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United States Supreme Court ELLIS v. UNION PAC. R. CO.(1947) No. 320 Argued: Decided: February 3, 1947 </s> Mr. George Mecham, of Omaha, Neb., for petitioner. Mr. Robert B. Hamer, of Omaha, Neb., for respondent. </s> Mr. Justice DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court. Petitioner was crushed between a moving railroad car and a building while working for respondent railroad as [329 U.S. 649, 650] an engine foreman in charge of a switching crew. Damages for personal injuries were sought in a Nebraska state court under the Federal Employers Liability Act, 35 Stat. 65, as amended, 45 U.S.C. 51 et seq., 45 U.S.C.A . 51 et seq. Judgment was rendered for petitioner on a jury verdict for $ 10,000, but on appeal the state Supreme Court reversed for insufficiency of evidence to show negligence, and ordered the complaint dismissed. 146 Neb. 397, 19 N.W.2d 641; 22 N.W.2d 305. We granted certiorari because of an appa ent conflict between that decision and Lavender v. Kurn, 327 U.S. 645 , 66 S.Ct. 740. Petitioner's evidence tended to show the following: Petitioner, aged 41, had been in the employ of respondent only one year, and had a total railroad experience of two or three years. Just before sunset on March 15, 1943, he was engaged, along with other members of his crew, in backing an engine and box car around a curve on a spur track where visibility was obstructed by a building located on the inside and near the middle of the curve. He was standing on the ground on the same side as the building and to the right of the engine, and was controlling operations by hand signals to the engineer. Engine foremen frequently stand to the right of the engine, on the engineer's side of the cab. A switchman was located around the curve, out of sight of the engineer, on a loading platform at which the car was to be 'spotted'. Petitioner moved between the building and the track in an attempt to be in a central position from which he could receive signals from the switchman and relay them to the engineer. As the car moved past petitioner, it caught and pinned the upper part of his body against the wall of the building, causing serious injuries. The situation was deceptive because the overhang of the car on the curve and its tilt toward the building resulting from a higher outside rail, reduced clearance materially. In fact, the place where petitioner was standing was in the one short segment [329 U.S. 649, 651] of the arc of the curve where clearance was insufficient. Petitioner was unfamiliar with the area and its hazards; if there was a sign warning of the danger, he did not see it; no effort was made to warn him personally. The nearness of the track to the building created an unsafe place for work. Though the engineer was an experienced railroad worker thoroughly familiar with this particular spur, and though it was his duty to watch petitioner continuously or stop the engine,1 he failed either to warn petitioner or to stop in time to avert the tragedy. During the operation the engineer could see the right side of petitioner and when he saw petitioner's right foot twisted on the ground, he stopped the train. Respondent's evidence, on the other hand, tended to establish the following: Petitioner was inconsistent in his statements, and it actually appeared that he had worked around this spur a number of times. The clearance, once adequate, was impaired by a subsequent extension of the building over which the respondent had no control. Neither the overhang of the car nor the pitch of the curve was unusual. Respondent maintained, near the building and some eight feet above the ground, a prominent, legible sign reading 'Impaired Clearance'. It was not required or desirable that petitioner stand between the building and the track; he could equally well have performed his functions on the left, or safe, side of the engine. He did not stand where he could see the switchman, and in fact, it was not necessary for him to relay signals from the switchman since the engineer would be in a position to watch the switchman himself when the car approached the loading platform. The engineer had not worked on the [329 U.S. 649, 652] ground and was not aware of the precise hazard; his distance from the petitioner (about 60 feet) and the configuration of the building were such that it was not apparent that the petitioner was in peril. That the engineer was vigilant is somewhat supported by the fact that the train was moving only one or two miles an hour and that he stopped it almost instantly, and within a distance of 12 or 14 inches, when petitioner was pinned between the car and the building. From this evid nce the jury might have concluded that petitioner had a safe place to work but elected to choose a dangerous one, that any duty of warning was fully discharged by the presence of the sign, and that the engineer had not been negligent in any way. In that view of the case the accident would be an unforeseeable, freak event or one caused solely by petitioner's own negligence. On the other hand, it would not have been unreasonable for the triers of fact to have inferred that it was proper and usual procedure to work on the right side of the engine, that the hazard was not radily apparent and was almost in the nature of a trap, that while the sign was placed so as to be readily visible from a train, it was insufficient warning to a man on the ground, and that consequently petitioner was not furnished a safe place to work. 2 And the jury might have thought that the engineer was negligent in failing to perceive the peril in time to avert the accident by a warning or by stopping the engine. Again, both parties might have been found negligent, in which event it would have been the duty of the jury, as the trial judge charged, to render a verdict based upon the damages caused by respondent's negligence diminished by the pro- [329 U.S. 649, 653] portion of negligence attributable to petitioner. 45 U.S.C. 53, 45 U.S.C. A. 53. The Act does not make the employer the insurer of the safety of his employees while they are on duty. The basis of his liability is his negligence, not the fact that injuries occur. And that negligence must be 'in whole or in part' the cause of the injury. 45 U.S.C. 51, 45 U.S.C.A . 51. Brady v. Southern Ry. Co., 320 U.S. 476, 484 , 64 S.Ct. 232, 236. Whether those standards are satisfied is a federal question, the rights created being federal rights. Brady v. Southern Ry. Co., supra; Bailey v. Central Vermont Ry. Co., 319 U.S. 350 , 63 S.Ct. 1062 </s> The choice of conflicting versions of the way the accident happened, the decision as to which witness was telling the truth, the inferences to be drawn from uncontroverted as well as controverted facts, are questions for the jury. Tennant v. Peoria & P.U.R. Co., 321 U.S. 29 , 64 S.Ct. 409; Lavender v. Kurn, supra. Once there is a reasonable basis in the record for concluding that there was negligence which caused the injury, it is irrelevant that fair-minded men might reach a different conclusion. For then it would be an invasion of the jury's function for an appellate court to draw contrary inferences or to conclude that a different conclusion would be more reasonable. Lavender v. Kurn, supra, 327 U.S. at page 652, 66 S.Ct. at page 743. And where, as here, the case turns on controverted facts and the credibility of witnesses, the case is peculiarly one for the Washington & Georgetown R. Co. v. McDade, 135 U.S. 554, 572 , 10 S.Ct. 1044, 1049; Tiller v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 318 U.S. 54, 68 , 63 S.Ct. 444, 451, 143 A.L.R. 967. We think the evidence raised substantial questions for the jury to determine and that there was a reasonable basis for the verdict which it returned. Reversed. </s> Footnotes </s> [Footnote 1 The engineer was required to have some member of the crew in sight at all times when the engine was in motion. At the time of the accident the undisputed testimony indicated that petitioner was the only member of the crew that the engineer could see. The engineer testified that he watched petitioner continuously. </s> [Footnote 2 The duty of the carrier to furnish a safe place to work 'is not relieved by the fact that the employee's work in the place in question is fleeting or infrequent.' Bailey v. Central Vermont R. Co., supra, 319 U.S. at page 353, 63 S.Ct. at page 1064.

United States Supreme Court GREENE v. UNITED STATES(1959) No. 134 Argued: January 13, 1959Decided: January 26, 1959 </s> Petitioner was convicted in a Federal District Court on each of 15 counts of an indictment for violations of the narcotic laws and was sentenced to consecutive sentences of 20 months to 5 years on each of Counts 2, 4 and 7 and to sentences of 20 months to 5 years on each of the other 12 counts, to run concurrently with each other and "with the sentences imposed on Counts Two, Four and Seven." On petitioner's appeal challenging the validity of his conviction and sentence on each count, the Court of Appeals held that, "The record supports at least 5 of the sentences that were to run `concurrently with' the 3 consecutive sentences. It therefore supports the aggregate sentence. We need not decide whether it supports the `consecutive' sentences themselves," and it affirmed. Held: The Court of Appeals should have passed upon the validity of the consecutive sentences. Pp. 327-330. </s> (a) The 15 sentences here involved may not be treated as one "gross sentence" to imprisonment for a period of 5 to 15 years, because the recorded judgment explicitly imposed a separate sentence of from 20 months to the then permissible maximum of 5 years on each of the 15 counts. Pp. 328-329. </s> (b) Because of the way the judgment is worded, imprisonment for an aggregate period of 5 to 15 years can be sustained in this case only if each of the consecutive sentences on Counts 2, 4 and 7 is valid. Pp. 329-330. </s> 100 U.S. App. D.C. 396, 246 F.2d 677, judgment vacated and cause remanded for further proceedings. </s> James H. Heller argued the cause and filed a brief for petitioner. </s> John L. Murphy argued the cause for the United States. On the brief were Solicitor General Rankin, Assistant Attorney General Anderson, Beatrice Rosenberg and Eugene L. Grimm. [358 U.S. 326, 327] </s> PER CURIAM. </s> Petitioner was convicted in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on each of 15 counts of an indictment for violations of the narcotic laws, 1 and as recited in the formal judgment was sentenced to imprisonment as follows: </s> "Twenty (20) Months to Five (5) Years . . . on Count Two; Twenty (20) Months to Five (5) Years . . . on Count Four, said sentence on Count Four to take effect [at] the expiration of sentence imposed on Count Two; Twenty (20) Months to Five (5) Years . . . on Count Seven, said sentence on Count Seven to take effect at the expiration of sentence imposed on Count Four; Twenty (20) Months to Five (5) Years . . . on each of Counts One, Three, Five, Six, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen, said sentences by the Counts to run concurrently and to run concurrently with the sentences imposed on Counts Two, Four and Seven." </s> On his appeal, petitioner sought reversal of the conviction and sentence on each count upon the grounds of prejudicial procedural errors at the trial, insufficiency of the evidence to support the convictions and sentences, and invalid multiple punishments for single offenses. In a per curiam opinion the Court of Appeals held that "The record supports at least 5 of the sentences that were to run `concurrently with' the 3 consecutive sentences. It therefore supports the aggregate sentence. We need not decide whether it supports the `consecutive' sentences [358 U.S. 326, 328] themselves. Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 85 ; Wanzer v. United States, 93 U.S. App. D.C. 412, 208 F.2d 45." It thereupon affirmed, one judge dissenting, 100 U.S. App. D.C. 396, 246 F.2d 677. Petitioner sought certiorari on the grounds that the sentences invalidly multiply punishments for single offenses, and that the Court of Appeals erred in failing to determine the validity of the several sentences and in holding that imprisonment for an aggregate period of 5 to 15 years is authorized by its finding that "at least 5 of the sentences that were to run `concurrently with' the 3 consecutive sentences [are valid]." We granted the writ to determine those questions. 357 U.S. 934 . </s> The Government contends here that the several sentences are in reality but one "gross sentence" to imprisonment for a period of 5 to 15 years, and that the holding of the Court of Appeals that at least 5 of the "concurrent" sentences are valid supports the judgment, 2 but it concedes that "If the sentence [may] not be considered as a gross sentence, at least as to the 12 counts which were to be concurrent with 2, 4, and 7, . . . the case would have to be remanded to the Court of Appeals to pass on the validity of counts 2, 4, and 7 [and if] it found any one of them invalid, that court would then have to remand to the District Court for resentencing, since, assuming that [358 U.S. 326, 329] the other counts cannot be considered in gross, it is not clear which of them, taken individually, were to be concurrent with 2, which with 4, and which with 7." </s> The question whether, in these circumstances, the law permits the imposition of a single "gross sentence" upon several counts exceeding the maximum sentence that may lawfully be imposed upon any one of such counts is not presented here, for we think the Government's contention that these 15 sentences were, or may be treated as, one "gross sentence" to imprisonment for a period of 5 to 15 years is unsupportable and is contradicted by the plain words of the recorded judgment. "The only sentence known to the law is the sentence or judgment entered upon the records of the court." Hill v. United States, 298 U.S. 460, 464 . The judgment entered on the records of the court in this case explicitly imposed a separate sentence of from 20 months to the then permissible maximum of 5 years 3 on each of the 15 counts. It is therefore plain that the court did not impose one "gross sentence" to imprisonment for a period of 5 to 15 years. </s> The judgment makes the separate sentences on Counts Two, Four, and Seven to run consecutively. Thus, if each is valid, they in sequence authorize imprisonment for an aggregate period of 5 to 15 years. But the judgment makes the separate sentences on the other 12 counts to run concurrently with each other (hence for a total period of 20 months to 5 years) and "with the sentences imposed on Counts Two, Four and Seven," without saying whether [358 U.S. 326, 330] those "concurrent" sentences are to run with the sentence on Count Two, with the consecutive sentence on Count Four, or with the consecutive sentence on Count Seven. It is therefore evident that the Court of Appeals was in error in concluding that the 5 "concurrent" sentences which it thought were valid alone support an aggregate period of imprisonment of 5 to 15 years. </s> The rule that reversal is not required if any one of several concurrent sentences is valid and alone supports the sentence and judgment, Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81, 85 , and cases cited; Pinkerton v. United States, 328 U.S. 640, 642 , n. 1; United States v. Sheridan, 329 U.S. 379, 381 ; Roviaro v. United States, 353 U.S. 53, 59 , n. 6; Lawn v. United States, 355 U.S. 339, 359 , does not aid the Government, for no one of the "concurrent" sentences, or even all of them together, could, even if geared to a particular (though invalid) consecutive sentence, support imprisonment for more than 20 months to 5 years. If any one of the consecutive sentences on Counts Two, Four or Seven be invalid it cannot be said that such of the "concurrent" sentences as are valid will run with such invalid consecutive sentence, and thus support that much of the aggregate term of imprisonment, because the trial judge did not make the concurrent sentences to run with any particular one of the consecutive sentences. It is therefore clear, under the present sentences, that imprisonment for an aggregate period of 5 to 15 years can be sustained only if each of the consecutive sentences on Counts Two, Four, and Seven is valid. Hence it is necessary for the Court of Appeals to pass upon the validity of the consecutive sentences. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated and the cause is remanded to that court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. </s> It is so ordered. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 The Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act, 2 (c), 65 Stat. 767, 21 U.S.C. 174; the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, 4704 (a), 4705 (a), and 7237 (a), 68A. Stat. 550-551, 860, as amended, 69 Stat. 3, 26 U.S.C. (Supp. III) 4704 (a), 4705 (a), 7237 (a). </s> [Footnote 2 In support of its stated position the Government relies on its understanding of this Court's opinions in In re De Bara, 179 U.S. 316 , and In re Henry, 123 U.S. 372 . It also relies upon Phillips v. United States, 212 F.2d 327, 335 (C. A. 8th Cir.); Barnes v. United States, 197 F.2d 271, 273 (C. A. 8th Cir.); Levine v. Hudspeth, 127 F.2d 982, 984 (C. A. 10th Cir.); McKee v. Johnston, 109 F.2d 273, 275 (C. A. 9th Cir.); Jackson v. Hudspeth, 111 F.2d 128, 129 (C. A. 10th Cir.); Ross v. Hudspeth, 108 F.2d 628, 629 (C. A. 10th Cir.); Hawkins v. United States, 14 F.2d 596, 597-598 (C. A. 7th Cir.); Klein v. United States, 14 F.2d 35, 37 (C. A. 1st Cir.); Neely v. United States, 2 F.2d 849, 852 (C. A. 4th Cir.). </s> [Footnote 3 At the time of these alleged offenses, and prior to the enactment of the Narcotic Control Act of 1956, 70 Stat. 567, 570, 2 (c) of the Narcotic Drugs Import and Export Act (65 Stat. 767, 21 U.S.C. 174) provided for imprisonment for its violation of "not less than two or more than five years," and 7237 (a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (68A. Stat. 860) provided for imprisonment for the violation or conspiracy to violate 4704 (a) or 4705 (a) of that Code of "not less than 2 or more than 5 years." </s> [358 U.S. 326, 331]

United States Supreme Court STANDARD OIL CO. v. PECK(1952) No. 184 Argued: Decided: February 4, 1952 </s> Ohio levied an ad valorem personal property tax on all the boats and barges owned by appellant, an Ohio corporation, and employed in transporting oil along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. The main terminals are in Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky and Louisiana. The vessels are registered in Cincinnati; but they neither pick up nor discharge oil in Ohio, they stop in Ohio only for occasional fuel or repairs, they traverse a maximum of only 17 1/2 miles of waters bordering Ohio, and they were almost continuously outside Ohio during the taxable year. Held: Since the vessels would be subject to taxation on an apportionment basis in several other states, the Ohio tax on their full value violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 382-385. </s> 155 Ohio St. 61, 98 N. E. 2d 8, reversed. </s> The Supreme Court of Ohio sustained an ad valorem tax on the entire value of appellant's boats and barges employed in interstate commerce. 155 Ohio St. 61, 98 N. E. 2d 8. On appeal to this Court, reversed, p. 385. </s> Isador Grossman and Rufus S. Day, Jr. argued the cause and filed a brief for appellant. </s> Isadore Topper argued the cause for appellees. With him on the brief were C. William O'Neill, Attorney General of Ohio, Robert E. Leach, Assistant Attorney General, Frank T. Cullitan and Saul Danaceau. </s> MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> Appellant, an Ohio corporation, owns boats and barges which it employs for the transportation of oil along the [342 U.S. 382, 383] Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. The vessels neither pick up oil nor discharge it in Ohio. The main terminals are in Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky, and Louisiana. The maximum river mileage traversed by the boats and barges on any trip through waters bordering Ohio was 17 1/2 miles. These 17 1/2 miles were in the section of the Ohio River which had to be traversed to reach Bromley, Kentucky. While this stretch of water bordered Ohio, it was not necessarily within Ohio. The vessels were registered in Cincinnati, Ohio, but only stopped in Ohio for occasional fuel or repairs. These stops were made at Cincinnati; but none of them involved loading or unloading cargo. </s> The Tax Commissioner of Ohio, acting under 5325 and 5328 of the Ohio General Code, levied an ad valorem personal property tax on all of these vessels. The Board of Tax Appeals affirmed (with an exception not material here), and the Supreme Court of Ohio sustained the Board, 155 Ohio St. 61, 98 N. E. 2d 8, over the objection that the tax violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case is here on appeal. 28 U.S.C. 1257 (2). </s> Under the earlier view governing the taxability of vessels moving in the inland waters (St. Louis v. Ferry Co., 11 Wall. 423; Ayer & Lord Tie Co. v. Kentucky, 202 U.S. 409 ; cf. Old Dominion S. S. Co. v. Virginia, 198 U.S. 299 ), Ohio, the state of the domicile, would have a strong claim to the whole of the tax that has been levied. But the rationale of those cases was rejected in Ott v. Mississippi Barge Line Co., 336 U.S. 169 , where we held that vessels moving in interstate operations along the inland waters were taxable by the same standards as those which Pullman's Car Co. v. Pennsylvania, 141 U.S. 18 , first applied to railroad cars in interstate commerce. The formula approved was one which fairly apportioned the tax to the commerce carried on within the state. In that way we [342 U.S. 382, 384] placed inland water transportation on the same constitutional footing as other interstate enterprises. </s> The Ott case involved a tax by Louisiana on vessels of a foreign corporation operating in Louisiana waters. Louisiana sought to tax only that portion of the value of the vessels represented by the ratio between the total number of miles in Louisiana and the total number of miles in the entire operation. The present case is sought to be distinguished on the ground that Ohio is the domiciliary state and therefore may tax the whole value even though the boats and barges operate outside Ohio. New York Central R. Co. v. Miller, 202 U.S. 584 , sustained a tax by the domiciliary state on all the rolling stock of a railroad. But in that case it did not appear that "any specific cars or any average of cars" was so continuously in another state as to be taxable there. P. 597. Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. Minnesota, 322 U.S. 292 , allowed the domiciliary state to tax the entire fleet of airplanes operating interstate; but in that case, as in the Miller case, it was not shown that "a defined part of the domiciliary corpus" had acquired a taxable situs elsewhere. P. 295. Those cases, though exceptional on their facts, illustrate the reach of the taxing power of the state of the domicile as contrasted to that of the other states. But they have no application here since most, if not all, of the barges and boats which Ohio has taxed were almost continuously outside Ohio during the taxable year. No one vessel may have been continuously in another state during the taxable year. But we do know that most, if not all, of them were operating in other waters and therefore under Ott v. Mississippi Barge Line Co., supra, could be taxed by the several states on an apportionment basis. The rule which permits taxation by two or more states on an apportionment basis precludes taxation of all of the property by the state of the domicile. See Union Transit [342 U.S. 382, 385] Co. v. Kentucky, 199 U.S. 194 . Otherwise there would be multiple taxation of interstate operations and the tax would have no relation to the opportunities, benefits, or protection which the taxing state gives those operations. </s> Reversed. </s> MR. JUSTICE BLACK dissents. </s> MR. JUSTICE MINTON, dissenting. </s> I assume for the purposes of this dissent that none of the vessels in question were within Ohio during the tax year, and that they were taxed to their full value by Ohio. The record shows that the vessels were all registered in Cincinnati, Ohio, as the home port, and that Ohio is the domicile of the owner. Ohio claims the right to tax these vessels because they have not acquired a tax situs elsewhere than their home port and domicile. </s> Seagoing vessels have always been taxable at the domicile of the owner. Southern Pacific Co. v. Kentucky, 222 U.S. 63 ; Morgan v. Parham, 16 Wall. 471; Hays v. Pacific Mail S. S. Co., 17 How. 596. This same rule has been applied to vessels engaged in commerce between the different states. Transportation Co. v. Wheeling, 99 U.S. 273 ; St. Louis v. Ferry Co., 11 Wall. 423. The only exception to the rule until today was that where vessels had acquired a situs for taxation in some other state, that other state might tax them. Old Dominion S. S. Co. v. Virginia, 198 U.S. 299 . In Ayer & Lord Tie Co. v. Kentucky, 202 U.S. 409, 421 , this Court said: </s> "The general rule has long been settled as to vessels plying between the ports of different States, engaged in the coastwise trade, that the domicil of the owner is the situs of a vessel for the purpose of taxation, wholly irrespective of the place of enrollment, subject, however, to the exception that where a vessel [342 U.S. 382, 386] engaged in interstate commerce has acquired an actual situs in a State other than the place of the domicil of the owner, it may there be taxed because within the jurisdiction of the taxing authority." </s> In the case at hand, the vessels had not acquired a situs for taxation in any other state. They were at large in the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, touching ports therein from time to time. There was no showing as to how much time any of the vessels spent in any state. Indeed, the time spent in any state by the vessels plying the Mississippi River could not be shown with any accuracy, as the states on each side own to the middle of the stream. * The navigation channel might be on either side of the center line or right on the center line. Who is to say what state the vessels were in? </s> The doctrine of apportionment applied in Ott v. Mississippi Valley Barge Line Co., 336 U.S. 169 , is not in point. In that case the domiciliary state had not sought to tax the vessels. The tax was approved in the Ott case only on the assurance of the Louisiana Attorney General that the taxing statute "was intended to cover and actually covers here, an average portion of property permanently within the State - and by permanently is meant throughout the taxing year." Ibid., at 175. Without such assurance there would have been no basis for applying the apportionment rule. New York Central R. Co. v. Miller, 202 U.S. 584 ; Pullman's Palace Car Co. v. Pennsylvania, 141 U.S. 18, 26 ; Union Refrigerator Transit Co. v. Kentucky, 199 U.S. 194, 206 . </s> The record in this case is silent as to whether any proportion of the vessels were in any one state for the whole [342 U.S. 382, 387] of a taxable year. The record does show that no other state collected taxes on the vessels for the year in question or any other year. Until this case, it has not been the law that the state of the owner's domicile is prohibited from taxing under such circumstances. </s> Southern Pacific Co. v. Kentucky, supra, is a case in point. There the owner of the vessels was a Kentucky corporation which operated between various coastal ports. None of the vessels were ever near Kentucky, but Kentucky was allowed to tax them because it was the state of the owner's domicile. The vessels were in and out of other states' ports, just as the instant vessels were in and out of other states' ports; but the mere possibility that some other state might attempt to levy an apportioned tax on the vessels was not permitted to destroy Kentucky's power to tax. The crucial fact was that the vessels were not shown to have acquired a tax situs elsewhere. </s> As recently as 1944 this Court would seem to have added vitality to the doctrine which should govern this case. Minnesota had taxed an airline on the full value of its airplanes, including those used in interstate commerce. MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, announcing the judgment of the Court upholding the tax, stated: </s> "The fact that Northwest paid personal property taxes for the year 1939 upon `some proportion of its full value' of its airplane fleet in some other States does not abridge the power of taxation of Minnesota as the home State of the fleet in the circumstances of the present case. The taxability of any part of this fleet by any other State than Minnesota, in view of the taxability of the entire fleet by that State, is not now before us. It . . . is not shown here that a defined part of the domiciliary corpus has acquired a permanent location, i. e., a taxing situs, elsewhere." Northwest Airlines v. Minnesota, 322 U.S. 292, 295 . [342 U.S. 382, 388] </s> The fear of "double taxation" was much more real in that case than in the instant case; yet the Minnesota tax was sustained because there was no showing that a taxing situs had been acquired elsewhere. The question of what some other state might do is no more before the Court in this case than it was in the Northwest case. </s> The majority today seeks to distinguish the earlier cases by magnifying the relevance of the continuous absence of the vessels from the domiciliary state. But the operative fact of the earlier cases was the absence or presence of another taxing situs. Where no other taxing situs was shown to exist, the state of the domicile was permitted to tax, irrespective of the amount of time the vessels were present in that state. Southern Pacific Co. v. Kentucky, supra. </s> As it is admittedly not shown on this record that these vessels have acquired a tax situs elsewhere, Ohio should be permitted to tax them as the state of the owner's domicile. I would affirm. </s> [Footnote * Douglas, Boundaries, Areas, Geographic Centers, and Altitudes of the United States and the Several States, 2d Ed. (U.S. Dept. of Interior, Geological Survey Bull. 817). </s> [342 U.S. 382, 389]

United States Supreme Court U.S. v. GERLACH LIVE STOCK CO.(1950) No. 191 Argued: March 1, 1949Decided: June 5, 1950 </s> Respondents are owners of so-called "uncontrolled grass lands" along the San Joaquin River in California which depend for water upon seasonal inundations resulting from overflows of the River. The value of these lands will be impaired by the construction by the United States of the Friant Dam and its dependent irrigation system, as part of the Central Valley Project, a gigantic undertaking by the Federal Government to redistribute the principal fresh water resources of California. While the project will have some relatively insignificant effects on navigation, its principal economic effects pertain to values realized from storage and redistribution of water for power, irrigation, reclamation, flood control and other similar purposes. Claiming under California law riparian rights to the benefits from the annual inundations of their lands, respondents sued in the Court of Claims for compensation. The Government contended that the damage was noncompensable, on the ground that the entire project was authorized by Congress, under the commerce power, as a measure for the control of navigation. Held: Judgments of the Court of Claims in favor of respondents are affirmed. Pp. 727-756. </s> 1. Even if it be assumed that Friant Dam bears some relation to control of navigation, nevertheless Congress elected to treat it as a reclamation project, to recognize any state-created rights and to take them under its power of eminent domain; and the provisions of the Reclamation Act, 43 U.S.C. 371 et seq., providing for reimbursement, are applicable to these claims. Pp. 731-742. </s> (a) In undertaking the Friant projects and implementing the work as carried forward by the Reclamation Bureau, Congress proceeded on the basis of full recognition of water rights having valid existence under state law. Pp. 734-736. [339 U.S. 725, 726] </s> (b) Notwithstanding its general declaration of purpose that the Central Valley Project as a whole is to improve navigation, Congress did not intend to invoke its navigation servitude as to each and every one of this group of coordinated projects and has not attempted to take, or authorized the taking, without compensation, of rights valid under state law. Pp. 736-739. </s> (c) The administrative practice with reference to this project supports the view that it is a reclamation project involving respect for existing water rights and compensation to owners thereof. Pp. 739-742. </s> 2. Under California law, respondents had riparian rights to periodic inundations of their lands by seasonal overflows of the River; these rights are compensable under California law; and the awards of the Court of Claims correctly applied the law of California as made applicable to these claims by Congress. Pp. 742-755. </s> 3. This Court declines to set aside the determination of the Court of Claims that the date from which interest is to be allowed is October 20, 1941, the date of the first substantial impoundment of water, even though it had not then prevented benefits from reaching the property. P. 755. </s> 4. This Court accepts without review a finding by the Court of Claims construing reservations in deeds of certain of the claimants, a question governed by conveyancing and real property law peculiar to this one case, depending on local law, and not of general interest, and on which there is no manifest error in the finding of the Court of Claims. P. 755. </s> 5. The Court of Claims adequately described the rights taken and for which it made an award. P. 756. </s> 111 Ct. Cl. 1, 89, 76 F. Supp. 87, 99, affirmed. </s> [Footnote * Together with No. 5, United States v. Potter; No. 6, United States v. Erreca; No. 7, United States v. James J. Stevinson (a Corporation); No. 8, United States v. Stevinson; and No. 9, United States v. 3-H Securities Co., also on certiorari to the same court. </s> The Court of Claims severally awarded compensation to respondents for the taking by the United States, through the construction of Friant Dam, of their riparian rights to annual inundations of their lands along the San Joaquin River in California. 111 Ct. Cl. 1, 89, 76 F. Supp. 87, 99. This Court granted certiorari. 335 U.S. 883 . Affirmed, p. 756. </s> Ralph S. Boyd argued the cause for the United States. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Perlman, [339 U.S. 725, 727] Assistant Attorney General Vanech and Roger P. Marquis. Robert L. Stern was also with them on the brief on the original argument and Stanley M. Silverberg was also with them on the brief on the reargument. </s> Edward F. Treadwell argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief was Reginald S. Laughlin. Samuel I. Jacobs was also of counsel for Potter, respondent in No. 5. </s> By special leave of Court, Warner W. Gardner argued the cause for Gill et al., as amici curiae, urging affirmance. With him on the brief on the original argument was Milton T. Farmer and with him on the brief on the reargument was A. E. Chandler. </s> An amici curiae brief, urging affirmance, was filed on behalf of the States of California, by Fred N. Howser, Attorney General, Arvin B. Shaw, Jr., Assistant Attorney General, Gilbert F. Nelson, Deputy Attorney General, and Northcutt Ely; Idaho, by Robert E. Smylie, Attorney General; Kansas, by Edward F. Arn, Attorney General; Nebraska, by James H. Anderson, Attorney General; Nevada, by Alan Bible, Attorney General; New Mexico, by Joe L. Martinez, Attorney General; North Dakota, by Nels G. Johnson, Attorney General; Oregon, by George Neuner, Attorney General; South Dakota, by Sigurd Anderson, Attorney General; and Washington, by Smith Troy, Attorney General. </s> Harry W. Horton, W. R. Bailey and Arvin B. Shaw, Jr. filed a brief for the Irrigation Districts Association of California, as amicus curiae, urging affirmance. </s> MR. JUSTICE JACKSON delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> We are asked to relieve the United States from six awards by the Court of Claims as just compensation for deprivation of riparian rights along the San Joaquin River [339 U.S. 725, 728] in California caused by construction of Friant Dam, and its dependent irrigation system, as part of the Central Valley Project. </s> This is a gigantic undertaking to redistribute the principal fresh-water resources of California. Central Valley is a vast basin, stretching over 400 miles on its polar axis and a hundred in width, in the heart of California. Bounded by the Sierra Nevada on the east and by coastal ranges on the west, it consists actually of two separate river valleys which merge in a single pass to the sea at the Golden Gate. Its rich acres, counted in the millions, are deficient in rainfall and must remain generally arid and unfruitful unless artificially watered. </s> Water resources there are, if they can be captured and distributed over the land. From the highland barricade at the north the Sacramento River flows southerly, while from the Yosemite region at the southeast the San Joaquin River winds northeasterly until the two meet and consort in outlet to the sea through estuaries that connect with San Francisco Bay. These dominating rivers collect tribute from many mountain currents, carry their hoardings past parched plains and thriftlessly dissipate them in the Pacific tides. When it is sought to make these streams yield their wasting treasures to the lands they traverse, men are confronted with a paradox of nature; for the Sacramento, with almost twice the water, is accessible to the least land, whereas about three-fifths of the valley lies in the domain of the less affluent San Joaquin. </s> To harness these wasting waters, overcome this perversity of nature and make water available where it would be of greatest service, the State of California proposed to re-engineer its natural water distribution. This project was taken over by the United States in 1935 and has since been a federal enterprise. The plan, in broad outline, is to capture and store waters of both rivers and many of their tributaries in their highland basins, in some [339 U.S. 725, 729] cases taking advantage of the resulting head for generation of electric energy. Shasta Dam in the north will produce power for use throughout much of the State and will provide a great reservoir to equalize seasonal flows of the Sacramento. A more dramatic feature of the plan is the water storage and irrigation system at the other end of the valley. There the waters of the San Joaquin will be arrested at Friant, where they would take leave of the mountains, and will be diverted north and south through a system of canals and sold to irrigate more than a million acres of land, some as far as 160 miles away. A cost of refreshing this great expanse of semiarid land is that, except for occasional spills, only a dry river bed will cross the plain below the dam. Here, however, surplus waters from the north are utilized, for through a 150-mile canal Sacramento water is to be pumped to the cultivated lands formerly dependent on the San Joaquin. </s> Both rivers afford navigation - the Sacramento for a considerable distance inland, the San Joaquin practically only at tidewater levels. The plan will have navigation consequences, principally on the Sacramento; but the effects on navigation are economically insignificant as compared with the values realized from redistribution of water benefits. </s> Such a project inevitably unsettles many advantages long enjoyed in reliance upon the natural order, and it is with deprivation of such benefits that we are here concerned. </s> Claimants own land parcels riparian to the San Joaquin. 1 These are called "uncontrolled grass lands," to distinguish them from either crop lands or "controlled grass lands," both of which have long been irrigated through controlled systems supplied from the stream. [339 U.S. 725, 730] Neither of these latter will be injured by the diversion, for they are to be provided with the replacement water from the Sacramento. </s> Uncontrolled grass lands involved in the claims are parts of a large riparian area which benefits from the natural seasonal overflow of the stream. Each year, with predictable regularity, the stream swells and submerges and saturates these low-lying lands. They are moistened and enriched by these inundations so that forage and pasturage thrive, as otherwise they can not. The high stage of the river, while fluctuating in height and variable in arrival, is not a flood in the sense of an abnormal and sudden deluge. The river rises and falls in rhythm with the cycle of seasons, expansion being normal for its time as curtailment is for others, and both are repeated with considerable constancy over the years. It should be noted, however, that claimants' benefit comes only from the very crest of this seasonal stage, which crest must be elevated and borne to their lands on the base of a full river, none of which can be utilized for irrigation above and little of it below them. Their claim of right is, in other words, to enjoy natural, seasonal fluctuation unhindered, which presupposes a peak flow largely unutilized. </s> The project puts an end to all this. Except at rare intervals, there will be no spill over Friant Dam, the bed of the San Joaquin along claimants' lands will be parched, and their grass lands will be barren. Unlike the supply utilized for nearby crop and "controlled" lands, the vanishing San Joaquin inundation cannot be replaced with Sacramento water. Claimants have been severally awarded compensation for this taking of their annual inundations, on the theory that, as part of the natural flow, its continuance is a right annexed to their riparian property. 111 Ct. Cl. 1, 89, 76 F. Supp. 87, 99. The principal issues are common to the six cases in which we granted certiorari. 335 U.S. 883 . [339 U.S. 725, 731] </s> I. NAVIGATION OR RECLAMATION PROJECT? </s> The Solicitor General contends that this overall project, and each part of it, has been authorized by Congress, under the commerce power, as a measure for control of navigation. Claimants on the other hand urge that although improvement of navigation was one objective of the Central Valley undertaking as a whole, nevertheless construction of the Friant Dam and the consequent taking of San Joaquin water rights had no purpose or effect except for irrigation and reclamation. This, it is claimed, was not only the actual, but the avowed purpose of Congress. On these conflicting assumptions the parties predicate contrary conclusions as to the right to compensation. </s> In the Rivers and Harbors Act of August 26, 1937, 2, 50 Stat. 844, 850, and again in the Rivers and Harbors Act of October 17, 1940, 54 Stat. 1198, 1199-1200, Congress said that "the entire Central Valley project . . . is . . . declared to be for the purposes of improving navigation, regulating the flow of the San Joaquin River and the Sacramento River, controlling floods, providing for storage and for the delivery of the stored waters thereof . . . ." The 1937 Act also provided that "the said dam and reservoirs shall be used, first, for river regulation, improvement of navigation, and flood control . . . ." </s> But it also is true, as pointed out by claimants, that in these Acts Congress expressly "reauthorized" 2 a project [339 U.S. 725, 732] already initiated by President Roosevelt, who, on September 10, 1935, made allotment of funds for construction of Friant Dam and canals under the Federal Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, 49 Stat. 115, 4, and provided that they "shall be reimbursable in accordance with the reclamation laws." 3 A finding of feasibility, as required by law, 4 was made by the Secretary of the Interior on November 26, 1935, making no reference to navigation, and his recommendation of "the Central Valley development as a Federal reclamation project" was approved by the President on December 2, 1935. </s> When it "reauthorized" the Central Valley undertaking, Congress in the same Act provided that "the provisions [339 U.S. 725, 733] of the reclamation law, 5 as amended, shall govern the repayment of expenditures and the construction, operation, and maintenance of the dams, canals, power plants, pumping plants, transmission lines, and incidental works deemed necessary to said entire project, and the Secretary of the Interior may enter into repayment contracts, and other necessary contracts, with State agencies, authorities, associations, persons, and corporations, either public or private, including all agencies with which contracts are authorized under the reclamation law, and may acquire by proceedings in eminent domain, or otherwise, all lands, rights-of-way, water rights, and other property necessary for said purposes: . . . ." </s> The Central Valley basin development envisions, in one sense, an integrated undertaking, but also an aggregate of many subsidiary projects, each of which is of first magnitude. It consists of thirty-eight major dams and reservoirs bordering the valley floor and scores of smaller ones in headwaters. It contemplates twenty-eight hydropower generating stations. It includes hundreds of miles of main canals, thousands of miles of laterals and drains, electric transmission and feeder lines and substations, and a vast network of structures for the control and use of water on two million acres of land already irrigated, three million acres of land to be newly irrigated, 360,000 acres in the delta needing protection from intrusions of salt water, and for municipal and miscellaneous purposes including cities, towns, duck clubs and game refuges. These projects are not only widely separated geographically, many of them physically independent in operation, but they are authorized in separate acts from year to year and are to be constructed at different times over a considerable span of years. A formula has been approved by the President by which multiple purpose dams are the [339 U.S. 725, 734] responsibility of the Bureau of Reclamation, and dams and other works only for flood control are exclusively the responsibility of the Army Engineers. 6 The entire Friant and San Joaquin projects at all times have been administered by the Bureau of Reclamation. </s> We cannot disagree with claimants' contention that in undertaking these Friant projects and implementing the work as carried forward by the Reclamation Bureau, Congress proceeded on the basis of full recognition of water rights having valid existence under state law. By its command that the provisions of the reclamation law should govern the construction, operation, and maintenance of the several construction projects, Congress directed the Secretary of the Interior to proceed in conformity with state laws, giving full recognition to every right vested under those laws. 7 Cf. Nebraska v. Wyoming, 295 U.S. 40, 43 ; Power Co. v. Cement Co., 295 U.S. 142, 164 ; Nebraska v. Wyoming, 325 U.S. 589, 614 ; Mason Co. v. Tax Comm'n, 302 U.S. 186 . In this respect, Congress' action parallels that in Ford & Son v. Little Falls Fibre Co., 280 U.S. 369 . The original plan called [339 U.S. 725, 735] for purchase of water rights and included an estimate of their cost. 8 We are advised by the Government that at least throughout administration of California reclamation projects it has been the consistent practice of the Bureau of Reclamation to respect such property rights. Such has specifically been the Bureau's practice in connection with the Friant project, and this has been reported to Congress, 9 which has responded some nine times in the past [339 U.S. 725, 736] twelve years to requests for appropriations to meet such expenses. We think this amounts, not to authorizations and declarations creating causes of action against the United States, but to awareness and approval of administrative construction. We think it clear that throughout the conception, enactment and subsequent administration of the plan, Congress has recognized the property status of water rights vested under California law. </s> It is not to be doubted that the totality of a plan so comprehensive has some legitimate relation to control of inland navigation or that particular components may be described without pretense as navigation and flood control projects. This made it appropriate that Congress should justify making this undertaking a national burden by general reference to its power over commerce and navigation. </s> The Government contends that the overall declaration of purpose is applicable to Friant Dam and related irrigation facilities as an integral part of "what Congress quite properly treated as a unit." Adverting to United States v. Willow River Co., 324 U.S. 499 ; United States v. Commodore Park, 324 U.S. 386 ; United States v. Appalachian Power Co., 311 U.S. 377 ; United States v. Chandler-Dunbar Co., 229 U.S. 53 , the Government relies on the rule that it does not have to compensate for destruction of riparian interests over which at the point of conflict it has a superior navigation easement the exercise of which occasions the damage. And irrespective of divisibility of the entire Central Valley undertaking, the Government contends that Friant Dam involves a measure of flood control, an end which is sensibly related to control of navigation. Oklahoma v. Atkinson Co., 313 U.S. 508 . </s> Claimants, on the other hand, urge that at least the Friant Dam project was wholly unrelated to navigation ends and could not be controlled by the general Congressional declaration of purpose. They point out that, although [339 U.S. 725, 737] definitions of navigation have been expanded, United States v. Appalachian Power Co., supra, in every instance in which this Court has denied compensation for deprivation of riparian rights it has specifically noted that the federal undertaking bore some positive relation to control of navigation. United States v. Willow River Co., supra, 510; United States v. Commodore Park, supra, 391; United States v. Appalachian Power Co., supra, 423; United States v. Chandler-Dunbar Co., supra, 62; and cases cited. And, referring to International Paper Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 399 ; United States v. River Rouge Co., 269 U.S. 411 , and cases cited, they observe that this Court has never permitted the Government to pervert its navigation servitude into a right to destroy riparian interests without reimbursement where no navigation purpose existed. </s> Since we do not agree that Congress intended to invoke its navigation servitude as to each and every one of this group of coordinated projects, we do not reach the constitutional or other issues thus posed. Accordingly, we need not decide whether a general declaration of purpose is controlling where interference with navigation is neither the means, South Carolina v. Georgia, 93 U.S. 4 , nor the consequence, United States v. Commodore Park, supra, of its advancement elsewhere. Similarly, we need not ponder whether, by virtue of a highly fictional navigation purpose, the Government could destroy the flow of a navigable stream and carry away its waters for sale to private interests without compensation to those deprived of them. We have never held that or anything like it, and we need not here pass on any question of constitutional power; for we do not find that Congress has attempted to take or authorized the taking, without compensation, of any rights valid under state law. </s> On the contrary, Congress' general direction of purpose we think was intended to help meet any objection to its [339 U.S. 725, 738] constitutional power to undertake this big bundle of big projects. The custom of invoking the navigation power in authorizing improvements appears to have had its origin when the power of the Central Government to make internal improvements was contested and in doubt. It was not until 1936 that this Court in United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 , declared for the first time, and without dissent on this point, that, in conferring power upon Congress to tax "to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States," the Constitution delegates a power separate and distinct from those later enumerated, and one not restricted by them, and that Congress has a substantive power to tax and appropriate for the general welfare, limited only by the requirement that it shall be exercised for the common benefit as distinguished from some mere local purpose. If any doubt of this power remained, it was laid to rest the following year in Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619, 640 . Thus the power of Congress to promote the general welfare through large-scale projects for reclamation, irrigation, or other internal improvement, is now as clear and ample as its power to accomplish the same results indirectly through resort to strained interpretation of the power over navigation. 10 But in view of this background we think that reference to the navigation power was in justification of federal action on the whole, not for effect on private rights at every location along each component project. [339 U.S. 725, 739] </s> Even if we assume, with the Government, that Friant Dam in fact bears some relation to control of navigation, we think nevertheless that Congress realistically elected to treat it as a reclamation project. It was so conceived and authorized by the President and it was so represented to Congress. Whether Congress could have chosen to take claimants' rights by the exercise of its dominant navigation servitude is immaterial. By directing the Secretary to proceed under the Reclamation Act of 1902, Congress elected not "to in any way interfere with the laws of any State . . . relating to the control, appropriation, use, or distribution of water used in irrigation, or any vested right acquired thereunder." 32 Stat. 388, 390. </s> We cannot twist these words into an election on the part of Congress under its navigation power to take such water rights without compensation. In the language of Mr. Justice Holmes, writing for the Court in International Paper Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 399, 407 , Congress "proceeded on the footing of a full recognition of [riparians'] rights and of the Government's duty to pay for the taking that [it] purported to accomplish." We conclude that, whether required to do so or not, Congress elected to recognize any state-created rights and to take them under its power of eminent domain. 11 </s> We are guided to this conclusion by the interpretation placed on Congress' Acts by the Reclamation Bureau, which, in administering the project, has at all times pursued a course impossible to reconcile with present contentions of the Government. From the beginning, [339 U.S. 725, 740] it has acted on the assumption that its Friant undertaking was a reclamation project. Even a casual inspection of its committee hearings and reports leaves no doubt that Congress was familiar with and approved this interpretation. Although the Solicitor General contends that, because of the navigation purpose remotely involved, deprivation of water rights along the San Joaquin is not compensable, we have observed that the plan as originally adopted and as carried out by the Bureau included replacement at great expense of all water formerly used for crops and "controlled grass lands" and purchase of that used on marginal pasture lands. 12 It has consistently advised the Congress that it was purchasing San Joaquin water rights and appropriations have been made accordingly. 13 Moreover, Congress 14 and the water users 15 have been advised that, in prosecution of the work, existing water rights would be respected. [339 U.S. 725, 741] </s> This administrative practice has been extended even to the lands in question. Pursuant to its plan, the Bureau offered to purchase the rights of claimants in Nos. 7, 8 and 9, but the parties could not agree on the price. In addition, it entered into a written contract with Miller & Lux, Inc., purchasing for $2,450,000 riparian rights which included some identical with those the Government now denies to exist. In fact it includes the very rights now asserted by claimants Gerlach, Erreca and Potter, who obtained title to their riparian properties from Miller & Lux. Because of certain reservations in their grants, it was possible that Miller & Lux retained the rights riparian to these properties. The Government therefore agreed with Miller & Lux that the sum of $511,350 should be deposited with an escrow agent. If final judgments obligate the United States to make compensation to Miller & Lux grantees for such riparian grass lands, the United States shall be reimbursed from [339 U.S. 725, 742] the escrow fund in an amount not exceeding $9 per acre. However, if final judgments dismiss the claims, the escrowed funds go to Miller & Lux. The substance of this strange transaction is that the Government, which now asks us to hold that there are no such riparian rights, has already bought and paid for them at the price which the Court of Claims has allowed. The results of the Government's bargain are that, if we hold there are no rights, Miller & Lux will be paid for them; and, if we hold there are such rights, they will be paid from what otherwise goes to Miller & Lux. As to these three cases, the Government is defending against the claims, not as the real party in interest, but because it undertook to do so on behalf of Miller & Lux. </s> Of course, this Court is not bound by administrative mistakes. If the Government had contracted to pay for rights which are nonexistent, it would not preclude us from upholding later and better advised contentions. But when a project has been regarded by the highest Executive authorities as a reclamation project, and has been carried as such from its initiation to final payment for these rights, and Congress, knowing its history, has given the approvals that it has, we think there is no ground for asking us to hold that the provisions of the Reclamation Act do not apply. We hold that they do apply and we therefore turn, as that Act bids us, to the laws of the State to determine the rights and liabilities of landowner and appropriator. </s> II. CLAIMANTS' RIPARIAN RIGHTS UNDER CALIFORNIA LAW. </s> The adversaries in this case invoke rival doctrines of water law which have been in competition throughout California legal history. The claims are expressly based on common-law riparian-rights doctrines as declared by California courts. The United States, on the other hand, [339 U.S. 725, 743] by virtue of the Reclamation Act, stands in the position of an upstream appropriator for a beneficial use. </s> The governing water law of California must now be derived from a 1928 Amendment to its Constitution 16 which compresses into a single paragraph a reconciliation and modification of doctrines evolved in litigations that have vexed its judiciary for a century. Its text leaves many questions to be answered, and neither it nor any legislation or judicial decision provides a direct and explicit determination of the present state law on issues before us. But since the federal law adopts that of the State as the test of federal liability, we must venture a conclusion as to peculiarly local law. We can do so only in the [339 U.S. 725, 744] light of a long history of strife and doctrinal conflict, which California says must be known by every judge of these matters, Conger v. Weaver, 6 Cal. 548, and in continuity with which both the cryptic text of the Amendment and the policy of federal statutes become more intelligible. 17 </s> Upon acquiring statehood in 1850, California adopted the common law of England as the rule of decision in its courts when not inconsistent with the Federal or State Constitutions or State legislation. In the middle of the Eighteenth Century, English common law included a body of water doctrine known as riparian rights. That also was the general Mexican law, if it had any lingering authority there, but see Boquillas Cattle Co. v. Curtis, 213 U.S. 339, 343 ; Gutierres v. Albuquerque Land Co., 188 U.S. 545, 556 , except for a peculiar concession to "pueblos." Indeed, riparian-rights doctrines prevailed throughout Western civilization. </s> As long ago as the Institutes of Justinian, running waters, like the air and the sea, were res communes - things common to all and property of none. Such was the doctrine spread by civil-law commentators and embodied [339 U.S. 725, 745] in the Napoleonic Code and in Spanish law. This conception passed into the common law. From these sources, but largely from civil-law sources, the inquisitive and powerful minds of Chancellor Kent and Mr. Justice Story drew in generating the basic doctrines of American water law. </s> Riparian rights developed where lands were amply watered by rainfall. The primary natural asset was land, and the run-off in streams or rivers was incidental. Since access to flowing waters was possible only over private lands, access became a right annexed to the shore. The law followed the principle of equality which requires that the corpus of flowing water become no one's property and that, aside from rather limited use for domestic and agricultural purposes by those above, each riparian owner has the right to have the water flow down to him in its natural volume and channels unimpaired in quality. The riparian system does not permit water to be reduced to possession so as to become property which may be carried away from the stream for commercial or nonriparian purposes. In working out details of this egalitarian concept, the several states made many variations, each seeking to provide incentives for development of its natural advantages. These are set forth in Shively v. Bowlby, 152 U.S. 1 . But it may be said that when California adopted it the general philosophy of the riparian-rights system had become common law throughout what was then the United States. </s> Then in the mountains of California there developed a combination of circumstances unprecedented in the long and litigious history of running water. Its effects on water laws were also unprecedented. Almost at the time when Mexico ceded California, with other territories, to the United States, gold was discovered there and a rush of hardy, aggressive and venturesome pioneers began. If the high lands were to yield their treasure to [339 U.S. 725, 746] prospectors, water was essential to separate the precious from the dross. The miner's need was more than a convenience - it was a necessity; and necessity knows no law. But conditions were favorable for necessity to make law, and it did - law unlike any that had been known in any part of the Western world. </s> The adventurers were in a little-inhabited, unsurveyed, unowned and almost ungoverned country, theretofore thought to have little value. It had become public domain of the United States and miners regarded waters as well as lands subject to preemption. To be first in possession was to be best in title. Priority - of discovery, location and appropriation - was the primary source of rights. Fortuitously, along lower reaches of the streams there were no riparian owners to be injured and none to challenge customs of the miners. </s> In September, 1850, California was admitted to the Union as a State. In 1851, its first Legislature enacted a Civil Practice Act which contained a provision that "in actions respecting `Mining Claims,' . . . customs, usages, or regulations, when not in conflict with the Constitution and Laws of this State, shall govern the decision of the action." 18 The custom of appropriating water thus acquired some authority, notwithstanding its contradiction of the common law. A practice that was law in the mountains was contrary to the law on the books. Here were provocations to controversy that soon came to the newly established state courts. </s> In California, as everywhere, the law of flowing streams has been the product of contentions between upper and lower levels. Thus when Matthew Irwin built a dam and canal on the upper San Joaquin for appropriating water to supply miners, downstream settler Robert Phillips tore [339 U.S. 725, 747] it down and asserted his own riparian right to have the water descend to him in its natural volume. Faced with this issue between custom and doctrine, the California Supreme Court escaped by observing that both claims were located on public domain, and that neither party could show proprietorship. Accordingly, as between two mere squatters, priority of appropriation established the better right. But the court gave warning that this appropriative right might not prevail against a downstream riparian who claimed by virtue of proprietorship. Irwin v. Phillips, 5 Cal. 140 (1855). </s> The United States, as owner of the whole public domain, was such a proprietor, and the decision made appropriations vulnerable to its challenge. It also left the pioneers in position of trespassers. They were taught that the tenure of their preemptions and appropriations was precarious when, in 1858, the Attorney General of the United States intervened in private litigation to contend in federal court that the land in dispute was public, and asserted generally a right to restrain all mining operations upon public land. His intervention was successful, an injunction forbade working the mine in question, and a writ issued under the hand of President Lincoln directing military authorities to remove the miners. United States v. Parrott, 1 McAll. (C. C.) 271. </s> Demands of mining and water interests that the Federal Government relieve their uncertain status were loud, but went unheeded amidst the problems that came with civil war. But after the war closed, the issue was again precipitated by a bill introduced at the request of the Secretary of the Treasury to have the United States withdraw all mines from the miners, appraise and sell them, reserving a royalty after sale. This the Secretary believed would yield a large revenue and the public lands would help pay the public war debt. However, the private interests prevailed. The Act of July 26, 1866, 14 [339 U.S. 725, 748] Stat. 251, R. S. 2339, declared the mining lands free and open to preemption and included the following: </s> "That whenever, by priority of possession, rights to the use of water for mining, agricultural, manufacturing, or other purposes, have vested and accrued, and the same are recognized and acknowledged by the local customs, laws, and the decisions of courts, the possessors and owners of such vested rights shall be maintained and protected in the same; and the right of way for the construction of ditches and canals for the purposes aforesaid is hereby acknowledged and confirmed: Provided, however, That whenever, after the passage of this act, any person or persons shall, in the construction of any ditch or canal, injure or damage the possession of any settler on the public domain, the party committing such injury or damage shall be liable to the party injured for such injury or damage." 14 Stat. 251, 253, 43 U.S.C. 661. </s> This section was expounded by Mr. Justice Field in Jennison v. Kirk, 98 U.S. 453 , as foreclosing further proprietary objection by the United States to appropriations which rested upon local custom. This Court regarded the Act as "an unequivocal grant" for existing diversions of water on the public lands. Broder v. Water Co., 101 U.S. 274 . Thus Congress made good appropriations in being as against a later patent to riparian parcels of the public domain, and removed the cloud cast by adverse federal claims. </s> While this was being accomplished, changed conditions brought new adversaries to contend against the appropriators. The Homestead Act of 1862 had opened agricultural lands to preemption and set up a method of acquiring formal title. 12 Stat. 392. Farms and ranches appeared along the streams and wanted the protection that the common law would give to their natural flow. [339 U.S. 725, 749] The Act of 1866, as we have noted, made appropriators liable for damage to settlers with whose possession they interfered. The Supreme Court of California decided that a riparian owner came into certain rights which he could assert against a subsequent appropriator of the waters of the stream, even though he could not as against a prior appropriation. Crandall v. Woods, 8 Cal. 136. </s> In 1886 came the decisive battle of Lux v. Haggin, 69 Cal. 255, 10 P. 674. Haggin organized an irrigation company and claimed the right to appropriate the entire flow of the Kern River for irrigation and to destroy any benefits for riparian owners downstream. The court held that the doctrine of riparian rights still prevailed in California, that such right attached to riparian land as soon as it became private property and, while subject to appropriations made prior to that time, it is free from all hostile appropriations thereafter. Thus California set itself apart by its effort to reconcile the system of riparian rights with the system of appropriation, whereas other arid states rejected the doctrine of riparian rights forthrightly and completely. </s> The Twentieth Century inducted new parties into the old struggle. Gigantic electric power and irrigation projects succeeded smaller operations, and municipalities sought to by-pass intervening agricultural lands and go into the mountains to appropriate the streams for city supply. Increasing dependence of all branches of the State's economy, both rural and urban, upon water centered attention upon its conservation and maximum utilization. </s> This objective seemed frustrated by the riparian-rights doctrine when, in 1926, the California Supreme Court decided Herminghaus v. Southern California Edison Co., 200 Cal. 81, 252 P. 607, and this Court, after argument, dismissed certiorari for want of a federal question, 275 U.S. 486 (1927). That case involved just such questions as we have here. Southern California Edison projected [339 U.S. 725, 750] a large storage of San Joaquin waters in the mountains primarily for power generation. Plaintiffs' ranch, like lands of claimants, had always been naturally irrigated by overflow and thus naturally was productive property. Appropriation by the power company threatened to impair this overflow and destroy the value of the ranch. The company was unwilling to compensate the damage. The court held that common law of riparian rights must prevail against the proposed utilization and, notwithstanding the economic waste involved in plaintiffs' benefit, enjoined the power project. </s> This ruling precipitated a movement for amendment of the State Constitution and thus brought to a focus a contest that had grown in bitterness and intensity throughout the arid regions as both populations and property values mounted. The doctrine of riparian rights was characterized as socialistic. Wiel, Theories of Water Law, 27 Harv. L. Rev. 530 (1914). The State Supreme Court said the law of appropriation would result in monopoly. Lux v. Haggin, supra, at 309, 10 P. at 703. If the uneconomic consequences of unlimited riparianism were revealed by court decisions, so the effects of unrestrained appropriation became apparent where the flow of rivers became completely appropriated, leaving no water for newcomers or new industry. 19 </s> A Joint Committee of the California Legislature gave extended study to the water problems of that State and careful consideration of many remedies. Among other [339 U.S. 725, 751] proposals, one relevant to our question was to revoke or nullify all common-law protection to riparian rights and do it retroactively as of the year 1850. 20 The Committee rejected all dispossession proposals as confiscatory. It reported an amendment to the Constitution which attempted to serve the general welfare of the State by preserving and limiting both riparian and appropriative rights while curbing either from being exercised unreasonably or wastefully. The Amendment was submitted to and adopted by the electors in November 1928 and now constitutes California's basic water law, to which the Federal Reclamation Act defers. </s> We cannot assume that this Amendment was without impact upon claims to water rights such as we have here, for, as we have seen, it was provoked by their assertion. Neither can we assume that its effect is to deprive riparian owners of benefits it declares to continue or unintentionally to strike down values there was a studied purpose to preserve. We are only concerned with whether it continued in claimants such a right as to be compensable if taken. But what it took away is some measure of what it left. </s> Riparianism, pressed to the limits of its logic, enabled one to play dog-in-the-manger. The shore proprietor could enforce by injunction his bare technical right to have the natural flow of the stream, even if he was getting no substantial benefit from it. This canine element in the doctrine is abolished. "The right to water or to the use or flow of water in or from any natural stream or water course in this State is and shall be limited to such water as shall be reasonably required for the beneficial use to be served, . . . ." This limitation is not transgressed [339 U.S. 725, 752] by the awards in question which only compensate for the loss of actual beneficial use. Any hazard to claimants' rights lurks in the following clause: "and such right does not and shall not extend to the waste or unreasonable use or unreasonable method of use or unreasonable method of diversion of water." Since riparian rights attach to, and only to, so much of the flow of the San Joaquin as may be put to beneficial use consistently with this clause, claimants can enforce no use of wasteful or unreasonable character. </s> We assume for purposes of this decision that the prodigal use, inseparable from claimants' benefits, is such that the rights here asserted might not be enforced by injunction. But withholding equitable remedies, such as specific performance, mandatory orders or injunctions, does not mean that no right exists. There may still be a right invasion of which would call for indemnification. In fact, adequacy of the latter remedy is usually grounds for denial of the former. </s> But the public welfare, which requires claimants to sacrifice their benefits to broader ones from a higher utilization, does not necessarily require that their loss be uncompensated any more than in other takings where private rights are surrendered in the public interest. The waters of which claimants are deprived are taken for resale largely to other private land owners not riparian to the river and to some located in a different water shed. Thereby private lands will be made more fruitful, more valuable, and their operation more profitable. The reclamation laws contemplate that those who share these advantages shall, through water charges, reimburse the Government for its outlay. This project anticipates recoupment of its cost over a forty-year period. 21 No reason [339 U.S. 725, 753] appears why those who get the waters should be spared from making whole those from whom they are taken. Public interest requires appropriation; it does not require expropriation. We must conclude that by the Amendment California unintentionally destroyed and confiscated a recognized and adjudicated private property right, or that it remains compensable although no longer enforcible by injunction. The right of claimants at least to compensation prior to the Amendment was entirely clear. Insofar as any California court has passed on the exact question, the right appears to survive. 