Opinion ID: 186912
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Public Citizen's Attempts to Distinguish and Narrow Marshall Field

Text: 40 Public Citizen admits that the importers in Marshall Field offered exhibits other than the journals, such as excerpts from the Congressional Record and acknowledges the Court's references to reports of committees [and] other documents printed by authority of [C]ongress. Appellant's Br. at 24-25. But Public Citizen argues that since the importers primarily relied upon congressional journals and journals are the only evidence discussed at length in the opinion, the Marshall Field Court's expansive statements regarding the conclusive nature of the enrolled bill constitute dicta going beyond what was necessary to decide the case and the decision should be read to hold only that as between journals and an enrolled bill, the enrolled bill is the superior evidence. Id. at 21-25. 41 We easily reject this attempt to distinguish Marshall Field as a case concerned solely with congressional journals. As noted above, the Court first held that the enrollment itself is the record, which is conclusive as to what the statute is, and it cannot be impeached by other materials. Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 675, 12 S.Ct. 495 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court then confirmed that it is not competent for the appellants to show, from the journals of either house, from the reports of committees or from other documents printed by authority of Congress, that the enrolled bill . . . as finally passed, contained a section that does not appear in the enrolled act. Id. at 680, 12 S.Ct. 495 (emphasis added). 42 Nothing in the Marshall Field opinion purports to limit application of the enrolled bill rule to journal-based challenges. And neither of the Court's rationales applies solely to impeachment by journals. No less uncertainty in the statute laws upon which depend public and private interests of vast magnitude, id. at 670, 675, 12 S.Ct. 495 (internal quotation marks omitted), would result from allowing collateral attack of the enrolled bill by congressional documents other than journals. And the spectacle of examination of journals by [the courts] no more subordinates the legislature, id. at 676-77, 12 S.Ct. 495 (internal quotation marks and emphasis omitted), than does inspection of other materials. Marshall Field 's plain language and justification cannot be read to create a rule of dismissal limited to the claims of plaintiffs who rely primarily upon journals to rebut an attested enrolled bill. 43 Public Citizen also contends that even if Marshall Field was not so restricted as originally decided, subsequent precedent has narrowed its holding. We view the legal landscape quite differently. First, the Supreme Court has applied the enrolled bill rule, see Harwood v. Wentworth, 162 U.S. 547, 562, 16 S.Ct. 890, 40 L.Ed. 1069 (1896) (taking attested enrolled bill of Arizona legislature to have been enacted in the mode required by law, and to be unimpeachable), and extended Marshall Field 's holding to claims challenging state ratification of constitutional amendments, see Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130, 137, 42 S.Ct. 217, 66 L.Ed. 505 (1922) (As the Legislatures of Tennessee and of West Virginia had power to [ratify the Nineteenth Amendment], official notice to the Secretary [of State], duly authenticated, that they had done so was conclusive upon him, and, being certified to by his proclamation, is conclusive upon the courts.); cf. Sitka, 845 F.2d at 46-47 (same where Sixteenth Amendment was challenged); Stahl, 792 F.2d at 1440-41 (same); United States v. Thomas, 788 F.2d 1250, 1253-54 (7th Cir. 1986) (same). 44 Furthermore, the Courts of Appeals have consistently invoked Marshall Field in refusing to conduct other inquiries into the internal governance of Congress. Mester Mfg. Co. v. INS, 879 F.2d 561, 571 (9th Cir. 1989); see, e.g., United States v. Campbell, No. 06-3418, 221 Fed.Appx. 459, 2007 WL 1028785, at  (7th Cir. Apr. 3, 2007) (unpublished order) (Campbell proposes to argue that 18 U.S.C. § 3231, which gives district judges jurisdiction to hear criminal prosecutions, has no legal effect because the House and Senate did not vote on it in the same session of Congress . . . . The enrolled bill rule prevents looking behind laws in th[at] way . . . .); Mester Mfg., 879 F.2d at 570-71 (holding that [i]n the absence of express constitutional direction, [the courts must] defer to