resolve this question as it appears that, in any event, the parties agree the statute of limitations bars recovery of back wages for any violation prior to October 1966.
In New York, a 1953 amendment allowed females over the age of 21 to work after midnight in factories operating multiple shifts where the Industrial Commissioner found transportation and safety conditions to be satisfactory and granted approval. See 1953 N. Y. Laws, c. 708, amending N. Y. Labor Law § 172, formerly codified in N. Y. Labor Law § 173 (3) (a) (1) (1965). In Pennsylvania, the law was amended in 1947 to permit women to work at night conditioned upon the approval of the State Department of Labor and Industry, Pa. Laws 1947, Act No.' 543, p. 1397, codified in Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 43, § 104 (Supp. 1974^1975), but state regulations required that, in order to obtain approval to employ women at night, an employer was required to furnish transportation where public transportation was not available. The District Court in No. 73-695 found that public transportation was not available in Wellsboro and that it was not economically feasible for Corning to furnish transportation for its female employees. In July 1965, however, the Pennsylvania regulations were amended to permit employers to hire women at night where regular private transportation is available. Pa. Dept, of Labor and Industry, Regulations Relating to Hours of Work and Conditions of Employment of Women in Pa., Rule S-8 (c) (1966).
In 1969, both New York and Pennsylvania repealed, either expressly or by implication, those special night-work restrictions for women cited above. See 2 N. Y. Laws 1969, c. 1042, § 2, p. 2630, repealing N. Y. Labor Law § 173.3.a (1) (1965) and replacing it with § 177.1 (c), which was subsequently repealed in 1973, 1 N. Y. Laws 1973, c. 377, § 11, p. 1336; Pa. Laws 1969, Act No. 56, p. 133, which, by including sex as a prohibited form of discrimination, Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 43, § 951 et seq. (Supp. 1974^-1975), impliedly voided all laws and regulations specifically protecting one sex. See Op. Atty. Gen. No. 69-304, Dec. 5, 1969.
The District Court in No. 73-29 issued a broadly worded injunction against all future violations of the Act. The Court of Appeals modified the injunction by limiting it to inspectors at the three plants at issue in that case, largely because of that court's belief that “Corning had been endeavoring since 1966 — sincerely, if ineffectively — to bring itself into compliance.” 474 F. 2d 226, 236 (CA2 1973). Since the Government did not seek certiorari from this aspect of the Second Circuit’s judgment, we have no occasion to consider this question.
See 109 Cong. Rec. 9196 (1963) (Rep. Frelinghuysen); 109 Cong. Rec. 9208 (Rep. Goodell).
Hodgson v. Corning Glass Works, 474 F. 2d 226, 231 (CA2 1973); Brennan v. Corning Glass Works, 480 F. 2d 1254, 1258 (CA3 1973). See also Hodgson v. Behrens Drug Co., 475 F. 2d 1041, 1049 (CA5 1973); Hodgson v. Golden Isles Convalescent Homes, Inc., 468 F. 2d 1256, 1257 (CA5 1972); Hodgson v. Fairmont Supply Co., 454 F. 2d 490, 493 (CA4 1972); Hodgson v. Brookhaven General Hospital, 436 F. 2d 719, 722 (CA5 1970); Shultz v. American Can Co.-Dixie Products, 424 F. 2d 356, 360 (CA8 1970).
See Hodgson v. Corning Glass Works, supra, at 231; Brennan v. Corning Glass Works, supra, at 1258; Hodgson v. Robert Hall Clothes, Inc., 473 F. 2d 589, 597 (CA3), cert. denied sub nom. Bren nan v. Robert Hall Clothes, Inc., 414 U. S. 866 (1973); Hodgson v. Security Nat. Bank of Sioux City, 460 F. 2d 57, 59 n. 4 (CA8 1972); Shultz v. Wheaton Glass Co., 421 F. 2d 259, 266 (CA3), cert. denied, 398 U. S. 905 (1970); Shultz v. American Can Co., supra, at 362; Shultz v. First Victoria Nat. Bank, 420 F. 2d 648, 654 n. 8 (CA5 1969); Hodgson v. Industrial Bank of Savannah, 347 F. Supp. 63, 67 (SD Ga. 1972); Hodgson v. Maison Miramon, Inc., 344 F. Supp. 843, 845 (ED La. 1972); Hodgson v. J. W. Lyles, Inc., 335 F. Supp. 128, 131 (Md. 1971), aff’d, 468 F. 2d 625 (CA4 1972); Hodgson v. City Stores, Inc., 332 F. Supp. 942, 947 (MD Ala. 1971) ; Shultz v. Kimberly-Clark Corp., 315 F. Supp. 1323, 1332 (WD Tenn. 1970); Wirtz v. Basic Inc., 256 F. Supp. 786, 790 (Nev. 1966). See also 29 CFR §800.141 (1973).
See A. H. Phillips. Inc. v. Walling, 324 U. S. 490, 493 (1945); Arnold v. Ben Kanowsky, Inc., 361 U. S. 388, 392 (1960); Walling v. General Industries Co., 330 U. S. 545, 547-548 (1947); Mitchell v. Kentucky Finance Co., 359 U. S. 290, 295 (1959).
The Secretary also advances an argument that even if night and day inspection work is assumed not to be performed under similar working conditions, the differential in base wages is nevertheless unlawful under the Act. The additional burden of working at night
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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B
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Breyer
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question before us is one of jurisdiction. An association of nursing homes sued, inter alios, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) and another federal party (hereinafter Secretary) in Federal District Court claiming that certain Medicare-related regulations violated various statutes and the Constitution. The association invoked the court’s federal-question jurisdiction, 28 U. S. C. § 1381. The District Court dismissed the suit on the groiind that it lacked jurisdiction. It believed that a set of special statutory provisions creates a separate, virtually exclusive, system of administrative and judicial review for denials of Medicare claims; and it held that one of those provisions explicitly barred a § 1331 suit. See 42 U. S. C. § 1395Ü (incorporating into the Medicare Act 42 U. S. C. § 405(h), which provides that “[n]o action... to recover on any claim” arising under the Medicare laws shall be “brought under section 1331... of title 28”). The Court of Appeals, however, reversed.
We conclude that the statutory provision at issue, § 405(h), as incorporated by § 1395Ü, bars federal-question jurisdiction here. The association or its members must proceed instead through the special review channel that the Medicare statutes create. See 42 U.S.C. §§1395cc(h), (b)(2)(A), 1395Ü; §§ 405(b), (g), (h).
I
A
We begin by describing the regulations that the association’s lawsuit attacks. Medicare Act Part A provides payment to nursing homes which provide care to Medicare beneficiaries after a stay in a hospital. To receive payment, a home must enter into a provider agreement with the Secretary of HHS, and it must comply with numerous statutory and regulatory requirements. State and federal agencies enforce those requirements through inspections. Inspectors report violations, called “deficiencies.” And “deficiencies” lead to the imposition of sanctions or “remedies.” See generally §§ 1395Í-3, 1395cc.
The regulations at issue focus on the imposition of sanctions or remedies. They were promulgated in 1994, 59 Fed. Reg. 56116, pursuant to a 1987 law that tightened the substantive standards that Medicare (and Medicaid) imposed upon nursing homes and that significantly broadened the Secretary’s authority to impose remedies upon violators. Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987, §§4201-4218, 101 Stat. 1330-160 to 1330-221 (codified as amended at 42 U. S. C. § 1395Í-3 (1994 ed. and Supp. III)).
The remedial regulations (and a related manual) in effect tell Medicare-administering agencies how to impose remedies after inspectors find that a nursing home has violated substantive standards. They divide a nursing home’s deficiencies into three categories of seriousness depending upon a deficiency’s severity, its prevalence at the home, its relation with other deficiencies, and the home’s compliance history. Within each category they list a set of remedies that the agency may, or must, impose. Where, for example, deficiencies “immediately jeopardize the health or safety of... residents,” the Secretary must terminate the home’s provider agreement or appoint new, temporary management. Where deficiencies are less serious, the Secretary may impose lesser remedies, such as civil penalties, transfer of residents, denial of some or all payment, state monitoring, and the like. Where a nursing home, though deficient in some respects, is in “[substantial compliance,” i. e., where its deficiencies do no more than create a “potential for [causing] minimal harm,” the Secretary will impose no sanction or remedy at all. See generally 42 U. S. C. § 1395i — 3(h); 42 CFR §488.301 (1998); §488.400 et seq.; App. 54, 66 (Manual). The statute and regulations also create various review procedures. 42 U. S. C. §§ 1395ec(b)(2)(A), (h); 42 CFR § 431.151 et seq. (1998); § 488.408(g); 42 CFR pt. 498 (1998).
The association’s complaint filed in Federal District Court attacked the regulations as unlawful in four basic ways. In its view: (1) certain terms, e.g., “substantial compliance” and “minimal harm,” are unconstitutionally vague; (2) the regulations and manual, particularly as implemented, violate statutory requirements seeking enforcement consistency, 42 U. S. C. § 1395i-3(g)(2)(D), and exceed the.legislative mandate of the Medicare Act; (3) the regulations create administrative procedures inconsistent with the Federal Constitution’s Due Process Clause; and (4) the manual and other agency publications create legislative rules that were not promulgated consistent with the Administrative Procedure Act’s demands for “notice and comment” and a statement of “basis and purpose,” 5 U. S. C. § 553. See App. 18-19,27-38, 43-49 (Amended Complaint).
B
We next describe the two competing jurisdictional routes through which the association arguably might seek to mount its legal attack. The route it has followed, federal-question jurisdiction, is set forth in 28 U. S. C. § 1331, which simply states that “district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States.” The route that it did not follow, the special Medicare review route, is set forth in a complex set of statutory provisions, which must be read together. See Appendix, infra. The Medicare Act says that a home
“dissatisfied... with a determination described in subsection (b)(2)... shall be entitled to a hearing... to the same extent as is provided in [the Social Security Act, 42 U. S. C. § ]405(b)... and to judicial review of the Secretary’s final decision after such hearing as is provided in section 405(g)... 42 U. S. C. § 1395cc(h)(l) (emphasis added).
The cross-referenced subsection (b)(2) gives the Secretary power to terminate an agreement where, for example, the Secretary
“has determinéd that the provider fails to comply substantially with the provisions [of the Medicare Act] and regulations thereunder....” § 1395cc(b)(2)(A) (emphasis added).
The cross-referenced § 405(b) describes the nature of the administrative hearing to which the Medicare Act entitles a home that is “dissatisfied” with the Secretary’s “determination.” The cross-referenced § 405(g) provides that a “dissatisfied” home may obtain judicial review in federal district court of “any final decision of the [Secretary] made after a hearing...Separate statutes provide for administrative and judicial review of civil monetary penalty assessments. § 1395i-3(h)(2)(B)(ii); §§ 1320a-7a(c)(2), (e).
A related Social Security Act provision, § 405(h), channels most, if not all, Medicare claims through this special review system. It says:
“(h) Finality of [Secretary’s] decision.
“The findings and decision of the [Secretary] after a hearing shall be binding upon all individuals who were parties to such hearing. No findings of fact or decision of the [Secretary] shall be reviewed by any person, tribunal, or governmental agency except as herein provided. No action against the United States, the [Secretary], or any officer or employee thereof shall be brought under section 1331 or 131*6 [federal defendant jurisdiction] of title 28 to recover on any claim arising under this subchapter.” (Emphasis added.)
Section 1395Ü makes § 405(h) applicable to the Medicare Act “to the same extent as” it applies to the Social Security Act.
C
The case before us began when the Illinois Council on Long Term Care, Inc. (Council), an association of about 200 Illinois nursing homes participating in the Medicare (or Medicaid) program, filed the complaint we have described, supra, at 7, in Federal District Court. (Medicaid is not at issue in this Court.) The District Court, as we have said, dismissed the complaint for lack of federal-question jurisdiction. No. 96 C 2953 (ND Ill., Mar. 31,1997), App. to Pet. for Cert. 13a, 15a. In doing so, the court relied upon § 405(h) as interpreted by this Court in Weinberger v. Salfi, 422 U. S. 749 (1975), and Heckler v. Ringer, 466 U. S. 602 (1984), App. to Pet. for Cert. 15a-19a.
The Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal. 143 F. 3d 1072 (CA7 1998). In its view, a later ease, Bowen v. Michigan Academy of Family Physicians, 476 U. S. 667 (1986), had significantly modified this Court’s earlier case law. Other Circuits have understood Michigan Academy differently. See Michigan Assn. of Homes and Servs. for the Aging v. Shalala, 127 F. 3d 496, 500-501 (CA6 1997); American Academy of Dermatology v. HHS, 118 F. 3d 1495, 1499-1501 (CA11 1997); St. Francis Medical Center v. Shalala, 32 F. 3d 805, 812-813 (CA3 1994), cert. denied, 514 U. S. 1016 (1995); Farkas v. Blue Cross & Blue Shield, 24 F. 3d 853, 855-860 (CA6 1994); Abbey v. Sullivan, 978 F. 2d 37, 41-44 (CA2 1992); National Kidney Patients Assn. v. Sullivan, 958 F. 2d 1127, 1130-1134 (CADC 1992), cert. denied, 506 U. S. 1049 (1993). We granted certiorari to resolve those differences.
II
Section 405(h) purports to make exclusive the judicial review method set forth in § 405(g). Its second sentence says that “[n]o findings of fact or decision of the [Secretary] shall be reviewed by any person, tribunal, or governmental agency except as herein provided.” § 405(h). Its third sentence, directly at issue here, says that “[n]o action against the United States, the [Secretary], or any officer or employee thereof shall be brought under section 1331 or 1346 of title 28 to recover on any claim arising under this subchapter.” (Emphasis added.)
The scope of the italicized language “to recover on any claim arising under” the Social Security (or, as incorporated through § 1395Ü, the Medicare) Act is, if read alone, uncertain. Those words clearly apply in a typical Social Security or Medicare benefits case, where an individual seeks a monetary benefit from the agency (say, a disability payment, or payment for some medical procedure), the agency denies the benefit, and the individual challenges the lawfulness of that denial. The statute plainly bars §1331 review in such a case, irrespective of whether the individual challenges the agency’s denial on evidentiary, rule-related, statutory, constitutional, or other legal grounds. But does the statute’s bar apply when one who might later seek money or some other benefit from (or contest the imposition of a penalty by) the agency challenges in advance (in a § 1331 action) the lawfulness of a policy, regulation, or statute that might later bar recovery of that benefit (or authorize the imposition of the penalty)? Suppose, as here, a group of such individuals, needing advance knowledge for planning purposes, together bring a § 1331 action challenging such a rule or regulation on general legal grounds. Is such an action one “to recover on any claim arising under” the Social Security or Medicare Acts? That, in effect, is the question before us.
III
In answering the question, we temporarily put the ease on which the Court of Appeals relied, Michigan Academy, supra, to the side. Were we not to take account of that case, § 405(h) as interpreted by the Court’s earlier cases of Weinberger v. Salfi, supra, and Heckler v. Ringer, supra, would clearly bar this § 1331 lawsuit.
In Salfi, a mother and a daughter, filing on behalf of themselves and a class of individuals, brought a § 1331 action challenging the constitutionality of a statutory provision that, if valid, would deny them Social Security benefits. See 42 U. S. C. §§ 416(c)(5), (e)(2) (imposing a duration-of-relationship Social Security eligibility requirement for surviving wives and stepchildren of deceased wage earners). The mother and daughter had appeared before the agency but had not completed its processes. The class presumably included some who had, and some who had not, appeared before the agency; the complaint did not say. This Court held that § 405(h) barred § 1331 jurisdiction for all members of the class because “it is the Social Security Act which provides both the standing and the substantive basis for the presentation of th[e] constitutional contentions.” Salfi, supra, at 760-761. The Court added that the bar applies “irrespective of whether resort to judicial processes is necessitated by discretionary decisions of the Secretary or by his nondiscretionary application of allegedly unconstitutional statutory restrictions.” 422 U. S., at 762. It also pointed out that the bar did not “preclude constitutional challenges,” but simply “require[d] that they be brought” under the same “jurisdictional grants” and “in conformity with the same standards” applicable “to nonconstitutional claims arising under the Act.” Ibid.
We concede that the Court also pointed to certain special features of the case not present here. The plaintiff class had asked for relief that included a direction to the Secretary to pay Social Security benefits to those entitled to them but for the challenged provision. See id., at 761. And the Court thought this fact helped make clear that the action arose “under the Act whose benefits [were] sought.” Ibid. But in a later case, Ringer, the Court reached a similar result despite the absence of any request for such relief. See 466 U. S., at 616, 623.
In Ringer, four individuals brought a § 1331 action challenging the lawfulness (under statutes and the Constitution) of the agency’s determination not to provide Medicare Part A reimbursement to those who had undergone a particular medical operation. The Court held that § 405(h) barred § 1331 jurisdiction over the action, even though the challenge was in part to the agency’s procedures, the relief requested amounted simply to a declaration of invalidity (not an order requiring payment), and one plaintiff had as yet no valid claim for reimbursement because he had not even undergone the operation and would likely never do so unless a court set aside as unlawful the challenged agency “no reimbursement” determination. See id., at 614-616, 621-623. The Court reiterated that § 405(h) applies where “both the standing and the substantive basis for the presentation” of a claim is the Medicare Act, id., at 615 (quoting Salfi, 422 U. S., at 760-761) (internal quotation marks omitted), adding that a “claim for future benefits” is a § 405(h) “claim,” 466 U. S., at 621-622, and that “all aspects” of any such present or future claim must be “channeled” through the administrative process, id., at 614. See also Your Home Visiting Nurse Services, Inc. v. Shalala, 525 U. S. 449, 456 (1999); Califano v. Sanders, 430 U. S. 99, 103-104, n. 3 (1977).
As so interpreted, the bar of § 405(h) reaches beyond ordinary administrative law principles of “ripeness” and “exhaustion of administrative remedies,” see Salfi, supra, at 757 — doctrines that in any event normally require channeling a legal challenge through the agency. See Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 148-149 (1967) (ripeness); McKart v. United States, 395 U. S. 185, 193-196 (1969) (exhaustion). Indeed, in this very case, the Seventh Circuit held that several of respondent’s claims were not ripe and remanded for ripeness review of the remainder. 143 F. 3d, at 1077-1078. Doctrines of “ripeness” and “exhaustion” contain exceptions, however, which exceptions permit early review when, for example, the legal question is “fit” for resolution and delay means hardship, see Abbott Laboratories, supra, at 148-149, or when exhaustion would prove “futile,” see McCarthy v. Madigan, 503 U. S. 140, 147-148 (1992); McKart, supra, at 197-201. (And sometimes Congress expressly authorizes preenforcement review, though not here. See, e. g., 15 U. S. C. § 2618(a)(1)(A) (Toxic Substances Control Act).)
Insofar as § 405(h) prevents application of the “ripeness” and “exhaustion” exceptions, i. e., insofar as it demands the “channeling” of virtually all legal attacks through the agency, it assures the agency greater opportunity to apply, interpret, or revise policies, regulations, or statutes without possibly premature interference by different individual courts applying “ripeness” and “exhaustion” exceptions case by case. But this assurance comes at a price, namely, occasional individual, delay-related hardship. In the context of a massive, complex health and safety program such as Medicare, embodied in hundreds of pages of statutes and thousands of pages of often interrelated regulations, any of which may become the subject of a legal challenge in any of several different courts, paying this price may seem justified. In any event, such was the judgment of Congress as understood in Salfi and Ringer. See Ringer, supra, at 627; Salfi, supra, at 762.
Despite the urging of the Council and supporting amici, we cannot distinguish Salfi and Ringer from the case before us. Those cases themselves foreclose distinctions based upon the “potential future” versus the “actual present” nature of the claim, the “general legal” versus the “fact-specific” nature of the challenge, the “collateral” versus “noncollateral” nature of the issues, or the “declaratory” versus “injunctive” nature of the relief sought. Nor can we accept a distinction that limits the scope of § 405(h) to claims for monetary benefits. Claims for money, claims for other benefits, claims of program eligibility, and claims that contest a sanction or remedy may all similarly rest upon individual fact-related circumstances, may all similarly dispute agency policy determinations, or may all similarly involve the application, interpretation, or constitutionality of interrelated regulations or statutory provisions. There is no reason to distinguish among them in terms of the language or in terms of the purposes of § 405(h). Section 1395ii’s blanket incorporation of that provision into the Medicare Act as a whole certainly contains no such distinction. Nor for similar reasons can we here limit those provisions to claims that involve “amounts.”
The Council cites two other cases in support of its efforts to distinguish Salfi and Ringer: McNary v. Haitian Refugee Center, Inc., 498 U. S. 479 (1991), and Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S. 319 (1976). In Haitian Refugee Center, the Court held permissible a §1331 challenge to “a group of decisions or a practice or procedure employed in making decisions” despite an immigration statute that barred § 1331 challenges to any Immigration and Naturalization Service “ ‘determination respecting an application for adjustment of status’” under the Special Agricultural Workers’ program. 498.U. S., at 491-498. Haitian Refugee Center’s outcome, however, turned on the different language of that different statute. Indeed, the Court suggested that statutory language similar to the language at issue here — any claim “arising under” the Medicare or Social Security Acts, § 405(h)— would have led it to a different legal conclusion. See id., at 494 (using as an example a statute precluding review of “ ‘all causes... arising under any of’ ” the immigration statutes).
In Eldridge, the Court held permissible a District Court lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of agency procedures authorizing termination of Social Security disability payments without a pretermination hearing. See 424 U. S., at 326-332. Eldridge, however, is a case in which the Court found that the respondent had followed the special review procedures set forth in § 405(g), thereby complying with, rather than disregarding, the strictures of § 405(h). See id., at 326-327 (holding jurisdiction available only under § 405(g)). The Court characterized the constitutional issue the respondent raised as “collateral” to his claim for benefits, but it did so as a basis for requiring the agency to excuse, where the agency would not do so on its own, see Salfi, 422 U. S., at 766-767, some (but not all) of the procedural steps set forth in § 405(g). 424 U. S., at 329-332 (identifying collateral nature of the claim and irreparable injury as reasons to excuse § 405(g)’s exhaustion requirements); see also Bowen v. City of New York, 476 U. S. 467, 483-485 (1986) (noting that Eldridge factors are not to be mechanically applied). The Court nonetheless held that § 405(g) contains the nonwaivable and nonexcusable requirement that an individual present a claim to the agency before raising it in court. See Ringer, supra, at 622; Eldridge, supra, at 329; Salfi, supra, at 763-764. The Council has not done so here, and thus cannot establish jurisdiction under § 405(g).
The upshot is that without Michigan Academy the Council cannot win. Its precedent-based argument must rest primarily upon that case.
IV
The Court of Appeals held that Michigan Academy modified the Court’s earlier holdings by limiting the scope of “[§]1395ii and therefore § 405(h)” to “amount determinations.” 143 F. 3d, at 1075-1076. But we do not agree. Michigan Academy involved a §1331 suit challenging the lawfulness of HHS regulations that governed procedures used to calculate benefits under Medicare Part B — which Part provides voluntary supplementary medical insurance, e. g., for doctors’ fees. See 476 U. S., at 674-675; United States v. Erika, Inc., 456 U. S. 201, 202-203 (1982). The Medicare statute, as it then existed, provided for only limited review of Part B decisions. It allowed the equivalent of § 405(g) review for “eligibility” determinations. See 42 U. S. C. § 1395ff(b)(l)(B) (1982 ed.). It required private insurance carriers (administering the Part B program) to provide a “fair hearing” for disputes about Part B “amount determinations.” § 1395u(b)(3)(C). But that was all.
Michigan Academy first discussed the statute’s total silence about review of “challenges mounted against the method by which... amounts are to be determined.” 476 U. S., at 675. It held that this silence meant that, although review was not available under § 405(g), the silence did not itself foreclose other forms of review, say, review in a court action brought under § 1331. See id., at 674-678. Cf. Erika, supra, at 208 (holding that the Medicare Part B statute’s explicit reference to carrier hearings for amount disputes does foreclose all further agency or court review of “amount determinations”).
The Court then asked whether § 405(h) barred 28 U. S. C. § 1331 review of challenges to methodology. Noting the Secretary’s Salfi/Ringer-based argument that § 405(h) barred § 1331 review of all challenges arising under the Medicare Act and the respondents’ counterargument that § 405(h) barred challenges to “methods” only where § 405(g) review was available, see Michigan Academy, 476 U. S., at 679, the Court wrote:
“Whichever may be the better reading of Salfi and Ringer, we need not pass on the meaning of § 405(h) in the abstract to resolve this case. Section 405(h) does not apply on its own terms to Part B of the Medicare program, but is instead incorporated mutatis mutandis by § 1395Ü. The legislative history of both the statute establishing the Medicare program and the 1972 amendments thereto provides specific evidence of Congress’ intent to foreclose review only of ‘amount determina tions’ — i. e., those [matters]... remitted finally and exclusively to adjudication by private insurance carriers in a 'fair hearing.’ By the same token, matters which Congress did not delegate to private carriers, such as challenges to the validity of the Secretary’s instructions and regulations, are cognizable in courts of law.” Id., at 680 (footnote omitted).
The Court’s words do not limit the scope of § 405(h) itself to instances where a plaintiff, invoking § 1331, seeks review of an “amount determination.” Rather, the Court said that it would “not pass on the meaning of § 405(h) in the abstract.” Ibid, (emphasis added). Instead it focused upon the Medicare Act’s cross-referencing provision, § 1395Ü, which makes § 405(h) applicable “to the same extent as” it is “applicable” to the Social Security Act. (Emphasis added.) It interpreted that phrase as applying § 405(h) “mutatis mutandis,” i. e., “[a]ll necessary changes having been made.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1039 (7th ed. 1999). And it applied § 1395Ü with one important change of detail — a change produced by not applying § 405(h) where its application to a particular category of cases, such as Medicare Part B “methodology” challenges, would not lead to a channeling of review through the agency, but would mean no review at all. The Court added that a “'serious constitutional question’... would arise if we construed § 1395ii to deny a judicial forum for constitutional claims arising under Part B.” 476 U. S., at 681, n. 12 (quoting Salfi, 422 U. S., at 762 (citing Johnson v. Robison, 415 U. S. 361, 366-367 (1974))).
More than that: Were the Court of Appeals correct in believing that Michigan Academy limited the scope of § 405(h) itself to “amount determinations,” that case would have significantly affected not only Medicare Part B cases but cases arising under the Social Security Act and Medicare Part A as well. It accordingly would have overturned or dramatically limited this Court’s earlier precedents, such as Salfi and Ringer, which involved, respectively, those programs. It would, moreover, have created a hardly justifiable distinction between “amount determinations” and many other similar HHS determinations, see supra, at 14. And we do not understand why Congress, as Justice Stevens believes, post, at 30-31 (dissenting opinion), would have wanted to compel Medicare patients, but not Medicare providers, to channel their claims through the agency. Cf. Brief for Respondent 7-8, 18-21, 30-31 (apparently conceding the point). This Court does not normally overturn, or so dramatically limit, earlier authority sub silentio. And we agree with those Circuits that have held the Court did not do so in this instance. See Michigan Assn. of Homes and Servs., 127 F. 3d, at 500-501; American Academy of Dermatology, 118 F. 3d, at 1499-1501; St. Francis Medical Center, 32 F. 3d, at 812; Farkas, 24 F. 3d, at 855-861; Abbey, 978 F. 2d, at 41-44; National Kidney Patients Assn., 958 F. 2d, at 1130-1134.
Justice Thomas maintains that Michigan Academy “must have established,” by way of a new interpretation of § 1395Ü, the critical distinction between a dispute about an agency determination in a particular case and a more general dispute about, for example, the agency’s authority to promulgate a set of regulations, i. e., the very distinction that this Court’s earlier cases deny. Post, at 38 (dissenting opinion). He says that, in this respect, we have mistaken Michigan Academy’s “reasoning” (the presumption against preclusion of judicial review) for its “holding.” Post, at 39-40. And, he finds the holding consistent with earlier cases such as Ringer because, he says, in Ringer everyone simply assumed without argument that § 1395ii’s channeling provision fully incorporated the whole of § 405(h). Post, at 40-42.
For one thing, the language to which Justice Thomas points simply says that “Congres[s] inten[ded] to foreclose review only of ‘amount determinations’” and not “matters which Congress did not delegate to private carriers, such as challenges to the validity of the Secretary’s instructions and regulations,” Michigan Academy, supra, at 680 (emphasis added). That language refers to particular features of the Medicare Part B program — “private carriers” and “amount determinations” — which are not here before us. And its reference to “foreclosure” of review quite obviously cannot be taken to refer to §1395ii because, as we have explained, § 1395Ü is a channeling requirement, not a foreclosure provision — of “amount determinations” or anything else. In short, it is difficult to reconcile Justice Thomas’ characterization of Michigan Academy as a holding that §1395ii is “triggered)” only by “challenges to... particular determinations,” post, at 40, with the Michigan Academy language to which he points.
Regardless, it is more plausible to read Michigan Academy as holding that §1395ii does not apply §405(h) where application of § 405(h) would not simply channel review through the agency, but would mean no review at all. And contrary to Justice Scalia’s suggestion, post, at 31-32 (dissenting opinion), that single rule applies to Medicare Part A as much as to Medicare Part B. This latter holding, as we have said, has the virtues of consistency with Michigan Academy’s actual language; consistency with the holdings of earlier cases such as Ringer; and consistency with the distinction that this Court has often drawn between a total preclusion of review and postponement of review. See, e. g., Salfi, supra, at 762 (distinguishing §405(h)’s channeling requirement from the complete preclusion of judicial review at issue in Robison, supra, at 373); Thunder Basin Coal Co. v. Reich, 510 U. S. 200, 207, n. 8 (1994) (strong presumption against preclusion of review is not implicated by provision postponing review); Haitian Refugee Center, 498 U. S., at 496-499 (distinguishing between Ringer and Michigan Academy and finding the case governed by the latter because the statute precluded all meaningful judicial review). Justice Thomas refers to an “antichanneling” presumption (a “presumption in favor of preenforcement review,” post, at 46-47). But any such presumption must be far weaker than a presumption against preclusion of all review in light of the traditional ripeness doctrine, which often requires initial presentation of a claim to an agency. As we have said, supra, at 13, Congress may well have concluded that a universal obligation to present a legal claim first to HHS, though postponing review in some cases, would produce speedier, as well as better, review overall. And this Court crossed the relevant bridge long ago when it held that Congress, in both the Social Security Act and the Medicare Act, insisted upon an initial presentation of the matter to the agency. Ringer, 466 U. S., at 627; Salfi, 422 U. S., at 762. Michigan Academy does not require that we reconsider that longstanding interpretation.
V
The Council argues that in any event it falls within the exception that Michigan Academy creates, for here as there, it can obtain no review at all unless it can obtain judicial review in a § 1331 action. In other words, the Council contends that application of § 1395ii’s channeling provision to the portion of the Medicare statute and the Medicare regulations at issue in this case will amount to the “practical equivalent of a total denial of judicial review.” Haitian Refugee Center, supra, at 497. The Council, however, has not convinced us that is so.
The Council says that the special review channel that the Medicare statutes create applies only where the Secretary terminates a home’s provider agreement; it is not available in the more usual case involving imposition of a lesser remedy, say, the transfer of patients, the withholding of payments, or the imposition of a civil monetary penalty.
We have set forth the relevant provisions, supra, at 8-9; Appendix, infra. The specific judicial review provision, § 405(g), authorizes judicial review of “any final decision of the [Secretary] made after a [§ 405(b)] hearing.” A further relevant provision, § 1395cc(h)(l), authorizes a § 405(b) hearing whenever a home is “dissatisfied... with a determi nation described in subsection (b)(2).” (Emphasis added.) And subsection (b)(2) authorizes the Secretary to terminate an agreement, whenever she “has determined that the provider fails to comply substantially with” statutes, agreements, or “regulations.” § 1395cc(b)(2)(A) (emphasis added).
The Secretary states in her brief that the relevant “determination” that entitles a “dissatisfied” home to review is any determination that a provider has failed to comply substantially with the statute, agreements, or regulations, whether termination or “some other remedy is imposed.” Reply Brief for Petitioners 14 (emphasis added). The Secretary’s regulations make clear that she so interprets the statute. See 42 CFR §§498.3(b)(12), 498.1(a)-(b) (1998). The statute’s language, though not free of ambiguity, bears that interpretation. And we are aware of no convincing countervailing argument. We conclude that the Secretary’s interpretation is legally permissible. See Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
I
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioners contend that a village ordinance making it a misdemeanor to engage in door-to-door advocacy without first registering with the mayor and receiving a permit violates the First Amendment. Through this facial challenge, we consider the door-to-door canvassing regulation not only as it applies to religious proselytizing, but also to anonymous political speech and the distribution of handbills.
I
Petitioner Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc., coordinates the preaching activities of Jehovah’s Witnesses throughout the United States and publishes Bibles and religious periodicals that are widely distributed. Petitioner Wellsville, Ohio, Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Inc., supervises the activities of approximately 59 members in a part of Ohio that includes the Village of Strat-ton (Village). Petitioners offer religious literature without cost to anyone interested in reading it. They allege that they do not solicit contributions or orders for the sale of merchandise or services, but they do accept donations.
Petitioners brought this action against the Village and its mayor in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, seeking an injunction against the enforcement of several sections of Ordinance No. 1998-5 regulating uninvited peddling and solicitation on private property in the Village. Petitioners’ complaint alleged that the ordinance violated several constitutional rights, including the free exercise of religion, free speech, and the freedom of the press. App. 10a-44a. The District Court conducted a bench trial at which evidence of the administration of the ordinance and its effect on petitioners was introduced.
Section 116.01 prohibits “canvassers” and others from “going in and upon” private residential property for the purpose of promoting any “cause” without first having obtained a permit pursuant to § 116.03. That section provides that any canvasser who intends to go on private property to promote a cause must obtain a “Solicitation Permit” from the office of the mayor; there is no charge for the permit, and apparently one is issued routinely after an applicant fills out a fairly detailed “Solicitor’s Registration Form.” The canvasser is then authorized to go upon premises that he listed on the registration form, but he must carry the permit upon his person and exhibit it whenever requested to do so by a police officer or by a resident. The ordinance sets forth grounds for the denial or revocation of a permit, but the record before us does not show that any application has been denied or that any permit has been revoked. Petitioners did not apply for a permit.
A section of the ordinance that petitioners do not challenge establishes a procedure by which a resident may prohibit solicitation even by holders of permits. If the resident files a “No Solicitation Registration Form” with the mayor, and also posts a “No Solicitation” sign on his property, no uninvited canvassers may enter his property, unless they are specifically authorized to do so in the “No Solicitation Registration Form” itself. Only 32 of the Village’s 278 residents filed such forms. Each of the forms in the record contains a list of 19 suggested exceptions; on one form, a resident checked 17 exceptions, thereby excluding only “Jehovah’s Witnesses” and “Political Candidates” from the list of invited canvassers. Although Jehovah’s Witnesses do not consider themselves to be “solicitors” because they make no charge for their literature or their teaching, leaders of the church testified at trial that they would honor “no solicitation” signs in the Village. They also explained at trial that they did not apply for a permit because they derive their authority to preach from Scripture. “For us to seek a permit from a municipality to preach we feel would almost be an insult to God.” App. 321a.
Petitioners introduced some evidence that the ordinance was the product of the mayor’s hostility to their ministry, but the District Court credited the mayor’s testimony that it had been designed to protect the privacy rights of the Village residents, specifically to protect them “from ‘Aim flam’ con artists who prey on small town populations.” 61 F. Supp. 2d 734, 736 (SD Ohio 1999). Nevertheless, the court concluded that the terms of the ordinance applied to the activities of petitioners as well as to “business or political canvassers,” id., at 737, 738.
The District Court upheld most provisions of the ordinance as valid, content-neutral regulations that did not infringe on petitioners’ First Amendment rights. The court did, however, require the Village to accept narrowing constructions of three provisions. First, the court viewed the requirement in § 116.03(b)(5) that the applicant must list the specific address of each residence to be visited as potentially invalid, but cured by the Village’s agreement to attach to the form a list of willing residents. Id., at 737. Second, it held that petitioners could comply with § 116.03(b)(6) by merely stating their purpose as “the Jehovah’s Witness ministry.” Id., at 738. And third, it held that § 116.05, which limited canvassing to the hours before 5 p.m., was invalid on its face and should be replaced with a provision referring to “reasonable hours of the day.” Id., at 739. As so modified, the court held the ordinance constitutionally valid as applied to petitioners and dismissed the case.
The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed. 240 F. 3d 553 (2001). It held that the ordinance was “content neutral and of general applicability and therefore subject to intermediate scrutiny.” Id., at 560. It rejected petitioners’ reliance on the discussion of laws affecting both the free exercise of religion and free speech in Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872 (1990), because that “language was dicta and therefore not binding.” 240 F. 3d, at 561. It also rejected petitioners’ argument that the ordinance is overbroad because it impairs the right to distribute pamphlets anonymously that we recognized in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n, 514 U. S. 334 (1995), reasoning that “the very act of going door-to-door requires the canvassers to reveal a portion of their identities.” 240 F. 3d, at 563. The Court of Appeals concluded that the interests promoted by the Village — “protecting its residents from fraud and undue annoyance” — as well as the harm that it seeks to prevent — “criminals posing as canvassers in order to defraud its residents” — though “by no means overwhelming,” were sufficient to justify the regulation. Id., at 565-566. The court distinguished earlier cases protecting the Jehovah’s Witnesses ministry because those cases either involved a flat prohibition on the dissemination of ideas, e. g., Martin v. City of Struthers, 319 U. S. 141 (1943), or an ordinance that left the issuance of a permit to the discretion of a municipal officer, see, e. g., Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 302 (1940).
In dissent, Judge Gilman expressed the opinion that by subjecting noncommercial solicitation to the permit requirements, the ordinance significantly restricted a substantial quantity of speech unrelated to the Village’s interest in eliminating fraud and unwanted annoyance. In his view, the Village “failed to demonstrate either the reality of the harm or the efficacy of the restriction.” 240 F. 3d, at 572.
We granted certiorari to decide the following question: “Does a municipal ordinance that requires one to obtain a permit prior to engaging in the door-to-door advocacy of a political cause and to display upon demand the permit, which contains one’s name, violate the First Amendment protection accorded to anonymous pamphleteering or discourse?” 534 U. S. 971 (2001); Pet. for Cert, i.
II
For over 50 years, the Court has invalidated restrictions on door-to-door canvassing and pamphleteering. It is more than historical accident that most of these cases involved First Amendment challenges brought by Jehovah’s Witnesses, because door-to-door canvassing is mandated by their religion. As we noted in Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105, 108 (1943), the Jehovah’s Witnesses “claim to follow the example of Paul, teaching ‘publickly, and from house to house.’ Acts 20:20. They take literally the mandate of the Scriptures, ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.’ Mark 16:15. In doing so they believe that they are obeying a commandment of God.” Moreover, because they lack significant financial resources, the ability of the Witnesses to proselytize is seriously diminished by regulations that burden their efforts to canvass door-to-door.
Although our past cases involving Jehovah’s Witnesses, most of which were decided shortly before and during World War II, do not directly control the question we confront today, they provide both a historical and analytical backdrop for consideration of petitioners’ First Amendment claim that the breadth of the Village’s ordinance offends the First Amendment. Those cases involved petty offenses that raised constitutional questions of the most serious magnitude — questions that implicated the free exercise of religion, the freedom of speech, and the freedom of the press. From these decisions, several themes emerge that guide our consideration of the ordinance at issue here.
First, the cases emphasize the value of the speech involved. For example, in Murdock v. Pennsylvania, the Court noted that “hand distribution of religious tracts is an age-old form of missionary evangelism — as old as the history of printing presses. It has been a potent force in various religious movements down through the years.... This form of religious activity occupies the same high estate under the First Amendment as do worship in the churches and preaching from the pulpits. It has the same claim to protection as the more orthodox and conventional exercises of religion. It also has the same claim as the others to the guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.” Id., at 108-109.
In addition, the cases discuss extensively the historical importance of door-to-door canvassing and pamphleteering as vehicles for the dissemination of ideas. In Schneider v. State (Town of Irvington), 308 U. S. 147 (1939), the petitioner was a Jehovah’s Witness who had been convicted of canvassing without a permit based on evidence that she had gone from house to house offering to leave books or booklets. Writing for the Court, Justice Roberts stated that "pamphlets have proved most effective instruments in the dissemination of opinion. And perhaps the most effective way of bringing them to the notice of individuals is their distribution at the homes of the people. On this method of communication the ordinance imposes censorship, abuse of which engendered the struggle in England which eventuated in the establishment of the doctrine of the freedom of the press embodied in our Constitution. To require a censorship through license which makes impossible the free and unhampered distribution of pamphlets strikes at the very heart of the constitutional guarantees.” Id., at 164 (emphasis added).
Despite the emphasis on the important role that door-to-door canvassing and pamphleteering has played in our constitutional tradition of free and open discussion, these early cases also recognized the interests a town may have in some form of regulation, particularly when the solicitation of money is involved. In Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296 (1940), the Court held that an ordinance requiring Jehovah’s Witnesses to obtain a license before soliciting door to door was invalid because the issuance of the license depended on the exercise of discretion by a city official. Our opinion recognized that “a State may protect its citizens from fraudulent solicitation by requiring a stranger in the community, before permitting him publicly to solicit funds for any purpose, to establish his identity and his authority to act for the cause which he purports to represent.” Id., at 306. Similarly, in Martin v. City of Struthers, the Court recognized crime prevention as a legitimate interest served by these ordinances and noted that “burglars frequently pose as canvassers, either in order that they may have a pretense to discover whether a house is empty and hence ripe for burglary, or for the purpose of spying out the premises in order that they may return later.” 319 U. S., at 144. Despite recognition of these interests as legitimate, our precedent is clear that there must be a balance between these interests and the effect of the regulations on First Amendment rights. We “must ‘be astute to examine the effect of the challenged legislation’ and must ‘weigh the circumstances and ... appraise the substantiality of the reasons advanced in support of the regulation.’” Ibid, (quoting Schneider, 308 U. S., at 161).
Finally, the cases demonstrate that efforts of the Jehovah’s Witnesses to resist speech regulation have not been a struggle for their rights alone. In Martin, after cataloging the many groups that rely extensively upon this method of communication, the Court summarized that “[d]oor to door distribution of circulars is essential to the poorly financed causes of little people.” 319 U. S., at 144-146.
That the Jehovah’s Witnesses are not the only “little people” who face the risk of silencing by regulations like the Village’s is exemplified by our cases involving nonreligious speech. See, e. g., Schaumburg v. Citizens for a Better Environment, 444 U. S. 620 (1980); Hynes v. Mayor and Council of Oradell, 425 U. S. 610 (1976); Thomas v. Collins, 323 U. S. 516 (1945). In Thomas, the issue was whether a labor leader could be required to obtain a permit before delivering a speech to prospective union members. After reviewing the Jehovah’s Witnesses cases discussed above, the Court observed:
“As a matter of principle a requirement of registration in order to make a public speech would seem generally incompatible with an exercise of the rights of free speech and free assembly. . . .
“If the exercise of the rights of free speech and free assembly cannot be made a crime, we do not think this can be accomplished by the device of requiring previous registration as a condition for exercising them and making such a condition the foundation for restraining in advance their exercise and for imposing a penalty for violating such a restraining order. So long as no more is involved than exercise of the rights of free speech and free assembly, it is immune to such a restriction. If one who solicits support for the cause of labor may be required to register as a condition to the exercise of his right to make a public speech, so may he who seeks to rally support for any social, business, religious or political cause. We think a requirement that one must register before he undertakes to make a public speech to enlist support for a lawful movement is quite incompatible with the requirements of the First Amendment.” Id., at 539-540.
Although these World War II-era cases provide guidance for our consideration of the question presented, they do not answer one preliminary issue that the parties adamantly dispute. That is, what standard of review ought we use in assessing the constitutionality of this ordinance. We find it unnecessary, however, to resolve that dispute because the breadth of speech affected by the ordinance and the nature of the regulation make it clear that the Court of Appeals erred in upholding it.
III
The Village argues that three interests are served by its ordinance: the prevention of fraud, the prevention of crime, and the protection of residents’ privacy. We have no difficulty concluding, in light of our precedent, that these are important interests that the Village may seek to safeguard through some form of regulation of solicitation activity. We must also look, however, to the amount of speech covered by the ordinance and whether there is an appropriate balance between the affected speech and the governmental interests that the ordinance purports to serve.
The text of the Village’s ordinance prohibits “canvassers” from going on private property for the purpose of explaining or promoting any “cause,” unless they receive a permit and the residents visited have not opted for a “no solicitation” sign. Had this provision been construed to apply only to commercial activities and the solicitation of funds, arguably the ordinance would have been tailored to the Village’s interest in protecting the privacy of its residents and preventing fraud. Yet, even though the Village has explained that the ordinance was adopted to serve those interests, it has never contended that it should be so narrowly interpreted. To the contrary, the Village’s administration of its ordinance unquestionably demonstrates that the provisions apply to a significant number of noncommercial “canvassers” promoting a wide variety of “causes.” Indeed, on the “No Solicitation Forms” provided to the residents, the canvassers include “Camp Fire Girls,” “Jehovah’s Witnesses,” “Political Candidates,” “Trick or Treaters during Halloween Season,” and “Persons Affiliated with Stratton Church.” The ordinance unquestionably applies, not only to religious causes, but to political activity as well. It would seem to extend to “residents casually soliciting the votes of neighbors,” or ringing doorbells to enlist support for employing a more efficient garbage collector.
The mere fact that the ordinance covers so much speech raises constitutional concerns. It is offensive — not only to the values protected by the First Amendment, but to the very notion of a free society — that in the context of everyday public discourse a citizen must first inform the government of her desire to speak to her neighbors and then obtain a permit to do so. Even if the issuance of permits by the may- or’s office is a ministerial task that is performed promptly and at no cost to the applicant, a law requiring a permit to engage in such speech constitutes a dramatic departure from our national heritage and constitutional tradition. Three obvious examples illustrate the pernicious effect of such a permit requirement.
First, as our cases involving distribution of unsigned handbills demonstrate, there are a significant number of persons who support causes anonymously. “The decision in favor of anonymity may be motivated by fear of economic or official retaliation, by concern about social ostracism, or merely by a desire to preserve as much of one’s privacy as possible.” McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n, 514 U. S., at 341-342. The requirement that a canvasser must be identified in a permit application filed in the mayor’s office and available for public inspection necessarily results in a surrender of that anonymity. Although it is true, as the Court of Appeals suggested, see 240 F. 3d, at 563, that persons who are known to the resident reveal their allegiance to a group or cause when they present themselves at the front door to advocate an issue or to deliver a handbill, the Court of Appeals erred in concluding that the ordinance does not implicate anonymity interests. The Sixth Circuit’s reasoning is undermined by our decision in Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, Inc., 525 U. S. 182 (1999). The badge requirement that we invalidated in Buckley applied to petition cir-culators seeking signatures in face-to-face interactions. The fact that circulators revealed their physical identities did not foreclose our consideration of the circulators’ interest in maintaining their anonymity. In the Village, strangers to the resident certainly maintain their anonymity, and the ordinance may preclude such persons from canvassing for unpopular causes. Such preclusion may well be justified in some situations — for example, by the special state interest in protecting the integrity of a ballot-initiative process, see ibid., or by the interest in preventing fraudulent commercial transactions. The Village ordinance, however, sweeps more broadly, covering unpopular causes unrelated to commercial transactions or to any special interest in protecting the electoral process.
Second, requiring a permit as a prior condition on the exercise of the right to speak imposes an objective burden on some speech of citizens holding religious or patriotic views. As our World War II-era cases dramatically demonstrate, there are a significant number of persons whose religious scruples will prevent them from applying for such a license. There are no doubt other patriotic citizens, who have such firm convictions about their constitutional right to engage in uninhibited debate in the context of door-to-door advocacy, that they would prefer silence to speech licensed by a petty official.
Third, there is a significant amount of spontaneous speech that is effectively banned by the ordinance. A person who made a decision on a holiday or a weekend to take an active part in a political campaign could not begin to pass out handbills until after he or she obtained the required permit. Even a spontaneous decision to go across the street and urge a neighbor to vote against the mayor could not lawfully be implemented without first obtaining the mayor’s permission. In this respect, the regulation is analogous to the circulation licensing tax the Court invalidated in Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U. S. 233 (1936). In Grosjean, while discussing the history of the Free Press Clause of the First Amendment, the Court stated that “‘[t]he evils to be prevented were not the censorship of the press merely, but any action of the government by means of which it might prevent such free and general discussion of public matters as seems absolutely essential to prepare the people for an intelligent exercise of their rights as citizens.’ ” Id., at 249-250 (quoting 2 T. Cooley, Constitutional Limitations 886 (8th ed. 1927)); see also Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U. S. 444 (1938).
The breadth and unprecedented nature of this regulation does not alone render the ordinance invalid. Also central to our conclusion that the ordinance does not pass First Amendment scrutiny is that it is not tailored to the Village’s stated interests. Even if the interest in preventing fraud could adequately support the ordinance insofar as it applies to commercial transactions and the solicitation of funds, that interest provides no support for its application to petitioners, to political campaigns, or to enlisting support for unpopular causes. The Village, however, argues that the ordinance is nonetheless valid because it serves the two additional interests of protecting the privacy of the resident and the prevention of crime.
With respect to the former, it seems clear that § 107 of the ordinance, which provides for the posting of “No Solicitation” signs and which is not challenged in this case, coupled with the resident’s unquestioned right to refuse to engage in conversation with unwelcome visitors, provides ample protection for the unwilling listener. Schaumburg, 444 U. S., at 639 (“[T]he provision permitting homeowners to bar solicitors from their property by posting [no solicitation] signs ... suggests] the availability of less intrusive and more effective measures to protect privacy”). The annoyance caused by an uninvited knock on the front door is the same whether or not the visitor is armed with a permit.
With respect to the latter, it seems unlikely that the absence of a permit would preclude criminals from knocking on doors and engaging in conversations not covered by the ordinance. They might, for example, ask for directions or permission to use the telephone, or pose as surveyers or census takers. See n. 1, supra. Or they might register under a false name with impunity because the ordinance contains no provision for verifying an applicant’s identity or organizational credentials. Moreover, the Village did not assert an interest in crime prevention below, and there is an absence of any evidence of a special crime problem related to door-to-door solicitation in the record before us.
The rhetoric used in the World War II-era opinions that repeatedly saved petitioners’ coreligionists from petty prosecutions reflected the Court’s evaluation of the First Amendment freedoms that are implicated in this case. The value judgment that then motivated a united democratic people fighting to defend those very freedoms from totalitarian attack is unchanged. It motivates our decision today.
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.
Section 116.01 provides: “The practice of going in and upon private property and/or the private residences of Village residents in the Village by canvassers, solicitors, peddlers, hawkers, itinerant merchants or transient vendors of merchandise or services, not having been invited to do so by the owners or occupants of such private property or residences, and not having first obtained a permit pursuant to Section 116.03 of this Chapter, for the purpose of advertising, promoting, selling and/or explaining any product, service, organization or cause, or for the purpose of soliciting orders for the sale of goods, wares, merchandise or services, is hereby declared to be a nuisance and is prohibited.” App. to Brief for Respondents 2a. The Village has interpreted the term “canvassers” to include Jehovah’s Witnesses and the term “cause” to include their ministry. The ordinance does not appear to require a permit for a surveyor since such an individual would not be entering private property “for the purpose of advertising, promoting, selling and/or explaining any product, service, organization or cause, or for the purpose of soliciting orders for the sale of goods, wares, merchandise or services.” Thus, contrary to the assumption of the dissent in its heavy reliance on the example from Dartmouth, post, at 172-173,177,179 (opinion of Rehnquist, C. J.), the Village’s ordinance would have done nothing to prevent that tragic crime.
Section 116.03 provides:
“(a) No canvasser, solicitor, peddler, hawker, itinerant merchant or transient vendor of merchandise or services who is described in Section 116.01 of this Chapter and who intends to go in or upon private property or a private residence in the Village for any of the purposes described in Section 116.01, shall go in or upon such private property or residence without first registering in the office of the Mayor and obtaining a Solicitation Permit.
“(b) The registration required by subsection (a) hereof shall be made by filing a Solicitor’s Registration Form, at the office of the Mayor, on a form furnished for such purpose. The Form shall be completed by the Registrant and it shall then contain the following information:
“(1) The name and home address of the Registrant and Registrant’s residence for five years next preceding the date of registration;
“(2) A brief description of the nature and purpose of the business, promotion, solicitation, organization, cause, and/or the goods or services offered;
“(3) The name and address of the employer or affiliated organization, with credentials from the employer or organization showing the exact relationship and authority of the Applicant;
“(4) The length of time for which the privilege to canvass or solicit is desired;
“(5) The specific address of each private residence at which the Registrant intends to engage in the conduct described in Section 116.01 of this Chapter, and,
“(6) Such other information concerning the Registrant and its business or purpose as may be reasonably necessary to accurately describe the nature of the privilege desired.” Brief for Respondents 3a-4a.
Section 116.04 provides: “Each Registrant who complies with Section 116.03(b) shall be famished a Solicitation Permit. The permit shall indicate that the applicant has registered as required by Section 116.03 of this Chapter. No permittee shall go in or upon any premises not listed on the Registrant’s Solicitor’s Registration Form.
“Each person shall at all times, while exercising the privilege in the Village incident to such permit, carry upon his person his permit and the same shall be exhibited by such person whenever he is requested to do so by any police officer or by any person who is solicited.” Id., at 4a.
Section 116.06 provides: “Permits described in Section 116.04 of this Chapter may be denied or revoked by the Mayor for any one or more of the following reasons:
“(a) Incomplete information provided by the Registrant in the Solicitor’s Registration Form.
“(b) Fraud or misrepresentation contained in the Solicitor’s Registration Form.
“(c) Fraud, misrepresentation or false statements made in the course of conducting the activity.
“(d) Violation of any of the provisions of this chapter or of other Codified Ordinances or of any State or Federal Law.
“(e) Conducting canvassing, soliciting or business in such a manner as to constitute a trespass upon private property.
“(f) The permittee ceases to possess the qualifications required in this chapter for the original registration.” Id., at 5a.
Section 116.07 provides, in part: “(a) Notwithstanding the provisions of any other Section of this Chapter 116, any person, firm or corporation who is the owner or lawful occupant of private property within the territorial limits of the Village of Stratton, Ohio, may prohibit the practice of going in or upon the private property and/or the private residence of such owner or occupant, by uninvited canvassers, solicitors, peddlers, hawkers, itinerant merchants or transient vendors, by registering its property in accordance with Subdivision (b) of this Section and by posting upon each such registered property a sign which reads ‘No Solicitation’ in a location which is reasonably visible to persons who intend to enter upon such property.
“(b) The registration authorized by Subsection (a) hereof shall be made by filing a ‘No Solicitation Registration Form’, at the office of the Mayor, on a form furnished for such purpose. The form shall be completed by the property owner or occupant and it shall then contain the following information:.. ..” Id., at 6a.
The suggested exceptions listed on the form are:
1. Scouting Organizations
2. Camp Fire Girls
3. Children’s Sports Organizations
4. Children’s Solicitation for Supporting School Activities
5. Volunteer Fire Dept.
6. Jehovah’s Witnesses
7. Political Candidates
8. Beauty Products Sales People
9. Watkins Sales
10. Christmas Carolers
11. Parcel Delivery
12. Little League
13. Trick or Treaters during Halloween Season
14. Police
15. Campaigners
16. Newspaper Carriers
17. Persons Affiliated with Stratton Church
18. Food Salesmen
19. Salespersons. App. 229a.
Apparently the ordinance would prohibit each of these 19 categories from canvassing unless expressly exempted.
Specifically, from the Book of “Matthew chapter 28, verses 19 and 20, which we take as our commission to preach. ... So Jesus, by example, instituted a house-to-house search for people so as to preach the good news to them. And that’s the activity that Jehovah’s Witnesses engage in, even as Christ’s apostles did after his resurrection to heaven.” Id., at 313a-314a.
“The only decisions in which we have held that the First Amendment bars application of a neutral, generally applicable law to religiously motivated action have involved not the Free Exercise Clause alone, but the Free Exercise Clause in conjunction with other constitutional protections, such as freedom of speech and of the press, see Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S., at 304-307 (invalidating a licensing system for religious and charitable solicitations under which the administrator had discretion to deny a license to any cause he deemed nonreligious); Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 (1943) (invalidating a flat tax on solicitation as applied to the dissemination of religious ideas); Follett v. McCormick, 321 U. S. 573 (1944) (same), or the right of parents, acknowledged in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925), to direct the education of their children, see Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205 (1972) (invalidating compulsory school-attendance laws as applied to Amish parents who refused on religious grounds to send their children to school).” 494 U. S., at 881 (footnote omitted).
In their briefs and at oral argument, the parties debated a factual issue embedded in the question presented, namely, whether the permit contains the speaker’s name. We need not resolve this factual dispute in order to answer whether the ordinance’s registration requirement abridges so much protected speech that it is invalid on its face.
Hynes v. Mayor and Council of Oradell, 425 U. S. 610 (1976); Martin v. City of Struthers, 319 U. S. 141 (1943); Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 (1943); Jamison v. Texas, 318 U. S. 413 (1943); Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296 (1940); Schneider v. State (Town of Irvington), 308 U. S. 147 (1939); Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U. S. 444 (1938).
The question presented is similar to one raised, but not decided, in Hynes. The ordinance that we held invalid in that case on vagueness grounds required advance, notice to the police before “casually soliciting the votes of neighbors.” 425 U. S., at 620, n. 4.
Hynes, 425 U. S., at 620, n. 4.
Talley v. California, 362 U. S. 60 (1960); McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n, 514 U. S. 334 (1995).
Although the Jehovah’s Witnesses do not themselves object to a loss of anonymity, they bring this facial challenge in part on the basis of over-breadth. We may, therefore, consider the impact of this ordinance on the free speech rights of individuals who are deterred from speaking because the registration provision would require them to forgo their right to speak anonymously. See Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U. S. 601, 612 (1973).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
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.
Chief Justice ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioners, a group of Nigerian nationals residing in the United States, filed suit in federal court against certain Dutch, British, and Nigerian corporations. Petitioners sued under the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1350, alleging that the corporations aided and abetted the Nigerian Government in committing violations of the law of nations in Nigeria. The question presented is whether and under what circumstances courts may recognize a cause of action under the Alien Tort Statute, for violations of the law of nations occurring within the territory of a sovereign other than the United States.
I
Petitioners were residents of Ogoniland, an area of 250 square miles located in the Niger delta area of Nigeria and populated by roughly half a million people. When the complaint was filed, respondents Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and Shell Transport and Trading Company, p.l.c., were holding companies incorporated in the Netherlands and England, respectively. Their joint subsidiary, respondent Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, Ltd. (SPDC), was incorporated in Nigeria, and engaged in oil exploration and production in Ogoniland. According to the complaint, after concerned residents of Ogoniland began protesting the environmental effects of SPDC's practices, respondents enlisted the Nigerian Government to violently suppress the burgeoning demonstrations. Throughout the early 1990's, the complaint alleges, Nigerian military and police forces attacked Ogoni villages, beating, raping, killing, and arresting residents and destroying or looting property. Petitioners further allege that respondents aided and abetted these atrocities by, among other things, providing the Nigerian forces with food, transportation, and compensation, as well as by allowing the Nigerian military to use respondents' property as a staging ground for attacks.
Following the alleged atrocities, petitioners moved to the United States where they have been granted political asylum and now reside as legal residents. See Supp. Brief for Petitioners 3, and n. 2. They filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging jurisdiction under the Alien Tort Statute and requesting relief under customary international law. The ATS provides, in full, that "[t]he district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." 28 U.S.C. § 1350. According to petitioners, respondents violated the law of nations by aiding and abetting the Nigerian Government in committing (1) extrajudicial killings; (2) crimes against humanity; (3) torture and cruel treatment; (4) arbitrary arrest and detention; (5) violations of the rights to life, liberty, security, and association; (6) forced exile; and (7) property destruction. The District Court dismissed the first, fifth, sixth, and seventh claims, reasoning that the facts alleged to support those claims did not give rise to a violation of the law of nations. The court denied respondents' motion to dismiss with respect to the remaining claims, but certified its order for interlocutory appeal pursuant to § 1292(b).
The Second Circuit dismissed the entire complaint, reasoning that the law of nations does not recognize corporate liability. 621 F.3d 111 (2010). We granted certiorari to consider that question. 565 U.S. ----, 132 S.Ct. 472, 181 L.Ed.2d 292 (2011). After oral argument, we directed the parties to file supplemental briefs addressing an additional question: "Whether and under what circumstances the [ATS] allows courts to recognize a cause of action for violations of the law of nations occurring within the territory of a sovereign other than the United States." 565 U.S. ----, 132 S.Ct. 1738, 182 L.Ed.2d 270 (2012). We heard oral argument again and now affirm the judgment below, based on our answer to the second question.
II
Passed as part of the Judiciary Act of 1789, the ATS was invoked twice in the late 18th century, but then only once more over the next 167 years. Act of Sept. 24, 1789, § 9, 1 Stat. 77; see Moxon v. The Fanny, 17 F. Cas. 942 (No. 9,895) (D.C.Pa.1793) ; Bolchos v. Darrel, 3 F. Cas. 810 (No. 1,607) (D.C.S.C.1795) ; O'Reilly de Camara v. Brooke, 209 U.S. 45, 28 S.Ct. 439, 52 L.Ed. 676 (1908) ; Khedivial Line, S.A.E. v. Seafarers' Int'l Union, 278 F.2d 49, 51-52 (C.A.2 1960) (per curiam ). The statute provides district courts with jurisdiction to hear certain claims, but does not expressly provide any causes of action. We held in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, 542 U.S. 692, 714, 124 S.Ct. 2739, 159 L.Ed.2d 718 (2004), however, that the First Congress did not intend the provision to be "stillborn." The grant of jurisdiction is instead "best read as having been enacted on the understanding that the common law would provide a cause of action for [a] modest number of international law violations." Id., at 724, 124 S.Ct. 2739. We thus held that federal courts may "recognize private claims [for such violations] under federal common law." Id., at 732, 124 S.Ct. 2739. The Court in Sosa rejected the plaintiff's claim in that case for "arbitrary arrest and detention," on the ground that it failed to state a violation of the law of nations with the requisite "definite content and acceptance among civilized nations." Id., at 699, 732, 124 S.Ct. 2739. The question here is not whether petitioners have stated a proper claim under the ATS, but whether a claim may reach conduct occurring in the territory of a foreign sovereign. Respondents contend that claims under the ATS do not, relying primarily on a canon of statutory interpretation known as the presumption against extraterritorial application. That canon provides that "[w]hen a statute gives no clear indication of an extraterritorial application, it has none," Morrison v. National Australia Bank Ltd., 561 U.S. 247, ----, 130 S.Ct. 2869, 2878, 177 L.Ed.2d 535 (2010), and reflects the "presumption that United States law governs domestically but does not rule the world," Microsoft Corp. v. AT & T Corp., 550 U.S. 437, 454, 127 S.Ct. 1746, 167 L.Ed.2d 737 (2007).
This presumption "serves to protect against unintended clashes between our laws and those of other nations which could result in international discord." EEOC v. Arabian American Oil Co., 499 U.S. 244, 248, 111 S.Ct. 1227, 113 L.Ed.2d 274 (1991) (Aramco ). As this Court has explained:
"For us to run interference in ... a delicate field of international relations there must be present the affirmative intention of the Congress clearly expressed. It alone has the facilities necessary to make fairly such an important policy decision where the possibilities of international discord are so evident and retaliative action so certain." Benz v. Compania Naviera Hidalgo, S.A., 353 U.S. 138, 147 [77 S.Ct. 699, 1 L.Ed.2d 709] (1957). The presumption against extraterritorial application helps ensure that the Judiciary does not erroneously adopt an interpretation of U.S. law that carries foreign policy consequences not clearly intended by the political branches.
We typically apply the presumption to discern whether an Act of Congress regulating conduct applies abroad. See, e.g., Aramco, supra, at 246, 111 S.Ct. 1227 ("These cases present the issue whether Title VII applies extraterritorially to regulate the employment practices of United States employers who employ United States citizens abroad"); Morrison, supra, at ----, 130 S.Ct., at 2876-2877 (noting that the question of extraterritorial application was a "merits question," not a question of jurisdiction). The ATS, on the other hand, is "strictly jurisdictional." Sosa, 542 U.S., at 713, 124 S.Ct. 2739. It does not directly regulate conduct or afford relief. It instead allows federal courts to recognize certain causes of action based on sufficiently definite norms of international law. But we think the principles underlying the canon of interpretation similarly constrain courts considering causes of action that may be brought under the ATS.
Indeed, the danger of unwarranted judicial interference in the conduct of foreign policy is magnified in the context of the ATS, because the question is not what Congress has done but instead what courts may do. This Court in Sosa repeatedly stressed the need for judicial caution in considering which claims could be brought under the ATS, in light of foreign policy concerns. As the Court explained, "the potential [foreign policy] implications ... of recognizing.... causes [under the ATS] should make courts particularly wary of impinging on the discretion of the Legislative and Executive Branches in managing foreign affairs." Id., at 727, 124 S.Ct. 2739;
see also id., at 727-728, 124 S.Ct. 2739 ("Since many attempts by federal courts to craft remedies for the violation of new norms of international law would raise risks of adverse foreign policy consequences, they should be undertaken, if at all, with great caution");
id., at 727, 124 S.Ct. 2739 ("[T]he possible collateral consequences of making international rules privately actionable argue for judicial caution"). These concerns, which are implicated in any case arising under the ATS, are all the more pressing when the question is whether a cause of action under the ATS reaches conduct within the territory of another sovereign.
These concerns are not diminished by the fact that Sosa limited federal courts to recognizing causes of action only for alleged violations of international law norms that are " 'specific, universal, and obligatory.' " Id., at 732, 124 S.Ct. 2739 (quoting In re Estate of Marcos, Human Rights Litigation, 25 F.3d 1467, 1475 (C.A.9 1994) ). As demonstrated by Congress's enactment of the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991, 106 Stat. 73, note following 28 U.S.C. § 1350, identifying such a norm is only the beginning of defining a cause of action. See id., § 3 (providing detailed definitions for extrajudicial killing and torture); id., § 2 (specifying who may be liable, creating a rule of exhaustion, and establishing a statute of limitations). Each of these decisions carries with it significant foreign policy implications.
The principles underlying the presumption against extraterritoriality thus constrain courts exercising their power under the ATS.
III
Petitioners contend that even if the presumption applies, the text, history, and purposes of the ATS rebut it for causes of action brought under that statute. It is true that Congress, even in a jurisdictional provision, can indicate that it intends federal law to apply to conduct occurring abroad. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 1091(e) (2006 ed., Supp. V) (providing jurisdiction over the offense of genocide "regardless of where the offense is committed" if the alleged offender is, among other things, "present in the United States"). But to rebut the presumption, the ATS would need to evince a "clear indication of extraterritoriality." Morrison, 561 U.S., at ----, 130 S.Ct., at 2883. It does not.
To begin, nothing in the text of the statute suggests that Congress intended causes of action recognized under it to have extraterritorial reach. The ATS covers actions by aliens for violations of the law of nations, but that does not imply extraterritorial reach-such violations affecting aliens can occur either within or outside the United States. Nor does the fact that the text reaches "any civil action" suggest application to torts committed abroad; it is well established that generic terms like "any" or "every" do not rebut the presumption against extraterritoriality. See, e.g., id., at ----, 130 S.Ct., at 2881-2882; Small v. United States, 544 U.S. 385, 388, 125 S.Ct. 1752, 161 L.Ed.2d 651 (2005) ; Aramco, 499 U.S., at 248-250, 111 S.Ct. 1227; Foley Bros., Inc. v. Filardo, 336 U.S. 281, 287, 69 S.Ct. 575, 93 L.Ed. 680 (1949).
Petitioners make much of the fact that the ATS provides jurisdiction over civil actions for "torts" in violation of the law of nations. They claim that in using that word, the First Congress "necessarily meant to provide for jurisdiction over extraterritorial transitory torts that could arise on foreign soil." Supp. Brief for Petitioners 18. For support, they cite the common-law doctrine that allowed courts to assume jurisdiction over such "transitory torts," including actions for personal injury, arising abroad. See Mostyn v. Fabrigas, 1 Cowp. 161, 177, 98 Eng. Rep. 1021, 1030 (1774) (Mansfield, L.) ("[A]ll actions of a transitory nature that arise abroad may be laid as happening in an English county"); Dennick v. Railroad Co., 103 U.S. 11, 18, 26 L.Ed. 439 (1881)
("Wherever, by either the common law or the statute law of a State, a right of action has become fixed and a legal liability incurred, that liability may be enforced and the right of action pursued in any court which has jurisdiction of such matters and can obtain jurisdiction of the parties").
Under the transitory torts doctrine, however, "the only justification for allowing a party to recover when the cause of action arose in another civilized jurisdiction is a well founded belief that it was a cause of action in that place." Cuba R. Co. v. Crosby, 222 U.S. 473, 479, 32 S.Ct. 132, 56 L.Ed. 274 (1912) (majority opinion of Holmes, J.). The question under Sosa is not whether a federal court has jurisdiction to entertain a cause of action provided by foreign or even international law. The question is instead whether the court has authority to recognize a cause of action under U.S. law to enforce a norm of international law. The reference to "tort" does not demonstrate that the First Congress "necessarily meant" for those causes of action to reach conduct in the territory of a foreign sovereign. In the end, nothing in the text of the ATS evinces the requisite clear indication of extraterritoriality.
Nor does the historical background against which the ATS was enacted overcome the presumption against application to conduct in the territory of another sovereign. See Morrison,supra, at ----, 130 S.Ct., at 2883 (noting that "[a]ssuredly context can be consulted" in determining whether a cause of action applies abroad). We explained in Sosa that when Congress passed the ATS, "three principal offenses against the law of nations" had been identified by Blackstone: violation of safe conducts, infringement of the rights of ambassadors, and piracy. 542 U.S., at 723, 724, 124 S.Ct. 2739; see 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 68 (1769). The first two offenses have no necessary extraterritorial application. Indeed, Blackstone-in describing them-did so in terms of conduct occurring within the forum nation. See ibid. (describing the right of safe conducts for those "who are here"); 1 id., at 251 (1765) (explaining that safe conducts grant a member of one society "a right to intrude into another"); id., at 245-248 (recognizing the king's power to "receiv[e] ambassadors at home" and detailing their rights in the state "wherein they are appointed to reside"); see also E. De Vattel, Law of Nations 465 (J. Chitty et al. transl. and ed. 1883) ("[O]n his entering the country to which he is sent, and making himself known, [the ambassador] is under the protection of the law of nations ...").
Two notorious episodes involving violations of the law of nations occurred in the United States shortly before passage of the ATS. Each concerned the rights of ambassadors, and each involved conduct within the Union. In 1784, a French adventurer verbally and physically assaulted Francis Barbe Marbois-the Secretary of the French Legion-in Philadelphia. The assault led the French Minister Plenipotentiary to lodge a formal protest with the Continental Congress and threaten to leave the country unless an adequate remedy were provided. Respublica v. De Longchamps, 1 Dall. 111, 1 L.Ed. 59 (O.T.Phila.1784) ; Sosa, supra, at 716-717, and n. 11, 124 S.Ct. 2739. And in 1787, a New York constable entered the Dutch Ambassador's house and arrested one of his domestic servants. See Casto, The Federal Courts' Protective Jurisdiction over Torts Committed in Violation of the Law of Nations, 18 Conn. L.Rev. 467, 494 (1986). At the request of Secretary of Foreign Affairs John Jay, the Mayor of New York City arrested the constable in turn, but cautioned that because " 'neither Congress nor our [State] Legislature have yet passed any act respecting a breach of the privileges of Ambassadors,' " the extent of any available relief would depend on the common law. See Bradley, The Alien Tort Statute and Article III, 42 Va. J. Int'l L. 587, 641-642 (2002) (quoting 3 Dept. of State, The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States of America 447 (1837)). The two cases in which the ATS was invoked shortly after its passage also concerned conduct within the territory of the United States. See Bolchos, 3 F. Cas. 810 (wrongful seizure of slaves from a vessel while in port in the United States); Moxon, 17 F. Cas. 942 (wrongful seizure in United States territorial waters).
These prominent contemporary examples-immediately before and after passage of the ATS-provide no support for the proposition that Congress expected causes of action to be brought under the statute for violations of the law of nations occurring abroad.
The third example of a violation of the law of nations familiar to the Congress that enacted the ATS was piracy. Piracy typically occurs on the high seas, beyond the territorial jurisdiction of the United States or any other country. See 4 Blackstone, supra, at 72 ("The offence of piracy, by common law, consists of committing those acts of robbery and depredation upon the high seas, which, if committed upon land, would have amounted to felony there"). This Court has generally treated the high seas the same as foreign soil for purposes of the presumption against extraterritorial application. See, e.g., Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, Inc., 509 U.S. 155, 173-174, 113 S.Ct. 2549, 125 L.Ed.2d 128 (1993) (declining to apply a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act to conduct occurring on the high seas); Argentine Republic v. Amerada Hess Shipping Corp., 488 U.S. 428, 440, 109 S.Ct. 683, 102 L.Ed.2d 818 (1989) (declining to apply a provision of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 to the high seas). Petitioners contend that because Congress surely intended the ATS to provide jurisdiction for actions against pirates, it necessarily anticipated the statute would apply to conduct occurring abroad.
Applying U.S. law to pirates, however, does not typically impose the sovereign will of the United States onto conduct occurring within the territorial jurisdiction of another sovereign, and therefore carries less direct foreign policy consequences. Pirates were fair game wherever found, by any nation, because they generally did not operate within any jurisdiction. See 4 Blackstone, supra, at 71. We do not think that the existence of a cause of action against them is a sufficient basis for concluding that other causes of action under the ATS reach conduct that does occur within the territory of another sovereign; pirates may well be a category unto themselves. See Morrison, 561 U.S., at ----, 130 S.Ct., at 2883 ("[W]hen a statute provides for some extraterritorial application, the presumption against extraterritoriality operates to limit that provision to its terms"); see also Microsoft Corp., 550 U.S., at 455-456, 127 S.Ct. 1746.
Petitioners also point to a 1795 opinion authored by Attorney General William Bradford. See Breach of Neutrality, 1 Op. Atty. Gen. 57. In 1794, in the midst of war between France and Great Britain, and notwithstanding the American official policy of neutrality, several U.S. citizens joined a French privateer fleet and attacked and plundered the British colony of Sierra Leone. In response to a protest from the British Ambassador, Attorney General Bradford responded as follows:
So far ... as the transactions complained of originated or took place in a foreign country, they are not within the cognizance of our courts; nor can the actors be legally prosecuted or punished for them by the United States. But crimes committed on the high seas are within the jurisdiction of the ... courts of the United States; and, so far as the offence was committed thereon, I am inclined to think that it may be legally prosecuted in ... those courts.... But some doubt rests on this point, in consequence of the terms in which the [applicable criminal law] is expressed. But there can be no doubt that the company or individuals who have been injured by these acts of hostility have a remedy by a civil suit in the courts of the United States; jurisdiction being expressly given to these courts in all cases where an alien sues for a tort only, in violation of the laws of nations, or a treaty of the United States...." Id., at 58-59.
Petitioners read the last sentence as confirming that "the Founding generation understood the ATS to apply to law of nations violations committed on the territory of a foreign sovereign." Supp. Brief for Petitioners 33. Respondents counter that when Attorney General Bradford referred to "these acts of hostility," he meant the acts only insofar as they took place on the high seas, and even if his conclusion were broader, it was only because the applicable treaty had extraterritorial reach. See Supp. Brief for Respondents 28-30. The Solicitor General, having once read the opinion to stand for the proposition that an "ATS suit could be brought against American citizens for breaching neutrality with Britain only if acts did not take place in a foreign country," Supp. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 8, n. 1 (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted), now suggests the opinion "could have been meant to encompass ... conduct [occurring within the foreign territory]," id., at 8.
Attorney General Bradford's opinion defies a definitive reading and we need not adopt one here. Whatever its precise meaning, it deals with U.S. citizens who, by participating in an attack taking place both on the high seas and on a foreign shore, violated a treaty between the United States and Great Britain. The opinion hardly suffices to counter the weighty concerns underlying the presumption against extraterritoriality.
Finally, there is no indication that the ATS was passed to make the United States a uniquely hospitable forum for the enforcement of international norms. As Justice Story put it, "No nation has ever yet pretended to be the custos morum of the whole world...." United States v. The La Jeune Eugenie, 26 F. Cas. 832, 847 (No. 15,551) (C.C.Mass.1822). It is implausible to suppose that the First Congress wanted their fledgling Republic-struggling to receive international recognition-to be the first. Indeed, the parties offer no evidence that any nation, meek or mighty, presumed to do such a thing.
The United States was, however, embarrassed by its potential inability to provide judicial relief to foreign officials injured in the United States. Bradley, 42 Va. J. Int'l L., at 641. Such offenses against ambassadors violated the law of nations, "and if not adequately redressed could rise to an issue of war." Sosa, 542 U.S., at 715, 124 S.Ct. 2739; cf. The Federalist No. 80, p. 536 (J. Cooke ed. 1961) (A. Hamilton) ("As the denial or perversion of justice ... is with reason classed among the just causes of war, it will follow that the federal judiciary ought to have cognizance of all causes in which the citizens of other countries are concerned"). The ATS ensured that the United States could provide a forum for adjudicating such incidents. See Sosa, supra, at 715-718, and n. 11, 124 S.Ct. 2739. Nothing about this historical context suggests that Congress also intended federal common law under the ATS to provide a cause of action for conduct occurring in the territory of another sovereign.
Indeed, far from avoiding diplomatic strife, providing such a cause of action could have generated it. Recent experience bears this out. See Doe v. Exxon Mobil Corp., 654 F.3d 11, 77-78 (C.A.D.C.2011) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting in part) (listing recent objections to extraterritorial applications of the ATS by Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom). Moreover, accepting petitioners' view would imply that other nations, also applying the law of nations, could hale our citizens into their courts for alleged violations of the law of nations occurring in the United States, or anywhere else in the world. The presumption against extraterritoriality guards against our courts triggering such serious foreign policy consequences, and instead defers such decisions, quite appropriately, to the political branches.
We therefore conclude that the presumption against extraterritoriality applies to claims under the ATS, and that nothing in the statute rebuts that presumption. "[T]here is no clear indication of extraterritoriality here," Morrison, 561 U.S., at ----, 130 S.Ct., at 2883, and petitioners' case seeking relief for violations of the law of nations occurring outside the United States is barred.
IV
On these facts, all the relevant conduct took place outside the United States. And even where the claims touch and concern the territory of the United States, they must do so with sufficient force to displace the presumption against extraterritorial application. See Morrison, 561 U.S. 247, 130 S.Ct., at 2883-2888. Corporations are often present in many countries, and it would reach too far to say that mere corporate presence suffices. If Congress were to determine otherwise, a statute more specific than the ATS would be required.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
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.
Appellant John Connally was indicted, tried, and convicted in the Superior Court of Walker County, Ga., for possession of marihuana in violation of the Georgia Controlled Substances Act, Ga. Code Ann. § 79A-801 et seq. (1973). On his appeal to the Supreme Court of Georgia, he asserted trial error in four respects: the constitutional impropriety of the fee system governing the issuance of search warrants by justices of the peace in Georgia; the deprivation of his right of confrontation when revelation of an informer’s identity was refused; the failure to give a requested instruction on joint occupancy of premises; and the failure to enter a judgment of acquittal because of an alleged absence of proof of the type of cannabis involved. The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed, with two justices dissenting (one on the first issue) and one justice concurring as to the second, third, and fourth issues and in the judgment. 237 Ga. 203, 227 S. E. 2d 352 (1976). The appellant, on direct appeal here, raises the first two questions. We deem the challenge to the warrant procedure worthy of consideration.
Pursuant to a search warrant issued by a justice of the peace, appellant's house was raided and marihuana found there was seized. Connally was arrested.. At his trial he moved to suppress the evidence so seized on the ground that the justice who had issued the warrant was not “a neutral and detached magistrate” because he had a pecuniary interest in issuing the warrant. The trial court denied that motion, and the Supreme Court of Georgia, in affirming, rejected the constitutional challenge.
Under Ga. Code Ann. § 24-1601 (1971), the fee for the issuance of a search warrant by a Georgia justice of the peace “shall be” $5, “and it shall be lawful for said [justice] of the peace to charge and collect the same.” If the requested warrant is refused, the justice of the peace collects no fee for reviewing and denying the application. The fee so charged apparently goes into county funds and from there to the issuing justice as compensation.
At a pretrial hearing in Connally's case, the issuing justice testified on cross-examination that he was a justice primarily because he was “interested in a livelihood,” Record 502; that he received no salary, ibid.; that his compensation was “directly dependent on how many warrants” he issued, ibid.; that since January 1, 1973, he had issued “some 10,000” warrants for arrests or searches, ibid.; and that he had no legal background other than attendance at seminars and reading law, id., at 506-508, 512-515.
Fifty years ago, in Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U. S. 510 (1927), the Court considered state statutes that permitted a charge of violating the State’s prohibition laws to be tried without a jury before a village mayor. Any fine imposed was divided between the State and the village. The latter’s share was used to hire attorneys and detectives to arrest offenders and prosecute them before the mayor. When the mayor convicted, he received fees and costs, and these were in addition to his salary. The Court, in an opinion by Mr. Chief Justice Taft, unanimously held that subjecting a defendant to trial before a judge having “a direct, personal, pecuniary interest in convicting the defendant,” that is, in the $12 of fees and costs imposed, id., at 523, 531, effected a denial of due process in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
This approach was reiterated in Ward v. Village of Monroeville, 409 U. S. 57 (1972). There, an Ohio statute authorized mayors to sit as judges of ordinance violations and certain traffic offenses. The petitioner was so convicted and fined by the mayor of Monroeville. Although the mayor had no direct personal financial stake in the outcome of cases before him, a major portion of the village’s income was derived from the fines, fees, and costs imposed in the mayor’s court. This Court, id., at 59-60, cited Tumey and repeated the test formulated in that case, namely, “whether the may- or’s situation is one ‘which would offer a possible temptation to the average man as a judge to forget the burden of proof required to convict the defendant, or which might lead him not to hold the balance nice, clear and true between the State and the accused ....’” 409 U. S., at 60. Dugan v. Ohio, 277 U. S. 61 (1928), where a mayor had judicial, functions but only “very limited executive authority,” and the executive power rested in a city manager and a commission, was distinguished as a situation where “the Mayor’s relationship to the finances and financial policy of the city was too remote to warrant a presumption of bias toward conviction in prosecutions before him as [a] judge,” 409 U. S., at 60-61, and the possibility of a later de novo trial in another court was held to be of no constitutional relevance because the defendant was “entitled to a neutral and detached judge in the first instance.” Id., at 61-62.
The present case, of course, is not precisely the same as Tumey or as Ward, but the principle of those cases, we conclude, is applicable to the Georgia system for the issuance of search warrants by justices of the peace. The justice is not salaried. He is paid, so far as search warrants are concerned, by receipt of the fee prescribed by statute for his issuance of the warrant, and he receives nothing for his denial of the warrant. His financial welfare, therefore, is enhanced by positive action and is not enhanced by negative action. The situation, again, is one which offers “a possible temptation to the average man as a judge ... or which might lead him not to hold the balance nice, clear and true between the State and the accused.” It is, in other words, another situation where the defendant is subjected to what surely is judicial action by an officer of a court who has “a direct, personal, substantial, pecuniary interest” in his conclusion to issue or to deny the warrant. See Bennett v. Cottingham, 290 F. Supp. 759, 762-763 (ND Ala. 1968), aff’d, 393 U. S. 317 (1969).
Shadwick v. City of Tampa, 407 U. S. 345 (1972), does not weigh to the contrary. The issue there centered in the qualification of municipal court clerks to issue arrest warrants for breaches of ordinances. The Court held that the clerks, although laymen, worked within the judicial branch under the supervision of judges and were qualified to determine the existence of probable cause. They were, therefore, “neutral and detached magistrates for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.” Id., at 346. There was no element of personal financial gain in the clerks’ issuance or nonissuance of arrest warrants. Cf. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 449-453 (1971).
We disagree with the Supreme Court of Georgia’s rulings, 237 Ga., at 205-206, 227 S. E. 2d, at 354-355, that the amount of the search warrant fee is de minimis in the present context, that the unilateral character of the justice’s adjudication of probable cause distinguishes the present case from Turney, and that, instead, this case equates with Bevan v. Krieger, 289 U. S. 459, 465-466 (1933), where a notary public’s fee for taking a deposition was measured by the folios of testimony taken.
We therefore hold that the issuance of the search warrant by the justice of the peace in Connally’s case effected a violation of the protections afforded him by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Georgia is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
Cf. Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465 (1976).
See Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 14 (1948); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 453 (1971); Shadwick v. City of Tampa, 407 U. S. 345, 350 (1972).
“Q In the case of a search warrant, I believe you receive compensation ultimately in the amount of $5.00, if you issue the warrant, do you not?
“A That’s true.
“Q If you choose not to issue the warrant, what compensation do you receive?
“A I don’t know.
“Q You receive no compensation?
“A Well, I never have, I’ll put it that way.
“Q Now with respect to issuing the search warrant, Mr. Murphy, does the $5.00, since that’s the only way you get paid, does that enter your mind when you’re sitting there contemplating whether or not to issue a search warrant?
“A It has.
“Q As a matter of fact, I believe you quite honestly and candidly told me on the day we had that preliminary hearing up here, I believe that was on, the best I can recall, it was on the 18th of May, that you would be a liar if you said it didn’t enter your mind?
“A That’s what I said.
“Q Is that true now, you would be [a] liar if you said it didn’t enter your mind?
“A It’s only human nature to me.
“Q Okay. Now, I believe you said you had been a J. P. since January 1st of 1973, is that correct?
“A Yes, sir.
“Q All right. Now, since January — you have to run for that office, or is it an appointed office?
“A Yes sir, it’s an elected office.
“Q Well, you ran for the office for the purpose of having employment and earning a living, is that correct?
“A That’s part of it.
“Q Of course, you like in other people’s motivations, primarily you were interested in a livelihood?
“A True.
“Q Now do you support yourself with the salary or with the fees that you receive in a J. P. system down here, or as J. P.?
“A Uh huh, yes sir.
“Q And you receive no salary at all, so that your compensation is directly dependent on how many warrants you issue, is that correct?
“A That’s right.
“Q Now, since January 1st, 1973, I believe you told me the other day, and let me ask you again, you have issued some 10,000 warrants of the arrest — either arrest or search warrants, is that correct?
“A That’s pretty close, total warrants.
“Q Okay. Total warrants?
“A Criminal warrants.
“Q That would be right about 10,000 of them?
“A Uh huh.
“Q Now with respect to the qualifications that you have for your office, of course, the people of Walker County elected you and under the law that would qualify you, but I believe the law prescribes some qualifications that you must have prior to the time you are elected, what are those qualifications?
“A You have to be a resident of the militia district in which you’re running for that office, registered voter, it might sound stupid but that’s all I remember.
“Q Okay. Now of course, the people have selected you as the J. P. for this militia district, and you have the qualifications that you mentioned that you are a resident and of age and so on and so forth, other than those, do you have any background, legal background or other background with respect to the instruments and issuance of warrants?
“A No, sir.
“Q So, the qualifications that you have mentioned are your sole qualifications for holding your job, is that correct?
“A That’s right.
“Q Okay.
“A Up to the time I was elected.
"MR. DANIEL: Okay, sir, that’s all I have.
“THE COURT: Have you done anything since you were elected to improve any qualifications that might be necessary?
“THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
“THE COURT: What have you done?
“THE WITNESS: I have attended several training seminars sponsored by our J. P. State Association, as a matter of fact, I’m leaving this afternoon if I can get out of here to go to a 2-day training seminar in Warner Robbins, Georgia, sponsored by the same State Association.
“I’ve bought one manual, study course from Judson-Pace at my own expense and attempted to learn a little bit more about the duties.” Record 499-500, 501-502, 506-508.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Black
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question squarely presented here is whether a State, consistently with the United States Constitution, can make it a crime for the editor of a daily newspaper to write and publish an editorial on election day urging people to vote a certain way on issues submitted to them.
On November 6, 1962, Birmingham, Alabama, held an election for the people to decide whether they preferred to keep their existing city commission form of government or replace it with a mayor-council government. On election day the Birmingham Post-Herald, a dhily newspaper, carried an editorial written by its editor, appellant, James E. Mills, which strongly urged the people to adopt the mayor-council form of government. Mills was later arrested on a complaint charging that by publishing the editorial on election day he had violated § 285 of the Alabama Corrupt Practices Act, Ala. Code, 1940, Tit. 17, §§ 268-286, which makes it a crime “to do any electioneering or to solicit any votes ... in support of or in opposition to any proposition that is being voted on on the day on which the election affecting such candidates or propositions is being held.” The trial court sustained demurrers to the complaint on the grounds that the state statute abridged freedom of speech and press in violation of the Alabama Constitution and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. On appeal by the State, the Alabama Supreme Court held that publication of the editorial on election day undoubtedly violated the state law and then went on to reverse the trial court by holding that the state statute as applied did not unconstitutionally abridge freedom of speech or press. Recognizing that the state law did limit and restrict both speech and press, the State Supreme Court nevertheless sustained it as a valid exercise of the State’s police power chiefly because, as that court said, the press “restriction, everything considered, is within the field of reasonableness” and “not an unreasonable limitation upon free speech, which includes free press.” 278 Ala. 188, 195, 196, 176 So. 2d 884, 890. The case is here on appeal under 28 U. S. C. § 1257 (1964 ed.).
I.
The State has moved to dismiss this appeal on the ground that the Alabama Supreme Court’s judgment is not a “final judgment” and therefore not appealable under § 1257. The State argues that since the Alabama Supreme Court remanded the case to the trial court for further proceedings not inconsistent with its opinion (which would include a trial), the Supreme Court’s judgment cannot be considered “final.” This argument has a surface plausibility, since it is true the judgment of the State Supreme Court did not literally end the case. It did, however, render a judgment binding upon the trial court that it must convict Mills under this state statute if he wrote and published the editorial. Mills concedes that he did, and he therefore has no defense in the Alabama trial court. Thus if the case goes back to the trial court, the trial, so far as this record shows, would be no more than a few formal gestures leading inexorably towards a conviction, and then another appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court for it formally to repeat its rejection of Mills’ constitutional contentions whereupon the case could then once more wind its weary way back to us as a judgment unquestionably final and appealable. Such a roundabout process would not only be an inexcusable delay of the benefits Congress intended to grant by providing for appeal to this Court, but it would also result in a completely unnecessary waste of time and energy in judicial systems already troubled by delays due to congested dockets. The language of § 1257 as we construed it in Pope v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 345 U. S. 379, 381-383, does not require a result leading to such consequences. See also Construction Laborers v. Curry, 371 U. S. 542, 548-551; Richfield Oil Corp. v. State Board, 329 U. S. 69, 72-74. Following those cases we hold that we have jurisdiction.
II.
We come now to the merits. The First Amendment, which applies to the States through the Fourteenth, prohibits laws “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The question here is whether it abridges freedom of the press for a State to punish a newspaper editor for doing no more than publishing an editorial on election day urging people to vote a particular way in the election. We should point out at once that this question in no way involves the extent of a State's power to regulate conduct in and around the polls in order to maintain peace, order and decorum there. The sole reason for the charge that Mills violated the law is that he wrote and published an editorial on election day urging Birmingham voters to cast their votes in favor of changing their form of government.
Whatever differences may exist about interpretations of the First Amendment, there is practically universal agreement that a major purpose of that Amendment was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs. This of course includes discussions of candidates, structures and forms of government, the manner in which government is operated or should be operated, and all such matters relating to political processes. The Constitution specifically selected the press, which includes not only newspapers, books, and magazines, but also humble leaflets and circulars, see Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U. S. 444, to play an important role in the discussion of public affairs. Thus the press serves-, and was designed to serve as a powerful antidote to any abuses of power by governmental officials and as -a constitutionally chosen means for keeping officials elected by the people responsible to all the people whom they were selected to serve. Suppression of the right of the press to praise or criticize governmental agents and to clamor and contend for or against change, which is all that this editorial did, muzzles one of the very agencies the Framers of our Constitution thoughtfully and deliberately selected to improve our society and keep it free. The Alabama Corrupt Practices Act by providing criminal penalties for publishing editorials such as the one here silences the press at a time when it can be most effective. It is difficult to conceive of a more obvious and flagrant abridgment of the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press.
Admitting that the state law restricted a newspaper editor’s freedom to publish editorials on election day, the Alabama Supreme Court nevertheless sustained the constitutionality of the law on the ground that the restrictions on the press were only “reasonable restrictions” or at least “within the field of reasonableness.” The court reached this conclusion because it thought the law imposed only a minor limitation on the press — restricting it only on election days — and because the court thought the law served a good purpose. It said:
“It is a salutary legislative enactment that protects the public from confusive last-minute charges and countercharges and the distribution of propaganda in an effort to influence voters on an election day; when as a practical matter, because of lack of time, such matters cannot be answered or their truth determined until after the election is over.” 278 Ala. 188, 195-196, 176 So. 2d 884, 890.
This argument, even if it were relevant to the constitutionality of the law, has a fatal flaw. The state statute leaves people free to hurl their campaign charges up to the last minute of the day before election. The law held valid by the Alabama Supreme Court then goes on to make it a crime to answer those “last-minute” charges on election day, the only time they can be effectively answered. Because the law prevents any adequate reply to these charges, it is wholly ineffective in protecting the electorate “from confusive last-minute charges and countercharges.” We hold that no test of reasonableness can save a state law from invalidation as a violation of the First Amendment when that law makes it a crime for a newspaper editor to do no more than urge people to vote one way or another in a publicly held election.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Alabama is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The editorial said in part: “Mayor Hanes’ proposal to buy the votes of city employees with a promise of pay raises which would cost the taxpayers nearly a million dollars a year was cause enough to destroy any confidence the public might have had left in .him.
“It was another good reason why the voters should vote overwhelmingly today in favor of Mayor-Council government.
“Now Mr. Hanes, in his arrogance, proposes to set himself up as news censor at City Hall and 'win or lose’ today he says he will instruct all city employees under him to neither give out news regarding the public business with which they are entrusted nor to discuss it with reporters either from the Post-Herald or the News.
“If Mayor Hanes displays such arrogant disregard of the public’s right to know on the eve of the election what can we expect in the future if the City Commission should be retained?
“Let’s take no chances.
“Birmingham and the people of Birmingham deserve a better break. A vote for Mayor-Council government will give it to them.”
“§ 285 (599) Corrupt practices at elections enumerated and defined. — It is a corrupt practice for any person on any election day to intimidate or attempt to intimidate an elector or any of the election officers; or, obstruct or hinder or attempt to obstruct or hinder, or prevent or attempt to prevent the forming of the lines of the voters awaiting their opportunity or time to enter the election booths; or to hire or to let for hire any automobile or other conveyance for the purpose of conveying electors to and from the polls; or, to do any electioneering or to solicit any votes or to promise to cast any votes for or against the election or nomination of any candidate, or in support of or in opposition to any proposition that is being voted on on the day on which the election affecting such candidates or propositions is being held.” Ala. Code, 1940, Tit. 17.
Section 1257 provides in part: “Final judgments or decrees rendered by the highest court of a State in which a decision could be had, may be reviewed by the Supreme Court . . . .”
This case was instituted more than three and one-half years ago. If jurisdiction is refused, we cannot know that it will not take another three and one-half years to get this constitutional question finally determined.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Thomas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In United States v. New Mexico, 455 U. S. 720 (1982), we held that a State generally may impose a nondiscriminatory tax upon a private company’s proceeds from contracts with the Federal Government. This case asks us to determine whether that same rule applies when the federal contractor renders its services on an Indian reservation. We hold that it does.
I
Under the Federal Lands Highways Program, 23 U. S. C. §204, the Federal Government finances road construction and improvement projects on federal public roads, including Indian reservation roads. Various federal agencies oversee the planning of particular projects and the allocation of funding to them. §§202(d), 204. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs has the responsibility to “plan, survey, design and construct” Indian reservation roads. 25 CFR § 170.3 (1998).
Over a several-year period, the Bureau of Indian Affairs contracted with Blaze Construction Company to build, repair, and improve roads on the Navajo, Hopi, Fort Apache, Colorado River, Tohono O’Odham, and San Carlos Apache Indian Reservations in Arizona. Blaze is incorporated under the laws of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and is owned by a member of that Tribe. But, as the company concedes, Blaze is the equivalent of a non-Indian for purposes of this case because none of its work occurred on the Blackfeet Reservation. Brief in Opposition 2, n. 1; see Washington v. Confederated Tribes of Colville Reservation, 447 U. S. 134, 160-161 (1980).
At the end of the contracting period, the Arizona Department of Revenue (Department) issued a tax deficiency assessment against Blaze for its failure to pay Arizona’s transaction privilege tax on the proceeds from its contracts with the Bureau; that tax is levied on the gross receipts of companies doing business in the State. See Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§42-1306, 42-1310.16 (1991). Blaze protested the assessment and prevailed at the end of administrative proceedings, but, on review, the Arizona Tax Court granted summary-judgment in the Department’s favor. The Arizona Court of Appeals reversed. 190 Ariz. 262, 947 P. 2d 836 (1997). It rejected the Department’s argument that our decision in New Mexico, supra, controlled the case and held that federal law pre-empted the application of Arizona’s transaction privilege tax to Blaze. The Arizona Supreme Court denied the Department’s petition for review, with one justice voting to grant the petition. We granted certiorari, 523 U. S. 1117 (1998), and now reverse.
II
In New Mexico, we considered whether a State could impose gross receipts and use taxes on the property, income, and purchases of private federal contractors. To remedy “the confusing nature of our precedents” in this area, 455 U. S., at 733, we announced a clear rule:
“[T]ax immunity is appropriate in only one circumstance: when the levy falls on the United States itself, or on an agency or instrumentality so closely connected to the Government that the two cannot realistically be viewed as separate entities, at least insofar as the activity being taxed is concerned.” Id., at 735.
We reasoned that this “narrow approach” to the scope of governmental tax immunity “accordfed] with competing constitutional imperatives, by giving full range to each sovereign’s taxing authority.” Id., at 735-736 (citing Graves v. New York ex rel. O’Keefe, 306 U. S. 466, 483 (1939)). For that immunity to be expanded beyond these “narrow constitutional limits,” we explained that Congress must “take responsibility for the decision, by so expressly providing as respects contracts in a particular form, or contracts under particular programs.” 455 U. S., at 737 (emphasis added); see also Carson v. Roane-Anderson Co., 342 U. S. 232, 234 (1952). Applying those principles, we upheld each of the taxes at issue in that case because the legal incidence of the taxes fell on the contractors, not the Federal Government; the contractors could not be considered agencies or instru-mentalities of the Federal Government; and Congress had not expressly exempted the contractors’ activities from taxation but, rather, had expressly repealed a pre-existing statutory exemption. See New Mexico, 455 U. S., at 743-744.
These principles control the resolution of this case. sent a constitutional immunity or congressional exemption, federal law does not shield Blaze from Arizona’s transaction privilege tax. See id., at 737; James v. Dravo Contracting Co., 302 U. S. 134, 161 (1937). The incidence of Arizona’s transaction privilege tax falls on Blaze, not the Federal Government. Blaze does not argue that it is an agency or instrumentality of the Federal Government, and New Mexico’s clear rule would have foreclosed any such argument under these circumstances. Nor has Congress exempted these contracts from taxation. Cf. Carson, supra, at 234.
Nevertheless, the Arizona Blaze urges here) that the tax cannot be applied to activities taking place on Indian reservations. After it employed a balancing test “weighing the respective state, federal, and tribal interests,” Cotton Petroleum Corp. v. New Mexico, 490 U. S. 163, 177 (1989), the court below held that a congressional intent to pre-empt Arizona’s tax could be inferred from federal laws regulating the welfare of Indians. In cases involving taxation of on-reservation activity, we have undertaken this “particularized examination,” Ramah Navajo School Bd., Inc. v. Bureau of Revenue of N. M., 458 U. S. 832, 838 (1982), where the legal incidence of the tax fell on a nontribal entity engaged in a transaction with tribes or tribal members. See, e. g., Cotton Petroleum Corp., supra, at 176-187 (state severance tax imposed on non-Indian lessee’s production of oil and gas); Ramah, supra, at 836-846 (state gross receipts tax imposed on private contractor’s proceeds from contract with tribe for school construction); Central Machinery Co. v. Arizona Tax Comm’n, 448 U. S. 160, 165-166 (1980) (tax imposed on sale of farm machinery to tribe); White Mountain Apache Tribe v. Bracker, 448 U. S. 136, 144-153 (1980) (motor carrier license and use fuel taxes imposed on logging and hauling operations pursuant to contract with tribal enterprise). But we have never employed this balancing test in a case such as this one where a State seeks to tax a transaction between the Federal Government and its non-Indian private contractor.
We decline to do so now. Interest balancing in this setting would only cloud the clear rule established by our decision in New Mexico. The need to avoid litigation and to ensure efficient tax administration counsels in favor of a bright-line standard for taxation of federal contracts, regardless of whether the contracted-for activity takes place on Indian reservations. Cf. Oklahoma Tax Comm’n v. Chickasaw Nation, 515 U. S. 450, 458-459 (1995); County of Yakima v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, 502 U. S. 251, 267-268 (1992). Moreover, as we recognized in New Mexico, the “political process is ‘uniquely adapted to accommodating’ ” the interests implicated by state .taxation of federal contractors. 455 U. S., at 738 (quoting Massachusetts v. United States, 435 U. S. 444, 456 (1978) (plurality opinion)). Accord, Washington v. United States, 460 U. S. 536, 546 (1983). Whether to exempt Blaze from Arizona’s transaction privilege tax is not our decision to make; that decision rests, instead, with the State of Arizona and with Congress.
Our conclusion in no way limits the opportunity to advance their interests when they choose to do so. Under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, 88 Stat. 2203, 25 U. S. C. §450 et seq. (1994 ed. and Supp. III), a tribe may request the Secretary of Interior to enter into a self-determination contract “to plan, conduct, and administer programs or portions thereof, including construction programs.” §450f(a)(1). Where a tribe enters into such a contract, it assumes greater responsibility over the management of the federal funds and the operation of certain federal programs. See, e. g., 25 CFR § 900.3(b)(4) (1998). Here, the Tribes on whose reservations Blaze’s work was performed have not exercised this option, and the Federal Government has retained contracting responsibility. Because the Tribes in this ease have not assumed this responsibility, we have no occasion to consider whether the Indian pre-emption doctrine would apply when Tribes choose to take a more direct and active role in administering the federal funds. Therefore, we see no need to depart from the clear rule announced in New Mexico.
* * *
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The Department initially also sought to tax Blaze’s proceeds from contracts with tribal housing authorities but eventually dropped its claim. We therefore have no occasion to consider Blaze’s tax liability with respect to those contracts.
Blaze also appears to argue that Arizona’s tax infringes on the Tribes’ right to make their own decisions and be governed by them and that this is sufficient, by itself, to preclude application of Arizona’s tax. See Williams v. Lee, 358 U. S. 217, 220 (1959). Our decisions upholding state taxes in a variety of on-reservation settings squarely foreclose that argument. See, e. g., Washington v. Confederated Tribes of Colville Reservation, 447 U. S. 134, 156 (1980); Moe v. Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Flathead Reservation, 425 U. S. 463, 483 (1976).
Indeed, a recent decision by the New Mexico Supreme Court illustrates the perils of a more fact-intensive inquiry. See Blaze Constr. Co., Inc. v. Taxation and Revenue Dept. of New Mexico, 118 N. M. 647, 884 P. 2d 803 (1994), cert. denied, 514 U. S. 1016 (1995). In that case, also involving the imposition of a tax on the gross receipts of Blaze’s federal contracts, the New Mexico Supreme Court applied the balancing test in Cotton Petroleum Corp. v. New Mexico, 490 U. S. 163 (1989), and reached the exact opposite conclusion from the Arizona Court of Appeals. 118 N. M., at 652-653, 884 P. 2d, at 808-809.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
J
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented by this case is whether a plaintiff in an action against the United States under § 15 (c) of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act is entitled to trial by jury.
I
The 1974 amendments to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 added a new § 15, which brought the Federal Government within the scope of the Act for the first time. Section 15 (a) prohibits the Federal Government from discrimination based on age in most of its civilian employment decisions concerning persons over 40 years of age. Section 15 (b) provides that enforcement of § 15 (a) in most agencies, including military departments, is the responsibility of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Commission is directed to “issue such rules, regulations, orders and instructions as [the Commission] deems necessary and appropriate” to carry out that responsibility. Section 15 (c) provides:
“Any person aggrieved may bring a civil action in any Federal district court of competent jurisdiction for such legal or equitable relief as will effectuate the purposes of this Act.” 88 Stat. 75.
In 1978, respondent Alice Nakshian, who was then a 62-year-old civilian employee of the United States Department of the Navy, brought an age discrimination suit against the Navy under § 15 (c). She requested a jury trial. The defendant moved to strike the request, and the District Court denied the motion. Nakshian v. Claytor, 481 F. Supp. 159 (DC). The court stressed that the “legal or equitable relief” language used by Congress to establish a right to sue the Federal Government for age discrimination was identical to the language Congress had previously used in § 7 (c) of the Act to authorize private ADEA suits. That language, the District Court said, was an important basis for this Court’s holding in Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U. S. 575, that § 7 (c) permits jury trials in private suits under the Act. The court stated that “if Congress had intended its consent to ADEA suits [against the Government] to be limited to non-jury trials, it could have easily said as much.” 481 F. Supp., at 161. Recognizing that as a result of 1978 amendments to the ADEA § 7 (c) (2) expressly confers a right to jury trial, whereas no such language exists in § 15, 481 F. Supp., at 161, the court found no “explicit refusal” by Congress to grant the right to jury trial against the Government, and noted that the legislative history of the 1978 amendments spoke in general terms about a right to jury trial in ADEA suits.
On interlocutory appeal under 28 U. S. C. § 1292 (b), a divided panel of the Court of Appeals affirmed. Nakshian v. Claytor, 202 U. S. App. D. C. 59, 628 F. 2d 59. The appellate court rejected the Secretary’s argument that a plaintiff is entitled to trial by jury in a suit against the United States only when such a trial has been expressly authorized. Instead, the court viewed the question as “an ordinary question of statutory interpretation,” and found sufficient evidence of legislative intent to provide for trial by jury in cases such as this. Noting that Congress had conferred jurisdiction over ADEA suits upon the federal district courts, rather than the Court of Claims, the Court of Appeals concluded that “ ‘absent a provision as to the method of trial, a grant of jurisdiction to a district court as a court of law carries with it a right of jury trial.’ ” Id., at 63, 628 F. 2d, at 63 (quoting 5 J. Moore, J. Lucas, & J. Wicker, Moore’s Federal Practice ¶ 38.32 [2], p. 38-236 (1979) (footnotes omitted)). The Court of Appeals also adopted the District Court’s view of the “legal . . . relief” language in § 15 (c). Further, it was the court’s view that the existence of the explicit statutory right to jury trial in suits against private employers does not negate the existence of a right to jury trial in suits against the Government, since the provision for jury trials in private suits was added only to resolve a conflict in the Courts of Appeals on that issue and to confirm the correctness of this Court's decision in the Lorillard case.
We granted certiorari to consider the issue presented. Sub nom. Hildalgo v. Nakshian, 449 U. S. 1009.
II
It has long been settled that the Seventh Amendment right to trial by jury does not apply in actions against the Federal Government. In Galloway v. United States, 319 U. S. 372, 388-389, the Court observed (footnotes omitted):
“The suit is one to enforce a monetary claim against the United States. It hardly can be maintained that under the common law in 1791 jury trial was a matter of right for persons asserting claims against the sovereign. Whatever force the Amendment has therefore is derived because Congress, in the legislation cited, has made it applicable.”
See also Glidden Co. v. Zdanok, 370 U. S. 530, 572; McElrath v. United States, 102 U. S. 426, 440. Moreover, the Court has recognized the general principle that “the 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, quoting United States v. Sherwood, 312 U. S. 584, 586. See also United States v. Mitchell, 445 U. S. 535, 538. Thus, if Congress waives the Government’s immunity from suit, as it has in the ADEA, 29 U. S. C. § 633a (1976 ed. and Supp. III), the plaintiff has a right to a trial by jury only where that right is one of “the terms of [the Government’s] consent to be sued.” Testan, supra, at 399. Like a waiver of immunity itself, which must be “unequivocally expressed,” United States v. Mitchell, supra, at 538, quoting United States v. King, 395 U. S. 1, 4, “this Court has long decided that limitations and conditions upon which the Government consents to be sued must be strictly observed and exceptions thereto are not to be implied.” Soriano v. United States, 352 U. S. 270, 276. See also United States v. Kubrick, 444 U. S. 111, 117-118; United States v. Sherwood, supra, at 590-591.
When Congress has waived the sovereign immunity of the United States, it has almost always conditioned that waiver upon a plaintiff's relinquishing any claim to a jury trial. Jury trials, for example, have not been made available in the Court of Claims for the broad range of cases within its jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1491 — i. e., all claims against the United States “founded either upon the Constitution, or any Act of Congress, ... or upon any express or implied contract with the United States, or for liquidated or unliquidated damages in cases not sounding in tort.” See Glidden Co., supra. And there is no jury trial right in this same range of cases when the federal district courts have concurrent jurisdiction. See 28 U. S. C. §§ 1346 (a)(2) and 2402. Finally, in tort actions against the United States, see 28 U. S. C. § 1346 (b), Congress has similarly provided that trials shall be to the court without a jury. 28 U. S. C. § 2402.
The appropriate inquiry, therefore, is whether Congress clearly and unequivocally departed from its usual practice in this area, and granted a right to trial by jury when it amended the ADEA.
A
Section 15 of the ADEA, 29 U. S. C. § 633a (1976 ed. and Supp. III), prohibits age discrimination in federal employment. Section 15 (c) provides the means for judicial enforcement of this guarantee: any person aggrieved “may bring a civil action in any Federal district court of competent jurisdiction for such legal or equitable relief as will effectuate the purposes” of the Act. Section 15 contrasts with § 7 (c) of the Act, 29 U. S.' C. § 626 (c) (1976 ed., Supp. III), which authorizes civil actions against private employers and state and local governments, and which expressly provides for jury trials. Congress accordingly demonstrated that it knew how to provide a statutory right to a jury trial when it wished to do so elsewhere in the very “legislation cited,” Galloway, supra, at 389. But in § 15 it failed explicitly to do so. See Fedorenko v. United States, 449 U. S. 490, 512-513; cf. Monroe v. Standard Oil Co., 452 U. S. 549, 561.
The respondent infers statutory intent from the language in § 15 (c) providing for the award of “legal or equitable relief,” relying on Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U. S. 575, for the proposition that the authorization of “legal” relief supports a statutory jury trial right. But Lorillard has no application in this context. In the first place, the word “legal” cannot be deemed to be what the Lorillard Court described as “a term of art” with respect to the availability of jury trials in cases where the defendant is the Federal Government. In Lorillard, the authorization for the award of “legal” relief was significant largely because of the presence of a constitutional question. The Court observed that where legal relief is granted in litigation between private parties, the Seventh Amendment guarantees the right to a jury, and reasoned that Congress must have been aware of the significance of the word “legal” in that context. But the Seventh Amendment has no application in actions at law against the Government, as Congress and this Court have always recognized. Thus no particular significance can be attributed to the word “legal” in § 15 (c).
Moreover, another basis of the decision in Lorillard was that when Congress chose to incorporate the enforcement scheme of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) into § 7 of the ADEA, it adopted in ADEA the FLSA practice of making jury trials available. 434 U. S., at 580-583. Again, that reasoning has no relevance to this case, because Congress did not incorporate the FLSA enforcement scheme into § 15. See 29 IT. S. C. § 633a (f) (1976 ed., Supp. III). Rather, §§ 15 (a) and (b) are patterned after §§ 717 (a) and (b) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended in March 1972, see Pub. L. 92-261, 86 Stat. 111-112, which extend the protection of Title VII to federal employees. 42 U. S. C. §§ 2000e-16 (a) and (b). See 118 Cong. Rec. 24397 (1972) (remarks of Sen. Bentsen, principal sponsor of § 15 of ADEA). And, of course, in contrast to the FLSA, there is no right to trial by jury in cases arising under Title VII. See Lorillard, supra, at 583-584; Great American Federal Savings & Loan Assn. v. Novotny, 442 U. S. 366, 375, and n. 19.
The respondent also infers a right to trial by jury from the fact that Congress conferred jurisdiction over ADEA suits upon the federal district courts, where jury trials are ordinarily available, rather than upon the Court of Claims, where they are not. Not only is there little logical support for this inference, but the legislative history offers no support for it either. Moreover, Rule 38 (a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides that the right to a jury trial "as declared by the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution or as given by a statute of the United States shall be preserved to the parties inviolate” (emphasis added). This language hardly states a general rule that jury trials are to be presumed whenever Congress provides for cases to be brought in federal district courts. Indeed, Rule 38 (a) requires an affirmative statutory grant of the right where, as in this case, the Seventh Amendment does not apply.
B
As already indicated, it is unnecessary to go beyond the language of the statute itself to conclude that Congress did not intend to confer a right to trial by jury on ADEA plaintiffs proceeding against the Federal Government. But it is helpful briefly to explore the legislative history, if only to demonstrate that it no more supports the holding of the Court of Appeals than does the statutory language itself.
The respondent cannot point to a single reference in the legislative history to the subject of jury trials in cases brought against the Federal Government. There is none. And there is nothing to indicate that Congress did not mean what it plainly indicated when it expressly provided for jury trials in § 7 (c) cases but not in § 15 (c) cases. In fact, the few inferences that may be drawn from the legislative history are inconsistent with the respondent’s position.
The ADEA originally applied only to actions against private employers. Section 7 incorporated the enforcement scheme used in employee actions against private employers under the FLSA. In Lorillard, the Court found that the incorporation of the FLSA scheme into § 7 indicated that the FLSA right to trial by jury should also be incorporated. The Lorillard holding was codified in 1978 when § 7 (c) was amended to provide expressly for jury trials in actions brought under that section.
Congress expanded the scope of ADEA in 1974 to include state and local government and Federal Government employers. State and local governments were added as potential defendants by a simple expansion of the term “employer” in the ADEA. The existing substantive and procedural provisions of the Act, including § 7 (c), were thereby extended to cover state and local government employees. In contrast, Congress added an entirely new section, § 15, to address the problems of age discrimination in federal employment. Here Congress deliberately prescribed a distinct statutory scheme applicable only to the federal sector, and one based not on the FLSA but, as already indicated, on Title VII, where, unlike the FLSA, there was no right to trial by jury.
Finally, in a 1978 amendment to ADEA, Congress declined an opportunity to extend a right to trial by jury to federal employee plaintiffs. Before the announcement of Lorillard, the Senate, but not the House, had included an amendment to § 7 (c) to provide for jury trials in a pending bill to revise ADEA. After Lorillard, the Conference Committee recommended and Congress enacted the present § 7 (c)(2), closely resembling the jury trial amendment passed by the Senate. But the Conference did not recommend, and Congress did not enact, any corresponding amendment of § 15 (c) to provide for jury trials in cases against the Federal Government. Indeed, the conferees recommended and Congress enacted a new § 15 (f), 29 U. S. C. § 633a (f) (1976 ed., Supp. III), providing that federal personnel actions covered by § 15 are not subject to any other section of ADEA, with one exception not relevant here. See H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 95-950, p. 11 (1978). See also H. R. Rep. No. 95-527, p. 11 (1977) (“Section 15 . . . is complete in itself”). Since the new subsection (f) clearly emphasized that § 15 was self-contained and unaffected by other sections, including those governing procedures applicable in actions against private employers, Judge Tamm, dissenting in the Court of Appeals, was surely correct when he concluded that “[i]n amending both sections as it did, Congress could not have overlooked the need to amend [§ 15 (c)] to allow jury trials for government employees if it had so wished.” 202 U. S. App. D. C., at 69, n. 8, 628 F. 2d, at 69, n. 8.
C
But even if the legislative history were ambiguous, that would not affect the proper resolution of this case, because the plaintiff in an action against the United States has a right to trial by jury only where Congress has affirmatively and unambiguously granted that right by statute. Congress has most obviously not done so here. Neither the provision for federal employer cases to be brought in district courts rather than the Court of Claims, nor the use of the word “legal” in that section, evinces a congressional intent that ADEA plaintiffs who proceed to trial against the Federal Government may do so before a jury. Congress expressly provided for jury trials in the section of the Act applicable to private-sector employers, and to state and local governmental entities. It did not do so in the section applicable to the Federal Government as an employer, and indeed, patterned that section after provisions in another Act under which there is no right to trial by jury. The conclusion is inescapable that Congress did not depart from its normal practice of not providing a right to trial by jury when it waived the sovereign immunity of the United States.
For these reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
It is so ordered.
81 Stat. 602, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §§ 621-634 (1976 ed. and Supp. III).
29 U. S. C. § 633a.
Section 15 (a), as amended in 1978, provides in pertinent part:
“All personnel actions affecting employees or applicants for employment who are at least 40 years of age ... in military departments [and other enumerated Government agencies] shall be made free from any discrimination based on age. 29 U. S. C. § 633a (a) (1976 ed., Supp. III).
29 U. S. C. § 633a (b) (1976 ed. and Supp. III).
29 U. S. C. § 633a (c).
Section 7 (c), as amended in 1978 and as set forth in 29 U. S. C. § 626 (c) (1976 ed., Supp. Ill), provides:
“(1) Any person aggrieved may bring a civil action in any court of competent jurisdiction for such legal or equitable relief as will effectuate the purposes of this chapter; Provided, That the right of any person to bring such action shall terminate upon the commencement of an action by the Commission to enforce the right of such employee under this chapter.
“(2) In an action brought under paragraph (1), a person shall be entitled to a trial by jury of any issue of fact in any such action for recovery of amounts owing as a result of a violation of this chapter, regardless of whether equitable relief is sought by any party in such action.”
With the exception of the express right to jury trial conferred by § 7 (c)(2) and of the proviso in § 7 (c)(1), §7 (e) is identical to §15 (c). Section 7 (c) (2) was added by the 1978 amendments of the ADEA.
See n. 6, supra.
It is not difficult to appreciate Congress’ reluctance to provide for jury trials against the United States. When fashioning a narrow exception to permit jury trials in tax refund cases in federal district courts under 28 U. S. C. § 1346 (a)(1), in legislation that Congress recognized established a “wholly new precedent,” H. R. Rep. No. 659, 83d Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (1953), Congress expressed its concern that juries “might tend to be overly generous because of the virtually unlimited ability of the Government to pay the verdict.” Ibid. Indeed, because of their firm opposition to breaking with precedent, the House conferees took almost a year before acceding to passage of the bill containing that exception. Only after much debate, and after the conferees became convinced that there would be no danger of excessive verdicts as a result of jury trials in that unique context — because recoveries would be limited to the amount of taxes illegally or erroneously collected — was the bill passed. See H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 2276, 83d Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1954).
The respondent argues that the strong presumption against the waiver of sovereign immunity has no relevance to the question of a right to trial by jury. But it is clear that the doctrine of sovereign immunity and its attendant presumptions must inform the Court’s decision in this case. The reason that the Seventh Amendment presumption in favor of jury trials does not apply in actions at law against the United States is that the United States is immune from suit, and the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial, therefore, never existed with respect to a suit against the United States. Since there is no generally applicable jury trial right that attaches when the United States consents to suit, the accepted principles of sovereign immunity require that a jury trial right be clearly provided in the legislation creating the cause of action.
The dissenters contend that this argument can only be made at the expense of overruling the Lorillard decision. But, as hereafter indicated, Lorillard has little relevance here. And, of course, the position taken in the dissent totally loses its force in view of the 1978 amendments to the ADEA, see infra, at 167-168, where Congress expressly extended a jury trial right in § 7 (c) but not in § 15 (c).
The decisions cited by the Court in Lorillard, 434 U. S., at 580, n. 7, for the proposition that there is a right to a jury trial in FLSA actions all appear to have rested on the Seventh Amendment, not the FLSA itself. Thus, for the same reason that the Seventh Amendment does not apply in suits against the Federal Government, there would be no comparable right to trial by jury in FLSA suits against the Federal Government under 29 U. S. C. §216 (b). Accordingly, even if Congress intended to incorporate the FLSA enforcement scheme into § 15 of the ADEA, there would be no basis for inferring a right to a jury trial in ADEA 'cases where the employer is the Federal Government.
There are a number of reasons why Congress may have chosen to limit jurisdiction to the federal district courts. They, along with state courts, already had jurisdiction of private-sector ADEA cases under §7 (c). Congress may have decided to follow the same course in federal sector cases, but confined jurisdiction to federal district courts so that there would not be trials in state courts of actions against the Federal Government. Exclusive district court jurisdiction is also consistent with the jurisdictional references in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. See 42 U. S. C. §§ 2000e-5 (f)(3) and 2000e-16 (c). Congress may also have believed it appropriate to have trials in federal district courts because they, unlike the Court of Claims, are accustomed to awarding equitable relief of the sort authorized by § 15 (c).
The respondent relies on United States v. Pfitsch, 256 U. S. 547. But the language relied on in Pfitsch is dicta, since the parties in that case agreed to trial by the court sitting without a jury, id., at 549, and the jury trial issue was therefore not directly before the Court. In any event, Pfitsch is plainly distinguishable. There Congress specifically rejected a proposal, “presented to its attention in a most precise form,” id., at 552, to confer concurrent jurisdiction on the district courts and Court of Claims under the Tucker Act and instead conferred a new and exclusive jurisdiction on the district courts. Given the particular legislative history in that case, the Court found it “difficult to conceive of any rational ground” for conferring exclusive jurisdiction on the district courts except to provide for jury trials. Ibid. That, of course, is not true here. See n. 12, supra. Moreover, Pfitsch arose before Rule 38 (a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 38 (a) made it clear that there is no general right to trial by jury in civil actions in federal district courts. The Rule establishes a mechanism for determining when there is such a right — i. e., when the Seventh Amendment applies, or if not, when a statute provides it.
The respondent also relies on Law v. United States, 266 U. S. 494. The statement in Law regarding jury trials, which in fact does no more than cite Pfitsch, is also dictum, and of virtually no relevance in this context.
A bill introduced by Senator Bentsen on March 9, 1972, S. 3318, 92d Cong., 2d Sess., 118 Cong. Rec. 7745 (1972), represented the first attempt to prohibit age discrimination in federal employment. This bill would have simply amended the definition of “employer” in the Act to include the Federal Government, as well as state and local governments. The result would presumably have been to bring federal employees under the procedural provisions in § 7. But Senator Bentsen subsequently submitted a revised version of his bill in the form of an amendment to pending FLSA amendments. See 118 Cong. Rec. 15894 (1972). In contrast to Senator Bentsen’s original bill, this amendment to the ADEA proposed the expansion of the definition of the term “employer” only with respect to state and local governments; ADEA coverage of federal employees was to be accomplished by the addition of an entirely new and separate section to the Act (presently §15). Senator Bentsen’s amendment was included in the FLSA bill reported by the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, S. Rep. No. 92-842, pp. 93-94 (1972), and it remained in this form when the bill was enacted into law in 1974.
Sections 15 (a) and 15 (b) of the ADEA, as offered by Senator Bentsen and as finally enacted, are patterned directly after §§ 717 (a) and (b) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended in March 1972, see Pub. L. 92-261, 86 Stat. 111-112, which extend Title VII protections to federal employees. Senator Bentsen acknowledged that “[t"|he measures used to protect Federal employees [from age discriminatio.nl would be substantially similar to those incorporated” in recently enacted amendments to Title VII. 118 Cong. Rec. 24397 (1972).
In fact, during floor consideration of the 1972 amendments to Title VII, the Senate rejected an amendment that would have conferred a statutory right to trial by jury in Title VII cases. Id, at 4919-4920. Senator Javits, in opposing the amendment, observed that it would impose “what would be a special requirement in these cases, as distinguished from the antidiscrimination field generally, of jury trial.” Id., at 4920.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Burger
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We granted certiorari to consider whether the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, by authorizing a foreign plaintiff to sue a foreign state in a United States district court on a nonfederal cause of action, violates Article III of the Constitution.
I
On April 21, 1975, the Federal Republic of Nigeria and petitioner Verlinden B. V., a Dutch corporation with its principal offices in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, entered into a contract providing for the purchase of 240,000 metric tons of cement by Nigeria. The parties agreed that the contract would be governed by the laws of the Netherlands and that disputes would be resolved by arbitration before the International Chamber of Commerce, Paris, France.
The contract provided that the Nigerian Government was to establish an irrevocable, confirmed letter of credit for the total purchase price through Slavénburg’s Bank in Amsterdam. According to petitioner’s amended complaint, however, respondent Central Bank of Nigeria, an instrumentality of Nigeria, improperly established an unconfirmed letter of credit payable through Morgan Guaranty Trust Co. in New York.
In. August 1975, Verlinden subcontracted with a Liechtenstein corporation, Interbuco, to purchase the cement needed to fulfill the contract. Meanwhile, the ports of Nigeria had become clogged with hundreds of ships carrying cement, sent by numerous other cement suppliers with whom Nigeria also had entered into contracts. In mid-September, Central Bank unilaterally directed its correspondent banks, including Morgan Guaranty, to adopt a series of amendments to all letters of credit issued in connection with the cement contracts. Central Bank also directly notified the suppliers that payment would be made only for those shipments approved by Central Bank two months before their arrival in Nigerian waters.
Verlinden then sued Central Bank in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that Central Bank’s actions constituted an anticipatory breach of the letter of credit. Verlinden alleged jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1330. Respondent moved to dismiss for, among other reasons, lack of subject-matter and personal jurisdiction.
The District Court first held that a federal court may exercise subject-matter jurisdiction over a suit brought by a foreign corporation against a foreign sovereign. Although the legislative history of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act does not clearly reveal whether Congress intended the Act to extend to actions brought by foreign plaintiffs, Judge Weinfeld reasoned that the language of the Act is “broad and embracing. It confers jurisdiction over ‘any nonjury civil action’ against a foreign state.” 488 F. Supp. 1284, 1292 (SDNY 1980). Moreover, in the District Court’s view, allowing all actions against foreign sovereigns, including those initiated by foreign plaintiffs, to be brought in federal court was necessary to effectuate “the Congressional purpose of concentrating litigation against sovereign states in the federal courts in order to aid the development of a uniform body of federal law governing assertions of sovereign immunity.” Ibid. The District Court also held that Art. Ill subject-matter jurisdiction extends to suits by foreign corporations against foreign sovereigns, stating:
“[The Act] imposes a single, federal standard to be applied uniformly by both state and federal courts hearing claims brought against foreign states. In consequence, even though the plaintiff’s claim is one grounded upon common law, the case is one that ‘arises under’ a federal law because the complaint compels the application of the uniform federal standard governing assertions of sovereign immunity. In short, the Immunities Act injects an essential federal element into all suits brought against foreign states.” Ibid.
The District Court nevertheless dismissed the complaint, holding that a foreign instrumentality is entitled to sovereign immunity unless one of the exceptions specified in the Act applies. After carefully considering each of the exceptions upon which petitioner relied, the District Court concluded that none applied, and accordingly dismissed the action.
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed, but on different grounds. 647 F. 2d 320 (1981). The court agreed with the District Court that the Act was properly construed to permit actions brought by foreign plaintiffs. The court held, however, that the Act exceeded the scope of Art. Ill of the Constitution. In the view of the Court of Appeals, neither the Diversity Clause nor the “Arising Under” Clause of Art. Ill is broad enough to support jurisdiction over actions by foreign plaintiffs against foreign sovereigns; accordingly it concluded that Congress was without power to grant federal courts jurisdiction in this case, and affirmed the District Court’s dismissal of the action.
We granted certiorari, 454 U. S. 1140 (1982), and we reverse and remand.
II
For more than a century and a half, the United States generally granted foreign sovereigns complete immunity from suit in the courts of this country. In The Schooner Exchange v. M’Faddon, 7 Cranch 116 (1812), Chief Justice Marshall concluded that, while the jurisdiction of a nation within its own territory “is susceptible of no limitation not imposed by itself,” id., at 136, the United States had impliedly waived jurisdiction over certain activities of foreign sovereigns. Although the narrow holding of The Schooner Exchange was only that the courts of the United States lack jurisdiction over an armed ship of a foreign state found in our port, that opinion came to be regarded as extending virtually absolute immunity to foreign sovereigns. See, e. g., Berizzi Brothers Co. v. S.S. Pesaro, 271 U. S. 562 (1926); Von Mehren, The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, 17 Colum. J. Transnat’l L. 33, 39-40 (1978).
As The Schooner Exchange made clear, however, foreign sovereign immunity is a matter of grace and comity on the part of the United States, and not a restriction imposed by the Constitution. Accordingly, this Court consistently has deferred to the decisions of the political branches — in particular, those of the Executive Branch — on whether to take jurisdiction over actions against foreign sovereigns and their instru-mentalities. See, e. g., Ex parte Peru, 318 U. S. 578, 586-590 (1943); Mexico v. Hoffman, 324 U. S. 30, 33-36 (1945).
Until 1952, the State Department ordinarily requested immunity in all actions against friendly foreign sovereigns. But in the so-called Tate Letter, the State Department announced its adoption of the “restrictive” theory of foreign sovereign immunity. Under this theory, immunity is confined to suits involving the foreign sovereign’s public acts, and does not extend to cases arising out of a foreign state’s strictly commercial acts.
The restrictive theory was not initially enacted into law, however; and its application proved troublesome. As in the past, initial responsibility for deciding questions of sovereign immunity fell primarily upon the Executive acting through the State Department, and the courts abided by “suggestions of immunity” from the State Department. As a consequence, foreign nations often placed diplomatic pressure on the State Department in seeking immunity. On occasion, political considerations led to suggestions of immunity in cases where immunity would not have been available under the restrictive theory.
An additional complication was posed by the fact that foreign nations did not always make requests to the State Department. In such cases, the responsibility fell to the courts to determine whether sovereign immunity existed, generally by reference to prior State Department decisions. See generally Lowenfeld, Claims Against Foreign States — A Proposal for Reform of United States Law, 44 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 901, 909-912 (1969). Thus, sovereign immunity determinations were made in two different branches, subject to a variety of factors, sometimes including diplomatic considerations. Not surprisingly, the governing standards were neither clear nor uniformly applied. See, e. g., id., at 906-909; Weber, The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976: Its Origin, Meaning and Effect, 3 Yale Studies in World Public Order 1, 11-13, 15-17 (1976).
In 1976, Congress passed the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in order to free the Government from the case-by-case diplomatic pressures, to clarify the governing standards, and to “assurfe] litigants that... decisions are made on purely legal grounds and under procedures that insure due process,” H. R. Rep. No. 94-1487, p. 7 (1976). To accomplish these objectives, the Act contains a comprehensive set of legal standards governing claims of immunity in every civil action against a foreign state or its political subdivisions, agencies, or instrumentalities.
