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What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The report of the Special Master tenders for the Court’s approval his determination of the true boundary between the States of California and Nevada. That boundary was the subject of numerous surveys in the latter half of the 19th century, and the central question presented in this original action is which, if any, of the lines which resulted properly marks the rugged border between the two States. The Special Master combed the voluminous record and concluded that in combination the two most recent surveys had fixed a boundary to which both States have acquiesced for the better part of a century. Applying the doctrine of prescription and acquiescence, he concluded that the boundary so fixed was the proper one. Nevada takes exception to that determination on several grounds. We overrule those exceptions and, with the qualifications hereinafter noted, approve and adopt the Special Master’s report.
I
The two straight-line segments that make up the boundary between California and Nevada were initially defined in California’s Constitution of 1849. The first, the “north-south” segment, commences on the Oregon border at the intersection of the 42d parallel and the 120th meridian and runs south along that meridian to the 39th parallel. And the second, the “oblique” segment, begins at that parallel and runs in a southeasterly direction to the point where the Colorado River crosses the 35th parallel. Cal. Const., Art. XII (1849). In 1850, when California was admitted to the Union, Congress approved the 1849 Constitution, and with it California’s eastern boundary. Act of Sept. 9, 1850, 9 Stat. 452.
On the same day that it admitted California, Congress established a territorial government in the area immediately to the east. The organic Act for that new Territory — which was then called Utah — stated that it was to be “bounded on the west by the State of California.” Act of Sept. 9, 1850, 9 Stat. 453. Eleven years later, the Territory of Nevada was created out of Utah. Congress indicated in the organic Act that Nevada might include portions of what was then California, but with the proviso that “so much of the Territory within the present limits of the State of California shall not be included within this Territory until the State of California shall assent to the same by an act irrevocable without the consent of the United States. . . .” Act of Mar. 2, 1861, 12 Stat. 210. No assent was ever given by California. Accordingly, when Nevada was admitted as a State in 1864 its western boundary and California’s eastern one remained congruent.
Notwithstanding brief and incomplete surveying efforts in the decade after California was admitted, the actual location on the ground of that State’s eastern boundary remained highly uncertain — so much so that fighting broke out over the precise whereabouts of a small valley on the north-south line above Lake Tahoe, and a border town along the oblique line found itself claimed as the seat of both a Nevada and a California county. These difficulties led California and Nevada to commission a joint survey of their border. Conducted in 1863, that survey located what is known as the Houghton-Ives line from the Oregon border south along the 120th meridian to a point in Lake Tahoe and then southeast for about 103 miles along the oblique line in the direction of the relevant point on the Colorado River. The remaining 300-plus miles of the oblique border were not surveyed.
Both California and Nevada adopted the Houghton-Ives line by statute, but its significance was to be short-lived. In 1867-1868 Daniel G. Major surveyed the Oregon-Califomia boundary for the General Land Office. One step in his work was to locate the intersection of that boundary and the 120th meridian. This he did, at a point more than two miles west of that meridian as marked by Houghton-Ives. This discrepancy eventually led the Commissioner of the General Land Office to recommend that Congress appropriate money for a full survey of the eastern boundary of California. His recommendation was followed in 1872.
The new survey was conducted by Allexey W. Yon Schmidt. While originally instructed to commence his north-south line at the point located by Daniel G. Major, Yon Schmidt concluded that the actual 120th meridian lay not only east of “Major’s comer,” but six-tenths of a mile east of the Hough-ton-Ives line as well. Accordingly, Von Schmidt marked a new north-south line starting at this location. His survey of the oblique boundary also had its surprises. From the intersection of his north-south segment and the 39th parallel he set off in what he thought was the direction of the intersection of the Colorado River and the 35th parallel. Unfortunately, the Colorado River had shifted since the point for which he was aiming had been marked, and rather than end at the wrong place he attempted to correct the line he was marking. It later turned out that his corrections were not complete and his line not entirely straight. But linear or not, his work did generate a boundary. And, although neither State adopted it by statute, the Von Schmidt survey won gradual acceptance in both California and Nevada.
In the 1880’s, however, substantial doubts about the accuracy of the oblique segment of the Von Schmidt line were voiced in Washington. As a result, Congress appropriated funds in 1892 for a new survey of that segment. The survey was undertaken by personnel of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey and conducted over a period of several years. It yielded a new oblique line and determined that the one charted by Von Schmidt had been neither straight nor accurate. Both States adopted the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey line by statute — California in 1901 and Nevada in 1903.
The Special Master concluded that the Yon Schmidt survey of the north-south line and the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey one of the oblique line were the most recent and accurate surveys available. While noting that Yon Schmidt had not been entirely accurate, the Master found that the north-south line that resulted from his survey had been consistently and routinely recognized and accepted by agencies and departments of the State of Nevada for more than a century. That the Houghton-Ives line was the first north-south boundary marked and the only one approved by statute was, he found, beside the point because as a practical matter that boundary had been superseded a decade after it was established and neither State had objected. As for the oblique boundary, the Master found that the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey line had not only been adopted by statute, but also been accepted and used by the two States for nearly 80 years. Since both States had treated these lines as the boundary from the time they were drawn, the Master invoked the doctrine of acquiescence to determine that together they in fact constitute the true and correct interstate boundary.
II
The State of Nevada’s primary contention is that the Special Master’s reliance upon the doctrine of acquiescence was in error. Basically, the argument is that once Nevada and California had conducted the 1863 joint survey which produced the Houghton-Ives line the Federal Government had no constitutional authority to mark a different line which had the effect of removing territory from one State and granting it to the other. Since the Congress was without power to determine the Yon Schmidt and United States Coast and Geodetic Survey lines, the argument continues, they are without legal effect. And because States may not confer upon the Federal Government a power which the Constitution does not vest in it, acquiescence in those lines cannot make them lawful. Thus, Nevada concludes, either (1) Congress is constitutionally empowered to redraw the boundaries of the several States, in which case the Von Schmidt and Geodetic Survey lines may be upheld regardless of acquiescence, or (2) Congress is constitutionally powerless to alter those boundaries, in which case no mere century of acquiescence can convert a usurpation into law.
The flaw in this argument is that it assumes that there must be a particular relationship between the origins of a boundary and the legal consequences of acquiescence in that boundary. In fact, however, no such relationship need exist. Longstanding acquiescence by California and Nevada can give the Von Schmidt and Geodetic Survey lines the force of law whether or not federal authorities had the power to draw them. And the determination that the two States’ conduct has had precisely this effect, therefore, does not place any sort of constitutional imprimatur upon the federal actions involved. See Ohio v. Kentucky, 410 U. S. 641, 648-651 (1973) ; Indiana v. Kentucky, 136 U. S. 479, 509-510 (1890). Accordingly, we need not address the issue of federal power to which Nevada adverts. It is enough that California claims and has always claimed all territory up to a specifically described boundary — the 120th meridan and the oblique line with which it connects — and that both States have long acquiesced in particular lines marking that boundary. If Nevada felt that those lines were inaccurate and operated to deprive it of territory lawfully within its jurisdiction the time to object was when the surveys were conducted, not a century later. Ohio v. Kentucky, supra, at 649. In consequence, we hold that in these circumstances the Special Master was fully justified in invoking the doctrine of acquiescence.
Ill
Having determined that the Special Master’s resolution of the boundary dispute was proper, we turn to his recommendations regarding the quite separate issue of ownership of various disputed borderlands. This matter is here on California’s motion to file a second amended complaint and bifurcate issues, which seeks further proceedings before the Special Master after the boundary questions are determined. Specifically, the United States has apparently confirmed or “clear-listed” to California and Nevada certain parcels that turn out to be on the “wrong” side of the boundary between those States. The Special Master was of the view that California’s motion should be allowed and that he should be authorized (1) to determine whether the United States should be made a party to this case and (2) to make recommendations as to the quieting of title on various borderlands.
We decline at this point to expand the Special Master’s reference. The ownership and title questions that remain typically will involve only one or the other State and the United States, or perhaps various citizens of those States. Disputes between California and Nevada are not in the offing. In consequence, even if some of the ownership questions to come do fall within our original jurisdiction, they will not fall within our exclusive jurisdiction. 28 U. S. C. § 1251 (1976 ed., Supp. II). Under these circumstances we see no reason to refer the matter to the Special Master. On the contrary, litigation in other forums seems an entirely appropriate means of resolving whatever questions remain.
In sum, we overrule Nevada’s exceptions and approve and adopt the Special Master’s report and recommendations except insofar as those recommendations would allow California’s second amended complaint and permit proceedings relating to the ownership of disputed lands on the California-Nevada boundary.
So ordered.
California instituted this original action on April 22, 1977, when it filed its motion for leave to file complaint and complaint. On June 29, 1977, we granted that motion and appointed the Special Master. Basically, California sought a declaration that the currently recognized line dividing the two States was in fact the lawful boundary. As counsel for the State characterized it at oral argument, the suit was in the nature of a quiet title action and was precipitated by growing doubts about the geographic accuracy of the existing line as well as concerns regarding the validity of certain titles which depended upon the location of the border. The Special Master’s report was filed in this Court on October 29, 1979, 444 U. S. 922, and we set Nevada’s exceptions and related matters for oral argument. 444 U. S. 1065 (1980).
Nevada’s Constitution stated that its boundary would proceed “in a North Westerly direction along [the oblique section of the] Eastern boundary line of the State of California to the forty third degree of Longitude West from Washington [and then] North along said forty third degree of West Longitude, and said Eastern boundary line of the State of California to the forty second degree of North Latitude. . . Nev. Const., Art. XIV, § 1 (1864). Although it turns out that the 43d degree of longitude west from Washington does not exactly coincide with the 120th meridian west of Greenwich — which was the north-south reference in the California Constitution — the Special Master concluded that the Congress that approved Nevada’s Constitution was of the view that the two lines were identical. Certainly the language of the Nevada Constitution supports this conclusion by seeming to equate the 43d degree of longitude west of Washington with the eastern boundary of California. In any event, we need not explore the matter further since it would be relevant only were we to require a new survey of one or the other longitudinal line, and we do not find such a new survey necessary.
Indeed, the town — Aurora—elected representatives to both the California and Nevada Legislatures in 1862, and those representatives apparently became speakers of their respective legislatures.
Two years later one James S. Lawson extended the oblique portion of the Houghton-Ives line another 73 miles.
A third survey, conducted in the summer of 1872 near the Oregon border, contributed to the confusion by concluding that the 120th meridian lay to the east of the locations pinpointed by both Major and Houghton-Ives.
Nevada's statute was in effect when the present litigation was commenced, although it has subsequently been repealed.
California notes that Nevada welcomed the Yon Schmidt survey at the time it was conducted. Indeed, the Surveyor General of that State remarked that “within a year the State will be inclosed by an actual surveyed line and monuments, and the troubles heretofore existing, to State and county officials, in dealing with an imaginary line, will be entirely and forever obviated.” Report of the Surveyor General and State Land Register of the State of Nevada for the years 1871 and 1872, p. 8.
Nor is Nevada’s position saved by the contention that California could not profit by the doctrine of acquiescence because its claim to the lands up to the Von Schmidt and United States Coast and Geodetic Survey lands was not made under color of title or claim of right. The fact is that California’s claim has always been for all lands on its side of the boundary described rather specifically in its Constitution. So long as its claims were made under a survey that purported to reflect that boundary, it had colorable title and a claim of right.
Several subsidiary issues relating to the Califomia-Nevada border are considered in the Special Master’s recommendations. First, it turns out that Von Schmidt’s north-south line and the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey oblique line do not intersect at precisely the 39th parallel, as in theory they should. The Special Master suggests that the two States be given the opportunity to determine by agreement the point in Lake Tahoe where the two lines meet. Failing such an accord, he indicates that he would recommend a solution; but this probably will not be necessary since the parties are apparently in agreement that if the balance of the Master’s report is accepted the best course is to extend the oblique line in a northwesterly direction to the point where it crosses the north-south line. This solution to the problem is entirely permissible. Cf. New Hampshire v. Maine, 426 U. S. 363 (1976). Second, the Master recommends that he be authorized to arrange for surveys, at the parties’ expense, if necessary to resolve disputes over the precise location of portions of either of the lines we approve today. That, too, seems appropriate. And third, he states that we should reserve the taxing of costs until after a further report — a suggestion which we will follow since the possibility of partial surveys would make an assessment at this time premature.
At oral argument, counsel for the State of California conceded that he knew of no instance in which both States claimed the same parcel.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | K | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Chief Justice Warren
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This controversy concerns the right to $400,000, part of the corpus of a trust established in Delaware by a settlor who later became domiciled in Florida. One group of claimants, “legatees,” urge that this property passed under the residuary clause of the settlor’s will, which was admitted to probate in Florida. The Florida courts have sustained this position. 100 So. 2d 378. Other claimants, “appointees” and “beneficiaries,” contend that the property passed pursuant to the settlor’s exercise of the inter vivos power of appointment created in the deed of trust. The Delaware courts adopted this position and refused to accord full faith and credit to the Florida determination because the Florida court had not acquired jurisdiction over an indispensable party, the Delaware trustee. - Del. -, 128 A. 2d 819. We postponed the question of jurisdiction in the Florida appeal, No. 107, 354 U. S. 919, and granted certiorari to the Delaware Supreme Court, No. 117, 354 U. S. 920.
The trust whose validity is contested here was created in 1935. Dora Browning Donner, then a domiciliary of Pennsylvania, executed a trust instrument in Delaware naming the Wilmington Trust Co., of Wilmington, Delaware, as trustee. The corpus was composed of securities. Mrs. Donner reserved the income for life, and stated that the remainder should be paid to such persons or upon such trusts as she should appoint by inter vivos or testamentary instrument. The trust agreement provided that Mrs. Donner could change the trustee, and that she could amend, alter or revoke the agreement at any time. A measure of control over trust administration was assured by the provision that only with the consent of a trust “advisor” appointed by the settlor could the trustee (1) sell trust assets, (2) make investments, and (3) participate in any plan, proceeding, reorganization or merger involving securities held in the trust. A few days after the trust was established Mrs. Donner exercised her power of appointment. That appointment was replaced by another in 1939. Thereafter she left Pennsylvania, and in 1944 became domiciled in Florida, where she remained until her death in 1952. Mrs. Donner’s will was executed Dec. 3, 1949. On that same day she executed the inter vivos power of appointment whose terms are at issue here. After making modest appointments in favor of a hospital and certain family retainers (the “appointees”), she appointed the sum of $200,000 to each of two trusts previously established with another Delaware trustee, the Delaware Trust Co. The balance of the trust corpus, over $1,000,000 at the date of her death, was appointed to her executrix. That amount passed under the residuary clause of her will and is not at issue here.
The two trusts with the Delaware Trust Co. were created in 1948 by Mrs. Donner’s daughter, Elizabeth Donner Hanson, for the benefit of Elizabeth’s children, Donner Hanson and Joseph Donner Winsor. In identical terms they provide that the income not required for the beneficiary’s support should be accumulated to age 25, when the beneficiary should be paid % of the corpus and receive the income from the balance for life. Upon the death of the beneficiary the remainder was to go to such of the beneficiary’s issue or Elizabeth Donner Hanson’s issue as the beneficiary should appoint by inter vivos or testamentary instrument; in default of appointment to the beneficiary’s issue alive at the time of his death, and if none to the issue of Elizabeth Donner Hanson.
Mrs. Donner died Nov. 20, 1952. Her will, which was admitted to probate in Florida, named Elizabeth Donner Hanson as executrix. She was instructed to pay all debts and taxes, including any which might be payable by reason of the property appointed under the power of appointment in the trust agreement with the Wilmington Trust Co. After disposing of personal and household effects, Mrs. Donner’s will directed that the balance of her property (the $1,000,000 appointed from the Delaware trust) be paid in equal parts to two trusts for the benefit of her daughters Katherine N. R. Denckla and Dorothy B. R. Stewart.
This controversy grows out of the residuary clause that created the last-mentioned trusts. It begins:
“All the rest, residue and remainder of my estate, real, personal and mixed, whatsoever and wheresoever the same may be at the time of my death, including any and all property, rights and interest over which I may have power of appointment which prior to my death has not been effectively exercised by me or has been exercised by me in favor of my Executrix, I direct my Executrix to deal with as follows....”
Residuary legatees Denckla and Stewart, already the recipients of over $500,000 each, urge that the power of appointment over the $400,000 appointed to sister Elizabeth’s children was not “effectively exercised” and that the property should accordingly pass to them. Fourteen months after Mrs. Donner’s death these parties petitioned a Florida chancery court for a declaratory judgment “concerning what property passes under the residuary clause” of the will. Personal service was had upon the following defendants: (1) executrix Elizabeth Donner Hanson, (2) beneficiaries Donner Hanson and Joseph Donner Winsor, and (3) potential beneficiary William Donner Roosevelt, also one of Elizabeth’s children. Curtin Winsor, Jr., another of Elizabeth’s children and also a potential beneficiary of the Delaware trusts, was not named as a party and was not served. About a dozen other defendants were nonresidents and could not be personally served. These included the Wilmington Trust Co. (“trustee”), the Delaware Trust Co. (to whom the $400,000 had been paid shortly after Mrs. Donner’s death), certain individuals who were potential successors in interest to complainants Denckla and Stewart, and most of the named appointees in Mrs. Donner’s 1949 appointment. A copy of the pleadings and a “Notice to Appear and Defend” were sent to each of these defendants by ordinary mail, and notice was published locally as required by the Florida statutes dealing with constructive service. With the exception of two individuals whose interests coincided with complainants Denckla and Stewart, none of the nonresident defendants made any appearance.
The appearing defendants (Elizabeth Donner Hanson and her children) moved to dismiss the suit because the exercise of jurisdiction over indispensable parties, the Delaware trustees, would offend Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Chancellor ruled that he lacked jurisdiction over these nonresident defendants because no personal service was had and because the trust corpus was outside the territorial jurisdiction of the court. The cause was dismissed as to them. As far as parties before the court were concerned, however, he ruled that the power of appointment was testamentary and void under the applicable Florida law. In a decree dated Jan. 14, 1955, he ruled that the $400,000 passed under the residuary clause of the will.
After the Florida litigation began, but before entry of the decree, the executrix instituted a declaratory judgment action in Delaware to determine who was entitled to participate in the trust assets held in that State. Except for the addition of beneficiary Winsor and several appointees, the parties were substantially the same as in the Florida litigation. Nonresident defendants were notified by registered mail. All of the trust companies, 'beneficiaries, and legatees except Katherine N. R. Denckla, appeared and participated in the litigation. After the Florida court enjoined executrix Hanson from further participation, her children pursued their own interests. When the Florida decree was entered the legatees unsuccessfully urged it as res judicata of the Delaware dispute. In a decree dated Jan. 13, 1956, the Delaware Chancellor ruled that the trust and power of appointment were valid under the applicable Delaware law, and that the trust corpus had properly been paid to the Delaware Trust Co. and the other appointees. - Del. Ch. -, 119 A. 2d 901.
Alleging that she would be bound by the Delaware decree, the executrix moved the Florida Supreme Court to remand with instructions to dismiss the Florida suit then pending on appeal. No full faith and credit question was raised. The motion was denied. The Florida Supreme Court affirmed its Chancellor’s conclusion that Florida law applied to determine the validity of the trust and power of appointment. Under that law the trust was invalid because the settlor had reserved too much power over the trustee and trust corpus, and the power of appointment was not independently effective to pass the property because it was a testamentary act not accompanied by the requisite formalities. The Chancellor’s conclusion that there was no jurisdiction over the trust companies and other absent defendants was reversed. The court ruled that jurisdiction to construe the will carried with it “substantive” jurisdiction “over the persons of the absent defendants” even though the trust assets were not “physically in this state.” Whether this meant jurisdiction over the person of the defendants or jurisdiction over the trust assets is open to doubt. In a motion for rehearing the beneficiaries and appointees urged for the first time that Florida should have given full faith and credit to the decision of the Delaware Chancellor. The motion was denied without Opinion, Nov. 28, 1956.
The full faith and credit question was first raised in the Delaware litigation by an unsuccessful motion for new trial filed with the Chancellor Jan. 20, 1956. After the Florida Supreme Court decision the matter was renewed by a motion to remand filed with the Delaware Supreme Court. In a decision of Jan. 14, 1957, that court denied the motion and affirmed its Chancellor in all respects. The Florida decree was held not binding for purposes of full faith and credit because the Florida court had no personal jurisdiction over the trust companies and no jurisdiction over the trust res.
The issues for our decision are, first, whether Florida erred in holding that it had jurisdiction over the nonresident defendants, and second, whether Delaware erred in refusing full faith and credit to the Florida decree. We need not determine whether Florida was bound to give full faith and credit to the decree of the Delaware Chancellor since the question was not seasonably presented to the Florida court. Radio Station WOW v. Johnson, 326 U. S. 120, 128.
No. 107, The Florida Appeal. The question of our jurisdiction was postponed until the hearing of the merits. The appeal is predicated upon the contention that as applied to the facts of this case the Florida statute providing for constructive service is contrary to the Federal Constitution. 28 U. S. C. § 1257 (2). But in the state court appellants (the “beneficiaries”) did not object that the statute was invalid as applied, but rather that the effect of the state court’s exercise of jurisdiction in the circumstances of this case deprived them of a right under the Federal Constitution. Accordingly, we are without jurisdiction of the appeal and it must be dismissed. Wilson v. Cook, 327 U. S. 474, 482; Charleston Fed. Sav. & L. Assn. v. Alderson, 324 U. S. 182. Treating the papers whereon appeal was taken as a petition for certiorari, 28 U. S. C. § 2103, certiorari is granted.
Relying upon the principle that a person cannot invoke the jurisdiction of this Court to vindicate the right of a third party, appellees urge that appellants lack standing to complain of a defect in jurisdiction over the nonresident trust companies, who have made no appearance in this action. Florida adheres to the general rule that a trustee is an indispensable party to litigation involving the validity of the trust. In the absence of such a party a Florida court may not proceed to adjudicate the controversy. Since state law required the acquisition of jurisdiction over the nonresident trust company before the court was empowered to proceed with the action, any defendant affected by the court’s judgment has that “direct and substantial personal interest in the outcome” that is necessary to challenge whether that jurisdiction was in fact acquired. Chicago v. Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co., 357 U. S. 77.
Appellants charge that this judgment is offensive to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because the Florida court was without jurisdiction. There is no suggestion that the court failed to employ a means of notice reasonably calculated to inform nonresident defendants of the pending proceedings, or denied them an opportunity to be heard in defense of their interests. The alleged defect is the absence of those “affiliating circumstances” without which the courts of a State may not enter a judgment imposing obligations on persons (jurisdiction in personam) or affecting interests in property (jurisdiction in rem or quasi in rem). While the in rem and in personam classifications do not exhaust all the situations that give rise to jurisdiction, they are adequate to describe the affiliating circumstances suggested here, and accordingly serve as a useful means of approach to this case.
In rem jurisdiction. Founded on physical power; McDonald v. Mabee, 243 U. S. 90, 91, the in rem jurisdiction of a state court is limited by the extent of its power and by the coordinate authority of sister States. The basis of the jurisdiction is the presence of the subject property within the territorial jurisdiction of the forum State. Rose v. Himely, 4 Cranch 241, 277; Overby v. Gordon, 177 U. S. 214, 221-222. Tangible property poses no problem for the application of this rule, but the situs of intangibles is often a matter of controversy. In considering restrictions on the power to tax, this Court has concluded that “jurisdiction” over intangible property is not limited to a single State. Tax Commission v. Aldrich, 316 U. S. 174; Curry v. McCanless, 307 U. S. 357. Whether the type of “jurisdiction” with which this opinion deals may be exercised by more than one State we need not decide. The parties seem to assume that the trust assets that form the subject matter of this action were located in Delaware and not in Florida. We can see nothing in the record contrary to that assumption, or sufficient to establish a situs in Florida.
The Florida court held that the presence of the subject property was not essential to its jurisdiction. Authority over the probate and construction of its domiciliary’s will, under which the assets might pass, was thought sufficient to confer the requisite jurisdiction. But jurisdiction cannot be predicated upon the contingent role of this Florida will. Whatever the efficacy of a so-called “in rem” jurisdiction over assets admittedly passing under a local will, a State acquires no in rem jurisdiction to adjudicate the validity of inter vivos dispositions simply because its decision might augment an estate passing under a will probated in its courts. If such a basis of jurisdiction were sustained, probate courts would enjoy nationwide service of process to adjudicate interests in property with which neither the State nor the decedent could claim any affiliation. The settlor-decedent’s Florida domicile is equally unavailing as a basis for jurisdiction over the trust assets. For the purpose of jurisdiction in rem the maxim that personalty has its situs at the domicile of its owner is a fiction of limited utility. Green v. Van Buskirk, 7 Wall. 139, 150. The maxim is no less suspect when the domicile is that of a decedent. In analogous cases, this Court has rejected the suggestion that the probate decree of the State where decedent was domiciled has an in rem effect on personalty outside the forum State that could render it conclusive on the interests of nonresidents over whom there was no personal jurisdiction. Riley v. New York Trust Co., 315 U. S. 343, 353; Baker v. Baker, Eccles & Co., 242 U. S. 394, 401; Overby v. Gordon, 177 U. S. 214. The fact that the owner is or was domiciled within the forum State is not a sufficient affiliation with the property upon which to base jurisdiction in rem. Having concluded that Florida had no in rem jurisdiction, we proceed to consider whether a judgment purporting to rest on that basis is invalid in Florida and must therefore be reversed.
Prior to the Fourteenth Amendment an exercise of jurisdiction over persons or property outside the forum State was thought to be an absolute nullity, but the matter remained a question of state law over which this Court exercised no authority. With the adoption of that Amendment, any judgment purporting to bind the person of a defendant over whom the court had not acquired in personam jurisdiction was void within the State as well as without. Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U. S. 714. Nearly a century has passed without this Court being called upon to apply that principle to an in rem judgment dealing with property outside the forum State. The invalidity of such a judgment within the forum State seems to have been assumed — and with good reason. Since a State is forbidden to enter a judgment attempting to bind a person over whom it has no jurisdiction, it has even less right to enter a judgment purporting to extinguish the interest of such a person in property over which the court has no jurisdiction. Therefore, so far as it purports to rest upon jurisdiction over the trust assets, the judgment of the Florida court cannot be sustained. Sadler v. Industrial Trust Co., 327 Mass. 10, 97 N. E. 2d 169.
In personam jurisdiction. Appellees’ stronger argument is for in personam jurisdiction over the Delaware trustee. They urge that the circumstances of this case amount to sufficient affiliation with the State of Florida to empower its courts to exercise personal jurisdiction over this nonresident defendant. Principal reliance is placed upon McGee v. International Life Ins. Co., 355 U. S. 220. In McGee the Court noted the trend of expanding personal jurisdiction over nonresidents. As technological progress has increased the flow of commerce between States, the need for jurisdiction over nonresidents has undergone a similar increase. At the same time, progress in communications and transportation has made the defense of a suit in a foreign tribunal less burdensome. In response to these changes,, the requirements for personal jurisdiction over nonresidents have evolved from the rigid rule of Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U. S. 714, to the flexible standard of International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U. S. 310. But it is a mistake to assume that this trend heralds the eventual demise of all restrictions on the personal jurisdiction of state courts. See Vanderbilt v. Vanderbilt, 354 U. S. 416, 418. Those restrictions are more than a guarantee of immunity from inconvenient or distant litigation. They arq a consequence of territorial limitations on the power of the respective States. However minimal the burden of defendin/g in a foreign tribunal, a defendant may not be called upon to do so unless he has had the “minimal contacts” with that State that are a prerequisite to its exercise of power over him. See International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U. S. 310, 319.
We fail to find such contacts in the circumstances of this case. The defendant trust company has no office in Florida, and transacts no business there. None of the trust assets has ever been held or administered in Florida, and the record discloses no solicitation of business in that State either in person or by mail. Cf. International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U. S. 310; McGee v. International Life Ins. Co., 355 U. S. 220; Travelers Health Assn. v. Virginia, 339 U. S. 643.
The cause of action in this case is not one that arises out of an act done or transaction consummated in the forum State. In that respect, it differs from McGee v. International Life Ins. Co., 355 U. S. 220, and the cases there cited. In McGee, the nonresident defendant solicited a reinsurance agreement with a resident of California. The offer was accepted in that State, and the insurance premiums were mailed from there until the insured’s death. Noting the interest California has in providing effective redress for its residents when nonresident insurers refuse to pay claims on insurance they have solicited in that State, the Court upheld jurisdiction because the suit “was based on a contract which had substantial connection with that State.” In contrast, this action involves the validity of an agreement that was entered without any connection with the forum State. The agreement was executed in Delaware by a trust company incorporated in that State and a settlor domiciled in Pennsylvania. The first relationship Florida had to the agreement was years later when the settlor became domiciled there, and the trustee remitted the trust income to her in that State. From Florida Mrs. Donner carried on several bits of trust administration that may be compared to the mailing of premiums in McGee., But the record discloses no instance in which the trustee performed any acts in Florida that bear the same relationship to the agreement as the solicitation in McGee. Consequently, this suit cannot be said to be one to enforce an obligation that arose from a privilege the defendant exercised in Florida. Cf. International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U. S. 310, 319. This case is also different from McGee in that there the State had enacted special legislation (Unauthorized Insurers Process Act) to exercise what McGee called its “manifest interest” in providing effective redress for citizens who had been injured by nonresidents engaged in an activity that the State treats as exceptional and subjects to special regulation. Cf. Trav elers Health Assn. v. Virginia, 339 U. S. 643, 647-649; Doherty & Co. v. Goodman, 294 U. S. 623, 627; Hess v. Pawloski, 274 U. S. 352.
The execution in Florida of the powers of appointment under which the beneficiaries and appointees claim does not give Florida a substantial connection with the contract on which this suit is based. It is the validity of the trust agreement, not the appointment, that is at issue here. For the purpose of applying its rule that the validity of a trust is determined by the law of the State of its creation, Florida ruled that the appointment amounted to a “republication” of the original trust instrument in Florida. For choice-of-law purposes such a ruling may be justified, but we think it an insubstantial connection with the trust agreement for purposes of determining the question of personal jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant. The unilateral activity of those who claim some relationship with a nonresident defendant cannot satisfy the requirement of contact with the forum State. The application of that rule will vary with the quality and nature of the defendant’s activity, but it is essential in each case that there be some act by which the defendant purposefully avails itself of the privilege of conducting activities within the forum State, thus invoking the benefits and protections of its laws. International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U. S. 310, 319. The settlor’s execution in Florida of her power of appointment cannot remedy the absence of such an act in this case.
It is urged that because the settlor and most of the appointees and beneficiaries were domiciled in Florida the courts of that State should be able to exercise personal jurisdiction over the nonresident trustees. This is a non sequitur. With personal jurisdiction over the executor, legatees, and appointees, there is nothing in federal law to prevent Florida from adjudicating concerning the ■respective rights and liabilities of those parties. But Florida has not chosen to do so. As we understand its law, the trustee is an indispensable party over whom the court must acquire jurisdiction before it is empowered to enter judgment in a proceeding affecting the validity of a trust. It does not acquire that jurisdiction by being the “center of gravity” of the controversy, or the most convenient location for litigation. The issue is personal jurisdiction, not choice of law. It is resolved in this case by considering the acts of the trustee. As we have indicated, they are insufficient to sustain the jurisdiction.
Because it sustained jurisdiction over the nonresident trustees, the Florida Supreme Court found it unnecessary to determine whether Florida law made those defendants indispensable parties in the circumstances of this case. Our conclusion that Florida was without jurisdiction over the Delaware trustee, or over the trust corpus held in that State, requires that we make that determination in the first instance. As we have noted earlier, the Florida Supreme Court has repeatedly held that a trustee is an indispensable party without whom a Florida court has no power to adjudicate controversies affecting the validity of a trust. For that reason the Florida judgment must be reversed not only as to the nonresident trustees but also as to appellants, over whom the Florida court admittedly had jurisdiction.
No. 117, The Delaware Certiorari. The same reasons that compel reversal of the Florida judgment require affirmance of the Delaware one. Delaware is under no obligation to give full faith and credit to a Florida judgment invalid in Florida because offensive to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 28 U. S. C. § 1738. Even before passage of the Fourteenth Amendment this Court sustained state courts in refusing full faith and credit to judgments entered by courts that were without jurisdiction over nonresident defendants. D’Arcy v. Ketchum, 11 How. 165; Hall v. Lanning, 91 U. S. 160. See Baker v. Baker, Eccles & Co., 242 U. S. 394; Riley v. New York Trust Co., 315 U. S. 343. Since Delaware was entitled to conclude that Florida law made the trust company an indispensable party, it was under no obligation to give the Florida judgpent any faith and credit — even against parties over whom Florida’s jurisdiction was unquestioned.
It is suggested that this disposition is improper — that the Delaware case should be held while the Florida cause is remanded to give that court an opportunity to determine whether the trustee is an indispensable party in the circumstances of this case. But this is not a case like Herb v. Pitcairn, 324 U. S. 117, where it is appropriate to remand for the state court to clarify an ambiguity in its opinion that may reveal an adequate state ground that would deprive us of power to affect the result of the controversy. Nor is this a circumstance where the state court has never ruled on the question of state law that we are deciding. Although the question was left open in this case, there is ample Florida authority from which we may determine the appropriate answer.
The rule of primacy to the first final judgment is a necessary incident to the requirement of full faith and credit. Our only function is to determine whether judgments are consistent with the Federal Constitution. In determining the correctness of Delaware’s judgment we look to what Delaware was entitled to conclude from the Florida authorities at the time the Delaware court’s judgment was entered. To withhold affirmance of a correct Delaware judgment until Florida has had time to rule on another question would be participating in the litigation instead of adjudicating its outcome.
The judgment of the Delaware Supreme Court is affirmed, and the judgment of the Florida Supreme Court is reversed and the cause is remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The appointment was partially revoked July 7, 1950 in a respect not material to the instant controversy.
The hospital received $10,000. Six servants qualified for appointments totalling $7,000.
Fla. Stat., 1957, c. 48, § 48.01: “Service of process by publication may be had, in any of the several courts of this state, and upon any of the parties mentioned in §48.02 in any suit or proceeding:
“(1) To enforce any legal or equitable lien upon or claim to any title or interest in real or personal property within the jurisdiction of the court or any fund held or debt owing by any party upon whom process can be served within this state.
“(5) For the construction of any will, deed, contract or other written instrument and for a judicial declaration or enforcement of any legal or equitable right, title, claim, lien or interest thereunder.”
§48.02: “Where personal service of process cannot be had, service of process by publication may be had upon any party, natural or corporate, known or unknown, including: (1) Any known or unknown natural person... (2) Anjr corporation or other legal entity, whether its domicile be foreign, domestic or unknown....”
The record discloses no mention of the state statute until the petition for rehearing in the Florida Supreme Court. In the trial court, appellant’s motion to dismiss raised the federal question in this manner: “The exercise by this Court of the jurisdiction sought to be invoked by the plaintiffs herein would contravene the Constitution and Laws of the State of Florida and the Constitution of the United States, and, in particular, Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.” No. 107, R. 41.
See Liberty Warehouse Co. v. Burley T. G. Co-op. M. Assn., 276 U. S. 71, 88; Smith v. Indiana, 191 U. S. 138, 148; Tyler v. Judges of the Court of Registration, 179 U. S. 405; Robertson and Kirkham, Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court (Wolfson and Kurland ed.), § 298.
Trueman Fertilizer Co. v. Allison, 81 So. 2d 734, 738; Winn v. Strickland, 34 Fla. 610, 633, 16 So. 606, 613; Wilson v. Russ, 17 Fla. 691, 697; McArthur v. Scott, 113 U. S. 340, 396; Sadler v. Industrial Trust Co., 327 Mass. 10, 97 N. E. 2d 169.
Martinez v. Balbin, 76 So. 2d 488, 490; Florida Land Rock Phosphate Co. v. Anderson, 50 Fla. 501, 512-513, 39 So. 392, 396.
Hereafter the terms “trust,” “trust company” and “trustee” have reference to the trust established in 1935 with the Wilmington Trust Co., the validity of which is at issue here. It is unnecessary to determine whether the Delaware Trust Co., to which the $400,000 remainder interest was appointed and was paid after Mrs. Donner’s death, is also an indispensable party to this proceeding.
Walker v. City of Hutchinson, 352 U. S. 112; Mullane v. Central Hanover B. & T. Co., 339 U. S. 306; McDonald v. Mabee, 243 U. S. 90.
Roller v. Holly, 176 U. S. 398.
Sunderland, The Problem of Jurisdiction, Selected Essays on Constitutional Law, 1270, 1272.
A judgment in personam imposes a personal liability or obligation on one person in favor of another. A judgment in rem affects the interests of all persons in designated property. A judgment quasi in rem affects the interests of particular persons in designated property. The latter is of two types. In one the plaintiff is seeking to secure a pre-existing claim in the subject property and to extinguish or establish the nonexistence of similar interests of particular persons. In the other the plaintiff seeks to apply what he concedes to be the property of the defendant to the satisfaction of a- claim against him. Restatement, Judgments, 5-9. For convenience of terminology this opinion will use “in rem” in lieu of “in rem and quasi in rem.”
E. g., Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U. S. 306, 312; Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, 297. Fraser, Jurisdiction by Necessity, 100 U. of Pa. L. Rev. 305.
Baker v. Baker, Eccles & Co., 242 U. S. 394, 400; Riley v. New York Trust Co., 315 U. S. 343, 349; Overby v. Gordon, 177 U. S. 214, 221-222; Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U. S. 714; Rose v. Himely, 4 Cranch 241, 277.
See Andrews, Situs of Intangibles in Suits against Non-Resident Claimants, 49 Yale L. J. 241.
This case does not concern the situs of a beneficial interest in trust property. These appellees were contesting the validity of the trust. Their concern was with the legal interest of the trustee or, if the trust was invalid, the settlor. Therefore, the relevant factor here is the situs of the stocks, bqnds, and notes that make up the corpus of the trust. Properly speaking such assets are intangibles that have no “physical” location. But their embodiment in documents treated for most purposes as the assets themselves makes them partake of the nature of tangibles. Cf. Wheeler v. Sohmer, 233 U. S. 434, 439.
The documents evidencing ownership of the trust property were held in Delaware, cf. Bank of Jasper v. First Nat. Bank, 258 U. S. 112, 119, by a Delaware trustee who was the obligee of the credit instruments and the record owner of the stock. The location of the obligors and the domicile of the corporations do not appear. The trust instrument was executed in Delaware by a settlor then domiciled in Pennsylvania. Without expressing any opinion on the significance of these or other factors unnamed, we note that none relates to Florida.
The Florida Supreme Court’s opinion states: “We held [in Henderson v. Usher, 118 Fla. 688, 160 So. 9] that constructive service was valid in that state of the record because substantive jurisdiction existed in the Florida court by virtue of construction of a will, which was also involved, the testator having been domiciled in Florida. We observed that it was not essential that the assets of the trust be physically in this state in order that constructive service be binding upon a non-resident where the problem presented to the court was to adjudicate, inter alia, the status of the securities incorporated in the trust estate and the rights of the non-resident therein. It is entirely consistent with the Henderson case to hold, as we do, that the court below erred in ruling that it lacked jurisdiction over the persons of the absent defendants.” 100 So. 2d, at 385.
The foregoing leaves unclear whether the court was invoking in 'personam jurisdiction over the trustee, or in rem, jurisdiction over the trust assets. Henderson v. Usher, supra, which was an action by testamentary trustees for a construction of the will establishing a trust whose assets were held in New York, found it unnecessary to decide the basis of the jurisdiction exercised. In response to the jurisdictional objections of a specially appearing nonresident defendant, the Florida Supreme Court ruled: “Since the interpretation of the will is the primary question with which we are confronted we are impelled to hold that the res is at least constructively in this state and that the Florida courts are empowered to advise the trustees how to proceed under it and what rights those affected have in it. For the immediate purpose of this suit the will is the res and when that is voluntarily brought into the courts of Florida to be construed the trust created by it is to all intents and purposes brought with it.” 118 Fla., at 692, 160 So., at 10.
We assume arguendo for the purpose of this discussion that the trust was invalid so that Mrs. Donner was the “owner” of the subject property.
Though analogous, these cases are not squarely in point.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that the denial of a class certification could not be appealed immediately under 28 U. S. C. § 1292 (a)(1) as an order refusing an injunction. 559 F. 2d 209. Because there is a conflict among the Circuits on the question whether § 1292 (a)(1) authorizes such an appeal, we granted certiorari. 434 U. S. 984. We affirm.
Petitioner unsuccessfully applied for employment as a radio talk-show host at a station owned by respondent. She then brought this civil rights action on behalf of herself and other Jemales adversely affected by respondent’s alleged practice of discriminating against women. The class she sought to represent included respondent’s past, present, and future female employees; unsuccessful female applicants; females deterred by respondent’s reputation from applying for employment; and females who will not in the future be considered for employment by respondent on account of their sex. Her complaint prayed for equitable relief for the entire class.
Petitioner moved for a class certification pursuant to Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 23 (b) . The District Court denied the motion on the grounds that petitioner’s claim was not typical and that the case did not present questions of law or fact common to the class. She immediately appealed, invoking the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals under § 1292 (a)(1).
Petitioner argues that the relief that could be granted in favor of the class if she prevails would be broader than the relief that she may obtain as an individual. The practical effect of the denial of class certification is, therefore, to refuse a substantial portion of the injunctive relief requested in the complaint. Relying on our decision in General Electric Co. v. Marvel Rare Metals Co., 287 U. S. 430, petitioner then argues that this sort of effect on a request for injunctive relief establishes appealability under § 1292 (a)(1). We cannot agree; indeed the argument misconceives both the scope of § 1292 (a)(1) and the import of decisions such as General Electric.
The history of § 1292 (a)(1), which we reviewed in Baltimore Contractors v. Bodinger, 348 U. S. 176, 178-181, need not be repeated. It is sufficient to note that the statute creates an exception from the long-established policy against piecemeal appeals, which this Court is not authorized to enlarge or extend. The exception is a narrow one and is keyed to the “need to permit litigants to effectually challenge interlocutory orders of serious, perhaps irreparable, consequence.” Id., at 181.
The order denying class certification in this case did not have any such “irreparable” effect. It could be reviewed both prior to and after final judgment; it did not affect the merits of petitioner’s own claim; and it did not pass on the legal sufficiency of any claims for injunctive relief. This stands in sharp contrast to the order in General Electric. In that case the Court held that an order dismissing a counterclaim for an injunction was appealable. The order, therefore, entirely disposed of the defendant’s prayer for injunctive relief; here, the order merely limits the scope of the relief that may ultimately be granted. While it may have a significant effect on the litigation, “[m]any interlocutory orders are equally important, . . . but they are not for that reason converted into injunctions.” Morgantown v. Royal Insurance Co., 337 U. S. 254, 258.
As we stated in Switzerland Cheese Assn., Inc. v. E. Horne’s Market, Inc., 385 U. S. 23, 24, “we approach this statute [§ 1292 (a)(1)] somewhat gingerly lest a floodgate be opened that brings into the exception many pretrial orders.” The exception does not embrace orders that have no direct or irreparable impact on the merits of the controversy. The order in this case, like the order in Switzerland Cheese, had no such impact; it “in no way touch[ed] on the merits of the claim but only relate[d] to pretrial procedures . . . .” Id., at 25 A holding that such an order falls within § 1292 (a)(1) would compromise “the integrity of the congressional policy against piecemeal appeals.” 385 U. S., at 25.
The judgment is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Ҥ 1292. Interlocutory decisions.
“(a) The courts of appeals shall have jurisdiction of appeals from:
“(1) Interlocutory orders of the district courts of the United States . . . granting, continuing, modifying, refusing or dissolving injunctions,, or refusing to dissolve or modify injunctions, except where a direct review may be had in the Supreme Court. . . .”
Compare Williams v. Wallace Silversmiths, Inc., 566 F. 2d 364 (CA2 1977); Williams v. Mumford, 167 U. S. App. D. C. 125, 511 F. 2d 363 (1975), cert. denied, 423 U. S. 828 (holding that such orders are not immediately appealable under § 1292 (a) (1)), with Smith v. Merchants & Farmers Bank, 574 F. 2d 982 (CA8 1978); Jones v. Diamond, 519 F. 2d 1090 (CA5 1975); Price v. Lucky Stores, Inc., 501 F. 2d 1177 (CA9 1974); Yaffe v. Powers, 454 F. 2d 1362 (CA1 1972); Brunson v. Board of Trustees of School District 1, 311 F. 2d 107 (CA4 1962), cert. denied, 373 U. S. 933 (holding that such orders are appealable).
Petitioner did not file a motion for a preliminary injunction; for that reason, the issue decided in Jenkins v. Blue Cross Mutual Hospital Insurance, Inc., 538 F. 2d 164 (CA7 1976), cert. denied, 429 U. S. 986 (plaintiff’s appeal from denial of class certification and denial of preliminary injunction held within appellate jurisdiction), is not before us.
On the same day that she filed her motion for class-action certification, petitioner also filed a motion to compel respondent to answer interrogatories concerning its employee rosters at other radio stations, owned and operated by respondent and located in other cities. The District Court did not pass on this second motion because it denied class-action certification.
Petitioner did not seek certification of her appeal pursuant . to §1292 (b).
As the Court of Appeals noted, a decision on class-action status “may be conditional, subject to alteration or amendment prior to final judgment, F. R. Civ. P. 23 (c) (1) .... If, after judgment on the merits, the relief granted is deemed unsatisfactory, the question of class status is fully reviewable.” 559 E. 2d 209, 212; see also United Airlines, Inc. v. McDonald, 432 U. S. 385, 393.
There is an important distinction between an order denying an injunction on the merits and “one based on alleged abuse of a discretionary power over the scope of the action.” Stewart-Warner Corp. v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 325 F. 2d 822, 829 (CA2 1963) (Friendly, J., dissenting).
“Where the order is of the former type, the danger of serious harm from the court’s erroneous belief in the' existence of a legal barrier to its entertaining a claim for an injunction has been thought to outweigh the general undesirability of interlocutory appeals. The very fact that the second type of order hinges on the trial court’s discretion is itself an indication that such orders, relating primarily to convenience in litigation, carry a lesser threat of harm.” Ibid.
In addition to General Electric, petitioner relies on Enelow v. New York Life Insurance Co., 293 U. S. 379, and Ettelson v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., 317 U. S. 188. Both of those cases, however, rest on the distinction between “legal” and “equitable” claims and supply no preceden-tial weight for petitioner’s argument. Our characterization of those cases in Morgantown v. Royal Insurance Co., 337 U. S. 254, 258, is equally applicable here:
“[Distinctions from common-law practice which supported our conclusions in the Enelow and Ettelson cases supply no analogy competent to mate an injunction of what in any ordinary understanding of the word is not one.”
In Switzerland Cheese we held that an order denying a motion for summary judgment was not within § 1292 (a). Inasmuch as the requested summary judgment would have included an injunction against trademark infringement, that order was, if anything, a more direct refusal of an injunction than the order denying class certification in this case.
Of course, in one sense, the denial of class certification, like the denial of a summary judgment, does “touch on the merits,” since a court must consider whether the complaint reveals common questions of law and fact, or whether there is a material issue of disputed fact. But this determination does not otherwise reflect on the legal sufficiency of the claim for injunctive relief.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
On August 13, 1998, an officer of the city of Los Angeles Department of Transportation ordered respondent Edwin David’s automobile towed from a spot where parking was forbidden. After paying $134.50, David recovered his car. David, believing that the trees obstructed his view of the “no parking” sign, requested a hearing to recover the money. On September 9, 1998 — 27 days after the vehicle was towed — the city held the hearing and denied David’s claim.
David then brought this lawsuit in Federal District Court under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, arguing that the city, in failing to provide a sufficiently prompt hearing, had violated his federal right to “due process of law.” Arndt. 14, § 1. The District Court granted summary judgment for the city. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, by a vote of 2 to 1, reversed, holding that the Constitution required the city to provide an earlier payment-recovery hearing, perhaps within 48 hours of the towing and at least within 5 days. 307 F. 3d 1143, 1147 (2002). The city, seeking certiorari here, argues that the Ninth Circuit’s holding rims contrary to well-settled principles of constitutional law. We agree. We grant the writ and summarily reverse the Ninth Circuit’s judgment.
In Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S. 319, 335 (1976), the Court set forth three factors that normally determine whether an individual has received the “process” that the Constitution finds “due”:
“First, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and finally, the Government’s interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail.”
By weighing these concerns, courts can determine whether a State has met the “fundamental requirement of due process” — “the opportunity to be heard ‘at a meaningful time and in a meaningfiil manner.’” Id., at 333.
In FDIC v. Mallen, 486 U. S. 230, 242 (1988), the Court considered circumstances in which “impairment of an individual’s property is not preceded by any opportunity for a pre-deprivation hearing.” A Government agency had suspended an indicted bank employee from his job. A statute required the agency to provide a postdeprivation hearing within 30 days and to issue a decision within 60 days of that hearing. The bank employee claimed that the 30- or 90-day delay between (a) the suspension and (b) the postsuspension hearing and decision violated the Due Process Clause. The Court recognized that there “is a point at which an unjustified delay in completing a post-deprivation proceeding ‘would become a constitutional violation.’” Ibid. It applied Eldridge-type factors to determine whether that point had been reached. 486 U. S., at 242 (assessing the importance of, and harm to, the private interest, the likelihood of interim error, and the governmental interest in a delay). And it concluded that a 30-day delay of the hearing, and a potential 90-day delay of a decision, did not violate the Constitution. Id., at 243.
Eldridge, as applied in Mallen, requires reversal of the Ninth Circuit’s decision. The first Eldridge factor, the “private interest,” is a monetary interest here. It consists of the private individual’s interest in maintaining the use of money between (a) the time of paying the impoundment and towing fees and (b) the time of the hearing. The temporary deprivation of a job, the “private interest” at issue in Mallen, typically works a far more serious harm. Cf. Eldridge, supra, at 340 (distinguishing in this respect between benefits “not based upon financial need” and welfare assistance “given to persons on the very margin of subsistence”). So does a temporary deprivation of the use of the automobile itself — the relevant deprivation at issue in the lower court cases to which the Ninth Circuit looked for support. See Stypmann v. San Francisco, 557 F. 2d 1388, 1342-1344 (CA9 1977). Cf. Goichman v. Rheuban Motors, Inc., 682 F. 2d 1320, 1324 (CA9 1982). Indeed, the city indicates that any loss in the time value of the money can be compensated by an interest payment. Pet. for Cert. 7.
The second Eldridge factor — concern for accuracy — does not support the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion. A 30-day delay in presenting evidence is unlikely to spawn significant factual errors. Administrative and judicial proceedings normally take place after considerably more time has elapsed. And the straightforward nature of the issue — whether the car was illegally parked — indicates that initial towing errors, while they may occur, are unlikely. Cf. Mallen, supra, at 244-245 (finding “little likelihood that the deprivation is without basis” in light of the grand jury indictment).
The third Eldridge factor — the “Government’s interest”— argues strongly in the city’s favor. The nature of the city’s interest in delay is one of administrative necessity. The city points out that it “conducts more than a thousand vehicle impound hearings annually.” Pet. for Cert. 8. It holds about five percent of these hearings — those involving individuals who are unable to afford the impoundment fees— within 48 hours. Ibid. It “takes time to organize hearings: there are only so many courtrooms and presiding officials; the city has to contact the towing officer and arrange for his appearance; the city may have to find a substitute to cover that officer’s responsibilities while he attends the hearing.” 307 F. 3d, at 1149 (Kozinski, J., dissenting). And the Ninth Circuit’s holding, which presumably would require the city to schedule annually 1,000 or more hearings, instead of 50 hearings, within a 48-hour (or 5-day) time limit, will prove burdensome. The administrative resources available to modern police departments are not limitless. The administrative necessity supporting the delay here is no less substantial than the governmental interest in the 30-day hearing delay in Mallen, namely, the need to protect the integrity of the banking system and to prepare thoroughly for the hearing. Mallen, supra, at 244. We also add that the reason for denying a predeprivation hearing here — such a hearing is impossible if the city is to be able to enforce the parking rules — is not any less important than in Mallen.
We conclude that the 27-day delay in holding a hearing here reflects no more than a routine delay substantially required by administrative needs. Our eases make clear that the Due Process Clause does not prohibit an agency from imposing this kind of procedural delay when holding hearings to consider claims of the kind here at issue. The Ninth Circuit’s judgment to the contrary is reversed.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | D | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Harlan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case, involving a suit by a union member against a local union, raises issues of federal preemption similar to those considered in Local 100, United Assn. of Journeymen v. Borden, ante, p. 690, also decided today.
In the present case the respondent, Jacob Perko, filed a complaint in a state court against Local 207 of the International Association of Bridge, Structural and Ornamental Iron Workers Union and certain of its officers, petitioners here, seeking damages under state common law. He alleged that for several years he had been a member in good standing of the iron workers local and had been employed “as a foreman” by the William B. Pollock Company; that the defendants without justification had conspired to deprive him of the right to continue to work “as a foreman”; that pursuant to this conspiracy they had demanded that the company discharge him from his duties “as superintendent and foreman”; that as a result he had been discharged, and defendants had since prevented him from obtaining work “as a foreman in ironwork by representing that plaintiffs foreman’s rights had been suspended”; and that he was entitled to damages for past and future loss of earnings in the amount of $75,000.
An order of thé trial court that the complaint be dismissed was reversed by the Supreme Court of Ohio and the case remanded for trial, 168 Ohio St. 161, 151 N. E. 2d 742. The court disposed of the union’s argument that Perko had failed to exhaust internal union remedies by noting that:
“Plaintiff is not attempting tó secure any redress for loss of rights as a member of the union.... He is alleging that the union to which he belonged and certain named officials thereof committed a common-law tort against him by conspiring to deprive him of his right to earn a living and interfering with his contract of employment . . . .” 168 Ohio St., at 162, 151 N. E. 2d, at 744.
In answer to the union’s argument that federal law precluded the exercise of state jurisdiction, the court stated that there was no federal preemption with regard to a state action “to recover, damages for a common-law tort, which is also an unfair labor practice,” citing International Assn. of Machinists v. Gonzales, 356 U. S. 617.
At trial, a verdict was directed for petitioners, but this ruling was reversed on appeal, and a second trial was held. The evidence at this trial showed that Perko had generally worked for the company as a “foreman” or “superintendent” ; that in December 1953 he was working as a superintendent on a. particular project; that in that capacity he gave instructions to boilermakers with respect to performance of certain phases of the work that the iron workers claimed; and that following this incident Perko was charged by members of petitioner local with assisting boilermakers in violation of the union’s rule and was found guilty, fined and suspended from membership. The fine, however, was later suspended and Perko was placed on probation, being permitted to resume payment of dues.
According to the evidence introduced by Perko, the iron workers informed the company, after settlement of the jurisdictional dispute with the boilermakers, that they would no longer take orders from Perko because he had been “educating the boilermakers in their particular work.” Some weeks after completion of the project, the company laid him off “due to his dispute with the union,” and Perko did not thereafter obtain. employment with Pollock, or with any other company either as a superintendent or as a foreman.
The jury brought in a verdict of $25,000 for Perko, and the judgment was affirmed by the Court of Appeals. 90 Ohio L. Abs. 65, 187 N. E. 2d 407. That court rejected again the contention that the State was without jurisdiction, and held on the merits that although “there is very little that supports the cause sued on here,” the evidence was sufficient to sustain the verdict. The Supreme Court of Ohio dismissed' an appeal “for the reason that no debatable constitutional question is involved.” 173 Ohio St. 576, 184 N. E. 2d 100. We granted certiorari, 371 U. S. 939, to consider the petitioner’s claim that the State lacked jurisdiction over this dispute by virtue of the National Labor Relations Act, 49 Stat. 449, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §§ 151-168.
At the outset we note that for the reasons set forth in Borden, ante, p. 690, the rationale of the Gonzales case does not support state jurisdiction here, and we need not now consider the present vitality of that rationale in the light of more recent decisions. As in Borden, the crux of the action here concerned alleged interference with the plaintiff’s existing or prospective employment relations and was not directed to internal union matters. Indeed the state court itself observed that “Plaintiff is not attempting to secure any redress for loss of rights as a member of the union.” Supra, p. 703. Thus there was no permissible state remedy to which the award of consequential damages for loss of earnings might be subordinated.
Respondent contends, however, that in any event the exercise of state jurisdiction is not precluded because the matter is clearly not subject to the Labor Board’s cognizance. The basis of this contention is respondent’s claim that he was a job superintendent, and thus a “supervisor” within the meaning of the Act, at the time of the alleged tort and that he was thus excluded from the scope, operation, and protection of federal law. There are, we believe, two independent and conclusive answers to this argument, both of which establish that'this matter falls squarely within the preemption principles declared in San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236.
First, even if it is conceded that a job. superintendent is a supervisor, it is at least reasonably arguable that a foreman, as that term has been used in this casé, is an “employee” within the meaning of the Act, since his function is apparently to transmit instructions, not to originate them. See, e. g., New York Shipping Assn., 116 N. L. R. B. 1183. Perko in his complaint alleged that he had worked for many years “as a foreman,” that the actions of the defendant were designed to cause his . discharge “as superintendent, and foreman,” and that he was subsequently prevented from obtaining employment “as a foreman.” The evidence indicated that Perko sometimes worked for Pollock as a regular iron worker in a gang, sometimes as a foreman, and sometimes as a superintendent.
It is. evident that this case presents difficult problems of definition of status, problems which we have held are precisely “of a kind most wisely entrusted initially to the agency charged with the day-to-day administration of the Act as a whole.” Marine Engineers Beneficial Assn. v. Interlake Steamship Co., 370 U. S. 173, 180. It is entirely possible that' the Board might conclude that a foreman under the facts of this case is an employee and that a man whose status fluctuates, as Perko’s seemingly did, is entitled to claim the protection afforded employees under the Act. Given such a conclusion, Perko’s complaint — that the petitioners caused his discharge and prevented his subsequent employment as a foreman as well as a superintendent — falls within the ambit of the unfair labor practices prohibited by§§8(b)(1)(A) and 8 (b) (2) of the Act. And since petitioners’ actions apparently resulted from Perko’s violation of a union rule, there is a reasonable likelihood that on these premises the Board would have found such unfair labor practices to have been committed. See the discussion in the Borden case, ante, pp. 694-695.
Second, even if it be assumed that Perko was not an employee but was solely a supervisor, there is a sufficient probability that the matter would still have been cognizable by the Board so as to compel the relinquishment of state jurisdiction. It has been held that discharge of a supervisor for failure effectively to coerce employees into renouncing-their union affiliation constitutes a violation of § 8 (a)(1) because such a discharge would reasonably cause nonsupervisory employees to fear that they might meet the same fate if they adhered to the union; and in such instances the Board has been sustained in ordering reinstatement of the supervisor with back pay. Labor Board v. Talladega Cotton Factory, Inc., 213 F. 2d 209; cf. Labor Board v. Better Monkey Grip Co., 243 F. 2d 836. So here, it may well be that a union’s insistence on discharge of a supervisor for failure to comply with union rules would violate §8 (b)(1)(A) because it would inevitably tend to coerce nonsupervisory employees into observing those rules. If so, it would surely be within the Board’s power under § 10 (c) to order the union to reimburse the supervisor for lost wages.
Moreover, if a union forces an employer to discharge a supervisor, such conduct may well violate §8 (b)(1)(B) because it coerces the “employer in the selection of his representatives for the purposes of collective bargaining or the adjustment of grievances.” Cf. International Typographical Union v. Labor Board, 278 F. 2d 6, aff’d in part by an equally divided Court, 365 U. S. 705; Labor Board v. Local 294, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 284 F. 2d 893. Whether a “job superintendent” like Perko has sufficient responsibilities with regard to grievances to bring this section into play cannot be ascertained on this record, and in any event would be a question for initial determination by the Board. But the probability that such a violation of § 8 (b)(1)(B) might have occurred, especially in view of Perko’s role in the interunion dispute that gave rise to the present controversy, is certainly not insignificant.
We do not of course intimate any view on the' merits of any of the underlying substantive' questions, that is, whether the union was guilty of a violation of the Act. It is enough to hold, as we do, that it is plain on a number of scores that the subject matter of this lawsuit “arguably” comes within the Board’s jurisdiction to deal with unfair labor- practices. We therefore conclude that the State must yield jurisdiction and the judgment below must be
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Clark dissent for the reasons stated in their dissent in No. 541, Local 100, United Assn, of Journeymen v. Borden, ante, p. 698.
Mr. Justice Goldberg took no part in the consideration of decision of this case.
The record indicates that as used in this case a “superintendent” is the supervisor of an entire construction project, who has working under him groups' of employees of various crafts. One member of each such craft group is designated as- its “foreman” and has the responsibility of receiving orders from the superintendent and transmitting them to his particular crew.
The rule provided that “any member that leaves the iron workers to go in as a boilermaker or assist them in any way will be fined $500.” (Emphasis added.)
Respondent does not challenge the existence of the requisite effect on commerce to bring the matter within the scope of the Board’s jurisdiction.
Section 2 (3) of the Act defines “employee” as not including “any individual employed as a supervisor.” Section 2(11) defines “supervisor” as meaning “any individual having authority, in the interest of the employer, to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action, if in connection with the foregoing the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment.”
Section 8 (b) of the Act provides that it shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents “(1) to restrain or coerce (A) employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7 ...,” or “ (2) to cause or attempt to cause an employer to discriminate against an employee in violation of subsection (a) (3) ... Section 8 (a) provides that it shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer “(3) by discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization . . . .”
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
Mk. Justice Jackson
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Government brought this civil action to enjoin the International Salt Company, appellant here, from carrying out provisions of the leases of its patented machines to the effect that lessees would use therein only International’s salt products. The restriction is alleged to violate § 1 of the Sherman Act, and § 3 of the Clayton Act. Upon appellant’s answer and admissions of fact, the Government moved for summary judgment under Rule 56 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, upon the ground that no issue as to a material fact was presented and that, on the admissions, judgment followed as matter of law. Neither party submitted affidavits. Judgment was granted and appeal was taken directly to this Court.
It was established by pleadings or admissions that the International Salt Company is engaged in interstate commerce in salt, of which it is the country’s largest producer for industrial uses. It also owns patents on two machines for utilization of salt products. One, the “Lixator,” dissolves rock salt into a brine used in various industrial processes. The other, the “Saltomat,” injects salt, in tablet form, into canned products during the canning process. The principal distribution of each of these machines is under leases which, among other things, require the lessees to purchase from appellant all unpatented salt and salt tablets consumed in the leased machines.
Appellant had outstanding 790 leases of an equal number of “Lixators,” all of which leases were on appellant’s standard form containing the tying clause and other standard provisions; of 50 other leases which somewhat varied the terms, all but 4 contained the tying clause. It also had in effect 73 leases of 96 “Saltomats,” all containing the restrictive clause. In 1944, appellant sold approximately 119,000 tons of salt, for about $500,000, for use in these machines.
The appellant’s patents confer a limited monopoly of the invention they reward. From them appellant derives a right to restrain others from making, vending or using the patented machines. But the patents confer no right to restrain use of, or trade in, unpatented salt. By contracting to close this market for salt against competition, International has engaged in a restraint of trade for which its patents afford no immunity from the antitrust laws. Morton Salt Co. v. G. S. Suppiger Co., 314 U. S. 488; Mercoid Corp. v. Mid-Continent Investment Co., 320 U. S. 661; Mercoid Corp. v. Minneapolis-Honey well Co., 320 U. S. 680.
Appellant contends, however, that summary judgment was unauthorized because it precluded trial of alleged issues of fact as to whether the restraint was unreasonable within the Sherman Act or substantially lessened competition or tended to create a monopoly in salt within the Clayton Act. We think the admitted facts left no genuine issue. Not only is price-fixing unreasonable, per se, United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U. S. 150; United States v. Trenton Potteries Co., 273 U. S. 392, but also it is unreasonable, per se, to foreclose competitors from any substantial market. Fashion Originators Guild v. Federal Trade Commission, 114 F. 2d 80, affirmed, 312 U. S. 457. The volume of business affected by these contracts cannot be said to be insignificant or insubstantial and the tendency of the arrangement to accomplishment of monopoly seems obvious. Under the law, agreements are forbidden which “tend to create a monopoly,” and it is immaterial that the tendency is a creeping one rather than one that proceeds at full gallop; nor does the law await arrival at the goal before condemning the direction of the movement.
Appellant contends, however, that the “Lixator” contracts are saved from unreasonableness and from the tendency to monopoly because they provided that if any competitor offered salt of equal grade at a lower price, the lessee should be free to buy in the open market, unless appellant would furnish the salt at an equal price; and the “Saltomat” agreements provided that the lessee was entitled to the benefit of any general price reduction in lessor’s salt tablets. The “Lixator” provision does, of course, afford a measure of protection to the lessee, but it does not avoid the stifling effect of the agreement on competition. The appellant had at all times a priority on the business at equal prices. A competitor would have to undercut appellant’s price to have any hope of capturing the market, while appellant could hold that market by merely meeting competition. We do not think this concession relieves the contract of being a restraint of trade, albeit a less harsh one than would result in the absence of such a provision. The “Saltomat” provision obviously has no effect of legal significance since it gives the lessee nothing more than a right to buy appellant’s salt tablets at appellant’s going price. All purchases must in any event be of appellant’s product.
Appellant also urges that since under the leases it remained under an obligation to repair and maintain the machines, it was reasonable to confine their use to its own salt because its high quality assured satisfactory functioning and low maintenance cost. The appellant’s rock salt is alleged to have an average sodium chloride content of 98.2%. Rock salt of other producers, it is said, “does not run consistent in sodium chloride content and in many instances runs as low as 95% of sodium chloride.” This greater percentage of insoluble impurities allegedly disturbs the functioning of the “Lixator” machine. A somewhat similar claim is pleaded as to the “Saltomat.”
Of course, a lessor may impose on a lessee reasonable restrictions designed in good faith to minimize maintenance burdens and to assure satisfactory operation. We may assume, as matter of argument, that if the “Lixator” functions best on rock salt of average sodium chloride content of 98.2%, the lessee might be required to use only salt meeting such a specification of quality. But it is not pleaded, nor is it argued, that the machine is allergic to salt of equal quality produced by anyone except International. If others cannot produce salt equal to reasonable specifications for machine use, it is one thing; but it is admitted that, at times, at least, competitors do offer such a product. They are, however, shut out of the market by a provision that limits it, not in terms of quality, but in terms of a particular vendor. Rules for use of leased machinery must not be disguised restraints of free competition, though they may set reasonable standards which all suppliers must meet. Cf. International Business Machines Corp. v. United States, 298 U. S. 131.
Appellant urges other objections to the summary judgment. The tying clause has not been insisted upon in all leases, nor has it always been enforced when it was included. But these facts do not justify the general use of the restriction which has been admitted here.
The appellant also strongly objects to the provisions of the sixth paragraph of the decree. Appellant denies the necessity for such provision and it is true that the record discloses no threat to discriminate after the judgment of the court is pronounced. It also suggests that we modify the judgment to accept a proposed alternative provision similar to one it says it urged upon the District Court, which rejected it. The record does not show what proceedings were had between rendering of the court’s opinion and signing of the decree.
The specific ground of objection raised by appellant to paragraph sixth is that International may find it necessary in some sections of the country to reduce the rental rates of the machines in order that its machines may compete with those of others. Of course, the Clayton Act itself permits one charged with price discrimination to show that he lowered his price in good faith to meet competition. Obviously, the District Court was not intending to prevent competition or to disable the appellant from meeting or offering it. The Government, too, says it would not oppose permitting a lower price to meet, in good faith, the equally low price of a competitor if the need arose.
The short of the contention is that since the company never has threatened to violate any decree entered in this case to restrain future use of the illegal leases, it feels that the provision invalidating the objectionable leases should end the matter and that, as to any additional provisions, appellant is entitled to stand before the court in the same position as one who has never violated the law at all — that the injunction should go no farther than the violation or threat of violation. We cannot agree that the consequences of proved violations are so limited. The fact is established that the appellant already has wedged itself into this salt market by methods forbidden by law. The District Court is not obliged to assume, contrary to common experience, that a violator of the antitrust laws will relinquish the fruits of his violation more completely than the court requires him to do. And advantages already in hand may be held by methods more subtle and informed, and more difficult to prove, than those which, in the first place, win a market. When the purpose to restrain trade appears from a clear violation of law, it is not necessary that all of the untraveled roads to that end be left open and that only the worn one be closed. The usual ways to the prohibited goal may be blocked against the proven transgressor and the burden put upon him to bring any proper claims for relief to the court’s attention. And it is desirable, in the interests of the court and of both litigants, that the decree be as specific as possible, not only in the core of its relief, but in its outward limits, so that parties may know their duties and unintended contempts may not occur.
The framing of decrees should take place in the District rather than in Appellate Courts. They are invested with large discretion to model their judgments to fit the exigencies of the particular case. United States v. Crescent Amusement Co., 323 U. S. 173, 185; United States v. National Lead Co., 332 U. S. 319. In an equity suit, the end to be served is not punishment of past transgression, nor is it merely to end specific illegal practices. A public interest served by such civil suits is that they effectively pry open to competition a market that has been closed by defendants’ illegal restraints. If this decree accomplishes less than that, the Government has won a lawsuit and lost a cause.
The District Court has retained jurisdiction, by the terms of its judgment, for the purpose of “enabling any of the parties ... to apply to the court at any time for such further orders and directions as may be necessary or appropriate for the construction or carrying out of this judgment” and “for the amendment, modifications or termination of any of the provisions . . . .” We think it would not be good judicial administration to strike paragraph VI from the judgment to meet a hypothetical situation when the District Court has purposely left the way open to remedy any such situations if and when the need arises. The factual basis of the claim for modification should appear in evidentiary form before the District Court rather than in the argumentative form in which it is before us. Nor are we impressed that this will require a multitude of separate applications. Once the concrete problem is before the District Court it will no doubt be able to fashion a provision that will avoid repetitious applications which would be as vexatious to the Court as to the litigants. We leave the appellant to proper application to the court below and deny the relief here, upon the present state of the record, without prejudice.
Judgment affirmed.
26 Stat. 209, § 1,15 U.S.C.§ 1.
38 Stat. 730, § 3,15 U. S. C. § 14.
6 F. R. D. 302.
Probable jurisdiction noted April 28, 1947.
"It is further mutually agreed that the said Lixate Process Dis-solver shall be installed by and at the expense of said Lessee and shall be maintained and kept in repair during the term of this lease by and at the expense of said Lessee; that the said Lixate Process Dissolver shall be used for dissolving and converting into brine only those grades of rock salt purchased by the Lessee from the Lessor at prices and upon terms and conditions hereafter agreed upon, Provided:
“If at any time during the term of this lease a general reduction in price of grades of salt suitable for use in the said Lixate Process Dissolver shall be made, said Lessee shall give said Lessor an opportunity to provide a competitive grade of salt at any such competitive price quoted, and in case said Lessor shall fail or be unable to do so, said Lessee, upon continued payment of the rental herein agreed upon, shall have the privilege of continued use of the said equipment with salt purchased in the open market, until such time as said Lessor shall furnish a suitable grade of salt at the said competitive price.”
It further provides as follows:
“. . . should said Lessee fail to pay promptly the aforesaid rental, or shall at any time discontinue purchasing its requirements of salt from said Lessor, or otherwise breach any of the terms and conditions of this lease", said Lessor shall have the right, upon 30 days’ written notice of intention to do so, to remove the said Lixate Process Dissolver from the possession of said Lessee.”
“It is further mutually agreed that the said Salt Tablet Depositor (s) shall be installed and maintained in good condition during the term of this lease: that the said Salt Tablet Depositor(s) shall be used only in conjunction with Salt Tablets sold or manufactured by the Lessor, and that the Lessee shall purchase from the Lessor, or its agent, Salt Tablets for use in the Salt Tablet Depositor (s) at prices and upon terms and conditions hereinafter agreed upon, Provided: If, at any time during the term of this lease, a general reduction in Lessor’s price of Salt Tablets suitable for use in the Depositor (s) shall be made, said Lessor shall provide said Lessee with Salt Tablets at a like price.”
The lease further provides:
“. . . should Lessee fail to pay promptly the aforesaid rental, or at any time discontinue purchasing its requirements of Salt Tablets for said Salt Tablet Depositor (s) from said Lessor, or its agent, or otherwise breach any of the terms and conditions of this lease, said Lessor shall have the right, upon ten days’ written notice of intention to do so, to remove the said Salt Tablet Depositor(s) from the premises and/or possession of said Lessee.”
“Defendant International Salt is directed to offer to lease or sell or license the use of the Lixator or Saltomat machines, or any other machine which is then being or about to be offered or shall have been offered by such defendant in the United States embodying inventions covered by any of the patents referred to in paragraph II hereof, to any applicant on non-discriminatory terms and conditions; provided that
“(a) A machine or machines is or are available for such purposes and
“(b) Defendant shall not be required to make such offer unless it is offering, about to offer, or has offered such machines for lease or sale or license within the United States and at any time the defendant may discontinue the business of renting or selling or licensing the use of such machines; and
“(c) Such sale or lease or license is not required to be made without cash payment or security to any person not having proper credit rating, and
“(d) The rental or sale price or license royalty may differ as to different types and sizes of machines and from time to time so long as the rental or sale price or royalty at any one time is uniform as to each size or type of machine. The terms of this paragraph shall apply to all future contracts and modifications of existing contracts. Any person with whom defendant International Salt now has a lease agreement relating to the Lixator or Saltomat machines may elect to retain his rights under the existing lease or to enter into a lease or sale or license contract with defendant International Salt in accordance with the provisions of this paragraph.”
Defendant would be enjoined “from refusing to sell, lease or license the use of any such machine to any person, firm or corporation, or from discriminating in the terms of any contract of sale, lease or license of any such machine with any person, firm or corporation, against the prospective buyer, lessee or licensee on the ground that he has used or dealt in, or intends or proposes to use or deal in, salt not manufactured or sold by the defendant International Salt.”
38 Stat. 730, 49 Stat. 1526, 15,U. S. C. § 13b.
That court is authorized, but not required, to call upon the Federal Trade Commission to assist in framing decrees in antitrust cases. § 7, Federal Trade Commission Act, 38 Stat. 722. This would seem unnecessary if Congress intended a simple prohibition of the particular practice proved before the court. It indicates the Congress has intended decrees to deal with the future economic condition of the enterprise as well as past violations.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Harlan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Almost nine years have passed since this Court’s decision in Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Wisconsin, 347 U. S. 672, holding that the Federal Power Commission has jurisdiction over the rates charged by an independent producer of natural gas. The present case, involving the same independent producer, Phillips Petroleum (Phillips), is a sequel to that earlier decision and strikingly illustrates the unique problems confronting the Commission in its efforts to achieve the goal of effective regulation.
T.
Following the remand in the Phillips case, the Commission, proceeding under § 5 (a) of the Natural Gas Act-, reinstituted its general- investigation of the lawfulness of Phillips’ rates'with respect to its sales of natural gas in interstate commerce. Later, it consolidated with that-invéstigation 12 proceedings under § 4 (e) of the Act which involved the lawfulness of certain specific rate increases filed by Phillips under § 4 (d) between June 1954 and May 1956. All of these rate increases had been suspended by the Commission for the maximum five-month period permitted by the statute (§.4 (e)) and had subsequently gone into effect subject to refund of any portion that might ultimately be found excessive (ibid.). With one minor exception, each of these increases had beén superseded by a subsequent increase, all of which were in turn suspended and are the subject of separate § 4 (e) proceedings not now before us.
Hearings in these consolidated proceedings did not begin until June 1956 and extended over a period of almost 18 months. All parties proceeded on the assumption that the lawfulness of Phillips’ rates was to be determined on the basis of its jurisdictional cost of service for the test year. 1954, and four full-scale cost-of-service studies were presented. A Commission Examiner in April 1959 issued a comprehensive decision (24 F. P. C. 590) comprising over 200 pages, in which he found that Phillips’ jurisdictional cost of service for the test year was $57,280,218. He then ordered Phillips to calculate a rate which, when applied to 1954 volumes, would produce revenues substantially equal to its test year cost of service. This rate, with appropriate adjustments for quality, pressure, etc., was to be applied to all of the company’s rate schedules on file with the Commission at the time of Commission approval.
Over pne year later, in September 1960, the Commission issued the opinion that is the subject of the present litigation. 24 F. P. C. 537. Its basic conclusion was that the individual company cost-of-service method, based on theories of original cost and prudent investment, was not a workable or desirable method for determining the rates of independent producers and that the “ultimate solution” lay in what has come to be known as the area rate approach: “the determination of fair prices for gas, based on reasonable financial requirements of the industry” for each of the various producing areas of the country. 24 F. P. C., at 547. This means that rates would be established on an area basis, rather than on an individual company basis. As initial steps toward this end, the Commission did two things at the same time it issued the opinion 'in these proceedings. First, it.promulgated a Statement of General Policy (S. G. P: 61-1), since amended on several occasions, in which it set forth area-by-area “price levels” for initial and increased rate filings by producers, and stated that in the absence of compelling evidence it would not certificate initial rates, and would suspend increased rates, which exceeded these price levels. Second, the Commission announced that it would begin a series of hearings, each designed to cover a major producing area. (At least one of these hearings, involving the Permian Basin, is now well under way.)
The Commission, in its opinion here, gave several reasons for rejecting as unsuitable the individual company cost-of-service method. 24 F. P. C., at 542-548. In particular it emphasized that, unlike the business of a typical public utility, the business of producing natural gas involved no fixed, determinable relationship between investment and service to the public. A huge investment might yield only a trickle of gas, while a small investment might lead to a bonanza. Thus the concept of an individual company’s “prudent investment,” as a basis for calculating rates that would call forth the necessary capital and also, protect consumers from excessive charges, seemed wholly out of place. Further, the Commission noted that the individual company cost-of-service method gave rise to staggering cost allocation problems,, could result in such anomalies as widely varying prices for gas coming from a single field and even from a single jointly owned well, and would create an intolerable administrative burden in requiring a separate rate determination for each of the several thousand independent producers.
Returning to the proceedings before'it, the Commisssion decided that, despite its disapproval of the cost-of-service method, the whole case having been tried on that basis, a final administrative determination of cost of sérvice for the test year should be made. It then proceeded to resolve a number of difficult questions, including those relating to allocation of production and exploration costs, allocation of costs between natural gas and extracted' liquids, and rate 9f return, and arrived at a system-wide jurisdictional cost of service for the test year of $55,548,054 — a figure which substantially exceeded jurisdictional revenues ($45,568,291) for that year.
With this determination in hand, the Commission turned to the consolidated § 4 (e) proceedings, involving specific rate increases filed through May 1956, and found that those increases had produced increased revenues of only about $5,250,000 annually, or considerably less than the total deficit for the test year. It also stated that there was nothing in the record to show that any of the increased-rates were “unduly discriminatory or preferential.” It then concluded that since it could not order refunds of any portion of these increases-, in view, of the continuing deficit, and since all increases had been superseded, there would be no purpose in continuing the § 4 (e) proceedings and, with two exceptions, they were terminated.
The two exceptions concerned rate increases under “spiral escalation” clauses in Phillips’ contracts, and these two proceedings were kept open because the proper-amount of the particular increases depended on the amount of increases, if' any, allowed to certain pipeline customers of Phillips in their own rate proceedings then pending before the Commission. The Commission refused- to hold such spiral clauses void ab initio, and in fact a rate increase in one of the 10 terminated § 4 (e) proceedings had resulted from the operation of a spiral escalation clause.
The Commission recognized that there remained almost 100 other § 4 (e) proceedings, involving increases filed by Phillips, that had not been consolidated in this case. It said that since the present record indicated that Phillips’ costs exceeded revenues at least through 1958 it was inviting Phillips to file motions to terminate all § 4 (e) proceedings relating to increases filed prior to 1959, thus limiting future consideration of Phillips' rates to 1959 and after. Whether this invitation has been accepted by Phillips is not disclosed, but in any event none of these other § 4 (e) proceedings is before us now.
Turning to the § 5 (a) investigation of the lawfulness of Phillips’ existing rates, the Commission first noted that there was considerable disagreement over how these rates should be set. — whether they should be approximately uniform throughout the country or should vary from area to area. It then said that it was aware that both costs and prices had greatly increased sinee 1954 (and especially after 1958) and it therefore did not “deem it appropriate to prescribe or require that Phillips file rates for the future based upon the present record.” 24 F. P. C., at 575-576. Concluding that the public would be adequately protected by Phillips’ potential refund obligations under § 4 (e), by the area pricing standards announced in the Statement of General Policy, and by the area rate proceedings to be initiated, the Commission ordered the termination of the present § 5 (a) investigation.
On application for rehearing, the Commission rejected the suggestion that it should reopen the case for submission of 1959 cost data. 24 F. P. C. 1008. It said that the “interest of consumers and the exigencies of regulation will be better- served in rate proceedings brought on an area basis rather than on an individual company basis,” and that the area method would lead to “more effective and -expeditious regulation of the producer sales.”. 24 F. P. C., at 1009. It also rejected the claim that it had erred in terminating the § 4 (e) proceedings because some of the increased rates were in excess of the average unit cost of service, reiterating that there had been no showing of undue discrimination or' preference and that the total revenue resulting from the increases did not make up the deficit shown by the test year determination.
On' review, the Court of Appeals, in a thorough and informative opinion, affirmed the decision of the Commission. 112 U. S. App. D. C. 369, 303 F. 2d 380. Judge Fahy, dissenting in part, argued that whether or not the area rate method of rate regulation was the ultimate solution, the Commission having gone so far in this proceeding should have finished it by deciding on a cost-of-service basis the justness and reasonableness of Phillips’ past increases and of its present rates. To have failed to do so, he believed, was a clear abuse of discretion. We granted certiorari because of the importance of this case in the administration and future operation of the Natural Gas Act. 369 U. S. 870.
The arguments of the parties, both in their briefs and at the bench, have covered a broad range of subjects, including a number of other administrative actions and proceedings — past, present, and future — that are not before us today. We lay these collateral subjects to one side and focus on the three precise questions that have been brought here for review: whether the Commission erred (1) in refusing to reject certain increased rates because they were baséd on spiral escalation clauses; (2) in terminating the 10 consolidated § 4 (e) proceedings involving increases now superseded and in leaving two such proceedings open only for a limited purpose; or (3) in discontinuing the § 5 (a) investigation of the lawfulness of Phillips’ current rates. Of these three questions, which will be considered in the order stated, the third is the only one vigorously pressed by all petitioners and is clearly the principal issue in the case.
II.
California, alone among the petitioners, challenges the Commission’s refusal to declare void ab initio the spiral escalation clauses in Phillips’ contracts on which rate increases in three of the 12 § 4 (e) dockets were based'. Such clauses, California contends, are manifestly inconsistent with the public interest, because they constitute a price mechanism by which “[cjonsumers of natural gas are caught in a maelstrom.”
.. But we have at least grave doubts that this question may be raised by California at this time. As to two of the three dockets, the claim would appear premature, since the dockets are still pending, and the increases there involved may eventually be disallowed if the pipeline increases on which they depend are themselves disallowed by the Commission. As to the third docket, the particular increase has been made fully effective by termination of the § 4 (e) proceeding, but since the sale in question, is to the Michigan-Wisconsin pipeline and appears to affect no California interests, no one whom California may properly represent is “aggrieved” (§ 19 (b)) by the Commission’s order.
Further, we see no merit in California’s contention. It is true that the Commission has announced prospectively that it would not accept for filing contracts containing such clauses, but it would have been' quite a different matter for the Commission to have declared that past rate increases were ineffective simply because they were based on spiral provisions. The ’ effect of a contract clause of this type,- of course, is only to permit the producer to resort to the filing provisions of § 4 (d) of the Act. If the increase is challenged, the producer must still establish its lawfulness wholly apart from the terms of the contract. Thus, we have sustained the right of a seller to file an increase under a contract which, in effect, authorized him to do so at any time. United Gas Pipe Line Co. v. Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division, 358 U. S. 103. The spiral clauses here are far more limited in scope, depending as they do on the occurrence of external events.
III.
The claim that the Commission erred in terminating 10- § 4 (e) dockets, and leaving two others open only for a limited purpose, is pressed primarily by Wisconsin and New York. In considering their contentions, it should be notéd again that all of.the rate increases involved were filed prior to the end of 1956, and have since been superseded or “locked in” by subsequent increases which, with one exception, have been suspended and made the subject of separate § 4 (e) proceedings.
The Commission’s termination of these § 4 (e) dockets was a decision on the merits. It was based on the finding that the annual increase in revenue produced by these increased rates was substantially less than the deficit, for the test year 1954. Petitioners’ principal objection appears to be that-Phillips’ overall, and unit (per Mcf.), revenues increased so substantially that they may have exceeded costs during the 1955-1959 period for which the increases were allowed. But the fact is that Phillips’ average unit revenues during this period never rose significantly above its test year unit revenue requirements as determined by the Commission. Moreover, petitioners do not claim, nor could they on this record, that the test year cost of service was higher per unit than in subsequent years. And assuming that unit costs did not decline, it is clear that the increases here did not even bring unit revenues up to those unit costs. Whether other subsequent increases involved in separate proceedings, not before us resulted in revenues exceeding cost of service in later years-has no effect on the propriety of terminating. these § 4(e) dockets. Thus the factors that may have made the record stale for purposes of determining in the § 5 (a)-investigation whether Phillips’ present rates are unjust or unreasonable do not make the record stale for purposes of determining the lawfulness of these past increases.
Petitioners also claim that the Commission terminated the § 4 (e) proceedings improperly because it failed to make any finding that the increased rates in question were just and reasonable. But this contention goes to the form and not the substance of what the Commission did. Since these increased rates were “locked in,” their validity for the future was not at issue; the sole question was whether all or any part of the increases had to be refunded by Phillips. Having decided on the basis of substantial evidence'that the increases did not bring revenues up to cost of service, the Commission properly concluded, on the only matter before it with respect to these dockets, that no refund obligation could be imposed.
It was urged on rehearing before the Commission, and in the court'below, that some of the increased rates were above average cost of service and that at most the Commission should have terminated only those § 4 (e) dockets in which the increased rates did not exceed the average unit cost of service..The Commission rejected this contention, stating that Phillips’ rates would normally vary greatly because sales were made, at widely separated points and under differeñt conditions, and that there was little or nothing to be gained by entering a protracted investigation of allocation of costs.to particular past rates “when it is already known that Phillips was not earning its whole cost of service.” 24 F. P. C., at 1009.
We believe this conclusion was justified, and.petitioners appear to have all but abandoned the theory that some of the § 4 (e) dockets were improperly terminated merely because the particular increased rates in those dockets exceeded average cost. Rather, they now urge that the variation, in the increased rates was so great as to compel the conclusion that they were “discriminatory and preferential per se.” The Commission noted that there was nothing in the record to show unlawful discrimination, and it is clear that mere differences in rates under this Act are not per se unlawful. But in any event, we need not reach the merits of the claim of discrimination because it is not.properly before us. It was not presented to the cou-rt below, nor was it adequately raised on application to the Commission for rehearing, a step required by § 19 (b) of the Act in order to preserve a point for judicial review. See, e. g., Sunray Mid-Continent Oil Co. v. Federal Power Comm’n, 364 U. S. 137, 167.
IV.
The final question is whether the Commission was justified in terminating the § 5 (a) investigation of the reasonableness of.Phillips’ current rates. Preliminarily, it is important to observe that the Commission’s accomplishments since the original Phillips case, the validity of the Statement of General Policy 61-1, the actions taken pursuant to it, and the lawfulness of the area pricing method are not themselves before the Court for review. To a limited extent, however, these matters do bear upon the propriety of the Commission’s decision to terminate this § 5 (a) proceeding.
As the petitioners recognize^ the issue is whether the.termination constituted an abuse of discretion, a discretion which in general is broad but which the petitioners urge is a good deal narrower in a proceeding that has gone this far than in the case of a decision whether or not to initiate an inquiry. See Minneapolis Gas Co. v. Federal Power Comm’n, 111 U. S. App. D. C. 16, 294 F. 2d 212. Underlying petitioners’ position are their claims that the result of the termination is little or no effective regulation in the interim- period before the development of area rate regulation, that such regulation may take many years to evolve, and that the method may eventually be held invalid.
1. The petitioners are not of one mind as to the feasibility and lawfulness of the area rate method of regulation, although no one questions the Commission’s right to undertake the experiment. California appears to come closest to the view that the individual company cost-of-service Method is the only lawful basis for rate regulation and that the invalidity of the area approach is therefore predictable. If we believed that such a departure from present concepts had little, if any, chance of being sustained, we would be hard pressed to say that the Commission had not abused its discretion in terminating this § 5 (a) proceeding while undertaking the area experiment. For if area regulation were almost sure to fail, and if the individual company cost-of-service method of determining. the reasonableness of rates had been abandoned, then there would be virtually no foreseeable prospect of effective regulation. Difficult as the problems of cost-of-service regulation may be, they would not warrant a breakdown of the administrative process.
But to declare that a particular method of rate regulation is so sanctified as to maké it highly unlikely that any other method could be sustained would be wholly out of keeping with this Court’s consistent and clearly articulated approach to the question of the Commission’s power to regulate rates. It has repeatedly been stated that no single method need be followed by the Commission in considering the justness and reasonableness of rates, Federal Power Comm’n v. Natural Gas Pipeline Co., 315 U. S. 575; Federal Power Comm’n v. Hope Natural Gas Co., 320 U. S. 591; Colorado Interstate Gas Co. v. Federal Power Comm’n, 324 U. S. 581, and we reaffirm that principle today. As the Court said in Hope:
“We held in Federal Power Commission v. Natural Gas Pipeline. Co., supra, that the Commission was not bound to the use of any single formula or combination of formulae in determining rates. Its rate-making function, moreover, involves the making of ‘pragmatic adjustments.’’. Id., p. 586. And when the Commission’s order is challenged in the courts, the question is whether that order ‘viewed in its entirety’ meets the requirements of the Act. Id., p. 586. Under the statutory standard of ‘just and reasonable’ it is the result reached not the method employed which is controlling.” 320 U. S., at 602.
More specifically, the Court has never held that the individual company cost-of-service method is a sine qua non of natural gas rate regulation. Indeed the prudent investment, original cost, rate base method which we are now told is lawful, established, and effective is the very one the Court was asked to declare impermissible in. the Hope case, less than'20 years ago.
To whatever extent ■ the matter, of costs may be a requisite element in rate regulation, we have no indication that the area method will fall short of statutory or constitutional standards. The Commission has stated in its opinion in this proceeding that the goal is' to have rates based on the “reasonable financial requirements of the industry” in each production.area, 24 F. P. C., at 547, and we were advised at oral argument that composite cost-of-service data will be considered in the area rate proceedings. Surely, we cannot say that the rates to be developed in these proceedings will in all likelihood be so high as to deprive consumers, or so low as to deprive producers, of their right to a just and reasonable rate.
We recognize the unusual difficulties inherent in regulating the price of a commodity such as natural gas. We respect the Commission’s considered judgment, backed by sound and persuasive reasoning, that the individual company cost-of-service method is not a feasible or suitable one for regulating the rates of independent producers. We share the Commission’s hopes that the area approach may prove to be the ultimate solution.
2. This is not a case in which the Commission has walked right up to the line and then refused to cross it— a case, in other words, in which, all the evidence necessary to a determination had been received but the determination was not made. Here, the Commission concluded that the record, relating to the test year 1954, was too stale in 1960 to permit a finding as to the justness and reasonableness of Phillips’ current rates. In view of this inadequacy, and since the Commission must establish the unlawfulness of present rates before taking further action in a § 5 (a) proceeding, continuation of the proceeding would have required remanding the case for the receipt of evidence as to costs in at least one subsequent test year. None of the petitioners specifically challenges the Commission’s conclusion that, for § 5 (a) purposes, the record was stale in I960; a fortiori it is stale today.
Thus the question whether the Commission abused its discretion in terminating the proceeding must be measured against the only alternative: remanding for additional evidence. Such a remand undoubtedly would have consumed considerable time and energy, including that of the Commission and its staff, and would almost certainly have involved another decision by a hearing exam-' iner, another appeal to the Commission, another petition for rehearing and further judicial review of qomplex and difficult issues. In short, the alternative rejected by the Commission would not have resulted in definitive regulation of Phillips’ rates immediately or in the riéar future. Indeed, several years might have elapsed before even.the method of regulation which the Commission regards as unsuitable would have become effective as to even this one producer.
3. It is contended that, as a result of the decision to terminate this'§ 5 (a) proceeding, the public will receive significantly less protection against the charging of excessive prices by Phillips (and others) in the interim period before the area method sees the light- of day. Were this the case, it would bear importantly on our review of the Commission’s exercise of its discretion. But in this connection several factors should be-noted. First, the record before us does pot paint a picture of the public interest sacrificed on the'altar of private profit. Indications are that at least unt.il 1959 Phillips’ jurisdictional revenues did not catch up to its cost of service. Although revenues increased substantially after that -time, the Commission observed that costs have also risen dramatically, and we.have no basis for assuming that current rates are grossly unreasonable.
Second, most of Phillips’ increased rates now in effect are the subject of pending §.4 (e) proceedings and are thus being collected subject to refund. Refund obligations, it is true, do not provide as much protection as the elimination of unreasonable rates, see Federal Power Comm’n v. Tennessee Gas Transmission Co., 371 U. S. 145, 154-155, but they are undoubtedly significant and cannot be ignored, as some of the petitioners would have us do.
Third, it is clear that since the Commission’s decision in this proceeding, the upward trend in producer prices has been substantially arrested, and in at least, one important area the trend has actually been downward. Although the Statement of General. Policy did not purport to establish just and reasonable rates, see note 7, supra, the price levels' declared in that statement, along with implementation of the program there announced, appear to. have played a significant role in accomplishing this result.
Fourth, it must be remembered that the problem of this transitional period would still exist if. the present § 5 (a) proceeding were reopened for the taking of new evidence; there is no way of predicting how much time would be required for a final decision to be rendered, but it would inevitably be substantial. It is therefore evident that the choice is not between protection or no protection. There will in either event be some protection, though doubtless with room for improvement, for. several years.
Petitioners claim that forcing the Commission to reopen this § 5 (a) investigation will not unduly delay area rate proceedings and will in fact provide useful information for area rate-making purposes. The Commission, with equal vigor, states that it does not have the facilities to reopen this case (and all others that have reached approximately the same stage) and at the same time to proceed expeditiously with its area investigations. It estimates that the Permian Basin area proceedings, a case involving some 35% of Phillips’ jurisdictional sales and roughly 10% of sales by all producers, will be completed in about the same time that would be required to complete a remanded § 5 (a) proceeding relating to Phillips alone. It warns that if it is required to reopen this and similar proceedings, the result may be to delay unduly the area investigations, while compelling adherence to a method the Commission deems unworkable, thus providing significantly less protection for the public both in the long and the short run.
The Court cannot resolve this dispute against the Commission and tell it that it has made an error of law— abused its discretion — in deciding how best to allocate its resources. The case might be different if the area approach had little or no chance of being sustained; if the present record were now ripe for determination of reasonable rates for Phillips on an individual company cost-of-service basis; or if it were manifest that the public would receive significantly less protection in the interim period than if the proceeding had not been terminated. But as we have already concluded, none of these conditions exists, and in their absence a reversal of the Commission would be a sheer act of interference in the details of the administrative process. Indeed, it might well have the effect of postponing even further the time when effective regulation will be realized.
Finally, the fact that the Commission in this case terminated the § 5 (a) proceedings, rather than merely holding them in abeyance as it did in Hunt Oil Co., 28 F. P. C. 623, is a circumstance of no significance. At the oral argument general counsel for the Commission assured us.that the Commission remains free to reactivate the investigation of Phillips’ individual rates if the area proceedings are unduly delayed or if circumstances should otherwise warrant. The distinction between termination and suspension of the § 5 (a) proceedings is thus one of form and not of substance. In either event the Commission retains the flexibility it must have at this still formative period in a difficult area of rate regulation.
Affirmed.
Phillips is a large integrated oil company which is also a producer' of.natural gas. It is known as an “independent” in that it does not engage in the interstate gas pipeline business and is not affiliated with any interstate gas pipeline company.
Section 5 (a) of the Natural Gas Act, 52 Stat. 823, 15 U. S'. C. § 717d (a), provides:
“Whenever the Commission, after a hearing had upon its own motion or upon complaint- of any State, municipality, State commission, or gas distributing company, shall find that any rate, charge, or classification demanded, observed, charged, or collected by any natural-gas company in connection with any. transportation or sale of natural gas, subject' to the jurisdiction of the Commission, or that any rule, regulation, practice, or contract affecting such rate, charge, or classification is unjust, unreasonable, unduly discriminatory, or preferential, the Commission shall determine the just-and reasonable rate, charge, classification, rule, regulation, practice,- or contract to be.thereafter observed and in force, and shall fix the same by order: Provided, however, That the Commission shall have no power to order any increase in any rate.contained in the currently effective schedule of such natural gas company on file with the Commission,unless such increase is in accordance with a new schedule filed by such natural gas company; but the Commission may order a decrease where existing rates are unjust, unduly discriminatory, preferential, otherwise unlawful, or' are not the lowest reasonable rates.”
Section 4 (e) of the Natural Gas Act, 52 Stat. 823, as amended, 76 Stat. 72, 15 U. S. C. (Supp. IV) § 717c (e), provides:
. “Whenever any such new schedule is filed the Commission shall have authority... to enter upon a hearing concerning the lawfulness of such rate, charge, classification, or service; and, pending such hearing and the decision thereon, the Commission', upon filing with such- schedules and delivering to the natural-gas company affected thereby a statement in writing of its reasons for such suspension, may suspend the operation of such schedule and defer the use of such rate, charge, classification, or service, but not for a longer period than five months beyond the time when it would - otherwise go into effect; and after full hearings, either completed before or after the rate, charge, classification, or service goes into effect, the Commission may make such orders with reference thereto as would be proper, in a proceeding initiated after it had become effective. If the proceeding has not been concluded and an order made at the expiration of the suspension period, on motion of the natural-gas company making the filing, the proposed change of rate,‘charge, classification, or service shall go into effect.. Where increased rates or charges are thus made effective, the Commission may, by order,, require the natural-gas company to furnish a bond, to be approved by the Commission, to refund- any amounts ordered by the Commission, to keep accurate accounts in detail of all amounts received by reason of such increase, specifying by whom and in whose behalf such amounts were paid, and, upon completion of the hearing and decision, to order such natural-gas company to refund,'with interest, the. portion of such increased rates or charges by its decision found not justified..At any hearing involving a rate or charge sought, to be.increased, the burden of proof to show that the increased rate or charge is just and reasonable shall be upon the natural-gas company, and the Commission shall give to- the hearing and decision of such questions preference over other questions pending before it and decide the same as speedily as possible."
The exception involves 'an annual increase of $21,234, and we are advised by Phillips that this increase has since been superseded by' a later filing, not suspended by the Commission.
An increased rate which is later superseded by a further increase is thus effective only for the limited intervening period, called the “locked-in” period, and retains significance iri § 4 (e) proceedings only in respect of its refundability if found unlawful. See, infra, pp. 304-305. ■
The phrase “jurisdictional cost of service” as used' here means the producer’s system-wide cost of service (z. e.,. all operating expenses, including depreciation, depletion, and taxes, plus a fair return on the rate.base) for its sales of natural gas subject to the Commission’s jurisdiction. The “test year 1954” means the calendar year 1954, with adjustments for certain changes in costs and increases in revenues through 1956. No challenge is here, made- by either side to any aspect of the Commission’s determination of Phillips’ jurisdictional cost of service for the test year.
The Statement of General Policy, as originally issued, appears at 25 Fed-. Reg. 9578. It was issued without notice or hearing, and the Commission expressly stated that the price levels were “for the purpose of guidance and initial action-by the Commission and their use will not deprive any party of substantive rights or fix the ultimate justness and reasonableness of any rate level.”
On rehearing, the cost of service was redetermined to be $54,525,315, or 11.10090 per Mcf, subject to certain neceásary adjustments for purchased gas- costs, gathering taxes, and royalties. These adjustments would increase the average unit- cost to about 12.160 per Mcf.
These clauses’’ provided that when a specified commodity price index increased by more than a certain number of points and a general increase in a Phillips pipeline customer’s resale rates had gone into effect, then Phillips’ rates to that customer could be proportionally increased.
See note 9, swpra.
52 Stat. 831, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 717r (b).
By Order Nos. 232, 26 Fed. Reg. 1983, and 232A, 26 Fed. Reg. 2850, the Commission announced that spiral escalation clauses contained in contracts executed on or after April 3, 1961, would be inoperative and without effect. By Order No. 242, 27 Fed. Reg. 1356, the Commission announced that contracts containing such clauses would be unacceptable for filing on or after April 2, 1962.
See note 5, supra.
Phillips’ test year unit revenue requirements, on the basis of the Commission’s determinations, were about 12.160 per Mcf. See note 8, supra. Data from Phillips’ annual reports, filed with the Commission, show average jurisdictional revenues as follows: 8.9$ (1955); 9.4$ (1956); 9.9$ (1957); 11.1$ (1958); 12.3$ (1959).
We find no necessary inconsistency between this determination and the Commission’s recent decision in Hunt Oil Co., 28 F. P. C. 623, in which the Commission remanded § 4 (e) proceedings for the taking of additional evidence and stated:
“Our examination of the record in this case convinces us that increased rates for specific sales cannot always be found to be just and reasonable solely on the basis of a comparison of individual company-wide costs with that company’s revenues in a test year.” 28 F. P. C., at 626.
The record in the Hunt chse is not before us, but it is evident from the Commission’s opinion that, unlike the present case, certain increased rates there involved were not “locked in” and were higher than the currently prevailing rates in the production area.'Thus the factors' that may have merited limited supplementation of the record in that ease
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case and Commissioner v. “Americans United” Inc., post, p. 752, involve the application of the Anti-Injunction Act, § 7421 (a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (the Code), 26 U. S. C. § 7421 (a),.to the ruling-letter* program of the Internal Revenue Service (the Service) for organizations claiming tax-exempt status under Code § 501 (c) (3), 26 U. S. C. § 501 (c) (3). The question presented' is whether, prior to the assessment and collection of any tax, a court may enjoin the Service from revoking a ruling letter declaring that petitioner qualifies for tax-exempt status and from_ withdrawing advance assurance to donors that contributions to petitioner will constitute charitable deductions under Code § 170 (c)(2), 26 U. S. C. § 170 (c)(2). We hold that it may not.
Section 501 (a) of the.Code exempts from federal income taxes organizations.described in § 501 (c)(3). The latter provision encompasses:
“Corporations, and any community chest, fund, or foundation, organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or.animals, no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual; no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying..on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation, and which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office.”
Section 501 (c) (3.) organizations are also exempt from federal social security (FICA) taxes by virtue of Code §3121 (b)(8)(B), 26 U. S. C. § 3121 (b)(8)(B), and from federal unemployment (FUTA) taxes by virtue of §3306 (c)(8), 26 U. S. C. §3306 (c)(8). Donations to § 501 (c) (3) organizations are tax deductible Under 1170(c)(2).
As a practical matter, an organization hoping to solicit tax-deductible contributions may not rely solely on technical compliance with the language of §§ 501 (c)(3) and. 170 (c)(2). The organization must also obtain a ruling letter from the Service, pursuant to Rev. Procs. 72-3 and 72-4, 1972-1 Cum. Bull. 698, 706, declaring that it qualifies under § 501 (c)(3). Receipt of such a ruling letter leads, in the ordinary case, to inclusion in the Service’s periodically updated Publication No. 78, “Cumulative List of Organizations described in Section 170 (c) - of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954” (the Cumulative List). In essence, the Cumulative List is the Service’s official roster of tax-exempt organizations: “The listing of an organization in [the Cumulative List] signifies it has received a ruling or determination letter... stating that contributions by donors to the organization are deductible as provided in section 170 of the-Code.” Rev. Proc. 72-39, 1972-2 Cum. Bull. 818. An. organization’s inclusion in the Cumulative List assures potential donors in advance that contributions to the organization will qualify as charitable deductions under §170 (c)(2). The Service has announced that, with ■ narrowly limited exceptions, a donor may rely on the Cumulative List for so long as the beneficiaries.of his largesse maintain their listing, regardless of their actual tax status. For this reason, appearance on the Cumu-. lative List is a prerequisite to successful fund raising for most charitable organizations. Many contributors simply will not make donations to an organization that does not appear on the Cumulative List.
Because of the importance of inclusion in the Cumulative List, revocation of a §501 (c)(3) ruling letter and consequent removal from the Cumulative List is likely to result in serious damage to a charitable organization. Revocation not only threatens the flow of contributions, it also subjects the affected organization to FICA and FUTA- taxes and, assuming that the organization has taxable income and does not qualify as tax exempt under another subsection of § 501, to federal income taxes. Upon -the assessment and attempted collection of income taxes, the organization may litigate the legality of the Service’s action by petitioning the Tax Court to review a notice of deficiency. See Code §§ 6212 and 6213, 26 U. S. C. §§ 6212 and 6213. Or, following the collection of apy federal tax and the denial of a refund by the Service,. the organization may bring a refund suit in a federal district court or in the Court of Claims. See Code § 7422, 26 U. S. C. § 7422; 28 U. S. C. §§ 1346 (a)(1) and 1491. Finally, a donor to the organization may bring a refund suit to challenge the denial of a charitable deduction under §170 (c)(2). Presumably such a “friendly donor” would be able to attack the legality of the Service’s revocation of an organization’s § 501 (c) (3) status. But these post-revocation avenues of review take substantial time, during which the organization is certain to lose contributions from those donors whose gifts are contingent on entitlement to charitable deductions under § 170 (c)(2). Accordingly,' any organization threatened with revocation of a § 501 (c) (3) ruling letter has a powerful incentive to bring a pre-enforcement suit to prevent the Service from taking action in the first instance.
The pressures operating on organizations facing revocation of §501 (c)(3) status to seek injunctive relief against the Service pending judicial review of the proposed action conflict directly with a congressional prohibition of such pre-enforcement tax suits. In force continuously' since its enactment in 1867, the Anti-Injunction Act, now Code § 7421 (a), provides in pertinent part that “no suit, for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court..'..” Because an injunction preventing the Service, from withdrawing a. § 501 (c) (3) ruling letter would necessarily preclude the collection of FICA, FUTA., and possibly incomé taxes from the affected organization, as well as the denial of § 170 (c)(2) charitable deductions to donors to the organization, a suit seeking such relief falls squarely within the literal scope of the Act.
The clash between the language of the Anti-Injunction Act and the desire of § 501 (c) (3) organizations to block the Service from withdrawing a ruling letter has been resolved against the organizations in most cases. E. g., Crenshaw County Private School Foundation v. Connally, 474 F. 2d 1185 (CA5 1973), pet. for cert. pending in No. 73-170; National Council on the Facts of Overpopulation v. Caplin, 224 F. Supp. 313 (DC 1963); Israelite House of David v. Holden, 14 F. 2d 701 (WD Mich. 1926). But see McGlotten v. Connally, 338 F. Supp. 448 (DC 1972) (three-judge court). Cf. Green v. Connally, 330 F. Supp. 1150 (DC), aff’d per curiam sub nom. Coit v. Green, 404 U. S. 997 (1971).
In the present case, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit followed the majority view. Bob Jones University v. Connally, 472 F. 2d 903, petition for rehearing denied, 476 F. 2d 259 (1973). In light of the contrary result reached by the Court, of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in “Americans United” Inc. v. Walters, 155 U. S. App. D. C. 284, 477 F. 2d 1169 (1973), rev’d sub nom. Commissioner_ v. “Americans. United” Inc., post, p. 752, we granted Bob Jones University’s petition for certiorari. 414 U. S. 817 (1973).
II
Petitioner refers to itself as “the world’s most unusual university.’’ Founded in. 1927 and now located in Green-ville, South Carolina, the University, is devoted, to the teaching and propagation of its fundamentalist religious beliefs. All classes commence, and close with grayer, and courses in religion are compulsory! Students and faculty are screened for adherence to certain religious precepts and may be expelled or dismissed for lack of allegiance to them. One of these beliefs is that God intended segregation of the races and that the Scriptures forbid interracial marriage. Accordingly, petitioner refuses to admit Negroes as students. On pain of expulsion students are prohibited from interracial dating, and petitioner believes that it would be impossible to enforce this prohibition absent the exclusion of Negroes.
In 1942, the Service issued petitioner a ruling letter under § 101 (6) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1939, the predecessor of § 501 (c)(3). In 1970, however, the Service announced that it would no longer allow §;501 (c)(3) status for private schools maintaining racially, discriminatory admissions policies and that it would no longer treat contributions to such schools as tax deductible. See Rev. Rui. 71-447, 1971-2 Cum. Bull. 230. The Service requested proof of a nondiscriminatory admissions policy from all such schools and warned that tax-exempt ruling letters would be reviewed in light of the information provided. At the end of 1970, petitioner advised the Service that it did not admit Negroes, and in September 1971, further stated that it had no intention of altering this policy. The Commissioner’ of Internal Revenue theréfore instructed the District Director to commence administrative procedures leading to the revocation of petitioner’s § 501 (e)(3) ruling letter.
Petitioner brought these administrative proceedings to.a halt by filing suit in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina for. preliminary and permanent injunctive relief preventing the Service from revoking or threatening to revoke petitioner’s tax-exempt status. Petitioner alleged irreparable injury in the form of substantial federal income tax liability and the loss of contributions. Petitioner asserted that. the Service’s threatened action was outside its lawful authority and would violate petitioner’s rights to the free exercise of religion, to free association, and to due process and equal protection of the laws.
The District Court rejected a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, and it preliminarily enjoined the Service from revoking or threatening to revoke petitioner’s tax-exempt status and from withdrawing advance assurance of the deductibility of contributions made to, petitioner. Bob Jones University v. Connolly, 341 F. Supp. 277 (1971). The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed, with one judge dissenting. 472 F. 2d 903, reh. den., 476 F. 2d 259 (1973). That court held that petitioher’s suit, was báífed by the Anti-Injunction Act as interpreted by this Court in Enochs v. Williams Packing & Navigation Co., 370 U. S. 1. (1962).
in
The Anti-Injunction Act apparently has no recorded legislative history, but its language could scarcely be more explicit — “no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court....’’ The Court has interpreted the principal purpose of this- language to be the protection of the Government’s need to assess and collect taxes as expeditiously as possible with a minimum of preenforcement judicial interference, “and to. require that the legal right to the disputed sums be determined in a suit for refund.” Enochs v. Williams Packing & Navi gation Co., supra, at 7. See also, e. g., State Railroad Tax Cases, 92 U. S. 575, 613-614 (1876). Cf. Cheatham v. United States, 92 U. S. 85, 88-89 (1876). The Court has also identified “a collateral objective of the Act — protection of the collector from litigation pending a suit for refund.” Williams Packing, supra, at 7-8.
In furtherance of these goals, the Court in its most recent reading gave the Act almost ■ literal effect. In Williams Packing, an employer sought to enjoin the collection of FICA and FUTA taxes that the employer alleged were not owed and would destroy its business. The Court held unanimously that the suit was barred by the Act. Only upon proof of the presence of two factors could the literati terms of § 7421 (a) be avoided: first, irreparable injury, the essential ‘prerequisite for injunctive relief in any case; and second, certainty of success on the merits. Id., at 6-7. An injunction could issue only “if it is clear that under no circumstances could the Government ultimately prevail....” Id., at 7. And this determination would be made on the basis of the information available to the Governmentat the time of the suit. “Only if it is-then apparent that, under the most liberal view of the law and the facts, the United States cannot establish its claim, may the suit for an injunction be maintained.” Ibid.
■Perhaps in recognition of the stringent nature of the Williams Packing standard and its implications for this case, petitioner makes little effort to argue that it can meet that test. Rather, it asserts that the Anti-Injunction Act, properly construed, is not applicable, that Williams Packing is not the controlling reading of the Act, and that rejection- of both these contentions would work a denial of due process of law. We find these arguments unpersuasive.
A ■
First, petitioner contends that the Act is inapplicable because this is not a suit “for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax.....” Under petitioner’s theory, its suit is intended solely to compel the Servic^ to refrain from withdrawing petitioner’s § 501 (c) (3) ruling letter and from depriving petitioner’s donors of advance assurance of deductibility. Petitioner describes its goal as the maintenance of the flow of contributions, not the 'obstruction of revenue.
Petitioner’s complaint and supporting documents filed in the District Court belie any notion that this is not a suit to enjoin the assessment or collection of federal taxes from petitioner. In support of its claim of irreparable injury, petitioner alleged in part that it would be subject to “substantial” federal income tax liability if the Service were allowed to carry out its threatened action. App. 6. Petitioner buttressed this contention with sworn affidavits alleging federal income tax liability of three-quarters of a million dollars for one year and in excess of half a million dollars for another and stressing the1 detrimental effect such tax liability would have on petitioner’s capacity to -operate its institution, to support its personnel, and to continue with its expansion plans. Id., at 10-11, 43-^44. These allegations leave little doubt that a primary purpose of this lawsuit.is ¿o prevent the Service from assessing and collecting incolne taxes from petitioner.
We recognize that petitioner’s assertions that |t will' owe federal income-taxes should its § 501 (c)(3).status be revoked are open to debate, because they are based in part on a failure to take into account possible deductions for depreciation of plant and equipment. Even if it could bé shown, however, that petitioner would owe.no federal income taxes if its. §501 (c)(3) status were revoked, this would still be a suit to restrain.the assessment or collection of taxes because petitioner would also be liable for FICA'and FUTA taxes. Section 7421 (a) speaks of “any tax”; it.does not differentiate between federal income taxes or FICA or FUTA taxes. See, e. g., Williams Packing, supra. Moreover, petitioner seeks to. restrain the collection of taxes from its donors — to force the Service to continue to provide advance assurance to those donors that contributions to petitioner will- be recognized as tax deductible, thereby reducing their tax liability. Although in this regard petitioner seeks to lower the taxes of those other than itself, the Act is nonetheless controlling. Thus in. any of its implications, this case falls- within the. literal' scope and the purposes of the Act.
Petitioner further contends that the Service’s actions do not represent an effort to protect the revenues but an attempt to regulate the admissions policies of private universities. Under- this line of argument, the Anti-Injunction Act is said to be inapplicable because the case does not truly involve taxes. We disagree.
The Service bases its present position with regard to the tax status of segregative private schools on its interpretatibn of the Code. There is no evidence that that position does not represent a good-faith effort to enforce the technical requirements of the tax laws, and, without indicating a view as to whether the Service’s interpretation is correct, we cannot say that its position has no legal basis or is unrelated to the protection of the revenues. The Act is therefore applicable. Petitioner’s attribution of non-tax-related motives to the Service ignores the fact that petitioned has not shown that the. Service’s action, is without an independent basis in the requirements of the Code. Moreover, petitioner’s argument fails to give appropriate weight to Bailey v. George, 259 U. S. 16 (1922). In that case, the Court held that the Act blocked a pre-enforcement suit to enjoin collection of the federal Child Labor Tax, although •the tax was challenged as a regulatory measure beyondthet taxing power of Congress.. Significantly, the Court announced Bailey v. George on the same day that it issued Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., 259 U. S. 20 (1922), a tax-refund case in which the Court struck down the Child Labor Tax Law as unconstitutional on the grounds that the taxpayer attempted to raise prematurely in Bailey v. George.
. Petitioner also argues that § 7421 (a) is not controlling because when the Act was passed in 1867 Congress could not possibly have foreseen something as sophisticated as the comparatively recent ruling-letter program and the special importance of that program for § 501 (c) (3) organizations. This argument proves too much, however, since the same Congress also could not have foreseen, for example, FICA or FUTA taxes, to which the prohibitory command of § 7421 (a) indisputably applies. See, e. g., Williams Packing, supra. Moreover, through the years Congress has repeatedly re-enacted the Anti-Injunction Act at times when it was obviously aware of the continuously increasing complexity of the federal tax system.
B
Petitioner next argues that Enochs v. Williams Packing & Navigation Co., supra, does not constitute an all-encompássing reading of the Act. Petitioner contends, on - the'basis of prior precedents, that § 7421 (a) is subject to judicially created exceptions other than the “under no circumstances”'test an-' nounced in Williams Packing. But the Court’s unanimous opinion in Williams Packing indicates that the case was meant to be the capstone to judicial construction of the Act. It spells an end to a cyclical pattern' of allegiance to the plain meaning of the Act, followed by periods of uncertainty causéd by a judicial departure from that meaning, and followed in turn by the Court’s rediscovery of the ActV purpose.
During the first half century of the Act’s existence, the Court gave, it literal.force, without regard to the character of the tax, the nature of the pre-enforcement challenge to it, or the status of the plaintiff. See State Railroad Tax Cases, 92 U. S., at 613-614; Snyder v. Marks, 109 U. S. 189 (1883); Pacific Steam Whaling. Co. v. United States, 187 U. S. 447 (1903); Dodge v. Osborn, 240 U. S. 118 (1916); Bailey v. George, 259 U. S. 16 (1922). Occasionally, however, the Court noted in dictum that unspecified extraordinary and exceptional circumstances might justify an injunction despite the Act. E. g., Dodge v. Osborn, supra, at 122; Bailey v. George, supra, at 20. In 1922, the Court seized upon these dicta and, permitted, pre-enforcement injunctive suits against tax statutes that were viewed as penalties or as adjuncts to the criminal law. Hill v. Wallace, 259 U. S. 44 (1922); Lipke v. Lederer, 259 U. S. 557 (1922); Regal Drug Corp. v. Wardell, 260 U. S. 386 (1922). Shortly thereafter, however, the- Court made clear that Hill, Lipke, and Regal Drug were of narrow scope and had no application to pre-enforcement challenges to truly revenue-raising tax statutes. Graham v. Du Pont, 262 U. S. 234 (1923). Thus, the Court’s first departure from a literal reading of the Act produced a prompt correction in course.
In the 1930’s the Court decided Miller v. Standard Nut Margarine Co., 284 U. S. 498 (1932), and Allen v. Regents of the University System, of Georgia, 304 U. S. 439 (1938), the cases relied on most heavily by petitioner. Standard Nut set forth a new definition of the extraordinary and exceptional circumstances test, which was followed in Regents. In Standard Nut the Court stated that the Act is merely “declaratory of the principle” of cases prior to its passage- that equity usually, but not 'always, disavows interference with tax collection; thus, the Act was to be construed “as near as may be in harmony with [equity doctrine] and the reasons upon which it rests.” 284 U. S., at 509. Through this interpretation, the concept of extraordinary and exceptional circumstances was reduced to the traditional equitable requirements for issuance of an injunction.
Standard Nut was such a significant deviation from, precedent that it was referred to by a commentator at the time as “a tribute to the tenacity of the American taxpayer” and “little short of phenomenal.” Read literally, the Court’s opinion effectively repealed the Act, since the Act wa§ viewed as requiring nothing more than equity doctrine had demanded before the Act’s passage. The incongruity of this positional as not escaped notice.. It undoubtedly led directly to the Court’s reexamination of the requirements of the Act in Williams Packing, the second time the Court has undertaken to rehabilitate the Act following debilitating départures from its explicit language. See Graham v. Du Pont, supra.
Williams Packing switched the focus of the extraordinary and exceptional circumstances test from a showing of the degree of harm to the plaintiff absent an injunction to the requirement that it be established that the Service’s action is plainly without a legal basis. The Court in essence read Standard Nut- not'as án instance of irreparable injury but as a case where the Service had no chance of success on the merits. 370 U. S., at 7. And the Court explicitly held that the Act may not be evaded “merely because collection would cause an irreparable injury, such as the ruination of the taxpayer’s enterprise.” Id., at 6. Yet petitioner’s argument that we should find Williams Packing inapplicable turns, in the last analysis, on its claim that' to do otherwise would subject it to great harm. The Court rejected that consideration in Williams Packing itself, and we reject it as a reason for' finding that case not controlling. Under the language of the Act, the degree of harm is not a factQr, and as a matter of judicial Construction-, it does not provide a meaningful stopping point, between Standard Ny,t and Williams Packing. Acceptance of petitioner’s irreparable injury argument would simply revive the evisceration of the Act inherent in Standard Nut.
C
. Assuming, arguendo, the applicability of § 7421 (a) and Williams Packing, petitioner, contends that forcing it to meet the standards of those authorities will deny it due process of law in light.of the irreparable injury it will suffer pending resort to alternative procedures for review and of the alleged inadequacies of those remedies at law. The Court. dismissed out of hand similar contentions nearly 60 years ago, and we find such arguments no more compelling.now than then.
This is not a case in which an aggrieved, party has no access at all to judicial review. Were that true, our conclusion might well be different. If, as alleged in its complaint, petitioner will have taxable income upon the withdrawal of its § 501 (c) (3) status, it may in accordance with prescribed procedures petition the.Tax Court to review the assessment of income taxes! Alternatively, petitioner may pay income taxes, or, in their absence, an installment of FICA' or FUTA taxes, exhaust the Service’s internal refund procedures, and then bring suit for a refund. These review procedures offer petitioner a full, albeit delayed, Opportunity to litigate the legality of the Service’s revocation of tax-exempt status and withdrawal of advance assurance of deductibility. See, e. g., Christian Echoes National Ministry, Inc. v. United States, 470 F. 2d 849 (CA10 1972), cert. denied, 414 U. S. 864 (1973); Center on Corporate Responsibility, Inc. v. Shultz, 368 F. Supp. 863 (DC 1973).
We do not say that these avenues of review áre the best that can be. devised. They present serious problems of delay, during which the flow of donations to an organization will be impaired and in some cases perhaps even terminated. But, as the Sfervice notes, some delay may be an inevitable consequence of the fact that disputes between the Service and a party challenging the Service’s actions are not susceptible of instant resolution through litigation. And although the congressional restriction to postenforcement review may place an organization claiming tax-exempt-status in a. precarious financial position, the problems presented do not rise to the level of constitutional infirmities, in light of the powerful governmental interests in protecting the administration of the tax system from premature judicial interferencé, e. g., Cheatham v. United States, 92 U. S., at 88-89; State Railroad Tax Cases, 92 U. S., at 613-614, and of the opportunities for review that are available.
IV
Since we hold that Williams Packing, supra, governs this case, the remaining issue is whether petitioner has met the standards of that case. Without deciding the merits, we think that petitioner’s First Amendment, due process, and equal protection contentions are sufficiently debatable to foreclose any notion that “under no circumstances could the Government ultimately prevail...370 U. S., at 7. See, e. g., Green v. Connally, 330 F. Supp. 1150 (DC), aff’d per curiam sub nom. Coit v. Green, 404 U. S. 997 (1971). Accordingly, the Court, of Appeals did not err in holding that § 7421 (a) deprived the District Court of jurisdiction to issue the injunctive relief petitioner sought.
In holding that § 7421 (a) blocks the present suit, we are not unaware that Congress has imposed an especially harsh regime on §501 (c)(3) organizations threatened with loss of tax-exempt status and with withdrawal of advance assurance of deductibility of contributions. Á former Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service has sharply critipized the system applicable to such organizations. The degree of bureaucratic control that, practically speaking, has been placed in the Service over those in petitioner’s position is susceptible of abuse, regardless of how conscientiously the Service may attempt to carry out its responsibilities. Specific treatment of not-for-profit organizations to allow them to seek pre-enforcement review may well merit consideration. • But this matter is for Congress, which is the appropriate body to weigh the relevant, policy-laden considerations, ', such as the harshness of the present law, the consequences of an unjustified revocation of § 501 (c) (3) status, the number of organizations in any year threatened with such'revocation, the comparability of those organizations to others which rely on the Service’s ruling-letter program, and the litigation burden on the Service and the effect on the assessment and collection of federal taxes if the law were to be changed.
The judgment is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Mr. Justice Douglas took no part in the decision of this case.
Section 170(a) of the Code provides that “[t]here shall be allowed -as a deduction any charitable contribution (as defined in subsection (c)) payment of which is made within the taxable year....” Section 170(c)(2) declares:
“Charitable contribution defined. — For purposes of this section, the term ‘Charitable contribution’ means a contribution or gift- to or for the use' of—
“(2) A corporation, trust, or community chest, fund, or foundation—
'“(A) created or organized in the United States or in any possession thereof, or under the law "of the United States, any State, the District of Columbia, or any possession of the United States;
“(B) organized and operated • exclusively for religious, -charitable, scientific, literary, or educational purposes or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals;
“(C) no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit •of any private shareholder or individual; and
“(D) no substantial part of the activities of which is carrying on propaganda, or otherwise attempting, to influence legislation, arid which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any..political campaign on behalf of any candidate -for public office.”
The organizations set forth in § 170 (c) (2) are, but for a few unimportant exceptions, the same as those described in § 501 (c) (3). Analogous-deductions for contributions to § 501 (c)(3) organizations are provided for federal estate and gift tax' purposes. See Code §§2055 (a) (2) and 2522 (a) (2), 26 U. S. C. §§2055 (a) (2) and 2522 (a)(2).
Section 3.01 of Rev. Proc. 72-39, 1972-2 Cum. Bull..'818, provides:
“Where an organization listed in [the Cumulative List] ceases to qualify as an organizátion contributions to which'are deductible under section 170 of the Code and the Service subsequently revokes a ruling or a determination letter previously issued to it, contributions made to the organization by persons unaware of the changes in the status of the organization generally will be considered allowable if made on or before the date of publication of the Internal Revenue Bulletin announcing that contributions are no longer deductible. However, the Service is not precluded from disallowing a deduction for any contribution made after an organization ceases to qualify under section 170, where the contributor (1) had knowledge of the revocation of the ruling or determination letter, (2) was aware that such revocation was imminent, or (3) was in part responsible for, or was aware of, the activities or deficiencies' on the part of the organization that.gave rise to the loss of qualification.”
This is particularly so with respect to tax-exempt private foundations, because they are subject to tax liability if they contribute funds to an organization that does not qualify under § 170 (c) (2). See Code §4945 (d)(5), 26 U. S. C. §4945 (d)(5).
In recognition of. the significance of such a change in status, the Service provides several stages of internal -administrative review. If the Service indicates, pursuant to prescribed procedures, that cause for revocation ’ exists, the affected organization is entitled to submit written protests and to have conferences at both the District Director and National Office level. § 11, Rev. Proc. 72-4, 1972-1 Cum. Bull., at 708; §4, Rev. Proc. 72-39, 1972-2 Cum. Bull., at 818-819.
An organization may lose its § 501 (c) (3) status but still be exempt from federal income taxes if it qualifies, for example, as a § 501 (c) (4), social welfare organization. But the loss of § 501 (c) (3) status inevitably means that the exemptions from FICA and FUTA taxes no longer apply, since those exemptions are keyed to §501 (c)(3). See Code §§ 3121 (b) (8) (B) and 3306-(c)(8).
See Act of Mar. 2, 1867, § 10, 14 Stat. 475; Rev. Stat. § 3224 (1874); Int. Rev. Code of 1939, §3653. Section 7421 (a) of the Code states:
“Except as provided in sections 6212 (a) and (c), 6213 (a), and 7426 (a) and (b)(1), no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall he maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed.” (Emphasis added.)
The italicized portion of § 7421 (a) is identical to language in § 10 of the Act of Mar. 2, 1867, but for the first “any,” which the revisers added to the Revised Statutes version. See Snyder v. Marks, 109 U. S. 189, 192 (1883). None of the exceptions in § 7421 (a) is relevant to this case. The phrase commencing with “by any person...” was added by § 110 (c) of the Federal Tax Lien Act of 1966, Pub. L. 89-719, 80 Stat. 1144. -The main purpose of the addition of this language was to deal with cases where third ■ parties who are not themselves subject to tax liability hold property liens that compete with federal tax liens. Due to the literal meaning of the Anti-Injunction Act, such persons were, prior 'to 1966, often unable to protect their legitimate property interests when the Service foreclosed oh property on which.it held a tax lien. See H. R. Rep. No.. 1884, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 27-28 (1966). Such persons are now given a-right of action under Code § 7426, 26 U. S. C. § 7426, and the language of § 7421 (a), as amended, renders that action exclusive. The “by any person” phrase is, however, also a reaffirmation of the plain meaning of the emphasized portion of § 7421 (a). In this respect, it'is declaratory, not innovative. Cf. Bittker & Kaufman, Taxes and Civil Rights: “Constitutionalizing” the Internal Revenue Code, 82 Yale L. J. 51, 57, n. 22 (1972). We.are aware of the contrary reading of the' “by any person” phrase in McGl
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The issue presented in this case is whether § 406 of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 (Act), 84 Stat. 1265, 21 U. S. C. § 846, authorizes a sentencing court to impose a term of special parole upon a defendant who is convicted of conspiracy to manufacture or distribute a controlled substance.
I
Section 406 provides:
“Any person who attempts or conspires to commit any offense defined in this title is punishable by imprisonment or fine or both which may not exceed the maximum punishment prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the attempt or conspiracy.”
The object of the conspiracy at issue in this case was the commission of the substantive offense defined in § 401 (a) of the Act, 21 U. S. C. § 841 (a). That subsection reads:
“Except as authorized by this title, it shall be unlawful for any person knowingly or intentionally—
“(1) to manufacture, distribute, or dispense, or possess with intent to manufacture, distribute, or dispense, a controlled substance; or
“(2) to create, distribute, or dispense, or possess with intent to distribute or dispense, a counterfeit substance.”
The penalties for violations of § 401 (a) are set forth in § 401 (b). That subsection authorizes the imposition of terms of imprisonment, fines, and, in some instances, mandatory minimum terms of special parole. The range of permissible punishments varies depending on the nature of the controlled substance involved, and on whether the defendant has been convicted previously of a drug offense. The penalty provision at issue is § 401 (b)(1)(B). It states:
“Except as otherwise provided in section 405 [which deals with distribution to minors], any person who violates subsection (a) of this section shall be sentenced as follows:
“In the case of a controlled substance in schedule I or II which is not a narcotic drug or in the case of any controlled substance in schedule III, such person shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 5 years, a fine or not more than $15,000, or both. If any person commits such a violation after one or more prior convictions of him for an offense punishable under this paragraph, or for a felony under any other provision of this title or title III or other law of the United States relating to narcotic drugs, marihuana, or depressant or stimulant substances, have become final, such person shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of not more than 10 years, a fine of not more than $30,000, or both. Any sentence imposing a term of imprisonment under this paragraph shall, in the absence of such a prior conviction, impose a special parole term of at least 2 years in addition to such term of imprisonment and shall, if there was such a prior conviction, impose a special parole term of at least 4 years in addition to such term of imprisonment.”
Section 401 (c) describes the operation of the special parole term provisions in greater detail. It states:
“A special parole term imposed under this section or section 405 may be revoked if its terms and conditions are violated. In such circumstances the original term of imprisonment shall be increased by the period of the special parole term and the resulting new term of imprisonment shall not be diminished by the time which was spent on special parole. A person whose special parole term has been revoked may be required to serve all or part of the remainder of the new term of imprisonment. A special parole term provided for in this section or section 405 shall be in addition to, and not in lieu of, any other parole provided for by law.”
The narrow, but important, question presented in this case is whether § 406, which states the penalty for conspiracy as “imprisonment or fine or both,” but limits maximum punishment by reference to the penalty provisions of the substantive target offense, authorizes the imposition of a special parole term where that sanction is included within the penalty provisions of the target offense.
II
In an indictment filed in December 1976 with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, petitioner Alphonse Bifulco and others were charged with a single count of conspiring to violate §401 (a)(1) by knowingly and intentionally manufacturing, distributing, and possessing substantial quantities of phencyclidine, a schedule III controlled substance. This conspiracy was charged as a violation of § 406. A jury found petitioner and several codefend-ants guilty of the offense charged, and petitioner was sentenced to a 4-year term of imprisonment, a fine of $1,000, and a 5-year special parole term. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit subsequently affirmed petitioner’s conviction in an unpublished order.
In January 1979, petitioner, pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 2255, filed pro se a motion to vacate his sentence. He claimed that the sentence was unlawful because § 406 does not authorize the imposition of a special parole term to be served upon completion of a term of imprisonment. The District Court held that petitioner had been properly sentenced, and dismissed his complaint. App. 7.
On appeal, the Second Circuit affirmed. 600 F. 2d 407 (1979). In a per curiam opinion, that court followed two other Courts of Appeals that had held that § 406 authorizes the imposition of a special parole term. See United States v. Burman, 584 F. 2d 1354, 1356-1358 (CA4 1978), cert. denied, 439 U. S. 1118 (1979), and United States v. Jacobson, 578 F. 2d 863, 867-868 (CA10), cert. denied, 439 U. S. 932 (1978). It also relied on the decision in United States v. Dankert, 507 F. 2d 190 (CA5 1975), which reached a similar result with respect to the closely analogous sentencing provisions of § 1013 of the Act, 21 U. S. C. § 963 (proscribing any conspiracy to import a controlled substance).
Shortly after the Second Circuit’s decision in this case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reached the opposite conclusion on the issue and held that a special parole term may not be imposed under § 406. United States v. Mearns, 599 F. 2d 1296 (1979), aff’g 461 F. Supp. 641 (Del. 1978), cert. pending, No. 79-415. We granted certiorari, 444 U. S. 897 (1979), to resolve this conflict among the Courts of Appeals.
III
The Government recognizes, Brief for United States 31, n. 26, that our examination of the meaning of § 406 must be informed by the policy that the Court has expressed as “the rule of lenity.” In past cases the Court has made it clear that this principle of statutory construction applies not only to interpretations of the substantive ambit of criminal prohibitions, but also to the penalties they impose. See, e. g., United States v. Batchelder, 442 U. S. 114, 121 (1979); Simpson v. United States, 435 U. S. 6, 14-15 (1978). The Court’s opinion in Ladner v. United States, 358 U. S. 169, 178 (1958), states the rule: “This policy of lenity means that the Court will not interpret a federal criminal statute so as to increase the penalty that it places on an individual when such an interpretation can be based on no more than a guess as to what Congress intended.” See Whalen v. United States, 445 U. S. 684, 695, n. 10 (1980); Simpson v. United States, 435 U. S., at 15.
The Court has emphasized that the “touchstone” of the rule of lenity “is statutory ambiguity.” See, e. g., Lewis v. United States, 445 U. S. 55, 65 (1980). Where Congress has manifested its intention, we may not manufacture ambiguity in order to defeat that intent. The Government argues here that there can be no uncertainty about Congress’ intent to authorize a special parole term as a penalty for a conspiracy offense, whenever that penalty is authorized for the offense that was the target of the conspiracy. In advancing this argument, it focuses on the language and structure, legislative history, and motivating policies of the Act. We examine these three factors in turn.
A
Language and structure of the Act. Several reviewing courts have adopted the view that the special parole term specified in § 401 (b)(1) (B) is necessarily included within the “term of imprisonment” to which it is appended. See, e. g., United States v. Jacobson, 578 F. 2d, at 868. Thus, when Congress stated in § 406 that a person guilty of attempt or conspiracy “is punishable by imprisonment,” it meant to include within the term “imprisonment” any special parole term made applicable by the penalty provisions of the substantive offense. This argument is not' too persuasive, however, because special parole is not authorized for all substantive offenses to which § 406 refers. Therefore, “imprisonment” within the meaning of § 406 does not always include special parole. As a period of supervision served upon completion of a prison term, special parole is also functionally distinct from incarceration. Finally, the penalty provisions of those substantive offenses that authorize special parole terms reflect this functional dichotomy. Section 401(b)(1)(B), for example, twice provides that a special parole term of years is to be imposed “in addition to such term of imprisonment.” (Emphasis added.) We agree, therefore, with the conclusion of those courts that have rejected the argument that “imprisonment” in § 406 plainly means a term of incarceration plus special parole. See. e. g., United States v. Jacquinto, 464 F. Supp. 728, 729-730 (ED Pa. 1979).
Faced with these obstacles, the Government cannot rely solely on a “plain meaning” interpretation of the term “imprisonment.” Thus, in its principal argument, the Government asks this Court to take a broader view of the relationship between § 406 and the penalty provisions for substantive offenses and to conclude that the structure of the Act, viewed as a whole, creates an inference that § 406 incorporates by reference those substantive penalty provisions. The Government contends that the language of the statute supports this reading because § 406 authorizes penalties “which may not exceed the maximum punishment prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the attempt or conspiracy.” While this argument is not wholly without force, it ignores the immediately preceding words of § 406, which state that “[a]ny person who attempts or conspires to commit any offense defined in this title is punishable by imprisonment or fine or both.” (Emphasis added.) Petitioner argues that § 406 defines the types of punishment authorized for conspirators — imprisonment, fine, or both — and sets maximum limits on those sanctions through reference to the penalty provisions of the target offense. Petitioner’s reading of the language of § 406, and the sentencing scheme that it proposes, is no less plausible than the Government’s. Moreover, it is petitioner’s reading that finds further support in the structure of the Act read as a whole.
Section 406 is not the only provision of the Act that defines sentences by reference to the penalty provisions of other offenses. Section 405 (a) of the Act, 21 U. S. C. § 845 (a), which enhances punishment for one convicted of distributing a controlled substance to a minor, provides:
“Any person at least eighteen years of age who violates section 401 (a)(1) by distributing a controlled substance to a person under twenty-one years of age is... punishable by (1) a term of imprisonment, or a fine, or both, up to twice that authorized by section 401 (b), and (2) at least twice any special parole term authorized by section 401 (b), for a first offense involving the same controlled substance and schedule.” (Emphasis supplied.)
At the least, Congress’ separate enumeration of intended penalties in § 405 confirms its design to adhere to the functional distinction between “imprisonment, or a fine, or both” and the unique and novel concept of special parole. That no reference is made to special parole in § 406 thus supports petitioner’s view that Congress did not intend it to constitute an element of the sentence imposed upon one convicted of conspiracy or attempt.
Further proof that Congress intended special parole to be imposed only for certain substantive offenses defined in § 401 and § 405, and not for other offenses under the Act, is found in §401 (c), which defines the workings of special parole. That subsection states: “A special parole term imposed under this section or section J+05 may be revoked if its terms and conditions are violated.” (Emphasis supplied.) One convicted and sentenced for conspiracy under § 406 cannot be said to have had his sentence “imposed under” § 401 or § 405.
B
Legislative history. Conceding that Congress’ draftsmanship when it enacted § 406 may have been less than “explicit,” Brief for United States 17, and n. 10, the Government asks this Court to look beyond the ambiguous language of the statute, and to give its words “their fair meaning in accord with the manifest intent of the lawmakers.” United States v. Brown, 333 U. S. 18, 26 (1948). The Government argues that the legislative history of the Act demonstrates that Congress intended that the penalties authorized for substantive offenses, and those for conspiracies to commit them, were to be identical.
It is true that prior to the Act federal narcotics legislation provided for a congruence between sentences authorized for substantive violations and sentences authorized for conspiracies. A similar congruence was a feature of the several bills introduced in Congress in 1969 that were the forerunners of the Act. But a special parole term, a sanction previously unknown in the administration of our system of criminal justice, was not authorized as a penalty for any offense in those initial proposals.
The special parole concept first was presented to Congress by John Ingersoll, Director of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, in testimony before a Senate Subcommittee on October 20, 1969. See Narcotics Legislation: Hearings on S. 1895 et al. before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 91st Cong., 1st Sess., 663, 676 (1969). The Attorney General earlier had sought Subcommittee approval for further input from the Justice Department on the penalty structures in the pending legislation, id., at 255, and Mr. Ingersoll presented several alternative penalty schemes for the Subcommittee’s consideration. His comments to the Subcommittee concerning the special parole provisions were, in their entirety, as follows:
“Another requirement that has been included in the alternative penalty schemes is a special parole term that is a part of the illicit trafficking sentence structure. Just as incarceration is not always a meaningful answer to effective rehabilitation, certainly incarceration without an adequate supervisory followup after release is not in the best interest of society.
“Therefore, we have required a special parole term so that persons sentenced for trafficking violations would be placed under supervision for a period of time regardless of whether they are incarcerated or their sentence probated or suspended. The intent here is to give the judges another tool for sentencing and another means of protecting society when dealing with the drug violator.” Id., at 676.
Mr. Ingersoll did not specify whether special parole terms were to be authorized for conspiracies to commit trafficking offenses, see n. 11, supra, and the bill that eventually was approved by the full Senate Committee on the Judiciary was no less ambiguous. See S. Rep. No. 91-613, pp. 116-118 (1969). That bill, S. 3246, 91st Cong., 2d Sess. (1970), in its §§ 501 (c)(1) and (2), mandated the imposition of a special parole term whenever a prison sentence was imposed under the forerunners to §§ 401 (b)(1)(A) and (B). But § 504 of the bill, the forerunner to § 406, included no reference to special parole.
The Judiciary Committee’s section-by-section analysis of S. 3246 noted that special parole terms were to be imposed for certain substantive offenses, S. Rep. No. 91-613, at 25, but with respect to the “endeavor and conspiracy” provision stated only: “Section 504 provides that any person who endeavors or conspires to commit any offense defined in this title may be punished by imprisonment and/or a fine, which may not exceed the maximum punishment prescribed for the offense.” Id., at 26. The Government argues that the Subcommittee meant to include a specific reference to special parole in § 504 when it amended the substantive offense sections in response to Mr. Ingersoll’s testimony. For unexplained reasons, however, the Subcommittee neglected to make the conforming change in the conspiracy section. Brief for United States 22. The wording of the Judiciary Committee’s section-by-section analysis, however, would seem to indicate its awareness that § 504, unlike the subsections of § 501 that had been amended to incorporate the concept of special parole, authorized punishments consisting only of “imprisonment and/or a fine.”
Further support for the view that the Judiciary Committee knew what it was doing when it approved § 504 of S. 3246 may be found in those provisions of the bill that dealt with a second or subsequent offense. Under the Act, doubly enhanced penalties for second offenders are included within the provisions defining the sentences for individual substantive offenses. See, e. g., §401 (b)(1)(B), quoted supra, at 383-384. S. 3246, however, contained a separate provision, § 508 (a), that set out the penalties for repeat offenders. It stated:
“Any person convicted of any offense under this Act is, if the offense is a second or subsequent offense, punishable by a term of imprisonment twice that authorized, by twice the fine otherwise authorized, or by both. If the conviction is for an offense punishable under subsection 501 (c)(1) or subsection 501 (c) (2) of this Act [the forerunners to §§401 (b)(1)(A) and (B)], and if it is the offender’s second or subsequent offense, the court shall impose, in addition to any terms of imprisonment and fine, twice the special parole term otherwise authorized.” S. Rep. No. 91-613, at 119-120.
We think this section of the Senate bill makes it fairly evident that the Committee recognized that it had provided for the imposition of special parole terms under various subsections of § 501, but that it had not done so generally. Thus, § 508 (a) of S. 3246, like § 405 of the Act, reveals that Congress’ failure explicitly to incorporate the concept of special parole into the Act’s conspiracy provision, alleged by the Government to have been inadvertent, in fact may have been intentional.
The only reference made to the special parole provisions during the Senate debates on S. 3246 tends to confirm this conclusion. Senator Dodd, the Subcommittee chairman, summarized the sentencing provisions of §§501 (c)(1) and (2) as follows:
“Those selling schedule I and II narcotics such as heroin and opium can draw a sentence of up to 12 years and a possible fine of $25,000. For schedules I, II, and III sales of non-narcotics such as marihuana, ‘pep pills’ and the like, the sentence is up to 5 years and a possible fine not exceeding $15,000. A [minimum] special parole term of from 2 to 3 years is required for each of the above offenses.” 116 Cong. Rec. 996 (1970).
Senator Dodd did not mention the special parole concept in the context of any other sentencing provisions; § 504, the conspiracy provision of S. 3246, was not mentioned at all during the Senate debates.
Given the scant support in the legislative history of the Senate bill for the Government’s position, it is not surprising that the Government must place greater reliance on events that transpired during the House’s consideration of proposed narcotics legislation similar to S. 3246. H. R. 17463, the subject of hearings before the House Committee on Ways and Means in July 1970, contained penalty provisions that were substantially identical to those in S. 3246. See H. R. 17463, 91st Cong., 2d Sess., §§501 (c)(1), (c)(2), and 504 (1970), reprinted in Ways and Means Hearings 61, 66.
Mr. Ingersoll appeared before the Committee on Ways and Means, testified as to the Department of Justice’s firm support for H. R. 17463, and submitted a section-by-section analysis of the bill which highlighted the differences between its provisions and existing federal narcotics legislation. Ways and Means Hearings 210-211. That analysis described the operation of the special parole terms applicable to § 501 (c), and noted: “This special parole term is a new program, and there are no comparable laws now in force for narcotic drug law convictions.” Id., at 222. With respect to the bill’s conspiracy provision, § 504, Mr. Ingersoll’s section-by-section analysis stated:
“This section provides that a person may be punished for endeavoring or conspiring to commit an offense under this Act. Upon conviction, his sentence may not exceed the punishment prescribed for the offense which was the object of the attempt or the conspiracy.” Id., at 223.
The Government would read the second sentence of this passage as explaining “that the sentencing scheme contemplated that conspiracy was to be punished to the same extent as object offenses, without exception.” Brief for United States 24. But the Ingersoll statement, like the language enacted in § 406, explains merely that the punishment imposed for conspiracy may not exceed the punishment authorized for the pertinent target offense. It does not define the punishment authorized under the conspiracy provision to include special parole, and it does not disavow petitioner’s theory that § 406 defines the types of punishment authorized for conspiracy, while the penalty provisions of the target offense set the maximum amounts of those types of punishment that properly may be imposed. Moreover, a chart submitted to the Committee by the Justice Department, and appended to Mr. Ingersoll’s section-by-section analysis, specifically noted that H. It. 17463 authorized the imposition of special parole terms for certain substantive offenses. Ways and Means Hearings 229. With respect to the conspiracy section of the bill, however, the chart contained a footnote that merely reads: “H. R. 17463 provides that any person who endeavors or conspires to commit any offense under the act may be punished by imprisonment and/or fine, which may not exceed the maximum punishment proscribed [sic] for committing the offense.” Id., at 230, n. 6. (Emphasis supplied.) In sum, we find no persuasive support for the Government’s argument in the report of the hearings before the House Committee on Ways and Means.
The hearings before the Committee on Ways and Means followed earlier hearings conducted by the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. The latter Committee issued the House Report on H. R. 18583, 91st Cong., 2d Sess. (1970), which contained additions and revisions to H. R. 17463 not pertinent to the sentencing provisions at issue here. H. R. Rep. No. 91-1444, pt. 1 (1970). Like the Senate Report, the House Report appears plainly to recognize the distinction between the penalties for specific substantive offenses, authorizing special parole terms, and the conspiracy offense, authorizing only terms of imprisonment and fines. Thus, with respect to § 406 of H. R. 18583, the direct ancestor of the present § 406, the House Report’s section-by-section analysis states:
“Section 406 provides that any person who attempts or conspires to commit any offense defined in this title may be punished by imprisonment and/or fine which may not exceed the maximum amount set for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the attempt or conspiracy.” H. R. Rep. No. 91-1444, at 50. (Emphasis supplied.)
The grammatical structure of this sentence lends obvious support to petitioner’s theory that §406 authorizes two types of sanctions — fines and imprisonment — and fixes the maximum amount of each that may be imposed by reference to the penalty provisions of the target offense.
In conclusion, we believe that, rather than supporting the Government’s argument that Congress manifested an intention to authorize special parole terms for conspiracy convictions, the Act’s legislative history supports the opposite view. In hearings, debates, and legislative reports, to the extent that Congress’ attention was drawn to the matter, Members of both Houses explicitly recognized that the penalty provisions of some substantive offenses attached a mandatory minimum term of special parole to any term of imprisonment. On the other hand, every reference to one of the forerunners of § 406 stated that it authorized penalties consisting of imprisonment and/or fine, and failed to mention special parole.
C
Motivating policy. The Government strongly argues, finally, that Congress’ principal objective in enacting the penalty provisions of the Act — to deter professional criminals from engaging in drug trafficking for profit — “render [s] it unreasonable to ascribe to [Congress] the intent to authorize special parole for isolated substantive offenses while withholding this major sentencing tool for conspiracy offenses.” Brief for United States 28. This contention is unpersuasive for two reasons.
First, as petitioner points out, Brief for Petitioner 14-23; Reply Brief for Petitioner 1-3, a comparison of those drug offenses for which Congress clearly authorized the imposition of special parole terms with those for which it clearly did not, does not reveal a coherent pattern based on the asserted justification for escalated sanctions. For some of the most serious offenses, as measured by the length of the term of imprisonment and severity of the fine they authorize, special parole is not included among the available sanctions. E. g., § 408 of the Act, 21 U. S. C. § 848 (continuing criminal enterprise) ; § 403 of the Act, 21 U. S. C. § 843 (registrants); and the new § 401 (d) of this Act, 21 U. S. C. § 841 (d) (1976 ed., Supp. II) (piperidine offenses). Thus, the Government’s argument based on Congress’ sentencing objectives would prove too much.
Second, the thrust of the Government’s argument is that the conspiracy to engage in drug trafficking presents at least as great a threat, if not a greater one, to the community as does an isolated act of distribution. In other contexts, we have recognized the logic of that view. See, e. g., Iannelli v. United States, 420 U. S. 770, 778 (1975). From this premise, the Government contends that Congress must have desired the harsh sanctions incorporated within the concept of special parole — the unlimited maximum length of its term and the grave consequences attending its revocation, see § 401 (c)— to be available to the judge sentencing a drug conspirator.
What the Government does not mention, however, is that § 406 sets identical penalties for conspiracies and for attempts. Congress dealt with both these forms of inchoate crime in a single provision, and prescribed an identical range of punishment for a person convicted of participation in a major trafficking conspiracy, and for another person convicted of an unsuccessful attempt to manufacture or distribute a small amount of a controlled substance. When one focuses on the fact that § 406 penalizes attempts as well as conspiracies, it is not surprising that Congress would provide for less stringent sanctions to be imposed for violations of that provision than for a completed substantive offense. Indeed, as Mr. Ingersoll pointed out in his section-by-section analysis of H. R. 17463, prior to the passage of this Act an attempt to commit a substantive drug offense was not punishable at all under the federal narcotics laws. Ways and Means Hearings 223.
IV
This investigation into the meaning of § 406, as informed by an examination of its language and structure, its history, and relevant policy considerations, yields the likely conclusion that Congress’ failure specifically to authorize the imposition of special parole terms as punishment for those convicted of conspiracy was not a slip of the legislative pen, nor the result of inartful draftsmanship, but was a conscious and not irrational legislative choice. Our analysis reveals, at the least, a complete absence of an unambiguous legislative decision to authorize special parole terms as punishment for those convicted of drug conspiracies. Of course, to the extent that doubts remain, they must be resolved in accord with the rule of lenity. If our construction of Congress’ intent, as evidenced by the scant record it left behind, clashes with present legislative expectations, there is a simple remedy — the insertion of a brief appropriate phrase, by amendment, into the present language of § 406. But it is for Congress, and not this Court, to enact the words that will produce the result the Government seeks in this case.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded to that court with instructions to vacate the special parole term that was imposed upon petitioner.
It is so ordered.
The Act, Pub. L. 91-513, is set forth at 84 Stat. 1236-1296. For the sake of simplicity, further otherwise appropriate citations to the Statutes at Large will be omitted.
This provision was amended in 1978, but the amendment is not pertinent to the issue presented here. See Pub. L. 95-633, § 201, 92 Stat. 3774, 21 U. S. C. §841 (b)(1)(B) (1976 ed., Supp. II).
The Court of Appeals stated that petitioner was charged with two substantive violations of § 401 (a) (1), in addition to the conspiracy count, and that he was acquitted of the substantive charges. 600 F. 2d 407, 408 (CA2 1979). The parties agree, however, that this is error and that petitioner was charged with, and convicted on, a single conspiracy count. Brief for Petitioner 4, n. 2; Brief for United States 4, n. 2.
Two Courts of Appeals, in addition to those followed by the Second Circuit in this case, have joined in the conclusion that § 406 authorizes the imposition of a special parole term where such a term is included in the penalty provisions of the target offense. See United States v. Sellers, 603 F. 2d 53, 58 (CA8 1979), and Cantu v. United States, 598 F. 2d 471, 472 (CA5 1979). In addition, in a number of cases appellate courts have affirmed the convictions of defendants sentenced to special parole terms under § 406 without considering the question whether special parole was authorized. For example, the question presented here may have lingered beneath the surface in United States v. Timmreck, 441 U. S. 780 (1979),
In Mearns, the Third Circuit followed the lead of two District Court opinions (in addition to the opinion there under review) holding that special parole is not a penalty authorized by § 406. See United States v. Jacquinto, 464 F. Supp. 728 (ED Pa. 1979), and Fassette v. United States, 444 F. Supp. 1245 (CD Cal. 1978). Cf. United States v. Wells, 470 F. Supp. 216 (SD Iowa 1979) (adopting the Mearns rationale in sentencing, pursuant to 18 U. S. C. § 3, accessories after the fact to a drug conspiracy).
The dissent’s “ordinary reading of § 406,” post, at 402, appears to be based on this same incomplete reading of the words of the conspiracy provision.
Section 405 (b) likewise provides for treble enhancement of the fine, the term of imprisonment, and the minimum length of any special parole term, for one who is convicted a second or subsequent time for distributing a controlled substance to a minor.
The Government argues that the express reference to special parole in § 405 does not detract from the view that § 406 incorporates special parole by implication. It contends that it was necessary for Congress to deal with special parole explicitly in § 405 because it chose to mandate a minimum special parole term of at least twice the length of the term authorized under § 401 (b), whereas § 405 imposes a fine or imprisonment of up to twice that otherwise authorized. The Government's argument does not dispel the fact, however, that Congress specifically accommodated the concept of special parole in one general provision imposing sentence by reference to other offenses, but did not do so with respect to an adjacent provision, § 406.
The Government would explain the specificity of § 401 (c) as an instance where the drafters of that provision “simply looked to see what sections of the proposed bill used the term special parole, and inserted those section numbers into [the forerunner of §401 (c)].” Brief for United States 26-27, n. 22. It argues, of course, that although § 406 did not refer to special parole in so many words, it did incorporate the sentencing provisions of § 401. We reject the Government’s argument for reasons stated in the text. Moreover, its “explanation” assumes a carelessness in draftsmanship that probably is unwarranted; see the following subparts B and C.
See 21 U. S. C. §§ 174, 176a, 176b (1964 ed.); and 26 U. S. C. §§ 7237 (a) and (b) (1964 ed.).
See S. 1895, 91st Cong., 1st Sess., §§ 701-708 (1969), and S. 2637, 91st Cong., 1st Sess., §§ 501-508 (1969), reprinted in Narcotics Legislation: Hearings on S. 1895 et al. before the Subcommittee to Investigate-Juvenile Delinquency of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 91st Cong., 1st Sess., 69-77, 160-170 (1969). See also H. R. 13743 and H. R. 14774, 91st Cong., 1st Sess., §§ 501-508 (1969), reprinted in Part 1, Drug Abuse Control Amendments — 1970: Hearings on H. R. 11701 and H. R. 13743 before the Subcommittee on Public Health and Welfare of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 91st Cong., 2d Sess., 17-20 (1970).
A chart setting out the alternative penalty schemes proposed by the Justice Department is included in the record of hearings held before the Subcommittee on Public Health and Welfare of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Id., at 90-92. This chart describes the penalty provisions favored by the Department for attempt and conspiracy as providing “that any person who attempts or conspires to commit any offense under the Act may be punished by imprisonment and/or fine, which may not exceed the maximum punishment proscribed for committing the offense.” Id., at 92. No mention is made of special parole terms in the conspiracy
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
Petitioner was convicted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on each of 15 counts of an indictment for violations of the narcotic laws, and as recited in the formal judgment was sentenced to imprisonment as follows:
“Twenty (20) Months to Five (5) Years ... on Count Two; Twenty (20) Months to Five (5) Years ... on Count Four, said sentence on Count Four to take effect [at] the expiration of sentence imposed on Count Two; Twenty (20) Months to Five (5) Years ... on Count Seven, said sentence on Count Seven to take effect at the expiration of sentence imposed on Count Four; Twenty (20) Months to Five (5) Years ... on each of Counts One, Three, Five, Six, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen, said sentences by the Counts to run concurrently and to run concurrently with the sentences imposed on Counts Two, Four and Seven.”
On his appeal, petitioner sought reversal of the conviction and sentence on each count upon the grounds of prejudicial procedural errors at the trial, insufficiency of the evidence to support the convictions and sentences, and invalid multiple punishments for single offenses. In a per curiam opinion the Court of Appeals held that “The record supports at least 5 of the sentences that were to run 'concurrently with’ the 3 consecutive sentences. It therefore supports the aggregate sentence. We need not decide whether it supports the 'consecutive’ sentences themselves. Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U. S. 81, 85; Warner v. United States, 93 U. S. App. D. C. 412, 208 P. 2d 45.” It thereupon affirmed, one judge dissenting, 100 U. S. App. D. C. 396, 246 F. 2d 677. Petitioner sought certiorari on the grounds that the sentences invalidly multiply punishments for single offenses, and that the Court of Appeals erred in failing to determine the validity of the several sentences and in holding that imprisonment for an aggregate period of 5 to 15 years is authorized by its finding that “at least 5 of the sentences that were to run 'concurrently with’ the 3 consecutive sentences [are valid].” We granted the writ to determine those questions. 357 U. S. 934.
The Government contends here that the several sentences are in reality but one “gross sentence” to imprisonment for a period of 5 to 15 years, and that the holding of the Court of Appeals that at least 5 of the “concurrent” sentences are valid supports the judgment, but it concedes that “If the sentence [may] not be considered as a gross sentence, at least as to the 12 counts which were to be concurrent with 2, 4, and 7, . . . the case would have to be remanded to the Court of Appeals to pass on the validity of counts 2, 4, and 7 [and if] it found any one of them invalid, that court would then have to remand to the District Court for resentencing, since, assuming that the other counts cannot be considered in gross, it is not clear which of them, taken individually, were to be concurrent with 2, which with 4, and which with 7.”
The question whether, in these circumstances, the law permits the imposition of a single "gross sentence” upon several counts exceeding the maximum sentence that may lawfully be imposed upon any one of such counts is not presented here, for we think the Government's contention that these 15 sentences were, or may be treated as, one “gross sentence” to imprisonment for a period of 5 to 15 years is unsupportable and is contradicted by the plain words of the recorded judgment. “The only sentence known to the law is the sentence or judgment entered upon the records of the court.” Hill v. United States, 298 U. S. 460, 464. The judgment entered on the records of the court in this case explicitly imposed a separate sentence of from 20 months to the then permissible maximum of 5 years on each of the 15 counts. It is therefore plain that the court did not impose one “gross sentence” to imprisonment for a period of 5 to 15 years.
The judgment makes the separate sentences on Counts Two, Four, and Seven to run consecutively. Thus, if each is valid, they in sequence authorize imprisonment for an aggregate period of 5 to 15 years. But the judgment makes the separate sentences on the other 12 counts to run concurrently with each other (hence for a total period of 20 months to 5 years) and “with the sentences imposed on Counts Two, Four and Seven,” without saying whether those “concurrent” sentences are to run with the sentence on Count Two, with the consecutive sentence on Count Four, or with the consecutive sentence on Count Seven. It is therefore evident that the Court of Appeals was in error in concluding that the 5 “concurrent” sentences which it thought were valid alone support an aggregate period of imprisonment of 5 to 15 years.
The rule that reversal is not required if any one several concurrent sentences is valid and alone supports the sentence and judgment, Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U. S. 81, 85, and cases cited; Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U. S. 640, 642, n. 1; United States v. Sheridan, 329 U. S. 379, 381; Roviaro v. United States, 353 U. S. 53, 59, n. 6; Lawn v. United States, 355 U. S. 339, 359, does not aid the Government, for no one of the “concurrent” sentences, or even all of them together, could, even if geared.to a particular (though invalid) consecutive sentence, support imprisonment for more than 20 months to 5 years. If any one of the consecutive sentences on Counts Two, Four or Seven be invalid it cannot be said that such of the “concurrent” sentences as are valid will run with such invalid consecutive sentence, and thus support that much of the aggregate term of imprisonment, because the trial judge did not make the concurrent sentences to run with any particular one of the consecutive sentences. It is therefore clear, under the present sentences, that imprisonment for an aggregate period of 5 to 15 years can be sustained only if each of the consecutive sentences on Counts Two, Four, and Seven is valid. Hence it is necessary for the Court of Appeals to pass upon the validity of the consecutive sentences. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated and the cause is remanded to that court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act, §2 (c), 65 Stat. 767, 21 U. S. C. § 174; the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, §§4704 (a), 4705 (a), and 7237 (a), 68A. Stat. 550-551, 860, as amended, 69 Stat. 3, 26 U. S. C. (Supp. Ill) §§4704 (a), 4705 (a), 7237 (a).
In support of its stated position the Government relies on its understanding of this Court's opinions in In re De Bara, 179 U. S. 316, and In re Henry, 123 U. S. 372. It also relies upon Phillips v. United States, 212 F. 2d 327, 335 (C. A. 8th Cir.); Barnes v. United States, 197 F. 2d 271, 273 (C. A. 8th Cir.); Levine v. Hudspeth, 127 F. 2d 982, 984 (C. A. 10th Cir.); McKee v. Johnston, 109 F. 2d 273, 275 (C. A. 9th Cir.); Jackson v. Hudspeth, 111 F. 2d 128, 129 (C. A. 10th Cir.); Ross v. Hudspeth, 108 F. 2d 628, 629 (C. A. 10th Cir.); Hawkins v. United States, 14 F. 2d 596, 597-598 (C. A. 7th Cir.); Klein v. United States, 14 F. 2d 35, 37 (C. A. 1st Cir.); Neely v. United States, 2 F. 2d 849, 852 (C. A. 4th Cir.).
At the time of these alleged offenses, and prior to the enactment of the Narcotic Control Act of 1956, 70 Stat. 567, 570, § 2 (c) of the Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act (65 Stat. 767, 21 U. S. C. § 174) provided for imprisonment for its violation of “not less than two or more than five years,” and § 7237 (a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (68A. Stat. 860) provided for imprisonment for the violation or conspiracy to violate §§ 4704 (a) or 4705 (a) of that Code of “not less than 2 or more than 5 years.”
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and the petition for a writ of certiorari are granted. The judgment is vacated and the case is remanded to the Supreme Court of Kansas for further consideration in light of Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353.
For reasons expressed in his dissenting opinion in No. 16, Misc., Pickelsimer v. Wainwright, post, p. 3, and related cases, Mr. Justice Harlan would set this case for argument of the question whether Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353, should be applied retroactively.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
Me. Justice Reed
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The issue here is the validity of United States Patent No. 2,118,468 which covers a “method of casting articles of intricate design and a product thereof.”
The patent was granted to Jungersen on May 24, 1938. In 1941, Ostby and Barton Company instituted in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey an action for a declaratory judgment that the patent was invalid and not infringed. Jungersen, by counterclaim, alleged infringement and sought an injunction. The District Court held Claims 1-4 valid but not infringed and Claims 5-6 invalid because too broad. 65 F. Supp. 652. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed on the reasoning of the District Court. 163 F. 2d 312. We denied petitions by both parties for certiorari. 332 U. S. 851, 852.
In 1944, Jungersen filed suit against Baden in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, in which he alleged infringement of the patent and sought damages, profits, and injunctive relief. That court held all the claims invalid. 69 F. Supp. 922. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed. 166 F. 2d 807.
Vacating the prior orders which denied it in the Ostby and Barton proceeding, we granted certiorari in both cases in order to settle the conflict. 334 U. S. 835. Since the parties do not assert error in those portions of the lower courts’ decisions which concern infringement, the sole issue before us is the validity of the patent.
The method described in the Jungersen patent, Claims 1-4, consists of the following steps: (1) the production of a model of the article to be cast, (2) the formation around this model of a “primary mould” of plastic material “such as rubber” which is “capable of assuming intimate contact with the intricate designs of the model” and which will “retain a lasting shape through subsequent treatment,” (3) the casting in this mould of a pattern consisting of molten wax or other material of a low melting point which is made to assume the minute configurations of the mould by means of centrifugal force, (4) the removal of this pattern (which has become solid upon cooling) from the primary mould, and the formation around it of a “secondary mould” of refractory material, such as plaster of Paris, which “will assume all the contours of its intricate design,” (5) the removal of the wax or similar material from the secondary mould, or “investment” as it is called, by the application of heat, thus melting it out, and finally (6) the casting of the desired molten metal into the cavity in the investment by the application of centrifugal force as in (3), above.
This method is capable of producing “small metal articles, particularly articles of intricate detail such as jewelry which frequently are designed with hollows, undercut portions and perforations, so that they will have a smooth clean surface faithful in detail to the original and free from imperfections or holes, and to enable such result being accomplished with the minimum of expense.” The patentee claims that it made possible the accurate reproduction of intricate designs in far less time than had previously been required.
Claim 5 describes in more general terms the formation of a primary mould around the original pattern, the removal of the pattern from the mould, the introduction of molten wax into the mould “by force sufficient to deposit the material into the depression or depressions of the primary mould” and the employment of the wax pattern for the manufacture of a casting mould. Claim 6 covers “an article of jewelry” of intricate design made by the process disclosed by Claim 5. It describes the article of jewelry only by reference to the process by which it is manufactured. Obviously if the first four claims are invalid, the last two must likewise fall.
An examination of the prior art as it existed at the time of this alleged invention reveals that every step in the Jungersen method was anticipated. We think that his combination of these steps was, in its essential features, also well known in the art.
Jungersen’s process is nothing more than a refinement of a method known as the “cire perdue” or “lost wax” process, which was in use as early as the sixteenth century. The Treatises of Benvenuto Cellini on Goldsmith-ing and Sculpture, pp. 87-89,- reveals a process which consists of filling a primary mould with molten wax, building a secondary mould around the wax model thus obtained, melting the wax from this mould and pouring the desired metal in the secondary mould. In 1904 United States Patent No. 748,996, issued to Spencer, described a substantially identical process in which the primary mould was made, as in the patent here involved, by vulcanizing rubber around the original model or pattern. In England a process similar to Spencer’s had been the basis of a patent issued to Haseltine in 1875.
The above-described developments in the prior art suggested no limitation of their applicability to any particular type of casting. Spencer stated that the purpose of his process was to produce accurate replicas of the original pattern, which could be of “intricate form” and which could “have any number of sides or surfaces or undercut or projecting parts.” Haseltine described his object as the production of “a casting in metal from a given pattern, which casting will be a perfect copy of such pattern without requiring much, if any, after finishing or chiselling work.”
The patentee claims that the invention in his combination lies in the use, in conjunction with the “lost wax” process, of centrifugal force. Long before the issuance of this patent, however, those skilled in the art recognized and disclosed the necessity for the application of force in order to make molten materials fit snugly the intricate details of the mould. Haseltine applied pressure of about twenty pounds per square inch to cause the molten metal “to lie to the dense mould and produce a sharp and well defined casting.” He accomplished this by introducing the metal into the mould through a pipe about six feet in height. United States Patent No. 1,238,789 issued to Kralund in 1917 teaches the application of pressure to the wax and the molten metal by means of an ordinary pressure die casting apparatus.
Whether these types of pressure are the equivalent of centrifugal force we need not decide since it is evident from patents and publications that the use of the latter was well known in the art. In 1923 McManus patented a casting machine which was adapted “to the casting of jewelry, such as gold rings, small trinkets, etc., where metal or other dies or moulds may be . . . filled by centrifugal casting methods.” United States Patent No. 1,457,040. He claimed “a means for transferring fused material from the furnace [in which the material was melted] to the mould under the action of centrifugal force.” In a paper on current casting methods which he presented to the Institute of Metals in England in 1926, one George Mortimer, with reference to the difficulty in filling a mould by gravity, stated: Centrifugal force was commonly used in dental casting prior to 1938.
“It was natural, therefore, that engineers should early turn their attention to some form of artificial pressure, whereby the mould could be filled by force, and soundness and clean definition seemingly assured.
“The simplest form of artificial pressure is that of centrifugal force . ...”
Thus it is clear that the “lost wax” process, the use of a flexible primary mould, and the use of centrifugal force were all old in the art of casting. The patentee claims that the centrifugal forcing of wax into the primary mould had never before been combined with the other features of his process. We think this fact is of no legal significance. Where centrifugal force was common as a means of introducing molten metal into the secondary mould, its use in an intermediate step to force molten wax into the primary mould was not an exemplification of inventive genius such as is necessary to render the patent valid. Cf. Lincoln Engineering Co. v. Stewart-Warner Corp., 303 U. S. 545; Cuno Engineering Corp. v. Automatic Devices Corp., 314 U. S. 84. The patentee himself admitted that the same principle was employed in both steps. Thus Jungersen employed in his claimed invention well-known skills and practices in a manner and for a purpose long familiar in the field of casting. His claimed improvement is therefore not patentable.
The patentee contends, however, that jewelry casting is a separate and distinct art; that consequently the advancements in other types of casting mentioned above cannot be viewed as the prior art in reference to this patent. The answer to this is twofold. In the first place, this patent is not restricted to the casting of jewelry. Its stated object is to “facilitate the casting of small metal articles, particularly articles of intricate detail such as jewelry . . . Secondly we think that the improvements in the art of casting which were disclosed by the patents and publications discussed above were so obviously applicable to the type of casting sought to be effected by Jungersen that he was bound by knowledge of them. Mandel Bros. v. Wallace, 335 U. S. 291, 295-96.
Numerous licenses under the patent were issued in the United States and other countries. The fact that this process has enjoyed considerable commercial success, however, does not render the patent valid. It is true that in cases where the question of patentable invention is a close one, such success has weight in tipping the scales of judgment toward patentability. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. v. Ray-O-Vac Co., 321 U. S. 275, 279, and cases cited in footnote 5 thereof. Where, as here, however, invention is plainly lacking, commercial success cannot fill the void. Dow Chemical Co. v. Halliburton Co., 324 U. S. 320, 330; Toledo Pressed Steel Co. v. Standard Parts, Inc., 307 U. S. 350, 356-57; Textile Machine Works v. Hirsch Co., 302 U. S. 490, 498-99; 1 Walker, Patents (Deller, 1937) § 44. Little profit would come from detailed examination of the cases cited above or those indicated by reference. Commercial success is really a makeweight where the patentability question is close.
Increased popular demand for jewelry or alertness in exploitation of the process may well have played an important part in the wide use of the patent. We cannot attribute Jungersen’s success solely or even largely to the novelty of his process.
We hold all the claims of the patent invalid for want of invention.
Nos. 7 and 48 affirmed.
No. 8 reversed.
In No. 7 we are asked to consider the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit as to claims 5 and 6; in No. 8, the decision of that court as to claims 1 through 4; and in No. 48, the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as to all the claims of the patent.
20 Encyclopaedia Britannica (1948), p. 229.
British Patent No. 2467.
'A French publication by Verleye entitled “La Gravure, etc.” (1924) describes in detail all of the elements of Jungersen’s process except the use of centrifugal force.
“La Gravure, etc.,” supra, note 3, advocates the use of steam pressure.
35 Journal of the Institute of Metals, 371, 377.
“Dental-casting methods employ four distinct principles; namely, gravity, centrifugal, vacuum, and pressure. . . .
“The centrifugal method has the advantage of great simplicity, and fills the mold by the force exerted in throwing the metal off on a tangent while being revolved about a center.” Stern, Die-casting Practice (1st ed., 1930), p. 10.
An excerpt from the testimony follows:
“Q. And when the machine is revolved, when it is centrifuged, it makes no difference whether it be molten wax or molten metal, does it, in the fact that it throws out the molten material into the gate? A. It would throw out anything of weight if it is made free to leave.
“Q. And that applies to wax as well as metal, does it not? A. It applies to wax and metal, but in a greater amount to the metal than to the wax.
“Q. But they both operate in the same way under the influence of the centrifugal machine ? A. The same principle is used, yes.
“Q. And the molten material in both cases is introduced into the mold? A. Yes.”
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Chief Justice Warren
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a civil antitrust action brought by the Government in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Named as defendants are Lee Shubert, Jacob J. Shubert, Marcus Heiman, and three corporations controlled by them. The defendants are principally engaged in the business of producing legitimate theatrical attractions, booking legitimate attractions in theatres throughout the United States, and operating approximately 40 theatres in eight states for the presentation of legitimate attractions. The Government’s complaint charges that the defendants, in the course of this business, have violated §§ 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. On the defendants’ motion, after this Court’s decision in Toolson v. New York Yankees, 346 U. S. 356, the District Court dismissed the Government’s complaint on the authority of the Toolson decision, and Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, 259 U. S. 200. The case is here on direct appeal under the Expediting Act, 15U.S.C. §29.
The Government’s complaint, which is summarized in an appendix to this opinion, describes the interstate phases of the defendants’ theatrical business in considerable detail. It concludes that the business of producing, booking, and presenting legitimate attractions requires
“a constant, continuous stream of trade and commerce between the States of the United States, consisting of the assemblage of personnel and property for rehearsals, the transportation of said personnel and property to various cities throughout the United States, the making and performing of contracts under which attractions are routed and presented in various States of the United States, and the transmission of applications, letters, memoranda, communications, commitments, contracts, money, checks, drafts and other media of exchange across State lines.”
The complaint alleges that the defendants have restrained this trade and commerce, and have monopolized certain phases of it, through a conspiracy (a) to compel other producers to book their legitimate attractions exclusively through the defendants, (b) to exclude others from booking legitimate attractions, (c) to prevent competition in the presentation of legitimate attractions, (d) to discriminate in favor of their own productions with respect to booking and presentation, and (e) to combine their power in booking and presentation in order to maintain and strengthen their domination in each of these fields. The main relief sought by the Government is the divorcement of the booking and presentation branches of the business.
The allegations of the complaint, on a motion to dismiss, must of course be taken as true. And the defendants do not deny that the allegations state a cause of action if their business is subject to the Sherman Act. The question presented is thus a narrow one: whether the business of producing, booking, and presenting legitimate attractions on a multistate basis constitutes “trade or commerce” that is “among the several States” within the meaning of those terms in the Sherman Act.
Both terms have been interpreted broadly in the decisions of this Court. “[T]rade or commerce” has been held to include the production, distribution, and exhibition of motion pictures (United States v. Paramount Pictures, 334 U. S. 131; Schine Theatres v. United States, 334 U. S. 110; United States v. Griffith, 334 U. S. 100; United States v. Crescent Amusement Co., 323 U. S. 173; Interstate Circuit v. United States, 306 U. S. 208; Binderup v. Pathe Exchange, 263 U. S. 291.); real estate brokerage (United States v. National Association of Real Estate Boards, 339 U. S. 485); the gathering and distribution of news (Associated Press v. United States, 326 U. S. 1); medical services to members of a health cooperative (American Medical Association v. United States, 317 U. S. 519); and insurance underwriting (United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Association, 322 U. S. 533). A similarly liberal construction has been given the requirement of §§ 1 and 2 that the “trade or commerce” be “among the several States.” Thus, in the South-Eastern Underwriters case, the requirement was satisfied by a “continuous and indivisible stream of intercourse among the states” involving the transmission of large sums of money and communications by mail, telephone, and telegraph. Cf. Electric Bond & Share Co. v. Securities and Exchange Commission, 303 U. S. 419, 432-433; North American Co. v. Securities and Exchange Commission, 327 U. S. 686, 694—695. In the Associated Press case, the requirement was satisfied by the interstate dissemination of news. See also Lorain Journal Co. v. United States, 342 U. S. 143. And in the motion picture cases, the requirement was satisfied by the interstate transportation of films, Binderup v. Pathe Exchange, supra, even though the actual “showing of motion pictures is of course a local affair.” United States v. Crescent Amusement Co., supra, at 183. See also Hart v. B. F. Keith Vaudeville Exchange, 262 U. S. 271.
These decisions, apart from Federal Baseball and Tool-son, make it clear beyond question that the allegations of the Government’s complaint bring the defendants within the scope of the Sherman Act, even though the actual performance of a legitimate stage attraction “is of course a local affair.” The defendants contend, however, that Federal Baseball and Toolson have already established their immunity under the Act. While conceding, as they must, that the motion picture industry is subject to the antitrust laws, they insist that all other businesses built around the performance of local exhibitions are exempt. We believe that Federal Baseball and Toolson afford no basis for such a conclusion.
In Federal Baseball, the Court, speaking through Mr. Justice Holmes, was dealing with the business of baseball and nothing else. The Court considered the nature of the game, its history and league organization, the necessity of arranging games between cities in different states, and the resulting travel across state lines. The travel, the Court concluded, was “a mere incident, not the essential thing.” On that basis, the Court held that “the restrictions by contract that prevented the plaintiff from getting players to break their bargains and the other conduct charged against the defendants were not an interference with commerce among the States.” 259 U. S., at 209.
At the very next Term, in Hart v. B. F. Keith Vaudeville Exchange, 262 U. S. 271, the Court was directly concerned with the effect of the Federal Baseball decision on the status of the theatrical business under the Sherman Act. The complaint in the Hart case, much like the complaint here under review, alleged a conspiracy to control the booking and presentation of vaudeville acts in theatres throughout the country. The district court, like the district court in the instant case, dismissed the complaint on the authority of Federal Baseball. This Court, again speaking through Mr. Justice Holmes, unanimously reversed. The Court took note of the plaintiff's argument “that in the transportation of vaudeville acts the apparatus sometimes is more important than the performers” and concluded that the complaint, at least to that extent, sufficiently alleged a violation of the Act to permit the case to go to trial. The Court distinguished Federal Baseball on the ground that “what in general is incidental, in some instances may rise to a magnitude that requires it to be considered independently.” The Court thus established, contrary to the defendants’ argument here, that Federal Baseball did not automatically immunize the theatrical business from the antitrust laws.
In Toolson, where the issue was the same as in Federal Baseball, the Court was confronted with a unique combination of circumstances. For over 30 years there had stood a decision of this Court specifically fixing the status of the baseball business under the antitrust laws and more particularly the validity of the so-called “reserve clause.” During this period, in reliance on the Federal Baseball precedent, the baseball business had grown and developed. Compare Helvering v. Hattack, 309 U. S. 106, 110. And Congress, although it had actively considered the ruling, had not seen fit to reject it by amendatory legislation. Against this background, the Court in Toolson was asked to overrule Federal Baseball on the ground that it was out of step with subsequent decisions reflecting present-day concepts of interstate commerce. The Court, in view of the circumstances of the case, declined to do so. But neither did the Court necessarily reaffirm all that was said in Federal Baseball. Instead, “[w]ithout re-examination of the underlying issues,” the Court adhered to Federal Baseball “so far as that decision determines that Congress had no intention of including the business of baseball within the scope of the federal antitrust laws.” 346 U. S., at 357. In short, Toolson was a narrow application of the rule of stare decisis.
The defendants would have us convert this narrow application of the rule into a sweeping grant of immunity to every business based on the live presentation of local exhibitions, regardless of how extensive its interstate phases may be. We cannot do so. If the Toolson holding is to be expanded — or contracted — the appropriate remedy lies with Congress. See United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Association, 322 U. S. 533, 561. Moreover, none of the considerations which led to the decision in Toolson are present here. This Court has never held that the theatrical business is not subject to the Sherman Act. On the contrary, less than a year after the Federal Baseball decision, the Court in the Hart case put the theatrical business on notice that Federal Baseball could not be relied upon as a basis for exemption from the antitrust laws. The rule of stare decisis undoubtedly embodies a policy of basic importance, but the rule cannot help the defendants here. If it is to be applied, Hart and the motion picture cases — not Federal Baseball and Toolson — are the controlling decisions.
We are not yet called upon to determine whether the defendants have in fact violated the Sherman Act or if they have what relief would be appropriate. We hold only that the allegations of the complaint state a cause of action and that the Government is entitled to an opportunity to prove those allegations. The judgment of the court below is
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Burton, retaining the views expressed in his dissent in the Toolson case, 346 U. S. 356, 357, joins the opinion and judgment of the Court in this case. Mr. Justice Reed joins in this concurrence.
Mr. Justice Minton agrees with the judgment in this case because, as it comes here on the pleadings, it is controlled by the Hart case. Whether the Government can prove its case now to the satisfaction of present courts, which the plaintiff could not do in the Hart case, 12 F. 2d 341, remains to be seen.
APPENDIX TO OPINION OF THE COURT.
The defendants state at page 3 of their brief: “The allegations of the complaint are summarized adequately at pages 5 to 11 of the Government’s brief.” That portion of the Government’s brief is set out below:
Production of a legitimate theatrical attraction involves (1) assembling of its component elements, including a script, financial backing, actors, stage hands, designers, advertising agents, scenery, costumes, lighting, and music; (2) rehearsals to weld the parts into an attraction suitable for presentation; (3) arranging for the booking and presentation of the attraction in a try-out town or towns, in New York City, and in road-show towns; and (4) transporting the entire cast and scenery to try-out towns, to New York City, and to road-show towns throughout the United States to fulfill these bookings and presentation arrangements (par. 24, R. 4). At the present time the cost of producing a play runs from $60,000 to $100,000, and of a musical from $200,000 to $300,000 (par. 25, R. 4). Persons other than the producer usually supply the necessary financing (ibid.). Frequently the production is incorporated and shares of stock are sold to investors, or the producer organizes a limited partnership (ibid.). All the appellees invest in legitimate attractions (pars. 3-7, R. 1-3).
After the production has been assembled and rehearsals have been completed, the attraction is presented in one or more “try-out” towns for the purpose of judging audience reaction and correcting observed deficiencies (pars. 20, 26, R. 4, 5). Audience reaction in try-out towns is important in gauging subsequent financial success in New York City and on the road (par. 26, R. 5). The attraction is then presented in New York City (par. 27, R. 5). If the run there is successful, the attraction is sent on tour to “road-show” towns throughout the United States (ibid.). This road-show tour is an “integral part of the exploitation of the attraction” and is the source of a “substantial part” of its profits (ibid.).
With the exception of a few cities, a legitimate attraction ordinarily cannot profitably play in a road-show town for more than a limited period of time, seldom exceeding two weeks. The producer of a play must therefore obtain playing dates in a number of suitable road-show towns, arranged so as to minimize lay-offs and travel between engagements. Successful operation of a theatre in a road-show town requires scheduling legitimate attractions so as to keep the theatre as continuously occupied as possible during the theatrical season. Playing dates of a road-show town must therefore be arranged so as to meet the needs of both the producer and the theatre operator. (Par. 29, R. 5.)
UBO acts as middleman between producers and operators of theatres in try-out and road-show towns, but is regarded as the agent of the theatre operators and usually receives, as compensation for its services, five per cent of the operator’s share of the theatre’s gross receipts (par. 28, R. 5). Each year UBO enters into or renews agreements with theatre operators to act as their booking agent (par. 30, R. 5). After negotiation with the producer of an attraction, UBO tentatively schedules it at various theatres throughout the United States, and contracts covering presentation at these theatres are subsequently executed (id., R. 5-6). The booking of legitimate attractions involves the cross-country routing of attractions in a constant stream to and from theatres in various cities throughout the United States (par. 28, R. 5).
The individual appellees control the booking of legitimate attractions in try-out and road-show towns in the United States (par. 37, R. 7). Apart from Select and a subsidiary thereof, UBO is the only concern in the country which books legitimate attractions throughout the United States (par. 5, R. 2). From 1932 to 1946, UBO followed a policy of entering into franchise agreements with theatre operators making UBO the exclusive booking agent for their theatres (par. 40, R. 8-9). About 1946, UBO discontinued formal franchise agreements and adopted in lieu thereof a system of listings which, as tacitly understood by the parties, continued the previous contract arrangements (id., R. 9).
The appellees operate or participate in the operation of approximately forty theatres in eight states (par. 42, R. 9). They operate or control all the theatres in “virtually all” key try-out towns, and in several important road-show towns (par. 41, R. 9). Approximately fifty per cent of all the theatres in New York City are owned or operated by the Shubert appellees (pars. 15, 41, R. 3, 9).
In producing, booking, and presenting legitimate attractions, there is a constant, continuous stream of trade and commerce between the various states, consisting of assemblage o'f personnel and property for rehearsals, transportation of such personnel and property to various cities, making and performing contracts under which attractions are routed and presented in various states, and transmission of applications, letters, memoranda, communications, contracts, money, checks, drafts, and other media of exchange across state lines (par. 49, R. 12).
The substantial elements of appellees’ conspiracy to restrain and monopolize, attempted monopolization, and monopolization have been that the appellees, by concert of action: (a) compel producers to book their legitimate attractions exclusively through appellees; (b) exclude others from booking legitimate attractions; (c) prevent competition in presentation of these attractions; (d) discriminate in favor of their own productions with respect to booking and presentation; and (e) combine their power in booking and presentation in order to maintain and strengthen their domination in each of these fields (par. 51, R. 13).
The means which the appellees have used in carrying-out the foregoing acts have included the following:
(1) Conditioning their investments in legitimate attractions produced by others, and conditioning the booking of legitimate attractions in try-out towns and in New York City, upon agreement by the producers to book these attractions exclusively through appellees (pars. 52 (a), (d), (e), R. 13).
(2) Forcing producers to book their legitimate attractions for an entire theatrical season exclusively through appellees (par. 52 (c), R. 13).
(3) Coercing producers who had booked through others to pay penalties or to accept discriminatory booking terms, as a condition of obtaining booking through them (par. 52 (f), R. 13).
(4) Entering into agreements with theatre operators whereby the operators agree to present only attractions booked through appellees, and appellees agree not to book for competing theatre operators (par. 52 (g),R. 13).
(5) Excluding legitimate attractions booked by others from theatres operated by appellees (par. 52 (h), R. 13).
(6) Coercing and intimidating independent theatre operators in towns where appellees operate the-atres to relinquish control of their theatres by-threatening to deprive them, by virtue of appel-lees’ control of booking, of access to legitimate attractions (par. 52 (k), R. 14).
Some of the effects of appellees’ concerted actions have been that producers have been forced to book exclusively with appellees on non-competitive terms; persons have been denied the right to engage in the business of operating a booking office; operators of independent "'theatres competing with those of appellees have been systematically excluded from obtaining legitimate attractions and, in many cities, have been forced out of business; in cities in which the appellees operate theatres, persons have been denied the right to engage in the business of presenting legitimate attractions, and the public has been deprived of access to legitimate attractions and the benefits which flow from open competition; and interstate commerce in production, booking, and presentation has been unreasonably restrained, and in booking and presentation has been monopolized (par. 53, R. 14).
Lee Shubert died prior to entry of the District Court’s judgment. His executors have not been substituted as parties.
The corporations are the United Booking Office, Inc. (“UBO”), Select Theatres Corporation (“Select”), and L. A. B. Amusement Corporation (“L. A. B”). Since the filing of the complaint, L. A. B. has been dissolved and its assets vested in Marcus Heiman personally.
The complaint defines “legitimate attractions” as “stage attractions performed in person by professional actors” including “plays, musicals, and operettas” but not ordinarily including “stock company attractions, vaudeville, burlesque, bands, individual dancers, dance groups, concerts, and vocal or instrumental presentations.” The complaint alleges that a play costs approximately $60,000 to $100,000 to produce, whereas a musical generally requires from $200,-000 to $300,000. As much as one-third of the cost, according to the complaint, may be attributable to expenditures for scenery, props, and related items and services.
“Booking” is defined in the complaint as “the arrangements, generally made through a booking office, between producers and operators for the routing and presentation of legitimate attractions and the fixing of playing dates.” The complaint alleges that UBO, apart from Select and a subsidiary thereof, is the only concern in the country that books legitimate attractions throughout the United States.
The complaint defines “presentation” as “the operation of a theatre or theatres and the exhibition of legitimate attractions therein.” The defendants, according to the complaint, operate or control all the theatres in virtually all key “try-out” cities (including Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore), all the theatres in several important “road-show” cities (including Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia), almost all the theatres in other important “road-show” cities (Chicago and Detroit), and approximately half of the theatres in New York City.
15U.S.C.§§ 1 and 2. These sections provide:
Ҥ 1. . . . Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal .... Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy declared by sections 1-7 of this title to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor ....
“§•2. . . . Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor . . . .”
Section 4 confers jurisdiction on the district courts “to prevent and restrain violations of sections 1-7 of this title” in equity proceedings instituted under the direction of the Attorney General.
The court issued the following order:
“In principle, I can see no valid distinction between the facts of this case and those which were before the Supreme Court in the cases of Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, 259 U. S. 200, 42 S. Ct. 465, 66 L. Ed. 898, and Toolson v. New York Yankees, 346 U. S. 356, 74 S. Ct. 78.
“Upon the authority of these adjudications the complaint in the above-entitled action will be dismissed.” 120 F. Supp. 15, 16.
Moreover, once interstate commerce is established, the Sherman Act may be applied even to “local” restraints on that commerce. E. g., Mandeville Island Farms v. American Crystal Sugar Co., 334 U. S. 219; United States v. Women’s Sportswear Mfrs. Assn., 336 U. S. 460; United States v. Employing Plasterers Association, 347 U. S. 186. Cf. Moore v. Mead’s Fine Bread Co., 348 U. S. 115, 118-119.
The defendants seek to distinguish the motion picture cases on the ground that the product of the motion picture industry is “an article of trade ... an inanimate thing — a reel of photographic film in a metal box — which moves into interstate commerce like any other manufactured product”; on the other hand, according to this argument, a legitimate theatrical attraction is “intangible and evanescent, unique and individual ... an experience of living people.” Compare United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Association, 322 U. S. 533, 546: “. . . Congress can regulate traffic though it consist of intangibles.” And see Hart v. B. F. Keith Vaudeville Exchange, 262 U. S. 271.
That other segments of the entertainment business, besides the motion picture industry, may constitute interstate commerce is well established. See, e. g., Federal Radio Commission v. Nelson Bros. Co., 289 U. S. 266, 279 (radio).
On remand, the trial court understood the Holmes opinion as authorizing a later dismissal if the plaintiff’s evidence failed to establish that the transportation was more than “incidental.” On that basis, the trial court dismissed the action and the Court of Appeals affirmed. 12 F. 2d 341. This Court denied certiorari. 273 U. S. 703. But, as the defendants admit, a denial of certiorari does not constitute an expression on the merits. Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 489-497. That rule is particularly appropriate where the decision sought to be reviewed is essentially a factual determination. Compare Graver Tank & Mfg. Co. v. Linde Co., 336 U. S. 271, 274-275.
For lower court decisions holding the theatrical business to be subject to the Sherman Act, see Judge Learned Hand in Marienelli v. United Booking Offices of America, 227 F. 165 (D. C. S. D. N. Y.), and Judge Charles Clark in Ring v. Spina, 148 F. 2d 647 (C. A. 2d Cir.), modified in 186 F. 2d 637 (C. A. 2d Cir.), cert. denied, 341 U. S. 935. But cf. San Carlo Opera Co. v. Conley, 72 F. Supp. 825 (D. C. S. D. N. Y.), affirmed, 163 F. 2d 310 (C. A. 2d Cir.), involving a personal employment contract under the Federal Arbitration Act.
The appellees control or operate the only theatre in Baltimore, the six theatres in Boston, seven of the nine theatres in Chicago, the only theatre in Cincinnati, the only theatre in Los Angeles, and the four theatres in Philadelphia (par. 42, R. 9-10). They have an interest in two of the three theatres in Detroit (par. 42 E, R. 10). The only theatre in New Haven is operated under a five-year agreement with a subsidiary of Select, which provides that the operator will accept only attractions booked through this subsidiary (par. 43, R. 11). UBO has exclusive booking rights for the only theatre in Toledo, Ohio (par. 45, R. 11).
The “key” try-out towns are Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Haven (par. 26, R. 4). [Footnote 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: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter
announced the judgment of the Court and an opinion in which
Mr. Justice Douglas, Mr. Justice Murphy and Mr. Justice Rutledge join.
This is a prosecution under the counterfeiting statutes. Rev. Stat. § 5430, 35 Stat. 1088, 1116, 18 U. S. C. (1946 ed.) § 264 (now § 474). The sole question before us is the correctness of the denial of a pretrial motion, sustained by the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, 159 F. 2d 798, to suppress evidence claimed to have been seized in contravention of the Fourth Amendment as it is to be applied under the doctrine of Byars v. United States, 273 U. S. 28.
Since the legal issue turns on the precise circumstances of this case they must be stated with particularity.
At about 2 p. m. on Sunday, March 10, 1946, Secret Service Agent Greene received two telephone calls, one from the police of Camden, New Jersey, the other from the manager of a hotel in that city, indicating violations of the counterfeiting statutes being carried on in Room 402 of the hotel. Lustig, the petitioner here, and one Reynolds were registered for this room under assumed names. It is to be noted that the Secret Service is the agency of the Government charged with enforcement of the laws pertaining to counterfeiting. On looking through the keyhole of the suspect room after reaching the hotel, Greene saw Lustig, two brief cases and a large suitcase, but no evidence pertinent to counterfeiting. He questioned the chambermaid whose suspicions had led to this investigation. She recounted the hearing of noises “like glass hitting against glass or metal hitting against metal” emanating from the suspect room. She also remarked that she had seen what looked like money on the table.