22 Five years after the Amendment, the Superior Court of California 23 specifically sustained identical rights. The Madera Irrigation District had been organized to build a dam at the Friant site and to divert San Joaquin waters to irrigate about 170,000 acres. It was sued by Miller & Lux, Inc., and two of its subsidiaries, and decrees in their favor were entered in 1933. In general, the court sustained the Miller & Lux riparian rights to the annual overflow of uncontrolled grass lands, some of which now belong to [339 U.S. 725, 754] claimants. It adjudged the proposed appropriation invalid and ineffective as against those rights. In July of 1940 the United States acquired all of Madera's rights, including pending applications to appropriate San Joaquin water under state law. These judgments had become final and were outstanding adjudications of the issues here involved against a grantor of the United States. Without considering the claim that the 1933 judgments may be res judicata, they are at least persuasive that claimants' rights to the benefit had, in the opinion of California courts, survived the Amendment and must be retired by condemnation or acquisition before the Friant diversion could be valid. </s> The Supreme Court of California has given no answer to this specific problem. But in the light of its precedents and its conclusions and discussions of collateral issues, especially in Peabody v. Vallejo, 2 Cal. 2d 351, 40 P.2d 486; Lodi v. East Bay Municipal Utility District, 7 Cal. 2d 316, 60 P.2d 439; Hillside Water Co. v. Los Angeles, 10 Cal. 2d 677, 76 P.2d 681; Gin S. Chow v. Santa Barbara, 217 Cal. 673, 22 P.2d 5; Meridian, Ltd. v. San Francisco, 13 Cal. 2d 424, 90 P.2d 537; Los Angeles v. Glendale, 23 Cal. 2d 68, 142 P.2d 289, we conclude that claimants' right to compensation has a sound basis in California law. The reclamation authorities were apparently of that view as the Miller & Lux contract would indicate. </s> We recognize that the right to inundation asserted here is unique in the history of riparian claims. Where the thirst of the land is supplied by rainfall, floods are detriments if not disasters, and to abate overflows could rarely if ever cause damage. But, as we have pointed out, uncommon local conditions have given rise to the singular rule of California. The same scarcity which makes it advantageous to take these waters gives them value in the extraordinary circumstances in which the California [339 U.S. 725, 755] courts have recognized a private right to have no interception of their flow except upon compensation. </s> We think the awards of the Court of Claims correctly applied the law of California as made applicable to these claims by Congress. </s> III. OTHER ISSUES. </s> The Government also assigns as error determination of the date from which interest is to be allowed. The Court of Claims adopted as the date of taking the first substantial impoundment of water which occurred on October 20, 1941, even though it had not then prevented benefits from reaching the property. The contract between the Government and Miller & Lux contemplated this as the date of taking, for it puts the $511,350 in escrow to protect the Government against suits "initiated prior to the sixth anniversary after the initial storage or diversion." Since the Government itself has adopted this date for the expiration of its protection by contract, we see no reason why it should challenge the Court of Claims for use of the same date for accrual of the claims. Regardless of how this might have been fixed in the absence of such an administrative determination, we decline to set aside the finding on this subject. </s> Second, the Government claims that the court below misconstrued reservations in the deeds between the three claimants and Miller & Lux. It is not apparent from the facts we have recited that the Government is the real party in interest as to this question, which seems to be in the nature of a private controversy between claimants and Miller & Lux. In any event, it presents a question of conveyancing and real property law peculiar to this one case, and depending on local law. It is not a question of general interest, nor is there any manifest error, and we accept, without review, the finding of the Court of Claims thereon. [339 U.S. 725, 756] </s> Finally, the Government protests that the court below failed adequately to describe the rights taken for which it has made an award. We think in view of the simple nature of the claims, the exhaustive character of the findings and the understanding the Government must have acquired in seven years of the litigations, there is little prospect that it will be grievously misled by deficiencies, if any, that may exist in the description. </s> The judgments are </s> Affirmed. </s> MR. JUSTICE BLACK concurs in the judgment and opinion except that he agrees with MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS that interest should not be allowed. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 Claimants' rights are subject to certain prior appropriative and other rights which do not affect the issues before us. </s> [Footnote 2 "[T]he entire Central Valley project, California, heretofore authorized and established under the provisions of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 (49 Stat. 115) and the First Deficiency Appropriation Act, fiscal year 1936 (49 Stat. 1622), is hereby reauthorized . . . ." The latter reference is to a $6,900,000 appropriation primarily for "Friant Reservoir and irrigation facilities therefrom," as a reclamation project "reimbursable under the Reclamation Law." 49 Stat. 1597, 1622. Development of the water resources of Central Valley was initiated by the State of California. Cal. Stat. (1933) 2643. Studies were [339 U.S. 725, 732] made of the feasibility of federal participation, and although there was no accompanying appropriation, the first congressional authorization in connection with the project was contained in the Act of Aug. 30, 1935, 49 Stat. 1028, 1038. In this Act, on the representation of the Chief of Engineers that, as to the Friant Dam phase, "No benefits would accrue to navigation from this development," (House Doc. No. 191, 73d Cong., 2d Sess. 3; and see Comm. on Rivers and Harbors, H. R., Doc. No. 35) Congress limited its approval of federal participation to purely navigation works in the northern part of the valley, and authorized a federal expenditure of $12,000,000 in the construction of Kennett Dam on the Sacramento. When it "reauthorized" the entire project, Congress provided that, when appropriated, this $12,000,000 should be exempt from the reimbursement requirements of the reclamation law. Act of Aug. 26, 1937, 2, 50 Stat. 844, 850. </s> [Footnote 3 The reference is to the Reclamation Act of 1902, 32 Stat. 388, as amended, 43 U.S.C. 371 et seq. </s> [Footnote 4 Act of June 25, 1910, 4, 36 Stat. 835, 836, provides that no irrigation project contemplated under the Reclamation Act "shall be begun unless and until the same shall have been recommended by the Secretary of the Interior and approved by the direct order of the President of the United States." To this was added the requirement that the Secretary "shall have made a finding in writing that it is feasible, that it is adaptable for actual settlement and farm homes, and that it will probably return the cost thereof to the United States." Act of Dec. 5, 1924, 4 (B), 43 Stat. 672, 702. </s> [Footnote 5 See n. 3, supra. </s> [Footnote 6 Letter of President Truman to the Secretary of the Interior, dated August 15, 1949, S. Doc. No. 113, 81st Cong., 1st Sess. </s> [Footnote 7 The Reclamation Act of 1902, 32 Stat. 388, as amended, 43 U.S.C. 371 et seq., to which Congress adverted, applies only to the seventeen Western States. Section 8 provides: "That nothing in this Act shall be construed as affecting or intended to affect or to in any way interfere with the laws of any State or Territory relating to the control, appropriation, use, or distribution of water used in irrigation, or any vested right acquired thereunder, and the Secretary of the Interior, in carrying out the provisions of this Act, shall proceed in conformity with such laws, and nothing herein shall in any way affect any right of any State or of the Federal Government or of any landowner, appropriator, or user of water in, to, or from any interstate stream or the waters thereof: . . . ." To the extent that it is applicable this clearly leaves it to the State to say what rights of an appropriator or riparian owner may subsist along with any federal right. </s> [Footnote 8 "Part of the water supply is to be obtained by the purchase of water now used for the irrigation of pasture lands and this will result in the retirement from use of 250,000 acres of submarginal land . . . ." Feasibility Report, Secretary of the Interior Ickes to President Roosevelt, Nov. 26, 1935. Included in the Secretary's estimated costs of the project was an item of $8,000,000 for "rights of way, water rights and general expense." Ibid. In the Act of Aug. 26, 1937, the Secretary was authorized to acquire "by proceedings in eminent domain, or otherwise, all lands, rights-of-way, water rights, and other property necessary for said purposes: . . . ." 50 Stat. 844, 850. </s> [Footnote 9 In administering the Central Valley Project, the Bureau of Reclamation submitted appropriation requests regularly from 1938 through 1949. On each occasion, excepting fiscal year 1945, Congress was advised that San Joaquin water rights were being purchased, and every appropriation request but three (fiscal years 1941, 1945, and 1946) included an item for such water rights. Hearings, Subcomm. of the House Comm. on Appropriations, Interior Dept., 75th Cong., 1st Sess. 281, 282 (except as noted, all following references are to hearings before this subcommittee), and see H. R. Rep. No. 786, 75th Cong., 1st Sess. 14; Hearings, 75th Cong., 3d Sess. 349, and see H. R. Rep. No. 1855, 75th Cong., 3d Sess. 14; Hearings, 76th Cong., 1st Sess. 421, 422, and see H. R. Rep. No. 161, 76th Cong., 1st Sess. 16; Hearings, 76th Cong., 3d Sess. 495, and see H. R. Rep. No. 1709, 76th Cong., 3d Sess. 14; Hearings, 77th Cong., 1st Sess. 741; Hearings, 77th Cong., 2d Sess. 434-439; Hearings, Pt. 1, 78th Cong., 1st Sess. 1174; Hearings, Pt. 1, 79th Cong., 1st Sess. 1200; Hearings, Pt. 2, 79th Cong., 2d Sess. 315-317; Hearings, Pt. 3, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 749-752; Hearings, Pt. 3, 80th Cong., 2d Sess. 1214, 1279-1280, and see Hearings, Subcomm. of the Senate Comm. on Appropriations, Interior Dept., 80th Cong., 2d Sess. 921-924; 50 Stat. 564, 597; 52 Stat. 291, 324; 53 Stat. 685, 719; 55 Stat. 303, 336; 56 Stat. 506, 536; 57 Stat. 451, 476; 60 Stat. 348, 367; 61 Stat. 460, 475; 62 Stat. 1112, 1129. </s> [Footnote 10 See Feasibility Report, Secretary of the Interior Ickes to President Roosevelt, Nov. 26, 1935, recommending "the approval of the Central Valley development as a Federal reclamation project," and pointing out that the area is served by excellent transportation facilities, that much of its produce is shipped to eastern markets, and that if decreasing productivity as a result of acute shortage of water for irrigation needs were to continue, "a share of the loss will be suffered by persons not residing in the areas directly affected." </s> [Footnote 11 This approach makes it unnecessary to consider the relevancy of United States v. Hotel Co., 329 U.S. 585 ; United States v. Goltra, 312 U.S. 203 ; Tillson v. United States, 100 U.S. 43 , on the question of claimants' right to interest. Unless we choose to disturb these cases we could not limit ourselves to saying that by invocation of the Reclamation Act of 1902 Congress simply assumed liability for claimants' water rights. </s> [Footnote 12 See n. 8, supra. </s> [Footnote 13 See n. 9, supra. </s> [Footnote 14 "In conducting irrigation investigations and constructing and operating projects throughout the West, the Bureau of Reclamation fully recognizes and respects existing water rights established under State law. Not only is this a specific requirement of the Reclamation Act under which the Bureau operates, but such a course is the only fair and just method of procedure. This basin report on the Central Valley is predicated on such a policy." Report of Regional Director, Region II, Bureau of Reclamation, Dec. 1, 1947, approved by the Secretary of the Interior, July 29, 1948, S. Doc. No. 113, 81st Cong., 1st Sess. 39. </s> [Footnote 15 After consultation with the Commissioner of Reclamation and the Secretary of the Interior, the Regional Director, Region II, Bureau of Reclamation, replied to questions concerning the Central Valley Project submitted by the Irrigation Districts Association of California: "The Bureau of Reclamation does recognize and respect existing water rights which have been initiated and perfected or which are in the state of being perfected under State laws. The Bureau of Reclamation has been required to do so by Section 8 of the Reclamation Act of 1902 ever since the inception of the reclamation program [339 U.S. 725, 741] administered by the Bureau of Reclamation. The Bureau of Reclamation has never proposed modification of that requirement of Federal law; and on the contrary, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Secretary of the Interior have consistently, through the 42 years since the 1902 act, been zealous in maintaining compliance with Section 8 of the 1902 act. They are proud of the historic fact that the reclamation program includes as one of its basic tenets that the irrigation development in the West by the Federal Government under the Federal Reclamation Laws is carried forward in conformity with State water laws. Ample demonstration of the effect of this law and policy of administration, in action, has been given in connection with the Central Valley Project. Water filings made by the State have been obtained by the Bureau of Reclamation by assignment, and vested water rights have been acquired by the United States by purchase, the considerations amounting to millions of dollars and being agreeable to the vendors - all in conformity with State laws. Further, other water rights of landowners which will or may be affected by the operations of the project are being analyzed and appropriate adjustments, giving full recognition of the rights of the landowners, are in the process of being worked out." </s> [Footnote 16 That amendment added Art. XIV, 3 of the State Constitution, which provides: "It is hereby declared that because of the conditions prevailing in this State the general welfare requires that the water resources of the State be put to beneficial use to the fullest extent of which they are capable, and that the waste or unreasonable use or unreasonable method of use of water be prevented, and that the conservation of such waters is to be exercised with a view to the reasonable and beneficial use thereof in the interest of the people and for the public welfare. The right to water or to the use or flow of water in or from any natural stream or water course in this State is and shall be limited to such water as shall be reasonably required for the beneficial use to be served, and such right does not and shall not extend to the waste or unreasonable use or unreasonable method of use or unreasonable method of diversion of water. Riparian rights in a stream or water course attach to, but to no more than so much of the flow thereof as may be required or used consistently with this section, for the purposes for which such lands are, or may be made adaptable, in view of such reasonable and beneficial uses; provided, however, that nothing herein contained shall be construed as depriving any riparian owner of the reasonable use of water of the stream to which his land is riparian under reasonable methods of diversion and use, or of depriving any appropriator of water to which he is lawfully entitled. This section shall be self-executing, and the Legislature may also enact laws in the furtherance of the policy in this section contained." </s> [Footnote 17 The historical background of both riparian and appropriative rights, the relevant local history and the legislative history of the Act of 1866 are comprehensibly set forth in 1 Wiel, Water Rights in the Western States 66 to 264 (3d ed., 1911), and in the following articles by the same author: Public Policy in Water Decisions, 1 Calif. L. Rev. 11; Comparative Water Law, 6 Calif. L. Rev. 245, 342; Political Water Rights, 10 Calif. L. Rev. 111; Theories of Water Law, 27 Harv. L. Rev. 530. See also Pomeroy on Water Rights, cc. 2, 3 (1893); 3 Farnham, Waters and Water Rights, c. 22; Toelle, Prospective Effect on Western Water Law of Proposed Federal Missouri Valley and Columbia Valley Authorities, 20 Temple L. Q. 425; Walton, Origin and Growth of Western Irrigation Law, 21 Ill. L. Rev. 126; Bannister, Federal Disposition of Waters in the Priority States, 28 Harv. L. Rev. 270; Lasky, From Prior Appropriation to Economic Distribution of Water by the State - Via Irrigation Administration, 1 Rocky Mt. L. Rev. 161. </s> [Footnote 18 Civil Practice Act of April 29, 1851, 621. In substance now 748, Code Civil Procedure. </s> [Footnote 19 Court opinions indicate that all the waters of the South Platte River have been appropriated and the entire normal flow of the river is inadequate to supply the priorities for irrigation purposes already decreed from it. Comstock v. Ramsey, 55 Colo. 244, 133 P. 1107. The entire Boise River in Idaho has been appropriated. United States v. Burley, 172 F. 615. Many Colorado streams are already overappropriated. Humphreys T. Co. v. Frank, 46 Colo. 524, 105 P. 1093. See Wiel, Theories of Water Law, 27 Harv. L. Rev. 530. </s> [Footnote 20 The legislative history of the Amendment is set forth in Wiel, The Pending Water Amendment, 16 Calif. L. Rev. 169 and 257, and see Wiel, Europeanizing the State Constitution - The Water and Power Amendment, 12 Calif. L. Rev. 454; Note, 1 Stanford L. Rev. 172. </s> [Footnote 21 The Feasibility Report of Secretary Ickes, supra, n. 8, referring to Friant Dam, Friant-Kern Canal and Madera Canal, among others included, says, "The next declaration required is that the cost of [339 U.S. 725, 753] construction will probably be returned to the Federal Government. This is interpreted to mean that it will be returned within forty years from the time the Secretary issues public notice that water is available from the project works. The estimated cost of construction is $170,000,000 and the annual cost, including repayment of all other charges is $7,500,000. It is estimated that annual revenues from the sale of water and of electric power will be sufficient to cover these charges. The favorable conditions heretofore recited justify the belief that the project will return its cost." </s> [Footnote 22 United States District Court, Southern District of California, rendered a decision on April 12, 1950, in Rank v. Krug, 90 F. Supp. 773, consistent with the views we take of the issues here involved. </s> [Footnote 23 Sacramento & San Joaquin Drainage District Co. v. Superior Court, 196 Cal. 414, 432, 238 P. 687, 694. This is not a local court but a part of a system of state courts. It seems to fall within the rule of Fidelity Trust Co. v. Field, 311 U.S. 169 , as a court whose decrees are regarded as determination of state law rather than within the rule of King v. Order of Travelers, 333 U.S. 153 . </s> MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, concurring in part and dissenting in part. </s> I think it is clear under our decisions that respondents are not entitled to compensation as a matter of constitutional right. For we have repeatedly held that there are no private property rights in the waters of a navigable river. See United States v. Appalachian Power Co., 311 U.S. 377, 424 ; United States v. Commodore Park, 324 U.S. 386, 390 -391; United States v. Willow River Co., 324 U.S. 499, 510 . That is true whether the rights of riparian owners or the rights of appropriators are involved. See Gibson v. United States, 166 U.S. 269 ; United States v. Rio Grande Irrigation Co., 174 U.S. 690 . As the Appalachian Power case makes plain ( 311 U.S. 424, 427 ), the existence of property rights in the waters of a navigable stream are not dependent upon whether the United States is changing the flow of the river in aid of navigation or for some other purpose. </s> Nor can respondents' rights to recover be founded on the Acts which appropriated money for the Central Valley project. They created no independent right in any [339 U.S. 725, 757] claimant against the United States. That is the teaching of Justice Brandeis' opinion for the Court in Mitchell v. United States, 267 U.S. 341, 345 -46. The appropriation in that case was for, inter alia, "losses to persons, firms, and corporations, resulting from the procurement of the land." In denying a claim for the loss of a business resulting from a taking of land, the Court said: </s> "By including in the appropriation clause the words `losses to persons, firms, and corporations, resulting from the procurement of the land for this purpose,' Congress doubtless authorized the Secretary of War to take into consideration losses due to the destruction of the business, where he purchased land upon agreement with the owners. But it does not follow that, in the absence of an agreement, the plaintiffs can compel payment for such losses. To recover, they must show some statutory right conferred." </s> The same is true in this case. For example, 2 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of August 26, 1937, 50 Stat. 844, 850, provided that the Secretary of the Interior "may acquire by proceedings in eminent domain, or otherwise, all lands, rights-of-way, water rights, and other property necessary for said purposes." Authority to pay for water rights is, of course, not to be construed to mean an assumption of liability to pay. </s> Congress, to be sure, has full power to relinquish its immunity from suit for the taking. See Ford & Son v. Little Falls Co., 280 U.S. 369, 377 ; United States v. Realty Co., 163 U.S. 427, 440 . And I think it has done so - not by the Acts appropriating funds for the project but by the Reclamation Act of 1902. 32 Stat. 388, 43 U.S.C. 371 et seq. </s> The Act applies solely to the 17 western States. It deals with reclamation projects, as its title indicates. The Central Valley project is such a project. [339 U.S. 725, 758] </s> Section 7 of the Act authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to purchase any rights necessary to the carrying out of the Act. 1 Section 8 provides: </s> "That nothing in this Act shall be construed as affecting or intended to affect or to in any way interfere with the laws of any State or Territory relating to the control, appropriation, use, or distribution of water used in irrigation, or any vested right acquired thereunder, and the Secretary of the Interior, in carrying out the provisions of this Act, shall proceed in conformity with such laws, and nothing herein shall in any way affect any right of any State or of the Federal Government or of any landowner, appropriator, or user of water in, to, or from any interstate stream or the waters thereof: Provided, That the right to the use of water acquired under the provisions of this Act shall be appurtenant to the land irrigated, and beneficial use shall be the basis, the measure, and the limit of the right." </s> Section 8 thus respects "any vested right" acquired under state water laws relating to irrigation, in "any interstate stream or the waters thereof." When such rights will be destroyed or interfered with by a proposed reclamation project, authority is found to acquire them under 7. The customary method of acquiring the water rights is to file a notice of appropriation pursuant to state law. [339 U.S. 725, 759] </s> Petitioner seeks to avoid the force of these Sections by asserting that they are not applicable to lands riparian to navigable streams. </s> The legislative history of the Act is not particularly instructive. The House Committee reporting the bill said that "Section 8 recognizes State control over waters of nonnavigable streams such as are used in irrigation." H. R. Rep. No. 1468, 57th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 6. There is no other evidence, however, that the framers thought the scope of the bill so narrow. When the Act was recommended in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt was careful to suggest that there should be protection for "vested rights" and respect for state laws. 35 Cong. Rec. 6677, 6775-6776. There are statements to the same effect by Representative Mondell, who was in charge of the Bill in the House (35 Cong. Rec. 6678-6679) and by Senator Clark of Wyoming (35 Cong. Rec. 2222). The clause in 8 according protection to "any vested right acquired" under state laws was added to the Bill by Committee amendment on the floor of the House. 35 Cong. Rec. 6762. </s> Whether 8 authorizes payment for water rights riparian to navigable waters has not been authoritatively determined by the courts. 2 This Court has recognized, however, that administration of the Act is to be in conformity to state laws. See Power Co. v. Cement Co., 295 U.S. 142, 164 . Nebraska v. Wyoming, 325 U.S. 589, 614 . That was the assumption in Mason Co. v. Tax Commission, 302 U.S. 186 , a case involving the navigable waters of the Columbia River. </s> Whatever doubts there may be are for me dispelled by the administrative practice under the Act, as summarized [339 U.S. 725, 760] by the Commissioner of Reclamation in a memorandum dated April 19, 1950. Reports from the seven regional counsel and a review of the files in the Bureau of Reclamation formed the basis for the memorandum. </s> The Commissioner concluded that it has been the almost invariable practice of the Bureau to file notices of appropriations under state law without regard to whether the stream involved was navigable or nonnavigable. 3 Such filings were made pursuant to state law [339 U.S. 725, 761] on water rights riparian to at least 13 navigable or probably navigable rivers. This administrative practice is too clear to be contradicted by the Bureau of Reclamation documents cited by petitioner. 4 Moreover, the Commissioner of Reclamation has drawn our attention to recent public statements by Department of Interior officers confirming this practice. </s> This Court has often emphasized that weight is to be given to the interpretation of a statute made by the administering agency. See United States v. American Trucking Assns., 310 U.S. 534, 549 ; Labor Board v. Hearst Publications, 322 U.S. 111, 130 . This long course of practice by the Bureau of Reclamation resolves any doubts and ambiguities that arise from the history and wording of the statute. </s> I conclude that Congress by 8 of the Reclamation Act agreed to pay (though not required to do so by the Constitution) for water rights acquired under state law in navigable as well as nonnavigable streams. As the Court holds, respondents under California law have a [339 U.S. 725, 762] water right. Section 8 therefore recognizes it as the basis for payment in connection with this federal project. </s> I do not think the claimants are entitled to interest. When the Government assumes a liability by statute, interest is not allowable unless specific provision is made for it. United States v. Goltra, 312 U.S. 203, 207 ; United States v. Hotel Co., 329 U.S. 585, 588 . A different rule obtains when the United States takes property protected by the Fifth Amendment. Seaboard Air Line R. Co. v. United States, 261 U.S. 299, 306 . The present water rights, though not protected by the Fifth Amendment, are ones which the United States has agreed to pay for under 7 and 8 of the Reclamation Act. Sections 7 and 8 contain no provision for the payment of interest. The Act refers to state law to determine whether a water right exists, not to ascertain the measure of damages for the taking. </s> [Footnote 1 Section 7 provides: "That where in carrying out the provisions of this Act it becomes necessary to acquire any rights or property, the Secretary of the Interior is hereby authorized to acquire the same for the United States by purchase or by condemnation under judicial process, and to pay from the reclamation fund the sums which may be needed for that purpose, and it shall be the duty of the Attorney-General of the United States upon every application of the Secretary of the Interior, under this Act, to cause proceedings to be commenced for condemnation within thirty days from the receipt of the application at the Department of Justice." </s> [Footnote 2 A United States District Court for the Southern District of California has recently held, however, that 8 of the Act provides for the purchase of water rights taken in connection with the Central Valley Project. Rank v. Krug, 90 F. Supp. 773 (April 12, 1950). </s> [Footnote 3 The memorandum records the following data: Region 1 (Washington, Idaho, northern Oregon, western Montana) reported the filing of appropriations under state law in 12 projects involving navigable rivers. In Region 2 (northern California, Oregon), 8 has been construed to include rights in navigable as well as nonnavigable waters, although the exact number of filings was not revealed. Although some filings for appropriation under state law have been made in Region 3 (southern California, Arizona, southern Nevada), the lower Colorado River projects are the single exception to the otherwise consistent administrative practice. In Region 4 (northern Nevada, Utah, western Wyoming, western Colorado), water rights on at least two navigable rivers have been acquired pursuant to state law. No occasion has yet arisen in Region 5 (Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, southern Colorado) making necessary the acquisition of water rights on navigable streams. In the only instance in Region 6 (eastern Montana, northern Wyoming, North and South Dakota) where a federal project interfered with private water rights on a navigable river, the rights were paid for by the United States. Water rights on three apparently navigable rivers in Region 7 (eastern Colorado, southern Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas) were acquired by the United States in accordance with state laws. The Commissioner notes that there are special circumstances concerning the lower Colorado River projects which explain the single exception. The Act authorizing Hoover Dam required that it be used first for "river regulation, improvement of navigation, and flood control," and only thereafter for irrigation. 45 Stat. 1061. Moreover, the Colorado River Compact assures an adequate supply of water for the project. The Commissioner points out that while no rights have been acquired on the lower Colorado under 7, "a search of Bureau records fails to disclose any instance on that river in which the Bureau in connection with any of its projects failed or refused to [339 U.S. 725, 761] recognize or make compensation for water rights validly established under State law." Another possible exception is the decision of the Department of Interior not to purchase a power right on the Spokane River on the ground, among others, that the right affected navigable waters. Yet, in the past, the Bureau instituted appropriations on that river also. </s> [Footnote 4 The unpublished Manual of the Bureau of Reclamation, printed for the guidance of its employees, supports petitioner's position in its 1913, 1917, and 1927 editions, and to a lesser extent in its 1938 edition. A new manual is now in preparation. These statements may have been based on an early decision of the Secretary of the Interior (California Development Co., 33 L. D. 391), which also provides some support for the petitioner's position. The Commissioner of Reclamation, however, has explained that "despite the statement in earlier Manuals based upon the California Land Development opinion . . .," the Bureau's practice has been to make no distinction between navigable and nonnavigable waters. </s> [339 U.S. 725, 763]

United States Supreme Court HANOVER BANK v. COMMISSIONER(1962) No. 224 Argued: February 27, 1962Decided: May 21, 1962 </s> The Internal Revenue Code of 1939 permits a taxpayer to deduct, through amortization, the premium he has paid in purchasing corporate bonds, and 125 provides that the amount to be amortized "shall be determined . . . with reference to the amount payable on maturity or on earlier call date." In 1953, prior to December 1, taxpayers purchased at a premium corporate bonds which were callable on 30 days' notice, either at a "general call price" or at a lower "special call price," and elected on their 1953 income tax returns to claim deductions for bond premiums computed with reference to the 30-day call period and the special call price. Held: They were entitled to do so, since the special call price at which the bonds here involved could be redeemed from a limited sinking fund and from other special funds made available upon the occurrence of certain contingent events was an "amount payable . . . on earlier call date" within the meaning of 125, and there was no basis in the statute, in the legislative history or in the Commissioner's prior interpretations of the statute for a distinction between a reference to a general or special call price in computing amortizable bond premiums under the 1939 Code. Pp. 673-688. </s> 289 F.2d 69, reversed. </s> Theodore Tannenwald, Jr. argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs was David Alter. Horace S. Manges was on the petition. </s> Stephen J. Pollak argued the cause for respondent. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Cox, Assistant Attorney General Oberdorfer, Meyer Rothwacks, Douglas A. Kahn and Wayne G. Barnett. </s> A brief urging reversal was filed by William Waller, as amicus curiae. [369 U.S. 672, 673] </s> MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> Despite the seemingly complex factual composition of the two cases consolidated herein, 1 this opinion deals with a relatively simple question of taxation: The extent to which a taxpayer may deduct, through amortization under the Internal Revenue Code of 1939, the premium he has paid in purchasing corporate bonds. In 1953, prior to December 1, the petitioners purchased fully taxable utility bonds at a premium above maturity value. 2 The bonds were callable at the option of the issuer at either a general or special call price, and at either price they were callable upon 30 days' notice. The term "general call price" is used to designate the price at which the issuer may freely and unconditionally redeem all or any portion of the outstanding bonds from its general funds. The lower, "special call price," is the amount the issuer would pay if the bonds were redeemed with cash from certain specially designated funds. 3 </s> [369 U.S. 672, 674] </s> In computing net income, the 1939 Code permits a taxpayer to deduct, through amortization, the premium he has paid in purchasing corporate bonds. 4 Section 125 of the Code, set forth in pertinent part in the margin, 5 provides [369 U.S. 672, 675] that the amount of bond premium to be amortized "shall be determined . . . with reference to the amount payable on maturity or on earlier call date." Pursuant to this Section, the petitioners elected to claim on their 1953 income tax returns a deduction for bond premium amortization computed with reference to the special redemption price and to the 30-day redemption period appearing in the bond indentures. The respondent did not question the petitioners' use of the 30-day amortization period, but he disallowed the computation based upon the special redemption price and recomputed the amount of bond premium using the higher, general call price. 6 The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [369 U.S. 672, 676] affirmed the Tax Court's orders sustaining the Commissioner's deficiency determination. 289 F.2d 69. However, in cases presenting the identical legal issue, the Courts of Appeals for the Third (Evans v. Dudley, 295 F.2d 713) and Sixth (United States v. Parnell, 272 F.2d 943, affirming 187 F. Supp. 576) Circuits allowed amortization taken with reference to the special redemption prices. 7 To resolve this conflict, we granted certiorari. 368 U.S. 812 . [369 U.S. 672, 677] </s> Bond premium is the amount a purchaser pays in buying a bond that exceeds the face or call value of the bond. 8 When a bond sells at a premium, it is generally because the interest it bears exceeds the rate of return on similar securities in the current market. For the right to receive this higher interest rate the purchaser of a bond pays a premium price when making the investment. However, interest is taxable to the recipient, and when a premium has been paid the actual interest received is not a true reflection of the bond's yield, but represents in part a return of the premium paid. It was to give effect to this principle that Congress in 1942 enacted Section 125 of the 1939 Code, 9 which for the first time provided for amortization of bond premium for tax purposes. [369 U.S. 672, 678] </s> By providing that amortization could be taken with reference to the "amount payable on maturity or on earlier call date" (emphasis added), Congress recognized that bonds are generally subject to redemption by the issuer prior to their maturity. In electing to allow amortization with reference to the period the bonds might actually be outstanding, Congress, through the words to which we have lent emphasis, provided that a bondholder could amortize bond premium with reference to any date named in the indenture at which the bond might be called. 10 </s> A bond indenture might contain any number of possible call dates, but we need only to be concerned in this case with the issuer's right to call the bonds on 30 days' notice at either a general or special call price. Unquestionably, both general and special redemption provisions have a legitimate, though distinct, business purpose, and both were in widespread use well before the enactment of Section 125. The general call price is employed when the issuer finds that the current rate of interest on marketable securities is substantially lower than what it is paying on [369 U.S. 672, 679] an outstanding issue. The issuer may then call the bonds at the general price and, following redemption, may refinance the obligation at the lower, prevailing rate of interest. In contrast, the provision for special funds from which bonds may be redeemed at the special call price, serves an entirely different purpose. Bond indentures normally require the issuer to protect the underlying security of the bonds by maintaining the mortgaged property and by insuring that its value is not impaired. This is done, first, through the maintenance of a special sinking fund, to which the issuer is obligated to make periodic payments, and, secondly, through the maintenance of other special funds, to which are added the proceeds from a sale or destruction of mortgaged property, or from its loss through a taking by eminent domain. 11 Although the issuer normally reserves an alternative to maintaining these special funds with cash, circumstances may dictate that the only attractive option from a business standpoint is the payment of cash and, to prevent the accumulation of this idle money, the indenture provides that the issuer may use it to redeem outstanding bonds at a special call price. It is evident that just as prevailing market conditions may render redemption at the special call price unlikely at a given time, the same or different market conditions may also cause redemption at the general call price equally unlikely, 12 particularly in an expanding [369 U.S. 672, 680] industry such as utilities. During the period the petitioners held their bonds, none were called at either price, but the risk incurred that they would be called was present with equal force as to both the general and special call provisions. The market for bonds reflects that risk, and the Section of the Code we are asked to interpret takes cognizance of that market reality. </s> Turning to the specific problem in the instant case, we are asked to determine whether the special price at which the bonds may be redeemed by the issuer from the limited sinking fund account and from the other special funds made available upon the occurrence of certain contingent events (see note 3, supra) is an "amount payable . . . on earlier call date" within the meaning of Section 125. For the reasons stated below, we answer this question affirmatively and hold that there is no basis either in the statute, in the legislative history, or in the respondent's own prior interpretations of the statute, for a distinction between reference to a general or special call price in computing amortizable bond premiums under the 1939 Code. </s> First, we note that the Government has made certain important concessions which lighten considerably the task before us. It does not question the right of the petitioners to amortize bond premium with reference to the 30-day call period, nor does it question amortization to the general call price. 13 In addition, in requesting a rule [369 U.S. 672, 681] which will apply to the "generality of cases," 14 it professes to have abandoned its argument below which became the rationale of the Second Circuit in holding against the taxpayers, that the statute calls for an analysis into the "likelihood of redemption" before amortization at a special call price will be permitted. 15 Moreover, the [369 U.S. 672, 682] Government does not contend that the transactions entered into by the petitioners were a sham without any business purpose except to gain a tax advantage. 16 Rather, the Government's position in this Court is that before an "earlier call date" is established with reference to the special call price, the taxpayer must show that "there is an ascertainable date on which the issuer will become entitled to redeem [a particular] bond at its option." The Government asserts that it is not enough that the issuer has the right to call some bonds at the special redemption price. Rather, "[i]t must have the right to call the particular bond for which amortization is claimed, for otherwise that bond has no `earlier call date.'" The Government's primary reason for urging this interpretation of Section 125 is that the statute has created a tax loophole of major dimension that should be closed short of allowing the deduction sought in this case. While this assertion might have been persuasive in securing enactment of the amendments to the statute made subsequent to the time the transactions involved here took place (see discussion, infra), it may not, of course, have any impact upon our interpretation of the statute under review. We are bound by the meaning of the words used by Congress, taken in light of the pertinent legislative history. In neither do we find support for the Government's interpretation. </s> This Court was first called upon to construe Section 125 in 1950 in Commissioner v. Korell, 339 U.S. 619 . The [369 U.S. 672, 683] taxpayer there had purchased bonds at a premium which reflected in large part not a higher yield of interest, but, rather, the attractiveness of the convertible feature of the bonds. The bonds were callable on 30 days' notice and the taxpayer amortized the premium accordingly. In contesting the deduction thus taken, the Commissioner contended that Section 125, in establishing a deduction for "amortizable bond premium," did not include premium paid for the conversion privilege. In rejecting this contention, the Court made it clear that Section 125 was not enacted solely to enable a bondholder to amortize "true premium," but that by "the clear and precise avenue of expression actually adopted by the Congress" ( 339 U.S., at 625 ), the legislation was adopted with "no distinctions based upon the inducements for paying the premium." (Id., at 628.) </s> The decision in Korell led to congressional re-examination of Section 125, and the enactment of Section 217 (a) of the Revenue Act of 1950 (64 Stat. 906), which eliminated amortization of bond premiums attributable to a conversion feature. However, response to the Korell decision was specifically limited to the convertible bond situation; no further change was made in the statute which would reflect on its interpretation in the case before us. 17 </s> [369 U.S. 672, 684] </s> In 1954, in enacting the successor to Section 125, Section 171 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (26 U.S.C., 1958 ed.), Congress again took cognizance of the tax benefit in question, and determined to eliminate the abuses inherent in permitting amortization with reference to 30-day call periods. Thus Congress further narrowed the loophole by providing that the premium on callable bonds could be amortized to the nearest call date only if such date was more than three years from the date of the original issue of the securities. With particular relevance to the Government's argument in the instant case, it is worthy of note that Congress understood the operation of the statute to the taxpayer's advantage, but limited correction of the abuses inherent in it to elimination of the quick write-off. The House Report accompanying H. R. 8300, which was to become the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, stated (H. R. Rep. No. 1337, 83d Cong., 2d Sess. 26): </s> "Under existing law, a bond premium may be amortized with reference to the amount payable on maturity or on earlier call date, at the election of the taxpayer. In the case of bonds with a very short call feature, such as those providing for call at any time on 30-day notice, the entire premium may be deducted in the year of purchase. </s> "This provision has given rise to tax-avoidance opportunities. Substantial bond issues have been made subject to a 30-day call, permitting the purchaser to take an immediate deduction for the entire premium against ordinary income. Where the call feature is nominal or inoperative this permits a [369 U.S. 672, 685] deduction for an unreal loss, since the market value of the bonds ordinarily remains fairly stable over considerable periods. The bonds may then be resold after 6 months subject to long-term capital gain treatment. The writeoff of premium thus affords a gratuitous tax saving, equivalent to the conversion of a corresponding amount of ordinary income into capital gain. This process may be repeated indefinitely. </s> "To curb this type of abuse, your committee's bill provides that the premium on callable bonds may be amortized to the nearest call date only if such date is more than 3 years from the date of original issue of the securities. This provision will apply only to bonds issued after January 22, 1951, and acquired after January 22, 1954." (Emphasis added.) </s> Not only did Congress fail to make the distinction between general and special call provisions urged by the respondent, but it expressly recognized that deductions could be taken under Section 125 with reference to a call date that was "nominal or inoperative." It did not remotely imply that a showing of a right to call all or any part of the outstanding bonds was necessary for operation of the statute. Furthermore, the change that it did adopt was to operate prospectively only. </s> Finally, in 1958, by adoption of Section 13 of the Technical Amendments Act of 1958, 72 Stat. 1610, Congress eliminated entirely the right to amortize to call date, permitting amortization to be taken only over the period to maturity. 18 Again, the legislative change was prospective [369 U.S. 672, 686] only and again no distinction was made with respect to general and special call dates or with respect to a right to call all or a part of the outstanding bonds. </s> Persuasive evidence that we are correct in our interpretation of Section 125, as bolstered by its legislative history and subsequent amendments, may be found in the respondent's own prior construction of the statute. As is true with the language of the statute itself, the respondent's regulations contained not the slightest hint of the distinction urged upon us here. The Commissioner defined "earlier call date" in Treas. Reg. 118, 39.125 (b)-2 (see note 10, supra) as any call date prior to maturity, specified in the bond. The regulations in effect in 1953 give no support to the Government's present contention that the taxpayer must show an unconditional right in the issuer to call the outstanding bonds at a particular redemption price before amortization with reference to that price would be permitted. Furthermore, although the petitioners are not entitled to rely upon unpublished private rulings which were not issued specifically to them, 19 such rulings do reveal the interpretation put upon the statute by the agency charged with the responsibility of administering the revenue laws. And, because the Commissioner ruled, in letters addressed to taxpayers requesting them, that amortization with reference to a special call price was proper under the statute, 20 we have [369 U.S. 672, 687] further evidence that our construction of allowable bond premium amortization is compelled by the language of the statute. 21 </s> A firmly established principle of statutory interpretation is that "the words of statutes - including revenue acts - should be interpreted where possible in their ordinary, everyday senses." Crane v. Commissioner, 331 U.S. 1, 6 . 22 The statute in issue here, in plain and ordinary language, evidences a clear congressional intent to allow amortization with reference to any call date named in the indenture. Under such circumstances we are not at liberty, notwithstanding the apparent tax-saving windfall bestowed upon taxpayers, to add to or alter the words employed to effect a purpose which does not appear on the face of the statute. Moreover, the legislative history, too, is persuasive evidence that the statute, as it appeared [369 U.S. 672, 688] in 1953 when these deductions were taken, allowed the deduction refused these taxpayers. Simply stated, an informed Congress enacted Section 125 with full realization of the existence and operation of special call provisions, but chose not to make any distinction between them and general redemption rights. Neither did the Commissioner. Nevertheless, the Government now urges this Court to do what the legislative branch of the Government failed to do or elected not to do. This, of course, is not within our province. 23 </s> The judgments are reversed. </s> MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER took no part in the decision of this case. </s> MR. JUSTICE WHITE took no part in the consideration or decision of this case. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 We have before us two cases which originated in the Tax Court: Estate of Gourielli v. Commissioner, 33 T. C. 357, and Goldfarb v. Commissioner, 33 T. C. 568. The cases were consolidated on appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and one opinion was filed by that court. Estate of Gourielli v. Commissioner, 289 F.2d 69. Petitioner Hanover Bank is the executor of the estate of Mr. Gourielli, who passed away since the commencement of this action. </s> [Footnote 2 The bonds involved in the Gourielli case were Appalachian Electric Power Company, 1981 series, bonds, which decedent and his wife purchased for $117.50 per $100 face value, and which were later sold for $115.50. The bonds in Goldfarb were Arkansas Power & Light Company, 30-year, Eighth Series, bonds, which petitioners purchased at an average price of $110.50 per $100 face amount, and which were later sold at an average price of $105.40. The total purchases in the two cases were $540,000 (Gourielli) and $500,000 (Goldfarb) face amount; the purchase prices were paid in cash in both cases. </s> [Footnote 3 In addition to a "sinking fund" into which the indenture required Appalachian to deposit during each annual period an amount (in [369 U.S. 672, 674] cash or property additions of an equivalent amount) equal to one percent of the bond issue, the special funds in the case of the Appalachian bonds were: (1) a released property and insurance fund, to which deposits were required only upon a loss by casualty or by a release of mortgaged properties securing the bonds; and (2) a maintenance fund, to which deposits were required only when Appalachian failed to expend a stated percentage of its revenues on maintenance or improvements. The special funds in the case of the Arkansas bonds were made up from the same type contributions as above, plus additions made to an eminent domain fund if and when mortgaged property was taken from the company by eminent domain proceedings. </s> [Footnote 4 Internal Revenue Code of 1939 (26 U.S.C., 1952 ed.): </s> "SEC. 23. DEDUCTIONS FROM GROSS INCOME. </s> "In computing net income there shall be allowed as deductions: </s> . . . . . </s> "(v) [as added by 126 (a), Revenue Act of 1942, c. 619, 56 Stat. 798] BOND PREMIUM DEDUCTION. - In the case of a bondholder, the deduction for amortizable bond premium provided in section 125." </s> [Footnote 5 This Section was also added by the Revenue Act of 1942, supra, note 4, 126 (b). Entitled "Amortizable Bond Premium," it reads in pertinent part as follows: </s> "(a) GENERAL RULE. - In the case of any bond, as defined in subsection (d), the following rules shall apply to the amortizable bond premium (determined under subsection (b)) on the bond for any taxable year beginning after December 31, 1941: </s> . . . . . </s> "(b) AMORTIZABLE BOND PREMIUM. - </s> "(1) AMOUNT OF BOND PREMIUM. - For the purposes of paragraph (2), the amount of bond premium, in the case of the holder of any bond, shall be determined with reference to the amount of the basis (for determining loss on sale or exchange) of such bond, and with reference to the amount payable on maturity or on earlier call date, with adjustments proper to reflect unamortized bond premium with respect to the bond, for the period prior to the date as of which [369 U.S. 672, 675] subsection (a) becomes applicable with respect to the taxpayer with respect to such bond. </s> "(2) AMOUNT AMORTIZABLE. - The amortizable bond premium of the taxable year shall be the amount of the bond premium attributable to such year. </s> "(3) METHOD OF DETERMINATION. - The determinations required under paragraphs (1) and (2) shall be made - </s> "(A) in accordance with the method of amortizing bond premium regularly employed by the holder of the bond, if such method is reasonable; </s> "(B) in all other cases, in accordance with regulations prescribing reasonable methods of amortizing bond premium, prescribed by the Commissioner with the approval of the Secretary." </s> [Footnote 6 At the time of the deduction in Gourielli, the schedule appearing in the Appalachian bond indenture provided that the bonds could be redeemed at a general call price of 105 3/8 or a special call price of 102 3/8. The petitioners' basis was $117.50 (see supra, note 2) and therefore amortization of premium with reference to the two prices would result in a deduction of $64,831.07 or $83,056.07, respectively. The difference in these amounts, $18,225.00, was the amount disallowed by the respondent. By a similar recomputation with reference to the schedule of redemption prices appearing in the Arkansas bond indenture (105.36 as compared to 101.36), the respondent reduced the deduction in Goldfarb by $27,175.00. The actual tax deficiency in each case was considerably less ($14,200.92 and $14,708.16, respectively), of course, because disallowance of the larger premium [369 U.S. 672, 676] resulted in a corresponding increase in the petitioners' basis which had been adjusted pursuant to Section 113 (b) (1) (H) of the Code when the premium was amortized. This increase in basis resulted in a smaller short-term capital gain (the petitioners held the bonds less than six months) than had been reported by petitioners in their 1953 returns. The decrease in tax due on the capital gain was offset against the amount of amortization disallowed to arrive at the petitioners' actual tax deficiencies in issue here. </s> [Footnote 7 In addition to the Third and Sixth Circuits' cases, the First and Seventh Circuits have also allowed deductions of bond premium amortization taken with reference to special redemption prices. In the First Circuit: Fabreeka Products Co. v. Commissioner, 294 F.2d 876, vacating and remanding 34 T. C. 290; Sherman v. Commissioner, 34 T. C. 303; and Friedman v. Commissioner, 34 T. C. 456. In the Seventh Circuit: Gallun v. Commissioner, 297 F.2d 455, reversing 1960 P-H T. C. Memo. Dec. § 60,104; and Maysteel Products, Inc., v. Commissioner, 287 F.2d 429, reversing 33 T. C. 1021. In each of these cases the taxpayer had purchased bonds at a premium, amortized that premium to the special call price, and thereafter made a distribution of the bonds which entailed a double tax deduction (e. g., a gift to charity). In each case the Court of Appeals allowed the double deduction. Although the precise issue presented in the instant case was not expressly decided in these latter cases, due to the fact that the Commissioner did not choose to challenge the use of the special call price as against the general call price for determining the amount of the premium, the allowance of the amortization to the special redemption price impliedly places the First and Seventh Circuits in accord with the Third and Sixth Circuits. </s> [Footnote 8 See the authorities collected in Commissioner v. Korell, 339 U.S. 619, 627 , n. 10. The Court in Korell, a case also involving an interpretation of Section 125 (see discussion, pp. 682-683, infra), concluded ( 339 U.S., at 627 ): "We adopt the view that `bond premium' in 125 means any extra payment, regardless of the reason therefor . . . ." </s> [Footnote 9 Commissioner v. Korell, 339 U.S. 619, 621 . See 1 Hearings before House Committee on Ways and Means on Revenue Revision of 1942, 77th Cong., 2d Sess. 90 (1942). The House Committee noted the recommendation made in the hearings that the difference between yield and the actual interest rate be treated as a return of capital and not as a capital loss (H. R. Rep. No. 2333, 77th Cong., 2d Sess. 47): </s> "Under existing law, bond premium is treated as a capital loss sustained by the owner of the bond at the time of disposition or maturity and periodical payments on the bond at the nominal or coupon rate are treated in full as interest. The want of statutory recognition of the sound accounting practice of amortizing premium leads to incorrect tax results which in many instances are so serious that provision should be made for their avoidance." </s> However, in rejecting the Government's argument in Korell, supra, that Congress intended to confine the deduction only to premium paid for a higher-than-market interest rate, the Court stated ( 339 U.S., at 626 -627): </s> "At most, [the Commissioner's] presentation of the legislative materials suggests that Congress may have had the bondholder who was [369 U.S. 672, 678] seeking a higher interest rate primarily in mind; but it does not establish that Congress in fact legislated with reference to him exclusively. [Citation omitted.] Congress, and the Treasury in advising Congress, may well have concluded that the best manner of affording him relief and correcting the inequitable treatment of bondholders whose interest receipts were taxable, was to define the scope of the amendment by reference to types of bonds rather than causes of premium payment." </s> [Footnote 10 Congress' intent in this regard was expressly noted by the respondent in enacting Treas. Reg. 118, 39.125 (b)-2: </s> "Callable and convertible bonds. (a) The fact that a bond is callable . . . does not, in itself, prevent the application of section 125. . . . The earlier call date may be the earliest call date specified in the bond as a day certain, the earliest interest payment date if the bond is callable at such date, the earliest date at which the bond is callable at par, or such other call date, prior to maturity, specified in the bond as may be selected by the taxpayer. . . ." </s> [Footnote 11 See generally Evans v. Dudley, 295 F.2d 713, 715; Estate of Gourielli v. Commissioner, 289 F.2d 69, 73; Parnell v. United States, 187 F. Supp. 576, 577, aff'd, 272 F.2d 943. See also Badger, Investment Principles and Practices (5th ed. 1961), 46-47, 114-115, 129; I Dewing, Financial Policy of Corporations (5th ed. 1953), 186-188, 247-249. </s> [Footnote 12 Hence, the occurrence of a redemption at the general call price is dependent upon one set of events - the fluctuation in the interest market; the occurrence of a redemption at the special call price is dependent upon another set of events - deposits in the sinking fund [369 U.S. 672, 680] by the issuer over one or more years, takings by governmental agencies through eminent domain, destruction of the property securing the bonds, etc. In either case, the events could happen. In fact, the petitioners point out in their brief here that in recent years more bonds have been called at the special redemption price than at the general price. See also Evans v. Dudley, 295 F.2d 713, 716. </s> [Footnote 13 Allowing a 30-day amortization period is in accord with the decision of the Court in Korell where, although the point was not argued by the Government, the taxpayer had amortized the premium [369 U.S. 672, 681] with reference to the 30-day period provided in the indenture. In its brief in the instant case the Government states: </s> ". . . [W]e concede that it is now too late to challenge the amortization of the premium on bonds subject to an unlimited right of redemption on 30 days' notice. Not only has the consistent administrative practice, culminating in a published ruling, been to allow such amortization, but Congress, in narrowing such deductions in the 1954 Code and prohibiting them entirely after 1957, expressly acknowledged that the prior law permitted that treatment. . . . Accordingly, we did not challenge in the lower courts and do not challenge here petitioners' right to amortization of the premium on the basis of the general right of the issuer to redeem the bonds at any time upon 30 days' notice." </s> See also Int. Rev. Rul. 56-398, 1956-2 Cum. Bull. 984, where the respondent, in a published ruling, acquiesced in a 30-day amortization period under the 1939 Code. </s> [Footnote 14 This concession also conforms to the pronouncement in Korell ( 339 U.S., at 625 ): "Congress was legislating for the generality of cases." See also Evans v. Dudley, 295 F.2d 713, 716; Parnell v. United States, 187 F. Supp. 576, 579, aff'd, 272 F.2d 943. </s> [Footnote 15 The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stated (289 F.2d 69, 74): "We do not think that . . . in 125 of the Code . . . [Congress] meant to include an amount payable on a call at a `special' price of which there was no real possibility during the period for which the amortization is being taken and the deduction claimed." And (289 F.2d, at 72): ". . . [T]he hazard that any significant number of petitioners' bonds would be called during [the] period was infinitesimal." In so holding, the Court accepted the Government's argument below that "[t]he taxpayer is not entitled to compute his amortizable bond premium deduction . . . with reference to the `special' call price . . . because . . . such a call was so contingent and unlikely that there was no realistic call date at the `special' call price . . . ." </s> In contrast, the Government states in its brief here: ". . . [O]ur position is not dependent upon the particular market conditions or [369 U.S. 672, 682] the actual probabilities that a right of redemption will be exercised. . . . [W]e agree with petitioners that the question . . . should not be dependent upon a finding in each case of the actual `likelihood' that any particular redemption right will be exercised." As to the futility in attempting to apply a "likelihood of redemption" standard, see note 12, supra. </s> [Footnote 16 Cf. Knetsch v. United States, 364 U.S. 361 ; Gregory v. Helvering, 293 U.S. 465 . </s> [Footnote 17 The legislation simply provided: </s> "In no case shall the amount of bond premium of a convertible bond include any amount attributable to the conversion features of the bond." </s> Where, as in the case before us, a question of interpretation of Section 125 is presented lying outside the scope of the 1950 Amendment, Korell retains its full vitality. Thus, it is worth noting that the Government's "right to call" approach advocated in the case at bar would result in a sub silentio overruling of Korell to the extent that in the latter case the right of the bondholder to exercise his conversion option at any time through the expiration of the notice period of a call defeated completely the issuer's "right" to call and redeem [369 U.S. 672, 684] even a single bond. In the instant case, however, neither party disputes the fact that at least some of the bonds could have been called at the special price and that if the issuer exercised his right so to call them the bondholder would have had no choice but to turn over the bonds and forfeit the premium paid for them. </s> [Footnote 18 The 1958 Amendment literally permits amortization to an earlier call date but only if it results in a smaller amortization deduction than would amortization to maturity, which, for all practical purposes, effectively eliminates the privilege of calling to an earlier call date. </s> [Footnote 19 See, e. g., Commissioner v. P. G. Lake, Inc., 356 U.S. 260, 265 -266, n. 5; Automobile Club v. Commissioner, 353 U.S. 180 ; Helvering v. New York Trust Co., 292 U.S. 455, 467 -468. </s> [Footnote 20 For example, the record in the instant case contains a copy of the following letter to a taxpayer from the respondent's office (we quote the relevant portion): </s> "Gentlemen: </s> . . . . . </s> "The Appalachian Electric Power Company 3 3/4% bonds, 1981 Series, are callable in whole or in part through May of 1953 at 105 5/8. They are also callable for sinking fund through funds derived from [369 U.S. 672, 687] maintenance or sale of property at any time upon thirty days notice through May 31, 1954 at 102 3/8. You request to be advised whether the above-mentioned ruling of July 30, 1952, means that such bonds may be amortized down to 102 3/8 or whether it means that they can only be amortized down to 105 5/8 through May of 1953. </s> "Upon the basis of the information on file in this office, it is the opinion of this office that a taxpayer electing to amortize the premium on Appalachian Electric Power Company bonds in accordance with section 125 of the Code may use the regular redemption price of 105 5/8 or the special redemption price of 102 3/8. </s> "Very truly yours, [etc.] . . ." </s> [Footnote 21 In 1956, three years after the deductions in the present case were taken, the Commissioner - reversing the position he had previously and uniformly adhered to in a series of private rulings - for the first time announced that amortization of bond premium under Section 125 of the 1939 Code was to be limited to premium in excess of a general call price and could not include premium in excess of a lower special call price, except where an actual call was made at the latter price. Int. Rev. Rul. 56-398, 1956-2 Cum. Bull. 984. </s> [Footnote 22 See also Commissioner v. Korell, 339 U.S. 619, 627 -628; Lang v. Commissioner, 289 U.S. 109, 111 ; Old Colony R. Co. v. Commissioner, 284 U.S. 552, 560 . </s> [Footnote 23 We believe the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit was correct when it said in Fabreeka Products Co. v. Commissioner, 294 F.2d 876, 879: "Granting the Government's proposition that these taxpayers have found a hole in the dike, we believe it one that calls for the application of the Congressional thumb, not the court's." See also Evans v. Dudley, 295 F.2d 713, 715, where the Third Circuit quotes this language from Judge Aldrich's opinion in Fabreeka Products. </s> [369 U.S. 672, 689]

