Source: http://supreme.nolo.com/us/379/306/case.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 07:15:42+00:00

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The petitioners, who are Negroes, were convicted for violations of state trespass statutes for participating in "sit-ins" at lunch counters of retail stores. It was conceded that the lunch counter operations would probably come within the coverage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was passed subsequent to the convictions and the affirmances thereof in the state courts.
1. The Act creates federal statutory rights which, under the Supremacy Clause, must prevail over any conflicting state laws. Pp. 379 U. S. 310-312.
2. These convictions, being on direct review at the time the Act made the conduct no longer unlawful, must abate. Pp. 379 U. S. 312-317.
(a) Had these been federal convictions, they would have abated, Congress presumably having intended to avoid punishment no longer furthering a legislative purpose, and the general federal saving statute being applicable to a statute like this which substitutes a right for what was previously criminal. Pp. 379 U. S. 312-314.
(b) Though these were state convictions, their abatement is likewise required not only under the Supremacy Clause, and because the pending convictions are contrary to the legislative purpose of the Act, but also because abatement is a necessary part of every statute which repeals criminal legislation. Pp. 379 U. S. 314-317.
241 S.C. 420, 128 S.E.2d 907; 236 Ark. 596, 367 S.W.2d 750, judgments vacated and charges ordered dismissed.
These are "sit-in" cases that came here from the highest courts of South Carolina and Arkansas, respectively. Each of those courts affirmed convictions based upon state trespass statutes against petitioners, who are Negroes, for participating in "sit-in" demonstrations in the luncheon facilities of retail stores in their respective States. We granted certiorari in each of the cases, 377 U.S. 988, 989, and consolidated them for argument. The petitioners asserted both in the state courts and here the denial of rights, privileges, and immunities secured by the Fourteenth Amendment; in addition, they claim here that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 241, passed subsequent to their convictions and the affirmances thereof in the state courts, abated these actions.
or to refuse to leave immediately after having entered therein. Petitioner's companion died subsequently. The conviction of petitioner was affirmed by both the Court of General Sessions and the Supreme Court of South Carolina, 241 S.C. 420, 128 S.E.2d 907 (1962).
Lupper v. Arkansas, No. 5, involves a group of Negroes who entered the department store of Gus Blass Company in Little Rock. The group went to the mezzanine tea room of the store at the busy luncheon hour, seated themselves, and requested service which was refused. Within a few minutes, the group, including petitioners, was advised that Blass reserved the right to refuse service to anyone, and was not prepared to serve them at that time. Upon being requested to leave, the petitioners refused. The police officers who were summoned located petitioners on the first floor of the store and arrested them. The officers' testimony that petitioners admitted the whole affair was denied. The prosecutions in the Little Rock Municipal Court resulted in convictions of petitioners based upon § 41-1433, Ark.Stat.Ann. (1964 Repl. Vol.), which prohibits a person from remaining on the premises of a business establishment after having been requested to leave by the owner or manager thereof. On appeal to the Pulaski Circuit Court, a trial de novo resulted in verdicts of guilty, and the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed, 236 Ark. 596, 367 S.W.2d 750 (1963), sub nom. Briggs v. State.
We hold that the convictions must be vacated and the prosecutions dismissed. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids discrimination in places of public accommodation, and removes peaceful attempts to be served on an equal basis from the category of punishable activities. Although the conduct in the present cases occurred prior to enactment of the Act, the still-pending convictions are abated by its passage.
lunch counter operation "probably would" come under the Act. Finally, neither respondent asks for a remand to determine the facts as to coverage of the respective lunch counters. [Footnote 2] In the light of such a record and the legislative history indicating that Congress intended to cover retail store lunch counters, see 110 Cong.Rec. 1519-1520, we hold that the Act covers both the McCrory and the Blass lunch counter operations.
3. The Provisions of the Act.
Under the Civil Rights Act, petitioners' conduct could not be the subject of trespass prosecutions, federal or state, if it had occurred after the enactment of the statute.
"[a]ll persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation,"
privilege secured by section 201 or 202, or (c) punish or attempt to punish any person for exercising or attempting to exercise any right or privilege secured by section 201 or 202."
"This plainly means that a defendant in a criminal trespass, breach of the peace, or other similar case can assert the rights created by 201 and 202, and that State Courts must entertain defenses grounded upon these provisions. . . ."
federal law and the application of an otherwise valid state enactment, Hill v. Florida, 325 U. S. 538 (1945). There can be no question that this was the intended result here in light of § 203(c). The present convictions and the command of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are clearly in direct conflict. The only remaining question is the effect of the Act on judgments rendered, but not finalized, before its passage.