Greene thereupon reported to Detective Arthur of the Camden police at the Camden Police Station that he had seen no evidence of counterfeiting but was confident that “something was going on.” Arthur reported the affair by telephone to his superior, Captain Koerner, at his home, who then came to the police station. In his account of the affair, Greene gave to Koerner the names under which the occupants of the room had registered. In reply to inquiry by Captain Koerner, Sergeant Murphy of the Camden police stated that one of the names was that of a “racehorse man or a tout or a bookie.” After verifying the names on the hotel register and on the assumption that the occupants of the room “might be trying to counterfeit race-track tickets” rather than currency, Koerner secured warrants for the arrest of persons bearing the names on the register in order to “get into that room and find out what was in there.” The offense charged against those bearing the assumed names was the violation of a Camden ordinance requiring “known criminals” to register with the local police within twenty-four hours after their arrival in town. At about four o’clock in the afternoon of the same day, Koerner and three city detectives secured a key from the manager of the hotel and entered Room 402. The police officers proceeded to empty the bags and the drawers of a bureau and thus came upon the evidence sought to be suppressed. What they found indicated counterfeiting of currency rather than of racetrack tickets.
During all this time, Greene had remained at police headquarters because he “was curious to see what they would find.” On finding what they did find, Koerner sent word to Greene, who came to the hotel and examined the evidence in controversy. When Lustig and Reynolds eventually returned they were arrested and searched by the detectives. As various articles were taken out of their pockets, those deemed to have bearing on counterfeiting currency were turned over to Greene. He observed that the ink on a $100 bill taken from Reynolds had not been tampered with. Greene was trying to discover what had been used to make the impression on the “similitude” found in the room. After the search was completed, Greene and the city police gathered up the articles revealed by the search and carried them to the police station. Some of' these articles were given to Greene before he left Room 402; all were eventually turned over to him.
We are confronted by a ruling of the District Court, sustained by the Court of Appeals, admitting the evidence. But the question before us is not foreclosed by the respect to be accorded to a ruling on an issue of fact by the trial court until analysis discloses that the ruling was merely on an issue of fact and that no issue of law was entwined in the ruling. Insofar as what the lower courts found as facts may properly be so regarded, they are to be accepted; but their constitutional significance is another matter.
On the basis of what was before him, the trial judge admitted the evidence because he did not “see any connivance or arrangement on the part of the Federal officers to have an illegal search made to get evidence they could not secure under the Federal law.” We therefore accept as a fact that Greene did not request the search, that, beyond indicating to the local police that there was something wrong, he was not the moving force of the search, and that the search was not undertaken by the police to help enforcement of a federal law. But search is a functional, not merely a physical, process. Search is not completed until effective appropriation, as part of an uninterrupted transaction, is made of illicitly obtained objects for subsequent proof of an offense. Greene’s selection of the evidence deemed important for use in a federal prosecution for counterfeiting, as part of the entire transaction in Room 402, was not severable, and therefore was part of the search carried on in that room. The uncontroverted facts show that before the search was concluded Greene was called in, and although he himself did not help to empty the physical containers of the seized articles he did share in the critical examination of the uncovered articles as the physical search proceeded. It surely can make no difference whether a state officer turns up the evidence and hands it over to a federal agent for his critical inspection with the view to its use in a federal prosecution, or the federal agent himself takes the articles out of a bag. It would trivialize law to base legal significance on such a differentiation. Had Greene accompanied the city police to the hotel, his participation could not be open to question even though the door of Room 402 had not been opened by him. See Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10. To differentiate between participation from the beginning of an illegal search and joining it before it had run its course, would be to draw too fine a line in the application of the prohibition of the Fourth Amendment as interpreted in Byars v. United States, supra, 273 U. S. 28.
The crux of that doctrine is that a search is a search by a federal official if he had a hand in it; it is not a search by a federal official if evidence secured by state authorities is turned over to the federal authorities on a silver platter. The decisive factor in determining the applicability of the Byars case is the actuality of a share by a federal official in the total enterprise of securing and selecting evidence by other than sanctioned means. It is immaterial whether a federal agent originated the idea or joined in it while the search was in progress. So long as he was in it before the object of the search was completely accomplished, he must be deemed to have participated in it. Where there is participation on the part of federal officers it is not necessary to consider what would be the result if the search had been conducted entirely by State officers. Evidence secured through such federal participation is inadmissible for the same considerations as those which made Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383, the governing principle in federal prosecutions.
Though state officers preceded Greene in illegally rummaging through the bags and bureau drawers in Room 402, they concerned themselves especially with turning up evidence of violations of the federal counterfeiting laws after Greene joined them. He was an expert in counterfeiting matters and had a vital share in sifting the evidence as the search proceeded. He exercised an expert's discretion in selecting or rejecting evidence that bore on counterfeiting. The fact that state officers preceded him in breach of the rights of privacy does not negative the legal significance of this collaboration in the illegal enterprise before it had run its course. Greene himself acknowledged such participation by his remark about "leaving the room after we had gathered all this evidence together.”
Nor is the search here defensible as incidental to a lawful arrest. Greene never made the arrest, he knew that Lustig and Reynolds were not present when he entered their room and he had an active hand in the continuation of the search without warrant before Lustig and Reynolds had returned. The ruling in Davis v. United States, 328 U. S. 582, does not come into play. Neither is it material that Greene may have been informed as to what he was likely to find before he joined the searchers. Vindicated anticipation of what an illegal search may reveal does not validate a search otherwise illegal. Trupiano v. United States, 334 U. S. 699, 708-9. With every respect for the rulings of the lower court, we find that the unquestioned facts disclose that the evidence on which the conviction rests was illicit and the motion to suppress it should have been granted.
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Black concurs in the judgment of the Court substantially for reasons set out in his dissent in Feldman v. United States, 322 U. S. 487, 494.
After this Court denied a petition for writ of certiorari, a petition for rehearing was granted. The order entered June 16, 1947, 331 U. S. 853, denying certiorari was vacated and the petition for writ of certiorari to the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit was granted on February 16, 1948. 333 U. S. 835.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 SOTOMAYORdelivered the opinion of the Court.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 provides, in relevant part, that "[a]ny decision by a State or local government or instrumentality thereof to deny a request to place, construct, or modify personal wireless service facilities shall be in writing and supported by substantial evidence contained in a written record." 110 Stat. 151, 47 U.S.C. § 332(c)(7)(B)(iii). The question presented is whether, and in what form, localities must provide reasons when they deny telecommunication companies' applications to construct cell phone towers. We hold that localities must provide or make available their reasons, but that those reasons need not appear in the written denial letter or notice provided by the locality. Instead, the locality's reasons may appear in some other written record so long as the reasons are sufficiently clear and are provided or made accessible to the applicant essentially contemporaneously with the written denial letter or notice.
I
In February 2010, petitioner T-Mobile South, LLC, applied to build a new, 108-foot-tall cell phone tower on 2.8 acres of vacant residential property in the city of Roswell, Georgia (City). Roswell's city ordinances require that any cell phone tower proposed for a residential zoning district must take the form of an "alternative tower structure"-an artificial tree, clock tower, steeple, or light pole-that, in the opinion of the city council (City Council or Council), is "compatible with the natural setting and surrounding structures" and that effectively camouflages the tower. Code of Ordinances §§ 21.2.2, 21.2.5(a); see App. 68, 75. In accordance with these provisions, petitioner's application proposed a structure in the shape of an artificial tree or "monopine." Id.,at 42.
The City's Planning and Zoning Division reviewed petitioner's application, along with a substantial number of letters and petitions opposing it, and ultimately issued a memorandum to the City Council concluding that the application met all of the requirements set out in the City's ordinances. It recommended that the City Council approve the application on three conditions to which petitioner was prepared to agree.
The City Council then held a 2-hour-long public hearing on April 12, 2010, to consider petitioner's application. Petitioner arranged privately to have the hearing transcribed, and, as discussed below, the City subsequently issued detailed minutes summarizing the proceedings. At the hearing, after the Planning and Zoning Division presented its recommendation and after petitioner's representatives made a presentation in support of the application, a number of residents raised concerns. Among these were concerns that the tower would lack aesthetic compatibility, that the technology was outdated and unnecessary, and that the tower would be too tall. Petitioner's representatives responded by reiterating that it had met all of the ordinance's requirements and by providing testimony from a property appraiser that placement of cell phone towers does not reduce property values.
Members of the City Council then commented on the application. One member of the six-person Council was recused, see id.,at 111 (hearing transcript); id.,at 322 (meeting minutes), leaving five voting members. Member Igleheart said that other carriers had sufficient coverage in the area and that the City did not need to level the playing field for petitioner. Id.,at 173-174 (hearing transcript). He also stated that his "[b]ottom line" was that he did not think it was "appropriate for residentially zoned properties to have the cell towers in their location." Id.,at 174 (hearing transcript); id.,at 338 (meeting minutes). Member Dippolito found it difficult to believe that the tower would not negatively impact the area and doubted that it would be compatible with the natural setting. Id.,at 175-176 (hearing transcript); id.,at 339 (meeting minutes). Member Wynn expressed concerns about the lack of a backup generator for emergency services, id.,at 172 (hearing transcript), and did not think the tower would be "compatible with this area," id.,at 176 (hearing transcript); id.,at 339 (meeting minutes). Member Orlans said only that he was impressed with the information put together by both sides. Id.,at 173 (hearing transcript); id.,at 337 (meeting minutes). Finally, Member Price, the liaison to the Planning and Zoning Division, made a motion to deny the application. She said that the tower would be aesthetically incompatible with the natural setting, that it would be too tall, and that its proximity to other homes would adversely affect the neighbors and the resale value of their properties. Id.,at 176-177 (hearing transcript); id.,at 339-340 (meeting minutes). The motion was seconded, and then passed unanimously. Id.,at 177 (hearing transcript); id.,at 340 (meeting minutes).
Two days later, on April 14, 2010, the Planning and Zoning Division sent a letter to petitioner that said in its entirety:
"Please be advised the City of Roswell Mayor and City Council denied the request from T-Mobile for a 108' mono-pine alternative tower structure during their April 12, 2010 hearing. The minutes from the aforementioned hearing may be obtained from the city clerk. Please contact Sue Creel or Betsy Branch at [phone number].
"If you have any additional questions, please contact me at [phone number]." Id.,at 278.
The detailed written minutes of the hearing, however, were not approved and published by the City until 26 days later, on May 10, 2010. See id.,at 321-341 (meeting minutes).
On May 13, 2010, 3 days after the detailed minutes were published-and now 29 days after the City denied petitioner's application-petitioner filed suit in Federal District Court. It alleged that the denial of the application was not supported by substantial evidence in the record, and would effectively prohibit the provision of wireless service in violation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (Act). The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment.
The District Court granted petitioner's motion for summary judgment, concluding that the City had violated the Act when it failed to issue a written decision that stated the reasons for denying petitioner's application. The District Court interpreted the Act to require that a written denial letter or notice describe the reasons for the denial and that those reasons be sufficiently explained to allow a reviewing court to evaluate them against the written record.
The Eleventh Circuit reversed. 731 F.3d 1213 (2013). It explained that, in T-Mobile South, LLC v. Milton,728 F.3d 1274 (2013), which was decided after the District Court's decision in this case, it had held that "to the extent that the decision must contain grounds or reasons or explanations, it is sufficient if those are contained in a different written document or documents that the applicant is given or has access to." Id.,at 1285. The Eleventh Circuit acknowledged that the Courts of Appeals had split on that question, and that it had departed from the majority rule. Compare Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems, Inc. v. Todd,244 F.3d 51, 60 (C.A.1 2001)(requiring that a locality issue a written denial that itself contains a "sufficient explanation of the reasons for the permit denial to allow a reviewing court to evaluate the evidence in the record supporting those reasons"); New Par v. Saginaw,301 F.3d 390, 395-396 (C.A.6 2002); MetroPCS, Inc. v. City and County of San Francisco,400 F.3d 715, 723 (C.A.9 2005), with AT & T Wireless PCS, Inc. v. City Council of Virginia Beach,155 F.3d 423, 429 (C.A.4 1998)(holding that written minutes of a meeting and the word "denied" stamped on a letter describing the application were sufficient). Applying its rule to this case, the Eleventh Circuit found that the requirements of 47 U.S.C. § 332(c)(7)(B)(iii)were satisfied because petitioner had its own transcript as well as a written letter stating that the application had been denied and informing petitioner that it could obtain access to the minutes of the hearing. 731 F.3d, at 1221. It did not consider when the City provided its written reasons to petitioner.
We granted certiorari, 572 U.S. ----, 134 S.Ct. 2136, 188 L.Ed.2d 1123 (2014), and now reverse the judgment of the Eleventh Circuit.
II
A
The first question we answer is whether the statute requires localities to provide reasons when they deny applications to build cell phone towers. We answer that question in the affirmative.
Our conclusion follows from the provisions of the Telecommunications Act. The Act generally preserves "the traditional authority of state and local governments to regulate the location, construction, and modification" of wireless communications facilities like cell phone towers, but imposes "specific limitations" on that authority. Rancho Palos Verdes v. Abrams,544 U.S. 113, 115, 125 S.Ct. 1453, 161 L.Ed.2d 316 (2005); see § 332(c)(7)(B). One of those limitations is that any decision to deny a request to build a tower "shall be in writing and supported by substantial evidence contained in a written record." § 332(c)(7)(B)(iii). Another is that parties adversely affected by a locality's decision may seek judicial review. § 332(c)(7)(B)(v). In order to determine whether a locality's denial was supported by substantial evidence, as Congress directed, courts must be able to identify the reason or reasons why the locality denied the application. See Rancho Palos Verdes,544 U.S., at 128, 125 S.Ct. 1453(BREYER, J., joined by O'Connor, Souter, and GINSBURG, JJ., concurring) (observing that the Act "requires local zoning boards ... [to] give reasons for [their] denials 'in writing' ").
The requirement that localities must provide reasons when they deny applications is further underscored by two of the other limitations on local authority set out in the Act. The Act provides that localities "shall not unreasonably discriminate among providers of functionally equivalent services," and may not regulate the construction of personal wireless service facilities "on the basis of the environmental effects of radio frequency emissions to the extent that such facilities comply with the [Federal Communications Commission's] regulations concerning such emissions." §§ 332(c)(7)(B)(i)(I), (iv).Again, it would be considerably more difficult for a reviewing court to determine whether a locality had violated these substantive provisions if the locality were not obligated to state its reasons.
This conclusion is not just commonsensical, but flows directly from Congress' use of the term "substantial evidence." The statutory phrase "substantial evidence" is a "term of art" in administrative law that describes how "an administrative record is to be judged by a reviewing court." United States v. Carlo Bianchi & Co.,373 U.S. 709, 715, 83 S.Ct. 1409, 10 L.Ed.2d 652 (1963). There is no reason discernible from the text of the Act to think that Congress meant to use the phrase in a different way. See FAA v. Cooper,566 U.S. ----, ----, 132 S.Ct. 1441, 1449, 182 L.Ed.2d 497 (2012)( "[W]hen Congress employs a term of art, it presumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas that were attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it was taken" (internal quotation marks omitted)). Indeed, for those who consider legislative history relevant, the Conference Report accompanying the Act confirmed as much when it noted that "[t]he phrase 'substantial evidence contained in a written record' is the traditional standard used for review of agency actions." H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 104-458, p. 208(1996), 1996 U.S.C.C.A.N. 10.
By employing the term "substantial evidence," Congress thus invoked, among other things, our recognition that "the orderly functioning of the process of [substantial-evidence] review requires that the grounds upon which the administrative agency acted be clearly disclosed," and that "courts cannot exercise their duty of [substantial-evidence] review unless they are advised of the considerations underlying the action under review." SEC v. Chenery Corp.,318 U.S. 80, 94, 63 S.Ct. 454, 87 L.Ed. 626 (1943); see also Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Assn. of United States, Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co.,463 U.S. 29, 43, 103 S.Ct. 2856, 77 L.Ed.2d 443 (1983)(explaining that an agency must "articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action" to enable substantial-evidence review); Beaumont, S.L. W.R. Co. v. United States,282 U.S. 74, 86, 51 S.Ct. 1, 75 L.Ed. 221 (1930)("Complete statements by the [agency] showing the grounds upon which its determinations rest are quite as necessary as are opinions of lower courts setting forth the reasons on which they base their decisions ...").
In response, the City primarily argues that a reason-giving obligation would deprive it of local zoning authority. But Congress intended to place "specific limitations on the traditional authority of state and local governments" regarding cell phone tower siting applications. Rancho Palos Verdes,544 U.S., at 115, 125 S.Ct. 1453. One of those "limitations," § 332(c)(7)(B), necessarily implied by the Act's "substantial evidence" requirement, is that local zoning authorities state their reasons when they deny applications.
In short, the statutory text and structure, and the concepts that Congress imported into the statutory framework, all point clearly toward the conclusion that localities must provide reasons when they deny cell phone tower siting applications. We stress, however, that these reasons need not be elaborate or even sophisticated, but rather, as discussed below, simply clear enough to enable judicial review.
B
The second question we answer is whether these reasons must appear in the same writing that conveys the locality's denial of an application. We answer that question in the negative.
Like our conclusion that localities must provide reasons, our conclusion that the reasons need not appear in a denial letter follows from the statutory text. Other than providing that a locality's reasons must be given in writing, nothing in that text imposes any requirement that the reasons be given in any particular form.
The Act's saving clause makes clear that, other than the enumerated limitations imposed on local governments by the statute itself, "nothing in this chapter shall limit or affect the authority of a State or local government or instrumentality thereof over decisions regarding the placement, construction, and modification of personal wireless service facilities." § 332(c)(7)(A). Given this language, and the system of "cooperative federalism" on which the Act is premised, Rancho Palos Verdes,544 U.S., at 128, 125 S.Ct. 1453(BREYER, J., concurring), we understand the enumerated limitations to set out an exclusive list. So while the text and structure of the Act render it inescapable that localities must provide reasons in writing when they deny applications, we can locate in the Act no command-either explicit or implicit-that localities must provide those reasons in a specific document.
We therefore conclude that Congress imposed no specific requirement on that front, but instead permitted localities to comply with their obligation to give written reasons so long as the locality's reasons are stated clearly enough to enable judicial review. Although the statute does not require a locality to provide its written reasons in any particular format, and although a locality may rely on detailed meeting minutes as it did here, we agree with the Solicitor General that "the local government may be better served by including a separate statement containing its reasons." Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae26; see also id.,at 34. If the locality writes a short statement providing its reasons, the locality can likely avoid prolonging the litigation-and adding expense to the taxpayers, the companies, and the legal system-while the parties argue about exactly what the sometimes voluminous record means. Moreover, in that circumstance, the locality need not worry that, upon review of the record, a court will either find that it could not ascertain the locality's reasons or mistakenly ascribe to the locality a rationale that was not in fact the reason for the locality's denial.
We hasten to add that a locality cannot stymie or burden the judicial review contemplated by the statute by delaying the release of its reasons for a substantial time after it conveys its written denial. The statute provides that an entity adversely affected by a locality's decision may seek judicial review within 30 days of the decision. § 332(c)(7)(B)(v). Because an entity may not be able to make a considered decision whether to seek judicial review without knowing the reasons for the denial of its application, and because a court cannot review the denial without knowing the locality's reasons, the locality must provide or make available its written reasons at essentially the same time as it communicates its denial.
This rule ought not to unduly burden localities given the range of ways in which localities can provide their reasons. Moreover, the denial itself needs only to be issued (or the application otherwise acted upon) "within a reasonable period of time." § 332(c)(7)(B)(ii). In an interpretation we have recently upheld, see Arlington v. FCC,569 U.S. ----, 133 S.Ct. 1863, --- L.Ed.2d ---- (2013), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has generally interpreted this provision to allow localities 90 days to act on applications to place new antennas on existing towers and 150 days to act on other siting applications. In re Petition for Declaratory Ruling to Clarify Provisions of Section 332(c)(7)(b),24 FCC Rcd. 13994, 13995, ¶ 4 (2009). If a locality is not in a position to provide its reasons promptly, the locality can delay the issuance of its denial within this 90- or 150-day window, and instead release it along with its reasons once those reasons are ready to be provided. Only once the denial is issued would the 30-day commencement-of-suit clock begin.
III
Petitioner offers four reasons why, in its view, our analysis in Part II-B is incorrect. Petitioner argues that the statute requires that a locality's reasons appear in the writing conveying the denial itself, but none of petitioner's reasons are persuasive.
First, petitioner argues that the word "decision" in the statute-the thing that must be "in writing"-connotes a written document that itself provides all the reasons for a given judgment. See Brief for Petitioner 24 (quoting Black's Law Dictionary 407 (6th ed. 1990) (a "decision" is a written document providing " 'the reasons given for [a] judgment' ")). But even petitioner concedes, with its preferred dictionary in hand, that the word "decision" can also mean "something short of a statement of reasons explaining a determination." Brief for Petitioner 24 (citing Black's Law Dictionary, at 407).
Second, petitioner claims that other provisions in the Act use the word "notify" when the Act means to impose only a requirement that a judgment be communicated.
Because the provision at issue here does not use the word "notify," petitioner argues, it must contemplate something more than a judgment. This does not logically follow. For one thing, the statute at issue here does not use any verb at all to describe the conveying of information from a locality to an applicant; it just says that a denial "shall be in writing and supported by substantial evidence contained in a written record." § 332(c)(7)(B)(iii). But more to the point, "notify" is a verb the use-or nonuse-of which does not reveal what the thing to be notified of or about is.
Third, petitioner contends that the "substantial evidence" requirement itself demands that localities identify their reasons in their written denials. See Brief for Petitioner 23. Certainly, as discussed above, the phrase "substantial evidence" requires localities to give reasons, but it says nothing on its own about the document in which those reasons must be stated or presented to a reviewing court.
Finally, petitioner invokes the statutory requirement that any adversely affected person shall have their challenge heard by a court "on an expedited basis." § 332(c)(7)(B)(v). See Brief for Petitioner 14-15, 28. As long as the reasons are provided in a written record, however, and as long as they are provided in such a manner that is clear enough and prompt enough to enable judicial review, there is no reason to require that those reasons be provided in the written denial itself.
We acknowledge that petitioner, along with those Courts of Appeals that have required a locality's reasons to appear in its written denial itself, have offered plausible bases for a rule that would require as much. See, e.g.,Todd,244 F.3d, at 60("A written record can create difficulties in determining the rationale behind a board's decision ..."). Congress could adopt such a rule if it were so inclined, but it did not do so in this statute. It is not our place to legislate another approach.
IV
Thus, we hold that the Act requires localities to provide reasons when they deny cell phone tower siting applications, but that the Act does not require localities to provide those reasons in written denial letters or notices themselves. A locality may satisfy its statutory obligations if it states its reasons with sufficient clarity in some other written record issued essentially contemporaneously with the denial. In this case, the City provided its reasons in writing and did so in the acceptable form of detailed minutes of the City Council meeting. The City, however, did not provide its written reasons essentially contemporaneously with its written denial. Instead, the City issued those detailed minutes 26 days after the date of the written denial and just 4 days before petitioner's time to seek judicial review would have expired.The City therefore did not comply with its statutory obligations. We do not consider questions regarding the applicability of principles of harmless error or questions of remedy, and leave those for the Eleventh Circuit to address on remand.
For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the judgment below and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Brief minutes had been adopted on April 19, but these only noted that the motion to deny the application had passed with five members in favor and one member recused. See Council Brief 041210, online at http:// roswell.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=657578&GUID=08D5297C-0271-41 F9-9DAA-E8E3DD6314BD&Options=&Search= (all Internet Materials as visited January 12, 2015, and available in Clerk of Court's case file). According to the meeting calendar for the City Council's May 10, 2010, meeting, it was on that day that the City Council approved detailed minutes of the April 12 meeting that included a recitation of each member's statements during the hearing. See http://roswell.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx? ID=101786&GUID=63828B21-EB83-4485-B4EA-10EE65CF48CD&Options=info&Search=.
The last "limitation" listed in the Act provides that localities shall act on applications to construct personal wireless service facilities "within a reasonable period of time after the request is duly filed ... taking into account the nature and scope of such request." § 332(c)(7)(B)(ii).
THE CHIEF JUSTICE's dissent rejects this particular requirement, and instead invents a process that turns judicial review on its head. Rather than give effect to a process that would permit an entity seeking to challenge a locality's decision to see the locality's written reasons before it files its suit-and the dissent agrees that the statute requires that a locality convey its reasons in writing, see post,at 5-the dissent would fashion a world in which a locality can wait until a lawsuit is commenced and a court orders it to state its reasons. The entity would thus be left to guess at what the locality's written reasons will be, write a complaint that contains those hypotheses, and risk being sandbagged by the written reasons that the locality subsequently provides in litigation after the challenging entity has shown its cards. The reviewing court would then need to ensure that those reasons are not post hocrationalizations, see Burlington Truck Lines, Inc. v. United States,371 U.S. 156, 168, 83 S.Ct. 239, 9 L.Ed.2d 207 (1962), but the dissent offers no guidance as to how a reviewing court that has never seen near-contemporaneous reasons would conduct that inquiry.
The City urges us to hold that the clock does not begin to run until after the reasons are given. We cannot so hold, however, without rewriting the statutory text. The Act provides that a lawsuit may be filed by "[a]ny person adversely affected by any final action or failure to act ... within 30 days after such action or failure to act." 47 U.S.C. § 332(c)(7)(B)(v). The relevant "final action" is the issuance of the written notice of denial, not the subsequent issuance of reasons explaining the denial. See Bennett v. Spear,520 U.S. 154, 177-178, 117 S.Ct. 1154, 137 L.Ed.2d 281 (1997)(agency action is "final" if it "mark[s] the consummation of the agency's decisionmaking process" and determines "rights or obligations" or triggers "legal consequences" (internal quotation marks omitted)).
One of petitioner's amiciargues that Congress has used the word "decision" in the context of other communications laws to mean something more than a judgment or verdict. See Brief for Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America (Chamber) et al. 9-13. But while it is true that a word used across "the same act" should be given the same meaning, see Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific Saipan, Ltd.,566 U.S. ----, ----, 132 S.Ct. 1997, 2004-2005, 182 L.Ed.2d 903 (2012), the Chamber's evidence is less persuasive because it arises out of entirely different "acts" and does not involve any term of art. By relying on other parts of Title 47 of the U.S. Code-some enacted in the Communications Act of 1934 decades before the enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 at issue here-the Chamber stretches to invoke this canon of construction beyond its most forceful application. See A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 172-173 (2012).
For example, petitioner cites § 11 (FCC must "notify the parties concerned" when it makes a "determination and order" regarding a railroad or telegraph company's failure to maintain and operate a telegraph line for public use) and § 398(b)(5) ("Whenever the Secretary [of Commerce] makes a final determination ... that a recipient" of federal funds has engaged in impermissible discrimination, the Secretary shall "notify the recipient in writing of such determination ..."). Brief for Petitioner 24-25.
Though petitioner arranged for a transcript of the meeting to be recorded on its own initiative and at its own expense, see App. 109-275, the fact that petitioner took steps to reduce oral statements made at the City Council meeting to writing cannot be said to satisfy the obligation that Congress placed on the City to state clearly its reasons, and to do so in a writing it provides or makes available.* * *
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Goldberg
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The petitioner, Raymond L. Haynes, was tried in a Superior Court of the State of Washington on a charge of. robbery, found guilty by a jury, and sentenced to imprisonment “for a term of not more than 20 years.” The Washington Supreme Court affirmed the conviction, with four of nine judges dissenting. 58 Wash. 2d 716; 364 P. 2d 935. Certiorari was granted, 370 U. S. 902, to consider whether the admission of the petitioner’s written and signed confession into evidence against him at trial constituted a denial of due process of law.
Haynes contends that the confession was involuntary, and thus constitutionally inadmissible, because induced by police threats and promises. He testified at trial that during the approximately 16-hour period between the time of his arrest and the making and signing of the written confession, he several times asked police to allow him to call an attorney and to call his wife. He said that such requests were uniformly refused and that he was repeatedly told that he would not be allowed to call unless and until he “cooperated” with police and gave them a written and signed confession admitting participation in the-robbery. He was not permitted to phone his wife, or for that matter anyone, either on the night of his arrest or the next day. The police persisted in their refusals to allow him contact with the outside world, he said, even after he signed one written confession and after a preliminary hearing before a magistrate, late on the day following his arrest. According to the petitioner, he was, in fact, .held incommunicado by the police until some five or seven days after his arrest.
The State asserts that the petitioner’s version of events is contradicted, that the confession was freely given, and that, in any event, the question of voluntariness was conclusively resolved against the petitioner by the verdict of the jury at trial. We consider each of these contentions in turn.
I.
'í'he petitioner was charged with robbing a gasoline service station in the City oh Spokane, Washington, at about 9 p. m. on Thursday, December 19, 1957. He was arrested by Spokane police in the vicinity of the station within approximately one-half hour after the crime. Though he orally admitted the robbery to officers while en route to the police station, he was, on arrival there, not charged with the crime, but instead booked for “investigation,” or, as it is locally called, placed on the “small book.” Concededly, prisoners held on the “small book” are permitted by police neither to make phone calls nor to have any visitors.
Shortly after arriving at the station at about 10 p. m., the petitioner was questioned for about one-half hour by Lieutenant Wakeley of the Spokane police, during which period he again orally admitted the crime. He was then placed in a line-up and identified by witnesses as one of the robbers. Apparently, nothing else was done that night.
On the following morning, beginning at approximately 9:30 a. m., the petitioner was again questioned for about an hour and a half, this time by Detectives Peck and Cockburn. He once more orally admitted the robbery, and a written confession was transcribed. Shortly thereafter, he was taken to the office of the deputy prosecutor, where still another statement was taken and transcribed. Though Haynes refused to sign this second confession, he then did sign the earlier statement given to Detectives Peck and Cockburn. Later that same afternoon he was taken before a magistrate for a preliminary hearing; this was at about 4 p. m. on December 20, the day after his arrest.
At the conclusion of the hearing, Haynes was transferred to the county jail and on either the following Tuesday or Thursday was returned to the deputy prosecutor’s office. He was again asked to sign the second statement which he had given there some four to six days earlier, but again refused to do so.
.The written confession taken from Haynes by Detectives Peck and Cockburn on the morning after his arrest and signed by Haynes on the same day in the deputy prosecutor’s office was introduced into evidence against .the' petitioner over proper and timely objection by his' counsel that such use would violate due process of law. Under the Washington procedure then in effect, volun-tariness of the confession was treated as a question of fact for ultimate determination by the jury. In overruling the petitioner’s objection to use of the confession,.‘the trial .judge, however, made an apparently preliminary-determination that it was voluntary and “conditionally” admissible. See 58 Wash. 2d, at 719-720, 364 P. 2d, at 937. The evidence going to voluntariness was heard before the jury and the issue submitted to it. The jury returned a general verdict of guilty and was not required to, and did not,’ indicate its view with respect to the voluntariness of the confession.
II.
The State first contends .that the petitioner’s version of the circumstances surrounding, the making and signing of his written confession is evidentially contradicted and thus should be rejected by this Court. We have carefully reviewed the entire record, however, and find that Haynes’ account is uncontradicted in its essential elements.
Haynes testified that on the evening of his arrest he made several specific requests of the police that he be permitted to call an attorney and to call his wife; Each such request, he said, was refused. He stated, however, that he was told he might make a call if he confessed:
“They kept wanting me to own up to robbing a Richfield Service Station and I asked Mr. [Detective] Pike several times if I could call a lawyer and he said if I cooperated and gave him a statement ; . . that I would be allowed- to call, to make a phone call
On cross-examination, Lieutenant Wakeley, the officer who interrogated the petitioner'on the night of his arrest, first said that Haynes did not ask him for permission to call his wife, but merely inquired whether his wife would be notified of his arrest. Lieutenant Wakeley said that he told the petitioner that his wife would be notified. Defense counsel, however, pursued the point and, only a moment later, Wakeley testified that Haynes “may have” asked permission to call his wife himself; Wakeley said he didn’t “remember exactly whether he asked or whether we wouldn’t notify his wife.” Wakeley then testified that he simply didn’t “remember” whether Haynes asked to call his wife so that she might secure a lawyer for him ; in addition, the lieutenant admitted that the petitioner might have asked to call his wife after the interrogation was completed. Detective Pike, also testifying at trial, said simply that he had not talked to Haynes on the evening of the arrest.
Tf this were the only evidence of police coercion and inducement in the record, we would face the problem of determining whether, in view of the testimony of Lieutenant Wakeley and Detective Pike, the petitioner’s own testimony would be sufficient, on review by this Court, to establish the existence of impermissible police conduct barring use of the written confession ultimately obtained. We need not pursue such an inquiry, however, since the record contains other probative, convincing, and uncon-tradicted evidence.
The written confession introduced at trial was dictated and transcribed while Haynes was being questioned by Detectives Peck and Cockburn on the morning of December 20, the day after the robbery.. Haynes testified:
“Q. . . . [S]tate whether or not the officers at that time asked you to give them a statement. A. Yes.
“Q. And what was your answer to that? A. I wanted to call my wife.
“Q. And were you allowed to call your wife? A. No.
“Q. . . . This was on Friday? A. Friday.
“Q. December 20th? A. Yes.
“Q. And was anything else said with respect to making a telephone call? A. Mr. Pike [sic] and %e other officer both told me that when I had made a statement and cooperated with them that they would see to it that as soon as I got booked I could call my wife.
“Q. Well, that was the night before you were told that, wasn’t it? A. I was told that the next day too, several times.
“Q. Who were the officers that were with you? A. Oh, not Mr. Pike. Mr. Cockburn and Mr. Peck, I believe.
“Q. In any event, Mr. Haynes, did you soon after that give them a statement? A. Well, not readily.
“Q. Did you give them a statement? A. Yes.”
The transcribed statement itself discloses that early in the interrogation Haynes asked whéther he might at least talk to -the prosecutor before proceeding further. He was told: “We just want to get this down for our records, and then we will go to the prosecutor’s office and he will ask the same questions that I am.”
Whatever contradiction of Haynes’ account of his interrogation on the night of his arrest might be found in the testimony of Lieutenant Wakeley and Detective Pike, his explicit description of the circumstances surrounding his questioning and the taking by Detectives Peck and Qockburn of the challenged confession on the following day remains testimonially undisputed. Though he took the stand at trial, Detective Cockburn did not deny that he or Detective Peck had told the petitioner that he might call his wife only if he “cooperated” and gave the police a statement. Cockburn said merely that he could not “remember” whether Haynes had asked to call his wife. He conceded that the petitioner “could have” made such a request. No legal alchemy can transmute such wholly equivocal, testimony into a denial or refutation of the petitioner’s specific recitation of events. Detective Peck, did not testify and no other evidence was presented to contradict the petitioner’s testimony, either as part of the prosecution’s case in chief or, even more importantly, by way of rebuttal subsequent to the petitioner’s testimony. We cannot but attribute significance .to' the failure of the State, after listening to the petitioner’s direct and explicit testimony, to attempt to contradict that crucial evidence; this testimonial void is the more meaningful in light of the availability and willing cooperation, of the policemen who, if honestly able to do' so, could have readily denied the defendant’s claims. Similarly, no évi-dencé was offered to contradict in any way the petitioner’s testimony that when first taken to the deputy prosecutor’s office to sign the statement he had given to Detectives Peck and Cockburn he again requested permission to call 'his wife and was again refused.
Thoiigh the police were in possession of evidence more .than adequate to justify his being charged without delay, it is uncontroverted that Haynes was not taken before a magistrate and granted a preliminary hearing until he had acceded to demands that he give and sign the written statement. Nor is there any indication in the record that prior to signing the written confession, or even thereafter, Haynes was advised by authorities of his right to remain silent, warned that his ánswers might be used against him, or told of his. rights respecting consultation with an attorney.
In addition, there is no contradiction, of Haynes’ testimony that even' after he submitted and supplied the written confession used at trial, the police nonetheless continued the incommunicado detention while persisting in efforts to secure still another signature on another statement. Upon being returned to the deputy prosecutor’s office during the week following his arrest and while still being held incommunicado, the petitioner was again asked to sign the second statement which he had given there several days earlier. He refused to do so, he said, because, as he then told the deputy prosecutor, “all the promises of all the officers I had talked to had not been fulfilled and I had not been able to call my wife and I would sign nothing under any conditions until I was allowed to call my wife to see about legal counsel.” The State offered no evidence to rebut this testimony. Similarly uncontradicted is Haynes’ testimony that it was not until during or after this second interview with the prosecutor on the Tuesday, or Thursday — Haynes could not be quite certain — but, in any event, some five or seven days after his arrest, that he was first allowed to call his wife.
The contested written confession itself contains the following exchange:
“Q. Have we made you any threats or promises? A. No.
“Q. Has [sic] any police officers made you any promises or threats? A. No — except that the Lieutenant promised me that as soon as I was booked that I could call my wife.
“Q. You are being held for investigation — you haven’t been booked yet. When you are, you will be able to phone your wife.”
The State argues that the quoted answers to the first two of these questions conclusively negative existence of coercion or inducement on the part of the police. The statement bears no such reading, however. The questions on their face disclose that the petitioner was told that “booking” was a prerequisite to calling his wife, and “booking” must mean booking on a charge of robbery. Since the police already had enough evidence to warrant charging the petitioner with the robbery — they had the petitioner’s prior oral admissions, the circumstances surrounding his arrest, and his identification by witnesses — the only fair inference to be drawn under all the circumstances is that he would not be booked on the robbery charge until the police had secured the additional evidence they desired, the signed statement for which they were pressing. The quoted portions of the signed confession thus support the petitioner’s version of events; under any view, they offer no viable or reliable contradiction.
Even were it otherwise, there would be' substantial doubt as to the probative effect to be accorded recitations in the challenged confession that it was not involuntarily induced. Cf. Haley v. Ohio, 332 U. S. 596, 601 (opinion of Me. Justice Douglas). It would be anomalous, indeed, if such a statement, contained within the very document asserted to have been obtained by use of impermissible coercive pressures, was itself enough to create an evidentiary conflict precluding this Court’s effective review of the constitutional issue. Commón sense dictates the conclusion that if the authorities were successful in compelling the totally incriminating confession of guilt, the very issue for determination, they would have little, if any, trouble securing the self-contained concession of voluntariness. Certainly, we cannot accord any conclusive import to such an admission, particularly when, as here, it is immediately followed by recitations supporting the petitioner’s version of events.
III.
The uncontroverted portions of the record thus disclose that the petitioner’s written confession was obtained in an atmosphere of' substantial coercion and inducement created by statements and actions of state authorities. We have only recently held again that a confession obtained by police through the use of threats is viola-tive of due process and that “the question in each case is whether the defendant’s will was overborne at the time he confessed,” Lynumn v. Illinois, 372 U. S. 528, 534. “In short, the true test of admissibility is that the confession is made "freely, voluntarily and without compulsion or inducement of any sort.” Wilson v. United States, 162 U. S. 613, 623. See also Bram v. United States, 168 U. S. 532. And, of course, whether the confession was obtained by .coercion or improper inducement can be determined only by an examination of all of the attendant circumstances. See, e. g., Leym v. Denno, 347 U. S. 556, 558. Haynes’ undisputed testimony as to the making and signing of the challenged confession used against him at trial permits no doubt that it was obtained under a totality of circumstances evidencing an involuntary written admission of guilt.
Here, as in Lynumn, supra, the petitioner was alone in the hands of the police, with no one to advise or aid him, and he had “no reason not to believe that the police had ample power to carry out their threats,” 372 U. S., at 534, to continue, for a much longer period if need be, the incommunicado detention — as in fact was actually done. Neither the petitioner’s prior contacts with the authorities nor the fact that he previously had made incriminating oral admissions negatives the existence and effectiveness of the coercive tactics used, in securing the written confession introduced at trial. The petitioner at first'resisted making a written statement and gave in only after consistent denials of his requests to call his wife, and the conditioning of such outside contact upon his accession to police demands. Confronted with the express threat of continued incommunicado detention and induced by the promise of communication with and access to family, Haynes understandably chose to make and sign the damning written statement; given the unfair and inherently coercive context in which made, that choice cannot-be said to be the voluntary product of a free and unconstrained will, as required by the Fourteenth Amendment.
We cannot blind ourselves to what experience unmistakably teaches: that even apart from the express threat, the basic techniques present here — the secret and incommunicado detention and interrogation — are devices adapted and used to extort confessions from suspects. Of coürse, detection and solution of crime is, at best, a difficult and arduous task requiring determination and per-sisténce omthe part of all responsible officers charged with the duty of law enforcement. And, certainly, we do not mean to suggest that all interrogation of witnesses and suspects is impermissible. Such questioning is undoubtedly a,n essential tool in effective law enforcement. The line between proper and permissible police conduct and techniques and methods offensive to due process is, at best, a difficult one to draw, particularly in cases such as this where it is necessary to make fine judgments as to the effect of psychologically coercive pressures and inducements on the mind and will of an accused.. But we cannot escape the demands of judging or of making the ■ difficult appráisals inherent in determining whether constitutional-rights have been violated. We are here impelled to the conclusion, from all of the facts presented, that the bounds of due process have been exceeded.
IV.
Our conclusion is in no way foreclosed, as the State contends, by the fact that the state trial judge or the jury may have reached a different result on this issue.
It is well settled that the duty óf constitutional adjudication resting upon this Court requires that the question whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has been violated by admission into evidence of a coerced confession be the subject of an independent determination here, see, e. g., Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U. S. 143, 147-148; “we cannot escape the responsibility of making our own examination of the record,” Spano v. New York, 360 U. S. 315, 316. While, for purposes of review in this Court, the determination of the trial judge or of the jury will ordinarily be taken to resolve evidentiary conflicts and may be entitled to some weight even with. respect to the ultimate conclusion on the crucial issue of voluntariness, we cannot avoid our responsibilities by permitting ourselves to be “completely bound by state court determination of any issue essential to decision of a claim of federal right, else federal law could be frustrated by distorted fact finding.” Stein v. New York, 346 U. S. 156, 181. As state courts are, in instances such as this, charged with the primary responsibility of protecting basic and essential rights, we accord an appropriate and substantial effect to their resolutions of conflicts in evidence as to the occurrence or nonoccurrence of factual events and happenings. This is particularly apposite because the trial judge and jury are closest to the trial scene- and thus afforded the best opportunity to evaluate contradictory testimony. But, as declared in Ward v. Texas, 316 U. S. 547, 550, “when, as in this case, the question is properly raised as to whether a defendant has been denied the due process of law ... we cannot be precluded by. the verdict of a jury from determining whether the circumstances under which the confession was made were such that its admission in evidence amounts to a denial of due process.” To the same effect, see, e. g., Spano v. New York, 360 U. S. 315; Thomas v. Arizona, 356 U. S. 390, 393; Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U. S. 560, 562, 568; Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U. S. 143, 147-148; Lisenba v. California, 314 U. S. 219, 237-238; Chambers v. Florida, 309 U. S. 227, 228.
Beyond even the compelling nature of our precedents, however, there is here still another reason for refusing to consider the present inquiry foreclosed by the verdict of the jury to which the issue of voluntariness of the confession was submitted. The jury was instructed, in effect, not to consider as relevant on the issue of voluntariness of the confession the fact that a defendant is not reminded that he is under arrest, that he is not cautioned that he may remain silent, that he is not warned that his answers may be used against him, or that he is not advised that he is entitled to counsel. Whatever independent consequence these factors may otherwise have, they are unquestionably attendant circumstances which the accused is entitled to have appropriately considered in determining voluntariness and admissibility of his confession.
In addition, the trial court instructed in terms of a Washington statute which permits consideration of a corroborated confession “made under inducement” and excepts only confessions “made under the influence of fear produced by threats.” It seems reasonably clear from this portion of the instructions that the jury may well have been misled as to the requisite constitutional standard, notwithstanding the apparent propriety of other portions of the instructions. Given the fact that the jury did no more than return a general verdict of guilty, we obviously have no way of knowing whether it found the confession to be voluntary and admissible or not. Because there was sufficient other evidence to sustain the verdict, the- jury may háve found the defendant guilty even though it.rejected the confession as involuntary; alternatively, the jury may have based its finding of guilt on the confession, reasoning, under the questionable instructions and the'Washington statute, that the confession was admissible as voluntary, even though improperly induced, because it was corroborated by the other evidence. Although, for the reasons indicated, the Washington statute and the quoted, instructions raise a serious and substantial question whether a proper constitutional standard was applied by the jury, we need not rely on the imperfections in the instructions as a separate ground of reversal. We think it clear, however, that these imperfections are entirely sufficient to preclude any dependence we might otherwise place on the jury verdict as settling the issue of voluntariness here.
V.
In reaching the conclusion which we do, we are not unmindful of substantial independent evidence tending to demonstrate the guilt of the petitioner. As was said in Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U. S. 534, 541:
“Indeed, in many of the cases in which , the command of the Due Process Clause has compelled us to reverse state convictions involving the use of confessions obtained by impermissible methods,' independent corroborating evidence left little doubt of the truth of what the defendant had confessed;' Despite such verification, confessions were found to be the product of constitutionally impermissible methods in their inducement.”
Of course, we neither express nor suggest a view with regard to the ultimate guilt or innocence of the petitioner here; that is for a jury to decide on a new trial free of constitutional infirmity, which the State is at liberty to order*.
This case illustrates a particular facet of police utilization of improper methods. While history amply.shows that confessions have often been extorted to save law en-' forcement officials the trouble and effort of obtaining valid and independent evidence, the coercive devices used.here were designed to-obtain admissions which would incontrovertibly complete a case in which there had already been obtained, by proper investigative efforts, competent evidence sufficient to sustain a conviction. The procedures here are ho less constitutionally impermissible, and perhaps more unwarranted because so unnecessary. There is no reasonable or rational basis for claiming that the oppressive and unfair methods utilized were in any way essential to the detection or solution of the crime or to the protection of the public. The claim, so often made in the context of coerced confession cases, that the devices employed by the authorities were requisite to solution of the crime and successful prosecution of the guilty party cannot here be made.
Official overzealousness of the type which vitiates the’ -petitioner’s conviction belo'vy Has only deleterious effects. Here it has put the State to the substantial additional expense of prosecuting the case through the appellate courts and, now, will require* even a greater expenditure in the event of retrial, as is likely. But it is the deprivation of the protected rights themselves which is fundamental and the. most-regrettable, not only because of the-effect on the individual defendant, but because of the effect on our system of law arid justice. Whether there is involved the brutal “third degree,” or the more subtle, but no less offensive, methods here obtaining, official misconduct cannot but breed disrespect for law, as well as for those-charged with its enforcément.
The judgment below is vacated and the case is remanded to the Supreme Court of Washington for further proceedings not inconsistent herewith.
It is so ordered.
Haynes makes no claim that he was physically abused, deprived of food or rest, or subjected to uninterrupted questioning for prolonged periods.
The petitioner’s brother, Keith Haynes, had been arrested a few minutes earlier. Though also charged with, and convicted of, participation in the robbery of the service station, he .does not seek review of his conviction here.
Apparently recognizing the questionable nature of-such a practice, the Spokane police, we are told, have since abandoned use of the “small book” and the attendant restrictive practices.
The written confession appears to indicate on its face that it was signed shortly before 2 p. m. on December 20, about 16% hours after Haynes was arrested. The State asserts in its brief, however, that the total time of detention prior to signing of the confession was “17 to 19” hours. We assume, for purposes here, that the 16-hour period is sufficiently accurate.
Washington has since revised its rules of practice to provide for a preliminary hearing by the trial court, out of the presence of the jury, on the issue of voluntariness of a confession. See 58 Wash. 2d, at 720, 364 P. 2d, at 937, and Rules of Pleading, Practice and Procedure, Wash. Rev. Code, Rule 101.20W, Vol. 0, as amended, effective January 2, 1961.
There is no indication that she was actually so notified. In fact, the petitioner’s wife telephoned police at about noon on the day following the robbery, but was refused any information beyond the fact that her husband was being held. Though she identified herself and asked specifically why her husband was in jail, she was told simply “to get the morning paper and read it.”
The petitioner’s incommunicado detention was in contravention of an explicit Washington statute, Wash. Rev. Code, §9.33.020 (5), which prohibits and makes it a misdemeanor for police to “refuse permission to [an] . . . arrested person to communicate with' his friends or with an attorney” when the refusal has as its purpose the obtaining of á confession.
While occurring after completion of the signed confession here challenged, such action not only tends to bear out petitioner’s version of what happened earlier but displays and confirms an official disregard by police of state law, see note 7, supra, and of the basic rights of the defendant. See Haley v. Ohio, 332 U. S. 596, 600 (opinion of Mr. Justice Douglas). The police “were rather concerned primarily .with securing a statement from defendant on which they could convict him. The undeviating intent of the officers to extract a confession from petitioner is therefore patent. When such an intent is shown, this Court has held- that the confession obtained must be examined with the most careful scrutiny . . . .” Spano v. New York, 360 U. S. 315, 324.
Though the deputy prosecutor himself appeared as a witness for the State at the trial, his testimony was in no way directed to this statement' made in his office or the attendant circumstances and he was not recalled to the stand after Haynes testified so that he might controvert the petitioner’s version of events..
See also Fikes v. Alabama, 352 U. S. 191, 197-198; Gallegos v. Nebraska, 342 U. S. 55, 65 (opinion of Mr. Justice Reed).
The trial court told the jury:
“And in this connection, I further instruct you that a confession or admission of a defendant is not rendered involuntary because he is not at the time of making the same reminded that he was under arrest, or that he was not obliged to reply, or that his answers would be used against him, or that he was entitled to be represented by counsel.”
That the jury was to take this as precluding consideration of the cited factors is evidenced by the immediately succeeding instruction which advised that it should consider a denial of communication with friends or an attorney in connection with determining whether the. written confession was voluntary or not.
See note 10, supra.
The instruction commenced:
"By statute of the State of Washington, it is provided:
“ ‘The confession of a defendant made under inducement, with all the circumstances, may be given as evidence against him, éxcept when made under the influence of fear produced by threats; but a confession made under inducement is not sufficient to warrant a conviction without corroborating 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: | 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
announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion in which
Mr. Justice Goldberg joins.
Appellant, Nico Jacobellis, manager of a motion picture theater in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was convicted on two counts of possessing and exhibiting an obscene film in violation of Ohio Revised Code (1963 Supp.), § 2905.34. He was fined $500 on the first count and $2,000 on the second, and was sentenced to the workhouse if the fines were not paid. His conviction, by a court of three judges upon waiver of trial by jury, was affirmed by an intermediate appellate court, 115 Ohio App. 226, 175 N. E. 2d 123, and by the Supreme Court of Ohio, 173 Ohio St. 22, 179 N. E. 2d 777. We noted probable jurisdiction of the appeal, 371 U. S. 808, and subsequently restored the case to the calendar for reargument, 373 U. S. 901. The dis-positive question is whether the state courts properly found that the motion picture involved, a French film called “Les Amants” (“The Lovers”), was obscene and hence not entitled to the protection for free expression that is guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. We conclude that the film is not obscene and that the judgment must accordingly be reversed.
Motion pictures are within the ambit of the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and of the press. Joseph Burstyn, Inc., v. Wilson, 343 U. S. 495. But in Roth v. United States and Alberts v. California, 354 U. S. 476, we held that obscenity is not subject to those guarantees'. Application of an obscenity law to suppress a motion picture thus requires ascertainment of the “dim and uncertain line” that often separates obscenity from constitutionally protected expression. Bantam Books, Inc., v. Sullivan, 372 U. S. 58, 66; see Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S. 513, 525. It has been suggested that this is a task in which our Court need not involve itself. We are told that the determination whether a particular motion picture, book, or other work of expression is obscene can be treated as a purely factual judgment on which a jury’s verdict is all but conclusive, or that in any event the decision can be left essentially to state and lower federal courts, with this Court exercising only a limited review such as that needed to determine whether the ruling below is supported by “sufficient evidence.” The suggestion is appealing, since it would lift from our .shoulders a difficult, recurring, and unpleasant task. But we cannot accept it. Such an abnegation of judicial supervision in this field would be inconsistent with our duty to uphold the constitutional guarantees. Since it is only “obscenity” that is excluded from the constitutional protection, the question whether a particular work is obscene necessarily implicates an issue of constitutional law. See Roth v. United States, supra, 354 U. S., at 497-498 (separate opinion). Such an issue, we think, must ultimately be decided by this Court. Our duty admits of no “substitute for facing up to the tough individual problems of constitutional judgment involved in every obscenity case.” Id., at 498; see Manual Enterprises, Inc., v. Day, 370 U. S. 478, 488 (opinion of Harlan, J.).
In other areas involving constitutional rights under the Due Process Clause, the Court has consistently recognized its duty to apply the applicable rules of law upon the basis of an independent review of the facts of each case. E. g., Watts v. Indiana, 338 U. S. 49, 51; Norris v. Alabama, 294 U. S. 587, 590. And this has been particularly true where rights have been asserted under the First Amendment guarantees of free expression. Thus in Pennekamp v. Florida, 328 U. S. 331, 335, the Court stated:
“The Constitution has imposed upon this Court final authority to determine the meaning and application of those words of that instrument which require interpretation to resolve judicial issues. With that responsibility, we are compelled to examine for ourselves the statements in issue and the circumstances under which they were made to see whether or not they . . . are of a character which the principles of the First Amendment, as adopted by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, protect.”
We cannot understand why the Court’s duty should be any different in the present case, where Jacobellis has been subjected to a criminal conviction for disseminating a work of expression and is challenging that conviction as a deprivation of rights guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Nor can we understand why the Court’s performance of its constitutional and judicial function in this sort of case should be denigrated by such epithets as “censor” or “super-censor.” In judging alleged obscenity the Court is no more “censoring” expression than it has in other cases “censored” criticism of judges and public officials, advocacy of governmental overthrow, or speech alleged to constitute a breach of the peace. Use of an opprobrious label can neither obscure nor impugn the Court’s performance of its obligation to test challenged judgments against the guarantees of the First and Fourteenth Amendments and, in doing so, to delineate the scope of constitutionally protected speech. Hence we reaffirm the principle that, in “obscenity” cases as in all others involving rights derived from the First Amendment guarantees of free- expression, this Court cannot avoid making an independent constitutional judgment on the facts of the case as to whether the material involved is constitutionally protected.
The question of the proper standard for making this determination has been the subject of much discussion and controversy since our decision in Roth seven years ago. Recognizing that the test for obscenity enunciated there — “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 — is not perfect, we think any substitute would raise equally difficult problems, and we therefore adhere to that standard. We would reiterate, however, our recognition in Roth that obscenity is excluded from the constitutional protection only because it is “utterly without redeeming social importance,” and that “the portrayal of sex, e. g., in art, literature and scientific works, is not itself sufficient reason to deny material the constitutional protection of freedom of speech and press.” Id., at 484, 487. It follows' that material dealing with sex in a manner that advocates ideas, Kingsley Int’l Pictures Corp. v. Regents, 360 U. S. 684, or that has literary or scientific or artistic value or any other form of social importance, may not be branded as obscenity and denied the constitutional protection. Nor may the constitutional status of the material be made to turn on a “weighing” of its social importance against its prurient appeal, for a work cannot be proscribed unless it is “utterly” without social importance. See Zeitlin v. Arnebergh, 59 Cal. 2d 901, 920, 383 P. 2d 152, 165, 31 Cal. Rptr. 800, 813 (1963). It should also be recognized that the Roth standard requires in the first instance a finding that the material “goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in description or representation of such matters.” This was a requirement of the Model Penal Code test that we approved in Roth, 354 U. S., at 487, n. 20, and it is explicitly reaffirmed in the more recent Proposed Official Draft of the Code. In the absence of such a deviation from society’s standards of decency, we do not see how any official inquiry into the allegedly prurient appeal of a work of expression can be squared with the guarantees of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. See Manual Enterprises, Inc., v. Day, 370 U. S. 478, 482-488 (opinion of Harlan, J.).
It has been suggested that the “contemporary community standards” aspect of the Roth test implies a determination of the constitutional question of obscenity in each case by the standards of the particular local community from which the case arises. This is an incorrect reading of Roth. The concept of “contemporary community standards” was first expressed by Judge Learned Hand in United States v. Kennerley, 209 F. 119, 121 (D. C. S. D. N. Y. 1913), where he said:
“Yet, if the time is not yet when men think innocent all that which is honestly germane to a pure subject, however little it may mince its words, still I scarcely think that they would forbid all which might corrupt the most corruptible, or that society is prepared to accept for its own limitations those which may perhaps be necessary to the weakest of its members. If there be no abstract definition, such as I have suggested, should not the word 'obscene’ be allowed to indicate the present critical point in the compromise between candor and shame at which the community may have arrived here and now f . . . To put thought in leash to the average conscience of the time is perhaps tolerable, but to fetter it by the necessities of the lowest and least capable seems a fatal policy.
“Nor is it an objection, I think, that such an interpretation gives to the words of the statute a varying meaning from time to time. Such words as these do not embalm the precise morals of an age or place; while they presuppose that some things will always be shocking to the public taste, the vague subject-matter is left to the gradual development of general notions about what is decent. . . (Italics added.)
It seems clear that in this passage Judge Hand was referring not to state and local “communities,” but rather to “the community” in the sense of “society at large; . . . the public, or people in general.” Thus, he recognized that under his standard the concept of obscenity would have “a varying meaning from time to time” — not from county to county, or town to town.
We do not see how any “local” definition of the “community” could properly be employed in delineating the area of expression that is protected by the Federal Constitution. Mr. Justice Harlan pointed out in Manual Enterprises, Inc., v. Day, supra, 370 U. S., at 488, that a standard based on a particular local community would have “the intolerable consequence of denying some sections of the country access to material, there deemed acceptable, which in others might be considered offensive to prevailing community standards of decency. Cf. Butler v. Michigan, 352 U. S. 380.” It is true that Manual Enterprises dealt with the federal statute banning obscenity from the mails. But the mails are not the only means by which works of expression cross local-community lines in this country. It can hardly be assumed that all the patrons of a particular library, book-stand, or motion picture theater are residents of the smallest local “community” that can be drawn around that establishment. Furthermore, to sustain the suppression of a particular book or film in one locality would deter its dissemination in other localities where it might be held not obscene, since sellers and exhibitors would be reluctant to risk criminal conviction in testing the variation between the two places. It would be a hardy person who would sell a book or exhibit a film anywhere in the land after this Court had sustained the judgment of one “community” holding it to be outside the constitutional protection. The result would thus be “to restrict the public’s access to forms of the printed word which the State could not constitutionally suppress directly.” Smith v. California, 361 U. S. 147, 154.
It is true that local communities throughout the land are in fact diverse, and that in cases such as this one the Court is confronted with the task of reconciling the rights of such communities with the rights of individuals. Communities vary, however, in many respects other than their toleration of alleged obscenity, and such variances have never been considered to require or justify a varying standard for application of the Federal Constitution. The Court has regularly been compelled, in reviewing criminal convictions challenged under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, to reconcile the conflicting rights of the local community which brought the prosecution and of the individual defendant. Such a task is admittedly difficult and delicate, but it is inherent in the Court’s duty of determining whether a particular conviction worked a deprivation of rights guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. The Court has not shrunk from discharging that duty in other areas, and we see no reason why it should do so here. The Court has explicitly refused to tolerate a result whereby “the constitutional limits of free expression in the Nation would vary with state lines,” Pennekamp v. Florida, supra, 328 U. S., at 335; we see even less justification for allowing such limits to vary with town or county lines. We thus reaffirm the position taken in Roth to the effect that the constitutional status of an allegedly obscene work must be determined on the basis of a national standard. It is, after all, a national Constitution we are expounding.
We recognize the legitimate and indeed exigent interest of States and localities throughout the Nation in preventing the dissemination of material deemed harmful to children. But that interest does not justify a total suppression of such material, the effect of which would be to “reduce the adult population ... to reading only what is fit for children.” Butler v. Michigan, 352 U. S. 380, 383. State and local authorities might well consider whether their objectives in this area would be better served by laws aimed specifically at preventing distribution of objectionable material to children, rather than at totally prohibiting its dissemination. Since the present conviction is based upon exhibition of the film to the public at large and not upon its exhibition to children, the judgment must be reviewed under the strict standard applicable in determining the scope of the expression that is protected by the Constitution.
We have applied that standard to the motion picture in question. “The Lovers” involves a woman bored with her life and marriage who abandons her husband and family for a young archaeologist with whom she has suddenly fallen in love. There is an explicit love scene in the last reel of the film, and the State’s objections are based almost entirely upon that scene. The film was favorably reviewed in a number of national publications, although disparaged in others, and was rated by at least two critics of national stature among the best films of the year in which it was produced. It was shown in approximately 100 of the larger cities in the United States, including Columbus and Toledo, Ohio. We have viewed the film, in the light of the record made in the trial court, and we conclude that it is not obscene within the standards enunciated in Roth v. United States and Alberts v. California, which we reaffirm here.
Reversed.
Mr. Justice White concurs in the judgment.
Opinion of
Mr. Justice Black,
with whom Mr. Justice Douglas joins.
I concur in the reversal of this judgment. My belief, as stated in Kingsley International Pictures Corp. v. Regents, 360 U. S. 684, 690, is that “If despite the Constitution . . . this Nation is to embark on the dangerous road of censorship, . . . this Court is about the most inappropriate Supreme Board of Censors that could be found.” My reason for reversing is that I think the conviction of appellant or anyone else for exhibiting a motion picture abridges freedom of the press as safeguarded by the First Amendment, which is made obligatory on the States by the Fourteenth. See my concurring opinions in Quantity of Copies of Books v. Kansas, post, p. 213; Smith v. California, 361 U. S. 147, 155; Kingsley International Pictures Corp. v. Regents, supra. See also the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Douglas in Roth v. United States, 354 U. S. 476, 508, and his concurring opinion in Superior Films, Inc., v. Department of Education, 346 U. S. 587, 588, in both of which I joined.
“Selling, exhibiting, and possessing obscene literature or drugs, for criminal purposes.
“No person shall knowingly sell, lend, give away, exhibit, or offer to sell, lend, give away, or exhibit, or publish or offer to publish or have in his possession or under his control an obscene, lewd, or lascivious book, magazine, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, circular, print, picture, photograph, motion picture film, or book, pamphlet, paper, magazine not wholly obscene but containing lewd or lascivious articles, advertisements, photographs, or drawing, representation, figure, image, cast, instrument, or article of an indecent or immoral nature, or a drug, medicine, article, or thing intended for the prevention of conception or for causing an abortion, or advertise any of them for sale, or write, print, or cause to be written or printed a card, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice giving information when, where, how, of whom, or by what means any of such articles or things can be purchased or obtained, or manufacture, draw, print, or make such articles or things, or sell, give away, or show to a minor, a book, pamphlet, magazine, newspaper, story paper, or other paper devoted to the publication, or principally made up, of criminal news, police reports, or accounts of criminal deeds, or pictures and stories of immoral deeds, lust, or crime, or exhibit upon a street or highway or in a place which may be within the view of a minor, any of such books, papers, magazines, or pictures.
“Whoever violates this section shall be fined not less than two hundred nor more than two thousand dollars or imprisoned not less than one nor more than seven years, or both.”
It is too late in the day to argue that the location of the line is different, and the task of ascertaining it easier, when a state rather than a federal obscenity law is involved. The view that the constitutional guarantees of free expression do not apply as fully to the States as they do to the Federal Government was rejected in Roth-Alberts, supra, where the Court’s single opinion applied the same standards to both a state and a federal conviction. Cf. Ker v. California, 374 U. S. 23, 33; Malloy v. Hogan, ante, pp. 1, 10-11.
See Kingsley Int’l Pictures Corp. v. Regents, 360 U. S. 684, 708 (separate opinion):
“It is sometimes said that this Court should shun considering the particularities of individual cases in this difficult field lest the Court become a final ‘board of censorship.’ But I cannot understand why it should be thought that the process of constitutional judgment in this realm somehow stands apart from that involved in other fields, particularly those presenting questions of due process. . .
See also Lockhart and McClure, Censorship of Obscenity: The Developing Constitutional Standards, 45 Minn. L. Rev. 5, 116 (1960): “This obligation — to reach an independent judgment in applying constitutional standards and criteria to constitutional issues that may be cast by lower courts ‘in the form of determinations of fact’— appears fully applicable to findings of obscenity by juries, trial courts, and administrative agencies. The Supreme Court is subject to that obligation, as is every court before which the constitutional issue is raised.”
And see id., at 119:
“It may be true . . . that judges ‘possess no special expertise’ qualifying them ‘to supervise the private morals of the Nation’ or to decide ‘what movies are good or bad for local communities.’ But they do have a far keener understanding of the importance of free expression than do most government administrators or jurors, and they have had considerable experience in making value judgments of the type required by the constitutional standards for obscenity. If freedom is to be preserved, neither government censorship experts nor juries can be left to make the final effective decisions restraining free expression. Their decisions must be subject to effective, independent review, and we know of no group better qualified for that review than the appellate judges of this country under the guidance of the Supreme Court.”
See also Fiske v. Kansas, 274 U. S. 380, 385-386; Haynes v. Washington, 373 U. S. 503, 515-516; Chambers v. Florida, 309 U. S. 227, 229; Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, 324 U. S. 652, 659; Lisenba v. California, 314 U. S. 219, 237-238; Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U. S. 143, 147-148; Napue v. Illinois, 360 U. S. 264, 271.
See also Niemotko v. Maryland, 340 U. S. 268, 271; Craig v. Harney, 331 U. S. 367, 373-374; Bridges v. California, 314 U. S. 252, 271; Edwards v. South Carolina, 372 U. S. 229, 235; New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 285.
This is precisely what the Court did in Times Film Corp. v. City of Chicago, 355 U. S. 35; One, Inc., v. Olesen, 355 U. S. 371; and Sunshine Book Co. v. Summerfield, 355 U. S. 372. The obligation has been recognized by state courts as well. See, e. g., State v. Hudson County News Co., 41 N. J. 247, 256-257, 196 A. 2d 225, 230 (1963); Zeitlin v. Arnebergh, 59 Cal. 2d 901, 909-911, 383 P. 2d 152, 157-158, 31 Cal. Rptr. 800, 805-806 (1963); People v. Richmond County News, Inc., 9 N. Y. 2d 578, 580-581, 175 N. E. 2d 681, 681-682, 216 N. Y. S. 2d 369, 370 (1961). See also American Law Institute, Model Penal Code, Proposed Official Draft (May 4, 1962), §251.4 (4).
Nor do we think our duty of constitutional adjudication in this area can properly be relaxed by reliance on a “sufficient evidence” standard of review. Even in judicial review of administrative agency determinations, questions of “constitutional fact” have been held to require de novo review. Ng Fung Ho v. White, 259 U. S. 276, 284-285; Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 54-65.
See, e. g., Attorney General v. Book Named “Tropic of Cancer,” 345 Mass. 11, 184 N. E. 2d 328 (Mass. 1962); Zeitlin v. Arnebergh, 59 Cal. 2d 901, 383 P. 2d 152, 31 Cal. Rptr. 800 (1963).
American Law Institute, Model Penal Code, Proposed Official Draft (May 4, 1962), §251.4 (1):
“Material is obscene if, considered as a whole, its predominant appeal is to prurient interest . . . and if in addition it goes substantially beyond customary limits of candor in describing or representing such matters.” (Italics added.)
Webster’s New International Dictionary (2d ed. 1949), at 542.
See State v. Hudson County News Co., 41 N. J. 247, 266, 196 A. 2d 225, 235 (1963). Lockhart and McClure, note 3, supra, 45 Minn. L. Rev., at 108-112; American Law Institute, Model Penal Code, Tentative Draft No. 6 (May 6, 1957), at 45; Proposed Official Draft (May 4, 1962), §251.4 (4)(d).
See State v. Settle, 90 R. I. 195, 156 A. 2d 921 (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: | C | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The appeal is dismissed for want of a properly presented substantial federal question.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Chief Justice ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court.
In our judicial system, "the public has a right to every man's evidence." Since the earliest days of the Republic, "every man" has included the President of the United States. Beginning with Jefferson and carrying on through Clinton, Presidents have uniformly testified or produced documents in criminal proceedings when called upon by federal courts. This case involves-so far as we and the parties can tell-the first state criminal subpoena directed to a President. The President contends that the subpoena is unenforceable. We granted certiorari to decide whether Article II and the Supremacy Clause categorically preclude, or require a heightened standard for, the issuance of a state criminal subpoena to a sitting President.
I
In the summer of 2018, the New York County District Attorney's Office opened an investigation into what it opaquely describes as "business transactions involving multiple individuals whose conduct may have violated state law." Brief for Respondent Vance 2. A year later, the office-acting on behalf of a grand jury-served a subpoena duces tecum (essentially a request to produce evidence) on Mazars USA, LLP, the personal accounting firm of President Donald J. Trump. The subpoena directed Mazars to produce financial records relating to the President and business organizations affiliated with him, including "[t]ax returns and related schedules," from "2011 to the present." App. to Pet. for Cert. 119a.
The President, acting in his personal capacity, sued the district attorney and Mazars in Federal District Court to enjoin enforcement of the subpoena. He argued that, under Article II and the Supremacy Clause, a sitting President enjoys absolute immunity from state criminal process. He asked the court to issue a "declaratory judgment that the subpoena is invalid and unenforceable while the President is in office" and to permanently enjoin the district attorney "from taking any action to enforce the subpoena." Amended Complaint in No. 1:19-cv-8694 (SDNY, Sept. 25, 2019), p. 19. Mazars, concluding that the dispute was between the President and the district attorney, took no position on the legal issues raised by the President.
The District Court abstained from exercising jurisdiction and dismissed the case based on Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971), which generally precludes federal courts from intervening in ongoing state criminal prosecutions. 395 F.Supp.3d 283, 290 (SDNY 2019). In an alternative holding, the court ruled that the President was not entitled to injunctive relief. Ibid.
The Second Circuit met the District Court halfway. As to the dismissal, the Court of Appeals held that Younger abstention was inappropriate because that doctrine's core justification-"preventing friction" between States and the Federal Government-is diminished when state and federal actors are already in conflict, as the district attorney and the President were. 941 F.3d 631, 637, 639 (2019).
On the merits, the Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court's denial of a preliminary injunction. Drawing on the 200-year history of Presidents being subject to federal judicial process, the Court of Appeals concluded that "presidential immunity does not bar the enforcement of a state grand jury subpoena directing a third party to produce non-privileged material, even when the subject matter under investigation pertains to the President." Id., at 640. It also rejected the argument raised by the United States as amicus curiae that a state grand jury subpoena must satisfy a heightened showing of need. The court reasoned that the proposed test, derived from cases addressing privileged Executive Branch communications, "ha[d] little bearing on a subpoena" seeking "information relating solely to the President in his private capacity and disconnected from the discharge of his constitutional obligations." Id., at 645-646.
We granted certiorari. 589 U. S. ----, 140 S.Ct. 659, 205 L.Ed.2d 418 (2019).
II
In the summer of 1807, all eyes were on Richmond, Virginia. Aaron Burr, the former Vice President, was on trial for treason. Fallen from political grace after his fatal duel with Alexander Hamilton, and with a murder charge pending in New Jersey, Burr followed the path of many down-and-out Americans of his day-he headed West in search of new opportunity. But Burr was a man with outsized ambitions. Together with General James Wilkinson, the Governor of the Louisiana Territory, he hatched a plan to establish a new territory in Mexico, then controlled by Spain. Both men anticipated that war between the United States and Spain was imminent, and when it broke out they intended to invade Spanish territory at the head of a private army.
But while Burr was rallying allies to his cause, tensions with Spain eased and rumors began to swirl that Burr was conspiring to detach States by the Allegheny Mountains from the Union. Wary of being exposed as the principal co-conspirator, Wilkinson took steps to ensure that any blame would fall on Burr. He sent a series of letters to President Jefferson accusing Burr of plotting to attack New Orleans and revolutionize the Louisiana Territory.
Jefferson, who despised his former running mate Burr for trying to steal the 1800 presidential election from him, was predisposed to credit Wilkinson's version of events. The President sent a special message to Congress identifying Burr as the "prime mover" in a plot "against the peace and safety of the Union." 16 Annals of Cong. 39-40 (1807). According to Jefferson, Burr contemplated either the "severance of the Union" or an attack on Spanish territory. Id., at 41. Jefferson acknowledged that his sources contained a "mixture of rumors, conjectures, and suspicions" but, citing Wilkinson's letters, he assured Congress that Burr's guilt was "beyond question." Id., at 39-40.
The trial that followed was "the greatest spectacle in the short history of the republic," complete with a Founder-studded cast. N. Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr 351 (2007). People flocked to Richmond to watch, massing in tents and covered wagons along the banks of the James River, nearly doubling the town's population of 5,000. Burr's defense team included Edmund Randolph and Luther Martin, both former delegates at the Constitutional Convention and renowned advocates. Chief Justice John Marshall, who had recently squared off with the Jefferson administration in Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803), presided as Circuit Justice for Virginia. Meanwhile Jefferson, intent on conviction, orchestrated the prosecution from afar, dedicating Cabinet meetings to the case, peppering the prosecutors with directions, and spending nearly $100,000 from the Treasury on the five-month proceedings.
In the lead-up to trial, Burr, taking aim at his accusers, moved for a subpoena duces tecum directed at Jefferson. The draft subpoena required the President to produce an October 21, 1806 letter from Wilkinson and accompanying documents, which Jefferson had referenced in his message to Congress. The prosecution opposed the request, arguing that a President could not be subjected to such a subpoena and that the letter might contain state secrets. Following four days of argument, Marshall announced his ruling to a packed chamber.
The President, Marshall declared, does not "stand exempt from the general provisions of the constitution" or, in particular, the Sixth Amendment's guarantee that those accused have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses for their defense. United States v. Burr, 25 F.Cas. 30, 33-34 (No. 14,692d) (CC Va. 1807). At common law the "single reservation" to the duty to testify in response to a subpoena was "the case of the king," whose "dignity" was seen as "incompatible" with appearing "under the process of the court." Id., at 34. But, as Marshall explained, a king is born to power and can "do no wrong." Ibid. The President, by contrast, is "of the people" and subject to the law. Ibid. According to Marshall, the sole argument for exempting the President from testimonial obligations was that his "duties as chief magistrate demand his whole time for national objects." Ibid. But, in Marshall's assessment, those demands were "not unremitting." Ibid. And should the President's duties preclude his attendance at a particular time and place, a court could work that out upon return of the subpoena. Ibid.
Marshall also rejected the prosecution's argument that the President was immune from a subpoena duces tecum because executive papers might contain state secrets. "A subpoena duces tecum," he said, "may issue to any person to whom an ordinary subpoena may issue." Ibid. As he explained, no "fair construction" of the Constitution supported the conclusion that the right "to compel the attendance of witnesses[ ] does not extend" to requiring those witnesses to "bring[ ] with them such papers as may be material in the defence." Id., at 35. And, as a matter of basic fairness, permitting such information to be withheld would "tarnish the reputation of the court." Id., at 37. As for "the propriety of introducing any papers," that would "depend on the character of the paper, not on the character of the person who holds it." Id., at 34. Marshall acknowledged that the papers sought by Burr could contain information "the disclosure of which would endanger the public safety," but stated that, again, such concerns would have "due consideration" upon the return of the subpoena. Id., at 37.
While the arguments unfolded, Jefferson, who had received word of the motion, wrote to the prosecutor indicating that he would-subject to the prerogative to decide which executive communications should be withheld-"furnish on all occasions, whatever the purposes of justice may require." Letter from T. Jefferson to G. Hay (June 12, 1807), in 10 Works of Thomas Jefferson 398, n. (P. Ford ed. 1905). His "personal attendance," however, was out of the question, for it "would leave the nation without" the "sole branch which the constitution requires to be always in function." Letter from T. Jefferson to G. Hay (June 17, 1807), in id., at 400-401, n.
Before Burr received the subpoenaed documents, Marshall rejected the prosecution's core legal theory for treason and Burr was accordingly acquitted. Jefferson, however, was not done. Committed to salvaging a conviction, he directed the prosecutors to proceed with a misdemeanor (yes, misdemeanor) charge for inciting war against Spain. Burr then renewed his request for Wilkinson's October 21 letter, which he later received a copy of, and subpoenaed a second letter, dated November 12, 1806, which the prosecutor claimed was privileged. Acknowledging that the President may withhold information to protect public safety, Marshall instructed that Jefferson should "state the particular reasons" for withholding the letter. United States v. Burr, 25 F.Cas. 187, 192, (No. 14694) (CC Va. 1807). The court, paying "all proper respect" to those reasons, would then decide whether to compel disclosure. Ibid. But that decision was averted when the misdemeanor trial was cut short after it became clear that the prosecution lacked the evidence to convict.
In the two centuries since the Burr trial, successive Presidents have accepted Marshall's ruling that the Chief Executive is subject to subpoena. In 1818, President Monroe received a subpoena to testify in a court-martial against one of his appointees. See Rotunda, Presidents and Ex-Presidents as Witnesses: A Brief Historical Footnote, 1975 U. Ill. L. Forum 1, 5. His Attorney General, William Wirt-who had served as a prosecutor during Burr's trial-advised Monroe that, per Marshall's ruling, a subpoena to testify may "be properly awarded to the President." Id., at 5-6. Monroe offered to sit for a deposition and ultimately submitted answers to written interrogatories.
Following Monroe's lead, his successors have uniformly agreed to testify when called in criminal proceedings, provided they could do so at a time and place of their choosing. In 1875, President Grant submitted to a three-hour deposition in the criminal prosecution of a political appointee embroiled in a network of tax-evading whiskey distillers. See 1 R. Rotunda & J. Nowak, Constitutional Law § 7.1(b)(ii), p. 996 (5th ed. 2012) (Rotunda & Nowak). A century later, President Ford's attempted assassin subpoenaed him to testify in her defense. See United States v. Fromme, 405 F.Supp. 578 (ED Cal. 1975). Ford obliged-from a safe distance-in the first videotaped deposition of a President. President Carter testified via the same means in the trial of two local officials who, while Carter was Governor of Georgia, had offered to contribute to his campaign in exchange for advance warning of any state gambling raids. See Carter's Testimony, on Videotape, Is Given to Georgia Gambling Trial, N. Y. Times, Apr. 20, 1978, p. A20 (Carter recounted that he "rejected the proposition instantly."). Two years later, Carter gave videotaped testimony to a federal grand jury investigating whether a fugitive financier had entreated the White House to quash his extradition proceedings. See Rotunda & Nowak § 7.1(b)(vi), at 997. President Clinton testified three times, twice via deposition pursuant to subpoenas in federal criminal trials of associates implicated during the Whitewater investigation, and once by video for a grand jury investigating possible perjury. See id., § 7.1(c)(viii), at 1007-1008.
The bookend to Marshall's ruling came in 1974 when the question he never had to decide-whether to compel the disclosure of official communications over the objection of the President-came to a head. That spring, the Special Prosecutor appointed to investigate the break-in of the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate complex filed an indictment charging seven defendants associated with President Nixon and naming Nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator. As the case moved toward trial, the Special Prosecutor secured a subpoena duces tecum directing Nixon to produce, among other things, tape recordings of Oval Office meetings. Nixon moved to quash the subpoena, claiming that the Constitution provides an absolute privilege of confidentiality to all presidential communications. This Court rejected that argument in United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 94 S.Ct. 3090, 41 L.Ed.2d 1039 (1974), a decision we later described as "unequivocally and emphatically endors[ing] Marshall's" holding that Presidents are subject to subpoena. Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681, 704, 117 S.Ct. 1636, 137 L.Ed.2d 945 (1997).
The Nixon Court readily acknowledged the importance of preserving the confidentiality of communications "between high Government officials and those who advise and assist them." 418 U.S. at 705, 94 S.Ct. 3090. "Human experience," the Court explained, "teaches that those who expect public dissemination of their remarks may well temper candor with a concern for appearances and for their own interests to the detriment of the decisionmaking process." Ibid. Confidentiality thus promoted the "public interest in candid, objective, and even blunt or harsh opinions in Presidential decisionmaking." Id., at 708, 94 S.Ct. 3090.
But, like Marshall two centuries prior, the Court recognized the countervailing interests at stake. Invoking the common law maxim that "the public has a right to every man's evidence," the Court observed that the public interest in fair and accurate judicial proceedings is at its height in the criminal setting, where our common commitment to justice demands that "guilt shall not escape" nor "innocence suffer." Id., at 709, 94 S.Ct. 3090 (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). Because these dual aims would be "defeated if judgments" were "founded on a partial or speculative presentation of the facts," the Nixon Court recognized that it was "imperative" that "compulsory process be available for the production of evidence needed either by the prosecution or the defense." Ibid.
The Court thus concluded that the President's "generalized assertion of privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial." Id., at 713, 94 S.Ct. 3090. Two weeks later, President Nixon dutifully released the tapes.
III
The history surveyed above all involved federal criminal proceedings. Here we are confronted for the first time with a subpoena issued to the President by a local grand jury operating under the supervision of a state court.
In the President's view, that distinction makes all the difference. He argues that the Supremacy Clause gives a sitting President absolute immunity from state criminal subpoenas because compliance with those subpoenas would categorically impair a President's performance of his Article II functions. The Solicitor General, arguing on behalf of the United States, agrees with much of the President's reasoning but does not commit to his bottom line. Instead, the Solicitor General urges us to resolve this case by holding that a state grand jury subpoena for a sitting President's personal records must, at the very least, "satisfy a heightened standard of need," which the Solicitor General contends was not met here. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 26, 29.
A
We begin with the question of absolute immunity. No one doubts that Article II guarantees the independence of the Executive Branch. As the head of that branch, the President "occupies a unique position in the constitutional scheme." Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731, 749, 102 S.Ct. 2690, 73 L.Ed.2d 349 (1982). His duties, which range from faithfully executing the laws to commanding the Armed Forces, are of unrivaled gravity and breadth. Quite appropriately, those duties come with protections that safeguard the President's ability to perform his vital functions. See, e.g., ibid. (concluding that the President enjoys "absolute immunity from damages liability predicated on his official acts"); Nixon, 418 U.S. at 708, 94 S.Ct. 3090 (recognizing that presidential communications are presumptively privileged).
In addition, the Constitution guarantees "the entire independence of the General Government from any control by the respective States." Farmers and Mechanics Sav. Bank of Minneapolis v. Minnesota, 232 U.S. 516, 521, 34 S.Ct. 354, 58 L.Ed. 706 (1914). As we have often repeated, "States have no power... to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress." McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 436, 4 L.Ed. 579 (1819). It follows that States also lack the power to impede the President's execution of those laws.
Marshall's ruling in Burr, entrenched by 200 years of practice and our decision in Nixon, confirms that federal criminal subpoenas do not "rise to the level of constitutionally forbidden impairment of the Executive's ability to perform its constitutionally mandated functions." Clinton, 520 U.S. at 702-703, 117 S.Ct. 1636. But the President, joined in part by the Solicitor General, argues that state criminal subpoenas pose a unique threat of impairment and thus demand greater protection. To be clear, the President does not contend here that this subpoena, in particular, is impermissibly burdensome. Instead he makes a categorical argument about the burdens generally associated with state criminal subpoenas, focusing on three: diversion, stigma, and harassment. We address each in turn.
1
The President's primary contention, which the Solicitor General supports, is that complying with state criminal subpoenas would necessarily divert the Chief Executive from his duties. He grounds that concern in Nixon v. Fitzgerald, which recognized a President's "absolute immunity from damages liability predicated on his official acts." 457 U.S. at 749, 102 S.Ct. 2690. In explaining the basis for that immunity, this Court observed that the prospect of such liability could "distract a President from his public duties, to the detriment of not only the President and his office but also the Nation that the Presidency was designed to serve." Id., at 753, 102 S.Ct. 2690. The President contends that the diversion occasioned by a state criminal subpoena imposes an equally intolerable burden on a President's ability to perform his Article II functions.
But Fitzgerald did not hold that distraction was sufficient to confer absolute immunity. We instead drew a careful analogy to the common law absolute immunity of judges and prosecutors, concluding that a President, like those officials, must "deal fearlessly and impartially with the duties of his office"-not be made "unduly cautious in the discharge of [those] duties" by the prospect of civil liability for official acts. Id., at 751-752, and n. 32, 102 S.Ct. 2690 (internal quotation marks omitted). Indeed, we expressly rejected immunity based on distraction alone 15 years later in Clinton v. Jones. There, President Clinton argued that the risk of being "distracted by the need to participate in litigation" entitled a sitting President to absolute immunity from civil liability, not just for official acts, as in Fitzgerald, but for private conduct as well. 520 U.S. at 694, n. 19, 117 S.Ct. 1636. We disagreed with that rationale, explaining that the "dominant concern" in Fitzgerald was not mere distraction but the distortion of the Executive's "decisionmaking process" with respect to official acts that would stem from "worry as to the possibility of damages." 520 U.S. at 694, n. 19, 117 S.Ct. 1636. The Court recognized that Presidents constantly face myriad demands on their attention, "some private, some political, and some as a result of official duty." Id., at 705, n. 40, 117 S.Ct. 1636. But, the Court concluded, "[w]hile such distractions may be vexing to those subjected to them, they do not ordinarily implicate constitutional... concerns." Ibid.
The same is true of criminal subpoenas. Just as a "properly managed" civil suit is generally "unlikely to occupy any substantial amount of " a President's time or attention, id., at 702, 117 S.Ct. 1636, two centuries of experience confirm that a properly tailored criminal subpoena will not normally hamper the performance of the President's constitutional duties. If anything, we expect that in the mine run of cases, where a President is subpoenaed during a proceeding targeting someone else, as Jefferson was, the burden on a President will ordinarily be lighter than the burden of defending against a civil suit.
The President, however, believes the district attorney is investigating him and his businesses. In such a situation, he contends, the "toll that criminal process... exacts from the President is even heavier" than the distraction at issue in Fitzgerald and Clinton, because "criminal litigation" poses unique burdens on the President's time and will generate a "considerable if not overwhelming degree of mental preoccupation." Brief for Petitioner 16-18, 30 (internal quotation marks omitted).
But the President is not seeking immunity from the diversion occasioned by the prospect of future criminal liability. Instead he concedes-consistent with the position of the Department of Justice-that state grand juries are free to investigate a sitting President with an eye toward charging him after the completion of his term. See Reply Brief 19 (citing Memorandum from Randolph D. Moss, Assistant Atty. Gen., Office of Legal Counsel, to the Atty. Gen.: A Sitting President's Amenability to Indictment and Criminal Prosecution, 24 Op. OLC 222, 257, n. 36 (Oct. 16, 2000)). The President's objection therefore must be limited to the additional distraction caused by the subpoena itself. But that argument runs up against the 200 years of precedent establishing that Presidents, and their official communications, are subject to judicial process, see Burr, 25 F.Cas. at 34, even when the President is under investigation, see Nixon, 418 U.S. at 706, 94 S.Ct. 3090.
2
The President next claims that the stigma of being subpoenaed will undermine his leadership at home and abroad. Notably, the Solicitor General does not endorse this argument, perhaps because we have twice denied absolute immunity claims by Presidents in cases involving allegations of serious misconduct. See Clinton, 520 U.S. at 685, 117 S.Ct. 1636 ; Nixon, 418 U.S. at 687,94 S.Ct. 3090. But even if a tarnished reputation were a cognizable impairment, there is nothing inherently stigmatizing about a President performing "the citizen's normal duty of... furnishing information relevant" to a criminal investigation. Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 691, 92 S.Ct. 2646, 33 L.Ed.2d 626 (1972). Nor can we accept that the risk of association with persons or activities under criminal investigation can absolve a President of such an important public duty. Prior Presidents have weathered these associations in federal cases, supra, at 2422 - 2425, and there is no reason to think any attendant notoriety is necessarily greater in state court proceedings.
To be sure, the consequences for a President's public standing will likely increase if he is the one under investigation. But, again, the President concedes that such investigations are permitted under Article II and the Supremacy Clause, and receipt of a subpoena would not seem to categorically magnify the harm to the President's reputation.
Additionally, while the current suit has cast the Mazars subpoena into the spotlight, longstanding rules of grand jury secrecy aim to prevent the very stigma the President anticipates. See S. Beale et al., Grand Jury Law and Practice § 5:1, p. 5-3 (2d ed. 2018) ("[T]he federal system and most states have adopted statutes or court rules" that "impose sharp restrictions on the extent to which matters occurring before a grand jury may be divulged" to outside persons.). Of course, disclosure restrictions are not perfect. See Nixon, 418 U.S. at 687, n. 4, 94 S.Ct. 3090 (observing that news media reporting made the protective order shielding the fact that the President had been named as an unindicted co-conspirator "no longer meaningful"). But those who make unauthorized disclosures regarding a grand jury subpoena do so at their peril. See, e.g., N. Y. Penal Law Ann. § 215.70 (West 2010) (designating unlawful grand jury disclosure as a felony).
3
Finally, the President and the Solicitor General warn that subjecting Presidents to state criminal subpoenas will make them "easily identifiable target[s]" for harassment. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 753, 102 S.Ct. 2690. But we rejected a nearly identical argument in Clinton, where then-President Clinton argued that permitting civil liability for unofficial acts would "generate a large volume of politically motivated harassing and frivolous litigation." Clinton, 520 U.S. at 708, 117 S.Ct. 1636. The President and the Solicitor General nevertheless argue that state criminal subpoenas pose a heightened risk and could undermine the President's ability to "deal fearlessly and impartially" with the States. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. at 752, 102 S.Ct. 2690 (internal quotation marks omitted). They caution that, while federal prosecutors are accountable to and removable by the President, the 2,300 district attorneys in this country are responsive to local constituencies, local interests, and local prejudices, and might "use criminal process to register their dissatisfaction with" the President. Brief for Petitioner 16. What is more, we are told, the state courts supervising local grand juries may not exhibit the same respect that federal courts show to the President as a coordinate branch of Government.
We recognize, as does the district attorney, that harassing subpoenas could, under certain circumstances, threaten the independence or effectiveness of the Executive. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 73. Even so, in Clinton we found that the risk of harassment was not "serious" because federal courts have the tools to deter and, where necessary, dismiss vexatious civil suits. 520 U.S. at 708, 117 S.Ct. 1636. And, while we cannot ignore the possibility that state prosecutors may have political motivations, see post, at 2447 - 2448 (ALITO, J., dissenting), here again the law already seeks to protect against the predicted abuse.
First, grand juries are prohibited from engaging in "arbitrary fishing expeditions" and initiating investigations "out of malice or an intent to harass." United States v. R. Enterprises, Inc., 498 U.S. 292, 299, 111 S.Ct. 722, 112 L.Ed.2d 795 (1991). See also, e.g., Virag v. Hynes, 54 N.Y.2d 437, 442-443, 446 N.Y.S.2d 196, 430 N.E.2d 1249, 1252 (1981) (recognizing that grand jury subpoenas can be "challenged by an affirmative showing of impropriety," including "bad faith" (internal quotation marks omitted)). These protections, as the district attorney himself puts it, "apply with special force to a President, in light of the office's unique position as the head of the Executive Branch." Brief for Respondent Vance 43. And, in the event of such harassment, a President would be entitled to the protection of federal courts. The policy against federal interference in state criminal proceedings, while strong, allows "intervention in those cases where the District Court properly finds that the state proceeding is motivated by a desire to harass or is conducted in bad faith." Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd., 420 U.S. 592, 611, 95 S.Ct. 1200, 43 L.Ed.2d 482 (1975).
Second, contrary to Justice ALITO's characterization, our holding does not allow States to "run roughshod over the functioning of [the Executive B]ranch." Post, at 2451. The Supremacy Clause prohibits state judges and prosecutors from interfering with a President's official duties. See, e.g., Tennessee v. Davis, 100 U.S. 257, 263, 25 L.Ed. 648 (1880) ("No State government can... obstruct [the] authorized officers" of the Federal Government.). Any effort to manipulate a President's policy decisions or to "retaliat[e]" against a President for official acts through issuance of a subpoena, Brief for Respondent Vance 15, 43, would thus be an unconstitutional attempt to "influence" a superior sovereign "exempt" from such obstacles, see McCulloch, 4 Wheat. at 427. We generally "assume[ ] that state courts and prosecutors will observe constitutional limitations." Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 484, 85 S.Ct. 1116, 14 L.Ed.2d 22 (1965). Failing that, federal law allows a President to challenge any allegedly unconstitutional influence in a federal forum, as the President has done here. See 42 U.S.C. § 1983 ; Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 155-156, 28 S.Ct. 441, 52 L.Ed. 714 (1908) (holding that federal courts may enjoin state officials to conform their conduct to federal law).
Given these safeguards and the Court's precedents, we cannot conclude that absolute immunity is necessary or appropriate under Article II or the Supremacy Clause. Our dissenting colleagues agree. Justice THOMAS reaches the same conclusion based on the original understanding of the Constitution reflected in Marshall's decision in Burr. Post, at 2434, 2435 - 2436. And Justice ALITO, also persuaded by Burr, "agree[s]" that "not all" state criminal subpoenas for a President's records "should be barred." Post, at 2448. On that point the Court is unanimous.
B
We next consider whether a state grand jury subpoena seeking a President's private papers must satisfy a heightened need standard. The Solicitor General would require a threshold showing that the evidence sought is "critical" for "specific charging decisions" and that the subpoena is a "last resort," meaning the evidence is "not available from any other source" and is needed "now, rather than at the end of the President's term." Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 29, 32 (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). Justice ALITO, largely embracing those criteria, agrees that a state criminal subpoena to a President "should not be allowed unless a heightened standard is met." Post, at 2448 - 2449 (asking whether the information is "critical" and "necessary... now").
We disagree, for three reasons. First, such a heightened standard would extend protection designed for official documents to the President's private papers. As the Solicitor General and Justice ALITO acknowledge, their proposed test is derived from executive privilege cases that trace back to Burr. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 26-28; post, at 2448 - 2449. There, Marshall explained that if Jefferson invoked presidential privilege over executive communications, the court would not "proceed against the president as against an ordinary individual" but would instead require an affidavit from the defense that "would clearly show the paper to be essential to the justice of the case." Burr, 25 F.Cas. at 192. The Solicitor General and Justice ALITO would have us apply a similar standard to a President's personal papers. But this argument does not account for the relevant passage from Burr : "If there be a paper in the possession of the executive, which is not of an official nature, he must stand, as respects that paper, in nearly the same situation with any other individual." Id., at 191 (emphasis added). And it is only "nearly"-and not "entirely"-because the President retains the right to assert privilege over documents that, while ostensibly private, "partake of the character of an official paper." Id., at 191-192.
Second, neither the Solicitor General nor Justice ALITO has established that heightened protection against state subpoenas is necessary for the Executive to fulfill his Article II functions. Beyond the risk of harassment, which we addressed above, the only justification they offer for the heightened standard is protecting Presidents from "unwarranted burdens." Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 28; see post, at 2448 (asking whether "there is an urgent and critical need for the subpoenaed information"). In effect, they argue that even if federal subpoenas to a President are warranted whenever evidence is material, state subpoenas are warranted "only when [the] evidence is essential." Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 28; see post, at 2448. But that double standard has no basis in law. For if the state subpoena is not issued to manipulate, supra, at 2428 - 2429, the documents themselves are not protected, supra, at 2429, and the Executive is not impaired, supra, at 2425
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court.
Mr. Justice Powell took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Clark
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This action by dairy farmers, nonmembers of cooperative, associations, concerns 1941 amendments to an order, of the Secretary of Agriculture dealing with the marketing of milk in the Boston area. It was previously here as Stark v. Wickard, 321 U. S. 288 (1944), where it was held that the respondents had such an interest in the Order as to give them legal standing to object to those of its provisions here under attack. Upon remand the provisions were held invalid by the District Court, 82 F. Supp. 614, and that decision, was affirmed in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. 87 U. S. App. D. C. 388, 185 F. 2d 871. We granted certiorari. 341 U. S. 908.
The question now presented is whether those amendments to the Order which provide for certain payments to cooperative associations are within the authority granted the Secretary by the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937. The respondents seek to enjoin the enforcement of the provisions in question.
The purpose of the Act and the nature of the Secretary’s Order No. 4 thereunder are set out in some detail in Stark v. Wickard, supra, at 291-302. It is here sufficient to note thq following aspects of Order No. 4, as amended: In the Order, issued pursuant to the Act, the Secretary divided all milk marketed in the Greater Bos: ton area into Class I, which is sold as fluid milk, and Class II, which is used for other purposes such as the manufacture of butter and cheese. The Order provides for the fixing of minimum price's to be paid, by handlers for each of these classes of milk. Each handler pays for milk in accordance with the amount of each class he has purchased. Producers, however, are paid the same price for milk delivered no matter what use is made of the particular milk by the handler. The Market Administrator computes, on the basis of prices paid by handlers, the value of all milk sold in the area each month. After making certain adjustments, he divides that value, as adjusted, by the total quantity of milk, sold in the area during the month, to determine the "blended price,” which is the price actually paid the producer. One adjustment made in determining the blended price is the deduction providing for the disputed payments to cooperatives. This deduction is thus “a burden on every area sale.” Stark v. Wickard, supra, at 303. “Apparently, [it] is the only deduction that is an unrecoverable charge agáinst the producers. The other items deducted under [the Order] are for a revolving fund or to meet differentials in price because of location, seasonal delivery, et cetera.” Id., at 301. The effect, of the deduction and. the correlative payments to cooperatives is to reduce the amount which producers, such as respondents, who are not members of cooperatives would otherwise receive for their milk, and to increase correspondingly the receipts of cooperatives. We must determine whether the Secretary was authorized by the statute to include the provisions requiring this deduction and these payments in the Order. No question is presented as to the adequacy of the evidence to support the findings of the Secretary, but rather, a question as to the power granted the Secretary by Congress.
The disputed provisions were introduced into the-Boston Order in 1941, after hearings called by the Secretary. Affidavits, filed by representatives of the Secretary in support of his motion for summary judgment in the District Court; show the following: A major issue at the hearings was the amount of a uniform allowance, previously 260 per hundredweight, which was reflected in the price paid by all handlers for Class II milk. This allowance resulted in a lower price to handlers, for Class II milk than for Class I milk. It was intended to defray the cost of handling surplus milk. There was a considerable variance in milk plant costs which was thought to make continuance of a uniform rate undesirable. Cooperative plants showed higher costs than those of proprietary handlers. That difference was attributable not only to the cooperatives’ maintenance of a reserve supply to meet irregular demands of proprietary handlers for Class I milk, but also to overcapitalization and excess capacity which had existed prior to any federal regulation. To meet these higher costs cooperatives proposed a lower uniform allowance for Class II milk, coupled with a payment to cooperatives only for market services, although they had engaged in the activities claimed to constitute market services for years • without any such payment. In the amendments resulting from the hearings, the uniform allowance to handlers was reduced from 26$ to 21%$, while at the same time the provisions here contested, requiring payments to cooperatives alone, were introduced.
Section 8c (5) of the Act provides that orders relating to milk and its products shall contain one or more of certain enumerated terms and conditions, “and (except as provided in subsection (7)) no others" (emphasis added). It is paragraph (D) of subsection (7) upon which the Secretary relies. That paragraph authorizes provisions “incidental to, and not inconsistent with, the terms and conditions specified in subsections (5), (6), and (7) and necessary to effectuate the other provisions of such order.” The provisions here in question are not specifically authorized by any part of the Act. Both courts below thought these provisions to be neither incidental nor necessary, and to be inconsistent with terms specified in the named subsections.
The payments to the cooperative associations are said to be justified as remuneration for services performed for the market by the associations. To qualify for the payments, an association must meet eight requirements listed in the Order. But none of these shows any indication that the activity it prescribes will benefit nonmembers, with the possible exception of the seventh, which requires that the association collaborate “with similar associations „ in activities incident, to the maintenance and strengthening of collective bargaining by producers and- the operation of a plan of uniform pricing of milk to handlers.” Even if this requirement comprehends a service to nonmember producers substantial enough to be significant in determining the validity of a mandatory contribution from them to cooperatives, it does not support the exaction in issue, which concededly is based mainly upon other services, primarily performed for members.
Indeed, those “services” which the Secretary principally urges as justifying the payments do not appear among the expressed prerequisites for .the payments. Chief among the activities claimed to benefit all producers are those-which tend to maintain an adequate supply of fluid milk at’ all times and to dispose of surplus supply. A principal source of the problems of milk marketing is the seasonal character of milk production. Herds sufficient to meet the demand for fluid milk during the winter months produce much more than enough to satisfy that demand during the summer months. It is contended that the cooperative associations handle a proportionately larger share of surplus milk than other handlers. It appears that they engage in the manufacture of milk products as a means of absorbing the surplus, and otherwise aid in obviating/the “dumping” of surplus and discouraging the reduction of- herds to a point below that necessary to supply the demand in the season of low production. It may be conceded that these activities are indirectly beneficial to the whole market, even though they are engaged in for the direct advantage of members only. However, proprietary handlers also carry on activities of this kind, and their plants handle two-thirds as much surplus milk as do those of the cooperatives. Prior to amendment of the Order in 1941, the cost of handling surplus milk was recognized in the uniform 26$ allowance to all handlers of Class II milk, but only cooperative associations now receive the payments in issue here. It is clear that the associations are in no way required to handle any of the surplus milk of nonmembers. More significant, there is no requirement in the Order that the associations take any action directed toward solution of the problem, even with respect to surplus milk of their members.
Other “services” of the cooperatives which are claimed to be beneficial to all producers are, as they affect the issue here, relatively insignificant. These activities are, like the others, primarily désigned for the advantage of members, although they may sometimes incidentally benefit the whole market. They generally amount to no more than playing the part of an alert, intelligent, organized participant in the market. They include such functions as employing economists to study the needs of the industry, participating in hearings on orders such as that inyplved here, being attentive to changing factors in the market, and maintaining the cooperative organizations by promotional work to show farmers the benefits of cooperation and by educational work among members.- One may observe some incongruity in requiring some producers to pay others for vigorously prosecuting their own interests, especially where their interests may sometimes conflict with those of the producers burdened with the payments.
In these circumstances, we cannot say that the disputed provisions fall within the authority granted by the catchall phrases of § & (7) (D) of the Act. We noté at the outset that § 8c (5) states in specific and lengthy detail the provisions which may be included in milk marketing orders. That subsection lays down comprehensive directions for classification, pricing, and the operation of the equalization pool mechanism, particularly as to adjustments and deductions employed in determining the blended price. But § 8c (5) does not authorize the provisions challenged here.. Section 8c (7) authorizes a congeries of general terms which may be included in all marketing orders, including those dealing with commoditiés other than milk and milk products. The'Secretary claims authority for the provisions in question is given by the last paragraph of this omnibus subsection, a paragraph .authorizing the inclusion of auxiliary provisions “incidental to . . . the terms and conditions specified in subsections (5), (6), and (7).” Yet it is claimed that the contested provisions are of such basic importance that their validity may be crucial to the success of the whole milk marketing program. We do not think it likely that Congress, in fashioning this intricate marketing order machinery, would thus hang one of the main gears on the tail pipe. The conclusion that these provisions are not “incidental” to the specified terms is further supported by the presence of § 8c (5) (E), expressly authorizing deductions from payments to producers for other, specified services, and indicating the likelihood of similar specific authorization for the contested deductions if Congress intended that they should be made. Finally, the provisions cannot be incidental to the enumerated terms and conditions since they are inconsistent therewith.
The payments to cooperatives are inconsistent with § 8c (5) (A), which provides that all handlers shall pay uniform prices for, each class of milk, subject to certain adjustments of no concern here. The discriminatory effect of the payments becomes the more evident when they are considered in context with the reduction in the uniform allowance to all handlers on the price of Class II milk. That reduction' was simultaneous with the establishment of the system of payments to be made to cooperatives only and to be funded by deductions from prices paid all producers. The result would have been substantially similar if the allowance to proprietary handlers had been reduced while the allowance to cooperatives had been permitted to remain at its previous higher level. Such a lack of- uniformity in prices paid by handlers, would clearly have contravened § 8c (5) (A).
The deduction for payments to cooperatives is inconsistent with §8c(5)(B), which requires the payment of uniform prices to all producers for all milk delivered, subject to certain adjustments not here pertinent. It has been contended that the deduction does not affect the uniform price of milk, but represepts only a reimbursement for services.' The argument seems to be that all producers receive a uniform price while the deduction merely constitutes a charge to all producers for services, a charge which happens to be paid certain associations of producers because those associations perform the services. The fact remains that the receipts of nonmembers resulting from delivery of a given quantity of milk are smaller than those of the associations and their members. This is true because nonmembers are' paid only the blended price while members receive, through their associations, the disputed payments in addition to the blended price. Although made to, members collectively, these payments necessarily redound to members individually. Thus, if they are used to pay the costs of the associations, they reduce pró ianto the contributions which are required from individual members. But we need not go further than to hold that the argument cannot negate inconsistency with the uniform price requirement where, as here, the services for which the payment is made are performed for the direct bénefit of the cooperatives’ memberships, are but incidentally helpful to other producers, and are not a required condition to receipt of the payments.
Since the provisions for payments to1 cooperatives are not incidental to § 8c (5) and (7),‘but are inconsistent with the former subsection, we need not determine whether they are “necessary to effectuate the other provisions” of the Order, the third requirement of § 8c (7)(D).
When the directly relevant provisions of the Act thus demonstrate lack of authority for the payments to cooperatives, no power to require them can be implied from the general instruction of § 10 (b)(1) to the Secretary, directing him to accord “recognition and encouragement” to cooperative associations.
Without support in the words of the statute the challenged provisions must fall, for neither legislative history nor administrative construction offers any cogent reasons for a contrary result. Available indicia of congressional intent at the time of enactment lend weight to the contention that specific provision would have been made for this kind of payments to cooperatives if they were meant to be made. Attempted amendment later to provide authorization for the payments, and the accompanying discussion in Congress, are, as a whole, indecisive. Approval of the payments by Congress cannot be inferred from its ratification, upon passage of the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act in 1937, of marketing orders previously issued under the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Even if we were to accept the proposition that Congress there intended to confer statutory authority for all future provisions like any of those then existing in any marketing order, we would reach the same conclusion because neither the provisions for these particular payments nor any closely analogous provisions were at that time present in any marketing orders. Nor have provisions bearing substantial similarity to those before us since been included in other orders so frequently as to amount to a consistent administrative interpretation of import in construing the Act. Many provisions for payments to cooperatives appearing in other orders have been of a kind specifically authorized by the statute. Thus, the provision of the first Boston Milk Order for a price differential as between cooperative milk and noncooperative milk was upheld in Green Valley Creamery v. United States, as a “market differential” authorized by § 8c (5) (A)(1).
We have no occasion to judge the equity or the wisdom of the payments to cooperatives involved in this case. We hold that they are not authorized by the Act.
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Jackson and Mr. Justice Minton took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
50 Stat. 246, as amended, 7 U. S. C. § 601 et seq. The Act of 1937 reenacted and amended provisions of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, 48 Stat. 31, as amended.
7 CFR §§ 904.1-904.110.
Section 904.8 (b) of the Order requires the Market Administrator, in computing the blended price, to deduct, among other items, the total amount of cooperative payments required by § 904.10 (b), which provides:
“(b) Cooperative payments. On or before the 25th day after the end of each month, each qualified association shall be entitled to receive a cooperative payment from the funds provided by handlers’ payments to the market administrator pursuant to §904.9. The payment shall be made under the conditions and at the rates specified in this paragraph, and shall be subject to verification of the receipts and other items upon which such payment is based.
“(1) Each qualified association shall be entitled to payment at the rate of 1 cént per hundredweight on the milk which its producer members deliver to the plant of a handler other than a qualified association; except on milk delivered by a producer who is also a member of another qualified association, and on milk delivered to a handler who fails to make applicable payments pursuant to § 904.9 (b) (2) and §904.11 within 10 days after the end of the month in which he is required to do so. If the handler is required by paragraph (e) of this section to make deductions from members of the association at a rate lower than 1 cent per hundredweight, the payment pursuant to this subparagraph shall be at such lower rate.
“ (2) Each qualified association shall be entitled to payment at the rate of 2 cents per hundredweight on milk received from producers at a plant operated by that association.” 7 CFR § 904.10 (b).
The total, amount thus pajd cooperatives in the Boston area since 1941 is $1,521,028; in addition, more than $400,000 has been deposited in a special account to await' the final result of this litigation. However, the payments to cooperatives have in each year constituted no more than a fraction of one percent of the total value of milk marketed in the area.
See, e. g., R. 60, 70-75.
§ 8c (5), note 1, supra:
“(5) In the case of milk and its products, orders issued pursuant to this section shall contain one or more of the following terms and conditions, and (except as provided in subsection (7)) no others:
“ (A) Classifying milk in accordance with the form in which or the purpose for which it is used, and fixing, or providing a method for fixing, minimum prices for each such use classification which all handlers shall pay, and the time when payments shall be made, for milk purchased from producers or associations 6f producers. Such prices shall be uniform as to all handlers, subject only to adjustments for (1) volume, market, and production differentials customarily applied by the handlers subject to such order, (2) the grade or quality of the milk purchased, and (3) the locations at which delivery of such milk, or any use classification thereof, is made to such handlers.
“(B) Providing:
(i) for the payment to all producers and associations of producers delivering milk to the same handler of uniform prices for all milk delivered by them: Provided, That, except in the case of orders covering milk products only, such provision is approved or favored by at least three-fourths of the producers who, during a representative period determined by the Secretary of Agriculture, have been engaged in the production for market of milk covered in such order or by producers who, during such representative period, have produced at least three-fourths of the volume of such milk produced for market during such period; the approval required hereunder shall be separate and apart from any other approval or disapproval provided for by this section; or
(ii) for the payment to all producers and associations of producers delivering milk to. all handlers of uniform prices for all milk so delivered, irrespective of the uses made of such milk by the individual handler to whom it is delivered;
subject, in either case, only to adjustments for (a) volume, market, and production differentials customarily applied by the handlers subject to such order, (b) the grade or quality of the milk delivered, (c) the locations at which delivery of such milk is made, and (d) a further adjustment, equitably to apportion the total value of the milk purchased by any handler, or by all handlers, among producers and associations of producers, on the basis of their marketings of milk during a representative period of time.
“(C) In order to accomplish the purposes set forth in paragraphs (A) and (B) of this subsection (5), providing a method for making' adjustments in payments, as among handlers (including producers who are also handlers), to the end that the total sums paid by each handler shall equal the value of the milk purchased by him at the prices fixed in accordance with paragraph (A) hereof.
“(D) Providing that, in the case of all milk purchased by handlers from any producer who did not regularly sell milk during a period of 30 days next preceding the effective date of such order for consumption in the area covered thereby, payments to such producer, for the period beginning with the first regular delivery by such producer and continuing 'until the end of two full calendar months following the first day of the next succeeding calendar month, shall be made at the price for the lowest use classification specified in such order, subject to the adjustments specified in paragraph (B) of this subsection (5).
“ (E) Providing (i) except as to producers for whom such services are being' rendered by a cooperative marketing association, qualified as provided in paragraph (F) of this subsection (5), for market information to producers and for the verification of weights, sarfipling, and testing of milk purchased from producers, and for making appropriate deductions therefor from payments to producers, and (ii) for assurance of, and security for, the payment by handlers for milk purchased.
“(F) Nothing contained in this subsection (5) is intended or shall be. construed to prevent a cooperative marketing association qualified under the provisions of the Act of Congress of February 18, 1922, as amended, known as the ‘Capper-Volstead Act’, engaged in making collective sales or marketing of milk or its products for the producers thereof, from blending the net proceeds of'all of its sales in all markets in all use classifications, arid making distribution thereof to its producers in accordance with the contract between the association and its producers: Provided, That it shall not sell milk or its products to any handler for use or consumption in any market at prices less than the prices fixed pursuant to paragraph (A) of this subsection (5) for such milk.
“(G) No marketing agreement or order applicable to milk and its products in any marketing area shall prohibit or in any manner limit, in the case of the products of milk, the marketing in that area of any milk or product thereof produced in any production area in the United States!”
§ 8c (7) (D), note 1, supra. Subsection 7 authorizes certain general terms for all marketing orders, including both those relating to milk and its products and those relating to other commodities. The terms thus authorized, aside from paragraph (D), prohibit-unfair competition, provide for filing of sales prices by handlers, and provide for selection of an agency to implement the order.
82 F. Supp. 614, 618; 87 U. S. App. D. C. 388, 397-399, 185 F. 2d 871, 880-882.
7 CFR § 904.10 (a):
“(a) Application and qualification for cooperative payments. Any cooperative association of producers duly organized under the laws of any state may apply to the Secretary for a determination that it is qualified to receive cooperative payments in accordance with the provisions of this section. Upon notice of the filing of such an application, the market administrator shall set aside for each month, from the funds provided by handlers’ payments to the market administrator pursuant to § 904.9, such amount as he estimates is ample to make payment to the applicant, and hold it in reserve until the Secretary has ruled upon the application. The applicant association shall be considered to -be a qualified association entitled to receive such payments from the date fixed by the Secretary, if he determines that it meets all of the following requirements.
“(1) It' conforms to the requirements relating to character of organization, voting, dividend payments, and dealing in products of nonmembers, which are set forth in the Capper-Volstead Act and in the state laws under which the association is organized.
“(2) It operates as a responsible producer-controlled marketing association exercising full authority in the sale of the milk of its members.
“(3) It .systematically checks the weights and tests of milk which its members deliver to plants not operated by the association.
“(4) It guarantees payment to its members for milk delivered to plants not operated by the association.
“(5) It maintains, either individually or together with-other qualified associations, a competent staff for dealing with marketing problems and for providing information to its members.
*(6) It constantly maintains close working relationships with its members.
“(7) It collaborates with similar associations in activities incident to the maintenance and strengthening of collective bargaining by producers and the operation of a plan of uniform pricing of milk to handlers.
“(8) It is in compliance with all applicable provisions of this subpart.”
Ibid.
In' 1939 (no later statistics are available in the record), there were 21 plants in the Boston area which were equipped for manufacturing milk powder, condensed milk or butter, of which 13 were cooperative and 8 proprietary. The cooperative plants handled 60.2 percent of the surplus milk that year. R. 66 and 68.
Contrast the New York Order, providing for .comparable payments, at various rates, to cooperatives. That Orcler expressly requires that an association, to qualify for any such payments, must arrange for and supply “in times of short supply, Class I milk to the marketing area,” and must secure “utilization of milk, in times of long supply, in a manner.to assure the greatest possible return to all producers.” 7 CFR, 1950 Cum. Supp., § 927.9 (f). To receive the highest rate of'payments under that Order, in certain circumstances a cooperative must “in addition to the other qualifications . . . [be] determined by the Secretary to have sufficient plant capacity to receive all the milk'of producers who are members and to be willing and able to receive milk from producers not members.” Id., at § 927.9 (f) (3). As proposed at one point in the hearings, the Boston Order would have contained requirements like those of the New York Order. R. 233. Their omission, in the Order, as finally issued, presumably was deliberate. In fact, the Secretary admits that many of the cooperatives in the Boston area were unwilling or unable to perform services such as those required by the New York Order. R. 24-25 and 70.
§ 8c (7) (D), note 1, supra. Subsection (6) has no application to orders dealing with milk.
§ 8c (7) (D), note 1, supra.
§ 10 (b) (1), note 1, supra.
The statutory provisions setting forth the terms which might be included in marketing orders were first enacted in an amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act in 1935. 49 Stat. 753. This enactment occurred shortly after the decisions of this Court in Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U. S. 388 (1935), and Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U. S. 495 (1935), placing limitations on the delegation of rule-making authority to administrative agencies. With these cases specifically in mind, Congress set forth with deliberate particularity and completeness the terms which the Secretary might include in marketing orders. H. E. Rep. No. 1241, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 8; S. Rep. No. 1011, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 8.
S. 3426, 76th Cong., 3d Sess.; S. Rep. No. 1719, 76th Cong., 3d Sess. S. 3426 would have clearly authorized payments such as those challenged here. It passed the Senate, but went no further. As to the inconclusive nature of the Bill and its history, see the opinion of the Court of Appeals, 87 U. S. App. D. C. 388, 400, 185 F. 2d 871, 883.
“Nothing in this Act shall be construed as invalidating any marketing agreement, license, or order, or any regulation relating to, or any provision of, or any act of the Secretary of Agriculture in connection with, any such agreement, license, or order which has been executed, issued, approved, or done under the Agricultural Adjustment Act, or any amendment thereof, but such marketing agreements, licenses, orders, regulations, provisions, and acts are hereby expressly ratified, legalized, and confirmed.” 50 Stat. 246. 249
Of thirty-nine currently' outstanding milk marketing orders, only four contain provisions of the general nature of those in question. One of these is the Boston Order involved here; another is the New York Order, as to which see note 12, supra.
108 F. 2d 342, 345 (G. A. 1st Cir., 1939).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Chief Justice Burger
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We noted probable jurisdiction to decide whether a New Mexico statute that grants a tax exemption limited to those Vietnam veterans who resided in the State before May 8, 1976, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
I
Pursuant to Art. VIII, § 5, of the New Mexico Constitution, the New Mexico State Legislature has granted annual property tax exemptions to residents who served in the Armed Forces. As applied to Vietnam veterans currently residing in New Mexico, § 7-37-5 of the New Mexico Statutes exempts $2,000 of the taxable value of property for any honorably discharged Vietnam veteran who served on active duty during the Vietnam War for at least 90 continuous days, N. M. Stat. Ann. §§7-37-5(0(1) and (2) (1983), and who was a New Mexico resident before May 8, 1976, § 7-37-5(C)(3)(d).
Appellants, Alvin D. Hooper and his wife Mary, established residence in New Mexico on August 17, 1981. During the Vietnam War, Alvin Hooper had served for over 90 continuous days as a member of the United States Army; Hooper was honorably discharged in September 1965. For the 1983 tax year, the Hoopers applied for the $2,000 veterans’ tax exemption with respect to their jointly held real property in Bernalillo County. Appellee, the Bernalillo County Assessor, denied the claim because Hooper had not been a state resident before May 8, 1975.
Appellants challenged § 7-37-5(C)(3)(d) as violative of their right to equal protection of the law and their constitutional right to migrate to New Mexico. After a hearing, the Ber-nalillo County Valuation Board rejected appellants’ constitutional challenge and upheld the Assessor’s denial of the tax exemption.
The New Mexico Court of Appeals affirmed. 101 N. M. 172, 679 P. 2d 840, cert. denied, 101 N. M. 77, 678 P. 2d 705 (1984). The court, noting that the statute did not affect “such fundamental interests as voting, welfare benefits, or public medical assistance,” concluded that the statute did not unconstitutionally burden an exercise of the right to travel. Id., at 175, 679 P. 2d, at 843. The court held that the statute was consistent with the Equal Protection Clause because it “reflects legitimate state purposes” and “bears a reasonable relationship to those purposes.” Ibid. The court reasoned that “[a] state’s interest in expressing gratitude and rewarding its pwn citizens for honorable military service is a rational basis for veterans’ preferences,” and that the state legislature is “entitled to limit the period of time within which [veterans] may choose to establish residency.” Id., at 176, 679 P. 2d at 844.
We noted probable jurisdiction. 469 U. S. 878 (1984). We reverse.
II
The New Mexico veterans’ tax exemption differs from the durational residence requirements the Court examined in Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S. 393 (1975); Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa County, 415 U. S. 250 (1974); Dunn v. Blumstein, 405 U. S. 330 (1972); and Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618 (1969). The statutes at issue in those cases conditioned eligibility for certain benefits, otherwise available on an equal basis to all residents, on a new resident’s living in the State for a fixed minimum period. The durational ^residence requirements purported to assure that only persons who had established bona fide residence received the benefits provided residents of the States.
The New Mexico statute does not impose any threshold waiting period on those resident veterans seeking the tax exemption; resident veterans are entitled to the exemption provided they satisfy the statute’s other criteria. Nor does the statute purport to establish a test of the bona fides of state residence. Instead, the tax exemption contains a fixed-date residence requirement. The statute thus divides resident Vietnam veterans into two groups: resident veterans who resided in the State before May 8, 1976, qualify for the exemption; resident veterans who established residence after that date do not. Like the Alaska dividend distribution law examined in Zobel v. Williams, 457 U. S. 55 (1982), the tax exemption statute thus creates “fixed, permanent distinctions between . . . classes of concededly bona fide residents” based on when they arrived in the State. Id., at 59.
Appellants established residence in New Mexico several months after the 1981 amendment set the eligibility date as May 8, 1975. Appellants have no quarrel with the legislature’s changing the eligibility date after veterans have chosen to reside in New Mexico, for the enactment date is irrelevant to qualification for the tax exemption. Appellants instead challenge the distinction made by the State within the class of Vietnam veterans who currently are bona fide residents. Their challenge is that the exemption is accorded to those resident Vietnam veterans who resided in the State sometime before May 8, 1976, but not to those Vietnam veterans who have arrived since then.
When a state distributes benefits unequally, the distinctions it makes are subject to scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Generally, a law will survive that scrutiny if the distinction rationally furthers a legitimate state purpose. Appellants claim that the distinction made by the New Mexico statute should be subjected to the higher level of scrutiny applied to the durational residence requirements in Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa County, supra, and Shapiro v. Thompson, supra. Alternatively, appellants claim that the statute cannot withstand the minimum rationality inquiry applied to the Alaska dividend distribution law in Zobel v. Williams, supra. Ap-pellee, on the other hand, asserts that the statute need only satisfy the latter standard of review. As in Zobel, if the statutory scheme cannot pass even the minimum rationality test, our inquiry ends.
Ill
The New Mexico Court of Appeals accepted two justifications for the distinction made by the Vietnam veterans’ tax exemption statute: the exemption encourages veterans to settle in the State and it serves as an expression of the State’s appreciation to its “own citizens for honorable military service.” 101 N. M., at 176, 679 P. 2d, at 844. Before this Court, the latter purpose has been refined as assisting “veterans who, as [New Mexico] citizens, were dependent on [the State] during a time of upheaval in their lives.” Brief for Appellee 22. This rationale assumes that the State accepted a special responsibility toward those veterans who “picked up or laid down the burdens of war” as state residents.
A
The distinction New Mexico makes between veterans who established residence before May 8, 1976, and those veterans who arrived in the State thereafter bears no rational relationship to one of the State’s objectives — encouraging Vietnam veterans to move to New Mexico. The legislature set this eligibility date long after the triggering event occurred. See n. 2, supra. The legislature cannot plausibly encourage veterans to move to the State by passing such retroactive legislation. It is possible that some Vietnam veterans, at least since 1981, might have been discouraged from settling in New Mexico given the State’s exclusion of new resident veterans from a benefit available only to those veterans who resided in the State before May 8, 1976. “The separation of residents into classes hardly seems a likely way to persuade new [residents] that the State welcomes them and wants them to stay.” Zobel v. Williams, 457 U. S., at 62, n. 9.
B
The second purpose of the statute — rewarding veterans who resided in the State before May 8, 1976, for their military service — was primarily relied upon by the New Mexico Court of Appeals to support the statute’s distinction between resident veterans. One component of this rationale is, of course, plainly legitimate; only recently we observed that “[o]ur country has a longstanding policy of compensating veterans for their past contributions by providing them with numerous advantages.” Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Wash., 461 U. S. 540, 551 (1983) (footnote omitted); see Personnel Administrator of Mass. v. Feeney, 442 U. S. 256, 279, n. 25 (1979). And as Judge Friendly has noted, the various preferences for veterans are grounded in a “[djesire to compensate in some measure for the disruption of a way of life . . . and to express gratitude . . . .” Russell v. Hodges, 470 F. 2d 212, 218 (CA2 1972). See Regan v. Taxation With Representation of Wash., supra, at 551.
Consistent with this policy, the State may award certain benefits to all its bona fide veterans, because it then is making neither an invidious nor irrational distinction among its residents. Resident veterans, as a group, may well deserve preferential treatment, and such differential treatment visa-vis non-veterans does not offend the Equal Protection Clause. See, e. g., Personnel Administrator of Mass. v. Feeney, supra; see also Johnson v. Robison, 415 U. S. 361 (1974).
The New Mexico statute, however, does not simply distinguish between resident veterans and non-veteran residents; it confers a benefit only on “established” resident veterans, i. e., those who resided in the State before May 8,1976. Ap-pellee and the State justify this distinction on the basis that those veterans who left their homes in New Mexico to fight in Vietnam, as well as those who settled in the State within the few years after thé war ended, deserve to be treated differently from veterans who make New Mexico their home after May 8, 1976. The legislature is said to have decided it owed a special responsibility to these “established” veterans.
Appellee and the State’s evaluation of this legislative judgment may be questioned on its own terms. Those who serve in the military during wartime inevitably have their lives disrupted; but it is difficult to grasp how New Mexico residents serving in the military suffered more than residents of other States who served, so that the latter would not deserve the benefits a State bestows for national military service. Moreover, the legislature provided this economic boon years after the dislocation occurred. Established state residents, by this time, presumably had become resettled in the community and the modest tax exemption hardly bears directly on the transition to civilian life long after the war’s end. Finally, the benefit of the tax exemption continues for the recipient’s life. The annual exemption, which will benefit this limited group of resident veterans long after the wartime disruption dissipated, is a continuing bounty for one group of residents rather than simply an attempt to ease the veteran’s return to civilian life.
Even assuming that the State may legitimately grant benefits on the basis of a coincidence between military service and past residence, the New Mexico statute’s distinction between resident veterans is not rationally related to the State’s asserted legislative goal. The statute is not written to require any connection between the veteran’s prior residence and military service. Indeed, the veteran who resided in New Mexico as an infant long ago would immediately qualify for the exemption upon settling in the State at any time in the future regardless of where he resided before, during, or after military service.
C
Stripped of its asserted justifications, the New Mexico statute suffers from the same constitutional flaw as the Alaska statute in Zobel. The New Mexico statute, by singling out previous residents for the tax exemption, rewards only those citizens for their “past contributions” toward our Nation’s military effort in Vietnam. Zobel teaches that such an objective is “not a legitimate state purpose.” 457 U. S., at 63. The State may not favor established residents over new residents based on the view that the State may take care of “its own,” if such is defined by prior residence. Newcomers, by establishing bona fide residence in the State, become the State’s “own” and may not be discriminated against solely on the basis of their arrival in the State after May 8, 1976. See, e. g., Vlandis v. Kline, 412 U. S. 441, 449-450, and n. 6 (1973); Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S., at 632-633; Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283, 492 (1849) (Taney, C. J., dissenting).
The New Mexico statute creates two tiers of resident Vietnam veterans, identifying resident veterans who settled in the State after May 8, 1976, as in a sense “second-class citizens.” This discrimination on the basis of residence is not supported by any identifiable state interest; the statute is not written to benefit only those residents who suffered dislocation within the State’s borders by reason of military service. Zobel made clear that the Constitution will not tolerate a state benefit program that “creates fixed, permanent distinctions . . . between . . . classes of concededly bona fide residents, based on how long they have been in the State.” 457 U. S., at 59. Neither the Equal Protection Clause, nor this Court’s precedents, permit the State to prefer established resident veterans over newcomers in the retroactive apportionment of an economic benefit.
D
We decline appellants’ request to rule on the severability of the unconstitutional aspect of the New Mexico veterans’ tax exemption statute. If the fixed-date residence requirement, § 7-37-5(C)(3)(d), were excised from the statute, the exemption would be available to all current resident veterans who served the requisite 90 days during the Vietnam War and received honorable discharges. It is for the New Mexico courts to decide, as a matter of state law, whether the state legislature would have enacted the statute without the invalid portion. See, e. g., Zobel v. Williams, supra, at 64-65; Champlin Refining Co. v. Corporation Comm’n of Oklahoma, 286 U. S, 210, 234 (1932); State v. Spearman, 84 N. M. 366, 368, 503 P. 2d 649, 651 (App. 1972).
IV
We hold that the New Mexico veterans’ tax exemption statute violates ’the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Accordingly, the judgment of the New Mexico Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Reversed and remanded.
Justice Powell took no part in the decision of the case.
Section 7-37-5 also provides the $2,000 property tax exemption, under substantially similar conditions, to certain resident veterans of World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. The one variable is the eligibility date: World War I veterans must have been residents of New Mexico before January 1, 1984; World War II veterans must have been residents before January 1, 1947; and Korean War veterans must have been residents before February 1, 1966. N. M. Stat. Ann. §§ 7-37-5(C)(3)(a), (b), and (c) (1983).
The initial statute extending an exemption to Vietnam veterans required that the veteran have been a New Mexico resident before “entering the armed services from New Mexico” and also that the veteran have been “awarded a Vietnam campaign medal for services in Vietnam” during a prescribed period. 1973 N. M. Laws, Ch. 258, p. 1052. In 1975, the state legislature eliminated the medal requirement but retained the condition that the veteran have entered the Armed Forces from the State. 1975 N. M. Laws, Ch. 3, p. 11.
In 1981, the legislature dropped the requirement that the veteran have entered the military from New Mexico. The new statute extended the tax exemption to any Vietnam veteran who “was a New Mexico resident prior to . . . May 8, 1975.” 1981 N. M. Laws, Ch. 187, p. 1078. In 1988, the statute was amended to provide the exemption to any Vietnam veteran “who was a New Mexico resident prior to . . . May 8, 1976.” 1988 N. M. Laws, Ch. 330, p. 2112.
The state legislature changed the eligibility date to May 8, 1976, after appellants had commenced administrative proceedings to challenge the denial of the exemption. The Board’s decision relied on the amended 1976 date. Before the New Mexico Court of Appeals, appellee conceded that this date was inapplicable to the 1983 tax year because the legislature intended that it apply starting with the 1984 tax year. Accordingly, appellants’ claimed exemption should have been denied on the basis of the 1975 eligibility date. Presumably because this discrepancy had no bearing on the constitutional issue, the Court of Appeals did not mention this point. For the sake of clarity, we analyze the statute using the 1976 eligibility date.
In the durational residence cases, the Court reviewed state laws which established waiting periods on access to divorce courts, Sosna v. Iowa; eligibility for free nonemergency medical care, Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa County; qualification for voting rights, Dunn v. Blumstein; and receipt of welfare assistance, Shapiro v. Thompson.
This eligibility date has a curious background, which is not explained simply as “one year [after] the final U. S. troop withdrawal [from Vietnam].” 101 N. M. 172,176, 679 P. 2d 840, 844, cert. denied, 101N. M. 77, 678 P. 2d 705 (1984). On January 27, 1973, the United States and other participants in the conflict signed the Vietnam cease-fire agreement in Paris, France. Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet-Nam, Jan. 27, 1973, [1973] 24 U. S. T. 1, T. I. A. S. No. 7542. The last American troops were withdrawn from Vietnam on March 29, 1973.
By Proclamation, President Ford designated May 7,1975, as the last day of the “Vietnam era.” Proclamation No. 4373, 3A CFR 48 (1976). The Federal Government uses this date to determine eligibility for veterans’ benefits for those persons who served in the Armed Forces during the Vietnam War. See 38 U. S. C. § 101(29), which defines the “Vietnam era” as that period beginning August 5,1964, and ending May 7,1975. In 1981, the New Mexico State Legislature adopted this date to determine eligibility for the Vietnam veterans’ tax exemption. In 1983, the state legislature changed the date to May 8, 1976, presumably to extend a “grace period” to veterans choosing to reside in New Mexico. See n. 2, supra.
The New Mexico Court of Appeals considered whether the veterans’ tax exemption law violated appellants’ constitutional right to travel. Despite disagreement over its source in the Constitution, compare Zobel v. Williams, 457 U. S. 55, 65 (1982) (Brennan, J., concurring), with id., at 71 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment), the Court has long held that the right to travel, “when applied to residency requirements, protects new residents of a State from being disadvantaged because of their recent migration or from otherwise being treated differently from longer term residents.” Id., at 60, n. 6; see, e. g., Memorial Hospital v. Maricopa County, 415 U. S. 250, 261 (1974); Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U. S. 618, 629-631 (1969).
As we noted in Zobel, “Might to travel cases have examined, in equal protection terms, state distinctions between newcomers and longer term residents.” 457 U. S., at 60, n. 6. This case involves a distinction between residents based on when they first established residence in the State. Following Zobel, we subject this case to equal protection analysis.
The State of New Mexico, as amicus curiae, observes that the statute’s purpose “is to reward persons who served in periods of armed conflict as residents of New Mexico or who established residency in New Mexico shortly thereafter.” Brief for State of New Mexico as Amicus Curiae 5.
Although neither appellee nor the State of New Mexico presses the point, the statute could conceivably influence certain veterans, having already moved to New Mexico, to remain there so as to secure the tax benefit. Similarly, the statute could plausibly encourage certain veterans, who had once resided in New Mexico prior to May 8,1976, to return to the State. This selective incentive, however, would encounter the same constitutional barrier faced by the statute’s distinction between past and newly arrived residents. See infra.
A state objective to inhibit migration into the State would encounter “insurmountable constitutional difficulties.” Zobel, supra, at 62, n. 9. See Shapiro v. Thompson, supra, at 629.
For a compilation of the variety of state veterans’ preference statutes, see House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, State Veterans’ Laws, 98th Cong., 2d Sess., 1-306 (Comm. Print No. 47, 1984).
Veterans’ benefit statutes, which condition eligibility on state residence at the time of induction into the military, have survived challenges under the Equal Protection Clause before Zobel was decided. See, e. g., Langston v. Levitt, 425 F. Supp. 642 (SDNY 1977); August v. Bronstein, 369 F. Supp. 190 (SDNY), summarily aff’d, 417 U. S. 901 (1974); Leech v. Veterans’ Bonus Division Appeals, 179 Conn. 311, 426 A. 2d 289 (1979).
The Court’s summary affirmance in August v. Bronstein may not be read as an adoption of the reasoning of the judgment under review. Zobel v. Williams, 457 U. S., at 64, n. 13; Fusari v. Steinberg, 419 U. S. 379, 391 (1975) (concurring opinion). Indeed, the Second Circuit recently has ruled that such a statute could not pass muster under the Equal Protection Clause in light of the Court’s holding in Zobel. Soto-Lopez v. New York City Civil Service Comm’n, 755 F. 2d 266 (1985), appeal docketed, No. 84-1803. Given the circumstances presented in this ease, we need not consider here the constitutionality of these statutes.
Compare the New Mexico open-ended prior-residence requirement with the specific criteria of Ill. Rev. Stat. Ch. 12672, ¶ 57.52 (1983); Ky. Rev. Stat. §40.005 (1980); and Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 51, §§20122, 20123 (1976 and Supp. 1984-1985) (Purdon).
We also note that the New Mexico statute differs from the local “bounty” laws enacted during the Civil War era, through which States paid residents cash bonuses for enlisting. See generally E. Murdock, Patriotism Unlimited, 1862-1865, pp. 16-41 (1967).
In Zobel v. Williams, the Court held that an Alaska statute that used length of state residence to calculate distribution of dividends from the State’s oil reserves violated the Equal Protection Clause. We made clear that the statute’s only conceivable purpose — “to reward citizens for past contributions” — is “not a legitimate state purpose.” 457 U. S., at 63; see id., at 68 (Brennan, J., concurring).
Concurring in Zobel, Justice Brennan noted that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment “does not provide for, and does not allow for, degrees of citizenship based on length of residenee. And the Equal Protection Clause would not tolerate such distinctions.” Id., at 69 (footnote omitted).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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 Clark
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner David D. Beck contends that his conviction of grand larceny in the Superior Court of the State of Washington for King County is invalid under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. This contention is based primarily on what is characterized as voluminous and continuous adverse publicity circulated by news media in the vicinity of Seattle, Washington, where he was indicted and tried. Specifically he claims, inter alia, that the grand jury was unfairly impaneled and instructed, that the prosecutor acted improperly before the grand jury, and that his motions for a change of venue and for continuances were erroneously denied. The judges of the Supreme Court of Washington divided equally in review, 56 Wash. 2d 474, 349 P. 2d 387, 353 P. 2d 429, leaving petitioner’s conviction undisturbed. We granted certiorari limited to the above contentions, 365 U. S. 866, and we now affirm the conviction.
I. The Publicity oe Which Petitioner Complains.
In addition to challenges to the grand and petit juries, petitioner prior to the selection of the petit jury made five motions on the ground of bias and prejudice arising from the publicity, viz., one to quash the indictment, three for continuances ranging from one month to an indefinite period, and one for a change of venue to Snohomish or Whatcom County. Petitioner’s counsel supported his factual contentions in regard to these various motions by his personal affidavits as well as by photostats of stories appearing in local newspapers and national magazines. We shall now summarize the highlights of the publicity set forth by the petitioner in his moving papers and exhibits.
The Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field of the United States Senate began its investigation on February 26, 1957. In early March the Chairman of the Committee announced that the Committee had “produced ‘rather conclusive’ evidence of a tie-up between West Coast Teamsters and underworld bosses to monopolize vice in Portland, Ore.” The announcement also stated that “Teamsters’ President Dave Beck and Brewster [also a Teamster leader] will be summoned for questioning on a charge that they schemed to control Oregon’s law enforcement machinery from a local level on up to the governor’s chair.”
On March 22 the Committee was quoted in the newspapers as stating “$250,000 had been taken from Teamster funds . . . and used for Beck’s personal benefit.” Petitioner appeared before the Committee on March 26, and the newspapers reported: “BECK TAKES 5TH AMENDMENT President of Teamsters ‘Very Definitely’ Thinks Records Might Incriminate Him.” Television cameras were permitted at the hearings. One Seattle TV station ran an 8%-hour “live” broadcast of the session on March 27, and films of this session were shown by various TV stations in the Seattle-Tacoma area. The April 12 issue of the U. S. News & World Report ran a caption: “Take a look around Seattle these days, and you find what a Senate inquiry can do to a top labor leader in his own home town.” On April 26 the county prosecutor announced that a special grand jury would be impaneled in Seattle “to investigate possible misuse of Teamsters Union funds by international president Dave Beck . . . .” It was later announced that former Mayor Devin of Seattle was to be appointed Chief Special Prosecutor. On May 3 petitioner was indicted by a federal grand jury at Tacoma for income tax evasion. The announcement of this action was of course in front-page headlines. Five days later the petitioner was again called as a witness before the Committee in Washington. News stories on his appearance concentrated on his pleading of the Fifth Amendment 60 times during the hearings. Other stories emanating from the Committee hearings were featured intermittently, and on May 20, the day of the convening of the special grand jury, the Chairman of the Senate Committee announced that “the Committee has not convicted Mr. Beck of any crime, although it is my belief that he has committed many criminal offenses.” The publicity continued to some degree after the grand jury had been convened and during the three-week period in which the prosecutors were gathering up documentary evidence through the use of grand jury subpoenas. Among other stories that appeared was one of June 4 stating that at the Committee hearings “Beck, Jr., who even refused to say whether he knew his father, took shelter behind the [fifth] amendment 130 times, following the example of Beck, Sr., who refused to answer 210 times in three appearances before the committee.” The indictment in this case was returned by the special grand jury on July 12 and of course received banner headlines. Intermittent publicity continued, some from Washington, D. C., until August 28 when a federal grand jury indicted petitioner and others on additional income tax evasion counts. The co-conspirators named in this latter indictment were then called before the Committee in Washington, and these hearings, which were held on November 5, brought on additional publicity. On November 12 Dave Beck, Jr., went to trial on other larceny charges and was convicted on November 23, a Saturday. The state papers gave that event considerable coverage. The trial of petitioner in this case began on December 2 and continued until his conviction on December 14.
II. The Objections to the Grand Jury Proceedings.
Ever since Hurtado v. California, 110 U. S. 516 (1884), this Court has consistently held that there is no federal constitutional impediment to dispensing entirely with the grand jury in state prosecutions. The State of Washington abandoned its mandatory grand jury practice some 50 years ago. Since that time prosecutions have been instituted on informations filed by the prosecutor, on many occasions without even a prior judicial determination of “probable cause” — a procedure which has likewise had approval here in such cases as Ocampo v. United States, 234 U. S. 91 (1914), and Lem Woon v. Oregon, 229 U. S. 586 (1913). Grand juries in Washington are convened only on special occasions and for specific purposes. The grand jury in this case, the eighth called in King County in 40 years, was summoned primarily to investigate circumstances which had been the subject of the Senate Committee hearings.
In his attempts before trial to have the indictment set aside petitioner did not contend that any particular grand juror was prejudiced or biased. Rather, he asserted that the judge impaneling the grand jury had breached his duty to ascertain on voir dire whether any prospective juror had been influenced by the adverse publicity and that this error had been compounded by his failure to adequately instruct the grand jury concerning bias and prejudice. It may be that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires the State, having once resorted to a grand jury procedure, to furnish an unbiased grand jury. Compare Lawn v. United States, 355 U. S. 339, 349-350 (1958); Costello v. United States, 350 U. S. 359, 363 (1956); Hoffman v. United States, 341 U. S. 479, 485 (1951). But we find that it is not necessary for us to determine this question; for even if due process would require a State to furnish an unbiased body once it resorted to grand jury procedure — a question upon which we do not remotely intimate any view — we have concluded that Washington, so far as is shown by the record, did so in this case.
Petitioner’s appearance before the Senate Committee was current news of high national interest and quite normally was widely publicized throughout the Nation, including his home city of Seattle and the State of Washington. His answers to and conduct before the Committee disclosed the possibility that he had committed local offenses within the jurisdiction of King County, Washington, against the laws of that State. In the light of those disclosures the King County authorities were duty-bound to investigate and, if the State’s laws had been violated, to prosecute the offenders. It appears that documentary evidence — in the hands of petitioner’s union — was necessary to a complete investigation. The only method available to secure such documents was by grand jury process, and it was decided therefore to impanel a grand jury. This Washington was free to do.
Twenty-three prospective grand jurors were called. The trial judge explained, as is customary in such matters, that they had been called primarily to investigate possible crimes committed in King County by officers of the Teamsters Union which had been the subject of the Senate Committee hearings. In impaneling the grand jury the judge, after determining their statutory qualifications, businesses, union affiliations and the like, asked each of the prospective jurors: “Is there anything about sitting on this grand jury that might embarrass you at all?” In answer to this or the question of whether they were conscious of any prejudice or bias, which was asked whenever previous answers suggested a need for further inquiry, two admitted they were prejudiced by the publicity and were excused. Another stated that whether he was prejudiced was “pretty hard to answer,” and he, too, was excused. In addition three persons who were or had been members of unions that were affiliated with petitioner’s union were excused. The remaining 17 were accepted and sworn as grand jurors and as a part of the oath swore that they would not “present [any] person through envy, hatred or malice.” Among them were a retired city employee who had been a Teamster, the manager of a real estate office, a bookkeeper, an engineer, an airplane manufacturer’s employee, a seamstress whose husband was a union member, a material inspector, a gravel company superintendent who was a former Teamsters Union member, a civil engineer with the State Department of Fisheries, and an engineer for a gyroscope manufacturer.
In his charge to the grand jury the trial judge explained that its “function is to inquire into the commission of crime in the county,” that ordinarily this was done “by the regularly established law enforcement agencies,” but that this was impossible here because further investigation was necessary requiring the attendance of witnesses and the examination of books and records which a prosecutor had no power to compel. As to the purpose for which it was called, he explained that “disclosures” by the Senate Investigating Committee indicated “hundreds of thousands of dollars of the funds” of the Teamsters Union had been “embezzled or stolen” by its officers. He also stated that the president of the Teamsters had “publicly declared” that the money he had received was a loan. “This presents a question of fact,” he added, “the truth of which is for you to ascertain.” After mentioning other accusations he concluded, “I urge you to do all that you can within practical limitations to ascertain the truth or falsity of these charges. . . . You have a most serious task to perform .... It is a tremendous responsibility, and I wish you well in your work.”
It is true that the judge did not admonish the grand jurors to disregard or disbelieve news reports and publicity concerning petitioner. Nor did he mention or explain the effect of the invocation of the Fifth Amendment by petitioner before the Committee or inquire as to the politics of any panel member. Discussion along such lines might well have added fuel to the flames which some see here. Apparently sensing this dilemma the judge admonished the grand jury that its function was to inquire into the commission of crime in the county and that it was to conduct an examination of witnesses as well as books and records. Twice in his short statement he said that it was for the grand jury to determine whether the charges were true or false. Taking the instructions as a whole, they made manifest that the jurors were to sift the charges by careful investigation, interrogation of witnesses, and examination of records, not by newspaper stories.
In the light of these facts and on the attack made we cannot say that the grand jury was biased. It was chosen from the regular jury list. Some six months thereafter a petit jury to try this case was selected from the same community and, as will hereafter be shown, was not found to be prejudicéd. Indeed, every judge who passed on the- issue in the State’s courts, including its highest court, has so held. A look at the grand jury through the record reveals that it was composed of people from all walks of life, some of whom were former union members. The judge immediately and in the presence of all of the panel eliminated six prospective grand jurors when indications of prejudice appeared. No grand juror personally knew petitioner or was shown to be adverse to the institutions with which petitioner is generally identified. Every person who was selected on the grand jury took an oath that he would not indict any person through “hatred or malice.” Moreover, the grand jury sat for six weeks before any indictment was returned against petitioner. The record also indicates that it heard voluminous testimony on the charges that had been made against petitioner and others and that it gave the matter most meticulous and careful consideration. We therefore conclude that petitioner has failed to show that the body which indicted him was biased or prejudiced against him.
In addition to the above due process contention three equal protection arguments are made by petitioner or suggested on his behalf. First, petitioner argues he is a member of a class (Teamsters) that was not accorded equal treatment in grand jury proceedings. The contention is based on references to the Teamsters by the judge impaneling the grand jury as he conducted the voir dire and explained the scope of the investigation. The complete answer to petitioner’s argument is that references to the Teamsters were necessary in the voir dire to eliminate persons who might be prejudiced for or against petitioner and in the instructions to explain the purpose and scope of this special body. Petitioner has totally failed to establish that non-Teamsters who are members of groups under investigation are given any different treatment.
Secondly, it is said that the Washington statute permitting persons in custody to challenge grand jurors, Revised Code of Washington § 10.28.030, denies equal protection to persons not in custody who are investigated by grand juries. This point is not properly before this Court. Although both opinions of the Washington Supreme Court discuss the interpretation of § 10.28.030, neither considered that question in light of the equal protection argument for that argument was never properly presented to the court in relation to this statute. The Washington Supreme Court has unfailingly refused to consider constitutional attacks upon statutes not made in the trial court, even where the constitutional claims arise from the trial court’s interpretation of the challenged statute. E. g., Johnson v. Seattle, 50 Wash. 2d 543, 313 P. 2d 676 (1957). Petitioner’s formal attack at the trial court level did not even mention § 10.28.030, much less argue that a restrictive interpretation would be unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause. That the prosecution and the court viewed petitioner as outside the scope of § 10.28.030 was brought home to him in the course of the trial court proceedings on his grand jury attack. But even then petitioner did not suggest that constitutional considerations might compel a different result. The failure to inject the equal protection contention into the case was carried forward to the proceedings before the Washington Supreme Court when petitioner failed to comply with that court’s rule prescribing the manner in which contentions are to be brought to its attention. Rule 43 of the Rules on Appeal, Revised Code of Washington, provides that “[n]o alleged error of the superior court will be considered by this court unless the same be definitely pointed out in the 'assignments of error’ in appellant’s brief.” Mere generalized attacks upon the validity of the holding below as petitioner made in his “assignments of error” are not considered by reason of this rule sufficient to invoke review of the underlying contentions. See, e. g., Washington v. Tanzymore, 54 Wash. 2d 290, 292, 340 P. 2d 178, 179 (1959); Fowles v. Sweeney, 41 Wash. 2d 182, 188, 248 P. 2d 400, 403, (1952). Nor will the Washington Supreme Court search through the brief proper to find specific contentions which should have been listed within the “assignments of error.” See Washington ex rel. Linden v. Bunge, 192 Wash. 245, 251, 73 P. 2d 516, 518-519 (1937). Moreover, the failure of petitioner to argue the constitutional contention in his brief, as opposed to merely setting it forth as he did in one sentence of his 125-page brief, is considered by the Washington Supreme Court to be an abandonment or waiver of such contention. E. g., Martin v. J. C. Penney Co., 50 Wash. 2d 560, 565, 313 P. 2d 689, 693 (1957); Washington v. Williams, 49 Wash. 2d 354, 356-357, 301 P. 2d 769, 770 (1956). Nor was the equal protection contention made at all in the petitions for rehearing filed after the Supreme Court had agreed with the lower court’s interpretation of the statute to exclude petitioner. Assuming arguendo that for the purposes of our jurisdiction the question would have been timely if raised in a petition for rehearing, not having been raised there or elsewhere or actually decided by the Washington Supreme Court, the argument cannot be entertained here under an unbroken line of precedent. E. g., Ferguson v. Georgia, 365 U. S. 570, 572 (1961); Capital City Dairy Co. v. Ohio, 183 U. S. 238, 248 (1902). Furthermore, it was not within the scope of the questions to which the writ of certiorari in this case was specifically limited, 365 U. S. 866, and for this additional reason cannot now be presented.
The final argument under the Equal Protection Clause is that Washington has singled out petitioner for special treatment by denying him the procedural safeguards the law affords others to insure an unbiased grand jury. But this reasoning proceeds on the wholly unsupported assumption that such procedures have been required in Washington in all other cases. Moreover, it is contrary to the underlying finding of the Superior Court, in denying the motion to dismiss the indictment, that the grand jurors were lawfully selected and instructed. And even if we were to assume that Washington law requires such procedural safeguards, the petitioner’s argument here comes down to a contention that Washington law was misapplied. Such misapplication cannot be shown to be an invidious discrimination. We have said time and again that the Fourteenth Amendment does not “assure uniformity of judicial decisions . . . [or] immunity from judicial error . . . .” Milwaukee Electric Ry. & Light Co. v. Wisconsin ex rel. Milwaukee, 252 U. S. 100, 106 (1920). Were it otherwise, every alleged misapplication of state law would constitute a federal constitutional question. Finally, were we to vacate this conviction because of a failure to follow certain procedures although it has not been shown that their ultimate end — a fair grand jury proceeding — was not obtained, we would be exalting form over substance contrary to our previous application of the Equal Protection Clause, e. g., Graham v. West Virginia, 224 U. S. 616, 630 (1912).
Petitioner also contends that a witness before the grand jury was improperly interrogated in a manner which prejudiced his case before that body. It appears that an employee of petitioner’s union was called before the grand jury to testify in reference to activities within his employment. During his first appearance he made statements which he subsequently changed on a voluntary reappearance before the grand jury some two days before the indictment was returned. On the second appearance the prosecutor attacked the witness’ changed story as incredible and warned him that he was under oath, that he might be prosecuted for perjury, and that there was no occasion for him to go to jail for petitioner. The record indicates that the prosecutor became incensed over the witness’ new story; and though some of his threats were out of bounds, it appears that they had no effect upon the witness whatsoever for he stuck to his story. We can find no irregularity of constitutional proportions, and we therefore reject this contention.
III. The Objections as to the Petit JuRy.
As in his grand jury attack, petitioner makes no claim that any particular petit juror was biased. Instead, he states the publicity which prevented the selection of a fair grand jury also precluded a fair petit jury. He argues that such a strong case of adverse publicity has been proved that any jury selected in Seattle at the time he was tried must be held to be presumptively biased and that the trial court’s adverse rulings on his motions for a change of venue and for continuances were therefore in error. Of course there could be no constitutional infirmity in these rulings if petitioner actually received a trial by an impartial jury. Hence, our inquiry is addressed to that subject.
Petitioner’s trial began early in December. This was nine and one-half months after he was first called before the Senate Committee and almost five months after his indictment. Although there was some adverse publicity during the latter period which stemmed from the second tax indictment and later Senate hearings as well as from the trial of petitioner’s son, it was neither intensive nor extensive. The news value of the original “disclosures” was diminished, and the items were often relegated to the inner pages. Even the occasional front-page items were straight news stories rather than invidious articles which would tend to arouse ill will and vindictiveness. If there was a campaign against him as petitioner infers, it was sidetracked by the appearance of other “labor bosses” on the scene who shared the spotlight.
The process of selecting a jury began with the exclusion from the panel of all persons summoned as prospective jurors in the November 12 trial of Dave Beck, Jr. In addition, all persons were excused who were in the courtroom at any time during the trial of that case. Next, the members were examined by the court and counsel at length. Of the 52 so examined, only eight admitted bias or a preformed opinion as to petitioner’s guilt and six others suggested they might be biased or might have formed an opinion — all of whom were excused. Every juror challenged for cause by petitioner’s counsel was excused; in addition petitioner was given six peremptory-challenges, all of which were exercised. Although most of the persons thus selected for the trial jury had been exposed to some of the publicity related above, each indicated that he was not biased, that he had formed no opinion as to petitioner's guilt which would require evidence to remove, and that he would enter the trial with an open mind disregarding anything he had read on the case.
A study of the voir dire indicates clearly that each juror’s qualifications as to impartiality far exceeded the minimum standards this Court established in its earlier cases as well as in Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U. S. 717 (1961), on which petitioner depends. There we stated:
“To hold that the mere existence of any preconceived notion as to the guilt or innocence of an accused, without more, is sufficient to rebut the presumption of a prospective juror’s impartiality would be to establish an impossible standard. It is sufficient if the juror can lay aside his impression or opinion and render a verdict based on the evidence presented in court.” Id., at 723.
We cannot say the pretrial publicity was so intensive and extensive or the examination of the entire panel revealed such prejudice that a court could not believe the answers of the jurors and would be compelled to find bias or preformed opinion as a matter of law. Compare Irvin v. Dowd, supra, at 723-728, where sensational publicity adverse to the accused permeated the small town in which he was tried, the voir dire examination indicated that 90% of 370 prospective jurors and two-thirds of those seated on the jury had an opinion as to guilt, and the accused unsuccessfully challenged for cause several persons accepted on the jury. The fact that petitioner did not challenge for cause any of the jurors so selected is strong evidence that he was convinced the jurors were not biased and had not formed any opinions as to his guilt. In addition, we note that while the Washington Supreme Court was divided on the question of the right of an accused to an impartial grand jury, the denial of the petitioner’s motions based on the bias and prejudice of the petit jury did not raise a single dissenting voice.
“While this Court stands ready to correct violations of constitutional rights, it also holds that 'it is not asking too much that the burden of showing essential unfairness be sustained by him who claims such injustice and seeks to have the result set aside, and that it be sustained not as a matter of speculation but as a demonstrable reality.’ ” United States ex rel. Darcy v. Handy, 351 U. S. 454, 462 (1956). This burden has not been met.
Affirmed.
Me. Justice Frankfurter took no part in the decision of this case.
Mr. Justice White took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Washington Laws 1909, c. 87.
Washington v. Griffith, 52 Wash. 2d 721, 328 P. 24 897 (1958), does not detract from this principle. In Griffith the Washington Supreme Court, while recognizing the general rule that constitutional arguments cannot be presented for the first time in the Supreme Court, found an exception to this general rule when the accused in a capital case asserts his court-appointed attorney incompetently conducted his trial. The reasons for such an exception are obvious, and it is just as obvious that such reasons are not applicable to the present case.
Petitioner made the following attacks upon the grand jury:
“Motion to Set Aside and Dismiss Indictment — Filed October 18, 1957
“Comes Now David D. Beck, also known as Dave Beck, defendant herein, by and through his attorneys of record herein, and respectfully moves to set aside and dismiss the indictment on the following grounds:
“1. That the grand jurors were not selected, drawn, summoned, impaneled or sworn as prescribed by law.
“2. That unauthorized persons, not required or permitted by law to attend sessions of the grand jury were present before the grand jury during the investigation of the allegations of the indictment.
“3. That persons other than the grand jurors were present before the grand jury during consideration of the matters and things charged in the indictment.
“4. That the proceedings of the grand jury which returned the indictment were conducted in an atmosphere of extreme bias, prejudice and hostility toward this defendant, and that said atmosphere was in part created by the Prosecuting Attorney and by persons acting or claiming to act upon his behalf; all of which was prejudicial to this defendant and which has denied and will continue to deny him rights guaranteed under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, Amendment 10 of the Constitution of the State of Washington, and Article I, § 3 of the Constitution of the State of Washington.
“5. That by reason of extreme bias, prejudice and hostility toward the defendant herein, contributed to in part by the conduct of the Prosecuting Attorney and persons acting or claiming to act upon his behalf, it is and will be impossible for the defendant to secure and obtain a fair and impartial trial in the jurisdiction of this Court, all of which is and will be prejudicial to this defendant and which will constitute a denial of his rights guaranteed under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, Amendment 10 of the Constitution of the State of Washington, and Article I, § 3 of the Constitution of the State of Washington.
“6. That the Court erred in its instructions and directions to the Grand Jury to the prejudice of the defendant and in denial of rights guaranteed under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, Amendment 10 of the Constitution of the State of Washington, and Article I, § 3 of the Constitution of the State of Washington.
“7. That there were excluded from the Grand Jury persons of defendant’s financial, social and business class and occupation, contrary to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and contrary to Article I, § 3 of the Constitution of the State of Washington.
“8. That the defendant herein was required and compelled to give evidence against himself, contrary to the provisions of Article I, § 9 of the Constitution of the State of Washington and the 5th and 14th Amendments of the Constitution of the United States.
“9. That the Grand Jury committed misconduct in violation of RCW 10.28.085 and R.CW 10.28.100.
“This motion is based upon all of the files, records, transcripts, exhibits and affidavits herein.”
"Challenge to Grand Jury — Filed October 18, 1957
“Comes Now the defendant herein and challenges each and all of the members of the grand jury which returned the indictment herein for the reason and on the grounds that the Court which impaneled said grand jury made no determination as to whether a state of mind existed on the part of any juror such as would render him unable to act impartially and without prejudice.”
Petitioner’s 29 “assignments of error” included the following:
“6. The lower court erred in denying appellant’s motion to set aside and dismiss the indictment.
“7. The lower court erred in denying appellant’s challenge to grand jury.
“25. The court denied appellant’s rights to a fair and impartial grand jury.”
However, when petitioner did attempt to conform to the rule of the Washington Supreme Court by pointing out “definitely” the errors committed in denying his attacks upon the grand jury, he limited the review to violations of the Due Process Clause as set out below.
“29. The appellant was denied due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America and under the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution of the State of Washington, as follows:
“a. by denying appellant his right to challenge the grand jury or to dismiss the indictment for bias and prejudice of the grand jury members.
“b. by denying his motions for continuance and change of venue thereby forcing appellant to go to trial in an atmosphere of extreme hostility and prejudice.
“c. by misconduct of the prosecutor
“1. during and after the grand jury proceedings, and
“2. at the trial.
“d. by denying appellant an opportunity to examine or inspect transcripts of proceedings before the grand jury after the State had introduced evidence of particular statements made before the grand jury by cross-examination or secondary evidence.
“e. the means used to accuse and convict appellant were not compatible with reasonable standards of fair play.”
There are no reported Washington cases so holding. The two cases on which this claim is predicated, Washington v. Guthrie, 185 Wash. 464, 56 P. 2d 160 (1936), and Washington ex rel. Murphy v. Superior Court, 82 Wash. 284, 144 P. 32 (1914), were concerned only with whether the members of the grand jury had been selected by chance as the law requires. Quotations from these cases when read in context clearly have reference only to the desirability of selecting grand jurors by chance. Petitioner in his rehearing petition before the Washington Supreme Court quoted from two unnamed, unreported Washington grand jury proceedings in which some prospective jurors were questioned as to bias. Even if it were clear that all the jurors in those cases were so questioned (which it is not), such isolated, unreviewable instances would not establish that Washington law requires the claimed procedures.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Scalia
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We address in this case the question whether a defendant’s incriminating statement to a jailhouse informant, concededly elicited in violation of Sixth Amendment strictures, is admissible at trial to impeach the defendant’s conflicting statement.
I
In the early hours of January 7,2004, after two days of no sleep and some drug use, Rhonda Theel and respondent Donnie Ray Ventris reached an ill-conceived agreement to confront Ernest Hicks in his home. The couple testified that the aim of the visit was simply to investigate rumors that Hicks abused children, but the couple may have been inspired by the potential for financial gain: Theel had recently learned that Hicks carried large amounts of cash.
The encounter did not end well. One or both of the pair shot and killed Hicks with shots from a .38-caliber revolver, and the companions drove off in Hicks’s truck with approximately $300 of his money and his cell phone. On receiving a tip from two friends of the couple who had helped transport them to Hicks's home, officers arrested Ventris and Theel and charged them with various crimes, chief among them murder and aggravated robbery. The State dropped the murder charge against Theel in exchange for her guilty plea to the robbery charge and her testimony identifying Ventris as the shooter.
Prior to trial, officers planted an informant in Ventris’s holding cell, instructing him to “keep [his] ear open and listen” for incriminating statements. App. 146. According to the informant, in response to his statement that Ventris appeared to have “something more serious weighing in on his mind,” Ventris divulged that “[h]e’d shot this man in his head and in his chest” and taken “his keys, his wallet, about $350.00, and ... a vehicle.” Id., at 154, 150.
At trial, Ventris took the stand and blamed the robbery and shooting entirely on Theel. The government sought to call the informant, to testify to Ventris’s prior contradictory statement; Ventris objected. The State conceded that there was “probably a violation” of Ventris’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel but nonetheless argued that the statement was admissible for impeachment purposes because the violation “doesn’t give the Defendant... a license to just get on the stand and lie.” Id., at 143. The trial court agreed and allowed the informant’s testimony, but instructed the jury to “consider with caution” all testimony given in exchange for benefits from the State. Id., at 30. The jury ultimately acquitted Ventris of felony murder and misdemeanor theft but returned a guilty verdict on the aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery counts.
The Kansas Supreme Court reversed the conviction, holding that “[o]nce a criminal prosecution has commenced, the defendant’s statements made to an undercover informant surreptitiously acting as an agent for the State are not admissible at trial for any reason, including the impeachment of the defendant’s testimony.” 285 Kan. 595, 606, 176 P. 3d 920, 928 (2008). Chief Justice McFarland dissented, id., at 611, 176 P. 3d, at 930. We granted the State’s petition for certiorari, 554 U. S. 944 (2008).
II
The Sixth Amendment, applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, guarantees that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall . . . have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” The core of this right has historically been, and remains today, “the opportunity for a defendant to consult with an attorney and to have him investigate the case and prepare a defense for trial.” Michigan v. Harvey, 494 U. S. 344, 348 (1990). We have held, however, that the right extends to having counsel present at various pretrial “critical” interactions between the defendant and the State, United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218, 224 (1967), including the deliberate elicitation by law enforcement officers (and their agents) of statements pertaining to the charge, Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. 201, 206 (1964). The State has conceded throughout these proceedings that Ventris’s confession was taken in violation of Massiah’s dictates and was therefore not admissible in the prosecution’s case in chief. Without affirming that this concession was necessary, see Kuhlmann v. Wilson, 477 U. S. 436, 459-460 (1986), we accept it as the law of the case. The only question we answer today is whether the State must bear the additional consequence of inability to counter Ventris’s contradictory testimony by placing the informant on the stand.
A
Whether otherwise excluded evidence can be admitted for purposes of impeachment depends upon the nature of the constitutional guarantee that is violated. Sometimes that explicitly mandates exclusion from trial, and sometimes it does not. The Fifth Amendment guarantees that no person shall be compelled to give evidence against himself, and so is violated whenever a truly coerced confession is introduced at trial, whether by way of impeachment or otherwise. New Jersey v. Portash, 440 U. S. 450, 458-459 (1979). The Fourth Amendment, on the other hand, guarantees that no person shall be subjected to unreasonable searches or seizures, and says nothing about excluding their fruits from evidence; exclusion comes by way of deterrent sanction rather than to avoid violation of the substantive guarantee. Inadmissibility has not been automatic, therefore, but we have instead applied an exclusionary-rule balancing test. See Walder v. United States, 347 U. S. 62, 65 (1954). The same is true for violations of the Fifth and Sixth Amendment prophylactic rules forbidding certain pretrial police conduct. See Harris v. New York, 401 U. S. 222, 225-226 (1971); Harvey, supra, at 348-350.
Respondent argues that the Sixth Amendment’s right to counsel is a “right an accused is to enjoy a[t] trial” Brief for Respondent 11. The core of the right to counsel is indeed a trial right, ensuring that the prosecution’s case is subjected to “the crucible of meaningful adversarial testing.” United States v. Cronic, 466 U. S. 648, 656 (1984). See also Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 57-58 (1932). But our opinions under the Sixth Amendment, as under the Fifth, have held that the right covers pretrial interrogations to ensure that police manipulation does not render counsel entirely impotent — depriving the defendant of “‘effective representation by counsel at the only stage when legal aid and advice would help him.’ ” Massiah, supra, at 204 (quoting Spano v. New York, 360 U. S. 315, 326 (1959) (Douglas, J., concurring)). See also Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, 468-469 (1966).
Our opinion in Massiah, to be sure, was equivocal on what precisely constituted the violation. It quoted various authorities indicating that the violation occurred at the moment of the postindictment interrogation because such questioning “‘contravenes the basic dictates of fairness in the conduct of criminal causes.’ ” 377 U. S., at 205 (quoting People v. Waterman, 9 N. Y. 2d 561, 565, 175 N. E. 2d 445, 448 (1961)). But the opinion later suggested that the violation occurred only when the improperly obtained evidence was “used against [the defendant] at his trial.” 377 U. S., at 206-207. That question was irrelevant to the decision in Massiah in any event. Now that we are confronted with the question, we conclude that the Massiah right is a right to be free of uncounseled interrogation, and is infringed at the time of the interrogation. That, we think, is when the “Assistance of Counsel” is denied.
It is illogical to say that the right is not violated until trial counsel’s task of opposing conviction has been undermined by the statement’s admission into evidence. A defendant is not denied counsel merely because the prosecution has been permitted to introduce evidence of guilt — even evidence so overwhelming that the attorney’s job of gaining an acquittal is rendered impossible. In such circumstances the accused continues to enjoy the assistance of counsel; the assistance is simply not worth much. The assistance of counsel has been denied, however, at the prior critical stage which produced, the inculpatory evidence. Our cases acknowledge that reality in holding that the stringency of the warnings necessary for a waiver of the assistance of counsel varies according to “the usefulness of counsel to the accused at the particular [pretrial] proceeding.” Patterson v. Illinois, 487 U. S. 285, 298 (1988). It is that deprivation which demands a remedy.
The United States insists that “post-charge deliberate elicitation of statements without the defendant's counsel or a valid waiver of counsel is not intrinsically unlawful.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 17, n. 4. That is true when the questioning is unrelated to charged crimes — the Sixth Amendment right is “offense specific,” McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U. S. 171, 175 (1991). We have never said, however, that officers may badger counseled defendants about charged crimes so long as they do not use information they gain. The constitutional violation occurs when the uncounseled interrogation is conducted.
B
This case does not involve, therefore, the prevention of a constitutional violation, but rather the scope of the remedy for a violation that has already occurred. Our precedents make clear that the game of excluding tainted evidence for impeachment purposes is not worth the candle. The interests safeguarded by such exclusion are “outweighed by the need to prevent perjury and to assure the integrity of the trial process.” Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 488 (1976). “It is one thing to say that the Government cannot make an affirmative use of evidence unlawfully obtained. It is quite another to say that the defendant can . . . provide himself with a shield against contradiction of his untruths.” Walder, supra, at 65. Once the defendant testifies in a way that contradicts prior statements, denying the prosecution use of “the traditional truth-testing devices of the adversary process,” Harris, supra, at 225, is a high price to pay for vindication of the right to counsel at the prior stage.
On the other side of the scale, preventing impeachment use of statements taken in violation of Massiah would add little appreciable deterrence. Officers have significant incentive to ensure that they and their informants comply with the Constitution’s demands, since statements lawfully obtained can be used for all purposes rather than simply for impeachment. And the ex ante probability that evidence gained in violation of Massiah would be of use for impeachment is exceedingly small. An investigator would have to anticipate both that the defendant would choose to testify at trial (an unusual occurrence to begin with) and that he would testify inconsistently despite the admissibility of his prior statement for impeachment. Not likely to happen — or at least not likely enough to risk squandering the opportunity of using a properly obtained statement for the prosecution’s case in chief.
In any event, even if “the officer may be said to have little to lose and perhaps something to gain by way of possibly uncovering impeachment material,” we have multiple times rejected the argument that this “speculative possibility” can trump the costs of allowing perjurious statements to go unchallenged. Oregon v. Hass, 420 U. S. 714, 723 (1975). We have held in every other context that tainted evidence — evidence whose very introduction does not constitute the constitutional violation, but whose obtaining was constitutionally invalid — is admissible for impeachment. See ibid.; Walder, 347 U. S., at 65; Harris, 401 U. S., at 226; Harvey, 494 U. S., at 348. We see no distinction that would alter the balance here.
* * *
We hold that the informant’s testimony, concededly elicited in violation of the Sixth Amendment, was admissible to challenge Ventris’s inconsistent testimony at trial. The judgment of the Kansas Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Ginsburg joins, dissenting.
In Michigan v. Harvey, 494 U. S. 344 (1990), the Court held that a statement obtained from a defendant in violation of the Sixth Amendment could be used to impeach his testimony at trial. As I explained in a dissent joined by three other Members of the Court, that holding eroded the principle that “those who are entrusted with the power of government have the same duty to respect and obey the law as the ordinary citizen.” Id., at 369. It was my view then, as it is now, that “the Sixth Amendment is violated when the fruits of the State’s impermissible encounter with the represented defendant are used for impeachment just as it is when the fruits are used in the prosecutor’s case in chief.” Id., at 355.
In this case, the State has conceded that it violated the Sixth Amendment as interpreted in Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. 201, 206 (1964), when it used a jailhouse informant to elicit a statement from the defendant. No Miranda warnings were given to the defendant, nor was he otherwise alerted to the fact that he was speaking to a state agent. Even though the jury apparently did not credit the informant’s testimony, the Kansas Supreme Court correctly concluded that the prosecution should not be allowed to exploit its pretrial constitutional violation during the trial itself. The Kansas court’s judgment should be affirmed.
This Court’s contrary holding relies on the view that a defendant’s pretrial right to counsel is merely “prophylactic” in nature. See ante, at 591. The majority argues that any violation of this prophylactic right occurs solely at the time the State subjects a counseled defendant to an uncounseled interrogation, not when the fruits of the encounter are used against the defendant at trial. Ante, at 592. This reasoning is deeply flawed.
The pretrial right to counsel is not ancillary to, or of lesser importance than, the right to rely on counsel at trial. The Sixth Amendment grants the right to counsel “[i]n all criminal prosecutions,” and we have long recognized that the right applies in periods before trial commences, see United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218, 224 (1967). We have never endorsed the notion that the pretrial right to counsel stands at the periphery of the Sixth Amendment. To the contrary, we have explained that the pretrial period is “perhaps the most critical period of the proceedings” during which a defendant “requires the guiding hand of counsel.” Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 57, 69 (1932); see Maine v. Moulton, 474 U. S. 159, 176 (1985) (recognizing the defendant’s “right to rely on counsel as a ‘medium’ between him and the State” in all critical stages of prosecution). Placing the prophylactic label on a core Sixth Amendment right mischaraeterizes the sweep of the constitutional guarantee.
Treating the State’s actions in this case as a violation of a prophylactic right, the Court concludes that introducing the illegally obtained evidence at trial does not itself violate the Constitution. I strongly disagree. While the constitutional breach began at the time of interrogation, the State’s use of that evidence at trial compounded the violation. The logic that compels the exclusion of the evidence during the State’s case in chief extends to any attempt by the State to rely on the evidence, even for impeachment. The use of ill-gotten evidence during any phase of criminal prosecution does damage to the adversarial process — the fairness of which the Sixth Amendment was designed to protect. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668, 685 (1984); see also Adams v. United States ex rel. McCann, 317 U. S. 269, 276 (1942) (“[The] procedural devices rooted in experience were written into the Bill of Rights not as abstract rubrics in an elegant code but in order to assure fairness and justice before any person could be deprived of ‘life, liberty or property’ ”).
When counsel is excluded from a critical pretrial interaction between the defendant and the State, she may be unable to effectively counter the potentially devastating, and potentially false, evidence subsequently introduced at trial. Inexplicably, today’s Court reftises to recognize that this is a constitutional harm. Yet in Massiah, the Court forcefully explained that a defendant is “denied the basic protections of [the Sixth Amendment] guarantee when there [is] used against him at his trial evidence of his own incriminating words” that were “deliberately elicited from him after he had been indicted and in the absence of his counsel.” 377 U. S., at 206. Sadly, the majority has retreated from this robust understanding of the right to counsel.
Today’s decision is lamentable not only because of its flawed underpinnings, but also because it is another occasion in which the Court has privileged the prosecution at the expense of the Constitution. Permitting the State to cut corners in criminal proceedings taxes the legitimacy of the entire criminal process. “The State’s interest in truthseeking is congruent with the defendant’s interest in representation by counsel, for it is an elementary premise of our system of criminal justice ‘“that partisan advocacy on both sides of a case will best promote the ultimate objective that the guilty be convicted and the innocent go free.” ’ ” Harvey, 494 U. S., at 357 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (quoting United States v. Cronic, 466 U. S. 648, 655 (1984)). Although the Court may not be concerned with the use of ill-gotten evidence in derogation of the right to counsel, I remain convinced that such shabby tactics are intolerable in all cases. I respectfully dissent.
Respondent’s amicus insists that jailhouse snitches are so inherently unreliable that this Court should craft a broader exclusionary rule for uncorroborated statements obtained by that means. Brief for National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers 25-26. Our legal system, however, is built on the premise that it is the province of the jury to weigh the credibility of competing witnesses, and we have long purported to avoid “establishfing] this Court as a rule-making organ for the promulgation of state rules of criminal procedure.” Spencer v. Texas, 385 U. S. 554, 564 (1967). It would be especially inappropriate to fabricate such a rule in this case, where it appears the jury took to heart the trial judge’s cautionary instruction on the unreliability of rewarded informant testimony by acquitting Ventris of felony murder.
See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966).
The likelihood that evidence gathered by self-interested jailhouse informants may be false cannot be ignored. See generally Brief for National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amicus Curiae. Indeed, by deciding to acquit respondent of felony murder, the jury seems to have dismissed the informant’s trial testimony as unreliable.
In the majority’s telling, “simply” having counsel whose help is “not worth much” is not a Sixth Amendment concern. Ante, at 592. Of course, the Court points to no precedent for this stingy view of the Counsel Clause, for we have never held that the Sixth Amendment only protects a defendant from actual denials of counsel. Indeed our venerable ineffective-assistance-of-counsel jurisprudence is built on a more realistic understanding of what the Constitution guarantees. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U. S. 668 (1984); McMann v. Richardson, 397 U. S. 759, 771, n. 14 (1970) (“[T]he right to counsel is the right to the effective assistance of counsel”).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice O’Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The issue presented in this case , is whether a resolution banning all “First Amendment activities” at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) violates the First Amendment.
I
On July 13, 1983, the Board of Airport Commissioners (Board) adopted Resolution No. 13787, which provides in pertinent part:
“NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the Board of Airport Commissioners that the Central Terminal Area at Los Angeles International Airport is not open for First Amendment activities by any individual and/or entity;
“BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that after the effective date of this Resolution, if any individual and/or entity seeks to engage in First Amendment activities within the Central Terminal Area at Los Angeles International Airport, said individual and/or entity shall be deemed to be acting in contravention of the stated policy of the Board of Airport Commissioners in reference to the uses permitted within the Central Terminal Area at Los Angeles International Airport; and
“BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that if any individual or entity engages in First Amendment activities within the Central Terminal Area at Los Angeles International Airport, the City Attorney of the City of Los Angeles is directed to institute appropriate litigation against such individual and/or entity to ensure compliance with this Policy statement of the Board of Airport Commissioners . . . App. 4a-5a.
Respondent Jews for Jesus, Inc., is a nonprofit religious corporation. On July 6,1984, Alan Howard Snyder, a minister of the Gospel for Jews for Jesus, was stopped by a Department of Airports peace officer while distributing free religious literature on a pedestrian walkway in the Central Terminal Area at LAX. The officer showed Snyder a copy of the resolution, explained that Snyder’s activities violated the resolution, and requested that Snyder leave LAX. The officer warned Snyder that the city would take legal action against him if he refused to leave as requested. Id., at 19a-20a. Snyder stopped distributing the leaflets and left the airport terminal. Id., at 20a.
Jews for Jesus and Snyder then filed this action in the District Court for the Central District of California, challenging the constitutionality of the resolution under both the California and Federal Constitutions. First, respondents contended that the resolution was facially unconstitutional under Art. I, §2, of the California Constitution and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution because it bans all speech in a public forum. Second, they alleged that the resolution had been applied to Jews for Jesus in a discriminatory manner. Finally, respondents urged that the resolution was unconstitutionally vague and overbroad.
When the case came before the District Court for trial, the parties orally stipulated to the facts, and the District Court treated the trial briefs as cross-motions for summary judgment. The District Court held that the Central Terminal Area was a traditional public forum under federal law, and that the resolution was facially unconstitutional under the United States Constitution. The District Court declined to reach the other issues raised by Jews for Jesus, and did not address the constitutionality of the resolution under the California Constitution. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. 785 F. 2d 791 (1986). Relying on Rosen v. Port of Portland, 641 F. 2d 1243 (CA9 1981), and Kuszynski v. Oakland, 479 F. 2d 1130 (CA9 1973), the Court of Appeals concluded that “an airport complex is a traditional public forum,” 785 F. 2d, at 795, and held that the resolution was unconstitutional on its face under the Federal Constitution. We granted certiorari, 479 U. S. 812 (1986), and now affirm, but on different grounds.
II
In balancing the government’s interest in limiting the use of its property against the interests of those who wish to use the property for expressive activity, the Court has identified three types of fora: the traditional public forum, the public forum created by government designation, and the nonpublic forum. Perry Ed. Assn. v. Perry Local Educators’ Assn., 460 U. S. 37, 45-46 (1983). The proper First Amendment analysis differs depending on whether the area in question falls in one category rather than another. In a traditional public forum or a public forum by government designation, we have held that First Amendment protections are subject to heightened scrutiny:
“In these quintessential public forums, the government may not prohibit all communicative activity. For the State to enforce a content-based exclusion it must show that its regulation is necessary to serve a compelling state interest and that it is narrowly drawn to achieve that end. . . . The State may also enforce regulations of the time, place, and manner of expression which are content-neutral, are narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest, and leave open ample alternative channels of communication.” Id., at 45.
We have further held, however, that access to a nonpublic forum may be restricted by government regulation as long as the regulation “is reasonable and not an effort to suppress expression merely because officials oppose the speaker’s view.” Id., at 46.
The petitioners contend that LAX is neither a traditional public forum nor a public forum by government designation, and accordingly argue that the latter standard governing access to a nonpublic forum is appropriate. The respondents, in turn, argue that LAX is a public forum subject only to reasonable time, place, or manner restrictions. Moreover, at least one commentator contends that Perry does not control a case such as this in which the respondents already have access to the airport, and therefore concludes that this ease is analogous to Tinker v. Des Moines School Dist., 393 U. S. 503 (1969). See Laycock, Equal Access and Moments of Silence: The Equal Status of Religious Speech by Private Speakers, 81 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1, 48 (1986). Because we conclude that the resolution is facially unconstitutional under the the First Amendment overbreadth doctrine regardless of the proper standard, we need not decide whether LAX is indeed a public forum, or whether the Perry standard is applicable when access to a nonpublic forum is not restricted.
Under the First Amendment overbreadth doctrine, an individual whose own speech or conduct may be prohibited is permitted to challenge a statute on its face “because it also threatens others not before the court — those who desire to engage in legally protected expression but who may refrain from doing so rather than risk prosecution or undertake to have the law declared partially invalid.” Brockett v. Spokane Arcades, Inc., 472 U. S. 491, 503 (1985). A statute may be invalidated on its face, however, only if the over-breadth is “substantial.” Houston v. Hill, ante, at 458-459; New York v. Ferber, 458 U. S. 747, 769 (1982); Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U. S. 601, 615 (1973). The requirement that the overbreadth be substantial arose from our recognition that application of the overbreadth doctrine is, “manifestly, strong medicine,” Broadrick v. Oklahoma, supra, at 613, and that “there must be a realistic danger that the statute itself will significantly compromise recognized First Amendment protections of parties not before the Court for it to be facially challenged on overbreadth grounds.” City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U. S. 789, 801 (1984).
On its face, the resolution at issue in this case reaches the universe of expressive activity, and, by prohibiting all protected expression, purports to create a virtual “First Amendment Free Zone” at LAX. The resolution does not merely ■'regulate expressive activity in the Central Terminal Area that might create problems such as congestion or the disruption of the activities of those who use LAX. Instead, the resolution expansively states that LAX “is not open for First Amendment activities by any individual and/or entity,” and that “any individual and/or entity [who] seeks to engage in First Amendment activities within the Central Terminal Area. . . shall be deemed to be acting in contravention of the stated policy of the Board of Airport Commissioners.” App. , 4a-5a. The resolution therefore does not merely reach the activity of respondents at LAX; it prohibits even talking and reading, or the wearing of campaign buttons or symbolic clothing. Under such a sweeping ban, virtually every individual who enters LAX may be found to violate the resolution by engaging in some “First Amendment activit[y].” We think it obvious that such a ban cannot be justified even if LAX were a nonpublic forum because no conceivable governmental interest would justify such an absolute prohibition of speech.
Additionally, we find no apparent saving construction of the resolution. The resolution expressly applies to all “First Amendment activities,” and the words of the resolution simply leave no room for a narrowing construction. In the past the Court sometimes has used either abstention or certification when, as here, the state courts have not had the opportunity to give the statute under challenge a definite construction. See, e. g., Babbitt v. Farm Workers, 442 U. S. 289 (1979). Neither option, however, is appropriate in this case because California has no certification procedure, and the resolution is not “fairly subject to an interpretation which will render unnecessary or substantially modify the federal constitutional question.” Harmon v. Forssenius, 380 U. S. 528, 535 (1965). The difficulties in adopting a limiting construction of the resolution are not unlike those found in Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U. S. 360 (1964). At issue in Baggett was the constitutionality of several statutes requiring loyalty oaths. The Baggett Court concluded that abstention would serve no purpose given the lack of any limiting construction, and held the statutes unconstitutional on their face under the First Amendment overbreadth doctrine. We observed that the challenged loyalty oath was not “open to one or a few interpretations, but to an indefinite number,” and concluded that “[i]t is fictional to believe that anything less than extensive adjudications, under the impact of a variety of factual situations, would bring the oath within the bounds of permissible constitutional certainty.” Id., at 378. Here too, it is difficult, to imagine that the resolution could be limited by anything less than a series of adjudications, and the chilling effect of the resolution on protected speech in the meantime would make such a case-by-case adjudication intolerable.
The petitioners suggest that the resolution is not substantially overbroad because it is intended to reach only expressive activity unrelated to airport-related purposes. Such a limiting construction, however, is of little assistance in substantially reducing the overbreadth of the resolution. Much nondisruptive speech — such as the wearing of a T-shirt or button that contains a political message — may not be “airport related,” but is still protected speech even in a nonpublic forum. See Cohen v. California, 403 U. S. 15 (1971). Moreover, the vagueness of this suggested construction itself presents serious constitutional difficulty. The line between airport-related speech and nonairport-related speech is, at best, murky. The petitioners, for example, suggest that an individual who reads a newspaper or converses with a neighbor at LAX is engaged in permitted “airport-related” activity because reading or conversing permits the traveling public to “pass the time.” Reply Brief for Petitioners 12. We presume, however, that petitioners would not so categorize the activities of a member of a religious or political organization who decides to “pass the time” by distributing leaflets to fellow travelers. In essence, the result of this vague limiting construction would be to give LAX officials alone the power to decide in the first instance whether a given activity is airport related. Such a law that “confers on police a virtually unrestrained power to arrest and charge persons with a violation” of the resolution is unconstitutional because “[t]he opportunity for abuse, especially where a statute has received a virtually open-ended interpretation, is self-evident.” Lewis v. City of New Orleans, 415 U. S. 130, 135-136 (1974) (Powell, J., concurring); see also Houston v. Hill, ante, at 465; Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U. S. 352, 358 (1983).
We conclude that the resolution is substantially overbroad, and is not fairly subject to a limiting construction. Accordingly, we hold that the resolution violates the First Amendment. 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 Black
announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion in which Mr. Justice Douglas, Mr. Justice Brennan, and Mr. Justice Marshall join.
The petitioner, Elliott Ashton Welsh II, was convicted by a United States District Judge of refusing to submit to induction into the Armed Forces in violation of 50 U. S. C. App. § 462 (a), and was on June 1, 1966, sentenced to imprisonment for three years. One of petitioner’s defenses to the prosecution was that § 6 (j) of the Universal Military Training and Service Act exempted him from combat and noncombat service because he was “by reason of religious training and belief . . . conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form.” After finding that there was no religious basis for petitioner’s conscientious objector claim, the Court of Appeals, Judge Hamley dissenting, affirmed the conviction. 404 F. 2d 1078 (1968). We granted certiorari chiefly to review the contention that Welsh’s conviction should be set aside on the basis of this Court’s decision in United States v. Seeger, 380 U. S. 163 (1965). 396 U. S. 816 (1969). For the reasons to be stated, and without passing upon the constitutional arguments that have been raised, we vote to reverse this conviction because of its fundamental inconsistency with United States v. Seeger, supra.
The controlling facts in this case are strikingly similar to those in Seeger. Both Seeger and Welsh were brought up in religious homes and attended church in their childhood, but in neither case was this church one which taught its members not to engage in war at any time for any reason. Neither Seeger nor Welsh continued his childhood religious ties into his young manhood, and neither belonged to any religious group or adhered to the teachings of any organized religion during the period of his involvement with the Selective Service System. At the time of registration for the draft, neither had yet come to accept pacifist principles. Their views on war developed only in subsequent years, but when their ideas did fully mature both made application to their local draft boards for conscientious objector exemptions from military service under § 6 (j) of the Universal Military Training and Service Act. That section then provided, in part:
“Nothing contained in this title shall be construed to require any person to be subject to combatant training and service in the armed forces of the United States who, by reason of religious training and belief, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form. Religious training and belief in this connection means an individual’s belief in a relation to a Supreme Being involving duties superior to those arising from any human relation, but does not include essentially political, sociological, or philosophical views or a merely personal moral code.”
In filling out their exemption applications both Seeger and Welsh were unable to sign the statement that, as printed in the Selective Service form, stated “I am, by reason of my religious training and belief, conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form.” Seeger could sign only after striking the words “training and” and putting quotation marks around the word “religious.” Welsh could sign only after striking the words “my religious training and.” On those same applications, neither could definitely affirm or deny that he believed in a “Supreme Being,” both stating that they preferred to leave the question open. But both Seeger and Welsh affirmed on those applications that they held deep conscientious scruples against taking part in wars where people were killed. Both strongly believed that killing in war was wrong, unethical, and immoral, and their consciences forbade them to take part in such an evil practice. Their objection to participating in war in any form could not be said to come from a “still, small voice of conscience”; rather, .for them that voice was so loud and insistent that both men preferred to go to jail rather than serve in the Armed Forces. There was never any question about the sincerity and depth of Seeger’s convictions as a conscientious objector, and the same is true of Welsh. In this regard the Court of Appeals noted, “[t]he government concedes that [Welsh’s] beliefs are held with the strength of more traditional religious convictions.” 404 F. 2d, at 1081. But in both cases the Selective Service System concluded that the beliefs of these men were in some sense insufficiently “religious” to qualify them for conscientious objector exemptions under the terms of § 6 (j). Seeger’s conscientious objector claim was denied “solely because it was not based upon a ‘belief in a relation to a Supreme Being’ as required by § 6 (j) of the Act,” United States v. Seeger, 380 U. S. 163, 167 (1965), while Welsh was denied the exemption because his Appeal Board and the Department of Justice hearing officer “could find no religious basis for the registrant’s beliefs, opinions and convictions.” App. 52. Both Seeger and Welsh subsequently refused to submit to induction into the military and both were convicted of that offense.
In Seeger the Court was confronted, first, with the problem that § 6 (j) defined “religious training and belief” in terms of a “belief in a relation to a Supreme Being definition that arguably gave a preference to those who believed in a conventional God as opposed to those who did not. Noting the “vast panoply of beliefs” prevalent in our country, the Court construed the congressional intent as being in “keeping with its long-established policy of not picking and choosing among religious beliefs,” id., at 175, and accordingly interpreted “the meaning of religious training and belief so as to embrace all religions . . . .” Id., at 165. (Emphasis added.) But, having decided that all religious conscientious objectors were entitled to the exemption, we faced the more serious problem of determining which beliefs were “religious” within the meaning of the statute. This question was particularly difficult in the case of Seeger himself. Seeger stated that his was a “belief in and devotion to goodness and virtue for their own sakes, and a religious faith in a purely ethical creed.” 380 U. S., at 166. In a letter to his draft board, he wrote: On the basis of these and similar assertions; the Government argued that Seeger’s conscientious objection to war was not “religious” but stemmed from “essentially political, sociological, or philosophical views or a merely personal moral code.”
“My decision arises from what I believe to be considerations of validity from the standpoint of the welfare of humanity and the preservation of the democratic values which we in the United States are struggling to maintain. I have concluded that war, from the practical standpoint, is futile and self-defeating, and that from the more important moral standpoint, it is unethical.” 326 F. 2d 846, 848 (1964).
In resolving the question whether Seeger and the other registrants in that case qualified for the exemption, the Court stated that “[the] task is to decide whether the beliefs professed by a registrant are sincerely held and whether they are, in his oton scheme of things, religious.” 380 U. S., at 185. (Emphasis added.) The reference to the registrant’s “own scheme of things” was intended to indicate that the central consideration in determining whether the registrant’s beliefs are religious is whether these beliefs play the role of a religion and function as a religion in the registrant’s life. The Court’s principal statement of its test for determining whether a conscientious objector’s beliefs are religious within the meaning of § 6 (j) was as follows:
“The test might be stated in these words: A sincere and meaningful belief which occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God of those admittedly qualifying for the exemption comes within the statutory definition.” 380 U. S., at 176.
The Court made it clear that these sincere and meaningful beliefs that prompt the registrant’s objection to all wars need not be confined in either source or content to traditional or parochial concepts of religion. It held that § 6 (j) “does not distinguish between externally and internally derived beliefs,” id., at 186, and also held that “intensely personal” convictions which some might find “incomprehensible” or “incorrect” come within the meaning of “religious belief” in the Act. Id., at 184-185. What is necessary under Seeger for a registrant’s conscientious objection to all war to be “religious” within the meaning of § 6 (j) is that this opposition to war stem from the registrant’s moral, ethical, or religious beliefs, about what is right and wrong and that these beliefs be held with the strength of traditional religious convictions. Most of the great religions of today and of the past have embodied the idea of a Supreme Being or a Supreme Reality — a God — who communicates to man in some way a consciousness of what is right and should be done, of what is wrong and therefore should be shunned. If an individual deeply and sincerely holds beliefs that are purely ethical or moral in source and content but that nevertheless impose upon him a duty of conscience to refrain from participating in any war at any time, those beliefs certainly occupy in the life of that individual “a place parallel to that filled by . . . God” in traditionally religious persons. Because his beliefs function as a religion in his life, such an individual is as much entitled to a “religious” conscientious objector exemption under § 6 (j) as is'someone who derives his conscientious opposition to war from traditional religious convictions.
Applying this standard to Seeger himself, the Court noted the “compulsion to ‘goodness’ ” that shaped his total opposition to war, the undisputed sincerity with which he held his views, and the fact that Seeger had “decried the tremendous ‘spiritual’ price man must pay for his willingness to destroy human life.” 380 U. S., at 186-187. The Court concluded:
“We think it clear that the beliefs which prompted his objection occupy the same place in his life as the belief in a traditional deity holds in the lives of his friends, the Quakers.” 380 U. S., at 187.
Accordingly, the Court found that Seeger should be granted conscientious objector status.
In the case before us the Government seeks to distinguish our holding in Seeger on basically two grounds, both of which were relied upon by the Court of Appeals in affirming Welsh’s conviction. First, it is stressed that Welsh was far more insistent and explicit than Seeger in denying that his views were religious. For example, in filling out their conscientious objector applications, Seeger put quotation marks around the word “religious,” but Welsh struck the word “religious” entirely and later characterized his beliefs as having been formed “by reading in the fields of history and sociology.” App. 22. The Court of Appeals found that Welsh had “denied that his objection to war was premised on religious belief” and concluded that “[t]he Appeal Board was entitled to take him at his word.” 404 F. 2d, at 1082. We think this attempt to distinguish Seeger fails for the reason that it places undue emphasis on the registrant’s interpretation of his own beliefs. The Court’s statement in Seeger that a registrant’s characterization of his own belief as “religious” should carry great weight, 380 U. S., at 184, does not imply that his declaration that his views are nonreligious should be treated similarly. When a registrant states that his objections to wTar are “religious,” that information is highly relevant to the question of the function his beliefs have in his life. But very few registrants are fully aware of the broad scope of the word “religious” as used in § 6 (j), and accordingly a registrant’s statement that his beliefs are nonreligious is a highly unreliable guide for those charged with administering the exemption. Welsh himself presents a case in point. Although he originally characterized his beliefs as nonreligious, he later upon reflection wrote a long and thoughtful letter to his Appeal Board in which he declared that his beliefs were “certainly religious in the ethical sense of the word.” He explained:
“I believe I mentioned taking of life as not being, for me, a religious wrong. Again, I assumed Mr. [Brady (the Department of Justice hearing officer) ] was using the word ‘religious’ in the conventional sense, and, in order to be perfectly honest did not characterize my belief as ‘religious.’ ” App. 44.
