Opinion ID: 109005
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: fourth amendment challenge to the domestic reporting requirements

Text: The District Court examined the domestic reporting requirements imposed on plaintiffs by looking to the broad authorization of the Act itself, without specific reference to the regulations promulgated under its authority. The District Court observed: [A]lthough to date the Secretary has required reporting only by the financial institutions and then only of currency transactions over $10,000, he is empowered by the Act, as indicated above, to require, if he so decides, reporting not only by the financial institution, but also by other parties to or participants in transactions with the institutions and, further, that the Secretary may require reports, not only of currency transactions but of any transaction involving any monetary instrumentand in any amountlarge or small. 347 F. Supp., at 1246. The District Court went on to pose, as the question to be resolved, whether these provisions, broadly authorizing an executive agency of government to require financial institutions and parties [thereto] . . . to routinely report . . . the detail of almost every conceivable financial transaction . . . [are] such an invasion of a citizen's right of privacy as amounts to an unreasonable search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Ibid. Since, as we have observed earlier in this opinion, the statute is not self-executing, and were the Secretary to take no action whatever under his authority there would be no possibility of criminal or civil sanctions being imposed on anyone, the District Court was wrong in framing the question in this manner. The question is not what sort of reporting requirements might have been imposed by the Secretary under the broad authority given him in the Act, but rather what sort of reporting requirements he did in fact impose under that authority. Even where some of the provisions of a comprehensive legislative enactment are ripe for adjudication, portions of the enactment not immediately involved are not thereby thrown open for a judicial determination of constitutionality. `Passing upon the possible significance of the manifold provisions of a broad statute in advance of efforts to apply the separate provisions is analogous to rendering an advisory opinion upon a statute or a declaratory judgment upon a hypothetical case.' Watson v. Buck, 313 U. S. 387, 402. Communist Party v. SACB, 367 U. S., at 71. The question for decision, therefore, is whether the regulations relating to the reporting of domestic transactions, violations of which could subject those required to report to civil or criminal penalties, invade any Fourth Amendment right of those required to report. To that question we now turn. The regulations issued by the Secretary require the reporting of domestic financial transactions only by financial institutions. United States v. Morton Salt Co., 338 U. S. 632 (1950), held that organizations engaged in commerce could be required by the Government to file reports dealing with particular phases of their activities. The language used by the Court in that case is instructive: It is unnecessary here to examine the question of whether a corporation is entitled to the protection of the Fourth Amendment. Cf. Oklahoma Press Publishing Co. v. Walling, 327 U. S. 186. Although the `right to be let alonethe most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men,' Brandeis, J., dissenting in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 471, at 478, is not confined literally to searches and seizures as such, but extends as well to the orderly taking under compulsion of process, Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, Hale v. Henkel, 201 U. S. 43, 70, neither incorporated nor unincorporated associations can plead an unqualified right to conduct their affairs in secret. Hale v. Henkel, supra ; United States v. White, 322 U. S. 694. While they may and should have protection from unlawful demands made in the name of public investigation, cf. Federal Trade Comm'n v. American Tobacco Co., 264 U. S. 298, corporations can claim no equality with individuals in the enjoyment of a right to privacy. Cf. United States v. White, supra . They are endowed with public attributes. They have a collective impact upon society, from which they derive the privilege of acting as artificial entities. The Federal Government allows them the privilege of engaging in interstate commerce. Favors from government often carry with them an enhanced measure of regulation. [Citations omitted.] Even if one were to regard the request for information in this case as caused by nothing more than official curiosity, nevertheless law-enforcing agencies have a legitimate right to satisfy themselves that corporate behavior is consistent with the law and the public interest. 338 U. S., at 651-652. We have no difficulty then in determining that the Secretary's requirements for the reporting of domestic financial transactions abridge no Fourth Amendment right of the banks themselves. The bank is not a mere stranger or bystander with respect to the transactions which it is required to record or report. The bank is itself a party to each of these transactions, earns portions of its income from conducting such transactions, and in the past may have kept records of similar transactions on a voluntary basis for its own purposes. See United States v. Biswell, 406 U. S., at 316. The regulations presently in effect governing the reporting of domestic currency transactions require information as to the personal and business identity of the person conducting the transaction and of the person or organization for whom it was conducted, as well as a summary description of the nature of the transaction. It is conceivable, and perhaps likely, that the bank might not of its own volition compile this amount of detail for its own purposes, and therefore to that extent the