United States Supreme Court LEMON v. KURTZMAN(1971) No. 89 Argued: March 3, 1971Decided: June 28, 1971 </s> [Footnote * Together with No. 569, Earley et al. v. DiCenso et al., and No. 570, Robinson, Commissioner of Education of Rhode Island, et al. v. DiCenso et al., on appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island. </s> Rhode Island's 1969 Salary Supplement Act provides for a 15% salary supplement to be paid to teachers in nonpublic schools at which the average per-pupil expenditure on secular education is below the average in public schools. Eligible teachers must teach only courses offered in the public schools, using only materials used in the public schools, and must agree not to teach courses in religion. A three-judge court found that about 25% of the State's elementary students attended nonpublic schools, about 95% of whom attended Roman Catholic affiliated schools, and that to date about 250 teachers at Roman Catholic schools are the sole beneficiaries under the Act. The court found that the parochial school system was "an integral part of the religious mission of the Catholic Church," and held that the Act fostered "excessive entanglement" between government and religion, thus violating the Establishment Clause. Pennsylvania's Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act, passed in 1968, authorizes the state Superintendent of Public Instruction to "purchase" certain "secular educational services" from nonpublic schools, directly reimbursing those schools solely for teachers' salaries, textbooks, and instructional materials. Reimbursement is restricted to courses in specific secular subjects, the textbooks and materials must be approved by the Superintendent, and no payment is to be made for any course containing "any subject matter expressing religious teaching, or the morals or forms of worship of any sect." Contracts were made with schools that have more than 20% of all the students in the State, most of which were affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. The complaint challenging the constitutionality of [403 U.S. 602, 603] the Act alleged that the church-affiliated schools are controlled by religious organizations, have the purpose of propagating and promoting a particular religious faith, and conduct their operations to fulfill that purpose. A three-judge court granted the State's motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim for relief, finding no violation of the Establishment or Free Exercise Clause. Held: Both statutes are unconstitutional under the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, as the cumulative impact of the entire relationship arising under the statutes involves excessive entanglement between government and religion. Pp. 611-625. </s> (a) The entanglement in the Rhode Island program arises because of the religious activity and purpose of the church-affiliated schools, especially with respect to children of impressionable age in the primary grades, and the dangers that a teacher under religious control and discipline poses to the separation of religious from purely secular aspects of elementary education in such schools. These factors require continuing state surveillance to ensure that the statutory restrictions are obeyed and the First Amendment otherwise respected. Furthermore, under the Act the government must inspect school records to determine what part of the expenditures is attributable to secular education as opposed to religious activity, in the event a nonpublic school's expenditures per pupil exceed the comparable figures for public schools. Pp. 615-620. </s> (b) The entanglement in the Pennsylvania program also arises from the restrictions and surveillance necessary to ensure that teachers play a strictly nonideological role and the state supervision of nonpublic school accounting procedures required to establish the cost of secular as distinguished from religious education. In addition, the Pennsylvania statute has the further defect of providing continuing financial aid directly to the church-related schools. Historically governmental control and surveillance measures tend to follow cash grant programs, and here the government's post-audit power to inspect the financial records of church-related schools creates an intimate and continuing relationship between church and state. Pp. 620-622. </s> (c) Political division along religious lines was one of the evils at which the First Amendment aimed, and in these programs, where successive and probably permanent annual appropriations that benefit relatively few religious groups are involved, political [403 U.S. 602, 604] fragmentation and divisiveness on religious lines are likely to be intensified. Pp. 622-624. </s> (d) Unlike the tax exemption for places of religious worship, upheld in Walz v. Tax Commission, 397 U.S. 664 , which was based on a practice of 200 years, these innovative programs have self-perpetuating and self-expanding propensities which provide a warning signal against entanglement between government and religion. Pp. 624-625. </s> No. 89, 310 F. Supp. 35, reversed and remanded; Nos. 569 and 570, 316 F. Supp. 112, affirmed. </s> BURGER, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BLACK, DOUGLAS, HARLAN, STEWART, MARSHALL (as to Nos. 569 and 570), and BLACKMUN, JJ., joined. DOUGLAS, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 625, in which BLACK, J., joined, and in which MARSHALL, J. (as to Nos. 569 and 570), joined, filing a separate statement, post, p. 642. BRENNAN, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 642. WHITE, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment in No. 89 and dissenting in Nos. 569 and 570, post, p. 661. MARSHALL, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of No. 89. </s> Henry W. Sawyer III argued the cause and filed briefs for appellants in No. 89. Edward Bennett Williams argued the cause for appellants in No. 569. With him on the brief were Jeremiah C. Collins and Richard P. McMahon. Charles F. Cottam argued the cause for appellants in No. 570. With him on the brief were Herbert F. DeSimone, Attorney General of Rhode Island, and W. Slater Allen, Jr., Assistant Attorney General. </s> J. Shane Creamer argued the cause for appellees Kurtzman et al. in No. 89. On the brief were Fred Speaker, Attorney General of Pennsylvania, David W. Rutstein, Deputy Attorney General, and Edward Friedman. William B. Ball argued the cause for appellee schools in No. 89. With him on the brief were Joseph G. Skelly, James E. Gallagher, Jr., C. Clark Hodgson, Jr., Samuel Rappaport, Donald A. Semisch, and William D. Valente. Henry T. Reath filed a brief for appellee Pennsylvania Association of Independent Schools in No. 89. Leo [403 U.S. 602, 605] Pfeffer and Milton Stanzler argued the cause for appellees in Nos. 569 and 570. With them on the brief were Harold E. Adams, Jr., and Allan M. Shine. </s> Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal in No. 89 were filed by Mr. Pfeffer for the American Association of School Administrators et al.; by Henry C. Clausen for United Americans for Public Schools; by Samuel Rabinove, Arnold Forster, George Soll, Joseph B. Robison, Paul Hartman, and Sol Rabkin for the American Jewish Committee et al.; by Franklin C. Salisbury for Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State; by J. Harold Flannery for the Center for Law and Education, Harvard University, et al.; and by Peter L. Costas and Paul W. Orth for the Connecticut State Conference of Branches of the NAACP et al. </s> Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance in No. 89 were filed by Acting Solicitor General Friedman, Assistant Attorney General Ruckelshaus, Robert V. Zener, and Donald L. Horowitz for the United States; by Paul W. Brown, Attorney General of Ohio, pro se, and Charles S. Lopeman, First Assistant Attorney General, for the Attorney General of Ohio et al.; by Levy Anderson for the City of Philadelphia; by Robert M. Landis for the School District of Philadelphia; by the City of Pittsburgh; by Bruce W. Kauffman, John M. Elliott, and Edward F. Mannino for the City of Erie; by James A. Kelly for the School District of the City of Scranton; by Charles M. Whelan, William R. Consedine, Alfred L. Scanlan, Arthur E. Sutherland, and Harmon Burns, Jr., for the National Catholic Educational Association et al.; by Ethan A. Hitchcock and I. N. P. Stokes for the National Association of Independent Schools, Inc.; by Jerome H. Gerber for the Pennsylvania State AFL-CIO; by Thomas J. Ford, Edward J. Walsh, Jr., and Theodore D. Hoffmann [403 U.S. 602, 606] for the Long Island Conference of Religious Elementary and Secondary School Administrators; by Nathan Lewin for the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs; by Stuart Hubbell for Citizens for Educational Freedom; and by Edward M. Koza, Walter L. Hill, Jr., Thomas R. Balaban, and William J. Pinkowski for the Polish American Congress, Inc., et al. </s> The National Association of Laymen filed a brief as amicus curiae in No. 89. </s> Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal in Nos. 569 and 570 were filed by Acting Solicitor General Friedman, Assistant Attorney General Gray, and Messrs. Zener and Horowitz for the United States, and by Jesse H. Choper and Messrs. Consedine, Whelan, and Burns for the National Catholic Educational Association et al. </s> Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance in Nos. 569 and 570 were filed by Messrs. Rabinove, Robison, Forster, and Rabkin for the American Jewish Committee et al.; by Mr. Salisbury for Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State; by Mr. Flannery for the Center for Law and Education, Harvard University, et al.; and by Messrs. Costas and Orth for the Connecticut State Conference of Branches of the NAACP et al. </s> MR. CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> These two appeals raise questions as to Pennsylvania and Rhode Island statutes providing state aid to church-related elementary and secondary schools. Both statutes are challenged as violative of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. </s> Pennsylvania has adopted a statutory program that provides financial support to nonpublic elementary and [403 U.S. 602, 607] secondary schools by way of reimbursement for the cost of teachers' salaries, textbooks, and instructional materials in specified secular subjects. Rhode Island has adopted a statute under which the State pays directly to teachers in nonpublic elementary schools a supplement of 15% of their annual salary. Under each statute state aid has been given to church-related educational institutions. We hold that both statutes are unconstitutional. </s> I </s> The Rhode Island Statute </s> The Rhode Island Salary Supplement Act 1 was enacted in 1969. It rests on the legislative finding that the quality of education available in nonpublic elementary schools has been jeopardized by the rapidly rising salaries needed to attract competent and dedicated teachers. The Act authorizes state officials to supplement the salaries of teachers of secular subjects in nonpublic elementary schools by paying directly to a teacher an amount not in excess of 15% of his current annual salary. As supplemented, however, a nonpublic school teacher's salary cannot exceed the maximum paid to teachers in the State's public schools, and the recipient must be certified by the state board of education in substantially the same manner as public school teachers. </s> In order to be eligible for the Rhode Island salary supplement, the recipient must teach in a nonpublic school at which the average per-pupil expenditure on secular education is less than the average in the State's public schools during a specified period. Appellant State Commissioner of Education also requires eligible schools to submit financial data. If this information indicates a per-pupil expenditure in excess of the statutory limitation, [403 U.S. 602, 608] the records of the school in question must be examined in order to assess how much of the expenditure is attributable to secular education and how much to religious activity. 2 </s> The Act also requires that teachers eligible for salary supplements must teach only those subjects that are offered in the State's public schools. They must use "only teaching materials which are used in the public schools." Finally, any teacher applying for a salary supplement must first agree in writing "not to teach a course in religion for so long as or during such time as he or she receives any salary supplements" under the Act. </s> Appellees are citizens and taxpayers of Rhode Island. They brought this suit to have the Rhode Island Salary Supplement Act declared unconstitutional and its operation enjoined on the ground that it violates the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment. Appellants are state officials charged with administration of the Act, teachers eligible for salary supplements under the Act, and parents of children in church-related elementary schools whose teachers would receive state salary assistance. </s> A three-judge federal court was convened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2281, 2284. It found that Rhode Island's nonpublic elementary schools accommodated approximately 25% of the State's pupils. About 95% of these pupils attended schools affiliated with the Roman Catholic church. To date some 250 teachers have applied for benefits under the Act. All of them are employed by Roman Catholic schools. [403 U.S. 602, 609] </s> The court held a hearing at which extensive evidence was introduced concerning the nature of the secular instruction offered in the Roman Catholic schools whose teachers would be eligible for salary assistance under the Act. Although the court found that concern for religious values does not necessarily affect the content of secular subjects, it also found that the parochial school system was "an integral part of the religious mission of the Catholic Church." </s> The District Court concluded that the Act violated the Establishment Clause, holding that it fostered "excessive entanglement" between government and religion. In addition two judges thought that the Act had the impermissible effect of giving "significant aid to a religious enterprise." 316 F. Supp. 112. We affirm. </s> The Pennsylvania Statute </s> Pennsylvania has adopted a program that has some but not all of the features of the Rhode Island program. The Pennsylvania Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act 3 was passed in 1968 in response to a crisis that the Pennsylvania Legislature found existed in the State's nonpublic schools due to rapidly rising costs. The statute affirmatively reflects the legislative conclusion that the State's educational goals could appropriately be fulfilled by government support of "those purely secular educational objectives achieved through nonpublic education . . . ." </s> The statute authorizes appellee state Superintendent of Public Instruction to "purchase" specified "secular educational services" from nonpublic schools. Under the "contracts" authorized by the statute, the State directly reimburses nonpublic schools solely for their actual expenditures for teachers' salaries, textbooks, and instructional materials. A school seeking reimbursement must [403 U.S. 602, 610] maintain prescribed accounting procedures that identify the "separate" cost of the "secular educational service." These accounts are subject to state audit. The funds for this program were originally derived from a new tax on horse and harness racing, but the Act is now financed by a portion of the state tax on cigarettes. </s> There are several significant statutory restrictions on state aid. Reimbursement is limited to courses "presented in the curricula of the public schools." It is further limited "solely" to courses in the following "secular" subjects: mathematics, modern foreign languages, 4 physical science, and physical education. Textbooks and instructional materials included in the program must be approved by the state Superintendent of Public Instruction. Finally, the statute prohibits reimbursement for any course that contains "any subject matter expressing religious teaching, or the morals or forms of worship of any sect." </s> The Act went into effect on July 1, 1968, and the first reimbursement payments to schools were made on September 2, 1969. It appears that some $5 million has been expended annually under the Act. The State has now entered into contracts with some 1,181 nonpublic elementary and secondary schools with a student population of some 535,215 pupils - more than 20% of the total number of students in the State. More than 96% of these pupils attend church-related schools, and most of these schools are affiliated with the Roman Catholic church. </s> Appellants brought this action in the District Court to challenge the constitutionality of the Pennsylvania statute. The organizational plaintiffs-appellants are associations of persons resident in Pennsylvania declaring [403 U.S. 602, 611] belief in the separation of church and state; individual plaintiffs-appellants are citizens and taxpayers of Pennsylvania. Appellant Lemon, in addition to being a citizen and a taxpayer, is a parent of a child attending public school in Pennsylvania. Lemon also alleges that he purchased a ticket at a race track and thus had paid the specific tax that supports the expenditures under the Act. Appellees are state officials who have the responsibility for administering the Act. In addition seven church-related schools are defendants-appellees. </s> A three-judge federal court was convened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 2281, 2284. The District Court held that the individual plaintiffs-appellants had standing to challenge the Act, 310 F. Supp. 42. The organizational plaintiffs-appellants were denied standing under Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 99 , 101 (1968). </s> The court granted appellees' motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim for relief. 5 310 F. Supp. 35. It held that the Act violated neither the Establishment nor the Free Exercise Clause, Chief Judge Hastie dissenting. We reverse. </s> II </s> In Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), this Court upheld a state statute that reimbursed the parents of parochial school children for bus transportation [403 U.S. 602, 612] expenses. There MR. JUSTICE BLACK, writing for the majority, suggested that the decision carried to "the verge" of forbidden territory under the Religion Clauses. Id., at 16. Candor compels acknowledgment, moreover, that we can only dimly perceive the lines of demarcation in this extraordinarily sensitive area of constitutional law. </s> The language of the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment is at best opaque, particularly when compared with other portions of the Amendment. Its authors did not simply prohibit the establishment of a state church or a state religion, an area history shows they regarded as very important and fraught with great dangers. Instead they commanded that there should be "no law respecting an establishment of religion." A law may be one "respecting" the forbidden objective while falling short of its total realization. A law "respecting" the proscribed result, that is, the establishment of religion, is not always easily identifiable as one violative of the Clause. A given law might not establish a state religion but nevertheless be one "respecting" that end in the sense of being a step that could lead to such establishment and hence offend the First Amendment. </s> In the absence of precisely stated constitutional prohibitions, we must draw lines with reference to the three main evils against which the Establishment Clause was intended to afford protection: "sponsorship, financial support, and active involvement of the sovereign in religious activity." Walz v. Tax Commission, 397 U.S. 664, 668 (1970). </s> Every analysis in this area must begin with consideration of the cumulative criteria developed by the Court over many years. Three such tests may be gleaned from our cases. First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion, Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236, 243 (1968); [403 U.S. 602, 613] finally, the statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion." Walz, supra, at 674. </s> Inquiry into the legislative purposes of the Pennsylvania and Rhode Island statutes affords no basis for a conclusion that the legislative intent was to advance religion. On the contrary, the statutes themselves clearly state that they are intended to enhance the quality of the secular education in all schools covered by the compulsory attendance laws. There is no reason to believe the legislatures meant anything else. A State always has a legitimate concern for maintaining minimum standards in all schools it allows to operate. As in Allen, we find nothing here that undermines the stated legislative intent; it must therefore be accorded appropriate deference. </s> In Allen the Court acknowledged that secular and religious teachings were not necessarily so intertwined that secular textbooks furnished to students by the State were in fact instrumental in the teaching of religion. 392 U.S., at 248 . The legislatures of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania have concluded that secular and religious education are identifiable and separable. In the abstract we have no quarrel with this conclusion. </s> The two legislatures, however, have also recognized that church-related elementary and secondary schools have a significant religious mission and that a substantial portion of their activities is religiously oriented. They have therefore sought to create statutory restrictions designed to guarantee the separation between secular and religious educational functions and to ensure that State financial aid supports only the former. All these provisions are precautions taken in candid recognition that these programs approached, even if they did not intrude upon, the forbidden areas under the Religion Clauses. We need not decide whether these legislative precautions restrict the principal or primary effect of the programs to the point where they do not offend the Religion [403 U.S. 602, 614] Clauses, for we conclude that the cumulative impact of the entire relationship arising under the statutes in each State involves excessive entanglement between government and religion. </s> III </s> In Walz v. Tax Commission, supra, the Court upheld state tax exemptions for real property owned by religious organizations and used for religious worship. That holding, however, tended to confine rather than enlarge the area of permissible state involvement with religious institutions by calling for close scrutiny of the degree of entanglement involved in the relationship. The objective is to prevent, as far as possible, the intrusion of either into the precincts of the other. </s> Our prior holdings do not call for total separation between church and state; total separation is not possible in an absolute sense. Some relationship between government and religious organizations is inevitable. Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 312 (1952); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 422 (1963) (HARLAN, J., dissenting). Fire inspections, building and zoning regulations, and state requirements under compulsory school-attendance laws are examples of necessary and permissible contacts. Indeed, under the statutory exemption before us in Walz, the State had a continuing burden to ascertain that the exempt property was in fact being used for religious worship. Judicial caveats against entanglement must recognize that the line of separation, far from being a "wall," is a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship. </s> This is not to suggest, however, that we are to engage in a legalistic minuet in which precise rules and forms must govern. A true minuet is a matter of pure form and style, the observance of which is itself the substantive end. Here we examine the form of the relationship for the light that it casts on the substance. [403 U.S. 602, 615] </s> In order to determine whether the government entanglement with religion is excessive, we must examine the character and purposes of the institutions that are benefited, the nature of the aid that the State provides, and the resulting relationship between the government and the religious authority. MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, in a separate opinion in Walz, supra, echoed the classic warning as to "programs, whose very nature is apt to entangle the state in details of administration . . . ." Id., at 695. Here we find that both statutes foster an impermissible degree of entanglement. </s> (a) Rhode Island program </s> The District Court made extensive findings on the grave potential for excessive entanglement that inheres in the religious character and purpose of the Roman Catholic elementary schools of Rhode Island, to date the sole beneficiaries of the Rhode Island Salary Supplement Act. </s> The church schools involved in the program are located close to parish churches. This understandably permits convenient access for religious exercises since instruction in faith and morals is part of the total educational process. The school buildings contain identifying religious symbols such as crosses on the exterior and crucifixes, and religious paintings and statues either in the classrooms or hallways. Although only approximately 30 minutes a day are devoted to direct religious instruction, there are religiously oriented extracurricular activities. Approximately two-thirds of the teachers in these schools are nuns of various religious orders. Their dedicated efforts provide an atmosphere in which religious instruction and religious vocations are natural and proper parts of life in such schools. Indeed, as the District Court found, the role of teaching nuns in enhancing the religious atmosphere has led the parochial school authorities [403 U.S. 602, 616] to attempt to maintain a one-to-one ratio between nuns and lay teachers in all schools rather than to permit some to be staffed almost entirely by lay teachers. </s> On the basis of these findings the District Court concluded that the parochial schools constituted "an integral part of the religious mission of the Catholic Church." The various characteristics of the schools make them "a powerful vehicle for transmitting the Catholic faith to the next generation." This process of inculcating religious doctrine is, of course, enhanced by the impressionable age of the pupils, in primary schools particularly. In short, parochial schools involve substantial religious activity and purpose. 6 </s> The substantial religious character of these church-related schools gives rise to entangling church-state relationships of the kind the Religion Clauses sought to avoid. Although the District Court found that concern for religious values did not inevitably or necessarily intrude into the content of secular subjects, the considerable religious activities of these schools led the legislature to provide for careful governmental controls and surveillance by state authorities in order to ensure that state aid supports only secular education. </s> The dangers and corresponding entanglements are enhanced by the particular form of aid that the Rhode Island Act provides. Our decisions from Everson to Allen have permitted the States to provide church-related schools with secular, neutral, or nonideological services, facilities, or materials. Bus transportation, school lunches, public health services, and secular textbooks supplied in common to all students were not [403 U.S. 602, 617] thought to offend the Establishment Clause. We note that the dissenters in Allen seemed chiefly concerned with the pragmatic difficulties involved in ensuring the truly secular content of the textbooks provided at state expense. </s> In Allen the Court refused to make assumptions, on a meager record, about the religious content of the textbooks that the State would be asked to provide. We cannot, however, refuse here to recognize that teachers have a substantially different ideological character from books. In terms of potential for involving some aspect of faith or morals in secular subjects, a textbook's content is ascertainable, but a teacher's handling of a subject is not. We cannot ignore the danger that a teacher under religious control and discipline poses to the separation of the religious from the purely secular aspects of pre-college education. The conflict of functions inheres in the situation. </s> In our view the record shows these dangers are present to a substantial degree. The Rhode Island Roman Catholic elementary schools are under the general supervision of the Bishop of Providence and his appointed representative, the Diocesan Superintendent of Schools. In most cases, each individual parish, however, assumes the ultimate financial responsibility for the school, with the parish priest authorizing the allocation of parish funds. With only two exceptions, school principals are nuns appointed either by the Superintendent or the Mother Provincial of the order whose members staff the school. By 1969 lay teachers constituted more than a third of all teachers in the parochial elementary schools, and their number is growing. They are first interviewed by the superintendent's office and then by the school principal. The contracts are signed by the parish priest, and he retains some discretion in negotiating salary levels. Religious authority necessarily pervades the school system. [403 U.S. 602, 618] </s> The schools are governed by the standards set forth in a "Handbook of School Regulations," which has the force of synodal law in the diocese. It emphasizes the role and importance of the teacher in parochial schools: "The prime factor for the success or the failure of the school is the spirit and personality, as well as the professional competency, of the teacher . . . ." The Handbook also states that: "Religious formation is not confined to formal courses; nor is it restricted to a single subject area." Finally, the Handbook advises teachers to stimulate interest in religious vocations and missionary work. Given the mission of the church school, these instructions are consistent and logical. </s> Several teachers testified, however, that they did not inject religion into their secular classes. And the District Court found that religious values did not necessarily affect the content of the secular instruction. But what has been recounted suggests the potential if not actual hazards of this form of state aid. The teacher is employed by a religious organization, subject to the direction and discipline of religious authorities, and works in a system dedicated to rearing children in a particular faith. These controls are not lessened by the fact that most of the lay teachers are of the Catholic faith. Inevitably some of a teacher's responsibilities hover on the border between secular and religious orientation. </s> We need not and do not assume that teachers in parochial schools will be guilty of bad faith or any conscious design to evade the limitations imposed by the statute and the First Amendment. We simply recognize that a dedicated religious person, teaching in a school affiliated with his or her faith and operated to inculcate its tenets, will inevitably experience great difficulty in remaining religiously neutral. Doctrines and faith are not inculcated or advanced by neutrals. With the best of intentions such a teacher would find it hard to make [403 U.S. 602, 619] a total separation between secular teaching and religious doctrine. What would appear to some to be essential to good citizenship might well for others border on or constitute instruction in religion. Further difficulties are inherent in the combination of religious discipline and the possibility of disagreement between teacher and religious authorities over the meaning of the statutory restrictions. </s> We do not assume, however, that parochial school teachers will be unsuccessful in their attempts to segregate their religious beliefs from their secular educational responsibilities. But the potential for impermissible fostering of religion is present. The Rhode Island Legislature has not, and could not, provide state aid on the basis of a mere assumption that secular teachers under religious discipline can avoid conflicts. The State must be certain, given the Religion Clauses, that subsidized teachers do not inculcate religion - indeed the State here has undertaken to do so. To ensure that no trespass occurs, the State has therefore carefully conditioned its aid with pervasive restrictions. An eligible recipient must teach only those courses that are offered in the public schools and use only those texts and materials that are found in the public schools. In addition the teacher must not engage in teaching any course in religion. </s> A comprehensive, discriminating, and continuing state surveillance will inevitably be required to ensure that these restrictions are obeyed and the First Amendment otherwise respected. Unlike a book, a teacher cannot be inspected once so as to determine the extent and intent of his or her personal beliefs and subjective acceptance of the limitations imposed by the First Amendment. These prophylactic contacts will involve excessive and enduring entanglement between state and church. [403 U.S. 602, 620] </s> There is another area of entanglement in the Rhode Island program that gives concern. The statute excludes teachers employed by nonpublic schools whose average per-pupil expenditures on secular education equal or exceed the comparable figures for public schools. In the event that the total expenditures of an otherwise eligible school exceed this norm, the program requires the government to examine the school's records in order to determine how much of the total expenditures is attributable to secular education and how much to religious activity. This kind of state inspection and evaluation of the religious content of a religious organization is fraught with the sort of entanglement that the Constitution forbids. It is a relationship pregnant with dangers of excessive government direction of church schools and hence of churches. The Court noted "the hazards of government supporting churches" in Walz v. Tax Commission, supra, at 675, and we cannot ignore here the danger that pervasive modern governmental power will ultimately intrude on religion and thus conflict with the Religion Clauses. </s> (b) Pennsylvania program </s> The Pennsylvania statute also provides state aid to church-related schools for teachers' salaries. The complaint describes an educational system that is very similar to the one existing in Rhode Island. According to the allegations, the church-related elementary and secondary schools are controlled by religious organizations, have the purpose of propagating and promoting a particular religious faith, and conduct their operations to fulfill that purpose. Since this complaint was dismissed for failure to state a claim for relief, we must accept these allegations as true for purposes of our review. </s> As we noted earlier, the very restrictions and surveillance necessary to ensure that teachers play a strictly nonideological role give rise to entanglements between [403 U.S. 602, 621] church and state. The Pennsylvania statute, like that of Rhode Island, fosters this kind of relationship. Reimbursement is not only limited to courses offered in the public schools and materials approved by state officials, but the statute excludes "any subject matter expressing religious teaching, or the morals or forms of worship of any sect." In addition, schools seeking reimbursement must maintain accounting procedures that require the State to establish the cost of the secular as distinguished from the religious instruction. </s> The Pennsylvania statute, moreover, has the further defect of providing state financial aid directly to the church-related school. This factor distinguishes both Everson and Allen, for in both those cases the Court was careful to point out that state aid was provided to the student and his parents - not to the church-related school. Board of Education v. Allen, supra, at 243-244; Everson v. Board of Education, supra, at 18. In Walz v. Tax Commission, supra, at 675, the Court warned of the dangers of direct payments to religious organizations: </s> "Obviously a direct money subsidy would be a relationship pregnant with involvement and, as with most governmental grant programs, could encompass sustained and detailed administrative relationships for enforcement of statutory or administrative standards . . . ." </s> The history of government grants of a continuing cash subsidy indicates that such programs have almost always been accompanied by varying measures of control and surveillance. The government cash grants before us now provide no basis for predicting that comprehensive measures of surveillance and controls will not follow. In particular the government's post-audit power to inspect and evaluate a church-related school's financial records and to determine which expenditures are religious and [403 U.S. 602, 622] which are secular creates an intimate and continuing relationship between church and state. </s> IV </s> A broader base of entanglement of yet a different character is presented by the divisive political potential of these state programs. In a community where such a large number of pupils are served by church-related schools, it can be assumed that state assistance will entail considerable political activity. Partisans of parochial schools, understandably concerned with rising costs and sincerely dedicated to both the religious and secular educational missions of their schools, will inevitably champion this cause and promote political action to achieve their goals. Those who oppose state aid, whether for constitutional, religious, or fiscal reasons, will inevitably respond and employ all of the usual political campaign techniques to prevail. Candidates will be forced to declare and voters to choose. It would be unrealistic to ignore the fact that many people confronted with issues of this kind will find their votes aligned with their faith. </s> Ordinarily political debate and division, however vigorous or even partisan, are normal and healthy manifestations of our democratic system of government, but political division along religious lines was one of the principal evils against which the First Amendment was intended to protect. Freund, Comment, Public Aid to Parochial Schools, 82 Harv. L. Rev. 1680, 1692 (1969). The potential divisiveness of such conflict is a threat to the normal political process. Walz v. Tax Commission, supra, at 695 (separate opinion of HARLAN, J.). See also Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S., at 249 (HARLAN, J., concurring); Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 307 (1963) (Goldberg, J., concurring). To have States or communities divide on the issues presented by state aid to parochial schools would tend to confuse [403 U.S. 602, 623] and obscure other issues of great urgency. We have an expanding array of vexing issues, local and national, domestic and international, to debate and divide on. It conflicts with our whole history and tradition to permit questions of the Religion Clauses to assume such importance in our legislatures and in our elections that they could divert attention from the myriad issues and problems that confront every level of government. The highways of church and state relationships are not likely to be one-way streets, and the Constitution's authors sought to protect religious worship from the pervasive power of government. The history of many countries attests to the hazards of religion's intruding into the political arena or of political power intruding into the legitimate and free exercise of religious belief. </s> Of course, as the Court noted in Walz, "[a]dherents of particular faiths and individual churches frequently take strong positions on public issues." Walz v. Tax Commission, supra, at 670. We could not expect otherwise, for religious values pervade the fabric of our national life. But in Walz we dealt with a status under state tax laws for the benefit of all religious groups. Here we are confronted with successive and very likely permanent annual appropriations that benefit relatively few religious groups. Political fragmentation and divisiveness on religious lines are thus likely to be intensified. </s> The potential for political divisiveness related to religious belief and practice is aggravated in these two statutory programs by the need for continuing annual appropriations and the likelihood of larger and larger demands as costs and populations grow. The Rhode Island District Court found that the parochial school system's "monumental and deepening financial crisis" would "inescapably" require larger annual appropriations subsidizing greater percentages of the salaries of lay teachers. Although no facts have been developed in this respect [403 U.S. 602, 624] in the Pennsylvania case, it appears that such pressures for expanding aid have already required the state legislature to include a portion of the state revenues from cigarette taxes in the program. </s> V </s> In Walz it was argued that a tax exemption for places of religious worship would prove to be the first step in an inevitable progression leading to the establishment of state churches and state religion. That claim could not stand up against more than 200 years of virtually universal practice imbedded in our colonial experience and continuing into the present. </s> The progression argument, however, is more persuasive here. We have no long history of state aid to church-related educational institutions comparable to 200 years of tax exemption for churches. Indeed, the state programs before us today represent something of an innovation. We have already noted that modern governmental programs have self-perpetuating and self-expanding propensities. These internal pressures are only enhanced when the schemes involve institutions whose legitimate needs are growing and whose interests have substantial political support. Nor can we fail to see that in constitutional adjudication some steps, which when taken were thought to approach "the verge," have become the platform for yet further steps. A certain momentum develops in constitutional theory and it can be a "downhill thrust" easily set in motion but difficult to retard or stop. Development by momentum is not invariably bad; indeed, it is the way the common law has grown, but it is a force to be recognized and reckoned with. The dangers are increased by the difficulty of perceiving in advance exactly where the "verge" of the precipice lies. As well as constituting an independent evil against which the Religion Clauses were intended to protect, involvement [403 U.S. 602, 625] or entanglement between government and religion serves as a warning signal. </s> Finally, nothing we have said can be construed to disparage the role of church-related elementary and secondary schools in our national life. Their contribution has been and is enormous. Nor do we ignore their economic plight in a period of rising costs and expanding need. Taxpayers generally have been spared vast sums by the maintenance of these educational institutions by religious organizations, largely by the gifts of faithful adherents. </s> The merit and benefits of these schools, however, are not the issue before us in these cases. The sole question is whether state aid to these schools can be squared with the dictates of the Religion Clauses. Under our system the choice has been made that government is to be entirely excluded from the area of religious instruction and churches excluded from the affairs of government. The Constitution decrees that religion must be a private matter for the individual, the family, and the institutions of private choice, and that while some involvement and entanglement are inevitable, lines must be drawn. </s> The judgment of the Rhode Island District Court in No. 569 and No. 570 is affirmed. The judgment of the Pennsylvania District Court in No. 89 is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. </s> MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL took no part in the consideration or decision of No. 89. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 R. I. Gen. Laws Ann. 16-51-1 et seq. (Supp. 1970). </s> [Footnote 2 The District Court found only one instance in which this breakdown between religious and secular expenses was necessary. The school in question was not affiliated with the Catholic church. The court found it unlikely that such determinations would be necessary with respect to Catholic schools because their heavy reliance on nuns kept their wage costs substantially below those of the public schools. </s> [Footnote 3 Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit 24, 5601-5609 (Supp. 1971). </s> [Footnote 4 Latin, Hebrew, and classical Greek are excluded. </s> [Footnote 5 Plaintiffs-appellants also claimed that the Act violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by providing state assistance to private institutions that discriminated on racial and religious grounds in their admissions and hiring policies. The court unanimously held that no plaintiff had standing to raise this claim because the complaint did not allege that the child of any plaintiff had been denied admission to any nonpublic school on racial or religious grounds. Our decision makes it unnecessary for us to reach this issue. </s> [Footnote 6 See, e. g., J. Fichter, Parochial School: A Sociological Study 77-108 (1958); Giannella, Religious Liberty, Nonestablishment, and Doctrinal Development, pt. II, The Nonestablishment Principle, 81 Harv. L. Rev. 513, 574 (1968). </s> MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, whom MR. JUSTICE BLACK joins, concurring. </s> While I join the opinion of the Court, I have expressed at some length my views as to the rationale of today's decision in these three cases. [403 U.S. 602, 626] </s> They involve two different statutory schemes for providing aid to parochial schools. Lemon deals with the Pennsylvania Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Laws 1968, Act No. 109. By its terms the Pennsylvania Act allows the State to provide funds directly to private schools to purchase "secular educational service" such as teachers' salaries, textbooks, and educational materials. Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 24, 5604 (Supp. 1971). Reimbursement for these services may be made only for courses in mathematics, modern foreign languages, physical science, and physical education. Reimbursement is prohibited for any course containing subject matter "expressing religious teaching, or the morals or forms of worship of any sect." 5603 (Supp. 1971). To qualify, a school must demonstrate that its pupils achieve a satisfactory level of performance in standardized tests approved by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and that the textbooks and other instructional materials used in these courses have been approved by the Superintendent of Public Instruction. The three-judge District Court below upheld this statute against the argument that it violates the Establishment Clause. We noted probable jurisdiction. 397 U.S. 1034 . </s> The DiCenso cases involve the Rhode Island Salary Supplement Act, Laws 1969, c. 246. The Rhode Island Act authorizes supplementing the salaries of teachers of secular subjects in nonprofit private schools. The supplement is not more than 15% of an eligible teacher's current salary but cannot exceed the maximum salary paid to teachers in the State's public schools. To be eligible a teacher must teach only those subjects offered in public schools in the State, must be certified in substantially the same manner as teachers in public schools, and may use only teaching materials which are used in the public schools. Also the teacher must agree in writing [403 U.S. 602, 627] "not to teach a course in religion for so long as or during such time as he or she receives any salary supplements." R. I. Gen. Laws Ann. 16-51-3 (Supp. 1970). The schools themselves must not be operated for profit, must meet state educational standards, and the annual per-student expenditure for secular education must not equal or exceed "the average annual per student expenditure in the public schools in the state at the same grade level in the second preceding fiscal year." 16-51-2 (Supp. 1970). While the Rhode Island Act, unlike the Pennsylvania Act, provides for direct payments to the teacher, the three-judge District Court below found it unconstitutional because it "results in excessive government entanglement with religion." Probable jurisdiction was noted and the cases were set for oral argument with the other school cases. 400 U.S. 901 . </s> In Walz v. Tax Commission, 397 U.S. 664, 674 , the Court in approving a tax exemption for church property said: </s> "Determining that the legislative purpose of tax exemption is not aimed at establishing, sponsoring, or supporting religion does not end the inquiry, however. We must also be sure that the end result - the effect - is not an excessive government entanglement with religion." </s> There is in my view such an entanglement here. The surveillance or supervision of the States needed to police grants involved in these three cases, if performed, puts a public investigator into every classroom and entails a pervasive monitoring of these church agencies by the secular authorities. Yet if that surveillance or supervision does not occur the zeal of religious proselytizers promises to carry the day and make a shambles of the Establishment Clause. Moreover, when taxpayers of [403 U.S. 602, 628] many faiths are required to contribute money for the propagation of one faith, the Free Exercise Clause is infringed. </s> The analysis of the constitutional objections to these two state systems of grants to parochial or sectarian schools must start with the admitted and obvious fact that the raison d'etre of parochial schools is the propagation of a religious faith. They also teach secular subjects; but they came into existence in this country because Protestant groups were perverting the public schools by using them to propagate their faith. The Catholics naturally rebelled. If schools were to be used to propagate a particular creed or religion, then Catholic ideals should also be served. Hence the advent of parochial schools. </s> By 1840 there were 200 Catholic parish schools in the United States. 1 By 1964 there were 60 times as many. 2 Today 57% of the 9,000 Catholic parishes in the country have their church schools. "[E]very diocesan chancery has its school department, and enjoys a primacy of status." 3 The parish schools indeed consume 40% to 65% of the parish's total income. 4 The parish is so "school centered" that "[t]he school almost becomes the very reason for being." 5 </s> Early in the 19th century the Protestants obtained control of the New York school system and used it to promote reading and teaching of the Scriptures as revealed in the King James version of the Bible. 6 The contests [403 U.S. 602, 629] between Protestants and Catholics, often erupting into violence including the burning of Catholic churches, are a twice-told tale; 7 the Know-Nothing Party, which included in its platform "daily Bible reading in the schools," 8 carried three States in 1854 - Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. 9 Parochial schools grew, but not Catholic schools alone. Other dissenting sects established their own schools - Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and others. 10 But the major force in shaping the pattern of education in this country was the conflict between Protestants and Catholics. The Catholics logically argued that a public school was sectarian when it taught the King James version of the Bible. They therefore wanted it removed from the public schools; and in time they tried to get public funds for their own parochial schools. 11 </s> The constitutional right of dissenters to substitute their parochial schools for public schools was sustained by the Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 . </s> The story of conflict and dissension is long and well known. The result was a state of so-called equilibrium where religious instruction was eliminated from public schools and the use of public funds to support religious schools was deemed to be banned. 12 </s> But the hydraulic pressures created by political forces and by economic stress were great and they began to [403 U.S. 602, 630] change the situation. Laws were passed - state and federal - that dispensed public funds to sustain religious schools and the plea was always in the educational frame of reference: education in all sectors was needed, from languages to calculus to nuclear physics. And it was forcefully argued that a linguist or mathematician or physicist trained in religious schools was just as competent as one trained in secular schools. </s> And so we have gradually edged into a situation where vast amounts of public funds are supplied each year to sectarian schools. 13 </s> And the argument is made that the private parochial school system takes about $9 billion a year off the back of government 14 - as if that were enough to justify violating the Establishment Clause. </s> While the evolution of the public school system in this country marked an escape from denominational control and was therefore admirable as seen through the eyes of those who think like Madison and Jefferson, it has disadvantages. The main one is that a state system may attempt to mold all students alike according to the views of the dominant group and to discourage the emergence of individual idiosyncrasies. </s> Sectarian education, however, does not remedy that condition. The advantages of sectarian education relate solely to religious or doctrinal matters. They give the [403 U.S. 602, 631] church the opportunity to indoctrinate its creed delicately and indirectly, or massively through doctrinal courses. </s> Many nations follow that course: Moslem nations teach the Koran in their schools; Sweden vests its elementary education in the parish; Newfoundland puts its school system under three superintendents - one from the Church of England, one from the Catholic church, one from the United Church. In Ireland the public schools are under denominational managership - Catholic, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Hebrew. </s> England puts sectarian schools under the umbrella of its school system. It finances sectarian education; it exerts control by prescribing standards; it requires some free scholarships; it provides nondenominational membership on the board of directors. 15 </s> The British system is, in other words, one of surveillance over sectarian schools. We too have surveillance over sectarian schools but only to the extent of making sure that minimum educational standards are met, viz., competent teachers, accreditation of the school for diplomas, the number of hours of work and credits allowed, and so on. </s> But we have never faced, until recently, the problem of policing sectarian schools. Any surveillance to date has been minor and has related only to the consistently unchallenged matters of accreditation of the sectarian school in the State's school system. 16 </s> The Rhode Island Act allows a supplementary salary to a teacher in a sectarian school if he or she "does not teach a course in religion." [403 U.S. 602, 632] </s> The Pennsylvania Act provides for state financing of instruction in mathematics, modern foreign languages, physical science, and physical education, provided that the instruction in those courses "shall not include any subject matter expressing religious teaching, or the morals or forms of worship of any sect." </s> Public financial support of parochial schools puts those schools under disabilities with which they were not previously burdened. For, as we held in Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 19 , governmental activities relating to schools "must be exercised consistently with federal constitutional requirements." There we were concerned with equal protection; here we are faced with issues of Establishment of religion and its Free Exercise as those concepts are used in the First Amendment. </s> Where the governmental activity is the financing of the private school, the various limitations or restraints imposed by the Constitution on state governments come into play. Thus, Arkansas, as part of its attempt to avoid the consequences of Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 349 U.S. 294, withdrew its financial support from some public schools and sent the funds instead to private schools. That state action was held to violate the Equal Protection Clause. Aaron v. McKinley, 173 F. Supp. 944, 952. We affirmed, sub nom. Faubus v. Aaron, 361 U.S. 197 . Louisiana tried a like tactic and it too was invalidated. Poindexter v. Louisiana Financial Assistance Commission, 296 F. Supp. 686. Again we affirmed. 393 U.S. 17 . Whatever might be the result in case of grants to students, 17 it is clear that once [403 U.S. 602, 633] one of the States finances a private school, it is dutybound to make certain that the school stays within secular bounds and does not use the public funds to promote sectarian causes. </s> The government may, of course, finance a hospital though it is run by a religious order, provided it is open to people of all races and creeds. Bradfield v. Roberts, 175 U.S. 291 . The government itself could enter the hospital business; and it would, of course, make no difference if its agents who ran its hospitals were Catholics, Methodists, agnostics, or whatnot. For the hospital is not indulging in religious instruction or guidance or indoctrination. As Mr. Justice Jackson said in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 26 (dissenting): </s> "[Each State has] great latitude in deciding for itself, in the light of its own conditions, what shall be public purposes in its scheme of things. It may socialize utilities and economic enterprises and make taxpayers' business out of what conventionally had been private business. It may make public business of individual welfare, health, education, entertainment or security. But it cannot make public business of religious worship or instruction, or of attendance at religious institutions of any character." </s> The reason is that given by Madison in his Remonstrance: 18 </s> "[T]he same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for [403 U.S. 602, 634] the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment . . . ." </s> When Madison in his Remonstrance attacked a taxing measure to support religious activities, he advanced a series of reasons for opposing it. One that is extremely relevant here was phrased as follows: 19 "[I]t will destroy that moderation and harmony which the forbearance of our laws to intermeddle with Religion, has produced amongst its several sects." Intermeddling, to use Madison's word, or "entanglement," to use what was said in Walz, has two aspects. The intrusion of government into religious schools through grants, supervision, or surveillance may result in establishment of religion in the constitutional sense when what the State does enthrones a particular sect for overt or subtle propagation of its faith. Those activities of the State may also intrude on the Free Exercise Clause by depriving a teacher, under threats of reprisals, of the right to give sectarian construction or interpretation of, say, history and literature, or to use the teaching of such subjects to inculcate a religious creed or dogma. </s> Under these laws there will be vast governmental suppression, surveillance, or meddling in church affairs. As I indicated in Tilton v. Richardson, post, p. 689, decided this day, school prayers, the daily routine of parochial schools, must go if our decision in Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 , is honored. If it is not honored, then the state has established a religious sect. Elimination of prayers is only part of the problem. The curriculum presents subtle and difficult problems. The constitutional mandate can in part be carried out by censoring the curricula. What is palpably a sectarian course can be marked for [403 U.S. 602, 635] deletion. But the problem only starts there. Sectarian instruction, in which, of course, a State may not indulge, can take place in a course on Shakespeare or in one on mathematics. No matter what the curriculum offers, the question is, what is taught? We deal not with evil teachers but with zealous ones who may use any opportunity to indoctrinate a class. 20 </s> It is well known that everything taught in most parochial schools is taught with the ultimate goal of religious education in mind. Rev. Joseph H. Fichter, S. J., stated in Parochial School: A Sociological Study 86 (1958): </s> "It is a commonplace observation that in the parochial school religion permeates the whole curriculum, and is not confined to a single half-hour period of the day. Even arithmetic can be used as an instrument of pious thoughts, as in the case of the teacher who gave this problem to her class: `If it takes forty thousand priests and a hundred and forty thousand sisters to care for forty million Catholics in the United States, how many more priests and sisters will be needed to convert and care for the hundred million non-Catholics in the United States?'" </s> One can imagine what a religious zealot, as contrasted to a civil libertarian, can do with the Reformation [403 U.S. 602, 636] or with the Inquisition. Much history can be given the gloss of a particular religion. I would think that policing these grants to detect sectarian instruction would be insufferable to religious partisans and would breed division and dissension between church and state. </s> This problem looms large where the church controls the hiring and firing of teachers: </s> "[I]n the public school the selection of a faculty and the administration of the school usually rests with a school board which is subject to election and recall by the voters, but in the parochial school the selection of a faculty and the administration of the school is in the hands of the bishop alone, and usually is administered through the local priest. If a faculty member in the public school believes that he has been treated unjustly in being disciplined or dismissed, he can seek redress through the civil court and he is guaranteed a hearing. But if a faculty member in a parochial school is disciplined or dismissed he has no recourse whatsoever. The word of the bishop or priest is final, even without explanation if he so chooses. The tax payers have a voice in the way their money is used in the public school, but the people who support a parochial school have no voice at all in such affairs." L. Boettner, Roman Catholicism 375 (1962). </s> Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236 , dealt only with textbooks. Even so, some had difficulty giving approval. Yet books can be easily examined independently of other aspects of the teaching process. In the present cases we deal with the totality of instruction destined to be sectarian, at least in part, if the religious character of the school is to be maintained. A school which operates to commingle religion with other instruction plainly cannot completely secularize its instruction. [403 U.S. 602, 637] Parochial schools, in large measure, do not accept the assumption that secular subjects should be unrelated to religious teaching. </s> Lemon involves a state statute that prescribes that courses in mathematics, modern foreign languages, physical science, and physical education "shall not include any subject matter expressing religious teaching, or the morals or forms of worship of any sect." The subtleties involved in applying this standard are obvious. It places the State astride a sectarian school and gives it power to dictate what is or is not secular, what is or is not religious. I can think of no more disrupting influence apt to promote rancor and ill-will between church and state than this kind of surveillance and control. They are the very opposite of the "moderation and harmony" between church and state which Madison thought was the aim and purpose of the Establishment Clause. </s> The DiCenso cases have all the vices which are in Lemon, because the supplementary salary payable to the teacher is conditioned on his or her not teaching "a course in religion." </s> Moreover, the DiCenso cases reveal another, but related, knotty problem presented when church and state launch one of these educational programs. The Bishop of Rhode Island has a Handbook of School Regulations for the Diocese of Providence. 21 </s> The school board supervises "the education, both spiritual and secular, in the parochial schools and diocesan high schools." </s> The superintendent is an agent of the bishop and he interprets and makes "effective state and diocesan educational directives." [403 U.S. 602, 638] </s> The pastors visit the schools and "give their assistance in promoting spiritual and intellectual discipline." </s> Community supervisors "assist the teacher in the problems of instruction" and these duties are: </s> "I. To become well enough acquainted with the teachers of their communities so as to be able to advise the community superiors on matters of placement and reassignment. </s> "II. To act as liaison between the provincialate and the religious teacher in the school. </s> "III. To cooperate with the superintendent by studying the diocesan school regulations and to encourage the teachers of their community to observe these regulations. </s> "IV. To avoid giving any orders or directions to the teachers of their community that may be in conflict with diocesan regulations or policy regarding curriculum, testing, textbooks, method, or administrative matters. </s> "V. To refer questions concerning school administration beyond the scope of their own authority to the proper diocesan school authorities, namely, the superintendent of schools or the pastor." </s> The length of the school day includes Mass: </s> "A full day session for Catholic schools at the elementary level consists of five and one-half hours, exclusive of lunch and Mass, 22 but inclusive of recess for pupils in grades 1-3." </s> A course of study or syllabus prescribed for an elementary or secondary school is "mandatory." [403 U.S. 602, 639] </s> Religious instruction is provided as follows: </s> "A. Systematic religious instructions must be provided in all schools of the diocese. </s> "B. Modern catechetics requires a teacher with unusual aptitudes, specialized training, and such unction of the spirit that his words possess the force of a personal call. He should be so filled with his subject that he can freely improvize in discussion, dramatization, drawing, song, and prayer. A teacher so gifted and so permeated by the message of the Gospel is rare. Perhaps no teacher in a given school attains that ideal. But some teachers come nearer it than others. If our pupils are to hear the Good News so that their minds are enlightened and their hearts respond to the love of God and His Christ, if they are to be formed into vital, twentieth-century Christians, they should receive their religious instructions only from the very best teachers. </s> "C. Inasmuch as the textbooks employed in religious instruction above the fifth grade require a high degree of catechetical preparation, religion should be a departmentalized subject in grade six through twelve." </s> Religious activities are provided, through observance of specified holy days and participation in Mass. </s> "Religious formation" is not restricted to courses but is achieved "through the example of the faculty, the tone of the school . . . and religious activities." </s> No unauthorized priest may address the students. </s> "Retreats and days of recollection form an integral part of our religious program in the Catholic schools." </s> Religious factors are used in the selection of students: </s> "Although wealth should never serve as a criterion for accepting a pupil into a Catholic school, all other [403 U.S. 602, 640] things being equal, it would seem fair to give preference to a child whose parents support the parish. Regular use of the budget, rather than the size of the contributions, would appear equitable. It indicates whether parents regularly attend Mass." </s> These are only highlights of the handbook. But they indicate how pervasive is the religious control over the school and how remote this type of school is from the secular school. Public funds supporting that structure are used to perpetuate a doctrine and creed in innumerable and in pervasive ways. Those who man these schools are good people, zealous people, dedicated people. But they are dedicated to ideas that the Framers of our Constitution placed beyond the reach of government. </s> If the government closed its eyes to the manner in which these grants are actually used it would be allowing public funds to promote sectarian education. If it did not close its eyes but undertook the surveillance needed, it would, I fear, intermeddle in parochial affairs in a way that would breed only rancor and dissension. </s> We have announced over and over again that the use of taxpayers' money to support parochial schools violates the First Amendment, applicable to the States by virtue of the Fourteenth. </s> We said in unequivocal words in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 16 , "No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion." We reiterated the same idea in Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 314 , and in McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 443 , and in Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488, 493 . We repeated the same idea in McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203, 210 , and added that a State's [403 U.S. 602, 641] tax-supported public schools could not be used "for the dissemination of religious doctrines" nor could a State provide the church "pupils for their religious classes through use of the State's compulsory public school machinery." Id., at 212. </s> Yet in spite of this long and consistent history there are those who have the courage to announce that a State may nonetheless finance the secular part of a sectarian school's educational program. That, however, makes a grave constitutional decision turn merely on cost accounting and bookkeeping entries. A history class, a literature class, or a science class in a parochial school is not a separate institute; it is part of the organic whole which the State subsidizes. The funds are used in these cases to pay or help pay the salaries of teachers in parochial schools; and the presence of teachers is critical to the essential purpose of the parochial school, viz., to advance the religious endeavors of the particular church. It matters not that the teacher receiving taxpayers' money only teaches religion a fraction of the time. Nor does it matter that he or she teaches no religion. The school is an organism living on one budget. What the taxpayers give for salaries of those who teach only the humanities or science without any trace of proselytizing enables the school to use all of its own funds for religious training. As Judge Coffin said, 316 F. Supp. 112, 120, we would be blind to realities if we let "sophisticated bookkeeping" sanction "almost total subsidy of a religious institution by assigning the bulk of the institution's expenses to `secular' activities." And sophisticated attempts to avoid the Constitution are just as invalid as simple-minded ones. Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, 275 . </s> In my view the taxpayers' forced contribution to the [403 U.S. 602, 642] parochial schools in the present cases violates the First Amendment. </s> MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, who took no part in the consideration or decision of No. 89, see ante, p. 625, while intimating no view as to the continuing vitality of Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), concurs in MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS' opinion covering Nos. 569 and 570. </s> [Footnote 1 A. Stokes & L. Pfeffer, Church and State in the United States 229 (1964). </s> [Footnote 2 Ibid. </s> [Footnote 3 Deedy, Should Catholic Schools Survive?, New Republic, Mar. 13, 1971, pp. 15, 16. </s> [Footnote 4 Id., at 17. </s> [Footnote 5 Ibid. </s> [Footnote 6 Stokes & Pfeffer, supra, n. 1, at 231. </s> [Footnote 7 Id., at 231-239. </s> [Footnote 8 Id., at 237. </s> [Footnote 9 Ibid. </s> [Footnote 10 R. Butts, The American Tradition in Religion and Education 115 (1950). </s> [Footnote 11 Id., at 118. And see R. Finney, A Brief History of the American Public School 44-45 (1924). </s> [Footnote 12 See E. Knight, Education in the United States 3, 314 (3d rev. ed. 1951); E. Cubberley, Public Education in the United States 164 et seq. (1919). </s> [Footnote 13 In 1960 the Federal Government provided $500 million to private colleges and universities. Amounts contributed by state and local governments to private schools at any level were negligible. Just one decade later federal aid to private colleges and universities had grown to $2.1 billion. State aid had begun and reached $100 million. Statistical Abstract of the United States 105 (1970). As the present cases demonstrate, we are now reaching a point where state aid is being given to private elementary and secondary schools as well as colleges and universities. </s> [Footnote 14 Deedy, supra, n. 3, at 16. </s> [Footnote 15 S. Curtis, History of Education in Great Britain 316-383 (5th ed. 1963); W. Alexander, Education in England, c. II (2d ed. 1964). </s> [Footnote 16 See Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 534 ; Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 402 . </s> [Footnote 17 Grants to students in the context of the problems of desegregated public schools have without exception been stricken down as tools of the forbidden discrimination. See Griffin v. School Bd. of Prince Edward County, 377 U.S. 218 ; Hall v. St. Helena Parish School Bd., 197 F. Supp. 649, aff'd, 368 U.S. 515 ; Lee v. Macon County Bd., 267 F. Supp. 458, aff'd sub nom. Wallace v. United [403 U.S. 602, 633] States, 389 U.S. 215 ; Poindexter v. Louisiana Financial Assistance Commission, 275 F. Supp. 833, aff'd, 389 U.S. 571 ; Brown v. South Carolina State Bd., 296 F. Supp. 199, aff'd, 393 U.S. 222 ; Coffey v. State Educ. Finance Commission, 296 F. Supp. 1389; Lee v. Macon County Bd., 231 F. Supp. 743. </s> [Footnote 18 Remonstrance § 3. The Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments has been reproduced in appendices to the [403 U.S. 602, 634] opinion of Rutledge, J., in Everson, 330 U.S., at 63 , and to that of DOUGLAS, J., in Walz, 397 U.S., at 719 . </s> [Footnote 19 Remonstrance § 11. </s> [Footnote 20 "In the parochial schools Roman Catholic indoctrination is included in every subject. History, literature, geography, civics, and science are given a Roman Catholic slant. The whole education of the child is filled with propaganda. That, of course, is the very purpose of such schools, the very reason for going to all of the work and expense of maintaining a dual school system. Their purpose is not so much to educate, but to indoctrinate and train, not to teach Scripture truths and Americanism, but to make loyal Roman Catholics. The children are regimented, and are told what to wear, what to do, and what to think." L. Boettner, Roman Catholicism 360 (1962). </s> [Footnote 21 It was said on oral argument that the handbook shown as an exhibit in the record had been superseded. The provisions hereinafter quoted are from the handbook as it reads after all the deletions to which we were referred. </s> [Footnote 22 "The use of school time to participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on the feasts of All Saints, Ascension, and the patronal saint of the parish or school, as well as during the 40 Hours Devotion, is proper and commendable." </s> MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN. * </s> I agree that the judgments in Nos. 569 and 570 must be affirmed. In my view the judgment in No. 89 must be reversed outright. I dissent in No. 153 insofar as the plurality opinion and the opinion of my Brother WHITE sustain the constitutionality, as applied to sectarian institutions, of the Federal Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963, as amended, 77 Stat. 363, 20 U.S.C. 711 et seq. (1964 ed. and Supp. V). In my view that Act is unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes grants of federal tax monies to sectarian institutions, but is unconstitutional only to that extent. I therefore think that our remand of the case should be limited to the direction of a hearing to determine whether the four institutional appellees here are sectarian institutions. </s> I continue to adhere to the view that to give concrete meaning to the Establishment Clause </s> "the line we must draw between the permissible and the impermissible is one which accords with history and faithfully reflects the understanding of the Founding Fathers. It is a line which the Court has consistently sought to mark in its decisions expounding the religious guarantees of the First [403 U.S. 602, 643] Amendment. What the Framers meant to foreclose, and what our decisions under the Establishment Clause have forbidden, are those involvements of religious with secular institutions which (a) serve the essentially religious activities of religious institutions; (b) employ the organs of government for essentially religious purposes; or (c) use essentially religious means to serve governmental ends, where secular means would suffice. When the secular and religious institutions become involved in such a manner, there inhere in the relationship precisely those dangers - as much to church as to state - which the Framers feared would subvert religious liberty and the strength of a system of secular government." Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 294 -295 (1963) (concurring opinion); Walz v. Tax Commission, 397 U.S. 664, 680 -681 (1970) (concurring opinion). </s> The common feature of all three statutes before us is the provision of a direct subsidy from public funds for activities carried on by sectarian educational institutions. We have sustained the reimbursement of parents for bus fares of students under a scheme applicable to both public and nonpublic schools, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947). We have also sustained the loan of textbooks in secular subjects to students of both public and nonpublic schools, Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236 (1968). See also Bradfield v. Roberts, 175 U.S. 291 (1899). </s> The statutory schemes before us, however, have features not present in either the Everson or Allen schemes. For example, the reimbursement or the loan of books ended government involvement in Everson and Allen. In contrast each of the schemes here exacts a promise in some form that the subsidy will not be used to finance [403 U.S. 602, 644] courses in religious subjects - promises that must be and are policed to assure compliance. Again, although the federal subsidy, similar to the Everson and Allen subsidies, is available to both public and nonpublic colleges and universities, the Rhode Island and Pennsylvania subsidies are restricted to nonpublic schools, and for practical purposes to Roman Catholic parochial schools. 1 These and other features I shall mention mean for me that Everson and Allen do not control these cases. Rather, the history of public subsidy of sectarian schools, and the purposes and operation of these particular statutes must be examined to determine whether the statutes breach the Establishment Clause. Walz v. Tax Commission, supra, at 681 (concurring opinion). [403 U.S. 602, 645] </s> I </s> In sharp contrast to the "undeviating acceptance given religious tax exemptions from our earliest days as a Nation," ibid., subsidy of sectarian educational institutions became embroiled in bitter controversies very soon after the Nation was formed. Public education was, of course, virtually nonexistent when the Constitution was adopted. Colonial Massachusetts in 1647 had directed towns to establish schools, Benjamin Franklin in 1749 proposed a Philadelphia Academy, and Jefferson labored to establish a public school system in Virginia. 2 But these were the exceptions. Education in the Colonies was overwhelmingly a private enterprise, usually carried on as a denominational activity by the dominant Protestant sects. In point of fact, government generally looked to the church to provide education, and often contributed support through donations of land and money. E. Cubberley, Public Education in the United States 171 (1919). </s> Nor was there substantial change in the years immediately following ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Schools continued to be local and, in the main, denominational institutions. 3 But the demand for public education soon emerged. The evolution of the struggle in New York City is illustrative. 4 In 1786, the first New York State Legislature ordered that one section in each township be set aside for the "gospel and schools." With no public schools, various private agencies and churches operated "charity schools" for the poor of New [403 U.S. 602, 646] York City and received money from the state common school fund. The forerunner of the city's public schools was organized in 1805 when DeWitt Clinton founded "The Society for Establishment of a Free School in the City of New York for the Education of such poor Children as do not belong to or are not provided for by any Religious Society." The State and city aided the society, and it built many schools. Gradually, however, competition and bickering among the Free School Society and the various church schools developed over the apportionment of state school funds. As a result, in 1825, the legislature transferred to the city council the responsibility for distributing New York City's share of the state funds. The council stopped funding religious societies which operated 16 sectarian schools but continued supporting schools connected with the Protestant Orphan Asylum Society. Thereafter, in 1831, the Catholic Orphan Asylum Society demanded and received public funds to operate its schools but a request of Methodists for funds for the same purpose was denied. Nine years later, the Catholics enlarged their request for public monies to include all parochial schools, contending that the council was subsidizing sectarian books and instruction of the Public School Society, which Clinton's Free School Society had become. The city's Scotch Presbyterian and Jewish communities immediately followed with requests for funds to finance their schools. Although the Public School Society undertook to revise its texts to meet the objections, in 1842, the state legislature closed the bitter controversy by enacting a law that established a City Board of Education to set up free public schools, prohibited the distribution of public funds to sectarian schools, and prohibited the teaching of sectarian doctrine in any public school. </s> The Nation's rapidly developing religious heterogeneity, the tide of Jacksonian democracy, and growing [403 U.S. 602, 647] urbanization soon led to widespread demands throughout the States for secular public education. At the same time strong opposition developed to use of the States' taxing powers to support private sectarian schools. 5 Although the controversy over religious exercises in the public schools continued into this century, Schempp, 374 U.S., at 268 -277 (BRENNAN, J., concurring), the opponents of subsidy to sectarian schools had largely won their fight by 1900. In fact, after 1840, no efforts of sectarian schools to obtain a share of public school funds succeeded. Cubberley, supra, at 179. Between 1840 and 1875, 19 States added provisions to their constitutions prohibiting the use of public school funds to aid sectarian schools, id., at 180, and by 1900, 16 more States had added similar provisions. In fact, no State admitted to the Union after 1858, except West Virginia, omitted such provision from its first constitution. Ibid. Today fewer than a half-dozen States omit such provisions from their constitutions. 6 </s> [403 U.S. 602, 648] And in 1897, Congress included in its appropriation act for the District of Columbia a statement declaring it </s> "to be the policy of the Government of the United States to make no appropriation of money or property for the purpose of founding, maintaining, or aiding by payment for services, expenses, or otherwise, any church or religious denomination, or any institution or society which is under sectarian or ecclesiastical control." 