For the most part, the Act codifies, as a matter of federal law, the restrictive theory of sovereign immunity. A foreign state is normally immune from the jurisdiction of federal and state courts, 28 U. S. C. § 1604, subject to a set of exceptions specified in §§ 1605 and 1607. Those exceptions include actions in which the foreign state has explicitly or impliedly waived its immunity, § 1605(a)(1), and actions based upon commercial activities of the foreign sovereign carried on in the United States or causing a direct effect in the United States, § 1605(a)(2). When one of these or the other specified exceptions applies, “the foreign state shall be liable in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances,” § 1606.
The Act expressly provides that its standards control in “the courts of the United States and of the States,” § 1604, and thus clearly contemplates that such suits may be brought in either federal or state courts. However, “[i]n view of the potential sensitivity of actions against foreign states and the importance of developing a uniform body of law in this area,” H. R. Rep. No. 94-1487, supra, at 32, the Act guarantees foreign states the right to remove any civil action from a state court to a federal court, § 1441(d). The Act also provides that any claim permitted under the Act may be brought from the outset in federal court, § 1330(a). If one of the specified exceptions to sovereign immunity applies, a federal district court may exercise subject-matter jurisdiction under § 1330(a); but if the claim does not fall within one of the exceptions, federal courts lack subject-matter jurisdiction. In such a case, the foreign state is also ensured immunity from the jurisdiction of state courts by § 1604.
III
The District Court and the Court of Appeals both held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act purports to allow a foreign plaintiff to sue a foreign sovereign in the courts of the United States, provided the substantive requirements of the Act are satisfied. We agree.
On its face, the language of the statute is unambiguous. The statute grants jurisdiction over “any nonjury civil action against a foreign state... with respect to which the foreign state is not entitled to immunity,” 28 U. S. C. § 1330(a). The Act contains no indication of any limitation based on the citizenship of the plaintiff.
The legislative history is less clear in this regard. The House Report recites that the Act would provide jurisdiction for “any claim with respect to which the foreign state is not entitled to immunity under sections 1605-1607,” H. R. Rep. No. 94-1487, supra, at 13 (emphasis added), and also states that its purpose was “to provide when and how parties can maintain a lawsuit against a foreign state or its entities,” id., at 6 (emphasis added). At another point, however, the Report refers to the growing number of disputes between “American citizens” and foreign states, id., at 6-7, and expresses the desire to ensure “our citizens... access to the courts,” id., at 6 (emphasis added).
Notwithstanding this reference to “our citizens,” we conclude that, when considered as a whole, the legislative history reveals an intent not to limit jurisdiction under the Act to actions brought by American citizens. Congress was aware of concern that “our courts [might be] turned into small ‘international courts of claims[,]’... open... to all comers to litigate any dispute which any private party may have with a foreign state anywhere in the world.” Testimony of Bruno A. Ristau, Hearings on H. R. 11315, at 31. As the language of the statute reveals, Congress protected against this danger not by restricting the class of potential plaintiffs, but rather by enacting substantive provisions requiring some form of substantial contact with the United States. See 28 U. S. C. § 1605. If an action satisfies the substantive standards of the Act, it may be brought in federal court regardless of the citizenship of the plaintiff.
> 1 — H
We now turn to the core question presented by this case: whether Congress exceeded the scope of Art. Ill of the Constitution by granting federal courts subject-matter jurisdiction over certain civil actions by foreign plaintiffs against foreign sovereigns where the rule of decision may be provided by state law.
This Court’s cases firmly establish that Congress may not expand the jurisdiction of the federal courts beyond the bounds established by the Constitution. See, e. g., Hodgson v. Bowerbank, 5 Cranch 303 (1809); Kline v. Burke Construction Co., 260 U. S. 226, 234 (1922). Within Art. III of the Constitution, we find two sources authorizing the grant of jurisdiction in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act: the Diversity Clause and the “Arising Under” Clause. The Diversity Clause, which provides that the judicial power extends to controversies between “a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States,” covers actions by citizens of States. Yet diversity jurisdiction is not sufficiently broad to support a grant of jurisdiction over actions by foreign plaintiffs, since a foreign plaintiff is not “a State, or [a] Citize[n] thereof.” See Mossman v. Higginson, 4 Dall. 12 (1800). We conclude, however, that the “Arising Under” Clause of Art. III provides an appropriate basis for the statutory grant of subject-matter jurisdiction to actions by foreign plaintiffs under the Act.
The controlling decision on the scope of Art. Ill “arising under” jurisdiction is Chief Justice Marshall’s opinion for the Court in Osborn v. Bank of United States, 9 Wheat. 738 (1824). In Osborn, the Court upheld the constitutionality of a statute that granted the Bank of the United States the right to sue in federal court on causes of action based upon state law. There, the Court concluded that the “judicial department may receive... the power of construing every... law” that “the Legislature may constitutionally make,” id., at 818. The rule was laid down that
“it [is] a sufficient foundation for jurisdiction, that the title or right set up by the party, may be defeated by one construction of the constitution or law[s] of the United States, and sustained by the opposite construction.” Id., at 822.
Osborn thus reflects a broad conception of “arising under” jurisdiction, according to which Congress may confer on the federal courts jurisdiction over any case or controversy that might call for the application of federal law. The breadth of that conclusion has been questioned. It has been observed that, taken at its broadest, Osborn might be read as permitting “assertion of original federal jurisdiction on the remote possibility of presentation of a federal question.” Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U. S. 448, 482 (1957) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). See, e. g., P. Bator, P. Mishkin, D. Shapiro, & H. Wechsler, Hart & Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal System 866-867 (2d ed. 1973). We need not now resolve that issue or decide the precise boundaries of Art. Ill jurisdiction, however, since the present case does not involve a mere speculative possibility that a federal question may arise at some point in the proceeding. Rather, a suit against a foreign state under this Act necessarily raises questions of substantive federal law at the very outset, and hence clearly “arises under” federal law, as that term is used in Art. III.
By reason of its authority over foreign commerce and foreign relations, Congress has the undisputed power to decide, as a matter of federal law, whether and under what circumstances foreign nations should be amenable to suit in the United States. Actions against foreign sovereigns in our courts raise sensitive issues concerning the foreign relations of the United States, and the primacy of federal concerns is evident. See, e. g., Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino, 376 U. S. 398, 423-425 (1964); Zschernig v. Miller, 389 U. S. 429, 440-441 (1968).
To promote these federal interests, Congress exercised its Art. I powers by enacting a statute comprehensively regulating the amenability of foreign nations to suit in the United States. The statute must be applied by the district courts in every action against a foreign sovereign, since subject-matter jurisdiction in any such action depends on the existence of one of the specified exceptions to foreign sovereign immunity, 28 U. S. C. § 1330(a). At the threshold of every action in a district court against a foreign state, therefore, the court must satisfy itself that one of the exceptions applies— and in doing so it must apply the detailed federal law standards set forth in the Act. Accordingly, an action against a foreign sovereign arises under federal law, for purposes of Art. Ill jurisdiction.
In reaching a contrary conclusion, the Court of Appeals relied heavily upon decisions construing 28 U. S. C. § 1331, the statute which grants district courts general federal-question jurisdiction over any case that “arises under” the laws of the United States. The court placed particular emphasis on the so-called “well-pleaded complaint” rule, which provides, for purposes of statutory “arising under” jurisdiction, that the federal question must appear on the face of a well-pleaded complaint and may not enter in anticipation of a defense. See, e. g., Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Mottley, 211 U. S. 149 (1908); Gully v. First National Bank, 299 U. S. 109 (1936); 13 C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 3662 (1975) (hereinafter Wright, Miller, & Cooper). In the view of the Court of Appeals, the question of foreign sovereign immunity in this case arose solely as a defense, and not on the face of Verlinden’s well-pleaded complaint.
Although the language of § 1331 parallels that of the “Arising Under” Clause of Art. Ill, this Court never has held that statutory “arising under” jurisdiction is identical to Art. Ill “arising under” jurisdiction. Quite the contrary is true. Section 1331, the general federal-question statute, although broadly phrased,
“has been continuously construed and limited in the light of the history that produced it, the demands of reason and coherence, and the dictates of sound judicial policy which have emerged from the [statute’s] function as a provision in the mosaic of federal judiciary legislation. It is a statute, not a Constitution, we are expounding.” Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co., 358 U. S. 354, 379 (1959) (emphasis added).
In an accompanying footnote, the Court further observed: “Of course the many limitations which have been placed on jurisdiction under § 1331 are not limitations on the constitutional power of Congress to confer jurisdiction on the federal courts.” Id., at 379, n. 51. We reiterated that conclusion in Powell v. McCormack, 395 U. S. 486, 515 (1969). See also Shoshone Mining Co. v. Rutter, 177 U. S. 505, 506 (1900). As these decisions make clear, Art. III “arising under” jurisdiction is broader than federal-question jurisdiction under § 1331, and the Court of Appeals’ heavy reliance on decisions construing that statute was misplaced.
In rejecting “arising under” jurisdiction, the Court of Appeals also noted that 28 U. S. C. §1330 is a jurisdictional provision. Because of this, the court felt its conclusion compelled by prior cases in which this Court has rejected congressional attempts to confer jurisdiction on federal courts simply by enacting jurisdictional statutes. In Mossman v. Higginson, 4 Dall. 12 (1800), for example, this Court found that a statute purporting to confer jurisdiction over actions “where an alien is a party” would exceed the scope of Art. Ill if construed to allow an action solely between two aliens. And in The Propeller Genesee Chief v. Fitzhugh, 12 How. 443, 451-453 (1852), the Court, while upholding a statute granting jurisdiction over vessels on the Great Lakes as an exercise of maritime jurisdiction, rejected the view that the jurisdictional statute itself constituted a federal regulation of commerce upon which “arising under” jurisdiction could be based.
From these cases, the Court of Appeals apparently concluded that a jurisdictional statute can never constitute the federal law under which the action arises, for Art. Ill purposes. Yet the statutes at issue in these prior cases sought to do nothing more than grant jurisdiction over a particular class of cases. As the Court stated in The Propeller Genesee Chief: “The law... contains no regulations of commerce.... It merely confers a new jurisdiction on the district courts; and this is its only object and purpose.... It is evident... that Congress, in passing [the law], did not intend to exercise their power to regulate commerce....” 12 How., at 451-452 (emphasis added).
In contrast, in enacting the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Congress expressly exercised its power to regulate foreign commerce, along with other specified Art. I powers. See n. 19, supra. As the House Report clearly indicates, the primary purpose of the Act was to “se[t] forth comprehensive rules governing sovereign immunity,” H. R. Rep. No. 94-1487, p. 12 (1976); the jurisdictional provisions of the Act are simply one part of this comprehensive scheme. The Act thus does not merely concern access to the federal courts. Rather, it governs the types of actions for which foreign sovereigns may be held liable in a court in the United States, federal or state. The Act codifies the standards governing foreign sovereign immunity as an aspect of substantive federal law, see Ex parte Peru, 318 U. S., at 588; Mexico v. Hoffman, 324 U. S., at 36; and applying those standards will generally require interpretation of numerous points of federal law. Finally, if a court determines that none of the exceptions to sovereign immunity applies, the plaintiff will be barred from raising his claim in any court in the United States — manifestly, “the title or right set up by the party, may be defeated by one construction of the... laws of the United States, and sustained by the opposite construction.” Osborn v. Bank of United States, 9 Wheat., at 822. That the inquiry into foreign sovereign immunity is labeled under the Act as a matter of jurisdiction does not affect the constitutionality of Congress’ action in granting federal courts jurisdiction over cases calling for application of this comprehensive regulatory statute.
Congress, pursuant to its unquestioned Art. I powers, has enacted a broad statutory framework governing assertions of foreign sovereign immunity. In so doing, Congress deliberately sought to channel cases against foreign sovereigns away from the state courts and into federal courts, thereby reducing the potential for a multiplicity of conflicting results among the courts of the 50 States. The resulting jurisdictional grant is within the bounds of Art. Ill, since every action against a foreign sovereign necessarily involves application of a body of substantive federal law, and accordingly “arises under” federal law, within the meaning of Art. III.
V
A conclusion that the grant of jurisdiction in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act is consistent with the Constitution does not end the case. An action must not only satisfy Art. Ill but must also be supported by a statutory grant of subject-matter jurisdiction. As we have made clear, deciding whether statutory subject-matter jurisdiction exists under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act entails an application of the substantive terms of the Act to determine whether one of the specified exceptions to immunity applies.
In the present case, the District Court, after satisfying itself as to the constitutionality of the Act, held that the present action does not fall within any specified exception. The Court of Appeals, reaching a contrary conclusion as to jurisdiction under the Constitution, did not find it necessary to address this statutory question. Accordingly, on remand the Court of Appeals must consider whether jurisdiction exists under the Act itself. If the Court of Appeals agrees with the District Court on that issue, the case will be at an end. If, on the other hand, the Court of Appeals concludes that jurisdiction does exist under the statute, the action may then be remanded to the District Court for further proceedings.
It is so ordered.
Morgan Guaranty acted solely as an advising bank; it undertook no independent responsibility for guaranteeing the letter of credit.
In 1975, Nigeria entered into 109 cement contracts with 68 suppliers. For a description of the general background of these events, see Texas Trading & Milling Corp. v. Federal Republic of Nigeria, 647 F. 2d 300, 303-306 (CA2 1981), cert. denied, 454 U. S. 1148 (1982). See also Trendtex Trading Corp. v. Central Bank of Nigeria, [1977] Q. B. 529.
The parties do not seriously dispute the fact that these unilateral amendments constituted violations of Article 3 of the Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits (Int’l Chamber of Commerce Brochure No. 222) (1962 Revision), which, by stipulation of the parties, is applicable. See 488 F. Supp. 1284, 1288, and n. 5 (SDNY 1980).
Title 28 U. S. C. § 1330 provides:
“(a) The district courts shall have original jurisdiction without regard to amount in controversy of any nonjury civil action against a foreign state as defined in section 1603(a) of this title as to any claim for relief in personam with respect to which the foreign state is not entitled to immunity either under sections 1605-1607 of this title or under any applicable international agreement.
“(b) Personal jurisdiction over a foreign state shall exist as to every claim for relief over which the district courts have jurisdiction under subsection (a) where service has been made under section 1608 of this title.”
The District Court dismissed “for lack of personal jurisdiction.” Under the Act, however, both statutory subject-matter jurisdiction (otherwise known as “competence”) and personal jurisdiction turn on application of the substantive provisions of the Act. Under § 1330(a), federal district courts are provided subject-matter jurisdiction if a foreign state is “not entitled to immunity either under sections 1605-1607... or under any applicable international agreement”; § 1330(b) provides personal jurisdiction wherever subject-matter jurisdiction exists under subsection (a) and service of process has been made under 28 U. S. C. § 1608. Thus, if none of the exceptions to sovereign immunity set forth in the Act applies, the District Court lacks both statutory subject-matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction. The District Court’s conclusion that none of the exceptions to the Act applied therefore signified an absence of both competence and personal jurisdiction.
The Foreign Diversity Clause provides that the judicial power extends “to Controversies.. ; between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.” U. S. Const., Art. III, §2, cl. 1.
The so-called “Arising Under” Clause provides: “The judicial Power [of the United States] shall extend to all Cases... arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority.” Ibid.
After the decision was announced, the United States moved for leave to intervene and for rehearing on the ground that the Court of Appeals had not complied with 28 U. S. C. § 2403, which requires that, in “any action” in which “the constitutionality of any Act of Congress affecting the public interest is drawn in question, the court shall certify such fact to the Attorney General.” The Court of Appeals denied the motion without explanation, see App. to Pet. for Cert. 55a.
Letter from Jack B. Tate, Acting Legal Adviser, Department of State, to Acting Attorney General Philip B. Perlman (May 19, 1952), reprinted in 26 Dept. of State Bull. 984-985 (1952), and in Alfred Dunhill of London, Inc. v. Cuba, 425 U. S. 682, 711 (1976) (Appendix 2 to opinion of White, J.).
See Testimony of Monroe Leigh, Legal Adviser, Department of State, Hearings on H. R. 11315 before the Subcommittee on Administrative Law and Governmental Relations of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 94th Cong., 2d Sess., 34-35 (1976) (hereafter Hearings on H. R. 11315); Leigh, Sovereign Immunity — The Case of the “Imias,” 68 Am. J. Int’l L. 280 (1974); Note, The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976: Giving the Plaintiff His Day in Court, 46 Ford. L. Rev. 543, 548-549 (1977).
The Act also contains exceptions for certain actions “in which rights in property taken in violation of international law are in issue,” § 1605(a)(3); actions involving rights in real estate and in inherited and gift property located in the United States, § 1605(a)(4); actions for certain noncommercial torts within the United States, § 1605(a)(5); certain actions involving maritime liens, § 1605(b); and certain counterclaims, § 1607.
Section 1606 somewhat modifies this standard of liability with respect to punitive damages and wrongful-death actions.
“[T]o encourage the bringing of actions against foreign states in Federal courts,” H. R. Rep. No. 94-1487, p. 13 (1976), the Act specifies that federal district courts shall have original jurisdiction “without regard to amount in controversy.” § 1330(a).
In such a situation, the federal court will also lack personal jurisdiction. See n. 5, supra.
Section 1605(a)(1), which provides that sovereign immunity shall not apply if waived, may be seen as an exception to the normal pattern of the Act, which generally requires some form of contact with the United States. We need not decide whether, by waiving its immunity, a foreign state could consent to suit based on activities wholly unrelated to the United States. The Act does not appear to affect the traditional doctrine of forum non conveniens. See generally Kane, Suing Foreign Sovereigns: A Procedural Compass, 34 Stanford L. Rev. 385, 411-412 (1982); Note, Suits by Foreigners Against Foreign States in United States Courts: A Selective Expansion of Jurisdiction, 90 Yale L. J. 1861, 1871-1873 (1981).
Prior to passage of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which Congress clearly intended to govern all actions against foreign sovereigns, state courts on occasion had exercised jurisdiction over suits between foreign plaintiffs and foreign sovereigns, see, e. g., J. Zeevi & Sons v. Grindlays Bank, 37 N. Y. 2d 220, 333 N. E. 2d 168, cert. denied, 423 U. S. 866 (1975). Congress did not prohibit such actions when it enacted the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, but sought to ensure that any action that might be brought against a foreign sovereign in state court could also be brought in or removed to federal court. See supra, at 489.
In view of our conclusion that proper actions by foreign plaintiffs under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act are within Art. Ill “arising under” jurisdiction, we need not consider petitioner’s alternative argument that the Act is constitutional as an aspect of so-called “protective jurisdiction.” See generally Note, The Theory of Protective Jurisdiction, 57 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 933.(1982).
Since Art. III requires only “minimal diversity,” see State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. Tashire, 386 U. S. 528, 530 (1967), diversity jurisdiction would be a sufficient basis for jurisdiction where at least one of the plaintiffs is a citizen of a State.
In enacting the legislation, Congress relied specifically on its powers to prescribe the jurisdiction of federal courts, Art. I, § 8, cl. 9; to define offenses against the “Law of Nations,” Art. I, § 8, cl. 10; to regulate commerce with foreign nations, Art. I, § 8, cl. 3; and to make all laws necessary and proper to execute the Government’s powers, Art. I, § 8, cl. 18.
The House Report on the Act states that “sovereign immunity is an affirmative defense which must be specially pleaded,” H. R. Rep. No. 94-1487, p. 17 (1976). Under the Act, however, subject-matter jurisdiction turns on the existence of an exception to foreign sovereign immunity, 28 U. S. C. § 1330(a). Accordingly, even if the foreign state does not enter an appearance to assert an immunity defense, a district court still must determine that immunity is unavailable under the Act.
Citing only Shoshone Mining Co. v. Rutter, 177 U. S. 505 (1900), the Court of Appeals recognized that this Court “has implied” that Art. Ill jurisdiction is broader than that under § 1331. The court nevertheless placed substantial reliance on decisions construing § 1331.
Although a major function of the Foreign Service Immunities Act as a whole is to regulate jurisdiction of federal courts over eases involving foreign states, the Act’s purpose is to set forth “comprehensive rules governing sovereign immunity.” H. R. Rep. No. 94-1487, swpra, at 12. The Act also prescribes procedures for commencing lawsuits against foreign states in federal and state courts and specifies the circumstances under which attachment and execution may be obtained against the property of foreign states. Ibid. In addition, the Act defines “Extent of Liability,” setting out a general rule that the foreign sovereign is “liable in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual,” subject to certain specified exceptions, 28 U. S. C. § 1606. In view of our resolution of this case, we need not consider petitioner’s claim that § 1606 itself renders every claim against a foreign sovereign a federal cause of action. See generally 13 Wright, Miller, & Cooper § 3563, at 418-419.
In several related cases involving contracts between Nigeria and other cement suppliers, the Court of Appeals held that statutory subject-matter jurisdiction existed under the Act. In those cases, the court held that Nigeria’s acts were commercial in nature and “cause[d] a direct effect in the United States,” within the meaning of 28 U. S. C. § 1605(a). Texas Trading & Milling Corp. v. Federal Republic of Nigeria,
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
I
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice BREYER delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Armed Career Criminal Act requires a federal sentencing judge to impose upon certain persons convicted of unlawfully possessing a firearm a 15-year minimum prison term. The judge is to impose that special sentence if the offender also has three prior convictions for certain violent or drug-related crimes. 18 U.S.C. § 924(e). Those prior convictions include convictions for "burglary." § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii). And the question here is whether the statutory term "burglary" includes burglary of a structure or vehicle that has been adapted or is customarily used for overnight accommodation. We hold that it does.
I
The consolidated cases before us involve two defendants, each of whom was convicted in a federal court of unlawfully possessing a firearm in violation of § 922(g)(1). The maximum punishment for this offense is typically 10 years in prison. § 924(a)(2). Each offender, however, had prior state burglary convictions sufficient, at least potentially, to require the sentencing judge to impose a mandatory 15-year minimum prison term under the Armed Career Criminal Act. That Act, as we have just said, requires an enhanced sentence for offenders who have at least three previous convictions for certain "violent" or drug-related felonies. § 924(e)(1). Those prior felonies include "any crime" that is "punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year" and that also
"(i) has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against the person of another; or
"(ii) is burglary, arson, or extortion, involves use of explosives, or otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another." § 924(e)(2)(B) (emphasis added).
The question here concerns the scope of the statutory word "burglary."
The relevant prior convictions of one of the unlawful firearms offenders, Victor J. Stitt, were for violations of a Tennessee statute that defines "[a]ggravated burglary" as "burglary of a habitation." Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-14-403(a) (1997). It further defines "[h]abitation" to include: (1) "any structure, including ... mobile homes, trailers, and tents, which is designed or adapted for the overnight accommodation of persons, " and (2) any "self-propelled vehicle that is designed or adapted for the overnight accommodation of persons and is actually occupied at the time of initial entry by the defendant." §§ 39-14-401(1)(A), (B) (emphasis added).
The relevant prior convictions of the other unlawful firearms offender, Jason Daniel Sims, were for violations of an Arkansas statute that prohibits burglary of a "residential occupiable structure." Ark. Code Ann. § 5-39-201(a)(1) (Michie 1997). The statute defines "[r]esidential occupiable structure" to include:
"a vehicle, building, or other structure:
"(A) [w]here any person lives; or
"(B) [w]hich is customarily used for overnight accommodation of persons whether or not a person is actually present." § 5-39-101(1) (emphasis added).
In both cases, the District Courts found that the state statutory crimes fell within the scope of the word "burglary" in the Armed Career Criminal Act and consequently imposed that statute's mandatory sentence enhancement. In both cases, the relevant Federal Court of Appeals held that the statutory crimes did not fall within the scope of the word "burglary," vacated the sentence, and remanded for resentencing. See 860 F.3d 854 (C.A.6 2017) (en banc) (reversing panel decision to the contrary); 854 F.3d 1037 (C.A.8 2017).
The Government asked us to grant certiorari to consider the question "[w]hether burglary of a nonpermanent or mobile structure that is adapted or used for overnight accommodation can qualify as 'burglary' under the Armed Career Criminal Act." Pet. for Cert. in No. 17-765, p. i; Pet. for Cert. in No. 17-766, p. i. And, in light of uncertainty about the scope of the term "burglary" in the lower courts, we granted the Government's request. Compare 860 F.3d, at 862-863, 854 F.3d, at 1040; United States v. White, 836 F.3d 437, 446 (C.A.4 2016) ; United States v. Grisel, 488 F.3d 844 (C.A.9 2007) (en banc), with Smith v. United States, 877 F.3d 720, 724 (C.A.7 2017), cert. pending, No. 17-7517; United States v. Spring, 80 F.3d 1450, 1462 (C.A.10 1996).
II
A
The word "burglary," like the word "crime" itself, is ambiguous. It might refer to a kind of crime, a generic crime, as set forth in a statute ("a burglary consists of behavior that ..."), or it might refer to the way in which an individual offender acted on a particular occasion ("on January 25, Jones committed a burglary on Oak Street in South San Francisco"). We have held that the words in the Armed Career Criminal Act do the first. Accordingly, we have held that the Act requires us to evaluate a prior state conviction "in terms of how the law defines the offense and not in terms of how an individual offender might have committed it on a particular occasion." Begay v. United States, 553 U.S. 137, 141, 128 S.Ct. 1581, 170 L.Ed.2d 490 (2008). A prior state conviction, we have said, does not qualify as generic burglary under the Act where "the elements of [the relevant state statute] are broader than those of generic burglary." Mathis v. United States, 579 U.S. ----, ----, 136 S.Ct. 2243, 2257, 195 L.Ed.2d 604 (2016). The case in which we first adopted this "categorical approach" is Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575, 110 S.Ct. 2143, 109 L.Ed.2d 607 (1990). That case, which specifically considered the statutory term "burglary," governs here and determines the outcome.
In Taylor, we did more than hold that the word "burglary" refers to a kind of generic crime rather than to the defendant's behavior on a particular occasion. We also explained, after examining the Act's history and purpose, that Congress intended a "uniform definition of burglary [to] be applied to all cases in which the Government seeks" an enhanced sentence under the Act. Id., at 580-592, 110 S.Ct. 2143. We held that this uniform definition includes "at least the 'classic' common-law definition," namely, breaking and entering a dwelling at night with intent to commit a felony. Id., at 593, 110 S.Ct. 2143. But we added that it must include more. The classic definition, by excluding all places other than dwellings, we said, has "little relevance to modern law enforcement concerns." Ibid. Perhaps for that reason, by the time the Act was passed in 1986, most States had expanded the meaning of burglary to include "structures other than dwellings." Ibid. (citing W. LaFave & A. Scott, Substantive Criminal Law §§ 8.13(a)-(f) (1986)).
In addition, the statute's purpose, revealed by its language, ruled out limiting the scope of "burglary" to especially serious burglaries, e.g., those having elements that created a particularly serious risk of physical harm. If that had been Congress's intent, adding the word "burglary" would have been unnecessary, since the (now-invalid) residual clause "already include[d] any crime that 'involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another.' " Taylor, 495 U.S., at 597, 110 S.Ct. 2143 (quoting 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii) ); see Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. ----, ---- - ----, 135 S.Ct. 2551, 2557-2560, 192 L.Ed.2d 569 (2015) (holding residual clause unconstitutionally vague). We concluded that the Act's term "burglary" must include "ordinary," "run-of-the-mill" burglaries as well as aggravated ones. Taylor, 495 U.S., at 597, 110 S.Ct. 2143. And we defined the elements of generic "burglary" as "an unlawful or unprivileged entry into, or remaining in, a building or other structure, with intent to commit a crime." Id., at 598, 110 S.Ct. 2143.
B
The relevant language of the Tennessee and Arkansas statutes falls within the scope of generic burglary's definition as set forth in Taylor . For one thing, we made clear in Taylor that Congress intended the definition of "burglary" to reflect "the generic sense in which the term [was] used in the criminal codes of most States" at the time the Act was passed. Ibid. In 1986, a majority of state burglary statutes covered vehicles adapted or customarily used for lodging-either explicitly or by defining "building" or "structure" to include those vehicles. See, e.g., N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 635:1 (1974) (prohibiting burglary of an "[o]ccupied structure," defined to include "any structure, vehicle, boat or place adapted for overnight accommodation of persons"); Ore. Rev. Stat. §§ 164.205, 164.215, 164.225 (1985) (prohibiting burglary of a "building," defined to include "any booth, vehicle, boat, aircraft or other structure adapted for overnight accommodation of persons"); see also ALI, Model Penal Code §§ 220.0(1), 221.1(1) (1980) (defining " 'occupied structure' " for purposes of burglary as "any structure, vehicle or place adapted for overnight accommodation of persons, or for carrying on business therein, whether or not a person is actually present"); Appendix, infra (collecting burglary statutes from 1986 or earlier that covered either vehicles adapted or customarily used for overnight accommodation or a broader class of vehicles).
For another thing, Congress, as we said in Taylor, viewed burglary as an inherently dangerous crime because burglary "creates the possibility of a violent confrontation between the offender and an occupant, caretaker, or some other person who comes to investigate." 495 U.S., at 588, 110 S.Ct. 2143 ; see also James v. United States, 550 U.S. 192, 203, 127 S.Ct. 1586, 167 L.Ed.2d 532 (2007). An offender who breaks into a mobile home, an RV, a camping tent, a vehicle, or another structure that is adapted for or customarily used for lodging runs a similar or greater risk of violent confrontation. See Spring, 80 F.3d, at 1462 (noting the greater risk of confrontation in a mobile home or camper, where "it is more difficult for the burglar to enter or escape unnoticed").
Although, as respondents point out, the risk of violence is diminished if, for example, a vehicle is only used for lodging part of the time, we have no reason to believe that Congress intended to make a part-time/full-time distinction. After all, a burglary is no less a burglary because it took place at a summer home during the winter, or a commercial building during a holiday. Cf. Model Penal Code § 221.1, Comment 3(b), p. 72 (burglary should cover places with the "apparent potential for regular occupancy").
Respondents make several additional arguments. Respondent Stitt argues that the Tennessee statute is too broad even under the Government's definition of generic burglary. That is so, Stitt contends, because the statute covers the burglary of a "structure appurtenant to or connected with" a covered structure or vehicle, a provision that Stitt reads to include the burglary of even ordinary vehicles that are plugged in or otherwise appurtenant to covered structures. Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-14-401(1)(C). Stitt's interpretation, however, ignores that the "appurtenant to" provision extends only to "structure [s]," not to the separate statutory term "vehicle[s]." Ibid. We therefore disagree with Stitt's argument that the "appurtenant to" provision sweeps more broadly than generic burglary, as defined in Taylor, 495 U.S., at 598, 110 S.Ct. 2143.
Respondents also point out that in Taylor, Mathis, and other cases, we said that burglary of certain nontypical structures and vehicles fell outside the scope of the federal Act's statutory word "burglary." See, e.g., Taylor, 495 U.S., at 599, 110 S.Ct. 2143 (noting that some States "define burglary more broadly" than generic burglary by, for example, "including places, such as automobiles and vending machines, other than buildings"). And they argue that the vehicles covered here are analogous to the nontypical structures and vehicles to which the Court referred in those cases. Our examination of those cases, however, convinces us that we did not decide in either case the question now before us.
In Taylor, for example, we referred to a Missouri breaking and entering statute that among other things criminalized breaking and entering "any boat or vessel, or railroad car." Ibid. (citing Mo. Rev. Stat. § 560.070 (1969); emphasis added). We did say that that particular provision was beyond the scope of the federal Act. But the statute used the word "any"; it referred to ordinary boats and vessels often at sea (and railroad cars often filled with cargo, not people), nowhere restricting its coverage, as here, to vehicles or structures customarily used or adapted for overnight accommodation. The statutes before us, by using these latter words, more clearly focus upon circumstances where burglary is likely to present a serious risk of violence.
In Mathis, we considered an Iowa statute that covered "any building, structure, ... land, water or air vehicle, or similar place adapted for overnight accommodation of persons [or used] for the storage or safekeeping of anything of value." Iowa Code § 702.12 (2013). Courts have construed that statute to cover ordinary vehicles because they can be used for storage or safekeeping. See State v. Buss, 325 N.W.2d 384 (Iowa 1982) ; Weaver v. Iowa, 949 F.2d 1049 (C.A.8 1991). That is presumably why, as we wrote in our opinion, "all parties agree[d]" that Iowa's burglary statute "covers more conduct than generic burglary does." Mathis, 579 U.S., at ----, 136 S.Ct., at 2250. The question before us was whether federal generic "burglary" includes within its scope a burglary statute that lists multiple, alternative means of satisfying one element, some of which fall within Taylor 's generic definition and some of which fall outside it. We held, in light of the parties' agreement that the Iowa statute covered some "outside" behavior (i.e., ordinary vehicles), that the statute did not count as a generic burglary statute. But for present purposes, what matters is that the Court in Mathis did not decide the question now before us-that is, whether coverage of vehicles designed or adapted for overnight use takes the statute outside the generic burglary definition. We now decide that latter question, and, for the reasons we have stated, we hold that it does not.
III
Respondent Sims argues that Arkansas' residential burglary statute is too broad to count as generic burglary for a different reason, namely, because it also covers burglary of "a vehicle ... [i]n which any person lives." See supra, at 404. Sims adds that these words might cover a car in which a homeless person occasionally sleeps. Sims' argument rests in part upon state law, and the lower courts have not considered it. As "we are a court of review, not of first view," Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U.S. 709, 718, n. 7, 125 S.Ct. 2113, 161 L.Ed.2d 1020 (2005), we remand the Arkansas case to the lower courts for further proceedings. Those courts remain free to determine whether Sims properly presented the argument and to decide the merits, if appropriate.
We reverse the judgment of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. We vacate the judgment of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
APPENDIX
Alaska Stat. §§ 11.46.300, 11.46.310, 11.81.900(b)(3) (1989) (effective 1978); Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 13-1501(7)-(8), 13-1507, 13-1508 (1978); Ark. Code Ann. §§ 41-2001(1), 41-2002 (Michie 1977); Cal. Penal Code Ann. §§ 459, 460 (West 1970) ; Colo. Rev. Stat. §§ 18-4-101(1) - (2), 18-4-202, 18-4-203 (1978) ; Conn. Gen. Stat. Ann. §§ 53a-100(a), 53a-101, 53a-103 (1985 Cum. Supp.); Del. Code Ann., Tit. 11, §§ 222(1), 824, 825 (1979); Fla. Stat. Ann. §§ 810.011(2), 810.02 (1976) ; Ga. Code Ann. § 16-7-1(a) (1984); Idaho Code Ann. § 18-1401 (1979); Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 38, § 19-1 (West 1985) ; Iowa Code §§ 702.12, 713.1 (1985); Kan. Stat. Ann. §§ 21-3715, 21-3716 (1988) (effective 1970); La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14:62 (West 1974 Cum. Supp.); Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 17-A, §§ 2(10), 2(24), 401 (1983) ; Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., ch. 266, § 16A (West 1970) ; Mont. Code Ann. §§ 45-2-101(40), 45-6-204 (1983); Nev. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 205.060 (1986); N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 635:1 (1974) ; N.J. Stat. Ann. §§ 2C:18-1, 2C:18-2 (West 1982) ; N.M. Stat. Ann. §§ 30-16-3, 30-16-4 (2018) (effective 1978); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §§ 2909.01, 2911.11, 2911.12 (Lexis 1982) ; Okla. Stat., Tit. 21, § 1435 (1983); Ore. Rev. Stat. §§ 164.205, 164.215, 164.225 (1985); Pa. Stat. Ann. Tit. 18, §§ 3501, 3502 (Purdon 1973); S.D. Codified Laws §§ 22-1-2(49), 22-32-1, 22-32-3, 22-32-8 (1988) (effective 1976); Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-3-406 (1982); Tex. Penal Code Ann. §§ 30.01, 30.02 (West 1989) (effective 1974); Utah Code Ann. §§ 76-6-201(1), 76-6-202 (1978) ; W. Va. Code Ann. § 61-3-11 (Lexis 1984) ; Wisc. Stat. Ann. § 943.10(1) (West 1982).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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A
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Directly injecting the drug Phenergan into a patient’s vein creates a significant risk of catastrophic consequences. A Vermont jury found that petitioner Wyeth, the manufacturer of the drug, had failed to provide an adequate warning of that risk and awarded damages to respondent Diana Levine to compensate her for the amputation of her arm. The warnings on Phenergan’s label had been deemed sufficient by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) when it approved Wyeth’s new drug application in 1955 and when it later approved changes in the drug’s labeling. The question we must decide is whether the FDA’s approvals provide Wyeth with a complete defense to Levine’s tort claims. We conclude that they do not.
I
Phenergan is Wyeth’s brand name for promethazine hydrochloride, an antihistamine used to treat nausea. The inject-able form of Phenergan can be administered intramuscularly or intravenously, and it can be administered intravenously through either the “IV-push” method, whereby the drug is injected directly into a patient’s vein, or the “IV-drip” method, whereby the drug is introduced into a saline solution in a hanging intravenous bag and slowly descends through a catheter inserted in a patient’s vein. The drug is corrosive and causes irreversible gangrene if it enters a patient’s artery.
Levine’s injury resulted from an IV-push injection of Phenergan. On April 7, 2000, as on previous visits to her local clinic for treatment of a migraine headache, she received an intramuscular injection of Demerol for her headache and Phenergan for her nausea. Because the combination did not provide relief, she returned later that day and received a second injection of both drugs. This time, the physician assistant administered the drugs by the IV-push method, and Phenergan entered Levine’s artery, either because the needle penetrated an artery directly or because the drug escaped from the vein into surrounding tissue (a phenomenon called “perivascular extravasation”) where it came in contact with arterial blood. As a result, Levine developed gangrene, and doctors amputated first her right hand and then her entire forearm. In addition to her pain and suffering, Levine incurred substantial medical expenses and the loss of her livelihood as a professional musician.
After settling claims against the health center and clinician, Levine brought an action for damages against Wyeth, relying on common-law negligence and strict-liability theories. Although Phenergan’s labeling warned of the danger of gangrene and amputation following inadvertent intraarterial injection, Levine alleged that the labeling was defective because it failed to instruct clinicians to use the IV-drip method of intravenous administration instead of the higher risk IV-push method. More broadly, she alleged that Phenergan is not reasonably safe for intravenous administration because the foreseeable risks of gangrene and loss of limb are great in relation to the drug’s therapeutic benefits. App. 14-15.
Wyeth filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that Levine’s failure-to-warn claims were pre-empted by federal law. The court found no merit in either Wyeth’s field preemption argument, which it has since abandoned, or its conflict pre-emption argument. With respect to the contention that there was an “actual conflict between a specific FDA order,” id., at 21, and Levine’s failure-to-warn action, the court reviewed the sparse correspondence between Wyeth and the FDA about Phenergan’s labeling and found no evidence that Wyeth had “earnestly attempted” to strengthen the intra-arterial injection warning or that the FDA had “specifically disallowed” stronger language, id., at 23. The record, as then developed, “lack[ed] any evidence that the FDA set a ceiling on this matter.” Ibid.
The evidence presented during the 5-day jury trial showed that the risk of intra-arterial injection or perivascular ex-travasation can be almost entirely eliminated through the use of IV-drip, rather than IV-push, administration. An IV drip is started with saline, which will not flow properly if the catheter is not in the vein and fluid is entering an artery or surrounding tissue. See id., at 50-51, 60, 66-68, 75. By contrast, even a careful and experienced clinician using the IV-push method will occasionally expose an artery to Phenergan. See id., at 73, 75-76. While Phenergan’s labeling warned against intra-arterial injection and perivascular ex-travasation and advised that “[w]hen administering any irritant drug intravenously it is usually preferable to inject it through the tubing of an intravenous infusion set that is known to be functioning satisfactorily,” id., at 390, the labeling did not contain a specific warning about the risks of IV-push administration.
The trial record also contains correspondence between Wyeth and the FDA discussing Phenergan’s label. The FDA first approved injectable Phenergan in 1955. In 1973 and 1976, Wyeth submitted supplemental new drug applications, which the agency approved after proposing labeling changes. Wyeth submitted a third supplemental application in 1981 in response to a new FDA rule governing drug labels. Over the next 17 years, Wyeth and the FDA intermittently corresponded about Phenergan’s label. The most notable activity occurred in 1987, when the FDA suggested different warnings about the risk of arterial exposure, and in 1988, when Wyeth submitted revised labeling incorporating the proposed changes. The FDA did not respond. Instead, in 1996, it requested from Wyeth the labeling then in use and, without addressing Wyeth’s 1988 submission, instructed it to “[rjetain verbiage in current label” regarding intra-arterial injection. Id., at 359. After a few further changes to the labeling not related to intra-arterial injection, the FDA approved Wyeth’s 1981 application in 1998, instructing that Phenergan’s final printed label “must be identical” to the approved package insert. Id., at 382.
Based on this regulatory history, the trial judge instructed the jury that it could consider evidence of Wyeth’s compliance with FDA requirements but that such compliance did not establish that the warnings were adequate. He also instructed, without objection from Wyeth, that FDA regulations “permit a drug manufacturer to change a product label to add or strengthen a warning about its product without prior FDA approval so long as it later submits the revised warning for review and approval.” Id., at 228.
Answering questions on a special verdict form, the jury found that Wyeth was negligent, that Phenergan was a defective product as a result of inadequate warnings and instructions, and that no intervening cause had broken the causal connection between the product defects and the plaintiff’s injury. Id., at 233-235. It awarded total damages of $7,400,000, which the court reduced to account for Levine’s earlier settlement with the health center and clinician. Id., at 235-236.
On August 3, 2004, the trial court filed a comprehensive opinion denying Wyeth’s motion for judgment as a matter of law. After making findings of fact based on the trial record (supplemented by one letter that Wyeth found after the trial), the court rejected Wyeth’s pre-emption arguments. It determined that there was no direct conflict between FDA regulations and Levine’s state-law claims because those regulations permit strengthened warnings without FDA approval on an interim basis and the record contained evidence of at least 20 reports of amputations similar to Levine’s since the 1960’s. The court also found that state tort liability in this case would not obstruct the FDA’s work because the agency had paid no more than passing attention to the question whether to warn against IV-push administration of Phenergan. In addition, the court noted that state law serves a compensatory function distinct from federal regulation. Id., at 249-252.
The Vermont Supreme Court affirmed. It held that the jury’s verdict “did not conflict with FDA’s labeling requirements for Phenergan because [Wyeth] could have warned against IV-push administration without prior FDA approval, and because federal labeling requirements create a floor, not a ceiling, for state regulation.” 183 Vt. 76, 84, 944 A. 2d 179,184 (2006). In dissent, Chief Justice Reiber argued that the jury’s verdict conflicted with federal law because it was inconsistent with the FDA’s conclusion that intravenous administration of Phenergan was safe and effective.
The importance of the pre-emption issue, coupled with the fact that the FDA has changed its position on state tort law and now endorses the views expressed in Chief Justice Reiber’s dissent, persuaded us to grant Wyeth’s petition for certiorari. 552 U. S. 1161 (2008). The question presented by the petition is whether the FDA’s drug labeling judgments “preempt state law product liability claims premised on the theory that different labeling judgments were necessary to make drugs reasonably safe for use.” Pet. for Cert. i.
II
Wyeth makes two separate pre-emption arguments: first, that it would have been impossible for it to comply with the state-law duty to modify Phenergan’s labeling without violating federal law, see Fidelity Fed. Sav. & Loan Assn. v. De la Cuesta, 458 U. S. 141, 153 (1982), and second, that recognition of Levine’s state tort action creates an unacceptable “obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress,” Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U. S. 52, 67 (1941), because it substitutes a lay jury’s decision about drug labeling for the expert judgment of the FDA. As a preface to our evaluation of these arguments, we identify two factual propositions decided during the trial court proceedings, emphasize two legal principles that guide our analysis, and review the history of the controlling federal statute.
The trial court proceedings established that Levine’s injury would not have occurred if Phenergan’s label had included an adequate warning about the risks of the IV-push method of administering the drug. The record contains evidence that the physician assistant administered a greater dose than the label prescribed, that she may have inadvertently injected the drug into an artery rather than a vein, and that she continued to inject the drug after Levine complained of pain. Nevertheless, the jury rejected Wyeth’s argument that the clinician’s conduct was an intervening cause that absolved it of liability. See App. 234 (jury verdict), 252-254. In finding Wyeth negligent as well as strictly liable, the jury also determined that Levine’s injury was foreseeable. That the inadequate label was both a but-for and proximate cause of Levine’s injury is supported by the record and no longer challenged by Wyeth.
The trial court proceedings further established that the critical defect in Phenergan’s label was the lack of an adequate warning about the risks of IV-push administration. Levine also offered evidence that the IV-push method should be contraindicated and that Phenergan should never be administered intravenously, even by the IV-drip method. Perhaps for this reason, the dissent incorrectly assumes that the state-law duty at issue is the duty to contraindicate the IV-push method. See, e. g., post, at 611, 628. But, as the Vermont Supreme Court explained, the jury verdict established only that Phenergan’s warning was insufficient. It did not mandate a particular replacement warning, nor did it require contraindicating IV-push administration: “There may have been any number of ways for [Wyeth] to strengthen the Phenergan warning without completely eliminating IV-push administration.” 183 Vt., at 92, n. 2, 944 A. 2d, at 189, n. 2. We therefore need not decide whether a state rule proscribing intravenous administration would be pre-empted. The narrower question presented is whether federal law preempts Levine’s claim that Phenergan’s label did not contain an adequate warning about using the IV-push method of administration.
Our answer to that question must be guided by two cornerstones of our pre-emption jurisprudence. First, “the purpose of Congress is the ultimate touchstone in every preemption case.” Medtronic, Inc. v. Lohr, 518 U. S. 470, 485 (1996) (internal quotation marks omitted); see Retail Clerks v. Schermerhorn, 375 U. S. 96, 103 (1963). Second, “[i]n all pre-emption cases, and particularly in those in which Congress has ‘legislated... in a field which the States have traditionally occupied,’... we ‘start with the assumption that the historic police powers of the States were not to be superseded by the Federal Act unless that was the clear and manifest purpose of Congress.’” Lohr, 518 U. S., at 485 (quoting Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218, 230 (1947)).
In order to identify the “purpose of Congress,” it is appropriate to briefly review the history of federal regulation of drugs and drug labeling. In 1906, Congress enacted its first significant public health law, the Federal Food and Drugs Act, ch. 3915, 34 Stat. 768. The Act, which prohibited the manufacture or interstate shipment of adulterated or misbranded drugs, supplemented the protection for consumers already provided by state regulation and common-law liability. In the 1930’s, Congress became increasingly concerned about unsafe drugs and fraudulent marketing, and it enacted the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), ch. 675, 52 Stat. 1040, as amended, 21 U. S. C. § 301 et seq. The FDCA’s most substantial innovation was its provision for premarket approval of new drugs. It required every manufacturer to submit a new drug application, including reports of investigations and specimens of proposed labeling, to the FDA for review. Until its application became effective, a manufacturer was prohibited from distributing a drug. The FDA could reject an application if it determined that the drug was not safe for use as labeled, though if the agency failed to act, an application became effective 60 days after the filing. FDCA, § 505(c), 52 Stat. 1052.
In 1962, Congress amended the FDCA and shifted the burden of proof from the FDA to the manufacturer. Before 1962, the agency had to prove harm to keep a drug out of the market, but the amendments required the manufacturer to demonstrate that its drug was “safe for use under the conditions prescribed, recommended, or suggested in the proposed labeling” before it could distribute the drug. §§ 102(c), 104(b), 76 Stat. 781, 784. In addition, the amendments required the manufacturer to prove the drug’s effectiveness by introducing “substantial evidence that the drug will have the effect it purports or is represented to have under the conditions of use prescribed, recommended, or suggested in the proposed labeling.” § 102(c), id., at 781.
As it enlarged the FDA’s powers to “protect the public health” and “assure the safety, effectiveness, and reliability of drugs,” id., at 780, Congress took care to preserve state law. The 1962 amendments added a saving clause, indicating that a provision of state law would only be invalidated upon a “direct and positive conflict” with the FDCA. § 202, id., at 793. Consistent with that provision, state common-law suits “continued unabated despite... FDA regulation.” Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc., 552 U. S. 312, 340 (2008) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting); see ibid., n. 11 (collecting state cases). And when Congress enacted an express pre-emption provision for medical devices in 1976, see § 2, 90 Stat. 574 (codified at 21 U. S. C. § 360k(a)), it declined to enact such a provision for prescription drugs.
In 2007, after Levine’s injury and lawsuit, Congress again amended the FDCA. 121 Stat. 823. For the first time, it granted the FDA statutory authority to require a manufacturer to change its drug label based on safety information that becomes available after a drug’s initial approval. § 901(a), id., at 924-926. In doing so, however, Congress did not enact a provision in the Senate bill that would have required the FDA to preapprove all changes to drug labels. See S. 1082, 110th Cong., 1st Sess., §208, pp. 107-114 (2007) (as passed) (proposing new §506D). Instead, it adopted a rule of construction to make it clear that manufacturers remain responsible for updating their labels. See 121 Stat. 925-926.
Ill
Wyeth first argues that Levine’s state-law claims are preempted because it is impossible for it to comply with both the state-law duties underlying those claims and its federal labeling duties. See De la Cuesta, 458 U. S., at 153. The FDA’s premarket approval of a new drug application includes the approval of the exact text in the proposed label. See 21 U. S. C. § 355; 21 CFR § 314.105(b) (2008). Generally speaking, a manufacturer may only change a drug label after the FDA approves a supplemental application. There is, however, an FDA regulation that permits a manufacturer to make certain changes to its label before receiving the agency’s approval. Among other things, this “changes being effected” (CBE) regulation provides that if a manufacturer is changing a label to “add or strengthen a contraindication, warning, precaution, or adverse reaction” or to “add or strengthen an instruction about dosage and administration that is intended to increase the safe use of the drug product,” it may make the labeling change upon filing its supplemental application with the FDA; it need not wait for FDA approval. §§314.70(c)(6)(iii)(A), (C).
Wyeth argues that the CBE regulation is not implicated in this case because a 2008 amendment provides that a manufacturer may only change its label “to reflect newly acquired information.” 73 Fed. Reg. 49609. Resting on this language (which Wyeth argues simply reaffirmed the interpretation of the regulation in effect when this case was tried), Wyeth contends that it could have changed Phenergan’s label only in response to new information that the FDA had not considered. And it maintains that Levine has not pointed to any such information concerning the risks of IV-push administration. Thus, Wyeth insists, it was impossible for it to discharge its state-law obligation to provide a stronger warning about IV-push administration without violating federal law. Wyeth’s argument misapprehends both the federal drug regulatory scheme and its burden in establishing a pre-emption defense.
We need not decide whether the 2008 CBE regulation is consistent with the FDCA and the previous version of the regulation, as Wyeth and the United States urge, because Wyeth could have revised Phenergan’s label even in accordance with the amended regulation. As the FDA explained in its notice of the final rule, “ ‘newly acquired information’ ” is not limited to new data, but also encompasses “new analyses of previously submitted data.” Id., at 49604. The rule accounts for the fact that risk information accumulates over time and that the same data may take on a different meaning in light of subsequent developments: “[I]f the sponsor submits adverse event information to FDA, and then later conducts a new analysis of data showing risks of a different type or of greater severity or frequency than did reports previously submitted to FDA, the sponsor meets the requirement for ‘newly acquired information.’” Id., at 49607; see also id., at 49606.
The record is limited concerning what newly acquired information Wyeth had or should have had about the risks of IV-push administration of Phenergan because Wyeth did not argue before the trial court that such information was required for a CBE labeling change. Levine did, however, present evidence of at least 20 incidents prior to her injury in which a Phenergan injection resulted in gangrene and an amputation. See App. 74, 252. After the first such incident came to Wyeth’s attention in 1967, it notified the FDA and worked with the agency to change Phenergan’s label. In later years, as amputations continued to occur, Wyeth could have analyzed the accumulating data and added a stronger warning about IV-push administration of the drug.
Wyeth argues that if it had unilaterally added such a warning, it would have violated federal law governing unauthorized distribution and misbranding. Its argument that a change in Phenergan’s labeling would have subjected it to liability for unauthorized distribution rests on the assumption that this labeling change would have rendered Phenergan a new drug lacking an effective application. But strengthening the warning about IV-push administration would not have made Phenergan a new drug. See 21 U. S. C. §321(p)(l) (defining “new drug”); 21 CFR § 310.3(h). Nor would this warning have rendered Phenergan misbranded. The FDCA does not provide that a drug is misbranded simply because the manufacturer has altered an FDA-approved label; instead, the misbranding provision focuses on the substance of the label and, among other things, proscribes labels that fail to include “adequate warnings.” 21 U. S. C. § 352(f). Moreover, because the statute contemplates that federal juries will resolve most misbranding claims, the FDA’s belief that a drug is misbranded is not conclusive. See §§331, 332, 334(a)-(b). And the very idea that the FDA would bring an enforcement action against a manufacturer for strengthening a warning pursuant to the CBE regulation is difficult to accept — neither Wyeth nor the United States has identified a case in which the FDA has done so.
Wyeth’s cramped reading of the CBE regulation and its broad reading of the FDCA’s misbranding and unauthorized distribution provisions are premised on a more fundamental misunderstanding. Wyeth suggests that the FDA, rather than the manufacturer, bears primary responsibility for drug labeling. Yet through many amendments to the FDCA and to FDA regulations, it has remained a central premise of federal drug regulation that the manufacturer bears responsibility for the content of its label at all times. It is charged both with crafting an adequate label and with ensuring that its warnings remain adequate as long as the drug is on the market. See, e. g., 21 CFR § 201.80(e) (requiring a manufacturer to revise its label “to include a warning as soon as there is reasonable evidence of an association of a serious hazard with a drug”); § 314.80(b) (placing responsibility for postmarketing surveillance on the manufacturer); 73 Fed. Reg. 49605 (“Manufacturers continue to have a responsibility under Federal law... to maintain their labeling and update the labeling with new safety information”).
Indeed, prior to 2007, the FDA lacked the authority to order manufacturers to revise their labels. See 121 Stat. 924-926. When Congress granted the FDA this authority, it reaffirmed the manufacturer’s obligations and referred specifically to the CBE regulation, which both reflects the manufacturer’s ultimate responsibility for its label and provides a mechanism for adding safety information to the label prior to FDA approval. See id., at 925-926 (stating that a manufacturer retains the responsibility “to maintain its label in accordance with existing requirements, including subpart B of part 201 and sections 314-.70 and 601.12 of title 21, Code of Federal Regulations (or any successor regulations)” (emphasis added)). Thus, when the risk of gangrene from IV-push injection of Phenergan became apparent, Wyeth had a duty to provide a warning that adequately described that risk, and the CBE regulation permitted it to provide such a warning before receiving the FDA’s approval.
Of course, the FDA retains authority to reject labeling changes made pursuant to the CBE regulation in its review of the manufacturer’s supplemental application, just as it retains such authority in reviewing all supplemental applications. But absent clear evidence that the FDA would not have approved a change to Phenergan’s label, we will not conclude that it was impossible for Wyeth to comply with both federal and state requirements.
Wyeth has offered no such evidence. It does not argue that it attempted to give the kind of warning required by the Vermont jury but was prohibited from doing so by the FDA. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 12-13; see also Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 25. And while it does suggest that the FDA intended to prohibit it from strengthening the warning about IV-push administration because the agency deemed such a warning inappropriate in reviewing Phenergan’s drug applications, both the trial court and the Vermont Supreme Court rejected this account as a matter of fact. In its decision on Wyeth’s motion for judgment as a matter of law, the trial court found “no evidence in this record that either the FDA or the manufacturer gave more than passing attention to the issue of” IV-push versus IV-drip administration. App. 249. The Vermont Supreme Court likewise concluded that the FDA had not made an affirmative decision to preserve the IV-push method or intended to prohibit Wyeth from strengthening its warning about IV-push administration. 183 Vt., at 91-92, 944 A. 2d, at 188-189. Moreover, Wyeth does not argue that it supplied the FDA with an evalnation or analysis concerning the specific dangers posed by the IV-push method. We accordingly cannot credit Wyeth’s contention that the FDA would have prevented it from adding a stronger warning about the IV-push method of intravenous administration.
Impossibility pre-emption is a demanding defense. On the record before us, Wyeth has failed to demonstrate that it was impossible for it to comply with both federal and state requirements. The CBE regulation permitted Wyeth to unilaterally strengthen its warning, and the mere fact that the FDA approved Phenergan’s label does not establish that it would have prohibited such a change.
IV
Wyeth also argues that requiring it to comply with a state-law duty to provide a stronger warning about IV-push administration would obstruct the purposes and objectives of federal drug labeling regulation. Levine’s tort claims, it maintains, are pre-empted because they interfere with “Congress’s purpose to entrust an expert agency to make drug labeling decisions that strike a balance between competing objectives.” Brief for Petitioner 46. We find no merit in this argument, which relies on an untenable interpretation of congressional intent and an overbroad view of an agency’s power to pre-empt state law.
Wyeth contends that the FDCA establishes both a floor and a ceiling for drug regulation: Once the FDA has approved a drug’s label, a state-law verdict may not deem the label inadequate, regardless of whether there is any evidence that the FDA has considered the stronger warning at issue. The most glaring problem with this argument is that all evidence of Congress’ purposes is to the contrary. Building on its 1906 Act, Congress enacted the FDCA to bolster consumer protection against harmful products. See Kordel v. United States, 335 U. S. 345, 349 (1948); United States v. Sullivan, 332 U. S. 689, 696 (1948). Congress did not provide a federal remedy for consumers harmed by unsafe or ineffective drugs in the 1938 statute or in any subsequent amendment. Evidently, it determined that widely available state rights of action provided appropriate relief for injured consumers. It may also have recognized that state-law remedies further consumer protection by motivating manufacturers to produce safe and effective drugs and to give adequate warnings.
If Congress thought state-law suits posed an obstacle to its objectives, it surely would have enacted an express preemption provision at some point during the FDCA’s 70-year history. But despite its 1976 enactment of an express preemption provision for medical devices, see §2, 90 Stat. 574 (codified at 21 U. S. C. § 360k(a)), Congress has not enacted such a provision for prescription drugs. See Riegel, 552 U. S., at 327 (“Congress could have applied the pre-emption clause to the entire FDCA. It did not do so, but instead wrote a pre-emption clause that applies only to medical devices”). Its silence on the issue, coupled with its certain awareness of the prevalence of state tort litigation, is powerful evidence that Congress did not intend FDA oversight to be the exclusive means of ensuring drug safety and effectiveness. As Justice O’Connor explained in her opinion for a unanimous Court: “The case for federal pre-emption is particularly weak where Congress has indicated its awareness of the operation of state law in a field of federal interest, and has nonetheless decided to stand by both concepts and to tolerate whatever tension there [is] between them.” Bonito Boats, Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats, Inc., 489 U. S. 141, 166-167 (1989) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also supra, at 565 (discussing the presumption against pre-emption).
Despite this evidence that Congress did not regard state tort litigation as an obstacle to achieving its purposes, Wyeth nonetheless maintains that, because the FDCA requires the FDA to determine that a drug is safe and effective under the conditions set forth in its labeling, the agency must be presumed to have performed a precise balancing of risks and benefits and to have established a specific labeling standard that leaves no room for different state-law judgments. In advancing this argument, Wyeth relies not on any statement by Congress, but instead on the preamble to a 2006 FDA regulation governing the content and format of prescription drug labels. See Brief for Petitioner 8, 11, 42, 45, and 50 (citing 71 Fed. Reg. 3922 (2006)). In that preamble, the FDA declared that the FDCA establishes “both a ‘floor’ and a ‘ceiling,’” so that “FDA approval of labeling... preempts conflicting or contrary State law.” Id., at 3934-3935. It further stated that certain state-law actions, such as those involving failure-to-warn claims, “threaten FDA’s statutorily prescribed role as the expert Federal agency responsible for evaluating and regulating drugs.” Id., at 3935.
This Court has recognized that an agency regulation with the force of law can pre-empt conflicting state requirements. See, e. g., Geier v. American Honda Motor Co., 529 U. S. 861 (2000); Hillsborough County v. Automated Medical Laboratories, Inc., 471 U. S. 707, 713 (1985). In such cases, the Court has performed its own conflict determination, relying on the substance of state and federal law and not on agency proclamations of pre-emption. We are faced with no such regulation in this case, but rather with an agency’s mere assertion that state law is an obstacle to achieving its statutory objectives. Because Congress has not authorized the FDA to pre-empt state law directly, cf. 21 U. S. C. § 360k (authorizing the FDA to determine the scope of the Medical Devices Amendments’ pre-emption clause), the question is what weight we should accord the FDA’s opinion.
In prior cases, we have given “some weight” to an agency’s views about the impact of tort law on federal objectives when “the subject matter is technica[l] and the relevant history and background are complex and extensive.” Geier, 529 U. S., at 883. Even in such cases, however, we have not deferred to an agency’s conclusion that state law is preempted. Rather, we have attended to an agency’s explanation of how state law affects the regulatory scheme. While agencies have no special authority to pronounce on preemption absent delegation by Congress, they. do have a unique understanding of the statutes they administer and an attendant ability to make informed determinations about how state requirements may pose an “obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress.” Hines, 312 U. S., at 67; see Geier, 529 U. S., at 883; Lohr, 518 U. S., at 495-496. The weight we accord the agency’s explanation of state law’s impact on the federal scheme depends on its thoroughness, consistency, and persuasiveness. Cf. United States v. Mead Corp., 533 U. S. 218, 234-235 (2001); Skidmore v. Swift & Co., 323 U. S. 134, 140 (1944).
Under this standard, the FDA’s 2006 preamble does not merit deference. When the FDA issued its notice of proposed rulemaking in December 2000, it explained that the rule would “not contain policies that have federalism implications or that preempt State law.” 65 Fed. Reg. 81103; see also 71 id., at 3969 (noting that the “proposed rule did not propose to preempt state law”). In 2006, the agency finalized the rule and, without offering States or other interested parties notice or opportunity for comment, articulated a sweeping position on the FDCA’s pre-emptive effect in the regulatory preamble. The agency’s views on state law are inherently suspect in light of this procedural failure.
Further, the preamble is at odds with what evidence we have of Congress’ purposes, and it reverses the FDA’s own longstanding position without providing a reasoned explanation, including any discussion of how state law has interfered with the FDA’s regulation of drug labeling during decades of coexistence. The FDA’s 2006 position plainly does not reflect the agency’s own view at all times relevant to this litigation. Not once prior to Levine’s injury did the FDA suggest that state tort law stood as an obstacle to its statutory mission. To the contrary, it cast federal labeling standards as a floor upon which States could build and repeatedly disclaimed any attempt to pre-empt failure-to-warn claims. For instance, in 1998, the FDA stated that it did “not believe that the evolution of state tort law [would] cause the development of standards that would be at odds with the agency’s regulations.” 68 id., at 66384. It further noted that, in establishing “minimal standards” for drug labels, it did not intend “to preclude the states from imposing additional labeling requirements.” Ibid.
In keeping with Congress’ decision not to pre-empt common-law tort suits, it appears that the FDA traditionally regarded state law as a complementary form of drug regulation. The FDA has limited resources to monitor the 11,000 drugs on the market, and manufacturers have superior access to information about their drugs, especially in the post-marketing phase as new risks emerge. State tort suits uncover unknown drug hazards and provide incentives for drug manufacturers to disclose safety risks promptly. They also serve a distinct compensatory function that may motivate injured persons to come forward with information. Failure-to-warn actions, in particular, lend force to the FDCA’s premise that manufacturers, not the FDA, bear primary responsibility for their drug labeling at all times. Thus, the FDA long maintained that state law offers an additional, and important, layer of consumer protection that complements FDA regulation. The agency’s 2006 preamble represents a dramatic change in position.
Largely based on the FDA’s new position, Wyeth argues that this case presents a conflict between state and federal law analogous to the one at issue in Geier. There, we held that state tort claims premised on Honda’s failure to install airbags conflicted with a federal regulation that did not require airbags for all cars. The Department of Transportion (DOT) had promulgated a rule that provided car manufacturers with a range of choices among passive restraint devices. Geier, 529 U. S., at 875. Rejecting an “‘all airbag’ ” standard, the agency had called for a gradual phase-in of a mix
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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J
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
After a jury trial in a state court in California, respondent Russell Coleman was convicted of the September 5, 1979, rape, sodomy, and murder of Shirley Hill. The jury’s two special circumstances findings of rape and sodomy made Coleman death-penalty eligible under California law. See People v. Coleman, 46 Cal. 3d 749, 756-757, 759 P. 2d 1260, 1264 (1988).
At the penalty phase of Coleman’s trial, the trial judge gave the jury a so-called Briggs instruction, then required by California law, which informed the jury of the Governor’s power to commute a sentence of life without possibility of parole to some lesser sentence that might include the possibility of parole. After giving the standard Briggs instruction, the state trial court instructed the jury that it was not to consider the Governor’s commutation power in reaching its verdict. Thus, the full jury instruction on commutation was as follows:
“You are instructed that under the State Constitution, a Governor is empowered to grant a reprieve, pardon or commutation of a sentence following conviction of the crime.
“Under this power, a Governor may in the future commute or modify a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole to a lesser sentence that would include the possibility of parole.
“So that you will have no misunderstandings relating to a sentence of life without possibility of parole, you have been informed generally as to the Governor’s commutation modification power. You are now instructed, however, that the matter of a Governor’s commutation power is not to be considered by you in determining the punishment for this defendant.
“You may not speculate as to if or when a Governor would commute the sentence to a lesser one which includes the possibility of parole.
“I instruct you again that you are to consider only those aggravating and mitigating factors which I have already read to you in determining which punishment shall be imposed on this defendant.” Respondent’s Opposition to Motion to Amend Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus in No. C89-1906 (ND Cal.), p. 7, Record, Doe. No. 267, quoting Tr. 1059-1060.
In an unrelated case, we had upheld the Briggs instruction against a federal constitutional challenge. California v. Ramos, 463 U. S. 992 (1983). On direct appeal, however, Coleman argued that giving the Briggs instruction in his case was reversible error under the California Supreme Court’s decision in California v. Ramos, 37 Cal. 3d 136, 689 P. 2d 430 (1984). There the California Supreme Court held, on remand from this Court, that the Briggs instruction violates the California Constitution because, in the California Supreme Court’s view, it is misleading, invites the jury to consider irrelevant and speculative matters, and diverts the jury from its proper function.
The California Supreme Court rejected Coleman’s argument and upheld his death sentence. People v. Coleman, supra. While the court found that the giving of the Briggs instruction was error under California law, it held the error was not prejudicial because the additional instruction told the jury it should not consider the possibility of commutation in, determining Coleman’s sentence. Id., at 780-781, 759 P. 2d, at 1281-1282.
Coleman then sought a federal writ of habeas corpus. Although the District Court acknowledged this Court’s holding that giving the Briggs instruction does not violate the Federal Constitution and does not mislead or inappropriately divert the jury, the court nonetheless granted the writ as to Coleman’s death sentence. No. C89-1906 (ND Cal., Mar. 28, 1997), App. to Pet. for Cert. A-146, A-151. Relying on recent Ninth Circuit precedent, the District Court found the Briggs instruction was inaccurate as applied to Coleman because it did not mention a limitation on the Governor’s power to commute Coleman’s sentence. Id., at A-147. Under the California Constitution, the Governor may not commute the sentence of a prisoner who, like Coleman, is a twice-convicted felon without the approval of four judges of the California Supreme Court. Art. 5, §8.
The District Court found that, because the Briggs instruction did not mention this limitation on the Governor’s commutation power, it violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments by “g[iving] the jury inaccurate information and potentially diverting] its attention from the mitigation evidence presented.” No. C89-1906, supra, at A-151. The court also found that, in the context of the case — particularly, the prosecutor’s arguments of future dangerousness, “the commutation instruction would likely have prevented the jury from giving due effect to Coleman’s mitigating evidence.” Id., at A-149. The court did not in express terms consider the effect of the additional instruction, which instructed the jury not to consider commutation, but it noted that the Ninth Circuit had held in a similar case, Hamilton v. Vasquez, 17 F. 3d 1149 (1994), “that the trial court did not cure the error by instructing the jury not to consider commutation.” No. C89-1906, supra, at A-148.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court’s grant of the writ as to Coleman’s sentence. 150 F. 3d 1105 (1998). The Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court’s finding that the instruction, as applied to Coleman, gave the jury inaccurate information about the Governor’s commutation power. Id., at 1118. And, in a sweeping pronouncement, the court declared, “[a] commutation instruction is imconstitutional when it is inaccurate.” Ibid. The instruction at issue was fatally flawed, the court held, because it “dramatically overstate^] the possibility of commuting the life sentence of a person such as Coleman” (by creating “the false impression that the Governor, acting alone,” could commute the sentence) and thus prevented the jurors from “understand[ing] the choice they [we]re asked to make” and “ Invited [them] to speculate’ that Coleman could be effectively isolated from the community only through a sentence of death.” Id., at 1119.
Having concluded that the giving of the instruction was constitutional error, the Court of Appeals then took up the State’s argument that, even if the instruction was unconstitutional, it “did not have a ‘substantial and injurious effect or influence’ on the jury’s sentence of death,” ibid., as required by Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U. S. 619, 637 (1993). The court explained:
“To decide this question, we look to Boyde v. California, 494 U. S. 370 (1990). Wien the inaccuracy undermines the jury’s understanding of sentencing options, ‘there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury has applied the challenged instruction in a way that prevents the consideration of constitutionally relevant evidence.’ Boyde, 494 U. S. at 380.
“We conclude the district court did not err in holding that Coleman was denied due process by the state trial court’s inaccurate commutation instruction.” 150 F. 3d, at 1119 (citations omitted).
Though the Court of Appeals’ constitutional analysis of the jury instruction, and the Circuit precedent on which it relied, have not been approved by this Court, we do not consider the validity of that analysis here because the State has not asked us to do so. We will simply assume at this stage that the instruction did not meet constitutional standards. The State does contend, however, that the Court of Appeals erred by failing to apply the harmless-error analysis of Brecht. We agree.
We held in Brecht that a federal court may grant habeas relief based on trial error only when that error “ ‘had substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict.’” 507 U. S., at 637 (quoting Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U. S. 750, 776 (1946)). This standard reflects the “presumption of finality and legality” that attaches to a conviction at the conclusion of direct review. 507 U. S., at 633. It protects the State’s sovereign interest in punishing offenders and its "good-faith attempts to honor constitutional rights,” id., at 635, while ensuring that the extraordinary remedy of habeas corpus is available to those i<£whom society has grievously wronged,’ ” id., at 634 (quoting Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391, 440-441 (1963)).
A federal court upsets this careful balance when it sets aside a state-court conviction or sentence without first determining that the error had a substantial and injurious effect on the jury’s verdict. The social costs of retrial or resen-tencing are significant, and the attendant difficulties are acute in cases such as this one, where the original sentencing hearing took place in November 1981, some 17 years ago. No. C89-1906, App. to Pet. for Cert. A-101, n. 45. The State is not to be put to this arduous task based on mere speculation that the defendant was prejudiced by trial error; the court must find that the defendant was actually prejudiced by the error. Brecht, supra, at 637. As a consequence, once the Court of Appeals determined that the giving of the Briggs instruction was constitutional error, it was bound to apply the harmless-error analysis mandated by Brecht.
The Boyde test that the Court of Appeals applied instead is not a harmless-error test at all. It is, rather, the test for determining, in the first instance, whether constitutional error occurred when the jury was given an ambiguous instruction that it might have interpreted to prevent consideration of constitutionally relevant evidence. Boyde v. California, 494 U. S. 370, 377, 380 (1990). In such cases, constitutional error exists only if “there is a reasonable likelihood” that the jury so interpreted the instruction.
Although the Boyde test for constitutional error, like the Brecht harmless-error test, furthers the “strong policy against retrials years after the first trial where the claimed error amounts to no more than speculation,” 494 U. S., at 380, it is not a substitute for the Brecht harmless-error test. The Boyde analysis does not inquire into the actual effect of the error on the jury’s verdict; it merely asks whether constitutional error has occurred. If the Court of Appeals had viewed the jury instruction as ambiguous on the issue whether the Governor had the power alone to commute defendant’s sentence, it might have inquired — as in Boyde— whether there was a reasonable likelihood that the jury understood the instruction as stating the Governor had that power. If the court found that possibility to be a reasonable one, it would determine then whether the instruction, so understood, was unconstitutional as applied to the defendant. Even if the court found a constitutional violation, however, it could not grant the writ without further inquiry. As the Court has recognized on numerous occasions, some constitutional errors do not entitle the defendant to relief, particularly habeas relief. See, e. g., Brecht, supra, at 637-638; O'Neal v. McAninch, 513 U.S. 432, 435-436 (1995) (applying harmless-error review to an instruction that “violated the Federal Constitution by misleading the jury”). The court must find that the error, in the whole context of the particular ease, had a substantial and injurious effect or influence on the jury’s verdict.
The motion of respondent for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and the petition for a writ of certiorari 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
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We granted certiorari to clarify the standard that governs a claim that a union has breached its duty of fair representation in its negotiation of a back-to-work agreement terminating a strike. We hold that the rule announced in Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S. 171, 190 (1967)—that a union breaches its duty of fair representation if its actions are either “arbitrary, discriminatory, or in bad faith” — applies to all union activity, including contract negotiation. We further hold that a union’s actions are arbitrary only if, in light of the factual and legal landscape at the time of the union’s actions, the union’s behavior is so far outside a “wide range of reasonableness,” Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, 345 U. S. 330, 338 (1953), as to be irrational.
> — I
This case arose out of a bitter confrontation between Continental Airlines, Inc. (Continental), and the union representing its pilots, the Air Line Pilots Association, International (ALPA). On September 24, 1983, Continental filed a petition for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. Immediately thereafter, with the approval of the Bankruptcy Court, Continental repudiated its collective-bargaining agreement with ALPA and unilaterally reduced its pilots’ salaries and benefits by more than half. ALPA responded by calling a strike that lasted for over two years. See 886 F. 2d 1438, 1440 (CA5 1989).
Of the approximately 2,000 pilots employed by Continental, all but about 200 supported the strike. By the time the strike ended, about 400 strikers had “crossed over” and been accepted for reemployment in order of reapplication. App. to Brief for Continental Airlines, Inc., as Amicus Curiae All, and n. 8. By trimming its operations and hiring about 1,000 replacements, Continental was able to continue in business. By August 1986, there were 1,600 working pilots and only 1,000 strikers. 886 F. 2d, at 1440.
The strike was acrimonious, punctuated by incidents of violence and the filing of a variety of lawsuits, charges, and countercharges. In August 1985, Continental notified ALPA that it was withdrawing recognition of ALPA as the collective-bargaining agent for its pilots. ALPA responded with a federal lawsuit alleging that Continental was unlawfully refusing to continue negotiations for a new collective-bargaining agreement. In this adversary context, on September 9, 1985, Continental posted its “Supplementary Base Vacancy Bid 1985-5” (85-5 bid) — an act that precipitated not only an end to the strike, but also the litigation that is now before us. Ibid.
For many years Continental had used a “system bid” procedure for assigning pilots to new positions. Bids were typically posted well in advance in order to allow time for necessary training without interfering with current service. When a group of vacancies was posted, any pilot could submit a bid specifying his or her preferred position (captain, first officer, or second officer), base of operations, and aircraft type. Ibid. In the past, vacant positions had been awarded on the basis of seniority, determined by the date the pilot first flew for Continental. The 85-5 bid covered an unusually large number of anticipated vacancies — 441 future captain and first officer positions and an undetermined number of second officer vacancies. Pilots were given nine days — until September 18, 1985 — to submit their bids. Id., at 1441.
Fearing that this bid might effectively lock the striking pilots out of jobs for the indefinite future, ALP A authorized the strikers to submit bids. Several hundred did so, as did several hundred working pilots. Although Continental initially accepted bids from both groups, it soon became concerned about the bona fides of the striking pilots’ offers to return to work at a future date. It therefore challenged the strikers’ bids in court and announced that all of the 85-5 bid positions had been awarded to working pilots. Ibid.
At this juncture, ALP A intensified its negotiations for a complete settlement. ALPA’s negotiating committee and Continental reached an agreement, which was entered as an order by the Bankruptcy Court on October 31, 1985. See App. 7-41. The agreement provided for an end to the strike, the disposition of all pending litigation, and reallocation of the positions covered by the 85-5 bid. See id., at 10-34.
The agreement offered the striking pilots three options. Under the first, pilots who settled all outstanding claims with Continental were eligible to participate in the allocation of the 85-5 bid positions. Under the second option, pilots who elected not to return to work received severance pay of $4,000 per year of service (or $2,000 if they had been furloughed before the strike began). Under the third option, striking pilots retained their individual claims against Continental and were eligible to return to work only after all the first option pilots had been reinstated. See 886 F. 2d., at 1441-1442.
Pilots who chose the first option were thus entitled to some of the 85-5 bid positions that, according to Continental, had previously been awarded to working pilots. The first 100 captain positions were allocated to working pilots and the next 70 captain positions were awarded, in order of seniority, to returning strikers who chose option one. App. 13. Thereafter, striking and nonstriking pilots were eligible for captain positions on a 1-to-l ratio. Id., at 13-14. The initial base and aircraft type for a returning striker was assigned by Continental, but the assignments for working pilots were determined by their bids. 886 F. 2d, at 1441. After the initial assignment, future changes in bases and equipment were determined by seniority, and striking pilots who were in active service when the strike began received seniority credit for the period of the strike. See App. 22.
f-H HH
Several months after the settlement, respondents, as representatives of a class of former striking pilots, brought this action against ALPA. See App. 1. In addition to raising other charges not before us, respondents alleged that the union had breached its duty of fair representation in negotiating and accepting the settlement. After extensive discovery, ALPA filed a motion for summary judgment. See id., at 3. Opposing that motion, respondents identified four alleged breaches of duty, including the claim that “ALPA negotiated an agreement that arbitrarily discriminated against striking pilots.”
The District Court granted the motion, relying alternatively on the fact that the Bankruptcy Court had approved the settlement and on its own finding that, even if the October 31 settlement was merely a private agreement, ALPA did not breach its duty of fair representation. In his oral explanation of his ruling, the District Judge opined that “the agreement that was achieved looks atrocious in retrospect, but it is not a breach of fiduciary duty badly to settle the strike.” App. 75.
The Court of Appeals reversed. 886 F. 2d 1438 (CA5 1989). It first rejected ALPA’s argument that a union cannot breach its duty of fair representation without intentional misconduct. The court held that the duty includes “‘three distinct’ ” components. Id., at 1444 (quoting Tedford v. Peabody Coal Co., 533 F. 2d 952, 957, n. 6 (CA5 1976)). A union breaches the duty if its conduct is “‘arbitrary, discriminatory, or in bad faith.’” 886 F. 2d, at 1444 (quoting Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S., at 190). With respect to the arbitrariness component, the Court of Appeals followed Fifth Circuit precedent, stating:
“‘We think a decision to be non-arbitrary must be (1) based upon relevant, permissible union factors which excludes the possibility of it being based upon motivations such as personal animosity or political favoritism; (2) a rational result of the consideration of these factors; and (3) inclusive of a fair and impartial consideration of the interests of all employees.’” 886 F. 2d, at 1444 (quoting Tedford, 533 F. 2d, at 957) (footnotes omitted and emphasis added by the Court of Appeals).
Applying this arbitrariness test to the facts of this case, the Court of Appeals concluded that a jury could find that ALPA acted arbitrarily because the jury could find that the settlement “left the striking pilots worse off in a number of respects than complete surrender to [Continental].” 886 F. 2d, at 1445. That conclusion rested on the court’s opinion that the evidence suggested that, if ALPA had simply surrendered and made an unconditional offer to return to work, the strikers would have been entitled to complete priority on all the positions covered by the 85-5 bid. Relying on a District Court decision in litigation between ALPA and another airline, the court rejected ALPA’s argument that the 85-5 bid positions were arguably not vacancies because they had already been assigned to working pilots. Id., at 1446. In addition, the Court of Appeals ruled that the evidence raised a genuine issue of material fact whether the favored treatment of working pilots in the allocation of 85-5 bid positions constituted discrimination against those pilots who had chosen to strike. Id., at 1446-1447.
The court held that respondents had raised a jury question whether ALPA had violated its duty to refrain from “arbitrary” conduct, and the court therefore remanded the case for trial. Id., at 1448-1449. Because it reversed the District Court’s grant of summary judgment on the arbitrariness component, the Court of Appeals did not decide whether summary judgment on the fair representation claim might be precluded by the existence of other issues of fact.
We granted certiorari to review the Court of Appeals’ statement of the standard governing an alleged breach of a union’s duty of fair representation and the court’s application of the standard in this case. 498 U. S. 806 (1990).
III
ALPA's central argument is that the duty of fair represen tation requires only that a union act in good faith and treat its members equally and in a nondiscriminatory fashion. The duty, the union argues, does not impose any obligation to provide adequate representation. The District Court found that there was no evidence that ALPA acted other than in good faith and without discrimination. Because of its view of the limited scope of the duty, ALPA contends that the District Court’s finding, which the Court of Appeals did not question, is sufficient to support summary judgment.
The union maintains, not without some merit, that its view that courts are not authorized to review the rationality of good-faith, nondiscriminatory union decisions is consonant with federal labor policy. The Government has generally regulated only “the process of collective bargaining,” H. K. Porter Co. v. NLRB, 397 U. S. 99, 102 (1970) (emphasis added), but relied on private negotiation between the parties to establish “their own charter for the ordering of industrial relations,” Teamsters v. Oliver, 358 U. S. 283, 295 (1959). As we stated in NLRB v. Insurance Agents, 361 U. S. 477, 488 (1960), Congress “intended that the parties should have wide latitude in their negotiations, unrestricted by any governmental power to regulate the substantive solution of their differences.” See also Carbon Fuel Co. v. Mine Workers, 444 U. S. 212, 219 (1979).
There is, however, a critical difference between governmental modification of the terms of a private agreement and an examination of those terms in search for evidence that a union did not fairly and adequately represent its constituency. Our decisions have long recognized that the need for such an examination proceeds directly from the union’s statutory role as exclusive bargaining agent. “[T]he exercise of a granted power to act in behalf of others involves the assumption toward them of a duty to exercise the power in their interest and behalf.” Steele v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co., 323 U. S. 192, 202 (1944).
The duty of fair representation is thus akin to the duty owed by other fiduciaries to their beneficiaries. For example, some Members of the Court have analogized the duty a union owes to the employees it represents to the duty a trustee owes to trust beneficiaries. See Teamsters v. Terry, 494 U. S. 558, 567-568 (1990); id., at 584-588 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). Others have likened the relationship between union and employee to that between attorney and client. See id., at 582 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). The fair representation duty also parallels the responsibilities of corporate officers and directors toward shareholders. Just as these fiduciaries owe their beneficiaries a duty of care as well as a duty of loyalty, a union owes employees a duty to represent them adequately as well as honestly and in good faith. See, e. g., Restatement (Second) of Trusts § 174 (1959) (trustee’s duty of care); Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668, 686 (1984) (lawyer must render “adequate legal assistance”); Hanson Trust PLC v. ML SCM Acquisition Inc., 781 F. 2d 264, 274 (CA2 1986) (directors owe duty of care as well as loyalty).
ALPA suggests that a union need owe no enforceable duty of adequate representation because employees are protected from inadequate representation by the union political process. ALPA argues, as has the Seventh Circuit, that employees “do not need . . . protection against representation that is inept but not invidious” because if a “union does an incompetent job . . .its members can vote in new officers who will do a better job or they can vote in another union.” Dober v. Roadway Express, Inc., 707 F. 2d 292, 295 (CA7 1983). In Steele, the case in which we first recognized the duty of fair representation, we also analogized a union’s role to that of a legislature. See 323 U. S., at 198. Even legislatures, however, are subject to some judicial review of the rationality of their actions. See, e. g., United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U. S. 144 (1938); Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U. S. 528 (1973).
ALPA relies heavily on language in Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, 345 U. S. 330 (1953), which, according to the union, suggests that no review of the substantive terms of a settlement between labor and management is permissible. In particular, ALPA stresses our comment in the case that “[a] wide range of reasonableness must be allowed a statutory bargaining representative in serving the unit it represents, subject always to complete good faith and honesty of purpose in the exercise of its discretion.” Id., at 338. Unlike ALPA, we do not read this passage to limit review of a union’s actions to “good faith and honesty of purpose,” but rather to recognize that a union’s conduct must also be within “[a] wide range of reasonableness.”
Although there is admittedly some variation in the way in which our opinions have described the unions’ duty of fair representation, we have repeatedly identified three components of the duty, including a prohibition against “arbitrary” conduct. Writing for the Court in the leading case in this area of the law, Justice White explained:
“The statutory duty of fair representation was developed over 20 years ago in a series of cases involving alleged racial discrimination by unions certified as exclusive bargaining representatives under the Railway Labor Act, see Steele v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 323 U. S. 192; Tunstall v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, 323 U. S. 210, and was soon extended to unions certified under the N. L. R. A., see Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, supra. Under this doctrine, the exclusive agent’s statutory authority to represent all members of a designated unit includes a statutory obligation to serve the interests of all members without hostility or discrimination toward any, to exercise its discretion with complete good faith and honesty, and to avoid arbitrary conduct. Humphrey v. Moore, 375 U. S., at 342. It is obvious that Owens’ complaint alleged a breach by the Union of a duty grounded in federal statutes, and that federal law therefore governs his cause of action.” Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S., at 177.
This description of the “duty grounded in federal statutes” has been accepted without question by Congress and in a line of our decisions spanning almost a quarter of a century.
The union correctly points out, however, that virtually all of those cases can be distinguished because they involved contract administration or enforcement rather than contract negotiation. ALPA argues that the policy against substantive review of contract terms applies directly only in the negotiation area. Although this is a possible basis for distinction, none of our opinions has suggested that the duty is governed by a double standard. Indeed, we have repeatedly noted that the Vaca v. Sipes standard applies to “challenges leveled not only at a union’s contract administration and enforcement efforts but at its negotiation activities as well.” Communications Workers v. Beck, 487 U. S. 735, 743 (1988) (internal citation omitted); see also Electrical Workers v. Foust, 442 U. S. 42, 47 (1979); Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S., at 177. We have also held that the duty applies in other instances in which a union is acting in its representative role, such as when the union operates a hiring hall. See Breininger v. Sheet Metal Workers, 493 U. S. 67, 87-89 (1989).
We doubt, moreover, that a bright line could be drawn between contract administration and contract negotiation. Industrial grievances may precipitate settlement negotiations leading to contract amendments, and some strikes and strike settlement agreements may focus entirely on questions of contract interpretation. See Conley v. Gibson, 355 U. S. 41, 46 (1957); Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U. S. 574, 581 (1960). Finally, some union activities subject to the duty of fair representation fall into neither category. See Breininger, 493 U. S., at 87-89.
We are, therefore, satisfied that the Court of Appeals correctly concluded that the tripartite standard announced in Vaca v. Sipes applies to a union in its negotiating capacity. We are persuaded, however, that the Court of Appeals’ further refinement of the arbitrariness component of the standard authorizes more judicial review of the substance of negotiated agreements than is consistent with national labor policy.
As we acknowledged above, Congress did not intend judicial review of a union’s performance to permit the court to substitute its own view of the proper bargain for that reached by the union. Rather, Congress envisioned the relationship between the courts and labor unions as similar to that between the courts and the legislature. Any substantive examination of a union’s performance, therefore, must be highly deferential, recognizing the wide latitude that negotiators need for the effective performance of their bargaining responsibilities. Cf. Day-Brite Lighting, Inc. v. Missouri, 342 U. S. 421, 423 (1952) (court does “not sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation nor to decide whether the policy which it expresses offends the public welfare”); United States v. Carolene Products, 304 U. S., at 154 (where “question is at least debatable,” “decision was for Congress”). For that reason, the final product of the bargaining process may constitute evidence of a breach of duty only if it can be fairly characterized as so far outside a “wide range of reasonableness,” Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, 345 U. S., at 338, that it is wholly “irrational” or “arbitrary.”
The approach of the Court of Appeals is particularly flawed because it fails to take into account either the strong policy favoring the peaceful settlement of labor disputes, see, e. g., Groves v. Ring Screw Works, Ferndale Fastener Div., 498 U. S. 168, 174 (1990), or the importance of evaluating the rationality of a union’s decision in light of both the facts and the legal climate that confronted the negotiators at the time the decision was made. As we shall explain, these factors convince us that ALPA’s agreement to settle the strike was not arbitrary for either of the reasons posited by the Court of Appeals.
IV
The Court of Appeals placed great stress on the fact that the deal struck by ALPA was worse than the result the union would have obtained by unilateral termination of the strike. Indeed, the court held that a jury finding that the settlement was worse than surrender could alone support a judgment that the union had acted arbitrarily and irrationally. See 886 F. 2d, at 1445-1446. This holding unduly constrains the “wide range of reasonableness,” 345 U. S., at 338, within which unions may act without breaching their fair representation duty.
For purposes of decision, we may assume that the Court of Appeals was correct in its conclusion that, if ALPA had simply surrendered and voluntarily terminated the strike, the striking pilots would have been entitled to reemployment in the order of seniority. Moreover, we may assume that Continental would have responded to such action by rescinding its assignment of all of the 85-5 bid positions to working pilots. After all, it did rescind about half of those assignments pursuant to the terms of the settlement. Thus, we assume that the union made a bad settlement — one that was even worse than a unilateral termination of the strike.
Nevertheless, the settlement was by no means irrational. A settlement is not irrational simply because it turns out in retrospect to have been a bad settlement. Viewed in light of the legal landscape at the time of the settlement, ALPA’s decision to settle rather than give up was certainly not illogical. At the time of the settlement, Continental had notified the union that all of the 85-5 bid positions had been awarded to working pilots and was maintaining that none of the strikers had any claim on any of those jobs.
A comparable position had been asserted by United Air Lines in litigation in the Northern District of Illinois. Because the District Court in that case had decided that such vacancies were not filled until pilots were trained and actually working in their new assignments, the Court of Appeals here concluded that the issue had been resolved in ALPA’s favor when it agreed to the settlement with Continental. See 886 F. 2d, at 1446. But this reasoning overlooks the fact that the validity of the District Court’s ruling in the other case was then being challenged on appeal.
Moreover, even if the law had been clear that the 85-5 bid positions were vacancies, the Court of Appeals erroneously assumed that the existing law was also clarion that the striking pilots had a right to those vacancies because they had more seniority than the crossover and replacement workers. The court relied for the latter proposition solely on our cases interpreting the National Labor Relations Act. See 886 F. 2d, at 1445. We have made clear, however, that National Labor Relations Act cases are not necessarily controlling in situations, such as this one, which are governed by the Railway Labor Act. See Trainmen v. Jacksonville Terminal Co., 394 U. S. 369, 383 (1969).
Given the background of determined resistance by Continental at all stages of this strike, it would certainly have been rational for ALPA to recognize the possibility that an attempted voluntary return to work would merely precipitate litigation over the right to the 85-5 bid positions. Because such a return would not have disposed of any of the individual claims of the pilots who ultimately elected option one or option two of the settlement, there was certainly a realistic possibility that Continental would not abandon its bargaining position without a complete settlement.
At the very least, the settlement produced certain and prompt access to a share of the new jobs and avoided the costs and risks associated with major litigation. Moreover, since almost a third of the striking pilots chose the lump-sum severance payment rather than reinstatement, see n. 1, supra, the settlement was presumably more advantageous than a surrender to a significant number of striking pilots. In labor disputes, as in other kinds of litigation, even a bad settlement may be more advantageous in the long run than a good lawsuit. In all events, the resolution of the dispute over the 85-5 bid vacancies was well within the “wide range of reasonableness,” 345 U. S., at 338, that a union is allowed in its bargaining.
The suggestion that the “discrimination” between striking and working pilots represented a breach of the duty of fair representation also fails. If we are correct in our conclusion that it was rational for ALPA to accept a compromise between the claims of the two groups of pilots to the 85-5 bid positions, some form of allocation was inevitable. A rational compromise on the initial allocation of the positions was not invidious “discrimination” of the kind prohibited by the duty of fair representation. Unlike the grant of “super-seniority” to the crossover and replacement workers in NLRB v. Erie Resistor Corp., 373 U. S. 221 (1963), this agreement preserved the seniority of the striking pilots after their initial reinstatement. In Erie, the grant of extra seniority enabled the replacement workers to keep their jobs while more senior strikers lost theirs during a layoff subsequent to the strike. See id., at 223-224. The agreement here only provided the order and mechanism for the reintegration of the returning strikers but did not permanently alter the seniority system. This case therefore more closely resembles our decision in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Flight Attendants, 489 U. S. 426 (1989), in which we held that an airline’s refusal, after a strike, to displace crossover workers with more senior strikers was not unlawful discrimination.
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.
In its amicus curiae brief, Continental states that the 366 pilots who elected option two received $17.3 million, an average of over $47,000 per pilot. See Brief for Continental Airlines, Inc., as Amicus Curiae 9.
The complaint included four counts: breach of the duty of fair representation, violation of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA), 29 U. S. C. § 411 et seq., breach of fiduciary duty in violation of the LMRDA, and breach of contract. See App. 47-56. The District Court granted summary judgment for petitioner on all counts, id., at 72-77, but respondents appealed only on the first two counts, see 886 F. 2d 1438, 1442 (CA5 1989). The Court of Appeals affirmed the summary judgment on the LMRDA count, id., at 1448, and respondents did not seek our review of this decision. Therefore, only the fair representation claim is before us.
The Court of Appeals described respondents’ claims as follows:
“The O’Neill Group asserted that the duty of fair representation had been breached by ALPA and various ALPA officers because (1) ALPA failed to allow ratification of the agreement and misrepresented the facts surrounding the negotiations to avoid a ratification vote; (2) ALPA negotiated an agreement that arbitrarily discriminated against striking pilots, including the O’Neill Group; (3) ALPA and various ALPA officers misrepresented to retired and resigned pilots that they would be included in any settlement; and (4) defendants were compelled by motives of personal gain, namely self-interest and political motivations.” Id., at 1442.
“Accepting the pilots’ evidence as true as we are required to do, a jury could reasonably conclude that if ALPA had unconditionally offered to return the pilots to duty, [Continental] likely would have returned striking pilots to work according to seniority, and would have permitted strikers to bid for vacancies according to [Continental]^ seniority-based assignment procedures.” Id.., at 1446.
Air Line Pilots Assn. Int’l v. United Air Lines, Inc., 614 F. Supp. 1020 (ND Ill. 1985), aff’d in relevant part, Air Line Pilots Assn., Int’l v. United Air Lines, Inc., 802 F. 2d 886 (CAT 1986), cert. denied, 480 U. S. 946 (1987).
Respondents also argued that a jury could find that ALPA acted in bad faith. See n. 3, supra. Although we conclude below that the Court of Appeals erred in reversing summary judgment on the arbitrariness component, see Part IV, infra, we express no opinion on whether respondents have put forth a triable issue concerning whether ALPA acted in bad faith.
“There is nothing to indicate that the Union made any choices among the Union members or the strikers who were not Union members other than on the best deal that the Union thought it could construct; that the deal is somewhat less than not particularly satisfactory is not relevant to the issue of fair representation.” App. 74.
See, e. g., Teamsters v. Terry, 494 U. S. 558, 563 (1990); Electrical Workers v. Foust, 442 U. S. 42, 47 (1979); Hines v. Anchor Motor Freight, Inc., 424 U. S. 554, 564 (1976).
Air Line Pilots Assn. Int’l v. United Air Lines, Inc., 614 F. Supp. 1020 (ND Ill. 1985).
Even if the Seventh Circuit had already affirmed the District Court’s holding in the United Air Lines case, the Court of Appeals would have erred in its conclusion that the law was so assuredly in ALPA’s favor that the settlement was irrational. First, a Seventh Circuit case would not have controlled the outcome in this dispute, which arose in the Fifth Circuit. Second, even if the United Air Lines decision had been a Fifth Circuit case, it was factually distinguishable and therefore might not have dictated the outcome regarding the 85-5 bid positions. In United Air Lines, the Seventh Circuit affirmed on the basis of the District Court’s finding that the carrier’s action was taken in bad faith, motivated by antiunion animus. 802 F. 2d, at 898; 614 F. Supp., at 1046. An equivalent finding was by no means certain in this case.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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G
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice O’Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case asks us to clarify what “employment-related connection to a vessel in navigation,” McDermott Int’l, Inc. v. Wilander, 498 U. S. 337, 355 (1991), is necessary for a maritime worker to qualify as a seaman under the Jones Act, 46 U. S. C. App. § 688(a). In Wilander, we addressed the type of activities that a seaman must perform and held that, under the Jones Act, a seaman’s job need not be limited to transportation-related functions that directly aid in the vessel’s navigation. We now determine what relationship a worker must have to the vessel, regardless of the specific tasks the worker undertakes, in order to obtain seaman status.
I
In May 1989, respondent Antonios Latsis was employed by petitioner Chandris, Inc., as a salaried superintendent engineer. Latsis was responsible for maintaining and updating the electronic and communications equipment on Chandris’ fleet of vessels, which consisted of six passenger cruise ships. Each ship in the Chandris fleet carried between 12 and 14 engineers who were assigned permanently to that vessel. Latsis, on the other hand, was one of two supervising engineers based at Chandris’ Miami office; his duties ran to the entire fleet and included not only overseeing the vessels’ engineering departments, which required him to take a number of voyages, but also planning and directing ship maintenance from the shore. Latsis claimed at trial that he spent 72 percent of his time at sea, App. 58; his immediate supervisor testified that the appropriate figure was closer to 10 percent, id., at 180.
On May 14, 1989, Latsis sailed for Bermuda aboard the S. S. Galileo to plan for an upcoming renovation of the ship, which was one of the older vessels in the Chandris fleet. Latsis developed a problem with his right eye on the day of departure, and he saw the ship’s doctor as the Galileo left port. The doctor diagnosed a suspected detached retina but failed to follow standard medical procedure, which would have been to direct Latsis to see an ophthalmologist on an emergency basis. Instead, the ship’s doctor recommended that Latsis relax until he could see an eye specialist when the Galileo arrived in Bermuda two days later. No attempt was made to transport Latsis ashore for prompt medical care by means of a pilot vessel or helicopter during the 11 hours it took the ship to reach the open sea from Baltimore, and Latsis received no further medical care until after the ship arrived in Bermuda. In Bermuda, a doctor diagnosed a detached retina and recommended immediate hospitalization and surgery. Although the operation was a partial success, Latsis lost 75 percent of his vision in his right eye.
Following his recuperation, which lasted approximately six weeks, Latsis resumed his duties with Chandris. On September 30,1989, he sailed with the Galileo to Bremerhaven, Germany, where the vessel was placed in drydock for a 6-month refurbishment. After the conversion, the company renamed the vessel the S. S. Meridian. Latsis, who had been with the ship the entire time it was in drydock in Bremerhaven, sailed back to the United States on board the Meridian and continued to work for Chandris until November 1990, when his employment was terminated for reasons that are not clear from the record.
In October 1991, Latsis filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York seeking compensatory damages under the Jones Act, 46 U. S. C. App. § 688, for the negligence of the ship’s doctor that resulted in the significant loss of sight in Latsis’ right eye. The Jones Act provides, in pertinent part, that “[a]ny seaman who shall suffer personal injury in the course of his employment may, at his election, maintain an action for damages at law, with the right of trial by jury....” The District Court instructed the jury that it could conclude that Latsis was a seaman within the meaning of the statute if it found as follows:
“[T]he plaintiff was either permanently assigned to the vessel or performed a substantial part of his work on the vessel. In determining whether Mr. Latsis performed a substantial part of his work on the vessel, you may not consider the period of time the Galileo was in drydock in Germany, because during that time period she was out of navigation. You may, however, consider the time spent sailing to and from Germany for the conversion. Also, on this first element of being a seaman, seamen do not include land-based workers.” App. 210.
The parties stipulated to the District Court’s second requirement for Jones Act coverage — that Latsis’ duties contributed to the accomplishment of the missions of the Chandris vessels. Id., at 211. Latsis did not object to the seaman status jury instructions in their entirety, but only contested that portion of the charge which explicitly took from the jury’s consideration the period of time that the Galileo was in dry-dock. The jury returned a verdict in favor of Chandris solely on the issue of Latsis’ status as a seaman under the Jones Act. Id., at 213.
Respondent appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which vacated the judgment and remanded the case for a new trial. 20 F. 3d 45 (1994). The court emphasized that its longstanding test for seaman status under the Jones Act required “‘a more or less permanent connection with the ship,’” Salgado v. M. J. Rudolph Corp., 514 F. 2d 750, 755 (CA2 1975), a connection that need not be limited to time spent on the vessel but could also be established by the nature of the work performed. The court thought that the alternate formulation employed by the District Court (permanent assignment to the vessel or performance of a substantial part of his work on the vessel), which was derived from Offshore Co. v. Robison, 266 F. 2d 769, 779 (CA5 1959), improperly framed the issue for the jury primarily, if not solely, in terms of Latsis’ temporal relationship to the vessel. With that understanding of what the language of the Robi-son test implied, the court concluded that the District Court’s seaman status jury instructions constituted plain error under established Circuit precedent. The court then took this case as an opportunity to clarify its seaman status requirements, directing the District Court that the jury should be instructed on remand as follows:
“[T]he test of seaman status under the Jones Act is an employment-related connection to a vessel in navigation. The test will be met where a jury finds that (1) the plaintiff contributed to the function of, or helped accomplish the mission of, a vessel; (2) the plaintiff’s contribution was limited to a particular vessel or identifiable group of vessels; (3) the plaintiff’s contribution was substantial in terms of its (a) duration or (b) nature; and (4) the course of the plaintiff’s employment regularly exposed the plaintiff to the hazards of the sea.” 20 F. 3d, at 57.
Elsewhere on the same page, however, the court phrased the third prong as requiring a substantial connection in terms of both duration and nature. Finally, the Court of Appeals held that the District Court erred in instructing the jury that the time Latsis spent with the ship while it was in dry-dock could not count in the substantial connection equation. Id., at 55-56. Judge Kearse dissented, arguing that the dry-dock instruction was not erroneous and that the remainder of the charge did not constitute plain error. Id., at 58.
We granted certiorari, 513 U. S. 945 (1994), to resolve the continuing conflict among the Courts of Appeals regarding the appropriate requirements for seaman status under the Jones Act.
H-1 HH
The Jones Act provides a cause of action in negligence for “any seaman” injured “in the course of his employment.” 46 U. S. C. App. § 688(a). Under general maritime law prevailing prior to the statute’s enactment, seamen were entitled to “maintenance and cure” from their employer for injuries incurred “in the service of the ship” and to recover damages from the vessel’s owner for “injuries received by seamen in consequence of the unseaworthiness of the ship,” but they were “not allowed to recover an indemnity for the negligence of the master, or any member of the crew.” The Osceola, 189 U. S. 158, 175 (1903); see also Cortes v. Baltimore Insular Line, Inc., 287 U. S. 367, 370-371 (1932). 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 (unavailable to other maritime workers) that seamen receive because of their exposure to the “perils of the sea.” See G. Gilmore & C. Black, Law of Admiralty §6-21, pp. 328-329 (2d ed. 1975); Robertson, A New Approach to Determining Seaman Status, 64 Texas L. Rev. 79 (1985) (hereinafter Robertson). Justice Story identified this animating purpose behind the legal regime governing maritime injuries when he observed that seamen “are emphatically the wards of the admiralty” because they “are by the peculiarity of their lives liable to sudden sickness from change of climate, exposure to perils, and exhausting labour.” Harden v. Gordon, 11 F. Cas. 480, 485, 483 (No. 6,047) (CC Me. 1823). Similarly, we stated in Wilander that “[traditional seamen’s remedies... have been ‘universally recognized as... growing out of the status of the seaman and his peculiar relationship to the vessel, and as a feature of the maritime law compensating or offsetting the special hazards and disadvantages to which they who go down to sea in ships are subjected.’” 498 U. S., at 354 (quoting Seas Shipping Co. v. Sieracki, 328 U. S. 85, 104 (1946) (Stone, C. J., dissenting)).
The Jones Act, however, does not define the term “seaman” and therefore leaves to the courts the determination of exactly which maritime workers are entitled to admiralty’s special protection. Early on, we concluded that Congress intended the term to have its established meaning under the general maritime law at the time the Jones Act was enacted. See Warner v. Goltra, 293 U. S. 155, 159 (1934). In Warner, we stated that “a seaman is a mariner of any degree, one who lives his life upon the sea.” Id., at 157. Similarly, in Norton v. Warner Co., 321 U. S. 565, 572 (1944), we suggested that “ ‘every one is entitled to the privilege of a seaman who, like seamen, at all times contributes to the labors about the operation and welfare of the ship when she is. upon a voyage’” (quoting The Buena Ventura, 243 F. 797, 799 (SDNY 1916)).
Congress provided some content for the Jones Act requirement in 1927 when it enacted the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act (LHWCA), which provides scheduled compensation (and the exclusive remedy) for injury to a broad range of land-based maritime workers but which also explicitly excludes from its coverage “a master or member of a crew of any vessel.” 44 Stat. (part 2) 1424, as amended, 33 U. S. C. § 902(3)(G). As the Court has stated on several occasions, the Jones Act and the LHWCA are mutually exclusive compensation regimes: “ ‘master or member of a crew’ is a refinement of the term ‘seaman’ in the Jones Act; it excludes from LHWCA coverage those properly-covered under the Jones Act.” Wilander, 498 U. S., at 347. Indeed, “it is odd but true that the key requirement for Jones Act coverage now appears in another statute.” Ibid. Injured workers who fall under neither category may still recover under an applicable state workers’ compensation scheme or, in admiralty, under general maritime tort principles (which are admittedly less generous than the Jones Act’s protections). See Cheavens, Terminal Workers’ Injury and Death Claims, 64 Tulane L. Rev. 361, 364-365 (1989).
Despite the LHWCA language, drawing the distinction between those maritime workers who should qualify as seamen and those who should not has proved to be a difficult task and the source of much litigation — particularly because “the myriad circumstances in which men go upon the water confront courts not with discrete classes of maritime employees, but rather with a spectrum ranging from the blue-water seaman to the land-based longshoreman.” Brown v. ITT Rayonier, Inc., 497 F. 2d 234, 236 (CA5 1974). The federal courts have struggled over the years to articulate generally applicable criteria to distinguish among the many varieties of maritime workers, often developing detailed multipronged tests for seaman status. Since the 1950’s, this Court largely has left definition of the Jones Act’s scope to the lower courts. Unfortunately, as a result, “[t]he perils of the sea, which mariners suffer and shipowners insure against, have met their match in the perils of judicial review.” Gilmore & Black, supra, §6-1, at 272. Or, as one court paraphrased Diderot in reference to this body of law: “ ‘We have made a labyrinth and got lost in it. We must find our way out.’” Johnson v. John F. Beasley Constr. Co., 742 F. 2d 1054, 1060 (CA7 1984), cert. denied, 469 U. S. 1211 (1985); see 9 Oeuvres Completes de Diderot, 203 (J. Assézat ed. 1875).
A
In Wilander, decided in 1991, the Court attempted for the first time in 33 years to clarify the definition of a “seaman” under the Jones Act. Jon Wilander was injured while assigned as a foreman supervising the sandblasting and painting of various fixtures and piping on oil drilling platforms in the Persian Gulf. His employer claimed that he could not qualify as a seaman because he did not aid in the navigation fimction of the vessels on which he served. Emphasizing that the question presented was narrow, we considered whether the term “seaman” is limited to only those maritime workers who aid in a vessel’s navigation.
After surveying the history of an “aid in navigation” requirement under both the Jones Act and general maritime law, we concluded that “all those with that ‘peculiar relationship to the vessel’ are covered under the Jones Act, regardless of the particular job they perform,” 498 U. S., at 354, and that “the better rule is to define ‘master or member of a crew’ under the LHWCA, and therefore ‘seaman’ under the Jones Act, solely in terms of the employee’s connection to a vessel in navigation,” ibid. Thus, we held that, although “[i]t is not necessary that a seaman aid in navigation or contribute to the transportation of the vessel,... a seaman must be doing the ship’s work.” Id., at 355. We explained that “[t]he key to seaman status is employment-related connection to a vessel in navigation,” and that, although “[w]e are not called upon here to define this connection in all details,... we believe the requirement that an employee’s duties must ‘contribut[e] to the function of the vessel or to the accomplishment of its mission’ captures well an important requirement of seaman status.” Ibid.
Beyond dispensing with the “aid to navigation” requirement, however, Wilander did not consider the requisite connection to a vessel in any detail and therefore failed to end the prevailing confusion regarding seaman status.
B
Respondent urges us to find our way out of the Jones Act “labyrinth” by focusing on the seemingly activity-based policy underlying the statute (the protection of those who are exposed to the perils of the sea), and to conclude that anyone working on board a vessel for the duration of a “voyage” in furtherance of the vessel’s mission has the necessary employment-related connection to qualify as a seaman. Brief for Respondent 12-17. Such an approach, however, would run counter to our prior decisions and our understanding of the remedial scheme Congress has established for injured maritime workers. A brief survey of the Jones Act’s tortured history makes clear that we must reject the initial appeal of such a “voyage” test and undertake the more difficult task of developing a status-based standard that, although it determines Jones Act coverage without regard to the precise activity in which the worker is engaged at the time of the injury, nevertheless best furthers the Jones Act’s remedial goals.
Our Jones Act cases establish several basic principles regarding the definition of a seaman. First, “[wjhether under the Jones Act or general maritime law, seamen do not include land-based workers.” Wilander, supra, at 348; see also All-britton, Seaman Status in Wilander’s Wake, 68 Tulane L. Rev. 373, 387 (1994). Our early Jones Act decisions had not recognized this fundamental distinction. In International Stevedoring Co. v. Haverty, 272 U. S. 50 (1926), we held that a longshoreman injured while stowing cargo, and while aboard but not employed by a vessel at dock in navigable waters, was a seaman covered by the Jones Act. Recognizing that “for most purposes, as the word is commonly used, stevedores are not ‘seamen,’” the Court nevertheless concluded that “[w]e cannot believe that Congress willingly would have allowed the protection to men engaged upon the same maritime duties to vary with the accident of their being employed by a stevedore rather than by the ship.” Id., at 52. Because stevedores are engaged in “a maritime service formerly rendered by the ship’s crew,” ibid. (citing Atlantic Transport Co. of W. Va. v. Imbrovek, 234 U. S. 52, 62 (1914)), we concluded, they should receive the Jones Act’s protections. See also Uravic v. F. Jarka Co., 282 U. S. 234, 238 (1931); Jamison v. Encarnacion, 281 U. S. 635, 639 (1930). In 1946, the Court belatedly recognized that Congress had acted, in passing the LHWCA in 1927, to undercut the Court’s reasoning in the Haverty line of cases and to emphasize that land-based maritime workers should not be entitled to the seamen’s traditional remedies. Our decision in Swanson v. Marra Brothers, Inc., 328 U. S. 1, 7 (1946), acknowledged that Congress had expressed its intention to “confine the benefits of the Jones Act to the members of the crew of a vessel plying in navigable waters and to substitute for the right of recovery recognized by the Haverty case only such rights to compensation as are given by [the LHWCA].” See also South Chicago Coal & Dock Co. v. Bassett, 309 U. S. 251, 257 (1940). Through the LHWCA, therefore, Congress “explicitly den[ied] a right of recovery under the Jones Act to maritime workers not members of a crew who are injured on board a vessel.” Swanson, supra, at 6. And this recognition process culminated in Wilander with the Court’s statement that, “[w]ith the passage of the LHWCA, Congress established a clear distinction between land-based and sea-based maritime workers. The latter, who owe their allegiance to a vessel and not solely to a land-based employer, are seamen.” 498 U. S., at 347.
In addition to recognizing a fundamental distinction between land-based and sea-based maritime employees, our cases also emphasize that Jones Act coverage, like the jurisdiction of admiralty over causes of action for maintenance and cure for injuries received in the course of a seaman’s employment, depends “not on the place where the injury is inflicted... but on the nature of the seaman’s service, his status as a member of the vessel, and his relationship as such to the vessel and its operation in navigable waters.” Swanson, supra, at 4. Thus, maritime workers who obtain seaman status do not lose that protection automatically when on shore and may recover under the Jones Act whenever they are injured in the service of a vessel, regardless of whether the injury occurs on or off the ship. In O’Donnell v. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co., 318 U. S. 36 (1943), the Court held a shipowner liable for injuries caused to a seaman by a fellow crew member while the former was on shore repairing a conduit that was a part of the vessel and that was used for discharging the ship’s cargo. We explained: “The right of recovery in the Jones Act is given to the seaman as such, and, as in the case of maintenance and cure, the admiralty jurisdiction over the suit depends not on the place where the injury is inflicted but on the nature of the service and its relationship to the operation of the vessel plying in navigable waters.” Id., at 42-43. Similarly, the Court in Swanson emphasized that the LHWCA “leaves unaffected the rights of members of the crew of a vessel to recover under the Jones Act when injured while pursuing their maritime employment whether on board... or on shore.” 328 U. S., at 7-8. See also Braen v. Pfeifer Oil Transp. Co., 361 U. S. 129, 131-132 (1959).
Our LHWCA cases also recognize the converse: Land-based maritime workers injured while on a vessel in navigation remain covered by the LHWCA, which expressly provides compensation for injuries to certain workers engaged in “maritime employment” that are incurred “upon the navigable waters of the United States,” 33 U. S. C. § 903(a). Thus, in Director, Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs v. Perini North River Associates, 459 U. S. 297 (1983), we held that a worker injured while “working on a barge in actual navigable waters” of the Hudson River, id., at 300, n. 4, could be compensated under the LHWCA, id., at 324. See also Parker v. Motor Boat Sales, Inc., 314 U. S. 244, 244-245 (1941) (upholding LHWCA coverage for a worker testing outboard motors who “was drowned when a motor boat in which he was riding capsized”). These decisions, which reflect our longstanding view of the LHWCA’s scope, indicate that a maritime worker does not become a “member of a crew” as soon as a vessel leaves the dock.
It is therefore well settled after decades of judicial interpretation that the Jones Act inquiry is fundamentally status based: Land-based maritime workers do not become seamen because they happen to be working on board a vessel when they are injured, and seamen do not lose Jones Act protection when the course of their service to a vessel takes them ashore. In spite of this background, respondent and Justice Stevens suggest that any maritime worker who is assigned to a vessel for the duration of a voyage — and whose duties contribute to the vessel’s mission — should be classified as a seaman for purposes of injuries incurred during that voyage. See Brief for Respondent 14; post, at 377 (opinion concurring in judgment). Under such a “voyage test,” which relies principally upon this Court’s statements that the Jones Act was designed to protect maritime workers who are exposed to the “special hazards” and “particular perils” characteristic of work on vessels at sea, see, e. g., Wilander, supra, at 354, the worker’s activities at the time of the injury would be controlling.
The difficulty with respondent’s argument, as the foregoing discussion makes clear, is that the LHWCA repudiated the Haverty line of cases and established that a worker is no longer considered to be a seaman simply because he is doing a seaman’s work at the time of the injury. Seaman status is not coextensive with seamen’s risks. See, e. g., Easley v. Southern Shipbuilding Corp., 965 F. 2d 1, 4-5 (CA5 1992), cert. denied, 506 U. S. 1050 (1993); Robertson 93 (following “the overwhelming weight of authority in taking it as given that seaman status cannot be established by any worker who fails to demonstrate that a significant portion of his work was done aboard a vessel” and acknowledging that “[sjome workers who unmistakably confront the perils of the sea, often in extreme form, are thereby left out of the seamen’s protections” (footnote omitted)). A “voyage test” would conflict with our prior understanding of the Jones Act as fundamentally status based, granting the negligence cause of action to those maritime workers who form the ship’s company. Swanson, supra, at 4-5; O’Donnell, supra, at 42-43.
Desper v. Starved Rock Ferry Co., 342 U. S. 187, 190 (1952), is not to the contrary. Although some language in that case does suggest that whether an individual is a seaman depends upon “the activity in which he was engaged at the time of injury,” the context of that discussion reveals that “activity” referred to the worker’s employment as a laborer on a vessel undergoing seasonal repairs while out of navigation, and not to his precise task at the time of injury. Similarly, despite Justice Harlan’s suggestion in dissent that the Court’s decision in Grimes v. Raymond Concrete Pile Co., 356 U. S. 252 (1958), necessarily construed the word seaman “to mean nothing more than a person injured while working at sea,” id., at 255, our short per curiam opinion in that case does not indicate that we adopted so expansive a reading of the statutory term. Citing our prior cases which emphasized that the question of seaman status is normally for the fact-finder to decide, see, e. g., Senko v. LaCrosse Dredging Corp., 352 U. S. 370, 371-372 (1957); Bassett, 309 U. S., at 257-258, we reversed the judgment of the Court of Appeals and held simply that the jury could have inferred from the facts presented that the petitioner was a member of a crew in light of his overall service to the company (as the District Court had concluded in ruling on a motion for a directed verdict at the close of petitioner’s case). Grimes, supra, at 253. That neither Desper nor Grimes altered our established course in favor of a voyage test is confirmed by reference to our later decision in Braen, supra, at 131, in which we repeated that “[t]he injured party must of course have ‘status as a member of the vessel’ for it is seamen, not others who may work on the vessel (Swanson v. Marra Bros., 328 U. S. 1, 4), to whom Congress extended the protection of the Jones Act.”
We believe it is important to avoid “ ‘engrafting upon the statutory classification of a “seaman” a judicial gloss so protean, elusive, or arbitrary as to permit a worker to walk into and out of coverage in the course of his regular duties.’” Barrett v. Chevron, U. S. A., Inc., 781 F. 2d 1067, 1075 (CA5 1986) (en banc) (quoting Longmire v. Sea Drilling Corp., 610 F. 2d 1342, 1347, n. 6 (CA5 1980)). In evaluating the employment-related connection of a maritime worker to a vessel in navigation, courts should not employ “a ‘snapshot’ test for seaman status, inspecting only the situation as it exists at the instant of injury; a more enduring relationship is contemplated in the jurisprudence.” Easley, supra, at 5. Thus, a worker may not oscillate back and forth between Jones Act coverage and other remedies depending on the activity in which the worker was engaged while injured. Reeves v. Mobile Dredging & Pumping Co., 26 F. 3d 1247, 1256 (CA3 1994). Unlike Justice Stevens, see post, at 383, we do not believe that any maritime worker on a ship at sea as part of his employment is automatically a member of the crew of the vessel within the meaning of the statutory terms. Our rejection of the voyage test is also consistent with the interests of employers and maritime workers alike in being able to predict who will be covered by the Jones Act (and, perhaps more importantly for purposes of the employers’ workers’ compensation obligations, who will be covered by the LHWCA) before a particular workday begins.
To say that our cases have recognized a distinction between land-based and sea-based maritime workers that precludes application of a voyage test for seaman status, however, is not to say that a maritime employee must work only on board a vessel to qualify as a seaman under the Jones Act. In Southwest Marine, Inc. v. Gizoni, 502 U. S. 81 (1991), decided only a few months after Wilander, we concluded that a worker’s status as a ship repairman, one of the enumerated occupations encompassed within the term “employee” under the LHWCA, 33 U. S. C. § 902(3), did not necessarily restrict the worker to a remedy under that statute. We explained that, “[w]hile in some cases a ship repairman may lack the requisite connection to a vessel in navigation to qualify for seaman status,... not all ship repairmen lack the requisite connection as a matter of law. This is so because ‘[i]t is not the employee’s particular job that is determinative, but the employee’s connection to a vessel.’” Gizoni, supra, at 89 (quoting Wilander, 498 U. S., at 354) (footnote omitted). Thus, we concluded, the Jones Act remedy may be available to maritime workers who are employed by a shipyard and who spend a portion of their time working on shore but spend the rest of their time at sea.
Beyond these basic themes, which are sufficient to foreclose respondent’s principal argument, our cases are largely silent as to the precise relationship a maritime worker must bear to a vessel in order to come within the Jones Act’s ambit. We have, until now, left to the lower federal courts the task of developing appropriate criteria to distinguish the “ship’s company” from those members of the maritime community whose employment is essentially land based.
C
The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit was apparently the first to develop a generally applicable test for seaman status. In Carumbo v. Cape Cod S. S. Co., 123 F. 2d 991 (1941), the court retained the pre-Swanson view that “the word ‘seaman’ under the Jones Act [did] not mean the same thing as ‘member of a crew’ under the [LHWCA],” 123 F. 2d, at 994. It concluded that “one who does any sort of work aboard a ship in navigation is a ‘seaman’ within the meaning of the Jones Act.” Id., at 995. To the phrase “member of a crew,” on the other hand, the court gave a more restrictive meaning. The court adopted three elements to define the phrase that had been used at various times in prior cases, holding that “[t]he requirements that the ship be in navigation; that there be a more or less permanent connection with the ship; and that the worker be aboard primarily to aid in navigation appear to us to be the essential and decisivé elements of the definition of a ‘member of a crew.’ ” Ibid. Cf. Senko, supra, at 375 (Harlan, J., dissenting) (“According to past decisions, to be a ‘member of a crew’ an individual must have some connection, more, or less permanent, with a ship and a ship’s company”). Once it became clear that the phrase “master or member of a crew” from the LHWCA is coextensive with the term “seaman” in the Jones Act, courts accepted the Carumbo formulation of master or member of a crew in the Jones Act context. See Boyd v. Ford Motor Co., 948 F. 2d 283 (CA6 1991); Estate of Wenzel v. Seaward Marine Services, Inc., 709 F. 2d 1326, 1327 (CA9 1983); Whittington v. Sewer Constr. Co., 541 F. 2d 427, 436 (CA4 1976); Griffith v. Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel Corp., 521 F. 2d 31, 36 (CA3 1975), cert. denied, 423 U. S. 1054 (1976); McKie v. Diamond Marine Co., 204 F. 2d 132, 136 (CA5 1953). The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit initially was among the jurisdictions to adopt the Carumbo formulation as the basis of its seaman status inquiry, see Salgado v. M. J. Rudolph Corp., 514 F. 2d, at 755, but that court took the instant case as an opportunity to modify the traditional test somewhat (replacing the “more or less permanent connection” prong with a requirement that the connection be “substantial in terms of its (a) duration and (b) nature”), 20 F. 3d, at 57.
The second major body of seaman status law developed in the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which has a substantial Jones Act caseload, in the wake of Offshore Co. v. Robison, 266 F. 2d 769 (CA5 1959). At the time of his injury, Robison was an oil worker permanently assigned to a drilling rig mounted on a barge in the Gulf of Mexico. In sustaining the jury’s award of damages to Robison under the Jones Act, the court abandoned the aid in navigation requirement of the traditional test and held as follows:
“[T]here is an evidentiary basis for a Jones Act case to go to the jury: (1) if there is evidence that the injured workman was assigned permanently to a vessel... or performed a substantial part of his work on the vessel; and (2) if the capacity in which he was employed or the duties which he performed contributed to the function of the vessel or to the accomplishment of its mission, or to the operation or welfare of the vessel in terms of its maintenance during its movement or during anchorage for its future trips.” Id., at 779 (footnote omitted).
Soon after Robison, the Fifth Circuit modified the test to allow seaman status for those workers who had the requisite connection with an “identifiable fleet”
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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H
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
CHIEF Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Chapter 154 of 28 U. S. C., part of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), 28 U. S. C. §2261 et seq. (1994 ed., Supp. II), provides certain procedural advantages to qualifying States in federal habeas proceedings. This ease requires us to decide whether state death-row inmates may sue state officials for declaratory and in-junctive relief limited to determining whether California qualifies under Chapter 154.
Chapter 154 revises procedural rules for federal habeas proceedings in capital cases. Most notably, it provides for an expedited review process in proceedings brought against qualifying States. It imposes a 180-day limitation period for filing a federal habeas petition. § 2263(a). It treats an untimely petition as a successive petition for purposes of obtaining a stay of execution, § 2262(e), and it allows a prisoner to amend a petition after an answer is filed only where the prisoner meets the requirements for a successive petition, § 2266(b)(3)(B). Chapter 154 also obligates a federal district court to render a final judgment on any petition within 180 days of its filing, and a court of appeals to render a final determination within 120 days of the briefing. §§ 2266(a) and (c).
As a general rule, Chapter 153 — which has a 1-year filing period, § 2244(d)(1), and lacks expedited review procedures— governs federal habeas proceedings against a State. Chapter 154 will apply in capital cases only if the State meets certain conditions. A State must establish “a mechanism for the appointment, compensation, and payment of reasonable litigation expenses of competent counsel” in state postconviction proceedings, and “must provide standards of competency for the appointment of such counsel.” § 2261(b) (States with separate postconvietion review proceedings); § 2265(a) (States with unitary review procedures). The State must offer counsel to all capital defendants, and the state court must enter an order concerning appointment of counsel. §§ 2261(b), 2265(b). If a State meets these criteria, then it may invoke Chapter 154.
Various California officials, including petitioner Attorney General Lungren, publicly indicated that they thought California qualified under Chapter 154 and that they intended to invoke the chapter’s protections. Respondent Troy Ash-mus, a state prisoner sentenced to death, filed a class-action suit against petitioners. The class, which included all capital prisoners in California whose convictions were affirmed on direct appeal after June 6, 1989, sought declaratory and injunctive relief to resolve uncertainty over whether Chapter 154 applied.
The District Court issued a declaratory judgment holding that California does not presently qualify for Chapter 154 and that Chapter 154 therefore does not apply to any class members. It also issued a preliminary injunction enjoining petitioners from “trying or seeking to obtain for the State of California the benefits of the provisions of Chapter 154 ... in any state or federal proceedings involving any class member.” 935 F. Supp. 1048, 1076 (ND Cal. 1996).
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. 123 F. 3d 1199 (1997). As a threshold matter, the Court of Appeals rejected petitioners’ claim that the Eleventh Amendment barred respondent’s suit as one against the State. The court concluded that the case falls within the Ex parte Young exception to Eleventh Amendment immunity, Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123 (1908), because respondent sufficiently alleged a continuing violation of federal law. 123 F. 3d, at 1204-1206. California’s announced intention to invoke Chapter 154, without having complied with its requirements, threatened to violate the class members’ right to thorough federal review of their first habeas petitions, pursuant to Chapter 153, and their right to assistance of counsel in federal habeas proceedings, pursuant to 21 U. S. C. § 848(q). By stating its intention to invoke Chapter 154, the Court of Appeals reasoned, California forced inmates to make an unacceptable choice: filing a pro se petition within 180 days in order to ensure compliance with Chapter 154, which may fail to raise substantial claims, or waiting until counsel is appointed, which may miss the 180-day filing deadline if Chapter 154 applies. 123 F. 3d, at 1204-1205.
The Court of Appeals also determined that the District Court had authority to issue a declaratory judgment under 28 U. S. C. § 2201(a). 123 F. 3d, at 1206-1207. It noted that a declaratory judgment plaintiff need only demonstrate an independent basis of federal jurisdiction and an actual ease or controversy. Id., at 1206. The District Court had federal question jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1331 because the ease challenged the interpretation of a federal Act. And the ease-or-controversy requirement was satisfied, the court concluded, because “the State’s threats to invoke Chapter 154 will significantly affect the plaintiff-class’s ability to obtain habeas corpus review by a federal court.” 123 F. 3d, at 1207.
The Court of Appeals agreed in large part with the District Court's conclusion that California does not qualify, and therefore found Chapter 154 inapplicable. In affirming the grant of injunctive relief, the Court of Appeals rejected petitioners’ contention that enjoining their advocacy of a particular legal position violates the First Amendment. It thought the injunction did not interfere with the state officials’ rights since they were free to voice their opinion that the decision was wrong — only not in court in order to invoke the benefits of Chapter 154. Id., at 1207-1209.
Petitioners sought review in this Court. We granted certiorari on both the Eleventh Amendment and the First Amendment issues, 522 U. S. 1011 (1997), but in keeping with our precedents, have decided that we must first address whether this action for a declaratory judgment is the sort of “Article III” “case or controversy” to which federal courts are limited. See, e. g., FW/PBS, Inc. v. Dallas, 493 U. S. 215, 230-231 (1990).
Before the enactment of the federal Declaratory Judgment Act, this Court expressed the view that a “declaratory judgment” was not within that jurisdiction. Willing v. Chicago Auditorium Assn., 277 U. S. 274, 289 (1928). But in Nashville, C. & St. L. R. Co. v. Wallace, 288 U. S. 249 (1933), the Court held that it did have jurisdiction to review a declaratory judgment granted by a state court. And in Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Haworth, 300 U. S. 227 (1937), we decided that the federal Declaratory Judgment Act validly conferred jurisdiction on federal courts to issue declaratory judgments in appropriate cases.
That Act provides that “[i]n a ease of actual controversy within its jurisdiction,... any court of the United States ... may declare the rights and other legal relations of any interested party seeking such declaration, whether or not further relief is or could be sought.” 28 U. S. C. § 2201. See also Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 57. Thus, in Aetna Life Ins., we held that an insurance company could bring a declaratory judgment action to determine the validity of insurance polieies. The company and the insured disputed whether the polieies had lapsed and how much was currently payable, but the insured had not brought suit to recover benefits. 300 U. S., at 239-240. We observed that the controversy would admit “of specific relief through a decree of a conclusive character, as distinguished from an opinion advising what the law would be upon a hypothetical state of facts.” Id., at 241. See also Wallace, supra, at 262. We have thus recognized the potential for declaratory judgment suits to fall outside the constitutional definition of a “case” in Article III: a claim “ ‘brought before the court(s) for determination by such regular proceedings as are established by law or custom for the protection or enforcement of rights, or the prevention, redress, or punishment of wrongs.’ ” Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U. S. 126, 129 (1922).
The underlying “controversy” between petitioners and respondent is whether respondent is entitled to federal habeas relief setting aside his sentence or conviction obtained in the California courts. But no such final or conclusive determination was sought in this action. Instead, respondent carved out of that claim only the question whether, when he sought habeas relief, California would be governed by Chapter 153 or by Chapter 154 in defending the action. Had he brought a habeas action itself, he undoubtedly would have obtained such a determination, but he seeks to have that question determined in anticipation of seeking habeas so that he will be better able to know, for example, the time limits that govern the habeas action.
We think previous decisions of this Court bar the use of the Declaratory Judgment Act for this purpose. In Coffman v. Breeze Corps., 323 U. S. 316 (1945), a patent owner brought suit seeking to have the Royalty Adjustment Act declared unconstitutional and to enjoin his licensee from paying accrued royalties to the government. The Court held that the action presented no case or controversy. The validity of the Act would properly arise only in a suit by the patent holder to recover the royalties, which could afford complete and adequate relief. In such a suit, if the licensee were to assert compliance with the Act as a defense to an obligation to pay the amounts due, the patent holder’s right of recovery would then depend on a determination of the Act’s validity. Id., at 322-323. The Court thus concluded that there was no justiciable question “unless and until [the patent owner] seeks recovery of the royalties, and then only if [the licensee] relies on the Act as a defense.” Id., at 324. See also Public Serv. Comm’n of Utah v. Wycoff Co., 344 U. S. 237, 245-246 (1952).
As in Coffman, respondent here seeks a declaratory judgment as to the validity of a defense the State may, or may not, raise in a habeas proceeding. Such a suit does not merely allow the resolution of a “case or controversy” in an alternative format, as in Aetna Life Ins., supra, but rather attempts to gain a litigation advantage by obtaining an advance ruling on an affirmative defense, see Coffman, supra, at 322-324; Wycoff Co., supra, at 245-246. The “case or controversy” actually at stake is the class members’ claims in their individual habeas proceedings. Any judgment in this action thus would not resolve the entire ease or controversy as to any one of them, but would merely determine a collateral legal issue governing certain aspects of their pending or future suits.