regulations put the bank in the position of seeking information from the customer in order to eventually report it to the Government. But as we have noted above, neither incorporated nor unincorporated associations can plead an unqualified right to conduct their affairs in secret. United States v. Morton Salt Co., supra, at 652. The regulations do not impose unreasonable reporting requirements on the banks. The regulations require the reporting of information with respect to abnormally large transactions in currency, much of which information the bank as a party to the transaction already possesses or would acquire in its own interest. To the extent that the regulations in connection with such transactions require the bank to obtain information from a customer simply because the Government wants it, the information is sufficiently described and limited in nature, and sufficiently related to a tenable congressional determination as to improper use of transactions of that type in interstate commerce, so as to withstand the Fourth Amendment challenge made by the bank plaintiffs. [T]he inquiry is within the authority of the agency, the demand is not too indefinite and the information sought is reasonably relevant. `The gist of the protection is in the requirement, expressed in terms, that the disclosure sought shall not be unreasonable.'  United States v. Morton Salt Co., supra, at 652-653; see Oklahoma Press Publishing Co. v. Walling, 327 U. S. 186, 208 (1946). In addition to the Fourth Amendment challenge to the domestic reporting requirements made by the bank plaintiffs, we are faced with a similar challenge by the depositor plaintiffs, who contend that since the reports of domestic transactions which the bank is required to make will include transactions to which the depositors were parties, the requirement that the bank make a report of the transaction violates the Fourth Amendment rights of the depositor. The complaint filed in the District Court by the ACLU and the depositors contains no allegation by any of the individual depositors that they were engaged in the type of $10,000 domestic currency transaction which would necessitate that their bank report it to the Government. This is not a situation where there might have been a mere oversight in the specificity of the pleadings and where this Court could properly infer that participation in such a transaction was necessarily inferred from the fact that the individual plaintiffs allege that they are in fact depositors. Such an inference can be made, for example, as to the recordkeeping provisions of Title I, which require the banks to keep various records of certain transactions by check; as our discussion of the challenges by the individual depositors to the recordkeeping provisions, supra, implicitly recognizes, the allegation that one is a depositor is sufficient to permit consideration of the challenges to the recordkeeping provisions, since any depositor would to some degree be affected by them. Here, however, we simply cannot assume that the mere fact that one is a depositor in a bank means that he has engaged or will engage in a transaction involving more than $10,000 in currency, which is the only type of domestic transaction which the Secretary's regulations require that the banks report. That being so, the depositor plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the domestic reporting regulations, since they do not show that their transactions are required to be reported. [28] Plaintiffs in the federal courts `must allege some threatened or actual injury resulting from the putatively illegal action before a federal court may assume jurisdiction.' Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U. S. 614, 617 (1973). There must be a `personal stake in the outcome' such as to `assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions.' Baker v. Carr, 369 U. S. 186, 204 (1962). . . . Abstract injury is not enough. It must be alleged that the plaintiff `has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury' as the result of the challenged statute or official conduct. Massachusetts v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447, 488 (1923). The injury or threat of injury must be both `real and immediate,' not `conjectural' or `hypothetical.' Golden v. Zwickler, 394 U. S. 103, 109-110 (1969); Maryland Casualty Co. v. Pacific Coal & Oil Co., 312 U. S. 270, 273 (1941); United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U. S. 75, 89-91 (1947). O'Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S. 488, 493-494 (1974) (footnote omitted). We therefore hold that the Fourth Amendment claims of the depositor plaintiffs may not be considered on the record before us. Nor do we think that the California Bankers Association or the Security National Bank can vicariously assert such Fourth Amendment claims on behalf of bank customers in general. The regulations promulgated by the Secretary require that a report concerning a domestic currency transaction involving more than $10,000 be filed only by the financial institution which is a party to the transaction; the regulations do not require a report from the customer. 31 CFR § 103.22; see 31 U. S. C. § 1082. Both the bank and depositor plaintiffs here argue that the regulations are constitutionally defective because they do not require the financial institution to notify the customer that a report will be filed concerning the domestic currency transaction. Since we have held that the depositor plaintiffs have not made a sufficient showing of injury to make a constitutional challenge to the domestic reporting requirements, we do not address ourselves to the necessity of notice to those bank customers whose transactions must be reported. The fact that the regulations do not require the banks to notify the customer of the report violates no constitutional right of the banks, and the banks in any event are left free to adopt whatever customer notification procedures they desire. [29]