29 Stat. 411. </s> Thus for more than a century, the consensus, enforced by legislatures and courts with substantial consistency, has been that public subsidy of sectarian schools constitutes an impermissible involvement of secular with [403 U.S. 602, 649] religious institutions. 7 If this history is not itself compelling against the validity of the three subsidy statutes, in the sense we found in Walz that "undeviating acceptance" was highly significant in favor of the validity of religious tax exemption, other forms of governmental involvement that each of the three statutes requires tip the scales in my view against the validity of each of them. These are involvements that threaten "dangers - as much to church as to state - which the Framers feared would subvert religious liberty and the strength of a system of secular government." Schempp, 374 U.S., at 295 (BRENNAN, J., concurring). "[G]overnment and religion have discrete interests which are mutually best served when each avoids too close a proximity to the other. It is not only the nonbeliever who fears the injection of sectarian doctrines and controversies into the civil polity, but in as high degree it is the devout believer who fears the secularization of a creed which becomes too deeply involved with and dependent upon the government." Id., at 259 (BRENNAN, J., concurring). All three of these statutes require "too close a proximity" of government to the subsidized sectarian institutions and in my view create real dangers of "the secularization of a creed." [403 U.S. 602, 650] </s> II </s> The Rhode Island statute requires Roman Catholic teachers to surrender their right to teach religion courses and to promise not to "inject" religious teaching into their secular courses. This has led at least one teacher to stop praying with his classes, 8 a concrete testimonial to the self-censorship that inevitably accompanies state regulation of delicate First Amendment freedoms. Cf. Smith v. California, 361 U.S. 147 (1959); Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 526 (1958). Both the Rhode Island and Pennsylvania statutes prescribe extensive standardization of the content of secular courses, and of the teaching materials and textbooks to be used in teaching the courses. And the regulations to implement those requirements necessarily require policing of instruction in the schools. The picture of state inspectors prowling the halls of parochial schools and auditing classroom instruction surely raises more than an imagined specter of governmental "secularization of a creed." </s> The same dangers attend the federal subsidy even if less obviously. The Federal Government exacts a promise that no "sectarian instruction" or "religious worship" will take place in a subsidized building. The Office of Education polices the promise. 9 In one instance federal [403 U.S. 602, 651] officials demanded that a college cease teaching a course entitled "The History of Methodism" in a federally assisted building, although the Establishment Clause "plainly does not foreclose teaching about the Holy Scriptures or about the differences between religious sects in classes in literature or history." Schempp, 374 U.S., at 300 (BRENNAN, J., concurring). These examples illustrate the complete incompatibility of such surveillance with the restraints barring interference with religious freedom. 10 </s> Policing the content of courses, the specific textbooks used, and indeed the words of teachers is far different from the legitimate policing carried on under state compulsory attendance laws or laws regulating minimum levels of educational achievement. Government's legitimate interest in ensuring certain minimum skill levels and the acquisition of certain knowledge does not carry with it power to prescribe what shall not be taught, or what methods of instruction shall be used, or what opinions the teacher may offer in the course of teaching. </s> Moreover, when a sectarian institution accepts state financial aid it becomes obligated under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment not to discriminate in admissions policies and faculty selection. [403 U.S. 602, 652] The District Court in the Rhode Island case pinpointed the dilemma: </s> "Applying these standards to parochial schools might well restrict their ability to discriminate in admissions policies and in the hiring and firing of teachers. At some point the school becomes `public' for more purposes than the Church could wish. At that point, the Church may justifiably feel that its victory on the Establishment Clause has meant abandonment of the Free Exercise Clause." 316 F. Supp., at 121-122 (citations omitted). </s> III </s> In any event, I do not believe that elimination of these aspects of "too close a proximity" would save these three statutes. I expressed the view in Walz that "[g]eneral subsidies of religious activities would, of course, constitute impermissible state involvement with religion." 397 U.S., at 690 (concurring opinion). I do not think the subsidies under these statutes fall outside "[g]eneral subsidies of religious activities" merely because they are restricted to support of the teaching of secular subjects. In Walz, the passive aspect of the benefits conferred by a tax exemption, particularly since cessation of the exemptions might easily lead to impermissible involvements and conflicts, led me to conclude that exemptions were consistent with the First Amendment values. However, I contrasted direct government subsidies: </s> "Tax exemptions and general subsidies, however, are qualitatively different. Though both provide economic assistance, they do so in fundamentally different ways. A subsidy involves the direct transfer of public monies to the subsidized enterprise and uses resources exacted from taxpayers as a whole. An exemption, on the other hand, involves no such [403 U.S. 602, 653] transfer. It assists the exempted enterprise only passively, by relieving a privately funded venture of the burden of paying taxes. In other words, `[i]n the case of direct subsidy, the state forcibly diverts the income of both believers and nonbelievers to churches,' while `[i]n the case of an exemption, the state merely refrains from diverting to its own uses income independently generated by the churches through voluntary contributions.' Thus, `the symbolism of tax exemption is significant as a manifestation that organized religion is not expected to support the state; by the same token the state is not expected to support the church.'" 397 U.S., at 690 -691 (footnotes and citations omitted) (concurring opinion). </s> Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and the Federal Government argue strenuously that the government monies in all these cases are not "[g]eneral subsidies of religious activities" because they are paid specifically and solely for the secular education that the sectarian institutions provide. 11 </s> Before turning to the decisions of this Court on which this argument is based, it is important to recall again the history of subsidies to sectarian schools. See Part [403 U.S. 602, 654] I, supra. The universality of state constitutional provisions forbidding such grants, as well as the weight of judicial authority disapproving such aid as a violation of our tradition of separation of church and state, reflects a time-tested judgment that such grants do indeed constitute impermissible aid to religion. See nn. 6 and 7, supra. The recurrent argument, consistently rejected in the past, has been that government grants to sectarian schools ought not be viewed as impermissible subsidies "because [the schools] relieve the State of a burden, which it would otherwise be itself required to bear . . . . they will render a service to the state by performing for it its duty of educating the children of the people." Cook County v. Chicago Industrial School, 125 Ill. 540, 571, 18 N. E. 183, 197 (1888). </s> Nonetheless, it is argued once again in these cases that sectarian schools and universities perform two separable functions. First, they provide secular education, and second, they teach the tenets of a particular sect. Since the State has determined that the secular education provided in sectarian schools serves the legitimate state interest in the education of its citizens, it is contended that state aid solely to the secular education function does not involve the State in aid to religion. Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), and Board of Education v. Allen, supra, are relied on as support for the argument. </s> Our opinion in Allen recognized that sectarian schools provide both a secular and a sectarian education: </s> "[T]his Court has long recognized that religious schools pursue two goals, religious instruction and secular education. In the leading case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), the Court held that . . . Oregon had not shown that its interest in secular education required that all children attend publicly operated schools. A premise of this [403 U.S. 602, 655] holding was the view that the State's interest in education would be served sufficiently by reliance on the secular teaching that accompanied religious training in the schools maintained by the Society of Sisters. </s> . . . . . </s> "[T]he continued willingness to rely on private school systems, including parochial systems, strongly suggests that a wide segment of informed opinion, legislative and otherwise, has found that those schools do an acceptable job of providing secular education to their students. This judgment is further evidence that parochial schools are performing, in addition to their sectarian function, the task of secular education." Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S., at 245 , 247-248 (footnote omitted). </s> But I do not read Pierce or Allen as supporting the proposition that public subsidy of a sectarian institution's secular training is permissible state involvement. I read them as supporting the proposition that as an identifiable set of skills and an identifiable quantum of knowledge, secular education may be effectively provided either in the religious context of parochial schools, or outside the context of religion in public schools. The State's interest in secular education may be defined broadly as an interest in ensuring that all children within its boundaries acquire a minimum level of competency in certain skills, such as reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as a minimum amount of information and knowledge in certain subjects such as history, geography, science, literature, and law. Without such skills and knowledge, an individual will be at a severe disadvantage both in participating in democratic self-government and in earning a living in a modern industrial economy. But the State has no proper interest in prescribing the precise forum in which such skills and knowledge are learned since acquisition of this [403 U.S. 602, 656] secular education is neither incompatible with religious learning, nor is it inconsistent with or inimical to religious precepts. </s> When the same secular educational process occurs in both public and sectarian schools, Allen held that the State could provide secular textbooks for use in that process to students in both public and sectarian schools. Of course, the State could not provide textbooks giving religious instruction. But since the textbooks involved in Allen would, at least in theory, be limited to secular education, no aid to sectarian instruction was involved. </s> More important, since the textbooks in Allen had been previously provided by the parents, and not the schools, 392 U.S., at 244 n. 6, no aid to the institution was involved. Rather, as in the case of the bus transportation in Everson, the general program of providing all children in the State with free secular textbooks assisted all parents in schooling their children. And as in Everson, there was undoubtedly the possibility that some parents might not have been able to exercise their constitutional right to send their children to parochial school if the parents were compelled themselves to pay for textbooks. However, as my Brother BLACK wrote for the Court in Everson, </s> "[C]utting off church schools from these [general] services, so separate and so indisputably marked off from the religious function, would make it far more difficult for the schools to operate. But such is obviously not the purpose of the First Amendment. That Amendment requires the state to be a neutral in its relations with groups of religious believers and non-believers; it does not require the state to be their adversary. State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions than it is to favor them." 330 U.S., at 18 . [403 U.S. 602, 657] </s> Allen, in my view, simply sustained a statute in which the State was "neutral in its relations with groups of religious believers and non-believers." The only context in which the Court in Allen employed the distinction between secular and religious in a parochial school was to reach its conclusion that the textbooks that the State was providing could and would be secular. 12 The present cases, however, involve direct subsidies of tax monies to the schools themselves and we cannot blink the fact that the secular education those schools provide goes hand in hand with the religious mission that is the only reason for the schools' existence. Within the institution, the two are inextricably intertwined. </s> The District Court in the DiCenso case found that all the varied aspects of the parochial school's program - the nature of its faculty, its supervision, decor, program, extracurricular activities, assemblies, courses, etc. - produced an "intangible `religious atmosphere,'" since the "diocesan school system is an integral part of the religious mission of the Catholic Church" and "a powerful vehicle for transmitting the Catholic faith to the next generation." 316 F. Supp., at 117. Quality teaching in secular subjects is an integral part of this religious enterprise. "Good secular teaching is as essential to the religious mission of the parochial schools as a roof for the school or desks for the classrooms." 316 F. Supp., at 117-118. That teaching cannot be separated from the environment in which it occurs, for its integration with the religious mission is both the theory and the strength of the religious school. </s> The common ingredient of the three prongs of the test [403 U.S. 602, 658] set forth at the outset of this opinion is whether the statutes involve government in the "essentially religious activities" of religious institutions. My analysis of the operation, purposes, and effects of these statutes leads me inescapably to the conclusion that they do impermissibly involve the States and the Federal Government with the "essentially religious activities" of sectarian educational institutions. More specifically, for the reasons stated, I think each government uses "essentially religious means to serve governmental ends, where secular means would suffice." This Nation long ago committed itself to primary reliance upon publicly supported public education to serve its important goals in secular education. Our religious diversity gave strong impetus to that commitment. </s> "[T]he American experiment in free public education available to all children has been guided in large measure by the dramatic evolution of the religious diversity among the population which our public schools serve. . . . The public schools are supported entirely, in most communities, by public funds - funds exacted not only from parents, nor alone from those who hold particular religious views, nor indeed from those who subscribe to any creed at all. It is implicit in the history and character of American public education that the public schools serve a uniquely public function: the training of American citizens in an atmosphere free of parochial, divisive, or separatist influences of any sort - an atmosphere in which children may assimilate a heritage common to all American groups and religions. This is a heritage neither theistic nor atheistic, but simply civic and patriotic." Schempp, 374 U.S., at 241 -242 (citation omitted) (BRENNAN, J., concurring). [403 U.S. 602, 659] </s> I conclude that, in using sectarian institutions to further goals in secular education, the three statutes do violence to the principle that "government may not employ religious means to serve secular interests, however legitimate they may be, at least without the clearest demonstration that nonreligious means will not suffice." Schempp, supra, at 265 (BRENNAN, J., concurring). </s> IV </s> The plurality's treatment of the issues in Tilton, No. 153, diverges so substantially from my own that I add these further comments. I believe that the Establishment Clause forbids the Federal Government to provide funds to sectarian universities in which the propagation and advancement of a particular religion are a function or purpose of the institution. Since the District Court made no findings whether the four institutional appellees here are sectarian, I would remand the case to the District Court with directions to determine whether the institutional appellees are "sectarian" institutions. </s> I reach this conclusion for the reasons I have stated: the necessarily deep involvement of government in the religious activities of such an institution through the policing of restrictions, and the fact that subsidies of tax monies directly to a sectarian institution necessarily aid the proselytizing function of the institution. The plurality argues that neither of these dangers is present. 13 </s> At the risk of repetition, I emphasize that a sectarian university is the equivalent in the realm of higher education of the Catholic elementary schools in Rhode Island; it is an educational institution in which the propagation [403 U.S. 602, 660] and advancement of a particular religion are a primary function of the institution. I do not believe that construction grants to such a sectarian institution are permissible. The reason is not that religion "permeates" the secular education that is provided. Rather, it is that the secular education is provided within the environment of religion; the institution is dedicated to two goals, secular education and religious instruction. When aid flows directly to the institution, both functions benefit. The plurality would examine only the activities that occur within the federally assisted building and ignore the religious nature of the school of which it is a part. The "religious enterprise" aided by the construction grants involves the maintenance of an educational environment - which includes high-quality, purely secular educational courses - within which religious instruction occurs in a variety of ways. </s> The plurality also argues that no impermissible entanglement exists here. My Brother WHITE cogently comments upon that argument: "Why the federal program in the Tilton case is not embroiled in the same difficulties [as the Rhode Island program] is never adequately explained." Post, at 668. I do not see any significant difference in the Federal Government's telling the sectarian university not to teach any nonsecular subjects in a certain building, and Rhode Island's telling the Catholic school teacher not to teach religion. The vice is the creation through subsidy of a relationship in which the government polices the teaching practices of a religious school or university. The plurality suggests that the facts that college students are less impressionable and that college courses are less susceptible to religious permeation may lessen the need for federal policing. But the record shows that such policing has occurred and occurred in a heavy-handed way. Given the dangers of self-censorship in such a situation, I cannot agree that the dangers of [403 U.S. 602, 661] entanglement are insubstantial. Finally, the plurality suggests that the "nonideological" nature of a building, as contrasted with a teacher, reduces the need for policing. But the Federal Government imposes restrictions on every class taught in the federally assisted building. It is therefore not the "nonideological" building that is policed; rather, it is the courses given there and the teachers who teach them. Thus, the policing is precisely the same as under the state statutes, and that is what offends the Constitution. </s> V </s> I, therefore, agree that the two state statutes that focus primarily on providing public funds to sectarian schools are unconstitutional. However, the federal statute in No. 153 is a general program of construction grants to all colleges and universities, including sectarian institutions. Since I believe the statute's extension of eligibility to sectarian institutions is severable from the broad general program authorized, I would hold the Higher Education Facilities Act unconstitutional only insofar as it authorized grants of federal tax monies to sectarian institutions - institutions that have a purpose or function to propagate or advance a particular religion. Therefore, if the District Court determines that any of the four institutional appellees here are "sectarian," that court, in my view, should enjoin the other appellees from making grants to it. </s> [Footnote * This opinion also applies to No. 153, Tilton et al. v. Richardson, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, et al., post, p. 672. </s> [Footnote 1 At the time of trial, 95% of the elementary school children in private schools in Rhode Island attended Roman Catholic schools. Only nonpublic school teachers could receive the subsidy and then only if they taught in schools in which the average per-pupil expenditure on secular education did not equal or exceed the average for the State's public schools. Some 250 of the 342 lay teachers employed in Rhode Island Roman Catholic schools had applied for and been declared eligible for the subsidy. To receive it the teacher must (1) have a state teaching certificate; (2) teach exclusively secular subjects taught in the State's public schools; (3) use only teaching materials approved for use in the public schools; (4) not teach religion; and (5) promise in writing not to teach a course in religion while receiving the salary supplement. </s> Unlike the Rhode Island case, the Pennsylvania case lacks a factual record since the complaint was dismissed on motion. We must therefore decide the constitutional challenge as addressed to the face of the Pennsylvania statute. Appellants allege that the nonpublic schools are segregated in Pennsylvania by race and religion and that the Act perpetrates and promotes the segregation of races "with the ultimate result of promoting two school systems in Pennsylvania - a public school system predominantly black, poor and inferior and a private, subsidized school system predominantly white, affluent and superior." Brief for Appellants Lemon et al. 9. The District Court held that appellants lacked standing to assert this equal protection claim. In my view this was plain error. </s> [Footnote 2 E. Cubberley, Public Education in the United States 17 (1919); Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 238 n. 7 and authorities cited therein (BRENNAN, J., concurring). </s> [Footnote 3 C. Antieau, A. Downey, E. Roberts, Freedom from Federal Establishment 174 (1964). </s> [Footnote 4 B. Confrey, Secularism in American Education: Its History 127-129 (1931). </s> [Footnote 5 See generally R. Butts, The American Tradition in Religion and Education 111-145 (1950); 2 A. Stokes, Church and State in the United States 47-72 (1950); Cubberley, supra n. 2, at 155-181. </s> [Footnote 6 See Ala. Const., Art. XIV, 263; Alaska Const., Art. VII, 1; Ariz. Const., Art. II, 12, Art. XI, 7, 8; Ark. Const., Art. XIV, 2; Calif. Const., Art. IX, 8; Colo. Const., Art. IX, 7; Conn. Const., Art. VIII, 4; Del. Const., Art. X, 3; Fla. Const., Decl. of Rights, Art. I, 3; Ga. Const., Art. VIII, 12, par. 1; Hawaii Const., Art. IX, 1; Idaho Const., Art. IX, 5; Ill. Const., Art. VIII, 3; Ind. Const., Art. 8, 3; Kan. Const., Art. 6, 6 (c); Ky. Const., 189; La. Const., Art. XII, 13; Mass. Const., Amend. Art. XLVI, 2; Mich. Const., Art. I, 4; Minn. Const., Art. VIII, 2; Miss. Const., Art. 8, 208; Mo. Const., Art. IX, 8; Mont. Const., Art. XI, 8; Neb. Const., Art. VII, 11; Nev. Const., Art. 11, 10; N. H. Const., Pt. II, Art. 83; N. J. Const., Art. VIII, 4, par. 2; N. Mex. Const., Art. XII, 3; N. Y. Const., Art. XI, 3; N. Car. Const., Art. IX, 4, 12; N. Dak. Const., Art. VIII, 152; Ohio Const., Art. VI, 2; Okla. Const., Art. II, 5; Ore. Const., Art. VIII, 2; Penn. Const., Art. 3, 15; R. I. Const., Art. XII, 4; S. C. Const., Art. XI, 9; S. Dak. Const., Art. VIII, 16; Tenn. [403 U.S. 602, 648] Const., Art. XI, 12; Tex. Const., Art. VII, 5; Utah Const., Art. X, 13; Va. Const., Art. IX, 141; Wash. Const., Art. IX, 4; W. Va. Const., Art. XII, 4; Wis. Const., Art. I, 18, Art. X, 2; Wyo. Const., Art. 7, 8. </s> The overwhelming majority of these constitutional provisions either prohibit expenditures of public funds on sectarian schools, or prohibit the expenditure of public school funds for any purpose other than support of public schools. For a discussion and categorization of the various constitutional formulations, see Note, Catholic Schools and public Money, 50 Yale L. J. 917 (1941). Many of the constitutional provisions are collected in B. Confrey, Secularism in American Education: Its History 47-125 (1931). </s> Many state constitutions explicitly apply the prohibition to aid to sectarian colleges and universities. See, e. g., Colo. Const., Art. IX, 7; Idaho Const., Art. IX, 5; Ill. Const., Art. VIII, 3; Kan. Const., Art. 6, 6 (c); Mass. Const., Amend. Art. XLVI, 2; Mo. Const., Art. IX, 8; Mont. Const., Art. XI, 8; Neb. Const., Art. VII, 11; N. Mex. Const., Art. XII, 3; S. C. Const., Art. XI, 9; Utah Const., Art. X, 13; Wyo. Const., Art. 7, 8. At least one judicial decision construing the word "schools" held that the word does not include colleges and universities, Opinion of the Justices, 214 Mass. 599, 102 N. E. 464 (1913), but that decision was overruled by constitutional amendment. Mass. Const., Amend. Art. XLVI, 2. </s> [Footnote 7 See, e. g., Wright v. School Dist., 151 Kan. 485, 99 P.2d 737 (1940); Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co. v. City of Atchison, 47 Kan. 712, 28 P. 1000 (1892); Williams v. Board of Trustees, 173 Ky. 708, 191 S. W. 507 (1917); Opinion of the Justices, 214 Mass. 599, 102 N. E. 464 (1913); Jenkins v. Andover, 103 Mass. 94 (1869); Otken v. Lamkin 56 Miss. 758 (1879); Harfst v. Hoegen, 349 Mo. 808, 163 S. W. 2d 609 (1942); State ex rel. Public School Dist. v. Taylor, 122 Neb. 454, 240 N. W. 573 (1932); State ex rel. Nevada Orphan Asylum v. Hallock, 16 Nev. 373 (1882); Synod of Dakota v. State, 2 S. D. 366, 50 N. W. 632 (1891). </s> [Footnote 8 "Already the Act has restricted the role of teachers. The evidence before us indicates that some otherwise qualified teachers have stopped teaching courses in religion in order to qualify for aid under the Act. One teacher, in fact, testified that he no longer prays with his class lest he endanger his subsidy." 316 F. Supp., at 121. </s> [Footnote 9 The Office of Education stipulated as follows: </s> "The Office of Education is now engaged in making a series of onsite reviews of completed projects to verify that conditions under which Federal assistance was provided are being implemented. During these visits, class schedules and course descriptions contained in the school catalog are analyzed to ascertain that nothing in the nature of sectarian instruction is scheduled in any area constructed with the [403 U.S. 602, 651] use of Federal funds. If there is found to be an indication that a portion of academic facilities constructed with Federal assistance is used in any way for sectarian purposes, either the questionable practice must be terminated or the institution must assume full responsibility for the cost of constructing the area involved." App. in No. 153, p. 82 (emphasis added). </s> [Footnote 10 The plurality opinion in No. 153 would strike down the 20-year "period of Federal interest," 20 U.S.C. 754 (a), upon the ground that "[t]he restrictive obligations of a recipient institution under 751 (a) (2) cannot, compatibly with the Religion Clauses, expire while the building has substantial value." Post, at 683. Thus the surveillance constituting the "too close a proximity" which for me offends the Establishment Clause continues for the life of the building. </s> [Footnote 11 The Pennsylvania statute differs from Rhode Island's in providing the subsidy without regard to whether the sectarian school's average per-pupil expenditure on secular education equals or exceeds the average of the State's public schools. Nor is there any limitation of the subsidy to nonpublic schools that are financially embarrassed. Thus the statute on its face permits use of the state subsidy for the purpose of maintaining or attracting an audience for religious education, and also permits sectarian schools not needing the aid to apply it to exceed the quality of secular education provided in public schools. These features of the Pennsylvania scheme seem to me to invalidate it under the Establishment Clause as granting preferences to sectarian schools. </s> [Footnote 12 The three dissenters in Allen focused primarily on their disagreement with the Court that the textbooks provided would be secular. See 392 U.S., at 252 -253 (BLACK, J., dissenting); id., at 257 (DOUGLAS, J., dissenting); id., at 270 (Fortas, J., dissenting). </s> [Footnote 13 Much of the plurality's argument is directed at establishing that the specific institutional appellees here, as well as most church-related colleges, are not sectarian in that they do not have a purpose or function to advance or propagate a specific religion. Those questions must await hearings and findings by the District Court. </s> MR. JUSTICE WHITE, concurring in the judgments in No. 153 (post, p. 672) and No. 89 and dissenting in Nos. 569 and 570. </s> It is our good fortune that the States of this country long ago recognized that instruction of the young and old ranks high on the scale of proper governmental functions [403 U.S. 602, 662] and not only undertook secular education as a public responsibility but also required compulsory attendance at school by their young. Having recognized the value of educated citizens and assumed the task of educating them, the States now before us assert a right to provide for the secular education of children whether they attend public schools or choose to enter private institutions, even when those institutions are church-related. The Federal Government also asserts that it is entitled, where requested, to contribute to the cost of secular education by furnishing buildings and facilities to all institutions of higher learning, public and private alike. Both the United States and the States urge that if parents choose to have their children receive instruction in the required secular subjects in a school where religion is also taught and a religious atmosphere may prevail, part or all of the cost of such secular instruction may be paid for by governmental grants to the religious institution conducting the school and seeking the grant. Those who challenge this position would bar official contributions to secular education where the family prefers the parochial to both the public and nonsectarian private school. </s> The issue is fairly joined. It is precisely the kind of issue the Constitution contemplates this Court must ultimately decide. This is true although neither affirmance nor reversal of any of these cases follows automatically from the spare language of the First Amendment, from its history, or from the cases of this Court construing it and even though reasonable men can very easily and sensibly differ over the import of that language. </s> But, while the decision of the Court is legitimate, it is surely quite wrong in overturning the Pennsylvania and Rhode Island statutes on the ground that they amount to an establishment of religion forbidden by the First Amendment. [403 U.S. 602, 663] </s> No one in these cases questions the constitutional right of parents to satisfy their state-imposed obligation to educate their children by sending them to private schools, sectarian or otherwise, as long as those schools meet minimum standards established for secular instruction. The States are not only permitted, but required by the Constitution, to free students attending private schools from any public school attendance obligation. Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925). The States may also furnish transportation for students, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), and books for teaching secular subjects to students attending parochial and other private as well as public schools, Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236 (1968); we have also upheld arrangements whereby students are released from public school classes so that they may attend religious instruction. Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306 (1952). Outside the field of education, we have upheld Sunday closing laws, McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961), state and federal laws exempting church property and church activity from taxation, Walz v. Tax Commission, 397 U.S. 664 (1970), and governmental grants to religious organizations for the purpose of financing improvements in the facilities of hospitals managed and controlled by religious orders. Bradfield v. Roberts, 175 U.S. 291 (1899). </s> Our prior cases have recognized the dual role of parochial schools in American society: they perform both religious and secular functions. See Board of Education v. Allen, supra, at 248. Our cases also recognize that legislation having a secular purpose and extending governmental assistance to sectarian schools in the performance of their secular functions does not constitute "law[s] respecting an establishment of religion" forbidden by the First Amendment merely because a secular program may incidentally benefit a church in fulfilling its religious mission. [403 U.S. 602, 664] That religion may indirectly benefit from governmental aid to the secular activities of churches does not convert that aid into an impermissible establishment of religion. </s> This much the Court squarely holds in the Tilton case, where it also expressly rejects the notion that payments made directly to a religious institution are, without more, forbidden by the First Amendment. In Tilton, the Court decides that the Federal Government may finance the separate function of secular education carried on in a parochial setting. It reaches this result although sectarian institutions undeniably will obtain substantial benefit from federal aid; without federal funding to provide adequate facilities for secular education, the student bodies of those institutions might remain stationary or even decrease in size and the institutions might ultimately have to close their doors. </s> It is enough for me that the States and the Federal Government are financing a separable secular function of overriding importance in order to sustain the legislation here challenged. That religion and private interests other than education may substantially benefit does not convert these laws into impermissible establishments of religion. </s> It is unnecessary, therefore, to urge that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment at least permits government in some respects to modify and mold its secular programs out of express concern for free-exercise values. See Walz v. Tax Commission, supra, at 673 (tax exemption for religious properties; "[t]he limits of permissible state accommodation to religion are by no means coextensive with the noninterference mandated by the Free Exercise Clause. To equate the two would be to deny a national heritage with roots in the Revolution itself"); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963) (exemption of Seventh Day Adventist from eligibility requirements for [403 U.S. 602, 665] unemployment insurance not only permitted but required by the Free Exercise Clause); Zorach v. Clauson, supra, at 313-314 (students excused from regular public school routine to obtain religious instruction; "[w]hen the state encourages religious instruction . . . it follows the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs"). See also Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 308 (1963) (STEWART, J., dissenting); Welsh v. United States, 398 U.S. 333, 367 (1970) (WHITE, J., dissenting). The Establishment Clause, however, coexists in the First Amendment with the Free Exercise Clause and the latter is surely relevant in cases such as these. Where a state program seeks to ensure the proper education of its young, in private as well as public schools, free exercise considerations at least counsel against refusing support for students attending parochial schools simply because in that setting they are also being instructed in the tenets of the faith they are constitutionally free to practice. </s> I would sustain both the federal and the Rhode Island programs at issue in these cases, and I therefore concur in the judgment in No. 153 1 and dissent from the judgments in Nos. 569 and 570. Although I would also reject the facial challenge to the Pennsylvania statute, I concur in the judgment in No. 89 for the reasons given below. </s> The Court strikes down the Rhode Island statute on its face. No fault is found with the secular purpose of the program; there is no suggestion that the purpose of the program was aid to religion disguised in secular attire. Nor does the Court find that the primary effect of the program is to aid religion rather than to implement secular goals. The Court nevertheless finds [403 U.S. 602, 666] that impermissible "entanglement" will result from administration of the program. The reasoning is a curious and mystifying blend, but a critical factor appears to be an unwillingness to accept the District Court's express findings that on the evidence before it none of the teachers here involved mixed religious and secular instruction. Rather, the District Court struck down the Rhode Island statute because it concluded that activities outside the secular classroom would probably have a religious content and that support for religious education therefore necessarily resulted from the financial aid to the secular programs, since that aid generally strengthened the parochial schools and increased the number of their students. </s> In view of the decision in Tilton, however, where these same factors were found insufficient to invalidate the federal plan, the Court is forced to other considerations. Accepting the District Court's observation in DiCenso that education is an integral part of the religious mission of the Catholic church - an observation that should neither surprise nor alarm anyone, especially judges who have already approved substantial aid to parochial schools in various forms - the majority then interposes findings and conclusions that the District Court expressly abjured, namely, that nuns, clerics, and dedicated Catholic laymen unavoidably pose a grave risk in that they might not be able to put aside their religion in the secular classroom. Although stopping short of considering them untrustworthy, the Court concludes that for them the difficulties of avoiding teaching religion along with secular subjects would pose intolerable risks and would in any event entail an unacceptable enforcement regime. Thus, the potential for impermissible fostering of religion in secular classrooms - an untested assumption of the Court - paradoxically renders unacceptable the State's efforts at insuring that secular teachers under religious discipline successfully avoid conflicts between the religious mission [403 U.S. 602, 667] of the school and the secular purpose of the State's education program. </s> The difficulty with this is twofold. In the first place, it is contrary to the evidence and the District Court's findings in DiCenso. The Court points to nothing in this record indicating that any participating teacher had inserted religion into his secular teaching or had any difficulty in avoiding doing so. The testimony of the teachers was quite the contrary. The District Court expressly found that "[t]his concern for religious values does not necessarily affect the content of secular subjects in diocesan schools. On the contrary, several teachers testified at trial that they did not inject religion into their secular classes, and one teacher deposed that he taught exactly as he had while employed in a public school. This testimony gains added credibility from the fact that several of the teachers were non-Catholics. Moreover, because of the restrictions of Rhode Island's textbook loan law . . . and the explicit requirement of the Salary Supplement Act, teaching materials used by applicants for aid must be approved for use in the public schools." DiCenso v. Robinson, 316 F. Supp. 112, 117 (RI 1970). Elsewhere, the District Court reiterated that the defect of the Rhode Island statute was "not that religious doctrine overtly intrudes into all instruction," ibid., but factors aside from secular courses plus the fact that good secular teaching was itself essential for implementing the religious mission of the parochial school. </s> Secondly, the Court accepts the model for the Catholic elementary and secondary schools that was rejected for the Catholic universities or colleges in the Tilton case. There it was urged that the Catholic condition of higher learning was an integral part of the religious mission of the church and that these institutions did everything they could to foster the faith. The Court's response was that on the record before it none of [403 U.S. 602, 668] the involved institutions was shown to have complied with the model and that it would not purport to pass on cases not before it. Here, however, the Court strikes down this Rhode Island statute based primarily on its own model and its own suppositions and unsupported views of what is likely to happen in Rhode Island parochial school classrooms, although on this record there is no indication that entanglement difficulties will accompany the salary supplement program. </s> The Court thus creates an insoluble paradox for the State and the parochial schools. The State cannot finance secular instruction if it permits religion to be taught in the same classroom; but if it exacts a promise that religion not be so taught - a promise the school and its teachers are quite willing and on this record able to give - and enforces it, it is then entangled in the "no entanglement" aspect of the Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence. </s> Why the federal program in the Tilton case is not embroiled in the same difficulties is never adequately explained. Surely the notion that college students are more mature and resistant to indoctrination is a make-weight, for in Tilton there is careful note of the federal condition on funding and the enforcement mechanism available. If religious teaching in federally financed buildings was permitted, the powers of resistance of college students would in no way save the federal scheme. Nor can I imagine the basis for finding college clerics more reliable in keeping promises than their counterparts in elementary and secondary schools - particularly those in the Rhode Island case, since within five years the majority of teachers in Rhode Island parochial schools will be lay persons, many of them non-Catholic. </s> Both the District Court and this Court in DiCenso have seized on the Rhode Island formula for supplementing [403 U.S. 602, 669] teachers' salaries since it requires the State to verify the amount of school money spent for secular as distinguished from religious purposes. Only teachers in those schools having per-pupil expenditures for secular subjects below the state average qualify under the system, an aspect of the state scheme which is said to provoke serious "entanglement." But this is also a slender reed on which to strike down this law, for as the District Court found, only once since the inception of the program has it been necessary to segregate expenditures in this manner. </s> The District Court also focused on the recurring nature of payments by the State of Rhode Island; salaries must be supplemented and money appropriated every year and hence the opportunity for controversy and friction over state aid to religious schools will constantly remain before the State. The Court in DiCenso adopts this theme, and makes much of the fact that under the federal scheme the grant to a religious institution is a one-time matter. But this argument is without real force. It is apparent that federal interest in any grant will be a continuing one since the conditions attached to the grant must be enforced. More important, the federal grant program is an ongoing one. The same grant will not be repeated, but new ones to the same or different schools will be made year after year. Thus the same potential for recurring political controversy accompanies the federal program. Rhode Island may have the problem of appropriating money each year to supplement the salaries of teachers, but the United States must each year seek financing for the new grants it desires to make and must supervise the ones already on the record. </s> With respect to Pennsylvania, the Court, accepting as true the factual allegations of the complaint, as it must for purposes of a motion to dismiss, would reverse the dismissal of the complaint and invalidate the legislation. [403 U.S. 602, 670] The critical allegations, as paraphrased by the Court, are that "the church-related elementary and secondary schools are controlled by religious organizations, have the purpose of propagating and promoting a particular religious faith, and conduct their operations to fulfill that purpose." Ante, at 620. From these allegations the Court concludes that forbidden entanglements would follow from enforcing compliance with the secular purpose for which the state money is being paid. </s> I disagree. There is no specific allegation in the complaint that sectarian teaching does or would invade secular classes supported by state funds. That the schools are operated to promote a particular religion is quite consistent with the view that secular teaching devoid of religious instruction can successfully be maintained, for good secular instruction is, as Judge Coffin wrote for the District Court in the Rhode Island case, essential to the success of the religious mission of the parochial school. I would no more here than in the Rhode Island case substitute presumption for proof that religion is or would be taught in state-financed secular courses or assume that enforcement measures would be so extensive as to border on a free exercise violation. We should not forget that the Pennsylvania statute does not compel church schools to accept state funds. I cannot hold that the First Amendment forbids an agreement between the school and the State that the state funds would be used only to teach secular subjects. </s> I do agree, however, that the complaint should not have been dismissed for failure to state a cause of action. Although it did not specifically allege that the schools involved mixed religious teaching with secular subjects, the complaint did allege that the schools were operated to fulfill religious purposes and one of the legal theories stated in the complaint was that the Pennsylvania Act "finances and participates in the blending of sectarian [403 U.S. 602, 671] and secular instruction." At trial under this complaint, evidence showing such a blend in a course supported by state funds would appear to be admissible and, if credited, would establish financing of religious instruction by the State. Hence, I would reverse the judgment of the District Court and remand the case for trial, thereby holding the Pennsylvania legislation valid on its face but leaving open the question of its validity as applied to the particular facts of this case. </s> I find it very difficult to follow the distinction between the federal and state programs in terms of their First Amendment acceptability. My difficulty is not surprising, since there is frank acknowledgment that "we can only dimly perceive the boundaries of permissible government activity in this sensitive area of constitutional adjudication," Tilton v. Richardson, post, at 678, and that "[j]udicial caveats against entanglement" are a "blurred, indistinct and variable barrier." Ante, at 614. I find it even more difficult, with these acknowledgments in mind, to understand how the Court can accept the considered judgment of Congress that its program is constitutional and yet reject the equally considered decisions of the Rhode Island and Pennsylvania legislatures that their programs represent a constitutionally acceptable accommodation between church and state. 2 </s> [Footnote 1 I accept the Court's invalidation of the provision in the federal legislation whereby the restriction on the use of buildings constructed with federal funds terminates after 20 years. </s> [Footnote 2 As a postscript I should note that both the federal and state cases are decided on specified Establishment Clause considerations, without reaching the questions that would be presented if the evidence in any of these cases showed that any of the involved schools restricted entry on racial or religious grounds or required all students gaining admission to receive instruction in the tenets of a particular faith. For myself, if such proof were made, the legislation would to that extent be unconstitutional. </s> [403 U.S. 602, 672]

United States Supreme Court DEPARTMENT OF LABOR v. TRIPLETT(1990) No. 88-1671 Argued: January 16, 1990Decided: March 27, 1990 </s> The Black Lung Benefits Act of 1972 prohibits attorneys from receiving fees for representing claimants except as approved by petitioner Department of Labor. In implementing this provision, the Department promulgated approval procedures which, inter alia, invalidate all contractual fee arrangements. Respondent Triplett (hereinafter respondent), an attorney, violated the Department's fee scheme when he agreed to represent claimants on a contingent-fee basis and collected fees without the required approval. Petitioner Committee on Legal Ethics of the West Virginia State Bar recommended that he be suspended for these infractions and filed a complaint in the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals to enforce the sanction. The court denied enforcement, ruling that the scheme was unconstitutional because it effectively denied claimants necessary access to counsel and, alternatively, because it denied them the procedural safeguards provided by the Act. </s> Held: </s> 1. Both sides have standing. The committee has standing on the basis of its classic interest as a government prosecuting agency in defending the law on which its prosecution is based, and there is therefore no need to inquire into the Department's standing. Respondent has third-party standing by virtue of his clients of a due process right to obtain scheme against him deprives his clients of a due process right to obtain legal representation. See Secretary of State of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. 947, 954 -958. ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605 , distinguished. There is no question that such a right is placed at issue here, since at least one of respondent's clients received benefits that the Government was seeking to recover as erroneously paid. Pp. 719-721. </s> 2. The Department's fee limitation scheme does not violate due process. Pp. 721-727. </s> (a) In light of the Government's obvious and legitimate interest in protecting claimants and others who may be required by the Act to pay [494 U.S. 715, 716] fees, the Department's scheme is entitled to a heavy presumption of constitutionality. Respondent must prove that the scheme made attorneys unavailable to his prospective clients at the time he violated the Act. See Walters v. National Assn. of Radiation Survivors, 473 U.S. 305 . The "factual record" upon which the state court relied is blatantly insufficient to meet respondent's burden. The only nonanecdotal evidence in the record powerfully suggests that claimants whose chances of success are high enough to attract contingent-fee lawyers have no difficulty finding them. Pp. 721-726. </s> (b) The state court's alternative holding that the fee scheme violated due process by depriving claimants of statutory procedural safeguards, including the right to counsel, is disposed of by the conclusion that they have not been deprived of their asserted constitutional right to representation. Pp. 726-727. </s> 180 W. Va. 533, 378 S. E. 2d 82, reversed and remanded. </s> SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in Parts I, II-A, III, and IV of which REHNQUIST, C. J., and WHITE, BLACKMUN, STEVENS, O'CONNOR, and KENNEDY, JJ., joined, and in Part II-B of which REHNQUIST, C. J., and STEVENS, O'CONNOR, and KENNEDY, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 727. MARSHALL, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in Part II of which BRENNAN, J., joined, post, p. 728. BRENNAN, J., filed a separate statement, post, p. 736. </s> [Footnote * Together with No. 88-1688, Committee on Legal Ethics of the West Virginia State Bar v. Triplett et al., also on certiorari to the same court. </s> Michael R. Dreeben argued the cause for petitioners in both cases. With him on the briefs for petitioner in No. 88-1671 and respondent in No. 88-1688, under this Court's Rule 12.4, were Solicitor General Starr, Assistant Attorney General Gerson, Deputy Solicitor General Roberts, William Kanter, John S. Koppel, Allen H. Feldman, and Edward D. Sieger. Jack Marden filed a brief for petitioner in No. 88-1688 and respondent in No. 88-1671, under this Court's Rule 12.4 </s> Jane Moran argued the cause for respondent Triplett in both cases. On the brief was James A. McKowen.Fn </s> Fn [494 U.S. 715, 716] Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America et al. by Jeffrey Robert White, John P. Ellis, Joseph E. Wolfe, Russ M. Herman, and Michael J. Blachman; and for the United Mine Workers of America by Robert H. Stropp, Jr. [494 U.S. 715, 717] </s> JUSTICE SCALIA delivered the opinion of the Court.[fn] </s> These cases call into question the constitutionality of the Department of Labor's administration of that provision of the Black Lung Benefits Act of 1972 which prohibits the acceptance of attorney's fees for the representation of claimants, except such fees as are approved by the Department. Respondent Triplett contends that the Secretary of Labor's manner of implementing this restriction violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment because it renders qualified attorneys unavailable and thereby deprives claimants of legal assistance in the prosecution of their claims. </s> I </s> The Black Lung Benefits Act of 1972, 83 Stat. 792, as amended, 30 U.S.C. 901 et seq. (1982 ed. and Supp. V), provides federal funds to those who have been totally disabled by pneumoconiosis, a respiratory disease commonly caused by coal mine employment, and to their eligible survivors. See Pittston Coal Group v. Sebben, 488 U.S. 105, 108 (1988). The Department of Labor (Department) awards benefits after adjudication by a deputy commissioner, and after review (if requested) by an administrative law judge (ALJ), the Benefits Review Board, and a federal court of appeals. 20 CFR 725.410, 725.419(a), 725.481 (1989); 30 U.S.C. 932(a) (1982 ed., Supp. V) (incorporating 33 U.S.C. 921(c) (1982 ed.)). </s> A claimant may be represented throughout these proceedings by an attorney, 20 CFR 725.362, 725.363(a) (1989), and the Act provides that when the claimant wins a contested case the employer, his insurer, or (in some cases, see 30 U.S.C. 934 (1982 ed.)) the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund shall pay a "reasonable attorney's fee" to the claimant's lawyer. 30 U.S.C. 932(a) (incorporating 33 U.S.C. 928(a) (1982 ed.)). The Act also incorporates, however, [494 U.S. 715, 718] that provision of the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act (LHWCA), 44 Stat. 1438, as amended, 33 U.S.C. 928(d) (1982 ed.), which prohibits an attorney from receiving a fee - whether from the employer, insurer, or Trust Fund, or from the claimant himself - unless approved by the appropriate agency or court. 30 U.S.C. 932(a) (1982 ed., Supp. V). The Department's regulations invalidate all contractual agreements for fees, see 20 CFR 725.365, 802.203(f) (1989), and the Department will not approve a fee if the claimant is unsuccessful, see Director, OWCP v. Hemingway Transport Inc., 1 BRBS 73, 75 (1974). Once the claimant's compensation order becomes final, 33 U.S.C. 928(a), the attorney may apply to each tribunal before whom the services were performed, 20 CFR 725.366(a) (1989), and shall be awarded a fee "reasonably commensurate with the necessary work done," 725.366(b), taking into account "the quality of the representation, the qualifications of the representative, the complexity of the legal issues involved, the level of proceedings to which the claim was raised, the level at which the representative entered the proceedings, and any other information which may be relevant to the amount of fee requested." Ibid. </s> Respondent George R. Triplett (hereinafter respondent) violated these restrictions by receiving unapproved fees. He agreed to represent claimants in exchange for 25% of any award obtained, and collected those fees without the required approval. The Committee on Legal Ethics of the West Virginia State Bar initiated a disciplinary action against respondent for these infractions. The committee, after a hearing, recommended a 6-month suspension, and filed a complaint in the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals to enforce that sanction. </s> That court denied enforcement. Although respondent had not raised such a contention, it occurred to the court that the Act's restriction on payment of fees, as implemented by the Department, might violate the Due Process Clause of the [494 U.S. 715, 719] Fifth Amendment and thus be impermissible as the premise for the disciplinary action. After asking for and receiving supplemental briefing on the issue, it held the Department's implementation of the Act unconstitutional because it "effectively den[ied] claimants necessary access to counsel," and, alternatively, because it "den[ied] qualified claimants the procedural safeguards provided by Congress that are essential to vindicate the right to benefits also granted by Congress." 180 W. Va. 533, 536, 544, 378 S. E. 2d 82, 85, 93 (1988). Two justices dissented, finding the factual record upon which the majority relied "woefully inadequate." Id., at 549, 378 S. E. 2d, at 98. </s> After issuing this opinion, the court invited the Department to intervene. The Department did so, supplemented the record, and petitioned for rehearing. The court denied the petition in a brief opinion that found the Department's proffered justifications for the fee limitation system, and its new evidence, unpersuasive. Id., at 547, 378 S. E. 2d, at 96. </s> Both the Department (in No. 88-1671) and the committee (in No. 88-1688) petitioned for certiorari. We granted the petitions. 493 U.S. 807 (1989). </s> II </s> A </s> We deal first with the parties' standing. On petitioners' side, the Committee on Legal Ethics has the classic interest of a government prosecuting agency arguing for the validity of a law upon which its prosecution is based. It has preferred charges against respondent that rest upon his disregard of the fee restrictions administered by the Department; those charges cannot be sustained if the restrictions themselves are unlawful. Since the committee has standing, we need not inquire whether the Department does as well. Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714, 721 (1986). [494 U.S. 715, 720] </s> B </s> On respondent's side, Triplett invokes not his own legal rights and interests, but those of the black lung claimants who hired him. Respondent's defense to the disciplinary proceeding is that the fee scheme he is accused of violating contravenes those claimants' due process rights because, by prohibiting collection pursuant to voluntary fee agreements and failing to provide adequate alternative means of attorney compensation, it renders claimants unable to obtain legal representation for their black lung claims. Ordinarily, of course, a litigant "`must assert his own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest his claim to relief on the legal rights or interests of third parties.'" Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 474 (1982) (quoting Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 499 (1975)). This is generally so even when the very same allegedly illegal act that affects the litigant also affects a third party. See United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 731 -732 (1980) (criminal defendant "lacks [third-party] standing under the Fourth Amendment to suppress . . . documents illegally seized from" his banker). When, however, enforcement of a restriction against the litigant prevents a third party from entering into a relationship with the litigant (typically a contractual relationship), to which relationship the third party has a legal entitlement (typically a constitutional entitlement), third-party standing has been held to exist. See Secretary of State of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. 947, 954 -958 (1984) (professional fundraiser given third-party standing to challenge statute limiting its commission to 25% as violation of clients' First Amendment right to hire him for a higher fee). A restriction upon the fees a lawyer may charge that deprives the lawyer's prospective client of a due process right to obtain legal representation falls squarely within this principle. See Caplin & Drysdale, Chartered v. United States, 491 U.S. 617 , [494 U.S. 715, 721] 623-624, n. 3 (1989). ** There is no question that a due process right to representation is placed at issue here, since at least one of the claimants who retained respondent received benefits that the Government was seeking to recover as erroneously paid. See 180 W. Va., at 543, n. 31, 378 S. E. 2d, at 92, n. 31; Walters v. National Assn. of Radiation Survivors, 473 U.S. 305, 320 , n. 8 (1985). </s> Accordingly, we find standing on both sides of this action. </s> III </s> In Walters v. National Assn. of Radiation Survivors, supra, we upheld against due process attack a statutory $10 limitation on attorney's fees payable by veterans seeking disability or death benefits in proceedings before the Veterans' Administration. We began there, as we begin here, by noting the heavy presumption of constitutionality to which a "carefully considered decision of a coequal and representative branch of our Government" is entitled. Id., at 319. We determined in Walters that the Government had an interest in administering benefits in an informal and nonadversarial fashion so that claimants would receive the entirety of an award without having to divide it with a lawyer. Id., at 321-323. We accorded that interest "great weight," id., at [494 U.S. 715, 722] 326, and required those challenging the law to make "an extraordinarily strong showing of probability of error under the present system - and the probability that the presence of attorneys would sharply diminish that possibility - to warrant a holding that the fee limitation denies claimants due process of law." Ibid. Applying a similar analysis here, we conclude that the fee limitation scheme must be upheld. </s> The Government pursues an obvious and legitimate interest through the current regime. The regulation of attorney's fees payable by claimants themselves is designed to protect claimants from their "improvident contracts, in the interest not only of themselves and their families but of the public." Yeiser v. Dysart, 267 U.S. 540, 541 (1925) (upholding similar state limitation). When fees are payable by persons other than the claimants, as Congress has provided, regulation is designed to assure fairness to the employer, carrier, or Trust Fund, and to protect those sources from a depletion that would leave other claimants without a source of compensation. The Government has good reason, moreover, to defer payment until the compensation award is final. A regime of payment immediately upon success at every level, subject to recovery in the event the judgment in favor of the claimant is reversed at a higher level, would impose upon the payor the onerous task of seeking to obtain a refund. </s> In Walters v. National Assn. of Radiation Survivors, supra, we assumed that the fee limitation would make attorneys unavailable to claimants, but nevertheless upheld the statute because attorneys were not essential to vindicate the claims. Here, we need not reach the latter issue unless respondent has proved what was assumed in that case, viz., that the regime made attorneys unavailable to his prospective clients at the time respondent violated the Act. That showing contains two component parts: (1) that claimants could not obtain representation, and (2) that this unavailability of attorneys was attributable to the Government's fee regime. That is no small burden, and respondent has failed to bear it. [494 U.S. 715, 723] </s> Since the due process issue in this case first arose during the original enforcement proceeding in the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, no lower court had heard evidence or made factual findings. Although the committee had heard evidence concerning respondent's misconduct, it made no findings regarding the effect of the fee regime on the availability of lawyers. The "factual record" upon which the court relied to invalidate this federal program consisted of testimony by two lawyers in the disciplinary proceeding, five affidavits attached to an amicus brief to the court, and statements by attorneys in hearings before a House of Representatives Subcommittee in 1985. Since it is critical to our disposition of the case, we shall describe the evidence the court relied upon in some detail. </s> As to the first issue - unavailability of attorneys - the court relied upon three lawyers' assessments. One stated that "fewer qualified attorneys are accepting black lung claims," and that more claimants are proceeding pro se. 180 W. Va., at 541, 378 S. E. 2d, at 90. According to a second attorney, "few attorneys are willing to represent black lung claimants." Ibid. A third lawyer's evaluation was not contained in the record, but consisted of his 1985 testimony to the House subcommittee that "many of his colleagues had `. . . stated unequivocally that they would not take black lung cases . . . .'" Id., at 542, 378 S. E. 2d, at 91 (quoting Hearings on Investigation of Backlog in Black Lung Cases before the Subcommittee on Labor Relations of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 99th Cong., 1st Sess., 188 (1985)). (The court did not mention the testimony of other witnesses before the Subcommittee to the opposite effect. See, e. g., id., at 45.) </s> This will not do. We made clear in Walters that this sort of anecdotal evidence will not overcome the presumption of regularity and constitutionality to which a program established by Congress is entitled. 473 U.S., at 324 , n. 11. The impressions of three lawyers that the current system has produced "few" lawyers, or "fewer qualified attorneys" [494 U.S. 715, 724] (whatever that means), and that "many" have left the field, are blatantly insufficient to meet respondent's burden of proof, even if entirely unrebutted. </s> In unneeded addition, there was rebuttal here - affirmative indication that attorneys willing to take black lung cases were in adequate supply. Data submitted by the Department in support of its petition for rehearing showed that in 1987 claimants were represented by counsel at the ALJ stage in 92% of cases resulting in grant or denial of benefits. Although these statistics are not conclusive of adequate attorney availability (they do not show, for example, the proportion of unrepresented claimants who never reached the ALJ stage), they are the only nonanecdotal evidence in the record, and they powerfully suggest that claimants whose chances of success are high enough to attract contingent-fee lawyers have no difficulty finding them. </s> Even if respondent had demonstrated an unavailability of attorneys, he would have been obliged further to show that its cause was the regulation of fees. He did not do so. In finding to the contrary, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals relied mainly on statements by attorneys concerning the delay in receiving payment. Of the three lawyers who claimed that there was a shortage of attorneys (see supra, at 723), two attributed the shortage, in part, to the delay in payment of fees. 180 W. Va., at 541, 542, 378 S. E. 2d, at 90, 91. See also id., at 536, n. 6, 378 S. E. 2d, at 85, n. 6 (lawyer testified that he had not yet been paid in "three or four" cases in which he had prevailed); id., at 541-542, 378 S. E. 2d, at 90-91 (testimony at congressional hearings that payment was delayed 2-3 years); id., at 541, 378 S. E. 2d, at 90 (lawyer stated that he is owed more than $30,000 in fees that have been awarded but not paid). The court thought this proved that the delay built into the fee-approval system produced the unavailability of attorneys: "In a small, depressed West Virginia town $30,000 is a substantial amount of money for an individual practitioner. In the long run, as John Maynard Keynes once observed, we are all dead. In [494 U.S. 715, 725] the short run, lawyers have offices to run, mortgages to pay and children to educate." Ibid. </s> The court did not explain why the Keynesian imperative of cash-on-the-barrelhead has not eliminated the contingent fee, the very institution respondent seeks to shield from regulation - which itself yields no office funds, mortgage payments, or tuition fees until often lengthy litigation is completed. The answer, of course, is that the contingent fees contracted for are high enough to compensate not only for the contingency but also for the delay until the contingency is resolved. There is no apparent reason why compensation cannot render palatable the additional delay inherent in the Department's approval procedure as well. At one point the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals seemed to acknowledge this, asserting that its whole case against the Department's scheme boils down to the fact that the fees are too low: "It is clear from the evidence before us that most lawyers are unwilling to represent black lung claimants because of the inadequate fees awarded by the DOL." Id., at 545, 378 S. E. 2d, at 94. The evidence to support this economic assessment is similar to that for the unavailability of attorneys: small in volume, anecdotal in character, and self-interested in motivation - to wit, a portion of the affidavit of one claimants' attorney who has not abandoned the practice. Id., at 541, 378 S. E. 2d, at 90 (citing Muth affidavit). On the face of the matter, it is difficult to understand how the Department could maintain a system of inadequate fees if it wanted to. The statute itself requires that the fees awarded be "reasonable," see 33 U.S.C. 928(a) (1982 ed.); 30 U.S.C. 932(a) (1982 ed., Supp. V), which the agency has interpreted to include a requirement that they compensate for delay, cf. Hobbs v. Director, OWCP, 820 F.2d 1528, 1529 (CA9 1987) (applying LHWCA); and where the statutory requirement is not observed, the dissatisfied attorney has a remedy in the appropriate court of appeals, see 33 U.S.C. 921(c), 928(a) (1982 ed.); 30 U.S.C. 932(a) (1982 ed., Supp. V); Hobbs v. Director, OWCP, supra. [494 U.S. 715, 726] </s> To establish the requisite causality between the Department's scheme and the (alleged) unavailability of attorneys, the court also relied upon the impressions of the three lawyers (see supra, at 723) who attributed the departure of many black lung attorneys to the risk of nonrecovery if the claimant loses. 180 W. Va., at 541-542, 378 S. E. 2d, at 90-91. But as noted above, the existence in this country of a thriving contingent-fee practice demonstrates that this risk can be compensated for - so it comes down once again to the level of compensation. And we note that the Benefits Review Board has construed the regulations of the Secretary of Labor governing the award of attorney's fees to permit consideration of the attorney's risk of going unpaid. See Risden v. Director, OWCP, 11 BRBS 819, 824 (1980). </s> Finally, to establish the necessary causality the court relied on the conclusory impressions of interested lawyers as to the effect of the Department's fee regime on the availability of attorneys. One lawyer, for example, whose experience consisted of representing two claimants prior to 1981, said that he did not take black lung cases because of the difficulty in obtaining fees. 180 W. Va., at 536, n. 6, 378 S. E. 2d, at 85, n. 6; Tr. 206. Cf. 180 W. Va., at 542, 378 S. E. 2d, at 91. Perhaps so; but that does not come close to proving that the fee regime dried up the supply of attorneys. </s> In sum, the evidence relied upon by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals did not remotely establish either that black lung claimants are unable to retain qualified counsel or that the cause of such inability is the attorney's fee system administered by the Department. The court therefore had no basis for concluding that that system deprives claimants of property without due process of law. </s> IV </s> It is not clear to us what the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals meant by what it described as its "independent [494 U.S. 715, 727] basis" for finding a due process violation, which was set forth as follows: </s> "Congress has conferred upon qualified claimants the right to receive black lung benefits. Congress has also prescribed the remedy (the claims process) to guarantee this right, an essential part of which is the right to counsel. It is, therefore, unconstitutional for the Department of Labor by its regulations to deny qualified claimants the procedural safeguards provided by Congress that are essential to vindicate the right to benefits also granted by Congress." Id., at 544, 378 S. E. 2d, at 93. </s> It seems to us this adds nothing to the prior analysis except the assertion that the right to counsel, besides being constitutionally required (as we have earlier assumed), was part of the statutory "remedy" prescribed by Congress. If that were so, of course, it would not be necessary to invoke the Due Process Clause, since in denying the right the Department of Labor would be violating the statute. In any case, the asserted basis is not "independent" - or at least not independent of the central proposition that black lung claimants have been deprived of their ability to obtain counsel. Our conclusion that that proposition has not remotely been established disposes of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals' alternative ground of decision as well. </s> * * * </s> The judgment of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals is reversed, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. </s> It is so ordered. </s> [fn] [494 U.S. 715, 717] JUSTICE WHITE and JUSTICE BLACKMUN join all but Part II-B of this opinion. </s> [Footnote ** We disagree with JUSTICE MARSHALL'S view that ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605 (1989), renders our inquiry into third-party standing inappropriate. See post, at 729-732. Whether a litigant can assert the rights of a third party under a particular statute is "closely related to the question whether a person in the litigant's position would have a right of action on the claim," Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 500 , n. 12 (1975). Thus, while state courts are fully entitled to entertain disputes that would not qualify as cases or controversies under Article III, it is questionable whether they have the power, by granting or denying third-party standing, to create or destroy federal causes of action. See Haitian Refugee Center v. Gracey, 257 U.S. App. D.C. 367, 381-382, and n. 12, 809 F.2d 794, 808-809, and n. 12 (1987). We follow longstanding precedent in ascertaining the third-party standing of a respondent in a case arising from state court. See Secretary of State of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. 