The disruptive effects of an action such as this are peculiarly great when the underlying claim must be adjudicated in a federal habeas proceeding. For we have held that any claim by a prisoner attacking the validity or duration of his confinement must be brought under the habeas sections of Title 28 of the United States Code. Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475, 500 (1973). As that opinion pointed out, this means that a state prisoner is required to exhaust state remedies before bringing his claim to a federal court. Id., at 489-491. But if respondent Ashmus is allowed to maintain the present action, he would obtain a declaration as to the applicable statute of limitations in a federal habeas action without ever having shown that he has exhausted state remedies. This aberration illustrates the need, emphasized in Coffman and Wycoff, to prevent federal-court litigants from seeking by declaratory judgment to litigate a single issue in a dispute that must await another lawsuit for complete resolution.
If the class members file habeas petitions, and the State asserts Chapter 154, the members obviously can litigate California’s compliance with Chapter 154 at that time. Any risk associated with resolving the question in habeas, rather than a pre-emptive suit, is no different from risks associated with choices commonly faced by litigants.
When asked at oral argument what authority existed for allowing a declaratory judgment suit on an anticipated defense, respondent replied that Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U. S. 452 (1974), allows a declaratory judgment action to prevent interference with federal rights. See also Brief for Respondent 16. Although acknowledging that Steffel involved a continuing threat of arrest in violation of the First Amendment, respondent argued that the Court’s decision did not distinguish types of threats. Here, according to respondent, the State’s “threat” to assert Chapter 154 in habeas proceedings and the risk that the class members will thereby lose their rights to application of Chapter 158 are sufficient to establish federal court jurisdiction.
Steffel, however, falls within the traditional scope of declaratory judgment actions because it completely resolved a concrete controversy susceptible to conclusive judicial determination. In Steffel, protesters had twice been told they would be arrested for handbilling in front of a shopping center, and the plaintiff’s companion had in fact been arrested after disregarding instructions to leave. Id., at 455-456. The imminent threat of state criminal prosecution and the consequent deterrence of the plaintiff’s exercise of constitutionally protected rights established a case or controversy. Id., at 459. That controversy could have been completely resolved by the declaratory judgment sought by the plaintiff. Id., at 460-462.
The differences between this case and Steffel are several. Here, California’s assertions on Chapter 154 have no coercive impact on the legal rights or obligations of either party. It is the members of the class, and not the State, who anticipate filing lawsuits. Those habeas actions would challenge the validity of their state court convictions and sentences; the State will oppose such challenges. The present declaratory judgment action would not completely resolve those challenges, but would simply carve out one issue in the dispute for separate adjudication.
We conclude that this action for a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief is not a justiciable ease within the meaning of Article III. The judgment of the Court of Appeals accordingly is reversed, and the case is remanded with instructions that respondent’s complaint be dismissed.
It is so ordered.
It is undisputed here that California is a unitary review State, which is a State that allows prisoners to raise collateral challenges in the course of direct review of the judgment, such that all damns may be raised in a single state appeal. See 28 U. S. C. § 2265(a) (1994 ed., Supp. II).
While the Eleventh Amendment is jurisdictional in the sense that it is a limitation on the federal court's judicial power, and therefore can be raised at any stage''of the proceedings, we have recognized that it is not coextensive with the limitations on judicial power in Article III. See Idaho v. Coeur d’Alene Tribe of Idaho, 521 U. S. 261, 267 (1997); Patsy v. Board of Regents of Fla., 457 U. S. 496, 515, n. 19 (1982).
Respondent conceded this point in earlier briefings. Brief in Opposition 7. Respondent now contends, however, that habeas proceedings will not provide an effective remedy because the class members still will be put in the file-or-default dilemma and because a decision in one ease will not relieve the other members of their continuing uncertainty. Brief for Respondent 35-36. But as explained, supra, at 747, the dilemma the class members face does not establish a ease in the constitutional sense. And the inability to bind the government as to the whole class does not affect that determination.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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I
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Scalia
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner Sun Oil Company seeks reversal of a decision of the Supreme Court of Kansas that it is liable for interest on certain previously suspended gas royalties. Wortman v. Sun Oil Co., 241 Kan. 226, 755 P. 2d 488 (1987) (Wortman III). The Kansas Supreme Court rejected petitioner’s contentions that (1) the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution, Art. IV, § 1, and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited application of Kansas’ statute of limitations so as to allow to proceed in Kansas courts a suit barred by the statute of limitations of the State whose substantive law governs the claim, and (2) those same Clauses of the Constitution mandated interpretations of other States’ substantive laws concerning interest that were different from those arrived at by the Kansas courts. We granted certiorari. 484 U. S. 912 (1987).
HH
In the 1960’s and 1970’s, petitioner, a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Texas, extracted gas from properties that it leased from respondents. The leases provided that respondents would receive a royalty, usually one-eighth of the proceeds, from the sale of gas. Petitioner sold the gas in interstate commerce at prices that had to be approved by the Federal Power Commission (FPC). The FPC permitted petitioner on several occasions to collect proposed increased prices from customers pending final approval, but required petitioner to refund with interest any amount so collected that was not ultimately approved. Specifically, petitioner had on file with the FPC an undertaking to comply with regulations, now codified at 18 CFR § 154.102 (1987), requiring petitioner to refund any ultimately unapproved increase plus interest at certain specified rates. §154.102(c). Petitioner made no royalty payments to respondents on the increased amounts collected until the FPC approved the increases. The respondents’ royalty shares of these increases have been called “suspended royalty payments” in this litigation.
In July 1976, petitioner paid respondents $1,167,000 in suspended royalty payments after the FPC approved increases that had been collected from July 1974 through April 1976. These payments covered 670 properties, 43.7% of which were located in Texas, 24% in Oklahoma, and 22.8% in Louisiana. In April 1978, petitioner paid respondents $2,676,000 in suspended royalty payments after the FPC approved increases that had been collected from December 1976 through April 1978. These payments covered 690 properties, 40.3% located in Texas, 31.6% in Oklahoma, and 23.6% in Louisiana.
In August 1979, respondents Richard Wortman and Hazel Moore filed a class action in a Kansas trial court on behalf of all landowners to whom petitioner had made or should have made suspended royalty payments, seeking interest on those payments for the period that the payments were held and used by petitioner. The trial court ruled that Kansas law governed all claims for interest, even claims relating to leases in another State and brought by residents of that State. The court further ruled that under Kansas law petitioner was liable for prejudgment interest at the rates petitioner had agreed to pay with respect to customer refunds under the FPC regulations. These rates were 7% per annum prior to October 10, 1974; 9% from then until September 30, 1979; and thereafter the average prime rate compounded quarterly. The trial court relied on Shutts v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 222 Kan. 527, 567 P. 2d 1292 (1977) (Shutts I), cert. denied, 434 U. S. 1068 (1978). That case, which also involved suspended royalty payments, had held that Kansas law gov-emed the claims of residents of other States concerning properties in those States, and that under Kansas law (1) the royalty owners were entitled to interest on suspended royalty payments because the royalty payments became owing under the royalty contract at the moment the gas company’s customers paid the increases and (2) the interest rate to be used was that set forth in the FPC regulations because the gas company’s corporate undertaking with the FPC constituted an agreement to pay that rate. See 222 Kan., at 562-565, 567 P. 2d, at 1317-1319.
The principles of Shutts I were reaffirmed in Shutts v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 235 Kan. 195, 679 P. 2d 1159 (1984) (Shutts II), a factually similar case involving suspended royalty payments different from those in Shutts I. The original decision of the trial court in this case was then affirmed on the strength of Shutts II in Wortman v. Sun Oil Co., 236 Kan. 266, 690 P. 2d 385 (1984) (Wortman I). The losing gas companies in both cases petitioned this Court for certiorari.
We reversed that part of Shutts II which held that Kansas could apply its substantive law to claims by residents of other States concerning properties located in those States, and remanded that case to the Kansas Supreme Court for application.of the governing law of the other States to those claims. Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Shutts, 472 U. S. 797, 816-823 (1985) (Shutts III). We also vacated the decision in Wort-man I and remanded it for reconsideration in light of our decision in Shutts III. Sun Oil Co. v. Wortman, 474 U. S. 806 (1985) (Wortman II).
On the remand in this case, the trial court held that under the law of the other States that had been held by Shutts III to govern the vast majority of claims, petitioner was liable for interest at the rate specified in the FPC regulations. The trial court further held that nothing in Shutts III precluded the application of Kansas’ 5-year statute of limitations to these claims, and that therefore claims for interest on the suspended royalty payments made in July 1976 were timely. The Kansas Supreme Court agreed with the first of these holdings in Shutts v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 240 Kan. 764, 732 P. 2d 1286 (1987) (Shutts IV), cert. pending, No. 87-348. The decision that the other States’ pertinent substantive legal rules were consistent with those of Kansas was reaffirmed in Wortman III, the decision we now review. Wort-man III also held that this Court’s decision in Shutts III applied only to substantive law, and not to procedural matters such as the appropriate statute of limitations.
HH HH
This Court has long and repeatedly held that the Constitution does not bar application of the forum State’s statute of limitations to claims that in their substance are and must be governed by the law of a different State. See, e. g., Wells v. Simonds Abrasive Co., 345 U. S. 514, 516-518 (1953); Townsend v. Jemison, 9 How. 407, 413-420 (1850); McElmoyle v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312, 327-328 (1839). We granted certiorari to reexamine this issue. We conclude that our prior holdings are sound.
A
The Full Faith and Credit Clause provides:
"Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.”
The Full Faith and Credit Clause does not compel “a state to substitute the statutes of other states for its own statutes dealing with a subject matter concerning which it is competent to legislate.” Pacific Employers Ins. Co. v. Industrial Accident Comm’n, 306 U. S. 493, 501 (1939). Since the procedural rules of its courts are surely matters on which a State is competent to legislate, it follows that a State may apply its own procedural rules to actions litigated in its courts. The issue here, then, can be characterized as whether a statute of limitations may be considered as a procedural matter for purposes of the Full Faith and Credit Clause.
Petitioner initially argues that McElmoyle v. Cohen, supra, was wrongly decided when handed down. The holding of McElmoyle, that a statute of limitations may be treated as procedural and thus may be governed by forum law even when the substance of the claim must be governed by another State’s law, rested on two premises, one express and one implicit. The express premise was that this reflected the rule in international law at the time the Constitution was adopted. This is indisputably correct, see Le Roy v. Crowninshield, 15 F. Cas. 362, 365, 371 (No. 8,269) (Mass. 1820) (Story, J.) (collecting authorities), and is not challenged by petitioner. The implicit premise, which petitioner does challenge, was that this rule from international law could properly have been applied in the interstate context consistently with the Full Faith and Credit Clause.
The first sentence of the Full Faith and Credit Clause was not much discussed at either the Constitutional Convention or the state ratifying conventions.. However, the most pertinent comment at the Constitutional Convention, made by James Wilson of Pennsylvania, displays an expectation that would be interpreted against the background of principles developed in international conflicts law. See 2 M. Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, p. 488 (rev. ed. 1966). Moreover, this expectation was practically inevitable, since there was no other developed body of conflicts law to which courts in our new Union could turn for guidance.
The reported state cases in the decades immediately following ratification of the Constitution show that courts looked without hesitation to international law for guidance in resolving the issue underlying this case: which State’s law governs the statute of limitations. The state of international law on that subject being as we have described, these early decisions uniformly concluded that the forum’s statute of limitations governed even when it was longer than the limitations period of the State whose substantive law governed the merits of the claim. See Nash v. Tupper, 1 Cai. 402, 412-413 (N. Y. 1803) (citing unreported 1795 New York case, Page v. Cable, holding the same); Pearsall v. Dwight, 2 Mass. 84, 89-90 (1806); Ruggles v. Keeler, 3 Johns. 263, 267-268 (N. Y. 1808) (Kent, C. J.); Graves v. Graves’s Executor, 5 Ky. 207, 208-209 (1810). By 1820, the use of the forum statute of limitations in the interstate context was acknowledged to be “well settled.” Medbury v. Hopkins, 3 Conn. 472, 473 (1820); accord, Le Roy v. Crowninshield, supra, at 371 (“settled”); cf. McCluny v. Silliman, 3 Pet. 270, 276-277 (1830) (“well settled”); Hawkins v. Barney’s Lessee, 5 Pet. 457, 466 (1831) (“not to be questioned”). Obviously, judges writing in the era when the Constitution was framed and ratified thought the use of the forum statute of limitations to be proper in the interstate context. Their implicit understanding that the Full Faith and Credit Clause did not preclude reliance on the international law rule carries great weight.
Moreover, this view of statutes of limitations as procedural for purposes of choice of law followed quite logically from the manner in which they were treated for domestic-law purposes. At the time the Constitution was adopted the rule was already well established that suit would lie upon a promise to repay a debt barred by the statute of limitations — on the theory, as expressed by many courts, that the debt constitutes consideration for the promise, since the bar of the statute does not extinguish the underlying right but merely causes the remedy to be withheld. See Little v. Blunt, 26 Mass. 488, 492 (1830) (“[T]he debt remained, the remedy was gone”); see also Wetzell v. Bussard, 11 Wheat. 309, 311 (1826). This is the same theory, of course, underlying the conflicts rule: the right subsists, and the forum may choose to allow its courts to provide a remedy, even though the jurisdiction where the right arose would not. See Graves v. Graves’s Executor, supra, at 208-209 (“The statute of limitations... does not destroy the right but withholds the remedy. It would seem to follow, therefore, that the lex fori, and not the lex loci was to prevail with respect to the time when the action should be commenced”).
The historical record shows conclusively, we think, that the society which adopted the Constitution did not regard statutes of limitations as substantive provisions, akin to the rules governing the validity and effect of contracts, but rather as procedural restrictions fashioned by each jurisdiction for its own courts. As Chancellor Kent explained in his landmark work, 2 J. Kent, Commentaries on American Law 462-463 (2d ed. 1832): “The period sufficient to constitute a bar to the litigation of sta[l]e demands, is a question of municipal policy and regulation, and one which belongs to the discretion of every government, consulting its own interest and convenience.”
Unable to sustain the contention that under the original understanding of the Full Faith and Credit Clause statutes of limitations would have been considered substantive, petitioner argues that we should apply the modern understanding that they are so. It is now agreed, petitioner argues, that the primary function of a statute of limitations is to balance the competing substantive values of repose and vindication of the underlying right; and we should apply that understanding here, as we have applied it in the area of choice of law for purposes of federal diversity jurisdiction, where we have held that statutes of limitations are substantive, see Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, 326 U. S. 99 (1945).
To address the last point first: Guaranty Trust itself rejects the notion that there is an equivalence between what is substantive under the Erie doctrine and what is substantive for purposes of conflict of laws. 326 U. S., at 108. Except at the extremes, the terms “substance” and “procedure” precisely describe very little except a dichotomy, and what they mean in a particular context is largely determined by the purposes for which the dichotomy is drawn. In the context of our Erie jurisprudence, see Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64 (1938), that purpose is to establish (within the limits of applicable federal law, including the prescribed Rules of Federal Procedure) substantial uniformity of predictable outcome between cases tried in a federal court and cases tried in the courts of the State in which the federal court sits. See Guaranty Trust, supra, at 109; Hanna v. Plumer, 380 U. S. 460, 467, 471-474 (1965). The purpose of the substance-procedure dichotomy in the context of the Full Faith and Credit Clause, by contrast, is not to establish uniformity but to delimit spheres of state legislative competence. How different the two purposes (and hence the appropriate meanings) are is suggested by this: It is never the case under Erie that either federal or state law — if the two differ — can properly be applied to a particular issue, cf. Erie, supra, at 72-73;. but since the legislative jurisdictions of the States overlap, it is frequently the case under the Full Faith and Credit Clause that a court can lawfully apply either the law of one State or the contrary law of another, see Shutts III, 472 U. S., at 823 (“[I]n many situations a state court may be free to apply one of several choices of law”). Today, for example, we do not hold that Kansas' must apply its own statute of limitations to a claim governed in its substance by another State’s law, but only that it may.
But to address petitioner’s broader point of which the Erie argument is only a part — that we should update our notion of what is sufficiently “substantive” to require full faith and credit: We cannot imagine what would be the basis for such an updating. As we have just observed, the words “substantive” and “procedural” themselves (besides not appearing in the Full Faith and Credit Clause) do not have a precise content, even (indeed especially) as their usage has evolved. And if one consults the purpose of their usage in the full-faith-and-credit context, that purpose is quite simply to give both the forum State and other interested States the legislative jurisdiction to which they are entitled. If we abandon the currently applied, traditional notions of such entitlement we would embark upon the enterprise of constitutionalizing choice-of-law rules, with no compass to guide us beyond our own perceptions of what seems desirable. There is no more reason to consider recharacterizing statutes of limitation as substantive under the Full Faith and Credit Clause than there is to consider recharacterizing a host of other matters generally treated as procedural under conflicts law, and hence generally regarded as within the forum State’s legislative jurisdiction. See, e. g., Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws § 131 (remedies available), § 133 (placement of burden of proof), § 134 (burden of production), § 135 (sufficiency of the evidence), § 139 (privileges) (1971).
In sum, long established and still subsisting choice-of-law practices that come to be thought, by modem scholars, unwise, do not thereby become unconstitutional. If current conditions render it desirable that forum States no longer treat a particular issue as procedural for conflict of laws purposes, those States can themselves adopt a rule to that effect, e. g., Heavner v. Uniroyal, Inc., 63 N. J. 130, 135-141, 305 A. 2d 412, 415-418 (1973) (statute of limitations), or it can be proposed that Congress legislate to that effect under the second sentence of the Full Faith and Credit Clause, cf. Mills v. Duryee, 7 Cranch 481, 485 (1813); Pacific Employers Ins. Co. v. Industrial Accident Comm’n, 306 U. S., at 502. It is not the function of this Court, however, to make departures from established choice-of-law precedent and practice constitutionally mandatory. We hold, therefore, that Kansas did not violate the Full Faith and Credit Clause when it applied its own statute of limitations.
B
Petitioner also makes a due process attack upon the Kansas court’s application of its own statute of limitations. Here again neither the tradition in place when the constitutional provision was adopted nor subsequent practice supports the contention. At the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, this Court had not only explicitly approved (under the Full Faith and Credit Clause) forum-state application of its own statute of limitations, but the practice had gone essentially unchallenged. And it has gone essentially unchallenged since. “If a thing has been prac-tised for two hundred years by common consent, it will need a strong case for the Fourteenth Amendment to affect it.” Jackman v. Rosenbaum Co., 260 U. S. 22, 31 (1922).
A State’s interest in regulating the workload of its courts and determining when a claim is too stale to be adjudicated certainly suffices to give it legislative jurisdiction to control the remedies available in its courts by imposing statutes of limitations. Moreover, petitioner could in no way have been unfairly surprised by the application to it of a rule that is as old as the Republic. There is, in short, nothing in Kansas’ action here that is “arbitrary or unfair,” Shutts III, 472 U. S., at 821-822, and the due process challenge is entirely without substance.
Ill
In Shutts III, we held that Kansas could not apply its own law to claims for interest by nonresidents concerning royalties from property located in other States. The Kansas Supreme Court has complied with that ruling, but petitioner claims that it has unconstitutionally distorted Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana law in its determination of that law made in Shutts IV and applied to this case in Wortman III.
To constitute a violation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause or the Due Process Clause, it is not enough that a state court misconstrue the law of another State. Rather, our cases make plain that the misconstruction must contradict law of the other State that is clearly established and that has been brought to the court’s attention. See, e. g., Pennsylvania Fire Ins. Co. v. Gold Issue Mining & Milling Co., 243 U. S. 93, 96 (1917); Western Life Indemnity Co. v. Rupp, 235 U. S. 261, 275 (1914); Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Melton, 218 U. S. 36, 51-52 (1910); Banholzer v. New York Life Ins. Co., 178 U. S. 402, 408 (1900); see also Shutts III, supra, at 834-842 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). We cannot conclude that any of the interpretations at issue here runs afoul of this standard.
1. Texas: Petitioner contests the Kansas Supreme Court’s interpretation of Texas law on the interest rate. Texas’ statutory rate of 6% does not apply when a “specified rate of interest is agreed upon by the parties.” Tex. Rev. Civ. Stat. Ann., Art. 5069-1.03 (Vernon 1987). Such an agreement need not be express, but can be inferred from conduct. See Preston Farm & Ranch Supply, Inc. v. Bio-Zyme Enterprises, 625 S. W. 2d 295, 298, 300 (Tex. 1981). The Kansas court held an agreement to pay interest at a higher rate was implied by petitioner’s undertaking with the FPC to comply with federal regulations setting forth the applicable rates of interest for refundable moneys held in suspense. See Shutts IV, 240 Kan., at 777, 783-784, 790-791, 732 P. 2d, at 1298, 1302, 1306; see also Shutts I, 222 Kan., at 562-565, 567 P. 2d, at 1317-1319.
Petitioner brought to the Kansas court’s attention no Texas decision clearly indicating that an agreement to pay interest at a specified rate would not be implied in these circumstances. Petitioner’s reliance on Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Stahl Petroleum Co., 569 S. W. 2d 480 (Tex. 1978), is misplaced. Although that, case was similar to the present one on its facts, the point at issue here was neither raised nor decided. In Stahl, the intermediate Texas court had ordered interest paid at the statutory 6% rate. There is nothing to indicate, however, that the royalty owner had requested anything else, and only the lessee and not the royalty owner appealed. Id., at 481. Thus, the Texas Supreme Court’s holding that 6% interest was payable is in no way a holding that more than 6% was not. It is far from unconstitutional for the Kansas Supreme Court to anticipate that the Texas Supreme Court would distinguish the case on the eminently reasonable ground that no rate of interest based on an implied agreement was at issue.
2. Oklahoma: Petitioner contests the Kansas Supreme Court’s interpretations of Oklahoma law as to both liability for interest and the rate to be paid. Concerning liability, petitioner relies on a statute providing that “[accepting payment of the whole principal, as such, waives all claim to interest.” Okla. Stat., Tit. 23, §8 (1981). But the Oklahoma Supreme Court has held that this statute does not bar a claim for interest based on an implied agreement to pay interest, since in that event the interest becomes, for purposes of the statute, part of the “principal” owed. See Webster Drilling Co. v. Sterling Oil of Oklahoma, Inc., 376 P. 2d 236, 238 (1962). Regarding the rate of interest, Oklahoma law provides for 6% only “in the absence of any contract as to the rate of interest, and by contract the parties may agree to any rate as may be authorized by law.” Okla. Stat., Tit. 15, § 266 (1981). Thus, for Oklahoma as for Texas, petitioner’s contention founders on the fact that it pointed to no decision indicating that an agreement to pay more than 6% interest would not be implied in circumstances such as those of the present case.
3. Louisiana: Finally, petitioner contests the Kansas Supreme Court’s interpretation of Louisiana law both as to liability for interest and the rate to be paid. Concerning liability, petitioner relies on Whitehall Oil Co. v. Boagni, 217 So. 2d 707 (La. App. 1968), aff’d on other issues, 255 La. 67, 229 So. 2d 702 (1969). That case involved a situation opposite from that involved here: the gas companies had paid the royalties on increased prices before FPC approval, and were seeking interest on those payments when the approval did not ensue. It thus involved a claim for unjust enrichment, see 217 So. 2d, at 709, and does not stand for the proposition that no interest is recoverable on a contractual debt — which would arguably (if not inevitably) have been governed by the Louisiana statute mandating interest on “[a]ll debts... from the time they become due.” La. Civ. Code Ann., Art. 1938 (West 1977); see also Wurzlow v. Placid Oil Co., 279 So. 2d 749, 772-774 (La. App.) (applying Art. 1938 to oil and gas royalties), cert,. denied, 282 So. 2d 140 (La. 1973).
As to petitioner’s claim that if interest was payable Louisiana’s 7% rate clearly applied: The 7% rate specified in the above-quoted statute applied “unless otherwise stipulated.” Art. 1938. Petitioner brought to the Kansas court’s attention no Louisiana decision indicating that an implied agreement could not constitute such a stipulation, or that an implied agreement would not be found in the circumstances of this case. Cf. Boutte v. Chevron Oil Co., 316 F. Supp. 524, 531 (ED La. 1970) (dictum) (gas company will owe royalty owner interest at FPC rates on suspended royalty payments once FPC approves increases), aff’d, 442 F. 2d 1337 (CA5 1971).
* * *
For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Kansas Supreme Court is
Affirmed.
Justice Kennedy took no part in the consideration or decision of this case..
Justice Brennan’s concurrence, post, at 740, misunderstands the famous statement from Milwaukee County v. M. E. White Co., 296 U. S. 268, 276-277 (1935), that “[t]he very purpose of the full faith and credit clause was to alter the status of the several states as independent foreign sovereignties.” This statement is true, as the context of the statement in Milwaukee County makes clear, not because the Clause itself radically changed the principles of conflicts law but because it made conflicts principles enforceable as a matter of constitutional command rather than leaving enforcement to the vagaries of the forum’s view of comity. See Estin v. Estin, 334 U. S. 541, 546 (1948) (the Full Faith and Credit Clause “substituted a command for the earlier principles of comity and thus basically altered the status of the States as independent sovereigns”) (emphasis added).
The concurrence’s assertion, post, at 740-741, n. 3, that Milwaukee County did not rely upon international conflicts law is entirely beside the point. It is not our point that the content of the Full Faith and Credit Clause is governed by international conflicts law, but only (in order to meet petitioner’s contention that McElmoyle was wrong when decided) that its original content was properly derived from that source. The conflicts law embodied in the Full Faith and Credit Clause allows room for common-law development, just as did the international conflicts law that it originally embodied. But the concurrence points to no such common-law development. The rule applied in McElmoyle continues to be the rule applied by most of the States. Nor, contrary to what the concurrence says, post, at 740-741, n. 3, did Milwaukee County strike down a practice that was in accord with then-accepted conflicts principles. Although the Restatement of Conflicts of Laws § 443 (1934) had taken the position that a judgment for taxes was not enforceable in another State, our opinion noted that “[t]he precise question now presented appears to have been decided in only a single case, New York v. Coe Manufacturing Co., 112 N. J. L. 536, 172 Atl. 198 [(1934)],” which held, as did this Court, that such a judgment was enforceable. 296 U. S., at 278-279. The opinion took some pains, moreover, to distinguish the traditional conflicts rules that one State need not entertain an action for taxes based on another State’s statute, id., at 274-277; see also id., at 279, and that generally one State need not enforce a judgment from another State for a penalty, see id., at 279-280. Cf. Restatement of Conflicts of Laws § 443, Comment d (1948 Supp.) (money judgments based on tax claims are enforceable “since such claims are not deemed penalties”).
Contrary to Justice Brennan’s concurrence, post, at 739-742, there is nothing unusual about our approach. This Court has regularly relied on traditional and subsisting practice in determining the constitutionally permissible authority of courts. See, e. g., Young v. United States ex rel. Vuitton et Fils, S. A., 481 U. S. 787, 795, and n. 7 (1987) (Article III); Tull v. United States, 481 U. S. 412, 417-421 (1987) (Seventh Amendment); Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Lavoie, 475 U. S. 813, 820-821 (1986) (disqualification of judges); Press-Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court of California, Riverside County, 464 U. S. 501, 505-508 (1984) (openness of jury selection process); Northern Pipeline Construction Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U. S. 50, 57-60, and nn. 10-11, 64-76, and nn. 15, 25, 86-87, n. 39 (1982) (plurality opinion of Brennan, J., joined by Marshall, Blackmun, and Stevens, JJ.) (Article III); id., at 90-91 (Rehnquist, J., joined by O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment); United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S. 683, 696 (1974) (“In the constitutional sense, controversy... means the kind of controversy courts traditionally resolve”). The concurrence’s citation, post, at 740, of the criticism by the plurality opinion in Allstate Ins. Co. v. Hague, 449 U. S. 302 (1981), of Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co. v. Delta & Pine Land Co., 292 U. S. 143 (1934), is not to the contrary. That criticism merely rejected the view that the Constitution enshrines the rule that the law of the place of contracting governs validity of all provisions of the contract. By the time of Allstate, of course., such a rule could not have been characterized as a subsisting tradition, if it ever could have been, in light of escape devices such as the doctrine of public policy, characterization of an issue as procedural, and the rule that the law of the place of performance governs matters of performance.
Although petitioner takes up this issue after discussion of the full-faith- and-credit claim, and devotes much less argument to it, we may note that, logically, the full-faith-and-eredit claim is entirely dependent upon it. It cannot possibly be a violation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause for a State to decline to apply another State’s law in a case where that other State itself does not consider it applicable. Although in certain circumstances standard conflicts law considers a statute of limitations to bar the right and not just the remedy, see Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws § 143 (1971), petitioner concedes, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 4-5, that (apart from the fact that Kansas does not so regard the out-of-state statutes of limitations at issue here) Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana view their own statutes as procedural for choice-of-law purposes, see, e. g., Los Angeles Airways, Inc. v. Lummis, 603 S. W. 2d 246, 248 (Tex. Civ. App. 1980), cert. denied, 455 U. S. 988 (1982); Western Natural Gas Co. v. Cities Service Gas Co., 507 P. 2d 1236, 1242 (Okla.), cert. denied, 409 U. S. 1052 (1972); Kirby Lumber Co. v. Hicks Co., 144 La. 473, 475, 80 So. 663 (1919). A full-faith-and-credit problem can therefore arise only if that disposition by those other States is invalid — that is, if they, as well as Kansas, are compelled to consider their statutes of limitations substantive. The nub of the present controversy, in other words, is the scope of constitutionally permissible legislative jurisdiction, and it matters little whether that is discussed in the context of the Full Faith and Credit Clause, as the litigants have principally done, or in the context of the Due Process Clause. Since we are largely traversing ground already covered, our discussion of the due process claim can be brief.
The partial dissent’s dissatisfaction with our decision to let stand Kansas’ interpretation of Texas law, as well as Oklahoma and Louisiana law, see infra, at 733-734, appears to rest on two premises: (1) That respondents have some threshold burden of supporting Kansas’ interpretation of what the other States’ laws would likely be, post, at 743-744, 745-746, 746-747, 748, and (2) that respondents have not met that burden because Kansas’ view of contract law is a manifest departure from normal and proper principles of contract law. Post, at 746, 748-749. We think neither premise is correct.
First, placing the initial burden on respondents to support the Kansas court’s interpretations is flatly inconsistent with the precedent of this Court. Relief cannot be granted in this Court unless decisions plainly contradicting the Kansas court’s interpretations were brought to the Kansas court’s attention. See, e. g., Western Life Indemnity Co. v. Rupp,
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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D
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion for the Court.
The Court of Appeals in a brief per curiam opinion held that portion of an Act of Congress prohibiting the mailing of firearms “capable of being concealed on the person,” 18 U. S. C. § 1715, to be unconstitutionally vague, and we granted certiorari to review this determination. 420 U. S. 971 (1975). Respondent was found guilty of having violated the statute by a jury in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, and was sentenced by that court to a term of two years' imprisonment. The testimony adduced at trial showed that a Mrs. Theresa Bailey received by mail an unsolicited package from Spokane, Wash., addressed to her at her home in Tacoma, Wash. The package contained two shotguns, shotgun shells, and 20 or 30 hacksaw blades.
While the source of this package was unknown to Mrs. Bailey, its receipt by her not unnaturally turned her thoughts to her husband George, an inmate at nearby McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. Her husband, however, disclaimed any knowledge of the package or its contents. Mrs. Bailey turned the package over to federal officials, and subsequent investigation disclosed that both of the shotguns had been purchased on the same date. One had been purchased by respondent, and another by an unidentified woman.
Ten days after having received the first package, Mrs. Bailey received a telephone call from an unknown woman who advised her that a second package was coming but that “it was a mistake.” The caller advised her to give the package to “Sally.” When Mrs. Bailey replied that she “did not have the address or any way of giving it to Sally,” the caller said she would call back.
Several days later, the second package arrived, and Mrs. Bailey gave it unopened to the investigating agents. The return address was that of respondent, and it was later determined that the package bore respondent’s handwriting. This package contained a sawed-off shotgun with a barrel length of 10 inches and an overall length of 22% inches, together with two boxes of shotgun shells.
Respondent was indicted on a single count of mailing a firearm capable of being concealed on the person (the sawed-off shotgun contained in the second package), in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 1715. At trial there was evidence that the weapon could be concealed on an average person. Respondent was convicted by a jury which was instructed that in order to return a guilty verdict it must find that she “knowingly caused to be delivered by mail a firearm capable of being concealed on the person.”
She appealed her judgment of conviction to the Court of Appeals, and that court held that the portion of § 1715 proscribing the mailing of "other firearms capable of being concealed on the person” was so vague that it violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. 501 F. 2d 1136 (1974). Citing Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U. S. 451 (1939), the court held that, although it was clear that a pistol could be concealed on the person, “the statutory prohibition as it might relate to sawed-off shotguns is not so readily recognizable to persons of common experience and intelligence.” 501 F. 2d, at 1137.
While the Court of Appeals considered only the constitutional claim, respondent in this Court makes a statutory argument which may fairly be described as an alternative basis for affirming the judgment of that court. She contends that as a matter of statutory construction, particularly in light of the doctrine of ejusdem generis, the language “other firearms capable of being concealed on the person” simply does not extend to sawed-off shotguns. We must decide this threshold question of statutory interpretation first, since if we find the statute inapplicable to respondent, it will be unnecessary to reach the constitutional question, Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471, 475-476 (1970).
The thrust of respondent’s argument is that the more general language of the statute (“firearms”) should be limited by the more specific language (“pistols and revolvers”) so that the phrase “other firearms capable of being concealed on the person” would be limited to “concealable weapons, such as pistols and revolvers.”
We reject this contention. The statute by its terms bans the mailing of “firearms capable of being concealed on the person,” and we would be justified in narrowing the statute only if such a narrow reading was supported by evidence of congressional intent over and above the language of the statute.
In Gooch v. United States, 297 U. S. 124, 128 (1936), the Court said:
“The rule of ejusdem generis, while firmly established, is only an instrumentality for ascertaining the correct meaning of words when there is uncertainty. Ordinarily, it limits general terms which follow specific ones to matters similar to those specified; but it may not be used to defeat the obvious purpose of legislation. And, while penal statutes are narrowly construed, this does not require rejection of that sense of the words which best harmonizes with the context and the end in view.”
The legislative history of this particular provision is sparse, but the House report indicates that the purpose of the bill upon which § 1716 is based was to avoid having the Post Office serve as an instrumentality for the violation of local laws which prohibited the purchase and possession of weapons. H. R. Rep. No. 610, 69th Cong., 1st Sess. (1926). It would seem that sawed-off shotguns would be even more likely to be prohibited by local laws than would pistols and revolvers. A statement by the author of the bill, Representative Miller of Washington, on the floor of the House indicates that the purpose of the bill was to make it more difficult for criminals to obtain concealable weapons. 66 Cong. Rec. 726 (1924). To narrow the meaning of the language Congress used so as to limit it to only those weapons which could be concealed as readily as pistols or revolvers would not comport with that purpose. Cf. United States v. Alpers, 338 U. S. 680, 682 (1950).
We therefore hold that a properly instructed jury could have found the 22-inch sawed-off shotgun mailed by respondent to have been a “firearm capable of being concealed on the person” within the meaning of 18 U. S. C. § 1715. Having done so, we turn to the Court of Appeals’ holding that this portion of the statute was unconstitutionally vague.
We said last Term that “[i]t is well established that vagueness challenges to statutes which do not involve First Amendment freedoms must be examined in the light of the facts of the case at hand.” United States v. Mazurie, 419 U. S. 544, 550 (1975). The Court of Appeals dealt with the statute generally, rather than as applied to respondent in this case. It must necessarily have concluded, therefore, that the prohibition against mailing “firearms capable of being concealed on the person” proscribed no comprehensible course of conduct at all. It is well settled, of course, that such a statute may not constitutionally be applied to any set of facts. Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U. S., at 453; Connolly v. General Constr. Co., 269 U. S. 385, 391 (1926).
An example of such a vague statute is found in United States v. Cohen Grocery Co., 255 U. S. 81, 89 (1921). The statute there prohibited any person from “willfully ... mak[ing] any unjusr or unreasonable rate or charge in . . . dealing in or with any necessaries. . . .” So worded it “forbids no specific or definite act” and “leaves open . . . the widest conceivable inquiry, the scope of which no one can foresee and the result of which no one can foreshadow or adequately guard against.” Ibid.
On the other hand, a statute which provides that certain oversized or heavy loads must be transported by the “shortest practicable route” is not unconstitutionally vague. Sproles v. Binford, 286 U. S. 374, 393 (1932). The carrier has been given clear notice that a reasonably ascertainable standard of conduct is mandated; it is for him to insure that his actions do not fall outside the legal limits. The sugar dealer in Cohen, to the contrary, could have had no idea in advance what an “unreasonable rate” would be because that would have been determined by the vagaries of supply and demand, factors over which he had no control. Engaged in a lawful business which Congress had in no way sought to proscribe, he could not have charged any price with the confidence that it would not be later found unreasonable.
But the challenged language of 18 U. S. C. § 1715 is quite different from that of the statute involved in Cohen. It intelligibly forbids a definite course of conduct: the mailing of concealable firearms. While doubts as to the applicability of the language in marginal fact situations may be conceived, we think that the statute gave respondent adequate warning that her mailing of a 22-inch-long sawed-off shotgun was a criminal offense. Even as to more doubtful cases than that of respondent, we have said that “the law is full of instances where a man’s fate depends on his estimating rightly, that is, as the jury subsequently estimates it, some matter of degree.” Nash v. United States, 229 U. S. 373, 377 (1913).
The Court of Appeals questioned whether the “person” referred to in the statute to measure capability of concealment was to be “the person mailing the firearm, the person receiving the firearm, or, perhaps, an average person, male or female, wearing whatever garb might be reasonably appropriate, wherever the place and whatever the season.” 501 F. 2d, at 1137. But we think it fair to attribute to Congress the commonsense meaning that such a person would be an average person garbed in a manner to aid, rather than hinder, concealment of the weapons. Such straining to inject doubt as to the meaning of words where no doubt would be felt by the normal reader is not required by the “void for vagueness” doctrine, and we will not indulge in it.
The Court of Appeals also observed that “[t]o require Congress to delimit the size of the firearms (other than pistols and revolvers) that it intends to declare unmailable is certainly to impose no insurmountable burden upon it . . . .” Ibid. Had Congress chosen to delimit the size of the firearms intended to be declared unmailable, it would have written a different statute and in some respects a narrower one than it actually wrote. To the extent that it was intended to proscribe the mailing of all weapons capable of being concealed on the person, a statute so limited would have been less inclusive than the one Congress actually wrote.
But the more important disagreement we have with this observation of the Court of Appeals is that it seriously misconceives the “void for vagueness” doctrine. The fact that Congress might, without difficulty, have chosen “[c]learer and more precise language” equally capable of achieving the end which it sought does not mean that the statute which it in fact drafted is unconstitutionally vague. United States v. Petrillo, 332 U. S. 1, 7 (1947).
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
Respondent’s husband, Travis Powell, also was an inmate at McNeil Island.
Mrs. Bailey testified at trial that she did not know “Sally.”
Title 18 U. S. C. § 1715 provides in pertinent part:
“Pistols, revolvers, and other firearms capable of being concealed on the person are nonmailable ....
“Whoever knowingly deposits for mailing or delivery, or knowingly causes to be delivered by mail according to the direction thereon . . . any pistol, revolver, or firearm declared nonmailable by this section, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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D
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner was convicted of rape and related offenses. At trial the complaining witness testified on direct examination by the prosecution that she had identified petitioner at a preliminary hearing at which he was not represented by counsel. The State Supreme Court affirmed petitioner's convictions, and the Federal District Court and Court of Appeals denied habeas corpus relief. We granted certiorari because of an apparent conflict between the decisions below and our holdings with respect to the right to counsel at corporeal identifications in United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218 (1967); Gilbert v. California, 388 U. S. 263 (1967); and Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U. S. 682 (1972). We reverse.
I
The victim of the offenses in question lived in an apartment on the South Side of Chicago. Shortly after noon on December 14, 1967, she awakened from a nap to find a man standing in the doorway to her bedroom holding a knife. The man entered the bedroom, threw her face down on the bed, and choked her until she was quiet. After covering his face with a bandana, the intruder partially undressed the victim, forced her to commit oral sodomy, and raped her. Then he left, taking a guitar and a flute from the apartment.
When police arrived, the victim gave them a description of her assailant. Although she did not know who he was and had seen his face for only 10 to 15 seconds during the attack, she thought he was the same man who had made offensive remarks to her in a neighborhood bar the night before. She also gave police a notebook she had found next to her bed after the attack.
In the week that followed, police showed the victim two groups of photographs of men. From the first group of 200 she picked about 30 who resembled her assailant in height, weight, and build. From the second group of about 10, she picked two or three. One of these was of petitioner. Police also found a letter in the notebook that the victim had given them. Investigation revealed that it was written by a woman with whom petitioner had been staying. The letter had been taken from the woman’s home in her absence, and petitioner appeared to be the only other person who had access to the home.
On the evening of December 20, 1967, police arrested petitioner at his apartment and held him overnight pending a preliminary hearing to determine whether he should be bound over to the grand jury and to set bail. The next morning, a policeman accompanied the victim to the Circuit Court of Cook County (First Municipal District) for the hearing. The policeman told her she was going to view a suspect and should identify him if she could. He also had her sign a complaint that named petitioner as her assailant. At the hearing, petitioner’s name was called and he was led before the bench. The judge told petitioner that he was charged with rape and deviate sexual behavior. The judge then called the victim, who had been in the courtroom waiting for the case to be called, to come before the bench. The State’s Attorney stated that police had found evidence linking petitioner with the offenses charged. He asked the victim whether she saw her assailant in the courtroom, and she pointed at petitioner. The State’s Attorney then requested a continuance of the hearing because more time was needed to check fingerprints. The judge granted the continuance and fixed bail. Petitioner was not represented by counsel at this hearing, and the court'did not offer to appoint counsel.
At a subsequent hearing, petitioner was bound over to the grand jury, which indicted him for rape, deviate sexual behavior, burglary, and robbery. Counsel was appointed, and he moved to suppress the victim’s identification of petitioner because it had been elicited at the preliminary hearing through an unnecessarily suggestive procedure at which petitioner was not represented by counsel. After an evidentiary hearing the trial court denied the motion on the ground that the prosecution had shown an independent basis for the victim’s identification.
At trial, the victim testified on direct examination by the prosecution that she had identified petitioner as her assailant at the preliminary hearing. She also testified that the defendant on trial was the man who had raped her. The prosecution’s other evidence linking petitioner with the crimes was the letter found in the victim’s apartment. Defense counsel stipulated that petitioner had taken the letter from his woman friend’s home, but he presented evidence that petitioner might have lost the notebook containing the letter at the neighborhood bar the night before the attack. The defense theory was that the victim, who also was in the bar that night, could have picked up the notebook by mistake and taken it home. The defense also called witnesses who testified that petitioner was with them in a college lunchroom in another part of Chicago at the time the attack was committed.
The jury found petitioner guilty on all four counts, thus rejecting his theory and alibi. The trial court sentenced him to 30 to 50 years in prison. The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed. People v. Moore, 51 Ill. 2d 79, 281 N. E. 2d 294 (1972). It rejected petitioner’s argument that the victim’s identification testimony should have been excluded, on the ground that the prosecution had shown an “independent basis” for the identification. Id., at 86, 281 N. E. 2d, at 298. After this Court denied certiorari, 409 U. S. 979 (1972), petitioner sought a writ of habeas corpus from the Federal District Court. He contended that admission of the identification testimony at trial violated his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Relying on the transcript from the state proceedings, the District Court denied the writ in an unpublished opinion, again on the ground that the prosecution had shown an independent basis for the identification. App. 31-35. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed in an unpublished opinion, United States ex rel. Moore v. Illinois, 534 F. 2d 331 (1976), and we granted certiorari. 429 U. S. 1061 (1977).
II
United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218 (1967), held that a pretrial corporeal identification conducted after a suspect has been indicted is a critical stage in a criminal prosecution at which the Sixth Amendment entitles the accused to the presence of counsel. The Court emphasized the dangers inherent in a pretrial identification conducted in the absence of counsel. Persons who conduct the identification procedure may suggest, intentionally or unintentionally, that they expect the witness to identify the accused. Such a suggestion, coming Jrom a police officer or prosecutor, can lead a witness to make a mistaken identification. The witness then will be predisposed to adhere to this identification in subsequent testimony at trial. Id., at 229, 235-236. If an accused’s counsel is present at the pretrial identification, he can serve both his client’s and the prosecution’s interests by objecting to suggestive features of a procedure before they influence a witness’ identification. Id., at 236, 238. In view of the “variables and pitfalls” that exist at an uncounseled pretrial identification, id., at 235, the Wade Court reasoned:
“[T]he first line of defense must be the prevention of unfairness and the lessening of the hazards of eyewitness identification at the lineup itself. The trial which might determine the accused’s fate may well not be that in the courtroom but that at the pretrial confrontation, with the State aligned against the accused, the witness the sole jury, and the accused unprotected against the overreaching, intentional or unintentional, and with little or no effective appeal from the judgment there rendered by the witness — ‘that’s the man.’ ” Id., at 235-236.
Wade and its companion case, Gilbert v. California, 388 U. S. 263 (1967), also considered the admissibility of evidence derived from a corporeal identification conducted in violation of the accused’s right to counsel. In Wade, witnesses to a robbery who had identified the defendant at an uncounseled pretrial lineup testified at trial on direct examination by the prosecution that he was the man who had committed the robbery. The prosecution did not elicit from the witnesses the fact that they had identified the defendant at the pretrial lineup. Nevertheless, because of the likelihood that the witnesses’ in-court identifications were based on their observations of the defendant at the uncounseled lineup rather than at the scene of the crime, the Court held that this testimony should have been excluded unless the prosecution could “establish by clear and convincing evidence that the in-court identifications were based upon observations of the suspect other than the lineup identification.” 388 U. S., at 240.
Gilbert differed from Wade in one critical respect. In Gilbert the prosecution did elicit testimony in its case-in-chief that witnesses had identified the accused at an uncounseled pretrial lineup. The Court recognized that such testimony would “enhance the impact of [a witness’] in-court identification on the jury and seriously aggravate whatever derogation exists of the accused’s right to a fair trial.” 388 U. S., at 273-274. Because “[t]hat testimony [was] the direct result of the illegal lineup 'come at by exploitation of [the primary] illegality [,]’ Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U. S. 471, 488,” the prosecution was “not entitled to an opportunity to show that the testimony had an independent source.” Id., at 272-273; see also Wade, supra, at 240 n. 32. The Court announced this exclusionary rule in the belief that such a sanction is necessary “to assure that law enforcement authorities will respect the accused’s constitutional right to the presence of his counsel at the critical lineup.” Gilbert, supra, at 273. The Court therefore reversed the conviction and remanded to the state court for a determination of whether admission of this evidence was harmless constitutional error under Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18 (1967). 388 U. S., at 274.
In Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U. S. 682 (1972), the plurality opinion made clear that the right to counsel announced in Wade and Gilbert attaches only to corporeal identifications Conducted “at or after the initiation of adversary judicial criminal proceedings — whether by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information, or arraignment.” 406 U. S., at 689. This is so because the initiation of such proceedings “marks the commencement of the 'criminal prosecutions’ to which alone the explicit guarantees of the Sixth Amendment are applicable.” Id., at 690. Thus, in Kirby the plurality held that the prosecution’s evidence of a robbery victim’s one-on-one stationhouse identification of an uncoun-seled suspect shortly after the suspect’s arrest was admissible because adversary judicial criminal proceedings had not yet been initiated. In such cases, however, due process protects the accused against the introduction of evidence of, or tainted by, unreliable pretrial identifications obtained through unnecessarily suggestive procedures. Id., at 690-691; Neil v. Biggers, 409 U. S. 188 (1972); Stovall v. Denno, 388 U. S. 293 (1967); see generally Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U. S. 98 (1977).
III
In the instant case, petitioner argues that the preliminary hearing at which the victim identified him marked the initiation of adversary judicial criminal proceedings against him. Hence, under Wade, Gilbert, and Kirby, he was entitled to the presence of counsel at that confrontation. Moreover, the prosecution introduced evidence of this uncounseled corporeal identification at trial in its case-in-chief. Petitioner contends that under Gilbert, this evidence should have been excluded without regard to whether there was an “independent source” for it.
The Court of Appeals took a different view of the case. It read Kirby as holding that evidence of a corporeal identification conducted in the absence of defense counsel must be excluded only if the identification is made after the defendant is indicted. App. 45-46. Such a reading cannot be squared with Kirby itself, which held that an accused’s rights under Wade and Gilbert attach to identifications conducted “at or after the initiation of adversary judicial criminal proceedings,” including proceedings instituted “by way of formal charge [or] preliminary hearing.” 406 U. S., at 689. The prosecution in this case was commenced under Illinois law when the victim’s complaint was filed in court. See Ill. Rev. Stat., ch. 38, § 111 (1975). The purpose of the preliminary hearing was to determine whether there was probable cause to bind petitioner over to the grand jury and to set bail. §§ 109-1, 109-3. Petitioner had the right to oppose the prosecution at that hearing by moving to dismiss the charges and to suppress the evidence against him. § 109-3 (e). He faced counsel for the State, who elicited the victim’s identification, summarized the State’s other evidence against petitioner, and urged that the State be given more time to marshal its evidence. It is plain that “the government ha[d] committed itself to prosecute,” and that petitioner found “himself faced with the prosecutorial forces of organized society, and immersed in the intricacies of substantive and procedural criminal law.” Kirby, supra, at 689. The State candidly concedes that this preliminary hearing. marked the “initiation of adversary judicial criminal proceedings” against petitioner, Brief for Respondent 8, and n. 1; Tr. of Oral Arg. 32, 34, and it hardly could contend otherwise. The Court of Appeals therefore erred in holding that petitioner’s rights under Wade and Gilbert had not yet attached at the time of the preliminary hearing.
The Court of Appeals also suggested that Wade and Gilbert did not apply here because the “in-court identification could hardly be considered a line-up.” App. 45. The meaning of this statement is not entirely clear. If the court meant that a one-on-one identification procedure, as distinguished from a lineup, is not subject to the counsel requirement, it was mistaken. Although Wade and Gilbert both involved lineups, Wade clearly contemplated that counsel would be required in both situations: “The pretrial confrontation for purpose of identification may take the form of a lineup ... or presentation of the suspect alone to the witness .... It is obvious that risks of suggestion attend either form of confrontation . . . .” 388 U. S., at 229; see also id., at 251 (White, J., dissenting in part and concurring in part); cf. Stovall v. Denno, supra; Kirby v. Illinois. Indeed, a one-on-one confrontation generally is thought to present greater risks of mistaken identification than a lineup. E. g., P. Wall, EyeWitness Identification in Criminal Cases 27-40 (1965); Williams & Hammelmann, Identification Parades — I, Crim. L. Rev. 479, 480-481 (1963). There is no reason, then, to hold that a one-on-one identification procedure is not subject to the same requirements as a lineup.
If the court believed that petitioner did not have a right to counsel at this identification procedure because it was conducted in the course of a judicial proceeding, we do not agree. The reasons supporting Wade’s holding that a corporeal identification is a critical stage of a criminal prosecution for Sixth Amendment purposes apply with equal force to this identification. It is difficult to imagine a more suggestive manner in which to present a suspect to a witness for their critical first confrontation than was employed in this case. The victim, who had seen her assailant for only 10 to 15 seconds, was asked to make her identification after she was told that she was going to view a suspect, after she was told his name and heard it called as he was led before the bench, and after she heard the prosecutor recite the evidence believed to implicate petitioner. Had petitioner been represented by counsel, some or all of this suggestiveness could have been avoided.
In sum, we are unpersuaded by the reasons advanced by -the Court of Appeals for distinguishing the identification procedure in this case from those considered in Wade and Gilbert. Here, as in those cases, petitioner’s Sixth Amendment rights were violated by a corporeal identification conducted after the initiation of adversary judicial criminal proceedings and in the absence of counsel. The courts below thought that the victim’s testimony at trial that she had identified petitioner at an uncounseled pretrial confrontation was admissible even if petitioner’s rights had been violated, because there was an “independent source” for the victim’s identification at the uncounseled confrontation. 51 Ill. 2d, at 86, 281 N. E. 2d, at 298; App. 35 (District Court), 45-46 (Court of Appeals). But Gilbert held that the prosecution cannot buttress its case-in-chief by introducing evidence of a pretrial identification made in violation of the accused’s Sixth Amendment rights, even if it can prove that the pretrial identification had an independent source. “That testimony is the direct result of the illegal lineup 'come at by exploitation of [the primary] illegality,’ ” Gilbert, 388 U. S., at 272-273, and the prosecution is “therefore not entitled to an opportunity to show that the testimony had an independent source.” Id., at 273. Because the prosecution made use of such testimony in this case, petitioner is entitled to the benefit of the strict rule of Gilbert.
IV
In view of the violation of petitioner’s Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment right to counsel at the pretrial corporeal identification, and of the prosecution’s exploitation at trial of evidence derived directly from that violation, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand for a determination of whether the failure to exclude that evidence was harmless constitutional error under Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18 (1967). See Gilbert, supra, at 274. That court also will be free on remand to re-examine the other issues presented by the petition, upon which we do not pass.
Reversed and remanded.
Me. Justice Stevens took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Counsel for petitioner explicitly drew the court’s attention to our then recent decision in United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218 (1967): “If we may look at the Wade case, Your Honor, it has as its holding, Your Honor, the requirement that a defendant have an attorney at an identification procedure . . . .” Trial Transcript 132.
Among the factors to be considered in making this determination are “the prior opportunity to observe the alleged criminal act, the existence of any discrepancy between any pre-lineup description and the defendant’s actual description, any identification prior to lineup of another person, the identification by picture of the defendant prior to the lineup, failure to identify the defendant on a prior occasion, and the lapse of time between the alleged act and the lineup identification.” 388 U. S., at 241.
In United States v. Ash, 413 U. S. 300 (1973), the Court held that the Sixth Amendment does not require that defense counsel be present when a witness views police or prosecution photographic arrays. . A photographic showing, unlike a corporeal identification, is not a “trial-like adversary confrontation” between an accused and agents of the government; hence, “no possibility arises that the accused might be misled by his lack of familiarity with the law or overpowered by his professional adversary.” Id., at 317. Moreover, even without attending the prosecution’s photographic showing, defense counsel has an equal chance to prepare for trial by presenting his own photographic displays to witnesses before trial. But “[duplication by defense counsel is a safeguard that normally is not available when a formal confrontation occurs.” Id., at 318 n. 10. An accused nevertheless is entitled to due process protection against the introduction of evidence of, or tainted by, unreliable identifications elicited through unnecessarily suggestive photographic displays. Id., at 320; Manson v. Brathwaite; Simmons v. United States, 390 U. S. 377 (1968).
Immediately before the State's Attorney asked the victim to identify petitioner, he stated:
“This is an allegation of rape and deviate sexual assault. It’s a home invasion of an apartment in Hyde Park and the victim was raped and forced to commit an oral copulation. Taken from her was a guitar and other instruments. When the defendant was arrested upon an arrest warrant signed by the Judge of the Court, the articles, the guitar and other instruments were found in the apartment, as were the clothes described of the man that attacked her that day.” App. 48-49.
It appears from the record that although a guitar and a flute were found in petitioner’s apartment when he was arrested, they were not the ones taken from the victim’s apartment and they were not introduced into evidence at petitioner’s trial. Transcript of Proceedings at Hearing of Feb. 5, 1968, p. 10; Trial Transcript 4A-45, 400-401. Neither was any clothing.
For example, counsel could have requested that the hearing be postponed until a lineup could be arranged at which the victim would view petitioner in a less suggestive setting. See, e. g., United States v. Ravich, 421 F. 2d 1196, 1202-1203 (CA2), cert. denied, 400 U. S. 834 (1970); Mason v. United States, 134 U. S. App. D. C. 280, 283 n. 19, 414 F. 2d 1176, 1179 n. 19 (1969). Short of that, counsel could have asked that the victim be excused from the courtroom while the charges were read and the evidence against petitioner was recited, and that petitioner be seated with other people in the audience when the victim attempted an identification. See Allen v. Rhay, 431 F. 2d 1160, 1165 (CA9 1970), cert. denied, 404 U. S. 834 (1971). Counsel might have sought to cross-examine the victim to test her identification before it hardened. Cf. Haberstroh v. Montanye, 493 F. 2d 483, 485 (CA2 1974); United States ex rel. Riffert v. Rundle, 464 F. 2d 1348, 1351 (CA3 1972), cert. denied sub nom. Riffert v. Johnson, 415 U. S. 927 (1974). Because it is in the prosecution’s interest as well as the accused’s that witnesses’ identifications remain untainted, see Wade, 388 U. S., at 238, we cannot assume that such requests would have been in vain. Such requests ordinarily are addressed to the sound discretion of the court, see United States v. Ravich, supra, at 1203; we express no opinion as to whether the preliminary hearing court would have been required to grant any such requests.
The existence of an “independent source” was thought to be demonstrated by the victim’s selection of a picture of petitioner from the second photographic array. The courts below and the parties here have not been certain as to how many pictures the victim actually selected from that array. Although there is some ambiguity in the record, compare Trial Transcript 110-111, 113-114, 167, 290-292, 294, 307-308, 421, 454, with id., at 155-156, 158, 231-232, we think a fair reading indicates that the victim selected more than one photograph and that she did not make a positive identification of petitioner from them. But resolution of this factual issue is not necessary to our decision in this case.
In addition to his Gilbert argument, petitioner urges that the victim’s in-court identification was tainted by the prior uncounseled identification, see Wade; that the in-court identification was the unreliable product of an unnecessarily suggestive identification procedure and should have been excluded under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U. S. 98 (1977); and that the trial court’s denial of a transcript of the preliminary hearing was prejudicial constitutional error, see Roberts v. LaVallee, 389 U. S. 40 (1967).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
A
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Black
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The petitioner, Kiefer-Stewart Company, is an Indiana drug concern which does a wholesale liquor business. Respondents, Seagram and Calvert corporations, are affiliated companies that sell liquor in interstate commerce to Indiana wholesalers. Petitioner brought this action in a federal district court for treble damages under the Sherman Act. 15 U. S. C. §§ 1, 15. The complaint charged that respondents had agreed or conspired to sell liquor only to those Indiana wholesalers who would resell at prices fixed by Seagram and Calvert, and that this agreement deprived petitioner of a continuing supply of liquor to its great damage. On the trial, evidence was introduced tending to show that respondents had fixed maximum prices above which the wholesalers could not resell. The jury returned a verdict for petitioner and damages were awarded. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed. 182 F. 2d 228. It held that an agreement among respondents to fix maximum resale prices did not violate the Sherman Act because such prices promoted rather than restrained competition. It also held the evidence insufficient to show that respondents had acted in concert. Doubt as to the correctness of the decision on questions important in antitrust litigation prompted us to grant certiorari. 340 U. S. 863.
The Court of Appeals erred in holding that an agreement among competitors to fix maximum resale prices of their products does not violate the Sherman Act. For such agreements, no less than those to fix minimum prices, cripple the freedom of traders and thereby restrain their ability to sell in accordance with their own judgment. We reaffirm what we said in United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U. S. 150, 223: “Under the Sherman Act a combination formed for the purpose and with the effect of raising, depressing, fixing, pegging, or stabilizing the price of a commodity in interstate or foreign commerce is illegal per se.”
The Court of Appeals also erred in holding the evidence insufficient to support a finding by the jury that respondents had conspired to fix maximum resale prices. The jury was authorized by the evidence to accept the following as facts: Seagram refused to sell to petitioner and others unless the purchasers agreed to the maximum resale price fixed by Seagram. Calvert was at first willing to sell without this restrictive condition and arrangements were made for petitioner to buy large quantities of Calvert liquor. Petitioner subsequently was informed by Calvert, however, that the arrangements would not be carried out because Calvert had “to go along with Seagram.” Moreover, about this time conferences were held by officials of the respondents concerning sales of liquor to petitioner. Thereafter, on identical terms as to the fixing of retail prices, both Seagram and Calvert resumed sales to other Indiana wholesalers who agreed to abide by such conditions, but no shipments have been made to petitioner.
The foregoing is sufficient to justify the challenged jury finding that respondents had a unity of purpose or a common design and understanding when they forbade their purchasers to exceed the fixed ceilings. Thus, there is support for the conclusion that a conspiracy existed, American Tobacco Co. v. United States, 328 U. S. 781, 809-810, even though, as respondents point out, there is other testimony in the record indicating that the price policies of Seagram and Calvert were arrived at independently.
Respondents also seek to support the judgment of reversal on other grounds not passed on by the Court of Appeals but which have been argued here both orally and in the briefs. These grounds raise only issues of law not calling for examination or appraisal of evidence and we will consider them. Respondents introduced evidence in the District Court designed to show that petitioner had agreed with other Indiana wholesalers to set minimum prices for the sale of liquor in violation of the antitrust laws. It is now contended that the trial court erred in charging the jury that petitioner’s part in such a conspiracy, even if proved, was no defense to the present cause of action. We hold that the instruction was correct. Seagram and Calvert acting individually perhaps might have refused to deal with petitioner or with any or all of the Indiana wholesalers. But the Sherman Act makes it an offense for respondents to agree among themselves to stop selling to particular customers. If petitioner and others were guilty of infractions of the antitrust laws, they could be held responsible in appropriate proceedings brought against them by the Government or by injured private persons. The alleged illegal conduct of petitioner, however, could not legalize the unlawful combination by respondents nor immunize them against liability to those they injured. Cf. Fashion Originators’ Guild v. Trade Comm’n, 312 U. S. 457; Mandeville Island Farms v. American Crystal Sugar Co., 334 U. S. 219, 242-243.
Respondents next suggest that their status as “mere instrumentalities of a single manufacturing-merchandizing unit” makes it impossible for them to have conspired in a manner forbidden by the Sherman Act. But this suggestion runs counter to our past decisions that common ownership and control does not liberate corporations from the impact of the antitrust laws. E. g. United States v. Yellow Cab Co., 332 U. S. 218. The rule is especially applicable where, as here, respondents hold themselves out as competitors.
It is also claimed that the District Court improperly refused to withdraw from the jury an issue as to respondents’ violation of the Clayton Act which had been charged in the complaint but which was not proved. A fair reading of the instructions to the jury, however, reveals that the trial court submitted to them only the cause of action under the Sherman Act. We are convinced from this record that a more formal withdrawal of the Clayton Act issue would have served solely to confuse.
Other contentions of error in the admission of evidence and in the charge to the jury are so devoid of merit that it is unnecessary to discuss them.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and that of the District Court is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Petitioner also charged a violation of the Clayton Act, 15 U. S. C. § 18, but this theory has been abandoned and is not important here. See p. 215, infra.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this case we are asked to decide whether a foreign nation is entitled to sue in our courts for treble damages under the antitrust laws. The respondents are the Government of India, the Imperial Government of Iran, and the Republic of the Philippines. They brought separate actions in Federal District Courts against the petitioners, six pharmaceutical manufacturing companies. The actions were later consolidated for pretrial purposes in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. The complaints alleged that the petitioners had conspired to restrain and monopolize interstate and foreign trade in the manufacture, distribution, and sale of broad spectrum antibiotics, in violation of §§ 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, ch. 647, 26 Stat. 209, as amended, 16 U. S. C. §§ 1, 2. Among the practices the petitioners allegedly engaged in were price fixing, market division, and fraud upon the United States Patent Office. India and Iran each alleged that it was a “sovereign foreign state with whom the United States of America maintains diplomatic relations”; the Philippines alleged that it was a “sovereign and independent government.” Each respondent claimed that as a purchaser of antibiotics it had been damaged in its business or property by the alleged antitrust violations and sought treble damages under § 4 of the Clayton Act, 38 Stat. 731, 15 U. S. C. § 15, on its own behalf and on behalf of several classes of foreign purchasers of antibiotics.
The petitioners asserted as an affirmative defense to the complaints that the respondents as foreign nations were not “persons” entitled to sue for treble damages under § 4. In response to pretrial motions the District Court held that the respondents were “persons” and refused to dismiss the actions. The trial court certified the question for appeal pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 1292 (b). The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed, 550 P. 2d 396, and adhered to its decision upon rehearing en banc. Id., at 400. We granted certiorari to resolve an important and novel question in the administration of the antitrust laws. 430 U. S. 964.
I
As the Court of Appeals observed, this case “turns on the interpretation of the statute.” 550 F. 2d, at 397. A treble-damages remedy for persons injured by antitrust violations was first provided in § 7 of the Sherman Act, and was re-enacted in 1914 without substantial change as § 4 of the Clayton Act. Section 4 provides:
“[A]ny person who shall be injured in his business or property by reason of anything forbidden in the antitrust laws may sue therefor in any district court of the United States in the district in which the defendant resides or is found or has an agent, without respect to the amount in controversy, and shall recover threefold the damages by him sustained, and the cost of suit, including a reasonable attorney’s fee.”
Thus, whether a foreign nation is entitled to sue for treble damages depends upon whether it is a “person” as that word is used in § 4. There is no statutory provision or legislative history that provides a clear answer; it seems apparent that the question was never considered at the time the Sherman and Clayton Acts were enacted.
The Court has previously noted the broad scope of the remedies provided by the antitrust laws. “The Act is comprehensive in its terms and coverage, protecting all who are made victims of the forbidden practices by whomever they may be perpetrated.” Mandeville Island Farms, Inc. v. American Crystal Sugar Co., 334 U. S. 219, 236; cf. Perma Life Mufflers, Inc. v. International Parts Corp., 392 U. S. 134, 138-139. And the legislative history of the Sherman Act demonstrates that Congress used the phrase “any person” intending it to have its naturally broad and inclusive meaning. There was no mention in the floor debates of any more restrictive definition. Indeed, during the course of those debates the word “person” was used interchangeably with other terms even broader in connotation. For example, Senator Sherman said that the treble-damages remedy was being given to “any party,” and Senator Edmunds, one of the principal draftsmen of the final bill, said that it established “the right of anybody to sue who chooses to sue.” 21 Cong. Rec. 2569, 3148 (1890).
In light of the law’s expansive remedial purpose, the Court has not taken a technical or semantic approach in determining who is a “person” entitled to sue for treble damages. Instead, it has said that “[t]he purpose, the subject matter, the context, the legislative history, and the executive interpretation of the statute are aids to construction which may indicate” the proper scope of the law. United States v. Cooper Corp., 312 U. S. 600, 605.
II
The respondents in this case possess two attributes that could arguably exclude them from the scope of the sweeping phrase “any person.” They are foreign, and they are sovereign nations.
A
As to the first of these attributes, the petitioners argue that, in light of statements made during the debates on the Sherman Act and the general protectionist and chauvinistic attitude evidenced by the same Congress in debating contemporaneous tariff bills, it should be inferred that the Act was intended to protect only American consumers. Yet it is clear that a foreign corporation is entitled to sue for treble damages, since the definition of “person” contained in the Sherman and Clayton Acts explicitly includes “corporations and associations existing under or authorized by . . . the laws of any foreign country.” See n. 9, supra. Moreover, the antitrust laws extend to trade “with foreign nations” as well as among the several States of the Union. 15 U. S. C. §§ 1, 2. Clearly, therefore, Congress did not intend to make the treble-damages remedy available only to consumers in our own country.
In addition, the petitioners’ argument confuses the ultimate purposes of the antitrust laws with the question of who can invoke their remedies. The fact that Congress’ foremost concern in passing the antitrust laws was the protection of Americans does not mean that it intended to deny foreigners a remedy when they are injured by antitrust violations. Treble-damages suits by foreigners who have been victimized by antitrust violations clearly may contribute to the protection of American consumers.
The Court has noted that § 4 has two purposes: to deter violators and deprive them of “ 'the fruits of their illegality,’ ” and “to compensate victims of antitrust violations for their injuries.” Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, 431 U. S. 720, 746; Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U. S. 477, 485-486; Perma Life Mufflers, Inc. v. International Parts Corp., supra, at 139. To deny a foreign plaintiff injured by an antitrust violation the right to sue would defeat these purposes. It would permit a price fixer or a monopolist to escape full liability for his illegal actions and would deny compensation to certain of his victims, merely because he happens to deal with foreign customers.
Moreover, an exclusion of all foreign plaintiffs would lessen the deterrent effect of treble damages. The conspiracy alleged by the respondents in this case operated domestically as well as internationally. If foreign plaintiffs were not permitted to seek a remedy for their antitrust injuries, persons doing business both in this country and abroad might be tempted to enter into anticompetitive conspiracies affecting American consumers in the expectation that the illegal profits they could safely extort abroad would offset any liability to plaintiffs at home. If, on the other hand, potential antitrust violators must take into account the full costs of their conduct, American consumers are benefited by the maximum deterrent effect of treble damages upon all potential violators.
B
The second distinguishing characteristic of these respondents is that they are sovereign nations. The petitioners contend that the word “person” was clearly understood by Congress when it passed the Sherman Act to exclude sovereign governments. The word “person,” however, is not a term of art with a fixed meaning wherever it is used, nor was it in 1890 when the Sherman. Act was passed. Cf. Towne v. Eisner, 245 U. S. 418, 425. Indeed, this Court has expressly noted that use of the word “person” in the Sherman and Clayton Acts did not create a “hard and fast rule of exclusion” of governmental bodies. United States v. Cooper Corp., 312 U. S., at 604-605.
On the two previous occasions that the Court has considered whether a sovereign government is a “person” under the antitrust laws, the mechanical rule urged by the petitioners has been rejected. In United States v. Cooper Corp., the United States sought to maintain a treble-damages action under § 7 of the Sherman Act for injury to its business or property. The Court considered the question whether the United States was a “person” entitled to sue for treble damages as one to be decided not “by a strict construction of the words of the Act, nor by the application of artificial canons of construction,” but by analyzing the language of the statute “in the light, not only of the policy intended to be served by the enactment, but, as well, by all other available aids to construction.” Id., at 605. The Court noted that the Sherman Act provides several separate and distinct remedies: criminal prosecutions, injunctions, and seizure of property by the United States on the one hand, and suits for treble damages “granted to redress private injury” on the other. Id., at 607-608. Statements made during the congressional debates on the Sherman and Clayton Acts provided further evidence that Congress affirmatively intended to exclude the United States from the treble-damages remedy. Id., at 611-612. Thus, the Court found that the United - States was not a “person” entitled to bring suit for treble damages.
In Georgia v. Evans, 316 U. S. 159, decided the very next Term, the question was whether Georgia was entitled to sue for treble damages under § 7 of the Sherman Act. The Court of Appeals, believing that the Cooper case controlled, had held that a State, like the Federal Government, was not a “person.” This Court reversed, noting that Cooper did not hold “that the word 'person/ abstractly considered, could not include a governmental body.” 316 U. S., at 161. As in Cooper, the Court did not rest its decision upon a bare analysis of the word “person,” but relied instead upon the entire statutory context to hold that Georgia was entitled to sue. Unlike the United States, which “had chosen for itself three potent weapons for enforcing the Act,” 316 U. S., at 161, a State had been given no other remedies to enforce the prohibitions of the law. To deprive it also of a suit for damages “would deny all redress to a State, when mulcted by a violator of the Sherman Law, merely because it is a State.” Id., at 162-163. Although the legislative history of the Sherman Act did not indicate that Congress ever considered whether a State would be entitled to sue, the Court found no reason to believe that Congress had intended to deprive a State of the remedy made available to all other victims of antitrust violations.
It is clear that in Georgia, v. Evans the Court rejected the proposition that the word “person” as used in the antitrust laws excludes all sovereign states. And the reasoning of that case leads to the conclusion that a foreign nation, like a domestic State, is entitled to pursue the remedy of treble damages when it has been injured in its business or property by antitrust violations. When a foreign nation enters our commercial markets as a purchaser of goods or services, it can be victimized by anticompetitive practices just as surely as a private person or a domestic State. The antitrust laws provide no alternative remedies for foreign nations as they do for the United States. The words of Georgia v. Evans are thus equally applicable here:
“We can perceive no reason for believing that Congress wanted to deprive a [foreign nation], as purchaser of commodities shipped in [international] commerce, of the civil remedy of treble damages which is available to other purchasers who suffer through violation of the Act. . . . Nothing in the Act, its history, or its policy, could justify so restrictive a construction of the word 'person' in § 7 ... . Such a construction would deny all redress to a [foreign nation], when mulcted by a violator of the Sherman Law, merely because it is a [foreign nation].” 316 U. S., at 162-163.
Ill
The result we reach does not involve any novel concept of the jurisdiction of the federal courts. This Court has long recognized the rule that a foreign nation is generally entitled to prosecute any civil claim in the courts of the United States upon the same basis as a domestic corporation or individual might do. “To deny him this privilege would manifest a want of comity and friendly feeling.” The Sapphire, 11 Wall. 164, 167; Monaco v. Mississippi, 292 U. S. 313, 323 n. 2; Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino, 376 U. S. 398, 408-409; see U. S. Const., Art. III, § 2, cl. 1. To allow a foreign sovereign to sue in our courts for treble damages to the same extent as any other person injured by air antitrust violation is thus no more than a specific application of a long-settled general rule. To exclude foreign nations from the protections of our antitrust laws would, on the other hand, create a conspicuous exception to this rule, air exception that could not be justified in the absence of clear legislative intent.
Finally, the result we reach does not require the Judiciary in any way to interfere in sensitive matters of foreign policy. It has long been established that only governments recognized by the United States and at peace with us are entitled to access to our courts, and that it is within the exclusive power of the Executive Branch to determine which nations are entitled to sue. Jones v. United States, 137 U. S. 202, 212; Guaranty Trust Co. v. United States, 304 U. S. 126, 137-138; Banco Nacional de Cuba v. Sabbatino, supra, at 408-412. Nothing we decide today qualifies this established rule of complete judicial deference to the Executive Branch.
We hold today only that a foreign nation otherwise entitled to sue in our courts is entitled to sue for treble damages under the antitrust laws to the same extent as any other plaintiff. Neither the fact that the respondents are foreign nor the fact that they are sovereign is reason to deny them the remedy of treble damages Congress afforded to “any person” victimized by violations of the antitrust laws.
Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Blackmun took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Similar actions were also brought by Spain, South Korea, West Germany, Colombia, Kuwait, and the Republic of Vietnam. Vietnam was a party to this case in the Court of Appeals and was named as a respondent in the petition for certiorari. Subsequent to the filing of the petition Vietnam’s complaint was dismissed by the District Court on the ground that the United States no longer recognized the Government of Vietnam; the dismissal was affirmed by the Court of Appeals. Republic of Vietnam v. Pfizer Inc., 556 F. 2d 892 (CA8). Vietnam has not participated as a party in this Court. Some of the other suits have been withdrawn and the rest are pending.
The antibiotic antitrust litigation originated with a proceeding brought by the Federal Trade • Commission which resulted in an order requiring petitioners Pfizer and American Cyanamid to grant domestic applicants licenses under their patents for broad spectrum antibiotics. See Charles Pfizer & Co. v. FTC, 401 F. 2d 574 (CA6). Criminal antitrust proceedings against petitioners Pfizer, American Cyanamid, and Bristol-Myers were eventually dismissed. United States v. Chas. Pfizer & Co., 367 F. Supp. 91 (SDNY); see also United States v. Chas. Pfizer & Co., 426 F. 2d 32 (CA2), modified, 437 F. 2d 957, aff’d by an equally divided Court, 404 U. S. 548. Most of the large number of civil suits have been settled. See West Virginia v. Chas. Pfizer & Co., 314 F. Supp. 710 (SDNY), aff’d, 440 F. 2d 1079 (CA2).
Respondents India and Iran also sued in a parens patriae capacity; those claims were dismissed in a separate appeal and are not at issue here. Pfizer Inc. v. Lord, 522 F. 2d 612, 615-620 (CA8).
Petitioners moved to dismiss the suits brought by India and Iran. The Philippines moved to strike petitioners’ affirmative defense.
The District Court relied upon an earlier decision denying a motion to dismiss a related suit brought by the State of Kuwait, see n. 1, supra. In re Antibiotic Antitrust Actions, 333 F. Supp. 315 (SDNY). An appeal was taken from that decision but was dismissed by stipulation of the parties. Thus, the Court of Appeals’ decision in the present case marked the first appellate consideration of the issue.
A petition for mandamus had previously been denied. Pfizer Inc. v. Lord, supra.
Two judges dissented, believing that Congress, in passing the Sherman and Clayton Acts, did not intend to include foreign sovereigns within the scope of the term “person.” 550 F. 2d, at 400. Three judges in the majority also joined a concurring opinion noting the absence of controlling legislative history and urging congressional action. Id., at 399-400.
Section 7 of the Sherman Act was repealed in 1955 as redundant. § 3, 69 Stat. 283; see S. Rep. No. 619, 84th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (1955).
The Sherman and Clayton Acts each provide that the word "person” “shall be deemed to include corporations and associations existing under or authorized by the laws of either the United States, the laws of any of the Territories, the laws of any State, or the laws of any foreign country.”15 U. S. C. §§ 7, 12.
It is apparent that this definition is inclusive rather than exclusive, and does not by itself imply that a foreign government, any more than a natural person, falls without its bounds. Cf. Helvering v. Morgan’s Inc., 293 U. S. 121, 125 n. 1; United States v. New York Telephone Co., ante, at 169 n. 15.
See Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, 310 U. S. 469, 489 n. 10.
Tee Chief Justice’s dissent seems to contend that the Sherman Act’s reference to commerce with foreign nations was intended only to reach conspiracies affecting goods imported into this country. Post, at 323-324. But the scope of congressional power over foreign commerce has never been so limited, and it is established that the antitrust laws apply to. exports as well. See, e. g., Timken Roller Bearing Co. v. United States, 341 U. S. 593, 599; United States v. Minnesota Mining & Mfg. Co., 92 F. Supp. 947 (Mass.).
Moreover, in the Webb-Pomerene Act, ch. 50, 40 Stat. 516, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 61 et seq., Congress has provided a narrow and carefully limited exception for export activity that would otherwise violate the antitrust laws. See United States v. Concentrated Phosphate Export Assn., 393 U. S. 199. A judicial rule excluding all non-Americans as plaintiffs in treble-damages cases would hardly be consistent, with the precisely limited exception Congress has established to the general applicability of the antitrust laws to foreign commerce.
See n. 2, swpra.
It has been suggested that depriving foreign plaintiffs of a treble-damages remedy and thus encouraging illegal conspiracies would affect American consumers in other ways as well: by raising worldwide prices and thus contributing to American inflation; by discouraging foreign entrants who might undercut monopoly prices in this country; and by allowing violators to accumulate a “war chest” of monopoly profits to police domestic cartels and defend them from legal attacks. Velvel, Antitrust Suits by Foreign Nations, 25 Cath. U. L. Rev. 1, 7-8 (1975).
The case relied on by petitioners as establishing a general rule, United States v. Fox, 94 U. S. 315, merely adopted New York’s construction of its Statute of Wills, as a matter of state law. Id., at 320. Even in New York the word “person” did not have a settled meaning. Compare In re Will of Fox, 52 N. Y. 530, aff’d sub nom. United States v. Fox, supra, with Republic of Honduras v. Soto, 112 N. Y. 310, 19 N. E. 845. In fact, contemporaneous cases generally held that the sovereign was entitled to have the benefit of a statute extending a right to “persons.” See, e. g., Stanley v. Schwalby, 147 U. S. 508, 514-517; Dollar Savings Bank v. United States, 19 Wall. 227, 239; Cotton v. United States, 11 How. 229, 231.
Cases construing federal statutes of the same era also indicate that the use of the term “person” did not invariably imply an intent to exclude governmental bodies. See, e. g., Ohio v. Helvering, 292 U. S. 360 (“person” in §§ 3140 and 3244 of the Revised Statutes of 1878 includes a State); California v. United States, 320 U. S. 577, 585-586 (“person” in the Shipping Act, 1916, 46 U. S. C. § 801 et seq., includes both a State and a city); Chattanooga Foundry & Pipe Works v. Atlanta, 203 U. S. 390, 396 (“person” in the Sherman Act includes a city).
Even earlier, in Chattanooga Foundry, supra, at 396, the Court held without extended discussion that a city was entitled to sue for treble damages.
In 1955 Congress amended the Clayton Act to allow the United States to sue for single damages when it is injured in its business or property. Ch. 283, § 1, 69 Stat. 282, 15 U. S. C. § 15a.
While The Chief Justice’s dissent says there are “weapons in the arsenals of foreign nations” sufficient to enable them to counter anticompet-itive conduct, such as cartels or boycotts, post, at 327-328, such a political remedy is hardly available to a foreign nation faced with monopolistic control of the supply of medicines needed for the health and safety of its people.
Congress has explicitly conferred jurisdiction upon the federal courts to entertain such suits:
“The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions where the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $10,000, exclusive of interest and costs, and is between—
“(4) a foreign state ... as plaintiff and citizens of a State or of different States.” 28 U. S. C. § 1332 (a) (4) (1976 ed.).
Among the actions foreign sovereign governments were entitled to maintain at the time of the passage of the Sherman and Clayton Acts were suits for common-law business torts, such as unfair competition, similar in general nature to antitrust claims. See French Republic v. Saratoga Vichy Spring Co., 191 U. S. 427 (1903); La Republique Francaise v. Schultz, 94 F. 500 (SDNY 1899).
In a letter that was presented to the Court of Appeals when it reconsidered this case en banc, the Legal Adviser of the Department of State advised “that the Department of State would not anticipate any foreign policy problems if . . . foreign governments [were held to be] 'persons’ within the meaning of Clayton Act § 4.” A copy of this letter is contained in the Memorandum for the United States as Amicus Curiae in opposition to the petition for a writ of certiorari filed in this Court.
Cf. n. 1, supra.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
H
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice O’Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the issue whether the Fourth Amendment prohibits law enforcement authorities from temporarily detaining personal luggage for exposure to a trained narcotics detection dog on the basis of reasonable suspicion that the luggage contains narcotics. Given the enforcement problems associated with the detection of narcotics trafficking and the minimal intrusion that a properly limited detention would entail, we conclude that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit such a detention. On the facts of this case, however, we hold that the police conduct exceeded the bounds of a permissible investigative detention of the luggage.
pH
Respondent Raymond J. Place’s behavior aroused the suspicions of law enforcement officers as he waited in line at the Miami International Airport to purchase a ticket to New York’s La Guardia Airport. As Place proceeded to the gate for his flight, the agents approached him and requested his airline ticket and some identification. Place complied with the request and consented to a search of the two suitcases he had checked. Because his flight was about to depart, however, the agents decided not to search the luggage.
Prompted by Place’s parting remark that he had recognized that they were police, the agents inspected the address tags on the checked luggage and noted discrepancies in the two street addresses. Further investigation revealed that neither address existed and that the telephone number Place had given the airline belonged to a third address on the same street. On the basis of their encounter with Place and this information, the Miami agents called Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) authorities in New York to relay their information about Place.
Two DEA agents waited for Place at the arrival gate at La Guardia Airport in New York. There again, his behavior aroused the suspicion of the agents. After he had claimed his two bags and called a limousine, the agents decided to approach him. They identified themselves as federal narcotics agents, to which Place responded that he knew they were “cops” and had spotted them as soon as he had deplaned. One of the agents informed Place that, based on their own observations and information obtained from the Miami authorities, they believed that he might be carrying narcotics. After identifying the bags as belonging to him, Place stated that a number of police at the Miami Airport had surrounded him and searched his baggage. The agents responded that their information was to the contrary. The agents requested and received identification from Place — a New Jersey driver’s license, on which the agents later ran a computer check that disclosed no offenses, and his airline ticket receipt. When Place refused to consent to a search of his luggage, one of the agents told him that they were going to take the luggage to a federal judge to try to obtain a search warrant and that Place was free to accompany them. Place declined, but obtained from one of the agents telephone numbers at which the agents could be reached.
The agents then took the bags to Kennedy Airport, where they subjected the bags to a “sniff test” by a trained narcotics detection dog. The dog reacted positively to the smaller of the two bags but ambiguously to the larger bag. Approximately 90 minutes had elapsed since the seizure of respondent’s luggage. Because it was late on a Friday afternoon, the agents retained the luggage until Monday morning, when they secured a search warrant from a Magistrate for the smaller bag. Upon opening that bag, the agents discovered 1,125 grams of cocaine.
Place was indicted for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute in violation of 21 U. S. C. § 841(a)(1). In the District Court, Place moved to suppress the contents of the luggage seized from him at La Guardia Airport, claiming that the warrantless seizure of the luggage violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The District Court denied the motion. Applying the standard of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1 (1968), to the detention of personal property, it concluded that detention of the bags could be justified if based on reasonable suspicion to believe that the bags contained narcotics. Finding reasonable suspicion, the District Court held that Place’s Fourth Amendment rights were not violated by seizure of the bags by the DEA agents. 498 F. Supp. 1217, 1228 (EDNY 1980). Place pleaded guilty to the possession charge, reserving the right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress.
On appeal of the conviction, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed. 660 F. 2d 44 (1981). The majority assumed both that Terry principles could be applied to justify a warrantless seizure of baggage on less than probable cause and that reasonable suspicion existed to justify the investigatory stop of Place. The majority concluded, however, that the prolonged seizure of Place’s baggage exceeded the permissible limits of a Terry-type investigative stop and consequently amounted to a seizure without probable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
We granted certiorari, 457 U. S. 1104 (1982), and now affirm.
) — I h — I
The Fourth Amendment protects the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” (Emphasis added.) Although in the context of personal property, and particularly containers, the Fourth Amendment challenge is typically to the subsequent search of the container rather than to its initial seizure by the authorities, our cases reveal some general principles regarding seizures. In the ordinary case, the Court has viewed a seizure of personal property as per se unreasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment unless it is accomplished pursuant to a judicial warrant issued upon probable cause and particularly describing the items to be seized. See, e. g., Marron v. United States, 275 U. S. 192, 196 (1927). Where law enforcement authorities have probable cause to believe that a container holds contraband or evidence of a crime, but have not secured a warrant, the Court has interpreted the Amendment to permit seizure of the property, pending issuance of a warrant to examine its contents, if the exigencies of the circumstances demand it or some other recognized exception to the warrant requirement is present. See, e. g., Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753, 761 (1979); United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443 (1971). For example, “objects such as weapons or contraband found in a public place may be seized by the police without a warrant,” Payton v. New York, 445 U. S. 573, 587 (1980), because, under these circumstances, the risk of the item’s disappearance or use for its intended purpose before a warrant may be obtained outweighs the interest in possession. See also G. M. Leasing Corp. v. United States, 429 U. S. 338, 354 (1977).
In this case, the Government asks us to recognize the reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment of warrantless seizures of personal luggage from the custody of the owner on the basis of less than probable cause, for the purpose of pursuing a limited course of investigation, short of opening the luggage, that would quickly confirm or dispel the authorities’ suspicion. Specifically, we are asked to apply the principles of Terry v. Ohio, supra, to permit such seizures on the basis of reasonable, articulable suspicion, premised on objective facts, that the luggage contains contraband or evidence of a crime. In our view, such application is appropriate.
In Terry the Court first recognized “the narrow authority of police officers who suspect criminal activity to make limited intrusions on an individual’s personal security based on less than probable cause.” Michigan v. Summers, 452 U. S. 692, 698 (1981). In approving the limited search for weapons, or “frisk,” of an individual the police reasonably believed to be armed and dangerous, the Court implicitly acknowledged the authority of the police to make a forcible stop of a person when the officer has reasonable, articulable suspicion that the person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in criminal activity. 392 U. S., at 22. That implicit proposition was embraced openly in Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S. 143, 146 (1972), where the Court relied on Terry to hold that the police officer lawfully made a forcible stop of the suspect to investigate an informant’s tip that the suspect was carrying narcotics and a concealed weapon. See also Michigan v. Summers, supra (limited detention of occupants while authorities search premises pursuant to valid search warrant); United States v. Cortez, 449 U. S. 411 (1981) (stop near border of vehicle suspected of transporting illegal aliens); United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873 (1975) (brief investigative stop near border for questioning about citizenship and immigration status).
The exception to the probable-cause requirement for limited seizures of the person recognized in Terry and its progeny rests on a balancing of the competing interests to determine the reasonableness of the type of seizure involved within the meaning of “the Fourth Amendment’s general proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures.” 392 U. S., at 20. We must balance the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against the importance of the governmental interests alleged to justify the intrusion. When the nature and extent of the detention are minimally intrusive of the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests, the opposing law enforcement interests can support a seizure based on less than probable cause.
We examine first the governmental interest offered as a justification for a brief seizure of luggage from the suspect’s custody for the purpose of pursuing a limited course of investigation. The Government contends that, where the authorities possess specific and articulable facts warranting a reasonable belief that a traveler’s luggage contains narcotics, the governmental interest in seizing the luggage briefly to pursue further investigation is substantial. We agree. As observed in United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U. S. 544, 561 (1980) (opinion of Powell, J.), “[t]he public has a compelling interest in detecting those who would traffic in deadly drugs for personal profit.”
Respondent suggests that, absent some special law enforcement interest such as officer safety, a generalized interest in law enforcement cannot justify an intrusion on an individual’s Fourth Amendment interests in the absence of probable cause. Our prior cases, however, do not support this proposition. In Terry, we described the governmental interests supporting the initial seizure of the person as “effective crime prevention and detection; it is this interest which underlies the recognition that a police officer may in appropriate circumstances and in an appropriate manner approach a person for purposes of investigating possibly criminal behavior even though there is no probable cause to make an arrest.” 392 U. S., at 22. Similarly, in Michigan v. Summers we identified three law enforcement interests that justified limited detention of the occupants of the premises during execution of a valid search warrant: “preventing flight in the event that incriminating evidence is found,” “minimizing the risk of harm” both to the officers and the occupants, and “orderly completion of the search.” 452 U. S., at 702-703. Cf. Florida v. Royer, 460 U. S. 491, 500 (1983) (plurality opinion) (“The predicate permitting seizures on suspicion short of probable cause is that law enforcement interests warrant a limited intrusion on the personal security of the suspect”). The test is whether those interests are sufficiently “substantial,” 452 U. S., at 699, not whether they are independent of the interest in investigating crimes effectively and apprehending suspects. The context of a particular law enforcement practice, of course, may affect the determination whether a brief intrusion on Fourth Amendment interests on less than probable cause is essential to effective criminal investigation. Because of the inherently transient nature of drug courier activity at airports, allowing police to make brief investigative stops of persons at airports on reasonable suspicion of drug-trafficking substantially enhances the likelihood that police will be able to prevent the flow of narcotics into distribution channels.
Against this strong governmental interest, we must weigh the nature and extent of the intrusion upon the individual’s Fourth Amendment rights when the police briefly detain luggage for limited investigative purposes. On this point, respondent Place urges that the rationale for a Terry stop of the person is wholly inapplicable to investigative detentions of personalty. Specifically, the Terry exception to the probable-cause requirement is premised on the notion that a Terry-type stop of the person is substantially less intrusive of a person’s liberty interests than a formal arrest. In the property context, however, Place urges, there are no degrees of intrusion. Once the owner’s property is seized, the dispossession is absolute.
We disagree. The intrusion on possessory interests occasioned by a seizure of one’s personal effects can vary both in its nature and extent. The seizure may be made after the owner has relinquished control of the property to a third party or, as here, from the immediate custody and control of the owner. Moreover, the police may confine their investigation to an on-the-spot inquiry — for example, immediate exposure of the luggage to a trained narcotics detection dog— or transport the property to another location. Given the fact that seizures of property can vary in intrusiveness, some brief detentions of personal effects may be so minimally intrusive of Fourth Amendment interests that strong countervailing governmental interests will justify a seizure based only on specific articulable facts that the property contains contraband or evidence of a crime.
In sum, we conclude that when an officer’s observations lead him reasonably to believe that a traveler is carrying luggage that contains narcotics, the principles of Terry and its progeny would permit the officer to detain the luggage briefly to investigate the circumstances that aroused his suspicion, provided that the investigative detention is properly limited in scope.
The purpose for which respondent’s luggage was seized, of course, was to arrange its exposure to a narcotics detection dog. Obviously, if this investigative procedure is itself a search requiring probable cause, the initial seizure of respondent’s luggage for the purpose of subjecting it to the sniff test — no matter how brief — could not be justified on less than probable cause. See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S., at 20; United States v. Cortez, 449 U. S., at 421; United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S., at 881-882; Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S., at 146.
The Fourth Amendment “protects people from unreasonable government intrusions into their legitimate expectations of privacy.” United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S., at 7. We have affirmed that a person possesses a privacy interest in the contents of personal luggage that is protected by the Fourth Amendment. Id., at 13. A “canine sniff” by a well-trained narcotics detection dog, however, does not require opening the luggage. It does not expose noncontraband items that otherwise would remain hidden from public view, as does, for example, an officer’s rummaging through the contents of the luggage. Thus, the manner in which information is obtained through this investigative technique is much less intrusive than a typical search. Moreover, the sniff discloses only the presence or absence of narcotics, a contraband item. Thus, despite the fact that the sniff tells the authorities something about the contents of the luggage, the information obtained is limited. This limited disclosure also ensures that the owner of the property is not subjected to the embarrassment and inconvenience entailed in less discriminate and more intrusive investigative methods.
In these respects, the canine sniff is sui generis. We are aware of no other investigative procedure that is so limited both in the manner in which the information is obtained and in the content of the information revealed by the procedure. Therefore, we conclude that the particular course of investigation that the agents intended to pursue here — exposure of respondent’s luggage, which was located in a public place, to a trained canine — did not constitute a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.
S HH H-Í
There is no doubt that the agents made a “seizure of Place’s luggage for purposes of the Fourth Amendment when, following his refusal to consent to a search, the agent told Place that he was going to take the luggage to a federal judge to secure issuance of a warrant. As we observed in Terry, “[t]he manner in which the seizure . . . [was] conducted is, of course, as vital a part of the inquiry as whether [it was] warranted at all.” 392 U. S., at 28. We therefore examine whether the agents’ conduct in this case was such as to place the seizure within the general rule requiring probable cause for a seizure or within Terry’s exception to that rule.
At the outset, we must reject the Government’s suggestion that the point at which probable cause for seizure of luggage from the person’s presence becomes necessary is more distant than in the case of a Terry stop of the person himself. The premise of the Government’s argument is that seizures of property are generally less intrusive than seizures of the person. While true in some circumstances, that premise is faulty on the facts we address in this case. The precise type of detention we confront here is seizure of personal luggage from the immediate possession of the suspect for the purpose of arranging exposure to a narcotics detection dog. Particularly in the case of detention of luggage within the traveler’s immediate possession, the police conduct intrudes on both the suspect’s possessory interest in his luggage as well as his liberty interest in proceeding with his itinerary. The person whose luggage is detained is technically still free to continue his travels or carry out other personal activities pending release of the luggage. Moreover, he is not subjected to the coercive atmosphere of a custodial confinement or to the public indignity of being personally detained. Nevertheless, such a seizure can effectively restrain the person since he is subjected to the possible disruption of his travel plans in order to remain with his luggage or to arrange for its return. Therefore, when the police seize luggage from the suspect’s custody, we think the limitations applicable to investigative detentions of the person should define the permissible scope of an investigative detention of the person’s luggage on less than probable cause. Under this standard, it is clear that the police conduct here exceeded the permissible limits of a Terry-type investigative stop.
The length of the detention of respondent’s luggage alone precludes the conclusion that the seizure was reasonable in the absence of probable cause. Although we have recognized the reasonableness of seizures longer than the momentary ones involved in Terry, Adams, and Brignoni-Ponce, see Michigan v. Summers, 452 U. S. 692 (1981), the brevity of the invasion of the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests is an important factor in determining whether the seizure is so minimally intrusive as to be justifiable on reasonable suspicion. Moreover, in assessing the effect of the length of the detention, we take into account whether the police diligently pursue their investigation. We note that here the New York agents knew the time of Place’s scheduled arrival at La Guardia, had ample time to arrange for their additional investigation at that location, and thereby could have minimized the intrusion on respondent’s Fourth Amendment interests. Thus, although we decline to adopt any outside time limitation for a permissible Terry stop, we have never approved a seizure of the person for the prolonged 90-minute period involved here and cannot do so on the facts presented by this case. See Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200 (1979).
Although the 90-minute detention of respondent’s luggage is sufficient to render the seizure unreasonable, the violation was exacerbated by the failure of the agents to accurately inform respondent of the place to which they were transporting his luggage, of the length of time he might be dispossessed, and of what arrangements would be made for return of the luggage if the investigation dispelled the suspicion. In short, we hold that the detention of respondent’s luggage in this case went beyond the narrow authority possessed by police to detain briefly luggage reasonably suspected to contain narcotics.
>
We conclude that, under all of the circumstances of this case, the seizure of respondent’s luggage was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Consequently, the evidence obtained from the subsequent search of his luggage was inadmissible, and Place’s conviction must be reversed. The judgment of the Court of Appeals, accordingly, is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
In support of his motion, respondent also contended that the detention of his person at both the Miami and La Guardia Airports was not based on reasonable suspicion and that the “sniff test” of his luggage was conducted in a manner that tainted the dog’s reaction. 498 F. Supp. 1217, 1221, 1228 (EDNY 1980). The District Court rejected both contentions. As to the former, it concluded that the agents had reasonable suspicion to believe that Place was engaged in criminal activity when he was detained at the two airports and that the stops were therefore lawful. Id., at 1225, 1226. On appeal, the Court of Appeals did not reach this issue, assuming the existence of reasonable suspicion. Respondent Place cross-petitioned in this Court on the issue of reasonable suspicion, and we denied certiorari. Place v. United States, 457 U. S. 1106 (1982). We therefore have no occasion to address the issue here.
The Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment provides that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
In Sanders, the Court explained:
“The police acted properly — indeed commendably — in apprehending respondent and his luggage. They had ample probable cause to believe that respondent’s green suitcase contained marihuana. . . . Having probable cause to believe that contraband was being driven away in the taxi, the police were justified in stopping the vehicle . . . and seizing the suitcase they suspected contained contraband.” 442 U. S., at 761.
The Court went on to hold that the police violated the Fourth Amendment in immediately searching the luggage rather than first obtaining a warrant authorizing the search. Id., at 766. That holding was not affected by our recent decision in United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798, 824 (1982).
In his concurring opinion in Terry, Justice Harlan made this logical underpinning of the Court’s Fourth Amendment holding clear:
“In the first place, if the frisk is justified in order to protect the officer during an encounter with a citizen, the officer must first have constitutional grounds to insist on an encounter, to make a forcible stop. ... I would make it perfectly clear that the right to frisk in this case depends upon the reasonableness of a forcible stop to investigate a suspected crime.” 892 U. S., at 32-33.
Referring to the problem of intercepting drug couriers in the Nation’s airports, Justice Powell has observed:
“Much of the drug traffic is highly organized and conducted by sophisticated criminal syndicates. The profits are enormous. And many drugs . . . may be easily concealed. As a result, the obstacles to detection of illegal conduct may be unmatched in any other area of law enforcement.” United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U. S. 544, 561-562 (1980).
See Florida v. Royer, 460 U. S. 491, 519 (1983) (Blackmun, J., dissenting) (“The special need for flexibility in uncovering illicit drug couriers is hardly debatable”) (airport context).
One need only compare the facts of this case with those in United States v. Van Leeuwen, 397 U. S. 249 (1970). There the defendant had voluntarily relinquished two packages of coins to the postal authorities. Several facts aroused the suspicion of the postal officials, who detained the packages, without searching them, for about 29 hours while certain lines of inquiry were pursued. The information obtained during this time was sufficient to give the authorities probable cause to believe that the packages contained counterfeit coins. After obtaining a warrant, the authorities opened the packages, found counterfeit coins therein, resealed the packages, and sent them on their way. Expressly limiting its holding to the facts of the case, the Court concluded that the 29-hour detention of the packages on reasonable suspicion that they contained contraband did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Id., at 253.
As one commentator has noted, “Van Leeuwen was an easy case for the Court because the defendant was unable to show that the invasion intruded upon either a privacy interest in the contents of the packages or a posses-sory interest in the packages themselves.” 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 9.6, p. 71 (Supp. 1982).
Cf. Florida v. Royer, supra, at 502 (plurality opinion) (“We agree with the State that [the officers had] adequate grounds for suspecting Royer of carrying drugs and for temporarily detaining him and his luggage while they attempted to verify or dispel their suspicions in a manner that did not exceed the limits of an investigative detention”) (emphasis added).
“At least when the authorities do not make it absolutely clear how they plan to reunite the suspect and his possessions at some future time and place, seizure of the object is tantamount to seizure of the person. This is because that person must either remain on the scene or else seemingly surrender his effects permanently to the police.” 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 9.6, p. 72 (Supp. 1982).
Cf. Florida v. Royer, 460 U. S., at 506 (plurality opinion) (“If [trained narcotics detection dogs] had been used, Royer and his luggage could have been momentarily detained while this investigative procedure was carried out”). This course of conduct also would have avoided the further substantial intrusion on respondent’s possessory interests caused by the removal of his luggage to another location.
Cf. ALI, Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure § 110.2(1) (1975) (recommending a maximum of 20 minutes for a Terry stop). We understand the desirability of providing law enforcement authorities with a clear rule to guide their conduct. Nevertheless, we question the wisdom of a rigid time limitation. Such a limit would undermine the equally important need to allow authorities to graduate their responses to the demands of any particular situation.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
Four Terms ago, in Glickman v. Wileman Brothers & Elliott, Inc., 521 U. S. 457 (1997), the Court rejected a First Amendment challenge to the constitutionality of a series of agricultural marketing orders that, as part of a larger regulatory marketing scheme, required producers of certain California tree fruit to pay assessments for product advertising. In this case a federal statute mandates assessments on handlers of fresh mushrooms to fund advertising for the product. The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit determined the mandated payments were not part of a more comprehensive statutory program for agricultural marketing, thus dictating a different result than in Glickman. It held the assessment requirement unconstitutional, and we granted certiorari. 531 U. S. 1009 (2000).
The statute in question, enacted by Congress in 1990, is the Mushroom Promotion, Research, and Consumer Information Act, 104 Stat. 3854, 7 U. S. C. § 6101 et seq. The Act authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to establish a Mushroom Council to pursue the statute’s goals. Mushroom producers and importers, as defined by the statute, submit nominations from among their group to the Secretary, who then designates the Council membership. 7 U. S. C. §§ 6104(b) (1)(B), 6102(6), 6102(11). To fund its programs, the Act allows the Council to impose mandatory assessments upon handlers of fresh mushrooms in an amount not to exceed one cent per pound of mushrooms produced or imported. § 6104(g)(2). The assessments can be used for “projects of mushroom promotion, research, consumer information, and industry information.” § 6104(c)(4). It is undisputed, though, that most moneys raised by the assessments are spent for generic advertising to promote mushroom sales.
Respondent United Foods, Inc., is a large agricultural enterprise based in Tennessee. It grows and distributes many crops and products, including fresh mushrooms. In 1996 respondent refused to pay its mandatory assessments under the Act. The forced subsidy for generic advertising, it contended, is a violation of the First Amendment. Respondent challenged the assessments in a petition filed with the Secretary. The United States filed an action in the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, seeking an order compelling respondent to pay. Both matters were stayed pending this Court’s decision in Glickman.
After Glickman was decided, the Administrative Law Judge dismissed respondent’s petition, and the Judicial Officer of the Department of Agriculture affirmed. Respondent sought review in District Court, and its suit was consolidated with the Government’s enforcement action. The District Court, holding Glickman dispositive of the First Amendment challenge, granted the Government’s motion for summary judgment. App. to Pet. for Cert. 18a.
The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held this case is not controlled by Glickman and reversed the District Court. 197 F. 3d 221 (1999). We agree with the Court of Appeals and now affirm.
A quarter of a century ago, the Court held that commercial speech, usually defined as speech that does no more than propose a commercial transaction, is protected by the First Amendment. Virginia Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U. S. 748, 762 (1976). “The commercial marketplace, like other spheres of our social and cultural life, provides a forum where ideas and information flourish.” Edenfield v. Fane, 507 U. S. 761, 767 (1993).
We have used standards for determining the validity of speech regulations which accord less protection to commercial speech than to other expression. See, e. g., ibid.; Central Hudson Gas & Elec. Corp. v. Public Serv. Comm’n of N. Y, 447 U. S. 557 (1980). That approach, in turn, has been subject to some criticism. See, e. g., Glickman, supra, at 504 (Thomas, J., dissenting); UU Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island, 517 U. S. 484, 518 (1996) (THOMAS, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); Rubin v. Coors Brewing Co., 514 U. S. 476, 493 (1995) (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). We need not enter into the controversy, for even viewing commercial speech as entitled to lesser protection, we find no basis under either Glickman or our other precedents to sustain the compelled assessments sought in this case. It should be noted, moreover, that the Government itself does not rely upon Central Hudson to challenge the Court of Appeals’ decision, Reply Brief for Petitioners 9, n. 7, and we therefore do not consider whether the Government’s interest could be considered substantial for purposes of the Central Hudson test. The question is whether the government may underwrite and sponsor speech with a certain viewpoint using special subsidies exacted from a designated class of persons, some of whom object to the idea being advanced.
Just as the First Amendment may prevent the government from prohibiting speech, the Amendment may prevent the government from compelling individuals to express certain views, see Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705, 714 (1977); West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943), or from compelling certain individuals to pay subsidies for speech to which they object. See Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed., 431 U. S. 209 (1977); Keller v. State Bar of Cal, 496 U. S. 1 (1990); see also Glickman, supra, at 469, n. 13. Our precedents concerning compelled contributions to speech provide the beginning point for our analysis. The fact that the speech is in aid of a commercial purpose does not deprive respondent of all First Amendment protection, as held in the cases already cited. The subject matter of the speech may be of interest to but a small segment of the population; yet those whose business and livelihood depend in some way upon the product involved no doubt deem First Amendment protection to be just as important for them as it is for other discrete, little noticed groups in a society which values the freedom resulting from speech in all its diverse parts. First Amendment concerns apply here because of the requirement that producers subsidize speech with which they disagree.
“[T]he general rule is that the speaker and the audience, not the government, assess the value of the information presented.” Edenfield, supra, at 767. There are some instances in which compelled subsidies for speech contradict that constitutional principle. Here the disagreement could be seen as minor: Respondent wants to convey the message that its brand of mushrooms is superior to those grown by other producers. It objects to being charged for a message which seems to be favored by a majority of producers. The message is that mushrooms are worth consuming whether or not they are branded. First Amendment values are at serious risk if the government can compel a particular citizen, or a discrete group of citizens, to pay special subsidies for speech on the side that it favors; and there is no apparent principle which distinguishes out of hand minor debates about whether a branded mushroom is better than just any mushroom. As a consequence, the compelled funding for the advertising must pass First Amendment scrutiny.
In the Government’s view the assessment in this case is permitted by Glickman because it is similar in important respects. It imposes no restraint on the freedom of an objecting party to communicate its own message; the program does not compel an objecting party (here a corporate entity) itself to express views it disfavors; and the mandated scheme does not compel the expression of political or ideological views. See Glickman, 521 U. S., at 469-470. These points were noted in Glickman in the context of a different type of regulatory scheme and' are not controlling of the outcome. The program sustained in Glickman differs from the one under review in a most fundamental respect. In Glickman the mandated assessments for speech were ancillary to a more comprehensive program restricting marketing autonomy. Here, for all practical purposes, the advertising itself, far from being ancillary, is the principal object of the regulatory scheme.
In Glickman we stressed from the very outset that the entire regulatory program must be considered in resolving the case. In deciding that case wé emphasized “the importance of the statutory context in which it arises.” Id., at 469. The California tree fruits were marketed “pursuant to detailed marketing orders that ha[d] displaced many aspects of independent business activity.” Id., at 469. Indeed, the marketing orders “displaced competition” to such an extent that they were “expressly exempted from the antitrust laws.” Id., at 461. The market for the tree fruit regulated by the program was characterized by “[collective action, rather than the aggregate consequences of independent competitive choices.” Ibid. The producers of tree fruit who were compelled to contribute funds for use in cooperative advertising “d[id] so as a part of a broader collective enterprise in which their freedom to act independently [wa]s already constrained by the regulatory scheme.” Id., at 469. The opinion and the analysis of the Court proceeded upon the premise that the producers were bound together and required by the statute to market their products according to cooperative rules. To that extent, their mandated participation in an advertising program -with a particular message was the logical concomitant of a valid scheme of economic regulation.
The features of the marketing scheme found important in Glickman are not present in the case now before us. As respondent notes, and as the Government does not contest, cf. Brief for Petitioners 25, almost all of the funds collected under the mandatory assessments are for one purpose: generic advertising. Beyond the collection and disbursement of advertising funds, there are no marketing orders that regulate how mushrooms may be produced and sold, no exemption from the antitrust laws, and nothing preventing individual producers from making their own marketing decisions. As the Court of Appeals recognized, there is no “heavy regulation through marketing orders” in the mushroom market. 197 F. 3d, at 225. Mushroom producers are not forced to associate as a group which makes cooperative decisions. “[T]he mushroom growing business ... is unregulated, except for the enforcement of a regional mushroom advertising program,” and “the mushroom market has not been collectivized, exempted from antitrust laws, subjected to a uniform price, or otherwise subsidized through price supports or restrictions on supply.” Id., at 222, 223.
It is true that the party who protests the assessment here is required simply to support speech by others, not to utter the speech itself. We conclude, however, that the mandated support is contrary to the First Amendment principles set forth in cases involving expression by groups which include persons who object to the speech, but who, nevertheless, must remain members of the group by law or necessity. See, e. g., Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed., 431 U. S. 209 (1977); Keller v. State Bar of Cal., 496 U. S. 1 (1990).
The Government claims that, despite the lack of cooperative marketing, the Abood rule protecting against compelled assessments for some speech is inapplicable. We did say in Glickman that Abood “recognized a First Amendment interest in not being compelled to contribute to an organization whose expressive activities conflict with one’s ‘freedom of belief.’ ” 521 U. S., at 471 (quoting Abood, 431 U. S., at 235). We take further instruction, however, from Abood,’s statement that speech need not be characterized as political before it receives First Amendment protection. Id., at 232. A proper application of the rule in Abood requires us to invalidate the instant statutory scheme. Before addressing whether a conflict with freedom of belief exists, a threshold inquiry must be whether there is some state imposed obligation which makes group membership less than voluntary; for it is only the overriding associational purpose which allows any compelled subsidy for speech in the first place. In Abood, the infringement upon First Amendment associational rights worked by a union shop arrangement was “constitutionally justified by the legislative assessment of the important contribution of the union shop to the system of labor relations established by Congress.”. Id., at 222. To attain the desired benefit of collective bargaining, union members and nonmembers were required to associate with one another, and the legitimate purposes of the group were furthered by the mandated association.
A similar situation obtained in Keller v. State Bar of Cal., supra. A state-mandated, integrated bar sought to ensure that “all of the lawyers who derive benefit from the unique status of being among those admitted to practice before the courts [were] called upon to pay a fair share of the cost.” Id., at 12. Lawyers could be required to pay moneys in support of activities that were germane to the reason justifying the compelled association in the first place, for example, expenditures (including expenditures for speech) that related to “activities connected with disciplining members of the Bar or proposing ethical codes for the profession.” Id., at 16. Those who were required to pay a subsidy for the speech of the association already were required to associate for other purposes, making the compelled contribution of moneys to pay for expressive activities a necessary incident of a larger expenditure for an otherwise proper goal requiring the cooperative activity. The central holding in Keller, moreover, was that the objecting members were not required to give speech subsidies for matters not germane to the larger regulatory purpose which justified the required association.
The situation was much the same in Glickman. As noted above, the market for tree fruit was cooperative. To proceed, the statutory scheme used marketing orders that to a large extent deprived producers of their ability to compete and replaced competition with a regime of cooperation. The mandated cooperation was judged by Congress to be necessary to maintain a stable market. Given that producers were bound together in the common venture, the imposition upon their First Amendment rights caused by using compelled contributions for germane advertising was, as in Abood and Keller, in furtherance of an otherwise legitimate program. Though four Justices who join this opinion disagreed, the majority of the Court in Glickman found the compelled contributions were nothing more than additional, economic regulation, which did not raise First Amendment concerns. Glickman, 521 U. S., at 474; see id., at 477 (Souter, J., dissenting).
The statutory mechanism as it relates to handlers of mushrooms is concededly different from the scheme in Glickman; here the statute does not require group action, save to generate the very speech to which some handlers object. In contrast to the program upheld in Glickman, where the Government argued the compelled contributions for advertising were “part of a far broader regulatory system that does not principally concern speech,” Reply Brief for Petitioner, O. T. 1996, No. 95-1184, p. 4, there is no broader regulatory system in place here. We have not upheld compelled subsidies for speech in the context of a program where the principal object is speech itself. Although greater regulation of the mushroom market might have been implemented under the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, 50 Stat. 246, 7 U. S. C. § 601 et seq., the compelled contributions for advertising are not part of some broader regulatory scheme. The only program the Government contends the compelled contributions serve is the very advertising scheme in question. Were it sufficient to say speech is germane to itself, the limits observed in Abood and Keller would be empty of meaning and significance. The cooperative marketing structure relied upon by a majority of the Court in Glickman to sustain an ancillary assessment finds no corollary here; the expression respondent is required to support is not germane to a purpose related to an association independent from the speech itself; and the rationale of Abood extends to the party who objects to the compelled support for this speech. For these and other reasons we have set forth, the assessments are not permitted under the First Amendment.
Our conclusions are not inconsistent with the Court’s decision in Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio, 471 U. S. 626 (1985), a case involving attempts by a State to prohibit certain voluntary advertising by licensed attorneys. The Court invalidated the restrictions in substantial part but did permit a rule requiring that attorneys who advertised by their own choice and who referred to contingent fees should disclose that clients might be liable for costs. Noting that substantial numbers of potential clients might be misled by omission of the explanation, the Court sustained the requirement as consistent with the State’s interest in “preventing deception of consumers.” Id., at 651. There is no suggestion in the case now before us that the mandatory assessments imposed to require one group of private persons to pay for speech by others are somehow necessary to make voluntary advertisements non-misleading for consumers.
The Government argues the advertising here is government speech, and so immune from the scrutiny we would otherwise apply. As the Government admits in a forthright manner, however, this argument was “not raised or addressed” in the Court of Appeals. Brief for Petitioners 32, n. 19. The Government, citing Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, 513 U. S. 374 (1995), suggests that the question is embraced within the question set forth in the petition for certiorari. In Lebron, the theory presented by the petitioner in the brief on the merits was addressed by the court whose judgment was being reviewed. Id., at 379. Here, by contrast, it is undisputed that the Court of Appeals did not mention the government speech theory now put forward for our consideration.
The Government’s failure to raise its argument in the Court of Appeals deprived respondent of the ability to address significant matters that might have been difficult points for the Government. For example, although the Government asserts that advertising is subject to approval by the Secretary of Agriculture, respondent claims the approval is pro forma. This and other difficult issues would have to be addressed were the program to be labeled, and sustained, as government speech.
We need not address the question, however. Although in some instances we have allowed a respondent to defend a judgment on grounds other than those pressed or passed upon below, see, e. g., United States v. Estate of Romani, 523 U. S. 517, 526, n. 11 (1998), it is quite a different matter to allow a petitioner to assert new substantive arguments attacking, rather than defending, the judgment when those arguments were not pressed in the court whose opinion we are reviewing, or at least passed upon by it. Just this Term we declined an invitation by an amicus to entertain new arguments to overturn a judgment, see Lopez v. Davis, 531 U. S. 230, 244, n. 6 (2001), and we consider it the better course to decline a party's suggestion for doing so in this case.
For the reasons we have discussed, 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:
|
C
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Clark
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a suit for damages arising from an injury suffered by a section foreman of the petitioner while operating a motor track car that was towing a push truck on petitioner’s tracks. It was brought under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act. The sole question is whether such vehicles when used in the manner here are within the coverage of the Safety Appliance Acts. The petitioner contends that neither vehicle comes within the general coverage of the Acts; and, in the alternative if the vehicles are included, that they are exempted as “four-wheel cars” under § 6 of the Acts.
Both, the trial court and the Court of Appeals have decided that the vehicles involved here are included within the coverage of the Safety Appliance Acts and that neither falls within any exemption contained therein. The case reaches us on certiorari, 352 U. S. 889. We agree with the two-court interpretation of the Acts as applied to the facts here involved.
The respondent was injured over five years ago. For 39 years he had been a section foreman of track maintenance for petitioner. He and the crew over which he had supervision were responsible for the maintenance and repair of a section of track between Waring and Durwood, Maryland. They used in their work a gasoline-motor-powered track car equipped with belt drive and a hand brake. The car could carry as many as 12 men and their tools. At various times a push truck or hand car was coupled by a pin to the motor track car and was towed by it to the scene of the work. The hand car weighed about 800 pounds unloaded, had a 5-ton carrying capacity, and had no brakes. Sometimes it carried a load of material and other times only equipment and tools. Each of these cars was equipped with four wheels and was capable of being removed from the rails by a crew of men.
On the occasion in question respondent and a crew of two men, pursuant to orders, had hauled about a ton of coal via the motor track car and hand car from Gaithers-burg to the stationmaster at Washington Grove, a station near the scene of their roadbed work on that day. The coal was placed on the hand car which was pulled along the tracks by the motor car. The two vehicles also carried tools, a wheelbarrow, and other equipment, as well as the respondent and his crew. After unloading the coal they proceeded a short distance beyond the Washington Grove station to work on a section of the westbound track. There they removed the vehicles from the track and worked that section of the rails until about 4 p. m. They then replaced the vehicles on the tracks, fastened them together, and began the return trip to the yards at Gaithersburg. On approaching the Washington Grove station at a speed of from 5 to 10 miles per hour the vehicles struck a large dog and derailed, throwing the respondent into a ditch and causing his injuries. The uncontradicted evidence was that respondent applied the hand brake on the motor track car immediately upon seeing the dog and the cars skidded on wet tracks about 39 feet before the impact. Respondent further testified that the motor track car alone, without the hand car attached, could have been stopped under the same conditions within six to eight feet.
Respondent brought his action against the railroad claiming that (1) the petitioner was negligent in directing him to operate a motor track car and push truck without sufficient braking power, and in requiring him to pull the push truck over wet, slippery rails when the truck was not equipped with brakes, and (2) the injury was proximately caused by petitioner’s noncompliance with the requirements of the Safety Appliance and Boiler Inspection Acts. The District Court ruled and instructed the jury that the provisions of the Safety Appliance Acts included within their coverage the vehicles in question. The issues in both causes of action were submitted to the jury, which returned with a verdict for respondent on “the issues aforesaid.” The appeal in the Court of Appeals was directed only to the second cause of action concerning the applicability of the Safety Appliance Acts. That court affirmed, 98 U. S. App. D. C. 169, 233 F. 2d 660, and as has already been indicated, we are faced here only with the problem of the coverage of the Safety Appliance Acts.
The power or train brake provisions of the Safety Appliance Acts apply to the motor track car and the coupling and brake requirements to the hand car when they are employed in the manner here involved. If used separately, though we do not pass on the question, it may well be that entirely different sections of the Acts might apply to each of the vehicles. But here the hand car was not operated by hand as was originally intended. On the contrary, it was fastened by a pin — not a coupler— to a motor track car, a self-propelled piece of equipment, and was hauled with its cargo to its destination on the tracks of petitioner. The hand car had no brakes, although the Acts specifically require “any car” to be equipped with a hand brake. It was being used for hauling purposes. Furthermore, the motor track car, instead of being used solely to carry men and tools to their place of work, was used to pull or tow another car— albeit a hand car. It had no power or train brakes but was equipped with a simple hand brake designed for its individual operation. The brake was wholly insufficient for the use to which the railroad put the vehicles.
We believe that the controlling factor is the nature of the employment of the vehicles in the railroad’s service, that is the type of operation for which they are being used. Here at the time of the injury it is admitted that petitioner was putting the motor track car to locomotive uses in pulling a hand car used to haul material, tools, and equipment. In the light of the prime purpose of the Safety Appliance Acts, i. e., “the protection of employees and others by requiring the use of safe equipment,” Lilly v. Grand Trunk R. Co., 317 U. S. 481, 486 (1943), when the railroad uses this type of equipment in this manner— regardless of the label it places on the vehicles — the commands of the Acts must be obeyed. The operation as conducted when the respondent was injured, with a motor track car equipped with neither power nor train brakes pulling an attached hand car with neither an automatic coupler nor hand brake, was in defiance of the requirements of the Acts. See 45 U. S. C. §§ 1-8. This is not to say that these vehicles, even when used as herein described, must be equipped with devices not adaptable to their safe operation. As was said in Southern R. Co. v. Crockett, 234 U. S. 725 (1914):
“We deem the true intent and meaning to be that the provisions and requirements respecting train brakes, automatic couplers, grab irons, and the height of draw-bars shall be extended to all railroad vehicles ... so far as the respective safety devices and standards are capable of being installed upon the respective vehicles.” Id., at 737-738.
It is said that there is no place on the vehicles in question here for a grab iron or a handhold and that power brakes might well increase the hazards of their operation. This may be true, but if these vehicles are to be used in a manner such as here, the Commission through the promulgation of standards or regulations covering such equipment should adapt the safety requirements of the Acts to the safe use of such vehicles and thus protect employees and the public from the hazards of their operation.
It is contended that, since the Commission has for over 60 years considered maintenance-of-way vehicles not subject to the Acts, this consistent administrative interpretation is persuasive evidence that the Congress never intended to include them within its coverage. It is true that long administrative practice is entitled to weight, Davis v. Manry, 266 U. S. 401, 405 (1925), but here there has been no expressed administrative determination of the problem. We believe petitioner overspeaks in elevating negative action to positive administrative decision. In our view the failure of the Commission to act is not a binding administrative interpretation that Congress did not intend these cars to come within the purview of the Acts. See Shields v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 350 U. S. 318, 321-322 (1956).
The fact that the Commission has not sponsored legislation rather indicates that it thought the problem too insignificant for consideration. We think the Commission expresses this view in its amicus curiae brief when it says “the needs are for strict enforcement of sound operating rules and regulations rather than for air brakes, automatic couplers and the other devices specified in the Safety Appliance Acts.” But this is a matter of policy for the Congress to decide and it wrote into the Safety Appliance Acts that their coverage embraced “all trains, locomotives, tenders, cars, and similar vehicles.” This plain language could not have been more all-inclusive. This Court has construed the language of the Act in its generic sense. In Johnson v. Southern Pacific Co., 196 U. S. 1 (1904), with reference to the meaning of the word “car,” the Court said: “There is nothing to indicate that any particular kind of car was meant. Tested by context, subject matter and object, 'any car’ meant all kinds of cars running on the rails, including locomotives.” Id., at 15-16. See also Spokane & Inland R. Co. v. Campbell, 241 U. S. 497 (1916).
While there is a paucity of cases on the point, with none to the contrary of our holding here, as early as 1934 in Hoffman v. New York, N. H. & H. R. Co., 74 F. 2d 227, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held a hand car or push truck, identical with the one here involved, and a small gasoline tractor subject to the Acts. The hand car was attached to the gasoline tractor by means of a hook (though the engine had an automatic coupler on one end) and the petitioner was injured when the hook dislodged and he was pinned between the car and the locomotive. The court unanimously held that if a hand car “is to be operated by a locomotive [which it held the gasoline tractor to be], rather than by hand, we are not inclined to depart from the literal terms of the statute and dispense with the requirement of an automatic coupler.” Id., at 232. Three years later the requirement of the Acts as to power or train brakes was held applicable to other than standard equipment in United States v. Ft. Worth & D. C. R. Co., 21 F. Supp. 916. There a trial court in the Northern District of Texas held that where a locomotive crane was “used to haul cars . . . it is being used for the purposes for which a locomotive is used and is a locomotive . . . regardless of whatever else it might also be.” Id., at 918. In 1955 the Supreme Court of Florida unanimously held in Martin v. Johnston, 79 So. 2d 419, that the same type motor track car as is involved here came within the terms of the Acts. There the motor track car was being used entirely separately and independently from any other vehicle. The Safety Acts require all cars to be equipped with “efficient hand brakes.” The failure of the brakes was the cause of the injury. The court commented: “There being as much reason for requiring the motor-car in question to be equipped with efficient handbrakes, to insure its safe operation when propelled under its own power, as there is for the requirement that such a car be equipped with automatic couplers, where it is to be used in connection with a train movement, we have the view that the Safety Appliance Acts are applicable and that we are not authorized to depart from the literal terms of the statute.” Id., at 420.
Nor do we find that § 6 of the Acts exempts these vehicles from the provisions of the Acts. Though it is true that the cars are of the four-wheel variety, they are used neither in coal trains nor as logging cars. As the Commission points out in its amicus curiae brief, the proviso of § 6 originally exempted “trains composed of four-wheel cars or . . . locomotives used in hauling such trains,” and the legislative history shows that this provision was enacted specifically to exempt coal cars. 24 Cong. Rec. 1477. This language was incorporated in the phraseology of the present section which admittedly through error was thought to apply to the exemption of trains composed of logging cars. See H. R. Rep. No. 727, 54th Cong., 1st Sess. The legislative history of the section reveals beyond doubt that it has no application here.
In view of the history and purposes of the Safety Appliance Acts, and the literal language used by the Congress that they embraced “any car” and “any locomotive engine . . . hauling . . . any car,” together with the practical necessity of affording safety appliances to thousands of railroad maintenance employees, as well as the public, we conclude that the motor track car and hand car when used by the petitioner in the manner employed here must be equipped in accordance with the requirements of the Safety Appliance Acts.
Affirmed.
27 Stat. 531, as amended, 45 U. S. C. §§ 1-16.
27 Stat. 532, as amended, 29 Stat. 85, 62 Stat. 909, 45 U. S. C. § 6, provides in part:
“That any such common carrier using any locomotive engine, running any train, or hauling or permitting to be hauled or used on its line any car in violation of any of the provisions of this Act, shall be liable to a penalty . . . : Provided, That nothing in this Act contained shall apply to trains composed of four-wheel cars or to trains composed of eight-wheel standard logging ears where the height of such car from top of rail to center of coupling does not exceed twenty-five inches, or to locomotives used in hauling such trains when such cars or locomotives are exclusively used for the transportation of logs.”
36 Stat. 298, 45 U. S. C. § 11, provides in part:
“. . . it shall be unlawful for any common carrier subject to the provisions of this Act to haul, or permit to be hauled or used on its line any car subject to the provisions of this Act not equipped with appliances provided for in this Act, to wit: All cars must be equipped with secure sill steps and efficient hand brakes . . .
We note that in 1953 the Interstate Commerce Commission, in a proceeding to prescribe rules governing inspection of electrically operated units and multiple-unit equipment, has itself declared a “self-propelled unit of equipment capable of moving other equipment” to be a locomotive under the Act. Ex parte No. 179, 297 I. C. C. 177, 192. While the proceeding did not involve motor track cars, the language of the Commission casts some light on that problem. The Commission pointed out that “The language in the act is all-inclusive, and considering its purpose . . . the words ‘any locomotive’ as used in section 2 must be construed as intended to encompass all of the motive equipment of any carrier subject to the act. . . . Appearance clearly cannot determine the classification into which this type of equipment should be placed.” (Emphasis added.) Id,., at 191-192.
32 Stat. 943, 45 U. S. C. § 8.
27 Stat. 531, 45 U. S. C. § 2.
27 Stat. 532, as amended, 45 U. S. C. § 6.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
The respondents, 16 Filipino nationals who served with the United States Armed Forces during World War II, claim they are entitled to apply for and receive American citizenship under a special immigration statute that expired over 40 years ago, §§ 701 to 705 of the Nationality Act of 1940, Ch. 876, 54 Stat. 1137, as amended by the Second War Powers Act of 1942, § 1001, Ch. 199, 56 Stat. 182, 8 U. S. C. §§ 1001 to 1005 (1940 ed., Supp. V) (1940 Act). In the decisions below the Ninth Circuit has, for the third time, ordered naturalization under that expired provision. See Mendoza v. United States, 672 F. 2d 1320 (CA9 1982), rev’d, 464 U. S. 154 (1984); INS v. Hibi, 475 F. 2d 7 (CA9), rev’d, 414 U. S. 5 (1973). In part because the decision below was in direct conflict with the Second Circuit’s decision in Olegario v. United States, 629 F. 2d 204 (CA2 1980), cert. denied, 450 U. S. 980 (1981), we granted certiorari.
H — I
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In March 1942, Congress amended the immigration laws to make American citizenship more readily available to aliens who served honorably in the United States Armed Forces during World War II. As amended at that time, § 701 of the 1940 Nationality Act exempted those aliens from such naturalization requirements as five years of residency in the United States and proficiency in the English language. ' Section 702 authorized representatives designated by the Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization to receive petitions, conduct hearings, and grant naturalization outside the United States. And §705 authorized the Commissioner, with the approval of the Attorney General, to make such rules and regulations as were necessary to carry into effect the provisions of §§701 and 702.
Over the next three years, approximately 7,000 Filipino soldiers were naturalized as American citizens in places outside the Philippine Islands (which were occupied during that entire period by Japan). Most of these were naturalized by courts in this country, but at least 1,000 others were naturalized by immigration officials appointed under § 702, traveling from post to post on rotation throughout England, Iceland, North Africa, and the islands of the Pacific. See Hibi, 414 U. S., at 10 (Douglas, J., dissenting). After the Philippines were liberated from Japanese occupation in August 1945, George Ennis, the American Vice Consul in Manila, was designated to naturalize aliens pursuant to the 1940 Act. Almost immediately after that, the Philippine Government began to express its concern that a mass migration of newly naturalized veterans would drain the country of essential manpower, undermining postwar reconstruction efforts in the soon-to-be independent country. Accordingly, on September 13, 1945, the Commissioner recommended to Attorney General Clark that Vice Consul Ennis’ naturalization authority be revoked. On October 26, 1945, Ennis was informed of that revocation. For the next nine months no official with § 702 authority to receive and act upon petitions for naturalization was present in the Philippines, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) apparently taking the position that appointment of such an official was authorized but not mandated. Not until August 1946 did the INS designate a new § 702 official for the Philippines, who naturalized approximately 4,000 Filipinos before the December 31, 1946, expiration date of the 1940 Act.
B
Attorney General Clark’s revocation of Vice Consul Ennis’ naturalization authority during those nine months of 1945 and 1946 has led to a stream of litigation involving efforts by Filipino veterans to obtain naturalization under the expired 1940 Act. In the suits we have before us here, all of the respondents except Mario Valderrama Litonjua and Bonifacio Lorenzana Manzano filed their petitions in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The INS has stipulated that all of these 14 respondents (the Pangilinan respondents) were eligible for naturalization under the 1940 Act and were present in the Philippines during the period from October 1945 to August 1946, though they had not taken affirmative steps to be naturalized before the cutoff date. The naturalization examiner who handled these cases recommended against naturalization, and the District Court decided against naturalization, relying on the Second Circuit’s decision in Olegario. The naturalization petitions were consolidated for purposes of appeal to the Ninth Circuit.