The Government also seeks to distinguish Seeger on the ground that Welsh’s views, unlike Seeger’s, were “essentially political, sociological, or philosophical views or a merely personal moral code.” As previously noted, the Government made the same argument about Seeger, and not without reason, for Seeger’s views had a substantial political dimension. Supra, at 338-339. In this case, Welsh’s conscientious objection to war was undeniably based in part on his perception of world politics. In a letter to his local board, he wrote:
“I can only act according to what I am and what I see. And I see that the military complex wastes both human and material resources, that it fosters disregard for (what I consider a paramount concern) human needs and ends; I see that the means we employ to ‘defend’ our ‘way of life’ profoundly change that way of life. I see that in our failure to recognize the political, social, and economic realities of the world, we, as a nation, fail our responsibility as a nation.” App. 30.
We certainly do not think that § 6 (j)’s exclusion of those persons with “essentially political, sociological, or philosophical views or a merely personal moral code” should be read to exclude those who hold strong beliefs about our domestic and foreign affairs or even those whose conscientious objection to participation in all wars is founded to a substantial extent upon considerations of public policy.. The two groups of registrants that obviously do fall within these exclusions from the exemption are those whose beliefs are not deeply held and those whose objection to war does not rest at all upon moral, ethical, or religious principle but instead rests solely upon considerations of policy, pragmatism, or expediency. In applying § 6 (j)’s exclusion of those whose views are “essentially political, sociological, or philosophical” or of those who have a “merely personal moral code,” it should be remembered that these exclusions are definitional and do not therefore restrict the category of persons who are conscientious objectors by “religious training and belief.” Once the Selective Service System has taken the first step and determined under the standards set out here and in Seeger that the registrant is a “religious” conscientious objector, it follows that his views cannot be “essentially political, sociological, or philosophical.” Nor can they be a “merely personal moral code.” See United States v. Seeger, 380 U. S., at 186.
Welsh stated that he “believe [d] the taking of life— anyone’s life — to be morally wrong.” App. 44. In his original conscientious objector application he wrote the following:
“I believe that human life is valuable in and of itself; in its living; therefore I will not injure or kill another human being. This belief (and the corresponding 'duty’ to abstain from violence toward another person) is not ‘superior to those arising from any human relation.’ On the contrary: it is essential to every human relation. I cannot, therefore, conscientiously comply with the Government’s insistence that I assume duties which I feel are immoral and totally repugnant.” App. 10.
Welsh elaborated his beliefs in later communications with Selective Service officials. On the basis of these beliefs and the conclusion of the Court of Appeals that he held them “with the strength of more traditional religious convictions,” 404 F. 2d, at 1081, we think Welsh was clearly entitled to a conscientious objector exemption. Section 6 (j) requires no more. That section exempts from military service all those whose consciences, spurred by deeply held moral, ethical, or religious beliefs, would give them no rest or peace if they allowed themselves to become a part of an instrument of war.
The judgment is
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Blackmun took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
62 Stat. 612. See also 50 U. S. C. App. § 456 (j). The pertinent provision as it read during the period relevant to this case is set out infra, at 336.
62 Stat. 612. An amendment to the Act in 1967, subsequent to the Court’s decision in the Seeger case, deleted the reference to a “Supreme Being” but continued to provide that “religious training and belief” does not include “essentially political, sociological, or philosophical views, or a merely personal moral code.” 81 Stat. 104, 60 U. S. C. App. §456 (j) (1964 ed., Supp. IV).
In his original application in April 1964, Welsh stated that he did not believe in a Supreme Being, but in a letter to his local board in June 1965, he requested that his original answer be stricken and the question left open. App. 29.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Scalia
delivered the opinion of the Court.
A discharge under the Bankruptcy Code does not extinguish certain tax liabilities for which a return was due within three years before the filing of an individual debt- or’s petition. 11 U. S. C. §§ 523(a)(1)(A), 507(a)(8)(A)(i). We must decide whether this “three-year lookback period” is tolled during the pendency of a prior bankruptcy petition.
I
Petitioners Cornelius and Suzanne Young failed to include payment with their 1992 income tax return, due and filed on October 15, 1993 (petitioners had obtained an extension of the April 15 deadline). About $15,000 was owing. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assessed the tax liability on January 3, 1994, and petitioners made modest monthly payments ($40 to $300) from April 1994 until November 1995. On May 1,1996, they sought protection under Chapter 13 of the Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Hampshire. The bulk of their tax liability (about $13,000, including accrued interest) remained due. Before a reorganization plan was confirmed, however, the Youngs moved on October 23, 1996, to dismiss their Chapter 13 petition, pursuant to 11 U. S. C. § 1307(b). On March 12, 1997, one day before the Bankruptcy Court dismissed their Chapter 13 petition, the Youngs filed a new petition, this time under Chapter 7. This was a “no asset” petition, meaning that the Youngs had no assets available to satisfy unsecured creditors, including the IRS. A discharge was granted June 17, 1997; the case was closed September 22,1997.
The IRS subsequently demanded payment of the 1992 tax debt. The Youngs refused and petitioned the Bankruptcy Court to reopen their Chapter 7 case and declare the debt discharged. In their view, the debt fell outside the Bankruptcy Code’s “three-year lookback period,” §§ 523(a)(1)(A), 507(a)(8)(A)(i), and had therefore been discharged, because it pertained to a tax return due on October 15,1993, more than three years before their Chapter 7 filing on March 12, 1997. The Bankruptcy Court reopened the case but sided with the IRS. Although the Youngs’ 1992 income tax return was due more than three years before they filed their Chapter 7 petition, it was due less than three years before they filed their Chapter 13 petition on May 1, 1996. Holding that the “three-year lookback period” is tolled during the pendency of a prior bankruptcy petition, the Bankruptcy Court concluded that the 1992 tax debt had not been discharged. The District Court for the District of New Hampshire and Court of Appeals for the First Circuit agreed. 233 F. 3d 56 (2000). We granted certiorari. 533 U. S. 976 (2001).
II
Section 523(a) of the Bankruptcy Code excepts certain individual debts from discharge, including any tax “of the kind and for the periods specified in section . . . 507(a)(8) of this title, whether or not a claim for such tax was filed or allowed.” § 523(a)(1)(A). Section 507(a), in turn, describes the priority of certain claims in the distribution of the debt- or’s assets. Subsection 507(a)(8)(A)(i) gives eighth priority to “allowed unsecured claims of governmental units, only to the extent that such claims are for— ... a tax on or measured by income or gross receipts— . . . for a taxable year ending on or before the date of the filing of the petition for which a return, if required, is last due, including extensions, after three years before the date of the filing of the petition ....” (Emphasis added.) This is commonly known as the “three-year lookback period.” If the IRS has a claim for taxes for which the return was due within three years before the bankruptcy petition was filed, the claim enjoys eighth priority under § 507(a)(8)(A)(i) and is nondischargeable in bankruptcy under § 523(a)(1)(A).
The terms of the lookback period appear to create a loophole: Since the Code does not prohibit back-to-back Chapter 13 and Chapter 7 filings (as long as the debtor did not receive a discharge under Chapter 13, see §§ 727(a)(8), (9)), a debtor can render a tax debt dischargeable by first filing a Chapter 13 petition, then voluntarily dismissing the petition when the lookback period for the debt has lapsed, and finally refiling under Chapter 7. During the pendency of the Chapter 13 petition, the automatic stay of § 362(a) will prevent the IRS from taking steps to collect the unpaid taxes, and if the Chapter 7 petition is filed after the lookback period has expired, the taxes remaining due will be dischargeable. Petitioners took advantage of this loophole, which, they believe, is permitted by the Bankruptcy Code.
We disagree. The three-year lookback period is a limitations period subject to traditional principles of equitable tolling. Since nothing in the Bankruptcy Code precludes equitable tolling of the lookback period, we believe the courts below properly excluded from the three-year limitation the period during which the Youngs’ Chapter 13 petition was pending.
A
The lookback period is a limitations period because it prescribes a period within which certain rights (namely, priority and nondischargeability in bankruptcy) may be enforced. 1 H. Wood, Limitations of Actions § 1, p. 1 (4th D. Moore ed. 1916). Old tax claims — those pertaining to returns due more than three years before the debtor filed the bankruptcy petition — become dischargeable, so that a bankruptcy decree will relieve the debtor of the obligation to pay. The period thus encourages the IRS to protect its rights — by, say, collecting the debt, 26 U. S. C. §§6501,6502 (1994 ed. and Supp. V), or perfecting a tax lien, §§6322, 6323(a), (f) (1994 ed.)— before three years have elapsed. If the IRS sleeps on its rights, its claim loses priority and the debt becomes dis-chargeable. Thus, as petitioners concede, the lookback period serves the same “basic policies [furthered by] all limitations provisions: repose, elimination of stale claims, and certainty about a plaintiff’s opportunity for recovery and a defendant’s potential liabilities.” Rotella v. Wood, 528 U. S. 549, 555 (2000). It is true that, unlike most statutes of limitations, the lookback period bars only some, and not all, legal remedies for enforcing the claim (viz., priority and nondischargeability in bankruptcy); that makes it a more limited statute of limitations, but a statute of limitations nonetheless.
Petitioners argue that the lookback period is a substantive component of the Bankruptcy Code, not a procedural limitations period. The lookback period commences on the date the return for the tax debt “is last due,” § 507(a)(8)(A)(i), not on the date the IRS discovers or assesses the unpaid tax. Thus, the IRS may have less than three years to protect itself against the risk that a debt will become dischargeable in bankruptcy.
To illustrate, petitioners offer the following variation on this case: Suppose the Youngs filed their 1992 tax return on October 15, 1993, but had not received (as they received here) an extension of the April 15, 1993, due date. Assume the remaining facts of the case are unchanged: The IRS assessed the tax on January 3,1994; petitioners filed a Chapter 13 petition on May 1,1996; that petition was voluntarily dismissed and the Youngs filed a new petition under Chapter 7 on March 12, 1997. In this hypothetical, petitioners argue, their tax debt would have been dischargeable in the first petition under Chapter 13. Over three years would have elapsed between the due date of their return (April 15,1993) and their Chapter 13 petition (May 1,1996). But the IRS— which may not have discovered the debt until petitioners filed a return on October 15,1993 — would have enjoyed less than three years to collect the debt or prevent the debt from becoming dischargeable in bankruptcy (by perfecting a tax lien). The Code even contemplates this possibility, petitioners believe. Section 523(a)(l)(B)(ii) renders a tax debt non-dischargeable if it arises from an untimely return filed within two years before a bankruptcy petition. Thus, if petitioners had filed their return on April 30,1994 (more than two years before their Chapter 13 petition), and if the IRS had been unaware of the debt until the return was filed, the IRS would have had only two years to act before the debt became dis-chargeable in bankruptcy. For these reasons, petitioners believe the lookback period is not a limitations period, but rather a definition of dischargeable taxes.
We disagree. In the sense in which petitioners use the term, all limitations periods are “substantive”: They define a subset of claims eligible for certain remedies. And the lookback is not distinctively “substantive” merely because it commences on a date that may precede the date when the IRS discovers its claim. There is nothing unusual about a statute of limitations that commences when the claimant has a complete and present cause of action, whether or not he is aware of it. See 1 C. Corman, Limitation of Actions §6.1, pp. 370, 378 (1991); 2 Wood, supra, §276c(l), at 1411. As for petitioners’ reliance on § 523(a)(l)(B)(ii), that section proves, at most, that Congress put different limitations periods on different kinds of tax debts. All tax debts falling within the terms of the three-year lookback period are nondischargeable in bankruptcy. §§ 523(a)(1)(A), 507(a)(8)(A)(i). Even if a tax debt falls outside the terms of the lookback period, it is nonetheless nondischargeable if it pertains to an untimely return filed within two years before the bankruptcy petition. § 523(a)(l)(B)(ii). These provisions are complementary; they do not suggest that the lookback period is something other than a limitations period.
B
It is hornbook law that limitations periods are “customarily subject to ‘equitable tolling,’ ” Irwin v. Department of Veterans Affairs, 498 U. S. 89, 95 (1990), unless tolling would be “inconsistent with the text of the relevant statute,” United States v. Beggerly, 524 U. S. 38, 48 (1998). See also American Pipe & Constr. Co. v. Utah, 414 U. S. 538, 558-559 (1974); Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U. S. 392, 397 (1946); Bailey v. Glover, 21 Wall. 342, 349-350 (1875). Congress must be presumed to draft limitations periods in light of this background principle. Cf. National Private Truck Council, Inc. v. Oklahoma Tax Comm’n, 515 U. S. 582, 589-590 (1995); United States v. Shabani, 513 U. S. 10, 13 (1994). That is doubly true when it is enacting limitations periods to be applied by bankruptcy courts, which are courts of equity and “appl[y] the principles and rules of equity jurisprudence.” Pepper v. Litton, 308 U. S. 295, 304 (1939); see also United States v. Energy Resources Co., 495 U. S. 545, 549 (1990).
This Court has permitted equitable tolling in situations “where the claimant has actively pursued his judicial remedies by filing a defective pleading during the statutory period, or where the complainant has been induced or tricked by his adversary’s misconduct into allowing the filing deadline to pass.” Irwin, supra, at 96 (footnotes omitted). We have acknowledged, however, that tolling might be appropriate in other cases, see, e.g., Baldwin County Welcome Center v. Brown, 466 U. S. 147, 151 (1984) (per curiam), and this, we believe, is one. Cf. Amy v. Watertown (No. 2), 130 U. S. 320, 325-326 (1889); 3 J. Story, Equity Jurisprudence §1974, pp. 558-559 (14th W. Lyon ed. 1918). The Youngs’ Chapter 13 petition erected an automatic stay under §362, which prevented the IRS from taking steps to protect its claim. When the Youngs filed a petition under Chapter 7, the three-year lookback period therefore excluded time during which their Chapter 13 petition was pending. The Youngs’ 1992 tax return was due within that three-year period. Hence the lower courts properly held that the tax debt was not discharged when the Youngs were granted a discharge under Chapter 7.
Tolling is in our view appropriate regardless of petitioners’ intentions when filing back-to-back Chapter 13 and Chapter 7 petitions — whether the Chapter 13 petition was filed in good faith or solely to run down the lookback period. In either case, the IRS was disabled from protecting its claim during the pendency of the Chapter 13 petition, and this period of disability tolled the three-year lookback period when the Youngs filed their Chapter 7 petition.
C
Petitioners invoke several statutory provisions which they claim display an intent to preclude tolling here. First they point to § 523(b), which, they believe, explicitly permits discharge in a Chapter 7 proceeding of certain debts that were nondischargeable (as this tax debt was) in a prior Chapter 13 proceeding. Petitioners, misread the provision. Section 523(b) declares that
“a debt that was excepted from discharge under subsection (a)(1), (a)(3), or (a)(8) of this section ... in a prior case concerning the debtor ... is dischargeable in a case under this title unless, by the terms of subsection (a) of this section, such debt is not dischargeable in the case under this title.” (Emphasis added.)
The phrase “excepted from discharge” in this provision is not synonymous (as petitioners would have it) with “nondis-chargeable.” It envisions a prior bankruptcy proceeding that progressed to the discharge stage, from which discharge a particular debt was actually “excepted.” It thus has no application to the present case; and even if it did, the very same arguments in favor of tolling that we have found persuasive with regard to §507 would apply to §523 as well. One might perhaps have expected an explicit tolling provision in § 523(b) if that subsection applied only to those debts “excepted from discharge” in the earlier proceeding that were subject to the three-year lookback — but in fact it also applies to excepted debts (see § 523(a)(3)) that were subject to no limitations period. And even the need for tolling as to debts that were subject to the three-year lookback is minimal, since a separate provision of the Code, § 727(a)(9), constrains successive discharges under Chapters 13 and 7: Generally speaking, six years must elapse between filing of the two bankruptcy petitions, which would make the need for tolling of the three-year limitation nonexistent. The absence of an explicit tolling provision in § 523 therefore suggests nothing.
Petitioners point to two provisions of the Code, which, in their view, do contain a tolling provision. Its presence there, and its absence in § 507, they argue, displays an intent to preclude equitable tolling of the lookback period. We disagree. Petitioners point first to § 108(c), which reads:
“Except as provided in section 524 of this title, if applicable nonbankruptcy law . . . fixes a period for commencing or continuing a civil action in a court other than a bankruptcy court on a claim against the debtor . . . , and such period has not expired before the date of the filing of the petition, then such period does not expire until the later of — (1) the end of such period, including any suspension of such period occurring on or after the commencement of the case; or (2) 30 days after notice of the termination or expiration of the stay . . . with respect to such claim.”
Petitioners believe § 108(c)(1) contains a tolling provision. The lower courts have split over this issue, compare, e. g., Rogers v. Corrosion Products, Inc., 42 F. 3d 292, 297 (CA5), cert. denied, 515 U. S. 1160 (1995), with Garbe Iron Works, Inc. v. Priester, 99 Ill. 2d 84, 457 N. E. 2d 422 (1983); we need not resolve it here. Even assuming petitioners are correct, we would draw no negative inference from the presence of an express tolling provision in § 108(c)(1) and the absence of one in § 507. It would be quite reasonable for Congress to instruct nonbankruptcy courts (including state courts) to toll nonbankruptcy limitations periods (including state-law limitations periods) while, at the same time, assuming that bankruptcy courts will use their inherent equitable powers to toll the federal limitations periods within the Code.
Finally, petitioners point to a tolling provision in § 507(a)(8)(A), the same subsection that sets forth the three-year lookback period. Subsection 507(a)(8)(A) grants eighth priority to tax claims pertaining to returns that were due within the three-year lookback period, §507(a)(8)(A)(i), and to claims that were assessed within 240 days before the debt- or’s bankruptcy petition, § 507(a)(8)(A)(ii). Whereas the three-year lookback period contains no express tolling provision, the 240-day lookback period is tolled “any time plus 30 days during which an offer in compromise with respect to such tax that was made within 240 days after such'assessment was pending.” §507(a)(8)(A)(ii). Petitioners believe this express tolling provision, appearing in the same subsection as the three-year lookback period, demonstrates a statutory intent not to toll the three-year lookback period.
If anything, § 507(a)(8)(A)(ii) demonstrates that the Bankruptcy Code incorporates traditional equitable principles. An “offer in compromise” is a settlement offer submitted by a debtor. When §507(a)(8)(A)(ii) was enacted, it was IRS practice — though no statutory provision required it — to stay collection efforts (if the Government’s interests would not be jeopardized) during the pendency of an “offer in compromise,” 26 CFR § 301.7122 — 1(d)(2) (1978); M. Saltzman, IRS Practice and Procedure ¶ 15.07[1], p. 15-47 (1981). Thus, a court would not have equitably tolled the 240-day lookback period during the pendency of an “offer in compromise,” since tolling is inappropriate when a claimant has voluntarily chosen not to protect his rights within the limitations period. See, e. g., Irwin, 498 U. S., at 96. Hence the tolling provision in §507(a)(8)(A)(ii) supplements rather than displaces principles of equitable tolling.
* * *
We conclude that the lookback period of 11 U. S. C. § 5Q7(a)(8)(A)(i) is tolled during the pendency of a prior bankruptcy petition. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Equitable remedies may still be available. Traditionally, for example, a mortgagee could sue in equity to foreclose mortgaged property even though the underlying debt was time barred. Hardin v. Boyd, 113 U. S. 756, 765-766 (1885); 2 G. Glenn, Mortgages §§ 141-142, pp. 812-818 (1943); see also Beach v. Ocwen Fed. Bank, 523 U. S. 410, 415-416 (1998) (recoupment is available after a limitations period has lapsed); United States v. Dalm, 494 U. S. 596, 611 (1990) (same).
The Code was amended in 1998 to prohibit collection efforts during the pendency of an offer in compromise. See 26 U. S. C. § 6331(k) (1994 ed., Supp. V).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner James Gustafson was convicted in a Florida trial court for unlawful possession of marihuana. At his trial the State introduced into evidence marihuana which had been seized from him during a search incident to his arrest on a charge of driving without possession of an operator’s license. The District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District, reversed petitioner’s conviction, holding that the search which had led to the discovery of the marihuana was unreasonable under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. 243 So. 2d 615 (1971). The Supreme Court of Florida in turn reversed that decision, 258 So. 2d 1 (1972), and petitioner sought certiorari in this Court. We granted certiorari, 410 U. S. 982 (1073), and set the case for argument with No. 72-936, United States v. Robinson, also decided today, ante, p. 218. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm the judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida.
At approximately 2 a. m., on January 12, 1969, Lieutenant Paul R. Smith, a uniformed municipal police officer of Eau Gallie, Florida, was on a routine patrol in an unmarked squad car when he observed a 1953 white Cadillac, bearing New York license plates, driving south through the town. Smith observed the automobile weave across the center line and back to the right side of the road “three or four” times. Smith testified that he observed the two occupants of the Cadillac look back; after they apparently saw the squad car, the car drove across the highway and behind a grocery store, and then headed south on another city street.
At that point Smith turned on his flashing light and ordered the Cadillac over to the side of the road. After stopping the vehicle, Smith asked petitioner, the driver, to produce his operator’s license. Petitioner informed Smith that he was a student and that he had left his operator’s license in his dormitory room in the neighboring city of Melbourne, Florida. Petitioner was then placed under arrest for failure to have his vehicle operator’s license in his possession. It was conceded by the parties below and in this Court that the officer had probable cause to arrest upon learning that petitioner did not have his license in his possession, and that he took petitioner into custody in order to transport him to the stationhouse for further inquiry.
Smith then proceeded to search the petitioner’s person. Smith testified that he patted down the clothing of the petitioner, “outside and inside, I checked the belt, the shirt pockets and all around the belt, completely around inside.” Upon completing his patdown, he testified, he placed his hand into the left front coat pocket of the coat petitioner was wearing. From that pocket he extracted a “long chain” and a Benson and Hedges cigarette box. Smith testified that he then “opened [the cigarette box] and it appeared there were marihuana cigarettes in the box. I had been shown this in training at the police department and these appeared to be marihuana to me.”
I
Petitioner urges that there could be no evidentiary-purpose for the search conducted by Smith, and therefore the authority to search for weapons incident to a lawful arrest is controlled by the standards laid down in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1 (1968). Petitioner contends that this case is different from United States v. Robinson, ante, p. 218, in that petitioner had experienced no previous encounters with the officer in this case, and the offense for which he was arrested was “benign or trivial in nature,” carrying with it no mandatory minimum sentence as did the offense for which Robinson was arrested. Petitioner points out that here, unlike Robinson, there were no police regulations which required the officer to take petitioner into custody, nor were there police department policies requiring full-scale body searches upon arrest in the field. Petitioner also points to the fact that here, as in Robinson, the officer expressed no fear for his own well-being or for that of others in dealing with the petitioner.
We have held today in United States v. Robinson that “[i]t is the fact of the lawful arrest which establishes the authority to search, and ... in the case of a lawful custodial arrest a full search of the person is not only an exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment, but is also a 'reasonable’ search under that Amendment.” Ante, at 235. Our decision in Robinson indicates that the limitations placed by Terry v. Ohio, supra, on protective searches conducted in an investigatory stop situation based on less than probable cause are not to be carried over to searches made incident to lawful custodial arrests. We stated in Robinson:
“The justification or reason for the authority to search incident to a lawful arrest rests quite as much on the need to disarm the suspect in order to take him into custody as it does on the need to preserve evidence on his person for later use at trial. Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20 (1925); Abel v. United States, 362 U. S. 217 (1960). The standards traditionally governing a search incident to lawful arrest are not, therefore, commuted to the stricter Terry standards by the absence of probable fruits or further evidence of the particular crime for which the arrest is made.”. Ante, at 234.
Neither Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969), nor Peters v. New York, 392 U. S. 40 (1968), relied upon by petitioner, purported to limit the traditional authority of the arresting officer to conduct a full search of the person of an arrestee incident to a lawful custodial arrest. United States v. Robinson, ante, at 225-226, 228-229. Indeed, as our decision in Robinson indicates, not only has this been established Fourth Amendment law since the decision in Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383 (1914), but it was also the rule both at common law and in the early development of American law. United States v. Robinson, ante, at 230-233.
Though the officer here was not required to take the petitioner into custody by police regulations as he was in Robinson, and there did not exist a departmental policy establishing the conditions under which a full-scale body search should be conducted, we do not find these differences determinative of the constitutional issue. Id., at 223 n. 2. It is sufficient that the officer had probable cause to arrest the petitioner and that he lawfully effectuated the arrest and placed the petitioner in custody. In addition, as our decision in Robinson makes clear, the arguable absence of “evidentiary” purpose for a search incident to a lawful arrest is not controlling. Id., at 233. “The authority to search the person incident to a lawful custodial arrest, while based upon the need to disarm and to discover evidence, does not depend on what a court may later decide was the probability in a particular arrest situation that weapons or evidence would in fact be found upon the person of the suspect.” Id., at 235.
II
We hold, therefore, that upon arresting petitioner for the offense of driving his automobile without possession of a valid operator’s license, and taking him into custody, Smith was entitled to make a full search of petitioner’s person incident to that lawful arrest. Since it is the fact of custodial arrest which gives rise to the authority to search, it is of no moment that Smith did not indicate any subjective fear of the petitioner or that he did not himself suspect that the petitioner was armed. Having in the course of his lawful search come upon the box of cigarettes, Smith was entitled to inspect it; and when his inspection revealed the homemade cigarettes which he believed to contain an unlawful substance, he was entitled to seize them as “fruits, instrumentalities, or contraband” probative of criminal conduct. Harris v. United States, 331 U. S. 145, 154-155 (1947); Warden v. Hayden, 387 U. S. 294, 299, 307 (1967); Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S. 143, 149 (1972); United States v. Robinson, ante, at 236. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Florida is therefore
Affirmed.
[For concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Powell, see ante, p. 237.]
Brief for Petitioner 9.
Upon placing petitioner under arrest for driving without possession of an operator’s license and after removing the chain and the cigarette box from petitioner’s clothing, Smith told the assisting officer on the scene to check the other passenger of the Cadillac to see if he had an operator's permit so that he could drive the car tO the station. Smith then put petitioner in the back seat of the squad car. Smith then opened the cigarette box and observed the rolled cigarettes he believed to be marihuana. He then told the other officer to place the other passenger in the squad car so that he could also be transported to the station, for the purpose of investigation. The passenger was frisked by the other officer and placed in the squad car; no charges were placed against the passenger. In addition to the marihuana conviction which we here review, petitioner was charged with driving without possession of an operator’s license; that charge was dropped when petitioner produced a valid operator’s license at a later date.
Smith testified that he wrote about eight to 10 traffic citations per week, and that about three or four out of every 10 persons he arrested for the offense of driving without a license were taken into custody to the police station. Smith indicated that an offender is more likely to be taken into custody if he does not reside in the city of Eau Gallie. Finally, Smith testified that after making a custodial arrest, he always searches the arrestee before placing him into the patrol car.
The State of Florida argues in this Court that there was an evidentiary purpose for the search of petitioner. It is contended that Smith’s observation of the erratic motions of the car that petitioner was driving created a reasonable suspicion that the petitioner may have been under the influence of some intoxicant. Upon confronting petitioner after stopping the ear, Smith indicated that he noticed that the petitioner’s eyes were “bleary.” The State argues that the officer had probable cause to arrest the petitioner for driving while intoxicated, and that Smith thought Gustafson was intoxicated when he confronted him. Since Smith did not detect an odor of alcohol during that confrontation, the State argues it was reasonable for the officer to search the petitioner’s person for drugs that may have been the cause of the suspected intoxication. Florida makes it a criminal offense to drive while intoxicated not only by alcohol, but also by unlawful drugs. Fla. Stat. Ann. §317.201 (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: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a church property dispute which arose when two local churches withdrew from a hierarchical general church organization. Under Georgia law the right to the property previously used by the local churches was made to turn on a civil court jury decision as to whether the general church abandoned or departed from the tenets of faith and practice it held at the time the local churches affiliated with it. The question presented is whether the restraints of the First Amendment, as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, permit a civil court to award church property on the basis of the interpretation and significance the civil court assigns to aspects of church doctrine.
Petitioner, Presbyterian Church in the United States, is an association of local Presbyterian churches governed by a hierarchical structure of tribunals which consists of, in ascending order, (1) the Church Session, composed of the elders of the local church; (2) the Presbytery, composed of several churches in a geographical area; (3) the Synod, generally composed of all Presbyteries within a State; and (4) the General Assembly, the highest governing body.
A dispute arose between petitioner, the general church, and two local churches in Savannah, Georgia — the respondents, Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church and Eastern Heights Presbyterian Church — over control of the properties used until then by the local churches. In 1966, the membership of the local churches, in the belief that certain actions and pronouncements of the general church were violations of that organization’s constitution and departures from the doctrine and practice in force at the time of affiliation, voted to withdraw from the general church and to reconstitute the local churches as an autonomous Presbyterian organization. The ministers of the two churches renounced the general church’s jurisdiction and authority over them, as did all but two of the ruling elders. In response, the general church, through the Presbytery of Savannah, established an Administrative Commission to seek a conciliation. The dissident local churchmen remained steadfast; consequently, the Commission acknowledged the withdrawal of the local leadership and proceeded to take over the local churches’ property on behalf of the general church until new local leadership could be appointed.
The local churchmen made no effort to appeal the Commission’s action to higher church tribunals — the Synod of Georgia or the General Assembly. Instead, the churches filed separate suits in the Superior Court of Chatham County to enjoin the general church from trespassing on the disputed property, title to which was in the local churches. The cases were consolidated for trial. The general church moved to dismiss the actions and cross-claimed for injunctive relief in its own behalf on the ground that civil courts were without power to determine whether the general church had departed from its tenets of faith and practice. The motion to dismiss was denied, and the case was submitted to the jury on the theory that Georgia law implies a trust of local church property for the benefit of the general church on the sole condition that the general church adhere to its tenets of faith and practice existing at the time of affiliation by the local churches. Thus, the jury was instructed to determine whether the actions of the general church “amount to a fundamental or substantial abandonment of the original tenets and doctrines of the [general church], so that the new tenets and doctrines are utterly variant from the purposes for which the [general church] was founded.” The jury returned a verdict for the local churches, and the trial judge thereupon declared that the implied trust had terminated and enjoined the general church from interfering with the use of the property in question. The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed, 224 Ga. 61, 159 S. E. 2d 690 (1968). We granted certiorari to consider the First Amendment questions raised. 392 U. S. 903 (1968). We reverse.
It is of course true that the State has a legitimate interest in resolving property disputes, and that a civil court is a proper forum for that resolution. Special problems arise, however, when these disputes implicate controversies over church doctrine and practice. The approach of this Court in such cases was originally developed in Watson v. Jones, 13 Wall. 679 (1872), a pre-Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins diversity decision decided before the application of the First Amendment to the States but nonetheless informed by First Amendment considerations. There, as here, civil courts were asked to resolve a property dispute between a national Presbyterian organization and local churches of that organization. There, as here, the disputes arose out of a controversy over church doctrine. There, as here, the Court was asked to decree the termination of an implied trust because of departures from doctrine by the national organization. The Watson Court refused, pointing out that it was wholly inconsistent with the American concept of the relationship between church and state to permit civil courts to determine ecclesiastical questions. In language which has a clear constitutional ring, the Court said
“In this country the full and free right to entertain any religious belief, to practice any religious principle, and to teach any religious doctrine which does not violate the laws of morality and property, and which does not infringe personal rights, is conceded to all. The law knows no heresy, and is committed to the support of no dogma, the establishment of no sect. . . . All who unite themselves to such a body [the general church] do so with an implied consent to [its] government, and are bound to submit to it. But it would be a vain consent and would lead to the total subversion of such religious bodies, if any one aggrieved by one of their decisions could appeal to the secular courts and have them [sic] reversed. It is of the essence of these religious unions, and of their right to establish tribunals for the decision of questions arising among themselves, that those decisions should be binding in all cases of ecclesiastical cognizance, subject only to such appeals as the organism itself provides for.” 13 Wall., at 728-729.
The logic of this language leaves the civil courts no role in determining ecclesiastical questions in the process of resolving property disputes.
Later cases, however, also decided on nonconstitutional grounds, recognized that there might be some circumstances in which marginal civil court review of ecclesiastical determinations would be appropriate. The scope of this review was delineated in Gonzalez v. Archbishop, 280 U. S. 1 (1929). There, Gonzalez claimed the right to be appointed to a chaplaincy in the Roman Catholic Church under a will which provided that a member of his family receive that appointment. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila, Philippine Islands, refused to appoint Gonzalez on the ground that he did not satisfy the qualifications established by Canon Law for that office. Gonzalez brought suit in the Court of First Instance of Manila for a judgment directing the Archbishop, among other things, to appoint him chaplain. The trial court entered such an order, but the Supreme Court of the Philippine Islands reversed and “absolved the Archbishop from the complaint.” This Court affirmed. Mr. Justice Brandéis, speaking for the Court, defined the civil court role in the following words: “In the absence of fraud, collusion, or arbitrariness, the decisions of the proper church tribunals on matters purely ecclesiastical, although affecting civil rights, are accepted in litigation before the secular courts as conclusive, because the parties in interest made them so by contract or otherwise.” 280 U. S., at 16.
In Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 344 U. S. 94 (1952), the Court converted the principle of Watson as qualified by Gonzalez into a constitutional rule. Kedroff grew out of a dispute between the Moscow-based general Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox churches located in North America over an appointment to St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City. The North American churches declared their independence from the general church, and the New York Legislature enacted a statute recognizing their administrative autonomy. The New York courts sustained the constitutionality of the statute and held that the North American churches’ elected hierarch had the right to use the cathedral. This Court reversed, finding that the Moscow church had not acknowledged the schism, and holding the statute unconstitutional. The Court said, 344 U. S., at 116:
“The opinion [in Watson v. Jones] radiates . . . a spirit of freedom for religious organizations, an independence from secular control or manipulation— in short, power to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine. Freedom to select the clergy, where no improper methods of choice are proven, we think, must now he said to have federal constitutional protection as a part of the free exercise of religion against state interference.” (Italics supplied.)
And, speaking of the New York statute, the Court said further, id., at 119:
“By fiat it displaces one church administrator with another. It passes the control of matters strictly ecclesiastical from one church authority to another. It thus intrudes for the benefit of one segment of a church the power of the state into the forbidden area of religious freedom contrary to the principles of the First Amendment.” (Italics supplied.)
This holding invalidating legislative action was extended to judicial action in Kreshik v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 363 U. S. 190 (1960), where the Court held that the constitutional guarantees of religious liberty required the reversal of a judgment of the New York courts which transferred control of St. Nicholas Cathedral from the central governing authority of the Russian Orthodox Church to the independent Russian Church of America.
Thus, the First Amendment severely circumscribes the role that civil courts may play in resolving church property disputes. It is obvious, however, that not every civil court decision as to property claimed by a religious organization jeopardizes values protected by the First Amendment. Civil courts do not inhibit free exercise of religion merely by opening their doors to disputes involving church property. And there are neutral principles of law, developed for use in all property disputes, which can be applied without “establishing” churches to which property is awarded. But First Amendment values are plainly jeopardized when church property litigation is made to turn on the resolution by civil courts of controversies over religious doctrine and practice. If civil courts undertake to resolve such controversies in order to adjudicate the property dispute, the hazards are ever present of inhibiting the free development of religious doctrine and of implicating secular interests in matters of purely ecclesiastical concern. Because of these hazards, the First Amendment enjoins the employment of organs of government for essentially religious purposes, Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203 (1963): the Amendment therefore commands civil courts to decide church property disputes without resolving underlying controversies over religious doctrine. Hence, States, religious organizations, and individuals must structure relationships involving church property so as not to require the civil courts to resolve ecclesiastical questions.
The Georgia courts have violated the command of the First Amendment. The departure-from-doctrine element of the implied trust theory which they applied requires the civil judiciary to determine whether actions of the general church constitute such a “substantial departure” from the tenets of faith and practice existing at the time of the local churches’ affiliation that the trust in favor of the general church must be declared to have terminated. This determination has two parts. The civil court must first decide whether the challenged actions of the general church depart substantially from prior doctrine. In reaching such a decision, the court must of necessity make its own interpretation of the meaning of church doctrines. If the court should decide that a substantial departure has occurred, it must then go on to determine whether the issue on which the general church has departed holds a place of such importance in the traditional theology as to require that the trust be terminated. A civil court can make this determination only after assessing the relative significance to the religion of the tenets from which departure was found. Thus, the departure-from-doctrine element of the Georgia implied trust theory requires the civil court to determine matters at the very core of a religion — the interpretation of particular church doctrines and the importance of those doctrines to the religion. Plainly, the First Amendment forbids civil courts from playing such a role.
Since the Georgia courts on remand may undertake to determine whether petitioner is entitled to relief on its cross-claims, we find it appropriate to remark that the departure-from-doctrine element of Georgia’s implied trust theory can play no role in any future judicial proceedings. The departure-from-doctrine approach is not susceptible of the marginal judicial involvement contemplated in Gonzalez Gonzalez’ rights under a will turned, on a church decision, the Archbishop’s, as to church law, the qualifications for the chaplaincy. It was the archbishopric, not the civil courts, which had the task of analyzing and interpreting church law in order to determine the validity of Gonzalez’ claim to a chaplaincy. Thus, the civil courts could adjudicate the rights under the will without interpreting or weighing church doctrine but simply by engaging in the narrowest kind of review of a specific church decision — i. e., whether that decision resulted from fraud, collusion, or arbitrariness. Such review does not inject the civil courts into substantive ecclesiastical matters. In contrast, under Georgia’s departure-from-doctrine approach, it is not possible for the civil courts to play so limited a role. Under this approach, property rights do not turn on a church decision as to church doctrine. The standard of departure-from-doctrine, though it calls for resolution of ecclesiastical questions, is a creation of state, not church, law. Nothing in the record suggests that this state standard has been interpreted and applied in a decision of the general church. Any decisions which have been made by the general church about the local churches’ withdrawal have at most a tangential relationship to the state-fashioned departure-from-doctrine standard. A determination whether such decisions are fraudulent, collusive, or arbitrary would therefore not answer the questions posed by the state standard. To reach those questions would require the civil courts to engage in the forbidden process of interpreting and weighing church doctrine. Even if the general church had attempted to apply the state standard, the civil courts could not review and enforce the church decision without violating the Constitution. The First Amendment prohibits a State from employing religious organizations as an arm of the civil judiciary to perform the function of interpreting and applying state standards. See Abington School District v. Schempp, supra. Thus, a civil court may no more review a church decision applying a state departure-from-doctrine standard than it may apply that standard itself.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Georgia is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The opinion of the Supreme Court of Georgia summarizes the claimed violations and departures from petitioner’s original tenets of faith and practice as including the following: “ordaining of women as ministers and ruling elders, making pronouncements and recommendations concerning civil, economic, social and political matters, giving support to the removal of Bible reading and prayers by children in the public schools, adopting certain Sunday School literature and teaching neo-orthodoxy alien to the Confession of Faith and Catechisms, as originally adopted by the general church, and causing all members to remain in the National Council of Churches of Christ and willingly accepting its leadership which advocated named practices, such as the subverting of parental authority, civil disobedience and intermeddling in civil affairs”; also “that the general church has . . . made pronouncements in matters involving international issues such as the Vietnam conflict and has disseminated publications denying the Holy Trinity and violating the moral and ethical standards of the faith.” 224 Ga. 61, 62-63, 159 S. E. 2d 690, 692 (1968).
This theory derives from principles fashioned by English courts. See, e. g., Craigdallie v. Aikman, 1 Dow 1, 3 Eng. Rep. 601 (H. L. 1813) (Scot.); Attorney General ex rel. Mander v. Pearson, 3 Mer. 353, 36 Eng. Rep. 135 (Ch. 1817). For the subsequent development of the implied trust theory in English courts, see Note, Judicial Intervention in Disputes Over the Use of Church Property, 75 Harv. L. Rev. 1142, 1148-1149 (1962).
We reject the contention of respondent local churches that no First Amendment issues were raised or decided in the state courts. Petitioner’s answer and cross-claim in each case included an express allegation that the action of respondents in appropriating the church property to their use was “in violation of the laws of Georgia, the United States of America, and the Southern Presbyterian Church.” (Italics supplied.) At trial, petitioners’ counsel objected to the admission of all testimony “pertaining to [the] alleged deviation from the faith and practice of the Presbyterian Church in the United States” because that question was “exclusively within the right of the Presbyterian Church in the United States through its proper judicial body to determine.” On appeal, petitioners again contended “that questions of an ecclesiastical nature concerning whether or not' a church has abandoned its tenents [sic] and doctrines, or some of them, are exclusively within the jurisdiction of the church courts and should not be submitted to a jury for determination as this would destroy the doctrine of separation of church and state.” Petitioners thus clearly raised claims under the First Amendment as applied to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 344 U. S. 94, 116, 119 (1952). The Georgia Supreme Court considered and decided these claims. “In considering this contention [that the petitions raise ecclesiastical questions which are exclusively within the jurisdiction of the church, not of civil courts, and therefore that respondents could not maintain their action],” the court said, “we are mindful that 'The traditional American doctrine of freedom of religion and separation of church and state carries with it freedom of the church from having its doctrines or beliefs defined, interpreted, or censored by civil courts.’ ” 224 Ga., at 68, 159 S. E. 2d, at 695. The court concluded, however, that the trial court did not violate the doctrine. Citing Georgia Code Ann. § 22-408, which provides: “Courts are reluctant to interpose in questions affecting the management of the temporalities of a church; but when property is devoted to a specific doctrine or purpose, the courts will prevent it from being diverted from the trust,” the court held that “a trust [in favor of the general church] is conditioned upon the general church’s adherence to its tenets of faith and practice existing when the local church affiliated with it and ... an abandonment of, or departure from, such tenets is a diversion from the trust, which the civil courts will prevent.” 224 Ga., at 68, 159 S. E. 2d, at 695.
“Watson v. Jones, although it contains a reference to the relations of church and state under our system of laws, was decided without depending upon prohibition of state interference with the free exercise of religion. It was decided in 1871 [sic], before judicial recognition of the coercive power of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect the limitations of the First Amendment against state action. It long antedated the 1938 decisions of Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins and Ruhlin v. New York Life Ins. Co., 304 U. S. 64 and 202, and, therefore, even though federal jurisdiction in the case depended solely on diversity, the holding was based on general law rather than Kentucky law.” Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 344 U. S. 94, 115-116 (1952).
Accord, see, e. g., decisions involving Presbyterian churches, Trustees of Pencader Presbyterian Church v. Gibson, 26 Del. Ch. 375, 22 A. 2d 782 (1941); Bramlett v. Young, 229 S. C. 519, 93 S. E. 2d 873 (1956); St. John’s Presbytery v. Central Presbyterian Church of St. Petersburg, 102 So. 2d 714 (Fla. 1958); see also Northside Bible Church v. Goodson, 387 F. 2d 534 (C. A. 5th Cir. 1967). See generally for an examination of the development and growth of the rules for settling church property disputes, Note, Judicial Intervention in Disputes Over the Use of Church Property, 75 Harv. L. Rev. 1142 (1962); 54 Va. L. Rev. 1451 (1968); Duesenberg, Jurisdiction of Civil Courts Over Religious Issues, 20 Ohio St. L. J. 508 (1959) ; Comment, Judicial Intervention in Church Property Disputes— Some Constitutional Considerations, 74 Yale L. J. 1113 (1965).
See, e. g., Bouldin v. Alexander, 15 Wall. 131 (1872); Brundage v. Deardorf, 55 F. 839 (C. C. N. D. Ohio 1893).
We have no occasion in this case to define or discuss the precise limits of review for “fraud, collusion, or arbitrariness” within the meaning of Gonzalez.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Marshall
delivered the opinion of the Court.
These cases arise out of a pre-enforcement challenge to the constitutionality of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (Surface Mining Act or Act), 91 Stat. 447, 30 U. S. C. § 1201 et seq. (1976 ed., Supp. III). The United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia declared several central provisions of the Act unconstitutional and permanently enjoined their-'enforcement. 483 F. Supp. 425 (1980). In these appeals, we consider whether Congress, in adopting the Act, exceeded its powers under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, or transgressed affirmative limitations on the exercise of that power contained in the Fifth and Tenth Amendments. We conclude that in the context of a facial challenge, the Surface Mining Act does not suffer from any of these alleged constitutional defects, and we uphold the Act as constitutional.
I
A
The Surface Mining Act is a comprehensive statute designed to “establish a nationwide program to protect society and the environment from the adverse effects of surface coal mining operations.” § 102 (a), 30 U. S. C. § 1202 (a) (1976 ed., Supp. III). Title II of the Act, 30 U. S. C. § 1211 (1976 ed., Supp. Ill), creates the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM), within the Department of the Interior, and the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary) acting through OSM, is charged with primary responsibility for administering and implementing the Act by promulgating regulations and enforcing its provisions. § 201 (c), 30 U. S. C. § 1211 (c) (1976 ed., Supp. III). The principal regulatory and enforcement provisions are contained in Title V of the Act, 91 Stat. 467-514, 30 U. S. C. §§ 1251-1279 (1976 ed., Supp. III). Section 501, 30 U. S. C. § 1251 (1976 ed., Supp. Ill), establishes a two-stage program for the regulation of surface coal mining: an initial, or interim regulatory phase, and a subsequent, permanent phase. The interim program mandates immediate promulgation and federal enforcement of some of the Act’s environmental protection performance standards, complemented by continuing state regulation. Under the permanent phase, a regulatory program is to be adopted for each State, mandating compliance with the full panoply of federal performance standards, with enforcement responsibility lying with either the State or Federal Government.
Section' 501 (a) directs the Secretary to promulgate regulations establishing an interim regulatory program during which mine operators will be required to comply with some of the Act’s performance standards, as specified by § 502 (c), 30 U. S. C. § 1252 (c) (1976 ed., Supp. III). Included among those selected standards are requirements governing: (a) restoration of land after mining to its prior condition; (b) restoration of land to its approximate original contour; (c) segregation and preservation of topsoil; (d) minimization of disturbance to the hydrologic balance; (e) construction of coal mine waste piles used as dams and embankments; (f) re-vegetation of mined areas; and (g) spoil disposal. § 515 (b), 30 U. S. C. § 1265 (b) (1976 ed., Supp. III). The interim regulations were published on December 13, 1977, see 42 Fed. Reg. 62639, and they are currently in effect in most States, including Virginia.
The Secretary is responsible for enforcing the interim regulatory program. § 502 (e), 30 U. S. C. § 1252 (e) (1976 ed., Supp. III). A federal enforcement and inspection program is to be established for each State, and is to remain in effect until a permanent regulatory program is implemented in the State. States may issue permits for surface mining operations during the interim phase, but operations authorized by such permits must comply with the federal interim performance standards. § 502 (b), 30 U. S. C. § 1252 (b) (1976 ed., Supp. Ill). States may also pursue their own regulatory and inspection programs during the interim phase, and they may assist the Secretary in enforcing the interim standards. The States are not, however, required to enforce the interim regulatory standards and, until the permanent phase of the program, the Secretary may not cede the Federal Government’s independent enforcement role to States that wish to conduct their own regulatory programs.
Section 501 (b), 30 U. S. C. § 1251 (b) (1976 ed., Supp. Ill), directs the Secretary to promulgate regulations establishing a permanent regulatory program incorporating all the Act’s performance standards. The Secretary published the permanent regulations on March 13, 1979, see 44 Fed. Reg. 14902, but these regulations do not become effective in a particular State until either a permanent state program, submitted and approved in accordance with § 503 of the Act, or a permanent federal program for the State, adopted in accordance with § 504, is implemented.
Under § 503, any State wishing to assume permanent regulatory authority over the surface coal mining operations on “non-Federal lands” within its borders must submit a proposed permanent program to the Secretary for his approval. The proposed program must demonstrate that the state legislature has enacted laws implementing the environmental protection standards established by the Act and accompanying regulations, and that the State has the administrative and technical ability to enforce these standards. 30 U. S. C. § 1253 (1976 ed., Supp. III). The Secretary must approve or disapprove each such proposed program in accordance with time schedules and procedures established by §§ 503 (b), (c), 30 U. S. C. §§ 1253 (b), (c) (1976 ed., Supp. III). In addition, the Secretary must develop and implement a federal permanent program for each State that fails to submit or enforce a satisfactory state program. § 504, 30 U. S. C. § 1254 (1976 ed., Supp. III). In such situations, the Secretary constitutes the regulatory authority administering the Act within that State and continues as such unless and until a “state program” is approved. No later than eight months after adoption of either a state-run or federally administered permanent regulatory program for a State, all surface coal mining and reclamation operations on “non-Federal lands” within that State must obtain a new permit issued in accordance with the applicable regulatory program. §506 (a), 30 U. S. C. § 1256 (a) (1976 ed., Supp. III).
B
On October 23, 1978, the Virginia Surface Mining and Reclamation Association, Inc., an association of coal producers engaged in surface coal mining operations in Virginia, 63 of its member coal companies, and 4 individual landowners filed suit in Federal District Court seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against various provisions of the Act. The Commonwealth of Virginia and the town of Wise, Va., intervened as plaintiffs. Plaintiffs’ challenge was primarily directed at Title V’s performance standards. Because the permanent regulatory program was not scheduled to become effective until June 3, 1980, plaintiffs’ challenge was directed at the sections of the Act establishing the interim regulatory program. Plaintiffs alleged that these provisions violate the Commerce Clause, the equal protection and due process guarantees of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, the Tenth Amendment, and the Just Compensation Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
The District Court held a 13-day trial on plaintiffs’ request for a permanent injunction. The court subsequently issued an order and opinion declaring several central provisions of the Act unconstitutional. 483 F. Supp. 425 (1980). The court rejected plaintiffs’ Commerce Clause, equal protection, and substantive due process challenges to the Act. The court held, however, that the Act "operates to ‘displace the States’ freedom to structure integral operations in areas of traditional functions,’... and, therefore, is in contravention of the Tenth Amendment.” Id., at 435, quoting National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U. S. 833, 852 (1976). The court also ruled that various provisions of the Act effect an uncompensated taking of private property in violation of the Just Compensation Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Finally, the court agreed with plaintiffs’ due process challenges to some of the Act’s enforcement provisions. The court permanently enjoined the Secretary from enforcing various provisions of the Act.
In No. 79-1538, the Secretary appeals from that portion of the District Court’s judgment declaring various sections of the Act unconstitutional and permanently enjoining their enforcement. In No. 79-1596, plaintiffs cross-appeal from the District Court’s rejection of their Commerce Clause challenge to the Act. Because of the importance of the issues raised, we noted probable jurisdiction of both appeals, 449 U. S. 817 (1980), and consolidated the two cases. For convenience, we shall usually refer to plaintiffs as “appellees.”
II
On cross-appeal, appellees argue that the District Court erred in rejecting their challenge to the Act as beyond the scope of congressional power under the Commerce Clause. They insist that the Act’s principal goal is regulating the use of private lands within the borders of the States and not, as the District Court found, regulating the interstate commerce effects of surface coal mining. Consequently, appellees contend that the ultimate issue presented is “whether land as such is subject to regulation under the Commerce Clause, i. e. whether land can be regarded as ‘in commerce.’ ” Brief for Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Association, Inc., et al. 12 (emphasis in original). In urging us to answer “no” to this question, appellees emphasize that the Court has recognized that land-use regulation is within the inherent police powers of the States and their political subdivisions, and argue that Congress may regulate land use only insofar as the Property Clause grants it control over federal lands.
We do not accept either appellees’ framing of the question or the answer they would have us supply. The task of a court that is asked to determine whether a particular exercise of congressional power is valid under the Commerce Clause is relatively narrow. The court must defer to a congressional finding that a regulated activity affects interstate commerce, if there is any rational basis for such a finding. Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U. S. 241, 258 (1964); Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U. S. 294, 303-304 (1964). This established, the only remaining question for judicial inquiry is whether “the means chosen by [Congress] must be reasonably adapted to the end permitted by the Constitution.” Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, supra, at 262. See United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100, 121 (1941); Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U. S., at 304. The judicial task is at an end once the court determines that Congress acted rationally in adopting a particular regulatory scheme. Ibid.
Judicial review in this area is influenced above all by the fact that the Commerce Clause is a grant of plenary authority to Congress. See National League of Cities v. Usery, supra, at 840; Cleveland v. United States, 329 U. S. 14, 19 (1946); NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1, 37 (1937). This power is “complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations, other than are prescribed in the constitution.” Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 196 (1824). Moreover, this Court has made clear that the commerce power extends not only to “the use of channels of interstate or foreign commerce” and to “protection of the instrumentalities of interstate commerce... or persons or things in commerce,” but also to “activities affecting commerce.” Perez v. United States, 402 U. S. 146, 150 (1971). As we explained in Fry v. United States, 421 U. S. 542, 547 (1975), “[ejven activity that is purely intrastate in character may be regulated by Congress, where the activity, combined with like conduct by others similarly situated, affects commerce among the States or with foreign nations.” See National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U. S., at 840; Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, supra, at 255; Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111, 127-128 (1942); United States v. Wrightwood Dairy Co., 315 U. S. 110, 119 (1942); United States v. Darby, supra, at 120-121.
Thus, when Congress has determined that an activity affects interstate commerce, the courts need inquire only whether the finding is rational. Here, the District Court properly deferred to Congress’ express findings, set out in the Act itself, about the effects of surface coal mining on interstate commerce. Section 101 (c), 30 U. S. C. § 1201 (c) (1976 ed., Supp. Ill), recites the congressional finding that
“many surface mining operations result in disturbances of surface areas that burden and adversely affect commerce and the public welfare by destroying or diminishing the utility of land for commercial, industrial, residential, recreational, agricultural, and forestry purposes, by causing erosion and landslides, by contributing to floods, by polluting the water, by destroying fish and wildlife habitats, by impairing natural beauty, by damaging the property of citizens, by creating hazards dangerous to life and property by degrading the quality of life in local communities, and by counteracting governmental programs and efforts to conserve soil, water, and other natural resources.”
The legislative record provides ample support for these statutory findings. The Surface Mining Act became law only after six years of the most thorough legislative consideration. Committees of both Houses of Congress held extended hearings during which vast amounts of testimony and documentary evidence about the effects of surface mining on our Nation’s environment and economy were brought to Congress’ attention. Both Committees made detailed findings about these effects and the urgent need for federal legislation to address the problem. The Senate Report explained that
"[sjurface coal mining activities have imposed large social costs on the public... in many areas of the country in the form of unreclaimed lands, water pollution, erosion, floods, slope failures, loss of fish and wildlife resources, and a decline in natural beauty.” S. Rep. No. 95-128, p. 50 (1977).
See id., at 50-54.
Similarly, the House Committee documented the adverse effects of surface coal mining on interstate commerce as including:
“ 'Acid drainage which has ruined an estimated 11,000 miles of streams; the loss of prime hardwood forest and the destruction of wildlife habitat by strip mining; the degrading of productive farmland; recurrent landslides; siltation and sedimentation of river systems....’” H. R. Rep. No. 95-218, p. 58 (1977), quoting H. R. Rep. No. 94-1445, p. 19 (1976).
And in discussing how surface coal mining affects water resources and in turn interstate commerce, the House Committee explained:
“The most widespread damages... are environmental in nature. Water users and developers incur significant economic and financial losses as well.
“Reduced recreational values, fishkills, reductions in normal waste assimilation capacity, impaired water supplies, metals and masonry corrosion and deterioration, increased flood frequencies and flood damages, reductions in designed water storage capacities at impoundments, and higher operating costs for commercial waterway-users are some of the most obvious economic effects that stem from mining-related pollution and sedimentation.” H. R. Rep. No. 95-218, at 59.
See id., at 96-122.
The Committees also explained that inadequacies in existing state laws and the need for uniform minimum nationwide standards made federal regulations imperative. See S. Rep. No. 95-128, at 49; H. R. Rep. No. 95-218, at 58. In light of the evidence available to Congress and the detailed consideration that the legislation received, we cannot say that Congress did not have a rational basis for concluding that surface coal mining has substantial effects on interstate commerce.
Appellees do not, in general, dispute the validity of the congressional findings. Rather, appellees’ contention is that the “rational basis” test should not apply in this case because the Act regulates land use, a local activity not affecting interstate commerce. But even assuming that appellees correctly characterize the land use regulated by the Act as a “local” activity, their argument is unpersuasive.
The denomination of an activity as a “local” or “intrastate” activity does not resolve the question whether Congress may regulate it under the Commerce Clause. As previously noted, the commerce power “extends to those activities intrastate which so affect interstate commerce, or the exertion of the power of Congress over it, as to make regulation of them appropriate means to the attainment of a legitimate end, the effective execution of the granted power to regulate interstate commerce.” United States v. Wrightwood Dairy Co., 315 U. S., at 119. See Fry v. United States, 421 U. S., at 547; NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Cory., 301 U. S., at 37. This Court has long held that Congress may regulate the conditions under which goods shipped in interstate commerce are produced where the “local” activity of producing these goods itself affects interstate commerce. See, e. g., United States v. Darby, 312 U. S. 100 (1941); Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111 (1942); NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., suyra; Kirschbaum Co. v. Walling, 316 U. S. 517 (1942). Cf. Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U. S. 294 (1964). Appellees do not dispute that coal is a commodity that moves in interstate commerce. Here, Congress rationally determined that regulation of surface coal mining is necessary to protect interstate commerce from adverse effects that may result from that activity. This congressional finding is sufficient to sustain the Act as a valid exercise of Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause.
Moreover, the Act responds to a congressional finding that nationwide “surface mining and reclamation standards are essential in order to insure that competition in interstate commerce among sellers of coal produced in different States will not be used to undermine the ability of the several States to improve and maintain adequate standards on coal mining operations within their borders.” 30 U. S. C. § 1201 (g) (1976 ed., Supp. III). The prevention of this sort of destructive interstate competition is a traditional role for congressional action under the Commerce Clause. In United States v. Darby, supra, the Court used a similar rationale to sustain the imposition of federal minimum wage and maximum hour regulations on a manufacturer of goods shipped in interstate commerce. The Court explained that the statute implemented Congress’ view that “interstate commerce should not be made the instrument of competition in the distribution of goods produced under substandard labor conditions, which competition is injurious to the commerce and to the states from and to which the commerce flows.” Id., at 115. The same rationale applies here to support the conclusion that the Surface Mining Act is within the authority granted to Congress by the Commerce Clause.
Finally, we agree with the lower federal courts that have uniformly found the power conferred by the Commerce Clause broad enough to permit congressional regulation of activities causing air or water pollution, or other environmental hazards that may have effects in more than one State. Appellees do not dispute that the environmental and other problems that the Act attempts to control can properly be addressed through Commerce Clause legislation. In these circumstances, it is difficult to find any remaining foundation for appellees’ argument that, because it regulates a particular land use, the Surface Mining Act is beyond congressional Commerce Clause authority. Accordingly, we turn to the question whether the means selected by Congress were reasonable and appropriate.
Appellees’ essential challenge to the means selected by the Act is that they are redundant or unnecessary. Appellees contend that a variety of federal statutes such as the Clean Air Act, 42 U. S. C. § 7401 et seq. (1976 ed., Supp. Ill), the Flood Control Acts, 33 U. S. C. § 701 et seq. (1976 ed., Supp. Ill), and the Clean Water Act, 33 U. S. C. § 1251 et seq. (1976 ed., Supp. Ill), adequately address the federal interest in controlling the environmental effects of surface coal mining without need to resort to the land-use regulation scheme of the Surface Mining Act. The short answer to this argument is that the effectiveness of existing laws in dealing with a problem identified by Congress is ordinarily a matter committed to legislative judgment. Congress considered the effectiveness of existing legislation and concluded that additional measures were necessary to deal with the interstate commerce effects of surface coal mining. See H. It. Rep. No. 95-218, at 58-60; S. Rep. No. 95-128, at 59-63. And we agree with the court below that the Act’s regulatory scheme is reasonably related to the goals Congress sought to accomplish. The Act’s restrictions on the practices of mine operators all serve to control the environmental and other adverse effects of surface coal mining.
In sum, we conclude that the District Court properly rejected appellees’ Commerce Clause challenge to the Act. We therefore turn to the court’s ruling that the Act contravenes affirmative constitutional limitations on congressional exercise of the commerce power.
Ill
The District Court invalidated §§ 515 (d) and (e) of the Act, which prescribe performance standards for surface coal mining on “steep slopes,” on the ground that they violate a constitutional limitation on the commerce power imposed by the Tenth Amendment. These provisions require “steep-slope” operators: (i) to reclaim the mined area by completely covering the highwall and returning the site to its “approximate original contour”; (ii) to refrain from dumping spoil material on the downslope below the bench or mining cut; and (iii) to refrain from disturbing land above the highwall unless permitted to do so by the regulatory authority. § 515 (d), 30 U. S. C. § 1265 (d) (1976 ed., Supp. III). Under § 515 (e), a “steep-slope” operator may obtain a variance from the approximate-original-contour requirement by showing that it will allow a postreclamation use that is “deemed to constitute an equal or better economic or public use” than would otherwise be possible. 30 U. S. C. § 1265 (e)(3)(A) (1976 ed., Supp. III).
The District Court’s ruling relied heavily on our decision in National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U. S. 833 (1976). The District Court viewed the central issue as whether the Act governs the activities of private individuals, or whether it instead regulates the governmental decisions of the States. And although the court acknowledged that the Act “ultimately affects the coal mine operator,” 483 F. Supp., at 432, it concluded that the Act contravenes the Tenth Amendment because it interferes with the States’ “traditional governmental function” of regulating land use. Id., at 435. The court held that, as applied to Virginia, the Act’s steep-slope provisions impermissibly constrict the State’s ability to make “essential decisions.” The court found the Act accomplishes this result “through forced relinquishment of state control of land use planning; through loss of state control of its economy; and through economic harm, from expenditure of state funds to implement the act and from destruction of the taxing power of certain counties, cities, and towns.” Id., at 435. The court therefore permanently enjoined enforcement of §§ 515 (d) and (e).
The District Court’s reliance on National League of Cities requires a careful review of the actual basis and import of our decision in that case. There, we considered a constitutional challenge to the 1974 amendments to the Fair Labor Standards Act which had extended federal minimum wage and maximum hour regulations to most state and local government employees. Because it was conceded that the challenged regulations were “undoubtedly within the scope of the Commerce Clause,” 426 U. S., at 841, the only question presented was whether that particular exercise of the commerce power “encounter [ed] a... constitutional barrier because [the regulations] applied directly to the States and subdivisions of States as employers.” Ibid. We began by drawing a sharp distinction between congressional regulation of private persons and businesses “necessarily subject to the dual sovereignty of the government of the Nation and of the State in which they reside,” id., at 845, and federal regulation “directed, not to private citizens, but to the States as States,” ibid. As to the former, we found no Tenth Amendment impediment to congressional action. Instead, we, reaffirmed our consistent rule:
“Congressional power over areas of private endeavor, even when its exercise may pre-empt express state-law determinations contrary to the result that has commended itself to the collective wisdom of Congress, has been held to be limited only by the requirement that 'the means chosen by [Congress] must be reasonably adapted to the end permitted by the Constitution.’ Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U. S. 241, 262 (1964).” Id., at 840.
The Court noted, however, that “the States as States stand on a quite different footing from an individual or corporation when challenging the exercise of Congress’ power to regulate commerce.” Id., at 854. It indicated that when Congress attempts to directly regulate the States as States the Tenth Amendment requires recognition that “there are attributes of sovereignty attaching to every state government which may not be impaired by Congress, not because Congress may lack an affirmative grant of legislative authority to reach the matter, but because the Constitution prohibits it from exercising the authority in that manner.” Id., at 845. The Court held that the power to set the wages and work hours of state employees was “an undoubted attribute of state sovereignty.” Ibid. And because it further found that the challenged regulations would “displace the States’ freedom to structure integral operations in areas of traditional governmental functions,” id., at 852, the Court concluded that Congress could not, consistently with the Tenth Amendment, “abrogate the States’ otherwise plenary authority to make [these decisions].” Id., at 846.
It should be apparent from this discussion that in order to succeed, a claim that congressional commerce power legislation is invalid under the reasoning of National League of Cities must satisfy each of three requirements. First, there must be a showing that the challenged statute regulates the “States as States.” Id., at 854. Second, the federal regulation must address matters that are indisputably “attribute [s] of state sovereignty.” Id., at 845. And third, it must be apparent that the States’ compliance with the federal law would directly impair their ability “to structure integral operations in areas of traditional governmental functions.” Id., at 852. When the Surface Mining Act is examined in light of these principles, it is clear that appellees’ Tenth Amendment challenge must fail because the first of the three requirements is not satisfied. The District Court’s holding to the contrary rests on an unwarranted extension of the decision in National League of Cities.
As the District Court itself acknowledged, the steep-slope provisions of the Surface Mining Act govern only the activities of coal mine operators who are private individuals and businesses. Moreover, the States are not compelled to enforce the steep-slope standards, to expend any state funds, or to participate in the federal regulatory program in any manner whatsoever. If a State does not wish to submit a proposed permanent program that complies with the Act and implementing regulations, the full regulatory burden will be borne by the Federal Government. Thus, there can be no suggestion that the Act commandeers the legislative processes of the States by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program. Cf. Maryland v. EPA, 530 F. 2d 215, 224-228 (CA4 1975), vacated and remanded sub nom. EPA v. Brown, 431 U. S. 99 (1977); District of Columbia v. Train, 172 U. S. App. D. C. 311, 330-334, 521 F. 2d 971, 990-994 (1975), vacated and remanded sub nom. EPA v. Brown, 431 U. S. 99 (1977); Brown v. EPA, 521 F. 2d 827, 837-842 (CA9 1975), vacated and remanded, 431 U. S. 99 (1977). The most that can be said is that the Surface Mining Act establishes a program of cooperative federalism that allows the States, within limits established by federal minimum standards, to enact and administer their own regulatory programs, structured to meet their own particular needs. See In re Permanent Surface Mining Regulation Litigation, 199 U. S. App. D. C. 225, 226, 617 F. 2d 807, 808 (1980). In this respect, the Act resembles a number of other federal statutes that have survived Tenth Amendment challenges in the lower federal courts.
Appellees argue, however, that the threat of federal usurpation of their regulatory roles coerces the States into enforcing the Surface Mining Act. Appellees also contend that the Act directly regulates the States as States because it establishes mandatory minimum federal standards. In essence, appellees urge us to join the District Court in looking beyond the activities actually regulated by the Act to its conceivable effects on the States’ freedom to make decisions in areas of “integral governmental functions.” And appellees emphasize, as did the court below, that the Act interferes with the States’ ability to exercise their police powers by regulating land use.
Appellees’ claims accurately characterize the Act insofar as it prescribes federal minimum standards governing surface coal mining, which a State may either implement itself or else yield to a federally administered regulatory program. To object to this scheme, however, appellees must assume that the Tenth Amendment limits congressional power to pre-empt or displace state regulation of private activities affecting interstate commerce. This assumption is incorrect.
A wealth of precedent attests to congressional authority to displace or pre-empt state laws regulating private activity affecting interstate commerce when these laws conflict with federal law. See, e. g., Jones v. Rath Packing Co., 430 U. S. 519, 525-526 (1977); Perez v. Campbell, 402 U. S. 637, 649-650 (1971); Florida Lime & Avocado Growers, Inc. v. Paul, 373 U. S. 132, 141-143 (1963); Bethlehem Steel Co. v. New York State Labor Relations Bd., 330 U. S. 767, 772-776 (1947); Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U. S. 52, 67-68 (1941). Moreover, it is clear that the Commerce Clause empowers Congress to prohibit all — and not just inconsistent — state regulation of such activities. See, e. g., City of Burbank v. Lockheed Air Terminal, Inc., 411 U. S. 624 (1973); Campbell v. Hussey, 368 U. S. 297 (1961); Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218 (1947); Transit Comm’n v. United States, 289 U. S. 121 (1933). Although such congressional enactments obviously curtail or prohibit the States’ prerogatives to make legislative choices respecting subjects the States may consider important, the Supremacy Clause permits no other result. See Chicago & North Western Transp. Co. v. Kalo Brick & Tile Co., 450 U. S. 311, 317-319 (1981); Sanitary District v. United States, 266 U. S. 405, 425-426 (1925); The Minnesota Rate Cases, 230 U. S. 352, 399 (1913); Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat., at 211. As the Court long ago stated: “It is elementary and well settled that there can be no divided authority over interstate commerce, and that the acts of Congress on that subject are supreme and exclusive.” Missouri Pacific R. Co. v. Stroud, 267 U. S. 404, 408 (1925).
Thus, Congress could constitutionally have enacted a statute prohibiting any state regulation of surface coal mining. We fail to see why the Surface Mining Act should become constitutionally suspect simply because Congress chose to allow the States a regulatory role. Contrary to the assumption by both the District Court and appellees, nothing in National League of Cities suggests that the Tenth Amendment shields the States from pre-emptive federal regulation of private activities affecting interstate commerce. To the contrary, National League of Cities explicitly reaffirmed the teaching of earlier cases that Congress may, in regulating private activities pursuant to the commerce power, “pre-empt express state-law determinations contrary to the result which has commended itself to the collective wisdom of Congress... 426 U. S., at 840. The only limitation on congressional authority in this regard is the requirement that the means selected be reasonably related to the goal of regulating interstate commerce. Ibid. We have already indicated that the Act satisfies this test.
This conclusion applies regardless of whether-the. federal legislation displaces laws enacted under the States’ “police powers.” The Court long ago rejected the suggestion that Congress invades areas reserved to the States by the Tenth Amendment simply because it exercises its authority under the Commerce Clause in a manner that displaces the States’ exercise of their police powers. See Hoke v. United States, 227 U. S. 308, 320-323 (1913); Athanasaw v. United States, 227 U. S. 326 (1913); Cleveland v. United States, 329 U. S., at 19; United States v. Darby, 312 U. S., at 113-114; United States v. Wrightwood Dairy Co., 315 U. S., at 119. Cf. United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U. S. 144, 147 (1938) (“it is no objection to the exertion of the power to regulate interstate commerce that its exercise is attended by the same incidents which attend the exercise of the police power of the states”); accord, FPC v. Natural Gas Pipeline Co., 315 U. S. 575, 582 (1942); Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries & Warehouse Co., 251 U. S. 146, 156 (1919); Seven Cases v. United States, 239 U. S. 510, 514 (1916). This Court has upheld as constitutional any number of federal statutes enacted under the commerce power that pre-empt particular exercises of state police power. See, e. g., United States v. Walsh, 331 U. S. 432 (1947) (upholding Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, 21 U. S. C. §§ 301-392);
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Chief Justice Burger
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We granted certiorari to resolve a Circuit conflict on whether commercial bribery of private employees prohibited by a state criminal statute constitutes “bribery ... in violation of the laws of the State in which committed” within the meaning of the Travel Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1952.
I
Petitioner Vincent Perrin and four codefendants were indicted in the Eastern District of Louisiana for violating the Travel Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1952, and for conspiring to violate the Act, 18 U. S. C. § 371. The Travel Act provides in part:
“(a) Whoever travels in interstate or foreign commerce or uses any facility in interstate or foreign commerce, including the mail, with intent to- — ■
“(1) distribute the proceeds of any unlawful activity; or
“(2) commit any crime of violence to further any unlawful activity; or
“(3) otherwise promote, manage, establish, carry on, or facilitate the promotion, management, establishment, or carrying on, of any unlawful activity,
“and thereafter performs or attempts to perform any of the acts specified in subparagraphs (1), (2), and (3), shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both.
“(b) As used in this subsection ‘unlawful activity’ means (1) any business enterprise involving gambling, liquor on which the Federal excise tax has not been paid, narcotics or controlled substances (as defined in section 102 (6) of the Controlled Substances Act), or prostitution offenses in violation of the laws of the State in which they are committed or of the United States, or (2) extortion, bribery, or arson in violation of the laws of the State in which committed or of the United States.”
The indictment charged that Perrin and his codefendants used the facilities of interstate commerce for the purpose of promoting a commercial bribery scheme in violation of the laws of the State of Louisiana.
Following a jury trial, Perrin was convicted on the conspiracy count and two substantive Travel Act counts. He received a 1-year suspended sentence on each of the three counts.
“Commercial bribery is the giving or offering to give, directly or indirectly, anything of apparent present or prospective value to any private agent, employee, or fiduciary, without the knowledge and consent of the principal or employer, with the intent to influence such agent’s, employee’s, or fiduciary’s action in relation to the principal’s or employer’s affairs.”
The Government’s evidence at trial was that Perrin, David Levy, and Duffy LaFont engaged in a scheme to exploit geological data obtained from the Petty-Ray Geophysical Co. Petty-Ray, a Louisiana-based company, was in the business of conducting geological explorations and selling the data to oil companies. At trial, company executives testified that confidentiality was imperative to the. conduct of their business. The economic value of exploration data would be undermined if its confidentiality were not protected. Moreover, public disclosure after sale would interfere with the contractual rights of the purchaser and would otherwise injure Petty-Ray’s relationship with its customers.
In June 1975 LaFont importuned Roger Willis, an employee of Petty-Ray, to steal confidential geological exploration data from his employer. In exchange, LaFont promised Willis a percentage of the profits of a corporation which had been created to exploit the stolen information. Willis’ position as an analyst of seismic data gave him access to the relevant material, which he in turn surreptitiously provided to the conspirators. Perrin, a consulting geologist, was brought into the scheme to interpret and analyze the data.
In late July 1975 Perrin met with Willis, LaFont, and Levy. Perrin directed Willis to call a firm in Richmond, Tex., to obtain gravity maps to aid him in his evaluation. After the meeting, Willis contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and disclosed the details of the scheme. Willis agreed to permit conversations between himself and. the other participants to be recorded. Forty-seven tapes were made, a large number of which were played to the jury.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed Perrin’s conviction, rejecting his contention that Congress intended “bribery” in the Act to include only bribery of public officials. The court also rejected challenges to the constitutionality of the Louisiana commercial bribery statute, to the sufficiency of the interstate nexus to establish jurisdiction under the Travel Act, and to the failure of the trial judge to sever petitioner’s trial from that of his codefendants. 580 F. 2d 730.
II
Petitioner argues that Congress intended “bribery” in the Travel Act to be confined to its common-law definition, i. e., bribery of a public official. He contends that because commercial bribery was not an offense at common law, the indictment fails to charge a federal offense.
The Travel Act was one of several bills enacted into law by the 87th Congress as part of the Attorney General’s 1961 legislative program directed against “organized crime.” Then Attorney General Robert Kennedy testified at Senate and House hearings that federal legislation was needed to aid state and local governments which were no longer able to cope with the increasingly complex and interstate nature of large-scale, multiparty crime. The stated intent was to “dry up” traditional sources of funds for such illegal activities. Legislation Relating to Organized Crime: Hearings on H. R. 468, H. R. 1246, etc., before Subcommittee No. 5 of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 87th Cong., 1st Sess. (1961) (hereinafter House Hearings); The Attorney General’s Program to Curb Organized Crime and Racketeering: Hearings on S. 1653, S. 1654, etc., before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 87th Cong., 1st Sess. (1961) (hereinafter Senate Hearings).
To remedy a gap in the authority of federal investigatory agencies, Congress employed its now familiar power under the Commerce Clause of the Federal Constitution to prohibit activities of traditional state and local concern that also have an interstate nexus. See, e. g., 18 U. S. C. § 1201 (federal kidnaping statute); 18 U. S. C. § 2312 (interstate transportation' of stolen automobiles). That Congress was consciously linking the enforcement powers and resources of the Federal and State Governments to deal with traditional state crimes is shown by its definition of “unlawful activity” as an “enterprise involving gambling, liquor . . . , narcotics or controlled substances ... , or prostitution offenses in violation of the laws of the State in which they are committed or of the United States.” The statute also makes it a federal offense to travel or use a facility in interstate commerce to commit “extortion [or] bribery ... in violation of the laws of the State in which committed or of the United States.” Because the offenses are defined by reference to existing state as well as federal law, it is clear beyond doubt that Congress intended to add a second layer of enforcement supplementing what it found to be inadequate state authority and state enforcement.
We begin with the language of the Travel Act itself. Southeastern Community College v. Davis, 442 U. S. 397, 405 (1979); TV A v. Hill, 437 U. S. 153, 173 (1978). A fundamental canon of statutory construction is that, unless otherwise defined, words will be interpreted as taking their ordinary, contemporary, common meaning. Burns v. Alcala, 420 U. S. 575, 580-581 (1975). Therefore, we look to the ordinary meaning of the term “bribery” at the time Congress enacted the statute in 1961. In light of Perrin’s contentions we consider first the development and evolution of the common-law definition.
At early common law, the crime of bribery extended only to the corruption of judges. 3 E. Coke, Institutes *144, *147 (1628). By the time of Blackstone, bribery was defined as an offense involving a judge or “other person concerned in the administration of justice” and included the giver as well as the receiver of the bribe. 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *139-*140 (1765). The writings of a 19th-century scholar inform us that by that time the crime of bribery had been expanded to include the corruption of any public official and the bribery of voters and witnesses as well. J. Stephen, Digest of the Criminal Law 85-87 (1877). And by the 20th century, England had adopted the Prevention of Corruption Act making criminal the commercial bribery of agents and employees. Act of 1906, 6 Edw. 7, ch. 34, amended by the Prevention of Corruption Act of 1916, 6 & 7 Geo. 5, ch. 64.
In this country, by the time the Travel Act was enacted in 1961, federal and state statutes had extended the term bribery well beyond its common-law meaning. Although Congress chose not to enact a general commercial bribery statute, it perceived abuses in the areas it found required particular legislation. Federal statutes specifically using “bribery” in the sense of payments to private persons to influence their actions are the Transportation Act of 1940, 49 U. S. C. § 1 (17) (b) (prohibiting the “bribery” of agents or employees of common carriers), and the 1960 Amendments to the Communications Act, 47 U. S. C. § 509 (a) (2) (prohibiting the “bribery” of television game show contestants).
A similar enlargement of the term beyond its common-law definition manifested itself in the states prior to 1961. Fourteen States had statutes which outlawed commercial bribery generally. An additional 28 had adopted more narrow statutes outlawing corrupt payments to influence private duties in particular fields, including bribery of agents, common carrier and telegraph company employees, labor officials, bank employees, and participants in sporting events.
In sum, by 1961 the common understanding and meaning of “bribery” had extended beyond its early common-law definitions. In 42 States and in federal legislation, “bribery” included the bribery of individuals acting in a private capacity. It was against this background that the Travel Act was passed.
Ill
On a previous occasion we took note of the sparse legislative history of the Travel Act. Rewis v. United States, 401 U. S. 808, 811 (1971). The record of the hearings and floor' debates discloses that Congress made no attempt to define the statutory term “bribery,” but relied on the accepted contemporary meaning. There are ample references to the bribery of state and local officials, but there is no indication that Congress intended to so limit its meaning. Indeed, references in the legislative history to the purposes and scope of the Travel Act, as well as other bills under consideration by Congress as part of the package of “organized crime” legislation aimed at supplementing state enforcement, indicate that Members, Committees, and draftsmen used “bribery” to include payments to private individuals to influence their actions.
Senator Keating, for instance, expressed concern about the influence of gamblers and racketeers on athletics. He indicated his belief that the sports bribery scandals could be dealt with under the Travel Act. See Senate Hearings 327-328. Attorney General Kennedy in his opening statement in both the Senate and House hearings in 1961 expressed his concern that “gamblers have bribed college basketball players to shave points on games.” House Hearings 25; Senate Hearings 6. In the consideration of a related bill to grant immunity to witnesses testifying in labor racketeering cases, repeated reference was made to the need to curb “bribery” of labor and management officials involved in labor disputes. See House Hearings 84. It is not suggested that the references to the immunity bill were intended to define the content of “bribery” in the Travel Act, yet they do indicate that Congress did not use the word in the narrow, common-law sense.
Petitioner also contends that commercial bribery is a “management” or “white-collar” offense not generally associated with organized criminal activities. See United States v. Brecht, 540 F. 2d 45, 50 (CA2 1976), cert. denied, 429 U. S. 1123 (1977). From this, he argues that Congress could not have intended to encompass commercial bribery within § 1952.
The notion that bribery of private persons is unrelated or unknown to what is called “organized crime” has no foundation. The hearings on the Travel Act make clear that a major area of congressional concern was with the infiltration by organized crime into legitimate activities. House Hearings 2 (remarks of Chairman Celler). Legitimate businesses had come to be used as a means for highly organized criminal activities to hide income derived from illegal sources. Moreover, Committees investigating these activities found that those who infiltrated legitimate businesses often used the same criminal techniques to expand their operations and sales in the legitimate enterprises. Thus, in discussing the infiltration of organized groups into nongambling amusement games, the McClellan Committee reported that the organization achieved its holdings in legitimate business by “force, terror and the corruption of management, union and public officials.” Final Report of the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, S. Rep. No. 1139, 86th Cong., 2d Sess., 856 (1960).
Indeed, the McClellan Committee in 1960, like the Kefauver Committee in 1950-1951, documented numerous specific instances of the use of commercial bribery by these organized groups to control legitimate businesses. The McClellan Committee, for example, reported that a particular “shylocking” operation began in New York when persons were able to obtain a substantial unsecured line of credit at a New York bank “by making gifts to two of the bank officials.” Id., at 772-773. The Kefauver Committee explored, among numerous others, the relationship between a high-ranking official of the Ford Motor Co. and persons believed to be members of organized illegal groups. Its evidence suggested that organized crime had exploited that relationship to obtain Ford dealerships and hauling contracts. Third Interim Report of the Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, S. Rep. No. 307, 82d Cong., 1st Sess., 75 (1951). See also id., at 160-161 (expressing concern about “corruption of college basketball players who could be talked into controlling the score of a game”).
There can be little doubt that Congress recognized in 1961 that bribery of private persons was widely used in highly organized criminal efforts to infiltrate and gain control of legitimate businesses, an area of special concern of Congress in enacting the Travel Act.
Our approach to ascertaining the meaning of “bribery” must be guided by our holding in United States v. Nardello, 393 U. S. 286 (1969), where the same provision of the Act under review in this case was before the Court. There, the respondents were charged with traveling in interstate commerce with the intent to engage in extortion contrary to the laws of Pennsylvania in violation of § 1952. Pennsylvania’s “extortion” statute applied only to acts committed by public officials. However, the State had outlawed the particular conduct engaged in by the appellees under a statute entitled “blackmail.” Nardello and his codefendants argued, as Perrin does here, that Congress intended to use the word “extortion” in its common-law sense, which would be limited to conduct by public officials.
An opinion by Mr. Chief Justice Warren for a unanimous Court rejected the argument limiting the definition of extortion to its common-law meaning, holding that Congress used the term in a generic and contemporary sense. The Court noted that in 1961 the Attorney General had pressed Congress to include “shakedown rackets,” “shylocking,” and labor extortion, which were methods frequently used by organized groups to generate income and infiltrate legitimate activities.
In rejecting Nardello’s argument that Congress intended to adopt the common-law meaning of the term “extortion,” the Court stated:
“In light of the scope of the congressional purpose we decline to give the term 'extortion’ an unnaturally narrow reading . . . and thus conclude that the acts for which appellees have been indicted fall within the generic term extortion as used in the Travel Act.” 393 U, S., at 296.
We are similarly persuaded that the generic definition of bribery, rather than a narrow common-law definition, was intended by Congress.
IV
Petitioner also contends that a broad interpretation of the meaning of bribery will have serious federalism implications. He relies particularly on Rewis v. United States, 401 U. S. 808 (1971). See also United States v. Bass, 404 U. S. 336, 349-350 (1971). The factual setting in Bewis was very different from this case. There, we were confronted with a Travel Act prosecution of the proprietors of a gambling establishment located a few miles south of the Georgia-Florida state line. There was no evidence that Rewis had employed interstate facilities to conduct his numbers operation; moreover, he could not readily identify which customers had crossed state lines. The District Court had instructed the jury that if it found that third persons traveled from Georgia to Florida to place bets, that would be sufficient to supply the interstate commerce element necessary to sustain the conviction of the proprietors under the Act. In reversing, we cautioned that in that setting “an expansive Travel Act would alter sensitive federal-state relationships, could overextend limited federal police resources, and . . . would transform relatively minor state offenses into federal felonies.” 401 U. S., at 812.
Reliance on the federalism principles articulated in Rewis to dictate a narrow interpretation of “bribery” is misplaced. Our concern there was with the tenuous interstate commerce element. Looking at congressional intent in that light, we held that Congress did not intend that the Travel Act should apply to criminal activity within one State solely because that activity was sometimes patronized by persons from another State. Ibid.
Here, the sufficiency of the interstate nexus is no longer at issue. Rather, so long as the requisite interstate nexus is present, the statute reflects a clear and deliberate intent on the part of Congress to alter the federal-state balance in order to reinforce state law enforcement. In defining an “unlawful activity,” Congress has clearly stated its intention to include violations of- state as well as federal bribery law. Until statutes such as the Travel Act contravene some provision of the Constitution, the choice is for Congress, not the courts.
We hold that Congress intended “bribery ... in violation of the laws of the State in which committed” as used in the Travel Act to encompass conduct in violation of state commercial bribery statutes. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice White took no part in the decision of this case.
See United States v. Brecht, 540 F. 2d 45 (CA2 1976), cert. denied, 429 U. S. 1123 (1977) (holding no violation of the Travel Act); United States v. Pomponio, 511 F. 2d 953 (CA4), cert. denied, 423 U. S. 874 (1975) (holding a violation of the Travel Act).
Also indicted with petitioner were Duffy LaFont, Jr., David Levy, Albert Izuel, and Jim Haddox. Proceedings against Izuel and Haddox were severed by the trial court, and the charges were subsequently dismissed.
Louisiana’s commercial bribery statute, La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14.73 (West 1974), provides in part:
The Government claimed at trial that Perrin purposefully chose an out-of-state supplier because it would be less likely to notice leasing activities in Louisiana.
Phone calls from Louisiana to Richmond, Tex., by Willis and Levy, and the subsequent shipment of materials by the Richmond firm to Louisiana by Continental Bus were held to provide the interstate nexus jurisdie-tionally required to support the Travel Act prosecutions.
LaFont and Levy were also convicted; the Court of Appeals affirmed. Petitions for certiorari have been filed by both LaFont, No. 78-5930, and Levy, No. 78-5855, and are pending before this Court.
Perrin’s other contentions, including a claim that the asserted ambiguity of the Travel Act resulted in failure to provide adequate notice that his conduct violated federal as well as Louisiana laws, do not merit discussion.
Examples of federal statutes which make illegal the giving or receiving of payments to influence private duties but without using the word bribery are found at 18 U. S. C. § 215 (prohibiting payments to bank oifleers to influence their consideration of loans); 41 U. S. C. § 51 (prohibiting payments to contractors to secure subcontracts); and 29 U. S. C. § 186 (prohibiting payments to labor union officials).
The statutes are currently codified at Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 53a-160, 53a-161 (West 1972) (enacted 1905); La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14.73 (West 1974) (enacted 1920); Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., ch. 271, § 39 (West 1970) (enacted 1904); Mich. Comp. Laws §750.125 (1968) (enacted 1905); Miss. Code Ann. §§ 97-11-11, 97-11-13 (1973) (enacted 1857); Neb. Rev. Stat. § 28-710 (1975) (enacted 1907); N. Y. Penal Law §§ 180.00-180.03 (McKinney Supp. 1978-1979) (enacted 1905); N. C. Gen. Stat. § 14-353 (1969) (enacted 1913); Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 18, § 4108 (Purdon 1973) (enacted 1939); R I. Gen. Laws §§ 11-7-3, 11-7-4 (1970) (enacted 1881) ; S. C. Code § 16-17-540 (1977) (enacted 1905); Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 13, § 1106 (1974) (enacted 1904); Va. Code § 18.2-444 (1975) (enacted 1950); Wis. Stat. § 134.05 (1978) (enacted 1905). Of these 14, most had also enacted other private bribery statutes reaching labor, banking, or sports bribery.
The current codifications of the statutes are found at Ala. Code § 13-4-9 (1977) (sports); Alaska Stat. Ann. §42.20.110 (1976) (telegraph agent); Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §4-243 (1974), § 13-2309 (1978) (alcoholic beverages, sports); Ark, Stat. Ann. §41-3288 (1977), §67-707 (1966) (sports, banking); Cal. Penal Code Ann. §§ 337b-337e, 641 (West 1970) and Cal. Fin. Code Ann. § 3350 (West 1968) (sports, telegraph agent, banking); Colo. Rev. Stat. § 18-5-403 (1978) (sports); Del. Code Ann., Tit. 28, §§701-704 (1975) (sports); Fla. Stat. §838.12 (1976) (sports); Haw. Rev. Stat. § 708-880 (1976) (sports); Ill. Rev. Stat., ch. 38, §§ 29-1 to 29-3 (1977) (sports); Ind. Code §§ 35-18-10-1, 35-18-10-2, 35-18-12-1, 35-18-12-2 (1976) (common carrier, sports); Iowa Code § 722.3 (1979) (sports); Ky. Rev. Stat. §244.600 (1972), §518.040-050 (1975) (alcoholic beverages, sports); Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 17, § 3601 (1965) (labor) ; Md. Ann. Code, Art. 27, §§24, 25 (1976) (sports); Minn. Stat. §609.825 (1964) (sports); Mo. Rev. Stat. §570.155 (1978) (sports); Mont. Code Ann. § 94-35-221 (1978) (telegraph agent); Nev. Rev. Stat. §§ 614.140, 707.120 (1973) (labor, telegraph agent); N. J. Stat. Ann. §§2A:91-1, 2A:93-7, 2A: 93-10 (West 1969) (banking, labor, sports); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2915.06 (1975) (sports); Okla. Stat., Tit. 21, §§ 399, 400 (1971) (sports); Ore. Rev. Stat. § 165.515 (1977) (telegraph agent); S. D. Comp. Laws Ann. §36-18-28 (1967) (architects); Tenn. Code Ann. §§ 39-821, 39-824 to 39-826 (1975) (common carriers, sports); Tex. Penal Code Ann. §§32.43, 32.44 (1974) (attorneys, sports); Wash. Rev. Code §§49.44.020, 67.04.010 to 67.04.080 (1976) (sports, labor); W. Va. Code §61-10-22 (1977) (sports).
Since 1961, of the eight States which had not adopted nonpublic official bribery statutes, Georgia, Kansas, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Wyoming now have such statutes. Moreover, a number of the States which did not have a commercial bribery statute in 1961 do so today.
See also ALI, Model Penal Code §223.10, pp. 113-117, Comments (Tent. Draft No. 11, 1960) (“all relations which are recognized in a society as involving special trust should be kept secure from the corrupting influence of bribery”); ALI, Model Penal Code § 224.8 (Prop. Off. Draft 1962) (containing a specific prohibition against commercial bribery).
Although congressional hearings subsequent to the passage of the Travel Act are not relied on, they do support the conclusion that bribery of private persons is a familiar tool of organized criminal groups. See Organized Crime, Stolen Securities: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, 92d Cong., 1st Sess., 675-683 (1971) (bribing of employees of banking institutions to accept pledges of worthless and stolen securities and of employees of brokerage houses to steal securities); Organized Crime, Techniques for Converting Worthless Securities into Cash: Hearings before the House Select Committee on Crime, 92d Cong., 1st Sess., 3, 242, 292-293, 361 (1971) (bribing of insurance company presidents to buy worthless securities for the company); Organized Crime, Securities: Thefts and Frauds: Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, 93d Cong., 1st Sess., 183, 239-240, 467-468, 475-476 (1973) (bribing of certified public accountants and employees in financial institutions and brokerage houses).
Our analysis leads us to reject the application of the maxim of statutory construction that ambiguity concerning the ambit of criminal statutes should be resolved in favor of lenity. Bell v. United States, 349 U. S. 81, 83 (1955). Although Bell states the general rule in cases where the courts are faced with genuine ambiguity, the rule of lenity applies “ 'when we are uncertain about the statute’s meaning/ ” and is “ 'not to be used in complete disregard of the purpose of the legislature.’ ” United States v. Culbert, 435 U. S. 371, 379 (1978), quoting Scarborough v. United States, 431 U. S. 563, 577 (1977). Nardello leaves little room for uncertainty about the statute’s meaning.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Clark
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case is a companion to Labor Board v. Mexia Textile Mills, ante, p. 563, decided this day. Respondent is a manufacturer of clothing in Texas, and is engaged in interstate commerce within the meaning of the labor relations acts. In December 1943, the National Labor Relations Board designated Local Union No. 251 of the United Garment Workers of America, affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, the exclusive bargaining-representative of certain of respondent’s employees. In December 1945, the Union charged the respondent with violations of §§8(1) and 8 (5) of the National Labor Relations Act in connection with a strike going on at that time. The Board’s complaint was issued pursuant to these charges in April 1946; a hearing was held; the Trial Examiner’s intermediate report was issued; and, since no exceptions to the report were entered by the respondent, the Board, on August 26, 1946, adopted the Trial Examiner’s findings, conclusions and recommendations, and ordered the respondent to cease and desist from its refusal to bargain with the Union. With certain limitations, the company was also ordered to offer reinstatement and back pay to employees who had gone on strike. 70 N. L. R. B. 540 (1946).
Two and one-half years later, on February 17, 1949, the Board petitioned the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for the enforcement of its order. Respondent moved for leave to adduce additional evidence. It stated that it had bargained with the Union since the date of the order, but that no agreement had been reached; that the Union had made no effort to bargain since early in 1948; that respondent questioned whether the Union retained the majority of employees in the bargaining unit, since certain employees had informed respondent that they had left the Union, and the Union’s organizer had stated, according to respondent, that a rival union had a “substantial group” within its membership; that these facts had come to respondent’s attention since the “record in the instant case was closed and completed”; and finally that the passage of the statute imposing a duty upon the Union to bargain with the respondent might affect the disposition of the case before the Board.
On May 13, 1949, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit entered an order identical in pertinent part with that quoted in Labor Board v. Mexia Textile Mills, ante, p. 563. We granted certiorari, 338 U. S. 909 (1950).
Although respondent concedes that the decision in the Mexia case governs the case at bar, a single issue may deserve separate treatment. In the instant case the Board waited two and one-half years before it sought enforcement of its order. There is a suggestion that the length of the delay may have influenced the Court of Appeals in ordering the Board to take evidence on the question of compliance. We regard this as doubtful, in view of its identical action in the Mexia case, when the petition for enforcement was filed only nine months after the Board’s order. But in any event we view the delay as without consequence in this case.
The Board is of course charged with primary responsibility in effectuating the policies of the Act. It has determined that those policies are advanced in some cases by resorting to the processes of negotiation with the employer rather than the compulsion, as well as the trouble and expense, of an enforcement decree. See § 202.13 of the Board’s earlier regulations regarding the Labor Management Relations Act, 12 Fed. Reg. 5651, 5653 (1947). In some cases delay in enforcement may be helpful in reaching an immediate solution of the problem; in others, exhaustion of negotiation techniques before a decree is requested may consume many months after the Board’s order and before such techniques fail. We are of the opinion that a strict judicial time limitation of the duration presented in the instant case would frustrate the deliberate purpose of Congress in permitting, but not requiring, resort to an enforcement decree. Cf. § 10 (b), which states a definite period of limitation regarding charges filed with the Board. Compare Labor Board v. American Creosoting Co., 139 F. 2d 193 (C. A. 6th Cir. 1943); Labor Board v. Electric Vacuum Cleaner Co., 315 U. S. 685, 697-698 (1942). We must not forget that the “question whether the settlement [with the employer] shall be accepted as definitive is for the Board to decide . . . Labor Board v. General Motors Corp., 179 F. 2d 221, 222 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1950). The employer, who could have obtained review of the Board order when it was entered, § 10 (f), is hardly in a position to object. Labor Board v. Todd Co., 173 F. 2d 705 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1949); Labor Board v. Andrew Jergens Co., 175 F. 2d 130, 134 (C. A. 9th Cir. 1949).
The contrary argument was made in more explicit terms in Labor Board v. Crompton-Highland Mills, 337 U. S. 217 (1949), a case also coming to us from the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The Board’s petition for enforcement had been filed more than a year and three months after its order. In its brief in this Court as well as in response to the petition for enforcement in the Court of Appeals, the employer alleged that it had bargained collectively with the Union for nearly two years prior to the petition for enforcement, and that the Board’s order requiring collective bargaining should not be enforced. Noting the delay, respondent asked that it be afforded “an opportunity to prove the pertinent facts.” The Court of Appeals denied the Board’s “belated” petition for enforcement for a reason not pertinent here, coupled with “the earnest assertions by the respondent that it has complied with the Board’s previous order .. . .” 167 F. 2d 662, 663 (1948). This Court reversed, holding “that the Board’s order to cease and desist is justified, under the circumstances of this case . . . .” The Court stated that “Even though the employer, since January 1, 1946, may have carried on collective bargaining in good faith as to rates of pay and other matters, a decree enforcing the original order against making a general increase without consulting the collective bargaining representatives is justifiable. '. . . an order of the character made by the Board, lawful when made, does not become moot because it is obeyed or because changing circumstances indicate that the need for it may be less than when made.’ Labor Board v. Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, 303 U. S. 261, 271. See also, Federal Trade Comm’n v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 304 U. S. 257.” 337 U. S. at 225, n. 7.
We think the rationale of the Crompton-Highland case is persuasive here. Otherwise those intent upon violating the Act have a ready means of escape through the use of delaying tactics in negotiation, culminating in the filing of motions for leave to adduce evidence when enforcement is sought, thus effectively frustrating the Board’s order. We need not now face the question whether a Court of Appeals may under § 10 (e) refer a matter back to the Board for appropriate action on a showing by the employer that subsequent to the Board’s order, but before the petition for enforcement several years later, a rival union has filed before the Board a petition for recognition, not yet acted upon, which claims that the bargaining representative no longer has a majority of the employees. Nor need we decide whether a period of delay through its length alone may mature into a denial of an enforcement decree or make necessary the adduction of additional evidence. Cf. Labor Board v. Eanet, 85 U. S. App. D. C. 371, 179 F. 2d 15 (C. A. D. C. Cir. 1949). We decide only that in this case the Board’s delay in filing its petition was not fatal, and cannot save the order entered below. Like its companion, this order of the Court of Appeals must be vacated and the enforcement of the Board order decreed pursuant to § 10 (e), unless “extraordinary circumstances” are pleaded which justify the respondent’s failure to urge its objections before the Board.
It is so ordered.
[For dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter, joined by Mr. Justice Jackson, see ante, p. 570.]
49 Stat. 449, 29 U. S. C. § 151 et seq.; 61 Stat. 136, 29 U. S. C. (Supp. III) § 141 et seq.
Including the Trial Examiner’s rejection of the employer’s allegation that the Union no longer represented the majority in the bargaining unit.
“The Senate amendment followed the present language of the act, which permits the Board to petition for enforcement, but does not require it to do so. The conference agreement adopts the language of the Senate amendment.” H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 510, on H. R. 3020, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 55.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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.
Pro se petitioner James L. Martin requests leave to proceed in forma pauperis under Rule 39 of this Court. We deny this request pursuant to our Rule 39.8. Martin is allowed until November 23, 1992, within which to pay the-docketing fees required by Rule 38 and to submit his petitions in compliance with this Court’s Rule 33. We also, direct the Clerk not to accept any further petitions for certio-rari from Martin in noncriminal matters unless he pays the docketing fee required by Rule 38 and submits his petition in compliance with Rule 33.
Martin is a notorious abuser of this Court’s certiorari process. We first invoked Rule 39.8 to deny Martin in forma pauperis status last November. See Zatko v. California, 502 U. S. 16 (1991) (per curiam). At that time, we noted that Martin had filed 45 petitions in the past 10 years, and 15 in the preceding 2 years alone. Although Martin was granted in forma pauperis status to file these petitions, all of these petitions were denied without recorded dissent. In invoking Rule 39.8, we observed that Martin is “unique — not merely among those who seek to file informa pauperis, but also among those who have paid the required filing fees— because [he has] repeatedly made totally frivolous demands on the Court’s limited resources.” Id., at 18. Unfortunately, Martin has continued in his accustomed ways.
Since we first denied him in forma pauperis status last year, he has filed nine petitions for certiorari with this Court. We denied Martin leave to proceed informa pauperis under Rule 39.8 of this Court with respect to four of these petitions, and denied the remaining five petitions outright. Two additional petitions for certiorari are before us today, bringing the total number of petitions Martin has filed in the past year to 11. With the arguable exception of one of these petitions, see Martin v. Knox, 502 U. S. 999 (1991) (Stevens, J., joined by Blackmun, J., respecting denial of certiorari), all of Martin’s filings, including those before us today, have been demonstrably frivolous.
In Zatko, we warned that “[fjuture similar filings from [Martin] will merit additional measures.” 502 U. S., at 18. As we have recognized, “[e]very paper filed with the Clerk of this Court, no matter how repetitious or frivolous, requires some portion of the institution’s limited resources. A part of the Court’s responsibility is to see that these resources are allocated in a way that promotes the interests of justice.” In re McDonald, 489 U. S. 180, 184 (1989) (per curiam). Consideration of Martin’s repetitious and frivolous petitions for certiorari does not promote this end.
We have entered orders similar to the present one on two previous occasions to prevent pro se petitioners from filing repetitious and frivolous requests for extraordinary relief. See In re Sindram, 498 U. S. 177 (1991) (per curiam); In re McDonald, supra. Although this case does not involve abuse of an extraordinary writ, but rather the writ of certiorari, Martin’s pattern of abuse has had a similarly deleterious effect on this Court’s “fair allocation of judicial resources.” See In re Sindram, supra, at 180. As a result, the same concerns which led us to enter the orders barring prospective filings in Sindram and McDonald require such action here.
We regret the necessity of taking this step, but Martin’s refusal to heed our earlier warning leaves us no choice. His abuse of the writ of certiorari has been in noncriminal cases, and so we limit our sanction accordingly. The order will therefore not prevent Martin from petitioning to challenge criminal sanctions which might be imposed on him. But it will free this Court’s limited resources to consider the claims of those petitioners who have not abused our certiorari process.
It is so ordered.
Martin v. Smith, post, p. 810; Martin v. Delaware, post, p. 810; Martin v. Sparks, post, p. 810; Martin v. Delaware, 505 U. S. 1203 (1992).
Martin v. Delaware Law School of Widener Univ., Inc., post, p. 841; Martin v. Delaware, post, p. 886; Martin v. Knox, 502 U. S. 999 (1991); Martin v. Knox, 502 U. S. 1015 (1991); Martin v. Medical Center of Delaware, 502.U. S. 991 (1991).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Stewart
delivered the opinion of the Court.
An Illinois statute authorizes law enforcement officers to detain and search any person found on premises being searched pursuant to a search warrant, to protect themselves from attack or to prevent the disposal or concealment of anything described in the warrant. The question before us is whether the application of this statute to the facts of the present case violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
I
On March 1, 1976, a special agent of the Illinois Bureau of Investigation presented a "Complaint for Search Warrant” to a judge of an Illinois Circuit Court. The complaint recited that the agent had spoken with an informant known to the police to be reliable and:
“3. The informant related . . . that over the weekend of 28 and 29 February he was in the [Aurora Tap Tavern, located in the city of Aurora, Ill.] and observed fifteen to twenty-five tin-foil packets on the person of the bartender 'Greg’ and behind the bar. He also has been in the tavern on at least ten other occasions and has observed tin-foil packets on ‘Greg’ and in a drawer behind the bar. The informant has used heroin in the past and knows that tin-foil packets are a common method of packaging heroin.
“4. The informant advised . . . that over the weekend of 28 and 29 February he had a conversation with ‘Greg’ and was advised that ‘Greg’ would have heroin for sale on Monday, March 1, 1976. This conversation took place in the tavern described.”
On the strength of this complaint, the judge issued a warrant authorizing the search of “the following person or place: . . . [T]he Aurora Tap Tavern. . . . Also the person of ‘Greg’, the bartender, a male white with blondish hair appx. 25 years.” The warrant authorized the police to search for “evidence of the offense of possession of a controlled substance,” to wit, “[h]eroin, contraband, other controlled substances, money, instrumentalities and narcotics, paraphernalia used in the manufacture, processing and distribution of controlled substances.”
In the late afternoon of that day, seven or eight officers proceeded to the tavern. Upon entering it, the officers announced their purpose and advised all those present that they were going to conduct a “cursory search for weapons.” One of the officers then proceeded to pat down each of the 9 to 13 customers present in the tavern, while the remaining officers engaged in an extensive search of the premises.
The police officer who frisked the patrons found the appellant, Ventura Ybarra, in front of the bar standing by a pinball machine. In his first patdown of Ybarra, the officer felt what he described as “a cigarette pack with objects in it.” He did not remove this pack from Ybarra’s pocket. Instead, he moved on and proceeded to pat down other customers. After completing this process the officer returned to Ybarra and frisked him once again. This second search of Ybarra took place approximately 2 to 10 minutes after the first. The officer relocated and retrieved the cigarette pack from Ybarra’s pants pocket. Inside the pack he found six tinfoil packets containing a brown powdery substance which later turned out to be heroin.
Ybarra was subsequently indicted by an Illinois grand jury for the unlawful possession of a controlled substance. He filed a pretrial motion to suppress all the contraband that had been seized from his person at the Aurora Tap Tavern. At the hearing on this motion the State sought to justify the search by reference to the Illinois statute in question. The trial court denied the motion to suppress, finding that the search had been conducted under the authority of subsection (b) of the statute, to “prevent the disposal or concealment of [the] things particularly described in the warrant.” The case proceeded to trial before the court sitting without a jury, and Ybarra was found guilty of the possession of heroin.
On appeal, the Illinois Appellate Court held that the Illinois statute was not unconstitutional “in its application to the facts” of this case. 58 Ill. App. 3d 57, 64, 373 N. E. 2d 1013, 1017. The court acknowledged that, had the warrant directed that a “large retail or commercial establishment” be searched, the statute could not constitutionally have been read to “authorize a ‘blanket search’ of persons or patrons found” therein. Id., at 62, 373 N. E. 2d, at 1016. The court interpreted the statute as authorizing the search of persons found on premises described in a warrant only if there is “some showing of a connection with those premises, that the police officer reasonably suspected an attack, or that the person searched would destroy or conceal items described in the warrant.” Id., at 61, 373 N. E. 2d, at 1016. Accordingly, the State Appellate Court found that the search of Ybarra had been constitutional because it had been “conducted in a one-room bar where it [was] obvious from the complaint . . . that heroin was being sold or dispensed,” id., at 62, 373 N. E. 2d, at 1016, because “the six packets of heroin . . . could easily ¡[have been] concealed by the defendant and thus thwart the purpose of the warrant,” id., at 61, 373 N. E. 2d, at 1016, and because Ybarra was not an “innocent strange[r] having no connection with the' premises,” ibid. The court, therefore, affirmed Ybarra’s conviction, and the Illinois Supreme Court denied his petition for leave to appeal. There followed an appeal to this Court, and we noted probable jurisdiction. 440 U. S. 790.
II
There is no reason to suppose that, when the search warrant was issued on March 1, 1976, the authorities had probable cause to believe that any person found on the premises of the Aurora Tap Tavern, aside from “Greg,” would be violating the law. The search warrant complaint did not allege that the bar was frequented by persons illegally purchasing drugs. It did not state that the informant had ever seen a patron of the tavern purchase drugs from “Greg” or from any other person. Nowhere, in fact, did the complaint even mention the patrons of the Aurora Tap Tavern.
Not only was probable cause to search Ybarra absent at the time the warrant was issued, it was still absent when the police executed the warrant. Upon entering the tavern, the police did not recognize Ybarra and had no reason to believe that he had committed, was committing, or was about to commit any offense under state or federal law. Ybarra made no gestures indicative of criminal conduct, made no movements that might suggest an attempt to conceal contraband, and said nothing of a suspicious nature to the police officers. In short, the agents knew nothing in particular about Ybarra, except that he was present, along with several other customers, in a public tavern at a time when the police had reason to believe that the bartender would have heroin for sale.
It is true that the police possessed a warrant based on probable cause to search the tavern in which Ybarra happened to be at the time the warrant was executed. But, a person’s mere propinquity to others independently suspected of criminal activity does not, without more, give rise to probable cause to search that person. Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40, 62-63. Where the standard is probable cause, a search or seizure of a person must be supported by probable cause particularized with respect to that person. This requirement cannot be undercut or avoided by simply pointing to the fact that coincidentally there exists probable cause to search or seize another or to search the premises where the person may happen to be. The Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments protect the “legitimate expectations of privacy” of persons, not places. See Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S. 128, 138-143, 148-149; Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 351-352.
Each patron who walked into the Aurora Tap Tavern on March 1, 1976, was clothed with constitutional protection against an unreasonable search or an unreasonable seizure. That individualized protection was separate and distinct from the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment protection possessed by the proprietor of the tavern or by “Greg.” Although the search warrant, issued upon probable cause, gave the officers authority to search the premises and to search “Greg,” it gave them no authority whatever to invade the constitutional protections possessed individually by the tavern's customers.
Notwithstanding the absence of probable cause to search Ybarra, the State argues that the action of the police in searching him and seizing what was found in his pocket was nonetheless constitutionally permissible. We are asked to find that the first patdown search of Ybarra constituted a reasonable frisk for weapons under the doctrine of Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1. If this finding is made, it is then possible to conclude, the State argues, that the second search of Ybarra was constitutionally justified. The argument is that the pat-down yielded probable cause to believe that Ybarra was carrying narcotics, and that this probable cause constitutionally supported the second search, no warrant being required in light of the exigencies of the situation coupled with the ease with which Ybarra could have disposed of the illegal substance.
We are unable to take even the first step required by this argument. The initial frisk of Ybarra was simply not supported by a reasonable belief that he was armed and presently dangerous, a belief which this Court has invariably held must form the predicate to a patdown of a person for weapons. Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S. 143, 146; Terry v. Ohio, supra, at 21-24, 27. When the police entered the Aurora Tap Tavern on March 1, 1976, the lighting was sufficient for them to observe the customers. Upon seeing Ybarra, they neither recognized him as a person with a criminal history nor had any particular reason to believe that he might be inclined to assault them. Moreover, as Police Agen't Johnson later testified, Ybarra, whose hands were empty, gave no indication of possessing a weapon, made no gestures or other actions indicative of an intent to commit an assault, and acted generally in a manner that was not threatening. At the suppression hearing, the most Agent Johnson could point to was that Ybarra was wearing a %-length lumber jacket, clothing which the State admits could be expected on almost any tavern patron in Illinois in early March. In short, the State is unable to articulate any specific fact that would have justified a police officer at the scene in even suspecting that Ybarra was armed and dangerous.
The Terry case created an exception to the requirement of probable cause, an exception whose “narrow scope” this Court “has been careful to maintain.” Under that doctrine a law enforcement officer, for his own protection and safety, may conduct a patdown to find weapons that he reasonably believes or suspects are then in the possession of the person he has accosted. See, e. g., Adams v. Williams, supra (at night, in high-crime district, lone police officer approached person believed by officer to possess gun and narcotics). Nothing in Terry can be understood to allow a generalized “cursory search for weapons” or, indeed, any search whatever for anything but weapons. The “narrow scope” of the Terry exception does not permit a frisk for weapons on less than reasonable belief or suspicion directed at the person to be frisked, even though that person happens to be on premises where an authorized narcotics search is taking place.
What has been said largely disposes of the State’s second and alternative argument in this case. Emphasizing the important governmental interest “in effectively controlling traffic in dangerous, hard drugs” and the ease with which the evidence of narcotics possession may be concealed or moved around from person to person, the State contends that .the Terry “reasonable belief or suspicion” standard should be made applicable to aid the evidence-gathering function of the search warrant. More precisely, we are asked to construe the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to permit evidence searches of persons who, at the commencement of the search, are on “compact” premises subject to a search warrant, at least where the police have a “reasonable belief” that such persons “are connected with” drug trafficking and “may be concealing or carrying away the contraband.”
Over 30 years ago, the Court rejected a similar argument in United States v. Di Re, 332 U. S. 581, 583-587. In that case, a federal investigator had been told by an informant that a transaction in counterfeit gasoline ration coupons was going to occur at a particular place. The investigator went to that location at the appointed time and saw the car of one of the suspected parties to the illegal transaction. The investigator went over to the car and observed a man in the driver’s seat, another man (Di Re) in the passenger’s seat, and the informant in the back. The informant told the investigator that the person in the driver’s seat had given him counterfeit coupons. Thereupon, all three men were arrested and searched. Among the arguments unsuccessfully advanced by the Government to support the constitutionality of the search of Di Re was the contention that the investigator could lawfully have searched the car, since he had reasonable cause to believe that it contained contraband, and correspondingly could have searched any occupant of the car because the contraband sought was of the sort “which could easily be concealed on the person.” Not deciding whether or not under the Fourth Amendment the car could have been searched, the Court held that it was “not convinced that a person, by mere presence in a suspected car, loses immunities from search of his person to which he would otherwise be entitled.”
The Di Re case does not, of course, completely control the case at hand. There the Government investigator was proceeding without a search warrant, and here the police possessed a warrant authorizing the search of the Aurora Tap Tavern. Moreover, in Di Re the Government conceded that its officers could not search all the persons in a house being searched pursuant to a search warrant.’ The State makes no such concession in this case. Yet the governing principle in both cases is basically the same, and we follow that principle today. The “long-prevailing” constitutional standard of probable cause embodies “ 'the best compromise that has been found for accommodating [the] often opposing interests’ in 'safeguard [ing] citizens from rash and unreasonable interferences with privacy' and in ‘seek[ing] to give fair leeway for enforcing the law in the community's protection.' ”
For these reasons, we conclude that the searches of Ybarra and the seizure of what was in his pocket contravened the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. Accordingly, the judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded to the Appellate Court of Illinois, Second District, for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The statute in question is Ill. Rev. Stat., ch. 38, §108-9 (1975), which provides in full:
“In the execution of the warrant the person executing the same may reasonably detain to search any person in the place at the time:
“(a) To protect himself from attack, or
“ (b) To prevent the disposal or concealment of any instruments, articles or things particularly described in the warrant.”
The warrant issued on March 1, 1976, did not itself authorize the search of Ybarra or of any other patron found on the premises of the Aurora Tap Tavern. It directed the police to search “the following person or place: . . . the Aurora Tap Tavern. . . . Also the person of ‘Greg’. . . .” Had the issuing judge intended that the warrant would or could authorize a search of every person found within the tavern, he would hardly have specifically authorized the search of “Greg” alone. “Greg” was an 'employee of the tavern, and the complaint upon which the search warrant was issued gave every indication that he would be present at the tavern on March 1.
Ybarra concedes that the warrant issued on March 1, 1976, was supported by probable cause insofar as it purported to authorize a search of the premises of the Aurora Tap Tavern and a search of the person of “Greg,” the bartender.
The Fourth Amendment directs that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause . . . and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Thus, “open-ended” or “general” warrants are constitutionally prohibited. See Lo-Ji Sales, Inc. v. New York, 442 U. S. 319; Marshall v. Barlow’s, Inc., 436 U. S. 307, 311; United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, 7-8; Stanford v. Texas, 379 U. S. 476, 480-482. It follows that a warrant to search a place cannot normally be construed to authorize a search of each individual in that place. The warrant for the Aurora Tap Tavern provided no basis for departing from this general rule. Consequently, we need not consider situations where the warrant itself authorizes the search of unnamed persons in a place and is supported by probable cause to believe that persons who will be in the place at the time of the search will be in possession of illegal drugs.
Since we conclude that the initial patdown of Ybarra was not justified under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, we need not decide whether or not the presence on Ybarra’s person of “a cigarette pack with objects in it” yielded probable cause to believe that Ybarra was carrying any illegal substance.
Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S. 200, 210.
332 U. S., at 586.
Id., at 587.
“The Government says it would not contend that, armed with a search warrant for a residence only, it could search all persons found in it. But an occupant of a house could be used to conceal this contraband on his person quite as readily as can an occupant of a car. Necessity, an argument advanced in support of this search, would seem as strong a reason for searching guests of a house for which a search warrant had issued as for search of guests in a car for which none had been issued. By a parity of reasoning with that on which the Government disclaims the right to search occupants of a house, we suppose the Government would not contend that if it had a valid search warrant for the car only it could search the occupants as an incident to its execution. How then could we say that the right to search a car without a warrant confers greater latitude to search occupants than a search by warrant would permit?” Ibid.
Dunaway v. New York, 442 U. S., at 208, quoting Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160, 176.
The circumstances of this case do not remotely approach those in which the Court has said that a search may be made on less than probable cause. In addition to Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, see, e. g., Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U. S. 648; Marshall v. Barlow’s, Inc., 436 U. S. 307; United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 643; South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S. 364; United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S. 873; United States v. Biswell, 406 U. S. 311; Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U. S. 523.
Our decision last Term in Michigan v. DeFillippo, 443 U. S. 31, does not point in a different direction. There we held that the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments had not been violated by an arrest based on a police officer's probable cause to believe that the suspect had committed or was committing a substantive criminal offense, even though the statute creating the offense was subsequently declared unconstitutional. Here, the police officers acted on the strength of Ill. Rev. Stat., ch. 38, § 108-9 (1975), but that statute does not define the elements of a substantive criminal offense under state law. The statute purports instead to authorize the police in some circumstances to make searches and seizures without probable cause and without search warrants. This state lawy therefore, falls within the category of statutes purporting to authorize searches without probable cause, which the Court has not hesitated to hold invalid as authority for unconstitutional searches. See, e. g., Torres v. Puerto Rico, 442 U. S. 465; Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U. S. 266; Sibron v. New York, 392 U. S. 40; Berger v. New York, 388 U. S. 41.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice O’Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case requires us to decide whether the use of excessive physical force against a prisoner may constitute cruel and unusual punishment when the inmate does not suffer serious injury. We answer that question in the affirmative.
I
At the time of the incident that is the subject of this smt, petitioner Keith Hudson was an inmate at the state penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana. Respondents Jack McMillian, Marvin Woods, and Arthur Mezo served as corrections security officers at the Angola facility. During the early morning hours of October 30,1983, Hudson and McMillian argued. Assisted by Woods, McMillian then placed Hudson in handcuffs and shackles, took the prisoner out of his cell, and walked him toward the penitentiary’s “administrative lock-down” area. Hudson testified that, on the way there, McMil-lian punched Hudson in the mouth, eyes, chest, and stomach while Woods held the inmate in place and kicked and punched him from behind. He further testified that Mezo, the supervisor on duty, watched the beating but merely told the officers “not to have too much fun.” App. 23. As a result of this episode, Hudson suffered minor bruises and swelling of his face, mouth, and lip. The blows also loosened Hudson’s teeth and cracked his partial dental plate, rendering it unusable for several months.
Hudson sued the three corrections officers in Federal District Court under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, alleging a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments and seeking compensatory damages. The parties consented to disposition of the case before a Magistrate, who found that McMillian and Woods used force when there was no need to do so and that Mezo expressly condoned their actions. App. 26. The Magistrate awarded Hudson damages of $800. Id., at 29.
The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed. 929 F. 2d 1014 (1990). It held that inmates alleging use of excessive force in violation of the Eighth Amendment must prove: (1) significant injury; (2) resulting “directly and only from the use of force that was clearly excessive to the need”; (3) the excessiveness of which was objectively unreasonable; and (4) that the action constituted an unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain. Id., at 1015. The court determined that respondents’ use of force was objectively unreasonable because no force was required. Furthermore, “[t]he conduct of McMillian and Woods qualified as clearly excessive and occasioned unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain.” Ibid. However, Hudson could not prevail on his Eighth Amendment claim because his injuries were “minor” and required no medical attention. Ibid.
We granted certiorari, 499 U. S. 958 (1991), to determine whether the “significant injury” requirement applied by the Court of Appeals accords with the Constitution’s dictate that cruel and unusual punishment shall not be inflicted.
II
In Whitley v. Albers, 475 U. S. 312 (1986), the principal question before us was what legal standard should govern the Eighth Amendment claim of an inmate shot by a guard during a prison riot. We based our answer on the settled rule that “ ‘the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain . . . constitutes cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Eighth Amendment.”’ Id., at 319 (quoting Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U. S. 651, 670 (1977)) (internal quotation marks omitted).
What is necessary to establish an “unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain,” we said, varies according to the nature of the alleged constitutional violation. 475 U. S., at 320. For example, the appropriate inquiry when an inmate alleges that prison officials failed to attend to serious medical needs is whether the officials exhibited “deliberate indifference.” See Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U. S. 97, 104 (1976). This standard is appropriate because the State’s responsibility to provide inmates with medical care ordinarily does not conflict with competing administrative concerns. Whitley, supra, at 320.
By contrast, officials confronted with a prison disturbance must balance the threat unrest poses to inmates, prison workers, administrators, and visitors against the harm inmates may suffer if guards use force. Despite the weight of these competing concerns, corrections officials must make their decisions “in haste, under pressure, and frequently without the luxury of a second chance.” 475 U. S., at 320. We accordingly concluded in Whitley that application of the deliberate indifference standard is inappropriate when authorities use force to put down a prison disturbance. Instead, “the question whether the measure taken inflicted unnecessary and wanton pain and suffering ultimately turns on ‘whether force was applied in a good faith effort to maintain or restore discipline or maliciously and sadistically for the very purpose of causing harm.’” Id., at 320-321 (quoting Johnson v. Glick, 481 F. 2d 1028, 1033 (CA2), cert. denied sub nom. John v. Johnson, 414 U. S. 1033 (1973)).
Many of the concerns underlying our holding in Whitley arise whenever guards use force to keep order. Whether the prison disturbance is a riot or a lesser disruption, corrections officers must balance the need “to maintain or restore discipline” through force against the risk of injury to inmates. Both situations may require prison officials to act quickly and decisively. Likewise, both implicate the principle that “‘[pjrison administrators . . . should be accorded wide-ranging deference in the adoption and execution of policies and practices that in their judgment are needed to preserve internal order and discipline and to maintain institutional security.’” 475 U. S., at 321-322 (quoting Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U. S. 520, 547 (1979)). In recognition of these similarities, we hold that whenever prison officials stand accused of using excessive physical force in violation of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, the core judicial inquiry is that set out in Whitley: whether force was applied in a good-faith effort to maintain or restore discipline, or maliciously and sadistically to cause harm.
Extending Whitley’s application of the “unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain” standard to all allegations of excessive force works no innovation. This Court derived the Whitley test from one articulated by Judge Friendly in Johnson v. Glick, supra, a case arising out of a prisoner’s claim to have been beaten and harassed by a guard. Moreover, many Courts of Appeals already apply the Whitley standard to allegations of excessive force outside of the riot situation. See Corselli v. Coughlin, 842 F. 2d 23, 26 (CA2 1988); Miller v. Leathers, 913 F. 2d 1085, 1087 (CA4 1990) (en banc), cert. denied, 498 U. S. 1109 (1991); Haynes v. Marshall, 887 F. 2d 700, 703 (CA6 1989); Stenzel v. Ellis, 916 F. 2d 423, 427 (CA8 1990); Brown v. Smith, 813 F. 2d 1187, 1188 (CA11 1987). But see Unwin v. Campbell, 863 F. 2d 124, 130 (CA1 1988) (rejecting application of Whitley standard absent “an actual disturbance”).
A
Under the Whitley approach, the extent of injury suffered by an inmate is one factor that may suggest “whether the use of force could plausibly have been thought necessary” in a particular situation, “or instead evinced such wantonness with respect to the unjustified infliction of harm as is tantamount to a knowing willingness that it occur.” 475 U. S., at 321. In determining whether the use of force was wanton and unnecessary, it may also be proper to evaluate the need for application of force, the relationship between that need and the amount of force used, the threat “reasonably perceived by the responsible officials,” and “any efforts made to temper the severity of a forceful response.” Ibid. The absence of serious injury is therefore relevant to the Eighth Amendment inquiry, but does not end it.
Respondents nonetheless assert that a significant injury requirement of the sort imposed by the Fifth Circuit is mandated by what we have termed the “objective component” of Eighth Amendment analysis. See Wilson v. Seiter, 501 U. S. 294, 298 (1991). Wilson extended the deliberate indifference standard applied to Eighth Amendment claims involving medical care to claims about conditions of confinement. In taking this step, we suggested that the subjective aspect of an Eighth Amendment claim (with which the Court was concerned) can be distinguished from the objective facet of the same claim. Thus, courts considering a prisoner’s claim must ask both if “the officials act[ed] with a sufficiently culpable state of mind” and if the alleged wrongdoing was objectively “harmful enough” to establish a constitutional violation. Id., at 298, 303.
With respect to the objective component of an Eighth Amendment violation, Wilson announced no new rule. Instead, that decision suggested a relationship between the requirements applicable to different types of Eighth Amendment claims. What is necessary to show sufficient harm for purposes of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause depends upon the claim at issue, for two reasons. First, “[t]he general requirement that an Eighth Amendment claimant allege and prove the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain should ... be applied with due regard for differences in the kind of conduct against which an Eighth Amendment objection is lodged.” Whitley, supra, at 320. Second, the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments “ (draw[s] its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society,’ ” and so admits of few absolute limitations. Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U. S. 337, 346 (1981) (quoting Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86, 101 (1958) (plurality opinion)).
The objective component of an Eighth Amendment claim is therefore contextual and responsive to “contemporary standards of decency.” Estelle, supra, at 103. For instance, extreme deprivations are required to make out a conditions-of-confinement claim. Because routine discomfort is “part of the penalty that criminal offenders pay for their offenses against society,” Rhodes, supra, at 347, “only those deprivations denying ‘the minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities’ are sufficiently grave to form the basis of an Eighth Amendment violation.” Wilson, supra, at 298 (quoting Rhodes, supra, at 347) (citation omitted). A similar analysis applies to medical needs. Because society does not expect that prisoners will have unqualified access to health care, deliberate indifference to medical needs amounts to an Eighth Amendment violation only if those needs are “serious.” See Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U. S., at 103-104.
In the excessive force context, society’s expectations are different. When prison officials maliciously and sadistically use force to cause harm, contemporary standards of decency always are violated. See Whitley, supra, at 327. This is true whether or not significant injury is evident. Otherwise, the Eighth Amendment would permit any physical punishment, no matter how diabolic or inhuman, inflicting less than some arbitrary quantity of injury. Such a result would have been as unacceptable to the drafters of the Eighth Amendment as it is today. See Estelle, supra, at 102 (proscribing torture and barbarous punishment was “the primary concern of the drafters” of the Eighth Amendment); Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U. S. 130, 136 (1879) (“[I]t is safe to affirm that punishments of torture . . . and all others in the same line of unnecessary cruelty, are forbidden by [the Eighth Amendment]”).
That is not to say that every malevolent touch by a prison guard gives rise to a federal cause of action. See Johnson v. Glick, 481 F. 2d, at 1033 (“Not every push or shove, even if it may later seem unnecessary in the peace of a judge’s chambers, violates a prisoner’s constitutional rights”). The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual” punishments necessarily excludes from constitutional recognition de minimis uses of physical force, provided that the use of force is not of a sort “ ‘repugnant to the conscience of mankind.’” Whitley, 475 U. S., at 327 (quoting Estelle, supra, at 106) (internal quotation marks omitted).
In this case, the Fifth Circuit found Hudson’s claim untenable because his injuries were “minor.” 929 F. 2d, at 1015. Yet the blows directed at Hudson, which caused bruises, swelling, loosened teeth, and a cracked dental plate, are not de minimis for Eighth Amendment purposes. The extent of Hudson’s injuries thus provides no basis for dismissal of his § 1983 claim.
B
The dissent’s theory that Wilson requires an inmate who alleges excessive use of force to show serious injury in addition to the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain misapplies Wilson and ignores the body of our Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. As we have already suggested, the question before the Court in Wilson was “[wjhether a prisoner claiming that conditions of confinement constitute cruel and unusual punishment must show a culpable state of mind on the part of prison officials, and, if so, what state of mind is required.” Wilson, supra, at 296. Wilson presented neither an allegation of excessive force nor any issue relating to what was dubbed the “objective component” of an Eighth Amendment claim.
Wilson did touch on these matters in the course of summarizing our prior holdings, beginning with Estelle v. Gamble, supra. Estelle, we noted, first applied the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause to deprivations that were not specifically part of the prisoner’s sentence. Wilson, supra, at 297. As might be expected from this primacy, Estelle stated the principle underlying the cases discussed in Wilson: Punishments “incompatible with the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” or “involving] the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain” are “repugnant to the Eighth Amendment.” Estelle, supra, at 102-103 (internal quotation marks omitted). This is the same rule the dissent would reject. With respect to the objective component of an Eighth Amendment claim, however, Wilson suggested no departure from Estelle and its progeny.
The dissent’s argument that claims based on excessive force and claims based on conditions of confinement are no different in kind, post, at 24-25, and n. 4, is likewise unfounded. Far from rejecting Whitley’s insight that the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain standard must be applied with regard for the nature of the alleged Eighth Amendment violation, the Wilson Court adopted it. See Wilson, 501 U. S., at 302-303. How could it be otherwise when the constitutional touchstone is whether punishment is cruel and unusual? To deny, as the dissent does, the difference between punching a prisoner in the face and serving him unappetizing food is to ignore the “ ‘concepts of dignity, civilized standards, humanity, and decency’” that animate the Eighth Amendment. Estelle, supra, at 102 (quoting Jackson v. Bishop, 404 F. 2d 571, 579 (CA8 1968)).
C
Respondents argue that, aside from the significant injury test applied by the Fifth Circuit, their conduct cannot constitute an Eighth Amendment violation because it was “isolated and unauthorized.” Brief for Respondents 28. The beating of Hudson, they contend, arose from “a personal dispute between correctional security officers and a prisoner,” and was against prison policy. Ibid. Respondents invoke the reasoning of courts that have held the use of force by prison officers under such circumstances beyond the scope of “punishment” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. See Johnson v. Glick, supra, at 1032. (“[Ajlthough a spontaneous attack by a guard is ‘cruel’ and, we hope, ‘unusual,’ it does not fit any ordinary concept of ‘punishment’ ”); George v. Evans, 633 F. 2d 413, 416 (CA5 1980) (“[A] single, unauthorized assault by a guard does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment . . .”)• But see Duckworth v. Franzen, 780 F. 2d 645, 652 (CA7 1985) (“If a guard decided to supplement a prisoner’s official punishment by beating him, this would be punishment. . cert. denied, 479 U. S. 816 (1986).
We take no position on respondents’ legal argument because we find it inapposite on this record. The Court of Appeals left intact the Magistrate’s determination that the violence at issue in this case was “not an isolated assault.” App. 27, n. 1. Indeed, there was testimony that McMillian and Woods beat another prisoner shortly after they finished with Hudson. Ibid. To the extent that respondents rely on the unauthorized nature of their acts, they make a claim not addressed by the Fifth Circuit, not presented by the question on which we granted certiorari, and, accordingly, not before this Court. Moreover, respondents ignore the Magistrate’s finding that Lieutenant Mezo, acting as a supervisor, “expressly condoned the use of force in this instance.” App. 26.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice O’Connor
delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to Part III.
As one season follows another, the decennial census has again generated a number of reapportionment controversies. This decade, as a result of the 1990 census and reapportionment, Massachusetts lost a seat in the House of Representatives. Appellees Massachusetts and two of its registered voters brought this action against the President, the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary), Census Bureau officials, and the Clerk of the House of Representatives, challenging, among other things, the method used for counting federal employees serving overseas. In particular, the appellants’ allocation of 922,819 overseas military personnel to the State designated in their personnel files as their “home of record” altered the relative state populations enough to shift a Representative from Massachusetts to Washington. A three-judge panel of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts held that the decision to allocate military personnel serving overseas to their “homes of record” was arbitrary and capricious under the standards of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. § 701 et seq. As a remedy, the District Court directed the Secretary to eliminate the overseas federal employees from the apportionment counts, directed the President to recalculate the number of Representatives per State and transmit the new calculation to Congress, and directed the Clerk of the House of Representatives to inform the States of the change. The federal officials appealed. We noted probable jurisdiction, stayed the District Court’s order, and ordered expedited briefing and argument. 503 U. S. 442 (1992). We now reverse.
I
Article I, §2, cl. 3, of the Constitution provides that Representatives “shall be apportioned among the several States ... according to their respective Numbers,” which requires, by virtue of §2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, “counting the whole number of persons in each State.” The number of persons in each State is to be calculated by “actual Enumeration,” conducted every 10 years, “in such Manner as [Congress] shall by Law direct.” U. S. Const., Art. I, §2, cl. 3.
The delegates to the Constitutional Convention included the periodic census requirement in order to ensure that entrenched interests in Congress did not stall or thwart needed reapportionment. See 1M. Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, pp. 571, 578-588 (rev. ed. 1966). Their effort was only partially successful, as the congressional battles over the method for calculating the reapportionment still caused delays. After just such a 10-year stalemate after the 1920 census, Congress reformed the reapportionment process to make it virtually self-executing, so that the number of Representatives per State would be determined by the Secretary of Commerce and the President without any action by Congress. See S. Rep. No. 2, 71st Cong., 1st Sess., 2-3 (1929) (“The need for legislation of this type is confessed by the record of the past nine years during which Congress has refused to translate the 1920 census into a new apportionment. ... As a result, great American constituencies have been robbed of their rightful share of representation . . .”); Department of Commerce v. Montana, 503 U. S. 442, 451-452, and n. 25 (1992).
Under the automatic reapportionment statute, the Secretary of Commerce takes the census “in such form and content as [s]he may determine.” 13 U. S. C. § 141(a). The Secretary is permitted to delegate her authority for establishing census procedures to the Bureau of the Census. See §§ 2,4. “The tabulation of total population by States ... as required for the apportionment of Representatives in Congress . . . shall be compléted within 9 months after the census date and reported by the Secretary to the President of the United States.” § 141(b). After receiving the Secretary's report, the President “shall transmit to the Congress a statement showing the whole number of persons in each State ... as ascertained under the ... decennial census of the population, and the number of Representatives to which each State would be entitled under an apportionment of the then existing number of Representatives by the method known as the method of equal proportions ” 2 U. S. C. § 2a(a). “Each State shall be entitled ... to the number of Representatives shown” in the President’s statement, and the Clerk of the House of Representatives must “send to the executive of each State a certificate of the number of Representatives to which such State is entitled.” § 2a(b).
With the one-time exception in 1900 of counting overseas servicemen at their family home, the Census Bureau did not allocate federal personnel stationed overseas to particular States for reapportionment purposes until 1970. App. 175, 177. The 1970 census, taken during the Vietnam War, allocated members of the Armed Forces stationed overseas to their “home of record,” using Defense Department personnel records. Id., at 179. “Home of record” is the State declared by the person upon entry into military service, and determines where he or she will be moved after military service is complete. Id., at 149. Because the Bureau found that military personnel were likely to designate a “home of record” with low or no income taxes instead of their true home State — even though home of record does not determine state taxation — -the Bureau did not allocate overseas employees to particular States in the 1980 census. App. 180.
Initially, the Bureau took the position that overseas federal employees would not be included in the 1990 state enumerations either. There were, however, stirrings in Congress in favor of including overseas federal employees, especially overseas military, in the state population counts. Several bills requiring the Secretary to include overseas military were introduced but not passed in the 100th and 101st Congresses. See H. R. 3814, 100th Cong., 1st Sess. (1987); H. R. 4234, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1988); H. R. 3815, 100th Cong., 1st Sess. (1987); H. R. 4720, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1988); S. 2103,100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1988); H. R. 1468,101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989); H. R. 2661, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989); H. R. 3016,101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989); S. 290,101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989). In July 1989, nine months before the census taking was to begin, then-Secretary of Commerce Robert Mosbacher agreed to allocate overseas federal employees to their home States for purposes of congressional apportionment. App. 182. His decision memorandum cites both the growing congressional support for including overseas employees and the Department of Defense’s belief that “its employees should not be excluded from apportionment counts because of temporary and involuntary, residence overseas.” Id., at 120. Another factor explaining the Secretary’s shift was that the Department of Defense, the largest federal overseas employer, planned to poll its employees to determine, among other things, which State they considered their permanent home. Id., at 184. In December 1989, however, the Defense Department canceled its plans to conduct the survey due to a lack of funds. Ibid. As an alternative, the Defense Department suggested that it could provide data on its employees’ last six months of residence in the United States, information that would be more complete and up-to-date than the home of record data already in the personnel files. This possibility also failed to materialize when the Defense Department informed the Census Bureau that it was not able to assemble the information after all. Ibid.
In the meantime, two more bills were introduced in Congress, but not passed, which would have required the Census Bureau to apportion members of the overseas military to their home States using the “home of record” data already in their personnel files. See H. R. 4903, 101st Cong., 2d Sess. (1990); S. 2675, 101st Cong., 2d Sess. (1990). In July 1990, six months before the census count was due to be reported to the President, the Census Bureau decided to allocate the Department of Defense’s overseas employees to the States based on their “home of record.” App. 185. It chose the home of record designation over other data available, including legal residence and last duty station, because home of record most closely resembled the Census Bureau’s standard measure of state affiliation — “usual residence.” 3 Record 925. Legal residence was thought less accurate because the choice of legal residence may have been affected by state taxation. Indeed, the Congressional Research Service found that in 1990 “the nine States with either no income taxes, or those which tax only interest and dividend income, have approximately 9 percent more of the overseas military personnel claiming the States for tax purposes, than those same States receive using home of record” Congressional Research Service Report, App. 151, n. 13. For similar reasons, last duty station was rejected because it would provide only a work address, and the employee’s last home address might have been in a different State, as with those, for example, who worked in the District of Columbia but lived in Virginia or Maryland. 3 Record 925. Residence at a “last duty station” may also have been of a very short duration and may not have reflected the more enduring tie of usual residence. App. 150. Those military personnel for whom home of record information was not available were allocated based on legal residence or last duty station, in that order. Id., at 186.
The Census Bureau invited 40 other federal agencies with overseas employees to submit counts of their employees as well. Of those, only 30 actually submitted counts, and only 20 agencies included dependents in their enumeration. Four of the agencies could not provide a home State for all of their overseas employees. Ibid.
Appellees challenged the decision to allocate federal overseas employees, and the method used to do so, as inconsistent with the APA and with the constitutional requirement that the apportionment of Representatives be determined by an “actual Enumeration” of persons “in each State.” U. S. Const., Art. I, §2, cl. 3; U. S. Const., Arndt. 14, §2. Appel-lees focused their attack on the Secretary’s decision to use “home of record” data for military personnel. The District Court, finding that it had jurisdiction to address the merits of the claims, was “skeptical” of the merits of appellees’ constitutional claims, speculating that “[tjhere would appear to be nothing inherently unconstitutional in a properly supported decision to include overseas federal employees in apportionment counts.” Commonwealth v. Mosbacher, 785 F. Supp. 230, 266 (Mass. 1992). The District Court nonetheless held that, on the administrative record before it, the Secretary’s decision to allocate the employees and to use home of record data was arbitrary and capricious under the standards of the APA. Id., at 264-266.
Appellees raise claims under both the APA and the Constitution. We address first the statutory basis for our jurisdiction under the APA. See Blum v. Bacon, 457 U. S. 132, 137 (1982); Burton v. United States, 196 U. S. 283, 295 (1905).
The APA sets forth the procedures by which federal agencies are accountable to the public and their actions subject to review by the courts. The Secretary’s report to the President is an unusual candidate for “agency action” within the meaning of the APA, because it is not promulgated to the public in the Federal Register, no official administrative record is generated, and its effect on reapportionment is felt only after the President makes the necessary calculations and reports the result to the Congress. Contrast 2 U. S. C. §441a(e) (requiring Secretary to publish each year in the Federal Register an estimate of the voting age population). Only after the President reports to Congress do the States have an entitlement to a particular number of Representatives. See §2a(b) (“Each State shall be entitled ... to the number of Representatives shown in the [President’s] statement”).
The APA provides for judicial review of “final agency action for which there is no other adequate remedy in a court.” 5 U. S. C. §704. At issue in this case is whether the “final” action that appellees have challenged is that of an “agency” such that the federal courts may exercise their powers of review under the APA. We hold that the final action complained of is that of the President, and the President is not an agency within the meaning of the Act. Accordingly, there is no final agency action that may be reviewed under the APA standards.
To determine when an agency action is final, we have looked to, among other things, whether its impact “is suffi-eiently direct and immediate” and has a “direct effect on ... day-to-day business.” Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 152 (1967). An agency action is not final if it is only “the ruling of a subordinate official,” or “tentative.” Id., at 151. The core question is whether the agency has completed its decisionmaking process, and whether the result of that process is one that will directly affect the parties. In this case, the action that creates an entitlement to a particular number of Representatives and has a direct effect on the reapportionment is the President’s statement to Congress, not the Secretary’s report to the President.
Unlike other statutes that expressly require the President to transmit an agency’s report directly to Congress, §2a does not. Compare, e. g., 20 U. S. C. § 1017(d) (“The President shall transmit each such report [of the National Advisory Council on Continuing Education] to the Congress with his comments and recommendations”); 30 U. S. C. § 1315(c) (similar language); 42 U. S. C. § 3015(f) (similar language); 42 U. S. C. § 6633(b)(2) (similar language). After receiving the Secretary’s report, the President is to “transmit to the Congress a statement showing the whole number of persons in each State ... as ascertained under the ... decennial census of the population.” 2 U. S. C. §2a(a). Section 2a does not expressly require the President to use the data in the Secretary’s report, but, rather, the data from the “decennial census.” There is no statute forbidding amendment of the “decennial census” itself after the Secretary submits the report to the President. For potential litigants, therefore, the “decennial census” still presents a moving target, even after the Secretary reports to the President. In this case, the Department of Commerce, in its press release issued the day the Secretary submitted the report to the President, was explicit that the data presented to the President was still subject to correction. See United States Department of Commerce News, Bureau of Census, 1990 Census Population for the United States is 249,632,692: Reapportionment Will Shift 19 Seats in the U. S. House of Representatives 2 (Dec. 26,1990) (“The population counts set forth herein are subject to possible correction for undercount and overcount. The United States Department of Commerce is considering whether to correct these counts and will publish corrected counts, if any, not later than July 15, 1991”). Moreover, there is no statute that rules out an instruction by the President to the Secretary to reform the census, even after the data are submitted to him. It is not until the President submits the information to Congress that the target stops moving, because only then are the States entitled by § 2a to a particular number of Representatives. Because the Secretary’s report to the President carries no direct consequences for the reapportionment, it serves more like a tentative recommendation than a final and binding determination. It is, like “the ruling of a subordinate official,” Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, supra, at 151, not final and therefore not subject to review. Cf. Chicago & Southern Air Lines, Inc. v. Waterman S. S. Corp., 333 U. S. 103, 109 (1948); United States v. George S. Bush & Co., 310 U. S. 371, 379 (1940).
The statutory structure in this ease differs from that at issue in Japan Wkaling Assn. v. American Cetacean Soc., 478 U. S. 221 (1986), in which we held that the Secretary of Commerce’s certification to the President that another country was endangering fisheries was “final agency action.” Id., at 231, n. 4. In that case, the Secretary’s certification to the President under 22 U. S. C. § 1978(a)(1) automatically triggered sanctions by the Secretary of State under 16 U. S. C. § 1821(e)(2)(B), regardless of any discretionary action the President himself decided to take. Japan Whaling, supra, at 226. Under 13 U. S. G. § 141(a), by contrast, the Secretary’s report to the President has no direct effect on reapportionment until the President takes affirmative steps to calculate and transmit the apportionment to Congress.
Appellees claim that because the President exercises no discretion in calculating the numbers of Representatives, his “role in the statutory scheme was intended to have no substantive content,” and the final action is the Secretary’s, not the President’s. Brief for Appellees 86. They cite the Senate Report for the bill that became 2 U. S. G. § 2a, which states that the President is to report “upon a problem in mathematics which is standard, and for which rigid specifications are provided by Congress itself, and to which there can be but one mathematical answer.” S. Rep. No. 2, 71st Cong., 1st Sess., at 4-5.
The admittedly ministerial nature of the apportionment calculation itself does not answer the question whether the apportionment is foreordained by the time the Secretary gives her report to the President. To reiterate, §2a does not curtail the President’s authority to direct the Secretary in making policy judgments that result in “the decennial census”; he is not expressly required to adhere to the policy decisions reflected in the Secretary’s report. Because it is the President’s personal transmittal of the report to Congress that settles the apportionment, until he acts there is no determinate agency action to challenge. The President, not the Secretary, takes the final action that affects the States.
Indeed, it is clear that Congress thought it was important to involve a constitutional officer in the apportionment process. Congress originally considered a bill requiring the Secretary to report the apportionment calculation directly to Congress. See S. Rep. No. 1446, 70th Cong., 2d Sess., 4 (1929). The bill was later amended to require the participation of the President: “Another objection to the previous bill was that the Secretary of Commerce should not be intrusted with the final responsibility for making so important a report to Congress. The new and pending bill recognizes this objection to the extent that the President is substituted for the Secretary of Commerce so that this function may be served by a constitutional officer. This makes for greater permanence, which is one of the major virtues to be desired in such a statute.” S. Rep. No. 2, supra, at 5. It is hard to imagine a purpose for involving the President if he is to be prevented from exercising his accustomed supervisory powers over his executive officers. Certainly no purpose to alter the President’s usual superintendent role is evident from the text of the statute.
As enacted, 2 U. S. C. § 2a provides that the Secretary cannot act alone; she must send her results to the President, who makes the calculations and sends the final apportionment to Congress. That the final act is that of the President is important to the integrity of the process and bolsters our conclusion that his duties are not merely ceremonial or ministerial. Thus, we can only review the APA claims here if the President, not the Secretary of Commerce, is an “agency” within the meaning of the Act.
The APA defines “agency” as “each authority of the Government of the United States, whether or not it is within or subject to review by another agency, but does not include— (A) the Congress; (B) the courts of the United States; (C) the governments of the territories or possessions of the United States; (D) the government of the District of Columbia.” 5 U. S. C. §§ 701(b)(1), 551(1). The President is not explicitly excluded from the APA’s purview, but he is not explicitly included, either. Out of respect for the separation of powers and the unique constitutional position of the President, we find that textual silence is not enough to subject the President to the provisions of the APA. We would require an express statement by Congress before assuming it intended the President’s performance of his statutory duties to be reviewed for abuse of discretion. Cf. Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 731, 748, n. 27 (1982) (Court would require an explicit statement by Congress before assuming Congress had created a damages action against the President). As the APA does not expressly allow review of the President’s actions, we must presume that his actions are not subject to its requirements. Although the President’s actions may still be reviewed for constitutionality, see Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U. S. 579 (1952); Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U. S. 388 (1935), we hold that they are not reviewable for abuse of discretion under the APA, see Armstrong v. Bush, 288 U. S. App. D. C. 38, 45, 924 F. 2d 282, 289 (1991). The District Court erred in proceeding to determine the merits of the APA claims.
Ill
Although the reapportionment determination is not subject to review under the standards of the APA, that does not dispose of appellees’ constitutional claims. See Webster v. Doe, 486 U. S. 592, 603-605 (1988). Constitutional challenges to apportionment are justiciable. See Department of Commerce v. Montana, 503 U. S. 442 (1992).
We first address standing. To invoke the constitutional power of the federal courts to adjudicate a ease or controversy under Article III, appellees here must allege and prove an injury “fairly traceable to the [appellants’] allegedly unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief.” Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 751 (1984).
To determine whether appellees sufficiently allege and prove causation requires separating out- appellees’ claims: Appellees claim both that the Secretary erred in deciding to allocate overseas employees to various States and that the Secretary erred in using inaccurate data to do so. Appellees have shown that Massachusetts would have had an additional Representative if overseas employees had not been allocated at all. App. 183. They have neither alleged nor shown, however, that Massachusetts would have had an additional Representative if the allocation had been done using some other source of “more accurate” data. Consequently, even if appellees have standing to challenge the Secretary’s decision to allocate, they do not have standing to challenge the accuracy of the data used in making that allocation. We need, then, review only the decision to include overseas federal employees in the state population counts, not the Secretary’s choice of information sources.
The thornier standing question is whether the injury is redressable by the relief sought. Tracking the statutory progress of the census data from the Census Bureau, through the President, and to the States, the District Court entered an injunction against the Secretary of Commerce, the President, and the Clerk of the House. 785 F. Supp., at 268. While injunctive relief against executive officials like the Secretary of Commerce is within the courts’ power, see Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, supra, the District Court’s grant of injunctive relief against the President himself is extraordinary, and should have raised judicial eyebrows. We have left open the question whether the President might be subject to a judicial injunction requiring the performance of a purely “ministerial” duty, Mississippi v. Johnson, 4 Wall. 475, 498-499 (1867), and we have held that the President may be subject to a subpoena to provide information relevant to an ongoing criminal prosecution, United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S. 683 (1974), but in general “this court has no jurisdiction of a bill to enjoin the President in the performance of his official duties.” Mississippi v. Johnson, supra, at 501. At the threshold, the District Court should have evaluated whether injunctive relief against the President was available, and, if not, whether appellees’ injuries were nonetheless redressable.
For purposes of establishing standing, however, we need not decide whether injunctive relief against the President was appropriate, because we conclude that the injury alleged is likely to be redressed by declaratory relief against the Secretary alone. See Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, Inc., 438 U. S. 59, 75, n. 20 (1978); Allen v. Wright, supra, at 752. The Secretary certainly has an interest in defending her policy determinations concerning the census; even though she cannot herself change the reapportionment, she has an interest in litigating its accuracy. And, as the Solicitor General has not contended to the contrary, we may assume it is substantially likely that the President and other executive and congressional officials would abide by an authoritative interpretation of the census statute and constitutional provision by the District Court, even though they would not be directly bound by such a determination.
IV
On the merits, appellees argue that the Secretary’s allocation of overseas federal employees to the States violated the command of Article I, § 2, cl. 3, that the number of Representatives per State be determined by an “actual Enumeration” of “their respective Numbers,” that is, a count of the persons “in” each State. Appellees point out that the first census conducted in 1790 required that persons be allocated to their place of “usual residence.” Brief for Appellees 77. See Act of Mar. 1,1790, §5,1 Stat. 103. Because the interpretations of the Constitution by the First Congress are persuasive, Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U. S. 714, 723-724 (1986), ap-pellees argue that the Secretary should have allocated the overseas employees’ to their overseas stations, because those were their usual residences.
The appellants respond, on the other hand, that the allocation of employees temporarily stationed overseas to their home States is fully compatible with the standard of "usual residence” used in the early censuses. We review the dispute to the extent of determining whether the Secretary’s interpretation is consistent with the constitutional language and the constitutional goal of equal representation. See Department of Commerce v. Montana, 503 U, S., at 459.
“Usual residence” was the gloss given the constitutional phrase “in each State” by the first enumeration Act and has been used by the Census Bureau ever since to allocate persons to their home States. App. 173-174. The term can mean more than mere physical presence, and has been used broadly enough to include some element of allegiance or enduring tie to a place. The first enumeration Act itself provided that “every person occasionally absent at the time of the enumeration [shall be counted] as belonging to that place in which he usually resides in the United States.” Act of Mar. 1, 1790, § 5, 1 Stat. 103. The Act placed no limit on the duration of the absence, which, considering the modes of transportation available at the time, may have been quite lengthy. For example, during the 36-week enumeration period of the 1790 census, President George Washington spent 16 weeks traveling through the States, 15 weeks at the seat of Government, and only 10 weeks at his home in Mount Vernon. He was, however, counted as a resident of Virginia. T. Clemence, Place of Abode, reproduced in App. 83.
The first enumeration Act uses other words as well to describe the required tie to the State: “usual place of abode,” “inhabitant,” “usual resident].” Act of Mar. 1, 1790, § 5, 1 Stat. 103. The first draft of Article I, § 2, also used the word “inhabitant,” which was omitted by the Committee of Style in the final provision. 2 Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, at 566, 590.
In the related context of congressional residence qualifications, U. S. Const., Art. I, § 2, James Madison interpreted the constitutional term “inhabitant” to include “persons absent occasionally for a considerable time on public or private business.” 2 Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, at 217. This understanding was applied in 1824, when a question was raised about the residency qualifications of would-be Representative John Forsyth, of Georgia. Mr. Forsyth had been living in Spain during his election, serving as minister plenipotentiary from the United States. His qualification for office was challenged on the ground that he was not “an inhabitant of the State in which he [was] chosen.” U. S. Const., Art. I, §2, el. 2. The House Committee of Elections disagreed, reporting: “There is nothing in Mr. Forsyth’s case which disqualifies him from holding a seat in this House. The capacity in which he acted, excludes the idea that, by the performance of his duty abroad, he ceased to be an inhabitant of the United States; and, if so, inasmuch as he had no inhabitancy in any other part of the Union than Georgia, he must be considered as in the same situation as before the acceptance of the appointment.” M. Clarke & D. Hall, Cases of Contested Elections in Congress 497-498 (1834). Representative Bailey, supporting the qualification of Mr. Forsyth, pointed out that if “the mere living in a place constituted inhabitancy,” it would “exclude sitting members of this House.” Id., at 497 (emphasis deleted).
Up to the present day, “usual residence” has continued to hold broad connotations. For example, up until 1950, college students were counted as belonging to the State where their parents resided, not to the State where they attended school. *App. 219. Even today, high school students away at boarding school are allocated to their parents’ home State, not the location of the school. Id., at 220. Members of Congress may choose whether to be counted in the Washington, D. C., area or in their home States. Id., at 218. Those persons who are institutionalized in out-of-state hospitals or jails for short terms are also counted in their home States. Id., at 225.
In this ease, the Secretary of Commerce made a judgment, consonant with, though not dictated by, the text and history of the Constitution, that many federal employees temporarily stationed overseas had retained their ties to the States and could and should be counted toward their States' representation in Congress: “Many, if not most, of these military overseas consider themselves to be usual residents of the United States, even though they are temporarily assigned overseas.” Id., at 120. The Secretary’s judgment does not hamper the underlying constitutional goal of equal representation, but, assuming that employees temporarily stationed abroad have indeed retained their ties to their home States, actually promotes equality. If some persons sharing in Washington’s fate had not been properly counted, the votes of all those who reside in Washington State would not have been weighted equally to votes of those who reside in other States. Certainly, appellees have not demonstrated that eliminating overseas employees entirely from the state counts will make representation in Congress more equal. Cf. Karcher v. Daggett, 462 U. S. 725, 730-731 (1983) (parties challenging state apportionment legislation bear burden of proving disparate representation). We conclude that appel-lees’ constitutional challenge fails on the merits.
The District Court’s judgment is
Reversed.
Justice Stevens suggests that the “decennial census” is a single count, determined solely by the Secretary, that is used for many purposes other than reapportionment of Representatives. Therefore, he reasons, it cannot be within the control of the President. However, the President may be involved in the policymaking tasks of his Cabinet members, whether or not his involvement is explicitly required by statute. The question here is whether the census count is final before the President acts. It seems clear that it is not. The tabulations used for purposes of state redistricting, which include counts of persons in each state district, are not required by statute to be completed until April 1, months after the President’s report to Congress. 13 U. S. C. § 141(c).
While appellants asserted below that the courts have no subject-matter jurisdiction over this case because it involves a “political question,” we recently rejected a similar argument in Department of Commerce v. Montana, 503 U. S., at 456-459, and appellants now concede the issue. Brief for Appellants 21.
As submitted to the Committee of Style, the provision read: “[T]he Legislature shall... regulate the number of representatives by the number of inhabitants.” 2 M. Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, p. 566 (rev. ed. 1966). After its return by the Committee, it had a more familiar ring: “Representatives ... shall be apportioned among the several states ... according to their respective numbers.” Id., at 590.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Clark
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner, under sentence of death for the murder of his paramour, claims that his conviction in a California court violates Fourteenth Amendment due process of law because (1) the confession admitted into evidence over his objection had been coerced from him by state authorities, and (2) even if his confession was voluntary it occurred while he was without counsel because of the previous denial of his request therefor. The Supreme Court of California affirmed the conviction. 47 Cal. 2d 348, 303 P. 2d 753. Certiorari was granted because of the serious due process implications that attend state denial of a request to employ an attorney. 354 U. S. 908 (1957). We conclude, however, that no violation of constitutional right has occurred.
The record here clearly reveals that prior to petitioner’s confession he asked for and was denied opportunity to call his lawyer. We first consider that denial in connection with petitioner’s contention that his subsequent confession was involuntary in nature.
It is well established that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits use of coerced confessions in state prosecutions. E. g., Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U. S. 278 (1936); Watts v. Indiana, 338 U. S. 49 (1949); Fikes v. Alabama, 352 U. S. 191 (1957). As in Thomas v. Arizona, 356 U. S. 390, and Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U. S. 560, both decided this Term, we consider the undisputed facts in the record to ascertain whether the confession resulted from police coercion or the exercise of petitioner’s own free will.
The victim’s son discovered her body the morning of July 5, 1955, stabbed and strangled to death in the bedroom of her Los Angeles home. She was last known to be alive about 1 a. m. the same day, when she talked with a friend by telephone.
Petitioner was arrested in his apartment at 1:30 that afternoon and subsequently was charged with the murder. He was then 31 years of age, a college graduate who had attended the first year of law school. While going to law school he had been a houseboy in the home of the victim. That position led to an illicit relationship with her, which she had attempted several times to terminate in the month preceding her death. The week of her death, after telling petitioner they had been found out, she had requested, and he had agreed, that he would never see her again.
Despite this understanding, he returned to her house late in the afternoon of July 4. Finding no one at home, he hid nearby for the ostensible purpose of discovering who was “threatening” her. From his hiding place he watched the victim return home with an escort around midnight. Shortly thereafter he saw the escort leave and watched the victim talk on the the telephone. He claims that he then left the vicinity to return to his apartment, never having entered the house that evening.
At the time of his arrest, petitioner was questioned about scratches that were evident on his neck and hands. He attributed the former to shaving and the latter to a traffic mishap on his way to the beach on July 4. However he refused to reveal where the accident occurred. After his apartment was searched, petitioner was taken to the Los Angeles Police Station, where he was photographed and asked to take a lie detector test. He refused to submit to the test, and indicated that he wanted to call an attorney. At no time, however, does it appear that petitioner was offered the use of a telephone. Aside from sporadic questioning at his apartment, petitioner was interrogated for the first time from 8:30-9:30 p. m., the questioning being conducted by four officers and centering around his refusal of the lie detector test. During this time he asked for an opportunity to get a lawyer, naming a specific attorney whom he thought might represent him, but was told that “after [the] investigation was concluded he could call an attorney.”
At 9:30 p. m. petitioner was transferred to the West Los Angeles Police Station, where five officers questioned him from 11 p. m. until shortly after midnight. He then was formally “booked,” and given a physical examination by a police physician. The third and last questioning period was conducted by the same five men from approximately 1-2 a. m. July 6. For the next hour petitioner wrote and signed a detailed confession of the murder. Afterward, he was taken to the victim’s home to re-enact the crime. At 5 a. m. he was put in jail and permitted to sleep.
That afternoon, a full day after his arrest, he was taken to the office of the Los Angeles County District Attorney to orally repeat the written confession. Petitioner balked at doing so and again asked that his attorney be called. Thereupon the District Attorney placed the call for him and listened to the conversation while petitioner talked on an extension phone with the attorney. Neither petitioner nor his attorney was aware that a tape recording was being made of everything that transpired in the office. The District Attorney interrupted at one point to deny that petitioner was forced to answer police questions, and later to advise that the most convenient time for the attorney to see petitioner would be at 7 p. m. back at the West Los Angeles Police Station. After the phone call, petitioner was returned to jail to meet his attorney that evening. From that time forward, through both arraignment and trial, he was represented by his own counsel.
In the 14 hours between his arrest and confession, petitioner was given coffee and allowed to smoke whenever he liked. He also was given milk and a sandwich a few hours after his arrest. Before being transferred to the West Los Angeles Police Station he was advised by a police lieutenant, “You don’t have to say anything that you don’t want to,” and he in fact refused to answer many questions both before and after the transfer. At such times he simply stated he “would rather not answer, or rather not make a statement about that.”
The bare fact of police “detention and police examination in private of one in official state custody” does not render involuntary a confession by the one so detained. Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 476 (1953). Neither does an admonition by the police to tell the truth, Sparf v. United States, 156 U. S. 51, 55-56 (1895), nor the failure of state authorities to comply with local statutes requiring that an accused promptly be brought before a magistrate. Fikes v. Alabama, 352 U. S. 191 (1957).
Petitioner’s claim of coercion, then, depends almost entirely on denial of his request to contact counsel. This Court has not previously had occasion to determine the character of a confession obtained after such a denial. But we have held that confessions made by indigent defendants prior to state appointment of counsel are not thereby rendered involuntary, even in prosecutions where conviction without counsel would violate due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 474-476 (1953); Stroble v. California, 343 U. S. 181, 196-198 (1952); Gallegos v. Nebraska, 342 U. S. 55, 64-68 (1951). To be sure, coercion seems more likely to result from state denial of a specific request for opportunity to engage counsel than it does from state failure to appoint counsel immediately upon arrest. That greater possibility, however, is not decisive. It is negated here by petitioner’s age, intelligence, and education. While in law school he had studied criminal law; indeed, when asked to take the lie detector test, he informed the operator that the results of such a test would not be admissible at trial absent a stipulation by the parties. Supplementing that background is the police statement to petitioner well before his confession that he did not have to answer questions. Moreover, the manner of his refusals to answer indicates full awareness of the right to be silent. On this record we are unable to say that petitioner’s confession was anything other than voluntary.
We turn now to the contention that even if the confession be voluntary, its use violates due process because it was obtained after denial of petitioner’s request to contact his attorney. Petitioner reaches this position by reasoning first that he has been denied a due process right to representation and advice from his attorney, and secondly that the use of any confession obtained from him during the time of such a denial would itself be barred by the Due Process Clause, even though freely made. We think petitioner fails to sustain the first point, and therefore we do not reach the second.
The right of an accused to counsel for his defense, though not firmly fixed in our common-law heritage, is of significant importance to the preservation of liberty in this country. See 1 Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations (8th ed. 1927) 696-700; 2 Story on the Constitution (4th ed. 1873) § 1794. That right, secured in state prosecutions by the Fourteenth Amendment guaranty of due process, includes not only the right to have an attorney appointed by the State in certain cases, but also the right of an accused to “a fair opportunity to secure counsel of his own choice.” Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 53 (1932); Chandler v. Fretag, 348 U. S. 3 (1954).
Under these principles, state refusal of a request to engage counsel violates due process not only if the accused is deprived of counsel at trial on the merits, Chandler v. Fretag, supra, but also if he is deprived of counsel for any part of the pretrial proceedings, provided that he is so prejudiced thereby as to infect his subsequent trial with an absence of “that fundamental fairness essential to the very concept of justice.” Lisenba v. California, 314 U. S. 219, 236 (1941). Cf. Moore v. Michigan, 355 U. S. 155, 160 (1957). The latter determination necessarily depends upon all the circumstances of the case.
In House v. Mayo, 324 U. S. 42 (1945), an uneducated man in his twenties, a stranger to the area, was brought before a court to be sentenced on two convictions previously returned against him. He was there presented for the first time with a burglary information filed by the State, asked for and was denied opportunity to engage counsel, and finally pleaded guilty to the information, thereby obviating any necessity for trial of the charge on the merits. We held that a due process right to counsel was denied.
In contrast, the sum total of the circumstances here during the time petitioner was without counsel is a voluntary confession by a college-educated man with law school training who knew of his right to keep silent. Such facts, while perhaps a violation of California law, do not approach the prejudicial impact in House v. Mayo, supra, and do not show petitioner to have been so “taken advantage of,” Townsend v. Burke, 334 U. S. 736, 739 (1948), as to violate due process of law.
Petitioner, however, contends that a different rule should determine whether there has been a violation of right to counsel. He would have every state denial of a request to contact counsel be an infringement of the constitutional right without regard to the circumstances of the case. In the absence of any confession, plea or waiver — or other event prejudicial to the accused — such a doctrine would create a complete anomaly, since nothing would remain that could be corrected on new trial. Refusal by state authorities of the request to contact counsel necessarily would then be an absolute bar to conviction. On the other hand, where an event has occurred while the accused was without his counsel which fairly promises to adversely affect his chances, the doctrine suggested by petitioner would have a lesser but still devastating effect on enforcement of criminal law, for it would effectively preclude police questioning — fair as well as unfair — until the accused was afforded opportunity to call his attorney. Due process, a concept “less rigid and more fluid than those envisaged in other specific and particular provisions of the Bill of Rights,” Betts v. Brady, 316 U. S. 455, 462 (1942), demands no such rule.
Affirmed.
The grant of certiorari was limited to two questions:
“1. Was the defendant denied due process of law by the refusal of the investigation officers to allow him to consult with an attorney upon demand being made to do so while he was in custody?
“2. Was the defendant denied due process of law by the admission into evidence of a confession which was taken from him while in custody and after he had been in such custody for fourteen hours and had not been allowed to consult with his attorney?”
Section 849 of the California Penal Cpde provides that a person arrested without a warrant must be brought before the nearest or most accessible magistrate in the county of arrest "without unnecessary delay.” Cal. Penal Code, 1956, § 849.
Even if within the scope of the limited grant of certiorari, claims of physical violence — “third degree” methods — were denied by witnesses for the State, and hence are not part of the undisputed portions of the record which we consider here. The ambiguous reply by one police officer, “I don’t think we hurt you,” in response to petitioner’s assertion in the District Attorney’s office that the officer struck him, cannot alter the contradicted state of the evidence when the same officer categorically denied the claim on cross-examination at the trial.
At times petitioner appears to urge “a rule” barring use of a voluntary confession obtained after state denial of a request to contact counsel regardless of whether any violation of a due process right to counsel occurred. That contention is simply an appeal to the supervisory power of this Court over the administration of justice in the federal courts. See McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332 (1943), which, significantly enough, petitioner cites. The short answer to such a contention here is that this conviction was had in a state, not a federal, court.
Section 825 of the California Penal Code provides that after an arrest, an attorney “may at the request of the prisoner or any relative of such prisoner, visit the person so arrested.” Any officer in charge of the prisoner who wilfully refuses to let the attorney see the prisoner is made guilty of a misdemeanor. Cal. Penal Code, 1956, § 825.
It is suggested that this decision extends the rule of Betts v. Brady, 316 U. S. 455 (1942), to a capital case, thereby overruling, I should suppose, Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, and related cases. But those decisions involve another problem, trial and conviction of the accused without counsel after state refusal to appoint an attorney for him. What due process requires in one situation may not be required in another, and this, of course, because the least change of circumstances may provide or eliminate fundamental fairness. The ruling here that due process does not always require immediate honoring of a request to obtain one’s own counsel in the hours after arrest, hardly means that the same concept of fundamental fairness does not require state appointment of counsel before an accused is put to trial, convicted and sentenced to death.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court.
Thirty-five years ago, this Court held that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act establishes a substantive right to a "free appropriate public education" for certain children with disabilities. Board of Ed. of Hendrick Hudson Central School Dist., Westchester Cty. v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176, 102 S.Ct. 3034, 73 L.Ed.2d 690 (1982). We declined, however, to endorse any one standard for determining "when handicapped children are receiving sufficient educational benefits to satisfy the requirements of the Act." Id., at 202, 102 S.Ct. 3034. That "more difficult problem" is before us today. Ibid.
I
A
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA or Act) offers States federal funds to assist in educating children with disabilities. 84 Stat. 175, as amended, 20 U.S.C. § 1400 et seq. ; see Arlington Central School Dist. Bd. of Ed. v. Murphy, 548 U.S. 291, 295, 126 S.Ct. 2455, 165 L.Ed.2d 526 (2006). In exchange for the funds, a State pledges to comply with a number of statutory conditions. Among them, the State must provide a free appropriate public education-a FAPE, for short-to all eligible children. § 1412(a)(1).
A FAPE, as the Act defines it, includes both "special education" and "related services." § 1401(9). "Special education" is "specially designed instruction ... to meet the unique needs of a child with a disability"; "related services" are the support services "required to assist a child ... to benefit from" that instruction. §§ 1401(26), (29). A State covered by the IDEA must provide a disabled child with such special education and related services "in conformity with the [child's] individualized education program," or IEP. § 1401(9)(D).
The IEP is "the centerpiece of the statute's education delivery system for disabled children." Honig v. Doe, 484 U.S. 305, 311, 108 S.Ct. 592, 98 L.Ed.2d 686 (1988). A comprehensive plan prepared by a child's "IEP Team" (which includes teachers, school officials, and the child's parents), an IEP must be drafted in compliance with a detailed set of procedures. § 1414(d)(1)(B) (internal quotation marks omitted). These procedures emphasize collaboration among parents and educators and require careful consideration of the child's individual circumstances. § 1414. The IEP is the means by which special education and related services are "tailored to the unique needs" of a particular child. Rowley, 458 U.S., at 181, 102 S.Ct. 3034.
The IDEA requires that every IEP include "a statement of the child's present levels of academic achievement and functional performance," describe "how the child's disability affects the child's involvement and progress in the general education curriculum," and set out "measurable annual goals, including academic and functional goals," along with a "description of how the child's progress toward meeting" those goals will be gauged. §§ 1414(d)(1)(A)(i)(I)-(III). The IEP must also describe the "special education and related services ... that will be provided" so that the child may "advance appropriately toward attaining the annual goals" and, when possible, "be involved in and make progress in the general education curriculum." § 1414(d)(1)(A)(i)(IV).
Parents and educators often agree about what a child's IEP should contain. But not always. When disagreement arises, parents may turn to dispute resolution procedures established by the IDEA. The parties may resolve their differences informally, through a "[p]reliminary meeting," or, somewhat more formally, through mediation. §§ 1415(e), (f)(1)(B)(i). If these measures fail to produce accord, the parties may proceed to what the Act calls a "due process hearing" before a state or local educational agency. §§ 1415(f)(1)(A), (g). And at the conclusion of the administrative process, the losing party may seek redress in state or federal court. § 1415(i)(2)(A).
B
This Court first addressed the FAPE requirement in Rowley . Plaintiff Amy Rowley was a first grader with impaired hearing. Her school district offered an IEP under which Amy would receive instruction in the regular classroom and spend time each week with a special tutor and a speech therapist. The district proposed that Amy's classroom teacher speak into a wireless transmitter and that Amy use an FM hearing aid designed to amplify her teacher's words; the district offered to supply both components of this system. But Amy's parents argued that the IEP should go further and provide a sign-language interpreter in all of her classes. Contending that the school district's refusal to furnish an interpreter denied Amy a FAPE, Amy's parents initiated administrative proceedings, then filed a lawsuit under the Act. Rowley, 458 U.S., at 184-185, 102 S.Ct. 3034.
The District Court agreed that Amy had been denied a FAPE. The court acknowledged that Amy was making excellent progress in school: She was "perform[ing] better than the average child in her class" and "advancing easily from grade to grade." Id., at 185, 102 S.Ct. 3034 (internal quotation marks omitted). At the same time, Amy "under[stood] considerably less of what goes on in class than she could if she were not deaf." Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). Concluding that "it has been left entirely to the courts and the hearings officers to give content to the requirement of an 'appropriate education,' " 483 F.Supp. 528, 533 (S.D.N.Y.1980), the District Court ruled that Amy's education was not "appropriate" unless it provided her "an opportunity to achieve [her] full potential commensurate with the opportunity provided to other children. " Rowley, 458 U.S., at 185-186, 102 S.Ct. 3034 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Second Circuit agreed with this analysis and affirmed.
In this Court, the parties advanced starkly different understandings of the FAPE requirement. Amy's parents defended the approach of the lower courts, arguing that the school district was required to provide instruction and services that would provide Amy an "equal educational opportunity" relative to children without disabilities. Id., at 198, 102 S.Ct. 3034 (internal quotation marks omitted). The school district, for its part, contended that the IDEA "did not create substantive individual rights"; the FAPE provision was instead merely aspirational. Brief for Petitioners in Rowley, O.T. 1981, No. 80-1002, pp. 28, 41.
Neither position carried the day. On the one hand, this Court rejected the view that the IDEA gives "courts carte blanche to impose upon the States whatever burden their various judgments indicate should be imposed." Rowley, 458 U.S., at 190, n. 11, 102 S.Ct. 3034. After all, the statutory phrase "free appropriate public education" was expressly defined in the Act, even if the definition "tend[ed] toward the cryptic rather than the comprehensive." Id., at 188, 102 S.Ct. 3034. This Court went on to reject the "equal opportunity" standard adopted by the lower courts, concluding that "free appropriate public education" was a phrase "too complex to be captured by the word 'equal' whether one is speaking of opportunities or services." Id., at 199, 102 S.Ct. 3034. The Court also viewed the standard as "entirely unworkable," apt to require "impossible measurements and comparisons" that courts were ill suited to make. Id., at 198, 102 S.Ct. 3034.
On the other hand, the Court also rejected the school district's argument that the FAPE requirement was actually no requirement at all. Id., at 200, 102 S.Ct. 3034. Instead, the Court carefully charted a middle path. Even though "Congress was rather sketchy in establishing substantive requirements" under the Act, id., at 206, 102 S.Ct. 3034 the Court nonetheless made clear that the Act guarantees a substantively adequate program of education to all eligible children, id., at 200-202, 207, 102 S.Ct. 3034 ; see id., at 193, n. 15, 102 S.Ct. 3034 (describing the "substantive standard ... implicit in the Act"). We explained that this requirement is satisfied, and a child has received a FAPE, if the child's IEP sets out an educational program that is "reasonably calculated to enable the child to receive educational benefits." Id., at 207, 102 S.Ct. 3034. For children receiving instruction in the regular classroom, this would generally require an IEP "reasonably calculated to enable the child to achieve passing marks and advance from grade to grade." Id., at 204, 102 S.Ct. 3034 ; see also id., at 203, n. 25, 102 S.Ct. 3034.
In view of Amy Rowley's excellent progress and the "substantial" suite of specialized instruction and services offered in her IEP, we concluded that her program satisfied the FAPE requirement. Id., at 202, 102 S.Ct. 3034. But we went no further. Instead, we expressly "confine[d] our analysis" to the facts of the case before us. Ibid. Observing that the Act requires States to "educate a wide spectrum" of children with disabilities and that "the benefits obtainable by children at one end of the spectrum will differ dramatically from those obtainable by children at the other end," we declined "to establish any one test for determining the adequacy of educational benefits conferred upon all children covered by the Act." Ibid.
C
Petitioner Endrew F. was diagnosed with autism at age two. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder generally marked by impaired social and communicative skills, "engagement in repetitive activities and stereotyped movements, resistance to environmental change or change in daily routines, and unusual responses to sensory experiences." 34 C.F.R. § 300.8(c)(1)(i) (2016) ; see Brief for Petitioner 8. A child with autism qualifies as a "[c]hild with a disability" under the IDEA, and Colorado (where Endrew resides) accepts IDEA funding. § 1401(3)(A). Endrew is therefore entitled to the benefits of the Act, including a FAPE provided by the State.
Endrew attended school in respondent Douglas County School District from preschool through fourth grade. Each year, his IEP Team drafted an IEP addressed to his educational and functional needs. By Endrew's fourth grade year, however, his parents had become dissatisfied with his progress. Although Endrew displayed a number of strengths-his teachers described him as a humorous child with a "sweet disposition" who "show[ed] concern[ ] for friends"-he still "exhibited multiple behaviors that inhibited his ability to access learning in the classroom." Supp. App. 182a; 798 F.3d 1329, 1336 (C.A.10 2015). Endrew would scream in class, climb over furniture and other students, and occasionally run away from school. Id., at 1336. He was afflicted by severe fears of commonplace things like flies, spills, and public restrooms. As Endrew's parents saw it, his academic and functional progress had essentially stalled: Endrew's IEPs largely carried over the same basic goals and objectives from one year to the next, indicating that he was failing to make meaningful progress toward his aims. His parents believed that only a thorough overhaul of the school district's approach to Endrew's behavioral problems could reverse the trend. But in April 2010, the school district presented Endrew's parents with a proposed fifth grade IEP that was, in their view, pretty much the same as his past ones. So his parents removed Endrew from public school and enrolled him at Firefly Autism House, a private school that specializes in educating children with autism.
Endrew did much better at Firefly. The school developed a "behavioral intervention plan" that identified Endrew's most problematic behaviors and set out particular strategies for addressing them.
See Supp. App. 198a-201a. Firefly also added heft to Endrew's academic goals. Within months, Endrew's behavior improved significantly, permitting him to make a degree of academic progress that had eluded him in public school.
In November 2010, some six months after Endrew started classes at Firefly, his parents again met with representatives of the Douglas County School District. The district presented a new IEP. Endrew's parents considered the IEP no more adequate than the one proposed in April, and rejected it. They were particularly concerned that the stated plan for addressing Endrew's behavior did not differ meaningfully from the plan in his fourth grade IEP, despite the fact that his experience at Firefly suggested that he would benefit from a different approach.
In February 2012, Endrew's parents filed a complaint with the Colorado Department of Education seeking reimbursement for Endrew's tuition at Firefly. To qualify for such relief, they were required to show that the school district had not provided Endrew a FAPE in a timely manner prior to his enrollment at the private school. See § 1412(a)(10)(C)(ii). Endrew's parents contended that the final IEP proposed by the school district was not "reasonably calculated to enable [Endrew] to receive educational benefits" and that Endrew had therefore been denied a FAPE. Rowley, 458 U.S., at 207, 102 S.Ct. 3034. An Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) disagreed and denied relief.
Endrew's parents sought review in Federal District Court. Giving "due weight" to the decision of the ALJ, the District Court affirmed. 2014 WL 4548439, *5 (D.Colo., Sept. 15, 2014) (quoting Rowley, 458 U.S., at 206, 102 S.Ct. 3034 ). The court acknowledged that Endrew's performance under past IEPs "did not reveal immense educational growth." 2014 WL 4548439, at *9. But it concluded that annual modifications to Endrew's IEP objectives were "sufficient to show a pattern of, at the least, minimal progress." Ibid. Because Endrew's previous IEPs had enabled him to make this sort of progress, the court reasoned, his latest, similar IEP was reasonably calculated to do the same thing. In the court's view, that was all Rowley demanded. 2014 WL 4548439, at *9.
The Tenth Circuit affirmed. The Court of Appeals recited language from Rowley stating that the instruction and services furnished to children with disabilities must be calculated to confer "some educational benefit." 798 F.3d, at 1338 (quoting Rowley, 458 U.S., at 200, 102 S.Ct. 3034 ; emphasis added by Tenth Circuit). The court noted that it had long interpreted this language to mean that a child's IEP is adequate as long as it is calculated to confer an "educational benefit [that is] merely ... more than de minimis. " 798 F.3d, at 1338 (internal quotation marks omitted). Applying this standard, the Tenth Circuit held that Endrew's IEP had been "reasonably calculated to enable [him] to make some progress." Id., at 1342 (internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, he had not been denied a FAPE.
We granted certiorari. 579 U.S. ----, 137 S.Ct. 29, 195 L.Ed.2d 901 (2016).
II
A
The Court in Rowley declined "to establish any one test for determining the adequacy of educational benefits conferred upon all children covered by the Act." 458 U.S., at 202, 102 S.Ct. 3034. The school district, however, contends that Rowley nonetheless established that "an IEP need not promise any particular level of benefit,"
so long as it is " ' reasonably calculated' to provide some benefit, as opposed to none ." Brief for Respondent 15.
The district relies on several passages from Rowley to make its case. It points to our observation that "any substantive standard prescribing the level of education to be accorded" children with disabilities was "[n]oticeably absent from the language of the statute." 458 U.S., at 189, 102 S.Ct. 3034 ; see Brief for Respondent 14. The district also emphasizes the Court's statement that the Act requires States to provide access to instruction "sufficient to confer some educational benefit," reasoning that any benefit, however minimal, satisfies this mandate. Brief for Respondent 15 (quoting Rowley, 458 U.S., at 200, 102 S.Ct. 3034 ). Finally, the district urges that the Court conclusively adopted a "some educational benefit" standard when it wrote that "the intent of the Act was more to open the door of public education to handicapped children ... than to guarantee any particular level of education." Id., at 192, 102 S.Ct. 3034 ; see Brief for Respondent 14.
These statements in isolation do support the school district's argument. But the district makes too much of them. Our statement that the face of the IDEA imposed no explicit substantive standard must be evaluated alongside our statement that a substantive standard was "implicit in the Act. " Rowley, 458 U.S., at 193, n. 15, 102 S.Ct. 3034. Similarly, we find little significance in the Court's language concerning the requirement that States provide instruction calculated to "confer some educational benefit." Id., at 200, 102 S.Ct. 3034. The Court had no need to say anything more particular, since the case before it involved a child whose progress plainly demonstrated that her IEP was designed to deliver more than adequate educational benefits. See id., at 202, 209-210, 102 S.Ct. 3034. The Court's principal concern was to correct what it viewed as the surprising rulings below: that the IDEA effectively empowers judges to elaborate a federal common law of public education, and that a child performing better than most in her class had been denied a FAPE. The Court was not concerned with precisely articulating a governing standard for closer cases. See id., at 202, 102 S.Ct. 3034. And the statement that the Act did not "guarantee any particular level of education" simply reflects the unobjectionable proposition that the IDEA cannot and does not promise "any particular [educational] outcome." Id., at 192, 102 S.Ct. 3034 (internal quotation marks omitted). No law could do that-for any child.
More important, the school district's reading of these isolated statements runs headlong into several points on which Rowley is crystal clear. For instance-just after saying that the Act requires instruction that is "sufficient to confer some educational benefit"-we noted that "[t]he determination of when handicapped children are receiving sufficient educational benefits ... presents a ... difficult problem." Id., at 200, 202, 102 S.Ct. 3034 (emphasis added). And then we expressly declined "to establish any one test for determining the adequacy of educational benefits" under the Act. Id., at 202, 102 S.Ct. 3034 (emphasis added). It would not have been "difficult" for us to say when educational benefits are sufficient if we had just said that any educational benefit was enough. And it would have been strange to refuse to set out a test for the adequacy of educational benefits if we had just done exactly that. We cannot accept the school district's reading of Rowley .
B
While Rowley declined to articulate an overarching standard to evaluate the adequacy of the education provided under the Act, the decision and the statutory language point to a general approach: To meet its substantive obligation under the IDEA, a school must offer an IEP reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress appropriate in light of the child's circumstances.
The "reasonably calculated" qualification reflects a recognition that crafting an appropriate program of education requires a prospective judgment by school officials. Id., at 207, 102 S.Ct. 3034. The Act contemplates that this fact-intensive exercise will be informed not only by the expertise of school officials, but also by the input of the child's parents or guardians. Id., at 208-209, 102 S.Ct. 3034. Any review of an IEP must appreciate that the question is whether the IEP is reasonable, not whether the court regards it as ideal. Id., at 206-207, 102 S.Ct. 3034.
The IEP must aim to enable the child to make progress. After all, the essential function of an IEP is to set out a plan for pursuing academic and functional advancement. See §§ 1414(d)(1)(A)(i)(I)-(IV). This reflects the broad purpose of the IDEA, an "ambitious" piece of legislation enacted "in response to Congress' perception that a majority of handicapped children in the United States 'were either totally excluded from schools or [were] sitting idly in regular classrooms awaiting the time when they were old enough to "drop out." ' " Rowley, 458 U.S., at 179, 102 S.Ct. 3034 (quoting H.R.Rep. No. 94-332, p. 2 (1975)). A substantive standard not focused on student progress would do little to remedy the pervasive and tragic academic stagnation that prompted Congress to act.
That the progress contemplated by the IEP must be appropriate in light of the child's circumstances should come as no surprise. A focus on the particular child is at the core of the IDEA. The instruction offered must be "specially designed" to meet a child's "unique needs" through an "[i ] ndividualized education program." §§ 1401(29), (14) (emphasis added). An IEP is not a form document. It is constructed only after careful consideration of the child's present levels of achievement, disability, and potential for growth. §§ 1414(d)(1)(A)(i)(I)-(IV), (d)(3)(A)(i)-(iv). As we observed in Rowley, the IDEA "requires participating States to educate a wide spectrum of handicapped children," and "the benefits obtainable by children at one end of the spectrum will differ dramatically from those obtainable by children at the other end, with infinite variations in between." 458 U.S., at 202, 102 S.Ct. 3034.
Rowley sheds light on what appropriate progress will look like in many cases. There, the Court recognized that the IDEA requires that children with disabilities receive education in the regular classroom "whenever possible. " Ibid. (citing § 1412(a)(5) ). When this preference is met, "the system itself monitors the educational progress of the child." Id., at 202-203, 102 S.Ct. 3034. "Regular examinations are administered, grades are awarded, and yearly advancement to higher grade levels is permitted for those children who attain an adequate knowledge of the course material." Id., at 203, 102 S.Ct. 3034. Progress through this system is what our society generally means by an "education." And access to an "education" is what the IDEA promises. Ibid. Accordingly, for a child fully integrated in the regular classroom, an IEP typically should, as Rowley put it, be "reasonably calculated to enable the child to achieve passing marks and advance from grade to grade." Id., at 203-204, 102 S.Ct. 3034.
This guidance is grounded in the statutory definition of a FAPE. One of the components of a FAPE is "special education," defined as "specially designed instruction ... to meet the unique needs of a child with a disability." §§ 1401(9), (29). In determining what it means to "meet the unique needs" of a child with a disability, the provisions governing the IEP development process are a natural source of guidance: It is through the IEP that "[t]he 'free appropriate public education' required by the Act is tailored to the unique needs of" a particular child. Id., at 181, 102 S.Ct. 3034.
The IEP provisions reflect Rowley 's expectation that, for most children, a FAPE will involve integration in the regular classroom and individualized special education calculated to achieve advancement from grade to grade. Every IEP begins by describing a child's present level of achievement, including explaining "how the child's disability affects the child's involvement and progress in the general education curriculum." § 1414(d)(1)(A)(i)(I)(aa). It then sets out "a statement of measurable annual goals ... designed to ... enable the child to be involved in and make progress in the general education curriculum," along with a description of specialized instruction and services that the child will receive. §§ 1414(d)(1)(A)(i)(II), (IV). The instruction and services must likewise be provided with an eye toward "progress in the general education curriculum." § 1414(d)(1)(A)(i)(IV)(bb). Similar IEP requirements have been in place since the time the States began accepting funding under the IDEA.
The school district protests that these provisions impose only procedural requirements-a checklist of items the IEP must address-not a substantive standard enforceable in court. Tr. of Oral Arg. 50-51. But the procedures are there for a reason, and their focus provides insight into what it means, for purposes of the FAPE definition, to "meet the unique needs" of a child with a disability. §§ 1401(9), (29). When a child is fully integrated in the regular classroom, as the Act prefers, what that typically means is providing a level of instruction reasonably calculated to permit advancement through the general curriculum.
Rowley had no need to provide concrete guidance with respect to a child who is not fully integrated in the regular classroom and not able to achieve on grade level. That case concerned a young girl who was progressing smoothly through the regular curriculum. If that is not a reasonable prospect for a child, his IEP need not aim for grade-level advancement. But his educational program must be appropriately ambitious in light of his circumstances, just as advancement from grade to grade is appropriately ambitious for most children in the regular classroom. The goals may differ, but every child should have the chance to meet challenging objectives.
Of course this describes a general standard, not a formula. But whatever else can be said about it, this standard is markedly more demanding than the "merely more than de minimis " test applied by the Tenth Circuit. It cannot be the case that the Act typically aims for grade-level advancement for children with disabilities who can be educated in the regular classroom, but is satisfied with barely more than de minimis progress for those who cannot.
When all is said and done, a student offered an educational program providing "merely more than de minimis " progress from year to year can hardly be said to have been offered an education at all. For children with disabilities, receiving instruction that aims so low would be tantamount to "sitting idly ... awaiting the time when they were old enough to 'drop out.' " Rowley, 458 U.S., at 179, 102 S.Ct. 3034 (some internal quotation marks omitted). The IDEA demands more. It requires an educational program reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress appropriate in light of the child's circumstances.
C
Endrew's parents argue that the Act goes even further. In their view, a FAPE is "an education that aims to provide a child with a disability opportunities to achieve academic success, attain self-sufficiency, and contribute to society that are substantially equal to the opportunities afforded children without disabilities." Brief for Petitioner 40.
This standard is strikingly similar to the one the lower courts adopted in Rowley, and it is virtually identical to the formulation advanced by Justice Blackmun in his separate writing in that case. See 458 U.S., at 185-186, 102 S.Ct. 3034 ; id., at 211, 102 S.Ct. 3034 (opinion concurring in judgment) ("[T]he question is whether Amy's program ... offered her an opportunity to understand and participate in the classroom that was substantially equal to that given her non-handicapped classmates"). But the majority rejected any such standard in clear terms. Id., at 198, 102 S.Ct. 3034 ("The requirement that States provide 'equal' educational opportunities would ... seem to present an entirely unworkable standard requiring impossible measurements and comparisons"). Mindful that Congress (despite several intervening amendments to the IDEA) has not materially changed the statutory definition of a FAPE since Rowley was decided, we decline to interpret the FAPE provision in a manner so plainly at odds with the Court's analysis in that case. Compare § 1401(18) (1976 ed.) with § 1401(9) (2012 ed.).
D
We will not attempt to elaborate on what "appropriate" progress will look like from case to case. It is in the nature of the Act and the standard we adopt to resist such an effort: The adequacy of a given IEP turns on the unique circumstances of the child for whom it was created. This absence of a bright-line rule, however, should not be mistaken for "an invitation to the courts to substitute their own notions of sound educational policy for those of the school authorities which they review." Rowley, 458 U.S., at 206, 102 S.Ct. 3034.
At the same time, deference is based on the application of expertise and the exercise of judgment by school authorities. The Act vests these officials with responsibility for decisions of critical importance to the life of a disabled child. The nature of the IEP process, from the initial consultation through state administrative proceedings, ensures that parents and school representatives will fully air their respective opinions on the degree of progress a child's IEP should pursue. See §§ 1414, 1415 ; id., at 208-209, 102 S.Ct. 3034. By the time any dispute reaches court, school authorities will have had a complete opportunity to bring their expertise and judgment to bear on areas of disagreement. A reviewing court may fairly expect those authorities to be able to offer a cogent and responsive explanation for their decisions that shows the IEP is reasonably calculated to enable the child to make progress appropriate in light of his circumstances.
The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The requirement was initially set out in the Education of the Handicapped Act, which was later amended and renamed the IDEA. See Pub. L. 101-476, § 901(a), 104 Stat. 1141. For simplicity's sake-and to avoid "acronym overload"-we use the latter title throughout this opinion. Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools, 580 U.S. ----, ----, n. 1, 137 S.Ct. 743, 750, n. 1, --- L.E.2d ---- (2017).
This guidance should not be interpreted as an inflexible rule. We declined to hold in Rowley, and do not hold today, that "every handicapped child who is advancing from grade to grade ... is automatically receiving a [FAPE]." Board of Ed. of Hendrick Hudson Central School Dist., Westchester Cty. v. Rowley, 458 U.S. 176, 203, n. 25, 102 S.Ct. 3034, 73 L.Ed.2d 690 (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: | 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.
Respondent Crescent Towing Company contracted with petitioner Dixilyn Drilling Corporation to tow Dixilyn’s barge Julie Ann down the Mississippi River. While being towed, the barge collided with a bridge, and the bridge owners filed a libel in the United States District Court claiming damages from the tower and the barge owner. These two jointly paid the claim but continued to litigate, as between themselves, the question of which was liable. The district judge after a full trial found that the collision and the resulting damage were due solely to the negligence of the tower. He also rejected the tower’s argument that regardless of which was negligent the barge owner should pay the damages because it had contracted to assume liability for all damages arising out of the towage including “any damage claims urged by third parties.” The judge held that the barge owner had not agreed to assume liability for damages caused by the tower’s own negligence. On review the Court of Appeals held that it need not decide the “extremely difficult” factual question of who was negligent because, in the court's view, the barge owner had agreed in the towage contract to assume liability for all losses arising out of the towage, including those caused by the tower’s negligence. Holding such a contract to be valid, the Court of Appeals reversed the District Court’s judgment.
In treating as valid a contract which exempts the tower from liability for its own negligence, the Court of Appeals’ holding is squarely in conflict with our holding in Bisso v. Inland Waterways Corp., 349 U. S. 85 (1955), and Boston Metals Co. v. The Winding Gulf, 349 U. S. 122 (1955). The Court of Appeals thought that the present case was distinguishable because the peculiar hazards of towage and other factors brought it within the ambit of Southwestern Sugar & Molasses Co. v. River Terminals Corp., 360 U. S. 411 (1959). But Southwestern Sugar is not applicable here, for in that case the Court merely preferred to give the Interstate Commerce Commission an opportunity to rule on an exculpatory clause which was part of a tariff filed with the Commission. We adhere to the rule laid down in Bisso and Winding Gulf and hold that the Court of Appeals was in error in failing to follow it. The judgment is reversed and the cause remanded to that court to consider other questions.
Reversed and remanded.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
Respondent’s petition for habeas corpus alleged, among other things, that he had been tried and sentenced in the state courts by a senile judge. On appeal from the District Court’s dismissal of the petition without a hearing, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit noted that state remedies had not been exhausted, expressed its confidence that “if the contention is squarely raised, the state courts will be willing to afford the petitioner a reasonable opportunity to prove his case,” and observed that a claim of judicial senility raised a most “sensitive issue of state administration of state criminal justice.” 435 F. 2d 453, 460 (1970). Despite these judicious observations underscoring the fact that this case was not ripe for federal cognizance, the Court of Appeals vacated the District Court’s judgment and remanded for further proceedings with instructions to stay the case until respondent had sought relief in the Virginia state courts.