947, 954 (1984); Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249 (1953). </s> JUSTICE STEVENS, concurring. </s> The Government unquestionably has a legitimate interest in preventing lawyers from overcharging program beneficiaries. It may, therefore, enforce regulations prohibiting unreasonable fees. For the reasons stated in my dissent in [494 U.S. 715, 728] Walters v. National Assn. of Radiation Survivors, 473 U.S. 305, 358 -372 (1985), however, I remain convinced that such regulation may not be so pervasive as to deny the individual the right to consult and retain independent counsel. In this action I agree with the Court that respondent Triplett has failed to prove that the regulations have this effect. </s> With regard to my colleagues' comments on ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605 (1989), I add this observation. In that case we carefully considered the question "whether, under federal standards, the case was nonjusticiable at its outset because the original plaintiffs lacked standing to sue," id., at 612; only thereafter did we address the separate question whether, in the circumstances of that case, the entry of a state-court judgment that caused concrete injury to the parties made it appropriate to examine justiciability at a later stage in the proceedings. It is entirely appropriate for the Court to follow the same procedure in this action. </s> Accordingly, I join the Court's opinion and judgment. </s> JUSTICE MARSHALL, with whom JUSTICE BRENNAN joins as to Part II, concurring in the judgment. </s> In the context of an attorney disciplinary action, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals held the provision of the Black Lung Benefits Act of 1972 that governs attorney's fees awarded to counsel for a successful claimant, 83 Stat. 796, as amended, 30 U.S.C. 932(a) (1982 ed., Supp. V), unconstitutional as applied. I agree with the Court's decision to reverse this judgment because the evidence supporting it does not establish that the Department of Labor's regulation of attorney's fees deprives black lung claimants of adequate legal assistance. Ante, at 726. Nevertheless, I write separately to underscore the limited nature of the Court's holding. </s> I </s> Before the Court proceeds to the merits of this litigation, it discusses the standing of petitioners and respondent Triplett (hereinafter respondent). I agree that we must examine the [494 U.S. 715, 729] standing of one of the petitioners and that petitioners can seek review in this Court. Ante, at 719. I am bewildered, however, by the Court's lengthy discussion of respondent's standing to assert the due process rights of black lung claimants. Ante, at 720-721. As long as one of the petitioners has standing and the litigation presents a live case or controversy, this Court has jurisdiction on certiorari from a state-court judgment even if, had the state court applied federal standing requirements, the respondent would have lacked standing. ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605, 623 -624 (1989). The rule we announced so recently in ASARCO renders examination of respondent's standing in the state courts through the lens of federal standing principles completely irrelevant. To the extent that the Court's extended treatment of the issue implies otherwise, it is blatantly inconsistent with our precedent. </s> In ASARCO, the petitioners sought review of a state-court decision on a federal issue in favor of the respondents, who were the plaintiffs in state court. The United States as amicus curiae argued that this Court should dismiss the case because the respondents would not have satisfied the standing requirements for bringing the suit in a federal district court. Id., at 620. This Court held, however, that the respondents were not required to meet federal standing requirements. Rather, only the parties "first invoking the authority of the federal courts in th[at] case," the petitioners, were required to prove standing. Id., at 624. See also id., at 617-618. </s> The ASARCO Court began its analysis with the well-established rule that "state courts are not bound to adhere to federal standing requirements [even though] they possess the authority, absent a provision for exclusive federal jurisdiction, to render binding judicial decisions that rest on their own interpretations of federal law." Id., at 617. The Court then reasoned that if it were to examine the respondents' standing and determine that the respondents failed to satisfy federal standing requirements, the only logical course would be to dismiss the case, leaving the state-court judgment intact. [494 U.S. 715, 730] See id., at 620-621. 1 The unavailability of federal review of such a state-court judgment would undermine the preclusive effect of that judgment on subsequent litigation between the parties in federal court, because a state-court judgment on a federal issue normally has collateral-estoppel effect in federal court only if the state-court judgment was subject to federal review. Id., at 621-622. A state court that sought to render a binding decision on a federal issue would be forced to adhere to federal standing requirements to ensure the availability of federal review. Id., at 622. The ASARCO Court concluded, therefore, that dismissing the case on the ground that the respondents lacked standing under federal principles would effectively impose those federal requirements on state courts. </s> The Court's decision in ASARCO clearly forecloses the need for any examination of whether respondent here satisfies federal standing requirements. It is of no importance that the standing issue raised in this case is whether respondent can raise the claims of third parties, whereas the issue in ASARCO was whether the respondent taxpayers and teachers association had shown distinct, concrete injury fairly [494 U.S. 715, 731] traceable to the state statute and likely to be redressed by the requested relief. The general principle that a party must raise his own legal rights and interests and not those of third parties, and the limited exceptions to that principle, are part of the same set of standing requirements devised by this Court to limit the category of parties who may seek relief in federal court. See Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 474 (1982). Nothing in ASARCO suggests that some of the federal standing requirements are applicable to the States, while others are not. 2 </s> [494 U.S. 715, 732] </s> Because respondent has not invoked the authority of any federal court, then, federal standing principles are simply inapplicable to him. Under this Court's clear pronouncement in ASARCO, the only relevant question for us here is whether one of the petitioners has standing to seek review by this Court of the state court's judgment. As in ASARCO, these petitioners have standing because "[t]he state proceedings ended in a . . . judgment adverse to petitioners, an adjudication of legal rights which constitutes the kind of injury cognizable in this Court on review from the state courts." ASARCO, 490 U.S., at 618 . The injury to the Committee on Legal Ethics is the nonenforcement of its disciplinary action. This injury is directly traceable to the state high court's judgment and can be redressed by a decision of this Court. [494 U.S. 715, 733] </s> II </s> Turning to the merits, I find it readily apparent that attorneys are necessary to vindicate claimants' rights under the Black Lung Benefits Act. As the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals noted, a black lung claimant must negotiate through a complex regulatory system to receive benefits from either the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund or the responsible mine operator. 180 W. Va. 538, 539, 378 S. E. 2d 82, 88 (1988). The complexity of the system is well documented. See, e. g., Hearings on Investigation of Backlog in Black Lung Cases before the Subcommittee on Labor Standards of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 99th Cong., 1st Sess., 186 (1985) (statement of attorney Thomas Makowski) ("Through the years, the standards have gotten more rigorous with regard to the sufficiency of evidence needed to prove a claim that a miner has black lung. As Congress made standards stricter, the regulations became more and more confusing, not only to the claimants, but to the attorneys and the administrative law judges as well"); id., at 85 (statement of attorney Robert T. Winston, Jr.) (describing the difficult task of developing evidence necessary to support a benefits award); Smith & Newman, The Basics of Federal Black Lung Litigation, 83 W. Va. L. Rev. 763 (1981) (detailing both the intricate regulatory scheme and the types of medical evidence required to prove a case). </s> More significantly, the black lung process is highly adversarial. Attorneys representing either the Department of Labor or the responsible mine operator actively oppose the award of benefits to a claimant at all levels of the black lung system. Because an operator faces the prospect of paying significant awards, it is often willing to pay substantial legal fees to defend against black lung claims. See Hearings, supra, at 22 (testimony of attorney Martin Sheinman). As we acknowledged in Walters v. National Assn. of Radiation Survivors (NARS), 473 U.S. 305 (1985), participation of [494 U.S. 715, 734] counsel in administrative proceedings "`inevitably give[s] the proceedings a more adversary cast.'" Id., at 325 (quoting Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 570 (1974)). The black lung benefits system is thus qualitatively different from the Veterans' Administration system, which "is designed to function throughout with a high degree of informality and solicitude for the claimant." NARS, supra, at 311. </s> By specifically providing for lawyers and for the payment of reasonable attorney's fees in black lung cases, 30 U.S.C. 932(a) (1982 ed., Supp. V) (incorporating 33 U.S.C. 928(a) (1982 ed.)), Congress acknowledged that legal representation is crucial to black lung claimants' success in this complex, adversarial process. Cf. NARS, supra, at 321 (Congress intended that Veterans' Administration system be managed so as to avoid the need for attorneys). An unsophisticated and desperately ill miner, unfamiliar with legal concepts and practices, is at a severe disadvantage when he faces the expert lawyers of the Government or operators without professional assistance of his own. If the system operates so that claimants cannot obtain representation, it undoubtedly denies those claimants their right to due process. </s> Although representation is necessary to protect claimants' rights under the Act, I agree with the Court that the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals had insufficient grounds for holding that the Department of Labor's regulation of attorney's fees deprives claimants of adequate legal assistance. 3 The Court's holding today, however, in no way precludes [494 U.S. 715, 735] a future constitutional challenge to the Department's implementation of the Act, founded on a more developed factual record. </s> Finally, I emphasize the Court's observation that the current fee structure should compensate attorneys for any delay in payment and for the contingent nature of claims. Ante, at 725-726. See also Risden v. Director, OWCP, 11 BRBS 819, 824 (1980) (Benefits Review Board holding that fee should account for contingency). The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals identified delay and the absence of premiums to offset the risk of loss as the cause of the dearth of attorneys willing to represent claimants. 180 W. Va., at 542, 378 S. E. 2d, at 91. When fee awards do not adequately account for these factors, individual attorneys can challenge the awards in the courts of appeals as violative of the Act's requirement of "reasonable" fees. Ante, at 725. If an attorney or claimant alleges that the regulations governing attorneys' fees do not allow the Department to award "reasonable" fees as required by the Black Lung Benefits Act, those regulations also may be challenged. </s> Although the allegations in the sparse record before us raise legitimate concerns that black lung claimants may not be able to retain legal counsel and the suspicion that this inability may stem from the Department of Labor's regulation of attorney's fees, concerns and suspicions are insufficient to justify striking down on constitutional grounds "the duly enacted and carefully considered decision of a coequal and representative branch of our Government." NARS, supra, at 319. Accordingly, I concur in the Court's decision today to reverse the judgment of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 The ASARCO Court also considered the possibility of vacating the state-court judgment if it were to find that the respondents did not meet federal standing requirements. ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S., at 620 . As with dismissal, the "clear effect" of vacating the state-court judgment "would be to impose federal standing requirements on the state courts whenever they adjudicate issues of federal law, if those judgments are to be conclusive on the parties." Ibid. The Court concluded, however, that vacating the state-court judgment would not be "a proper exercise of our authority . . . . It would be an unacceptable paradox to exercise jurisdiction to confirm that we lack it and then to interfere with a State's sovereign power by vacating a judgment rendered within its own proper authority." Ibid. See also id., at 621, n. 1. Thus, vacating the state-court judgment would not be an appropriate option for the Court in this context. If the Court were to apply federal standing requirements to a respondent and find that he did not satisfy the requirements, the proper course of action would be to dismiss the case, thereby leaving the state-court judgment undisturbed. </s> [Footnote 2 Indeed, had the ASARCO Court found that third-party standing issues deserved different treatment, it presumably would have distinguished the decision in Secretary of State of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. 947 (1984), on that ground, as that case involved the issue whether the respondents (again, the plaintiffs in state court below) had standing to raise the rights of third parties. See id., at 954-958. Notably, however, the Court distinguished that case instead on the ground that the Court there had found that the respondents satisfied federal standing requirements, "which obviated any further inquiry." ASARCO, supra, at 623, n. 2. </s> Contrary to the Court's assertion, declining to examine a respondent's third-party standing would not enable state courts "to create . . . federal causes of action." Ante, at 721, n. Rather, it would simply allow States to permit a suit under an established federal cause of action by a party who might be precluded by federal third-party standing doctrine from bringing the same suit in federal court. This result is precisely what ASARCO requires. Whether a party would have a "right of action on [a] claim," Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 500 , n. 12 (1975) (emphasis added), is the same question as whether that party has standing. That question is distinct from the question whether any claim - any cause of action - exists at all. "Third-party standing" is exactly what one would expect from its name - a doctrine concerning a party's standing to assert an existing federal claim. </s> The only cases of this Court that the majority cites in support of its analysis predate our decision in ASARCO. The Court of Appeals opinion relied on by the Court for its novel assertion actually supports the applicability of the ASARCO analysis to third-party standing. In a discussion of such standing, the lower court stated: "[T]he Supreme Court may review a [494 U.S. 715, 732] case from a state court although standing would have been lacking under the Court's prudential rules if the case had been brought in a federal district court." Haitian Refugee Center v. Gracey, 257 U.S. App. D.C. 367, 381, n. 12, 809 F.2d 794, 808, n. 12 (1987) (citing Revere v. Massachusetts General Hospital, 463 U.S. 239 (1983)). See also Monaghan, Third Party Standing, 84 Colum. L. Rev. 277, 292 (1984). </s> Even if ASARCO did not so clearly foreclose, in the context of review of a state-court judgment, application of federal standing requirements to a respondent, it would make no sense to apply the third-party standing doctrine when a state court has already allowed that respondent to raise the rights of third parties and has issued a final judgment on the issues. The limitation on third-party standing permits federal courts to avoid "`unnecessary pronouncement on constitutional issues,'" and assures that the issues raised will be "concrete and sharply presented." Secretary of State of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Co., supra, at 955 (quoting United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 22 (1960)) (footnote omitted). This Court's resolution of a constitutional issue cannot be characterized as "unnecessary" once the state court has already rendered a ruling on it in the respondent's favor. See Revere, supra, at 243; supra, at 729-730. Moreover, the concern that the controversy be "concrete and sharply presented" is fully satisfied by ascertaining that "the judgment of the state court causes direct, specific, and concrete injury to the parties who petition for our review, [and that] the requisites of a case or controversy are also met." ASARCO, supra, at 623-624. </s> [Footnote 3 The Court should not be surprised at the paucity of facts about representation of black lung claimants. When the writ of certiorari was granted, the Court was aware that the issue presented by the litigation had been raised for the first time before the State Supreme Court of Appeals, that it was only indirectly implicated in an attorney disciplinary action, and that the Department of Labor had not been a party when the issue was first resolved. Moreover, it was evident that the Government's late intervention in the case did not result in the development of an extensive record. And, most importantly, the Court was aware that such a record would be required before such a challenge to the entire regulatory scheme [494 U.S. 715, 735] could be evaluated properly. See Walters v. National Assn. of Radiation Survivors, 473 U.S. 305, 324 , n. 11 (1985). The Court therefore should not have granted the petition in the first place, or it should have dismissed the writ as improvidently granted as soon as oral argument made manifestly clear the insufficiency of the record. [494 U.S. 715, 736] </s> Separate statement of JUSTICE BRENNAN. </s> I write separately to explain why it is prudent that we not resolve the issue whether respondent Triplett (hereinafter respondent) has standing in these cases. As JUSTICE MARSHALL explains, see ante, at 728-732, we held in ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605 (1989), that if a petitioner in a case arising from a state court satisfies Article III's core standing requirements, we need not inquire whether the respondent also satisfies these requirements. Nevertheless, today the Court still inquires whether respondent is entitled to "`rest his claim . . . on the legal rights or interests of third parties,'" ante, at 720 (citations omitted), an inquiry heretofore characterized as a "prudential" standing limitation on the jurisdiction of federal courts. 1 The Court suggests that there might be a "third-party claim" exception to the rule of ASARCO because the question whether a litigant may assert the rights of a third party is "`closely related to the question whether a person in the litigant's position would have a right of action on the claim.'" Ante, at 721, n., quoting Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 500 , n. 12 (1975). I take the Court to be suggesting that the traditional "third-party standing" inquiry might be reformulated as a straightforward question of substantive federal law: whether the litigant is entitled to raise the legal claim asserted, either because her own legal rights are at stake or because principles of federal law justify her status as a "private attorney general" on behalf of those absent parties whose rights are at stake. </s> Perhaps the Court's suggestion may provide a more coherent explanation for what is now perceived as a confusing area of standing doctrine. 2 But this suggested recharacterization, even if ultimately persuasive, would seem to depart from [494 U.S. 715, 737] our present understanding, 3 and the issue has been neither briefed nor argued here. Because the requisites of "third-party standing" doctrine are satisfied, ante, at 720-721, it is prudent that we not decide today whether to distinguish ASARCO on the basis of this recharacterization. 4 </s> [Footnote 1 See Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 474 (1982). </s> [Footnote 2 See, e. g., Fletcher, The Structure of Standing, 98 Yale L. J. 221, 243-247 (1988); Monaghan, Third Party Standing, 84 Colum. L. Rev. 277 (1984). </s> [Footnote 3 The Court correctly notes that, in some cases, we have observed a similarity between the "third-party standing" inquiry and a "right of action" inquiry. See, e. g., Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 501 (1975) ("In such instances [where the Court allowed litigants to raise the legal rights of third parties], the Court has found, in effect, that the constitutional or statutory provision in question implies a right of action in the plaintiff"). In Warth itself, however, we described the "third-party standing" inquiry as a "rule of self-governance . . . subject to exceptions." Id., at 509. Such language suggests that we have considered the "third-party standing" inquiry to turn on the prudence of exercising jurisdiction rather than the content of substantive federal law. See also, e. g., Secretary of State of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. 947, 956 (1984) ("[T]here are situations where competing considerations outweigh any prudential rationale against third-party standing, and . . . this Court has relaxed the prudential-standing limitation when such concerns are present"); Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 193 (1976) ("[O]ur decisions have settled that limitations on a litigant's assertion of jus tertii . . . stem from a salutary `rule of self-restraint'"). </s> Moreover, the natural consequence of adopting the Court's suggested approach - that were "third-party standing" requirements not satisfied here, we would set aside the state-court judgment for its error in presuming that respondent was entitled as a matter of federal substantive law to raise the due process challenge - was expressly rejected in Revere v. Massachusetts General Hospital, 463 U.S. 239 (1983). There we explained that the Massachusetts "Supreme Judicial Court, of course, is not bound by the prudential limitations on jus tertii that apply to federal courts." Id., at 243. </s> [Footnote 4 Even assuming the Court's suggested approach were persuasive, I do not understand why we ought to address sua sponte the question whether respondent is entitled to litigate his due process challenge. If this is indeed a question of substantive federal law and not one of Article III jurisdiction, then we should address this question only if petitioners argued unsuccessfully below that respondent was not entitled to raise the constitutional claim and petitioners sought certiorari on this legal question. But petitioners did not do so in this case, nor did they raise the issue in their briefs or at oral argument. </s> [494 U.S. 715, 738]

United States Supreme Court FPC v. NEW ENGLAND POWER CO.(1974) No. 72-1162 Argued: December 3, 1973Decided: March 4, 1974 </s> The Independent Offices Appropriation Act, 1952 (the Act), authorizes each federal agency to prescribe a fee, charge, or price for services provided by the agency "to or for any person (including groups . . .)," determined to be fair and equitable, consideration being taken of "direct and indirect cost to the Government, value to the recipient, public policy or interest served, and other pertinent facts . . . ." Pursuant to the Act, the Federal Power Commission imposed an annual assessment against all jurisdictional electric utilities in proportion to their wholesale sales and interchange of electricity, and against all natural gas companies with operating revenues of $1,000,000 or more in proportion to their deliveries of natural gas in interstate commerce. On petitions for review, the Court of Appeals set aside these annual charges, holding that whole industries are not in the category of those who may be assessed under the Act, the thrust of which reaches only specific charges for specific services to specific individuals or companies. Held: </s> 1. While the Act includes services rendered "to or for any person (including groups . . .)," since the Act is to be construed to cover only "fees" and not "taxes," National Cable Television Assn. v. United States, ante, p. 336, the "fee" presupposes an application for the agency's services, whether by a single company or group of companies or the receipt of a specific beneficial service. P. 349. </s> 2. The Act is to be construed as authorizing a reasonable charge to "each identifiable recipient for a measurable unit or amount of Government service or property from which he derives a special benefit," and as precluding a charge for services rendered "when the identification of the ultimate beneficiary is obscure and the services can be primarily considered as benefitting broadly the general public." Pp. 349-351. </s> 151 U.S. App. D.C. 371, 467 F.2d 425, affirmed. [415 U.S. 345, 346] </s> DOUGLAS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and STEWART, WHITE, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. MARSHALL, J., filed an opinion concurring in the result, in which BRENNAN, J., joined, post, p. 352. BLACKMUN and POWELL, JJ., took no part in the decision of the case. </s> Keith A. Jones argued the cause for petitioner. On the brief were Solicitor General Bork, Leo A. Forquer, and George W. McHenry, Jr. </s> Thomas M. Debevoise and Stanley M. Morley argued the cause for respondents. With Mr. Debevoise on the brief for respondent New England Power Co. were William J. Madden, Jr., and Jerome C. Muys. With Mr. Morley on the brief for respondent Independent Natural Gas Association of America were Jerome J. McGrath and Francis H. Caskin. L. F. Cadenhead and Melvin Richter were on the brief for respondent Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co., a division of Tenneco, Inc. </s> MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> This case, companion to National Cable Television Assn. v. United States, ante, p. 336, raises another important problem of construction of the provisions of the Independent Offices Appropriation Act, 1952, Tit. 5, 65 Stat. 290, 31 U.S.C. 483a. The Federal Power Commission established filing fees under the Natural Gas Act and under the Federal Power Act. These filing fees have not been challenged. What was challenged were annual assessments under both Acts, levied in an effort of the agency to recoup some of the remaining costs under the two Acts. </s> With respect to electric utilities, the Commission determines each year the costs of administering the Federal Power Act. The costs associated with the Commission's efforts to promote the co-ordination and [415 U.S. 345, 347] reliability of nonjurisdictional electric systems are not included. The Commission also deducts from administration costs the costs associated with services rendered to electric systems not subject to the Commission's jurisdiction and the amount received during the year from filing fees. The remaining balance is assessed against jurisdictional utilities 1 in proportion to their wholesale sales and interchange of electricity. In 1971 these companies had gross revenues of some $21 billion and net income of nearly $4 billion. The annual assessment challenged here involved 1973 and for all such electric companies was $5 million or 0.024% of gross revenue and 0.14% of net income. </s> As respects natural gas companies, the Commission determines each year the costs of administering the natural gas pipeline programs under the Natural Gas Act, 52 Stat. 821, 15 U.S.C. 717 et seq. These costs, after deducting amounts received from filing fees, are assessed against all natural gas companies with annual operating revenues of $1,000,000 or more in proportion to their deliveries of natural gas in interstate commerce. In addition, all natural gas companies required to file an annual report on their total gas supply (18 CFR 260.7) are assessed one-tenth of a mill for each thousand cubic feet of new reserves of natural gas certificated each year to support the cost of the producer certificate program. [415 U.S. 345, 348] </s> The Commission in its report, 45 F. P. C. 440 and 964, said as respects both electric utilities and natural gas companies that regulations have provided "the foundation for the sound financial condition which public utilities and natural gas companies have achieved." Id., at 445. It mentioned the "industry-wide recognition of the benefits accruing from only one facet of the Commission's activities - the adoption of a uniform accounting system." Id., at 445 n. 5. The Commission, while noting that its regulatory activities were beneficial to consumers, added that its actions </s> "have redounded to the benefit of both industries by creating the economic climate for greater usage of the services of the regulated companies which in turn have further strengthened their financial stability and their ability to sell debt and equity securities required for capital additions to meet ever-increasing demands." Id., at 445. </s> As respects electric utilities it noted that its regime was "system wide and beneficial" to the companies. Id., at 966. As respects natural gas pipelines it listed its activities that were beneficial to them: </s> "the issuance of temporary certificates to expedite deliveries, the elimination of indefinite price escalation provisions, and the control over the quality of natural gas to be delivered and the length of the period in which supplies may be delivered where advance payments are made by the pipelines." Id., at 967. </s> On petitions for review the Court of Appeals set aside that portion of the Commission's order establishing annual charges, 151 U.S. App. D.C. 371, 467 F.2d 425. The case is here on a petition for certiorari, 411 U.S. 981 . [415 U.S. 345, 349] </s> The Act in question, 31 U.S.C. 483a, authorizes the head of each federal agency to prescribe a "fee, charge, or price" for any "benefit, privilege, . . . license, permit, certificate, registration or similar thing of value . . . provided . . . by [the] Federal agency . . . for any person (including groups, . . . corporations . . .)" which he determines "to be fair and equitable taking into consideration direct and indirect cost to the Government, value to the recipient, public policy or interest served, and other pertinent facts . . . ." </s> The Court of Appeals held that whole industries are not in the category of those who may be assessed, the thrust of the Act reaching only specific charges for specific services to specific individuals or companies. We agree with the Court of Appeals. </s> The report on the Act, H. R. Rep. No. 384, 82d Cong., 1st Sess., 2, states that "[t]he Committee is concerned that the Government is not receiving full return from many of the services which it renders to special beneficiaries" (emphasis added). It is true that the Act includes services rendered "to or for any person (including groups . . .)." But if we are to construe the Act to cover only "fees" and not "taxes" - as we held should be done in the National Cable Television case, ante, p. 336 - the "fee" presupposes an application whether by a single company or by a group of companies. The Office of Management and Budget (then known as the Bureau of the Budget) issued a circular in 1959 2 construing the Act. That circular stated that a reasonable charge "should be made to each identifiable recipient for a measurable unit or amount of Government service or property from which he derives a special benefit." 3 </s> [415 U.S. 345, 350] (Emphasis added.) The circular also states that no charge should be made for services rendered, "when the identification of the ultimate beneficiary is obscure and the service can be primarily considered as benefitting broadly the general public." 4 </s> [415 U.S. 345, 351] </s> We believe that is the proper construction of the Act. Though it greatly narrows the Act from the dimensions urged by the Commission, it keeps it within the boundaries of the "fee" system and away from the domain of "taxes" toward which the Commission's "economic climate" argument would lead. Some of the assessments made by the Commission under its formula would be on companies which had no proceedings before the Commission during the year in question. The "identifiable recipient" of a unit of service from which "he derives a special benefit," to quote the Office of Management and Budget, does not describe members of an industry which have neither asked for nor received the Commission's services during the year in question. A blanket ruling by the Commission, say on accounting practices, may not be the result of an application. But each member of the industry which is required to adopt the new accounting system is an "identifiable recipient" of the service and could be charged a fee, if the new system was indeed beneficial to the members of the industry. There may well be other variations of a like nature which would warrant the fixing of a "fee" for services rendered. But what was done here is not within the scope of the Act. Hence the judgment of the Court of Appeals is </s> Affirmed. </s> MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN and MR. JUSTICE POWELL took no part in the decision of this case. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 Part I of the Federal Power Act covering licenses to hydro-electric companies, see 16 U.S.C. 797 et seq., is not involved in this litigation, only Parts II, 49 Stat. 847, 16 U.S.C. 824 et seq., and III, 49 Stat. 854, 16 U.S.C. 825 et seq. Moreover, the "jurisdictional" aspect of a public utility's activities refers, inter alia, to the transmission of electric energy in interstate commerce and to the sale of electric energy at wholesale in interstate commerce as contained in 201 of the Act, 49 Stat. 847, 16 U.S.C. 824 et seq., the provision that filled the gap created by Public Utilities Comm'n v. Attleboro Steam & Electric Co., 273 U.S. 83 . See United States v. Public Utilities Comm'n, 345 U.S. 295 . </s> [Footnote 2 Budget Circular No. A-25, Sept. 23, 1959. </s> [Footnote 3 The circular goes on to state that the services include agency action which "provides special benefits . . . above and beyond those [415 U.S. 345, 350] which accrue to the public at large . . . . For example, a special benefit will be considered to accrue and a charge should be imposed when a Government-rendered service: </s> "(a) Enables the beneficiary to obtain more immediate or substantial gains or values (which may or may not be measurable in monetary terms) than those which accrue to the general public (e. g., receiving a patent, crop insurance, or a license to carry on a specific business); or </s> "(b) Provides business stability or assures public confidence in the business activity of the beneficiary (e. g., certificates of necessity and convenience for airline routes, or safety inspections of craft); or </s> "(c) Is performed at the request of the recipient and is above and beyond the services regularly received by other members of the same industry or group, or of the general public (e. g., receiving a passport, visa, airman's certificate, or an inspection after regular duty hours)." </s> [Footnote 4 Since oral argument we have been advised by the Solicitor General that of all federal agencies "having industry-wide regulatory authority" there are two, other than the Federal Power Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, which impose "annual industry-wide fees analogous" to those in the instant case. The Solicitor General summarizes the actions of the other two federal agencies as follows: </s> "The fee schedule of the Atomic Energy Commission is set forth at 10 C. F. R. [] 170.21 and 170.31 and was last revised on October 29, 1973 (38 Fed. Reg. 30254-30255). Under that schedule, operators of nuclear power reactors are subject to a minimum annual fee of $20,000 and operators of other nuclear facilities are subject to annual fees ranging from $8,500 to $215,000. Holders of materials licenses are assessed annual fees of up to $27,000. The Commission estimates that approximately $7 million will be recovered from these annual fees in fiscal year 1974. The Commission's fee schedule, including annual fees, was first adopted in 1968. </s> "The Securities and Exchange Commission imposes an annual [415 U.S. 345, 351] fee of $100 on each of the approximately 1100 investment advisers registered with it under the Investment Advisors Act of 1940, 15 U.S.C. [] 80b-1 et seq. See 17 C. F. R. [] 275.203-3(b). This fee was first adopted in 1972." </s> This statement covers only fees imposed under Tit. 5, 31 U.S.C. 483a, not those authorized "under more specific grants of statutory authority." [415 U.S. 345, 352] </s> MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, with whom MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN joins, concurring in the result in No. 72-1162 and dissenting in No. 72-948, ante, p. 336. </s> These cases present two distinct issues involving interpretation of the Independent Offices Appropriation Act, 1952: first, whether sufficient "work, service, . . . benefit, . . . or similar thing of value or utility" was conferred on the CATV operators or utility companies to warrant imposition of a fee under the statute; and, second, whether, if a fee was justifiably imposed, the amount of the fee was determined in accordance with a proper interpretation of the statutory standard that it be "fair and equitable taking into consideration direct and indirect cost to the Government, value to the recipient, public policy or interest served, and other pertinent facts." 31 U.S.C. 483a. </s> The Court, however, fails to recognize that these issues require independent analysis. Instead, permeating the Court's opinions on both issues is an attempt to draw metaphysical distinctions between a "fee" and a "tax." I do not find this approach either helpful or appropriate; whatever the label, the questions presented in these cases involve simply whether the charges assessed by the Commissions were authorized by Congress. The Court's approach merely beclouds its analysis, producing results which seem to me inconsistent and affording guidance to the agencies in setting their fee policies which might be charitably described as uncertain. </s> This approach is allegedly based on the need to construe the statute narrowly to avoid constitutional difficulties. I do not believe that any serious question of the constitutionality of the Act would be presented if Congress had in fact authorized these charges. The notion that the Constitution narrowly confines the power of Congress to delegate authority to administrative agencies, which was briefly in vogue in the 1930's, has [415 U.S. 345, 353] been virtually abandoned by the Court for all practical purposes, 1 at least in the absence of a delegation creating "the danger of overbroad, unauthorized, and arbitrary application of criminal sanctions in an area of [constitutionally] protected freedoms," United States v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258, 272 (1967) (BRENNAN, J., concurring). This doctrine is surely as moribund as the substantive due process approach of the same era - for which the Court is fond of writing an obituary, e. g., Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U.S. 726 (1963); North Dakota Pharmacy Board v. Snyder's Stores, 414 U.S. 156 (1973) - if not more so. It is hardly surprising that, until today's decision, [415 U.S. 345, 354] the Court had not relied upon Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935), almost since the day it was decided. 2 </s> I have no doubt - and I suspect that a majority of the Court would agree - that Congress could constitutionally authorize the Commissions to impose annual charges of the sort involved here. Surely the congressionally prescribed standards, permitting imposition of fees for work done or service or benefit provided if they are "fair and equitable" taking into account "cost to the Government, value to the recipient, [and] public policy," are sufficiently definite to withstand any conceivable delegation objection. See, e. g., Yakus v. United States, 321 U.S. 414, 423 -427 (1944); Lichter v. United States, 334 U.S. 742, 783 -786 (1948). I therefore see no reason to construe the statute in an artificially narrow way to avoid nonexistent constitutional difficulties. </s> Even on a neutral reading of the statute and its legislative history, however, I am convinced that Congress did not intend to authorize industrywide annual assessments like those at issue here. The movement in Congress to encourage Government agencies to establish fees to recover some of the costs of providing services to special beneficiaries began in 1950 with a study of the Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Branch which culminated in a report to Congress on "Fees for Special Services." S. Rep. No. 2120, 81st Cong., 2d Sess. (1950). This report concluded that fees should be charged for agency services the benefits of which accrued wholly or primarily to special interests. Id., at 3-4. In particular, the report pointed out that the FCC "renders a tremendous variety of services, a [415 U.S. 345, 355] substantial number of which would lend themselves to equitable fees." Id., at 4. The report listed the type of services for which assessment of fees would be appropriate: radio station construction permits, radio station operating licenses and renewals, authorization of assignment or transfer of licenses, radio operator licenses, and certificates of public convenience and necessity. Id., at 11. 3 </s> On the other hand, the report was careful to point out the limited nature of its recommendations. It emphasized that it was not proposing that Government regulation in general be made self-sustaining by shifting the costs to those regulated: </s> "There has been no quarrel with the philosophy governing the study that those who receive the benefit of services rendered by the Government especially for them should pay the costs thereof. In the several staff reports and press releases which have been issued, occasion has been taken to reiterate that philosophy and to give reassurance that there is no thought here to establish a system of fees for fundamental Government services, but only to explore the feasibility and fairness of shifting to special beneficiaries the expense now being borne for them by the taxpayers at large." Id., at 3. </s> These themes were reiterated during the 1951 hearings which led directly to enactment of the Independent Offices Appropriation Act, 1952. Hearings on Independent Offices Appropriations for 1952 before the Subcommittee on Independent Offices of the House Committee on Appropriations, 82d Cong., 1st Sess. (1951). The questions of the committee members reflected their [415 U.S. 345, 356] concern that the regulatory agencies were not recouping any part of the cost of services which benefited particular special interests. But it is apparent that the Committee had in mind imposition of fees for issuance of licenses, id., at 281, 681, certificates of public convenience and necessity, id., at 281, 524, and the like. And it was recognized that in the absence of this sort of special benefit, imposition of the cost of regulation on those regulated represented a different philosophical approach, as to which there had been in the past substantial resistance. Id., at 730. </s> The actual language of the Appropriation Act is quite general, and is certainly capable of varying interpretations. But the intended content of the statute's authorization of fees to be charged for "any work, service publication, report, document, benefit, privilege, authority, use, franchise, license, permit, certificate, registration or similar thing of value or utility" can be gleaned from this legislative history. When the Committee Report expressed its concern that "the Government is not receiving full return from many of the services which it renders to special beneficiaries," H. R. Rep. No. 384, 82d Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (1951), and suggested that "fees could be charged for other services" "of the type here under consideration," id., at 3, I think that it contemplated imposition of application fees, registration fees, and fees for grants of licenses, permits, or other similar authorizations. This interpretation is consistent with the statutory language, with its long enumeration of specific, readily identifiable, and discrete Commission actions for which fees can be charged. This interpretation is consistent, also, with the explanation of the statute on the floor of the House offered by Representative Yates, in which he cited the award of franchises, licenses, certificates of public convenience and necessity, and construction permits as [415 U.S. 345, 357] examples of benefits for which fees could appropriately be charged by the FCC. 97 Cong. Rec. 4809 (1951). </s> I see nothing in the legislative history which suggests any broader interpretation of the concept of "benefit" under the Act. On the contrary, since the broader view that the full cost of regulation should be assessed those subject to the agency's jurisdiction in the absence of a "special benefit" would have represented a controversial policy choice, I think that the very lack of debate over this provision of the Act and the ease with which it passed compel the more limited interpretation. The Committee Report itself noted that more "basic" changes in agency fee practice would have to await further study by congressional committees and additional legislation. H. R. Rep. No. 384, 82d Cong., 1st Sess., 2-3 (1951). </s> I therefore do not believe that the creation of an "economic climate" which fosters the growth of a regulated industry is a sufficiently specific, discrete benefit within the meaning of the Appropriation Act to justify imposition of a fee. Nor do I think that this benefit is conferred upon a sufficiently identifiable recipient to be the basis for assessment of a fee. Accordingly, I agree with the Court's construction of the Act, ante, at 349-350, and concur in the result in this case. </s> I cannot agree, however, with the result in No. 72-948, National Cable Television Assn. v. United States, ante, p. 336. In view of the Court's conclusion in No. 72-1162, I am mystified as to how the Court can reach its apparent, though completely unexplained, holding in No. 72-948 that operators of CATV systems may receive "special benefits" sufficient to sustain imposition of an annual fee under the Appropriation Act. Ante, at 343. In 1970, when the fees at issue here were established, FCC regulation of CATV was quite limited. CATV operators did not receive licenses or any similar authorization from the Commission. [415 U.S. 345, 358] Rather, their franchises were generally awarded by state authorities, to whom the CATV operators pay franchise fees. Although FCC regulations prohibited carriage of distant signals into larger television markets unless Commission authorization was obtained, 47 CFR 74.1107 (1968), 4 carriage of local signals as well as distant signals into smaller markets was permitted, unless objections were raised, without the need for approval by the Commission. 47 CFR 74.1105 (a), (c) (1968). Many of the CATV operators against whom these annual charges were assessed had no contact at all with the Commission during 1970, and some had never had any dealings with the Commission. The only other FCC regulations of CATV in 1970 pointed to by the Solicitor General are regulations which prohibit telephone companies and television broadcasters from entering the CATV field. 5 </s> In my view, the mere existence of such regulation cannot justify the annual fees imposed in this case. While these regulations may have been of some benefit to the CATV industry in a very broad sense, I regard the FCC's argument on this point as identical to the FPC's [415 U.S. 345, 359] "economic climate" argument rejected by the Court in No. 72-1162. I can see no specific benefit provided or service rendered by the Commission on the order of the grant of a license or certificate, processing of an application, or even provision of a new and useful accounting system. Nor do I believe that the benefits of FCC regulation have been conferred on any identifiable recipient; I would think this a classic case where "`the identification of the ultimate beneficiary is obscure and the services can be primarily considered as benefitting broadly the general public.'" Ante, at 350. </s> I would therefore hold that the annual fees imposed in both these cases were not authorized by the statute. But since the Court apparently holds otherwise, and goes on to discuss the standards to be applied by the FCC in setting fees under the statute, I think it appropriate to express my views on this issue. I cannot agree with the Court that the only factor which the Commission may consider in determining the amount of the fees is the "value to the recipient." The statute provides that the fee must be "fair and equitable taking into consideration direct and indirect cost to the Government, value to the recipient, public policy or interest served, and other pertinent facts." This is a perfectly clear and intelligible standard, and I see no reason why, assuming a proper occasion for imposition of a fee, the Commission is not entitled to weigh each of the statutory considerations. It may well be true that the Commission here gave undue emphasis to one of the statutory factors, "cost to the Government." But the Court's response, to require that undue, seemingly exclusive reliance be placed on the standard of "value to the recipient" is, in my opinion, equally erroneous. It is also quite unrealistic and unworkable: How is the Commission to determine whether to set the fee at 1%, 5%, or 50% of the "value to the [415 U.S. 345, 360] recipient" unless it is also free to consider such other factors as "cost to the Government" and "public policy"? </s> I would leave the Commission free to consider all the statutory standards in setting its fees. Certainly the Commission should be free to consider "cost to the Government," 6 as well as the statutory mandate that the Commission "be self-sustaining to the full extent possible." It could not be clearer, from the language of the statute and from its genesis, that Congress intended these factors to be considered by the Commissions in setting their fee schedules. If the Court seriously believes that this somehow presents a substantial constitutional problem, then the constitutional issue should be squarely faced and resolved; it should not be permitted to justify the Court's rewriting of the statute contrary to congressional intent. </s> I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals in No. 72-1162 and reverse the judgment in No. 72-948. </s> [Footnote 1 "Lawyers who try to win cases by arguing that congressional delegations are unconstitutional almost invariably do more harm than good to their clients' interests. Unrealistic verbiage in some of the older judicial opinions should not now be taken seriously. The effective law is in accord with a 1940 statement of the Supreme Court: `Delegation by Congress has long been recognized as necessary in order that the exertion of legislative power does not become a futility.' [Sunshine Anthracite Coal Co. v. Adkins, 310 U.S. 381, 398 (1940).] Much of the judicial talk about requirement of standards is contrary to the action the Supreme Court takes when delegations are made without standards. The vaguest of standards are held adequate, and various delegations without standards have been upheld. . . . </s> "In only two cases in all American history have congressional delegations to public authorities been held invalid. Neither delegation was to a regularly constituted administrative agency which followed an established procedure designed to afford the customary safeguards to affected parties. The Panama case [Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U.S. 388 (1935)] was influenced by exceptional executive disorganization and in absence of such a special factor would not be followed today. The Schechter case [Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935)] involved excessive delegation of the kind that Congress is not likely again to make. . . . </s> "In absence of palpable abuse or true congressional abdication, the non-delegation doctrine to which the Supreme Court has in the past often paid lip service is without practical force." 1 K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise 2.01 (1958) (footnotes omitted). </s> [Footnote 2 The last time that the Court relied upon Schechter Poultry was in Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238 (1936). </s> [Footnote 3 Similarly, as to the Federal Power Commission, the report suggested that fees could be charged for issuance of licenses and certificates of public convenience. Id., at 12. </s> [Footnote 4 It would seem clear that fees could appropriately be imposed under the Appropriation Act in connection with application for or issuance of such Commission authorization. However, no such fees are at issue in this case. </s> [Footnote 5 Extensive new regulations of CATV were promulgated in 1972. 37 Fed. Reg. 3280 (Feb. 12, 1972). These regulations prescribe in considerable detail the provisions of franchises granted by local authorities to CATV operators, and also limit the franchise fees which may be charged by the localities in which CATV stations operate. Most important for present purposes, the new regulations also provide that a CATV operator must obtain an FCC certificate of compliance before commencing operations; existing cable systems must obtain a certificate of compliance by March 31, 1977. 47 CFR 76.11 (b) (1973). While these new regulations will undoubtedly affect the question of the permissibility of fees imposed for future years, they cannot retroactively validate fees imposed for 1970. </s> [Footnote 6 In my view, "cost to the Government" comprehends the cost of FCC regulation of the industry as well as the cost of processing a specific application. While the existence of such regulation is not itself sufficient under the present statute to sustain imposition of a fee, it will often be beneficial to the industry - as the Government's "economic climate" argument suggests - and will play a role in enhancing the "value to the recipient" of the license or other authorization. It is therefore neither unreasonable nor inconsistent with the statutory intent that the contribution of this regulation be considered. </s> [415 U.S. 345, 361]

United States Supreme Court WEINBERGER v. HYNSON, WESTCOTT & DUNNING(1973) No. 72-394 Argued: April 17, 1973Decided: June 18, 1973 </s> The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, as amended in 1962, establishes a system of premarketing clearance for drugs and prohibits in 505 (a) the introduction into commerce of any "new drug" unless a new drug application (NDA) filed with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was effective with respect to such drug. Under the Act procedures were established for filing "new drug" applications not only for the safety of drugs but for their efficacy as well. Standards were provided under which, after notice and hearing, FDA could refuse to allow an NDA to become effective, or could suspend an NDA in effect on the basis of new evidence that the drug was not effective. FDA is directed to refuse approval of an NDA and to withdraw prior approval if "substantial evidence" ( 505 (d)) that the drug is effective for its intended use is lacking. All NDA's "effective" prior to 1962 were deemed "approved" and manufacturers were given two years to develop substantial evidence of effectiveness during which previously approved NDA's could not be withdrawn by FDA for the drug's lack of effectiveness. The 1962 Act also contained a "grandfather" clause exempting from the effectiveness requirements any drug which on the day preceding enactment (1) was commercially used or sold in the United States, (2) was not a "new drug" as defined in the 1938 Act, and (3) "was not covered by an effective application" for a new drug under the 1938 Act. FDA had permitted more than 9,000 NDA's to become effective between 1938 and 1962, of which some 4,000 were still on the market. Additionally, manufacturers have marketed thousands of "me-too" drugs without applying for clearance, drugs similar or identical to drugs with effective NDA's, marketed in reliance on [412 U.S. 609, 610] the "pioneer" drug application approved by FDA. To aid it in fulfilling the statutory mandate to review all marketed drugs, whether or not previously approved, for their efficacy, FDA retained the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (NAS-NRC) to create expert panels to review by class the efficacy of each approved drug. Holders of NDA's were invited to furnish the panels with the best available data to establish efficacy and FDA announced that it would apply NAS-NRC efficacy findings to all drugs, including the "me-too" drugs. Respondent in No. 72-394 (Hynson) had filed an application for a drug called Lutrexin under the 1938 Act. FDA informed Hynson that the studies submitted with the application were not sufficiently well controlled to justify the claims of effectiveness, but allowed the application to become effective since the 1938 Act permitted evaluation of a new drug solely on the basis of its safety. When the 1962 amendments became effective Hynson submitted evidence of the efficacy of the drug, but the NAS-NRC panel reported that Hynson had not satisfied the requirements. Notice of an intention to withdraw approval of the NDA's covering the drug was given by the Commissioner of Food and Drugs. Before the hearing, Hynson brought suit in the District Court for a declaratory judgment that the drug was exempt from the efficacy review provisions of the 1962 Act, or that there was no lack of substantial evidence of the drug's efficacy. Petitioners' motion to dismiss was granted. While the District Court litigation was pending, the Commissioner denied Hynson's request for a hearing based on claims of "substantial evidence" of Lutrexin's effectiveness, and withdrew the NDA for the drug, ruling that it was not exempt from the 1962 amendments and that Hynson had not submitted adequate evidence that the drug was not a new drug or was effective. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that while the drug was not exempt, Hynson was entitled to a hearing on the substantial-evidence issue. No. 72-414 is a cross-petition by Hynson from the judgment of the Court of Appeals, which suggested that only a district court has authority to determine whether Lutrexin is a "new drug." While Hynson agrees that the Commissioner has authority to determine new drug status in proceedings to withdraw approval of the product's NDA, some manufacturers, parties to other suits in this group of cases, advance the contrary view. Held: </s> 1. The 1962 amendments and the regulations issued thereunder, which express well-established principles of scientific investigation, [412 U.S. 609, 611] in their reduction of the "substantial evidence" standard to detailed guidelines for the protection of the public, make FDA's so-called administrative summary judgment procedure appropriate. Pp. 617-619. </s> 2. FDA's procedure, whereby it will not provide a formal hearing when it is apparent at the threshold that the applicant has not tendered any evidence which on its face meets the statutory standards as particularized by the regulations, is valid. United States v. Storer Broadcasting Co., 351 U.S. 192 ; FPC v. Texaco, 377 U.S. 33 . Pp. 620-622. </s> 3. In No. 72-394, the Court of Appeals' holding that Hynson was entitled to a hearing on whether its submission of evidence satisfied its threshold burden of providing "substantial evidence" is affirmed. Pp. 622-623. </s> 4. The heart of the statutory procedure is the grant of primary jurisdiction to FDA, subject to judicial review when administrative remedies are exhausted. Pp. 623-627. </s> 5. Although a drug can be "generally recognized" by experts as effective for intended use within the meaning of the Act only when that expert consensus is founded upon "substantial evidence," any ruling on Lutrexin's "new drug" status is premature, and must await the outcome of the hearing on whether Hynson submitted "substantial evidence," as held in No. 72-394 (item 3, supra). Pp. 628-632. </s> 6. Lutrexin is not exempt under the "grandfather" provisions of the 1962 Act, as held by FDA and the Court of Appeals, and their construction accords with the legislative history which suggests that the exemption is afforded only for drugs that never had been subject to new drug regulation. Pp. 632-634. </s> 461 F.2d 215, affirmed as modified. </s> DOUGLAS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and WHITE, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. POWELL, J., filed an opinion concurring in the result as to Part I and joining in Part II of the Court's opinion, post, p. 637. BRENNAN, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the cases. STEWART, J., took no part in the decision of the cases. </s> [Footnote * Together with No. 72-414, Hynson, Westcott & Dunning, Inc. v. Weinberger, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, et al., also on certiorari to the same court. </s> Deputy Solicitor General Friedman and Andrew L. Frey argued the cause for petitioners in No. 72-394 and respondents in No. 72-414. With Mr. Frey on the briefs were Solicitor General Griswold, Assistant Attorney General [412 U.S. 609, 612] Kauper, Deputy Solicitor General Wallace, Robert B. Nicholson, Howard E. Shapiro, and Peter Barton Hutt. </s> Edward Brown Williams argued the cause for petitioner in No. 72-414 and respondent in No. 72-394. With him on the briefs was Jan Edward Williams.Fn </s> Fn [412 U.S. 609, 612] Briefs of amici curiae in both cases were filed by Lloyd N. Cutler, Daniel Marcus, and William T. Lake for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Assn.: by Bruce J. Terris, Joseph Onck, and Peter II. Schuck for American Public Health Assn. et al.: and by Thomas D. Finney. Jr., Thomas Richard Spradlin, and Daniel F. O'Keefe, Jr., for the Proprietary Assn. Briefs of amici curiae in No. 72-394 were filed by Alan II. Kaplan for E. R. Squibb & Sens, Inc., and by Robert L. Wald, Selma M. Levine, Joel E. Hoffman, Philip Elman, and Philip J. Franks for USV Pharmaceutical Corp. </s> MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> These cases, together with Weinberger v. Bentex Pharmaceuticals, Inc., post, p. 645, CIBA Corp. v. Weinberger, post, p. 640, and USV Pharmaceutical Corp. v. Weinberger, post, p. 655, all here on certiorari, raise a series of questions under the 1962 amendments 1 to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 1040. The 1938 Act, which established a system of premarketing clearance for drugs, prohibited the introduction into commerce of any "new drug" unless a new drug application (NDA) filed with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 2 was effective with respect to that drug. 505 (a), 52 Stat. 1052. Under the 1938 Act a "new drug" [412 U.S. 609, 613] was one not generally recognized by qualified experts as safe for its intended use. 201 (p) (1). The Government could sue to enjoin violations, prosecute criminally, and seize and condemn the articles. 301 (d), 302 (a), 303, 304. The Act established procedures for filing NDA's, 505 (b), and provided standards under which, after notice and hearing, FDA could refuse to allow an NDA to become effective, 505 (c) and (d), or could suspend an NDA in effect on the basis of new evidence that the drug was unsafe. 505 (e). Orders denying or suspending an NDA could be reviewed in a district court on the administrative record. 505 (h). </s> The 1962 Act amended 201 (p) (1) of the 1938 Act to define a "new drug" as a drug not generally recognized among experts as effective as well as safe for its intended use. 21 U.S.C. 321 (p) (1). A new drug, as now defined, still may not be marketed unless an NDA is in effect. FDA is now directed to refuse approval of an NDA and to withdraw any prior approval if "substantial evidence" 3 that the drug is effective for its intended use is lacking. 21 U.S.C. 355 (d) and (e). Thus, the basic clearance system, requiring FDA approval of an NDA before a "new drug" may be lawfully marketed, was continued, except that FDA now either must approve or disapprove an application within 180 days. 21 U.S.C. 355 (c). (Under the 1938 Act an application automatically became effective if it was not disapproved.) Judicial review was transferred to the courts of appeals. 21 U.S.C. 355 (h). [412 U.S. 609, 614] </s> Since the Act as amended requires affirmative agency approval, all NDA's "effective" prior to 1962 were deemed "approved" under the new definition, and manufacturers were given two years to develop substantial evidence of effectiveness, during which previously approved NDA's could not be withdrawn by FDA for a drug's lack of effectiveness. 4 The 1962 amendments also contain a "grandfather" clause exempting from the effectiveness requirements any drug which on the day preceding enactment (1) was commercially used or sold in the United States, (2) was not a "new drug" as defined in the 1938 Act (it being generally recognized as safe), and (3) "was not covered by an effective application" for a new drug under the 1938 Act. 5 </s> Between 1938 and 1962 FDA had permitted 9,457 NDA's to become effective. Of these, some 4,000 were still on the market. In addition, there were thousands of drugs which manufacturers had marketed without applying to FDA for clearance. These drugs, known as "me-toos," are similar to or identical with drugs with effective NDA's and are marketed in reliance on the "pioneer" drug application approved by FDA. In some cases, a manufacturer obtained an advisory opinion letter from FDA that its product was generally recognized among experts as safe. </s> To aid in its task of fulfilling the statutory mandate to review all marketed drugs for their therapeutic efficacy, whether or not previously approved, FDA retained the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (NAS-NRC) to create expert panels to review by class the efficacy of each approved drug. Holders of NDA's were invited to furnish the panels with [412 U.S. 609, 615] the best available data to establish the effectiveness of their drugs. 6 The panels reported to FDA; and on January 23, 1968, FDA announced its policy of applying the NAS-NRC efficacy findings to all drugs, including the related "me-too" drugs. 7 </s> I </s> Respondent in No. 72-394, Hynson, Westcott & Dunning, Inc., had filed an application under the 1938 Act for a drug called Lutrexin, recommended by Hynson for use in the treatment of premature labor, threatened and habitual abortion, and dysmenorrhea. FDA informed Hynson that Hynson's studies submitted with the application were not sufficiently well controlled to justify the claims of effectiveness and urged Hynson not to represent the drug as useful for threatened and habitual abortion. But FDA allowed the application to become effective, since the 1938 Act permitted evaluation of a new drug solely on the grounds of its safety. Before the 1962 amendments Hynson filed an application for a related drug which FDA, again on the basis of the test of safety, allowed to become effective. When the 1962 amendments became effective and NAS-NRC undertook to appraise the efficacy of drugs theretofore approved as safe, Hynson submitted a list of literature references, a copy of an unpublished study, and a representative sample testimonial letter on behalf of Lutrexin. The panel of NAS-NRC [412 U.S. 609, 616] working in the relevant field reported to FDA that Hynson's claims for effectiveness of the drug were either inappropriate or unwarranted in the absence of submission of further appropriate documentation. At the invitation of the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, Hynson submitted additional data. But the Commissioner concluded that this additional information was inadequate and published notice of his intention to withdraw approval of the NDA's covering the drug, offering Hynson the opportunity for a prewithdrawal hearing. Before the hearing could take place, Hynson brought suit in the District Court for a declaratory judgment that the drugs in question were exempt from the efficacy review provisions of the 1962 amendments or, alternatively, that there was no lack of substantial evidence of the drug's efficacy. The Government's motion to dismiss was granted, the District Court ruling that FDA had primary jurisdiction and that Hynson had failed to exhaust its administrative remedies. </s> While the District Court litigation was pending, FDA promulgated new regulations establishing minimal standards for "adequate and well-controlled investigations" and limiting the right to a hearing to those applicants who could proffer at least some evidence meeting those standards. 8 Although Hynson maintained that it was not subject to the new regulations because its initial request for a hearing predated their issuance, it renewed its request and submitted the material which it claimed constituted "substantial evidence" of Lutrexin's effectiveness. The Commissioner denied the request for a hearing and withdrew the NDA for Lutrexin. He ruled that Lutrexin is not exempt from the 1962 amendments and that Hynson had not submitted adequate evidence that Lutrexin is not a new drug or is effective. The Court [412 U.S. 609, 617] of Appeals reversed, 461 F.2d 215, holding that while the drug in question was not exempt, Hynson was entitled to a hearing on the substantial-evidence question. </s> Section 505 (e) 9 directs FDA to withdraw approval of an NDA if the manufacturer fails to carry the burden of showing there is "substantial evidence" 10 respecting the efficacy of the drug. As the Court of Appeals says, "substantial evidence" was substituted for "preponderance" of the evidence. 461 F.2d, at 220. The Act and the Regulations, in their reduction of that standard to detailed guidelines, 11 make FDA's so-called administrative summary judgment procedure appropriate. </s> The general contours of "substantial evidence" are defined by 505 (d) of the Act to include "evidence consisting of adequate and well-controlled investigations, including clinical investigations, by experts qualified by scientific training and experience to evaluate the effectiveness of the drug involved, on the basis of which it could fairly and responsibly be concluded by such experts that the drug will have the effect it purports or is represented to have under the conditions of use prescribed, recommended, or suggested in the labeling or proposed labeling thereof." 21 U.S.C. 355 (d). Acting pursuant [412 U.S. 609, 618] to his "authority to promulgate regulations for the efficient enforcement" of the Act, 701 (a), 21 U.S.C. 371 (a), the Commissioner has detailed the "principles . . . recognized by the scientific community as the essentials of adequate and well-controlled clinical investigations. They provide the basis for the determination whether there is `substantial evidence' to support the claims of effectiveness for `new drugs'. . . ." 21 CFR 130.12 (a) (5) (ii). They include a "plan or protocol" setting forth the objective of the study and an adequate method for selecting appropriate subjects, 12 explaining the methods of observation and steps taken to minimize bias, providing a comparison by one of four "recognized" methods of the results of treatment or diagnosis with a control, and summarizing the methods of analysis, including any appropriate statistical methods. Id., 130.12 (a) (5) (ii) (a). No investigation will be considered "adequate for approval of a new drug" unless the test drug is "standardized as to identity, strength, quality, purity, and dosage form to give significance to the results of the investigation." Id., 130.12 (a) (5) (ii) (b). Finally, the regulation provides that "[u]ncontrolled studies or partially controlled studies are not acceptable as the sole basis for the approval of claims of effectiveness. Such studies, carefully conducted and documented, may provide corroborative support . . . . Isolated case reports, random experience, and reports lacking the details which permit scientific evaluation will not be considered." Id., 130.12 (a) (5) (ii) (c). </s> Lower courts have upheld the validity of these regulations, 13 </s> [412 U.S. 609, 619] and it is not disputed here that they express well-established principles of scientific investigation. Moreover, their strict and demanding standards, barring anecdotal evidence indicating that doctors "believe" in the efficacy of a drug, are amply justified by the legislative history. The hearings underlying the 1962 Act show a marked concern that impressions or beliefs of physicians, no matter how fervently held, are treacherous. 14 Congress in its definition of "substantial evidence" in 505 (d) wrote the requirement of "evidence consisting of adequate and well-controlled investigations." The Senate Report makes clear that an abrupt departure was being taken from old norms for marketing drugs. There had been mounting concern over efficacy of drugs as well as their safety. 15 The Report stated: 16 </s> "[A] claim could be rejected if it were found (a) that the investigations were not `adequate'; (b) that they were not `well controlled'; (c) that they had been conducted by experts not qualified to evaluate the effectiveness of the drug for which the application is made; or (d) that the conclusions [412 U.S. 609, 620] drawn by such experts could not fairly and responsibly be derived from their investigations." </s> To be sure, the Act requires FDA to give "due notice and opportunity for hearing to the applicant" before it can withdraw its approval of an NDA. 505 (e), 21 U.S.C. 355 (e). FDA, however, by regulation, requires any applicant who desires a hearing to submit reasons "why the application . . . should not be withdrawn, together with a well-organized and full-factual analysis of the clinical and other investigational data he is prepared to prove in support of his opposition to the notice of opportunity for a hearing. . . . When it clearly appears from the data in the application and from the reasons and factual analysis in the request for the hearing that there is no genuine and substantial issue of fact . . . . e. g., no adequate and well-controlled clinical investigations to support the claims of effectiveness," the Commissioner may deny a hearing and enter an order withdrawing the application based solely on these data. 21 CFR 130.14 (b). What the agency has said, then, is that it will not provide a formal hearing where it is apparent at the threshold that the applicant has not tendered any evidence which on its face meets the statutory standards as particularized by the regulations. </s> The propriety of such a procedure was decided in United States v. Storer Broadcasting Co., 351 U.S. 192, 205 , and FPC v. Texaco, 377 U.S. 33, 39 . We said in Texaco: </s> "[T]he statutory requirement for a hearing under 7 [of the Natural Gas Act] does not preclude the Commission from particularizing statutory standards through the rulemaking process and barring at the threshold those who neither measure up to them nor show reasons why in the public interest the rule should be waived." Ibid. [412 U.S. 609, 621] </s> There can be no question that to prevail at a hearing an applicant must furnish evidence stemming from "adequate and well-controlled investigations." We cannot impute to Congress the design of requiring, nor does due process demand, a hearing when it appears conclusively from the applicant's "pleadings" that the application cannot succeed. 