Respondent Litonjua’s petition for naturalization was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. Litonjua had served as a member of the United States Navy from May 1941 to April 1946, but had made no effort to apply for naturalization while on active duty. He made preliminary efforts to obtain citizenship while working as a civilian employee of the United States Army in Seattle, Washington, after his discharge, but he did not complete the petition process before the December 31, 1946, cutoff date. The naturalization examiner recommended against naturalization, and the District Court concurred, for reasons similar to those adopted by the District Court in Pangilinan.
Respondent Manzano also petitioned for naturalization in the Southern District of California. His situation was the same as that of the Pangilinan respondents, except that he claims that in July 1946, after completing his military service, he specifically inquired at the American Embassy in the Philippines about the possibility of obtaining citizenship but was told there was no longer anyone there to assist him. The District Court, following the recommendation of the naturalization examiner, denied the petition for reasons similar to those adopted by the District Courts in Pangilinan and Litonjua.
The appeals of the Pangilinan respondents and Litonjua were filed in 1980 and 1981 and were consolidated by the Court of Appeals (No. 86-1992). Manzano’s appeal (No. 86-2019) was filed later and assigned to a different panel. The Ninth Circuit initially decided the Pangilinan-Litonjua consolidated cases by relying on the collateral-estoppel theory of its Mendoza decision, which had not yet been reversed by this Court. We vacated that judgment in light of our ruling in Mendoza. INS v. Litonjua, 465 U. S. 1001 (1984), vacating and remanding Barretto v. United States, 694 F. 2d 603 (CA9 1982). On remand, the Ninth Circuit held that the revocation of Vice Consul Ennis’ naturalization authority violated what it characterized as the mandatory language of §§702 and 705 of the 1940 Act, and that the naturalization of the respondents was an appropriate equitable remedy. Pangilinan v. INS, 796 F. 2d 1091 (CA9 1986). After this decision was announced, the panel in No. 86-2019 reversed and remanded to the District Court for reconsideration in light of the Pangilinan decision, characterizing the two cases as nearly identical. In 86-1992, the INS’ petition for rehearing with suggestion -for rehearing en banc was denied, with Judge Kozinski (writing for himself and seven others) dissenting. Pangilinan v. INS, 809 F. 2d 1449 (CA9 1987). We granted the INS’ petition for a writ of certiorari. 484 U. S. 814 (1987).
II
A
Article I, § 8, cl. 4, of the Constitution provides: “The Congress shall have Power . . . [t]o establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization . . . .” Sections 701, 702, and 705 of the amended 1940 Act, set forth in the margin above, constitute a complete description of the extent of the liberalized naturalization rights conferred under that exclusive constitutional authority in 1942. Section 701 explicitly limits the benefits to those who filed petitions no later than December 31,1946. Moreover, Congress has again exercised its exclusive constitutional power to provide that any petition for naturalization filed on or after September 26, 1961, will be heard and determined under the 1952 Nationality Act, as amended. See § 310(e), 75 Stat. 656, 8 U. S. C. § 1421(e). Respondents concede that they are not entitled to be naturalized under that law. Brief for Respondent Pangilinan in Opposition 12-13. Since all the petitions for naturalization in this case were filed after December 31, 1946, and even after September 26, 1961, it is incontestable (and uncontested) that respondents have no statutory right to citizenship.
In INS v. Hibi, 414 U. S. 5 (1973), we summarily reversed the holding of the Ninth Circuit that the same official acts alleged here gave rise to an estoppel that prevented the Government from invoking the December 31, 1946, cutoff in the 1940 Act. We said that normal estoppel rules applicable to private litigants did not apply to the INS since, “in enforcing the cutoff date established by Congress, as well as in recognizing claims for the benefits conferred by the Act, [the INS] is enforcing the public policy established by Congress.” Id., at 8.
Although the Ninth Circuit’s holding in the present cases rests upon a somewhat different theory — not that estoppel eliminates the effectiveness of the December 31, 1946, cutoff, but that equitable authority to craft a remedy enables the conferral of citizenship despite that cutoff — we think our reasoning in Hibi quite clearly produces the same result. The reason we expressed why estoppel could not be applied, viz., that that doctrine could not override a “public policy established by Congress,” surely applies as well to the invocation of equitable remedies. Even assuming the truth of the Ninth Circuit’s unsupported assertion that “[i]n reviewing naturalization petitions, federal courts sit as courts of equity,” 796 F. 2d, at 1102, it is well established that “[c]ourts of equity can no more disregard statutory and constitutional requirements and provisions than can courts of law.” Hedges v. Dixon County, 160 U. S. 182, 192 (1893). “A Court of equity cannot, by avowing that there is a right but no remedy known to the law, create a remedy in violation of law . . . .” Rees v. Watertown, 19 Wall. 107, 122 (1874). See also, e. g., Thompson v. Allen County, 115 U. S. 550, 555 (1885); 1 J. Story, Equity Jurisprudence § 19 (W. Lyon ed. 1918).
More fundamentally, however, the power to make someone a citizen of the United States has not been conferred upon the federal courts, like mandamus or injunction, as one of their generally applicable equitable powers. See, e. g., 28 U. S. C. § 1361; 28 U. S. C. § 1651. Rather, it has been given them as a specific function to be performed in strict compliance with the terms of an authorizing statute which says that “[a] person may be naturalized ... in the manner and under the conditions prescribed in this subchapter, and not otherwise” 8 U. S. C. § 1421(d) (emphasis added).
“An alien who seeks political rights as a member of this Nation can rightfully obtain them only upon terms and conditions specified by Congress. Courts are without authority to sanction changes or modifications; their duty is rigidly to enforce the legislative will in respect of a matter so vital to the public welfare.” United States v. Ginsberg, 243 U. S. 472, 474 (1917).
Or as we have more recently said: “ ‘Once it has been determined that a person does not qualify for citizenship, . . . the district court has no discretion to ignore the defect and grant citizenship.’” Fedorenko v. United States, 449 U. S. 490, 517 (1981) (citation omitted).
The congressional command here could not be more manifest. Besides the explicit cutoff date in the 1940 Act, Congress in 1948, adopted a new liberalized citizenship program that excluded Filipino servicemen, and specifically provided that even applications timely filed under the 1940 Act and still pending would be adjudged under the new provisions. Act of June 1, 1948, Ch. 360, 62 Stat. 281. These provisions were carried forward into the-1952 Nationality Act, see 66 Stat. 250, 8 U. S. C. § 1440. , (It is particularly absurd to contemplate that Filipinos who actually filed their applications before the 1946 cutoff were denied citizenship by reason of this provision, whereas the present respondents, who filed more than 30 years after the deadline, were awarded it by the Ninth Circuit.) Finally, in 1961, Congress amended the 1952 Act by adding § 310(e), 8 U. S. C. § 1421(e), which specifies that “any” petition thereafter filed will be adjudged under the requirements of the 1952 Act. Neither by application of the doctrine of estoppel, nor by invocation of equitable powers, nor by any other means does a court have the power to confer citizenship in violation of these limitations.
B
Respondents advance as an alternative ground for affirmance the claim that Attorney General Clark’s revocation of Vice Consul Ennis’ naturalization authority deprived them of their rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and under its equal protection component. See Hampton v. Mow Sun Wong, 426 U. S. 88, 100 (1976). Assuming that these respondents can properly invoke the protections of the United States Constitution, and granting that they are members of a special class that Congress intended to favor with statutory entitlements to naturalization, they were not deprived of those entitlements without due process. First, it did not violate due process for Congress to impose a reasonable limitations period upon the filing of naturalization petitions. Cf. Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U. S. 422, 437 (1982). Second, even assuming that a reasonable opportunity to file for naturalization was required, respondents were accorded at least that. Unlike noncitizen servicemen in other parts of the world, they had the continuous presence of a §702 naturalization officer in the Philippines from August 1945 through October 1945, and from August 1946 to the end of that year. In this last period, the officer naturalized approximately 4,000 Filipinos. In addition, approximately another 7,000 Filipinos were naturalized either in this country or by naturalization officers traveling post to post around the world. We do not agree with respondents’ contention that in addition to these ample opportunities, respondents were entitled as a matter of due process to individualized notice of any statutory rights and to the continuous presence of a naturalization officer in the Philippines from October 1945 until July 1946.
We also reject the possibility of a violation of the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The approximately 7-month presence of a naturalization officer in the Philippines not only met the applicable standard of equal protection, but indeed compared favorably with the merely periodic presence of such officers elsewhere in the world. See generally Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U. S. 787, 792 (1977); Mathews v. Diaz, 426 U. S. 67, 79-83 (1976). Moreover, beyond the absence of any unequal treatment, the historical record lends no support whatever to the contention that the actions at issue here were motivated by any racial animus. Indeed, it is fair to assume that the Filipino soldiers who fought so valiantly during the early months of World War II were regarded with especial esteem when this legislation was enacted and implemented. Every court to consider this matter has observed that Attorney General Clark’s and Commissioner Carusi’s decisions were taken in response to the concerns of Philippine officials that their nation would suffer a manpower drain, and not because of hostility towards Filipinos. See n. 5, supra. Thousands of Filipinos were naturalized outside the Philippines during the period in question, and approximately 4,000 more in the Philippines after a successor to Ennis was appointed in August 1946.
C
Respondents Litonjua and Manzano argue that the Government cannot prevail in their cases even if it prevails with respect to the 14 Pangilinan respondents because it did not introduce any evidence in their cases concerning the historical events at issue. This argument fails, since “it has been universally accepted that the burden is on the alien applicant to show his eligibility for citizenship in every respect,” Berenyi v. District Director, INS, 385 U. S. 630, 637 (1967). We also reject respondent Litonjua’s assertion that his claim should be treated differently because he is within that category of veterans (“Category I” as described in Matter of Naturalization of 68 Filipino War Veterans, 406 F. Supp. 931, 937-940 (ND Cal. 1975)) whose petitions it has been the policy of the Government not to oppose. That category includes only veterans who had taken some affirmative steps to obtain naturalization both before the December 31, 1946, cutoff date and while they were still on active duty. Ibid. Litonjua made his first efforts after he was no longer on active duty with the Armed Forces.
We have considered Litonjua’s and Manzano’s other separate claims and have found none that is meritorious.
* * *
For the reasons stated, the judgments of the Court of Appeals are reversed.
It is so ordered.
Justice Blackmun concurs in the result.
Justice Kennedy took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
The two cases actually involve three lawsuits: two appeals (both part of No. 86-1992) that were consolidated in the Court of Appeals (Pangilinan v. INS and Litonjua v. INS) and a third (INS v. Manzano, No. 86-2019) that was consolidated by this Court with No. 86-1992.
Section 701 provided in pertinent part:
“[A]ny person not a citizen, regardless of age, who has served or hereafter serves honorably in the military or naval forces of the United States during the present war and who, having been lawfully admitted to the United States, including its Territories and possessions, shall have been at the time of his enlistment or induction a resident thereof, may be naturalized upon compliance with all the requirements of the naturalization laws except that (1) no declaration of intention, and no period of residence within the United States or any State shall be required; (2) the petition for naturalization may be filed in any court having naturalization jurisdiction regardless of the residence of the petitioner; (3) the petitioner shall not be required to speak the English language, sign his petition in his own handwriting, or meet any educational test; and (4) no fee shall be charged or collected for making, filing, or docketing the petition for naturalization, or for the final hearing thereon, or for the certification of naturalization, if issued: Provided, however, That. . . the petition shall be filed no later than [December 31, 1946]. . . .”
Section 702 provided in pertinent part:
“During the present war, any person entitled to naturalization under section [701] of this [Act], who while serving honorably in the military . . . forces of the United States is not within the jurisdiction of any court authorized to naturalize aliens, may be naturalized in accordance with all the applicable provisions of section 701 without appearing before a naturalization court. The petition for naturalization of any petitioner under this section shall be made and sworn to before, and filed with, a representative of the Immigration and Naturalization Service designated by the Commissioner or a Deputy Commissioner, which designated representative is hereby authorized to receive such petition in behalf of the Service, to conduct hearings thereon, to take testimony concerning any matter touching or in any way affecting the admissibility of any such petitioner for naturalization, to call witnesses, to administer oaths, including the oath of the petitioner and his witnesses to the petition for naturalization and the oath of renunciation and allegiance prescribed by section 335 of this Act, and to grant naturalization, and to issue certificates of citizenship . . . .”
Section 705 provided in pertinent part:
“The Commissioner, with the approval of the Attorney General, shall prescribe and furnish such forms, and shall make such rules and regulations, as may be necessary to carry into effeet the provisions of this Act.”
The Commissioner’s memorandum to Attorney General Clark read in pertinent part:
“The Philippine Government again has expressed to the Department of State its concern because Filipino members of the armed forces of the United States are being naturalized even though they have always been domiciled in the Philippine Islands. Since the Islands are not embraced within the domain of any naturalization court, naturalization therein may be awarded only by an administrative official designated by me under the authorization of Section 702 of the Nationality Act, 8 U. S. C. § 1002. Mr. George H. Ennis, Vice Consul of the United States at Manila, has been designated to grant naturalizations under Section 702, but I do not believe he has as yet exercised his authority.
“In view of the concern expressed by the Philippine Government, it is my belief that that situation might best be handled by revoking the authority previously granted to Mr. Ennis and by omitting to designate any representative authorized to confer citizenship in the Philippine Islands. This course would eliminate a source of possible embarrassment in our dealings with the Philippine people, who probably will be awarded independence in the near future.” Memorandum to Tom C. Clark, Attorney General, from Ugo Carusi, INS Commissioner, dated September 13, 1945, quoted in Matter of Naturalization of 68 Filipino War Veterans, 406 F. Supp. 931, 936, n. 5 (ND Cal. 1975).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
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.
Certiorari, 348 U. S. 887, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Per Curiam:
The record in this case discloses no sufficient grounds for the failure and refusal of the District Court to grant petitioner’s application for admission to the bar of that Court. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is accordingly reversed with direction to remand the cause to the District Court for appropriate action in accordance with this order.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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. Chief Justice Vinson
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This suit was brought in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by the Domestic & Foreign Commerce Corporation against Robert M. Little-john, the then head of the War Assets Administration. The. complaint alleged that the Administration.had sold certain surplus coal to the plaintiff; that the Administrator refused to deliver the coal but, on the contrary, had entered into a new contract to sell it to others. The.prayer was for an injunction prohibiting the Administrator from selling or delivering the coal to anyone other than the plaintiff and for a declaration that the sale to the plaintiff was valid and the sale to the second purchaser invalid.
A temporary restraining order was issued ex parte. At the subsequent hearing on the issuance of a preliminary injunction, the defendant moved to dismiss the complaint on the ground, among others, that the court did not have jurisdiction because the suit was one against the United States. The motion was granted. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the jurisdictional capacity of' the court depended on-whether or not title to the coal had passed. Since this was also one of the questions on the merits, it remanded the case for trial. We granted certiorari. 333 U. S: 872.
The controversy on the merits concerns the interpretation to be given to the contract of sale. The War Assets Administration construed the contract as requiring the plaintiff to deposit funds to pay for the coal in advance and, when an unsatisfactory letter of credit was offered in place of a deposit, it considered that the contract was breached. The respondent, on the other hand, construed the contract as requiring payment only on delivery of the documents covering the coal shipment. In its view, it was not obliged to deposit any funds in advance of shipment and, therefore, had not breached the contract by failing to do so.
A second question, related to but different from the question of breach, was whether legal title to the coal had passed to the respondent when the contract was made. If the contract required the deposit of funds then, of course, title could not pass until the contract terms were complied with. If, on the other hand, the contract required payment only on the delivery of documents, a question remained as to whether title nevertheless passed at the time the contract was made..
Since these questions were not decided by the courts below we do not pass on them here. They are important only insofar as they illuminate the basis on which it Was claimed that the district court had jurisdiction over the suit. It was not alleged that the contract for. the sale of the coal was a contract with the officer personally. The basis of the action, on the contrary, was that a contract had been entered into with the United States. Nor was it claimed that the Administrator had any personal interest in this coal or, indeéd, that he himself had taken any wrongful action. The complaint was directed against him because of his official function as chief of the War Assets Administration. It asked for an injunctión against him in that capacity, and against “his agents, assistants, deputies and employees and all persons acting or assuming to act under their direction.” The relief sought was, in short, relief against the Administration for wrongs allegedly committed by subordinate officials in that Administration. The question presented to the courts below was whether such an injunction was barred by the sovereign’s immunity from suit.
Before answering that question it is perhaps advisable to state clearly what is and what is not involved. There is not involved any question of the immunization of Govérnment officers against responsibility for their wrongful.¿actions. If those actions are such as to create a personal liability, whether sounding in tort or in contract, the fact that, the officer is an instrumentality of the sovereign does not, of course, forbid a court from taking jurisdiction over a suit against him. Sloan Shipyards v. U. S. Fleet Corp., 258 U. S. 549, 567 (1922). As was said in Brady v. Roosevelt S. S. Co., 317 U. S. 575, 580 (1943), the principle that an agentjs liable for his own'.torts “is an ancient one and applies 'even to certain act's of public officers or public instrumentalities.” But the existence of a right to sue the officer is not the issue, in this case. The issue here is whether this particular suit is not also, in effect, a suit against the sovereign. If it is, it must fail, whether or not the officer might otherwise be suable.
If the denomination of the party defendant by the plaintiff were the sole test of whether a suit was against the officer individually or against his principal, the sovereign, our task would be easy.- Our decision then would be that the United States is not being sued here because it is not named-as, a party. This would be simple and would not leave room for controversy. But controversy there has been, in this field above all others, because it has long been established that the crucial question is whether the relief sought in a suit nominally addressed to the officer is relief against the sovereign. In a suit against the officer to recover damages for the agent’s personal actions,' that question is easily answered. The judgment sought will not require action by the sovereign or disturb the sovereign’s property. There is, therefore, no jurisdictional difficulty. The question becomes difficult and the area of controversy is entered when the suit is not one. for damages but for specific relief: i.■ e., the recovery of specific property or monies, ejectment from land, or injunction either directing or restraining the defendant officer’s actions. In each such case the question is directly posed as to whether, by obtaining relief against the officer, relief will not, in effect, be obtained against the sovereign. For the sovereign can act only through agents and, when an agent’s actions are restrained, the sovereign itself may, through him, be restrained. As indicated, this question does not arise because of any distinction between law and equity. It arises whenever suit is brought against an officer of the sovereign in which the relief sought from him is not compensation^ for an alleged wrong but, rather, the prevention or discontinuance, in rem, of the wrong. In each such case the compulsion, which the court is asked to impose, may be compulsion against the sovereign, although nominally directed against the individual officer. If it is, then the suit is barred, not because it is a suit against an officer of the Government, but because it is, in substance, a suit against the Government oyer which the court, in the absence of consent, has ho jurisdiction.
The relief sought in this case was not the payment of damages by the individual defendant. To the contrary, it was asked that the court order-the War Assets Administrator, his agents, assistants,' deputies and.employees and all persons acting under their direction, not to sell the coal involved and not to deliver it to anyone other than the respondent. The district court held that this was relief against the. sovereign and therefore dismissed the suit. We agree.
There may be, of course, suits for specific relief against officers of the sovereign which are not suits against the sovereign. If the officer purports to act as an individual and not as an official, a suit directed against that action is not a suit against the sovereign. If the War Assets Administrator had completed a sale of his personal home, he presumably could be éñjdmed“Trom Táíér'conveying it to a third person. On a similar theory, where the officer’s powers are limited by statute, his actions beyond those limitations are considered individual and not sovereign actions. The officer is not doing the business which the sovereign has empowered him to do or he is doing it in a way which the sovereign has forbidden. His actions are ultra vires his authority and therefore may be made the object of specific relief. It is important to note that in such cases the. relief can be granted, without impleading the sovereign, only because of the officer’s lack of delegated power. A claim, of error in the exercise of that power is therefore not sufficient.. And, since the jurisdiction of the court to hear the case may depend, as we have recently recognized, upon the decision which it ultimately reaches on the merits, it is necessary that the plaintiff set out in his complaint the statutory limitation on which he relies.
A second type of case is that in which the statute or order conferring power upon the officer to take action in the sovereign’s name is cláimed to be unconstitutional. Actions for habeas corpus against a-warden and injunctions against the threatened enforcement of unconstitutional statutes are familiar examples of this type. Here) too, the conduct against which specific relief is sought is beyond the officer’s powers and is, therefore, not the conduct of the sovereign. The only difference is that in this case the. power has- been conferred in form but the grant is lacking in substance because of its constitutional invalidity.
■ These two types have frequently been recognized by this Court as the only ones in which a restraint may be obtained against the conduct of Government officials. The rule was stated by Mr. Justice Hughes in Philadelphia Co. v. Stimson, 223 U. S. 605, 620, (1912), where he said: “... in case of an injury threatened by his illegal action, the officer cannot claim immunity from injunction process. The. principle has frequently been applied with respect to state officers seeking to enforce unconstitutional enactments. [Citing cases.] And it is equally applicable to a Federal officer acting in excess of his authority or under an authority not validly conferred!”
It is not contended by the respondent that the present case falls within either of these categories. There was no claim made that the Administrator and his agents, etc., were acting unconstitutionally or pursuant to an unconstitutional grant of power. Nor was there any allegation of a limitation. on the Administrator’s delegated power to refuse shipment in cases in which he believed the United States was not obliged to deliver. There was, it is true, an allegation that the Administrator was acting “illegally,” and that the refusal to deliver was “unauthorized.” But these allegations were not based and, did not purport to be based upon any lack of delegated power. Nor could they be, since the Administrator was empowered by the sovereign to administer a general sales program encompassing the negotiation of contracts, the shipment of goods and the receipt of payment. A normal concomitant of such powers, as a matter of general agency law, is the power to refuse delivery when, in the agent’s view, delivery is not called for under a contract and the power to sell goods which the agent believes are still his principal’s to sell.
The respondent’s contention, which the Court of Appeals sustained, was that there exists a third category of cases in which the action of a Government official may be restrained or directed. If, says the respondent, an officer of the Government wrongly takes or holds specific property to which the plaintiff has title, then his taking or holding is a tort, and “illegal” as a matter of general law, whether or not it be within his delegated powers. He may therefore be sued individually to prevent the “illegal” taking or to recover the property “illegally” held.
If this is an adequate theory on which to rest the conclusion that the relief asked is not relief against the sovereign, then the respondent’s complaint made out a sufficient basis for jurisdiction. The complaint alleged that the respondent’s contract with the United States was an immediate contract of sale under which title to the coal had passed. The coal was thus alleged to be the respondent’s coal, not the United States’ coal. Retention of it by the Administrator after demand was claimed to be a conversion; sale to a third party would aggravate the conversion. Since these actions were tortious they were “illegal” in the respondent’s sense and hence were contended to be individual actions, not properly taken on behalf of the United States, which could be enjoined without making the United States a party.
We believe the theory to be erroneous. It confuses the doctrine of sovereign immunity with the requirement that a plaintiff state a cause of action. It is a prerequisite to the maintenance of any action for specific relief that the plaintiff claim an invasion of his legal rights, either past or threatened. He must, therefore, allege conduct which is “illegal” in the sense, that the respondent suggests. If he does not, he- has not stated a cause of action. This is true whether the conduct complained of is sovereign or individual. In a suit against an agency of the sovereign, as in any other suit, it is therefore necessary that the plaintiff claim an invasion of his recognized legal rights. If he does not do so, the suit must fail even if he alleges that the agent acted beyond statutory authority or unconstitutionally. But, in a suit against an agency of the sovereign, it is not sufficient that he make such acclaim. Since the sovereign may not be sued, it must also appear that the action to be restrained or directed is not action of the sovereign. The mere allegation that the officer, acting officially, wrongfully holds property to which the plaintiff has title does not meet that requirement.' True, it establishes a wrong to the plaintiff. But it does not establish that the officer, in committing that wrong, is not exercising the powers delegated to him-by the sovereign. If he is exercising such powers, the action is the sovereign’s and a suit to enjoin it may not be brought unless the sovereign has consented.
It is argued, however, that the commission of a tort cannot be authorized by the sovereign. Therefore,- the argument goes, the allegation that a Government officer has acted or is threatening to act tortiously toward the plaintiff is sufficient to support the claim that he has acted beyond his delegated powers*: I-t is on this contention that the respondent’s position fundamentally rests, since it is admitted that, if the action to be prevented or compelled is authorized by the sovereign, the demand for it must fail as a demand against the sovereign. It has been said, in a very special sense, that, as a matter-of agency law, a principal may. never lawfully authorize the commission of a tort by his agent; But that statement, ir¿ its usual context, is only a way of saying that an agent’s liability for torts committed by him cannot be avoided by pleading the direction or authorization of his principal. The agént is himself liable whether or not he has been authorized or even directed to commit the tort. This, of course, does not mean that the principal is not.liable-nor that the tortious action may not be regarded -as. the action of the principal. It does not mean, therefore, that the agent’s action, because tortious, is, for that reason alone, ultra vires his authority. An - argument to that effect was at one time advanced in connection with corporate agents, in an effort to avoid corporate liability for torts, but was decisively rejected. '
There is, therefore, nothing in the law of agency which lends support to the contention that an officer’s tortious action is ipso jacto beyond his delegated powers. Nor, we think, is there anything in the doctrine of sovereign immunity which requires up do adopt such a view as regards Government agencies. If, of course, it is assumed that the basis of. the doctrine of sovereign immunity is the thesis that the king can do no wrong, then it may be also assumed that if the king’s agent, does wrong that action cannot be the action of the king. It is on some such argument that the. position of the respondent rests. It is argued that’ an officer given the power to make decisions is only given ffie power to make correct decisions. If his decisions are n<|t correct, then his action based on those decisions is beyond his authority and not the action of the sovereign. There is no warrant for such a contention in cases in whjch th’_ lecision made by the officer does not relate to the terms of his statutory authority. Certainly the jurisdiction of a court to decide a case does not disappear if its decision on the merits is wrong.. And we have heretofore rejected the argument that official action is invalid if based on an incorrect decision as to law or fact, if the officer making the decision was empowered to do so. Adams v. Nagle, 303 U. S. 532, 542 (1938). We therefore reject the contention here. We hold that if the actions of an officer do not conflict with the terms of his valid statutory authority, then they are the actions of the sovereign, whether or not they are tortious under general law, if they would be regarded as the actions of a private principal under the normal rules of agency. A Government officer is not thereby necessarily immunized from liability, if his action is such that a liability would be imposed by the general law of torts. But the action itself cannot be enjoined or directed, since it is also the action of the sovereign.
United States v. Lee, 106 U. S. 196 (1882), is said to have established the rule for which the respondent contends. It did not. It represents, rather, a specific application of the constitutional exception to the doctrine of sovereign immunity. The suit there was against federal officers to recover land held by them, within the scope of their authority, as a United States military station and cemetery. The question at issue was the validity of a tax sale under which the United States, at least in the view of the officers, had obtained title to the property The plaintiff alleged that the sale was invalid and that\ title to the land was in him. The Court held that if he was right the defendants’ possession of the land was illegal and a suit against them was not a suit against the sovereign. Prima facie, this holding would appear to support the contention of the plaintiff. Examination of the Lee case, however, indicates that the basis of the decision was the assumed lack of the defendants’ constitutional authority to hold the land against the plaintiff. The Court said (106 U. S. at 219):
“It is not pretended, as the case now stands, that the President had any lawful authority to [take the land], or that the legislative body could give him any such authority except upon payment of just compensation. The defence stands here solely upon the absolute immunity from judicial ■ inquiry of every one who asserts authority from the executive branch of the government, however clear it may be made that the executive possessed no such power. Not only no such power is given, but it is absolutely pro-' hibited, both to the executive and the legislative, to deprive any one of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or to take private property without just compensation.
“Shall it be said... that the courts cannot give a remedy when the citizen has been deprived of his property by force, his estate seized and converted to the use of the government without lawful authority, without process of law, and without compensation, because the President has ordered it and his officers are in possession?”
The Court thus assumed that if title had been in the plaintiff the taking of the property by the defendants would be a taking without just compensation and, therefore, an unconstitutional action. On that assumption, and only on that assumption, the defendants’ possession of the property was an unconstitutional use of their power and was, therefore, not validly authorized by the sovereign. For that reason, a suit, for specific relief, to obtain the property, was not a suit against the sovereign and could be maintained against the defendants as individuals.
The Lee case, therefore, offers no support to the contention that a claim of title to property held by an officer of the sovereign is, of itself, sufficient to demonstrate that the officer holding the property is not validly empowered by the sovereign to do so. Only where there is a claim that the holding constitutes an unconstitutional taking of property without just compensation does the Lee case require that conclusion. The cases which followed Lee’s do not require a different result. There are a great number of such cases and, as this Court has itself remarked, it is not “an easy matter to reconcile all the decisions of the court in this, class of cases.” With only one possible exception, however, specific relief in connection with property held or injured by officers of the sovereign acting in the name of the sovereign has been granted only where there was a claim that the taking of the property or the injury to it was not the action of the'sovereign because unconstitutional or beyond the officer’s statutory powers. Certainly, the Court has repeatedly stated these to be the cases in which such relief could be granted. A contrary doctrine was stated in Goltra v. Weeks, 271 U. S. 536 (1926). In that case the United States had leased barges to the plaintiff under a contract which gave it a right to repossess under certain conditions.- Believing that those conditions existed, officers of the Government attempted to repossess the barges. The Court held that a suit to enjoin them from doing so was not a suit against the United States. The Court said that the taking of the barges was alleged to be a trespass and hence “illegal.” • Therefore, the actions of the officers were personal actions, not the actions of the United States, arid injunction against them would not be injunction against the United States. 271 U. S. at 544. For this conclusion the Court relied entirely upon the opinion of Mr. Justice Hughes in Philadelphia Co. v. Stimson, 223 U. S. 605 (1912). The reliance was misplaced, since, the opinion in that case clearly and specifically rested on the claim that there was a lack of statutory power to act, not simply on a claim of tortious injury to the plaintiff.
Opposed to the rationale of the Goltra opinion is the decision, by Mr. Justice Holmes, in Goldberg v. Daniels, 231 U. S. 218 (1913). There, as here, the question concerned the effect of a claimed sale of Government surplus property. The plaintiff submitted a sealed bid for a surplus war vessel, accompanied in that case by a certified check as payment in advance. When the bids were opened his was the highest. The Secretary of the Navy, however, determined not to accept the bid and refused to deliver the vessel. The plaintiff brought mandamus. He alleged that the sale was complete when the bids were opened and that the ownership of the vessel was therefore in him, and he asked that the Secretary be compelled to deliver it. The lower courts examined the details of the transaction and concluded that the sale was not compíete until the Secretary announced his acceptance of the bid. On appeal here, it was expressly held that it was not necessary to decide whether the lower courts were correct. The suit must fail as one against the United States, the Court said, whether or not the sale was complete. In so holding the Court said, in effect,, that the question of title was immaterial to the court's jurisdiction. Wrongful the Secretary’s conduct might be, but a suit to relieve the wrong by obtaining the vessel would interfére with the sovereign behind its back and hence must fail.
Both cases are pressed upon us. The petitioner argues, and correctly, that the result in the Goldberg case calls for a similar result in this, case — a dismissal of the suit for want of jurisdiction. The respondent argues, with equal correctness, that the theory of the Goltra opinion— that, an allegation that the actions of Government officers are. wrongful under general law is sufficient to show that they are “unauthorized” — calls for an affirmance of the decision below. Since we must therefore resolve the conflict in doctrine we adhere to the rule applied in the.Goldberg case and to the principle which Las been frequently repeated by this Court, both before and after the Goltra case: the action of an officer of the sovereign (be it holding, taking or otherwise legally affecting the plaintiff’s property) can be regarded as so “illegal” as' to permit a suit for specific relief against the officer as an individual only if it is not within the officer’s statutory powers or, if within those powers, only if the powers, or their exercise in the particular case, are constitutionally void.
The application of this principle to the presen't case is clear. The very basis of the respondent’s action is that the Administrator was an officer of the Government, validly appointed to administer its sales program and therefore authorized to enter, through his subordinates, into a binding contract concerning the sale of the Government’s coal. There is no allegation of any statutory limitation on his powers as a sales agent. In the absence of such a limitation he, like any other sales agent, had the power and the duty to construe such contracts and to refuse delivery in cases in which he believed that the contract terms had not been complied with. His action in so doing in this case was, therefore, within his authority even if, for purposes of decision here, we assume that his construction was wrong and that title to the coal had, in fact, passed to the respondent under, the contract. There is no claim that his action constituted an unconstitutional taking. It was, therefore, inescapably the action of theTTnited States and the effort to enjoin it must fail as an effort to enjoin the United States.
It is argued that the principle of sovereign immunity is an archaic hangover not consonant with modern morality and that it should therefore be limited wherever possible. There may be substance in such a viewpoint as applied to suits for damages. The Congress has increasingly permitted such suits to be maintained against the sovereign and we should give hospitable scope to that trend. But the reasoning is not applicable to suits for specific relief. For, it is one thing to provide a method by which a citizen may be compensated for a wrong done to him by the Government. It is a far different matter to permit a court to exercise its compulsive powers to restrain the Government from acting, or to compel it to act. There are the strongest reasons of public policy for the rule that such relief cannot be had against the sovereign. The Government, as representative of the community as a whole, cannot be stopped in its tracks by any plaintiff who presents a disputed question of property or contract right. As was early recognized, “The interference of the Courts with the performance of the ordinary duties of the executive departments of the government, would be productive of nothing but mischief....”
There are limits, of course. Under our constitutional system, certain rights are protected against governmental action and, if such rights are infringed by the actions of officers of the Government, it is proper that the courts have the power to.grant relief against those actions. But in the absence of a claim of constitutional limitation, the necessity of permitting the Government to carry out its functions unhampered by direct judicial intervention outweighs the possible disadvantage to the citizen in being relegated to the recovery of money damages after the event.
‘It is argued that a sales agency, such as the War Assets Administration, is not the type of agency which requires the protection from direct judicial interference which the doctrine of sovereign immunity confers. We do not doubt that there may be some activities of the Government which do not require such protection. There are others iñ which the necessity of immunity is apparent. But it is not for this Court to examine the necessity in each case. That is a function of the Congress. The Coñgress has, in many cases, entrusted the business of the Government -to agencies which may contract in their own names and which are subject to suit in their own names. In other cases it has permitted suits for damages, but, significantly, not for specific relief, in the Court of Claims. The differentiations as to remedy which the Congress has erected would be rendered nugatory if the basis on which they rest — the assumed immunity of the sovereign from suit in the absence of consent — were undermined by an unwarranted extension of the Lee doctrine.
The cause is reversed with directions that the complaint be dismissed.
It is so ordered.
Mr. Justice Douglas.
I think that the principles announced by the Court are the ones which should govern the selling of government property. Less strict applications of those principles would cause intolerable interference with public administration. To make the right to sue the officer turn on ’whether by the law of sales title had passed to the buyer would clog this governmental function with intolerable burdens. So I have joined the Court’s opinion.
Mr. Justice Rutledge concurs in the result.
Mr. Justice Jackson dissents.
Littlejohn resigned on November 28, 1947. On April 19, 1948, we granted the Government’s motion to substitute his successor, Jess Larson, as petitioner here.
165 F. 2d 235 (1947).
The judgment of the Court of Appeals was not a final one, but we considered it appropriate for review here since, in our view, the jurisdictional issue was “fundamental to the further conduct of the case.” See Land v. Dollar, 330 U. S. 731, 734 (1947).
Cf. Sloan Shipyards v. U. S. Fleet Corp., 258 U. S. 549 (1922), where the question was whether a. corporate agency of the United States could be sued where it, not the United States, was the contractor.
For this reason, there obviously was no objection to the substitution in this Court of the present Administrator for his predecessor, although all tha actions complained of in the complaint were taken during the predecessor’s administration.
In re Ayers, 123 U. S. 443 (1887). As. was said in Minnesota v. Hitchcock, 185 U. S. 373, 387 (1902):. whether a suit is one against a State is to be determined, not by the fact of the party named as defendant on the record, but by the result of the judgment or decree which may be entered
There are, of course, limitations on the right to recover damages from public officers. See Gibson v. Reynolds, 172 F. 2d 95 (1949); Glass v. Ickes, 117 F. 2d 273 (1940); Harper, Law of Torts (1933) § 298. These limitations are matters of substantive law, applicable in suits indubitably addressed to the officer, not the sovereign. They are not necessarily coincidental with the.limitations on the court’s jurisdiction to hear a suit directed against the- sovereign. See Jennings, Tort Liability of Administrative Officers, 21 Minn. L. Rev. 263 (1937), and note the differing treatment accorded the claim for compensation and the claim for specific relief in Belknap v. Schild, 161 U.S. 10, 27 (1896).
Whether such relief is obtainable from any Government officer on the basis of tjae facts set out in the complaint is, as stated, not the question here. But it may seriously be doubted whether damages could, in any event, be recovered from Jess Larson, the present War Assets Administrator, or fróm his predecessor, Robert.M. Littlejohn. The complaint did not charge them with any personal wrongdoing nor even with knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing of their subordinates. Cf. Robertson v. Sichel, 127 U. S. 507, 515-516 (1888). Since the complaint did not ask for damages but for specific relief, the Administrator, in his official capacity, was, of course, a proper party. Cf. Williams v. Fanning, 332 U. S. 490 (1947).
The complaint also asked for declaratory relief even more clearly directed at the sovereign. It was asked that the court declare that “the sale of this coal... is still valid and in effect.” The Adminis-' trator, an agent for a disclosed principal, was not a party to the contract of sale. See 2 Restatement, Agency (1933) § 320. The request for an adjudication of the validity of the sale was thus, even in form, a request for an adjudication against the sovereign. Such a declaration of the rights of the respondent vis-á-vis the United States would clearly have been beyond the court’s jurisdiction. See Stanley v. Schwalby, 162 U. S. 255 (1896). We do not rest our conclusion here on the request for such a declaration, since the district court could have granted only the injunctive relief requested.
Land v. Dollar, 330 U. S. 731, 739 (1947). Since jurisdiction in this type of case does rest on the decision on the-merits there can be no question that.dismissal of a suit in which “the alleged claim under the' Constitution or federal statutes clearly appears to be... ’made solely for the purpose of obtaining jurisdiction or... is wholly insubstantial, and frivolous” would be dismissal for lack of jurisdiction. See Bell v. Hood, 327 U. S, 678, 682-683 (1946).
Of course, a suit may fail; as one against the sovereign, even if it is claimed that the officer being sued has acted unconstitutionally or beyond his statutory power's, if the relief requested can not be granted by merely ordering the cessation of the conduct complained of but will require affirmative action by the sovereign or the disposition of unquestionably sovereign property. North Carolina v. Temple, 134 U. S. 22 (1890).
This case must, therefore, be clearly distinguished from cases like Noble v. Union River Logging R. Co., 147 U. S. 165 (1893). In that case, it was held that the officer being sued lacked power to refuse delivery because, under the statutory scheme, his predecessor’s determination that the plaintiff was entitled to delivery was binding. A similar, case would be presented here if the statute expressly provided that the Administrator’s interpretations of contracts should be binding and irrevocable and if a later, or subordinate, official refused to follow a prior binding, interpretation. In such a case the issue would not be the correctness or incorrectness of the later decision under general law but simply the power of the official, under the statute, to make a decision at all. Cf. Ickes v. Fox, 300 U.S. 82 (1937).
Perkins v. Lukens Steel Co., 310 U. S. 113, 125 (1940).
Tennessee Power Co. v. T. V. A., 306 U. S. 118, 137-139 (1939); Mine Safety Co. v. Forrestal, 326 U. S. 371 (1945).
Thus the Court said in Hopkins v. Clemson College, 221 U. S. 636, 643 (1911) “... neither á State nor an individual can confer upon an agent authority to commit a tort so as to excuse the perpetrator.” (Emphasis added.) See also 1 Mechem, Agency (2d ed., 1914) 1077.
See Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore R. Co. v. Quigley, 21 How. 202, 209-210 (1859); 10 Fletcher, Cyclopedia Corporations (1931) §4877. The contention of the respondent in the present case is remarkably similar.to that made, as regards-corporate agents, in Chestnut Hill Turnpike Co. v. Rutter, 4 Serg. & R. 6 (Pa. 1818). The argument is reported as follows, id. at p. 9:
“Now, a corporation never was and never can be authorised by law to commit a tort; they can invest no one with power for that purpose. If, therefore, an agent constituted for a legal purpose, inflict an injury, the corporation is no more answerable, than it would be for an act of that agent, done without any authority whatever derived from it, because being unauthorised to commit a wrong, it is out of the scope of its corporate powers.”
The argument was rejected by the Court. See also Thayer v. Boston, 19 Pick. 511, 515 (Mass. 1837).
The Lee case was decided in 1882. At that time there clearly was no'remedy available by which he could have obtained compensation for the taking of his land. Whether compensation could be obtained today in such a case is, of course, not the issue here.
For this reason the availability of a remedy in the Court of Claims may, in some cases, be relevant to the question of sovereign immunity. Where the action against which specific relief is sought is a taking or holding of the plaintiffs’ property, the availability of
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U. S. C. § 552 (1976 ed. and Supp. IV), does not require the disclosure of “investigatory records compiled for law enforcement purposes” when the release of such records would interfere with effective law enforcement, impede the administration of justice, constitute an unwarranted invasion of privacy, or produce certain other specified consequences. § 552(b)(7). The sole question presented in this case is whether information contained in records compiled for law enforcement purposes loses that exempt status when it is incorporated into records compiled for purposes other than law enforcement.
I
Respondent Howard Abramson is a professional journalist interested in the extent to which the White House may have used the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its files to obtain derogatory information about political opponents. On June 23, 1976, Abramson filed a request pursuant to FOIA for specific documents relating to the transmittal from the FBI to the White House in 1969 of information concerning particular individuals who had criticized the administration. The Bureau denied the request on grounds that the information was exempt from disclosure pursuant to § 552(b) (6) (Exemption 6) and § 552(b)(7)(C) (Exemption 7(C)), both of which protect against unwarranted invasions of personal privacy. Abramson, believing his first request was flawed by its specificity, filed a much broader request, which was denied for failure to “reasonably describe the records sought” as required by § 552(a)(3).
In December 1977, after unsuccessfully appealing both denials within the agency, Abramson filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to enjoin the FBI from withholding the requested records. While the suit was pending, the FBI provided Abramson with 84 pages of documents, some intact and some with deletions. The District Court rejected the Bureau’s assertions that all deleted material was exempt. Abramson v. U. S. Dept. of Justice, Civ. Action No. 77-2206 (Jan. 3, 1979). In response, the FBI submitted an affidavit to the District Court explaining the justification for each deletion. In light of the released material and the Bureau’s affidavit, Abramson modified his request, seeking only the material withheld from a single document consisting of a one-page memorandum from J. Edgar Hoover to John D. Ehrlichman, together with approximately 63 pages of “name check” summaries and attached documents. The “name check” summaries contained information, culled from existing FBI files, on 11 public figures.
The District Court found that the FBI had failed to show that the information was compiled for law enforcement rather than political purposes, but went on to rule that Exemption 7(C) was validly invoked by the Government because disclosure of the withheld materials would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. The District Court thus granted the Government’s motion for summary judgment with respect to material withheld pursuant to Exemption 7(C). Abramson v. FBI, Civ. Action No. 77-2206 (Nov. 30, 1979).
The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that with the exception of those documents attached to the summaries that may have been duplicates of original FBI files, the Government had failed to sustain its burden of demonstrating that the documents were compiled for law enforcement purposes, and that Exemption 7(C) was therefore unavailable even though disclosure would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. 212 U. S. App. D. C. 58, 658 F. 2d 806 (1980). To reach this conclusion, the Court of Appeals rejected the Government’s claim that Exemption 7(C) was applicable because the “name check” summaries contained information taken from documents in FBI files that had been created for law enforcement purposes. Thus, with the exception noted, the Government’s invocation of Exemption 7(C) was rejected. Because this interpretation of the Exemption has important ramifications for law enforcement agencies, for persons about whom information has been compiled, and for the general public, we granted certiorari. 452 U. S. 937 (1981). We now reverse.
r*H I — <
The Freedom of Information Act sets forth a policy of broad disclosure of Government documents in order “to ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society.” NLRB v. Robbins Tire & Rubber Co., 437 U. S. 214, 242 (1978); EPA v. Mink, 410 U. S. 73, 80 (1973). Yet Congress realized that legitimate governmental and private interests could be harmed by release of certain types of information and provided nine specific exemptions under which disclosure could be refused. Here we are concerned with Exemption 7, which was intended to prevent premature disclosure of investigatory materials which might be used in a law enforcement action. This provision originally exempted “investigatory files compiled for law enforcement purposes except to the extent available by law to a private party.” A sweeping interpretation given the Exemption by some courts permitted the unlimited withholding of files merely by classifying them as investigatory files compiled for law enforcement purposes. As a result, the Exemption underwent a major revision in 1974. As amended, Exemption 7 authorizes disclosure of law enforcement records unless the agency-can demonstrate one of six specific harms. The provision now protects
“investigatory records compiled for law enforcement purposes but only to the extent that the production of such records would (A) interfere with enforcement proceedings, (B) deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication, (C) constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, (D) disclose the identity of a confidential source and, in the case of a record compiled by a criminal law enforcement authority in the course of a criminal investigation, or by an agency conducting a lawful national security intelligence invéstigation, confidential information furnished only by the confidential source, (E) disclose investigative techniques and procedures, or (F) endanger the life or physical safety of law enforcement personnel.” 5 U. S. C. § 552(b)(7).
The language of the Exemption indicates that judicial review of an asserted Exemption 7 privilege requires a two-part inquiry. First, a requested document must be shown to have been an investigatory record “compiled for law enforcement purposes.” If so, the agency must demonstrate that release of the material would have one of the six results specified in the Act.
As the case comes to us, it is agreed that the information withheld by the Bureau was originally compiled for law enforcement purposes. It is also settled that the name check summaries were developed pursuant to a request from the White House for information about certain public personalities and were not compiled for law enforcement purposes. Finally, it is not disputed that if the threshold requirement of Exemption 7 is met — if the documents were compiled for law enforcement purposes — the disclosure of such information would be an unwarranted invasion of privacy. The sole question for decision is whether information originally compiled for law enforcement purposes loses its Exemption 7 protection if summarized in a new document not created for law enforcement purposes.
Ill
No express answer is provided by the statutory language or by the legislative history. The Court of Appeals resolved the question in favor of Abramson by construing the threshold requirement of Exemption 7 in the following manner. The cover letter to the White House, along with the accompanying summaries and attachments, constituted a “record.” Because that “record” was not compiled for law enforcement purposes, the material within it could not qualify for the exemption, regardless of the purpose for which that material was originally gathered and recorded and regardless of the impact that disclosure of such information would produce. The Court of Appeals supported its interpretation by distinguishing between documents and information. “[T]he statutory scheme of the FOIA very clearly indicates that exemptions from disclosure apply only to documents, and not to the use of the information contained in such documents.” 212 U. S. App. D. C., at 65, 658 F. 2d, at 813. A “record” is a “document” and, for the Court of Appeals, the document must be treated as a unit for purposes of deciding whether it was prepared for law enforcement purposes. The threshold requirement for qualifying under Exemption 7 turns on the purpose for which the document sought to be withheld was prepared, not on the purpose for which the material included in the document was collected. The Court of Appeals would apply this rule even when the information for which the exemption is claimed appears in the requested document in the form essentially identical to the original memorialization.
The Court of Appeals’ view is a tenable construction of Exemption 7, but there is another interpretation, equally plausible on the face of the statute, of the requirement that the record sought to be withheld must have been prepared for law enforcement purposes. If a requested document, such as the one sent to the White House in this case, contains or essentially reproduces all or part of a record that was previously compiled for law enforcement reasons, it is reasonably arguable that the law enforcement record does not lose its exemption by its subsequent inclusion in a document created for a nonexempt purpose. The Court of Appeals itself pointed the way to this alternative construction by indicating that Exemption 7 protected attachments to the name check summaries that were duplicates of original records compiled for law enforcement purposes. Those records would not lose their exemption by being included in a later compilation made for political purposes. Although in this case the duplicate law enforcement records were attached to the name check summaries, the result hardly should be different if all or part of the prior record were quoted verbatim in the new document. That document, even though it may be delivered to another agency for a nonexempt purpose, contains a “record” qualifying for consideration under Exemption 7.
The question is whether FOIA permits the same result where the exempt record is not reproduced verbatim but is accurately reflected in summary form. The Court of Appeals would have it that because the FBI summarized the relevant records rather than reproducing them verbatim, the identical information no longer qualifies for the exemption. The originally compiled record and the derivative summary would be treated completely differently although the content of the information is the same and although the reasons for maintaining its confidentiality remain equally strong. We are of the view, however, that the statutory language is reasonably construable to protect that part of an otherwise nonexempt compilation which essentially reproduces and is substantially the equivalent of all or part of an earlier record made for law enforcement uses. Moreover, that construction of the statute rather than the interpretation embraced by the Court of Appeals, more accurately reflects the intention of Congress, is more consistent with the structure of the Act, and more fully serves the purposes of the statute.
FOIA contains no definition of the term “record.” Throughout the legislative history of the 1974 amendments, Representatives and Senators used interchangeably such terms as “documents,” “records,” “matters,” and “information. ” Furthermore, in determining whether information in a requested record should be released, the Act consistently focuses on the nature of the information and the effects of disclosure. After enumerating the nine exemptions from FOIA, Congress expressly directed that “[a]ny reasonably segrega-ble portion of a record” be “provided to any person requesting such record after deletion of the portions which are exempt . . . .” § 552(b). This provision requires agencies and courts to differentiate among the contents of a document rather than to treat it as an indivisible “record” for FOIA purposes. When a record is requested, it is permissible for an agency to divide the record into parts that are exempt and parts that are not exempt, based on the kind of information contained in the respective parts.
The 1974 amendments modified Exemption 7 in two ways. First, by substituting the word “records” for “files,” Congress intended for courts to “consider the nature of the particular document as to which exemption was claimed, in order to avoid the possibility of impermissible ‘commingling’ by an agency’s placing in an investigatory file material that did not legitimately have to be kept confidential.” NLRB v. Robbins Tire & Rubber Co., 437 U. S., at 229-230. Second, by enumerating six particular objectives of the Exemption, the amendments required reviewing courts to “loo[k] to the reasons” for allowing withholding of information. Id., at 230. The requirement that one of six types of harm must be demonstrated to prevent production of a record compiled for law enforcement purposes was a reaction to a line of cases decided by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit which read the original Exemption 7 as protecting all law enforcement files. The amendment requires that the Government “specify some harm in order to claim the exemption” rather than “affording all law enforcement matters a blanket exemption.” 120 Cong. Rec. 36626 (1974), 1975 Source Book 413 (statement of Rep. Reid). The enumeration of these categories of undesirable consequences indicates Congress believed the harm of disclosing this type of information would outweigh its benefits. There is nothing to suggest, and no reason for believing, that Congress would have preferred a different outcome simply because the information is now reproduced in a non-law-enforcement record.
The Court of Appeals would protect information compiled in a law enforcement record when transferred in original form to another agency for nonexempt purposes but would withdraw that protection if the same information or record is transmitted in slightly different form. In terms of the statutory objectives, this distinction makes little sense. If the Court of Appeals is correct that this kind of information should be disclosed, its position leaves an obvious means of qualifying for the exemption — transmittal of the law enforcement records intact. Conversely, to the extent that Congress intended information initially gathered in the course of a law enforcement investigation to remain private, the Court of Appeals’ decision creates a substantial prospect that this purpose, the very reason for Exemption 7’s existence, will no longer be served.
IV
Neither are we persuaded by the several other arguments Abramson submits in support of the decision below.
First, we reject the argument that the legitimate interests in protecting information from disclosure under Exemption 7 are satisfied by other exemptions when a record has been recompiled for a non-law-enforcement purpose. In particular, Abramson submits that Exemption 6 suffices to protect the privacy interest of individuals. Even if this were so with respect to the particular information requested in this case, the threshold inquiry of what constitutes compilation for law enforcement purposes must be considered with regard for all six of the types of harm stemming from disclosure that Congress sought to prevent. Assuming that Exemption 6 provided fully comparable protection against disclosures which would constitute unwarranted invasions of privacy, a questionable proposition itself, no such companion provision in FOIA would halt the disclosure of information that might deprive an individual of a fair trial, interrupt a law enforcement investigation, safeguard confidential law enforcement techniques, or even protect the physical well-being of law enforcement personnel. No other provision of FOIA could compensate for the potential disruption in the flow of information to law enforcement agencies by individuals who might be deterred from speaking because of the prospect of disclosure. It is therefore critical that the eompiled-for-law-enforcement requirement be construed to avoid the release of information that would produce the undesirable results specified.
For much the same reason, the result we reach today is fully consistent with our holding in NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U. S. 132, 148-154 (1975), that Exemption 5, § 552(b)(5), an exemption protecting from mandatory disclosure predecisional communications within an agency and other internal documents, does not protect internal advisory communications when incorporated in a final agency decision. The purposes behind Exemption 5, protecting the give-and-take of the decisional process, were not violated by disclosure once an agency chooses expressly to adopt a particular text as its official view. As we have explained above, this cannot be said here. The reasons for an Exemption 7 exemption may well remain intact even though information in a law enforcement record is recompiled in another document for a non-law-enforcement function.
The result is also consistent with the oft-repeated caveat that FOIA exemptions are to be narrowly construed, Department of Air Force v. Rose, 425 U. S. 352, 361 (1976). While Congress established that the basic policy of the Act is in favor of disclosure, it recognized the important interests served by the exemptions. We are not asked in this case to expand Exemption 7 to agencies or material not envisioned by Congress: “It is . . . necessary for the very operation of our Government to allow it to keep confidential certain material such as the investigatory files of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” S. Rep. No. 813, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (1965). Reliance on this principle of narrow construction is particularly unpersuasive in this case where it is conceded that the information as originally compiled is exempt under Exemption 7 and where it is the respondent, not the Government, who urges a formalistic reading of the Act.
We are not persuaded that Congress’ undeniable concern with possible misuse of governmental information for partisan political activity is the equivalent of a mandate to release any information which might document such activity. Congress did not differentiate between the purposes for which information was requested. NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., supra, at 149. Rather, the Act required assessment of the harm produced by disclosure of certain types of information. Once it is established that information was compiled pursuant to a legitimate law enforcement investigation and that disclosure of such information would lead to one of the'listed harms, the information is exempt. Congress thus created a scheme of categorical exclusion; it did not invite a judicial weighing of the benefits and evils of disclosure on a case-by-case basis.
V
We therefore find that the construction adopted by the Court of Appeals, while plausible on the face of the statute, lacks support in the legislative history and would frustrate the purposes of Exemption 7. We hold that information initially contained in a record made for law enforcement purposes continues to meet the threshold requirements of Exemption 7 where that recorded information is reproduced or summarized in a new document prepared for a non-law-enforcement purpose. Of course, it is the agency’s burden to establish that the requested information originated in a record protected by Exemption 7. The Court of Appeals refused to consider such a showing as a sufficient reason for withholding certain information. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore reversed, and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
Section 552(b) in its entirety provides:
“This section does not apply to matters that are—
“(1)(A) specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and (B) are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order;
“(2) related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency;
“(3) specifically exempted from disclosure by statute (other than section 552b of this title), provided that such statute (A) requires that the matters be withheld from the public in such a manner as to leave no discretion on the issue, or (B) establishes particular criteria for withholding or refers to particular types of matters to be withheld;
“(4) trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential;
“(5) inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency;
“(6) personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy;
“(7) investigatory records compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such records would (A) interfere with enforcement proceedings, (B) deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication, (C) constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, (D) disclose the identity of a confidential source and, in the case of a record compiled by a criminal law enforcement authority in the course of a criminal investigation, or by an agency conducting a lawful national security intelligence investigation, confidential information furnished only by the confidential source, (E) disclose investigative techniques and procedures, or (F) endanger the life or physical safety of law enforcement personnel;
“(8) contained in or related to examination, operating, or condition reports prepared by, on behalf of, or for the use of an agency responsible for the regulation or supervision of financial institutions; or
“(9) geological and geophysical information and data, including maps, concerning wells.
“Any reasonably segregable portion of a record shall be provided to any person requesting such record after deletion of the portions which are exempt under this subsection.”
Abramson sought the following documents:
“ — Copies of any and all information contained in [FBI] files showing or indicating the transmittal of any documents or information from the FBI to the White House, or any White House aides, for the years 1969 and 1970, concerning the following individuals: Lowell P. Weicker, Jr.; Thomas J. Meskill; Joseph Duffey; Thomas J. Dodd; Alphonsus J. Donahue; John Lup-ton; Wallace C. Barnes; and Emilio Q. Daddario.
“ — Copies of any and all information so transmitted.
“ — An uncensored copy of the Oct. 6, 1969 letter from J. Edgar Hoover to John D. Ehrlichman by which Mr. Hoover transmits ‘memoranda’ on several individuals to Mr. Ehrlichman.
“ — A copy of the original request letter from Mr. Ehrlichman to Mr. Hoover for that data.
“ — Copies of all data so transmitted by the Oct. 6, 1969 letter from Mr. Hoover to Mr. Ehrlichman.
“ — A copy of the receipt signed by the recipient at the White House of the Oct. 6, 1969, letter.” 212 U. S. App. D. C. 58, 60, 658 F. 2d 806, 808 (1980).
In his revised request, Abramson sought the following documents:
—“All written requests and written records of oral or telephone requests from the White House or any person employed by the White House to the FBI for information about any person who was in 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, or 1974 the holder of a federal elective office or a candidate for federal elective office.
—“All written replies and records of oral or telephonic replies from the FBI to the White House in response to requests described in paragraph one.
—“Any index or indices to requests or replies described in paragraphs one and two.” Id., at 61, 658 F. 2d, at 809.
The District Court did not consider the summaries and attachments separately for Exemption 7(C) purposes. The Court of Appeals was “satisfied that the ‘name check’ summaries were not compiled for legitimate law enforcement purposes,” but was “less sure” of the “attachments,” being unable to determine their precise nature or the purposes for which they were originally created. The Court of Appeals stated that if the “attachments” documents were already in existence and a part of the FBI files prior to the White House’s “name check” requests, and if these original documents were sent to the White House as initially compiled, without modification, then a determination would have to be made whether these documents meet the threshold requirements of Exemption 7. Thus, the Court of Appeals remanded to the District Court for a finding on whether the “attachments” were the original documents in FBI files and whether they were originally compiled pursuant to a legitimate law enforcement investigation.
The Attorney General’s Memorandum on the 1974 Amendments to the FOIA 6 (1975) reads the amendments in this manner. Respondent places undue emphasis on this document and the direction to first determine whether a record has been compiled for law enforcement purposes and then examine whether one of the six harms are involved. This is, of course, the prescribed order in which a court should interpret the Exemption. It does not necessarily mean, however, that information admittedly compiled in a law enforcement record loses its exemption when recompiled. The Attorney General’s memorandum submits that the test is whether the requested material “reflect[s] or result[s] from investigative efforts” into civil or criminal enforcement matters.” Ibid.
The Court of Appeals supported this distinction by referring to two of its earlier FOIA decisions. Simpson v. Vance, 208 U. S. App. D. C. 270, 648 F. 2d 10 (1980), held that a State Department Biographic Register was not exempt from disclosure even though the information in the Register was extracted from personnel flies which may have been exempt under Exemption 6 of FOIA. Lesar v. United States Department of Justice, 204 U. S. App. D. C. 200, 636 F. 2d 472 (1980), held that summaries of FBI surveillance records did not lose their exempt status because the underlying original surveillance records from which the summaries were compiled may not have been gathered for legitimate law enforcement purposes. As we understand those cases, however, neither of them is inconsistent with the result we reach today.
We would agree with much of Justice O’Connor’s dissenting opinion if we accepted its premise that the language of the statute is “plain” in the sense that it can reasonably be read only as the dissent would read it. But we do not agree with that premise: “The notion that because the words of a statute are plain, its meaning is also plain, is merely pernicious oversimplification.” United States v. Monia, 317 U. S. 424, 431 (1943) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting). Given our view that there is a reasonable alternative construction of Exemption 7, much of Justice O’Connor’s dissent is rhetorical and beside the point. For our duty then is “to find that interpretation which can most fairly be said to be imbedded in the statute, in the sense of being most harmonious with its scheme and with the general purposes that Congress manifested.” NLRB v. Lion Oil Co., 352 U. S. 282, 297 (1957) (Frankfurter, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
While Congress’ definition of “records” in the Records Disposal Act and the Presidential Records Act of 1978 was helpful to us in determining that an agency must create or obtain a record before information to which the Government has access can be considered an “agency record,” Forsham v. Harris, 445 U. S. 169, 183-184 (1980), the definition of terms in these Acts does not aid in resolving the issue presented in this case.
See, e. g., 120 Cong. Rec. 17033 (1974), House Committee on Government Operations and Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Freedom of Information Act and Amendments of 1974 (Pub. L. 93-502), Source Book, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., 333 (Joint Comm. Print 1975) (hereafter 1975 Source Book) (remarks of Sen. Hart); 120 Cong. Rec. 17034 (1974), 1975 Source Book 335 (remarks of Sen. Kennedy); 120 Cong. Rec. 36626 (1974), 1975 Source Book 413 (remarks of Rep. Reid); 120 Cong. Rec. 36877-36878 (1974), 1975 Source Book 468 (remarks of Sen. R. Byrd); H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 93-1380, p. 13 (1974), 1975 Source Book 230.
There is no claim that the “name check” summaries are protected against disclosure in toto because of the presence of some material falling squarely within Exemption 7.
Senator Hart, the sponsor of the 1974 amendment, stated specifically that the amendment’s purpose was to respond to four decisions of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit which cumulatively held that all material found in an investigatory file compiled for law enforcement purposes was exempt, even if an enforcement proceeding were neither imminent nor likely. Weisberg v. United States Dept. of Justice, 160 U. S. App. D. C. 71, 74, 489 F. 2d 1195, 1198 (1973), cert. denied, 416 U. S. 993 (1974); Aspin v. Department of Defense, 160 U. S. App. D. C. 231, 237, 491 F. 2d 24, 30 (1973); Ditlow v. Brinegar, 161 U. S. App. D. C. 154, 494 F. 2d 1073 (1974); Center for National Policy Review on Race and Urban Issues v. Weinberger, 163 U. S. App. D. C. 368, 502 F. 2d 370 (1974). These four cases, in Senator Hart’s view, erected a “stone wall” preventing public access to any material in an investigatory file. 120 Cong. Rec. 17033 (1974), 1975 Source Book 332. See NLRB v. Robbins Tire & Rubber Co., 437 U. S. 214, 227-229 (1978). The Conference Report on the 1974 amendment similarly states that the amendment was designed to communicate Congress’ disapproval of these court decisions. H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 93-1380, at 12, 1975 Source Book 229. Because the disapproved decisions cut far more broadly into the Act than the present issue, we cannot infer that Congress intended all subsidiary questions concerning Exemption 7’s scope to be resolved against the Government.
Information transmitted for a non-law-enforcement purpose may well still be used in an ongoing investigation. Moreover, by compromising the confidentiality of information gathered for law enforcement purposes, the Court of Appeals’ decision could result in restricting the flow of essential information to the Government. Deputy Attorney General Schmults stated before the Second Circuit Judicial Conference (May 9, 1981): “The risk of disclosure of FBI records has made private persons, nonfederal law enforcement officials, and informants reticent about providing vital information. Many informants have actually stopped cooperating with the FBI, for example, because they feared that their identities would be disclosed under the Act.” As quoted in Kennedy, Foreword: Is The Pendulum Swinging Away From Freedom of Information?, 16 Harv. Civ. Rights-Civ. Lib. L. Rev. 311, 315 (1981). See FOIA Update 1 (Dept, of Justice, Sept. 1981) (“[Experiences of the FBI and DEA indicate that there is a widespread perception among confidential information sources that federal investigators cannot fully guarantee the confidentiality of information because of FOIA”). The Drug Enforcement Administration claims that 40% of FOIA requests come from convicted felons, many of whom are seeking information with which to identify the informants who helped to convict them. Freedom of Information Act Oversight, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations, 97th Cong., 1st Sess., 165 (1981) (statement of Jonathan Rose, Dept. of Justice); see also U. S. Dept. of Justice, Attorney General’s Task Force on Violent Crime, Final Report 32 (1981).
The Court has previously recognized that the purposes of the exemptions do not disappear when information is incorporated in a new document or otherwise put to a different use. See NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U. S. 132, 166 (1975) (Document protected by Exemption 7 does not become discloseable solely because it is referred to in a final agency opinion; “reasons underlying Congress’ decision to protect investigatory files [remain] applicable”).
“Exemption 6 protects against disclosure of information which would constitute a “clearly unwarranted” invasion of privacy. Exemption 7 does not require that the harm to privacy be “clearly” unwarranted. The distinction is meaningful. As we noted in Department of Air Force v. Rose, 425 U. S. 352, 379, n. 16 (1976), the Conference Committee dropped the “clearly” in response to a Presidential request, 120 Cong. Rec. 33158-33159 (1974), 1975 Source Book 368-372 (letters between President Ford and Sen. Kennedy); 120 Cong. Rec. 34162-34163 (1974), 1975 Source Book 377-380 (letters between President Ford and Cong. Moorhead), and the bill was enacted as reported by the Conference Committee, 88 Stat. 1563. Thus, even with respect to Exemption 7(C), it should not be assumed that Exemption 6 would provide overlapping protection.
To be sure, the rule crafted by the Court of Appeals might deter the interagency transfer of information initially gathered for law enforcement purposes, but it should be remembered that FOIA is legislation directed at securing public access to information, not an Act intended to interdict the flow of information among Government agencies.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Ginsburg
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Congress has provided for removal of eases from state court to federal court when the plaintiff’s eomplaint alleges a claim arising under federal law. Congress has not authorized removal based on a defense or anticipated defense federal in character. This ease presents the question whether removal may be predicated on a defendant’s assertion that a prior federal judgment has disposed of the entire matter and thus bars plaintiffs from later pursuing a state-law-based case. We reaffirm that removal is improper in such a ease. In so holding we clarify and confine to its specific context the Court’s second footnote in Federated Department Stores, Inc. v. Moitie, 452 U. S. 894, 897, n. 2 (1981). The defense of claim preclusion, we emphasize, is properly made in the state proceeding, subject to this Court’s ultimate review.
I
This case arose out of a series of mortgages and conveyances involving a parcel of real property in New Orleans. In 1983, a partnership that owned the Louisiana equivalent of a leasehold estate in the property mortgaged that interest to respondent Regions Bank of Louisiana (Bank). One year later, to secure further borrowing, the partnership granted a second mortgage to petitioners Mary Anna Rivet, Minna Ree Winer, Edmond G. MLranne, and Edmond G. MIranne, Jr. The partnership thereafter filed for bankruptcy, and the bankruptcy trustee sought court permission to sell the leasehold estate free and clear of all claims.
In June and August 1986 orders, the Bankruptcy Court first granted the sale application and later approved sale of the leasehold estate to the Bank, sole bidder at the public auction. The court also directed the Recorder of Mortgages for Orleans Parish to cancel all liens, mortgages, and encumbrances, including the mortgages held by the Bank and petitioners. Nonetheless, petitioners’ mortgage remained inscribed on the mortgage rolls of Orleans Parish. Subsequently, in 1993, the Bank acquired the underlying land from respondents Walter L. Brown, Jr., and Perry S. Brown. The Bank then sold the entire property to the current owner, respondent Fountainbleau Storage Associates (FSA).
On December 29,1994, petitioners filed this action in Louisiana state court. They alleged that the 1993 transactions violated Louisiana law because the property was transferred without satisfying petitioners’ superior rights under the second mortgage. In their prayer for relief, petitioners sought recognition and enforcement of their mortgage or, alternatively, damages. Respondents removed the action to the District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Federal-question jurisdiction existed, they contended, because the prior Bankruptcy Court orders extinguished petitioners’ rights under the second mortgage.
In federal court, petitioners filed a motion to remand and respondents moved for summary judgment. The District Court denied the remand motion. Relying on the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Carpenter v. Wichita Falls Independent School Dist., 44 F. 3d 362 (1995), the District Court held that removal was properly predicated on the preclusive effect of the 1986 Bankruptcy Court orders. The court then granted summary judgment to the Bank and FSA on the ground that the Bankruptcy Court’s adjudication barred petitioners’ suit. The District Court also granted summary judgment to the Browns, ruling that petitioners failed to state a claim against them.
The Fifth Circuit affirmed. 108 F. 3d 576 (1997). It agreed with the District Court that under Carpenter a defendant could remove “'where a plaintiff files a state cause of action completely precluded by a prior federal judgment on a question of federal law.’ ” 108 F. 3d, at 586 (quoting Carpenter, 44 F. 3d, at 370). Carpenter's holding, the Court of Appeals thought, was dictated by the second footnote to our decision in Moitie, 452 U. S., at 397, n. 2.
In dissent, priate under Moitie only where a plaintiff loses in federal court on an "essentially federal” claim and, recharacterizing the claim as one based on state law, files again in state court. 108 F. 3d, at 594. She concluded that removal here was improper because there was nothing federal about petitioners’ claim.
The Courts of Appeals have adopted differing views regarding the propriety of removing a state-court action to federal court on the ground that the claim asserted is precluded by a prior federal judgment. We granted certiorari, 521 U. S. 1152 (1997), to resolve the matter.
H
í>
A state-court action may be removed to federal court if it qualifies as a "civil action ... of which the district courts of the United States have original jurisdiction,” unless Congress expressly provides otherwise. 28 U. S. C. § 1441(a). In this case, respondents invoked, in support of removal, the district courts’ original federal-question jurisdiction over "[a]ny civil action . . . founded on a claim or right arising under the Constitution, treaties or laws of the United States.” 28 U. S. C. § 1441(b); see also 28 U. S. C. § 1331.
We have long held that “[t]he presence or absence of federal-question jurisdiction is governed by the ‘well-pleaded complaint rule,’ which provides that federal jurisdiction exists only when a federal question is presented on the face of the plaintiff’s properly pleaded complaint.” Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams, 482 U. S. 386, 392 (1987); see also Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Mottley, 211 U. S. 149, 152 (1908). A defense is not part of a plaintiff’s properly pleaded statement of his or her claim. See Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Taylor, 481 U. S. 58, 63 (1987); Gully v. First Nat. Bank in Meridian, 299 U. S. 109, 112 (1936) (“To bring a ease within the [federal-question removal] statute, a right or immunity created by the Constitution or laws of the United States must be an element, and an essential one, of the plaintiff’s cause of action.”). Thus, “a ease may not be removed to federal court on the basis of a federal defense, . . . even if the defense is anticipated in the plaintiff’s complaint, and even if both parties admit that the defense is the only question truly at issue in the case.” Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Construction Laborers Vacation Trust for Southern Cal., 463 U. S. 1, 14 (1983).
Allied as an “independent corollary” to the well-pleaded complaint rule is the further principle that “a plaintiff may not defeat removal by omitting to plead necessary federal questions.” Id., at 22, If a court concludes that a plaintiff has “artfully pleaded” claims in this fashion, it may uphold removal even though no federal question appears on the face of the plaintiff’s complaint. The artful pleading doctrine allows removal where federal law completely preempts a plaintiff’s state-law claim. See Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 481 U. S., at 65-66 (upholding removal based on the preemptive effect of § 502(a)(1)(B) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974); Avco Corp. v. Machinists, 390 U. S. 557, 560 (1968) (upholding removal based on the preemptive effect of § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947). Although federal preemption is ordinarily a defense, “[o]nce an area of state law has been completely preempted, any claim purportedly based on that pre-empted state-law claim is considered, from its inception, a federal claim, and therefore arises under federal law.” Caterpillar, 482 U. S., at 393.,
B
Petitioners’ complaint sought recognition and enforcement of a mortgage. The dispute involved Louisiana parties only, and petitioners relied exclusively on Louisiana law. Respondents defended their removal of the case from state court to federal court on the ground that petitioners’ action was precluded, as a matter of federal law, by the earlier Bankruptcy Court orders. We now explain why the removal was improper.
Under the doctrine on the merits of an action precludes the parties or their privies from relitigating issues that were or could have been raised in that action.” Moitie, 452 U. S., at 398; see also Baker v. General Motors Corp., ante, at 233, n. 5 (“a valid final adjudication of a claim precludes a second action on that claim or any part of it”). Claim preclusion (res judicata), as Rule 8(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure makes clear, is an affirmative defense. See also Blonder-Tongue Laboratories, Inc. v. University of Ill. Foundation, 402 U. S. 313, 350 (1971) (“Res judicata and collateral estoppel [issue preclusion] are affirmative defenses that must be pleaded.” (italics omitted)).
A case blocked by the claim preclusive effect of a prior federal judgment differs from the standard case governed by a completely preemptive federal statute in this critical respect: The prior federal judgment does not transform the plaintiff’s state-law claims into federal claims but rather extinguishes them altogether. See Commissioner v. Sunnen, 333 U. S. 591, 597 (1948) (“The judgment puts an end to the cause of action, which cannot again be brought into litigation between the parties upon any ground whatever, absent fraud or some other factor invalidating the judgment.”). Under the well-pleaded complaint rule, preclusion thus remains a defensive plea involving no recasting of the plaintiff’s complaint, and is therefore not a proper basis for removal.
In holding removal appropriate here, the Court of Appeals relied on a footnote — the second one — in our Moitie opinion. The Fifth Circuit is not alone in concluding from the Moitie footnote that removal properly may rest on the alleged pre-clusive effect of a prior federal judgment. See supra, at 474, n. 2. The Moitie footnote, however, was a marginal comment and will not bear the heavy weight lower courts have placed on it.
We granted certiorari in Moitie principally to address the Ninth Circuit’s “novel exception to the doctrine of res judicata.” 452 U. S., at 398. In that case, several actions alleging price fixing by department stores in California were consolidated in federal court and dismissed. Most of the plaintiffs appealed and obtained a reversal, but two chose instead to file separate claims in state court. The defendants removed the actions to Federal District Court, where plaintiffs unsuccessfully moved to remand and defendants successfully moved to dismiss the actions on preclusion grounds. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed that removal was proper, but held that preclusion did not apply in the unique circumstances of the ease. Moitie v. Federated Department Stores, Inc., 611 F. 2d 1267 (1980).
In the course of reversing the Ninth Circuit’s holding on preclusion, we noted, without elaboration, our agreement with the Court of Appeals that “at least some of the claims had a sufficient federal character to support removal.” 452 U. S., at 397, n. 2. In that case-specific context, we declined to “question . . . [the District Court’s] factual finding” that the plaintiffs “had attempted to avoid removal jurisdiction by artfully casting their essentially federal[-]law claims as state-law claims.” Ibid, (internal quotation marks omitted).
“Moitie’s enigmatic footnote,” Rivet, 108 F. 3d, at 584, we recognize, has caused considerable confusion in the circuit courts. We therefore clarify today that Moitie did not create a preclusion exception, to the rule, fundamental under currently governing legislation, that a defendant cannot remove on the basis of a federal defense.
In sum, claim preclusion by reason of a prior federal judgment is a defensive plea that provides no basis for removal under § 1441(b). Such a defense is properly made in the state proceedings, and the state courts’ disposition of it is subject to this Court’s ultimate review.
* # *
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is reversed, and the ease is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The events leading to this lawsuit actually involved two predecessors of Regions, First Federal Bank and Secor Bank. For ease of discussion, we use the name Regions Bank to cover all three entities.
Compare In re Brand Name Prescription, Drugs, 128 F. 3d 599, 612 (CA7 1997) (removal is allowed where “sole basis for filing a state suit is to get around ... a federal judgment”), cert. pending sub nom. Abbott Labs v. Huggins, No. 97-775; and Ultramar America, Ltd. v. Dwelle, 900 F. 2d 1412, 1415-1417 (CA9 1990) (removal permitted “where a plaintiff files state claims after a federal judgment has been entered ... on essentially the same claims,” provided the federal judgment sounds in federal law), with Travelers Indemnity Co. v. Sarkisian, 794 F. 2d 754, 759-761 (CA2 1986) (removal under Moitie permitted only where the elements of a plaintiff’s state-law claim are virtually identical to the elements of a federal claim the plaintiff previously elected to file in federal court).
We note also that under the relitigation exception to the Anti-Injunction Act, 28 U. S. C. § 2283, a federal court may enjoin state-court proceedings "where necessary ... to protect or effectuate its judgments.” Ibid.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
I
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Scalia
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We must decide whether the creditor of a debtor in bankruptcy may, in order to protect its setoff rights, temporarily withhold payment of a debt that it owes to the debtor in bankruptcy without violating the automatic stay imposed by 11 U.S. C. § 362(a).
I
On January 25,1991, when respondent filed for relief under Chapter 13 of the Bankruptcy Code, he had a checking account with petitioner, a bank conducting business in the State of Maryland. He also was in default on the remaining balance of a loan of $5,068.75 from the bank. Under 11 U. S. C. § 362(a), respondent’s bankruptcy filing gave rise to an automatic stay of various types of activity by his creditors, including “the setoff of any debt owing to the debtor that arose before the commencement of the [bankruptcy case] against any claim against the debtor.” § 362(a)(7).
On October 2, 1991, petitioner placed what it termed an “administrative hold” on so much of respondent’s account as it claimed was subject to setoff — that is, the bank refused to pay withdrawals from the account that would reduce the balance below the sum that it claimed was due on respondent’s loan. Five days later, petitioner filed in the Bankruptcy Court, under § 362(d), a “Motion for Relief from Automatic Stay and for Setoff;” Respondent then filed a motion to hold petitioner in contempt, claiming that petitioner’s administrative hold violated the automatic stay established by § 362(a).
The Bankruptcy Court ruled on respondent’s contempt motion first. It concluded that petitioner’s “administrative hold” constituted a “setoff” in violation of § 362(a)(7) and sanctioned petitioner. Several weeks later, the Bankruptcy Court granted petitioner’s motion for relief from the stay and authorized petitioner to set off respondent’s remaining checking account balance against the unpaid loan. By that time, however, respondent had reduced the checking account balance to zero, so there was nothing to set off.
The District Court reversed the judgment that petitioner had violated the automatic stay, concluding that the administrative hold was not a violation of § 362(a). The Court of Appeals reversed. “[A]n administrative hold,” it said, “is tantamount to the exercise of a right of setoff and thus violates the automatic stay of § 362(a)(7).” 37 F. 3d 155, 158 (CA4 1994). We granted certiorari. 514 U. S. 1035 (1995).
II
The right of setoff (also called “offset”) allows entities that owe each other money to apply their mutual debts against each other, thereby avoiding “the absurdity of making A pay B when B owes A.” Studley v. Boylston Nat. Bank, 229 U. S. 523, 528 (1913). Although no federal right of setoff is created by the Bankruptcy Code, 11 U. S. C. § 553(a) provides that, with certain exceptions, whatever right of setoff otherwise exists is preserved in bankruptcy. Here it is undisputed that, prior to the bankruptcy filing, petitioner had the right under Maryland law to set off the defaulted loan against the balance in the checking account. It is also undisputed that under § 362(a) respondent’s bankruptcy filing stayed any exercise of that right by petitioner. The principal question for decision is whether petitioner’s refusal to pay its debt to respondent upon the latter’s demand constituted an exercise of the setoff right and hence violated the stay.
In our view, petitioner’s action was not a setoff within the meaning of § 362(a)(7). Petitioner refused to pay its debt, not permanently and absolutely, but only while it sought relief under § 362(d) from the automatic stay. Whether that temporary refusal was otherwise wrongful is a separate matter — we do not consider, for example, respondent’s contention that the portion of the account subjected to the “administrative hold” exceeded the amount properly subject to setoff. All that concerns us here is whether the refusal was a setoff. We think it was not, because — as evidenced by petitioner’s “Motion for Relief from Automatic Stay and for Setoff” — petitioner did not purport permanently to reduce respondent’s account balance by the amount of the defaulted loan. A requirement of such an intent is implicit in the rule followed by a majority of jurisdictions addressing the question, that a setoff has not occurred until three steps have been taken: (i) a decision to effectuate a setoff, (ii) some action accomplishing the setoff, and (iii) a recording of the setoff. See, e. g., Baker v. National City Bank of Cleveland, 511 F. 2d 1016, 1018 (CA6 1975) (Ohio law); Normand Josef Enterprises, Inc. v. Connecticut Nat. Bank, 230 Conn. 486, 504-505, 646 A. 2d 1289, 1299 (1994). But even if state law were different, the question whether a setoff under §362(a)(7) has occurred is a matter of federal law, and other provisions of the Bankruptcy Code would lead us to embrace the same requirement of an intent permanently to settle accounts.
Section 542(b) of the Code, which concerns turnover of property to the estate, requires a bankrupt’s debtors to “pay” to the trustee (or on his order) any “debt that is property of the estate and that is matured, payable on demand, or payable on order . . . except to the extent that such debt may be offset under section 553 of this title against a claim against the debtor.” 11 U. S. C. § 542(b) (emphasis added). Section 553(a), in turn, sets forth a general rule, with certain exceptions, that any right of setoff that a creditor possessed prior to the debtor’s filing for bankruptcy is not affected by the Bankruptcy Code. It would be an odd construction of § 362(a)(7) that required a creditor with a right of setoff to do immediately that which § 542(b) specifically excuses it from doing as a general matter: pay a claim to which a defense of setoff applies.
Nor is our assessment of these provisions changed by the fact that § 553(a), in generally providing that nothing in the Bankruptcy Code affects creditors’ prebankruptcy setoff rights, qualifies this rule with the phrase “[e]xcept as otherwise provided in this section and in sections 362 and 363.” This undoubtedly refers to § 362(a)(7), but we think it is most naturally read as merely recognizing that provision’s restriction upon when an actual setoff may be effected — which is to say, not during the automatic stay. When this perfectly reasonable reading is available, it would be foolish to take the § 553(a) “except” clause as indicating that § 362(a)(7) requires immediate payment of a debt subject to setoff. That would render §553(a)’s general rule that the Bankruptcy Code does not affect the right of setoff meaningless, for by forcing the creditor to pay its debt immediately, it would divest the creditor of the very thing that supports the right of setoff. Furthermore, it would, as we have stated, eviscerate § 542(b)’s exception to the duty to pay debts. It is an elementary rule of construction that “the act cannot be held to destroy itself.” Texas & Pacific R. Co. v. Abilene Cotton Oil Co., 204 U. S. 426, 446 (1907).
Finally, we are unpersuaded by respondent’s additional contentions that the administrative hold violated §§ 362(a)(3) and 362(a)(6). Under these sections, a bankruptcy filing automatically stays “any act to obtain possession of property of the estate or of property from the estate or to exercise control over property of the estate,” 11 U. S. C. § 362(a)(3), and “any act to collect, assess, or recover a claim against the debtor that arose before the commencement of the case under this title,” § 362(a)(6). Respondent’s reliance on these provisions rests on the false premise that petitioner’s administrative hold took something from respondent, or exercised dominion over property that belonged to respondent. That view of things might be arguable if a bank account consisted of money belonging to the depositor and held by the bank. In fact, however, it consists of nothing more or less than a promise to pay, from the bank to the depositor, see Bank of Marin v. England, 385 U. S. 99, 101 (1966); Keller v. Frederickstown Sav. Institution, 193 Md. 292, 296, 66 A. 2d 924, 925 (1949); and petitioner’s temporary refusal to pay was neither a taking of possession of respondent’s property nor an exercising of control over it, but merely a refusal to perform its promise. In any event, we will not give § 362(a)(3) or § 362(a)(6) an interpretation that would proscribe what §542(b)’s “exception]” and §553(a)’s general rule were plainly intended to permit: the temporary refusal of a creditor to pay a debt that is subject to setoff against a debt owed by the bankrupt.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is reversed.
It is so ordered.
We decline to address respondent’s contention, not raised below, that the confirmation of his Chapter 13 Plan under 11 U. S. C. § 1327 precluded petitioner’s exercise of its setoff right. See Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg, 492 U. S. 33, 39 (1989).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
H
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Stewart
delivered .the opinion of the Court.
On. August 31, 1967, during a period of civil disturbances in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the appellant,- a Roman Catholic priest, was arrested in that city on a charge of resisting arrest. Under Wisconsin law that offense is a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of not more than $500 or imprisonment in the county jail for not more than one year, or both. After a senes of continuances, the appellant was brought to trial before a jury in a Milwaukee County court on February 8, 1968. The first morning of the trial was occupied with qualifying the jurors, during the course of which the appellant exhausted all of his peremptory challenges. The trial then proceeded, and at its conclusion the jury convicted the appellant as charged.
Prior to the trial, counsel for the appellant filed a motion for a change of venue from Milwaukee County “to a county where community prejudice against this defendant does not exist and where an impartial jury trial can be had.” The motion asked the court to take judicial notice of “the massive coverage by all news media in this community of the activities of this defendant,” or, in the alternative, that “the defendant be permitted to offer proof of the nature and extent thereof, its effect upon this community and on the right of defendant to an impartial jury trial.” The trial judge denied the motion, making clear that his ruling was based exclusively on his view that Wisconsin law did not permit a change of venue in misdemeanor cases.
On appeal, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin affirmed the conviction. 41 W,is. 2d 312, 164 N. W. 2d 266. It held that the trial judge had been correct in his understanding that a Wisconsin statute foreclosed thé possibility of a change of venue in a misdemeanor prosecution. It further held that this state law was constitutionally valid, pointing out that “it would be extremely unusual for a community as a whole to prejudge the guilt of any person charged with a misdemeanor.” 41 Wis. 2d, at 317, 164 N. W. 2d, at 268. The court also noted that a defendant in a Wisconsin misdemeanor prosecution has a right to ask for continuances and to challenge prospective jurors on voir dire, and if “these measures are still not sufficient to provide an impartial jury, the verdict can be set aside after trial based on the denial of a fair and impartial trial.” 41 Wis. 2d, at 321, 164 N. W. 2d, at 270. Two members of the court dissented, helieving that the state statute did not absolutely forbid a change of venue in a misdemeanor prosecution, and that if the statute did contain such a prohibition it was constitutionally invalid. 41 Wis. 2d, at 325, 164 N. W. 2d, at 272.
This appeal followed, and we noted probable jurisdiction. 398 U. S. 957. As the case reaches us we must, of course, accept the construction that the Supremq Court of Wisconsin has put upon the state statute. E. g., Kingsley Pictures Corp. v. Regents, 360 U. S. 684, 688. The question before us, therefore, goes to the constitutionality of a state law that categorically prevents a change of venue for a criminal jury trial, regardless of the extent of local prejudice against the defendant, on the sole ground that the charge against him is labeled a misdemeanor. We hold that this question was answered correctly by the dissenting justices in' the Supreme Court of Wisconsin.
The issue in this case is not whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to accord a jury trial to- a defendant on a charge such as the appellant faeed here. The issue concerns, rather, the nature of the jury trial that the Fourteenth Amendment commands, when trial, by jury is what the State has purported to accord. We had occasion to consider this precise question almost 10 years ago in Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U. S. 717. There we found that an Indiana conviction could not constitutionally stand because the jury had been infected by community prejudice before the trial had commenced. What the Court said in that case is wholly relevant here:
“In essence, the right to jury .trial guarantees to the criminally accused a fair trial by a panel of impartial, ‘indifferent’ jurors. The failure to. accord an accused a fair hearing violates even the minimal standards of due process. In re Oliver, 333 U. S. 257; Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U. S. 510. ‘A fair trial' in a fair tribunal is a basic requirement of due process.’ In re Murchison, 349 U. S. 133, 136. In the ultimate analysis, only the jury can strip a man of his liberty .or his life. In the language of Lord Coke, a juror must be as ‘indifferent as he stands unsworne.’ Co. Litt. 155b. His verdict must be based upon the evidence developed at the trial. Cf. Thompson v. City of Louisville, 362 U. S. 199. This is true, regardless of the heinousness of the crime charged, the apparent guilt of the offender or the station in life which he occupies. It was so written into our law as early as 1807 by Chief Justice Marshall in 1 Burr’s Trial 416 . . . .” 366 U. S., at 722. .
There are many ways- to try to assure the kind of impartial jury that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees. In Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U. S. 333, the Court enumerated many of the procedures available, particularly in the context of a jury threatened by the poisonous influence of prejudicial publicity during the course of the trial itself. 384 U. S., at 357-363. Here we are concerned with the methods available to assure an impartial ■ jury in a situation where, because of prejudicial publicity or for some other reason, the community from which the jury is to be drawn may already be permeated with hostility toward the defendant. The problem is an ancient one. Mr. Justice Holmes stated no more than a commonplace when, two generations ago, he noted that “[a]ny judge who has sat with juries knows that in spite of forms they are extremely likely to be impregnated by the environing atmosphere.” Frank v. Mangum, 237 U. S. 309, 349 (dissenting opinion).
One way to try to meet the problem is to grant a continuance of the trial in the hope that in the course of time, the fires of prejudice will cool. But this hope may not be realized, and continuances, particularly if they are repeated, work against the important values implicit in the constitutional guarantee of a. speedy trial. Another way is to provide a method of jury qualification that will promote, through the exercise of challenges to the ve-nire — peremptory and for cause — the exclusion of prospective jurors infected with the prejudice of the community from which they come. But this protection, as Irvin v. Dowd, supra, shows, is not always adequate to effectuate the constitutional guarantee.
Oh at least one occasion this Court has explicitly held that only a change of venue was constitutionally , sufficient to assure the kind of impartial jury that is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. That was. in the case of Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U. S. 723. We held that, “it was a denial of due process, of law to refuse the request for a change of venue, after the people óf Calcasieu Parish had been exposed repeatedly and in depth” to the prejudicial pretrial publicity there involved. 373 U. S., at 726. Ridedu was not decided until 1963, but its message echoes more than 200 years of human experience in the endless quest for the fair administration of criminal justice.
It is doubtless true, as the Supreme Court of Wisconsin said, that community prejudice is not often' aroused against a man accused only of a misdemeanor. But under the Constitution a defendant must be given an opportunity to show that a change of venue is required in his case. The Wisconsin statute wholly denied that opportunity to the appellant.
Accordingly, the judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
“Whoever knowingly resists or obstructs an officer while such officer is doing any act in his official capacity and with lawful authority, may be fined not more than $500 or imprisoned not more than one year in countv i,.il or both.” Wis. Stat. § 946.41 (1) (1967).
Apparently no transcript was made of the voir dire proceedings.
The court: “So, therefore, the change of venue as asked for in_the motion for a change of venue will be denied; it not being provided for in the Wisconsin Statutes. . . . No, I’m denying the motion for a change of venue because this is a misdemeanor case and not a felony. And the Wisconsin Statute does not provide for a change of venue in a misdemeanor matter.”
The relevant statute in effect at the time of the appellant’s trial was Wis. Stat. §956.03 (3) (1967), which provided:
“If a defendant who is charged with a felony files his affidavit that an impartial trial cannot be had in the county, the court may change the venue of the action to any county where an impartial trial can be had. Only one change may be granted under this subsection.”
Wis. Stat. § 971.22, effective July 1) 1970, now permits a change of venue in all criminal cases. See Wis. Laws 1969, c. 255, p. 650.
We reject the suggestion that the appellant is not in a position to attack the statute because he made an insufficient showing of community prejudice. His motion for a change of venue explicitly asked in the alternative that he be permitted to “offer proof” of the nature and extent of the local prejudice against him. His motion was denied in its entirety, thus foreclosing any opportunity to produce evidence of a prejudiced community. The trial court’s ruling was, of course, wholly consistent with its view that it was powerless to grant a change of venue under Wisconsin law, regardless of what showing of local prejudice might have been made.
Accord, Pamplin v. Mason, 364 F. 2d 1 (CA5); State ex rel. Ricco v. Biggs, 198 Ore. 413, 255 P. 2d 1055.
That question was answered affirmatively in Baldwin v. New York, 399 U. S. 66.
Wisconsin grants a. right to trial by jury in all misdemeanor cases. See State ex rel. Murphy v. Voss, 34 Wis. 2d 501, 505, 149 N. W. 2d 595, 597; State ex rel. Sauk County District Attorney v. Gollmar, 32 Wis. 2d 406, 410, 1145 N, W. 2d 670, 672.
The Sixth Amendment provides that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ttf . . . an impartial jury . . . .” (Emphasis added.)
See Klopfer v. North Carolina, 386 U. S. 213; Smith v. Hooey, 393 U. S. 374; Dickey v. Florida, 398. U. S. 30; id., at 39 (BrenNan, J., concurring). .
See generally Broeder, Voir Dire Examinations: An Empirical Study, 38 S. Cal. L. RSv. 503 (1965).
See Rex v. Harris, 3 Burr. 1330, 1333, 97 Eng. Rep. 858, 859 (K. B. 1762): “Notwithstanding the locality of some sorts of actions, or of informations for misdemeanors, if the matter can not be tried at all, or can not be fairly and impartially, tried in the proper county, it shall be tried in the next adjoining county.” (Lord Mansfield.)
See also Crocker v. Justices of the Superior Court, 208 Mass. 162, 178-179, 94 N. E. 369, 376-377 (1911):
“This review demonstrates that the great .weight of authority ■ supports .the view that courts, which by statute or .custom, possess a jurisdiction like that of the Kings Bench before our revolution, have the right to change the place of trial, when justice requires it, to a county; where an impartial trial may be had.
•“. . . There can be no justice in a trial by jurors inflamed by passion, warped by prejudice, awed by violence, menaced by the virulence of public opinion or manifestly biased by any influences operating either openly or insidiously to such an extent as to poison the judgment and prevent the freedom of fair action. Justice cannot be assured in a trial where other considerations enter the minds of those who are to decide than the single desire to ascertain and •declare the truth according to the law and the evidence. A court of general jurisdiction ought not to be left powerless under the law to do within reason all that the conditions of society and human nature permit to provide an unprejudiced panel for a jury trial.”
See also, e. g., State v. Albee, 61 N. H. 423, 60 Am. Rep. 325 (1881).
Whether corrective relief can be afforded the appellant short of a new trial will be for the Wisconsin courts to determine in the first instance. Cf. Coleman v. Alabama, 399 U. S. 1, 10-11.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
A
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Breyer
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case concerns the reach of § 2 of the Federal Arbitration Act. That section makes enforceable a written arbitration provision in “a contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce.” 9 U. S. C. § 2 (emphasis added). Should we read this phrase broadly, extending the Act’s reach to the limits of Congress’ Commerce Clause power? Or, do the two italicized words — “involving” and “evidencing” — significantly restrict the Act’s application? We conclude that the broader reading of the Act is the correct one, and we reverse a State Supreme Court judgment to the contrary.
I
In August 1987, Steven Gwin, a respondent who owned a house in Birmingham, Alabama, bought a lifetime “Termite Protection Plan” (Plan) from the local office of Allied-Bruce Terminix Companies, a franchise of Terminix International Company. In the Plan, Allied-Bruce promised “to protect” Gwin’s house “against the attack of subterranean termites,” to reinspect periodically, to provide any “further treatment found necessary,” and to repair, up to $100,000, damage caused by new termite infestations. App. 69. Terminix International “guarantee^] the fulfillment of the terms” of the Plan. Ibid. The Plan’s contract document provided in writing that
“any controversy or claim .. . arising out of or relating to the interpretation, performance or breach of any provision of this agreement shall be settled exclusively by arbitration.” Id., at 70 (emphasis added).
In the spring of 1991, Mr. and Mrs. Gwin, wishing to sell their house to Mr. and Mrs. Dobson, had Allied-Bruce reinspect the house. They obtained a clean bill of health. But no sooner had they sold the house and transferred the Plan to Mr. and Mrs. Dobson than the Dobsons found the house swarming with termites. Allied-Bruce attempted to treat and repair the house, but the Dobsons found Allied-Bruce’s efforts inadequate. They therefore sued the Gwins, and (along with the Gwins, who cross-claimed) also sued Allied-Bruce and Terminix in Alabama state court. Allied-Bruce and Terminix, pointing to the Plan’s arbitration clause and §2 of the Federal Arbitration Act, immediately asked the court for a stay, to allow arbitration to proceed. The court denied the stay. Allied-Bruce and Terminix appealed.
The Supreme Court of Alabama upheld the denial of the stay on the basis of a state statute, Ala. Code §8-1-41(3) (1993), making written, predispute arbitration agreements invalid and “unenforceable.” 628 So. 2d 354, 355 (1993). To reach this conclusion, the court had to find that the Federal Arbitration Act, which pre-empts conflicting state law, did not apply to the termite contract. It made just that finding. The court considered the federal Act inapplicable because the connection between the termite contract and interstate commerce was too slight. In the court’s view, the Act applies to a contract only if “ ‘at the time [the parties entered into the contract] and accepted the arbitration clause, they contemplated substantial interstate activity.’” Ibid, (emphasis in original) (quoting Metro Industrial Painting Corp. v. Terminal Constr. Co., 287 F. 2d 382, 387 (CA2) (Lumbard, C. J., concurring), cert. denied, 368 U. S. 817 (1961)). Despite some interstate activities (e. g., Allied-Bruce, like Terminix, is a multistate firm and shipped treatment and repair material from out of state), the court found that the parties “contemplated” a transaction that was primarily local and not “substantially” interstate.
Several state courts and Federal District Courts, like the Supreme Court of Alabama, have interpreted the Act’s language as requiring the parties to a contract to have “contemplated” an interstate commerce connection. See, e. g., Burke County Public Schools Bd. of Ed. v. Shaver Partnership, 303 N. C. 408, 417-420, 279 S. E. 2d 816, 822-823 (1981); R. J. Palmer Constr. Co. v. Wichita Band Instrument Co., 7 Kan. App. 2d 363, 367, 642 P. 2d 127, 130 (1982); Lacheney v. Profitkey Int’l, Inc., 818 F. Supp. 922, 924 (ED Va. 1993). Several federal appellate courts, however, have interpreted the same language differently, as reaching to the limits of Congress’ Commerce Clause power. See, e. g., Foster v. Turley, 808 F. 2d 38, 40 (CA10 1986); Robert Lawrence Co. v. Devonshire Fabrics, Inc., 271 F. 2d 402, 406-407 (CA2 1959), cert. dism’d, 364 U. S. 801 (1960); cf. Snyder v. Smith, 736 F. 2d 409, 417-418 (CA7), cert. denied, 469 U. S. 1037 (1984). We granted certiorari to resolve this conflict, 510 U. S. 1190 (1994); and, as we said, we conclude that the broader reading of the statute is the right one.
II
Before we can reach the main issues in this case, we must set forth three items of legal background.
First, the basic purpose of the Federal Arbitration Act is to overcome courts’ refusals to enforce agreements to arbitrate. See Volt Information Sciences, Inc. v. Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior Univ., 489 U. S. 468, 474 (1989). The origins of those refusals apparently lie in “ ‘ancient times,’ ” when the English courts fought “ ‘for extension of jurisdiction — all of them being opposed to anything that would altogether deprive every one of them of jurisdiction.’ ” Bernhardt v. Polygraphic Co. of America, Inc., 350 U. S. 198, 211, n. 5 (1956) (Frankfurter, J., concurring) (quoting United States Asphalt Refining Co. v. Trinidad Lake Petroleum Co., 222 F. 1006, 1007 (SDNY 1915), in turn quoting Scott v. Avery, 5 H. L. Cas. 811 (1856) (Campbell, L. J.)). American courts initially followed English practice, perhaps just “ ‘standing] . . . upon the antiquity of the rule’ ” prohibiting arbitration clause enforcement, rather than “ ‘upon its excellence or reason.’” Bernhardt v. Polygraphic Co., supra, at 211, n. 5 (quoting United States Asphalt Refining Co., supra, at 1007). Regardless, when Congress passed the Arbitration Act in 1925, it was “motivated, first and foremost, by a ... desire” to change this antiarbitration rule. Dean Witter Reynolds Inc. v. Byrd, 470 U. S. 213, 220 (1985). It intended courts to “enforce [arbitration] agreements into which parties had entered,” ibid, (footnote omitted), and to “place such agreements ‘upon the same footing as other contracts/ ” Volt Information Sciences, Inc., supra, at 474 (quoting Scherk v. Alberto-Culver Co., 417 U. S. 506, 511 (1974)).
Second, some initially assumed that the Federal Arbitration Act represented an exercise of Congress’ Article III power to “ordain and establish” federal courts, U. S. Const., Art. Ill, § 1. See Southland Corp. v. Keating, 465 U. S. 1, 28, n. 16 (1984) (O’Connor, J., dissenting) (collecting cases). In 1967, however, this Court held that the Act “is based upon and confined to the incontestable federal foundations of ‘control over interstate commerce and over admiralty.’ ” Prima Paint Corp. v. Flood & Conklin Mfg. Co., 388 U. S. 395, 405 (1967) (quoting H. R. Rep. No. 96, 68th Cong., 1st Sess., 1 (1924)). The Court considered the following complicated argument: (1) The Act’s provisions (about contract remedies) are important and often outcome determinative, and thus amount to “substantive,” not “procedural,” provisions of law; (2) Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64, 71-80 (1938), made clear that federal courts must apply state substantive law in diversity cases, see also Hanna v. Plumer, 380 U. S. 460, 465 (1965); therefore (3) federal courts must not apply the Federal Arbitration Act in diversity cases. This Court responded by agreeing that the Act set forth substantive law, but concluding that, nonetheless, the Act applied in diversity cases because Congress had so intended. The Court wrote: “Congress may prescribe how federal courts are to conduct themselves with respect to subject matter over which Congress plainly has power to legislate.” Prima Paint, supra, at 405.
Third, the holding in Prima Paint led to a further question. Did Congress intend the Act also to apply in state courts? Did the Federal Arbitration Act pre-empt conflicting state antiarbitration law, or could state courts apply their antiarbitration rules in cases before them, thereby reaching results different from those reached in otherwise similar federal diversity cases? In Southland Corp. v. Keating, supra, this Court decided that Congress would not have wanted state and federal courts to reach different outcomes about the validity of arbitration in similar cases. The Court concluded that the Federal Arbitration Act pre-empts state law; and it held that state courts cannot apply state statutes that invalidate arbitration agreements. Id., at 15-16.
We have set forth this background because respondents, supported by 20 state attorneys general, now ask us to overrule Southland and thereby to permit Alabama to apply its antiarbitration statute in this case irrespective of the proper interpretation of §2. The Southland Court, however, recognized that the pre-emption issue was a difficult one, and it considered the basic arguments that respondents and amici now raise (even though those issues were not thoroughly briefed at the time). Nothing significant has changed in the 10 years subsequent to Southland; no later cases have eroded Southland’s authority; and no unforeseen practical problems have arisen. Moreover, in the interim, private parties have likely written contracts relying upon Southland as authority. Further, Congress, both before and after Southland, has enacted legislation extending, not retracting, the scope of arbitration. See, e. g., 9 U. S. C. § 15 (eliminating the Act of State doctrine as a bar to arbitration); 9 U. S. C. §§201-208 (international arbitration). For these reasons, we find it inappropriate to reconsider what is by now well-established law.
We therefore proceed to the basic interpretive questions aware that we are interpreting an Act that seeks broadly to overcome judicial hostility to arbitration agreements and that applies in both federal and state courts. We must decide in this case whether that Act used language about interstate commerce that nonetheless limits the Act’s application, thereby carving out an important statutory niche in which a State remains free to apply its antiarbitration law or policy. We conclude that it does not.
Ill
The Federal Arbitration Act, §2, provides that a
“written provision in any maritime transaction or a contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce to settle by arbitration a controversy thereafter arising out of such contract or transaction ... shall be valid, irrevocable, and enforceable, save upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract.” 9 U. S. C. §2 (emphasis added).
The initial interpretive question focuses upon the words “involving commerce.” These words are broader than the often-found words of art “in commerce.” They therefore cover more than “‘only persons or activities within the flow of interstate commerce.’” United States v. American Building Maintenance Industries, 422 U. S. 271, 276 (1975) (quoting Gulf Oil Corp. v. Copp Paving Co., 419 U. S. 186, 195 (1974)) (defining “in commerce” as related to the “flow” and defining the “flow” to include “the generation of goods and services for interstate markets and their transport and distribution to the consumer”); see also FTC v. Bunte Brothers, Inc., 312 U. S. 349, 351 (1941). But how far beyond the flow of commerce does the word “involving” reach? Is “involving” the functional equivalent of the word “affecting”? That phrase — “affecting commerce” — normally signals Congress’ intent to exercise its Commerce Clause powers to the full. See Russell v. United States, 471 U. S. 858, 859 (1985). We cannot look to other statutes for guidance for the parties tell us that this is the only federal statute that uses the word “involving” to describe an interstate commerce relation.
After examining the statute’s language, background, and structure, we conclude that the word “involving” is broad and is indeed the functional equivalent of “affecting.” For one thing, such an interpretation, linguistically speaking, is permissible. The dictionary finds instances in which “involve” and “affect” sometimes can mean about the same thing. V Oxford English Dictionary 466 (1st ed. 1933) (providing examples dating back to the mid-19th century, where “involve” means to “include or affect in ... operation”). For another, the Act’s legislative history, to the extent that it is informative, indicates an expansive congressional intent. See, e. g., H. R. Rep. No. 96, supra, at 1 (the Act’s “control over interstate commerce reaches not only the actual physical interstate shipment of goods but also contracts relating to interstate commerce”); 65 Cong. Rec. 1931 (1924) (the Act “affects contracts relating to interstate subjects and contracts in admiralty”) (remarks of Rep. Graham); Joint Hearings on S. 1005 and H. R. 646 before the Subcommittees of the Committees on the Judiciary, 68th Cong., 1st Sess., 7 (1924) (hereinafter Joint Hearings) (testimony of Charles L. Bernheimer, chairman of the Committee on Arbitration of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, agreeing that the proposed bill “relates to contracts arising in interstate commerce”); id., at 16 (testimony of Julius H. Cohen, drafter for the American Bar Association of much of the proposed bill’s language, that the Act reflects part of a strategy to rid the law of an “anachronism” by “get[ting] a Federal law to cover interstate and foreign commerce and admiralty”); see also 9 U. S. C. § 1 (defining the word “commerce” in the language of the Commerce Clause itself).
Further, this Court has previously described the Act’s reach expansively as coinciding with that of the Commerce Clause. See, e. g., Perry v. Thomas, 482 U. S. 483, 490 (1987) (the Act “embodies Congress’ intent to provide for the enforcement of arbitration agreements within the full reach of the Commerce Clause”); Southland Corp. v. Keating, 465 U. S., at 14-15 (the “ ‘involving commerce’ ” requirement is a constitutionally “necessary qualification” on the Act’s reach, marking its permissible outer limit); see also Prima Paint Corp. v. Flood & Conklin Mfg. Co., 388 U. S., at 407 (Harlan, J., concurring) (endorsing Robert Lawrence Co. v. Devonshire Fabrics, Inc., 271 F. 2d 402, 407 (CA2 1959) (Congress, in enacting the FAA, “took pains to utilize as much of its power as it could”)).
Finally, a broad interpretation of this language is consistent with the Act’s basic purpose, to put arbitration provisions on “ ‘the same footing’ ” as a contract’s other terms. Scherk v. Alberto-Culver Co., 417 U. S., at 511. Conversely, a narrower interpretation is not consistent with the Act’s purpose, for (unless unreasonably narrowed to the flow of commerce) such an interpretation would create a new, unfamiliar test lying somewhere in a no man’s land between “in commerce” and “affecting commerce,” thereby unnecessarily complicating the law and breeding litigation from a statute that seeks to avoid it.
We recognize arguments to the contrary: The pre-New Deal Congress that passed the Act in 1925 might well have thought the Commerce Clause did not stretch as far as has turned out to be the case. But, it is not unusual for this Court in similar circumstances to ask whether the scope of a statute should expand along with the expansion of the Commerce Clause power itself, and to answer the question affirmatively — as, for the reasons set forth above, we do here. See, e. g., McLain v. Real Estate Bd. of New Orleans, Inc., 444 U. S. 232, 241 (1980); Hospital Building Co. v. Trustees of Rex Hospital, 425 U. S. 738, 743, n. 2 (1976).
Further, the Gwins and Dobsons point to two cases containing what they believe to be favorable language. In Mine Workers v. Coronado Coal Co., 259 U. S. 344 (1922), and then again in Leather Workers v. Herkert & Meisel Trunk Co., 265 U. S. 457 (1924), they say, this Court said that one might draw a distinction between, on the one hand, cases that “involve interstate commerce intrinsically,” and, on the other hand, cases “affecting interstate commerce so directly as to be within the federal regulatory power.” Mine Workers, supra, at 410 (emphasis added); Leather Workers, supra, at 470 (same). One could read these cases as driving a wedge between “involve” and “affecting.” Yet, in these cases, the Court was not construing a statute containing the words “involving commerce.” Furthermore, nothing suggests the drafters of the Act looked to these cases as a source. And, these cases themselves use the phrase “involve . . . intrinsically,” not the word “involving” alone. In sum, these cases do not support respondents’ position.
The Gwins and Dobsons, with far better reason, point to a different case, Bernhardt v. Polygraphic Co. of America, Inc., 350 U. S. 198 (1956). In that case, Bernhardt, a New York resident, had entered into an employment contract (containing an arbitration clause) in New York with Poly graphic, a New York corporation. But, Bernhardt “was to perform” that contract after he “later became a resident of Vermont.” Id., at 199. This Court was faced with the question whether, in light of Erie, a federal court should apply the Federal Arbitration Act in a diversity case when faced with state law hostile to arbitration. 350 U. S., at 200. The Court did not reach that question, however, for it decided that the contract itself did not “involv[e]” interstate commerce and therefore fell outside the Act. Id., at 200-202. Since Congress, constitutionally speaking, could have applied the Act to Bernhardt’s contract, say the parties, how then can we say that the Act’s word “involving” reaches as far as the Commerce Clause itself?
The best response to this argument is to point to the way in which the Court reasoned in Bernhardt, and to what the Court said. It said that the reason the Act did not apply to Bernhardt’s contract was that there was
“no showing that petitioner while performing his duties under the employment contract was working ‘in’ commerce, was producing goods for commerce, or was engaging in activity that affected commerce, within the meaning of our decisions.” Id., at 200-201 (emphasis added) (footnote omitted).
Thus, the Court interpreted the words “involving commerce” as broadly as the words “affecting commerce”; and, as we have said, these latter words normally mean a full exercise of constitutional power. At the same time, the Court’s opinion does not discuss the implications of the “interstate” facts to which the respondents now point. For these reasons, Bernhardt does not require us to narrow the scope of the word “involving.” And, we conclude that the word “involving,” like “affecting,” signals an intent to exercise Congress’ commerce power to the full.
IV
Section 2 applies where there is “a contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce.” 9 U. S. C. § 2 (emphasis added). The second interpretive question focuses on the italicized words. Does “evidencing a transaction” mean only that the transaction (that the contract “evidences”) must turn out, in fact, to have involved interstate commerce? Or, does it mean more?
Many years ago, Second Circuit Chief Judge Lumbard said that the phrase meant considerably more. He wrote:
“The significant question ... is not whether, in carrying out the terms of the contract, the parties did cross state lines, but whether, at the time they entered into it and accepted the arbitration clause, they contemplated substantial interstate activity. Cogent evidence regarding their state of mind at the time would be the terms of the contract, and if it, on its face, evidences interstate traffic . . . , the contract should come within §2. In addition, evidence as to how the parties expected the contract to be performed and how it was performed is relevant to whether substantial interstate activity was contemplated.” Metro Industrial Painting Corp. v. Terminal Constr. Co., 287 F. 2d 382, 387 (1961) (concurring opinion) (second emphasis added).
The Supreme Court of Alabama and several other courts have followed this view, known as the “contemplation of the parties” test. See supra, at 269-270.
We find the interpretive choice difficult, but for several reasons we conclude that the first interpretation (“commerce in fact”) is more faithful to the statute than the second (“contemplation of the parties”). First, the “contemplation of the parties” interpretation, when viewed in terms of the statute’s basic purpose, seems anomalous. That interpretation invites litigation about what was, or was not, “contemplated.” Why would Congress intend a test that risks the very kind of costs and delay through litigation (about the circumstances of contract formation) that Congress wrote the Act to help the parties avoid? See Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U. S. 1, 29 (1983) (the Act “calls for a summary and speedy disposition of motions or petitions to enforce arbitration clauses”).
Moreover, that interpretation too often would turn the validity of an arbitration clause on what, from the perspective of the statute’s basic purpose, seems happenstance, namely, whether the parties happened to think to insert a reference to interstate commerce in the document or happened to mention it in an initial conversation. After all, parties to a sales contract with an arbitration clause might naturally think about the goods sold, or about arbitration, but why should they naturally think about an interstate commerce connection?
Further, that interpretation fits awkwardly with the rest of § 2. That section, for example, permits parties to agree to submit to arbitration “an existing controversy arising out of” a contract made earlier. Why would Congress want to risk nonenforceability of this later arbitration agreement (even if fully connected with interstate commerce) simply because the parties did not properly “contemplate” (or write about) the interstate aspects of the earlier contract? The first interpretation, requiring only that the “transaction” in fact involve interstate commerce, avoids this anomaly, as it avoids the other anomalous effects growing out of the “contemplation of the parties” test.
Second, the statute’s language permits the “commerce in fact” interpretation. That interpretation, we concede, leaves little work for the word “evidencing” (in the phrase “a contract evidencing a transaction”) to perform, for every contract evidences some transaction. But, perhaps Congress did not want that word to perform much work. The Act’s history, to the extent informative, indicates that the Act’s supporters saw the Act as part of an effort to make arbitration agreements universally enforceable. They wanted to “get a Federal law” that would “cover” areas where the Constitution authorized Congress to legislate, namely, “interstate and foreign commerce and admiralty.” Joint Hearings 16 (testimony of Julius H. Cohen). They urged Congress to model the Act after a New York statute that made enforceable a written arbitration provision “in a written contract,” Act of Apr. 19,1920, ch. 275, §2,1920 N. Y. Laws 803, 804. Hearing on S. 4213 and S. 4214 before the Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 67th Cong., 4th Sess., 2 (1923) (testimony of Charles L. Bern-heimer). Early drafts made enforceable a written arbitration provision “in any contract or maritime transaction or transaction involving commerce.” S. 4214, 67th Cong., 4th Sess., §2 (1922) (emphasis added); S. 1005, 68th Cong., 1st Sess. (1923); H. R. 646, 68th Cong., 1st Sess. (1924). Members of Congress, looking at that phrase, might have thought the words “any contract” standing alone went beyond Congress’ constitutional authority. And, if so, they might have simply connected those words with the later words “transaction involving commerce,” thereby creating the phrase that became law. Nothing in the Act’s history suggests any other, more limiting, task for the language.
Third, the basic practical argument underlying the “contemplation of the parties” test was, in Chief Judge Lum-bard’s words, the need to “be cautious in construing the act lest we excessively encroach on the powers which Congressional policy, if not the Constitution, would reserve to the states.” Metro Industrial Painting Corp., supra, at 386 (concurring opinion). The practical force of this argument has diminished in light of this Court’s later holdings that the Act does displace state law to the contrary. See Southland Corp. v. Keating, 465 U. S., at 10-16; Perry v. Thomas, 482 U. S., at 489-492.
Finally, we note that an amicus curiae argues for an “objective” (“reasonable person” oriented) version of the “contemplation of the parties” test on the ground that such an interpretation would better protect consumers asked to sign form contracts by businesses. We agree that Congress, when enacting this law, had the needs of consumers, as well as others, in mind. See S. Rep. No. 536, 68th Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (1924) (the Act, by avoiding “the delay and expense of litigation,” will appeal “to big business and little business alike,... corporate interests [and]... individuals”). Indeed, arbitration’s advantages often would seem helpful to individuals, say, complaining about a product, who need a less expensive alternative to litigation. See, e. g., H. R. Rep. No. 97-542, p. 13 (1982) (“The advantages of arbitration are many: it is usually cheaper and faster than litigation; it can have simpler procedural and evidentiary rules; it normally minimizes hostility and is less disruptive of ongoing and future business dealings among the parties; it is often more flexible in regard to scheduling of times and places of hearings and discovery devices . . .”). And, according to the American Arbitration Association (also an amicus here), more than one-third of its claims involve amounts below $10,000, while another third involve claims of $10,000 to $50,000 (with an average processing time of less than six months). App. to Brief for American Arbitration Association as Amicus Curiae 26-27.
We are uncertain, however, just how the “objective” version of the “contemplation” test would help consumers. Sometimes, of course, it would permit, say, a consumer with potentially large damages claims to disavow a contract’s arbitration provision and proceed in court. But, if so, it would equally permit, say, local business entities to disavow a contract’s arbitration provisions, thereby leaving the typical consumer who has only a small damages claim (who seeks, say, the value of only a defective refrigerator or television set) without any remedy but a court remedy, the costs and delays of which could eat up the value of an eventual small recovery.
In any event, § 2 gives States a method for protecting consumers against unfair pressure to agree to a contract with an unwanted arbitration provision. States may regulate contracts, including arbitration clauses, under general contract law principles and they may invalidate an arbitration clause “upon such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract.” 9 U. S. C. §2 (emphasis added). What States may not do is decide that a contract is fair enough to enforce all its basic terms (price, service, credit), but not fair enough to enforce its arbitration clause. The Act makes any such state policy unlawful, for that kind of policy would place arbitration clauses on an unequal “footing,” directly contrary to the Act’s language and Congress’ intent. See Volt Information Sciences, Inc., 489 U. S., at 474.
For these reasons, we accept the “commerce in fact” interpretation, reading the Act’s language as insisting that the “transaction” in fact “involv[e]” interstate commerce, even if the parties did not contemplate an interstate commerce connection.
V
The parties do not contest that the transaction in this case, in fact, involved interstate commerce. In addition to the multistate nature of Terminix and Allied-Bruce, the termite-treating and house-repairing material used by Allied-Bruce in its (allegedly inadequate) efforts to carry out the terms of the Plan, came from outside Alabama.
Consequently, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Alabama is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent 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:
|
J
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam:
The judgment is affirmed. R. Simpson & Co. v. Commissioner, 321 U. S. 225; Helvering v. Northern Coal Co., 293 U. S. 191.
Mr. Justice Douglas 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.
Mr. Justice Douglas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellant, who has served on board American-flag commercial vessels in various capacities, is now qualified to act as a second assistant engineer on steam vessels. But between 1949 and 1964 he was employed in trades other than that of a merchant seaman. In October 1964 he applied to the Commandant of the Coast Guard for a validation of the permit or license which evidences his ability to act as a second assistant engineer.
Under the Magnuson Act, 64 Stat. 427, 50 U. S. C. § 191 (b), the President is authorized, if he finds that “the security of the United States is endangered by . . . subversive activity,” to issue rules and regulations “to safeguard against destruction, loss, or injury from sabotage or other subversive acts” all “vessels” in the territories or waters subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
President Truman promulgated Regulations, 33 CFR, pt. 6, which give the Commandant of the Coast Guard authority to grant or withhold validation of any permit or license evidencing the right of a seaman to serve on a merchant vessel of the United States. § 6.10-3. He is directed not to issue such validation unless he. is satisfied that “the character and habits of life of such person are such as to authorize the belief that the presence of the individual on board would not be inimical to the security of the United States.” § 6.10-1.
The questionnaire, which appellant in his application was required to submit, contained the following inquiry which he answered:
“Item 4. Do you now advocate, or have you ever advocated, the overthrow or alteration of the Government of the United States by force' or violence or by unconstitutional means?
“Answer: No.”
The questionnaire contained the following inquiries which related to his membership and participation in organizations which were on the special list of the Attorney General as authorized by Executive Order 10450, 18 Fed. Reg. 2489:
“Item 5. Have you ever submitted material for publication to any of the organizations listed in Item 6 below?
“Answer. No.
“Item 6. Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of, or affiliated or associated with in any way, any of the organizations set forth below? [There followed a list of more than 250 organizations.]
“Answer. Yes.
“If your answer is 'yes/ give full details in Item 7.
“Item 7. (Use this space to explain Items 1 through 6. . . . Attach a separate sheet if there is not enough space here.)
“Answer. I have been a member of many political & social organizations, including several named on this list.
“I cannot remember the names of most of them & could not be specific about any.
“To the best of my knowledge, I have not been a member or participated in the activities of any of these organizations for ten years.”
Upon receiving the questionnaire returned by the appellant, the Commandant advised him that the information was not sufficient and that answers to further interrogatories were necessary.
In reply, appellant, speaking through his counsel, admitted to the Commandant that he had been a member of the Communist Party as well as other organizations on the Attorney General’s list and that he had subscribed to People’s World. He said that he had joined the Party because of his personal philosophy and idealistic goals, but later quit it and the other organizations due to fundamental disagreement with Communist methods and techniques. But beyond that he said he would not answer because “it would be obnoxious to a truly free citizen to answer the kinds of questions under compulsion that you require.” The Commandant declined to process the application further, relying upon 33 CFR § 121.05 (d)(2), which authorizes him to hold the application in abeyance if an applicant fails or refuses to furnish the additional information.
Appellant thereupon brought this action for declaratory relief that the provisions of the Magnuson Act in question and the Commandant’s actions thereunder were unconstitutional, praying that the Commandant be directed to approve his application and that he be enjoined from interfering with appellant’s employment upon vessels flying the American flag.
A three-judge court was convened and the complaint was dismissed. 263 F. Supp. 496. The case is here on appeal, 28 U. S. C. § 1263. We postponed the question of jurisdiction to the merits. 389 U. S. 810.
We agree, as does appellee, that the case was one to be heard by a three-judge court and that accordingly we have jurisdiction of this appeal. For appellant did raise the question as to whether the statute was unconstitutional because of vagueness and abridgment of First Amendment rights and also questioned whether the power to install a screening program was validly delegated. A three-judge court was accordingly proper. Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U. S. 360; Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U. S. 1.
The Magnuson Act gives the President no express authority to set up a screening program for personnel on merchant vessels of the United States. As respects “any foreign-flag vessels” the power to control those who “go or remain on board” is clear. 50 U. S. C. § 191 (a). As respects personnel of our own merchant ships, the power exists under the Act only if it is found in the power to “safeguard” vessels and waterfront facilities against “sabotage or other subversive acts,” that is, under § 191 (b). The Solicitor General argues that the power to exclude persons from vessels “clearly implies auhority to establish a screening procedure for determining who shall be allowed on board.” But that power to exclude is contained in § 191 (a) which, as noted, applies to “foreign-flag vessels,” while, as we have said, the issue tendered here must find footing in § 191 (b).
We agree with the District Court that keeping our merchant marine free of saboteurs is within the purview of this Act. Our question is a much narrower one.
The Regulations prescribe the standards by which the Commandant is to judge the “character and habits of life” of the employee to determine whether his “presence ... on board” the vessel would be “inimical to the security of the United States”:
“(a) Advocacy of the overthrow or alteration of the Government of the United States by unconstitutional means.
“(b) Commission of, or attempts or preparations to commit, an act of espionage, sabotage, sedition or treason, or conspiring with, or aiding or abetting another to commit such an act.
“(c) Performing, or attempting to perform, duties or otherwise acting so as to serve the interests of another government to the detriment of the United States.
“(d) Deliberate unauthorized disclosure of classified defense information.
“(e) Membership in, or affiliation or sympathetic association with, any foreign or domestic organization, association, movement, group, or combination of persons designated by the Attorney General pursuant to Executive Order 10450, as amended.” 33 CFR § 121.03.
If we assume arguendo that the Act authorizes a type of screening program directed at “membership” or “sympathetic association,” the problem raised by it and the Regulations would b'e kin to the one presented in Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U. S. 479, where a teacher to be hired by a public school of Arkansas had to submit an affidavit “listing all organizations to which he at the time belongs and to which he has belonged during the past five years.” Id., at 481.
We held that an Act touching on First Amendment rights must be narrowly drawn so that the precise evil is exposed; that an unlimited and indiscriminate search of the employee’s past which interferes with his associational freedom is unconstitutional. Id., at 487-490.
If we gave § 191 (b) the broad construction the Solicitor General urges, we would face here the kind of issue present in Shelton v. Tucker, supra, whether government can probe the reading habits, political philosophy, beliefs, and attitudes on social and economic issues of prospective seamen on our merchant vessels.
A saboteur on a merchant vessel may, of course, be dangerous. But no charge that appellant was a saboteur was made. Indeed, no conduct of appellant was at issue before the Commandant. The propositions tendered in the complaint were (1) plaintiff is now and always has been loyal to the United States; (2) he has not been active in any organization on the Attorney General’s list for the past 10 years; (3) he has never committed any act of sabotage or espionage or any act inimical to the security of the United States. Those propositions were neither contested by the Commandant nor conceded. He took the position that admission of evidence on those propositions was “irrelevant and immaterial.”
We are loath to conclude that Congress, in its grant of authority to the President to “safeguard” vessels and waterfront facilities from “sabotage or other subversive acts,” undertook to reach into the First Amendment area. The provision of the Act in question, 50 U. S. C. § 191 (b), speaks only in terms of actions, not ideas or beliefs or reading habits or social, educational, or political associations.
The purpose of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, unlike more recent models promoting a welfare state, was to take government off the backs of people. The First Amendment’s ban against Congress “abridging” freedom of speech, the right peaceably to assemble and to petition, and the “associational freedom” (Shelton v. Tucker, supra, at 490) that goes with those rights create a preserve where the views of the individual are made inviolate. This is the philosophy of Jefferson that “the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction .... [I]t is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order . ...”
No act of sabotage or espionage or any act inimical to the security of the United States is raised or charged in the present case.
In United States v. Rumely, 345 U. S. 41, the Court construed the statutory word “lobbying” to include only direct representation to Congress, its members, and its committees, not all activities tending to influence, encourage, promote, or retard legislation. Id., at 47. Such an interpretation of the statute, it was said, was “in the candid service of avoiding a serious constitutional doubt” (ibid.) — doubts that were serious “in view of the prohibition of the First Amendment.” Id., at 46.
The holding in Rumely was not novel. It is part of the stream of authority which admonishes courts to construe statutes narrowly so as to avoid constitutional questions.
The Court said in Rumely, “Whenever constitutional limits upon the investigative power of Congress have to be drawn by this Court, it ought only to be done after Congress has demonstrated its full awareness of what is at stake by unequivocally authorizing an inquiry of dubious limits. Experience admonishes us to tread warily in this domain.” 345 U. S., at 46.
The present case involves investigation, not by Congress but by the Executive Branch, stemming from congressional delegation. When we read that delegation with an eye to First Amendment problems, we hesitate to conclude that Congress told the Executive to ferret out the ideological strays in the maritime industry. The words it used — “to safeguard . . . from sabotage or other subversive acts” — refer to actions, not to ideas or beliefs. We would have to stretch those words beyond their normal meaning to give them the meaning the Solicitor General urges. Rumely, and its allied cases, teach just the opposite — that statutory words are to be read narrowly so as to avoid questions concerning the “associational freedom” that Shelton v. Tucker protected and concerning other rights within the purview of the First Amendment.
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Black, while concurring in the Court’s judgment and opinion, also agrees with the statement in Mr. Justice Fortas’ concurring opinion that the statute under consideration, if construed to authorize the interrogatories involved, is offensive to the First Amendment.
Mr. Justice Marshall took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Section 191 provides in part:
“Whenever the President finds that the security of the United States is endangered by reason of actual or threatened war, or invasion, or insurrection, or subversive activity, or ’of disturbances or threatened disturbances of the international relations of the United States, the President is authorized to institute such measures and issue such rules and regulations—
“(a) to govern the anchorage and movement of any foreign-flag vessels in the territorial waters of the United States, to inspect such vessels at any time, to place guards thereon, and, if necessary in his opinion in order to secure such vessels from damage or injury, or to prevent damage or injury to any harbor or waters of the United States, or to secure the observance of rights and obligations of the United States, may take for such purposes full possession and control of such vessels and remove therefrom the officers and crew thereof, and all other persons not especially authorized by him to go or remain on board thereof;
“(b) to safeguard against destruction, loss, or injury from sabotage or other subversive acts, accidents, or other causes of similar nature, vessels, harbors, ports, and waterfront facilities in the United States, the Canal Zone, and all territory and water, continental or insular, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”
"1. With respect to your statements above, furnish the following information, fully and honestly to the best of your ability:
“(a) List the names of the political and social organizations to which you belonged, and location.
“(b) Furnish approximate dates of membership.
“(c) Furnish full particulars concerning the extent of your activities and participation in the organization's (number and type of meetings/functions attended; positions or offices held; classes or schools attended; contributions made; etc.).
“(d) Your reason for discontinuing the membership.
“(e) Your present attitude toward the principles and objectives of the organizations.
“If your answer is ‘YES’ to the following Questions, explain jully in the space provided at the end of the Interrogatories:
“2. Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of or affiliated with, in any way, the Communist Party, its Subdivisions, Subsidiaries, or Affiliates?
(Answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’)
“3. Have you at any time been a subscriber to the ‘People’s World’?
“. If your answer is ‘Yes,’ give dates.
(Answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’)
4. “Have you at any time engaged in any activities in behalf of
the ‘People’s World’? .
(Answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’)
“If your answer is ‘Yes,’ furnish details.
“5. What is your present attitude toward the Communist Party?
“6. What is your present attitude toward the principles and objectives of Communism?
“7. What is your attitude toward the form of Government in the United States?”
It is true that Senator Magnuson when discussing this measure stated that it “will give the President the authority to invoke th§ same kind of security measures which were invoked in World War I and in World War II.” 96 Cong. Pec. 10795. And from that the Solicitor General argues that the Act authorizes the broad sweeping personnel screening programs which were in force during World War II.
But this reference by Senator Magnuson apparently was to § 191 (a) which, as noted, covers “any foreign-flag vessels.” When it came to § 191 (b) Senator Magnuson did not speak in terms of any screening program, but said:
“It [the bill] also has this purpose, which I think is a good one: As I have said before, the last stronghold of subversive activity in this country, in my opinion, or at least the last concentrated stronghold, has been around our waterfronts. It would be impossible for destruction to come to any great port of the United States, of which there are many, as the result of a ship coming into port with an atomic bomb or with biological or other destructive agency, without some liaison ashore. This would give authority to the President to instruct the FBI, in cooperation with the Coast Guard, the Navy, or any other appropriate governmental agency, to go.to our water fronts and pick out people who might be subversives or security risks to this country. I think it goes a long way toward taking care of the domestic situation, as related to this subject, particularly in view of the large amount of talk we have had in the Senate within the past few days about Communists. The bill also protects that last loophole which is left, by which there might be some actual destruction along the shores of the United States.” 96 Cong. Rec. 11321.
A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, Jeffersonian Cyclopedia 976 (1900).
United States v. Delaware & H. Co., 213 U. S. 366, 407-408; United States v. Harriss, 347 U. S. 612, 618, n. 6; International Machinists v. Street, 367 U. S. 740, 749; Lynch v. Overholser, 369 U. S. 705, 710-711; United States v. National Dairy Corp., 372 U. S. 29, 32.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioners in this case are three persons who were convicted of distributing obscene materials and sentenced to periods of probation on the condition that they make regular installment payments toward the satisfaction of substantial fines. Because they failed to make these payments, their probations were revoked by the Georgia court, and they are now claiming that these revocations discriminated against them on the basis of wealth in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Since the record in this case suggests that petitioners may be in their present predicament because of the divided loyalties of their counsel, we have concluded that it is inappropriate to reach the merits of this difficult equal protection issue. Instead, we remand this case for further findings concerning a possible due process violation.