the reasonable procedures Congress has ordained for its internal business where an employer assert[ed] that [the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986] is entirely null and void, as unconstitutionally passed . . . because Congress has no constitutional authority to present a bill after adjournment sine die ); Gibson v. Anderson, 131 F. 39, 42-43 (9th Cir. 1904) (The appellant cannot go behind the authenticated published statutes of the United States, and show that an act which purports to have been approved on a certain date was in fact approved on a different date.); cf. Am. Fed'n of Gov't Employees v. United States, 330 F.3d 513, 522 (D.C.Cir. 2003) (rejecting the argument that a statute may only be supported by a rational basis included in congressional papers and citing Marshall Field for the proposition that Congress has broad discretion in determining what must be published in the official record). 45 Finally, the Supreme Court recently reaffirmed Marshall Field in a case clarifying the limits of the enrolled bill rule: 46 [T]he Marshall Field doctrine does not preclude us from asking whether the statute means something other than what the punctuation dictates. . . . The Marshall Field doctrine concerns the nature of the evidence the Court [may] consider in determining whether a bill had actually passed Congress; it places no limits on the evidence a court may consider in determining the meaning of a bill that has passed Congress. 47 U.S. National Bank of Oregon v. Indep. Ins. Agents of Am., Inc., 508 U.S. 439, 455 n. 7, 113 S.Ct. 2173, 124 L.Ed.2d 402 (1993) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); cf. United States v. Pabon-Cruz, 391 F.3d 86, 99-100 (2d Cir. 2004) (finding Marshall Field irrelevant where the court's task . . . [was] not to doubt the accuracy or validity of [a bill's] language, but merely to determine what Congress intended by it); Cherry v. Steiner, 716 F.2d 687, 693 (9th Cir. 1983) (The enrolled bill doctrine . . . forestall[s] judicial inquiry into procedural irregularities occurring prior to the enactment of bills, not inherent defects in bills as enrolled.). 48 Even in the face of this evidence, Public Citizen argues that there can be no question that courts may look behind an enrolled bill to assess whether a law was passed. Appellant's Br. at 10. Appellant rests this claim on the concluding sentence of an oblique footnote in United States v. Munoz-Flores, 495 U.S. 385, 110 S.Ct. 1964, 109 L.Ed.2d 384 (1990), see id. at 391 n. 4, 110 S.Ct. 1964, a case decided three years prior to the Court's reaffirmance of Marshall Field in U.S. National Bank of Oregon. 49 In Munoz-Flores, a Magistrate ordered the defendant to pay a special assessment for each federal misdemeanor to which he pled guilty. 495 U.S. at 388, 110 S.Ct. 1964. Munoz-Flores argued that the statute authorizing such assessments was passed in violation of the Origination Clause which mandates that `[a]ll Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.' Id. at 387-88, 110 S.Ct. 1964 (quoting U.S. CONST. art. I, § 7, cl. 1). In an earlier Origination Clause decision, the Court avoided determining whether the enrolled bill rule applies to such challenges by first concluding that the act before it was clearly not a revenue bill. See Twin City Bank v. Nebeker, 167 U.S. 196, 200-03, 17 S.Ct. 766, 42 L.Ed. 134 (1897). Although the Munoz-Flores Court likewise ultimately decided that the bill at issue was not one for raising revenue and therefore found consideration of [the] origination question unnecessary, 495 U.S. at 401, 110 S.Ct. 1964 (internal quotation marks omitted), it first addressed justiciability. The Court framed its holding that Munoz-Flores' claim was justiciable in terms of the traditional political question doctrine under Baker v. Carr, never mentioning Marshall Field in the text of its opinion. Id. at 389-96, 110 S.Ct. 1964. 