17 </s> The NAS-NRC panels evaluated approximately 16,500 claims made on behalf of the 4,000 drugs marketed pursuant to effective NDA's in 1962. Seventy percent of these claims were found not to be supported by substantial evidence of effectiveness, and only 434 drugs were found effective for all their claimed uses. If FDA were required automatically to hold a hearing for each product whose efficacy was questioned by the NAS-NRC study, even though many hearings would be an exercise in futility, we have no doubt that it could not fulfill its statutory mandate to remove from the market all those drugs which do not meet the effectiveness requirements of the Act. [412 U.S. 609, 622] </s> If this were a case involving trial by jury as provided in the Seventh Amendment, there would be sharper limitations on the use of summary judgment, 18 as our decisions reveal. See, e. g., Adickes v. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 153 -161; White Motor Co. v. United States, 372 U.S. 253 . But Congress surely has great leeway in setting standards for releasing on the public, drugs which may well be miracles or, on the other hand, merely easy money-making schemes through use of fraudulent articles labeled in mysterious scientific dress. The standard of "well-controlled investigations" particularized by the regulations is a protective measure designed to ferret out those drugs for which there is no affirmative, reliable evidence of effectiveness. The drug manufacturers have full and precise notice of the evidence they must present to sustain their NDA's, and under these circumstances we find FDA hearing regulations unexceptionable on any statutory or constitutional ground. </s> Our conclusion that the summary judgment procedure of FDA is valid does not end the matter, for Hynson argues that its submission to FDA satisfied its threshold burden. In reviewing an order of the Commissioner denying a hearing, a court of appeals must determine whether the Commissioner's findings accurately reflect the study in question and if they do, whether the deficiencies he finds conclusively render the study inadequate or uncontrolled in light of the pertinent regulations. 19 </s> [412 U.S. 609, 623] There is a contrariety of opinion within the Court concerning the adequacy of Hynson's submission. Since a majority are of the view that the submission was sufficient to warrant a hearing, we affirm the Court of Appeals on that phase of the case. </s> II </s> No. 72-414 is a cross-petition by Hynson from the judgment of the Court of Appeals. This cross-petition raises questions concerning the "new drug" provisions of the 1962 amendments. The Court of Appeals suggested that only a district court has authority to determine whether Lutrexin is a "new drug." The Government contends that the Commissioner has authority to determine new drug status in proceedings to withdraw approval of the product's NDA under 505 (e). Although Hynson agrees, some of the manufacturers, parties to other suits in this group of cases, advance the contrary view. </s> Prior to 1938 there was no machinery for the premarketing approval of drugs sold in commerce. Under the 1906 Act, 34 Stat. 768, adulterated and misbranded drugs were narrowly defined, and the Act provided only criminal sanctions and seizure by libel for condemnation. As previously noted, the 1938 Act provided for regulatory clearance of drugs prior to marketing and for administrative suspension of any clearance if required in the interests of public safety. To introduce a new drug an application had to be effective with respect to that drug. The application was to become effective within a fixed period unless the agency after notice and opportunity for hearing refused to permit it to become effective, finding that [412 U.S. 609, 624] it could not determine from existing evidence or had not been shown that it was safe. 52 Stat. 1041-1042, 1052. Any NDA could be suspended if clinical experience or new testing showed that the drug was not safe. Id., at 1053. Orders denying or suspending an NDA were reviewable on the administrative record in a district court. Ibid. Marketing a new drug without an effective NDA could be enjoined or made the basis of a criminal prosecution, or the drug could be seized in libel and condemnation proceedings. </s> There was a steady stream of NDA's under that Act supported by voluminous data. 20 Many new drugs claiming "me-too" status were marketed illegally or were launched with an advisory opinion of FDA that they were recognized as safe. It is estimated that by 1969 there were five identical or similar drugs for every drug with an effective NDA. Enormous administrative problems were created. Each NDA contained about 30 volumes, a stack 10 to 12 feet high; and some contained as many as 400 volumes of data. </s> It is clear to us that FDA has power to determine whether particular drugs require an approved NDA in order to be sold to the public. FDA is indeed the administrative agency selected by Congress to administer the Act, and it cannot administer the Act intelligently and rationally unless it has authority to determine what drugs are "new drugs" under 201 (p) and whether they are exempt from the efficacy requirements of the 1962 amendments by the grandfather clause of 107 (c) (4). </s> Regulatory agencies have by the requirements of particular statutes usually proceeded on a case-by-case basis, giving each person subject to regulation separate hearings. [412 U.S. 609, 625] But there is not always a constitutional reason why that must be done. United States v. Storer Broad-casting Co., 351 U.S. 192 , is one example. We there upheld rules of the Federal Communications Commission limiting the number of broadcasting stations a single individual might own, saying that was a proper exercise of the agency's "rule-making authority necessary for the orderly conduct of its business." Id., at 202. The comprehensive, rather than the individual, treatment may indeed be necessary for quick effective relief. See Permian Basin Area Rate Cases, 390 U.S. 747 . A generic drug - which is found to be unsafe and/or lacking in efficacy - may be manufactured by several persons or manufacturers. To require separate judicial proceedings to be brought against each, as if each were the owner of a Black Acre being condemned, would be to create delay where in the interests of public health there should be prompt action. A single administrative proceeding in which each manufacturer may be heard is constitutionally permissible measured by the requirements of procedural due process. </s> FDA maintains that a withdrawal of any NDA approval covers all "me-too" drugs. For the reasons stated, that procedure is a permissible one where every manufacturer of a challenged drug has an opportunity to be heard. FDA under 554 of the Administrative Procedure Act may issue a declaratory order governing all drugs covered by a particular NDA. 5 U.S.C. 554 (e). That section prescribes the procedures an agency must follow "in every case of adjudication required by statute to be determined on the record after opportunity for an agency hearing." 554 (a). The industry maintains that 554 (e) is of no avail to FDA because in a withdrawal proceeding a common issue is whether a drug is a "new drug." That issue, it is argued, can be resolved only in a court proceeding where there is an adjudication [412 U.S. 609, 626] "on the record of [a] hearing." But that assumes an individualized hearing and adjudication as is common in regulatory proceedings. Section 554 (e), however, does not place administrative proceedings in that straitjacket. It provides that an agency "in its sound discretion, may issue a declaratory order to terminate a controversy or remove uncertainty." The termination of a controversy over a "new drug" may often be of prime importance. This is an age of ever-expanding dockets at the administrative as well as at the judicial level. If the administrative controls over drugs are to be efficient, they must be exercised with dispatch. Only paralysis would result if case-by-case battles in the courts were the only way to protect the public against unsafe or ineffective drugs. Moreover, if every "me-too" drug in a particular generic category had to be put to the test in court actions, great inequities might well result. It might take months to eliminate one "me-too" drug manufactured by one company from the market. Meanwhile, competitors selling drugs in the same category would go scot-free until the tedious and laborious procedures of litigation reached them. We cannot believe that Congress engaged in such an exercise in futility when it enacted the 1962 amendments. That would in effect restore the enforcement provisions to the status they enjoyed under the rather primitive 1906 Act. We hold that FDA by reasons of 554 (e) of the Administrative Procedure Act may issue a declaratory order to terminate a controversy over a "new drug" or to remove any uncertainty whether a particular drug is a "new drug" within the meaning of 201 (p) (1) of the 1938 Act. See Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136 . </s> It is argued, however, that the only lawful purpose of an FDA hearing is to allow it a method for determining which lawsuits it will file in the future. Yet that is only another version of the tactics of delay and procrastination [412 U.S. 609, 627] which the industry offers as the way best to serve industry's needs. The public needs are, however, opposed and paramount. We do not accept the invitation to hold that FDA has no jurisdiction to determine whether a particular drug is a "new drug" and to decide whether an NDA should be withdrawn. </s> Its determination that a product is a "new drug" or a "me-too" drug is, of course, reviewable. But its jurisdiction to determine whether it has jurisdiction is as essential to its effective operation as is a court's like power. Cf. United States v. Shipp, 203 U.S. 563, 573 . The heart of the new procedures designed by Congress is the grant of primary jurisdiction to FDA, the expert agency it created. FDA does not have the final say, for review may be had, not in a district court (except in a limited group of cases we will discuss), but in a court of appeals. FDA does not have unbridled discretion to do what it pleases. Its procedures must satisfy the rudiments of fair play. Judicial relief is available only after administrative remedies have been exhausted. </s> It is argued that though FDA is empowered to decide the threshold question whether the drug is a "new drug," that power is only an incident to its power to approve or withdraw approval of NDA's. Some manufacturers, however, have no NDA's in effect and are not seeking approval of any drugs. Nevertheless, FDA may make a declaratory order that a drug is a "new drug." While that order is not reviewable by the court of appeals under 505 (h), it is reviewable by the district court under the Administrative Procedure Act. 5 U.S.C. 701-704; Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, 401 U.S. 402, 410 ; Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, supra, at 139-148. By analogy an agency order declaring a commodity not exempt from regulation is normally a declaratory order that is reviewable, as we held in Frozen Food Express v. United States, 351 U.S. 40 . [412 U.S. 609, 628] </s> The question then presented is whether FDA properly exercised its jurisdiction in this instance. As indicated above, Hynson in requesting an administrative hearing also asked FDA to decide that Lutrexin is not a "new drug" within the meaning of 201 (p) as amended, 21 U.S.C. 321 (p). 21 In addition, it asked that Lutrexin be "grandfathered" under 107 (c) (4) of the 1962 amendments. 22 The Commissioner rejected both claims. Finding that Hynson had failed to present any evidence of adequate and well-controlled investigations in support [412 U.S. 609, 629] of Lutrexin's effectiveness, he concluded that "there is no data base upon which experts can fairly and responsibly conclude that the safety and effectiveness of the drugs has been proven and is so well established that the drugs can be generally recognized among such experts as safe and effective for their intended uses." The Commissioner also held that Lutrexin is not exempt under 107 (c) (4) because its NDA, which had become effective in 1953, had not been withdrawn prior to the enactment of the 1962 amendments and thus was "covered by an effective application" within the meaning of 107 (c) (4) (C). The Court of Appeals affirmed the Commissioner's ruling that Lutrexin is not exempt under 107 (c) (4). It did not discuss his holding that Lutrexin currently is a "new drug." Although we agree that the Commissioner properly ruled that Lutrexin does not come within 107 (c) (4), we conclude that the Commissioner's order with respect to Lutrexin's "new drug" status must be vacated. </s> The thrust of 201 (p) is both qualitative and quantitative. The Act, however, nowhere defines what constitutes "general recognition" among experts. Hynson contends that the "lack of substantial evidence" is applicable only to proof of the actual effectiveness of drugs that fall within the definition of a new drug and not to the initial determination under 201 (p) whether a drug is "generally recognized" as effective. It would rely solely on the testimony of physicians and the extant literature, evidence that has been characterized as "anecdotal." We agree with FDA, however, that the statutory scheme and overriding purpose of the 1962 amendments compel the conclusion that the hurdle of "general recognition" of effectiveness requires at least "substantial evidence" of effectiveness for approval of an NDA. In the absence of any evidence of adequate and well-controlled investigation supporting the efficacy of Lutrexin, a fortiori [412 U.S. 609, 630] Lutrexin would be a "new drug" subject to the provisions of the Act. 23 </s> As noted, the 1962 amendments for the first time gave FDA power to scrutinize and evaluate drugs for effectiveness as well as safety. The Act requires the Commissioner to disapprove any application when there is a lack of "substantial evidence" that the applicant's drug is effective. 505 (d), 21 U.S.C. 355 (d). Similarly, he may withdraw approval for any drug if he subsequently determines that there is a lack of such evidence. 505 (e), 21 U.S.C. 355 (e). Evidence may be accepted only if it consists of "adequate and well-controlled investigations, including clinical investigations, by experts qualified by scientific training and experience to evaluate the effectiveness of the drug involved . . . ." 505 (d), 21 U.S.C. 355 (d). The legislative history of the Act indicates that the test was to be rigorous one. The "substantial evidence" requirements reflects the conclusion of Congress, based upon hearings, 24 that clinical impressions of practicing physicians and poorly controlled experiments do not constitute an adequate basis for establishing efficacy. This policy underlies the regulations defining the contours of "substantial evidence": "Uncontrolled studies or partially controlled studies are not acceptable as the sole basis for the approval of claims of effectiveness. Such studies, carefully conducted and documented, may provide corroborative support of well-controlled studies . . . . Isolated case reports, random experience, and reports lacking the details which permit scientific evaluation will not be considered." 21 CFR 130.12 (a) (5) (ii) (c). [412 U.S. 609, 631] </s> These efficacy requirements were not designed to be prospective only. Clearly, after the initial two-year moratorium on existing drugs, FDA has the power to withdraw an application which became effective prior to the adoption of the 1962 amendments, if the applicant has not provided "substantial evidence" of the drug's efficacy. The Act plainly contemplates that such drugs will be evaluated on the basis of adequate and wellcontrolled investigations. Hynson would have us hold that withdrawal proceedings can be thwarted by a showing of general recognition of effectiveness based merely on expert testimony and reports with respect to investigations and clinical observation regardless of the controls used. But, we cannot construe 201 (p) to deprive FDA of jurisdiction over a drug which, if subject to FDA regulation, could not be marketed because it had not passed the "substantial evidence" test. To do so "would be to impute to Congress a purpose to paralyze with one hand what it sought to promote with the other." Clark v. Uebersee Finanz-Korp., 332 U.S. 480 ,489. </s> Moreover, the interpretation of 201 (p) urged by Hynson is not consistent with the statutory scheme as it operates on a purely prospective basis. Under subsection (2), a drug cannot transcend "new drug" status until it has been used "to a material extent or for a material time." Yet, a drug cannot be marketed lawfully before an NDA has been approved by the Commissioner on the basis of "substantial evidence." As the Solicitor General argues, "the Act is designed so that drugs on the market, unless exempt, will have mustered the requisite scientifically reliable evidence of effectiveness long before they are in a position to drop out of active regulation by ceasing to be a `new drug.'" </s> It is well established that our task in interpreting separate provisions of a single Act is to give the Act "the most harmonious, comprehensive meaning possible" in [412 U.S. 609, 632] light of the legislative policy and purpose. Clark v. Uebersee Finanz-Korp., supra, at 488; see United States v. Bacto-Unidisk, 394 U.S. 784, 798 . We accordingly have concluded that a drug can be "generally recognized" by experts as effective for intended use within the meaning of the Act only when that expert consensus is founded upon "substantial evidence" as defined in 505 (d). We have held in No. 72-394, however, that the Commissioner was not justified in withdrawing Hynson's NDA without a prior hearing on whether Hynson had submitted "substantial evidence" of Lutrexin's effectiveness. Consequently, any ruling as to Lutrexin's "new drug" status is premature and must await the outcome of this hearing. </s> Finally, we cannot agree with Hynson that Lutrexin is exempt from the provisions of the Act by virtue of 107 (c) (4) of the 1962 amendments. That section provides that no drug will be treated as a "new drug" if, on the day preceding the adoption of the amendments, the drug "(A) was commercially used or sold in the United States, (B) was not a new drug as defined by section 201 (p) of the basic Act as then in force, and (C) was not covered by an effective application under section 505 of that Act . . . ." The applicability of this section turns solely on whether Lutrexin was "covered" by an effective NDA immediately prior to the adoption of the 1962 amendments. Hynson argues that when Lutrexin became generally recognized as safe and was no longer a "new drug," its NDA ceased to be effective. 25 </s> [412 U.S. 609, 633] </s> That argument draws no statutory support. The 1938 Act did not provide any mechanism other than the Commissioner's suspension authority under 505 (e), whereby an NDA once effective could cease to be effective. Indeed, 505 (e) leads to the conclusion that an NDA remains effective unless it is suspended. That section empowers FDA to withdraw approval of an NDA whenever new evidence comes to light suggesting that the drug has become unsafe, whether or not the drug was generally recognized as safe in the interim. </s> Moreover, Hynson's argument, as the Court of Appeals recognized, would render clause (C) superfluous. Under Hynson's reasoning, any drug that could satisfy clause (B) - i. e., any drug that had become generally recognized as safe - automatically would satisfy clause (C). This construction, therefore, offends the wellsettled rule of statutory construction that all parts of a statute, if at all possible, are to be given effect. See, e. g., Jarecki v. G. D. Searle & Co., 367 U.S. 303, 307 ; Ginsberg & Sons v. Popkin, 285 U.S. 204, 208 . The [412 U.S. 609, 634] interpretation accorded by the Commissioner and the Court of Appeals, on the other hand, does give clause (C) operative effect. It would limit the exemption to drugs, generally recognized as safe, which had not come under the blanket of an effective NDA. This interpretation accords with the legislative history which suggests that the exemption is afforded only for drugs that never had been subject to new drug regulation. 26 </s> Except for the modification with respect to Lutrexin's "new drug" status, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is </s> Affirmed. </s> MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases. MR. JUSTICE STEWART took no part in the decision of these cases. </s> APPENDIX TO OPINION OF THE COURT </s> Title 21 CFR 130.12 (a) (5) provides: </s> (ii) The following principles have been developed over a period of years and are recognized by the scientific community as the essentials of adequate and well-controlled clinical investigations. They provide the basis for the determination whether there is "substantial evidence" to support the claims of effectiveness for "new drugs" and antibiotic drugs. [412 U.S. 609, 635] </s> (a) The plan or protocol for the study and the report of the results of the effectiveness study must include the following: </s> (1) A clear statement of the objectives of the study, </s> (2) A method of selection of the subjects that - </s> (i) Provides adequate assurance that they are suitable for the purposes of the study, diagnostic criteria of the condition to be treated or diagnosed, confirmatory laboratory tests where appropriate, and, in the case of prophylactic agents, evidence of susceptibility and exposure to the condition against which prophylaxis is desired. </s> (ii) Assigns the subjects to test groups in such a way as to minimize bias. </s> (iii) Assures comparability in test and control groups of pertinent variables, such as age, sex, severity, or duration of disease, and use of drugs other than the test drug. </s> (3) Explains the methods of observation and recording of results, including the variables measured, quantitation, assessment of any subject's response, and steps taken to minimize bias on the part of the subject and observer. </s> (4) Provides a comparison of the results of treatment or diagnosis with a control in such a fashion as to permit quantitative evaluation. The precise nature of the control must be stated and an explanation given of the methods used to minimize bias on the part of the observers and the analysts of the data. Level and methods of "blinding," if used, are to be documented. Generally, four types of comparison are recognized: </s> (i) No treatment: Where objective measurements of effectiveness are available and placebo effect is negligible, comparison of the objective results in comparable groups of treated and untreated patients. </s> (ii) Placebo control: Comparison of the results of use of the new drug entity with an inactive preparation designed to resemble the test drug as far as possible. [412 U.S. 609, 636] </s> (iii) Active treatment control: An effective regimen of therapy may be used for comparison, e. g., where the condition treated is such that no treatment or administration of a placebo would be contrary to the interest of the patient. </s> (iv) Historical control: In certain circumstances, such as those involving diseases with high and predictable mortality (acute leukemia of childhood), with signs and symptoms of predictable, duration or severity (fever in certain infections), or in case of prophylaxis, where morbidity is predictable, the results of use of a new drug entity may be compared quantitatively with prior experience historically derived from the adequately documented natural history of the disease or condition in comparable patients or populations with no treatment or with a regimen (therapeutic, diagnostic, prophylactic) the effectiveness of which is established. </s> (5) A summary of the methods of analysis and an evaluation of data derived from the study, including any appropriate statistical methods. </s> Provided, however, That any of the above criteria may be waived in whole or in part, either prior to the investigation or in the evaluation of a completed study, by the Director of the Bureau of Drugs with respect to a specific clinical investigation; a petition for such a waiver may be filed by any person who would be adversely affected by the application of the criteria to a particular clinical investigation; the petition should show that some or all of the criteria are not reasonably applicable to the investigation and that alternative procedures can be, or have been, followed, the results of which will or have yielded data that can and should be accepted as substantial evidence of the drug's effectiveness. A petition for a waiver shall set forth clearly and concisely the specific provision or provisions in the criteria from which waiver is sought, why the criteria are not reasonably applicable to the particular [412 U.S. 609, 637] clinical investigation, what alternative procedures, if any, are to be, or have been, employed, what results have been obtained, and the basis on which it can be, or has been, concluded that the clinical investigation will or has yielded substantial evidence of effectiveness, notwithstanding nonconformance with the criteria for which waiver is requested. </s> (b) For such an investigation to be considered adequate for approval of a new drug, it is required that the test drug be standardized as to identity, strength, quality, purity, and dosage from to give significance to the results of the investigation. </s> (c) Uncontrolled studies or partially controlled studies are not acceptable as the sole basis for the approval of claims of effectiveness. Such studies, carefully conducted and documented, may provide corroborative support of well-controlled studies regarding efficacy and may yield valuable data regarding safety of the test drug. Such studies will be considered on their merits in the light of the principles listed here, with the exception of the requirement for the comparison of the treated subjects with controls. Isolated case reports, random experience, and reports lacking the details which permit scientific evaluation will not be considered. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 Drug Amendments of 1962 (Harris-Kefauver Act), 76 Stat. 780, amending 21 U.S.C. 301 et seq. </s> [Footnote 2 The Act originally provided for filing applications with the Secretary of Agriculture, but his functions were assigned to FDA. FDA is now part of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), and the Secretary of HEW has delegated his responsibilities under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to the Commissioner of Food and Drugs. 21 CFR 2.120. </s> [Footnote 3 "Substantial evidence" was defined to mean "evidence consisting of adequate and well-controlled investigations, including clinical investigations, by experts qualified by scientific training and experience to evaluate the effectiveness of the drug involved, on the basis of which it could fairly and responsibly be concluded by such experts that the drug will have the effect it purports or is represented to have . . . ." 21 U.S.C. 355 (d). </s> [Footnote 4 Drug Amendments of 1962, 107 (c) (2) and (c) (3) (B), 76 Stat. 788, note following 21 U.S.C. 321. </s> [Footnote 5 Id., 107 (c) (4). </s> [Footnote 6 31 Fed. Reg. 9426. </s> [Footnote 7 FDA has recently adopted a regulation declaring the manner in which Drug Efficacy Study Implementation Notices and Notices of Opportunity for Hearing apply to identical, related, and similar drugs. Any person with an interest in such drugs is provided an opportunity for hearing on any proposed withdrawal of NDA approval for the basic or pioneer drug. 37 Fed. Reg. 23185, adding 130.40 to 21 CFR. </s> [Footnote 8 35 Fed. Reg. 7251, amending 21 CFR 130.12 (a) (5) and 130.14. </s> [Footnote 9 Section 505 (e) as amended, 21 U.S.C. 355 (e), provides in relevant part: "The Secretary shall, after due notice and opportunity for hearing to the applicant, withdraw approval of an application with respect to any drug under this section if the Secretary finds . . . (3) on the basis of new information before him with respect to such drug, evaluated together with the evidence available to him when the application was approved, that there is a lack of substantial evidence that the drug will have the effect it purports or is represented to have under the conditions of use prescribed, recommended, or suggested in the labeling thereof . . . ." </s> [Footnote 10 Sec n. 3, supra. </s> [Footnote 11 Title 21 CFR 130.12 (a) (5) as amended, 35 Fed. Reg. 7251, is set forth in relevant part in an Appendix to this opinion. </s> [Footnote 12 Subject must be chosen so that they are "suitable for the purposes of the study," assigned to test groups in such a way as to minimize bias, and comparable in terms of "pertinent variables, such as age, sex, severity, or duration of disease, and use of drugs other than the test drug." 21 CFR 130.12 (a) (5) (ii) (a) (2). </s> [Footnote 13 Upjohn Co. v. Finch, 422 F.2d 944 (CA6); Pharmaceutical Manufactures Assn. v. Richardson, 318 F. Supp. 301 (Del.). FDA was enjoined from enforcing the regulations as originally issued on September 19, 1969. 34 Fed. Reg. 14596, on the ground that FDA had not complied with the notice requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act. Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Assn. v. Finch, 307 F. Supp. 858 (Del.). The regulations were reissued in their current form on May 8, 1970. 35 Fed. Reg. 7251. </s> [Footnote 14 See Hearings on S. 1552 before the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 87th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1, pp. 195, 282, 411-412. Much of this aspect of the legislative background of the 1962 Act is reviewed in enlightening detail by Judge Latchum in Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Assn. v. Richardson, supra, at 306 et seq. </s> [Footnote 15 S. Rep. No. 1744, 87th Cong., 2d Sess., pt. 2, p. 1. </s> [Footnote 16 Id., at 6. </s> [Footnote 17 This applies, of course, only to those regulations that are precise. For example, the plan or protocol for a study must include "[a] summary of the methods of analysis and an evaluation of data derived from the study, including any appropriate statistical methods." 21 CFR 130.12 (a) (5) (ii) (a) (5). A mere reading of the study submitted will indicate whether the study is totally deficient in this regard. Some of the regulations, however, are not precise, as they call for the exercise of discretion or subjective judgment in determining whether a study is adequate and well controlled. For example, 130.12 (a) (5) (ii) (a) (2) (i) requires that the plan or protocol for the study include a method of selection of the subjects that provide "adequate assurance that they are suitable for the purposes of the study." (Emphasis added.) The qualitative standards "adequate" and "suitable" do not lend themselves to clear-cut definition, and it may not be possible to tell from the face of a study whether the standards have been met. Thus, it might not be proper to deny a hearing on the ground that the study did not comply with this regulation. </s> [Footnote 18 Under the Rules of Civil Procedure the party moving for summary judgment has the burden of showing the absence of a genuine issue as to any material fact. Adickes v. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 157 . </s> [Footnote 19 Under the Administrative Procedure Act, a court reviews agency findings to determine whether they are supported by substantial evidence only in a case subject to the hearing provisions of 5 U.S.C. 556 and 557 or "otherwise reviewed on the record of an agency hearing provided by statute . . . ." 5 U.S.C. 706 (2) (E) This [412 U.S. 609, 623] is not such a case. The question with which we are concerned involves the initial agency determination whether a hearing is required by statute. See Pfizer, Inc. v. Richardson, 434 F.2d 536, 546-547 (CA2). </s> [Footnote 20 1939 Annual Report FDA; 1941 Annual Report FDA; Annual Reports Federal Security Agency (1938-1952); Annual Reports HEW (1953-1962). </s> [Footnote 21 That section provides: "The term `new drug' means - "(1) Any drug (except a new animal drug or an animal feed bearing or containing a new animal drug) the composition of which is such that such drug is not generally recognized, among experts qualified by scientific training and experience to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of drugs, as safe and effective for use under the conditions prescribed, recommended, or suggested in the labeling thereof, except that such a drug not so recognized shall not be deemed to be a `new drug' if at any time prior to the enactment of this chapter it was subject to the Food and Drugs Act of June 30, 1906, as amended, and if at such time its labeling contained the same representations concerning the conditions of its use; or "(2) Any drug (except a new animal drug or an animal feed bearing or containing a new animal drug) the composition of which is such that such drug, as a result of investigations to determine its safety and effectiveness for use under such conditions, has become so recognized, but which has not, otherwise than in such investigations, been used to a material extent or for a material time under such conditions." </s> [Footnote 22 That section provides: "In the case of any drug which, on the day immediately preceding the enactment date, (A) was commercially used or sold in the United States, (B) was not a new drug as defined by section 201 (p) of the basic Act as then in force, and (C) was not covered by an effective application under section 505 of that Act, the amendments to section 201 (p) made by this Act shall not apply to such drug when intended solely for use under conditions prescribed, recommended, or suggested in labeling with respect to such drug on that day." </s> [Footnote 23 It also follows that if Hynson were not entitled to a hearing under 505 (e), it would not be entitled to a hearing on its claim that Lutrexin is not a "new drug." </s> [Footnote 24 See Hearings, supra, n. 14. </s> [Footnote 25 Hynson also argues that Lutrexin is exempt by operation of 107 (c) (2), which provides: "An application filed pursuant to section 505 (b) of the basic Act which was `effective' within the meaning of that Act on the day immediately preceding the enactment date shall be deemed, as of the enactment date, to be an application `approved' by the Secretary within the meaning of the basic Act as amended by this Act." Hynson contends that Lutrexin, generally recognized as safe prior [412 U.S. 609, 633] to 1962, was not a "new drug" under applicable standards before the 1962 amendments. Thus, the argument goes, its NDA had ceased to be effective and could not be deemed "approved" under 107 (c) (2). Consequently, there was no approval that could be withdrawn in administrative proceedings pursuant to 505 (e). This argument shares a common thread with the argument under 107 (c) (4) - that the NDA for Lutrexin had ceased to be effective. The argument is no more persuasive under 107 (c) (2) than 107 (c) (4). In addition, the construction offered by Hynson would upset the carefully drawn transitionary provisions of 107 (c) (2) and (c) (3). Since the Commissioner now must affirmatively approve or disapprove all NDA's, 107 (c) (2) was enacted to remove the administrative burden of approving each and every NDA then effective. It also protected the marketing authority of all manufacturers that had effective NDA's. Without this provision, no manufacturer whose drug had become generally recognized as safe could have continued to market the drug if it was not also generally recognized as effective. </s> [Footnote 26 See S. Rep. No. 1744, 87th Cong., 2d Sess., pt. 2, p. 8; H. R. Rep. No. 2464, 87th Cong., 2d Sess., 12; H. R. Rep. No. 2526, 87th Cong., 2d Sess., 22-23. Hynson contends that the construction afforded by FDA renders the exemption nugatory and defeats the legislative purpose. The provision, however, does exempt drugs that, as a generic class, were never subject to new drug regulation. These consist primarily of over-the-counter drugs which, although they were not "grandfathered" under the 1938 Act, were not subject to new drug regulation because of universal recognition of the safety of their old, established ingredients at the time they came on the market. </s> MR. JUSTICE POWELL, concurring in part, and concurring in the result in part. </s> I concur in Part II of the Court's opinion, which disposes of the issues raised by Hynson, Westcott & Dunning, Inc., in its cross-petition (No. 72-414). As to Part I, which addresses issues raised in the petition filed by the Commissioner of FDA (No. 72-394), I concur only in the result and state briefly the limited sense in which I accept the Court's conclusion. </s> Insofar as the Court today sustains the holding below that Hynson's submission to FDA raised "a genuine and [412 U.S. 609, 638] substantial issue of fact" requiring a hearing on the ultimate issue of efficacy, 21 CFR 130.14 (b), I am in accord. Hynson's presentation in support of the efficacy of Lutrexin clearly justified a hearing as to whether the drug was supported by "adequate and well-controlled investigations," 21 U.S.C. 355 (d), even as that term is defined in the Commission's regulations. 21 CFR 130.12 (a) (5). For this reason I concur in the result reached in this case. I cannot agree on this record, however, with any implications or conclusions in the Court's opinion to the effect that the regulations - as construed and applied by the Commissioner in this case - are either compatible with the statutory scheme or constitutional under the Due Process Clause. 1 Such questions have not been squarely presented here and, in light of the Court's conclusion that Hynson has complied with the regulations, their resolution is unnecessary to the Court's decision. </s> Were we required to reach these issues, there might well be serious doubt whether the commissioner's rigorous threshold specifications as to proof of "adequate and well-controlled investigation," coupled with his restrictive summary judgment regulation, go beyond the statutory requirements and in effect frustrate the congressional mandate for a prewithdrawal "opportunity for hearing." 21 U.S.C. 355 (e). There is also a genuine issue of procedural due process where, as in this case, the Commissioner construes his regulations to deny a hearing as to the efficacy of a drug established and used by the medical profession for two decades, and where its effectiveness [412 U.S. 609, 639] is supported by a significant volume of clinical data and the informed opinions of experts whose qualifications are not questioned. 2 </s> These important and complex questions should await decision in future cases in which the issues are briefed fully and are necessary to the Court's decision. </s> [Footnote 1 Cf. Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U.S. 67, 80 (1972), and cases cited therein. I do not question, of course, the authority of the Commissioner to adopt reasonable regulations consistent with the statute and which do not, as applied, deprive persons of their property without the elementary due process of a fair opportunity for a hearing. </s> [Footnote 2 There can be no doubt, both from the legislative history and the language of the 1962 amendments to the Act, that Congress intended to impose standards that would bar reliance upon anecdotal evidence or mere professions of belief by doctors as determinative of a drug's efficacy. But it is also clear that Congress intended to protect against the arbitrary withdrawal or withholding of approval of a drug where there is "substantial evidence" of its effectiveness. To provide protection against such action, especially when authority is vested in an official who acts in an administrative as well as judicial capacity, the Act specifically provided for a hearing. The public interest is twofold: (i) to remove from the market, in accordance with due process, drugs of no utility or effectiveness; and (ii) to retain on the market those drugs that are efficacious. In an understandable zeal to remove the former, an administrative agency must not overlook both the interest of the public and the right of the proprietor in protecting the drugs that are useful in the prevention, control, or treatment of illness. </s> [412 U.S. 609, 640]

United States Supreme Court RENO, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES, et al. v. AMERICAN CIVIL(1997) No. 96-511 Argued: March 19, 1997Decided: June 26, 1997 </s> </s> Two provisions of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA or Act) seek to protect minors from harmful material on the Internet, an international network of interconnected computers that enables millions of people to communicate with one another in "cyberspace" and to access vast amounts of information from around the world. Title 47 U. S. C. A. §223(a)(1)(B)(ii) (Supp. 1997) criminalizes the "knowing" transmission of "obscene or indecent" messages to any recipient under 18 years of age. Section 223(d) prohibits the "knowin[g]" sending or displaying to a person under 18 of any message "that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs." Affirmative defenses are provided for those who take "good faith, . . . effective . . . actions" to restrict access by minors to the prohibited communications, §223(e)(5)(A), and those who restrict such access by requiring certain designated forms of age proof, such as a verified credit card or an adult identification number, §223(e)(5)(B). A number of plaintiffs filed suit challenging the constitutionality of §§223(a)(1) and 223(d). After making extensive findings of fact, a three judge District Court convened pursuant to the Act entered a preliminary injunction against enforcement of both challenged provisions. The court's judgment enjoins the Government from enforcing §223(a)(1)(B)'s prohibitions insofar as they relate to "indecent" communications, but expressly preserves the Government's right to investigate and prosecute the obscenity or child pornography activities prohibited therein. The injunction against enforcement of §223(d) is unqualified because that section contains no separatereference to obscenity or child pornography. The Government appealed to this Court under the Act's special review provisions, arguing that the District Court erred in holding that the CDA violated both the First Amendment because it is overbroad and the Fifth Amendment because it is vague. </s> Held: The CDA's "indecent transmission" and "patently offensive display" provisions abridge "the freedom of speech" protected by the First Amendment. Pp. 17-40. </s> (a) Although the CDA's vagueness is relevant to the First Amendment overbreadth inquiry, the judgment should be affirmed without reaching the Fifth Amendment issue. P. 17. </s> (b) A close look at the precedents relied on by the Government--Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629 ; FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 ; and Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41 --raises, rather than relieves, doubts about the CDA's constitutionality. The CDA differs from the various laws and orders upheld in those cases in many ways, including that it does not allow parents to consent to their children's use of restricted materials; is not limited to commercial transactions; fails to provide any definition of "indecent" and omits any requirement that "patently offensive" material lack socially redeeming value; neither limits its broad categorical prohibitions to particular times nor bases them on an evaluation by an agency familiar with the medium's unique characteristics; is punitive; applies to a medium that, unlike radio, receives full First Amendment protection; and cannot be properly analyzed as a form of time, place, and manner regulation because it is a content based blanket restriction on speech. These precedents, then, do not require the Court to uphold the CDA and are fully consistent with the application of the most stringent review of its provisions. Pp. 17-21. </s> (c) The special factors recognized in some of the Court's cases as justifying regulation of the broadcast media--the history of extensive government regulation of broadcasting, see, e.g., Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367, 399 -400; the scarcity of available frequencies at its inception, see, e.g., Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 637 -638; and its "invasive" nature, see Sable Communications of Cal., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115, 128 --are not present in cyberspace. Thus, these cases provide no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment scrutiny that should be applied to the Internet. Pp. 22-24. </s> (d) Regardless of whether the CDA is so vague that it violates the Fifth Amendment, the many ambiguities concerning the scope of its coverage render it problematic for First Amendment purposes. For instance, its use of the undefined terms "indecent" and "patently offensive" will provoke uncertainty among speakers about how the twostandards relate to each other and just what they mean. The vagueness of such a content based regulation, see, e.g., Gentile v. State Bar of Nev., 501 U.S. 1030 , coupled with its increased deterrent effect as a criminal statute, see, e.g., Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479 , raise special First Amendment concerns because of its obvious chilling effect on free speech. Contrary to the Government's argument, the CDA is not saved from vagueness by the fact that its "patently offensive" standard repeats the second part of the three prong obscenity test set forth in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 24 . The second Miller prong reduces the inherent vagueness of its own "patently offensive" term by requiring that the proscribed material be "specifically defined by the applicable state law." In addition, the CDA applies only to "sexual conduct," whereas, the CDA prohibition extends also to "excretory activities" and "organs" of both a sexual and excretory nature. Each of Miller's other two prongs also critically limits the uncertain sweep of the obscenity definition. Just because a definition including three limitations is not vague, it does not follow that one of those limitations, standing alone, is not vague. The CDA's vagueness undermines the likelihood that it has been carefully tailored to the congressional goal of protecting minors from potentially harmful materials. Pp. 24-28. </s> (e) The CDA lacks the precision that the First Amendment requires when a statute regulates the content of speech. Although the Government has an interest in protecting children from potentially harmful materials, see, e.g., Ginsberg, 390 U.S., at 639 , the CDA pursues that interest by suppressing a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to send and receive, see, e.g., Sable, supra, at 126. Its breadth is wholly unprecedented. The CDA's burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the Act's legitimate purposes. See, e.g., Sable, 492 U.S., at 126 . The Government has not proved otherwise. On the other hand, the District Court found that currently available user based software suggests that a reasonably effective method by which parents can prevent their children from accessing material which the parents believe is inappropriate will soon be widely available. Moreover, the arguments in this Court referred to possible alternatives such as requiring that indecent material be "tagged" to facilitate parental control, making exceptions for messages with artistic or educational value, providing some tolerance for parental choice, and regulating some portions of the Internet differently than others. Particularly in the light of the absence of any detailed congressional findings, or even hearings addressing the CDA's special problems, the Court is persuaded that the CDA is not narrowly tailored. Pp. 28-33. </s> (f) The Government's three additional arguments for sustaining the CDA's affirmative prohibitions are rejected. First, the contention that the Act is constitutional because it leaves open ample "alternative channels" of communication is unpersuasive because the CDA regulates speech on the basis of its content, so that a "time, place, and manner" analysis is inapplicable. See, e.g., Consolidated Edison Co. of N. Y. v. Public Serv. Comm'n of N. Y., 447 U.S. 530, 536 . Second, the assertion that the CDA's "knowledge" and "specific person" requirements significantly restrict its permissible application to communications to persons the sender knows to be under 18 is untenable, given that most Internet forums are open to all comers and that even the strongest reading of the "specific person" requirement would confer broad powers of censorship, in the form of a "heckler's veto," upon any opponent of indecent speech. Finally, there is no textual support for the submission that material having scientific, educational, or other redeeming social value will necessarily fall outside the CDA's prohibitions. Pp. 33-35. </s> (g) The §223(e)(5) defenses do not constitute the sort of "narrow tailoring" that would save the CDA. The Government's argument that transmitters may take protective "good faith actio[n]" by "tagging" their indecent communications in a way that would indicate their contents, thus permitting recipients to block their reception with appropriate software, is illusory, given the requirement that such action be "effective": The proposed screening software does not currently exist, but, even if it did, there would be no way of knowing whether a potential recipient would actually block the encoded material. The Government also failed to prove that §223(b)(5)'s verification defense would significantly reduce the CDA's heavy burden on adult speech. Although such verification is actually being used by some commercial providers of sexually explicit material, the District Court's findings indicate that it is not economically feasible for most noncommercial speakers. Pp. 35-37. </s> (h) The Government's argument that this Court should preserve the CDA's constitutionality by honoring its severability clause, §608, and by construing nonseverable terms narrowly, is acceptable in only one respect. Because obscene speech may be banned totally, see Miller, supra, at 18, and §223(a)'s restriction of "obscene" material enjoys a textual manifestation separate from that for "indecent" material, the Court can sever the term "or indecent" from the statute, leaving the rest of §223(a) standing. Pp. 37-39. </s> (i) The Government's argument that its "significant" interest in fostering the Internet's growth provides an independent basis for upholding the CDA's constitutionality is singularly unpersuasive. The dramatic expansion of this new forum contradicts the factual basisunderlying this contention: that the unregulated availability of "indecent" and "patently offensive" material is driving people away from the Internet. P. 40. </s> 929 F. Supp. 824, affirmed. </s> Stevens, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. O'Connor, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part, in which Rehnquist, C. J., joined. </s> NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash ington, D.C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. </s> U.S. Supreme Court </s> No. 96-511 </s> JANET RENO, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES, et al., APPELLANTS v. AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION et al. </s> on appeal from the united states district court for the eastern district of pennsylvania [June 26, 1997] </s> Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> At issue is the constitutionality of two statutory provisions enacted to protect minors from "indecent" and "patently offensive" communications on the Internet. Notwithstanding the legitimacy and importance of the congressional goal of protecting children from harmful materials, we agree with the three judge District Court that the statute abridges "the freedom of speech" protected by the First Amendment. 1 </s> The District Court made extensive findings of fact, most of which were based on a detailed stipulation prepared by the parties. See 929 F. Supp. 824, 830-849 (ED Pa. 1996). 2 The findings describe the character and the dimensions of the Internet, the availability ofsexually explicit material in that medium, and the problems confronting age verification for recipients of Internet communications. Because those findings provide the underpinnings for the legal issues, we begin with a summary of the undisputed facts. </s> The Internet </s> The Internet is an international network of interconnected computers. It is the outgrowth of what began in 1969 as a military program called "ARPANET," 3 which was designed to enable computers operated by the military, defense contractors, and universities conducting defense related research to communicate with one another by redundant channels even if some portions of the network were damaged in a war. While the ARPANET no longer exists, it provided an example for the development of a number of civilian networks that, eventually linking with each other, now enable tens of millions of people to communicate with one another and to access vast amounts of information from around the world. The Internet is "a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide human communication." 4 </s> The Internet has experienced "extraordinary growth." 5 The number of "host" computers--those that store information and relay communications--increased from about 300 in 1981 to approximately 9,400,000 by the time of the trial in 1996. Roughly 60% of these hosts are located in the United States. About 40 million people used the Internet at the time of trial, a number that is expected to mushroom to 200 million by 1999. </s> Individuals can obtain access to the Internet frommany different sources, generally hosts themselves or entities with a host affiliation. Most colleges and universities provide access for their students and faculty; many corporations provide their employees with access through an office network; many communities and local libraries provide free access; and an increasing number of storefront "computer coffee shops" provide access for a small hourly fee. Several major national "online services" such as America Online, CompuServe, the Microsoft Network, and Prodigy offer access to their own extensive proprietary networks as well as a link to the much larger resources of the Internet. These commercial online services had almost 12 million individual subscribers at the time of trial. </s> Anyone with access to the Internet may take advantage of a wide variety of communication and information retrieval methods. These methods are constantly evolving and difficult to categorize precisely. But, as presently constituted, those most relevant to this case are electronic mail ("e mail"), automatic mailing list services ("mail exploders," sometimes referred to as "listservs"), "newsgroups," "chat rooms," and the "World Wide Web." All of these methods can be used to transmit text; most can transmit sound, pictures, and moving video images. Taken together, these tools constitute a unique medium--known to its users as "cyberspace"--located in no particular geographical location but available to anyone, anywhere in the world, with access to the Internet. </s> E mail enables an individual to send an electronic message--generally akin to a note or letter--to another individual or to a group of addressees. The message is generally stored electronically, sometimes waiting for the recipient to check her "mailbox" and sometimes making its receipt known through some type of prompt. A mail exploder is a sort of e mail group. Subscribers can send messages to a common e mail address, which then forwards the message to the group's other subscribers.Newsgroups also serve groups of regular participants, but these postings may be read by others as well. There are thousands of such groups, each serving to foster an exchange of information or opinion on a particular topic running the gamut from, say, the music of Wagner to Balkan politics to AIDS prevention to the Chicago Bulls. About 100,000 new messages are posted every day. In most newsgroups, postings are automatically purged at regular intervals. In addition to posting a message that can be read later, two or more individuals wishing to communicate more immediately can enter a chat room to engage in real time dialogue--in other words, by typing messages to one another that appear almost immediately on the others' computer screens. The District Court found that at any given time "tens of thousands of users are engaging in conversations on a huge range of subjects." 6 It is "no exaggeration to conclude that the content on the Internet is as diverse as human thought." 7 </s> The best known category of communication over the Internet is the World Wide Web, which allows users to search for and retrieve information stored in remote computers, as well as, in some cases, to communicate back to designated sites. In concrete terms, the Web consists of a vast number of documents stored in different computers all over the world. Some of these documents are simply files containing information. However, more elaborate documents, commonly known as Web "pages," are also prevalent. Each has its own address--%rather like a telephone number." 8 Web pages frequently contain information and sometimes allow the viewer to communicate with the page's (or "site's") author. They generally also contain "links" to otherdocuments created by that site's author or to other (generally) related sites. Typically, the links are either blue or underlined text--sometimes images. </s> Navigating the Web is relatively straightforward. A user may either type the address of a known page or enter one or more keywords into a commercial "search engine" in an effort to locate sites on a subject of interest. A particular Web page may contain the information sought by the "surfer," or, through its links, it may be an avenue to other documents located anywhere on the Internet. Users generally explore a given Web page, or move to another, by clicking a computer "mouse" on one of the page's icons or links. Access to most Web pages is freely available, but some allow access only to those who have purchased the right from a commercial provider. The Web is thus comparable, from the readers' viewpoint, to both a vast library including millions of readily available and indexed publications and a sprawling mall offering goods and services. </s> From the publishers' point of view, it constitutes a vast platform from which to address and hear from a world wide audience of millions of readers, viewers, researchers, and buyers. Any person or organization with a computer connected to the Internet can "publish" information. Publishers include government agencies, educational institutions, commercial entities, advocacy groups, and individuals. 9 Publishers may either make their material available to the entire pool of Internet users, or confine access to a selected group, such as those willing to pay for the privilege. "No single organization controls any membership in the Web, nor is there any centralized point from which individual Web sites or services can be blocked from the Web." 10 </s> Sexually Explicit Material </s> Sexually explicit material on the Internet includes text, pictures, and chat and "extends from the modestly titillating to the hardest core." 11 These files are created, named, and posted in the same manner as material that is not sexually explicit, and may be accessed either deliberately or unintentionally during the course of an imprecise search. "Once a provider posts its content on the Internet, it cannot prevent that content from entering any community." 12 Thus, for example, </s> "when the UCR/California Museum of Photography posts to its Web site nudes by Edward Weston and Robert Mapplethorpe to announce that its new exhibit will travel to Baltimore and New York City, those images are available not only in Los Angeles, Baltimore, and New York City, but also in Cincinnati, Mobile, or Beijing--wherever Internet users live. Similarly, the safer sex instructions that Critical Path posts to its Web site, written in street language so that the teenage receiver can understand them, are available not just in Philadelphia, but also in Provo and Prague." 13 </s> Some of the communications over the Internet that originate in foreign countries are also sexually explicit. 14 </s> Though such material is widely available, users seldomencounter such content accidentally. "A document's title or a description of the document will usually appear before the document itself . . . and in many cases the user will receive detailed information about a site's content before he or she need take the step to access the document. Almost all sexually explicit images are preceded by warnings as to the content." 15 For that reason, the "odds are slim" that a user would enter a sexually explicit site by accident. 16 Unlike communications received by radio or television, "the receipt of information on the Internet requires a series of affirmative steps more deliberate and directed than merely turning a dial. A child requires some sophistication and some ability to read to retrieve material and thereby to use the Internet unattended." 17 </s> Systems have been developed to help parents control the material that may be available on a home computer with Internet access. A system may either limit a computer's access to an approved list of sources that have been identified as containing no adult material, it may block designated inappropriate sites, or it may attempt to block messages containing identifiable objectionable features. "Although parental control software currently can screen for certain suggestive words or for known sexually explicit sites, it cannot now screen for sexually explicit images." 18 Nevertheless, the evidence indicates that "a reasonably effective method by which parents can prevent their children from accessing sexually explicit and other material which parents may believe is inappropriate for their children will soon be available." 19 </s> Age Verification </s> The problem of age verification differs for different uses of the Internet. The District Court categorically determined that there "is no effective way to determine the identity or the age of a user who is accessing material through e mail, mail exploders, newsgroups or chat rooms." 20 The Government offered no evidence that there was a reliable way to screen recipients and participants in such fora for age. Moreover, even if it were technologically feasible to block minors' access to newsgroups and chat rooms containing discussions of art, politics or other subjects that potentially elicit "indecent" or "patently offensive" contributions, it would not be possible to block their access to that material and "still allow them access to the remaining content, even if the overwhelming majority of that content was not indecent." 21 </s> Technology exists by which an operator of a Web site may condition access on the verification of requested information such as a credit card number or an adult password. Credit card verification is only feasible, however, either in connection with a commercial transaction in which the card is used, or by payment to averification agency. Using credit card possession as a surrogate for proof of age would impose costs on non commercial Web sites that would require many of them to shut down. For that reason, at the time of the trial, credit card verification was "effectively unavailable to a substantial number of Internet content providers." Id., at 846 (finding 102). Moreover, the imposition of such a requirement "would completely bar adults who do not have a credit card and lack the resources to obtain one from accessing any blocked material." 22 </s> Commercial pornographic sites that charge their users for access have assigned them passwords as a method of age verification. The record does not contain any evidence concerning the reliability of these technologies. Even if passwords are effective for commercial purveyors of indecent material, the District Court found that an adult password requirement would impose significant burdens on noncommercial sites, both because they would discourage users from accessing their sites and because the cost of creating and maintaining such screening systems would be "beyond their reach." 23 </s> In sum, the District Court found: </s> "Even if credit card verification or adult password verification were implemented, the Government presented no testimony as to how such systems could ensure that the user of the password or credit card is in fact over 18. The burdens imposed by credit card verification and adult password verification systems make them effectively unavailable to a substantial number of Internet content providers." Ibid. (finding 107). </s> The Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L. 104-104, 110 Stat. 56, was an unusually important legislative enactment. As stated on the first of its 103 pages, its primary purpose was to reduce regulation and encourage "the rapid deployment of new telecommunications technologies." The major components of the statute have nothing to do with the Internet; they were designed to promote competition in the local telephone service market, the multichannel video market, and the market for over the air broadcasting. The Act includes seven Titles, six of which are the product of extensive committee hearings and the subject of discussion in Reports prepared by Committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives. By contrast, Title V--known as the "Communications Decency Act of 1996" (CDA)--contains provisions that were either added in executive committee after the hearings were concluded or as amendments offered during floor debate on the legislation. An amendment offered in the Senate was the source of the two statutory provisions challenged in this case. 24 Theyare informally described as the "indecent transmission" provision and the "patently offensive display" provision. 25 </s> The first, 47 U. S. C. A. §223(a) (Supp. 1997), prohibits the knowing transmission of obscene or indecent messages to any recipient under 18 years of age. It provides in pertinent part: </s> "(a) Whoever-- </s> %(1) in interstate or foreign communications-- </s> . . . . . </s> "(B) by means of a telecommunications device knowingly-- </s> %(i) makes, creates, or solicits, and </s> %(ii) initiates the transmission of, </s> %any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication which is obscene or indecent, knowing that the recipient of the communication is under 18 years of age, regardless of whether the maker of such communication placed the call or initiated the communication; </s> . . . . . </s> "(2) knowingly permits any telecommunications facility under his control to be used for any activity prohibited by paragraph (1) with the intent that it be used for such activity, </s> %shall be fined under Title 18, or imprisoned not more than two years, or both." </s> The second provision, §223(d), prohibits the knowing sending or displaying of patently offensive messages in a manner that is available to a person under 18 years of age. It provides: </s> "(d) Whoever-- </s> "(1) in interstate or foreign communications knowingly-- </s> "(A) uses an interactive computer service to send to a specific person or persons under 18 years of age, or </s> "(B) uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, </s> %any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive asmeasured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs, regardless of whether the user of such service placed the call or initiated the communication; or </s> "(2) knowingly permits any telecommunications facility under such person's control to be used for an activity prohibited by paragraph (1) with the intent that it be used for such activity, </s> %shall be fined under Title 18, or imprisoned not more than two years, or both." </s> The breadth of these prohibitions is qualified by two affirmative defenses. See §223(e)(5). 26 One covers those who take "good faith, reasonable, effective, and appropriate actions" to restrict access by minors to the prohibited communications. §223(e)(5)(A). The other covers those who restrict access to covered material by requiring certain designated forms of age proof, such as a verified credit card or an adult identification number or code. §223(e)(5)(B). </s> On February 8, 1996, immediately after the Presidentsigned the statute, 20 plaintiffs 27 filed suit against the Attorney General of the United States and the Department of Justice challenging the constitutionality of §§223(a)(1) and 223(d). A week later, based on his conclusion that the term "indecent" was too vague to provide the basis for a criminal prosecution, District Judge Buckwalter entered a temporary restraining order against enforcement of §223(a)(1)(B)(ii) insofar as it applies to indecent communications. A second suit was then filed by 27 additional plaintiffs, 28 the two cases were consolidated, and a three judge District Court was convened pursuant to §561 of the Act. 29 After an evidentiary hearing, that Court entered a preliminary injunction against enforcement of both of the challenged provisions. Each of the three judges wrote a separate opinion, but their judgment was unanimous. </s> Chief Judge Sloviter doubted the strength of the Government's interest in regulating "the vast range of online material covered or potentially covered by the CDA," but acknowledged that the interest was "compelling" with respect to some of that material. 929 F. Supp., at 853. She concluded, nonetheless, that the statute "sweeps more broadly than necessary and thereby chills the expression of adults" and that the terms "patently offensive" and "indecent" were "inherently vague." Id., at 854. She also determined that the affirmative defenses were not "technologically or economically feasible for most providers," specifically considering and rejecting an argument that providers could avoid liability by "tagging" their material in a manner that would allow potential readers to screen out unwanted transmissions. Id., at 856. Chief Judge Sloviter also rejected the Government's suggestion that the scope of the statute could be narrowed by construing it to apply only to commercial pornographers. Id., at 854-855. </s> Judge Buckwalter concluded that the word "indecent" in §223(a)(1)(B) and the terms "patently offensive" and "in context" in §223(d)(1) were so vague that criminal enforcement of either section would violate the "fundamental constitutional principle" of "simple fairness," id., at 861, and the specific protections of the First and Fifth Amendments, id., at 858. He found no statutory basis for the Government's argument that the challenged provisions would be applied only to "pornographic" materials, noting that, unlike obscenity, "indecency has not been defined to exclude works of serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." Id., at 863. Moreover, the Government's claim that the work must be considered patently offensive "in context" was itself vague because the relevant context might "refer to, among other things, the nature of the communication as a whole, the time of day it was conveyed, the medium used, the identity of the speaker, or whether or not it is accompanied by appropriate warnings." Id., at 864. He believed that the unique nature of the Internet aggravated the vagueness of the statute. Id., at 865, n. 9. </s> Judge Dalzell's review of "the special attributes of Internet communication" disclosed by the evidence convinced him that the First Amendment denies Congress the power to regulate the content of protected speech on the Internet. Id., at 867. His opinion explained at length why he believed the Act would abridge significant protected speech, particularly by noncommercial speakers, while "[p]erversely, commercial pornographers would remain relatively unaffected." Id., at 879. He construed our cases as requiring a "medium specific" approach to the analysis of the regulation of mass communication, id., at 873, and concluded that the Internet--as "the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed," id., at 883--is entitled to "the highest protection from governmental intrusion," ibid. 30 </s> The judgment of the District Court enjoins the Government from enforcing the prohibitions in §223(a)(1)(B) insofar as they relate to "indecent" communications, but expressly preserves the Government's right to investigate and prosecute the obscenity or child pornography activities prohibited therein. The injunction against enforcement of §§223(d)(1) and (2) is unqualified because those provisions contain no separate reference to obscenity or child pornography. </s> The Government appealed under the Act's special review provisions, §561, 110 Stat. 142-143, and we noted probable jurisdiction, see 519 U. S. ___ (1996). In its appeal, the Government argues that the District Court erred in holding that the CDA violated both the First Amendment because it is overbroad and the Fifth Amendment because it is vague. While we discuss the vagueness of the CDA because of its relevance to the First Amendment overbreadth inquiry, we conclude that the judgment should be affirmed without reaching the Fifth Amendment issue. We begin our analysis by reviewing the principal authorities on which the Government relies. Then, after describing the overbreadth of the CDA, we consider the Government's specific contentions, including its submission that we save portions of the statute either by severance or by fashioning judicial limitations on the scope of its coverage. </s> In arguing for reversal, the Government contends that the CDA is plainly constitutional under three ofour prior decisions: (1) Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629 (1968); (2) FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978); and (3) Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41 (1986). A close look at these cases, however, raises--rather than relieves--doubts concerning the constitutionality of the CDA. </s> In Ginsberg, we upheld the constitutionality of a New York statute that prohibited selling to minors under 17 years of age material that was considered obscene as to them even if not obscene as to adults. We rejected the defendant's broad submission that "the scope of the constitutional freedom of expression secured to a citizen to read or see material concerned with sex cannot be made to depend on whether the citizen is an adult or a minor." 390 U.S., at 636 . In rejecting that contention, we relied not only on the State's independent interest in the well being of its youth, but also on our consistent recognition of the principle that "the parents' claim to authority in their own household to direct the rearing of their children is basic in the structure of our society." 