I
Petitioners Tante and Allen were working, respectively, as the projectionist and ticket taker at the Plaza Theatre in Atlanta when they were arrested and charged with two counts of distributing obscene materials in violation of Ga. Code § 26-2101 (1978). About four months later, petitioner Wood was arrested and charged with two violations of the same provision after he sold two magazines to a policeman while working at the Plaza Adult Bookstore. There is no evidence that any of these employees owned an interest in the businesses they served or had any managerial responsibilities.
Tante and Allen were tried together and found guilty on both counts by a jury. A separate jury convicted Wood on both counts. All three were then sentenced by the same judge. Tante and Allen each received a fine of $5,000 and two concurrent jail sentences of 12 months, but they were allowed immediate probation. Wood received two $5,000 fines and two consecutive jail sentences of 12 months; he also was placed on probation immediately.
After these convictions were affirmed on appeal, the trial court issued orders specifying the terms of probation. These required all three petitioners to make installment payments on their fines of $500 per month during the course of their periods of probation. After three months had elapsed, none of the petitioners had made any of the required payments, and the county probation officers therefore moved for revocation of their probations. At a hearing on January 26, 1979, petitioners admitted that they had failed to make the installment payments, but offered convincing evidence of their inability to make these payments out of their own earnings. They also stated that they had expected their employer to pay the fines for them. Faced with petitioners’ complete failure to satisfy a condition of their probations, the court decided to revoke these probations unless petitioners made up their arrearages within five days. Unable to do so, petitioners moved for a modification of the conditions of their proba-tions. This motion was denied, and the court ordered petitioners to serve the remaining portions of their jail sentences.
II
After this revocation decision was affirmed by the Georgia Court of Appeals, we granted a writ of certiorari to decide a question presented by the facts just summarized: whether it is constitutional under the Equal Protection Clause to imprison a probationer solely because of his inability to make installment payments on fines. 446 U. S. 951. On closer inspection, however, the record reveals other facts that make this an inappropriate case in which to decide the constitutional question. Where, as here, a possible due process violation is apparent on the particular facts of a case, we are empowered to consider the due process issue. Moreover, for prudential reasons, it is preferable for us to remand for consideration of this issue, rather than decide a novel constitutional question that may be avoided. Cf. Spector Motor Service, Inc. v. McLaughlin, 323 U. S. 101, 105 (1944) (broad constitutional questions should be avoided where a case may be decided on narrower, statutory grounds on remand).
Petitioners have been represented since the time of their arrests by a single lawyer. The testimony of each petitioner at the probation revocation hearing makes it clear that none of them ever paid — or was expected to pay — the lawyer for his services. They understood that this legal assistance was provided to them by their employer. In fact, the transcript of this hearing reveals that legal representation was only one aspect of the assistance that was promised to petitioners if they should face legal trouble as a result of their employment. They were told that their employer also would pay any fines and post any necessary bonds, and these promises were kept for the most part. In this case itself, as petitioners’ lawyer stated at oral argument, bonds were posted with funds he provided. In addition, when each of the petitioners was arrested a second time, he paid the resulting fines. All aspects of this arrangement were revealed to the court at the revocation hearing.
For some reason, however, the employer declined to provide money to pay the fines in the cases presently under review. Since it was this decision by the employer that placed petitioners in their present predicament, and since their counsel has acted as the agent of the employer and has been paid by the employer, the risk of conflict of interest in this situation is evident. The fact that the employer chose to refuse payment of these fines, even as it paid other fines and paid the sums necessary to keep petitioners free on bond in this case, suggests the possibility that it was seeking — in its own interest — a resolution of the equal protection claim raised here. If offenders cannot be jailed for failure to pay fines that are beyond their own means, then this operator of “adult” establishments may escape the burden of paying the fines imposed on its employees when they are arrested for conducting its business. To obtain such a ruling, however, it was necessary for petitioners to receive fines that were beyond their own means and then risk jail by failing to pay.
Although we cannot be sure that the employer and petitioners’ attorney were seeking to create a test case, there is a clear possibility of conflict of interest on these facts. Indications of this apparent conflict of interest may be found at various stages of the proceedings below. It was conceded at oral argument here that petitioners raised no protest about the size of the fines imposed at the time of sentencing. During the three months leading up to the probation revocation hearing they failed to pay even small amounts toward their fines to indicate their good faith. In fact, throughout this period, petitioners apparently remained under the impression that — as promised — the fines would be paid by the employer. Even at the revocation hearing itself, petitioners attempted to prove their inability to make the required payments but failed to make a motion for a modification of those requirements. That motion was not made until one day before petitioners were due to be incarcerated. A review of these facts demonstrates that, if petitioners’ counsel was serving the employer’s interest in setting a precedent, this conflict in goals may well have influenced the decision of the trial court to impose such large fines, as well as the decision to revoke petitioners’ probations rather than to modify the conditions.
Ill
Courts and commentators have recognized the inherent dangers that arise when a criminal defendant is represented by a lawyer hired and paid by a third party, particularly when the third party is the operator of the alleged criminal enterprise. One risk is that the lawyer will.prevent his client from obtaining leniency by preventing the client from offering testimony against his former employer or from taking other actions contrary to the employer’s interest Another kind of risk is present where, as here, the party paying the fees may have had a long-range interest in establishing a legal precedent and could do so only if the interests of the defendants themselves were sacrificed. As suggested above, the factual setting of this case requires the Court to take note of the potential unfairness resulting from this particular third-party fee arrangement. Petitioners were mere employees, performing the most routine duties, yet they received heavy fines on the apparent assumption that their employer would pay them. They now face prison terms solely because of the employer’s failure to pay the fines, having been represented throughout by a lawyer hired by that employer. The potential for injustice in this situation is sufficiently serious to require us to consider whether petitioners have been deprived of federal rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
We have held that due process protections apply to parole and probation revocations. Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U. S. 778 (1973); Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471 (1972). In Scarpelli we adopted a standard for deciding when due process requires appointment of counsel for indigent offenders during revocation hearings. Recognizing that the “need for counsel at revocation hearings derives, not from the invariable attributes of those hearings, but rather from the peculiarities of particular cases,” 411 U. S., at 789, we left it to the state tribunals to identify, on a case-by-case basis, the situations in which fundamental fairness requires appointed counsel.
In the present case, petitioners appeared at the hearing with retained counsel, as was their right under Ga. Code § 27-2713 (1978). But, significantly, petitioners would have had a right to appointed counsel if they had made the showing of indigence on which they now rely. Scarpelli established a presumption in favor of appointment of counsel in cases where the probation or parole violation is a matter of record but “there are substantial reasons which justified or mitigated the violation and make revocation inappropriate, and . . . the reasons are complex or otherwise difficult to develop or present.” 411 U. S., at 790. This case, where there were assurances that the fines would be paid by an unnamed employer, falls into that category.
Where a constitutional right to counsel exists, our Sixth Amendment cases hold that there is a correlative right to representation that is free from conflicts of interest. E. g., Cuyler v. Sullivan, 446 U. S. 335 (1980); Holloway v. Arkansas, 435 U. S. 475, 481 (1978). Here, petitioners were represented by their employer’s lawyer, who may not have pursued their interests single-mindedly. It was his duty originally at sentencing and later at the revocation hearing, to seek to convince the court to be lenient. On the record before us, we cannot be sure whether counsel was influenced in his basic strategic decisions by the interests of the employer who hired him. If this was the case, the due process rights of petitioners were not respected at the revocation hearing, or at earlier stages of the proceedings below.
It is, however, difficult for this Court to determine whether an actual conflict of interest was present, especially without the benefit of briefing and argument on this issue. Nevertheless, the record does demonstrate that the possibility of a conflict of interest was sufficiently apparent at the time of the revocation hearing to impose upon the court a duty to inquire further. The facts outlined above were all made known at that time. The court must have known that it had imposed disproportionately large fines — penalties that almost certainly were increased because of an assumption that the employer would pay the fines. The court did know that petitioners’ counsel had been provided by that employer and was pressing a constitutional attack rather than making the arguments for leniency that might well have resulted in substantial reductions in, or deferrals of, the fines. These facts demonstrate convincingly the duty of the court to recognize the possibility of a disqualifying conflict of interest. Any doubt as to whether the court should have been aware of the problem is dispelled by the fact that the State raised the conflict problem explicitly and requested that the court look into it.
For these reasons, we base our decision in this case on due process grounds. The judgment below is vacated and the case remanded with instructions that it be returned to the State Court of Fulton County. That court should hold a hearing to determine whether the conflict of interest that this record strongly suggests actually existed at the time of the probation revocation or earlier. If the court finds that an actual conflict of interest existed at that time, and that there was no valid waiver of the right to independent counsel, it must hold a new revocation hearing that is untainted by a legal representative serving conflicting interests.
Vacated and remanded.
Allen v. State, 144 Ga. App. 233, 240 S. E. 2d 754 (1977), cert. denied, 439 U. S. 899 (1978); Wood v. State, 144 Ga. App. 236, 240 S. E. 2d 743 (1977), cert. denied, 439 U. S. 899 (1978).
According to their testimony, all of the petitioners had by that time left their jobs in the “adult” establishments. Allen testified that her only income was $250 per month from unemployment insurance. See Transcript of Revocation Hearing, State Court of Fulton County, Criminal Division (Jan. 26, 1979) (hereinafter Tr.), at 7. Tante testified that his income as a correction officer was $540 per month. Id., at 35. He had been unemployed for eight months before obtaining that job. Id., at 39-40. Wood testified that he was trying to support a family and earning $120 per week working at a truck and trailer rental yard. Id., at 53-54.
The record suggests that the Plaza Theatre, which employed Tante and Allen, and the Plaza Adult Bookstore, which employed Wood, were under common ownership.
150 Ga. App. 582, 258 S. E. 2d 171 (1979).
Justice White’s dissenting opinion argues that this Court lacks jurisdiction to remand this ease on due process grounds because, in his view, the conflict-of-interest issue has not been properly presented. To be sure, it was not raised on appeal below or included as a question in the petition for certiorari. These facts merely emphasize, however, why it is appropriate for us to consider the issue. The party who argued the appeal and prepared the petition for certiorari was the lawyer on whom the conflict-of-interest charge focused. It is unlikely that he would concede that he had continued improperly to act as counsel. And certainly the State’s Solicitor, whose duty it was to support the judgment below, could not be expected to do more than call the problem to the attention of the courts, as he did. Petitioners were low-level employees, and now appear to be indigent. See n. 2, supra. We cannot assume that they, on their own initiative, were capable of protecting their interests.
As indicated, post, at 277r278, n. 1; see also n. 20, infra, it is abundantly clear that the possibility of a conflict of interest was pointed out to the trial court at the revocation hearing. The State’s Solicitor raised the issue repeatedly. The State’s Brief in Opposition 4, n. 2, again identified the apparent conflict. See n. 20, infra. Accordingly, counsel for petitioners cannot be heard to complain of any lack of notice.
In this context, it is appropriate to treat the due process issue as one “raised” below, and proceed to consider it here. See Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U. S. 454, 457 (1960) (deciding a case on a statutory issue raised below but not raised in this Court). Even if one considers that the conflict-of-interest question was not technically raised below, there is ample support for a remand required in the interests of justice. See 28 U. S. C. §2106 (authorizing this Court to “require such further proceedings to be had as may be just under the circumstances”); R. Stem & E. Gressman, Supreme Court Practice § 6.27, p. 460 (5th ed. 1978) (in review of state cases, “the Court doubtless limits its power to notice plain error to those situations where it feels the error is so serious as to constitute a fundamental unfairness in the proceedings”). See also Vachon v. New Hampshire, 414 U. S. 478 (1974).
See Tr. 26 (Allen); id., at 43 (Tante); id., at 63 (Wood).
E. g., id., at 42-43 (Tante).
As petitioners’ lawyer himself put it: “I want to bring this before the Solicitor and the Court that I believe Mrs. Allen told me and she told the Probation Officer that she — they were told, given information that their fine would be paid. The bond would be paid and a lawyer would be representing them.” Id., at 14. See also id., at 62-63 (Wood). During oral argument in this Court, the lawyer conceded that he had been paid by the employer during petitioners’ trials. Tr. of Oral Arg. 15-16. He indicated that these payments stopped when petitioners went on probation and left their jobs with this employer, but he has never dispelled the implication that he has an ongoing employment arrangement with the employer.
Id., at 8. The fact that the employer provided appeal bonds for petitioners after the probation revocation hearing suggests that his involvement with the case did not end when petitioners quit work in these “adult” establishments.
Tr. 12, 41, 56-57. These payments took place while the instant cases were still on direct appeal.
Counsel suggested at oral argument that the reason for this decision not to pay the fines was a change of ownership. It might also be explained by the fact that petitioners were no longer working for the “adult” establishments. Neither of these facts suggests, however, that the employer had lost interest in the case, since appeal bonds were provided for petitioners. Indeed, the providing of these appeal bonds suggests that the decision not to pay the fines themselves was a conscious one. And the fact that petitioners had left their jobs may have allowed the employer to pursue his goals without any concern about losing petitioners’ services in the event of a probation revocation.
The record does not make clear whether the employer was an individual or a corporation, or indeed even identify the employer.
Petitioners’ counsel states that he did attempt to alert the court to the problem of petitioners’ inability to pay by letter, soon after their pro-bations began. But no motion was made.
There is also a danger that petitioners’ lawyer was influenced in his strategic decisions by other improper considerations. Rather than relying solely on the equal protection claims, he could have sought leniency at the probation hearing by arguing that the stiff sentences imposed on petitioners should be modified in light of the employer’s unanticipated refusal to pay the fines. But this would have required him to dwell on the apparent bad faith of his own employer, and to emphasize the possibly improper arrangement by which he came to represent petitioners. Thus it is not correct, as Justice White argues, post, at 281, that the “conflict of interests . . . only emerges by assuming that the employer ... set out to construct a constitutional test case.” Even if the employer’s motives were unrelated to its interest in establishing a precedent, its refusal to pay the fines put the attorney in a position of conflicting obligations.
As one court has stated:
“A conflict of interest inheres in every such situation. ... It is inherently wrong to represent both the employer and the employee if the employee’s interest may, and the public interest will, be advanced by the employee’s disclosure of his employer’s criminal conduct. For the same reasons, it is also inherently wrong for an attorney who represents only the employee to accept a promise to pay from one whose criminal liability may turn on the employee’s testimony.” In re Abrams, 56 N. J. 271, 276, 266 A. 2d 275, 278 (1970).
See also In re Investigation Before April 1975 Grand Jury, 174 U. S. App. D. C. 268, 274, n. 11, 531 F. 2d 600, 606, n. 11 (1976); Pirillo v. Takiff, 462 Pa. 511, 341 A. 2d 896 (1975), appeal dism’d and cert. denied, 423 U. S. 1083 (1976); ABA Model Code of Professional Responsibility DR 5-107 (A), (B) (1980); ABA Standards for Criminal Justice 4-3.5 (c) (2d ed. 1980); Lowenthal, Joint Representation in Criminal Cases: A Critical Appraisal, 64 Va. L. Rev. 939, 960-961 (1978).
There are indications in the transcript of the revocation hearing that the State had been unable to learn the name of petitioners’ employer, and that petitioners were concealing its identity. At one point, the Solicitor stated: “Mrs. Allen, is it not true each time you were arrested that we sought to get your cooperation to find out who is operating these places?” Tr. 28. Later, during the Solicitor’s cross-examination of Tante, the following colloquy took place:
“Q Mr. Tante, who did you call when you said you called and told them to get someone else out there?
“A I called the secretary of the union first.
“Q And what about the company? Did you call them?
“A And the company, I gave notice to — whatever his name was. Mister — what was his name?
“MR. ZELL [petitioners’ attorney] I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.
“A The manager of the theatre, Mister — I think it was you I told first. I said, T want to get out of the theatre as soon as possible. In fact, I’d like to leave now.’ And I said, 'As far as I’m concerned, I’m out, and that’s it.’
“Q You called Mr. Zell to tell him to get someone else out there to operate the theatre?
“A No, sir. I called my business secretary at the union, told them I wanted out; to find me another job. If they wanted to put a man in there send them out. And they informed me to get on out of there that they would not send another union man out there.
“Q But you also talked to someone with the company, you said?
“A At the time, I did not, sir. I told Mister — Mrs. Allen, I said—
“MR. ZELL Hold it. Hold it, Mr. Tante. It’s now ten-thirty, Your Honor. We’re getting into areas that — the only question here is violation or failure to pay as directed.” Id., at 45-46.
The ABA Model Code of Professional Responsibility EC 5-23 (1980) states:
“A person or organization that pays or furnishes lawyers to represent others possesses a potential power to exert strong pressures against the independent judgment of those lawyers. Some employers may be interested in furthering their own economic, political, or social goals without regard to the professional responsibility of the lawyer to his individual client. Others may be jar more concerned with establishment or extension of legal principles than in the immediate protection of the rights of the lawyer’s individual client. . . . Since a lawyer must always be free to exercise his professional judgment without regard to the interests or motives of a third person, the lawyer who is employed by one to represent another must constantly guard against erosion of his professional freedom.” (Emphasis added.)
Justice White’s dissent states that we have gone beyond the recent decision in Cuyler v. Sullivan, 446 U. S. 335 (1980). Yet nothing in that case rules out the raising of a conflict-of-interest problem that is apparent in the record. Moreover, Sullivan mandates a reversal when the trial court has failed to make an inquiry even though it “knows or reasonably should know that a particular conflict exists.” Id., at 347.
Both counsel agreed that, in light of the size of fines imposed on petitioners — relatively minor and impecunious participants in the criminal enterprises — the judge must have assumed that the employer would pay. Tr. of Oral Arg. 13, 40.
At one point during the discussion of Allen’s case, the Solicitor, Mr. Rhodes, put it this way:
“MR. RHODES: What I’m trying to show is, Your Honor, that she in fact — that Mr. Zell [the attorney] was hired by someone else. She did not make the choice. That they sent Mr. Zell down here to represent her. And she may have acquiesced in it, but that she did not employ Mr. Zell to represent her.
“THE COURT: All right. How is that relevant to this issue?
“MR. RHODES: To what I say, there’s a conflict of interest in this case.
“Mr. Zell is representing her employer, and there’s two different interests there.
“They had promised this woman that they would pay her fine and they would take care of all these expenses. There’s a conflict.
“Mr. Zell’s, as I said, his first duty is to the persons that pay him. And that’s what he’s doing. He’s trying to take care of them.” Tr. 26-27 (emphasis added).
See also id., at 14-15.
As noted in n. 5, supra, the State raised this problem here as an argument against a grant of certiorari. The State’s Brief in Opposition 4, n. 2, stated:
“During the probation revocation hearing there were several discussions between the Court, the Petitioner’s [sic] lawyer and the Solicitor concerning the fact that the Petitioner’s [sic] lawyer also represents the Plaza Theater, the theater in which Petitioners Allen and Tante were employed. The argument of the Solicitor was that the employer had agreed to pay the fines, and now was attempting to get out of paying the fines by arguing that there was no agreement, and that Petitioners were now indigents . . . .”
Because we are presented here only with the question of petitioners’ probation revocations, we do not order more sweeping relief, such as vacating petitioners’ sentences or reversing their convictions. Such actions do, however, remain within the discretion of the trial court upon appropriate motion.
There also is the possibility that this relief may be available in habeas corpus proceedings, if petitioners can show an actual conflict of interest during the trials or at the time of sentencing.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
B
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Thomas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Federal Rule of Evidence 804(b)(1) states an exception to the hearsay rule that allows a court, in certain instances, to admit the former testimony of an unavailable witness. We must decide in this case whether the Rule permits a criminal defendant to introduce the grand jury testimony of a witness who asserts the Fifth Amendment privilege at trial.
I
The seven respondents, Anthony Salerno, Vincent DiNa-poli, Louis DiNapoli, Nicholas Auletta, Edward Halloran, Alvin O. Chattin, and Amello Migliore, allegedly took part in the activities of a criminal organization known as the Genovese Family of La Cosa Nostra (Family) in New York City. In 1987, a federal grand jury in the Southern District of New York indicted the respondents and four others on the basis of these activities. The indictment charged the respondents with a variety of federal offenses, including 41 acts constituting a “pattern of illegal activity” in violation of the Racketeer Influencéd and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), 18U.S.C. § 1962(b).
Sixteen of the alleged acts involved fraud in the New York construction industry in the 1980’s. According to the indictment and evidence later admitted at trial, the Family used its influence over labor unions and its control over the supply of concrete to rig bidding on large construction projects in Manhattan. The Family purportedly allocated contracts for these projects among a so-called “Club” of six concrete companies in exchange for a share of the proceeds.
Much of the case concerned the affairs of the Cedar Park Concrete Construction Corporation (Cedar Park). Two of the owners of this firm, Frederick DeMatteis and Pasquale Bruno, testified before the grand jury under a grant of immunity. In response to questions by the United States, they repeatedly stated that neither they nor Cedar Park had participated in the Club. At trial, however, the United States attempted to show that Cedar Park, in fact, had belonged to the Club by calling two contractors who had taken part in the scheme and by presenting intercepted conversations among the respondents. The United States also introduced documents indicating that the Family had an ownership interest in Cedar Park.
To counter the United States evidence, the respondents subpoenaed DeMatteis and Bruno as witnesses in the hope that they would provide the same exculpatory testimony that they had presented to the grand jury. When both witnesses invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and refused to testify, the respondents asked the District Court to admit the transcripts of their grand jury testimony. Although this testimony constituted hearsay, see Rule 801(c), the respondents argued that it fell within the hearsay exception in Rule 804(b)(1) for former testimony of unavailable witnesses.
The District Court refused to admit the grand jury testimony. It observed that Rule 804(b)(1) permits admission of former testimony against a party at trial only when that party had a “similar motive to develop the testimony by direct, cross, or redirect examination.” The District Court held that the United States did not have this motive, stating that the “motive of a prosecutor in questioning a witness before the grand jury in the investigatory stages of a case is far different from the motive of a prosecutor in conducting the trial.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 51a. A jury subsequently convicted the respondents of the RICO counts and other federal offenses.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed, holding that the District Court had erred in excluding DeMatteis’ and Bruno’s grand jury testimony. 937 F. 2d 797 (1991). Although the Court of Appeals recognized that “the government may have had no motive ... to impeach . . . Bruno or DeMatteis” before the grand jury, it concluded that “the government’s motive in examining the witnesses . . . was irrelevant.” Id., at 806. The Court of Appeals decided that, in order to maintain “adversarial fairness,” Rule 804(b)(l)’s similar motive element should “evapo-rat[e]” when the Government obtains immunized testimony in a grand jury proceeding from a witness who refuses to testify at trial. Ibid. We granted certiorari, 502 U. S. 1056 (1992), and now reverse and remand.
HH
The hearsay rule prohibits admission of certain statements made by a declarant other than while testifying at trial. See Rules 801(c) (hearsay definition), 802 (hearsay rule). The parties acknowledge that the hearsay rule, standing by itself, would have blocked introduction at trial of DeMatteis’ and Bruno’s grand jury testimony. Rule 804(b)(1), however, establishes an exception to the hearsay rule for former testimony. This exception provides:
“The following are not excluded by the hearsay rule if the declarant is unavailable as a witness:
“(1) Former Testimony. — Testimony given as a witness at another hearing ... if the party against whom the testimony is now offered ... had an opportunity and similar motive to develop the testimony by direct, cross, or redirect examination.”
We must decide whether the Court of Appeals properly interpreted Rule 804(b)(1) in this case.
The parties agree that DeMatteis and Bruno were “unavailable” to the defense as witnesses, provided that they properly invoked the Fifth Amendment privilege and refused to testify. See Rule 804(a)(1). They also agree that DeMatteis’ and Bruno’s grand jury testimony constituted “testimony given as . . . witnesses] at another hearing.” They disagree, however, about whether the “similar motive” requirement in the final clause of Rule 804(b)(1) should have prevented admission of the testimony in this case.
A
Nothing in the language of Rule 804(b)(1) suggests that a court may admit former testimony absent satisfaction of each of the Rule’s elements. The United States thus asserts that, unless it had a “similar motive,” we must conclude that the District Court properly excluded DeMatteis’ and Bruno’s testimony as hearsay. The respondents, in contrast, urge us not to read Rule 804(b)(1) in a “slavishly literal fashion.” Brief for Respondents 31. They contend that “adversarial fairness” prevents the United States from relying on the similar motive requirement in this ease. We agree with the United States.
When Congress enacted the prohibition against admission of hearsay in Rule 802, it placed 24 exceptions in Rule 803 and 5 additional exceptions in Rule 804. Congress thus presumably made a careful judgment as to what hearsay may come into evidence and what may not. To respect its determination, we must enforce the words that it enacted. The respondents, as a result, had no right to introduce DeMatteis' and Bruno's former testimony under Rule 804(b)(1) without showing a “similar motive.” This Court cannot alter eviden-tiary rules merely because litigants might prefer different rules in a particular class of cases. See Green v. Bock Laundry Machine Co., 490 U. S. 504, 524 (1989).
The respondents’ argument for a different result takes several forms. They first assert that adversarial fairness requires us to infer that Rule 804(b)(1) contains implicit limitations. They observe, for example, that the Advisory Committee Note to Rule 804 makes clear that the former testimony exception applies only to statements made under oath or affirmation, even though the Rule does not state this restriction explicitly. See Advisory Committee's Notes on Fed. Rule Evid. 804,28 U. S. C. App., p. 788, subd. (b), except. (1). The respondents maintain that we likewise may hold that Rule 804(b)(1) does not require a showing of similar motive in all instances.
The respondents’ example does not persuade us to change our reading of Rule 804(b)(1). If the Rule applies only to sworn statements, it does so not because adversarial fairness implies a limitation, but simply because the word “testimony” refers only to statements made under oath or affirmation. See Black's Law Dictionary 1476 (6th ed. 1990). We see no way to interpret the text of Rule 804(b)(1) to mean that defendants sometimes do not have to show “similar motive.”
The respondents also assert that courts often depart from the Rules of Evidence to prevent litigants from presenting only part of the truth. For example, citing United States v. Miller, 600 F. 2d 498 (CA5 1979), the respondents maintain that, although parties may enjoy various testimonial privileges, they can forfeit these privileges by “opening the door” to certain subjects. In the respondents’ view, the United States is attempting to use the hearsay rule like a privilege to keep DeMatteis’ and Bruno’s grand jury testimony away from the jury. They contend, however, that adversarial fairness requires us to conclude that the United States forfeited its right to object to admission of the testimony when it introduced contradictory evidence about Cedar Park.
This argument also fails. Even assuming that we should treat the hearsay rule like the rules governing testimonial privileges, we would not conclude that a forfeiture occurred here. Parties may forfeit a privilege by exposing privileged evidence, but do not forfeit one merely by taking a position that the evidence might contradict. See 8 J. Wigmore, Evidence §2327, p. 636 (McNaughton rev. 1961); M. Larkin, Federal Testimonial Privileges §2.06, pp. 2-103, 2-104, 2-120 (1991). In Miller, for example, the court held that a litigant, “after giving the jury his version of a privileged communication, [could not] prevent the cross-examiner from utilizing the communication itself to get at the truth.” 600 F. 2d, at 501 (emphasis added). In this case, by contrast, the United States never presented to the jury any version of what De-Matteis and Bruno had said in the grand jury proceedings. Instead, it attempted to show Cedar Park’s participation in the Club solely through other evidence available to the respondents. The United States never exposed the jury to anything analogous to a “privileged communication.” The respondents’ argument, accordingly, fails on its own terms.
The respondents finally argue that adversarial fairness may prohibit suppression of exculpatory evidence produced in grand jury proceedings. They note that, when this Court required disclosure of a grand jury transcript in Dennis v. United States, 384 U. S. 855 (1966), it stated that “it is rarely justifiable for the prosecution to have exclusive access” to relevant facts. Id., at 873. They allege that the United States nevertheless uses the following tactics to develop evidence in a one-sided manner: If a witness inculpates a defendant during the grand jury proceedings, the United States immunizes him and calls him at trial; however, if the witness exculpates the defendant, as Bruno and DeMatteis each did here, the United States refuses to immunize him and attempts to exclude the testimony as hearsay. The respondents assert that dispensing with the “similar motive” requirement would limit these tactics.
We again fail to see how we may create an exception to Rule 804(b)(1). The Dennis case, unlike this one, did not involve a question about the admissibility of evidence. Rather, it concerned only the need to disclose a transcript to the defendants. See 384 U. S., at 873. Moreover, in Dennis, we did not hold that adversarial fairness required the United States to make the grand jury transcript available. Instead, we ordered disclosure under the specific language of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e). See 384 U. S., at 869-870,872. In this case, the language of Rule 804(b)(1) does not support the respondents. Indeed, the respondents specifically ask us to ignore it. Neither Dennis nor anything else that the respondents have eited provides us with this authority.
B"
The question remains whether the United States had a “similar motive” in this case. The United States asserts that the District Court specifically found that it did not and that we should not review its factual determinations. It also argues that a prosecutor generally will not have the same motive to develop testimony in grand jury proceedings as he does at trial. A prosecutor, it explains, must maintain secrecy during the investigatory stages of the criminal process and therefore may not desire to confront grand jury witnesses with contradictory evidence. It further states that a prosecutor may not know, prior to indictment, which issues will have importance at trial and accordingly may fail to develop grand jury testimony effectively.
The respondents disagree with both of the United States’ arguments. They characterize the District Court’s ruling as one of law, rather than fact, because the District Court essentially ruled that a prosecutor’s motives at trial always differ from his motives in grand jury proceedings. The respondents contend further that the grand jury transcripts in this case actually show that the United States thoroughly attempted to impeach DeMatteis and Bruno. They add that, despite the United States’ stated concern about maintaining secrecy, the United States revealed to DeMatteis and Bruno the identity of the major witnesses who testified against them at trial.
The Court of Appeals, as noted, erroneously concluded that the respondents did not have to demonstrate a similar motive in this case to make use of Rule 804(b)(1). It therefore declined to consider fully the arguments now presented by the parties about whether the United States had such a motive. Rather than to address this issue here in the first instance, we think it prudent to remand the case for further consideration. Cf. Denton v. Hernandez, 504 U. S. 25, 32-35 (1992).
It is so ordered.
The respondents also suggest that, in the event that a witness chooses to testify at trial without immunity, the United States can impeach him with his grand jury testimony. See Fed. Rules Evid. 607, 801(d)(1)(A).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
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.
One of the series of orders issued by the Federal Power Commission after this Court’s decision in Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Wisconsin, 347 U. S. 672, required affected independent producers of natural gas to submit rate schedules in effect on June 7, 1954, the date Phillips was decided. The respondent, Shell Oil Company, on November 18, 1954, submitted its contract dated May 1, 1951, with Texas Gas Transmission Corporation, as a rate schedule on June 7, 1954, for gas from its Chalkley Field, Cameron Parish, Louisiana. The Commission, on March-13, 1957, accepted the contract as a rate schedule but ordered a hearing for the purpose of determining and fixing the price effective thereunder on June 7, 1954.
At the hearing, Texas Gas contended that paragraph 1 of Article VI of the contract specifying the price of 8.997 cents per thousand cubic feet (Mcf.) for the period which included June 7, 1954, established that price for the date. This was the price at which Shell was billing Texas Gas for gas at the time. However, Shell contended that when Texas Gas, prior to June 7, 1954, began paying 12.5 cents per Mcf. to Atlantic Refining Company, for gas produced in nearby Acadia Parish, Shell became entitled to receive the same price under the so-called “favored nation” clause of the Shell contract. That clause, paragraph 3 of Article VI, provides that “[i]f at any time after December 31,1951, [Texas Gas] shall enter into a contract providing for the purchase by it of gas” at a higher price [than that currently being paid under this— the Shell — contract], the price currently being paid will be increased to equal the “price payable under such other contract.”
When Texas Gas and Shell made the contract of May 1, 1951, Atlantic Refining Company was selling gas to the former from Acadia Parish production under a contract concluded in 1943 for a 25-year term. The Atlantic contract specified a price effective for the first five years and provided that during succeeding five-year periods, “prices to be paid will be determined at the beginning of each period . . . .” “The price to be paid . . . is to be agreed upon . . . after a survey of prevailing prices for gas being sold in similar quantities in the southwestern part of Louisiana.” The contract further provided that “ [i] n the event that the parties are unable to agree upon the price . . . such determination shall be submitted to arbitration”; the arbitrators to be selected as provided in the agreement. Negotiations between Atlantic and Texas Gas as to the price to be effective for the five-year period beginning September 1, 1953, terminated with a letter agreement dated February 17, 1954, which recited: “[I]t is hereby agreed that the price to be paid . . . between September 1, 1953, and August 31, 1958, both inclusive, shall be 12.2 cents net” plus .3 cent for severance tax, or 12.5 cents. It is this letter agreement which Shell contends triggered the Shell contract’s “favored nation” clause.
The Commission’s examiner issued his decision on August 9, 1957. He held that in making the Atlantic letter agreement Texas Gas “enter [ed] into a contract providing for the purchase by it of gas” within the meaning of the Shell “favored nation” clause and that this had escalated the Shell price to 12.5 cents per Mcf. The Commission reversed the examiner’s decision and determined that the effective price on June 7, 1954, was 8.997 cents per Mcf., the price fixed in paragraph 1 of Article VI. 18 F. P. C. 617. Shell’s petition for rehearing was denied. 19 F. P. C. 74. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, on review, vacated the Commission’s order. 263 F. 2d 223. We granted the separate petitions for certiorari of Texas Gas and Louisville Gas and Electric Company in No. 167, and of the Federal Power Commission in No. 170, being particularly moved to do so by the contention made in both petitions that the Court of Appeals exceeded the appropriate scope of judicial review of the Commission’s determination. 361 U. S. 811.
We may assume with the petitioners that the Court of Appeals did not treat the Commission’s order as one which it was required to accept if reasonably supported in the record, and instead considered that it could examine de novo the question of the proper interpretation to be given the Shell “favored nation” clause. The petitioners’ argument that the Court of Appeals exceeded the allowable limits of judicial review is based upon the premise that the Commission's interpretation of the “favored nation” clause reflects the application of its expert knowledge and judgment to a highly technical field, so that the Court of Appeals was required to accept the Commission’s interpretation if it had “ ‘warrant in the record’ and a ‘reasonable basis in law,’ ” citing Unemployment Compensation Comm’n v. Aragon, 329 U. S. 143, 153-154. But the record nowhere discloses that the Commission arrived at its interpretation of the “favored nation” clause on the basis of specialized knowledge gained from experience in the regulation of the natural gas business, or upon the basis of any trade practice concerning “favored nation” clauses. On the contrary the opinions of the examiner and the Commission show that both treated the question as one to be determined simply by the application of ordinary rules of contract construction. The examiner stated that “[t]he language [of the “favored nation” clause] is clear enough to reveal the intent of the parties without resort to parole evidence or self-serving memoranda. . . . [I]ts plain meaning is . . . Shell sought to cause its selling price to rise to that called for by any other contract Buyer made for gas after an agreed date .... The language was evidently broad; not narrowly technical in character.” The examiner concluded that “elemental principles of contract law . . . too commonly known to the legal profession to require citations in support thereof” compelled the decision he reached. The Commission, in turn, relying for authority entirely upon court decisions and texts, construed the “favored nation” clause to be applicable only when Texas Gas entered into a “new” contract after December 31, 1951, and held that the February 17, 1954, “agreement with Atlantic does not constitute a new contract as required by Shell’s escalation clause, but merely represents action taken under a pre-existing contract between Texas Gas and Atlantic.” 18 F. P. C., at 618-619. It is apparent that the Commission rested its determination upon a construction of the words of the contract as it supposed a court would interpret them.
“The grounds upon which an administrative order must be judged are those upon which the record discloses that its action was based.” Securities & Exchange Comm’n v. Chenery Corp., 318 U. S. 80, 87. Therefore, since the Commission professed to dispose of the case solely upon its view of the result called for by the application of canons of contract construction employed by the courts, and did not in any wise rely on matters within its special competence, the Court of Appeals was fully justified in making its own independent determination of the correct application of the governing principles. See Federal Communications Comm’n v. RCA Communications, Inc., 346 U. S. 86, 91. There applies here what the Court said in Chenery: “Since the decision of the Commission was explicitly based upon the applicability of principles [of contract interpretation] announced by courts, its validity must likewise be judged on that basis." 318 U. S., at 87.
In the circumstances, considerations of the scope of review of administrative determinations need not deter us from reviewing the decision of the Court of Appeals and deciding the proper construction of the “favored nation” clause. We proceed to do so since the question of interpretation of the clause was presented in both petitions, our grant of certiorari was not limited to exclude it, and the question has been briefed and argued.
The question to be decided is: did the parties to the Shell contract mean that an agreement of the nature of the Atlantic letter agreement of February 17,1954, should constitute the “enter [ing] into a contract [by Texas Gas] providing for the purchase by it of gas . . .”? We first consider the nature of the letter agreement. The pricing provisions of the Atlantic contract specify a price for the first five-year period, and provide that prices for the four succeeding five-year periods should be determined by agreement of the parties, or failing such agreement, by arbitration. In either case the determination is to be made “after a survey of prevailing prices for gas being sold in similar quantities in the southwestern part of Louisiana.” Pursuant to this provision a letter agreement dated October 29, 1948, and a modification agreement dated February 16, 1949, established prices for the five-year period from September 1,1948, to August 31, 1953. The letter agreement of February 17, 1954, setting the price for the 1953-1958 period was thus the second such agreement.
Shell urges that the letter agreement is in actuality an entirely new contract which incorporates by inferential reference the terms of the 1943 contract. There is nothing in the letter agreement or otherwise in the record to substantiate this contention. On the contrary, the letter agreement affirmatively states that the action was taken “in accordance with” the 1943 contract.
To be sure, the letter agreement may be said to have been a “contract” insofar as Atlantic and Texas Gas agreed therein upon a price and gave up the right to have arbitrators determine the price for them. But their act was merely in the performance of an undertaking they assumed in 1943 when they chose this binding method for periodic price adjustments instead of some method which would have foreordained the adjustments in precise amounts. The letter agreement in discharge of this obligation assumed in 1943 is thus simply “executory of the [1943] contract between the parties." Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Federal Power Comm’n, 227 F. 2d 470, 475. We .therefore agree with the Commission's holding that the letter agreement “merely represents action taken under a pre-existing contract between Texas Gas and Atlantic.” 18 F. P. C., at 619.
In the light of this, we do not think that in being party to the letter agreement Texas Gas “enter [ed] into a contract for the purchase ... of gas” within the meaning of those words as employed by the parties in the “favored nation” clause. The language of that clause of the Shell contract is virtually the same as the parties used several times at the very outset of that contract. The sense in which the parties used the language there reveals its meaning in the “favored nation” clause and, so interpreted, the Atlantic letter agreement is not a “contract” within the meaning of the clause. The contract begins:
“This Contract, made and entered into as of May 1, 1951 . . .
“Whereas, under date of October 1, 1943, Shell Oil Company, Inc., entered into a contract for the sale of gas . . .
"Whereas, . . . Buyer and Seller now desire to rescind said contract and enter into a new contract for the purchase of gas . . . .” (Emphasis added.)
What follows are the nine Articles which detail the many aspects of the parties’ relationship for the 20-year term of the contract. The Articles are captioned “Sale of Gas,” “Quantity of Gas,” “Pressure Decline,” “Point of Delivery,” “Warranty of Title to Gas,” “Prices,” “Arbitration,” “Term of Contract,” and “Miscellaneous.” In addition an exhibit made part of the contract deals with such matters as “Quality of Gas,” “Measurements,” “Billing and Payment,” “Regulatory Bodies” and “Force Majeure.” In other words “enter[ing] into a contract providing for the purchase of gas” meant to the parties the making of a full-fledged contract containing all the terms defining the complete relationship.
This conclusion is borne out in the “Prices” Article itself. That Article divides the contract term into five periods, one from May 1, 1951, until January 1, 1952, and four others each of five years. Paragraph 1 specifies the price for each period according to a schedule of automatic step-increases. Adjustment otherwise to higher prices may result in one of two ways: (1) under paragraph 3, the “favored nation” clause, or (2) under paragraph 4 — applicable only to the last two five-year periods — if Shell requests a “price redetermination.” Upon such request “determination is to be made by the parties or, if they are unable to agree, by the arbitrators” upon the basis of “the three (3) highest prices to be paid during such period by operating interstate transporters of natural gas, including [Texas Gas]” for gas purchased from named Louisiana fields.
In all probability any “price redetermination” agreed upon by Shell and Texas Gas under paragraph 4 would be evidenced by a writing stating the determination. Surely the parties who used the language “enter [ing] into a contract” as they did in the preamble to their agreement would not conceive of such a “price redetermination” as “enter [ing] into a contract providing for the purchase ... of gas.” No more does the similar periodic price adjustment under the Atlantic contract partake of the nature of “enter [ing] into a contract providing for the purchase ... of gas,” within the meaning of the language of the Shell “favored nation” clause.
The Court of Appeals, in holding that the letter agreement came within the intendment of “enter [ing] into a contract providing for the purchase ... of gas,” stressed that Shell’s objective was to assure itself a “top price for its gas” and said that the facts tended to show “that the intention of the parties was for any higher price paid by [Texas Gas] to another producer to trigger a rise on the Shell contract to the same figure . . . .” 263 F. 2d, at 225. We think the contract demonstrates the contrary, and we find the record barren of any other evidence which would support this conclusion. Of course, we recognize that Shell desired to protect itself during so extended a contract period by provisions for price increases; and it did so. Indeed in this respect the contract is a one-way street. Shell is guaranteed automatic periodic step-increases and in addition, during the last 10 years of the contract term, at Shell’s option, prices are to be redetermined to reflect any higher prevailing market prices. Then there is the “favored nation” clause — also part of the protection afforded Shell. Shell is entitled to the highest price which any of these methods will yield. In contrast, there is no provision allowing Texas Gas the possibility of a price decrease.
Even assuming that the parties assigned paramount importance to giving Shell the “top price,” the “favored nation” clause as written is not as broad as it might have been. Shell has made other contracts with “favored nation” clauses which are triggered by every higher price paid by the buyer to other producers. In contrast, Shell concedes that this "favored nation” clause would not be triggered by higher prices paid by Texas Gas to other producers under pre-existing contracts by way of automatic increases or increases which are mathematically determined. The most reasonable explanation for the inclusion of the concededly more limited clause is that the parties meant to distinguish between increases which Texas Gas was contractually bound to pay under provisions of pre-1951 contracts and higher prices which Texas Gas voluntarily assumed to pay after 1951. In deciding which increases do and which do not trigger this “favored nation” clause we would be making an irrational distinction were we to focus upon the mechanics chosen in the Atlantic contract and conclude that the Shell clause was activated by a post-1951 price determination under the Atlantic contract, although it would not have been activated by price increases pursuant to a more mathematically precise formula. In its essential respects the Atlantic price adjustment was no different from the latter, for the Atlantic adjustment was required under a preexisting contract, and Texas Gas was powerless to prevent it.
We therefore hold that the Court of Appeals erred in its interpretation of the “favored nation” clause and that the Commission correctly construed it as not effecting an increase in price by reason of the letter agreement.
There remains for mention an argument of Shell which the Court of Appeals found unnecessary to consider because of the rationale which it adopted. This is the contention that the 1943 Atlantic agreement did not provide for a fixed and determined price beyond the first five-year period, so that under applicable state law enforceability was suspended until the contract price for a particular succeeding five-year term was supplied by agreement or arbitration. From this premise it is argued that when the second five-year period came to an end on August 31, 1953, neither Atlantic nor Texas Gas was under any enforceable obligation to continue the prior relationship and therefore when on February 17, 1954, Texas Gas signed the letter agreement it was not acting pursuant to any pre-existing obligation but was exercising its free choice to enter what was in effect a new contract. In its petition for writ of certiorari the Commission argued that not only was there no doubt about the enforceability of the Atlantic contract but that the issue is immaterial because the parties to that contract treated the contract as binding and that it is not for Shell, a stranger to the contract, to say that it was not legally enforceable. However, the Commission suggested that should we reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals, premised as it is upon the assumption that the 1943 Atlantic contract imposed a binding obligation for its entire stated term, and if we considered the question of enforceability to be material, we should remand the issue of enforceability to the Court of Appeals for its decision. Shell has maintained in this Court that the issue of enforceability is material but, in view of the Commission’s statement, has argued neither that issue nor the issue of enforceability. We agree that it is appropriate that the Court of Appeals address itself to the enforceability issue, if it is material, but under the circumstances we think the Court of Appeals should first decide the question of materiality. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Me. Justice Black concurs in the result.
The Phillips case held that the Commission had jurisdiction over the independent producers and the order in question was Order No. 174r-B now incorporated in Regulations under the Natural Gas Act, 18 CFR §§ 154.92-154.93.
The contract was actually between Shell and Louisiana Natural Gas Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the petitioner, Texas Gas Transmission Corporation. The subsidiary was merged into its parent in 1955.
The hearing was ordered after Shell filed on February 11, 1957, an application for a rate increase from 12.5 cents per thousand cubic feet (Mcf.) to 16.75 cents per Mcf. plus tax reimbursement. This price increase has been suspended and is pending before the Commission in another proceeding. The Commission noted in its opinion herein that it was “necessary in connection with any rate proceeding after suspension of increased rates . . . that we know the rate previously in effect . . . .” 18 F. P. C. 617, 618. Texas Gas and its customer, the other petitioner in No. 167, Louisville Gas and Electric Company, were permitted to intervene in these proceedings.
Article YI, paragraph 1, provides in pertinent part:
“1. The prices to be paid by Buyer for gas hereunder shall be as follows:
“For all gas purchased from January 1, 1952, through December 31, 1956. 8.99700 per 1000 cu. ft.”
Paragraph 3 of Article VI is as follows:
“If at any time after December 31, 1951, Buyer shall enter into a contract providing for the purchase by it of gas produced from a field or fields located, and delivered to Buyer, within a radius of fifty (50) miles of any point of delivery provided hereunder, Buyer shall forthwith notify Seiler of such fact, and if the price per one thousand (1000) cubic feet at any time payable under such other contract is higher than the price payable hereunder, each price payable hereunder which is less than thé price payable at the same time under such other contract shall be immediately increased so that it will equal the price payable under such other contract. In determining whether the price payable under such other contract is ‘higher’ than the price payable for gas under this contract, due consideration shall be given to the provisions of this contract as compared with such other contract as to quality of gas; delivery pressures, gathering and compressing arrangements, quantity, provisions regarding measurement of gas, including deviation from Boyle’s Law, taxes payable on or in .respect of gas delivered and all other pertinent factors.”
The pertinent provisions are in Article III of the 1943 Atlantic contract reading as follows:
“The Buyer agrees to pay for the gas received hereunder a price computed as follows:
“(b) At the end of the first five-year period, Buyer and Seller are to reach an agreement as to the price for gas sold and delivered under this contract during the second five-year period. The price to be paid during such second five-year period is to be agreed upon at the beginning of such period after a survey of prevailing prices for gas being sold in similar quantities in the southwestern part of Louisiana.
“(c) During succeeding five-year periods, prices to be paid will be determined at the beginning of each period in the same manner as provided for in paragraph (b) above.
“(d) In the event that the parties are unable to agree upon the price to be paid for gas after the first five-year period, in accordance with the arrangements set forth in paragraphs (b) and (c) above, such determination shall be submitted to arbitration in accordance with Condition XII.”
Tlie Commission reached its conclusion as to the interpretation of the “favored nation” clause without dissent. There was one dissent, by Commissioner Connole, from an' alternative ground of decision, namely, that the effective rate on June 7, 1954, was 8.997 cents per Mcf. because that was the charge actually being collected from Texas Gas. 18 F. P. C. 621. The Court of Appeals found no merit in this ground saying “What that rate was . . . depends upon the contract-established provisions rather than on the fortuity of rates which were being actually paid on that date.” 263 F. 2d, at 224. The Commission did not present this question among the Questions Presented in its petition for certiorari and we intimate no view upon its merits.
For purposes of its decision the Court of Appeals “assumed without deciding that the Atlantic contract of 1943 did in fact impose a binding agreement-to-agree on the price for gas in each of the contract’s last four five year periods.” 263 F. 2d, at 226. We proceed on the same assumption in reviewing the interpretation of the “favored nation” clause in the Shell contract.
The pertinent text of the letter is as follows:
“Under date of September 1, 1943, Defense Plant Corporation, as Buyer, entered into a gas purchase contract with The Atlantic Refining Company, as Seller, for the purchase of gas produced from Seller’s leases in the North Tepetate pool of Acadia Parish, Louisiana, which contract was subsequently amended February 16, 1949. Louisiana Natural Gas Corporation purchased the pipe line operated by Defense Plant Corporation and the aforesaid contract with The Atlantic Refining Company was assigned to Louisiana Natural Gas Corporation.
“In accordance with Paragraph III of said [1943] contract, it is hereby agreed that the price to be paid by Louisiana Natural Gas Corporation to The Atlantic Refining Company for gas sold and delivered under such contract between September 1, 1953, and August 31, 1958, both inclusive, shall be 12.2 cents net for each 1,000 cubic feet at a pressure base of 15.025 psia of gas received at the central point or points set forth in the original contract, regardless of whether such gas is delivered to a government plant or not; and, in addition, Buyer shall reimburse Seller for all state severance taxes, or similar taxes, which Seller is obligated to pay and has paid to the State of Louisiana on such eas.”
For example the Commission’s opinion on the order denying rehearing, 19 F. P. C., at 77, states:
“For instance in Shell’s Gas Rate Schedule No. 4 it is provided:
“ ‘If at any time or times the price per Mcf of gas or dry gas purchased by [the Buyer] from any gas producer whomever . . . shall be greater than the price per Mcf of gas purchased hereunder, [the Buyer] will increase the price per Mcf payable to [Shell] for gas delivered hereunder. . . .’
“In Shell’s Gas Rate Schedule No. 7, it is provided:
“ ‘Buyer agrees that if, during the term of this agreement, it purchases or agrees to purchase natural gas at any place within a distance of twenty-five (25) miles of the delivery point under the present contract, at a price or prices higher . . . than the prices provided for by the present contract, ... it will, upon seller’s request, thereafter pay to seller a price or prices under the present agreement not less than the higher price so being paid.’
“There are numerous other examples included in the present record.”
We do not read the following statement of the Court of Appeals as foreclosing the Commission’s argument that the issue of enforceability is not material:
“We have assumed without deciding that the Atlantic contract of 1943 did in fact impose a binding agreement-to-agree on the price for gas in each of the contract’s last four five year periods. Thus it has not been necessary to determine the several questions raised in connection with the arguments directed to that phase of the oase. Of course if the Atlantic contract of 1943 was not a binding agreement-to-agree, that circumstance alone would place the February, 1954 Atlantic contract fully within the terms of the escalation clause in the Shell contract.” 263 F. 2d, at 226.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
I
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We granted certiorari to decide whether the preclearance requirement of § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended, applies to a reapportionment plan submitted to a Federal District Court by the legislative body of a covered jurisdiction in response to a judicial determination that the existing apportionment of its electoral districts is unconstitutional. Relying on East Carroll Parish School Board v. Marshall, 424 U. S. 636 (per curiam), the District Court held that the plan submitted to it in this case was a judicial plan and thus excepted from the requirements of § 5. Relying on Wise v. Lipscomb, 437 U. S. 535, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed; it held that because the plan had been prepared by a legislative body, it was a legislative plan within the coverage of § 5. We are persuaded that Congress intended to require compliance with the statutory preclearance procedures under the circumstances of this case. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
The covered jurisdiction in this case is Kleberg County, a rural county in Texas. Under Texas law, a Commissioners Court, which is composed of four county commissioners presided over by the county judge, is authorized to govern Kle-berg County. The county is divided periodically by the Commissioners Court into four commissioners’ precincts, each of which elects a resident to the position of county commissioner. The county judge is elected at large. The county commissioners and the county judge serve 4-year terms.
In January 1978, four Mexican-American residents of Kle-berg County brought this class action against various county officials alleging that the apportionment of the four commissioners’ precincts denied individual residents of the larger precincts a vote of equal weight, and unconstitutionally diluted the voting strength of the county’s substantial Mexican-American population. After a trial, the District Court rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that the county’s apportionment plan unconstitutionally diluted the voting power of Mexican-Americans as a class, but held that individual voters were denied equal representation because of the substantial disparity in the number of residents in each commissioners’ precinct. The District Court therefore directed the county officials to submit a proposed reapportionment plan to the court within six weeks, and scheduled a hearing on the validity of the proposal for four weeks thereafter.
Pursuant to the District Court’s order, the Commissioners Court undertook the task of devising a new apportionment plan. The Commissioners Court employed Dr. Robert Nash, a statistician and the Dean of the College of Business at Texas A. & I. University, to prepare a new plan, instructing him to define the commissioners’ precincts “on a one-person/one-vote basis.” With one insignificant modification, the Commissioners Court officially adopted the plan prepared by Dr. Nash as the plan it would submit to the District Court.
Respondents objected to the proposed plan. They challenged the data used by the Dean, they claimed that the plan diluted the voting strength of Mexican-Amerieans, and they contended that the Voting Rights Act required the county to obtain preclearance from the Attorney General of the United States or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia before the plan could become effective. After an evidentiary hearing, the District Court rejected both of respondents’ factual contentions, and held as a matter of law that the Voting Rights Act did not require preclearance. The court entered an order approving the new plan and authorizing the Commissioners Court to conduct the 1980 primary and general elections under it. See App. to Pet. for Cert. A-21 to A-23.
Without expressing any opinion with respect to the constitutionality of the new plan, the Court of Appeals vacated the District Court’s order in a per curiam opinion. See 615 F. 2d 1023 (1980). Reasoning that “[a] proposed reapportionment plan submitted by a local legislative body does not lose its status as a legislative rather than court-ordered plan merely because it is the product of litigation conducted in a federal forum,” id., at 1024, the Court of Appeals held that the Voting Rights Act required preclearance. The court thereafter denied petitioners’ application for a stay pending filing and consideration of a petition for writ of certiorari. On August 14, 1980, however, Justice Powell, in his capacity as Circuit Justice, entered an order recalling the mandate and staying the judgment of the Court of Appeals pending disposition of the petition for certiorari. 448 U. S. 1318. We granted that petition because the question presented is important and because the answer suggested by our prior opinions is not free of ambiguity. 449 U. S. 898.
In this Court, the county officials contend that the Voting Rights Act does not apply to a plan that “(a) was prepared and presented in response to an order by the district court, (b) was not prepared by county officials but by a third party expert, (c) was not adopted by the county before submission to the court, (d) was considered by the trial court to be court-ordered, and (e) was put into effect only after county officials were ordered to do so by the trial court.”
We first consider the significance of the distinction between legislative and court-ordered plans as identified in our prior cases. We then review our decisions in East Carroll and Wise v. Lipscomb, on which the District Court and the Court of Appeals respectively placed primary reliance. Finally, we examine the statute and its legislative history.
I
Texas and its political subdivisions are covered by the Voting Rights Act. Briscoe v. Bell, 432 U. S. 404. Section 5 of that Act is applicable whenever a covered jurisdiction “shall enact or seek to administer any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect on November 1, 1972... 42 U. S. C. § 1973c. A reapportionment plan is a “standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting” within the meaning of § 5, Georgia v. United States, 411 U. S. 526, 531-535, and it is undisputed that Kleberg County is a covered jurisdiction. What is in dispute is whether that jurisdiction did “enact or seek to administer” a proposed reapportionment plan when it presented that plan to a Federal District Court as a proposed remedy for a constitutional violation. If the statute does apply, then the plan must be precleared either by the Attorney General of the United States or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia before it may become effective. In such a preclearance proceeding, it is not sufficient to demonstrate that. the new plan is constitutional; the covered jurisdiction also has the burden of demonstrating that the districting changes are not motivated by a discriminatory purpose and will not have an adverse impact on minority voters. See, e. g., City of Rome v. United States, 446 U. S. 156, 172-173.
Two polar propositions are perfectly clear. First, the Act requires preclearance of new legislative apportionment plans that are adopted without judicial direction or approval. See Georgia v. United States, supra. Second, the Act’s preclearance requirement does not apply to plans prepared and adopted by a federal court to remedy a constitutional violation. See Connor v. Johnson, 402 U. S. 690 (per curiam) Petitioners contend that the Act does not apply to this reapportionment plan because it is a court-ordered plan, while respondents argue that the Act does apply because the plan was prepared and submitted on behalf of the local legislative body.
In prior reapportionment cases not arising under the Voting Rights Act, we have recognized important differences between legislative plans and court-ordered plans. Because “reapportionment is primarily the duty and responsibility of the State through its legislature or other body, rather than of a federal court,” Chapman v. Meier, 420 U. S. 1, 27, the Court has tolerated somewhat greater flexibility in the fashioning of legislative remedies for violation of the one-person, one-vote rule than when a federal court prepares its own remedial decree. Thus, in Chapman we held that “unless there are persuasive justifications, a court-ordered reapportionment plan of a state legislature must avoid use of multi-member districts, and, as well, must ordinarily achieve the goal of population equality with little more than de minimis variation.” Id., at 26-27 (footnote omitted). In contrast, reapportionment plans prepared by legislative bodies may employ multimember districts and may result in greater population disparities than would be permitted in a court-ordered plan. See Connor v. Finch, 431 U. S. 407, 414-415. Cf. Mahan v. Howell, 410 U. S. 315.
In this case, we are concerned only with the question whether the reapportionment plan submitted to the District Court should be considered a legislative plan for purposes of preclearance under § 5. We are not presented with any question concerning the substantive acceptability of that plan. Nonetheless, we draw significant guidance from prior cases in which the substantive acceptability of a reapportionment plan, rather than the applicability of § 5, was at issue.
II
• In neither of the cases on which the respective parties now place their primary reliance did the Court predicate its decision on the Voting Rights Act. In both of those cases, the question before the Court was whether it was error for the District Court to approve the inclusion of a multimember district in the reapportionment plan under review.
In East Carroll Parish School Board v. Marshall, 424 U. S. 636 (per curiam), the plaintiff contended that population disparities among the parish’s wards had unconstitutionally denied him the right to cast an effective vote for representatives to the school board and the police jury, the governing body of the parish. The District Court found that the parish’s existing apportionment was unconstitutional. As a remedy, the court adopted a reapportionment plan, suggested by the police jury, that provided for at-large election of the members of both the police jury and the school board. Following the 1970 census, the District Court directed the police jury and school board to submit revised reapportionment plans. They resubmitted the plan calling for at-large elections, and the District Court again approved this plan. After a divided panel of the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s decision, the court sitting en banc reversed on the ground that the multimember arrangement approved by the District Court was unconstitutional.
When we reviewed the case, we concluded that it was improper for the Court of Appeals to base its decision on a constitutional ground in view of the fact that the District Court had violated the frequently reaffirmed “rule that when United States district courts are put to the task of fashioning reapportionment plans to supplant concededly invalid state legislation, single-member districts are to be preferred absent unusual circumstances.” Id., at 639. Thus, we held in East Carroll that the plan approved by the District Court was a judicial plan for purposes of substantive review.
Although the issue was not raised by the parties, we also stated in East Carroll that the plan was a judicial plan for purposes of § 5 preclearance. Neither of the parties had argued that § 5’s preclearance requirement was applicable in that case. However, the United States, as amicus curiae, had contended that, because the plan had been submitted by the legislative bodies of a covered jurisdiction, preclearance was required. We rejected that argument in a footnote:
“[Cjourt-ordered plans resulting from equitable jurisdiction over adversary proceedings are not controlled by § 5. Had the East Carroll police jury reapportioned itself on its own authority, clearance under § 5 of the Voting Rights Act would clearly have been required. Connor v. Waller, 421 U. S. 656 (1975). However, in submitting the plan to the District Court, the jury did not purport to reapportion itself in accordance with the 1968 enabling legislation... which permitted police juries and school boards to adopt at-large elections. App. 56. Moreover, since the Louisiana enabling legislation was opposed by the Attorney General of the United States under § 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the jury did not have the authority to reapportion itself.... Since the reapportionment scheme was submitted and adopted pursuant to court order, the preclearance procedures of § 5 do not apply. Connor v. Johnson, 402 U. S. 690, 691 (1971).” 424 U. S., at 638-639, n. 6.
Petitioners rely heavily upon this footnote. While their reliance is understandable, the footnote is not dispositive in this case. The discussion of § 5 in East Carroll was dictum unnecessary to the decision in that case. It is, therefore, not controlling in this case, in which the impact of § 5 is directly placed in issue. Moreover, our subsequent decision in Wise v. Lipscomb, 437 U. S. 535, indicates that, at least to the extent that East Carroll addressed the Voting Rights Act, it must be narrowly limited to its particular facts.
In Wise v. Lipscomb, the District Court held that the system of at-large election to the Dallas City Council unconstitutionally diluted the voting strength of black citizens. The court thereafter gave the City Council an opportunity to prepare and submit a new apportionment plan. In response, the City Council passed a resolution stating the Council’s intention to pass an ordinance providing- for the election of eight council members from single-member districts, and for the election of the three remaining members from the city at large. The District Court conducted a hearing " 'to determine the constitutionality of the new proposed plan’ ” and held that it was "a valid legislative Act.” See 437 U. S., at 538-539. The Court of Appeals reversed, relying on East Carroll to hold that it was error for the District Court merely to evaluate the new plan under constitutional standards without also deciding whether exceptional circumstances justified the inclusion of a multimember district in that judicially imposed reapportionment plan. See 551 F. 2d 1043 (CA5 1977).
The question this Court addressed was whether the District Court had committed error by failing to apply the usual presumption against multimember districts in judicial reapportionment plans. In his opinion announcing the judgment of the Court, Justice White, joined by Justice Stewart, answered that question by holding that the presumption did not apply because it is "appropriate, whenever practicable, to afford a reasonable opportunity for the legislature to meet constitutional requirements by adopting a substitute measure rather than for the federal court to devise and order into effect its own plan.” 437 U. S., at 540. Justice White distinguished East Carroll on the ground that the legislative bodies in that case had not purported to reapportion themselves and, indeed, had been without power to reapportion themselves under state law because the Louisiana enabling statute had been invalidated under the Voting Rights Act. The Dallas City Council, in contrast, had acted within its inherent legislative authority in devising and submitting a reapportionment plan to replace the plan invalidated by the District Court in Wise. See 437 U. S., at 545-546.
Justice Powell’s separate opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, was joined by the The Chief Justice, Justice Blackmun, and Justice Rehnquist. Justice Powell agreed with Justice White’s conclusion that the Dallas reapportionment plan was a legislative plan for purposes of the application of the presumption against multi-member districts. However, relying upon Burns v. Richardson, 384 U. S. 73, Justice Powell disagreed with Justice White’s suggestion that East Carroll had held that a proposed reapportionment plan may be considered legislative only if the legislative body that suggested the plan had authority to enact it under state law. 437 U. S., at 548. In Justice Powell’s view, the legislative body’s authority under state law was irrelevant to the question before the Court. He explained that the critical difference between a legislative plan and a court-imposed plan for purposes of substantive review was that the former reflected the policy choices of the elected representatives of the people, whereas the latter represented the remedial directive of a federal court. Deference to the judgment of the legislative body was required even if that body lacked authority under state law to adopt the proposed reapportionment plan.
In dissent, Justice Marshall, joined by Justice Brennan and Justice Stevens, expressed the opinion that Wise was indistinguishable from East Carroll and that the Court of Appeals therefore had correctly applied the presumption against -multimember districts. 437 U. S., at 550-554. Justice Marshall, however, agreed with the majority that it would not be proper to reach any question under the Voting Rights Act because Texas had not been subject to the Act when the case was pending in the District Court.
While it is clear that Wise, like East Carroll, did not require the Court to decide any statutory issue, the references to § 5 of the Voting Rights Act in Justice White’s opinion announcing the judgment of the Court are nevertheless instructive. After pointing out that “the distinctive impact” of § 5 upon the power of the States to reapportion themselves must be observed in the normal case, 437 U. S., at 541-542, Justice White stated:
“Plans imposed by court order are not subject to the requirements of § 5, but under that provision, a State or political subdivision subject to the Act may not 'enact or seek to administer’ any 'different’ voting qualification or procedure with respect to voting without either obtaining a declaratory judgment from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia that the proposed change ‘does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color’ or submitting the change to the Attorney General and affording him an appropriate opportunity to object thereto. A new reapportionment plan enacted by a State, including one purportedly adopted in response to invalidation of the prior plan by a federal court, will not be considered ‘effective as law,’ Connor v. Finch, 431 U. S., at 412; Connor v. Waller, 421 U. S. 656 (1975), until it has been submitted and has received clearance under § 5. Neither, in those circumstances, until clearance has been obtained, should a court address the constitutionality of the new measure. Connor v. Finch, supra; Connor v. Waller, supra.” Id., at 542 (footnote omitted).
Neither East Carroll nor Wise decided the precise question that is now presented. Nonetheless, both Justice White’s opinion and Justice Powell’s opinion surely foreshadowed the holding we announce today. For both opinions indicate that the fact that the reapportionment plan before us was devised in response to an order of a federal court does not change its character as a legislative plan. In addition, Justice Powell’s opinion indicates that the Commissioners Court’s power under Texas law to adopt this plan should be irrelevant to the decision in this case.
Ill
This is not a ease in which the language of the controlling statute unambiguously answers the question presented. The Solicitor General, on behalf of the United States as amicus curiae, contends that a covered jurisdiction “seek[s] to administer” a new voting practice when it submits a redistricting plan to a district court as a proposed remedy for a constitutional violation. This is a plausible but not an obviously correct reading of the statutory language. For there is force to the contrary argument that Kleberg County had no intention to administer any new plan until after it was given legal effect by incorporation in a judicial decree. Arguably, therefore, the statute has no application before the District Court enters its decree, and because the Act does not require the District Court to have its decisions precleared, see Connor v. Johnson, 402 U. S. 690, once such a decree is entered it is too late for the statute to qualify the county’s duty to administer the plan as entered by the District Court. We find sufficient ambiguity in the statutory language to make it appropriate to turn to legislative history for guidance.
In 1975, when Congress adopted the amendments that ultimately brought Texas and Kleberg County within the coverage of the Act, it directed special attention to § 5 and to the redistricting that would be required after the 1980 census. In its Report on S. 1279, the bill that extended the life of the Voting Rights Act beyond 1975, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary explained “the future need for the Act” by pointing out that redrafting of district lines to correct violations of the one-person, one-vote rule created opportunities to disenfranchise minority voters. “By providing that Section 5 protections not be removed before 1985, S. 1279 would guarantee Federal protection of.minority voting rights during the years that the post-census redistrictings will take place.”
The Committee unambiguously stated that the statutory protections are to be available even when the redistricting is ordered by a federal court to remedy a constitutional violation that has been established in pending federal litigation. The Committee Report is crystal clear on this point:
“Thus, for example, where a federal district court holds unconstitutional an apportionment plan which predates the effective date of coverage under the Voting Rights Act, any subsequent plan ordinarily would be subject to Section 5 review. In the typical case, the court either will direct the governmental body to adopt a new plan and present it to the court for consideration or else itself choose a plan from among those presented by various parties to the litigation. In either situation, the court should defer its consideration of — or selection among- — any plans presented to it until such time as these plans have been submitted for Section 5 review. Only after such review should the district court proceed to any remaining fourteenth or fifteenth amendment questions that may be raised.
“The one exception where Section 5 review would not ordinarily be available is where the court, because of exigent circumstances, actually fashions the plan itself instead of relying on a plan presented by a litigant. This is the limited meaning of the 'court decree’ exception recognized in Connor v. Johnson, 402 U. S. 690 (1971). Even in these cases, however, if the governmental body subsequently adopts a plan patterned after the court’s plan, Section 5 review would be required, Connor v. Waller, supra. Furthermore, in fashioning the plan, the court should follow the appropriate Section 5 standards, including the body of administrative and judicial precedents developed in Section 5 cases.” Senate Report, at 18-19.
The view expressed by the Committee is consistent with the basic purposes of the statute and with the well-settled rule that § 5 is to be given a broad construction. See, e. g., Dougherty County Board of Education v. White, 439 U. S. 32, 38; United States v. Sheffield Board of Commissioners, 435 U. S. 110, 122-123; Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U. S. 379, 387. The preclearance procedure is designed to forestall the danger that local decisions to modify voting practices will impair minority access to the electoral process. The federal interest in preventing local jurisdictions from making changes that adversely affect the rights of minority voters is the same whether a change is required to remedy a constitutional. violation or is merely the product of a community’s perception of the desirability of responding to new social patterns.
It is true, of course, that the federal interest may be protected by the federal district court presiding over voting rights litigation, but sound reasons support the Committee’s view that the normal § 5 preclearance procedures should nevertheless be followed in cases such as this. The procedures contemplated by the statute reflect a congressional choice in favor of specialized review- — either by the Attorney General of the United States or by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Because a large number of voting changes must necessarily undergo the preclearance process, centralized review enhances the likelihood that recurring problems will be resolved in a consistent and expeditious way. Moreover, if covered jurisdictions could avoid the normal preclearance procedure by awaiting litigation challenging a refusal to redistrict after a census is completed, the statute might have the unintended effect of actually encouraging delay in making obviously needed changes in district boundaries. The federal interest in evenhanded review of all changes in covered jurisdictions is furthered by the application of the statute in cases such as this.
The application of the statute is not dependent on a showing that the county’s proposed plan is defective in any way. Cf. United States v. Board of Supervisors of Warren County, 429 U. S. 642 (per curiam); Morris v. Gressette, 432 U. S. 491. The prophylactic purposes of the § 5 remedy are achieved by automatically requiring “review of all voting changes prior to implementation by the covered jurisdictions.” Senate Report, at 15 (emphasis supplied). It is therefore not material that the plan submitted by the Corn-missioners Court of Kleberg County in this case was actually prepared by an independent expert. His expertise may facilitate the satisfactory completion of the preclearance process, but it does not obviate the preclearance requirement itself. For just as the reasons for the county’s decision to propose a new plan are irrelevant to the statutory preclearance requirement, so also is the particular method that is employed in formulating the plan that is submitted to the court on behalf of the county irrelevant.
The application of the statute also is not dependent upon any showing that the Commissioners Court had authority under state law to enact the apportionment plan at issue in this case. As Justice Powell pointed out in Wise v. Lipscomb, 437 U. S. 535, the essential characteristic of a legislative plan is the exercise of legislative judgment. The fact that particular requirements of state law may not be satisfied before a plan is proposed to a federal court does not alter this essential characteristic. The applicability of § 5 to specific remedial plans is a matter of federal law that federal courts should determine pursuant to a uniform federal rule.
As we construe the congressional mandate, it requires that whenever a covered jurisdiction submits a proposal reflecting the policy choices of the elected representatives of the people — no matter what constraints have limited the choices available to them — the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act is applicable. It was, therefore, error for the District Court to act on the county’s proposed- plan before it had been submitted to the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for preclearance.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore affirmed.
It is so ordered.
The Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, 79 Stat. 437, and was amended in 1970, 84 Stat. 314, and in 1975, 89 Stat. 400. In relevant part, § 5, 89 Stat. 404, as set forth in 42 U. S. C. § 1973c, now provides: “[W]henever a State or political subdivision with respect to which the prohibitions set forth in section 1973b (a) of this title based upon determinations made under the third sentence of section 1973b (b) of this title are in effect shall enact or seek to administer any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect on November 1, 1972, such State or subdivision may institute an action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for a declaratory judgment that such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure does not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color, or in contravention of the guarantees set forth in section 1973b (f) (2) of this title, and unless and until the court enters such judgment no person shall be denied the right to vote for failure to comply with such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure: Provided, That such qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure may be enforced without such proceeding if the qualification, prerequisite, standard, practice, or procedure has been submitted by the chief legal officer or other appropriate official of such State or subdivision to the Attorney General and the Attorney General has not interposed an objection within sixty days after such submission, or upon good cause shown, to facilitate an expedited approval within sixty days after such submission, the Attorney General has affirmatively indicated that such objection will not be made.”
Section 4 of the Act identifies the jurisdictions that are subject to the Act’s prohibitions. One of the determinants of coverage is the use of a “test or device” as a prerequisite for registration or voting. See 42 U. S. C. §§ 1973b (b), (c). In 1975, Congress enlarged the coverage of the Act by changing the definition of “test or device” to protect non-English-speaking citizens who constitute more than 5% of the voting age population in any jurisdiction. The amendment provides:
“In addition to the meaning given the term under subsection (e) of this section, the term ‘test or device’ shall also mean any practice or requirement by which any State or political subdivision provided any registration or voting notices, forms, instructions, assistance, or other materials or information relating to the electoral process, including ballots, only in the English language, where the Director of the Census determines that more than five per centum of the citizens of voting age residing in such State or political subdivision are members of a single language minority.” 89 Stat. 401-402, 42 U. S. C. § 1973b (f) (3).
As a result of this amendment, Texas and its political subdivisions became covered jurisdictions. See Briscoe v. Bell, 432 U. S. 404.
See generally Tex. Const., Art. 5, § 18; Tex. Rev. Civ. Stat. Ann., Art. 2351 (Vernon 1971). Elections are staggered in the four precincts so that two commissioners are elected every two years.
The District Court certified two classes of Kleberg County voters as plaintiffs: (1) the class of all registered voters who were denied a vote of equal weight in the election of county commissioners due to the mal-apportionment of the commissioners’ precincts; and (2) the class of all Mexican-American voters whose voting power had been diluted under the Kleberg County apportionment, plan. See App. to Pet. for Cert. A-2, A-4.
In February 1978, the District Court had refused to grant the plaintiffs preliminary relief enjoining the May 1978 primary elections, relying in part on the uncertainty of the statistical data presented by the plaintiffs to establish their claim of malapportionment. After the primary election, the Court of Appeals vacated the District Court’s order denying a preliminary injunction and remanded for reconsideration in the light of its decision in Lister v. Commissioners Court, 566 F. 2d 490 (1978), which held that a Commissioners Court “had a clear duty to reapportion on the basis of the 1970 Census.” Id., at 492. Upon remand, the case proceeded to trial in the District Court.
The 1970 census indicated that Kleberg County had 33,166 residents. If the precinct boundaries had been drawn to achieve perfect population equality, each precinct would have had 8,291 residents. In fact, however, the largest precinct contained 9,928 residents and the smallest only 6,702. The maximum deviation from the largest precinct to the smallest was therefore 38.9%. See App. to Pet. for Cert. A-5. This apportionment plan had been adopted in 1968, and the precincts had not been reapportioned following the 1970 census.
In ordering the defendants to submit a proposed reapportiónment plan, the District Court noted: “The initial burden of fashioning a constitutionally permissible remedy is on the County Commissioners Court.” Id., at A-19.
Although the Commissioners Court employed Dr. Nash, he was not given extensive instructions with respect to preparation of the reapportionment plan. Dr. Nash’s testimony in the District Court reveals that the plan’s details were left largely within his discretion:
“Q. What instructions did you receive at the time of notification from Judge McDaniel in reference to drafting the new plan?
“A. They wanted it broken down on a one-person/one-vote basis and that was the extent of their input on how I would do it.” App. 25.
The Commissioners Court did not ask Dr. Nash to take into consideration geographical boundaries, previous county maintenance districts, or the ethnic balance of individual precincts. Id., at 26. In drafting the plan, Dr. Nash was primarily influenced by population considerations; he also attempted to stay within the boundaries of existing voting precincts as much as possible. Id., at 29-30.
After Dr. Nash submitted his proposal, the Commissioners Court asked him to redraw one boundary in order to locate the county courthouse in Precinct One instead of Precinct Four. Because there were no residents on the only block affected by this change, see id., at 28, no one contends that it was significant for purposes of this litigation.
See n. 1, supra.
As Justice Powell noted in granting petitioners’ application for a stay:
“It is fair to say that the opinions in East Carroll and Wise v. Lipscomb fall considerably short of providing clear guidance to the courts that initially address this difficult issue. It would be helpful, therefore, for this Court to exercise its responsibility to provide such guidance.” 448 U. S., at 1322.
Pet. for Cert. I; see also Brief for Petitioners II.
See n. 2, supra.
In our prior decisions construing the Act, we have described in detail the preclearance procedures. See, e. g., Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U. S. 544; South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301; Georgia v. United States, 411 U. S. 526; Morris v. Gressette, 432 U. S. 491.
In Johnson, the Court summarily rejected the suggestion that an apportionment plan formulated by a federal court must be submitted for preclearance under § 5:
“A decree of the United States District Court is not within reach of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.” 402 U. S., at 691.
In his dissenting opinion in Johnson, Justice Black added:
“Needless to say I completely agree with the holding of the majority that a reapportionment plan formulated and ordered by a federal district court need not be approved by the United States Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Under our constitutional system it would be strange indeed to construe § 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 439, 42 U. S. C. § 1973c (1964 ed., Supp. V), to require that actions of a federal court be stayed and reviewed by the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.” Id., at 695.
Chapman involved reapportionment of the Legislature of North Dakota, a jurisdiction that is not covered by the Voting Rights Act.
See Zimmer v. McKeithen, 467 F. 2d 1381 (CA5 1972).
See Zimmer v. McKeithen, 485 F. 2d 1297 (CA5 1973) (en banc). In the Court of Appeals, the appellants had also argued that the at-large election was not permitted by state law because the Louisiana statute that authorized the use of multimember districts had never become effective since it had not been precleared pursuant to § 5 of the Voting Rights Act. See 485 F. 2d, at 1301-1302, and n. 7.
The Chief Justice, in his concurring opinion in
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
B
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
OPINION OF THE COURT
[562 U.S. 310]
Justice Ginsburg
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case concerns California’s time limitation on applications for postcon-viction (habeas corpus) relief. The question presented: Does California’s timeliness requirement qualify as an independent state ground adequate to bar habeas corpus relief in federal court?
California does not employ fixed statutory deadlines to determine the timeliness of a state prisoner’s petition for habeas corpus. Instead, California directs petitioners to file known claims “as promptly as the circumstances allow.” In re Clark, 5 Cal. 4th 750, 765, n. 5, 855 P.2d 729, 738, n. 5 (1993). Petitioners are further instructed to state when they first learned of the asserted claims and to explain why they did not seek post-conviction relief sooner. In re Robbins, 18 Cal. 4th 770, 780, 959 P.2d 311, 317-318 (1998). Claims substantially delayed without justification may be denied as untimely. Ibid.; Clark, 5 Cal. 4th, at 765, n. 5, 855 P.2d, at 738, n. 5.
California courts signal that a habeas petition is denied as untimely by citing the controlling decisions, i.e., Clark and Robbins. A spare order denying a petition without explanation or citation ordinarily ranks as a disposition on the merits. Tr. of Oral Arg. 7; see Harrington v. Richter, ante, at 99, 131 S. Ct. 770, 178 L. Ed. 2d 624. California courts may elect to preter-mit the question whether a petition is timely and simply deny the petition, thereby signaling that the petition lacks merit.
Petitioner below, respondent here, Charles W. Martin, presented the claims at issue—all alleging ineffective assistance of counsel—in a ha-beas petition filed in the California Supreme Court nearly five years after his conviction became final. He stated no reason for the long delay. Citing Clark and Robbins, the court denied Martin’s petition. In turn, the U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of California dismissed Martin’s federal habeas petition raising the same ineffective-assistance claims. Denial of Martin’s state-court petition as untimely, the District Court held, rested on an
[562 U.S. 311]
adequate and independent state ground, i.e., Martin’s failure to seek relief in state court “without substantial delay.” See Robbins, 18 Cal. 4th, at 787, 959 P.2d, at 322.
The U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the District Court’s decision. Contrasting the precision of “fixed statutory deadlines” with California’s proscription of “substantial delay,” the appeals court held that California’s standard lacked the clarity and certainty necessary to constitute an adequate state bar. 357 Fed. Appx. 793, 794 (2009) (relying on Townsend v. Knowles, 562 F.3d 1200 (CA9 2009)).
In a recent decision, Beard v. Kindler, 558 U.S. 53, 130 S. Ct. 612, 175 L. Ed. 2d 417 (2009), this Court clarified that 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. Guided by that decision, we hold that California is not put to the choice of imposing a specific deadline for habeas petitions (which would almost certainly rule out Martin’s nearly five-year delay) or preserving the flexibility of current practice, “but only at the cost of undermining the finality of state court judgments.” Id., at 61, 130 S. Ct. 612, 175 L. Ed. 2d 417. In so ruling, we stress that Martin has not alleged that California’s time bar, either by design or in operation, discriminates against federal claims or claimants.
I
A
While most States set determinate time limits for collateral relief applications, in California, neither statute nor rule of court does so. Instead, California courts “appl[y] a general ‘reasonableness’ standard” to judge whether a habeas petition is timely filed. Carey v. Saffold, 536 U.S. 214, 222, 122 S. Ct. 2134, 153 L. Ed. 2d 260 (2002). The basic instruction provided by the California Supreme Court is simply that “a [habeas] petition should be filed as promptly as the circumstances allow . . . .” Clark, 5 Cal. 4th, at 765, n. 5, 855 P.2d, at 738, n. 5.
[562 U.S. 312]
Three leading decisions describe California’s timeliness requirement: Robbins, Clark, and In re Gallego, 18 Cal. 4th 825, 959 P.2d 290 (1998). A prisoner must seek habeas relief without “substantial delay,” Robbins, 18 Cal. 4th, at 780, 959 P.2d, at 317; Gallego, 18 Cal. 4th, at 833, 959 P.2d, at 296; Clark, 5 Cal. 4th, at 783, 855 P.2d, at 750, as “measured from the time the petitioner or counsel knew, or reasonably should have known, of the information offered in support of the claim and the legal basis for the claim,” Robbins, 18 Cal. 4th, at 787, 959 P.2d, at 322. Petitioners in non-capital cases have “the burden of establishing (i) absence of substantial delay, (ii) good cause for the delay, or (iii) that the claim falls within an exception to the bar of untimeliness.” Id., at 780, 959 P.2d, at 317.
California’s collateral review regime differs from that of other States in a second notable respect: All California courts “have original jurisdiction in habeas corpus proceedings,” Cal. Const., Art. VI, § 10, thus “no appeal lies from the denial of a petition for writ of habeas corpus,” Clark, 5 Cal. 4th, at 767, n. 7, 855 P.2d, at 740, n. 7. “[A] prisoner whose petition has been denied by the superior court can obtain review of his claims only by the filing of a new petition in the Court of Appeal.” Ibid. The new petition, however, must be confined to claims raised in the initial petition. See In re Martinez, 46 Cal. 4th 945, 956, 209 P.3d 908, 915 (2009).
Because a habeas petitioner may skip over the lower courts and file directly in the California Supreme Court, In re Kler, 188 Cal. App. 4th 1399, 1403, 115 Cal. Rptr. 3d 889, 891-892 (2010), that court rules on a staggering number
[562 U.S. 313]
of habeas petitions each year. The court issues generally unelaborated “summary denials” of petitions that “d[o] not state a prima facie case for relief’ or that contain “claims [that] are all procedurally barred.” People v. Romero, 8 Cal. 4th 728, 737, 883 P.2d 388, 391 (1994) (internal quotation marks omitted). A summary denial citing Clark and Robbins means that the petition is rejected as untimely. See, e.g., Brief for Habeas Corpus Resource Center as Amicus Curiae 20, and n. 23. California courts have discretion, however, to bypass a timeliness issue and, instead, summarily reject the petition for want of merit. See Robbins, 18 Cal. 4th, at 778, n. 1, 959 P.2d, at 316, n. 1. See also Saffold, 536 U.S., at 225-226, 122 S. Ct. 2134, 153 L. Ed. 2d 260.
B
In December 1986, Charles Martin participated in a robbery and murder in California. Martin fled the State, but eight years later he was extradited to California to stand trial. Convicted in state court of murder and robbery, Martin was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 1997, the California Court of Appeal affirmed his conviction and sentence, and the California Supreme Court denied review.
Martin initiated his first round of state habeas proceedings in 1998, and the next year, the California Supreme Court denied his petition. He then filed a habeas petition in the appropriate U. S. District Court. Finding that Martin’s federal petition included ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims
[562 U.S. 314]
he had not aired in state court, the District Court stayed the federal proceedings pending Martin’s return to state court to exhaust his remedies there.
In March 2002, Martin filed his second habeas petition in the California Supreme Court, raising the federal ineffective-assistance claims his earlier filing omitted. He gave no reason for his failure to assert the additional claims until nearly five years after his sentence and conviction became final. Tr. of Oral Arg. 36, 39. In September 2002, the California Supreme Court denied Martin’s petition in an order typical of that court’s summary dispositions for failure to file “as promptly as the circumstances allow.” Clark, 5 Cal. 4th, at 765, n. 5, 855 P.2d, at 738, n. 5. The order read in its entirety: “Petition for writ of habeas corpus is DENIED. (See In re Clark (1993) 5 Cal. 4th 750, In re Robbins (1998) 18 Cal. 4th 770, 780.).” See App. to Pet. for Cert. 60.
Having exhausted state postconviction remedies, Martin returned to federal court and filed an amended petition. Based upon the California Supreme Court’s time-bar disposition, the District Court dismissed Martin’s belatedly asserted claims as procedurally precluded. Id., at 27, 57. The Ninth Circuit vacated the dismissal order and remanded the case, directing the District Court to determine the “adequacy” of the State’s time bar. Martin v. Hubbard, 192 Fed. Appx. 616, 618 (2006). The District Court again rejected Martin’s petition, stating that “[t]he California timeliness bar as set forth in ... Clark/Robbins is clearly defined, well established and consistently applied.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 4.
[562 U.S. 315]
The Ninth Circuit again disagreed. Controlled by its prior decision in Townsend, 562 F.3d, at 1207-1208, the Court of Appeals held that California’s time bar “has yet to be firmly defined” and was not shown by the State to be “consistently applied.” 357 Fed. Appx., at 794. The remand order directed the District Court to determine the merits of the claims Martin asserted in his second petition to the California Supreme Court.
We granted certiorari, 561 U.S. 1005, 130 S. Ct. 3464, 177 L. Ed. 2d 1054 (2010), to determine the “adequacy” of California’s practice under which a prisoner may be barred from collaterally attacking his conviction when he has “substantially delayed” filing his habeas petition. Martin does not here dispute that the time limitation is an “independent” state ground. See Brief in Opposition 5-6. See also Bennett v. Mueller, 322 F.3d 573, 582-583 (CA9 2003). Nor does he contend that he established “cause” and “prejudice,” i.e., cause for the delay in asserting his claims and actual prejudice resulting from the State’s alleged violation of his constitutional rights. See Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 87-91, 97 S. Ct. 2497, 53 L. Ed. 2d 594 (1977).
II
A
“A federal habeas court will not review a claim rejected by a state court ‘if the decision of [the state] court rests on a state law ground that is independent of the federal question and adequate to support the judgment.’ ” Kindler, 558 U.S., at 55, 130 S. Ct. 612, 175 L. Ed. 2d 417 (quoting Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 729, 111 S. Ct. 2546, 115 L. Ed. 2d 640 (1991)). The state-law ground may be a substantive rule dispositive of the case, or a procedural barrier to adjudication of the claim on the merits. See Sykes, 433 U.S., at 81-82, 90, 97 S. Ct. 2497, 53 L. Ed. 2d 594.
Ordinarily, a state prisoner seeking federal habeas relief must first “exhaus[t] the remedies available in the courts of the State,” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b)(1)(A), thereby affording those courts “the first opportunity to address and correct
[562 U.S. 316]
alleged violations of [the] prisoner’s federal rights,” Coleman, 501 U.S., at 731, 111 S. Ct. 2546, 115 L. Ed. 2d 640. The adequate and independent state ground doctrine furthers that objective, for without it, “habeas petitioners would be able to avoid the exhaustion requirement by defaulting their federal claims in state court.” Id., at 732, 111 S. Ct. 2546, 115 L. Ed. 2d 640. Accordingly, absent showings of “cause” and “prejudice,” see Sykes, 433 U.S., at 84-85, 97 S. Ct. 2497, 53 L. Ed. 2d 594, federal habeas relief will be unavailable when (1) “a state court [has] declined to address a prisoner’s federal claims because the prisoner had failed to meet a state procedural requirement,” and (2) “the state judgment rests on independent and adequate state procedural grounds.” Coleman, 501 U.S., at 729-730, 111 S. Ct. 2546, 115 L. Ed. 2d 640.
B
To qualify as an “adequate” procedural ground, a state rule must be “firmly established and regularly followed.” Kindler, 558 U.S., at 60-61, 130 S. Ct. 612, 175 L. Ed. 2d 417 (internal quotation marks omitted). “[A] discretionary state procedural rule,” we held in Kindler, “can serve as an adequate ground to bar federal habeas review.” Id., at 60, 130 S. Ct. 612, 175 L. Ed. 2d 417. A “rule can be ‘firmly established’ and ‘regularly followed,’ ” Kindler observed, “even if the appropriate exercise of discretion may permit consideration of a federal claim in some cases but not others.” Id., at 60, 130 S. Ct. 612, 175 L. Ed. 2d 417.
[562 U.S. 317]
California’s time rule, although discretionary, meets the “firmly established” criterion, as Kindler comprehended that requirement. The California Supreme Court, as earlier noted, framed the timeliness requirement for habeas petitioners in a trilogy of cases. See supra, at 312, 179 L. Ed. 2d, at 68. Those decisions instruct habeas petitioners to “al-leg[e] with specificity” the absence of substantial delay, good cause for delay, or eligibility for one of four exceptions to the time bar. Gallego, 18 Cal. 4th, at 838, 959 P.2d, at 299; see Robbins, 18 Cal. 4th, at 780, 959 P.2d, at 317. And California’s case law made it altogether plain that Martin’s delay of nearly five years ranked as “substantial.” See Gallego, 18 Cal. 4th, at 829-831, 838, and n. 13, 959 P.2d, at 293-294, 299, and n. 13 (delay of four years barred claim); In re Tsaturyan, No. B156012, 2002 WL 1614107, *3 (Cal. App., July 23, 2002) (delay of 16 months barred claim). See also In re Miller, No. B186447, 2006 WL 1980385, *2-*3 (Cal. App., July 17, 2006) (delay of two years and six months barred claim).
Martin nevertheless urges that California’s rule is too vague to be regarded as “firmly established.” “ [Reasonable time” period and “substantial delay,” he maintains, are “meaningless terms.” Brief for Respondent 48 (internal quotation marks omitted). We disagree. Indeterminate language is typical of discretionary rules. Application of those rules in particular circumstances, however, can supply the requisite clarity.
[562 U.S. 318]
Congressional statutes and this Court’s decisions, we note, have employed time limitations that are not stated in precise, numerical terms. Former Federal Habeas Corpus Rule 9(a), for example, set no fixed time limit on submission of habeas petitions. The Rule permitted dismissal of a state prisoner’s petition when it appeared that delay in commencing litigation “prejudiced [the State] in its ability to respond.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254 Rule 9(a) (1994 ed.). To stave off dismissal, the petitioner had to show that he could not earlier have known, “by the exercise of reasonable diligence,” the grounds on which he based the petition. Ibid. In Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. 269, 125 S. Ct. 1528, 161 L. Ed. 2d 440 (2005), we instructed district courts, when employing stay and abeyance procedure, see supra, at 314, n. 3, 179 L. Ed. 2d, at 69, to “place reasonable time limits on a petitioner’s trip to state court and back,” 544 U.S., at 278, 125 S. Ct. 1528, 161 L. Ed. 2d 440.
Current federal habeas prescriptions limit the time for filing a petition to one year. The clock runs from “the date on which the [supporting] facts . . . could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence.” 28 U.S.C. § 2255(f)(4) (2006 ed., Supp. Ill) (applicable to federal prisoners); see § 2244(d)(1)(D) (2006 ed.) (similar provision applicable to state prisoners). “[D]ue diligence,” we have observed, “is an inexact measure of how much delay is too much.” Johnson v. United States, 544 U.S. 295, 309, n. 7, 125 S. Ct. 1571, 161 L. Ed. 2d 542 (2005) (internal quotation marks omitted). But “use of an imprecise standard,” we immediately added, “is no justification for depriving [a rule’s] language of any meaning.” Ibid. “[I]t would seem particularly strange to 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, 175 L. Ed. 2d 417.
Nor is California’s time rule vulnerable on the ground that it is not regularly followed. Each year, the California Supreme Court summarily denies hundreds of habeas petitions by citing Clark and Robbins. Brief for Appellant in
[562 U.S. 319]
No. 08-15752 (CA9), pp. 31-32. On the same day the court denied Martin’s petition, it issued 21 other Clark/Robbins summary denials. See Brief for Habeas Corpus Resource Center as Amicus Curiae 20. In reasoned opinions, too, California courts regularly invoke Clark, Rob bins, and Gallego to determine whether a habeas petition is time barred.
Martin argued below that California’s time bar is not regularly followed in this sense: Use 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” Brief for Appellant in No. 08-15752 (CA9), pp. 37-38. We see no reason to reject California’s time bar simply because a court may opt to bypass the Clark/Robbins assessment and summarily dismiss a petition on the merits, if that is the easier path. See, e.g., Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 697, 104 S. Ct. 2052, 80 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1984) (“[A] court need not determine whether counsel’s performance was deficient . . . [i]f it is easier to dispose of an ineffectiveness claim on the ground of lack of sufficient prejudice . . . .”); cf. Ruhrgas AG v. Marathon Oil Co., 526 U.S. 574, 585, 119 S. Ct. 1563, 143 L. Ed. 2d 760 (1999) (“It is hardly novel for a federal court to choose among threshold grounds for denying audience to a case on the merits.”).
The Ninth Circuit concluded that California’s time bar is not consistently applied because outcomes under the rule vary from case to case. See 357 Fed. Appx., at 794. For example, in People v. Fairbanks, No. C047810, 2006 WL 950267, *2-*3 (Cal. App., Apr. 11, 2006), a one-year delay was found substantial, while in In re Little, No. D047468, 2008 WL 142832, *4, n. 6 (Cal. App., Jan. 16, 2008), a delay of 14 months was determined to be insubstantial.
[562 U.S. 320]
A discretionary rule ought not be disregarded automatically upon a showing of seeming inconsistencies. Discretion enables a court to home in on case-specific considerations and to avoid the harsh results that sometimes attend consistent application of an unyielding rule. See Prihoda v. McCaughtry, 910 F.2d 1379, 1385 (CA7 1990) (“Uncertainty is not enough to disqualify a state’s procedural ground as one ‘adequate’ under federal law. If it were, states would be induced to make their rules draconian . . . .”).
A state ground, no doubt, may be found inadequate when “discretion has been exercised to impose novel and unforeseeable requirements without fair or substantial support in prior state law . . . .” 16B C. Wright, A. Miller, & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure § 4026, p. 386 (2d ed. 1996) (hereinafter Wright & Miller); see Prihoda, 910 F.2d, at 1383 (state ground “applied infrequently, unexpectedly, or freakishly” may “discriminate] against the federal rights asserted” and therefore rank as “inadequate”). Martin does not contend, however, that in his case, the California Supreme Court exercised its discretion in a surprising or unfair manner.
“[S]ound procedure often requires discretion to exact or excuse compliance with strict rules,” 16B Wright & Miller § 4028, p. 403, and we have no cause to discourage standards allowing courts to exercise such discretion. As this Court
[562 U.S. 321]
observed in Kindler, if forced to choose between mandatory rules certain to be found “adequate,” or more supple prescriptions that federal courts may disregard as “inadequate,” “many States [might] opt for mandatory rules to avoid the high costs that come with plenary federal review.” 558 U.S., at 61, 130 S. Ct. 612, 175 L. Ed. 2d 417. “Th[at] result would be particularly unfortunate for [habeas petitioners], who would lose the opportunity to argue that a procedural default should be excused through the exercise of judicial discretion.” Ibid.
C
Today’s decision, trained on California’s timeliness rule for habeas petitions, leaves unaltered this Court’s repeated recognition that federal courts must carefully examine state procedural requirements to ensure that they do not operate to discriminate against claims of federal rights. See Brown v. Western R. Co. of Ala., 338 U.S. 294, 298-299, 70 S. Ct. 105, 94 L. Ed. 100 (1949); Davis v. Wechsler, 263 U.S. 22, 24-25, 44 S. Ct. 13, 68 L. Ed. 143 (1923); 16B Wright & Miller § 4026, p. 386 (noting “risk that discretionary procedural sanctions may be invoked more harshly against disfavored federal rights, . . . denying] [litigants] a fair opportunity to present federal claims”). See also Kindler, 558 U.S., at 65, 130 S. Ct. 612, 175 L. Ed. 2d 417 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (a state procedural ground would be inadequate if the challenger shows a “purpose or pattern to evade constitutional guarantees”). On the record before us, however, there is no basis for concluding that California’s timeliness rule operates to the particular disadvantage of petitioners asserting federal rights.
For the reasons stated, we find no inadequacy in California’s timeliness rule generally or as applied in Martin’s case.
[562 U.S. 322]
The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is therefore reversed.
. A petition for habeas relief in a capital case is presumed to be filed without substantial delay if it is filed within 180 days after the final due date for the filing of [an] appellant’s reply brief on the direct appeal . . . California Supreme Court Policies Regarding Cases Arising Prom Judgments of Death, Policy 3, Standard 1-1.1 (2010).
. In fiscal year 2008-2009, the California Supreme Court issued dispositions in 3,258 original habeas actions. Judicial Council of California, 2010 Court Statistics Report, Statewide Caseload Trends, 1999-2000 Through 2008-2009, p. 6, http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/reference/documents/ csr2010.pdf (as visited Feb. 15, 2011, and in Clerk of Court’s case file). During a similar time period, a total of 2,210 habeas cases were on this Court’s docket. See October Term 2008 Filings by Case Type (available in Clerk of Court’s case file).
. Rather than dismiss a petition containing both exhausted and unexhausted claims, “a district court might stay the petition and hold it in abeyance while the petitioner returns to state court to exhaust his previously unexhausted claims. Once the petitioner exhausts his state remedies, the district court will lift the stay and allow the petitioner to proceed in federal court.” Rhines v. Weber, 544 U.S. 269, 275-276, 125 S. Ct. 1528, 161 L. Ed. 2d 440 (2005).
. We have also recognized a “limited category’’ of “exceptional cases in which exorbitant application of a generally sound rule renders the state ground inadequate to stop consideration of a federal question.’’ Lee v. Kemna, 534 U.S. 362, 376, 122 S. Ct. 877, 151 L. Ed. 2d 820 (2002). In Lee, for example, the defendant unsuccessfully moved for a continuance when, for reasons unknown to him, his alibi witnesses left the courthouse the day they were scheduled to testify. This Court held inadequate to bar federal review a state court’s persnickety application of a rule detailing formal requirements for continuance motions. The defendant had substantially complied with the rule’s key requirement and flawless compliance would have been unavailing given the trial court’s reason for denying the motion. See id., at 381-382, 122 S. Ct. 877, 151 L. Ed. 2d 820. Martin does not suggest that the application of California’s timeliness rule in his case falls within the exceptional category Lee described and illustrated. See Brief for Respondent 28, 29, 54.
. An untimely petition “will be entertained on the merits if the petitioner demonstrates (i) that error of constitutional magnitude led to a trial that was so fundamentally unfair that absent the error no reasonable judge or jury would have convicted the petitioner; (ii) that the petitioner is actually innocent of the crime or crimes of which he or she was convicted; (iii) that the death penalty was imposed by a sentencing authority that had such a grossly misleading profile of the petitioner before it that, absent the trial error or omission, no reasonable judge or jury would have imposed a sentence of death; or (iv) that the petitioner was convicted or sentenced under an invalid statute.’’ In re Robbins, 18 Cal. 4th 770, 780-781, 959 P.2d 311, 318 (1998).
. See, e.g., In re Sanders, 21 Cal. 4th 697, 703, 981 P.2d 1038, 1042 (1999); In re Hamilton, 20 Cal. 4th 273, 283, n. 5, 975 P.2d 600, 605, n. 5 (1999); In re Watson, 104 Cal. Rptr. 3d 403, 407 (App. 2010) (officially depublished); In re Nuñez, 173 Cal. App. 4th 709, 723, 93 Cal. Rptr. 3d 242, 252 (2009).
. Closer inspection may reveal that “seeming ‘inconsistency [s]’ . . . are not necessarily . . . arbitrarly] or irrationa[l]." Thornburgh v. Abbott, 490 U.S. 401, 417, n. 15, 109 S. Ct. 1874, 104 L. Ed. 2d 459 (1989). Fairbanks and Little are illustrative. In Fairbanks, the court found that petitioner did not act diligently when she waited to withdraw her guilty plea until one year after learning that revocation of her driver’s license was irreversible. 2006 WL 950267, *2-*3. In Little, a pro se prisoner claimed that his trial counsel should have raised a posttraumatic stress disorder defense. Although the filing delay was 14 months, the court entertained it on the merits. 2008 WL 142832, *4, *14. Given the discrete context in which each case arose, the two decisions present no square conflict.
. See also 16B Wright & Miller § 4026, pp. 385-386 (“Precisely defined rules cannot take account of the gravity of a procedural failure, the strength of the excuses offered, or the importance of the procedural and substantive consequences of excusing or punishing the failure.’’).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The expanding range of federal regulatory activity and growth in the Government sector of the economy have increased federal agencies’ demands for information about the activities of private individuals and corporations. These developments have paralleled a related concern about secrecy in Government and abuse of power. The Freedom of Information Act (hereinafter FOIA) was a response to this concern, but it has also had a largely unforeseen tendency to exacerbate the uneasiness of those who comply with governmental demands for information. For under the FOIA third parties have been able to obtain Government files containing information submitted by corporations and individuals who thought that the information would be held in confidence.
This case belongs to a class that has been popularly denominated “reverse-FOIA” suits. The Chrysler Corp. (hereinafter Chrysler) seeks to enjoin agency disclosure on the grounds that it is inconsistent with the FOIA and 18 U. S. C. § 1905, a criminal statute with origins in the 19th century that proscribes disclosure of certain classes of business and personal information. We agree with the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that the FOIA is purely a disclosure statute and affords Chrysler no private right of action to enjoin agency disclosure. But we cannot agree with that court’s conclusion that this disclosure is “authorized by law” within the meaning of § 1905. Therefore, we vacate the Court of Appeals’ judgment and remand so that it can consider whether the documents at issue in this case fall within the terms of § 1905.
I
As a party to numerous Government contracts, Chrysler is required to comply with Executive Orders 11246 and 11375, which charge the Secretary of Labor with ensuring that corporations that benefit from Government contracts provide equal employment opportunity regardless of race or sex. The United States Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has promulgated regulations which require Government contractors to furnish reports and other information about their affirmative-action programs and the general composition of their work forces.
The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) (formerly the Defense Supply Agency) of the Department of Defense is the designated compliance agency responsible for monitoring Chrysler’s employment practices. OFCCP regulations require that Chrysler make available to this agency written affirmative-action programs (AAP’s) and annually submit Employer Information Reports, known as EEO-1 Reports. The agency may also conduct “compliance reviews” and “complaint investigations,” which culminate in Compliance Review Reports (CRR’s) and Complaint Investigation Reports (CIR’s), respectively.
Regulations promulgated by the Secretary of Labor provide for public disclosure of information from records of the OFCCP and its compliance agencies. Those regulations state that notwithstanding exemption from mandatory disclosure under the FOIA, 5 ü. S. C. § 552,
“records obtained or generated pursuant to Executive Order 11246 (as amended)... shall be made available for inspection and copying... if it is determined that the requested inspection or copying furthers the public interest and does not impede any of the functions of the OFCC[P] or the Compliance Agencies except in the case of records disclosure of which is prohibited by law.”
It is the voluntary disclosure contemplated by this regulation, over and above that mandated by the FOIA, which is the gravamen of Chrysler’s complaint in this case.
This controversy began on May 14, 1975, when the DLA informed Chrysler that third parties had made an FOIA request for disclosure of the 1974 AAP for Chrysler’s Newark, Del., assembly plant and an October 1974 CIR for the same facility. Nine days later, Chrysler objected to release of the requested information, relying on OFCCP’s disclosure regulations and on exemptions to the FOIA. Chrysler also requested a copy of the CIR, since it had never seen it. DLA responded the following week that it had determined that the requested material was subject to disclosure under the FOIA and the OFCCP disclosure rules, and that both documents would be released five days later.
On the day the documents were to be released, Chrysler filed a complaint in the United States District Court for Delaware seeking to enjoin release of the Newark documents. The District Court granted a temporary restraining order barring disclosure of the Newark documents and requiring that DLA give five days’ notice to Chrysler before releasing any similar documents. Pursuant to this order, Chrysler was informed oil July 1, 1975, that DLA had received a similar request for information about Chrysler’s Hamtramck, Mich., plant. Chrysler amended its complaint and obtained a restraining order with regard to the Hamtramck disclosure as well.
Chrysler made three arguments in support of its prayer for an injunction: that disclosure was barred by the FOIA; that it was inconsistent with 18 U. S. C. § 1905, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-8 (e), and 44 U. S. C. § 3508, which for ease of reference will be referred to as the “confidentiality statutes”; and finally that disclosure was an abuse of agency discretion insofar as it conflicted with OFCCP rules. The District Court held that it had jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1331 to subject the disclosure decision to review under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). 5 U. S. C. §§ 701-706. It conducted a trial de novo on all of Chrysler’s claims; both sides presented extensive expert testimony during August 1975.
On April 20, 1976, the District Court issued its opinion. It held that certain of the requested information, the “manning” tables, fell within Exemption 4 of the FOIA. The District Court reasoned from this holding that the tables may or must be withheld, depending on applicable agency regulations, and that here a governing regulation required that the information be withheld. Pursuant to 5 U. S. C. § 301, the enabling statute which gives federal department heads control over department records, the Secretary of Labor has promulgated a regulation, 29 CFR § 70.21 (a) (1978), stating that no officer or employee of the Department is to violate 18 U. S. C. § 1905. That section imposes criminal sanctions on Government employees who make unauthorized disclosure of certain classes of information submitted to a Government agency, including trade secrets and confidential statistical data. In essence, the District Court read § 1905 as not merely a prohibition of unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information by Government employees, but as a restriction on official agency actions taken pursuant to promulgated regulations.
Both sides appealed, and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated the District Court’s judgment. Chrysler Corp. v. Schlesinger, 565 F. 2d 1172 (1977). It agreed with the District Court that the FOIA does not compel withholding of information that falls within its nine exemptions. It also, like the District Court, rejected Chrysler’s reliance on the confidentiality statutes, either because there was no implied private right of action to proceed under the statute, or because the statute, by its terms, was not applicable to the information at issue in this case. It agreed with the District Court that analysis must proceed under the APA. But it disagreed with that court’s interpretation of 29 CFR §70.21 (a). By the terms of that regulation, the specified disclosures are only proscribed if “not authorized by law,” the standard of 18 U. S. C. § 1905. In the Court of Appeals’ view, disclosures made pursuant to OFCCP disclosure regulations are “authorized by law” by virtue of those regulations. Therefore, it held that 29 CFR § 70.21 (a) was inapplicable.
The Court of Appeals also disagreed with the District Court’s view of the scope of review under the APA. It held that the District Court erred in conducting a de novo review; review should have been limited to the agency record. However, the Court of Appeals found that record inadequate in this case and directed that the District Court remand to the agency for supplementation. Because of a conflict in the Circuits and the general importance of these “reverse-FOIA” cases, we granted certiorari, 435 U. S. 914, and now vacate the judgment of the Third Circuit and remand for further proceedings.
II
We have decided a number of FOIA cases in the last few years. Although we have not had to face squarely the question whether the FOIA ex proprio vigore forbids governmental agencies from disclosing certain classes of information to the public, we have in the course of at least one opinion intimated an answer. We have, moreover, consistently recognized that the basic objective of the Act is disclosure.
In contending that the FOIA bars disclosure of the requested equal employment opportunity information, Chrysler relies on the Act’s nine exemptions and argues that they require an agency to withhold exempted material. In this case it relies specifically on Exemption 4:
“(b) [FOIA] does not apply to matters that are—
“(4) trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential 5U.S.C. §552 (b)(4).
Chrysler contends that the nine exemptions in general, and Exemption 4 in particular, reflect a sensitivity to the privacy interests of private individuals and nongovernmental entities. That contention may be conceded without inexorably requiring the conclusion that the exemptions impose affirmative duties on an agency to withhold information sought. In fact, that conclusion is not supported by the language, logic, or history of the Act.
The organization of the Act is straightforward. Subsection (a), 5 U. S. C. § 552 (a), places a general obligation on the agency to make information available to the public and sets out specific modes of disclosure for certain classes of information. Subsection (b), 5 U. S. C. § 552 (b), which lists the exemptions, simply states that the specified material is not subject to the disclosure obligations set out in subsection (a). By its terms, subsection (b) demarcates the agency’s obligation to disclose; it does not foreclose disclosure.
That the FOIA is exclusively a disclosure statute is, perhaps, demonstrated most convincingly by examining its provision for judicial relief. Subsection (a) (4) (B) gives federal district courts “jurisdiction to enjoin the agency from withholding agency records and to order the production of any agency records improperly withheld from the complainant.” 5 U. S. C. § 552 (a) (4) (B). That provision does not give the authority to bar disclosure, and thus fortifies our belief that Chrysler, and courts which have shared its view, have incorrectly interpreted the exemption provisions of the FOIA. The Act is an attempt to meet the demand for open government while preserving workable confidentiality in governmental decision-making. Congress appreciated that, with the expanding sphere of governmental regulation and enterprise, much of the information within Government files has been submitted by private entities seeking Government contracts or responding to unconditional reporting obligations imposed by law. There was sentiment that Government agencies should have the latitude, in certain circumstances, to afford the confidentiality desired by these submitters. But the congressional concern was with the agency’s need or preference for confidentiality; the FOIA by itself protects the submitters’ interest in confidentiality only to the extent that this interest is endorsed by the agency collecting the information.
Enlarged access to governmental information undoubtedly cuts against the privacy concerns of nongovernmental entities, and as a matter of policy some balancing and accommodation may well be desirable. We simply hold here that Congress did not design the FOIA exemptions to be mandatory bars to disclosure.
This conclusion is further supported by the legislative history. The FOIA was enacted out of dissatisfaction with § 3 of the APA, which had not resulted in as much disclosure by the agencies as Congress later thought desirable. Statements in both the Senate and House Reports on the effect of the exemptions support the interpretation that the exemptions were only meant to permit the agency to withhold certain information, and were not meant to mandate nondisclosure. For example, the House Report states:
“■[The FOIA] sets up workable standards for the categories of records which may be exempt from public disclosure...
.. There may be legitimate reasons for nondisclosure and [the FOIA] is designed to permit nondisclosure in such cases.”
“[The FOIA] lists in a later subsection the specific categories of information which may be exempted from disclosure.”
We therefore conclude that Congress did not limit an agency’s discretion to disclose information when it enacted the FOIA. It necessarily follows that the Act does not afford Chrysler any right to enjoin agency disclosure.
Ill
Chrysler contends, however, that even if its suit for injunc-tive relief cannot be based on the FOIA, such an action can be premised on the Trade Secrets Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1905. The Act provides:
“Whoever, being an officer or employee of the United States or of any department or agency thereof, publishes, divulges, discloses, or makes known in any manner or to any extent not authorized by law any information coming to him in the course of his employment or official duties or by reason of any examination or investigation made by, or return, report or record made to or filed with, such department or agency or officer or employee thereof, which information concerns or relates to the trade secrets, processes, operations, style of work, or apparatus, or to the identity, confidential statistical data, amount or source of any income, profits, losses, or expenditures of any person, firm, partnership, corporation, or association; or permits any income return or copy thereof or any book containing any abstract or particulars thereof to be seen or examined by any person except as provided by law; shall be fined not more than $1,000, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and shall be removed from office or employment.”
There are necessarily two parts to Chrysler’s argument: that § 1905 is applicable to the type of disclosure threatened in this case, and that it affords Chrysler a private right of action to obtain injunctive relief.
A
The Court of Appeals held that § 1905 was not applicable to the agency disclosure at issue here because such disclosure was “authorized by law” within the meaning of the Act. The court found the source of that authorization to be the OFCCP regulations that DLA relied on in deciding to disclose information on the Hamtramck and Newark plants. Chrysler contends here that these agency regulations are not “law” within the meaning of § 1905.
It has been established in a variety of contexts that properly promulgated, substantive agency regulations have the “force and effect of law.” This doctrine is so well established that agency regulations implementing federal statutes have been held to pre-empt state law under the Supremacy Clause. It would therefore take a clear showing of contrary legislative intent before the phrase “authorized by law” in § 1905 could be held to have a narrower ambit than the traditional understanding.
The origins of the Trade Secrets Act can be traced to Rev. Stat. § 3167, an Act which barred unauthorized disclosure of specified business information by Government revenue officers. There is very little legislative history concerning the original bill, which was passed in 1864. It was re-enacted numerous times, with some modification, and remained part of the revenue laws until 1948. Congressional statements made at the time of these re-enactments indicate that Congress was primarily concerned with unauthorized disclosure of business information by feckless or corrupt revenue agents, for in the early days of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, it was the field agents who had substantial contact with confidential financial information.
In 1948, Rev. Stat. § 3167 was consolidated with two other statutes — involving the Tariff Commission and the Department of Commerce — to form the Trade Secrets Act. The statute governing the Tariff Commission was very similar to Rev. Stat. § 3167, and it explicitly bound members of the Commission as well as Commission employees. The Commerce Department statute embodied some differences in form. It was a mandate addressed to the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce and to its Director, but there was no reference to Bureau employees and it contained no criminal sanctions. Unlike the other statutes, it also had no exception for disclosures “authorized by law.” In its effort to “con-solidat[e]” the three statutes, Congress enacted § 1905 and essentially borrowed the form of Rev. Stat. § 3167 and the Tariff Commission statute. We find nothing in the legislative history of § 1905 and its predecessors which lends support to Chrysler’s contention that Congress intended the phrase “authorized by law,” as used in § 1905, to have a special, limited meaning.
Nor do we find anything in the legislative history to support the respondents’ suggestion that § 1905 does not address formal agency action — i. e., that it is essentially an “antileak” statute that does not bind the heads of governmental departments or agencies. That would require an expansive and unprecedented holding that any agency action directed or approved by an agency head is “authorized by law,” regardless of the statutory authority for that action. As Attorney General Brownell recognized not long after § 1905 was enacted, such a reading is difficult to reconcile with Congress’ intent to consolidate the Tariff Commission and Commerce Department statutes, both of which explicitly addressed ranking officials, with Rev. Stat. § 3167. It is also inconsistent with a settled understanding — previously shared by the Department of Justice — that has been continually articulated and relied upon in Congress during the legislative efforts in the last three decades to increase public access to Government information. Although the existence of this understanding is not by any means dispositive, it does shed some light on the intent of the enacting Congress. See Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U. S. 367, 380-381 (1969); FHA v. The Darlington, Inc., 358 U. S. 84, 90 (1958). In sum, we conclude that § 1905 does address formal agency action and that the appropriate inquiry is whether OFCCP’s regulations provide the “authorization] by law” required by the statute.
In order for a regulation to have the “force and effect of law,” it must have certain substantive characteristics and be the product of certain procedural requisites. The central distinction among agency regulations found in the APA is that between “substantive rules” on the one hand and “interpretive rules, general statements of policy, or rules of agency organization, procedure, or practice” on the other. A “substantive rule” is not defined in the APA, and other authoritative sources essentially offer definitions by negative inference. But in Morton v. Ruiz, 415 U. S. 199 (1974), we noted a characteristic inherent in the concept of a “substantive rule.” We described a substantive rule — or a “legislative-type rule,” id., at 236 — as one “affecting individual rights and obligations.” Id., at 232. This characteristic is an important touchstone for distinguishing those rules that may be “binding” or have the “force of law.” Id., at 235, 236.
That an agency regulation is “substantive,” however, does not by itself give it the “force and effect of law.” The legislative power of the United States is vested in the Congress, and the exercise of quasi-legislative authority by governmental departments and agencies must be rooted in a grant of such power by the Congress and subject to limitations which that body imposes. As this Court noted in Batterton v. Francis, 432 U. S. 416, 425 n. 9 (1977):
“Legislative, or substantive, regulations are ‘issued by an agency pursuant to statutory authority and... implement the statute, as, for example, the proxy rules issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission.... Such rules have the force and effect of law.’ ”
Likewise the promulgation of these regulations must conform with any procedural requirements imposed by Congress. Morton v. Ruiz, supra, at 232. For agency discretion is limited not only by substantive, statutory grants of authority, but also by the procedural requirements which “assure fairness and mature consideration of rules of general application.” NLRB v. Wyman-Gordon Co., 394 U. S. 759, 764 (1969). The pertinent procedural limitations in this case are those found in the APA.
The regulations relied on by the respondents in this case as providing “authorization] by law” within the meaning of § 1905 certainly affect individual rights and obligations; they govern the public’s right to information in records obtained under Executive Order 11246 and the confidentiality rights of those who submit information to OFCCP and its compliance agencies. It is a much closer question, however, whether they are the product of a congressional grant of legislative authority.
In his published memorandum setting forth the disclosure regulations at issue in this case, the Secretary of Labor states that the authority upon which he relies in promulgating the regulations are § 201 of Executive Order 11246, as amended, and 29 CFR § 70.71 (1978), which permits units in the Department of Labor to promulgate supplemental disclosure regulations consistent with 29 CFR pt. 70 and the FOIA. 38 Fed. Reg. 3192-3194 (1973). Since materials that are exempt from disclosure under the FOIA are by virtue of Part II of this opinion outside the ambit of that Act, the Government cannot rely on the FOIA as congressional authorization for disclosure regulations that permit the release of information within the Act’s nine exemptions.
Section 201 of Executive Order 11246 directs the Secretary of Labor to “adopt such rules and regulations and issue such orders as he deems necessary and appropriate to achieve the purposes thereof.” But in order for such regulations to have the “force and effect of law,” it is necessary to establish a nexus between the regulations and some delegation of the requisite legislative authority by Congress. The origins of the congressional authority for Executive Order 11246 are somewhat obscure and have been roundly debated by commentators and courts. The Order itself as amended establishes a program to eliminate employment discrimination by the Federal Government and by those who benefit from Government contracts. For purposes of this case, it is not necessary to decide whether Executive Order 11246 as amended is authorized by the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, or some more general notion that the Executive can impose reasonable contractual require-merits in the exercise of its procurement authority. The pertinent inquiry is whether under any of the arguable statutory grants of authority the OFCCP disclosure regulations relied on by the respondents are reasonably within the contemplation of that grant of authority. We think that it is clear that when it enacted these statutes, Congress was not concerned with public disclosure of trade secrets or confidential business information, and, unless we were to hold that any ■ federal statute that implies some authority to collect information must grant legislative authority to disclose that information to the public, it is simply not possible to find in these statutes a delegation of the disclosure authority asserted by the respondents here.
The relationship between any grant of legislative authority and the disclosure regulations becomes more remote when one examines § 201 of the Executive Order. It speaks in terms of rules and regulations “necessary and appropriate” to achieve the purposes of the Executive Order. Those purposes are an end to discrimination in employment by the Federal Government and those who deal with the Federal Government. One cannot readily pull from the logic and purposes of the Executive Order any concern with the public’s access to information in Government files or the importance of protecting trade secrets or confidential business statistics.
The “purpose and scope” section of the disclosure regulations indicates two underlying rationales: OFCCP’s general policy “to disclose information to the public,” and its policy “to cooperate with other public agencies as well as private parties seeking to eliminate discrimination in employment.” 41 CFR § 60-40.1 (1978). The respondents argue that “[t]he purpose of the Executive Order is to combat discrimination in employment, and a disclosure policy designed to further this purpose is consistent with the Executive Order and an appropriate subject for regulation under its aegis.” Brief for Respondents 48. Were a grant of legislative authority as a basis for Executive Order 11246 more clearly identifiable, we might agree with the respondents that this “compatibility” gives the disclosure regulations the necessary legislative force. But the thread between these regulations and any grant of authority by the Congress is so strained that it would do violence to established principles of separation of powers to denominate these particular regulations “legislative” and credit them with the “binding effect of law.”
This is not to say that any grant of legislative authority to a federal agency by Congress must be specific before regulations promulgated pursuant to it can be binding on courts in a manner akin to statutes. What is important is that the reviewing court reasonably be able to conclude that the grant of authority contemplates the regulations issued. Possibly the best illustration remains Mr. Justice Frankfurter’s opinion for the Court in National Broadcasting Co. v. United States, 319 U. S. 190 (1943). There the Court rejected the argument that the Communications Act of 1934 did not give the Federal Communications Commission authority to issue regulations governing chain broadcasting beyond the specification of technical, engineering requirements. Before reaching that conclusion, however, the Court probed the language and logic of the Communications Act and its legislative history. Only after this careful parsing of authority did the Court find that the regulations had the force of law and were binding on the courts unless they were arbitrary or not promulgated pursuant to prescribed procedures.
“Our duty is at an end when we find that the action of the Commission was based upon findings supported by evidence, and was made pursuant to authority granted by Congress. It is not for us to say that the 'public interest’ will be furthered or retarded by the Chain Broadcasting Regulations. The responsibility belongs to the Congress for the grant of valid legislative authority and to the Commission for its exercise.” Id., at 224.
The respondents argue, however, that even if these regulations do not have the force of law by virtue of Executive Order 11246, an explicit grant of legislative authority for such regulations can be found in 5 U. S. C. § 301, commonly referred to as the “housekeeping statute.” It provides:
“The head of an Executive department or military department may prescribe regulations for the government of his department, the conduct of its employees, the distribution and performance of its business, and the custody, use, and preservation of its records, papers, and property. This section does not authorize withholding information from the public or limiting the availability of records to the public.”
The antecedents of § 301 go back to the beginning of the Republic, when statutes were enacted to give heads of early Government departments authority to govern internal departmental affairs. Those laws were consolidated into one statute in 1874 and the current version of the statute was enacted in 1958.
Given this long and relatively uncontroversial history, and the terms of the statute itself, it seems to be simply a grant of authority to the agency to regulate its own affairs. What is clear from the legislative history of the 1958 amendment to § 301 is that this section was not intended to provide authority for limiting the scope of § 1905.
The 1958 amendment to § 301 was the product of congressional concern that agencies were invoking § 301 as a source of authority to withhold information from the public. Congressman Moss sponsored an amendment that added the last sentence to § 301, which specifically states that this section “does not authorize withholding information from the public.” The Senate Report accompanying the amendment stated:
“Nothing in the legislative history of [§ 301] shows that Congress intended this statute to be a grant of authority to the heads of the executive departments to withhold information from the public or to limit the availability of records to the public.” S. Rep. No. 1621, 85th Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1958).
The logical corollary to this observation is that there is nothing in the legislative history of § 301 to indicate it is a substantive grant of legislative power to promulgate rules authorizing the release of trade secrets or confidential business information. It is indeed a “housekeeping statute,” authorizing what the APA terms “rules of agency organization, procedure or practice” as opposed to “substantive rules.”
This would suggest that regulations pursuant to § 301 could not provide the “authorization] by law” required by § 1905. But there is more specific support for this position. During the debates on the 1958 amendment Congressman Moss assured the House that the amendment would “not affect the confidential status of information given to the Government and carefully detailed in title 18, United States Code, section 1905.” 104 Cong. Rec. 6550 (1958).
The respondents argue that this last statement is of little significance, because it is only made with reference to the amendment. But that robs Congressman Moss’ statement of any substantive import. If Congressman Moss thought that records within the terms of § 1905 could be released on the authority of a § 301 regulation, why was he (and presumably the House) concerned with whether the amendment affected § 1905? Under the respondents’ interpretation, records released pursuant to § 301 are outside § 1905 by virtue of the first sentence of § 301.
The remarks of a single legislator, even the sponsor, are not controlling in analyzing legislative history. Congressman Moss’ statement must be considered with the Reports of both Houses and the statements of other Congressmen, all of which refute the respondents’ interpretation of the relationship between § 301 and § 1905. Of greatest significance, however, is the “housekeeping” nature of § 301 itself. On the basis of this evidence of legislative intent, we agree with the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that “[s]ection 301 does not authorize regulations limiting the scope of section 1905.” Charles River Park “A,” Inc. v. Department of HUD, 171 U. S. App. D. C. 286, 293-294, 519 F. 2d 935, 942-943 (1975).
There is also a procedural defect in the OFCCP disclosure regulations which precludes courts from affording them the force and effect of law. That defect is a lack of strict compliance with the APA. Recently we have had occasion to examine the requirements of the APA in the context of “legislative” or “substantive” rulemaking. In Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 435 U. S. 519 (1978), we held that courts could only in “extraordinary circumstances” impose procedural requirements on an agency beyond those specified in the APA. It is within an agency’s discretion to afford parties more procedure, but it is not the province of the courts to do so. In Vermont Yankee, we recognized that the APA is “ ‘a formula upon which opposing social and political forces have come to rest.’ ” Id., at 547 (quoting Wong Yang Sung v. McGrath, 339 U. S. 33, 40 (1950)). Courts upset that balance when they override informed choice of procedures and impose obligations not required by the APA. By the same token, courts are charged with maintaining the balance: ensuring that agencies comply with the “outline of minimum essential rights and procedures” set out in the APA. H. R. Rep. No. 1980, 79th Cong., 2d Sess., 16 (1946); see Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp., supra, at 549 n. 21. Certainly regulations subject to the APA cannot be afforded the “force and effect of law” if not promulgated pursuant to the statutory procedural minimum found in that Act.
Section 4 of the APA, 5 U. S. C. § 553, specifies that an agency shall afford interested persons general notice of proposed rulemaking and an opportunity to comment before a substantive rule is promulgated “Interpretive rules, general statements of policy or rules of agency organization, procedure or practice” are exempt from these requirements. When the Secretary of Labor published the regulations pertinent in this case, he stated:
“As the changes made by this document relate solely to interpretive rules, general statements of policy, and to rules of agency procedure and practice, neither notice of proposed rule making nor public participation therein is required by 5 U. S. C. 553. Since the changes made by this document either relieve restrictions or are interpretative rules, no delay in effective date is required by 5 U. S. C. 553 (d). These rules shall therefore be effective immediately.
“In accordance with the spirit of the public policy set forth in 5 U. S. C. 553, interested persons may submit written comments, suggestions, data, or arguments to the Director, Office of Federal Contract Compliance....” 38 Fed. Reg. 3193 (1973).
Thus, the regulations were essentially treated as interpretative rules and interested parties were not afforded the notice of proposed rulemaking required for substantive rules under 5 U. S. C. § 553 (b). As we observed in Batterton v. Francis, 432 U. S., at 425 n. 9: “[A] court is not required to give effect to an interpretative regulation. Varying degrees of deference are accorded to administrative interpretations, based on such factors as the timing and consistency of the agency’s position, and the nature of its expertise.” We need not decide whether these regulations are properly characterized as “interpretative rules.” It is enough that such regulations are not properly promulgated as substantive rules, and therefore not the product of procedures which Congress prescribed as necessary prerequisites to giving a regulation the binding effect of law. An interpretative regulation or general statement of agency policy cannot be the “authorization] by law” required by § 1905.
This disposition best comports with both the purposes underlying the APA and sound administrative practice. Here important interests are in conflict: the public’s access to information in the Government’s files and concerns about personal privacy and business confidentiality. The OFCCP’s regulations attempt to strike a balance. In enacting the APA, Congress made a judgment that notions of fairness and informed administrative decisionmaking require that agency decisions be made only after affording interested persons notice and an opportunity to comment. With the consideration that is the necessary and intended consequence of such procedures, OFCCP might have decided that a different accommodation was more appropriate.
B
We reject, however, Chrysler’s contention that the Trade Secrets Act affords a private right of action to enjoin disclosure in violation of the statute. In Cort v. Ash, 422 U. S. 66 (1975), we noted that this Court has rarely implied a private right of action under a criminal statute, and where it has done so “there was at least a statutory basis for inferring that a civil cause of action of some sort lay in favor of someone.” Nothing in § 1905 prompts such an inference. Nor are other pertinent circumstances outlined in Cort present here. As our review of the legislative history of § 1905 — or lack of same — might suggest, there is no indication of legislative intent to create a private right of action. Most importantly, a private right of action under § 1905 is not “necessary to make effective the congressional purpose,” J. I. Case Co. v. Borak, 377 U. S. 426, 433 (1964), for we find that review of DLA’s decision to disclose Chrysler’s employment data is available under the APA.
IV
While Chrysler may not avail itself of any violations of the provisions of § 1905 in a separate cause of action, any such violations may have a dispositive effect on the outcome of judicial review of agency action pursuant to § 10 of the APA. Section 10 (a) of the APA provides that “[a] person suffering legal wrong because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved- by agency action..., is entitled to judicial review thereof.” 5 U. S. C. § 702. Two exceptions to this general rule of reviewability are set out in § 10.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
Opinion PER CURIAM.
Petitioner Torrey Dale Grady was convicted in North Carolina trial courts of a second degree sexual offense in 1997 and of taking indecent liberties with a child in 2006. After serving his sentence for the latter crime, Grady was ordered to appear in New Hanover County Superior Court for a hearing to determine whether he should be subjected to satellite-based monitoring (SBM) as a recidivist sex offender. See N.C. Gen.Stat. Ann. §§ 14-208.40(a)(1), 14-208.40B (2013). Grady did not dispute that his prior convictions rendered him a recidivist under the relevant North Carolina statutes. He argued, however, that the monitoring program-under which he would be forced to wear tracking devices at all times-would violate his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Unpersuaded, the trial court ordered Grady to enroll in the program and be monitored for the rest of his life. Record in No. COA13-958 (N.C. App.), pp. 3-4, 18-22.
Grady renewed his Fourth Amendment challenge on appeal, relying on this Court's decision in United States v. Jones,565 U.S. ----, 132 S.Ct. 945, 181 L.Ed.2d 911 (2012). In that case, this Court held that police officers had engaged in a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when they installed and monitored a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device on a suspect's car. The North Carolina Court of Appeals rejected Grady's argument, concluding that it was foreclosed by one of its earlier decisions. App. to Pet. for Cert. 5a-7a. In that decision, coincidentally named State v. Jones,the court had said:
"Defendant essentially argues that if affixing a GPS to an individual's vehicle constitutes a search of the individual, then the arguably more intrusive act of affixing an ankle bracelet to an individual must constitute a search of the individual as well. We disagree. The context presented in the instant case-which involves a civil SBM proceeding-is readily distinguishable from that presented in [United States v.] Jones,where the Court considered the propriety of a search in the context of a motion to suppress evidence. We conclude, therefore, that the specific holding in [United States v.] Jonesdoes not control in the case sub judice." --- N.C.App. ----, ----, 750 S.E.2d 883, 886 (2013).
The court in Grady's case held itself bound by this reasoning and accordingly rejected his Fourth Amendment challenge. App. to Pet. for Cert. 6a-7a. The North Carolina Supreme Court in turn summarily dismissed Grady's appeal and denied his petition for discretionary review. 367 N.C. 523, 762 S.E.2d 460 (2014). Grady now asks us to reverse these decisions.
The only explanation provided below for the rejection of Grady's challenge is the quoted passage from State v. Jones. And the only theory we discern in that passage is that the State's system of nonconsensual satellite-based monitoring does not entail a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. That theory is inconsistent with this Court's precedents.
