Opinion ID: 2959850
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Marshall Field

Text: In Marshall Field, several importers protesting the assessment of duties under the Tariff Act of October 1, 1890 claimed that “the act was not a law of the United States.” 143 U.S. at 665-66. The Supreme Court described the importers’ principal contention as follows: The contention of the appellants is that [the] enrolled act, in the custody of the Secretary of State, and appearing, upon its face to have become a law in 5 Because plaintiffs’ multiple notices of appeal ensure timeliness, and because we can nostra sponte address any argu ment on stan ding not presented to or d ecid ed by the D istrict C ourt, we n eed not consid er whether it was possible for plaintiffs to appeal at any tim e before August 9, 2006, or whether the District C ourt properly conclu ded tha t it retained jurisdiction to decide the standing issue. 7 the mode prescribed by the Constitution, is to be deemed an absolute nullity, in all its parts, because—such is the allegation—it is shown by the Congressional record of proceedings, reports of committees of each house, reports of committees of conference, and other papers printed by authority of Congress, and having reference to [the bill in question], that a section of the bill, as it finally passed, was not in the bill authenticated by the signatures of the presiding officers of the respective houses of Congress, and approved by the President. Id. at 668-69. In other words, the importers were arguing that neither house of Congress had passed a version of the bill identical to the enrolled bill. The importers “rest[ed] their contention” on the Journal Clause of the Constitution, U.S. Const. art. I, § 5, cl. 3,6 which they claimed made congressional journals “the best, if not conclusive evidence upon the issue as to whether a bill was, in fact, passed by the two houses of Congress.” Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 670. The Supreme Court rejected this interpretation of the Journal Clause and stated that nothing in the Constitution “prescribe[s] the mode in which the fact of the original passage of a bill by the House of Representatives and the Senate shall be authenticated, or preclude[s] Congress from adopting any mode to that end which its wisdom suggests.” Id. at 671. Noting that the Constitution does not “expressly require bills that have passed Congress to be attested by the signatures of the presiding officers of the two houses,” the Court observed that “usage, the orderly conduct of legislative proceedings and the rules under which the two bodies have acted since the organization of the government, require that mode of authentication.” Id. The Court then concluded that “when a bill, thus attested, receives [the President’s] approval, and is deposited in the public archives, its authentication as a bill that has passed Congress should be deemed complete and unimpeachable.” Id. at 672. Recognizing that separation-of-powers concerns were at issue, the Court elaborated that “[t]he respect due to coequal and independent departments requires the judicial department to act upon that 6 The Journal Clause states that “[e]ach House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such P arts as may in their Judgment require Sec recy; and the Y eas and N ays of the M emb ers of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal.” U.S. Const. art. I, § 5, cl. 3. 8 assurance, and to accept, as having passed Congress, all bills authenticated in the manner stated.” Id. The Supreme Court in Marshall Field admitted that the rule thereby established would allow the continued enforcement of legislation that had not been enacted in the manner prescribed by the Constitution. See id. at 675. However, it reasoned that [b]etter, far better, that a provision should occasionally find its way into the statute through mistake, or even fraud, than that every act, state and national, should at any and all times be liable to be put in issue and impeached by the journals, loose papers of the legislature, and parole evidence. Such a state of uncertainty in the statute laws of the land would lead to mischiefs absolutely intolerable. Id. (quoting Sherman v. Story, 30 Cal. 253, 275 (1866)). In concluding its discussion of Congress’s alleged failure to pass the precise text of the act in question, the Court set forth “a clear rule” requiring the judicial branch to treat an enrolled bill signed by the presiding officers of the House and Senate as conclusive evidence of the text passed by both houses of Congress. Public Citizen, 486 F.3d at 1350. Under Marshall Field, “it is not competent” for a plaintiff alleging that a statute is void because Congress did not pass the exact text appearing in an authenticated enrolled bill “to show, from the journals of either house, from the reports of committees, or from other documents printed by authority of Congress,” that the bills actually passed by the two houses of Congress differed from the enrolled bill. Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 680. The rule articulated by the Supreme Court in Marshall Field became known as the “enrolled bill rule” and has been described by our Court as “a longstanding rule, invoked by many courts, including the Supreme Court and our own Court.” United States v. Pabon-Cruz, 391 F.3d 86, 99 (2d Cir. 2004) (holding that the enrolled bill rule does not prevent courts from considering legislative history when determining how to interpret and apply statutory language). As we have observed, the enrolled bill rule “provides that [i]f a legislative document is authenticated in regular form by the appropriate officials, the court[s] treat[ ] that document as properly adopted.” Id. (alterations in original) (quoting United 9 States v. Sitka, 845 F.2d 43, 46 (2d Cir. 1988) (quoting United States v. Thomas, 788 F.2d 1250, 1253 (7th Cir. 1986) (citing Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 672-73))) (internal quotation marks omitted). The plain language of Marshall Field appears to foreclose plaintiffs’ constitutional claims in the instant case, which would require our Court to look beyond the authenticated enrolled bill for evidence that the House and Senate did not pass identical texts. Yet plaintiffs present a variety of arguments urging us to decide that Marshall Field does not mean what it says. They also assert that they have standing under the Constitution to pursue their claims. We conclude that plaintiffs’ arguments regarding the inapplicability of the enrolled bill rule are without merit, and we note that it is for the Supreme Court rather than a court of inferior jurisdiction to determine whether the venerable enrolled bill rule requires revision in light of technological and political developments since Marshall Field was decided in 1892. We also conclude that a court may dismiss claims pursuant to the enrolled bill rule before addressing whether a plaintiff has standing. B. The Enrolled Bill Rule Is a “Non-Merits Threshold Ground for Dismissal” We first consider whether it is necessary for a court to determine if a plaintiff satisfies the “irreducible constitutional minimum of standing” before deciding whether the enrolled bill rule applies. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560. We agree with the District of Columbia Circuit that “[a]t a minimum, the Marshall Field rule is . . . a non-merits threshold ground for dismissal” that cuts off judicial inquiry into a plaintiff’s constitutional claims based on the alleged failure of Congress (whether one house or both) to pass the precise text of a statute. Public Citizen, 486 F.3d at 1349; see Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 675 (recognizing that application of the enrolled bill rule will allow unconstitutional laws to survive). Like other rules that are “designed not merely to defeat the asserted claims, but to preclude judicial inquiry,” Tenet v. Doe, 544 U.S. 1, 6 n.4 (2005), or that “deny[ ] audience to a case on the merits,” Ruhrgas AG v. Marathon Oil Co., 526 U.S. 574, 585 (1999), the enrolled bill rule may support dismissal of a claim before a court assesses its authority to hear that claim. See Public Citizen, 486 F.3d at 1345-49; cf. Sinochem Int’l 10 Co. v. Malaysia, – U.S. –, 127 S. Ct. 1184, 1188 (2007) (permitting dismissal on the ground of forum non conveniens before consideration of jurisdictional issues); Tenet, 544 U.S. at 6 n.4 (allowing dismissal of a suit involving covert espionage agreements on public policy grounds before consideration of jurisdictional issues); Ellis v. Dyson, 421 U.S. 426, 433-34 (1975) (permitting abstention under Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971), before consideration of whether there is an Article III case or controversy). As the District of Columbia Circuit pointed out in Public Citizen, because the enrolled bill rule is a “non-merits threshold ground for dismissal,” Public Citizen, 486 F.3d at 1349, it “does not authorize a merits dismissal for failure to state a claim” under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), id. at 1348. Consequently, a district court need not accept as true the facts alleged in a plaintiff’s pleadings when a defendant moves to dismiss pursuant to the enrolled bill rule. Cf. McCarthy v. Dun & Bradstreet Corp., 482 F.3d 184, 191 (2d Cir. 2007) (“In reviewing a motion to dismiss under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) . . ., we accept as true all factual statements alleged in the complaint and draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party.”). Rather, the district court must determine (1) whether the presiding officers of the House and Senate in fact signed the enrolled bill, thereby attesting to its passage, and (2) whether the enrolled bill rule requires dismissal of a particular claim as a matter of law. A court of appeals would then review the district court’s factual findings under a clearly erroneous standard and its legal conclusions de novo. Cf. Gualandi v. Adams, 385 F.3d 236, 240 (2d Cir. 2004) (“In reviewing a district court’s determination of whether it has subject matter jurisdiction, we review factual findings for clear error and legal conclusions de novo.”). In the instant case, there is no dispute as to whether the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate signed the enrolled bill that would subsequently become the DRA. Thus, we need only review the District Court’s legal conclusions regarding application of the enrolled bill rule to the particular claims at issue. 