31 In four important respects, the statute upheld in Ginsberg was narrower than the CDA. First, we noted in Ginsberg that "the prohibition against sales to minors does not bar parents who so desire from purchasing the magazines for their children." Id., at 639. Under the CDA, by contrast, neither the parents' consent--nor even their participation--in the communication would avoid the application of the statute. 32 Second, the NewYork statute applied only to commercial transactions, id., at 647, whereas the CDA contains no such limitation. Third, the New York statute cabined its definition of material that is harmful to minors with the requirement that it be "utterly without redeeming social importance for minors." Id., at 646. The CDA fails to provide us with any definition of the term "indecent" as used in §223(a)(1) and, importantly, omits any requirement that the "patently offensive" material covered by §223(d) lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. Fourth, the New York statute defined a minor as a person under the age of 17, whereas the CDA, in applying to all those under 18 years, includes an additional year of those nearest majority. </s> In Pacifica, we upheld a declaratory order of the Federal Communications Commission, holding that the broadcast of a recording of a 12-minute monologue entitled "Filthy Words" that had previously been delivered to a live audience "could have been the subject of administrative sanctions." 438 U.S., at 730 (internal quotations omitted). The Commission had found that the repetitive use of certain words referring to excretory or sexual activities or organs "in an afternoon broadcast when children are in the audience was patently offensive" and concluded that the monologue was indecent "as broadcast." Id., at 735. The respondent did not quarrel with the finding that the afternoon broadcast was patently offensive, but contended that it was not "indecent" within the meaning of the relevant statutes because it contained no prurient appeal. After rejecting respondent's statutory arguments, we confronted its two constitutional arguments: (1) that the Commission's construction of its authority to ban indecent speech was so broad that its order had to be set aside even if thebroadcast at issue was unprotected; and (2) that since the recording was not obscene, the First Amendment forbade any abridgement of the right to broadcast it on the radio. </s> In the portion of the lead opinion not joined by Justices Powell and Blackmun, the plurality stated that the First Amendment does not prohibit all governmental regulation that depends on the content of speech. Id., at 742-743. Accordingly, the availability of constitutional protection for a vulgar and offensive monologue that was not obscene depended on the context of the broadcast. Id., at 744-748. Relying on the premise that "of all forms of communication" broadcasting had received the most limited First Amendment protection, id., at 748-749, the Court concluded that the ease with which children may obtain access to broadcasts, "coupled with the concerns recognized in Ginsberg," justified special treatment of indecent broadcasting. Id., at 749-750. </s> As with the New York statute at issue in Ginsberg, there are significant differences between the order upheld in Pacifica and the CDA. First, the order in Pacifica, issued by an agency that had been regulating radio stations for decades, targeted a specific broadcast that represented a rather dramatic departure from traditional program content in order to designate when--rather than whether--it would be permissible to air such a program in that particular medium. The CDA's broad categorical prohibitions are not limited to particular times and are not dependent on any evaluation by an agency familiar with the unique characteristics of the Internet. Second, unlike the CDA, the Commission's declaratory order was not punitive; we expressly refused to decide whether the indecent broadcast "would justify a criminal prosecution." Id., at 750. Finally, the Commission's order applied to a medium which as a matter of history had "received the most limited First Amendment protection," id., at 748, in large part because warnings could not adequately protect the listener from unexpected program content. The Internet, however, has no comparable history. Moreover, the District Court found that the risk of encountering indecent material by accident is remote because a series of affirmative steps is required to access specific material. </s> In Renton, we upheld a zoning ordinance that kept adult movie theatres out of residential neighborhoods. The ordinance was aimed, not at the content of the films shown in the theaters, but rather at the "secondary effects"--such as crime and deteriorating property values--that these theaters fostered: " `It is th[e] secondary effect which these zoning ordinances attempt to avoid, not the dissemination of "offensive" speech.' " 475 U.S., at 49 (quoting Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U.S. 50, 71 , n. 34 (1976)). According to the Government, the CDA is constitutional because it constitutes a sort of "cyberzoning" on the Internet. But the CDA applies broadly to the entire universe of cyberspace. And the purpose of the CDA is to protect children from the primary effects of "indecent" and "patently offensive" speech, rather than any "secondary" effect of such speech. Thus, the CDA is a content based blanket restriction on speech, and, as such, cannot be "properly analyzed as a form of time, place, and manner regulation." 475 U.S., at 46 . See also Boos v. Barry, 485 U.S. 312, 321 (1988) ("Regulations that focus on the direct impact of speech on its audience" are not properly analyzed under Renton); Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement, 505 U.S. 123, 134 (1992) ("Listeners' reaction to speech is not a content neutral basis for regulation"). </s> These precedents, then, surely do not require us to uphold the CDA and are fully consistent with the application of the most stringent review of its provisions. </s> In Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 420 U.S. 546, 557 (1975), we observed that "[e]ach medium of expression . . . may present its own problems." Thus, some of our cases have recognized special justifications for regulation of the broadcast media that are not applicable to other speakers, see Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367 (1969); FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978). In these cases, the Court relied on the history of extensive government regulation of the broadcast medium, see, e.g., Red Lion, 395 U.S., at 399 -400; the scarcity of available frequencies at its inception, see, e.g., Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 637 -638 (1994); and its "invasive" nature, see Sable Communications of Cal., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115, 128 (1989). </s> Those factors are not present in cyberspace. Neither before nor after the enactment of the CDA have the vast democratic fora of the Internet been subject to the type of government supervision and regulation that has attended the broadcast industry. 33 Moreover, the Internet is not as "invasive" as radio or television. The District Court specifically found that "[c]ommunications over the Internet do not `invade' an individual's home or appear on one's computer screen unbidden. Users seldom encounter content `by accident.' " 929 F. Supp., at844 (finding 88). It also found that "[a]lmost all sexually explicit images are preceded by warnings as to the content," and cited testimony that " `odds are slim' that a user would come across a sexually explicit sight by accident." Ibid. </s> We distinguished Pacifica in Sable, 492 U.S., at 128 , on just this basis. In Sable, a company engaged in the business of offering sexually oriented prerecorded telephone messages (popularly known as "dial a porn") challenged the constitutionality of an amendment to the Communications Act that imposed a blanket prohibition on indecent as well as obscene interstate commercial telephone messages. We held that the statute was constitutional insofar as it applied to obscene messages but invalid as applied to indecent messages. In attempting to justify the complete ban and criminalization of indecent commercial telephone messages, the Government relied on Pacifica, arguing that the ban was necessary to prevent children from gaining access to such messages. We agreed that "there is a compelling interest in protecting the physical and psychological well being of minors" which extended to shielding them from indecent messages that are not obscene by adult standards, 492 U.S., at 126 , but distinguished our "emphatically narrow holding" in Pacifica because it did not involve a complete ban and because it involved a different medium of communication, id., at 127. We explained that "the dial it medium requires the listener to take affirmative steps to receive the communication." Id., at 127-128. "Placing a telephone call," we continued, "is not the same as turning on a radio and being taken by surprise by an indecent message." Id., at 128. </s> Finally, unlike the conditions that prevailed when Congress first authorized regulation of the broadcast spectrum, the Internet can hardly be considered a "scarce" expressive commodity. It provides relatively unlimited, low cost capacity for communication of allkinds. The Government estimates that "[a]s many as 40 million people use the Internet today, and that figure is expected to grow to 200 million by 1999." 34 This dynamic, multifaceted category of communication includes not only traditional print and news services, but also audio, video, and still images, as well as interactive, real time dialogue. Through the use of chat rooms, any person with a phone line can become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox. Through the use of Web pages, mail exploders, and newsgroups, the same individual can become a pamphleteer. As the District Court found, "the content on the Internet is as diverse as human thought." 929 F. Supp., at 842 (finding 74). We agree with its conclusion that our cases provide no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment scrutiny that should be applied to this medium. </s> Regardless of whether the CDA is so vague that it violates the Fifth Amendment, the many ambiguities concerning the scope of its coverage render it problematic for purposes of the First Amendment. For instance, each of the two parts of the CDA uses a different linguistic form. The first uses the word "indecent," 47 U. S. C. A. §223(a) (Supp. 1997), while the second speaks of material that "in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs," §223(d). Given the absence of a definition of either term, 35 this difference in language will provokeuncertainty among speakers about how the two standards relate to each other 36 and just what they mean. 37 Could a spe aker confidently assume that a serious discussion about birth control practices, homosexuality, the First Amendment issues raised by the Appendix to our Pacifica opinion, or the consequences of prison rape would not violate the CDA? This uncertainty undermines the likelihood that the CDA has been carefully tailored to the congressional goal of protecting minors from potentially harmful materials. </s> The vagueness of the CDA is a matter of special concern for two reasons. First, the CDA is a content based regulation of speech. The vagueness of such a regulation raises special First Amendment concerns because of its obvious chilling effect on free speech. See, e.g., Gentile v. State Bar of Nev., 501 U.S. 1030, 1048 -1051 (1991). Second, the CDA is a criminal statute. In addition to the opprobrium and stigma of a criminal conviction, the CDA threatens violators with penalties including up to two years in prison for each act of violation. The severity of criminal sanctions may well cause speakers to remain silent rather than communicate even arguably unlawful words, ideas, and images. See, e.g., Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 494 (1965). As a practical matter, this increased deterrent effect, coupled with the "risk of discriminatory enforcement" of vague regulations, poses greater First Amendment concerns than those implicated by the civil regulation reviewed in Denver Area Ed. Telecommunications Consortium, Inc. v. FCC, 518 U. S. ___ (1996). </s> The Government argues that the statute is no more vague than the obscenity standard this Court established in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973). But that is not so. In Miller, this Court reviewed a criminal conviction against a commercial vendor who mailed brochures containing pictures of sexually explicit activities to individuals who had not requested such materials. Id., at 18. Having struggled for some time to establish a definition of obscenity, we set forth in Miller the test for obscenity that controls to this day: </s> "(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest; (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Id., at 24 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). </s> Because the CDA's "patently offensive" standard (and, we assume arguendo, its synonymous "indecent" standard) is one part of the three prong Miller test, the Government reasons, it cannot be unconstitutionally vague. </s> The Government's assertion is incorrect as a matter of fact. The second prong of the Miller test--the purportedly analogous standard--contains a critical requirement that is omitted from the CDA: that the proscribed material be "specifically defined by the applicable state law." This requirement reduces the vagueness inherent in the open ended term "patently offensive" as used in the CDA. Moreover, the Miller definition is limited to "sexual conduct," whereas the CDA extends also to include (1) "excretory activities" as well as (2) "organs" of both a sexual and excretory nature. </s> The Government's reasoning is also flawed. Just because a definition including three limitations is not vague, it does not follow that one of those limitations, standing by itself, is not vague. 38 Each of Miller's additional two prongs--(1) that, taken as a whole, the material appeal to the "prurient" interest, and (2) that it "lac[k] serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value"--critically limits the uncertain sweep of the obscenity definition. The second requirement is particularly important because, unlike the "patently offensive" and "prurient interest" criteria, it is not judged by contemporary community standards. See Pope v. Illinois, 481 U.S. 497, 500 (1987). This "societal value" requirement, absent in the CDA, allows appellate courts to impose some limitations and regularity on the definition by setting, as a matter of law, a national floor for socially redeeming value. The Government's contention that courts will be able to give such legal limitations to the CDA's standards is belied by Miller's own rationale for having juries determine whether material is "patently offensive" according to community standards: that such questions are essentially ones of fact. 39 </s> In contrast to Miller and our other previous cases, the CDA thus presents a greater threat of censoring speech that, in fact, falls outside the statute's scope. Given the vague contours of the coverage of the statute, it unquestionably silences some speakers whose messages would be entitled to constitutional protection. That danger provides further reason for insisting that the statute not be overly broad. The CDA's burden on protected speech cannot be justified if it could be avoided by a more carefully drafted statute. </s> We are persuaded that the CDA lacks the precision that the First Amendment requires when a statute regulates the content of speech. In order to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another. That burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the legitimate purpose that the statute was enacted to serve. </s> In evaluating the free speech rights of adults, we have made it perfectly clear that "[s]exual expression which is indecent but not obscene is protected by the First Amendment." Sable, 492 U.S., at 126 . See also Carey v. Population Services Int'l, 431 U.S. 678, 701 (1977) ("[W]here obscenity is not involved, we have consistentlyheld that the fact that protected speech may be offensive to some does not justify its suppression"). Indeed, Pacifica itself </s> admonished that "the fact that society may find speech offensive is not a sufficient reason for suppressing it." 438 U.S., at 745 . </s> It is true that we have repeatedly recognized the governmental interest in protecting children from harmful materials. See Ginsberg, 390 U.S., at 639 ; Pacifica, 438 U.S., at 749 . But that interest does not justify an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults. As we have explained, the Government may not "reduc[e] the adult population . . . to . . . only what is fit for children." Denver, 518 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 29) (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Sable, 492 U.S., at 128 ). 40 "[R]egardless of the strength of the government's interest" in protecting children, "[t]he level of discourse reaching a mailbox simply cannot be limited to that which would be suitable for a sandbox." Bolger v. Youngs Drug Products Corp., 463 U.S. 60, 74 -75 (1983). </s> The District Court was correct to conclude that the CDA effectively resembles the ban on "dial a porn" invalidated in Sable. 929 F. Supp., at 854. In Sable, 492 U.S., at 129 , this Court rejected the argument that we should defer to the congressional judgment that nothing less than a total ban would be effective in preventing enterprising youngsters from gaining access to indecent communications. Sable thus made clear that the mere fact that a statutory regulation of speech was enactedfor the important purpose of protecting children from exposure to sexually explicit material does not foreclose inquiry into its validity. 41 As we pointed out last Term, that inquiry embodies an "over arching commitment" to make sure that Congress has designed its statute to accomplish its purpose "without imposing an unnecessarily great restriction on speech." Denver, 518 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 11). </s> In arguing that the CDA does not so diminish adult communication, the Government relies on the incorrect factual premise that prohibiting a transmission whenever it is known that one of its recipients is a minor would not interfere with adult to adult communication. The findings of the District Court make clear that this premise is untenable. </s> Given the size of the potential audience for most messages, in the absence of a viable age verification process, the sender must be charged with knowing that one or more minors will likely view it. Knowledge that, for instance, one or more members of a 100 person chat group will be minor--and therefore that it would be a crime to send the group an indecent message--would surely burden communication among adults. 42 </s> The District Court found that at the time of trial existing technology did not include any effective method for a sender to prevent minors from obtaining access to its communications on the Internet without also denying access to adults. The Court found no effective way to determine the age of a user who is accessing material through e mail, mail exploders, newsgroups, or chat rooms. 929 F. Supp., at 845 (findings 90-94). As a practical matter, the Court also found that it would be prohibitively expensive for noncommercial--as well as some commercial--speakers who have Web sites to verify that their users are adults. Id., at 845-848 (findings 95-116). 43 These limitations must inevitably curtail a significant amount of adult communication on the Internet. By contrast, the District Court found that "[d]espite its limitations, currently available user based software suggests that a reasonably effective method by which parents can prevent their children from accessing sexually explicit and other material which parents may believe is inappropriate for their children will soon be widely available." Id., at 842 (finding 73) (emphases added). </s> The breadth of the CDA's coverage is wholly unprecedented. Unlike the regulations upheld in Ginsberg and Pacifica, the scope of the CDA is not limited to commercial speech or commercial entities. Its open ended prohibitions embrace all nonprofit entities and individuals posting indecent messages or displaying them on their own computers in the presence of minors. The general,undefined terms "indecent" and "patently offensive" cover large amounts of nonpornographic material with serious educational or other value. 44 Moreover, the "community standards" criterion as applied to the Internet means that any communication available to a nation wide audience will be judged by the standards of the community most likely to be offended by the message. 45 The regulated subject matter includes any of the seven "dirty words" used in the Pacifica monologue, the use of which the Government's expert acknowledged could constitute a felony. See Olsen Test., Tr. Vol. V, 53:16-54:10. It may also extend to discussions about prison rape or safe sexual practices, artistic images that include nude subjects, and arguably the card catalogue of the Carnegie Library. </s> For the purposes of our decision, we need neither accept nor reject the Government's submission that the First Amendment does not forbid a blanket prohibition on all "indecent" and "patently offensive" messages communicated to a 17 year old--no matter how much valuethe message may contain and regardless of parental approval. It is at least clear that the strength of the Government's interest in protecting minors is not equally strong throughout the coverage of this broad statute. Under the CDA, a parent allowing her 17 year old to use the family computer to obtain information on the Internet that she, in her parental judgment, deems appropriate could face a lengthy prison term. See 47 U. S. C. A. §223(a)(2) (Supp. 1997). Similarly, a parent who sent his 17 year old college freshman information on birth control via e mail could be incarcerated even though neither he, his child, nor anyone in their home community, found the material "indecent" or "patently offensive," if the college town's community thought otherwise. </s> The breadth of this content based restriction of speech imposes an especially heavy burden on the Government to explain why a less restrictive provision would not be as effective as the CDA. It has not done so. The arguments in this Court have referred to possible alternatives such as requiring that indecent material be "tagged" in a way that facilitates parental control of material coming into their homes, making exceptions for messages with artistic or educational value, providing some tolerance for parental choice, and regulating some portions of the Internet--such as commercial web sites--differently than others, such as chat rooms. Particularly in the light of the absence of any detailed findings by the Congress, or even hearings addressing the special problems of the CDA, we are persuaded that the CDA is not narrowly tailored if that requirement has any meaning at all. </s> In an attempt to curtail the CDA's facial overbreadth, the Government advances three additional arguments for sustaining the Act's affirmative prohibitions: (1) thatthe CDA is constitutional because it leaves open ample "alternative channels" of communication; (2) that the plain meaning of the Act's "knowledge" and "specific person" requirement significantly restricts its permissible applications; and (3) that the Act's prohibitions are "almost always" limited to material lacking redeeming social value. </s> The Government first contends that, even though the CDA effectively censors discourse on many of the Internet's modalities--such as chat groups, newsgroups, and mail exploders--it is nonetheless constitutional because it provides a "reasonable opportunity" for speakers to engage in the restricted speech on the World Wide Web. Brief for Appellants 39. This argument is unpersuasive because the CDA regulates speech on the basis of its content. A "time, place, and manner" analysis is therefore inapplicable. See Consolidated Edison Co. of N. Y. v. Public Serv. Comm'n of N. Y., 447 U.S. 530, 536 (1980). It is thus immaterial whether such speech would be feasible on the Web (which, as the Government's own expert acknowledged, would cost up to $10,000 if the speaker's interests were not accommodated by an existing Web site, not including costs for database management and age verification). The Government's position is equivalent to arguing that a statute could ban leaflets on certain subjects as long as individuals are free to publish books. In invalidating a number of laws that banned leafletting on the streets regardless of their content--we explained that "one is not to have the exercise of his liberty of expression in appropriate places abridged on the plea that it may be exercised in some other place." Schneider v. State (Town of Irvington), 308 U.S. 147, 163 (1939). </s> The Government also asserts that the "knowledge" requirement of both §§223(a) and (d), especially when coupled with the "specific child" element found in §223(d), saves the CDA from overbreadth. Because bothsections prohibit the dissemination of indecent messages only to persons known to be under 18, the Government argues, it does not require transmitters to "refrain from communicating indecent material to adults; they need only refrain from disseminating such materials to persons they know to be under 18." Brief for Appellants 24. This argument ignores the fact that most Internet fora--including chat rooms, newsgroups, mail exploders, and the Web--are open to all comers. The Government's assertion that the knowledge requirement somehow protects the communications of adults is therefore untenable. Even the strongest reading of the "specific person" requirement of §223(d) cannot save the statute. It would confer broad powers of censorship, in the form of a "heckler's veto," upon any opponent of indecent speech who might simply log on and inform the would be discoursers that his 17 year old child--a "specific person . . . under 18 years of age," 47 U. S. C. A. §223(d)(1)(A) (Supp. 1997)--would be present. </s> Finally, we find no textual support for the Government's submission that material having scientific, educational, or other redeeming social value will necessarily fall outside the CDA's "patently offensive" and "indecent" prohibitions. See also n. 37, supra. </s> The Government's three remaining arguments focus on the defenses provided in §223(e)(5). 46 First, relying on the "good faith, reasonable, effective, and appropriate actions" provision, the Government suggests that "tagging" provides a defense that saves the constitutionality of the Act. The suggestion assumes that transmitters may encode their indecent communications in a way that would indicate their contents, thus permitting recipients to block their reception with appropriatesoftware. It is the requirement that the good faith action must be "effective" that makes this defense illusory. The Government recognizes that its proposed screening software does not currently exist. Even if it did, there is no way to know whether a potential recipient will actually block the encoded material. Without the impossible knowledge that every guardian in America is screening for the "tag," the transmitter could not reasonably rely on its action to be "effective." </s> For its second and third arguments concerning defenses--which we can consider together--the Government relies on the latter half of §223(e)(5), which applies when the transmitter has restricted access by requiring use of a verified credit card or adult identification. Such verification is not only technologically available but actually is used by commercial providers of sexually explicit material. These providers, therefore, would be protected by the defense. Under the findings of the District Court, however, it is not economically feasible for most noncommercial speakers to employ such verification. Accordingly, this defense would not significantly narrow the statute's burden on noncommercial speech. Even with respect to the commercial pornographers that would be protected by the defense, the Government failed to adduce any evidence that these verification techniques actually preclude minors from posing as adults. 47 Given that the risk of criminal sanctions "hovers over each content provider, like the proverbial sword of Damocles," 48 the District Court correctly refused to rely on unproven future technology to save the statute. The Government thus failed to prove that theproffered defense would significantly reduce the heavy burden on adult speech produced by the prohibition on offensive displays. </s> We agree with the District Court's conclusion that the CDA places an unacceptably heavy burden on protected speech, and that the defenses do not constitute the sort of "narrow tailoring" that will save an otherwise patently invalid unconstitutional provision. In Sable, 492 U.S., at 127 , we remarked that the speech restriction at issue there amounted to " `burn[ing] the house to roast the pig.' " The CDA, casting a far darker shadow over free speech, threatens to torch a large segment of the Internet community. </s> At oral argument, the Government relied heavily on its ultimate fall back position: If this Court should conclude that the CDA is insufficiently tailored, it urged, we should save the statute's constitutionality by honoring the severability clause, see 47 U.S.C. § 608 and construing nonseverable terms narrowly. In only one respect is this argument acceptable. </s> A severability clause requires textual provisions that can be severed. We will follow §608's guidance by leaving constitutional textual elements of the statute intact in the one place where they are, in fact, severable. The "indecency" provision, 47 U. S. C. A. §223(a) (Supp. 1997), applies to "any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication which is obscene or indecent." (Emphasis added.) Appellees do not challenge the application of the statute to obscene speech, which, they acknowledge, can be banned totally because it enjoys no First Amendment protection. See Miller, 413 U.S., at 18 . As set forth by the statute, the restriction of "obscene" material enjoys a textual manifestation separate from that for "indecent" material, which we have held unconstitutional. Therefore, we willsever the term "or indecent" from the statute, leaving the rest of §223(a) standing. In no other respect, however, can §223(a) or §223(d) be saved by such a textual surgery. </s> The Government also draws on an additional, less traditional aspect of the CDA's severability clause, 47 U. S. C., §608, which asks any reviewing court that holds the statute facially unconstitutional not to invalidate the CDA in application to "other persons or circumstances" that might be constitutionally permissible. It further invokes this Court's admonition that, absent "countervailing considerations," a statute should "be declared invalid to the extent it reaches too far, but otherwise left intact." Brockett v. Spokane Arcades, Inc., 472 U.S. 491, 503 -504 (1985). There are two flaws in this argument. </s> First, the statute that grants our jurisdiction for this expedited review, 47 U. S. C. A. §561 (Supp. 1997), limits that jurisdictional grant to actions challenging the CDA "on its face." Consistent with §561, the plaintiffs who brought this suit and the three judge panel that decided it treated it as a facial challenge. We have no authority, in this particular posture, to convert this litigation into an "as applied" challenge. Nor, given the vast array of plaintiffs, the range of their expressive activities, and the vagueness of the statute, would it be practicable to limit our holding to a judicially defined set of specific applications. </s> Second, one of the "countervailing considerations" mentioned in Brockett is present here. In considering a facial challenge, this Court may impose a limiting construction on a statute only if it is "readily susceptible" to such a construction. Virginia v. American Bookseller's Assn., Inc., 484 U.S. 383, 397 (1988). See also Erznoznik, v. Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205, 216 (1975) ("readily subject" to narrowing construction). The open ended character of the CDA provides no guidance whatever for limiting its coverage. </s> This case is therefore unlike those in which we have construed a statute narrowly because the text or other source of congressional intent identified a clear line that this Court could draw. Cf., e.g., Brockett, 472 U.S., at 504 -505 (invalidating obscenity statute only to the extent that word "lust" was actually or effectively excised from statute); United States v. Grace, 461 U.S. 171, 180 -183 (1983) (invalidating federal statute banning expressive displays only insofar as it extended to public sidewalks when clear line could be drawn between sidewalks and other grounds that comported with congressional purpose of protecting the building, grounds, and people therein). Rather, our decision in United States v. Treasury Employees, 513 U.S. 454, 479 , n. 26 (1995), is applicable. In that case, we declined to "dra[w] one or more lines between categories of speech covered by an overly broad statute, when Congress has sent inconsistent signals as to where the new line or lines should be drawn" because doing so "involves a far more serious invasion of the legislative domain." 49 This Court "will not rewrite a . . . law to conform it to constitutional requirements." American Booksellers, 484 U.S., at 397 . 50 </s> In this Court, though not in the District Court, the Government asserts that--in addition to its interest in protecting children--its "[e]qually significant" interest in fostering the growth of the Internet provides an independent basis for upholding the constitutionality of the CDA. Brief for Appellants 19. The Government apparently assumes that the unregulated availability of "indecent" and "patently offensive" material on the Internet is driving countless citizens away from the medium because of the risk of exposing themselves or their children to harmful material. </s> We find this argument singularly unpersuasive. The dramatic expansion of this new marketplace of ideas contradicts the factual basis of this contention. The record demonstrates that the growth of the Internet has been and continues to be phenomenal. As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship. </s> For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court is affirmed. </s> It is so ordered. </s> U.S. Supreme Court </s> No. 96-511 </s> JANET RENO, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES, et al., APPELLANTS v. AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION et al. </s> on appeal from the united states district court for the eastern district of pennsylvania [June 26, 1997] </s> Justice O'Connor, with whom The Chief Justice joins, concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part. </s> I write separately to explain why I view the Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) as little more than an attempt by Congress to create "adult zones" on the Internet. Our precedent indicates that the creation of such zones can be constitutionally sound. Despite the soundness of its purpose, however, portions of the CDA are unconstitutional because they stray from the blueprint our prior cases have developed for constructing a "zoning law" that passes constitutional muster. </s> Appellees bring a facial challenge to three provisions of the CDA. The first, which the Court describes as the "indecency transmission" provision, makes it a crime to knowingly transmit an obscene or indecent message or image to a person the sender knows is under 18 years old. 47 U. S. C. A. §223(a)(1)(B) (May 1996 Supp.). What the Court classifies as a single " `patently offensive display' " provision, see ante, at 11, is in reality two separate provisions. The first of these makes it a crime to knowingly send a patently offensive message or image to a specific person under the age of 18 ("specificperson" provision). §223(d)(1)(A). The second criminalizes the display of patently offensive messages or images "in a[ny] manner available" to minors ("display" provision). §223(d)(1)(B). None of these provisions purports to keep indecent (or patently offensive) material away from adults, who have a First Amendment right to obtain this speech. Sable Communications of Cal., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115, 126 (1989) ("Sexual expression which is indecent but not obscene is protected by the First Amendment"). Thus, the undeniable purpose of the CDA is to segregate indecent material on the Internet into certain areas that minors cannot access. See S. Conf. Rep. No. 104-230, p. 189 (1996) (CDA imposes "access restrictions . . . to protect minors from exposure to indecent material"). </s> The creation of "adult zones" is by no means a novel concept. States have long denied minors access to certain establishments frequented by adults. 1 Stateshave also denied minors access to speech deemed to be "harmful to minors." 2 The Court has previously sustained such zoning laws, but only if they respect the First Amendment rights of adults and minors. That isto say, a zoning law is valid if (i) it does not unduly restrict adult access to the material; and (ii) minors have no First Amendment right to read or view the banned material. As applied to the Internet as it exists in 1997, the "display" provision and some applications of the "indecency transmission" and "specific person" provisions fail to adhere to the first of these limiting principles by restricting adults' access to protected materials in certain circumstances. Unlike the Court, however, I would invalidate the provisions only in those circumstances. </s> Our cases make clear that a "zoning" law is valid only if adults are still able to obtain the regulated speech. If they cannot, the law does more than simply keep children away from speech they have no right to obtain--it interferes with the rights of adults to obtain constitutionally protected speech and effectively "reduce[s] the adult population . . . to reading only what is fit for children." Butler v. Michigan, 352 U.S. 380, 383 (1957). The First Amendment does not tolerate such interference. See id., at 383 (striking down a Michigan criminal law banning sale of books--to minors or adults--that contained words or pictures that " `tende[d] to . . . corrup[t] the morals of youth' "); Sable Communications, supra (invalidating federal law that made it a crime to transmit indecent, but nonobscene, commercial telephone messages to minors and adults); Bolger v. Youngs Drug Products Corp., 463 U.S. 60, 74 (1983) (striking down a federal law prohibiting the mailing of unsolicited advertisements for contraceptives). If the law does not unduly restrict adults' access to constitutionally protected speech, however, it may be valid. In Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 634 (1968), for example, the Court sustained a New York law that barred store owners from selling pornographic magazinesto minors in part because adults could still buy those magazines. </s> The Court in Ginsberg concluded that the New York law created a constitutionally adequate adult zone simply because, on its face, it denied access only to minors. The Court did not question--and therefore necessarily assumed--that an adult zone, once created, would succeed in preserving adults' access while denying minors' access to the regulated speech. Before today, there was no reason to question this assumption, for the Court has previously only considered laws that operated in the physical world, a world that with two characteristics that make it possible to create "adult zones": geography and identity. See Lessig, Reading the Constitution in Cyberspace, 45 Emory L. J. 869, 886 (1996). A minor can see an adult dance show only if he enters an establishment that provides such entertainment. And should he attempt to do so, the minor will not be able to conceal completely his identity (or, consequently, his age). Thus, the twin characteristics of geography and identity enable the establishment's proprietor to prevent children from entering the establishment, but to let adults inside. </s> The electronic world is fundamentally different. Because it is no more than the interconnection of electronic pathways, cyberspace allows speakers and listeners to mask their identities. Cyberspace undeniably reflects some form of geography; chat rooms and Web sites, for example, exist at fixed "locations" on the Internet. Since users can transmit and receive messages on the Internet without revealing anything about their identities or ages, see Lessig, supra, at 901, however, it is not currently possible to exclude persons from accessing certain messages on the basis of their identity. </s> Cyberspace differs from the physical world in another basic way: Cyberspace is malleable. Thus, it is possible to construct barriers in cyberspace and use them toscreen for identity, making cyberspace more like the physical world and, consequently, more amenable to zoning laws. This transformation of cyberspace is already underway. Lessig, supra, at 888-889. Id., at 887 (cyberspace "is moving . . . from a relatively unzoned place to a universe that is extraordinarily well zoned"). Internet speakers (users who post-material on the Internet) have begun to zone cyberspace itself through the use of "gateway" technology. Such technology requires Internet users to enter information about themselves--perhaps an adult identification number or a credit card number--before they can access certain areas of cyberspace, 929 F. Supp. 824, 845 (ED Pa. 1996), much like a bouncer checks a person's driver's license before admitting him to a nightclub. Internet users who access information have not attempted to zone cyberspace itself, but have tried to limit their own power to access information in cyberspace, much as a parent controls what her children watch on television by installing a lock box. This user based zoning is accomplished through the use of screening software (such as Cyber Patrol or SurfWatch) or browsers with screening capabilities, both of which search addresses and text for keywords that are associated with "adult" sites and, if the user wishes, blocks access to such sites. Id., at 839-842. The Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) project is designed to facilitate user based zoning by encouraging Internet speakers to rate the content of their speech using codes recognized by all screening programs. Id., at 838-839. </s> Despite this progress, the transformation of cyberspace is not complete. Although gateway technology has been available on the World Wide Web for some time now, id., at 845; Shea v. Reno, 930 F. Supp. 916, 933-934 (SDNY 1996), it is not available to all Web speakers, 929 F. Supp., at 845-846, and is just now becoming technologically feasible for chat rooms and USENETnewsgroups, Brief for Federal Parties 37-38. Gateway technology is not ubiquitous in cyberspace, and because without it "there is no means of age verification," cyberspace still remains largely unzoned--and unzoneable. 929 F. Supp., at 846; Shea, supra, at 934. User based zoning is also in its infancy. For it to be effective, (i) an agreed upon code (or "tag") would have to exist; (ii) screening software or browsers with screening capabilities would have to be able to recognize the "tag"; and (iii) those programs would have to be widely available--and widely used--by Internet users. At present, none of these conditions is true. Screening software "is not in wide use today" and "only a handful of browsers have screening capabilities." Shea, supra, at 945-946. There is, moreover, no agreed upon "tag" for those programs to recognize. 929 F. Supp., at 848; Shea, supra, at 945. </s> Although the prospects for the eventual zoning of the Internet appear promising, I agree with the Court that we must evaluate the constitutionality of the CDA as it applies to the Internet as it exists today. Ante, at 36. Given the present state of cyberspace, I agree with the Court that the "display" provision cannot pass muster. Until gateway technology is available throughout cyberspace, and it is not in 1997, a speaker cannot be reasonably assured that the speech he displays will reach only adults because it is impossible to confine speech to an "adult zone." Thus, the only way for a speaker to avoid liability under the CDA is to refrain completely from using indecent speech. But this forced silence impinges on the First Amendment right of adults to make and obtain this speech and, for all intents and purposes, "reduce[s] the adult population [on the Internet] to reading only what is fit for children." Butler, 352 U.S., at 383 . As a result, the "display" provision cannot withstand scrutiny. Accord, Sable Communications, 492 U.S., at 126 -131; Bolger v.Youngs Drug Products Corp., 463 U.S., at 73 -75. </s> The "indecency transmission" and "specific person" provisions present a closer issue, for they are not unconstitutional in all of their applications. As discussed above, the "indecency transmission" provision makes it a crime to transmit knowingly an indecent message to a person the sender knows is under 18 years of age. 47 U. S. C. A. §223(a)(1)(B) (May 1996 Supp.). The "specific person" provision proscribes the same conduct, although it does not as explicitly require the sender to know that the intended recipient of his indecent message is a minor. §223(d)(1)(A). Appellant urges the Court to construe the provision to impose such a knowledge requirement, see Brief for Federal Parties 25-27, and I would do so. See Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. Florida Gulf Coast Building & Constr. Trades Council, 485 U.S. 568, 575 (1988) ("[W]here an otherwise acceptable construction of a statute would raise serious constitutional problems, the Court will construe the statute to avoid such problems unless such construction is plainly contrary to the intent of Congress"). </s> So construed, both provisions are constitutional as applied to a conversation involving only an adult and one or more minors--e.g., when an adult speaker sends an e mail knowing the addressee is a minor, or when an adult and minor converse by themselves or with other minors in a chat room. In this context, these provisions are no different from the law we sustained in Ginsberg. Restricting what the adult may say to the minors in no way restricts the adult's ability to communicate with other adults. He is not prevented from speaking indecently to other adults in a chat room (because there are no other adults participating in the conversation) and he remains free to send indecent e mails to other adults. The relevant universe contains only one adult, and the adult in that universe has the power to refrain from using indecent speech and consequently to keep allsuch speech within the room in an "adult" zone. </s> The analogy to Ginsberg breaks down, however, when more than one adult is a party to the conversation. If a minor enters a chat room otherwise occupied by adults, the CDA effectively requires the adults in the room to stop using indecent speech. If they did not, they could be prosecuted under the "indecency transmission" and "specific person" provisions for any indecent statements they make to the group, since they would be transmitting an indecent message to specific persons, one of whom is a minor. Accord, ante, at 30. The CDA is therefore akin to a law that makes it a crime for a bookstore owner to sell pornographic magazines to anyone once a minor enters his store. Even assuming such a law might be constitutional in the physical world as a reasonable alternative to excluding minors completely from the store, the absence of any means of excluding minors from chat rooms in cyberspace restricts the rights of adults to engage in indecent speech in those rooms. The "indecency transmission" and "specific person" provisions share this defect. </s> But these two provisions do not infringe on adults' speech in all situations. And as discussed below, I do not find that the provisions are overbroad in the sense that they restrict minors' access to a substantial amount of speech that minors have the right to read and view. Accordingly, the CDA can be applied constitutionally in some situations. Normally, this fact would require the Court to reject a direct facial challenge. United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745 (1987) ("A facial challenge to a legislative Act [succeeds only if] the challenger . . . establish[es] that no set of circumstances exists under which the Act would be valid"). Appellees' claim arises under the First Amendment, however, and they argue that the CDA is facially invalid because it is "substantially overbroad"--that is, it "sweeps too broadly . . . [and] penaliz[es] a substantial amount of speech that isconstitutionally protected," Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement, 505 U.S. 123, 130 (1992). See Brief for Appellees American Library Association et al. 48; Brief for Appellees American Civil Liberties Union et al. 39-41. I agree with the Court that the provisions are overbroad in that they cover any and all communications between adults and minors, regardless of how many adults might be part of the audience to the communication. </s> This conclusion does not end the matter, however. Where, as here, "the parties challenging the statute are those who desire to engage in protected speech that the overbroad statute purports to punish . . . [t]he statute may forthwith be declared invalid to the extent that it reaches too far, but otherwise left intact." Brockett v. Spokane Arcades, Inc., 472 U.S. 491, 504 (1985). There is no question that Congress intended to prohibit certain communications between one adult and one or more minors. See 47 U. S. C. A. §223(a)(1)(B) (May 1996 Supp.) (punishing "[w]hoever . . . initiates the transmission of [any indecent communication] knowingly that the recipient of the communication is under 18 years of age"); §223(d)(1)(A) (punishing "[w]hoever . . . send[s] to a specific person or persons under 18 years of age [a patently offensive message]"). There is also no question that Congress would have enacted a narrower version of these provisions had it known a broader version would be declared unconstitutional. 47 U.S.C. § 608 ("If . . . the application [of any provision of the CDA] to any person or circumstance is held invalid, . . . the application of such provision to other persons or circumstances shall not be affected thereby"). I would therefore sustain the "indecency transmission" and "specific person" provisions to the extent they apply to the transmission of Internet communications where the party initiating the communication knows that all of the recipients are minors. </s> Whether the CDA substantially interferes with the First Amendment rights of minors, and thereby runs afoul of the second characteristic of valid zoning laws, presents a closer question. In Ginsberg, the New York law we sustained prohibited the sale to minors of magazines that were "harmful to minors." Under that law, a magazine was "harmful to minors" only if it was obscene as to minors. 390 U.S., at 632 -633. Noting that obscene speech is not protected by the First Amendment, Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 485 (1957), and that New York was constitutionally free to adjust the definition of obscenity for minors, 390 U.S., at 638 , the Court concluded that the law did not "invad[e] the area of freedom of expression constitutionally secured to minors." Id., at 637. New York therefore did not infringe upon the First Amendment rights of minors. Cf. Erznoznik v. Jacksonville, 422 U.S. 205, 213 (1975) (striking down city ordinance that banned nudity that was not "obscene even as to minors"). </s> The Court neither "accept[s] nor reject[s]" the argument that the CDA is facially overbroad because it substantially interferes with the First Amendment rights of minors. Ante, at 32. I would reject it. Ginsberg established that minors may constitutionally be denied access to material that is obscene as to minors. As Ginsberg explained, material is obscene as to minors if it (i) is "patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable . . . for minors"; (ii) appeals to the prurient interest of minors; and (iii) is "utterly without redeeming social importance for minors." 390 U.S., at 633 . Because the CDA denies minors the right to obtain material that is "patently offensive"--even if it has some redeeming value for minors and even if it does not appeal to their prurient interests--Congress' rejection of the Ginsberg "harmful to minors" standard means thatthe CDA could ban some speech that is "indecent" (i.e., "patently offensive") but that is not obscene as to minors. </s> I do not deny this possibility, but to prevail in a facial challenge, it is not enough for a plaintiff to show "some" overbreadth. Our cases require a proof of "real" and "substantial" overbreadth, Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 615 (1973), and appellees have not carried their burden in this case. In my view, the universe of speech constitutionally protected as to minors but banned by the CDA--i.e., the universe of material that is "patently offensive," but which nonetheless has some redeeming value for minors or does not appeal to their prurient interest--is a very small one. Appellees cite no examples of speech falling within this universe and do not attempt to explain why that universe is substantial "in relation to the statute's plainly legitimate sweep." Ibid. That the CDA might deny minors the right to obtain material that has some "value," see ante, at 32-33, is largely beside the point. While discussions about prison rape or nude art, see ibid., may have some redeeming education value for adults, they do not necessarily have any such value for minors, and under Ginsberg, minors only have a First Amendment right to obtain patently offensive material that has "redeeming social importance for minors," 390 U.S., at 633 (emphasis added). There is also no evidence in the record to support the contention that "many [e] mail transmissions from an adult to a minor are conversations between family members," ante, at 18, n. 32, and no support for the legal proposition that such speech is absolutely immune from regulation. Accordingly, in my view, the CDA does not burden a substantial amount of minors' constitutionally protected speech. </s> Thus, the constitutionality of the CDA as a zoning law hinges on the extent to which it substantially interferes with the First Amendment rights of adults. Because therights of adults are infringed only by the "display" provision and by the "indecency transmission" and "specific person" provisions as applied to communications involving more than one adult, I would invalidate the CDA only to that extent. Insofar as the "indecency transmission" and "specific person" provisions prohibit the use of indecent speech in communications between an adult and one or more minors, however, they can and should be sustained. The Court reaches a contrary conclusion, and from that holding that I respectfully dissent. </s> Footnotes </s> [Footnote 1 "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech." U. S. Const., Amdt. 1. </s> [Footnote 2 The Court made 410 findings, including 356 paragraphs of the parties' stipulation and 54 findings based on evidence received in open court. See 929 F. Supp. at 830, n. 9, 842, n. 15. </s> [Footnote 3 An acronym for the network developed by the Advanced Research Project Agency. </s> [Footnote 4 Id., at 844 (finding 81). </s> [Footnote 5 Id., at 831 (finding 3). </s> [Footnote 6 Id., at 835 (finding 27). </s> [Footnote 7 Id., at 842 (finding 74). </s> [Footnote 8 Id., at 836 (finding 36). </s> [Footnote 9 "Web publishing is simple enough that thousands of individual users and small community organizations are using the Web to publish their own personal `home pages,' the equivalent of individualized newsletters about the person or organization, which are available to everyone on the Web." Id., at 837 (finding 42). </s> [Footnote 10 Id., at 838 (finding 46). </s> [Footnote 11 Id., at 844 (finding 82). </s> [Footnote 12 Ibid. (finding 86). </s> [Footnote 13 Ibid. (finding 85). </s> [Footnote 14 Id., at 848 (finding 117). </s> [Footnote 15 Id., at 844-845 (finding 88). </s> [Footnote 16 Ibid. </s> [Footnote 17 Id., at 845 (finding 89). </s> [Footnote 18 Id., at 842 (finding 72). </s> [Footnote 19 Ibid. (finding 73). </s> [Footnote 20 Id., at 845 (finding 90): "An e mail address provides no authoritative information about the addressee, who may use an e mail `alias' or an anonymous remailer. There is also no universal or reliable listing of e mail addresses and corresponding names or telephone numbers, and any such listing would be or rapidly become incomplete. For these reasons, there is no reliable way in many instances for a sender to know if the e mail recipient is an adult or a minor. The difficulty of e mail age verification is compounded for mail exploders such as listservs, which automatically send information to all e mail addresses on a sender's list. Government expert Dr. Olsen agreed that no current technology could give a speaker assurance that only adults were listed in a particular mail exploder's mailing list." </s> [Footnote 21 Ibid. (finding 93). </s> [Footnote 22 Id., at 846 (finding 102). </s> [Footnote 23 Id., at 847 (findings 104-106): "At least some, if not almost all, non commercial organizations, such as the ACLU, Stop Prisoner Rape or Critical Path AIDS Project, regard charging listeners to access their speech as contrary to their goals of making their materials available to a wide audience free of charge. . . . . . "There is evidence suggesting that adult users, particularly casual Web browsers, would be discouraged from retrieving information that required use of a credit card or password. Andrew Anker testified that HotWired has received many complaints from its members about HotWired's registration system, which requires only that a member supply a name, e mail address and self created password. There is concern by commercial content providers that age verification requirements would decrease advertising and revenue because advertisers depend on a demonstration that the sites arewidely available and frequently visited." </s> [Footnote 24 See Exon Amendment No. 1268, 141 Cong. Rec. S8120 (June 9, 1995). See also id., at S8087. This amendment, as revised, became§502 of the Communications Act of 1996, 110 Stat. 133, 47 U. S. C. A. §§223(a)%(e) (Supp. 1997). Some Members of the House of Representatives opposed the Exon Amendment because they thought it "possible for our parents now to child proof the family computer with these products available in the private sector." They also thought the Senate's approach would "involve the Federal Government spending vast sums of money trying to define elusive terms that are going to lead to a flood of legal challenges while our kids are unprotected." These Members offered an amendment intended as a substitute for the Exon Amendment, but instead enacted as an additional section of the Act entitled "Online Family Empowerment." See 110 Stat. 137, 47 U. S. C. A. §230 (Supp. 1997); 141 Cong. Rec. H8468-H8472. No hearings were held on the provisions that became law. See S. Rep. No. 104-23 (1995), p. 9. After the Senate adopted the Exon amendment, however, its Judiciary Committee did conduct a one day hearing on "Cyberporn and Children." In his opening statement at that hearing, Senator Leahy observed: "It really struck me in your opening statement when you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, that it is the first ever hearing, and you are absolutely right. And yet we had a major debate on the floor, passed legislation overwhelmingly on a subject involving the Internet, legislation that could dramatically change--some would say even wreak havoc--on the Internet. The Senate went in willy nilly, passed legislation, and never once had a hearing, never once had a discussion other than an hour or so on the floor." Cyberporn and Children: The Scope of the Problem, The State of the Technology, and the Need for Congressional Action, Hearing on S. 892 before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 104th Cong., 1st Sess., 7-8 (1995). </s> [Footnote 25 Although the Government and the dissent break §223(d)(1) into two separate "patently offensive" and "display" provisions, we follow the convention of both parties below, as well the District Court's order and opinion, in describing §223(d)(1) as one provision. </s> [Footnote 26 In full, § 223(e)(5) provides: "(5) It is a defense to a prosecution under subsection (a)(1)(B) or (d) of this section, or under subsection (a)(2) of this section with respect to the use of a facility for an activity under subsection (a)(1)(B) of this section that a person-- "(A) has taken, in good faith, reasonable, effective, and appropriate actions under the circumstances to restrict or prevent access by minors to a communication specified in such subsections, which may involve any appropriate measures to restrict minors from such communications, including any method which is feasible under available technology; or "(B) has restricted access to such communication by requiring use of a verified credit card, debit account, adult access code, or adult personal identification number." </s> [Footnote 27 American Civil Liberties Union; Human Rights Watch; Electronic Privacy Information Center; Electronic Frontier Foundation; Journalism Education Association; Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility; National Writers Union; Clarinet Communications Corp.; Institute for Global Communications; Stop Prisoner Rape; AIDS Education Global Information System; Bibliobytes; Queer Resources Directory; Critical Path AIDS Project, Inc.; Wildcat Press, Inc.; Declan McCullagh dba Justice on Campus; Brock Meeks dba Cyberwire Dispatch; John Troyer dba The Safer Sex Page; Jonathan Wallace dba The Ethical Spectacle; and Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. </s> [Footnote 28 American Library Association; America Online, Inc.; American Booksellers Association, Inc.; American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression; American Society of Newspaper Editors; Apple Computer, Inc.; Association of American Publishers, Inc.; Association of Publishers, Editors and Writers; Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition; Commercial Internet Exchange Association; CompuServe Incorporated; Families Against Internet Censorship; Freedom to Read Foundation, Inc.; Health Sciences Libraries Consortium; Hotwired Ventures LLC; Interactive Digital Software Association; Interactive Services Association; Magazine Publishers of America; Microsoft Corporation; The Microsoft Network, L. L. C.; National Press Photographers Association; Netcom On Line Communication Services, Inc.; Newspaper Association of America; Opnet, Inc.; Prodigy Services Company; Society of Professional Journalists; Wired Ventures, Ltd. </s> [Footnote 29 110 Stat. 142-143, note following 47 U. S. C. A. §223 (Supp.1997). </s> [Footnote 30 See also 929 F. Supp., at 877: "Four related characteristics of Internet communication have a transcendent importance to our shared holding that the CDA is unconstitutional on its face. We explain these characteristics in our Findings of fact above, and I only rehearse them briefly here. First, the Internet presents very low barriers to entry. Second, these barriers to entry are identical for both speakers and listeners. Third, as a result of these low barriers, astoundingly diverse content is available on the Internet. Fourth, the Internet provides significant access to all who wish to speak in the medium, and even creates a relative parity among speakers." According to Judge Dalzell, these characteristics and therest of the District Court's findings "lead to the conclusion that Congress may not regulate indecency on the Internet at all." Ibid. Because appellees do not press this argument before this Court, we do not consider it. Appellees also do not dispute that the Government generally has a compelling interest in protecting minors from "indecent" and "patently offensive" speech. </s> [Footnote 31 390 U.S., at 639 . We quoted from Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166 (1944): "It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder." </s> [Footnote 32 Given the likelihood that many E mail transmissions from an adult to a minor are conversations between family members, it is therefore incorrect for the dissent to suggest that the provisions of the CDA, even in this narrow area, "are no different from the lawwe sustained in Ginsberg." Post, at 8. </s> [Footnote 33 Cf. Pacifica Foundation v. FCC, 556 F. 2d 9, 36 (CADC 1977) (Levanthal, J., dissenting), rev'd, FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978). When Pacifica was decided, given that radio stations were allowed to operate only pursuant to federal license, and that Congress had enacted legislation prohibiting licensees from broadcasting indecent speech, there was a risk that members of the radio audience might infer some sort of official or societal approval of whatever was heard over the radio, see 556 F. 2d, at 37, n. 18. No such risk attends messages received through the Internet, which is not supervised by any federal agency. </s> [Footnote 34 Juris. Statement 3 (citing 929 F. Supp., at 831 (finding 3)). </s> [Footnote 35 "Indecent" does not benefit from any textual embellishment at all. "Patently offensive" is qualified only to the extent that it involves "sexual or excretory activities or organs" taken "in context" and "measured by contemporary community standards." </s> [Footnote 36 See Gozlon Peretz v. United States, 498 U.S. 395, 404 (1991) ("Where Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the same Act, it is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion and exclusion") (internal quotation marks omitted). </s> [Footnote 37 The statute does not indicate whether the "patently offensive" and "indecent" determinations should be made with respect to minors or the population as a whole. The Government asserts that the appropriate standard is "what is suitable material for minors." Reply Brief for Appellants 18, n. 13 (citing Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629, 633 (1968)). But the Conferees expressly rejected amendments that would have imposed such a "harmful to minors" standard. See S. Conf. Rep. No. 104-230, p. 189 (1996) (S. Conf. Rep.), 142 Cong. Rec. H1145, H1165-1166 (Feb. 1, 1996). The Conferees also rejected amendments that would have limited the proscribed materials to those lacking redeeming value. See S. Conf. Rep., at 189, 142 Cong. Rec. H1165-1166 (Feb. 1, 1996). </s> [Footnote 38 Even though the word "trunk," standing alone, might refer to luggage, a swimming suit, the base of a tree, or the long nose of an animal, its meaning is clear when it is one prong of a three part description of a species of gray animals. </s> [Footnote 39 413 U.S., at 30 (Determinations of "what appeals to the `prurient interest' or is `patently offensive'. . . . are essentially questions of fact, and our Nation is simply too big and too diverse for this Court to reasonably expect that such standards could be articulated for all 50 States in a single formulation, even assuming the prerequisite consensus exists"). The CDA, which implements the "contemporary community standards" language of Miller, thus conflicts with the Conferees' own assertion that the CDA was intended "to establish a uniform national standard of content regulation." S. Conf. Rep., at 191. </s> [Footnote 40 Accord, Butler v. Michigan, 352 U.S. 380, 383 (1957) (ban on sale to adults of books deemed harmful to children unconstitutional); Sable Communications of Cal., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115, 128 (1989) (ban on "dial a porn" messages unconstitutional); Bolger v. Youngs Drug Products Corp., 463 U.S. 60, 73 (1983) (ban on mailing of unsolicited advertisement for contraceptives unconstitutional). </s> [Footnote 41 The lack of legislative attention to the statute at issue in Sable suggests another parallel with this case. Compare 492 U.S., at 129 -130 ("[A]side from conclusory statements during the debates by proponents of the bill, as well as similar assertions in hearings on a substantially identical bill the year before, . . . the congressional record presented to us contains no evidence as to how effective or ineffective the FCC's most recent regulations were or might prove to be. . . . No Congressman or Senator purported to present a considered judgment with respect to how often or to what extent minors could or would circumvent the rules and have access to dial a porn messages") with n. 24, supra. </s> [Footnote 42 The Government agrees that these provisions are applicable whenever "a sender transmits a message to more than one recipient, knowing that at least one of the specific persons receiving themessage is a minor." Opposition to Motion to Affirm and Reply to Juris. Statement 4-5, n. 1. </s> [Footnote 43 The Government asserts that "[t]here is nothing constitutionally suspect about requiring commercial Web site operators . . . to shoulder the modest burdens associated with their use." Brief for Appellants 35. As a matter of fact, however, there is no evidence that a "modest burden" would be effective. </s> [Footnote 44 Transmitting obscenity and child pornography, whether via the Internet or other means, is already illegal under federal law for both adults and juveniles. See 18 U.S.C. §§ 1464-1465 (criminalizing obscenity); §2251 (criminalizing child pornography). In fact, when Congress was considering the CDA, the Government expressed its view that the law was unnecessary because existing laws already authorized its ongoing efforts to prosecute obscenity, child pornography, and child solicitation. See 141 Cong. Rec. S8342 (June 14, 1995) (letter from Kent Markus, Acting Assistant Attorney General, U. S. Department of Justice, to Sen. Leahy). </s> [Footnote 45 Citing Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993), among other cases, appellees offer an additional reason why, in their view, the CDA fails strict scrutiny. Because so much sexually explicit content originates overseas, they argue, the CDA cannot be "effective." Brief for Appellees American Library Association et al. 33-34. This argument raises difficult issues regarding the intended, as well as the permissible scope of, extraterritorial application of the CDA. We find it unnecessary to address those issues to dispose of this case. </s> [Footnote 46 For the full text of §223(e)(5), see n. 26, supra. </s> [Footnote 47 Thus, ironically, this defense may significantly protect commercial purveyors of obscene postings while providing little (or no) benefit for transmitters of indecent messages that have significant social or artistic value. </s> [Footnote 48 929 F. Supp., at 855-856. </s> [Footnote 49 As this Court long ago explained, "It would certainly be dangerous if the Legislature could set a net large enough to catch all possible offenders and leave it to the courts to step inside and say who could be rightfully be detained and who should be set at large. This would, to some extent, substitute the judicial for the legislative department of the government." United States v. Reese, 92 U.S. 214, 221 (1876). In part because of these separation of powers concerns, we have held that a severability clause is "an aid merely; not an inexorable command." Dorchy v. Kansas, 264 U.S. 286, 290 (1924). </s> [Footnote 50 See also Osborne v. Ohio, 495 U.S. 103, 121 (1990) (judicial rewriting of statutes would derogate Congress's "incentive to draft a narrowly tailored law in the first place"). </s> [Footnote 1 See, e.g., Alaska Stat. Ann. §11.66.300 (1996) (no minors in "adult entertainment" places); Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §13-3556 (1989) (no minors in places where people expose themselves); Ark. Code Ann. §§5-27-223, 5-27-224 (1993) (no minors in poolrooms and bars); Colo. Rev. Stat. §18-7-502(2) (1986) (no minors in places displaying movies or shows that are "harmful to children"); Del. Code Ann., Tit. 11, §1365(i)(2) (1995) (same); D. C. Code Ann. §22-2001(b)(1)(B) (1996) (same); Fla. Stat. §847.013(2) (1994) (same); Ga. Code Ann. §16-12-103(b) (1996) (same); Haw. Rev. Stat. §712-1215(1)(b) (1994) (no minors in movie houses or shows that are "pornographic for minors"); Idaho Code §18-1515(2) (1987) (no minors in places displaying movies or shows that are "harmful to minors"); La. Rev. Stat. Ann. §14:91.11(B) (West 1986) (no minors in places displaying movies that depict sex acts and appeal to minors' prurient interest); Md. Ann. Code, Art. 27, §416E (1996) (no minors in establishments where certain enumerated acts are performed or portrayed); Mich. Comp. Laws §750.141 (1991) (no minors without an adult in places where alcohol is sold); Minn. Stat. §617.294 (1987 and Supp. 1997) (no minors in places displaying movies or shows that are "harmful to minors"); Miss. Code Ann. §97-5-11 (1994) (nominors in poolrooms, billiard halls, or where alcohol is sold); Mo. Rev. Stat. §573.507 (1995) (no minors in adult cabarets); Neb. Rev. Stat. §28-809 (1995) (no minors in places displaying movies or shows that are "harmful to minors"); Nev. Rev. Stat. §201.265(3) (1997) (same); N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §571-B:2(II) (1986) (same); N. M. Stat. Ann. §30-37-3 (1989) (same); N. Y. Penal Law §235.21(2) (McKinney 1989) (same); N. D. Cent. Code §12.1-27.1-03 (1985 and Supp. 1995) (same); 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. §5903(a) (Supp. 1997) (same); S. D. Comp. Laws Ann. §22-24-30 (1988) (same); Tenn. Code Ann. §39-17-911(b) (1991) (same); Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 13, §2802(b) (1974) (same); Va. Code Ann. §18.2-391 (1996) (same). </s> [Footnote 2 See, e.g., Ala. Code §13A-12-200.5 (1994); Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §13-3506 (1989); Ark. Code Ann. 5-68-502 (1993); Cal. Penal Code Ann. §313.1 (West Supp. 1997); Colo. Rev. Stat. §18-7-502(1) (1986); Conn. Gen. Stat. §53a-196 (1994); Del. Code Ann., Tit. 11, §1365(i)(1) (1995); D. C. Code Ann. §22-2001(b)(1)(A) (1996); Fla. Stat. §847.012 (1994); Ga. Code Ann. §16-12-103(a) (1996); Haw. Rev. Stat. §712-1215(1) (1994); Idaho Code §18-1515(1) (1987); Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 720, §5/11-21 (1993); Ind. Code §35-49-3-3(1) (Supp. 1996); Iowa Code §728.2 (1993); Kan. Stat. Ann. §21-4301c(a)(2) (1988); La. Rev. Stat. Ann. §14:91.11(B) (West 1986); Md. Ann. Code, Art. 27, §416B (1996); Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 272, §28 (1992); Minn. Stat. §617.293 (1987 and Supp. 1997); Miss. Code Ann. §97-5-11 (1994); Mo. Rev. Stat. §573.040 (1995); Mont. Code Ann. §45-8-206 (1995); Neb. Rev. Stat. §28-808 (1995); Nev. Rev. Stat. §§201.265(1), (2) (1997); N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann. §571-B:2(I) (1986); N. M. Stat. Ann. §30-37-2 (1989); N. Y. Penal Law §235.21(1) (McKinney 1989); N. C. Gen. Stat. §14-190.15(a) (1993); N. D. Cent. Code §12.1-27.1-03 (1985 and Supp. 1995); Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §2907.31(A)(1) (Supp. 1997); Okla. Stat., Tit. 21, §1040.76(2) (Supp. 1997); 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. §5903(c) (Supp. 1997); R. I. Gen. Laws §11-31-10(a) (1996); S. C. Code Ann. §16-15-385(A) (Supp. 1996); S. D. Comp. Laws Ann. §22-24-28 (1988); Tenn. Code Ann. §39-17-911(a) (1991); Tex Penal Code Ann. §43.24(b) (1994); Utah Code Ann. §76-10-1206(2) (1995); Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 13, §2802(a) (1974); Va. Code Ann. §18.2-391 (1996); Wash. Rev. Code §9.68.060 (1988 and Supp. 1997); Wis. Stat. §948.11(2) (Supp. 1995).