4. Effect of the Act upon the Prosecutions.
Last Term, in Bell v. Maryland, 378 U. S. 226, we noted the existence of a body of federal and state law to the effect that convictions on direct review at the time the conduct in question is rendered no longer unlawful by statute, must abate. We consider first the effect the Civil Rights Act would have on petitioners' convictions if they had been federal convictions, and then the import of the fact that these are state, and not federal, convictions. We think it is clear that the convictions, if federal, would abate.
be necessary to set aside a judgment, rightful when rendered, but which cannot be affirmed but in violation of law, the judgment must be set aside."
"Prosecution for crimes is but an application or enforcement of the law, and, if the prosecution continues, the law must continue to vivify it."
291 U. S. 291 U.S. 217 at 291 U. S. 226. Although Chambers specifically left open the question of the effect of its rule on cases where final judgment was rendered prior to ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment and petition for certiorari sought thereafter, such an extension of the rule was taken for granted in the per curiam decision in Massey v. United States, supra, handed down shortly after Chambers.
applicable as part of the background against which Congress acts. Thus, we deem it irrelevant that Congress made no allusion to the problem in enacting the Civil Rights Act.
Nor do we believe that the provisions of the federal saving statute, 61 Stat. 635, 1 U.S.C. § 109 (1958 ed.), would nullify abatement of a federal conviction. In Chambers, a case where the cause for punishment was removed by a repeal of the constitutional basis for the punitive statute, the Court was quite certain as to this. See 291 U.S. at 291 U. S. 224 and n. 2, involving the identical statute. The federal saving statute was originally enacted in 1871, 16 Stat. 432. It was meant to obviate mere technical abatement such as that illustrated by the application of the rule in Tynen, decided in 1871. There, a substitution of a new statute with a greater schedule of penalties was held to abate the previous prosecution. In contrast, the Civil Rights Act works no such technical abatement. It substitutes a right for a crime. So drastic a change is well beyond the narrow language of amendment and repeal. It is clear therefore that, if the convictions were under a federal statute, they would be abated.
the mill" repealer. Since the provisions of the Act would abate all federal prosecutions, it follows that the same rule must prevail under the Supremacy Clause, which requires that a contrary state practice or state statute must give way. Here, the Act intervened before either of the judgments under attack was finalized. Just as in federal cases, abatement must follow in these state prosecutions. Rather than a retroactive intrusion into state criminal law, this is but the application of a longstanding federal rule, namely, that, since the Civil Rights Act substitutes a right for a crime any state statute or its application to the contrary must, by virtue of the Supremacy Clause, give way under the normal abatement rule covering pending convictions arising out of a preenactment activity. The great purpose of the civil rights legislation was to obliterate the effect of a distressing chapter of our history. This demands no less than the application of a normal rule of statutory construction to strike down pending convictions inconsistent with the purposes of the Act.
Far from finding a bar to the application of the rule where a state statute is involved, we find that our construction of the effect of the Civil Rights Act is more than statutory. It is required by the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. See Kesler v. Department of Safety, 369 U. S. 153, 369 U. S. 172 (1962); Hill v. Florida, 325 U. S. 538 (1945). Future state prosecutions under the Act being unconstitutional, and there being no saving clause in the Act itself, convictions for preenactment violations would be equally unconstitutional, and abatement necessarily follows.
of a principle since embodied in the law of the land. The convictions were based on the theory that the rights of a property owner had been violated. However, the supposed right to discriminate on the basis of race, at least in covered establishments, was nullified by the statute. Under such circumstances, the actionable nature of the acts in question must be viewed in the light of the statute and its legislative purpose.
We find yet another reason for applying the Chambers rule of construction. In our view, Congress clearly had the power to extend immunity to pending prosecutions. Some might say that to permit these convictions to stand would have no effect on interstate commerce, which we have held justified the adoption of the Act. But, even if this be true, the principle of abatement is so firmly imbedded in our jurisprudence as to be a necessary and proper part of every statute working a repealer of criminal legislation. Where Congress sets out to regulate a situation within its power, the Constitution affords it a wide choice of remedies. This being true, the only question remaining is whether Congress exercised its power in the Act to abate the prosecutions here. If we held that it did not, we would then have to pass on the constitutional question of whether the Fourteenth Amendment, without the benefit of the Civil Rights Act, operates of its own force to bar criminal trespass convictions where, as here, they are used to enforce a pattern of racial discrimination. As we have noted, some of the Justices joining this opinion believe that the Fourteenth Amendment does so operate; others are of the contrary opinion. Since this point is not free from doubt, and since as we have found Congress has ample power to extend the statute to pending convictions, we avoid that question by favoring an interpretation of the statute which renders a constitutional decision unnecessary.
