Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/419/7
Timestamp: 2013-12-20 04:44:42
Document Index: 761663524

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 3402', '§ 3402', '§ 3402', '§ 7421', '§ 3402', '§ 7421', '§ 9', '§ 3402']

UNITED STATES v. AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE et al. | Supreme Court | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews UNITED STATES v. AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE et al.
419 U.S. 7 (95 S.Ct. 13, 42 L.Ed.2d 7)
Decided: Oct. 29, 1974
of the portion of their wages required to be withheld under § 3402 of the Internal Revenue Code.
The District Court ordered a refund of amounts tendered by the employer but not withheld by it, since the Government had also levied on the employees for these taxes and hence had received a double payment of the amount due. The Government does not contest this portion of the District Court's judgment.
The District Court also enjoined the United States from enforcing § 3402 against the employer with respect to 51.6% of the required withholding from the employees' salaries, holding that § 3402 as applied to this amount constituted an unconstitutional abridgment of the right to free exercise of religion. The United States appeals this portion of the judgment.
The District Court's opinion and order were entered before this Court handed down its opinions in Bob Jones University v. Simon, 416 U.S. 725, 94 S.Ct. 2038, 40 L.Ed.2d 496 (1974), and Commissioner v. 'Americans United' Inc., 416 U.S. 752, 94 S.Ct. 2053, 40 L.Ed.2d 518 (1974).
The Anti-Injunction Act, 26 U.S.C. 7421(a), provides that no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed.
In Bob Jones, supra, we rejected an appeal to create judicial exceptions to § 7421(a) other than that carved out in Enochs v. Williams Packing & Navigation Co., Inc., 370 U.S. 1, 82 S.Ct. 1125, 8 L.Ed.2d 292 (1962). We noted that Williams Packing was the 'capstone' of judicial construction of the Act and spelled an end to cyclical departures from the Act's plain meaning. Bob Jones University v. Simon, supra, 416 U.S. at 742, 94 S.Ct. at 2048. In 'Americans United' Inc., supra, we stated that a pre-enforcement injunction against the assessment or collection of taxes could be granted only if it were clear that the Government could in no circumstances ultimately prevail on the merits, and that equity jurisdiction existed. 'Unless both conditions are met, a suit for preventive injunctive relief must be dismissed.' Commissioner v. 'Americans United' Inc., 416 U.S., at 758, 94 S.Ct., at 2057.
The employees concede, and the District Court found, that § 3402 withholding is a method of collection of taxes within the meaning of § 7421(a).
In Bob Jones we left open the question of whether injunctive relief as to future collection would be proper as a form of ancillary relief in a refund suit where the taxpayer prevailed on the merits, in order to avoid the necessity of continuous subsequent 'backward-looking refund suits.' 416 U.S., at 748 n. 22, 94 S.Ct., at 2051 n. 22. That situation is not presented here since the employees have never brought a refund action, much less prevailed on the merits of such an action. Their joinder in the employer's successful refund action, based on the receipt of double payment by the Government, would afford no basis for injunctive relief based on their constitutional claim. The injunctive relief granted by the District Court in this case is plainly at odds with the dual objectives of the Act: efficient and expeditious collection of taxes with 'a minimum of preenforcement judicial interference,' and protection of the collector from litigation pending a refund suit. Bob Jones, supra, 416 U.S. at 748, 94 S.Ct. at 2046.
They invoke the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, as they are Quakers who are opposed to participation in war in any form and who claim that this method of collection directly forecloses their ability freely to express that opposition, i.e., to bear witness to their religious scruples.
forecloses the employees from bearing witness against the use of these monthly deductions for military purposes. Under the opinion of this Court, they are deprived of bearing witness to their opposition to warthese withheld portions of their salaries pay the entire tax and they therefore have 'no alternative legal remedy,' a circumstance which distinguishes both Enochs v. Williams Packing & Navigation Co., 370 U.S. 1, 82 S.Ct. 1125, 8 L.Ed.2d 292, and Bob Jones University v. Simon, 416 U.S. 725, 94 S.Ct. 2038, 40 L.Ed.2d 496.
Quakers with true religious scruples against participating in war may no more be barred from protesting the payment of taxes to support was than they can be forcibly inducted into the Armed Forces and required to carry a gun, and yet be denied all opportunity to state their religious views against participation. See United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163, 85 S.Ct. 850, 13 L.Ed.2d 733. The Court misses the entire point of the present controversy. The employees are barred from protesting these monthly deductions under the Court's opinion. In Enochs v. Williams Packing & Navigation Co., supra, and Bob Jones University v. Simon, supra, taxpayers sought to enjoin the collection of taxes by any means whatever, while the taxpayers litigated the question whether the taxes were due at all. Here the employees challenge the withholding law as depriving them of their one and only chance of contesting the constitutionality of the withholding of the tax as applied to them. So, unlike Enochs and Bob Jones University, there is no remedy by way of refund.
The religious belief which the Government violates here is that the employees must bear active witness to their objections to their support of war efforts. Dr. Edwin Bronner, who qualified as an expert on the history of Quakerism, gave testimony which, as summarized by the District Court, 368 F.Supp., at 1178, stated: '(M)ost Quakers have considered it an integral part of their faith
to bear witness to the beliefs which they hold. It has always been the prevailing view that simple preaching of one's beliefs is not sufficient, and that one's actions must accord with and give expression to one's beliefs. Many of the employees of the AFSC, including particularly appellees Cleveland and Cadwallader, share this belief, and for these employees, the operation of the withholding tax which leaves them no option as to the payment of the taxes which they conscientiously questions, operates as a direct abridgment of the expression and implementation of deeply cherished religious beliefs.'