11 C. The Enrolled Bill Rule Was Not Dicta Plaintiffs and amicus Public Citizen argue that the Supreme Court’s holding in Marshall Field extended only to congressional journals and that the prohibition against considering all “other documents printed by authority of Congress,” Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 680, was merely expansive dicta. This argument was presented to the District of Columbia Circuit in Public Citizen and convincingly rejected by that court. We agree that “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.” Public Citizen, 486 F.3d at 1351. The Supreme Court articulated an expansive rule in Marshall Field because such a rule was necessary to answer the expansive question before the Court, see Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 668-69, 680, notwithstanding that the appellants’ strongest argument lay in their interpretation of the Journal Clause. Moreover, neither the Supreme Court’s concern for stability nor its attentiveness to the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers “applies solely to impeachment by journals.” Public Citizen, 486 F.3d at 1351. Permitting litigants to impeach the text of an enrolled bill by other congressional documents would likewise create “uncertainty in the statute laws,” Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 675 (quoting Sherman, 30 Cal. at 275), and require courts to conduct inquiries that impinge upon the “respect due to coequal and independent departments,” id. at 672. Finally, the Supreme Court’s own subsequent interpretation of Marshall Field’s holding requires us to reject plaintiffs’ argument that Marshall Field did nothing but prevent litigants from challenging the text of an enrolled bill through congressional journals. See United States v. MunozFlores, 495 U.S. 385, 391 n.4 (1990) (“The Court rejected [appellants’] 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.” (emphasis added)). Plaintiffs also argue that the scope of the holding of Marshall Field was cast into doubt by the Supreme Court’s inspection of congressional journals in United States v. Ballin, 144 U.S. 1 (1892), a case 12 decided on the same day as Marshall Field. This argument, which would render Marshall Field meaningless with respect to the one source of evidence plaintiffs concede was at issue, is without merit. In Ballin, the Court considered whether another tariff act had been “legally passed.” Id. at 3. The Court addressed whether a quorum of the House of Representatives had been present “to do Business,” U.S. Const. art I, § 5, cl. 1, and whether the bill before the House received a sufficient number of votes. See Ballin, 144 U.S. at 3-9. The Court first observed that, as a general matter, “whenever a question arises in a court of law of the existence of a statute . . ., the judges who are called upon to decide it have a right to resort to any source of information which in its nature is capable of conveying to the judicial mind a clear and satisfactory answer to such question.” Id. at 3 (quoting Gardner v. Collector, 73 U.S. (6 Wall.) 499, 511 (Dec. Term 1867)). The Court then noted its decision in Marshall Field and stated “[i]t is unnecessary to add anything here to that general discussion.” Id. at 4. Ballin in no way purported to disturb Marshall Field’s holding as expressed by the plain language of that case itself and reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Munoz-Flores. Indeed, the Supreme Court’s analysis in Ballin appears to reinforce its reasoning in Marshall Field. In Ballin, the Court inspected the House’s journal only after “[a]ssuming that by reason of [the Journal Clause] reference may be had to the journal, to see whether the yeas and nays were ordered, and if so, what was the vote disclosed thereby.” Id. In contrast, the Marshall Field Court made plain that the Constitution grants Congress full discretion in deciding how to authenticate the particular text of a bill passed by both houses. See Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 671. Moreover, in Ballin, the Court noted that the House of Representatives had itself implemented a rule requiring that certain information regarding voting be recorded in the journal. See Ballin, 144 U.S. at 5. The Court respected the House’s discretion “to determine its rules of proceedings,” id. at 5, accepting as true the information contained in the journal even though it might be erroneous, see id. at 4. In the same way, the Court in Marshall Field respected Congress’s discretion to prescribe the authentication of an 13 enrolled bill’s text, even though that text might not have actually passed both houses. See Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 