50 Justice Scalia disagreed with the Court's justiciability determination, stating that the Marshall Field principle, if not the very same holding, [led him] to conclude that federal courts should not undertake an independent investigation into the origination of [a] statute . . . [where] . . . [t]he designation `H. J. Res.' (a standard abbreviation for `House Joint Resolution') attests that the legislation originated in the House. Id. at 408-10, 110 S.Ct. 1964 (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment). The Munoz-Flores Court responded in a footnote: 51 JUSTICE SCALIA . . . contends that Congress' resolution of the constitutional question in passing the bill [with an H. J. Res. designation] bars this Court from independently considering that question. The only case he cites for his argument is Marshall Field . . . . But Field does not support his argument. That case concerned the nature of the evidence the Court would consider in determining whether a bill had actually passed Congress. . . . The Court rejected [the importers'] interpretation of the Journal Clause, holding that the Constitution left it to Congress to determine how a bill is to be authenticated as having passed. In the absence of any constitutional requirement binding Congress, we stated that [t]he respect due to coequal and independent departments demands that the courts accept as passed all bills authenticated in the manner provided by Congress. Where, as here, a constitutional provision is implicated, Field does not apply. 52 Id. at 391 n. 4, 110 S.Ct. 1964 (internal citations omitted). 53 Public Citizen reads the last lines of this footnote to effectively distinguish between Journal Clause challenges on one hand and Origination Clause and Bicameralism Clause challenges on the other: 54 The distinction made . . . is between requirements with respect to the enactment of laws and requirements that do not affect valid enactment. Thus, for example, the Constitution requires Congress to keep journals, but neither the Constitution nor any statute conditions the enactment of laws on the keeping of journals or imposes requirements on the content of journals. Accordingly, as in Marshall Field, the content of congressional journals cannot be used to impeach the validity of an enrolled bill that has been signed. . . . On the other hand, the Constitution requires that legislation to raise revenue originate in the House. Therefore, as in Munoz-Flores, the courts may look beyond an enrolled bill to determine whether a law has been passed in accordance with that constitutional condition . . . . 55 At issue in this case is another requirement for the valid enactment of law—the requirement that identical legislation be passed in both the House and the Senate before it is presented to the President for his signature. In accordance with both Munoz-Flores and Marshall Field, the Court can and should examine the evidence that this requirement has been violated. 56 Appellant's Br. at 10-11. 57 Public Citizen's attempt to square the Munoz-Flores footnote with Court precedent fails. In assessing appellant's claim, it is important to recall that Munoz-Flores did not in any way involve the question raised in Marshall Field, i.e., whether an authenticated enrolled bill had passed Congress. The question instead was whether a provision that unquestionably had passed Congress constituted a bill for raising revenue. It is not plausible to think that the Court meant to overrule the enrolled bill rule in the last two sentences of an obscure footnote in a case that did not involve an application of the rule. Under Public Citizen's interpretation, the Munoz-Flores Court overruled the time-tested Marshall Field decision sub silento in a footnote, and then three years later inadvertently referenced the purportedly defunct rule in U.S. National Bank of Oregon. See 508 U.S. at 455 n. 7, 113 S.Ct. 2173. The argument collapses under its own weight. 58 The last two sentences of the cited footnote in Munoz-Flores defy easy comprehension. Nonetheless, the text of the footnote is clear on one point: the Court did not mean to overturn or modify the enrolled bill rule of Marshall Field. The Court's footnote in Munoz-Flores clearly states that [t]he respect due to coequal and independent departments demands that the courts accept as passed all bills authenticated in the manner provided by Congress. 495 U.S. at 392 n. 4, 110 S.Ct. 1964 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court then says: Where . . . a constitutional provision is implicated, Field does not apply. Id. In other words, Marshall Field does apply in a case of the sort at hand, where the court must accept as passed [the bill] authenticated in the manner provided by Congress. Id. There is nothing in the footnote to indicate that the Court meant to distinguish between challenges arising under the Journal Clause as opposed to challenges arising under the Origination Clause and Bicameralism Clause, as Public Citizen suggests. Indeed, the footnote appears unambiguous in reaffirming that there can be no Bicameralism Clause challenge when a bill has been authenticated in the manner provided by Congress. The text of the footnote may be less than carefully crafted, but it does not admit of the strained construction offered by appellant. 