In short, now that Congress has exercised its constitutional power in enacting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and declared that the public policy of our country is to prohibit discrimination in public accommodations as therein defined, there is no public interest to be served in the further prosecution of the petitioners. And, in accordance with the long established rule of our cases, they must be abated, and the judgment in each is therefore vacated, and the charges are ordered dismissed.
* Together with No. 5, @Lupper et al. v. Arkansas, on certiorari to the Supreme Court of Arkansas.
"(b) Each of the following establishments which serves the public is a place of public accommodation within the meaning of this title if its operations affect commerce . . ."
"(2) any restaurant, cafeteria, lunchroom, lunch counter, soda fountain, or other facility principally engaged in selling food for consumption on the premises, including, but not limited to, any such facility located on the premises of any retail establishment . . ."
"(c) The operations of an establishment affect commerce within the meaning of this title if . . . it serves or offers to serve interstate travelers. . . ."
In Lupper, the State's brief says, "a remand of these cases would not reap any . . . benefits." At 13.
Some of us believe that the substantive rights granted by the Act here, i.e., freedom from discrimination in places of public accommodation, are also included in the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment, see concurring opinions in Bell v. Maryland, 378 U. S. 226; others take the position that the Amendment creates no such substantive rights, see dissenting opinion in Bell v. Maryland,supra. No such question is involved here, and we do not pass upon it in any manner. We deal only with the statutory rights created in the Act.
In Bell v. Maryland, supra, we dealt with the problem arising when a state enactment intervened prior to the finalizing of state criminal trespass convictions. Because we were dealing with the effect of a state statute on a state conviction prior to the Act's passage, we felt that the state courts should be allowed to pass on the question. Here we have an intervening federal statute, and, in attempting to judge its effect on a state conviction, we are faced with a federal, not a state, question. Because of this distinction, we do not feel that remand is required or desirable.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, whom MR. JUSTICE GOLDBERG joins, concurring.
right, albeit prior to the enactment of the present legislation, and that this Court should not put its imprimatur on such state prosecutions, whenever they arose.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, validly, I think, [Footnote 2/1] made it unlawful for certain restaurants thereafter to refuse to serve food to colored people because of their color. The Court now interprets the Act as a command making it unlawful for the States to prosecute and convict "sit-in" demonstrators who had violated valid state trespass laws prior to passage of the federal Act. The idea that Congress has power to accomplish such a result has no precedent, so far as I know, in the nearly 200 years that Congress has been in existence.
out of the streets and restaurants and into the courts, which Congress has granted power to provide an adequate and orderly judicial remedy.
"The repeal of any statute shall not have the effect to release or extinguish any penalty, forfeiture, or liability incurred under such statute unless the repealing Act shall so expressly provide, and such statute shall be treated as still remaining in force for the purpose of sustaining any proper action or prosecution for the enforcement of such penalty, forfeiture, or liability. . . ."
States, 208 U. S. 452; United States v. Reisinger, 128 U. S. 398; United States v. Ulrici, 3 Dillon 532, 28 Fed.Cas. 328 (No. 16,594) (C.C.E.D.Mo.) (opinion of Mr. Justice Miller on circuit), and, by any fair reading, it is broad enough to wipe out any and every application of the common law rule which it was designed to do away with, unless judge-made rules of construction have some sort of superiority over congressionally enacted statutes. [Footnote 2/3] In United States v. Chambers, 291 U. S. 217, and Massey v. United States, 291 U. S. 608, the only cases which the Court cites as authority for disregarding the federal saving statute, this Court made clear that the saving statute was not involved in any way, since the abatement there was by force of the Twenty-first Amendment, and, of course, an amendment to the Constitution supersedes an Act of Congress. See 291 U.S. at 291 U. S. 223-224. By today's discovery of a "long established rule of our cases," the Court has now put back on Congress the burden of spelling out expressly, statute by statute, in laws passed hereafter that it does not want to upset convictions for past crimes, a burden which Congress renounced nearly 100 years ago, and which it did not know it had when it passed the 1964 Act.