The Court of Appeals’ form of “abstention” is perhaps technically consistent with the statutory prohibition against issuing the writ where state remedies have not been exhausted. 28 U. S. C. § 2254. But, having determined that state remedies had not been exhausted, the Court of Appeals would have better served the policy of the statute had it avoided any implication as to the merits of so delicate a subject. Further, absent special circumstances, cf. Nelson v. George, 399 U. S. 224 (1970), Wade v. Wilson, 396 U. S. 282 (1970), rather than ordering retention of the casé on the District Court’s docket, the Court of Appeals should simply have vacated the judgment of the lower court and directed dismissal of the petition for failure to exhaust state remedies.
The motion of respondent for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and the petition for writ of certiorari are granted, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
Mr. Justice Douglas, with whom Mr. Justice Stewart joins, believing that the Court of Appeals has observed all the proprieties as well as the requirements of the Act, would affirm its judgment.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
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Justice Marshall
announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II-A, and III, and an opinion with respect to Parts II-B and II-C, in which Justice Brennan, Justice White, and Justice Blackmun joined.
This case raises two questions regarding the time limits for filing charges of employment discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 253, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq. The primary question presented is whether a state agency’s decision to waive its exclusive 60-day period for initial processing of a discrimination charge, pursuant to a worksharing agreement with the EEOC, “terminates” the agency’s proceedings within the meaning of § 706(c) of Title VII, 78 Stat. 260, as amended in 1972, 86 Stat. 104, 42 U. S. C. §2000e-5(c), so that the EEOC immediately may deem the charge filed. In addition, we must decide whether a complainant who files a discrimination charge that is untimely under state law is nonetheless entitled to the extended 300-day federal filing period of § 706(e) of Title VII, 78 Stat. 260, as amended in 1972, 86 Stat. 105, 42 U. S. C. §2000e-5(e).
I
The time limit provisions of Title VII as interpreted by this Court establish the following procedures for filing discrimination charges with the EEOC. As a general rule, a complainant must file a discrimination charge with the EEOC within 180 days of the occurrence of the alleged unlawful employment practice. § 706(e), 42 U. S. C. §2000e-5(e). If a complainant initially institutes proceedings with a state or local agency with authority to grant or seek relief from the practice charged, the time limit for filing with the EEOC is extended to 300 days. Ibid.
In order to give States and localities an opportunity to combat discrimination free from premature federal intervention, the Act provides that no charge may be filed with the EEOC until 60 days have elapsed from initial filing of the charge with an authorized state or local agency, unless that agency’s proceedings “have been earlier terminated.” § 706(c), 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-5(c). The EEOC’s referral of a charge initially filed with the EEOC to the appropriate state or local agency properly institutes the agency’s proceedings within the meaning of the Act, and the EEOC may hold the charge in “‘suspended animation’” during the agency’s 60-day period of exclusive jurisdiction. Love v. Pullman Co., 404 U. S. 522, 525-526 (1972). In light of the 60-day deferral period, a complainant must file a charge with the appropriate state or local agency, or have the EEOC refer the charge to that agency, within 240 days of the alleged discriminatory event in order to ensure that it may be filed with the EEOC within the BOO-day limit. See Mohasco Corp. v. Silver, 447 U. S. 807, 814, n. 16 (1980). If the complainant does not file within 240 days, the charge still may be timely filed with the EEOC if the state or local agency terminates its proceedings before 300 days. See ibid.
The central question in this case is whether a state agency’s waiver of the 60-day deferral period, pursuant to a work-sharing agreement with the EEOC, constitutes a “termination” of its proceedings so as to permit the EEOC to deem a charge filed and to begin to process it immediately. This question is of substantial importance because the EEOC has used its statutory authority to enter into worksharing agreements with approximately three-quarters of the 109 state and local agencies authorized to enforce state and local employment discrimination laws. See § 709(b), 86 Stat. 107-108, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-8(b) (authorizing the EEOC to “enter into written agreements” with state and local agencies to promote “effective enforcement” of the Act); Brief for Petitioner 4 (EEOC has entered into worksharing agreements with approximately 81 of 109 authorized state and local agencies).
These worksharing agreements typically provide that the state or local agency will process certain categories of charges and that the EEOC will process others, with the state or local agency waiving the 60-day deferral period in the latter instance. See, e. g., Worksharing Agreement between Colorado Civil Rights Division and EEOC, App. to Pet. for Cert. 48a-49a. In either instance, the nonprocessing party to the worksharing agreement generally reserves the right to review the initial processing party’s resolution of the charge and to investigate the charge further after the initial processing party has completed its proceedings. See, e. g., id., at 47a. Whether a waiver of the 60-day deferral period pursuant to a worksharing agreement constitutes a “termination” of a state or local agency’s proceedings will determine not only when the EEOC may initiate its proceedings, but also whether an entire class of charges may be timely filed with the EEOC in the first instance.
The facts of the instant case concretely reflect what is at stake. On March 26, 1984, Suanne Leerssen filed a charge of discrimination with petitioner EEOC. She alleged that 290 days earlier, respondent Commercial Office Products Company had discharged her because of her sex in violation of Title VII. On March 30, the EEOC sent a copy of Leers-sen’s charge and a charge transmittal form to the Colorado Civil Rights Division (CCRD), which is authorized by the State to process charges of employment discrimination. The form stated that the EEOC would initially process the charge, pursuant to the worksharing agreement between the EEOC and the CCRD.
The CCRD returned the transmittal form to the EEOC, indicating on the form that the CCRD waived its right under Title VII to initially process the charge. On April 4, the CCRD sent a form letter to Leerssen explaining that it had waived its right to initial processing but stating that it still retained jurisdiction to act on the charge after the conclusion of the EEOC’s proceedings. If the CCRD’s waiver “terminated” its proceedings, then Leerssen’s charge was filed with the EEOC just under the 300-day limit. If the waiver was not a “termination,” however, then the charge was not timely filed with the EEOC because the 60-day deferral period did not expire until well after the 300-day limit.
The timeliness issue was raised in this case when the EEOC issued an administrative subpoena for information relevant to Leerssen’s charge. Respondent refused to comply with the subpoena, maintaining that the EEOC lacked jurisdiction to investigate the charge because it was not timely filed. The EEOC commenced an action in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado seeking judicial enforcement of the subpoena. The District Court agreed with respondent and dismissed the EEOC’s enforcement action, holding that the EEOC lacked jurisdiction over Leerssen’s charge because it was not timely filed. See Civil Action No. 85-K-1385 (June 6, 1985), App. to Pet. for Cert. 23a.
The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed. 803 F. 2d 581 (1986). As a threshold matter, the Court of Appeals rejected respondent’s contention that the extended 300-day federal filing period was inapplicable because Leerssen had failed to file her charge with the CCRD within the State’s own 180-day limitations period. Id., at 585-586, and n. 3. The Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court, however, that Leerssen’s charge was not filed within the 300-day period and that the EEOC therefore lacked jurisdiction over the charge. The Court of Appeals reasoned that a state agency “terminates” its proceedings within the meaning of § 706(c) only when it “completely surrenders its jurisdiction over a charge.” Id., at 587. Because the CCRD retained jurisdiction over Leerssen’s charge, reserving the right to act at the conclusion of the EEOC’s proceedings, it did not “finally and unequivocally terminate its authority” over the charge as the plain language of the statute required. Id., at 590. The Court of Appeals expressly disagreed with the decision of the First Circuit in Isaac v. Harvard University, 769 F. 2d 817 (1985). The First Circuit had upheld the EEOC’s view that a waiver of the right to initially process a charge constitutes a “termination,” reasoning that the language of the Act is ambiguous and that the history and purposes of the Act support the EEOC’s construction. Judge McKay dissented from the opinion of the Court of Appeals in this case, arguing that the EEOC should prevail for the reasons offered by the First Circuit.
We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict between the First and the Tenth Circuits, 482 U. S. 926 (1987), and we now reverse.
II
A
First and foremost, respondent defends the judgment of the Court of Appeals on the ground that the language of the statute unambiguously precludes the conclusion that the CCRD’s waiver of the deferral period “terminated” its proceedings. According to respondent, “terminated” means only “‘completed’” or “‘ended.’” Brief for Respondent 14. Respondent urges that this definition is met only when a state agency, in the words of the Court of Appeals, “completely relinquish[es] its authority to act on the charge at that point or in the future” 803 F. 2d, at 589, n. 13 (emphasis in original). Because the CCRD retained authority to reactivate its proceedings after the EEOC’s resolution of the charge, respondent maintains that the CCRD did not “terminate” its proceedings within the meaning of the Act.
We cannot agree with respondent and the Court of Appeals that “terminate” must mean “to end for all time.” Rather, we find persuasive the determination of the First Circuit that the definition of “termination” also includes “cessation in time.” The First Circuit noted that this -definition is included in both Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 2359 (1976) (definition of “terminate”) and Black’s Law Dictionary 1319 (5th ed. 1979) (definition of “termination”). See Isaac, 769 F. 2d, at 820, 821, n. 5. Moreover, the First Circuit correctly observed that common usage of the words “terminate,” “complete,” or “end” often includes a time element, as in “ending negotiations despite the likely inevitability of their resumption” or “terminating work on the job-site knowing that it will resume the next day.” Id., at 821. These observations support the EEOC’s contention that a state agency “terminates” its proceedings when it declares that it will not proceed, if it does so at all, for a specified interval of time.
To be sure, “terminate” also may bear the meaning proposed by respondent. Indeed, it may bear that meaning more naturally or more frequently in common usage. But it is axiomatic that the EEOC’s interpretation of Title VII, for which it has primary enforcement responsibility, need not be the best one by grammatical or any other standards. Rather, the EEOC’s interpretation of ambiguous language need only be reasonable to be entitled to deference. See Oscar Mayer & Co. v. Evans, 441 U. S. 750, 761 (1979). The reasonableness of the EEOC’s interpretation of “terminate” in its statutory context is more than amply supported by the legislative history of the deferral provisions of Title VII, the purposes of those provisions, and the language of other sections of the Act, as described in detail below. Deference is therefore appropriate.
B
The legislative history of the deferral provisions of Title VII demonstrates that the EEOC’s interpretation of § 706(c) is far more consistent with the purposes of the Act than respondent’s contrary construction.
The deferral provisions of §706 were enacted as part of a compromise forged during the course of one of the longest filibusters in the Senate’s history. The bill that had passed the House provided for “deferral” to state and local enforcement efforts only in the sense that it directed the EEOC to enter into agreements with state agencies providing for the suspension of federal enforcement in certain circumstances. See H. R. 7152, 88th Cong., 2d Sess., §708, 110 Cong. Rec. 2511-2512 (1964). The House bill further directed the EEOC to rescind any agreement with a state agency if the EEOC determined that the agency was no longer effectively exercising its power to combat discrimination. See ibid. In the Senate, this bill met with strenuous opposition on the ground that it placed the EEOC in the position of monitoring state enforcement efforts, granting States exclusive jurisdiction over local discrimination claims only upon the EEOC’s determination that state efforts were effective. See, e. g., id., at 6449 (remarks of Sen. Dirksen). The bill’s opponents voiced their concerns against the backdrop of the federal-state civil rights conflicts of the early 1960’s, which no doubt intensified their fear of “the steady and deeper intrusion of the Federal power.” See id., at 8193 (remarks of Sen. Dirksen). These concerns were resolved by the “Dirksen-Mansfield substitute,” which proposed the 60-day deferral period now in § 706(c) of the Act. See 110 Cong. Rec., at 11926-11935.
The proponents of the Dirksen-Mansfield substitute identified two goals of the deferral provisions, both of which fully support the EEOC’s conclusion that States may, if they choose, waive the 60-day deferral period but retain jurisdiction over discrimination charges by entering into work-sharing agreements with the EEOC. First, the proponents of the substitute deferral provisions explained that the 60-day deferral period was meant to give States a “reasonable opportunity to act under State law before the commencement of any Federal proceedings.” Id., at 12708 (remarks of Sen. Humphrey). Nothing in the waiver provisions of the worksharing agreements impinges on the opportunity of the States to have an exclusive 60-day period for processing a discrimination charge. The waiver of that opportunity in specified instances is a voluntary choice made through individually negotiated agreements, not an imposition by the Federal Government. Indeed, eight worksharing States and the District of Columbia filed a brief as amici in this case, explaining their satisfaction with the operation of the waiver provisions of the worksharing agreements: “By clarifying primary responsibility for different categories of charges, work-sharing agreements benefit both the EEOC and the states.” Brief for Colorado et al. as Amici Curiae 5. Moreover, most worksharing agreements are flexible, permitting States to express interest in cases ordinarily waived under the agreement and to call upon the EEOC to refrain from assuming jurisdiction in such cases. See, e. g., Worksharing Agreement Between CCRD and EEOC, App. to Pet. for Cert. 49a.
In contrast, respondent’s argument that States should not be permitted to waive the deferral period because its creation reflected a congressional preference for state as opposed to federal enforcement is entirely at odds with the voluntarism stressed by the proponents of deferral. Congress clearly foresaw the possibility that States might decline to take advantage of the opportunity for enforcement afforded them by the deferral provisions. It therefore gave the EEOC the authority and responsibility to act when a State is “unable or unwilling” to provide relief. 110 Cong. Rec. 12725 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Humphrey). This Court, too, has recognized that Congress envisioned federal intervention when “States decline, for whatever reason, to take advantage of [their] opportunities” to settle grievances in “a voluntary and localized manner.” Oscar Mayer & Co. v. Evans, 441 U. S., at 761. As counsel for the EEOC explained, deferral was meant to work as “a carrot, but not a stick,” affording States an opportunity to act, but not penalizing their failure to do so other than by authorizing federal intervention. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 11. The waiver provisions of worksharing agreements are fully consistent with this goal.
In addition to providing States with an opportunity to forestall federal intervention, the deferral provisions were meant to promote “time economy and the expeditious handling of cases.” 110 Cong. Rec. 9790 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Dirksen). Respondent’s proposed interpretation of § 706(c), adopted by the Court of Appeals, is irreconcilable with this purpose because it would result in extraordinary inefficiency without furthering any other goal of the Act. The EEOC would be required to wait 60 days before processing its share of discrimination claims under a worksharing agreement, even though both the EEOC and the relevant state or local agency agree that the State or locality will take no action during that period. Or, in an effort to avoid this pointless 60-day delay, state and local agencies could abandon their work-sharing agreements with the EEOC and attempt to initially process all charges during the 60-day deferral period, a solution suggested by respondent. See Brief for Respondent 29-30. Such a solution would create an enormous backlog of discrimination charges in States and localities, preventing them from securing for their citizens the quick attention to discrimination claims afforded under worksharing agreements. Or, in another scenario proposed by respondent, see id., at 29, n. 29, state or local agencies could rewrite their worksharing agreements with the EEOC to provide for “termination” of state or local proceedings in accordance with respondent’s definition of that term — complete relinquishment of jurisdiction. This solution would prevent a pointless 60-day delay, but it would also preclude a State’s reactivation of a discrimination charge upon the conclusion of federal proceedings. Requiring that States completely relinquish authority over claims in order to avoid needless delay turns on its head the dual purposes of the deferral provisions: deference to the States and efficient processing of claims. As the amici States observe, such a requirement “frustrates the congressional intent to ensure state and local agencies the opportunity to employ their expertise to resolve discrimination complaints.” Brief for Colorado et al. as Amici Curiae 1..
The most dramatic result of respondent’s reading of the deferral provisions is the preclusion of any federal relief for an entire class of discrimination claims. All claims filed with the EEOC in worksharing States more than 240 but less than 300 days after the alleged discriminatory event, like Leers-sen’s claim in this case, will be rendered untimely because the 60-day deferral period will not expire within the 300-day filing limit. Respondent’s interpretation thus requires the 60-day deferral period — which was passed on behalf of state and local agencies — to render untimely a claim filed within the federal 300-day limit, despite the joint efforts of the EEOC and the state or local agency to avoid that result. As petitioner epigrammatically observes, a claim like Leerssen’s that is filed with the EEOC within the last 60 days of the federal filing period is “too early until it is too late.” Brief for Petitioner 25. This severe consequence, in conjunction with the pointless delay described above, demonstrates that respondent’s interpretation of the language of § 706(c) leads to “absurd or futile results . . . ‘plainly at variance with the policy of the legislation as a whole,”’ which this Court need not and should not countenance. United States v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 310 U. S. 534, 543 (1940), quoting Ozawa v. United States, 260 U. S. 178, 194 (1922).
C
The EEOC’s construction of § 706(c) also finds support in other, related sections of Title VII. These sections reinforce our reading of the legislative history that the 1964 Congress did not intend to preclude the operation of the waiver provisions of the worksharing agreements now widely in force.
Section 706(d) provides that when a member of the EEOC, rather than an individual complainant, files a discrimination charge in a State or locality with concurrent jurisdiction, “the Commission shall, before taking any action with respect to such charge, notify the appropriate State or local officials and, upon request, afford them a reasonable time, but not less than sixty days . . . unless a shorter period is requested, to act.” 42 U. S. C. §2000e-5(d) (emphasis added). This language clearly permits state and local agencies to waive the 60-day deferral period and thus authorize the EEOC to take immediate action in cases arising under § 706(d). There is every reason to believe that Congress intended the same result in § 706(c), notwithstanding the variance in language. The legislative history of the deferral provisions reflects the legislators’ understanding that the time limits of §§ 706(c) and (d) were the same. See, e. g., 110 Cong. Rec. 12690 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Saltonstall); id., at 15896 (remarks of Rep. Celler). Moreover, this Court already has recognized in Love v. Pullman Co., 404 U. S., at 526-527, n. 6, that “the difference in wording between [the two sections] seems to be only a reflection of the different persons who initiate the charge.” We concluded in Love that “[t]here is no reason to think” that Congress meant to permit the EEOC to hold a claim in abeyance during the deferral period under § 706(d), but not under § 706(c) — even though the former section expressly authorizes such action, and the latter section does not. Ibid. Similarly, in the instant case, there is no reason to think that Congress meant to make the deferral period waivable by States under § 706(d) when the EEOC files a claim, but mandatory under § 706(c) when an individual files a claim.
The EEOC’s interpretation of § 706(c) also finds support in provisions of the Act calling for formal cooperation between the EEOC and state and local agencies. Section 705(g)(1) gives the EEOC the power “to cooperate with and, with their consent, utilize regional, State, local, and other agencies.” 78 Stat. 258, 42 U. S. C. §2000e-4(g)(1). Section 709(b) specifies that “[i]n furtherance of such cooperative efforts, the Commission may enter into written agreements with such State or local agencies.” 86 Stat. 108, 42 U. S. C. §2000e-8(b). These sections clearly envision the establishment of some sort of worksharing agreements between the EEOC and state and local agencies, and they in no way preclude provisions designed to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort or waste of time. Because the EEOC’s interpretation of the “termination” requirement of § 706(c) is necessary to give effect to such provisions in most of the existing worksharing agreements, we find that interpretation more consistent with the cooperative focus of the Act than respondent’s contrary construction.
I — I 1-H hH
In the alternative, respondent argues in support of the result below that the extended 300-day federal filing period is inapplicable to this case because the complainant failed to file her discrimination charge with the CCRD within Colorado’s 180-day limitations period. Respondent reasons that the extended 300-day filing period applies only when “the person aggrieved has initially instituted proceedings with a state or local agency with authority to grant or seek relief” from the practice charged, § 706(e), 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-5(e), and that in the absence of a timely filing under state law, a state agency lacks the requisite “authority to grant or seek relief.” The Tenth Circuit rejected this argument below, as has every other Circuit to consider the question, on the ground that the words “authority to grant or seek relief” refer merely to enabling legislation that establishes state or local agencies, not to state limitations requirements. We join the Circuits in concluding that state time limits for filing discrimination claims do not determine the applicable federal time limit.
Although respondent is correct that this Court’s opinion in Oscar Mayer & Co. v. Evans, 441 U. S. 750 (1979), did not decide the precise issue we address today, see Brief for Respondent 36, the reasoning of Oscar Mayer provides significant guidance. In Oscar Mayer, we found in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) context that a complainant’s failure to file a claim within a state limitations period did not automatically render his federal claim untimely. We reasoned that the federal statute contained no express requirement of timely state filing, 441 U. S., at 759, and we declined to create such a requirement in light of the remedial purpose of the ADEA and our recognition that it is a “ ‘statutory scheme in which laymen, unassisted by trained lawyers, initiate the process.’” Id., at 761, quoting Love v. Pullman Co., supra, at 527. In the instant case, we decide the separate question whether under Title VII, untimely filing under state law automatically precludes the application of the extended 300-day federal filing period, but the reasoning of Oscar Mayer is entirely apposite. As we noted in Oscar Mayer itself, the filing provisions of the ADEA and Title VII are “virtually in haec verba,” the former having been patterned after the latter. 441 U. S., at 755. Title VII, like the ADEA, contains no express reference to timeliness under state law. In addition, the policy considerations that militate against importing such a hurdle into the federal ADEA scheme are identical in the Title VII context: Title VII also is a remedial scheme in which laypersons, rather than lawyers, are expected to initiate the process.
The importation of state limitations periods into § 706(e) not only would confuse lay complainants, but also would embroil the EEOC in complicated issues of state law. In order for the EEOC to determine the timeliness of a charge filed with it between 180 and 300 days, it first would have to determine whether the charge had been timely filed under state law, because the answer to the latter question would establish which of the two federal limitations periods should apply. This state-law determination is not a simple matter. The EEOC first would have to determine whether a state limitations period was jurisdictional or nonjurisdictional. And if the limitations period was nonjurisdictional, like Colorado’s in this case, the EEOC would have to decide whether it was waived or equitably tolled. The EEOC has neither the time nor the expertise to make such determinations under the varying laws of the many deferral States and has accordingly construed the extended 300-day period to be available regardless of the state filing. See 52 Fed. Reg. 10224 (1987). In contrast to the difficulties presented by respondent’s argument, our broadly worded statement in Mohasco Corp. v. Silver, 447 U. S. 807 (1980), a case presenting a related issue regarding the application of the extended 300-day federal filing period, that a complainant “need only file his charge within 240 days of the alleged discriminatory employment practice in order to ensure that his federal rights will be preserved,” id,., at 814, n. 16, establishes a rule that is both easily understood by complainants and easily administered by the EEOC. We reaffirm that rule today.
Because we find that the extended 300-day federal limitations period is applicable to this case and that the CCRD’s waiver of the 60-day deferral period “terminated” its proceedings within that 300-day limit, we conclude that Leers-sen’s claim was timely filed under Title VII. We therefore reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Kennedy took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Section 706(e) provides:
“A charge under this section shall be filed within one hundred and eighty days after the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred and notice of the charge (including the date, place and circumstances of the alleged unlawful employment practice) shall be served upon the person against whom such charge is made within ten days thereafter, except that in a case of an unlawful employment practice with respect to which the person aggrieved has initially instituted proceedings with a State or local agency with authority to grant or seek relief from such practice or to institute criminal proceedings with respect thereto upon receiving notice thereof, such charge shall be filed by or on behalf of the person aggrieved within three hundred days after the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred, or within thirty days after receiving notice that the State or local agency has terminated the proceedings under the State or local law, whichever is earlier, and a copy of such charge shall be filed by the Commission with the State or local agency.” 86 Stat. 106, 42 U. S. C. §2000e-5(e).
Section 706(c) provides:
“In the case of an alleged unlawful employment practice occurring in a State, or political subdivision of a State, which has a State or local law prohibiting the unlawful employment practice alleged and establishing or authorizing a State or local authority to grant or seek relief from such practice or to institute criminal proceedings with respect thereto upon receiving notice thereof, no charge may be filed under [subsection (b)] of this section by the person aggrieved before the expiration of sixty days after proceedings have been commenced under the State or local law, unless such proceedings have been earlier terminated, provided that such sixty-day period shall be extended to one hundred and twenty days during the first year after the effective date of such State or local law. If any requirement for the commencement of such proceedings is imposed by a State or local authority other than a requirement of the filing of a written and signed statement of the facts upon which the proceeding is based, the proceeding shall be deemed to have been commenced for the purposes of this subsection at the time such statement is sent by registered mail to the appropriate State or local authority.” 86 Stat. 104, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e-5(e).
This point was made by other Senators and has been emphasized by this Court in our previous Title VII eases. See, e. g., 110 Cong. Rec. 12688 (1964) (remarks of Sen. Saltonstall) (deferral provisions preserve “the opportunity and authority of the State and local governments to work out their own problems if they are willing to do so”); id., at 14313 (remarks of Sen. Miller) (deferral provisions “giv[e] the States the opportunity to carry out their responsibilities first”); Mohasco Corp. v. Silver, 447 U. S. 807, 821 (1980) (deferral provisions “give state agencies an opportunity to redress the evil at which the federal legislation was aimed, and to avoid federal intervention unless its need was demonstrated”); Oscar Mayer & Co. v. Evans, 441 U. S. 750, 755 (1979) (deferral provisions “give state agencies a limited opportunity to resolve problems of employment discrimination and thereby to make unnecessary, resort to federal relief by victims of the discrimination”); Love v. Pullman Co., 404 U. S. 522, 526 (1972) (deferral provisions “give state agencies a prior opportunity to consider discrimination complaints”).
Respondent’s contrary contention that the compromise provisions represented Congress’ choice of deferral over efficiency, see Brief for Respondent 24, finds no support in the comments of Senator Dirksen, the chief architect of the compromise. His remarks make clear that he believed the compromise would promote efficiency while respecting state prerogatives. See, e. g., 110 Cong. Rec. 8193 (1964) (deferral provisions will “assure individual complainants that they will have fair and expeditious consideration of their grievances”).
Reactivation of state proceedings after the conclusion of federal proceedings serves the useful function of permitting States to enforce their discrimination laws when these laws are more protective than Title VII. For example, Title VII does not give the EEOC jurisdiction to enforce the Act against employers of fewer than 15 employees or against bona fide private membersliip clubs. § 701(b), 42 U. S. C. § 2000e(b). Each year, the CCRD reactivates four to five charges in which the EEOC has determined after investigation that it lacks jurisdiction. Brief for Colorado et al. as Amici Curiae 7.
All of the worksharing States, with the possible exception of Oklahoma and Tennessee, retain jurisdiction over a charge when they waive the 60-day deferral period. Brief for Petitioner 27, n. 24. Hence, none of these States “terminates” its proceedings by its waiver under respondent’s interpretation of that term.
See Gilardi v. Schroeder, 833 F. 2d 1226, 1230-1231 (CA7 1987); Mennor v. Fort Hood National Bank, 829 F. 2d 553, 556 (CA5 1987); Maurya v. Peabody Coal Co., 823 F. 2d 933, 935 (CA6 1987), cert. denied, 484 U. S. 1067 (1988); EEOC v. Shamrock Optical Co., 788 F. 2d 491, 493-494 (CA8 1986); Thomas v. Florida Power & Light Co., 764 F. 2d 768, 771 (CA11 1985); Howze v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. 750 F. 2d 1208, 1211 (CA3 1984).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Fortas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Respondent, a North Carolina corporation, brought this action in a North Carolina state court. It sought $200,000 in damages for defamation alleged to have occurred during the course of the United Steelworkers’ campaign to unionize respondent’s employees. The Steelworkers, an unincorporated labor union whose principal place of business purportedly is Pennsylvania, removed the case to a Federal District Court. The union asserted not only federal-question jurisdiction, but that for purposes of the diversity jurisdiction it was a citizen of Pennsylvania, although some of its members were North Carolinians.
The corporation sought to have the case remanded to the state courts, contending that its complaint raised no federal questions and relying upon the generally prevailing principle that an unincorporated association’s citizenship is that of each of its members. But the District Court retained jurisdiction. The District Judge noted “a trend to treat unincorporated associations in the same manner as corporations and to treat them as citizens of the state wherein the principal office is located.” Divining “no common sense reason for treating an unincorporated national labor union differently from a corporation,” he declined to follow what he styled “the poorer reasoned but more firmly established rule” of Chapman v. Barney, 129 U. S. 677.
On interlocutory appeal the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed and directed that the case be remanded to the state courts. 336 F. 2d 160. Certiorari was granted, 379 U. S. 958, so that we might decide whether an unincorporated labor union is to be treated as a citizen for purposes of federal diversity jurisdiction, without regard to the citizenship of its members. Because we believe this properly a matter for legislative consideration which cannot adequately or appropriately be dealt with by this Court, we affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals.
Article III, § 2, of the Constitution provides:
“The judicial Power shall extend ... to Controversies . . . between Citizens of different States . . . .”
Congress lost no time in implementing the grant. In 1789 it provided for federal jurisdiction in suits “between a citizen of the State where the suit is brought, and a citizen of another State.” There shortly arose the question as to whether a corporation — a creature of state law — is to be deemed a “citizen” for purposes of the statute. This Court, through Chief Justice Marshall, initially responded in the negative, holding that a corporation was not a “citizen” and that it might sue and be sued under the diversity statute only if none of its shareholders was a co-citizen of any opposing party. Bank of the United States v. Deveaux, 5 Cranch 61. In 1844 the Court reversed itself and ruled that a corporation was to be treated as a citizen of the State which created it. Louisville, C. & C. R. Co. v. Letson, 2 How. 497. Ten years later, the Court reached the same result by a different approach. In a compromise destined to endure for over a century, the Court indulged in the fiction that, although a corporation was not itself a citizen for diversity purposes, its shareholders would conclusively be presumed citizens of the incorporating State. Marshall v. Baltimore & O. R. Co., 16 How. 314.
Congress re-entered the lists in 1875, significantly expanding diversity jurisdiction by deleting the requirement imposed in 1789 that one of the parties must be a citizen of the forum State. The resulting increase in the quantity of diversity litigation, however, cooled enthusiasts of the jurisdiction, and in 1887 and 1888 Congress enacted sharp curbs. It quadrupled the jurisdictional amount, confined the right of removal to nonresident defendants, reinstituted protections against jurisdiction by collusive assignment, and narrowed venue.
It was in this climate that the Court in 1889 decided Chapman v. Barney, supra. On its own motion the Court observed that plaintiff was a joint stock company and not a corporation or natural person. It held that although plaintiff was endowed by New York with capacity to sue, it could not be considered a “citizen” for diversity purposes. 129 U. S., at 682.
In recent years courts and commentators have reflected dissatisfaction with the rule of Chapman v. Barney. The distinction between the “personality” and “citizenship” of corporations and that of labor unions and other unincorporated associations, it is increasingly argued, has become artificial and unreal. The mere fact that a corporation is endowed with a birth certificate is, they say, of no consequence. In truth and in fact, they point out, many voluntary associations and labor unions are indistinguishable from corporations in terms of the reality of function and structure, and to say that the latter are juridical persons and “citizens” and the former are not is to base a distinction upon an inadequate and irrelevant difference. They assert, with considerable merit, that it is not good judicial administration, nor is it fair, to remit a labor union or other unincorporated association to vagaries of jurisdiction determined by the citizenship of its members and to disregard the fact that unions and associations may exist and have an identity and a local habitation of their own.
The force of these arguments in relation to the diversity jurisdiction is particularized by petitioner’s showing in this case. Petitioner argues that one of the purposes underlying the jurisdiction — protection of the nonresident litigant from local prejudice — is especially applicable to the modern labor union. According to the argument, when the nonresident defendant is a major union, local juries may be tempted to favor local interests at its expense. Juries may also be influenced by the fear that unionization would adversely affect the economy of the community and its customs and practices in the field of race relations. In support of these contentions, petitioner has exhibited material showing that during organizational campaigns like that involved in this case, localities have been saturated with propaganda concerning such economic and racial fears. Extending diversity jurisdiction to unions, says petitioner, would make available the advantages of federal procedure, Article III judges less exposed to local pressures than their state court counterparts, juries selected from wider geographical areas, review in appellate courts reflecting a multi-state perspective, and more effective review by this Court.
We are of the view that these arguments, however appealing, are addressed to an inappropriate forum, and that pleas for extension of the diversity jurisdiction to hitherto uncovered broad categories of litigants ought to be made to the Congress and not to the courts.
Petitioner urges that in Puerto Rico v. Russell & Co., 288 U. S. 476, we have heretofore breached the doctrinal wall of Chapman v. Barney and, that step having been taken, there is now no necessity for enlisting the assistance of Congress. But Russell does not furnish the precedent which petitioner seeks. The problem which it presented was that of fitting an exotic creation of the civil law, the sociedad en comandita, into a federal scheme which knew it not. The Organic Act of Puerto Rico conferred jurisdiction upon the federal court if all the parties on either side of a controversy were citizens of a foreign state or “citizens of a State, Territory or District of the United States not domiciled in Puerto Rico.” All of the sociedad’s members were nonresidents of Puerto Rico, and jurisdiction lay in the federal court if they were the “parties” to the action. But this Court held that the sociedad itself, not its members, was the party, doing so on a basis that is of no help to petitioner. It did so because, as Justice Stone stated for the Court, in “[t]he tradition of the civil law, as expressed in the Code of Puerto Rico,” “the sociedad is consistently regarded as a juridical person.” 288 U. S., at 480-481. Accordingly, the Court held that the sociedad, Russell & Co., was a citizen domiciled in Puerto Rico, within the meaning of the Organic Act, and ordered the case remanded to the insular courts. It should be noted that the effect of Russell was to contract jurisdiction of the federal court in Puerto Rico.
If we were to accept petitioner’s urgent invitation to amend diversity jurisdiction so as to accommodate its case, we would be faced with difficulties which we could not adequately resolve. Even if the record here were-adequate, we might well hesitate to assume that petitioner’s situation is sufficiently representative or typical to form the predicate of a general principle. We should, for example, be obliged to fashion a test for ascertaining of which State the labor union is a citizen. Extending the jurisdiction to corporations raised no such problem, for the State of incorporation was a natural candidate, its arguable irrelevance in terms of the policies underlying the jurisdiction being outweighed by its certainty of application. But even that easy and apparent solution did not dispose of the problem; in 1958 Congress thought it necessary to enact legislation providing that corporations are citizens both' of the State of incorporation and of the State in which their principal place of business is located. Further, in contemplating a rule which would accommodate petitioner’s claim, we are acutely aware of the complications arising from the circumstance that petitioner, like other labor unions, has local as well as national organizations and that these, perhaps, should be reckoned with in connection with “citizenship” and its jurisdictional incidents.
Whether unincorporated labor unions ought to be assimilated to the status of corporations for diversity-purposes, how such citizenship is to be determined, and what if any related rules ought to apply, are decisions which we believe suited to the legislative and not the judicial branch, regardless of our views as to the intrinsic merits of petitioner’s argument — merits stoutly attested by widespread support for the recognition of labor unions as juridical personalities.
We affirm the decision below.
28 U. S. C. § 1441 (a) (1964 ed.) provides: “Except as otherwise expressly provided by Act of Congress, 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:”
Petitioner does not here challenge the Court of Appeals’ finding with respect to the absence of federal-question jurisdiction. Mention of this finding is omitted from the “statement of the ease” portion of petitioner’s brief. Instead, petitioner expresses an intention, on remand of this case, to raise a different issue — that libel suits brought against unions for conduct arising in the course of an organizational campaign are within the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board and may not be the subject of litigation, at least initially, in state or federal court. Compare Linn v. United Plant Guard Workers of America, Local 114., 337 F. 2d 68 (C. A. 6th Cir.), cert. granted, 381 U. S. 923, with Meyer v. Joint Council 53, Intern’l Bro. of Teamsters, 416 Pa. 401, 206 A. 2d 382, petition for cert. dismissed under Rule 60, post, p. 897.
1 Stat. 78.
See 72 Stat. 415 (1958), 28 U. S. C. § 1332 (c), providing that: “For the purposes of this section and section 1441 of this title, a corporation shall be deemed a citizen of any State by which it has been incorporated and of the State where it has its principal place of business.”
18 Stat. 470.
24 Stat. 552, 553, as amended by 25 Stat. 434. On the historical background of these changes in the diversity jurisdiction see generally, Moore and Weckstein, Diversity Jurisdiction: Past, Present, and Future, 43 Tex. L. Rev. 1 (1964); Moore and Weckstein, Corporations and Diversity of Citizenship Jurisdiction: A Supreme Court Fiction Revisited, 77 Harv. L. Rev. 1426 (1964); Hart and Wechsler, The Federal Courts and the Federal System 891-943 (1953).
Equally responsive to the congressional intent as manifested in 1887 and 1888 was the Court’s decision in 1892 in Shaw v. Quincy Mining Co., 145 U. S. 444, holding that in a diversity suit a corporation could only be sued in the State of incorporation, even though its principal place of business was elsewhere.
See Mason v. American Express Co., 334 F. 2d 392 (C. A. 2d Cir.); 78 Harv. L. Rev. 1661 (1965); 53 Geo. L. J. 513 (1965); 65 Col. L. Rev. 162 (1965); American Fed. of Musicians v. Stein, 213 F. 2d 679, 685-689 (C. A. 6th Cir.), cert. denied, 348 U. S. 873, suggesting that a trial court might find a union to be a citizen for diversity purposes — a suggestion rejected on remand, 183 F. Supp. 99 (D. C. M. D. Tenn.); and Van Sant v. American Express Co., 169 F. 2d 355 (C. A. 3d Cir.); Comment, 1965 Duke L. J. 329; Note, Unions as Juridical Persons, 66 Yale L. J. 712, 742-749 (1957). Cf. Swan v. First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, 225 F. 2d 745 (C. A. 9th Cir.). But see Brocki v. American Express Co., 279 F. 2d 785 (C. A. 6th Cir.), cert. denied, 364 U. S. 871; Underwood v. Maloney, 256 F. 2d 334 (C. A. 3d Cir.), cert. denied, 358 U. S. 864; A. H. Bull Steamship Co. v. NMEBA, 250 F. 2d 332 (C. A. 2d Cir.), each of which takes a more conventional view.
The federal district court in Puerto Rico had jurisdiction “of all cases cognizable in the district courts of the United States” and “of all controversies where all of the parties on either side of the controversy are citizens or subjects of a foreign State or States, or citizens of a State, Territory, or District of the United States not domiciled in Puerto Rico . . . .” § 41, Organic Act of Puerto Rico of 1917, 39 Stat. 965 (now 48 U. S. C. §863). See 70 Stat. 658 (1956), amending 28 U. S. C. § 1332, relating to the treatment of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico for diversity purposes.
As the Court noted in Russell, 288 U. S., at 482, the effect of its decision was to prevent nonresidents from organizing sociedads to carry on business in Puerto Rico and then “remove from the Insular Courts controversies arising under local law.” The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Mason, 334 F. 2d, at 397, n. 8, seems to assert that Russell had the effect of broadening the diversity jurisdiction. We do not agree. At the time Russell was decided, Puerto Rico was not considered a “State” for purposes of the federal diversity jurisdiction statute. Accordingly, a sociedadj although recognized as a citizen of Puerto Rico in Russell, could not avail itself of the general diversity statute.
See note 4, supra.
The American Law Institute has proposed that for diversity purposes unincorporated associations be deemed citizens of the States in which their principal places of business are located, but that they be disabled from initiating diversity litigation in States where they maintain “local establishments.” ALI, Study of the Division of Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts, Proposed Final Draft No. 1 (1965), §§1301 (b)(2) and 1302 (b). Compare 29 U. S. C. § 185 (c), which provides: “For the purposes of actions and proceedings by or against labor organizations in the district courts of the United States, district courts shall be deemed to have jurisdiction of a labor organization (1) in the district in which such organization maintains its principal office, or (2) in any district in which its duly authorized officers or agents are engaged in representing or acting for employee members.”
See, e. g., United Mine Workers v. Coronado Coal Co., 259 U. S. 344; Rule 17 (b) of the Fed. Rules Civ. Proc.; ALI, Study, supra; 3 Moore, Federal Practice ¶ 17.25 (2d ed., 1964); Note, Unions as Juridical Persons, 66 Yale L. J. 712 (1957). Cf. 78 Stat. 445 (1964), which amended 28 U. S. C. § 1332 (c) to confer citizenship upon insurers, “whether incorporated or unincorporated,” involved in direct-action suits; Note, Developments in the Law — Judicial Control of Actions of Private Associations, 76 Harv. L. Rev. 983, 1080-1100 (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: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
The petitioner, Ford T. Johnson, Jr., was convicted of contempt of the Traffic Court of the City of Richmond, Virginia, and appealed his conviction to the Hustings Court, where he was tried without a jury and again convicted. The Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia refused to grant a writ of error on the ground that the judgment appealed' from was “plainly right,” but the Chief Justice of that court stayed execution of the judgment pending disposition of this petition for certiorari.
The evidence at petitioner’s trial in the Hustings Court is summarized in an approved statement of facts. According to this statement, the. witnesses for the State testified as follows: The-petitioner, a Negro, was seated in. the Traffic Court in a section reserved for whites, and when requested to move- by the bailiff, refused to do so. The judge then summoned the petitioner to the bench and instructed him to be seated in the right-hand section of the courtroom, the section reserved for Negroes. The petitioner moved back in front of the counsel-table and remained standing with his arms folded, stating that he preferred standing and indicating that he would not comply with the judge’s order. Upon refusal to obey the judge’s further direction to be-seated, the petitioner was arrested for contempt.' At no time did he behave in a boisterous or abusive manner, and there was no disorder in the courtroom. The State,, in its Brief in Opposition filed in this Court, concedes that in the section of the Richmond Traffic Court reserved for spectators, seating space “is assigned on the basis of racial designation, the seats on one side of the aisle being for use off Negro citizens and the seats on the other side being for the use of white citizens.”
It is clear from the totality of circumstances, and particularly the fact that the petitioner was peaceably seated in the section reserved for whites before being summoned tó the bench, that the "arrest and conviction rested entirely on the refusal to comply with the segregated seating requirements imposed in this particular courtroom. Such a conviction cannot stand, for it is no longer open to question that .a State may not constitutionally require segregation of public facilities. See, e. g., Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483; Mayor and City Council of Baltimore v. Dawson, 350 U. S. 877; Turner v. Memphis, 369 U. S. 350. State-compelled segregation in a court of justice is a manifest violation of the State’s duty to dény no one the equal protection of its laws.
Reversed and remanded.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Souter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Federal Magistrate Act of 1979 (Federal Magistrate Act or Act) expanded the power of magistrate judges by authorizing them to conduct “any or all proceedings in a jury or nonjury civil matter and order the entry of judgment in the case,” as long as they are “specially designated ... by the district court” and are acting “[u]pon the consent of the parties.” 28 U. S. C. § 636(c)(1). The question is whether consent can be inferred from a party’s conduct during litigation, and we hold that it can be.
I
Respondent Jon Michael Withrow is a Texas state prisoner who brought an action under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. §1983, against members of the prison’s medical staff, petitioners Joseph Roell, Petra Garibay, and James Reagan, alleging that they had deliberately disregarded his medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment. See Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U. S. 97 (1976). During a preliminary hearing before a Magistrate Judge to determine whether the suit could proceed in forma pauperis, see 28 U. S. C. § 1915, the Magistrate Judge told Withrow that he could choose to have her rather than the District Judge preside over the entire case. App. 10-11. Withrow agreed orally, id., at 11, and later in writing, App. to Pet. for Cert. 20a. A lawyer from the Texas attorney general’s office who attended the hearing, but was not permanently assigned to Withrow’s case, indicated that she would have to “talk to the attorneys who have been assigned the case to see if [the petitioners] will execute consent forms.” App. 11.
Without waiting for the petitioners’ decision, the District Judge referred the case to the Magistrate Judge for final disposition, but with the caveat that “all defendants [would] be given an opportunity to consent to the jurisdiction of the magistrate judge,” and that the referral order would be vacated if any of the defendants did not consent. App. to Pet. for Cert. 21a. The Clerk of Court sent the referral order to the petitioners along with a summons directing them to include “[i]n their answer or in a separate pleading... a statement that ‘All defendants consent to the jurisdiction of a United States Magistrate Judge’ or ‘All defendants do not consent to the jurisdiction of a United States Magistrate Judge.’ ” App. 13. The summons advised them that “[t]he court shall not be told which parties do not consent.” Ibid. Only Reagan, who was represented by private counsel, gave written consent to the referral; Roell and Garibay, who were represented by an assistant in the attorney general’s office, filed answers but said nothing about the referral. App. to Pet. for Cert. 17a.
The case nevertheless proceeded in front of the Magistrate Judge, all the way to a jury verdict and judgment for the petitioners. When Withrow appealed, the Court of Appeals sua sponte remanded the ease to the District Court to “determine whether the parties consented to proceed before the magistrate judge and, if so, whether the consents were oral or written.” Id., at 13a. It was only then that Roell and Garibay filed a formal letter of consent with the District Court, stating that “they consented to all proceedings before this date before the United States Magistrate Judge, including disposition of their motion for summary judgment and trial.” Id., at 22a.
The District Court nonetheless referred the Court of Appeals’s enquiry to the same Magistrate Judge who had conducted the trial, who reported that “by their actions [Roell and Garibay] clearly implied their consent to the jurisdiction of a magistrate.” Id., at 19a. She was surely correct, for the record shows that Roell and Garibay voluntarily participated in the entire course of proceedings before the Magistrate Judge, and voiced no objection when, at several points, the Magistrate Judge made it clear that she believed they had consented. The Magistrate Judge observed, however, that under the Circuit’s precedent “consent cannot be implied by the conduct of the parties,” id., at 18a, and she accordingly concluded that the failure of Roell and Garibay to give express consent before sending their postjudgment letter to the District Court meant that she had lacked jurisdiction to hear the case, ibid. The District Court adopted the report and recommendation over the petitioners’ objection. Id., at 14a-15a.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court, agreeing that “[w]hen, pursuant to § 636(c)(1), the magistrate judge enters [a] final judgment, lack of consent and defects in the order of reference are jurisdictional errors” that cannot be waived. 288 F. 3d 199, 201 (CA5 2002). It also reaffirmed its prior holding that “§ 636(c) consent must be express; it cannot be implied by the parties’ conduct.” Ibid. Finally, the appellate court decided that petitioners’ postjudgment consent did not satisfy §636(c)(l)’s consent requirement. Id., at 203. We granted certiorari, 537 U. S. 999 (2002), and now reverse.
II
The Federal Magistrate Act provides that “[u]pon the consent of the parties, a full-time United States magistrate judge . . . may conduct any or all proceedings in a jury or nonjury civil matter and order the entry of judgment in the case, when specially designated to exercise such jurisdiction by the district court.” 28 U. S. C. § 636(c)(1). Unlike non-consensual referrals of pretrial but case-dispositive matters under § 636(b)(1), which leave the district court free to do as it sees fit with the magistrate judge’s recommendations, a § 636(c)(1) referral gives the magistrate judge full authority over dispositive motions, conduct of trial, and entry of final judgment, all without district court review. A judgment entered by “a magistrate judge designated to exercise civil jurisdiction under [§ 636(c)(1)]” is to be treated as a final judgment of the district court, appealable “in the same manner as an appeal from any other judgment of a district court.” § 636(c)(3).
Section 636(c)(2) establishes the procedures for a § 636(c)(1) referral. “If a magistrate judge is designated to exercise civil jurisdiction under [§ 636(c)(1)], the clerk of court shall, at the time the action is filed, notify the parties of the availability of a magistrate judge to exercise such jurisdiction.” § 636(c)(2). Within the time required by local rule, “[t]he decision of the parties shall be communicated to the clerk of court.” Ibid. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 73(b) specifies that the parties’ election of a magistrate judge shall be memorialized in “a joint form of consent or separate forms of consent setting forth such election,” see Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. Form 34, and that neither the magistrate nor the district judge “shall ... be informed of a party’s response to the clerk’s notification, unless all parties have consented to the referral of the matter to a magistrate judge.” The procedure created by 28 U. S. C. § 636(c)(2) and Rule 73(b) thus envisions advance, written consent communicated to the clerk, the point being to preserve the confidentiality of a party’s choice, in the interest of protecting an objecting party against any possible prejudice at the magistrate judge’s hands later on. See also § 636(c)(2) (“Rules of court for the reference of civil matters to magistrate judges shall include procedures to protect the voluntariness of the parties’ consent”).
Here, of course, § 636(c)(2) was honored in the breach, by a referral before Roell and Garibay gave their express consent, without any statement from them, written or oral, until after judgment. App. to Pet. for Cert. 19a. Nonetheless, Roell and Garibay “clearly implied their consent” by their decision to appear before the Magistrate Judge, without expressing any reservation, after being notified of their right to refuse and after being told that she intended to exercise case-dispositive authority. Ibid. The only question is whether consent so shown can count as conferring “civil jurisdiction” under § 636(c)(1), or whether adherence to the letter of § 636(c)(2) is an absolute demand.
So far as it concerns full-time magistrate judges, the font of a magistrate judge’s authority, § 636(c)(1), speaks only of “the consent of the parties,” without qualification as to form, and § 636(c)(3) similarly provides that “[t]he consent of the parties allows” a full-time magistrate judge to enter a final, appealable judgment of the district court. These unadorned references to “consent of the parties” contrast with the language in § 636(c)(1) covering referral to certain part-time magistrate judges, which requires not only that the parties consent, but that they do so by “specific written request.” Cf. also 18 U. S. C. § 3401(b) (allowing magistrate judges to preside over misdemeanor trials only if the defendant “expressly consents ... in writing or orally on the record”). A distinction is thus being made between consent simple, and consent expressed in a “specific written request.” And although the specific referral procedures in 28 U. S. C. § 636(c)(2) and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 73(b) are by no means just advisory, the text and structure of the section as a whole suggest that a defect in the referral to a full-time magistrate judge under § 636(c)(2) does not eliminate that magistrate judge’s “civil jurisdiction” under § 636(c)(1) so long as the parties have in fact voluntarily consented. See King v. Ionization Int’l, Inc., 825 F. 2d 1180, 1185 (CA7 1987) (noting that the Act “does not require a specific form . . . of consent”).
These textual clues are complemented by a good pragmatic reason to think that Congress intended to permit implied consent. In giving magistrate judges case-dispositive civil authority, Congress hoped to relieve the district courts’ “mounting queue of civil cases” and thereby “improve access to the courts for all groups.” S. Rep. No. 96-74, p. 4 (1979); see H. R. Rep. No. 96-287, p. 2 (1979) (The Act’s main object was to create “a supplementary judicial power designed to meet the ebb and flow of the demands made on the Federal judiciary”). At the same time, though, Congress meant to preserve a litigant’s right to insist on trial before an Article III district judge insulated from interference with his obligation to ignore everything but the merits of a case. See Commodity Futures Trading Common v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833, 848 (1986) (Article III protects litigants’ “ ‘right to have claims decided before judges who are free from potential domination by other branches of government’” (quoting United States v. Will, 449 U. S. 200, 218 (1980))). It was thus concern about the possibility of coercive referrals that prompted Congress to make it clear that “the voluntary consent of the parties is required before a civil action may be referred to a magistrate for a final decision.” S. Conf. Rep. No. 96-322, p. 7 (1979); see also S. Rep. No. 96-74, at 5 (“The bill clearly requires the voluntary consent of the parties as a prerequisite to a magistrate’s exercise of the new jurisdiction. The committee firmly believes that no pressure, tacit or expressed, should be applied to the litigants to induce them to consent to trial before the magistrates”); H. R. Rep. No. 96-287, at 2 (The Act “creates a vehicle by which litigants can consent, freely and voluntarily, to a less formal, more rapid, and less expensive means of resolving their civil controversies”).
When, as here, a party has signaled consent to the magistrate judge’s authority through actions rather than words, the question is what outcome does better by the mix of congressional objectives. On the one hand, the virtue of strict insistence on the express consent requirement embodied in § 636(c)(2) is simply the value of any bright line: here, absolutely minimal risk of compromising the right to an Article III judge. But there is another risk, and insisting on a bright line would raise it: the risk of a full and complicated trial wasted at the option of an undeserving and possibly opportunistic litigant. This risk is right in front of us in this case. Withrow consented orally and in writing to the Magistrate Judge’s authority following notice of his right to elect trial by an Article III district judge; he received the protection intended by the statute, and deserves no boon from the other side’s failure to cross the bright line. In fact, there is even more to Withrow’s unworthiness, since under the local rules of the District Court, it was Withrow’s unmet responsibility as plaintiff to get the consent of all parties and file the completed consent form with the clerk. See Gen. Order No. 80-5, Art. III(B)(2) (SD Tex., June 16, 1980), p. 5, App. to Brief in Opposition 7a. In another case, of course, the shoe might be on the other foot; insisting on the bright line would allow parties in Roell’s and Garibay’s position to sit back without a word about their failure to file the form, with a right to vacate any judgment that turned out not to their liking.
The bright line is not worth the downside. We think the better rule is to accept implied consent where, as here, the litigant or counsel was made aware of the need for consent and the right to refuse it, and still voluntarily appeared to try the case before the Magistrate Judge. Inferring consent in these circumstances thus checks the risk of gamesmanship by depriving parties of the luxury of waiting for the outcome before denying the magistrate judge’s authority. Judicial efficiency is served; the Article III right is substantially honored. See Schor, supra, at 849-850 (finding that the litigant “effectively] waive[d]” his right to an Article III court by deciding “to seek relief before the [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] rather than in the federal courts”); United States v. Raddatz, 447 U. S. 667, 676, n. 3 (1980) (eschewing a construction of the Act that would tend to “frustrate the plain objective of Congress to alleviate the increasing congestion of litigation in the district courts”).
HH HH h-H
Roell’s and Garibay’s general appearances before the Magistrate Judge, after they had been told of their right to be tried by a district judge, supply the consent necessary for the Magistrate Judge’s “civil jurisdiction” under § 636(c)(1). We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
On at least three different occasions, counsel for Roell and Garibay was present and stood silent when the Magistrate Judge stated that they had consented to her authority. First, in a status teleconference involving the addition of a new defendant, Danny Knutson, who later settled with Wi-throw and was dropped from the suit, the Magistrate Judge stated that “all of the other parties have consented to my jurisdiction.” App. 18. Petitioners later filed a motion for summary judgment, which the Magistrate Judge denied, noting in her order that “this case was referred to the undersigned to conduct all further proceedings, including entry of final judgment, in accordance with 28 U. S. C. § 636(c)(1).” App. to Pet. for Cert. 26a. And finally, during jury selection, the Magistrate Judge told the panel that both sides had consented to her jurisdiction to hear the case. Id., at 27a.
Prior to the 1996 amendments to the Act, see Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1996, Pub. L. 104-317, §207(1)(B), 110 Stat. 3850, parties could also elect to appeal to “a judge of the district court in the same manner as on an appeal from a judgment of the district court to a court of appeals.” 28 U. S. C. § 636(c)(4) (1994 ed.) (repealed 1996). If the latter course was pursued, the court of appeals could grant leave to appeal the district court’s judgment. § 636(c)(5) (same). In all events, whether the initial appeal was to the court of appeals under § 636(e)(3) or to the district court under § 636(c)(4), the parties retained the right to seek ultimate review from this Court. § 636(c)(5) (same).
See Black’s Law Dictionary 95 (7th ed. 1999) (“ ‘The term “appearance” . . . designate^] the overt act by which [a party] submits himself to the court’s jurisdiction.... An appearance may be expressly made by formal written or oral declaration, or record entry, or it may be implied from some act done with the intention of appearing and submitting to the court’s jurisdiction’ ” (quoting 4 Am. Jur. 2d, Appearance § 1, p. 620 (1995))).
The parties do not dispute that the Magistrate Judge who presided over the trial was a full-time Magistrate Judge.
The textual evidence cited by the dissent is far from conclusive. The dissent focuses on the fact that § 636(c)(1) allows a magistrate judge to exercise authority only “[u]pon” the parties’ consent, and it concludes that this temporal connotation forecloses accepting implied consent. But the timing of consent is a different matter from the manner of its expression, and it is perfectly in keeping with the sequence of events envisioned by § 686(c)(1) to infer consent from a litigant’s initial act of appearing before the magistrate judge and submitting to her jurisdiction, instead of insisting on trial before a district judge. An “appearance” being commonly understood as “[t]he first act of the defendant in court,” J. Ballen-tine, Law Dictionary with Pronunciations 91 (2d ed. 1948), any subsequent proceedings by the court will occur “[u]pon the consent of the parties,” § 636(c)(1).
Furthermore, it is hardly true, contrary to the dissent’s claim, post, at 594 (opinion of Thomas, J.), that § 636(c)(2) and Rule 73(b) are pointless if implied consent is permitted under § 636(c)(1). Certainly, notification of the right to refuse the magistrate judge is a prerequisite to any inference of consent, so that aspect of §636(c)(2)’s protection is preserved. And litigants may undoubtedly insist that they be able to communicate their decision on the referral to the clerk, in order to guard against the risk of reprisals at the hands of either judge. The only question is whether a litigant who forgoes that procedural opportunity, but still voluntarily gives his consent through a general appearance before the magistrate judge, is still subject to the magistrate judge’s “civil jurisdiction,” and we think that the language of § 636(c)(1) indicates that he is.
Originally, the third sentence of § 636(c)(2) provided that once the decision of the parties was communicated to the clerk, “neither the district judge nor the magistrate shall attempt to persuade or induce any party to •consent to reference of any civil matter to a magistrate.” 93 Stat. 643. In the 1990 amendments to the Act, Congress amended § 636(e)(2) to provide that even after the parties’ decision is made, “either the district court judge or the magistrate may again advise the parties of the availability of the magistrate, but in so doing, shall also advise the parties that they are free to withhold consent without adverse substantive consequences.” Judicial Improvements Act of 1990, Pub. L. 101-650, §308, 104 Stat. 5112. The change reflected Congress’s diminishing concern that communication between the judge and the parties would lead to coercive referrals. See H. R. Rep. No. 101-734, p. 27 (1990).
We doubt that this interpretation runs a serious risk of “spawning] a second litigation of significant dimension.” Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Dept. of Health and Human Resources, 532 U. S. 598, 609 (2001) (internal quotation marks omitted). In the first place, implied consent will be the exception, not the rule, since, as we discuss above, district courts remain bound by the procedural requirements of § 636(c)(2) and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 73(b). See supra, at 586, 587-588, n. 5. The dissent surmises, post, at 596, that our position raises “ambiguities” as to whether an inference of consent will be supported in a particular case, but we think this concern is greatly exaggerated: as long as parties are notified of the availability of a district judge as required by § 636(c)(2) and Rule 73(b), a litigant’s general appearance before the magistrate judge will usually indicate the necessary consent. In all events, whatever risk of “secondfary] litigation” may exist under an implied consent rule pales in comparison to the inefficiency and unfairness of requiring relitigation of the entire case in circumstances like these.
Because we conclude that Roell and Garibay impliedly consented to the Magistrate Judge’s authority, we need not address whether express postjudgment consent would be sufficient in a case where there was no prior consent, either express or implied. We also have no opportunity to decide Whether the Court of Appeals was correct that lack of consent is a “jurisdictional defect” that can be raised for the first time on appeal.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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.
After being informed of his rights pursuant to Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), and after executing a series of written waivers, respondent confessed to the murder of a young woman. At no point during the course of the interrogation, which occurred prior to arraignment, did he request an attorney. While he was in police custody, his sister attempted to retain a lawyer to represent him. The attorney telephoned the police station and received assurances that respondent would not be questioned further until the next day. In fact, the interrogation session that yielded the inculpatory statements began later that evening. The question presented is whether either the conduct of the police or respondent’s ignorance of the attorney’s efforts to reach him taints the validity of the waivers and therefore requires exclusion of the confessions.
I
On the morning of March 3, 1977, Mary Jo Hickey was found unconscious in a factory parking lot in Providence, Rhode Island. Suffering from injuries to her skull apparently inflicted by a metal pipe found at the scene, she was rushed to a nearby hospital. Three weeks later she died from her wounds.
Several months after her death, the Cranston, Rhode Island, police arrested respondent and two others in connection with a local burglary. Shortly before the arrest, Detective Ferranti of the Cranston police force had learned from a confidential informant that the man responsible for Ms. Hickey’s death lived at a certain address and went by the name of “Butch. ” Upon discovering that respondent lived at that address and was known by that name, Detective Ferranti informed respondent of his Miranda rights. When respondent refused to execute a written waiver, Detective Ferranti spoke separately with the two other suspects arrested on the breaking and entering charge and obtained statements further implicating respondent in Ms. Hickey’s murder. At approximately 6 p.m., Detective Ferranti telephoned the police in Providence to convey the information he had uncovered. An hour later, three officers from that department arrived at the Cranston headquarters for the purpose of questioning respondent about the murder.
That same evening, at about 7:45 p.m., respondent’s sister telephoned the Public Defender’s Office to obtain legal assistance for her brother. Her sole concern was the breaking and entering charge, as she was unaware that respondent was then under suspicion for murder. She asked for Richard Casparian who had been scheduled to meet with respondent earlier that afternoon to discuss another charge unrelated to either the break-in or the murder. As soon as the conversation ended, the attorney who took the call attempted to reach Mr. Casparian. When those efforts were unsuccessful, she telephoned Allegra Munson, another Assistant Public Defender, and told her about respondent’s arrest and his sister’s subsequent request that the office represent him.
At 8:15 p.m., Ms. Munson telephoned the Cranston police station and asked that her call be transferred to the detective division. In the words of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, whose factual findings we treat as presumptively correct, 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d), the conversation proceeded as follows:
“A male voice responded with the word ‘Detectives.’ Ms. Munson identified herself and asked if Brian Burbine was being held; the person responded affirmatively. Ms. Munson explained to the person that Burbine was represented by attorney Casparian who was not available; she further stated that she would act as Burbine’s legal counsel in the event that the police intended to place him in a lineup or question him. The unidentified person told Ms. Munson that the police would not be questioning Burbine or putting him in a lineup and that they were through with him for the night. Ms. Munson was not informed that the Providence Police were at the Cranston police station or that Burbine was a suspect in Mary’s murder.” State v. Burbine, 451 A. 2d 22, 23-24 (1982).
At all relevant times, respondent was unaware of his sister’s efforts to retain counsel and of the fact and contents of Ms. Munson’s telephone conversation.
Less than an hour later, the police brought respondent to an interrogation room and conducted the first of a series of interviews concerning the murder. Prior to each session, respondent was informed of his Miranda rights, and on three separate occasions he signed a written form acknowledging that he understood his right to the presence of an attorney and explicitly indicating that he “[did] not want an attorney called or appointed for [him]” before he gave a statement. App. to Pet. for Cert. 94, 103, 107. Uncontradicted evidence at the suppression hearing indicated that at least twice during the course of the evening, respondent was left in a room where he had access to a telephone, which he apparently declined to use. Tr. of Suppression Hearing 23, 85. Eventually, respondent signed three written statements fully admitting to the murder.
Prior to trial, respondent moved to suppress the statements. The court denied the motion, finding that respondent had received the Miranda warnings and had “knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily waived his privilege against self-incrimination [and] his right to counsel.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 116. Rejecting the contrary testimony of the police, the court found that Ms. Munson did telephone the detective bureau on the evening in question, but concluded that “there was no... conspiracy or collusion on the part of the Cranston Police Department to secrete this defendant from his attorney.” Id., at 114. In any event, the court held, the constitutional right to request the presence of an attorney belongs solely to the defendant and may not be asserted by his lawyer. Because the evidence was clear that respondent never asked for the services of an attorney, the telephone call had no relevance to the validity of the waiver or the admissibility of the statements.
The jury found respondent guilty of murder in the first degree, and he appealed to the Supreme Court of Rhode Island. A divided court rejected his contention that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution required, the suppression of the inculpatory statements and affirmed the conviction. Failure to inform respondent of Ms. Munson’s efforts to represent him, the court held, did not undermine the validity of the waivers. “It hardly seems conceivable that the additional information that an attorney whom he did not know had called the police station would have added significantly to the quantum of information necessary for the accused to make an informed decision as to waiver. ” State v. Burbine 451 A. 2d 22, 29 (1982). Nor, the court concluded, did Miranda v. Arizona, or any other decision of this Court independently require the police to honor Ms. Munson’s request that interrogation not proceed in her absence. In reaching that conclusion, the court noted that because two different police departments were operating in the Cranston station house on the evening in question, the record supported the trial court’s finding that there was no “conspiracy or collusion” to prevent Ms. Munson from seeing respondent. 451 A. 2d, at 30, n. 5. In any case, the court held, the right to the presence of counsel belongs solely to the accused and may not be asserted by “benign third parties, whether or not they happen to be attorneys.” Id., at 28.
After unsuccessfully petitioning the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island for a writ of habeas corpus, 589 F. Supp. 1245 (1984), respondent appealed to the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. That court reversed. 753 F. 2d 178 (1985). Finding it unnecessary to reach any arguments under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, the court held that the police’s conduct had fatally tainted respondent’s “otherwise valid” waiver of his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and right to counsel. Id., at 184. The court reasoned that by failing to inform respondent that an attorney had called and that she had been assured that no questioning would take place until the next day, the police had deprived respondent of information crucial to his ability to waive his rights knowingly and intelligently. The court also found that the record would support “no other explanation for the refusal to tell Burbine of Attorney Munson’s call than... deliberate or reckless irresponsibility.” Id., at 185. This kind of “blameworthy action by the police,” the court concluded, together with respondent’s ignorance of the telephone call, “vitiate[d] any claim that [the] waiver of counsel was knowing and voluntary.” Id., at 185, 187.
We granted certiorari to decide whether a prearraignment confession preceded by an otherwise valid waiver must be suppressed either because the police misinformed an inquiring attorney about their plans concerning the suspect or because they failed to inform the suspect of the attorney’s efforts to reach him. 471 U. S. 1098 (1985). We now reverse.
r — I ⅜ — I
In Miranda v. Arizona, the Court recognized that custodial interrogations, by their very nature, generate “compelling pressures which work to undermine the individual’s will to resist and to compel him to speak where he would not otherwise do so freely.” 384 U. S., at 467. To combat this inherent compulsion, and thereby protect the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, Miranda imposed on the police an obligation to follow certain procedures in their dealings with the accused. In particular, prior to the initiation of questioning, they must fully apprise the suspect of the State’s intention to use his statements to secure a conviction, and must inform him of his rights to remain silent and to “have counsel present... if [he] so desires.” Id., at 468-470. Beyond this duty to inform, Miranda requires that the police respect the accused’s decision to exercise the rights outlined in the warnings. “If the individual indicates in any manner, at any time prior to or during questioning, that he wishes to remain silent, [or if he] states that he wants an attorney, the interrogation must cease.” Id., at 473-474. See also Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U. S. 477 (1981).
Respondent does not dispute that the Providence police followed these procedures with precision. The record amply supports the state-court findings that the police administered the required warnings, sought to assure that respondent understood his rights, and obtained an express written waiver prior to eliciting each of the three statements. Nor does respondent contest the Rhode Island courts’ determination that he at no point requested the presence of a lawyer. He contends instead that the confessions must be suppressed because the police’s failure to inform him of the attorney’s telephone call deprived him of information essential to his ability to knowingly waive his Fifth Amendment rights. In the alternative, he suggests that to fully protect the Fifth Amendment values served by Miranda, we should extend that decision to condemn the conduct of the Providence police. We address each contention in turn.
A
Echoing the standard first articulated in Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 464 (1938), Miranda holds that “[t]he defendant may waive effectuation” of the rights conveyed in the warnings “provided the waiver is made voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently.” 384 U. S., at 444, 475. The inquiry has two distinct dimensions. Edwards v. Arizona, supra, at 482; Brewer v. Williams, 430 U. S. 387, 404 (1977). First, the relinquishment of the right must have been voluntary in the sense that it was the product of a free and deliberate choice rather than intimidation, coercion, or deception. Second, the waiver must have been made with a full awareness of both the nature of the right being abandoned and the consequences of the decision to abandon it. Only if the “totality of the circumstances surrounding the interrogation” reveals both an uncoerced choice and the requisite level of comprehension may a court properly conclude that the Miranda rights have been waived. Fare v. Michael C., 442 U. S. 707, 725 (1979). See also North Carolina v. Butler, 441 U. S. 369, 374-375 (1979).
Under this standard, we have no doubt that respondent validly waived his right to remain silent and to the presence of counsel. The voluntariness of the waiver is not at issue. As the Court of Appeals correctly acknowledged, the record is devoid of any suggestion that police resorted to physical or psychological pressure to elicit the statements. 753 F. 2d, at 184. Indeed it appears that it was respondent, and not the police, who spontaneously initiated the conversation that led to the first and most damaging confession. Id., at 180. Cf. Edwards v. Arizona, supra. Nor is there any question about respondent’s comprehension of the full panoply of rights set out in the Miranda warnings and of the potential consequences of a decision to relinquish them. Nonetheless, the Court of Appeals believed that the “[deliberate or reckless” conduct of the police, in particular their failure to inform respondent of the telephone call, fatally undermined the validity of the otherwise proper waiver. 753 F. 2d, at 187. We find this conclusion untenable as a matter of both logic and precedent.
Events occurring outside of the presence of the suspect and entirely unknown to him surely can have no bearing on the capacity to comprehend and knowingly relinquish a constitutional right. Under the analysis of the Court of Appeals, the same defendant, armed with the same information and confronted with precisely the same police conduct, would have knowingly waived his Miranda rights had a lawyer not telephoned the police station to inquire about his status. Nothing in any of our waiver decisions or in our understanding of the essential components of a valid waiver requires so incongruous a result. No doubt the additional information would have been useful to respondent; perhaps even it might have affected his decision to confess. But we have never read the Constitution to require that the police supply a suspect with a flow of information to help him calibrate his self-interest in deciding whether to speak or stand by his rights. See, e. g., Oregon v. Elstad, 470 U. S. 298, 316-317 (1985); United States v. Washington, 431 U. S. 181, 188 (1977). Cf. Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U. S. 52, 56 (1985); McMann v. Richardson, 397 U. S. 759, 769 (1970). Once it is determined that a suspect’s decision not to rely on his rights was uncoerced, that he at all times knew he could stand mute and request a lawyer, and that he was aware of the State’s intention to use his statements to secure a conviction, the analysis is complete and the waiver is valid as a matter of law. The Court of Appeals’ conclusion to the contrary was in error.
Nor do we believe that the level of the police’s culpability in failing to inform respondent of the telephone call has any bearing on the validity of the waivers. In light of the state-court findings that there was no “conspiracy or collusion” on the part of the police, 451 A. 2d, at 30, n. 5, we have serious doubts about whether the Court of Appeals was free to conclude that their conduct constituted “deliberate or reckless irresponsibility.” 753 F. 2d, at 185; see 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d). But whether intentional or inadvertent, the state of mind of the police is irrelevant to the question of the intelligence and voluntariness of respondent’s election to abandon his rights. Although highly inappropriate, even deliberate deception of an attorney could not possibly affect a suspect’s decision to waive his Miranda rights unless he were at least aware of the incident. Compare Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U. S. 478, 481 (1964) (excluding confession where police incorrectly told the suspect that his lawyer “ ‘didn’t want to see’ him”). Nor was the failure to inform respondent of the telephone call the kind of “trick[ery]” that can vitiate the validity of a waiver. Miranda, 384 U. S., at 476. Granting that the “deliberate or reckless” withholding of information is objectionable as a matter of ethics, such conduct is only relevant to the constitutional validity of a waiver if it deprives a defendant of knowledge essential to his ability to understand the nature of his rights and the consequences of abandoning them. Because respondent’s voluntary decision to speak was made with full awareness and comprehension of all the information Miranda requires the police to convey, the waivers were valid.
B
At oral argument respondent acknowledged that a constitutional rule requiring the police to inform a suspect of an attorney’s efforts to reach him would represent a significant extension of our precedents. Tr. of Oral Arg. 32-33. He contends, however, that the conduct of the Providence police was so inimical to the Fifth Amendment values Miranda seeks to protect that we should read that decision to condemn their behavior. Regardless of any issue of waiver, he urges, the Fifth Amendment requires the reversal of a conviction if the police are less than forthright in their dealings with an attorney or if they fail to tell a suspect of a lawyer’s unilateral efforts to contact him. Because the proposed modification ignores the underlying purposes of the Miranda rules and because we think that the decision as written strikes the proper balance between society’s legitimate law enforcement interests and the protection of the defendant’s Fifth Amendment rights, we decline the invitation to further extend Miranda’s reach.
At the outset, while we share respondent’s distaste for the deliberate misleading of an officer of the court, reading Miranda to forbid police deception of an attorney “would cut [the decision] completely loose from its own explicitly stated rationale.” Beckwith v. United States, 425 U. S. 341, 345 (1976). As is now well established, “[t]he... Miranda warnings are ‘not themselves rights protected by the Constitution but [are] instead measures to insure that the [suspect’s] right against compulsory self-incrimination [is] protected.’” New York v. Quarles, 467 U. S. 649, 654 (1984), quoting Michigan v. Tucker, 417 U. S. 433, 444 (1974). Their objective is not to mold police conduct for its own sake. Nothing in the Constitution vests in us the authority to mandate a code of behavior for state officials wholly unconnected to any federal right or privilege. The purpose of the Miranda warnings instead is to dissipate the compulsion inherent in custodial interrogation and, in so doing, guard against abridgment of the suspect’s Fifth Amendment rights. Clearly, a rule that focuses on how the police treat an attorney-conduct that has no relevance at all to the degree of compulsion experienced by the defendant during interrogation — would ignore both Miranda’s mission and its only source of legitimacy.
Nor are we prepared to adopt a rule requiring that the police inform a suspect of an attorney’s efforts to reach him. While such a rule might add marginally to Miranda’s goal of dispelling the compulsion inherent in custodial interrogation, overriding practical considerations counsel against its adoption. As we have stressed on numerous occasions, “[o]ne of the principal advantages” of Miranda is the ease and clarity of its application. Berkemer v. McCarty, 468 U. S. 420, 430 (1984); see also New York v. Quarles, supra, at 662-664 (concurring opinion); Fare v. Michael C., 442 U. S., at 718. We have little doubt that the approach urged by respondent and endorsed by the Court of Appeals would have the inevitable consequence of muddying Miranda’s otherwise relatively clear waters. The legal questions it would spawn are legion: To what extent should the police be held accountable for knowing that the accused has counsel? Is it enough that someone in the station house knows, or must the interrogating officer himself know of counsel’s efforts to contact the suspect? Do counsel’s efforts to talk to the suspect concerning one criminal investigation trigger the obligation to inform the defendant before interrogation may proceed on a wholly separate matter? We are unwilling to modify Miranda in a manner that would so clearly undermine the decision’s central “virtue of informing police and prosecutors with specificity... what they may do in conducting [a] custodial interrogation, and of informing courts under what circumstances statements obtained during such interrogation are not admissible.” Fare v. Michael C., supra, at 718.
Moreover, problems of clarity to one side, reading Miranda to require the police in each instance to inform a suspect of an attorney’s efforts to reach him would work a substantial and, we think, inappropriate shift in the subtle balance struck in that decision. Custodial interrogations implicate two competing concerns. On the one hand, “the need for police questioning as a tool for effective enforcement of criminal laws” cannot be doubted. Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218, 225 (1973). Admissions of guilt are more than merely “desirable,” United States v. Washington, 431 U. S., at 186; they are essential to society’s compelling interest in finding, convicting, and punishing those who violate the law. On the other hand, the Court has recognized that the interrogation process is “inherently coercive” and that, as a consequence, there exists a substantial risk that the police will inadvertently traverse the fine line between legitimate efforts to elicit admissions and constitutionally impermissible compulsion. New York v. Quarles, supra, at 656. Miranda attempted to reconcile these opposing concerns by giving the defendant the power to exert some control over the course of the interrogation. Declining to adopt the more extreme position that the actual presence of a lawyer was necessary to dispel the coercion inherent in custodial interrogation, see Brief for American Civil Liberties Union as Amicus Curiae in Miranda v. Arizona, O. T. 1965, No. 759, pp. 22-31, the Court found that the suspect’s Fifth Amendment rights could be adequately protected by less intrusive means. Police questioning, often an essential part of the investigatory process, could continue in its traditional form, the Court held, but only if the suspect clearly understood that, at any time, he could bring the proceeding to a halt or, short of that, call in an attorney to give advice and monitor the conduct of his interrogators.
The position urged by respondent would upset this carefully drawn approach in a manner that is both unnecessary for the protection of the Fifth Amendent privilege and injurious to legitimate law enforcement. Because, as Miranda holds, full comprehension of the rights to remain silent and request an attorney are sufficient to dispel whatever coercion is inherent in the interrogation process, a rule requiring the police to inform the suspect of an attorney’s efforts to contact him would contribute to the protection of the Fifth Amendment privilege only incidentally, if at all. XhisJxdnimal benefit, however, would come at a substantial cost to society’s legitimate and substantial interest in securing admissions of guilt. Indeed, the very premise of the Court of Appeals was not that awareness of Ms. Munson’s phone call would have dissipated the coercion of the interrogation room, but that it might have convinced respondent not to speak at all. 753 F. 2d, at 185. Because neither the letter nor purposes of Miranda require this additional handicap on otherwise permissible investigatory efforts, we are unwilling to expand the Miranda rules to require the police to keep the suspect abreast of the status of his legal representation.
We acknowledge that a number of state courts have reached a contrary conclusion. Compare State v. Jones, 19 Wash. App. 850, 578 P. 2d 71 (1978), with State v. Beck, 687 S. W. 2d 155 (Mo. 1985) (en banc). We recognize also that our interpretation of the Federal Constitution, if given the dissent’s expansive gloss, is at odds with the policy recommendations embodied in the American Bar Association Standards of Criminal Justice. Cf. ABA Standards for Criminal Justice 5-7.1 (2d ed. 1980). Notwithstanding the dissent’s protestations, however, our interpretive duties go well beyond deferring to the numerical preponderance of lower court decisions or to the subconstitutional recommendations of even so esteemed a body as the American Bar Association. See Nix v. Whiteside, ante, at 189 (Blackmun, J., concurring in judgment). Nothing we say today disables the States from adopting different requirements for the conduct of its employees and officials as a matter of state law. We hold only that the Court of Appeals erred in construing the Fifth Amendment to the Federal Constitution to require the exclusion of respondent’s three confessions.
I — I I — I I — I
Respondent also contends that the Sixth Amendment requires exclusion of his three confessions. It is clear, of course, that, absent a valid waiver, the defendant has the right to the presence of an attorney during any interrogation occurring after the first formal charging proceeding, the point at which the Sixth Amendment right to counsel initially attaches. United States v. Gouveia, 467 U. S. 180, 187 (1984); Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U. S. 682, 689 (1972) (opinion of Stewart, J.). See Brewer v. Williams, 430 U. S., at 400-401. And we readily agree that once the right has attached, it follows that the police may not interfere with the efforts of a defendant’s attorney to act as a “‘medium’ between [the suspect] and the State” during the interrogation. Maine v. Moulton, 474 U. S. 159, 176 (1985); see Brewer v. Williams, supra, at 401, n. 8. The difficulty for respondent is that the interrogation sessions that yielded the inculpatory statements took place before the initiation of “adversary judicial proceedings.” United States v. Gouveia, supra, at 192. He contends, however, that this circumstance is not fatal to his Sixth Amendment claim. At least in some situations, he argues, the Sixth Amendment protects the integrity of the attorney-client relationship regardless of whether the prosecution has in fact commenced “by way of formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information or arraignment.” 467 U. S., at 188. Placing principal reliance on a footnote in Miranda, 384 U. S., at 465, n. 35, and on Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U. S. 478 (1964), he maintains that Gouveia, Kirby, and our other “critical stage” cases, concern only the narrow question of when the right to counsel — that is, to the appointment or presence of counsel — attaches. The right to noninterference with an attorney’s dealings with a criminal suspect, he asserts, arises the moment that the relationship is formed, or, at the very least, once the defendant is placed in custodial interrogation.
We are not persuaded. At the outset, subsequent decisions foreclose any reliance on Escobedo and Miranda for the proposition that the Sixth Amendment right, in any of its manifestations, applies prior to the initiation of adversary judicial proceedings. Although Escobedo was originally decided as a Sixth Amendment case, “the Court in retrospect perceived that the ‘prime purpose’ of Escobedo was not to vindicate the constitutional right to counsel as such, but, like Miranda, ‘to guarantee full effectuation of the privilege against self-incrimination....’” Kirby v. Illinois, supra, at 689, quoting Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U. S. 719, 729 (1966), Clearly then, Escobedo provides no support for respondent’s argument. Nor, of course, does Miranda, the holding of which rested exclusively on the Fifth Amendment. Thus, the decision’s brief observation about the reach of Escobedo’s Sixth Amendment analysis is not only dictum, but reflects an understanding of the case that the Court has expressly disavowed. See also, United States v. Gouveia, supra, at 188, n. 5; Y. Kamisar, Police Interrogation and Confessions 217-218, n. 94 (1980).
Questions of precedent to one side, we find respondent’s understanding of the Sixth Amendment both practically and theoretically unsound. As a practical matter, it makes little sense to say that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches at different times depending on the fortuity of whether the suspect or his family happens to have retained counsel prior to interrogation. Cf. id., at 220-221. More importantly, the suggestion that the existence of an attorney-client relationship itself triggers the protections of the Sixth Amendment misconceives the underlying purposes of the right to counsel. The Sixth Amendment’s intended function is not to wrap a protective cloak around the attorney-client relationship for its own sake any more than it is to protect a suspect from the consequences of his own candor. Its purpose, rather, is to assure that in any “criminal prosecutio[n],” U. S. Const., Amdt. 6, the accused shall not be left to his own devices in facing the “ ‘prosecutorial forces of organized society.’” Maine v. Moulton, supra, at 170 (quoting Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U. S., at 689). By its very terms, it becomes applicable only when the government’s role shifts from investigation to accusation. For it is only then that the assistance of one versed in the “intricacies... of law,” ibid., is needed to assure that the prosecution’s case encounters “the crucible of meaningful adversarial testing.” United States v. Cronic, 466 U. S. 648, 656 (1984).
Indeed, in Maine v. Moulton, decided this Term, the Court again confirmed that looking to the initiation of adversary judicial proceedings, far from being mere formalism, is fundamental to the proper application of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. There, we considered the constitutional implications of a surreptitious investigation that yielded evidence pertaining to two crimes. For one, the defendant had been indicted; for the other, he had not. Concerning the former, the Court reaffirmed that after the first charging proceeding the government may not deliberately elicit incriminating statements from an accused out of the presence of counsel. See also Massiah v. United States, 377 U. S. 201 (1964). The Court made clear, however, that the evidence concerning the crime for which the defendant had not been indicted — evidence obtained in precisely the same manner from the identical suspect — would be admissible at a trial limited to those charges. Maine v. Moulton, 474 U. S., at 180, and n. 16. The clear implication of the holding, and one that confirms the teaching of Gouveia, is that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel does not attach until after the initiation of formal charges. Moreover, because Moulton already had legal representation, the decision all but forecloses respondent’s argument that the attorney-client relationship itself triggers the Sixth Amendment right.
Respondent contends, however, that custodial interrogations require a different rule. Because confessions elicited during the course of police questioning often seal a suspect’s fate, he argues, the need for an advocate — and the concomitant right to noninterference with the attorney-client relationship — is at its zenith, regardless of whether the State has initiated the first adversary judicial proceeding. We do not doubt that a lawyer’s presence could be of value to the suspect; and we readily agree that if a suspect confesses, his attorney’s case at trial will be that much more difficult. But these concerns are no more decisive in this context than they were for the equally damaging preindictment lineup at issue in Kirby, or the statements pertaining to the unindicted crime elicted from the defendant in Maine v. Moulton. Compare United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218, 226-227 (1967) (Sixth Amendment attaches at postindictment lineup); Massiah v. United States, supra (after indictment, police may not elicit statements from suspect out of the presence of counsel). For an interrogation, no more or less than for any other “critical” pretrial event, the possibility that the encounter may have important consequences at trial, standing alone, is insufficient to trigger the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. As Gouveia made clear, until such time as the “ ‘government has committed itself to prosecute, and... the adverse positions of government and defendant have solidified’” the Sixth Amendment right to counsel does not attach. 467 U. S., at 189 (quoting Kirby v. Illinois, supra, at 689).
Because, as respondent acknowledges, the events that led to the inculpatory statements preceded the formal initiation of adversary judicial proceedings, we reject the contention that the conduct of the police violated his rights under the Sixth Amendment.
IV
Finally, respondent contends that the conduct of the police was so offensive as to deprive him of the fundamental fairness guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Focusing primarily on the impropriety of conveying false information to an attorney, he invites us to declare that such behavior should be condemned as violative of canons fundamental to the “‘traditions and conscience of our people.’” Rochin v. California, 342 U. S. 165, 169 (1952), quoting Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U. S. 97, 105 (1934). We do not question that on facts more egregious than those presented here police deception might rise to a level of a due process violation. Accordingly, Justice Ste-VENS’ apocalyptic suggestion that we have approved any and all forms of police misconduct is demonstrably incorrect. We hold only that, on these facts, the challenged conduct falls short of the kind of misbehavior that so shocks the sensibilities of civilized society as to warrant a federal intrusion into the criminal processes of the States.
We hold therefore that the Court of Appeals erred in finding that the Federal Constitution required the exclusion of the three inculpatory statements. Accordingly, we reverse and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
The dissent incorrectly reads our analysis of the components of a valid waiver to be inconsistent with the Court’s holding in Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U. S. 477 (1981). Post, at 452. When a suspect has requested counsel, the interrogation must cease, regardless of any question of waiver, unless the suspect himself initiates the conversation. In the course of its lengthy exposition, however, the dissent never comes to grips with the crucial distinguishing feature of this case — that Burbine at no point requested the presence of counsel, as was his right under Miranda to do. We do not quarrel with the dissent’s characterization of police interrogation as a “privilege terminable at the will of the suspect.” Post, at 458. We reject, however, the dissent’s entirely undefended suggestion that the Fifth Amendment “right to counsel” requires anything more than that the police inform the suspect of his right to representation and honor his request that the interrogation cease until his attorney is present. See, e. g., Michigan v. Mosley, 423 U. S. 96, 104, n. 10 (1975).
Petitioner does not argue that respondent’s valid waiver of his Fifth Amendment right to counsel necessarily served to waive his parallel rights under the Sixth Amendment. Accordingly, we have no occasion to consider whether a waiver for one purpose necessarily operates as a general waiver of the right to counsel for all purposes.
Notwithstanding the Rhode Island Supreme Court’s finding that, as a matter of state law, no attorney-client relationship existed between respondent and Ms. Munson, the Sixth Amendment issue is properly before us. State v. Burbine, 451 A. 2d 22, 29 (1982). Petitioner now concedes that such a relationship existed and invites us to decide the Sixth Amendment question based on that concession. Of course,
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
This action began as a suit by the trustees of the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund against the respondents, individually and as owners of Phillips Brothers Coal Company, a partnership, seeking to recover some $55,000 in royalty payments alleged to be due and payable under the trust provisions of the National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement of 1950, as amended, September 29, 1952, executed by Phillips and United Mine Workers of America on or about October 1, 1953, and re-executed with amendments on or about September 8, 1955, and October 22, 1956. Phillips filed an answer and a cross claim against UMW, alleging in both that the trustees, the UMW and certain large coal operators had conspired to restrain and to monopolize interstate commerce in violation of §§ 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, as amended, 26 Stat. 209, 15 U. S. C. §§ 1, 2 (1958 ed.). Actual damages in the amount of $100,000 were claimed for the period beginning February 14, 1954, and ending December 31, 1958.
The allegations of the cross claim were essentially as follows: Prior to the 1950 Wage Agreement between the operators and the union, severe controversy had existed in the industry, particularly over wages, the welfare fund and the union’s efforts to control the working time of its members. Since 1950, however, relative peace has existed in the industry, all as the result of the 1950 Wage Agreement and its amendments and the additional understandings entered into between UMW and the large operators. Allegedly the parties considered overproduction to be the critical problem of the coal industry. The agreed solution was to be the elimination of the smaller companies, the larger companies thereby controlling the market. More specifically, the union abandoned its efforts to control the working time of the miners, agreed not to oppose the rapid mechanization of the mines which would substantially reduce mine employment, agreed to help finance such mechanization and agreed to impose the terms of the 1950 agreement on all operators without regard to their ability to pay. The benefit to the union was to be increased wages as productivity increased with mechanization, these increases to be demanded of the smaller companies whether mechanized or not. Royalty payments into the welfare fund were to be increased also, and the union was to have effective control over the fund’s use. The union and large companies agreed upon other steps to exclude the marketing, production, and sale of nonunion coal. Thus the companies agreed not to lease coal lands to nonunion operators, and in 1958 agreed not to sell or buy coal from such companies. The companies and the union jointly and successfully approached the Secretary of Labor to obtain establishment under the Walsh-Healey Act, as amended, 49 Stat. 2036, 41 U. S. C. § 35 et seq. (1958 ed.), of a minimum wage for employees of contractors selling coal to the TVA, such minimum wage being much higher than in other industries and making it difficult for small companies to compete in the TYA term contract market. At a later time, at a meeting attended by both union and company representatives, the TVA was urged to curtail its spot market purchases, a substantial portion of which were exempt from the Walsh-Healey order. Thereafter four of the larger companies waged a destructive and collusive price-cutting campaign in the TVA spot market for coal, two of the companies, West Kentucky Coal Co. and its subsidiary Nashville Coal Co., being those in which the union had large investments and over which it was in position to exercise control.
The complaint survived motions to dismiss and after a five-week trial before a jury, a verdict was returned in favor of Phillips and against the trustees and the union, the damages against the union being fixed in the amount of $90,000, to be trebled under 15 U. S. C. § 15 (1958 ed.). The trial court set aside the verdict against the trustees but overruled the union’s motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or in the alternative for a new trial. The Court of Appeals affirmed. 325 F. 2d 804. It ruled that the union was not exempt from liability under the Sherman Act on the facts of this case, considered the instructions adequate and found the evidence generally sufficient to support the verdict. We granted certiorari. 377 U. S. 929. We reverse and remand the case for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
I.
We first consider UMW’s contention that the trial court erred in denying its motion for a directed verdict and for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, since a determination in UMW’s favor on this issue would finally resolve the controversy. The question presented by this phase of the case is whether in the circumstances of this case the union is exempt from liability under the antitrust laws. We think the answer is clearly in the negative and that the union’s motions were correctly denied.
The antitrust laws do not bar the existence and operation of labor unions as such. Moreover, § 20 of the Clayton Act, 38 Stat. 738, and § 4 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 70, permit a union, acting alone, to engage in the conduct therein specified without violating the Sherman Act. United States v. Hutcheson, 312 U. S. 219; United States v. International Hod Carriers Council, 313 U. S. 539, affirming per curiam, 37 F. Supp. 191 (D. C. N. D. Ill. 1941); United States v. American Federation of Musicians, 318 U. S. 741, affirming per curiam, 47 F. Supp. 304 (D. C. N. D. Ill. 1942).
But neither § 20 nor § 4 expressly deals with arrangements or agreements between unions and employers. Neither section tells us whether any or all such arrangements or agreements are barred or permitted by the antitrust laws. Thus Hutcheson itself stated:
“So long as a union acts in its self-interest and does not combine with non-labor groups, the licit and the illicit under § 20 are not to be distinguished by any judgment regarding the wisdom or unwisdom, the rightness or wrongness, the selfishness or unselfishness of the end of which the particular union activities are the means.” 312 U. S., at 232. (Emphasis added.)
And in Allen Bradley Co. v. Union, 325 U. S. 797, this Court made explicit what had been merely a qualifying expression in Hutcheson and held that “when the unions participated with a combination of business men who had complete power to eliminate all competition among themselves and to prevent all competition from others, a situation was created not included within the exemptions of the Clayton and Norris-LaGuardia Acts.” Id., at 809. See also Brotherhood of Carpenters v. United States, 330 U. S. 395, 398-400; United States v. Employing Plasterers Assn., 347 U. S. 186, 190. Subsequent cases have applied the Allen Bradley doctrine to such combinations without regard to whether they found expression in a collective bargaining agreement, Brother hood of Carpenters v. United States, supra; see Teamsters Union v. Oliver, 358 U. S. 283, 296, and even though the mechanism for effectuating the purpose of the combination was an agreement on wages, see Adams Dairy Co. v. St. Louis Dairy Co., 260 F. 2d 46 (C. A. 8th Cir. 1958), or on hours of work, Philadelphia Record Co. v. Manufacturing Photo-Engravers Assn., 155 F. 2d 799 (C. A. 3d Cir. 1946).
If the UMW in this case, in order to protect its wage scale by maintaining employer income, had presented a set of prices at which the mine operators would be required to sell their coal, the union and the employers who happened to agree could not successfully defend this contract provision if it were challenged under the antitrust laws by the United States or by some party injured by the arrangement. Cf. Allen Bradley Co. v. Union, 325 U. S. 797; United States v. Borden Co., 308 U. S. 188, 203-205; Lumber Prods. Assn. v. United States, 144 F. 2d 546, 548 (C. A. 9th Cir. 1944), aff’d on this issue sub nom. Brotherhood of Carpenters v. United States, 330 U. S. 395, 398-400; Las Vegas Merchant Plumbers Assn. v. United States, 210 F. 2d 732 (C. A. 9th Cir. 1954), cert. denied, 348 U. S. 817; Local 175, IBEW v. United States, 219 F. 2d 431 (C. A. 6th Cir. 1955), cert. denied, 349 U. S. 917. In such a case, the restraint on the product market is direct and immediate, is of the type characteristically deemed unreasonable under the Sherman Act and the union gets from the promise nothing more concrete than a hope for better wages to come.
Likewise, if as is alleged in this case, the union became a party to a collusive bidding arrangement designed to drive Phillips and others from the TVA spot market, we think any claim to exemption from antitrust liability would be frivolous at best. For this reason alone the motions of the unions were properly denied.
A major part of Phillips’ case, however, was that the union entered into a conspiracy with the large operators to impose the agreed-upon wage and royalty scales upon the smaller, nonunion operators, regardless of their ability to pay and regardless of whether or not the union represented the employees of these companies, all for the purpose of eliminating them from the industry, limiting production and pre-empting the market for the large, unionized operators. The UMW urges that since such an agreement concerned wage standards, it is exempt from the antitrust laws.
It is true that wages lie at the very heart of those subjects about which employers and unions must bargain and the law contemplates agreements on wages not only between individual employers and a union but agreements between the union and employers in a multi-employer bargaining unit. Labor Board v. Truck Drivers Union, 353 U. S. 87, 94-96. The union benefit from the wage scale agreed upon is direct and concrete and the effect on the product market, though clearly present, results from the elimination of competition based on wages among the employers in the bargaining unit, which is not the kind of restraint Congress intended the Sherman Act to proscribe. Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, 310 U. S. 469, 503-504; see Adams Dairy Co. v. St. Louis Dairy Co., 260 F. 2d 46 (C. A. 8th Cir. 1958). We think it beyond question that a union may conclude a wage agreement with the multi-employer bargaining unit without violating the antitrust laws and that rit may as a matter of its own policy, and not by agreement with all or part of the employers of that unit, seek the same wages from other employers.
This is not to say that an agreement resulting from union-employer negotiations is automatically exempt from Sherman Act scrutiny simply because the negotiations involve a compulsory subject of bargaining, regardless of the subject or the form and content of the agreement. Unquestionably the Board’s demarcation of the bounds of the duty to bargain has great relevance to any consideration of the sweep of labor’s antitrust immunity, for we are concerned here with harmonizing the Sherman Act with the national policy expressed in the National Labor Relations Act of promoting “the peaceful settlement of industrial disputes by subjecting labor-management controversies to the mediatory influence of negotiation,” Fibreboard Paper Prods. Corp. v. Labor Board, 379 U. S. 203, 211. But there are limits to what a union or an employer may offer or extract in the name of wages, and because they must bargain does not mean that the agreement reached may disregard other laws. Teamsters Union v. Oliver, 358 U. S. 283, 296; Brotherhood of Carpenters v. United States, 330 U. S. 395, 399-400.
We have said that a union may make wage agreements with a multi-employer bargaining unit and may in pursuance of its own union interests seek to obtain the same terms from other employers. No case under the antitrust laws could be made out on evidence limited to such union behavior. But we think a union forfeits its exemption from the antitrust laws when it is clearly shown that it has agreed with one set of employers to impose a certain wage scale on other bargaining units. One group of employers may not conspire to eliminate competitors from the industry and the union is liable with the employers if it becomes a party to the conspiracy. This is true even though the union’s part in the scheme is an undertaking to secure the same wages, hours or other conditions of employment, from the remaining employers in the industry.
We do not find anything in the national labor policy that conflicts with this conclusion. This Court has recognized that a legitimate aim of any national labor organization is to obtain uniformity of labor standards and that a consequence of such union activity may be to eliminate competition based on differences in such standards. Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, 310 U. S. 469, 503. But there is nothing in the labor policy indicating that the union and the employers in one bargaining unit are free to bargain about the wages, hours and working conditions of other bargaining units or to attempt to settle these matters for the entire industry. On the contrary, the duty to bargain unit by unit leads to a quite different conclusion. The union’s obligation to its members would seem best served if the union retained the ability to respond to each bargaining situation as the individual circumstances might warrant, without being strait-jacketed by some prior agreement with the favored employers.
So far as the employer is concerned it has long been the Board’s view that an employer may not condition the signing of a collective bargaining agreement on the union’s organization of a majority of the industry. American Range Lines, Inc., 13 N. L. R. B. 139, 147 (1939); Samuel Youlin, 22 N. L. R. B. 879, 885 (1940); Newton Chevrolet, Inc., 37 N. L. R. B. 334, 341 (1941); see Labor Board v. George P. Pilling & Son Co., 119 F. 2d 32, 38 (C. A. 3d Cir. 1941). In such cases the obvious interest of the employer is to ensure that acceptance of the union’s wage demands will not adversely affect his competitive position. In American Range Lines, Inc., supra, the Board rejected that employer interest as a justification for the demand. “[A]n employer cannot lawfully deny his employees the right to bargain collectively through their designated representative in an appropriate unit because he envisions competitive disadvantages accruing from such bargaining.” 13 N. L. R. B., at 147. Such an employer condition, if upheld, would clearly reduce the extent of collective bargaining. Thus, in Newton Chevrolet, Inc., supra, where it was held a refusal to bargain for the employer to insist on a provision that the agreed contract terms would not become effective until five competitors had signed substantially similar contracts, the Board stated that “[tjhere is nothing in the Act to justify the imposition of a duty upon an exclusive bargaining representative to secure an agreement from a majority of an employer’s competitors as a condition precedent to the negotiation of an agreement with the employer. To permit individual employers to refuse to bargain collectively until some or all of their competitors had done so clearly would lead to frustration of the fundamental purpose of the Act to encourage the practice of collective bargaining.” 37 N. L. R. B., at 341. Permitting insistence on an agreement by the union to attempt to impose a similar contract on other employers would likewise seem to impose a restraining influence on the extent of collective bargaining, for the union could avoid an impasse only by surrendering its freedom to act in its own interest vis-á-vis other employers, something it will be unwilling to do in many instances. Once again, the employer’s interest is a competitive interest rather than an interest in regulating its own labor relations, and the effect on the union of such an agreement would be to limit the free exercise of the employees’ right to engage in concerted activities according to their own views of their self-interest. In sum, we cannot conclude that the national labor policy provides any support for such agreements.
On the other hand, the policy of the antitrust laws is clearly set against employer-union agreements seeking to prescribe labor standards outside the bargaining unit. One could hardly contend, for example, that one group of employers could lawfully demand that the union impose on other employers wages that were significantly higher than those paid by the requesting employers, or a system of computing wages that, because of differences in methods of production, would be more costly to one set of employers than to another. The anticompetitive potential of such a combination is obvious, but is little more severe than what is alleged to have been the purpose and effect of the conspiracy in this case to establish wages at a level that marginal producers could not pay so that they would be driven from the industry. And if the conspiracy presently under attack were declared exempt it would hardly be possible to deny exemption to such avowedly discriminatory schemes.
From the viewpoint of antitrust policy, moreover, all such agreements between a group of employers and a union that the union will seek specified labor standards outside the bargaining unit suffer from a more basic defect, without regard to predatory intention or effect in the particular case. For the salient characteristic of such agreements is that the union surrenders its freedom of action with respect to its bargaining policy. Prior to the agreement the union might seek uniform standards in its own self-interest but would be required to assess in each case the probable costs and gains of a strike or other collective action to that end and thus might conclude that the objective of uniform standards should temporarily give way. After the agreement the union’s interest would be bound in each case to that of the favored employer group. It is just such restraints upon the freedom of economic units to act according to their own choice and discretion that run counter to antitrust policy. See, e. g., Associated Press v. United States, 326 U. S. 1, 19; Fashion Originators’ Guild v. Federal Trade Comm’n, 312 U. S. 457, 465; Anderson v. Shipowners Assn., 272 U. S. 359, 364-365.
Thus the relevant labor and antitrust policies compel us to conclude that the alleged agreement between UMW and the large operators to secure uniform labor standards throughout the industry, if proved, was not exempt from the antitrust laws.
II.
The UMW next contends that the trial court erroneously denied its motion for a new trial based on claimed errors in the admission of evidence.
In Eastern R. Conf. v. Noerr Motors, 365 U. S. 127, the Court rejected an attempt to base a Sherman Act conspiracy on evidence consisting entirely of activities of competitors seeking to influence public officials. The Sherman Act, it was held, was not intended to bar concerted action of this kind even though the resulting official action damaged other competitors at whom the campaign was aimed. Furthermore, the legality of the conduct “was not at all affected by any anticompetitive purpose it may have had,” id., at 140 — even though the “sole purpose in seeking to influence the passage and enforcement of laws was to destroy the truckers as competitors for the long-distance freight business,” id., at 138. Nothing could be clearer from the Court’s opinion than that anticompeti-tive purpose did not illegalize the conduct there involved.
We agree with the UMW that both the Court of Appeals and the trial court failed to take proper account of the Noerr case. In approving the instructions of the trial court with regard to the approaches of the union and the operators to the Secretary of Labor and to the TVA officials, the Court of Appeals considered Noerr as applying only to conduct “unaccompanied by a purpose or intent to further a conspiracy to violate a statute. It is the illegal purpose or intent inherent in the conduct which vitiates the conduct which would otherwise be legal.” 325 F. 2d, at 817. Noerr shields from the Sherman Act a concerted effort to influence public officials regardless of intent or purpose. The Court of Appeals, however, would hold the conduct illegal depending upon proof of an illegal purpose.
The instructions of the trial court to the jury exhibit a similar infirmity. The jury was instructed that the approach to the Secretary of Labor was legal unless part of a conspiracy to drive small operators out of business and that the approach to the TVA was not a violation of the antitrust laws “unless the parties so urged the TYA to modify its policies in buying coal for the purpose of driving the small operators out of business.” If, therefore, the jury determined the requisite anticompetitive purpose to be present, it was free to find an illegal conspiracy based solely on the Walsh-Healey and TVA episodes, or in any event to attribute illegality to these acts as part of a general plan to eliminate Phillips and other operators similarly situated. Neither finding, however,^ is permitted by Noerr for the reasons stated in that case. Joint efforts to influence public officials do...not violate the antitrust laws even though intended to eliminate competition. Such conduct is not illegal, either standing alone or as part of a broader scheme itself viola-tive of the Sherman Act. The iurv should have-heemso— instructed and, given the obviously telling nature of this evidence, we cannot hold this lapse to be mere harmless error.
There is another reason for remanding this case for further proceedings in the lower courts. It is clear under Noerr that Phillips could not collect any damages under the Sherman Act for any injury which it suffered from the action of the Secretary of Labor. The conduct of the union and the operators did not violate the Act, the action taken to set a minimum wage for government purchases of coal was the act of a public official who is not claimed to be a co-conspirator, and the jury should have been instructed, as UMW requested, to exclude any damages which Phillips may have suffered as a result of the Secretary’s Walsh-Healey determinations. See also American Banana Co. v. United Fruit Co., 213 U. S. 347, 358; Angle v. Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha R. Co., 151 U. S. 1, 16-21; Okefenokee Rural Elec. Mem. Corp. v. Florida P. & L. Co., 214 F. 2d 413, 418 (C. A. 5th Cir. 1954). The trial court, however, admitted evidence concerning the Walsh-Healey episodes for “whatever bearing it may have on the overall picture” and told the jury in its final instructions to include in the verdict all damages resulting directly from any act which was found to be part of the conspiracy. The effect this may have had on the jury is reflected by the statement of the Court of Appeals that the jury could reasonably conclude “that the wage determination for the coal industry under the Walsh-Healey Act and the dumping of West Kentucky coal on the TVA spot market materially and adversely affected the operations of Phillips in the important TVA market . . . ,” 325 F. 2d, at 815, and that “[t]his minimum wage determination prevented Phillips from bidding on the TVA term market . . . ,” id., at 814.
The judgment is reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
[For opinion of Mr. Justice Goldberg dissenting from the opinion but concurring in the reversal, see post, p. 697.]
The parties stipulated that the damages period would include the four-year limitation period, 15 U. S. C. § 15b (1958 ed.), preceding the filing of Phillips’ cross claim and extend up to December 31,1958, the date on which Phillips terminated its business.
Unilaterally, and without agreement with any employer group to do so, a union may adopt a uniform wage policy and seek vigorously to implement it even though it may suspect that some employers cannot effectively compete if they are required to pay the wage scale demanded by the union. The union need not gear its wage demands to wages which the weakest units in the industry can afford to pay. Such union conduct is not alone sufficient evidence to maintain a union-employer conspiracy charge under the Sherman Act. There must be additional direct or indirect evidence of the conspiracy. There was, of course, other evidence in this case, but we indicate no opinion as to its sufficiency.
It would of course still be within the province of the trial judge to admit this evidence, if he deemed it probative and not unduly prejudicial, under the “established judicial rule of evidence that testimony of prior or subsequent transactions, which for some reason are barred from forming the basis for a suit, may nevertheless be introduced if it tends reasonably to show the purpose and character of the particular transactions under scrutiny. Standard Oil Co. v. United States, 221 U. S. 1, 46-47; United States v. Reading Co., 253 U. S. 26, 43-44.” Federal Trade Comm’n v. Cement Institute, 333 U. S. 683, 705; see also Heike v. United States, 227 U. S. 131, 145; American Medical Assn. v. United States, 76 U. S. App. D. C. 70, 87-89, 130 F. 2d 233, 250-252 (1942), aff’d, 317 U. S. 519 (certio-rari limited to other issues).
By contrast, in Continental Ore Co. v. Union Carbide & Carbon Corp., 370 U. S. 690, we held that the acts of a wartime purchasing agent appointed by the Canadian Government could be proved as part of the conspiracy and as an element in computing damages. The purchasing agent, however, was not a public official but the wholly owned subsidiary of an American corporation alleged to be a principal actor in the conspiracy. The acts complained of had been performed at the direction of the purchasing agent’s American parent and there was “no indication that the Controller or any other official within the structure of the Canadian Government approved or would have approved of joint efforts to monopolize the production and sale of vanadium or directed that purchases from [the plaintiff] be stopped.” 370 U. S., at 706. That case is wholly dissimilar to both Noerr and the present case.
This latter conclusion regarding the term market would seem doubly erroneous as Phillips had virtually conceded, in the course of offering evidence respecting bids of the alleged conspirators on the term market, that it was claiming no damages from its exclusion from the term market, a market it never had any immediate prospect of entering. The trial court ruled that the proffered testimony was inadmissible on the damages phase of the 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: | 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 Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Major Crimes Act of 1885 authorizes the prosecution in federal court of an Indian charged with the commission on an Indian reservation of certain specifically-enumerated offenses. This case requires us to decide whether an Indian prosecuted under the Act is entitled to a jury instruction on a lesser included offense where that lesser offense is not one of the crimes enumerated in the Act.
At the close of petitioner’s trial for assault with intent to commit serious bodily injury, the United States District Court for the District of South Dakota refused to instruct the jury, as petitioner requested, that they might convict him of simple assault. The court reasoned that since simple assault is not an offense enumerated in the Act, it is exclusively “a matter for the tribe.” App. 15. A panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, one judge dissenting, upheld that determination on the strength of the court’s earlier de~ cisión in Kills Crow v. United States, 451 F. 2d 323 (1971). 459 F. 2d 757 (1972). Following a remand to the District Court for a hearing on an unrelated issue, the case returned to the Court of Appeals and the conviction was affirmed. Id., at 762 (supplemental opinion). We granted certiorari limited to the question of the validity of denying the requested instruction, 409 U. S. 1037 (1972), and we reverse.
The events that led to the death of petitioner’s brother-in-law, Robert Pomani, and hence to this criminal prosecution, took place on the South Dakota Reservation of the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe. Petitioner and the deceased, both Indians of that Tribe, spent the evening of March 6, 1971, drinking and quarreling over petitioner’s alleged mistreatment of his wife, Pomani’s sister. The argument soon became violent, and it ended only when petitioner, having beaten Pomani severely and left him bleeding from the head and face, went to bed. The next morning he discovered Pomani’s lifeless body on the ground a short distance from the house where the beating had occurred. He reported the death to an official of the Department of the Interior serving as Captain of the Tribal Police at Fort Thompson, South Dakota. An autopsy revealed that Pomani died because of exposure to excessive cold, although the beating was a contributing factor. Petitioner was convicted of assault with intent to inflict great bodily injury, and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
Although the lesser included offense doctrine developed at common law to assist the prosecution in cases where the evidence failed to establish some element of the offense originally charged, it is now beyond dispute that the defendant is entitled to an instruction on a lesser included offense if the evidence would permit a jury rationally to find him guilty of the lesser offense and acquit him of the greater. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure deal with lesser included offenses, see Rule 31 (c), and the defendant’s right to such an instruction has been recognized in numerous decisions of this Court. See, e. g., Sansone v. United States, 380 TJ. S. 343, 349 (1965); Berra v. United States, 351 U. S. 131, 134 (1956); Stevenson v. United States, 162 U. S. 313 (1896).
In defending the trial court’s refusal to offer the requested instruction, the Government does not dispute this general proposition, nor does it argue that a lesser offense instruction was incompatible with the evidence presented at trial. Cf. Sansone v. United States, supra; Sparf v. United States, 156 U. S. 51, 63-64 (1895). On the contrary, the Government explicitly concedes that any non-Indian who had committed this same act on this same reservation and requested this same instruction would have been entitled to the jury charge that petitioner was refused. Brief for the United States 13 n. 16. The Government does maintain, however, that the Major Crimes Act precludes the District Court from offering a lesser offense instruction on behalf of an Indian, such as the petitioner before us. Specifically, the Government contends that the Act represents a carefully limited intrusion of federal power into the otherwise exclusive jurisdiction of the Indian tribes to punish Indians for crimes committed on Indian land. To grant an instruction on the lesser offense of simple assault would, in the Government’s view, infringe the tribe’s residual jurisdiction in a manner inconsistent with the Act. Under the Government’s approach, in other words, the interests of an individual Indian defendant in obtaining a jury instruction on a lesser offense must fall before the congressionally sanctioned interests of the tribe in preserving its inherent jurisdiction. Since that conclusion is compelled neither by the language, nor the purposes, nor the history of the Act, we cannot agree.
The Major Crimes Act was passed by Congress in direct response to the decision of this Court in Ex parte Crow Dog, 109 U. S. 556 (1883). The Court held there that a federal court lacked jurisdiction to try an Indian for the murder of another Indian, a chief of the Brule Sioux named Spotted Tail, in Indian country. Although recognizing the power of Congress to confer such jurisdiction on the federal courts, the Court reasoned that, in the absence of explicit congressional direction, the Indian tribe retained exclusive jurisdiction to punish the offense. Cf. Taitón v. Mayes, 163 U. S. 376 (1896); Worcester v. Georgia, 6 Pet. 515 (1832).
The prompt congressional response — conferring jurisdiction on the federal courts to punish certain offenses— reflected a view that tribal remedies were either nonexistent or incompatible with principles that Congress thought should be controlling. Representative Cutcheon, sponsor of the Act, described the events that followed the reversal by this Court of Crow Dog's conviction:
“Thus Crow Dog went free. He returned to his reservation, feeling, as the Commissioner says, a great deal more important than any of the chiefs of his tribe. The result was that another murder grew out of that — a murder committed by Spotted Tail, jr., upon White Thunder. And so these things must go on unless we adopt proper legislation on the subject.
“It is an infamy upon our civilization, a disgrace to this nation, that there should be anywhere within its boundaries a body of people who can, with absolute impunity, commit the crime of murder, there being no tribunal before which they can be brought for punishment. Under our present law there is no penalty that can be inflicted except according to the custom of the tribe, which is simply that the 'blood-avenger' — that is, the next of kin to the person murdered — shall pursue the one who has been guilty of the crime and commit a new murder upon him. . . .
“If ... an Indian commits a crime against an Indian on an Indian reservation there is now no law to punish the offense except, as I have said, the law of the tribe, which is just no law at all.” 16 Cong. Rec. 934 (1885).
The Secretary of the Interior, who supported the Act, struck a similar note:
“If offenses of this character [the killing of Spotted Tail] can not be tried in the courts of the United States, there is no tribunal in which the crime of murder can be punished. Minor offenses may be punished through the agency of the ‘court of Indian offenses,' but it will hardly do to leave the punishment of the crime of murder to a tribunal that exists only by the consent of the Indians of the reservation. If the murderer is left to be punished according to the old Indian custom, it becomes the duty of the next of kin to avenge the death of his relative by either killing the murderer or some one of his kinsmen . . . .”
In short, Congress extended federal jurisdiction to crimes committed by Indians on Indian land out of a conviction that many Indians would “be civilized a great deal sooner by being put under [federal criminal] laws and taught to regard life and the personal property of others.” 16 Cong. Rec. 936 (1885) (remarks of Rep. Cutcheon). That is emphatically not to say, however, that Congress intended to deprive Indian defendants of procedural rights guaranteed to other defendants, or to make it easier to convict an Indian than any other defendant. Indeed, the Act expressly provides that Indians charged under its provisions “shall be tried in the same courts, <md in the same manner,, as are all other persons committing any of the above crimes within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States.” 18 U. S. C. § 3242 (emphasis added). In the face of that explicit statutory direction, we can hardly conclude that Congress intended to disqualify Indians from the benefits of a lesser offense instruction, when those benefits are made available to any non-Indian charged with the same offense.
Moreover, it is no answer to petitioner’s demand for a jury instruction on a lesser offense to argue that a defendant may be better off without such an instruction. True, if the prosecution has not established beyond a reasonable doubt every element of the offense charged, and if no lesser offense instruction is offered, the jury must, as a theoretical matter, return a verdict of acquittal. But a defendant is entitled to a lesser offense instruction — in this context or any other — precisely because he should not be exposed to the substantial risk that the jury’s practice will diverge from theory. Where one of the elements of the offense charged remains in doubt, but the defendant is plainly guilty of some offense, the jury is likely to resolve its doubts in favor of conviction. In the case before us, for example, an intent to commit serious bodily injury is a necessary element of the crime with which petitioner was charged, but not of the crime of simple assault. Since the nature of petitioner's intent was very much in dispute at trial, the jury could rationally have convicted him of simple assault if that option had been presented. But the jury was presented with only two options: convicting the defendant of assault with intent to commit great bodily injury, or acquitting him outright. We cannot say that the availability of a third option — convicting the defendant of simple assault — could not have resulted in a different verdict. Indeed, while we have never explicitly held that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment guarantees the right of a defendant to have the jury instructed on a lesser included offense, it is nevertheless clear that a construction of the Major Crimes Act to preclude such an instruction would raise difficult constitutional questions. In view of our interpretation of the Act, those are questions that we need not face.
Finally, we emphasize that our decision today neither expands the reach of the Major Crimes Act nor permits the Government to infringe the residual jurisdiction of a tribe by bringing prosecutions in federal court that are not authorized by statute. We hold only that where an Indian is prosecuted in federal court under the provisions of the Act, the Act does not require that he be deprived of the protection afforded by an instruction on a lesser included offense, assuming of course that the evidence warrants such an instruction. No interest of a tribe is jeopardized by this decision. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Reversed and remanded.
Act of Mar. 3, 1885, c. 341, § 9, 23 Stat. 385, now 18 U. S. C. §§ 1153, 3242.
As originally enacted, the statute provided:
"That immediately upon and after the date of the passage of this act all Indians, committing against the person or property of another Indian or other person any of the following crimes, namely, murder, manslaughter, rape, assault with intent to kill, arson, burglary, and larceny within any Territory of the United States, and either within or without an Indian reservation, shall be subject therefor to the laws of such Territory relating to said crimes, and shall be tried therefor in the same courts and in the same manner and shall be subject to the same penalties as are all other persons charged with the commission of said crimes, respectively; and the said courts are hereby given jurisdiction in all such cases; and all such Indians committing any of the above crimes against the person or property of another Indian or other person within the boundaries of any State of the United States, and within the limits of any Indian reservation, shall be subject to the sam,e laws, tried in the same courts and in the same manner, and subject to the same penalties as are all other persons committing any of the above crimes within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States.” 23 Stat. 385.
By successive amendments, Congress has increased the number of enumerated crimes from seven to 13, adding carnal knowledge, assault with intent to commit rape, incest, assault with a dangerous weapon, assault resulting in serious bodily injury, and robbery.
The case was remanded to the District Court for a hearing on the voluntariness of petitioner’s confession, in light of the requirements of 18 U. S. C. § 3501. On remand, the District Court concluded that the confession was voluntary, notwithstanding a lapse of time between petitioner’s arrest and his confession.
The petition for certiorari also asked us to consider the validity of admitting petitioner’s confession in view of the requirements of Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 5 (a).
See Kelly v. United States, 125 U. S. App. D. C. 205, 207, 370 F. 2d 227, 229 (1966); United States v. Mar Ids, 352 F. 2d 860, 866 (CA2 1965); 2 C. Wright, Federal Practice and Procedure — ’Criminal §515, p. 372 (1969).
Rule 31 (c) provides that “[t]he defendant may be found guilty of an offense necessarily included in the offense charged or of an attempt to commit either the offense charged or an offense necessarily included therein if the attempt is an offense.” The rule codified pre-existing law, in particular former § 565 of Tit. 18, Act of June 1, 1872, § 9, 17 Stat. 198. See Berra v. United States, 351 U. S. 131, 134 and n. 6 (1956).
See also, e. g., Government of Virgin Islands v. Carmona, 422 F. 2d 95, 100 (CA3 1970); United States v. Comer, 137 U. S. App. D. C. 214, 218, 421 F. 2d 1149, 1153 (1970).
If a non-Indian had committed this same act on an Indian reservation, he would, of course, be tried in federal court under federal enclave law. 18 U. S. C. § 1152.
The constitutionality of the Major Crimes Act was upheld in United States v. Kagama, 118 U. S. 375 (1886), where the Court rejected the argument that punishment of criminal offenses by Indians on Indian land is exclusively a state function.
The same congressional purpose is evident in the most recent amendment to the Act, the 1968 addition to the list of enumerated crimes of the offense of assault resulting in serious bodily injury. See S. Rep. No. 721, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 32 (1967):
“Without this amendment an Indian can commit a serious crime and receive only a maximum sentence of 6 months. Since Indian courts cannot impose more than a 6-month sentence, the crime of aggravated assault should be prosecuted in a Federal court, where the punishment will be in proportion to the gravity of the offense.”
The remark, from the Secretary’s annual report, was quoted by Representative Cutcheon during debate in the House of Representatives on the proposed statute. 16 Cong. Rec. 935 (1885).
In making the most recent amendment to the Major Crimes Act, see n. 10, supra, Congress neglected to add the offense of assault resulting in serious bodily injury to both of the sections in which the Act is now codified. The Government concedes that the failure to add this new offense to the list of those enumerated in 18 U. S. C. § 3242 is “probably a congressional oversight.” Brief for the United States 18 n. 17. In any case, Congress plainly did not intend to provide a special rule for the trial of Indians charged with assault resulting in serious bodily injury.
Similarly, in view of our conclusion that the trial court erred in denying the requested instruction, we need not decide whether an apparent defect in the indictment- — a defect to which petitioner did not object- — provides an independent ground for reversal. The Major Crimes Act provides that an Indian may be tried in federal court for the offense of assault resulting in serious bodily injury. The statute further provides that this offense “shall be defined and punished in accordance with the laws of the State in which such offense was committed.” Petitioner was not charged, however, with assault resulting in serious bodily injury, but rather with assault with intent to commit serious bodily injury. See S. D. Comp. Laws Ann. § 22-18-12 (1967). The South Dakota criminal code does not specifically proscribe the offense of assault resulting in serious bodily injury. Whether the prosecution should have been required to prove not only that the petitioner intended to commit serious bodily injury, but also that the assault resulted in serious bodily injury, is a question we do not now decide.
The Government argues that “[t]he ruling petitioner seeks would, under the principle of mutuality, empower federal prosecutors, dissatisfied with the leniency of tribal courts, to prosecute in marginal cases, knowing that if the major offense is not proved the penalty for the minor offense would be more substantial than in the tribal courts.” Brief for the United States 22. The lower courts have often held that a defendant is entitled to an instruction on a lesser included offense only in circumstances where the prosecution could,also ask for such an instruction. See, e. g., Kelly v. United States, 125 U. S. App. D. C. 205, 207, 370 F. 2d 227, 229 (1966). That is the principle of mutuality to which the Government refers. Nevertheless, Judge Wilkey, speaking for a panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, recently concluded that “despite the patina of antiquity, considerations of justice and good judicial administration warrant dispensing with mutuality as an essential prerequisite to the defense’s right to a lesser included offense charge.” United States v. Whitaker, 144 U. S. App. D. C. 344, 351, 447 F. 2d 314, 321 (1971). Whether that conclusion is sound, at least in the special situation presented by the case before us, is a question that we need not now decide.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Auto
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question whether administrative payment orders issued by the Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) for the purpose of assessing royalty underpayments on oil and gas leases fall within 28 U. S. C. § 2415(a), which sets out a 6-year statute of limitations for Government contract actions. We hold that this provision does not apply to these administrative payment orders, and we therefore affirm.
I
A
The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 (MLA) authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to lease public-domain lands to private parties for the production of oil and gas. 41 Stat. 437, as amended, 30 U. S. C. § 181 et seq. MLA lessees are obligated to pay a royalty of at least “12.5 percent in amount or value of the production removed or sold from the lease.” § 226(b)(1)(A).
In 1982, Congress enacted the Federal Oil and Gas Royalty Management Act (FOGRMA), 96 Stat. 2447, as amended, 30 U. S. C. § 1701 et seq., to address the concern that the “system of accounting with respect to royalties and other payments due and owing on oil and gas produced from such lease sites [was] archaic and inadequate.” § 1701(a)(2). FOGRMA ordered the Secretary of the Interior to “audit and reconcile, to the extent practicable, all current and past lease accounts for leases of oil or gas and take appropriate actions to make additional collections or refunds as warranted.” § 1711(c)(1). The Secretary, in turn, has assigned these duties to MMS. 30 CFR §201.100 (2006).
Under FOGRMA, lessees are responsible in the first instance for the accurate calculation and payment of royalties. 30 U. S. C. § 1712(a). MMS, in turn, is authorized to audit those payments to determine whether a royalty has been overpaid or underpaid. §§ 1711(a) and (c); 30 CFR §§ 206.150(c), 206.170(d). In the event that an audit suggests an underpayment, it is MMS’ practice to send the lessee a letter inquiring about the perceived deficiency. If, after reviewing the lessee’s response, MMS concludes that the lessee owes additional royalties, MMS issues an order requiring payment of the amount due. Failure to comply with such an order carries a stiff penalty: “Any person who — (1) knowingly or willfully fails to make any royalty payment by the date as specified by [an] order... shall be liable for a penalty of up to $10,000 per violation for each day such violation continues.” 30 U. S. C. § 1719(c). The Attorney General may enforce these orders in federal court. § 1722(a).
An MMS payment order may be appealed, first to the Director of MMS and then to the Interior Board of Land Appeals or to an Assistant Secretary. 30 CFR §§290.105, 290.108. While filing an appeal does not generally stay the payment order, § 218.50(c), MMS will usually suspend the order’s effect after the lessee complies with applicable bonding or financial solvency requirements, § 243.8.
Congress supplemented this scheme by enacting the Federal Oil and Gas Royalty Simplification and Fairness Act of 1996 (FOGRSFA), 110 Stat. 1700, as amended, 30 U. S. C. § 1701 et seq. FOGRSFA adopted a prospective 7-year statute of limitations for any “judicial proceeding or demand” for royalties arising under a federal oil or gas lease. § 1724(b)(1). The parties agree that this provision applies both to judicial actions (“judicial proceeding[s]”) and to MMS’ administrative payment orders (“demand[s]”) arising on or after September 1, 1996. Ibid. This provision does not, however, apply to judicial proceedings or demands arising from leases of Indian land or underpayments of royalties on pre-September 1,1996, production. FOGRSFA §§ 9,11,110 Stat. 1717, notes following 30 U. S. C. § 1701.
There is no dispute that a lawsuit in court to recover royalties owed to the Government on pre-September 1, 1996, production is covered by 28 U. S. C. § 2415(a), which sets out a general 6-year statute of limitations for Government contract actions. That section, which was enacted in 1966, provides in relevant part:
“Subject to the provisions of section 2416 of this title, and except as otherwise provided by Congress, every action for money damages brought by the United States or an officer or agency thereof which is founded upon any contract express or implied in law or fact, shall be barred unless the complaint is filed within six years after the right of action accrues or within one year after final decisions have been rendered in applicable administrative proceedings required by contract or by law, whichever is later.” (Emphasis added.)
Whether this general 6-year statute of limitations also governs MMS administrative payment orders concerning preSeptember 1, 1996, production is the question that we must decide in this case.
B
Petitioner BP America Production Co. holds gas leases from the Federal Government for lands in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin. BP’s predecessor, Amoco Production Co., first entered into these leases nearly 50 years ago, and these leases require the payment of the minimum 12.5 percent royalty prescribed by 30 U. S. C. § 226(b)(1)(A). For years, Amoco calculated the royalty as a percentage of the value of the gas as of the moment it was produced at the well. In 1996, MMS sent lessees a letter directing that royalties should be calculated based not on the value of the gas at the well, but on the value of the gas after it was treated to meet the quality requirements for introduction into the Nation’s mainline pipelines. Consistent with this guidance, MMS in 1997 ordered Amoco to pay additional royalties for the period from January 1989 through December 1996 in order to cover the difference between the value of the treated gas and its lesser value at the well.
Amoco appealed the order, disputing MMS’ interpretation of its royalty obligations and arguing that the payment order was in any event barred in part by the 6-year statute of limitations in 28 U. S. C. § 2415(a). The Assistant Secretary of the Interior denied the appeal and ruled that the statute of limitations was inapplicable.
Amoco, together with petitioner Atlantic Richfield Co., sought review in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, which agreed with the Assistant Secretary that § 2415(a) did not govern the administrative order. Amoco Production Co. v. Baca, 300 F. Supp. 2d 1, 21 (2003). The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed, Amoco Production Co. v. Watson, 410 F. 3d 722, 733 (2005), and we granted certiorari, 547 U. S. 1068 (2006), in order to resolve the conflict between that decision and the contrary holding of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in OXY USA, Inc. v. Babbitt, 268 F. 3d 1001, 1005 (2001) (en banc). We now affirm.
II
A
We start, of course, with the statutory text. Central Bank of Denver, N. A. v. First Interstate Bank of Denver, N. A., 511 U. S. 164, 173 (1994). Unless otherwise defined, statutory terms are generally interpreted in accordance with their ordinary meaning. Perrin v. United States, 444 U. S. 37, 42 (1979). Read in this way, the text of § 2415(a) is quite clear.
The statute of limitations imposed by § 2415(a) applies when the Government commences any “action for money damages” by filing a “complaint” to enforce a contract, and the statute runs from the point when “the right of action accrues.” The key terms in this provision — “action” and “complaint” — are ordinarily used in connection with judicial, not administrative, proceedings. In 1966, when § 2415(a) was enacted, a commonly used legal dictionary defined the term “right of action” as “[t]he right to bring suit; a legal right to maintain an action,” with “suit” meaning “any proceeding ... in a court of justice.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1488, 1603 (4th ed. 1951) (hereinafter Black’s). Likewise, “complaint” was defined as “the first or initiatory pleading on the part of the plaintiff in a civil action.” Id., at 356. See also Unexcelled Chemical Corp. v. United States, 345 U. S. 59, 66 (1953) (holding that filing a complaint, in the ordinary sense of the term, means filing a suit in court, not initiating an administrative proceeding: “Commencement of an action by the filing of a complaint has too familiar a history ... for us to assume that Congress did not mean to use the words in their ordinary sense”). The phrase “action for money damages” reinforces this reading because the term “damages” is generally used to mean “pecuniary compensation or indemnity, which may be recovered in the courts.” Black’s 466 (emphasis added).
Nothing in the language of § 2415(a) suggests that Congress intended these terms to apply more broadly to administrative proceedings. On the contrary, § 2415(a) distinguishes between judicial and administrative proceedings. Section 2415(a) provides that an “action” must commence “within one year after final decisions have been rendered in applicable administrative proceedings.” Thus, Congress knew how to identify administrative proceedings and manifestly had two separate concepts in mind when it enacted § 2415(a).
B
In an effort to show that the term “action” is commonly used to refer to administrative, as well as judicial, proceedings, petitioners have cited numerous statutes and regulations that, petitioners claim, document this usage. These examples, however, actually undermine petitioners’ argument, since none of them uses the term “action” standing alone to refer to administrative proceedings. Rather, each example includes a modifier of some sort, referring to an “administrative action,” a “civil or administrative action,” or “administrative enforcement actions.” This pattern of usage buttresses the point that the term “action,” standing alone, ordinarily refers to a judicial proceeding.
Petitioners contend that their broader interpretation of the statutory term “action” is supported by the reference to “every action for money damages” founded upon “any contract.” 28 U. S. C. § 2415(a) (emphasis added). But the broad terms “every” and “any” do not assist petitioners, as they do not broaden the ordinary meaning of the key term “action.”
Petitioners argue that their interpretation is supported by Pennsylvania v. Delaware Valley Citizens’ Council for Clean Air, 478 U. S. 546 (1986), and West v. Gibson, 527 U. S. 212 (1999), but this reliance is misplaced. In Delaware Valley Citizens’ Council, we construed the attorney’s fee provision of the Clean Water Act (CWA), which authorizes a “court, in issuing any final order in any action brought pursuant to subsection (a) of this section, [to] award costs of litigation ... to any party.” 42 U. S. C. § 7604(d). We permitted the recovery of fees both for work done in court and in subsequent administrative proceedings. But the pertinent statutory provision in that case did not employ the key terms that appear in the statute at issue here. Specifically, the CWA provision referred to “litigation,” not to an “action” commenced by the filing of a “complaint.” Moreover, “the work done by counsel [in the administrative phase of the case] was as necessary to the attainment of adequate relief... as was all of their earlier work in the courtroom . . . obtaining the consent decree.” 478 U. S., at 558. And we expressly reserved judgment on the question “whether an award of attorney’s fees is appropriate . . . when there is no connected court action in which fees are recoverable.” Id., at 560, n. 5.
West helps petitioners even less. There, we considered whether the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) could order a federal agency to pay compensatory damages in an administrative proceeding. Section 717(b) of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,42 U. S. C. §2000e-16(b), authorized the EEOC to employ “appropriate remedies,” but did not specifically authorize damages, and § 717(c) authorized a subsequent court action against an employer agency, 42 U. S. C. § 2Q00e-16(c). In 1991, Congress added Rev. Stat. § 1977A(a)(l), 42 U. S. C. § 1981a(a)(l), which provided that “[i]n an action brought by a complaining party under section 706 or 717 . . . the complaining party may recover compensatory ... damages.” In West, the respondent employee argued that the enactment of § 1981a(a)(l) showed that Congress did not consider compensatory damages to be “appropriate remedies” in an EEOC proceeding, as opposed to an action brought by an aggrieved employee. If Congress had wished to authorize the award of compensatory damages in an EEOC proceeding, the respondent employee reasoned, Congress would have so provided in § 1981a(a)(l), by expressly cross-referencing § 717(c). We rejected this argument, but in doing so we did not hold that an EEOC proceeding is an “action” under § 1981a(a)(l). Rather, we simply concluded that the EEOC’s authorization under § 717(b) to award “appropriate remedies” was broad enough to encompass compensatory damages. 527 U. S., at 220-221.
For these reasons, we are not persuaded by petitioners’ argument that the term “action” in § 2415(a) applies to the administrative proceedings that follow the issuance of an MMS payment order.
C
We similarly reject petitioners’ suggestion that an MMS letter or payment order constitutes a “complaint” within the meaning of § 2415(a). Petitioners point to examples of statutes and regulations that employ the term “complaint” in the administrative context. See, e. g., 15 U. S. C. § 45(b) (requiring the Federal Trade Commission to serve a “complaint” on a party suspected of engaging in an unfair method of competition); 29 CFR § 102.15 (2006) (a “complaint” initiates unfair labor practice proceedings before the National Labor Relations Board). But the occasional use of the term to describe certain administrative filings does not alter its primary meaning, which concerns the initiation of “a civil action.” Black’s 356. Moreover, even if the distinction between administrative and judicial proceedings is put aside, an MMS payment order lacks the essential attributes of a complaint. While a complaint is a filing that commences a proceeding that may in the end result in a legally binding order providing relief, an MMS payment order in and of itself imposes a legal obligation on the party to which it is issued. As noted, the failure to comply with such an order can result in fines of up to $10,000 a day. An MMS payment order, therefore, plays an entirely different role from that of a “complaint.”
D
To the extent that any doubts remain regarding the meaning of § 2415(a), they are erased by the rule that statutes of limitations are construed narrowly against the government. E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. v. Davis, 264 U. S. 456 (1924). This canon is rooted in the traditional rule quod nullum tern-pus occurrit regi — time does not run against the King. Guaranty Trust Co. v. United States, 304 U. S. 126, 132 (1938). A corollary of this rule is that when the sovereign elects to subject itself to a statute of limitations, the sovereign is given the benefit of the doubt if the scope of the statute is ambiguous.
Bowers v. New York & Albany Lighterage Co., 273 U. S. 346 (1927), cited by petitioners, is not to the contrary. There, as here, the issue was the scope of a statute of limitations. The provision in that case, however, provided that “ ‘[n]o suit or proceeding for the collection of any such taxes’ ” shall commence more than five years after the filing of the return. Id., at 348-349. The Government argued that the terms “proceeding” and “suit” were coterminous, and urged further that any ambiguity should be resolved in its favor.
The Court recognized the canon, restating it much as we have above. Id., at 349. But the Court concluded that the canon had no application in that case because the text of the relevant statute, unlike § 2415(a), applied clearly and separately to “suits” and “proceedings,” and the Court saw no reason to give these different terms the same meaning. Id., at 349-350.
E
We come now to petitioners’ argument that interpreting § 2415(a) as applying only to judicial actions would render subsection (i) of the same statute superfluous. Subsection (i) provides as follows:
“The provisions of this section shall not prevent the United States or an officer or agency thereof from collecting any claim of the United States by means of administrative offset, in accordance with section 3716 of title 31.” 28U.S.C. §2415(i).
An administrative offset is a mechanism by which the Government withholds payment of a debt that it owes another party in order to recoup a payment that this party owes the Government. 31 U. S. C. § 3701(a)(1). Thus, under subsection (i), the Government may recover a debt via an administrative offset even if the Government would be time barred under subsection (a) from pursuing the debt in court.
Petitioners argue that, if § 2415(a) applies only to judicial proceedings and not to administrative proceedings, there is no need for § 2415(i)’s rule protecting a particular administrative mechanism (i. e., an administrative offset) from the statute of limitations set out in subsection (a). Invoking the canon against reading a statute in a way that makes part of the statute redundant, see, e. g., TRW Inc. v. Andrews, 534 U. S. 19, 31 (2001), petitioners contend that subsection (i) shows that subsection (a) was meant to apply to administrative, as well as judicial, proceedings. We disagree.
As the Court of Appeals noted, subsection (i) was not enacted at the same time as subsection (a) but rather was added 16 years later by the Debt Collection Act of 1982. 96 Stat. 1749. This enactment followed a dispute between the Office of the Comptroller General of the United States, head of the agency then named the General Accounting Office (GAO), and the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) over whether an administrative offset could be used to recoup a debt where a judicial recoupment action was already time barred.
In 1978, in response to a question from the United States Civil Service Commission, OLC opined that an administrative offset could not be used to recoup a debt as to which a judicial action was already time barred. OLC reached this conclusion not because it believed that § 2415(a) reached administrative proceedings generally, but rather because of the particular purpose of an administrative offset. “Where [a] debt has not been reduced to judgment,” OLC stated, “an administrative offset is merely a pre-judgment attachment device.” Memorandum from John M. Harmon, Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to Alan K. Campbell, Chairman, U. S. Civil Service Commission Re: Effect of Statute of Limitations on Administrative Collection of United States Claims 3 (Sept. 29,1978), Joint Lodging. OLC opined that a prejudgment attachment device such as this exists only to preserve funds to satisfy any judgment the creditor subsequently obtains. Id., at 4 (citing cases). OLC therefore concluded that, where a lawsuit is already foreclosed by § 2415(a), an administrative offset that is the functional equivalent of a pretrial attachment is also unavailable. Id., at 3.
GAO disagreed. See In re Collection of Debts — Statute of Limitations on Administrative Setojf, 58 Comp. Gen. 501, 504-505 (1979). In its view, the question was answered by
“[t]he general rule ... that statutes of limitations applicable to suits for debts or money demands bar or run only against the remedy (the right 'to bring suit) to which they apply and do not discharge the debt or extinguish, or even impair, the right or obligation, either in law or in fact, and the creditor may avail himself of every other lawful means of realizing on the debt or obligation. See Mascot Oil Co. v. United States, 42 F. 2d 309 (Ct. Cl. 1930), affirmed 282 U. S. 434; and 33 Comp. Gen. 66 (1953). See also Ready-Mix Concrete Co. v. United States, 130 F. Supp. 390 (Ct. Cl. 1955).” Ibid.
That Congress had time barred the judicial remedy, GAO reasoned, imposed no limit on the administrative remedy.
The OLC-GAO dispute reveals that, even under the interpretation of subsection (a) — the one we are adopting — that considers it applicable only to court proceedings, subsection (i) is not mere surplusage. It clarifies that administrative offsets are not covered by subsection (a) even if they are viewed as an adjunct of a court action.
To accept petitioners’ argument, on the other hand, we would have to hold either that § 2415(a) applied to administrative actions when it was enacted in 1966 or that it was extended to reach administrative actions when subsection (i) was added in 1982. The clear meaning of the text of § 2415(a), which has not been amended, refutes the first of these propositions, and accepting the latter would require us to conclude that in 1982 Congress elected to enlarge § 2415 to cover administrative proceedings by inserting text expressly excluding a single administrative vehicle from the statute’s reach. It is entirely unrealistic to suggest that Congress would proceed by such an oblique and cryptic route.
Ill
Petitioners contend that interpreting § 2415(a) as applying only to judicial actions results in a statutory scheme with peculiarities that Congress could not have intended. For example, petitioners note that while they are required by statute to preserve their records regarding royalty obligations for only seven years, 30 U. S. C. § 1724(f), the interpretation of § 2415(a) adopted by the Court of Appeals permits MMS to issue payment orders that reach back much further.
We are mindful of the fact that a statute should be read where possible as effecting a “‘symmetrical and coherent regulatory scheme,’” FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U. S. 120, 133 (2000), but here petitioners’ alternative interpretation of § 2415(a) would itself result in disharmony. For instance, under FOGRSFA, MMS payment orders regarding oil and gas leases are now prospectively subject to a 7-year statute of limitations except with respect to obligations arising out of leases of Indian land. Consequently, if we agreed with petitioners that § 2415(a) applies generally to administrative proceedings, payment orders relating to oil and gas royalties owed under leases of Indian land would be subject to a shorter (¿ e., 6-year) statute of limitations than similar payment orders relating to leases of other public-domain lands (which would be governed by FOGRSFA’s new 7-year statute). Particularly in light of Congress’ exhortation that the Secretary of the Interior “aggressively carry out his trust responsibility in the administration of Indian oil and gas,” 30 U. S. C. § 1701(a)(4), it seems unlikely that Congress intended to impose a shorter statute of limitations for payment orders regarding Indian lands.
Petitioners contend, finally, that interpreting § 2415(a) as applying only to judicial actions would frustrate the statute’s purposes of providing repose, ensuring that actions are brought while evidence is fresh, lightening recordkeeping burdens, and pressuring federal agencies to assert federal rights promptly. These are certainly cogent policy arguments, but they must be viewed in perspective.
For one thing, petitioners overstate the scope of the problem, since Congress of course can enact and has enacted specific statutes of limitations to govern specific administrative actions. See, e. g., 42 U. S. C. § 5205(a)(1) (statute of limitations for an administrative action to recover payments made to state governments for disaster or emergency assistance). Indeed, in 1996, FOGRSFA imposed just such a limitation prospectively on all non-Indian land, oil, and gas lease claims.
Second, and more fundamentally, the consequences of interpreting § 2415(a) as limited to court actions must be considered in light of the traditional rule exempting proceedings brought by the sovereign from any time bar. There are always policy arguments against affording the sovereign this special treatment, and therefore in a case like this, where the issue is how far Congress meant to go when it enacted a statute of limitations applicable to the Government, arguing that an expansive interpretation would serve the general purposes of statutes of limitations is somewhat beside the point. The relevant inquiry, instead, is simply how far Congress meant to go when it enacted the statute of limitations in question. Here prior to the enactment of § 2415(a) in 1966, contract actions brought by the Government were not subject to any statute of limitations. See Guaranty Trust Co., 304 U. S., at 132. Absent congressional action changing this rule, it remains the law, and the text of § 2415(a) betrays no intent to change this rule as it applies to administrative proceedings.
In the final analysis, while we appreciate petitioners’ arguments, they are insufficient to overcome the plain meaning of the statutory text. We therefore hold that the 6-year statute of limitations in § 2415(a) applies only to court actions and not to the administrative proceedings involved in this case.
* * *
For these reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
The Chief Justice and Justice Breyer took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
MMS is not always the auditing body, as MMS may delegate its authority to the host State or an Indian tribe. 30 U. S. C. §§ 1732,1735.
MMS intended this letter to implement its regulations, which required lessees “to place gas in marketable condition at no cost to the Federal Government unless otherwise provided in the lease agreement.” 30 CFR §206.152® (1996).
These primary definitions have not changed in substance since 1966. Black’s (8th ed. 2004) now defines “action” as “[a] civil or criminal judicial proceeding” and a “complaint” as “[t]he initial pleading that starts a civil action and states the basis for the court’s jurisdiction, the basis for the plaintiff’s claim, and the demand for relief.” Id., at 31,303.
Moreover, it seems unlikely that Congress intended administrative proceedings to commence within one year after the conclusion of administrative proceedings.
See, e. g., 42 U. S. C. § 5205(a)(1) (statute of limitations for “administrative actionfs] to recover any payments] made to a State or local government for disaster or emergency assistance”); 12 U. S. C. § 1441a(b)(ll)(G) (requiring Resolution Trust Corporation to maintain staff to assist with certain “cases, civil claims, and administrative enforcement actions”); 15 U. S. C. § 78u(h)(9)(B) (Securities Exchange Act of 1934 provision noting that certain “[f]inancial records . . . may be disclosed or used only in an administrative, civil, or criminal action”). See also 7 CFR § 3018.400(c) (2006) (Department of Agriculture regulation regarding “administrative action [s] for the imposition of a civil penalty” for failure to file disclosure forms); 71 Fed. Reg. 7407 (2006) (to be codified in 12 CFR § 1412.2(1)(1)) (Farm Credit System Insurance Corporation regulation defining “prohibited indemnification payment” to include reimbursement for a civil money penalty of judgment resulting from any “administrative or civil action” instituted by the Farm Credit Administration); 10 CFR pt. 820, App. A, IX-b (2006) (“Administrative actions, such as determination of award fees where [Department of Energy] contracts provide for such determinations, will be considered separately from any civil penalties that may be imposed under this Enforcement Policy”).
There was some question at oral argument whether MMS’ initial letter might constitute a “complaint” within the meaning of § 2415(a). Petitioners did not advance this argument, and recognized at oral argument that neither the statute nor the regulations require the issuance of such a letter. Tr. of Oral Arg. 7-9. The Government, for its part, observed that all such a letter does is request information, as the agency has not yet decided whether to assert a claim. Id., at 28. This is not a complaint.
Indeed, what emerges strikingly from OLC's 1978 opinion is that no one at the time — neither OLC nor GAO — even contemplated that § 2415(a) applied to administrative procedures in the first instance. Nor have petitioners pointed to any source demonstrating otherwise.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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 Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
At issue in this case is the constitutionality of § 12 of the Illinois Probate Act which allows illegitimate children to inherit by intestate succession only from their mothers. Under Illinois law, legitimate children are allowed to inherit by intestate succession from both their mothers and their fathers.
I
Appellant Deta Mona Trimble is the illegitimate daughter of appellant Jessie Trimble and Sherman Gordon. Trimble and Gordon lived in Chicago with Deta Mona from 1970 until Gordon died in 1974, the victim of a homicide. On January 2, 1973, the Circuit Court of Cook County, Ill., had entered a paternity order finding Gordon to be the father of Deta Mona and ordering him to pay $15 per week for her support. Gordon thereafter supported Deta Mona in accordance with the paternity order and openly acknowledged her as his child. He died intestate at the age of 28, leaving an estate consisting only of a 1974 Plymouth automobile worth approximately $2,500.
Shortly after Gordon’s death, Trimble, as the mother and next friend of Deta Mona, filed a petition for letters of administration, determination of heirship, and declaratory relief in the Probate Division of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Ill. That court entered an order determining heirship, identifying as the only heirs of Gordon his father, Joseph Gordon, his mother, Ethel King, and his brother, two sisters, and a half brother. All of these individuals are appellees in this appeal, but only appellee King has filed a brief.
The Circuit Court excluded Deta Mona on the authority of the negative implications of § 12 of the Illinois Probate Act, which provides in relevant part:
“An illegitimate child is heir of his mother and of any maternal ancestor, and of any person from whom his mother might have inherited, if living; and the lawful issue of an illegitimate person shall represent such person and take, by descent, any estate which the parent would have taken, if living. A child who was illegitimate whose parents inter-marry and who is acknowledged by the father as the father’s child is legitimate.”
If Deta Mona had been a legitimate child, she would have inherited her father’s entire estate under Illinois law. In rejecting Deta Mona’s claim of heirship, the court sustained the constitutionality of § 12.
After a notice of appeal was filed, the Illinois Supreme Court entered an order allowing direct appeal of the decision of the Circuit Court, bypassing the Illinois Appellate Court. Appellants were granted leave to file an amicus brief in two pending consolidated appeals which presented similar challenges to the constitutionality of § 12. On June 2, 1975, the Illinois Supreme Court handed down its opinion in In re Estate of Karas, 61 Ill. 2d 40, 329 N. E. 2d 234 (1975), sustaining § 12 against all constitutional challenges, including those presented in appellants’ amicus brief. On September 24, 1975, oral argument was held in the instant case. Chief Justice Underwood orally delivered the opinion of the court from the bench, affirming the decision of the Circuit Court on the authority of Karas. A final judgment was entered on October 15, 1975.
We noted probable jurisdiction to consider the arguments that § 12 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by invidiously discriminating on the basis of illegitimacy and sex. 424 U. S. 964 (1976). We now reverse. As we conclude that the statutory discrimination against illegitimate children is unconstitutional, we do not reach the sex discrimination argument.
II
In Karas, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected the equal protection challenge to the discrimination against illegitimate children on the explicit authority of Labine v. Vincent, 401 U. S. 532 (1971). The court found that § 12 is supported by the state interests in encouraging family relationships and in establishing an accurate and efficient method of disposing of property at death. The court also found the Illinois law unobjectionable because no “insurmountable barrier” prevented illegitimate children from sharing in the estates of their fathers. By leaving a will, Sherman Gordon could have assured Deta Mona a share of his estate.
Appellees endorse the reasoning of the Illinois Supreme Court and suggest additional justifications for the statute. In weighing the constitutional sufficiency of these justifications, we are guided by our previous decisions involving equal protection challenges to laws discriminating on the basis of illegitimacy. “[T]his Court requires, at a minimum, that a statutory classification bear some rational relationship to a legitimate state purpose.” Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 406 U. S. 164, 172 (1972). In this context, the standard just stated is a minimum; the Court sometimes requires more. “Though the latitude given state economic and social regulation is necessarily broad, when state statutory classifications approach sensitive and fundamental personal rights, this Court exercises a stricter scrutiny . . . .” Ibid.
Appellants urge us to hold that classifications based on illegitimacy are “suspect,” so that any justifications must survive “strict scrutiny.” We considered and rejected a similar argument last Term in Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U. S. 495 (1976). As we recognized in Lucas, illegitimacy is analogous in many respects to the personal characteristics that have been held to be suspect when used as the basis of statutory differentiations. Id., at 505. We nevertheless concluded that the analogy was not sufficient to require “our most exacting scrutiny.” Id., at 506. Despite the conclusion that classifications based on illegitimacy fall in a “realm of less than strictest scrutiny,” Lucas also establishes that the scrutiny “is not a toothless one,” id., at 510, a proposition clearly demonstrated by our previous decisions in this area.
III
The Illinois Supreme Court prefaced its discussion of the state interests served by § 12 with a general discussion of the purpose of the statute. Quoting from its earlier opinions, the court concluded that the statute was enacted to ameliorate the harsh common-law rule under which an illegitimate child was filius nullius and incapable of inheriting from anyone. 61 Ill. 2d, at 44-45, 329 N. E. 2d, at 236-237. Although § 12 did not bring illegitimate children into parity with legitimate children, it did improve their position, thus partially achieving the asserted objective. The sufficiency of the justifications advanced for the remaining discrimination against illegitimate children must be considered in light of this motivating purpose.
A
The Illinois Supreme Court relied in part on the State’s purported interest in “the promotion of [legitimate] family relationships.” 61 Ill. 2d, at 48, 329 N. E. 2d, at 238. Although the court noted that this justification had been accepted in Labine, the opinion contains only the most perfunctory analysis. This inattention may not have been an oversight, for § 12 bears only the most attenuated relationship to the asserted goal.
In a case like this, the Equal Protection Clause requires more than the mere incantation of a proper state purpose. No one disputes the appropriateness of Illinois’ concern with the family unit, perhaps the most fundamental social institution of our society. The flaw in the analysis lies elsewhere. As we said in Lucas, the constitutionality of this law “depends upon the character of the discrimination and its relation to legitimate legislative aims.” 427 U. S., at 504. The court below did not address the relation between § 12 and the promotion of legitimate family relationships, thus leaving the constitutional analysis incomplete. The same observation can be made about this Court’s decision in Labine, but that case does not stand alone. In subsequent decisions, we have expressly considered and rejected the argument that a State may attempt to influence the actions of men and women by imposing sanctions on the children born of their illegitimate relationships.
In Weber we examined a Louisiana workmen’s compensation law which discriminated against one class of illegitimate children. Without questioning Louisiana’s interest in protecting legitimate family relationships, we rejected the argument that “persons will shun illicit relations because the offspring may not one day reap the benefits of workmen’s compensation.” 406 U. S., at 173. Although Weber distinguished Labine on other grounds, the reasons for rejecting this justification are equally applicable here:
“The status of illegitimacy has expressed through the ages society’s condemnation of irresponsible liaisons beyond the bonds of marriage. But visiting this condemnation on the head of an infant is illogical and unjust. Moreover, imposing disabilities on the illegitimate child is contrary to the basic concept of our system that legal burdens should bear some relationship to individual responsibility or wrongdoing. Obviously, no child is responsible for his birth and penalizing the illegitimate child is an ineffectual—as well as an unjust—way of deterring the parent.” 406 U. S., at 175 (footnote omitted).
The parents have the ability to conform their conduct to societal norms, but their illegitimate children can affect neither their parents’ conduct nor their own status.
B
The Illinois Supreme Court relied on Labine for another and more substantial justification: the State’s interest in "establish [ing] a method of property disposition.” 61 Ill. 2d, at 48, 329 N. E. 2d, at 238. Here the court’s analysis is more complete. Focusing specifically on the difficulty of proving paternity and the related danger of spurious claims, the court concluded that this interest explained and justified the asymmetrical statutory discrimination against the illegitimate children of intestate men. The more favorable treatment of illegitimate children claiming from their mothers’ estates was justified because “proof of a lineal relationship is more readily ascertainable when dealing with maternal ancestors.” Id., at 52, 329 N. E. 2d, at 240. Alluding to the possibilities of abuse, the court rejected a case-by-case approach to claims based on alleged paternity. Id., at 52-53, 329 N. E. 2d, at 240-241.
The more serious problems of proving paternity might justify a more demanding standard for illegitimate children claiming under their fathers’ estates than that required either for illegitimate children claiming under their mothers’ estates or for legitimate children generally. We think, however, that the Illinois Supreme Court gave inadequate consideration to the relation between § 12 and the State’s proper objective of assuring accuracy and efficiency in the disposition of property at death. The court failed to consider the possibility of a middle ground between the extremes of complete exclusion and case-by-case determination of paternity. For at least some significant categories of illegitimate children of intestate men, inheritance rights can be recognized without jeopardizing the orderly settlement of estates or the dependability of titles to property passing under intestacy laws. Because it excludes those categories of illegitimate children unnecessarily, § 12 is constitutionally flawed.
The orderly disposition of property at death requires an appropriate legal framework, the structuring of which is a matter particularly within the competence of the individual States. In exercising this responsibility, a State necessarily must enact laws governing both the procedure and substance of intestate succession. Absent infringement of a constitutional right, the federal courts have no role here, and, even when constitutional violations are alleged, those courts should accord substantial deference to a State’s statutory scheme of inheritance.
The judicial task here is the difficult one of vindicating constitutional rights without interfering unduly with the State’s primary responsibility in this area. Our previous decisions demonstrate a sensitivity to “the lurking problems with respect to proof of paternity,” Gomez v. Perez, 409 U. S. 535, 538 (1973), and the need for the States to draw “arbitrary lines . . . to facilitate potentially difficult problems of proof,” Weber, 406 U. S., at 174. “Those problems are not to be lightly brushed aside, but neither can they be made into an impenetrable barrier that works to shield otherwise invidious discrimination.” Gomez, supra, at 538. Our decision last Term in Mathews v. Lucas, supra, provides especially helpful guidance.
In Lucas we sustained provisions of the Social Security Act governing the eligibility for surviving children’s insurance benefits. One of the statutory conditions of eligibility was dependency on the deceased wage earner. 427 U. S., at 498, and n. 1. Although the Act presumed dependency for a number of categories of children, including some categories of illegitimate children, it required that the remaining illegitimate children prove actual dependency. The Court upheld the statutory classifications, finding them “reasonably related to the likelihood of dependency at death.” Id., at 509. Central to this decision was the finding that the “statute does not broadly discriminate between legitimates and illegitimates without more, but is carefully tuned to alternative considerations.” Id., at 513.
Although the present case arises in a context different from that in Lucas, the question whether the statute “is carefully tuned to alternative considerations” is equally applicable here. We conclude that § 12 does not meet this standard. Difficulties of proving paternity in some situations do not justify the total statutory disinheritance of illegitimate children whose fathers die intestate. The facts of this ease graphically illustrate the constitutional defect of § 12. Sherman Gordon was found to be the father of Deta Mona in a state-court paternity action prior to his death. On the strength of that finding, he was ordered to contribute to the support of his child. That adjudication should be equally sufficient to establish Deta Mona’s right to claim a child’s share of Gordon’s estate, for the State’s interest in the accurate and efficient disposition of property at death would not be compromised in any way by allowing her claim in these circumstances. The reach of the statute extends well beyond the asserted purposes. See Jimenez v. Weinberger, 417 U. S. 628, 637 (1974).
C
The Illinois Supreme Court also noted that the decedents whose estates were involved in the consolidated appeals could have left substantial parts of their estates to their illegitimate children by writing a will. The court cited Labine as authority for the proposition that such a possibility is constitutionally significant. 61 Ill. 2d, at 52, 329 N. E. 2d, at 240. The penultimate paragraph of the opinion in Labine distinguishes that case from Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 68 (1968), because no insurmountable barrier prevented the illegitimate child from sharing in her father’s estate. “There is not the slightest suggestion in this case that Louisiana has barred this illegitimate from inheriting from her father.” 401 U. S., at 539. The Court then listed three different steps that would have resulted in some recovery by Labine’s illegitimate daughter. Labine could have left a will; he could have legitimated the daughter by marrying her mother; and he could have given the daughter the status of a legitimate child by stating in his acknowledgment of paternity his desire to legitimate her. Ibid. In Weber our distinction of Labine was based in part on the fact that no such alternatives existed, as state law prevented the acknowledgment of the children involved. 406 U. S., at 170-171.
Despite its appearance in two of our opinions, the focus on the presence or absence of an insurmountable barrier is somewhat of an analytical anomaly. Here, as in Labine, the question is the constitutionality of a state intestate succession law that treats illegitimate children differently from legitimate children. Traditional equal protection analysis asks whether this statutory differentiation on the basis of illegitimacy is justified by the promotion of recognized state objectives. If the law cannot be sustained on this analysis, it is not clear how it can be saved by the absence of an insurmountable barrier to inheritance under other and hypothetical circumstances.
By focusing on the steps that an intestate might have taken to assure some inheritance for his illegitimate children, the analysis loses sight of the essential question: the constitutionality of discrimination against illegitimates in a state intestate succession law. If the decedent had written a will devising property to his illegitimate child, the case no longer would involve intestate succession law at all. Similarly, if the decedent had legitimated the child by marrying the child’s mother or by complying with the requirements of some other method of legitimation, the case no longer would involve discrimination against illegitimates. Hard questions cannot be avoided by a hypothetical reshuffling of the facts. If Sherman Gordon had devised his estate to Deta Mona this case would not be here. Similarly, in Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71 (1971), if the decedent had left a will naming an executor, the problem of the statutory preference for male administrators of estates of intestates would not have been presented. The opinion in Reed gives no indication that this available alternative had any constitutional significance. We think it has none in this case.
D
Finally, appellees urge us to affirm the decision below on the theory that the Illinois Probate Act, including § 12, mirrors the presumed intentions of the citizens of the State regarding the disposition of their property at death. Individualizing this theory, appellees argue that we must assume that Sherman Gordon knew the disposition of his estate under the Illinois Probate Act and that his failure to make a will shows his approval of that disposition. We need not resolve the question whether presumed intent alone can ever justify discrimination against illegitimates, for we do not think that § 12 was enacted for this purpose. The theory of presumed intent is not relied upon in the careful opinion of the Illinois Supreme Court examining both the history and the text of § 12. This omission is not without significance, as one would expect a state supreme court to identify the state interests served by a statute of its state legislature. Our own examination of § 12 convinces us that the statutory provisions at issue were shaped by forces other than the desire of the legislature to mirror the intentions of the citizens of the State with respect to their illegitimate children.
To the extent that other policies are not considered more important, legislators enacting state intestate succession laws probably are influenced by the desire to reflect the natural affinities of decedents in the allocation of estates among the categories of heirs. See Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U. S., at 514-515. A pattern of distribution favoring brothers and sisters over cousins is, for example, best explained on this basis. The difference in § 12 between the rights of illegitimate children in the estates of their fathers and mothers, however, is more convincingly explained by the other factors mentioned by the court below. Accepting in this respect the views of the Illinois Supreme Court, we find in § 12 a primary purpose to provide a system of intestate succession more just to illegitimate children than the prior law, a purpose tempered by a secondary interest in protecting against spurious claims of paternity. In the absence of a more convincing demonstration, we will not hypothesize an additional state purpose that has been ignored by the Illinois Supreme Court.
IV
For the reasons stated above, we conclude that § 12 of the Illinois Probate Act cannot be squared with the command of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Illinois Supreme Court and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Stewart, Mr. Justice Blackmun, and Mr. Justice Rehnquist dissent. Like the Supreme Court of Illinois, they find this case constitutionally indistinguishable from Labine v. Vincent, 401 U. S. 532 (1971). They would, therefore, affirm the judgment.
Ill. Rev. Stat. c. 3, § 12 (1973). Effective January 1, 1976, § 12 and the rest of the Probate Act of which it was a part were repealed and replaced by the Probate Act of 1975, Public Act 79-328. Section 12 has been replaced by Ill. Rev. Stat. c. 3, § 2-2 (1976). Although § 2-2 of the Probate Act of 1975 differs in some respects from the old § 12, that part of § 12 that is at issue here was recodified without material change in § 2-2. As the opinions below and the briefs refer to the disputed statutory provision as § 12, we will continue to refer to it that way.
Ill. Rev. Stat. c. 3, § 2-1 (b) (1976).
There is some dispute over the status of Jessie Trimble in this litigation. It has been argued that she is in the case only as the next friend of her daughter. As the question is relevant only to the claim of sex discrimination against the mothers of illegitimate children, an issue we do not reach, we need not resolve the dispute.
App. 8.
Id., at 14.
See n. 1, supra.
See n. 2, supra.
For purposes of its decision, the court assumed that the children had been acknowledged. There is no mention of a prior adjudication of paternity.
App. 54-56.
Not presented here is the appellants’ contention below that § 12 discriminates on the basis of race because of its alleged disproportionate impact on Negroes.
This case represents the 12th time since 1968 that we have considered the constitutionality of alleged discrimination on the basis of illegitimacy. The previous decisions are as follows: Mathews v. Lucas, 427 U. S. 495 (1976); Beaty v. Weinberger, 478 F. 2d 300 (CA5 1973), summarily aff’d, 418 U. S. 901 (1974); Jimenez v. Weinberger, 417 U. S. 628 (1974); New Jersey Welfare Rights Org. v. Cahill, 411 U. S. 619 (1973); Griffin v. Richardson, 346 F. Supp. 1226 (Md.), summarily aff’d, 409 U. S. 1069 (1972); Davis v. Richardson, 342 F. Supp. 588 (Conn.), summarily aff’d, 409 U. S. 1069 (1972); Gomez v. Perez, 409 U. S. 535 (1973); Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 406 U. S. 164 (1972); Labine v. Vincent, 401 U. S. 532 (1971); Glona v. American Guarantee & Liability Ins. Co., 391 U. S. 73 (1968); Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 68 (1968).
See cases cited n. 11, supra. Labine v. Vincent, supra, is difficult to place m the pattern of this Court’s equal protection decisions, and subsequent cases have limited its force as a precedent. In Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., supra, we found in Labine a recognition that judicial deference is appropriate when the challenged statute involves the “substantial state interest in providing for the stability of . . . land titles and in the prompt and definitive determination of the valid ownership of property left by decedents’. . . .” 406 U. S., at 170, quoting Labine v. Vincent, 229 So. 2d 449, 452 (La. App. 1969). We reaffirm that view, but there is a point beyond which such deference cannot justify discrimination. Although the proposition is self-evident, Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71 (1971), demonstrates that state statutes involving the disposition of property at death are not immunized from equal protection scrutiny. See also Eskra v. Morton, 524 F. 2d 9, 13 (CA7 1975) (Stevens, J.). The more specific analysis of Labine is discussed throughout the remainder of this opinion.
This purpose is not apparent from the statute. Penalizing children as a means of influencing their parents seems inconsistent with the desire of the Illinois Legislature to make the intestate succession law more just to illegitimate children. Moreover, the difference in the rights of illegitimate children in the estates of their mothers and their fathers appears to be unrelated to the purpose of promoting family relationships. In this respect the Louisiana laws at issue in Labine were quite different. Those laws differentiated on the basis of the character of the child’s illegitimacy. “Bastard children” were given no inheritance rights. “Natural children,” who could be and were acknowledged under state law, were given limited inheritance rights, but still less than those of legitimate children. 401 U. S., at 537, and n. 13. The Louisiana categories are consistent with a theory of social opprobrium regarding the parents’ relationships and with a measured, if misguided, attempt to deter illegitimate relationships.
Evidence of paternity may take a variety of forms, some creating more significant problems of inaccuracy and inefficiency than others. The States, of course, are free to recognize these differences in fashioning their requirements of proof. Our holding today goes only to those forms of proof which do not compromise the States’ interests. This clearly would be the case, for example, where there is a prior adjudication or formal acknowledgment of paternity. Thus, we would have a different case if the state statute were carefully tailored to eliminate imprecise and unduly burdensome methods of establishing paternity.
In Levy the Court struck down a Louisiana wrongful-death statute that gave legitimate, but not illegitimate, children a cause of action for the wrongful death of their parents.
Appellees characterize the Illinois intestate succession law as a “statutory will.” Because intent is a central ingredient in the disposition of property by will, the theory that intestate succession laws are “statutory wills” based on the “presumed intent” of the citizens of the State may have some superficial appeal. The theory proceeds from the initial premise that an individual could, if he wished, disinherit his illegitimate children in his will. Because the statute merely reflects the intent of those citizens who failed to make a will, discrimination against illegitimate children in intestate succession laws is said to be equally permissible. The term “statutory will,” however, cannot blind us to the fact that intestate succession laws are acts of States, not of individuals. Under the Fourteenth Amendment this is a fundamental difference.
Even if one assumed that a majority of the citizens of the State preferred to discriminate against their illegitimate children, the sentiment hardly would be unanimous. With respect to any individual, the argument of knowledge and approval of the state law is sheer fiction. The issue therefore becomes where the burden of inertia in writing a will is to fall. At least when the disadvantaged group has been a frequent target of discrimination, as illegitimates have, we doubt that a State constitutionally may place the burden on that group by invoking the theory of “presumed intent.” See Eskra v. Morton, 524 F. 2d, at 12-14 (Stevens, J.).
The Illinois statute can be distinguished in several respects from the Louisiana statute in Labine. The discrimination in Labine took a different form, suggesting different legislative objectives. See, e. g., n. 13, supra. In its impact on the illegitimate children excluded from their parents’ estates, the statute was significantly different. Under Louisiana law, all illegitimate children, “natural” and “bastard,” were entitled to support from the estate of the deceased parent. 401 U. S., at 534 n. 2. Despite these differences, it is apparent that we have examined the Illinois statute more critically than the Court examined the Louisiana statute in Labine. To the extent that our analysis in this case differs from that in Labine the more recent analysis controls.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
Respondent brought this suit in the District Court for the Southern District of Indiana on behalf of the estate of her deceased son, Joseph Jones, Jr., alleging that he suffered personal injuries from which he died because the petitioners, federal prison officials, violated his due process, equal protection, and Eighth Amendment rights. Asserting jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1331 (a), she claimed compensatory and punitive damages for the constitutional violations. Two questions are presented for decision: (1) Is a remedy available directly under the Constitution, given that respondent’s allegations could also support a suit against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act? And (2) if so, is survival of the cause of action governed by federal common law or by state statutes?
I
The District Court held that under Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U. S. 97 (1976), the allegations set out in note 1, supra, pleaded a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s proscription against infliction of cruel and unusual punishment, giving rise to a cause of action for damages under Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388 (1971). The court recognized that the decedent could have maintained this action if he had survived, but dismissed the complaint because in its view the damages remedy as a matter of federal law was limited to that provided by Indiana’s survivorship and wrongful-death laws and, as the court construed those laws, the damages available to Jones’ estate failed to meet § 1331 (a)’s $10,000 jurisdictional-amount requirement. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit agreed that an Eighth Amendment violation was pleaded under Estelle and that a cause of action was stated under Bivens, but reversed the holding that § 1331 (a)’s jurisdictional-amount requirement was not met. Rather, the Court of Appeals held that § 1331 (a) was satisfied because “whenever the relevant State survival statute would abate a Bivens-type action brought against defendants whose conduct results in death, the federal common law allows survival of the action.” 581 F. 2d 669, 675 (1978). The court reasoned that the Indiana law, if applied, would “subvert” “the policy of allowing complete vindication of constitutional rights” by making it “more advantageous for a tortfeasor to kill rather than to injure.” Id., at 674. We granted certiorari. 442 U. S. 940 (1979). We affirm.
^
Bivens established that the victims of a constitutional violation by a federal agent have a right to recover damages against the official in federal court despite the absence of any statute conferring such a right. Such a cause of action may be defeated in a particular case, however, in two situations. The first is when defendants demonstrate “special factors counselling hesitation in the absence of affirmative action by Congress.” 403 U. S., at 396; Davis v. Passman, 442 U. S. 228, 245 (1979). The second is when defendants show that Congress has provided an alternative remedy which it explicitly declared to be a substitute for recovery directly under the Constitution and viewed as equally effective. Bivens, supra, at 397; Davis v. Passman, supra, at 245-247.
Neither situation obtains in this case. First, the case involves no special factors counselling hesitation in the absence of affirmative action by Congress. Petitioners do not enjoy such independent status in our constitutional scheme as to suggest that judicially created remedies against them might be inappropriate. Davis v. Passman, supra, at 246. Moreover, even if requiring them to defend respondent’s suit might inhibit their efforts to perform their official duties, the qualified immunity accorded them under Butz v. Economou, 438 U. S. 478 (1978), provides adequate protection. See Davis v. Passman, supra, at 246.
Second, we have here no explicit congressional declaration that persons injured by federal officers’ violations of the Eighth Amendment may not recover money damages from the agents but must be remitted to another remedy, equally effective in the view of Congress. Petitioners point to nothing in the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) or its legislative history to show that Congress meant to pre-empt a Bivens remedy or to create an equally effective remedy for constitutional violations. FTCA was enacted long before Bivens was decided, but when Congress amended FTCA in 1974 to create a cause of action against the United States for intentional torts committed by federal law enforcement officers, 28 U. S. C. § 2680 (h), the congressional comments accompanying that amendment made it crystal clear that Congress views FTCA and Bivens as parallel, complementary causes of action:
“[AJfter the date of enactment of this measure, innocent individuals who are subjected to raids [like that in Bivens] will have a cause of action against the individual Federal agents and the Federal Government. Furthermore, this provision should be viewed as a counterpart to the Bivens case and its progenty [sic], in that it waives the defense of sovereign immunity so as to make the Government independently liable in damages for the same type of conduct that is alleged to have occurred in Bivens (and for which that case imposes liability upon the individual Government officials involved).” S. Rep. No. 93-588, p. 3 (1973) (emphasis supplied).
In the absence of a contrary expression from Congress, § 2680 (h) thus contemplates that victims of the kind of intentional wrongdoing alleged in this complaint shall have an action under FTCA against the United States as well as a Bivens action against the individual officials alleged to have infringed their constitutional rights.
This conclusion is buttressed by the significant fact that Congress follows the practice of explicitly stating when it means to make FTCA an exclusive remedy. See 38 U. S. C. §4116 (a), 42 U. S. C. §233 (a), 42 U. S. C. § 2458a, 10 U. S. C. § 1089 (a), and 22 U. S. C. §817 (a) (malpractice by certain Government, health personnel); 28 U. S. C. § 2679 (b) (operation of motor vehicles by federal employees); and 42 U. S. C. § 247b (k) (manufacturers of swine flu vaccine). Furthermore, Congress has not taken action on other bills that would expand the exclusivity of FTCA. See, e. g., S. 695, 96th Cong., 1st Sess. (1979); H. R. 2659, 96th Cong., 1st Sess. (1979); S. 3314, 95th Cong., 2d Sess. (1978).
Four additional factors, each suggesting that the Bivens remedy is more effective than the FTCA remedy, also support our conclusion that Congress did not intend to limit respondent to an FTCA action. First, the Bivens remedy, in addition to compensating victims, serves a deterrent purpose. See Butz v. Economou, supra, at 505. Because the Bivens remedy is recoverable against individuals, it is a more effective deterrent than the FTCA remedy against the United States. It is almost axiomatic that the threat of damages has a deterrent effect, Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U. S. 409, 442 (1976) (White, J., concurring in judgment), surely particularly so when the individual official faces personal financial liability.
Petitioners argue that FTCA liability is a more effective deterrent because the individual employees responsible for the Government’s liability would risk loss of employment and because the Government would be forced to promulgate corrective policies. That argument suggests, however, that the superiors would not take the same actions when an employee is found personally liable for violation of a citizen’s constitutional rights. The more reasonable assumption is that responsible superiors are motivated not only by concern for the public fisc but also by concern for the Government’s integrity.
Second, our decisions, although not expressly addressing and deciding the question, indicate that punitive damages maybe awarded in a Bivens suit. Punitive damages are “a particular remedial mechanism normally available in the federal courts,” Bivens, 403 U. S., at 397, and are especially appropriate to redress the violation by a Government official of a citizen’s constitutional rights. Moreover, punitive damages are available in “a proper” § 1983 action, Carey v. Piphus, 435 U. S. 247, 257, n. 11 (1978) (punitive damages not awarded because District Court found defendants “did not act with a malicious intention to deprive respondents of their rights or to do them other injury”), and Butz v. Economou, suggests that the “constitutional design” would be stood on its head if federal officials did not face at least the same liability as state officials guilty of the same constitutional transgression. 438 U. S., at 504. But punitive damages in an FTCA suit are statutorily prohibited. 28 U. S. C. § 2674. Thus FTCA is that much less effective than a Bivens action as a deterrent to unconstitutional acts.
Third, a plaintiff cannot opt for a jury in an FTCA action, 28 U. S. C. § 2402, as he may in a Bivens suit. Petitioners argue that this is an irrelevant difference because juries have been biased against Bivens claimants. Reply Brief for Petitioners 7, and n. 6; Brief for Petitioners 30-31, n. 30. Significantly, however, they do not assert that judges trying the claims as FTCA actions would have been more receptive, and they cannot explain why the plaintiff should not retain the choice.
Fourth, an action under FTCA exists only if the State in which the alleged misconduct occurred would permit a cause of action for that misconduct to go forward. 28 U. S. C. § 1346 (b) (United States liable “in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred”). Yet it is obvious that the liability of federal officials for violations of citizens’ constitutional rights should be governed by uniform rules. See Part III, infra. The question whether respondent’s action for violations by federal officials of federal constitutional rights should be left to the vagaries of the laws of the several States admits of only a negative answer in the absence of a contrary congressional resolution.
Plainly FTCA is not a sufficient protector of the citizens’ constitutional rights, and without a clear congressional mandate we cannot hold that Congress relegated respondent exclusively to the FTCA remedy.
Ill
Bivens actions are a creation of federal law and, therefore, the question whether respondent’s action survived Jones’ death is a question of federal law. See Burks v. Lasker, 441 U. S. 471, 476 (1979). Petitioners, however, would have us fashion a federal rule of survivorship that incorporates the survivorship laws of the forum State, at least where the state law is not inconsistent with federal law. Respondent argues, on the other hand, that only a uniform federal rule of sur-vivorship is compatible with the goal of deterring federal officials from infringing federal constitutional rights in the manner alleged in respondent’s complaint. We agree with respondent. Whatever difficulty we might have resolving the question were the federal involvement less clear, we hold that only a uniform federal rule of survivorship will suffice to redress the constitutional deprivation here alleged and to protect against repetition of such conduct.
In short, we agree with and adopt the reasoning of the Court of Appeals, 581 F. 2d, at 674-675 (footnote omitted):
“The essentiality of the survival of civil rights claims for complete vindication of constitutional rights is buttressed by the need for uniform treatment of those claims, at least when they are against federal officials. As this very case illustrates, uniformity cannot be achieved if courts are limited to applicable state law. Here the relevant Indiana statute would not permit survival of the claim, while in Beard [v. Robinson, 563 F. 2d 331 (CA7 1977),] the Illinois statute permitted survival of the Bivens action. The liability of federal agents for violation of constitutional rights should not depend upon where the violation occurred. ... In sum, we hold that whenever the relevant state survival statute would abate a Bivens-type action brought against defendants whose conduct results in death, the federal common law allows survival of the action.”
Robertson v. Wegmann, 436 U. S. 584 (1978), holding that a § 1983 action would abate in accordance with Louisiana survivorship law is not to the contrary. There the plaintiff’s death was not caused by the acts of the defendants upon which the suit was based. Moreover, Robertson expressly recognized that to prevent frustrations of the deterrence goals of § 1983 (which in part also underlie Bivens actions, see Part II, supra) “[a] state official contemplating illegal activity must always be prepared to face the prospect of a i 1983 action being filed against him.” 436 U. S., at 592. A federal official contemplating unconstitutional conduct similarly must be prepared to face the prospect of a Bivens action. A uniform rule that claims such as respondent’s survive the decedent’s death is essential if we are not to “frustrate in [an] important way the achievement” of the goals of Bivens actions. Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U. S. 696, 702 (1966).
Affirmed.
More specifically, respondent alleged that petitioners, being fully apprised of the gross inadequacy of medical facilities and staff at the Federal Correction Center in Terre Haute, Ind., and of the seriousness of Jones’ chronic asthmatic condition, nonetheless kept him in that facility against the advice of doctors, failed to give him competent medical attention for some eight hours after he had an asthmatic attack, administered contraindicated drugs which made his attack more severe, attempted to use a respirator known to be inoperative which further impeded his breathing, and delayed for too long a time his transfer to an outside hospital. The complaint further alleges that Jones’ death resulted from these acts and omissions, that petitioners were deliberately indifferent to Jones’ serious medical needs, and that their indifference was in part attributable to racial prejudice.
This question was presented in the petition for certiorari, but not in either the District Court or the Court of Appeals. However, respondent does not object to its decision by this Court. Though we do not normally decide issues not presented below, we are not precluded from doing so. E. g., Youakim v. Miller, 425 U. S. 231 (1976). Here, the issue is squarely presented and fully briefed. It is an important, recurring issue and is properly raised in another petition for certiorari being held pending disposition of this case. See Loe v. Armistead, 582 F. 2d 1291 (CA4 1978), cert. pending sub nom. Moffitt v. Loe, No. 78-1260. We conclude that the interests of judicial administration will be served by addressing the issue on its merits.
Petitioners do not contest the determination that the allegations satisfy the standards set out in EsteUe.
The relevant Indiana law provides that a personal injury claim does not survive where the acts complained of caused the victim’s death. Ind. Code §34-1-1-1 (1976). Indiana does provide a wrongful-death cause of action for the personal representative of one whose death is caused by an alleged wrongful act or omission. Damages may “includ[e], but [are] not limited to, reasonable medical, hospital, funeral and burial expenses, and lost earnings.” But if the decedent is not survived by a spouse, dependent child, or dependent next of kin, then the recovery is limited to expenses incurred in connection with the death. Ind. Code §34r-l-l-2 (1976).
The District Court read the complaint in this case as stating claims under both §§ 34-1-1-1 and 34H-1-2. Accordingly, the court assumed that recovery on the claim was limited to expenses (all of which would be paid by the Federal Government) only because Jones died without a spouse or any dependents. The Court of Appeals read the complaint as stating only a survivorship claim on behalf of Jones under § 34-1-1-1. Thus it assumed that the claim would have abated even if Jones had left dependents or a spouse. 581 F. 2d 669, 672, n. 4 (1978). Resolution of this conflict is irrelevant in light of our holding today.
To satisfy this test, petitioners need not show that Congress recited any specific “magic words.” See the dissenting opinion of The Cheep Justice, post, at 31, and n. 2. Instead, our inquiry at this step in the analysis is whether Congress has indicated that it intends the statutory remedy to replace, rather than to complement, the Bivens remedy. Where Congress decides to enact a statutory remedy which it views as fuEy adequate only in combination with the Bivens remedy, e. g., 28 U. S. C. § 2680 (h), that congressional decision should be given effect by the courts.
Title 42 U. S. C. § 1983 serves similar purposes. See, e. g., Robertson v. Wegmann, 436 U. S. 584, 590-591 (1978); Carey v. Piphus, 435 U. S. 247, 256 (1978); Mitchum v. Foster, 407 U. S. 225, 242 (1972); Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167, 172-187 (1961).
Indeed, underlying the qualified immunity which public officials enjoy for actions taken in good faith is the fear that exposure to personál liability would otherwise deter them from acting at all. See Butz v. Economou, 438 U. S. 478, 497 (1978); Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U. S. 232, 240 (1974).
Some doubt has been cast on the validity of the assumption that there exist adequate mechanisms for disciplining federal employees in such cases. See Testimony of Griffin B. Bell, Attorney General of the United States, Joint Hearing on Amendments to the Federal Tort Claims Act before the Subcommittee on Citizens and Shareholders Rights and Remedies and the Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 95th Cong., 2d Sess., pt. 1, p. 6' (1978).
Moreover, after Carey punitive damages may be the only significant remedy available in some § 1983 actions where constitutional rights are maliciously violated but the victim cannot prove compensable injury.
Petitioners argue that the availability of punitive damages or a jury trial under Bivens is irrelevant because neither is a necessary element of a remedial scheme. But that argument completely misses the mark. The issue is not whether a Bivens cause of action or any one of its particular features is essential. Rather the inquiry is whether Congress has created what it views as an equally effective remedial scheme. Otherwise the two can exist side by side. Moreover, no one difference need independently render FTCA inadequate. It can fail to be equally effective on the cumulative basis of more than one difference.
Robertson fashioned its holding by reference to 42 IT. S. C. § 1988, which requires that § 1983 actions be governed by
“the common law, as modified and changed by the constitution and statutes of the State wherein the court having jurisdiction of [the] civil . . . cause is held, so far as the same is not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States.”
Section 1988 does not in terms apply to Bivens actions, and there are cogent reasons not to apply it to such actions even by analogy. Bivens defendants are federal officials brought into federal court for violating the Federal Constitution. No state interests are implicated by applying purely federal law to them. While it makes some sense to allow aspects of § 1983 litigation to vary according to the laws of the States under whose authority § 1983 defendants work, federal officials have no similar claim to be bound only by the law of the State in which they happen to work. Bivens, 403 U. S., at 409 (Harlan, J., concurring in judgment). Moreover, these petitioners have the power to transfer prisoners to facilities in any one of several States which may have different rules governing survivorship or other aspects of the case, thereby controlling to some extent the law that would apply to their own wrongdoing. See Robertson, 436 U. S., at 592-593, and n. 10. Another aspect of the power to transfer prisoners freely within the federal prison system is that there is no reason to expect that any given prisoner will have any ties to the State in which he is incarcerated, and, therefore, the State will have little interest in having its law applied to that prisoner. Nevertheless, as to other sur-vivorship questions that may arise in Bivens actions, it may be that the federal law should choose to incorporate' state rules as a matter of convenience. We leave such questions for another day.
Otherwise, an official could know at the time he decided to act whether his intended victim’s claim would survive. Cf. Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp. (whether statute of limitation will matter cannot be known at time of conduct).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Marshall
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Respondent. was convicted in the Southern District of New York of possessing firearms in violation of Title VII of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U. S. C. App. § 1202 (a). In pertinent part, that statute reads:
“Any person who—
“(1) has been convicted by a court of the United States or of a State or any political subdivision thereof of a felony . . . and who receives, possesses, or transports in commerce or affecting commerce . . . any firearm shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned for not more than two years, or both.”
The evidence showed that respondent, who had previously been convicted of a felony in New York State, possessed on separate occasions a pistol and then a shotgun. There was no allegation in the indictment and no attempt by the prosecution to show that either firearm had been possessed “in commerce or affecting commerce.” The Government proceeded on the assumption that § 1202 (a)(1) banned all possessions and receipts of firearms by convicted felons, and that no connection with interstate commerce had to be demonstrated in individual cases.
After his conviction, respondent unsuccessfully moved for arrest of judgment on two primary grounds: that the statute did not reach possession of a firearm not shown to have been “in commerce or affecting commerce,” and that, if it did, Congress had overstepped its constitutional powers under the Commerce Clause. 308 F. Supp. 1385. The Court of Appeals reversed the conviction, being of the view that if the Government’s construction of the statute were accepted, there would be substantial doubt about the statute’s constitutionality. 434 F. 2d 1296. We granted certiorari to resolve a conflict among lower courts over the proper reach of the statute. We affirm the judgment of the court below, but for substantially different reasons. We conclude that § 1202 is ambiguous in the critical respect. Because its sanctions are criminal and because, under the Government’s broader reading, the statute would mark a major inroad into a domain traditionally left to the States, we refuse to adopt the broad reading in the absence of a clearer direction from Congress.
I
Not wishing “to give point to the quip that only when legislative history is doubtful do you go to the statute,” we begin by looking to the text itself. The critical textual question is whether the statutory phrase “in commerce or affecting commerce” applies to “possesses” and “receives” as well as to “transports.” If it does, then the Government must prove as an essential element of the offense that a possession, receipt, or transportation was “in commerce or affecting commerce” — a burden not undertaken in this prosecution for possession.
While the statute does not read well under either view, "the natural construction of the language" suggests that the clause "in commerce or affecting commerce" qualifies all three antecedents in the list. Porto Rico Railway, Light & Power Co. v. Mor, 253 U. S. 345, 348 (1920). Since "in commerce or affecting commerce" undeniably applies to at least one antecedent, and since it makes sense with all three, the more plausible construction here is that it in fact applies to all three. But although this is a beginning, the argument is certainly neither overwhelming nor decisive.
In a more significant respect, however, the language of the statute does provide support for respondent’s reading. Undeniably, the phrase “in commerce or affecting commerce” is part of the “transports” offense. But if that phrase applies only to “transports,” the statute would have a curious reach. While permitting transportation of a firearm unless it is transported “in commerce or affecting commerce,” the statute would prohibit all possessions of firearms, and both interstate and intrastate receipts. Since virtually all transportations, whether interstate or intrastate, involve an accompanying possession or receipt, it is odd indeed to argue that on the one hand the statute reaches all possessions and receipts, and on the other hand outlaws only interstate transportations. Even assuming that a person can “transport” a firearm under the statute without possessing or receiving it, there is no reason consistent with any discernible purpose of the statute to apply an interstate commerce requirement to the “transports” offense alone. In short, the Government has no convincing explanation for the inclusion of the clause “in commerce or affecting commerce” if that phrase only applies to the word “transports.” It is far more likely that the phrase was meant to apply to “possesses” and “receives” as well as “transports.” As the court below noted, the inclusion of such a phrase “mirror [s] the approach to federal criminal jurisdiction reflected in many other federal statutes.”
Nevertheless, the Government argues that its reading is to be preferred because the defendant’s narrower interpretation would make Title YII redundant with Title IV of the same Act. Title IV, inter alia, makes it a crime for four categories of people — including those convicted of a crime punishable for a term exceeding one year — “to ship or transport any firearm or ammunition in interstate or foreign commerce . . . [or] to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.” 18 U. S. C. §§ 922 (g) and (h). As Senator Long, the sponsor of Title VII, represented to Senator Dodd, the sponsor of Title IV, Title VII indeed does complement Title IV. 114 Cong. Rec. 14774; see also 114 Cong. Rec. 16286. Respondent’s reading of Title VII is fully consistent with this view. First, although subsections of the two Titles do address their prohibitions to some of the same people, each statute also reaches substantial groups of people not reached by the other. Secondly, Title VII complements Title IV by punishing a broader class of behavior. Even under respondent’s view, a Title VII offense is made out if the firearm was possessed or received “in commerce or affecting commerce”; however, Title IV apparently does not reach possessions or intrastate transactions at all, even those with an interstate commerce nexus, but is limited to the sending or receiving of firearms as part of an interstate transportation.
In addition, whatever reading is adopted, Title VII and Title IV are, in part, redundant. The interstate commerce requirement in Title VII minimally applies to transportation. Since Title IV also prohibits convicted criminals from transporting firearms in interstate commerce, the two Titles overlap under both readings. The Government’s broader reading of Title VII does not eliminate the redundancy, but simply creates a larger area in which there is no overlap. While the Government would be on stronger ground if its reading were necessary to give Title VII some unique and independent thrust, this is not the case here. In any event, circumstances surrounding the passage of Title VII make plain that Title VII was not carefully molded to complement Title IV. Title VII was a last-minute Senate amendment to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act. The Amendment was hastily passed, with little discussion, no hearings, and no report. The notion that it was enacted to dovetail neatly with Title IV rests perhaps on a conception of the model legislative process; but we cannot pretend that all statutes are model statutes. While courts should interpret a statute with an eye to the surrounding statutory landscape and an ear for harmonizing potentially discordant provisions, these guiding principles are not substitutes for congressional lawmaking. In our view, no conclusion can be drawn from Title IV concerning the correct interpretation of Title VII.
Other aspects of the meager legislative history, however, do provide some significant support for the Government’s interpretation. On the Senate floor, Senator Long, who introduced § 1202, described various evils that prompted his statute. These evils included assassinations of public figures and threats to the operation of businesses significant enough in the aggregate to affect commerce. Such evils, we note, would be most thoroughly mitigated by forbidding every possession of any firearm by specified classes of especially risky people, regardless of whether the gun was possessed, received, or transported “in commerce or affecting commerce.” In addition, specific remarks of the Senator can be read to state that the amendment reaches the mere possession of guns without any showing of an interstate commerce nexus. But Senator Long never specifically says that no connection with commerce need be shown in the individual case. And nothing in his statements explains why, if an interstate commerce nexus is irrelevant in individual cases, the phrase “in commerce or affecting commerce” is in the statute at all. But even if Senator Long’s remarks were crystal clear to us, they were apparently not crystal clear to his congressional colleagues. Meager as the discussion of Title VII was, one of the few Congressmen who discussed the amendment summarized Title VII as “mak[ing] it a Federal crime to take, possess, or receive a firearm across State lines . . . 114 Cong. Rec. 16298 (statement of Rep. Pollock).
In short, “the legislative history of [the] Act hardly speaks with that clarity of purpose which Congress supposedly furnishes courts in order to enable them to enforce its true will.” Universal Camera Corp. v. NLRB, 340 U. S. 474, 483 (1951). Here, as in other cases, the various remarks by legislators “are sufficiently ambiguous insofar as this narrow issue is concerned ... to invite mutually destructive dialectic,” and not much more. FCC v. Columbia Broadcasting System, 311 U. S. 132, 136 (1940). Taken together, the statutory materials are inconclusive on the central issue of whether or not the statutory phrase “in commerce or affecting commerce” applies to “possesses” and “receives” as well as “transports.” While standing alone, the legislative history might tip in the Government’s favor, the respondent explains far better the presence of critical language in the statute. The Government concedes that “the statute is not a model of logic or clarity.” Pet. for Cert. 5. After “seiz[ing] every thing from which aid can be derived,” United States v. Fisher, 2 Cranch 358, 386 (1805) (Marshall, C. J.), we are left with an ambiguous statute.
II
Given this ambiguity, we adopt the narrower reading: the phrase “in commerce or affecting commerce” is part of all three offenses, and the present conviction must be set aside because the Government has failed to show the requisite nexus with interstate commerce. This result is dictated by two wise principles this Court has long followed.
First, as we have recently reaffirmed, “ambiguity concerning the ambit of criminal statutes should be resolved in favor of lenity.” Rewis v. United States, 401 U. S. 808, 812 (1971). See also Ladner v. United States, 358 U. S. 169, 177 (1958); Bell v. United States, 349 U. S. 81 (1955); United States v. Five Gambling Devices, 346 U. S. 441 (1953) (plurality opinion for affirmance). In various ways over the years, we have stated that "when choice has to be made between two readings of what conduct Congress has made a crime, it is appropriate, before we choose the harsher alternative, to require that Congress should have spoken in language that is clear and definite." United States v. Universal C. I. T. Credit Corp., 344 U. S. 218, 221-222 (1952). This principle is founded on two policies that have long been part of our tradition. First, "a fair warning should be given to the world in language that the common world will understand, of what the law intends to do if a certain line is passed. To make the warning fair, so far as possible the line should be clear." McBoyle v. United States, 283 U. S. 25, 27 (1931) (Holmes, J.). See also United States v. Cardiff, 344 U. S. 174 (1952). Second, because of the seriousness of criminal penalties, and because criminal punishment usually represents the moral condemnation of the community, legislatures and not courts should define criminal activity. This policy embodies "the instinctive distaste against men languishing in prison unless the lawmaker has clearly said they should." H. Friendly, Mr. Justice Frankfurter and the Reading of Statutes, in Benchmarks 196, 209 (1967). Thus, where there is ambiguity in a criminal statute, doubts are resolved in favor of the defendant. Here, we conclude that Congress has not "plainly and unmistakably," United States v. Gradwell, 243 U. S. 476, 485 (1917), made it a federal crime for a convicted felon simply to possess a gun absent some demonstrated nexus with interstate commerce.
There is a second principle supporting today’s result: unless Congress conveys its purpose clearly, it will not be deemed to have significantly changed the federal-state balance. Congress has traditionally been reluctant to define as a federal crime conduct readily denounced as criminal by the States. This congressional policy is rooted in the same concepts of American federalism that have provided the basis for judge-made doctrines. See, e. g., Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971). As this Court emphasized only last Term in Rewis v. United States, supra, we will not be quick to assume that Congress has meant to effect a significant change in the sensitive relation between federal and state criminal jurisdiction. In traditionally sensitive areas, such as legislation affecting the federal balance, the requirement of clear statement assures that the legislature has in fact faced, and intended to bring into issue, the critical matters involved in the judicial decision. In Rewis, we declined to accept an expansive interpretation of the Travel Act. To do so, we said then, “would alter sensitive federal-state relationships [and] could overextend limited federal police resources.” While we noted there that “[i]t is not for us to weigh the merits of these factors,” we went on to conclude that “the fact that they are not even discussed in the legislative history . . . strongly suggests that Congress did not intend that [the statute have the broad reach].” 401 U. S., at 812. In the instant case, the broad construction urged by the Government renders traditionally local criminal conduct a matter for federal enforcement and would also involve a substantial extension of federal police resources. Absent proof of some interstate commerce nexus in each case, § 1202 (a) dramatically intrudes upon traditional state criminal jurisdiction. As in Rewis, the legislative history provides scanty basis for concluding that Congress faced these serious questions and meant to affect the federal-state balance in the way now claimed by the Government. Absent a clearer statement of intention from Congress than is present here, we do not interpret § 1202 (a) to reach the “mere possession” of firearms.
