Opinion ID: 2623199
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The intervening changes requirement

Text: As an alternative to demonstrating that Swanner was wrong when it was originally decided, the landlords could meet their burden of establishing the first element needed to overcome the rule of stare decisis by making a clear and convincing showing that the decision is no longer sound because conditions have changed. [44] But the landlords' claims reveal few salient factual changes: the landlords' situation is nearly indistinguishable from the one we considered in Swanner. The landlords nonetheless allege that their current situation differs markedly from Swanner because the law has now changed. As we have previously recognized, a prior decision may be abandoned because of changed conditions if related principles of law have so far developed as to have left the old rule no more than a remnant of abandoned doctrine, [or] facts have so changed or come to be seen so differently, as to have robbed the old rule of significant application.... [ [45] ] The landlords claim here that Swanner has recently been overruled by the Supreme Court's decision in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. [46] Though they acknowledge that Dale dealt with associational freedom, not free exercise of religion, and so does not directly overrule Swanner, the landlords insist that  Swanner has been overruled sub silentio by Dale.  In the landlords' view, Dale stands for the general proposition that anti-discrimination laws like those challenged here must fail when placed in opposition to a serious fundamental First Amendment right. But it seems reasonable to wonder whether sub silentio rulings  in other words, rulings that inform existing law by mere force of analogy  can ever trump stare decisis by establishing changed conditions that have so far developed as to have left the old rule no more than a remnant of abandoned doctrine. [47] And more to the point, the landlords' reading of Dale overstates the opinion's holding. For the Supreme Court in Dale did not broadly rule, as the landlords suggest, that First Amendment rights should generally be deemed more compelling than laws barring marital discrimination; instead, the Court expressly found New Jersey's claim of compelling interest attenuated in the particular situation at issue there because New Jersey law extended its anti-discrimination requirements to private groups whose activities fell well beyond those usually involved in providing public accommodations. [48] This same observation obviously would not hold true in the circumstances at issue here, since the challenged Alaska and Anchorage laws deal exclusively with the core activity of providing public accommodations. It follows that Dale does not clearly and convincingly undermine Swanner's continuing soundness.