Court judicially declares that "there is no public interest to be served" in upholding the convictions of these trespassers, a conclusion of policy which I had thought was only for legislative bodies to decide. See Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726.
"To interfere with the penal laws of a State, where they are not leveled against the legitimate powers of the Union, but have for their sole object the internal government of the country, is a very serious measure which Congress cannot be supposed to adopt lightly, or inconsiderately. The motives for it must be serious and weighty. It would be taken deliberately, and the intention would be clearly and unequivocally expressed."
"An act, such as that under consideration ought not, we think, to be so construed as to imply this intention unless its provisions were such as to render the construction inevitable."
volumes weighing well over half a hundred pounds, in which every conceivable aspect and application of the 1964 Act were discussed ad infinitum, not even once did a single sponsor, proponent. or opponent of the Act intimate a hope or express a fear that the Act was intended to have the effect which the Court gives it today.
See my concurring opinion in Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, ante, p. 379 U. S. 268.
Sections 201-203, 78 Stat. 243-244, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000a to 2000a-2 (1964 ed.).
"The federal saving statute was originally enacted in 1871, 16 Stat. 432. It was meant to obviate mere technical abatement such as that illustrated by the application of the rule in Tynen, decided in 1871. There, a substitution of a new statute with a greater schedule of penalties was held to abate the previous prosecution."
Ante, p. 379 U. S. 314. There is no support for this statement in the language of the statute, in its legislative history, or in subsequent decisions under it.
The Court holds that these state trespass convictions, occurring before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, must be set aside by virtue of the federal doctrine of criminal abatement. This remarkable conclusion finds no support in reason or authority.
"By the repeal of the 13th section of the act of 1813, all criminal proceedings taken under it fell. There can be no legal conviction, nor any valid judgment pronounced upon conviction, unless the law creating the offence be at the time in existence. By the repeal, the legislative will is expressed that no further proceedings be had under the act repealed."
The doctrine has its origins in the English common law, see, e.g., Rex v. Cator, 4 Burr. 2026, 98 Eng.Rep. 56; King v. Davis, 1 Leach Crown Cases 306 (3d ed), 168 Eng.Rep. 238, and has been embraced in American state and federal jurisprudence.
I know of no case which suggests that the doctrine of abatement can be applied to affect the existing legislation of another jurisdiction. Until today the doctrine has always been applied only with respect to legislation of the same sovereignty, e.g., Rex v. Cator, supra; King v. Davis, supra; United States v. Tynen, supra; 9 U. S. United States, 5 Cranch 281. And all of the cases relied on by the Court are of that character.
The Supremacy Clause cannot serve as a vehicle for extending the federal doctrine of abatement beyond proper bounds. That provision of the Constitution would come into play only if it appeared from the Civil Rights Act itself or from its legislative history and setting that Congress' purpose was to displace past, as well as prospective, applications of state laws touching upon the matters with which the federal statute is concerned. For me, this would have to be made to appear in unmistakable terms, for such a purpose would represent an exercise of federal legislative power wholly unprecedented in our history.
of this Act, or any provision thereof."
Whether or not state trespass laws as applied to "racial trespasses" occurring after the effective date of the Civil Rights Act are to be deemed inconsistent with the provisions of § 203(c) of the Act, [Footnote 3/4] a question which I find unnecessary to decide at this juncture, there is certainly no such plain inconsistency between § 203(c) and state trespass laws as applied in those situations arising before the passage of the Civil Rights Act as would justify this Court's attributing to Congress a purpose to preempt state law in such instances.
Moreover, the contrary conclusion would confront us with constitutional questions of the gravest import, for the legislative record is barren of any evidence showing that giving effect to past state trespass convictions would result in placing any burden on present interstate commerce. [Footnote 3/5] Such evidence, at the very least, would be a prerequisite to the validity of any purported exercise of the Commerce power in this regard. See Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, ante, p. 379 U. S. 241; Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U. S. 294. There is, indeed, nothing to indicate that Congress even adverted to such a question.
Finally, the Court's decision cannot be justified under the rule of avoidance of constitutional questions, see Court's opinion, ante, p. 379 U. S. 316. That rule does not reach to the extent of enabling this Court to fabricate nonconstitutional grounds of decision out of whole cloth.
be pressed to the point of disingenuous evasion."