III
Having concluded that the commerce requirement in § 1202 (a) must be read as part of the “possesses” and “receives” offenses, we add a final word about the nexus with interstate commerce that must be shown in individual cases. The Government can obviously meet its burden in a variety of ways. We note only some of these. For example, a person “possesses ... in commerce or affecting commerce” if at the time of the offense the gun was moving interstate or on an interstate facility, or if the possession affects commerce. Significantly broader in reach, however, is the offense of “receiv[ing] ... in commerce or affecting commerce,” for we conclude that the Government meets its burden here if it demonstrates that the firearm received has previously traveled in interstate commerce. This is not the narrowest possible reading of the statute, but canons of clear statement and strict construction do “not mean that every criminal statute must be given the narrowest possible meaning in complete disregard of the purpose of the legislature.” United States v. Bramblett, 348 U. S. 503, 510 (1955). We have resolved the basic uncertainty about the statute in favor of the narrow reading, concluding that “in commerce or affecting commerce” is part of the offense of possessing or receiving a firearm. But, given the evils that prompted the statute and the basic legislative purpose of restricting the firearm-related activity of convicted felons, the readings we give to the commerce requirement, although not all narrow, are appropriate. And consistent with our regard for the sensitive relation between federal and state criminal jurisdiction, our reading preserves as an element of all the offenses a requirement suited to federal criminal jurisdiction aione.
The judgment is
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Brennan joins the judgment of the Court and the opinion except for Part III. No question of the quantum of evidence necessary to establish the Government’s prima facie case is before the Court and he would await a case properly presenting that question before deciding it.
Section 1202 (a) reads in full:
“Any person who—
“(1) has been convicted by a court of the United States or of a State or any political subdivision thereof of a felony, or
“(2) has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions, or
“(3) has been adjudged by a court of the United States or of a State or any political subdivision thereof of being mentally incompetent, or
“(4) having been a citizen of the United States has renounced his citizenship, or
“(5) being an alien is illegally or unlawfully in the United States, and who receives, possesses, or transports in commerce or affecting commerce, after the date of enactment of this Act, any firearm shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned for not more than two years, or both.”
Respondent was acquitted on another count charging him with carrying a firearm during the commission of a felony (the sale of a narcotic drug), a federal offense under 18 U. S. C. §924 (c)(2).
At this date, six circuits and numerous district courts have decided the issue. The Government’s view was adopted in United States v. Cabbler, 429 F. 2d 577 (CA4 1970), cert. denied, 400 U. S. 901; United States v. Donofrio, 450 F. 2d 1054 (CA5 1971); Stevens v. United States, 440 F. 2d 144 (CA6 1971) (one judge dissenting); United States v. Synnes, 438 F. 2d 764 (CA8 1971); United States v. Daniels, 431 F. 2d 697 (CA9 1970). The result reached by the Second Circuit in this case has also been reached in United States v. Harbin, 313 F. Supp. 50 (ND Ind. 1970); United States v. Steed, No. CR 70-57 (WD Tenn., May 11, 1970); United States v. Phelps, No. CR 14,465 (MD Tenn., Feb. 10, 1970); United States v. Francis, No. CR 12,684 (ED Tenn., Dec. 12, 1969).
In light of our disposition of the case, we do not reach the question whether, upon appropriate findings, Congress can constitutionally punish the “mere possession” of firearms; thus, we need not consider the relevance, in that connection, of our recent decision in Perez v. United States, 402 U. S. 146 (1971). The question whether the definition of “felony” in § 1202 (c) (2) creates a classification violating the Fifth Amendment was not raised in the Government’s Petition for Certiorari, and is also not considered here.
Frankfurter, Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes, 47 Col. L. Rev. 527, 543 (1947).
Compare United States v. Standard Brewery, Inc., 251 U. S. 210, 218 (1920), with FTC v. Mandel Brothers, Inc., 359 U. S. 385, 389-390 (1959); see also 2 J. Sutherland, Statutory Construction §4921 (3d ed. 1943); K. Llewellyn, The Common Law Tradition 527 (1960).
The Government, noting that there is no comma after “transports,” argues that the punctuation indicates a congressional intent to limit the qualifying phrase to the last antecedent. But many leading grammarians, while sometimes noting that commas at the end of series can avoid ambiguity, concede that use of such commas is discretionary. See, e. g., B. Evans & C. Evans, A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage 103 (1957); M. Nicholson, A Dictionary of American-English Usage 94 (1957); R. Copperud, A Dictionary of Usage and Style 94-95 (1964); cf. W. Strunk & E. White, The Elements of Style 1-2 (1959). When grammarians are divided, and surely where they are cheerfully tolerant, we will not attach significance to an omitted comma. It is enough to say that the statute’s punctuation is fully consistent with the respondent’s interpretation, and that in this case grammatical expertise will not help to clarify the statute’s meaning.
The Government urges that “transports” includes the act of “causing a firearm to be transported,” and therefore would- connote an offense separate in some cases from “receives” or “possesses.” From this, the Government argues that “Congress might have felt that the broader scope of the term ‘transports/ as compared to the terms ‘receives’ or ‘possesses/ justified its qualification by the interstate commerce requirement.” Brief for the United States 14 — 15. The Government’s view about the comparative breadth of the various offenses certainly does not follow from its definition of “transports.” But beyond that, its argument about what Congress “might have felt” is purely speculative, and finds no support in any arguable purpose of the statute. There is certainly no basis for concluding that Congress was less concerned about the transporting and supplying of guns than their acquisition.
434 F. 2d, at 1298. See, e. g., 18 U. S. C. § 2421 (prostitution); 18 U. S. C. § 1952 (Travel Act); 18 U. S. C. § 1951 (robbery and extortion); 18 U. S. C. § 1231 (strikebreaking); 18 U. S. C. § 1201 (kidnaping); 18 U. S. C. § 1084 (gambling); 18 U. S. C. § 842 (i) (explosives); 15 U. S. C. § 1 et seq. (antitrust); 15 U. S. C. § 77e (securities fraud).
Title VII limits the firearm-related activity of convicted felons, dishonorable dischargees from the Armed Services, persons adjudged “mentally incompetent,” aliens illegally in the country, and former citizens who have renounced their citizenship. See n. 1, supra. A felony is defined as “any offense punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year, but does not include any offense (other than one involving a firearm or explosive) classified as a misdemeanor under the laws of a State and punishable by a term of imprisonment of two years or less 18 U. S. C. App. § 1202 (c)(2).
Title IV reaches persons “under indictment for, or . . . convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year”; fugitives from justice; users or addicts of various drugs; persons adjudicated as “mental defective[s] or . . . committed” to a mental institution. 18 U. S. C. §§ 922 (g) and (h).
Title IV, 18 U. S. C. §§ 922 (g) and (h), is a modified and recodified version of 15 U. S. C. §§902 (e) and (f) (1964 ed.), 75 Stat. 757, which in turn amended the original statute passed in 1938, 52 Stat. 1250, 1251. Each amendment enlarged the group of people coming within the Act’s substantive prohibitions against transportation or receipt of firearms in interstate commerce. The wording of the substantive offense has remained identical, although the original Act had a provision that possession of a firearm “shall be presumptive evidence that such firearm or ammunition was shipped or transported or received [in interstate or foreign commerce].” That presumption was struck down in Tot v. United States, 319 U. S. 463 (1943), and the Court there noted:
“[T]he Act is confined to the receipt of firearms or ammunition as a part of interstate transportation and does not extend to the receipt, in an intrastate transaction, of such articles which, at some prior time, have been transported interstate.” Id., at 466.
While the reach of Title IV itself is a question to be decided finally some other day, the Government has presented here no learning or other evidence indicating that the 1968 Act changed the prior approach to the “receipt” offense. See, e. g., S. Rep. No. 1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 115 (1968).
The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 started its life as a measure designed to aid state and local governments in law enforcement by means of financial and administrative assistance. See H. R. Rep. No. 488, 90th Cong., 1st Sess. (1967). The bill passed the House on August 8, 1967, and went to the Senate. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate (S. 917) and went to the Committee on the Judiciary, which rewrote it completely. See S. Rep. No. 1097, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., supra. The amendments included the much-debated provisions regarding the admissibility of confessions, wiretapping, and state firearms control.
On May 17, 1968, Senator Long introduced on the floor his amendment to S. 917, which he designated Title VII. His introductory remarks set forth the purpose of the amendment. 114 Cong. Rec. 13867-13869. About a week later he explained his amendment once again. There was a brief debate; the reaction was favorable but cautious, with “further thought” and “study” being suggested by several favorably inclined Senators who observed some problems with the bill as drafted. Unexpectedly, however, there was a call for a vote and Title VII passed without modification. See 114 Cong. Rec. 14772-14775. The amendment received only passing mention in the House discussion of the bill, 114 Cong. Rec. 16286, 16298, and never received committee consideration or study in the House either.
See 114 Cong. Rec. 13868-13871, 14772-14775.
For example, Senator Long began his floor statement by announcing:
“I have prepared an amendment which I will offer at an appropriate time, simply setting forth the fact that anybody who has been convicted of a felony [or comes within certain other categories] ... is not permitted to possess a firearm . . . .” 114 Cong. Rec. 13868.
For the same, and additional, reasons, § 1201, which contains the congressional “findings” applicable to § 1202 (a), is not decisive support for the Government. That section reports that:
“The Congress hereby finds and declares that the receipt, possession, or transportation of a firearm by felons, veterans who are discharged under dishonorable conditions, mental incompetents, aliens who are illegally in the country, and former citizens who have renounced their citizenship, constitutes—
“(1) a burden on commerce or threat affecting the free flow of commerce,
“(2) a threat to the safety of the President of the United States and Vice President of the United States,
“(3) an impediment or a threat to the exercise of free speech and the free exercise of a religion guaranteed by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and
“(4) a threat to the continued and effective operation of the Government of the United States and of the government of each State guaranteed by article IV. of the Constitution.”
The Government argues that these findings would have been “wholly unnecessary” unless Congress intended to prohibit all receipts and possessions of firearms by felons. But these findings of “burdens” and “threats” simply state Congress’ view of the constitutional basis for its power to act; the findings do not tell us how much of Congress’ perceived power was in fact invoked. That the findings in fact support a statute broader than the one actually passed is suggested by the fact that “in commerce or affecting commerce” does not appear at all in the introductory clause to the “findings,” even though § 1202 (a) contains the phrase and concededly reaches only transportation “in commerce or affecting commerce.”
Holmes prefaced his much-quoted statement with the observation that “it is not likely that a criminal will carefully consider the text of the law before he murders or steals . . . .” But in the case of gun acquisition and possession it is not unreasonable to imagine a citizen attempting to “[steer] a careful course between violation of the statute [and lawful conduct],” United States v. Hood, 343 U. S. 148, 151 (1952). Of course, where there is a state law prohibiting felons from possessing firearms, as in New York State, N. Y. Penal Law § 265.05 (Supp. 1971-1972), it may be unreal to argue that there are notice problems under the federal law. There are many States, however, that do not have their own laws prohibiting felons from possessing firearms. See Geisel, Roll, & Wettick, The Effectiveness of State and Local Regulation of Handguns: A Statistical Analysis, 1969 Duke L. J. 647, 652-653. Since ex-offenders in these States are limited only by the federal gun control laws, the notice problem of that law may be quite real.
Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, 310 U. S. 469, 513 (1940); United States v. Five Gambling Devices, 346 U. S. 441, 449-450 (1953) (plurality opinion); FTC v. Bunte Bros., Inc., 312 U. S. 349, 351, 354-355 (1941); Frankfurter, Some Reflections on the Reading of Statutes, 47 Col. L. Rev. 527, 539-540 (1947). Cf. Auto Workers v. Wisconsin Board, 351 U. S. 266, 274-275 (1956); Palmer v. Massachusetts, 308 U. S. 79, 83-84 (1939); Leiter Minerals, Inc. v. United States, 352 U. S. 220, 225-226 (1957).
H. Hart & A. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law 1241 (tent. ed. 1958).
This reading preserves a significant difference between the “receipt” offenses under Title IV and Title VII. See supra, at 342-343.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Chief Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
On February 10, 1984, a police officer in Boulder, Colorado, arrested respondent Steven Lee Bertine for driving while under the influence of alcohol. After Bertine was taken into custody and before the arrival of a tow truck to take Bertine’s van to an impoundment lot, a backup officer inventoried the contents of the van. The officer opened a closed backpack in which he found controlled substances, cocaine paraphernalia, and a large amount of cash. Bertine was subsequently charged with driving while under the influence of alcohol, unlawful possession of cocaine with intent to dispense, sell, and distribute, and unlawful possession of methaqualone. We are asked to decide whether the Fourth Amendment prohibits the State from proving these charges with the evidence discovered during the inventory of Ber-tine’s van. We hold that it does not.
The backup officer inventoried the van in accordance with local police procedures, which require a detailed inspection and inventory of impounded vehicles. He found the backpack directly behind the frontseat of the van. Inside the pack, the officer observed a nylon bag containing metal canisters. Opening the canisters, the officer discovered that they contained cocaine, methaqualone tablets, cocaine paraphernalia, and $700 in cash. In an outside zippered pouch of the backpack, he also found $210 in cash in a sealed envelope. After completing the inventory of the van, the officer had the van towed to an impound lot and brought the backpack, money, and contraband to the police station.
After Bertine was charged with the offenses described above, he moved to suppress the evidence found during the inventory search on the ground, inter alia, that the search of the closed backpack and containers exceeded the permissible scope of such a search under the Fourth Amendment. The Colorado trial court ruled that probable causé supported Bertine’s arrest and that the police officers had made the decisions to impound the vehicle and to conduct a thorough inventory search in good faith. Although noting that the inventory of the vehicle was performed in a “somewhat slipshod” manner, the District Court concluded that “the search of the backpack was done for the purpose of protecting the owner’s property, protection of the police from subsequent claims of loss or stolen property, and the protection of the police from dangerous instrumentalities.” App. 81-83. The court observed that the standard procedures for impounding vehicles mandated a “detailed inventory involving the opening of containers and the listing of [their] contents.” Id., at 81. Based on these findings, the court determined that the inventory search did not violate Bertine’s rights under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Id., at 83. The court, nevertheless, granted Bertine’s motion to suppress, holding that the inventory search violated the Colorado Constitution.
On the State’s interlocutory appeal, the Supreme Court of Colorado affirmed. 706 P. 2d 411 (1985). In contrast to the District Court, however, the Colorado Supreme Court premised its ruling on the United States Constitution. The court recognized that in South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S. 364 (1976), we had held inventory searches of automobiles to be consistent with the Fourth Amendment, and that in Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U. S. 640 (1983), we had held that the inventory search of personal effects of an arrestee at a police station was also permissible under that Amendment. The Supreme Court of Colorado felt, however, that our decisions in Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U. S. 753 (1979), and United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977), holding searches of closed trunks and suitcases to violate the Fourth Amendment, meant that Opperman and Lafayette did not govern this case.
We granted certiorari to consider the important and recurring question of federal law decided by the Colorado Supreme Court. 475 U. S. 1081 (1986). As that court recognized, inventory searches are now a well-defined exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment. See Lafayette, supra, at 643; Opperman, supra, at 367-376. The policies behind the warrant requirement are not implicated in an inventory search, Opperman, 428 U. S., at 370, n. 5, nor is the related concept of probable cause:
“The standard of probable cause is peculiarly related to criminal investigations, not routine, noncriminal procedures. . . . The probable-cause approach is unhelpful when analysis centers upon the reasonableness of routine administrative caretaking functions, particularly when no claim is made that the protective procedures are a subterfuge for criminal investigations.” Ibid.
See also United States v. Chadwick, supra, at 10, n. 5. For these reasons, the Colorado Supreme Court’s reliance on Arkansas v. Sanders, supra, and United States v. Chadwick, supra, was incorrect. Both of these cases concerned searches solely for the purpose of investigating criminal conduct, with the validity of the searches therefore dependent on the application of the probable-cause and warrant requirements of the Fourth Amendment.
By contrast, an inventory search may be “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment even though it is not conducted pursuant to a warrant based upon probable cause. In Opperman, this Court assessed the reasonableness of an inventory search of the glove compartment in an abandoned automobile impounded by the police. We found that inventory procedures serve to protect an owner’s property while it is in the custody of the police, to insure against claims of lost, stolen, or vandalized property, and to guard the police from danger. In light of these strong governmental interests and the diminished expectation of privacy in an automobile, we upheld the search. In reaching this decision, we observed that our cases accorded deference to police caretaking procedures designed to secure and protect vehicles and their contents within police custody. See Cooper v. California, 386 U. S. 58, 61-62 (1967); Harris v. United States, 390 U. S. 234, 236 (1968); Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U. S. 433, 447-448 (1973).
In our more recent decision, Lafayette, a police officer conducted an inventory search of the contents of a shoulder bag in the possession of an individual being taken into custody. In deciding whether this search was reasonable, we recognized that the search served legitimate governmental interests similar to those identified in Opperman. We determined that those interests outweighed the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests and upheld the search.
In the present case, as in Opperman and Lafayette, there was no showing that the police, who were following standardized procedures, acted in bad faith or for the sole purpose of investigation. In addition, the governmental interests justifying the inventory searches in Opperman and Lafayette are nearly the same as those which obtain here. In each case, the police were potentially responsible for the property taken into their custody. By securing the property, the police protected the property from unauthorized interference. Knowledge of the precise nature of the property helped guard against claims of theft, vandalism, or negligence. Such knowledge also helped to avert any danger to police or others that may have been posed by the property.
The Supreme Court of Colorado opined that Lafayette was not controlling here because there was no danger of introducing contraband or weapons into a jail facility. Our opinion in Lafayette, however, did not suggest that the station-house setting of the inventory search was critical to our holding in that case. Both in the present case and in Lafayette, the common governmental interests described above were served by the inventory searches.
The Supreme Court of Colorado also expressed the view that the search in this case was unreasonable because Bertine’s van was towed to a secure, lighted facility and because Bertine himself could have been offered the opportunity to make other arrangements for the safekeeping of his property. But the security of the storage facility does not completely eliminate the need for inventorying; the police may still wish to protect themselves or the owners of the lot against false claims of theft or dangerous instrumentalities. And while giving Bertine an opportunity to make alternative arrangements would undoubtedly have been possible, we said in Lafayette:
“[T]he real question is not what ‘could have been achieved,’ but whether the Fourth Amendment requires such steps ....
“The reasonableness of any particular governmental activity does not necessarily or invariably turn on the existence of alternative ‘less intrusive’ means.” Lafayette, 462 U. S., at 647 (emphasis in original).
See Cady v. Dombrowski, supra, at 447; United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543, 557, n. 12 (1976). We conclude that here, as in Lafayette, reasonable police regulations relating to inventory procedures administered in good faith satisfy the Fourth Amendment, even though courts might as a matter of hindsight be able to devise equally reasonable rules requiring a different procedure.
The Supreme Court of Colorado also thought it necessary to require that police, before inventorying a container, weigh the strength of the individual’s privacy interest in the container against the possibility that the container might serve as a repository for dangerous or valuable items. We think that such a requirement is contrary to our decisions in Opperman and Lafayette, and by analogy to our decision in United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798 (1982):
“Even if less intrusive means existed of protecting some particular types of property, it would be unreasonable to expect police officers in the everyday course of business to make fine and subtle distinctions in deciding which containers or items may be searched and which must be sealed as a unit.” Lafayette, supra, at 648.
“When a legitimate search is under way, and when its purpose and its limits have been precisely defined, nice distinctions between closets, drawers, and containers, in the case of a home, or between glove compartments, upholstered seats, trunks, and wrapped packages, in the case of a vehicle, must give way to the interest in the prompt and efficient completion of the task at hand.” United States v. Ross, supra, at 821.
We reaffirm these principles here: “‘[a] single familiar standard is essential to guide police officers, who have only limited time and expertise to reflect on and balance the social and individual interests involved in the specific circumstances they confront.’ ” Lafayette, supra, at 648 (quoting New York v. Belton, 453 U. S. 454, 458 (1981)).
Bertine finally argues that the inventory search of his van was unconstitutional because departmental regulations gave the police officers discretion to choose between impounding his van and parking and locking it in a public parking place. The Supreme Court of Colorado did not rely on this argument in reaching its conclusion, and we reject it. Nothing in Opperman or Lafayette prohibits the exercise of police discretion so long as that discretion is exercised according to standard criteria and on the basis of something other than suspicion of evidence of criminal activity. Here, the discretion afforded the Boulder police was exercised in light of standardized criteria, related to the feasibility and appropriateness of parking and locking a vehicle rather than impounding it. There was no showing that the police chose to impound Bertine’s van in order to investigate suspected criminal activity.
While both Opperman and Lafayette are distinguishable from the present case on their facts, we think that the principles enunciated in those cases govern the present one. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Colorado is therefore
Reversed.
Section 7-7-2(a)(4) of the Boulder Revised Code authorizes police officers to impound vehicles when drivers are taken into custody. Section 7-7-2(a)(4) provides:
“A peace officer is authorized to remove or cause to be removed a vehicle from any street, parking lot, or driveway when:
(4) The driver of a vehicle is taken into custody by the police department.” Boulder Rev. Code § 7-7-2(a)(4)(1981).
Two justices dissented from the majority opinion, arguing that South Dakota v. Opperman and Illinois v. Lafayette compel the conclusion that the inventory search of the backpack found in Bertine’s van was permissible under the Fourth Amendment.
Since our decision in South Dakota v. Opperman, several courts have confronted the issue whether police may inventory the contents of containers found in vehicles taken into police custody. See, e. g., United States v. Griffin, 729 F. 2d 475 (CA7) (upholding inventory search of package found in paper bag), cert. denied, 469 U. S. 830 (1984); United States v. Bloomfield, 594 F. 2d 1200 (CA8 1979) (affirming suppression of evidence found in closed knapsack); People v. Braasch, 122 Ill. App. 3d 747, 461 N. E. 2d 651 (1984) (upholding inventory of paper bag); People v. Gonzalez, 62 N. Y. 2d 386, 465 N. E. 2d 823 (1984) (upholding inventory of paper bag); Boggs v. Commonwealth, 229 Va. 501, 331 S. E. 2d 407 (1985) (upholding inventory of boxes and pouch found in bag), cert. denied, 475 U. S. 1031 (1986).
The Colorado Supreme Court correctly stated that Opperman did not address the question whether the scope of an inventory search may extend to closed containers located in the interior of an impounded vehicle. We did note, however, that “ ‘when the police take custody of any sort of container [such as] an automobile ... it is reasonable to search the container to itemize the property to be held by the police.’ ” 428 U. S., at 371 (quoting United States v. Gravitt, 484 F. 2d 375, 378 (CA5 1973), cert. denied, 414 U. S. 1135 (1974)).
In arguing that the latter two interests are not implicated here, the dissent overlooks the testimony of the backup officer who conducted the inventory of Bertine’s van. According to the officer, the vehicle inventory procedures of the Boulder Police Department are designed for the “[p]ro-teetion of the police department” in the event that an individual later claims that “there was something of value taken from within the vehicle.” 2 Tr. 19. The officer added that inventories are also conducted in order to cheek “[f]or any dangerous items such as explosives [or] weapons.” Id., at 20. The officer testified that he had found such items in vehicles.
We emphasize that, in this case, the trial court found that the Police Department’s procedures mandated the opening of closed containers and the listing of their contents. Our decisions have always adhered to the requirement that inventories be conducted according to standardized criteria. See Lafayette, 462 U. S., at 648; Opperman, 428 U. S., at 374-376.
By quoting a portion of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision out of context, the dissent suggests that the inventory here was not authorized by the standard procedures of the Boulder Police Department. See post, at 380-381. Yet that court specifically stated that the procedure followed here was “officially authorized.” 706 P. 2d 411, 413, n. 2 (1985). In addition, the court did not disturb the trial court’s finding that the police procedures for impounding vehicles required a detailed inventory of Bertine’s van. See id., at 418-419.
In arguing that the Boulder Police Department procedures set forth no standardized criteria guiding an officer’s decision to impound a vehicle, the dissent selectively quotes from the police directive concerning the care and security of vehicles taken into police custody. The dissent fails to mention that the directive establishes several conditions that must be met before an officer may pursue the park-and-loek alternative. For example, police may not park and lock the vehicle where there is reasonable risk of damage or vandalism to the vehicle or where the approval of the arrestee cannot be obtained. App. 91-92, 94-95. Not only do such conditions circumscribe the discretion of individual officers, but they also protect the vehicle and its contents and minimize claims of property loss.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We are called upon in this case to decide what statute of limitations governs a claim by a union member under § 101 (a)(2) of Title I of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA), Pub. L. 86-257, 73 Stat. 522, 29 U. S. C. § 411(a)(2), alleging that the union violated its member’s right to free speech as to union matters. Congress enacted no statute of limitations expressly applicable to § 101 actions.
Petitioner Reed, the Secretary and Treasurer of Local 1715 (Local) of respondent United Transportation Union (Union), received reimbursement from the Local for “time lost” carrying out his union duties. After an audit the Union’s president, respondent Hardin, disallowed these payments. Hardin ruled that petitioner was not entitled to the payments because he had failed to obtain approval for them prior to doing the tasks that caused him to lose time, and because his salary as an officer of the Local was intended to cover all his official duties. When petitioner subsequently attempted to enforce a policy that reimbursements required prior approval — denying unapproved claims by the president and other officers of the Local — Hardin overruled these decisions. Petitioner thereupon unsuccessfully sought reinstatement of his disallowed payment. In a series of letters to Hardin, the last dated August 2, 1983, petitioner alleged that more stringent standards had been applied to his reimbursement claims because he had been critical of the Local’s president. Threatening suit, he asserted that the disallowance amounted to harassment for expressing his views on union matters and violated LMRDA § 101. Petitioner did not file this action in the Western District of North Carolina against the Union and various of its officers, however, until August 2, 1985.
Respondents moved for summary judgment, arguing that petitioner had filed his suit out of time. Respondents maintained that on the reasoning of DelCostello v. Teamsters, 462 U. S. 151 (1983), petitioner’s § 101 claim should be governed by the statute of limitations that applies to the filing of charges with the National Labor Relations Board alleging unfair labor practices defined in § 8 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 U. S. C. § 158. Section 10(b) of the NLRA, 29 U. S. C. § 160(b), provides that such charges must be filed within six months. The District Court denied summary judgment, holding that petitioner’s action was more akin to a civil rights claim than an unfair labor practice charge, and hence was governed by North Carolina’s 3-year statute of limitations for personal injury actions in accordance with the rule this Court established in Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U. S. 261 (1985). 633 F. Supp. 1516 (1986).
The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed, construing DelCostello to require that petitioner’s § 101(a)(2) claim be governed by NLRA § 10(b). 828 F. 2d 1066 (1987). We granted certiorari, 485 U. S. 933 (1988), to settle a conflict among Courts of Appeals as to the statute of limitations applicable to § 101(a)(2) actions. We now reverse the Fourth Circuit’s decision, and hold that § 101(a)(2) claims are governed by state general or residual personal injury statutes, which are to be identified in conformity with our decision this Term in Owens v. Okure, ante, p. 235.
I
Congress not infrequently fails to supply an express statute of limitations when it creates a federal cause of action. When that occurs, “[w]e have generally concluded that Congress intended that the courts apply the most closely analogous statute of limitations under state law.” DelCostello, supra, at 158. See, e. g., Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Associates, Inc., 483 U. S. 143, 147 (1987) (noting that the Rules of Decision Act usually requires that a state statute be borrowed, and also that “[gjiven our longstanding practice of borrowing state law, and the congressional awareness of this practice, we can generally assume that Congress intends by its silence that we borrow state law”); Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U. S. 696, 703-705 (1966); Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U. S. 392, 395 (1946).
“State legislatures do not devise their limitations periods with national interests in mind,” however, “and it is the duty of the federal courts to assure that the importation of state law will not frustrate or interfere with the implementation of national policies.” Occidental Life Ins. Co. of California v. EEOC, 432 U. S. 355, 367 (1977). Thus, on the assumption that Congress would not choose “to adopt state [limitations] rules at odds with the purpose or operation of federal substantive law,” DelCostello, supra, at 161, we have recognized a closely circumscribed exception to the general rule that statutes of limitation are to be borrowed from state law. We decline to borrow a state statute of limitations only “when a rule from elsewhere in federal law clearly provides a closer analogy than available state statutes, and when the federal policies at stake and the practicalities of litigation make that rule a significantly more appropriate vehicle for interstitial lawmaking.” DelCostello, supra, at 172. See Agency Holding Corp., supra (adopting federal statute of limitations for civil RICO claims); Occidental Life Ins. Co., supra (federal limitations period applied to EEOC enforcement actions); McAllister v. Magnolia Petroleum Co., 357 U. S. 221 (1958) (federal limitations period applied to unseaworthiness actions); Holmberg v. Armbrecht, supra (refusing to apply state statute to action to enforce federally created equitable right). This is a narrow exception to the general rule. As we made clear in DelCostello, “in labor law or elsewhere,” application of a federal statute will be unusual, and “resort to state law remains the norm for borrowing of limitations periods.” 462 U. S., at 171. Respondents urge in this case that petitioner’s § 101(a)(2) claim that he was penalized for exercising his right as a union member to speak freely as to union matters falls within the narrow exception requiring application of a federal statute of limitations, rather than within the general rule that we borrow an analogous state statute. We cannot agree.
A
We have upon previous occasions considered the history of Title I of the LMRDA, and have concluded that “Congress modeled Title I after the Bill of Rights, and that the legislators intended § 101(a)(2) to restate a principal First Amendment value — the right to speak one’s mind without fear of reprisal.” Steelworkers v. Sadlowski, 457 U. S. 102, 111 (1982). Indeed, the amendments that eventually were enacted as Title I were introduced under the heading of “Bill of Rights of Members of Labor Organizations.” See Finnegan v. Leu, 456 U. S. 431, 435 (1982). Congress considered the protection afforded by Title I to free speech and assembly in the union context necessary to bring an end to abuses by union leadership that had curtailed union democracy. It “adopted the freedom of speech and assembly provision in order to promote union democracy . . . [and] recognized that democracy would be assured only if union members are free to discuss union policies and criticize the leadership without fear of reprisal.” Sadlowski, supra, at 112. See also Finnegan, supra, at 436 (Title I was “necessary to further the [LMRDA’s] primary objective of ensuring that unions would be democratically governed and responsive to the will of their memberships”). Thus the core purpose of § 101(a)(2) is to protect free speech and assembly rights because these are considered “vital to the independence of the membership and the effective and fair operation of the union as the representative.” Hall v. Cole, 412 U. S. 1, 8 (1973).
As a preliminary matter, consideration of this core purpose suggests that “all claims arising out of [§ 101(a)(2)] ‘should be characterized in the same way.’” Agency Holding Corp., supra, at 147, quoting Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U. S. 261, 268 (1985). Though § 101(a)(2) creates personal rights, a union member vindicating those rights also serves public goals, in that he “necessarily render[s] a substantial service to his union as an institution and to all of its members,” contributing to the improvement or preservation of democracy within the union. Hall, supra, at 8. Time-consuming litigation as to the collateral question of the appropriate statute of limitations for a § 101 claim would likely interfere with Congress’ aim that actions to enforce free speech and association rights should in fact enhance union democracy. Such litigation creates uncertainty as to the time available for filing, and it would not be surprising if the prospect of perhaps prolonged litigation against the union before ever the merits are reached were to have a deterrent effect on would-be § 101(a)(2) plaintiffs. The diversion of resources to collateral statute-of-limitations litigation would be foreign to the central purposes of § 101(a)(2), and thus we are persuaded that all claims under that provision should be characterized in the same way. Determining exactly how they should be characterized does not appear to us to be a difficult task, given a proper understanding of the narrow scope of the DelCostello exception to our standard borrowing rule, and of the nature and purpose of § 101(a)(2).
Because § 101(a)(2) protects rights of free speech and assembly, and was patterned after the First Amendment, it is readily analogized for the purpose of borrowing a statute of limitations to state personal injury actions. We find it unnecessary to detail here the elements of this analogy. We have previously considered possible analogies between federal civil rights actions under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 (which lacks an express statute of limitations) and various state-law claims, and have held that §1983 actions are governed by state general or residual personal injury statutes of limitations. Owens v. Okure, ante, p. 235; Wilson v. Garcia, supra. See also Goodman v. Lukens Steel Co., 482 U. S. 656 (1987) (applying state personal injury statute to federal civil rights action against a private party brought under 42 U. S. C. § 1981). Since § 101(a)(2) has evident similarities to § 1983, which prohibits the infringement of First Amendment rights by persons acting under color of state law, it is apparent that § 101(a)(2) actions also are analogous to state personal injury claims, and under our usual borrowing rule would take their statutes of limitations. Moreover, these state personal injury statutes are of sufficient length, see Owens, ante, at 248, nn. 9 and 10, to accommodate the practical difficulties faced by § 101(a)(2) plaintiffs, which include identifying the injury, deciding in the first place to bring suit against and thereby antagonize union leadership, and finding an attorney. See Doty v. Sewall, 784 F. 2d 1, 9 (CA1 1986). As a result, no practicalities of litigation compel us to search beyond state law for a more analogous statute of limitations. Cf. Agency Holding Corp., 483 U. S., at 147-148; DelCostello, 462 U. S., at 165-166, 167-168 (and see n. 4, infra); Burnett v. Grattan, 468 U. S. 42, 50-51 (1984). In light of the analogy between § 101(a)(2) and personal injury actions, and of the lack of any conflict between the practicalities of § 101(a)(2) litigation and state personal injury limitations periods, we are bound to borrow state personal injury statutes absent some compelling demonstration that “the federal policies at stake” in § 101(a)(2) actions make a federal limitations period “a significantly more appropriate vehicle for interstitial lawmaking.” DelCostello, supra, at 172.
B
Respondents argue that the same federal labor policies that led us in DelCostello to borrow the NLRA § 10(b) statute of limitations for hybrid § 301/fair representation claims likewise require that we borrow § 10(b) for LMRDA §101 (a)(2) actions. This argument lacks merit. It fails to take seriously our admonition that analogous state statutes of limitations are to be used unless they frustrate or significantly interfere with federal policies. More importantly, it entirely ignores the core federal interest furthered by § 101(a)(2) — the interest in union democracy promoted by free speech and assembly rights of union members — instead urging that we select a statute of limitations to serve federal policies that might merely be implicated by tangential and contingent effects of some § 101(a)(2) litigation.
We declined in DelCostello to apply state statutes of limitations for vacation of an arbitration award or for legal malpractice to an employee’s hybrid § 301/fair representation action. Such hybrid suits formally comprise two causes of action. First, the employee alleges that the employer violated §301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947 (LMRA), 61 Stat. 156, 29 U. S. C. § 185, by breaching the collective-bargaining agreement. Second, the employee claims that the union breached its duty of fair representation, which this Court has implied from the scheme of the NLRA, by mishandling the ensuing grievance-and-arbitration proceedings. See DelCostello, supra, at 164, and n. 14. We held in DelCostello that, having regard to “the policies of federal labor law and the practicalities of hybrid § 301/fair representation litigation,” 462 U. S., at 165, § 10(b) of the NLRA, with its 6-month limitations period for unfair labor practice charges, provided the closest analogy for hybrid § 301/fair representation actions.
Respondents argue, and the Court of Appeals held, that the § 10(b) 6-month limitations period must be applied to § 101(a)(2) actions in order to further the federal policy that calls for “‘rapid resolution of internal union disputes’” in order “‘to maintain . . . stable bargaining relationships.’” 828 F. 2d, at 1069, quoting Local Union 1397, United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO v. United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO, 748 F. 2d 180, 184 (CA3 1984). It is true that in DelCostello we held that use of a long malpractice statute of limitations for hybrid §301/fair representation actions would conflict with the federal policy favoring “the relatively rapid final resolution of labor disputes. ” 462 U. S., at 168. The specific focus of our comparison between unfair labor practice charges governed by § 10(b) and hybrid §301/fair representation claims was their effects upon the formation and operation of the collective-bargaining agreement between the employer and the bargaining representative, and upon the private settlement of disputes under that agreement through grievance-and-arbitration procedures. We noted that the § 10(b) period was “ ‘attuned to . . . the proper balance between the national interests in stable, bargaining relationships and finality of private settlements, and an employee’s interest in setting aside what he views as an unjust settlement under the collective-bargaining system.’” Id., at 171, quoting United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U. S. 56, 70 (1981) (Stewart, J., concurring in judgment). Those same interests, we held, are implicated by hybrid § 301/fair representation claims against union and employer, because such claims constitute a direct challenge to private dispute settlement under the collective-bargaining agreement. DelCostello, supra, at 165.
Insofar as interests in stable bargaining relationships and in private dispute resolution under collective-bargaining agreements are implicated by § 101(a)(2) claims, however, the relationship will generally be tangential and remote — as in the present case, which involves an internal union dispute not directly related in any way to collective bargaining or dispute settlement under a collective-bargaining agreement. To be sure, the Court of Appeals stated:
“Internal union disputes, if allowed to fester, may erode the confidence of union members in their leaders and possibly cause a disaffection with the union, thus weakening the union and its ability to bargain for its members. Such prolonged disputes may also distract union officials from their sole purpose — representation of union members in their relations with their employer. These probable effects of protracted disputes may be destabilizing to labor-management relations.” 828 F. 2d, at 1070.
See also Local Union 1397, supra, at 184 (“[Dissension within a union naturally affects that union’s activities and effectiveness in the collective bargaining arena”). These observations have some plausibility. But they are not enough to persuade us that federal policy requires that § 10(b) govern claims under § 101(a)(2) of the LMRDA, for they establish no more than that § 101(a)(2) actions may sometimes have “some impact on economic relations between union and employer and on labor peace.” Brief for Respondents 22. This is substantially less immediate and less significant an impact on bargaining and private dispute settlement than that which led us to apply the § 10(b) statute to hybrid § 301/fair representation claims, which directly challenge both the employer’s adherence to the collective-bargaining agreement and the union’s representation of the employee in grievance-and-arbitration procedures. As the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit noted in Doty v. Sewall, 784 F. 2d, at 7, a Title I suit does not directly
“challeng[e] the ‘stable relationship’ between the employer and the union. It does not affect any interpretation or effect any reinterpretation of the collective bargaining agreement and so, unlike the hybrid actions, a Title I claim does not attack a compromise between labor and management. . . . There is no erosion of the finality of private settlements, for in the free standing LMRDA cases the union member is not attempting to attack any such settlement.”
See also Davis v. United Automobile, Aerospace and Agriculture Implement Workers of America, 765 F. 2d 1510, 1514 (CA11 1985). Thus the federal interests in collective bargaining and in the resolution of disputes under collective-bargaining agreements, which require application of a 6-month statute of limitations to unfair labor practice charges and hybrid § 301/fair representation claims, simply are not directly involved in § 101(a)(2) actions.
There is another and more important reason why we cannot conclude in this case, as we did in DelCostello, that § 10(b) provides “a federal statute of limitations actually designed to accommodate a balance of interests very similar to that at stake here.” 462 U. S., at 169. Section 101(a)(2) implements a federal policy — to guarantee free speech and association rights in order to further union democracy — that simply had no part in the design of a statute of limitations for unfair labor practice charges. Indeed, Title I of the LMRDA was a response to a perception that the NLRA, including the § 8(b) provisions defining unfair labor practices by labor organizations, had failed to provide the necessary protection for the free speech and other rights of union members that Congress considered essential to the democratic operation of unions. See, e. g., Steelworkers v. Sadlowski, 457 U. S., at 102, 108-110. Hence while § 10(b) was “ ‘attuned to . . . the . . . balance between national interests in stable bargaining relationships and finality of private settlements’” on the one hand, and “‘an employee’s interest in setting aside [a] settlement under the collective-bargaining system’” on the other, DelCostello, supra, at 171, quoting Mitchell, supra, at 70, the relevant balance in the case of § 101(a)(2) actions is quite different. The second element in the § 10(b) balance is replaced in § 101(a)(2) cases by
“a union member’s interest in protection against the infringement of his rights of free speech[, which] rises to a national interest, as embodied in section 101(a)(2) of the LMRDA, . . . and thus seems of greater importance than an employee’s interest in setting aside an individual settlement under a collective bargaining agreement.” Davis, supra, at 1514.
The 6-month § 10(b) statute of limitations was crafted to accommodate federal interests in stable bargaining relationships and in private dispute resolution that are not squarely implicated in LMRDA § 101(a)(2) actions; and it was not adopted with the distinct federal interest in the free speech of union members in mind. Hence it is not the case that “the federal policies at stake” in § 101(a)(2) actions make the § 10(b) statute of limitations “a significantly more appropriate vehicle for interstitial lawmaking” than the analogous state statute of limitations that our established borrowing rule favors.
II
Because § 101(a)(2) of the LMRDA is modeled on the First Amendment to our Constitution, there is an analogy between § 101(a)(2) claims, § 1983 claims, and state personal injury actions. Indeed, we have already held that 42 U. S. C. § 1983, which like § 101(a)(2) protects the exercise of First Amendment rights, is governed by state general or residual personal injury statutes of limitations. Owens v. Okure, ante, p. 235. The well-established rule that statutes of limitations for federal causes of action not supplied with their own limitations periods will be borrowed from state law thus requires that state general or residual personal injury statutes be applied to § 101(a)(2) suits. None of the exceptions to that rule apply, for § 10(b) of the NLRA does not supply a more analogous statute; its 6-month limitations period is not better suited to the practicalities of § 101(a)(2) litigation; and it was not designed to accommodate federal policies similar to those implicated in § 101(a)(2) actions. 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 101(a)(2) of the LMRDA provides:
“Freedom of speech and assembly.
“Every member of any labor organization shall have the right to meet and assemble freely with other members; and to express any views, arguments, or opinions; and to express at meetings of the labor organization his views, upon candidates in an election of the labor organization or upon any business properly before the meeting, subject to the organization’s established and reasonable rules pertaining to the conduct of meetings: Provided, That nothing herein shall be construed to impair the right of a labor organization to adopt and enforce reasonable rules as to the responsibility of every member toward the organization as an institution and to his refraining from conduct that would interfere with its performance of its legal or contractual obligations.” 73 Stat. 522.
This section is enforceable by private right of action. 29 U. S. C. § 412.
Section 10(b) states in pertinent part that “no complaint shall issue based upon any unfair labor practice occurring more than six months prior to the filing of the charge with the Board.”
The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit’s holding conflicts with Rodonich v. House Wreckers Union Local 95, 817 F. 2d 967 (CA2 1987), and Doty v. Sewall, 784 F. 2d 1 (CA1 1986) (applying state personal injury limitations periods to Title I claims). It is in accord, however, with Clift v. International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America, 818 F. 2d 623 (CA7 1987), cert. pending No. 87-42; Davis v. United Automobile, Aerospace and Agriculture Implement Workers of America, 765 F. 2d 1510 (CA11 1985), cert. denied, 475 U. S. 1057 (1986); and Local Union 1397, United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO v. United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO, 748 F. 2d 180 (CA3 1984) (applying § 10(b) statute of limitations).
The practical concerns that we held made state limitations periods unsuitable for hybrid § 301/fair representation claims are not implicated in LMRDA § 101(a)(2) actions. We reasoned in DelCostello that the suggestion that § 301/fair representation claims be governed by state limitations periods for actions to vacate an arbitration award suffered from “flaws . . . of practical application.” DelCostello v. Teamsters, 462 U. S., at 165. These limitations periods, typically between 10 and 90 days, id., at 166, n. 15, were too short “to provide an aggrieved employee with a satisfactory opportunity to vindicate his rights under § 301 and the fair representation doctrine,” because in hybrid actions the employee “is called upon, within the limitations period, to evaluate the adequacy of the union’s representation, to retain counsel, to investigate substantial matters that were not at issue in the [grievance] proceeding, and to frame his suit.” Id., at 166. No such “flaws ... of practical application” arise from the application of state general personal injury statutes of limitation to § 101(a)(2) suits, as noted in the text, supra, at 327.
An additional factor considered important to our analysis in DelCostello but absent here is that a hybrid § 301/fair representation action yokes together interdependent claims that could only very impractically be treated as governed by different statutes of limitations. 462 U. S., at 164-165. Cf. McAllister v. Magnolia Petroleum Co., 357 U. S. 221 (1958) (applying a federal statute to seaworthiness actions under general admiralty law that are almost invariably brought in tandem with federal Jones Act claims). Departure from the normal practice of borrowing state statutes of limitations is more likely to be necessary where distinct actions are combined, making the possibility of finding a single analogous state statute more remote. See DelCostello, supra, at 166-167.
Thus, in DelCostello we distinguished Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U. S. 696 (1966), where we held that a straightforward § 301 suit by a union against management for breach of a collective-bargaining agreement, involving no agreement to submit disputes to arbitration, was governed by Indiana’s 6-year limitations period for actions on an unwritten contract. The action at issue in Hoosier had not involved either the formation of a collective-bargaining agreement or the private settlement of disputes under a collective-bargaining agreement, and had not called for application of a uniform federal statute of limitations. DelCostello, supra, at 162-163.
One class of Title I actions may have a more direct effect on collective bargaining. Union members may attempt to challenge a collective-bargaining agreement by alleging that the union denied them the proper opportunity “to participate in the deliberations and voting” to ratify the agreement, in violation of LMRDA § 101(a)(1). See, e. g., Adkins v. International Union of Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers, AFL-CIO, 769 F. 2d 330, 335 (CA6 1985); Linder v. Berge, 739 F. 2d 686, 690 (CA1 1984) (both applying the § 10(b) statute of limitations). We have no occasion in this case, which involves a § 101(a)(2) free speech claim, to decide what statute of limitations applies to other Title I actions. We note, nevertheless, that however direct an effect some Title I claims may have on the collective-bargaining agreement or on private dispute resolution, Title I claims all serve the core function of enhancing union democracy through enforcement of the rights of union members, not of protecting the integrity of collective bargaining or of grievance-and-arbitration procedures. See text infra this page and 333.
Respondents also argue that the § 10(b) statute of limitations should be applied to § 101(a)(2) claims because these bear a “family resemblance” to, and overlap with, unfair labor practices charges and claims that a union has breached its duty of fair representation. Brief for Respondents 24-26. In support of borrowing § 10(b) for hybrid § 301/fair representation claims, we noted in DelCostello that “the family resemblance [between breaches of the duty of fair representation and unfair labor practices] is undeniable, and indeed there is a substantial overlap,” because the NLRB treats breaches of the duty as unfair labor practices. 462 U. S., at 170. Even were it the ease, however, that Title I violations may constitute unfair labor practices and breaches of the duty of fair representation — questions we need not delve into today and upon which we express no opinion — we would still hold this resemblance inconclusive as regards the question whether § 101 actions should be governed by a state statute of limitations or by NLRA § 10(b). In contrast to the situation in DelCostello, an overlap between Title I violations and unfair labor practices or breaches of the duty of fair representation would not be attributable to similar federal policies underlying each of these areas of protection, for the policies behind Title I, on the one hand, and NLRA § 8(b) and the implied duty of fair representation on the other, are quite different. See supra, at 331.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Frankfurter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case concerns § 9 (a) of the divorce law of the Virgin Islands:
“Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 8 and 9 hereof, [] if the plaintiff is within the district at the time of the filing of the complaint and has been continuously for six weeks immediately prior thereto, this shall be prima facie evidence of domicile, and where the defendant has been personally served within the district or enters a general appearance in the action, then the Court shall have jurisdiction of the action and of the parties thereto without further reference to domicile or to the place where the marriage was solemnized or the cause of action arose.”
The circumstances of the case and the course of the litigation are briefly stated. Petitioner filed suit for divorce because of “irreconcilable incompatibility” in the District Court of the Virgin Islands on March 16, 1953. The complaint alleged that she had been a “resident and inhabitant” of the Islands for more than six weeks prior to the commencement of the action, that respondent was not a resident of the Islands, and that the couple had no children under 21. Through Virgin Islands counsel — authorized by a power of attorney executed in New York — respondent entered an appearance, waived personal service, denied petitioner’s allegations, and filed a “Waiver and Consent” to “hearing of this cause as if by default” and to “such findings of fact and conclusions of law and decree as to the Court may seem just and reasonable.”
Solely on the basis of petitioner’s testimony that she had resided in the Virgin Islands continuously for 43 days before bringing suit, the Commissioner who heard the case found that she was a resident and inhabitant of the Islands and had been so for more than six weeks prior to the action. Having also found that the claimed ground for divorce was substantiated, he recommended that she be granted a divorce. On petitioner’s motion to confirm the Commissioner’s recommendation, the District Court inquired of petitioner’s counsel whether he had “any more evidence to offer on the question of domicile.” Since no further evidence was proffered, the court, relying on its earlier opinion in Alton v. Alton, 121 F. Supp. 878, dismissed the complaint for want of jurisdiction over petitioner.
The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed, 214 F. 2d 820, on the basis of its decision in the Alton case, 207 F. 2d 667. In that case, the Court of Appeals, likewise sitting en ba’nc and three judges dissenting, held § 9 (a) in violation of “due process” guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment and the Virgin Islands Organic Act. This Court had granted certiorari in the Alton case, 347 U. S. 911, but intervening mootness aborted disposition on the merits. 347 U. S. 610. The obvious importance of the issue which brought the Alton case here led us to grant certiorari in this case. 348 U. S. 810. In view of the lack of genuine adversary proceedings at any stage in this litigation, the outcome of which could have far-reaching consequences on domestic relations throughout the United States, the Court invited specially qualified counsel “to appear and present oral argument, as amicus curiae, in support of the judgment below.” 348 U. S. 885.
We need not consider any of the substantive questions passed on below and we intimate nothing about them. For we find that Congress did not give the Virgin Islands Legislative Assembly power to enact a law with the radiations of § 9 (a).
Article IV, § 3 of the Constitution gives the Congress authority to “make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States . . . .” Accordingly, Congress has from time to time established governments in the various territories that have come under federal control. Territorial government in the continental United States was customarily viewed as a transition step to statehood, and statehood in fact resulted. The Spanish-American War opened a new chapter. Beginning with the Treaty of Paris, the United States acquired by conquest, treaty or purchase outlying territories for which statehood was not contemplated. The position of these territories in our national scheme gave rise to lively political controversy. Answers to some of the constitutional issues that arose were unfolded in a series of decisions best formulated, perhaps, in opinions by Mr. Chief Justice White and Mr. Chief Justice Taft.
A vital distinction was made between “incorporated” and “unincorporated” territories. The first category had the potentialities of statehood like unto continental territories. The United States Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, fully applied to an “incorporated” territory. See, e. g., Rassmussen v. United States, 197 U. S. 516. The second category described possessions of the United States not thought of as future States. To these only some essentials, withal undefined, of the Constitution extended. See, e. g., Balzac v. Porto Rico, 258 U. S. 298. The incidence of the differentiation fell in two areas: (a) the right of the individual to trial by jury and similar protections, e. g., Balzac v. Porto Rico, supra; (b) the right of the Federal Government to tax territorial products on a nonuniform basis, e. g., Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 244.
The legislative power of territories has customarily been expressed as extending to “all rightful subjects of legislation” not inconsistent with the Constitution or laws of the United States. This conventional phrasing was altered to subjects of “local application,” or “not locally inapplicable,” in the case of unincorporated territories such as pre-Commonwealth Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam.
The questions that have arisen under grants of legislative powers to territories have fallen into three main classes: (1) those in which the sovereign immunity of the territory was in issue, e. g., Porto Rico v. Rosaly y Castillo, 227 U. S. 270; (2) those in which conflict was claimed with the United States Constitution or laws, e. g., Puerto Rico v. Shell Co., 302 U. S. 253; Territory of Montana v. Lee, 2 Mont. 124; (3) those in which the “rightful” nature of particular territorial legislation was assailed, e. g., Tiaco v. Forbes, 228 U. S. 549; People v. Daniels, 6 Utah 288, 22 P. 159. It is the third group that is our immediate concern. In determining the rightfulness of territorial legislation the courts have considered whether a territorial legislature has transcended the familiar bounds of legislation. See, e. g., Christianson v. King County, 239 U. S. 356. One of the earlier questions regarding the power of territorial legislatures involved the right to pass laws applicable not generally but to specific individuals or portions of a territory. In Maynard v. Hill, 125 U. S. 190, this Court held that a legislative divorce granted without cause by the Oregon Territorial Legislature to a local homesteader was valid though the wife was not in the Territory and had had no notice. The Court relied on the historic practice of individual legislative divorces. It is significant, however, that while the litigation was in progress Congress forbade territories to pass “local” or “special” divorce laws. 24 Stat. 170, now 48 U. S. C. § 1471.
The United States acquired the Virgin Islands by purchase from Denmark in 1917, but it was not until the Organic Act of 1936 that Congress provided a complete government — including a Legislative Assembly. The Organic Act: (1) labeled the Islands an “insular possession” of the United States, 49 Stat. 1807, 48 U. S. C. § 1405a; (2) endowed the Legislative Assembly (consisting of the two pre-existing municipal councils in joint session) with power to enact laws on “all subjects of local application not inconsistent with . . . this title or the laws of the United States made applicable to said islands, but no law shall be enacted which would impair rights existing or arising by virtue of any treaty entered into by the United States, nor shall the lands or other property of nonresidents be taxed higher than the lands or other property of residents,” 49 Stat. 1811, 48 U. S. C. § 1405r; (3) enacted a due process clause for the Islands, 49 Stat. 1815, 48 U. S. C. § 1406g; and (4) gave the District Court jurisdiction over “[a]ll cases of divorce,” 49 Stat. 1814, 48 U. S. C. § 1406 (4).
The Legislative Assembly was held on a checkrein by a presidentially appointed governor who shared with the President an absolute veto over legislation. Congress had the customary reserved power to annul legislation. 49 Stat. 1810, 48 U. S. C. § 1405o.
By virtue of the 1936 Organic Act, the Legislative Assembly passed the 1944 divorce law making six weeks’ “residence” by an “inhabitant” sufficient for divorce jurisdiction. In 1952, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit construed “inhabitant” and “residence” to imply “domiciliary” and “domicile.” Burch v. Burch, 195 F. 2d 799. The legislature thereupon provided that six weeks’ “physical presence” was adequate as a basis for divorce. The Governor vetoed this amendment. To overcome the veto, § 9 (a) was enacted. Bill No. 55, 17th Legislative Assembly of the Virgin Islands of the United States, 3d Sess., 1953.
Congress passed a revised Organic Act in 1954. Act of July 22, 1954, 68 Stat. 497, 48 U. S. C. A. § 1541 et seq. Previous to the legislation, this Court, on June 1, had dismissed Alton v. Alton, supra, for mootness. Though the judgment below was vacated, the Court of Appeals had expressed its views on the constitutionality of § 9 (a). Certainly no inference favorable to its validity can be drawn from the revised Organic Act.
In giving content to the power to pass legislation having “local application,” two considerations at once obtrude. The phrase most liberally interpreted can be no broader than “all rightful subjects of legislation.” Yet in the Organic Acts of the “incorporated” territories, Alaska and Hawaii, there is specific limitation on divorce jurisdiction to cases where the plaintiff has resided in such territory for at least two years. 37 Stat. 514, 48 U. S. C. § 45 (Alaska); 31 Stat. 150, 48 U. S. C. § 519 (Hawaii). It is hardly reasonable to believe that Congress was less concerned with the scope of divorce jurisdiction in the “unincorporated” possession of the Virgin Islands, so temptingly near the mainland, and that it intended to give them unrestricted freedom in this sensitive field of legislation. The Virgin Islands divorce law, with the exception of substantive grounds drawn from Danish law, copied that of Alaska. See Compiled Laws of the Territory of Alaska (1913) §§ 1293-1306; cf. Terrill v. Terrill, 2 Alaska 475; Wilson v. Wilson, 10 Alaska 616. Secondly, “local application” obviously implies limitation to subjects having relevant ties within the territory, to laws growing out of the needs of the Islands and governing relations within them. An example is provided by Puerto Rico v. Shell Co., supra, which involved the validity of a territorial antitrust law. “It requires no argument to demonstrate that a conspiracy in restraint of trade within the borders of Puerto Rico is clearly a local matter, and that it falls within the precise terms of the power granted . . . .” 302 U. S., at 261. And in upholding the power of the Philippine Legislature to deport dangerous aliens, Mr. Justice Holmes, for the Court, observed that “the local government has all civil and judicial power necessary to govern the Islands. . . . It would be strange if a government so remote should be held bound to wait for the action of Congress in a matter that might touch its life unless dealt with at once and on the spot.” Tiaco v. Forbes, 228 U. S., at 557.
In such light the decisive question is: was § 9 (a) concerned with the needs and interests of the local population or was it, as amicus pressed upon us, designed for export? For the purpose of regulating divorce of Virgin Islanders, it may be abstractly relevant but practically it has no point. The Virgin Islanders could of course bring themselves within the 1944 law as interpreted in Burch v. Burch, 195 F. 2d 799. They would have no difficulty in making the appropriate showing of connection with the forum. Virgin Islanders seeking divorce are not sojourners, mere transients in the Islands. Cf. Berger v. Berger, 210 F. 2d 403 (C. A. 3d Cir.). It hardly needs proof to read this statute as one designed for people outside the Virgin Islands. The Virgin Islands Legislative Assembly stated the purpose of § 9 (a) with disarming frankness. It is inadmissible to assume that Congress authorized the Assembly to traffic in easy divorces for citizens of the States as a stimulus to money-making by the Islanders. What Mr. Chief Justice Taft for the Court said in another connection is strikingly applicable here: “All others can see and understand this. How can we properly shut our minds to it?” Child Labor Tax Case, 259 U. S. 20, 37. But it sometimes helps to prove, as well as to see, the obvious.
In 1950 the Virgin Islands had 26,665 inhabitants in its 133 square miles; for at least 20 years the population had remained relatively static, and the 1952 census, estimates indicate a slight decline. In 1940, 34 divorces were granted in the Islands (1.4 per 1,000 population). In 1951 the figure had reached 312 (12.5 per 1,000). This, per capita, represented the second highest figure for any State or Territory of the United States. Moreover, the Virgin Islands far exceeded its leader, Nevada, in ratio of divorces to marriages. Nevada in 1951 had 55.7 divorces per 1,000 population but at the same time had 289.5 marriage licenses per 1,000. Thus while Nevada granted 5 marriage licenses for every divorce, the Virgin Islands was granting 4 divorces for every 3 marriages. Lest this year be considered unrepresentative, we may look to 1950 and 1952, during which the Islands granted 2 for 1 and 7 for 5 divorces over marriages respectively. Only in the Virgin Islands did divorces exceed marriages during any of the years under consideration. The national average in 1940 was 2.0 divorces and 12.1 marriages per 1,000 population. Apart from some wartime fluctuations, the ratios have been quite stable. In 1951 the average was 2.5 divorces and 10.4 marriages. Thus, while the Virgin Islands was somewhat below the national average for marriages in 1951, it was 5 times the national average for divorce.
In 1952 the Virgin Islands hit its peak of divorces. Three hundred and forty-three were granted (14.3 per 1,000) as opposed to only 237 marriages. But the decisions in Alton v. Alton reduced the divorce figure to 236 in 1953, and only 111 divorces were granted between January and November of 1954.
The extraordinary rate of divorce and the disproportion between marriages and divorces raise controlling doubts of the “local” application of § 9 (a), especially in the context of its legislative history. Such doubts are confirmed by further inquiry. The 1950 Census reveals that only 416 widowed or divorced men and 1,105 widowed or divorced women resided in the Islands. Thus the number of divorces in 1951 nearly equalled the total widowed or divorced male population of the Islands. Remarriage can serve only as a partial explanation. Petitioner’s brief reveals a second surprising disproportion. Although the two components of the Islands (the Municipality of St. Croix and the Municipality of St. Thomas and St. John) are nearly equal in population, and although in 1940 St. Croix granted 18 divorces and St. Thomas and St. John 16, by 1952 St. Croix had increased only to 33, whereas St. Thomas and St. John had gone up nearly 2,000% to 310. It is not inappropriate to take judicial notice of the considerably greater tourist facilities on the Islands of St. Thomas and St. John.
We have no information as to the duration of residence of divorcees under the questioned law. But we are advised that contest of jurisdiction occurred in only 1% of the 310 cases concluded in St. Thomas and St. John in 1952 and that contest of the merits was no more frequent. A general appearance — which strips the court of its power to inquire further into domicile — but no contest as to any issue, was the practice in most cases. The clear impact of the legislation, even if we disregard the candid explanations of local political, commercial and legal sources and the rapid drop in divorces following the initial decision of unconstitutionality, is to provide a convenient forum for prosperous persons with substantial connections to the mainland, who desire to sever their marital ties while vacationing. The Commissioner in the case at bar did not even ask petitioner where she lived in the Virgin Islands.
The Legislative Assembly is much less liberal toward would-be voters. One-year domicile is required. Further, a personal property or income tax on persons physically present for six weeks but with no stronger link to the Islands would no doubt be strongly challenged and of questionable validity.
In the circumstances, we cannot conclude that if Congress had consciously been asked to give the Virgin Islands Legislative Assembly power to do what no State has ever attempted, it would have done so.
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Harlan took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Section 8 deals with annulment and is not here relevant. Section 9 reads as follows: “In an action for the dissolution of the marriage contract or for a legal separation the plaintiff therein must be an inhabitant of the district at the commencement of the action and for six weeks prior thereto, which residence shall be sufficient to give the Court jurisdiction without regard to the place where the marriage was solemnized or the cause of action arose.” Bill No. 14, 8th Legislative Assembly of the Virgin Islands of the United States, Sess., 1944.
Section 9 (a) was added by amendment in 1953. Bill No. 55, 17th Legislative Assembly of the Virgin Islands of the United States, 3d Sess., 1953.
Section 7 (8), Bill No. 14, 8th Legislative Assembly of the Virgin Islands of the United States, Sess., 1944.
Beginning with Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 244, 287-344; see Coudert, The Evolution of the Doctrine of Territorial Incorporation, 26 Col. L. Rev. 823.
In Balzac v. Porto Rico, 258 U. S. 298.
Both were distinguished from States. “A state, except as the Federal Constitution otherwise requires, is supreme and independent. ... A dependency [here the Philippines] has no government but that of the United States, except in so far as the United States may permit. . . . [0]ver such a dependency the nation possesses the sovereign powers of the general government plus the powers of a local or a state government in all cases where legislation is possible.” Cincinnati Soap Co. v. United States, 301 U. S. 308, 317.
E. g., 37 Stat. 514, 48 U. S. C. § 77 (Alaska).
39 Stat. 964, 48 U. S. C. § 821 (Puerto Rico); 68 Stat. 500, 48 U. S. C. A. § 1574 (a) (Virgin Islands); 64 Stat. 387, 48 U. S. C. § 1423a (Guam).
“. . . the granting of divorces was a rightful subject of legislation according to the prevailing judicial opinion of the country, and the understanding of the profession, at the time the organic act of Oregon was passed by Congress, when either of the parties divorced was at the time a resident within the territorial jurisdiction of the legislature.” 125 U. S., at 209.
The local law as it had existed under Danish rule was continued in effect, 39 Stat. 1132, 48 U. S. C. § 1392, subject to change by the two Colonial Councils, the instruments of municipal government for the two districts of the Islands. Presidential approval of any change in this body of law was required. Ibid. Each Colonial Council subsequently passed a divorce law, verbally drawn from that of Alaska. Burch v. Burch, 195 F. 2d 799, 805-806.
See note 1, supra.
His objection was that the amendment made physical presence sufficient in both ex parte and contested actions.
For the first time, the legislation explicitly characterized the Virgin Islands an “unincorporated territory.”
The Senate Report spoke as follows: “S. 3378 declares the Virgin Islands to be ‘an unincorporated territory of the United States of America.’ Thus, their legal status would be distinct and wholly different from that of Hawaii and Alaska, which are Incorporated Territories. . . . [S]tatehood has unvaryingly been the destiny of all Incorporated Territories. ... On the other hand, there is no precedent ... for statehood for a political, geographic, and economic unit such as the Virgin Islands would become under S. 3378. . . . A still higher degree of self-government and autonomy is, of course, possible within that framework — such as an elective governor when the people are ready for it.” S. Rep. No. 1271, 83d Cong., 2d Sess. 8. Congressman Powell, on the other hand, criticized “. . . the unwarranted failure of the bill to provide for any advance whatsoever toward increased self-government.” 100 Cong. Rec. 8664.
See note 12, supra. The Senate Report on the 1936 Organic Act gives some idea of the legislative purpose: . . the inhabitants of the Virgin Islands ... are capable of managing their local affairs. Unfortunately, the islands are not yet economically self-supporting. Hence it has been necessary to provide for an amount of Federal control over local affairs commensurate with continuing expenditures of Federal funds to subsidize the local government. . . . Matters of purely local concern are placed within local legislative power. The leyying of local taxes and the expenditure of local revenue are authorized. It has not been deemed wise to give the local government power to incur bonded indebtedness so long as local revenue is insufficient to pay the entire cost of local government. Locally enacted bills may be vetoed by the Governor.” S. Rep. No. 1974, 74th Cong., 2d Sess. 2.
For the history of the Alaskan provision, see 48 Cong. Rec. 5267-5270, 5293, 5297-5298.
Of course a suit for damages brought by a resident of the Virgin Islands for an injury occurring on the mainland, or a suit against a defendant served in the Virgin Islands arising out of a commercial transaction connecting both the Virgin Islands and the mainland, would clearly contain a relevant tie amply affording jurisdiction to the courts of the Virgin Islands.
We are dealing here with the bearing of the statute on consensual divorces. So far as these are concerned § 9 (a) is an entirety, for in its application the first part of the section accomplishes precisely the same thing as the second. Under our system of law a judge is not charged with the role of an adversary party, and as such called upon to assume responsibility for rebutting a statutory presumption.
Cf. People v. Daniels, 6 Utah 288, 293, 22 P. 159, 160, “. . . as to the extent to which the legislature may act on a rightful subject, when the limit is not expressly fixed, the court must ascertain the limit and determine whether the law is within it. To illustrate:
. . . Divorce is also a rightful subject of legislation, but a law giving any married person who might apply to the court a right to a divorce without cause would be invalid.”
Three members of the Legislative Assembly addressed themselves to the reasons for changing the result of the Court of Appeals in Burch v. Burch, see p. 8, supra.
Mr. Rohlsen spoke with authority as member in charge of tlje bill: “The divorce business in the Virgin Islands is quite a thriving business. I understand that this business provides quite an income for the municipalities since it is estimated that over $300,000 a year is spent within the Virgin Islands by persons who have been using the facilities of our divorce law to put their homes in order. Unfortunately, because of an error in the draft of original law . . . and because of the Governor’s attitude ... it now becomes necessary for us to consider another amendment which is designed to enhance this u-coming [sic] business in the islands .... I am not trying to speak for or against the moral ethics of divorce because, as far as I am concerned, those issues were denied when the statute was encted [sic] making it possible for people to come here for divorces. ... I consider this matter as a means of enhancing the economy of our islands . . . .”
“The people of the Virgin Islands have enjoyed great financial benefits by an influx of people to these islands for the purpose of getting divorced. ... I recommend to my colleagues this piece of legislation for their favorable consideration inasmuch as they can see the disadvantage in which the municipalities have been placed by not having the divorce court functioning at the present time.” Proceedings and Debates, 17th Legislative Assembly of the Virgin Islands of the United States, 3d Sess., 1953, pp. 46-47, 66-67.
Moving adoption of the earlier version of § 9 (a), which the Governor vetoed but which does not, so far as concerns our problem, differ from § 9 (a), Mr. Richards stated: “. . . personally I do not see why this Assembly should be deliberating so extensively on this amendment. Only about 2% of the divorces heard and the decisions rendered in the District Courts affect the residents of the Virgin Islands. I should conclude that this law was enacted not to facilitate the bona fide residents of the Virgin Islands but in order to provide as it were source of economic asset to the islands by which people are brought to our shores and contribute to the general economic welfare of the islands. ... I feel proud to see that only a possible of 2 or three resident[s] of the Virgin Islands are involved in divorce cases a year.” Proceedings and Debates, 17th Legislative Assembly of the Virgin Islands of the United States, 2d Sess., 1953, p. 10.
Mr. Hey wood, in discussing the earlier amendment, observed: “This bill No. 54 before us today appears to be in my opinion, a devise [sic] aimed primarily at transients in the islands. ... I am very well aware of the volume of divorce business being carried on in these islands. ... I have heard that there is anticipated a half a million dollars-business in this current year which will be distributed among lawyers, hotel bills, taxi cabs and other business ventures in the Community.” Id., at p. 8.
The statistics which follow are derived from these sources: United States Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1954, pp. 9, 63, 85, 940, 942; United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Summary of Marriage and Divorce Statistics, United States, 1952, pp. 45, 52-53; United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Monthly Vital Statistics Report, Vol. 3, No. 12, Feb. 15, 1955, p. 7; Brief for Petitioner,
United States Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1954, p.939.
Brief for Petitioner, p. 53.
See Virgin Islands Report, Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, 83d Cong., 2d Sess. 125-127; VIII Virgin Islands Magazine (Special Edition 1954) 7 et seq.; Murray, The Complete Handbook of the Virgin Islands (1951), 12-100.
The St. Croix Chamber of Commerce Newsletter for Feb. 1, 1954, cited the “change in the divorce situation” as one reason for the tourist slump during the previous season. District Judge Moore, who decided both Alton v. Alton, supra, and this case, wrote the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs: “. . . the present court is not unsympathetic to the fact that the failure to grant these divorces has affected the economic status of both lawyers and guesthouse keepers . . . .” Virgin Islands Report, Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, 83d Cong., 2d Sess. 4, 54.
“(b) For the purpose of this law 'residents of the Virgin Islands’ shall be persons who have maintained legal residence in the Virgin Islands for a period of one year next preceding the date of the election, and in the district in which they desire to vote for a period of sixty days next preceding the election. In all cases of doubt as to legal residence, the Board shall request the registrant to submit substantial and satisfactory proof that the said registrant has fulfilled the legal residence requirement. The domicile, which is the registrant’s legal residence, shall be determined in accordance with the following rules:
“1) Every person has a domicile.
“2) There can be but one domicile.
“3) Legal residence or domicile is the place where a person habitually resides when not called elsewhere to work or for some other temporary purpose and to which such person returns in season for rest.
“4) Legal domicile or residence may be changed by joinder of act and intent.
“5) A domicile cannot be lost until a new one has been acquired.
“This subsection shall be strictly enforced by the Board.” Bill No. 86, 18th Legislative Assembly of the Virgin Islands of the United States, 2d Sess., 1954, c. II, § 1.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | M | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Chief Justice
Warren delivered the opinion of the Court.
The respondent Steve Nelson, an acknowledged member of the Communist Party, was convicted in the Court of Quarter Sessions of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, of a violation of the Pennsylvania Sedition Act and sentenced to imprisonment for twenty years and to a fine of $10,000 and to costs of prosecution in the sum of $13,000. The Superior Court affirmed the conviction. 172 Pa. Super. 125, 92 A. 2d 431. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, recognizing but not reaching many alleged serious trial errors and conduct of the trial court infringing upon respondent’s right to due process of law, decided the case on the narrow issue of supersession of the state law by the Federal Smith Act. In its opinion, the court stated:
“And, while the Pennsylvania statute proscribes sedition against either the Government of the United States or the Government of Pennsylvania, it is only alleged sedition against the United States with which the instant case is concerned. Out of all the voluminous testimony, we have not found, nor has anyone pointed to, a single word indicating a seditious act or even utterance directed against the Government of Pennsylvania.”
The precise holding of the court, and all that is before us for review, is that the Smith Act of 1940, as amended in 1948, which prohibits the knowing advocacy of the overthrow of the Government of the United States by force and violence, supersedes the enforceability of the Pennsylvania Sedition Act which proscribes the same conduct.
Many State Attorneys General and the Solicitor General of the United States appeared as amici curiae for petitioner, and several briefs were filed on behalf of the respondent. Because of the important question of federal-state relationship involved, we granted certiorari. 348 U. S. 814.
It should be said at the outset that the decision in this case does not affect the right of States to enforce their sedition laws at times when the Federal Government has not occupied the field and is not protecting the entire country from seditious conduct. The distinction between the two situations was clearly recognized by the court below. Nor does it limit the jurisdiction of the States where the Constitution and Congress have specifically given them concurrent jurisdiction, as was done under the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act. United States v. Lanza, 260 XL S. 377. Neither does it limit the right of the State to protect itself at any time against sabotage or attempted violence of all kinds. Nor does it prevent the State from prosecuting where the same act constitutes both a federal offense and a state offense under the police power, as was done in Fox v. Ohio, 5 How. 410, and Gilbert v. Minnesota, 254 U. S. 325, relied upon by petitioner as authority herein. In neither of those cases did the state statute impinge on federal jurisdiction. In the Fox case, the federal offense was counterfeiting. The state offense was defrauding the person to whom the spurious money was passed. In the Gilbert case this Court, in upholding the enforcement of a state statute, proscribing conduct which would “interfere with or discourage the enlistment of men in the military or naval forces of the United States or of the State of Minnesota,” treated it not as an act relating to “the raising of armies for the national defense, nor to rules and regulations for the government of those under arms [a constitutionally exclusive federal power]. It [was] simply a local police measure . ...”
Where, as in the instant case, Congress has not stated specifically whether a federal statute has occupied a field in which the States are otherwise free to legislate, different criteria have furnished touchstones for decision. Thus,
“ [t] his Court, in considering the validity of state laws in the light of . . . federal laws touching the same subject, has made use of the following expressions: conflicting; contrary to; occupying the field; repugnance; difference; irreconcilability; inconsistency; violation; curtailment; and interference. But none of these expressions provides an infallible constitutional test or an exclusive constitutional yardstick. In the final analysis, there can be no one crystal clear distinctly marked formula.” Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U. S. 52, 67.
And see Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218, 230-231. In this case, we think that each of several tests of supersession is met.
First, “[t]he scheme of federal regulation [is] so pervasive as to make reasonable the inference that Congress left no room for the States to supplement it.” Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S., at 230. The Congress determined in 1940 that it was necessary for it to re-enter the field of antisubversive legislation, which had been abandoned by it in 1921. In that year, it enacted the Smith Act which proscribes advocacy of the overthrow of any government — federal, state or local — by force and violence and organization of and knowing membership in a group which so advocates. Conspiracy to commit any of these acts is punishable under the general criminal conspiracy provisions in 18 U. S. C. § 371. The Internal Security Act of 1950 is aimed more directly at Communist organizations. It distinguishes between “Communist-action organizations” and "Communist-front organizations,” requiring such organizations to register and to file annual reports with the Attorney General giving complete details as to their officers and funds. Members of Communist-action organizations who have not been registered by their organization must register as individuals. Failure to register in accordance with the requirements of Sections 786-787 is punishable by a fine of not more than $10,000 for an offending organization and by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years or both for an individual offender — each day of failure to register constituting a separate offense. And the Act imposes certain sanctions upon both “action” and “front” organizations and their members. The Communist Control Act of 1954 declares “that the Communist Party of the United States, although purportedly a political party, is in fact an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the United States” and that “its role as the agency of a hostile foreign power renders its existence a clear present and continuing danger to the security of the United States.” It also contains a legislative finding that the Communist Party is a “Communist-action organization” within the meaning of the Internal Security Act of 1950 and provides that “knowing” members of the Communist Party are “subject to all the provisions and penalties” of that Act. It furthermore sets up a new classification of “Communist-infiltrated organizations” and provides for the imposition of sanctions against them.
We examine these Acts only to determine the congressional plan. Looking to all of them in the aggregate, the conclusion is inescapable that Congress has intended to occupy the field of sedition. Taken as a whole, they evince a congressional plan which makes it reasonable to determine that no room has been left for the States to supplement it. Therefore, a state sedition statute is superseded regardless of whether it purports to supplement the federal law. As was said by Mr. Justice Holmes in Charleston & Western Carolina R. Co. v. Varnville Furniture Co., 237 U. S. 597, 604:
“When Congress has taken the particular subject-matter in hand coincidence is as ineffective as opposition, and a state law is not to be declared a help because it attempts to go farther than Congress has seen fit to go.”
Second, the federal statutes “touch a field in which the federal interest is so dominant that the federal system [must] be assumed to preclude enforcement of state laws on the same subject.” Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S., at 230, citing Hines v. Davidowitz, supra, Congress has devised an all-embracing program for resistance to the various forms of totalitarian aggression. Our external defenses have been strengthened, and a plan to protect against internal subversion has been made by it. It has appropriated vast sums, not only for our own protection, but also to strengthen freedom throughout the world. It has charged the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency with responsibility for intelligence concerning Communist seditious activities against our Government, and has denominated such activities as part of a world conspiracy. It accordingly proscribed sedition against all government in the nation — national, state and local. Congress declared that these steps were taken “to provide for the common defense, to preserve the sovereignty of the United States as an independent nation, and to guarantee to each State a republican form of government . . . .” Congress having thus treated seditious conduct as a matter of vital national concern, it is in no sense a local enforcement problem. As was said in the court below:
“Sedition against the United States is not a local offense. It is a crime against the Nation. As such, it should be prosecuted and punished in the Federal courts where this defendant has in fact been prosecuted and convicted and is now under sentence. It is not only important but vital that such prosecutions should be exclusively within the control of the Federal Government . . .
Third, enforcement of state sedition acts presents a serious danger of conflict with the administration of the federal program. Since 1939, in order to avoid a hampering of uniform enforcement of its program by sporadic local prosecutions, the Federal Government has urged local authorities not to intervene in such matters, but to turn over to the federal authorities immediately and unevaluated all information concerning subversive activities. The President made such a request on September 6, 1939, when he placed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in charge of investigation in this field:
“The Attorney General has been requested by me to instruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice to take charge of investigative work in matters relating to espionage, sabotage, and violations of the neutrality regulations.
“This task must be conducted in a comprehensive and effective manner on a national basis, and all information must be carefully sifted out and correlated in order to avoid confusion and irresponsibility.
“To this end I request all police officers, sheriffs, and all other law enforcement officers in the United States promptly to turn over to the nearest representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation any information obtained by them relating to espionage, counterespionage, sabotage, subversive activities and violations of the neutrality laws.”
And in addressing the Federal-State Conference on Law Enforcement Problems of National Defense, held on August 5 and 6, 1940, only a few weeks after the passage of the Smith Act, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said:
“The fact must not be overlooked that meeting the spy, the saboteur and the subverter is a problem that must be handled on a nation-wide basis. An isolated incident in the middle west may be of little significance, but when fitted into a national pattern of similar incidents, it may lead to an important revelation of subversive activity. It is for this reason that the President requested all of our citizens and law enforcing agencies to report directly to the Federal Bureau of Investigation any complaints or information dealing with espionage, sabotage or subversive activities. In such matters, time is of the essence. It is unfortunate that in a few States efforts have been made by individuals not fully acquainted with the far-flung ramifications of this problem to interject superstructures of agencies between local law enforcement and the FBI to sift what might be vital information, thus delaying its immediate reference to the FBI. This cannot be, if our internal security is to be best served. This is no time for red tape or amateur handling of such vital matters. There must be a direct and free flow of contact between the local law enforcement agencies and the FBI. The job of meeting the spy or saboteur is one for experienced men of law enforcement.”
Moreover, the Pennsylvania Statute presents a peculiar danger of interference with the federal program. For, as the court below observed:
“Unlike the Smith Act, which can be administered only by federal officers acting in their official capacities, indictment for sedition under the Pennsylvania statute can be initiated upon an information made by a private individual. The opportunity thus present for the indulgence of personal spite and hatred or for furthering some selfish advantage or ambition need only be mentioned to be appreciated. Defense of the Nation by law, no less than by arms, should be a public and not a private undertaking. It is important that punitive sanctions for sedition against the United States be such as have been promulgated by the central governmental authority and administered under the supervision and review of that authority’s judiciary. If that be done, sedition will be detected and punished, no less, wherever it may be found, and the right of the individual to speak freely and without fear, even in criticism of the government, will at the same time be protected.”
In his brief, the Solicitor General states that forty-two States plus Alaska and Hawaii have statutes which in some form prohibit advocacy of the violent overthrow of established government. These statutes are entitled anti-sedition statutes, criminal anarchy laws, criminal syndicalist laws, etc. Although all of them are primarily directed against the overthrow of the United States Government, they are in no sense uniform. And our attention has not been called to any case where the prosecution has been successfully directed against an attempt to destroy state or local government. Some of these Acts are studiously drawn and purport to protect fundamental rights by appropriate definitions, standards of proof and orderly procedures in keeping with the avowed congressional purpose “to protect freedom from those who would destroy it, without infringing upon the freedom of all our people.” Others are vague and are almost wholly without such safeguards. Some even purport to punish mere membership in subversive organizations which the federal statutes do not punish where federal registration requirements have been fulfilled.
When we were confronted with a like situation in the field of labor-management relations, Mr. Justice Jackson wrote:
"A multiplicity of tribunals and a diversity of procedures are quite as apt to produce incompatible or conflicting adjudications as are different rules of substantive law.”
Should the States be permitted to exercise a concurrent jurisdiction in this area, federal enforcement would encounter not only the difficulties mentioned by Mr. Justice Jackson, but the added conflict engendered by different criteria of substantive offenses.
Since we find that Congress has occupied the field to the exclusion of parallel state legislation, that the dominant interest of the Federal Government precludes state intervention, and that administration of state Acts would conflict with the operation of the federal plan, we are convinced that the decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is unassailable.
We are not unmindful of the risk of compounding punishments which would be created by finding concurrent state power. In our view of the case, we do not reach the question whether double or multiple punishment for the same overt acts directed against the United States has constitutional sanction. Without compelling indication to the contrary, we will not assume that Congress intended to permit the possibility of double punishment. Cf. Houston v. Moore, 5 Wheat. 1, 31, 75; Jerome v. United States, 318 U. S. 101, 105.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is
Affirmed.
[For dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Reed, joined by Mr. Justice Burton and Mr. Justice Minton, see post, p. 512.]
APPENDIX.
Pennsylvania Penal Code § 207.
The word “sedition,” as used in this section, shall mean:
Any writing, publication, printing, cut, cartoon, utterance, or conduct, either individually or in connection or combination with any other person, the intent of which is:
(a) To make or cause to be made any outbreak or demonstration of violence against this State or against the United States.
(b) To encourage any person to take any measures or engage in any conduct with a view of overthrowing or destroying or attempting to overthrow or destroy, by any force or show or threat of force, the Government of this State or of the United States.
(c) To incite or encourage any person to commit any overt act with a view to bringing the Government of this State or of the United States into hatred or contempt.
(d) To incite any person or persons to do or attempt to do personal injury or harm to any officer of this State or of the United States, or to damage or destroy any public property or the property of any public official because of his official position.
The word “sedition” shall also include:
(e) The actual damage to, or destruction of, any public property or the property of any public official, perpetrated because the owner or occupant is in official position.
(f) Any writing, publication, printing, cut, cartoon, or utterance which advocates or teaches the duty, necessity, or propriety of engaging in crime, violence, or any form of terrorism, as a means of accomplishing political reform or change in government.
(g) The sale, gift or distribution of any prints, publications, books, papers, documents, or written matter in any form, which advocates, furthers or teaches sedition as hereinbefore defined.
(h) Organizing or helping to organize or becoming a member of any assembly, society, or group, where any of the policies or purposes thereof are seditious as hereinbefore defined.
Sedition shall be a felony. Whoever is guilty of sedition shall, upon conviction thereof, be sentenced to pay a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or to undergo imprisonment not exceeding twenty (20) years, or both.
18 U. S. C. § 2385.
Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or
Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or
Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—
Shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.
Pa. Penal Code § 207, 18 Purdon’s Pa. Stat. Ann. § 4207. The text of the statute is set out in an Appendix to this opinion, post, p. 510.
The Supreme Court also did not have to reach the question of the constitutionality of subdivision (c) of the Pennsylvania Act, the basis of four counts of the twelve-count indictment, which punishes utterances “or conduct [intended to] incite or encourage any person to commit any overt act with a view to bringing the Government of this State or of the United States into hatred or contempt.” Cf. Winters v. New York, 333 U. S. 507. This provision is strangely reminiscent of the Sedition Act of 1798, 1 Stat. 596, which punished utterances made “with intent to defame the . . . government, or either house of the . . . Congress, or the . . . President, or to bring them . . . into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them . . . the hatred of the good people of the United States . . . .”
377 Pa. 58,104 A. 2d 133.
377 Pa., at 69,104 A. 2d, at 139.
54 Stat. 670.
18 U. S. C. § 2385. The text of the statute is set out in an Appendix to this opinion, post, p. 511. (Another part of the Smith Act, punishing the advocacy of mutiny, is now 18 U. S. C. § 2387.)
“No question of federal supersession of a state statute was in issue . . . when the Supreme Court upheld the- validity of the state statutes in Gitlow v. New York, 268 U. S. 652 (1925), and Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357 (1927)." 377 Pa., at 73-74, 104 A. 2d, at 141.
Although the judgments of conviction in both Gitlow and Whitney were rendered in 1920, before repeal of the federal wartime sedition statute of 1918, 41 Stat. 1359, the question of supersession was not raised in either case and, of course, not considered in this Court’s opinions.
“Nor is a State stripped of its means of self-defense by the suspension of its sedition statute through the entry of the Federal Government upon the field. There are many valid laws on Pennsylvania’s statute books adequate for coping effectively with actual or threatened internal civil disturbances. As to the nationwide threat to all citizens, imbedded in the type of conduct interdicted by a sedition act, we are — all of us — protected by the Smith Act and in a manner more efficient and more consistent with the service of our national welfare in all respects.” 377 Pa., at 70, 104 A. 2d, at 139.
254 U. S., at 331. The Court went on to observe: “. . . the State knew the conditions which existed and could have a solicitude for the public peace, and this record justifies it. Gilbert's remarks were made in a public meeting. They were resented by his auditors. There were protesting interruptions, also accusations and threats against him, disorder and intimations of violence. And such is not an uncommon experience. On such occasions feeling usually runs high and is impetuous; there is a prompting to violence and when violence is once yielded to, before it can be quelled, tragedies may be enacted. To preclude such result or a danger of it is a proper exercise of the power of the State.” Id., at 331-332.
Petitioner makes the subsidiary argument that 18 U. S. C. § 3231 shows a congressional intention not to supersede state criminal statutes by any provision of Title 18. Section 3231 provides:
“The district courts of the United States shall have original jurisdiction, exclusive of the courts of the States, of all offenses against the laws of the United States.
“Nothing in this title shall be held to take away or impair the jurisdiction of the courts of the several States under the laws thereof.”
The office of the second sentence is merely to limit the effect of the jurisdictional grant of the first sentence. There was no intention to resolve particular supersession questions by the Section.
See Appendix, post, p. 511. See also the Voorhis Act passed in 1940, now codified as 18 U. S. C. § 2386, and the Foreign Agents Registration Act passed in 1938, 22 U. S. C. § 611 et seq.
50 U. S. C. § 781 et seq.
Id.,§782 (3), (4).
Id., §786.
Id., §787.
Id., § 794 (a).
Id., §§ 784, 785, 789, 790.
50 U. S. C. (1955 Supp.) § 841.
Id., §843.
Id., § 782 (4A).
It is worth observing that in Hines this Court held a Pennsylvania statute providing for alien registration was superseded by Title III of the same Act of which the commonly called Smith Act was Title I. Title II amended certain statutes dealing with the exclusion and deportation of aliens. The provisions of Title I involve a field of no less dominant federal interest than Titles II and III, in which Congress manifestly did not desire concurrent state action.
50 U. S. C. §781 (15).
United States v. Mesarosh [Nelson], 116 F. Supp. 345, aff’d, 223 F. 2d 449, cert. granted, 350 U. S. 922.
377 Pa., at 76, 104 A. 2d, at 142.
The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1939 Volume, pp. 478-479 (1941).
Proceedings, p. 23.
377 Pa., at 74-75, 104 A. 2d, at 141.
E. g., compare Fla. Stat., 1953, § 876.02: “Any person who— . . . (5) Becomes a member of, associated with or promotes the interest of any criminal anarchistic, communistic, nazi-istic or fascistic organization, . . . [s]hall be guilty of a felony . . . ,” with 50 U. S. C. § 783 (f): “Neither the holding of office nor membership in any Communist organization by any person shall constitute per se a violation of subsection (a) or subsection (c) of this section or of any other criminal statute. The fact of the registration of any person under section 787 or section 788 of this title as an officer or member of any Communist organization shall not be received in evidence against such person in any prosecution for any alleged violation of subsection (a) or subsection (c) of this section or for any alleged violation of any other criminal statute.”
Garner v. Teamsters Union, 346 U. S. 485, 490-491.
But see Grant, The Lanza Rule of Successive Prosecutions, 32 Col. L. Rev. 1309.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Scalia
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this case we must determine whether federal legislation providing for controls over the allocation and pricing of petroleum products, passed in response to the oil crisis of the early 1970’s, or the legislation subsequently eliminating those controls, pre-empts gasoline price regulation by the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
I
In 1973, Congress passed the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act (EPAA), Pub. L. 93-159, 87 Stat. 627, 15 U. S. C. § 751 et seq., in reaction to severe market disruptions caused by an embargo on oil exports to the United States. The central provision of the legislation, upon which all the rest depended, was § 4, 15 U. S. C. § 753, which required the President to promulgate regulations governing allocation and pricing of petroleum products. The Act also contained an express pre-emption provision, § 6(b), 15 U. S. C. § 755(b), precluding state and local regulation of allocation and pricing in conflict with a regulation or order under § 4. As originally enacted, the EPAA provided for termination of the President’s regulatory authority early in 1975, but during that year Congress provided for temporary extensions, and then enacted the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA), Pub. L. 94-163, 89 Stat. 871 (codified in scattered Titles and sections of United States Code), which amended the EPAA to provide for gradual decontrol. The EPCA extended the President’s EPAA regulatory obligations for 40 months, and thereafter granted him discretionary regulatory authority until September 30, 1981; on that date, the statute prescribed that “[t]he authority to promulgate and amend any regulation or to issue any o'rder under [the EPAA] shall expire.” § 461, 89 Stat. 955, 15 U. S. C. § 760g.
Before enactment of the EPAA, Puerto Rico had regulated the prices of gasoline and other petroleum products sold in the Commonwealth. The Puerto Rico Department of Consumer Affairs (referred to in this litigation as DACO, apparently the acronym of its Spanish title, Departamento de Asuntos del Consumidor) was charged with regulating these and other commodities, but suspended its regulation of petroleum products when the EPAA was passed in 1973. In 1975, anticipating the expiration of the EPAA, DACO issued a regulation to restore its regulatory authority, but after the EPCA was passed it modified this regulation to make it effective only after federal price controls were lifted. Then in the spring of 1986 (414 years after the President’s regulatory authority was terminated), the Legislature of Puerto Rico imposed an excise tax on oil refiners, and DACO issued the regulations that are the subject of the challenge here. DACO Orders of March 26, April 23, and May 20, 1986 (App. to Pet. for Cert. 42a-45a, App. 7-12, 21-29). Among other requirements, these regulations prescribed that the Secretary of DACO be given 15 days’ notice of price increases, prohibited wholesalers from passing on the cost of the excise tax to retailers, and imposed maximum profit margins on sales by wholesalers to retailers. '
Respondents, several oil companies, brought actions that were consolidated in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico alleging, inter alia, that DACO’s orders were unconstitutional on pre-emption grounds, and requesting declaratory and injunctive relief. The District Court enjoined DACO from enforcing its regulations, in part on the grounds that DACO’s authority was pre-empted by Congress’ decision to decontrol petroleum prices, and petitioners appealed this determination to the Temporary Emergency Court of Appeals (TECA). (Petitioners also challenged certain other aspects of the District Court’s decision in an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which has stayed its proceedings.) A divided panel of the TECA affirmed. 811 F. 2d 1511 (1986). Because of the importance of the issue presented, we granted the petition for certiorari. 484 U. S. 814 (1987).
II
Although Puerto Rico has a unique status in our federal system, see, e. g., Examining Board v. Flores de Otero, 426 U. S. 572, 596 (1976), the parties have assumed, and we agree, that the test for federal pre-emption of the law of Puerto Rico at issue here is the same as the test under the Supremacy Clause, U. S. Const., Art. VI, cl. 2, for preemption of the law of a State. See 48 U. S. C. § 734 (statutory laws of the United States generally “have the same force and effect in Puerto Rico as in the United States”); Helfeld, How Much of the United States Constitution and Statutes Are Applicable to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico?, 110 F. R. D. 452, 469 (1985) (Supremacy Clause applies to Puerto Rico). Cf. Examining Board, supra, at 597; Calero-Toledo v. Pearson Yacht Leasing Co., 416 U. S. 663, 675 (1974). Our Supremacy Clause cases typically involve analysis of the scope of pre-emptive intent underlying statutory provisions that impose federal regulation. See, e. g., Louisiana Public Service Comm’n v. FCC, 476 U. S. 355, 368-370 (1986); Shaw v. Delta Air Lines, Inc., 463 U. S. 85, 95-96 (1983); Hines v. Davidowitz, 312 U. S. 52, 67, 69-70 (1941). While the EPAA was operative, that typical question posed relatively little, difficulty, since §6(b) explicitly pre-empted state regulation “in conflict” with an EPAA regulation or order. Here, however, we are presented with the decidedly untypical claim that federal pre-emption exists despite, not only the absence of a statutory provision specifically announcing it, but the absence of any extant federal regulatory program with which the state regulation might conflict and which might therefore be thought to imply pre-emption. Respondents’ contention, in a nutshell, is that the EPAA evinced a federal intent to enter the field of petroleum allocation and price regulation, and that the EPCA never countermanded that intent, but merely changed the nature of the federally imposed regime from one of federal hands-on regulation to one of federally mandated free-market control.
We have suggested elsewhere that the Constitution permits congressional creation of such a regime. See, e. g., Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. v. Arkansas Public Service Comm’n, 461 U. S. 375, 384 (1983). But to say that it can be created is not to say it can be created subtly. As we have repeatedly stated, “ ‘ “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.’”” Hillsborough County v. Automated Medical Laboratories, Inc., 471 U. S. 707, 715 (1985), quoting Jones v. Rath Packing Co., 430 U. S. 519, 525 (1977), in turn quoting Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218, 230 (1947). We do not find that clarity and manifestness in the statutory scheme respondents rely upon here, which consists of no more than (1) provisions for detailed Presidential regulation, which remain in the current version of the United States Code, but whose effect has, by subsequent statute, specifically been decreed to expire, and (2) a provision pre-empting state laws that conflict with any Presidential regulation or order under this expired authority.
In the last analysis, what respondents rely upon consists of nothing more than excerpts from the legislative history of the EPCA which in their view (though not in the view of petitioners) evidence a congressional intent that there be a free market in petroleum products. While we have frequently said that pre-emption analysis requires ascertaining congressional intent, see, e. g., Louisiana Public Service Comm’n, supra, at 369, we have never meant that to signify congressional intent in a vacuum, unrelated to the giving of meaning to an enacted statutory text. There is no text here — neither §6(b), which only pre-empts conflicts with actual federal regulation, nor any extant federal regulation that might plausibly be thought to imply exclusivity — to which expressions of pre-emptive intent in legislative history might attach. Respondents have brought to our attention statements that may reflect general congressional approval of a free market in petroleum products, or general congressional belief that such a market would result from enactment of the EPCA, or even general congressional desire that it result. But unenacted approvals, beliefs, and desires are not laws. Without a text that can, in light of those statements, plausibly be interpreted as prescribing federal pre-emption it is impossible to find that a free market was mandated by federal law.
Today’s conclusion that the DACO regulations are not preempted was plainly foreshadowed by our decision in Tully v. Mobil Oil Corp., 455 U. S. 245 (1982) (per curiam). In that case, the TECA had held that the EPAA pre-empted a state provision barring oil companies from passing on to subsequent purchasers the cost of the State’s gross-receipts tax. Since, by the time we decided that appeal, the EPCAimposed expiration date for Presidential authority under the EPAA had already passed, we vacated the judgment, agreeing with the TECA’s own determination that expiration of the EPAA “‘will signal the end of federal concern in this area.’” Id., at 246, quoting 653 F. 2d 497, 502 (1981). Our action was based on the theory that the pre-empting legislation was no more. 455 U. S., at 247, and n. 2.
Instead of following our decision in Tully, the TECA relied on language in our subsequent decision in Transcontinental Pipe Line Corp. v. State Oil and Gas Bd. of Miss., 474 U. S. 409 (1986), apparently finding there a modification of our preemption doctrine. In Transcontinental, we returned to an issue we had previously considered in Northern Natural Gas Co. v. State Corporation Comm’n of Kansas, 372 U. S. 84 (1963): whether a state regulation requiring a pipeline company to purchase gas ratably from owners with common interests in a gas source was pre-empted by federal legislation. The affirmative answer in Northern Natural had been based on the Court’s construction of the Natural Gas Act (NGA), 15 U. S. C. § 717 et seq. In Transcontinental, the question presented was whether the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978 (NGPA), 15 U. S. C. § 3301 et seq., “altered those characteristics of the federal regulatory scheme which provided the basis in Northern Natural for a finding of pre-emption. ” 474 U. S., at 417. The strongest evidence of such alteration was the NGPA’s withdrawal of the type of gas purchases at issue in Transcontinental from the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). We concluded, however, that the pre-emptive force of the NGA recognized in Northern Natural was equalled by the pre-emptive force of the NGPA, because the NGPA did not alter the comprehensive nature of the scheme, id., at 420-421, and did not eliminate the federal interest in consumer protection, id., at 423-424.
At one point in our Transcontinental opinion, we phrased the question as “whether Congress, in revising a comprehensive federal regulatory scheme to give market forces a more significant role in determining the supply, the demand, and the price of natural gas, intended to give the States the power it had denied FERC.” Id., at 422. In the decision below, the TECA apparently interpreted this as the enunciation of a new pre-emption test, and proceeded to search the legislative history of the EPCA for evidence of an affirmative intention that the States assume the price-regulating role that the Federal Government was abandoning. Finding none, and further finding the expression of congressional sentiments favoring the free market, it concluded that the States were pre-empted. This mistook our intent. Transcontinental was not meant to announce a new rule of burden-shifting whenever the Federal Government terminates or reduces its regulation of a field of commerce, replacing the normal need for finding a federal intent to pre-empt with a need to find a federal intent to retransfer authority to the States. To the contrary, a “clear and manifest purpose” of pre-emption is always required. We demanded an affirmative intent to retransfer authority in Transcontinental because only that could have refuted the pre-emptive intent already manifest in the revised, but nonetheless “comprehensive,” federal regulatory scheme.
Respondents would draw exaggerated inferences from another statement in Transcontinental, to the effect that “ ‘[a] federal decision to forgo regulation in a given area may imply an authoritative federal determination that the area is best left unregulated, and in that event would have as much preemptive force as a decision to regulate.’ ” Ibid., quoting Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp., 461 U. S., at 384. That was obviously not meant in an unqualified sense; otherwise, deliberate federal inaction could always imply pre-emption, which cannot be. There is no federal pre-emption in vacuo, without a constitutional text or a federal statute to assert it. Where a comprehensive federal scheme intentionally leaves a portion of the regulated field without controls, then the preemptive inference can be drawn — not from federal inaction alone, but from inaction joined with action.
That is not what we have here. Congress has withdrawn from all substantial involvement in petroleum allocation and price regulation. There being no extant action that can create an inference of pre-emption in an unregulated segment of an otherwise regulated field, pre-emption, if it is intended, must be explicitly stated. To adopt the imaginative analogy set forth in the Solicitor General’s amicus brief, repeal of EPAA regulation did not leave behind a pre-emptive grin without a statutory cat.
For the reasons stated, the judgment of the TECA is
Reversed.
Justice O’Connor took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Specifically, § 6(b), as codified, 15 U. S. C. § 755(b), read as follows:
“The regulation under [§ 4] of this title and any order issued thereunder shall preempt any provision of any program for the allocation of crude oil, residual fuel oil, or any refined petroleum product established by any State or local government if such provision is in conflict with such regulation or any such order.”
This text permits the argument that the federal pre-emption excluded state and local price regulation only in connection with a state or local allocation program. That argument has not been made here, and would in any event only reinforce the conclusion that we reach. We shall assume, for purposes of our analysis, that the federal pre-emption of conflicting price regulation was complete.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Minton
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case involves the relative priority between an attachment lien and the liens of the United States for unpaid taxes. The District Court found the attachment lien prior to the liens of the United States, and the Court of Appeals affirmed without opinion. We granted certiorari, 347 U. S. 973.
On August 11, 1948, the United--States filed suit in the District Court for the Northern District of Ohio to collect unpaid income taxes for the years 1942-1946 against one Acri and his wife. Acri was at the time in the penitentiary for the murder of one Oravec, whose personal representative, Oravitz, had, on August 6, 1947, in Mahoning County, Ohio, filed an action against Acri for wrongful death. On the same date, certain cash and bonds of Acri, which were in his safety deposit box in the Dollar Savings and Trust Company, were attached by Oravitz. The box was not opened until September 11, 1948, after the bank had been made guardian of Acri, at which time an inventory was filed. The personal representative, Oravitz, and the bank, as guardian of Acri, were made parties to the Government’s suit.
On January 19, 1949, the personal representative of the murdered man recovered judgment against Acri in the sum of $18,500. In the meantime, on November 18, 1947, after the issuance of the writ of attachment, but more than a year before the judgment in the main action for wrongful death, the assessment lists for unpaid income taxes of Acri and his wife for the years 1942-1946 were received in the office of the Collector of Internal Revenue. On November 19, 1947, demand for payment was mailed to Acri. On November 21, 1947, a notice of the tax liens was filed in the office of the Recorder in Mahoning County, Ohio, which is the residence of the defendants and the location of the Acris’ property, and the place where the action for wrongful death was begun. Notice and levy of the tax liens were served upon the Dollar Bank. It was stipulated that the only question involved was the relative priority of the attachment lien of the personal representative and the tax liens of the United States.
The issue here is identical with that in United States v. Security Trust Co., 340 U. S. 47. There the question was stated as follows:
“The question presented here is whether a tax lien of the United States is prior in right to an attachment lien where the federal tax lien was recorded subsequent to the date of the attachment lien but prior to the date the attaching creditor obtained judgment.” 340 U. S., at 48.
Our answer here is the same as in the Security Trust Company case and for the same reasons.
The relative priority of the lien of the United States for unpaid taxes is, as we said in United States v. Waddill Co., 323 U. S. 353, 356, 357; Illinois v. Campbell, 329 U. S. 362, 371; United States v. Security Trust Co., 340 U. S. 47, 49, always a federal question to be determined finally by the federal courts. The state’s characterization of its liens, while good for all state purposes, does not necessarily bind this Court. United States v. Waddill Co., 323 U. S. 353, at 357; United States v. Gilbert Associates, 345 U. S. 361. Therefore, the fact that the Ohio courts had designated an attachment lien “an execution in advance,” Rempe & Son v. Ravens, 68 Ohio St. 113, 67 N. E. 282, and treated it as a perfected lien at the time of attachment, does not bind this Court. We must look at the circumstances as we did in the Waddill case, where the Virginia court had held a landlord’s lien was fixed, specific, and not inchoate. This Court, after examining the facts, found otherwise. In Gilbert Associates, the New Hampshire court had held that the assessment of a tax was a judgment and the United States’ lien for taxes was not valid against the tax assessment made by the town within the meaning of § 3672 of the Internal Revenue Code. We held that although New Hampshire might treat its tax assessments as judgments for state purposes, the assessment of the tax was not a judgment within the meaning of § 3672. We hold here that the attachment lien in Ohio is for federal tax purposes an inchoate lien because, at the time the attachment issued, the fact and the amount of the lien were contingent upon the outcome of the suit for damages.
In argument it was pointed out that the statute of California involved in the Security Trust case was different because California courts had held an attachment lien to be inchoate and a mere notice of a more perfect lien to come, while Ohio courts had held it to be an execution in advance and a lien perfected as of the time of attachment. This distinction is immaterial for purposes of federal law. This case is not to be distinguished from United States v. Security Trust Co., 340 U. S. 47, and the judgment is
Reversed.
“Such lien shall not be valid as against any mortgagee, pledgee, purchaser, or judgment creditor until notice thereof has been filed by the collector . . etc.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The petitioner, Robert Swain, a Negro, was indicted and convicted of rape in the Circuit Court of Talladega County, Alabama, and sentenced to death. His motions to quash the indictment, to strike the trial jury venire and to declare void the petit jury chosen in the case, all based on alleged invidious discrimination in the selection of jurors, were denied. The Alabama Supreme Court affirmed the conviction, 275 Ala. 508, 156 So. 2d 368, and we granted certiorari, 377 U. S. 915.
In support of his claims, petitioner invokes the constitutional principle announced in 1880 in Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303, where the Court struck down a state statute qualifying only white people for jury duty. Such a statute was held to contravene the central purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment: “exemption from unfriendly legislation against [Negroes] distinctively as colored, — exemption from legal discriminations, implying inferiority in civil society, lessening the security of their enjoyment of the rights which others enjoy....” 100 U. S., at 308. Although a Negro defendant is not entitled to a jury containing members of his race, a State’s purposeful or deliberate denial to Negroes on account of race of participation as jurors in the administration of justice violates the Equal Protection Clause. Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S. 339; Gibson v. Mississippi, 162 U. S. 565. This principle was further elaborated in Carter v. Texas, 177 U. S. 442, 447, where, in respect to exclusion from grand juries, the Court said:
“Whenever by any action of a State, whether through its legislature, through its courts, or through its executive or administrative officers, all persons of the African race are excluded, solely because of their race or color, from serving as grand jurors in the criminal prosecution of a person of the African race, the equal protection of the laws is denied....”
And it has been consistently and repeatedly applied in many cases coming before this Court. The principle of these cases is broadly based.
“For racial discrimination to result in the exclusion from jury service of otherwise qualified groups not only violates our Constitution and the laws enacted under it but is at war with our basic concepts of a democratic society and a representative government.” Smith v. Texas, 311 U. S. 128, 130.
Further, “[jjurymen should be selected as individuals, on the basis of individual qualifications, and not as members of a race.” Cassell v. Texas, 339 U. S. 282, 286 (opinion of Mr. Justice Reed, announcing judgment). Nor is the constitutional command forbidding intentional exclusion limited to Negroes. It applies to any identifiable group in the community which may be the subject of prejudice. Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U. S. 475.
But purposeful discrimination may not be assumed or merely asserted. Brownfield v. South Carolina, 189 U. S. 426; Tarrance v. Florida, 188 U. S. 519; Smith v. Mississippi, 162 U. S. 592; Bush v. Kentucky, 107 U. S. 110. It must be proven, Tarrance v. Florida, supra; Martin v. Texas, 200 U. S. 316, the quantum of proof necessary being a matter of federal law. Norris v. Alabama, 294 U. S. 587; Smith v. Texas, 311 U. S. 128. It is not the soundness of these principles, which is unquestioned, but their scope and application to the issues in this case that concern us here.
I.
We consider first petitioner’s claims concerning the selection of grand jurors and the petit jury venire. The evidence was that while Negro males over 21 constitute 26% of all males in the county in this age group, only 10 to 15% of the grand and petit jury panels drawn from the jury box since 1953 have been Negroes, there having been only one case in which the percentage was as high as 23%. In this period of time, Negroes served on 80% of the grand juries selected, the number ranging from one to three. There were four or five Negroes on the grand jury panel of about 33 in this case, out of which two served on the grand jury which indicted petitioner. Although there has been an average of six to seven Negroes on petit jury venires in criminal cases, no Negro has actually served on a petit jury since about 1950. In this case there were eight Negroes on the petit jury venire but none actually served, two being exempt and six being struck by the prosecutor in the process of selecting the jury.
It is wholly obvious that Alabama has not totally excluded a racial group from either grand or petit jury panels, as was the case in Norris v. Alabama, 294 U. S. 587; Hill v. Texas, 316 U. S. 400; Patton v. Mississippi, 332 U. S. 463; Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U. S. 475; and Reece v. Georgia, 350 U. S. 85. Moreover, we do not consider an average of six to eight Negroes on these panels as constituting forbidden token inclusion within the meaning of the cases in this Court. Thomas v. Texas, 212 U. S. 278; Akins v. Texas, 325 U. S. 398; Avery v. Georgia, 345 U. S. 559. Nor do we consider the evidence in this case to make out a prima facie case of invidious discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Alabama law requires that the three jury commissioners in Talladega County place on the jury roll all male citizens in the community over 21 who are reputed to be honest, intelligent men and are esteemed for their integrity, good character and sound judgment. Ala. Code, Tit. 30, §§ 20, 21 (1958). In practice, however, the commissioners do not place on the roll all such citizens, either white or colored. A typical jury roll at best contains about 2,500 names, out of a total male population over 21, according to the latest census, of 16,406 persons. Each commissioner, with the clerk’s assistance, produces for the jury list names of persons who in his judgment are qualified. The sources are city directories, registration lists, club and church lists, conversations with other persons in the community, both white and colored, and personal and business acquaintances.
Venires drawn from the jury box made up in this manner unquestionably contained a smaller proportion of the Negro community than of the white community. But a defendant in a criminal case is not constitutionally entitled to demand a proportionate number of his race on the jury which tries him nor on the venire or jury roll from which petit jurors are drawn. Virginia v. Rives, 100 U. S. 313, 322-323; Gibson v. Mississippi, 162 U. S. 565; Thomas v. Texas, 212 U. S. 278, 282; Cassell v. Texas, 339 U. S. 282. Neither the jury roll nor the venire need be a perfect mirror of the community or accurately reflect the proportionate strength of every identifiable group. “Obviously the number of races and nationalities appearing in the ancestry of our citizens would make it impossible to meet a requirement of proportional representation. Similarly, since there can be no exclusion of Negroes as a race and no discrimination because of color, proportional limitation is not permissible.” Cassell v. Texas, 339 U. S. 282, 286-287 (opinion of Mr. Justice Reed, announcing judgment). We cannot say that purposeful discrimination based on race alone is satisfactorily proved by showing that an identifiable group in a community is underrepresented by as much as 10%. See Thomas v. Texas, 212 U. S. 278, 283; Akins v. Texas, 325 U. S. 398; Cassell v. Texas, 339 U. S. 282. Here the commissioners denied that racial considerations entered into their selections of either their contacts in the community or the names of prospective jurors. There is no evidence that the commissioners applied different standards of qualifications to the Negro community than they did to the white community. Nor was there any meaningful attempt to demonstrate that the same proportion of Negroes qualified under the standards being administered by the commissioners. It is not clear from the record that the commissioners even knew how many Negroes were in their respective areas, or on the jury roll or on the venires drawn from the jury box. The overall percentage disparity has been small, and reflects no studied attempt to include or exclude a specified number of Negroes. Undoubtedly the selection of prospective jurors was somewhat haphazard and little effort was made to ensure that all groups in the community were fully represented. But an imperfect system is not equivalent to purposeful discrimination based on race. We do not think that the burden of proof was carried by petitioner in this case.
II.
Petitioner makes a further claim relating to the exercise of peremptory challenges to exclude Negroes from serving on petit juries.
In Talladega County the petit jury venire drawn in a criminal case numbers about 35 unless a capital offense is involved, in which case it numbers about 100. Ala. Code, Tit. 30, §§ 60, 62, 63 (1958). After excuses and removals for cause, the venire in a capital case is reduced to about 75. The jury is then “struck” — the defense striking two veniremen and the prosecution one in alternating turns, until only 12 jurors remain. Ala. Code, Tit. 30, § 64 (1958). This essentially is the Alabama struck-jury system, applicable in all criminal cases and available in civil cases. Ala. Code, Tit. 30, §§ 54, 60 (1958). In this case, the six Negroes available for jury service were struck by the prosecutor in the process of selecting the jury which was to try petitioner.
In the trial court after the jury was selected, petitioner moved to have the jury declared void on Fourteenth Amendment grounds. Among other things the motion alleged:
“(4) That because of the systematic and arbitrary method of selecting the names of qualified male citizens, negro male citizens, by the Jury Commission of Talladega County, Alabama, the State can, and did in this case, readily strike members of the negro race and that there were only six negroes remaining on the final venire in this cause, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and also the Constitution of the State of Alabama....”
The main thrust of the motion according to its terms was the striking of the six Negroes from the petit jury venire. No evidence was taken, petitioner apparently being content to rely on the record which had been made in connection with the motion to quash the indictment. We think the motion, seeking as it did to invalidate the alleged purposeful striking of Negroes from the jury which was to try petitioner, was properly denied.
In providing for jury trial in criminal cases, Alabama adheres to the common-law system of trial by an impartial jury of 12 men who must unanimously agree on a verdict, the system followed in the federal courts by virtue of the Sixth Amendment. As part of this system it provides for challenges for cause and substitutes a system of strikes for the common-law method of peremptory challenge. Alabama contends that its system of peremptory strikes — challenges without cause, without explanation and without judicial scrutiny — affords a suitable and necessary method of securing juries which in fact and in the opinion of the parties are fair and impartial. This system, it is said, in and of itself, provides justification for striking any group of otherwise qualified jurors in any given case, whether they be Negroes, Catholics, accountants or those with blue eyes. Based on the history of this system and its actual use and operation in this country, we think there is merit in this position.
The peremptory challenge has very old credentials. In all trials for felonies at common law, the defendant was allowed to challenge peremptorily 35 jurors, and the prosecutor originally had a right to challenge any number of jurors without cause, a right which was said to tend to “infinite delayes and danger.” Coke on Littleton 156 (14th ed. 1791). Thus The Ordinance for Inquests, 33 Edw. 1, Stat. 4 (1305), provided that if “they that sue for the King will challenge any... Jurors, they shall assign... a Cause certain.” So persistent was the view that a proper jury trial required peremptories on both sides, however, that the statute was construed to allow the prosecution to direct any juror after examination to “stand aside” until the entire panel was gone over and the defendant had exercised his challenges; only if there was a deficiency of jurors in the box at that point did the Crown have to show cause in respect to jurors recalled to make up the required number. Peremptories on both sides became the settled law of England, continuing in the above form until after the separation of the Colonies.
This common law provided the starting point for pe-remptories in this country. In the federal system, Congress early took a part of the subject in hand in establishing that the defendant was entitled to 35 peremptories in trials for treason and 20 in trials for other felonies specified in the 1790 Act as punishable by death, 1 Stat. 119 (1790). In regard to trials for other offenses without the 1790 statute, both the defendant and the Government were thought to have a right of peremptory challenge, although the source of this right was not wholly clear. In 1865, the Government was given by statute five peremptory challenges in capital and treason cases, the defendant being entitled to 20, and two in other cases where the right of the defendant to challenge then existed, he being entitled to 10. 13 Stat. 500 (1865). Subsequent enactments increased the number of challenges the Government could exercise, the Government now having an equal number with the defendant in capital cases, and six in eases where the crime is punishable by more than one year’s imprisonment, the defendant or defendants having ten.
The course in the States apparently paralleled that in the federal system. The defendant’s right of challenge was early conferred by statute, the number often corresponding to the English practice, the prosecution was thought to have retained the Crown’s common-law right to stand aside, and by 1870, most, if not all, States had enacted statutes conferring on the prosecution a substantial number of peremptory challenges, the number generally being at least half, but often equal to, the number had by the defendant. Although there has been some criticism in the twentieth century leveled at peremptory challenges, on the basis of the delays, expense and elimination of qualified jurors incident to their use, the system has survived these attacks. In every State, except where peremptory strikes are a substitute, peremptory challenges are given by statute to both sides in both criminal and civil cases, the number in criminal cases still being considerably greater. Under these statutes the prosecution generally possesses a substantial number of challenges.
The system of struck juries also has its roots in ancient common-law heritage. Since striking a jury allowed both sides a greater number of challenges and an opportunity to become familiar with the entire venire list, it was deemed an effective means of obtaining more impartial and better qualified jurors. Accordingly, it was used in causes of “great nicety" or “where the sheriff [responsible for the jury list] was suspected of partiality.” 3 Bl. Comm. 357. It is available in many States for both civil and criminal cases. The Alabama system adheres to the common-law form, except that the veniremen are drawn from the regular jury list, are summoned to court before striking begins and the striking continues until 12 rather than 24 remain. It was adopted as a fairer system to the defendant and prosecutor and a more efficacious, quicker way to obtain an impartial jury satisfactory to the parties.
In contrast to the course in England, where both peremptory challenge and challenge for cause have fallen into disuse, peremptories were and are freely used and relied upon in this country, perhaps because juries here are drawn from a greater cross-section of a heterogeneous society.* The voir dire in American trials tends to be extensive and probing, operating as a predicate for the exercise of peremptories, and the process of selecting a jury protracted. The persistence of peremptories and their extensive use demonstrate the long and widely held belief that peremptory challenge is a necessary part of trial by jury. See Lewis v. United States, 146 U. S. 370, 376. Although “[t]here is nothing in the Constitution of the United States which requires the Congress [or the States] to grant peremptory challenges,” Stilson v. United States, 250 U. S. 583, 586, nonetheless the challenge is “one of the most important of the rights secured to the accused,” Pointer v. United States, 151 U. S. 396, 408. The denial or impairment of the right is reversible error without a showing of prejudice, Lewis v. United States, supra; Harrison v. United States, 163 U. S. 140; cf. Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe R. Co. v. Shane, 157 U. S. 348. “For it is, as Blackstone says, an arbitrary and capricious right; and it must be exercised with full freedom, or it fails of its full purpose.” Lewis v. United States, supra, at 378.
The function of the challenge is not only to eliminate extremes of partiality on both sides, but to assure the parties that the jurors before whom they try the case will decide on the basis of the evidence placed before them, and not otherwise. In this way the peremptory satisfies the rule that “to perform its high function in the best way ‘justice must satisfy the appearance of justice.’ ” In re Murchison, 349 U. S. 133, 136. Indeed the very availability of peremptories allows counsel to ascertain the possibility of bias through probing questions on the voir dire and facilitates the exercise of challenges for cause by removing the fear of incurring a juror’s hostility through examination and challenge for cause. Although historically the incidence of the prosecutor’s challenge has differed from that of the accused, the view in this country has been that the system should guarantee “not only freedom from any bias against the accused, but also from any prejudice against his prosecution. Between him and the state the scales are to be evenly held.” Hayes v. Missouri, 120 U. S. 68, 70.
The essential nature of the peremptory challenge is that it is one exercised without a reason stated, without inquiry and without being subject to the court’s control. State v. Thompson, 68 Ariz. 386, 206 P. 2d 1037 (1949) ; Lewis v. United States, 146 U. S. 370, 378. While challenges for cause permit rejection of jurors on a narrowly specified, provable and legally cognizable basis of partiality, the peremptory permits rejection for a real or imagined partiality that is less easily designated or demonstrable. Hayes v. Missouri, 120 U. S. 68, 70. It is often exercised upon the “sudden impressions and unaccountable prejudices we are apt to conceive upon the bare looks and gestures of another,” Lewis, supra, at 376, upon a juror’s “habits and associations,” Hayes v. Missouri, supra, at 70, or upon the feeling that “the bare questioning [a juror’s] indifference may sometimes provoke a resentment,” Lewis, supra, at 376. It is no less frequently exercised on grounds normally thought irrelevant to legal proceedings or official action, namely, the race, religion, nationality, occupation or affiliations of people summoned for jury duty. For the question a prosecutor or defense counsel must decide is not whether a juror of a particular race or nationality is in fact partial, but whether one from a different group is less likely to be. It is well known that these factors are widely explored during the voir dire, by both prosecutor and accused, Miles v. United States, 103 U. S. 304; Aldridge v. United States, 283 U. S. 308. This Court has held that the fairness of trial by jury requires no less. Aldridge, supra, Hence veniremen are not always judged solely as individuals for the purpose of exercising peremptory challenges. Rather they are challenged in light of the limited knowledge counsel has of them, which may include their group affiliations, in the context of the case to be tried.
With these considerations in mind, we cannot hold that the striking of Negroes in a particular case is a denial of equal protection of the laws. In the quest for an impartial and qualified jury, Negro and white, Protestant and Catholic, are alike subject to being challenged without cause. To subject the prosecutor’s challenge in any particular case to the demands and traditional standards of the Equal Protection Clause would entail a radical change in the nature and operation of the challenge. The challenge, pro tanto, would no longer be peremptory, each and every challenge being open to examination, either at the time of the challenge or at a hearing afterwards. The prosecutor’s judgment underlying each challenge would be subject to scrutiny for reasonableness and sincerity. And a great many uses of the challenge would be banned.
In the light of the purpose of the peremptory system and the function it serves in a pluralistic society in connection with the institution of jury trial, we cannot hold that the Constitution requires an examination of the prosecutor’s reasons for the exercise of his challenges in any given case. The presumption in any particular case must be that the prosecutor is using the State’s challenges to obtain a fair and impartial jury to try the case before the court. The presumption is not overcome and the prosecutor therefore subjected to examination by allegations that in the case at hand all Negroes were removed from the jury or that they were removed because they were Negroes. Any other result, we think, would establish a rule wholly at odds with the peremptory challenge system as we know it. Hence the motion to strike the trial jury was properly denied in this case.
III.
Petitioner, however, presses a broader claim in this Court. His argument is that not only were the Negroes removed by the prosecutor in this case but that there never has been a Negro on a petit jury in either a civil or criminal case in Talladega County and that in criminal cases prosecutors have consistently and systematically exercised their strikes to prevent any and all Negroes on petit jury venires from serving on the petit jury itself. This systematic practice, it is claimed, is invidious discrimination for which the peremptory system is insufficient justification.
We agree that this claim raises a different issue and it may well require a different answer. We have decided that it is permissible to insulate from inquiry the removal of Negroes from a particular jury on the assumption that the prosecutor is acting on acceptable considerations related to the case he is trying, the particular defendant involved and the particular crime charged. But when the prosecutor in a county, in case after case, whatever the circumstances, whatever the crime and whoever the defendant or the victim may be, is responsible for the removal of Negroes who have been selected as qualified jurors by the jury commissioners and who have survived challenges for cause, with the result that no Negroes ever serve on petit juries, the Fourteenth Amendment claim takes on added significance. Cf. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356. In these circumstances, giving even the widest leeway to the operation of irrational but trial-related suspicions and antagonisms, it would appear that the purposes of the peremptory challenge are being perverted. If the State has not seen fit to leave a single Negro on any jury in a criminal case, the presumption protecting the prosecutor may well be overcome. Such proof might support a reasonable inference that Negroes are excluded from juries for reasons wholly unrelated to the outcome of the particular case on trial and that the peremptory system is being used to deny the Negro the same right and opportunity to participate in the administration of justice enjoyed by the white population. These ends the peremptory challenge is not designed to facilitate or justify.
We need pursue this matter no further, however, for even if a State’s systematic striking of Negroes in the selection of petit juries raises a prima facie case under the Fourteenth Amendment, we think it is readily apparent that the record in this case is not sufficient to demonstrate that the rule has been violated by the peremptory system as it operates in Talladega County. Cf. Glasser v. United States, 315 U. S. 60, 87.
The difficulty with the record before us, perhaps flowing from the fact that it was made in connection with the motion to quash the indictment, is that it does not with any acceptable degree of clarity, show when, how often, and under what circumstances the prosecutor alone has been responsible for striking those Negroes who have appeared on petit jury panels in Talladega County. The record is absolutely silent as to those instances in which the prosecution participated in striking Negroes, except for the indication that the prosecutor struck the Negroes in this case and except for those occasions when the defendant himself indicated that he did not want Negroes on the jury. Apparently in some cases, the prosecution agreed with the defense to remove Negroes. There is no evidence, however, of what the prosecution did or did not do on its own account in any cases other than the one at bar. In one instance the prosecution offered the defendant an all-Negro jury but the defendant in that case did not want a jury with any Negro members. There was other testimony that in many cases the Negro defendant preferred an all-white to a mixed jury. One lawyer, who had represented both white and Negro defendants in criminal cases, could recall no Negro client who wanted Negroes on the jury which was to try him. The prosecutor himself, who had served since 1953, said that if the Negro defendant wanted Negroes on the jury it would depend “upon the circumstances and the conditions and the case and what I thought justice demanded and what [it] was in that particular case,” and that striking is done differently depending on the race of the defendant and the victim of the crime. These statements do not support an inference that the prosecutor was bent on striking Negroes, regardless of trial-related considerations. The fact remains, of course, that there has not been a Negro on a jury in Talladega County since about 1950. But the responsibility of the prosecutor is not illuminated in this record. There is no allegation or explanation, and hence no opportunity for the State to rebut, as to when, why and under what circumstances in cases previous to this one the prosecutor used his strikes to remove Negroes. In short, petitioner has not laid the proper predicate for attacking the peremptory strikes as they were used in this case. Petitioner has the burden of proof and he has failed to carry it.
A dissent asserts that a showing that there are qualified Negroes and that none have served makes out a prima facie case of purposeful discrimination on the part of the State and that the continued vitality of Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303, as well as “a practical accommodation” between the constitutional right of equal protection and the statutory right of peremptory challenge, requires application of such a rule here. Where discrimination is said to occur in the selection of veniremen by state jury commissioners, “proof that Negroes constituted a substantial segment of the population..., that some Negroes were qualified to serve as jurors, and that none had been called for jury service over an extended period of time... constitute [s] prima facie proof of the systematic exclusion of Negroes from jury service,” Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U. S. 475, 480, as does proof “that no Negro had served on a criminal court grand or petit jury for a period of thirty years,” Patton v. Mississippi, 332 U. S. 463, 466. (Emphasis added.) See also Norris v. Alabama, 294 U. S. 587; Harper v. Mississippi, 251 Miss. 699, 171 So. 2d 129 (1965). Total exclusion of Negroes by the state officers responsible for selecting names of jurors gives rise to a fair inference of discrimination on their part, an inference which is determinative absent sufficient rebuttal evidence. But this rule of proof cannot be woodenly applied to cases where the discrimination is said to occur during the process of peremptory challenge of persons called for jury service. Unlike the selection process, which is wholly in the hands of state officers, defense counsel participate in the peremptory challenge system, and indeed generally have a far greater role than any officers of the State. It is for this reason that a showing that Negroes have not served during a specified period of time does not, absent a sufficient showing of the prosecutor’s participation, give rise to the inference of systematic discrimination on the part of the State. The ordinary exercise of challenges by defense counsel does not, of course, imply purposeful discrimination by state officials. This is not to say that a defendant attacking the prosecutor’s use of peremptory challenges over a period of time need elicit an admission from the prosecutor that discrimination accounted for his rejection of Negroes, any more than a defendant attacking jury selection need obtain such an admission from the jury commissioners. But the defendant must, to pose the issue, show the prosecutor’s systematic use of peremptory challenges against Negroes over a period of time. This is the teaching of Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U. S. 475; Norris v. Alabama, 294 U. S. 587; Patton v. Mississippi, 332 U. S. 463. We see no reason, except for blind application of a proof standard developed in a context where there is no question of state responsibility for the alleged exclusion, why the defendant attacking the prosecutor’s systematic use of challenges against Negroes should not be required to establish on the record the prosecutor’s conduct in this regard, especially where the same prosecutor for many years is said to be responsible for this practice and is quite available for questioning on this matter.
Accordingly the judgment is is
Affirmed.
Neal v. Delaware, 103 U. S. 370; Norris v. Alabama, 294 U. S. 587; Hale v. Kentucky, 303 U. S. 613; Pierre v. Louisiana, 306 U. S. 354; Smith v. Texas, 311 U. S. 128; Hill v. Texas, 316 U. S. 400; Akins v. Texas, 325 U. S. 398; Patton v. Mississippi, 332 U. S. 463; Cassell v. Texas, 339 U. S. 282; Avery v. Georgia, 345 U. S. 559; Hernandez v. Texas, 347 U. S. 475; Reece v. Georgia, 350 U. S. 85; Eubanks v. Louisiana, 356 U. S. 584; Arnold v. North Carolina, 376 U. S. 773.
There is a special statute governing jury selection in Talladega County. Ala. Acts, 1955 Sess., Act No. 475, vol. 2, at 1081. The provisions pertinent to this case follow the general state statute and thus all references will be to the latter.
Ala. Code, Tit. 30, §21 (1958) provides:
“Qualifications of persons on jury roll. — The jury commission shall place on the jury roll and in the jury box the names of all male citizens of the county who are generally reputed to be honest and intelligent men and are esteemed in the community for their integrity, good character and sound judgment; but no person must be selected who is under twenty-one or who is an habitual drunkard, or who, being afflicted with a permanent disease or physical weakness is unfit to discharge the duties of a juror; or cannot read English or who has ever been convicted of any offense involving moral.turpitude. If a person cannot read English and has all the other qualifications prescribed herein and is a freeholder or householder his name may be placed on the jury roll and in the jury box. No person over the age of sixty-five years shall be required to serve on a jury or to remain on the panel of jurors unless he is willing to do so.”
Although the statute aims at an exhaustive jury list, failure to include the name of every qualified person on the jury roll is not a ground to quash an indictment or venire, absent fraud or purposeful discrimination. Fikes v. Alabama, 263 Ala. 89, 81 So. 2d 303 (1955), rev’d on other grounds, 352 U. S. 191.
The commissioners testified that since 1959 they have met once or twice yearly, for about an hour each meeting, at which time each commissioner presented a list of persons he deemed qualified for jury service. Their names were obtained from disparate sources, each commissioner going about his task in his area of the county in his own way. The chief commissioner testified that with the assistance of city directories, and registration lists, he went out into the beats to which he was assigned and asked persons he knew for suggestions and information. He also secured names from customers of his paint store. He averred that he was familiar with Negro and white members of the community, talked with both, and used the same method for determining the qualifications of both Negro and white citizens. Another commissioner, working a predominantly rural area, testified that membership lists of Farm Bureau Cooperatives in the area and the Rural Electric Cooperative were his main sources of names, both organizations having a substantial number of Negro and white persons. He also relied on the city directory for Talladega City and on the people he knew through his 40 years of residence and farming in the area. He noted that he did not rely on predominantly white social clubs or on Negro churches, adding that he was not familiar with the relative percentage of Negroes or whites in his beats and could not identify the persons on the jury list by race. He also stated that the jury list did not contain the names of all qualified citizens and that compilation of an all-inclusive list would be impossible. The third commissioner testified that he used the telephone directory and went out into the various beats to gather names through local merchants and citizens, both Negro and white. He also relied on the customers of his business. He too was unable to identify the persons on the jury list by race. The clerk stated that she assisted by supplying some additional names to the commissioners; she compiled these names from various directories, church rolls, club rolls and from lists sent by the managers of local plants and industries. She testified that she was acquainted with more white persons than Negroes but that she did not visit the beats or talk with persons in the beats to gather names for the commission’s approval. All the commissioners averred that they did not watch the color line in obtaining names, did not know the number of Negroes in their beats, and, accordingly, did not count the number of whites and colored people in preparing the lists. The record contains no admission by the commissioners'that they had relatively few Negro acquaintances or that they tended primarily to use white church lists or white club lists.
“ ‘It may be that the jury commissioners did not give the negro race a full fro rata with the white race in the selection of the grand and petit jurors in this case, still this would not be evidence of discrimination. If they fairly and honestly endeavored to discharge their duty, and did not in fact discriminate against the negro race in the selection of the jury lists, then the Constitution of the United States has
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Reed
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Hatch Act, enacted in 1940, declares unlawful certain specified political activities of federal employees. Section 9 forbids officers and employees in the executive branch of the Federal Government, with exceptions, from taking “any active part in political management or in political campaigns.” Section 15 declares that the activities theretofore determined by the United States Civil Service Commission to be prohibited to employees in the classified civil service of the United States by the Civil Service Rules shall be deemed to be prohibited to federal employees covered by the Hatch Act. These sections of the Act cover all federal officers and employees whether in the classified civil service or not and a penalty of dismissal from employment is imposed for violation. There is no designation of a single governmental agency for its enforcement.
For many years before the Hatch Act the Congress had authorized the exclusion of federal employees in the competitive classified service from active participation in political management and political campaigns. In June, 1938, the congressional authorization for exclusion had been made more effective by a Civil Service Commission dis-. ciplinary rule. That power to discipline members of. the competitive classified civil service continues in the Commission under the Hatch Act by virtue of the present applicability of the Executive Order No. 8705, March 5, 1941. The applicable Civil Service Commission rules are. printed in the margin. The only change in the Civil Service Rules relating to political activity, caused by the Hatch Act legislation, that is of significance in this case is the elimination on March 5, 1941, of the word “privately” from the phrase “to express privately their opinions.” This limitation to private expression had regulated classified personnel since 1907.
The present appellants sought an injunction before a statutory three-judge district court of the District of Columbia against appellees, members of the United States Civil Service Commission, to prohibit them from enforcing against appellants the provisions of the second sentence of § 9 (a) of the Hatch Act for the reason that the sentence is repugnant to the Constitution of the United States. A declaratory judgment of the unconstitutionality of the sentence was also sought. The sentence referred to reads, “No officer or employee in the executive branch of the Federal Government... shall take any active part in political management or in political campaigns.”
Various individual employees of the federal executive civil service and the United Public Workers of America, a labor union with these and other executive employees as members, as a representative of all its members, joined in the suit. It is alleged that the individuals desire to engage in acts of political management and in political campaigns. Their purposes are as stated in the excerpt from the complaint set out in the margin. From the affidavits it is plain, and we so assume, that these activities will be carried on completely outside of the hours of employment. Appellants challenge the second sentence of § 9 (a) as unconstitutional for various reasons. They are set out below in the language of the complaint.
None of the appellants, except George P. Poole, has violated the provisions of the Hatch Act. They wish to act contrary to its provisions and those of § 1 of the Civil Service Rules and desire a declaration of the legally permissible limits of regulation. Defendants moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of a justiciable case or controversy. The District Court determined that each of these individual appellants had an interest in their claimed privilege of engaging in political activities, sufficient to give them a right to maintain this suit. United Federal Workers of America (C. I. O.) v. Mitchell, 56 F. Supp. 621, 624. The District Court further determined that the questioned provision of the Hatch Act was valid and that the complaint therefore failed to state a cause.of action. It accordingly dismissed the complaint and granted summary judgment to defendants.
First. The judgment of the District Court was entered on September 26, 1944. An order was duly entered on October 26, 1944, allowing an appeal. 28 U. S. C. § 380a. The same section of the statutes provides: “In the event that an appeal is taken under this section, the record shall be made up and the case docketed in the Supreme Court of the United States within sixty days from the time such appeal is allowed, under such rules as may be prescribed by the proper courts.” This appeal was not docketed in this Court until February 2, 1945, a date after the return date of the order under § 380a. Thereafter the Government suggested a lack of jurisdiction in this Court to consider the appeal because of the failure of appellants to docket the appeal in time. We postponed consideration of our jurisdiction over this appeal to the hearing. We proceed now to a disposition of this question.
To comply with the suggestion of § 380a, this Court adopted Rule 47. In other cases of appeals, Rule 11 governs docketing. If Rule 11 applies also to appeals under § 380a, we may hear this appeal, for the steps for dismissal required by Rule 11 were not taken by the appellees. This is because upon the allowance of an appeal by a judge of the district court as here, Supreme Court Rules 10 and 36, the case, is transferred from the district court to this Court and subsequent steps for dismissal or affirmance are to be taken here. If, however, the above-quoted provision of § 380a as to docketing is a prerequisite to the power of this Court to review, this appeal must fail.
Prior to the passage of § 380a, appeals docketed after the return day were governed by Rule 11, 275 U. S. 602. In principle it has long been in existence. By the words of the rule, it appears that dismissal for appellant’s tardiness in docketing requires a step by the appellee. Even after dismissal for failure to docket, the rule permits this Court to allow the appellant to docket. Nothing in the legislative history which has been called to our attention indicates that Congress intended its docketing provision to vary Rule 11. Direct appeal accomplishes the congressional purpose of expediting review, of course, and is consistent with an unchanged practice as to dismissals. The time to docket may have been enlarged from the conventional return day of Rules 10 and 11 to bring continental uniformity, see Rule 10, or to give time for the preparation of a record which would often be large and not transcribed or printed. It will not expedite determination of constitutional questions to dismiss appeals because of errors of practice. In fact the sentence of § 380a on docketing seems deliberately to leave the practice on failure to docket to rules of court. We do not construe the requirement of docketing within sixty days as a limitation on our power to hear this appeal.
So far as our Rule 47 is concerned, we construe it as requiring in accordance with § 380a the docketing in sixty days from the allowance of the appeal, instead of the forty days of our Rule 10, and that, as to dismissals, the first sentence of Rule 47 requires the same practice for appeals under § 380a that Rule 11 does for other appeals. We think it desirable to have sufficient flexibility in the rule to permit extensions of the time for return in the unusual situations that occur when large records are involved. In view of the recognized congressional purpose to quicken review under § 380a, the discretion to delay final hearing allowed under Rule 11 will be exercised only on a definite showing of need therefor to assure fair review. This leads us to hear this appeal.
[Second. At the threshold of consideration, we are called upon to decide whether the complaint states a controversy cognizable in this Court. We defer consideration of the cause of action of Mr. Poole until section Three of this opinion. The other individual employees have elaborated the grounds of their objection in individual affidavits for use in the hearing on the summary judgment.] We select as an example one that contains the essential averments of all the others and print below the portions with significance in this suit. Nothing similar to the fourth paragraph of the printed affidavit is contained in the other affidavits. The assumed controversy between affiant and the Civil Service Commission as to affiant's right to act as watcher at the polls on November 2, 1943, had long been moot when this complaint was filed. We do not therefore treat this allegation separately. The affidavits, it will be noticed, follow the generality of purpose expressed by the complaint. See note 11 supra. declare a desire to act contrary to the rule against political activity but not that the rule has been violated. In this respect, we think they differ from the type of threat adjudicated in Railway Mail Association v. Corsi, 326 U. S. 88. In that case, the refusal to admit an applicant to membership in a labor union on account of race was involved. Admission had been refused. 326 U. S. at p. 93, note 10. Definite action had also been taken in Hill v. Florida, 325 U. S. 538. In the Hill case an injunction had been sought and allowed against Hill and the union forbidding Hill from acting as the business agent of, the union and the union from further functioning as a union until it complied with the state law. The threats which menaced the affiants of these affidavits in the case now being considered are closer to a general threat by officials to enforce those laws which they are charged to administer, compare Watson v. Buck, 313 U. S. 387, 400, than they are to the direct threat of punishment against a named organization for a completed act that made the Mail Association arid the Hill cases justiciable.]
As is well known, the federal courts established pursuant to Article III of the Constitution do not render advisory opinions. For adjudication of constitutional issues, “concrete legal issues, presented in actual cases, not abstractions,” are requisite. This is as true of declaratory judgments as any other field. These appellants seem clearly to seek advisory opinions upon broad claims of rights protected by the 'First, Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution. As these appellants are classified employees, they have a right superior to the generality of citizens, compare Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U. S. 126, but the facts of their personal interest in their civil rights, of the general threat of possible interference with those rights by the Civil. Service Commission under its rules, if specified things are done by appellants, does not make a justiciable case or controversy. Appellants want to engage in “political management and political campaigns,” to persuade others to follow appellants’ views by discussion, speeches, articles and other acts reasonably designed to secure the selection of appellants’ political choices. Such generality of objection is really an attack on the political expediency of the Hatch Act, not the presentation of legal issues. It is beyond the competence of courts to render such a decision. Texas v. Interstate Commerce Commission, 258 U. S. 158, 162.
[The power of courts, and ultimately of this Court, to pass upon the constitutionality of acts of Congress arises only when the interests of litigants require the use of this judicial authority for their protection against actual interference. A hypothetical threat is not enough. We can only speculate as to the kinds of political activity the appellants desire to engage in or as to the contents of their proposed public statements or the circumstances of their publication. It would not accord with judicial responsibility to adjudge, in a matter involving constitutionality, between the freedom of the individual and the requirements of public order except when definite rights appear upon the one side and definite prejudicial interferences upon the other.]
The Constitution allots the nation’s judicial power to the federal courts. Unless these courts respect the limits of that unique authority, they intrude upon powers vested in the legislative or executive branches. Judicial adherence to the doctrine of the separation of powers preserves the courts for the decision of issues, between litigants, capable of effective determination. Judicial exposition upon political proposals is permissible only when necessary to decide definite issues between litigants. When the courts act continually within these constitutionally imposed boundaries of their power, their ability to perform their function as a balance for the people’s protection against abuse of power by other branches of government remains unimpaired. Should the courts seek to expand their power so as to bring under their jurisdiction ill-defined controversies over constitutional issues, they would become the organ of political theories. Such abuse of judicial power would properly meet rebuke and restriction from other branches. By these mutual checks and balances by and between the branches of government, democracy undertakes to preserve the liberties of the people from excessive concentrations of authority. No threat of interference by the Commission with rights of these appellants appears beyond that implied by the existence of the law and the regulations. Watson v. Buck, supra, p. 400. We should not take judicial cognizance of the situation presented on the part of the appellants considered in this subdivision of the opinion. [These reasons lead us to conclude that the determination of the trial court, that the individual appellants, other than Poole, could maintain this action, was erroneous.]
[Third. The appellant Poole does present by the complaint and affidavit matters appropriate for judicial determination. The affidavits filed by appellees confirm that Poole has been charged by the Commission with political activity and a proposed qrder for his removal from his position adopted subject to his right.under Commission procedure to reply to the charges and to present further evidence in refutation. We proceed to consider the controversy over constitutional power at issue between Poole and the Commission as defined.by the charge and preliminary finding upon one side and the admissions of Poole’s affidavit upon the other. Our determination is limited to those facts. This proceeding so limited meets the requirements of defined rights and a definite threat to interfere with a possessor of the menaced rights by a penalty for an act done in violation of the claimed restraint.
Because we conclude hereinafter that the prohibition of § 9 of the Hatch Act and Civil Service Rule 1,] see notes 2 and 6 abovedare valid, it is unnecessary to consider, as this is a declaratory judgment action, whether or not this appellant sufficiently alleges that an irreparable injury to him would result from his removal from his position. Nor need we inquire whether or not a court of equity would enforce by injunction any judgment declaring rights. Since Poole admits that he violated the rule against political activity and that, removal from office is therefore mandatory under the act, there is no question as to the exhaustion of administrative remedies. The act provides no administrative or statutory review for the order of the Civil Service Commission.] Compare Stark v. Wickard, 321 U. S. 288, 306-10; Macauley v. Waterman S. S. Corporation, 327 U. S. 540. [As no prior proceeding, offering an effective remedy or otherwise, is pending in the courts, there is no problem of judicial discretion as to whether to take cognizance of this case.] Brillhart v. Excess Insurance Co., 316 U. S. 491, 496-97, dissent at 500; Larson v. General Motors Corporation, 134 F. 2d 450, 453. [Under such circumstances, we see no reason why a declaratory judgment action, even though constitutional issues are involved, does not lie.] See Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 57. Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad Co., 323 U. S. 192, 197, 207; Tunstall v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen, 323 U. S. 210, 212, et seq.
Fourth. [This brings us to consider the narrow but important point involved in Poole’s situation. Poole’s stated offense is taking an “active part in political management or in political campaigns.” He was a ward executive committeeman of a political party and was politically active on election day as a worker at the polls and a paymaster for the services of other party workers. The issue for decision and the only one we decide is whether such a breach of the Hatch Act and Rule 1 of the Commission can, without violating the Constitution, be made the basis for disciplinary action.]
When the issue is thus narrowed, the interference with free expression is seen in better proportion as compared with the requirements of orderly management of administrative personnel. Only while the employee is politically active, in the sense of Rule 1, must he withhold expression of opinion on public subjects. See note 6. We assume that Mr. Poole would be expected to comment publicly as committeeman on political matters, so that indirectly there is an attenuated interference. We accept appellants’ contention that the nature of political rights reserved to the people by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are involved. The right claimed as inviolate may be stated as the right of a citizen to act as a party official or worker to further his own political views. Thus we have a measure of interference by the Hatch Act and the Rules with what otherwise would be the freedom of the civil servant under the First, Ninth and Tenth Amendments. And, if we look upon due process as a guarantee of freedom in those fields, there is a corresponding impairment of that right under the Fifth Amendment. Appellants' objections under the Amendments are basically the same.
We do not find persuasion in appellants' argument that such activities during free time are not subject to regulation even though admittedly political activities cannot be indulged in during working hours. The influence of political activity by government employees, if evil in its effects on the service, the employees or people dealing with them, is hardly less so because that activity takes place after hours. Of course, the question of the need for this regulation is for other branches of government rather than the courts. Our duty in this case ends if the Hatch Act provision under examination is constitutional.
Of course, it is accepted constitutional doctrine that these fundamental human rights are not absolutes. The requirements of residence and age must be met. The essential rights of the First Amendment in some instances are subject to the elemental need for order without which the guarantees of civil rights to others would be a mockery. The powers granted by the Constitution to the Federal Government are subtracted from the totality of sovereignty originally in the states and the people. Therefore, when objection is made that the exercise of a federal power infringes upon rights reserved by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, the inquiry must be directed toward the granted power under which the action of the Union was taken. If granted power is found, necessarily the objection of invasion of those rights, reserved by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, must fail. Again this Court must balance the extent of the guarantees of freedom against a congressional enactment to protect a democratic society against the supposed evil of political partisanship by classified employees of government.
As pointed out hereinbefore in this opinion, the practice of excluding classified employees from party offices and personal political activity at the polls has been in effect for several decades. Some incidents similar to those that are under examination here have been before this Court and the prohibition against certain types of political activity by officeholders has been upheld. The leading case was decided in 1882. Ex parte Curtis, 106 U. S. 371. There a subordinate United States employee was indicted for violation of an act that forbade employees who were not appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate from giving or receiving money for political purposes from or to other employees of the government on penalty of discharge and criminal punishment. Curtis urged that the statute was unconstitutional. This Court upheld the right of Congress to punish the infraction of this law. The decisive principle was the power of Congress, within reasonable limits, to regulate, so far as it might deem necessary, the political conduct of its employees. A list of prohibitions against acts by public officials that are permitted to other citizens was given. This Court said, p. 373:
“The evident purpose of Congress in all this class of enactments has been to promote efficiency and integrity in the discharge of official duties, and to maintain proper discipline in the public service. Clearly such a purpose is within the just scope of legislative power, and it is not easy to see why the act now under consideration does not come fairly within the legitimate means to such an end.”
The right to contribute money through fellow employees to advance the contributor’s political theories was held not to be protected by any constitutional provision. It was held subject to regulation. A dissent by Mr. Justice Bradley emphasized the broad basis of the Court’s opinion. He contended that a citizen’s right to promote his political views could not be so restricted merely because he was an official of government.
No other member of the Court joined in this dissent. The conclusion of the Court, that there was no constitutional bar to regulation of such financial contributions of public servants as distinguished from the exercise of political privileges such as the ballot, has found acceptance in the subsequent practice of Congress and the growth of the principle of required political neutrality for classified public servants as a sound element for efficiency. The conviction that an actively partisan governmental personnel threatens good administration has deepened since Ex parte Curtis. Congress recognizes danger to the service in that political rather than official effort may earn advancement and to the public in that governmental favor may be channeled through political connections.
In United States v. Wurzbach, 280 U. S. 396, the doctrine of legislative power over actions of governmental officials was held valid when extended to members of Congress. The members of Congress were prohibited from receiving contributions for “any political purpose whatever” from any other federal employees. Private citizens were not affected. The argument of unconstitutionality because of interference with the political rights of a citizen by that time was dismissed in a sentence. Compare United States v. Thayer, 209 U. S. 39.
The provisions of § 9 of the Hatch Act and the Civil Service Rule 1 are not dissimilar in purpose from the statutes against political contributions of money. The prohibitions now under discussion are directed at political contributions of energy by government employees. These contributions, too, have a long background of disapproval. Congress and the President are responsible for an efficient public service. If, in their judgment, efficiency may be best obtained by prohibiting active participation by classified employees in politics as party officers or workers, we see no constitutional objection.
Another Congress may determine that, on the whole, limitations on active political management by federal personnel are unwise. The teaching, of experience has evidently led Congress to enact the Hatch Act provisions. To declare that the present supposed evils of political activity are beyond the power of Congress to redress would leave the nation impotent to deal with what many sincere men believe is a material threat to the democratic system. Congress is not politically naive or regardless of public welfare or that of the employees. It leaves untouched full participation by employees in political decisions at the ballot box and forbids only the partisan activity of federal personnel deemed offensive to efficiency. With that limitation only, employees may make their contributions to public affairs or protect their own interests, as before the passage of the Act.
The argument that political neutrality is not indispensable to a merit system for federal employees may be accepted. But because it is not indispensable does not mean that it is not desirable or permissible. Modern American politics involves organized political parties. Many classifications of government employees have been accustomed to work in politics—national, state and local— as a matter of principle or to assure their tenure. Congress may reasonably desire to limit party activity of federal employees so as to avoid a tendency toward a one-party system. It may have considered that parties would be more truly devoted to the public welfare if public servants were not overactive politically.
Appellants urge that federal employees are protected by the Bill of Rights and that Congress may not “enact a regulation providing that no Republican, Jew or Negro shall be appointed to federal office, or that no federal employee shall attend Mass or take any active part in missionary work.” None would deny such limitations on congressional power but, because there are some limitations, it does not follow that a prohibition against acting as ward leader or worker at the polls is invalid. A reading of the Act and Rule 1, notes 2 and 6, supra, together with the Commission’s determination shows the wide range of public activities with which there is no interference by the legislation. It is only partisan political activity that is interdicted. It is active participation in political management and political campaigns. Expressions, public or private, on public affairs, personalities and matters of public interest, not an objective of party action, are unrestricted by law so long as the government employee does not direct his activities toward party success.
It is urged, however, that Congress has gone further than necessary in prohibiting political activity to all types of classified employees. It is pointed out by appellants “that the impartiality of many of these is a matter of complete indifference to the effective performance” of their duties. Mr.;Poole would appear to be a good illustration for appellants' argument. The complaint states that he is a roller in the mint. We take it this is a job calling for the qualities of a skilled mechanic and that it does not involve contact with the public. Nevertheless, if in free time he is engaged in political activity, Congress may have concluded that the activity may promote or retard his advancement or preferment with his superiors. Congress may have thought that government employees are handy elements for leaders in political policy to use in building a political machine. For regulation of employees it is not necessary that the act regulated be anything more than an act reasonably deemed by Congress to interfere with the efficiency of the public service. There are hundreds of thousands of United States employees with positions no more influential upon policy determination than that of Mr. Poole. Evidently what Congress feared was the cumulative effect on employee morale of political activity by all employees who could be induced to participate actively. It does not seem to us an unconstitutional basis for legislation.
There is a suggestion that administrative workers maybe barred, constitutionally, from political management and political campaigns while the industrial workers may not be barred, constitutionally, without an act “narrowly and selectively drawn to define and punish the specific conduct.” A ready answer, it seems to us, lies in the fact that the prohibition of § 9 (a) of the Hatch Act “applies without discrimination to all employees whether industrial or administrative” and that the Civil Service Rules, by § 15 made a part of the Hatch Act, makes clear that industrial workers are covered in the prohibition against political activity. Congress has determined that the presence of government employees, whether industrial or administrative, in the ranks of political party workers is bad. Whatever differences there may be between administrative employees of the government and industrial workers in its employ are differences in detail so far as the constitutional power under review is concerned. Whether there are such differences and what weight to attach to them, are all matters of detail for Congress. We do not know whether the number of federal employees will expand or contract; whether the need for regulation of their political activities will increase or diminish. The use of the constitutional power of regulation is for Congress, not for the courts.
We have said that Congress may regulate the political conduct of government employees “within reasonable limits,” even though the regulation trenches to some extent upon unfettered political action. The determination of the extent to which political activities of governmental employees shall be regulated lies primarily with Congress. Courts will interfere only when such regulation passes beyond the generally existing conception of governmental power. That conception develops from practice, history, and changing educational, social and economic conditions. The regulation of such activities as Poole carried on has the approval of long practice by the Commission, court decisions upon similar problems and a large body of informed public opinion. Congress and the administrative agencies have authority over the discipline and efficiency of the public service. When actions of civil servants in the judgment of Congress menace the integrity and the competency of the service, legislation to forestall such danger and adequate to maintain its usefulness is’required. The Hatch Act is the answer of Congress to this need. We cannot say with such a background that these restrictions are unconstitutional.
Section 15 of the Hatch Act, note 3 above, defines an active part in political management or political campaigns as the same activities that the United States Civil Service Commission has determined to be prohibited to classified civil service employees by the provisions of the Civil Service Rules when § 15 took effect July 19, 1940. 54 Stat. 767. The activities of Mr. Poole, as ward executive committeeman and a worker at the polls, obviously fall within the prohibitions of § 9 of the Hatch Act against taking an active part in political management and political campaigns. They are also covered by the prior determinations of the Commission. We need to examine no further at this time into the validity of the definition of political activity and § 15.
The judgment of the District Court is accordingly
Affirmed.
Mb. Justice Murphy and Mr. Justice Jackson took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Mr. Justice Rutledge dissents as to Poole for the reasons stated by Mr. Justice Black. He does not pass upon the constitutional questions presented by the other appellants for the reason that he feels the controversy as to them is not yet appropriate for the discretionary exercise of declaratory judgment jurisdiction.
Another controversy under the same act is decided today. Oklahoma v. United States Civil Service Commission, post, p. 127.
August 2, 1939, 53 Stat. 1147; July 19, 1940, 54 Stat. 767; 56 Stat. 181, 986; 58 Stat. 136, 148, 727; 59 Stat. 108, 658; 60 Stat. 937. Only the first two are important for consideration of this case.
18 U. S. C. § 61h, as amended:
["(a) It shall be unlawful for any person employed in the executive branch of the Federal Government, or any agency or department thereof, to use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with an election or affecting the result thereof. No officer or employee in the executive branch of the Federal Government, or any agency or department thereof, except a part-time officer or part-time employee without compensation or with nominal compensation serving in connection with the existing war effort, other than in any capacity relating to the procurement or manufacture of war material shall take any active part in political management or in political campaigns.] All such persons shall retain the right to vote as, they may choose and to express their opinions on all political subjects and candidates. For the purposes of this section the term 'officer’ or 'employee’ shall not be construed to include (1) the President and Vice President of the United States; (2) persons whose compensation is paid from the appropriation for the office of the President; (3) heads and assistant heads of executive departments; (4) officers who are appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and who determine policies to be pursued by the United States in its relations with foreign powers or in the Nationwide administration of Federal laws.
["(b) Any person violating the provisions of this section shall be immediately removed from the position or office held by him, and thereafter no part of the funds appropriated by any Act of Congress for such position or office shall be used to pay the compensation of such person.” 53 Stat. 1147, 1148; 54 Stat. 767; 56 Stat. 181.]
18 U.S. C. § 61o:
“The provisions of this subchapter which prohibit persons to whom such provisions apply from taking any active part in political management or in political campaigns shall be deemed to prohibit the same activities on the part of such persons as the United States Civil Service Commission has heretofore determined are at the time this section takes effect prohibited on the-part of employees in the classified civil service of the United States by the provisions of the civil-service rules prohibiting such employees from taking any active part in political management or in political campaigns.” 54 Stat. 767, 771.
See Civil Service Act (1883), § 2, 22 Stat. 403-404:
“Sec. 2. That it shall be the duty of said commissioners:
“First. To aid the President, as he may request, in preparing suitable rules for carrying this act into effect, and when said rules shall have been promulgated it shall be the duty of all officers of the United States in the departments and offices to which any such rules may relate to aid, in all proper ways, in carrying said rules, and any modifications thereof, into effect.
“Second. And, among other things, said rules shall provide and declare, as nearly as the conditions of good administration will warrant, as follows:
“Sixth, that no person in said service has any right to use his official authority or influence to coerce the political action of any person or body.”
5 U.S.C. § 631:
“The President is authorized to... establish regulations for the conduct of persons who may receive appointments in the civil service.”
First Annual Report, Civil Service Commission, H. R. Ex. Doc. No. 105, 48th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 45:
“In the exercise of the power vested in the President by the Constitution, and by virtue of the 1753d section of the Revised Statutes, and of the civil service act approved January 16, 1883, the following rules for the regulation and improvement of the executive civil service are hereby amended and promulgated:
Rule I.
“No person in said service shall use his official authority or influence either to coerce the political action of any person or body or to interfere with any election.”
Executive Order No. 642, June 3, 1907 (amended to consolidate without changing wording, Executive Order No. 655, June 15, 1907); Twenty-Fourth Annual Report, Civil Service Commission, House Doc. No. 600, 60th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 104:
“Section 1 of Rule I of the civil-service rules is hereby amended to read as follows:
“No person in the Executive civil service shall use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with an election or affecting the result thereof. Persons who, by the provisions of these rules are in the competitive classified service, while retaining the right to vote as they please and to express privately their opinions on all political subjects, shall take no active part in political management or in political campaigns.”
Civil Service Rules 15, 3 Fed. Reg. 1525.
5 C. F. R., Cum. Supp., §1.1: “No interference with elections. No person in the executive civil service shall use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with an election or affecting the results thereof. Persons who by the provisions of the rules in this chapter are in the competitive classified service, while retaining the right to vote as they please and to express their opinion on all political subjects, shall take no active part in political management or in political campaigns.”
Section 15.1: “Legal appointment necessary to compensation. Whenever the Commission finds, after due notice and opportunity for explanation, that any person has been appointed to or is holding any position, whether by original appointment, promotion, assignment, transfer, or reinstatement, in violation of the Civil Service Act or Rules, or of any Executive order or any regulation of the Commission, or that any employee subject thereto has violated such Act, Rules, orders, or regulations, it shall certify the facts to the proper appointing officer with specific instructions as to discipline or dismissal of the person or employee affected. If the appointing officer fails to carry out the instructions of the Commission within 10 days after receipt thereof, the Commission shall certify the facts to the proper disbursing and auditing officers, and such officers shall make no payment or allowance of the salary or wages of any such person or employee thereafter accruing.”
See E. O. 8705, March 5, 1941, 6 Fed. Reg. 1313.
See note 4, supra, and 5 C. F R. § 1.1, June 1, 1938.
A change occurred also in Rule 15. This was to comply with a ruling of the Attorney General that the Hatch Act made removal from office a mandatory penalty for forbidden political activity. 40 Op. A. G., Political Activity by Government Employees, January 8,
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Kennedy
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Tohono O’odham Nation (Nation) is an Indian Tribe with federal recognition. The Nation’s main reservation is in the Sonoran desert of southern Arizona. Counting this and other reservation lands, the Nation’s landholdings are approximately 3 million acres.
The Nation brought two actions based on the same alleged violations of fiduciary duty with respect to the Nation’s lands and other assets. One action was filed against federal officials in District Court and the other against the United States in the Court of Federal Claims (CFC). The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the CFC suit was not barred by the rule that the CFC lacks jurisdiction over an action “for or in respect to” a claim that is also the subject of an action pending in another court. 28 U. S. C. § 1500. The question presented is whether a common factual basis like the one apparent in the Nation’s suits suffices to bar jurisdiction under § 1500.
I
The case turns on the relationship between the two suits the Nation filed. The first suit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against federal officials responsible for managing tribal assets held in trust by the Federal Government. The complaint alleged various violations of fiduciary duty with respect to those assets. The Nation claimed, for example, that the officials failed to provide an accurate accounting of trust property; to refrain from self-dealing; or to use reasonable skill in investing trust assets. The complaint requested equitable relief, including an accounting.
The next day the Nation filed the instant action against the United States in the CFC. The CFC complaint described the same trust assets and the same fiduciary duties that were the subject of the District Court complaint. And it alleged almost identical violations of fiduciary duty, for which it requested money damages. The CFC case was dismissed under § 1500 for want of jurisdiction.
A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed. 559 F. 3d 1284 (2009). Two suits are for or in respect to the same claim, it reasoned, only if they share operative facts and also seek overlapping relief. Finding no overlap in the relief requested, the court held that the two suits at issue were not for or in respect to the same claim.
This Court granted certiorari. 559 U. S. 1066 (2010).
II
Since 1868, Congress has restricted the jurisdiction of the CFC and its predecessors when related actions are pending elsewhere. Section 1500, identical in most respects to the original statute, provides:
“The United States Court of Federal Claims shall not have jurisdiction of any claim for or in respect to which the plaintiff or his assignee has pending in any other court any suit or process against the United States or any person who, at the time when the cause of action alleged in such suit or process arose, was, in respect thereto, acting or professing to act, directly or indirectly under the authority of the United States.”
The rule is more straightforward than its complex wording suggests. The CFC has no jurisdiction over a claim if the plaintiff has another suit for or in respect to that claim pending against the United States or its agents.
The question to be resolved is what it means for two suits to be “for or in respect to” the same claim. Keene Corp. v. United, States, 508 U. S. 200 (1993), provided a partial answer. It held that two suits are for or in respect to the same claim when they are “based on substantially the same operative facts ..., at least if there [is] some overlap in the relief requested.” Id., at 212. The Keene case did not decide whether the jurisdictional bar also operates if the suits are based on the same operative facts but do not seek overlapping relief. Still, Keene narrows the permissible constructions of “for or in respect to” a claim to one of two interpretations. Either it requires substantial factual and some remedial overlap, or it requires substantial factual overlap without more.
Congress first enacted the jurisdictional bar now codified in § 1500 to curb duplicate lawsuits brought by residents of the Confederacy following the Civil War. The so-called “cotton claimants” — named for their suits to recover for cotton taken by the Federal Government — sued the United States in the Court of Claims under the Abandoned Property Collection Act, 12 Stat. 820, while at the same time suing federal officials in other courts, seeking relief under tort law for the same alleged actions. See Keene, supra, at 206-207; Schwartz, Section 1500 of the Judicial Code and Duplicate Suits Against the Government and Its Agents, 55 Geo. L. J. 578, 574-580 (1967). Although the rule embodied in § 1500 originated long ago, Congress reenacted the statute at various times, most recently in 1948. See Act of June 25, 1948, 62 Stat. 942; Keene, 508 U. S., at 206-207.
The text of § 1500 reflects a robust response to the problem first presented by the cotton claimants. It bars jurisdiction in the CFC not only if the plaintiff sues on an identical claim elsewhere — a suit “for” the same claim — but also if the plaintiff’s other action is related although not identical — a suit “in respect to” the same claim. The phrase “in respect to” does not resolve all doubt as to the scope of the jurisdictional bar, but “it does make it clear that Congress did not intend the statute to be rendered useless by a narrow concept of identity.” Id., at 213. It suggests a broad prohibition, regardless of whether “claim” carries a special or limited meaning. Cf. United States v. Jones, 131 U. S. 1 (1889) (“claim” in the Little Tucker Act refers only to requests for money).
Of the two constructions of “for or in respect to” the same claim that Keene permits — one based on facts alone and the other on factual plus remedial overlap — the former is the more reasonable interpretation in light of the statute’s use of a similar phrase in a way consistent only with factual overlap. The CFC bar applies even where the other action is not against the Government but instead against a “person who, at the time when the cause of action alleged in such suit or process arose, was, in respect thereto, acting or professing to act, directly or indirectly under the authority of the United States.” The statute refers to a person who acts under eolor of federal law in respect to a cause of action at the time it arose. But at that time, the person could not act in respect to the relief requested, for no complaint was yet filed. This use of the phrase “in respect to a cause of action” must refer to operative facts and not whatever remedies an aggrieved party might later request. A person acts under color of federal law in respect to a cause of action by claiming or wielding federal authority in the relevant factual context.
Although the two phrases are not identical — one is in respect to a claim, the other a cause of action — they are almost so, and there is reason to think that both phrases refer to facts alone and not to relief. As the Keene Court explained, “the term ‘claim’ is used here synonymously with ‘cause of action. ’ ” 508 U. S., at 210. And if either of the two phrases were to include both operative facts and a specific remedy, it would be the one that uses the term “cause of action” rather than “claim.” “Cause of action” is the more technical term, while “claim” is often used in a commonsense way to mean a right or demand. Here, for the reasons stated in the preceding paragraph, “in respect to a cause of action” refers simply to facts without regard to judicial remedies. So, if the phrase with the more technical of the two terms does not embrace the concept of remedy, it is reasonable to conclude that neither phrase does. Even if the terms “claim” or “cause of action” include the request for relief, the phrase “for or in respect to” gives the statutory bar a broader scope.
Reading the statute to require only factual and not also remedial overlap makes sense in light of the unique remedial powers of the CFC. The CFC is the only judicial forum for most nontort requests for significant monetary relief against the United States. See 28 U. S. C. § 1491 (2006 ed. and Supp. III); § 1346(a)(2) (2006 ed.). Unlike the district courts, however, the CFC has no general power to provide equitable relief against the Government or its officers. Compare United States v. King, 395 U. S. 1, 2-3 (1969), with 5 U. S. C. § 702; see also United States v. Alire, 6 Wall. 573, 575 (1868) (“[T]he only judgments which the Court of Claims are authorized to render against the government... are judgments for money found due from the government to the petitioner”). The distinct jurisdiction of the CFC makes overlapping relief the exception and distinct relief the norm. For that reason, a statute aimed at precluding suits in the CFC that duplicate suits elsewhere would be unlikely to require remedial overlap.
Remedial overlap between CFC actions and those in other courts was even more unusual when § 1500’s rule was first enacted in 1868. At that time the CFC had a more limited jurisdiction than it does now, for the Tucker Act’s general waiver of sovereign immunity for nontort claims for monetary relief had not yet been enacted. See 24 Stat. 505. And while the district courts can today adjudicate suits against the United States for money damages under the Little Tucker Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1346(a)(2), and the Federal Tort Claims Act § 1346(b), in 1868 the United States could only be sued in the Court of Claims. United, States v. Mitchell, 463 U. S. 206, 212-214 (1983); G. Sisk, Litigation With the Federal Government § 4.02(a)(1) (4th ed. 2006). Because the kinds of suits and forms of relief available against the United States were few and constrained, remedial overlap between CFC suits and those in other courts was even less common then than now. If the statute were to require remedial as well as factual overlap, it would have had very limited application in 1868 despite its broad language that bars not only identical but also related claims. The rule in § 1500 effects a significant jurisdictional limitation, and Congress reenacted it even as changes in the structure of the courts made suits on the same facts more likely to arise. Doing so reaffirmed the force of the bar and thus the commitment to curtailing redundant litigation.
The panel of the Court of Appeals could not identify “any purpose that § 1500 serves today,” 559 F. 3d, at 1292, in large part because it was bound by Circuit precedent that left the statute without meaningful force. For example, the panel cited Tecon Engineers, Inc. v. United States, 170 Ct. Cl. 389, 343 F. 2d 943 (1965), which held that § 1500 does not prohibit two identical suits from proceeding so long as the action in the CFC, or at that time the Court of Claims, is filed first. The Tecon holding is not presented in this case because the CFC action here was filed after the District Court suit.
Still, the Court of Appeals was wrong to allow its precedent to suppress the statute’s aims. Courts should not render statutes nugatory through construction. In. fact the statute’s purpose is clear from its origins with the cotton claimants — the need to save the Government from burdens of redundant litigation — and that purpose is no less significant today. The conclusion that two suits are for or in respect to the same claim when they are based on substantially the same operative facts allows the statute to achieve its aim. Keene, supra, at 206. Developing a factual record is responsible for much of the cost of litigation. Discovery is a conspicuous example, and the preparation and examination of witnesses at trial is another. The form of relief requested matters less, except insofar as it affects what facts parties must prove. An interpretation of § 1500 focused on the facts rather than the relief a party seeks preserves the provision as it was meant to function, and it keeps the provision from becoming a mere pleading rule, to be circumvented by carving up a single transaction into overlapping pieces seeking different relief. Cf. Casman v. United States, 135 Ct. Cl. 647 (1956) (CFC had jurisdiction notwithstanding common facts in district court suit because the plaintiff sought different relief in each forum).
Concentrating on operative facts is also consistent with the doctrine of claim preclusion, or res judicata, which bars “repetitious suits involving the same cause of action" once “a court of competent jurisdiction has entered a final judgment on the merits.” Commissioner v. Sunnen, 333 U. S. 591, 597 (1948). The jurisdictional bar in § 1500 was enacted in part to address the problem that judgments in suits against officers were not preclusive in suits against the United States. Matson Nav. Co. v. United States, 284 U. S. 352, 355-356 (1932). So it is no surprise that the statute would operate in similar fashion. The now-accepted test in preclusion law for determining whether two suits involve the same claim or cause of action depends on factual overlap, barring “claims arising from the same transaction.” Kremer v. Chemical Constr. Corp., 456 U. S. 461, 482, n. 22 (1982); see also Restatement (Second) of Judgments §24 (1980). The transactional test is of course much younger than the rule embodied in § 1500, but even in the 19th century it was not uncommon to identify a claim for preclusion purposes based on facts rather than relief. See J. Wells, Res Adjudicata and Stare Decisis §241, p. 208 (1878) (“The true distinction between demands or rights of action which are single and entire, and those which are several and distinct, is, that the former immediately arise out of one and the same act or contract, and the latter out of different acts or contracts” (internal quotation marks omitted)); 2 H. Black, Law of Judgments §726, p. 866 (1891) (The test for identity is: “Would the same evidence support and establish both the present and the former cause of action”). Reading § 1500 to depend on the underlying facts and not also on the relief requested gives effect to the principles of preclusion law embodied in the statute.
There is no merit to the Nation’s assertion that the interpretation adopted here cannot prevail because it is unjust, forcing plaintiffs to choose between partial remedies available in different courts. The hardship in this case is far from clear. The Nation could have filed in the CFG alone and if successful obtained monetary relief to compensate for any losses caused by the Government’s breach of duty. It also seems likely that Indian tribes in the Nation’s position could go to district court first without losing the chance to later file in the CFC, for Congress has provided in every appropriations Act for the Department of the Interior since 1990 that the statute of limitations on Indian trust mismanagement claims shall not run until the affected tribe has been given an appropriate accounting. See, e. g., 123 Stat. 2922; 104 Stat. 1930.
Even were some hardship to be shown, considerations of policy divorced from the statute’s text and purpose could not override its meaning. Although Congress has permitted claims against the United States for monetary relief in the CFC, that relief is available by grace and not by right. See Beers v. Arkansas, 20 How. 527,529 (1858) (“[A]s this permission is altogether voluntary on the part of the sovereignty, it follows that it may prescribe the terms and conditions on which it consents to be sued, and the manner in which the suit shall be conducted”). If indeed the statute leads to incomplete relief, and if plaintiffs like the Nation are dissatisfied, they are free to direct their complaints to Congress. This Court “enjoy[s] no ‘liberty to add an exception ... to remove apparent hardship.’ ” Keene, 508 U. S., at 217-218 (quoting Corona Coal Co. v. United States, 263 U. S. 537, 540 (1924)).
Keene reserved the question whether common facts are sufficient to bar a CFC action where a similar case is pending elsewhere. To continue to reserve the question would force the CFC to engage in an unnecessary and complicated remedial inquiry, and it would increase the expense and duration of litigation. The question thus demands an answer, and the answer is yes. Two suits are for or in respect to the same claim, precluding jurisdiction in the CFC, if they are based on substantially the same operative facts, regardless of the relief sought in each suit.
Ill
The remaining question is whether the Nation’s two suits have sufficient factual overlap to trigger the jurisdictional bar. The CFC dismissed the action here in part because it concluded that the facts in the Nation’s two suits were, “for all practical purposes, identical.” 79 Fed. Cl. 645,656 (2007). It was correct to do so.
The two actions both allege that the United States holds the same assets in trust for the Nation’s benefit. They describe almost identical breaches of fiduciary duty — that the United States engaged in self-dealing and imprudent investment, and failed to provide an accurate accounting of the assets held in trust, for example. Indeed, it appears that the Nation could have filed two identical complaints, save the caption and prayer for relief, without changing either suit in any significant respect.
Under § 1500, the substantial overlap in operative facts between the Nation’s District Court and CFC suits precludes jurisdiction in the CFC. The Court of Appeals erred when it concluded otherwise.
IV
The holding here precludes the CFC from exercising jurisdiction over the Nation’s suit while the District Court case is pending. Should the Nation choose to dismiss the latter action, or upon that action’s completion, the Nation is free to file suit again in the CFC if the statute of limitations is no bar. In the meantime, and in light of the substantial overlap in operative facts between them, the two suits are “for or in respect to” the same claim under § 1500, and the CFC case must be dismissed. The contrary judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Kagan took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Stevens
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Prior to January 3, 2007, Mark Dayton represented the State of Minnesota in the United States Senate. Appellee, Brad Hanson, was employed in the Senator’s Ft. Snelling office prior to his discharge by the Senator, which he alleges occurred on July 3, 2002. Hanson brought this action for damages against appellant, the Senator’s office (Office), invoking the District Court’s jurisdiction under the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 (Act), 109 Stat. 3, as amended, 2 U. S. C. § 1301 et seq. (2000 ed. and Supp. IV), and alleging violations of three other federal statutes. The District Court denied appellant’s motion to dismiss the complaint based on a claim of immunity under the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution. The Court of Appeals affirmed, Fields v. Office of Eddie Bernice Johnson, Employing Office, United States Congress, 459 F. 3d 1 (CADC 2006), the Office invoked our appellate jurisdiction under § 412 of the Act, 2 U. S. C. § 1412, and we postponed consideration of jurisdiction pending hearing the case on the merits, 549 U. S. 1177 (2007). Because we do not have jurisdiction under §412, we dismiss the appeal. Treating appellant’s jurisdictional statement as a petition for a writ of certiorari, we deny the petition.
Under § 412 of the Act, direct review in this Court is available “from any interlocutory or final judgment, decree, or order of a court upon the constitutionality of any provision” of the statute. Neither the order of the District Court denying appellant’s motion to dismiss nor the judgment of the Court of Appeals affirming that order can fairly be characterized as a ruling “upon the constitutionality” of any provision of the Act. The District Court’s minute order denying the motion to dismiss does not state any grounds for decision. App. to Juris. Statement 59a. Both parties agree that that order cannot, therefore, be characterized as a constitutional holding. The Court of Appeals’ opinion rejects appellant’s argument that forcing Senator Dayton to defend against the allegations in this case would necessarily contravene the Speech or Debate Clause, although it leaves open the possibility that the Speech or Debate Clause may limit the scope of the proceedings in some respects. Neither of those holdings qualifies as a ruling on the validity of the Act itself.
The Office argues that the Court of Appeals’ holding amounts to a ruling that the Act is constitutional “as applied.” According to the Office, an “as applied” constitutional holding of that sort satisfies the jurisdictional requirements of §412. We find this reading difficult to reconcile with the statutory scheme. Section 413 of the Act provides that
“[t]he authorization to bring judicial proceedings under [the Act] shall not constitute a waiver of sovereign immunity for any other purpose, or of the privileges of any Senator or Member of the House of Representatives under [the Speech or Debate Clause] of the Constitution.” 2 U. S. C. § 1413.
This provision demonstrates that Congress did not intend the Act to be interpreted to permit suits that would otherwise be prohibited under the Speech or Debate Clause. Consequently, a court’s determination that jurisdiction attaches despite a claim of Speech or Debate Clause immunity is best read as a ruling on the scope of the Act, not its constitutionality. This reading is faithful, moreover, to our established practice of interpreting statutes to avoid constitutional difficulties. See Clark v. Martinez, 543 U. S. 371, 381-382 (2005).
The provision for appellate review is best understood as responding to a congressional concern that if a provision of the statute is declared invalid there is an interest in prompt adjudication by this Court. To extend that review to instances in which the statute itself has not been called into question, giving litigants under the Act preference over litigants in other cases, does not accord with that rationale. This is also consistent with our cases holding that “statutes authorizing appeals are to be strictly construed.” Perry Ed. Assn. v. Perry Local Educators’ Assn., 460 U. S. 37, 43 (1983); see also Fornaris v. Ridge Tool Co., 400 U. S. 41, 42, n. 1 (1970) (per curiam).
Nor are there special circumstances that justify the exercise of our discretionary certiorari jurisdiction to review the Court of Appeals’ affirmance of the interlocutory order entered by the District Court. Having abandoned its decision in Browning v. Clerk, U. S. House of Representatives, 789 F. 2d 923 (1986), the D. C. Circuit is no longer in obvious conflict with any other Circuit on the application of the Speech or Debate Clause to suits challenging the personnel decisions of Members of Congress. Compare 459 F. 3d 1 (case below) with Bastien v. Office of Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, 390 F. 3d 1301 (CA10 2004).
Accordingly, the appeal is dismissed for want of jurisdiction, and certiorari is denied. We express no opinion on the merits, nor do we decide whether this action became moot upon the expiration of Senator Dayton’s term in office.
It is so ordered.
The Chief Justice took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
A brief of amicus curiae urging reversal was filed for the President pro tempore of the Senate of Pennsylvania by John P. Krill, Jr., Linda J. Shorey, and George A. Bibikos.
A brief of amici curiae urging affirmance was filed for Congressman Barney Frank et al. by Glen D. Nager, Traci L. Lovitt, and Virginia A. Seitz.
A brief of amicus curiae was filed for AARP by Thomas W. Osborne and Melvin Radowitz.
Appellee alleged violations of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993,107 Stat. 6, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 2601 et seq. (2000 ed. and Supp. IV), the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990,104 Stat. 327,42 U. S. C. §12101 et seq. (2000 ed. and Supp. IV), and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 1060, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §201 et seq. (2000 ed. and Supp. IV).
“[F]or any Speech or Debate in either House, [the Senators and Representatives] shall not be questioned in any other Place.” Art. I, § 6, el. 1.
Section 412 reads in full:
“Expedited review of certain appeals
“(a) In general
“An appeal may be taken directly to the Supreme Court of the United States from any interlocutory or final judgment, decree, or order of a court upon the constitutionality of any provision of this chapter.
“(b) Jurisdiction
“The Supreme Court shall, if it has not previously ruled on the question, accept jurisdiction over the appeal referred to in subsection (a) of this section, advance the appeal on the docket, and expedite the appeal to the greatest extent possible.” 2 U. S. C. § 1412.
Had the District Court’s order qualified as a ruling “upon the constitutionality” of a provision of the Act, the Court of Appeals’ jurisdiction to hear the appeal would have been called into serious doubt. See 28 U. S. C. § 1291 (granting jurisdiction to the courts of appeals from final decisions of federal district courts “except where a direct review may be had in the Supreme Court”).
Nor does this reading make a dead letter out of § 412’s limitation of appellate review in this Court to constitutional rulings. The possibility remains that provisions of the Act could be challenged on constitutional grounds unrelated to the Speech or Debate Clause.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Me. Justice Brennan
delivered the opinion of the. Court.
No. 55 (hereafter Mail Box) draws into question the constitutionality of 39 U. S. C. §4006-(now 39 U. S. C. § 3006, Postal Reorganization Act, 84 Stat. 747), under which the Postmaster General, following administrative hearings, may halt use of the mails and of postal money orders-for commerce in allegedly obscene materials. No. 58 (hereafter Book Bin) also draws into question the constitutionality of §4006, and, in addition, the constitutionality of 39 U. S. C. § 4007 (now 39 U. S. C. § 3007), 84 Stat. 748, under which the Postmaster General may obtain a court order permitting him to detain the defendant’s incoming mail pending the outcome of § 4006 proceedings against him.
39 U. S. C. § 4006 provides in pertinent part:
“Upon evidence satisfactory to the Postmaster Genéral that a person is obtaining or attempting to obtain remittances of money or property of any kind through the mail for an obscene . . . matter ..., or is depositing or causing to be deposited in the United States mail information as to where, how, or from whom the. same may be obtained, the Postmaster General may—
“(1) direct postmasters at-the office at which registered letters or other letters- or mail arrive, addressed to such a person or to his representative, to return the registered letters or other letters or mail to the sender marked 'Unlawful’; and
“(2) forbid the payment by a postmaster to such a person or his representative of any money order or postal note drawn to the order of either and provide for the return to the remitters of the sums named in the money orders or postal notes.”
Proceedings under ■ § 4006 are conducted according to departmental regulations. A proceeding js begun by the General Counsel of the Post Office Department by written complaint and notice of hearing. 39 CFR §§ 952.5, 952.7,- 952.8. The Judicial Officer of the Department holds a trial-type hearing at which a full record is transcribed. He renders an opinion -which includes findings of fact and a statement of reasons. 39 CFR §§ 952.9-952.25. The decision is to “be rendered with all due speed,” 39 CFR § 952.24 (a), and there is an administrative appeal. 39 CFR § 952.25. No § 4006 order may issue against the defendant until completion of the administrative proceeding. If, however,- the Postmaster General wishes to detain the defendant’s incoming mail before the termination of the § 4006 proceedings, he may apply to the United States District Court for the district in which the defendant resides, under 39 U. S. C. § 4007, which in pertinent part provides:
“In preparation for or during the pendency of proceedings under [§4006] of this title, the United States district court in the district in which the defendant receives his mail shall, upon application therefor by the Postmaster General and upon a showing of probable cause to believe the statute is being violated, enter a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction pursuant to rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure directing the detention of the defendant’s incoming mail by the postmaster pending the conclusion of the statutory proceedings and any appeal therefrom. .The district court may provide in the order that the- detained mail be open to examination by the defendant, and such mail be delivered as is clearly not connected with the alleged unlawful activity. An action taken by a court hereunder does not affect or determine any fact at issue in the statutory proceedings.”
In Mail Box, the Postmaster General Began administrative proceedings under § 4006 on November 1, 1968. The administrative hearing was concluded December 5, 1968. The Judicial Officer, filed his decision December 31, Í968, finding that the specified magazines were obscene and, therefore, entered a § 4006 order — 6Í days after the complaint was filed. Mail Box filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Central District of California seeking a declaratory judgment that § 4006 was unconstitutional and an injunction against enforcement of the administrative order. A three-judge court was convened and held that 39 U. S. C. § 4006 “is unconstitutional on its face, because it fails to meet the requirements of Freedman v. Maryland (1965) 380 U. S. 51....” 305 F. Supp. 634, 635 (1969). The court, therefore, vacated the administrative order, directed the delivery “forthwith” of all mail addressed to Mail Box, and enjoined any proceedings to enforce § 4006.
In Book Bin, the Postmaster General applied to the District Court for the Northern District of Georgia for a § 4007 order, pending the completion of § 4006 proceedings against Book Bin. Book Bin counterclaimed, asserting that both §§ 4006 and 4007 were unconstitutional and that their énforcement should be enjoined. A three-judge court was convened and held both sections unconstitutional. It agreed with the three-judge court in Mail Box that the procedures of § 4006 were fatally deficient under Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U. S. 51. (1965), and also held that the finding under § 4007 merely of “probable cause” to believe material was obscene was hot a constitutionally sufficient standard to support a temporary mail detention order. 306 F. Supp. 1023 (1969).
We noted probable jurisdiction of the Government’s appeals. 397 U. S. 959, 960 (1970). We affirm the judgment in each case.
Our discussion appropriately begins with Mr. Justice Holmes’ frequently quoted admonition that, “The United States may give up the Post Office when it sees fit, but while it carries it on the use of the mails is almost as much a part of free speech as the right to use our tongues . . . .” Milwaukee Social Democratic Pub. Co. v. Burleson, 255 U. S. 407, 437 (1921) (dissenting opinion); see also Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381. U. S. 301 (1965). Since § 4006 on its face, and §4007 as applied, are procedures designed to deny use of the mails to commercial distributors of obscene. literature, those procedures violate the First Amendment unless they include built-in safeguards against curtailment .of constitutionally protected expression, for Government “is not free to adopt whatever procedures it pleases for dealing with obscenity . . . without regard to the possible consequences for constitutionally protected speech.” Marcus v. Search Warrant, 367 U. S. 717, 731 (1961). Rather, the First Amendment requires that procedures be incorporated- that “ensure against the curtailment of constitutionally protected expression, which is often separated from obscenity only by a dim and uncertain line. . . . Our insistence that regulations of obscenity scrupulously embody the most rigorous procedural safeguards . . . is . . ; but a special instance of the larger principle that the freedoms of expression must; be ringed about with adequate bulwarks. . . .” Bantam, Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U. S. 58, 66 (1963). Since we have recognized that “the line between speech unconditionally guaranteed and speech which may legitimately be regulated ... is finely drawn. . . . [t]he separation of legitimate from illegitimate speech calls for . . . sensitive tools . . . .” Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S. 513, 525 (1958).
The procedure established by § 4006 and the imple- ■ menting regulations omit those “sensitive tools” essential to satisfy the requirements of the First Amendment. The three-judge courts correctly held in these cases that our decision in Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U. S. 51 (1965) compels this conclusion. We there considered the constitutionality of a motion picture censorship procedure administered by a State Board of Censors. We held that to avoid constitutional infirmity a scheme of administrative censorship must: place the burdens of initiating judicial review and. of proving that the material is unprotected expression on the censor; require “prompt judicial review” — a final judicial determination on the merits within a specified, brief period — to prevent the administrative decision of the censor from achieving an effect of finality; and limit to preservation of the status quo for the shortest, fixed period compatible with sound judicial resolution, any restraint imposed in advance of the final judicial determination. 380 U. S., at 58-60.
These safeguards are lacking in the administrative censorship scheme created by §§4006, 4007, and the regulations.
The scheme has no statutory provision requiring gov-ernmentally-initiated judicial participation in the procedure which bars- the magazines from the mails, or even any provision assuring prompt judicial review. The scheme does differ from the Maryland scheme involved in-Freedman in that under the Maryland scheme the motion picture could not be exhibited pending conclusion of the administrative hearing, whereas under § 4006 the order to return mail or to refuse to pay money orders is. not imposed until there has been an administrative determination that the magazines are obscene. This, however, does not redress the fatal flaw of the procedure in failing to require that the Postmaster General seek to obtain a prompt judicial determination of the obscenity of the material; rather, once the administrative proceedings disapprove the magazines the distributor “must assume the burden of instituting judicial proceedings and of persuading the courts that the . . . [magazines are] protected expression.”' 380 U. S., at 59-60. The First Amendment demands that the Government must assume this burden. “The teaching of our cases is that, because only a judicial determination in an adversary proceeding ensures the necessary sensitivity to freedom of expression, only a procedure requiring a judicial determination suffices to impose a valid final restraint.” 380 U. S., at 58.
Moreover, once a § 4006 administrative order has been entered against the distributor, there being no provision for judicial review, the Postmaster may stamp as “Unlawful” and immediately return to the sender orders for purchase of the magazines addressed to the distributor, and prohibit the payment of postal money orders to him. Such a scheme “presents peculiar dangers tó constitutionally protected speech. . . . Because the censor’s business is to censor, there inheres the danger that he may well be less responsive than a court — part of an independent branch of government — to the constitutionally protected interests in free expression. And if it is made unduly onerous, by reason of delay or otherwise, to seek judicial review, the censor’s determination may in practice be final.” 380 U. S., at 57-58. Appellants suggest that we avoid the constitutional question raised by the failure of § 4006 to provide that the Government seek a prompt judicial determination by construing that section to deny the administrative order any effect whatever, if judicial review is sought by the distributor, until the completion of that review. Apart from the fact that this suggestion neither requires that the appellants initiate judicial proceedings, nor provides for a prompt judicial determination, it is for Congress, not this Court, to rewrite the statute.
The authority of the Postmaster General under § 4007 to apply to a district court for an order directing the detention of the distributor’s incoming mail pending the conclusion of the § 4006 administrative proceedings and any appeal therefrom plainly does not remedy the defects in § 4006. That section does not provide a prompt proceeding for a judicial adjudication of the challenged obscenity of the magazine. First, it is entirely discretionary with the Attorney General whether to institute a § 4007 action and, therefore, the section does not satisfy the requirement that the appellants assume the burden of seeking a judicial determination of the alleged obscenity of the magazines. Second, the district court is required to grant the relief sought by the Postmaster General upon a showing merely of “probable cause” to believe § 4006 is being violated. We agree with the three-judge court in Book Bin that to satisfy the demánd of the First Amendment “it is vital that prompt judicial review on the issue of obscenity — rather than merely probable cause — be assured on the Government’s initiative before the seyere restrictions in §§4006, 4007, are invoked.” 306 F. Supp., at 1028. Indeed, the statute expressly provides that, “An action taken by a court hereunder does not affect or determine any fact at issue in the statutory proceedings.”
Moreover, § 4007 does not in any event itself meet the requisites of the First Amendment. Any order is-suéd by the district court remains in effect “pending the conclusion of the statutory proceedings and any appeal therefrom.” Thus, the statute not only fails to provide that the district court should make a final judicial determination of the question of obscenity, expressly giving that authority to the Judicial Officer, but it fails to provide that “[a]ny restraint imposed in advance of a final judicial determination on the merits must ... be limited to preservation of the status quo for the shortest fixed period compatible with sound judicial resolution.” 380 U. S., at 59.
The appellees here not only were not afforded “prompt judicial review” but they “can only get full judicial review on the question of obscenity — by which the Postmaster would be actually bound — after lengthy administrative proceedings, and then only by [their] own initiative. During the interim, the prolonged threat of an adverse administrative] decision in §4006 or the reality of a sweeping § 4007 order, will have a severe restriction on the exercise of [appellees’] First Amendment rights — all without a final judicial determination of obscenity.” 306 F. Supp., at 1028. .
The judgments of the three-judge courts in Nos. 55 and 58 are
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Black concurs in the result.
The codification of the Act will appear in. the 1970 edition of the United States Code. This opinion treats the old Code sections as current.
Section 4006 was enacted in 1950. 64 Stat. 451. In 1956 the Postmaster General sought and obtained the power himself to enter an order, pending administrative proceedings under § 4006, that all mail' addressed to the defendant in the § 4006 proceeding be impounded. The order was to expire at the end of 20 days unless the Postmaster General sought in a federal district court, an order continuing the impounding. 70 Stat. 699. In 1959, extensive hearings, were held in the House on the Post Office’s request that the 20-day period be extended to 45 days, and that the standard of necessity be changed to “public interest.” Hearings on Obscene Matter Sent Through the Mail .before the Subcommittee on Postal Operations of the House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., pts. 1, 2, and 3 (1959); Hearings on-Detention of Mail for Temporary Periods before the House Committee on Post Office and Civil 'Service, 86th Cong., 1st Sess. (1959). Instead, Congress enacted § 4007 which stripped, the Postmaster General of his power to issue an interim order for toy period, and directed him to seek such an order in a federal district court. One Senate Report expressed misgivings when the Postmaster General-had originally sought the impounding power: “The committee recognizes .that even' in its present form the bill gives the Postmaster General extraordinary and summary powers to impose a substantial penalty by impounding a person’s mail for up to 20 days in advance of any hearing or any review by the courts. Such power is directly contrary to the letter and spirit of normal due process, as exemplified by the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires a hearing before any penalty may be imposed. The Post Office Department has made its case for this legislation on the grounds that a temporary and summary procedure is required to deal with fly-by-night operators using the mails to defraud or to peddle pornography, who may go out of business — or change the name of their business or their business address — before normal legal procedures can be brought into operation. • The Post Office Department has not recommended, nor does this committee approve, the use of the temporary impounding procedure under this bill as a substitute for the. normal practice of an advance hearing or the bringing of an indictment for violation- of the criminal code in all cases involving legitimate and well-established business operations. The committee would not approve the use of the extraordinary- summary procedure under the bill against legitimate publishers of newspapers, .magazines, or books in cases in which a Postmaster General might take objection to an article, an issue, or a volume.” S. Rep. No. 2234, 84th Cong., 2d Sess., 2-3 (1956).
Section 4007 also authorizes the Postmaster General to apply for an impounding order during the pendency of proceedings under 39 U. S. C. §4005 (1964 ed., Supp. V), now §3005. Section 4005, as amended (82 Stat. 1153), permits the return to the sender of any mail sent to the perpetrator of what the Postmaster General finds to be a scheme for .obtaining money by means of false representations. That section has been upheld against First Amendment attack. Donaldson v. Read Magazine, 333 U. S. 178 (1948). The Government does not argue in its brief that Donaldson, compels the conclusion that § 4006 also is constitutional but only that “Section 4006, ’ like the fraud statute upheld in Donaldson . . . meets all necessary constitutional standards.” Brief for Appellants 20. On oral argument, the Government suggested that an affirmance in this case might jeopardize the validity of § 4005 and the continued vitality of Donaid-son. But no argument was offered to support the suggestion.
The order was sought with respect to a' single issue of one
We therefore have no occasion to consider the argument of ap-pellees that Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U. S. 557 (1969), presupposes that an individual has a constitutional right to obtain possession of the challenged materials by delivery through the mail.
In 1962,- three Justices of the Court stated: “[We have] ... no doubt that Congress could constitutionally authorize a noncriminal process in the nature of a judicial proceeding under closely defined procedural safeguards. But the suggestion that Congress may constitutionally authorize any process other than a fully .judicial one immediately raises the gravest doubts.” Manual Enterprises v. Day, 370 U. S. 478, 518-519 (1962) (opinion of BreNNAN, J.).
The Judicial Officer is appointed by the Postmaster General to “perform such quasi-judicial duties as the Postmaster General may designate.” 39 U. S. C. § 308a. He functions as hearing examiner in many proceedings in addition to those under § 4006. The appellants argue that the Judicial Officer enjoys “many of the insulations that judges enjoy.” What the Constitution requires, however, is that a noncriminal censoring process require govemmentally initiated full judicial participation. ■ Clearly, § 4006 does not so provide.
The Court said in Freedman v. Maryland that the procedure considered in Kingsley Books, Inc. v. Brown, 354 U. S. 436 (1957), provides “a model ... [of an] . . . injunctive procedure designed to prevent the sale of. obscene books.” 380 U. S., at 60.