672, 675. D. The Enrolled Bill Rule Has Not Been Overruled or Modified by the Supreme Court Plaintiffs’ principal contention on appeal is that, whatever Marshall Field meant in 1892, the Supreme Court has subsequently restricted its application “to cases where a constitutional requirement binding Congress is absent,” Appellants’ Reply Br. 1, or has at least “squarely confine[d] Field to a Journal Clause controversy,” id. at 3. Plaintiffs’ sole support for this argument is what Judge Edwards of the District of Columbia Circuit styled an “oblique footnote” in Munoz-Flores. Public Citizen, 486 F.3d at 1352. Like the District of Columbia Circuit, we too “are satisfied that the Court’s decision in Munoz-Flores does not purport to overrule or modify the enrolled bill rule.” Id. at 1355. In Munoz-Flores, a criminal defendant challenged the constitutionality of a provision of the Victims of Crime Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3013. He argued that the provision, “which requires courts to impose a mandatory special assessment on any person convicted of a felony misdemeanor,” MunozFlorez, 495 U.S. at 387 (internal quotation marks omitted), was passed in violation of the Constitution’s Origination Clause, which states that “[a]ll Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives,” U.S. Const. art. I, § 7, cl. 1. See Munoz-Flores, 495 U.S. at 387. The Supreme Court eventually determined that the provision did not violate the Origination Clause because it was not a bill for raising revenue. See id. at 401. However, before doing so, the Court discussed whether the case was justiciable under the “political question doctrine,” ultimately concluding that it was. See id. at 389-96. Justice Scalia, in an opinion concurring in the judgment, stated that Marshall Field prohibits judicial inquiry into the origination of a statute where an authenticated enrolled bill contains the designation “H.J. Res.,” an abbreviation for “House Joint Resolution.” See id. at 408-10 (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment). The majority addressed Justice Scalia’s position in a footnote containing the majority opinion’s lone mention of Marshall Field. The footnote read: 14 [Justice Scalia] contends that Congress’ resolution of the constitutional question in passing the bill bars this Court from independently considering that question. The only case he cites for his argument is Marshall Field & Co. v. Clark. 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. Appellants had argued that the constitutional Clause providing that “[e]ach House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings” implied that whether a bill had passed must be determined by an examination of the journals. The Court rejected that 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. Munoz-Flores, 495 U.S. at 391 n.4 (citations omitted). Plaintiffs interpret this footnote as rendering the enrolled bill rule inapplicable to their constitutional claims under the Bicameralism and Presentment Clause and the Appropriations Clause. We disagree. Although “the language of the Munoz-Flores footnote is cumbersome, making it difficult to discern precisely what the Court meant to say,” Public Citizen, 486 F.3d at 1354, we think it clear that the Court did not intend to change the fundamental parameters of the enrolled bill rule established in Marshall Field—namely, that courts must “accept, as having passed Congress, all bills authenticated” by the signatures of the presiding officers of the House and Senate, Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 672. The Munoz-Flores “oblique footnote” repeatedly refers to the basic constitutional deficiency alleged in Marshall Field, which was that the statute in question had not passed both houses of Congress in a form identical to the enrolled bill. That same alleged deficiency underlies plaintiffs’ claims in the instant case. Moreover, as mentioned above, see page 12 ante, the footnote describes Marshall Field’s holding in broad terms, providing no indication that it applies only to particular types of evidence. Whatever plausible alternative interpretations may be supported by the language of the “oblique footnote,” plaintiffs’ 15 reading is not one of them.7 See Public Citizen, 486 F.3d at 1354-55 (discussing what the Munoz-Flores Court might have meant when it stated that a constitutional provision was not implicated in Marshall Field). E. We May Not Create Exceptions to the Enrolled Bill Rule Based on Technological and Political Developments Since Marshall Field Was Decided Plaintiffs and amici offer two additional reasons why the enrolled bill rule should not apply in the instant case: (1) the engrossed bill, whose production is required by statute, is more reliable than the congressional documents presented as evidence of a constitutional violation in Marshall Field; and (2) plaintiffs allege a conspiracy to subvert the Constitution by the presiding officers of Congress and the President. Neither of these arguments is availing. First, although technological