In United States v. Jones,we held that "the Government's installation of a GPS device on a target's vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a 'search.' " 565 U.S., at ----, 132 S.Ct., at 949(footnote omitted). We stressed the importance of the fact that the Government had "physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information." Id.,at ----, 132 S.Ct., at 949. Under such circumstances, it was not necessary to inquire about the target's expectation of privacy in his vehicle's movements in order to determine if a Fourth Amendment search had occurred. "Where, as here, the Government obtains information by physically intruding on a constitutionally protected area, such a search has undoubtedly occurred." Id.,at ----, n. 3, 132 S.Ct., at 950, n. 3.
We reaffirmed this principle in Florida v. Jardines,569 U.S. ----, ---- - ----, 133 S.Ct. 1409, 1413-1414, 185 L.Ed.2d 495 (2013), where we held that having a drug-sniffing dog nose around a suspect's front porch was a search, because police had "gathered ... information by physically entering and occupying the [curtilage of the house] to engage in conduct not explicitly or implicitly permitted by the homeowner." See also id.,at ----, 133 S.Ct., at 1417(a search occurs "when the government gains evidence by physically intruding on constitutionally protected areas"). In light of these decisions, it follows that a State also conducts a search when it attaches a device to a person's body, without consent, for the purpose of tracking that individual's movements.
In concluding otherwise, the North Carolina Court of Appeals apparently placed decisive weight on the fact that the State's monitoring program is civil in nature. See Jones,--- N.C.App., at ----, 750 S.E.2d, at 886("the instant case ... involves a civil SBM proceeding"). "It is well settled," however, "that the Fourth Amendment's protection extends beyond the sphere of criminal investigations," Ontario v. Quon,560 U.S. 746, 755, 130 S.Ct. 2619, 177 L.Ed.2d 216 (2010), and the government's purpose in collecting information does not control whether the method of collection constitutes a search. A building inspector who enters a home simply to ensure compliance with civil safety regulations has undoubtedly conducted a search under the Fourth Amendment. See Camara v. Municipal Court of City and County of San Francisco,387 U.S. 523, 534, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967)(housing inspections are "administrative searches" that must comply with the Fourth Amendment).
In its brief in opposition to certiorari, the State faults Grady for failing to introduce "evidence about the State's implementation of the SBM program or what information, if any, it currently obtains through the monitoring process." Brief in Opposition 11. Without evidence that it is acting to obtain information, the State argues, "there is no basis upon which this Court can determine whether North Carolina conducts a 'search' of an offender enrolled in its SBM program." Ibid.(citing Jones,565 U.S., at ----, n. 5, 132 S.Ct., at 951, n. 5(noting that a government intrusion is not a search unless "done to obtain information")). In other words, the State argues that we cannot be sure its program for satellite-based monitoringof sex offenders collects any information. If the very name of the program does not suffice to rebut this contention, the text of the statute surely does:
"The satellite-based monitoring program shall use a system that provides all of the following:
"(1) Time-correlated and continuous tracking of the geographic location of the subject....
"(2) Reporting of subject's violations of prescriptive and proscriptive schedule or location requirements." N.C. Gen.Stat. Ann. § 14-208.40(c).
The State's program is plainly designed to obtain information. And since it does so by physically intruding on a subject's body, it effects a Fourth Amendment search.
That conclusion, however, does not decide the ultimate question of the program's constitutionality. The Fourth Amendment prohibits only unreasonablesearches. The reasonableness of a search depends on the totality of the circumstances, including the nature and purpose of the search and the extent to which the search intrudes upon reasonable privacy expectations. See, e.g.,Samson v. California,547 U.S. 843, 126 S.Ct. 2193, 165 L.Ed.2d 250 (2006)(suspicionless search of parolee was reasonable); Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton,515 U.S. 646, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 132 L.Ed.2d 564 (1995)(random drug testing of student athletes was reasonable). The North Carolina courts did not examine whether the State's monitoring program is reasonable-when properly viewed as a search-and we will not do so in the first instance.
The petition for certiorari is granted, the judgment of the Supreme Court of North Carolina is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Grady aims his petition at the decisions of both North Carolina appellate courts. See Pet. for Cert. 1. Because we treat the North Carolina Supreme Court's dismissal of an appeal for lack of a substantial constitutional question as a decision on the merits, it is that court's judgment, rather than the judgment of the Court of Appeals, that is subject to our review under 28 U.S.C. § 1257(a). See R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Durham County,479 U.S. 130, 138-139, 107 S.Ct. 499, 93 L.Ed.2d 449 (1986).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
A
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court. This is yet another case concerning the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) chapter of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970. Pub. L. 91-452, Title IX, 84 Stat. 941, as amended, 18 U. S. C. §§ 1961-1968 (1982 ed.). At issue here is the interpretation of the chapter’s forfeiture provision, § 1963(a)(1), and, specifically, the meaning of the words “any interest [the defendant] has acquired . . . in violation of section 1962.”
On June 8, 1977, petitioner Joseph C. Russello and others were indicted for racketeering, conspiracy, and mail fraud, in violation of 18 U. S. C. §§ 1341, 1962(c) and (d), and 2. App. 5. After a jury trial in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, petitioner was convicted as charged in four counts of the indictment. The jury then returned special verdicts for the forfeiture to the United States, under 18 U. S. C. § 1963(a), of four payments, aggregating $340,043.09, made to petitioner by a fire insurance company. App. 54-57. These verdicts related to the racketeering activities charged in the second count of the indictment under which petitioner had been convicted. The District Court, accordingly, entered a judgment of forfeiture against petitioner in that amount. Id., at 58.
Petitioner took an appeal to the former United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. A panel of that court affirmed petitioner's criminal conviction, United States v. Martino, 648 F. 2d 367, 406 (1981), and this Court denied certiorari, 456 U. S. 943 (1982), as to that aspect of the case. The panel, however, reversed the judgment of forfeiture. App. 64-69. The full court granted rehearing en banc on the forfeiture issue and, by a vote of 16-7, vacated that portion of the panel opinion, and then affirmed the forfeiture judgment entered by the District Court. United States v. Martino, 681 F. 2d 952 (1982). Because of this significant division among the judges of the Court of Appeals, and because the Fifth Circuit majority, id., at 959, stated that its holding “squarely conflict[ed]” with that of the Ninth Circuit in United States v. Marubeni America Corp., 611 F. 2d 763 (1980), we granted certiorari. 459 U. S. 1101 (1983). Since then, the Seventh Circuit has issued an opinion agreeing with the Ninth Circuit. United States v. McManigal, 708 F. 2d 276, 283-287 (1983).
t — l J-H
So far as the case in its present posture is concerned, the basic facts are not in dispute. The majority opinion of the en banc court described them succinctly:
“Briefly, the evidence showed that a group of individuals associated for the purpose of committing arson with the intent to defraud insurance companies. This association in fact enterprise, composed of an insurance adjuster, homeowners, promoters, investors, and arsonists, operated to destroy at least eighteen residential and commercial properties in Tampa and Miami, Florida between July 1973 and April 1976. The panel summarized the ring’s operations as follows:
“‘At first the arsonists only burned buildings already owned by those associated with the ring. Following a burning, the building owner filed an inflated proof of loss statement and collected the insurance proceeds from which his co-conspirators were paid. Later, ring members bought buildings suitable for burning, secured insurance in excess of value and, after a burning, made claims for the loss and divided the proceeds’.” 681 F. 2d, at 953 (footnote omitted).
Specifically, petitioner was the owner of the Central Professional Building in Tampa. This structure had two parts, an original smaller section in front and a newer addition at the rear. The latter contained apartments, offices, and parking facilities. Petitioner arranged for arsonists to set fire to the front portion. He intended to use the insurance proceeds to rebuild that section. The fire, however, spread to the rear. Joseph Carter, another member of the arson ring, was the adjuster for petitioner’s insurance claim and helped him to obtain the highest payments possible. The resulting payments made up the aggregate sum of $340,043.09 mentioned above. From those proceeds, petitioner paid Carter $30,000 for his assistance.
HH H-i h — l
Title 18 U. S. C. § 1962(c) states that it shall be unlawful “for any person employed by or associated with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of which affect, interstate . . . commerce, to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity or collection of unlawful debt.” Section 1962(d) makes it unlawful to conspire to violate § 1962(c). Section 1963(a)(1) provides that a person convicted under § 1962 shall forfeit to the United States “any interest he has acquired or maintained in violation of section 1962.”
The sole issue in this case is whether profits and proceeds derived from racketeering constitute an “interest” within the meaning of this statute and are therefore subject to forfeiture. Petitioner contends that § 1963(a)(1) reaches only “interests in an enterprise” and does not authorize the forfeiture of mere “profits and proceeds.” He rests his argument upon the propositions that criminal forfeitures are disfavored in law and that forfeiture statutes, as a consequence, must be strictly construed.
In a RICO case recently decided, this Court observed: “In determining the scope of a statute, we look first to its language. If the statutory language is unambiguous, in the absence of ‘a clearly expressed legislative intent to the contrary, that language must ordinarily be regarded as conclusive.’” United States v. Turkette, 452 U. S. 576, 580 (1981), quoting from Consumer Product Safety Comm’n v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U. S. 102, 108 (1980). See also Dickerson v. New Banner Institute, Inc., 460 U. S. 103, 110 (1983); Lewis v. United States, 445 U. S. 55, 60 (1980).
Here, 18 U. S. C. § 1963(a)(1) calls for the forfeiture to the United States of “any interest. . . acquired ... in violation of section 1962.” There is no question that petitioner Russello acquired the insurance proceeds at issue in violation of § 1962(c); that much has been definitely and finally settled. Accordingly, if those proceeds qualify as an “interest,” they are forfeitable.
The term “interest” is not specifically defined in the RICO statute. This silence compels us to “start with the assumption that the legislative purpose is expressed by the ordinary meaning of the words used.” Richards v. United States, 369 U. S. 1, 9 (1962). The ordinary meaning of “interest” surely encompasses a right to profits or proceeds. See Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1178 (1976), broadly defining “interest,” among other things, as a “good,” “benefit,” or “profit.” Random House Dictionary of the English Language 741 (1979) defines interest to include “benefit.” Black’s Law Dictionary 729 (5th ed., 1979) provides a significant definition of “interest”: “The most general term that can be employed to denote a right, claim, title, or legal share in something.” It is thus apparent that the term “interest” comprehends all forms of real and personal property, including profits and proceeds.
This Court repeatedly has relied upon the term “interest” in defining the meaning of “property” in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. See Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U. S. 593, 601 (1972) (“‘property’ denotes a broad range of interests”); Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U. S. 422, 430 (1982); Jago v. Van Curen, 454 U. S. 14, 17-18 (1981). It undoubtedly was because Congress did not wish the forfeiture provision of § 1963(a) to be limited by rigid and technical definitions drawn from other areas of the law that it selected the broad term “interest” to describe those things that are subject to forfeiture under the statute. Congress selected this general term apparently because it was fully consistent with the pattern of the RICO statute in utilizing terms and concepts of breadth. Among these are “enterprise” in § 1961(4); “racketeering activity” in § 1961(1) (1982 ed.); and “participate” in § 1962(c).
Petitioner himself has not attempted to define the term “interest” as used in § 1963(a)(1). He insists, however, that the term does not reach money or profits because, he says: “‘Interest,’ by definition, includes of necessity an interest in something.” Brief for Petitioner 9. Petitioner then asserts that the “something” emerges from the wording of § 1963(a)(1) itself, that is, an interest “acquired ... in violation of section 1962,” and thus derives its meaning from the very activities barred by the statute. In other words, a direct relationship exists between that which is subject to forfeiture as a result of racketeering activity and that which constitutes racketeering. This relationship, it is said, means that forfeiture is confined to an interest in an “enterprise” itself. Petitioner derives support for this approach from United States v. Marubeni America Corp., supra, and from language contained in two Federal District Court opinions, United States v. Meyers, 432 F. Supp. 456, 461 (WD Pa. 1977), and United States v. Thevis, 474 F. Supp. 134, 142 (ND Ga. 1979), aff’d on other grounds, 665 F. 2d 616 (CA5 1982). He also now relies on the McManigal case, supra, recently decided by the Seventh Circuit. Tr. of Oral Arg. 4.
We do not agree. Every property interest, including a right to profits or proceeds, may be described as an interest in something. Before profits of an illegal enterprise are divided, each participant may be said to own an “interest” in the ill-gotten gains. After distribution, each will have a pos-sessory interest in currency or other items so distributed. We therefore conclude that the language of the statute plainly covers the insurance proceeds petitioner received as a result of his arson activities.
> HH
We are fortified in this conclusion by our examination of the structure of the RICO statute. We disagree with those courts that have felt that a broad construction of the word “interest” is necessarily undermined by the statute’s other forfeiture provisions. The argument for a narrow construction of § 1963(a)(1) is refuted by the language of the succeeding subsection (a)(2). The former speaks broadly of “any interest. . . acquired,” while the latter reaches only “any interest in . . . any enterprise which [the defendant] has established^] operated, controlled, conducted, or participated in the conduct of, in violation of section 1962.” Similar less expansive language appears in §§ 1962(b) and 1964(a). “[W]here Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the same Act, it is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion.” United States v. Wong Kim Bo, 472 F. 2d 720, 722 (CA5 1972). See United States v. Wooten, 688 F. 2d 941, 950 (CA4 1982). Had Congress intended to restrict § 1963(a)(1) to an interest in an enterprise, it presumably would have done so expressly as it did in the immediately following subsection (a)(2). See North Haven Board of Education v. Bell, 456 U. S. 512, 521 (1982); United States v. Naftalin, 441 U. S. 768, 773-774 (1979). In the latter case, id., at 773, the Court said: “The short answer is that Congress did not write the statute that way.” We refrain from concluding here that the differing language in the two subsections has the same meaning in each. We would not presume to ascribe this difference to a simple mistake in draftsmanship.
The evolution of these statutory provisions supplies further evidence that Congress intended § 1963(a)(1) to extend beyond an interest in an enterprise. An early proposed version of RICO, S. 1861, 91st Cong., 1st Sess. (1969), had a single forfeiture provision for § 1963(a) that was limited to “all interest in the enterprise.” This provision, however, later was divided into the present two subsections and the phrase “in the enterprise” was excluded from the first. Where Congress includes limiting language in an earlier version of a bill but deletes it prior to enactment, it may be presumed that the limitation was not intended. See Arizona v. California, 373 U. S. 546, 580-581 (1963). See Weiner, Crime Must Not Pay: RICO Criminal Forfeiture in Perspective, 1981 N. Ill. U. L. Rev. 225, 238, and n. 49. It is no answer to say, as petitioner does, Brief for Petitioner 17-18, that if the term “interest” were as all-encompassing as suggested by the majority opinion of the Court of Appeals, § 1963(a)(2) would have no meaning independent of § 1963(a)(1), and would be mere surplusage. This argument is plainly incorrect. Subsection (a)(1) reaches “any interest,” whether or not in an enterprise, provided it was “acquired ... in violation of section 1962.” Subsection (a)(2), on the other hand, is restricted to an interest in an enterprise, but that interest itself need not have been illegally acquired. Thus, there are things forfeit-able under one, but not the other, of each of the subsections.
We note that the RICO statute’s definition of the term “enterprise” in §1961(4) encompasses both legal entities and illegitimate associations-in-fact. See United States v. Turkette, 452 U. S., at 580-593. Forfeiture of an interest in an illegitimate association-in-fact ordinarily would be of little use because an association of that kind rarely has identifiable assets; instead, proceeds or profits usually are distributed immediately. Thus, construing § 1963(a)(1) to reach only interests in an enterprise would blunt the effectiveness of the provision in combating illegitimate enterprises, and would mean that “[w]hole areas of organized criminal activity would be placed beyond” the reach of the statute. United States v. Turkette, 452 U. S., at 589.
Petitioner stresses that 21 U. S. C. § 848(a)(2), contained in the Controlled Substances Act, 84 Stat. 1242, as amended, specifically authorizes the forfeiture of “profits” obtained in a continuing criminal enterprise engaged in certain drug offenses. Brief for Petitioner 6-7. The Ninth Circuit in Marubeni, 611 F. 2d, at 766, n. 7, placed similar reliance upon § 848(a)(2) and observed that the two statutes were passed by the same Congress in the same month. We feel, however, that the specific mention of “profits” in the Controlled Substances Act cannot be accepted as an indication that the broader language of § 1963(a)(1) was not meant, to reach profits as well as other types of property interests. Language in one statute usually sheds little light upon the meaning of different language in another statute, even when the two are enacted at or about the same time. The term “profits” is specific; the term “interest” is general. The use of the specific in the one statute cannot fairly be read as imposing a limitation upon the general provision in the other statute. In addition, the RICO statute was aimed at organized crime’s economic power in all its forms, and it was natural to use the broad term “interest” to fulfill that aim. In contrast, the narcotics activity proscribed by §848 usually generates only monetary profits, a fact which would explain the use of the narrower term in § 848(a)(2).
Petitioner, of course, correctly suggests that Members of Congress who voted for the RICO statute were aware of the Controlled Substances Act. See 116 Cong. Rec. 33651 (1970) (remarks of Rep. Brotzman); id., at 1180-1182 (remarks of Sen. Thurmond); id., at 33631 (remarks of Rep. Weicker); id., at 33646 (remarks of Rep. Kastenmeier); id., at 35318 (remarks of Rep. Anderson). It is most unlikely, however, that without explanation a potent forfeiture weapon was withheld from the RICO statute, intended for use in a broad assault on organized crime, while the same weapon was included in the Controlled Substances Act, meant for use in only one part of the same struggle. If this was Congress’ intent, one would expect it to have said so in clear and understandable terms.
Petitioner also suggests that subsequent proposed legislation demonstrates that the RICO forfeiture provision of 1970 excludes profits. Brief for Petitioner 29-34. The bills to which petitioner refers, however, were introduced in order to overcome the decisions in Marubeni, Meyers, and Thevis. See, e. g., S. 2320, 97th Cong., 2d Sess. (1982). The introduction of these bills hardly suggests that their sponsors viewed those decisions as correct interpretations of § 1963(a)(1). See United States v. Gordon, 638 F. 2d 886, 888, n. 5 (CA6), cert. denied, 452 U. S. 909 (1981). In any event, it is well settled that “ The views of a subsequent Congress form a hazardous basis for inferring the intent of an earlier one.’” Jefferson County Pharmaceutical Assn. v. Abbott Laboratories, 460 U. S. 150, 165, n. 27 (1983), quoting from United States v. Price, 361 U. S. 304, 313 (1960). See also United States v. Clark, 445 U. S. 23, 33, n. 9 (1980).
Neither are we persuaded by petitioner’s argument that his position is supported by the fact that certain state racketeering statutes expressly provide for the forfeiture of “profits,” “money,” “interest or property,” or “all property, real or personal,” acquired from racketeering. Brief for Petitioner 8-9. Nearly all of the state statutes postdate the Meyers and Thevis District Court decisions. See, e. g., Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-17-106 (Supp. 1982) (enacted in 1981); R. I. Gen. Laws §7-15-3 (Supp. 1982) (enacted in 1979). The legislatures of those States presumably employed language different from that of § 1963(a)(1) so as to avoid narrow interpretations of their laws along the lines of the narrow interpretations given the federal statute by the courts in Meyers and Thevis.
y
If it is necessary to turn to the legislative history of the RICO statute, one finds that that history does not reveal, as petitioner would have us hold, see Brief for Petitioner 11-21, a limited congressional intent.
The legislative history clearly demonstrates that the RICO statute was intended to provide new weapons of unprecedented scope for an assault upon organized crime and its economic roots. Congress’ statement of findings and purpose in enacting Pub. L. 91-452, 84 Stat. 922, is set forth in its § 1. This statement dramatically describes the problem presented by organized crime. Congress declared, id., at 923: “It is the purpose of this Act to seek the eradication of organized crime in the United States ... by providing enhanced sanctions and new remedies to deal with the unlawful activities of those engaged in organized crime.” This Court has recognized the significance of this statement of findings and purpose. United States v. Turkette, 452 U. S., at 588-589. Further, Congress directed, by § 904(a) of Pub. L. 91-452, 84 Stat. 947: “The provisions of this title shall be liberally construed to effectuate its remedial purposes.” So far as we have been made aware, this is the only substantive federal criminal statute that contains such a directive; a similar provision, however, appears in the Criminal Appeals Act, 18 U. S. C. §3731.
Congress emphasized the need to fashion new remedies in order to achieve its far-reaching objectives. See S. Rep. No. 91-617, p. 76 (1969).
“What is needed here . . . are new approaches that will deal not only with individuals, but also with the economic base through which those individuals constitute such a serious threat to the economic well-being of the Nation. In short, an attack must be made on their source of economic power itself, and the attack must take place on all available fronts.” Id., at 79.
Senator Scott spoke of “new legal weapons,” 116 Cong. Rec. 819 (1970), and Senator McClellan stressed the need for new penal remedies. Id., at 591-592. Representative Poff, floor manager of the bill in the House, made similar observations. Id., at 35193. Representative Rodino observed that “[djrastic methods . . . are essential, and we must develop law enforcement measures at least as efficient as those of organized crime.” Id., at 35199. The RICO statute was viewed as one such “extraordinary” weapon. Id., at 602 (remarks of Sen. Hruska). And the forfeiture provision was intended to serve all the aims of the RICO statute, namely, to “punish, deter, incapacitate, and . . . directly to remove the corrupting influence from the channels of commerce.” Id., at 18955 (remarks of Sen. McClellan).
The legislative history leaves no doubt that, in the view of Congress, the economic power of organized crime derived from its huge illegal profits. See Blakey, The RICO Civil Fraud Action in Context: Reflections on Bennett v. Berg, 58 Notre Dame L. Rev. 237, 249-256 (1982). Congress could not have hoped successfully to attack organized crime’s economic roots without reaching racketeering profits. During the congressional debates, the sources and magnitude of organized crime’s income were emphasized repeatedly. See, e. g., 115 Cong. Rec. 5873, 5884-5885 (1969); 116 Cong. Rec. 590, 592 (1970) (remarks of Sen. McClellan). From all this, the intent to authorize forfeiture of racketeering profits seems obvious. H. R. Rep. No. 91-1549, p. 57 (1970), recites that the forfeiture provision extends to “all property and interests, as broadly defined, which are related to the violations.”
It is true that Congress viewed the RICO statute in large part as a response to organized crime’s infiltration of legitimate enterprises. United States v. Turkette, 452 U. S., at 591. But Congress’ concerns were not limited to infiltration. The broader goal was to remove the profit from organized crime by separating the racketeer from his dishonest gains. Forfeiture of interest in an enterprise often would do little to deter; indeed, it might only encourage the speedy looting of an infiltrated company. It is unlikely that Congress intended to enact a forfeiture provision that provided an incentive for activity of this kind while authorizing forfeiture of an interest of little worth in a bankrupt shell.
We are not persuaded otherwise by the presence of a 1969 letter from the then Deputy Attorney General to Senator McClellan. See Measures Relating to Organized Crime: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Criminal Laws and Procedures of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 91st Cong., 1st Sess., 407 (1969). That letter, with its reference to “one’s interest in the enterprise” does not indicate, for us, any congressional intent to preclude forfeiture of racketeering profits. The reference, indeed, is not to § 1963(a) as finally enacted but to an earlier version in which forfeiture was to be expressly limited to an interest in an enterprise. The letter was merely following the language of the then pending bill. Furthermore, the real purpose of the sentence was not to explain what the statutory provision meant, but to explain why the Department of Justice believed it was constitutional.
The rule of lenity, which this Court has recognized in certain situations of statutory ambiguity, see United States v. Turkette, 452 U. S., at 587, n. 10, has no application here. That rule “comes into operation at the end of the process of construing what Congress has expressed, not at the beginning as an overriding consideration of being lenient to wrongdoers.” Callanan v. United States, 364 U. S. 587, 596 (1961). Here, the language of the RICO forfeiture provision is clear, and “the rule of lenity does not come into play.” United States v. Turkette, 452 U. S., at 588, n. 10.
We therefore disagree with the reasoning of the respective courts in the Marubeni, McManigal, Meyers, and Thevis cases, and we affirm the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
It is so ordered.
The Solicitor General, while perceiving “a factual distinction between Marubeni and the present case,” felt that “the holding and reasoning of Marubeni would require the Ninth Circuit to reach the opposite result from the Fifth Circuit on the facts of the instant case.” Memorandum for United States 4, n. 3. Accordingly, he joined in the prayer that a writ of certiorari be granted.
There may well be factual situations to which both subsections apply. The subsections, however, are clearly not wholly redundant.
In our ruling today, we recognize that we have not resolved any ambiguity that might be inherent in the terms “profits” and “proceeds.” Our use of those terms is not intended to suggest a particular means of calculating the precise amount that is subject to RICO forfeiture in any given case. We hold simply that the “interests” subject to forfeiture under § 1963(a)(1) are not limited to interests in an enterprise.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and the petition for writ of certiorari are granted.
The judgment is vacated and the case is remanded to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa with directions to dismiss the indictment. Durham v. United States, 401 U. S. 481 (1971).
The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Blackmun dissent for the reasons stated in Mr. Justice Blackmun’s dissenting opinion in Durham v. United States, 401 U. S. 481, 483-485 (1971).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
I
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In United States v. Louisiana, 363 U. S. 1, the Court held that by the Submerged Lands Act of 1953 the United States had quitclaimed to Louisiana the lands underlying the Gulf of Mexico within three geographical miles of the coastline. The United States was declared entitled to the lands further seaward. In the decree, as in the Submerged Lands Act, “coast line” was defined as “the line of ordinary low water along that portion of the coast which is in direct contact with the open sea and the line marking the seaward limit of inland waters.” We reserved jurisdiction “to entertain such further proceedings, enter such orders and issue such writs as may... be deemed necessary or advisable to give proper force and effect to this decree.” Before the Court now are cross-motions by the United States and Louisiana for a supplemental decree designating the boundary of the lands under the Gulf owned by Louisiana. The segments of that boundary line that lie three miles outward from “that portion of the coast which is in direct contact with the open sea” are for the most part easily determinable. The controversy here is primarily over the location of that part of the coastline that consists of “the line marking the seaward limit of inland waters.”
More than three years ago, in United States v. California, 381 U. S. 139, we held that Congress had left to the Court the task of defining “inland waters,” and we adopted for purposes of the Submerged Lands Act the definitions contained in the international Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone, ratified by the United States in 1961. The United States asserts that the same definitions should determine the location of the “line marking the seaward limit of inland waters” of Louisiana. Louisiana, on the other hand, contends that this line has already been determined pursuant to an 1895 Act of Congress which directed the drawing of “lines dividing the high seas from rivers, harbors and inland waters,” and has proposed a decree based upon this contention. Alternatively, Louisiana argues that, even assuming the applicability of the definitions contained in the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone, the decree proposed by the United States reflects too restrictive a construction of the Convention’s provisions in derogation of relevant principles of international law.
I.
The “Inland Water Line.”
Comprehensive congressional regulation of maritime navigation began with the Act of April 29, 1864, which promulgated rules applicable to all vessels of domestic registry on any waters. These rules were patterned on emerging international standards, and when most other maritime nations subsequently changed their rules, the United States Congress in 1885 enacted conforming “Revised International Rules and Regulations” to govern American ships “upon the high seas and in all coast waters of the United States, except such as are otherwise provided for.” The 1864 Act was therefore repealed except as to navigation “within the harbors, lakes, and inland waters of the United States.” In 1889 the International Maritime Conference drafted new International Rules, which were promptly adopted by Congress. Article 30 of those rules provided that “ [n] othing in these rules shall interfere with the operation of a special rule, duly made by local authority, relative to the navigation of any harbor, river, or inland waters.”
The United States already had in the 1864 Act such special inland rules for ships of American registry. In order to clarify the areas and ships to which the International and Inland Rules would respectively apply, Congress in 1895 provided that the rules of the 1864 Act were to govern the navigation of all vessels “on the harbors, rivers and inland waters of the United States.” The 1895 Act went on to provide:
“The Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized, empowered and directed from time to time to designate and define by suitable bearings or ranges with light houses, light vessels, buoys or coast objects, the lines dividing the high seas from rivers, harbors and inland waters."
The authority thus vested in the Secretary of the Treasury has since been transferred several times to various federal officials and now resides with the Commandant of the Coast Guard; and from time to time the lines authorized by the 1895 Act have been designated along portions of the United States coast. When the Submerged Lands Act was passed in 1953, such lines had been drawn in the Gulf only along some segments of the Louisiana shore, but in that year the Commandant of the Coast Guard drew new lines applicable to all the waters off the Louisiana coast. In 1954 the Louisiana Legislature declared that it “accepted and approved” this demarcation, which it now calls the “Inland Water Line,” as its boundary. Louisiana now argues that this line encloses inland waters and is therefore “the line marking the seaward limit of inland waters,” and thus its “coastline” within the meaning of the Submerged Lands Act.
Louisiana argues initially that the 1895 Act is in pari materia with the Submerged Lands Act. Congress, it is said, must have contemplated that a technical term such as “inland waters” should have the same meaning in different statutes. The phrase appears, however, in quite different contexts in the two pieces of legislation. While the Submerged Lands Act established boundaries between the lands of the States and the Nation, Congress’ only concern in the 1895 Act was with the problem of navigation in waters close to this Nation’s shores. There is no evidence in the legislative history that it was the purpose of Congress in 1953 to tie the meaning of the phrase “inland waters” to the 1895 statute. For instance, during the Senate Committee hearings on the Submerged Lands Act, the following exchange took place between Senator Anderson and the Assistant Attorney-General of Louisiana:
"Senator Anderson-. Was there not a so-called Government line drawn along the coast of Louisiana?
“Mr. Madden. Only a partial line, Senator. I remember the old statute that authorized, I believe it was first the Secretary of Commerce, or the Treasury, to fix a line to show the demarcation between inland waters and the high seas. I think the Coast Guard has attempted to draw a partial line over on the east side of Louisiana.
“Senator Anderson-. We went through all that in the hearing a couple of years ago, and found that was of no value to us whatsoever.”
Louisiana’s position that the Submerged Lands Act must necessarily be read as referring to the 1895 Act is thus not tenable. After a lengthy review of the legislative history of the Submerged Lands Act in United States v. California, we reached the conclusion that Congress deliberately “chose to leave the definition of inland waters where it found it — in the Court’s hands.” 381 U. S., at 157. We adhere to that view, and turn to Louisiana’s other arguments in support of the “Inland Water Line.”
We further decided in United States v. California that the provisions of the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone were “the best and most workable definitions available,” 381 U. S., at 165, and we adopted them for purposes of the Submerged Lands Act. Yet Louisiana asserts that the Court is not precluded by the California decision from adopting the “Inland Water Line” in this case. Essentially the argument is that the Convention was not intended either to be the exclusive determinant of inland or territorial waters or to divest a nation of waters which it had long considered subject to its sole jurisdiction. By the long-standing, continuous, and unopposed exercise of jurisdiction to regulate navigation on waters within the “Inland Water Line,” the United States is said to have established them as its inland waters under traditional principles of international law. Alternatively, Louisiana suggests that, even assuming the exclusivity of the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone, the “Inland Water Line,” by virtue of this assertion of sovereignty, has created “historic bays” within the exception of Article 7 of the Convention. We have concluded, however, that nothing in either the enactment of the 1895 Act or its administration indicates that the United States has ever treated that line as a territorial boundary.
Under generally accepted principles of international law, the navigable sea is divided into three zones, distinguished by the nature of the control which the contiguous nation can exercise over them. Nearest to the nation’s shores are its inland, or internal waters. These are subject to the complete sovereignty of the nation, as much as if they were a part of its land territory, and the coastal nation has the privilege even to exclude foreign vessels altogether. Beyond the inland waters, and measured from their seaward edge, is a belt known as the marginal, or territorial, sea. Within it the coastal nation may exercise extensive control but cannot deny the right of innocent passage to foreign nations. Outside the territorial sea are the high seas, which are international waters not subject to the dominion of any single nation.
Whether particular waters are inland has depended on historical as well as geographical factors. Certain shoreline configurations have been deemed to confine bodies of water, such as bays, which are necessarily inland. But it has also been recognized that other areas of water closely connected to the shore, although they do not meet any precise geographical test, may have achieved the status of inland waters by the manner in which they have been treated by the coastal nation. As we said in United States v. California, it is generally agreed that historic title can be claimed only when the “coastal nation has traditionally asserted and maintained dominion with the acquiescence of foreign nations.” 381 U. S., at 172.
While there is not complete accord on the definition of historic inland waters, it is universally agreed that the reasonable regulation of navigation is not alone a sufficient exercise of dominion to constitute a claim to historic inland waters. On the contrary, control of navigation has long been recognized as an incident of the coastal nation’s jurisdiction over the territorial sea. Article 17 of the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone embodies this principle in its declaration that “[f]oreign ships exercising the right of innocent passage [in the territorial sea] shall comply with the laws and regulations enacted by the coastal State... and, in particular, with such laws and regulations relating to transport and navigation.” Because it is an accepted regulation of the territorial sea itself, enforcement of navigation rules by the coastal nation could not constitute a claim to inland waters from whose seaward border the territorial sea is measured.
But even if a nation could base a claim to historic inland waters on its continuous regulation of navigation, it is clear that no historic title can accrue when the coastal nation disclaims any territorial reach by such an exercise of jurisdiction. For at least the last 25 years, during which time Congress has twice re-enacted both the International and Inland Rules, the responsible officials have consistently disclaimed any but navigational significance to the “Inland Water Line.” When the line was for the first time completed off the entire Louisiana shore, the Commandant of the Coast Guard declared:
“The establishment of descriptive lines of demarcation is solely for purposes connected with navigation and shipping.... These lines are not for the purpose of defining Federal or State boundaries, nor do they define or describe Federal or State jurisdiction over navigable waters.”
As early as 1943 the Coast Guard had differentiated the “Inland Water Line” from other boundaries with territorial significance. Its manual on Admiralty Law Enforcement, published that year, discussed the principles of international law relating to the definitions and jurisdictional attributes of inland waters, the territorial sea, and the high seas. The manual then contrasted the line drawn under the 1895 Act.
“NAVIGATION RULE: Now let us consider another line of demarcation. As shown in Chapter V, there are different rules for navigation on the ‘inland waters’ and the ‘high seas’: the Inland Rules and the International Rules. But here we do not apply the previous definition, but adopt a new one for convenience. The Secretary of Commerce has fixed a series of lines along our coast, lines not following the natural curvature of our shores, and not following any three-mile natural perimeter, and the Inland Rules apply inside this line, while the International Rules apply outside the line....
“Quite obviously, this artificial line does not truly separate the high seas from the inland waters of the United States. It simply marks the area within which the Inland Rules apply, and outside of which the International Rules control.”
In United States v. California we held that the United States’ disclaimer to the Court of any historic title was decisive in the light of the “questionable evidence of continuous and exclusive assertions of dominion over the disputed waters.” 381 U. S., at 175. In this case, not only-are there long-standing, extrajudicial disclaimers of historic title, but also the United States has never treated the “Inland Water Line” as delimiting an area within which it can exercise jurisdiction over anything but navigation.
There is no indication that in enacting the navigation rules and authorizing the designation of an “Inland Water Line” Congress believed it was also determining the Nation’s territorial boundaries. Indeed, it seems unlikely that Congress, if it had intended that result, would have delegated such authority to the Secretary of the Treasury, to be exercised in his discretion “from time to time” and by reference to navigational aids rather than in accordance with prevailing principles of international law. Consistently with their limited statutory purpose, the lines have always been drawn, and frequently altered, solely with regard to contemporary navigational needs. And in the only instance called to our attention in which the “Inland Water Line” was mentioned by the United States in its international relations, the State Department in 1929 cautioned that the “lines do not represent territorial boundaries, but are for navigational purposes.” We must therefore reject Louisiana’s contention that the United States has historically treated the “Inland Water Line” as the territorial boundary of its inland waters.
Finally, Louisiana argues that only adoption of the current “Inland Water Line” will fulfill the “requirements of definiteness and stability which should attend any congressional grant of property rights belonging to the United States.” United States v. California, 381 U. S. 139, 167. Any fine drawn by application of the rules of the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone would be ambulatory and would vary with the frequent changes in the shoreline. This will lead, it is said, to continuing uncertainty and endless litigation concerning the location of the Louisiana coastline under the Submerged Lands Act, because the shoreline is constantly shifting as the Mississippi River and violent Gulf storms remold the soft, silt-like delta soil. This problem was not encountered on the rock-hard, comparatively straight California coast, and Louisiana contends that there is nothing in the Submerged Lands Act which requires that inland waters be given the same definition for every part of the United States coast. Just as the Court was free in United States v. California to adopt the definition which best solved the problems of that case, the argument concludes, we are free in this ease to adopt a different definition more suited to the peculiarities of the highly unstable Louisiana shore.
We do not, however, so broadly construe our function under the Submerged Lands Act. Our adoption in United States v. California of the definitions contained in the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone was “for purposes of the Submerged Lands Act/’ and not simply for the purpose of delineating the California coastline. Congress left to this Court the task of defining a term used in the Act, not of drawing state boundaries by whatever method might seem appropriate in a particular case. It would be an extraordinary principle of construction that would authorize or permit a court to give the same statute wholly different meanings in different cases, and it would require a stronger showing of congressional intent than has been made in this case to justify the assumption of such unconfined power. Finally, we note that if the inconvenience of an ambulatory coastline proves to be substantial, there is nothing in this decision which would obstruct resolution of the problems through appropriate legislation or agreement between the parties. Such legislation or agreement might, for example, freeze the coastline as of an agreed-upon date.
Even if we were free to adopt varying definitions of inland waters for different portions of the United States coast, we are not convinced that the policy in favor of a certain and stable coastline, strong as it is, would necessarily outweigh countervailing policy considerations under the Submerged Lands Act. We recognized in California the desirability of “a single coastline for both the administration of the Submerged Lands Act and the conduct of our future international relations.” 381 U. S., at 165. The adoption of the “Inland Water Line” for Louisiana would be completely at odds with this desideratum. Moreover, adoption of a new definition of inland waters in this case would create uncertainty and encourage controversy over the coastlines of other States, unsure as to which, if either, of the two definí-tions would be applied to them. This uncertainty might be compounded by the absence of any “Inland Water Line” around much of the United States. And we cannot assume that, in enacting the Submerged Lands Act, Congress envisioned that the ownership of potentially vast resources might thereafter be determined “from time to time” by the Coast Guard, acting solely in the interest of navigational convenience.
For these reasons, we conclude that that part of Louisiana’s coastline which, under the Submerged Lands Act, consists of “the line marking the seaward limit of inland waters,” is to be drawn in accordance with the definitions of the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone.
II.
Application of the Convention on the Territoeial Sea and the Contiguous Zone.
Many issues divide the parties concerning the application of the provisions of the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone to the Louisiana coast. Some of these issues, which involve simply interpretation of the Convention, we have been able to decide on the basis of the materials now before us. Others, however, are primarily factual questions involving the construction and application of the Convention’s provisions with respect to particularized geographical configurations. Several of these factual disputes cannot be properly resolved without evidentiary hearings, and as to others we think it would be wise at all events in this technical and unfamiliar area to have the benefit, preliminarily, of the judgment of a detached referee. Accordingly, we have decided to refer to a Special Master the task of resolving in the first instance several of the particularized disputes over the precise boundary between the submerged Gulf lands belonging to the United States and those belonging to Louisiana.
1. Dredged channels. A recurring question in the application of the Convention to the Louisiana coast is whether dredged channels in the Gulf leading to inland harbors comprise inland waters. In support of its contention that dredged channels, as such, are inland waters, Louisiana relies principally on Article 8 of the Convention:
“For the purpose of delimiting the territorial sea, the outermost permanent harbour works which form an integral part of the harbour system shall be regarded as forming part of the coast.”
Incontestably, Louisiana argues, the channels “form an integral part of the harbour system”; that they are “harbour works” as well should also be obvious in light of the enormous cost and effort which the United States has expended in dredging and maintaining them.
The United States argues more convincingly, however, that Article 8 applies only to raised structures. The discussions of the Article by the 1958 Geneva Conference and the International Law Commission reveal that the term “harbour works” connoted “structures” and “installations” which were “part of the land” and which in some sense enclosed and sheltered the waters within. It is not enough that the dredged channels may be an “integral part of the harbour system”; even raised structures which fit that description, such as lighthouses, are not considered “harbour works” unless they are “connected with the coast.” Thus, Article 8 provides that “harbour works... shall be regarded as forming part of the coast” (emphasis supplied), a description which hardly fits underwater channels. As part of the “coast,” the breadth of the territorial sea is measured from the harbor works’ low-water lines, attributes not possessed by dredged channels. We must therefore conclude that Article 8 does not establish dredged channels as inland waters.
Louisiana also contends that the legislative history of the Submerged Lands Act reveals a clear congressional purpose to include such channels as inland waters. Early versions of the bill contained a definition of the term “inland waters” for the purposes of the Act, and that definition included “channels.” The definition was later deleted, but Louisiana contends that the sole purpose of the deletion was to avoid a construction of the definition which would exclude other areas from inland waters. In United States v. California, 381 U. S. 139, 150-160, we reviewed at length the pertinent legislative history and concluded that the only sure inference which could be drawn from the deletion of the definition was that Congress thought the highly technical question should be left to the courts. We remain of that view. Moreover, it is far from clear that the word “channels” in the deleted definition encompassed dredged channels in the open sea. From the context in which the word appears, it is far more likely that the definition referred only to bodies of water bordered by land.
2. The territorial sea of low-tide elevations. Article 11 of the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone deals with the subject of low-tide elevations:
“1. A low-tide elevation is a naturally-formed area of land which is surrounded by and above water at low-tide but submerged at high tide. Where a low-tide elevation is situated wholly or partly at a distance not exceeding the breadth of the territorial sea from the mainland or an island, the low-water line on that elevation may be used as the baseline for measuring the breadth of the territorial sea.
“2. Where a low-tide elevation is wholly situated at a distance exceeding the breadth of the territorial sea from the mainland or an island, it has no territorial sea of its own.”
The question presented by the application of this provision to the Louisiana coast is whether the territorial sea — or, for purposes of this case, the three-mile grant to Louisiana under the Submerged Lands Act — is to be measured from low-tide elevations which lie within three miles of the baseline across the mouth of a bay but more than three miles from any point on the mainland or an island.
The United States argues that the phrase “at a distance not exceeding the breadth of the territorial sea from the mainland” does not refer to the territorial sea as a situs. Rather it uses the width of the territorial sea only as a measurement of distance — a circumlocution made necessary by the failure of the 1958 Geneva Conference to agree upon a uniform width. And that distance — three miles in this case — is to be measured from the “mainland,” a term which does not comprise baselines across bodies of water but is limited to the low-water mark on dry land. Louisiana, on the other hand, interprets the Article as covering all low-tide elevations situated anywhere within the territorial sea. And the drawing of baselines across the mouths of bays is an integral step in the determination of the area of the territorial sea. Moreover, Louisiana argues, the term “mainland” does include inland waters. The theory of the Convention, it is argued, reflects a long-standing principle of international law — that bays and other inland waters are practically assimilated to the dry land and treated for all legal purposes as if they were a part of it.
The parties agree that Article 11 on its face is not wholly dispositive of the issue, and that the language does not preclude either construction. Each party, therefore, relies on the origins of the Article and the statements of its drafters. When the provision was first proposed to the International Law Commission in 1952, it read as follows:
“Elevations of the sea bed situated within the territorial sea, though only above water at low tide, are taken into consideration for the determination of the base line of the territorial sea.” (Emphasis supplied.)
After several amendments to the rapporteur’s draft, the Commission in 1954 adopted a version with substantially the same meaning:
“Drying rocks and shoals which are wholly or partly within the territorial sea may be taken as points of departure for delimiting the territorial sea.” (Emphasis supplied.)
As the discussion made clear, both drafts of the Article covered all low-tide elevations within the territorial sea, however measured. Moreover, the provision was thought to embody long-standing principles of international law.
The draft encountered a serious objection, however, which led to its further amendment by the International Law Commission. If every low-tide elevation “within the territorial sea” was to have a territorial sea of its own, then
“a country like Holland might extend its territorial sea very considerably by advancing from one shoal to another, claiming that a shoal situated within the territorial sea of another shoal had itself a territorial sea.”
To avoid this undue extension of the territorial sea, the final draft of the Commission was revised to read as follows:
“Drying rock and drying shoals which are wholly or partly within the territorial sea, os measured from the mainland or an island, may be taken as points of departure for measuring the extension of the territorial sea.” (Emphasis supplied.)
It is clear that under the International Law Commission version of Article 11, the “territorial sea, as measured from the mainland” included those portions which extended from baselines enclosing bays. The sole purpose of the amendment to the initial proposals was to indicate that “drying rocks and drying shoals could only be used once as points of departure for extending the territorial sea and that the process could not be repeated by leapfrogging, as it were, from one rock or shoal to another.”
The United States contends that by changing the language of the International Law Commission draft to its present form in the Convention, the Geneva Conference intended also to change its meaning. Precisely the opposite conclusion, however, flows from an inspection of the history of the Convention. The amendment was advanced by the United States; yet its explanation for the proposal contained not the slightest indication that any change in the basic meaning of the Article was intended. Surely there would have been some discussion of the reference to the territorial sea as a measure of distance rather than as a situs had it been the purpose of the United States or the Conference to alter so significantly the meaning of prior drafts and the existing international consensus. Instead, the expert to the Secretariat of the Conference explained “that all the proposals on article 11 corresponded entirely to the intentions of the International Law Commission.” We therefore conclude that low-tide elevations situated in the territorial sea as measured from bay-closing lines are part of the coastline from which the three-mile grant of the Submerged Lands Act extends.
3. The semicircle test. Article 7 (2) defines a bay as follows:
“For the purposes of these articles, a bay is a well-marked indentation whose penetration is in such proportion to the width of its mouth as to contain landlocked waters and constitute more than a mere curvature of the coast. An indentation shall not, however, be regarded as a bay unless its area is as large as, or larger than, that of the semi-circle whose diameter is a line drawn across the mouth of that indentation.”
(a) In several areas along the Louisiana coast the parties raise the problem of whether and to what extent indentations within or tributary to another indentation can be included in the area of the latter for purposes of the semicircle test. Louisiana argues that a closing line should be drawn across what it calls “Outer Vermilion Bay” from Tigre Point to Shell Keys. That body of water does not meet the semicircle test unless the area of Vermilion Bay, joined to “Outer Vermilion Bay” only by a channel between the mainland and Marsh Island, is included. Similarly, Louisiana contends that “Ascension Bay,” whose headlands are said to be the jetties at Belle Pass on the west and Southwest Pass on the east, is a bay under Article 7 (2). Again, however, its area will satisfy the semicircle test only if deemed to include the waters of the Barataria Bay-Caminada Bay complex, which are separated from the outer indentation by a string of islands.
Louisiana argues that the area of tributary bays or other indentations must be included within that of the primary indentation. Article 7 (3) provides that “[f]or the purpose of measurement, the area of an indentation is that lying between the low-water mark around the shore of the indentation and a line joining the low-water marks of its natural entrance points.” (Emphasis supplied.) The italicized phrase, it is said, constitutes a direction to follow the low-water line wherever it goes, including into other indentations, in drawing the perimeter of the primary bay. The general rule is well recognized, Louisiana argues, by the United States Department of State among others, that the area of bays within bays is included in calculating the semicircle test.
The United States does not reject the notion that some indentations which would qualify independently as bays may nonetheless be considered as part of larger indentations for purposes of the semicircle test; but it denies the existence of any rule that all tributary waters are so includible. Article 7 (2), it emphasizes, refers to “that indentation.” The inner bays can be included, therefore, only if they can reasonably be considered part of the single, outer indentation. And that cannot be said of inland waters which, like Vermilion Bay and Barataría Bay-Caminada Bay, are wholly separated from the outer body of water and linked only by narrow passages or channels.
For purposes of this lawsuit, we find it unnecessary to provide a complete answer to the questions posed by the parties. “Outer Vermilion Bay,” if it is to qualify under the semicircle test, must include the waters of Vermilion Bay. Yet Vermilion Bay is itself a part of the much larger indentation which includes West and East Cote Blanche Bays and Atchafalaya Bay, and which opens to the sea between Marsh Island and Point au Fer. Recognition of the unitary nature of this larger indentation follows from Louisiana’s insistence that the low-water mark must be followed around the entire indentation. If, as Louisiana posits, the western headland of the indentation is at Tigre Point, then a closing line across its mouth to Point au Fer far exceeds the 24-mile limit imposed by Article 7 (4). It follows that “Outer Vermilion Bay” is neither itself a bay nor part of a larger bay under the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone.
We have concluded, on the other hand, that the area of “Ascension Bay” does include the Barataría Bay-Caminada Bay complex and therefore meets the semicircle test. Those inner bays are separated from the larger “Ascension Bay” only by the string of islands across their entrances. If those islands are ignored, the entrance to Barataría and Caminada Bays is sufficiently wide that those bays and “Ascension Bay” can reasonably be deemed a single large indentation even under the United States’ approach. Article 7 (3) provides that for the purposes of calculating the semicircle test, “[i]slands within an indentation shall be included as if they were part of the water areas of the indentation.” The clear purpose of the Convention is not to permit islands to defeat the semicircle test by consuming areas of the indentation. We think it consistent with that purpose that islands should not be permitted to defeat the semicircle test by sealing off one part of the indentation from the rest. Treating the string of islands “as if they were part of the water areas” of the single large indentation within which they lie, “Ascension Bay” does meet the semicircle test.
(b) Another issue involving the semicircle test arises in East Bay in the Mississippi River Delta. Since East Bay does not meet the semicircle test on a closing line between its seawardmost headlands — the tip of the jetty at Southwest Pass and the southern end of South Pass — it does not qualify as a bay under Article 7 of the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone. There is a line which can be drawn within East Bay, however, so as to satisfy the semicircle test. Louisiana argues that, just as under Article 7 (5) a 24-mile line can be drawn within a bay whose mouth is more than 24 miles wide, so also can a line which satisfies the semicircle test be drawn within a bay whose mouth is too wide to meet that test.
The analogy is unsound. A bay whose mouth is wider than 24 miles is nevertheless a bay. But an indentation that does not meet the semicircle test is not a bay but open sea. If an indentation which satisfies the semicircle test is a true bay, therefore, it cannot be on the theory that the closing line carves out a portion of a larger bay. The enclosed indentation must by its own features qualify as a bay.
The United States argues that the area within East Bay enclosed by Louisiana’s proposed line does not constitute a bay because there is no “well-marked indentation” with identifiable headlands which encloses “landlocked” waters. Indeed, it is said, there is not the slightest curvature of the coast at either asserted entrance point. We do not now decide whether the designated portion of East Bay meets these criteria, but hold only that they must be met. We cannot accept Louisiana’s argument that an indentation which satisfies the semicircle test ipso facto qualifies as a bay under the Convention. Such a construction would fly in the face of Article 7 (2), which plainly treats the semicircle test as a minimum requirement. And we have found nothing in the history of the Convention which would support so awkward a construction.
4. Islands at the mouth of a bay. Article 7 (3) of the Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone provides:
“For the purpose of measurement, the area of an indentation is that lying between the low-water mark around the shore of the indentation and a line joining the low-water marks of its natural entrance points. Where, because of the presence of islands, an indentation has more than one mouth, the semicircle shall be drawn on a line as long as the sum total of the lengths of the lines across the different mouths. Islands within an indentation shall be included as if they were part of the water areas of the indentation.”
While the only stated relevance of such islands is to the semicircle test, it is clear that the lines across the various mouths are to be the baselines for all purposes. The application of this provision to the string of islands across the openings to the Lake Pelto-Terrebonne Bay-Timbalier Bay complex has raised the following questions: (a) between what points on the islands are the closing lines to be drawn, and (b) should the lines be drawn landward of a direct line between the entrance points on the mainland?
(a) It is Louisiana’s primary contention that when islands appear in the mouth of a bay, the lines closing the bay and separating inland from territorial waters should be drawn between the mainland headlands and the seawardmost points on the islands. This position, however, is refuted by the language of Article 7 (3), which provides for the drawing of baselines “across the different mouths” (emphasis supplied), not across the most seaward tips of the islands. There is no suggestion in the Convention that a mouth caused by islands is to he located in a manner any different from a mouth between points on the mainland — that is, by “a line joining the low-water marks of [the bay’s] natural entrance points.” The “natural entrance points” may, and in some instances in the Lake Pelto-Terrebonne Bay-Timbalier Bay complex do, coincide with the outermost edges of the islands. But there is no automatic correlation, and the headlands must be selected according to the same principles that govern the location of entrance points on the mainland.
(b) Louisiana argues in the alternative that even if the closing lines should not necessarily connect the most seaward points on the islands, in no event should they be drawn landward of a direct line between the entrance points on the mainland
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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J
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Jackson
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The key issue in this case is whether statutes of the United States should be applied to this claim of maritime tort. Larsen, a Danish seaman, while temporarily in New York joined the crew of the Randa, a ship of Danish flag and registry, owned by petitioner, a Danish citizen. Larsen signed ship’s articles, written in Danish, providing that the rights of crew members would be governed by Danish law and by the employer’s contract with the Danish Seamen’s Union, of which Larsen was a member. He was negligently injured aboard the Randa in the course of employment, while in Havana harbor.
Respondent brought suit under the Jones Act on the law side of the District Court for the Southern District of New York and demanded a jury. Petitioner contended that Danish law was applicable and that, under it, respondent had received all of the compensation to which he was entitled. He also contested the court’s jurisdiction. Entertaining the cause, the court ruled that American rather than Danish law applied, and the jury rendered a verdict of $4,267.50. The Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, affirmed. Its decision, at least superficially, is at variance with its own earlier ones and conflicts with one by the New York Court of Appeals. We granted certiorari.
The question of jurisdiction is shortly answered. A suit to recover damages under the Jones Act is in per-sonam against the ship’s owner and not one in rem against the ship itself. The defendant appeared generally, answered and tendered no objection to jurisdiction of his person. As frequently happens, a contention that there is some barrier to granting plaintiff’s claim is cast in terms of an exception to jurisdiction of subject matter. A cause of action under our law was asserted here, and the court had power to determine whether it was or was not well founded in law and in fact. Cf. Montana-Dakota Co. v. Public Service Co., 341 U. S. 246, 249.
Denmark has enacted a comprehensive code to govern the relations of her shipowners to ■ her seagoing labor which by its terms and intentions controls this claim. Though it is not for us to decide, it is plausibly contended that all obligations of the owner growing out of Danish law have been performed or tendered to this seaman. The shipowner, supported here by the Danish Government, asserts that the Danish law supplies the full measure of his obligation and that maritime usage and international law as accepted by the United States exclude the application of our incompatible statute.
That allowance of an additional remedy under our Jones Act would sharply conflict with the policy and letter of Danish law is plain from a general comparison of the two systems of- dealing with shipboard accidents. Both assure the ill or injured seafaring worker the conventional maintenance and cure at the shipowner’s cost, regardless of fault or negligence on the part of anyone. But, while we limit this to the period within which maximum possible cure can be effected, Farrell v. United States, 336 U. S. 511, the Danish law limits it to a fixed period of twelve weeks, and the monetary measurement is different. The two systems are in sharpest conflict as to treatment of claims for disability, partial or complete, which are permanent, or which outlast the liability for maintenance and cure, to which class this claim belongs. Such injuries Danish law relieves under a state-operated plan similar to our workmen’s compensation systems. Claims for such disability are not made against the owner but against the state’s Directorate of Insurance Against the Consequences of Accidents. They may be presented directly or through any Danish Consulate. They are allowed by administrative action, not by litigation, and depend not upon fault or negligence but only on the fact of injury and the extent of disability. Our own law, apart from indemnity for injury caused by the ship’s unseaworthiness, makes no such compensation for such disability in the absence of fault or negligence. But, when such fault or negligence is established by litigation, it allows recovery for elements such as pain and suffering not compensated under Danish law and lets the damages be fixed by jury. In this case, since negligence was found, United States law permits a larger recovery than Danish law. If the same injury were sustained but negligence was absent or not provable, the Danish law would appear to provide compensation where ours would not.
Respondent does not deny that Danish law is applicable to his case. The contention as stated in his brief is rather that “A claimant may select whatever forum he desires and receive the benefits resulting from such choice” and “A ship owner is liable under the laws of the forum where he does business as well as in his own country.” This contention that the Jones Act provides an optional cumulative remedy is not based on any explicit terms of the Act, which makes no provision for cases in which remedies have been obtained or are obtainable under foreign law. Rather he relies upon the literal catholicity of its terminology. If read literally, Congress has conferred an American right of action which requires nothing more than that plaintiff be “any seaman who shall suffer personal injury in the course of his employment.” It makes no explicit requirement that either the seaman, the employment or the injury have the slightest connection with the United States. Unless some relationship of one or more of these to our national interest is implied, Congress has extended our law and opened our courts to all alien seafaring men injured anywhere in the world in service of watercraft of every foreign nation— a hand on a Chinese junk, never outside Chinese waters, would not be beyond its literal wording.
But Congress in 1920 wrote these all-comprehending words, not on a clean slate, but as a postscript to a long series of enactments governing shipping. All were enacted with regard to a seasoned body of maritime law developed by the experience of American courts long accustomed to dealing with admiralty problems in reconciling our own with foreign interests and in accommodating the reach of our own laws to those of other maritime nations.
The shipping laws of the United States, set forth in Title 46 of the United States Code, comprise a patchwork of separate enactments, some tracing far back in our history and many designed for particular emergencies. While some have been specific in application to foreign shipping and others in being confined to American shipping, many give no evidence that Congress addressed itself to their foreign application and are in general terms which leave their application to be judicially determined from context and circumstance. By usage as old as the Nation, such statutes have been construed to apply only to areas and transactions in which American law would be considered operative under prevalent doctrines of international law. Thus, in United States v. Palmer, 3 Wheat. 610, this Court was called upon to interpret a statute of 1790 (1 Stat. 115) punishing certain acts when committed on the high seas by “any person or persons,” terms which, as Mr. Chief Justice Marshall observed, are “broad enough to comprehend every human being.” But the Court determined that the literal universality of the prohibition “must not only be limited to cases within the jurisdiction of the state, but also to those objects to which the legislature intended to apply them” (p. 631) and therefore would not reach a person performing the proscribed acts aboard the ship of a foreign state on the high seas.
This doctrine of construction is in accord with the long-heeded admonition of Mr. Chief Justice Marshall that “an act of congress ought never to be construed to violate the law of nations if any other possible construction remains....” The Charming Betsy, 2 Cranch 64, 118. See The Nereide, 9 Cranch 388, 423; MacLeod v. United States, 229 U. S. 416, 434; Sandberg v. McDonald, 248 U. S. 185, 195. And it has long been accepted in maritime jurisprudence that “... if any construction otherwise be possible, an Act will not be construed as applying to foreigners in respect to acts done by them outside the dominions of the sovereign power enacting. That is a rule based on international law by which one sovereign power is bound to respect the subjects and the rights of all other sovereign powers outside its own territory.” Lord Russell of Killowen in The Queen v. Jameson, [1896] 2 Q. B. 425, 430. This is not, as sometimes is implied, any impairment of our own sovereignty, or limitation of the power of Congress. “The law of the sea,” we have had occasion to observe, “is in a peculiar sense an international law, but application of its specific rules depends upon acceptance by the United States.” Farrell v. United States, 336 U. S. 511, 517. On the contrary, we are simply dealing with a problem of statutory construction rather commonplace in a federal system by which courts often have to decide whether “any” or “every” reaches to the limits of the enacting authority’s usual scope or is to be applied to foreign events or transactions.
The history of the statute before us begins with the 1915 enactment of the comprehensive LaFollette Act, entitled, “An Act To promote the welfare of American seamen in the merchant marine of the United States; to abolish arrest and imprisonment as a penalty for desertion and to secure the abrogation of treaty provisions in relation thereto; and to promote safety at sea.” 38 Stat. 1164. Many sections of this Act were in terms or by obvious implication restricted to American ships. Three sections were made specifically applicable to foreign vessels, and these provoked considerable doubt and debate. Others were phrased in terms which on their face might apply to the world or to anything less. In this category fell § 20, a cryptic paragraph dealing with the fellow-servant doctrine, to which this Court ascribed little, if any, of its intended effect. Chelentis v. Luckenbach S. S. Co., 247 U. S. 372. In 1920, Congress, under the title “An Act To provide for the promotion and maintenance of the American merchant marine... and other subjects not relevant, provided a plan to aid our mercantile fleet and included the revised provision for injured seamen now before us for construction. 41 Stat. 988, 1007. It did so by reference to the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, which we have held not applicable to an American citizen’s injury sustained in Canada while in service of an American employer. New York Central R. Co. v. Chisholm, 268 U. S. 29. And it did not give the seaman the one really effective security for a claim against a foreign owner, a maritime lien.
Congress could not have been unaware of the necessity of construction imposed upon courts by such generality of language and was well warned that in the absence of more definite directions than are contained in the Jones Act it would be applied by the courts to foreign events, foreign ships and foreign seamen only in accordance with the usual doctrine and practices of maritime law.
Respondent places great stress upon the assertion that petitioner’s commerce and contacts with the ports of the United States are frequent and regular, as the basis for applying our statutes to incidents aboard his ships. But the virtue and utility of sea-borne commerce lies in its frequent and important contacts with more than one country. If, to serve some immediate interest, the courts of each were to exploit every such contact to the limit of its power, it is not difficult to see that a multiplicity of conflicting and overlapping burdens would blight international carriage by sea. Hence, courts of this and other commercial nations have generally deferred to a non-national or international maritime law of impressive maturity and universality. It has the force of law, not from extraterritorial reach of national laws, nor from abdication of its sovereign powers by any nation, but from acceptance by common consent of civilized communities of rules designed to foster amicable and workable commercial relations.
International or maritime law in such matters as this does not seek uniformity and does not purport to restrict any nation from making and altering its laws to govern its own shipping and territory. However, it aims at stability and order through usages which considerations of comity, reciprocity and long-range interest have developed to define the domain which each nation will claim as its own. Maritime law, like our municipal law, has attempted to avoid or resolve conflicts between competing laws by ascertaining and valuing points of contact between the transaction and the states or governments whose competing laws are involved. The criteria, in general, appear to be arrived at from weighing of the significance of one or more connecting factors between the shipping transaction regulated and the national interest served by the assertion of authority. It would not be candid to claim that our courts have arrived at satisfactory standards or apply those that they profess with perfect consistency. But in dealing with international commerce we cannot be unmindful of the necessity for mutual forbearance if retaliations are to be avoided; nor should we forget that any contact which we hold sufficient to warrant application of our law to a foreign transaction will logically be as strong a warrant for a foreign country to apply its law to an American transaction.
In the case before us, two foreign nations can claim some connecting factor with this tort — Denmark, because, among other reasons, the ship and the seaman were Danish nationals; Cuba, because the tortious conduct occurred and caused injury in Cuban waters. The United States may also claim contacts because the seaman had been hired in and was returned to the United States, which also is the state of the forum. We therefore review the several factors which, alone or in combination, are generally conceded to influence choice of law to govern a tort claim, particularly a maritime tort claim, and the weight and significance accorded them.
1. Place of the Wrongful Act. — -The solution most commonly accepted as to torts in our municipal and in international law is to apply the law of the place where the acts giving rise to the liability occurred, the lex loci delicti commissi. This rule of locality, often applied to maritime torts, would indicate application of the law of Cuba, in whose domain the actionable wrong took place. The test of location of the wrongful act or omission, however sufficient for torts ashore, is of limited application to shipboard torts, because of the varieties of legal authority over waters she may navigate. These range from ports, harbors, roadsteads, straits, rivers and canals which form part of the domain of various states, through bays and gulfs, and that band of the littoral sea known as territorial waters, over which control in a large, but not unlimited, degree is conceded to the adjacent state. It includes, of course, the high seas as to which the law was probably settled and old when Grotius wrote that it cannot be anyone’s property and cannot be monopolized by virtue of discovery, occupation, papal grant, prescription or custom.
We have sometimes uncompromisingly asserted territorial rights, as when we held that foreign ships voluntarily entering our waters become subject to our prohibition laws and other laws as well, except as we may in pursuance of our own policy forego or limit exertion of our power. Cunard Steamship Co. v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 100, 124. This doctrine would seem to indicate Cuban law for this case. But the territorial standard is so unfitted to an enterprise conducted under many territorial rules and under none that it usually is modified by the more constant law of the flag. This would appear to be consistent with the practice of Cuba, which applies a workmen’s compensation system in principle not unlike that of Denmark to all accidents occurring aboard ships of Cuban registry. The locality test, for what it is worth, affords no support for the application of American law in this case and probably refers us to Danish in preference to Cuban law, though this point we need not decide, for neither party urges Cuban law as controlling.
2. Law of the Flag. — Perhaps the most venerable and universal rule of maritime law relevant to our problem is that which gives cardinal importance to the law of the flag. Each state under international law may determine for itself the conditions on which it will grant its nationality to a merchant ship, thereby accepting responsibility for it and acquiring authority over it. Nationality is evidenced to the world by the ship’s papers and its flag. The United States has firmly and successfully maintained that the regularity and validity of a registration can be questioned only by the registering state.
This Court has said that the law of the flag supersedes the territorial principle, even for purposes of criminal jurisdiction of personnel of a merchant ship, because it “is deemed to be a part of the territory of that sovereignty [whose flag it flies], and not to lose that character when in navigable waters within the territorial limits of another sovereignty.” On this principle, we concede a territorial government involved only concurrent jurisdiction of offenses aboard our ships. United States v. Flores, 289 U. S. 137, 155-159, and cases cited. Some authorities reject, as a rather mischievous fiction, the doctrine that a ship is constructively a floating part of the flag-state, but apply the law of the flag on the pragmatic basis that there must be some law on shipboard, that it cannot change at every change of waters, and no experience shows a better rule than that of the state that owns her.
It is significant to us here that the weight given to the ensign overbears most other connecting events in determining applicable law. As this Court held in United States v. Flores, supra, at 158, and iterated in Cunard Steamship Co. v. Mellon, supra, at 123:
“And so by comity it came to be generally understood among civilized nations that all matters of discipline and all things done on board which affected only the vessel or those belonging to her, and did not involve the peace or dignity of the country, or the tranquillity of the port, should be left by the local government to be dealt with by the authorities of the nation to which the vessel belonged as the laws of that nation or the interests of its commerce should require....”
This was but a repetition of settled American doctrine.
These considerations are of such weight in favor of Danish and against American law in this case that it must prevail unless some heavy counterweight appears.
3. Allegiance or Domicile of the Injured. — Until recent times there was little occasion for conflict between the law of the flag and the law of the state of which the seafarer was a subject, for the long-standing rule, as pronounced by this Court after exhaustive review of authority, was that the nationality of the vessel for jurisdictional purposes was attributed to all her crew. In re Ross, 140 U. S. 453, 472. Surely during service under a foreign flag some duty of allegiance is due. But, also, each nation has a legitimate interest that its nationals and permanent inhabitants be not maimed or disabled from self-support. In some later American cases, courts have been prompted to apply the Jones Act by the fact that the wrongful act or omission alleged caused injury to an American citizen or domiciliary. We need not, however, weigh the seaman’s nationality against that of the ship, for here the two coincide without resort to fiction. Admittedly, respondent is neither citizen nor resident of the United States. While on direct examination he answered leading questions that he was living in New York when he joined the Randa, the articles which he signed recited, and on cross-examination he admitted, that his home was Silkeburg, Denmark. His presence in New York was transitory and created no such national interest in, or duty toward, him as to justify intervention of the law of one state on the shipboard of another.
4. Allegiance of the Defendant Shipowner. — A state “is not debarred by any rule of international law from governing the conduct of its own citizens upon the high seas or even in foreign countries when the rights of other nations or their nationals are not infringed.” Skiriotes v. Florida, 313 U. S. 69, 73. Steele v. Bulova Watch Co., 344 U. S. 280, 282. Until recent times this factor was not a frequent occasion of conflict, for the nationality of the ship was that of its owners. But it is common knowledge that in recent years a practice has grown, particularly among American shipowners, to avoid stringent shipping laws by seeking foreign registration eagerly offered by some countries. Confronted with such operations, our courts on occasion have pressed beyond the formalities of more or less nominal foreign registration to enforce against American shipowners the obligations which our law places upon them. But here again the utmost liberality in disregard of formality does not support the application of American law in this case, for it appears beyond doubt that this owner is a Dane by nationality and domicile.
5. Place of Contract. — Place of contract, which was New York, is the factor on which respondent chiefly relies to invoke American law. It is one which often has significance in choice of law in a contract action. But a Jones Act suit is for tort, in which respect it differs from one to enforce liability for maintenance and cure. As we have said of the latter, “In the United States this obligation has been recognized consistently as an implied provision in contracts of marine employment. Created thus with the contract of employment, the liability, unlike that for indemnity or that later created by the Jones Act, in no sense is predicated on the fault or negligence of the shipowner.” Aguilar v. Standard Oil Co., 318 U. S. 724, 730. De Zon v. American President Lines, 318 U. S. 660, 667; Calmar S. S. Corp. v. Taylor, 303 U. S. 525, 527. But this action does not seek to recover anything due under the contract or damages for its breach.
The place of contracting in this instance, as is usual to such contracts, was fortuitous. A seaman takes his employment, like his fun, where he finds it; a ship takes on crew in any port where it needs them. The practical effect of making the lex loci contractus govern all tort claims during the service would be to subject a ship to a multitude of systems of law, to put some of the crew in a more advantageous position than others, and not unlikely in the long run to diminish hirings in ports of countries that take best care of their seamen.
But if contract law is nonetheless to be considered, we face the fact that this contract was explicit that the Danish law and the contract with the Danish union were to control. Except as forbidden by some public policy, the tendency of the law is to apply in contract matters the law which the parties intended to apply. We are aware of no public policy that would prevent the parties to this contract, which contemplates performance in a multitude of territorial jurisdictions and on the high seas, from so settling upon the law of the flag-state as their governing code. This arrangement is so natural and compatible with the policy of the law that even in the absence of an express provision it would probably have been implied. The Belgenland, 114 U. S. 355, 367; The Hanna Nielsen, 273 F. 171. We think a quite different result would follow if the contract attempted to avoid applicable law, for example, so as to apply foreign law to an American ship.
However, at the same time that he is relying on the place of the contract, respondent attacks the whole contract as void because the articles do not describe the voyage with sufficient definiteness within the rule applied in The Quoque, 261 F. 414, aff’d 266 F. 696. This case dealt with an American ship and its holding was founded upon a statute originally enacted in 1873 and held by those courts that have dealt with the problem applicable only to American ships. The Montapedia, 14 F. 427; The Elswick Tower, 241 F. 706. The contention is without merit.
We do not think the place of contract is a substantial influence in the choice between competing laws to govern a maritime tort.
6. Inaccessibility of Foreign Forum. — It is argued, and particularly stressed by an amicus brief, that justice requires adjudication under American law to save seamen expense and loss of time in returning to a foreign forum. This might be a persuasive argument for exercising a discretionary jurisdiction to adjudge a controversy; but it is not persuasive as to the law by which it shall be judged. It is pointed out, however, that the statutes of at least one maritime country (Panama) allow suit under its law by injured seamen only in its own courts. The effect of such a provision is doubtful in view of our holding that such venue restrictions by one of the states of the Union will not preclude action in a sister state, Tennessee Coal, Iron & R. Co. v. George, 233 U. S. 354.
Confining ourselves to the case in hand, we do not find this seaman disadvantaged in obtaining his remedy under Danish law from being in New York instead of Denmark. The Danish compensation system does not necessitate delayed, prolonged, expensive and uncertain litigation. It is stipulated in this case that claims may be made through the Danish Consulate. There is not the slightest showing that to obtain any relief to which he is entitled under Danish law would require his presence in Denmark or necessitate his leaving New York. And, even if it were so, the record indicates that he was offered and declined free transportation to Denmark by petitioner.
7. The Law of the Forum. — It is urged that, since an American forum has perfected its jurisdiction over the parties and defendant does more or less frequent and regular business within the forum state, it should apply its own law to the controversy between them. The “doing business” which is enough to warrant service of process may fall quite short of the considerations necessary to bring extraterritorial torts to judgment under our law. Under respondent’s contention, all that is necessary to bring a foreign transaction between foreigners in foreign ports under American law is to be able to serve American process on the defendant. We have held it a denial of due process of law when a state of the Union attempts to draw into control of its law otherwise foreign controversies, on slight connections, because it is a forum state. Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co. v. Delta & Pine Land Co., 292 U. S. 143; Home Insurance Co. v. Dick, 281 U. S. 397. The purpose of a conflict-of-laws doctrine is to assure that a case will be treated in the same way under the appropriate law regardless of the fortuitous circumstances which often determine the forum. Jurisdiction of maritime cases in all countries is so wide and the nature of its subject matter so far-flung that there would be no justification for altering the law of a controversy just because local jurisdiction of the parties is obtainable.
It is pointed out that our statute oh limitation of shipowner’s liability which formerly applied in terms to “any vessel” was applied by our courts to foreign causes. Hence, it is argued by analogy that “any seaman” should be construed so to apply. But the situation is inverted. The limitation-of-liability statute was construed to thus apply only against those who had chosen to sue in our courts on foreign transactions. Because a law of the forum is applied to plaintiffs who voluntarily submit themselves to it is no argument for imposing the law of the forum upon those who do not. Furthermore, this application of the limitation on liability brought our practice into harmony with that of all other maritime nations, while the application of the Jones Act here advocated would bring us into conflict with the maritime world.
This review of the connecting factors which either maritime law or our municipal law of conflicts regards as significant in determining the law applicable to a claim of actionable wrong shows an overwhelming preponderance in favor of Danish law. The parties are both Danish subjects, the events took place on a Danish ship, not within our territorial waters. Against these considerations is only the fact that the defendant was served here with process and that the plaintiff signed on in New York, where the defendant was engaged in our foreign commerce. The latter event is offset by provision of his contract that the law of Denmark should govern. We do not question the power of Congress to condition access to our ports by foreign-owned vessels upon submission to any liabilities it may consider good American policy to exact. But we can find no justification for interpreting the Jones Act to intervene between foreigners and their own law because of acts on a foreign ship not in our waters.
In apparent recognition of the weakness of the legal argument, a candid and brash appeal is made by respondent and by amicus briefs to extend the law to this situation as a means of benefiting seamen and enhancing the costs of foreign ship operation for the competitive advantage of our own. We are not sure that the interest of this foreign seaman, who is able to prove negligence, is the interest of all seamen or that his interest is that of the United States. Nor do we stop to inquire which law does whom the greater or the lesser good. The argument is misaddressed. It would be within the proprieties if addressed to Congress. Counsel familiar with the traditional attitude of this Court in maritime matters could not have intended it for us.
The judgment below is reversed and the cause remanded to District Court for proceedings consistent herewith.
Reversed and remanded.
Mr. Justice Black agrees with the Court of Appeals and would affirm its judgment.
Mr. Justice Clark, not having heard oral argument, took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
“Any seaman who shall suffer personal injury in the course of his employment may, at his election, maintain an action for damages at law, with the right of trial by jury, and in such action all statutes of the United States modifying or extending the common-law right or remedy in cases of personal injury to railway employees shall apply....” 46 U. S. C. § 688.
196 F. 2d 220.
In The Paula, 91 F. 2d 1001, the then Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, held the Jones Act inapplicable to a suit by an alien seaman against this same petitioner, and expressly refused to follow dicta by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Arthur v. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, 72 F. 2d 662, to the effect that the Act gave a right of action to “all seamen regardless of nationality.” The Paula decision is generally consistent with prior decisions of the court rendering it. See The Hanna Nielsen, 273 F. 171; The Pinar Del Rio, 16 F. 2d 984, aff’d 277 U. S. 151. A few years later, in Gambera v. Bergoty, 132 F. 2d 414, that same court granted relief under the Jones Act to a plaintiff who was a long-time resident, though not a citizen, of this country, and who suffered injury in American territorial waters while serving on a Greek ship. In Kyriakos v. Goulandris, 151 F. 2d 132, the court (over the dissent of Judge Learned Hand) held that the Act applied to injuries sustained while ashore in the United States by a Greek seaman employed by a Greek shipowner. In O’Neill v. Cunard White Star, 160 F. 2d 446, that court held that a British seaman injured on a British vessel on the high seas could not sue under the Jones Act. In Taylor v. Atlantic Maritime Co., 179 F. 2d 597, it reversed a district court judgment dismissing a Jones Act suit by a Panamanian citizen, allegedly residing in New York, against a ship of Panamanian registry for injuries apparently received on the high seas. Judge Learned Hand, writing for the court, indicated that a majority of the panel thought that the Jones Act was not applicable to alien seamen, but that “in spite of what we should hold, were we free” they were bound by the decision in Kyriakos. In the case now before us the court affirmed -per curiam on the authority of Kyriakos and Taylor. No two of these cases present exactly the same basis for application of American law and their contrary results do not necessarily mean inconsistency. But they illustrate different considerations which influence choice of law in maritime tort cases.
Sonnesen v. Panama Transport Co., 298 N. Y. 262, 82 N. E. 2d 569. Such a conflict can arise because Jones Act suits may be brought in state as well as federal courts. Engel v. Davenport, 271 U. S. 33.
344 U. S. 810.
See Plamals v. Pinar Del Rio, 277 U. S. 151.
Cheatham and Reese, Choice of the Applicable Law, 52 Col. L. Rev. 959, 961, dealing with state statutes, puts the problem in this fashion:
“There is one rule or policy which, wherever applicable, takes precedence over others and, to a large extent, saves the courts from further pain of decision. That controlling policy, obvious as it may be, is that a court must follow the dictates of its own legislature to the extent that these are constitutional. But, although choice of law constitutes no exception to this fundamental rule, rarely can the principle be applied in practice. The vast run of statutes are enacted with only the intrastate situation in mind. The application of a statute to out-of-state occurrences, therefore, must generally be determined in accordance with ordinary conflict of laws rules. And this is so even if, as is frequently the case, the statute employs such sweeping terms as ‘every contract’ or ‘every decedent.’ Unless it appears that the draftsmen so intended, language of this sort is not to be taken literally to mean that the statute is applicable to every transaction wherever occurring or to every case brought in the forum. Where, on the other hand, it is clear that the legislature has actually addressed itself to the choice of law problem, the courts, subject to the limitation of constitutionality, must give effect to its intentions.”
Section 1, requiring lost seamen to be replaced, directed the master to report such replacement to the United States consul at the first port at which he shall arrive thereafter. Section 2 provided certain regulations affecting the duties of crew members aboard “all merchant vessels of the United States.” Section 5 provided that on complaint of the officers or crew of “any vessel” in a foreign port that the vessel is unseaworthy or inadequately provisioned “the consul” may appoint someone to make inquiry. Section 6 set forth certain sanitation requirements for “merchant vessels of the United States.” Section 13 required every vessel to have in its complement a minimum percentage of able-bodied seamen certified by the Secretary of Commerce. Section 19 was concerned with the procedure to be followed before American consuls abroad in certain matters involving American seamen.
§§ 4, 11, and 14. Section 4 gave seamen the right to demand certain wage payments on coming into port. Its closing portion provided "... this section shall apply to seamen on foreign vessels while in harbors of the United States, and the courts of the United States shall be open to such seamen for its enforcement.” Section 11 re-enacted, with some changes, an 1898 statute prohibiting payment of advance wages to seamen; one subsection stated “this section shall apply as well to foreign vessels while in waters of the United States, as to vessels of the United States, and any master, owner, consignee, or agent of any foreign vessel who has violated its provisions shall be liable to the same penalty that the master, owner, or agent of a vessel of the United States would be for similar violation.”
For construction of these two sections see Patterson v. Bark Eudora, 190 U. S. 169; Sandberg v. McDonald, 248 U. S. 185, and Strathearn S. S. Co. v. Dillon, 252 U. S. 348.
Section 14 directed that certain requirements concerning lifeboats should also be applicable to foreign vessels leaving United States ports.
See Report of the House Committee on Merchant Marine
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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H
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The appellees have framed the issue here as follows:
“Does appellants’ action in refusing to allow an alien scholar to enter the country to attend academic meetings violate the First Amendment rights of American scholars and students who had invited him?”
Expressed in statutory terms, the question is whether §§212 (a) (28) (D) and (G)(v) and § 212 (d) (3) (A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 66 Stat. 182, 8 U. S. C. §§ 1182 (a)(28)(D) and (G)(v) and § 1182 (d) (3) (A), providing that certain aliens “shall be ineligible to receive visas and shall be excluded from admission into the United States” unless the Attorney General, in his discretion, upon recommendation by the Secretary of State or a consular officer, waives inadmissibility and approves temporary admission, are unconstitutional as applied here in that they deprive American citizens of freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.
The challenged provisions of the statute are:
“Section 212(a). Except as otherwise provided in this Act, the following classes of aliens shall be ineligible to receive visas and shall be excluded from admission into the United States:
“(28) Aliens who are, or at any time have been, members of any of the following classes:
“(D) Aliens not within any of the other provisions of this paragraph who advocate the economic, international, and governmental doctrines of world communism or the establishment in the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship ....
“(G) Aliens who write or publish . . . (v) the economic, international, and governmental doctrines of world communism or the establishment in the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship; . . .
“(d)
“(3) Except as provided in this subsection, an alien (A) who is applying for a nonimmigrant visa and is known or believed by the consular officer to be ineligible for such visa under one or more of the paragraphs enumerated in subsection (a) . . . may, after approval by the Attorney General of a recommendation by the Secretary of State or by the consular officer that the alien be admitted temporarily despite his inadmissibility, be granted such a visa and may be admitted into the United States temporarily as a nonimmigrant in the discretion of the Attorney General . . . .”
Section 212 (d) (6) provides that the Attorney General “shall make a detailed report to the Congress in any case in which he exercises his authority under paragraph (3) of this subsection on behalf of any alien excludable under paragraphs (9), (10), and (28) . . .
I
Ernest E. Mandel resides in Brussels, Belgium, and is a Belgian citizen. He is a professional journalist and is editor-in-chief of the Belgian Left Socialist weekly La Gauche. He is author of a two-volume work entitled Marxist Economic Theory published in 1969. He asserted in his visa applications that he is not a member of the Communist Party. He has described himself, however, as “a revolutionary Marxist.” He does not dispute, see 325 F. Supp. 620, 624, that he advocates the economic, governmental, and international doctrines of world communism.
Mandel was admitted to the United States temporarily in 1962 and again in 1968. On the first visit he came as a working journalist. On the second he accepted invitations to speak at a number of universities and colleges. On each occasion, although apparently he was not then aware of it, his admission followed a finding of ineligibility under § 212 (a) (28), and the Attorney General’s exercise of discretion to admit him temporarily, on recommendation of the Secretary of State, as § 212 (d) (3) (A) permits.
On September 8, 1969, Mandel applied to the American Consul in Brussels for a nonimmigrant visa to enter the United States in October for a six-day period, during which he would participate in a conference on Technology and the Third World at Stanford University. He had been invited to Stanford by the Graduate Student Association there. The invitation stated that John Kenneth Galbraith would present the keynote address and that Mandel would be expected to participate in an ensuing panel discussion and to give a major address the following day. The University, through the office of its president, “heartily endorse [d]” the invitation. When Mandel’s intended visit became known, additional invitations for lectures and conference participations came to him from members of the faculties at Princeton, Amherst, Columbia, and Yassar, from groups in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York City, and from others. One conference, to be in New York City, was sponsored jointly by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and the Socialist Scholars Conference; Mandel’s assigned subject there was “Revolutionary Strategy in Imperialist Countries.” Mandel then filed a second visa application proposing a more extensive itinerary and a stay of greater duration.
On October 23 the Consul at Brussels informed Mandel orally that his application of September 8 had been refused. This was confirmed in writing on October 30. The Consul’s letter advised him of the finding of inadmissibility under § 212 (a) (28) in 1962, the waivers in that year and in 1968, and the current denial of a waiver. It said, however, that another request for waiver was being forwarded to Washington in connection with Mandel’s second application for a visa. The Department of State, by a letter dated November 6 from its Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs to Mandel’s New York attorney, asserted that the earlier waivers had been granted on condition that Mandel conform to his itinerary and limit his activities to the stated purposes of his trip, but that on his 1968 visit he had engaged in activities beyond the stated purposes. For this reason, it was said, a waiver “was not sought in connection with his September visa application.” The Department went on to say, however, that it had now learned that Mandel might not have been • aware in 1968 of the conditions and limitations attached to his visa issuance, and that, in view of this and upon his assurances that he would conform to his stated itinerary and purposes, the Department was reconsidering his case. On December 1 the Consul at Brussels informed Mandel that his visa had been refused.
The Department of State in fact had recommended to the Attorney General that Mandel’s ineligibility be waived with respect to his October visa application. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, however, acting on behalf of the Attorney General, see 28 U. S. C. § 510, in a letter dated February 13, 1970, to New York counsel stated that it had determined that Mandel’s 1968 activities while in the United States “went far beyond the stated purposes of his trip, on the basis of which his admission had been authorized and represented a flagrant abuse of the opportunities afforded him to express his views in this country.” The letter concluded that favorable exercise of discretion, provided for under the Act, was not warranted and that Mandel’s temporary admission was not authorized.
Mandel’s address to the New York meeting was then delivered by transatlantic telephone.
In March Mandel and six of the other appellees instituted the present action against the Attorney General and the Secretary of State. The two remaining appellees soon came into the lawsuit by an amendment to the complaint. All the appellees who joined Mandel in this action are United States citizens and are university professors in various fields of the social sciences. They are persons who invited Mandel to speak at universities and other forums in the United States or who expected to participate in colloquia with him so that, as the complaint alleged, “they may hear his views and engage him in a free and open academic exchange.”
Plaintiff-appellees claim that the statutes are unconstitutional on their face and as applied in that they deprive the American plaintiffs of their First and Fifth Amendment rights. Specifically, these plaintiffs claim that the statutes prevent them from hearing and meeting with Mandel in person for discussions, in contravention of the First Amendment; that §212 (a) (28) denies them equal protection by permitting entry of “rightists” but not “leftists” and that the same section deprives them of procedural due process; that § 212 (d) (3) (A) is an unconstitutional delegation of congressional power to the Attorney General because of its broad terms, lack of standards, and lack of prescribed procedures; and that application of the statutes to Mandel was “arbitrary and capricious” because there was no basis in fact for concluding that he was ineligible, and no rational reason or basis in fact for denying him a waiver once he was determined ineligible. Declaratory and injunctive relief was sought.
A three-judge district court was duly convened. The case was tried on the pleadings and affidavits with exhibits. Two judges held that, although Mandel had no personal right to enter the United States, citizens of this country have a First Amendment right to have him enter and to hear him explain and seek to defend his views. The court then entered a declaratory judgment that § 212 (a) (28) and § 212 (d) (3) (A) were invalid and void insofar as they had been or might be invoked by the defendants to find Mandel ineligible for admission. The defendants were enjoined from implementing and enforcing those statutes so as to deny Mandel admission as a nonimmigrant visitor. 325 F. Supp. 620 (EDNY 1971). Judge Bartels dissented. Id., at 637. Probable jurisdiction was noted. 404 U. S. 1013 (1972).
II
Until 1875 alien migration to the United States was unrestricted. The Act of March 3, 1875, 18 Stat. 477, barred convicts and prostitutes. Seven years later Congress passed the first general immigration statute. Act of Aug. 3, 1882, 22 Stat. 214. Other legislation followed. A general revision of the immigration laws was effected by the Act of Mar. 3, 1903, 32 Stat. 1213. Section 2 of that Act made ineligible for admission “anarchists, or persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States or of all government or of all forms of law.” By the Act of Oct. 16, 1918, 40 Stat. 1012, Congress expanded the provisions for the exclusion of subversive aliens. Title II of the Alien Registration Act of 1940, 54 Stat. 671, amended the 1918 Act to bar aliens who, at any time, had advocated or were members of or affiliated with organizations that advocated violent overthrow of the United States Government.
In the years that followed, after extensive investigation and numerous reports by congressional committees, see Communist Party v. Subversive Activities Control Board, 367 U. S. 1, 94 n. 37 (1961), Congress passed the Internal Security Act of 1950, 64 Stat. 987. This Act dispensed with the requirement of the 1940 Act of a finding in each case, with respect to members of the Communist Party, that the party did in fact advocate violent overthrow of the Government. These provisions were carried forwrard into the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952.
We thus have almost continuous attention on the part of Congress since 1875 to the problems of immigration and of excludability of certain defined classes of aliens. The pattern generally has been one of increasing control with particular attention, for almost 70 years now, first to anarchists and then to those with communist affiliation or views.
III
It is clear that Mandel personally, as an unadmitted and nonresident alien, had no constitutional right of entry to this country as a nonimmigrant or otherwise. United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams, 194 U. S. 279, 292 (1904); United States ex rel. Knauff v. Shaughnessy, 338 U. S. 537, 542 (1950); Galvan v. Press, 347 U. S. 522, 530-532 (1954); see Harisiades v. Shaughnessy, 342 U. S. 580, 592 (1952).
The appellees concede this. Brief for Appellees 33; Tr. of Oral Arg. 28. Indeed, the American appellees assert that “they sue to enforce their rights, individually and as members of the American public, and assert none on the part of the invited alien.” Brief for Appellees 14. “Dr. Mandel is in a sense made a plaintiff because he is symbolic of the problem.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 22.
The case, therefore, comes down to the narrow issue whether the First Amendment confers upon the appellee professors, because they wish to hear, speak, and debate with Mandel in person, the ability to determine that Mandel should be permitted to enter the country or, in other words, to compel the Attorney General to allow Mandel’s admission.
IV
In a variety of contexts this Court has referred to a First Amendment right to “receive information and ideas”:
“It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas. 'This freedom [of speech and press] . . . necessarily protects the right to receive . . . Martin v. City of Struthers, 319 U. S. 141, 143 (1943) . . . .” Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U. S. 557, 564 (1969).
This was one basis for the decision in Thomas v. Collins, 323 U. S. 516 (1945). The Court there held that a labor organizer’s right to speak and the rights of workers “to hear what he had to say,” id., at 534, were both abridged by a state law requiring organizers to register before soliciting union membership. In a very different situation, Me. Justice White, speaking for a unanimous Court upholding the FCC’s “fairness doctrine” in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U. S. 367, 386-390 (1969), said:
“It is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail .... It is the right of the public to receive suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral, and other ideas and experiences which is crucial here. That right may not constitutionally be abridged either by Congress or by the FCC.” Id., at 390.
And in Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U. S. 301 (1965), the Court held that a statute permitting the Government to hold “communist political propaganda” arriving in the mails from abroad unless the addressee affirmatively requested in writing that it be delivered to him placed an unjustifiable burden on the addressee’s First Amendment right. This Court has recognized that this right is “nowhere more vital” than in our schools and universities. Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U. S. 479, 487 (1960); Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U. S. 234, 250 (1957) (plurality opinion); Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U. S. 589, 603 (1967). See Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U. S. 97 (1968).
In the present case, the District Court majority held:
“The concern of the First Amendment is not with a non-resident alien’s individual and personal interest in entering and being heard, but with .the rights , of the citizens of the country to have the alien enter and to hear him explain and seek to defend his views; that, as Garrison [v. Louisiana, 379 U. S. 64 (1964)] and Red Lion observe, is of the essence of self-government.” 325 F. Supp., at 631.
The Government disputes this conclusion on two grounds. First, it argues that exclusion of Mandel, involves no restriction on First Amendment rights at all since what is restricted is “only action — the action of the alien in coming into this country.” Brief for Appellants 29. Principal reliance is placed on Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U. S. 1 (1965), where the Government’s refusal to validate an American passport for travel to Cuba was upheld. The rights asserted there were those of the passport applicant himself. The Court held that his right to travel and his asserted ancillary right to inform himself about Cuba did not outweigh substantial “foreign policy considerations affecting all citizens” that, with the backdrop of the Cuban missile crisis, were characterized as the “weightiest considerations of national security.” Id., at 13, 16. The rights asserted here, in some contrast, are those of American academics who have invited Man-del to participate with them in colloquia, debates, and discussion in the United States. In light of the Court’s previous decisions concerning the “right to receive information,” we cannot realistically say that the problem facing us disappears entirely or is nonexistent because the mode of regulation bears directly on physical movement. In Thomas the registration requirement on its face concerned only action. In Lamont, too, the face of the regulation dealt only with the Government’s undisputed power to control physical entry of mail into the country. See United States v. Robel, 389 U. S. 258, 263 (1967).
The Government also suggests that the First Amendment is inapplicable because appellees have free access to Mandel’s ideas through his books and speeches, and because “technological developments,” such as tapes or telephone hook-ups, readily supplant his physical presence. This argument overlooks what may be particular qualities inherent in sustained, face-to-face debate, discussion and questioning. While alternative means of access to Mandel’s ideas might be a relevant factor were we called upon to balance First Amendment rights against governmental regulatory interests — a balance we find unnecessary here in light of the discussion that follows in Part Y — we are loath to hold on this record that existence of other alternatives extinguishes altogether any constitutional interest on the part of the appellees in this particular form of access.
V
Recognition that First Amendment rights are implicated, however, is not dispositive of our inquiry here. In accord with ancient principles of the international law of nation-states, the Court in The Chinese Exclusion Case, 130 U. S. 581, 609 (1889), and in Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U. S. 698 (1893), held broadly, as the Government describes it, Brief for Appellants 20, that the power to exclude aliens is “inherent in sovereignty, necessary for maintaining normal international relations and defending the country against foreign encroachments and dangers — a power to be exercised exclusively by the political branches of government . . . Since that time, the Court’s general reaffirmations of this principle have been legion. The Court without exception has sustained Congress’ “plenary power to make rules for the admission of aliens and to exclude those who possess those characteristics which Congress has forbidden.” Boutilier v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 387 U. S. 118, 123 (1967). “[O] ver no conceivable subject is the legislative power of Congress more complete than it is over” the admission of aliens. Oceanic Navigation Co. v. Stranahan, 214 U. S. 320, 339 (1909). In Lem Moon Sing v. United States, 158 U. S. 538, 547 (1895), the first Mr. Justice Harlan said:
“The power of Congress to exclude aliens altogether from the United States, or to prescribe the terms and conditions upon which they may come to this country, and to have its declared policy in that regard enforced exclusively through executive officers, without judicial intervention, is settled by our previous adjudications.”
Mr. Justice Frankfurter ably articulated this history in Galvan v. Press, 347 U. S. 522 (1954), a deportation case, and we can do no better. After suggesting, at 530, that “much could be said for the view” that due process places some limitations on congresssional power in this area “were we writing on a clean slate,” he continued:
“But the slate is not clean. As to the extent of the power of Congress under review, there is not merely 'a page of history’. . . but a whole volume. Policies pertaining to the entry of aliens and their right to remain here are peculiarly concerned with the political conduct of government. In the enforcement of these policies, the Executive Branch of the Government must respect the procedural safeguards of due process. . . . But that the formulation of these policies is entrusted exclusively to Congress has become about as firmly embedded in the legislative and judicial tissues of our body politic as any aspect of our government. . . .
“We are not prepared to deem ourselves wiser or more sensitive to human rights than our predecessors, especially those who have been most zealous in protecting civil liberties under the Constitution, and must therefore under our constitutional system recognize congressional power in dealing with aliens ....” Id., at 531-532.
We are not inclined in the present context to reconsider this line of cases. Indeed, the appellees, in contrast to the amicus, do not ask that we do so. The appellees recognize the force of these many precedents. In seeking to sustain the decision below, they concede that Congress could enact a blanket prohibition against entry of all aliens falling into the class defined by §§ 212 (a) (28) (D) and (G) (v), and that First Amendment rights could not override that decision. Brief for Appellees 16. But they contend that by providing a waiver procedure, Congress clearly intended that persons ineligible under the broad provision of the section would be temporarily admitted when appropriate “for humane reasons and for reasons of public interest.” S. Rep. No. 1137, 82d Cong., 2d Sess., 12 (1952). They argue that the Executive’s implementation of this congressional mandate through decision whether to grant a waiver in each individual case must be limited by the First Amendment rights of persons like appellees. Specifically, their position is that the First Amendment rights must prevail, at least where the Gov-eminent advances no justification for failing to grant a waiver. They point to the fact that waivers have been granted in the vast majority of cases.
Appellees’ First Amendment argument would prove too much. In almost every instance of an alien excludable under § 212 (a) (28), there are probably those who would wish to meet and speak with him. The ideas of most such aliens might not be so influential as those of Mandel, nor his American audience so numerous, nor the planned discussion forums so impressive. But the First Amendment does not protect only the articulate, the well known, and the popular. Were we to endorse the proposition that governmental power to withhold a waiver must yield whenever a bona fide claim is made that American citizens wish to meet and talk with an alien excludable under §212 (a) (28), one of two unsatisfactory results would necessarily ensue. Either every claim would prevail, in which case the plenary discretionary authority Congress granted the Executive becomes a nullity, or courts in each case would be required to weigh the strength of the audience’s interest against that of the Government in refusing a waiver to the particular alien applicant, according to some as yet undetermined standard. The dangers and the undesirability of making that determination on the basis of factors such as the size of the audience or the probity of the speaker’s ideas are obvious. Indeed, it is for precisely this reason that the waiver decision has, properly, been placed in the hands of the Executive.
Appellees seek to soften the impact of this analysis by arguing, as has been noted, that the First Amendment claim should prevail, at least where no justification is advanced for denial of a waiver. Brief for Appellees 26. The Government would have us reach this question, urging a broad decision that Congress has delegated the waiver decision to the Executive in its sole and unfettered discretion, and any reason or no reason may be given. See Jay v. Boyd, 351 U. S. 345, 357-358 (1956) ; Hintopoulos v. Shaughnessy, 353 U. S. 72, 77 (1957); Kimm v. Rosenberg, 363 U. S. 405, 408 (1960). This record, however, does not require that we do so, for the Attorney General did inform Mandel’s counsel of the reason for refusing him a waiver. And that reason was facially legitimate and bona fide.
The Government has chosen not to rely on the letter to counsel either in the District Court or here. The fact remains, however, that the official empowered to make the decision stated that he denied a waiver because he concluded that previous abuses by Mandel made it inappropriate to grant a waiver again. With this, we think the Attorney General validly exercised the plenary power that Congress delegated to the Executive by §§ 212 (a) (28) and (d)(3).
In summary, plenary congressional power to make policies and rules for exclusion of aliens has long been firmly established. In the case of an alien excludable under §212 (a) (28), Congress has delegated conditional exercise of this power to the Executive. We hold that when the Executive exercises this power negatively on the basis of a facially legitimate and bona fide reason, the courts will neither look behind the exercise of that discretion, nor test it by balancing its justification against the First Amendment interests of those who seek personal communication with the applicant. What First Amendment or other grounds may be available for attacking exercise of discretion for which no justification whatsoever is advanced is a question we neither address nor_ decide in this case.
Reversed.
Brief for Appellees 1.
E. Mandel, Revolutionary Strategy in the Imperialist Countries (1969), reprinted in App. 54r-66.
Appellees, while suggesting that §101 (a) (40), defining “world communism,” and § 212 (a) (28) (D) are unacceptably vague, “do not contest the fact that appellants can and do conclude that Dr. Mandel’s Marxist economic philosophy falls within the scope of these vague provisions.” Brief for Appellees 10 n. 8.
Entry presumably was claimed as a nonimmigrant alien under § 101 (a) (15) (H) of the Act, 8 U. S. C. § 1101 (a) (15) (H), namely, “an alien having a residence in a foreign country which he has no intention of abandoning (i) who is of distinguished merit and ability and who is coming temporarily to the United States to perform services of an exceptional nature requiring such merit and ability . . .
Mr. Justice Douglas in his dissent, post, at 773 n. 4, states that Mandel's noncompliance with the conditions imposed for his 1968 visit “appear merely to have been his speaking at more universities than his visa application indicated.” The letter dated November 6, 1969, from the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs of the Department of State to Mandel’s New York counsel observed: “On his 1968 visit, Mr. Mandel engaged in activities beyond the stated purposes of his trip. For this reason, a waiver of ineligibility was not sought in connection with his September visa application.”
Counsel’s affidavit in support of appellees’ motion for the convening of a three-judge court and for the issuance of a preliminary injunction stated:
“Mr. Mandel further assured the Consul by letter on November 10, 1969 that he would not appear at any assembly in the United States at which money was solicited for any political cause. This was apparently in response to a charge that he had been present at such a solicitation during his 1968 tour. (See also Exhibit L.)
“Of course, just as Mr. Mandel had no prior notice that he was required to adhere to a stated itinerary in 1968, so Mr. Mandel was not aware that he was forbidden from appearing where contributions [were] solicited for political causes. I have been advised by Mr. George Novaek, an American citizen, who coordinated Mr. Mandel’s 1968 tour, that in fact the event in question was a cocktail reception held at the Gotham Art Theatre in New York City on October 19, 1968. Mr. Mandel addressed the gathering on the events in France during May and June. Later that evening posters by French students were auctioned. The money was sent to aid the legal defense of students who had taken part in the spring demonstrations. Mr. Mandel did not participate in the fund raising. (See Ex. L, Oct. 30, 1969 letter.)”
The asserted noncompliance by Mandel is therefore broader than mere acceptance of more speaking engagements than his visa application indicated.
See, for example, Ekiu v. United States, 142 U. S. 651, 659 (1892); Fok Yung Yo v. United States, 185 U. S. 296, 302 (1902); United States ex rel. Turner v. Williams, 194 U. S. 279, 294 (1904); Keller v. United States, 213 U. S. 138, 143-144 (1909); Mahler v. Eby, 264 U. S. 32, 40 (1924); Shaughnessy v. Mezei, 345 U. S. 206, 210 (1953) ; cf. Graham v. Richardson, 403 U. S. 365, 377 (1971).
The Government’s brief states :
“The Immigration and Naturalization Service reports the following with respect to applications to the Attorney General for waiver of an alien’s ineligibility for admission under Section 212 (a) (28):
Total Number of Number Applications for of Waiver of Waivers “Year Section 212 (a) (28) Granted Number of Waivers Denied
1971 6210 6196 14
1970 6193 6189 4
1969 4993 4984 9
1968 4184 4176 8
1967 3860 3852 8”
Brief for Appellants 18 n. 24. These cases, however, are only those that, as § 212 (d) (3) (A) provides, come to the Attorney General with a positive recommendation from the Secretary of State or the consular officer. The figures do not include those cases where these officials had refrained from making a positive recommendation.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
C
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and the petition for writ of certiorari are granted. The judgment is vacated and the case is remanded for consideration in light of Coppedge v. United States, ante, p. 438.
Mr. Justice Clark and Mr. Justice Harlan dissent for the reasons stated in their dissenting opinion in the Coppedge case.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter 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:
|
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 Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Respondent Larry Youngblood was convicted by a Pima County, Arizona, jury of child molestation, sexual assault, and kidnaping. The Arizona Court of Appeals reversed his conviction on the ground that the State had failed to preserve semen samples from the victim’s body and clothing. 153 Ariz. 50, 734 P. 2d 592 (1986). We granted certiorari to consider the extent to which the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires the State to preserve evidentiary material that might be useful to a criminal defendant.
On October 29, 1983, David L., a 10-year-old boy, attended a church service with his mother. After he left the service at about 9:30 p.m., the boy went to a carnival behind the church, where he was abducted by a middle-aged man of medium height and weight. The assailant drove the boy to a secluded area near a ravine and molested him. He then took the boy to an unidentified, sparsely furnished house where he sodomized the boy four times.. Afterwards, the assailant tied the boy up while he went outside to start his car. Once the assailant started the car, albeit with some difficulty, he returned to the house and again sodomized the boy. The assailant then sent the boy to the bathroom to wash up before he returned him to the carnival. He threatened to kill the boy if he told anyone about the attack. The entire ordeal lasted about YA hours.
After the boy made his way home, his mother took him to Kino Hospital. At the hospital, a physician treated the boy for rectal injuries. The physician also used a “sexual assault kit” to collect evidence of the attack. The Tucson Police Department provided such kits to all hospitals in Pima County for use in sexual assault cases. Under standard procedure, the victim of a sexual assault was taken to a hospital, where a physician used the kit to collect evidence. The kit included paper to collect saliva samples, a tube for obtaining a blood sample, microscopic slides for making smears, a set of Q-Tip-like swabs, and a medical examination report. Here, the physician used the swab to collect samples from the boy’s rectum and mouth. He then made a microscopic slide of the samples. The doctor also obtained samples of the boy’s saliva, blood, and hair. The physician did not examine the samples at any time. The police placed the kit in a secure refrigerator at the police station. At the hospital, the police also collected the boy’s underwear and T-shirt. This clothing was not refrigerated or frozen.
Nine days after the attack, on November 7, 1983, the police asked the boy to pick out his assailant from a photographic lineup. The boy identified respondent as the assailant. Respondent was not located by the police until four weeks later; he was arrested on December 9, 1983.
On November 8, 1983, Edward Heller, a police criminologist, examined the sexual assault kit. He testified that he followed standard department procedure, which was to examine the slides and determine whether sexual contact had occurred. After he determined that such contact had occurred, the criminologist did not perform any other tests, although he placed the assault kit back in the refrigerator. He testified that tests to identify blood group substances were not routinely conducted during the initial examination of an assault kit and in only about half of all cases in any event. He did not test the clothing at this time.
Respondent was indicted on charges of child molestation, sexual assault, and kidnaping. The State moved to compel respondent to provide blood and saliva samples for comparison with the material gathered through the use of the sexual assault kit, but the trial court denied the motion on the ground that the State had not obtained a sufficiently large semen sample to make a valid comparison. The prosecutor then asked the State’s criminologist to perform an ABO blood group test on the rectal swab sample in an attempt to ascertain the blood type of the boy’s assailant. This test failed to detect any blood group substances in the sample.
In January 1985, the police criminologist examined the boy’s clothing for the first time. He found one semen stain on the boy’s underwear and another on the rear of his T-shirt. The criminologist tried to obtain blood group substances from both stains using the ABO technique, but was unsuccessful. He also performed a P-30 protein molecule test on the stains, which indicated that only a small quantity of semen was present on the clothing; it was inconclusive as to the assailant’s identity. The Tucson Police Department had just begun using this test, which was then used in slightly more than half of the crime laboratories in the country.
Respondent’s principal defense at trial was that the boy had erred in identifying him as the perpetrator of the crime. In this connection, both a criminologist for the State and an expert witness for respondent testified as to what might have been shown by tests performed on the samples shortly after they were gathered, or by later tests performed on the samples from the boy’s clothing had the clothing been properly refrigerated. The court instructed the jury that if they found the State had destroyed or lost evidence, they might “infer that the true fact is against the State’s interest.” 10 Tr. 90.
The jury found respondent guilty as charged, but the Arizona Court of Appeals reversed the judgment of conviction. It stated that “‘when identity is an issue at trial and the police permit the destruction of evidence that could eliminate the defendant as the perpetrator, such loss is material to the defense and is a denial of due process.’” 153 Ariz., at 54, 734 P. 2d, at 596, quoting State v. Escalante, 153 Ariz. 55, 61, 734 P. 2d 597, 603 (App. 1986). The Court of Appeals concluded on the basis of the expert testimony at trial that timely performance of tests with properly preserved semen samples could have produced results that might have completely exonerated respondent. The Court of Appeals reached this conclusion even though it did “not imply any bad faith on the part of the State.” 153 Ariz., at 54, 734 P. 2d, at 596. The Supreme Court of Arizona denied the State’s petition for review, and we granted certiorari. 485 U. S. 903 (1988). We now reverse.
Decision of this case requires us to again consider “what might loosely be called the area of constitutionally guaranteed access to evidence.” United States v. Valenzuela-Bernal, 458 U. S. 858, 867 (1982). In Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83 (1963), we held that “the suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to the accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.” Id., at 87. In United States v. Agurs, 427 U. S. 97 (1976), we held that the prosecution had a duty to disclose some evidence of this description even though no requests were made for it, but at the same time we rejected the notion that a “prosecutor has a constitutional duty routinely to deliver his entire file to defense counsel.” Id., at 111; see also Moore v. Illinois, 408 U. S. 786, 795 (1972) (“We know of no constitutional requirement that the prosecution make a complete and detailed accounting to the defense of all police investigatory work on a case”).
There is no question but that the State complied with Brady and Agurs here. The State disclosed relevant police reports to respondent, which contained information about the existence of the swab and the clothing, and the boy’s examination at the hospital. The State provided respondent’s expert with the laboratory reports and notes prepared by the police criminologist, and respondent’s expert had access to the swab and to the clothing.
If respondent is to prevail on federal constitutional grounds, then, it must be because of some constitutional duty over and above that imposed by cases such as Brady and Agurs. Our most recent decision in this area of the law, California v. Trombetta, 467 U. S. 479 (1984), arose out of a drunken driving prosecution in which the State had introduced test results indicating the concentration of alcohol in the blood of two motorists. The defendants sought to suppress the test results on the ground that the State had failed to preserve the breath samples used in the test. We rejected this argument for several reasons: first, “the officers here were acting in ‘good faith and in accord with their normal practice,’” id., at 488, quoting Killian v. United States, 368 U. S. 231, 242 (1961); second, in the light of the procedures actually used the chances that preserved samples would have exculpated the defendants were slim, 467 U. S., at 489; and, third, even if the samples might have shown inaccuracy in the tests, the defendants had “alternative means of demonstrating their innocence.” Id., at 490. In the present case, the likelihood that the preserved materials would have enabled the defendant to exonerate himself appears to be greater than it was in Trombetta, but here, unlike in Trombetta, the State did not attempt to make any use of the materials in its own case in chief.
Our decisions in related areas have stressed the importance for constitutional purposes of good or bad faith on the part of the Government when the claim is based on loss of evidence attributable to the Government. In United States v. Marion, 404 U. S. 307 (1971), we said that “[n]o actual prejudice to the conduct of the defense is alleged or proved, and there is no showing that the Government intentionally delayed to gain some tactical advantage over appellees or to harass them.” Id., at 325; see also United States v. Lovasco, 431 U. S. 783, 790 (1977). Similarly, in United States v. Valenzuela-Bemal, supra, we considered whether the Government’s deportation of two witnesses who were illegal aliens violated due process. We held that the prompt deportation of the witnesses was justified “upon the Executive’s good-faith determination that they possess no evidence favorable to the defendant in a criminal prosecution.” Id., at 872.
The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as interpreted in Brady, makes the good or bad faith of the State irrelevant when the State fails to disclose to the defendant material exculpatory evidence. But we think the Due Process Clause requires a different result when we deal with the failure of the State to preserve evidentiary material of which no more can be said than that it could have been subjected to tests, the results of which might have exonerated the defendant. Part of the reason for the difference in treatment is found in the observation made by the Court in Trombetta, supra, at 486, that “[w]henever potentially exculpatory evidence is permanently lost, courts face the treacherous task of divining the import of materials whose contents are unknown and, very often, disputed.” Part of it stems from our unwillingness to read the “fundamental fairness” requirement of the Due Process Clause, see Lisenba v. California, 314 U. S. 219, 236 (1941), as imposing on the police an undifferentiated and absolute duty to retain and to preserve all material that might be of conceivable evidentiary significance in a particular prosecution. We think that requiring a defendant to show bad faith on the part of the police both limits the extent of the police’s obligation to preserve evidence to reasonable bounds and confines it to that class of cases where the interests of justice most clearly require it, i. e., those cases in which the police themselves by their conduct indicate that the evidence could form a basis for exonerating the defendant. We therefore hold that unless a criminal defendant can show bad faith on-the part of the police, failure to preserve potentially useful evidence does not constitute a denial of due process of law.
In this case, the police collected the rectal swab and clothing on the night of the crime; respondent was not taken into custody until six weeks later. The failure of the police to refrigerate the clothing and to perform tests on the semen samples can at worst be described as negligent. None of this information was concealed from respondent at trial, and the evidence — such as it was — was made available to respondent’s expert who declined to perform any tests on the samples. The Arizona Court of Appeals noted in its opinion— and we agree — that there was no suggestion of bad faith on the part of the police. It follows, therefore, from what we have said, that there was no violation of the Due Process Clause.
The Arizona Court of Appeals also referred somewhat obliquely to the State’s “inability to quantitatively test” certain semen samples with the newer P-30 test. 153 Ariz., at 54, 734 P. 2d, at 596. If the court meant by this statement that the Due Process Clause is violated when the police fail to use a particular investigatory tool, we strongly disagree. The situation here is no different than a prosecution for drunken driving that rests on police observation alone; the defendant is free to argue to the finder of fact that a breathalyzer test might have been exculpatory, but the police do not have a constitutional duty to perform any particular tests.
The judgment of the Arizona Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Reversed.
In this case, the Arizona Court of Appeals relied on its earlier decision in State v. Escalante, 153 Ariz. 55, 734 P. 2d 597 (1986), holding that ‘“when identity is an issue at trial and the police permit destruction of evidence that could eliminate a defendant as the perpetrator, such loss is material to the defense and is a denial of due process.’ ” 153 Ariz. 50, 54, 734 P. 2d 592, 596 (1986), quoting Escalante, supra, at 61, 734 P. 2d, at 603 (emphasis added). The reasoning in Escalante and the instant case mark a sharp departure from Trombetta in two respects. First, Trombetta speaks of evidence whose exculpatory value is “apparent.” 467 U. S., at 489. The possibility that the semen samples could have exculpated respondent if preserved or tested is not enough to satisfy the standard of constitutional materiality in Trombetta. Second, we made clear in Trombetta that the exculpatory value of the evidence must be apparent “before the evidence was destroyed.” Ibid, (emphasis added). Here, respondent has not shown that the police knew the semen samples would have exculpated him when they failed to perform certain tests or to refrigerate the boy’s clothing; this evidence was simply an avenue of investigation that might have led in any number of directions. The presence or absence of bad faith by the police for purposes of the Due Process Clause must necessarily turn on the police’s knowledge of the exculpatory value of the evidence at the time it was lost or destroyed. Cf. Napue v. Illinois, 360 U. S. 264, 269 (1959).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
Per Curiam.
Respondent Damasco Vincente Rodriguez was charged in a Florida state trial court with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. The State claimed that on September 12, 1978, he had attempted to transport three pounds of cocaine contained in his luggage through the Miami International Airport. Cocaine seized from the respondent following an examination of his luggage at the airport was suppressed by the Florida trial court on the grounds that respondent’s rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution had been violated by the search. The Florida District Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment in a per curiam opinion, citing its earlier decision in State v. Battleman, 374 So. 2d 636 (1979). State v. Rodriguez, 389 So. 2d 4 (1980). This Court originally denied certiorari, Florida v. Rodriguez, 451 U. S. 1022 (1981), but two years later granted rehearing and remanded the case to the Florida District Court of Appeal for reconsideration in the light of our opinions in Florida v. Royer, 460 U. S. 491 (1983). Florida v. Rodriguez, 461 U. S. 940 (1983). The Florida District Court of Appeal again affirmed the suppression of the evidence in a one-word order, 443 So. 2d 995 (1983), and the State has again petitioned for certiorari. Because of the Florida court’s suppression of the evidence against him prior to trial, respondent has never been tried for the drug offense with which he was charged, and his former attorneys have advised this Court that he is currently a fugitive from justice.
The only witness to testify at the suppression hearing was Officer Charles McGee, who was a police officer with the Dade County Public Safety Department. McGee testified that he had received about 40 hours of narcotics training in the police academy and, after being assigned to the Narcotics Squad, a 5-week course from the Organized Crime Bureau, which included one-and-one-half to two weeks of training in narcotic surveillance and drug identification. He had received further training under the auspices of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and at the time of his testimony he had 18 months’ experience with the airport unit. He also testified that Miami was a “source city” for narcotics.
McGee testified that he first noticed respondent Rodriguez at the National Airlines ticket counter in the Miami Airport shortly after noon on September 12, 1978. McGee’s attention was drawn to respondent by the fact that he and two individuals later identified as Blanco and Ramirez behaved in an unusual manner while leaving the National Airlines ticket counter in the Miami Airport. McGee and Detective Facchiano, who were both in plain clothes, followed respondent, Ramirez, and Blanco from the ticket counter to the airport concourse from which National Airlines flights departed. Ramirez and Blanco stood side by side on an escalator, and respondent stood directly behind them. The detectives observed Ramirez and Blanco converse with one another, although neither spoke to respondent. At the top of the escalator stairs, Blanco looked back and saw the detectives; he then spoke in a lower voice to Ramirez. Ramirez turned around and looked directly at the detectives, then turned his head back very quickly and spoke to Blanco.
As the three cohorts left the escalator single file, Blanco turned, looked directly at respondent, and said, “Let’s get out of here.” He then repeated in a much lower voice, “Get out of here.” Respondent turned around and caught sight of the detectives. He attempted to move away, in the words of Officer McGee, “His legs were pumping up and down very fast and not covering much ground, but the legs were as if the person were running in place.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 49. Finding his efforts at flight unsuccessful, respondent confronted Officer McGee and uttered a vulgar exclamation.
McGee then showed his badge and asked respondent if they might talk. Respondent agreed, and McGee suggested that they move approximately 15 feet to where Blanco and Ramirez were standing with Facchiano, who now also had identified himself as a police officer.
They remained in the public area of the airport. McGee asked respondent if he had some identification and an airline ticket. Respondent said that he did not, but Ramirez then handed McGee a cash ticket with three names on it — Martinez, Perez, and Rodriguez. In the ensuing discussion, McGee asked respondent what his name was and he replied “Rodriguez”; McGee then asked Blanco what his name was and he, too, answered “Rodriguez.” Blanco later identified himself correctly. At this point, the officers informed the suspects that they were narcotics officers, and they asked for consent to search respondent’s luggage. Respondent answered that he did not have the key, but Ramirez told respondent that he should let the officers look in the luggage, which prompted respondent to hand McGee the key. McGee found three bags of cocaine in the suit bag, and arrested the three men. McGee testified that until he found the cocaine, the three men were free to leave. He also testified that he did not advise respondent that he could refuse consent to the search.
The order of the Florida trial court granting the motion to suppress the cocaine reads as follows:
“1. There was no reason to stop the defendant, Da-masco Vincente Rodriguez. The Defendant did nothing which would arouse an articulable suspicion in the eyes of Detective McGee and Detective Facchiano.
“2. Due to the laek of telling the Defendant he had a right to leave, and the lack of telling the Defendant he had a right to refuse to consent to a search, there was an insufficient showing that the consent herein was completely untainted due to the lack of the two things previously mentioned.
“3. The statement made by the Defendant’s companion did not overcome the taint from the initial illegal stop of the Defendant.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 89-90.
We think that the trial court’s order as affirmed by the District Court of Appeal reflects a misapprehension of the controlling principles of law governing airport stops enunciated by this Court in United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U. S. 544 (1980), and Florida v. Royer, 460 U. S. 491 (1983). Because its ruling was made in May 1979, the trial court obviously cannot be faulted for lack of familiarity with these opinions, but the District Court of Appeal’s final affirmance of the suppression order on remand from this Court occurred on November 15, 1983, after these opinions had been issued. We think the trial court’s order also reflects a misapprehension of legal principles enunciated in Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218 (1973).
Certain constraints on personal liberty that constitute “seizures” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment may nonetheless be justified even though there is no showing of “probable cause” if “there is articulable suspicion that a person has committed or is about to commit a crime.” Florida v. Royer, supra, at 498 (opinion of White, J.). Such a temporary detention for questioning in the case of an airport search is reviewed under the lesser standard enunciated in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1 (1968), and is permissible because of the “public interest involved in the suppression of illegal transactions in drugs or of any other serious crime.” Royer, supra, at 498-499.
The initial contact between the officers and respondent, where they simply asked if he would step aside and talk with them, was clearly the sort of consensual encounter that implicates no Fourth Amendment interest. United States v. Mendenhall, supra, at 554 (opinion of Stewart, J.); Florida v. Royer, supra, at 497 (opinion of White, J.). Assuming, without deciding, that after respondent agreed to talk with the police, moved over to where his cohorts and the other detective were standing, and ultimately granted permission to search his baggage, there was a “seizure” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, we hold that any such seizure was justified by “articulable suspicion.”
Before the officers even spoke to the three confederates, one by one they had sighted the plainclothes officers and had spoken furtively to one another. One was twice overheard urging the others to “get out of here.” Respondent’s strange movements in his attempt to evade the officers aroused further justifiable suspicion, and so did the contradictory statements concerning the identities of Blanco and respondent. Officer McGee had special training in narcotics surveillance and apprehension; like members of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Narcotics Squad of the Dade County Public Safety Department is “carrying out a highly specialized law enforcement operation designed to combat the serious societal threat posed by narcotics distribution.” United States v. Mendenhall, supra, at 562 (Powell, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Respondent “was approached in a major international airport where, due in part to extensive antihijacking surveillance and equipment, reasonable privacy expectations are of significantly lesser magnitude . . . .” Florida v. Royer, supra, at 515 (Blackmun, J., dissenting).
We hold, therefore, that the trial court was incorrect both in its conclusion that there was no articulable basis for detaining respondent and in its conclusion that there was “taint” resulting from this initial stop. In Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, supra, we held that the State need not prove that a defendant consenting to a search knew that he had the right to withhold his consent, although we also held that knowledge of the right to refuse consent could be taken into account in determining whether or not a consent was “voluntary.” We are unable to determine from the trial court’s opinion whether its conclusion with respect to the voluntariness of the consent to search the luggage would have been the same had it correctly applied the governing legal principles embodied in the Fourth Amendment.
The petition for writ of certiorari is therefore granted, the judgment of the Florida Court of Appeal is reversed, and the cause is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Marshall 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:
|
A
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
These cases present questions as to procedures required at prison disciplinary hearings and as to the reach of our recent decision in Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S. 539 (1974).
I
A. No. 74-1194
Respondents are inmates of the California penal institution at San Quentin. They filed an action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 seeking declaratory and injunctive relief and alleging that the procedures used in disciplinary proceedings at San Quentin violated their rights to due process and equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. After an evi-dentiary hearing, the District Court granted substantial relief. Clutchette v. Procunier, 328 F. Supp. 767 (ND Cal. 1971). The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, with one judge dissenting, affirmed, 497 F. 2d 809 (1974), holding that an inmate facing a disciplinary proceeding at San Quentin was entitled to notice of the charges against him, to be heard and to present witnesses, to confront and cross-examine witnesses, to face a neutral and detached hearing body, and to receive a decision based solely on evidence presented at the hearing. The court also held that an inmate must be provided with counsel or a counsel-substitute when the consequences of the disciplinary action are “serious,” such as .prolonged periods of “isolation.” Id., at 821. The panel of the Court of Appeals, after granting rehearing to reconsider its conclusions in light of our intervening decision in Wolff, supra, reaffirmed its initial judgment— again with one judge dissenting — but modified its prior opinion in several respects. 510 F. 2d 613 (1975). The Court of Appeals held that minimum notice and a right to respond are due an inmate faced even with a temporary suspension of privileges, that an inmate at a disciplinary hearing who is denied the privilege of confronting and cross-examining witnesses must receive written reasons for such denial or the denial “will be deemed prima facie evidence of abuse of discretion,” id., at 616, and — reaffirming its initial view — that an inmate facing prison discipline for a violation that might also be punishable in state criminal proceedings has a right to counsel (not just counsel-substitute) at the prison hearing. We granted certiorari and set the case for oral argument with No. 74-1187. 421 U. S. 1010 (1975).
B. No. 74-1187
Respondent Palmigiano is an inmate of the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institution serving a life sentence for murder. He was charged by correctional officers with “inciting a disturbance and disrupt [ion] of [prison] operations, which might have resulted in a riot.” App. 197 (No. 74-1187). He was summoned before the prison Disciplinary Board and informed that he might be prosecuted for a violation of state law, that he should consult his attorney (although his attorney was not permitted by the Board to be present during the hearing), that he had a right to remain silent during the hearing but that if he remained silent his silence would be held against him. Respondent availed himself of the counsel-substitute provided for by prison rules and remained silent during the hearing. The Disciplinary-Board’s decision was that respondent be placed in “punitive segregation” for 30 days and that his classification status be downgraded thereafter.
Respondent filed an action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 for damages and injunctive relief, claiming that the disciplinary hearing violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The District Court held an evidentiary hearing and denied relief. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, with one judge dissenting, reversed, holding that respondent “was denied due process in the disciplinary hearing only insofar as he was not provided with use immunity for statements he might have made within the disciplinary hearing, and because he was denied access to retained counsel within the hearing.” 487 F. 2d 1280, 1292 (1973). We granted certiorari, vacated the judgment of the Court of Appeals, and remanded to that court for further consideration in light of Wolff v. McDonnell, supra, decided in the interim. 418 U. S. 908 (1974). On remand, the Court of Appeals affirmed its prior decision but modified its opinion. 510 F. 2d 534 (1974). The Court of Appeals held that an inmate at a prison disciplinary proceeding must be advised of his right to remain silent, that he must not be questioned further once he exercises that right, and that such silence may not be used against him at that time or in future proceedings. With respect to counsel, the Court of Appeals held:
“[I]n cases where criminal charges are a realistic possibility, prison authorities should consider whether defense counsel, if requested, should not be let into the disciplinary proceeding, not because Wolff requires it in that proceeding, but because Miranda [v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966)] requires it in light of future criminal prosecution.” Id., at 537.
We granted certiorari and heard the case with No. 74-1194. 421 U.S. 1010 (1975).
II
In Wolff v. McDonnell, supra, drawing comparisons to Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U. S. 778 (1973), we said:
“The insertion of counsel into the [prison] disciplinary process would inevitably give the proceedings a more adversary cast and tend to reduce their utility as a means to further correctional goals. There would also be delay and very practical problems in providing counsel in sufficient numbers at the time and place where hearings are to be held. At this stage of the development of these procedures we are not prepared to hold that inmates have a right to either retained or appointed counsel in disciplinary proceedings.” 418 U. S., at 570.
Relying on Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), and Mathis v. United States, 391 U. S. 1 (1968), both Courts of Appeals in these cases held that prison inmates are entitled to representation at prison disciplinary hearings where the charges involve conduct punishable as a crime under state law, not because of the services that counsel might render in connection with the disciplinary proceedings themselves, but because statements inmates might make at the hearings would perhaps be used in later state-court prosecutions for the same conduct.
Neither Miranda, supra, nor Mathis, supra, has any substantial bearing on the question whether counsel must be provided at “[p]rison disciplinary hearings [which] are not part of a criminal prosecution.” Wolff v. McDonnell, supra, at 556. The Court has never held, and we decline to do so now, that the requirements of those cases must be met to render pretrial statements admissible in other than criminal cases.
We see no reason to alter our conclusion so recently made in Wolff that inmates do not “have a right to either retained or appointed counsel in disciplinary hearings.” 418 U. S., at 570. Plainly, therefore, state authorities were not in error in failing to advise Palmigiano to the contrary, i. e., that he was entitled to counsel at the hearing and that the State would furnish counsel if he did not have one of his own.
Ill
Palmigiano was advised that he was not required to testify at his disciplinary hearing and that he could remain silent but that his silence could be used against him. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that the self-incrimination privilege of the Fifth Amendment, made applicable to the States by reason of the Fourteenth Amendment, forbids drawing adverse inferences against an inmate from his failure to testify.. The State challenges this determination, and we sustain the challenge.
As the Court has often held, the Fifth Amendment “not only protects the individual against being involuntarily called as a witness against himself in a criminal prosecution but also privileges him not to answer official questions put to him in any other proceeding, civil or criminal, formal or informal, where the answers might incriminate him in future criminal proceedings.” Lefkowitz v. Turley, 414 U. S. 70, 77 (1973). Prison disciplinary hearings are not criminal proceedings; but if inmates are compelled in those proceedings to furnish testimonial evidence that might incriminate them in later criminal proceedings, they must be offered “whatever immunity is required to supplant the privilege” and may not be required to “waive such immunity.” Id., at 85; Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U. S. 493 (1967); Gardner v. Broderick, 392 U. S. 273 (1968); Sanitation Men v. Sanitation Comm’r, 392 U. S. 280 (1968). In this line of cases from Garrity to Lefkowitz, the States, pursuant to statute, sought to interrogate individuals about their job performance or about their contractual relations with the State; insisted upon waiver of the Fifth Amendment privilege not to respond or to object to later use of the incriminating statements in criminal prosecutions; and, upon refusal to waive, automatically terminated employment or eligibility to contract with the State. Holding that the State could not constitutionally seek to compel testimony that had not been immunized by threats of serious economic reprisal, we invalidated the challenged statutes.
The Court has also plainly ruled that it is constitutional error under the Fifth Amendment to instruct a jury in a criminal case that it may draw an inference of guilt from a defendant's failure to testify about facts relevant to his case. Griffin v. California, 380 U. S. 609 (1965). This holding paralleled the existing statutory policy of the United States, id., at 612, and the governing statutory or constitutional rule in the overwhelming majority of the States. 8 J. Wigmore, Evidence 425-439 (McNaughton rev. 1961).
The Rhode Island prison rules do not transgress the foregoing principles. No criminal proceedings are or were pending against Palmigiano. The State has not, contrary to Griffin, sought to make evidentiary use of his silence at the disciplinary hearing in any criminal proceeding. Neither has Rhode Island insisted or asked that Palmigiano waive his Fifth Amendment privilege. He was notified that he was privileged to remain silent if he chose. He was also advised that his silence could be used against him, but a prison inmate in Rhode Island electing to remain silent during his disciplinary hearing, as respondent Palmigiano did here, is not in consequence of his silence automatically found guilty of the infraction with which he has been charged. Under Rhode Island law, disciplinary decisions “must be based on substantial evidence manifested in the record of the disciplinary proceeding.” Morris v. Travisono, 310 F. Supp. 857, 873 (RI 1970). It is thus undisputed that an inmate's silence in and of itself is insufficient to support an adverse decision by the Disciplinary Board. In this respect, this case is very different from the circumstances before the Court in the Garrity-Lefkowitz decisions, where refusal to submit to interrogation and to waive the Fifth Amendment privilege, standing alone and without regard to the other evidence, resulted in loss of employment or opportunity to contract with the State. There, failure to respond to interrogation was treated as a final admission of guilt. Here, Palmigiano remained silent at the hearing in the face of evidence that incriminated him; and, as far as this record reveals, his silence was given no more evidentiary value than was warranted by the facts surrounding his case. This does not smack of an invalid attempt by the State to compel testimony without granting immunity or to penalize the exercise of the privilege. The advice given inmates by the decisionmakers is merely a realistic reflection of the evidentiary significance of the choice to remain silent.
Had the State desired Palmigiano’s testimony over his Fifth Amendment objection, we can but assume that it would have extended whatever use immunity is required by the Federal Constitution. Had this occurred and had Palmigiano nevertheless refused to answer, it surely would not have violated the Fifth Amendment to draw whatever inference from his silence that the circumstances warranted. Insofar as the privilege is concerned, the situation is little different where the State advises the inmate of his right to silence but also plainly notifies him that his silence will be weighed in the balance.