Concluding that these trespass convictions are not abated, I would affirm the judgments in both of these cases for the reasons given by MR. JUSTICE Black in his dissenting opinion in Bell v. Maryland, 378 U. S. 226, 378 U. S. 318, in which I joined.
"The repeal of any statute shall not have the effect to release or extinguish any penalty, forfeiture, or liability incurred under such statute unless the repealing Act shall so expressly provide, and such statute shall be treated as still remaining in force for the purpose of sustaining any proper action or prosecution for the enforcement of such penalty, forfeiture, or liability. The expiration of a temporary statute shall not have the effect to release or extinguish any penalty, forfeiture, or liability incurred under such statute unless the temporary statute shall so expressly provide, and such statute shall be treated as still remaining in force for the purpose of sustaining any proper action or prosecution for the enforcement of such penalty, forfeiture, or liability."
I accept the Court's conclusion that this section has no application here, but only because there has been no repeal or amendment of an existing federal statute.
Arkansas, for example, has a saving clause, Ark.Stat.Ann. §§ 1-103, 1-104, similar to 1 U.S.C. § 109, which expresses a state policy to save the conviction of Lupper. See Mack v. Connor, 220 Ga. 450, 139 S.E.2d 286 (Ga.Sup.Ct.1964). Cf. Bell v. Maryland, 378 U. S. 226, conviction affirmed on remand, 236 Md. 356, 204 A.2d 54; rehearing granted and argument deferred "awaiting the outcome of similar issues now pending before the United States Supreme Court," quite obviously referring to these cases.
See Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 19 U. S. 443, quoted in my Brother BLACK's opinion, ante, p. 379 U. S. 321.
Quoted in the Court's opinion, ante, pp. 379 U. S. 310-311.
No attempt is made by the Court to justify the retroactive application of the Civil Rights Act under the Fourteenth Amendment.
See also International Association of Machinists v. Street, 367 U. S. 740, 367 U. S. 797 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting).
The chief difference between these cases and Bell v. Maryland, 378 U. S. 226, is that here federal, rather than state, legislation has intervened while the convictions were under review. As I understand the Court's opinion, it first asserts that, if these had been federal convictions, the passage of the Civil Rights Act would have abated them under principles of federal decisional law. It then proceeds to apply those asserted principles to these state convictions through the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. If I thought that Congress had provided that such nonfinal state convictions are to be abated, I would find no constitutional difficulty in joining the Court's disposition of these cases under the Supremacy Clause. But Congress was silent on the subject, and I am unable to subscribe to the Court's reasoning.
In Bell v. Maryland, we said that a State's abatement policy was for the State to determine. Arkansas and South Carolina might hold that this supervening federal legislation provides a compelling reason to abate these proceedings, but I can find nothing in the legislation or in the Constitution which requires these States to do so.
Arkansas and South Carolina is no clearer. Like Maryland, Arkansas has a saving statute similar to the federal counterpart. And like Maryland, South Carolina apparently has a policy favoring abatement when state criminal statutes are repealed while prosecutions are pending. See State v. Spencer, 177 S.C. 346, 181 S.E. 217.
For the reasons stated in the Court's opinion in Bell v. Maryland, I would vacate the judgments and remand the cases to the state courts for reconsideration in the light of the supervening federal legislation.
Absent the Civil Rights Act, there was, in my view, no constitutional infirmity in the state court convictions. Bell v. Maryland, 378 U. S. 226, 378 U. S. 318 (dissenting opinion of MR. JUSTICE BLACK). And if Congress had the power to abate these convictions, I am confident it had no intent of exercising it by passing the new law. There is nothing but silence to indicate that Congress meant to void outstanding judgments of state courts. I would not, for several reasons, read so much into nothing as the Court attempts to do.
seems to me to point to the conclusion exactly opposite to that reached by the Court.
Finally, had Congress intended to ratify massive disobedience to the law, so often attended by violence, I feel sure it would have said so in unmistakable language. The truth is that it is only judicial rhetoric to blame this result upon Congress. Given a discernable congressional decision, I would be happy to follow it, as it is our task to do, absent constitutional limitations. But, without it, we have another case. Whether persons or groups should engage in nonviolent disobedience to laws with which they disagree perhaps defies any categorical answer for the guidance of every individual in every circumstance. But whether a court should give it wholesale sanction is a wholly different question which calls for only one answer.

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