Opinion ID: 1721404
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: Opening Statement of Chairman.

Text: At the outset of the hearings involved in this matter the Chairman of the Committee informed all of the witnesses collectively, including the appellants, that the Committee would concern itself with the activities of various organizations operating in Florida in fields of race relations, the coercive reform of educational and social practices by litigation and pressured administrative action, in the field of labor, education and other phases of life within the state. He told them that to this extent the Committee would concern itself with the Communist Party, its members, its activities, its aims and objectives and the degree, if any, to which Communist and Communistic influences had successfully penetrated or infiltrated various organizations operating in the fields of endeavor which he had previously summarized. Admittedly NAACP is an organization active in the area of race relations. The announced purposes of the Committee inquiry were well within the orbit of the authorizing statute and likewise within the power of the State of Florida to accomplish. In addition the Committee points out in its brief that aside from any question of pre-emption of control of seditious activities by the Congress, every state has a right to instigate and inaugurate a process for amending the United States Constitution provided it can succeed in obtaining the agreement of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the states. Article V, Constitution of the United States. Under the cited Article of the Federal Constitution, whenever the Legislatures of two-thirds of the states petition the Congress so to do, it is bound to call a Convention for proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States which amendments shall be subject to subsequent ratification by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the states. Here, we think, the appellee-Committee correctly reasoned that the Florida Legislature has the right to inform itself of the existence or non-existence of the sedition described in order to exercise a proper legislative function. That function is to determine whether the Legislature of Florida deems it wise to institute a movement among the several states to obtain the accord of at least two-thirds of them on an application to the Congress to set in motion the amending procedure. Here again we find a perfectly legitimate area of legislative activity that justifies the pursuit of the investigation under review.