This provision was added at the request of Postmaster General Summerfield who desired it expressly to forestall judicial review pending completion of the administrative proceeding. ' “This would guarantee that counsel for a mailer will not be able to raise successfully a bar to all further administrative proceedings in a case in which the Government failed to prevail .on its motion for a preliminary injunction.” Letter from Arthur E. Summerfield, Postmaster General, to Senator Olin D. Johnston, Chairman, Senate Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, U. S. Code Cong. & Admin. News, 86th Cong., 2d Sess., 3249 (1960), In 1959, Postmaster General Summer-field had testified:
“In spite of the frustrations and the legal complications, and even the court decisions [which the Postmaster General had described as handing down 'the'very broad definition of obscenity’], I feel, a responsibility to the public to attempt to prevent the use of the mails for indecent material, and to seek indictments and prosecutions for such offenses, even though it may be argued that it falls in the category of material concerning which there have been previous rulings favorable to the promoters.” Hearing on Obscene Matter Sent Through the Mail before the Subcommittee on Postal Operations of the House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1, p. 6 (1959).
Appellants point out that orders under §§ 4006 and 4007 generally allow the addressee to open his mail at the post office and receive any first class mail demonstrated clearly not to be connected with the allegedly unlawful use. This provision is provided in light of 39 U. S. C. § 4057 which provides that “[o]nly an employee opening dead mail by authority of the Postmaster General, or a person holding a search warrant authorized by law may open any letter or parcel of the first class which is in the custody of the Department.” See also 39 CFR § 117.1. But, query whether such provision of the order requires an “official act,” viz., examining the mail, which constitutes an unconstitutional limitation on the addressee’s First Amendment rights. Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U. S. 301 (1965).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner, an enlisted member of the United States Coast Guard, challenges his conviction by a court-martial. His conviction was affirmed first by the Coast Guard Court of Military Review, and then by the United States Court of Military Appeals. The latter court agreed with petitioner that the two civilian judges who served on the Court of Military Review had not been appointed in accordance with the dictates of the Appointments Clause, U. S. Const., Art. II, § 2, cl. 2, but nonetheless held that the actions of those judges were valid de facto. We hold that the judges’ actions were not valid de facto.
Petitioner was convicted of several drug offenses, and was sentenced by a general court-martial to five years’ confinement (later reduced to three years), forfeiture of pay, reduction in grade, and a dishonorable discharge. He appealed to the Coast Guard Court of Military Review, which, except in one minor aspect, affirmed his conviction. 34 M. J. 1077 (1992). On request for rehearing, petitioner challenged the composition of that court as violative of the Appointments Clause of the Constitution because two of the judges on the three-judge panel were civilians appointed by the General Counsel of the Department of Transportation. The court granted rehearing and rejected this challenge. 34 M. J. 1259 (1992).
The Court of Military Appeals likewise affirmed petitioner’s conviction, 39 M. J. 454 (1994), although it agreed with petitioner that the appellate judges on the Coast Guard Court of Military Review had been appointed in violation of the Appointments Clause. The court relied for this conclusion on its previous decision in United States v. Carpenter, 37 M. J. 291 (1993), where it had decided that appellate military judges are inferior officers whose service requires appointment by a President, a court of law, or a head of a department. U. S. Const., Art. II, § 2, cl. 2. Despite finding a constitutional violation in the appointment of two judges on petitioner’s three-judge appellate panel, the Court of Military Appeals affirmed his conviction on the ground that the actions of these judges were valid defacto, citing Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976) (per curiam). We granted certiorari. 513 U. S. 1071 (1995).
The defacto officer doctrine confers validity upon acts performed by a person acting under the color of official title even though it is later discovered that the legality of that person’s appointment or election to office is deficient. Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U. S. 425, 440 (1886). “The de facto doctrine springs from the fear of the chaos that would result from multiple and repetitious suits challenging every action taken by every official whose claim to office could be open to question, and seeks to protect the public by insuring the orderly functioning of the government despite technical defects in title to office.” 63A Am. Jur. 2d, Public Officers and Employees § 578, pp. 1080-1081 (1984) (footnote omitted). The doctrine has been relied upon by this Court in several cases involving challenges by criminal defendants to the authority of a judge who participated in some part of the proceedings leading to their conviction and sentence.
In Ball v. United States, 140 U. S. 118 (1891), a Circuit Judge assigned a District Judge from the Western District of Louisiana to sit in the Eastern District of Texas as a replacement for the resident judge who had fallen ill and who later died. The assigned judge continued to sit until the successor to the deceased judge was duly appointed. The assigned judge had sentenced Ball after the resident judge had died, and Ball made no objection at that time. Ball later moved in arrest of judgment challenging the sentence imposed upon him by the assigned judge after the death of the resident judge, but this Court held that the assigned judge “was judge de facto if not de jure, and his acts as such are not open to collateral attack.” Id., at 128-129.
Similarly, in McDowell v. United States, 159 U. S. 596 (1895), a Circuit Judge assigned a judge from the Eastern District of North Carolina to sit as a District Judge in the District of South Carolina until a vacancy in the latter district was filled. McDowell was indicted and convicted during the term in which the assigned judge served, but made no objection at the time of his indictment or trial. He later challenged the validity of his conviction because of a claimed error in the assigned judge’s designation. This Court decided that the assigned judge was a “judge de facto,” and that “his actions as such, so far as they affect third persons, are not open to question.” Id., at 601. The Court further observed that McDowell’s claim “presents a mere matter of statutory construction .... It involves no trespass upon the executive power of appointment.” Id., at 598. In a later case, Ex parte Ward, 173 U. S. 452 (1899), petitioner sought an original writ of habeas corpus to challenge the authority of the District Judge who had sentenced him on the grounds that the appointment of the judge during a Senate recess was improper. This Court held that “the title of a person acting with color of authority, even if he be not a good officer in point of law, cannot be collaterally attacked.” Id., at 456.
In the case before us, petitioner challenged the composition of the Coast Guard Court of Military Review while his case was pending before that court on direct review. Unlike the defendants in Ball, McDowell, and Ward, petitioner raised his objection to the judges’ titles before those very judges and prior to their action on his case. And his claim is based on the Appointments Clause of Article II of the Constitution — a claim that there has been a “trespass upon the executive power of appointment,” McDowell, supra, at 598, rather than a misapplication of a statute providing for the assignment of already appointed judges to serve in other districts.
In Buckley v. Valeo, supra, at 125, we said “[t]he Appointments Clause could, of course, be read as merely dealing with etiquette or protocol in describing ‘Officers of the United States’ but the drafters had a less frivolous purpose in mind.” The Clause is a bulwark against one branch aggrandizing its power at the expense of another branch, but it is more: it “preserves another aspect of the Constitution’s structural integrity by preventing the diffusion of the appointment power.” Freytag v. Commissioner, 501 U. S. 868, 878 (1991). In Glidden Co. v. Zdanok, 370 U. S. 530 (1962), we declined to invoke the de facto officer doctrine in order to avoid deciding a question arising under Article III of the Constitution, saying that the cases in which we had relied on that doctrine did not involve “basic constitutional protections designed in part for the benefit of litigants.” Id., at 536 (plurality opinion). We think that one who makes a timely challenge to the constitutional validity of the appointment of an officer who adjudicates his case is entitled to a decision on the merits of the question and whatever relief may be appropriate if a violation indeed occurred. Any other rule would create a disincentive to raise Appointments Clause challenges with respect to questionable judicial appointments.
The Court of Military Appeals relied, not without reason, on our decision in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976). There, plaintiffs challenged the appointment of the Federal Election Commission members on separation-of-powers grounds. The Court agreed with them and held that the appointment of four members of the Commission by Congress, rather than the President, violated the Appointments Clause. It nonetheless quite summarily held that the “past acts of the Commission are therefore accorded defacto validity.” Id., at 142. We cited as authority for this determination Connor v. Williams, 404 U. S. 549, 550-551 (1972), in which we held that legislative acts performed by legislators held to have been elected in accordance with an unconstitutional apportionment were not therefore void.
Neither Buckley nor Connor explicitly relied on the de facto officer doctrine, though the result reached in each case validated the past acts of public officials. But in Buckley, the constitutional challenge raised by the plaintiffs was decided in their favor, and the declaratory and injunctive relief they sought was awarded to them. And Connor, like other voting rights cases, see Allen v. State Bd. of Elections, 393 U. S. 544, 572 (1969); Cipriano v. City of Houma, 395 U. S. 701 (1969) (per curiam), did not involve a defect in a specific officer’s title, but rather a challenge to the composition of an entire legislative body. The Court assumed, arguendo, that an equal protection violation infected the District Court’s reapportionment plan, declined to invalidate the elections that had already occurred, and reserved judgment on the propriety of the prospective relief requested by petitioners pending completion of further District Court proceedings that could rectify any constitutional violation present in the court-ordered redistricting plan. Connor, supra, at 550-551. To the extent these civil cases may be thought to have implicitly applied a form of the de facto officer doctrine, we are not inclined to extend them beyond their facts.
The Government alternatively defends the decision of the Court of Military Appeals on the grounds that it was, for several reasons, proper for that court to give its decision in Carpenter — holding that the appointment of the civilian judges to the Coast Guard Court of Military Review violated the Appointments Clause — prospective application only. It first argues that the Court of Military Appeals exercised remedial discretion pursuant to Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U. S. 97 (1971). But whatever the continuing validity of Chevron Oil after Harper v. Virginia Dept. of Taxation, 509 U. S. 86 (1993), and Reynoldsville Casket Co. v. Hyde, 514 U. S. 749 (1995), there is not the sort of grave disruption or inequity involved in awarding retrospective relief to this petitioner that would bring that doctrine into play. The parties agree that the defective appointments of the civilian judges affect only between 7 to 10 cases pending on direct review. As for the Government’s concern that a flood of habeas corpus petitions will ensue, precedent provides little basis for such fears. Ex parte Ward, 173 U. S. 452 (1899).
Nor does the Government persuade us that the inquiry into clearly established law as it pertains to qualified immunity counsels in favor of discretion to deny a remedy in this case. Qualified immunity specially protects public officials from the specter of damages liability for judgment calls made.in a legally uncertain environment. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800, 806 (1982) (“[0]ur decisions consistently have held that government officials are entitled to some form of immunity from suits for damages” (emphasis added)). Providing relief to a claimant raising an Appointments Clause challenge does not subject public officials to personal damages that represent a “potentially disabling threa[t] of liability,” but only invalidates actions taken pursuant to defective title. The qualified immunity doctrine need not be extended to protect public officials from such attacks.
Similarly, the practice of denying criminal defendants an exclusionary remedy from Fourth Amendment violations when those errors occur despite the good faith of the Government actors, United States v. Leon, 468 U. S. 897 (1984), does not require the affirmance of petitioner’s conviction in this case. Finding the deterrent remedy of suppression not compelled by the Fourth Amendment, id., at 910, that case specifically relied on the “objectionable collateral consequence of [the] interference with the criminal justice system’s truth-finding function” in requiring a blanket exclusionary-remedy for all violations, id., at 907, and the relative ineffectiveness of such remedy to deter future Fourth Amendment violations in particular cases, id., at 918-921. No similar collateral consequence arises from rectifying an Appointments Clause violation, and correcting Appointments Clause violations in cases such as this one provides a suitable incentive to make such challenges.
The Government finally suggests that the Court of Military Appeals applied something akin to a harmless-error doctrine in affirming petitioner’s conviction, refusing to redress the violation because petitioner suffered no adverse consequences from the composition of the court. Brief for United States 38. The Government did not argue below that the error, assuming it occurred, was harmless, and there is no indication from the Court of Military Appeals’ summary disposition of this issue that it determined that no harm occurred in this case. We therefore need not address whether the alleged defects in the composition of petitioner’s appellate panel are susceptible to harmless-error review. The Government also argues, at least obliquely, that whatever defect there may have been in the proceedings before the Coast Guard Court of Military Review was in effect cured by the review available to petitioner in the Court of Military Appeals. Id., at 24, n. 16. Again, because of the hierarchical nature of sentence review in the system of military courts, we need not address whether this defect is susceptible to the cure envisioned by the Government.
Congress has established three tiers of military courts pursuant to its power “[t]o make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.” U. S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 14. Cases such as the present one are tried before a general court-martial consisting of a military judge and not less than five service members or by a military judge alone. Art. 16(1), UCMJ, 10 U. S. C. §816(1). Four Courts of Military Review (one each for the Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Navy-Marine Corps) hear appeals from courts-martial in cases where the approved sentence involves death, dismissal of a commissioned officer, punitive discharge, or confinement for one year or more. Art. 66, UCMJ, 10 U. S. C. § 866(b)(1). These courts, which sit in panels of three or more, exercise de novo review over the factual findings and legal conclusions of the court-martial. Art. 66(c), UCMJ, 10 U. S. C. § 866(c).
The court of last resort in the military justice system is the Court of Military Appeals. Five civilian judges appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate constitute the court. Art. 142, UCMJ, 10 U. S. C. §942 (1988 ed., Supp. V). The court grants review in cases decided by the Courts of Military Review “upon petition of the accused and on good cause shown.” Art. 67, UCMJ, 10 U. S. C. § 867(a) (1988 ed., Supp. V). The scope of review is narrower than the review exercised by the Court of Military Review; so long as there is some competent evidence in the record to establish the elements of an offense beyond a reasonable doubt, the Court of Military Appeals will not reevaluate the facts. United States v. Wilson, 6 M. J. 214 (1979).
Examining the difference in function and authority between the Coast Guard Court of Military Review and the Court of Military Appeals, it is quite clear that the former had broader discretion to review claims of error, revise factual determinations, and revise sentences than did the latter. It simply cannot be said, therefore, that review by the properly constituted Court of Military Appeals gave petitioner all the possibility for relief that review by a properly constituted Coast Guard Court of Military Review would have given him. We therefore hold that the Court of Military Appeals erred in according defacto validity to the actions of the civilian judges of the Coast Guard Court of Military Review. Petitioner is entitled to a hearing before a properly appointed panel of that court. The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1995, Pub. L. 103-337, § 924, 108 Stat. 2831, changed the nomenclature for the military-appellate courts. The previous “Court[s] of Military Review” were rechristened as the “Court[s] of Criminal Appeals” and the previous “United States Court of Military Appeals” was redesignated as the “United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces.” We adhere to the former names consistent with all previous proceedings in this ease.
The Appointments Clause reads in full:
“[The President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.” U. S. Const., Art. II, §2, cl. 2.
For similar reasons, we do not find instructive the Court’s disposition of petitioner’s challenge in Northern Pipeline Constr. Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U. S. 50 (1982). The Court declared the broad grant of jurisdiction to Article I bankruptcy courts unconstitutional and applied its decision prospectively only. Id., at 88. But in doing so, it affirmed the judgment of the District Court, which had dismissed petitioner’s bankruptcy action and afforded respondent the relief requested pursuant to its constitutional challenge. Id., at 57. So Northern Pipeline is not a case in which the Court invoked the de facto officer doctrine to deny relief to the party before it and therefore does not support the Government in this case.
The Government advances a virtual cornucopia of factors more or less peculiar to this case which it says validate the Court of Military Appeals’ exercise of discretion in this case and thus support affirmance. It points to the lack of any. substantial impact that the improper appointments had on petitioner’s appeal, to the lack of any constitutional right to appellate review, and to the deference owed the military and the public interest in avoiding disruption of that system. Brief for United States 22. At oral argument, it also contended that subsequent action taken by the Secretary of Transportation to cure the Appointments Clause error, the fact that petitioner’s underlying claims of error were meritless, and the fact that the civilian judges in this ease had previously served under proper appointments while on active duty were relevant criteria. Tr. of Oral Arg. 29-30, 33-34. The substance, if not the form, of several of these arguments is discussed and rejected in the text. Those that are not discussed are alternative grounds for affirmance which the Government did not raise below, see Answer to Supplement for Petition for Review in No. 68449 (Ct. Mil. App.), pp. 2-4, and which we decline to reach. Jenkins v. Anderson, 447 U. S. 231, 234-235, n. 1 (1980); FTC v. Grolier Inc., 462 U. S. 19, 23, n. 6 (1983).
The Court of Military Review “may affirm only such findings of guilty, and the sentence or such part or amount of the sentence, as it finds correct in law and fact and determines, on the basis of the entire record, should be approved. In considering the record, it may weigh the evidence, judge the credibility of witnesses, and determine controverted questions of fact.” Art. 66(c), UCMJ, 10 U. S. C. § 866(c).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
Respondent Nelson sued in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado to compel arbitration of his discharge by petitioner Great Western Sugar Co. The District Court held that the presumption of arbitrability consistently applied by the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit required that the dispute be submitted to arbitration. Before petitioner’s appeal from the District Court’s order could be decided on the merits, the arbitration proceedings had been completed, and respondent filed a suggestion of mootness with the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals, in an order and opinion admirable for its conciseness, if not for its fidelity to our case law, said:
“This matter comes on for consideration of the appel-lee’s suggestion of mootness and motion to vacate judgment of the District Court and to remand the captioned cause with instructions to dismiss. The appellant filed a brief in response arguing that the appeal be allowed to continue but if not the judgment of the trial court should be reversed and the cause be remanded with directions to dismiss.
“Upon consideration whereof, the order of the Court is as follows:
“1. The appeal is dismissed on the ground of mootness.
“2. The judgment of the trial court is allowed to stand.” App. to Pet. for Cert. A5.
In Duke Power Co. v. Greenwood County, 299 U. S. 259, 267 (1936), this Court said:
“Where it appears upon appeal that the controversy has become entirely moot, it is the duty of the appellate court to set aside the decree below and to remand the cause with directions to dismiss.” (Emphasis supplied.)
The course of action prescribed in Duke Power has been followed in countless cases in this Court. See, e. g., Preiser v. Newkirk, 422 U. S. 395 (1975); Parker v. Ellis, 362 U. S. 574 (1960); United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U. S. 36 (1950).
Here neither the law nor the facts are in dispute. The Court of Appeals has proceeded on the assumption that the case is moot and has dismissed the appeal for that reason. It has nonetheless stated that the judgment of the District Court shall remain in effect, a statement totally at odds with the holding of Duke Power. The reasons for not allowing the District Court judgment to remain in effect when the fact of mootness had been properly called to the attention of the Court of Appeals were fully stated in United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., supra, at 39-41, and need not be restated here. The Court of Appeals’ disposition of this case may-have been the result of a desire to show approval of the reasoning of the District Court in directing arbitration, but that motive cannot be allowed to excuse its failure to follow the teaching of Duke Power Co., supra.
Because the fact of mootness is clear, and indeed is relied upon by the Court of Appeals as its reason for dismissing petitioner’s appeal, and because the law as laid down by this Court in Duke Power Co., supra, and United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., supra, is equally clear, the petition for certiorari is granted, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded to the Court of Appeals with directions to vacate the District Court’s judgment and to remand the case for dismissal of respondent’s complaint.
It is so ordered.
United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., is perhaps the leading case on the proper disposition of cases that become moot on appeal. There the Court reiterated that “[t]he established practice of the Court in dealing with a civil case from a court in the federal system which has become moot while on its way here or pending our decision on the merits is to reverse or vacate the judgment below and remand with a direction to dismiss.” 340 U. S., at 39.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Per Curiam.
The writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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.
Petitioners, husband and wife, stand convicted under § 145 of the Internal Revenue Code of an attempt to evade and defeat their income taxes for the year 1948. The prosecution was based on the net worth method of proof, also in issue in three companion cases and a number of other decisions here from the Courts of Appeals of nine circuits. During the past two decades this Court has been asked to review an increasing number of criminal cases in which proof of tax evasion rested on this theory. We have denied certiorari because the cases involved only questions of evidence and, in isolation, presented no important questions of law. In 1943 the Court did have occasion to pass upon an application of the net worth theory where the taxpayer had no records. United States v. Johnson, 319 U. S. 503.
In recent years, however, tax-evasion convictions obtained under the net worth theory have come here with increasing frequency and left impressions beyond those of the previously unrelated petitions. We concluded that the method involved something more than the ordinary use of circumstantial evidence in the usual criminal case. Its bearing, therefore, on the safeguards traditionally provided in the administration of criminal justice called for a consideration of the entire theory. At our last Term a number of cases arising from the Courts of Appeals brought to our attention the serious doubts of those courts regarding the implications of the net worth method. Accordingly, we granted certiorari in these four cases and have held others to await their decision.
In a typical net worth prosecution, the Government, having concluded that the taxpayer’s records are inadequate as a basis for determining income tax liability, attempts to establish an “opening net worth” or total net value of the taxpayer’s assets at the beginning of a given year. It then proves increases in the taxpayer’s net worth for each succeeding year during the period under examination and calculates the difference between the adjusted net values of the taxpayer’s assets at the beginning and end of each of the years involved. The taxpayer’s nondeductible expenditures, including living expenses, are added to these increases, and if the resulting figure for any year is substantially greater than the taxable income reported by the taxpayer for that year, the Government claims the excess represents unreported taxable income. In addition, it asks the jury to infer willfulness from this understatement, when taken in connection with direct evidence of “conduct, the likely effect of which would be to mislead or to conceal.” Spies v. United States, 317 U. S. 492, 499.
Before proceeding with a discussion of these cases, we believe it important to outline the general problems implicit in this type of litigation. In this consideration we assume, as we must in view of its widespread use, that the Government deems the net worth method useful in the enforcement of the criminal sanctions of our income tax laws. Nevertheless, careful study indicates that it is so fraught with danger for the innocent that the courts must closely scrutinize its use.
One basic assumption in establishing guilt by this method is that most assets derive from a taxable source, and that when this is not true the taxpayer is in a position to explain the discrepancy. The application of such an assumption raises serious legal problems in the administration of the criminal law. Unlike civil actions for the recovery of deficiencies, where the determinations of the Commissioner have prima facie validity, the prosecution must always prove the criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt. This has led many of our courts to be disturbed by the use of the net worth method, particularly in its scope and the latitude which it allows prosecutors. E. g., Demetree v. United States, 207 F. 2d 892, 894 (1953); United States v. Caserta, 199 F. 2d 905, 907 (1952); United States v. Fenwick, 177 F. 2d 488.
But the net worth method has not grown up overnight. It was first utilized in such cases as Capone v. United States, 51 F. 2d 609 (1931) and Guzik v. United States, 54 F. 2d 618 (1931), to corroborate direct proof of specific unreported income. In United States v. Johnson, supra, this Court approved of its use to support the inference that the taxpayer, owner of a vast and elaborately concealed network of gambling houses upon which he declared no income, had indeed received unreported income in a “substantial amount.” It was a potent weapon in establishing taxable income from undisclosed sources when all other efforts failed. Since the Johnson case, however, its horizons have been widened until now it is used in run-of-the-mine cases, regardless of the amount of tax deficiency involved. In each of the four cases decided today the allegedly unreported income comes from the same disclosed sources as produced the taxpayer’s reported income and in none is the tax deficiency anything like the deficiencies in Johnson, Capone or Cuzik. The net worth method, it seems, has evolved from the final volley to the first shot in the Government’s battle for revenue, and its use in the ordinary income-bracket cases greatly increases the chances for error. This leads us to point out the dangers that must be consciously kept in mind in order to assure adequate appraisal of the specific facts in individual cases.
1. Among the defenses often asserted is the taxpayer’s claim that the net worth increase shown by the Government’s statement is in reality not an increase at all because of the existence of substantial cash on hand at the starting point. This favorite defense asserts that the cache is made up of many years’ savings which for various reasons were hidden and not expended until the prosecution period. Obviously, the Government has great difficulty in refuting such a contention. However, taxpayers too encounter many obstacles in convincing the jury of the existence of such hoards. This is particularly so when the emergence of the hidden savings also uncovers a fraud on the taxpayer’s creditors.
In this connection, the taxpayer frequently gives “leads” to the Government agents indicating the specific sources from which his cash on hand has come, such as prior earnings, stock transactions, real estate profits, inheritances, gifts, etc. Sometimes these “leads” point back to old transactions far removed from the prosecution period. Were the Government required to run down all such leads it would face grave investigative difficulties; still its failure to do so might jeopardize the position of the taxpayer.
2. As we have said, the method requires assumptions, among which is the equation of unexplained increases in net worth with unreported taxable income. Obviously such an assumption has many weaknesses. It may be that gifts, inheritances, loans and the like account for the newly acquired wealth. There is great danger that the jury may assume that once the Government has established the figures in its net worth computations, the crime of tax evasion automatically follows. The possibility of this increases where the jury, without guarding instructions, is allowed to take into the jury room the various charts summarizing the computations; bare figures have a way of acquiring an existence of their own, independent of the evidence which gave rise to them.
3. Although it may sound fair to say that the taxpayer can explain the “bulge” in his net worth, he may be entirely honest and yet unable to recount his financial history. In addition, such a rule would tend to shift the burden of proof. Were the taxpayer compelled to come forward with evidence, he might risk lending support to the Government’s case by showing loose business methods or losing the jury through his apparent evasiveness. Of course, in other criminal prosecutions juries may disbelieve and convict the innocent. But the courts must minimize this danger.
4. When there are no books and records, willfulness may be inferred by the jury from that fact coupled with proof of an understatement of income. But when the Government uses the net worth method, and the books and records of the taxpayer appear correct on their face, an inference of willfulness from net worth increases alone might be unjustified, especially where the circumstances surrounding the deficiency are as consistent with innocent mistake as with willful violation. On the other hand, the very failure of the books to disclose a proved deficiency might indicate deliberate falsification.
5. In many cases of this type, the prosecution relies on the taxpayer’s statements, made to revenue agents in the course of their investigation, to establish vital links in the Government’s proof. But when a revenue agent confronts the taxpayer with an apparent deficiency, the latter may be more concerned with a quick settlement than an honest search for the truth. Moreover, the prosecution may pick and choose from the taxpayer’s statement, relying on the favorable portion and throwing aside that which does not bolster its position. The problem of corroboration, dealt with in the companion cases of Smith v. United States, post, p. 147, and United States v. Calderon, post, p. 160, therefore becomes crucial.
6. The statute defines the offense here involved by individual years. While the Government may be able to prove with reasonable accuracy an increase in net worth over a period of years, it often has great difficulty in relating that income sufficiently to any specific prosecution year. While a steadily increasing net worth may justify an inference of additional earnings, unless that increase can be reasonably allocated to the appropriate tax year the taxpayer may be convicted on counts of which he is innocent.
While we cannot say that these pitfalls inherent in the net worth method foreclose its use, they do require the exercise of great care and restraint. The complexity of the problem is such that it cannot be met merely by the application of general rules. Cf. Universal Camera Corp. v. Labor Board, 340 U. S. 474, 489. Trial courts should approach these cases in the full realization that the taxpayer may be ensnared in a system which, though difficult for the prosecution to utilize, is equally hard for the defendant to refute. Charges should be especially clear, including, in addition to the formal instructions, a summary of the nature of the net worth method, the assumptions on which it rests, and the inferences available both for and against the accused. Appellate courts should review the cases, bearing constantly in mind the difficulties that arise when circumstantial evidence as to guilt is the chief weapon of a method that is itself only an approximation.
With these considerations as a guide, we turn to the facts.
The indictment returned against the Hollands embraced three counts. The first two charged Marion L. Holland, the husband, with attempted evasion of his income tax for the years 1946 and 1947. He was found not guilty by the jury on both of these counts. The third count charged Holland and his wife with attempted evasion in 1948 of the tax on $19,736.74 not reported by them in their joint return. The jury found both of them guilty. Mrs. Holland was fined $5,000, while her husband was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and fined $10,000.
The Government’s opening net worth computation shows defendants with a net worth of $19,152.59 at the beginning of the indictment period. Shortly thereafter, defendants purchased a hotel, bar and restaurant, and began operating them as the Holland House. Within three years, during which they reported $31,265.92 in taxable income, their apparent net worth increased by $113,-185.32. The Government’s evidence indicated that, during 1948, the year for which defendants were convicted, their net worth increased by some $32,000, while the amount of taxable income reported by them totaled less than one-third that sum.
Use of Net Worth Method Where Books Are Apparently Adequate.
As we have previously noted, this is not the first net worth case to reach this Court. In United States v. Johnson, supra, the Court affirmed a tax-evasion conviction on evidence showing that the taxpayer’s expenditures had exceeded his “available declared resources.” Since Johnson and his concealed establishments had destroyed the few records they had, the Government was forced to resort to the net worth method of proof. This Court approved on the ground that “to require more . . . would be tantamount to holding that skilful concealment is an invincible barrier to proof,” 319 U. S., at 517-518. Petitioners ask that we restrict the Johnson case to situations where the taxpayer has kept no books. They claim that § 41 of the Internal Revenue Code, expressly limiting the authority of the Government to deviate from the taxpayer’s method of accounting, confines the net worth method to situations where the taxpayer has no books or where his books are inadequate. Despite some support for this view among the lower courts (see United States v. Riganto, 121 F. Supp. 158, 161, 162; United States v. Williams, 208 F. 2d 437, 437-438; Remmer v. United States, 205 F. 2d 277, 286, judgment vacated on other grounds, 347 U. S. 227), we conclude that this argument must fail. The provision that the “net income shall be computed ... in accordance with the method of accounting regularly employed in keeping the books of such taxpayer,” refers to methods such as the cash receipts or the accrual method, which allocate income and expenses between years. United States v. American Can Co., 280 U. S. 412, 419. The net worth technique, as used in this case, is not a method of accounting different from the one employed by defendants. It is not a method of accounting at all, except insofar as it calls upon taxpayers to account for their unexplained income. Petitioners’ accounting system was appropriate for their business purposes; and, admittedly, the Government did not detect any specific false entries therein. Nevertheless, if we believe the Government’s evidence, as the jury did, we must conclude that the defendants’ books were more consistent than truthful, and that many items of income had disappeared before they had even reached the recording stage. Certainly Congress never intended to make § 41 a set of blinders which prevents the Government from looking beyond the self-serving declarations in a taxpayer’s books. “The United States has relied for the collection of its income tax largely upon the taxpayer’s own disclosures .... This system can function successfully only if those within and near taxable income keep and render true accounts.” Spies v. United States, 317 U. S., at 495. To protect the revenue from those who do not “render true accounts,” the Government must be free to use all legal evidence available to it in determining whether the story told by the taxpayer’s books accurately reflects his financial history.
Establishing a Definite Opening Net Worth.
We agree with petitioners that an essential condition in cases of this type is the establishment, with reasonable certainty, of an opening net worth, to serve as a starting point from which to calculate future increases in the taxpayer’s assets. The importance of accuracy in this figure is immediately apparent, as the correctness of the result depends entirely upon the inclusion in this sum of all assets on hand at the outset. The Government’s net worth statement included as assets at the starting point stock costing $29,650 and $2,153.09 in cash. The Hollands claim that the Government failed to include in its opening net worth figure an accumulation of $113,-000 in currency and “hundreds and possibly thousands of shares of stock” which they owned at the beginning of the prosecution period. They asserted that the cash had been accumulated prior to the opening date, $104,000 of it before 1933, and the balance between 1933 and 1945. They had kept the money, they claimed, mostly in $100 bills and at various times in a canvas bag, a suitcase, and a metal box. They had never dipped into it until 1946, when it became the source of the apparent increase in wealth which the Government later found in the form of a home, a ranch, a hotel and other properties. This was the main issue presented to the jury. The Government did not introduce any direct evidence to dispute this claim. Rather it relied on the inference that anyone who had had $104,000 in cash would not have undergone the hardship and privation endured by the Hollands all during the late 20’s and throughout the 30’s. During this period they lost their café business; accumulated $35,000 in debts which were never paid; lost their household furniture because of an unpaid balance of $92.20; suffered a default judgment for $506.66; and were forced to separate for some eight years because it was to their “economical advantage.” During the latter part of this period, Mrs. Holland was obliged to support herself and their son by working at a motion picture house in Denver while her husband was in Wyoming. The evidence further indicated that improvements to the hotel, and other assets acquired during the prosecution years, were bought in installments and with bills of small denominations, as if out of earnings rather than from an accumulation of $100 bills. The Government also negatived the possibility of petitioners’ accumulating such a sum by checking Mr. Holland’s income tax returns as far back as 1913, showing that the income declared in previous years was insufficient to enable defendants to save any appreciable amount of money. The jury resolved this question of the existence of a cache of cash against the Hollands, and we believe the verdict was fully supported.
As to the stock, Mr. Holland began dabbling in the stock market in a small way in 1937 and 1938. His purchases appear to have been negligible and on borrowed money. His only reported income from stocks was in his tax returns for 1944 and 1945 when he disclosed dividends of $1,600 and $1,850 respectively. While the record is unclear on this point, it appears that during the period from 1942 to 1945 he pledged considerable stock as collateral for loans. There is no evidence, however, showing what portions of this stock Mr. Holland actually owned at any one time, since he was trading in shares from day to day. And, even if we assume that he owned all the stock, some 4,550 shares, there is evidence that Mr. Holland’s stock transactions were usually in “stock selling for only a few dollars per share.” In this light, the Government’s figure of approximately $30,000 is not out of line. In 1946 Holland reported the sale of about $50,000 in stock, but no receipt of dividends; nor were dividends reported in subsequent years. It is reasonable to assume that he sold all of his stock in 1946. In fact, Holland stated to the revenue agents that he had not “fooled with the stock market” since the beginning of 1946; that he had not owned any stocks for two or three years prior to 1949; that he had saved about $50,000 from 1933 to 1946, and that in 1946 he had $9,000 in cash with the balance of his savings in stocks. The Government’s evidence, bolstered by the admissions of petitioners, provided convincing proof that they had no stock other than the amount included in the opening net worth statement. By the same token, the petitioners’ argument that the Government failed to account for the proceeds of stock sold by them before the starting date must also fail. The Government’s evidence fully justified the jury’s conclusion that there were no proceeds over and above the amount credited to petitioners.
The Government’s Investigation of Leads.
So overwhelming, indeed, was the Government’s proof on the issue of cash on hand that the Government agents did not bother to check petitioners’ story that some of the cash represented proceeds from the sales of two cafés in the 20’s; and that in 1933 an additional portion of this $113,000 in currency was obtained by exchanging some $12,000 in gold at a named bank. While sound administration of the criminal law requires that the net worth approach — a powerful method of proving otherwise undetectable offenses — should not be denied the Government, its failure to investigate leads furnished by the taxpayer might result in serious injustice. It is, of course, not for us to prescribe investigative procedures, but it is within the province of the courts to pass upon the sufficiency of the evidence to convict. When the Government rests its case solely on the approximations and circumstantial inferences of a net worth computation, the cogency of its proof depends upon its effective negation of reasonable explanations by the taxpayer inconsistent with guilt. Such refutation might fail when the Government does not track down relevant leads furnished by the taxpayer — leads reasonably susceptible of being checked, which, if true, would establish the taxpayer’s innocence. When the Government fails to show an investigation into the validity of such leads, the trial judge may consider them as true and the Government’s case insufficient to go to the jury. This should aid in forestalling unjust prosecutions, and have the practical advantage of eliminating the dilemma, especially serious in this type of case, of the accused’s being forced by the risk of an adverse verdict to come forward to substantiate leads which he had previously furnished the Government. It is a procedure entirely consistent with the position long espoused by the Government, that its duty is not to convict but to see that justice is done.
In this case, the Government’s detailed investigation was a complete answer to the petitioners’ explanations. Admitting that in cases of this kind it “would be desirable to track to its conclusion every conceivable line of inquiry,” the Government centered its inquiry on the explanations of the Hollands and entered upon a detailed investigation of their lives covering several states and over a score of years. The jury could have believed that Mr. Holland had received moneys from the sale of cafés in the twenties and that he had turned in gold in 1933 and still it could reasonably have concluded that the Hollands lacked the claimed cache of currency in 1946, the crucial year. Even if these leads were assumed to be true, the Government’s evidence was sufficient to convict. The distant incidents relied on by petitioners were so remote in time and in their connection with subsequent events proved by the Government that, whatever petitioners’ net worth in 1933, it appears by convincing evidence that on January 1, 1946, they had only such assets as the Government credited to them in its opening net worth statement.
Net Worth Increases Must he Attributable to Taxable Income.
Also requisite to the use of the net worth method is evidence supporting the inference that the defendant’s net worth increases are attributable to currently taxable income.
The Government introduced evidence tending to show that although the business of the hotel apparently increased during the years in question, the reported profits fell to approximately one-quarter of the amount declared by the previous management in a comparable period; that the cash register tapes, on which the books were based, were destroyed by the petitioners; and that the books did not reflect the receipt of money later withdrawn from the hotel’s cash register for the personal living expenses of the petitioners and for payments made for restaurant supplies. The unrecorded items in this latter category totaled over $12,500 for 1948. Thus there was ample evidence that not all the income from the hotel had been included in its books and records. In fact, the net worth increase claimed by the Government for 1948 could have come entirely from the unreported income of the hotel and still the hotel’s total earnings for the year would have been only 73% of the sum reported by the previous owner for the comparable period in 1945.
But petitioners claim the Government failed to adduce adequate proof because it did not negative all the possible nontaxable sources of the alleged net worth increases — gifts, loans, inheritances, etc. We cannot agree. The Government’s proof, in our view, carried with it the negations the petitioners urge. Increases in net worth, standing alone, cannot be assumed to be attributable to currently taxable income. But proof of a likely source, from which the jury could reasonably find that the net worth increases sprang, is sufficient. In the Johnson case, where there was no direct evidence of the source of the taxpayer’s income, this Court’s conclusion that the taxpayer “had large, unreported income was reinforced by proof . . . that [for certain years his] private expenditures . . . exceeded his available declared resources.” This was sufficient to support “the finding that he had some unreported income which was properly attributable to his earnings . . . .” United States v. Johnson, 319 U. S., at 517. There the taxpayer was the owner of an undisclosed business capable of producing taxable income; here the disclosed business of the petitioners was proven to be capable of producing much more income than was reported and in a quantity sufficient to account for the net worth increases. Any other rule would burden the Government with investigating the many possible nontaxable sources of income, each of which is as unlikely as it is difficult to disprove. This is not to say that the Government may disregard explanations of the defendant reasonably susceptible of being checked. But where relevant leads are not forthcoming, the Government is not required to negate every possible source of nontaxable income, a matter peculiarly within the knowledge of the defendant. See Rossi v. United States, 289 U. S. 89, 91-92.
The Burden of Proof Remains on the Government.
Nor does this rule shift the burden of proof. The Government must still prove every element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt though not to a mathematical certainty. The settled standards of the criminal law are applicable to net worth cases just as to prosecutions for other crimes. Once the Government has established its case, the defendant remains quiet at his peril. Cf. Yee Hem v. United States, 268 U. S. 178, 185. The practical disadvantages to the taxpayer are lessened by the pressures on the Government to check and negate relevant leads.
Willfulness Must be Present.
A final element necessary for conviction is willfulness. The petitioners contend that willfulness “involves a specific intent which must be proven by independent evidence and which cannot be inferred from the mere understatement of income.” This is a fair statement of the rule. Here, however, there was evidence of a consistent pattern of underreporting large amounts of income, and of the failure on petitioners’ part to include all of their income in their books and records. Since, on proper submission, the jury could have found that these acts supported an inference of willfulness, their verdict must stand. Spies v. United States, supra, at 499-500.
The Charge to the Jury.
Petitioners press upon us, finally, the contention that the instructions of the trial court were so erroneous and misleading as to constitute grounds for reversal. We have carefully reviewed the instructions and cannot agree. But some require comment. The petitioners assail the refusal of the trial judge to instruct that where the Government’s evidence is circumstantial it must be such as to exclude every reasonable hypothesis other than that of guilt. There is some support for this type of instruction in the lower court decisions, Garst v. United States, 180 F. 339, 343; Anderson v. United States, 30 F. 2d 485-487; Stutz v. United States, 47 F. 2d 1029, 1030; Hanson v. United States, 208 F. 2d 914, 916, but the better rule is that where the jury is properly instructed on the standards for reasonable doubt, such an additional instruction on circumstantial evidence is confusing and incorrect, United States v. Austin-Bagley Corp., 31 F. 2d 229, 234, cert. denied, 279 U. S. 863; United States v. Becker, 62 F. 2d 1007, 1010; 1 Wigmore, Evidence (3d ed.), §§ 25-26.
Circumstantial evidence in this respect is intrinsically no different from testimonial evidence. Admittedly, circumstantial evidence may in some cases point to a wholly incorrect result. Yet this is equally true of testimonial evidence. In both instances, a jury is asked to weigh the chances that the evidence correctly points to guilt against the possibility of inaccuracy or ambiguous inference. In both, the jury must use its experience with people and events in weighing the probabilities. If the jury is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, we can require no more.
Even more insistent is the petitioners’ attack, not made below, on the charge of the trial judge as to reasonable doubt. He defined it as “the kind of doubt . . . which you folks in the more serious and important affairs of your own lives might be willing to act upon.” We think this section of the charge should have been in terms of the kind of doubt that would make a person hesitate to act, see Bishop v. United States, 71 App. D. C. 132, 137-138, 107 F. 2d 297, 303, rather than the kind on which he would be willing to act. But we believe that the instruction as given was not of the type that could mislead the jury into finding no reasonable doubt when in fact there was some. A definition of a doubt as something the jury would act upon would seem to create confusion rather than misapprehension. “Attempts to explain the term ‘reasonable doubt’ do not usually result in making it any clearer to the minds of the jury,” Miles v. United States, 103 U. S. 304, 312, and we feel that, taken as a whole, the instructions correctly conveyed the concept of reasonable doubt to the jury.
Petitioners also assign as error the refusal of the trial judge to give instructions on the wording of the criminal statute under which they were indicted, even though the judge fully and correctly instructed the jury on every element of the crime. The impossibility of pointing to any way in which defendants’ rights were prejudiced by this, assuming it was error, is enough to indicate that the trial judge was correct, see United States v. Center Veal & Beef Co., 162 F. 2d 766, 771. There is here no question of the jury’s duty to apply the law to the facts. That operation implies the application of a general standard to the specific physical facts as found by the jury. The meanings of standards such as willfulness were properly explained by the trial judge in no greater particularity than necessary, and thus the jury’s function was not invaded.
In the light of these considerations the judgment is
Affirmed.
26 U. S. C. § 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 . . . .”
Friedberg v. United States, post, p. 142; United States v. Calderon, post, p. 160; Smith v. United States, post, p. 147. Because of the extensive factual backgrounds they require, and the significant differences in the problems they present, the cases are treated in separate opinions.
This is a corrected figure taking into account certain nontaxable income and nondeductible expenses of defendants.
26 U. S. C. “Part IV. — Accounting Periods and Methods of Accounting. § 41. General rule.
“The net income shall be computed upon the basis of the taxpayer’s annual accounting period (fiscal year or calendar year, as the case may be) in accordance with the method of accounting regularly employed in keeping the books of such taxpayer; . . . .”
As of this time, petitioners’ liabilities were listed as 112,650.50.
“Q. In other words, to summarize this whole thing: you had a net worth of $157,000 at January 1, 1946, which consisted of $104,000 which you had since December 22, 1933, and the balance of $9,000 in currency, and your investment in securities — or the value of your securities.
“A. Yes.” [R. 303.]
This Court will formulate rules of evidence and procedure to be applied in federal prosecutions where it appears necessary to maintain “proper standards for the enforcement of the federal criminal law in the federal courts.” McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332, 341.
The record indicates that the income of the hotel as reported for 1946 was approximately 12%% of that reported by the previous owner in 1945; in 1947 the ratio was 12%; and in 1948 it was 26%.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Breyer
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question we address today concerns a large state-court punitive damages award. We are asked whether the Constitution’s Due Process Clause permits a jury to base that award in part upon its desire to punish the defendant for harming persons who are not before the court (e. g., victims whom the parties do not represent). We hold that such an award would amount to a taking of “property” from the defendant without due process.
I
This lawsuit arises out of the death of Jesse Williams, a heavy cigarette smoker. Respondent, Williams’ widow, represents his estate in this state lawsuit for negligence and deceit against Philip Morris, the manufacturer of Marlboro, the brand that Williams favored. A jury found that Williams’ death was caused by smoking; that Williams smoked in significant part because he thought it was safe to do so; and that Philip Morris knowingly and falsely led him to believe that this was so. The jury ultimately found that Philip Morris was negligent (as was Williams) and that Philip Morris had engaged in deceit. In respect to deceit, the claim at issue here, it awarded compensatory damages of about $821,000 (about $21,000 economic and $800,000 noneconomic) along with $79.5 million in punitive damages.
The trial judge subsequently found the $79.5 million punitive damages award “excessive,” see, e. g., BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore, 517 U. S. 559 (1996), and reduced it to $32 million. Both sides appealed. The Oregon Court of Appeals rejected Philip Morris’ arguments and restored the $79.5 million jury award. Subsequently, Philip Morris sought review in the Oregon Supreme Court (which denied review) and then here. We remanded the case in light of State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Campbell, 538 U. S. 408 (2003). 540 U. S. 801 (2003). The Oregon Court of Appeals adhered to its original views. And Philip Morris sought, and this time obtained, review in the Oregon Supreme Court.
Philip Morris then made two arguments relevant here. First, it said that the trial court should have accepted, but did not accept, a proposed “punitive damages” instruction that specified the jury could not seek to punish Philip Morris for injury to other persons not before the court. In particular, Philip Morris pointed out that the plaintiff’s attorney had told the jury to “think about how many other Jesse Williams in the last 40 years in the State of Oregon there have been. ... In Oregon, how many people do we see outside, driving home . . . smoking cigarettes? . . . [Cigarettes . . . are going to kill ten [of every hundred]. [And] the market share of Marlboros [i e., Philip Morris] is one-third [i e., one of every three killed].” App. 197a, 199a. In light of this argument, Philip Morris asked the trial court to tell the jury that “you may consider the extent of harm suffered by others in determining what [the] reasonable relationship is” between any punitive award and “the harm caused to Jesse Williams” by Philip Morris’ misconduct, “[but] you are not to punish the defendant for the impact of its alleged misconduct on other persons, who may bring lawsuits of their own in which other juries can resolve their claims . . . Id., at 280a. The judge rejected this proposal and instead told the jury that “[p]unitive damages are awarded against a defendant to punish misconduct and to deter misconduct,” and “are not intended to compensate the plaintiff or anyone else for damages caused by the defendant’s conduct.” Id., at 283a. In Philip Morris’ view, the result was a significant likelihood that a portion of the $79.5 million award represented punishment for its having harmed others, a punishment that the Due Process Clause would here forbid.
Second, Philip Morris pointed to the roughly 100-to-l ratio the $79.5 million punitive damages award bears to $821,000 in compensatory damages. Philip Morris noted that this Court in BMW emphasized the constitutional need for punitive damages awards to reflect (1) the “reprehensibility” of the defendant’s conduct, (2) a “reasonable relationship” to the harm the plaintiff (or related victim) suffered, and (3) the presence (or absence) of “sanctions,” e. g., criminal penalties, that state law provided for comparable conduct, 517 U. S., at 575-585. And in State Farm, this Court said that the longstanding historical practice of setting punitive damages at two, three, or four times the size of compensatory damages, while “not binding,” is “instructive,” and that “[s]ingle-digit multipliers are more likely to comport with due process.” 538 U. S., at 425. Philip Morris claimed that, in light of this case law, the punitive award was “grossly excessive.” See TXO Production Corp. v. Alliance Resources Corp., 509 U. S. 443, 458 (1993) (plurality opinion); BMW, supra, at 574-575; State Farm, supra, at 416-417.
The Oregon Supreme Court rejected these and other Philip Morris arguments. In particular, it rejected Philip Morris’ claim that the Constitution prohibits a state jury “from using punitive damages to punish a defendant for harm to nonparties.” 340 Ore. 35, 51-52, 127 P. 3d 1165, 1175 (2006). And in light of Philip Morris’ reprehensible conduct, it found that the $79.5 million award was not “grossly excessive.” Id., at 63-64, 127 P. 3d, at 1181-1182.
Philip Morris then sought certiorari. It asked us to consider, among other things, (1) its claim that Oregon had unconstitutionally permitted it to be punished for harming nonparty victims; and (2) whether Oregon had in effect disregarded “the constitutional requirement that punitive damages be reasonably related to the plaintiff’s harm.” Pet. for Cert. (I). We granted certiorari limited to these two questions.
For reasons we shall set forth, we consider only the first of these questions. We vacate the Oregon Supreme Court’s judgment, and we remand the case for further proceedings.
II
This Court has long made clear that “[pjunitive damages may properly be imposed to further a State’s legitimate interests in punishing unlawful conduct and deterring its repetition.” BMW, supra, at 568. See also Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U. S. 323, 350 (1974); Newport v. Fact Concerts, Inc., 453 U. S. 247, 266-267 (1981); Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip, 499 U. S. 1, 22 (1991). At the same time, we have emphasized the need to avoid an arbitrary determination of an award’s amount. Unless a State insists upon proper standards that will cabin the jury’s discretionary authority, its punitive damages system may deprive a defendant of “fair notice ... of the severity of the penalty that a State may impose,” BMW, supra, at 574; it may threaten “arbitrary punishments,” i. e., punishments that reflect not an “application of law” but “a decisionmaker’s caprice,” State Farm, supra, at 416, 418 (internal quotation marks omitted); and, where the amounts are sufficiently large, it may impose one State’s (or one jury’s) “policy choice,” say, as to the conditions under which (or even whether) certain products can be sold, upon “neighboring States” with different public policies, BMW, supra, at 571-572.
For these and similar reasons, this Court has found that the Constitution imposes certain limits, in respect both to procedures for awarding punitive damages and to amounts forbidden as “grossly excessive.” See Honda Motor Co. v. Oberg, 512 U. S. 415, 432 (1994) (requiring judicial review of the size of punitive awards); Cooper Industries, Inc. v. Leatherman Tool Group, Inc., 532 U. S. 424, 443 (2001) (review must be de novo); BMW, supra, at 574-585 (excessiveness decision depends upon the reprehensibility of the defendant’s conduct, whether the award bears a reasonable relationship to the actual and potential harm caused by the defendant to the plaintiff, and the difference between the award and sanctions “authorized or imposed in comparable cases”); State Farm, supra, at 425 (excessiveness more likely where ratio exceeds single digits). Because we shall not decide whether the award here at issue is “grossly excessive,” we need now only consider the Constitution’s procedural limitations.
III
In our view, the Constitution’s Due Process Clause forbids a State to use a punitive damages award to punish a defendant for injury that it inflicts upon nonparties or those whom they directly represent, i. e., injury that it inflicts upon those who are, essentially, strangers to the litigation. For one thing, the Due Process Clause prohibits a State from punishing an individual without first providing that individual with “an opportunity to present every available defense.” Lindsey v. Normet, 405 U. S. 56, 66 (1972) (internal quotation marks omitted). Yet a defendant threatened with punishment for injuring a nonparty victim has no opportunity to defend against the charge, by showing, for example in a case such as this, that the other victim was not entitled to damages because he or she knew that smoking was dangerous or did not rely upon the defendant’s statements to the contrary.
For another, to permit punishment for injuring a nonparty victim would add a near standardless dimension to the punitive damages equation. How many such victims are there? How seriously were they injured? Under what circumstances did injury occur? The trial will not likely answer such questions as to nonparty victims. The jury will be left to speculate. And the fimdamental due process concerns to which our punitive damages cases refer — risks of arbitrariness, uncertainty, and lack of notice — will be magnified. State Farm, 538 U. S., at 416, 418; BMW, 517 U. S., at 574.
Finally, we can find no authority supporting the use of punitive damages awards for the purpose of punishing a defendant for harming others. We have said that it may be appropriate to consider the reasonableness of a punitive damages award in light of the potential harm the defendant’s conduct could have caused. But we have made clear that the potential harm at issue was harm potentially caused the plaintiff. See State Farm, supra, at 424 (“[W]e have been reluctant to identify concrete constitutional limits on the ratio between harm, or potential harm, to the plaintiff and the punitive damages award” (emphasis added)). See also TXO, 509 U. S., at 460-462 (plurality opinion) (using same kind of comparison as basis for finding a punitive award not unconstitutionally excessive). We did use the term “error-free” (in BMW) to describe a lower court punitive damages calculation that likely included harm to others in the equation. 517 U. S., at 568, n. 11. But context makes clear that the term “error-free” in the BMW footnote referred to errors relevant to the case at hand. Although elsewhere in BMW we noted that there was no suggestion that the plaintiff “or any other BMW purchaser was threatened with any additional potential harm” by the defendant’s conduct, we did not purport to decide the question of harm to others. Id., at 582. Rather, the opinion appears to have left the question open.
Respondent argues that she is free to show harm to other vietims because it is relevant to a different part of the punitive damages constitutional equation, namely, reprehensibility. That is to say, harm to others shows more reprehensible conduct. Philip Morris, in turn, does not deny that a plaintiff may show harm to others in order to demonstrate reprehensibility. Nor do we. Evidence of actual harm to nonparties can help to show that the conduct that harmed the plaintiff also posed a substantial risk of harm to the general public, and so was particularly reprehensible — although counsel may argue in a particular case that conduct resulting in no harm to others nonetheless posed a grave risk to the public, or the converse. Yet for the reasons given above, a jury may not go further than this and use a punitive damages verdict to punish a defendant directly on account of harms it is alleged to have visited on nonparties.
Given the risks of unfairness that we have mentioned, it is constitutionally important for a court to provide assurance that the jury will ask the right question, not the wrong one. And given the risks of arbitrariness, the concern for adequate notice, and the risk that punitive damages awards can, in practice, impose one State’s (or one jury’s) policies (e. g., banning cigarettes) upon other States — all of which accompany awards that, today, may be many times the size of such awards in the 18th and 19th centuries, see id., at 594-595 (Breyer, J., concurring) — it is particularly important that States avoid procedure that unnecessarily deprives juries of proper legal guidance. We therefore conclude that the Due Process Clause requires States to provide assurance that juries are not asking the wrong question, i. e., seeking, not simply to determine reprehensibility, but also to punish for harm caused strangers.
IV
Respondent suggests as well that the Oregon Supreme Court, in essence, agreed with us, that it did not authorize punitive damages awards based upon punishment for harm caused to nonparties. We concede that one might read some portions of the Oregon Supreme Court’s opinion as focusing only upon reprehensibility. See, e.g., 340 Ore., at 51, 127 P. 3d, at 1175 (“[T]he jury could consider whether Williams and his misfortune were merely exemplars of the harm that Philip Morris was prepared to inflict on the smoking public at large”). But the Oregon court’s opinion elsewhere makes clear that that court held more than these few phrases might suggest.
The instruction that Philip Morris said the trial court should have given distinguishes between using harm to others as part of the “reasonable relationship” equation (which it would allow) and using it directly as a basis for punishment. The instruction asked the trial court to tell the jury that “you may consider the extent of harm suffered by others in determining what [the] reasonable relationship is” between Philip Morris’ punishable misconduct and harm caused to Jesse Williams, “[but] you are not to punish the defendant for the impact of its alleged misconduct on other persons, who may bring lawsuits of their own in which other juries can resolve their claims . . . .” App. 280a (emphasis added). And as the Oregon Supreme Court explicitly recognized, Philip Morris argued that the Constitution “prohibits the state, acting through a civil jury, from using punitive damages to punish a defendant for harm to nonparties.” 340 Ore., at 51-52, 127 P. 3d, at 1175.
The court rejected that claim. In doing so, it pointed out (1) that this Court in State Farm had held only that a jury could not base its award upon “dissimilar” acts of a defendant. 340 Ore., at 52-53, 127 P. 3d, at 1175-1176. It added (2) that “[i]f a jury cannot punish for the conduct, then it is difficult to see why it may consider it at all.” Id., at 52, n. 3, 127 P. 3d, at 1175, n. 3. And it stated (3) that “[i]t is unclear to us how a jury could ‘consider’ harm to others, yet withhold that consideration from the punishment calculus.” Ibid.
The Oregon court’s first statement is correct. We did not previously hold explicitly that a jury may not punish for the harm caused others. But we do so hold now. We do not agree with the Oregon court’s second statement. We have explained why we believe the Due Process Clause prohibits a State’s inflicting punishment for harm caused strangers to the litigation. At the same time we recognize that conduct that risks harm to many is likely more reprehensible than conduct that risks harm to only a few. And a jury consequently may take this fact into account in determining reprehensibility. Cf., e. g., Witte v. United States, 515 U. S. 389, 400 (1995) (recidivism statutes taking into account a criminal defendant’s other misconduct do not impose an “ ‘additional penalty for the earlier crimes,’ but instead ... ‘a stiffened penalty for the latest crime, which is considered to be an aggravated offense because a repetitive one’” (quoting Gryger v. Burke, 334 U. S. 728, 732 (1948))).
The Oregon court’s third statement raises a practical problem. How can we know whether a jury, in taking account of harm caused others under the rubric of reprehensibility, also seeks to punish the defendant for having caused injury to others? Our answer is that state courts cannot authorize procedures that create an unreasonable and unnecessary risk of any such confusion occurring. In particular, we believe that where the risk of that misunderstanding is a significant one — because, for instance, of the sort of evidence that was introduced at trial or the kinds of argument the plaintiff made to the jury — a court, upon request, must protect against that risk. Although the States have some flexibility to determine what kind of procedures they will implement, federal constitutional law obligates them to provide some form of protection in appropriate cases.
V
As the preceding discussion makes clear, we believe that the Oregon Supreme Court applied the wrong constitutional standard when considering Philip Morris’ appeal. We remand this ease so that the Oregon Supreme Court can apply the standard we have set forth. Because the application of this standard may lead to the need for a new trial, or a change in the level of the punitive damages award, we shall not consider whether the award is constitutionally “grossly excessive.” We vacate the Oregon Supreme Court’s judgment and remand the case 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: | 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 Murphy
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The problem posed by this case is whether private plant guards, who are required to be civilian auxiliaries to the military police of the United States Army, are employees within the meaning of § 2 (3) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U. S. C. § 152 (3).
At all material times, the respondent corporation was engaged in the manufacture of saws, tools and armor plate. It employed more than 1,200 production and maintenance employees at its two plants at Indianapolis, Indiana. Before it began to produce armor plate for defense and war purposes, respondent employed about six watchmen or guards. When it entered upon war production, however, the War Department required that an auxiliary military police force of sixty-four members be established to guard the plants.
In 1943, after the necessary additional guards had been recruited, a union petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for investigation and certification of representatives pursuant to § 9 (c) of the Act. It was alleged that the union represented the sixty-four plant guards employed by respondent at its two plants. The respondent moved to dismiss the petition on the ground that it was not the employer of the guards within the meaning of § 2 (2) and that the guards were not employees as defined by § 2 (3). A hearing was thereupon held and evidence concerning the status of the guards was introduced.
On October 19, 1943, the Board concluded from the evidence thus submitted that these plant guards were employees within the meaning of § 2 (3) despite their status as civilian auxiliaries to the military police. 52 N. L. R. B. 1470. It held that all the plant guards at respondent’s two plants, excluding the chief guards, lieutenants and all other supervisory employees with authority to hire, promote, discharge, discipline, or otherwise effect changes in the status of employees, or effectively recommend such action, constituted a unit appropriate for collective bargaining. An election was therefore directed to be held, which resulted in the union in question being chosen as bargaining representative. The union was certified by the Board as the exclusive representative of the plant guards.
Subsequently, the union filed charges that the respondent had refused to bargain collectively. A complaint was issued by the Board, followed by a hearing at which evidence regarding that refusal was introduced. The Board, on May 30, 1944, issued its decision in which it concluded that the guards were employees of respondent and that the latter had committed unfair labor practices in refusing to bargain with the union. 56 N. L. R. B. 1056.
The Board accordingly issued an order requiring respondent to cease and desist from refusing to bargain collectively with the union, and commanding it to bargain with the union, upon request, in respect to rates of pay, wages, hours of employment and other conditions of employment. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals declined to enforce the Board’s order, holding (1) that the guards were not employees of the respondent within the meaning of § 2 (3) of the Act since they were militarized, and (2) that even if the militarized guards were to be considered as employees of respondent, enforcement of the Board’s order should not be allowed because to do so would be or would likely be inimical to the public welfare. 147 F. 2d 730.
In filing a petition in this Court for a writ of certiorari, the Board noted that the guard forces at respondent’s plants had been demilitarized early in 1944, but urged that the case was not thereby rendered moot. We granted certiorari, vacated the judgment below and remanded the case to the Circuit Court of Appeals “for further consideration of the alleged changed circumstances with respect to the demilitarization of the employees involved, and the effect thereof on the Board’s orders.” 325 U. S. 838.
The Board and the respondent entered into a stipulation relative to the dates and circumstances of the demilitarization of the guards. The stipulation noted that most of the guards had been released from service and that only eleven of them had been retained as watchmen by respondent as of February 23, 1946; and those eleven had been “sworn in as Deputy Policemen by the City of Indianapolis.” The Board then filed a motion in the Circuit Court of Appeals for a decree enforcing its order. This motion was denied and the prior holding was reaffirmed, the court stating that the demilitarization was irrelevant to the issue of whether the plant guards were employees at the time when the respondent refused to bargain with the union. 155 F. 2d 567. The importance of the problem raised by the case, together with a conflict over the answer to this problem between the court below and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, Labor Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 146 F. 2d 718, prompted us to grant a further review of the case.
We agree with the Circuit Court of Appeals that the demilitarization of the guards did not render the case moot and that it had no effect upon the prime issue in the case. The Board’s order was based upon a holding that the respondent committed an unfair labor practice by refusing to recognize and bargain with the union selected by the militarized guards. And that refusal occurred at a time when the guards were still militarized. A determination that the respondent had a statutory duty to bargain with the union at that time is therefore essential to the validity of the Board’s order. The fact that the guards were subsequently demilitarized did not affect their status as employees at this crucial juncture; nor did it relieve respondent of any duty to bargain that it might otherwise have had at that point.
The Board’s order, moreover, was a continuing direction to bargain collectively with the union designated by the guards. Demilitarization has not dispensed with whatever duty respondent may have now or in the future to comply with that order. If the guards were employees of respondent entitled to the benefits of the Act during the period of militarization, a fortiori they are employees now that all connections with the Army have been severed; and their statutory rights continue to be entitled to full respect. Respondent’s guard force still remains in existence, although considerably reduced in size, and the union presumably continues to be the representative of the guards. Under such circumstances, the case is not moot. Labor Board v. Greyhound Lines, 303 U. S. 261, 271; J. I. Case Co. v. Labor Board, 321 U. S. 332, 334. See also Federal Trade Commission v. Goodyear Co., 304 U. S. 257, 260.
As to the merits, it is elementary that the Board has the duty of determining in the first instance who is an employee for purposes of the National Labor Relations Act and that the Board’s determination must be accepted by reviewing courts if it has a reasonable basis in the evidence and is not inconsistent with the law. Labor Board v. Hearst Publications, 322 U. S. 111. Realizing that labor disputes and industrial strife are not confined to those who fall within ordinary legal classifications, Congress has not attempted to spell out a detailed or rigid definition of an employee or of an employer. The relevant portion of § 2 (3) simply provides that “The term 'employee’ shall include any employee, . . .” In contrast, § 2 (2) states that “The term ‘employer’ includes any person acting in the interest of an employer, directly or indirectly, . . .” As we recognized in the Hearst case, the terms “employee” and “employer” in this statute carry with them more than the technical and traditional common law definitions. They also draw substance from the policy and purposes of the Act, the circumstances and background of particular employment relationships, and all the hard facts of industrial life.
And so the Board, in performing its delegated function of defining and applying these terms, must bring to its task an appreciation of economic realities, as well as a recognition of the aims which Congress sought to achieve by this statute. This does not mean that it should disregard the technical and traditional concepts of “employee” and “employer.” But it is not confined to those concepts. It is free to take account of the more relevant economic and statutory considerations. And a determination by the Board based in whole or in part upon those considerations is entitled to great respect by a reviewing court, due to the Board’s familiarity with the problems and its experience in the administration of the Act.
Laying aside for the moment the matter of militarization, we cannot say in this case that the Board would be legally unjustified in holding that the rank-and-file plant guards are employees within the meaning of the Act. They bear essentially the same relation to management as maintenance and production employees. In fact, they are indistinguishable from ordinary watchmen, gatemen, patrolmen, firemen and guards — persons who have universally been regarded and treated as employees for purposes of union membership and employee benefits. They perform such duties as inspecting persons, packages and vehicles, carrying cash to various parts of the plant, and generally surveying the premises to detect fires, suspicious circumstances and sabotage. Moreover, the guards in question are not supervisors; they possess no power to affect the working conditions of other employees. Without collective bargaining, they are subject to the unilateral determination by the employer of their wages, hours, seniority, tenure and other conditions of work. Individually, they suffer from inequality of bargaining power and their need for collective action parallels that of other employees. From any economic or statutory standpoint, the Board would be warranted in treating them as employees. Even under conventional standards, they are controlled by management to an extent sufficient to justify designating them as employees.
Nor can we say, as a matter of law, that permitting plant guards to be considered as employees entitled to the benefits of the Act would make them any less loyal to their employer in carrying out their designated tasks. In guarding the plant and personnel against physical danger, they represent the management’s legitimate interest in plant protection. But that function is not necessarily inconsistent with organizing and bargaining with the employer on matters affecting their own wages, hours and working conditions. They do not lose the right to serve themselves in these respects merely because in other respects they represent a separate and independent interest of management. As in the case of foremen, we see no basis in the Act whatever for denying plant guards the benefits of the statute when they take collective action to protect their collective interests. Packard Motor Car Co. v. Labor Board, 330 U. S. 485.
We cannot assume, moreover, that labor organizations will make demands upon plant guard members or extract concessions from employers so as to decrease the loyalty and efficiency of the guards in the performance of their obligations to the employers. There is always that possibility, but it does not qualify as a legal basis for taking away from the guards all their statutory rights. In other words, unionism and collective bargaining are capable of adjustments to accommodate the special functions of plant guards.
The crucial problem in this case, however, is whether the militarization of the plant guards changed their status as employees as a matter of law so as to prohibit the Board from extending to them the benefits of the Act which they would otherwise have. The short answer to that problem is that militarization as such does not necessarily change the status of plant guards. It may or may not bring about a change, depending upon the particular circumstances. The militarization may be a qualified one; the employer may retain power to fix wages, hours and other conditions of work; the need and desirability for collective action on the part of the guards may exist as to the matters over which the employer retains control; and a recognition of the statutory rights of the guards may be entirely consistent with their military obligations. If that is the case, the guards remain employees for purposes of the Act. But if the militarization is such as to transfer to the Army all the matters over which the employer would normally have control, matters which would form the basis for collective bargaining as contemplated by the Act, the guards may lose their status as private employees within the purview of the statute.
The Board’s determination that the militarization of the guards in respondent’s plants was of a type that did not alter their status as employees under the Act must therefore be tested by the applicable War Department regulations and by the evidence introduced at the hearing before the Board. If such a result is consistent with the regulations and has a reasonable basis in the other evidence, the Board’s order must be sustained.
The plant guards in this case were enrolled as civilian auxiliaries to the military police under War Department regulations issued pursuant to Executive Order No. 8972, dated December 12, 1941. That order authorized the Secretary of War to establish and maintain military guards and patrols, and to take other appropriate measures, to protect certain strategic premises, materials and utilities from injury and destruction. The Secretary of War accordingly directed the military organization of plant guard forces as auxiliary military police at plants important to the prosecution of the war, the directive to that effect being issued by the Adjutant General on July 2, 1942. Supplementary regulations were contained in Circular No. 15, issued on March 17, 1943, by Headquarters, Army Service Forces.
As stated by these regulations, the purpose of the military organization of the plant guards was “to increase the authority, efficiency, and responsibility of guard forces at plants important to the prosecution of the war, and through military training to provide auxiliary forces throughout the United States to supplement the Army in wartime emergency situations.” It was made clear, however, that plant managements were not relieved of their responsibility “for providing adequate protection at all times against all hazards.” In other words, employers who wished to obtain government contracts for the production of war materials were required to provide “adequate protection” for their plants where the material was to be produced; if the existing plant protection forces were inadequate, additional guards were to be recruited by the employers. But all the original and additional guards were to be enrolled as civilian auxiliaries to the military police.
The military authorities reserved the right to veto the hiring or firing of any plant guard where such action by the employer might impair the efficiency of the guard force. And the military plant guard officers were authorized to take appropriate action “through the plant management” to correct conditions which might result in “defective or inadequate performance by the guard forces of its ordinary protective duties.”
The functions of these civilian auxiliaries to the military police were stated to be twofold: “(1) To provide internal and external protection of the plant against sabotage, espionage, and natural hazards. (2) To serve with the Army in providing protection to the plant and its environs in emergency situations.” They were subject to call for military service even where emergencies arose at places other than the plants where they normally worked. To these ends, military plant guard officers were authorized to exercise direct control over the guard forces “only in matters relating to military instruction and duties as Auxiliary Military Police.” But such orders “will be issued only after consultation with and, if possible, concurrence by the plant management. . . . Control, therefore, will be exercised as heretofore through the plant management except at drill and except in emergency situations. Although the plant guard officers will be in command at all times, they will not supplant the civilian guard officers, and unless expediency demands otherwise will exercise their authority through the chain of command established by the plant management.” The regulations also provided that the military drill of the guard forces should not . exceed one hour per week “except with the approval of the plant management.”
As to the employer’s relations with the guard force, the regulations were explicit in recognizing that those relations remained essentially the same as if there were no militarization. According to Circular No. 15: “Basically, the militarization of plant guard forces does not change the existing systems of hiring, compensation, and dismissal; all remain primarily a matter between the guards and the plant managements. Guards in the employ of a private employer may, as heretofore, be dismissed by that employer.” A veto power over employment and dismissal, of course, was retained by the military. It was further provided: “The status of the employer in respect to the employee benefits for the guard force is not changed. For example, social security, workmen’s compensation, and employer’s liability provisions remain unaffected.” And the employer was expected to train the guard forces in their ordinary protective duties and was required to furnish them with uniforms and weapons.
The right of the plant guards to bargain collectively was recognized by Circular No. 15, paragraph 6h (2) of which provided: “Auxiliary Military Police are permitted to bargain collectively, but no such activity will be tolerated which will interfere with their obligations as members of the Auxiliary Military Police. In view of recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board (see In re Lord Mfg. Co. & United Rubber Workers of America, CIO, Case No. R-4826, February 1943) [Lord Manufacturing Co., 47 N. L. R. B. 1032], the Auxiliary Military Police should be represented in collective bargaining with the management by a bargaining unit other than that composed of the production and maintenance workers, although both bargaining units may be affiliated with the same labor organization. Where the guards are not now included in the same bargaining unit, this is mandatory; where the guards are included in such unit, serious consideration will be given to effect a change to conform to the foregoing policies.” Provision was also made that collective bargaining agreements covering plant guards who were civilian auxiliaries should include a clause recognizing that nothing in the collective bargaining relationship should interfere with the duties imposed upon the guards as auxiliary military police.
The guards were required to sign agreements with the United States. Each agreement stated that the individual, who had been or was about to be employed by the particular company as a guard at its plant, agreed that he would support and defend the Constitution, bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution, and faithfully discharge his duties as a civilian auxiliary to the military police. He also acknowledged in this agreement that appropriate Articles of War had been read and explained to him and that he was subject to military law during his employment. The applicable regulations then provided that he could be court-martialed where no other effective form of punishment would be effective. But “Unlike the court-martial punishment of a person in military service, a court martial cannot punish a member of the Auxiliary Military Police by reduction in military grade or by forfeiture of pay and allowances. Analogous punishments might be imposed, such as reduction in grade in the guard organization or temporary suspension from duty. A fine, as distinguished from forfeiture, is regarded as an appropriate form of punishment.” In all other respects, the guards remained subject to the civil courts.
The evidence and testimony submitted to the Board confirmed the fact that the plant guards in respondent’s two plants were militarized in accordance with the foregoing regulations. The guards at each plant were under the direct supervision of a chief guard and several lieutenants — all of whom were civilians recruited by the respondent like the rank-and-file guards. The military superior of the chief guards was the District Plant Guard Officer stationed at the Continuous Security District Office of the War Department, Cincinnati, Ohio, an officer who also had charge of guard forces at other plants in the district. A general directive issued by this office repeated many of the provisions of Circular No. 15. It also provided that orders and regulations for the auxiliary military police would be issued in the name of the Chief of the District “after plant management has indicated its concurrence by signing the guard order in the lower left hand corner.” But the only guard orders received by the chief guards at respondent’s plants were three general ones signed by the District Plant Guard Officer, orders that were applicable to all militarized guards in the district. All the specific orders that were ever issued emanated from the chief guards. About the only direct contact between the military authorities and these guards occurred during the weekly drill period.
Respondent recruited the necessary additional guards through its ordinary employment channels and it had the power to initiate dismissals from the force. Such actions, however, were subject to the approval of the military. Respondent at all times carried the guards on its regular pay rolls, determined their rate of compensation and paid their wages after making appropriate deductions. And since it did not operate on a cost-plus basis, respondent actually bore the cost of the guards’ wages. Respondent did not attempt to give orders to the guards, merely making suggestions to the chief guards. The latter worked in close cooperation with respondent’s personnel manager and no friction developed. Respondent delegated to the chief guards its power to determine the guards’ working hours and the promotion policies in regard to them. Finally, respondent maintained its liability as to the guards on matters of social security and workmen’s compensation and was obliged to obey all minimum wage and maximum hour requirements.
From the foregoing, an ample basis is evident to support the Board’s determination that militarization did not destroy the employee status of the guards in respondent’s plants. The War Department regulations and the actual practice in these plants were based upon the explicit assumption that the guards were the private employees of respondent rather than employees or soldiers of the United States. The regulations made it unmistakable that the normal, private employer-employee relationship was to remain substantially intact. Especially clear was the fact that the right of the guards to join unions and to bargain collectively was to be respected. The military authorities took over from respondent only those attributes of control which were necessary to effectuate the rather limited military program, many aspects of that transferred power being exercisable by the Army only in the gravest emergencies.
We cannot say that the Board was without warrant in law or in fact in concluding that respondent retained “a sufficient residual measure of control over the terms and conditions of employment of the guards” so that they might fairly be described as employees of respondent. The most important incidents of the employer-employees relationship — wages, hours and promotion — remained matters to be determined by respondent rather than by the Army. Respondent could settle those vital matters unilaterally or by agreement with the guards. And the guards were free to negotiate and bargain individually or collectively on these items. It is precisely such a situation to which the National Labor Relations Act is applicable. It is a situation where collective bargaining may be appropriate and where statutory objectives may be achieved despite the limitations imposed by militarization. Under such circumstances, the Board may properly find that an employee status exists for purposes of the Act.
In this setting, it matters not that respondent was deprived of some of the usual powers of an employer, such as the absolute power to hire and fire the guards and the absolute power to control their physical activities in the performance of their service. Those are relevant but not exclusive indicia of an employer-employee relationship under this statute. As we have seen, judgment as to the existence of such a relationship for purposes of this Act must be made with more than the common law concepts in mind. That relationship may spring as readily from the power to determine the wages and hours of another, coupled with the obligation to bear the financial burden of those wages and the receipt of the benefits of the hours worked, as from the absolute power to hire and fire or the power to control all the activities of the worker. In other words, where the conditions of the relation are such that the process of collective bargaining may appropriately be utilized as contemplated by the Act, the necessary relationship may be found to be present. Labor Board v. Hearst Publications, supra, 129.
The Board’s determination that there was a relationship in this case deserving of statutory protection does not reflect an isolated or careless reconciliation of the rights guaranteed by the Act with the important wartime duties of plant protection employees. In the course of its administration of the Act during the war, the Board was faced with this problem many times. It was well acquainted with the important and complex considerations inherent in the situation. The responsibility of representing the public interest in such matters and of reaching a judgment after giving due weight to all the relevant factors lay primarily with the Board. See Southern Steamship Co. v. Labor Board, 316 U. S. 31, 47. In the absence of some compelling evidence that the Board has failed to measure up to its responsibility, courts should be reluctant to overturn the considered judgment of the Board and to substitute their own ideas of the public interest. We find no such evidence in this case.
Here we have the Board’s considered and consistent judgment that militarized plant guards may safely be permitted to join unions and bargain collectively and that their military duties and obligations do not suffer thereby. In agreement with that viewpoint has been the War Department, the agency most directly concerned with the military aspects of the problem. Its regulations and directives have clearly acknowledged the feasibility of recognizing collective bargaining rights of these guards during wartime, provided only that no encroachment is made upon military necessities. This policy of the Board, moreover, has been confirmed by experience. The Board states that it has certified bargaining representatives for units of militarized guards in more than 105 cases, in none of which has any danger to the public interest or to the war effort resulted.
Under such circumstances, it would be folly on our part to disregard or to upset the policy the Board has applied in this case. Since the Board’s order is in accord with the law and has substantial roots in the evidence, it should have been enforced by the Circuit Court of Appeals. Respondent’s objections to the language and scope of the order are either without merit or have been removed by the demilitarization of the guards. And any issues concerning the subsequent deputization of the guards as policemen are answered by our decision in Labor Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., post, p. 416. The judgment below is accordingly
Reversed.
The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Frankfurter and Mr. Justice Jackson dissent substantially for the reasons set forth in the opinion of the court below, 155 F. 2d 567.
Local 1683 of the International Association of Machinists, District 90. This union did not represent any of the maintenance or production employees in respondent’s plants, but it did admit to membership plant protection employees of other employers as well as those of respondent.
Circular No. 15 was not introduced into evidence in tbe proceeding before the Board. But it was issued by military authorities pursuant to the power vested in the Secretary of War by Executive Order No. 8972 and we may take judicial notice of it. Standard Oil Co. v. Johnson, 316 U. S. 481, 483-484.
Circular No. 15, par. la.
Id. par. lb.
Id. par. 6b (2).
Id. par. lb.
Id. par. 2a.
Id. par. 5a (2).
Id. pars. 5e (2) and 6a (1).
Id. par. 7g (1).
Id. par. 6b (1).
Id. par. 6f.
The guards were required to salute Army officers and had the right to arrest anyone in the plants. They carried identification cards issued by the War Department and wore arm bands on which appeared the words “Auxiliary Military Police.” Id. par. 7.
Id. par. 6h (1).
If a guard refused to sign this agreement, he might be, but need not be, temporarily retained with the understanding that he would be dismissed as soon as he could be replaced, and in any event within a reasonable time. Id. par. 5b (1).
Id. par. 8d.
This directive, however, omitted par. 6h (2) of Circular No. 15, dealing with the right of guards to bargain collectively.
Respondent argues that it was forced to pay the guards because of the War Department’s action in requiring additional plant protection. But respondent was not forced to enter into its war production contracts with the Government. It did so voluntarily and with the understanding that it would comply with any terms and conditions the Government saw fit to impose. One of these conditions was that respondent expand its peacetime guard force of six men to a wartime complement of sixty-four. So far as these additional guards being respondent’s employees is concerned, it is no different from a requirement that respondent employ more chemists or other production experts to facilitate execution of the contracts.
The Board’s conclusion in this respect is confirmed by the results reached under other statutes. Militarized guards have been treated as private employees for purposes of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Walling v. Lum, 4 WH Cases 465. And they have consistently been treated as such by the National War Labor Board. Detroit Steel Products Co., 6 War Lab. Rep. 495; Brewster Aeronautical Corp., 11 War Lab. Rep. 286, 15 War Lab. Rep. 239,240-243; Great American Industries, 11 War Lab. Rep. 287; Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., 15 War Lab. Rep. 500, 19 War Lab. Rep. 813; General Motors Corp., 18 War Lab. Rep. 541. And see Labor Board v. Carroll, 120 F. 2d 457.
See, e. g., Chrysler Corporation, 44 N. L. R. B. 881; Budd Wheel Co., 52 N. L. R. B. 666; Dravo Corporation, 52 N. L. R. B. 322. See also National Labor Relations Board, Seventh Annual Report (1943), p. 63; Eighth Annual Report (1944), p. 57.
In adopting the War Labor Disputes Act, 57 Stat. 163, Congress provided in § 7 (a) (2) that all actions of the National War Labor Board must conform to the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act — an indication that Congress deemed the preservation of the right to collective bargaining to be essential in war industries.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Brennan
announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion, in which Justice Marshall and Justice Stevens join.
Texas exempts from its sales tax “[pjeriodicals that are published or distributed by a religious faith and that consist wholly of writings promulgating the teaching of the faith and books that consist wholly of writings sacred to a religious faith.” Tex. Tax Code Ann. §151.312 (1982). The question presented is whether this exemption violates the Establishment Clause or the Free Press Clause of the First Amendment when the State denies a like exemption for other publications. We hold that, when confined exclusively to publications advancing the tenets of a religious faith, the exemption runs afoul of the Establishment Clause; accordingly, we need not reach the question whether it contravenes the Free Press Clause as well.
I
Prior to October 2, 1984, Texas exempted from its sales and use tax magazine subscriptions running half a year or longer and entered as second class mail. Tex. Tax Code Ann. §151.320 (1982). This exemption was repealed as of October 2, 1984, before being reinstated effective October 1, 1987. Tex. Tax Code Ann. §151.320 (Supp. 1988-1989). Throughout this 3-year period, Texas continued to exempt from its sales and use tax periodicals published or distributed by a religious faith consisting entirely of writings promulgating the teaching of the faith, along with books consisting solely of writings sacred to a religious faith. Tex. Tax Code Ann. § 151.312 (1982).
Appellant Texas Monthly, Inc., publishes a general interest magazine of the same name. Appellant is not a religious faith, and its magazine does not contain only articles promulgating the teaching of a religious faith. Thus, it was required during this 3-year period to collect and remit to the State the applicable sales tax on the price of qualifying subscription sales. Tex. Tax Code Ann. §§ 151.051, 151.052, 151.401 (1982 and Supp. 1988-1989). In 1985, appellant paid sales taxes of $149,107.74 under protest and sued to recover those payments in state court.
The District Court of Travis County, Texas, ruled that an exclusive exemption for religious periodicals had “no basis... other than the promotion of religion itself, a prohibited reason” under the Establishment Clause. App. to Juris. Statement 47. The court also found the exemption unconstitutional because it discriminated on the basis of the content of publications, presumably in violation of the Free Press Clause. Id., at 42. Declaring itself “without power to rewrite the statute to make religious periodicals subject to tax,” id., at 47, the court struck down the tax as applied to nonreligious periodicals and ordered the State to refund the amount of tax Texas Monthly had paid, plus interest. Id., at 43.
The Court of Appeals, Third Supreme Judicial District of Texas, reversed by a 2-to-l vote. 731 S. W. 2d 160 (1987). Applying the tripartite test enunciated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602, 612-613 (1971), the court held, first, that the exemption served the secular purpose of preserving separation between church and state. Second, the court asserted that the exemption did not have the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion, because “the effect of religious tax exemptions such as § 151.312 is to permit religious organizations to be independent of government support or sanction.” 731 S. W. 2d, at 163. The court considered it irrelevant that the exemption did not extend to other nonprofit or secular publications, because “the neutrality toward religion effected by the grant of an exemption for religious periodicals” remained unaffected by the provision or denial of a similar exemption for nonreligious publications. Id., at 164. Finally, the court concluded that the exemption did not produce impermissible government entanglement with religion. Rather than scrutinize each publication for which a publisher sought an exemption for conformity with the statute’s terms, the court found, the Comptroller’s Office merely required that a group applying for an exemption demonstrate that it was a religious organization. Once a satisfactory showing had been made, the Comptroller’s Office did not later reassess the group’s status as a religious organization. It further allowed the group to determine, without review by the State, which of its publications promulgated the teaching of its faith. Because the exemption was administered to minimize state entanglement with religion, the court thought it consistent with Lemon’s third prong.
In addition, the court rejected Texas Monthly’s claim that the exemption violated the Free Press Clause because it discriminated among publications on the basis of their content. The court read our decision in Arkansas Writers’ Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U. S. 221 (1987), to preclude only those taxes that are imposed solely on the press or targeted at a small group within the press. Because Texas’ exemption encompassed only a minority of publications, leaving the bulk of subscription sales subject to tax, the court reasoned that it escaped the strictures of the Free Press Clause as we had interpreted it.
now reverse. We noted probable jurisdiction, 485 U. S. 958 (1988), and now reverse.
As a preliminary matter, Texas argues that appellant lacks standing to challenge the constitutionality of the exemption. It claims that if this Court were to declare the exemption invalid, the proper course under state law would be to remove the exemption for religious publications, rather than extend it to nonreligious periodicals or strike down the sales and use tax in its entirety. If Texas is right, appellant cannot obtain a refund of the tax it paid under protest. Nor can it qualify for injunctive relief, because.its subscription sales are no longer taxed. Hence, Texas contends, appellant cannot show that it has suffered or is threatened with redressable injury, which this Court declared to be a prerequisite for standing in Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U. S. 464, 472 (1982).
The State’s contention is misguided. In Arkansas Writers’ Project, supra, at 227, we rejected a similar argument, “for it would effectively insulate underinclusive statutes from constitutional challenge, a proposition we soundly rejected in Orr v. Orr, 440 U. S. 268, 272 (1979).” It is not for us to decide whether the correct response as a matter of state law to a finding that a state tax exemption is unconstitutional is to eliminate the exemption, to curtail it, to broaden it, or to invalidate the tax altogether. Nor does it make any difference — contrary to the State’s suggestion — that Texas Monthly seeks only a refund and not prospective relief, as did the appellant in Arkansas Writers’ Project. A live controversy persists over Texas Monthly’s right to recover the $149,107.74 it paid, plus interest. Texas cannot strip appellant of standing by changing the law after taking its money.
Ill
In proscribing all laws “respecting an establishment of religion,” the Constitution prohibits, at the very least, legislation that constitutes an endorsement of one or another set of religious beliefs or of religion generally. It is part of our settled jurisprudence that “the Establishment Clause prohibits government from abandoning secular purposes in order to put an imprimatur on one religion, or on religion as such, or to favor the adherents of any sect or religious organization.” Gillette v. United States, 401 U. S. 437, 450 (1971). See, e. g., School Dist. of Grand Rapids v. Ball, 473 U. S. 373, 381 (1985); Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 52-53, and n. 37 (1985); Welsh v. United States, 398 U. S. 333, 356-357 (1970) (Harlan, J., concurring in result); Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U. S. 97, 103-104 (1968); Abington School Dist. v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203, 216-217 (1963); Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U. S. 488, 495 (1961); Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing, 330 U. S. 1, 15-16 (1947). The core notion animating the requirement that a statute possess “a secular legislative purpose” and that “its principal or primary effect... be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion,” Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S., at 612, is not only that government may not be overtly hostile to religion but also that it may not place its prestige, coercive authority, or resources behind a single religious faith or behind religious belief in general, compelling nonadherents to support the practices or proselytizing of favored religious organizations and conveying the message that those who do not contribute gladly are less than full members of the community.
It does not follow, of course, that government policies with secular objectives may not incidentally benefit religion. The nonsectarian aims of government and the interests of religious groups often overlap, and this Court has never required that public authorities refrain from implementing reasonable measures to advance legitimate secular goals merely because they would thereby relieve religious groups of costs they would otherwise incur. See Mueller v. Allen, 463 U. S. 388, 393 (1983). Nor have we required that legislative categories make no explicit reference to religion. See Wallace v. Jaffree, supra, at 70 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment) (“The endorsement test does not preclude government from acknowledging religion or from taking religion into account in making law and policy”); Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U. S. 668, 715 (1984) (Brennan, J., dissenting). Government need not resign itself to ineffectual diffidence because of exaggerated fears of contagion of or by religion, so long as neither intrudes unduly into the affairs of the other.
Thus, in Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U. S. 263 (1981), we held that a state university that makes its facilities available to registered student groups may not deny equal access to a registered student group desiring to use those facilities for religious worship or discussion. Although religious groups benefit from access to university facilities, a state university may not discriminate against them based on the content of their speech, and the university need not ban all student group meetings on campus in order to avoid providing any assistance to religion. Similarly, in Mueller v. Allen, supra, we upheld a state income tax deduction for the cost of tuition, transportation, and nonreligious textbooks paid by a taxpayer for the benefit of a dependent. To be sure, the deduction aided parochial schools and parents whose children attended them, as well as nonsectarian private schools and their pupils’ parents. We did not conclude, however, that this subsidy deprived the law of an overriding secular purpose or effect. And in the case most nearly on point, Walz v. Tax Comm’n of New York City, 397 U. S. 664 (1970), we sustained a property tax exemption that applied to religious properties no less than to real estate owned by a wide array of nonprofit organizations, despite the sizable tax savings it accorded religious groups.
In all of these cases, however, we emphasized that the benefits derived by religious organizations flowed to a large number of nonreligious groups as well. Indeed, were those benefits confined to religious organizations, they could not have appeared other than as state sponsorship of religion; if that were so, we would not have hesitated to strike them down for lacking a secular purpose and effect. See, e. g., School Dist. of Grand Rapids v. Ball, supra (invalidating state-funded educational programs in private schools, where 40 of the 41 beneficiaries were religious schools); Estate of Thornton v. Caldor, Inc., 472 U. S. 703 (1985) (finding vio-lative of the Establishment Clause a statute providing Sabbath observers with an unconditional right not to work on their chosen Sabbath).
In Widmar v. Vincent, we noted that an open forum in a public university would not betray state approval of religion so long as the forum was available “to a broad class of nonreligious as well as religious speakers.” 454 U. S., at 274. “The provision of benefits to so broad a spectrum of groups,” we said, “is an important index of secular effect.” Ibid. We concluded that the primary effect of an open forum would not be to advance religion, “[a]t least in the absence of empirical evidence that religious groups will dominate” it. Id., at 275. Likewise, in Mueller v. Allen, we deemed it “particularly significant,” 463 U. S., at 396, that “the deduction is available for educational expenses incurred by all parents, including those whose children attend public schools and those whose children attend nonsectarian private schools or sectarian private schools.” Id., at 397.
Finally, we emphasized in Walz that in granting a property tax deduction, the State “has not singled out one particular church or religious group or even churches as such; rather, it has granted exemption to all houses of religious worship within a broad class of property owned by nonprofit, quasi-public corporations which include hospitals, libraries, playgrounds, scientific, professional, historical, and patriotic groups.” 397 U. S., at 673. The breadth of New York’s property tax exemption was essential to our holding that it was “not aimed at establishing, sponsoring, or supporting religion,” id., at 674, but rather possessed the legitimate secular purpose and effect of contributing to the community’s moral and intellectual diversity and encouraging private groups to undertake projects that advanced the community’s well-being and that would otherwise have to be funded by tax revenues or left undone. Moreover, “[t]he scheme [was] not designed to inject any religious activity into a nonreligious context, as was the case with school prayers. No particular activity of a religious organization — for example, the propagation of its beliefs — [was] specially promoted by the exemptions.” Id., at 689 (Brennan, J., concurring). As Justice Harlan observed:
“To the extent that religious institutions sponsor the secular activities that this legislation is designed to promote, it is consistent with neutrality to grant them an exemption just as other organizations devoting resources to these projects receive exemptions.... As long as the breadth of exemption includes groups that pursue cultural, moral, or spiritual improvement in multifarious secular ways, including, I would suppose, groups whose avowed tenets may be antitheological, atheistic, or agnostic, I can see no lack of neutrality in extending the benefit of the exemption to organized religious groups.” Id., at 697 (separate opinion) (footnote omitted).
Texas’ sales tax exemption for periodicals published or distributed by a religious faith and consisting wholly of writings promulgating the teaching of the faith lacks sufficient breadth to pass scrutiny under the Establishment Clause. Every tax exemption constitutes a subsidy that affects non-qualifying taxpayers, forcing them to become “indirect and vicarious ‘donors.’” Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U. S. 574, 591 (1983). See also Regan v. Taxation with Representation of Wash., 461 U. S. 540, 544 (1983). Insofar as that subsidy is conferred upon a wide array of nonsectarian groups as well as religious organizations in pursuit of some legitimate secular end, the fact that religious groups benefit incidentally does not deprive the subsidy of the secular purpose and primary effect mandated by the Establishment Clause. However, when government directs a subsidy exclusively to religious organizations that is not required by the Free Exercise Clause and that either burdens nonbenefi-ciaries markedly or cannot reasonably be seen as removing a significant state-imposed deterrent to the free exercise of religion, as Texas has done, see infra, at 17-20, it “provide[s] unjustifiable awards of assistance to religious organizations” and cannot but “conve[y] a message of endorsement” to slighted members of the community. Corporation of Presiding Bishop of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. Amos, 483 U. S. 327, 348 (1987) (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment). This is particularly true where, as here, the subsidy is targeted at writings that promulgate the teachings of religious faiths. It is difficult to view Texas’ narrow exemption as anything but state sponsorship of religious belief, regardless of whether one adopts the perspective of beneficiaries or of uncompensated contributors.
How expansive the class of exempt organizations or activities must be to withstand constitutional assault depends upon the State’s secular aim in granting a tax exemption. If the State chose to subsidize, by means of a tax exemption, all groups that contributed to the community’s cultural, intellectual, and moral betterment, then the exemption for religious publications could be retained, provided that the exemption swept as widely as the property tax exemption we upheld in Walz. By contrast, if Texas sought to promote reflection and discussion about questions of ultimate value and the contours of a good or meaningful life, then a tax exemption would have to be available to an extended range of associations whose publications were substantially devoted to such matters; the exemption could not be reserved for publications dealing solely with religious issues, let alone restricted to publications advocating rather than criticizing religious belief or activity, without signaling an endorsement of religion that is offensive to the principles informing the Establishment Clause. See Estate of Thornton v. Caldor, Inc., 472 U. S., at 711 (O’Connor, J., concurring) (because the statute bestows an advantage on Sabbath observers “without according similar accommodation to ethical and religious beliefs and practices of other private employees,” “[t]he message conveyed is one of endorsement of a particular religious belief, to the detriment of those who do not share it”; the statute therefore “has the effect of advancing religion, and cannot withstand Establishment Clause scrutiny”); Welsh v. United States, 398 U. S., at 356-361 (Harlan, J., concurring in result) (conscientious objector status cannot be limited to those whose opposition to war has religious roots, but must extend to those whose convictions have purely moral or philosophical sources).
It is not our responsibility to specify which permissible secular objectives, if any, the State should pursue to justify a tax exemption for religious periodicals. That charge rests with the Texas Legislature. Our task, and that of the Texas courts, is rather to ensure that any scheme of exemptions adopted by the legislature does not have the purpose or effect of sponsoring certain religious tenets or religious belief in general. As Justice Harlan remarked: “The Court must survey meticulously the circumstances of governmental categories to eliminate, as it were, religious gerrymanders. In any particular case the critical question is whether the circumference of legislation encircles a class so broad that it can be fairly concluded that religious institutions could be thought to fall within the natural perimeter.” Walz, 397 U. S., at 696 (separate opinion). Because Texas’ sales tax exemption for periodicals promulgating the teaching of any religious sect lacks a secular objective that would justify this preference along with similar benefits for nonreligious publications or groups, and because it effectively endorses religious belief, the exemption manifestly fails this test.
IV
A
In defense of its sales tax exemption for religious publications, Texas claims that it has a compelling interest in avoiding violations of the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses, and that the exemption serves that end. Without such an exemption, Texas contends, its sales tax might trammel free exercise rights, as did the flat license tax this Court struck down as applied to proselytizing by Jehovah’s Witnesses in Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 (1943). In addition, Texas argues that an exemption for religious publications neither advances nor inhibits religion, as required by the Establishment Clause, and that its elimination would entangle church and state to a greater degree than the exemption itself.
We reject both parts of this argument. Although Texas may widen its exemption consonant with some legitimate secular purpose, nothing in our decisions under the Free Exercise Clause prevents the State from eliminating altogether its exemption for religious publications. “It is virtually self-evident that the Free Exercise Clause does not require an exemption from a governmental program unless, at a minimum, inclusion in the program actually burdens the claimant’s freedom to exercise religious rights. ” Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation v. Secretary of Labor, 471 U. S. 290, 303 (1985) (citations omitted). In this case, the State has adduced no evidence that the payment of a sales tax by subscribers to religious periodicals or purchasers of religious books would offend their religious beliefs or inhibit religious activity. The State therefore cannot claim persuasively that its tax exemption is compelled by the Free Exercise Clause in even a single instance, let alone in every case. No concrete need to accommodate religious activity has been shown.
Moreover, even if members of some religious group succeeded in demonstrating that payment of a sales tax — or, less plausibly, of a sales tax when applied to printed matter— would violate their religious tenets, it is by no means obvious that the State would be required by the Free Exercise Clause to make individualized exceptions for them. In United States v. Lee, 455 U. S. 252 (1982), we ruled unanimously that the Federal Government need not exempt an Amish employer from the payment of Social Security taxes, notwithstanding our recognition that compliance would offend his religious beliefs. We noted that “[n]ot all burdens on religion are unconstitutional,” id., at 257, and held that “[t]he state may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing that it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest.” Id., at 257-258. Although the balancing test we set forth in Lee must be performed on a case-by-case basis, a State’s interest in the uniform collection of a sales tax appears comparable to the Federal Government’s interest in the uniform collection of Social Security taxes, and mandatory exemptions under the Free Exercise Clause are arguably as difficult to prove. No one has suggested that members of any of the major religious denominations in the United States — the principal beneficiaries of Texas’ tax exemption — could demonstrate an infringement of their free exercise rights sufficiently serious to overcome the State’s countervailing interest in collecting its sales tax.
B
Texas’ further claim that the Establishment Clause mandates, or at least favors, its sales tax exemption for religious periodicals is equally unconvincing. Not only does the exemption seem a blatant endorsement of religion, but it appears, on its face, to produce greater state entanglement with religion than the denial of an exemption. As Justice Stevens has noted: “[There exists an] overriding interest in keeping the government — whether it be the legislature or the courts — out of the business of evaluating the relative merits of differing religious claims. The risk that governmental approval of some and disapproval of others will be perceived as favoring one religion over another is an important risk the Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.” Id., at 263, n. 2 (concurring in judgment). See Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U. S., at 604, n. 30. The prospect of inconsistent treatment and government embroilment in controversies over religious doctrine seems especially baleful where, as in the case of Texas’ sales tax exemption, a statute requires that public officials determine whether some message or activity is consistent with “the teaching of the faith.” See, e. g., Jones v. Wolf, 443 U. S. 595 (1979); Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich, 426 U. S. 696 (1976); Presbyterian Church in U. S. v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church, 393 U. S. 440 (1969).
While Texas is correct in pointing out that compliance with government regulations by religious organizations and the monitoring of their compliance by government agencies would itself enmesh the operations of church and state to some degree, we have found that such compliance would generally not impede the evangelical activities of religious groups and that the “routine and factual inquiries” commonly associated with the enforcement of tax laws “bear no resemblance to the kind of government surveillance the Court has previously held to pose an intolerable risk of government entanglement with religion.” Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation v. Secretary of Labor, 471 U. S., at 305.
On the record before us, neither the Free Exercise Clause nor the Establishment Clause prevents Texas from withdrawing its current exemption for religious publications if it chooses not to expand it to promote some legitimate secular aim.
C
Our conclusion today is admittedly in tension with some unnecessarily sweeping statements in Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 (1943), and Follett v. McCormick, 321 U. S. 573 (1944). To the extent that language in those opinions is inconsistent with our decision here, based on the evolution in our thinking about the Religion Clauses over the last 45 years, we disavow it.
In Murdock, the Court ruled that a city could not impose a flat license tax payable by “all persons canvassing for or soliciting... orders for goods, paintings, pictures, wares, or merchandise of any kind” on Jehovah’s Witnesses who “went about from door to door... distributing literature and soliciting people to ‘purchase’ certain religious books and pamphlets.” 319 U. S., at 106. In Follett, the Court ruled similarly that a Jehovah’s Witness who “went from house to house distributing certain books” was exempt under the Free Exercise Clause from payment of a flat business and occupation tax on booksellers. 321 U. S., at 574. In both cases, the majority stated that the “sale” of religious pamphlets by itinerant evangelists was a form of preaching, Murdock, supra, at 109; Follett, supra, at 577, and that imposing a license or occupation tax on such a preacher was tantamount to exacting “a tax from him for the privilege of delivering a sermon.” Murdock, 319 U. S., at 112. The Court acknowledged that imposing an income or property tax on preachers would not be unconstitutional. Ibid. It emphasized, however, that a flat license or occupation tax poses a greater threat to the free exercise of religion than do those other taxes, because it is “levied and collected as a condition to the pursuit of activities whose enjoyment is guaranteed by the First Amendment” and thus “restrains in advance those constitutional liberties... and inevitably tends to suppress their exercise.” Id., at 114. See Follett, supra, at 575.
If one accepts the majority’s characterization of the critical issues in Murdock and Follett, those decisions are easily compatible with our holding here. In striking down application of the town ordinance to Jehovah’s Witnesses in Follett — an ordinance the Court found to be “in all material respects the same,” 321 U. S., at 574, as the one whose application it restricted in Murdock — the Court declared that only a single “narrow” question was presented: “It is whether a flat license tax as applied to one who earns his livelihood as an evangelist or preacher in his home town is constitutional.” 321 U. S., at 576. Regarding Follett in this light, we must agree that “we have quite a different case from that of a merchant who sells books-at a stand or on the road.” Ibid. There is no doubt that the First Amendment prevents both the States and the Federal Government from imposing a special occupation tax exclusively on those who devote their days to spreading religious messages. Moreover, it is questionable whether, consistent with the Free Exercise Clause, government may exact a facially neutral license fee designed for commercial salesmen from religious missionaries whose principal work is preaching and who only occasionally sell religious tracts for small sums, so long as “the fee is not a nominal one, imposed as a regulatory measure and calculated to defray the expense of protecting those on the streets and at home against the abuses of solicitors.” Murdock, supra, at 116. In such a case, equal treatment of commercial and religious solicitation might result in an unconstitutional imposition on religious activity warranting judicial relief, particularly where that activity is deemed central to a given faith, as the Court found this form of proselytizing to be in Murdock and Follett, and where the tax burden is far from negligible.
Insofar as the Court’s holdings in Murdock and Follett are limited to these points, they are plainly consistent with our decision today.- The sales tax that Texas imposes is not an occupation tax levied on religious missionaries. Nor is it a flat tax that “restrains iii. advance,” 319 U. S., at 114, the free exercise.of religioriN' On the contrary, because the tax is equal to a small fraction of the value of each sale and payable by the buyer, it poses little danger of stamping out missionary work involving the sale of religious publications, and in view of its generality it can hardly be viewed as a covert attempt to curtail religious activity. We therefore see no inconsistency between our former decisions and our present holding.
To the extent that our opinions in Murdock and Follett might be read, however, to suggest that the States and the Federal Government may never tax the sale of religious or other publications, we reject those dicta. Our intervening decisions make clear that even if the denial of tax benefits “will inevitably have a substantial impact” on religious groups, the refusal to grant such benefits does not offend the Free Exercise Clause when it does not prevent those groups “from observing their religious tenets.” Bob Jones Univer sity v. United States, 461 U. S., at 603-604. In Murdock and Follett, the application of a flat license or occupation tax to Jehovah’s Witnesses arguably did prevent adherents of that sect from acting in accordance with some of their central religious beliefs, in the absence of any overriding government interest in denying them an exemption. In the much more common circumstances exemplified by this case, however, taxes or regulations would not subject religious organizations to undue burdens and the government’s interest in their uniform application is far weightier. Hence, there is no bar to Texas’ imposing a general sales tax on religious publications.
V
We conclude that Texas’ sales tax exemption for religious publications violates the First Amendment, as made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. Accordingly, the judgment of the Texas Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings.
It is so ordered.
Justice O’Connor’s concurrence in Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38 (1985), properly emphasized this point:
“[T]he Establishment Clause is infringed when the government makes adherence to religion relevant to a person’s standing in the political community. Direct government action endorsing religion or a particular religious practice is invalid under this approach because it ‘sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.’ [Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U. S. 668, 688 (1984) (O’Connor, J., concurring).] Under this view, Lemon’s inquiry as to the purpose and effect of a statute requires courts to examine whether government’s purpose is to endorse religion and whether the statute actually conveys a message of endorsement.” Id., at 69.
See also Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U. S. 668, 701 (1984) (Brennan, J., dissenting) (the Establishment Clause was designed to prevent “religious chauvinism” that tells “minority religious groups, as well as... those who may reject all religion,... that their views are not similarly worthy of public recognition nor entitled to public support”).
Although we found it “unnecessary to justify the tax exemption on the social welfare services or ‘good works’ that some churches perform for parishioners and others,” Walz v. Tax Comm'n, 397 U. S., at 674, we in no way intimated that the exemption would have been valid had it applied only to the property of religious groups or had it lacked a permissible secular objective. Rather, we concluded that the State might reasonably have determined that religious groups generally contribute to the cultural and moral improvement of the community, perform useful social services, and enhance a desirable pluralism of viewpoint and enterprise, just as do the host of other nonprofit organizations that qualified for the exemption. It is because the set of organizations defined by these secular objectives was so large that we saw no need to inquire into the secular benefits provided by religious groups that sought to avail themselves of the exemption. In addition, we noted that inquiry into the particular contributions of each religious group “would introduce an element of governmental evaluation and standards as to the worth of particular social welfare programs, thus producing a kind of continuing day-to-day relationship which the policy of neutrality seeks to minimize.” Ibid. We therefore upheld the State’s classification of religious organizations among the socially beneficial associations whose activities it desired to foster. Had the State defined the class of subsidized activities more narrowly — to encompass only “charitable” works, for example — more searching scrutiny would have been necessary, notwithstanding the greater intermingling of government and religion that would likely result. Cf. id., at 697, n. 1 (opinion of Harlan, J.); Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U. S. 574, 591-592, and n. 18 (1983).
The dissent's accusation that we have distorted or misdescribed the Court’s holding in Walz, post, at 33-38, is simply mistaken. The Court expressly stated in Walz that the legislative purpose of New York’s property tax exemption was not to accommodate religion. Rather, “New York, in common with the other States, has determined that certain entities that exist in a harmonious relationship to the community at large, and that foster its ‘moral or mental improvement,’ should not be inhibited in their activities by property taxation or the hazard of loss of those properties for nonpayment of taxes.” 397 U. S., at 672. Churches, we found, were reasonably classified among a diverse array of nonprofit groups that promoted this end. But it was only because churches, along with numerous other groups, produced these public benefits that we approved their exemption from property tax. The Court said quite plainly: “The State has an affirmative policy that considers these groups as beneficial and stabilizing influences in community life and finds this classification useful, desirable, and in the public interest. Qualification for tax exemption is not perpetual or immutable: some tax-exempt groups lose that status w'hen their activities take them outside the classification and new entities can come into being and qualify for exemption.” Id., at 673. Although the concurring opinions in Walz amplified this point, the opinion for the Court relied on it as well in determining that the tax exemption possessed a valid secular purpose.
Nor is our'reading of Walz by any means novel. Indeed, it has been the Court’s accepted understanding of the holding in Walz for almost 20 years. In Gillette v. United States, 401 U. S. 437, 454 (1971), we said: “‘Neutrality’ in matters of religion is not inconsistent with ‘benevolence’ by way of exemptions from onerous duties, Walz v. Tax Comm’n, 397 U. S., at 669, so long as an exemption is tailored broadly enough that it reflects valid secular purposes.” We read Walz to stand for the same proposition in Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U. S. 756, 793-794 (1973). “Without intimating whether this factor alone might have controlling significance in another context in some future case,” we noted that the breadth of an exemption for religious groups is unquestionably 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: | 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 Supreme Court of Ohio here held that a witness who denies all culpability does not have a valid Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. Because our precedents dictate that the privilege protects the innocent as well as the guilty, and that the facts here are sufficient to sustain a claim of privilege, we grant the petition for certiorari and reverse.
Respondent was charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the death of his 2-month-old son Alex. The coroner testified at trial that Alex died from “shaken baby syndrome,” the result of child abuse. He estimated that Alex’s injury most likely occurred minutes before the child stopped breathing. Alex died two days later when he was removed from life support. Evidence produced at trial revealed that Alex had a broken rib and a broken leg at the time of his death. His twin brother Derek, who was also examined, had several broken ribs. Respondent had been alone with Alex for half an hour immediately before Alex stopped breathing. Respondent’s experts testified that Alex could have been injured several hours before his respiratory arrest. Alex was in the care of the family’s babysitter, Susan Batt, at that time. Batt had cared for the children during the day for about two weeks prior to Alex’s death. The defense theory was that Batt, not respondent, was the culpable party.
Batt informed the court in advance of testifying that she intended to assert her Fifth Amendment privilege. At the State’s request, the trial court granted her transactional immunity from prosecution pursuant to Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §2945.44 (1999). She then testified to the jury that she had refused to testify without a grant of immunity on the advice of counsel, although she had done nothing wrong. Batt denied any involvement in Alex’s death. She testified that she had never shaken Alex or his brother at any time, specifically on the day Alex suffered respiratory arrest. She said she was unaware of and had nothing to do with the other injuries to both children. The jury found respondent guilty of involuntary manslaughter, and he appealed.
The Court of Appeals of Ohio, Sixth District, reversed respondent’s conviction on grounds not relevant to our decision here. The Supreme Court of Ohio affirmed the reversal, on the alternative ground that Batt had no valid Fifth Amendment privilege and that the trial court’s grant of immunity under § 2945.44 was therefore unlawful. 89 Ohio St. 3d 342, 358, 731 N. E. 2d 662, 677 (2000). The court found that the wrongful grant of immunity prejudiced respondent, because it effectively told the jury that Batt did not cause Alex’s injuries.
The court recognized that the privilege against self-incrimination applies where a witness’ answers “could reasonably ‘furnish a link in the chain of evidence’ ” against him, id., at 352, 731 N. E. 2d, at 673 (quoting Hoffman v. United States, 341 U. S. 479, 486 (1951)). Hoffman, it noted, requires the trial court to determine whether the witness has correctly asserted the privilege, and to order the witness to answer questions if the witness is mistaken about the danger of incrimination. Ibid. The court faulted the trial judge for failing to question sufficiently Batt’s assertion of the privilege. It noted that the Court of Appeals, in finding a valid privilege, failed to consider the prosecutor’s suggestion that Batt’s testimony would not incriminate her, and Batt’s denial of involvement in Alex’s abuse when questioned by the Children’s Services Board. The court held that “Susan Batt’s [trial] testimony did not incriminate her, because she denied any involvement in the abuse. Thus, she did not have a valid Fifth Amendment privilege.” 89 Ohio St. 3d, at 355, 731 N. E. 2d, at 675 (emphasis in original). The court emphasized that the defense’s theory of Batt’s guilt was not grounds for a grant of immunity, “when the witness continues to deny any self-incriminating conduct.” Ibid.
The Supreme Court of Ohio’s decision that Batt was wrongly granted immunity under §2945.44 (and consequently, that reversal of respondent’s conviction was required) rested on the court’s determination that Batt did not have a valid Fifth Amendment privilege. In discussing the contours of that privilege, the court relied on our precedents. We have observed that “this Court retains a role when a state court’s interpretation of state law has been influenced by an accompanying interpretation of federal law.” Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold Reservation v. Wold Engineering, P. C., 467 U. S. 138, 152 (1984). The decision at issue “fairly appears ... to be interwoven with the federal law,” and no adequate and independent state ground is clear from the face of the opinion. Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032, 1040-1041 (1983). We have jurisdiction over a state-court judgment that rests, as a threshold matter, on a determination of federal law. See Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. Thompson, 478 U. S. 804, 816 (1986) (“[T]his Court retains power to review the decision of a federal issue in a state cause of action”); St. Louis, I. M. & S. R. Co. v. Taylor, 210 U. S. 281, 293-294 (1908).
The Fifth Amendment provides that “[n]o person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” U. S. Const., Arndt. 5. As the Supreme Court of Ohio acknowledged, this privilege not only extends “to answers that would in themselves support a conviction ... but likewise embraces those which would furnish a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute the claimant.” Hoffman, 341 U. S., at 486. “[I]t need only be evident from the implications of the question, in the setting in which it is asked, that a responsive answer to the question or an explanation of why it cannot be answered might be dangerous because injurious disclosure could result.” Id., at 486-487.
We have held that the privilege’s protection extends only to witnesses who have "reasonable cause to apprehend danger from a direct answer.” Id., at 486. That inquiry is for the court; the witness’ assertion does not by itself establish the risk of incrimination. Ibid. A danger of “imaginary and unsubstantial character” will not suffice. Mason v. United States, 244 U. S. 362, 366 (1917). But we have never held, as the Supreme Court of Ohio did, that the privilege is unavailable to those who claim innocence. To the contrary, we have emphasized that one of the Fifth Amendment’s "basic functions ... is to protect innocent men . . . ‘who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances.’” Grunewald v. United States, 353 U. S. 391, 421 (1957) (quoting Slochower v. Board of Higher Ed. of New York City, 350 U. S. 551, 557-558 (1956)) (emphasis in original). In Grunewald, we recognized that truthful responses of an innocent witness, as well as those of a wrongdoer, may provide the government with incriminating evidence from the speaker’s own mouth. 353 U. S., at 421-422.
The Supreme Court of Ohio’s determination that Batt did not have a valid Fifth Amendment privilege because she denied any involvement in the abuse of the children clearly conflicts with Hoffman and Grünewald. Batt had "reasonable cause” to apprehend danger from her answers if questioned at respondent’s trial. Hoffman, supra, at 486. Batt spent extended periods of time alone with Alex and his brother in the weeks immediately preceding discovery of their injuries. She was with Alex within the potential timeframe of the fatal trauma. The defense’s theory of the case was that Batt, not respondent, was responsible for Alex’s death and his brother’s uncharged injuries. In this setting, it was reasonable for Batt to fear that answers to possible questions might tend to incriminate her. Batt therefore had a valid Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
We do not, of course, address the question whether immunity from suit under § 2945.44 was appropriate. Because the Supreme Court of Ohio mistakenly held that the witness’ assertion of innocence deprived her of her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, the petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, the court’s judgment is reversed, and this case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §2945.44 (1999) states in pertinent part: “In any criminal proceeding... if a witness refuses to answer or produce information on the basis of his 'privilege against self-incrimination, the court of common pleas... unless it finds that to do so would not further the administration of justice, shall compel the witness to answer or produce the information, if. . . [the prosecuting attorney so requests and] . . . [t]he court... informs the witness that by answering, or producing the information he will receive [transactional] immunity . . . .” (Emphasis added.)
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Breyer
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act of 1982 (FTAIA) excludes from the Sherman Act’s reach much anti-competitive conduct that causes only foreign injury. It does so by setting forth a general rule stating that the Sherman Act “shall not apply to conduct involving trade or commerce ... with foreign nations'.” 96 Stat. 1246,15 U. S. C. § 6a. It then creates exceptions to the general rule, applicable where (roughly speaking) that conduct significantly harms imports, domestic commerce, or American exporters.
We here focus upon anticompetitive price-fixing activity that is in significant part foreign, that causes some domestic antitrust injury, and that independently causes separate foreign injury. We ask two questions about the price-fixing conduct and the foreign injury that it causes. First, does that conduct fall within the FTAIA’s general rule excluding the Sherman Act’s application? That is to say, does the price-fixing activity constitute “conduct involving trade or commerce . . . with foreign nations”? We conclude that it does.
Second, we ask whether the conduct nonetheless falls within a domestic-injury exception to the general rule, an exception that applies (and makes the Sherman Act nonetheless applicable) where the conduct (1) has a “direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect” on domestic commerce, and (2) “such effect gives rise to a [Sherman Act] claim.” §§6a(1)(A), (2). We conclude that the exception does not apply where the plaintiff’s claim rests solely on the independent foreign harm.
To clarify: The issue before us concerns (1) significant foreign anticompetitive conduct with (2) an adverse domestic effect and (3) an independent foreign effect giving rise to the claim. In more concrete terms, this case involves vitamin sellers around the world that agreed to fix prices, leading to higher vitamin prices in the United States and independently leading to higher vitamin prices in other countries such as Ecuador. We conclude that, in this scenario, a purchaser in the United States could bring a Sherman Act claim under the FTAIA based on domestic injury, but a purchaser in Ecuador could not bring a Sherman Act claim based on foreign harm.
I
The plaintiffs in this case originally filed a class-action suit on behalf of foreign and domestic purchasers of vitamins under, inter alia, §1 of the Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 1, and §§4 and 16 of the Clayton Act, 38 Stat. 731, 737, as amended, 15 U. S. C. §§ 15, 26. Their complaint alleged that petitioners, foreign and domestic vitamin manufacturers and distributors, had engaged in a price-fixing conspiracy, raising the price of vitamin products to customers in the United States and to customers in foreign countries.
As relevant here, petitioners moved to dismiss the suit as to the foreign purchasers (the respondents here), five foreign vitamin distributors located in Ukraine, Australia, Ecuador, and Panama, each of which bought vitamins from petitioners for delivery outside the United States. No. Civ. 001686TFH, 2001 WL 761360, *4 (D. D. C., June 7, 2001) (describing the relevant transactions as “wholly foreign”). Respondents have never asserted that they purchased any vitamins in the United States or in transactions in United States commerce, and the question presented assumes that the relevant “transactions occurred] entirely outside U. S. commerce,” Pet. for Cert. (i). The District Court dismissed their claims. 2001 WL 761360, at *4. It applied the FTAIA and found none of the exceptions applicable. Id., at *3-*4. Thereafter, the domestic purchasers transferred their claims to another pending suit and did not take part in the subsequent appeal. 315 F. 3d 338, 343 (CADC 2003).
A divided panel of the Court of Appeals reversed. 315 F. 3d 338. The panel concluded that the FTAIA’s general exclusionary rule applied to the case, but that its domestic-injury exception also applied. It basically read the plaintiffs’ complaint to allege that the vitamin manufacturers’ price-fixing conspiracy (1) had “a direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect” on ordinary domestic trade or commerce, i. e., the conspiracy brought about higher domestic vitamin prices, and (2) “such effect” gave “rise to a [Sherman Act] claim,” i. e., an injured domestic customer could have brought a Sherman Act suit, 15 U. S. C. §§ 6a(1), (2). Those allegations, the court held, are sufficient to meet the exception’s requirements. 315 F. 3d, at 341.
The court assumed that the foreign effect, i. e., higher prices in Ukraine, Panama, Australia, and Ecuador, was independent of the domestic effect, i. e., higher domestic prices. Ibid. But it concluded that, in light of the FTAIA’s text, legislative history, and the policy goal of deterring harmful price-fixing activity, this lack of connection does not matter. Ibid. The District of Columbia Circuit denied rehearing en bane by a 4-to-3 vote. App. to Pet. for Cert. 44a.
We granted certiorari to resolve a split among the Courts of Appeals about the exception’s application. Compare Den Norske Stats Oljeselskap As v. HeereMac Vof, 241 F. 3d 420, 427 (CA5 2001) (exception does not apply where foreign injury independent of domestic harm), with Kruman v. Christie’s Int’l PLC, 284 F. 3d 384, 400 (CA2 2002) (exception does apply even where foreign injury independent); 315 F. 3d, at 341 (similar).
II
The FTAIA seeks to make clear to American exporters (and to firms doing business abroad) that the Sherman Act does not prevent them from entering into business arrangements (say, joint-selling arrangements), however anticompet-itive, as long as those arrangements adversely affect only foreign markets. See H. R. Rep. No. 97-686, pp. 1-3, 9-10 (1982) (hereinafter House Report). It does so by removing from the Sherman Act’s reach, (1) export activities and (2) other commercial activities taking place abroad, unless those activities adversely affect domestic commerce, imports to the United States, or exporting activities of one engaged in such activities within the United States.
The FTAIA says:
“Sections 1 to 7 of this title [the Sherman Act] shall not apply to conduct involving trade or commerce (other than import trade or import commerce) with foreign nations unless—
“(1) such conduct has a direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect—
“(A) on trade or commerce which is not trade or commerce with foreign nations [i. e., domestic trade or commerce], or on import trade or import commerce with foreign nations; or
“(B) on export trade or export commerce with foreign nations, of a person engaged in such trade or commerce in the United States [i. e., on an American export competitor]; and
“(2) such effect gives rise to a claim under the provisions of sections 1 to 7 of this title, other than this section.
“If sections 1 to 7 of this title apply to such conduct only because of the operation of paragraph (1)(B), then sections 1 to 7 of this title shall apply to such conduct only for injury to export business in the United States.” 15U.S.C. §6a.
This technical language initially lays down a general rule placing all (nonimport) activity involving foreign commerce outside the Sherman Act’s reach. It then brings such conduct back within the Sherman Act’s reach provided that the conduct both (1) sufficiently affects American commerce, i e., it has a “direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect” on American domestic, import, or (certain) export commerce, and (2) has an effect of a kind that antitrust law considers harmful, i. e., the “effect” must “giv[e] rise to a [Sherman Act] claim.” §§6a(1), (2).
We ask here how this language applies to price-fixing activity that is in significant part foreign, that has the requisite domestic effect, and that also has independent foreign effects giving rise to the plaintiff’s claim.
HI
Respondents make a threshold argument. They say that the transactions here at issue fall outside the FTAIA because the FTAIA’s genéral exclusionary rule applies only to conduct involving exports. The rule says that the Sherman Act “shall not apply to conduct involving trade or commerce (other than import trade or import commerce) with foreign nations.” §6a (emphasis added). The word “with” means between the United States and foreign nations. And, they contend, commerce between the United States and foreign nations that is not import commerce must consist of export commerce — a kind of commerce irrelevant to the case at hand.
The difficulty with respondents’ argument is that the FTAIA originated in a bill that initially referred only to “export trade or export commerce.” H. R. 5235, 97th Cong., 1st Sess., §1 (1981). But the House Judiciary Committee subsequently changed that language to “trade or commerce (other than import trade or import commerce).” 15 U. S. C. § 6a. And it did so deliberately to include commerce that did not involve American exports but which was wholly foreign.
The House Report says in relevant part:
“The Subcommittee’s ‘export’ commerce limitation appeared to make the amendments inapplicable to transactions that were neither import nor export, i. e., transactions within, between, or among other nations. . . . Such foreign transactions should, for the purposes of this legislation, be treated in the same manner as export transactions — that is, there should be no American antitrust jurisdiction absent a direct, substantial and reasonably foreseeable effect on domestic commerce or a domestic competitor. The Committee amendment therefore deletes references to ‘export’ trade, and substitutes phrases such as ‘other than import’ trade. It is thus clear that wholly foreign transactions as well as export transactions are covered, by the amendment, but that import transactions are not.” House Report, at 9-10 (emphases added).
For those who find legislative history useful, the House Report’s account should end the matter. Others, by considering carefully the amendment itself and the lack of any other plausible purpose, may reach the same conclusion, namely, that the FTAIA’s general rule applies where the an-ticompetitive conduct at issue is foreign.
IV
We turn now to the basic question presented, that of the exception’s application. Because the underlying antitrust action is complex, potentially raising questions not directly at issue here, we reemphasize that we base our decision upon the following: The price-fixing conduct significantly and adversely affects both customers outside the United States and customers within the United States, but the adverse foreign effect is independent of any adverse domestic effect. In these circumstances, we find that the FTAIA exception does not apply (and thus the Sherman Act does not apply) for two main reasons.
First, this Court ordinarily construes ambiguous statutes to avoid unreasonable interference with the sovereign authority of other nations. See, e. g., McCulloch v. Sociedad Nacional de Marineros de Honduras, 372 U. S. 10, 20-22 (1963) (application of National Labor Relations Act to foreign-flag vessels); Romero v. International Terminal Operating Co., 358 U. S. 354, 382-383 (1959) (application of Jones Act in maritime case); Lauritzen v. Larsen, 345 U. S. 571, 578 (1953) (same). This rule of construction reflects principles of customary international law — law that (we must assume) Congress ordinarily seeks to follow. See Restatement (Third) of Foreign Relations Law of the United States §§403(1), 403(2) (1986) (hereinafter Restatement) (limiting the unreasonable exercise of prescriptive jurisdiction with respect to a person or activity having connections with another State); Murray v. Schooner Charming Betsy, 2 Cranch 64, 118 (1804) (“[A]n act of congress ought never to be construed to violate the law of nations if any other possible construction remains”); Hartford Fire Ins. Co. v. California, 509 U. S. 764, 817 (1993) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (identifying rule of construction as derived from the principle of “ ‘prescriptive comity’ ”).
This rule of statutory construction cautions courts to assume that legislators take account of the legitimate sovereign interests of other nations when they write American laws. It thereby helps the potentially conflicting laws of different nations work together in harmony — a harmony particularly needed in today’s highly interdependent commercial world.
No one denies that America’s antitrust laws, when applied to foreign conduct, can interfere with a foreign nation’s ability independently to regulate its own commercial affairs. But our courts have long held that application of our antitrust laws to foreign anticompetitive conduct is nonetheless reasonable, and hence consistent with principles of prescriptive comity, insofar as they reflect a legislative effort to redress domestic antitrust injury that foreign anticompetitive conduct has caused. See United States v. Aluminum Co. of America, 148 F. 2d 416, 443-444 (CA2 1945) (L. Hand, J.); 1 P. Areeda & D. Turner, Antitrust Law ¶ 236 (1978).
But why is it reasonable to apply those laws to foreign conduct insofar as that conduct causes independent foreign harm and that foreign harm alone gives rise to the plaintiff’s claim? Like the former case, application of those laws creates a serious risk of interference with a foreign nation’s ability independently to regulate its own commercial affairs. But, unlike the former case, the justification for that interference seems insubstantial. See Restatement §403(2) (determining reasonableness on basis of such factors as connections with regulating nation, harm to that nation’s interests, extent to which other nations regulate, and the potential for conflict). Why should American law supplant, for example, Canada’s or Great Britain’s or Japan’s own determination about how best to protect Canadian or British or Japanese customers from anticompetitive conduct engaged in significant part by Canadian or British or Japanese or other foreign companies?
We recognize that principles of comity provide Congress greater leeway when it seeks to control through legislation the actions of American companies, see Restatement § 402; and some of the anticompetitive price-fixing conduct alleged here took place in America. But the higher foreign prices of which the foreign plaintiffs here complain are not the consequence of any domestic anticompetitive conduct that Congress sought to forbid, for Congress did not seek to forbid any such conduct insofar as it is here relevant, i. e., insofar as it is intertwined with foreign conduct that causes independent foreign harm. Rather Congress sought to release domestic (and foreign) anticompetitive conduct from Sherman Act constraints when that conduct causes foreign harm. Congress, of course, did make an exception where that conduct also causes domestic harm. See House Report, at 13 (concerns about American firms’ participation in international cartels addressed through “domestic injury” exception). But any independent domestic harm the foreign conduct causes here has, by definition, little or nothing to do with the matter.
We thus repeat the basic question: Why is it reasonable to apply this law to conduct that is significantly foreign insofar as that conduct causes independent foreign harm and that foreign harm alone gives rise to the plaintiffs claim? We can find no good answer to the question.
The Areeda and Hovenkamp treatise notes that under the Court of Appeals’ interpretation of the statute
“a Malaysian customer could . . . maintain an action under United States law in a United States court against its own Malaysian supplier, another cartel member, simply by noting that unnamed third parties injured [in the United States] by the American [cartel member’s] conduct would also have a cause of action. Effectively, the United States courts would provide worldwide subject matter jurisdiction to any foreign suitor wishing to sue its own local supplier, but unhappy with its own sovereign’s provisions for private antitrust enforcement, provided that a different plaintiff had a cause of action against a different firm for injuries that were within U. S. [other-than-import] commerce. It does not seem excessively rigid to infer that Congress would not have intended that result.” P. Areeda & H. Hovenkamp, Antitrust Law ¶ 273, pp. 51-52 (Supp. 2003).
We agree with the comment. We can find no convincing justification for the extension of the Sherman Act’s scope that it describes.
Respondents reply that many nations have adopted antitrust laws similar to our own, to the point where the practical likelihood of interference with the relevant interests of other nations is minimal. Leaving price fixing to the side, however, this Court has found to the contrary. See, e. g., Hartford Fire, 509 U. S., at 797-799 (noting that the alleged conduct in the London reinsurance market, while illegal under United States antitrust laws, was assumed to be perfectly consistent with British law and policy); see also, e. g., 2 W. Fugate, Foreign Commerce and the Antitrust Laws §16.6 (5th ed. 1996) (noting differences between European Union and United States law on vertical restraints).
Regardless, even where nations agree about primary conduct, say, price fixing, they disagree dramatically about appropriate remedies. The application, for example, of American private treble-damages remedies to anticompetitive conduct taking place abroad has generated considerable controversy. See, e. g., 2 ABA Section of Antitrust Law, Antitrust Law Developments 1208-1209 (5th ed. 2002). And several foreign nations have filed briefs here arguing that to apply our remedies would unjustifiably permit their citizens to bypass their own less generous remedial schemes, thereby upsetting a balance of competing considerations that their own domestic antitrust laws embody. E. g., Brief for Government of Federal Republic of Germany et al. as Amici Curiae 2 (setting forth German interest “in seeing that German companies are not subject to the extraterritorial reach of the United States’ antitrust laws by private foreign plaintiffs— whose injuries were sustained in transactions entirely outside United States commerce — seeking treble damages in private lawsuits against German companies”); Brief for Government of Canada as Amicus Curiae 14 (“treble damages remedy would supersede” Canada’s “national policy decision”); Brief for Government of Japan as Amicus Curiae 10 (finding “particularly troublesome” the potential “interference] with Japanese governmental regulation of the Japanese market”).
These briefs add that a decision permitting independently injured foreign plaintiffs to pursue private treble-damages remedies would undermine foreign nations’ own antitrust enforcement policies by diminishing foreign firms’ incentive to cooperate with antitrust authorities in return for prosecuto-rial amnesty. Brief for Government of Federal Republic of Germany et al. as Amici Curiae 28-30; Brief for Government of Canada as Amicus Curiae 11-14. See also Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 19-21 (arguing the same in respect to American antitrust enforcement).
Respondents alternatively argue that comity does not demand an interpretation of the FTAIA that would exclude independent foreign injury cases across the board. Rather, courts can take (and sometimes have taken) account of comity considerations case by case, abstaining where comity considerations so dictate. Cf., e.g., Hartford Fire, supra, at 797, n. 24; United States v. Nippon Paper Industries Co., 109 F. 3d 1, 8 (CA1 1997); Mannington Mills, Inc. v. Congoleum Corp., 595 F. 2d 1287, 1294-1295 (CA3 1979).
In our view, however, this approach is too complex to prove workable. The Sherman Act covers many different kinds of anticompetitive agreements. Courts would have to examine how foreign law, compared with American law, treats not only price fixing but also, say, information-sharing agreements, patent-licensing price conditions, territorial product resale limitations, and various forms of joint venture, in respect to both primary conduct and remedy. The legally and economically technical nature of that enterprise means lengthier proceedings, appeals, and more proceedings — to the point where procedural costs and delays could themselves threaten interference with a foreign nation’s ability to maintain the integrity of its own antitrust enforcement system. Even in this relatively simple price-fixing case, for example, competing briefs tell us (1) that potential treble-damages liability would help enforce widespread anti-price-fixing norms (through added deterrence) and (2) the opposite, namely, that such liability would hinder antitrust enforcement (by reducing incentives to enter amnesty programs). Compare, e. g., Brief for Certain Professors of Economics as Amici Curiae 2-4 with Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 19-21. How could a court seriously interested in resolving so empirical a matter — a matter potentially related to impact on foreign interests — do so simply and expeditiously?
We conclude that principles of prescriptive comity counsel against the Court of Appeals’ interpretation of the FTAIA. Where foreign anticompetitive conduct plays a significant role and where foreign injury is independent of domestic effects, Congress might have hoped that America’s antitrust laws, so fundamental a component of our own economic system, would commend themselves to other nations as well. But, if America’s antitrust policies could not win their own way in the international marketplace for such ideas, Congress, we must assume, would not have tried to impose them, in an act of legal imperialism, through legislative fiat.
Second, the FTAIA’s language and history suggest that Congress designed the FTAIA to clarify, perhaps to limit, but not to expand in any significant way, the Sherman Act’s scope as applied to foreign commerce. See House Report, at 2-3. And we have found no significant indication that at the time Congress wrote this statute courts would have thought the Sherman Act applicable in these circumstances.
The Solicitor General and petitioners tell us that they have found no case in which any court applied the Sherman Act to redress foreign injury in such circumstances. Tr. of Oral Arg. 21; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 13; Brief for Petitioners 13; see also Den Norske, 241 F. 3d, at 429 (“[W]e have found no case in which jurisdiction was found in a case like this — where a foreign plaintiff is injured in a foreign market with no injuries arising from the anticompeti-tive effect on a United States market”). And respondents themselves apparently conceded as much at a May 23, 2001, hearing before the District Court below. 2001 WL 761360, at *4.
Nevertheless, respondents now have called to our attention six cases, three decided by this Court and three decided by lower courts. In the first three cases the defendants included both American companies and foreign companies jointly engaged in anticompetitive behavior having both foreign and domestic effects. See Timken Roller Bearing Co. v. United States, 341 U. S. 593, 595 (1951) (agreements among American, British, and French corporations to eliminate competition in the manufacture and sale of antifriction bearings in world, including United States, markets); United States v. National Lead Co., 332 U. S. 319, 325-328 (1947) (international cartels with American and foreign members, restraining international commerce, including United States commerce, in titanium pigments); United States v. American Tobacco Co., 221 U. S. 106, 171-172 (1911) (American tobacco corporations agreed in England with British company to divide world markets). In all three cases the plaintiff sought relief, including relief that might have helped to protect those injured abroad.
In all three cases, however, the plaintiff was the Government of the United States. A Government plaintiff, unlike a private plaintiff, must seek to obtain the relief necessary to protect the public from further anticompetitive conduct and to redress anticompetitive harm. And a Government plaintiff has legal authority broad enough to allow it to carry out this mission. 15 U. S. C. § 25; see also, e. g., United States v. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., 366 U. S. 316, 334 (1961) (“[I]t is well settled that once the Government has successfully borne the considerable burden of establishing a violation of law, all doubts as to the remedy are to be resolved in its favor”). Private plaintiffs, by way of contrast, are far less likely to be able to secure broad relief. See California v. American Stores Co., 495 U. S. 271, 295 (1990) (“Our conclusion that a district court has the power to order divestiture in appropriate cases brought [by private plaintiffs] does not, of course, mean that such power should be exercised in every situation in which the Government would be entitled to such relief”); 2 P. Areeda, H. Hovenkamp, & R. Blair, Antitrust Law ¶¶ 303d-303e, pp. 40-45 (2d ed. 2000) (distinguishing between private and government suits in terms of availability, public interest motives, and remedial scope); Griffin, Extraterritoriality in U. S. and EU Antitrust Enforcement, 67 Antitrust L. J. 159, 194 (1999) (“[P]rivate plaintiffs often are unwilling to exercise the degree of self-restraint and consideration of foreign governmental sensibilities generally exercised by the U. S. Government”). This difference means that the Government’s ability, in these three cases, to obtain relief helpful to those injured abroad tells us little or nothing about whether this Court would have awarded similar relief at the request of private plaintiffs.
Neither did the Court focus explicitly in its opinions on a claim that the remedies sought to cure only independently caused foreign harm. Thus the three cases tell us even less about whether this Court then thought that foreign private plaintiffs could have obtained foreign relief based solely upon such independently caused foreign injury.
Respondents also refer to three lower court cases brought by private plaintiffs. In the first, Industria Siciliana Asfalti, Bitumi, S. p. A. v. Exxon Research & Engineering Co., No. 75 Civ. 5828-CSH, 1977 WL 1353 (SDNY, Jan. 18, 1977), a District Court permitted an Italian firm to proceed against an American, firm with a Sherman Act claim based upon a purely foreign injury, i. e., an injury suffered in Italy. The court made clear, however, that the foreign injury was “inex tricably bound up with . . . domestic restraints of trade,” and that the plaintiff “was injured ... by reason of an alleged restraint of our domestic trade,” id., at *11, *12 (emphasis added), i. e., the foreign injury was dependent upon, not independent of domestic harm. See Part VI, infra.
In the second case, Dominicus Americana' Bohio v. Gulf & Western Industries, Inc., 473 F. Supp. 680 (SDNY 1979), a District Court permitted Dominican and American firms to proceed against a competing American firm and the Dominican Tourist Information Center with a Sherman Act claim based upon injury apparently suffered in the Dominican Republic. The court, in finding the Sherman Act applicable, weighed several different factors, including the participation of American firms in the unlawful conduct, the partly domestic nature of both conduct and harm (to American tourists, a kind of “export”), and the fact that the domestic harm depended in part upon the foreign injury. Id., at 688. The' court did not separately analyze the legal problem before it in terms of independently caused foreign injury. Its opinion simply does not discuss the matter. It consequently cannot be taken as significant support for application of the Sherman Act here.
The third case, Hunt v. Mobil Oil Corp., 550 F. 2d 68, 72 (CA2 1977), involved a claim by Hunt, an independent oil producer with reserves in Libya, that other major oil producers in Libya and the Persian Gulf (the “seven majors”) had conspired in New York and elsewhere to make it more difficult for Hunt to reach agreement with the Libyan Government on production terms and thereby eliminate him as a competitor. The case can be seen as involving a primarily foreign conspiracy designed to bring about foreign injury in Libya. But, as in Dominicus, the court nowhere considered the problem of independently caused foreign harm. Rather, the case was about the “act of state” doctrine, and the sole discussion of Sherman Act applicability — one brief paragraph — refers to other matters. 550 F. 2d, at 72, and n. 2. We do not see how Congress could have taken this case as significant support for the proposition that the Sherman Act applies in present circumstances.
The upshot is that no pre-1982 case provides significant authority for application of the Sherman Act in the circumstances we here assume. Indeed, a leading contemporaneous lower court case contains language suggesting the contrary. See Timberlane Lumber Co. v. Bank of America, N. T. & S. A., 549 F. 2d 597, 613 (CA9 1976) (insisting that the foreign conduct’s domestic effect be “sufficiently large to present a cognizable injury to the plaintiffs” (emphasis added)).
Taken together, these two sets of considerations, the one derived from comity and the other reflecting history, convince us that Congress would not have intended the FTAIA’s exception to bring independently caused foreign injury within the Sherman Act’s reach.
V
Respondents point to several considerations that point the other way. For one thing, the FTAIA’s language speaks in terms of the Sherman Act’s applicability to certain kinds of conduct. The FTAIA says that the Sherman Act applies to foreign “conduct” with a certain kind of harmful domestic effect. Why isn’t that the end of the matter? How can the Sherman Act both apply to the conduct when one person sues but not apply to the same conduct when another person sues? The question of who can or cannot sue is a matter for other statutes (namely, the Clayton Act) to determine.
Moreover, the exception says that it applies if the conduct’s domestic effect gives rise to “a claim,” not to “the plaintiff’s claim” or “the claim at issue.” 15 U. S. C. §6a(2) (emphases added). The alleged conduct here did have domestic effects, and those effects were harmful enough to give rise to “a” claim. Respondents concede that this claim is not their own claim; it is someone else’s claim. But, linguistically speaking, they say, that is beside the point. Nor did Congress place the relevant words “gives rise to a claim” in the FTAIA to suggest any geographical limitation; rather it did so for a here neutral reason, namely, in order to make clear that the domestic effect must be an adverse (as opposed to a beneficial) effect. See House Report, at 11 (citing National Bank of Canada v. Interbank Card Assn., 666 F. 2d 6, 8 (CA2 1981)).
Despite their linguistic logic, these arguments are not convincing. Linguistically speaking; a statute can apply and not apply to the same conduct, depending upon other circumstances; and those other circumstances may include the nature of the lawsuit (or of the related underlying harm). It also makes linguistic sense to read the words “a claim” as if they refer to the “plaintiff’s claim” or “the claim at issue.”
At most, respondents’ linguistic arguments might show that respondents’ reading is the more natural reading of the statutory language. But those arguments do not show that we must accept that reading. And that is the critical point. The considerations previously mentioned — those of comity and history — make clear that the respondents’ reading is not consistent with the FTAIA’s basic intent. If the statute’s language reasonably permits an interpretation consistent with that intent, we should adopt it. And, for the reasons stated, we believe that the statute’s language permits the reading that we give it.
Finally, respondents point to policy considerations, namely, that application of the Sherman Act in present circumstances will (through increased deterrence) help protect Americans against foreign-caused anticompetitive injury. Petitioners and supporting enforcement-agency amici, however, have made important experience-backed arguments (based upon amnesty-seeking incentives) to the contrary. We cannot say whether, on balance, respondents’ side of this empirically based argument or the enforcement agencies’ side is correct. But we can say that the answer to the dispute is neither clear enough, nor of such likely empirical significance, that it could overcome the considerations we have previously discussed and change our conclusion.
For these reasons, we conclude that petitioners’ reading of the statute’s language is correct. That reading furthers the statute’s basic purposes, it properly reflects considerations of comity, and it is consistent with Sherman Act history.
VI
We have assumed that the anticompetitive conduct here independently caused foreign injury; that is, the conduct’s domestic effects did not help to bring about that foreign injury. Respondents argue, in the alternative, that the foreign injury was not independent. Rather, they say, the anti-competitive conduct’s domestic effects were linked to that foreign harm. Respondents contend that, because vitamins are fungible and readily transportable, without an adverse domestic effect (i. e., higher prices in the United States), the sellers could not have maintained their international price-fixing arrangement and respondents would not have suffered their foreign injury. They add that this “but for” condition is sufficient to bring the price-fixing conduct within the scope of the FTAIA’s exception.
The Court of Appeals, however, did not address this argument, 315 F. 3d, at 341, and, for that reason, neither shall we. Respondents remain free to ask the Court of Appeals to consider the claim. The Court of Appeals may determine whether respondents properly preserved the argument, and, if so, it may consider it and decide the related claim.
For these reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice O’Connor 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.
Me. Chief Justice Burgee
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question in this case is whether mandamus is an appropriate means of challenging the validity of an indictment of a Member of Congress on the ground that it violates the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution. The Court of Appeals declined to issue the writ. We affirm.
I
Petitioner Helstoski served in the United States Congress from 1965 through 1976 as a Representative from New Jersey. In 1974, the Department of Justice began investigating reported political corruption, including allegations that aliens had paid money for the introduction and processing of private bills which would suspend the application of the immigration laws so as to allow them to remain in this country.
In June 1976, a grand jury returned a 12-count indictment charging Helstoski and others with various criminal acts. Only the first four counts are involved in this case. The first count charged that Helstoski and others had conspired to violate 18 U. S. C. § 201 (c) (1) by accepting money in return for Helstoski’s “being influenced in the performance of official acts, to wit: the introduction of private bills in the United States House of Representatives.” The charge recited 16 overt acts, 4 of which referred to the actual introduction of private bills; a 5th referred to an agreement to introduce a private bill. The entire conspiracy was charged as a violation of the general conspiracy statute, 18 U. S. C. § 371.
Counts II, III, and IV were substantive counts charging violations of 18 U. S. C. §§ 201 (c) (1) and (2):
“Whoever, being a public official[,] directly or indirectly, corruptly asks, demands, exacts, solicits, seeks, accepts, receives, or agrees to receive anything of value for himself or for any other person or entity, in return for:
“(1) being influenced in his performance of any official act; or
“(2) being influenced to commit or aid in committing, or to collude in, or allow, any fraud, or make opportunity for the commission of any fraud on the United States;
“Shall be fined ... or imprisoned.” (Emphasis added.)
“Public official” and “official act” are defined in 18 U. S. C. §201:
“(a) For the purpose of this section:
“ ‘public official’ means Member of Congress . . . ; and
“ ‘official act’ means any decision or action on any question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy, which may at any time be pending, or which may by law be brought before any public official, in his official capacity, or in his place of trust or profit.”
Each count charged that Helstoski, acting through his legislative aide, had solicited money from aliens in return for “being influenced in the performance of official acts, to wit: the introduction of private bills in the United States House of Representatives on behalf of” the aliens. Essentially, the charges against Helstoski parallel those dealt with in United States v. Johnson, 383 U. S. 169 (1966), and United States v. Brewster, 408 U. S. 501 (1972).
Each count also charged that Helstoski, again acting through his aide, had accepted a bribe “in return for his being influenced in the performance of official acts, to wit: the introduction of private bills in the United States House of Representatives on behalf of” the aliens. Finally, each count charged that a private bill had been introduced on a particular date.
Helstoski neither appeared before nor submitted material to the particular grand jury that returned the indictment. The prosecutor provided that grand jury with transcripts of most, but not all, of the testimony of witnesses, including Helstoski, before eight other grand juries. The United States Attorney explained that to avoid any possible prejudice to Helstoski he had not told the ninth grand jury of Helstoski’s invocation of his privilege under the Fifth Amendment. Moreover, he sought to avoid any challenge resulting from the fact that the District Judge had appeared before one grand jury to rule on Helstoski’s claim of that privilege.
Helstoski moved to dismiss the indictment, contending that the grand jury process had been abused and that the indictment violated the Speech or Debate Clause. He supported his allegation of abuse of the grand jury by characterizing the eight grand juries as “discovery tools.” The effect, he contended, was to permit the prosecutor to select the information presented to the indicting grand jury and to deprive that grand jury of evidence of the demeanor of witnesses, especially that of Helstoski himself.
District Judge Meanor denied the motion after examining a transcript of the evidence presented to the indicting grand jury. He held that there had been no such abuse to justify invalidating the indictment. He found that most of the material not submitted to the indicting grand jury “was either prejudicial to the defendants, or neither inculpating nor exculpating in nature.” He also found that the testimony of two grand jury witnesses should have been presented to the indicting grand jury and concluded that Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83 (1963), required that the Government provide Helstoski with transcripts of their testimony.. Judge Meanor also held that the Speech or Debate Clause did not require dismissal.
Approximately three months later, in June 1977, Helstoski petitioned the Court of Appeals for a writ of mandamus directing the District Court to dismiss the indictment.
The Court of Appeals declined to issue the writ of mandamus. 576 F. 2d 511 (CA3 1978). It concluded that the indictment in this case was indistinguishable from that in United States v. Brewster, supra, where an indictment was held not to violate the Speech or Debate Clause even though it contained references to legislative acts. The Court of Appeals rejected Helstoski’s argument that the indictment was invalid because the grand jury had heard evidence of legislative acts, which he argued was in violation of the Speech or Debate Clause. The court declined to go behind the indictment, holding that it was valid on its face.
In seeking reversal here of the Court of Appeals holding, Helstoski argues that the extraordinary remedy of mandamus is appropriate in this case to protect the constitutional command of separation of powers. He contends that the Speech or Debate Clause assigns exclusive jurisdiction over all legislative acts to Congress. The indictment itself, he urges, is a violation of that Clause because it represents an impermissible assertion of jurisdiction over the legislative function by the grand jury and the federal courts. He challenges the validity of the indictment on two grounds. First, the indictment itself refers to legislative acts. Any attempt at restricting the proof at trial, as approved by the Court of Appeals, will amount to an amendment of the indictment, thereby violating a Fifth Amendment right to be tried only on an indictment in precisely the form issued by a grand jury. Second, he contends the Speech or Debate Clause was violated when the grand jury was allowed to consider evidence of his legislative acts notwithstanding that such evidence and testimony was presented by him.
II
Almost 100 years ago, this Court explained: “The general principle which governs proceedings by mandamus is, that whatever can be done without the employment of that extraordinary writ, may not be done with it. It lies only when there is practically no other remedy.” Ex parte Rowland, 104 U. S. 604, 617 (1882) (emphasis added). More recently we summarized certain considerations for determining whether the writ should issue:
“Among these are that the party seeking issuance of the writ have no other adequate means to attain the relief he desires, and that he satisfy The burden of showing that [his] right to issuance of the-writ is “clear and indisputable.” ’ Moreover, it is important to remember that issuance of the writ is in large part a matter of discretion with the court to which the petition is addressed.” Kerr v. United States District Court, 426 U. S. 394, 403 (1976) (citations omitted).
Helstoski contends that his petition for a writ of mandamus should not be governed by the rules which we have developed for assessing mandamus petitions generally. He argues that the writ is especially appropriate for enforcing the commands of the Speech or Debate Clause. We agree that the guarantees of that Clause are vitally important to our system of government and therefore are entitled to be treated by the courts with the sensitivity that such important values require. We are unwilling, however, to accept the contention that mandamus is the appropriate vehicle for assuring protection of the Clause in the circumstances shown here. Helstoski could readily have secured review of the ruling complained of and all objectives now sought, by direct appeal to the Court of Appeals from the District Court order denying his motion to dismiss the indictment.
Only recently in Abney v. United States, 431 U. S. 651 (1977), we held that “pretrial orders rejecting claims of former jeopardy . . . constitute ‘final decisions’ and thus satisfy the jurisdictional prerequisites of [28 U. S. C.] § 1291.” Id., at 662. The reasoning undergirding that holding applies with particular force here. The language of the Abney opinion is particularly apt, even though the context was the Double Jeopardy Clause:
“[T]here can be no doubt that such orders constitute a complete, formal and, in the trial court, final rejection of a criminal defendant’s double jeopardy claim. There are simply no further steps that can be taken in the District Court to avoid the trial the defendant maintains is barred by the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee.” Id., at 659.
This is equally true for a claim that an indictment violates the fundamental guarantees of the Speech or Debate Clause. Once a motion to dismiss is denied, there is nothing the Member can do under that Clause in the trial court to prevent the trial; but it is equally clear an appeal of the District Court ruling was available.
Second, we noted:
“ [T]he very nature of a double jeopardy claim is such that it is collateral to, and separable from, the principal issue at the accused's impending criminal trial, i. e., whether or not the accused is guilty of the offense charged. In arguing that the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment bars his prosecution, the defendant makes no challenge whatsoever to the merits of the charge against him. Nor does he seek suppression of evidence which the Government plans to use in obtaining a conviction. Rather, he is contesting the very authority of the Government to hale him into court to face trial on the charge against him.” Ibid. (Emphasis added; citations omitted.)
Abney concludes:
“ [T]he rights conferred on a criminal accused by the Double Jeopardy Clause would be significantly undermined if appellate review of double jeopardy claims were postponed until after conviction and sentence. . . . [T]his Court has long recognized that the Double Jeopardy Clause protects an individual against more than being subjected to double punishments. It is a guarantee against being twice put to trial for the same offense.” Id., at 660-661.
That characterization of the purpose of the Double Jeopardy Clause echoed this Court’s statement in Dombrowski v. Eastland, 387 U. S. 82, 85 (1967), that the Speech or Debate Clause was designed to protect Congressmen “not only from the consequences of litigation’s results but, also from the burden of defending themselves.”
Here, the holding of Abney becomes highly relevant; by analogy, if a Member “is to avoid exposure to [being questioned for acts done in either House] and thereby enjoy the full protection of the Clause, his . . . challenge to the indictment must be reviewable before ... exposure [to trial] occurs.” Abney, supra, at 662.
Helstoski argues that he should not be penalized for failing to predict our decision in Abney, But he cannot be viewed as being penalized since the controlling law of the Third Circuit was announced at the time of the District Court order denying dismissal of the indictment, and our holding did no more than affirm the correctness of the law of that Circuit. See United States v. DiSilvio, 520 F. 2d 247, 248 n. 2a (CA3), cert. denied, 423 U. S. 1015 (1975). The relevance of the Abney-DiSilvio holdings, read in light of Dombrowski v. Eastland, supra, was predictable. We hold that if Helstoski wished to challenge the District Court’s denial of his motion to dismiss the indictment, direct appeal to the Court of Appeals was the proper course under DiSilvio, supra.
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Powell took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
The Speech or Debate Clause provides that “for any Speech or Debate in either House, they [the Senators and Representatives] shall not be questioned in any other Place.” Art. I, § 6.
This ease was argued together with No. 78-349, United States v. Helstoski, ante, p. 477, which concerns the restrictions the Speech or Debate Clause places on the admissibility of evidence at a trial on charges that a former Member of the House accepted money in return for promising to introduce and introducing private bills.
Tbe proceedings before the various grand juries are described in United States v. Helstoski, ante, p. 477.
It is true that Helstoski challenges the admissibility of evidence at his trial; that challenge, however, is raised only if the indictment is allowed to stand.
If the petition for a writ of mandamus were treated as an appeal it would, of course, have been jurisdictionally out of time. Fed. Rule App. Proc. 4.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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 Marshall
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Respondent was convicted of violating the Hobbs Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1951 (1976 ed.), which provides in relevant part:
“Whoever in any way or degree obstructs, delays, or affects commerce or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce, by robbery or extortion or attempts or conspires so to do, or commits or threatens physical violence to any person or property in furtherance of a plan or purpose to do anything in violation of this section shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.” § 1951 (a).
The question in this case is whether the Government not only had to establish that respondent violated the express terms of the Act, but also had to prove that his conduct constituted “racketeering.”
The evidence at respondent’s jury trial showed that he and an accomplice attempted to obtain $100,000 from a federally insured bank by means of threats of physical violence made to the bank’s president. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, with one judge dissenting, reversed the Hobbs Act conviction, holding that, “ 'although an activity may be within the literal language of the Hobbs Act, it must constitute “racketeering” to be within the perimeters of the Act.’ ” 548 F. 2d 1355, 1357, quoting United States v. Yokley, 542 F. 2d 300, 304 (CA6 1976). We granted certiorari, 434 U. S. 816 (1977), and we now reverse.
I
Nothing on the face of the statute suggests a congressional intent to limit its coverage to persons who have engaged in “racketeering.” To the contrary, the statutory language sweeps within it all persons who have “in any way or degree . . . affect [ed] commerce ... by robbery or extortion.” 18 U. S. C. § 1951 (a) (1976 ed.). These words do not lend themselves to restrictive interpretation; as we have recognized, they “manifest... a purpose to use all the constitutional power Congress has to punish interference with interstate commerce by extortion, robbery or physical violence,” Stirone v. United States, 361 U. S. 212, 215 (1960). The statute, moreover, carefully defines its key terms, such as “robbery,” “extortion,” and “commerce.” Hence the absence of any reference to “racketeering” — much less any definition of the word — is strong evidence that Congress did not intend to make “racketeering” an element of a Hobbs Act violation.
Respondent nevertheless argues that we should read a racketeering requirement into the statute. To do so, however, might create serious constitutional problems, in view of the absence of any definition of racketeering in the statute. Neither respondent nor either of the two Courts of Appeals that have read this requirement into the statute has even attempted to provide a definition. Without such a definition, the statute might well violate “the first essential of due process of law”: It would forbid “the doing of an act in terms so vague that [persons] of common intelligence [would] necessarily [have to] guess at its meaning and differ as to its application.” Connolly v. General Constr. Co., 269 U. S. 385, 391 (1926); see, e. g., Hynes v. Mayor of Orodell, 425 U. S. 610, 620 (1976). But we need not concern ourselves with these potential constitutional difficulties because a construction that avoids them is virtually compelled by the language and structure of the statute.
II
A
Nothing in the legislative history supports the interpretation of the statute adopted by the Court of Appeals. The predecessor to the Hobbs Act, the Anti-Racketeering Act of 1934, ch. 569, 48 Stat. 979, was enacted, as its name implies, at a time when Congress was very concerned about racketeering activities. Despite these concerns, however, the Act, which was written in broad language similar to the language of the Hobbs Act, nowhere mentioned racketeering. This absence of the term is not surprising, since the principal congressional committee working on the Act, known as the Copeland Committee, found that the term and the associated word “racket” had “for some time been used loosely to designate every conceivable sort of practice or activity which was either questionable, unmoral, fraudulent, or even disliked, whether criminal or not.” S. Rep. No. 1189, 75th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (1937).
The Copeland Committee proceeded to develop its own “working definition” of racketeering, but it did not incorporate this definition into the Act. Ibid. Critical to the definition was the existence of “an organized conspiracy to commit the crimes of extortion or coercion.” Id., at 3. Yet the Act itself did not require a conspiracy to engage in unlawful conduct, and the Senate Judiciary Committee Report expressly stated that a violation of the Act would be established “ 'whether the restraints [of commerce] are in form of conspiracies or not/ ” S. Rep. No. 532, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1934), quoting Justice Department memorandum; see H. R, Rep. No, 1833, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., 2 (1934). Moreover, the Act included a separate prohibition on conspiracies, § 2 (d), 48 Stat. 980; see n. 5, supra, that would have been superfluous if proof of racketeering — as defined by the Copeland Committee to require conspiracy — were an integral element of the substantive offenses. There is nothing in the legislative history to dispel the conclusion compelled by these observations. Congress simply did not intend to make racketeering a separate, unstated element of an Anti-Racketeering Act violation.
B
Given the absence of this intent in the Hobbs Act’s predecessor, any requirement that racketeering be proved must be derived from the Hobbs Act itself or its legislative history. While the Hobbs Act was enacted to correct a perceived deficiency in the Anti-Racketeering Act, that deficiency had nothing to do with the element of racketeering. See United States v. Enmons, 410 U. S. 396, 401-404 (1973). Rather, it involved the latter Act’s requirement that the proscribed “force, violence or coercion” lead to exaction of “valuable consideration” and its exclusion of wage payments from the definition of consideration. See n. 5, supra. In construing the wage-payments exclusion, this Court had held that the Act did not cover the actions of union truckdrivers who exacted money by threats or violence from out-of-town drivers in return for undesired and often unutilized services. United States v. Teamsters, 315 U. S. 521 (1942). Shortly thereafter, several bills were introduced in Congress to alter this result. United States v. Enmons, supra, at 402, and n. 8.
The bill that eventually became the Hobbs Act deleted the exception on which the Court had relied in Teamsters and substituted specific prohibitions against robbery and extortion for the Anti-Racketeering Act’s language relating to the use of force or threats of force. The primary focus in the Hobbs Act debates was on whether the bill was designed as an attack on organized labor. Opponents of the bill argued that it would be used to prosecute strikers and interfere with labor unions. See, e. g., 91 Cong. Rec. 11848 (1945) (remarks of Rep. Lane) ; ibid, (remarks of Rep. Powell); id., at 11902 (remarks of Rep. Celler). The proponents of the bill steadfastly maintained that the purpose of the bill was to prohibit robbery and extortion perpetrated by anyone. See, e. g., id., at 11900 (remarks of Rep. Hancock); id., at 11904 (remarks of Rep. Gwynne); id., at 11912 (remarks of Rep. Hobbs); id., at 11914 (remarks of Rep. Russell). Although there were many references in the debates to “racketeers” and “racketeering,” see, e. g., id., at 11906 (remarks of Rep. Robsion); id., at 11908 (remarks of Rep. Vursell); id., at 11910 (remarks of Rep. Andersen), none of the comments supports the conclusion that Congress did not intend to make punishable all conduct falling within the reach of the statutory language. To the contrary, the debates are fully consistent with the statement in the Report of the House Committee on the Judiciary that the purpose of the bill was “to prevent anyone from obstructing, delaying, or affecting commerce, or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce by robbery or extortion as defined in the bill.” H. R. Rep. No. 238, 79th Cong., 1st Sess., 9 (1945) (emphasis added); see also S. Rep. No. 1516, 79th Cong., 2d Sess., 1 (1946).
Indeed, many Congressmen praised the bill because it set out with more precision the conduct that was being made criminal. As Representative Hobbs noted, the words robbery and extortion “have been construed a thousand times by the courts. Everybody knows what they mean.” 91 Cong. Rec. 11912 (1945). See also id., at 11906 (remarks of Rep. Robsion); id., at 11910 (remarks of Rep. Springer); id., at 11914 (remarks of Rep. Russell). In the wake of the Court’s decision in Teamsters, moreover, a paramount congressional concern was to be clear about what conduct was prohibited:
“We are explicit. That language is too general, and we thought it better to make this bill explicit, and leave nothing to the imagination of the court.” 91 Cong. Rec. 11904 (1945) (remarks of Rep. Hancock).
See id., at 11912 (remarks of Rep. Hobbs).
It is inconceivable that, at the same time Congress was so concerned about clearly defining the acts prohibited under the bill, it intended to make proof of racketeering — a term not mentioned in the statute — a separate prerequisite to criminal liability under the Hobbs Act.
III
We therefore conclude that respondent’s position has no support in either the statute or its legislative history. Respondent also invokes, as did the court below, two maxims of statutory construction, but neither is applicable here. It is true that “ambiguity concerning the ambit of criminal statutes should be resolved in favor of lenity,” Rewis v. United States, 401 U. S. 808, 812 (1971), and that, “unless Congress conveys its purpose clearly, it will not be deemed to have significantly changed the federal-state balance,” United States v. Bass, 404 U. S. 336, 349 (1971). Rut here Congress has conveyed its purpose clearly, and we decline to manufacture ambiguity where none exists. The two maxims only apply “when we are uncertain about the statute’s meaning”; they are “not to be used ‘in complete disregard of the purpose of the legislature.’ ” Scarborough v. United States, 431 U. S. 563, 577 (1977), quoting United States v. Bramblett, 348 U. S. 503, 510 (1955).
With regard to the concern about disturbing the federal-state balance, moreover, there is no question that Congress intended to define as a federal crime conduct that it knew was punishable under state law. The legislative debates are replete with statements that the conduct punishable under the Hobbs Act was already punishable under state robbery and extortion statutes. See, e. g., 91 Cong. Rec. 11848 (1945) (remarks of Rep. Powell); id., at 11900 (remarks of Rep. Hancock); id., at 11904 (remarks of Rep. Gwynne). Those who opposed the Act argued that it was a grave interference with the rights of the States. See, e. g., id., at 11903 (remarks of Rep. Welch); id., at 11913 (remarks of Rep. Resa). Congress apparently believed, however, that the States had not been effectively prosecuting robbery and extortion affecting interstate commerce and that the Federal Government had an obligation to do so. See, e. g., id., at 11911 (remarks of Rep. Jennings); id., at 11904, 11920 (remarks of Rep. Gwynne).
Our examination of the.statutory language and the legislative history of the Hobbs Act impels us to the conclusion that Congress intended to make criminal all conduct within the reach of the statutory language. We therefore decline the invitation to limit the statute’s scope by reference to an undefined category of conduct termed “racketeering.” The judgment of the Court of Appeals is, accordingly,
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Brennan took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Respondent was also convicted of attempted bank robbery, a violation of 18 U. S. C. §2113 (a) (1976 ed.). In the Court of Appeals, however, the Government confessed error on the ground that § 2113 (a) is not violated unless the taking of the bank’s money is "from the person or presence of another.” Since respondent’s plan involved the delivery of the money by the bank president to a parking lot and did not contemplate any entry by respondent into the bank or any taking from the person or presence of the president, the Government conceded that the bank robbery conviction should be vacated. 548 F. 2d 1355, 1356-1357.
In its brief in this Court, the Government notes that “the United States Attorney’s concession was not approved by the Solicitor General and does not represent the position of the Department of Justice on this question.” Brief for United States 33 n. 19. We express no view on the validity of the United States Attorney’s interpretation of §2113 (a).
There is a conflict in the Circuits on this issue. Compare United States v. Culbert, 548 F. 2d 1355 (CA9 1977) (case below), and United States v. Yokley, 542 F. 2d 300 (CA6 1976), with United States v. Frazier, 560 F. 2d 884, 886 (CA8 1977), cert. pending, No. 77-847; United States v. Warledo, 557 F. 2d 721, 730 (CA10 1977); and United States v. Brecht, 540 F. 2d 45, 52 (CA2 1976).
Title 18 U. S. C. § 1951 (b) (1976 ed.) provides:
“As used in this section—
“(1) The term ‘robbery’ means the unlawful taking or obtaining of personal property from the person or in the presence of another, against his will, by means of actual or threatened force, or violence, or fear of injury, immediate or future, to his person or property, or property in his custody or possession, or the person or property of a relative or member of his family or of anyone in his company at the time of the taking or obtaining.
“(2) The term ‘extortion’ means the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, or under color of official right.
“(3) The term ‘commerce’ means commerce within the District of Columbia, or any Territory or Possession of the United States; all commerce between any point in a State, Territory, Possession, or the District of Columbia and any point outside thereof; all commerce between points within the same State through any place outside such State; and all other commerce over which the United States has jurisdiction.”
Although we find the statutory language to be clear, we have often stated that, “[w]hen aid to construction of the meaning of words, as used in the statute, is available, there certainly can be no ‘rule of law’ which forbids its use, however clear the words may appear on ‘superficial examination.’ ” United States v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 310 U. S. 534, 543-544 (1940) (footnotes omitted). See Train v. Colorado Public Interest Research Group, Inc., 426 U. S. 1, 10 (1976); Cass v. United States, 417 U. S. 72, 77-79 (1974).
The Anti-Racketeering Act provided in pertinent part:
“Sec. 2. Any person who, in connection with or in relation to any act in any way or in any degree affecting trade or commerce or any article or commodity moving or about to move in trade or commerce—
“(a) Obtains or attempts to obtain, by the use of or attempt to use or threat to use force, violence, or coercion, the payment of money or other valuable considerations, or the purchase or rental of property or protective services, not including, however, the payment of wages by a bona-fide employer to a bona-fide employee; or
“(b) Obtains the property of another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of force or fear, or under color of ofiicial right; or “(c) Commits or threatens to commit an act of physical violence or physical injury to a person or property in furtherance of a plan or purpose to violate sections (a) or (b); or
“(d) Conspires or acts concertedly with any other person or persons to commit any of the foregoing acts; shall, upon conviction thereof, be guilty of a felony and shall be punished by imprisonment from one to ten years or by a fine of $10,000, or both.
“Sec. 3. (a) As used in this Act the term 'wrongful’ means in violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State or Territory.
“(b) The terms 'property’, 'money’, or 'valuable considerations’ used herein shall not be deemed to include wages paid by a bona-fide employer to a bona-fide employee.”
Although the cited report was issued in 1937, it was intended to provide “a complete picture” of the earlier work of the Copeland Committee. S. Rep. No. 1189, 75th Cong., 1st Sess., 1 (1937).
The Hobbs Act also separately proscribes conspiracies. 18 U. S. C. 1951 (a) (1976 ed.), quoted, supra, at 371-372.
There are other indications that Congress did not intend to make criminal liability .under the Hobbs Act turn on proof of some additional element of “racketeering.” One Congressman, in enumerating for his colleagues exactly what the Government would have to prove to establish an. individual’s liability under the bill, made no reference to “racketeering.” 91 Cong. Rec. 11903 (1945) (remarks of Rep. Gwynne). Another emphasized that, with respect to a predecessor bill — one that “was substantially carried forward into the [Hobbs] Act,” United States v. Enmons, 410 U. S. 396, 404-405, n. 14 (1973) — Congress was “trying to make a legal definition of racketeering” by proscribing specific conduct in the statute. 89 Cong. Rec. 3227 (1943) (remarks of Rep. Vorys).
We note that when Congress wanted to make racketeering an element of an offense, it knew how to do so. In the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, Pub. L. 91-452, 84 Stat. 922, Congress not only made “racketeering activity” an element of a statutory offense, but it specifically defined the term for purposes of the statute. 18 U. S. C. § 1961 (1) (1976 ed.). Moreover, the statute defines as “racketeering activity” any act which violates certain state laws as well as “any act which is indictable under . . . title 18, United States Code . . . sectiom.1951” — the Hobbs Act. § 1961 (1) (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 | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 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 1984 the State of Montana filed an information in the Yellowstone County District Court charging respondent with felony sexual assault in violation of Mont. Code Ann. § 45-5-502 (1981). The affidavit in support of the information indicated that the assault took place during the summer of 1983, and that the victim was the daughter of respondent’s ex-wife. The victim was 12 years old at the time of the offense. Four days before trial, respondent filed a motion to dismiss the information, arguing that because the victim was his stepdaughter he could be prosecuted only for incest, under Mont. Code Ann. § 45-5-507 (1983), not sexual assault. Respondent argued that incest was merely a specific instance of sexual assault, and that the Montana Legislature had not intended incestuous acts to be subject to prosecution under the more general sexual assault statute. On the morning of the trial, the State District Court held a hearing and then granted the motion. The State promptly filed a new information charging respondent with incest, and proceeded to trial. A jury convicted respondent. The judge sentenced respondent to 10 years’ imprisonment, but suspended 5 years of the sentence.
Respondent appealed his conviction to the Montana Supreme Court, raising a number of claims not directly relevant to the issue before this Court. One of respondent’s claims was that he could not lawfully be convicted of incest because the victim was not his stepdaughter within the meaning of the Montana incest statute. In the course of considering this claim, the State discovered that at the time of the assault the incest statute had not applied to sexual assaults against stepchildren. The amended statute under which respondent was tried had not become effective until October 1, 1983, three months after the assault in question. On March 5, 1986, the State filed a motion bringing this matter to the attention of the Montana Supreme Court.
After briefing on the questions raised by the State’s motion, the Montana Supreme Court concluded that the conviction was void because retroactive application of the amended statute would violate the ex post facto law prohibition of the Montana Constitution, Art. II, §31. It also held that the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Federal Constitution prohibited retrial of respondent. It stated that “[i]f the offense charged in the second trial is the same in law and fact as the offense charged in the first trial, the double jeopardy clause prohibits successive trials.” 224 Mont. 187, 190, 728 P. 2d 1339, 1340 (1986) (citing Brown v. Ohio, 432 U. S. 161, 167, n. 6 (1977)). The court then analyzed the elements of sexual assault and incest and concluded that they were the same offense for double jeopardy purposes. Relying on this conclusion and Brown v. Ohio, it held that the Double Jeopardy Clause barred retrial. As an alternative ground of decision, it noted that respondent “was convicted of a crime which did not exist on the date of the charged offense.” 224 Mont., at 192, 728 P. 2d, at 1342. In the court’s view, a retrial after a conviction for committing a nonexistent crime also would subject respondent to double jeopardy.
It is a “venerable principle] of double jeopardy jurisprudence” that “[t]he successful appeal of a judgment of conviction, on any ground other than the insufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict, Burks v. United States, [437 U. S. 1 (1978)], poses no bar to further prosecution on the same charge.” United States v. Scott, 437 U. S. 82, 90-91 (1978). See generally 3 W. LaFave & J. Israel, Criminal Procedure §24.4 (1984). Justice Harlan explained the basis for this rule:
“Corresponding to the right of an accused to be given a fair trial is the societal interest in punishing one whose guilt is clear after he has obtained such a trial. It would be a high price indeed for society to pay were every accused granted immunity from punishment because of any defect sufficient to constitute reversible error in the proceedings leading to conviction. From the standpoint of a defendant, it is at least doubtful that appellate courts would be as zealous as they now are in protecting against the effects of improprieties at the trial or pretrial stage if they knew that reversal of a conviction would put the accused irrevocably beyond the reach of further prosecution. In reality, therefore, the practice of retrial serves defendants’ rights as well as society’s interest.” United States v. Toteo, 377 U. S. 463, 466 (1964).
See Burks v. United States, supra, at 15.
Although Montana’s ex post facto law clause prevents Montana from convicting respondent of incest, we see no reason why the State should not be allowed to put respondent to a trial on the related charge of sexual assault. There is no suggestion that the evidence introduced at trial was insufficient to convict respondent. See Burks v. United States, supra. Montana originally sought to try respondent for sexual assault. At respondent’s behest, Montana tried him instead for incest. In these circumstances, trial of respondent for sexual assault, after reversal of respondent’s incest conviction on grounds unrelated to guilt or innocence, does not offend the Double Jeopardy Clause.
The principal federal authority relied on by the Montana Supreme Court was our decision in Brown v. Ohio, supra. The petitioner in that case had been convicted of joyriding. After serving a term of imprisonment on that conviction, he was charged with auto theft. We concluded that the charges of joyriding and theft punished a single offense, and thus that retrial was impermissible. But the Brown analysis is not apposite in this case. In Brown, the defendant did not overturn the first conviction; indeed, he served the prison sentence assessed as punishment for that crime. Thus, when the State sought to try him for auto theft, it actually was seeking a second conviction for the same offense. By contrast, respondent in this case sought, and secured, invalidation of his first conviction. This case falls squarely within the rule that retrial is permissible after a conviction is reversed on appeal.
The Montana court also suggested that the Double Jeopardy Clause would forbid retrial because respondent was convicted of an offense that did not exist when respondent had committed the acts in question. But, under the Montana court’s reading of the Montana sexual assault statute, respondent’s conduct apparently was criminal at the time he engaged in it. If that is so, the State simply relied on the wrong statute in its second information. It is clear that the Constitution permits retrial after a conviction is reversed because of a defect in the charging instrument. E. g., United States v. Ball, 163 U. S. 662, 672 (1896).
We grant Montana’s petition for a writ of certiorari and reverse the judgment of the Montana Supreme Court. The case is remanded to that court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Brennan would deny the petition for certiorari.
Nor was the jury’s conviction of respondent on the charge of incest an implied acquittal of the offense of sexual assault; there would have been an implied acquittal only if the jury had been presented with charges of both sexual assault and incest and had chosen to convict respondent of incest. See Green v. United States, 355 U. S. 184 (1957).
We explicitly noted in Brown that the case did not raise “the double jeopardy questions that may arise . . . after a conviction is reversed on appeal.” 432 U. S., at 165, n. 5.
As Justice Stevens implicitly acknowledges, we have jurisdiction over this petition under 28 U. S. C. § 1257(3). The Montana court’s decision “fairly appears to rest primarily on federal law, or to be interwoven with the federal law,” and “the adequacy and independence of any possible state law ground is not clear from the face of the opinion.” Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032, 1040-1041 (1983).
We express no opinion on the correctness, as a matter of federal constitutional law, of the Montana Supreme Court’s conclusion that sexual assault and incest are the “same” offenses.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 judgment is vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for further consideration in light of § 633 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (enacted as Division C of the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 1997, Pub. L. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009-701).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
Appellees, individual foster parents and an organization of foster parents, brought this civil rights class action pursuant to 42 U. S. C. § 1983 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on their own behalf and on behalf of children for whom they have provided homes for a year or more. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief against New York State and New York City officials, alleging that the procedures governing the removal of foster children from foster homes provided in N. Y. Soc. Serv. Law §§ 383 (2) and 400 (McKinney 1976), and in 18 N. Y. C. R. R. §450.14 (1974) violated the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The District Court appointed independent counsel for the foster children to forestall any possibility of conflict between their interests and the interests asserted by the foster parents. A group of natural mothers of children in foster care were granted leave to intervene on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated.
A divided three-judge District Court concluded that “the pre-removal procedures presently employed by the State are constitutionally defective,” holding that “before a foster child can be peremptorily transferred from the foster home in which he has been living, be it to another foster home or to the natural parents who initially placed him in foster care, he is entitled to a hearing at which all concerned parties may present any relevant information to the administrative decisionmaker charged with determining the future placement of the child,” Organization of Foster Families v. Dumpson, 418 F. Supp. 277, 282 (1976). Four appeals to this Court were taken from the ensuing judgment declaring the challenged statutes unconstitutional and permanently enjoining their enforcement. The New York City officials are appellants in No. 76-180. The New York State officials are appellants in No. 76-183. Independent counsel appointed for the foster children appeals on their behalf in No. 76-5200. The intervening natural mothers are appellants in No. 76-5193. We noted probable jurisdiction of the four appeals. 429 U. S. 883 (1976). We reverse.
I
A detailed outline of the New York statutory system regulating foster care is a necessary preface to a discussion of the constitutional questions presented.
A
The expressed central policy of the New York system is that “it is generally desirable for the child to remain with or be returned to the natural parent because the child’s need for a normal family life will usually best be met in the natural home, and... parents are entitled to bring up their own children unless the best interests of the child would be thereby endangered,” Soc. Serv. Law § 38A-b (1) (a) (ii) (McKinney Supp. 1976-1977). But the State has opted for foster care as one response to those situations where the natural parents are unable to provide the “positive, nurturing family relationships” and “normal family life in, a permanent home” that offer “the best opportunity for children to develop and thrive.” § § 384-b (1) (b), (1) (a) (i).
Foster care has been defined as “[a] child welfare service which provides substitute family care for a planned period for a child when his own family cannot care for him for a temporary or extended period, and when adoption is neither desirable nor possible.” Child Welfare League of America, Standards for Foster Family Care Service 5 (1959). Thus, the distinctive features of foster care are, first, “that it is care in a family, it is noninstitutional substitute care,” and, second, “that it is for a planned period — either temporary or extended. This is unlike adoptive placement, which implies a permanent substitution of one home for another.” Kadushin 355.
Under the New York scheme children may be placed in foster care either by voluntary placement or by court order. Most foster-care placements are voluntary. They occur when physical or mental illness, economic problems, or other family crises make it impossible for natural parents, particularly single parents, to provide a stable home life for their children for some limited period. Resort to such placements is almost compelled when it is not possible in such circumstance to place the child with a relative or friend, or to pay for the services of a homemaker or boarding school.
Voluntary placement requires the signing of a written agreement by the natural parent or guardian, transferring the care and custody of the child to an authorized child welfare agency. N. Y. Soc. Serv. Law § 384h-a (1) (McKinney Supp. 1976-1977). Although by statute the terms of such agreements are open to negotiation, § 38A-a (2) (a), it is contended that agencies require execution of standardized forms. Brief for Appellants in No. 76-5193, p. 25 n. 17. See App. 63a-64a, 65a-67a. The agreement may provide for return of the child to the natural parent at a specified date or upon occurrence of a particular event, and if it does not, the child must be returned by the agency, in the absence of a court order, within 20 days of notice from the parent. § 384-a (2) (a).
The agency may maintain the child in an institutional setting, §§ 374-b, 374-c, 374-d (McKinney 1976), but more commonly acts under its authority to “place out and board out” children in foster homes. §374 (1). Foster parents, who are licensed by the State or an authorized foster-care agency, §§ 376, 377, provide care under a contractual arrangement with the agency, and are compensated for their services. See 18 N. Y. C. R. R. §§ 606.2, 606.6 (1977); App. 76a, 81a. The typical contract expressly reserves the right of the agency to remove the child on request. 418 F. Supp., at 281; App. 76a, 79a. See N. Y. Soc. Serv. Law § 383 (2) (McKinney 1976). Conversely, the foster parent may cancel the agreement at will.
The New York system divides parental functions among agency, foster parents, and natural parents, and the definitions of the respective roles are often complex and often unclear. The law transfers “care and custody” to the agency, § 384-a; see also § 383 (2), but day-to-day supervision of the child and his activities, and most of the functions ordinarily associated with legal custody, are the responsibility of the foster parent. Nevertheless, agency supervision of the performance of the foster parents takes forms indicating that the foster parent does not have the full authority of a'legal custodian. Moreover, the natural parent’s placement of the child with the agency does not surrender legal guardianship; the parent retains authority to act with respect to the child in certain circumstances. The natural parent has not only the right but the obligation to visit the foster child and plan for his future; failure of a parent with capacity to fulfill the obligation for more than a year can result in a court order terminating the parent’s rights on the ground of neglect. § § 384-b (4), (7). See also § 384-b (5); N. Y. Dorn. Rel. Law § 111 (McKinney Supp. 1976-1977); N. Y. Family Court Act § 611 (McKinney Supp. 1976-1977).
Children may also enter foster care by court order. The Family Court may order that a child be placed in the custody of an authorized child-care agency after a full adversary judicial hearing under Art. 10 of the New York Family Court Act, if it is found that the child has been abused or neglected by his natural parents. §§ 1052, 1055. In addition, a minor adjudicated a juvenile delinquent, or “person in need of supervision” may be placed by the court with an agency. §§ 753, 754, 756. The consequences of foster-care placement by court order do not differ substantially from those for children voluntarily placed, except that the parent is not entitled to return of the child on demand pursuant to Soc. Serv. Law § 384-a (2) (a); termination of foster care must then be consented to by the court. § 383 (1).
B
The provisions of the scheme specifically at issue in this litigation come into play when the agency having legal custody determines to remove the foster child from the foster home, either because it has determined that it would be in the child’s best interests to transfer him to some other foster home, or to return the child to his natural parents in accordance with the statute or placement agreement. Most children are removed in order to be transferred to another foster home. The procedures by which foster parents may challenge a removal made for that purpose differ somewhat from those where the removal is made to return the child to his natural parent.
Section 383 (2), n. 3, supra, provides that the “authorized agency placing out or boarding [a foster] child... may in its discretion remove such child from the home where placed or boarded.” Administrative regulations implement this provision. The agency is required, except in emergencies, to notify the foster parents in writing 10 days in advance of any removal. 18 N. Y. C. R. R. § 450.10 (a) (1976). The notice advises the foster parents that if they object to the child’s removal they may request a “conference” with the Social Services Department. Ibid. The department schedules requested conferences within 10 days of the receipt of the request. §450.10 (b). The foster parent may appear with counsel at the conference, where he will “be advised of the reasons [for the removal of the child] and be afforded an opportunity to submit reasons why the child should not be removed.” § 450.10 (a). The official must render a decision in writing within five days after the close of the conference, and send notice of his decision to the foster parents and the agency. § 450.10 (c). The proposed removal is stayed pending the outcome of the conference. §450.10 (d).
If the child is removed after the conference, the foster parent may appeal to the Department of Social Services for a “fair hearing,” that is, a full adversary administrative hearing, under Soc. Serv. Law § 400, the determination of which is subject to judicial review under N. Y. Civ. Prac. Law § 7801 et seq. (McKinney 1963); however, the removal is not automatically stayed pending the hearing and judicial review.
This statutory and regulatory scheme applies statewide. In addition, regulations promulgated by the New York City Human Resources Administration, Department of Social Services — Special Services for Children (SSC) provide even greater procedural safeguards there. Under SSC Procedure No. 5 (Aug. 5, 1974), in place of or in addition to the conference provided by the state regulations, the foster parents may request a full trial-type hearing before the child is removed from their home. This procedure applies, however, only if the child is being transferred to another foster home, and not if the child is being returned to his natural parents.
One further preremoval procedural safeguard is available. Under Soc. Serv. Law § 392, the Family Court has jurisdiction to review, on petition of the foster parent or the agency, the status of any child who has been in foster care for 18 months or longer. The foster parents, the natural parents, and all interested agencies are made parties to the proceeding. § 392 (4). After hearing, the court may order that foster care be continued, or that the child be returned to his natural parents, or that the agency take steps to free the child for adoption. § 392 (7). Moreover, § 392 (8) authorizes the court to issue an “order of protection” which “may set forth reasonable conditions of behavior to be observed for a specified time by a person or agency who is before the court.” Thus, the court may order not only that foster care be continued, but additionally, “in assistance or as a condition of” that order, that the agency leave the child with the present foster parent. In other words, § 392 provides a mechanism whereby a foster parent may obtain preremoval judicial review of an agency’s decision to remove a child who has been in foster care for 18 months or more.
c
Foster care of children is a sensitive and emotion-laden subject, and foster-care programs consequently stir strong controversy. The New York regulatory scheme is no exception. New York would have us view the scheme as described in its brief:
“Today New York premises its foster care system on the accepted principle that the placement of a child into foster care is solely a temporary, transitional action intended to lead to the future reunion of the child with his natural parent or parents, or if such a reunion is not possible, to legal adoption and the establishment of a new permanent home for the child.” Brief for Appellants in No. 76-183, p. 3.
Some of the parties and amici argue that this is a misleadingly idealized picture. They contend that a very different perspective is revealed by the empirical criticism of the system presented in the record of this case and confirmed by published studies of foster care.
From the standpoint of natural parents, such as the appellant intervenors here, foster care has been condemned as a class-based intrusion into the family life of the poor. See, e. g., Jenkins, Child Welfare as a Class System, in Children and Decent People 3 (A. Schorr ed. 1974). And see generally tenBroek, California’s Dual System of Family Law: Its Origins, Development and Present Status (pt. I), 16 Stan. L. Rev. 257 (1964); (pt. II), 16 Stan. L. Rev. 900 (1964); (pt. III), 17 Stan. L. Rev. 614 (1965). It is certainly true that the poor resort to foster care more often than other citizens. For example, over 50%- of all children in foster care in New York City are from female-headed families receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Foundation for Child Development, State of the Child: New York City 61 (1976). Minority families are also more likely to turn to foster care; 52.3% of the children in foster care in New York City are black and 25.5% are Puerto Rican. Child Welfare Information Services, Characteristics of Children in Foster Care, New York City Reports, Table No. 2 (Dec. 31, 1976). This disproportionate resort to foster care by the poor and victims of discrimination doubtless reflects in part the greater likelihood of disruption of poverty-stricken families. Commentators have also noted, however, that middle- and upper-income families who need temporary care services for their children have the resources to purchase private care. See, e. g., Rein, Nutt, & Weiss 24, 25. The poor have little choice but to submit to state-supervised child care when family crises strike. Id., at 34.
The extent to which supposedly “voluntary” placements are in fact voluntary has been questioned on other grounds as well. For example, it has been said that many “voluntary” placements are in fact coerced by threat of neglect proceedings and are not in fact voluntary in the sense of the product of an informed consent. Mnookin I 599, 601. Studies also suggest that social workers of middle-class backgrounds, perhaps unconsciously, incline to favor continued placement in foster care with a generally higher-status family rather than return the child to his natural family, thus reflecting a bias that treats the natural parents’ poverty and lifestyle as prejudicial to the best interests of the child. Rein, Nutt, & Weiss 42-44; Levine, Caveat Parens: A Demystification of the Child Protection System, 35 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 1, 29 (1973). This accounts, it has been said, for the hostility of agencies to the efforts of natural parents to obtain the return of their children.
Appellee foster parents as well as natural parents question the accuracy of the idealized picture portrayed by New York. They note that children often stay in “temporary” foster care for much longer than contemplated by the theory of the system. See, e. g., Kadushin 411-412; Mnookin I 610-613; Wald 662-663; Rein, Nutt, & Weiss 37-39. The District Court found as a fact that the median time spent in foster care in New York was over four years. 418 F. Supp., at 281. Indeed, many children apparently remain in this “limbo” indefinitely. Mnookin II 226, 273. The District Court also found that the longer a child remains in foster care, the more likely it is that he will never leave: “[T]he probability of a foster child being returned to his biological parents declined markedly after the first year in foster care.” 418 F. Supp., at 279 n. 6. See also E. Sherman, R. Neuman, & A. Shyne, Children Adrift in Foster Care: A Study of Alternative Approaches 3 (1973); Fanshel, The Exit of Children from Foster Care: An Interim Research Report, 50 Child Welfare 65, 67 (1971). It is not surprising then that many children, particularly those that enter foster care at a very early age and have little or no contact with their natural parents during extended stays in foster care, often develop deep emotional ties with their foster parents.
Yet such ties do not seem to be regarded as obstacles to transfer of the child from one foster placement to another. The record in this case indicates that nearly 60% of the children in foster care in New York City have experienced more than one placement, and about 28% have experienced three or more. App. 189a. See also Wald 645-646; Mnookin I 625-626. The intended stability of the foster-home management is further damaged by the rapid turnover among social work professionals who supervise the foster-care arrangements on behalf of the State. Id., at 625; Rein, Nutt, & Weiss 41; Kadushin 420. Moreover, even when it is clear that a foster child will not be returned to his natural parents, it is rare that he achieves a stable home life through final termination of parental ties and adoption into a new permanent family. Fanshel, Status Changes of Children in Foster Care: Final Results of the Columbia University Longitudinal Study, 55 Child Welfare 143, 145, 157 (1976); Mnookin II 275-277; Mnookin I 612-613. See also n. 23, supra.
The parties and amici devote much of their discussion to these criticisms of foster care, and we present this summary in the view that some understanding of those criticisms is necessary for a full appreciation of the complex and controversial system with which this lawsuit is concerned. But the issue presented by the case is a narrow one. Arguments asserting the need for reform of New York’s statutory scheme are properly addressed to the New York Legislature. The relief sought in this case is entirely procedural. Our task is only to determine whether the District Court correctly held that the present procedures preceding the removal from a foster home of children resident there a year or more are constitutionally inadequate. To that task we now turn.
II
A
Our first inquiry is whether appellees have asserted interests within the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of “liberty” and “property.” Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564, 571 (1972).
The appellees have not renewed in this Court their contention, rejected by the District Court, 418 F. Supp., at 280-281, that the realities of the foster-care system in New York gave them a justified expectation amounting to a “property” interest that their status as foster parents would be continued. Our inquiry is therefore narrowed to the question whether their asserted interests are within the “liberty” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The appellees’ basic contention is that when a child has lived in a foster home for a year or more, a psychological tie is created between the child and the foster parents which constitutes the foster family the true “psychological family” of the child. See J. Goldstein, A. Freud, & A. Solnit, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973). That family, they argue, has a “liberty interest” in its survival as a family protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Cf. Moore v. East Cleveland, ante, p. 494. Upon this premise they conclude that the foster child cannot be removed without a prior hearing satisfying due process. Appointed counsel for the children, appellants in No. 76-5200, however, disagrees, and has consistently argued that the foster parents have no such liberty interest independent of the interests of the foster children, and that the best interests of the children would not be served by procedural protections beyond those already provided by New York law. The intervening natural parents of children in foster care, appellants in No. 76-5193, also- oppose the foster parents, arguing that recognition of the procedural right claimed would undercut both the substantive family law of New York, which favors the return of children to their natural parents as expeditiously as possible, see supra, at 823, and their constitutionally protected right of family privacy, by forcing them to submit to a hearing and defend their rights to their children before the children could be returned to them.
The District Court did not reach appellees’ contention “that the foster home is entitled to the same constitutional deference as that long granted to the more traditional biological family.” 418 F. Supp., at 281. Rather than “reach [ing] out to decide such novel questions,” the court based its holding that “the pre-removal procedures presently employed by the state are constitutionally defective,” id., at 282, not on the recognized liberty interest in family privacy, but on an independent right of the foster child “to be heard before being ‘condemned to suffer grievous loss,’ Joint Anti-Fascist Committee v. McGrath, 341 U. S. 123, 168... (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).” Ibid.
The court apparently reached this conclusion by weighing the “harmful consequences of a precipitous and perhaps improvident decision to remove a child from his foster family,” id., at 283, and concluding that this disruption of the stable relationships needed by the child might constitute “grievous loss.” But if this was the reasoning applied by the District Court, it must be rejected. Meachum v. Fano, 427 U. S. 215, 224 (1976), is authority that such a finding does not, in and of itself, implicate the due process guarantee. What was said in Board of Regents v. Roth, supra, at 570-571, applies equally well here:
“The District Court decided that procedural due process guarantees apply in this ease by assessing and balancing the weights of the particular interests involved.... [A] weighing process has long been a part of any determination of the form of hearing required in particular situations by procedural due process. But, to determine whether due process requirements apply in the first place, we must look not to the ‘weight’ but to the nature of the interest at stake.... We must look to see if the interest is within the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of liberty and property.”
We therefore turn to appellees’ assertion that they have a constitutionally protected liberty interest — in the words of the District Court, a “right to familial privacy,” 418 F. Supp., at 279 — in the integrity of their family unit. This assertion clearly presents difficulties.
B
It is, of course, true that “freedom of personal choice in matters of... family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur, 414 U. S. 632, 639-640 (1974). There does exist a “private realm of family life which the state cannot enter,” Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U. S. 158, 166 (1944), that has been afforded both substantive and procedural protection. But is the relation of foster parent to foster child sufficiently akin to the concept of “family” recognized in our precedents to merit similar protection? Although considerable difficulty has attended the task of defining “family” for purposes of the Due Process Clause, see Moore v. East Cleveland, ante, pp. 494 (plurality-opinion of Powell, J.), 531 (Stewart, J., dissenting), 541 (White, J., dissenting), we are not without guides to some of the elements that define the concept of “family” and contribute to its place in our society.
First, the usual understanding of “family” implies biological relationships, and most decisions treating the relation between parent and child have stressed this element. Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U. S. 645, 651 (1972), for example, spoke of “[t]he rights to conceive and to raise one’s children” as essential rights, citing Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390 (1923), and Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, 316 U. S. 535 (1942). And Prince v. Massachusetts, stated:
“It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder.” 321 U. S., at 166.
A biological relationship is not present in the case of the usual foster family. But biological relationships are not exclusive determination of the existence of a family. The basic foundation of the family in our society, the marriage relationship, is of course not a matter of blood relation. Yet its importance has been strongly emphasized in our cases:
“We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights — older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions.” Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479, 486 (1965).
See also Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1, 12 (1967).
Thus the importance of the familial relationship, to the individuals involved and to the society, stems from the emotional attachments that derive from the intimacy of daily association, and from the role it plays in “promot[ing] a way of life” through the instruction of children, Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205, 231-233 (1972), as well as from the fact of blood relationship. No one would seriously dispute that a deeply loving and interdependent relationship between an adult and a child in his or her care may exist even in the absence of blood relationship. At least where a child has been placed in foster care as an infant, has never known his natural parents, and has remained continuously for several years in the care of the same foster parents, it is natural that the foster family should hold the same place in the emotional life of the foster child, and fulfill the same socializing functions, as a natural family. For this reason, we cannot dismiss the foster family as a mere collection of unrelated individuals. Cf. Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, 416 U. S. 1 (1974).
But there are also important distinctions between the foster family and the natural family. First, unlike the earlier cases recognizing a right to family privacy, the State here seeks to interfere, not with a relationship having its origins entirely apart from the power of the State, but rather with a foster family which has its source in state law and contractual arrangements. The individual’s freedom to marry and reproduce is “older than the Bill of Rights,” Griswold v. Connecticut, supra, at 486. Accordingly, unlike the property interests that are also protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, cf. Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S., at 577, the liberty interest in family privacy has its source, and its contours are ordinarily to be sought, not in state law, but in intrinsic human rights, as they have been understood in “this Nation’s history and tradition.” Moore v. East Cleveland, ante, at 503. Cf. also Meachum v. Fano, 427 U. S., at 230 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Here, however, whatever emotional ties may develop between foster parent and foster child have their origins in an arrangement in which the State has been a partner from the outset. While the Court has recognized that liberty interests may in some cases arise from positive-law sources, see, e. g., Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S. 539, 557 (1974), in such a case, and particularly where, as here, the claimed interest derives from a knowingly assumed contractual relation with the State, it is appropriate to ascertain from state law the expectations and entitlements of the parties. In this case, the limited recognition accorded to the foster family by the New York statutes and the contracts executed by the foster parents argue against any but the most limited constitutional “liberty” in the foster family.