Our conclusion is consistent with the prevailing rule that the Fifth Amendment does not forbid adverse inferences against parties to civil actions when they refuse to testify in response to probative evidence offered against them: the Amendment "does not preclude the inference where the privilege is claimed by a party to a civil cause.” 8 J. Wigmore, Evidence 439 (McNaughton rev. 1961). In criminal cases, where the stakes are higher and the State’s sole interest is to convict, Griffin prohibits the judge and prosecutor from suggesting to the jury that it may treat the defendant’s silence as substantive evidence of guilt. Disciplinary proceedings in state prisons, however, involve the correctional process and important state interests other than conviction for crime. We decline to extend the Griffin rule to this context.
It is important to note here that the position adopted by the Court of Appeals is rooted in the Fifth Amendment and the policies which it serves. It has little to do with a fair trial and derogates rather than improves the chances for accurate decisions. Thus, aside from the privilege against compelled self-incrimination, the Court has consistently recognized that in proper circumstances silence in the face of accusation is a relevant fact not barred from evidence by the Due Process Clause. Adamson v. California, 332 U. S. 46 (1947); United States ex rel. Bilokumsky v. Tod, 263 U. S. 149, 163-154 (1923); Raffel v. United States, 271 U. S. 494 (1926); Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U. S. 78 (1908). See also United States v. Hale, 422 U. S. 171, 176-177 (1975); Gastelum-Quinones v. Kennedy, 374 U. S. 469, 479 (1963); Grunewald v. United States, 353 U. S. 391, 418-424 (1957). Indeed, as Mr. Justice Brandeis declared, speaking for a unanimous court in the Tod case, supra, which involved a deportation: “Silence is often evidence of the most persuasive character.” 263 U. S., at 153-154. And just last Term in Hale, supra, the Court recognized that “[fjailure to contest an assertion ... is considered evidence of acquiescence ... if it would have been natural under the circumstances to object to the assertion in question.” 422 U. S., at 176.
The short of it is that permitting an adverse inference to be drawn from an inmate’s silence at his disciplinary proceedings is not, on its face, an invalid practice; and there is no basis in the record for invalidating it as here applied to Palmigiano.
IV
In Wolff v. McDonnell, we held that “the inmate facing disciplinary proceedings should be allowed to call witnesses and present documentary evidence in his defense when permitting him to do so will not be unduly hazardous to institutional safety or correctional goals.” 418 U. S., at 566. We noted that “[o]rdinarily, the right to present evidence is basic to a fair hearing; but the unrestricted right to call witnesses from the prison population carries obvious potential for disruption and for interference with the swift punishment that in individual cases may be essential to carrying out the correctional program of the institution.” Ibid. The right to call witnesses, like other due process rights delineated in Wolff, is thus circumscribed by the necessary “mutual accommodation between institutional needs and objectives and the provisions of the Constitution that are of general application.” Id., at 556. Within the reasonable limitations necessary in the prison disciplinary context, we suggested, but did not require, that the disciplinary committee “state its reason for refusing to call a witness, whether it be for irrelevance, lack of necessity, or the hazards presented in individual cases.” Id., at 566.
We were careful to distinguish between this limited right to call witnesses and other due process rights at disciplinary hearings. We noted expressly that, in comparison to the right to call witnesses, “[confrontation and cross-examination present greater hazards to institutional interests.” Id., at 567. We said:
“If confrontation and cross-examination of those furnishing evidence against the inmate were to be allowed as a matter of course, as in criminal trials, there would be considerable potential for havoc inside the prison walls. Proceedings would inevitably be longer and tend to unmanageability.” Ibid.
We therefore concluded that “[t]he better course at this time, in a period where prison practices are diverse and somewhat experimental, is to leave these matters to the sound discretion of the officials of state prisons.” Id., at 569.
Although acknowledging the strictures of Wolff with respect to confrontation and cross-examination, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, on rehearing in No. 74— 1194, went on to require prison authorities to provide reasons in writing to inmates denied the privilege to cross-examine or confront witnesses against them in disciplinary proceedings; absent explanation, failure to set forth reasons related to the prevention of one or more of the four concerns expressly mentioned in Wolff would be deemed prima facie abuse of discretion.
This conclusion is inconsistent with Wolff. We characterized as “useful,” but did not require, written reasons for denying inmates the limited right to call witnesses in their defense. We made no such suggestion with respect to confrontation and cross-examination which, as was there pointed out, stand on a different footing because of their inherent danger and the availability of adequate bases of decision without them. See 418 U. S., at 567-568. Mandating confrontation and cross-examination, except where prison officials can justify their denial on one or more grounds that appeal to judges, effectively preempts the area that Wolff left to the sound discretion of prison officials. We add that on the record before us there is no evidence of the abuse of discretion by the state prison officials.
y
Finally, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in No. 74-1194 held that minimum due process — such as notice, opportunity for response, and statement of reasons for action by prison officials — was necessary where inmates were deprived of privileges. 510 F. 2d, at 615. We did not reach the issue in Wolff; indeed, we said: “We do not suggest, however, that the procedures required by today’s decision for the deprivation of good time would also be required for the imposition of lesser penalties such as the loss of privileges.” 418 U. S., at 572 n. 19. Nor do we find it necessary to reach the issue now in light of the record before us. None of the named plaintiffs in No. 74-1194 was subject solely to loss of privileges; all were brought before prison disciplinary hearings for allegations of the type of “serious misconduct,” 418 U. S., at 558, that we held in Wolff to trigger procedures therein outlined. See n. 1, supra. Without such a record, we are unable to consider the degree of “liberty” at stake in loss of privileges and thus whether some sort of procedural safeguards are due when only such “lesser penalties” are at stake. To the extent that the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit required any procedures in such circumstances, the Court of Appeals acted prematurely, and its decision on the issue cannot stand.
We said in Wolff v. McDonnell: “As the nature of the prison disciplinary process changes in future years, circumstances may then exist which will require further consideration and reflection of this Court. It is our view, however, that the procedures we have now required in prison disciplinary proceedings represent a reasonable accommodation between the interests of the inmates and the needs of the institution.” 418 U. S., at 572. We do not retreat from that view. However, the procedures required by the Courts of Appeals in Nos. 74-1187 and 74-1194 are either inconsistent with the “reasonable accommodation” reached in Wolff, or premature on the bases of the records before us. The judgments in Nos. 74-1187 and 74-1194 accordingly are
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Stevens took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases.
Respondents John Wesley Clutchette and George L. Jackson brought suit “on their own behalf, and, pursuant to Rule 23 (b) (1) and Rule 23 (b) (2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, on behalf of all other inmates of San Quentin State Prison subject to defendants’ jurisdiction and affected by the policies, practices or acts of defendants complained of herein.” Plaintiffs’ Amended Complaint, 1 Record 33 (No. 74-1194). The District Court treated the suit as a class action, Clutchette v. Procunier, 328 F. Supp. 767, 769-770 (ND Cal. 1971), but did not certify the action as a class action within the contemplation of Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. 23 (c) (1) and 23 (c) (3). Without such certification and identification of the class, the action is not properly a class action. Indianapolis School Comm’rs v. Jacobs, 420 U. S. 128 (1975). We were advised at oral argument in No. 74-1194 that respondent Clutchette was paroled in 1972, two years after the suit was filed; counsel for respondents conceded that the case is moot as to him. Tr. of Oral Arg. (No. 74-1194), p. 34. We were further advised that respondent Jackson died after the suit was filed. However, the parties stipulated on June 21, 1972, to the intervention of Alejandro R. Ferrel as a named party plaintiff in the suit. 3 Record 285 (No. 74-1194). The parties further stipulated the facts that, like Clutchette and Jackson, Ferrel was an inmate at San Quentin who was brought before a disciplinary committee for an infraction that could have also led to state criminal proceedings, that he asked for and was denied an attorney at the hearing, and that he was assigned to “segregation” for an unspecified number of days for the infraction. Ferrel, we were told at oral argument, is still incarcerated at San Quentin. Tr. of Oral Arg. 34 (No. 74-1194). He thus has standing as a named plaintiff to raise the issues before us in No. 74-1194.
The United States as amicus curiae suggests that No. 74-1187 is not properly before the Court because the case involves the constitutionality of regulations of the Rhode Island Adult Corrections Authority and hence should have been heard by a three-judge court, subject to review here on direct appeal. The applicable regulations of the Authority when this case was brought had been promulgated as the result of a negotiated settlement of litigation in the District Court for the District of Rhode Island. Morris v. Travisono, 310 F. Supp. 857 (1970). It is conceded that they have become state law, and it would appear that they are of statewide effect. The rules on their face, however, although regulating in some detail the procedures required in prison disciplinary hearings, do not expressly grant or deny, or even mention, the right to counsel where charges brought are also a crime under state law. Nor do they suggest, one way or the other, whether an inmate’s silence may be used against him in the proceeding itself. Palmigiano’s complaint did not mention or challenge any rule or regulation of the Authority; nor did it seek an injunction against the enforcement of any identified rule. What it asked was that the Board’s disciplinary decision be declared invalid and its enforcement enjoined. Neither Palmigiano nor the State asked or suggested that a three-judge court be convened. It would not appear that the District Court considered the validity of any of the Authority’s rules to be at stake. That court ruled Palmigiano was not entitled to be represented by counsel, not because the applicable rules forbade it but because it considered the controlling rule under the relevant cases was to this effect. The Court of Appeals, although quite aware that constitutional attacks on the Rhode Island prison rules might necessitate a three-judge court, see Souza v. Travisono, 498 F. 2d 1120, 1121-1122 (CA1 1974), evidently did not doubt its jurisdiction in this case. On the record before us, the provisions of 28 U. S. C. § 2281 with respect to three-judge courts would not appear to be applicable.
The Court based its statement on 3A J. Wigmore, Evidence § 1042 (Chadbourn rev. 1970), which reads as follows:
“Silence, omissions, or negative statements, as inconsistent: (1) Silence, etc., as constituting the impeaching statement. A failure to assert a fact, when it would have been natural to assert it, amounts in effect to an assertion of the non-existence of. the fact. This is conceded as a general principle of evidence (§ 1071 infra). There may be explanations, indicating that the person had in truth no belief of that tenor; but the conduct is ‘prima facie’ an inconsistency.
“There are several common classes of cases:
“(1) Omissions in legal proceedings to assert what would naturally have been asserted under the circumstances.
“(2) Omissions to assert anything, or to speak with such detail or positiveness, when formerly narrating, on the stand or elsewhere, the matter now dealt with.
“(3) Failure to take the stand at all, when it would have been natural to do so.
“In all of these much depends on the individual circumstances, and in all of them the underlying test is, would it have been natural for the person to make the assertion in question?” (Emphasis in original.) (Footnotes omitted.)
The record in No. 74-1187 shows that Palmigiano was provided with copies of the Inmate Disciplinary Report and the superior's investigation report, containing the charges and primary evidence against him, on the day before the disciplinary hearing. At the hearing, Captain Baxter read the charge to Palmigiano and summarized the two reports. In the face of the reports, which he had seen, Palmigiano elected to remain silent. The Disciplinary Board’s decision was based on these two reports, Palmigiano’s decision at the hearing not to speak to them, and supplementary reports made by the officials filing the initial reports. All of the documents were introduced in evidence at the hearing before the District Court in this case. App. 197-202 (No. 74-1187).
The Court of Appeals also held, in its initial opinion (unmodified in rehearing with respect to this point), that “the disciplinary committee must be required to make its fact finding determinations based solely upon the evidence presented at the hearing” in order “[f]or the right to confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses to be meaningful.” 497 F. 2d, at 820. Because we have held that there is no general right to confront and cross-examine adverse witnesses, it follows that the Court of Appeals’ holding on this point must fall with its rejected premise. Due to the peculiar environment of the prison setting, it may be that certain facts relevant to the disciplinary determination do not come to light until after the formal hearing. It would be unduly restrictive to require that such facts be excluded from consideration, inasmuch as they may provide valuable information with respect to the incident in question and may assist prison officials in tailoring penalties to enhance correctional goals. In so stating, however, we in no way diminish our holding in Wolff that “there must be a ‘written statement by the factfinders as to the evidence relied on and reasons’ for the disciplinary action.” 418 U. S., at 564.
Petitioners in No. 74-1194 have not challenged the holdings of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit with respect to notice, 497 F. 2d, at 818, or to the right to be heard by a “neutral and detached” hearing body, id., at 820. Cf. 418 U. S., at 570-571. Because these holdings are no longer in issue, it is unnecessary for us to consider them.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
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.
Per Curiam.
The judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit for further consideration in light of Teague v. Lane, ante, p. 288.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
A
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Black
delivered the opinion of the Court.
October 30, 1936, the petitioner was indicted in the County Court of Erie County, New York, on a charge of
“Buying, receiving, concealing and withholding property, knowing the same to have been stolen or appropriated wrongfully in such manner as to constitute larceny, contrary to the Penal Law, Section 1308, in that he, the said Joseph Paterno on or about the 5th day of October, 1936, at the City of Tona-wanda, in this County, feloniously brought [sic], received, concealed and withheld property stolen from Charles M. Rosen, doing business under the assumed name and style of Arcade Jewelry Shop.”
The punishments provided for this offense and for larceny are substantially the same. Both may, according to circumstances, range up to ten years at hard labor. November 10,1936, petitioner appeared in court with counsel, pleaded not guilty to the indictment, and was released on a bond of $2500. Five months later, on April 14,1937, he again appeared in Erie County Court and upon agreement with the district attorney was “permitted to plead guilty to the reduced charge of Attempted Grand Larceny 2nd Degree.” Under New York law the punishment for such an attempt can be no more than half the punishment provided for the offense attempted. The sentence, not imposed until July 16, three months after the plea of guilty, was for fifteen months minimum and thirty months maximum at hard labor. This sentence was suspended and petitioner was placed on probation with a requirement that he “make restitution $75.00 cash balance as determined by probation dept.”
Although discharged from probation December 1,1938, petitioner on December 27, 1945, made a motion in the nature of coram nobis in the Erie County Court asking that court to vacate and set aside its former conviction of petitioner, permit withdrawal of the plea of guilty, and for leave to plead de novo. There was a special reason why petitioner wished to vacate this judgment long after the probationary restraints of the sentence had been lifted. In the meantime he had pleaded guilty in the Chautauqua County Court, New York, to the crime of robbery second degree under an indictment charging him with robbery first degree. In accordance with the requirements of the New York second felony offender law the Chautauqua County judge had sentenced petitioner to 15 to 30 years at hard labor, proof having been made before him of petitioner’s prior Erie County conviction for attempted grand larceny second degree.
The grounds of the motion in the nature of coram nobis were that the Erie County Court had exceeded its power in accepting his plea of guilty to the offense of attempted grand larceny second degree under the indictment which charged him with the offense of receiving, concealing, and withholding property knowing it to have been stolen. He alleged that judgment of conviction in a case initiated by an indictment which did not include the charge to which he had pleaded guilty denied him his right under Art. 1, § 6 of the New York Constitution to be prosecuted for an infamous crime only on indictment of a grand jury, and also denied him due process of law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The judge of the Erie County Court was of opinion that acceptance of the plea of guilty to the lesser offense deprived him of rights guaranteed by the New York Constitution and that therefore his conviction was without due process of law. 187 Misc. 56, 60 N. Y. S. 2d 813. That judge was prevented from vacating the judgment, however, by a writ of prohibition issued upon the application of the State by the Supreme Court of Erie County. That court held that Paterno had “been denied no constitutional or legal right.” The Fourth Department of the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, affirmed, 272 App. Div. 120, 69 N. Y. S. 2d 715, stating that acceptance of Paterno’s plea to the lesser offense might have been an error of law which would have justified relief by motion in arrest of judgment or by appeal as of right; but that petitioner, having declined to avail himself of these remedies within the statutory period, could not later raise the question. It failed to accept Paterno’s claim that the circumstances under which his plea was entered deprived him of due process of law. The New York Court of Appeals affirmed without opinion. 297 N. Y. 617, 75 N. E. 2d 630. We granted certiorari. 333 U. S. 831.
It is again contended here that acceptance of petitioner’s plea of guilty to attempted grand larceny second degree under an indictment which charged that he had bought, received, concealed, and withheld stolen property deprived him of his right under the New York Constitution to be prosecuted for an infamous crime only on a grand jury indictment and that consequently the Erie County judgment of conviction is a nullity. But this contention as to New York law has previously been rejected by the State’s highest court, in People ex rel. Wachowicz v. Martin, 293 N. Y. 361, 57 N. E. 2d 53, and was again rejected by the New York courts in this case. Their decision on such a state question is final here. In re Duncan, 139 U. S. 449, 462; West v. Louisiana, 194 U. S. 258, 261.
Petitioner next argues that the State has failed to supply him an available remedy to attack the judgment against him and that such a failure denies him due process of law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. See Mooney v. Holohan, 294 U. S. 103, 113. But this contention falls with its premise. Petitioner, within the periods prescribed by New York statutes, could have challenged any alleged errors of state law either by filing a motion to withdraw his plea of guilty, or a motion in arrest of judgment, or by taking a direct appeal from the original judgment. Certainly in the absence of any showing that petitioner was without an opportunity effectively to take advantage of these corrective remedies to challenge purely state questions such remedies are adequate from a due process standpoint. See Parker v. Illinois, 333 U. S. 571; American Surety Co. v. Baldwin, 287 U. S. 156, 169, and cases cited n. 6.
Petitioner further challenges the judgment as a denial of due process upon the ground that the indictment charged him with one offense and that the judgment was based on a plea of guilty to an entirely separate offense. This challenge again basically rests on the allegation that under New York law an indictment for receiving stolen property does not necessarily include a charge of an attempt to steal the property. Petitioner’s motion to vacate on such a federal constitutional ground appears to be an available procedure under New York law, and the courts below so assumed. Determination of this federal due process question does not depend upon whether as a matter of New York law the Erie County judge erred in permitting petitioner to plead guilty. The question turns rather upon whether the petitioner under the circumstances here disclosed was given reasonable notice and information of the specific charge against him and a fair hearing in open court. In re Oliver, 333 U. S. 257, 273, 278; Cole v. Arkansas, 333 U. S. 196, 201. We agree with the New York courts that this petitioner had such notice and information. The fairness of the hearing afforded petitioner is not challenged.
There is close kinship between the offense of larceny and that of receiving stolen property knowing that it was stolen. When related to the same stolen goods, as here, the two crimes certainly may fairly be said to be "connected with the same transaction” as the New York Court of Appeals noted in the Wachowicz case. 293 N. Y. at 367, 57 N. E. 2d at 56. A person commits larceny under New York law if he "unlawfully obtains or appropriates” an article, N. Y. Penal Law § 1294; he violates the receiving of stolen property statute if he “in any way . . . conceals, withholds, or aids in concealing or withholding . . . property, knowing the same to have been stolen, or appropriated wrongfully in such a manner as to constitute larceny,” N. Y. Penal Law § 1308. The overlapping nature of the two offenses is further emphasized by the definition of larceny in § 1290, which includes conduct whereby any person who “with the intent to deprive or defraud another of the use and benefit of property, or to appropriate the same to the use of . . . any other person other than the true owner, wrongfully takes, obtains or withholds [any property] by any means whatever, from the possession of the true owner or of any other person . . . .”
It would be exaltation of technical precision to an unwarranted degree to say that the indictment here did not inform petitioner that he was charged with substantial elements of the crime of larceny thereby enabling him, as a means of cutting his sentence in half, to agree to plead guilty to an attempted larceny. Procedural requirements are essential constitutional safeguards in our system of criminal law. These safeguards should constantly and vigilantly be observed to afford those accused of crime every fair opportunity to defend themselves. This petitioner had such opportunity. Months after his first appearance in court he came back and pleaded guilty to an attempt wrongfully to “withhold” the very property of another which the indictment had originally charged him with wrongfully “withholding.” It would be a strained interpretation of petitioner’s constitutional rights to hold that under these circumstances he was not given sufficient notice of the charge against him to afford a basis for an intelligent decision to plead guilty to a related but lesser offense than that specifically described in the indictment. The due process clause of the Federal Constitution requires no such holding.
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Douglas dissents.
N. Y. Penal Law §§ 1294, 1297, 1308.
N. Y. Penal Law § 261. Maximum punishment for grand larceny second degree is 5 years. N. Y. Penal Law § 1297. The District Attorney explained his reasons for the agreement in these words: “Only a very small portion of the stolen property was recovered and that was found in the possession of several admitted inmates of a disorderly house who are of necessity the chief witnesses for the People in this case. For these reasons and because of the character of these witnesses, it is recommended that the defendant be permitted to plead guilty to the reduced charge of Attempted Grand Larceny 2nd Degree.”
N. Y. Penal Law § 1941.
“No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime . . . unless on indictment of a grand jury . . . .” N. Y. Const., Art. 1, § 6.
These questions had previously been raised by petitioner in other New York courts without success. In 1943 he had moved the Chautauqua County Court to vacate its judgment, under which he had been sentenced as a second felony offender. That Court held it was without power to pass upon the validity of the Erie County judgment and dismissed his motion. People v. Paterno, 182 Misc. 491, 50 N. Y. S. 2d 713. In another proceeding the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, relying on People ex rel. Wachowicz v. Martin, 293 N. Y. 361, 57 N. E. 2d 53, held that habeas corpus was not available to obtain vacation of the judgment, and that the only way to raise a question as to whether a plea of guilty to attempted larceny could be accepted under an indictment such as that against Paterno was by appeal or motion in arrest of judgment. People ex rel. Paterno v. Martin, 268 App. Div. 956, 51 N. Y. S. 2d 679.
The State argues here that while petitioner had a right to appeal and challenge acceptance of the plea of guilty under the circumstances shown, neither People ex rel. Wachowicz v. Martin, 293 N. Y. 361, 57 N. E. 2d 53, nor any other New York Court of Appeals case has squarely held that the trial court’s action would have constituted reversible error.
N. Y. Code Crim. Proc. §§ 337, 467, 469, 517, 519-521; N. Y. Laws 1946, e. 942; N. Y. Laws 1947, c. 706; Matter of Hogan v. Court of General Sessions, 296 N. Y. 1, 68 N. E. 2d 849; Matter of Hogan v. N. Y. Supreme Court, 295 N. Y. 92, 65 N. E. 2d 181; People ex rel. Wachowicz v. Martin, 293 N. Y. 361, 57 N. E. 2d 53; People v. Gersewitz, 294 N. Y. 163, 61 N. E. 2d 427; Matter of Morhous v. N. Y. Supreme Court, 293 N. Y. 131, 56 N. E. 2d 79; Matter of Lyons v. Goldstein, 290 N. Y. 19, 47 N. E. 2d 425; see Canizio v. New York, 327 U. S. 82, 84-85.
See cases cited note 7; Fuld, The Writ of Error Coram Nobis, 117 N. Y. L. J. 2212, 2230, 2248.
See Caldwell v. Texas, 137 U. S. 692, 698; In re Converse, 137 U. S. 624, 631; Leeper v. Texas, 139 U. S. 462, 468; Davis v. Texas, 139 U. S. 651; Howard v. Kentucky, 200 U. S. 164, 173.
The Appellate Division’s opinion in this case said: “It is true that the crime of attempted grand larceny, second degree is not necessarily included under a charge of criminally receiving stolen property (the then indictment against Paterno) (People ex rel. Wachowicz v. Martin, 293 N. Y. 361, supra) but one can conceive a set of facts under which one guilty of criminally receiving stolen property could be guilty of larceny in unlawfully withholding the stolen property from the owner thereof. (Penal Law, §1290; see People v. Vitolo, 271 App. Div. 959; 136 A. L. R. 1091; and 2 Wharton on Criminal Law, §§ 1122, 1168.)” 272 App. Div. at 126, 69 N. Y. S. 2d at 719.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Investment Advisers Act of 1940, 15 U. S. C. § 80b-1 et seq., was enacted to deal with abuses that Congress had found to exist in the investment advisers industry. The question in this case is whether that Act creates a private cause of action for damages or other relief in favor of persons aggrieved by those who allegedly have violated it.
The respondent, a shareholder of petitioner Mortgage Trust of America (Trust), brought this suit in a Federal District Court as a derivative action on behalf of the Trust and as a class action on behalf of the Trust’s shareholders. Named as defendants were the Trust, several individual trustees, the Trust’s investment adviser, Transamerica Mortgage Advisors, Inc. (TAMA), and two corporations affiliated with TAMA, Land Capital, Inc. (Land Capital), and Transamerica Corp. (Transamerica), all of which are petitioners in this case.
The respondent’s complaint alleged that the petitioners in the course of advising or managing the Trust had been guilty of various frauds and breaches of fiduciary duty. The complaint set out three causes of action, each said to arise under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. The first alleged that the advisory contract between TAMA and the Trust was unlawful because TAMA and Transamerica were not registered under the Act and because the contract had provided for grossly excessive compensation. The second alleged that the petitioners breached their fiduciary duty to the Trust by causing it to purchase securities of inferior quality from Land Capital. The third alleged that the petitioners had misappropriated profitable investment opportunities for the benefit of other companies affiliated with Transamerica. The complaint sought injunctive relief to restrain further performance of the advisory contract, rescission of the contract, restitution of fees and other considerations paid by the Trust, an accounting of illegal profits, and an award of damages.
The trial court ruled that the Investment Advisers Act confers no private right of action, and accordingly dismissed the complaint. The Court of Appeals reversed, Lewis v. Transamerica Corp., 575 F. 2d 237, holding that “implication of a private right of action for injunctive relief and damages under the Advisers Act in favor of appropriate plaintiffs is necessary to achieve the goals of Congress in enacting the legislation.” Id., at 239. We granted certiorari to consider the important federal question presented. 439 U. S. 952.
The Investment Advisers Act nowhere expressly provides for a private cause of action. The only provision of the Act that authorizes any suits to enforce the duties or obligations created by it is § 209, which permits the Securities and Exchange Commission (Commission) to bring suit in a federal district court to enjoin violations of the Act or the rules promulgated under it. The argument is made, however, that the clients of investment advisers were the intended beneficiaries of the Act and that courts should therefore imply a private cause of action in their favor. See Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S. 677, 689; Cort v. Ash, 422 U. S. 66, 78; J. I. Case Co. v. Borak, 377 U. S. 426, 432.
The question whether a statute creates a cause of action, either expressly or by implication, is basically a matter of statutory construction. Touche Ross & Co. v. Bedington, 442 U. S. 560, 568; Cannon v. University of Chicago, supra, at 688; see National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. National Association of Railroad Passengers, 414 U. S. 453, 458 (Amtrak). While some opinions of the Court have placed considerable emphasis upon the desirability of implying private rights of action in order to provide remedies thought to effectuate the purposes of a given statute, e. g., J. I. Case Co. v. Borak, supra, what must ultimately be determined is whether Congress intended to create the private remedy asserted, as our recent decisions have made clear. Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, supra, at 568; Cannon v. University of Chicago, supra, at 688. We accept this as the appropriate inquiry to be made in resolving the issues presented by the case before us.
Accordingly, we begin with the language of the statute itself. Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, supra, at 568; Cannon v. University of Chicago, supra, at 689; Santa Fe Industries, Inc. v. Green, 430 U. S. 462, 472; Piper v. Chris-Craft Industries, Inc., 430 U. S. 1, 24. It is asserted that the creation of a private right of action can fairly be inferred from the language of two sections of the Act. The first is § 206, which broadly proscribes fraudulent practices by investment advisers, making it unlawful for any investment adviser “to employ any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud ... [or] to engage in any transaction, practice, or course of business which operates as a fraud or deceit upon any client or prospective client,” or to engage in specified transactions with clients without making required disclosures. The second is § 215, which provides that contracts whose formation or performance would violate the Act “shall be void ... as regards the rights of” the violator and knowing successors in interest.
It is apparent that the two sections were intended to benefit the clients of investment advisers, and, in the case of § 215, the parties to advisory contracts as well. As we have previously recognized, § 206 establishes “federal fiduciary standards” to govern the conduct of investment advisers, Santa Fe Industries, Inc. v. Green, supra, at 471, n. 11; Burks v. Lasker, 441 U. S. 471, 481-482, n. 10; SEC v. Capital Gains Research Bureau, Inc., 375 U. S. 180, 191-192. Indeed, the Act’s legislative history leaves no doubt that Congress intended to impose enforceable fiduciary obligations. See H. R. Rep. No. 2639, 76th Cong., 3d Sess., 28 (1940); S. Rep. No. 1775, 76th Cong., 3d Sess., 21 (1940); SEC, Report on Investment Trusts and Investment Companies (Investment Counsel and Investment Advisory Services), H. R. Doc. No. 477, 76th Cong., 2d Sess., 27-30 (1939). But whether Congress intended additionally that these provisions would be enforced through private litigation is a different question.
On this question the legislative history of the Act is entirely silent — -a state of affairs not surprising when it is remembered that the Act concededly does not explicitly provide any private remedies whatever. See Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S., at 694. But while the absence of anything in the legislative history that indicates an intention to confer any private right of action is hardly helpful to the respondent, it does not automatically undermine his position. This Court has held that the failure of Congress expressly to consider a private remedy is not inevitably inconsistent with an intent on its part to make such a remedy available. Ibid. Such an intent may appear implicitly in the language or structure of the statute, or in the circumstances of its enactment.
In the case of § 215, we conclude that the statutory language itself fairly implies a right to specific and limited relief in a federal court. By declaring certain contracts void, § 215 by its terms necessarily contemplates that the issue of voidness under its criteria may be litigated somewhere. At the very least Congress must have assumed that § 215 could be raised defensively in private litigation to preclude the enforcement of an investment advisers contract. But the legal consequences of voidness are typically not so limited. A person with the power to avoid a contract ordinarily may resort to a court to have the contract rescinded and to obtain restitution of consideration paid. See Deckert v. Independence Corp., 311 U. S. 282, 289; S. Williston, Contracts § 1525 (3d ed. 1970); J. Pomeroy, Equity Jurisprudence §§881 and 1092 (4th ed. 1918). And this Court has previously recognized that a comparable provision, § 29 (b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U. S. C. § 78cc (b), confers a “right to rescind” a contract void under the criteria of the statute. Mills v. Electric Auto-Lite Co., 396 U. S. 375, 388. Moreover, the federal courts in general have viewed such language as implying an equitable cause of action for rescission or similar relief. E. g., Kardon v. National Gypsum Co., 69 F. Supp. 512, 514 (ED Pa. 1946); see 3 L. Loss, Securities Regulation 1758-1759 (2d ed. 1961). Cf. Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U. S. 723, 735.
For these reasons we conclude that when Congress declared in § 215 that certain contracts are void, it intended that the customary legal incidents of voidness would follow, including the availability of a suit for rescission or for an injunction against continued operation of the contract, and for restitution. Accordingly, we hold that the Court of Appeals was correct in ruling that the respondent may maintain an action on behalf of the Trust seeking to void the investment advisers contract.
We view quite differently, however, the respondent’s claims for damages and other monetary relief under § 206. Unlike § 215, § 206 simply proscribes certain conduct, and does not in terms create or alter any civil liabilities. If monetary liability to a private plaintiff is to be found, it must be read into the Act. Yet it is an elemental canon of statutory construction that where a statute expressly provides a particular remedy or remedies, a court must be chary of reading others into it. “When a statute limits a thing to be done in a particular mode, it includes the negative of any other mode.” Botany Mills v. United, States, 278 U. S. 282, 289. See Amtrak, 414 U. S., at 458; Securities Investor Protection Corp. v. Barbour, 421 U. S. 412, 419; T. I. M. E., Inc. v. United States, 359 U. S. 464, 471. Congress expressly provided both judicial and administrative means for enforcing compliance with § 206. First, under § 217,15 U. S. C. § 80b-17, willful violations of the Act are criminal offenses, punishable by fine or imprisonment, or both. Second, § 209 authorizes the Commission to bring civil actions in federal courts to enjoin compliance with the Act, including, of course, § 206. Third, the Commission is authorized by § 203 to impose various administrative sanctions on persons who violate the Act, including § 206. In view of these express provisions for enforcing the duties imposed by § 206, it is highly improbable that “Congress absentmindedly forgot to mention an intended private action.” Cannon v. University of Chicago, supra, at 742 (Powell, J., dissenting).
Even settled rules of statutory construction could yield, of course, to persuasive evidence of a contrary legislative intent. Securities Investor Protection Corp. v. Barbour, supra, at 419; Amtrak, supra, at 458. But what evidence of intent exists in this case, circumstantial though it be, weighs against the implication of a private right of action for a monetary award in a case such as this. Under each of the securities laws that preceded the Act here in question, and under the Investment Company Act of 1940 which was enacted as companion legislation, Congress expressly authorized private suits for damages in prescribed circumstances. For example, Congress provided an express damages remedy for misrepresentations contained in an underwriter’s registration statement in § 11 (a) of the Securities Act of 1933, and for certain materially misleading statements in § 18 (a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. “Obviously, then, when Congress wished to provide a private damages remedy, it knew how to do so and did so expressly.” Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, 442 U. S., at 572; Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, supra, at 734; see Amtrak, supra, at 458; T. I. M. E., Inc. v. United States, supra, at 471. The fact that it enacted no analogous provisions in the legislation here at issue strongly suggests that Congress was simply unwilling to impose any potential monetary liability on a private suitor. See Abrahamson v. Fleschner, 568 F. 2d 862, 883 (CA2 1977) (Gurfein, J., concurring and dissenting).
The omission of any such potential remedy from the Act’s substantive provisions was paralleled in the jurisdictional section, § 214. Early drafts of the bill had simply incorporated by reference a provision of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which gave the federal courts jurisdiction “of all suits in equity and actions at law brought to enforce any liability or duty created by” the statute (emphasis added). See S. 3580, 76th Cong., 3d Sess., §§40 (a), 203 (introduced by Sen. Wagner, Mar. 14, 1940); H. R. 8935, 76th Cong., 3d Sess., §§40 (a), 203 (introduced by Rep. Lea, Mar. 14,1940). After hearings on the bill in the Senate, representatives of the investment advisers industry and the staff of the Commission met to discuss the bill, and certain changes were made. The language that was enacted as § 214 first appeared in this compromise version of the bill. See Confidential Committee Print, S. 3580, 76th Cong., 3d Sess., § 213 (1940). That version, and the version finally enacted into law, S. 4108, 76th Cong., 3d Sess., § 214 (1940), both omitted any references to “actions at law” or to “liability.” The unexplained deletion of a single phrase from a jurisdictional provision is, of course, not determinative of whether a private remedy exists. But it is one more piece of evidence that Congress did not intend to authorize a cause of action for anything beyond limited equitable relief.
Relying on the factors identified in Cort v. Ash, 422 U. S. 66, the respondent and the Commission, as amicus curiae, argue that our inquiry in this case cannot stop with the intent of Congress, but must consider the utility of a private remedy, and the fact that it may be one not traditionally relegated to state law. We rejected the same contentions last Term in Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, where it was argued that these factors standing alone justified the implication of a private right of action under § 17 (a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. We said in that case:
“It is true that in Cort v. Ash, the Court set forth four factors that it considered ‘relevant’ in determining whether a private remedy is implicit in a statute not expressly providing one. But the Court did not decide that each of these factors is entitled to equal weight. The central inquiry remains whether Congress intended to create, either expressly or by implication, a private cause of action. Indeed, the first three factors discussed in Cort — the language and focus of the statute, its legislative history, and its purpose, see 422 U. S., at 78 — are ones traditionally relied upon in determining legislative intent.” 442 U. S,, at 575-576.
The statute in Touche Boss by its terms neither granted private rights to the members of any identifiable class, nor proscribed any conduct as unlawful. Touche Ross & Co. v. Bedington, 442 U. S., at 576. In those circumstances it was evident to the Court that no private remedy was available. Section 206 of the Act here involved concededly was intended to protect the victims of the fraudulent practices it prohibited. But the mere fact that the statute was designed to protect advisers’ clients does not require the implication of a private cause of action for damages on their behalf. Touche Boss & Co. v. Redington, supra, at 578; Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U. S., at 690-693; Securities Investor Protection Corp. v. Barbour, 421 U. S., at 421. The dispositive question remains whether Congress intended to create any such remedy. Having answered that question in the negative, our inquiry is at an end.
For the reasons stated in this opinion, we hold that there exists a limited private remedy under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 to void an investment advisers contract, but that the Act confers no other private causes of action, legal or equitable. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed in part and reversed in part, and the ease is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Hereinafter “the petitioners” refers to the petitioners other than the Trust. The Trust is a real estate investment trust within the meaning of §§ 856-858 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, 26 U, S. C. §§ 856-858. TAMA, in addition to advising the Trust, managed its day-to-day operations. Transamerica is the sponsor of the Trust and the parent of Land Capital. Land Capital is the parent of TAMA, through a subsidiary, and sold the Trust its initial portfolio of investments. Several of the individual trustees were at the time of suit affiliated with TAMA, Transamerica, or other subsidiaries of Transamerica.
Each cause of action was stated as a derivative shareholder’s claim and restated as a shareholder’s class claim.
The pertinent orders of the District Court are unreported.
The District Court was of the view that it was without subject-matter jurisdiction of the respondent’s suit. The Court of Appeals recharacter-ized the District Court’s order dismissing the suit as properly based upon the respondent’s failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted, Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 12(b)(6), noting that the respondent’s suit was apparently within the District Court’s general federal-question jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1331. 675 F. 2d, at 239, n. 2.
The Court of Appeals in this case followed the Courts of Appeals for the Fifth and Second Circuits, which also have held that private causes of action may be maintained under the Act. See Wilson v. First Houston Investment Corp., 566 F. 2d 1235 (CA5 1978); Abrahamson v. Fleschner, 568 F. 2d 862 (CA2 1977).
Section 209, 54 Stat. 854, as amended, as set forth in 15 U. S. C. § 80b-9, provides in part as follows:
“(e) . . . Whenever it shall appear to the Commission that any person has engaged, is engaged, or is about to engage in any act or practice constituting a violation of any provision of this subehapter, or of any rule, regulation, or order hereunder, or that any person has aided, abetted, counseled, commanded, induced, or procured, is aiding, abetting, counseling, commanding, inducing, or procuring, or is about to aid, abet, counsel, command, induce, or procure such a violation, it may in its discretion bring an action in the proper district court of the United States, or the proper United States court of any Territory or other place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, to enjoin such acts or practices and to enforce compliance with this subehapter or any rule, regulation, or order hereunder. Upon a showing that such person has engaged, is engaged, or is about to engage in any such act or practice, or in aiding, abetting, counseling, commanding, inducing, or procuring any such act or practice, a permanent or temporary injunction or decree or restraining order shall be granted without bond. The Commission may transmit such evidence as may be available concerning any violation of the provisions of this sub-chapter, or of any rule, regulation, or order thereunder, to the Attorney General, who, in his discretion, may institute the appropriate criminal proceedings under this subchapter.”
The language in § 209 (e) that authorizes the Commission to obtain an injunction against persons “aiding, abetting, ... or procuring” violations of the Act was added to the statute in 1960. 74 Stat. 887.
Section 206, 54 Stat. 852, as amended, as set forth in 15 U. S. C. §80b-6, reads as follows:
Ҥ 80b-6. Prohibited transactions by investment advisers
“It shall be unlawful for any investment adviser, by use of the mails or any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce, directly or indirectly'—
“(1) to employ any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud any client or prospective client;
“(2) to engage in any transaction, practice, or course of business which operates as a fraud or deceit upon any client or prospective client;
“(3) acting as principal for his own account, knowingly to sell any security to or purchase any security from a client, or acting as broker for a person other than such client, knowingly to effect any sale or purchase of any security for the account of such client, without disclosing to such client in writing before the completion of such transaction the capacity in which he is acting and obtaining the consent of the client to such transaction. The prohibitions of this paragraph shall not apply to any transaction with a customer of a broker or dealer if such broker or dealer is not acting as an investment adviser in relation to such transaction;
“ (4) to engage in any act, practice, or course of business which is fraudulent, deceptive, or manipulative. The Commission shall, for the purposes of this paragraph (4) by rules and regulations define, and prescribe means reasonably designed to prevent, such acts, practices, and courses of business as are fraudulent, deceptive, or manipulative.”
Section 206 (4) was added to the statute in 1960. 74 Stat. 887. At that time Congress also extended the provisions of § 206 to all investment advisers, whether or not such advisers were required to register under
§ 203 of the Act, 15 U. S. C. § 80b-3. 74 Stat. 887.
Section 215, 54 Stat. 856, as set forth in 15 U. S. C. § 80b-15, reads in part as follows:
Ҥ 80b-15. Validity of contracts
“(b) Every contract made in violation of any provision of this subchapter and every contract heretofore or hereafter made, the performance of which involves the violation of, or the continuance of any relationship or practice in violation of any provision of this subchapter, or any rule, regulation, or order thereunder, shall be void (1) as regards the rights of any person who, in violation of any such provision, rule, regulation, or order, shall have made or engaged in the performance of any such contract, and (2) as regards the rights of any person who, not being a party to such contract, shall have acquired any right thereunder with actual knowledge of the facts by reason of which the making or performance of such contract was in violation of any such provision.”
One possibility, of course, is that Congress intended that claims under § 215 would be raised only in state court. But we decline to adopt such an anomalous construction without some indication that Congress in fact wished to remit the litigation of a federal right to the state courts.
Jurisdiction of such suits would exist under § 214, 15 U. S. C. § 80b-14, which, though referring in terms only to “suits in equity to enjoin any violation,” would equally sustain actions where simple declaratory relief or rescission is sought.
See Securities Act of 1933, §§ 11 and 12, 15 U. S. C. §§ 77k and 77l; Securities Exchange Act of 1934, §§ 9 (e), 16 (b), and 18, 15 U. S. C. §§78i(e), 78p (b), and 78r; Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, §§ 16 (a) and 17 (b), 15 U. S. C. §§79p (a) and 79q (b); Trust Indenture Act of 1939, § 323 (a), 15 U. S. C. § 77www (a); Investment Company Act of 1940, § 30 (f), 15 U. S. C. § 80a-29 (f).
Section 214, 54 Stat. 856, as set forth in 15 U. S. C. § 80b-14, provides: “§ 80b-14. Jurisdiction of offenses and suits
“The district courts of the United States and the United States courts of any Territory or other place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States shall have jurisdiction of violations of this subchapter or the rules, regulations, or orders thereunder, and, concurrently with State and Territorial courts, of all suits in equity to enjoin any violation of this sub-chapter or the rules, regulations, or orders thereunder. Any criminal proceeding may be brought in the district wherein any act or transaction constituting the violation occurred. Any suit or action to enjoin any violation of this subchapter or rules, regulations, or orders thereunder, may be brought in any such district or in the district wherein the defendant is an inhabitant or transacts business, and process in such cases may be served in any district of which the defendant is an inhabitant or transacts business or wherever the defendant may be found. Judgments and decrees so rendered shall be subject to review as provided in sections 1254, 1291 and 1292 of title 28, and section 7, as amended, of the Act entitled ‘An Act to establish a court of appeals for the District of Columbia’, approved February 9, 1893. No costs shall be assessed for or against the Commission in any proceeding under this subchapter brought by or against the Commission in any court.”
The respondent argues that the omission of any reference in § 214 to “actions at law” is without relevance because jurisdiction over such cases as this would often exist under 28 U. S. C. § 1331, the general federal-question jurisdiction statute, and because there was no express statement that the omission was intended to preclude private remedies. But the respondent concedes that the language of § 214 was probably narrowed in view of the absence from the Investment Advisers Act of any express provision for a private cause of action for damages. We agree, but find the omission inconsistent more generally with an intent on the part of Congress to make such a remedy available.
Congress amended the Investment Company Act in 1970 to create a narrowly circumscribed right of action for damages against investment advisers to registered investment companies. Act of Dec. 14, 1970, § 20, 84 Stat. 1428, 15 U. S. C. § 80a-35 (b). While subsequent legislation can disclose little or nothing of the intent of Congress in enacting earlier laws, see SEC v. Capital Gains Research Bureau, Inc, 375 U. S. 180, 199-200, the 1970 amendments to the companion Act are another clear indication that Congress knew how to confer a private right of action when it wished to do so.
In 1975, the Commission submitted a proposal to Congress that would have amended § 214 to extend jurisdiction, without regard to the amount in controversy, to “actions at law” under the Act. See S. 2849, 94th Cong., 2d Sess., §6 (1976). The Commission was of the view that the amendment also would confirm the existence of a private right of action to enforce the Act’s substantive provisions. See Hearings on S. 2849 before the Subcommittee on Securities of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, 94th Cong., 2d Sess., 17 (1976); Hearings on H. R. 12981 and H. R. 13737 before the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Finance of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 94th Cong., 2d Sess., 36-37 (1976). The Senate Committee reported favorably on the provision as proposed by the Commission, but the bill did not come to a vote in either House.
Where rescission is awarded, the rescinding party may of course have restitution of the consideration given under the contract, less any value conferred by the other party. See 5 A. Corbin, Contracts § 1114 (1964). Restitution would not, however, include compensation for any diminution in the value of the rescinding party’s investment alleged to- have resulted from the adviser’s action or inaction. Such relief could provide by indirection the equivalent of a private damages remedy that we have concluded Congress did not confer.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
H
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice O’Connor
announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which The Chief Justice, Justice Scalia, and Justice Thomas join.
In this ease, the Court considers a challenge under the Due Process and Takings Clauses of the Constitution to the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 (Coal Act or Act), 26 ü. S. C. §§9701-9722 (1994 ed. and Supp. II), which establishes a mechanism for funding health care benefits for retirees from the coal industry and their dependents. We conclude that the Coal Act, as applied to petitioner Eastern Enterprises, effects an unconstitutional taking.
I
A
For a good part of this century, employers in the coal industry have been involved in negotiations with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA or Union) regarding the provision of employee benefits to coal miners. When petitioner Eastern Enterprises (Eastern) was formed in 1929, coal operators provided health care to their employees through a prepayment system funded by payroll deductions. Because of the rural location of most mines, medical facilities were frequently substandard, and many of the medical professionals willing to work in mining areas were “company doctors,” often selected by the eoal operators for reasons other than their skills or training. The health care available to coal miners and their families was deficient in many respects. In addition, the cost of company-provided services, such as housing and medical care, often consumed the bulk of miners' compensation. See generally U. S. Dept, of Interior, Report of the Coal Mines Administration, A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry (1947) (Boone Report); Report of United States Coal Commission, S. Doc. No. 195,68th Cong., 2d Sess. (1925).
In the late 1930’s, the UMWA began to demand changes in the manner in which essential services were provided to miners, and by 1946, the subject of miners’ health care had become a critical issue in collective bargaining negotiations between the Union and bituminous coal companies. When a breakdown in those negotiations resulted in a nationwide strike, President Truman issued an Executive order directing Secretary of the Interior Julius Krug to take possession of all bituminous coal mines and to negotiate “appropriate changes in the terms and conditions of employment” of miners with the UMWA. 11 Fed. Reg. 5593 (1946). A week of negotiations between Secretary Krug and UMWA President John L. Lewis produced the historic Krug-Lewis Agreement that ended the strike. See App. in No. 96-1947 (CAI), p. 610 (hereinafter App. (CA1)).
That agreement, described as “an almost complete victory for the miners,” M. Fox, United We Stand 405 (1990), led to the creation of benefit funds, financed by royalties on coal produced and payroll deductions. The funds compensated miners and their dependents and survivors for wages lost due to disability, death, or retirement. The funds also provided for the medical expenses of miners and their dependents, with the precise benefits determined by UMWA-appointed trustees. In addition, the Krug-Lewis Agreement committed the Government to undertake a comprehensive survey of the living conditions in coal mining areas in order to assess the improvements necessary to bring those communities up to “recognized American standards.” Krug-Lewis Agreement §5, App. (CA1) 613. That study concluded that the medical needs of miners and their dependents would be more effectively served through “a broad prepayment system, based on sound actuarial principles.” Boone Report 226-227.
Shortly after the study was issued, the mines returned to private control and the UMWA and several coal operators entered into the National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement of 1947 (1947 NBCWA), App. (CA1) 615, which established the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund (1947 W&R Fund), modeled after the Krug-Lewis benefit trusts. The Fund was to use the proceeds of a royalty on coal production to provide pension and medical benefits to miners and their families. The 1947 NBCWA did not specify the benefits to which miners and their dependents were entitled. Instead, three trustees appointed by the parties were given authority to determine “coverage and eligibility, priorities among classes of benefits, amounts of benefits, methods of providing or arranging for provisions for benefits, investment of trust funds, and all other related matters.” 1947 NBCWA 146, App. (CA1) 619.
Disagreement over benefits continued, however, leading to the execution of another NBCWA in 1950, which created a new multiemployer trust, the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund of 1950 (1950 W&R Fund). The 1950 W&R Fund established a 30-eents-per-ton royalty on coal produced, payable by signatory operators on a “several and not joint” basis for the duration of the 1950 Agreement. 1950 NBCWA 63, App. (CA1) 640. As with the 1947 W&R Fund, the 1950 W&R Fund was governed by three trustees chosen by the parties and vested with responsibility to determine the level of benefits. Id., at 59-61, App. (CA1) 638-639. Between 1950 and 1974, the 1950 NBCWA was amended on occasion, and new NBCWA’s were adopted in 1968 and 1971. Except for increases in the amount of royalty payments, however, the terms and structure of the 1950 W&R Fund remained essentially unchanged. A 1951 amendment recognized the creation of the Bituminous Coal Operators’ Association (BCOA), a multiemployer bargaining association, which became the primary representative of coal operators in negotiations with the Union. See App. (CA1) 647-648.
Under the 1950 W&R Fund, miners and their dependents were not promised specific benefits. As the 1950 W&R Fund’s Annual Report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1955, explained:
“Under the legal and financial obligations... imposed [by the Trust Agreement], the Fund is operated on a pay-as-you-go basis, maintaining a sound relationship between revenues and expenditures. Resolutions adopted by the Trustees governing Fund Benefits — Pensions, Hospital and Medical Care, and Widows and Survivors Benefits — specifically provide that all these Benefits are subject to termination, revision, or amendment, by the Trustees in their discretion at any time. No vested interest in the Fund extends to any beneficiary.” Id., at 8-4, App. (CA1) 869-870.
See also Mine Workers Health and Retirement Funds v. Robinson, 455 U. S. 562, 565, and n. 2 (1982). Thus, the Fund operated using a fixed amount of royalties, with the trustees, having the authority to establish and adjust the level of benefits provided so as to remain within the budgetary constraints.
Subsequent annual reports of the 1950 W&R Fund reiterated that benefits were subject to change. See, e. g., 1950 W&R Fund Annual Report for the Year Ending June 30, 1956 (1956 Annual Report), p. 30, App. (CA1) 929 (“Resolutions adopted by the Trustees governing Fund Benefits— Pensions, Hospital and Medical Care, and Widows and Survivors Benefits — specifically provide that all these Benefits are subject to termination, revision, or amendment, by the Trustees in their discretion at any time”); 1950 W&R Fund Annual Report for the Year Ending June 30,1958, pp. 20-21, App. (CA1) 955-956 (“Trustee regulations governing Benefits specifically provide that all Benefits which have been authorized are subject to termination, suspension, revision, or amendment by the Trustees in their discretion at any time. Each beneficiary is officially notified of this governing provision at the time his Benefit is authorized”). Thus, although persons involved in the coal industry may have made occasional statements intimating that the 1950 W&R Fund promised lifetime health benefits, see App. (CAl) 1899,1971-1972, it is clear that the 1950 W&R Fund did not, by its terms, guarantee lifetime health benefits for retirees and their dependents. In fact, as to -widows of miners, the 1950 W&R Fund expressly limited health benefits to the time period during which -widows would also receive death benefits. See, e. g., Robinson, supra, at 565-566; 1956 Annual Report 14, App. (CA1) 913.
Between 1950 and 1974, the trustees often exercised their prerogative to alter the level of benefits according to the Fund’s budget. In 1960, for instance, “[t]he Trustees of the Fund, recognizing their legal and fiscal obligation to soundly administer the Trust Fund, took action prior to the close of the fiscal year, to curtail the excess of expenditures over income,” by “limit[ing] or terminat[ing] eligibility for [certain] Trust Fund Benefits.” 1960 Annual Report 2, App. (CAl) 1011. Similar concerns prompted the trustees to reduce monthly pension benefits by 25% at one point, and to limit the range of medical and pension benefits available to miners employed by operators who did not pay the required royalties. See 1961 Annual Report 2, 11-12, App. (CAl) 1044, 1053-1054; 1963 Annual Report 13, 16, App. (CAl) 1121,1124.
Reductions in benefits were not always acceptable to the miners, and some wildcat strikes erupted in the 1960’s. See Secretary of Labor’s Advisory Commission on United Mine Workers of America Retiree Health Benefits, Coal Commission Report 22-23 (1990) (Coal Comm’n Report), App. (CAl) 1352-1353. Nonetheless, the 1950 W&R Fund continued to provide benefits on a “pay-as-you-go” basis, with the level of benefits fully subject to revision, until the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 29 Ü. S. C. §1001 et seq., introduced specific funding and vesting requirements for pension plans. To comply with ERISA, the UMWA and the BCOA entered into a new agreement, the 1974 NBCWA, which created four trusts, funded by royalties on coal production and premiums based on hours worked by miners, to replace the 1950 W&R Fund. See Robinson, supra, at 566. Two of the new trusts, the UMWA 1950 Benefit Plan and Trust (1950 Benefit Plan) and the UMWA 1974 Benefit Plan and Trust (1974 Benefit Plan), provided nonpension benefits, including medical benefits. Miners who retired before January 1,1976, and their dependents were covered by the 1950 Benefit Plan, while active miners and those who retired after 1975 were covered by the 1974 Benefit Plan.
The 1974 NBCWA thus was the first agreement between the UMWA and the BCOA to expressly reference health benefits for retirees; prior agreements did not specifically mention retirees, and the scope of their benefits was left to the discretion of fund trustees. The 1974 NBCWA explained that it was amending previous medical benefits to provide a Health Services card for retired miners until their death, and to their widows until their death or remarriage. 1974 NBCWA 99, 105 (Summary of Principal Provisions, UMWA Health and Retirement Benefits), App. (CA1) 755, 758. Despite the expanded benefits, the 1974 NBCWA did not alter the employers’ obligation to contribute only a fixed amount of royalties, nor did it extend employers’ liability beyond the life of the agreement. See id., Art. XX, § (d), App. (CA1) 749.
As a result of the broadened coverage under the 1974 NBCWA, the number of eligible benefit recipients jumped dramatically. See 1977 Annual Report of the UMWA Wei-fare and Retirement Funds 3, App. (CA1) 1253. A1993 Report of the House Committee on Ways and Means explained:
"The 1974 agreement was the first NBCWA to mention retiree health benefits. As part of a substantial liberalization of benefits and eligibility under both the pension and health plans, the 1974 contract provided lifetime health benefits for retirees, disabled mine workers, and spouses, and extended the benefits to surviving spouses....” House Committee on Ways and Means, Financing UMWA Coal Miner “Orphan Retiree” Health Benefits, 103d Cong., 1st Sess., 4 (Comm. Print 1993) (House Report).
The increase in benefits, combined with various other circumstances — such as a decline in the amount of coal produced, the retirement of a generation of miners, and rapid escalation of health care costs — quickly resulted in financial problems for the 1950 and 1974 Benefit Plans. In response, the next NBCWA, executed in 1978, assigned responsibility to signatory employers for the health care of their own active and retired employees. See 1978 NBCWA, Art. XX, § (c)(3), App. (CA1) 778. The 1974 Benefit Plan remained in effect, but only to cover retirees whose former employers were no longer in business.
To ensure the Benefit Plans’ solvency, the 1978 NBCWA included a “guarantee” clause obligating signatories to make sufficient contributions to maintain benefits during that agreement, and “evergreen” clauses were incorporated into the Benefit Plans so that signatories would be required to contribute as long as they remained in the coal business, regardless of whether they signed a subsequent agreement. See id., §(h), App. (CA1) 787-788; House Report 5. As a result, the coal operators’ liability to the Benefit Plans shifted from a defined contribution obligation, under which employers were responsible only for a predetermined amount of royalties, to a form of defined benefit obligation, under which employers were to fund specific benefits.
Despite the 1978 changes, the Benefit Plans continued to suffer financially as costs increased and employers who had signed the 1978 NBCWA withdrew from the agreement, either to continue in business with nonunion employees or to exit the coal business altogether. As more and more coal operators abandoned the Benefit Plans, the remaining signatories were forced to absorb the increasing cost of covering retirees left behind by exiting employers. A spiral soon developed, with the rising cost of participation leading more employers to withdraw from the Benefit Plans, resulting in more onerous obligations for those that remained. In 1988, the UMWA and BGOA attempted to relieve the situation by imposing withdrawal liability on NBCWA signatories who seceded from the Benefit Plans. See 1988 NBCWA, Art. XX, §§(i) and (j), App. (CA1) 805, 828-829. Even so, by 1990, the 1950 and 1974 Benefit Plans had incurred a deficit of about $110 million, and obligations to beneficiaries were continuing to surpass revenues. See House Report 9; Coal Comm’n Report 43-44, App. (CA1) 1373-1374.
B
In response to unrest among miners, such as the lengthy strike that followed Pittston Coal Company’s refusal to sign the 1988 NBCWA, Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole announced the creation of the Advisory Commission on United Mine Workers of America Retiree Health Benefits (Coal Commission or Commission). The Coal Commission was charged with “recommending] a solution for ensuring that orphan retirees in the 1950 and 1974 Benefit Trusts will continue to receive promised medical care.” Coal Comm’n Report 2, App. (CA1) 1333. The Commission explained that “[hjealth care benefits are an emotional subject in the coal industry, not only because coal miners have been promised and guaranteed health care benefits for life, but also because coal miners in their labor contracts have traded lower pensions over the years for better health care benefits.” Coal Comm’n Report, Executive Summary vii, App. (CAl) 1324. The Commission agreed that “a statutory obligation to contribute to the plans should be imposed on current and former signatories to the [NBCWA],” but disagreed about “whether the entire [coal] industiy should contribute to the resolution of the problem of orphan retirees.” Id., at vii-viii, App. (CAl) 1324-1325. Therefore, the Commission proposed two alternative funding plans for Congress’ consideration.
First, the Commission recommended that Congress establish a fund financed by an industrywide fee to provide health care to orphan retirees at the level of benefits they were entitled to receive at that fund’s inception. To cover the cost of medical benefits for retirees from signatories to the 1978 or subsequent NBCWA’s who remained in the coal business, the Commission proposed the creation of another fund financed by the retirees’ most recent employers. Id., at 61, App. (CAl) 1390. The Commission also recommended that Congress codify the “evergreen” obligation of the 1978 and subsequent NBCWA’s. Id., at 63, App. (CAl) 1392.
As an alternative to imposing industrywide liability, the Commission suggested that Congress spread the cost of retirees’ health benefits across “a broadened base of current and past signatories to the contracts,” apparently referring to the 1978 and subsequent NBCWA’s. See id., at 58, 65, App. (CAl) 1387, 1394. Not all Commission members agreed, however, that it would be fair to assign such a burden to signatories of the 1978 agreement. Four Commissioners explained that “[i]ssues of elemental fairness are involved” in imposing obligations on “respectable operators who made decisions in the past to move to different locales, invest in different technology, or pursue their business with or without respect to union presence.” Id., at 85, App. (CAl) 1414 (statement of Commissioners Michael J. Mahoney, Carl J. Schramm, Arlene Holen, Richard M. Holsten); see also id., at 81-82, App. (CA1) 1410-1411 (statement of Commissioner Richard M. Holsten).
After the Coal Commission issued its report, Congress considered several proposals to fund health benefits for UMWA retirees. At a 1991 hearing, a Senate subcommittee was advised that more than 120,000 retirees might not receive “the benefits they were promised.” Coal Commission Report on Health Benefits of Retired Coal Miners: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Medicare and Long-Term Care of the Senate Committee on Finance, 102d Cong., 1st Sess., 45 (1991) (statement of BCOA Chairman Michael K. Reilly). The Coal Commission’s Chairman submitted a statement urging that Congress’ assistance was needed “to fulfill the promises that began in the collective bargaining process nearly 50 years ago....” Id., at 306 (prepared statement of W. J. Usery, Jr.). Some Senators expressed similar concerns that retired miners might not receive the benefits promised to them. See id., at 16 (statement of Sen. Dave Durenberger) (describing issue as involving “a whole bunch of promises made to a whole lot of people back in the 1940s and 1950s when the cost consequences of those problems were totally unknown”); id., at 59 (prepared statement of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch) (stating that “miners and their families... were led to believe by their own union leaders and the companies for which they worked that they were guaranteed lifetime [health] benefits”).
In 1992, as part of a larger bill, both Houses passed legislation based on the Coal Commission’s first proposal, which required signatories to the 1978 or any subsequent NBCWA to fund their own retirees’ health care costs and provided for orphan retirees’ benefits through a tax on future coal production. See H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 102-461, pp. 268-295 (1992). President Bush, however, vetoed the entire bill. See H. R. Doe. No. 102-206, p. 1 (1992).
Congress responded by passing the Coal Act, a modified version of the Coal Commission’s alternative funding plan. In the Act, Congress purported “to identify, persons most responsible for [1950 and 1974 Benefit Plan] liabilities in order to stabilize plan funding and allow for the provision of health care benefits to... retirees.” § 19142(a)(2), 106 Stat. 3037, note following 26 U. S. C. § 9701; see also 138 Cong. Rec. 34001 (1992) (Conference Report on Coal Act) (explaining that, under the Coal Act, “those companies which employed the retirees in question, and thereby benefitted from their services, will be assigned responsibility for providing the health care benefits promised in their various collective bargaining agreements”).
The Coal Act merged the 1950 and 1974 Benefit Plans into a new multiemployer plan called the United Mine Workers of America Combined Benefit Fund (Combined Fund). See 26 U. S. C. §§ 9702(a)(1), (2). The Combined Fund provides “substantially the same” health benefits to retirees and their dependents that they were receiving under the 1950 and 1974 Benefit Plans. See §§ 9703(b)(1), (f). It is financed by annual premiums assessed against “signatory coal operators,” i. e., coal operators that signed any NBCWA or any other agreement requiring contributions to the 1950 or 1974 Benefit Plans. See §§ 9701(b)(1), (3); § 9701(c)(1). Any signatory operator who “conducts or derives revenue from any business activity, whether or not in the coal industry,” may be liable for those premiums. §§ 9706(a), 9701(c)(7). Where a signatory is no longer involved in any business activity, premiums may be levied against “related personfe],” including successors in interest and businesses or corporations under common control. §§ 9706(a), 9701(c)(2)(A).
The Commissioner of Social Security (Commissioner) calculates the premiums due from any signatory operator based on the following formula, by which retirees are assigned to particular operators:
“For purposes of this chapter, the Commissioner of Social Security shall... assign each coal industry retiree who is an eligible beneficiary to a signatory operator which (or any related person with respect to which) remains in business in the following order:
“(1) First, to the signatory operator which—
“(A) was a signatory to the 1978 coal wage agreement or any subsequent coal wage agreement, and
“(B) was the most recent signatory operator to employ the coal industry retiree in the coal industry for at least 2 years.
“(2) Second, if the retiree is not assigned under paragraph (1), to the signatory operator which—
“(A) was a signatory to the 1978 coal wage agreement or any subsequent coal wage agreement, and
“(B) was the most recent signatory operator to employ the coal industry retiree in the coal industry.
“(3) Third, if the retiree is not assigned under paragraph (1) or (2), to the signatory operator which employed the coal industry retiree in the coal industry for a longer period of time than any other signatory operator prior to the effective date of the 1978 coal wage agreement.” § 9706(a).
It is the application of the third prong of the allocation formula, § 9706(a)(3), to Eastern that we review in this case.
> — H HH
A
Eastern was organized as a Massachusetts business trust in 1929, under the name Eastern Gas and Fuel Associates. Its current holdings include Boston Gas Company and a barge operator. Therefore, although Eastern is no longer involved in the coal industry, it is “in business” within the meaning of the Coal Act. Until 1965, Eastern conducted extensive coal mining operations centered in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. As a signatory to each NBCWA executed between 1947 and 1964, Eastern made contributions of over $60 million to the 1947 and 1950 W&R Funds. Brief for Petitioner 6.
In 1963, Eastern decided to transfer its coal-related operations to a subsidiary, Eastern Associated Coal Corp. (EACC). The transfer was completed by the end of 1965, and was described in Eastern's federal income tax return as an agreement by EACC to assume all of Eastern’s liabilities arising out of coal mining and marketing operations in exchange for Eastern’s receipt of EACC’s stock. EACC made similar representations in Security and Exchange Commission filings, describing itself as the successor to Eastern’s coal business. See App. (CAI) 117-118. At that time, the 1950 W&R Fund had a positive balance of over $145 million. 1966 Annual Report 3, App. (CA1) 1207.
Eastern retained its stock interest in EACC through a subsidiary corporation, Coal Properties Corp. (CPC), until 1987, and it received dividends of more than $100 million from EACC during that period. See Brief for Petitioner 6, n. 13. In 1987, Eastern sold its interest in CPC to respondent Peabody Holding Company, Inc. (Peabody). Under the terms of the agreement effecting the transfer, Peabody, CPC, and EACC assumed responsibility for payments to certain benefit plans, including the “Benefit Plan for UMWA Represented Employees of EACC and Subs.” App. 206a, 210a. As of June 30,1987, the 1950 and 1974 Benefit Plans reported surplus assets, totaling over $33 million. House Report 9.
B
Following enactment of the Coal Act, the Commissioner assigned to Eastern the obligation for Combined Fund premiums respecting over 1,000 retired miners who had worked for the company before 1966, based on Eastern’s status as the pre-1978 signatory operator for whom the miners had worked for the longest period of time. See 26 U. S. C. § 9706(a). Eastern’s premium for a 12-month period exceeded $5 million. See Brief for Petitioner 16.
Eastern responded by suing the Commissioner, as well as the Combined Fund and its trustees, in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Eastern asserted that the Coal Act, either on its face or as applied, violates substantive due process and constitutes a taking of its property in violation of the Fifth Amendment. Eastern also challenged the Commissioner’s interpretation of the Coal Act. The District Court granted summary judgment for respondents on all claims, upholding both the Commissioner’s interpretation of the Coal Act and the Act’s constitutionality. Eastern Enterprises v. Shalala, 942 F. Supp. 684 (Mass. 1996).
The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed. Eastern Enterprises v. Chater, 110 F. 3d 150 (1997). The court rejected Eastern’s challenge to the Commissioner’s interpretation of the Coal Act. Addressing Eastern’s substantive due process claim, the court described the Coal Act as “entitled to the most deferential level of judicial scrutiny,” explaining that, “[w]here, as here, a piece of legislation is purely economic and does not abridge fundamental rights, a challenger must show that the legislature acted in an arbitrary and irrational way.” Id., at 155-156 (internal quotation marks omitted). In the court’s view, the retroactive liability imposed by the Act was permissible “[a]s long as the retroactive application... is supported by a legitimate legislative purpose furthered by rational means,” for “judgments about the wisdom of such legislation remain within the exclusive province of the legislative and executive branches.” Id., at 156 (internal quotation marks omitted). The court concluded that Congress’ purpose in enacting the Coal Act was legitimate and that Eastern’s obligations under the Act are rationally related to those objectives, because Eastern’s execution of pre-1974 NBCWA’s contributed to miners’ expectations of lifetime health benefits. Id., at 157. The court rejected Eastern’s argument that costs of retiree health benefits should be borne by post-1974 coal operators, reasoning that Eastern’s proposal would require coal operators to fund health benefits for miners whom the operators had never employed. Id., at 158, n. 5. The court also noted the substantial dividends that Eastern had received from EACC. Id., at 158.
The court analyzed Eastern’s claim that the Coal Act effects an uncompensated taking under the. three factors set out in Connolly v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, 475 U. S. 211, 225 (1986): “(1) the economic impact of the regulation on the claimant, (2) the extent to which the regulation interferes with the claimant’s reasonable investment-backed expectations, and (S) the nature of the governmental action.” 110 F. 3d, at 160. With respect to the Act’s economic impact on Eastern, the court observed that the Act “does not involve the total deprivation of an asset.” Ibid. The Act’s terms, the court found, “reflec[t] a sufficient degree of proportionality” because Eastern is assigned liability only for miners “whom it employed for a relevant (and relatively long) period of time,” and then only if no post-1977 NBCWA signatory (or related person) can be found. Ibid. The court also rejected Eastern’s contention that the Act unreasonably interferes with its investment-backed expectations, explaining that the pattern of federal intervention in the coal industry and Eastern’s role in fostering an expectation of lifetime health benefits meant that Eastern “had every reason to anticipate that it might be called upon to bear some of the financial burden that this expectation engendered.” Id., at 161. Finally, in assessing the nature of the challenged governmental action, the court determined that the Coal Act does not result in the physical invasion or permanent appropriation of Eastern’s property, but merely “adjusts the benefits and burdens of economic life to promote the common good.” Ibid, (internal quotation marks omitted). The court also noted that the premiums are disbursed to the privately operated Combined Fund, not to a government entity. For those reasons, the court concluded, “there is no basis whatever for [Eastern’s] claim that the [Coal Act] transgresses the Takings Clause.” Ibid.
Other Courts of Appeals have also upheld the Coal Act against constitutional challenges. In view of the importance of the issues raised in this case, we granted certiorari. 522 U. S. 931 (1997).
Ill
We begin with a threshold jurisdictional question, raised in the federal respondent’s answer to Eastern’s complaint: Whether petitioner’s takings claim was properly filed in Federal District Court rather than the United States Court of Federal Claims. See App. (CAI) 40. Although the Commissioner no longer challenges the Court’s adjudication of this action, see Brief for Federal Respondent 38-39, n. 30, it is appropriate that we clarify the basis of our jurisdiction over petitioner’s claims.
Under the Tucker Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1491(a)(1), the Court of Federal Claims has exclusive jurisdiction to render judgment upon any claim against the United States for money damages exceeding $10,000 that is “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 eases not sounding in tort.” Accordingly, a claim for just compensation under the Takings Clause must be brought to the Court of Federal Claims in the first instance, unless Congress has withdrawn the Tucker Act grant of jurisdiction in the relevant statute. See, e. g., Ruckelshaus v. Monsanto Co., 467 U. S. 986, 1016-1019 (1984).
In this case, however, Eastern does not seek compensation from the Government. Instead, Eastern requests a declaratory judgment that the Coal Act violates the Constitution and a corresponding injunction against the Commissioner’s enforcement of the Act as to Eastern. Such equitable relief is arguably not within the jurisdiction of the Court of Federal Claims under the Tucker Act. See United States v. Mitchell, 463 U. S. 206, 216 (1983) (explaining that, in order for a claim to be “cognizable under the Tucker Act,” it “must be one for money damages against the United States”); see also, e. g., Bowen v. Massachusetts, 487 U. S. 879, 905 (1988).
Some Courts of Appeals have accepted the view that the Tucker Act does not apply to suits seeking only equitable relief, see In re Chateaugay Corp., 53 F. 3d 478, 493 (CA2), cert. denied sub nom. LTV Steel Co. v. Shalala, 516 U. S. 913 (1995); Southeast Kansas Community Action Program, Inc. v. Secretary of Agriculture, 967 F. 2d 1452, 1455-1456 (CA10 1992), while others have concluded that a claim for equitable relief under the Takings Clause is hypothetical, and therefore not within the district courts’ jurisdiction, until compensation has been sought and refused in the Court of Federal Claims, see Bay View, Inc. v. Ahtna, Inc., 105 F. 3d 1281, 1286 (CA9 1997); Rose Acre Farms, Inc. v. Madigan, 956 F. 2d 670, 673-674 (CA7), cert. denied, 506 U. S. 820 (1992).
On the one hand, this Court’s precedent can be read to support the latter conclusion that regardless of the nature of relief sought, the availability of a Tucker Act remedy renders premature any takings claim in federal district court. See Preseault v. ICC, 494 U. S. 1, 11 (1990); see also Monsanto, supra, at 1016. On the other hand, in a ease such as this one, it cannot be said that monetary relief against the Government is an available remedy. See Brief for Federal Respondent 38-39, n. 30. The payments mandated by the Coal Act, although calculated by a Government agency, are paid to the privately operated Combined Fund. Congress could not have contemplated that the Treasury would compensate coal operators for their liability under the Act, for “[e]very dollar paid pursuant to a statute would be presumed to generate a dollar of Tucker Act compensation.” In re Chateaugay Corp., 53 F. 3d, at 493. Accordingly, the “presumption of Tucker Act availability must be reversed where the challenged statute, rather than burdening real or physical property, requires a direct transfer of funds” mandated by the Government. Ibid. In that situation, a claim for compensation “would entail an utterly pointless set of activities.” Student Loan Marketing Assn. v. Riley, 104 F. 3d 397, 401 (CADC), cert. denied, 522 U. S. 913 (1997). Instead, as we explained in Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, Inc., 438 U. S. 59, 71, n. 15 (1978), the Declaratory Judgment Act “allows individuals threatened with a taking to seek a declaration of the constitutionality of the disputed governmental action before potentially uneompen-sable damages are sustained.”
Moreover, in situations analogous to this case, we have assumed the lack of a compensatory remedy and have 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:
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D
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Chief Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court except as to footnote 4.
In New York v. Belton, 453 U. S. 454 (1981), we held that when a police officer has made a lawful custodial arrest of an occupant of an automobile, the Fourth Amendment allows the officer to search the passenger compartment of that vehicle as a contemporaneous incident of arrest. We have granted certiorari twice before to determine whether Bel-ton’s rule is limited to situations where the officer makes contact with the occupant while the occupant is inside the vehicle, or whether it applies as well when the officer first makes contact with the arrestee after the latter has stepped out of his vehicle. We did not reach the merits in either of those two cases. Arizona v. Gant, 540 U. S. 963 (2003) (vacating and remanding for reconsideration in light of State v. Dean, 206 Ariz. 158, 76 P. 3d 429 (2003) (en bane)); Florida v. Thomas, 532 U. S. 774 (2001) (dismissing for lack of jurisdiction). We now reach that question and conclude that Bel-ton governs even when an officer does not make contact until the person arrested has left the vehicle.
Officer Deion Nichols of the Norfolk, Virginia, Police Department, who was in uniform but driving an unmarked police car, first noticed petitioner Marcus Thornton when petitioner slowed down so as to avoid driving next to him. Nichols suspected that petitioner knew he was a police officer and for some reason did not want to pull next to him. His suspicions aroused, Nichols pulled off onto a side street and petitioner passed him. After petitioner passed him, Nichols ran a check on petitioner’s license tags, which revealed that the tags had been issued to a 1982 Chevy two-door and not to a Lincoln Town Car, the model of car petitioner was driving. Before Nichols had an opportunity to pull him over, petitioner drove into a parking lot, parked, and got out of the vehicle. Nichols saw petitioner leave his vehicle as he pulled in behind him. He parked the patrol car, accosted petitioner, and asked him for his driver’s license. He also told him that his license tags did not match the vehicle that he was driving.
Petitioner appeared nervous. He began rambling and licking his lips; he was sweating. Concerned for his safety, Nichols asked petitioner if he had any narcotics or weapons on him or in his vehicle. Petitioner said no. Nichols then asked petitioner if he could pat him down, to which petitioner agreed. Nichols felt a bulge in petitioner’s left front pocket and again asked him if he had any illegal narcotics on him. This time petitioner stated that he did, and he reached into his pocket and pulled out two individual bags, one containing three bags of marijuana and the other containing a large amount of crack cocaine. Nichols handcuffed petitioner, informed him that he was under arrest, and placed him in the back seat of the patrol car. He then searched petitioner’s vehicle and found a BryCo 9-millimeter handgun under the driver’s seat.
A grand jury charged petitioner with possession with intent to distribute cocaine base, 84 Stat. 1260, 21 U. S. C. § 841(a)(1), possession of a firearm after having been previously convicted of a crime punishable by a term of imprisonment exceeding one year, 18 U. S. C. § 922(g)(1), and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, § 924(c)(1). Petitioner sought to suppress, inter alia, the firearm as the fruit of an unconstitutional search. After a hearing, the District Court denied petitioner’s motion to suppress, holding that the automobile search was valid under New York v. Belton, supra, and alternatively that Nichols could have conducted an inventory search of the automobile. A jury convicted petitioner on all three counts; he was sentenced to 180 months’ imprisonment and 8 years of supervised release.
Petitioner appealed, challenging only the District Court’s denial of the suppression motion. He argued that Belton was limited to situations where the officer initiated contact with an arrestee while he was still an occupant of the car. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed. 325 F. 3d 189 (2003). It held that “the historical rationales for the search incident to arrest doctrine — ‘the need to disarm the suspect in order to take him into custody’ and ‘the need to preserve evidence for later use at trial,’ ” id., at 195 (quoting Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U. S. 113, 116 (1998)), did not require Belton to be limited solely to situations in which suspects were still in their vehicles when approached by the police. Noting that petitioner conceded that he was in “close proximity, both temporally and spatially,” to his vehicle, the court concluded that the car was within petitioner’s immediate control, and thus Nichols’ search was reasonable under Belton. 325 F. 3d, at 196. We granted certiorari, 540 U. S. 980 (2003), and now affirm.
In Belton, an officer overtook a speeding vehicle on the New York Thruway and ordered its driver to pull over. 453 U. S., at 455. Suspecting that the occupants possessed marijuana, the officer directed them to get out of the car and arrested them for unlawful possession. Id., at 454-455. He searched them and then searched the passenger compartment of the car. Id., at 455. We considered the constitutionally permissible scope of a search in these circumstances- and sought to lay down a workable rule governing that situation.
We first referred to Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969), a case where the arrestee was arrested in his home, and we had described the scope of a search incident to a lawful arrest as the person of the arrestee and the area immediately surrounding him. 453 U. S., at 457 (citing Chimel, supra, at 763). This rule was justified by the need to remove any weapon the arrestee might seek to use to resist arrest or to escape, and the need to prevent the concealment or destruction of evidence. 453 U. S., at 457. Although easily stated, the Chimel principle had proved difficult to apply in specific cases. We pointed out that in United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218 (1973), a case dealing with the scope of the search of the arrestee’s person, we had rejected a suggestion that “ ‘there must be litigated in each case the issue of whether or not there was present one of the reasons supporting the authority’ ” to conduct such a search. 453 U. S., at 459 (quoting Robinson, supra, at 235). Similarly, because “courts ha[d] found no workable definition of ‘the area within the immediate control of the arrestee’ when that area arguably includefd] the interior of an automobile and the arrestee [wa]s its recent occupant,” 453 U. S., at 460, we sought to set forth a clear rule for police officers and citizens alike. We therefore held that “when a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile.” Ibid, (footnote omitted).
In so holding, we placed no reliance on the fact that the officer in Belton ordered the occupants out of the vehicle, or initiated contact with them while they remained within it. Nor do we find such a factor persuasive in distinguishing the current situation, as it bears no logical relationship to Bel-toris rationale. There is simply no basis to conclude that the span of the area generally within the arrestee’s immediate control is determined by whether the arrestee exited the vehicle at the officer’s direction, or whether the officer initiated contact with him while he remained in the car. We recognized as much, albeit in dicta, in Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032 (1983), where officers observed a speeding car swerve into a ditch. The driver exited and the officers met him at the rear of his car. Although there was no indication that the officers initiated contact with the driver while he was still in the vehicle, we observed that “[i]t is clear . . . that if the officers had arrested [respondent] . . . they could have searched the passenger compartment under New York v. Belton.” Id., at 1035-1036, and n. 1.
In all relevant aspects, the arrest of a suspect who is next to a vehicle presents identical concerns regarding officer safety and the destruction of evidence as the arrest of one who is inside the vehicle. An officer may search a suspect’s vehicle under Belton only if the suspect is arrested. See Knowles, supra, at 117-118. A custodial arrest is fluid and “[t]he danger to the police officer flows from the fact of the arrest, and its attendant proximity, stress, and uncertainty,” Robinson, supra, at 234-235, and n. 5 (emphasis added). See Washington v. Chrisman, 455 U. S. 1, 7 (1982) (“Every arrest must be presumed to present a risk of danger to the arresting officer”). The stress is no less merely because the arrestee exited his car before the officer initiated contact, nor is an arrestee less likely to attempt to lunge for a weapon or to destroy evidence if he is outside of, but still in control of, the vehicle. In either case, the officer faces a highly volatile situation. It would make little sense to apply two different rules to what is, at bottom, the same situation.
In some circumstances it may be safer and more effective for officers to conceal their presence from a suspect until he has left his vehicle. Certainly that is a judgment officers should be free to make. But under the strictures of petitioner’s proposed “contact initiation” rule, officers who do so would be unable to search the car’s passenger compartment in the event of a custodial arrest, potentially compromising their safety and placing incriminating evidence at risk of concealment or destruction. The Fourth Amendment does not require such a gamble.
Petitioner argues, however, that Belton will fail to provide a “bright-line” rule if it applies to more than vehicle “occupants.” Brief for Petitioner 29-34. But Belton allows police to search the passenger compartment of a vehicle incident to a lawful custodial arrest of both “occupant[s]” and “recent occupant[s].” 453 U. S., at 460. Indeed, the respondent in Belton was not inside the car at the time of the arrest and search; he was standing on the highway. In any event, while an arrestee’s status as a “recent occupant” may turn on his temporal or spatial relationship to the car at the time of the arrest and search, it certainly does not turn on whether he was inside or outside the car at the moment that the officer first initiated contact with him.
To be sure, not all contraband in the passenger compartment is likely to be readily accessible to a “recent occupant.” It is unlikely in this case that petitioner could have reached under the driver’s seat for his gun once he was outside of his automobile. But the firearm and the passenger compartment in general were no more inaccessible than were the contraband and the passenger compartment in Belton. The need for a clear rule, readily understood by police officers and not depending on differing estimates of what items were or were not within reach of an arrestee at any particular moment, justifies the sort of generalization which Belton enunciated. Once an officer determines that there is probable cause to make an arrest, it is reasonable to allow officers to ensure their safety and to preserve evidence by searching the entire passenger compartment.
Rather than clarifying the constitutional limits of a Belton search, petitioner’s “contact initiation” rule would obfuscate them. Under petitioner’s proposed rule, an officer approaching a suspect who has just alighted from his vehicle would have to determine whether he actually confronted or signaled confrontation with the suspect while he remained in the car, or whether the suspect exited his vehicle unaware of, and for reasons unrelated to, the officer’s presence. This determination would be inherently subjective and highly fact specific, and would require precisely the sort of ad hoc determinations on the part of officers in the field and reviewing courts that Belton sought to avoid. Id,., at 459-460. Experience has shown that such a rule is impracticable, and we refuse to adopt it. So long as an arrestee is the sort of “recent occupant” of a vehicle such as petitioner was here, officers may search that vehicle incident to the arrest.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
The Court of Appeals did not reach the District Court’s alternative holding that Nichols could have conducted a lawful inventory search. 325 F. 3d, at 196.
Petitioner argues that if we reject his proposed “contact initiation” rule, we should limit the scope of Belton to “recent occupant[s]” who are within “reaching distance” of the car. Brief for Petitioner 35-36. We decline to address petitioner’s argument, however, as it is outside the question on which we granted certiorari, see this Court’s Rule 14.1(a), and was not addressed by the Court of Appeals, see Peralta v. Heights Medical Center, Inc., 485 U. S. 80, 86 (1988). We note that it is unlikely that petitioner would even meet his own standard as he apparently conceded in the Court of Appeals that he was in “close proximity, both temporally and spatially,” to his vehicle when he was approached by Nichols. 325 F. 3d 189, 196 (CA4 2003).
Justice Stevens contends that Belton’s bright-line rule “is not needed for cases in which the arrestee is first accosted when he is a pedestrian, because Chimel [v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969),] itself provides all the guidance that is necessary.” Post, at 636 (dissenting opinion). Under Justice Stevens’ approach, however, even if the car itself was within the arrestee’s reaching distance under Chimel, police officers and courts would still have to determine whether a particular object within the passenger compartment was also within an arrestee’s reaching distance under Chimel. This is exactly the type of unworkable and fact-specific inquiry that Belton rejected by holding that the entire passenger compartment may be searched when “ ‘the area within the immediate control of the arrestee’ . . . arguably includes the interior of an automobile and the arrestee is its recent occupant.” 453 U. S., at 460.
Whatever the merits of Justice Scalia's opinion concurring in the judgment, this is the wrong case in which to address them. Petitioner has never argued that Belton should be limited “to cases where it is reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle,” post, at 632, nor did any court below consider Justice Scalia’s reasoning. See Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections v. Yeskey, 524 U. S. 206, 212-213 (1998) (“ ‘Where issues are neither raised before nor considered by the Court of Appeals, this Court will not ordinarily consider them’ ” (quoting Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co., 398 U. S. 144, 147, n. 2 (1970))). The question presented — “[w]hether the bright-line rule announced in New York v. Belton is confined to situations in which the police initiate contact with the occupant of a vehicle while that person is in the vehicle,” Pet. for Cert. — does not fairly encompass Justice Scalia’s analysis. See this Court’s Rule 14.1(a) (“Only the questions set out in the petition, or fairly included therein, will be considered by the Court”). And the United States has never had an opportunity to respond to such an approach. See Yee v. Escondido, 503 U. S. 519, 536 (1992). Under these circumstances, it would be imprudent to overrule, for all intents and purposes, our established constitutional precedent, which governs police authority in a common occurrence such as automobile searches pursuant to arrest, and we decline to do so at this time.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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A
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
Respondent Glenn Charles was arrested in Grand Rapids, Mich., while driving a stolen car. The car belonged to Theodore Ziefle, who had been strangled to death in his Ann Arbor home less than a week earlier. The respondent was charged with first-degree murder. At his trial in the Circuit Court of Washtenaw County, Mich., the State presented circumstantial evidence linking the respondent with the crime. The respondent was found with Ziefle’s car and some of his other personal property. The respondent also owned clothing like that worn by the man last seen with the victim, and he boasted to witnesses that he had killed a man and stolen his car. Police Detective Robert LeVanseler testified that he interviewed the respondent shortly after his arrest. After giving the respondent Miranda warnings, LeVanseler asked him about the stolen automobile. According to LeVanseler, the respondent said that he stole the car in Ann Arbor from the vicinity of Washtenaw and Hill Streets, about two miles from the local bus station.
The respondent testified in his own behalf. On direct examination, he stated that he took Ziefle’s unattended automobile from the parking lot of Kelly’s Tire Co. in Ann Arbor. On cross-examination, the following colloquy occurred:
“Q. Now, this Kelly’s Tire Company, that’s right next to the bus station, isn’t it?
“A. That’s correct.
“Q. And, the bus station and Kelly’s Tire are right next to the Washtenaw County Jail are they not?
“A. They are.
“Q. And, when you’re standing in the Washtenaw County Jail looking out the window you can look right out and see the bus station and Kelly’s Tire, can you not?
“A. That’s correct.
“Q. So, you’ve had plenty of opportunity from — well, first you spent some time in the Washtenaw County Jail, haven’t you?
“A. Quite a bit.
“Q. And, you have had plenty of opportunity to look out that window and see the bus station and Kelly’s Tire?
“A. That’s right.
“Q. And, you’ve seen cars being parked there, isn’t that right?
“A. That’s correct.
“Q. Is this where you got the idea to come up with the story that you took a car from that location?
“A. No, the reason I came up with that is because it’s the truth.
“Q. It's the truth?
“A. That’s right.
“Q. Don’t you think it’s rather odd that if it were the truth that you didn’t come forward and tell anybody at the time you were arrested, where you got that car?
“A. No, I don’t.
“Q. You don’t think that’s odd?
“A. I wasn’t charged with auto theft, I was charged with murder.
“Q. Didn’t you think at the time you were arrested that possibly the car would have something to do with the charge of murder?
“A. When I tried to talk to my attorney they wouldn’t let me see him and after that he just said to keep quiet.
“Q. This is a rather recent fabrication of yours isn’t [sic] it not?
“A. No it isn’t.
“Q. Well, you told Detective LeVanseler back when you were first arrested, you stole the car back on Wash-tenaw and Hill Street?
“A. Never spoke with Detective LeVanseler.
“Q. Never did?
“A. Right, except when Detective Hall and Price were there and then it was on tape.” Trial Transcript 302-304.
The jury convicted the respondent of first-degree murder. The Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed, People v. Charles, 58 Mich. App. 371, 227 N. W. 2d 348 (1975), and the Michigan Supreme Court denied leave to appeal, 397 Mich. 815 (1976). The respondent then sought a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. The District Court withheld the writ, but a divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed. The Court of Appeals held that “the prosecutor’s questions about [respondent’s] post-arrest failure to tell officers the same story he told the jury violated due process” under the rule of Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U. S. 610 (1976). 610 F. 2d 417, 422 (1979). The prison warden now petitions for a writ of certiorari. We grant the petition, grant the respondent leave to proceed in forma pauperis, and reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
In Doyle, we held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits impeachment on the basis of a defendant’s silence following Miranda warnings. The case involved two defendants who made no postarrest statements about their involvement in the crime. Each testified at trial that he had been framed. On cross-examination, the prosecutor asked the defendants why they had not told the frameup story to the police upon arrest. We concluded that such impeachment was fundamentally unfair because Miranda warnings inform a person of his right to remain silent and assure him, at least implicitly, that his silence will not be used against him. 426 U. S., at 618-619; see Jenkins v. Anderson, ante, at 239-240.
Doyle bars the use against a criminal defendant of silence maintained after receipt of governmental assurances. But Doyle does not apply to cross-examination that merely inquires into prior inconsistent statements. Such questioning makes no unfair use of silence, because a defendant who voluntarily speaks after receiving Miranda warnings has not been induced to remain silent. As to the subject matter of his statements, the defendant has not remained silent at all. See United States v. Agee, 597 F. 2d 350, 354-356 (CA3) (en banc), cert. denied, 442 U. S. 944 (1979); United States v. Mireles, 570 P. 2d 1287, 1291-1293 (CA5 1978); United States v. Goldman, 563 F. 2d 501, 503-504 (CA1 1977), cert. denied, 434 U. S. 1067 (1978).
In this case, the Court of Appeals recognized that the respondent could be questioned about prior statements inconsistent with his trial testimony. The court therefore approved the “latter portion of the above quoted cross-examination. . . .” 610 P. 2d, at 421. But the Court of Appeals found that “the earlier portion of the exchange” concerned the “separate issu[e]” of the respondent’s “failure to tell arresting officers the same story he told the jury.” Ibid. In the court’s view, these questions were unconstitutional inquiries about postarrest silence. Thus, the Court of Appeals divided the cross-examination into two parts. It then applied Doyle to bar questions that concerned the respondent’s failure to tell the police the story he recounted at trial.
We do not believe that the cross-examination in this case can be bifurcated so neatly. The quoted colloquy, taken as a whole, does “not refe[r] to the [respondent’s] exercise of his right to remain silent; rather [it asks] the [respondent] why, if [his trial testimony] were true, he didn’t tell the officer that he stole the decedent’s car from the tire store parking lot instead of telling him that he took it from the street.” 58 Mich. App., at 381, 227 N. W. 2d, at 354. Any ambiguity in the prosecutor’s initial questioning was quickly resolved by explicit reference to Detective LeVanseler’s testimony, which the jury had heard only a few hours before. The questions were not designed to draw meaning from silence, but to elicit an explanation for a prior inconsistent statement.
We conclude that Doyle does not apply to the facts of this case. Each of two inconsistent descriptions of events may be said to involve “silence” insofar as it omits facts included in the other version. But Doyle does not require any such formalistic understanding of “silence,” and we find no reason to adopt such a view in this case.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Brennan, with whom Mr. Justice Marshall joins, dissents and would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the reasons stated in its opinion.
Neither the Court of Appeals nor the state courts addressed the question whether Doyle should be applied retroactively. Although the petitioner now claims that Doyle should be limited to prospective application, see Stovall v. Denno, 388 U. S. 293 (1967), there is no indication that this claim was raised in the courts below. Moreover, the respondent asserts that Doyle’s prohibition against use of postarrest silence was the law of the Sixth Circuit and of the State of Michigan long before his arrest. In view of our disposition of the merits of this controversy, we express no view on the retroactivity question.
One defendant said nothing at all. The other asked arresting officers, “[W]hat’s this all about?” 426 U. S., at 615, n. 5. When told the reason for his arrest, he exclaimed “you got to be crazy,” or “I don’t know what you are talking about.” Id., at 622-623, n. 4 (SteveNS, J., dissenting). Both the Court and the dissent in Doyle analyzed the due process question as if both defendants had remained silent. The issue was said to involve cross-examination of a person who “does remain silent” after police inform him that he is legally entitled to do so. Id., at 620 (SteveNS, J., dissenting); see id., at 616-619; id., at 621, 622, 626 (SteveNS, J., dissenting). In any event, neither the inquiry nor the exclamation quoted above contradicted the defendant’s later trial testimony.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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A
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Harlan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The statute of limitations on the felony of willfully attempting to evade federal income taxes requires the Government to obtain an indictment for that offense within six years of the date of its commission, with the proviso:
“. . . Where a complaint is instituted before a commissioner of the United States within the period above limited, the time shall be extended until the date which is 9 months after the date of the making of the complaint before the commissioner of the United States. . . .” Internal Revenue Code of 1954, § 6531.
On April 15, 1963, the day before the six-year period was to expire, the Government filed a complaint against petitioner Jaben charging him with willfully filing a false return for the year 1956. The Commissioner determined that the complaint showed probable cause for believing that Jaben had committed the offense, and, at the Government’s request, issued a summons ordering Jaben to appear at a preliminary hearing on May 15, 1963. On May 11, 1963, the preliminary hearing on the complaint was continued to May 22, 1963, at the request of the United States Attorney, and without objection by petitioner. The preliminary hearing was never held since, on May 17, 1963, the grand jury superseded the complaint procedure by returning an indictment against Jaben, one count of which covered the 1956 attempted evasion which the complaint had charged. The indictment was not returned within the normal six-year limitation period, but if the complaint filed with the Commissioner was valid for the purpose of bringing the nine-month extension into play, then the indictment was timely. Jaben moved to dismiss the count of the indictment pertaining to 1956, arguing that the complaint was insufficient because it did not show probable cause for believing that he had committed the offense. Both the trial court and the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit rejected this claim, 333 F. 2d 535. We granted certiorari, 379 U. S. 878, to resolve a conflict with United States v. Greenberg, 320 F. 2d 467, decided by the Ninth Circuit, in which an identical claim, based on a virtually identical complaint, was accepted. For reasons that follow we agree with the Eighth Circuit and affirm its judgment.
I.
Under the Government’s interpretation of § 6531, probable cause is not relevant to the complaint’s ability to initiate the extension of the limitation period. Section 6531 provides that the nine-month extension is brought into play “[w]here a complaint is instituted before a commissioner of the United States” within the six-year period of limitations (supra, pp. 215-216). Rule 3 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure defines a complaint as
“. . . a written statement of the essential facts constituting the offense charged. It shall be made upon oath before a commissioner or other officer empowered to commit persons charged with offenses against the United States.”
Since the Government’s complaint stated the essential facts constituting the offense of attempted tax evasion and was made upon oath before a Commissioner, the Government contends that regardless of the complaint’s adequacy for any other purposes, it was valid for the purpose of triggering the nine-month extension of the limitation period whether or not it showed probable cause. The Government would, thus, totally ignore the further steps in the complaint procedure required by Rules 4 and 5. Indeed it follows from its position that once having filed a complaint, the Government need not further pursue the complaint procedure at all, and, in the event that the defendant pressed for a preliminary hearing and obtained a dismissal of the complaint, that the Government could nonetheless rely upon the complaint as having extended the limitation period.
We do not accept the Government’s interpretation. Its effort to look solely to Rule 3 and ignore the requirements of the Rules that follow would deprive the institution of the complaint before the Commissioner of any independent meaning which might rationally have led Congress to fasten upon it as the method for initiating the nine-month extension. The Commissioner’s function, on that view, would be merely to rubber-stamp the complaint. The Government seeks to give his role importance in its version of § 6531 by pointing out that he would administer the oath, receive the complaint, and make sure that it stated facts constituting the offense (a requirement which would be met by a charge in the words of the statute); but surely these matters are essentially formalities. The argument ignores the fact that the Commissioner’s basic functions under the Rules are to make the judgment that probable cause exists and to warn defendants of their rights. Furthermore, if we do not look beyond Rule 3, there is no provision for notifying the defendant that he has been charged and the period of limitations extended. (Indeed, it is not until we reach Rule 4 that we find a requirement that the complaint must show who it was that committed the offense.) Notice to a criminal defendant is usually achieved by service upon him of the summons or arrest warrant provided for in Rule 4. Neither is appropriate absent a judgment by the Commissioner that the complaint shows probable cause, and no other form of notice is specified by the Rules.
More basically, the evident statutory purpose of the nine-month extension provision is to afford the Government an opportunity to indict criminal tax offenders in the event that a grand jury is not in session at the end of the normal limitation period. This is confirmed by the immediate precursor of the present section which provided for an extension “until the discharge of the grand jury at its next session within the district.” I. R. C. 1939, § 3748 (a). Clearly the statute was not meant to grant the Government greater time in which to make its case (a result which could have been accomplished simply by making the normal period of limitation six years and nine months), but rather was intended to deal with the situation in which the Government has its case made within the normal limitation period but cannot obtain an indictment because of the grand jury schedule. The Government’s interpretation does not reflect this statutory intention, for it provides no safeguard whatever to prevent the Government from filing a complaint at a time when it does not have its case made, and then using the nine-month period to make it.
The better view of § 6531 is that the complaint, to initiate the time extension, must be adequate to begin effectively the criminal process prescribed by the Federal Criminal Rules. It must be sufficient to justify the next steps in the process — those of notifying the defendant and bringing him before the Commissioner for a preliminary hearing. To do so the complaint must satisfy the probable cause requirement of Rule 4. Furthermore, we think that the Government must proceed through the further steps of the complaint procedure by affording the defendant a preliminary hearing as required by Rule 5, unless before the preliminary hearing is held, the grand jury supersedes the complaint procedure by returning an indictment. This interpretation of the statute reflects its purpose by insuring that within a reasonable time following the filing of the complaint, either the Commissioner will decide whether there is sufficient cause to bind the defendant over for grand jury action, or the grand jury itself will have decided whether or not to indict. A dismissal of the complaint before the indictment is returned would vitiate the time extension.
In this case the Government obtained a superseding indictment before any preliminary hearing took place. Under the interpretation which we have adopted it follows that if the complaint satisfied the requirements of Rules 3 and 4, in particular the probable cause standard of Rule 4, then the nine-month extension had come into play and had not been cut off by any later dismissal of the complaint. We turn then to the question whether the complaint showed probable cause.
II.
The Jaben complaint read as follows:
“The undersigned complainant, being duly sworn, states:
“That he is a Special Agent of the Internal Revenue Service and, in the performance of the duties imposed on him by law, he has conducted an investigation of the Federal income tax liability of Max Jaben for the calendar year 1956, by examining the said taxpayer’s tax return for the year 1956 and other years; by identifying and interviewing third parties with whom the said taxpayer did business; by consulting public and private records reflecting the said taxpayer’s income; and by interviewing third persons having knowledge of the said taxpayer’s financial condition.
“That based on the aforesaid investigation, the complainant has personal knowledge that on or about the 16th day of April, 1957, at Kansas City, Missouri, in the Western District of Missouri, Max Jaben did unlawfully and wilfully attempt to evade and defeat the income taxes due and owing by him to the United States of America for the calendar year 1956, by filing and causing to be filed with the District Director of Internal Revenue for the District of Kansas City, Missouri, at Kansas City, Missouri, a false and fraudulent income tax return, wherein he stated that his taxable income for the calendar year 1956 was $17,665.31, and that the amount of tax due and owing thereon was the sum of $6,017.32, when in fact his taxable income for the said calendar year was the sum of $40,001.76 upon which said taxable income he owed to the United States of America an income tax of $14,562.99.
“[Signed] David A. Thompson
“Special Agent
“Internal Revenue Service
“Kansas City, Missouri.”
Petitioner argues that the complaint is basically indistinguishable from that which the Court found wanting in Giordenello v. United States, 357 U. S. 480. The Giordenello complaint read in relevant part:
“The undersigned complainant being duly sworn states: That on or about January 26, 1956, at Houston, Texas in the Southern District of Texas, Veto Giordenello did receive, conceal, etc., narcotic drugs, to-wit: heroin hydrochloride with knowledge of unlawful importation; in violation of Section 174, Title 21, United States' Code.
“And the complainant further states that he believes that- are material witnesses in relation to this charge.”
The complaints there and here are materially distinguishable. Information in a complaint alleging the commission of a crime falls into two categories: (1) that information which, if true, would directly indicate commission of the crime charged, and (2) that which relates to the source of the directly incriminating information. The Giordenello complaint gave no source information whatsoever. Its directly incriminating information consisted merely of an allegation in the words of the statute, and even then incomplete, supplemented by “on or about January 26, 1956, at Houston.” If the Jaben complaint were as barren, it would have stated simply that “on or about April 16, 1957, at Kansas City, Missouri, Jaben willfully filed a false income tax return.” In fact, it gave dollars-and-cents figures for the amounts which allegedly should have been returned and the amounts actually returned. As to sources, the affiant indicated that he, in his official capacity, had personally conducted an investigation in the course of which he had examined the taxpayer’s returns for 1956 and other years, interviewed third persons with whom the taxpayer did business and others having knowledge of his financial condition, and consulted public and private records reflecting the taxpayer’s income; and that the conclusion that Jaben had committed the offense was based upon this investigation.
Beyond the substance of the complaint there is a material distinction in the nature of the offense charged. Some offenses are subject to putative establishment by blunt and concise factual allegations, e. g., “A saw narcotics in B’s possession,” whereas “A saw B file a false tax return” does not mean very much in a tax evasion case. Establishment of grounds for belief that the offense of tax evasion has been committed often requires a reconstruction of the taxpayer’s income from many individually unrevealing facts which are not susceptible of a concise statement in a complaint. Furthermore, unlike narcotics informants, for example, whose credibility may often be suspect, the sources in this tax evasion case are much less likely to produce false or untrustworthy information. Thus, whereas some supporting information concerning the credibility of informants in narcotics cases or other common garden varieties of crime may be required, such information is not so necessary in the context of the case before us.
Giordenello v. United States, supra, and Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U. S. 108, established that a magistrate is intended to make a neutral judgment that resort to further criminal process is justified. A complaint must provide a foundation for that judgment. It must provide the affiant’s answer to the magistrate’s hypothetical question, “What makes you think that the defendant committed the offense charged?” This does not reflect a requirement that the Commissioner ignore the credibility of the complaining witness. There is a difference between disbelieving the affiant and requiring him to indicate some basis for his allegations. Obviously any reliance upon factual allegations necessarily entails some degree of reliance upon the credibility of the source. See, e. g., Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 13. Nor does it indicate that each factual allegation which the affiant puts forth must be independently documented, or that each and every fact which contributed to his conclusions be spelled out in the complaint. Compare United States v. Ventresca, 380 U. S. 102. It simply requires that enough information be presented to the Commissioner to enable him to make the judgment that the charges are not capricious and are sufficiently supported to justify bringing into play the further steps of the criminal process.
In this instance the issue of probable cause comes down to the adequacy of the basis given for the allegation that petitioner’s income was $40,001.76 instead of the $17,665.31 he had reported. This is not the type of fact that can be physically observed. The amount of petitioner’s income could only be determined by examining records and interviewing third persons familiar with petitioner’s financial condition. Compare Holland v. United States, 348 U. S. 121. Here the affiant, a Special Agent of the Internal Revenue Service, swore that he had conducted just such an investigation and thereafter swore that he had personal knowledge as to petitioner’s actual income. In such circumstances, the magistrate would be justified in accepting the agent’s judgment of what he “saw” without requiring him to bring the records and persons to court, to list and total the items of unreported income or to otherwise explain how petitioner’s actual income was calculated.
We conclude that the challenged count of this indictment is not time-barred.
Affirmed.
Rule 4 (a) provides:
“If it appears from the complaint that there is probable cause to believe that an offense has been committed and that the defendant has committed it, a warrant for the arrest of the defendant shall issue to any officer authorized by law to execute it. Upon the request of the attorney for the government a summons instead of a warrant shall issue. ... If a defendant fails to appear in response to the summons, a warrant shall issue.”
Rule 5 (c) provides:
“. . . If the defendant waives preliminary examination, the commissioner shall forthwith hold him to answer in the district court. If the defendant does not waive examination, the commissioner shall hear the evidence within a reasonable time. The defendant may cross-examine witnesses against him and may introduce evidence in his own behalf. If from the evidence it appears to the commissioner that there is probable cause to believe that an offense has been committed and that the defendant has committed it, the commissioner shall forthwith hold him to answer in the district court; otherwise the commissioner shall discharge him. . . .”
This provision was introduced into the tax laws in 1884 by way of an amendment to a bill providing for a limitation period. In proposing the amendment on the floor of the Senate, Senator Hoar stated:
“As has already been said, this limitation which purports to be a limitation of two years is in point of fact in many districts but a limitation of one year, because the indictment must be found by a grand jury within two years within the commission of the offense. If the offense be concealed, or if it be discovered a year before the grand jury meet, it would be too late to make the prosecution. I move this amendment:
“ ‘Provided, That where a complaint shall be instituted before a commissioner of the United States within the period above limited, the period shall be extended until the discharge of the grand jury at its next session within the district.’
“I think there will be no objection to that.” 15 Cong. Rec. 5771. The time for which the period was extended was changed to nine months in 1954.
A dissenting opinion accepts our interpretation of the statute, but, likening petitioner’s position to one who is incarcerated awaiting a preliminary hearing, argues that petitioner was not scheduled to have a preliminary hearing within the “reasonable time” required by Rule 5 (c). We reject this view of the case. (1) Although the statute should be interpreted to reflect its intent, it greatly overplays that intent to invest the procedure required to effectuate it with the same sense of urgency which might be thought to attend a preliminary hearing for an incarcerated prisoner. (2) A defendant can fully protect himself from unreasonable delay by moving for advancement of the preliminary hearing date and by objecting to any postponements. Petitioner made no such motion or objection, and at no point in the trial or appellate review of this case has he objected to the scheduling of the preliminary hearing.
Mallory v. United, States, 354 U. S. 449, did not deal with preliminary hearings under Rule 5 (c), but with the requirement of Rule 5 (a) that a person who is arrested must be taken “without unnecessary delay before the nearest available commissioner” so that he can be apprised of his rights.
So in original.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
A
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The petitioner was convicted by a jury in the United States District Court in Massachusetts upon a 75-count indictment for making false claims against the Government in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 287. The trial judge, after preliminary sentencing hearings, came to the conclusion that it would be helpful “for the Court to know something more about the defendant than I have seen or heard up to date.” Accordingly, the court entered an order committing the petitioner “to the custody of the Attorney General of the United States under Title 18, United States Code, 4208 (b).” More than three months later, after considering the report which the Bureau of Prisons had submitted in accordance with § 4208 (b), the trial judge, in a proceeding at which the petitioner and his counsel were present, entered an order suspending imposition of sentence and placing the petitioner on probation for two years. Three days later the petitioner filed a notice of appeal.
Upon motion of the Government the appeal was dismissed as untimely, on the ground that the period for appeal had expired 10 days after entry of the trial court’s initial order committing the petitioner for study under 18 U. S. C. § 4208 (b). Pointing out that § 4208 (b) provides that such a commitment “shall be deemed to be for the maximum sentence of imprisonment prescribed by law,” the Court of Appeals reasoned that “at this point the defendant was on notice as to the extent of his punishment. If he desired to appeal, this was the time that he should have acted.” 307 F. 2d 839, 840. We granted certiorari, 371 U. S. 966, to consider questions which have arisen in the District Courts and Courts of Appeals in the application of 18 U. S. C. § 4208 (b).
The procedural rules governing the usual course of criminal appeals in the federal judicial system are well settled. After a plea or finding of guilty, sentence is to be imposed “without unreasonable delay.” A judgment of conviction setting forth the sentence is then entered, and a notice of appeal must be filed within 10 days thereafter. The record is filed with the Court of Appeals and the appeal docketed within 40 days thereafter, and the appeal is heard “as soon ... as the state of the calendar will permit.” Pending disposition of the appeal, the sentence is stayed unless the defendant elects otherwise, and the defendant may be released on bail.
The dominant philosophy embodied in these rules reflects the twin concerns that criminal appeals be disposed of as expeditiously as the fair and orderly administration of justice may permit, and that the imposition of actual punishment be avoided pending disposition of an appeal. In the ordinary criminal case, where the imposition of a sentence follows promptly upon a determination of guilt, no problem arises in the application of these appellate rules or in the effectuation of the policies which they reflect. An appeal may not be taken until after the pronouncement of sentence, and must be taken promptly after sentence is imposed.
But under the provisions of 18 U. S. C. § 4208 (b) the trial judge sentences a convicted defendant not once, but twice. The judge first imposes a sentence of imprisonment “deemed to be” the maximum prescribed by the law, and then, after the defendant has been imprisoned for three or six months, the judge fixes a new sentence which may be quite different from the one originally imposed. The present case illustrates the problem which then arises. That problem, simply stated, is how, in cases where trial judges have utilized the sentencing provisions authorized by 18 U. S. C. § 4208 (b), the rules governing criminal appeals are to be applied so as neither to frustrate their purpose nor to impair the efficacy of the flexible sentencing procedure which Congress devised in enacting 18 U. S. C. § 4208 (b). We have concluded that in such cases an appeal may be taken within the time provided by Rule 37 (a)(2), Fed. Rules Crim. Proc., after either the first or the second sentence under § 4208 (b), at the option of the convicted defendant.
It would obviously contravene the basic policies of the criminal appellate rules to require a defendant sentenced under § 4208 (b) to defer his appeal until after he had submitted to the three or six months of incarceration and diagnostic study prescribed by the statute. Such a requirement would not only forestall any opportunity of a prompt appeal from an underlying criminal conviction, but would deprive a convicted defendant of the substantial right to be enlarged on bail while his appeal was pending. Indeed, the imposition of such a mandatory three- or six-month term of imprisonment before the defendant could file an appeal might raise constitutional problems of significant proportions.
But we need not consider such problems, because a § 4208 (b) commitment is clearly not lacking in sufficient “finality” to support an immediate appeal, and there is nothing to indicate that Congress intended that the right of appeal be mandatorily suspended in cases where the provisions of § 4208 (b) are utilized. The provisions of § 4208 (b) are invoked only after “a judgment of conviction.” The defendant is committed under § 4208 (b) “to the custody of the Attorney General” as in the case of all sentenced prisoners. It is provided that the term of the final sentence “shall run from date of original commitment under this section.”
A sentence under these provisions, which is imposed only after the whole process of the criminal trial and determination of guilt has been completed, sufficiently satisfies conventional requirements of finality for purposes of appeal. The litigation is complete as to the fundamental matter at issue — -“the right to convict the accused of the crime charged in the indictment.” Heike v. United States, 217 U. S. 423, 429. “Final judgment in a criminal case,” the Court has said, “means sentence. The sentence is the judgment.” Berman v. United States, 302 U. S. 211, 212. This concept was later explained and amplified in words of complete applicability here: “The 'sentence is judgment’ phrase has been used by this Court in dealing with cases in which the action of the trial court did not in fact subject the defendant to any form of judicial control. . . . But certainly when discipline has been imposed, the defendant is entitled to review.” Korematsu v. United States, 319 U. S. 432, 434.
For these reasons it is clear to us that the petitioner in the present case could have appealed his conviction within 10 days after the entry of the original commitment order under § 4208 (b). Had he done so, the Court of Appeals could have reviewed all claims of error in the trial proceedings, and its determination would have been final, subject only to discretionary review by this Court.
It does not follow, however, simply because a defendant could have sought review of his conviction after the initial commitment under § 4208 (b), that Congress intended to deny altogether the right of appeal to a defendant who chose to adopt the course followed by the petitioner in the present case. While an initial commitment under § 4208 (b) is, as we have pointed out, freighted with sufficiently substantial indicia of finality to support an appeal, the fact remains that the proceedings in the trial court are not actually terminated until after the period of diagnostic study, review of the same by the district judge, and final sentence. Cf. United States v. Behrens, ante, p. 162. There might be many reasons why a convicted defendant or his counsel would prefer to await final termination of the trial court proceedings before taking an appeal. For instance, a defendant might think, rightly or wrongly, that the trial court’s knowledge that an appeal had already been taken might adversely influence the court’s discretion in imposing final sentence. Moreover, if every defendant initially committed under § 4208 (b) to the maximum prison term prescribed by law were faced with the choice of then and there seeking review of his conviction or forever losing the right of appeal, he might well feel obliged to take an appeal because of his very ignorance of what his sentence was eventually going to turn out to be. As a practical matter, the severity of the sentence actually imposed might in any case be a major factor in determining whether an appeal is to be taken.
Long-accepted and conventional principles of federal appellate procedure require recognition of the defendant’s right to await the imposition of final sentence before seeking review of the conviction. That is the general rule. Miller v. Aderhold, 288 U. S. 206; Berman v. United States, 302 U. S. 211; Cobbledick v. United States, 309 U. S. 323; Rule 37 (a), Fed. Rules Crim. Proc. We find nothing to indicate that Congress intended to depart from that rule in enacting § 4208 (b).
Reversed
18 U. S. C. § 4208 (b) provides:
“If the court desires more detailed information as a basis for determining the sentence to be imposed, the court may commit the defendant to the custody of the Attorney General, which commitment shall be deemed to be for the maximum sentence of imprisonment prescribed by law, for a study as described in subsection (c) hereof. The results of such study, together with any recommendations which the Director of the Bureau of Prisons believes would be helpful in determining the disposition of the case, shall be furnished to the court within three months unless the court grants time, not to exceed an additional three months, for further study. After receiving such reports and recommendations, the court may in its discretion: (1) Place the prisoner on probation as authorized by section 3651 of this title, or (2) affirm the sentence of imprisonment originally imposed, or reduce the sentence of imprisonment, and commit the offender under any applicable provision of law. The term of the sentence shall run from date of original commitment under this section.”
See note 1, supra.
Since the petitioner was convicted upon each of 75 counts under 18 U. S. C. § 287, and since each offense under that statute is punishable by a prison term of up to five years, “the extent of his punishment,” if it was the “maximum sentence of imprisonment prescribed by law,” was 375 years in prison. Such a sentence, if actually imposed for the substantive offenses in question, would obviously raise a serious issue under the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.
In Behrens v. United States, 312 F. 2d 223 (1962), certiorari granted, 373 U. S. 902, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, holding that the defendant and his counsel must be present when sentence is imposed following receipt of the Bureau of Prisons report, apparently considered that proceeding — rather than the earlier commitment order — as the one from which the time for appeal would begin to run. On the question of the right of the defendant and his counsel to then be present, we have today affirmed that decision. United States v. Behrens, ante, p. 162. See also United States v. Johnson, 315 F. 2d 714 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1963).
Rule 32 (a), Fed. Rules Crim. Proc.
Rule 32 (b), Fed. Rules Crim. Proc.
Rule 37 (a)(2), Fed. Rules Crim. Proc.
Rule 39 (c), Fed. Rules Crim. Proc.
Rule 39 (d), Fed. Rules Crim. Proc.
Rule 38 (a)(2), Fed. Rules Crim. Proc.
Rule 46 (a)(2), Fed. Rules Crim. Proc.
Section 4208 (b) was enacted in 1958 as part of broad legislation to improve sentencing practices in the federal courts. See 28 U. S. C. § 334 (providing for judicial sentencing institutes to be held in the various circuits); 18 U. S. C. § 4209 (extending the application of the Federal Youth Corrections Act to offenders between 22 and 26); 18 U. S. C. § 4208 (a) (authorizing a sentencing judge to delegate wide discretion to the Parole Board).
18 U. S. C. §4208 (a) begins: “Upon entering a judgment of conviction, the court having jurisdiction to impose sentence, when in its opinion the ends of justice and best interests of the public require that the defendant be sentenced to imprisonment for a term exceeding one year, may ...” While these words are not repeated in subsection (b), it is plain that they serve as an introduction to all of §4208.
See 18 U. S. C. § 4082.
Only the final sentence which was later imposed would still have been open, under accepted procedures, to attack in the trial court and review on appeal, e. g., for failure to accord the defendant and his counsel the right to be present and to be heard at the final sentencing proceeding. See United, States v. Behrens, ante, p. 162.
If a defendant appeals after a preliminary commitment under § 4208 (b) and is enlarged on bail pending appeal, the further procedures under § 4208 (b) (including the pronouncement of final sentence) will necessarily be postponed until the appeal is determined (and eliminated entirely if the conviction is reversed), because the diagnostic study by the Bureau of Prisons cannot be carried out if the defendant is not incarcerated. On the other hand, if a defendant taking an appeal after an initial commitment under § 4208 (b) does not seek bail but elects to commence service of his sentence, there is no reason why the diagnostic study contemplated by the statute should not proceed. Modifications of sentences have in fact been made under § 4208 (b) while cases were on appeal. See Armstrong v. United States, 306 F. 2d 520, 521, n. 1 (C. A. 10th Cir. 1962); United States v. Varner, 283 F. 2d 900, 901 (C. A. 7th Cir. 1961).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Douglas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner is detained by respondent under a deportation order, the validity of which is challenged by a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The District Court granted the petition and discharged petitioner. The Circuit Court of Appeals reversed. 159 F. 2d 130. The case is here on a petition for a writ of certiorari which we granted because of the seeming conflict between the decision below and Di Pasquale v. Karnuth, 158 F. 2d 878, from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
Petitioner is a Mexican citizen who made legal entry into this country in 1923 and resided here continuously until 1942. In June of that year, when this nation was engaged in hostilities with Germany and Japan, he shipped out of Los Angeles on an inter coastal voyage to New York City as a member of the crew of an American merchant ship. The ship was torpedoed after passing through the Panama Canal on its way to New York City. Petitioner was rescued and taken to Havana, Cuba, where he was taken care of by the American Consul for about one week. On July 19, 1942, he was returned to the United States through Miami, Florida, and thereafter continued to serve as a seaman in the merchant fleet of this nation. In March 1944 he was convicted in California of second-degree robbery and sentenced to imprisonment for a term of one year to life. While he was confined in the California prison, proceedings for deportation were commenced against him under § 19 (a) of the Immigration Act of February 5, 1917, 39 Stat. 874, as amended 54 Stat. 671, 8U. S. C. § 155 (a).
That section provides in part:
“. . . any alien who is hereafter sentenced to imprisonment for a term of one year or more because of conviction in this country of a crime involving moral turpitude, committed within five years after the entry of the alien to the United States . . . shall, upon the warrant of the Attorney General, be taken into custody and deported. . . .”
Those requirements for deportation are satisfied if petitioner’s passage from Havana, Cuba, to Miami, Florida, on July 19, 1942, was “the entry of the alien to the United States” within the meaning of the Act.
In United States ex rel. Claussen v. Day, 279 U. S. 398, United States ex rel. Stapf v. Corsi, 287 U. S. 129, and United States ex rel. Volpe v. Smith, 289 U. S. 422, there is language which taken from its context suggests that every return of an alien from a foreign country to the United States constitutes an “entry” within the meaning of the Act. Thus in the Smith case it was stated, 289 U. S. p. 425, that “any coming of an alien from a foreign country into the United States whether such coming be the first or any subsequent one” is such an “entry.” But those were cases where the alien plainly expected or planned to enter a foreign port or place. Here he was catapulted into the ocean, rescued, and taken to Cuba. He had no part in selecting the foreign port as his destination. His itinerary was forced on him by wholly fortuitous circumstances. If, nonetheless, his return to this country was an “entry” into the United States within the meaning of the Act, the law has been given a capricious application as Di Pasquale v. Karnuth, supra, suggests.
In that case an alien traveled between Buffalo and Detroit on a railroad which, unknown to him, passed through Canada. He was asleep during the time he was in transit through Canada and was quite unaware that he had left or returned to this country. The court refused to hold that the alien had made an “entry,” for to do so would impute to Congress a purpose to subject aliens “to the sport of chance.” 158 F. 2d 879. In this case petitioner, of course, chose to return to this country, knowing he was in a foreign place. But the exigencies of war, not his voluntary act, put him on foreign soil. It would indeed be harsh to read the statute so as to add the peril of deportation to such perils of the sea. We might as well hold that if he had been kidnapped and taken to Cuba, he made a statutory “entry” on his voluntary return. Respect for law does not thrive on captious interpretations.
Deportation can be the equivalent of banishment or exile. See Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U. S. 135, 147. The stakes are indeed high and momentous for the alien who has acquired his residence here. We will not attribute to Congress a purpose to make his right to remain here dependent on circumstances so fortuitous and capricious as those upon which the Immigration Service has here seized. The hazards to which we are now asked to subject the alien are too irrational to square with the statutory scheme.
Other grounds are now sought to be advanced for the first time in support of the deportation order. They are not open on the record before us.
Reversed.
If his intercoastal voyage had continued without interruption, it is clear that he would not have made an “entry” when he landed at its termination. United, States ex rel. Claussen v. Day, supra, p. 401.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
B
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The respondents, who are members of a multiemployer bargaining group, locked out their employees in response to a whipsaw strike against another member of the group. They and the struck employer continued operations with temporary replacements. The National Labor Relations Board found that the struck employer’s use of temporary replacements was lawful under Labor Board v. Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co., 304 U. S. 333, but that the respondents had violated §§8(a)(1) and (3) of the National Labor Relations Act by locking out their regular employees and using temporary replacements to carry on business. 137 N. L. R. B. 73. The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit disagreed and refused to enforce the Board’s order. 319 F. 2d 7. We granted certiorari, 375 U. S. 962. We affirm the Court of Appeals.
Five operators of six retail food stores in Carlsbad, New Mexico, make up the employer group. The stores had bargained successfully on a group basis for many years with Local 462 of the Retail Clerks International Association. Negotiations for a new collective-bargaining agreement to replace the expiring one began in January 1960. Agreement was reached by mid-February on all terms except the amount and effective date of a wage increase. Bargaining continued without result, and on March 2 the Local informed the employers that a strike had been authorized. The employers responded that a strike against any member of the employer group would be regarded as a strike against all. On March 16, the union struck Food Jet, Inc., one of the group. The four respondents, operating five stores, immediately locked out all employees represented by the Local, telling them and the Local that they would be recalled to work when the strike against Food Jet ended. The stores, including Food Jet, continued to carry on business by using management personnel, relatives of such personnel, and a few temporary employees; all of the temporary replacements were expressly told that the arrangement would be discontinued when the whipsaw strike ended. Bargaining continued until April 22 when an agreement was reached. The employers immediately released the temporary replacements and restored the strikers and the locked-out employees to their jobs.
The Board and the Court of Appeals agreed that the case was to be decided in light of our decision in the so-called Buffalo Linen case, Labor Board v. Truck Drivers Union, 353 U. S. 87. There we sustained the Board’s finding that, in the absence of specific proof of unlawful motivation, the use of a lockout by members of a multiem-ployer bargaining unit in response to a whipsaw strike did not violate either § 8 (a) (1) or § 8 (a) (3). We held that, although the lockout tended to impair the effectiveness of the whipsaw strike, the right to strike “is not so absolute as to deny self-help by employers when legitimate interests of employees and employers collide. . . . The ultimate problem is the balancing of the conflicting legitimate interests.” 353 U. S., at 96. We concluded that the Board correctly balanced those interests in upholding the lockout, since it found that the nonstruck employers resorted to the lockout to preserve the multiemployer bargaining unit from the disintegration threatened by the whipsaw .strike. But in the present case the Board held, two members dissenting, that the respondents’ continued operations with temporary replacements constituted a “critical difference” from Buffalo Linen — where all members of the employer group shut down operations — and that in this circumstance it was reasonable to infer that the respondents did not act to protect the multiemployer group, but “for the purpose of inhibiting a lawful strike.” 137 N. L. R. B., at 76. Thus the respondents’ act was both a coercive practice condemned by §8 (a)(1) and discriminatory conduct in violation of § 8 (a)(3).
The Board’s decision does not rest upon independent evidence that the respondents acted either out of hostility toward the Local or in reprisal for the whipsaw strike. It rests upon the Board’s appraisal that the respondents’ conduct carried its own indicia of unlawful intent, thereby establishing, without more, that the conduct constituted an unfair labor practice. It was disagreement with this appraisal, which we share, that led the Court of Appeals to refuse to enforce the Board’s order.
It is true that the Board need not inquire into employer motivation to support a finding of an unfair labor practice where the employer conduct is demonstrably destructive of employee rights and is not justified by the service of significant or important business ends. See, e. g., Labor Board v. Erie Resistor Corp., 373 U. S. 221; Labor Board v. Burnup & Sims, Inc., 379 U. S. 21. We agree with the Court of Appeals that, in the setting of this whipsaw strike and Food Jet’s continued operations, the respondents’ lockout and their continued operations with the use of temporary replacements, viewed separately or as a single act, do not constitute such conduct.
We begin with the proposition that the Act does not constitute the Board as an “arbiter of the sort of economic weapons the parties can use in seeking to gain acceptance of their bargaining demands.” Labor Board v. Insurance Agents, 361 U. S. 477, 497. In the absence of proof of unlawful motivation, there are many economic weapons which an employer may use that either interfere in some measure with concerted employee activities, or which are in some degree discriminatory and discourage union membership, and yet the use of such economic weapons does not constitute conduct that is within the prohibition of either § 8 (a)(1) or § 8 (a)(3). See, e. g., Labor Board v. Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co., supra; Labor Board v. Dalton Brick & Tile Corp., 301 F. 2d 886, 896. Even the Board concedes that an employer may legitimately blunt the effectiveness of an anticipated strike by stockpiling inventories, readjusting contract schedules, or transferring work from one plant to another, even if he thereby makes himself “virtually strikeproof.” As a general matter he may completely liquidate his business without violating either §8 (a)(1) or §8 (a)(3), whatever the impact of his action on concerted employee activities. Texile Workers v. Darlington Mfg. Co., Nos. 37 and 41, decided today, ante, p. 263. Specifically, he may in various circumstances use the lockout as a legitimate economic weapon. See, e. g., Labor Board v. Truck Drivers Union, supra; Labor Board v. Dalton Brick & Tile Corp., supra; Leonard v. Labor Board, 205 F. 2d 355; Betts Cadillac Old's, Inc., 96 N. L. R. B. 268; International Shoe Co., 93 N. L. R. B. 907; Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co., 72 N. L. R. B. 601, 602; Duluth Bottling Assn., 48 N. L. R. B. 1335; Link-Belt Co., 26 N. L. R. B. 227. And in American Ship Building Co. v. Labor Board, No. 255, decided today, post, p. 300, we hold that a lockout is not an unfair labor practice simply because used by an employer to bring pressure to bear in support of his bargaining position after an impasse in bargaining negotiations has been reached.
In the circumstances of this case, we do not see how the continued operations of respondents and their use of temporary replacements imply hostile motivation any more than the lockout itself; nor do we see how they are inherently more destructive of employee rights. Rather, the compelling inference is that this was all part and parcel of respondents’ defensive measure to preserve the multiemployer group in the face of the whipsaw strike. Since Food Jet legitimately continued business operations, it is only reasonable to regard respondents’ action as evincing concern that the integrity of the employer group was threatened unless they also managed to stay open for business during the lockout. For with Food Jet open for business and respondents’ stores closed, the prospect that the whipsaw strike would succeed in breaking up the employer association was not at all fanciful. The retail food industry is very competitive and repetitive patronage is highly important. Faced with the prospect of a loss of patronage to Food Jet, it is logical that respondents should have been concerned that one or more of their number might bolt the group and come to terms with the Local, thus destroying the common front essential to multiemployer bargaining. The Court of Appeals correctly pictured the respondents’ dilemma in saying, “If . . . the struck employer does choose to operate with replacements and the other employers cannot replace after lockout, the economic advantage passes to the struck member, the non-struck members are deterred in exercising the defensive lockout, and the whipsaw strike . . . enjoys an almost inescapable prospect of success.” 319 F. 2d, at 11. Clearly respondents’ continued operations with the use of temporary replacements following the lockout were wholly consistent with a legitimate business purpose.
Nor are we persuaded by the Board’s argument that justification for the inference of hostile motivation appears in the respondents’ use of temporary employees rather than some of the regular employees. It is not commonsense, we think, to say that the regular employees were “willing to work at the employers’ terms.” 137 N. L. R. B., at 76. It seems probable that this “willingness” was motivated as much by their understandable desire to further the objective of the whipsaw strike — to break through the employers’ united front by forcing Food Jet to accept the Local’s terms — as it was by a desire to work for the employers under the existing unacceptable terms. As the Board’s dissenting members put it, “These employees are willing only to receive wages while their brethren in the rest of the associationwide unit are exerting whipsaw pressure on one employer to gain benefits that will ultimately accrue to all employees in the asso-ciationwide unit, including those here locked out.” 137 N. L. R. B., at 78. Moreover, the course of action to which the Board would limit the respondents would force them into the position of aiding and abetting the success of the whipsaw strike and consequently would render “largely illusory,” 137 N. L. R. B., at 78-79, the right of lockout recognized by Buffalo Linen; the right would be meaningless if barred to nonstruck stores that find it necessary to operate because the struck store does so.
The Board’s finding of a § 8 (a)(1) violation emphasized the impact of respondents’ conduct upon the effectiveness of the whipsaw strike. It is no doubt true that the collective strength of the stores to resist that strike is maintained, and even increased, when all stores stay open with temporary replacements. The pressures on the employees are necessarily greater when none of the union employees is working and the stores remain open. But these pressures are no more than the result of the Local’s inability to make effective use of the whipsaw tactic. Moreover, these effects are no different from those that result from the legitimate use of any economic weapon by an employer. Continued operations with the use of temporary replacements may result in the failure of the whipsaw strike, but this does not mean that the employers’ conduct is demonstrably so destructive of employee rights and so devoid of significant service to any legitimate business end that it cannot be tolerated consistently with the Act. Certainly then, in the absence of evidentiary findings of hostile motive, there is no support for the conclusion that respondents violated § 8 (a)(1).
Nor does the record show any basis for concluding that respondents violated § 8 (a) (3). Under that section both discrimination and a resulting discouragement of union membership are necessary, but the added element of unlawful intent is also required. In Buffalo Linen itself the employers treated the locked-out employees less favorably because of their union membership, and this may have tended to discourage continued membership, but we rejected the notion that the use of the lockout violated the statute. The discriminatory act is not by itself unlawful unless intended to prejudice the employees’ position because of their membership in the union; some element of antiunion animus is necessary. See Radio Officers’ Union v. Labor Board, 347 U. S. 17, 42-44; Labor Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1, at 46. We have determined that the “real motive” of the employer in an alleged § 8 (a)(3) violation is decisive, Associated Press v. Labor Board, 301 U. S. 103, 132; if any doubt still persisted, we laid it to rest in Radio Officers’ Union v. Labor Board, supra, where we reviewed the legislative history of the. provision and concluded that Congress clearly intended the employer’s purpose in discriminating to be controlling. Id., at 44. See also Textile Workers v. Darlington Mfg. Co., ante, at 275, 276; American Ship Building Co. v. Labor Board, post, at 311— 313; Local 357, International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. Labor Board, 365 U. S. 667, 674-676.