advances in printing and copying since the late nineteenth century may have removed some of the sources of unreliability in congressional documents, the facts alleged by plaintiffs in this case reveal that even engrossed bills printed today are subject to error or mishandling. Indeed, such advances may provide new ways to alter a bill’s text during the legislative process. Additionally, while the Supreme Court in Marshall Field contemplated that Congress could change its internal bill authentication procedure if it wanted to, see Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 675 (quoting Sherman, 30 Cal. at 275, for the proposition that departure from the enrolled bill rule is required in certain States because there exists “some express constitutional or statutory provision requiring some relaxation of the rule”), Congress has not done so. Nothing in 1 U.S.C. § 106, expressly or otherwise, limits the 7 In other words, the Munoz-Flores footnote refuses to extend, but does not retract, the enrolled bill rule. That said, we do agree with plaintiffs that the Supreme Court has been less than clear in explaining why courts may probe congressional doc um ents when adjudica ting some types of constitutional claims but not others. In the context of a claim that se eks to impeach the authenticated tex t of an enrolled bill, the C ourt ma y reg ard as un ique the “usa ge, the orderly conduct of legislative proceedings, and the rules under which the [houses of Congress] have acted since the organization of the government, requir[ing] that mode of authentication.” Ma rshall F ield, 143 U.S. at 671. Or the Court may consider the textual inconsistencies invoked in a bicameralism challenge to be a greater source of “uncertainty in the statute laws of the land,” id. at 675 (quoting Sherman, 30 Ca l. at 275), than o ther ground s for con stitutional challenges. In any ev ent, our task is to apply clearly established Sup reme Court precedent, not to speculate on the reasons the Su prem e Cou rt migh t have had fo r creating this precedent. 16 longstanding authority of the presiding officers of the House and Senate to attest to the passage of an enrolled bill’s text. See page 4 ante (quoting 1 U.S.C. § 106). Second, we do not agree with plaintiffs’ argument (supported by several members of the House of Representatives acting as amici) that Marshall Field creates an exception to the enrolled bill rule in certain cases involving allegations that the presiding officers of Congress and the President of the United States conspired to violate the Constitution by enacting legislation that had not passed both the House and Senate. As it happens, the Supreme Court in Marshall Field responded to the contention that under the enrolled bill rule “it becomes possible for the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate to impose upon the people as a law a bill that was never passed by Congress”: But this possibility is too remote to be seriously considered in the present inquiry. It suggests a deliberate conspiracy to which the presiding officers, the committees on enrolled bills, and the clerks of the two houses must necessarily be parties, all acting with a common purpose to defeat an expression of the popular will in the mode prescribed by the Constitution. Marshall Field, 143 U.S. at 672-73. Plaintiffs and amici seize upon the Court’s statement that the possibility of a conspiracy was “too remote to be considered in the present inquiry,” arguing that where the likelihood of a conspiracy is greater, the enrolled bill rule does not apply. Yet the Court’s next sentence warned that “[j]udicial action based upon . . . a suggestion [of conspiracy] is forbidden by the respect due to a co-ordinate branch of the government.” Id. at 673. In light of the separation-ofpowers concerns at the forefront of Marshall Field, which are surely undiminished by the passage of time, we do not think it plausible that the judicial branch must, before deciding if the enrolled bill rule applies, conduct threshold inquiries into how likely it was for a particular set of legislative and executive actors to conspire in alleged constitutional violations. Whether the enrolled bill rule has come to serve as an incentive for politicians to avoid the rigors of constitutional law-making is a different question. The answer might provide a policy argument against strict application of the enrolled bill rule, but we 17 are bound to follow Supreme Court precedent as it currently exists. In the last analysis, even if plaintiffs’ arguments support the creation of exceptions to the enrolled bill rule in some circumstances (or militate toward abandoning the rule altogether), we are not at liberty to depart from binding Supreme Court precedent “unless and until [the] Court reinterpret[s]” that precedent. Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 238 (1997); accord United States v. Quinones, 313 F.3d 49, 62 n.10 (2d Cir. 2002). Plaintiffs’ constitutional claims are therefore foreclosed by Marshall Field, and dismissal by the District Court was appropriate.