A second consideration related to this is that ordinarily procedural protection may be afforded to a liberty interest of one person without derogating from the substantive liberty of another. Here, however, such a tension is virtually unavoidable. Under New York law, the natural parent of a foster child in voluntary placement has an absolute right to the return of his child in the absence of a court order obtainable only upon compliance with rigorous substantive and procedural standards, which reflect the constitutional protection accorded the natural family. See nn. 46, 47, supra. Moreover, the natural parent initially gave up his child to the State only on the express understanding that the child would be returned in those circumstances. These rights are difficult to reconcile with the liberty interest in the foster family relationship claimed by appellees. It is one thing to say that individuals may acquire a liberty interest against arbitrary governmental interference in the family-like associations into which they have freely entered, even in the absence of biological connection or state-law recognition of the relationship. It is quite another to say that one may acquire such an interest in the face of another's constitutionally recognized liberty interest that derives from blood relationship, state-law sanction, and basic human right — an interest the foster parent has recognized by contract from the outset. Whatever liberty interest might otherwise exist in the foster family as an institution, that interest must be substantially attenuated where the proposed removal from the foster family is to return the child to his natural parents.
As this discussion suggests, appellees’ claim to a constitutionally protected liberty interest raises complex and novel questions. It is unnecessary for us to resolve those questions definitively in this case, however, for, like the District Court, we conclude that “narrower grounds exist to support” our reversal. We are persuaded that, even on the assumption that appellees have a protected “liberty interest,” the District Court erred in holding that the preremoval procedures presently employed by the State are constitutionally defective.
Ill
Where procedural due process must be afforded because a “liberty” or “property” interest is within the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection, there must be determined “what process is due” in the particular context. The District Court did not spell out precisely what sort of preremoval hearing would be necessary to meet the constitutional standard, leaving to “the various defendants — -state and local officials — the first opportunity to formulate procedures suitable to their own professional needs and compatible with the principles set forth in this opinion.” 418 F. Supp., at 286. The court’s opinion, however, would seem to require at a minimum that in all cases in which removal of a child within the certified class is contemplated, including the situation where the removal is for the purpose of returning the child to his natural parents, a hearing be held automatically, regardless of whether or not the foster parents request a hearing; that the hearing be before an officer who has had no previous contact with the decision to remove the child, and who has authority to order that the child remain with the foster parents; and that the agency, the foster parents, and the natural parents, as well as the child, if he is able intelligently to express his true feelings, and an independent representative of the child’s interests, if he is not, be represented and permitted to introduce relevant evidence.
It is true that “[bjefore a person is deprived of a protected interest, he must be afforded opportunity for some kind of a hearing, ‘except for extraordinary situations where some valid governmental interest is at stake that justifies postponing the hearing until after the event.’ ” Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U. S., at 570 n. 7, quoting Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U. S. 371, 379 (1971). But the hearing required is only one “appropriate to the nature of the case.” Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co., 339 U. S. 306, 313 (1950). See, e. g., Bell v. Burson, 402 U. S. 535, 542 (1971); Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U. S. 254, 263 (1970); Cafeteria Workers v. McElroy, 367 U. S. 886, 895 (1961). “[D]ue process is flexible and calls for such procedural protections as the particular situation demands.” Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471, 481 (1972). Only last Term, the Court held that “identification of the specific dictates of due process generally requires consideration of three distinct factors: First, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and finally, the Government’s interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail.” Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S. 319, 335 (1976). Consideration of the procedures employed by the State and New York City in light of these three factors requires the conclusion that those procedures satisfy constitutional standards.
Turning first to the procedure applicable in New York City, SSC Procedure No. 5, see supra, at 831, and n. 29, provides that before a child is removed from a foster home for transfer to another foster home, the foster parents may request an “independent review.” The District Court’s description of this review is set out in the margin. Such a procedure would appear to give a more elaborate trial-type hearing to foster families than this Court has found required in other contexts of administrative determinations. Cf. Goldberg v. Kelly, supra, at 266-271. The District Court found the procedure inadequate on four grounds, none of which we find sufficient to justify the holding that the procedure violates due process.
First, the court held that the “independent review” administrative proceeding was insufficient because it was only-available on the request of the foster parents. In the view of the District Court, the proceeding should be provided as a matter of course, because the interests of the foster parents and those of the child would
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 KENNEDY delivered the opinion of the Court.
Federal courts of appeals have jurisdiction of appeals from "final decisions" of United States district courts. 28 U.S.C. § 1291. In Budinich v. Becton Dickinson & Co., 486 U.S. 196, 108 S.Ct. 1717, 100 L.Ed.2d 178 (1988), this Court held that a decision on the merits is a "final decision" under § 1291 even if the award or amount of attorney's fees for the litigation remains to be determined. The issue in this case is whether a different result obtains if the unresolved claim for attorney's fees is based on a contract rather than, or in addition to, a statute. The answer here, for purposes of § 1291 and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, is that the result is not different. Whether the claim for attorney's fees is based on a statute, a contract, or both, the pendency of a ruling on an award for fees and costs does not prevent, as a general rule, the merits judgment from becoming final for purposes of appeal.
I
Petitioner Ray Haluch Gravel Co. (Haluch) is a landscape supply company. Under a collective-bargaining agreement (CBA) with the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 98, Haluch was required to pay contributions to union-affiliated benefit funds. Various of those funds are respondents here.
In 2007, respondents (Funds) commissioned an audit to determine whether Haluch was meeting its obligations under the CBA. Based on the audit, the Funds demanded additional contributions. Haluch refused to pay, and the Funds filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
The Funds alleged that Haluch's failure to make the required contributions was a violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947. The Funds also sought attorney's and auditor's fees and costs, under § 502(g)(2)(D) of ERISA, 94 Stat. 1295, 29 U.S.C. § 1132(g)(2)(D) (providing for "reasonable attorney's fees and costs of the action, to be paid by the defendant"), and the CBA itself, App. to Pet. for Cert. 52a (providing that "[a]ny costs, including legal fees, of collecting payments due these Funds shall be borne by the defaulting Employer").
At the conclusion of a bench trial, the District Court asked the parties to submit proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law to allow the court "to consider both the possibility of enforcing [a] settlement and a decision on the merits at the same time." Tr. 50 (Feb. 28, 2011). These submissions were due on March 14, 2011. The District Court went on to observe that "[u]nder our rules ... if there is a judgment for the plaintiffs, typically a motion for attorney's fees can be filed" shortly thereafter. Id., at 51. It also noted that, "[o]n the other hand, attorney's fees is part of the damages potentially here." Ibid. It gave the plaintiffs the option to offer a submission with regard to fees along with their proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, or to "wait to see if I find in your favor and submit the fee petition later on." Ibid.
The Funds initially chose to submit their fee petition at the same time as their proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, but they later changed course. They requested an extension of time to file their "request for reimbursement of attorneys' fees and costs in the above matter." Motion to Extend Time to Submit Request for Attorneys' Fees in No. 09-cv-11607-MAP (D Mass.), p. 1. The District Court agreed; and on April 4, the Funds moved "for an [o]rder awarding the total attorneys' fees and costs incurred ... in attempting to collect this delinquency, in obtaining the audit, in protecting Plaintiffs' interests, and in protecting the interests of the participants and beneficiaries." App. 72. The motion alleged that "[t]hose fees and costs ... amount to $143,600.44," and stated that "[d]efendants are liable for these monies pursuant to" ERISA, "and for the reasons detailed in the accompanying" affidavit. Ibid. The accompanying "affidavit in support of [the] application for attorneys' fees and costs," in turn, cited the parties' agreements (including the CBA, as well as related trust agreements) and § 502(g)(2)(D) of ERISA. Id., at 74.
As to the merits of the claim that Haluch had underpaid, on June 17, 2011, the District Court issued a memorandum and order ruling that the Funds were entitled to certain unpaid contributions, though less than had been requested. International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 98 Health and Welfare, Pension and Annuity Funds v. Ray Haluch Gravel Co., 792 F.Supp.2d 129 (Mass.). A judgment in favor of the Funds in the amount of $26,897.41 was issued the same day. App. to Pet. for Cert. 39a-40a. The District Court did not rule on the Funds' motion for attorney's fees and costs until July 25, 2011. On that date it awarded $18,000 in attorney's fees, plus costs of $16,688.15, for a total award of $34,688.15. 792 F.Supp.2d 139, 143. On August 15, 2011, the Funds appealed from both decisions. Haluch filed a cross-appeal a week later.
In the Court of Appeals Haluch argued that there had been no timely appeal from the June 17 decision on the merits. In its view, the June 17 decision was a final decision under § 1291, so that notice of appeal had to be filed within 30 days thereafter, see Fed. Rule App. Proc. 4(a)(1)(A). The Funds disagreed. They argued that there was no final decision until July 25, when the District Court rendered a decision on their request for attorney's fees and costs. In their view the appeal was timely as to all issues in the case. See Digital Equipment Corp. v. Desktop Direct, Inc., 511 U.S. 863, 868, 114 S.Ct. 1992, 128 L.Ed.2d 842 (1994).
The Court of Appeals agreed with the Funds. 695 F.3d 1, 7 (C.A.1 2012). It acknowledged this Court's holding that an unresolved issue of attorney's fees generally does not prevent judgment on the merits from being final. But it held that this rule does not "mechanically ... apply to all claims for attorneys' fees, whatever their genesis," and that, instead, "[w]here, as here, an entitlement to attorneys' fees derives from a contract ... the critical question is whether the claim for attorneys' fees is part of the merits." Id., at 6. Interpreting the CBA in this case as "provid[ing] for the payment of attorneys' fees as an element of damages in the event of a breach," the Court of Appeals held that the June 17 decision was not final. Ibid. Concluding that the appeal was timely as to all issues, the Court of Appeals addressed the merits of the dispute with respect to the amount of unpaid remittances as well as the issue of fees and costs, remanding both aspects of the case to the District Court. Id., at 11.
Haluch sought review here, and certiorari was granted to resolve a conflict in the Courts of Appeals over whether and when an unresolved issue of attorney's fees based on a contract prevents a judgment on the merits from being final. 570 U.S. ----, 133 S.Ct. 2825, 186 L.Ed.2d 883 (2013). Compare O & G Industries, Inc. v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, 537 F.3d 153, 167, 168, and n. 11 (C.A.2 2008); United States ex rel. Familian Northwest, Inc. v. RG & B Contractors, Inc., 21 F.3d 952, 954-955 (C.A.9 1994); Continental Bank, N.A. v. Everett, 964 F.2d 701, 702-703 (C.A.7 1992); and First Nationwide Bank v. Summer House Joint Venture, 902 F.2d 1197, 1199-1200 (C.A.5 1990), with Carolina Power & Light Co. v. Dynegy Marketing & Trade, 415 F.3d 354, 356 (C.A.4 2005); Brandon, Jones, Sandall, Zeide, Kohn, Chalal & Musso, P.A. v. MedPartners, Inc., 312 F.3d 1349, 1355 (C.A.11 2002) ( per curiam ); Gleason v. Norwest Mortgage, Inc., 243 F.3d 130, 137-138 (C.A.3 2001); and Justine Realty Co. v. American Nat. Can Co., 945 F.2d 1044, 1047-1049 (C.A.8 1991). For the reasons set forth, the decision of the Court of Appeals must be reversed.
II
Title 28 U.S.C. § 1291 provides that "[t]he courts of appeals ... shall have jurisdiction of appeals from all final decisions of the district courts of the United States...." "[T]he timely filing of a notice of appeal in a civil case is a jurisdictional requirement." Bowles v. Russell, 551 U.S. 205, 214, 127 S.Ct. 2360, 168 L.Ed.2d 96 (2007). Rule 4 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure provides, as a general matter and subject to specific qualifications set out in later parts of the Rule, that in a civil case "the notice of appeal ... must be filed ... within 30 days after entry of the judgment or order appealed from." Rule 4(a)(1)(A). The parties in this case agree that notice of appeal was not given within 30 days of the June 17 decision but that it was given within 30 days of the July 25 decision. The question is whether the June 17 order was a final decision for purposes of § 1291.
In the ordinary course a "final decision" is one that ends the litigation on the merits and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute the judgment. Catlin v. United States, 324 U.S. 229, 233, 65 S.Ct. 631, 89 L.Ed. 911 (1945). In Budinich, this Court addressed the question whether an unresolved issue of attorney's fees for the litigation prevents a judgment from being final. 486 U.S., at 202, 108 S.Ct. 1717. There, a District Court in a diversity case had entered a judgment that left unresolved a motion for attorney's fees based on a Colorado statute providing attorney's fees to prevailing parties in certain cases. Id., at 197, 108 S.Ct. 1717. The Court held that the judgment was final for purposes of § 1291 despite the unresolved issue of attorney's fees. Id., at 202, 108 S.Ct. 1717.
The Court in Budinich began by observing that "[a]s a general matter, at least, ... a claim for attorney's fees is not part of the merits of the action to which the fees pertain." Id., at 200, 108 S.Ct. 1717. The Court noted that awards of attorney's fees do not remedy the injury giving rise to the action, are often available to the party defending the action, and were regarded at common law as an element of "costs" awarded to a prevailing party, which are generally not treated as part of the merits judgment. Ibid. Though the Court acknowledged that the statutory or decisional law authorizing the fees might sometimes treat the fees as part of the merits, it held that considerations of "operational consistency and predictability in the overall application of § 1291" favored a "uniform rule that an unresolved issue of attorney's fees for the litigation in question does not prevent judgment on the merits from being final." Id., at 202, 108 S.Ct. 1717.
The facts of this case have instructive similarities to Budinich. In both cases, a plaintiff sought to recover employment-related payments. In both cases, the District Court entered a judgment resolving the claim for unpaid amounts but left outstanding a request for attorney's fees incurred in the course of litigating the case. Despite these similarities, the Funds offer two arguments to distinguish Budinich. First, they contend that unresolved claims for attorney's fees authorized by contract, unlike those authorized by statute, are not collateral for finality purposes. Second, they argue that the claim left unresolved as of June 17 included fees incurred prior to the commencement of formal litigation and that those fees, at least, fall beyond the scope of the rule announced in Budinich. For the reasons given below, the Court rejects these arguments.
III
A
The Funds' principal argument for the nonfinality of the June 17 decision is that a district court decision that does not resolve a fee claim authorized by contract is not final for purposes of § 1291, because it leaves open a claim for contract damages. They argue that contractual provisions for attorney's fees or costs of collection, in contrast to statutory attorney's fees provisions, are liquidated-damages provisions intended to remedy the injury giving rise to the action.
The premise that contractual attorney's fees provisions are always a measure of damages is unpersuasive, for contractual fee provisions often provide attorney's fees to prevailing defendants. See 1 R. Rossi, Attorneys' Fees § 9:25, p. 9-64 (3d ed. 2012); cf. Gleason, supra, at 137, n. 3. The Funds' argument fails, however, for a more basic reason, which is that the Court in Budinich rejected the very distinction the Funds now attempt to draw.
The decision in Budinich made it clear that the uniform rule there announced did not depend on whether the statutory or decisional law authorizing a particular fee claim treated the fees as part of the merits. 486 U.S., at 201, 108 S.Ct. 1717. The Court acknowledged that not all statutory or decisional law authorizing attorney's fees treats those fees as part of "costs" or otherwise not part of the merits; and the Court even accepted for purposes of argument that the Colorado statute in that case "ma[de] plain" that the fees it authorized "are to be part of the merits judgment." Ibid. But this did not matter. As the Court explained, the issue of attorney's fees was still collateral for finality purposes under § 1291. The Court was not then, nor is it now, "inclined to adopt a disposition that requires the merits or nonmerits status of each attorney's fee provision to be clearly established before the time to appeal can be clearly known." Id., at 202, 108 S.Ct. 1717. There is no reason to depart here from this sound reasoning. By arguing that a different rule should apply to fee claims authorized by contract because they are more often a matter of damages and thus part of the merits, the Funds seek in substance to relitigate an issue already decided in Budinich.
Were the jurisdictional effect of an unresolved issue of attorney's fees to depend on whether the entitlement to fees is asserted under a statute, as distinct from a contract, the operational consistency and predictability stressed in Budinich would be compromised in many instances. Operational consistency is not promoted by providing for different jurisdictional effect to district court decisions that leave unresolved otherwise identical fee claims based solely on whether the asserted right to fees is based on a contract or a statute.
The Funds' proposed distinction also does not promote predictability. Although sometimes it may be clear whether and to what extent a fee claim is contractual rather than statutory in nature, that is not always so. This case provides an apt illustration. The Funds' notice of motion itself cited just ERISA; only by consulting the accompanying affidavit, which included an oblique reference to the CBA, could it be discerned that a contractual fee claim was being asserted in that filing. This may explain why the District Court's July 25 decision cited just ERISA, without mention or analysis of the CBA provision or any other contractual provision. 792 F.Supp.2d, at 140.
The Funds urge the importance of avoiding piecemeal litigation. The basic point is well taken, yet, in the context of distinguishing between different sources for awards of attorney's fees, quite inapplicable. The Court was aware of piecemeal litigation concerns in Budinich, but it still adopted a uniform rule that an unresolved issue of attorney's fees for the litigation does not prevent judgment on the merits from being final. Here it suffices to say that the Funds' concern over piecemeal litigation, though starting from a legitimate principle, is counterbalanced by the interest in determining with promptness and clarity whether the ruling on the merits will be appealed. This is especially so because claims for attorney's fees may be complex and require a considerable amount of time to resolve. Indeed, in this rather simple case, the fee-related submissions take up well over 100 pages in the joint appendix. App. 64-198.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, furthermore, provide a means to avoid a piecemeal approach in the ordinary run of cases where circumstances warrant delaying the time to appeal. Rule 54(d)(2) provides for motions claiming attorney's fees and related nontaxable expenses. Rule 58(e), in turn, provides that the entry of judgment ordinarily may not be delayed, nor may the time for appeal be extended, in order to tax costs or award fees. This accords with Budinich and confirms the general practice of treating fees and costs as collateral for finality purposes. Having recognized this premise, Rule 58(e) further provides that if a timely motion for attorney's fees is made under Rule 54(d)(2), the court may act before a notice of appeal has been filed and become effective to order that the motion have the same effect as a timely motion under Rule 59 for purposes of Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(4). This delays the running of the time to file an appeal until the entry of the order disposing of the fee motion. Rule 4(a)(4)(A)(iii).
In their brief in opposition to the petition for certiorari, the Funds argued that in their case this procedure would not have been applicable. Brief in Opposition 34. Rule 54(d)(2) provides that "[a] claim for attorney's fees and related nontaxable expenses must be made by motion unless the substantive law requires those fees to be proved at trial as an element of damages." The Advisory Committee Notes to Rule 54(d)(2) state that the procedure outlined in that Rule "does not ... apply to fees recoverable as an element of damages, as when sought under the terms of a contract; such damages typically are to be claimed in a pleading and may involve issues to be resolved by a jury." Advisory Committee's 1993 Note on subd. (d), par. (2) of Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 54, 28 U.S.C.App., pp. 240-241.
The Funds no longer rely on their reading of Rule 54 and the Advisory Committee Notes as a basis for their argument that the June 17 decision was not final under § 1291. And this is not a case in which the parties attempted to invoke Rule 58(e) to delay the time to appeal. Regardless of how the Funds' fee claims could or should have been litigated, however, the Rules eliminate concerns over undue piecemeal appeals in the vast range of cases where a claim for attorney's fees is made by motion under Rule 54(d)(2). That includes some cases in which the fees are authorized by contract. See 2 M. Derfner & A. Wolf, Court Awarded Attorney Fees ¶ 18.01[1][c], pp. 18-7 to 18-8 (2013) (remarking that Rule 54(d)(2) applies "regardless of the statutory, contractual, or equitable basis of the request for fees," though noting inapplicability where attorney's fees are an element of damages under the substantive law governing the action).
The complex variations in statutory and contractual fee-shifting provisions also counsel against making the distinction the Funds suggest for purposes of finality. Some fee-shifting provisions treat the fees as part of the merits; some do not. Some are bilateral, authorizing fees either to plaintiffs or defendants; some are unilateral. Some depend on prevailing party status; some do not. Some may be unclear on these points. The rule adopted in Budinich ignores these distinctions in favor of an approach that looks solely to the character of the issue that remains open after the court has otherwise ruled on the merits of the case.
In support of their argument against treating contractual and statutory fee claims alike the Funds suggest, nevertheless, that it is unclear whether Budinich still applies where, as here, auditor's fees (or other nonattorney professional fees) are included as an incidental part of a motion for attorney's fees and costs. (In this case, auditor's fees accounted for $6,537 of the $143,600.44 requested in total.) To the extent the Funds suggest that similar fees will be claimed alongside attorney's fees only where a contractual fee claim is involved, they are incorrect. Statutory fee claims are not always limited to attorney's fees per se. Many fee-shifting statutes authorize courts to award additional litigation expenses, such as expert fees. See West Virginia Univ. Hospitals, Inc. v. Casey, 499 U.S. 83, 89, n. 4, 111 S.Ct. 1138, 113 L.Ed.2d 68 (1991) (listing statutes); cf. Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 54(d)(2)(A) (providing mechanism for claims by motion for "attorney's fees and related nontaxable expenses"). Where, as here, those types of fees are claimed and awarded incidental to attorney's fees, there is no apparent reason why parties or courts would find it difficult to tell that Budinich remains applicable.
B
The Funds separately contend that the June 17 decision was not final because their motion claimed some $8,561.75 in auditor's and attorney's fees (plus some modest additional expenses) incurred prior to the commencement of litigation. These included fees for the initial audit to determine whether Haluch was complying with the CBA, as well as attorney's fees incurred in attempting to obtain records from Haluch, researching fund auditing rights, drafting a letter demanding payment, and working on the initial complaint. Brief for Respondents 4-5; App. 64-67, 81-88. The Funds argue that these fees do not fall within the scope of Budinich, because the Court in Budinich referred only to fees "for the litigation in question," 486 U.S., at 202, 108 S.Ct. 1717, or, equivalently, "attributable to the case," id., at 203, 108 S.Ct. 1717.
The fact that some of the claimed fees accrued before the complaint was filed is inconsequential. As this Court has observed, "some of the services performed before a lawsuit is formally commenced by the filing of a complaint are performed 'on the litigation.' " Webb v. Dyer County Bd. of Ed., 471 U.S. 234, 243, 105 S.Ct. 1923, 85 L.Ed.2d 233 (1985). "Most obvious examples" include "the drafting of the initial pleadings and the work associated with the development of the theory of the case." Ibid. More generally, pre-filing tasks may be for the litigation if they are "both useful and of a type ordinarily necessary to advance the ... litigation" in question. Ibid.
The fees in this case fit that description. Investigation, preliminary legal research, drafting of demand letters, and working on the initial complaint are standard preliminary steps toward litigation. See id., at 250, 105 S.Ct. 1923 (Brennan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) ("[I]t is settled that a prevailing party may recover fees for the time spent before the formal commencement of the litigation on such matters as ... investigation of the facts of the case, research on the viability of potential legal claims, [and] drafting of the complaint and accompanying documents...."); 2 Derfner, supra, ¶ 16.02[2][b], at 16-15 ("[H]ours ... spent investigating facts specific to the client's case should be included in the lodestar, whether [or not] that time is spent prior to the filing of a complaint"). To be sure, the situation would differ if a party brought a freestanding contract action asserting an entitlement to fees incurred in an effort to collect payments that were not themselves the subject of the litigation. But that is not this case. Here the unresolved issue left open by the June 17 order was a claim for fees for the case being resolved on the merits.
* * *
There was no timely appeal of the District Court's June 17 order. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed. The case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
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.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Chief Justice Burger
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We noted probable jurisdiction to decide whether a state may impose nondiscriminatory ad valorem personal property taxes on imported goods stored under bond in a customs warehouse and destined for foreign markets. The Texas Court of Civil Appeals held such taxes constitutional.
HH
Appellant Xerox Corp. is a New York corporation engaged in the business of manufacturing and selling business machines. Its operations span the globe, and it has established affiliates in foreign countries to facilitate foreign sales. It has assembly plants and production facilities in Mexico.
Xerox manufactured parts for copying machines in Colorado and New York which were shipped to Mexico City, Mexico, for assembly by its affiliate there. The copiers assembled in Mexico were designed for sale in the Latin American market, and all printing on the machines and instructions accompanying them were in Spanish or Portuguese. Most of the copiers operated on electric current of 50 cycles per second, rather than the 60 cycles per second that is standard in the United States. Many of the copiers assembled by appellant’s affiliate in Mexico City were not approved by either United Laboratories or the Canadian Standards Association, as required for sale in the United States. To convert the copiers for domestic sale would have cost approximately $100 per copier.
After assembly in Mexico, the copiers were transported by a customs bonded trucking company to the Houston Terminal Warehouse in Houston, Tex., a Class 3 customs bonded warehouse. There they were stored for periods ranging from a few days to three years while awaiting sale and shipment to Xerox affiliates in Latin America. The copiers remained in the warehouse, segregated from other merchandise, until a shipment order was received. When Xerox received an order, it would transport the copiers under bond to either the Port of Houston or the Port of Miami, where they were loaded on board vessels for shipment to Latin America. The copiers remained under the continuous control and supervision of the United States Customs Service from the time they entered the bonded warehouse until they cleared United States Customs at the Port of Houston or the Port of Miami for export.
None of the copiers assembled in Mexico and stored in Houston were ever sold to customers for domestic use; all were ultimately sold abroad. Consequently, Xerox paid no import duties on them.
The local authorities did not assess any taxes on the copiers stored under customs bond in 1974 and 1975. In 1977, the city of Houston assessed ad valorem personal property taxes of $156,728 on the copiers stored in the Houston warehouse during 1977. The County of Harris followed suit, assessing $55,969 in taxes for 1977 and also assessing $48,426 in back taxes for 1976, for a total of $104,395.
As soon as Xerox learned that the local authorities intended to tax its Mexican-assembled copiers, it shipped all the machines to a foreign trade zone in Buffalo, N. Y., from which it continued to fill orders for shipment to Latin America.
Declaratory and injunctive relief was sought in state court both from the taxes already assessed and such taxes as appel-lees might impose in the future. Xerox claimed that the taxes in question were unconstitutional because they violated the Import-Export Clause and the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Art. I., § 10, cl. 2; Art. I, §8, cl. 3. Appellees counterclaimed for the taxes assessed.
The trial court held that the taxes assessed by appellees violated both the Import-Export and Commerce Clauses, and it granted judgment to Xerox. The Texas Court of Civil Appeals, First District, reversed, holding that the taxes violated neither the Import-Export Clause nor the Commerce Clause. 619 S. W. 2d 402 (1981). Alternatively, it held that the trial court had violated Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 683 in granting injunctive relief. Finally, it granted judgment to appellees on their counterclaims in the amount of $131,311 plus penalties and interest to Harris County and $156,728 plus penalties and interest to the city of Houston. The Texas Supreme Court denied Xerox’s application for a writ of error and this appeal followed. We noted probable jurisdiction, 456 U. S. 913 (1982), and we reverse.
h-1 I — H
A
A preliminary question is whether this Court has jurisdiction over the appeal. Appellees argue that this Court lacks jurisdiction since the decision of the Texas court reversing the grant of an injunction rested on an independent and adequate state ground. However, an indispensable predicate to an award of judgment to the appellees on their counterclaims was a determination that the taxes at issue were permissible under the United States Constitution; the Texas Court of Civil Appeals so held. It is not claimed that any independent and adequate state-law ground supports that holding. We therefore have jurisdiction to review that judgment. 28 U. S. C. § 1257(2).
B
Pursuant to its powers under the Commerce Clause, Congress established a comprehensive customs system which includes provisions for Government-supervised bonded warehouses where imports may be stored duty free for prescribed periods. At any time during that period the goods may be withdrawn and reexported without payment of duty. Only if the goods are withdrawn for domestic sale or stored beyond the prescribed period does any duty become due. 19 U. S. C. § 1557(a) (1976 ed., Supp. V). While the goods are in bonded warehouses they are in the joint custody of the United States Customs Service and the warehouse proprietor and under the continuous control and supervision of the local customs officers. 19 U. S. C. § 1555. Detailed regulations control every aspect of the manner in which the warehouses are to be operated. 19 CFR §§ 19.1-19.6 (1982).
Government-regulated, bonded warehouses have been a link in the chain of foreign commerce since “a very early period in our history.” Fabbri v. Murphy, 95 U. S. 191, 197 (1877). A forerunner of the present statute was the Warehousing Act of 1846, 9 Stat. 58. A major objective of the warehousing system was to allow importers to defer payment of duty until the goods entered the domestic market or were exported. The legislative history explains that Congress sought to reinstate
“the sound though long neglected maxim of Adam Smith, ‘That every tax ought to be levied at the time and in the manner most convenient for the contributor to pay it; ’ [by providing] that the tax shall only be paid when the imports are entered for consumption . . . .” H. R. Rep. No. 411, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (1846).
The Act stimulated foreign commerce by allowing goods in transit in foreign commerce to remain in secure storage, duty free, until they resumed their journey in export. The geographic location of the country made it a convenient place for transshipment of goods within the Western Hemisphere and across both the Atlantic and the Pacific. A consequence of making the United States a center of world commerce was that
“our carrying trade would be vastly increased; that shipbuilding would be stimulated; that many foreign markets would be supplied, wholly or in part, by us with merchandise now furnished from the warehouses of Europe; that the industry of our seaports would be put in greater activity; [and] that the commercial transactions of the country would be facilitated . . . Cong. Globe, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., App. 792 (1846) (remarks of Sen. Dix).
To these ends, Congress was willing to waive all duty on goods that were reexported from the warehouse, and to defer, for a prescribed period, the duty on goods destined for American consumption. This was no small sacrifice at a time when customs duties made up the greater part of federal revenues, but its objective was to stimulate business for American industry and work for Americans.
In short, Congress created secure and duty-free enclaves under federal control in order to encourage merchants here and abroad to make use of American ports. The question is whether it would be compatible with the comprehensive scheme Congress enacted to effect these goals if the states were free to tax such goods while they were lodged temporarily in Government-regulated bonded storage in this country.
In McGoldrick v. Gulf Oil Corp., 309 U. S. 414 (1940), the City of New York sought to impose a sales tax on imported petroleum that was refined into fuel oil in New York and sold as ships’ stores to vessels bound abroad. The crude oil was imported under bond and refined in a customs bonded manufacturing warehouse and was free from all duties. We struck down the state tax, finding it pre-empted by the congressional scheme. Id., at 429.
The Court determined that the purpose of the exemption from the tax normally laid upon importation of crude petroleum was “to encourage importation of the crude oil for [refinement into ships’ stores] and thus to enable American refiners to meet foreign competition and to recover trade which had been lost by the imposition of the tax.” Id., at 427; see also id., at 428. The Court went on to note that, in furtherance of this purpose,
“Congress provided for the segregation of the imported merchandise from the mass of goods within the state, prescribed the procedure to insure its use for the intended purpose, and by reference confirmed and adopted customs regulations prescribing that the merchandise, while in bonded warehouse, should be free from state taxation.” Id., at 428-429.
The Court concluded that
“the purpose of the Congressional regulation of the commerce would fail if the state were free at any stage of the transaction to impose a tax which would lessen the competitive advantage conferred on the importer by Congress, and which might equal or exceed the remitted import duty.” Id., at 429.
In so deciding, the Court expressly declined to rely on the customs regulation “prescribing the exemption from state taxation,” holding that the regulation merely stated “what is implicit in the Congressional regulation of commerce presently involved.” Ibid.
The analysis in McGoldrick applies with full force here. First, Congress sought, in the statutory scheme reviewed in McGoldrick, to benefit American industry by remitting duties otherwise due. The import tax on crude oil was remitted to benefit oil refiners employing labor at refineries within the United States, whose products would not be sold in domestic commerce. Here, the remission of duties benefited those shippers using American ports as transshipment centers. Second, the system of customs regulation is as pervasive for the stored goods in the present case as it was in McGoldrick for the refined petroleum. In both cases, the imported goods were segregated in warehouses under continual federal custody and supervision. Finally, the state tax was large enough in each case to offset substantially the very benefits Congress intended to confer by remitting the duty. In short, freedom from state taxation is as necessary to the congressional scheme here as it was in McGoldrick.
Although there are factual distinctions between this case and McGoldrick, they are distinctions without a legal difference. We can discern no relevance to the issue of congressional intent in the fact that the fuel oil in McGoldrick could be sold only as ships’ stores whereas Xerox had the option to pay the duty and withdraw the copiers for domestic sale, or that in McGoldrick the city sought to impose a sales tax and here appellees assessed a property tax.
A similar conclusion was reached in District of Columbia v. International Distributing Corp., 118 U. S. App. D. C. 71, 331 F. 2d 817 (1964). There, the Court of Appeals held that a wholesaler of imported alcoholic beverages was not liable for District of Columbia excise taxes on the sale of such beverages to foreign embassies while the beverages were stored in a customs bonded warehouse. The court reasoned that Congress intended to make customs bonded warehouses federal enclaves free of state taxation and that although the imported goods were physically within the District of Columbia, they were not subject to its taxing jurisdiction until they were removed from the warehouse. Since the sales took place prior to removal, the District could not tax those sales. The Court of Appeals quoted with approval the following language of the Tax Court:
“ ‘The idea of bonded warehouses and their use by the United States custom authorities negatives the proposition that at the time of sale the alcoholic beverages were in the possession of the petitioner [the corporation]. True it is that the private bonded warehouse was physically in the District of Columbia; and the liquors were stored therein; and in that sense they were in the District. In law, however, they were still without that jurisdiction, and did not become subject thereto until they had been withdrawn from the private bonded warehouse and removed from the control of the customs official.’” Id., at 73-74, 381 F. 2d, at 819-820.
International Distributing Corp. merely confirms what this Court said in 1877 in Fabbri v. Murphy, 95 U. S., at 197-198: “Congress did not regard the importation as complete while the goods remained in the custody of the proper officers of customs.”
Accordingly, we hold that state property taxes on goods stored under bond in a customs warehouse are pre-empted by Congress’ comprehensive regulation of customs duties.
H — I HH HH
It is unnecessary for us to consider whether, absent congressional regulation, the taxes here would pass muster under the Import-Export Clause or the Commerce Clause.
The judgment of the Texas Court of Civil Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Reversed and remanded.
Until 1974, Xerox shipped its Mexican-assembled copiers to the Free Trade Zone of Panama, where they were stored tax free. In 1974, rising anti-American sentiment in Panama led Xerox to seek another storage facility. It settled on the Houston warehouse because of the excellent port facilities in the Port of Houston.
Goods stored in customs bonded warehouses are under the “joint custody” of the warehouse proprietor and the United States Customs Service. The United States Customs Service is “in charge” of the warehouse and all work performed there is under its “supervision.” 19 U. S. C. § 1555.
At the time in question, 19 U. S. C. § 1557(a) permitted the storage of imported goods for up to three years in a customs bonded warehouse without payment of an import duty. The importer was required to post a bond for the value of the duty. At the end of the three years, the goods could be withdrawn for domestic sale upon payment of the duty owed, or could be withdrawn for reexport without payment of any duty. In 1978, the time limit on the storage period was extended from three years to five years. Customs Procedural Reform and Simplification Act of 1978, Pub. L. 95-410, § 108(b)(1), 92 Stat. 892, 19 U. S. C. § 1557(a) (1976 ed., Supp. V).
Houston assesses and collects taxes for itself and the Houston Independent School District.
In 1976 and 1977, Xerox paid a total of approximately $1,817,000 in ad valorem taxes to appellees for copiers located in Texas for domestic use.
Harris County assesses and collects taxes for itself, the State of Texas, and other local taxing authorities.
In 1846, approximately 90% of all federal revenues were derived from customs duties. U. S. Bureau of Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Part 2, p. 1106 (Bicentennial ed. 1975) (customs accounted for $26,713,000 out of total federal revenues of $29,700,000).
Here, a footnote in the regulations governing customs bonded warehouses specifically provided that “[i]mported goods in bonded warehouses are exempt from taxation or judicial process of any State or subdivision thereof.” 19 CFR § 19.6(c), n. 11 (1982). A recent amendment to the regulations deleted this footnote on November 1, 1982, effective Decern-ber 1, 1982. 47 Fed. Reg. 49370. The Treasury Department offered no explanation for the amendment. The deletion of footnote 11 without explanation does not alter our conclusion that the ad valorem taxes here are pre-empted by the statutory scheme.
The fair market value of the copiers located in the Houston warehouse on January 1, 1977, was $9,015,690. The duty remitted by the United States on these copiers amounted to $540,000. By comparison, the appel-lees here sought to impose taxes on the copiers for the year 1977 amounting to $211,112. App. 12a-15a, 25a.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Opinion of the Court by
Mr. Justice Douglas,
announced by Mr. Justice Brennan.
This is the third time that the constitutional rights of appellant challenged in investigations by New Hampshire into subversion have been brought to us. The present case stems from an investigation by the Attorney General of the State under Rev. Stat. Ann. § 588:8-a (1965 Supp.), enacted in 1957, which provides in part:
“At any time when the attorney general has information which he deems reasonable or reliable relating to violations of the provisions of this chapter he shall make full and complete investigation thereof and shall report to the general court the results of this investigation, together with his recommendations, if any, for legislation. . . . [T]he attorney general is hereby authorized to make public such information received by him, testimony given before him, and matters handled by him as he deems fit to effectuate the purposes hereof.”
The “violations” cover a wide raiige of “subversive” activities designed to “overthrow, destroy or alter, or to assist in the overthrow, destruction or alteration of, the constitutional form of the government ... of the state of New Hampshire, or any political subdivision . . . by force, or violence.” § 588:1.
Appellant was willing to answer questions concerning his relationship with and knowledge of Communist activities since 1957, and in fact he did answer them. But he refused to answer a series of questions put him concerning earlier periods: His refusal, not being based on the Fifth Amendment, raised important questions under the First Amendment, made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. He was committed to jail for a period of one year or until he purged himself of contempt. That judgment was affirmed by the New Hampshire Supreme Court. 106 N. H. 262, 209 A. 2d 712. The case is here on appeal. 382 U. S. 877.
The substantiality of appellant’s First Amendment claim can best be seen by considering what he was asked to do. Appellant had already testified that he had not been involved with the Communist Party since 1957 and that he had no knowledge of Communist activities during that period. The Attorney General further sought to have him disclose information relating to his political associations of an earlier day, the meetings he attended, and the views expressed and ideas advocated at any such gatherings. Indeed, the Attorney General here relied entirely upon a 1955 Report on Subversive Activities in New Hampshire to justify renewed investigation of appellant. The Report connects appellant with the Communist Party only until 1953, over 10 years prior to the investigation giving rise to the present contempt.
On the basis of our prior cases, appellant had every reason to anticipate that the details of his political associations to which he might testify would be reported in a pamphlet purporting to describe the nature of subversion in New Hampshire. (See Uphaus v. Wyman, 360 U. S. 72, 88-95, Brennan, J., dissenting.) Admittedly, “exposure — in the sense of disclosure — is an inescapable incident of an investigation into the presence of subversive persons within a State.” Uphaus v. Wyman, supra, at 81. But whatever justification may have supported such exposure in Uphaus is absent here; the staleness of both the basis for the investigation and its subject matter makes indefensible such exposure of one’s associational and political past — exposure which is objectionable and damaging in the extreme to one whose associations and political views do not command majority approval.
“The First Amendment may be invoked against infringement of the protected freedoms by law or by lawmaking.” Watkins v. United States, 354 U. S. 178, 197. investigation is a part of lawmaking and the First Amendment, as well as the Fifth, stands as a barrier to state intrusion of privacy. No attack is made on the truthfulness of the questions answered by appellant stating that he does not serve in a subversive role and lacks knowledge of any current subversion. There is no showing of “overriding and compelling state interest” (Gibson v. Florida Legislative Comm., 372 U. S. 539, 546) that would warrant intrusion into the realm of political and associational privacy protected by the First Amendment. The information being sought was historical, not current. Lawmaking at the investigatory stage may properly probe historic events for any light that may be thrown on present conditions and problems. But the First Amendment prevents use of the power to investigate enforced by the contempt power to probe at will and without relation to existing need. Watkins v. United States, supra, at 197-200. The present record is devoid of any evidence that there is any Communist movement in New Hampshire. The 1955 Report deals primarily with “world-wide communism” and the Federal Government. There is no showing whatsoever of present danger of sedition against the State itself, the only area to which the authority of the State extends. There is thus absent that “nexus” between appellant and subversive activities in New Hampshire which the Court found to exist in Uphaus v. Wyman, supra, at 79. New Hampshire’s interest on this record is too remote and conjectural to override the guarantee of the First Amendment that a person can speak or not, as he chooses, free of all governmental compulsion. Reversed
DeGregory v. Wyman, 360 U. S. 717; DeGregory v. Attorney General, 368 U. S. 19. After remand of the latter case appellant purged himself of contempt by answering in the negative the question “Are you presently a member of the Communist Party?” Subsequently, new hearings were held and it is out of them that the present case arises.
Although the Act purports to extend its protection to the Federal Government as well, that field has been pre-empted. See Pennsylvania v. Nelson, 350 U. S. 497.
“I am not now a member of the Communist Party and have not been at any time since this authority under which I was subject has been on the statute books; that I have no knowledge of any communistic activities in New Hampshire during this period, or any violations of law during this period of six and one-half years. In fact, I have not even been aware of the existence of any Communist Party in the State of New Hampshire at any time that this authority has been on the statute books.”
“Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
“When did you join the Communist Party?
“Were you a paid member of the Communist Party?
“Were you an officer of the Communist Party?
“Did you ever have access to or control of membership or financial records of the Communist Party in New Hampshire?
“Did you attend Communist Party meetings in New Hampshire?
“To what extent did Communist Party District I in Boston, Massachusetts, have control over the party’s activities in New Hampshire?
“Did you ever attend any Communist Party meetings in New Hampshire wherein any person advocated to . . . overthrow, destroy or alter the Government of the State of New Hampshire, by force or violence?
“Did you ever attend any Communist Party meetings in New Hampshire where any person advocated, abetted, advised or taught by any means the commission of an act to constitute a clear and present danger to the security of this state?
“Did you or any person known to you destroy any books, records or files, or secrete any funds in this state belonging to or owned by the Communist Party?
“Did you at any time participate or assist in the formation of or contribute to the support of the Communist Party in New Hampshire ?”
Prosecution for these activities was apparently barred by the six-year state statute of limitations, N. H. Rev. St-at. Ann. §603:1, long before the investigation in 1964.
See Gibson v. Florida Legislative Comm., 372 U. S. 539, 543-544; Bates v. Little Rock, 361 U. S. 516, 523-524; NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U. S. 449, 462-463. Cf. Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U. S. 479, 485-487; Talley v. California, 362 U. S. 60, 64-65.
Pennsylvania v. Nelson, supra, n. 2.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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 Blackmun
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The issue here is whether a bankruptcy court may consider evidence extrinsic to the judgment and record of a prior state suit when determining whether a debt previously reduced to judgment is dischargeable under § 17 of the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U. S. C. § 35.
I
Petitioner G. Garvin Brown III was a guarantor for respondent Mark Paul Felsen and Felsen’s car dealership, Le Mans Motors, Inc. Petitioner’s guarantee secured a bank loan that financed the dealership’s trading in Lotus, Ferrari, and Lamborghini automobiles. In 1975, the lender brought a collection suit against petitioner, respondent, and Le Mans in Colorado state court. Petitioner filed an answer to the bank’s complaint, and a cross-claim against respondent and Le Mans. The answer and the cross-claim, by incorporating the answer, alleged that respondent and Le Mans induced petitioner to sign the guarantee “by misrepresentations and non-disclosures of material facts.” App. 35. The suit was settled by a stipulation. It provided that the bank should recover jointly and severally against all three defendants, and that petitioner should have judgment against respondent and Le Mans. Neither the stipulation nor the resulting judgment indicated the cause of action on which respondent’s liability to petitioner was based. Because the case was settled, respondent’s sworn deposition was never made part of the court record.
A short time later, respondent filed a petition for voluntary bankruptcy and sought to have his debt to petitioner discharged. Through discharge, the Bankruptcy Act provides “a new opportunity in life and a clear field for future effort, unhampered by the pressure and discouragement of preexisting debt,” Local Loan Co. v. Hunt, 292 U. S. 234, 244 (1934). By seeking discharge, however, respondent placed the rectitude of his prior dealings squarely in issue, for, as the Court has noted, the Act limits that opportunity to the “honest but unfortunate debtor.” Ibid. Section 14 of the Act, 11 U. S. C. § 32, specifies that a debtor may not obtain a discharge if lie has committed certain crimes or offenses. Section 17a, the focus of this case, provides that certain types of debts are not affected by a discharge. These include, under § 17a (2), “liabilities for obtaining money or property by false pretenses or false representations ... or for willful and malicious conversion of the property of another” and, under § 17a (4), debts that “were created by his fraud, embezzlement, misappropriation, or defalcation while acting as an officer or in any fiduciary capacity.”
In the bankruptcy court, petitioner sought to establish that respondent's debt to petitioner was not dischargeable. Petitioner alleged that the guarantee debt was the product of respondent’s fraud, deceit, and malicious conversion and so came within §§ 17a (2) and 17a (4). Petitioner contended that respondent had prepared false title certificates, sold automobiles out of trust, and applied the proceeds to private purposes. Respondent answered and moved for summary judgment. Respondent said that the prior state-court proceeding did not result in a finding of fraud, and contended that res judicata barred relitigation of the nature of respondent’s debt to petitioner, even though the application of § 17 had not been in issue in the prior proceeding.
Before 1970, such res judicata claims were seldom heard in federal court. Traditionally, the bankruptcy court determined whether the debtor merited a discharge under § 14, but left the dischargeability under § 17 of a particular debt to the court in which the creditor sued, after bankruptcy, to enforce his prior judgment. Typically, that court was a state court. In 1970, however, Congress altered § 17 to require creditors to apply to the bankruptcy court for adjudication of certain dischargeability questions, including those arising under §§ 17a (2) and 17a (4). In In re Nicholas, 510 F. 2d 160, cert. denied, 421 U. S. 1012 (1975), the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, confronting for the first time the res judicata question presented here, resolved it by holding that, in determining the dischargeability of a claim previously reduced to judgment, the District Court had properly limited its review to the record and judgment in the prior state-court proceeding. The Court of Appeals found that its decision accorded with the majority rule among state courts previously considering the question.
The bankruptcy court here, bound by Nicholas, somewhat reluctantly confined its consideration to the judgment, pleadings, exhibits, and stipulation which were in the state-court record. It declined to hear other evidence, and it refused to consider respondent’s deposition that had never been made part of that record. The court concluded that, because neither the judgment nor the record showed that petitioner’s allegation of misrepresentation was the basis for the judgment on the cross-claim against respondent, the liability had not been shown to be within §§ 17a (2) and 17a (4). The court granted summary judgment for respondent and held that the debt was dischargeable. App. 44-48.
Both the United States District Court for the District of Colorado, id., at 49, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed. In an unpublished opinion, the Court of Appeals followed Nicholas, applied res judicata, and said that the prior consent decree was conclusive as to the nature of respondent’s liability. The court noted that neither the stipulation nor the judgment mentioned fraud, and the court said that petitioner had not even met the state requirement that fraud be pleaded with specificity. See Colo. Rule Civ. Proc. 9 (b). The court agreed that respondent’s debt was dischargeable. App. 50-56.
Since Nicholas was decided, every other Court of Appeals that has considered the question has rejected res judicata and held that extrinsic evidence may be admitted in order to determine accurately the dischargeability under § 17 of a debt previously reduced to judgment in state court. We granted certiorari to resolve this conflict. 439 U. S. 925 (1978).
II
Res judicata ensures the finality of decisions. Under res judicata, “a final judgment on the merits bars further claims by parties or their privies based on the same cause of action.” Montana v. United States, 440 U. S. 147, 153 (1979). Res judicata prevents litigation of all grounds for, or defenses to, recovery that were previously available to the parties, regardless of whether they were asserted or determined in the prior proceeding. Chicot County Drainage Dist. v. Baxter State Bank, 308 U. S. 371, 378 (1940); 1B J. Moore, Federal Practice ¶ 0.405 [1] (2d ed. 1974). Res judicata thus encourages reliance on judicial decisions, bars vexatious litigation, and frees the courts to resolve other disputes.
Bankruptcy often breeds litigation, and respondent contends that the policy of repose which underlies res judicata has particular force here. Respondent argues that petitioner chose not to press the question of fraud in the state-court proceeding even though an adjudication of fraud would have entitled petitioner to extraordinary, remedies such as exemplary damages and body execution. Respondent says that because petitioner did not obtain a stipulation concerning fraud in the prior state-court proceeding, he is now barred from litigating matters that could have been concluded in the consent judgment. See United States v. Armour & Co., 402 U. S. 673, 681-682 (1971). Applying res judicata in bankruptcy court, it is argued, prevents a creditor from raising as an afterthought claims so insubstantial that they had previously been overlooked. In respondent’s view, res judicata stops harassment and promotes the orderly processes of justice by encouraging the consolidation of the entire dispute between debtor and creditor into one prior proceeding.
Because res judicata may govern grounds and defenses not previously litigated, however, it blockades unexplored paths that may lead to truth. Nor the sake of repose, res judicata shields the fraud and the cheat as well as the honest person. It therefore is to be invoked only after careful inquiry. Petitioner contends, and we agree, that here careful inquiry reveals that neither the interests served by res judicata, the process of orderly adjudication in state courts, nor the policies of the Bankruptcy Act would be well served by foreclosing petitioner from submitting additional evidence to prove his case.
A
Respondent’s res judicata claim is unlike those customarily entertained by the courts. Por example, this case is readily distinguishable from Chicot County Drainage Dist. v. Baxter State Bank, supra. There, bondholders participated in a federal statutory proceeding for the readjustment of indebtedness and a judgment was entered. After parties from another State succeeded in having the statute declared unconstitutional, the bondholders brought a suit seeking to collect the sums that had been due before readjustment. The Court held that res judicata barred the second suit and said that the bondholders "were not the less bound by the decree” because they failed to raise the constitutional claim in the first proceeding. 308 U. S., at 375.
Here, in contrast, petitioner readily concedes that the prior decree is binding. That is the cornerstone of his claim. He does not assert a new ground for recovery, nor does he attack the validity of the prior judgment. Rather, what he is attempting to meet here is the new defense of bankruptcy which respondent has interposed between petitioner and the sum determined to be due him. A substantial minority of state-court decisions, particularly those following Fidelity & Casualty Co. v. Golombosky, 133 Conn. 317, 322-324, 50 A. 2d 817, 819-820 (1946) (Maltbie, C. J.), have recognized this distinction and have refused to apply res judicata in determining the dischargeability of debts previously reduced to judgment. Respondent has upset the repose that would justify treating the prior state-court proceeding as final, and it would hardly promote confidence in judgments to prevent petitioner from meeting respondent’s new initiative.
B
Respondent contends that the § 17 questions raised here, or similar issues of state law, could have been considered in the prior state-court proceeding and therefore are not “new.” Respondent argues that the state-court collection suit is the appropriate forum for resolving all debtor-creditor disputes, including those concerning dischargeability. While in some circumstances the consolidation of proceedings may be desirable, here consolidation would undercut a statutory policy in favor of resolving § 17 questions in bankruptcy court, and would force state courts to decide these questions at a stage when they are not directly in issue and neither party has a full incentive to litigate them. See In re Pigge, 539 F. 2d 369, 371-372 (CA4 1976).
1. Considerations material to discharge are irrelevant to the ordinary collection proceeding. The creditor sues on the instrument which created the debt. Even if an issue similar to those created by § 17 should arise, the state-law concept is likely to differ from that adopted in the federal statute. See 1A J. Moore, J. Mulder, & R. Oglebay, Collier on Bankruptcy ¶ 17.16 [6], p. 1650.1 (14th ed. 1978). For example, in Davis v. Aetna Acceptance Co., 293 U. S. 328 (1934), the Court held that a mere technical conversion by a bankrupt dealer in automobiles was not “willful and malicious” within the meaning of § 17 by virtue of being actionable under state law, nor was a misappropriation of funds, held pursuant to a “trust receipt,” a breach of an express trust sufficient to constitute an act done “as an officer or in any fiduciary capacity.”
When § 17 issues are not identical to those arising under state law, the parties have little incentive to litigate them. In the collection suit, the debtor’s bankruptcy is still hypothetical. The rule proposed by respondent would force an otherwise unwilling party to try § 17 questions to the hilt in order to protect himself against the mere possibility that a debtor might take bankruptcy in the future. In many cases, such litigation would prove, in the end, to have been entirely unnecessary, and it is not surprising that at least one state court has expressly refused to embroil itself in an advisory adjudication of this kind. See Pioneer Finance & Thrift Co. v. Powell, 21 Utah 2d 201, 204, 443 P. 2d 389, 391 (1968). And absent trial on the merits, there is no particular reason to favor extraneous facts thrown into a record for § 17 purposes over facts adduced before the bankruptcy court.
2. If a state court should expressly rule on § 17 questions, then giving finality to those rulings would undercut Congress’ intention to commit § 17 issues to the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court. The 1970 amendments eliminated post-bankruptcy state-court collection suits as a means of resolving certain § 17 dischargeability questions. In those suits, creditors had taken advantage of debtors who were unable to retain counsel because bankruptcy had stripped them of their assets. Congress’ primary purpose was to stop that abuse. A secondary purpose, however, was to take these § 17 claims away from state courts that seldom dealt with the federal bankruptcy laws and to give those claims to the bankruptcy court so that it could develop expertise in handling them. By the express terms of the Constitution, bankruptcy law is federal law, U. S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 4, and the Senate Report accompanying the amendment described the bankruptcy court’s jurisdiction over these § 17 claims as “exclusive.” S. Rep. No. 91-1173, p. 2 (1970). While Congress did not expressly confront the problem created by prebank-ruptcy state-court adjudications, it would be inconsistent with the philosophy of the 1970 amendments to adopt a policy of res judicata which takes these § 17 questions away from bankruptcy courts and forces them back into state courts. See In re McMillan, 579 F. 2d 289, 293 (CA3 1978); In re Houtman, 568 F. 2d 651, 654 (CA9 1978); In re Pigge, 539 F. 2d, at 371; 1 D. Cowans, Brankruptcy Law and Practice § 253, p. 298 (1978). Compare 1A J. Moore, J. Mulder, & R. Oglebay, Collier on Bankruptcy ¶ 17.16 [6], p. 1650.1 n. 50 (14th ed. 1978) (1970 Act), with id., ¶ 17.16 [4], p. 1643 (prior state law).
Respondent argues that petitioner could have avoided such a result and preserved his dischargeability contentions for bankruptcy court review by bargaining for a stipulation that § 17 issues were not resolved by the consent judgment. It makes little sense, however, to resolve a federal discharge-ability question according to whether or not the parties in state court waived their right to engage in hypothetical litigation in an inappropriate forum.
3. Respondent also contends that petitioner had an adequate incentive to prove state-law fraud, which might have entailed proof identical to that required by § 17. Petitioner, however, rejected whatever lure exemplary damages and body execution may have provided. That rejection does not conclusively show that petitioner thought respondent was innocent of fraud. Petitioner may have thought those remedies would not be advantageous to him. While respondent is certainly entitled to claim that res judicata would bar further pursuit of those extraordinary remedies in state court, their hypothetical desirability provides no basis for preventing petitioner from recovering on the debt, the remedy he elected from the beginning.
C
Refusing to apply res judicata here would permit the bankruptcy court to make an accurate determination whether respondent in fact committed the deceit, fraud, and malicious conversion which petitioner alleges. These questions are now, for the first time, squarely in issue. They are the type of question Congress intended that the bankruptcy court would resolve. That court can weigh all the evidence, and it can also take into account whether or not petitioner's failure to press these allegations at an earlier time betrays a weakness in his case on the merits.
Some indication that Congress intended the fullest possible inquiry arises from the history of § 17. In the 1898 Bankruptcy Act, Congress provided that only “judgments” sounding in fraud would be excepted from a bankrupt's discharge. 30 Stat. 550. In 1903, Congress substituted “liabilities” for “judgments.” 32 Stat. 798. The amendment, said the accompanying House Report, was “in the interest of justice and honest dealing and honest conduct,” and it was intended “to exclude beyond peradventure certain liabilities growing out of offenses against good morals.” This broad language suggests that all debts arising out of conduct specified in § 17 should be excepted from discharge and the mere fact that a conscientious creditor has previously reduced his claim to judgment should not bar further inquiry into the true nature of the debt. Cf. Hargadine-McKittrick Dry Goods Co. v. Hudson, 111 F. 361, 362-363 (ED Mo. 1901), aff'd, 122 F. 232, 235-236 (CA8 1903) (comparing 1903 Act to prior law).
In sum, we reject respondent’s contention that res judicata applies here and we hold that the bankruptcy court is not confined to a review of the judgment and record in the prior state-court proceedings when considering the dischargeability of respondent’s debt. Adopting the rule respondent urges would take § 17 issues out of bankruptcy courts well suited to adjudicate them, and force those issues onto state courts concerned with other matters, all for the sake of a repose the bankrupt has long since abandoned. This we decline to do. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
It is so ordered.
In 1978, Congress repealed the Bankruptcy Act, effective October 1, 1979. See Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978, Pub. L. 95-598, § 401 (a), 92 Stat. 2682. A case commenced under the Bankruptcy Act continues to be governed by it. §403 (a), 92 Stat. 2683. Discharge provisions substantially similar to § 17 of the Bankruptcy Act appear in § 523 of the new law. 11 U. S. C. App. § 523 (1976 ed., Supp. II).
See Pub. L. 91-467, §§ 5-7, 84 Stat. 992; H. R. Rep. No. 91-1502 (1970); S. Rep. No. 91-1173 (1970).
The court observed that, in its experience, the Nicholas rule had “created more difficulties and more problems than it has solved.” Tr. in No. 76 B 56 (Colo., Dec. 14, 1976), p. 13.
See In re Wright, 584 F. 2d 83, 84 (CA5 1978); In re McMillan, 579 F. 2d 289, 293, and n. 6 (CA3 1978); In re Houtman, 568 F. 2d 651, 653-654 (CA9 1978); In re Pigge, 539 F. 2d 369, 371-372 (CA4 1976).
Two Circuits held that extrinsic evidence was admissible under pre-1970 law. See Martin v. Rosenbaum, 329 F. 2d 817, 820 (CA9 1964); In re Johnson, 323 F. 2d 574 (CA3 1963). But cf. Chernick v. United States, 492 F. 2d 1349, 1351, and n. 4 (CA7 1974) (bound by prior post-bankruptcy judgment). This Court, in dictum, indicated that extrinsic evidence could be admitted in a proceeding under the 1867 Bankruptcy Act. Strang v. Bradner, 114 U. S. 555, 560-561 (1885).
In Colorado, body 'execution is a statutory remedy which, under certain circumstances, permits a creditor to have a tortious judgment debtor imprisoned at the creditor’s expense. See Hershey v. People, 91 Colo. 113, 12 P. 2d 345 (1932); Colo. Rev. Stat. § 13-59-103 (1973).
See United States Credit Bureau v. Manning, 147 Cal. App. 2d 558, 562, 305 P. 2d 970, 973 (2d Dist. 1957); Welsh v. Old Dominion Bank, 229 A. 2d 455, 456 (D. C. App. 1967); Levin v. Singer, 227 Md. 47, 57-60, 175 A. 2d 423, 428-430 (1961); Fireman’s Fund Indemnity Co. v. Caruso, 252 Minn. 435, 439-441, 90 N. W. 2d 302, 305-306 (1958); Durrett v. Smith, 358 S. W. 2d 261, 263 (Mo. App. 1962). The Golombosky case has been applauded by the commentators. See J. MacLachlan, Bankruptcy 111 (1956); Note, Fraudulent Financial Statements and Section 17 of the Bankruptcy Act—The Creditor’s Dilemma, 1967 Utah L. Rev. 281, 288-290, 296; Developments in the Law—Res Judicata, 65 Harv. L. Rev. 818, 885 (1952); Comment, 60 Harv. L. Rev. 638 (1947); Comment, 33 Va. L. Rev. 508 (1947). Cf. 8 H. Remington, Bankruptcy Law 186 (6th ed. 1955) (contrary decisions are sound only when applied to the “typical ‘afterthought’ and harassment case”). But see Note, 21 J. Nat. Assn. of Referees in Bankruptcy 94 (1947).
Other States, however, continued to apply res judicata and refused to admit additional evidence. See Miller v. Rush, 155 Colo. 178, 188, 393 P. 2d 565, 571 (1964); Security National Bank v. Boccio, 60 Misc. 2d 547, 548, 303 N. Y. S. 2d 610, 611 (Nassau Cty. 1969); Universal C. I. T. Credit Corp. v. Woodmansee, 213 Tenn. 429, 437, 374 S. W. 2d 386, 390 (1964); Beehive State Bank v. Buntine, 17 Utah 2d 351, 352, 411 P. 2d 967, 968 (1966); Northey v. Vandermark, 66 Wash. 2d 173, 176, 401 P. 2d 873, 875-876 (1965).
The state decisions predating Golombosky are close to unanimity in adhering to res judicata. See Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. v. Sentilles, 160 So. 149, 151 (La. App. 1935); Rice v. Guider, 275 Mich. 14, 18, 265 N. W. 777, 778 (1936); Ehnes v. Generazzo, 19 N. J. Misc. 393, 396, 20 A. 2d 513, 515 (Com. Pl. 1941); Scott v. Corn, 19 S. W. 2d 412, 415 (Tex. Civ. App. 1929), cert. denied, 281 U. S. 736 (1930); Annot., 170 A. L. R. 368 (1947). But see Gehlen v. Patterson, 83 N. H. 328, 331, 141 A. 914, 916 (1928).
See S. Rep. No. 91-1173, pp. 2-3 (1970); H. R. Rep. No. 91-1502, p. 1 (1970). A statement by Professor Lawrence King, prepared for the National Bankruptcy Conference, included in both the House and Senate Reports and placed in the Congressional Record by Representative Wiggins, said:
“One of the strongest arguments in support of the bill is that, if the bill is passed, a single court, to wit, the bankruptcy court, will be able to pass upon the question of dischargeability of a particular claim and it will be able to develop an expertise in resolving the problem in particular eases. The State court judges, however capable they may be, do not have enough cases to acquire sufficient experience to enable them to develop this expertise. Moreover, even under the present system, in the last analysis, it is the U. S. Supreme Court which has the ultimate word on the construction of section 17 of the Bankruptcy Act. . . . Since this is a Federal statute, the Federal courts necessarily have the final word as to the meaning of any terms contained therein.” S. Rep. No. 91-1173, p. 9 (1970); H. R. Rep. No. 91-1502, p. 8 (1970); 116 Cong. Rec. 34819 (1970).
See also S. Rep. No. 91-1173, p. 6 (1970) (letter of Royal E. Jackson, Chief, Division of Bankruptcy, quoting Prof. Charles Seligson).
So long as a debtor is solvent, the debtor and creditor alike may prefer a simple contract suit to complex tort litigation. Default and consent judgments are common in collection proceedings. For the creditor, the prospect of increased attorney’s fees and the likelihood of driving the debtor into bankruptcy may offset the advantages of exemplary damages or other extraordinary remedies. Bankruptcy deprives the debtor of his creditworthiness and so impairs his ability to repay. In the words of a Shakespearean creditor, fearing the worst:
“When every feather sticks in his own wing,
Which Timón will be left a naked Gull,
Which flashes now a Phoenix.” Timón of Athens, Act 2, Scene 1, in VII The Works of Shakespeare 294 (Henley ed. 1903).
Nor does body execution aid in the collection of a debt if the debtor needs to be out of jail in order to earn the money to repay the debt.
H. R. Rep. No. 1698, 57th Cong., 1st Sess., 3, 6 (1902). See 36 Cong. Rec. 1375 (1903).
This case concerns res judicata only, and not the narrower principle of collateral estoppel. Whereas res judicata forecloses all that which might have been litigated previously, collateral estoppel treats as final only those questions actually and necessarily decided in a prior suit. Montana v. United States, 440 U. S. 147, 153 (1979); Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 439 U. S. 322, 326 n. 5 (1979); Cromwell v. County of Sac, 94 U. S. 351, 352-353 (1877). If, in the course of adjudicating a state-law question, a state court should determine factual issues using standards identical to those of § 17, then collateral estoppel, in the absence of countervailing statutory policy, would bar relitigation of those issues in the bankruptcy court.
Because respondent does not contend that the state litigation actually and necessarily decided either fraud or any other question against petitioner, we need not and therefore do not decide whether a bankruptcy court adjudicating a § 17 question should give collateral-estoppel effect to a prior state judgment. In another context, the Court has held that a bankruptcy court should give collateral-estoppel effect to a prior decision. Heiser v. Woodruff, 327 U. S. 726, 736 (1946). The 1970 amendments to the Bankruptcy Act, however, have been interpreted by some ' commentators to permit a contrary result. See 1A J. Moore, J. Mulder, & R. Oglebay, Collier on Bankruptcy § 17.16 [6], p. 1650.2 (14th ed. 1978); Countryman, The New Dischargeability Law, 45 Am. Bankr. L. J. 1, 49-50 (1971). But see 1 D. Cowans, Bankruptcy Law and Practice § 253 (1978).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Reed
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question in this case is whether an appeal may be taken to a court of appeals from a district court order refusing to stay an action for an accounting pending arbitration.
This equitable action was brought in a state court for an accounting of the profits of a joint venture in construction under the National Housing Act, and was removed to a federal district court on the basis of diversity of citizenship. Under the joint venture agreement, Baltimore Contractors agreed to pay the respondent twenty-five percent of the net profits on its construction contracts. The provision under which arbitration was sought reads as follows:
“In the event of any dispute in the calculation of the net profits under this Paragraph, Erenkil shall select either Wooden and Benson or Haskins and Sells or an accountant or auditor named by either of them whose determination of all such disputes shall be final and binding upon all parties to the dispute.”
The complaint alleged a number of improper practices on the part of Contractors: the use of “dummy” corporations to inflate costs; charges for machinery and material purchases without credits for value or surpluses after completion of the job; receipt of undisclosed rebates; excessive charges and rental for equipment; padded insurance costs, etc.
The petitioner moved for a stay of the action pursuant to § 3 of the United States Arbitration Act, 9 U. S. C. § 3, which authorizes a stay by a federal court when an issue is “referable to arbitration under an agreement in writing for such arbitration.” The District Court refused the stay on the ground that the agreement between the parties did not constitute an agreement to arbitrate. The court apparently construed the quoted provision as limited to mathematical disputes. Petitioner appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. On respondent’s motion the Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal, citing Morgantown v. Royal Ins. Co., 337 U. S. 254. Cer-tiorari was sought on the following question:
“Whether in an action for an accounting an interlocutory order denying a stay under Section 3 of the United States Arbitration Act should be regarded as a denial of an injunction from which an appeal lies.”
In view of the conflict between the decision below and Hudson Lumber Co. v. United States Plywood Corp., 181 F. 2d 929, we granted the petition, 347 U. S. 942.
Congress has long expressed a policy against piecemeal appeals. The reasons for such a policy were stated as follows:
“From the very foundation of our judicial system the object and policy of the acts of Congress in relation to appeals and writs of error, (with the single exception of a provision in the act of 1875 in relation to cases of removal, which was repealed by the act of 1887,) have been to save the expense and delays of repeated appeals in the same suit, and to have the whole case and every matter in controversy in it decided in a single appeal.” McLish v. Roff, 141 U. S. 661, 665-666.
Section 22 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, 1 Stat. 73, 84, provided that appeals in civil actions could be taken to the circuit courts only from final decrees and judgments. That requirement of finality has remained a part of our law ever since, and now appears as § 1291 of the Judicial Code.
The trial court’s interpretation of the quoted contract clause and its order denying a stay could not be called a final decision under § 1291. It was as surely an interlocutory order as the District Court’s order in Shanferoke Corp. v. Westchester Corp., 293 U. S. 449,451. The question here presented involves the interpretation of 28 U. S. C. § 1292 (1) which makes an exception to the requirement of finality, permitting appeals from “interlocutory orders . . . granting, continuing, modifying, refusing or dissolving injunctions, or refusing to dissolve or modify injunctions, except where a direct review may be had in the Supreme Court.” Appealability here turns on whether the District Court’s refusal to stay this trial for arbitration was the refusal of an “injunction” under § 1292.
The provision for interlocutory appeals was first introduced in 1891 when the circuit courts of appeals were established as intermediate appellate courts. 26 Stat. 826. Section 7 of that Act allowed appeals from interlocutory orders in equity “granting or continuing” injunctions, but from those only. Additions to the class of appealable interlocutory orders were made from time to time until the enactment of § 1292 in its present form. No discussion of the underlying reasons for modifying the rule of finality appears in the legislative history, although the changes seem plainly to spring from a developing need to permit litigants to effectually challenge interlocutory orders of serious, perhaps irreparable, consequence. When the pressure rises to a point that influences Congress, legislative remedies are enacted. The Congress is in a position to weigh the competing interests of the dockets of the trial and appellate courts, to consider the practicability of savings in time and expense, and to give proper weight to the effect on litigants. When countervailing considerations arise, interested parties and organizations become active in efforts to modify the appellate jurisdiction. This Court, however, is not authorized to approve or declare judicial modification. It is the responsibility of all courts to see that no unauthorized extension or reduction of jurisdiction, direct or indirect, occurs in the federal system. Shanferoke Corp. v. Westchester Corp., 293 U. S. 449, 451. Any such ad hoc decisions disorganize practice by encouraging attempts to secure or oppose appeals with a consequent waste of time and money. The choices fall in the legislative domain. They are enlargement of the allowable list of appealable interlocutory orders; abandonment of fragmentary appeals; or a general allowance of such appeals in the discretion of the trial judge upon findings of need, with or without the consent or approval of the appellate court.
A series of decisions of this Court has developed the rationale for determining the appealability of such an interlocutory order as this under § 1292 and its predecessors. The appealability of routine interlocutory injunctive orders raised few questions. See George v. Victor Co., 293 U. S. 377. There the statute was clear. It was when stays of proceedings, in distinction to injunctions, were appealed that the issue of jurisdiction became sharp. In Enelow v. New York Life Ins. Co., 293 U. S. 379, a case arising when federal courts had actions at law and proceedings in equity, a complaint at common law on a life insurance policy was met by an answer alleging fraud in the policy's procurement with a prayer for its cancellation and a motion to try the equitable issue first. The motion was granted, and jurisdiction on appeal from that order was approved on this reasoning:
“The power to stay proceedings in another court appertains distinctively to equity in the enforcement of equitable principles, and the grant or refusal of such a stay by a court of equity of proceedings at law is a grant or refusal of an injunction within the meaning of § 129 [§ 1292]. And, in this aspect, it makes no difference that the two cases, the suit in equity for an injunction and the action at law in which proceedings are stayed, are both pending in the same court, in view of the established distinction between ‘proceedings at law and proceedings in equity in the national courts and between the powers of those courts when sitting as courts of law and when sitting as courts of equity.’ Per Yan Devanter, J., in Griesa v. Mutual Life Ins. Co., 165 Fed. 48, 50, 51.” 293 U. S., at 382.
After the adoption of the one form, of action by the Fed. Rules Civ. Proc., 2, we reiterated this ruling in a like case. Ettelson v. Metropolitan Ins. Co., 317 U. S. 188. We said a stay of the complaint until disposition of the fraud issue “is as effective ... as an injunction .... The statute looks to the substantial effect of the order made.”
The point was made in the Eneloui case that power to stay mere steps within the framework of the litigation before a court differs as to appealability from an injunction prohibiting proceedings in another court. This distinction was applied in Morgantown v. Royal Ins. Co., 337 U. S. 254. There the insurance company brought a suit for reformation of the contract. .The insured counterclaimed, seeking to enforce the contract as written, and demanded a jury trial; the company moved to strike the demand; the court granted the motion and set the case for trial to the court without a jury. The insured appealed and the Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal. We affirmed, holding that the Enelow rule did not apply; that since this was an equitable proceeding with a counterclaim to enforce the policy, the decision to hear the reformation issue first without a jury was only a decision as to how to try the case, and therefore was not an interlocutory order in the nature of an injunction. To the argument that the importance of a jury trial justified treating the order of trial as an interlocutory injunction, we answered:
“Many interlocutory orders are equally important, and may determine the outcome of the litigation, but they are not for that reason converted into injunctions.” 337 U. S., at 258.
The Morgantown case controls here. Whether the District Court was right or wrong in its ruling that the contract provision did not require arbitration proceedings, it was simply a ruling in the only suit pending, actual or fictional. It was a mere order and not an injunction as that word is understood through the Enelow and the Ettelson cases as a stay through equitable principles of a common-law action. This present case is to be distinguished from the Shanferoke case, supra, note 5, in the same way. There in a common-law action a motion for an interlocutory injunction on an equitable defense was refused. The order was appealable under Judicial Code §129. This Court said:
“For the reasons stated in Enelow v. New York Life Ins. Co., decided this day, ante, p. 379, an order granting or denying a stay based on an equitable defense or cross-bill interposed in an action at law under § 274b, is appealable under § 129.” 293 U. S., at 452.
The reliance on the analogy of equity power to enjoin proceedings in other courts has elements of fiction in this day of one form of action The incongruity of taking jurisdiction from a stay in a law type and denying jurisdiction in an equity type proceeding springs from the persistence of outmoded procedural differentiations. Some simplification would follow from an assumption or denial of jurisdiction in both. The distinction has been applied for years, however, and we conclude that it is better judicial practice to follow the precedents which limit appealability of interlocutory orders, leaving Congress to make such amendments as it may find proper.
It is difficult to generalize as to whether interlocutory appeals are or are not advantageous to an efficient administration of justice. A compromise has been worked out by Congress through § 1292. But- that compromise does not authorize appeals to simplify litigation. This ruling was a step in controlling the litigation before the trial court, not the refusal of an interlocutory injunction.
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Burton concurs in the judgment of the Court.
The Hudson Lumber Co. ease was a suit for a declaratory judgment as to the meaning of certain contract provisions with a prayer for incidental injunctive relief. Appeal was allowed by the Court of Appeals from the District Court order staying the trial pending resort to arbitration as required by the contract.
See Catlin v. United States, 324 U. S. 229, 233-234; United States v. Bailey, 9 Pet. 238, 273.
This enlarged the English rule for there interlocutory appeals were allowed in equity, although not at common law. 1 Holdsworth’s History of English Law 214; Crick, The Final Judgment as a Basis for Appeal, 41 Yale L. J. 539, 540-548, 551. Section 22 was rigorously enforced. Rutherford v. Fisher, 4 Dall. 22; Young v. Grundy, 6 Cranch 51. Fragmentary appeals were denounced. Canter v. American Ins. Co., 3 Pet. 307, 318; United States v. Bailey, 9 Pet. 238, 273.
28 U. S. C. §1291:
“The courts of appeals shall have jurisdiction of appeals from all final decisions of the district courts of the United States, the District Court for the Territory of Alaska, the United States District Court for the District of the Canal Zone, the District Court of Guam, and the District Court of the Virgin Islands, except where a direct review may be had in the Supreme Court.”
The statutory limitation of appeals to final decisions, i. e., judgments and decrees, Ex parte Tiffany, 252 U. S. 32, 36, has called for determinations of the characteristics of finality. Stack v. Boyle, 342 U. S. 1, 6; Roberts v. U. S. District Court, 339 U. S. 844, 845; Swift & Co. v. Compania Caribe, 339 U. S. 684, 688; Cohen v. Beneficial Loan Corp., 337 U. S. 541, 546; Cogen v. United States, 278 U. S. 221. Cf. Bandini Co. v. Superior Court, 284 U. S. 8, 14 — 15; Radio Station WOW v. Johnson, 326 U. S. 120, 124; Montgomery Union v. Ledbetter Co., 344 U. S. 178. See Underwood, Appeals in the Federal Practice from Collateral Orders, 36 Va. L. Itev. 731.
The concept of finality does not require a judgment completely disposing of every matter or issue that arises in the litigation. Some collateral issues may become “so severed ... as to permit an appeal.” Cobbledick v. United States, 309 U. S. 323, 328.
Shanferoke Corp. v. Westchester Corp., 293 U. S. 449, was a suit at common law to recover damages for breach of a contract containing an arbitration clause. A motion was made to stay the suit until arbitration. The motion was denied because the trial court thought the arbitration clause applicable only to New York litigation. This Court held that the order was interlocutory and was appealable under § 129 of the Judicial Code of 1911, the predecessor of 28 U. S. C. § 1292 (1). The ruling followed Enelow v. New York Life Ins. Co., infra, p. 182.
Wilko v. Swan, 201 F. 2d 439, reversed on issues not pertinent here, 346 U. S. 427, was a suit for statutory damages. It allowed an appeal under 28 U. S. C. § 1292 to the Court of Appeals from a District Court interlocutory order refusing a stay sought pursuant to the United States Arbitration Act, 9 U. S. C. § 3. The Shanferoke case was cited.
In 1895, § 7 was amended to permit an appeal from interlocutory orders refusing or dissolving injunctions, or refusing to dissolve an injunction. 28 Stat. 666. A further amendment was made in 1900 to include certain orders in receiverships. 31 Stat. 660. This amendment had the effect of repealing the 1895 provision which was restored in § 129 of the Judicial Code of 1911. 36 Stat. 1087, 1134. See Frankfurter and Landis, The Business of the Supreme Court, 124-127. The amendment of 1925, 43 Stat. 937, made two changes: First, it embraced orders modifying or refusing to modify injunctions and expanded the number of orders in receiverships which were ap-pealable. Second, it dropped the words “in equity” from the phrase “where upon a hearing in equity in a district court” which had been employed since the initial enactment of § 7 in 1891. No change was intended by that omission. Schoenamsgruber v. Hamburg Line, 294 U. S. 454, 457, n. 3. In 1927, provision was made for interlocutory appeals in patent cases which are final save for an accounting, 44 Stat. 1261. Interlocutory appeals in bankruptcy cases are covered by § 24 of the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U. S. C. § 47.
Compare Fed. Rules Civ. Proc., 54 (b), and see Dickinson v. Petroleum Conversion Corp., 338 U. S. 507.
Statutory provisions for interlocutory appeals have been enacted in Great Britain. See the Judicature Act of 1925, Law Reports 1925 (2), 15 & 16 Geo. V, c. 49, § 31; 19 Halsbury’s Laws of England (2d ed.) 209.
See Hart and Wechsler, The Federal Courts and the Federal System, Note on Rule 54 (b) and Review of Interlocutory Orders, 1344; Proposals for Interlocutory Appeals, 58 Yale L. J. 1186. See Report of the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Judicial Conference of the United States for Sept. 24-25, 1953, p. 27, Report of Committee on Enlargement of Scope of Appeals from Interlocutory Orders, with proposed amendment to § 1292. This was transmitted to Congress, 100 Cong. Rec. 1079 and 1168.
Cf. Schoenamsgruber v. Hamburg Line, 294 U. S. 454, 457, where a stay in admiralty for arbitration was held not appealable as an injunction but only an order as to the course of trial.
Cf. Moore’s Commentary on the U. S. Judicial Code, 492.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
CHIEF Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In Totten v. United States, 92 U. S. 105 (1876), we held that public policy forbade a self-styled Civil War spy from suing the United States to enforce its obligations under their secret espionage agreement. Respondents here, alleged former Cold War spies, filed suit against the United States and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), asserting estoppel and due process claims for the CIA’s alleged failure to provide respondents with the assistance it had promised in return for their espionage services. Finding that Totten did not bar respondents’ suit, the District Court and the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the case could proceed. We reverse because this holding contravenes the longstanding rule, announced more than a century ago in Totten, prohibiting suits against the Government based on covert espionage agreements.
Respondents, a husband and wife who use the fictitious names John and Jane Doe, brought suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. According to respondents, they were formerly citizens of a foreign country that at the time was considered to be an enemy of the United States, and John Doe was a high-ranking diplomat for the country. After respondents expressed interest in defecting to the United States, CIA agents persuaded them to remain at their posts and conduct espionage for the United States for a specified period of time, promising in return that the Government “would arrange for travel to the United States and ensure financial and personal security for life.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 122a. After “carrying out their end of the bargain” by completing years of purportedly high-risk, valuable espionage services, id., at 123a, respondents defected (under new names and false backgrounds) and became United States citizens, with the Government’s help. The CIA designated respondents with “PL-110” status and began providing financial assistance and personal security.
With the CIA’s help, respondent John Doe obtained employment in the State of Washington. As his salary increased, the CIA decreased his living stipend until, at some point, he agreed to a discontinuation of benefits while he was working. Years later, in 1997, John Doe was laid off after a corporate merger. Because John Doe was unable to find new employment as a result of CIA restrictions on the type of jobs he could hold, respondents contacted the CIA for financial assistance. Denied such assistance by the CIA, they claim they are unable to properly provide for themselves. Thus, they are faced with the prospect of either returning to their home country (where they say they face extreme sanctions), or remaining in the United States in their present circumstances.
Respondents assert, among other things, that the CIA violated their procedural and substantive due process rights by denying them support and by failing to provide them with a fair internal process for reviewing their claims. They seek injunctive relief ordering the CIA to resume monthly financial support pending further agency review. They also request a declaratory judgment stating that the CIA failed to provide a constitutionally adequate review process, and detailing the minimal process the agency must provide. Finally, respondents seek a mandamus order requiring the CIA to adopt agency procedures, to give them fair review, and to provide them with security and financial assistance.
The Government moved to dismiss the complaint under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6), principally on the ground that Totten bars respondents’ suit. The District Court dismissed some of respondents’ claims but denied the Government’s Totten objection, ruling that the due process claims could proceed. 99 F. Supp. 2d 1284, 1289-1294 (WD Wash. 2000). After minimal discovery, the Government renewed its motion to dismiss based on Totten, and it moved for summary judgment on respondents’ due process claims. Apparently construing the complaint as also raising an estoppel claim, the District Court denied the Government’s motions, ruled again that Totten did not bar respondents’ claims, and found there were genuine issues of material fact warranting a trial on respondents’ due process and es-toppel claims. App. to Pet. for Cert. 85a-94a. The District Court certified an order for interlocutory appeal and stayed further proceedings pending appeal. Id., at 79a-88a.
A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed in relevant part. 329 F. 3d 1135 (2003). It reasoned that Totten posed no bar to reviewing some of respondents’ claims and thus that the case could proceed to trial, subject to the Government’s asserting the evidentiary state secrets privilege and the District Court’s resolving that issue. 329 F. 3d, at 1145-1155. Over dissent, the Court of Appeals denied a petition for rehearing en banc. 353 F. 3d 1141 (CA9 2004). The Government sought review, and we granted certiorari. 542 U. S. 936 (2004).
In Totten, the administrator of William A. Lloyd’s estate brought suit against the United States to recover compensation for services that Lloyd allegedly rendered as a spy during the Civil War. 92 U. S. 105. Lloyd purportedly entered into a contract with President Lincoln in July 1861 to spy behind Confederate lines on troop placement and fort plans, for which he was to be paid $200 a month. Id., at 105-106. The lower court had found that Lloyd performed on the contract but did not receive full compensation. Id., at 106. After concluding with “no difficulty,” ibid., that the President had the authority to bind the United States to contracts with secret agents, we observed that the very essence of the alleged contract between Lloyd and the Government was that it was secret, and had to remain so:
“The service stipulated by the contract was a secret service; the information sought was to be obtained clandestinely, and was to be communicated privately; the employment and the service were to be equally concealed. Both employer and agent must have under- . stood that the lips of the other were to be for ever sealed respecting the relation of either to the matter. This condition of the engagement was implied from the nature of the employment, and is implied in all secret employments of the government in time of war, or upon matters affecting our foreign relations, where a disclosure of the service might compromise or embarrass our government in its public duties, or endanger the person or injure the character of the agent.” Ibid.
Thus, we thought it entirely incompatible with the nature of such a contract that a former spy could bring suit to enforce it. Id., at 106-107.
We think the Court of Appeals was quite wrong in holding that Totten doe's not require dismissal of respondents’ claims. That court, and respondents here, reasoned first that Totten developed merely a contract rule, prohibiting breach-of-contract claims seeking to enforce the terms of espionage agreements but not barring claims based on due process or estoppel theories. In fact, Totten was not so limited: “[P]ub-lic policy forbids the maintenance of any suit in a court of justice, the trial of which would inevitably lead to the disclosure of matters which the law itself regards as confidential.” Id., at 107 (emphasis added); see also ibid. (“The secrecy which such contracts impose precludes any action for their enforcement” (emphasis added)). No matter the clothing in which alleged spies dress their claims, Totten precludes judicial review in cases such as respondents’ where success depends upon the existence of their secret espionage relationship with the Government.
Relying mainly on United States v. Reynolds, 345 U. S. 1 (1953), the Court of Appeals also claimed that Totten has been recast simply as an early expression of the evidentiary “state secrets” privilege, rather than a categorical bar to their claims. Reynolds involved a wrongful-death action brought under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1346, by the widows of three civilians who died in the crash of a military B-29 aircraft. 345 U. S., at 2-3. In the course of discovery, the plaintiffs sought certain investigation-related documents, which the Government said contained “‘highly secret/” privileged military information. Id., at 3-4. We recognized “the privilege against revealing military secrets, a privilege which is well established in the law of evidence,” id., at 6-7, and we set out a balancing approach for courts to apply in resolving Government claims of privilege, id., at 7-11. We ultimately concluded that the Government was entitled to the privilege in that case. Id., at 10-12.
When invoking the “well established” state secrets privilege, we indeed looked to Totten. Reynolds, supra, at 7, n. 11 (citing Totten, supra, at 107). See also Brief for United States in United States v. Reynolds, O. T. 1952, No. 21, pp. 36, 42 (citing Totten in support of a military secrets privilege). But that in no way signaled our retreat from Totten’s broader holding that lawsuits premised on alleged espionage agreements are altogether forbidden. Indeed, our opinion in Reynolds refutes this very suggestion: Citing Totten as a case “where the very subject matter of the action, a contract to perform espionage, was a matter of state secret,” we declared that such a case was to be “dismissed on the pleadings without ever reaching the question of evidence, since it was so obvious that the action should never prevail over the privilege.” 345 U. S., at 11, n. 26 (emphasis added).
In a later case, we again credited the more sweeping holding in Totten, thus confirming its continued validity. See Weinberger v. Catholic Action of Haw./Peace Ed. Project, 454 U. S. 139, 146-147 (1981) (citing Totten in holding that “whether or not the Navy has complied with [§ 102(2)(C) of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, 83 Stat. 853, 42 U. S. C. § 4332(2)(C)] ‘to the fullest extent possible’ is beyond judicial scrutiny in this case,” where, “[d]ue to national security reasons,” the Navy could “neither admit nor deny” the fact that was central to the suit, i. e., “that it propose[d] to store nuclear weapons” at a facility). Reynolds therefore cannot plausibly be read to have replaced the categorical Totten bar with the balancing of the state secrets evidentiary-privilege in the distinct class of cases that depend upon clandestine spy relationships.
Nor does Webster v. Doe, 486 U. S. 592 (1988), support respondents’ claim. There, we held that § 102(c) of the National Security Act of 1947, 61 Stat. 498, 50 U. S. C. § 403(c), may not be read to exclude judicial review of the constitutional claims made by a former CIA employee for alleged discrimination. 486 U. S., at 603. In reaching that conclusion, we noted the “‘serious constitutional question’ that would arise if a federal statute were construed to deny any judicial forum for a colorable constitutional claim.” Ibid. But there is an obvious difference, for purposes of Totten, between a suit brought by an acknowledged (though covert) employee of the CIA and one filed by an alleged former spy. Only in the latter scenario is Totten’s, core concern implicated: preventing the existence of the plaintiff’s relationship with the Government from being revealed. That is why the CIA regularly entertains Title VII claims concerning the hiring and promotion of its employees, as we noted in Webster, supra, at 604, yet Totten has long barred suits such as respondents’.
There is, in short, no basis for respondents’ and the Court of Appeals’ view that the Totten bar has been reduced to an example of the state secrets privilege. In a far closer case than this, we observed that if the “precedent of this Court has direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to this Court the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.” Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U. S. 477, 484 (1989).
We adhere to Totten. The state secrets privilege and the more frequent use of in camera judicial proceedings simply cannot provide the absolute protection we found necessary in enunciating the Totten rule. The possibility that a suit may proceed and an espionage relationship may be revealed, if the state secrets privilege is found not to apply, is unacceptable: “Even a small chance that some court will order disclosure of a source’s identity could well impair intelligence gathering and cause sources to ‘close up like a clam.’” CIA v. Sims, 471 U. S. 159, 175 (1985); Forcing the Government to litigate these claims would also make it vulnerable to “graymail,” i. e., individual lawsuits brought to induce the CIA to settle a case (or prevent its filing) out of fear that any effort to litigate the action would reveal classified information that may undermine ongoing covert operations. And requiring the Government to invoke the privilege on a case-by-case basis risks the perception that it is either confirming or denying relationships with individual plaintiffs.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
It is so ordered.
The Government has neither confirmed nor denied any of respondents’ allegations. We therefore describe the facts as asserted in respondents’ second amended complaint. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 128a-136a. They are, of course, no more than allegations.
While the Government neither confirms nor denies that respondents •are part of any “PL-110” program, the parties agree this reference is to 50 U. S. C. § 403h, a provision enacted as part of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, § 8, 68 Stat. 212 (renumbered § 7, 72 Stat. 337). This provision allows a limited number of aliens and members of their immediate families per year to be admitted to the United States for permanent residence, regardless of their admissibility under the immigration laws, upon a determination by the Director of the CIA, the Attorney General, and the Commissioner of Immigration that admission of the particular alien “is in the interest of national security or essential to the furtherance of the national intelligence mission.” §403h. However, nothing in this statute, nor anything in the redacted CIA regulations and related materials respondents cite, see Brief for Respondents 41-43; App. to Brief in Opposition 41-50, represents an enforceable legal commitment by the CIA to provide support to spies that may be admitted into the United States under §403h. See also App. to Pet. for Cert. 145a (decl. of William McNair ¶ 5 (Information Review Officer for the CIA’s Directorate of Operations) (stating, based on his search of regulations and internal CIA policies, that he “can inform the court unequivocally that there are no Agency or other US federal regulations that require the CIA to provide lifetime subsistence assistance to individuals brought into the United States under the authority of PL-110” (emphasis in original))).
Respondents document their alleged series of contacts with the CIA. See id., at 128a-136a (Second Amended Complaint). For instance, respondents allegedly received a letter from the CIA in June 1997, expressing regret that the agency no longer had funds available to provide assistance. Id., at 128a. Later, respondents claim they were told the agency determined “the benefits previously provided were adequate for the services rendered.” Id., at 129a. Although the CIA apparently did not disclose to respondents the agency’s appeals process, respondents were permitted to appeal the initial determination both to the Director of the CIA and to a panel of former agency officials called the Helms Panel; both appeals were denied. Id., at 129a-132a.
Preliminarily, we must address whether Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83 (1998), prevents us from resolving this ease based on the Totten issue. In Steel Co., we adhered to the requirement that a court address questions pertaining to its or a lower court’s jurisdiction before proceeding to the merits. 523 U. S., at 94-95. In the lower courts, in addition to relying on Totten, the Government argued that the Tucker Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1491(a)(1), required that respondents’ claims be brought in the Court of Federal Claims, rather than in the District Court. The District Court and the Court of Appeals rejected this argument, and the Government did not seek review on this question in its petition for certiorari. Pet. for Cert. 8, n. 2.
We may assume for purposes of argument that this Tucker Act question is the kind of jurisdictional issue that Steel Co. directs must be resolved before addressing the merits of a claim. Cf. United States v. Mitchell, 463 U. S. 206, 212, 215 (1983) (holding that “the Tucker Act effects a waiver of sovereign immunity” and observing that “the existence of consent [to be sued] is a prerequisite for jurisdiction”). Nevertheless, application of the Totten rule of dismissal, like the abstention doctrine of Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971), or the prudential standing doctrine, represents the sort of “threshold question” we have recognized may be resolved before addressing jurisdiction. See Ruhrgas AG v. Marathon Oil Co., 526 U. S. 574, 585 (1999) (“It is hardly novel for a federal court to choose among threshold grounds for denying audience to a case on the merits”); see also Kowalski v. Tesmer, 543 U. S. 125, 129 (2004) (assuming Article III standing in order to “address the alternative threshold question whether” attorneys had third-party standing); Steel Co., supra, at 100, n. 3 (approving a decision resolving Younger abstention before addressing subject-matter jurisdiction). It would be inconsistent with the unique and categorical nature of the Totten bar — a rule designed not merely to defeat the asserted claims, but to preclude judicial inquiry — to first allow discovery or other proceedings in order to resolve the jurisdictional question. Thus, whether or not the Government was permitted to waive the Tucker Act question, we may dismiss respondents’ cause of action on the ground that it is barred by Totten.
The Court of Appeals apparently believed that the plaintiff’s relationship with the CIA was secret in Webster, just as in this case. See 329 F. 3d 1135, 1153 (CA9 2003). It is true that the plaintiff in Webster proceeded under a pseudonym because “his status as a CIA employee cannot be publicly acknowledged.” Brief for United States in Webster v. Doe, O. T. 1987, No. 86-1294, p. 3, n. 1. But the fact that the plaintiff in Webster kept his identity secret did not mean that the employment relationship between him and the CIA was not known and admitted by the CIA.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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 KAGAN delivered the opinion of the Court.
To help staunch a "flood of nonmeritorious" prisoner litigation, the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA) established what has become known as the three-strikes rule. Jones v. Bock , 549 U.S. 199, 203, 127 S.Ct. 910, 166 L.Ed.2d 798 (2007). That rule generally prevents a prisoner from bringing suit in forma pauperis (IFP)-that is, without first paying the filing fee-if he has had three or more prior suits "dismissed on the grounds that [they were] frivolous, malicious, or fail[ed] to state a claim upon which relief may be granted." 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). Today we address whether a suit dismissed for failure to state a claim counts as a strike when the dismissal was without prejudice. We conclude that it does: The text of Section 1915(g) 's three-strikes provision refers to any dismissal for failure to state a claim, whether with prejudice or without.
I
Petitioner Arthur Lomax is an inmate in a Colorado prison. He filed this suit against respondent prison officials to challenge his expulsion from the facility's sex-offender treatment program. As is common in prison litigation, he also moved for IFP status to allow his suit to go forward before he pays the $400 filing fee. For that motion to succeed, Lomax must avoid Section 1915(g). That provision bars further IFP litigation once a prisoner has had at least three prior suits dismissed on specified grounds. And Lomax is no rookie litigant. During his time in prison, he has already brought three unsuccessful legal actions (against various corrections officers, prosecutors, and judges). If the dispositions of those cases qualify as strikes under Section 1915(g), Lomax may not now proceed IFP.
The courts below ruled that Lomax had struck out. The District Court denied his motion for IFP status, finding that all three of his prior suits had been dismissed for failure to state a claim-one of the grounds specified in Section 1915(g). See App. 65-66. On appeal, Lomax argued that two of those dismissals should not count as strikes because they were without prejudice, thus allowing him to file a later suit on the same claim. The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit rejected that argument. Relying on Circuit precedent, the Court held it "immaterial to the strikes analysis" whether a dismissal was with or without prejudice. 754 Fed.Appx. 756, 759 (2018) (quoting Childs v. Miller , 713 F.3d 1262, 1266 (CA10 2013) ).
The Courts of Appeals have long divided over whether a dismissal without prejudice for failure to state a claim qualifies as a strike under Section 1915(g). In line with our duty to call balls and strikes, we granted certiorari to resolve the split, 589 U. S. ----, 140 S.Ct. 428, 205 L.Ed.2d 244 (2019), and we now affirm.
II
This case begins, and pretty much ends, with the text of Section 1915(g). Under that provision, a prisoner accrues a strike for any action "dismissed on the ground[ ] that it ... fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted." That broad language covers all such dismissals: It applies to those issued both with and without prejudice to a plaintiff 's ability to reassert his claim in a later action. A strike-call under Section 1915(g)
thus hinges exclusively on the basis for the dismissal, regardless of the decision's prejudicial effect. To reach the opposite result-counting prejudicial orders alone as strikes-we would have to read the simple word "dismissed" in Section 1915(g) as "dismissed with prejudice." But this Court may not narrow a provision's reach by inserting words Congress chose to omit. See, e.g., Virginia Uranium, Inc. v. Warren , 587 U. S. ----, ----, 139 S.Ct. 1894, 1900, 204 L.Ed.2d 377 (2019) (lead opinion of GORSUCH, J.).
Indeed, to do so would violate yet another rule of statutory construction: "In all but the most unusual situations, a single use of a statutory phrase must have a fixed meaning" across a statute. Cochise Consultancy, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Hunt , 587 U. S. ----, ----, 139 S.Ct. 1507, 1512, 203 L.Ed.2d 791 (2019). The PLRA includes three other provisions mentioning "dismiss[als]" for "fail[ure] to state a claim"-each enabling courts to dismiss sua sponte certain prisoner suits on that ground. §§ 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii), 1915A(b) ; 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(c). No one here thinks those provisions deprive courts of the ability to dismiss those suits without prejudice. See Reply Brief 15; Brief for Respondents 21-24; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 21-22. Nor would that be a plausible position. The broad statutory language-on its face covering dismissals both with and without prejudice-tracks courts' ordinary authority to decide whether a dismissal for failure to state a claim should have preclusive effect. So reading the PLRA's three-strikes rule to apply only to dismissals with prejudice would introduce inconsistencies into the statute. The identical phrase would then bear different meanings in provisions almost next-door to each other.
Still, Lomax maintains that the phrase "dismissed [for] fail[ure] to state a claim" in Section 1915(g) is a "legal term of art" referring only to dismissals with prejudice. Reply Brief 4. To support that view, he relies on a procedural rule used to answer a different question. When a court dismisses a case for failure to state a claim, but neglects to specify whether the order is with or without prejudice, how should a later court determine its preclusive effect? Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b), codifying an old equitable principle, supplies the answer: It tells courts to treat the dismissal "as an adjudication on the merits"-meaning a dismissal with prejudice. See Durant v. Essex Co. , 7 Wall. 107, 109, 19 L.Ed. 154 (1869). According to Lomax, " Section 1915(g) should be interpreted in light of this legal backdrop." Brief for Petitioner 17. He reasons: Because Rule 41(b) presumes that an order stating only "dismissed for failure to state a claim" is with prejudice, the same language when used in Section 1915(g) should bear that same meaning. And if so, the provision would assign a strike to only with-prejudice dismissals for failure to state a claim.
But that argument gets things backwards. The Rule 41(b) presumption (like its older equitable counterpart) does not convert the phrase "dismissed for failure to state a claim" into a legal term of art meaning "dismissed with prejudice" on that ground. To the contrary, Rule 41(b) is necessary because that phrase means only what it says: "dismissed for failure to state a claim"-whether or not with prejudice. In other words, the phrase's indifference to prejudicial effect is what creates the need for a default rule to determine the import of a dismissal when a court fails to make that clear. Rule 41(b), then, actually undercuts Lomax's position: Its very existence is a form of proof that the language used in Section 1915(g) covers dismissals both with and without prejudice. And here too, confirmation of the point comes from the PLRA's other provisions referring to "dismiss[als]" for "fail[ure] to state a claim." See supra, at 1725. If that phrase had really become a legal term of art implying "with prejudice," then those provisions would prevent courts from dismissing prisoner suits without prejudice for failure to state a claim. But Lomax himself does not accept that improbable reading. See ibid . His supposed "term of art" is strangely free-floating, transforming ordinary meaning in one place while leaving it alone in all others.
Lomax also makes an argument based on the two other grounds for dismissal listed in Section 1915(g). Recall that the provision counts as strikes dismissals of actions that are "frivolous" or "malicious," along with those that fail to state a claim. See supra, at 1723, 1724, n. 1. In Lomax's view, the first two kinds of dismissals "reflect a judicial determination that a claim is irremediably defective"-that it "cannot succeed and should not return to court." Brief for Petitioner 11, 22 (internal quotation marks omitted). To "harmonize [all] three grounds for strikes," he continues, the same must be true of dismissals for failure to state a claim. Id., at 23; see id., at 21 (invoking the "interpretive canon noscitur a sociis , a word is known by the company it keeps" (internal quotation marks omitted)). So Section 1915(g), Lomax concludes, must capture only the subset of those dismissals that are issued with prejudice-the ones disposing of "irredeemable" suits. Id., at 21.
As an initial matter, the very premise of that argument is mistaken. Contra Lomax's view, courts can and sometimes do conclude that frivolous actions are not "irremediably defective," and thus dismiss them without prejudice. See, e.g., Marts v. Hines , 117 F.3d 1504, 1505 (CA5 1997) ; see also Jackson v. Florida Dept. of Financial Servs. , 479 Fed.Appx. 289, 292 (CA11 2012) (similarly if less commonly, dismissing a malicious action without prejudice). Indeed, this Court has suggested that a trial court might abuse its discretion by dismissing an IFP suit with prejudice if "frivolous factual allegations [can] be remedied through more specific pleading." Denton v. Hernandez , 504 U.S. 25, 34, 112 S.Ct. 1728, 118 L.Ed.2d 340 (1992). So on Lomax's own metric-whether down the road the plaintiff 's claim might return-the dismissals he claims would be outliers in Section 1915(g) in fact would have company. And because that is true, his reason for excluding those decisions from the provision collapses. If dismissals without prejudice for frivolousness count as a strike under Section 1915(g), then why not for failure to state a claim too?
Still more fundamentally, Lomax is wrong to suggest that every dismissed action encompassed in Section 1915(g) must closely resemble frivolous or malicious ones. The point of the PLRA, as its terms show, was to cabin not only abusive but also simply meritless prisoner suits. Before the PLRA, the statute governing IFP claims targeted frivolous and malicious actions, but no others. See Neitzke v. Williams , 490 U.S. 319, 328, 109 S.Ct. 1827, 104 L.Ed.2d 338 (1989). In the PLRA, Congress chose to go further-precisely by aiming as well at actions that failed to state a claim. The theory was that a "flood of nonmeritorious claims," even if not in any way abusive, was "effectively preclud[ing] consideration of " suits more likely to succeed. Jones , 549 U.S. at 203, 127 S.Ct. 910. So we cannot, in the interest of "harmonization," interpret the phrase "failure to state a claim" based on the pre-existing terms "frivolous" and "malicious."
Cf. Babbitt v. Sweet Home Chapter, Communities for Great Ore., 515 U.S. 687, 702, 705, 115 S.Ct. 2407, 132 L.Ed.2d 597 (1995) (rejecting use of the noscitur canon when "the Senate went out of its way to add" a "broad word" to a statute). That would defeat the PLRA's expansion of the statute beyond what was already there.
III
The text of the PLRA's three-strikes provision makes this case an easy call. A dismissal of a suit for failure to state a claim counts as a strike, whether or not with prejudice. We therefore affirm the judgment below.
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.
Justice THOMAS joins all but footnote 4 of this opinion.
The full text of the three-strikes provision reads:
"In no event shall a prisoner bring a civil action or appeal a judgment in a civil action or proceeding [in forma pauperis ] if the prisoner has, on 3 or more prior occasions, while incarcerated or detained in any facility, brought an action or appeal in a court of the United States that was dismissed on the grounds that it is frivolous, malicious, or fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted, unless the prisoner is under imminent danger of serious physical injury." 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g).
Two of the cases were dismissed under Heck v. Humphrey , 512 U.S. 477, 114 S.Ct. 2364, 129 L.Ed.2d 383 (1994), which holds that a claim challenging the validity of a conviction or sentence under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 "does not accrue until the conviction or sentence has been invalidated." 512 U.S. at 490, 114 S.Ct. 2364. In concluding that those two Heck dismissals were for failure to state a claim, the District Court followed Circuit precedent. See Smith v. Veterans Admin. , 636 F.3d 1306, 1312 (CA10 2011). Not all Courts of Appeals accept that view. See, e.g., Mejia v. Harrington , 541 Fed.Appx. 709, 710 (CA7 2013). But Lomax did not raise that issue, and we therefore do not address it.
Four Circuits treat dismissals without prejudice for failure to state a claim as strikes. See Orr v. Clements , 688 F.3d 463, 465 (CA8 2012) ; Paul v. Marberry , 658 F.3d 702, 704 (CA7 2011) ; O'Neal v. Price , 531 F.3d 1146, 1154 (CA9 2008) ; Day v. Maynard , 200 F.3d 665, 667 (CA10 1999) (per curiam ). Two Circuits do the opposite. See Millhouse v. Heath , 866 F.3d 152, 162-163 (CA3 2017) ; McLean v. United States , 566 F.3d 391, 396-397 (CA4 2009).
Note, however, that the provision does not apply when a court gives a plaintiff leave to amend his complaint. Courts often take that path if there is a chance that amendment can cure a deficient complaint. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 15(a) (discussing amendments to pleadings). In that event, because the suit continues, the court's action falls outside of Section 1915(g) and no strike accrues. See Brief for Respondents 31-35 (noting that flexible amendment practices "ensure that potentially meritorious prisoner suits are not hastily dismissed with a strike"); Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 27-28 (similar); Tr. of Oral Arg. 32-34, 44 (similar).
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Chief Justice Vinson
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this case, the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has certified questions of law concerning which it asks instructions for the proper decision of the cause pending in that court. Judicial Code, § 239; 28 U. S. C. § 346.
The certificate states that this is an action brought by the Administrator for treble damages and for an'injunction under § 205 of the Emergency Price Control Act and under the Rent Regulation for Housing. Hills, the defendant below, remodeled apartments located in a Defense Rental Area, subject to the Rent Regulations, and duly registered them. Thereafter, on December 17,1943, the maximum rents were reduced by the Area Rent Director pursuant to § 5 (c) of the Regulation; and on March 7, 1945, the Rent Director issued an order further reducing the maximum rents.
On trial in the District Court without a jury, the parties stipulated that the only issue was the validity of the second order. The District Court entered judgment for the defendant on October 29, 1946, holding that the burden was on the Administrator to establish the validity of the second order and that he had failed to introduce proof establishing its validity.
At the time the District Court entered its judgment, exclusive jurisdiction to pass on the validity of a regulation or order issued by the Administrator was vested in the Emergency Court of Appeals and in this Court upon review of judgments and orders of the Emergency Court. § 204 (d), 50 U. S. C. A. App. § 924 (d). However, the appeal by the Administrator from the judgment of the District Court was not submitted in the Circuit Court of Appeals until September 10, 1947, and the Emergency Price Control Act expired by its terms on June 30, 1947. § 1 (b), 50 U. S. C. A. App. § 901 (b).
The questions certified are as follows:
“(1) On remand, will the District Court of the United States for the District of Kansas, First Division, have jurisdiction to determine the validity of the second rent order and should we direct the District Court to pass on the validity of such rent order?
“(2) If the first question is answered in the negative, does the Emergency Court of Appeals still have jurisdiction to determine the validity of the second rent order?
“(3) If the second question is answered in the affirmative, and this court remands the cause with directions to enter judgment as prayed for against Hills, may Hills, under Sec. 204 (e) of the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942, as amended (50 U. S. C. A. App., Sec. 924-(e)), apply to the District Court for leave to file in the Emergency Court of Appeals a complaint against the Administrator, setting forth objections to the validity of the second rent order, and, upon proper petition and showing, obtain the relief provided for in Sec. 204 (e), and should we so direct on remand?”
There can be no doubt that the exclusive jurisdiction conferred on the Emergency Court of Appeals by § 204 (d) precluded the District Court in 1946 from determining the validity of the individual rent order even though the defense to the action brought there was based on the alleged invalidity of the order.
The Emergency Price Control Act was to terminate on June 30, 1947. Section 1 (b), which fixed that date, expressly provides that “as to offenses committed, or rights or liabilities incurred, prior to such termination date, the provisions of this Act and such regulations, orders, price schedules, and requirements shall be treated as still remaining in force for the purpose of sustaining any proper suit, action, or prosecution with respect to any such right, liability, or offense.” 56 Stat. 24. Since the offense complained of in the case at bar occurred before the termination date, § 1 (b) would apply and the Emergency Court of Appeals would still have exclusive jurisdiction to pass on the validity of the second rent order, if additional prerequisites set forth in § 204 (e) (1) of the statute were satisfied.
Jurisdiction of the Emergency Court of Appeals over any complaint arises, pursuant to § 204 (e) (1), when the court in which a civil or criminal enforcement proceeding is pending has granted the defendant leave to file in the Emergency Court of Appeals a complaint setting forth objections to the validity of any provision which the defendant is alleged to have violated, and the defendant has duly filed such a complaint. Prior to a 1947 amendment, § 204 (e) (1) provided that “Within thirty days after arraignment, or such additional time as the court may allow for good cause shown, in any criminal proceeding, and within five days after judgment in any civil or criminal proceeding, brought pursuant to section 205 of this Act or section 37 of the Criminal Code, involving alleged violation of any provision of any regulation or order issued under section 2 or of any price schedule effective in accordance with the provisions of section 206, the defendant may apply to the court in which the proceeding is pending for leave to file in the Emergency Court of Appeals a complaint against the Administrator setting forth objections to the validity of any provision which the defendant is alleged to have violated or conspired to violate. The court in which the proceeding is pending shall grant such leave with respect to any objection which it finds is made in good faith and with respect to which it finds there is reasonable and substantial excuse for the defendant’s failure to present such objection in a protest filed in accordance with section 203 (a). Upon the filing of a complaint pursuant to and within thirty days from the granting of such leave, the Emergency Court of Appeals shall have jurisdiction to enjoin or set aside in whole or in part the provision of the regulation, order, or price schedule complained of or to dismiss the complaint. . . .” 59 Stat. 308.
However, the Supplemental Appropriation Act, 1948, approved July 30, 1947, amended § 204 (e) by striking out the first sentence of the foregoing provision and substituting the following: “Within sixty days after the date of enactment of this amendment, or within sixty days after arraignment in any criminal proceedings and within sixty days after commencement of any civil proceedings brought pursuant to section 205 of this Act or section 37 of the Criminal Code, involving alleged violation of any provision of any regulation or order issued under section 2 or alleged violation of any price schedule effective in accordance with the provisions of section 206 with respect to which responsibility was transferred to the Department of Commerce by Executive Order 9841, the defendant may apply to the court in which the proceeding is pending for leave to file in the Emergency Court of Appeals a complaint against the Administrator setting forth objections to the validity of any provision which the defendant is alleged to have violated or conspired to violate.” 61 Stat. 619.
Since responsibility for functions with respect to rent control was transferred by Executive Order 9841 to the Housing Expediter rather than to the Department of Commerce, the necessary effect of the foregoing amendment is to eliminate entirely the statutory right the defendant in the present case previously had to apply to the District Court for leave to file a complaint in the Emergency Court of Appeals. As a corollary, the latter court can no longer acquire jurisdiction pursuant to § 204 (e) over any complaint which defendant may desire to file with it to contest the validity of the second rent order.
We may now consider what effect the 1947 amendment, thus viewed, has upon the “exclusive jurisdiction” provision in § 204 (d), which was preserved by the saving clause of § 1 (b). If elimination of the complaint procedure of § 204 (e) as a remedy for those seeking to challenge rent orders meant the elimination of all provision for review by the Emergency Court of Appeals, it might be argued that preservation of the ban imposed by § 204 (d) on district court adjudication of the validity of rent orders would be a denial of due process to a defendant charged with a violation of an order.
However, the 1947 amendment left unimpaired the provision in § 203 (a) for review of rent orders by filing protests with the Administrator (i. e., the Housing Expediter, as transferee of the Administrator’s rent control functions). A denial of such a protest may be reviewed in the Emergency Court of Appeals by filing a complaint pursuant to § 204 (a). Prior to an amendment added by the Stabilization Extension Act of 1944, protests could be filed under § 203 (a) only within a period of sixty days after the issuance of the regulation or order sought to be challenged. Under the 1944 amendment, which is preserved unchanged for rent orders, this period was extended so that protests can be filed “At any time after the issuance” of the regulation or order, although the 1947 amendment expressly takes cognizance of the right of the United States or any officer thereof to dismiss any protest under § 203 on the ground of laches.
Thus, it appears that the Emergency Court of Appeals may still be able to acquire jurisdiction to review rent orders, issued under the Price Control Act, by means of the protest and complaint procedure of §§ 203 (a) and 204 (a). Accordingly, the exclusive jurisdiction provision in § 204 (d) is not a meaningless anomaly so far as review of rent control orders is concerned, and it remains as substantial a barrier to review of the second rent order by the District Court as it was held to be in Yakus v. United States, 321 U. S. 414 (1944). There this Court ruled that defendants could not attack the validity of price regulations in a prosecution in a District Court even though the Emergency Price Control Act as then drawn made no provision for review by the complaint procedure later set up under § 204 (e) (and now abandoned so far as rent orders are concerned). The only judicial review then available required as a preliminary the filing of a protest to the Administrator under § 203 (a) within sixty days after the promulgation of the order or regulation. That statutory review procedure, whose constitutionality was upheld in the Yakus case, is still preserved to defendants charged with violations of rent orders issued under the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942. If anything, the judicial review still available to such defendants is even broader than the procedure sustained in the Yakus case, since the sixty-day limitation on the filing of protests no longer applies to rent orders.
In view of the foregoing, we answer question (1) in the negative. In answer to question (2), the Emergency Court of Appeals no longer has jurisdiction pursuant to § 204 (e) to determine the validity of the second rent order.
As amended, 50 U. S. C. A. App. §§ 901, 925.
As amended, 8 Fed. Reg. 7322.
“. . . The Emergency Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court upon review of judgments and orders of the Emergency Court of Appeals, shall have exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of any regulation or order issued under section 2, of any price schedule effective in accordance with the provisions of section 206, and of any provision of any such regulation, order, or price schedule. Except as provided in this section, no court, Federal, State, or Territorial, shall have jurisdiction or power to consider the validity of any such regulation, order, or price schedule, or to stay, restrain, enjoin, or set aside, in whole or in part, any provisions of this Act authorizing the issuance of such regulations or orders, or making effective any such price schedule, or any provision of any such regulation, order, or price schedule, or to restrain or enjoin the enforcement of any such provision.” 56 Stat. 33.
See Bowles v. Willingham, 321 U. S. 503, 510-511, 521 (1944); Yakus v. United States, 321 U. S. 414 (1944).
Cf. 150 East 47th Street Corp. v. Porter, 156 F. 2d 541 (E. C. A., 1946). Moreover, the terms of a 1947 amendment, discussed infra, pp. 215-217, clearly show congressional recognition that this exclusive jurisdiction continued after the termination date.
Section 203 (a) provides inter alia for the filing of protests to rent orders issued by the Administrator at any time after issuance. The denial by the Administrator of such a protest is reviewable by a complaint filed in the Emergency Court of Appeals pursuant to § 204 (a).
12 Fed. Reg. 2645.
“. . . Nothing herein shall be construed as in any way affecting the right of the United States or any officer thereof to dismiss any protest under section 203 of the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942, as amended, or defend against any complaint under section 204 (e) of such Act on the ground of laches.” 61 Stat. 619.
Of course the District Court can withhold judgment so that it may give effect to any determination by the Housing Expediter or the Emergency Court of Appeals that might result from the defendant’s pursuit of this remedy.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice Kennedy
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We must decide in the case before us whether a private litigant in a civil case may use peremptory challenges to exclude jurors on account of their race. Recognizing the impropriety of racial bias in the courtroom, we hold the race-based exclusion violates the equal protection rights of the challenged jurors. This civil case originated in a United States District Court, and we apply the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. See Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U. S. 497 (1954).
HH
Thaddeus Donald Edmonson, a construction worker, was injured in a jobsite accident at Fort Polk, Louisiana, a federal enclave. Edmonson sued Leesville Concrete Company for negligence in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, claiming that a Leesville employee permitted one of the company’s trucks to roll backward and pin him against some construction equipment. Edmonson invoked his Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury.
During voir dire, Leesville used two of its three peremptory challenges authorized by statute to remove black persons from the prospective jury. Citing our decision in Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79 (1986), Edmonson, who is himself black, requested that the District Court require Leesville to articulate a race-neutral explanation for striking the two jurors. The District Court denied the request on the ground that Batson does not apply in civil proceedings. As empaneled, the jury included 11 white persons and 1 black person. The jury rendered a verdict for Edmonson, assessing his total damages at $90,000. It also attributed 80% of the fault to Edmonson’s contributory negligence, however, and awarded him the sum of $18,000.
Edmonson appealed, and a divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed, holding that our opinion in Batson applies to a private attorney representing a private litigant and that peremptory challenges may not be used in a civil trial for the purpose of excluding jurors on the basis of race. 860 F. 2d 1308 (1989). The Court of Appeals panel held that private parties become state actors when they exercise peremptory challenges and that to limit Batson to criminal cases “would betray Batson’s fundamental principle [that] the state’s use, toleration, and approval of peremptory challenges based on race violates the equal protection clause.” Id., at 1314. The panel remanded to the trial court to consider whether Edmonson had established a prima facie case of racial discrimination under Batson.
The full court then ordered rehearing en banc. A divided en banc panel affirmed the judgment of the District Court, holding that a private litigant in a civil case can exercise peremptory challenges without accountability for alleged racial classifications. 895 F. 2d 218 (1990). The court concluded that the use of peremptories by private litigants does not constitute state action and, as a result, does not implicate constitutional guarantees. The dissent reiterated the arguments of the vacated panel opinion. The Courts of Appeals have divided on the issue. See Dunham v. Frank’s Nursery & Crafts, Inc., 919 F. 2d 1281 (CA7 1990) (private litigant may not use peremptory challenges to exclude venirepersons on account of race); Fludd v. Dykes, 863 F. 2d 822 (CA11 1989) (same). Cf. Dias v. Sky Chefs, Inc., 919 F. 2d 1370 (CA9 1990) (corporation may not raise a Batson-type objection in a civil trial); United States v. De Gross, 913 F. 2d 1417 (CA9 1990) (government may raise a Batson-type objection in a criminal case), rehearing en banc granted, 930 F. 2d 695 (1991); Reynolds v. Little Rock, 893 F. 2d 1004 (CA8 1990) (when government is involved in civil litigation, it may not use its peremptory challenges in a racially discriminatory manner). We granted certiorari, 498 U. S. 809 (1990), and now reverse the Court of Appeals.
K
>
In Powers v. Ohio, 499 U. S. 400 (1991), we held that a criminal defendant, regardless of his or her race, may object to a prosecutor’s race-based exclusion of persons from the petit jury. Our conclusion rested on a two-part analysis. First, following our opinions in Batson and in Carter v. Jury Commission of Greene County, 396 U. S. 320 (1970), we made clear that a prosecutor’s race-based peremptory challenge violates the equal protection rights of those excluded from jury service. 499 U. S., at 407-409. Second, we relied on well-established rules of third-party standing to hold that a defendant may raise the excluded jurors’ equal protection rights. Id., at 410-415.
Powers relied upon over a century of jurisprudence dedicated to the elimination of race prejudice within the jury selection process. See, e. g., Batson, supra, at 84; Swain v. Alabama, 380 U. S. 202, 203-204 (1965); Carter, supra, at 329-330; Neal v. Delaware, 103 U. S. 370, 386 (1881); Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303 (1880). While these decisions were for the most part directed at discrimination by a prosecutor or other government officials in the context of criminal proceedings, we have not intimated that race discrimination is permissible in civil proceedings. See Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U. S. 217, 220-221 (1946). Indeed, discrimination on the basis of race in selecting a jury in a civil proceeding harms the excluded juror no less than discrimination in a criminal trial. See id., at 220. In either case, race is the sole reason for denying the excluded venire-person the honor and privilege of participating in our system of justice.
That an act violates the Constitution when committed by a government official, however, does not answer the question whether the same act offends constitutional guarantees if committed by a private litigant or his attorney. The Constitution’s protections of individual liberty and equal protection apply in general only to action by the government. National Collegiate Athletic Assn. v. Tarkanian, 488 U. S. 179, 191 (1988). Racial discrimination, though invidious in all contexts, violates the Constitution only when it may be attributed to state action. Moose Lodge No. 107 v. Irvis, 407 U. S. 163, 172 (1972). Thus, the legality of the exclusion at issue here turns on the extent to which a litigant in a civil case may be subject to the Constitution’s restrictions.
The Constitution structures the National Government, confines its actions, and, in regard to certain individual liberties and other specified matters, confines the actions of the States. With a few exceptions, such as the provisions of the Thirteenth Amendment, constitutional guarantees of individual liberty and equal protection do not apply to the actions of private entities. Tarkanian, supra, at 191; Flagg Bros., Inc. v. Brooks, 436 U. S. 149, 156 (1978). This fundamental limitation on the scope of constitutional guarantees “preserves an area of individual freedom by limiting the reach of federal law” and “avoids imposing on the State, its agencies or officials, responsibility for conduct for which they cannot fairly be blamed.” Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U. S. 922, 936-937 (1982). One great object of the Constitution is to permit citizens to structure their private relations as they choose subject only to the constraints of statutory or deci-sional law.
To implement these principles, courts must consider from time to time where the governmental sphere ends and the private sphere begins. Although the conduct of private parties lies beyond the Constitution’s scope in most instances, governmental authority may dominate an activity to such an extent that its participants must be deemed to act with the authority of the government and, as a result, be subject to constitutional constraints. This is the jurisprudence of state action, which explores the “essential dichotomy” between the private sphere and the public sphere, with all its attendant constitutional obligations. Moose Lodge, supra, at 172.
We begin our discussion within the framework for state-action analysis set forth in Lugar, supra, at 937. There we considered the state-action question in the context of a due process challenge to a State’s procedure allowing private parties to obtain prejudgment attachments. We asked first whether the claimed constitutional deprivation resulted from the exercise of a right or privilege having its source in state authority, 457 U. S., at 939-941; and second, whether the private party charged with the deprivation could be described in all fairness as a state actor, id., at 941-942.
There can be no question that the first part of the Lugar inquiry is satisfied here. By their very nature, peremptory challenges have no significance outside a court of law. Their sole purpose is to permit litigants to assist the government in the selection of an impartial trier of fact. While we have recognized the value of peremptory challenges in this regard, particularly in the criminal context, see Batson, 476 U. S., at 98-99, there is no constitutional obligation to allow them. Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U. S. 81, 88 (1988); Stilson v. United States, 250 U. S. 583, 586 (1919). Peremptory challenges are permitted only when the government, by statute or deci-sional law, deems it appropriate to allow parties to exclude a given number of persons who otherwise would satisfy the requirements for service on the petit jury.
Legislative authorizations, as well as limitations, for the use of peremptory challenges date as far back as the founding of the Republic; and the common-law origins of peremptories predate that. See Holland v. Illinois, 493 U. S. 474, 481 (1990); Swain, 380 U. S., at 212-217. Today in most jurisdictions, statutes or rules make a limited number of peremptory challenges available to parties in both civil and criminal proceedings. In the case before us, the challenges were exercised under a federal statute that provides, inter alia:
“In civil cases, each party shall be entitled to three peremptory challenges. Several defendants or several plaintiffs may be considered as a single party for the purposes of making challenges, or the court may allow additional peremptory challenges and permit them to be exercised separately or jointly.” 28 U. S. C. §1870.
Without this authorization, granted by an Act of Congress itself, Leesville would not have been able to engage in the alleged discriminatory acts.
Given that the statutory authorization for the challenges exercised in this case is clear, the remainder of our state-action analysis centers around the second part of the Lugar test, whether a private litigant in all fairness must be deemed a government actor in the use of peremptory challenges. Although we have recognized that this aspect of the analysis is often a factbound inquiry, see Lagar, supra, at 939, our cases disclose certain principles of general application. Our precedents establish that, in determining whether a particular action or course of conduct is governmental in character, it is relevant to examine the following: the extent to which the actor relies on governmental assistance and benefits, see Tulsa Professional Collection Services, Inc. v. Pope, 485 U. S. 478 (1988); Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U. S. 715 (1961); whether the actor is performing a traditional governmental function, see Terry v. Adams, 345 U. S. 461 (1953); Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U. S. 501 (1946); cf. San Francisco Arts & Athletics, Inc. v. United States Olympic Comm., 483 U. S. 522, 544-545 (1987); and whether the injury caused is aggravated in a unique way by the incidents of governmental authority, see Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U. S. 1 (1948). Based on our application of these three principles to the circumstances here, we hold that the exercise of peremptory challenges by the defendant in the District Court was pursuant to a course of state action.
Although private use of state-sanctioned private remedies or procedures does not rise, by itself, to the level of state action, Tulsa Professional, 485 U. S., at 485, our cases have found state action when private parties make extensive use of state procedures with “the overt, significant assistance of state officials.” Id., at 486; see Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 U. S. 922 (1982); Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp. of Bay View, 395 U. S. 337 (1969). It cannot be disputed that, without the overt, significant participation of the government, the peremptory challenge system, as well as the jury trial system of which it is a part, simply could not exist. As discussed above, peremptory challenges have no utility outside the jury system, a system which the government alone administers. In the federal system, Congress has established the qualifications for jury service, see 28 U. S. C. § 1865, and has outlined the procedures by which jurors are selected. To this end, each district court in the federal system must adopt a plan for locating and summoning to the court eligible prospective jurors. 28 U. S. C. § 1863; see, e. g., Jury Plan for the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana (on file with Administrative Office of United States Courts). This plan, as with all other trial court procedures, must implement statutory policies of random juror selection from a fair cross section of the community, 28 U. S. C. § 1861, and nonexclusion on account of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or economic status, 18 U. S. C. §243; 28 U. S. C. §1862. Statutes prescribe many of the details of the jury plan, 28 U. S. C. § 1863, defining the jury wheel, § 1863(b)(4), voter lists, §§ 1863(b)(2), 1869(c), and jury Commissions, § 1863(b)(1). A statute also authorizes the establishment of procedures for assignment to grand and petit juries, § 1863(b)(8), and for lawful excuse from jury service, §§ 1863(b)(5), (6).
At the outset of the selection process, prospective jurors must complete jury qualification forms as prescribed by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. See 28 U. S. C. § 1864. Failure to do so may result in fines and imprisonment, as might a willful misrepresentation of a material fact in answering a question on the form. Ibid. In a typical case, counsel receive these forms and rely on them when exercising their peremptory strikes. See G. Bermant, Jury Selection Procedures in United States District Courts 7-8 (Federal Judicial Center 1982). The clerk of the United States district court, a federal official, summons potential jurors from their employment or other pursuits. They are required to travel to a United States courthouse, where they must report to juror lounges, assembly rooms, and courtrooms at the direction of the court and its officers. Whether or not they are selected for a jury panel, summoned jurors receive a per diem fixed by statute for their service. 28 U. S. C. § 1871.
The trial judge exercises substantial control over voir dire in the federal system. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 47. The judge determines the range of information that may be discovered about a prospective juror, and so affects the exercise of both challenges for cause and peremptory challenges. In some cases, judges may even conduct the entire voir dire by themselves, a common practice in the District Court where the instant case was tried. See Louisiana Rules of Court, Local Rule 13.02 (WD La. 1990). The judge oversees the exclusion of jurors for cause, in this way determining which jurors remain eligible for the exercise of peremptory strikes. In cases involving multiple parties, the trial judge decides how peremptory challenges shall be allocated among them. 28 U. S. C. § 1870. When a lawyer exercises a peremptory challenge, the judge advises the juror he or she has been excused.
As we have outlined here, a private party could not exercise its peremptory challenges absent the overt, significant assistance of the court. The government summons jurors, constrains their freedom of movement, and subjects them to public scrutiny and examination. The party who exercises a challenge invokes the formal authority of the court, which must discharge the prospective juror, thus effecting the “final and practical denial” of the excluded individual’s opportunity to serve on the petit jury. Virginia v. Rives, 100 U. S. 313, 322 (1880). Without the direct and indispensable participation of the judge, who beyond all question is a state actor, the peremptory challenge system would serve no purpose. By enforcing a discriminatory peremptory challenge, the court “has not only made itself a party to the [biased act], but has elected to place its power, property and prestige behind the [alleged] discrimination.” Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U. S., at 725. In so doing, the government has “create[d] the legal framework governing the [challenged] conduct,” National Collegiate Athletic Assn., 488 U. S., at 192, and in a significant way has involved itself with invidious discrimination.
In determining Leesville’s state-actor status, we next consider whether the action in question involves the performance of a traditional function of the government. A traditional function of government is evident here. The peremptory challenge is used in selecting an entity that is a quintessential governmental body, having no attributes of a private actor. The jury exercises the power of the court and of the government that confers the court’s jurisdiction. As we noted in Powers, the jury system performs the critical governmental functions of guarding the rights of litigants and “ensuring] continued acceptance of the laws by all of the people.” 499 U. S., at 407. In the federal system, the Constitution itself commits the trial of facts in a civil cause to the jury. Should either party to a cause invoke its Seventh Amendment right, the jury becomes the principal factfinder, charged with weighing the evidence, judging the credibility of witnesses, and reaching a verdict. The jury’s factual determinations as a general rule are final. Basham v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 372 U. S. 699 (1963). In some civil cases, as we noted earlier this Term, the jury can weigh the gravity of a wrong and determine the degree of the government’s interest in punishing and deterring willful misconduct. See Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip, 499 U. S. 1 (1991). A judgment based upon a civil verdict may be preclusive of issues in a later case, even where some of the parties differ. See Allen v. McCurry, 449 U. S. 90 (1980). And in all jurisdictions a true verdict will be incorporated in a judgment enforceable by the court. These are traditional functions of government, not of a select, private group beyond the reach of the Constitution.
If a government confers on a private body the power to choose the government’s employees or officials, the private body will be bound by the constitutional mandate of race neutrality. Cf. Tarkanian, 488 U. S., at 192-193; Rendell-Baker v. Kohn, 457 U. S. 830 (1982). At least a plurality of the Court recognized this principle in Terry v. Adams, 345 U. S. 461 (1953). There we found state action in a scheme in which a private organization known as the Jaybird Democratic Association conducted whites-only elections to select candidates to run in the Democratic primary elections in Ford Bend County, Texas. The Jaybird candidate was certain to win the Democratic primary and the Democratic candidate was certain to win the general election. Justice Clark’s concurring opinion drew from Smith v. Allwright, 321 U. S. 649, 664 (1944), the principle that “any ‘part of the machinery for choosing officials’ becomes subject to the Constitution’s constraints.” Terry, supra, at 481. The concurring opinion concluded:
“[W]hen a state structures its electoral apparatus in a form which devolves upon a political organization the uncontested choice of public officials, that organization itself, in whatever disguise, takes on those attributes of government which draw the Constitution’s safeguards into play.” 345 U. S., at 484.
The principle that the selection of state officials, other than through election by all qualified voters, may constitute state action applies with even greater force in the context of jury selection through the use of peremptory challenges. Though the motive of a peremptory challenge may be to protect a private interest, the objective of jury selection proceedings is to determine representation on a governmental body. Were it not for peremptory challenges, there would be no question that the entire process of determining who will serve on the jury constitutes state action. The fact that the government delegates some portion of this power to private litigants does not change the governmental character of the power exercised. The delegation of authority that in Terry occurred without the aid of legislation occurs here through explicit statutory authorization.
We find respondent’s reliance on Polk County v. Dodson, 454 U. S. 312 (1981), unavailing. In that case, we held that a public defender is not a state actor in his general representation of a criminal defendant, even though he may be in his performance of other official duties. See id., at 325; Branti v. Finkel, 445 U. S. 507, 519 (1980). While recognizing the employment relation between the public defender and the government, we noted that the relation is otherwise adversarial in nature. 454 U. S., at 323, n. 13. “[A] defense lawyer is not, and by the nature of his function cannot be, the servant of an administrative superior. Held to the same standards of competence and integrity as a private lawyer, ... a public defender works under canons of professional responsibility that mandate his exercise of independent judgment on behalf of the client.” Id., at 321.
In the ordinary context of civil litigation in which the government is not a party, an adversarial relation does not exist between the government and a private litigant. In the jury selection process, the government and private litigants work for the same end. Just as a government employee was deemed a private actor because of his purpose and functions in Dodson, so here a private entity becomes a government actor for the limited purpose of using peremptories during jury selection. The selection of jurors represents a unique governmental function delegated to private litigants by the government and attributable to the government for purposes of invoking constitutional protections against discrimination by reason of race.
Our decision in West v. Atkins, 487 U. S. 42 (1988), provides a further illustration. We held there that a private physician who contracted with a state prison to attend to the inmates’ medical needs was a state actor. He was not on a regular state payroll, but we held his “functions] within the state system, not the precise terms of his employment, [determined] whether his actions can fairly be attributed to the State.” Id., at 55-56. We noted:
“Under state law, the only medical care West could receive for his injury was that provided by the State. If Doctor Atkins misused his power by demonstrating deliberate indifference to West’s serious medical needs, the resultant deprivation was caused, in the sense relevant for state-action inquiry, by the State’s exercise of its right to punish West by incarceration and to deny him a venue independent of the State to obtain needed medical care.” Id., at 55.
In the case before us, the parties do not act pursuant to any contractual relation with the government. Here, as in most civil cases, the initial decision whether to sue at all, the selection of counsel, and any number of ensuing tactical choices in the course of discovery and trial may be without the requisite governmental character to be deemed state action. That cannot be said of the exercise of peremptory challenges, however; when private litigants participate in the selection of jurors, they serve an important function within the government and act with its substantial assistance. If peremptory challenges based on race were permitted, persons could be required by summons to be put at risk of open and public discrimination as a condition of their participation in the justice system. The injury to excluded jurors would be the direct result of governmental delegation and participation.
Finally, we note that the injury caused by the discrimination is made more severe because the government permits it to occur within the courthouse itself. Few places are a more real expression of the constitutional authority of the government than a courtroom, where the law itself unfolds. Within the courtroom, the government invokes its laws to determine the rights of those who stand before it. In full view of the public, litigants press their cases, witnesses give testimony, juries render verdicts, and judges act with the utmost care to ensure that justice is done.
Race discrimination within the courtroom raises serious questions as to the fairness of the proceedings conducted there. Racial bias mars the integrity of the judicial system and prevents the idea of democratic government from becoming a reality. Rose v. Mitchell, 443 U. S. 545, 556 (1979); Smith v. Texas, 311 U. S. 128, 130 (1940). In the many times we have addressed the problem of racial bias in our system of justice, we have not “questioned the premise that racial discrimination in the qualification or selection of jurors offends the dignity of persons and the integrity of the courts.” Powers, 499 U. S., at 402. To permit racial exclusion in this official forum compounds the racial insult inherent in judging a citizen by the color of his or her skin.
B
Having held that in a civil trial exclusion on account of race violates a prospective juror’s equal protection rights, we consider whether an opposing litigant may raise the excluded person’s rights on his or her behalf. As we noted in Powers: “In the ordinary course, a litigant must assert his or her own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest a claim to relief on the legal rights or interests of third parties.” Id., at 410. We also noted, however, that this fundamental restriction on judicial authority admits of “certain, limited exceptions,” ibid., and that a litigant may raise a claim on behalf of a third party if the litigant can demonstrate that he or she has suffered a concrete, redressable injury, that he or she has a close relation with the third party, and that there exists some hindrance to the third party’s ability to protect his or her own interests. All three of these requirements for third-party standing were held satisfied in the criminal context, and they are satisfied in the civil context as well.
Our conclusion in Powers that persons excluded from jury service will be unable to protect their own rights applies with equal force in a civil trial. While individual jurors subjected to peremptory racial exclusion have the right to bring suit on their own behalf, “[t]he barriers to a suit by an excluded juror are daunting.” Id., at 414. We have no reason to believe these barriers would be any less imposing simply because a person was excluded from jury service in a civil proceeding. Likewise, we find the relation between the excluded venireperson and the litigant challenging the exclusion to be just as close in the civil context as in a criminal trial. Whether in a civil or criminal proceeding, “[vjoir dire permits a party to establish a relation, if not a bond of trust, with the jurors,” a relation that “continues throughout the entire trial.” Id., at 413. Exclusion of a juror on the basis of race severs that relation in an invidious way.
We believe the only issue that warrants further consideration in this case is whether a civil litigant can demonstrate a sufficient interest in challenging the exclusion of jurors on account of race. In Powers, we held:
“The discriminatory use of peremptory challenges by the prosecution causes a criminal defendant cognizable injury, and the defendant has a concrete interest in challenging the practice. See Allen v. Hardy, 478 U. S. [255,] 259 [(1986)] (recognizing a defendant’s interest in ‘neutral jury selection procedures’). This is not because the individual jurors dismissed by the prosecution may have been predisposed to favor the defendant; if that were true, the jurors might have been excused for cause. Rather, it is because racial discrimination in the selection of jurors ‘casts doubt on the integrity of the judicial process,’ Rose v. Mitchell, [supra, at 556], and places the fairness of a criminal proceeding in doubt.” Id., at 411.
The harms we recognized in Powers are not limited to the criminal sphere. A civil proceeding often implicates significant rights and interests. Civil juries, no less than their criminal counterparts, must follow the law and act as impartial factfinders. And, as we have observed, their verdicts, no less than those of their criminal counterparts, become binding judgments of the court. Racial discrimination has no place in the courtroom, whether the proceeding is civil or criminal. See Thiel v. Southern Pacific Co., 328 U. S., at 220. Congress has so mandated by prohibiting various discriminatory acts in the context of both civil and criminal trials. See 18 U. S. C. §243; 28 U. S. C. §§1861, 1862. The Constitution demands nothing less. We conclude that courts must entertain a challenge to a private litigant’s racially discriminatory use of peremptory challenges in a civil trial.
It may be true that the role of litigants in determining the jury’s composition provides one reason for wide acceptance of the jury system and of its verdicts. But if race stereotypes are the price for acceptance of a jury panel as fair, the price is too high to meet the standard of the Constitution. Other means exist for litigants to satisfy themselves of a jury’s impartiality without using skin color as a test. If our society is to continue to progress as a multiracial democracy, it must recognize that the automatic invocation of race stereotypes retards that progress and causes continued hurt and injury. By the dispassionate análysis which is its special distinction, the law dispels fears and preconceptions respecting racial attitudes. The quiet rationality of the courtroom makes it an appropriate place to confront race-based fears or hostility by means other than the use of offensive stereotypes. Whether the race generality employed by litigants to challenge a potential juror derives from open hostility or from some hidden and unarticulated fear, neither motive entitles the litigant to cause injury to the excused juror. And if a litigant believes that the prospective juror harbors the same biases or instincts, the issue can be explored in a rational way that consists with respect for the dignity of persons, without the use of classifications based on ancestry or skin color.
H hH I — H
It remains to consider whether a prima facie case of racial discrimination has been established in the case before us, requiring Leesville to offer race-neutral explanations for its peremptory challenges. In Batson, we held that determining whether a prima facie case has been established requires consideration of all relevant circumstances, including whether there has been a pattern of strikes against members of a particular race. 476 U. S., at 96-97. The same approach applies in the civil context, and we leave it to the trial courts in the first instance to develop evidentiary rules for implementing our decision.
The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with our opinion.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Justice White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The opinion in San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236 (1959), set forth a general standard for determining when state proceedings or regulations are pre-empted by the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA or Act), see 29 U. S. C. § 151 et seq. (1982 ed. and Supp. II): Subject to exception only in limited circumstances, “[w]hen an activity is arguably subject to §7 or §8 of the Act [29 U. S. C. §157 or §158], the States as well as the federal courts must defer to the exclusive competence of the National Labor Relations Board if the danger of state interference with national policy is to be averted.” 359 U. S., at 245. This general standard has been applied in a multitude of cases decided since Garmon, and it must be applied again today. Before addressing that question, however, we must consider the very nature of such pre-emption — whether Garmon pre-emption is in the nature of an affirmative defense that must be asserted in the trial court or be considered forever waived or whether it is in the nature of a challenge to a court’s power to adjudicate that may be raised at any time.
I
Appellee Larry Davis was formerly employed by Ryan-Walsh Stevedoring Co. in Mobile, Alabama. At the times relevant to the events that gave rise to this suit, he was a ship superintendent or trainee ship superintendent. The ship superintendents apparently served as the immediate superiors of the longshoremen employed by Ryan-Walsh. They were on salary, however, and their compensation was generally lower than that received by the longshoremen, who worked on an hourly basis.
In early 1981, Ben Trione, one of the ship superintendents who worked for Ryan-Walsh, contacted appellant International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA or Union), a union that represents longshoremen and other employees on the waterfront, to discuss the possibility of organizing the superintendents and affiliating with the Union. Although the parties here dispute the content of the conversations that occurred at this stage between Trione and the ILA representatives regarding the ship superintendents and their eligibility for union membership, it is undisputed that a meeting of the superintendents was organized by Trione and attended by Benny Holland, an ILA official from Houston, Texas.
At this meeting, several of the superintendents expressed a fear of being discharged for participating in union-related activities. According to Davis’ witnesses, Holland’s response to this was to reassure them that the Union would get them their jobs back with backpay if that happened. According to Holland, however, Holland’s response was that they would be protected in that manner only if they were determined not to be supervisors under the Act and that he did not know whether or not they would be considered supervisors. Holland further testified that he had submitted this issue to the Union’s lawyers and had not received a definitive opinion from them by the time of the meeting. The meeting, according to all witnesses, resulted in a number of the ship superintendents, including Davis, signing pledge cards and a union charter application with the ILA.
On the day following the organizational meeting, Ryan-Walsh fired Trione. Trione contacted the ILA, which supplied him with an attorney. The attorney filed an unfair labor practice charge against Ryan-Walsh with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that Trione was an employee under the Act and that Ryan-Walsh had violated § 8(a)(1) and § 8(a)(3) of the Act by discharging him for participating in union activities. See 29 U. S. C. §§ 158(a)(1), (3). The NLRB’s Regional Director, however, determined that Trione was a supervisor under the Act and declined to issue a complaint. Trione did not, as he had a right to do, appeal this determination to the NLRB General Counsel. See 29 CFR § 102.19 (1985). Shortly thereafter, Davis was also discharged by Ryan-Walsh, apparently for his continued efforts to organize the ship superintendents and to join the Union.
In response to his discharge, Davis filed this suit against the ILA in the Circuit Court of Mobile County, alleging fraud and misrepresentation under Ala. Code §6-5-101 (1975). The case proceeded to trial, and a jury entered a verdict in Davis’ favor in the amount of $75,000. Throughout the trial, the Union defended the suit on the merits, raising no issue that the suit was pre-empted by the NLRA. In its motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, however, the ILA raised for the first time a claim that the state court lacked jurisdiction over the case because the field had “been preempted by federal law and federal jurisdiction.” App. 96a. The Circuit Court denied the Union’s motion without opinion and entered judgment on the jury’s verdict.
On appeal to the Supreme Court of Alabama, the ILA argued that pre-emption was not a waivable defense and that the state fraud and misrepresentation action was pre-empted under Garmon. Although acknowledging that other state courts had adopted the ILA’s position that NLRA preemption was nonwaivable, the Alabama court held that “[i]t is not the circuit court’s subject matter jurisdiction to adjudicate a damage claim for the tort of fraud — even if it arises in the context of a labor-related dispute — that is pre-empted. Rather, it is the state court’s exercise of that power that is subject to preemption.” 470 So. 2d 1215, 1216 (1985). The court’s view was that as a state court of general jurisdiction the Circuit Court had had subject-matter jurisdiction over this ordinary tort claim for damages. As a waivable defense, the pre-emption claim was required under Alabama law to be affirmatively pleaded. Since it was not so pleaded, it was deemed waived.
The Alabama Supreme Court, although holding that the ILA’s pre-emption claim had been waived, stated in a footnote that if it had had occasion to reach the merits, it would have found no pre-emption:
“The instant facts fall squarely within the ‘peripheral concern’ exception to federal preemption of state jurisdiction of labor-related disputes. San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236, 243-44 (1959). The National Labor Relations Board has already determined that an employer’s supervisors are not protected by the Labor Management Relations Act. Thus, in this case, [Davis] has no remedy before the NLRB, and this dispute, although somewhat labor-related, is, at most, only of ‘peripheral concern’ to the NLRB. See, e. g., Linn v. United Plant Guard Workers Local 114, 383 U. S. 53 (1966).” Id., at 1216-1217, n. 2 (citations omitted).
The Alabama Supreme Court accordingly affirmed the judgment against the Union. The Union appealed to this Court; Davis moved to dismiss the appeal on the ground that the decision below rested on an adequate and independent state ground because the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision was based on an application of a state procedural rule. The ILA’s submission, however, raised a substantial question whether reliance on the procedural rule rested on an erroneous view of the scope of Garmon pre-emption, a matter of federal law, and hence whether the procedural ground relied on was adequate and independent. We noted probable jurisdiction, 474 U. S. 899 (1985).
II
A
Given the reliance of the Alabama Supreme Court on its procedural rule governing the presentation of affirmative defenses, we first decide whether that rule in this case represents an independent and adequate state ground supporting the judgment below. If it does, our review is at an end, for we have no authority to review state determinations of purely state law. Nor do we review federal issues that can have no effect on the state court’s judgment. See, e. g., Zacchini v. Scripps-Howard Broadcasting Co., 433 U. S. 562, 566 (1977); Herb v. Pitcairn, 324 U. S. 117, 125-126 (1945); Fox Film Corp. v. Muller, 296 U. S. 207, 210 (1935). The inquiry into the sufficiency of the asserted state ground, however, is one that we undertake ourselves. See Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032, 1038 (1983); Abie State Bank v. Bryan, 282 U. S. 765, 773 (1931).
In concluding that the Union’s pre-emption claim was procedurally barred, the Alabama Supreme Court first held that because the Mobile County Circuit Court, as a state court of general jurisdiction, had subject-matter jurisdiction over the simple tort claim of misrepresentation, there could be no preemption of that court’s actual jurisdiction. Only the exercise of that jurisdiction could be pre-empted.
This explanation has a certain logic to it; but the point is not whether state law gives the state courts jurisdiction over particular controversies but whether jurisdiction provided by state law is itself pre-empted by federal law vesting exclusive jurisdiction over that controversy in another body. It is clearly within Congress’ powers to establish an exclusive federal forum to adjudicate issues of federal law in a particular area that Congress has the authority to regulate under the Constitution. See, e. g., Kalb v. Feuerstein, 308 U. S. 433 (1940). Whether it has done so in a specific case is the question that must be answered when a party claims that a state court’s jurisdiction is pre-empted. Such a determination of congressional intent and of the boundaries and character of a pre-empting congressional enactment is one of federal law. Pre-emption, the practical manifestation of the Supremacy Clause, is always a federal question.
If the Alabama procedural ruling under state law implicates an underlying question of federal law, however, the state law is not an independent and adequate state ground supporting the judgment:
“[W]hen resolution of the state procedural law question depends on a federal constitutional ruling, the state-law prong of the court’s holding is not independent of federal law, and our jurisdiction is not precluded.... In such a case, the federal-law holding is integral to the state court’s disposition of the matter, and our ruling on the issue is in no respect advisory.” Ake v. Oklahoma, 470 U. S. 68, 75 (1985) (citing Herb v. Pitcairn, supra, at 126; Enterprise Irrigation District v. Farmers Mutual Canal Co., 243 U. S. 157, 164 (1917)).
To determine the sufficiency of the state procedural ground relied upon by the Alabama Supreme Court we must ascertain whether that court correctly resolved the antecedent federal question regarding the nature of Garmon preemption under the NLRA. Specifically, the question is whether Garmon pre-emption is a waivable affirmative defense such that a state court may adjudicate an otherwise pre-empted claim if the Garmon defense is not timely raised or whether Garmon pre-emption is a nonwaivable foreclosure of the state court’s very jurisdiction to adjudicate.
B
The Court’s opinion in Garner v. Teamsters, 346 U. S. 485, 490-491 (1953), articulated what has come to be the accepted basis for the broadly pre-emptive scope of the NLRA:
“Congress did not merely lay down a substantive rule of law to be enforced by any tribunal competent to apply law generally to the parties. It went on to confide primary interpretation and application of its rules to a specific and specially constituted tribunal and prescribed a particular procedure for investigation, complaint and notice, and hearing and decision, including judicial relief pending a final administrative order. Congress evidently considered that centralized administration of specially designed procedures was necessary to obtain uniform application of its substantive rules and to avoid these diversities and conflicts likely to result from a variety of local procedures and attitudes toward labor controversies.... A multiplicity of tribunals and a diversity of procedures are quite as apt to produce incompatible or conflicting adjudications as are different rules of substantive law.”
Building on this cornerstone, the Garmon Court went on to set out the now well-established scope of NLRA preemption. Given the NLRA’s “complex and interrelated federal scheme of law, remedy, and administration,” 359 U. S., at 243, the Court held that “due regard for the federal enactment requires that state jurisdiction must yield,” id., at 244, when the activities sought to be regulated by a State are clearly or may fairly be assumed to be within the purview of § 7 or § 8. The Court acknowledged that “[a]t times it has not been clear whether the particular activity regulated by the States was governed by § 7 or § 8 or was, perhaps, outside both these sections.” Ibid. Even in such ambiguous situations, however, the Court concluded that “courts are not primary tribunals to adjudicate such issues. It is essential to the administration of the Act that these determinations be left in the first instance to the National Labor Relations Board.” Id., at 244-245. Thus, the Court held that “[w]hen an activity is arguably subject to § 7 or § 8 of the Act, the States as well as the federal courts must defer to the exclusive competence of the National Labor Relations Board if the danger of state interference with national policy is to be averted.” Id., at 245.
In Construction Laborers v. Curry, 371 U. S. 542 (1963), we considered the application of these principles to a situation in which the Georgia courts had awarded relief based on a complaint that contained allegations that made out “at least an arguable violation of §8(b).” Id., at 546. There, we reviewed a claim that “the subject matter of [the] suit was within the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board,” id., at 543, and held that, even though the state court was authorized to adjudicate the claim as a matter of state law, the state court “clearly exceeded its power” in awarding relief on the complaint. Id., at 548. Specifically, “the state court had no jurisdiction to issue an injunction or to adjudicate this controversy, which lay within the exclusive powers of the National Labor Relations Board.” Id., at 546-547.
That our conclusion was in fact jurisdictional was accentuated by our discussion of the procedural context in which the case arose. The state court had awarded a temporary injunction only, and a permanent order had not yet been issued. We rejected, however, the argument that the judgment was not yet final for purposes of our own jurisdiction:
“[W]e believe our power to review this case rests upon solid ground. The federal question raised by petitioner in the Georgia court, and here, is whether the Georgia courts had power to proceed with and determine this controversy. The issue ripe for review is not whether a Georgia court has erroneously decided a matter of federal law in a case admittedly within its jurisdiction nor is it the question of whether federal or state law governs a case properly before the Georgia courts. What we do have here is a judgment of the Georgia court finally and erroneously asserting its jurisdiction to deal with a controversy which is beyond its power and instead is within the exclusive domain of the National Labor Relations Board.” Id., at 548 (citations omitted).
See also Belknap, Inc. v. Hale, 463 U. S. 491, 497-498, n. 5 (1983). Curry made clear that when a state proceeding or regulation is claimed to be pre-empted by the NLRA under Garmon, the issue is a choice-of-forum rather than a choice-of-law question. As such, it is a question whether the State or the Board has jurisdiction over the dispute. If there is pre-emption under Garmon, then state jurisdiction is extinguished.
Since Garmon and Curry, we have reiterated many times the general pre-emption standard set forth in Garmon and the jurisdictional nature of Garmon pre-emption; we have also reaffirmed that our decisions describing the nature of Garmon pre-emption and defining its boundaries have rested on a determination that in enacting the NLRA Congress intended for the Board generally to exercise exclusive jurisdiction in this area. See, e. g., Journeymen v. Borden, 373 U. S. 690, 698 (1963); Iron Workers v. Perko, 373 U. S. 701, 708 (1963); Liner v. Jafco, Inc., 375 U. S. 301, 309-310 (1964); Linn v. Plant Guard Workers, 383 U. S. 53, 60 (1966); Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S. 171, 179 (1967); Motor Coach Em ployees v. Lockridge, 403 U. S. 274, 285-291 (1971); Farmer v. Carpenters, 430 U. S. 290, 296-297, 305 (1977); Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Carpenters, 436 U. S. 180, 188-190 (1978); Operating Engineers v. Jones, 460 U. S. 669, 676 (1983); Belknap, Inc. v. Hale, supra, at 510-511; Brown v. Hotel Employees, 468 U. S. 491, 502-503 (1984); Wisconsin Dept. of Industry, Labor and Human Relations v. Gould Inc., 475 U. S. 282, 286 (1986).
Davis does not seriously dispute this conclusion — at least as a general matter. He concedes, in fact, that “when a particular issue has been placed by Congress within the primary and exclusive jurisdiction of the NLRB, a state court will have no subject matter jurisdiction to adjudicate the issue. In such cases, any judgment issued by the state court will be void ab initio because subject matter jurisdiction is preempted.” Brief for Appellee 13. Davis notes, however, that this Court has acknowledged that Garmon does not preempt “all local regulation that touches or concerns in any way the complex interrelationships between employees, employers, and unions; obviously, much of this is left to the States.” Lockridge, supra, at 289. Specifically, Davis points to Garmon’s own recognition that some controversies that are arguably subject to § 7 or § 8 are not pre-empted:
“[D]ue regard for the presuppositions of our embracing federal system... has required us not to find withdrawal from the States of power to regulate where the activity regulated was a merely peripheral concern of the Labor Management Relations Act. Or where the regulated conduct touched interests so deeply rooted in local feeling and responsibility that, in the absence of compelling congressional direction, we could not infer that Congress had deprived the States of the power to act.” 359 U. S., at 243-244 (citations omitted).
Both before and since Garmon we have identified claims that fall within one or both these articulated exceptions. See, e. g., Belknap, Inc. v. Hale, supra; Farmer v. Carpen ters, supra; Linn v. Plant Guard Workers, supra; Automobile Workers v. Russell, 356 U. S. 634 (1958); Machinists v. Gonzales, 356 U. S. 617 (1958); Youngdahl v. Rainfair, Inc., 355 U. S. 131 (1957); Construction Workers v. Laburnum Construction Corp., 347 U. S. 656 (1954). But these cases serve only as more precise demarcations of the scope of Garmon pre-emption. They have not redefined the nature of that pre-emption in any way. A claim of Garmon preemption is a claim that the state court has no power to adjudicate the subject matter of the case, and when a claim of Garmon pre-emption is raised, it must be considered and resolved by the state court. Consequently, the state procedural rule relied on by the Alabama Supreme Court to support the judgment below was not a sufficient state ground, and the Union was and is entitled to an adjudication of its pre-emption claim on the merits.
Ill
As the Garmon line of cases directs, the pre-emption inquiry is whether the conduct at issue was arguably protected or prohibited by the NLRA. That much is clear. There is also no dispute that if Davis was a supervisor, he was legally fired, the Union misspoke if it represented that there was legal redress for the discharge, and there is no pre-emption. But if Davis was an employee, his discharge for union activities was an unfair practice, the Union was protected in its attempt to interest him in the Union, and it did not err in representing that if he was discharged for joining the Union, there would be a remedy. We should inquire, then, whether Davis was arguably an employee, rather than a supervisor. If he was, the issue was to be initially decided by the NLRB, not the state courts.
The precondition for pre-emption, that the conduct be “arguably” protected or prohibited, is not without substance. It is not satisfied by a conclusory assertion of pre-emption and would therefore not be satisfied in this case by a claim, without more, that Davis was an employee rather than a supervisor. If the word “arguably” is to mean anything, it must mean that the party claiming pre-emption is required to demonstrate that his case is one that the Board could legally decide in his favor. That is, a party asserting pre-emption must advance an interpretation of the Act that is not plainly contrary to its language and that has not been “authoritatively rejected” by the courts or the Board. Marine Engineers v. Interlake S.S. Co., 370 U. S. 173, 184 (1962). The party must then put forth enough evidence to enable the court to find that the Board reasonably could uphold a claim based on such an interpretation. In this case, therefore, because the pre-emption issue turns on Davis’ status, the Union’s claim of pre-emption must be supported by a showing sufficient to permit the Board to find that Davis was an employee, not a supervisor. Our examination of the record leads us to conclude that the Union has not carried its burden in this case.
Expecting that the Union would put its best foot forward in this Court, we look first at its submission here that there is an arguable case for pre-emption. The Union’s brief states that its conduct was protected by federal law if Davis was an employee, that in order to find the Union liable the jury must have found that Davis was a supervisor, and that “the state law controversy of whether the Union made a misrepresentation and the federal controversy of whether the superintendents were in fact supervisors are ‘the same in a fundamental respect.’” Brief for Appellant 16 (quoting Operating Engineers v. Jones, 460 U. S., at 682). So far, the argument proceeds in the right direction. As for the critical issue of whether Davis is an employee or a supervisor, the Union asserts only that “[a]bsent a clear determination by the NLRB that the ship superintendents are supervisors rather than employees, superintendents are arguably employees and the state is preempted from applying its law.” Brief for Appellant 13. In making this contention, the ILA relies on our cases indicating that pre-emption can be avoided if an individual’s supervisory status has been determined “‘with unclouded legal significance.’” Hanna Mining Co. v. Marine Engineers, 382 U. S. 181, 190 (1965) (quoting Garmon, 359 U. S., at 246). See also Jones, supra, at 680. It does not undertake any examination of Davis’ duties as a ship superintendent. It makes no attempt to show that Davis was more like an employee than a supervisor as those terms are defined in §§2(1) and (11) of the Act, 29 U. S. C. §§152(1) and (11). It points to no evidence in the record indicating that Davis was not a supervisor. It does not argue that Davis’ job was different from Trione’s or that the Regional Director was wrong in finding that Trione was a supervisor. Its sole submission is that Davis was arguably an employee because the Board has not decided that he was a supervisor.
We cannot agree that Davis’ arguable status as a supervisor is made out by the mere fact that the Board has not finally determined his status. The lack of a Board decision in no way suggests how it would or could decide the case if it had the opportunity to do so. To accept the Union’s submission would be essentially equivalent to allowing a conclusory claim of pre-emption and would effectively eliminate the necessity to make out an arguable case. The better view is that those claiming pre-emption must carry the burden of showing at least an arguable case before the jurisdiction of a state court will be ousted.
Moreover, neither Garmon nor Hanna Mining supports the Union’s position. Garmon itself is the source of the arguably protected or prohibited standard for pre-emption. The Court stated, 359 U. S., at 244:
“When it is clear or may fairly be assumed that the activities which a State purports to regulate are protected by § 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, or constitute an unfair labor practice under § 8, due regard for the federal enactment requires that state jurisdiction must yield. To leave the States free to regulate conduct so plainly within the central aim of the federal regulation involves too great a danger of conflict between power asserted by Congress and requirements imposed by state law.”
Later the Court said: “When an activity is arguably subject to § 7 or § 8 of the Act, the States as well as the federal courts must defer to the exclusive competence” of the Board. Id., at 245. Of course, the Court explained, the Board might decide the case one way or the other, but in the “absence of the Board’s clear determination that an activity is neither protected or prohibited,” id., at 246, it is not for the courts to decide the case. It is apparent from these passages that a court first must decide whether there is an arguable case for pre-emption; if there is, it must defer to the Board, and only if the Board decides that the conduct is not protected or prohibited may the court entertain the litigation. Nothing in Garmon suggests that an arguable case for pre-emption is made out simply because the Board has not decided the general issue one way or the other.
Hanna Mining also does nothing for the Union’s submission. The Court there, relying on Garmon, held that there was no pre-emption because the Board or its General Counsel had in fact adversely decided the issues on which the claim of pre-emption rested. Obviously, no inference may be drawn from that decision that a party makes out a case for preemption by merely asserting that the issue involved has not been decided by the Board. The Union’s position is also negated by Interlake S.S. Co., supra, where the Court found pre-emption only after examining the facts and deciding “whether the evidence in this case was sufficient to show that either of [the organizations] was arguably a ‘labor organization’ within the contemplation of §8(b).” Id., at 178. The Court went on to hold that while there was persuasive evidence that the marine engineers were supervisors, the Board had nevertheless effectively decided that the union involved was a labor organization within the meaning of the Act. While agreeing with the principles announced by the Court, Justice Douglas dissented because he had a different view of the facts of the case. Consequently, a party asserting preemption must put forth enough evidence to enable a court to conclude that the activity is arguably subject to the Act.
Here, the Union points to no evidence in support of its assertion that Davis was arguably an employee. The Union’s claim of pre-emption in the state courts was also devoid of any factual or legal showing that Davis was arguably not a supervisor but an employee. In this respect, its brief in the Alabama Supreme Court was similar to its brief here, and its post-trial motion for judgment in the trial court contained no more than a conclusory assertion that state jurisdiction was pre-empted. Until that motion, no claim of pre-emption had been made out, but whether Davis was a supervisor or an employee was a relevant inquiry in making out his case. He alleged in his complaint that he was a supervisor. The Union answered that it was without sufficient information to form a belief as to whether or not he was. Moreover, in moving for summary judgment or for directed verdict at the close of Davis’ case and at the close of all the evidence the Union did not assert that Davis was an employee, not a supervisor, let alone point to any evidence to support such a claim. In sum, the Union has not met its burden of showing that the conduct here was arguably subject to the Act.
IV
We hold that where state law is pre-empted by the NLRA under Garmon and our subsequent cases, the state courts lack the very power to adjudicate the claims that trigger preemption. Thus, the Alabama Supreme Court’s holding that the ILA had waived its pre-emption claim by noncompliance with state procedural rules governing affirmative defenses did not present an independent and adequate state ground supporting the judgment below, and that court erred in declining to address that claim on the merits. On the merits, we reject the ILA’s characterization of our prior cases as holding that the mere lack of a conclusive determination by the Board that an activity is without the purview of the Act renders that activity arguably subject to the Act. Rather, we reaffirm our previously expressed view that the party asserting pre-emption must make an affirmative showing that the activity is arguably subject to the Act and we therefore affirm the judgment of the Alabama Supreme Court.
So ordered.
Under §2(11) of the Act, 61 Stat. 138, a supervisor is defined as follows:
“The term ‘supervisor’ means any individual having authority, in the interest of the employer, to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend such action, if in connection with the foregoing the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment.” 29 U. S. C. § 152(11).
Supervisors as defined in this section are expressly not considered to be employees as defined in § 2(3) of the Act. 29 U. S. C. § 152(3).
Only employees as defined in § 2(3), however, are given rights under § 7 of the Act, 61 Stat. 140, 29 U. S. C. § 157, which provides:
“Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 8(a)(3).”
Apparently, however, an insufficient number of cards was obtained, see 29 U. S. C. § 159(a), and no representation petition was filed with the NLRB.
Section 8(a) of the Act, 49 Stat. 452, in turn, provides in relevant part:
“It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer-
'll) To interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7.
“(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....” 29 U. S. C. §§ 158(a)(1), (3).
Under the Act, an employer does not commit an unfair labor practice under § 8(a)(3) if it fires a supervisor for union-related reasons: An employer “is at liberty to demand absolute loyalty from his supervisory personnel by insisting, on pain of discharge, that they neither participate in, nor retain membership in, a labor union.” Florida Power & Light Co. v. Electrical Workers, 417 U. S. 790, 812 (1974). See also Operating Engineers v. Jones, 460 U. S. 669, 671, n. 1 (1983); Beasley v. Food Fair of North Carolina, Inc., 416 U. S. 653, 656-657 (1974). An employer may, however, allow its supervisory employees to join a union. See Florida Power & Light, supra, at 808, 813. Even though supervisors are not covered by the Act, a discharge may constitute a § 8(a)(1) unfair labor practice if it infringes on the § 7 rights of the employer’s nonsupervisory employees. See, e. g., Parker-Robb Chevrolet, Inc., 262 N. L. R. B. 402 (1982), aff’d Automobile Salesmen’s Union Local 1095 v. NLRB, 229 U. S. App. D. C. 105, 711 F. 2d 383 (1983) (summarizing post-1982 standard for finding violations of the Act in disciplinary actions taken against supervisors).
In response to Trione’s complaint, the Regional Director stated his conclusions as follows:
“As a result of the investigation, it appears that further proceedings on the charge [of a violation under Section 8 of the Act] are not warranted inasmuch as the evidence disclosed that Mr. Trione was employed as a supervisor within the meaning of Section 2(11) of the Act. For this reason, Section 8(a)(3) would not be applicable to his discharge inasmuch as'supervisors’ are specifically excluded from the definition of employee under the Act. Nor is there sufficient evidence to establish that Mr. Trione’s discharge violated Section 8(a)(1) of the Act. I am, therefore, refusing to issue a complaint in this matter.” App. 62a-63a.
That section provides: “Misrepresentations of a material fact made willfully to deceive, or recklessly without knowledge, and acted on by the opposite party, or if made by mistake and innocently and acted on by the opposite party, constitute legal fraud.”
See, e. g., Consolidated Theatres, Inc. v. Theatrical Stage Employees Union, Local 16, 69 Cal. 2d 713, 447 P. 2d 325 (1968).
In reaching this conclusion, the Alabama Supreme Court noted that Alabama Rule of Civil Procedure 8(c) requires that affirmative defenses be specifically asserted and concluded that although pre-emption was not specifically listed as an affirmative defense under Rule 8 “it quite obviously falls within the nature of those defenses specifically listed.” 470 So. 2d, at 1216, n. 1. See also Powell v. Phenix Federal Savings & Loan Assn., 434 So. 2d 247 (Ala. 1983) (holding claim of pre-emption of state-law affirmative defenses to be deemed waived if not affirmatively pleaded).
Assuming, as we decide infra, that the judgment below did not rest on an independent and adequate state ground and that we therefore have jurisdiction over this case, this is a proper appeal under 28 U. S. C
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | I | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellants, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, its Secretary, the Social Security Administration and various of its officials, appeal from a decision of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California invalidating duration-of-relationship Social Security eligibility requirements for surviving wives and stepchildren of deceased wage earners. 373 F. Supp. 961 (1974).
That court concluded that it had jurisdiction of the action by virtue of 28 U. S. C. § 1331, and eventually certified the case as a class action. On the merits, it concluded that the nine-month requirements of §§ 216 (c) (5) and (e) (2) of the Social Security Act, 49 Stat. 620, as added, 64 Stat. 510, and as amended, 42 U. S. C. §§416 (c)(5) and (e)(2) (1970 ed. and Supp. Ill), constituted “irrebuttable presumptions” which were constitutionally invalid under the authority of Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur, 414 U. S. 632 (1974); Vlandis v. Kline, 412 U. S. 441 (1973); and Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U. S. 645 (1972). We hold that the District Court did not have jurisdiction of this action under 28 U. S. C. § 1331, and that while it had jurisdiction of the claims of the named appellees under the provisions of 42 U. S. C. § 405 (g), it had no jurisdiction over the claims asserted on behalf of unnamed class members. We further decide that the District Court was wrong on the merits of the constitutional question tendered by the named appellees.
I
Appellee Salfi married the deceased wage earner, Londo L. Salfi, on May 27, 1972. Despite his alleged apparent good health at the time of the marriage, he suffered a heart attack less than'a month later, and died on November 21, 1972, less than six months after the marriage. Appellee Salfi filed applications for mother’s insurance benefits for herself and child’s insurance benefits for her daughter by a previous marriage, appellee Doreen Kalnins. These applications were denied by the Social Security Administration, both initially and on reconsideration at the regional level, solely on the basis of the duration-of-relationship requirements of §§416 (c)(5) and (e)(2), which define “widow” and “child.” The definitions exclude surviving wives and stepchildren who had their respective relationships to a deceased wage earner for less than nine months prior to his death.
The named appellees then filed this action, principally relying on 28 U. S. C. § 1331 for jurisdiction. They sought to represent the class of “all widows and stepchildren of deceased wage earners who are denied widow’s [sic] or children’s insurance benefits because the wage earner died within nine months of his marriage to the applicant or (in case of a stepchild) the applicant’s mother.” App. 8. They alleged at least partial exhaustion of remedies with regard to their personal claims, but made no similar allegations with regard to other class members. They sought declaratory relief against the challenged statute, and injunctive relief restraining appellants from denying mother’s and child’s benefits on the basis of the statute. In addition to attorneys’ fees and costs, they also sought “damages or sums due and owing equivalent to the amount of benefits to which plaintiffs became entitled as of the date of said entitlement.” Id., at 13.
A three-judge District Court heard the case on cross-motions for summary judgment, and granted substantially all of the relief prayed for by appellees. The District Court rendered a declaratory judgment holding the challenged statute to be unconstitutional, certified a class consisting of “all otherwise eligible surviving spouses and stepchildren... heretofore disqualified from receipt of... benefits by operation” of the duration-of-relationship requirements, enjoined appellants from denying benefits on the basis of those requirements, and ordered them to provide such benefits “from the time of original entitlement.” 373 F. Supp., at 966. We noted probable jurisdiction of the appeal from that judgment. 419 U. S. 992 (1974).
In addition to their basic contention that the duration-of-relationship requirements pass constitutional muster, appellants present several contentions bearing on the scope of the monetary relief awarded by the District Court. They contend that the award is barred by sovereign immunity insofar as it consists of retroactive benefits, that regardless of sovereign immunity invalidation of the duration-of-relationship requirements should be given prospective effect only, and that the District Court did not properly handle certain class-action issues. Because we conclude that the duration-of-relationship requirements are constitutional, we have no occasion to reach the retroactivity and class-action issues. We are confronted, however, by a serious question as to whether the District Court had jurisdiction over this suit.
II
The third sentence of 42 U. S. C. § 405 (h) provides in part:
“No action against the United States, the Secretary, or any officer or employee thereof shall be brought under [§ 1331 et seq.} of Title 28 to recover on any claim arising under [Title II of the Social Security Act].”
On its face, this provision bars district court federal-question jurisdiction over suits, such as this one, which seek to recover Social Security benefits. Yet it was § 1331 jurisdiction which appellees successfully invoked in the District Court. That court considered this provision, but concluded that it was inapplicable because it amounted to no more than a codification of the doctrine of exhaustion of administrative remedies. The District Court's reading of § 405 (h) was, we think, entirely too narrow.
That the third sentence of § 405 (h) is more than a codified requirement of administrative exhaustion is plain from its own language, which is sweeping and direct and which states that no action shall be brought under § 1331, not merely that only those actions shall be brought in which administrative remedies have been exhausted. Moreover, if the third sentence is construed to be nothing more than a requirement of administrative exhaustion, it would be superfluous. This is because the first two sentences of § 405 (h), which appear in the margin, assure that administrative exhaustion will be required. Specifically, they prevent review of decisions of the Secretary save as provided in the Act, which provision is made in § 405 (g). The latter section prescribes typical requirements for review of matters before an administrative agency, including administrative exhaustion. Thus the District Court’s treatment of the third sentence of § 405 (h) not only ignored that sentence’s plain language, but also relegated it to a function which is already performed by other statutory provisions.
A somewhat more substantial argument that the third sentence of § 405 (h) does not deprive the District Court of federal-question jurisdiction relies on the fact that it only affects actions to recover on “any claim arising under [Title II]” of the Social Security Act. The argument is that the present action arises under the Constitution and not under Title II. It would, of course, be fruitless to contend that appellees’ claim is one which does not arise under the Constitution, since their constitutional arguments are critical to their complaint. But it is just as fruitless to argue that this action does not also arise under the Social Security Act. For not only is it Social Security benefits which appellees seek to recover, but it is the Social Security Act which provides both the standing and the substantive basis for the presentation of their constitutional contentions. Appellees sought, and the District Court granted, a judgment directing the Secretary to pay Social Security benefits. To contend that such an action does not arise under the Act whose benefits are sought is to ignore both the language and the substance of the complaint and judgment. This being so, the third sentence of § 405 (h) precludes resort to federal-question jurisdiction for the adjudication of appellees’ constitutional contentions.
It has also been argued that Johnson v. Robison, 415 U. S. 361 (1974), supports the proposition that appellees are not seeking to recover on a claim arising under Title II. In that case we considered 38 U. S. C. § 211 (a), which provides:
“[T]he decisions of the [Veterans’] Administrator on any question of law or fact under any law administered by the Veterans’ Administration providing benefits for veterans... shall be final and conclusive and no other official or any court of the United States shall have power or jurisdiction to review any such decision by an action in the nature of mandamus or otherwise.”
We were required to resolve whether this language precluded an attack on the constitutionality of a statutory limitation. We concluded that it did not, basically because such a limitation was not a “decision” of the Administrator “on any question of law or fact”; indeed, the “decision” had been made by Congress, not the Administrator, and the issue was one which the Administrator considered to be beyond his jurisdiction. 415 U. S., at 367-368. Thus the question sought to be litigated was simply not within §211 (a)’s express language, and there was accordingly no basis for concluding that Congress sought to preclude review of the constitutionality of veterans’ legislation.
The language of § 405 (h) is quite different. Its reach is not limited to decisions of the Secretary on issues of law or fact. Rather, it extends to any “action” seeking “to recover on any [Social Security] claim” — irrespective of whether resort to judicial processes is necessitated by discretionary decisions of the Secretary or by his non-discretionary application of allegedly unconstitutional statutory restrictions.
There is another reason why Johnson v. Robison is in-apposite. It was expressly based, at least in part, on the fact that if §211 (a) reached constitutional challenges to statutory limitations, then absolutely no judicial consideration of the issue would be available. Not only would such a restriction have been extraordinary, such that “clear and convincing” evidence would be required before we would ascribe such intent to Congress, 415 U. S., at 373, but it would have raised a serious constitutional question of the validity of the statute as so construed. Id., at 366-367. In the present case, as will be discussed below, the Social Security Act itself provides jurisdiction for constitutional challenges to its provisions. Thus the plain words of the third sentence of § 405 (h) do not preclude constitutional challenges. They simply require that they be brought under jurisdictional grants contained in the Act, and thus in conformity with the same standards which are applicable to nonconstitutional claims arising under the Act. The result is not only of unquestionable constitutionality, but it is also manifestly reasonable, since it assures the Secretary the opportunity prior to constitutional litigation to ascertain, for example, that the particular claims involved are neither invalid for other reasons nor allowable under other provisions of the Social Security Act.
As has been stated, the Social Security Act itself provides for district court review of the Secretary’s determinations. Title 42 U. S. C. § 405 (g) provides that “[a]ny individual, after any final decision of the Secretary made after a hearing to which he was a party, irrespective of the amount in controversy, may obtain a review of such decision by a civil action commenced within sixty days after the mailing to him of notice of such decision....” See n. 5, supra. The question with which we must now deal is whether this provision could serve as a jurisdictional basis for the District Court’s consideration of the present case. We conclude that it provided jurisdiction only as to the named appellees and not as to the unnamed members of the class.
Section 405 (g) specifies the following requirements for judicial review: (1) a final decision of the Secretary made after a hearing; (2) commencement of a civil action within 60 days after the mailing of notice of such decision (or within such further time as the Secretary may allow); and (3) filing of the action in an appropriate district court, in general that of the plaintiff’s residence or principal place of business. The second and third of these requirements specify, respectively, a statute of limitations and appropriate venue. As such, they are waivable by the parties, and not having been timely raised below, see Fed. Rules Civ. Proc. 8 (c), 12 (h)(1), need not be considered here. We interpret the first requirement, however, to be central to the requisite grant of subject-matter jurisdiction — the statute empowers district courts to review a particular type of decision by the Secretary, that type being those which are “final” and “made after a hearing.”
In the present case, the complaint seeks review of the denial of benefits based on the plain wording of a statute which is alleged to be unconstitutional. That a denial on such grounds, which are beyond the power of the Secretary to affect, is nonetheless a decision of the Secretary for these purposes has been heretofore established. Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U. S. 603 (1960). As to class members, however, the complaint is deficient in that it contains no allegations that they have even filed an application with the Secretary, much less that he has rendered any decision, final or otherwise, review of which is sought. The class thus cannot satisfy the requirements for jurisdiction under 42 U. S. C. § 405 (g). Other sources of jurisdiction being foreclosed by § 405 (h), the District Court was without jurisdiction over so much of the complaint as concerns the class, and it should have entered an appropriate order of dismissal.
The jurisdictional issue with respect to the named appellees is somewhat more difficult. In a paragraph entitled “Exhaustion of Remedies,” the complaint alleges that they fully presented their claims for benefits “to their district Social Security Office and, upon denial, to the Regional Office for reconsideration.” It further alleges that they have no dispute with the Regional Office’s findings of fact or applications of statutory law, and that the only issue is a matter of constitutional law which is beyond the Secretary’s competence. On their face these allegations with regard to exhaustion fall short of meeting the literal requirement of § 405 (g) that there shall have been a “final decision of the Secretary made after a hearing.” They also fall short of satisfying the Secretary’s regulations, which specify that the finality required for judicial review is achieved only after the further steps of a hearing before an administrative law judge and, possibly, consideration by the Appeals Council. See 20 CFR §§ 404.916, 404.940,404.951 (1974).
We have previously recognized that the doctrine of administrative exhaustion should be applied with a regard for the particular administrative scheme at issue. Parisi v. Davidson, 405 U. S. 34 (1972); McKart v. United States, 395 U. S. 185 (1969). Exhaustion is generally required as a matter of preventing premature interference with agency processes, so that the agency may function efficiently and so that it may have an opportunity to correct its own errors, to afford the parties and the courts the benefit of its experience and expertise, and to compile a record which is adequate for judicial review. See, e. g., id., at 193-194. Plainly these purposes have been served once the Secretary has satisfied himself that the only issue is the constitutionality of a statutory requirement, a matter which is beyond his jurisdiction to determine, and that the claim is neither otherwise invalid nor cognizable under a different section of the Act. Once a benefit applicant has presented his or her claim at a sufficiently high level of review to satisfy the Secretary’s administrative needs, further exhaustion would not merely be futile for the applicant, but would also be a commitment of administrative resources unsupported by any administrative or judicial interest.
The present case, of course, is significantly different from McKart in that a “final decision” is a statutorily specified jurisdictional prerequisite. The requirement is, therefore, as we have previously noted, something more than simply a codification of the judicially developed doctrine of exhaustion, and may not be dispensed with merely by a judicial conclusion of futility such as that made by the District Court here. But it is equally true that the requirement of a “final decision” contained in § 405 (g) is not precisely analogous to the more classical jurisdictional requirements contained in such sections of Title 28 as 1331 and 1332. The term “final decision” is not only left undefined by the Act, but its meaning is left to the Secretary to flesh out by regulation. Section 405 (l) accords the Secretary complete authority to delegate his statutory duties to officers and employees of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The statutory scheme is thus one in which the Secretary may specify such requirements for exhaustion as he deems serve his own interests in effective and efficient administration. While a court may not substitute its conclusion as to futility for the contrary conclusion of the Secretary, we believe it would be inconsistent with the congressional scheme to bar the Secretary from determining in particular cases that full exhaustion of internal review procedures is not necessary for a decision to be “final” within the language of § 405 (g).
Much the same may be said about the statutory requirement that the Secretary’s decision be made “after a hearing.” Not only would a hearing be futile and wasteful, once the Secretary has determined that the only issue to be resolved is a matter of constitutional law concededly beyond his competence to decide, but the Secretary may, of course, award benefits without requiring a hearing. We do not understand the statute to prevent him from similarly determining in favor of the applicant, without a hearing, all issues with regard to eligibility save for one as to which he considers a hearing to be useless.
In the present case the Secretary does not raise any challenge to the sufficiency of the allegations of exhaustion in appellees’ complaint. We interpret this to be a determination by him that for the purposes of this litigation the reconsideration determination is “final.” The named appellees thus satisfy the requirements for § 405 (g) judicial review, and we proceed to the merits of their claim.
Ill
The District Court relied on congressional history for the proposition that the duration-of-relationship requirement was intended to prevent the use of sham marriages to secure Social Security payments. As such, concluded the court, “the requirement constitutes a presumption that marriages like Mrs. Salfi’s, which did not precede the wage earner’s death by at least nine months, were entered into for the purpose of securing Social Security benefits.” 373 F. Supp., at 965. The presumption was, moreover, conclusive, because applicants were not afforded an opportunity to disprove the presence of the illicit purpose. The court held that under our decisions in Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur, 414 U. S. 632 (1974); Vlandis v. Kline, 412 U. S. 441 (1973); and Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U. S. 645 (1972), the requirement was unconstitutional, because it presumed a fact which was not necessarily or universally true.
Our ultimate conclusion is that the District Court was wrong in holding the duration-of-relationship requirement unconstitutional. Because we are aware that our various holdings in related cases do not all sound precisely the same note, we will explain ourselves at some length.
The standard for testing the validity of Congress’ Social Security classification was clearly stated in Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U. S., at 611:
“Particularly when we deal with a withholding of a noncontractual benefit under a social welfare program such as [Social Security], we must recognize that the Due Process Clause can be thought to interpose a bar only if the statute manifests a patently arbitrary classification, utterly lacking in rational justification.”
In Richardson v. Belcher, 404 U. S. 78 (1971), a portion of the Social Security Act which required an otherwise entitled disability claimant to be subjected to an “offset” by reason of his simultaneous receipt of state workmen’s compensation benefits was attacked as being violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The claimant in that case asserted that the provision was arbitrary in that it required offsetting of a state workmen’s compensation payment, but not of a similar payment made by a private disability insurer. The Court said:
“If the goals sought are legitimate, and the classification adopted is rationally related to the achievement of those goals, then the action of Congress is not so arbitrary as to violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.” 404 U. S., at 84.
Two Terms earlier the Court had decided the case of Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471 (1970), in which it rejected a claim that Maryland welfare legislation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court had said:
“In the area of economics and social welfare, a State does not violate the Equal Protection Clause merely because the classifications made by its laws are imperfect. If the classification has some ‘reasonable basis,’ it does not offend the Constitution simply because the classification ‘is not made with mathematical nicety or because in practice it results in some inequality.’ Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U. S. 61, 78. ‘The problems of government are practical ones and may justify, if they do not require, rough accommodations — illogical, it may be, and unscientific.’ Metropolis Theatre Co. v. City of Chicago, 228 U. S. 61, 69-70....
“To be sure, the cases cited, and many others enunciating this fundamental standard under the Equal Protection Clause, have in the main involved state regulation of business or industry. The administration of public welfare assistance, by contrast, involves the most basic economic needs of impoverished human beings. We recognize the dramatically real factual difference between the cited cases and this one, but we can find no basis for applying a different constitutional standard.... It is a standard that has consistently been applied to state legislation restricting the availability of employment opportunities. Goesaert v. Cleary, 335 U. S. 464; Kotch v. Board of River Port Pilot Comm’rs, 330 U. S. 552. See also Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U. S. 603. And it is a standard that is true to the principle that the Fourteenth Amendment gives the federal courts no power to impose upon the States their views of what constitutes wise economic or social policy.” Id., at 485-486.
The relation between the equal protection analysis of Dandridge and the Fifth Amendment due process analysis of Flemming v. Nestor and Richardson v. Belcher was described in the latter case in this language:
“A statutory classification in the area of social welfare is consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if it is 'rationally based and free from invidious discrimination.’ Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471, 487. While the present case, involving as it does a federal statute, does not directly implicate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, a classification that meets the test articulated in Dandridge is perforce consistent with the due process requirement of the Fifth Amendment. Cf. Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U. S. 497, 499.” 404 U. S., at 81.
These cases quite plainly lay down the governing principle for disposing of constitutional challenges to classifications in this type of social welfare legislation. The District Court, however, chose to rely on Cleveland Board of Education v. LaFleur, supra; Vlandis v. Kline, supra; and Stanley v. Illinois, supra. It characterized this recent group of cases as dealing with “the appropriateness of conclusive evidentiary presumptions.” 373 F. Supp., at 965.
Stanley v. Illinois held that it was a denial of the equal protection guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment for a State to deny a hearing on parental fitness to an unwed father when such a hearing was granted to all other parents whose custody of their children was challenged. This Court referred to the fact that the “rights to conceive and to raise one’s children have been deemed ‘essential,’ Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390, 399 (1923), ‘basic civil rights of man,’ Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U. S. 535, 541 (1942), and ‘[r]ights far more precious... than property rights,’ May v. Anderson, 345 U. S. 528, 533 (1953).” 405 U. S., at 651.
In Vlandis v. Kline, a statutory definition of “residents” for purposes of fixing tuition to be paid by students in a state university system was held invalid. The Court held that where Connecticut purported to be concerned with residency, it might not at the same time deny to one seeking to meet its test of residency the opportunity to show factors clearly bearing on that issue. 412 U. S., at 452.
In LaFleur the Court held invalid, on the authority of Stanley and Vlandis, school board regulations requiring pregnant school teachers to take unpaid maternity leave commencing four to five months before the expected birth. The Court stated its longstanding recognition “that freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” 414 U. S., at 639-640, and that “overly restrictive maternity leave regulations can constitute a heavy burden on the exercise of these protected freedoms.” Id., at 640.
We hold that these cases are not controlling on the issue before us now. Unlike the claims involved in Stanley and LaFleur, a noncontractual claim to receive funds from the public treasury enjoys no constitutionally protected status, Dandridge v. Williams, supra, though of course Congress may not invidiously discriminate among such claimants on the basis of a “bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group,” U. S. Dept. of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U. S. 528, 534 (1973), or on the basis of criteria which bear no rational relation to a legitimate legislative goal. Jimenez v. Weinberger, 417 U. S. 628, 636 (1974); U. S. Dept. of Agriculture v. Murry, 413 U. S. 508, 513-514 (1973). Unlike the statutory scheme in Vlandis, 412 U. S., at 449, the Social Security Act does not purport to speak in terms of the bona fides of the parties to a marriage, but then make plainly relevant evidence of such bona fides inadmissible. As in Starns v. Malkerson, 326 F. Supp. 234 (Minn. 1970), summarily aff’d, 401 U. S. 985 (1971), the benefits here are available upon compliance with an objective criterion, one which the Legislature considered to bear a sufficiently close nexus with underlying policy objectives to be used as the test for eligibility. Like the plaintiffs in Starns, appellees are completely free to present evidence that they meet the specified requirements ; failing in this effort, their only constitutional claim is that the test they cannot meet is not so rationally related to a legitimate legislative objective that it can be used to deprive them of benefits available to those who do satisfy that test.
We think that the District Court’s extension of the holdings of Stanley, Vlandis, and LaFleur to the eligibility requirement in issue here would turn the doctrine of those cases into a virtual engine of destruction for countless legislative judgments which have heretofore been thought wholly consistent with the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. For example, the very section of Title 42 which authorizes an action such as this, §405 (g), requires that a claim be filed within 60 days after administrative remedies are exhausted. It is indisputable that this requirement places people who file their claims more than 60 days after exhaustion in a different “class” from people who file their claims within the time limit. If we were to follow the District Court’s analysis, we would first try to ascertain the congressional “purpose” behind the provision, and probably would conclude that it was to prevent stale claims from being asserted in court. We would then turn to the questions of whether such a flat cutoff provision was necessary to protect the Secretary from stale claims, whether it would be possible to make individualized determinations as to any prejudice suffered by the Secretary as the result of an untimely filing, and whether or not an individualized hearing on that issue should be required in each case. This would represent a degree of judicial involvement in the legislative function which we have eschewed except in the most unusual circumstances, and which is quite unlike the judicial role mandated by Dandridge, Belcher, and Nestor, as well as by a host of cases arising from legislative efforts to regulate private business enterprises.
In Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U. S. 483 (1955), the Court dealt with a claim that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was violated by an Oklahoma statute which subjected opticians to a system of detailed regulation, but which exempted sellers of ready-to-wear glasses. In sustaining the statute the Court said:
“The problem of legislative classification is a perennial one, admitting of no doctrinaire definition. Evils in the same field may be of different dimensions and proportions, requiring different remedies. Or so the legislature may think.” Id., at 489.
More recently, in Mourning v. Family Publications Service, Inc., 411 U. S. 356 (1973), the Court sustained the constitutionality of a regulation promulgated under the Truth in Lending Act which made the Act’s disclosure provisions applicable whenever credit is offered to a consumer “ 'for which either a finance charge is or may be imposed or which pursuant to an agreement, is or may be payable in more than four installments.’ ” Id., at 362. The regulation was challenged because it was said to conclusively presume that payments made under an agreement providing for more than four instalments necessarily included a finance charge, when in fact that might not be the case. The Court rejected the constitutional challenge in this language:
“The rule was intended as a prophylactic measure; it does not presume that all creditors who are within its ambit assess finance charges, but, rather, imposes a disclosure requirement on all members of a defined class in order to discourage evasion by a substantial portion of that class.” Id., at 377.
If the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments permit this latitude to legislative decisions regulating the private sector of the economy, they surely allow no less latitude in prescribing the conditions upon which funds shall be dispensed from the public treasury. Dandridge v. Williams, supra. With these principles in mind, we turn to consider the statutory provisions which the District Court held invalid.
Title 42 U. S. C. § 402 (1970 ed. and Supp. Ill) is the basic congressional enactment defining eligibility for old-age and survivors insurance benefit payments, and is divided into 23 lettered subsections. Subsection (g) is entitled “Mother’s insurance benefits,” and primarily governs the claim of appellee Salfi. Subsection (d) governs eligibility for child’s insurance benefits, and is the provision under which appellee Kalnins makes her claim. These subsections, along with others in § 402, specify the types of social risks for which protection is provided by what is basically a statutory insurance policy.
A different insurance system, but similarly defined by statute and operated by a governmental entity, was the subject of our consideration in Geduldig v. Aiello, 417 U. S. 484 (1974), and our disposition of that case is instructive. We reversed the judgment of a District Court which had held that a California state disability insurance program was invalid insofar as it failed to provide benefits for disabilities associated with normal pregnancy. In our opinion we said:
“The District Court suggested that moderate alterations in what it regarded as 'variables’ of the disability insurance program could be made to accommodate the substantial expense required to include normal pregnancy within the program’s protection. The same can be said, however, with respect to the other expensive class of disabilities that are excluded from coverage — short-term disabilities. If the Equal Protection Clause were thought to compel disability payments for normal pregnancy, it is hard to perceive why it would not also compel payments for short-term disabilities suffered by participating employees.
“It is evident that a totally comprehensive program would be substantially more costly than the present program and would inevitably require state subsidy, a higher rate of employee contribution, a lower scale of benefits for those suffering insured disabilities, or some combination of these measures. There is nothing in the Constitution, however, that requires the State to subordinate or compromise its legitimate interests solely to create a more comprehensive social insurance program than it already has.” Id., at 495-496.
The present case is somewhat different, since the Secretary principally defends the duration-of-relationship requirement, not as a reasonable legislative decision to exclude a particular type of risk from coverage, but instead as a method of assuring that payments are made only upon the occurrence of events the risk of which is covered by the insurance program. Commercial insurance policies have traditionally relied upon fixed, prophylactic rules to protect against abuses which could expand liability beyond the risks which are within the general concept of its coverage. For example, life insurance policies often cover deaths by suicide, but not those suicides which were contemplated when the policy was purchased. Frequently the method chosen to contain liability within these conceptual bounds is a strict rule that deaths by suicide are covered if, and only if, they occur some fixed period of time after the policy is issued. See, e. g., 9 G. Couch, Cyclopedia of Insurance Law § 40.50 (2d ed. 1962). While such a limitation doubtless proves in particular cases to be “under-inclusive” or “over-inclusive,” in light of its presumed purpose, it is nonetheless a widely accepted response to legitimate interests in administrative economy and certainty of coverage for those who meet its terms. When the Government chooses to follow this tradition in its own social insurance programs, it does not come up against a constitutional stone wall. Rather, it may rely on such rules so long as they comport with the standards of legislative reasonableness enunciated in cases like Dandridge v. Williams and Richardson v. Belcher.
Under those standards, the question raised is not whether a statutory provision precisely filters out those, and only those, who are in the factual position which generated the congressional concern reflected in the statute. Such a rule would ban all prophylactic provisions, and would be directly contrary to our holding in Mourning, supra. Nor is the question whether the provision filters out a substantial part of the class which caused congressional concern, or whether it filters out more members of the class than nonmembers. The question is whether Congress, its concern having been reasonably aroused by the possibility of an abuse which it legitimately desired to avoid, could rationally have concluded both that a particular limitation or qualification would protect against its occurrence, and that the expense and other difficulties of individual determinations justified the inherent imprecision of a prophylactic rule. We conclude that the duration-of-relationship test meets this constitutional standard.