We recognize that, analogous to the determination of unfair practices under § 8 (a) (1), when an employer practice is inherently destructive of employee rights and is not justified by the service of important business ends, no specific evidence of intent to discourage union membership is necessary to establish a violation of §8 (a)(3). This principle, we have said, is “but an application of the common-law rule that a man is held to intend the foreseeable consequences of his conduct.” Radio Officers’ Union v. Labor Board, supra, at 45. For example, in Labor Board v. Erie Resistor Corp., supra, we held that an employer’s action in awarding superseniority to employees who worked during a strike was discriminatory conduct that carried with it its own indicia of improper intent. The only reasonable inference that could be drawn by the Board from the award of superseniority— balancing the prejudicial effect upon the employees against any asserted business purpose — was that it was directed against the striking employees because of their union membership; conduct so inherently destructive of employee interests could not be saved from illegality by an asserted overriding business purpose pursued in good faith. But where, as here, the tendency to discourage union membership is comparatively slight, and the employers’ conduct is reasonably adapted to achieve legitimate business ends or to deal with business exigencies, we enter into an area where the improper motivation of the employers must be established by independent evidence. When so established, antiunion motivation will convert an otherwise ordinary business act into an unfair labor practice. Labor Board v. Erie Resistor Corp., supra, at 227, and cases there cited.
We agree with the Court of Appeals that respondents’ conduct here clearly fits into the latter category, where actual subjective intent is determinative, and where the Board must find from evidence independent of the mere conduct involved that the conduct was primarily motivated by an antiunion animus. While the use of temporary nonunion personnel in preference to the locked-out union members is discriminatory, we think that any-resulting tendency to discourage union membership is comparatively remote, and that this use of temporary personnel constitutes a measure reasonably adapted to the effectuation of a legitimate business end. Here discontent on the part of the Local’s membership in all likelihood is attributable largely to the fact that the membership was locked out as the result of the Local’s whipsaw stratagem. But the lockout itself is concededly within the rule of Buffalo Linen. We think that the added dissatisfaction, with its resultant pressure on membership, attributable to the fact that the nonstruck employers remain in business with temporary replacements is comparatively insubstantial. First, the replacements were expressly used for the duration of the labor dispute only; thus, the displaced employees could not have looked upon the replacements as threatening their jobs. At most the union would be forced to capitulate and return its members to work on terms which, while not as desirable as hoped for, were still better than under the old contract. Second, the membership, through its control of union policy, could end the dispute and terminate the lockout at any time simply by agreeing to the employers’ terms and returning to work on a regular basis. Third, in light of the union-shop provision that had been carried forward into the new contract from the old collective-bargaining agreement, it would appear that a union member would have nothing to gain, and much to lose, by quitting the union. Under all these circumstances, we cannot say that the employers’ conduct had any great tendency to discourage union membership. Not only was the prospect of discouragement of membership comparatively remote, but the respondents’ attempt to remain open for business with the help of temporary replacements was a measure reasonably adapted to the achievement of a legitimate end — preserving the integrity of the multi-employer bargaining unit.
When the resulting harm to employee rights is thus comparatively slight, and a substantial and legitimate business end is served, the employers’ conduct is prima facie lawful. Under these circumstances the finding of an unfair labor practice under § 8 (a) (3) requires a showing of improper subjective intent. Here, there is no assertion by either the union or the Board that the respondents were motivated by antiunion animus, nor is there any evidence that this was the case. On the contrary, the background of the employer association’s relations with the union and all the circumstances of the respondents’ behavior during the dispute tend to support the contrary conclusion: the history of labor relations between the employers and the Local divulges that the relationship has always been more than amicable; union-shop provisions have been incorporated in the collective-bargaining agreement between the Local and the employers for many years; in these very negotiations, the employers’ association waived the failure of the Local to give timely notice of its desire to bargain over new terms of employment and consented to hear the Local’s claims at the bargaining table; the record contains undisputed testimony by the store owners that they had no bone to pick with the Local, that on the contrary they thought that unions were a good thing, but felt forced to take action in order to preserve the multiemployer group from disintegration and to save their considerable stock of perishable food produce. Even the struck member of the association did not resort to permanent replacements for the striking workers, though it could have under Mackay; rather it sought to ride out the dispute with temporary replacements to avoid depriving the regular employees of their jobs. Thus, not only is there absent in the record any independent evidence of improper motive, but the record contains positive evidence of the employers’ good faith. In sum, the Court of Appeals was required to conclude that there was not sufficient evidence gathered from the record as a whole to support the Board’s finding that respondents’ conduct violates § 8 (a)(3). See Universal Camera Corp. v. Labor Board, 340 U. S. 474.
It is argued, finally, that the Board’s decision is within the area of its expert judgment and that, in setting it aside, the Court of Appeals exceeded the authorized scope of judicial review. This proposition rests upon our statement in Buffalo Linen that in reconciling the conflicting interests of labor and management the Board’s determination is to be subjected to “limited judicial review.” 353 U. S., at 96. When we used the phrase “limited judicial review” we did not mean that the balance struck by the Board is immune from judicial examination and reversal in proper cases. Courts are expressly empowered to enforce, modify or set aside, in whole or in part, the Board’s orders, except that the findings of the Board with respect to questions of fact, if supported by substantial evidence on the record considered as a whole, shall be conclusive. National Labor Relations Act, as amended, §§10 (e), (f), 29 U. S. C. §§ 160 (e), (f) (1958 ed.). Courts should be “slow to overturn an administrative decision,” Labor Board v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U. S. 105, 112, but they are not left “to 'sheer acceptance’ of the Board’s conclusions,” Republic Aviation Corp. v. Labor Board, 324 U. S. 793, 803. Reviewing courts are not obliged to stand aside and rubber-stamp their affirmance of administrative decisions that they deem inconsistent with a statutory mandate or that frustrate the congressional policy underlying a statute. Such review is always properly within the judicial province, and courts would abdicate their responsibility if they did not fully review such administrative decisions. Of course due deference is to be rendered to agency determinations of fact, so long as there is substantial evidence to be found in the record as a whole. But where, as here, the review is not of a question of fact, but of a judgment as to the proper balance to be struck between conflicting interests, “[t]he deference owed to an expert tribunal cannot be allowed to slip into a judicial inertia which results in the unauthorized assumption by an agency of major policy decisions properly made by Congress.” American Ship Building Co. v. Labor Board, post, at 318.
Courts must, of course, set aside Board decisions which rest on an “erroneous legal foundation.” Labor Board v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., supra, at 112-113. Congress has not given the Board untrammelled authority to catalogue which economic devices shall be deemed freighted with indicia of unlawful intent. Labor Board v. Insurance Agents, supra, at 498. In determining here that the respondents’ conduct carried its own badge of improper motive, the Board’s decision, for the reasons stated, misapplied the criteria governing the application of §§ 8 (a) (1) and (3). Since the order therefore rested on an erroneous legal foundation, the Court of Appeals properly refused to enforce it.
Affirmed
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, §8 (a), 61 Stat. 140, 29 U. S. C. § 158 (a) (1958 ed.) provides: “It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer—
“(1) to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 157 of this title;
“(3) by discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization . . . .”
National Labor Relations Act, as amended, § 7, 61 Stat. 140, 29 U. S. C. § 157 (1958 ed.) provides: “Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment . . . .”
Food Jet used supervisory personnel and hired some “sack boys”; respondent Safeway Stores, which operated two stores in Carlsbad, closed one and transferred its managerial personnel to the other; respondent Thrifty Way Food Stores used management personnel and their wives and also hired some part-time “box boys”; respondent Brown Food Store relied on management personnel and their relatives, and a “sack boy” transferred from an out-of-town branch store; respondent Cashway Food Stores also relied on management personnel and their relatives and some transferees from out-of-town branches.
See brief for the National Labor Relations Board in American Ship Building Co. v. Labor Board, No. 255, post, p. 300, also decided today, at p. 17. See also 76 Harv. L. Rev. 1494, 1497.
For a history of rejection by Congress of proposals to limit or outlaw multiemployer bargaining see Buffalo Linen, 353 U. S., at 95-96.
This is evident from the authorities cited in Buffalo Linen, 353 U. S., at 96, n. 28.
In Labor Board v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U. S. 105, we set aside, as resting on an erroneous legal foundation, a Board decision finding that the employer’s refusal to allow distribution of union literature on a company-owned parking lot violated §8 (a)(1). In Republic Aviation Corp. v. Labor Board, 324 U. S. 793, we sustained the Board’s decision but emphasized that judicial review is contemplated by 29 U. S. C. §§ 160 (e), (f), 324 U. S., at 799. Phelps Dodge Corp. v. Labor Board, 313 U. S. 177, involved a question of remedy as to which the statute expressly grants the Board broad authority, 29 U. S. C. § 160 (c). Since Buffalo Linen numerous Board orders have been set aside as outside of the. Board’s statutory authority. See, e. g., Labor Board v. Insurance Agents, 361 U. S. 477; Labor Board v. Drivers Local Union, 362 U. S. 274; Local 357, International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. Labor Board, 365 U. S. 667; Labor Board v. Fruit Packers, 377 U. S. 58. Even where the Board is sustained, its anatysis in support of its conclusion is subjected to full, independent judicial review. See Labor Board v. Erie Resistor Corp., supra.
We do not here decide whether the case would be the same had the struck employer exercised its prerogative to hire permanent replacements for the strikers under our rule in Labor Board v. Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co., 304 U. S. 333, and the nonstruck employers had then hired permanent replacements for their locked-out employees.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
G
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The single question of statutory construction presented by these cases is whether injuries to longshoremen occurring on piers permanently affixed to shore are compen-sable under the Longshoremen’s and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act of 1927 (Longshoremen’s Act), 44 Stat. 1424, 33 U. S. C. §§ 901-950.
Johnson and Klosek were employed by the Nacirema Operating Company as longshoremen; Avery was similarly employed by the Old Dominion Stevedoring Corporation. All three men were engaged at the time of their accidents in performing similar operations as “slingers,” attaching cargo from railroad cars located on piers to ships’ cranes for removal to the ships. Klosek was killed, and each of the other men was injured, when cargo hoisted by the ship’s crane swung back and knocked him to the pier or crushed him against the side of the railroad car. Deputy Commisioners of the United States Department of Labor denied claims for compensation in each case on the ground that the injuries had not occurred “upon the navigable waters of the United States” as required by the Act. The District Courts upheld the Deputy Commissioners’ decisions. 243 E. Supp. 184 (D. C. Md. 1965); 245 F. Supp. 51 (D. C. E. D. Va. 1965). The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, sitting en banc, reversed. 398 F. 2d 900 (1968). We granted certiorari, 393 U. S. 976 (1968), to resolve the resulting conflict with decisions in other circuits holding that pier injuries are not covered by the Act. We have concluded from an examination of the language, purpose, and legislative history of the Act, as well as prior decisions of this Court, that the judgment of the Court of Appeals must be reversed.
Since long before the Longshoremen’s Act was passed, it has been settled law that structures such as wharves and piers, permanently affixed to land, are extensions of the land. Thus, literally read, a statute that covers injuries “upon the navigable waters” would not cover injuries on a pier even though the pier, like a bridge, extends over navigable waters.
Respondents urge, however, that the 1927 Act, though it employs language that determines coverage by the “situs” of the injury, was nevertheless aimed at broader coverage: coverage of the “status” of the longshoreman employed in performing a maritime contract. We do not agree. Congress might have extended coverage to all longshoremen by exercising its power over maritime contracts. But the language of the Act is to the contrary and the background of the statute leaves little doubt that Congress’ concern in providing compensation was a narrower one.
Ten years before the Act was passed this Court in Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U. S. 205 (1917), held that a State was without power to extend a compensation remedy to a longshoreman injured on the gangplank between the ship and the pier. The decision left longshoremen injured on the seaward side of the pier without a compensation remedy, while longshoremen injured on the pier enjoyed the protection of state compensation acts. State Industrial Commission v. Nordenholt Corp., 259 U. S. 263 (1922).
Twice Congress attempted to fill this gap by passing legislation that would have extended state compensation remedies beyond the line drawn in Jensen. Each time, this Court struck down the statute as an unlawful delegation of congressional power. Washington v. Dawson & Co., 264 U. S. 219 (1924); Knickerbocker Ice Co. v. Stewart, 253 U. S. 149 (1920). Finally, responding to this Court’s suggestion that what Congress could not empower the States to do, it could do itself, Congress passed the Longshoremen’s Act. The clear implication is that in enacting its own compensation statute, Congress w.as trying to do what it had failed to do in earlier attempts: to extend a compensation remedy to workmen injured beyond the pier and hence beyond the jurisdiction of the States. This purpose was clearly expressed in the language limiting coverage to injuries occurring “upon the navigable waters/’ and permitting recovery only “if recovery . . . through workmen’s compensation proceedings may not validly be provided by State law.”
This conclusion is fully supported by the legislative history. As originally drafted, § 3 extended coverage to injuries “on a place within the admiralty jurisdiction of the United States, except employment of local concern and of no direct relation to navigation and commerce.” During the hearings, it was repeatedly emphasized and apparently assumed by representatives from both the shipping industry and the unions that a “place within the admiralty jurisdiction” did not include a dock or pier. In fact, a representative of the Labor Department objected to the bill precisely for that reason, urging the Committee to extend coverage to embrace the contract, “and not the man simply when he is on the ship.” If Congress had intended to adopt that suggestion, it could not have chosen a more inappropriate way of expressing its intent than by substituting the words “upon the navigable waters” for the words “within the admiralty jurisdiction.” Indeed, the Senate Report that accompanied the revised bill, containing the language of the present Act, makes clear that the suggestion was rejected, rather than adopted: “[Ijnjuries occurring in loading or unloading are not covered unless they occur on the ship or between the wharf and the ship so as to bring them within the maritime jurisdiction of the United States.” S. Rep. No. 973, 69th Cong., 1st Sess., 16. We decline to ignore these explicit indications of a design to provide compensation only beyond the pier where the States could not reach. “That is the gap that we are trying to fill.” In filling that gap Congress did not extend coverage to longshoremen like those respondents whose injuries occurred on the landward side of the Jensen line, clearly entitling them to protection under state compensation Acts.
Decisions of this Court have more than once embraced this interpretation. Swanson v. Marra Bros., Inc., 328 U. S. 1 (1946), held that neither the Jones Act nor the Longshoremen’s Act covered a longshoreman injured on the dock in the course of his employment even if the injury was caused by a vessel on navigable waters. Parker v. Motor Boat Sales, 314 U. S. 244, 249 (1941), concluded that the purpose of the Act “was to provide for federal compensation in the area which the specific decisions referred to placed beyond the reach of the states.” Davis v. Dept. of Labor & Industries, 317 U. S. 249, 256 (1942), noted that in passing the Longshoremen’s Act, Congress had specifically adopted the Jensen line. The interpretation endorsed by these cases is also reflected in a consistent course of administrative construction commencing immediately after the enactment of the Act. Employees’ Compensation Commission Opinions Nos. 5 and 16, 1927 A. M. C. 1558 and 1855; No. 30, 1928 A. M. C. 417.
It is true that since Jensen this Court has permitted recovery under state remedies in particular situations seaward of the pier, Parker v. Motor Boat Sales, supra, and in Calbeck v. Travelers Insurance Co., 370 U. S. 114 (1962), approved recovery under - the Longshoremen’s Act for injuries occurring on navigable waters which might also have been compensable under state law. Calbeck made it clear that Congress intended to exercise its full jurisdiction seaward of the Jensen line and to cover all injuries on navigable waters, whether or not state compensation was also available in particular situations. The proviso to § 3 (a) conditioning coverage on the unavailability of state remedies was not meant to deny federal relief where the injury occurred on navigable waters. But removing uncertainties as to the Act’s coverage of injuries occurring on navigable waters is a far cry from construing the Act to reach injuries on land traditionally within the ambit of state compensation acts.
Indeed, Calbeck freely cited the Parker and Davis declarations that the Longshoremen’s Act adopted the Jensen line, and Calbeck’s holding rejected the notion that the line should advance or recede simply because decisions of this Court had permitted state remedies in narrow areas seaward of that line. Otherwise, the reach of the federal Act would be subject to uncertainty, and its coverage would “expand and recede in harness with developments in constitutional interpretation as to the scope of state power to compensate injuries on navigable waters,” with the result “that every litigation raising an issue of federal coverage would raise an issue of constitutional dimension, with all that that implies . . . .” 370 U. S., at .126. As in Calbeck, we refuse to impute to Congress the intent of burdening the administration of compensation by perpetuating such confusion.
Nor can we agree that what Congress did not do in 1927, it did in 1948 when it passed the Extension of Admiralty Jurisdiction Act (Extension Act), 62 Stat. 496, 46 U. S. C. § 740. In pertinent part, that Act provides:
“The admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States shall extend to and include all cases of damage or injury, to person or property, caused by a vessel on navigable water, notwithstanding that such damage or injury be done or consummated on land.”
By its very choice of language, the Act re-enforces the conclusion that Congress was well aware of the distinction between land injuries and water injuries and that when it limited recovery to injuries on navigable waters, it did not mean injuries on land. The Act no doubt extended the admiralty tort jurisdiction to ship-caused injuries on a pier. But far from modifying the clear understanding in the law that a pier was an extension of land and that a pier injury was not on navigable waters but on land, the Act accepts that rule and nevertheless declares such injuries to be maritime torts if caused by a vessel on navigable waters.
The Extension Act was passed to remedy the completely different problem that arose from the fact that parties aggrieved by injuries done by ships to bridges, docks, and the like could not get into admiralty at all. There is no evidence that Congress thereby intended to amend or affect the coverage of the Longshoremen’s Act or to overrule Swanson v. Marra Bros., supra, decided just two years earlier. While the Extension Act may have the effect of permitting respondents to maintain an otherwise unavailable libel in admiralty, see Gutierrez v. Waterman S. S. Corp., 373 U. S. 206 (1963), the Act has no bearing whatsoever on their right to a compensation remedy under the Longshoremen’s Act.
There is much to be said for uniform treatment of longshoremen injured while loading or unloading a ship. But even construing the Extension Act to amend the Longshoremen’s Act would not effect this result, since longshoremen injured on a pier by pier-based equipment would still remain outside the Act. And construing the Longshoremen’s Act to coincide with the limits of admiralty jurisdiction — whatever they may be and however they may change — simply replaces one line with another whose uncertain contours can only perpetuate on the landward side of the Jensen line, the same confusion that previously existed on the seaward side. While we have no doubt that Congress had the power to choose either of these paths in defining the coverage of its compensation remedy, the plain fact is that it chose instead the line in Jensen separating water from land at the edge of the pier. The invitation to move that line landward must be addressed to Congress, not to this Court.
Reversed.
The piers involved extended from shore into the Patapsco River at Sparrows Point, Maryland, and into the Elizabeth River at Norfolk, Virginia.
§3 (a) of the Act, 33 U. S. C. §903 (a), provides in relevant part:
“(a) Compensation shall be payable under this chapter in respect of disability or death of an employee, but only if the disability or death results from an injury occurring upon the navigable waters of the United States (including any dry dock) and if recovery for the disability or death through workmen’s compensation proceedings may not validly be provided by State law. . . .”
The three cases were consolidated on appeal. In a fourth case, an award to a longshoreman who had drowned after being knocked off a pier into the water was affirmed by the District Court and the Court of Appeals. Marine Stevedoring Corp. v. Oosting, 238 F. Supp. 78 (D. C. E. D. Va. 1965).
Nicholson v. Calbeck, 385 F. 2d 221 (C. A. 5th Cir. 1967), cert. denied, 389 U. S. 1051 (1968); Houser v. O’Leary, 383 F. 2d 730 (C. A. 9th Cir. 1967), cert. denied, 390 U. S. 954 (1968); Travelers Insurance Co. v. Shea, 382 F. 2d 344 (C. A. 5th Cir. 1967), cert. denied sub nom. McCollough v. Travelers Insurance Co., 389 U. S. 1050 (1968); Michigan Mutual Liability Co. v. Arrien, 344 F. 2d 640 (C. A. 2d Cir.), cert. denied, 382 U. S. 835 (1965).
Swanson v. Marra Bros., Inc., 328 U. S. 1 (1946); Minnie v. Port Huron Terminal Co., 295 U. S. 647 (1935); T. Smith & Son, Inc. v. Taylor, 276 U. S. 179 (1928); State Industrial Commission v. Nordenholt Corp., 259 U. S. 263 (1922); Cleveland Terminal & Valley R. Co. v. Cleveland S. S. Co., 208 U. S. 316 (1908); The Plymouth, 3 Wall. 20 (1866); 1 E. Benedict, The Law of American Admiralty §§ 28, 29 (6th ed. 1940); G. Gilmore & C. Black, The Law of Admiralty §§ 6-46, 7-17 (1957); G. Robinson, Handbook of Admiralty Law in the United States § 11 (1939).
We reject the alternative holding of the Court of Appeals that all injuries on these piers, despite settled doctrine to the contrary, may now be considered injuries on navigable waters — a proposition rejected implicitly by a unanimous Court just last Term. See Rodrigue v. Aetna Casualty Co., 395 U. S. 352, 360, 366 (1969). Piers, like bridges, are not transformed from land structures into floating structures by the mere fact that vessels may pass beneath them.
The admiralty jurisdiction in tort was traditionally “bounded by locality,” De Lovio v. Boit, 7 F. Cas. 418, 444 (No. 3776) (C. C. D. Mass. 1815) (Story, J.) (followed in Insurance Co. v. Dunham, 11 Wall. 1 (1871)), encompassing all torts that took place on navigable waters. By contrast, admiralty contract jurisdiction “extends over all contracts, (wheresoever they may be made or executed, or whatsoever may be the form of the stipulations,) which relate to the navigation, business or commerce of the sea.” De Lovio v. Boit, supra, at 444. Since a workmen’s compensation act combines elements of both tort and contract, Congress need not have tested coverage by locality alone. As the text indicates, however, the history of the Act shows that Congress did indeed do just that.
Act of October 6, 1917, 40 Stat. 395; Act of June 10, 1922, 42 Stat. 634.
Washington v. Dawson & Co., 264 U. S. 219, 227 (1924). The passage from Dawson & Co. was referred to in the hearings in both the Senate and the House. See Hearings on S. 3170 before a Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 69th Cong., 1st Sess., 18, 31, 103 and n. 3 (1926) (hereinafter “Senate Hearings”) ; Hearing on H. R. 9498 before the House Committee on the Judiciary, 69th Cong., 1st Sess., ser. 16, pp. 18, 119 and n. 3 (1926) (hereinafter “House Hearing”).
Drydocks were conceded to be within the admiralty jurisdiction in both the hearings and the debates, even though such structures are not always floating structures. See House Hearing 34; 68 Cong. Rec. 5403 (1927). If Congress had thought the words “upon the navigable waters” were broad enough to embrace the limits of admiralty jurisdiction, there would have been no need to add the parenthetical “(including any dry dock).”
See Senate Hearings 2.
Mr. Dempsey, representing the International Longshoremen’s Association, testified that the bill would cover injuries on the dock as well as on the ship. When pressed as to how injuries on the dock could come within the admiralty jurisdiction, he confessed he did not understand the legal theory, and would defer to the longshoremen’s attorney, Mr. Austin. Mr. Austin proceeded to testify: that the dock was not within the admiralty jurisdiction; that injuries on the dock were compensable under state law; that the problem arose because the longshoreman was left “high and dry” once he left the State’s jurisdiction and stepped on the gangplank; and that “[t]hat is the gap that we are trying to fill . . . .” Senate Hearings 28, 30-31. Testimony that longshoremen injured on the docks would not be covered by the Act also came from representatives of the shipbuilders. See Senate Hearings 68, 95, 103. See also n. 15, infra; Hearing on S. 3170 before the House Committee on the Judiciary, 69tb Cong., 1st Sess., ser. 16, pt. 2, pp. 141, 157 (1926) (testimony on the revised bill, containing the language of the present §3).
Senate Hearings 40.
While the reason for the change in the language concerning the bill’s coverage is not expressly indicated, it appears to have been a response to objections that the original language, carving out an exception for employment of “local concern,” was too vague to define clearly the line being drawn, and might even encounter problems once again at the hands of this Court. See Senate Hearings 56-57, 95; House Hearing 77, 100. In fact, the same spokesman for the shipbuilders who objected to the vagueness of the “local concern” exception, also objected that the bill as written might “upset all the present arrangements with respect to compensating men on the dock.” Senate Hearings 57. The implication is that no one expected the federal law to extend into the area of the State’s jurisdiction on the dock, but that confusion existed as to whether, conversely, state remedies would be exclusive as to injuries “on navigable waters” but within the “maritime but local” exception created by Grant Smith-Porter Ship Co. v. Rohde, 257 U. S. 469 (1922). This reading of the legislative history was adopted in Calbeck v. Travelers Insurance Co., 370 U. S. 114, 121-127 (1962), where the Court concluded that the Act did not prevent recovery for injuries on navigable waters, even though a state remedy would also have been available under Rohde.
See n. 12, supra. Other indications that Congress had no intention of replacing or overlapping state compensation- remedies for dockside injuries can be found throughout the hearings. At one point, in attempting to calculate the increased costs involved in the federal Act, Senator Cummins, Chairman of the Committee, pointed out that “we are proceeding on the theory that these people can not be compensated under the New York compensation law or any other compensation law.” “[T]he purpose of this law,” he agreed with a witness, was simply to cover the men who “are going to be exposed a part of the time on board vessels . . . and therefore will have to be compensated in some other way where the New York law is not the remedy available.” Senate Hearings 84-85. Similarly, Representative Graham, Chairman of the House Committee, agreed that “the real necessity for this legislation” was to provide workers with compensation when they stepped from dock to ship. House Hearing 25. In fact, the labor representative who was testifying at that point in the hearing insisted that the legislation sought was only for “[tjhose who are injured on board vessels at the dock.” Those injured on the dock “are taken care of under the State law.” Id., at 28. There was also testimony by a longshoremen's representative that “65 per cent of the accidents in the courts of New York happen on board ships or on gangplanks; . . . therefore . . . 65 per cent of the accidents of the men who are injured by performing this work will be compensable under this bill.” Id., at 35. See also id., at 44. Another noted that “our men that are working on the dock are protected, and well protected, under the New York compensation act, but our men on board ship are not protected. We feel that Congress wants to protect them . . . .” Senate Hearings 42.
Both Johnson and Klosek’s widow and minor children have filed claims, and are concededly entitled to benefits, under the Maryland Workmen’s Compensation Act. Avery has already been awarded benefits under the Virginia Workmen’s Compensation Law.
See Gilmore & Black, supra, n. 5, § 7-17.
The legislative history of the Extension Act is devoid of any reference to the Longshoremen’s Act, as might well be expected in an Act dealing with a wholly unrelated problem. See S. Rep. No. 1593, 80th Gong., 2d Sess. (1948); H. R. Rep. No. 1523, 80th Cong., 2d Sess. (1948).
The House Report accompanying the Extension Act notes that “the bill will not create new causes of action,” id., at 3, and the statute speaks of extending jurisdiction to suits “in rem or in per-sonam” for “damage” to “person or property” — concepts wholly at odds with the theory of workmen’s compensation — awards made in an administrative proceeding. The conclusion of the District Court is inescapable. “The two statutes do not deal with the same subject matter, are inherently inconsistent with each other, and cannot be read as being in pari materia.” 243 F. Supp. 184, 194 (1965).
It is worth noting that a contemporaneous amendment of the Longshoremen’s Act contains no cross reference to the Extension Act. See Act of June 24, 1948, 62 Stat. 602 (a bill to increase benefits under the Longshoremen’s Act, passed five days after the Extension Act). And, a House Report dated July 28, 1958 — 10 years after enactment of the Extension Act — points out that employees “on the navigable waters of the United States” are covered under the Longshoremen’s Act, but are under state protection “when performing work on docks and in other shore areas.” H. R. Rep. No. 2287, 85th Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (accompanying a bill to provide safety programs for longshoremen).
We were informed in argument that two of the parties have in fact already commenced actions against the shipowner.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
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H
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
MR. Justice Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Chapter 75, subchapter A, of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, as amended, 26 U. S. C. §§ 7201-7241, is concerned with tax crimes. Sections 7201-7207, inclusive, which in the aggregate relate to attempts to evade or defeat tax, to failures to act, and to fraud, all include the word “willfully” in their respective contexts. Specifically, § 7206 is a felony statute and reads:
Ҥ 7206. Fraud and false statements.
“Any person who—
“(1) Declaration under penalties of perjury. “Willfully makes and subscribes any return, statement, or other document, which contains or is verified by a written declaration that it is made under the penalties of perjury, and which he does not believe to be true and correct as to every material matter ....
“shall be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than 3 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution.”
Section 7207 is a misdemeanor statute and reads:
“7207. Fraudulent returns, statements, or other documents.
“Any person who willfully delivers or discloses to the Secretary or his delegate any list, return, account, statement, or other document, known by him to be fraudulent or to be false as to any material matter, shall be fined not more than $1,000, or imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both.”
This case presents the issue of the meaning of the critical word “willfully” as it is employed in these two successive statutes. Is its meaning the same in each, or is the willfulness specified by the misdemeanor statute, § 7207, of somewhat less degree than the felony willfulness specified by § 7206?
I
Respondent, Cecil J. Bishop, was convicted by a jury on all three counts of an indictment charging him with felony violations of § 7206 (1) with respect to his federal income tax returns for the calendar years 1963, 1964, and 1965. The Court of Appeals, holding that a lesser-included-offense instruction directed to the misdemeanor statute, § 7207, was improperly refused by the trial judge, reversed the judgment of the District Court and remanded the case for a new trial. 455 F. 2d 612 (CA9 1972). Since the meaning of “willfully,” as used in the tax crime statutes, has divided the circuits, we granted certiorari. 409 U. S. 841 (1972).
We conclude that it was proper and correct for the District Court to refuse the lesser-included-offense instruction. In our view, the word “willfully” has the same meaning in both statutes. Consequently, we reverse and remand so that the Court of Appeals may now proceed to consider the additional issues that court found it unnecessary to reach.
II
Mr. Bishop is a lawyer who has practiced his profession in Sacramento, California, since 1951. During that period, he owned an interest in a walnut ranch he and his father operated. In 1960 his secretary, Louise, married his father. The father died, and thereafter respondent’s stepmother managed the ranch.
Respondent periodically sent checks to Louise. These were used to run the ranch, to pay principal on loans, and to make improvements.
Louise maintained a record of ranch expenditures and submitted an itemized list of these disbursements to respondent at the end of each calendar year. In his 1963 return respondent asserted as business deductions all amounts paid to Louise and, in addition, all the expenses Louise listed. This necessarily resulted in a double deduction for all ranch expenditures in 1963. Moreover, some of these expenditures were for repayment of loans and for other personal items that did not qualify as income tax deductions. In his 1964 and 1965 returns respondent similarly included nondeductible amounts among the ranch figures that were deducted.
The aggregate amount of improper deductions taken by respondent for the three taxable years exceeded $45,000. He enjoyed aggregate gross income for those years of about $70,000.
The incorrectness of the returns as filed for the three years was not disputed at trial. Transcript of Trial 869-872, 1148. Neither is it disputed here. Brief for Respondent 4.
Ill
Section 7206 (1), the felony statute, is violated when one “[wjillfully makes and subscribes any return,” under penalties of perjury, “which he does not believe to be true and correct as to every material matter.” Respondent based his defense at trial on the ground that he was not aware of the double deductions asserted in 1963 or of the improper deductions taken in the three taxable years. He claimed that his law office secretary prepared the return schedules from his records and from the information furnished by Louise; he merely failed to check the returns for accuracy.
Respondent requested lesser-included-offense instructions based on the misdemeanor statute, § 7207. This tax misdemeanor is committed by one “who willfully delivers or discloses” to the Internal Revenue Service any return or document “known by him to be fraudulent or to be false as to any material matter.” Respondent argued that the word “willfully” in the misdemeanor statute should be construed to require less scienter than the same word in the felony statute. App. 28. With the state of respondent's guilty knowledge in dispute, his proposed instructions would have allowed the jury to choose between a misdemeanor based on caprice or careless disregard and a felony requiring evil purpose. The trial judge declined to give the requested instructions and, instead, gave an instruction only on the felony, requiring a finding by the jury that the defendant intended “with evil motive or bad purpose either to disobey or to disregard the law.” App. 24.
After the guilty verdict on all counts was returned, respondent was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment on each count, the sentences to run concurrently. The court, however, suspended all but 90 days of each sentence and placed respondent on probation for five years on condition that he pay a fine of $5,000. App. 31.
IV
The Court of Appeals relied upon and followed, 455 F. 2d, at 614, a series of its own cases, particularly Abdul v. United States, 254 F. 2d 292 (1958), enunciating the proposition that the word “willfully” has a meaning in tax felony statutes that is more stringent than its meaning in tax misdemeanor statutes. Our examination of these Ninth Circuit precedents in the light of this Court’s decisions leads us to conclude that the Court of Appeals’ opinion cannot be sustained by this asserted distinction between § 7206 (1) and § 7207.
A. The Ninth Circuit rule appears to have been evolved from language in this Court’s opinion in Spies v. United States, 317 U. S. 492 (1943). In Spies the defendant requested an instruction to the effect that an affirmative act was necessary to constitute a willful attempt to evade or defeat a tax, within the meaning of § 145 (b) of the Revenue Act of 1936, 49 Stat. 1703. The trial court refused the request. The Second Circuit affirmed. This Court reversed. We were concerned in Spies with a felony statute, § 145 (b), applying to one “who willfully attempts in any manner to evade or defeat any tax,” and with a companion misdemeanor statute, § 145 (a), applying to one who “willfully fails to pay such tax, make such return, keep such records, or supply such information, at the time or times required by law or regulations.” These statutes were the predecessors of the current §§ 7201 and 7203, respectively, of the 1954 Code. In distinguishing between the two offenses, the Court said:
“The difference between willful failure to pay a tax when due, which is made a misdemeanor, and willful attempt to defeat and evade one, which is made a felony, is not easy to detect or define. Both must be willful, and willful, as we have said, is a word of many meanings, its construction often being influenced by its context. United States v. Mur-dock, 290 U. S. 389. It may well mean something more as applied to nonpayment of a tax than when applied to failure to make a return. Mere voluntary and purposeful, as distinguished from accidental, omission to make a timely return might meet the test of willfulness. But in view of our traditional aversion to imprisonment for debt, we would not without the clearest manifestation of Congressional intent assume that mere knowing and intentional default in payment of a tax, where there had been no willful failure to disclose the liability, is intended to constitute a criminal offense of any degree. We would expect willfulness in such a case to include some element of evil motive and want of justification in view of all the financial circumstances of the taxpayer.
“Had § 145 (a) not included willful failure to pay a tax, it would have defined as misdemeanors generally a failure to observe statutory duties to make timely returns, keep records, or supply information— duties imposed to facilitate administration of the Act even if, because of insufficient net income, there were no duty to pay a tax. It would then be a permissible and perhaps an appropriate construction of § 145 (b) that it made felonies of the same willful omissions when there was the added element of duty to pay a tax. The definition of such nonpayment as a misdemeanor, we think, argues strongly against such an interpretation.” 317 U. S., at 497-498.
In Abdul the court considered an appeal by a taxpayer convicted of tax misdemeanors (§ 2707 (b) of the 1939 Code and § 7203 of the 1954 Code) based on failure to file but acquitted of tax felonies (§ 2707 (c) of the 1939 Code and § 7202 of the 1954 Code) based on failure to account for and pay withholding taxes. The defense was inability to pay. The trial judge instructed the jury that the term “wilful” in the misdemeanor counts meant, among other things, “capriciously or with a careless disregard whether one has the right so to act,” whereas the same word in the felony counts meant “with knowledge of one’s obligation to pay the taxes due and with intent to defraud the Government of that tax by any affirmative conduct.” 254 F. 2d, at 294. Relying on Spies, the Court of Appeals approved these instructions and concluded that
“the word ‘wilful’ as used in the misdemeanor statute means something less when applied to a failure to make a return than as applied to a felony non-payment of a tax. This being true, then the words used in the instruction defining ‘wilful’ as relates to a misdemeanor adequately and clearly point up that difference.” Ibid.
Because of an error in the cross-examination of Abdul, his conviction was reversed. On retrial, he was again convicted. He appealed, and the judgment was affirmed. Abdul v. United States, 278 F. 2d 234 (CA9 1960). When Abdul sought certiorari, the Solicitor General conceded that the sentence under one of the counts could not stand and undertook to say that the Government would present to the District Court a motion for correction of the sentence. Certiorari, accordingly, was denied. Two Justices would have granted the writ to review the correctness of the charge “regarding the requirement of willfulness.” 364 U. S. 832 (1960).
In the present case the Court of Appeals continued this Abdul distinction between willfulness in tax misdemeanor charges and willfulness in tax felony charges. Section 7207, it was said, requires only a showing of “unreasonable, capricious, or careless disregard for the truth or falsity of income tax returns filed,” whereas § 7206 (1) “requires proof of an evil motive and bad faith.” 455 F. 2d, at 615. The level of willfulness, thus, would create a disputed factual element that made appropriate a lesser-included-offense instruction.
B. The decisions of this Court do not support the holding in Abdul, and implicitly they reject the approach taken by the Court of Appeals. In Spies, the Court speculated, 317 U. S., at 495-498, that Congress could have distinguished between the regulatory aspects of the tax system, which call for compliance regardless of financial status, and the revenue-collecting aspects, which may place demands on a taxpayer he cannot meet. Since the antecedent of § 7203 (as does that section itself today) punished both failure to file and failure to pay as misdemeanors, the Court concluded that Congress had not drawn the line between felonies and misdemeanors on the basis of distinctions between the system’s regulatory aspects and its revenue-collecting aspects. The reliance in Abdul on that hypothetical statutory scheme, discussed by this Court in Spies but found not in line with what Congress had actually done, was misplaced. Utilizing the unsupported Abdul distinction as a foundation, the Court of Appeals constructed the further general distinction between tax felonies and tax misdemeanors, a distinction also inconsistent with prior decisions of this Court.
In Berra v. United States, 351 U. S. 131 (1956), a defendant was convicted of violating the antecedent of § 7201, namely, § 145 (b) of the 1939 Code, a felony statute identical, for present purposes, with the section of the same number in the Revenue Act of 1936 at issue in Spies. The defendant claimed that he was entitled to a lesser-included-offense instruction based on § 3616 (a) of the 1939 Code, the antecedent of § 7207. The Court rejected this contention, concluding that the two sections of the 1939 Code then “covered precisely the same ground.” 351 U. S., at 134. Implicit in this was the conclusion that the level of intent required for tax misdemeanors was not automatically lower than the level of intent required for tax felonies.
Although the misdemeanor statute, §3616 (a), proffered by the defendant in Berra did not contain the word “willfully,” the Berra facts were presented to the Court again in Sansone v. United States, 380 U. S. 343 (1965), when the misdemeanor statutes there in issue, §§ 7207 and 7203 of the 1954 Code, both contained the word “willfully.” In Sansone the Court rejected the argument that a set of facts could exist that would satisfy the willfulness element in the § 7207 misdemeanor but not in the § 7201 felony:
“Given petitioner's material misstatement which resulted in a tax deficiency, if, as the jury obviously found, petitioner's act was willful in the sense that he knew that he should have reported more income than he did for the year 1957, he was guilty of violating both §§ 7201 and 7207. If his action was not willful, he was guilty of violating neither.” 380 U. S., at 353.
The same analysis v/as applied to the requested lesser-included-offense instruction for § 7203. Id., at 352. The clear implication of the decision in Sansone is that the word “willfully” possesses the same meaning in §§ 7201, 7203, and 7207. Sansone thus foreclosed the argument that the word “willfully” was to be given one meaning in the tax felony statutes and another meaning in the tax misdemeanor statutes.
The thesis relied upon by the Court of Appeals, therefore, was incorrect.
y
It would be possible, of course, that the word “willfully” was intended by Congress to have a meaning in § 7206 (1) different from its meaning in § 7207, and we turn now to that possibility.
We continue to recognize that context is important in the quest for the word’s meaning. See United States v. Murdock, 290 U. S. 389, 394-395 (1933). Here, as in Spies, the “legislative history of the section [s] contains nothing helpful on the question here at issue, and we must find the answer from the [sections themselves] and i[their] context in the revenue laws.” 317 U. S., at 495. We consider first, then, the sections themselves.
A. Respondent argues that both §§ 7206 (1) and 7207 apply to a fraudulent “return” and cover the same ground if the word “willfully” has the same meaning in both sections. Since “it would be unusual and we would not readily assume that Congress by the felony . . . meant no more than the same derelictions it had just defined ... as a misdemeanor,” 317 U. S., at 497, respondent concludes that Congress must have intended to require a more willful violation for the felony than for the misdemeanor.
The critical difficulty for respondent is that the two sections have substantially different express terms. The most obvious difference is that § 7206 (1) applies only if the document “contains or is verified by a written declaration that it is made under the penalties of perjury.” No equivalent requirement is present in § 7207. Respondent recognizes this but then relies on the presence of perjury declarations on all federal income tax returns, a fact that effectively equalizes the sections where a federal tax return is at issue. See 26 U. S. C. § 6065 (a).
This approach, however, is not persuasive for two reasons. First, the Secretary or his delegate has the power under § 6065 (a) to provide that no perjury declaration is required. If he does so provide, then § 7207 immediately becomes operative in the area theretofore covered by § 7206 (1). Second, the term “return” is not necessarily limited to a federal income tax return. A state or other nonfederal return could be intended and might not contain a perjury warning. If this type of return were submitted in support of a federal return, or in the course of a tax audit, § 7207 could apply even if § 7206 (1) could not.
There are other distinctions. The felony applies to a document that a taxpayer “[w]illfully makes and subscribes . . . and which he does not believe to be true and correct as to every material matter,” whereas the misdemeanor applies to a document that a taxpayer “willfully delivers or discloses to the Secretary or his delegate . . . known by him ... to be false as to any material matter.” In the felony, then, the taxpayer must verify the return or document in writing, and he is liable if he does not affirmatively believe that the material statements are true. For the misdemeanor, however, a document prepared by another could give rise to liability on the part of the taxpayer if he delivered or disclosed it to the Service; additional protection is given to the taxpayer in this situation because the document must be known by him to be fraudulent or to be false.
These differences in the respective applications of §§ 7206 (1) and 7207 provide solid evidence that Congress distinguished the statutes in ways that do not turn on the meaning of the word “willfully.” Judge Hastie, in analyzing this Court's holding in Spies, appropriately described this distinction as follows:
“However, this distinction is found in the additional misconduct which is essential to the violation of the felony statute . . . and not in the quality of willfulness which characterizes the wrongdoing.” United States v. Vitiello, 363 F. 2d 240, 243 (CA3 1966).
Thus the word “willfully” may have a uniform meaning in the several statutes without rendering any one of them surplusage. We next turn to context.
B. The hierarchy of tax offenses set forth in §§ 7201-7207, inclusive, utilizes the mental state of the offender as a guide in establishing the penalty. Section 7201, relating to attempts to evade or defeat tax, has been described and recognized by the Court as the “climax of this variety of sanctions” and as the “capstone of a system of sanctions which singly or in combination were calculated to induce prompt and forthright fulfillment of every duty under the income tax law and to provide a penalty suitable to every degree of delinquency.” Spies, 317 U. S., at 497; Sansone, 380 U. S., at 350-351. The actor's mental state is described both by the requirement that acts be done “willfully” and by the designation of certain express elements of the offenses. In § 7201, for example, the Court has held that, by requiring an attempt to evade, “Congress intended some willful commission in addition to the willful omissions that make up the list of misdemeanors.” Spies, 317 U. S., at 499. Similarly, in § 7207, the Government must show that the document was known by the taxpayer to be fraudulent or to be false as to a material matter.
All these offenses, except two subsections of § 7206, viz., subsections (3) and (4), require that acts be done “willfully.” Although the described states of mind might be included in the normal meaning of the word “willfully,” the presence of both an express designation and the simultaneous requirement that a violation be committed “willfully” is strong evidence that Congress used the word “willfully” to describe a constant rather than a variable in the tax penalty formula.
The Court, in fact, has recognized that the word “willfully” in these statutes generally connotes a voluntary, intentional violation of a known legal duty. It has formulated the requirement of willfulness as “bad faith or evil intent,” Murdock, 290 U. S., at 398, or “evil motive and want of justification in view of all the financial circumstances of the taxpayer,” Spies, 317 U. S., at 498, or knowledge that the taxpayer “should have reported more income than he did.” Sansone, 380 U. S., at 353. See James v. United States, 366 U. S. 213, 221 (1961); McCarthy v. United States, 394 U. S. 459, 471 (1969).
This longstanding interpretation of the purpose of the recurring word “willfully” promotes coherence in the group of tax crimes. In our complex tax system, uncertainty often arises even among taxpayers who earnestly wish to follow the law. The Court has said, “It is not the purpose of the law to penalize frank difference of opinion or innocent errors made despite the exercise of reasonable care.” Spies, 317 U. S., at 496. Degrees of negligence give rise in the tax system to civil penalties. The requirement of an offense committed “willfully” is not met, therefore, if a taxpayer has relied in good faith on a prior decision of this Court. James v. United States, 366 U. S., at 221-222. Cf. Lambert v. California, 355 U. S. 225 (1957). The Court’s consistent interpretation of the word “willfully” to require an element of mens rea implements the pervasive intent of Congress to construct penalties that separate the purposeful tax violator from the well-meaning, but easily confused, mass of taxpayers.
Until Congress speaks otherwise, we therefore shall continue to require, in both tax felonies and tax misdemeanors that must be done “willfully,” the bad purpose or evil motive described in Murdock, supra. We hold, consequently, that the word “willfully” has the same meaning in § 7207 that it has in § 7206 (1). Since the only issue in dispute in this case centered on willfulness, it follows that a conviction of the misdemeanor would clearly support a conviction for the felony. Under these circumstances a lesser-included-offense instruction was not required or proper, for in the federal system it is not the function of the jury to set the penalty. Berra v. United States, 351 U. S., at 134r-135.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings.
It is so ordered.
Mr. Justice Douglas would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on the opinion written for that court by Judge Powell. 455 F. 2d 612.
Title 18 U. S. C. § 1 defines felony and misdemeanor:
Ҥ 1. Offenses classified.
“Notwithstanding any Act of Congress to the contrary:
“(1) Any offense punishable by death or imprisonment for a term exceeding one year is a felony.
“(2) Any other offense is a misdemeanor.”
Compare United States v. Vitiello, 363 F. 2d 240, 243 (CA3 1966) (§§ 7201 and 7203), and Haner v. United States, 315 F. 2d 792, 794 (CA5 1963) (§ 7203), where the Ninth Circuit analysis was rejected, with United States v. Fahey, 411 F. 2d 1213 (CA9), cert. denied, 396 U. S. 957 (1969) (§ 7203); Martin v. United States, 317 F. 2d 753 (CA9 1963) (§ 7203); Abdul v. United States, 254 F. 2d 292 (CA9 1958) (§§ 2707 (b) and (c) of the 1939 Code and §§ 7202 and 7203 of the 1954 Code). See also Janko v. United States, 281 F. 2d 156, 166-167 (CA8 1960), rev’d on confession of error by the Solicitor General, 366 U. S. 716 (1961) (§§ 7201 and 7207); Lumetta v. United States, 362 F. 2d 644, 646 n. 3 (CA8 1966) (§§ 7201 and 7203); Escobar v. United States, 388 F. 2d 661 (CA5 1967), cert. denied, 390 U. S. 1024 (1968) (§§ 7206 (1) and 7207). Other inconsistencies in interpreting the word "willfully” have compounded the confusion. See n. 8, infra. Cf. United States v. Lachmann, 469 F. 2d 1043 (CA1 1972) (§§7201 and 7203).
United States v. Haseltine, 419 F. 2d 579, 581 (1970) (§§ 7201 and 7203); United States v. Fahey, n. 2, supra; Eustis v. United States, 409 F. 2d 228 (1969) (§ 7203); Edwards v. United States, 375 F. 2d 862 (1967) (§§7201, 7203, and 7206 (2)); Martin v. United States, n. 2, supra; Abdul v. United States, n. 2, supra.
One possible result of this distinction, of course, is that the Government’s burden in a misdemeanor case could be less than in a felony case.
The applicability of § 3616 (a) of the 1939 Code to income tax returns was not contested in Berra v. United States, 351 U. S. 131, 133 (1956), but the Court soon held that that statute “did not apply to evasion of the income tax.” Achilli v. United States, 353 U. S. 373, 379 (1957). In Sansone, however, statutory revisions effected by the enactment of the 1954 Code were held to make § 7207 applicable to income tax violations. Sansone v. United States, 380 U. S. 343, 347-349 (1965).
See H. R. Rep. No. 1337, 83d Cong., 2d Sess., A425 (1954); S. Rep. No. 1622, 83d Cong., 2d Sess., 602-603 (1954). The predecessor to § 7206 (1) was § 3809 (a) of the 1939 Code. The antecedent to § 7207 was, as we have noted above, § 3616 (a) of the 1939 Code. See Scmsone, 380 U. S., at 347.
Ҥ 6065. Verification of returns.
"(a) Penalties of perjury.
“Except as otherwise provided by the Secretary or his delegate, any return, declaration, statement, or other document required to be made under any provision of the internal revenue laws or regulations shall contain or be verified by a written declaration that it is made under the penalties of perjury.” See also Treas. Reg. § 1.6065-1 (1972).
Semantic confusion sometimes has been created when courts discuss the express requirement of an “attempt to evade” in § 7201 as if it were implicit in the word “willfully” in that statute. This type of analysis produces language suggesting that “willfully” in § 7201 has a different meaning from the same term in § 7203. See United States v. Ming, 466 F. 2d 1000, 1004 (CA7), cert. denied, 409 U. S. 915 (1972) (§§ 7201 and 7203); United States v. Matosky, 421 F. 2d 410 (CA7), cert. denied, 398 U. S. 904 (1970) (§7203); United States v. Haseltine, 419 F. 2d, at 581; Edwards v. United States, 375 F. 2d, at 867; United States v. Schipani, 362 F. 2d 825, 831 (GA2), cert. denied, 385 U. S. 934 (1966). This Court may be somewhat responsible for this imprecision because a similar analysis was employed in Spies v. United States, 317 U. S 492, 497-499 (1943). Greater clarity might well result from an analysis that distinguishes the express elements, such as an “attempt to evade,” prescribed by § 7201, from the uniform requirement of willfulness.
The Government has argued that the misdemeanor of § 7207 could never be a lesser included offense in § 7206 (1) because the misdemeanor requires that the actor have knowledge of the falsity. This is said to create an additional element in the misdemeanor, not present in the felony, so the misdemeanor is not “necessarily included” in the felony, within the meaning of Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 31 (c). Our conclusion that the word "willfully” has the same meaning in both statutes makes it unnecessary to reach this contention.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
A
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The petition for certiorari is granted limited to Question 2 presented in the petition, namely, whether a city, in a public nuisance abatement action brought against a motion picture theater, must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the motion pictures at issue are obscene.
The Santa Ana City Attorney brought this action against respondents to abate a public nuisance pursuant to Cal. Civ. Proc. Code Ann. §731 (West 1980). The complaint alleged that numerous films shown by the respondents were obscene and thus constituted a public nuisance as defined by Cal. Civ. Code Ann. §§3479, 3480 (West 1970). The complaint sought, inter alia, court approval of a resolution passed by the Santa Ana City Council revoking all of respondents’ operating licenses and permits, a permanent injunction forbidding respondents to show the films named in the complaint, and a 1-year closure of respondents’ theater.
The trial court determined that the complaint presented both equitable and legal issues and ordered that a jury trial be held on the issues of obscenity, public nuisance, and damages prior to resolution of the equitable issues by the court. The jury trial was divided into liability and damages stages. After the evidence pertaining to obscenity and public nuisance had been presented, the jury was instructed that they could find the films at issue to be obscene only if they were persuaded of such “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The jury found 11 films obscene, 4 not obscene, and was unable to reach a verdict on 2 others.
Following a jury determination of damages, the court issued findings of fact and conclusions of law with respect to the equitable issues. The court found, independently from the jury verdict and based upon its own viewing, that the same 11 films were obscene beyond a reasonable doubt as the term obscene is defined in Cal. Penal Code Ann. § 311(a) (West 1970). There were cross-appeals, the city asserting, among other things, that the trial court erred in imposing the beyond-reasonable-doubt burden of proof. The California Court of Appeal affirmed on this issue. Relying on this Court’s observation that “the regulation of a communicative activity such as the exhibition of motion pictures must adhere to more narrowly drawn procedures than is necessary for the abatement of an ordinary nuisance,” Vance v. Universal Amusement Co., 445 U. S. 308, 315 (1980) (per curiam), and Justice Brennan’s statement that “the hazards to First Amendment freedoms inhering in the regulation of obscenity require that even in ... a civil proceeding, the State comply with the more exacting standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” McKinney v. Alabama, 424 U. S. 669, 683-684 (1976) (concurring opinion), the court concluded that “one of the required procedures is that obscenity be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” People ex rel. Gow v. Mitchell Bros.’ Santa Ana Theater, 114 Cal. App. 3d 923, 936, 171 Cal. Rptr. 85, 93 (1981). We reverse.
The purpose of a standard of proof is “to instruct the factfinder concerning the degree of confidence our society thinks he should have in the correctness of factual conclusions for a particular type of adjudication.” In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358, 370 (1970) (Harlan, J., concurring). Three standards of proof are generally recognized, ranging from the “preponderance of the evidence” standard employed in most civil cases, to the “clear and convincing” standard reserved to protect particularly important interests in a limited number of civil cases, to the requirement that guilt be proved “beyond a reasonable doubt” in a criminal prosecution. See Addington v. Texas, 441 U. S. 418, 423-424 (1979). This Court has, on several occasions, held that the “clear and convincing” standard or one of its variants is the appropriate standard of proof in a particular civil case. See Addington v. Texas, supra, at 431 (civil commitment); Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc., 403 U. S. 29, 52 (1971) (libel); Woodby v. INS, 385 U. S. 276, 285 (1966) (deportation); Chaunt v. United States, 364 U. S. 350, 353 (1960) (denaturalization); Schneiderman v. United States, 320 U. S. 118, 159 (1943) (denaturalization). However, the Court has never required the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard to be applied in a civil case. “This unique standard of proof, not prescribed or defined in the Constitution, is regarded as a critical part of the ‘moral force of the criminal law,’ In re Winship, 397 U. S., at 364, and we should hesitate to apply it too broadly or casually in noncriminal cases.” Addington v. Texas, supra, at 428.
Thus while a State may require proof beyond reasonable doubt in an obscenity case, that choice is solely a matter of state law. The First and Fourteenth Amendments do not require such a standard. The judgment of the Court of Appeal is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
The petition is otherwise denied.
Section 731 provides in pertinent part:
“An action may be brought by any person whose property is injuriously affected, or whose personal enjoyment is lessened by a nuisance, as the same is defined in section thirty-four hundred and seventy-nine of the Civil Code, and by the judgment in such action the nuisance may be enjoined or abated as well as damages recovered therefor. A civil action may be brought in the name of the people of the State of California to abate a public nuisance, as the same is defined in section thirty-four hundred and eighty of the Civil Code, ... by the city attorney of any town or city in which such nuisance exists . . . .”
Sections 3479 and 3480 provide in pertinent part:
“§ 3479. . . . Anything which is injurious to health, or is indecent or offensive to the senses, or an obstruction to the free use of property, so as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property, ... is a nuisance.”
“§ 3480. ... A public nuisance is one which affects at the same time an entire community or neighborhood, or any considerable number of persons, although the extent of the annoyance or damage inflicted upon individuals may be unequal.”
See also People ex rel. Busch v. Projection Room Theater, 17 Cal. 3d 42, 49, 550 P. 2d 600, 603-604 (exhibition of obscene films may be characterized as “indecent” or “offensive to the senses”), cert. denied sub nom. Van de Kamp v. Projection Room Theater, 429 U. S. 922 (1976).
Section 311(a) reads:
“ ‘Obscene matter’ means matter, taken as a whole, the predominant appeal of which is to the average person, applying contemporary standards, is to prurient interest, i.e., a shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion; and is matter which taken as a whole goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in description or representation of such matters; and is matter which taken as a whole is utterly without redeeming social importance.”
The court’s conclusion rested solely on federal grounds; no state authority was cited for the proposition that obscenity must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
The precise verbal formulation of this standard varies, and phrases such as “clear and convincing,” “clear, cogent, and convincing,” and “clear, unequivocal, and convincing” have all been used to require a plaintiff to prove his case to a higher probability than is required by the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard. C. McCormick, Evidence §320, p. 679 (1954). See also Kaplan, Decision Theory and the Factfinding Process, 20 Stan. L. Rev. 1065, 1072 (1968).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
C
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Chief Justice Warren
announced the judgment of the Court and an opinion in which
Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Stewart concur.
The issue before us in this case is whether embezzled funds are to be included in the “gross income” of the embezzler in the year in which the funds are misappropriated under § 22 (a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1939 and § 61 (a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954.
The facts are not in dispute. The petitioner is a union official who, with another person, embezzled in excess of $738,000 during the years 1951 through 1954 from his employer union and from an insurance company with which the union was doing business. Petitioner failed to report these amounts in his gross income in those years and was convicted for willfully attempting to evade the federal income tax due for each of the years 1951 through 1954 in violation of § 145 (b) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1939 and § 7201 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. He was sentenced to a total of three years’ imprisonment. The Court of Appeals affirmed. 273 F. 2d 5. Because of a conflict with this Court’s decision in Commissioner v. Wilcox, 327 U. S. 404, a case whose relevant facts are concededly the same as those in the case now before us, we granted certiorari. 362 U. S. 974.
In Wilcox, the Court held that embezzled money does not constitute taxable income to the embezzler in the year of the embezzlement under § 22 (a) of the internal Revenue Code of 1939, Six years later, this Court held, in Rutkin v. United States, 343 U. S. 130, that extorted money does constitute taxable income to the extortionist in the year that the money is received under § 22 (a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1939. In Rutkin, the Court did not overrule Wilcox, but stated:
“Wé do not reach in this case the factual situation involved in Commissioner v. Wilcox, 327 U. S. 404. We limit that case to its facts. There embezzled funds were held not to constitute taxable income to the embezzler under § 22 (a).” Id., at 138.
However, examination of the reasoning used in Rutkin leads us inescapably to the conclusion that Wilcox was thoroughly devitalized.
The basis for the Wilcox decision was “that a taxable gain is conditioned upon (1) the presence of a claim of right to the alleged gain and (2) the absence of a definite, unconditional obligation to repay or return that which would otherwise constitute a gain. Without some bona fide legal or equitable claim, even though it be contingent or contested in nature, the taxpayer cannot be said to have received any gain or profit within the reach of §22 (a).” Commissioner v. Wilcox, supra, at p. 408. Since Wilcox embezzled the money, held it “without any semblance of a bona fide claim of right,” ibid., and therefore “was at all times under an unqualified duty and obligation to repay the money to his employer,” ibid., the Court found that the money embezzled was not includible within “gross income.” But, Rutkin’s legal claim was no greater than that of Wilcox. It was specifically found “that petitioner had no basis for his claim . . . and that he obtained it by extortion.” Rutkin v. United States, supra, at p. 135. Both Wilcox and Rutkin obtained the money by means of a criminal act; neither had a bona fide claim of right to the funds. Nor was Rutkin’s obligation to repay the extorted money to the victim any less than that of Wilcox. The victim of an extortion, like the victim of an embezzlement, has a right to restitution. Furthermore, it is inconsequential that an embezzler may lack title to the sums he appropriates while an extortionist may gain a voidable title. Questions of federal income taxation are not determined by .such “attenuated subtleties.” Lucas v. Earl, 281 U. S. 111, 114; Corliss v. Bowers, 281 U. S. 376, 378. Thus, the fact that Rutkin secured the money with the consent of his victim, Rutkin v. United States, supra, at p. 138, is irrelevant. Likewise unimportant is the fact that the sufferer of an extortion is less likely to seek restitution than one whose funds are embezzled. What is important is that the right to recoupment exists in both situations.
Examination of the relevant cases in the courts of appeals lends credence to our conclusion that the Wilcox rationale was effectively vitiated by this Court’s decision in Rutkin, Although this case appears to be the first to arise that is “on all fours” with Wilcox, the lower federal courts, in deference to the undisturbed Wilcox holding, have earnestly endeavored to find distinguishing facts in the cases before them which would enable them to include sundry unlawful gains within “gross income.”
It had been a well-established principle, long before either Rutkin or Wilcox, that unlawful, as well as lawful, gains are comprehended within the term “gross income.” Section II B of the Income Tax Act of 1913 provided that “the net income of a taxable person shall include gains, profits, and income . . . from ... the transaction of any lawful business carried on for gain or profit, or gains or profits and income derived from any source whatever . . . .” (Emphasis supplied.) 38 Stat. 167. When the statute was amended in 1916, the one word “lawful” was omitted. This revealed, we think, the obvious intent of that Congress to tax income derived from both legal and illegal sources, to remove the incongruity of having the gains of the honest laborer taxed and the gains of the dishonest immune. Rutkin v. United States, supra, at p. 138; United States v. Sullivan, 274 U. S. 259, 263. Thereafter, the Court held that gains from illicit traffic in liquor are includible within “gross income.” Ibid. See also Johnson v. United States, 318 U. S. 189; United States v. Johnson, 319 U. S. 503. And, the Court has pointed out, with approval, that there “has been a widespread and settled administrative and judicial recognition of the taxability of unlawful gains of many kinds,” Rutkin v. United States, supra, at p. 137. These include protection payments made to racketeers, ransom payments paid to kidnappers, .bribes, money derived from the sale of unlawful insurance policies, graft, black market gains, funds obtained from the operation of lotteries, income from race track bookmaking and illegal prize fight pictures. Ibid.
The starting point in all cases dealing with the question of the scope of what is included in “gross income” begins with the basic premise that the purpose of Congress was “to use the full measure of its taxing power.” Helvering v. Clifford, 309 U. S. 331, 334. And the Court has given a liberal construction to the broad phraseology of the “gross income” definition statutes in recognition of the intention of Congress to tax all gains except those specifically exempted. Commissioner v. Jacobson, 336 U. S. 28, 49; Helvering v. Stockholms Enskilda Bank, 293 U. S. 84, 87-91. The language of § 22 (a) of the 1939 Code, “gains or profits and income derived from any source whatever,” and the more simplified language of § 61 (a) of the 1954 Code, “all income from whatever source derived,” have been held to encompass all “aeces- • sions to wealth, clearly realized, and over which the taxpayers have complete dominion.” Commissioner v. Clenshaw Glass Co., 348 U. S. 426, 431. A gain “constitutes taxable income when its recipient has such control over it that, as a practical matter, he derives readily realizable economic value from it.” Rutkin v. United States, supra, at p. 137. Under these broad principles, we believe that petitioner’s contention, that all unlawful gains are taxable except those resulting from embezzlement, should fail.
When a taxpayer acquires earnings, lawfully or unlawfully, without the consensual recognition, express or implied, of an obligation to repay and without restriction as to their disposition, “he has received income which he is required to return, even though it may still be claimed that he is not entitled to retain the, money, and even though he may still be adjudged hable to restore its equivalent.” North American Oil v. Burnet, supra, at p. 424. In such case, the taxpayer has “actual command over the property taxed — the actual benefit for which the tax is paid,” Corliss v. Bowers, supra. This standard brings wrongful appropriations within the broad sweep of “gross income”; it excludes loans. When a law-abiding taxpayer mistakenly receives income in one year, which receipt is assailed and found to be invalid in a subsequent year, the taxpayer must nonetheless report the amount as “gross income” in the year received. United States v. Lewis, supra; Healy v. Commissioner, supra. We do not believe that Congress intended to treat a law-breaking taxpayer differently. Just as the honest taxpayer may deduct any amount repaid in the year in which the repayment is made, the Government points out that, “If, when, and to the extent that the victim recovers back the misappropriated funds, there is of course a reduction in the embezzler’s income.” Brief for the United States, p. 24.
Petitioner contends that the Wilcox rule has been in existence since 1946; that if Congress had intended to change the rule, it would have done so; that there was a general revision of the income tax laws in 1954 without mention of the rule; that a bill to change it was introduced in the Eighty-sixth Congress but was not acted upon; that, therefore, we may not change the rule now. But the fact that Congress has remained silent or has re-enacted a statute which we have construed, or that congressional attempts to amend a rule announced by this Court have failed, does not necessarily debar us from re-examining and correcting the Court’s own errors. Girouard v. United States, 328 U. S. 61, 69-70; Helvering v. Hallock, 309 U. S. 106, 119-122. There may have been any number of reasons why Congress acted as it did. Helvering v. Hallock, supra. One of the reasons could well be our subsequent decision in Rutkin which has been thought by many to have repudiated Wilcox. Particularly might this be true in light of the decisions of the Courts of Appeals which have been riding a narrow rail between the two cases and further distinguishing them to the disparagement of Wilcox. See notes 8 and 9, supra.
We believe that Wilcox was wrongly decided and we find nothing in congressional history since then to persuade us that Congress intended to legislate the rule. Thus, we believe that we should now correct the error and the confusion resulting from it, certainly if we do so in a manner that will not prejudice those who might have relied on it. Cf. Helvering v. Hallock, supra, at 119. We should not continue to confound confusion, particularly when the result would be to perpetuate the injustice of relieving embezzlers of the duty of paying income taxes on the money they enrich themselves with through theft while honest people pay their taxes on every conceivable type of income.
But, we are dealing here with a felony conviction under statutes which apply to any person who “willfully” fails to account for his tax or who “willfully” attempts to evade his obligation. In Spies v. United States, 317 U. S. 492, 499, the Court said that § 145 (b) of the 1939 Code embodied “the gravest of offenses against the revenues,” and stated that willfulness must therefore include an evil motive and want of justification in view of all the circumstances. Id., at 498. Willfulness “involves a specific intent which must be proven by independent evidence and which cannot be inferred from the mere understatement of income.” Holland v. United States, 348 U. S. 121, 139.
We believe that the element of willfulness could not be proven in a criminal prosecution for failing to include embezzled funds in gross income in the year of misappropriation so long as the statute contained the gloss placed upon it by Wilcox at the time the alleged crime was committed. Therefore, we feel that petitioner’s conviction may not stand and that the indictment against him must be dismissed.
Since Mr. Justice Harlan, Mr. Justice Frank- ' eurter, and Mr. Justice Clark agree with us concerning Wilcox, that case is overruled. Mr. Justice Black, Mr. Justice ' Douglas, and Mr. Justice Whittaker believe that petitioner’s conviction must be reversed and the case dismissed for the reasons stated in their opinions.
Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the case is remanded to the District Court with directions to dismiss the indictment.
It is so ordered.
§ 22. Gross Income.
“(a) General Definition. — ‘Gross income’ includes gains, profits, and income derived from salaries, wages, or compensation for personal service ... of whatever kind and in whatever form paid, or from professions, vocations, trades, businesses, commerce, or sales, or dealings in property, whether real or personal, growing out of the ownership or use of or interest in such property; also from interest, rent, dividends, securities, or the transaction of any business carried on for gain or profit, or gains or profits and income derived from any source whatever. . . .” (26 U. S. C. (1952 ed.) §22 (a).)
§ 61. Gross Income Defined..
“(a) General Definition. — Except as otherwise provided in this subtitle, gross income means all income from whatever source derived....” (26 U. S. C. §61 (a).)
Petitioner has pleaded guilty to the offense of conspiracy to embezzle in the-Court of Essex County, New Jersey.
§ 145. Penalties.
“ (b) Failure to Collect and Pay Over Tax, or Attempt to Defeat or Evade Tax. — Any person required under this chapter to collect, account for, and pay over any tax imposed by this chapter, who willfully fails to collect or truthfully account for and pay over such tax, and any person who willfully attempts in any manner to evade or defeat any tax imposed by this chapter or the payment thereof, shall, in addition to other penalties provided by law, be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution.” (26 U. S. C. (1952 ed.) § 145 (b).)
§ 7201. Attempt to Evade or Defeat Tax.
“Any person who willfully attempts in any manner to evade or defeat any tax imposed by this title or the payment thereof shall, in addition to other penalties provided by law, be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than HOjOOO, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution.” (26 U, S. C. § 7201.)
The dissenters in Rutkin stated that the Court had rejected the Wilcox interpretation of § 22 (a). Id., at 140.
The Government contends that the adoption in Wilcox of a claim of right test as a touchstone of taxability had no support in the prior cases of this Court; that the claim of right test was a doctrine invoked by the Court in aid of the concept of annual accounting, to determine when, not whether, receipts constituted income. See North American Oil v. Burnet, 286 U. S. 417; United States v. Lewis, 340 U. S. 590; Nealy v. Commissioner, 345 U. S. 278. In view of our reasoning set forth below, we need not pass on this contention. The use to which we put the claim of right test here is only to demonstrate that, whatever its validity as a test of whether certain receipts constitute income, it calls for no distinction between Wilcox and Rutkin.
In Marienfeld v. United States, 214 F. 2d 632, the Eighth Circuit stated, “We find it difficult to reconcile the Wilcox case with the later opinion of the Supreme Court in Rutkin . . . .” Id., at 636. The Second Circuit announced, in United States v. Bruswitz, 219 F. 2d 59, “It is difficult to perceive what, if anything, is left of the Wilcox holding after Rutkin ....’’ Id., at 61. The Seventh Circuit’s prior decision in Macias v. Commissioner, 255 F. 2d 23, observed, “If this reasoning [of Rutkin] had been employed in Wilcox, we see no escape from the conclusion that the decision in that case would have been different. In our view, the Court in Rutkin repudiated its holding in Wilcox; certainly it repudiated the reasoning by which the result was reached in that case.” Id., at 26 .
For example, Kann v. Commissioner, 210 F. 2d 247, was differentiated on the following grounds: the taxpayer was never indicted or convicted of embezzlement; there was no adequate proof that the victim did not forgive the misappropriation; the taxpayer was financially able to both pay the income tax and make restitution; the taxpayer would have likely received most of the misappropriated money as dividends. In Marienfeld v. United States, supra, the court believed that the victim was not likely to repudiate. In United States v. Wyss, 239 F. 2d 658, the distinguishing factors were that the district judge had not found as a fact that the taxpayer embezzled the funds and the money had not as yet been reclaimed by the victim. See also Briggs v. United States, 214 F. 2d 699, 702; Prokop v. Commissioner, 254 F. 2d 544, 554-555. Cf. J. J. Dix, Inc., v. Commissioner, 223 F. 2d 436.
Petitioner urges upon us the case of Alison v. United States, 344 U. S. 167. But that case dealt with the right of the victim of an embezzlement to take a deduction, under § 23 (e) and (f) of the 1939 Code, in the year of the discovery of the embezzlement rather than the year in which, the embezzlement occurred. The Court held only “that the special factual circumstances found by the District Courts in both these cases justify deductions under I. R. C., §§ 23 (e) and (f) and the long-standing Treasury Regulations applicable to embezzlement losses.” Id., at 170. The question of inclusion of embezzled funds in “gross income” was not presented in Alison.
H. R. 8854, 86th Cong., 1st Sess.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 view of the representation in the Solicitor General’s argument at the Bar that the blood grouping test requirement here involved is presently and has been for some time applied without discrimination “in every case, irrespective of race, whenever deemed necessary,” and in view of our remand of the case, we need not now pass upon the claim of unconstitutional discrimination.
It appearing that the blood grouping tests made herein were in some respects inaccurate and the reports thereof partly erroneous and conflicting, the judgments heretofore entered are vacated and the case is remanded to the District Court with directions that the hearings before the Special Inquiry Officer or a Board of Special Inquiry be reopened, so that new, accurate blood grouping tests may be made under appropriate circumstances, and that relevant evidence may be received as offered on the issues involved. The excludability of petitioners remains to be determined upon those proceedings.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
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.
After the 1980 census, Texas’ congressional delegation increased from 24 to 27 members. A reapportionment plan, Senate Bill No. 1 (SB1), was enacted on August 14, 1981, and then submitted to the Attorney General for preclearance. While it was pending before him, suit was filed in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Texas challenging the constitutionality of SB1 and its validity under §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 437, as amended, 42 U. S. C. § 1973. A three-judge court was empaneled, held a hearing, and delayed any further action until after the Attorney General acted. On January 29, 1982, the Attorney General entered an objection to SB1. Specifically, he objected to the lines drawn for two contiguous districts in south Texas, Districts 15 and 27. He stated that the State “has satisfied its burden of demonstrating that the submitted plan is nondiscriminatory in purpose and effect” with respect to the other 25 districts. In the face of this objection, which made SB1 unenforceable, and the obvious unconstitutionality of the prior apportionment plan, the court ordered the parties to provide written submissions along with maps, plats, and other data to aid the court in reaching a court-ordered reapportionment plan. A hearing was held on February 9. The court then proceeded to resolve the Attorney General’s objection to Districts 15 and 27. 536 F. Supp. 931. All other districts of the court’s plan, except for those in Dallas County, were identical to those of SB1. The court devised its own districts for Dallas County, and it is that part of the District Court’s judgment that is on appeal here. A stay and expedited consideration are requested.
Judge Sam Johnson and Judge Justice wrote separately, but agreed that SBl’s plan for Dallas County could not be implemented. Judge Justice alone determined that the SB1 plan for Dallas County was unconstitutional. In Judge Johnson’s view, since SB1 was a nullity, the entire plan had to be a court-ordered plan which must conform to § 5, 42 U. S. C. § 1973c, standards, including the “no retrogression rule” of Beer v. United States, 425 U. S. 130 (1976). However, he thought that in two respects the standards applicable to court-ordered plans were stricter than those that must be observed by a legislature: population equality and racial fairness. Judicial application of the no retrogression standard, in his view, is limited to consideration of purely numerical factors; unlike a legislature, a court cannot consider the “innumerable political factors that may affect a minority group’s access to the political process.” 536 F. Supp., at 948. Although a court must defer to legislative judgments on reapportionment as much as possible, it is forbidden to do so when the legislative plan would not meet the special standards of population equality and racial fairness that are applicable to court-ordered plans.
SBl’s treatment of Dallas County failed to meet the test of racial fairness for a court-ordered plan. Under SB1, minority strength in District 5, in Dallas County, would have gone from 29.1 percent to 12.1 percent. Apparently, the minority votes had been shifted to District 24, which increased in minority population from 37.4 percent to 63.8 percent. Judge Johnson reasoned that this change would reduce minority effectiveness in District 5 substantially and would not guarantee a “safe” seat in District 24. This “would result in a severe retrogression in the Dallas County area.” Id., at 957, n. 39. He specifically recognized that SBl’s plans for Dallas County had been formulated in response to the interests expressed by minority voters in creating a “safe” seat. He did not hold this legislative response to be unconstitutional, nor did he criticize it as inconsistent with § 5 as it applied to legislative redistricting. A court, however, could not, in his view, consider the same factors as a legislature. The court, therefore, redrew the boundaries of Districts 5 and 24, and the two adjoining Districts, 3 and 26. Under the court-ordered plan, District 5 would have a minority population of 31.87 percent and District 24 would have 45.7 percent.
Appellants, who are Republican Party officials in Texas, contend that the District Court simply substituted its own reapportionment preferences for those of the state legislature and that this is inconsistent with Wise v. Lipscomb, 437 U. S. 535 (1978); McDaniel v. Sanchez, 452 U. S. 130 (1981); and White v. Weiser, 412 U. S. 783 (1973). They argue that in the absence of any objection to the Dallas County districts by the Attorney General, and in the absence of any finding of a constitutional or statutory violation with respect to those districts, a court must defer to the legislative judgments the plans reflect, even under circumstances in which a court order is required to effect an interim legislative apportionment plan. We agree and, therefore, summarily reverse.
The relevant principles that govern federal district courts in reapportionment cases are well established:
“From the beginning, we have recognized that ‘reapportionment is primarily a matter for legislative consideration and determination, and that judicial relief becomes appropriate only when a legislature fails to reapportion according to federal constitutional requisites in a timely fashion after having had an adequate opportunity to do so.’ We have adhered to the view that state legislatures have ‘primary jurisdiction’ over legislative reapportionment. . . . Just as a federal district court, in the context of legislative reapportionment, should follow the policies and preferences of the State, as expressed in statutory and constitutional provisions or in the reapportionment plans proposed by the state legislature, whenever adherence to state policy does not detract from the requirements of the Federal Constitution, we hold that a district court should similarly honor state policies in the context of congressional reapportionment. In fashioning a reapportionment plan or in choosing among plans, a district court should not pre-empt the legislative task nor ‘intrude upon state policy any more than necessary.’” White v. Weiser, 412 U. S., at 794-795 (citations omitted).
Weiser itself presents a good example of when such an intrusion is not necessary. We held there that the District Court erred when, in choosing between two possible court-ordered plans, it failed to choose that plan which most closely approximated the state-proposed plan. The only limits on judicial deference to state apportionment policy, we held, were the substantive constitutional and statutory standards to which such state plans are subject. Id., at 797.
We reached a similar conclusion in Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U. S. 124, 160-161 (1971), in which we held that the District Court erred in fashioning a court-ordered plan that rejected state policy choices more than was necessary to meet the specific constitutional violations involved. Indeed, our decision in Whitcomb directly conflicts with the lower court’s order in this case. Specifically, we indicated that the District Court should not have rejected all multimember districts in the State, absent a finding that those multimember districts were unconstitutional. Ibid. We reached this conclusion despite the fact that we had previously held that “when district courts are forced to fashion apportionment plans, single-member districts are preferable to large multimember districts as a general matter.” Connor v. Johnson, 402 U. S. 690, 692 (1971). See also Chapman v. Meier, 420 U. S. 1, 19 (1975) (indicating that court-ordered plans should, in some circumstances, defer to, or respect, a state policy of multimember districting).
It is true that this Court has held that court-ordered reapportionment plans are subject in some respects to stricter standards than are plans developed by a state legislature. Wise v. Lipscomb, supra, at 540; Connor v. Finch, 431 U. S. 407, 414 (1977). This stricter standard applies, however, only to remedies required by the nature and scope of the violation: “The remedial powers of an equity court must be adequate to the task, but they are not unlimited.” Whitcomb v. Chavis, supra, at 161. We have never said that the entry of an objection by the Attorney General to any part of a state plan grants a district court the authority to disregard aspects of the legislative plan not objected to by the Attorney General. There may be reasons for rejecting other parts of the State’s proposal, but those reasons must be something other than the limits on the court’s remedial actions. Those limits do not come into play until and unless a remedy is required; whether a remedy is required must be determined on the basis of the substantive legal standards applicable to the State’s submission.
Whenever a district court is faced with entering an interim reapportionment order that will allow elections to go forward it is faced with the problem of “reconciling the requirements of the Constitution with the goals of state political policy.” Connor v. Finch, supra, at 414. An appropriate reconciliation of these two goals can only be reached if the district court’s modifications of a state plan are limited to those necessary to cure any constitutional or statutory defect. Thus, in the absence of a finding that the Dallas County reapportionment plan offended either the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act, the District Court was not free, and certainly was not required, to disregard the political program of the Texas State Legislature.
Although the District Court erred, it does not necessarily follow that its plan should not serve as an interim plan governing the forthcoming congressional elections. The filing date for candidates, which was initially postponed by the District Court, has now come and gone. The District Court has also adjusted other dates so that the primary elections scheduled for May 1 may be held. The State of Texas, although it disagrees with the judgment of the District Court with respect to Dallas County, urges that the election process should not now be interrupted and a new schedule adopted, even for Dallas County. It is urged that because the District Court’s plan is only an interim plan and is subject to replacement by the legislature in 1983, the injury to appellants, if any, will not be irreparable.
It is true that we have authorized District Courts to order or to permit elections to be held pursuant to apportionment plans that do not in all respects measure up to the legal requirements, even constitutional requirements. See, e. g., Bullock v. Weiser, 404 U. S. 1065 (1972); Whitcomb v. Chavis, 396 U. S. 1055 (1970). Necessity has been the motivating factor in these situations,
Because we are not now as familiar as the District Court with the Texas election laws and the legal and practical factors that may bear on whether the primary elections should. be rescheduled, we vacate the District Court judgment and remand the case to that court for further proceedings. See Connor v. Waller, 421 U. S. 656 (1975); Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U. S. 1, 4 (1964). Having indicated the legal error of the District Court, we leave it to that court in the first instance to determine whether to modify its judgment and reschedule the primary elections for Dallas County or, in spite of its erroneous refusal to adopt the SB1 districts for Dallas County, to allow the election to go forward in accordance with the present schedule.
The judgment of the Court shall issue forthwith.
So ordered.
His objection, however, went to the entire plan, and on February 23, he refused the State’s request that the objection be severed and addressed to only a portion of SB1 (but see n. 7, infra).
The existing apportionment plan created only 24, not 27 districts, and the changes in population over the past 10 years had created extreme numerical variations between the districts, which were unconstitutional under the one-man, one-vote rule.
Judge Parker dissented from the relevant part of the court order — he would have followed SB1 in Dallas County.
The relevant passage of Judge Johnson’s opinion reads as follows:
“This Court recognizes that certain minority group members expressed a desire for a ‘safe’ minority district in Dallas County. After consideration of numerous political factors, and substantial legislative battling, the Texas Legislature decided on the configurations in S.B.l .... The legislature was at liberty to engage in such considerations. This Court, in fashioning a nonretrogressive apportionment plan does not have that privilege. It must evaluate the new plan without access to questions regarding the ability of separate minority groups to form coalitions or other political concerns. ... It is not before this Court to determine whether considerations valid in the legislative context justify simply increasing swing-vote influence in one district at the expense of the influence previously enjoyed in a neighboring district. This Court determines, however, that, in the context of a court-ordered apportionment plan, such a trade-off would result in a retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise.” 536 F. Supp., at 957, n. 9.
Appellants are supported in this appeal by the State of Texas. While Texas agrees with them on the merits of this case and supports a summary reversal of the District Court decision, it asks that this Court delay any remedial action until after the 1982 elections. In other words, Texas chai-lenges the merits of the District Court decision, but contends that it would be too disruptive and expensive to attempt to alter the 1982 elections at this point.
Appellants propose two other arguments. First, under Texas law an invalid statutory provision is severable. Therefore, the fact that the Attorney General objected to the validity of SBl’s district lines for 2 districts did not invalidate the plans for the other 25 districts. Second, the “stricter standards” applicable to court-ordered plans apply only to the use of multimember districts and population variations beyond a de minimis amount. In particular, this “stricter standard” does not apply to plans that have already been precleared by the Attorney General. In light of our disposition of the case, we need not reach either of these arguments.
The Attorney General took the same position in declining to grant preclearance to that portion of SB1 that he did not find objectionable:
“Since the federal district courts will be acting in the stead of the Legislature we believe that the courts should attempt to effectuate the legislative judgment to the extent possible and modify the Legislature’s plans only as necessary to meet the concerns raised in the objection letters. In other words, we believe the court should make such modifications to the plans as would normally be made by the Legislature if it were in session.” App. to Juris. Statement F-3 (letter of Wm. Bradford Reynolds, Assistant Attorney General, to Texas Secretary of State).
In this Court, the Solicitor General takes a slightly different position. He contends that the question of what weight a district court should give to a legislative plan that is partially objected to by the Attorney General is substantial and, therefore, merits plenary consideration by this Court.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
B
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sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Once again, this time in an antitrust context, the Court is confronted with an issue concerning integrated poultry operations. Petitioner phrases the issue substantially as follows:
Is a producer of broiler chickens precluded from qualifying as a “farmer,” within the meaning of the Capper-Volstead Act, when it employs an independent contractor to tend the chickens during the “grow-out” phase from chick to mature chicken?
The issue apparently is of importance to the broiler industry and in the administration of the antitrust laws.
I
In April 1973, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, the United States brought suit against petitioner National Broiler Marketing Association (NBMA). It alleged that NBMA had conspired with others not named, but including members of NBMA, in violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 1 (1976 ed.). It prayed for injunctive relief and that NBMA “be ordered to make whatever changes are necessary in its organization and operation to insure compliance with the judgment” of the court. Record 10. In its answer NBMA alleged, among other things, that its status, as a cooperative association of persons engaged in the production of agricultural products, sheltered it from antitrust liability for the acts alleged, under § 1 of the Capper-Volstead Act, also known as the Cooperative Marketing Associations Act, 42 Stat. 388, 7 U. S. C. §291 (1976 ed.).
On motion and cross-motion for partial summary judgment, the District Court concluded that the involvement of all the members of NBMA in the production of broiler chickens was sufficient to justify their classification as “farmers,” within the meaning of the Act, and that NBMA therefore was a cooperative entitled to the limited exemption from the antitrust laws the Act afforded. 1975-2 Trade Cases ¶ 60,509.
On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed. It held that all the NBMA members were not farmers in the ordinary, popular meaning of that word and as it was employed in. 1922 when the Capper-Volstead Act became law. 550 F. 2d 1380 (1977). Because of the importance of the issue for the agricultural community and for the administration of the antitrust laws, we granted certiorari. 434 U. S. 888 (1977).
II
NBMA is a nonprofit cooperative association organized in 1970 under Georgia law. It performs various cooperative marketing and purchasing functions on behalf of its members. App. 7. Its membership has varied somewhat during the course of this litigation, but apparently it has included as many as 75 separate entities. Id., at 172.
These members are all involved in the production and marketing of broiler chickens. Production involves a number of distinct stages: the placement, raising, and breeding of breeder flocks to produce eggs to be hatched as broiler chicks; the hatching of the eggs and placement of those chicks; the production of feed for the chicks; the raising of the broiler chicks for a period, not to exceed, apparently, 10 weeks; the catching, cooping, and hauling of the “grown-out” broiler chickens to processing facilities; and the operation of facilities to process and prepare the broilers for market. Id., at 7.
The broiler industry has become highly efficient and departmentalized in recent years, and stages of production that in the past might all have been performed by one enterprise may now be split and divided among several, each with a highly specialized function. No longer are eggs necessarily hatched where they are laid, and chicks are not necessarily raised where they are hatched. Conversely, some stages that in the past might have been performed by different persons or enterprises are now combined and controlled by a single entity. Also, the owner of a breeder flock may own a processing plant.
All the members of NBMA are “integrated,” that is, they are involved in more than one of these stages of production. Many, if not all, directly or indirectly own and operate a processing plant where the broilers are slaughtered and dressed for market. All contract with independent growers for the raising or grow-out of at least part, and usually a substantial part, of their flocks. Id., at 8. Often the chicks placed with an independent grower have been hatched in the member’s hatchery from eggs produced by the member’s breeder flocks. The member then places its chicks with the independent grower for the grow-out period, provides the grower with feed, veterinary service, and necessary supplies, and, with its own employees, usually collects the mature chickens from the grower. Generally, the member retains title to the birds while they are in the care of the independent grower. Ibid.
It is established, however, ibid.; Brief for Petitioner 5 n. 2, that six NBMA members do not own or control any breeder flock whose offspring are raised as broilers, and do not own or control any hatchery where the broiler chicks are hatched. And it appears from the record that three members do not own a breeder flock or hatchery, and also do not maintain any grow-out facility. These members, who buy chicks already hatched and then place them with growers, enter the production line only at its later processing stages.
Ill
The Capper-Yolstead Act removed from the proscription of the antitrust laws cooperatives formed by certain agricultural producers that otherwise would be directly competing with each other in efforts to bring their goods to market. But if the cooperative includes among its members those not so privileged under the statute to act collectively, it is not entitled to the protection of the Act. Case-Swayne Co. v. Sunkist Growers, Inc., 389 U. S. 384 (1967). Thus, in order for NBMA to enjoy the limited exemption of the Capper-Volstead Act, and, as a consequence, to avoid liability under the antitrust laws for its collective activity, all its members must be qualified to act collectively. It is not enough that a typical member qualify, or even that most of NBMA’s members qualify. We therefore must determine not whether the typical integrated broiler producer is qualified under the Act but whether all the integrated producers who are members of NBMA are entitled to the Act’s protection.
The Act protects “[p'Jersons engaged in the production of agricultural products as farmers, planters, ranchmen, dairymen, nut or fruit growers” (emphasis added). A common-sense reading of this language clearly leads one to conclude that not all persons engaged in the production of agricultural products are entitled to join together and to obtain and enjoy the Act’s benefits! The italicized phrase restricts and limits the broader preceding phrase “[pjersons engaged in the production of agricultural products . . . .”
The purposes of the Act, as revealed by the legislative history, confirm the conclusion that not all those involved in bringing agricultural products to market may join cooperatives exempt under the statute, and have the cooperatives retain that exemption. The Act was passed in 1922 to remove the threat of antitrust restrictions on certain kinds of collective activity, including processing and handling, undertaken by certain persons engaged in agricultural production. Similar organizations of those engaged in farming, as well as organizations of laborers, were already entitled, since 1914, to special treatment under § 6 of the Clayton Act, 38 Stat. 731, 15 U. S. C. § 17 (1976 ed.). This treatment, however, had proved to be inadequate. Only nonstock organizations were exempt under the Clayton Act, but various agricultural groups had discovered that, in order best to serve the needs of their members, accumulation of capital was required. With capital, cooperative associations could develop and provide the handling and processing services that were needed before their members’ products could be sold. The Capper-Yolstead Act was passed to make it clear that the formation of an agricultural organization with capital would not result in a violation of the antitrust laws, and that the organization, without antitrust consequences, could perform certain functions in preparing produce for market. Mr. Justice Black summarized this legislative history in his opinion for a unanimous Court in Maryland & Virginia Milk Producers Assn. v. United States, 362 U. S. 458, 464-468 (1960), and it is further discussed in Case-Swayne, 389 U. S., at 391.
Farmers were perceived to be in a particularly harsh economic position. They were subject to the vagaries of market conditions that plague agriculture generally, and they had no means individually of responding to those conditions. Often the farmer had little choice about who his buyer would be and when he would sell. A large portion of an entire year’s labor devoted to the production of a crop could be lost if the farmer were forced to bring his harvest to market at an unfavorable time. New farmers, however, so long as they could act only individually, had sufficient economic power to wait out an unfavorable situation. Farmers were seen as being caught in the hands of processors and distributors who, because of their position in the market and their relative economic strength, were able to take from the farmer a good share of whatever profits might be available from agricultural production. By allowing farmers to join together in cooperatives, Congress hoped to bolster their market strength and to improve their ability to weather adverse economic periods and to deal with processors and distributors.
NBMA argues that this history demonstrates that the Act was meant to protect all those that must bear the costs and risks of a fluctuating market, and that all its members, because they are exposed to those costs and risks and must make decisions affected thereby, are eligible to organize in exempt cooperative associations. The legislative history indicates, however, and does it clearly, that it is not simply exposure to those costs and risks, but the inability of the individual farmer to respond effectively, that led to the passage of the Act. The congressional debates demonstrate that the Act was meant to aid not the full spectrum of the agricultural sector but, instead, to aid only those whose economic position rendered them comparatively helpless. It was, very definitely, special-interest legislation. Indeed, several attempts were made to amend the Act to include certain processors who, according to preplanting contracts, paid growers amounts based on the market price of processed goods; these attempts were roundly rejected. Clearly, Congress did not intend to extend the benefits of the Act to the processors and packers to whom the farmers sold their goods, even when the relationship was such that the processor and packer bore a part of the risk.
Petitioner suggests that agriculture has changed since 1922, when the Act was passed, and that an adverse decision here “might simply accelerate an existing trend toward the absorption of the contract grower by the integrator,” or “might induce the integrators to rewrite their contracts with the contract growers to designate the latter as lessor-employees rather than independent contractors.” Brief for Petitioner 13; see id., at 24, 26, and Tr. of Oral Arg. 17. We may accept the proposition that agriculture has changed in the intervening 55 years, but, as the second Mr. Justice Harlan said, when speaking for the Court in another context, a statute “is not an empty vessel into which this Court is free to pour a vintage that we think better suits present-day tastes.” United States v. Sisson, 399 U. S. 267, 297 (1970). Considerations of this kind are for the Congress, not the courts.
IV
We, therefore, conclude that any member of NBMA that owns neither a breeder flock nor a hatchery, and that maintains no grow-out facility at which the flocks to which it holds title are raised, is not among those Congress intended to protect by the Capper-Volstead Act. The economic role of such a member in the production of broiler chickens is indistinguishable from that of the processor that enters into a preplanting contract with its supplier, or from that of a packer that assists its supplier in the financing of his crops. Their participation involves only the kind of investment that Congress clearly did not intend to protect. We hold that such members are not “farmers,” as that term is used in the Act, and that a cooperative organization that includes them — or even one of them — as members is not entitled to the limited protection of the Capper-Yolstead Act.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings.
It is so ordered.
See Bayside Enterprises, Inc. v. NLRB, 429 U. S. 298 (1977).
The Court of Appeals described the issue in this manner:
“We must decide whether broiler industry companies that neither own nor operate farms can be 'farmers’ within the meaning of a 1922 federal statute called the Capper-Volstead Act, which gives farmers’ cooperatives some measure of protection from the antitrust laws” (footnote omitted). 550 F. 2d 1380, 1381 (CA5 1977).
Nineteen States have filed a brief amicus curiae and assert interests as antitrust litigants. See In re Chicken Antitrust Litigation, M. D. L. No. 237, ND Ga. No. C74r-2454A. See also Brown, United States v. National Broiler Marketing Association: Will the Chicken Lickin’ Stand?, 56 N. C. L. Rev. 29 (1978); Department of Agriculture, Farmer Cooperative Service, Legal Phases of Farmer Cooperatives (1976); Note, Trust Busting Down on the Farm: Narrowing the Scope of Antitrust Exemptions for Agricultural Cooperatives, 61 Va. L. Rev. 341 (1975).
Section 1 of the Capper-Yolstead Act provides in pertinent part:
“Persons engaged in the production of agricultural products as farmers, planters, ranchmen, dairymen, nut or fruit .growers may act together in associations, corporate or otherwise, with or without capital stock, in collectively processing, preparing for market, handling, and marketing in interstate and foreign commerce, such products of persons so engaged. Such associations may have marketing agencies in common; and such associations and their members may make the necessary contracts and agreements to effect such purposes . . .
The statute further provides that any such association must be operated for the mutual benefit of its members; that it may not pay dividends of more than 8% annually on its stock or membership capital; and that it “shall not deal in the products of nonmembers to an amount greater in value than such as are handled by it for members.” Section 2 of the Act, 7 U. S. C. §292 (1976 ed.), provides for certain regulation of the association by the Secretary of Agriculture.
In order to facilitate the appeal, the United States, after the District Court’s decision, amended the complaint to limit its allegations of conspiracy to the members of NBMA. App. 94r-95. This was done without prejudice to any later renewal of allegations abandoned by the amendment. Id., at 91. Noting that the United States did not dispute that if NBMA were a qualified cooperative, the exemption afforded by the Capper-Volstead Act provided a complete defense to the amended complaint, and restating its conclusion that NBMA’s members were entitled to join in a cooperative under the Act, the District Court dismissed the amended complaint with prejudice. Id., at 105-108; 1976-1 Trade Cases ¶ 60,801.
Georgia Cooperative Marketing Act, Ga. Code § 65-201 et seq. (1975). The Act authorizes cooperative associations of “persons engaged in the production of . . . agricultural products.” § 65-205. When first organized, NBMA was chartered as a cooperative association with capital stock. In December 1973, after the complaint in this suit had been filed, its articles of incorporation were amended to authorize the cancellation of its capital stock and the conversion of the association to a nonprofit membership cooperative association not having stock. App. 6.
There is no suggestion by the parties that this change in organization in any way affects the issue presented in the case.
The record includes more specific but nevertheless limited references to NBMA’s activities. It has been involved in the purchasing of feed ingredients and of other specialized products used by its members in raising broilers and preparing them for market, in market research and planning, and in conducting a foreign trade sales program. Id., at 137-139. The full range of NBMA’s activities may well be put in issue on remand.
Broilers are chickens that a.re slaughtered at 7 to 9 (or 8 to 10) weeks of age and processed for sale to supermarkets, restaurants, hotels and other institutions. Id., at 8, 93, 98. The United States has conceded that, for the purposes of this litigation, a broiler chicken is an agricultural product. Id., at 7.
Compare, for example, Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Adjustment Administration, W. Termohlen, J. Kinghorne, & E. Warren, An Economic Survey of the Commercial Broiler Industry (1936), with V. Benson & T. Witzig, The Chicken Broiler Industry: Structure, Practices, and Costs (Dept, of Agriculture, Economic Rep. No. 381, 1977). See generally E. Roy, Contract Farming and Economic Integration, ch. 4, “Broiler Chickens” (2d ed. 1972); Department of Agriculture, Packers and Stockyards Administration, The Broiler Industry: An Economic Study of Structure, Practices and Problems (1967); Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, B. Marion & H. Arthur, Dynamic Factors in Vertical Commodity Systems: A Case Study of the Broiler System (1973).
See Table G-1, and the data as to Members 2, 3, and 20, attached to affidavit of I. R. Barnes, submitted by petitioner and accepted as to accuracy by the United States. Record 467; App. 187-188.
The Act does not remove from the general operation 'of the antitrust laws the deahngs of such cooperatives with others. United States v. Borden Co., 308 U. S. 188, 203-205 (1939).
See Malat v. Riddell, 383 U. S. 669, 571 (1966); Addison v. Holly Hill Fruit Products, Inc., 322 U. S. 607, 618 (1944).
The report on the bill that became the Act stressed that the limitations on “the kind of associations to which the legislation applies” were “aimed to exclude from the benefits of this legislation all but actual farmers and all associations not operated for the mutual help of their members as such producers.” H. R. Rep. No. 24, 67th Cong., 1st Sess., 1 (1921). See also H. R. Rep. No. 939, 66th Cong., 2nd Sess., 1 (1920).
Senator Kellogg, a supporter of the bill, read this language to have a restrictive meaning:
“Mr. CUMMINS .... Are the words 'as farmers, planters, ranch-men, dairymen, nut or fruit growers’ used to exclude all others who may be engaged in the production of agricultural products, or are those words merely descriptive of the general subject?
“Mr. KELLOGG. I think they are descriptive of the general subject. I think 'farmers’ would have covered them all.
“Mr. CUMMINS. I think the Senator does not exactly catch my point. Take the flouring mills of Minneapolis: They are engaged, in a broad sense, in the production of an agricultural product. The packers are engaged, in a broad sense, in the production of an agricultural product. The Senator does not intend by this bill to confer upon them the privileges which the bill grants, I assume?
“Mr. KELLOGG. Certainly not; and I do not think a proper construction of the bill grants them any such privileges. The bill covers farmers, people who produce farm products of all kinds, and out of precaution the descriptive words were added.
“Mr. TOWNSEND. They must be persons who produce these things.
“Mr. KELLOGG. Yes; that has always been the understanding.” 62 Cong. Rec. 2052 (1922).
Section 6 of the Clayton Act reads:
“The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce. Nothing contained in the antitrust laws shall be construed to forbid the existence and operation of labor, agricultural, or horticultural organizations, instituted for the purposes of mutual help, and not having capital stock or conducted for profit, or to forbid or restrain individual members of such organizations from lawfully carrying out the legitimate objects thereof; nor shall such organizations, or the members thereof, be held or construed to be illegal combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade, under the antitrust laws.”
See also, e. g., 59 Cong. Rec. 7851-7852 (1920) (remarks of Rep. Morgan.); id., at 8017 (remarks of Rep. Volstead). See generally Ballan-tine, Co-operative Marketing Associations, 8 Minn. L. Rev. 1 (1923) ; L. Hulbert, Legal Phases of Cooperative Associations 43-47 (Department of Agriculture Bull. No. 1106,1922).
The Court specifically has acknowledged the relationship of the exemption for labor unions and that for farm cooperatives:
“These large sections of the population — those who labored with their hands and those who worked the soil — were as a matter of economic fact in a different relation to the community from that occupied by industrial combinations. Farmers were widely scattered and inured to habits of individualism; their economic fate was in large measure dependent upon contingencies beyond their control.” Tigner v. Texas, 310 U. S. 141, 145 (1940).
See also Liberty Warehouse Co. v. Tobacco Growers, 276 U. S. 71, 92-93 (1928); Frost v. Corporation Comm’n, 278 U. S. 515, 538-543 (1929) (Brandéis, J., dissenting).
See, e. g., 59 Cong. Rec. 8025 (1920) (remarks of Rep. Hersman); id., at 9154 (extended remarks of Rep. Michener); 61 Cong. Rec. 1040 (1921) (remarks of Rep. Towner); 62 Cong. Rec. 2048-2049 (1922) (remarks of Sen. Kellogg); id., at 2058 (remarks of Sen. Capper).
Essentially the same argument was made and rejected by the Court in Case-Swayne Co. v. Sunkist Growers, Inc., 389 U. S. 384, 393-396 (1967), in which it concluded that a cooperative of orange growers, which included some members who operated packing houses but grew no fruit, was not entitled to the protection of the Act.
NBMA asserts that the integrator bears 90%, or more, of broiler production costs, as compared with the grower’s 10%, or less. Tr. of Oral Arg. 13; Brief for Petitioner 16, 21.
This amendment, repeatedly introduced by Senator Phipps, would have inserted the following language after “nut or fruit growers” (see n. 4, supra):
“and where any such agricultural product or products must be submitted to a manufacturing process, in order to convert it or them into a finished commodity, and the price paid by the manufacturer to the producer thereof is controlled by or dependent upon the price received by the manufacturer for the finished commodity by contract entered into before the production of such agricultural product or products, then any such manufacturers.” 62 Cong. Ree. 2227,2273-2275, 2281 (1922).
The dissent suggests, post, at 849, that petitioner’s members “partake in substantially all of the risks of bringing a crop . . . from ohick to broiler.” Although it is true that petitioner’s members bear some of the risks associated with bringing each flock to market, they do not bear all the risks. Growers dealing with many of petitioner’s members, including M2, M3, and probably M20, receive no payment for their labor if a flock is lost due, in some cases, to the weather, and in other cases, to disease. See Table G-2, App. 195. And, perhaps more importantly, petitioner’s members do not bear all the risks associated with changes in demand over a longer period of time. Very few of petitioner’s members, not including M2 or M3, provide the growers with whom they deal anything more than “informal assurances” that the member will continue to place flocks with the grower and therefore that the grower will receive a return on the investment he has in his grow-out facilities. See Table G-7, App. 219.
Because we conclude that these members have not made the kind of investment that would entitle them to the protection of the Act, we need not consider whether, even if they had, they would be ineligible for the protection of the Act because their economic position is such that they are not helplessly exposed to the risks about which Congress was concerned. Thus we need not consider here the status under the Act of the fully integrated producer that not only maintains its own breeder flock, hatchery, and grow-out facility, but also runs its own processing plant. Neither'do we consider the status of the less fully integrated producer that, although maintaining a grow-out facility, also contracts with independent growers for a large portion of the broilers processed at its facility.
There is nothing in the record that would allow us to consider whether these integrators are “too small” to own their own breeder flocks, hatcheries, or grow-out facilities, or whether, because of the history of their economic development, they have concentrated only on the feed production and processing aspects of broiler production.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
H
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sc_issuearea
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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The narrow question presented by this case is whether the fact that the Federal Government has agreed to indemnify a state instrumentality against the costs of litigation, including adverse judgments, divests the state agency of Eleventh Amendment immunity. We hold that it does not.
I — I
Respondent, a citizen of New York, brought suit against the Regents of the University of California and several individual defendants in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Although he alleged other claims, we are concerned only with respondent’s breach-of-contract claim against the University. Doe contends that the University agreed to employ him as a mathematical physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which the University operates pursuant to a contract with the Federal Government. According to his complaint, the University wrongfully refused to perform its agreement with Doe because it determined that he could not obtain the required security clearance from the Department of Energy (Department). Relying on Ninth Circuit cases holding that the University is “an arm of the state,” the District Court concluded that the Eleventh Amendment barred respondent from maintaining his breach-of-contract action in federal court.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. Assuming that in some, but not all, of its functions the University is entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity, the court addressed the narrow question whether it is an arm of the State when “acting in a managerial capacity” for the Liver-more Laboratory. Doe v. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 65 F. 3d 771, 774 (1995). Although the majority applied “a five-factor analysis,” it emphasized that “liability for money judgment is the single most important factor in determining whether an entity is an arm of the state.” Ibid. The majority opinion gave decisive weight to the terms of the University’s agreement with the Department, which made it “clear that the Department, and not the State of California, is liable for any judgment rendered against the University in its performance of the Contract.” Ibid.
The dissenting judge did not take issue with the majority’s emphasis on the importance of the defendant’s liability for a money judgment, but he reasoned that the proper analysis should focus on the primary legal liability rather than the ultimate economic impact of the judgment. Noting that it was undisputed that a judgment against the University “is a legal obligation of the State of California,” id., at 777, he discounted the significance of the indemnitor’s secondary, or indirect, liability. For his conclusion, he relied on Ninth Circuit precedent suggesting that a State may not confer Eleventh Amendment immunity on an entity or individual who would otherwise not enjoy that immunity simply by volunteering to satisfy judgments against the entity, Durning v. Citibank, N. A., 950 F. 2d 1419, 1425, n. 3 (1991), or by passing a statute indemnifying individual officers from liability, Blaylock v. Schwinden, 862 F. 2d 1352, 1353-1354 (1988). “The question is not who pays in the end; it is who is legally obligated to pay the judgment that is being sought.” 65 F. 3d, at 777-778.
Because other Courts of Appeals agree with the dissent’s focus on legal rather than financial liability, we granted cer-tiorari to resolve the conflict. 518 U. S. 1004 (1996).
t — I HH
The Eleventh Amendment provides:
“The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.”
It has long been settled that the reference to actions “against one of the United States” encompasses not only actions in which a State is actually named as the defendant, but also certain actions against state agents and state instru-mentalities. Poindexter v. Greenhow, 114 U. S. 270, 287 (1885); In re Ayers, 123 U. S. 443, 487 (1887); Smith v. Reeves, 178 U. S. 436, 438-439 (1900); Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury of Ind., 323 U. S. 459 (1945). Thus, “when the action is in essence one for the recovery of money from the state, the state is the real, substantial party in interest and is entitled to invoke its sovereign immunity from suit even though individual officials are nominal defendants.” Id., at 464.
When deciding whether a state instrumentality may invoke the State’s immunity, our eases have inquired into the relationship between the State and the entity in question. In making this inquiry, we have sometimes examined “the essential nature and effect of the proceeding,” ibid.; see also Kennecott Copper Corp. v. State Tax Comm’n, 327 U. S. 573, 576 (1946), and sometimes focused on the “nature of the entity created by state law” to determine whether it should “be treated as an arm of the State,” Mt. Healthy City Bd. of Ed. v. Doyle, 429 U. S. 274, 280 (1977).
Of course, the question whether a money judgment against a state instrumentality or official would be enforceable against the State is of considerable importance to any evaluation of the relationship between the State and the entity or individual being sued. Hess v. Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation, 513 U. S. 30, 45-51 (1994); Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651, 663 (1974); Ford Motor, 323 U. S., at 464. In Hess, we evaluated the relationship between ah entity created by a bistate compact and the States that had joined to create that entity in order to determine whether that entity could properly be denominated as an “arm” of either of its founding States for the purposes of the Eleventh Amendment. In addition to considering the position of the bistate entity as a unique creature within the federal system, 513 U. S., at 39-42, and the nature of the claims at issue in the underlying proceeding, id., at 42, we focused particular attention on the fact that “both legally and practically” neither of the relevant States would have been obligated to pay a judgment obtained against the bistate entity, id., at 51-52.
Respondent seeks to detach the importance of a State’s legal liability for judgments against a state agency from its moorings as an indicator of the relationship between the State and its creation and to convert the inquiry into a formalistic question of ultimate financial liability. But none of the reasoning in our opinions lends support to the notion that the presence or absence of a third party’s undertaking to indemnify the agency should determine whether it is the kind of entity that should be treated as an arm of the State.
Just as with the arm-of-the-state inquiry, we agree with the dissenting judge in the Court of Appeals that with respect to the underlying Eleventh Amendment question, it is the entity’s potential legal liability, rather than its ability or inability to require a third party to reimburse it, or to discharge the liability in the first instance, that is relevant. Surely, if the sovereign State of California should buy insurance to protect itself against potential tort liability to pedestrians stumbling on the steps of the State Capitol, it would not cease to be “one of the United States.”
Accordingly, we reject respondent’s principal contention— that the Eleventh Amendment does not apply to this litigation because any award of damages would be paid by the Department of Energy, and therefore have no impact upon the treasury of the State of California. The Eleventh Amendment protects the State from the risk of adverse judgments even though the State may be indemnified by a third party.
Ill
As an alternative ground for affirmance, respondent invites us to reexamine the validity of the Ninth Circuit cases holding that the University is an arm of the State. He argues that we should look beyond the potential impact of an adverse judgment on the state treasury, and examine the extent to which the elected state government exercises “real, immediate control and oversight” over the University, see id., at 62 (O’Connor, J., dissenting), as well as the character of the function that gave rise to the litigation. Because the question we granted certiorari to address does not encompass this argument, we decline to address it.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
It is so ordered.
See App. to Pet. for Cert. A-22, A-24, and A-28 (citing Thompson v. City of Los Angeles, 885 F. 2d 1439, 1442-1443 (1989), and Jackson v. Hayakawa, 682 F. 2d 1344, 1350 (1982)).
The court relied on one case holding that Congress had abrogated the University’s immunity from suit for patent infringement, Genentech, Inc. v. Eli Lilly & Co., 998 F. 2d 931, 940-941 (CA Fed. 1993), cert. denied, 510 U. S. 1140 (1994), and another holding that the University had waived its immunity in some eases, In re Holoholo, 512 F. Supp. 889, 901-902 (Haw. 1981), for its conclusion that the “University is an enormous entity which functions in various capacities and which is not entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity for all of its functions.” Doe v. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 65 F. 3d 771, 775 (1995). We have no occasion to consider questions of waiver or abrogation of immunity in this ease. Nor is it necessary to decide whether there may be some state instrumen-talities that qualify as “arms of the State” for some purposes but not others.
The five factors considered by the court in evaluating whether the University is an arm of the State were: “[1] whether a money judgment would be satisfied out of state funds, [2] whether the entity performs central governmental functions, [3] whether the entity may sue or be sued, [4] whether the entity has power to take property in its own name or only the name of the state, and [5] the corporate status of the entity.” Id., at 774.
See Cronen v. Texas Dept. of Human Services, 977 F. 2d 934, 938 (CA5 1992) (“[T]he source of the damages is irrelevant when the suit is against the state itself or a state agency”); Cannon v. University of Health Sciences/The Chicago Medical School, 710 F. 2d 351, 357 (CA7 1983) (“No authority supports Cannon’s argument that [the Eleventh Amendment] analysis is altered by the possibility that a damage award would be met through insurance proceeds or from federal funds”).
Ultimately, of course, the question whether a particular state agency has the same kind of independent status as a county or is instead an arm of the State, and therefore “one of the United States” within the meaning of the Eleventh Amendment, is a question of federal law. But that federal question can be answered only after considering the provisions of state law that define the agency’s character.
We relied in Mt. Healthy on our earlier decision that a California county is not an “arm of the State” and therefore may be considered a “citizen” of California for the purpose of determining the federal court’s diversity jurisdiction over a state-law claim. Moor v. County of Alameda, 411 U. S. 693, 717-721 (1973). In Moor we made a “detailed examination of the relevant provisions of California law” defining counties, noting that the county “is liable for all judgments against it and is authorized to levy taxes to pay such judgments,” that it is “empowered to issue general obligation bonds,” and that it has other characteristics that provide “persuasive indicia of the independent status occupied by California counties relative to the State of California.” Id., at 719-721.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
H
|
sc_issuearea
|
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
By the terms of an agreement (the Agreement) authorized by § 2 Eleventh of the Railway Labor Act between the Southern Railway Company and a number of railway labor organizations including the two petitioners herein, employees of Southern are obligated, as a condition of employment, to pay the periodic dues, initiation fees and assessments uniformly required as a condition of acquiring or retaining membership in the union representing their particular class or craft. The individual respondents herein are a number of- such employees belonging to classes or crafts represented by petitioners. When the Agreement was adopted respondents were not union members. They refused to pay petitioners any part of the moneys required under the- Agreement, instead bringing this action in the Superior Court of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, to restrain its. enforcement. After a trial the Superior Court granted an injunction upon the jury’s separate findings that moneys exacted under the Agreement were used by petitioners for purposes- not reasonably necessary or related to collective bargaining, namely; (1) to support or oppose legislation, (2) to influence votes in elections for public office, (3) to make campaign contributions in such elections, (4) to support the death-benefits system operated by petitioner Brotherhood of Railway Clerks. The injunction restrained petitioners “from placing any compulsion of any nature upon the [respondents] . . . whereby they . . . against their free will and choice would be required to join the Defendant Unions ... or pay money to said Unions.” It was provided, however, that upon a. showing by petitioners of the proportion of expenditures from exacted funds that was reasonably necessary and related to collective bargaining, the injunction would be modified appropriately.
On appeal, the Supreme Court of North Carolina reversed, Allen v. Southern R. Co., 249 N. C. 491, 107 S. E. 2d 125, holding that judgment for petitioners was required by our decision in Railway Employes’ Dept. v. Hanson, 351 U. S. 225, where we held that § 2 Eleventh was a valid exercise by Congress of its powers -under the Commerce Clause and did not violate the First Amendment or the Due Process Clause of the Fifth. However, rehearing was granted, and pending decision thereon we decided International Assn. of Machinists v. Street, 367 U. S. 740. Upon reconsideration of the Superior Court’s judgment in the light of that decision, the Supreme Court of North Carolina divided equally, which had the effect of affirming the lower court’s judgment. 256 N. C. 700, 124 S. E. 2d 871 (per curiam); see Schoenith v Town & Country Realty Co., 244 N. C. 601, 94 S. E. 2d 592 (per curiam); Ward v. Odell Mfg. Co., 126 N. C. 946, 36 S. E. 194. We granted certiorari, 371 U. S. 875, to consider whether the injunction granted by the Superior Court might stand consistently with our decision in Street. We reverse and remand for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
First. We held in Street “that § 2, Eleventh is to be ' construed to deny the unions, oyer an employee’s objection, the power to use his exacted funds to support political causes which he opposes.” 367 U. S., at 768-769. Respondents’ amended complaint alleges that sums exacted under the Agreement “have been and are and will be regularly and continually used by the defendant Unions to carry on, finance and pay for political activities directly at cross-purposes with the free will and choice of the plaintiffs.” This allegation sufficiently states a cause of action. It would be impracticable to require a dissenting employee to allege and prove each distinct union political expenditure to which he objects; it is enough that he manifests his opposition to any political expenditures by the union. But we made clear in Street that “dissent is not to be presumed — it must affirmatively be made known to the union by the dissenting employee.” 367 U. S., at 774. At trial, only 14 of the respondents testified that they objected to the use of exacted sums for political causes. No respondent who does not in ■ the course of the further proceedings in this case prove that he objects to such use will be entitled to relief. This is not and cannot be a class action. See note 4, supra. “The union receiving money exacted from an employee under a union-shop agreement should not in fairness be subjected to sanctions in favor of an employee who makes no complaint of the use of his money for such activities.” 367 U. S., at 774.
Second. We also held in Street that an injunction relieving dissenting employees of all obligation to pay the moneys due under an agreement authorized by § 2 Eleventh was impermissible. Such employees “remain obliged, as á condition of continued employment, to make the payments to their respective unions called for by the agreement. Their . . . grievance stems from the spending of their funds for purposes not authorized by the Act in the face of their objection, not from the enforcement of the union-shop agreement by the mere collection of funds.” 367 U. S., at 771. The injunction granted by the Superior Court was thus improper, even though it is subject to modification if petitioners come forward and prove the proportion of exacted funds required for purposes germane to collective bargaining. Even such a remedy, we' think, “sweeps too broadly . . . [and] might well interfere with the . . . unions' performance of those functions and duties which the Railway Labor Act places upon them to attain its goal of stability in the industry.” Ibid.
It also follows from Street that the Superior Court erred in granting respondents interim relief against compliance with the financial obligations imposed by the Agreement.As a result of this relief none of the. respondents has taken any steps toward compliance since the suit was instituted. We think that lest the important fúnctions of labor organizations under the Railway Labor Act be unduly impaired, dissenting employees (at least in the absence of special circumstances not shown here) can be entitled to no relief until final judgment in their favor is entered. Therefore, on remand respondents should be given a reasonable time within which they must pay to the bargaining representative of their class or craft all sums required under the Agreement, including arrears, that are owing; as to any respondent failing to do this, the action must be dismissed.
Third. We suggested in Street that among the permissible remedies for dissenting employees were “an injunction against éxpenditure for political causes opposed by each complaining employee of a sum, from those moneys to be spent by the union for political purposes, which is so much of the moneys exacted from him as is the proportion of the union’s total expenditures made for such political activities to the union’s total budget,” and restitution of such a sum already exacted from the complainant and expended by the union over his objection. 367 U. S., at 774-775. The necessary predicate for. such remedies is a division of the union’s political expenditures from those germane to collective bargaining, since only the former, to the extent made from exacted funds of dissenters, are not authorized by §-2 Eleventh. But at trial. no evidence was offered by either side, nor was the jury required to make findings, as to the total amount of union expenditures for political purposes, the breakdown of the total union budget according to particular kinds of expenditure, or the proportion of political expenditures in the total union budget of a given period. On remand, in order to frame a decree embodying the suggested remedies, two determinations will have to be made: (1) what expenditures disclosed by the récord are political; (2) what percentage of total union expenditures are political expenditures. As to (1) we presently intimate no view, see note 7, infra, because here, as in Street, see 367 U. S., at 768-770, the courts below made no attempt to draw the boundary between political expenditures and those germane to collective bargaining, and it would be inappropriate for this Court to do so in the first instance and upon the present record. As to (2) the present record is insufficient to enable any calculation.
Since the unions possess the facts and records from which the proportion of political to total union expenditures can reasonably be calculated, basic considerations of fairness compel that they, not the individual employees, bear the burden of proving such proportion. Absolute precision in the calculation of such proportion is not, of course, to be expected or required; we are mindful of the difficult accounting problems that may arise. And no decree would be proper which appeared likely to infringe the unions’ right to expend. uniform exactions under the union-shop agreement in support of activities germane to collective bargaining and, as well, to expend nondissenters’ such exactions in support of political activities.
Fourth. While adhering to the principles governing remedy which we announced in Street, see 367 U. S., at 771-775, we think it appropriate to suggest, in addition, a practical decree to which each respondent proving his right to relief would be entitled. Such, a decree would order (1) the refund to him of a portion of the exacted funds in the same proportion that union political expenditures bear to total union expenditures, and (2) a reduction of future such exactions from him by the same proportion. We recognize that practical difficulties may attend a decree reducing an employee’s obligations under the union-shop agreement by a fixed proportion, since the proportion of the union budget devoted to political activities may not be constant. The difficulties in judicially administered relief, although not insurmountable (a decree once entered would of course be modifiable upon a showing of changed circumstances), should, we think, encourage petitioner unions to consider the adoption by their membership of some voluntary plan by which dissenters would be afforded an internal' union remedy. There is precedent for such a plan. If a union- agreed upon a formula for ascertaining the proportion bf political expenditures in its budget, and made available a simple procedure for allowing dissenters to be excused from having to pay this proportion of moneys due from them under the union-shop agreement, prolonged and expensive litigation might well be averted. The instant action, for example, has been before the courts for 10 years and has not yet run its course. It is a lesson of our national history of industrial relations that resort to litigation to settle the rights of labor organizations and employees very often proves unsatisfactory. The courts will not shrink from affording what remedies they may, with due regard for the legitimate interests of all parties; but it is appropriate to remind the parties of the availability of more practical alternatives to litigation for the vindication of the rights and accommodation of interests here involved.
Reversed and remanded.
Mr. Justice Black, while adhering to the views he expressed in International Assn. of Machinists v. Street, 367 U. S. 740, 780-797, concurs in the judgment and opinion of the Court in this case because he believes both .are in accord with the holding and opinion of the Court in the Street case.
Mr. Justice Goldberg took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
[For opinion of Mr. Justice Harlan, see post, p. 129.]
APPENDIX TO OPINION OF THE COURT.
The Trade Union Act of 1913, 2 & 3 Geo. V, c. 30, reads in part as follows:
3. — (1) The funds of a trade union shall not be applied, either directly or in conjunction with any other trade union, association, or body, or otherwise indirectly, in the furtherance of the political objects to which this section applies (without prejudice to the furtherance of any other political objects), unless the furtherance of those objects has been approved as an object of the union by a resolution for the time being in force passed on a ballot of the members of the union taken in accordance with this Act for the purpose by a majority of the members voting; and where such a resolution is in force, unless rules, to be approved, whether the union is registered or not, by the Registrar of Friendly Societies, are in force providing—
•(a) That any payments in the furtherance of. those objects are to be made out of a separate fund (in this Act referred to as the political fund of the union), and for the exemption in accordance with this Act of ahy member of the union from any obligation to contribute to such a fund if he gives notice in accordance with this Act that he objects to contribute; and
(6) That a member who is exempt from the obligation to contribute to the political fund of the union shall not be excluded from any benefits of the union, or placed in any respect either directly or indirectly under any disability or at any disadvantage as compared with other members of the union (except in relation to the control or management of the political fund) by reason of his being so exempt, and that contribution to the political fund of the union shall not be made a condition for admission to the' union.
(2) If any member of a trade union alleges that he is aggrieved by a breach of any rule made in pursuance of this section, he may complain to the Registrar of Friendly Societies, and the Registrar of Friendly Societies, after giving the complainant and any representative of the union an opportunity of being heard, may, if he considers that such a'breach has been committed, make such order for remedying the breach as he thinks just under the circumstances; and any such order of the Registrar shall be binding and conclusive on all parties without appeal and shall not be removable into any court of law or restrainable by injunction, and on being recorded in the county court, may be enforced as if it had been an order of the county court. . . .
(3) The political objects to which this section applies are the expenditure of money—
(а) on the payment of any expenses incurred either directly or indirectly by a candidate or prospective candidate for election to Parliament or to any public office, before, during, or after the election in connexion with his candidature or election; or
(б) on the holding of any meeting or the distribution of any literature or documents in support of any such candidate or prospective candidate; or
(c) on the maintenance of any person who is a member of Parliament or who holds a public office; or
.(d) in connection with the registration of electors or the selection of a candidate, for Parliament or any public office; or
(e) on the holding of political meetings of any kind, or on the distribution of political literature or political documents of any kind, unless the main purpose of the meetings or of the distribution of the literature or documents is the furtherance of statutory objects within the meaning of this Act.
The expression “public office” in this section means the office of member of any county, county borough, district, or parish council, or board of guardians, of of any public body who have power to raise money, either directly or indirectly, by means of a rate.
(4) A resolution under this section approving political objects as an object of the union shall take effect as if it were a r.ule of the union and may be rescinded in the-sarr e manner and subject to the same provisions as such a ruia.
(5) The' provisions of this Act as to the application of the funds of a union for political purposes shall app - to a union which is in whole or in part an association or combination of other unions as if the individual members of the component unions were the members of that union and not the unions; but nothing in this Act shall prevent any such component union from collecting from any of their members who are not exempt on behalf of the association or combination any contributions to the political fund of the association or combination.
4. — (1) A ballot for the purposes of this Act shall be taken in accordance with rules of the union to be approved for the purpose, whether the union is registered or not, by the Registrar of Friendly Societies, but the Registrar of Friendly Societies shall not approve any such rules unless he is satisfied that every member has an equal right, and, if reasonably possible, a fair opportunity of voting, and that the secrecy of the ballot is properly secured.
(2) If the Registrar of Friendly Societies is satisfied, and certifies, that rules for the purpose of a ballot under this Act or rules made for other purposes of this Act which require approval by the Registrar, have been approved by a majority of members of a trade union, whether registered or not, voting for the purpose, or by a majority of delegates of such a trade union voting at a meeting called for the purpose, those rules shall have effect as rules of the union, notwithstanding that the provisions of the rules of the union as to the alteration of rules or the making of new rules have not been complied with.
5. — (1) A member of a trade union may . at any time give notice, in the form set out in the Schedule to this Act or in a form to the like effect, that he objects to contribute to the political fund of the union, and, on the adoption of a resolution of the union approving the furtherance of political objects as an .object of the union, notice shall be given to the members of the union acquainting them-that each member has a right to be exempt from contributing to the political fund of the union, and that a form of exemption notice can be obtained by or on behalf of a member either by application at or by post' from the head office or any branch office of the union or the office of the Registrar of Friendly Societies.
Any such notice to members of the union shall be given in accordance with rules of the union approved for the purpose by the Registrar of Friendly Societies, having regard in each case to the existing practice and to the character of the union.
(2) On giving notice in accordance with this Act of his objection to contribute, a member of the union shall be exempt, so long as his notice is not withdrawn, from contributing to the political fund of the union as from the first day of January next after the notice is given, or, in the case of a notice given within one month after the. notice given to members under'this Section on the adoption of a resolution approving the furtherance of political objects, as from the date on which the member’s notice is given.
6. Effect may be given to the exemption of members to contribute to the political fund of a union either by a separate levy of contributions to that fund from the members of the union who are not exempt, and in that case the rules shall provide that no moneys of the union other than the amount raised by such separate levy shall be carried to that fund, or by relieving any members who are exempt from the payment of the whole or any part of any periodical contributions required from the members of the union towards the expenses of the union, and in that case the rules shall provide that the relief shall be given as far as possible to all members who are exempt on the occasion of the same periodical payment and for enabling each member of the union to know as respects any such periodical contribution, what portion, if any, of the sum payable by him is a contribution to the political fund of the union.
SCHEDULE.
Form of Exemption Notice.
Name of Trade Union
Political Fund (Exemption Notice).
I hereby give notice that I object to contribute to the Political Fund of the Union,
and am in consequence exempt, in manner provided by the Trade Union Act, 1913, from contributing to that fund.
A. B.
Address
day of 19
Section 2 Eleventh, 45 U. .S. C. § 152 Eleventh, provides in part:
“Notwithstanding any other provisions of this chapter, or of any other statute or law of the United States, or Territory thereof, or of any State, any carrier or carriers as defined in this chapter and a labor organization or labor organizations duly designated and authorized to represent employees in accordance with the requirements of this chapter shall be permitted—
“(a) to make agreements, requiring, as a condition of continued employment, that within sixty days following the beginning of such employment, or the effective date of such agreements, whichever is the later, all employees shall become members of the labor organization représenting their craft or class: Provided, That no such agreement shall require such condition of employment with respect to employees to whom membership is not available upon the same terms and conditions as are generally applicable to any other member or with respect to employees to whom membership was denied or terminated for any reason other than the failure, of the employee to tender the periodic dues, initiation fees, and assessments (not including fines and penalties) uniformly required as a condition of acquiring or retaining membership.”
Although the Agreement requires employees to become union members within the 60-day period, in fact petitioners do not insist that employees actually join the union, but regard payment of the uniform exactions required by the Agreement as complete compliance therewith.
This action was commenced by 26 such employees but subsequent to the filing of the complaint 11 more were added as plaintiffs by amendment thereto; all 37 are respondents herein. Southern, which was a defendant below but disclaimed interest in the merits of the dispute between the employees and petitioners and did not appeal the Superior Court’s judgment, appears in this Court as a respondent. In this opinion, the term “respondents” refers only to the individual respondents, and excludes Southern.
The action was predicated in part on North Carolina’s “right to work” law, which makes the union shop unlawful. N. C. Gen. Stats., §§ 95-78 to 95-84; but see Hudson v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 242 N. C. 650, 89 S. E. 2d 441. The complaint sought temporary and permanent injunctive relief on behalf of the named plaintiffs, respondents herein, and all other employees similarly situated, against Southern and every union representing employees of Southern. But the case was nonsuited as to all the defendant unions except petitioners when at trial no proof was offered that any of the plaintiffs belonged to crafts or classes other than those represented by petitioners. Also, the relief granted by the Superior Court in its final judgment was limited to "the plaintiffs, individually named as such in the caption of this case.” This limitation was obviously proper and indeed required, since the instant “action is not a true class action, for there is no attempt to prove the existence of a class of workers who had specifically objected to the exaction of dues for political purposes.” International Assn. of Machinists v. Street, 367 U. S. 740, 774; see p. 119, infra.
Upon commencement of the instant action, the plaintiffs obtained an ex parte order temporarily restraining enforcement of the union-shop agreement; after hearing, the order was continued in effect pendente lite, although it was subsequently modified to be “effective only for the protection of persons who. are individually named as parties plaintiff herein or who become added by order of court as such within thirty days from date hereof.” Even as modified, such relief was improper. See p. 120, infra.
Respondents testified before any evidence of union, political expenditures had been introduced and were asked hypothetical questions such as the following: “If the evidence should show that the money which you might be compelled to pay to. the union weald be used in part to influence the passage of laws, or to defeat the passage of legislation, or to influence the election of certain candidates and defeat the election of other candidates, what is your position with respect to siich uses of your money?” The answer to this particular question was typical of respondents’ testimony: “I am opposed to it. I am opposed to use of my money to influence the passage of laws or effect the election of candidates because I think that as individuals we should have the right to make our own decisions about such matters.” Some plaintiffs, however, testified somewhat more specifically.
In holding respondents’ allegations and testimony adequately specific, we are not inconsistent with the plurality opinion in Lathrop v. Donohue, 367 U. S. 820, 845-846, where it was observed, in concluding that the question of the constitutionality of the integrated bar was not yet ripe for decision, that “ [n] owhere are we clearly apprised as to the views of the appellant on any particular legislative issues on which the State Bar has taken a position ....’’ This observation was made in the context of constitutional adjudication, not statutory as here.
Respondents first made known their objection to the petitioners’ political expenditures in their complaint filed in this action; however, this was early enough. Street, 367 U. S., at 771.
We do conclude, however, without necessarily finding all the questions put to the jury proper for the purpose of distinguishing political expenditures from those germane to collective bargaining, see p. 117, supra, or all the answers adequately supported by the evidence, that the verdict, fairly' read, constitutes a finding for which there is adequate support in the record that petitioners use a part of the exacted funds in support of political causes.
See Trade Union Act of.1913, 2 & 3 Geo. V, c. 30, reenacted by Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act, 1946, 9 & 10 Geo. VI, c. 52; Comment, 19 U. of Chi. L. Rev. 371, 381-388 (1952); Rothschild, Government Regulation of Trade Unions in Great Britain: II, 38 Col. L. Rev. 1335, 1360-1366 (1938). Pertinent portions of the Act are set out in an Appendix at the end of this opinion. Although the Act is a legislative solution to the problem of dissenters’ rights, it might be possible for unions to adopt the substantial equivalent without legislation; we do not mean to suggest, however, that the Act provides a perfect model for a plan that would conform with the discussion in this opinion and in Street, nor that all aspects of the English Act are essential, for example the aptual segregation of political funds, nor that the particular boundary drawn by the Act between political expenditures and those germane to collective bargaining is necessarily sound. It may be noted that one possible solution to the problem of fluctuating union political expenditures, see p. 122, supra, might be adoption by the union of a proportion calculated on the basis not of present political expenditures but projected future such expenditures, so as to anticipate possible fluctuations, with the dissenting employee free to contract out of this proportion of his dues and fees. Alternatively, - unions might consider actually fixing a percentage ceiling of political expenditures, from which proportion dissenters could contract out. On the problem of remedies, see generally McAlister, Labor, Liberalism and Majoritarian Democracy, 31 Ford. L. Rev. 661, 687-693 (1963). Cf. Dudra, Approaches to Union Security in Switzerland, Canada,"and Colombia, 86 Monthly Lab. Rev. 136 (1963).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer:
|
G
|
sc_issuearea
|
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