Opinion ID: 109005
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: fifth amendment challenge to the foreign and domestic reporting requirements

Text: The District Court rejected the depositor plaintiffs' claim that the foreign reporting requirements violated the depositors' Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, and found it unnecessary to consider the similarly based challenge to the domestic reporting requirements since the latter were found to be in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The appeal of the depositor plaintiffs in No. 72-1196 challenges the foreign reporting requirements under the Fifth Amendment, and their brief likewise challenges the domestic reporting requirements as violative of that Amendment. Since they are free to urge in this Court reasons for affirming the judgment of the District Court which may not have been relied upon by the District Court, we consider here the Fifth Amendment objections to both the foreign and the domestic reporting requirements. As we noted above, the bank plaintiffs, being corporations, have no constitutional privilege against compulsory self-incrimination by virtue of the Fifth Amendment. Hale v. Henkel, 201 U. S. 43 (1906). Their brief urges that they may vicariously assert Fifth Amendment claims on behalf of their depositors. But since we hold infra that those depositor plaintiffs who are actually parties in this litigation are premature in asserting any Fifth Amendment claims, we do not believe that the banks under these circumstances have standing to assert Fifth Amendment claims on behalf of customers in general. The individual depositor plaintiffs below made various allegations in the complaint and affidavits filed in the District Court. Plaintiff Stark alleged that he was, in addition to being president of plaintiff Security National Bank, a customer of and depositor in the bank. Plaintiff Marson alleged that he was a customer of and depositor in the Bank of America. Plaintiff Lieberman alleged that he had repeatedly in the recent past transported or shipped one or more monetary instruments exceeding $5,000 in value from the United States to places outside the United States, and expected to do likewise in the near future. Plaintiffs Lieberman, Harwood, Bruer, and Durell each alleged that they maintained a financial interest in and signature authority over one or more bank accounts in foreign countries. This, so far as we can ascertain from the record, is the sum and substance of the depositors' allegations of fact upon which they seek to mount an attack on the reporting requirements of regulations as violative of the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination granted to each of them by the Fifth Amendment. Considering first the challenge of the depositor plaintiffs to the foreign reporting requirements, we hold that such claims are premature. In United States v. Sullivan, 274 U. S. 259 (1927), this Court reviewed a judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 15 F. 2d 809 (1926), which had held that the Fifth Amendment protected the respondent from being punished for failure to file an income tax return. This Court reversed the decision below, stating: As the defendant's income was taxed, the statute of course required a return. See United States v. Sischo, 262 U. S. 165. In the decision that this was contrary to the Constitution we are of opinion that the protection of the Fifth Amendment was pressed too far. If the form of return provided called for answers that the defendant was privileged from making he could have raised the objection in the return, but could not on that account refuse to make any return at all. We are not called on to decide what, if anything, he might have withheld. Most of the items warranted no complaint. It would be an extreme if not an extravagant application of the Fifth Amendment to say that it authorized a man to refuse to state the amount of his income because it had been made in crime. But if the defendant desired to test that or any other point he should have tested it in the return so that it could be passed upon. He could not draw a conjurer's circle around the whole matter by his own declaration that to write any word upon the government blank would bring him into danger of the law. 274 U. S., at 263-264. Here the depositor plaintiffs allege that they intend to engage in foreign currency transactions or dealings with foreign banks which the Secretary's regulations will require them to report, but they make no additional allegation that any of the information required by the Secretary will tend to incriminate them. It will be time enough for us to determine what, if any, relief from the reporting requirement they may obtain in a judicial proceeding when they have properly and specifically raised a claim of privilege with respect to particular items of information required by the Secretary, and the Secretary has overruled their claim of privilege. The posture of plaintiffs' Fifth Amendment rights here is strikingly similar to those asserted in Communist Party v. SACB, 367 U. S., at 105-110. The Communist Party there sought to assert the Fifth Amendment claims of its officers as a defense to the registration requirement of the Subversive Activities Control Act, although the officers were not at that stage of the proceeding required by the Act to register, and had neither registered nor refused to register on the ground that registration might incriminate them. The Court said: If a claim of privilege is made, it may or may not be honored by the Attorney General. We cannot, on the basis of supposition that privilege will be claimed and not honored, proceed now to adjudicate the constitutionality under the Fifth Amendment of the registration provisions. Whatever proceeding may be taken after and if the privilege is claimed will provide an adequate forum for litigation of that issue. Id., at 107. Plaintiffs argue that cases such as Albertson v. SACB, 382 U. S. 70 (1965), have relaxed the requirements of earlier cases, but we do not find that contention supported by the language or holding of that case. There the Attorney General had petitioned for and obtained an order from the Subversive Activities Control Board compelling certain named members of the Communist Party to register their affiliation. In response to the Attorney General's petitions, both before the Board and in subsequent judicial proceedings, the Communist Party members had asserted the privilege against self-incrimination, and their claims had been rejected by the Attorney General. A previous decision of this Court had held that an affirmative answer to the inquiry as to membership in the Communist Party was an incriminating admission protected under the Fifth Amendment. Blau v. United States, 340 U. S. 159 (1950). The differences then between the posture of the depositor plaintiffs in this case and that of petitioner in Albertson v. SACB, supra , are evident. We similarly think that the depositor plaintiffs' challenges to the domestic reporting requirements are premature. As we noted above, it is not apparent from the allegations of the complaints in these actions that any of the depositor plaintiffs would be engaged in $10,000 domestic transactions with the bank which the latter would be required to report under the Secretary's regulations pertaining to such domestic transactions. Not only is there no allegation that any depositor engaged in such transactions, but there is no allegation in the complaint that any report which such a bank was required to make would contain information incriminating any depositor. To what extent, if any, depositors may claim a privilege arising from the Fifth Amendment by reason of the obligation of the bank to report such a transaction may be left for resolution when the claim of privilege is properly asserted. Depositor plaintiffs rely on Marchetti v. United States, 390 U. S. 39 (1968), Grosso v. United States, 390 U. S. 62 (1968), and Haynes v. United States, 390 U. S. 85 (1968), as supporting the merits of their Fifth Amendment claim. In each of those cases, however, a claim of privilege was asserted as a defense to the requirement of reporting particular information required by the law under challenge, and those decisions therefore in no way militate against our conclusion that depositor plaintiffs' efforts to litigate the Fifth Amendment issue at this time are premature.