If we are faithful to the command of the First Amendment, we would honor that religious belief. I have not bowed to the view of the majority that 'some compelling state interest' will warrant an infringement of the Free Exercise Clause. Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 406407, 83 S.Ct. 1790, 17951796, 10 L.Ed.2d 965; Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S. 599, 603, 81 S.Ct. 1144, 1145, 6 L.Ed.2d 563. I have previously dissented from that position and opposed amending by judicial construction the plain command of the Free Exercise Clause. See Sherbert v. Verner, supra, 374 U.S. at 410413, 83 S.Ct. at 17971799; McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 575576, 81 S.Ct. 1101, 1225, 1226, 6 L.Ed.2d 393; Arlan's Department Store v. Kentucky, 371 U.S. 218, 83 S.Ct. 277, 9 L.Ed.2d 264.
The Anti-Injunction Act, 26 U.S.C. 7421(a), is no barrier. No 'assessment or collection of any tax' is restrained, only one method of collection is barred, the Government being left free to use all other means at its disposal. Moreover, to construe the Act as the Court construes it does not avoid a constitutional question but directly raises one. The Act, read as literally as the Court reads it, plainly violates the First Amendment as applied to the facts of this case, for 'no law' prohibiting the free exercise of religion includes every kind of law, including a law staying the hand of a judge who enjoins a law for the collection of taxes that trespasses on the First Amendment.
The power of Congress to ordain and establish inferior courts (Lockerty v. Phillips, 319 U.S. 182, 187, 63 S.Ct. 1019, 1022, 87 L.Ed. 1339) has not to this date been assumed or held to mean that Congress could require a federal court to take action in violation of the Constitution. Thus suspension of the writ of habeas corpus is restricted to 'Cases of Rebellion or Invasion' where 'the public Safety may require it.' Art. I, § 9, cl. 2. And when it comes to the First Amendment and the free exercise of religion, the mandate is that 'Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting' it. The Anti-Injunction Act is a 'law'; and the Constitution gives no such preference to tax laws as to permit them to override religious scruples. May Congress enact a law that prohibits a minister from preaching if his taxes are in arrears? Or that disallows the making of a protest to a tax assessment even though the assessment and payment violate one's religious scruples? Until today, I would have thought not. The First Amendment, as applied to the States by the Fourteenth, bars a tax on the conduct of a religious exercise by a minority even though that religious exercise is obnoxious to the majority. Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105, 63 S.Ct. 870, 87 L.Ed. 1292. Dicta to the effect that an allegation of unconstitutionality is irrelevant under the Anti-Injunction Act (Bailey v. George, 259 U.S. 16, 20, 42 S.Ct. 419, 66 L.Ed. 816)which the Court today elevates to a holding were based on the premise that there was an alternative remedy to the unconstitutional actions. Here, as demonstrated, there is no other remedy. A refund suit is of no value, since the religious scruples which these taxpayers invoke relate to their inability to protest the payment, not to the use of the taxes themselves for military purposes.
26 U.S.C. 3402. The provision provides in part that '(e)very employer making payment of wages shall deduct and wihhold upon such wages (except as otherwise provided in this section) a tax determined in accordance with the following tables. . . .' There is no dispute as to the applicability of the provision to the employees' wages.
Since the District Court held that § 3402 was unconstitutional as applied to the facts of this case, this Court has jurisdiction over the appeal under 28 U.S.C. 1252. Fleming v. Rhodes, 331 U.S. 100, 102103, 67 S.Ct. 1140, 11411142, 91 L.Ed. 1368 (1947); United States v. Christian Echoes Nat. Ministry, 404 U.S. 561, 563, 92 S.Ct. 663, 664, 30 L.Ed.2d 716 (1972).
The legislative history of this provision enacted in 1943 indicates that its purpose in part was to assist the Government in securing needed revenue without having to resort to levy. H.R.Rep.No.268, 78th Cong., 1st Sess., 12 (1943); S.Rep.No.221, 78th Cong., 1st Sess., 1 (1943). The District Court noted that relegating the Government to levying after returns were filed would be an inefficient process. 368 F.Supp., at 1180.
Because we have concluded that the Anti-Injunction Act bars injunctive relief, we have not found it necessary to decide other threshhold issues such as whether a three-judge District Court was required, whether the sovereign immunity of the United States barred the suit, and whether the requirements of 28 U.S.C. 1331 were met.
In Bob Jones University, the Court expressly stated: '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.' 416 U.S., at 746, 94 S.Ct., at 2050. Similarly, in Commissioner v. 'Americans United' Inc., 416 U.S. 752, 94 S.Ct. 2053, 40 L.Ed.2d 518, the Court examined at length the claim that the respondent there had 'no alternative legal remedy,' ultimately concluding that the claim was untrue since a refund action for FUTA taxes, while slow and unsatisfactory from the taxpayer's point of view would still provide a forum in which judicial review of the legality of the actions of the IRS could be obtained. Id., at 761762, 94 S.Ct., at 20582059.