The danger of persons entering a marriage relationship not to enjoy its traditional benefits, but instead to enable one spouse to claim benefits upon the anticipated early death of the wage earner, has been recognized from the very beginning of the Social Security program. While no early legislative history addresses itself specifically to the duration-of-relationship requirement for mother’s and child’s benefits, there were discussions of the analogous requirement for receipt of wife’s benefits under § 402 (b). See 42 U. S. C. § 416 (b) (1970 ed., Supp. IV), defining “wife.” Dr. A. J. Altmeyer, Chairman of the Social Security Board, noted that a five-year requirement “should be strict enough to prevent marriage in
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | B | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Frankfurter
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In 1945, Michigan-Wisconsin Pipe Line Company-sought from the Federal Power Commission a certificate of public convenience and necessity, required by § 7 (c) of the Natural Gas Act, 52 Stat. 825, as amended, 15 U. S. C. § 717f (c), for the construction and operation of a pipe line to carry natural gas from Texas to Michigan and Wisconsin. A prerequisite for such a certificate is adequate reserves of gas. To obtain these reserves Michigan-Wisconsin entered into an agreement with Phillips Petroleum Company on December 11, 1945, whereby the latter undertook to make available gas from the Hugoton Gas Field, sprawling over Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, which it produced or purchased from others. Phillips had contracted with petitioners, Skelly Oil Company, Stanolind Oil and Gas Company, and Magnolia Petroleum Company, to purchase gas produced by them in the Hugoton Field for resale to Michigan-Wisconsin. Each contract provided that “in the event Michigan-Wisconsin Pipe Line Company shall fail to secure from the Federal Power Commission on or before [October 1, 1946] a certificate of public convenience and necessity for the construction and operation of its pipe line, Seller [a petitioner] shall have the right to terminate this contract by written notice to Buyer [Phillips] delivered to Buyer at any time after December 1, 1946, but before the issuance of such certificate.” The legal significance of this provision is at the core of this litigation.
The Federal Power Commission, in response to the application of Michigan-Wisconsin, on November 30, 1946, ordered that “A certificate of public convenience and necessity be and it is hereby issued to applicant [Michigan-Wisconsin], upon the terms and conditions of this order,” listing among the conditions that there be no transportation or sale of natural gas by means of the sanctioned facilities until all necessary authorizations were obtained from the State of Wisconsin and the communities proposed to be served, that Michigan-Wisconsin should have the approval of the Securities and Exchange Commission for its plan of financing, that the applicant should file for the approval of the Commission a schedule of reasonable rates, and that the sanctioned facilities should not be used for the transportation of gas to Detroit and Ann Arbor except with due regard for the rights and duties of Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Company, which had intervened before the Federal Power Commission, in its established service for resale in these areas, such rights and duties to be set forth in a supplemental order. It was also provided that Michigan-Wisconsin should have fifteen days from the issue of the supplemental order to notify the Commission whether the certificate “as herein issued is acceptable to it.” Finally, the Commission’s order provided that for purposes of computing the time within which applications for rehearing could be filed, “the date of issuance of this order shall be deemed to be the date of issuance of the opinions, or of the supplemental order referred to herein, whichever may be the later.” 5 F. P. C. 953, 954, 956.
News of the Commission’s action was released on November 30, 1946, but the actual content of the order was not made public until December 2, 1946. Petitioners severally, on December 2, 1946, gave notice to Phillips of termination of their contracts on the ground that Michigan-Wisconsin had not received a certificate of public convenience and necessity. Thereupon Michigan-Wisconsin and Phillips brought suit against petitioners in the District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma. Alleging that a certificate of public convenience and necessity, “within the meaning of said Natural Gas Act and said contracts” had been issued prior to petitioners’ attempt at termination of the contracts, they invoked the Federal Declaratory Judgment Act for a declaration that the contracts were still “in effect and binding upon the parties thereto.” Motions by petitioners to have Michigan-Wisconsin dropped as a party plaintiff were sustained, but motions to dismiss the complaint for want of jurisdiction were denied. The case then went to the merits, and the District Court decreed that the contracts between Phillips and petitioners had not been “effectively terminated and that each of such contracts remain [sic] in full force and effect.” The Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed, 174 F. 2d 89, and we brought the case here, 338 U. S. 846, because it raises in sharp form the question whether a suit like this “arises under the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States,” 28 U. S. C. § 1331, so as to enable District Courts to give declaratory relief under the Declaratory Judgment Act. 48 Stat. 955, as amended, now 28 U. S. C. § 2201.
“[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 federal 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 only 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. See Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. v. Huffman, 319 U. S. 293, 300; Colegrove v. Green, 328 U. S. 549, 551-52.
If Phillips sought damages from petitioners or specific performance of their contracts, it could not bring suit in a United States District Court on the theory that it was asserting a federal right. And for the simple reason that such a suit would “arise” under the State law governing the contracts. Whatever federal claim Phillips may be able to urge would in any event be injected into the case only in anticipation of a defense to be asserted by petitioners. “Not every question of federal law emerging in a suit is proof that a federal law is the basis of the suit.” Gully v. First National Bank, 299 U. S. 109, 115; compare 28 U. S. C. § 1257, with 28 U. S. C. § 1331. Ever since Metcalf v. Watertown, 128 U. S. 586, 589, it has been settled doctrine that where a suit is brought in the federal courts “upon the sole ground that the determination of the suit depends upon some question of a Federal nature, it must appear, at the outset, from the declaration or the bill of the party suing, that the suit is of that character.” But “a suggestion of one party, that the other will or may set up a claim under the Constitution or laws of the United States, does not make the suit one arising under that Constitution or those laws.” Tennessee v. Union & Planters’ Bank, 152 U. S. 454, 464. The plaintiff’s claim itself must present a federal question “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; Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Mottley, 211 U. S. 149, 152.
These decisions reflect the current of jurisdictional legislation since the Act of March 3, 1875, 18 Stat. 470, first entrusted to the lower federal courts wide jurisdiction in cases “arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties.” U. S. Const. Art. Ill, § 2. “The change is in accordance with the general policy of these acts, manifest upon their face, and often recognized by this court, to contract the jurisdiction of the Circuit Courts [which became the District Courts] of the United States.” Tennessee v. Union & Planters’ Bank, supra at 462. See also Arkansas v. Kansas & Texas Coal Co., 183 U. S. 185, 188, and Gully v. First National Bank, supra at 112-14. With exceptions not now relevant Congress has narrowed the opportunities for entrance into the federal courts, and this Court has been more careful than in earlier days in enforcing these jurisdictional limitations. See Gully v. First National Bank, supra at 113.
To be observant of these restrictions is not to indulge in formalism or sterile technicality. It would turn into the federal courts a vast current of litigation indubitably arising under State law, in the sense that the right to be vindicated was State-created, if a suit for a declaration of rights could be brought into the federal courts merely because an anticipated defense derived from federal law. Not only would this unduly swell the volume of litigation in the District Courts but it would also embarrass those courts — and this Court on potential review — in that matters of local law may often be involved, and the District Courts may either have to decide doubtful questions of State law or hold cases pending disposition of such State issues by State courts. To sanction suits for declaratory relief as within the jurisdiction of the District Courts merely because, as in this case, artful pleading anticipates a defense based on federal law would contravene the whole trend of jurisdictional legislation by Congress, disregard the effective functioning of the federal judicial system and distort the limited procedural purpose of the Declaratory Judgment Act. See Developments in the Law — Declaratory Judgments — 1941-1949, 62 Harv. L. Rev. 787, 802-03 (1949). Since the matter in controversy as to which Phillips asked for a declaratory judgment is not one that “arises under the . . . laws ... of the United States” and since as to Skelly and Stanolind jurisdiction cannot be sustained on the score of diversity of citizenship, the proceedings against them should have been dismissed.
As to Magnolia, a Texas corporation, a different situation is presented. Since Phillips was a Delaware corporation, there is diversity of citizenship. Magnolia had qualified to do business in Oklahoma and appointed an agent for service of process in accordance with the prevailing Oklahoma statute. Okla. Stat. Ann. tit. 18, § 452 (1937). Magnolia claimed that the subject matter of this proceeding did not arise in Oklahoma within the meaning of its consent to be sued. This contention was rejected below, and we do not reexamine the local law as applied by the lower courts. Under the doctrine of Neirbo Co. v. Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., 308 U. S. 165, venue was properly laid in Oklahoma; that the declaratory remedy which may be given by the federal courts may not be available in the State courts is immaterial.
Therefore, in the case of Magnolia we must reach the merits. They relate to two matters: (1) the clause in the contract with Phillips permitting its termination at any time after December 1, 1946, but before the “issuance” of “a certificate of public convenience and necessity” by the Federal Power Commission; and (2) whether this provision was satisfied by Magnolia’s notice of termination of December 2, 1946, despite the Commission’s order of November 30, 1946. The phraseology “certificate of public convenience and necessity” in the contract is identic with the phrase in § 7 (c) of the Natural Gas Act. The Court of Appeals equated the term of the contract with that in the statute and in effect deemed its problem to be the proper construction of what constitutes the “issuance” of a “certificate of public convenience and necessity” within the meaning of § 7 (c). So viewing the matter, the court held that the order of November 30, 1946, satisfied the requirement of the contract, and that therefore a certificate of public convenience and necessity had been issued within the terminal period of the contract, and that its termination was not timely.
It will be recalled that the order of November 30,1946, had three parts: (A) it stated that “A certificate of public convenience and necessity be and it is hereby issued to applicant [Michigan-Wisconsin]”; (B) it imposed certain conditions upon the grant, some of which were to be set forth in a supplemental order; and (C) it said that “For the purpose of computing the time within which applications for rehearing may be filed, the date of issuance of this order shall be deemed to be the date of issuance of the opinions, or of the supplemental order referred to herein, whichever may be the later.” 5 F. P. C. at 954, 956. The course of reasoning by which the Court of Appeals concluded that the order of November 30, 1946, satisfied the statutory requirement for a certificate of public convenience and necessity can be briefly summarized. It relied on the grammatical argument that the Commission used the present tense in its order and subsequently referred to it as an order “issuing a certificate of public convenience and necessity,” e. g., 6 F. P. C. 1, 37; the conditional nature of the order was not deemed to impair its efficacy since § 7 (e) of the Natural Gas Act authorized the Commission “to attach to the issuance of the certificate and to the exercise of the rights granted thereunder such reasonable terms and conditions as the public convenience and necessity may require”; and the provision of the order connecting the date of the order’s issuance with the time defined for securing a rehearing was thought relevant only to the supplemental order.
We are not persuaded now to rest decision on the analysis of the Court of Appeals which led to its conclusion. We need not linger long on the merely grammatical argument of that court; it is given more weight than it can bear. Of course, the Commission has considerable administrative discretion to decide when an order may fairly be deemed to have been “issued.” Section 16 of the Act provides that “Orders of the Commission shall be effective on the date and in the manner which the Commission shall prescribe.” But surely a certificate cannot be said to have been issued for purposes of defining rights and the seeking of reconsideration by an aggrieved person if its substance is merely in the bosom of the Commission. Knowledge of the substance must to some extent be made manifest. Here the content of the order of November 30, 1946, was not made public until December 2,1946, the date of the termination notice.
The Commission itself in its rule for computing rehearing time distinguishes between “adoption” of an order and its “issuance.” However, as a matter of usage, the Commission has referred to an order as having “issued” a certificate on a particular date when in fact the date was that of “adoption.” See, e. g., Arkansas Louisiana Gas Co., 5 F. P. C. 813, 897; cf. Pacific Gas & Elec. Co., 5 F. P. C. 824, 901. Finally, the restriction of the Court of Appeals of the rehearing provision of Part C to the supplemental order finds no support on the face of the order of November 30, 1946. There is nothing to indicate that Part C was not to apply to the entire order for purposes of § 19 of the Act, which allows a rehearing by a party aggrieved “within thirty days after the issuance of such order” and makes such rehearing a prerequisite to judicial review. See 6 F. P. C. 323.
Since the requirements of the Natural Gas Act for the issuance of “a certificate of public convenience and necessity” may be distributive in scope, varying with the different contexts in which the question must be examined, this is not the occasion to decide that these requirements have a single uniform content. Whether the statutory requirement here was satisfied is not a question of fact, the finding of which by the District Court is to be respected unless clearly erroneous. The District Court merely found that the content of the piece of paper dated November 30, 1946, was that day agreed upon in executive session of the Commission and that that fact was made known. But this leaves untouched the legal significance of this action of the Commission, and the Court ought not now in darkness to pronounce on this question.
We are not restricted to disposition of the controversy on so truncated a treatment of the issues that underlie the record. Considering the fact that so to dispose of the case would involve determination of an important problem concerning a regulatory statute with implications of public importance that private litigants naturally enough do not wholly represent and that on these matters neither the courts below nor this Court had the benefit of the experience and illumination of the agency entrusted with the enforcement of the Act, the due administration of justice requires that we should exercise our discretionary power in reviewing cases to “require such further proceedings to be had as may be just under the circumstances.” 28 U. S. C. § 2106; Honeyman v. Hanan, 300 U. S. 14, 25. Accordingly, we think that the proper disposition requires that we vacate the judgment as to Magnolia and remand the case in order that the Court of Appeals either itself or by sending the case back to the District Court can further explore, through ways that may be appropriate, the issues which have been laid bare. See Kennedy v. Silas Mason Co., 334 U. S. 249.
The impact of the litigation both here and below was on the proper construction of § 7 (c). Even though the language of the contract may be identic with that of § 7 (c), this language in the contract may have a scope independent of the proper construction of § 7 (c). The same words, in different settings, may not mean the same thing. Compare opinion of Mr. Justice Holmes in Towne v. Eisner, 245 U. S. 418, with his dissent in Eisner v. Macomber, 252 U. S. 189, 219. Parties do not necessarily endow statutory language in a contract with the scope of the statute, particularly when the same term may have variant meanings for different applications of the statute. See Standard Oil Co. v. Johnson, 316 U. S. 481, 483. Of course the statutory meaning in the context of the entire Natural Gas Act may not be irrelevant. In remanding the case we do not mean to foreclose this line of inquiry.
In respect to Magnolia, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated and the cause remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. As to Skelly and Stanolind, we reverse the judgment with directions that the cause be dismissed.
It is so ordered.
Mr. Justice Black agrees with the Court of Appeals and would affirm its judgment.
Mr. Justice Douglas took no part in the consideration or disposition of this case.
Mr. Chief Justice Vinson,
with whom
Mr. Justice Burton joins, dissenting in part.
I concur in that part of the Court’s judgment that directs dismissal of the cause as to Skelly and Stanolind. I have real doubts as to whether there is a federal question here at all, even though interpretation of the contract between private parties requires an interpretation of a federal statute and the action of a federal regulatory body. But the Court finds it unnecessary to reach that question because it holds that the federal question, if any, is not a part of the plaintiff’s claim and that jurisdiction does not, therefore, attach. While this result is not a necessary one, I am not prepared to dissent from it at this time.
But I am forced to dissent from the vacation and remand of the cause in respect to Magnolia. I think that, as to this petitioner, the judgment of the Court of Appeals should be affirmed. The Court decides that the Court of Appeals erred in holding that the Federal Power Commission had issued a certificate of public convenience and necessity to Michigan-Wisconsin Pipe Line Company on November 30, 1946, despite the fact that on that date the Commission adopted an order stating that “A certificate of public convenience and necessity be and it is hereby issued to Applicant, upon the terms and conditions of this order, . . . .” This disregard for what the District Court found to be the Commission’s express intention is based upon two alternative grounds. First, it is suggested that while the order issuing the certificate was “adopted” on November 30, it was not “issued” until December 2. Second, it is said that Part C of the November 30 order, which concerned the date of issuance of the order for purposes of applications for rehearing, precludes a finding that a certificate was issued on November 30. Neither of these grounds, in my judgment, supports the Court’s conclusion.
As to the first, which was not argued here nor in the Court of Appeals, it is true that the Commission’s rules provide that an order is not to be deemed “issued” until the full text is mimeographed and mailed to the parties to the proceeding. This usually follows within two or three days after the order is “adopted.” The only purpose of the postponement of the date of issuance of the order, so far as we are informed, is to postpone the running of the 30-day period for applications for rehearing until the full text is available to the parties who have standing to ask for rehearing.
But the Commission uniformly refers to the date of adoption of the order as the date upon which the certificate of public convenience and necessity was “issued.” It did so in this case, when, on March 12, 1947, it issued a supplemental order referring to its “order of November 30, 1946, issuing a certificate of public convenience and necessity.” Furthermore, the District Court found as a fact that
“On November 30, a Saturday, the Commission in executive session made an order granting, with conditions, a certificate of public convenience and necessity to the Michigan-Wisconsin Pipe Line Company. During this session as the members of the Commission came to agreement as to the wording of the order, Mr. Fuquay, the secretary of the Commission, prepared the order in full and exact text. The secretary was directed by the Commission to release the order immediately.”
Following adjournment on that day, the secretary sent a telegram to the parties to the proceeding, informing them that the “Commission today . . . adopted Opinion and Order, in Docket No. G-669, issuing certificate, with conditions, to Michigan Wisconsin Pipe Line Company.” On the same day, releases to the press were made announcing the action taken by the Commission.
Skelly, Stanolind and Magnolia were not parties to this proceeding. It may very well be that the date of issuance of the order granting the certificate is December 2 or some later date — for purposes of rehearing upon application of the parties. But I think there is no question that the certificate, as distinguished from the order, was issued on November 30. That is the Commission’s view, as indicated by its supplemental order. The fact that it takes a few days to get its orders mimeographed and the Commission has adopted a rule that, in fairness to the parties, the time for rehearing shall not begin to run until such orders, in full text, are available, does not mean that the issuance of the certificate is also held in abeyance until that time.
The second argument requires but short answer. Part C provides that
“For the purpose of computing the time within which applications for rehearing may be filed, the date of issuance of this order shall be deemed to be the date of issuance of the opinions, or of the supplemental order referred to herein, whichever may be the later.”
The paragraph means just what it says. I do not understand the Court to hold that the Commission cannot thus postpone the running of the time for rehearing. Computation of that time, as I have indicated, has no necessary relation to the date of issuance of the certificate.
I think that the Commission intended to and did issue a certificate of public convenience and necessity to Michigan-Wisconsin Pipe Line Company on November 30, 1946, whatever the date of its order, for purposes of computation of time for rehearing. The crucial clause of the contract refers to “the issuance of such certificate [of public convenience and necessity].” By their inclusion of a provision dependent upon the action of a federal agency, it is obvious that the parties intended that the contract should be construed with reference to the effective date of agency action under the statutes and the practices of the Commission. The District Court so concluded. I can see no reason, therefore, to remand the cause for further proceedings. In my view, effective agency action was taken on November 30, 1946. As to Magnolia, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
Rule 13 (b) of the Commission’s Rules of Practice and Procedure provides: “In computing any period of time involving the date of the issuance of an order by the Commission, the day of issuance of an order shall be the day the Office of the Secretary mails or delivers copies of the order (full text) to the parties or their attorneys of record, or makes such copies public, whichever be the earlier. . . . The day of issuance of an order may or may not be the day of its adoption by the Commission.” 18 C. F. R. § 1.13 (b). A deposition taken of the' Secretary of the Commission gave light on this point. The Commission’s previous rule on rehearing time is in 18 C. F. R. Cum. Supp. § 50.75.
Rule 13 (c) provides: “Orders of the Commission shall be effective as of the dates of issuance unless otherwise specifically provided in the orders.” 18 C. F. R. § 1.13 (c). This provision may be of significance if the effectiveness of a certificate is an issue in proceedings under § 20 or § 21 of the Act. The Court of Appeals did not discuss the bearing of these rules upon this case.
The significance of the conditions in qualifying what is formally called a “certificate” in the order of November 30, 1946, is precisely one of those matters upon which Commission practice and experience may shed helpful light.
In its conclusions of law, the District Court stated: “The certificate issued by the Commission to Michigan-Wisconsin on November 30, 1946, although containing terms and conditions, was and is a certificate issued under the requirements of the Natural Gas Act and one that is provided for by that act. A consideration of the contracts between plaintiff and defendants, together with the contract between plaintiff and Michigan-Wisconsin, compels a conclusion that such certificate was one within the contemplation of the parties and satisfied the terms of the contracts.”
The context suggests that in the second sentence the District Court may still have been focusing upon statutory meaning.
See, e. g., Arkansas Louisiana Gas Co., 5 F. P. C. 813, 897; Pacific Gas & Elec. Co., 5 F. P. C. 824, 901.
The District Court stated as one of its conclusions of law: “The certificate issued by the Commission to Michigan-Wisconsin on November 30, 1946, although containing terms and conditions, was and is a certificate issued under the requirements of the Natural Gas Act and one that is provided for by that act. A consideration of the contracts between plaintiff and defendants, together with the contract between plaintiff and Michigan-Wisconsin, compels a conclusion that such certificate was one within the contemplation of the parties and satisfied the terms of the contracts.”
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Marshall
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question presented here is whether a rent control ordinance enacted by a municipality pursuant to popular initiative is unconstitutional because pre-empted by the Sherman Act.
I
In June 1980, the electorate of the city of Berkeley, California, enacted an initiative entitled “Ordinance 5261-N. S., Rent Stabilization and Eviction for Good Cause Ordinance” (hereafter Ordinance). Section 3 of the Ordinance stated the measure’s purposes:
“The purposes of this Ordinance are to regulate residential rent increases in the City of Berkeley and to protect tenants from unwarranted rent increases and arbitrary, discriminatory, or retaliatory evictions, in order to help maintain the diversity of the Berkeley community and to ensure compliance with legal obligations relating to the rental of housing. This legislation is designed to address the City of Berkeley’s housing crisis, preserve the public peace, health and safety, and advance the housing policies of the City with regard to low and fixed income persons, minorities, students, handicapped, and the aged.” App. to Juris. Statement A-111.
To accomplish these goals, the Ordinance places strict rent controls on all real property that “is being rented or is available for rent for residential use in whole or in part,” §5, id., at A-113. Excepted are government-owned units, transient units, cooperatives, hospitals, certain small owner-occupied buildings, and all newly constructed buildings. For the remaining units, numbering approximately 23,000, 37 Cal. 3d 644, 678, 693 P. 2d 261, 288 (1984), the Ordinance establishes a base rent ceiling reflecting the rents in effect at the end of May 1980. A landlord may raise his rents from these levels only pursuant to an annual general adjustment of rent ceilings by a Rent Stabilization Board of appointed commissioners or after he is successful in petitioning the Board for an individual adjustment. A landlord who fails to register with the Board units covered by the Ordinance or who fails to adhere to the maximum allowable rent set under the Ordinance may be fined by the Board, sued by his tenants, or have rent legally withheld from him. If his violations are willful, he may face criminal penalties.
Shortly after the passage of the initiative, appellants, a group of landlords owning rental property in Berkeley, brought this suit in California Superior Court, claiming, inter alia, that the Ordinance violates their rights under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, and seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. The Superior Court upheld the Ordinance on its face, but was reversed by the Court of Appeal. While that appeal was pending, however, this Court’s decision in Community Communications Co. v. Boulder, 455 U. S. 40 (1982), led certain amici to raise the question whether the Ordinance was unconstitutional because pre-empted by the federal antitrust laws. When the California Supreme Court heard the appeal from the Court of Appeal’s decision, it therefore chose to consider plaintiffs’ pre-emption claim along with their Fourteenth Amendment challenge.
Although fully briefed on the question whether the Berkeley Ordinance constitutes state action exempt from antitrust scrutiny under the standard established in Boulder, supra, the California Supreme Court noted that consideration of this issue would become necessary only were there to be “ Truly a conflict between the Sherman Act and the challenged regulatory scheme,”’ 37 Cal. 3d, at 660, 693 P. 2d, at 275 (quoting First American Title Co. v. South Dakota Land Title Assn., 714 F. 2d 1439, 1452 (CA8 1983), cert. denied, 464 U. S. 1042 (1984)). Such a conflict would exist, the Supreme Court concluded, only if the Ordinance on its face mandated conduct prohibited by either § 1 or § 2 of the Sherman Act. See Rice v. Norman Williams Co., 458 U. S. 654, 661 (1982). After reviewing the two “traditional standards” that have consistently been used to determine whether conduct violates § 1 of the Sherman Act — the per se rules and the rule of reason, see National Society of Professional Engineers v. United States, 435 U. S. 679, 692 (1978)—the court concluded that both standards, with their exclusive focus on competition and concern for the selfish motives of private actors, failed to give due deference to a municipality’s legitimate interest in promoting public health, safety, and welfare. 37 Cal. 3d, at 667-673, 693 P. 2d, at 280-285. The Supreme Court therefore found both standards inappropriate and proceeded to apply a standard of its own devising, based upon this Court’s Commerce Clause cases. Applying this test, the court found no conflict between the Ordinance and either § 1 or § 2 of the Sherman Act.
We noted probable jurisdiction limited to the antitrust pre-emption question, 471 U. S. 1124 (1985), and now affirm, although on grounds different from those relied on by the California Supreme Court. While that court was correct in noting that consideration of state action is not necessary unless an actual conflict with the antitrust laws is established, we find traditional antitrust analysis adequate to resolve the issue presented here.
II
We begin by noting that appellants make no claim under either § 4 or § 16 of the Clayton Act, 15 U. S. C. §§ 15 and 26, that the process by which the Rent Stabilization Ordinance was passed renders the Ordinance the product of an illegal “contract, combination ... , or conspiracy.” Appellants instead claim that, regardless of the manner of its enactment, the regulatory scheme established by the Ordinance, on its face, conflicts with the Sherman Act and therefore is preempted.
Recognizing that the function of government may often be to tamper with free markets, correcting their failures and aiding their victims, this Court noted in Rice v. Norman Williams Co., supra, that a “state statute is not pre-empted by the federal antitrust laws simply because the state scheme may have an anticompetitive effect,” id., at 659. See Exxon Corp. v. Governor of Maryland, 437 U. S. 117, 133 (1978). We have therefore held that a state statute should be struck down on pre-emption grounds “only if it mandates or authorizes conduct that necessarily constitutes a violation of the antitrust laws in all cases, or if it places irresistible pressure on a private party to violate the antitrust laws in order to comply with the statute.” 458 U. S., at 661.
While Rice involved a state statute rather than a municipal ordinance, the rule it established does not distinguish between the two. As in other pre-emption cases, the analysis is the same for the acts of both levels of government. See, e. g., White v. Massachusetts Council of Construction Employers, Inc., 460 U. S. 204 (1983). Only where legislation is found to conflict “irreconcilably” with the antitrust laws, Rice, supra, at 659, does the level of government responsible for its enactment become important. Legislation that would otherwise be pre-empted under Rice may nonetheless survive if it is found to be state action immune from antitrust scrutiny under Parker v. Brown, 317 U. S. 341 (1943). The ultimate source of that immunity can be only the State, not its subdivisions. See Community Communications Co. v. Boulder, supra, at 50-51; Lafayette v. Louisiana Power & Light Co., 435 U. S. 389, 412-413 (1978) (opinion of Brennan, J.).
A
Appellants argue that Berkeley’s Ordinance is pre-empted under Rice because it imposes rent ceilings across the entire rental market for residential units. Such a regime, they contend, clearly falls within the per se rule against price fixing, a rule that has been one of the settled points of antitrust enforcement since the earliest days of the Sherman Act, see Arizona v. Maricopa County Medical Society, 457 U. S. 332, 344-348 (1982); United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U. S. 150, 218 (1940). That the prices set here are ceilings rather than floors and that the public interest has been invoked to justify this stabilization should not, appellants argue, save Berkeley’s regulatory scheme from condemnation under the per se rule.
Certainly there is this much truth to appellants’ argument: Had the owners of residential rental property in Berkeley voluntarily banded together to stabilize rents in the city, their activities would not be saved from antitrust attack by claims that they had set reasonable prices out of solicitude for the welfare of their tenants. See National Society of Professional Engineers v. United States, supra, at 695; United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Assn., 166 U. S. 290 (1897). Moreover, it cannot be denied that Berkeley’s Ordinance will affect the residential housing rental market in much the same way as would the philanthropic activities of this hypothetical trade association. What distinguishes the operation of Berkeley’s Ordinance from the activities of a benevolent landlords’ cartel is not that the Ordinance will necessarily have a different economic effect, but that the rent ceilings imposed by the Ordinance and maintained by the Rent Stabilization Board have been unilaterally imposed by government upon landlords to the exclusion of private control.
The distinction between unilateral and concerted action is critical here. Adhering to the language of § 1, this Court has always limited the reach of that provision to “unreasonable restraints of trade effected by a 'contract, combination . . . , or conspiracy’ between separate entities.” Copperweld Corp. v. Independence Tube Corp., 467 U. S. 752, 768 (1984) (emphasis in original). We have therefore deemed it “of considerable importance” that independent activity by a single entity be distinguished from a concerted effort by more than one entity to fix prices or otherwise restrain trade, Monsanto Co. v. Spray-Rite Service Corp., 465 U. S. 752, 763 (1984). Even where a single firm’s restraints directly affect prices and have the same economic effect as concerted action might have, there can be no liability under § 1 in the absence of agreement. Id., at 760-761; United States v. Parke, Davis & Co., 362 U. S. 29, 44 (1960). Thus, if the Berkeley Ordinance stabilizes rents without this element of concerted action, the program it establishes cannot run afoul of § 1.
Recognizing this concerted-action requirement, appellants argue that the Ordinance “forms a combination between [the city of Berkeley and its officials], on the one hand, and the property owners on the other. It also creates a horizontal combination among the landlords.” Reply Brief for Appellants 10, n. 7. In so arguing, appellants misconstrue the concerted-action requirement of §1. A restraint imposed unilaterally by government does not become concerted action within the meaning of the statute simply because it has a coercive effect upon parties who must obey the law. The ordinary relationship between the government and those who must obey its regulatory commands whether they wish to or not is not enough to establish a conspiracy. Similarly, the mere fact that all competing property owners must comply with the same provisions of the Ordinance is not enough to establish a conspiracy among landlords. Under Berkeley’s Ordinance, control over the maximum rent levels of every affected residential unit has been unilaterally removed from the owners of those properties and given to the Rent Stabilization Board. While the Board may choose to respond to an individual landlord’s petition for a special adjustment of a particular rent ceiling, it may decide not to. There is no meeting of the minds here. See American Tobacco Co. v. United States, 328 U. S. 781, 810 (1946), quoted in Monsanto, supra, at 764. The owners of residential property in Berkeley have no more freedom to resist the city’s rent controls than they do to violate any other local ordinance enforced by substantial sanctions.
B
Not all restraints imposed upon private actors by government units necessarily constitute unilateral action outside the purview of § 1. Certain restraints may be characterized as “hybrid,” in that nonmarket mechanisms merely enforce private marketing decisions. See Rice v. Norman Williams Co., 458 U. S., at 665 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). Where private actors are thus granted “a degree of private regulatory power,” id., at 666, n. 1, the regulatory scheme may be attacked under § 1. Indeed, this Court has twice found such hybrid restraints to violate the Sherman Act. See Schwegmann Bros. v. Calvert Distillers Corp., 341 U. S. 384 (1951); California Retail Liquor Dealers Assn. v. Midcal Aluminum, Inc., 445 U. S. 97 (1980).
In Schwegmann, a Louisiana statute authorized a distributor to enforce agreements fixing minimum retail prices not only against parties to such contracts, but also against retailers who sold the distributor’s products without having agreed to the price restrictions. After finding that the statute went far beyond the now-repealed Miller-Tydings Act, which offered a limited antitrust exemption to certain “ ‘contracts or agreements prescribing minimum prices for the resale’” of specified commodities, the Court held that two liquor distributors had violated § 1 when they attempted to hold a retailer to the price-fixing terms of a contract it had refused to sign. In so holding, the Court noted that “when a state compels retailers to follow a parallel price policy, it demands private conduct which the Sherman Act forbids.” 341 U.S, at 389. However, under the Louisiana statute, both the selection of minimum price levels and the exclusive power to enforce those levels were left to the discretion of distributors. While the petitioner-retailer in that case may have been legally required to adhere to the levels so selected, the involvement of his suppliers in setting those prices made it impossible to characterize the regulation as unilateral action by the State of Louisiana.
The trade restraint condemned in Midcal entailed a similar degree of free participation by private economic actors. That case presented an antitrust challenge to California’s requirement that all wine producers, wholesalers, and rectifiers file fair trade contracts or price schedules with the State. If a wine producer did not set prices, wholesalers had to post a resale price schedule for that producer’s brands. No state-licensed wine merchant could sell wine to a retailer at other than those prices. 445 U. S., at 99. The Court found: “California’s system for wine pricing plainly constitutes resale price maintainance in violation of the Sherman Act.... The wine producer holds the power to prevent price competition by dictating the prices charged by wholesalers.” Id., at 103. Here again, the mere existence of legal compulsion did not turn California’s scheme into unilateral action by the State. The Court noted: “The State has no direct control over wine prices, and it does not review the reasonableness of the prices set by wine dealers.” Id., at 100.
The hybrid restraints condemned in Schwegmann and Midcal were thus quite different from the pure regulatory scheme imposed by Berkeley’s Ordinance. While the Ordinance does give tenants — certainly a group of interested private parties — some power to trigger the enforcement of its provisions, it places complete control over maximum rent levels exclusively in the hands of the Rent Stabilization Board. Not just the controls themselves but also the rent ceilings they mandate have been unilaterally imposed on the landlords by the city.
C
There may be cases in which what appears to be a state- or municipality-administered price stabilization scheme is really a private price-fixing conspiracy, concealed under a “gauzy cloak of state involvement,” Midcal, supra, at 106. This might occur even where prices are ostensibly under the absolute control of government officials. However, we have been given no indication that such corruption has tainted the rent controls imposed by Berkeley’s Ordinance. Adopted by popular initiative, the Ordinance can hardly be viewed as a cloak for any conspiracy among landlords or between the landlords and the municipality. Berkeley’s landlords have simply been deprived of the power freely to raise their rents. That is why they are here. And that is why their role in the stabilization program does not alter the restraint’s unilateral nature.
Ill
Because under settled principles of antitrust law, the rent controls established by Berkeley’s Ordinance lack the element of concerted action needed before they can be characterized as a per se violation of § 1 of the Sherman Act, we cannot say that the Ordinance is facially inconsistent with the federal antitrust laws. See Rice v. Norman Williams Co., supra, at 661. We therefore need not address whether, even if the controls were to mandate § 1 violations, they would be exempt under the state-action doctrine from antitrust scrutiny. See Hallie v. Eau Claire, 471 U. S. 34 (1985).
The judgment of the California Supreme Court is
Affirmed.
In 1982, while this case was pending in the California Court of Appeal, the Berkeley electorate enacted the “Tenants’ Rights Amendments Act of 1982,” revising certain sections of the 1980 Ordinance. Like the California Supreme Court, we review the Ordinance as amended, see 37 Cal. 3d 644, 654, n. 2, 693 P. 2d 261, 270, n. 2 (1984); all reference herein will therefore be to the 1982 version of the Ordinance.
Though they have not pressed the point with any vigor in this Court, appellants have suggested that Berkeley’s rent controls constitute attempted monopolization because the city “is clearly engaged in the provision of housing in the public sector” and using the controls to depress the prices of residential properties as a prelude to taking them over. Tr. of Oral Arg. 14-15. As to this claim, we note only that the inquiry demanded by appellants’ allegations goes beyond the scope of the facial challenge presented here. See Rice v. Norman Williams Co., 458 U. S., at 661.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Me. Justice Powell
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents the question whether, in the absence of exigent circumstances, police are required to obtain a warrant before searching luggage taken from an automobile properly stopped and searched for contraband. We took this case by writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court of Arkansas to resolve some apparent misunderstanding as to the application of our decision in United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977), to warrantless searches of luggage seized from automobiles.
I
On April 23, 1976, Officer David Isom of the Little Rock, Ark., Police Department received word from an informant that at 4:35 that afternoon respondent would arrive aboard an American Airlines flight at gate No. 1 of the Municipal Airport of Little Rock. According to the informant, respondent would be carrying a green suitcase containing marihuana. Both Isom and the informant knew respondent well, as in January 1976 the informant had given the Little Rock Police Department information that had led to respondent’s arrest and conviction for possession of marihuana. Acting on the tip, Officer Isom and two other police officers placed the airport under surveillance. As the informant had predicted, respondent duly arrived at gate No. 1. The police watched as respondent deposited some hand luggage in a waiting taxicab, returned to the baggage claim area, and met a man whom police subsequently identified as David Rambo. While Rambo waited, respondent retrieved from the airline baggage service a green suitcase matching that described by the informant. Respondent gave this suitcase to his companion and went outside, where he entered the taxi into which he had put his luggage. Rambo waited a short while in the airport and then joined respondent in the taxi, after placing the green suitcase in the trunk of the vehicle.
When respondent’s taxi drove away carrying respondent, Rambo, and the suitcase, Officer Isom and one of his fellow officers gave pursuit and, with the help of a patrol car, stopped the vehicle several blocks from the airport. At the request of the police, the taxi driver opened the trunk of his vehicle, where the officers found the green suitcase. Without asking the permission of either respondent or Rambo, the police opened the unlocked suitcase and discovered what proved to be 9.3 pounds of marihuana packaged in 10 plastic bags.
On October 14, 1976, respondent and Rambo were charged with possession of marihuana with intent to deliver in violation of Ark. Stat. Ann. § 82-2617 (1976). Before trial, respondent moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the suitcase, contending that the search violated his rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The trial court held a hearing on January 31, 1977, and denied the suppression motion without explanation. After respondent’s conviction by a jury on February 3, 1977, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was fined $15,000.
On appeal the Supreme Court of Arkansas reversed respondent’s conviction, ruling that the trial court should have suppressed the marihuana because it was obtained through an unlawful search of the suitcase. 262 Ark. 595, 559 S. W. 2d 704 (1977). Relying upon United States v. Chadwick, supra, and Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443 (1971), the court concluded that a warrantless search generally must be supported by “probable cause coupled with exigent circumstances.” 262 Ark., at 599, 559 S. W. 2d, at 706. In the present case, the court found there was ample probable cause for the police officers’ belief that contraband was contained in the suitcase they searched. The court found to be wholly lacking, however, any exigent circumstance justifying the officers’ failure to secure a warrant for the search of the luggage. With the police in control of the automobile and its occupants, there was no danger that the suitcase and its contents would be rendered unavailable to due legal process. The court concluded, therefore, that there was “nothing in this set of circumstances that would lend credence to an assertion of impracticality in obtaining a search warrant.” Id., at 600, 559 S. W. 2d, at 706.
II
Although the general principles applicable to claims of Fourth Amendment violations are well settled, litigation over requests for suppression of highly relevant evidence continues to occupy much of the attention of courts at all levels of the state and federal judiciary. Courts and law enforcement officials often find it difficult to discern the proper application of these principles to individual cases, because the circumstances giving rise to suppression requests can vary almost infinitely. Moreover, an apparently small difference in the factual situation frequently is viewed as a controlling difference in determining Fourth Amendment rights. The present case presents an example. Only two Terms ago, we held that a locked footlocker could not lawfully be searched without a warrant, even though it had been loaded into the trunk of an automobile parked at a curb. United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1 (1977). In earlier cases, on the other hand, the Court sustained the constitutionality of warrantless searches of automobiles and their contents under what has become known as the “automobile exception” to the warrant requirement. See, e. g., Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42 (1970); Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132 (1925). We thus are presented with the task of determining whether the warrantless search of respondent's suitcase falls on the Chadwick or the Chambers/Carroll side of the Fourth Amendment line. Although in a sense this is a line-drawing process, it must be guided by established principles.
We commence with a summary of these principles. The Fourth Amendment protects the privacy and security of persons in two important ways. First, it guarantees ''[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” In addition, this Court has interpreted the Amendment to include the requirement that normally searches of private property be performed pursuant to a search warrant issued in compliance with the Warrant Clause. See, e. g., Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 390 (1978); United States v. Chadwick, supra, at 9; United States v. United States District Court, 407 U. S. 297, 317 (1972); Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 357 (1967); Agnello v. United States, 269 U. S. 20, 33 (1925). In the ordinary case, therefore, a search of private property must be both reasonable and pursuant to a properly issued search warrant. The mere reasonableness of a search, assessed in the light of the surrounding circumstances, is not a substitute for the judicial warrant required under the Fourth Amendment. See United States v. United States District Court, supra. As the Court said in Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra, at 481:
“The warrant requirement has been a valued part of our constitutional law for decades, and it has determined the result in scores and scores of cases in courts all over this country. It is not an inconvenience to be somehow 'weighed’ against the claims of police efficiency. It is, or should be, an important working part of our machinery of government, operating as a matter of course to check the 'well-intentioned but mistakenly overzealous executive officers’ who are a part of any system of law enforcement.”
The prominent place the warrant requirement is given in our decisions reflects the “basic constitutional doctrine that individual freedoms will best be preserved through a separation of powers and division of functions among the different branches and levels of Government.” United States v. United States District Court, supra, at 317. By requiring that conclusions concerning probable cause and the scope of a search “be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime,” Johnson v. United States, 333 U. S. 10, 14 (1948), we minimize the risk of unreasonable assertions of executive authority. See McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451, 455-456 (1948).
Nonetheless, there are some exceptions to the warrant requirement. These have been established where it was concluded that the public interest required some flexibility in the application of the general rule that a valid warrant is a prerequisite for a search. See United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543, 555 (1976). Thus, a few “jealously and carefully drawn” exceptions provide for those cases where the societal costs of obtaining a warrant, such as danger to law officers or the risk of loss or destruction of evidence, outweigh the reasons for prior recourse to a neutral magistrate. See United States v. United States District Court, supra, at 318. But because each exception to the warrant requirement invariably impinges to some extent on the protective purpose of the Fourth Amendment, the few situations in which a search may be conducted in the absence of a warrant have been carefully delineated and “the burden is on those seeking the exemption to show the need for it.” United States v. Jeffers, 342 U. S. 48, 51 (1951). See Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752, 762 (1969); Katz v. United States, supra, at 357. Moreover, we have limited the reach of each exception to that which is necessary to accommodate the identified needs of society. See Mincey v. Arizona, supra, at 393; United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S., at 15; Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S., at 455.
One of the circumstances in which the Constitution does not require a search warrant is when the police stop an automobile on the street or highway because they have probable cause to believe it contains contraband or evidence of a crime. See United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, supra, at 561-562; United States v. Ortiz, 422 U. S. 891, 896 (1975); Texas v. White, 423 U. S. 67, 68 (1975). As the Court said in Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S., at 153:
“[T]he guaranty of freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures by the Fourth Amendment has been construed, practically since the beginning of the Government, as recognizing a necessary difference between a search of a store, dwelling house or other structure in respect of which a proper official warrant readily may be obtained, and a search of a ship, motor boat, wagon or automobile, for contraband goods, where it is not practicable to secure a warrant . ...”
There are essentially two reasons for the distinction between automobiles and other private property. First, as the Court repeatedly has recognized, the inherent mobility of automobiles often makes it impracticable to obtain a warrant. See, e. g., United States v. Chadwick, supra, at 12; Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S., at 49-50; Carroll v. United States, supra. In addition, the configuration, use, and regulation of automobiles often may dilute the reasonable expectation of privacy that exists with respect to differently situated property. See Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S. 128, 155 (1978) (Powell, J., concurring); United States v. Chadwick, supra; South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S. 364, 368 (1978); Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U. S. 583, 590 (1974) (plurality opinion); Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U. S. 433, 441-442 (1973); Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U. S. 266, 279 (1973) (Powell, J., concurring).
Ill
In the present case, the State argues that the warrantless search of respondent’s suitcase was proper under Carroll and its progeny. 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. A previously reliable informant had provided a detailed account of respondent’s expected arrival at the Little Rock Airport, which account proved to be accurate in every detail, including the color of the suitcase in which respondent would be carrying the marihuana. Having probable cause to believe that contraband was being driven away in the taxi, the police were justified in stopping the vehicle, searching it on the spot, and seizing the suitcase they suspected contained contraband. See Chambers v. Maroney, supra, at 52. At oral argument, respondent conceded that the stopping of the taxi and the seizure of the suitcase were constitutionally unobjectionable. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 30, 44-46.
The only question, therefore, is whether the police, rather than immediately searching the suitcase without a warrant, should have taken it, along with respondent, to the police station and there obtained a warrant for the search. A lawful search of luggage generally may be performed only pursuant to a warrant. In Chadwick, we declined an invitation to extend the Carroll exception to all searches of luggage, noting that neither of the two policies supporting warrantless searches of automobiles applies to luggage. Here, as in Chadwick, the officers had seized the luggage and had it exclusively within their control at the time of the search. Consequently, “there was not the slightest danger that [the luggage] or its contents could have been removed before a valid search warrant could be obtained.” 433 U. S., at 13. And, as we observed in that case, luggage is a common repository for one’s personal effects, and therefore is inevitably associated with the expectation of privacy. Ibid.
The State argues, nevertheless, that the warrantless search of respondent’s suitcase was proper, not because the property searched was luggage, but rather because it was taken from an automobile lawfully stopped and searched on the street. In effect, the State would have us extend Carroll to allow war-rantless searches of everything found within an automobile, as well as of the vehicle itself. As noted above, the Supreme Court of Arkansas found our decision in Chadwick virtually controlling in this case. The State contends, however, that Chadwick does not control because in that case the vehicle had remained parked at the curb where the footlocker had been placed in its trunk and that therefore no argument was made that the “automobile exception” was applicable. This Court has not had occasion previously to rule on the constitutionality of a warrantless search of luggage taken from an automobile lawfully stopped. Rather, the decisions to date have involved searches of some integral part of the automobile. See, e. g., South Dakota v. Opperman, supra, at 366 (glove compartment); Texas v. White, 423 U. S., at 68 (passenger compartment); Cady v. Dombrowski, supra, at 437 (trunk); Chambers v. Maroney, supra, at 44 (concealed compartment under the dashboard); Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S., at 136 (behind the upholstering of the seats).
We conclude that the State has failed to carry its burden of demonstrating the need for warrantless searches of luggage properly taken from automobiles. A closed suitcase in the trunk of an automobile may be as mobile as the vehicle in which it rides. But as we noted in Chadwick, the exigency of mobility must be assessed at the point immediately before the search — after the police have seized the object to be searched and have it securely within their control. See 433 U. S., at 13. Once police have seized a suitcase, as they did here, the extent of its mobility is in no way affected by the place from which it was taken. Accordingly, as a general rule there is no greater need for warrantless searches of luggage taken from automobiles than of luggage taken from other places.
Similarly, a suitcase taken from an automobile stopped on the highway is not necessarily attended by any lesser expectation of privacy than is associated with luggage taken from other locations. One is not less inclined to place private, personal possessions in a suitcase merely because the suitcase is to be carried in an automobile rather than transported by other means or temporarily checked or stored. Indeed, the very purpose of a suitcase is to serve as a repository for personal items when one wishes to transport them. Accordingly, the reasons for not requiring a warrant for the search of an automobile do not apply to searches of personal luggage taken by police from automobiles. We therefore find no justification for the extension of Carroll and its progeny to the warrantless search of one’s personal luggage merely because it was located in an automobile lawfully stopped by the police.
In sum, we hold that the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment applies to personal luggage taken from an automobile to the same degree it applies to such luggage in other locations. Thus, insofar as the police are entitled to search such luggage without a warrant, their actions must be justified under some exception to the warrant requirement other than that applicable to automobiles stopped on the highway. Where — as in the present case — the police, without endangering themselves or risking loss of the evidence, lawfully have detained one suspected of criminal activity and secured his suitcase, they should delay the search thereof until after judicial approval has been obtained. In this way, constitutional rights of suspects to prior judicial review of searches will be fully protected.
The judgment of the Arkansas Supreme Court is
Affirmed.
Compare United States v. Finnegan, 568 F. 2d 637, 641-642 (CA9 1977), with United States v. Stevie, 582 F. 2d 1175, 1178-1179 (CA8 1978) (en banc).
In addition to the marihuana found in the suitcase, police officers found one ounce of heroin hidden in their patrol car after transporting Rambo to police headquarters. Accordingly, Rambo also was charged with possession of heroin with intent to deliver. Immediately before trial on both counts, the court severed the heroin-possession count for later trial.
“With the suitcase safely immobilized, it was unreasonable to undertake the additional and greater intrusion of a search without a warrant.” 262 Ark., at 601, 559 S. W. 2d, at 707. The court also rejected the State's contention that luggage is entitled to a lesser protection against warrantless searches than are other private areas, such as homes. It noted that suitcases, unlike automobiles, customarily are the repositories for personal effects.
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.” The Fourth Amendment has been made fully applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. See Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 (1961); Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25 (1949). In this opinion we refer to the Fourth Amendment as it so applies to the State of Arkansas.
The need for a carefully drawn, limited warrant for searches of private premises was the product in large part of the colonists’ resentment of the writs of assistance to which they were subjected by the English. See United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, 8 (1977); J. Landynski, Search and Seizure and the Supreme Court 19 (1966); N. Lasson, The History and Development of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution 51-78 (1937). Mr. Justice Frankfurter went so far as to suggest that abuses of the writs of assistance were “so deeply felt by the Colonies as to be one of the potent causes of the Revolution.” United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56, 69 (1950) (dissenting opinion).
Jones v. United States, 357 U. S. 493, 499 (1958).
The willingness of courts to excuse the absence of a warrant where spontaneous searches are required of a vehicle on the road has led to what is called the “automobile exception” to the warrant requirement, although the exception does not invariably apply whenever automobiles are searched. See, e. g., Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U. S. 443, 461-462 (1971) (“The word 'automobile' is not a talisman in whose presence the Fourth Amendment fades away and disappears”). See generally Moylan, The Automobile Exception: What it is and What it is not — A Rationale in Search of a Clearer Label, 27 Mercer L. Rev. 987 (1976).
Respondent concedes that the suitcase was his property, see Brief for Respondent 3, and so there is no question of his standing to challenge the search. See Simmons v. United States, 390 U. S. 377, 387-388 (1968). Cf. Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U. S. 128, 148-149 (1978).
The facts of the two cases are similar in several critical respects. In Chadwick, a locked, 200-pound footlocker was searched without a warrant after the police, acting with probable cause, had taken it from the trunk of a parked automobile. In the present case, respondent’s comparatively small, unlocked suitcase also had been placed in the trunk of an automobile and was searched without a warrant by police acting upon probable cause. We do not view the difference in the sizes of the footlocker and suitcase as material here; nor did respondent’s failure to lock his suitcase alter its fundamental character as a repository for personal, private effects. Cf. Note, A Reconsideration of the Katz Expectation of Privacy Test, 76 Mich. L. Rev. 154, 170 (1977).
The difficulties in seizing and securing automobiles have led the Court to make special allowances for their search. See n. 14, infra.
There may be cases in which the special exigencies of the situation would justify the warrantless search of a suitcase. Cf. Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U. S. 433 (1973) (police had reason to suspect automobile trunk contained a weapon). Generally, however, such exigencies will depend upon the probable contents of the luggage and the suspect’s access to those contents — not upon whether the luggage is taken from an automobile. In the present case the State has conceded that there were no special exigencies. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 16.
Nor do we consider the constitutionality of searches of luggage incident to the arrest of its possessor. See, e. g., United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218 (1973). The State has not argued that respondent's suitcase was searched incident to his arrest, and it appears'that the bag was not within his “immediate control” at the time of the search.
We have recognized that personal property brought into the country may be searched at the border under circumstances that would not otherwise justify a warrantless search. See United States v. Ramsey, 431 U. S. 606, 616-617 (1977). Arkansas does not assert, however, that the search of respondent’s luggage was a border search. Moreover, it may be that the public safety requires luggage to be searched without a warrant in some circumstances — such as when luggage is about to be placed onto an airplane. This presents questions under the Fourth Amendment wholly absent from the present case.
It is beyond question that the police easily could have obtained a warrant to search respondent’s bag if they had taken the suitcase to a magistrate. They had probable cause to believe not only that respondent was carrying marihuana, but also that the contraband was contained in the suitcase that they seized. The State argues that under the circumstances of this case inconvenience to all concerned would have been the only result of deferring search of the suitcase until a warrant was obtained. Those in respondent’s position who find such inconvenience unacceptable may avoid it simply by consenting to the search.
Not all containers and packages found by police during the course of a search will deserve the full protection of the Fourth Amendment. Thus, some containers (for example a kit of burglar tools or a gun case) by their very nature cannot support any reasonable expectation of privacy because their contents can be inferred from their outward appearance. Similarly, in some cases the contents of a package will be open to “plain view,” thereby obviating the need for a warrant. See Harris v. United States, 390 U. S. 234, 236 (1968) (per curiam). There will be difficulties in determining which parcels taken from an automobile require a warrant for their search and which do not. Our decision in this case means only that a warrant generally is required before personal luggage can be searched and that the extent to which the Fourth Amendment applies to containers and other parcels depends not at all upon whether they are seized from an automobile.
We are not persuaded by the State’s argument that, under Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U. S. 42 (1970), if the police were entitled to seize the suitcase, then they were entitled to search it. In Chambers, the Court upheld the warrantless search of an automobile stopped on the highway by police who believed that its occupants had robbed a gasoline station a short time before. The Court recognized that “[a]rguably, because of the preference for a magistrate’s judgment, only the immobilization of the car should be permitted until a search warrant is obtained Id., at 51. Nonetheless, the Court ruled that a warrantless search was permissible, concluding that there was no constitutional difference between the intrusion of seizing and holding the automobile until a warrant could be obtained, on the one hand, and searching the vehicle without a warrant, on the other.
We view, however, the seizure of a suitcase as quite different from the seizure of an automobile. In Chambers, if the Court had required seizure and holding of the vehicle, it would have imposed a constitutional requirement upon police departments of all sizes around the country to have available the people and equipment necessary to transport impounded automobiles to some central location until warrants could be secured. Moreover, once seized automobiles were taken from the highway the police would be responsible for providing some appropriate location where they could be kept, with due regard to the safety of the vehicles and their contents, until a magistrate ruled on the application for a warrant. Such a constitutional requirement therefore would have imposed severe, even impossible, burdens on many police departments. See Note, Warrant-less Searches and Seizures of Automobiles, 87 Harv. L. Rev. 835, 841-842 (1974). No comparable burdens are likely to exist with respect to the seizure of personal luggage.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
Around one o'clock in the morning on May 27, 2008, Officer Mike Stanton and his partner responded to a call about an "unknown disturbance" involving a person with a baseball bat in La Mesa, California. App. to Pet. for Cert. 6. Stanton was familiar with the neighborhood, known for "violence associated with the area gangs." Ibid. The officers-wearing uniforms and driving a marked police vehicle-approached the place where the disturbance had been reported and noticed three men walking in the street. Upon seeing the police car, two of the men turned into a nearby apartment complex. The third, Nicholas Patrick, crossed the street about 25 yards in front of Stanton's car and ran or quickly walked toward a residence. Id., at 7, 17. Nothing in the record shows that Stanton knew at the time whether that residence belonged to Patrick or someone else; in fact, it belonged to Drendolyn Sims.
Stanton did not see Patrick with a baseball bat, but he considered Patrick's behavior suspicious and decided to detain him in order to investigate. Ibid.; see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). Stanton exited his patrol car, called out "police," and ordered Patrick to stop in a voice loud enough for all in the area to hear. App. to Pet. for Cert. 7. But Patrick did not stop. Instead, he "looked directly at Stanton, ignored his lawful orders[,] and quickly went through [the] front gate" of a fence enclosing Sims' front yard. Id., at 17 (alterations omitted). When the gate closed behind Patrick, the fence-which was more than six feet tall and made of wood-blocked Stanton's view of the yard. Stanton believed that Patrick had committed a jailable misdemeanor under California Penal Code § 148 by disobeying his order to stop; * Stanton also "fear [ed] for [his] safety." App. to Pet. for Cert. 7. He accordingly made the "split-second decision" to kick open the gate in pursuit of Patrick. Ibid. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to Stanton, Sims herself was standing behind the gate when it flew open. The swinging gate struck Sims, cutting her forehead and injuring her shoulder.
Sims filed suit against Stanton in Federal District Court under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Stanton unreasonably searched her home without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The District Court granted summary judgment to Stanton, finding that: (1) Stanton's entry was justified by the potentially dangerous situation, by the need to pursue Patrick as he fled, and by Sims' lesser expectation of privacy in the curtilage of her home; and (2) even if a constitutional violation had occurred, Stanton was entitled to qualified immunity because no clearly established law put him on notice that his conduct was unconstitutional.
Sims appealed, and a panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed. 706 F.3d 954 (2013). The court held that Stanton's warrantless entry into Sims' yard was unconstitutional because Sims was entitled to the same expectation of privacy in her curtilage as in her home itself, because there was no immediate danger, and because Patrick had committed only the minor offense of disobeying a police officer. Id., at 959-963. The court also found the law to be clearly established that Stanton's pursuit of Patrick did not justify his warrantless entry, given that Patrick was suspected of only a misdemeanor. Id., at 963-964. The court accordingly held that Stanton was not entitled to qualified immunity. Id., at 964-965. We address only the latter holding here, and now reverse.
"The doctrine of qualified immunity protects government officials 'from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.' "
Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231, 129 S.Ct. 808, 172 L.Ed.2d 565 (2009) (quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982)). "Qualified immunity gives government officials breathing room to make reasonable but mistaken judgments," and "protects 'all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.' " Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. ----, ----, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 2085, 179 L.Ed.2d 1149 (2011) (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986)). "We do not require a case directly on point" before concluding that the law is clearly established, "but existing precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate." al-Kidd, 563 U.S., at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 2083.
There is no suggestion in this case that Officer Stanton knowingly violated the Constitution; the question is whether, in light of precedent existing at the time, he was "plainly incompetent" in entering Sims' yard to pursue the fleeing Patrick. Id., at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 2085. The Ninth Circuit concluded that he was. It did so despite the fact that federal and state courts nationwide are sharply divided on the question whether an officer with probable cause to arrest a suspect for a misdemeanor may enter a home without a warrant while in hot pursuit of that suspect. Compare, e.g.,Middletown v. Flinchum, 95 Ohio St.3d 43, 45, 765 N.E.2d 330, 332 (2002) ( "We ... hold today that when officers, having identified themselves, are in hot pursuit of a suspect who flees to a house in order to avoid arrest, the police may enter without a warrant, regardless of whether the offense for which the suspect is being arrested is a misdemeanor"), and State v. Ricci, 144 N.H. 241, 244, 739 A.2d 404, 407 (1999) ("the facts of this case demonstrate that the police had probable cause to arrest the defendant for the misdemeanor offense of disobeying a police officer" where the defendant had fled into his home with police officers in hot pursuit), with Mascorro v. Billings, 656 F.3d 1198, 1207 (C.A.10 2011) ("The warrantless entry based on hot pursuit was not justified" where "[t]he intended arrest was for a traffic misdemeanor committed by a minor, with whom the officer was well acquainted, who had fled into his family home from which there was only one exit" (footnote omitted)), and Butler v. State, 309 Ark. 211, 217, 829 S.W.2d 412, 415 (1992) ("even though Officer Sudduth might have been under the impression that he was in continuous pursuit of Butler for what he considered to be the crime of disorderly conduct, ... since the crime is a minor offense, under these circumstances there is no exigent circumstance that would allow Officer Sudduth's warrantless entry into Butler's home for what is concededly, at most, a petty disturbance").
Other courts have concluded that police officers are at least entitled to qualified immunity in these circumstances because the constitutional violation is not clearly established. E.g., Greiner v. Champlin, 27 F.3d 1346, 1354 (C.A.8 1994) ("Putting firmly to one side the merits of whether the home arrests were constitutional, we cannot say that only a plainly incompetent policeman could have thought them permissible at the time," where officers entered a home without a warrant in hot pursuit of misdemeanor suspects who had defied the officers' order to remain outside (internal quotation marks and citation omitted)).
Notwithstanding this basic disagreement, the Ninth Circuit below denied Stanton qualified immunity. In its one-paragraph analysis on the hot pursuit point, the panel relied on two cases, one from this Court, Welsh v. Wisconsin, 466 U.S. 740, 750, 104 S.Ct. 2091, 80 L.Ed.2d 732 (1984), and one from its own, United States v. Johnson, 256 F.3d 895, 908 (2001)
(en banc) ( per curiam ). Neither case clearly establishes that Stanton violated Sims' Fourth Amendment rights.
In Welsh, police officers learned from a witness that Edward Welsh had driven his car off the road and then left the scene, presumably because he was drunk. Acting on that tip, the officers went to Welsh's home without a warrant, entered without consent, and arrested him for driving while intoxicated-a nonjailable traffic offense under state law. 466 U.S., at 742-743, 104 S.Ct. 2091. Our opinion first noted our precedent holding that hot pursuit of a fleeing felon justifies an officer's warrantless entry. Id., at 750, 104 S.Ct. 2091 (citing United States v. Santana, 427 U.S. 38, 42-43, 96 S.Ct. 2406, 49 L.Ed.2d 300 (1976)). But we rejected the suggestion that the hot pursuit exception applied: "there was no immediate or continuous pursuit of [Welsh] from the scene of a crime." 466 U.S., at 753, 104 S.Ct. 2091. We went on to conclude that the officers' entry violated the Fourth Amendment, finding it "important" that "there [was] probable cause to believe that only a minor offense ... ha[d] been committed." Ibid. In those circumstances, we said, "application of the exigent-circumstances exception in the context of a home entry should rarely be sanctioned." Ibid. But we did not lay down a categorical rule for all cases involving minor offenses, saying only that a warrant is "usually" required. Id., at 750, 104 S.Ct. 2091.
In Johnson, police officers broke into Michael Johnson's fenced yard in search of another person (Steven Smith) whom they were attempting to apprehend on five misdemeanor arrest warrants. 256 F.3d, at 898-900. The Ninth Circuit was clear that this case, like Welsh, did not involve hot pursuit: "the facts of this case simply are not covered by the 'hot pursuit' doctrine" because Smith had escaped from the police 30 minutes prior and his whereabouts were unknown. 256 F.3d, at 908. The court held that the officers' entry required a warrant, in part because Smith was wanted for only misdemeanor offenses. Then, in a footnote, the court said: "In situations where an officer is truly in hot pursuit and the underlying offense is a felony, the Fourth Amendment usually yields [to law enforcement's interest in apprehending a fleeing suspect]. See [Santana, supra, at 42-43, 96 S.Ct. 2406]. However, in situations where the underlying offense is only a misdemeanor, law enforcement must yield to the Fourth Amendment in all but the 'rarest' cases. Welsh, [ supra, at 753, 104 S.Ct. 2091]." Johnson, supra, at 908, n. 6.
In concluding-as it must have-that Stanton was "plainly incompetent," al-Kidd, 563 U.S., at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 2085, the Ninth Circuit below read Welsh and the footnote in Johnson far too broadly. First, both of those cases cited Santana with approval, a case that approved an officer's warrantless entry while in hot pursuit. And though Santana involved a felony suspect, we did not expressly limit our holding based on that fact. See 427 U.S., at 42, 96 S.Ct. 2406 ("The only remaining question is whether [the suspect's] act of retreating into her house could thwart an otherwise proper arrest. We hold that it could not"). Second, to repeat, neither Welsh nor Johnson involved hot pursuit. Welsh, supra, at 753, 104 S.Ct. 2091;Johnson, supra, at 908. Thus, despite our emphasis in Welsh on the fact that the crime at issue was minor-indeed, a mere nonjailable civil offense-nothing in the opinion establishes that the seriousness of the crime is equally important in cases of hot pursuit. Third, even in the portion of Welsh cited by the Ninth Circuit below, our opinion is equivocal: We held not that warrantless entry to arrest a misdemeanant is never justified, but only that such entry should be rare. 466 U.S., at 753, 104 S.Ct. 2091.
That is in fact how two California state courts have read Welsh. In both People v. Lloyd, 216 Cal.App.3d 1425, 1430, 265 Cal.Rptr. 422, 425 (1989), and In re Lavoyne M., 221 Cal.App.3d 154, 159, 270 Cal.Rptr. 394, 396 (1990), the California Court of Appeal refused to limit the hot pursuit exception to felony suspects. The court stated in Lloyd : "Where the pursuit into the home was based on an arrest set in motion in a public place, the fact that the offenses justifying the initial detention or arrest were misdemeanors is of no significance in determining the validity of the entry without a warrant." 216 Cal.App.3d, at 1430, 265 Cal.Rptr., at 425. It is especially troubling that the Ninth Circuit would conclude that Stanton was plainly incompetent-and subject to personal liability for damages-based on actions that were lawful according to courts in the jurisdiction where he acted. Cf. al-Kidd, supra, at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 2086-2087 (KENNEDY, J., concurring).
Finally, our determination that Welsh and Johnson are insufficient to overcome Stanton's qualified immunity is bolstered by the fact that, even after Johnson, two different District Courts in the Ninth Circuit have granted qualified immunity precisely because the law regarding warrantless entry in hot pursuit of a fleeing misdemeanant is not clearly established. See Kolesnikov v. Sacramento County, No. S-06-2155, 2008 WL 1806193, at *7 (E.D.Cal., Apr. 22, 2008) ("since Welsh, it has not been clearly established that there can never be warrantless home arrests in the context of a 'hot pursuit' of a suspect fleeing from the commission of misdemeanor offenses"); Garcia v. Imperial, No. 08-2357, 2010 WL 3834020, at *6, n. 4 (S.D.Cal., Sept. 28, 2010). In Garcia, a case with facts similar to those here, the District Court distinguished Johnson as a case where "the officers were not in hot pursuit of the suspect, had not seen the suspect enter the neighbor's property, and had no real reason to think the suspect was there." 2010 WL 3834020, at *6, n. 4. Precisely the same facts distinguish this case from Johnson : Stanton was in hot pursuit of Patrick, he did see Patrick enter Sims' property, and he had every reason to believe that Patrick was just beyond Sims' gate. App. to Pet. for Cert. 6-7, 17.
To summarize the law at the time Stanton made his split-second decision to enter Sims' yard: Two opinions of this Court were equivocal on the lawfulness of his entry; two opinions of the State Court of Appeal affirmatively authorized that entry; the most relevant opinion of the Ninth Circuit was readily distinguishable; two Federal District Courts in the Ninth Circuit had granted qualified immunity in the wake of that opinion; and the federal and state courts of last resort around the Nation were sharply divided.
We do not express any view on whether Officer Stanton's entry into Sims' yard in pursuit of Patrick was constitutional. But whether or not the constitutional rule applied by the court below was correct, it was not "beyond debate." al-Kidd, supra, at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 2083. Stanton may have been mistaken in believing his actions were justified, but he was not "plainly incompetent." Malley, 475 U.S., at 341, 106 S.Ct. 1092.
The petition for certiorari and respondent's motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis are granted, the judgment of the Ninth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | A | sc_issuearea |
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Chief Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
As this school desegregation litigation enters its 18th year, we are called upon again to review the decisions of the lower courts. In this case, the State of Missouri has challenged the District Court’s order of salary increases for virtually all instructional and noninstructional staff within the Kansas City, Missouri, School District (KCMSD) and the District Court’s order requiring the State to continue to fund remedial “quality education” programs because student achievement levels were still “at or below national norms at many grade levels.”
I
A general overview of this litigation is necessary for proper resolution of the issues upon which we granted cer-tiorari. This case has been before the same United States District Judge since 1977. Missouri v. Jenkins, 491 U. S. 274, 276 (1989) (Jenkins I). In that year, the KCMSD, the school board, and the children of two school board members brought suit against the State and other defendants. Plaintiffs alleged that the State, the surrounding suburban school districts (SSD’s), and various federal agencies had caused and perpetuated a system of racial segregation in the schools of the Kansas City metropolitan area. The District Court realigned the KCMSD as a nominal defendant and certified as a class, present and future KCMSD students. The KCMSD brought a cross-claim against the State for its failure to eliminate the vestiges of its prior dual school system.
After a trial that lasted Tk months, the District Court dismissed the case against the federal defendants and the SSD’s, but determined that the State and the KCMSD were liable for an intradistrict violation, i e., they had operated a segregated school system within the KCMSD. Jenkins v. Missouri, 593 F. Supp. 1485 (WD Mo. 1984). The District Court determined that prior to 1954 “Missouri mandated segregated schools for black and white children.” Id., at 1490. Furthermore, the KCMSD and the State had failed in their affirmative obligations to eliminate the vestiges of the State’s dual school system within the KCMSD. Id., at 1504.
In June 1985, the District Court issued its first remedial order and established as its goal the “elimination of all vestiges of state imposed segregation.” Jenkins v. Missouri, 639 F. Supp. 19, 23 (WD Mo. 1985). The District Court determined that “[segregation ha[d] caused a system wide reduction in student achievement in the schools of the KCMSD.” Id., at 24. The District Court made no particularized findings regarding the extent that student achievement had been reduced or what portion of that reduction was attributable to segregation. The District Court also identified 25 schools within the KCMSD that had enrollments of 90% or more black students. Id., at 36.
The District Court, pursuant to plans submitted by the KCMSD and the State, ordered a wide range of quality education programs for all students attending the KCMSD. First, the District Court ordered that the KCMSD be restored to an AAA classification, the highest classification awarded by the State Board of Education. Id., at 26. Second, it ordered that the number of students per class be reduced so that the student-to-teacher ratio was below the level required for AAA standing. Id., at 28-29. The District Court justified its reduction in class size as
“an essential part of any plan to remedy the vestiges of segregation in the KCMSD. Reducing class size will serve to remedy the vestiges of past segregation by increasing individual attention and instruction, as well as increasing the potential for desegregative educational experiences for KCMSD students by maintaining and attracting non-minority enrollment.” Id., at 29.
The District Court also ordered programs to expand educational opportunities for all KCMSD students: full-day kindergarten; expanded summer school; before- and after-school tutoring; and an early childhood development program. Id., at 30-33. Finally, the District Court implemented a state-funded “effective schools” program that consisted of substantial yearly cash grants to each of the schools within the KCMSD. Id., at 33-34. Under the “effective schools” program, the State was required to fund programs at both the 25 racially identifiable schools as well as the 43 other schools within the KCMSD. Id., at 33.
The KCMSD was awarded an AAA rating in the 1987-1988 school year, and there is no dispute that since that time it has “‘maintained and greatly exceeded AAA requirements.’” 19 F. 3d 393, 401 (CA8 1994) (Beam, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). The total cost for these quality education programs has exceeded $220 million. Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, KCMSD Total Desegregation Program Expenditures (Sept. 30, 1994) (Desegregation Expenditures).
The District Court also set out to desegregate the KCMSD but believed that “[t]o accomplish desegregation within the boundary lines of a school district whose enrollment remains 68.3% black is a difficult.task.” 639 F. Supp., at 38. Because it had found no interdistrict violation, the District Court could not order mandatory interdistrict redistribution of students between the KCMSD and the surrounding SSD’s. Ibid.; see also Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U. S. 717 (1974) (Milliken I). The District Court refused to order additional mandatory student reassignments because they would “increase the instability of the KCMSD and reduce the potential for desegregation.” 639 F. Supp., at 38. Relying on favorable precedent from the Eighth Circuit, the District Court determined that “[ajchievement of AAA status, improvement of the quality of education being offered at the KCMSD schools, magnet schools, as well as other components of this desegregation plan can serve to maintain and hopefully attract non-minority student enrollment.” Ibid.
In November 1986, the District Court approved a compre-hensivé magnet school and capital improvements plan and held the State and the KCMSD jointly and severally liable for its funding. 1 App. 130-193. Under the District Court’s plan, every senior high school, every middle school, and one-half of the elementary schools were converted into magnet schools. Id., at 131. The District Court adopted the magnet-school program to “provide a greater educational opportunity to all KCMSD students,” id., at 131-132, and because it believed “that the proposed magnet plan [was] so attractive that it would draw non-minority students from the private schools who have abandoned or avoided the KCMSD, and draw in additional non-minority students from the suburbs.” Id., at 132. The District Court felt that “[t]he long-term benefit of all KCMSD students of a greater educational opportunity in an integrated environment is worthy of such an investment.” Id., at 133. Since its inception, the magnet-school program has operated at a cost, including magnet transportation, in excess of $448 million. See Desegregation Expenditures. In April 1993, the District Court considered, but ultimately rejected, the plaintiffs’ and the KCMSD’s proposal seeking approval of a long-range magnet renewal program that included a 10-year budget of well over $500 million, funded by the State and the KCMSD on a joint-and-several basis. App. to Pet. for Cert. A-123.
In June 1985, the District Court ordered substantial capital improvements to combat the deterioration of the KCMSD’s facilities. In formulating its capital-improvements plan, the District Court dismissed as “irrelevant” the “State’s argument that the present condition of the facilities [was] not traceable to unlawful segregation.” 639 F. Supp., at 40. Instead, the District Court focused on- its responsibility to “remed[y] the vestiges of segregation” and to “implement] a desegregation plan which w[ould] maintain and attract non-minority enrollment.” Id., at 41. The initial phase of the capital-improvements plan cost $37 million. Ibid. The District Court also required the KCMSD to present further capital-improvements proposals “in order to bring its facilities to a point comparable with the facilities in neighboring suburban school districts.” Ibid. In November 1986, the District Court approved further capital improvements in order to remove the vestiges of racial segregation and “to... attract non-minority students back to the KCMSD.” App. to Pet. for Cert. A-133 to A-134.
In September 1987, the District Court adopted, for the most part, KCMSD’s long-range capital-improvements plan at a cost in excess of $187 million. Jenkins v. Missouri, 672 F. Supp. 400, 408 (WD Mo. 1987). The plan called for the renovation of approximately 55 schools, the closure of 18 facilities, and the construction of 17 new schools. Id., at 405. The District Court rejected what it referred to as the “ ‘patch and repair’ approach proposed by the State” because it “would not achieve suburban comparability or the visual attractiveness sought by the Court as it would result in floor coverings with unsightly sections of mismatched carpeting and tile, and individual walls possessing different shades of paint.” Id., at 404. The District Court reasoned that “if the KCMSD schools underwent the limited renovation proposed by the State, the schools would continue to be unattractive and substandard, and would certainly serve as a deterrent to parents considering enrolling their children in KCMSD schools.” Id., at 405. As of 1990, the District Court had ordered $260 million in capital improvements. Missouri v. Jenkins, 495 U. S. 33, 61 (1990) (Jenkins II) (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Since then, the total cost of capital improvements ordered has soared to over $540 million.
As part of its desegregation plan, the District Court has ordered salary assistance to the KCMSD. In 1987, the District Court initially ordered salary assistance only for teachers within the KCMSD. Since that time, however, the District Court has ordered salary assistance to all but three of the approximately 5,000 KCMSD employees. The total cost of this component of the desegregation remedy since 1987 is over $200 million. See Desegregation Expenditures.
The District Court’s desegregation plan has been described as the most ambitious and expensive remedial program in the history of school desegregation. 19 F. 3d, at 397 (Beam, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). The annual cost per pupil at the KCMSD far exceeds that of the neighboring SSD’s or of any school district in Missouri. Nevertheless, the KCMSD, which has pursued a “friendly adversary” relationship with the plaintiffs, has continued to propose ever more expensive programs. As a result, the desegregation costs have escalated and now are approaching an annual cost of $200 million. These massive expenditures have financed
“high schools in which every classroom will have air conditioning, an alarm system, and 15 microcomputers; a 2,000-square-foot planetarium; green houses and vivariums; a 25-acre farm with an air-conditioned meeting room for 104 people; a Model United Nations wired for language translation; broadcast capable radio and television studios with an editing and animation lab; a temperature controlled art gallery; movie editing and screening rooms; a 3,500-square-foot dust-free diesel mechanics room; 1,875-square-foot elementary school animal rooms for use in a zoo project; swimming pools; and numerous other facilities.” Jenkins II, 495 U. S., at 77 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).
Not surprisingly, the cost of this remedial plan has “far exceeded KCMSD’s budget, or for that matter, its authority to tax.” Id., at 60. The State, through the operation of joint- and-several liability, has borne the brunt of these costs. The District Court candidly has acknowledged that it has “allowed the District planners to dream” and “provided the mechanism for th[ose] dreams to be realized.” App. to Pet. for Cert. A-133. In short, the District Court “has gone to great lengths to provide KCMSD with facilities and opportunities not available anywhere else in the country.” Id., at
II
With this background, we turn to the present controversy. First, the State has challenged the District Court’s requirement that it fund salary increases for KCMSD instructional and noninstructional staff. Id., at A-76 to A-93 (District Court’s Order of June 15, 1992); id., at A-94 to A-109 (District Court’s Order of June 30, 1993); id., at A-110 to A-121 (District Court’s Order of July 30,1993). The State claimed that funding for salaries was beyond the scope of the District Court’s remedial authority. Id., at A-86. Second, the State has challenged the District Court’s order requiring it to continue to fund the remedial quality education programs for the 1992-1993 school year. Id., at A-69 to A-75 (District Court’s Order of June 17, 1992). The State contended that under Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U. S. 467 (1992), it had achieved partial unitary status with respect to the quality education programs already in place. As a result, the State argued that the District Court should have relieved it of responsibility for funding those programs.
The District Court rejected the State’s arguments. It first determined that the salary increases were warranted because “[h]igh quality personnel are necessary not only to implement specialized desegregation programs intended to ‘improve educational opportunities and reduce racial isolation’, but also to ‘ensure that there is no diminution in the quality of its regular academic program.’ ” App. to Pet. for Cert. A-87 (citations omitted). Its “ruling [was] grounded in remedying the vestiges of segregation by improving the desegregative attractiveness of the KCMSD.” Id., at A-90. The District Court did not address the State’s Freeman arguments; nevertheless, it ordered the State to continue to fund the quality education programs for the 1992-1993 school year. See App. to Pet. for Cert. A-70.
The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed. 11 F. 3d 755 (1993). It rejected the State’s argument that the salary increases did not directly address and relate to the State’s constitutional violation and that “low teacher salaries d[id] not flow from any earlier constitutional violations by the State.” Id., at 767. In doing so, it observed that “[i]n addition to compensating the victims, the remedy in this case was also designed to reverse white flight by offering superior educational opportunities.” Ibid.; see also 13 F. 3d 1170, 1172 (1993) (affirming the District Court’s June 30, 1993, and July 30, 1993, orders).
The Court of Appeals concluded that the District Court implicitly had rejected the State’s Freeman arguments in spite of the fact that it had failed “to articulate... even a eonclusory rejection” of them. 11 F. 3d, at 765. It looked to the District Court’s comments from the bench and its later orders to “illuminate the June 1992 order.” Id., at 761. The Court of Appeals relied on statements made by the District Court during a May 28, 1992, hearing:
“The Court’s goal was to integrate the Kansas City, Missouri, School District to the maximum degree possible, and all these other matters were elements to be used to try to integrate the Kansas City, Missouri, schools so the goal is integration. That’s the goal. And a high standard of quality education. The magnet schools, the summer school program and all these programs are tied to that goal, and until such time as that goal has been reached, then we have not reached the goal.... The goal is to integrate the Kansas City, Missouri, School district. So I think we are wasting our time.” 2 App. 482 (emphasis added).
See 11 F. 3d, at 761. Apparently, the Court of Appeals extrapolated from the findings regarding the magnet-school program and later orders and imported those findings wholesale to reject the State’s request for a determination of partial unitary status as to the quality education programs. See id., at 761-762. It found significant the District Court’s determination that although “there had been a trend of improvement in academic achievement,... the school district was far from reaching its maximum potential because KCMSD is still at or below national norms at many grade levels.” Ibid. It went on to say that with respect to quality education, “implementation of programs in and of itself is not sufficient. The test, after all, is whether the vestiges of segregation, here the systemwide reduction in student achievement, have been eliminated to the greatest extent practicable. The success of quality of education programs must be measured by their effect on the students, particularly those who have been the victims of segregation.” Id., at 766.
The Court of Appeals denied rehearing en banc, with five judges dissenting. 19 F. 3d, at 395. The dissent first examined the salary increases ordered by the District Court and characterized “the current effort by the KCMSD and the American Federation of Teachers... aided by the plaintiffs, to bypass the collective bargaining process” as “uncalled for” and “probably not an exercise reasonably related to the constitutional violations found by the court.” Id., at 399. The dissent also “agree[d] with the [S]tate that logic d[id] not directly relate the pay of parking lot attendants, trash haulers and food handlers... to any facet or phase of the desegregation plan or to the constitutional violations.” Ibid.
Second, the dissent believed that in evaluating whether the KCMSD had achieved partial unitary status in its quality education programs, the District Court and the panel had
“misrea[d] Freeman and create[d] a hurdle to the withdrawal of judicial intervention from public education that has no support in the law. The district court has, with the approbation of the panel, imbedded a student achievement goal measured by annual standardized tests into its test of whether the KCMSD has built a high-quality educational system sufficient to remedy past discrimination. The Constitution requires no such standard.” Id., at 400.
The dissent noted that “KCMSD students have in place a system that offers more educational opportunity than anywhere in America,” id., at 403, but that the District Court was “‘not satisfied that the District has reached anywhere close to its maximum potential because the District is still at or below national norms át many grade levels,’ ” ibid, (emphasis added). The dissent concluded that this case, “as it now proceeds, involves an exercise in pedagogical sociology, not constitutional adjudication.” Id., at 404.
Because of the importance of the issues, we granted certio-rari to consider the following: (1) whether the District Court exceeded its constitutional authority when it granted salary increases to virtually all instructional and noninstructional employees of the KCMSD, and (2) whether the District Court properly relied upon the fact that student achievement test scores had failed to rise to some unspecified level when it declined to find that the State had achieved partial unitary status as to the quality education programs. 512 U. S. 1287 (1994).
Ill
Respondents argue that the State may no longer challenge the District Court’s remedy, and in any event, the propriety of the remedy is not before the Court. Brief for Respondents KCMSD et al. 40-49; Brief for Respondents Jenkins et al. 23. We disagree on both counts. In Jenkins II, we granted certiorari to review the manner in which the District Court had funded this desegregation remedy. 495 U. S., at 37. Because we had denied certiorari on the State’s challenge to review the scope of the remedial order, we resisted the State’s efforts to challenge the scope of the remedy. Id., at 53; cf. id., at 80 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Thus, we neither “approved]” nor “disapproved] the Court of Appeals’ conclusion that the District Court’s remedy was proper.” Id., at 53.
Here, however, the State has challenged the District Court’s approval of across-the-board salary increases for instructional and noninstructional employees as an action beyond its remedial authority. Pet. for Cert, i. An analysis of the permissible scope of the District Court’s remedial authority is necessary for a proper determination of whether the order of salary increases is beyond the District Court’s remedial authority, see Milliken I, 418 U. S., at 738-740, 745, and thus, it is an issue subsidiary to our ultimate inquiry. Cf. Yee v. Escondido, 503 U. S. 519, 537 (1992). Given that the District Court’s basis for its salary order was grounded in “improving the desegregative attractiveness of the KCMSD,” App. to Pet. for Cert. A-90, we must consider the propriety of that reliance in order to resolve properly the State’s challenge to that order. We conclude that a challenge to the scope of the District Court’s remedy is fairly included in the question presented. See this Court’s Rule 14.1; Procunier v. Navarette, 434 U. S. 555, 560, n. 6 (1978) (“Since consideration of these issues is essential to analysis of the Court of Appeals’ [decision] we shall also treat these questions as subsidiary issues ‘fairly comprised’ by the question presented”); see also United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U. S. 544, 551-552, n. 5 (1980) (opinion of Stewart, J.) (Where the determination of a question “is essential to the correct disposition of the other issues in the case, we shall treat it as ‘fairly comprised’ by the questions presented in the petition for certiorari”); cf. Yee, supra, at 536-537.
Justice Souter argues that our decision to review the scope of the District Court’s remedial authority is both unfair and imprudent. Post, at 147. He claims that factors such as our failure to grant certiorari on the State’s challenge to the District Court’s remedial authority in 1988 “lulled [respondents] into addressing the case without sufficient attention to the foundational issue, and their lack of attention has now infected the Court’s decision.” Post, at 139. Justice Souter concludes that we have “decide[d] the issue without any warning to respondents.” Post, at 147. These arguments are incorrect.
Of course, “[t]he denial of a writ of certiorari imports no expression of opinion upon the merits of the case, as the bar has been told many times.” United States v. Carver, 260 U. S. 482, 490 (1923). A fortiori, far from lulling respondents into a false sense of security, our previous decision in Jenkins v. Missouri put respondents on notice that the Court had not affirmed the validity of the District Court’s remedy, 495 U. S., at 53, and that at least four Justices of the Court questioned that remedy, id., at 75-80 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).
With respect to the specific orders at issue here, the State has once again challenged the scope of the District Court’s remedial authority. The District Court was aware of this fact. See App. to Pet. for Cert. A-86 (“The State claims that the Court should not approve desegregation funding for salaries because such funding would be beyond the scope of the Court’s remedial authority”) (District Court’s June 25, 1992, order); id., at A-97 (“The State has argued repeatedly and currently on appeal that the salary component is not a valid component of the desegregation remedy”) (District Court’s June 30, 1993, order). The Court of Appeals also understood that the State had renewed this challenge. See 11 F. 3d, at 766 (“The State argues first that the salary increase remedy sought exceeded that necessary to remedy the constitutional violations, and alternatively, that if the district court had lawful authority to impose the increases, it abused its discretion in doing so”); id., at 767 (“The State’s legal argument is that the district court should have denied the salary increase funding because it is contrary to Milliken [v. Bradley, 433 U. S. 267 (1977),] and Swann [v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Ed., 402 U. S. 1 (1971),] in that it does not directly address and relate to the State’s constitutional violation”); 13 F. 3d, at 1172 (“We reject the State’s argument that the salary order is contrary to Milliken II and Swann”). The State renewed this same challenge in its petition for certiorari, Pet. for Cert, i, and argued here that the District Court’s salary orders were beyond the scope of its remedial authority. Brief for Petitioners 27-32; Reply Brief for Petitioners 6-12. In the 100 pages of briefing provided by respondents, they have argued that the State’s challenge to the scope of the District Court’s remedial authority is not fairly presented and is meritless. See Brief for Respondents KCMSD et al. 40-49; Brief for Respondents Jenkins et al. 2-21, 44-49; cf. Reply Brief for Petitioners 2 (“[Respondents... urge the Court to dismiss the writ as improvidently granted. This is not surprising; respondents cannot defend the excesses of the courts below”).
In short, the State has challenged the scope of the District Court’s remedial authority. The District Court, the Court of Appeals, and respondents have recognized this to be the case. Contrary to Justice Souter’s arguments, there is no unfairness or imprudence in deciding issues that have been passed upon below, are properly before us, and have been briefed by the parties. We turn to the questions presented.
Almost 25 years ago, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Ed., 402 U. S. 1 (1971), we dealt with the authority of a district court to fashion remedies for a school district that had been segregated in law in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Although recognizing the discretion that must necessarily adhere in a district court in fashioning a remedy, we also recognized the limits on such remedial power:
“[Elimination of racial discrimination in public schools is a large task and one that should not be retarded by efforts to achieve broader purposes lying beyond the jurisdiction of the school authorities. One vehicle can carry only a limited amount of baggage. It would not serve the important objective of Brown [v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954),] to seek to use school desegregation cases for purposes beyond their scope, although desegregation of schools ultimately will have impact on other forms of discrimination.” Id., at 22-23.
Three years later, in Milliken I, 418 U. S. 717 (1974), we held that a District Court had exceeded its authority in fashioning interdistrict relief where the surrounding school districts had not themselves been guilty of any constitutional violation. Id., at 746-747. We said that a desegregation remedy “is necessarily designed, as all remedies are, to restore the victims of discriminatory conduct to the position they would have occupied in the absence of such conduct.” Id., at 746. “[WJithout an interdistrict violation and inter-district effect, there is no constitutional wrong calling for an interdistrict remedy.” Id., at 745. We also rejected “[t]he suggestion... that schools which have a majority of Negro students are not ‘desegregated,’ whatever the makeup of the school district’s population and however neutrally the district lines have been drawn and administered.” Id., at 747, n. 22; see also Freeman, 503 U. S., at 474 (“[A] critical beginning point is the degree of racial imbalance in the school district, that is to say a comparison of the proportion of majority to minority students in individual schools with the proportions of the races in the district as a whole”).
Three years later, in Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U. S. 267 (1977) (Milliken II), we articulated a three-part framework derived from our prior cases to guide district courts in the exercise of their remedial authority.
“Ini the first place, like other equitable remedies, the nature of the desegregation remedy is to be determined by the nature and scope of the constitutional violation. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U. S., at 16. The remedy must therefore be related to ‘the condition alleged to offend the Constitution....’ Milliken I, 418 U. S., at 738. Second, the decree must indeed be remedial in nature, that is, it must be designed as nearly as possible ‘to restore the victims of discriminatory conduct to the position they would have occupied in the absence of such conduct.’ Id., at 746. Third, the federal courts in devising a remedy must take into account the interests of state and local authorities in managing their own affairs, consistent with the Constitution.” Id., at 280-281 (footnotes omitted).
We added that the “principle that the nature and scope of the remedy are to be determined by the violation means simply that federal-court decrees must directly address and relate to the constitutional violation itself.” Id., at 281-282. In applying these principles, we have identified “student assignments,... ‘faculty, staff, transportation, extracurricular activities and facilities’ ” as the most important indicia of a racially segregated school system. Board of Ed. of Oklahoma City Public Schools v. Dowell, 498 U. S. 237, 250 (1991) (quoting Green v. School Bd. of New Kent Cty., 391 U. S. 430, 435 (1968)).
Because “federal supervision of local school systems was intended as a temporary measure to remedy past discrimination,” Dowell, supra, at 247, we also have considered the showing that must be made by a school district operating under a desegregation order for complete or partial relief from that order. In Freeman, we stated that
“[a]mong the factors which must inform the sound discretion of the court in ordering partial withdrawal are the following: [1] whether there has been full and satisfactory compliance with the decree in those aspects of the system where supervision is to be withdrawn; [2] whether retention of judicial control is necessary or practicable to achieve compliance with the decree in other facets of the school system; and [3] whether the school district has demonstrated, to the public and to the parents and students of the once disfavored race, its good-faith commitment to the whole of the courts’ decree and to those provisions of the law and the Constitution that were the predicate for judicial intervention in the first instance.” 503 U. S., at 491.
The ultimate inquiry is “‘whether the [constitutional violator] ha[s] complied in good faith with the desegregation decree since it was entered, and whether the vestiges of past discrimination ha[ve] been eliminated to the extent practicable.’” Id., at 492 (quoting Dowell, supra, at 249-250).
Proper analysis of the District Court’s orders challenged here, then, must rest upon their serving as proper means to the end of restoring the victims of discriminatory conduct to the position they would have occupied in the absence of that conduct and their eventual restoration of “state and local authorities to the control of a school system that is operating in compliance with the Constitution.” 503 U. S., at 489. We turn to that analysis.
The State argues that the order approving salary increases is beyond the District Court’s authority because it was crafted to serve an “interdistrict goal,” in spite of the fact that the constitutional violation in this case is “intradis-trict” in nature. Brief for Petitioners 19. “[T]he nature of the desegregation remedy is to be determined by the nature and scope of the constitutional violation.” Milliken II, supra, at 280; Pasadena City Bd. of Ed. v. Spangler, 427 U. S. 424, 434 (1976) (“ ‘[T]here are limits’ beyond which a court may not go in seeking to dismantle a dual school system”). The proper response to an intradistrict violation is an intradistrict remedy, see Milliken I, supra, at 746-747; Milliken II, supra, at 280, that serves to eliminate the racial identity of the schools within the affected school district by eliminating, as far as practicable, the vestiges of de jure segregation in all facets of their operations. See Dowell, supra, at 250; see also Swann, 402 U. S., at 18-19; Green, supra, at 435.
Here, the District Court has found, and the Court of Appeals has affirmed, that this case involved no interdistrict constitutional violation that would support interdistrict relief. Jenkins II, 495 U. S., at 37, n. 3 (“The District Court also found that none of the alleged discriminatory actions had resulted in lingering interdistrict effects and so dismissed the suburban school districts and denied interdistrict relief”); id., at 76 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (“[T]here was no interdistrict constitutional violation that would support mandatory interdistrict relief”). Thus, the proper response by the District Court should have been to eliminate to the extent practicable the vestiges of prior de jure segregation within the KCMSD: a systemwide reduction in student achievement and the existence of 25 racially identifiable schools with a population of over 90% black students. 639 F. Supp., at 24, 36.
The District Court and Court of Appeals, however, have felt that because the KCMSD’s enrollment remained 68.3% black, a purely miradistrict remedy would be insufficient. Id., at 38; Jenkins v. Missouri, 865 F. 2d 1296, 1302 (CA8 1988) (“[V]oluntary interdistrict remedies may be used to make meaningful integration possible in a predominantly minority district”). But, as noted in Milliken I, 418 U. S. 717 (1974), we have rejected the suggestion “that schools which have a majority of Negro students are not ‘desegregated’ whatever the racial makeup of the school district’s population and however neutrally the district lines have been drawn and administered.” Id., at 747, n. 22; see Milliken II, 433 U. S., at 280, n. 14 (“[T]he Court has consistently held that the Constitution is not violated by racial imbalance in the schools,
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 petitioner, born in 1910 in the Philippine Islands, has lived in the continental United States since 1930, when he was admitted for permanent residence. In February 1951, he was convicted upon a plea of guilty of violating the federal narcotics laws. He was taken into custody in March 1951, and, after administrative proceedings, was ordered deported under the Act of February 18, 1931, as amended, which provided for the deportation of “any alien” convicted of violating a federal narcotics law.
Petitioner applied to the District Court for the Western District of Washington for a writ of habeas corpus and declaratory relief from the order of the Immigration and Naturalization Service deporting him to the Philippine Islands. The District Court denied the petitioner’s application, and the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. We granted certiorari.
The sole issue for decision is whether the petitioner is deportable as an alien within the meaning of the 1931 Act. The parties agree that the petitioner was a national of the United States at birth and when he entered the continental United States for permanent residence. Under the 1898 Treaty of Paris, Spain ceded the Philippine Islands to the United States. Article IX of the Treaty provided that . . [t]he civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants . . . shall be determined by the Congress.” Pursuant to that Article, the Congress declared, inter alia, in the Act of July 1, 1902, that Filipinos born in the Islands after 1899 were to . . be citizens of the Philippine Islands and as such entitled to the protection of the United States . ...” The Filipinos, as nationals, owed an obligation of permanent allegiance to this country.
Upon the proclamation of Philippine independence on July 4, 1946, § 14 of the Philippine Independence Act of 1934 became operative. Section 14 provided:
“Upon the final and complete withdrawal of American sovereignty over the Philippine Islands the immigration laws of the United States (including all the provisions thereof relating to persons ineligible to citizenship) shall apply to persons who were born in the Philippine Islands to the same extent as in the case of other foreign countries.” 48 Stat. 464, 48 U. S. C. (1946 ed.) § 1244.
The Court of Appeals held that the petitioner lost his status as a national when the United States relinquished its sovereignty over the Islands on July 4, 1946, and that this occurred regardless of his residence in the continental United States on that date.
The petitioner argues that his status as a national, acquired at birth under the Treaty and the 1902 statute, bears such close relationship to the constitutionally secured birthright of citizenship acquired by the American-born, that its divestiture should rest only upon the most explicit expression of congressional intention. In the Independence Act, the Congress granted full and complete independence to the Islands, and necessarily severed the obligation of permanent allegiance owed by Filipinos who were nationals of the United States. Anything less than the severance of the ties for all Filipinos, regardless of residence in or out of the continental United States, would not have fulfilled our long-standing national policy to grant independence to the Philippine people. See Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, 324 U. S. 652, 674-678, 692. Section 14 of the Independence Act in clear language applies “to persons who were born in the Philippine Islands.” This language demonstrates, and we hold, as did the courts below, that persons born in the Islands, and who thereby were nationals of the United States, became aliens on July 4, 1946, regardless of permanent residence in the continental United States on that date.
The petitioner contends that, because he was admitted for permanent residence at the time the Islands were a territory of the United States, he did not enter from a foreign country and therefore cannot be an alien within the purview of the 1931 Act. He relies on Barber v. Gonzales, 347 U. S. 637, where this Court held that a Filipino admitted for permanent residence in 1930 was not deportable under § 19 (a) of the Immigration Act of 1917 as an alien sentenced for certain crimes “committed . . . after entry.” (Emphasis added.) The word “entry” was held to be significant of a congressional purpose to limit deportation under § 19 (a) to aliens arriving “from some foreign port or place,” a description which did not fit a territory belonging to the United States. But the 1931 Act differs from the 1917 Act because it is silent as to whether “entry” from a foreign country is a condition of deportability. By its terms, the 1931 Act applies to “. . . any alien . . . who, after . . . [February 18, 1931], shall be convicted . . .” of a federal narcotics offense. It follows that the holding in Gonzales is not applicable.
The petitioner argues that the requirement of “entry,” as construed in Gonzales, was incorporated into the 1931 Act by the provision that deportation shall be accomplished “in manner provided in sections 19 and 20” of the Immigration Act of 1917. We hold that the reference to the “manner provided” in those sections draws into the 1931 Act only the procedural steps for securing deportation set forth in those sections. Bugajewitz v. Adams, 228 U. S. 585. The Congress adopted these procedures by reference instead of spelling them out in the 1931 Act.
The petitioner urges finally that the requirement of “entry” is implicit in the 1931 Act. Citing Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U. S. 698, he argues that the bounds of the power to deport aliens are circumscribed by the bounds of the power to exclude them, and that the power to exclude extends only to “foreigners” and does not embrace Filipinos admitted from the Islands when they were a territory of the United States. It is true that Filipinos were not excludable from the country under any general statute relating to the exclusion of “aliens.” See Gonzales v. Williams, 192 U. S. 1, 12-13; Toyota v. United States, 268 U. S. 402, 411.
But the fallacy in the petitioner’s argument is the erroneous assumption that Congress was without power to legislate the exclusion of Filipinos in the same manner as “foreigners.” This Court has held that “. . . the power to acquire territory by treaty implies not only the power to govern such territory, but to prescribe upon what terms the United States will receive its inhabitants, and what their status shall be . . . .” Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 244, 279. Congress not only had, but exercised, the power to exclude Filipinos in the provision of § 8 (a)(1) of the Independence Act, which, for the period from 1934 to 1946, provided:
“For the purposes of the Immigration Act of 1917, the Immigration Act of 1924 (except section 13 (c)), this section, and all other laws of the United States relating to the immigration, exclusion, or expulsion of aliens, citizens of the Philippine Islands who are not citizens of the United States shall be considered as if they were aliens. For such purposes the Philippine Islands shall be considered as a separate country and shall have for each fiscal year a quota of fifty. . . ” 48 Stat. 462, 48 U. S. C. (1934 ed.) § 1238.
The 1931 Act plainly covers the situation of the petitioner, who was an alien, and who was convicted of a federal narcotics offense. Cf. United States ex rel. Eichenlaub v. Shaughnessy, 338 U. S. 521. We therefore conclude that the petitioner was deportable as an alien under that Act. The judgment is
Affirmed.
The Act of February 18, 1931, as amended, provided:
“. . . [A]ny alien (except an addict who is not a dealer in, or peddler of, any of the narcotic drugs mentioned in this Act) who, after . . . [February 18, 1931], shall be convicted for violation of or conspiracy to violate any statute of the United States or of any State, Territory, possession, or of the District of Columbia, taxing, prohibiting, or regulating the manufacture, production, compounding, transportation, sale, exchange, dispensing, giving away, importation, or exportation of opium, coca leaves, heroin, marihuana, or any salt, derivative, or preparation of opium or coca leaves, shall be taken into custody and deported in manner provided in sections 19 and 20 of the Act of February 5, 1917, entitled 'An Act to regulate the immigration of aliens to, and the residence of aliens in, the United States.’ ” 46 Stat. 1171, as amended, 54 Stat. 673, 8 U. S. C. (1946 ed.) § 156a.
234 F. 2d 904.
352 U. S. 906.
30 Stat. 1754.
Id., at 1759.
32 Stat. 691, 692; compare 39 Stat. 545, 546.
Compare § 101 of the Nationality Act of 1940, which defines the term “national” as follows:
“(a) The term 'national’ means a person owing permanent allegiance to a state.
“(b) The term 'national of the United States’ means ... (2) a person who, though not a citizen of the United States, owes permanent allegiance to the United States. It does not include an alien.” 54 Stat. 1137, 8 U. S. C. (1946 ed.) § 501.
Presidential Proclamation No. 2695, 60 Stat. 1352, 11 Fed. Reg. 7517; Presidential Proclamation No. 2696, 60 Stat. 1353, 11 Fed. Reg. 7517.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has consistently followed this principle. E. g., Resurreccion-Talavera v. Barber, 231 F. 2d 524; Gonzales v. Barber, 207 F. 2d 398, aff’d on other grounds, 347 U. S. 637; Mangaoang v. Boyd, 205 F. 2d 553; Cabebe v. Acheson, 183 F. 2d 795; cf. Banez v. Boyd, 236 F. 2d 934.
The “manner provided” in § 19 of the Immigration Act of 1917, 39 Stat. 889, as amended, 8 U. S. C. (1946 ed.) § 155, was “upon the warrant of the Attorney General.” Section 20, 39 Stat. 890, as amended, 8 U. S. C. (1946 ed., Supp. IV) § 156, related to ports to which aliens are to be deported, costs of deportation and other details. The Attorney General is required by that section to deport “to the country specified by the alien, if it is willing to accept him into its territory.” In the administrative proceedings the petitioner specified the Philippine Islands.
It is not contended that the procedures specified in §§ 19 and 20 were not followed in this case.
See Magoon, Reports (1902), 120:
“The inhabitants of the islands acquired by the United States during the late war with Spain, not being citizens of the United States, do not possess the right of free entry into the United States. That right is appurtenant to citizenship. The rights of immigration into the United States by the inhabitants of said islands are no more than those of aliens of the same race coming from foreign lands.”
Illustrative of the scope of the congressional power is the treatment afforded Puerto Ricans who were first nationals, 31 Stat. 77, 79, and who later became citizens, 39 Stat. 951, 953. See also Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 244, 280, as to the status of the inhabitants of other territories acquired by the United States.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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.
The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994 (DPPA or Act), 18 U. S. G. §§ 2721-2725 (1994 ed. and Supp. IV), regulates the disclosure of personal information contained in the records of state motor vehicle departments (DMVs). We hold that in enacting this statute Congress did not run afoul of the federalism principles enunciated in New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144 (1992), and Printz v. United States, 521 U. S. 898 (1997).
The DPPA regulates the disclosure and resale of personal information contained in the records of state DMVs. State DMVs require drivers and automobile owners to provide personal information, which may include a person’s name, address, telephone number, vehicle description, Social Security number, medical information, and photograph, as a condition of obtaining a driver’s license or registering an automobile. Congress found that many States, in turn, sell this personal information to individuals and businesses. See, e.g., 139 Cong. Rec. 29466, 29468, 29469 (1993); 140 Cong. Rec. 7929 (1994) (remarks of Rep. Goss). These sales generate significant revenues for the States. See Travis v. Reno, 163 F. 3d 1000, 1002 (CA7 1998) (noting that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation receives approximately $8 million each year from the sale of motor vehicle information).
The DPPA establishes a regulatory scheme that restricts the States’ ability to disclose a driver’s personal information without the driver’s consent. The DPPA generally prohibits any state DMV, or officer, employee, or contractor thereof, from “knowingly disclos[ing] or otherwise mak[ing] available to any person or entity personal information about any individual obtained by the department in connection with a motor vehicle record.” 18 U. S. C. § 2721(a). The DPPA defines “personal information” as any information “that identifies an individual, including an individual’s photograph, social security number, driver identification number, name, address (but not the 5-digit zip code), telephone number, and medical or disability information,” but not including “information on vehicular accidents, driving violations, and driver’s status.” § 2725(3). A “motor vehicle record” is defined as “any record that pertains to a motor vehicle operator’s permit, motor vehicle title, motor vehicle registration, or identification card issued by a department of motor vehicles.” §2725(1).
The DPPA’s ban on disclosure of personal information does not apply if drivers have consented to the release of their data. When we granted certiorari in this case, the DPPA provided that a DMV could obtain that consent either on a case-by-case basis or could imply consent if the State provided drivers with an opportunity to block disclosure of their personal information when they received or renewed their licenses and drivers did not avail themselves of that opportunity. §§ 2721(b)(11), (13), and (d). However, Public Law 106-69, 113 Stat. 986, which was signed into law on October 9, 1999, changed this “opt-out” alternative to an “opt-in” requirement. Under the amended DPPA, States may not imply consent from a driver’s failure to take advantage of a state-afforded opportunity to block disclosure, but must rather obtain a driver’s affirmative consent to disclose the driver’s personal information for use in surveys, marketing, solicitations, and other restricted purposes. See Pub. L. 106-69, 113 Stat. 986 §§ 350(c), (d), and (e), App. to Supp. Brief for Petitioners 1(a), 2(a).
The DPPA’s prohibition of nonconsensual disclosures is also subject to a number of statutory exceptions. For example, the DPPA requires disclosure of personal information “for use in connection with matters of motor vehicle or driver safety and theft, motor vehicle emissions, motor vehicle product alterations, recalls, or advisories, performance monitoring of motor vehicles and dealers by motor vehicle manufacturers, and removal of non-owner records from the original owner records of motor vehicle manufacturers to carry out the purposes of titles I and IV of the Anti Car Theft Act of 1992, the Automobile Information Disclosure Act, the Clean Air Act, and chapters 301,305, and 321-331 of title 49.” 18 U. S. C. § 2721(b) (1994 ed., Supp. Ill) (citations omitted). The DPPA 'permits DMVs to disclose personal information from motor vehicle records for a number of purposes.
The DPPA’s provisions do not apply solely to States. The Act also regulates the resale and redisclosure of drivers’ personal information by private persons who have obtained that information from a state DMV. 18 U. S. C. § 2721(c) (1994 ed. and Supp. III). In general, the Act allows private persons who have obtained drivers’ personal information for one of the aforementioned permissible purposes to further disclose that information for any one of those purposes. Ibid. If a State has obtained drivers’ consent to disclose their personal information to private persons generally and a private person has obtained that information, the private person may redisclose the information for any purpose. Ibid. Additionally, a private actor who has obtained drivers’ information from DMV records specifically for direct-marketing purposes may resell that information for other direct-marketing uses, but not otherwise. Ibid. Any person who rediscloses or resells personal information from DMV records must, for five years, maintain records identifying to whom the records were disclosed and the permitted purpose for the resale or rediselosure. Ibid.
The DPPA establishes several penalties to be imposed on States and private actors that fail to comply with its requirements. The Act makes it unlawful for any “person” knowingly to obtain or disclose any record for a use that is not permitted under its provisions, or to make a false representation in order to obtain personal information from a motor vehicle record. §§ 2722(a) and (b). Any person who knowingly violates the DPPA may be subject to a criminal fine, §§ 2723(a), 2725(2). Additionally, any person who knowingly obtains, discloses, or uses information from a state motor vehicle record for a use other than those specifically permitted by the DPPA may be subject to liability in a civil action brought by the driver to whom the information pertains. §2724. While the DPPA defines “person” to exclude States and state agencies, §2725(2), a state agency that maintains a “policy or practice of substantial noncompliance” with the Act may be subject to a civil penalty imposed by the United States Attorney General of not more than $5,000 per day of substantial noncompliance. § 2723(b).
South Carolina law conflicts with the DPPAs provisions. Under that law, the information contained in the State’s DMV records is available to any person or entity that fills out a form listing the requester’s name and address and stating that the information will not be used for telephone solicitation. S. C. Code Ann. §§56-3-510 to 56-3-540 (Supp. 1998). South Carolina’s DMV retains a copy of all requests for information from the State’s motor vehicle records, and it is required to release copies of all requests relating to a person upon that person’s written petition. §56-3-520. State law authorizes the South Carolina DMV to charge a fee for releasing motor vehicle information, and it requires the DMV to allow drivers to prohibit the use of their motor vehicle information for certain commercial activities. §§ 56-3-530, 56-3-540.
Following the DPPA’s enactment, South Carolina and its Attorney General, respondent Condon, filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, alleging that the DPPA violates the Tenth and Eleventh Amendments to the United States Constitution. The District Court concluded that the Act is incompatible with the principles of federalism inherent in the Constitution’s division of power between the States and the Federal Government. The court accordingly granted summary judgment for the State and permanently enjoined the Act’s enforcement against the State and its officers. See 972 F. Supp. 977, 979 (1997). The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed, concluding that the Act violates constitutional prin-eiples of federalism. See 155 F. 3d 453 (1998). We granted certiorari, 526 U. S. 1111 (1999), and now reverse.
We of course begin with the time-honored presumption that the DPPA is a “constitutional exercise of legislative power.” Close v. Glenwood Cemetery, 107 U. S. 466, 475 (1883); see also INS v. Chadha, 462 U. S. 919, 944 (1983).
The United States asserts that the DPPA is a proper exercise of Congress’ authority to regulate interstate commerce under the Commerce Clause, U. S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 3. The United States bases its Commerce Clause argument on the fact that the personal, identifying information that the DPPA regulates is a “thin[g] in interstate commerce,” and that the sale or release of that information in interstate commerce is therefore a proper subject of congressional regulation. United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 558-559 (1995). We agree with the United States’ contention. The motor vehicle information which the States have historically sold is used by insurers, manufacturers, direct marketers, and others engaged in interstate commerce to contact drivers with customized solicitations. The information is also used in the stream of interstate commerce by various public and private entities for matters related to interstate motoring. Because drivers’ information is, in this context, an article of commerce, its sale or release into the interstate stream of business is sufficient to support congressional regulation. We therefore need not address the Government’s alternative argument that the States’ individual, intrastate activities in gathering, maintaining, and distributing drivers’ personal information have a sufficiently substantial impact on interstate commerce to create a constitutional base for federal legislation.
But the fact that drivers’ personal information is, in the context of this case, an article in interstate commerce does not conclusively resolve the constitutionality of the DPPA. In New York and Printz, we held federal statutes invalid, not because Congress lacked legislative authority over the subject matter, but because those statutes violated the principles of federalism contained in the Tenth Amendment. In New York, Congress commandeered the state legislative process by requiring a state legislature to enact a particular kind of law. We said:
“While Congress has substantial powers to govern the Nation directly, including in areas of intimate concern to the States, the Constitution has never been understood to confer upon Congress the ability to require the States to govern according to Congress’ instructions. See Coyle v. Smith, 221 U. S. 559, 565 (1911).” 505 U. S., at 162.
In Printz, we invalidated a provision of the Brady Act which commanded “state and local enforcement officers to conduct background checks on prospective handgun purchasers.” 521 U. S., at 902. We said:
“We held in New York that Congress cannot compel the States to enact or enforce a federal regulatory program. Today we hold that Congress cannot circumvent that prohibition by conscripting the States’ officers directly. The Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.” Id., at 935.
South Carolina contends that the DPPA violates the Tenth Amendment because it “thrusts upon the States all of the day-to-day responsibility for administering its complex provisions,” Brief for Respondents 10, and thereby makes “state officials the unwilling implementors of federal policy,” id., at ll. South Carolina emphasizes that the DPPA requires the State’s employees to learn and apply the Act’s substantive restrictions, which are summarized above, and notes that these activities will consume the employees’ time and thus the State’s resources. South Carolina further notes that the DPPA’s penalty provisions hang over the States as a potential punishment should they fail to comply with the Act.
We agree with South Carolina’s assertion that the DPPA’s provisions will require time and effort on the part of state employees, but reject the State’s argument that the DPPA violates the principles laid down in either New York or Printz. We think, instead, that this case is governed by our decision in South Carolina v. Baker, 485 U. S. 505 (1988). In Baker, we upheld a statute that prohibited States from issuing unregistered bonds because the law “regulate[d] state activities,” rather than “seeking] to control or influence the manner in which States regulate private parties.” Id., at 514-515. We further noted:
“The [National Governor’s Association] nonetheless contends that § 310 has commandeered the state legislative and administrative process because many state legislatures had to amend a substantial number of statutes in order to issue bonds in registered form and because state officials had to devote substantial effort to determine how best to implement a registered bond system. Such ‘commandeering’ is, however, an inevitable consequence of regulating a state activity. Any federal regulation demands compliance. That a State wishing to engage in certain activity must take administrative and sometimes legislative action to comply with federal standards regulating that activity is a commonplace that presents no constitutional defect.” Ibid.
Like the statute at issue in Baker, the DPPA does not require the States in their sovereign capacity to regulate their own citizens. The DPPA regulates the States as the owners of data bases. It does not require the South Carolina Legislature to enact any laws or regulations, and it does not require state officials to assist in the enforcement of federal statutes regulating private individuals. We accordingly conclude that the DPPA is consistent with the constitutional principles enunciated in New York and Printz.
As a final matter, we turn to South Carolina’s argument that the DPPA is unconstitutional because it regulates the States exclusively. The essence of South Carolina’s argument is that Congress may only regulate the States by means of “generally applicable” laws, or laws that apply to individuals as well as States. But we need not address the question whether general applicability is a constitutional requirement for federal regulation of the States, because the DPPA is generally applicable. The DPPA regulates the universe of entities that participate as suppliers to the market for motor vehicle information — the States as initial suppliers of the information in interstate commerce and private resellers or redisclosers of that information in commerce.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore
Reversed.
Disclosure is permitted for use “by any government agency” or by “any private person or entity acting on behalf of a Federal, State or local agency in carrying out its functions.” 18 U. S. C. § 2721(b)(1) (1994 ed. and Supp. III). The Act also allows States to divulge drivers’ personal information for any state-authorized purpose relating to the operation of a motor vehicle or public safety, §2721(b)(14); for use in connection with car safety, prevention of car theft, and promotion of driver safety, §2721(b)(2); for use by a business to verify the accuracy of personal information submitted to that business and to prevent fraud or pursue legal remedies if the information that the individual submitted to the business is revealed to have been inaccurate, § 2721(b)(3); in connection with court, agency, or self-regulatory body proceedings, § 2721(b)(4); for research purposes so long as the information is not further disclosed or used to contact the individuals to whom the data pertain, § 2721(b)(5); for use by insurers in connection with claims investigations, antifraud activities, rating or underwriting, § 2721(b)(6); to notify vehicle owners that their vehicle has been towed or impounded, § 2721(b)(7); for use by licensed private investigative agencies or security services for any purpose permitted by the DPPA, §2721(b)(8); and in connection with private toll transportation services, §2721(b)(10).
In the lower courts, the United States also asserted that the DPPA was lawfully enacted pursuant to Congress’ power under §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. See 155 F. 3d 453, 463-465 (1998); 972 F. Supp. 977-979, 986-992 (1997). The District Court and Court of Appeals rejected that argument. See 155 F. 3d, at 465; 972 F. Supp., at 992. The United States’ petition for certiorari and briefs to this Court do not address the §5 issue and, at oral argument, the Solicitor General expressly disavowed any reliance on it.
South Carolina has not asserted that it does not participate in the interstate market for personal information. Rather, South Carolina asks that the DPPA be invalidated in its entirety, even as it is applied to the States acting purely as commercial sellers.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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 Harlan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In Toilet Goods Ass'n. v. Gardner, ante, p. 158, we affirmed a judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit holding that judicial review of a regulation concerning inspection of cosmetics factories was improper in a pre-enforcement suit for injunctive and declaratory judgment relief. The present case is brought here by the Government seeking review of the Court of Appeals’ further holding that review of three other regulations in this type of action was proper. 360 F. 2d 677. We likewise affirm.
For reasons stated in our opinion in Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, ante, p. 136, we find nothing in the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (52 Stat. 1040, as amended), 21 U. S. C. § 301 et seq., that precludes resort to the courts for pre-enforcement relief under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U. S. C. §§ 701-704 (1964 ed., Supp. II), and the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U. S. C. § 2201. And for reasons to follow, we believe the Court of Appeals was correct in holding that the District Court did not err when it refused to dismiss the complaint with respect to these regulations.
The regulations challenged here were promulgated under the Color Additive Amendments of 1960, 74 Stat. 397, 21 U. S. C. §§ 321-376. These statutory provisions, in brief, allow the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and his delegate, the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, 22 Fed. Reg. 1051, 25 Fed. Reg. 8625, to prescribe conditions for the use of color additives in foods, drugs, and cosmetics. The Act requires clearance of every color additive in the form of a regulation prescribing conditions for use of that particular additive, and also certification of each “batch” unless exempted by regulation. A color additive is defined as “a dye, pigment, or other substance . . . [which] when added or applied to a food, drug, or cosmetic, or to the human body or any part thereof, is capable (alone or through reaction with other substance) of imparting color thereto . . . ,” 21 U. S. C. § 321(t)(1).
Under his general rule-making power, § 701 (a), 21 U. S. C. § 371 (a), the Commissioner amplified the statutory definition to include as color additives all diluents, that is, “any component of a color additive mixture that is not of itself a color additive and has been intentionally mixed therein to facilitate the use of the mixture in coloring foods, drugs, or cosmetics or in coloring the human body.” 21 CFR §8.1(m). By including all diluents as color additives, the Commissioner in respondents’ view unlawfully expanded the number of items that must comply with the premarketing clearance procedure.
The Commissioner also included as a color additive within the coverage of the statute any “substance that, when applied to the human body results in coloring . . . unless the function of coloring is purely incidental to its intended use, such as in the case of deodorants. Lipstick, rouge, eye makeup colors, and related cosmetics intended for coloring the human body are ‘color additives.’ ” 21 CFR § 8.1 (f). Respondents alleged that in promulgating this regulation the Commissioner again impermissibly expanded the reach of the statute beyond the clear intention of Congress.
A third regulation challenged by these respondents concerns the statutory exemption for hair dyes that conform to a statutory requirement set out in § 601 (e), 21 U. S. C. § 361 (e). That requirement provides that hair dyes are totally exempt from coverage of the statute if they display a certain cautionary notice on their labels prescribing a “patch test” to determine whether the dye will cause skin irritation on the particular user. The Commissioner’s regulation recognizes that the exemption applies to the Color Additive Amendments, but goes on to declare: “If the poisonous or deleterious substance in the ‘hair dye’ is one to which the caution is inapplicable and for which patch-testing provides no safeguard, the exemption does not apply; nor does the exemption extend to the poisonous or deleterious diluents that may be introduced as wetting agents, hair conditioners, emulsifiers, or other components in a color shampoo, rinse, tint, or similar dual-purpose cosmetics that alter the color of the hair.” 21 CFR § 8.1 (u).
Respondents contend that this regulation too is irreconcilable with the statute: whereas the statute grants an across-the-board exemption to all hair dyes meeting the patch-test notice requirement, the regulation purports to limit that exemption to cover only those dyes as to which the test is “effective.” Moreover, it is said, the regulation appears to limit the exemption only to the coloring ingredient of the dye, and to require clearance for all other components of a particular hair dye.
We agree with the Court of Appeals that respondents’ challenge to these regulations is ripe for judicial review under the standards elaborated in Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, supra, namely the appropriateness of the issues for judicial determination and the immediate severity of the regulations’ impact upon the plaintiffs.
The issue as framed by the parties is a straightforward legal one: what general classifications of ingredients fall within the coverage of the Color Additive Amendments? Both the Government and the respondents agree that for any color additive, distribution is forbidden unless the additive is (1) listed in a Food and Drug Administration regulation as safe for use under prescribed conditions, and (2) comes from a “certified” batch, unless specifically exempted from the certification requirement. The only question raised is what sort of items are “color additives.” The three regulations outlined above purport to elaborate the statutory definition; they include within the statutory term certain classes of items, e. g., diluents, finished cosmetics, and hair dyes, that respondents assert are not within the purview of the statute at all. We agree with the District Court and the Court of Appeals that this is not a situation in which consideration of the underlying legal issues would necessarily be facilitated if they were raised in the context of a specific attempt to enforce the regulations. Rather, “to the extent that they purport to apply premarketing requirements to broad categories like finished products and non-coloring ingredients and define the hair-dye exemption, they appear, prima facie, to be susceptible of reasoned comparison with the statutory mandate without inquiry into factual issues that ought to be first ventilated before the agency.” 360 F. 2d, at 685.
For these reasons we find no bar to consideration by the courts of these issues in their present posture. Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, supra; United States v. Storer Broadcasting Co., 351 U. S. 192; Frozen Food Express v. United States, 351 U. S. 40.
This result is supported as well by the fact that these regulations are self-executing, and have an immediate and substantial impact upon the respondents. See Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, ante, pp. 152-153. The Act, as noted earlier, prescribes penalties for the distribution of goods containing color additives unless they have been cleared both by listing in a regulation and by certification of the particular batch. Faced with these regulations the respondents are placed in a quandary. On the one hand they can, as the Government suggests, refuse to comply, continue to distribute products that they believe do not fall within the purview of the Act, and test the regulations by defending against government criminal, seizure, or injunctive suits against them. We agree with the respondents that this proposed avenue of review is beset with penalties and other impediments rendering it inadequate as a satisfactory alternative to the present declaratory judgment action.
The penalties to which cosmetics manufacturers might be subject are extensive. A color additive that does not meet the premarketing clearance procedure is declared to be “unsafe,” § 706 (a), 21 U. S. C. § 376 (a), and hence “adulterated,” § 601, 21 U. S. C. § 361 (e). It is a “prohibited act” to introduce such material into commerce, § 301, 21 U. S. C. § 331, subject to injunction, § 302, 21 U. S. C. § 332, criminal penalties, § 303, 21 U. S. C. § 333, and seizure of the goods, § 304 (a), 21 U. S. C. § 334 (a). The price of noncompliance is not limited to these formal penalties. Respondents note the importance of public good will in their industry, and not without reason fear the disastrous impact of an announcement that their cosmetics have been seized as “adulterated.”
The alternative to challenging the regulations through noncompliance is, of course, to submit to the regulations and present the various ingredients embraced in them for premarketing clearance. We cannot say on this record that the burden of such a course is other than substantial, accepting, as we must on a motion to dismiss on the pleadings, the allegations of the complaint and supporting affidavits as true. The regulations in this area require separate petitions for listing each color additive, 21 CFR §§ 8.1 (f), 8.1 (m), 8.4 (c), at an initial fee, subject to refunds, of $2,600 a listing. 21 CFR § 8.50 (c). One respondent, Kolmar Laboratories, Inc., in affidavits submitted to the District Court, asserted that more than 2,700 different formulae would fall under the Commissioner’s regulations and would cost some $7,000,000 in listing fees alone. According to the allegations the company also uses 264 diluents which under the challenged regulations must be included as color additives as well. Moreover, a listing is not obtained by mere application alone. Physical and chemical tests must be made and their results submitted with each petition, 21 CFR § 8.4 (c), at a cost alleged by Kolmar of up to $42,000,000. Detailed records must be maintained for each listed ingredient, 21 CFR § 8.26, and batches of listed items must ultimately be certified, again at a substantial fee, 21 CFR § 8.51.
Whether or not these cost estimates are exaggerated it is quite clear that if respondents, failing judicial review at this stage, elect to comply with the regulations and await ultimate judicial determination of the validity of them in subsequent litigation, the amount of preliminary paper work, scientific testing, and recordkeeping will be substantial. The District Court found in denying the motion to dismiss: “I conclude that in a substantial and practical business sense plaintiffs are threatened with irreparable injury by the obviously intended consequences of the challenged regulations, and that to resort to later piecemeal resolution of the controversy in the context of individual enforcement proceedings would be costly and inefficient, not only for the plaintiffs but as well for the public as represented by the defendants.” 235 F. Supp. 648, 651.
Like the Court of Appeals, we think that this record supports those findings and conclusions. And as in Abbott Laboratories, supra, we have been shown no substantial governmental interest that should lead us to reach a conclusion different from the one we have reached in that case. We hold that this action is maintainable.
Affirmed.
Mr. Justice Brennan took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
We use “necessarily” advisedly, because this case arises on a motion to dismiss. The District Court also denied respondents’ motion for summary judgment, and called for an evidentiary hearing. If in the course of further proceedings the District Court is persuaded that technical questions are raised that require a more concrete setting for proper adjudication, a different issue will be presented.
The Court of Appeals observed that “Very likely these figures are exaggerated-” 360 F. 2d, at 682, n. 5. The District Court stated that “While this amount is immediately suspect, there can be little doubt but that the added recordskeeping and laboratory testing costs in themselves will be extremely burdensome for all of the plaintiffs.” 235 F. Supp. 648, 652. (Footnote omitted.)
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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 Thomas
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this case we are asked to decide whether the National Bank for Cooperatives, which Congress has designated as a federally chartered instrumentality of the United States, is exempt from state income taxation. We hold that it is not.
I
In the Farm Credit Act of 1933, 48 Stat. 257, as amended, 12 U. S. seq., institutions within the Farm Credit System to meet the specific credit needs of farmers. Among these institutions were banks for cooperatives, one in each of 12 farm credit districts, and a Central Bank for Cooperatives. These banks were designed to make loans to cooperative associations engaged in marketing farm products, purchasing farm supplies, or furnishing farm services.
Today, the Farm Credit System includes banks for cooperatives, production credit associations, farm credit banks, and federal land bank associations. § 2002(a). By statute, each of these institutions is designated as a “federally chartered instrumentalit[y] of the United States.” §2121 (banks for cooperatives and Central Bank for Cooperatives); §2141 (National Bank for Cooperatives); §§ 2071(a) and (b)(7) (production credit associations); § 2011(a) (farm credit banks); §§ 2091(a) and (b)(4) (federal land bank associations). The Farm Credit Act also addresses the taxation of these institutions. The provision applicable to a bank for cooperatives, the institution at issue in this case, states:
“Each bank for cooperatives and its obligations are instrumentalities of the United States and as such any and all notes, debentures, and other obligations issued by such bank shall be exempt, both as to principal and interest from all taxation (except surtaxes, estate, inheritance, and gift taxes) now or hereafter imposed by the United States or any State, territorial, or local taxing authority, except that interest on such obligations shall be subject to Federal income taxation in the hands of the holder.” § 2134.
Respondent CoBank ACB is the successor to all rights and obligations of the National Bank for Cooperatives, which had been formed in 1989 through the consolidation of 10 district banks for cooperatives and the Central Bank for Cooperatives. The National Bank for Cooperatives filed Missouri corporate income tax returns for the years 1991 through 1994 and paid the taxes shown on those returns. In March 1996, CoBank filed amended returns on behalf of the National Bank for Cooperatives, requesting an exemption from all state income taxes and refunds on the taxes paid — erroneously, it alleged — for 1991 through 1994. Relying on the doctrine of implied tax immunity that originated in McCul-loch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316 (1819), CoBank asserted that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution accords federal instrumentalities immunity from state taxation unless Congress has expressly waived this immunity. CoBank argued that, because the current version of the Farm Credit Act does not expressly waive this immunity, banks for cooperatives are exempt from Missouri’s corporate income tax. The ' Director of Revenue of Missouri denied the request.
On appeal, the Administrative Hearing Commission upheld' the Director of Revenue’s assessment of corporate income tax, because the National Bank for Cooperatives had not established that it was a federal instrumentality statutorily exempt from state taxation of its income. The commission determined that Congress did not provide expressly that banks for cooperatives, in contrast to farm credit banks and federal land bank associations, would have immunity from state income taxation. The commission reasoned that had Congress intended to confer upon banks for cooperatives the same immunity that was provided to farm credit banks and federal land bank associations, it would have done so expressly. For jurisdictional reasons, the commission did not decide CoBank’s constitutional claim.
The Missouri Supreme Court reversed the commission’s decision and held that banks for cooperatives are exempt from state income taxation. Production Credit Assn. of Southeastern Mo. v. Director of Revenue, 10 S. W. 3d 142, 143 (2000). The Missouri Supreme Court held that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution provides federal instrumentalities immunity from state taxation unless Congress has expressly waived this immunity. According to the Missouri Supreme Court, because the current version of the Farm Credit Act is silent as to such institutions’ immunity from state taxation, Congress cannot be said to have expressly consented to state income taxation and, thus, the institutions are exempt from state income taxes. The Missouri,Supreme Court noted that other courts that had addressed the issue of state taxation of member institutions of the Farm Credit System also had concluded that the States could not tax such institutions. Id., at 143-144 (citing Farm Credit Servs. of Central Ark., PCA v. Arkansas, 76 F. 3d 961, 964 (CA8 1996), rev’d on other grounds, 520 U. S. 821 (1997); State v. Farm Credit Servs. of Central Ark., 338 Ark. 322, 327, 994 S. W. 2d 453, 456 (1999), cert. denied, 529 U. S. 1036 (2000); Northwest La. Production Credit Assn. v. State, 98-1995 (La. App. 11/5/99), 746 So. 2d 280).
The New Mexico Court of Appeals and the Indiana Supreme Court have reached the opposite conclusion with respect to state taxation of production credit associations. See Production Credit Assn. of Eastern N. M. v. Taxation and Revenue Dept., 2000 NMCA-021 ¶26, 999 P. 2d 1031, 1038, cert. denied, 128 N. M. 688, 997 P. 2d 820 (2000); Indiana Dept. of State Revenue v. Farm Credit Servs. of Mid-America, ACA, 734 N. E. 2d 551, 560 (Ind. 2000). Since the statutory history and provisions regarding the taxation of production credit associations and banks for cooperatives are virtually identical, compare 12 U. S. C. §2077 with §2134; compare Farm Credit Act of 1971, §2.17, 85 Stat. 602, with §3.13, 85 Stat. 608; compare Farm Credit Amendments Act of 1985, § 205(d)(16), 99 Stat. 1705, with §205(e)(10), 99 Stat. 1705, we granted certiorari to resolve this conflict. 530 U. S. 1260 (2000).
II
Congress has expressly designated banks for cooperatives as “instrumentalities of the United States.” 12 U. S. C. §2121. We have held, in addressing state taxation of contractors conducting business with the United States, that an instrumentality is entitled to implied tax immunity only when it is “so closely connected to the Government that the two cannot realistically be viewed as separate entities.” United States v. New Mexico, 455 U. S. 720, 735 (1982). Relying on New Mexico, the Director of Revenue argues that banks for cooperatives are not “so closely connected” to the United States as to be indistinguishable from the United States, and that banks for cooperatives thus are not entitled to immunity from state taxation. CoBank disagrees with this characterization and asks us to conclude that banks for cooperatives are indeed virtual arms of the United States, worthy of implied tax immunity under McCulloch.
We need not, however, reach this implied immunity question. Implied immunity becomes an issue only when Congress has failed to indicate whether an instrumentality is subject to state taxation. In this case, Congress has provided that banks for cooperatives are subject to state taxation. To be sure, Congress did not include an express statement in the current version of §2134. However, nothing in the statute indicates a repeal of the previous express approval of state taxation, and the structure of the Farm Credit Act indicates by negative implication that banks for cooperatives are not entitled to immunity.
A
Upon their creation in 1933, banks for cooperatives were subject to state income taxation except during periods when the United States held stock in the banks. Farm Credit Act of 1933, § 63, 48 Stat. 267 (“Such banks,... and their income, shall be exempt from all taxation now or hereafter imposed by the United States or by any State, Territorial, or local taxing authority .... The exemption provided herein shall not apply . .. with respect to .. . any . .. Bank for Cooperatives, or its property or income after the stock held in it by the United States has been retired”). Under this statute, as soon as governmental investment in a bank for cooperatives was repaid (as it was for all such banks by 1968), the bank had to pay state income taxes because the exemption from such taxation no longer applied.
When Congress amended the Farm Credit Act in 1971, it did not change the rule that banks for cooperatives are subject to state taxation unless the United States holds stock in the banks. Farm Credit Act of 1971, §3.13, 85 Stat. 608. Although all banks for cooperatives were at the time privately owned, Congress provided that the Governor of the Farm Credit Administration had the authority on behalf of the United States to purchase stock in banks for cooperatives “as a temporary investment in the stock of the institution to help one or several of the banks... to meet emergency credit needs of borrowers.” §4.0, 85 Stat. 609. The 1971 version of § 2134 therefore provided, in relevant part:
“Such banks . . . and their income shall be exempt from all taxation now or hereafter imposed by the United States or by any State, territorial, or local taxing authority .... The exemption provided in the preceding sentence shall apply only for any year or part thereof in which stock in the bank for cooperatives is held by the Governor of the Farm Credit Administration.” §3.13, 85 Stat. 608-609.
In 1985, Congress enacted various amendments to the Act. Among other things, these amendments eliminated the position of Governor of the Farm Credit Administration, discontinued the Farm Credit Administration’s authority to own stock in banks for cooperatives, and included numerous “Technical and Conforming Amendments.” Farm Credit Amendments Act of 1986, §201, 99 Stat. 1688; § 101, 99 Stat. 1678; § 205, 99 Stat. 1703-1707. One of these technical and conforming amendments was the deletion of the two sentences within §2134 that, first, exempted a bank for cooperatives from state taxation and, second, limited that exemption to periods when the Governor held stock in the bank. § 205(e)(10), 99 Stat. 1705, as amended, 12 U. S. C. §2134.
CoBank argues that the deletion of these two sentences altered the States’ ability to tax the income of banks for cooperatives. According to CoBank, because the deletion eliminated the express statutory authorization for such taxation, Congress intended banks for cooperatives to be immune from state taxation under McCulloch’s implied immunity doctrine. We do not share CoBank’s interpretation as to the effect of this amendment, because there is no indication that Congress intended to change the taxation of banks for cooperatives with the 1985 amendments. Since 1933, the States could collect revenue from banks for cooperatives. Nothing in the 1985 amendments expressly changes this. And, it would be surprising, indeed, if Congress had eliminated this important fact sub silentio.
CoBank’s interpretation would mean that Congress made a radical — but entirely implicit — change in the taxation of banks for cooperatives with the 1985 amendment to §2134. The amendment to § 2134 was merely one of numerous "technical and conforming amendments” to the Farm Credit Act. Farm Credit Amendments Act of 1985, § 205, 99 Stat. 1703-1707 (section entitled “Technical and Conforming Amendments”). In fact, the deletion of the sentence within § 2134 referring to the Governor was one of more than 30 deletions of references to the Governor, a position eliminated by the 1985 amendments to the Act. Ibid. . The more logical interpretation of this amendment to §2134 is that Congress merely deleted language that had become superfluous once the United States no longer owned, and no longer could own, stock in banks for cooperatives. This explanation accords with the more than 50-year history of the Farm Credit Act, permitting the States to tax banks for cooperatives except when there was governmental investment in the banks. Had Congress simply deleted the final sentence of § 2134 that limited the exemption while retaining the sentence granting the exemption, we would have no trouble concluding that Congress had eliminated the States’ ability to tax banks for cooperatives. Short of this act, however, we find Congress’ silence insufficient to disrupt the 50-year history of state taxation of banks for cooperatives.
B
In addition, the structure of the Farm Credit Act confirms that banks for cooperatives are subject to state taxation. With respect to each lending institution in the Farm Credit System, the Act contains a taxation provision that specifically delineates the immunity from taxation enjoyed by that entity. For example, farm credit banks and federal land bank associations receive the type of immunity from state taxation that the Missouri Supreme Court held to be implied here for banks for cooperatives. See 12 U. S. C. § 2023 (“The Farm Credit Banks and the capital, reserves, and surplus thereof, and the income derived therefrom, shall be exempt from Federal, State, municipal, and local taxation . . § 2098 (“Each Federal land bank association and the capital, reserves, and surplus thereof, and the income derived therefrom, shall be exempt from Federal, State, municipal, and local taxation .. .”).
By contrast, since their creation in 1933, banks for cooperatives have been granted only limited exemptions from taxation. Had Congress intended to confer upon banks for cooperatives the more comprehensive exemption from taxation that it had provided to farm credit banks and federal land bank associations, it would have done so expressly as it had done elsewhere in the Farm Credit Act. Thus, in light of the structure of the Farm Credit Act — and the explicit grant of immunity to other institutions within the Farm Credit System — Congress’ silence with respect to banks for cooperatives indicates that banks for cooperatives are subject to state taxation.
* * *
The judgment of the Missouri Supreme Court is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
CoBank is an “agricultural credit bank,” which the Farm Credit Administration recognizes as having the combined authority of a bank for cooperatives and a farm credit bank. See 12 CFR §§ 618.8005(c), 619.9020 (2000).
In this consolidated appeal, the Missouri Supreme Court also addressed the taxation of production credit associations and held that such institutions are exempt from state taxation.
See also Farm Credit Act of 1933, § 63, 48 Stat. 267.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | H | sc_issuearea |
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the issue area of the Court's decision. Determine the issue area on the basis of the Court's own statements as to what the case is about. Focus on the subject matter of the controversy rather than its legal basis. In specifying the issue in a legacy case, choose the one that best accords with what today's Court would consider it to be. Choose among the following issue areas: "Criminal Procedure" encompasses the rights of persons accused of crime, except for the due process rights of prisoners. "Civil rights" includes non-First Amendment freedom cases which pertain to classifications based on race (including American Indians), age, indigency, voting, residency, military or handicapped status, gender, and alienage. "First Amendment encompasses the scope of this constitutional provision, but do note that it need not involve the interpretation and application of a provision of the First Amendment. For example, if the case only construe a precedent, or the reviewability of a claim based on the First Amendment, or the scope of an administrative rule or regulation that impacts the exercise of First Amendment freedoms. "Due process" is limited to non-criminal guarantees. "Privacy" concerns libel, comity, abortion, contraceptives, right to die, and Freedom of Information Act and related federal or state statutes or regulations. "Attorneys" includes attorneys' compensation and licenses, along with trhose of governmental officials and employees. "Unions" encompass those issues involving labor union activity. "Economic activity" is largely commercial and business related; it includes tort actions and employee actions vis-a-vis employers. "Judicial power" concerns the exercise of the judiciary's own power. "Federalism" pertains to conflicts and other relationships between the federal government and the states, except for those between the federal and state courts. "Federal taxation" concerns the Internal Revenue Code and related statutes. "Private law" relates to disputes between private persons involving real and personal property, contracts, evidence, civil procedure, torts, wills and trusts, and commercial transactions. Prior to the passage of the Judges' Bill of 1925 much of the Court's cases concerned such issues. Use "Miscellaneous" for legislative veto and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states.
Mr. Justice Jackson
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The questions are whether the United States District Court has inherent power to dismiss a suit pursuant to the doctrine of jorum non conveniens and, if so, whether that power was abused in this case.
The respondent-plaintiff brought this action in the Southern District of New York, but resides at Lynchburg, Virginia, where he operated a public warehouse. He alleges that the petitioner-defendant, in violation of the ordinances of Lynchburg, so carelessly handled a delivery of gasoline to his warehouse tanks and pumps as to cause an explosion and fire which consumed the warehouse building to his damage of 141,889.10, destroyed merchandise and fixtures to his damage of $3,602.40, caused injury to his business and profits of $20,038.27, and burned the property of customers in his custody under warehousing agreements to the extent of $300,000. He asks judgment of $365,529.77 with costs and disbursements, and interest from the date of the fire. The action clearly is one in tort.
The petitioner-defendant is a corporation organized under the laws of Pennsylvania, qualified to do business in both Virginia and New York, and it has designated officials of each state as agents to receive service of process. When sued in New York, the defendant, invoking the doctrine of jorum non conveniens, claimed that the appropriate place for trial is Virginia, where the plaintiff lives and defendant does business, where all events in litigation took place, where most of the witnesses reside, and where both state and federal courts are available to plaintiff and are able to obtain jurisdiction of the defendant.
The case, on its merits, involves no federal question and was brought in the United States District Court solely because of diversity in citizenship of the parties. Because of the character of its jurisdiction and the holdings of and under Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64, the District Court considered that the law of New York as to jorum non conveniens applied and that it required the case to be left to Virginia courts. It therefore dismissed.
The Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed as to the applicability of New York law, took a restrictive view of the application of the entire doctrine in federal courts and, one judge dissenting, reversed. The case is here on certiorari. 328 U. S. 830.
I.
It is conceded that the venue statutes of the United States permitted the plaintiff to commence his action in the Southern District of New York and empower that court to entertain it. But that does not settle the question whether it must do so. Indeed, the doctrine of jorum non conveniens can never apply if there is absence of jurisdiction or mistake of venue.
This Court, in one form of words or another, has repeatedly recognized the existence of the power to decline jurisdiction in exceptional circumstances. As formulated by Mr. Justice Brandéis, the rule is:
“Obviously, the proposition that a court having jurisdiction must exercise it, is not universally true; else the admiralty court could never decline jurisdiction on the ground that the litigation is between foreigners. Nor is it true of courts administering other systems of our law. Courts of equity and of law also occasionally decline, in the interest of justice, to exercise jurisdiction, where the suit is between aliens or non-residents or where for kindred reasons the litigation can more appropriately be conducted in a foreign tribunal.” Canada Malting Co., Ltd., v. Paterson Steamships, Ltd., 285 U. S. 413, 422-23.
We later expressly said that a state court “may in appropriate cases apply the doctrine of forum non conveniens.” Broderick v. Rosner, 294 U. S. 629, 643; Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, 294, n. 5. Even where federal rights binding on state courts under the Constitution are sought to be adjudged, this Court has sustained state courts in a refusal to entertain a litigation between a nonresident and a foreign corporation or between two foreign corporations. Douglas v. New York, N. H. & H. R. R., 279 U. S. 377; Anglo-American Provision Co. v. Davis Provision Co. No. 1, 191 U. S. 373. It has held the use of an inappropriate forum in one case an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce. Davis v. Farmers Co-operative Equity Co., 262 U. S. 312. On substantially jorum non conveniens grounds we have required federal courts to relinquish decision of cases within their jurisdiction where the court would have to participate in the administrative policy of a state. Railroad Commission v. Rowan & Nichols Oil Co., 311 U. S. 570; Burford v. Sun Oil Co., 319 U. S. 315; but cf. Meredith v. Winter Haven, 320 U. S. 228. And most recently we decided Williams v. Green Bay & Western R. R. Co., 326 U. S. 549, in which the Court, without questioning the validity of the doctrine, held it had been applied in that case without justification.
It is true that in cases under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act we have held that plaintiff’s choice of a forum cannot be defeated on the basis of jorum non conveniens. But this was because the special venue act under which those cases are brought was believed to require it. Baltimore & Ohio R. R. v. Kepner, 314 U. S. 44; Miles v. Illinois Central R. R., 315 U. S. 698. Those decisions do not purport to modify the doctrine as to other cases governed by the general venue statutes.
But the court below says that “The Kepner case . . . warned against refusal of jurisdiction in a particular case controlled by congressional act; here the only difference is that congressional act, plus judicial interpretation (under the Neirbo case), spells out the result.” 153 F. 2d at 885. The Federal Employers’ Liability Act, however, which controlled decision in the Kepner case, specifically provides where venue may be had in any suit on a cause of action arising under that statute. What the court below refers to as “congressional act, plus judicial interpretation,” is the general statute of venue in diversity suits, plus our decision that it gives the defendant “a personal privilege respecting the venue, or place of suit, which he may assert, or may waive, at his election,” Neirbo Co. v. Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., 308 U. S. 165, 168. The Federal Employers’ Liability Act, as interpreted by Kepner, increases the number of places where the defendant may be sued and makes him accept the plaintiff’s choice. The Neirbo case is only a declaration that if the defendant, by filing consent to be sued, waives its privilege to be sued at its place of residence, it may be sued in the federal courts at the place where it has consented to be sued. But the general venue statute plus the Neirbo interpretation do not add up to a declaration that the court must respect the choice of the plaintiff, no matter what the type of suit or issues involved. The two taken together mean only that the defendant may consent to be sued, and it is proper for the federal court to take jurisdiction, not that the plaintiff’s choice cannot be questioned. The defendant’s consent to be sued extends only to give the court jurisdiction of the person; it assumes that the court, having the parties before it, will apply all the applicable law, including, in those cases where it is appropriate, its discretionary judgment as to whether the suit should be entertained. In all cases in which the doctrine of jorum non conveniens comes into play, it presupposes at' least two forums in which the defendant is amenable to process; the doctrine furnishes criteria for choice between them.
II.
The principle of forum non conveniens is simply that a court may resist imposition upon its jurisdiction even when jurisdiction is authorized by the letter of a general venue statute. These statutes are drawn with a necessary generality and usually give a plaintiff a choice of courts, so that he may be quite sure of some place in which to pursue his remedy. But the open door may admit those who seek not simply justice but perhaps justice blended with some harassment. A plaintiff sometimes is under temptation to resort to a strategy of forcing the trial at a most inconvenient place for an adversary, even at some inconvenience to himself.
Many of the states have met misuse of venue by investing courts with a discretion to change the place of trial on various grounds, such as the convenience of witnesses and the ends of justice. The federal law contains no such express criteria to guide the district court in exercising its power. But the problem is a very old one affecting the administration of the courts as well as the rights of litigants, and both in England and in this country the common law worked out techniques and criteria for dealing with it.
Wisely, it has not been attempted to catalogue the circumstances which will justify or require either grant or denial of remedy. The doctrine leaves much to the discretion of the court to which plaintiff resorts, and experience has not shown a judicial tendency to renounce one’s own jurisdiction so strong as to result in many abuses.
If the combination and weight of factors requisite to given results are difficult to forecast or state, those to be considered are not difficult to name. An interest to be considered, and the one likely to be most pressed, is the private interest of the litigant. Important considerations are the relative ease of access to sources of proof; availability of compulsory process for attendance of unwilling, and the cost of obtaining attendance of willing, witnesses; possibility of view of premises, if view would be appropriate to the action; and all other practical problems that make trial of a case easy, expeditious and inexpensive. There may also be questions as to the enforcibility of a judgment if one is obtained. The court will weigh relative advantages and obstacles to fair trial. It is often said that the plaintiff may not, by choice of an inconvenient forum, “vex,” “harass,” or “oppress” the defendant by inflicting upon him expense or trouble not necessary to his own right to pursue his remedy. But unless the balance is strongly in favor of the defendant, the plaintiff’s choice of forum should rarely be disturbed.
Factors of public interest also have place in applying the doctrine. Administrative difficulties follow for courts when litigation is piled up in congested centers instead of being handled at its origin. Jury duty is a burden that ought not to be imposed upon the people of a community which has no relation to the litigation. In cases which touch the affairs of many persons, there is reason for holding the trial in their view and reach rather than in remote parts of the country where they can learn of it by report only. There is a local interest in having localized controversies decided at home. There is an appropriateness, too, in having the trial of a diversity case in a forum that is at home with the state law that must govern the case, rather than having a court in some other forum untangle problems in conflict of laws, and in law foreign to itself.
The law of New York as to the discretion of a court to apply the doctrine of forum non conveniens, and as to the standards that guide discretion is, so far as here involved, the same as the federal rule. Murnan v. Wabash R. Co., 246 N. Y. 244, 158 N. E. 508; Wedemann v. United States Trust Co., 258 N. Y. 315, 179 N. E. 712; see Gregonis v. Philadelphia and Reading Co., 235 N. Y. 152, 139 N. E. 223. It would not be profitable, therefore, to pursue inquiry as to the source from which our rule must flow.
III.
Turning to the question whether this is one of those rather rare cases where the doctrine should be applied, we look first to the interests of the litigants.
The plaintiff himself is not a resident of New York, nor did any event connected with the case take place there, nor does any witness, with the possible exception of experts, live there. No one connected with that side of the case save counsel for the plaintiff resides there, and he has candidly told us that he was retained by insurance companies interested presumably because of subrogation. His affidavits and argument are devoted to controverting claims as to defendant’s inconvenience rather than to showing that the present forum serves any convenience of his own, with one exception. The only justification for trial in New York advanced here is one rejected by the district court and is set forth in the brief as follows:
“This Court can readily realize that an action of this type, involving as it does a claim for damages in an amount close to $400,000, is one which may stagger the imagination of a local jury which is surely unaccustomed to dealing with amounts of such a nature. Furthermore, removed from Lynchburg, the respondent will have an opportunity to try this case free from local influences and preconceived notions which may make it difficult to procure a jury which has no previous knowledge of any of the facts herein.”
This unproven premise that jurors of New York live on terms of intimacy with $400,000 transactions is not an assumption we easily make. Nor can we assume that a jury from Lynchburg and vicinity would be “staggered” by contemplating the value of a warehouse building that stood in their region, or of merchandise and fixtures such as were used there, nor are they likely to be staggered by the value of chattels which the people of that neighborhood put in storage. It is a strange argument on behalf of a Virginia plaintiff that the community which gave him patronage to make his business valuable is not capable of furnishing jurors who know the value of the goods they store, the building they are stored in, or the business their patronage creates. And there is no specification of any local influence, other than accurate knowledge of local conditions, that would make a fair trial improbable. The net of this is that we cannot say the District Court was bound to entertain a provincial fear of the provincialism of a Virginia jury. That leaves the Virginia plaintiff without even a suggested reason for transporting this suit to New York.
Defendant points out that not only the plaintiff, but every person who participated in the acts charged to be negligent, resides in or near Lynchburg. It also claims a need to interplead an alleged independent contractor which made the delivery of the gasoline and which is a Virginia corporation domiciled in Lynchburg, that it cannot interplead in New York. There also are approximately 350 persons residing in and around Lynchburg who stored with plaintiff the goods for the damage to which he seeks to recover. The extent to which they have left the community since the fire and the number of them who will actually be needed is in dispute. The complaint alleges that defendant’s conduct violated Lynchburg ordinances. Conditions are said to require proof by firemen and by many others. The learned and experienced trial judge was not unaware that litigants generally manage to try their cases with fewer witnesses than they predict in such motions as this. But he was justified in concluding that this trial is likely to be long and to involve calling many witnesses, and that Lynchburg, some 400 miles from New York, is the source of all proofs for either side, with possible exception of experts. Certainly to fix the place of trial at a point where litigants cannot compel personal attendance and may be forced to try their cases on deposition, is to create a condition not satisfactory to court, jury or most litigants. Nor is it necessarily cured by the statement of plaintiff’s counsel that he will see to getting many of the witnesses to the trial and that some of them “would be delighted to come to New York to testify.” There may be circumstances where such a proposal should be given weight. In others, the offer may not turn out to be as generous as defendant or court might suppose it to be. Such matters are for the District Court to decide in exercise of a sound discretion.
The court likewise could well have concluded that the task of the trial court would be simplified by trial in Virginia. If trial was in a state court, it could apply its own law to events occurring there. If in federal court by reason of diversity of citizenship, the court would apply the law of its own state in which it is likely to be experienced. The course of adjudication in New York federal court might be beset with conflict of laws problems all avoided if the case is litigated in Virginia where it arose.
We are convinced that the District Court did not exceed its powers or the bounds of its discretion in dismissing plaintiff’s complaint and remitting him to the courts of his own community. The Circuit Court of Appeals took too restrictive a view of the doctrine as approved by this Court. Its judgment is
Reversed.
Mr. Justice Reed and Mr. Justice Burton dissent. They do not set out the factual reasons for their dissent since the Court’s affirmance of Roster v. Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Co., decided today, post, p. 518, would control.
Gilbert v. Gulf Oil Corp., 62 F. Supp. 291.
Gilbert v. Gulf Oil Corp., 153 F. 2d 883.
See 28 U. S. C. § 112; Neirbo Co. v. Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., Ltd., 308 U. S. 165.
The doctrine did not originate in federal but in state courts. This Court in recognizing and approving it by name has never indicated that it was rejecting application of the doctrine to law actions which had been an integral and necessary part of evolution of the doctrine. And cf. Slater v. Mexican National R. R., 194 U. S. 120. Wherever it is applied in courts of other jurisdictions, its application does not depend on whether the action is at law, Collard v. Beach, 93 App. Div. 339, 87 N. Y. S. 884; Murnan v. Wabash R. Co., 246 N. Y. 244, 158 N. E. 508; Jackson & Sons v. Lumbermen’s Mutual Casualty Co., 86 N. H. 341, 168 A. 895; or in equity, Langfelder v. Universal Laboratories, 293 N. Y. 200, 56 N. E. 2d 550; Egbert v. Short, [1907] 2 Ch. 205. See footnote 1, Roster v. (American) Lumbermens Mutual Casualty Co., decided this day, post, p. 518.
See Foster, Place of Trial—Interstate Application of Intrastate Methods of Adjustment, 44 Harv. L. Rev. 41, 47, 62.
See Logan v. Bank of Scotland, [1906] 1 K. B. 141; cf. La Société du Gaz de Paris v. La Société Anonyme de Navigation "Les Armateurs Français,” [1926] Sess. Cas. (H. L.) 13. Collard v. Beach, 93 App. Div. 339, 87 N. Y. S. 884; Jackson & Sons v. Lumbermen’s Mutual Casualty Co., 86 N. H. 341, 168 A. 895; see Pietraroia v. New Jersey & Hudson R. R. Co., 197 N. Y. 434, 91 N. E. 120; Great Western Railway Co. v. Miller, 19 Mich. 305.
See Dainow, The Inappropriate Forum, 29 111. L. Rev. 867, 889.
See Blair, The Doctrine of Forum Non Conveniens in Anglo-American Law, 29 Col. L. Rev. 1.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
F. Attorneys
G. Unions
H. Economic Activity
I. Judicial Power
J. Federalism
K. Interstate Relations
L. Federal Taxation
M. Miscellaneous
N. Private Action
Answer: | 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 White
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The issue presented in thesé suits is whether § 101 (a) (3) of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 providing that the dues of an international union “shall not. be increased . . . except ... by majority vote of the delegates voting at a regular convention” prohibits the vote of delegates at a national convention of the union, as authorized by its constitution, from being weighted and counted according to the number of members in the local that the delegate represents.
I.
The petitioner American Federation of Musicians (Federation) is an international labor organization comprising 675 locals in the United States and Canada. As .with numerous other national and international labor organizations having many scattered locals. of varying size, Federation’s constitution and bylaws have long authorized alternative methods of ascertaining the vote of the delegates representing the locals at a union convention. Each local is entitled to one delegate for each 100 members or major fraction thereof, not to exceed three delegates from any one local. Federation’s bylaws permit a voice vote of the delegates attending a convention in all cases, which is the method often used on routine noncontroversial matters. When amendments to the union constitution or bylaws are at issue, however, the delegates representing the locals, upon a roll call vote, may cast as many votes as there are members in the respective locals. A roll call vote is required upon the demand of 10 delegates or five locals. All amendments to the bylaws and constitution approved by a roll call vote are required under the constitution to be referred to a convention committee which may approve or veto the proposal.
At petitioner’s 1963 annual convention, a resolution increasing the per capita dues of all members, approximately 255,000, was submitted to the delegates. After the chairman ruled that two voice votes of the delegates were inconclusive, a delegate speaking on behalf of five locals requested a roll call vote in accordance with Federation’s constitution. The rules governing a roll call vote were explained to the delegates. Delegates were to cast as many votes as there were members in the local that they represented. If the delegates from a given local were in disagreement, the total votes of that local were to be divided among the delegates. The roll call was taken and the recommendation carried by some 44,326 votes, with less than one-half of the delegates present voting in favor of the proposal.
Respondents, members of several -locals whose delegates voted for or against the resolution at the convention, brought these suits against Federation and one of its locals to have the resolution declared null and void and its. implementation enjoined. In the District Court, summary judgment in the consolidated actions was rendered for the respondent union members. 223 F. Supp. 27 (D. C. S. D. N. Y.). Finding that the material facts about the enactment of the dues resolution in regard to the issue under § 101 (a)(3)(B) were not in dispute, that court ruled that weighted voting did not comply with § 101 (a)(3)(B)’s requirement of approval by “majority-vote of the delegates voting at a regular convention.” Á divided Court of Appeals affirmed. 326 F. 2d 26 (C. A. 2d Cir.). Although noting that weighted voting “is to all appearances the most ‘democratic’ method, in the sense that each member is duly ‘represented,’ ” it held that the plain language of § 101 (a)(3)(B) requires that each delegate be allowed but one vote regardless of the number of members he represents. The question being an important one of' first impression under the LMRDA, we granted certiorari. 376 U. S. 942. We hold that § 101 (a)(3)(B) does not prohibit a weighted-voting system under which delegates cast a number of votes equal to the membership of the local union from which they are elected.
II.
Under § 101 (a) (3) (B) an international union may increase membership dues or levy an assessment by majority voté of the members voting in a membership referendum, by majority vote of the members of the executive board, effective, however, only to the next regular conventipn, or “by majority vote of the delegates voting at a . . . convention.” The quoted language, it is said, authorizes only one system of voting: a head count of the delegates at a convention. Just as each member and each executive board member is entitled to one vote, so too each delegate may cast only his single vote. There cannot be a majority vote of the delegates voting, the argument proceeds, unless a delegate casts but one vote, no more or less, and the affirmative votes cast add up to a majority of the delegates voting. So far the argument is based solely upon what is said to be the literal meaning of the statutory language; there is no suggestion that § 101 (a) (3) (B) embodies an accepted or preferable system of representation by delegates or that the provision requires any set number of delegates at a convention or any particular relationship between the size of the local and the number of representatives at the convention.
We do not think this is the only fair import of the language in § 101 (a)(3)(B). The section requires a majority vote of the delegates voting. It does not state that a dues increase must be approved by a majority of the delegates voting at a convention. The respondents’ construction renders the key word “vote” entirely superfluous, although that word describes what is to be counted to determine a majority. The provision on its face prescribes only by whom the vote must be cast — a delegate to a convention — and the proportion of votes needed for passage — a majority of the votes cast. The statute does require that those voting at a convention be delegates, but it says nothing about the number of votes each delegate may cast. Where the “vote” cast at a convention is weighted according to the number of people the delegate represents, that vote, we think, is a vote of a delegate. We believe that a majority vote so determined in favor of a dues increase is approval by majority vote of the delegates voting at a. convention.
Whatever doubts may be left by sole and plenary reliance on plain meaning are fully resolved by consideration of the legislative history behind § 101 (a)(3)(B) and of other provisions of the'LMRDA. This section had its genesis in Senator McClellan’s proposals in S. 1137, which would have required a “general vote” on rules relating to the rate of dues and initiation fees and would have required that the vote of delegates at a convention “be numerically-equivalent, or proportionate, to the number of the members of [each] constituent unit.” I Leg. Hist. 269, 278. Although S. 1137 was not reported out by the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Senator McClellan’s requirement that the voting strength of convention delegates be proportionate to the size of their constituency is significant for the reason that it was the outgrowth of the extensive hearings held by the McClellan Committee which uncovered substantial evidence of various forms of internal misgovernment and abuses in several labor organizations. The findings of this committee became the primaryfoasis for the many bills that followed its investigations, an amalgam of which ultimately became the LMRDA. In light of the fact that then as now many large unions had provisions for weighted voting by delegates at a convention, it is very clear that weighted voting was not thought to be one of these abuses or forms of misgovernment.
Senate bill No. 1555, the Kennedy-Ervin bill, was favorably reported out of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare without any Bill of Rights for union members, now Title I of the Act, of which the provision relating to dues is a part. Senator McClellan soon introduced a comprehensive Bill of Rights provision as an amendment to S. 1555, which was adopted in the Senate by a vote of 47 to 46. In respect to financial exactions, this amendment placed a flat limit on initiation fees and required for approval of a dues increase a majority vote of the members in the case of a local union and a “majority vote of the delegates present” at a general meeting in the case of a national or international union. It is not without significance that this language is susceptible of the same construction that is urged here in respect to § 101 (a)(3)(B), for it is quite clear that the author of this provision, Senator McClellan, did not intend to prohibit weighted voting. A few days later the Kuchel amendment, substituting another Bill of Rights provision, was adopted by a vote of 77 to 14. This amendment eliminated some of the more stringent requirements of Senator McClellan’s Bill of Rights, such as the limit on initiation fees, and dealt with voting procedures for approval of a dues increase by a local and an international union in more detail; in the case of a local, majority, approval of the members was necessary, while in the case of an international, a “majority vote at a regular convention” was required. Under this language, which was said to be “taken almost verbatim from ... the McClellan amendment,” it is very clear that no question of .the permissibility of weighted voting could be raised. And no one expressed the thought that the McClellan pror posal on voting was being altered in this or any other respect. S.' 1555 passed the Senate with the Kuchel substitute as Title I.
The changes in § 101 (a) (3) (B) in the House support the conclusion that this provision does not bar weighted voting. S. 1555^'as passed.by the Senate, became the focus of testimony before a Joint Subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor. The gist of the objections to § 101 (a) (3) (B) was that it failed explicitly to allow other methods of ensuring membership participation on proposals of an international or national union to increase dues, and it was too rigid in disallowing action by an executive board of the international or national union. The Committee responded'by expanding the permissible methods of raising dues. As reported out in the Elliott bill, § 101 (a)(3)(B) allowed an international to increase dues by majority vote of the members, by majority Vote of the members of an executive board, effective only until the next convention, and “by majority vote of the delegates voting at a regular convention.” The Committee version was incorporated in identical language in the Landrum-Griffin bill, which prevailed on the floor of the House. In respect to his bill, Representative Griffin observed generally, that the “bill of rights in our substitute is essentially the bill of rights in the form passed by the [Seriate]. It guarantees to union members, subject to reasonable rules and regulations, . . . that their dues and initiation fees will not be increased arbitrarily.” The House Joint Conference Committee Report confirmed the view that the Senate and House versions of Title I contain “similar provisions.” Senator Goldwater, a member of the Joint Committee that considered S. 1555 and Landrum-Griffin, stated in his textual analysis of both bills that the House version of § 101 (a) (3) (B) was technically preferable and that the differences were in respect to the expanded methods of approval under the House bill and the applicability of the House bill only to dues increases rather than all changes. And Senator Kuchel, the author of the Senate version of the dues proposal, and a conferee, stated that the Landrum-Griffin bill “adopted substantially the same bill of rights language” as he had earlier authored. In light of the fact that the House changes were in the direction of affording unions more latitude for raising dues and the fact that- no one, in the House or Senate, perceived that the House version would restrict voting at -a convention to a head count of the delegates, we think it abundantly clear that § 101 (a)(3)(B) was intended to guarantee a member’s “right to participate in deciding upon the rate of dues, initiation fees, and assessments,” H. R. Rep. No. 741 on H. R. 8342, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., at 7, I Leg. Hist. 759, 765, but not to bar a well-known system of voting embodied in many union constitutions which well serves that end.
Other provisions of the LMRDA confirm this view. Section 101 (a)(3)(B) is a part of Title I, entitled the “Bill of Rights of Members of Labor Organizations.” This Title guarantees to every member of a labor organi-: zation equal rights and privileges to vote, to attend meetings, and to participate in the deliberations and business of such meetings. Section 101 (a)(3)(B) forms a part of this framework by requiring participation by all mem-, bers, either directly or through their elected representatives, on certain union matters thought to be of special importance. We find nothing to indicate that Congress thought this objective would be better fulfilled by allowing a delegate to cast one vote, regardless of the size of his constituency, than by permitting him to cast a.vote equal to the number of members he represents. As a part of the Act’s, purpose of protecting and fostering participation by the rank and file in. the affairs of the union, Title IV contains elaborate statutory safeguards for the election of union officers. But nothing in that title prohibits election of union officers by delegates voting, at a convention in accordance with the number of members they represent. Respondents do not demonstrate any differences between weighted voting for officers of the union and weighted voting on changes in financial exactions that would support the asserted difference in voting procedures applicable to each. It is argued that delegates may not ascertain or follow the wishes of the members in respect to dues and assessments. But few issues are more likely to arouse active opposition and general membership participation than a proposal to increase dues. Further, this argument is too broad, for it questions the validity of a system of representative union government and has little to do with the manner in which the representative’s vote is counted. Section 101 (a)(3)(B), as well as Title IV, authorizes a representative system of. government and does not require a town meeting for action by an international or national union. To that end Congress recognized the key role of elections in the process of union self-government and surrounded it with many safeguards to provide a fair election and to guarantee membership participation.
The pervading premise of both these titles is that there should be full and active participation by the rank and file in the affairs of the union. We think our decision today that the vote of an elected delegate may reflect the size of his constituency is wholly consistent with that purpose.
Accordingly, the judgments below are reversed and the case is remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Goldberg took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
73 Stat. 519, 522, 29 ü. S. C. § 411 (a) (3) (1958 ed., Supp. V).
“(3) Dues, initiation fees, and'assessments. — Except in the case of a federation of national or international labor organizations, the rates of dues and initiation fees payable by members of any labor organization in effect on September 14, .1959 shah not be increased, and no general or special assessment shall be levied upon such members, except—
“(A)-in thé case of a local labor organization, (i) by majority vote by secret ballot of the members in good standing voting at- a general or special membership meeting, after reasonable notice of the intention to vote upon such question, or (ii) by majority vote of the members in- good standing voting in a membership referendum conducted by secret ballot; or
“ (B) in the case of, a labor organization, other than a local labor organization or .a federation of national or international labor organizations, (i) by majority vote of the delegates voting at a regular convention, or at a special convention of such labor organization held upon not less than thirty days’ written notice to the principal office of'each local or constituent labor organization entitled to such notice, or (ii) by majority vote of the members in good standing of such labor organization voting in a membership referendum conducted by secret ballot, or (iii) by majority vote of the members of the executive board or similar governing body of such labor organization, pursuant to express authority contained in the constitution and bylaws of such labor organization: Provided, That such action on the part of the executive board or similar governing body shall be effective only until the next regular convention, of such labor organization.”
Article 5 of Federation’s constitution provides:
“All Locals of this Federation of one hundred and fifty members or less shall be entitled to one delegate. All Locals shall be entitled to one delegate for each one hundred members or a major fraction thereof, not.exceeding three delegates for any one Local, but each Local shall be entitled to one vote for each one hundred or major fraction thereof, but no Local shall cast more than ten votes, and the number each Local is entitled to shall be computed from the last report made on January 1st before the convention by the Local, according to the books of the Treasurer. On questions affecting a change in the laws, each Local may, upon roll call, cast as many votes as it has members, as per book of the Treasurer, A. F. of M. All laws so passed shall be referred to a convention committee consisting of the Executive Board, A. F. of M., and chairmen of all committees, who may sanction or veto same, their action to be final. Roll call shall be demandable and had under this Article on demand of ten delegates or five Locals.”
S. 1137, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., I Legislative History of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, 260, 269, 278 (1959) (hereafter Leg. Hist.).
Section 101 (5) of S. 1137 provided:
“Freedom from arbitrary financial exactions. — Rules relating to the rate of dues and initiation fees, or the levying of any special or general assessment, may be adopted or amended only after due notice and by general vote.”
Section 104 (2) of S. 1137 provided:
“YotiNG at conventions. — All delegates elected or designated by the constituent units of an international labor organization ... to represent such constituent unit at any meeting or convention held by such labor organization shall have a vote in all elections for officers and upon other matters brought before such meeting or convention for action or ratification by vote, which vote shall be numerically equivalent, or proportionate, to the number of the members of such constituent unit as disclosed by the roster of members . . .
The Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor and Management Field.
That the findings of the McClellan Committee were significant in the drafting of the LMRDA is well reflected in the Committee Reports.
“The committee reported bill is primarily designed to correct the abuses which have crept into labor and management and which have been the subject of investigation by the Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor and Management Field for the past several years. . . . The committee-reported bill is based on the legislation approved by the Senate last year and thus it too implements the remaining recommendations of the McClellan committee.” S. Rep. No. 187, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., at 2, I Leg. Hist. 397, 398.
“The committee reported bill is primarily intended to correct the abuses which have crept into the labor and management field and which have been the subject of investigation by the Senate Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor and Management Field for the past several years.” H. R. Rep. No. 741, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., at 1,1 Leg. Hist. 759. See also 105 Cong. Rec. 15530, II Leg. Hist. 1566 (remarks of Congressman Griffin).
Leiserson, American Trade Union Democracy 129-132 (1959).
“Except in the few unions where locals are entitled to but one delegate with one vote, the number of votes in a convention is always greater than the number of delegates. Although proxy voting is generally prohibited (Longshoremen, and Blacksmiths are exceptions), every convention delegate casts not only his own vote, but a share of the voting strength of the local union he represents as well. This voting strength varies with the size of the locals, and the total vote of a local union may be divided among its delegates or one of them may cast all its votes. The basis of representation and the methods of basing voting strength on size of local memberships differ among the unions . . . .” Id., at 129-130.
See also United States Department of Labor, Bulletin No. 1239, Union Constitution Provisions: Election and Tenure of National and International Union Officers, at 15 (1958); National Industrial Conference Board, Handbook of Union Government, Structure and Procedures, Studies in Personnel Policy, No. 150, at 73 (1955).
S. 1555, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., I Leg. Hist. 338:
105 Cong. Rec. 6475, II Leg. Hist. 1102.
105 Cong. Rec. 6693-6694, 6727, II Leg. Hist. 1220-1221, 1239.
105 Cong. Rec. 6719, II Leg. Hist. 1232.
S. 1555, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., I Leg.
Hearings before a Joint Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., on H. R. 3540, H. R. 3302, H. R. 4473, and H. R. 4474 and Related Bills Regarding Labor-Management Reform Legislation.
Id., at 1517-1518.
H. R. 8342, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., I Leg. Hist. 687, 697.
H. R. 8400, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., 105 Cong. Rec. 15859-15860, II Leg. Hist. 1527, 1691-1692.
105 Cong. Rec. 15530, II Leg. Hist. 1566.
H. R. Rep. No. 1147 on S. 1555, 86th Cong.,1st Sess., I Leg. Hist. 934r-935.
105 Cong. Rec. 16487, II Leg. Hist. 1357.
105 Cong. Rec. 16760, II Leg. Hist. 1373.
See United States Department of Labor, Technical Assistance Aid No. 5, Electing Union Officers (rev. Sept. 1962).
The Senate Committee, Report accompanying S. 1555 stated in this regard:
“Under the NationalL^bor Relations Act and the Railway Labor Act, a labor organization has vast responsibility for economic welfare of the individual members whom it represents. Union members have a vital interest, therefore, in the policies and conduct of union affairs. To the extent that union procedures are democratic they, permit the individual to share in the formulation of union policy. This is not to say that in order to have democratically responsive unions, it is necessary to have each union member make decisions on detail as in a New England town meeting. What is required is the opportunity to influence policy and leadership by free and periodic elections.” S. Rep. No. 187, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., at 6-7, I Leg. Hist. 397, 402-403.
Question: What is the issue area of the decision?
A. Criminal Procedure
B. Civil Rights
C. First Amendment
D. Due Process
E. Privacy
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.
Syllabus*
Police officers observed a suspect in a violent robbery run into an apartment building, and heard screams coming from one of the apartments. They knocked on the apartment door, which was answered by Roxanne Rojas, who appeared to be battered and bleeding. When the officers asked her to step out of the apartment so that they could conduct a protective sweep, petitioner came to the door and objected. Suspecting that he had assaulted Rojas, the officers removed petitioner from the apartment and placed him under arrest. He was then identified as the perpetrator in the earlier robbery and taken to the police station. An officer later returned to the apartment and, after obtaining Rojas' oral and written consent, searched the premises, where he found several items linking petitioner to the robbery. The trial court denied petitioner's motion to suppress that evidence, and he was convicted. The California Court of Appeal affirmed. It held that because petitioner was not present when Rojas consented to the search, the exception to permissible warrantless consent searches of jointly occupied premises that arises when one of the occupants present objects to the search, Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 126 S.Ct. 1515, 164 L.Ed.2d 208, did not apply, and therefore, petitioner's suppression motion had been properly denied.
Held : Randolph does not extend to this situation, where Rojas' consent was provided well after petitioner had been removed from their apartment. Pp. 1131 - 1137.
(a) Consent searches are permissible warrantless searches, Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 228, 231-232, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 36 L.Ed.2d 854, and are clearly reasonable when the consent comes from the sole occupant of the premises. When multiple occupants are involved, the rule extends to the search of the premises or effects of an absent, nonconsenting occupant so long as "the consent of one who possesses common authority over [the] premises or effects" is obtained. United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 170, 94 S.Ct. 988, 39 L.Ed.2d 242. However, when "a physically present inhabitan[t]" refuses to consent, that refusal "is dispositive as to him, regardless of the consent of a fellow occupant." Randolph, 547 U.S., at 122-123, 126 S.Ct. 1515. A controlling factor in Randolph was the objecting occupant's physical presence. See, e.g.,id., at 106, 108, 109, 114, 126 S.Ct. 1515. Pp. 1131 - 1134.
(b) Petitioner contends that, though he was not present when Rojas consented, Randolph nevertheless controls, but neither of his arguments is sound. Pp. 1134 - 1137.
(1) He first argues that his absence should not matter since it occurred only because the police had taken him away. Dictum in Randolph suggesting that consent by one occupant might not be sufficient if "there is evidence that the police have removed the potentially objecting tenant from the entrance for the sake of avoiding a possible objection," 547 U.S., at 121, 126 S.Ct. 1515, is best understood to refer to situations in which the removal of the potential objector is not objectively reasonable. Petitioner does not contest the fact that the police had reasonable grounds for his removal or the existence of probable cause for his arrest. He was thus in the same position as an occupant absent for any other reason. Pp. 1134 - 1135.
(2) Petitioner also argues that the objection he made while at the threshold remained effective until he changed his mind and withdrew it. This is inconsistent with Randolph in at least two important ways. It cannot be squared with the "widely shared social expectations" or "customary social usage" upon which Randolph 's holding was based. 547 U.S., at 111, 121, 126 S.Ct. 1515. It also creates the sort of practical complications that Randolph sought to avoid by adopting a "formalis[tic]" rule, id., at 121, 126 S.Ct. 1515,e.g., requiring that the scope of an objection's duration and the procedures necessary to register a continuing objection be defined. Pp. 1134 - 1137.
(c) Petitioner claims that his expansive interpretation of Randolph would not hamper law enforcement because in most cases where officers have probable cause to arrest a physically present objector they also have probable cause to obtain a warrant to search the premises that the objector does not want them to enter. But he misunderstands the constitutional status of consent searches, which are permissible irrespective of the availability of a warrant. Requiring officers to obtain a warrant when a warrantless search is justified may interfere with law enforcement strategies and impose an unmerited burden on the person willing to consent to an immediate search. Pp. 1136 - 1137.
208 Cal.App.4th 100, 145 Cal.Rptr.3d 51, affirmed.
ALITO, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C.J., and SCALIA, KENNEDY, THOMAS, and BREYER, JJ., joined. SCALIA, J., and THOMAS, J., filed concurring opinions. GINSBURG, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which SOTOMAYOR and KAGAN, JJ., joined.
Jeffrey L. Fisher, Stanford, CA, for Petitioner.
Louis W. Karlin, Los Angeles, CA, for Respondent.
Joseph R. Palmore, for the United States as amicus curiae, by special leave of the Court, supporting the respondent.
Jeffrey L. Fisher, Counsel of Record, Pamela S. Karlan, Stanford Law School, Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, Stanford, CA, Kevin K. Russell, Goldstein & Russell, P.C., Washington, DC, Gerald P. Peters, Law Office of Gerald Philip Peters, Thousand Oaks, CA, for Petitioner.
Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General of California, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Donald E. DeNicola, Deputy State Solicitor General, Lance E. Winters, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Steven E. Mercer, Deputy Attorney General, Louis W. Karlin, Deputy Attorney General, Counsel of Record, Los Angeles, CA, Counsel for Respondent.
Justice ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court.
Our cases firmly establish that police officers may search jointly occupied premises if one of the occupants 1 consents. See United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 94 S.Ct. 988, 39 L.Ed.2d 242 (1974). In Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 126 S.Ct. 1515, 164 L.Ed.2d 208 (2006), we recognized a narrow exception to this rule, holding that the consent of one occupant is insufficient when another occupant is present and objects to the search. In this case, we consider whether Randolph applies if the objecting occupant is absent when another occupant consents. Our opinion in Randolph took great pains to emphasize that its holding was limited to situations in which the objecting occupant is physically present. We therefore refuse to extend Randolph to the very different situation in this case, where consent was provided by an abused woman well after her male partner had been removed from the apartment they shared.
I
A
The events involved in this case occurred in Los Angeles in October 2009. After observing Abel Lopez cash a check, petitioner Walter Fernandez approached Lopez and asked about the neighborhood in which he lived. When Lopez responded that he was from Mexico, Fernandez laughed and told Lopez that he was in territory ruled by the "D.F.S.," i.e., the "Drifters" gang. App. 4-5. Petitioner then pulled out a knife and pointed it at Lopez' chest. Lopez raised his hand in self-defense, and petitioner cut him on the wrist.
Lopez ran from the scene and called 911 for help, but petitioner whistled, and four men emerged from a nearby apartment building and attacked Lopez. After knocking him to the ground, they hit and kicked him and took his cell phone and his wallet, which contained $400 in cash.
A police dispatch reported the incident and mentioned the possibility of gang involvement, and two Los Angeles police officers, Detective Clark and Officer Cirrito, drove to an alley frequented by members of the Drifters. A man who appeared scared walked by the officers and said: " '[T]he guy is in the apartment.' " Id., at 5. The officers then observed a man run through the alley and into the building to which the man was pointing. A minute or two later, the officers heard sounds of screaming and fighting coming from that building.
After backup arrived, the officers knocked on the door of the apartment unit from which the screams had been heard. Roxanne Rojas answered the door. She was holding a baby and appeared to be crying. Her face was red, and she had a large bump on her nose. The officers also saw blood on her shirt and hand from what appeared to be a fresh injury. Rojas told the police that she had been in a fight. Officer Cirrito asked if anyone else was in the apartment, and Rojas said that her 4-year-old son was the only other person present.
After Officer Cirrito asked Rojas to step out of the apartment so that he could conduct a protective sweep, petitioner appeared at the door wearing only boxer shorts. Apparently agitated, petitioner stepped forward and said, " 'You don't have any right to come in here. I know my rights.' " Id., at 6. Suspecting that petitioner had assaulted Rojas, the officers removed him from the apartment and then placed him under arrest. Lopez identified petitioner as his initial attacker, and petitioner was taken to the police station for booking.
Approximately one hour after petitioner's arrest, Detective Clark returned to the apartment and informed Rojas that petitioner had been arrested. Detective Clark requested and received both oral and written consent from Rojas to search the premises.2 In the apartment, the police found Drifters gang paraphernalia, a butterfly knife, clothing worn by the robbery suspect, and ammunition. Rojas' young son also showed the officers where petitioner had hidden a sawed-off shotgun.
B
Petitioner was charged with robbery, Cal.Penal Code Ann. § 211 (West 2008), infliction of corporal injury on a spouse, cohabitant, or child's parent, § 273.5(a), possession of a firearm by a felon, § 12021(a)(1)(West 2009), possession of a short-barreled shotgun, § 12020(a)(1), and felony possession of ammunition, § 12316(b)(1).
Before trial, petitioner moved to suppress the evidence found in the apartment, but after a hearing, the court denied the motion. Petitioner then pleaded nolo contendere to the firearms and ammunition charges. On the remaining counts-for robbery and infliction of corporal injury-he went to trial and was found guilty by a jury. The court sentenced him to 14 years of imprisonment.
The California Court of Appeal affirmed. 208 Cal.App.4th 100, 145 Cal.Rptr.3d 51 (2012). Because Randolph did not overturn our prior decisions recognizing that an occupant may give effective consent to search a shared residence, the court agreed with the majority of the federal circuits that an objecting occupant's physical presence is "indispensible to the decision in Randolph." Id., at 122, 145 Cal.Rptr.3d, at 66.3 And because petitioner was not present when Rojas consented, the court held that petitioner's suppression motion had been properly denied. Id., at 121, 145 Cal.Rptr.3d, at 65.
The California Supreme Court denied the petition for review, and we granted certiorari. 569 U.S. ----, 133 S.Ct. 2388, 185 L.Ed.2d 1103 (2013).
II
A
The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and provides that a warrant may not be issued without probable cause, but "the text of the Fourth Amendment does not specify when a search warrant must be obtained." Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. ----, ----, 131 S.Ct. 1849, 1856, 179 L.Ed.2d 865 (2011). Our cases establish that a warrant is generally required for a search of a home, Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403, 126 S.Ct. 1943, 164 L.Ed.2d 650 (2006), but "the ultimate touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is 'reasonableness,' " ibid.; see also Michigan v. Fisher, 558 U.S. 45, 47, 130 S.Ct. 546, 175 L.Ed.2d 410 (2009) ( per curiam ). And certain categories of permissible warrantless searches have long been recognized.
Consent searches occupy one of these categories. "Consent searches are part of the standard investigatory techniques of law enforcement agencies" and are "a constitutionally permissible and wholly legitimate aspect of effective police activity." Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 228, 231-232, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973). It would be unreasonable-indeed, absurd-to require police officers to obtain a warrant when the sole owner or occupant of a house or apartment voluntarily consents to a search. The owner of a home has a right to allow others to enter and examine the premises, and there is no reason why the owner should not be permitted to extend this same privilege to police officers if that is the owner's choice. Where the owner believes that he or she is under suspicion, the owner may want the police to search the premises so that their suspicions are dispelled. This may be particularly important where the owner has a strong interest in the apprehension of the perpetrator of a crime and believes that the suspicions of the police are deflecting the course of their investigation. An owner may want the police to search even where they lack probable cause, and if a warrant were always required, this could not be done. And even where the police could establish probable cause, requiring a warrant despite the owner's consent would needlessly inconvenience everyone involved-not only the officers and the magistrate but also the occupant of the premises, who would generally either be compelled or would feel a need to stay until the search was completed. Michigan v. Summers, 452 U.S. 692, 701, 101 S.Ct. 2587, 69 L.Ed.2d 340 (1981).4
While it is clear that a warrantless search is reasonable when the sole occupant of a house or apartment consents, what happens when there are two or more occupants? Must they all consent? Must they all be asked? Is consent by one occupant enough? The Court faced that problem 40 years ago in United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 94 S.Ct. 988, 39 L.Ed.2d 242 (1974).
In that case, Matlock and a woman named Graff were living together in a house that was also occupied by several of Graff's siblings and by her mother, who had rented the house. While in the front yard of the house, Matlock was arrested for bank robbery and was placed in a squad car. Although the police could have easily asked him for consent to search the room that he and Graff shared, they did not do so. Instead, they knocked on the door and obtained Graff's permission to search. The search yielded incriminating evidence, which the defendant sought to suppress, but this Court held that Graff's consent justified the warrantless search. As the Court put it, "the consent of one who possesses common authority over premises or effects is valid as against the absent, nonconsenting person with whom that authority is shared." Id., at 170, 94 S.Ct. 988.
In Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 110 S.Ct. 2793, 111 L.Ed.2d 148 (1990), the Court reaffirmed and extended the Matlock holding. In Rodriguez, a woman named Fischer told police officers that she had been assaulted by Rodriguez in what she termed " 'our' apartment." 497 U.S., at 179, 110 S.Ct. 2793. She also informed the officers that Rodriguez was asleep in the apartment, and she then accompanied the officers to that unit. When they arrived, the officers could have knocked on the door and awakened Rodriguez, and had they done so, Rodriguez might well have surrendered at the door and objected to the officers' entry. Instead, Fischer unlocked the door, the officers entered without a warrant, and they saw drug paraphernalia and containers filled with white powder in plain view.
After the search, the police learned that Fischer no longer resided at the apartment, and this Court held that she did not have common authority over the premises at the time in question. The Court nevertheless held that the warrantless entry was lawful because the police reasonably believed that Fischer was a resident. Id., at 188-189, 110 S.Ct. 2793.
B
While consent by one resident of jointly occupied premises is generally sufficient to justify a warrantless search, we recognized a narrow exception to this rule in Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 126 S.Ct. 1515, 164 L.Ed.2d 208 (2006). In that case, police officers responded to the Randolphs' home after receiving a report of a domestic dispute. When the officers arrived, Janet Randolph informed the officers that her estranged husband, Scott Randolph, was a cocaine user and that there were "items of drug evidence" in the house. Id., at 107, 126 S.Ct. 1515 (internal quotation marks omitted). The officers first asked Scott for consent to search, but he "unequivocally refused." Ibid. The officers then turned to Janet, and she consented to the search, which produced evidence that was later used to convict Scott for possession of cocaine.
Without questioning the prior holdings in Matlock and Rodriguez, this Court held that Janet Randolph's consent was insufficient under the circumstances to justify the warrantless search. The Court reiterated the proposition that a person who shares a residence with others assumes the risk that "any one of them may admit visitors, with the consequence that a guest obnoxious to one may nevertheless be admitted in his absence by another." 547 U.S., at 111, 126 S.Ct. 1515. But the Court held that " a physically present inhabitant's express refusal of consent to a police search [of his home] is dispositive as to him, regardless of the consent of a fellow occupant." Id., at 122-123, 126 S.Ct. 1515 (emphasis added).
The Court's opinion went to great lengths to make clear that its holding was limited to situations in which the objecting occupant is present. Again and again, the opinion of the Court stressed this controlling factor. See id., at 106, 126 S.Ct. 1515 ("present at the scene"); ibid. ("physically present"); id., at 108, 126 S.Ct. 1515 ("a co-tenant who is present"); id., at 109, 126 S.Ct. 1515 ("physically present"); id., at 114, 126 S.Ct. 1515 ("a present and objecting co-tenant"); id., at 119, 126 S.Ct. 1515 (a co-tenant "standing at the door and expressly refusing consent"); id., at 120, 126 S.Ct. 1515 ("a physically present resident"), id., at 121, 126 S.Ct. 1515 ("a physically present fellow tenant objects"); ibid. ("[A] potential defendant with self-interest in objecting is at the door and objects"); id., at 122, 126 S.Ct. 1515 ("[A] physically present inhabitant's express refusal of consent to a police search is dispositive as to him"). The Court's opinion could hardly have been clearer on this point, and the separate opinion filed by Justice BREYER, whose vote was decisive, was equally unambiguous. See id., at 126, 126 S.Ct. 1515 (concurring) ("The Court's opinion does not apply where the objector is not present 'and object[ing]' ").
III
In this case, petitioner was not present when Rojas consented, but petitioner still contends that Randolph is controlling. He advances two main arguments. First, he claims that his absence should not matter since he was absent only because the police had taken him away. Second, he maintains that it was sufficient that he objected to the search while he was still present. Such an objection, he says, should remain in effect until the objecting party "no longer wishes to keep the police out of his home." Brief for Petitioner 8. Neither of these arguments is sound.
A
We first consider the argument that the presence of the objecting occupant is not necessary when the police are responsible for his absence. In Randolph, the Court suggested in dictum that consent by one occupant might not be sufficient if "there is evidence that the police have removed the potentially objecting tenant from the entrance for the sake of avoiding a possible objection." 547 U.S., at 121, 126 S.Ct. 1515. We do not believe the statement should be read to suggest that improper motive may invalidate objectively justified removal. Hence, it does not govern here.
The Randolph dictum is best understood not to require an inquiry into the subjective intent of officers who detain or arrest a potential objector but instead to refer to situations in which the removal of the potential objector is not objectively reasonable. As petitioner acknowledges, see Brief for Petitioner 25, our Fourth Amendment cases "have repeatedly rejected" a subjective approach. Brigham City, 547 U.S., at 404, 126 S.Ct. 1943 (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted). "Indeed, we have never held, outside limited contexts such as an 'inventory search or administrative inspection ..., that an officer's motive invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the Fourth Amendment.' " King, 563 U.S., at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 1859.
Petitioner does not claim that the Randolph Court meant to break from this consistent practice, and we do not think that it did. And once it is recognized that the test is one of objective reasonableness, petitioner's argument collapses. He does not contest the fact that the police had reasonable grounds for removing him from the apartment so that they could speak with Rojas, an apparent victim of domestic violence, outside of petitioner's potentially intimidating presence. In fact, he does not even contest the existence of probable cause to place him under arrest. We therefore hold that an occupant who is absent due to a lawful detention or arrest stands in the same shoes as an occupant who is absent for any other reason.
This conclusion does not "make a mockery of Randolph," as petitioner protests. Brief for Petitioner 9. It simply accepts Randolph on its own terms. The Randolph holding unequivocally requires the presence of the objecting occupant in every situation other than the one mentioned in the dictum discussed above.
B
This brings us to petitioner's second argument, viz., that his objection, made at the threshold of the premises that the police wanted to search, remained effective until he changed his mind and withdrew his objection. This argument is inconsistent with Randolph 's reasoning in at least two important ways. First, the argument cannot be squared with the "widely shared social expectations" or "customary social usage" upon which the Randolph holding was based. See 547 U.S., at 111, 121, 126 S.Ct. 1515. Explaining why consent by one occupant could not override an objection by a physically present occupant, the Randolph Court stated:
"[I]t is fair to say that a caller standing at the door of shared premises would have no confidence that one occupant's invitation was a sufficiently good reason to enter when a fellow tenant stood there saying, 'stay out.' Without some very good reason, no sensible person would go inside under those conditions." Id., at 113, 126 S.Ct. 1515.
It seems obvious that the calculus of this hypothetical caller would likely be quite different if the objecting tenant was not standing at the door. When the objecting occupant is standing at the threshold saying "stay out," a friend or visitor invited to enter by another occupant can expect at best an uncomfortable scene and at worst violence if he or she tries to brush past the objector. But when the objector is not on the scene (and especially when it is known that the objector will not return during the course of the visit), the friend or visitor is much more likely to accept the invitation to enter. 5 Thus, petitioner's argument is inconsistent with Randolph 's reasoning.
Second, petitioner's argument would create the very sort of practical complications that Randolph sought to avoid. The Randolph Court recognized that it was adopting a "formalis[tic]" rule, but it did so in the interests of "simple clarity" and administrability. Id., at 121, 122, 126 S.Ct. 1515.
The rule that petitioner would have us adopt would produce a plethora of practical problems. For one thing, there is the question of duration. Petitioner argues that an objection, once made, should last until it is withdrawn by the objector, but such a rule would be unreasonable. Suppose that a husband and wife owned a house as joint tenants and that the husband, after objecting to a search of the house, was convicted and sentenced to a 15-year prison term. Under petitioner's proposed rule, the wife would be unable to consent to a search of the house 10 years after the date on which her husband objected. We refuse to stretch Randolph to such strange lengths.
Nor are we persuaded to hold that an objection lasts for a "reasonable" time. "[I]t is certainly unusual for this Court to set forth precise time limits governing police action," Maryland v. Shatzer, 559 U.S. 98, 110, 130 S.Ct. 1213, 175 L.Ed.2d 1045 (2010), and what interval of time would be reasonable in this context? A week? A month? A year? Ten years?
Petitioner's rule would also require the police and ultimately the courts to determine whether, after the passage of time, an objector still had "common authority" over the premises, and this would often be a tricky question. Suppose that an incarcerated objector and a consenting co-occupant were joint tenants on a lease. If the objector, after incarceration, stopped paying rent, would he still have "common authority," and would his objection retain its force? Would it be enough that his name remained on the lease? Would the result be different if the objecting and consenting lessees had an oral month-to-month tenancy?
Another problem concerns the procedure needed to register a continuing objection. Would it be necessary for an occupant to object while police officers are at the door? If presence at the time of consent is not needed, would an occupant have to be present at the premises when the objection was made? Could an objection be made pre-emptively? Could a person like Scott Randolph, suspecting that his estranged wife might invite the police to view his drug stash and paraphernalia, register an objection in advance? Could this be done by posting a sign in front of the house? Could a standing objection be registered by serving notice on the chief of police?
Finally, there is the question of the particular law enforcement officers who would be bound by an objection. Would this set include just the officers who were present when the objection was made? Would it also apply to other officers working on the same investigation? Would it extend to officers who were unaware of the objection? How about officers assigned to different but arguably related cases? Would it be limited by law enforcement agency?
If Randolph is taken at its word-that it applies only when the objector is standing in the door saying "stay out" when officers propose to make a consent search-all of these problems disappear.
In response to these arguments, petitioner argues that Randolph 's requirement of physical presence is not without its own ambiguity. And we acknowledge that if, as we conclude, Randolph requires presence on the premises to be searched, there may be cases in which the outer boundary of the premises is disputed. The Court confronted a similar problem last Term in Bailey v. United States, 568 U.S. ----, 133 S.Ct. 1031, 185 L.Ed.2d 19 (2013), but despite arguments similar to those now offered by petitioner, the Court adopted a rule that applies only when the affected individual is near the premises being searched. Having held that a premises rule is workable in that context, we see no ground for reaching a different conclusion here.
C
Petitioner argues strenuously that his expansive interpretation of Randolph would not hamper law enforcement because in most cases where officers have probable cause to arrest a physically present objector they also have probable cause to search the premises that the objector does not want them to enter, see Brief for Petitioner 20-23, but this argument misunderstands the constitutional status of consent searches. A warrantless consent search is reasonable and thus consistent with the Fourth Amendment irrespective of the availability of a warrant. Even with modern technological advances, the warrant procedure imposes burdens on the officers who wish to search, the magistrate who must review the warrant application, and the party willing to give consent. When a warrantless search is justified, requiring the police to obtain a warrant may "unjustifiably interfer[e] with legitimate law enforcement strategies." King, 563 U.S., at ----, 131 S.Ct., at 1860. Such a requirement may also impose an unmerited burden on the person who consents to an immediate search, since the warrant application procedure entails delay. Putting the exception the Court adopted in Randolph to one side, the lawful occupant of a house or apartment should have the right to invite the police to enter the dwelling and conduct a search. Any other rule would trample on the rights of the occupant who is willing to consent. Such an occupant may want the police to search in order to dispel "suspicion raised by sharing quarters with a criminal." 547 U.S., at 116, 126 S.Ct. 1515; see also Schneckloth, 412 U.S., at 243, 93 S.Ct. 2041 (evidence obtained pursuant to a consent search "may insure that a wholly innocent person is not wrongly charged with a criminal offense"). And an occupant may want the police to conduct a thorough search so that any dangerous contraband can be found and removed. In this case, for example, the search resulted in the discovery and removal of a sawed-off shotgun to which Rojas' 4-year-old son had access.
Denying someone in Rojas' position the right to allow the police to enter her home would also show disrespect for her independence. Having beaten Rojas, petitioner would bar her from controlling access to her own home until such time as he chose to relent. The Fourth Amendment does not give him that power.
* * *
The judgment of the California Court of Appeal 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: | 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.
Certiorari, 348 U. S. 894, to the Superior Court of California, Appellate Department, County of Santa Clara. Argued October 17, 1955. Decided October 24,1955.
Per Curiam:
A majority of the Court are of opinion that the record in this case fails to establish that a federal question is presented and for that reason the writ of certiorari is dismissed.
Mr. Justice Reed and Mr. Justice Douglas dissent. The Chief Justice did not participate 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: | I | sc_issuearea |
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