59 Even more problematic for Public Citizen is that, given our finding that Marshall Field has not been overturned or modified by Munoz-Flores, there can be no doubt that the application of appellant's theory to the case at bar is positively foreclosed by Marshall Field. The decision in Marshall Field addressed a bicameralism challenge, so for us to embrace Public Citizen's argument that the enrolled bill rule does not apply to requirement[s] for the valid enactment of law, such as the Bicameralism Clause, would be tantamount to narrowing Marshall Field entirely out of existence. Public Citizen's claim that Marshall Field involved only a Journal Clause challenge and no bicameralism challenge is belied by the facts of that case. Although the importers sought support from the Journal Clause in their attempt to impeach the attested enrolled bill, they advanced a Bicameralism Clause challenge, just as Public Citizen does. 60 We acknowledge that the language of the Munoz-Flores footnote is cumbersome, making it difficult to discern precisely what the Court meant to say. The footnote indicates that the H. J. Res. moniker does not carry the conclusive weight in the Origination Clause context that the signatures of the presiding officers command in the Bicameralism Clause context. In the text of its decision, the Munoz-Flores Court stated that adjudication of an Origination Clause challenge despite the existence of an H. J. Res. designation no more express[es] a lack of respect for the House of Representatives than does any other constitutional challenge. Id. at 390-91, 110 S.Ct. 1964 (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). In light of this conclusion, the Munoz-Flores footnote might be seen as a simple attempt, in response to Justice Scalia's contention to the contrary, to distinguish Origination Clause challenges from Bicameralism Clause challenges based on the lesser applicability of the separation of powers rationale in the former context. This is hardly a satisfying explanation, however. Alternatively, the footnote might be viewed as an ex post interpretation of Marshall Field. In other words, if in the post- Marshall Field legal landscape any bicameralism challenge made in the face of an attested enrolled bill really raises no constitutional claim, the Munoz-Flores Court could have—with perfect hindsight—treated the claim in Marshall Field itself as similarly implicating no constitutional provision. This makes some sense. We need not resolve the puzzle of the footnote, however, because we are satisfied that the Court's decision in Munoz-Flores does not purport to overrule or modify the enrolled bill rule. 61 At bottom, Public Citizen asks that we set aside directly controlling Supreme Court precedent in favor of an ambiguous footnote. Public Citizen attempts to alter the balance, arguing that the engrossed bill it proffers as evidence that the House passed a 36-month duration figure is a public record far more reliable than journals and one given official status when Congress adopted 1 U.S.C. § 106 after the Court decided Marshall Field. Appellant's Br. at 31-34. But this is beside the point, because the argument in no way undercuts the public policy and separation of powers rationales that undergird the enrolled bill rule. One need only look to the breadth of the DRA to understand the vast magnitude of public and private interests which depend upon the certainty of statutes. Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 670, 12 S.Ct. 495. And today, no less than in 1892, the spectacle of courts directing legislative authentication procedures and otherwise meddling in the inner workings of Congress disregards that coequal position . . . of the three [branches] of government. Id. at 676, 12 S.Ct. 495 (internal quotation marks omitted). 62 The Supreme Court has repeatedly cautioned that we should [not] conclude [that its] more recent cases have, by implication, overruled an earlier precedent. Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 237, 117 S.Ct. 1997, 138 L.Ed.2d 391 (1997). Therefore, even if we were inclined to think that the Munoz-Flores footnote offers some implicit support for Public Citizen's position—and we are not—this would not change the outcome that we reach today. The District Court correctly decided that the enrolled bill rule governs the disposition of this case.