United States Supreme Court UNITED STATES v. WATSON(1976) No. 74-538 Argued: October 8, 1975Decided: January 26, 1976 </s> A postal inspector received from an informant of known reliability a stolen credit card that respondent had given the informant to be used for their mutual advantage, and the inspector was told by the informant that respondent had agreed to furnish additional cards. At the inspector's suggestion, a meeting was arranged between the informant and respondent for a few days later, which took place at a restaurant. Upon a prearranged signal from the informant that respondent had the additional cards, postal officers made a warrantless arrest of respondent, removed him from the restaurant, and gave him Miranda warnings. When a search of respondent's person revealed no cards, a consented search of his nearby car (after respondent had been cautioned that the results could be used against him) revealed two additional cards in the names of other persons. Following an unsuccessful motion to suppress, these cards were used as evidence in respondent's trial, which resulted in his conviction of possessing stolen mail. The Court of Appeals reversed, ruling that the Fourth Amendment prohibited use of that evidence because (1) notwithstanding probable cause for respondent's arrest, the arrest was unconstitutional because the postal inspector had failed to secure an arrest warrant though he had time to do so, and (2) based on the totality of the circumstances (including the illegality of the arrest) respondent's consent to the car search was coerced and thus invalid. Held: </s> 1. The arrest of respondent, having been based on probable cause and made by postal officers acting in strict compliance with the governing statute and regulations, did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Pp. 414-424. </s> 2. Since the arrest comported with the Fourth Amendment, respondent's consent to the car search was not, contrary to the holding of the Court of Appeals, the product of an illegal arrest, nor were there any other circumstances indicating that respondent's consent was not his own "essentially free and unconstrained [423 U.S. 411, 412] choice" because his "will ha[d] been . . . overborne and his capacity for self-determination critically impaired," Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 225 . Pp. 424-425. </s> 504 F.2d 849, reversed. </s> WHITE, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and BLACKMUN, POWELL, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. POWELL, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 425. STEWART, J., filed an opinion concurring in the result, post, p. 433. MARSHALL, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN, J., joined, post, p. 433. STEVENS, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. </s> Deputy Solicitor General Frey argued the cause for the United States. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Bork, Acting Assistant Attorney General Keeney, and Peter M. Shannon, Jr. </s> Michael D. Nasatir, by appointment of the Court, 421 U.S. 997 . argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief was Donald M. Re. </s> MR. JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> This case presents questions under the Fourth Amendment as to the legality of a warrantless arrest and of an ensuing search of the arrestee's automobile carried out with his purported consent. </s> I </s> The relevant events began on August 17, 1972, when an informant, one Khoury, telephoned a postal inspector informing him that respondent Watson was in possession of a stolen credit card and had asked Khoury to cooperate in using the card to their mutual advantage. On five to 10 previous occasions Khoury had provided the inspector with reliable information on postal inspection matters, some involving Watson. Later that day [423 U.S. 411, 413] Khoury delivered the card to the inspector. On learning that Watson had agreed to furnish additional cards, the inspector asked Khoury to arrange to meet with Watson. Khoury did so, a meeting being scheduled for August 22. 1 Watson canceled that engagement, but at noon on August 23, Khoury met with Watson at a restaurant designated by the latter. Khoury had been instructed that if Watson had additional stolen credit cards, Khoury was to give a designated signal. The signal was given, the officers closed in, and Watson was forthwith arrested. He was removed from the restaurant to the street where he was given the warnings required by Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). A search having revealed that Watson had no credit cards on his person, the inspector asked if he could look inside Watson's car, which was standing within view. Watson said, "Go ahead," and repeated these words when the inspector cautioned that "[i]f I find anything, it is going to go against you." Using keys furnished by Watson, the inspector entered the car and found under the floor mat an envelope containing two credit cards in the names of other persons. These cards were the basis for two counts of a four-count indictment charging Watson with possessing stolen mail in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1708. 2 </s> Prior to trial, Watson moved to suppress the cards, claiming that his arrest was illegal for want of probable cause and an arrest warrant and that his consent to search the car was involuntary and ineffective because he had not been told that he could withhold consent. [423 U.S. 411, 414] The motion was denied, and Watson was convicted of illegally possessing the two cards seized from his car. 3 </s> A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, 504 F.2d 849 (1974), ruling that the admission in evidence of the two credit cards found in the car was prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. In reaching this judgment, the court decided two issues in Watson's favor. First, notwithstanding its agreement with the District Court that Khoury was reliable and that there was probable cause for arresting Watson, the court held the arrest unconstitutional because the postal inspector had failed to secure an arrest warrant although he concededly had time to do so. Second, based on the totality of the circumstances, one of which was the illegality of the arrest, the court held Watson's consent to search had been coerced and hence was not a valid ground for the warrantless search of the automobile. We granted certiorari. 420 U.S. 924 (1975). </s> II </s> A major part of the Court of Appeals' opinion was its holding that Watson's warrantless arrest violated the Fourth Amendment. Although it did not expressly do so, it may have intended to overturn the conviction on the independent ground that the two credit cards were the inadmissible fruits of an unconstitutional arrest. Cf. Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590 (1975). However that may be, the Court of Appeals treated the illegality of Watson's arrest as an important factor in determining the voluntariness of his consent to search his car. We therefore deal first with the arrest issue. </s> Contrary to the Court of Appeals' view, Watson's arrest was not invalid because executed without a warrant. [423 U.S. 411, 415] Title 18 U.S.C. 3061 (a) (3) expressly empowers the Board of Governors of the Postal Service to authorize Postal Service officers and employees "performing duties related to the inspection of postal matters" to </s> "make arrests without warrant for felonies cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such a felony." </s> By regulation, 39 CFR 232.5 (a) (3) (1975), and in identical language, the Board of Governors has exercised that power and authorized warrantless arrests. Because there was probable cause in this case to believe that Watson had violated 1708, the inspector and his subordinates, in arresting Watson, were acting strictly in accordance with the governing statute and regulations. The effect of the judgment of the Court of Appeals was to invalidate the statute as applied in this case and as applied to all the situations where a court fails to find exigent circumstances justifying a warrantless arrest. We reverse that judgment. </s> Under the Fourth Amendment, the people are to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, . . . and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause . . . ." Section 3061 represents a judgment by Congress that it is not unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment for postal inspectors to arrest without a warrant provided they have probable cause to do so. 4 This was not an [423 U.S. 411, 416] isolated or quixotic judgment of the legislative branch. Other federal law enforcement officers have been expressly authorized by statute for many years to make felony arrests on probable cause but without a warrant. This is true of United States marshals, 18 U.S.C. 3053, and of agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 18 U.S.C. 3052; the Drug Enforcement Administration, 84 Stat. 1273, 21 U.S.C. 878; the Secret Service, 18 U.S.C. 3056 (a); and the Customs Service, 26 U.S.C. 7607. </s> [Footnote 5 </s> Because there is a "strong presumption of constitutionality due to an Act of Congress, especially when it turns on what is `reasonable,'" "[o]bviously the Court should be reluctant to decide that a search thus authorized by Congress was unreasonable and that the Act was therefore unconstitutional." United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 585 (1948). Moreover, there is nothing in the Court's prior cases indicating that under the [423 U.S. 411, 417] Fourth Amendment a warrant is required to make a valid arrest for a felony. Indeed, the relevant prior decisions are uniformly to the contrary. </s> "The usual rule is that a police officer may arrest without warrant one believed by the officer upon reasonable cause to have been guilty of a felony . . . ." Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 156 (1925). In Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98 (1959), the Court dealt with an FBI agent's warrantless arrest under 18 U.S.C. 3052, which authorizes a warrantless arrest where there are reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed a felony. The Court declared that "[t]he statute states the constitutional standard . . . ." 361 U.S., at 100 . The necessary inquiry, therefore, was not whether there was a warrant or whether there was time to get one, but whether there was probable cause for the arrest. In Abel v. United States, 362 U.S. 217, 232 (1960), the Court sustained an administrative arrest made without "a judicial warrant within the scope of the Fourth Amendment." The crucial question in Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307 (1959), was whether there was probable cause for the warrantless arrest. If there was, the Court said, "the arrest, though without a warrant, was lawful . . . ." Id., at 310. Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 34 -35 (1963) (opinion of Clark, J.), reiterated the rule that "[t]he lawfulness of the arrest without warrant, in turn, must be based upon probable cause . . ." and went on to sustain the warrantless arrest over other claims going to the mode of entry. Just last Term, while recognizing that maximum protection of individual rights could be assured by requiring a magistrate's review of the factual justification prior to any arrest, we stated that "such a requirement would constitute an intolerable handicap for legitimate law enforcement" and noted that the Court "has never invalidated an arrest supported by probable cause solely [423 U.S. 411, 418] because the officers failed to secure a warrant." Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 113 (1975). 6 </s> The cases construing the Fourth Amendment thus reflect the ancient common-law rule that a peace officer was permitted to arrest without a warrant for a misdemeanor or felony committed in his presence as well as for a felony not committed in his presence if there was reasonable ground for making the arrest. 10 Halsbury's Laws of England 344-345 (3d ed. 1955); 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *292; 1 J. Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England 193 (1883); 2 M. Hale, Pleas of the Crown *72-74; Wilgus, Arrest Without a Warrant 22 Mich. L. Rev. 541, 547-550, 686-688 (1924); [423 U.S. 411, 419] Samuel v. Payne, 1 Doug. 359, 99 Eng. Rep. 230 (K. B. 1780); Beckwith v. Philby, 6 Barn. & Cress. 635, 108 Eng. Rep. 585 (K. B. 1827). This has also been the prevailing rule under state constitutions and statutes. "The rule of the common law, that a peace officer or a private citizen may arrest a felon without a warrant, has been generally held by the courts of the several States to be in force in cases of felony punishable by the civil tribunals." Kurtz v. Moffitt, 115 U.S. 487, 504 (1885). </s> In Rohan v. Sawin, 59 Mass. 281 (1850), a false-arrest case, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held that the common-law rule obtained in that State. Given probable cause to arrest, "[t]he authority of a constable, to arrest without warrant, in cases of felony, is most fully established by the elementary books, and adjudicated cases." Id., at 284. In reaching this judgment the court observed: </s> "It has been sometimes contended, that an arrest of this character, without a warrant, was a violation of the great fundamental principles of our national and state constitutions, forbidding unreasonable searches and arrests, except by warrant founded upon a complaint made under oath. Those provisions doubtless had another and different purpose, being in restraint of general warrants to make searches, and requiring warrants to issue only upon a complaint made under oath. They do not conflict with the authority of constables or other peace-officers, or private persons under proper limitations, to arrest without warrant those who have committed felonies. The public safety, and the due apprehension of criminals, charged with heinous offences, imperiously require that such arrests should be made without warrant by officers of the law." Id., at 284-285. [423 U.S. 411, 420] </s> Also rejected, id., at 285-286, was the trial court's view that to justify a warrantless arrest, the State must show "an immediate necessity therefor, arising from the danger, that the plaintiff would otherwise escape, or secrete the stolen property, before a warrant could be procured against him." The Supreme Judicial Court ruled that there was no "authority for thus restricting a constable in the exercise of his authority to arrest for a felony without a warrant." Id., at 286. Other early cases to similar effect were Wakely v. Hart, 6 Binn. 316 (Pa. 1814); Tolley v. Mix, 3 Wend. 350 (N. Y. Sup. Ct. 1829); State v. Brown, 5 Del. 505 (Ct. Gen. Sess. 1853); Johnson v. State, 30 Ga. 426 (1860); Wade v. Chaffee, 8 R. I. 224 (1865). See Reuck v. McGregor, 32 N. J. L. 70, 74 (Sup. Ct. 1866); Baltimore & O. R. Co. v. Cain, 81 Md. 87, 100, 102, 31 A. 801, 803, 804 (1895). 7 </s> Because the common-law rule authorizing arrests without a warrant generally prevailed in the States, it is important for present purposes to note that in 1792 Congress invested United States marshals and their deputies with "the same powers in executing the laws of the United States, as sheriffs and their deputies in the several states have by law, in executing the laws of their respective states." Act of May 2, 1792, c. 28, 9, 1 Stat. 265. The Second Congress thus saw no inconsistency between the Fourth Amendment and legislation giving United States marshals the same power as local peace officers to arrest for a felony without a warrant. 8 This provision equating the power of federal marshals [423 U.S. 411, 421] with those of local sheriffs was several times reenacted 9 and is today 570 of Title 28 of the United States Code. That provision, however, was supplemented in 1935 by 504a of the Judicial Code, 10 which in its essential elements is now 18 U.S.C. 3053 and which expressly empowered marshals to make felony arrests without warrant and on probable cause. It was enacted to furnish a federal standard independent of the vagaries of state laws, the Committee Report remarking that under existing law a "marshal or deputy marshal may make an arrest without a warrant within his district in all cases where the sheriff might do so under the State statutes." H. R. Rep. No. 283, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., 1 (1935). See United States v. Riggs, 474 F.2d 699, 702-703, n. 2 (CA2), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 820 (1973). </s> The balance struck by the common law in generally authorizing felony arrests on probable cause, but without a warrant, has survived substantially intact. It appears [423 U.S. 411, 422] in almost all of the States in the form of express statutory authorization. In 1963, the American Law Institute undertook the task of formulating a model statute governing police powers and practice in criminal law enforcement and related aspects of pretrial procedure. In 1975, after years of discussion, A Model Code of Pre-arraignment Procedure was proposed. Among its provisions was 120.1 which authorizes an officer to take a person into custody if the officer has reasonable cause to believe that the person to be arrested has committed a felony, or has committed a misdemeanor or petty misdemeanor in his presence. 11 The commentary to this section said: "The Code thus adopts the traditional and almost universal standard for arrest without a warrant." 12 </s> [423 U.S. 411, 423] </s> This is the rule Congress has long directed its principal law enforcement officers to follow. Congress has plainly decided against conditioning warrantless arrest power on proof of exigent circumstances. 13 Law enforcement officers may find it wise to seek arrest warrants where practicable to do so, and their judgments about probable cause may be more readily accepted where backed by a warrant issued by a magistrate. See United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 106 (1965); Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 111 (1964); Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 479 -480 (1963). But we decline to transform this judicial preference into a constitutional rule when the judgment of the Nation and Congress has for so long been to authorize warrantless public arrests on probable cause rather than to encumber criminal prosecutions with endless litigation with respect to the existence of exigent circumstances, whether it was practicable [423 U.S. 411, 424] to get a warrant, whether the suspect was about to flee, and the like. </s> Watson's arrest did not violate the Fourth Amendment, and the Court of Appeals erred in holding to the contrary. </s> III </s> Because our judgment is that Watson's arrest comported with the Fourth Amendment, Watson's consent to the search of his car was not the product of an illegal arrest. To the extent that the issue of the voluntariness of Watson's consent was resolved on the premise that his arrest was illegal, the Court of Appeals was also in error. </s> We are satisfied in addition that the remaining factors relied upon by the Court of Appeals to invalidate Watson's consent are inadequate to demonstrate that, in the totality of the circumstances, Watson's consent was not his own "essentially free and unconstrained choice" because his "will ha[d] been overborne and his capacity for self-determination critically impaired." Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 225 (1973). There was no overt act or threat of force against Watson proved or claimed. There were no promises made to him and no indication of more subtle forms of coercion that might flaw his judgment. He had been arrested and was in custody, but his consent was given while on a public street, not in the confines of the police station. Moreover, the fact of custody alone has never been enough in itself to demonstrate a coerced confession or consent to search. Similarly, under Schneckloth, the absence of proof that Watson knew he could withhold his consent, though it may be a factor in the overall judgment, is not to be given controlling significance. There is no indication in this record that Watson was a newcomer [423 U.S. 411, 425] to the law, 14 mentally deficient, or unable in the face of a custodial arrest to exercise a free choice. He was given Miranda warnings and was further cautioned that the results of the search of his car could be used against him. He persisted in his consent. </s> In these circumstances, to hold that illegal coercion is made out from the fact of arrest and the failure to inform the arrestee that he could withhold consent would not be consistent with Schneckloth and would distort the voluntariness standard that we reaffirmed in that case. </s> In consequence, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals. </s> So ordered. </s> MR. JUSTICE STEVENS took no part in the consideration or decision of this case. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 In the meantime the inspector had verified that the card was stolen. </s> [Footnote 2 Title 18 U.S.C. 1708 punishes the theft of mail as well as the possession of stolen mail. The punishment is a fine of not more than $2,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both. </s> [Footnote 3 Watson was acquitted on the second count. The fourth was dismissed prior to trial. </s> [Footnote 4 At least since approval of the Act of June 10, 1955, c. 137, 203, 69 Stat. 106, 39 U.S.C. 3523 (a) (2) (K) (1964 ed.), postal inspectors' duties have been thought to permit arrest without a warrant upon probable cause. Compare United States v. Helbock, 76 F. Supp. 985 (Ore. 1948), with United States v. Alexander, 415 F.2d 1352 (CA7 1969), cert. denied, 397 U.S. 1014 (1970); Kelley v. Dunne, 344 F.2d 129 (CA1 1965); and United [423 U.S. 411, 416] States v. Bell, 294 F. Supp. 1314 (ND Ill. 1968). The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held, however, that 3523 (a) (2) (K) did not give the necessary express power to arrest, but that a warrantless arrest by a postal inspector could be upheld by resort to a citizen's power to arrest. United States v. DeCatur, 430 F.2d 365 (1970); Neggo v. United States, 390 F.2d 609 (1968); Ward v. United States, 316 F.2d 113, cert. denied, 375 U.S. 862 (1963). In 1968 in the face of confusion generated by these decisions and two others striking down warrantless arrests by postal inspectors as not authorized by federal statute or by state law, Alexander v. United States, 390 F.2d 101 (CA5 1968); United States v. Moderacki, 280 F. Supp. 633 (Del. 1968), the Congress enacted 18 U.S.C. 3061 to make clear that postal inspectors are empowered to arrest without warrant upon probable cause. Pub. L. 90-560, 5 (a), 82 Stat. 998; H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 1918, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., 6 (1968); H. R. Rep. No. 1725, 90th Cong., 2d Sess. (1968); 114 Cong. Rec. 20914-20915, 26928, 28864-28865 (1968). </s> [Footnote 5 There are other federal officers subject to a more restrictive statutory standard. See, e. g., 18 U.S.C. 3050, with respect to employees of the Bureau of Prisons. </s> [Footnote 6 In the case before us the Court of Appeals relied heavily, but mistakenly, on Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 480 -481 (1971), for as we noted in Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S., at 113 n. 13, the still unsettled question posed in that part of the Coolidge opinion was "whether and under what circumstances an officer may enter a suspect's home to make a warrantless arrest." Watson's midday public arrest does not present that question. In its proposed Model Code of Pre-arraignment Procedure, the American Law Institute has addressed the question and recommends that an officer who is empowered to make an arrest and has probable cause to believe the person to be arrested is on private premises be authorized to demand entry to such premises and thereupon to enter to make an arrest. ALI, Model Code of Pre-arraignment Procedure 120.6 (1) (1975). In certain cases of necessity, however, notification and demand are not required. 120.6 (2). Authority to make nighttime arrests on private premises is restricted to arrests with warrants authorizing nighttime execution and to certain cases of necessity. 120.6 (3). The commentary states that 24 States (and the District of Columbia) authorize forcible entry whenever there is authority to arrest, six whenever the arrest is under a warrant or for a felony, six whenever the arrest is under a warrant, and two whenever the arrest is for a felony. Id., at 310, 696-697. Of these jurisdictions all but three have prior-notice requirements for entries to make an arrest similar to those 18 U.S.C. 3109 imposes on entries to execute a search warrant. ALI Model Code, supra, at 310-313. </s> [Footnote 7 As Professor Wilgus observed in his article Arrest Without A Warrant, 22 Mich. L. Rev. 541, 549-550 (1924) (footnote omitted), "[i]t was early argued that similar provisions [to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution] in state constitutions forbade arrests without a warrant; it was ruled otherwise as to arrests by officers and private persons according to the common law." </s> [Footnote 8 Of equal import is the rule recognized by this Court that even [423 U.S. 411, 421] in the absence of a federal statute granting or restricting the authority of federal law enforcement officers, "the law of the state where an arrest without warrant takes place determines its validity." United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 589 (1948). Accord, Miller v. United States, 357 U.S. 301, 305 (1958); Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 15 n. 5 (1948); Bad Elk v. United States, 177 U.S. 529, 535 (1900). This rule is consistent with the express statutory authority of United States marshals discussed in the text, as well as with the Act of Sept. 24, 1789, c. 20, 33, 1 Stat. 91, providing that for any offense against the United States the offender may be arrested by any judge or justice of the United States "agreeably to the usual mode of process against offenders in such state" as he might be found. See United States v. Di Re, supra, at 589 n. 8. </s> [Footnote 9 Act of Feb. 28, 1795, c. 36, 9, 1 Stat. 425; Act of July 29, 1861, c. 25, 7, 12 Stat. 282; Rev. Stat. 788 (1874); Judicial Code of 1948, 549, 62 Stat. 912. </s> [Footnote 10 Act of June 15, 1935, c. 259, 2, 49 Stat. 378. </s> [Footnote 11 Section 120.1 of the Model Code provides, in pertinent part: "(1) Authority to Arrest Without a Warrant. A law enforcement officer may arrest a person without a warrant if the officer has reasonable cause to believe that such person has committed "(a) a felony; "(b) a misdemeanor, and the officer has reasonable cause to believe that such person "(i) will not be apprehended unless immediately arrested; or "(ii) may cause injury to himself or others or damage to property unless immediately arrested; or "(c) a misdemeanor or petty misdemeanor in the officer's presence." </s> [Footnote 12 Id., at 289 (footnote omitted). The commentary goes on to say with respect to 120.1: "This Section does not require an officer to arrest under a warrant even if a reasonable opportunity to obtain a warrant exists. As to arrests on the street such a requirement would be entirely novel. Moreover the need for it is not urgent, and the subsequent inquiry such a requirement would authorize would be indeterminate and difficult." Id., at 303 (footnotes omitted). As the commentary notes, id., at 289 n. 1, a statute in the State of Georgia is more restrictive of the arrest power than the general [423 U.S. 411, 423] standard. Ga. Code Ann. 27-207 (a) (Supp. 1975). See also Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. 16-3-102 (1973), which provides that an arrest warrant should be obtained "when practicable," and Mont. Rev. Codes Ann. 95-608 (d) (1969) which authorizes a warrantless arrest if "existing circumstances require" it. A North Carolina statute, N.C. Gen. Stat. 15-41 (1965), similar to the Georgia statute, was replaced in 1975 by a provision permitting warrantless felony arrests on probable cause. N.C. Gen. Stat. 15A-401 (b) (2) (1975). </s> [Footnote 13 Until 1951, 18 U.S.C. 3052 conditioned the warrantless arrest powers of the agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on there being reasonable grounds to believe that the person would escape before a warrant could be obtained. The Act of Jan. 10, 1951, c. 1221, 1, 64 Stat. 1239, eliminated this condition. The House Report explained the purpose of the amendment, H. R. Rep. No. 3228, 81st Cong., 2d Sess., 1-2 (1950), and the amendment was given effect by the courts in accordance with its terms. Compare United States v. Coplon, 185 F.2d 629, 633-636 (CA2 1950), cert. denied, 342 U.S. 920 (1952), with Coplon v. United States, 89 U.S. App. D.C. 103, 108-109, 191 F.2d 749, 753-754 (1951), cert. denied, 342 U.S. 926 (1952). </s> [Footnote 14 On the contrary, the inspector making the arrest in this case had arrested Watson in 1971 for mail theft. Those charges were dropped when Watson cooperated with the prosecution. During the ensuing two years he also furnished information to the authorities. </s> MR. JUSTICE POWELL, concurring. </s> Although I concur in the opinion of the Court, I write to express additional views. I note at the outset that the case could be disposed of on the ground that respondent's consent to the search was plainly voluntary. Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218 (1973). Indeed, the evidence that his consent was the product of free will is so overwhelming that I would have held the consent voluntary even on the assumption that the preceding warrantless arrest was unconstitutional, and that the doctrine of Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963), therefore was applicable. See Brown v. Illinois, 422 U.S. 590 (1975). The Court's different route to [423 U.S. 411, 426] the same result requires, however, an inquiry into the validity of the arrest itself. </s> I </s> Respondent was arrested without a warrant in a public restaurant six days after postal inspectors learned from a reliable source that he possessed stolen credit cards in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1708. The Government made no effort to show that circumstances precluded the obtaining of a warrant, relying instead for the validity of the arrest solely upon the showing of probable cause to believe that respondent had committed a felony. Respondent contends, and the Court of Appeals held, that the absence of any exigency justifying the failure to procure a warrant renders this arrest violative of the Fourth Amendment. </s> In reversing the Court of Appeals, the Court concludes that nothing in our previous cases involving warrantless arrests supports the position of respondent and the Court of Appeals. See, e. g., Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 113 (1975). But it is fair to say, I think, that the prior decisions of the Court have assumed the validity of such arrests without addressing in a reasoned way the analysis advanced by respondent. 1 Today's decision is [423 U.S. 411, 427] the first square holding that the Fourth Amendment permits a duly authorized law enforcement officer to make a warrantless arrest in a public place even though he had adequate opportunity to procure a warrant after developing probable cause for arrest. </s> On its face, our decision today creates a certain anomaly. There is no more basic constitutional rule in the Fourth Amendment area than that which makes a warrantless search unreasonable except in a few "jealously and carefully drawn" exceptional circumstances. Jones v. United States, 357 U.S. 493, 499 (1958); see Almeida-Sanchez v. United States 413 U.S. 266, 279 -280 (1973) (POWELL, J., concurring); United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297, 314 -321 (1972); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 454 -455 (1971). On more than one occasion this Court has rejected an argument that a law enforcement officer's own probable cause to search a private place for contraband or evidence of crime should excuse his otherwise unexplained failure to procure a warrant beforehand. Id., at 450; Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 356 -358 [423 U.S. 411, 428] (1967). In short, the course of judicial development of the Fourth Amendment with respect to searches has remained true to the principles so well expressed by Mr. Justice Jackson: </s> "Any assumption that evidence sufficient to support a magistrate's disinterested determination to issue a search warrant will justify the officers in making a search without a warrant would reduce the Amendment to a nullity and leave the people's homes secure only in the discretion of police officers . . . . When the right of privacy must reasonably yield to the right of search is, as a rule, to be decided by a judicial officer, not by a policeman or government enforcement agent." Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14 (1948). </s> Since the Fourth Amendment speaks equally to both searches and seizures, and since an arrest, the taking hold of one's person, is quintessentially a seizure, it would seem that the constitutional provision should impose the same limitations upon arrests that it does upon searches. Indeed, as an abstract matter an argument can be made that the restrictions upon arrest perhaps should be greater. A search may cause only annoyance and temporary inconvenience to the law-abiding citizen, assuming more serious dimension only when it turns up evidence of criminality. An arrest, however, is a serious personal intrusion regardless of whether the person seized is guilty or innocent. Although an arrestee cannot be held for a significant period without some neutral determination that there are grounds to do so, see Gerstein, supra, no decision that he should go free can come quickly enough to erase the invasion of his privacy that already will have occurred. See Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 776 (1969) (WHITE, J., dissenting); cf. United States v. [423 U.S. 411, 429] Robinson, 414 U.S. 218, 237 -238 (1973) (POWELL, J., concurring). Logic therefore would seem to dictate that arrests be subject to the warrant requirement at least to the same extent as searches. </s> But logic sometimes must defer to history and experience. The Court's opinion emphasizes the historical sanction accorded warrantless felony arrests. In the early days of the common law most felony arrests were made upon personal knowledge and without warrants. So established were such arrests as the usual practice that Lord Coke seriously questioned whether a justice of the peace, receiving his information secondhand instead of from personal knowledge, even could authorize an arrest by warrant. 4 E. Coke, Institutes 177 (6th ed. 1681). By the late 18th century it had been firmly established by Blackstone, with an intervening assist from Sir Matthew Hale, that magistrates could issue arrest warrants upon information supplied by others. 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *290; see 2 M. Hale, Pleas of the Crown *108-110. But recognition of the warrant power cast no doubt upon the validity of warrantless felony arrests, which continued to be practiced and upheld as before. 4 W. Blackstone, supra, at *282; 1 J. Chitty, Criminal Law *14-15. There is no historical evidence that the Framers or proponents of the Fourth Amendment, outspokenly opposed to the infamous general warrants and writs of assistance, were at all concerned about warrantless arrests by local constables and other peace officers. See N. Lasson, The History and Development of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution 79-105 (1937); cf. Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S., at 114 -116. As the Court today notes, the Second Congress' passage of an Act authorizing such arrests 2 so soon after the adoption of the Fourth Amendment [423 U.S. 411, 430] itself underscores the probability that the constitutional provision was intended to restrict entirely different practices. </s> The historical momentum for acceptance of warrantless arrests, already strong at the adoption of the Fourth Amendment, has gained strength during the ensuing two centuries. Both the judiciary and the legislative bodies of this Nation repeatedly have placed their imprimaturs upon the practice and, as the Government emphasizes, law enforcement agencies have developed their investigative and arrest procedures upon an assumption that warrantless arrests were valid so long as based upon probable cause. The decision of the Court of Appeals in this case was virtually unprecedented. 3 Of course, no practice that is inconsistent with constitutional protections can be saved merely by appeal to previous uncritical acceptance. But the warrantless felony arrest, long preferred at common law and unimpeached at the passage of the Fourth Amendment, is not such a practice. Given the revolutionary implications of such a holding, a declaration at this late date that warrantless felony arrests are constitutionally infirm would have to rest upon reasons more substantial than a desire to harmonize the rules for arrest with those governing searches. Cf. United States v. Robinson, supra, at 230. [423 U.S. 411, 431] </s> Moreover, a constitutional rule permitting felony arrests only with a warrant or in exigent circumstances could severely hamper effective law enforcement. Good police practice often requires postponing an arrest, even after probable cause has been established, in order to place the suspect under surveillance or otherwise develop further evidence necessary to prove guilt to a jury. 4 Under the holding of the Court of Appeals such additional investigative work could imperil the entire prosecution. Should the officers fail to obtain a warrant initially, and later be required by unforeseen circumstances to arrest immediately with no chance to procure a lastminute warrant, they would risk a court decision that the subsequent exigency did not excuse their failure to get a warrant in the interim since they first developed probable cause. If the officers attempted to meet such a contingency [423 U.S. 411, 432] by procuring a warrant as soon as they had probable cause and then merely held it during their subsequent investigation, they would risk a court decision that the warrant had grown stale by the time it was used. 5 Law enforcement personnel caught in this squeeze could ensure validity of their arrests only by obtaining a warrant and arresting as soon as probable cause existed, thereby foreclosing the possibility of gathering vital additional evidence from the suspect's continued actions. </s> In sum, the historical and policy reasons sketched above fully justify the Court's sustaining of a warrantless arrest upon probable cause, despite the resulting divergence between the constitutional rule governing searches and that now held applicable to seizures of the person. 6 </s> II </s> Finally, I share the view expressed in the opinion of MR. JUSTICE STEWART. It makes clear that we do not today consider or decide whether or under what circumstances [423 U.S. 411, 433] an officer lawfully may make a warrantless arrest in a private home or other place where the person has a reasonable expectation of privacy. 7 </s> MR. JUSTICE STEWART, concurring in the result. </s> The arrest in this case was made upon probable cause in a public place in broad daylight. The Court holds that this arrest did not violate the Fourth Amendment, and I agree. The Court does not decide, nor could it decide in this case, whether or under what circumstances an officer must obtain a warrant before he may lawfully enter a private place to effect an arrest. See Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103, 113 n. 13; Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 474 -481; Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721, 728 ; Jones v. United States, 357 U.S. 493, 499 -500. </s> [Footnote 1 None of the decisions cited by the Court today squarely faced the issue. In Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98 (1959), for example, the Court declared that 18 U.S.C. 3052, which authorizes an FBI agent to make a warrantless arrest when he has reasonable grounds to believe that a person has committed a felony, "states the constitutional standard." 361 U.S., at 100 . But that declaration was made without discussion, and the issue actually presented to and addressed by the Court was whether there was in fact probable cause for the arrest in that case. Similarly, Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307 (1959), stands only for the validity of a warrantless arrest made with probable cause to believe that the arrestee had committed an offense in the arresting officer's presence. See id., at 313. As this Court had noted in an earlier case, [423 U.S. 411, 427] such an arrest presents no danger that an innocent person might be ensnared, since the officer observes both the crime and the culprit with his own eyes; there thus would be no reason to require a warrant in that particular situation even if there might be in others. Trupiano v. United States, 334 U.S. 699, 705 (1948). Another case cited by the Court, Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925), involved no challenge to an arrest. Nor did Abel v. United States, 362 U.S. 217 (1960), in which the Court refused to consider petitioner's challenge to his arrest under less than a judicial warrant because of his failure to raise the issue in the lower courts. See id., at 230-232. Finally, in Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23 (1963), the Court addressed only the questions of whether there was probable cause for arrest and whether the method of entry for the purpose of arrest was reasonable; no issue arose as to whether a warrant was necessary for either the arrest or the entry. </s> [Footnote 2 Act of May 2, 1792, c. 18, 9, 1 Stat. 265; see 28 U.S.C. 570. </s> [Footnote 3 Respondent has cited no other decision, state or federal, in support of the Court of Appeals' result in this case. The Government stated in its petition that the decision below was the first of which it was aware that required a warrant for an arrest in a public place. The Court of Appeals relied upon part of this Court's discussion in Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 480 -481 (1971), but as other courts have recognized that discussion had nothing to do with warrantless arrests in public places. See, e. g., United States v. Miles, 468 F.2d 482, 486-487, and n. 6 (CA3 1972); United States v. Bazinet, 462 F.2d 982, 987 (CA8), cert. denied sub nom. Knox v. United States, 409 U.S. 1010 (1972). </s> [Footnote 4 This Court has not attempted a more precise definition of probable cause than the one in Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S., at 161 , where the standard was affirmed as "facts and circumstances . . . such as to warrant a man of [reasonable] prudence and caution in believing that the offense has been committed" and, of course, that the person to be arrested was the offender. See generally Henry v. United States, 361 U.S., at 100 -102. Whatever evidence may be necessary to establish probable cause in a given case, however, it is clear that it never need rise to the level required to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Id., at 102; Draper v. United States, 358 U.S., at 311 -312, and n. 4. The different standards for arrest and conviction reflect a recognition of society's valid interest in the earliest detention of suspected criminals that is consistent with the individual's interest in freedom from arbitrary interference with his liberty. See Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176 (1949). But society's equally valid interest in ultimate conviction of the guilty requires the police sometimes to continue their investigation after establishing probable cause to arrest, even if doing so means they have to leave a suspect at large pending such investigation. See generally ALI, A Model Code of Pre-arraignment Procedure 120.1, Commentary, pp. 289, 292-296 (1975). </s> [Footnote 5 The probable cause to support issuance of an arrest warrant normally would not grow stale as easily as that which supports a warrant to search a particular place for particular objects. This is true because once there is probable cause to believe that someone is a felon the passage of time often will bring new supporting evidence. But in some cases the original grounds supporting the warrant could be disproved by subsequent investigation that at the same time turns up wholly new evidence supporting probable cause on a different theory. In those cases the warrant could be stale because based upon discredited information. </s> [Footnote 6 I do not understand today's decision to suggest any retreat from our longstanding position that such an arrest should receive careful judicial scrutiny if challenged. "An arrest without a warrant bypasses the safeguards provided by an objective determination of probable cause, and substitutes instead the far less reliable procedure of an after-the-event justification for the arrest . . ., too likely to be subtly influenced by the familiar shortcomings of hindsight judgment." Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89, 96 (1964). </s> [Footnote 7 Compare Dorman v. United States, 140 U.S. App. D.C. 313, 318-319, 435 F.2d 385, 390-391 (1970) (en banc) (warrant required, absent exigent circumstances, for entry into a suspect's home for purpose of arrest), with People v. Eddington, 23 Mich. App. 210, 178 N. W. 2d 686 (1970), aff'd, 387 Mich. 551, 198 N. W. 2d 297 (1972) (only probable cause to arrest needed to enter suspect's home if there is a reasonable belief that he is there). Compare England v. State, 488 P.2d 1347 (Okla. Crim. 1971) (search warrant needed to enter residence of third party to arrest suspect), with United States v. Brown, 151 U.S. App. D.C. 365, 369, 467 F.2d 419, 423 (1972) (only an arrest warrant, plus reasonable belief that the suspect is present, necessary to support entry onto third party's premises). </s> MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, with whom MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN joins, dissenting. </s> By granting police broad powers to make warrantless arrests, the Court today sharply reverses the course of our modern decisions construing the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment. The Court turns next to the consent-to-search question last dealt with in Schneckloth [423 U.S. 411, 434] v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218 (1973). Without acknowledgment or analysis, the Court extends the scope of that decision to the situation expressly reserved in Schneckloth, and creates a rule inconsistent with Schneckloth's own analysis. The Court takes both steps with a remarkable lack of consideration of either the facts of this case or the constitutional questions it is deciding. That is unfortunate not only because, in my view, the Court decides the constitutional questions wrongly, but also because consideration would have shown that the first question decided today is not raised by the facts before us, and that the second question should not be resolved here, given the present posture of this case. I respectfully dissent. </s> I </s> Before addressing what the Court does today, I note what it does not do. It does not decide this case on the narrow question that is presented. That is unfortunate for this is, fundamentally, a simple case. </s> On the afternoon of August 23, 1972, Awad Khoury, an informant of proved reliability, met with respondent Watson at a public restaurant under the surveillance of two postal inspectors. Khoury was under instructions to light a cigarette as a signal to the watching agents if Watson was in possession of stolen credit cards. Khoury lit a cigarette, and the postal inspectors moved in, made the arrest, and, ultimately, discovered under the floor mat of Watson's automobile the stolen credit cards that formed the basis of Watson's conviction and this appeal. </s> The signal of the reliable informant that Watson was in possession of stolen credit cards gave the postal inspectors probable cause to make the arrest. This probable cause was separate and distinct from the probable cause relating to the offense six days earlier, and provided an [423 U.S. 411, 435] adequate independent basis for the arrest. Whether or not a warrant ordinarily is required prior to making an arrest, no warrant is required when exigent circumstances are present. When law enforcement officers have probable cause to believe that an offense is taking place in their presence and that the suspect is at that moment in possession of the evidence, exigent circumstances exist. Delay could cause the escape of the suspect or the destruction of the evidence. Accordingly, Watson's warrantless arrest was valid under the recognized exigent-circumstances exception to the warrant requirement, and the Court has no occasion to consider whether a warrant would otherwise be necessary. 1 </s> This conclusion should properly dispose of the case before us. As the Court observes, ante, at 414, the Court of Appeals relied heavily on the supposed illegality of Watson's arrest in ruling that his consent to the search of his car was coerced. Neither the opinion of the Court of Appeals nor the briefs of the parties here address the remaining issue of the circumstances under which consent to search given by a suspect lawfully in custody may be deemed coerced. Since that issue is both complex and [423 U.S. 411, 436] expressly reserved in Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, supra, I think it inappropriate for resolution without the benefit of the views of the parties and the Court of Appeals. Accordingly, I would reverse the Court of Appeals on the legality of the arrest, vacate its judgment, and remand the case to that court for further proceedings. </s> II </s> Since, for reasons it leaves unexpressed, the Court does not take this traditional course, I am constrained to express my views on the issues it unnecessarily decides. The Court reaches its conclusion that a warrant is not necessary for a police officer to make an arrest in a public place, so long as he has probable cause to believe a felony has been committed, on the basis of its views of precedent and history. As my Brother POWELL correctly observes, ante, at 426-427, n. 1 (concurring), the precedent is spurious. None of the cases cited by the Court squarely confronted the issue decided today. Moreover, an examination of the history relied on by the Court shows that it does not support the conclusion laid upon it. After showing why, in my view, the Court's rationale does not support today's result, I shall examine the relevant decisions and suggest what I believe to be the proper rule for arrests. </s> The Fourth Amendment provides: </s> "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." </s> There is no doubt that by the reference to the seizure of persons, the Fourth Amendment was intended to [423 U.S. 411, 437] apply to arrests. Ex parte Burford, 3 Cranch 448 (1806). See generally N. Lasson, The History and Development of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution 79-82 (1937). Indeed, we have often considered whether arrests were made in conformity with the Fourth Amendment. E. g., Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S. 89 (1964); Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23 (1963); Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307 (1959); Giordenello v. United States, 357 U.S. 480 (1958). Admittedly, as the Court observes, some of our decisions make passing reference to the common-law rule on arrests. E. g., Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 156 (1925); Bad Elk v. United States, 177 U.S. 529, 534 (1900); Kurtz v. Moffitt, 115 U.S. 487, 498 -499 (1885). However, none of the cases cited by the Court, nor any other warrantless arrest case in this Court, mandates the decision announced today. Frequently exigent circumstances were present, so that the warrantless arrest was proper even if a warrant ordinarily may be required. Ker v. California, supra; Draper v. United States, supra; United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581 (1948). Many cases have invalidated arrests as not based on probable cause, thereby bypassing the need to reach the warrant question. E. g., Beck v. Ohio, supra; Henry v. United States, 361 U.S. 98 (1959). Elsewhere the Court has simply assumed the propriety of the arrest and resolved the case before it on other grounds. Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752 (1969). Cf. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 476 (1971). And in other cases, the Court noted, but did not reach, the warrantless-arrest issue, E. g., Giordenello v. United States, supra. In sum, as the case-by-case analysis undertaken by my Brother POWELL demonstrates, the dicta relied upon by the Court in support of its decision today are just that - dicta. See ante, at 426-427, n. 1 (concurring). They are no substitute [423 U.S. 411, 438] for reasoned analysis of the relationship between the warrant requirement and the law of arrest. </s> The Court next turns to history. It relies on the English common-law rule of arrest and the many state and federal statutes following it. There are two serious flaws in this approach. First, as a matter of factual analysis, the substance of the ancient common-law rule provides no support for the far-reaching modern rule that the Court fashions on its model. Second, as a matter of doctrine, the longstanding existence of a Government practice does not immunize the practice from scrutiny under the mandate of our Constitution. </s> The common-law rule was indeed as the Court states it: </s> "[A] peace officer was permitted to arrest without a warrant for a misdemeanor or felony committed in his presence as well as for a felony not committed in his presence if there was reasonable ground for making the arrest." Ante, at 418, and sources cited. </s> See also Kurtz v. Moffitt, supra; Bad Elk v. United States, supra. To apply the rule blindly today, however, makes as much sense as attempting to interpret Hamlet's admonition to Ophelia, "Get thee to a nunnery, go," 2 without understanding the meaning of Hamlet's words in the context of their age. 3 For the fact is that a felony at common law and a felony today bear only slight resemblance, with the result that the relevance of the common-law rule of arrest to the modern interpretation of our Constitution is minimal. </s> Both at common law and today, felonies find definition in the penal consequences of crime rather than the [423 U.S. 411, 439] nature of the crime itself. At common law, as this Court has several times recognized, </s> "No crime was considered a felony which did not occasion a total forfeiture of the offender's lands, or goods, or both." Kurtz v. Moffitt, 115 U.S., at 499 . </s> See also Ex parte Wilson, 114 U.S. 417, 423 (1885); 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *95. 4 At present, on the other hand, </s> "Any offense punishable by death or imprisonment for a term exceeding one year is a felony." 18 U.S.C. 1 (1). 5 </s> This difference reflects more than changing notions of penology. It reflects a substantive change in the kinds of crimes called felonies. Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S., at 158 . 6 Only the most serious crimes were felonies at common law, and many crimes now classified [423 U.S. 411, 440] as felonies under federal or state law were treated as misdemeanors. Professor Wilgus has summarized and documented the cases: </s> "At common law an assault was a misdemeanor and it was still only such even if made with the intent to rob, murder, or rape. Affrays, abortion, barratry, bribing voters, challenging to fight, compounding felonies, cheating by false weights or measures, escaping from lawful arrest, eavesdropping, forgery, false imprisonment, forcible and violent entry, forestalling, kidnapping, libel, mayhem, maliciously killing valuable animals, obstructing justice, public nuisance, perjury, riots and routs, etc. were misdemeanors . . . ." Wilgus, Arrest Without a Warrant, 22 Mich. L. Rev. 541, 572-573 (1924) (footnotes omitted). </s> See also 9 Halsbury's Laws of England 450-793 (1909). 7 To make an arrest for any of these crimes at common law, the police officer was required to obtain a warrant, unless the crime was committed in his presence. 8 Since many of these same crimes are commonly classified as felonies today, 9 however, under the Court's holding a [423 U.S. 411, 441] warrant is no longer needed to make such arrests, a result in contravention of the common law. </s> Thus the lesson of the common law, and those courts in this country that have accepted its rule, is an ambiguous one. Applied in its original context, the common-law rule would allow the warrantless arrest of some, but not all, of those we call felons today. Accordingly, the Court is simply historically wrong when it tells us that "[t]he balance struck by the common law in generally authorizing felony arrests on probable cause, but without a warrant, has survived substantially intact." Ante, at 421. As a matter of substance, the balance struck by the [423 U.S. 411, 442] common law in accommodating the public need for the most certain and immediate arrest of criminal suspects with the requirement of magisterial oversight to protect against mistaken insults to privacy decreed that only in the most serious of cases could the warrant be dispensed with. This balance is not recognized when the common-law rule is unthinkingly transposed to our present classifications of criminal offenses. Indeed, the only clear lesson of history is contrary to the one the Court draws: the common law considered the arrest warrant far more important than today's decision leaves it. </s> I do not mean by this that a modern warrant requirement should apply only to arrests precisely analogous to common-law misdemeanors, and be inapplicable to analogous of common-law felonies. Rather, the point is simply that the Court's unblinking literalism cannot replace analysis of the constitutional interests involved. While we can learn from the common law, the ancient rule does not provide a simple answer directly transferable to our system. Thus, in considering the applicability of the common-law rule to our present constitutional scheme, we must consider both of the rule's two opposing constructs: the presumption favoring warrants, as well as the exception allowing immediate arrests of the most dangerous criminals. The Court's failure to do so, indeed its failure to recognize any tension in the common-law rule at all, drains all validity from its historical analysis. </s> Lastly, the Court relies on the numerous state and federal statutes codifying the common-law rule. But this, too, is no substitute for reasoned analysis. True enough, the national and state legislatures have steadily ratified the drift of the balance struck by the common-law rule past the bounds of its original intent. And it is true as well, as the Court observes, that a presumption of constitutionality attaches to every Act of Congress. But neither observation is determinative of the constitutional issue, [423 U.S. 411, 443] and the doctrine of deference that the Court invokes is contrary to the principles of constitutional analysis practiced since Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803). The Court's error on this score is far more dangerous than its misreading of history, for it is well settled that the mere existence of statutes or practice, even of long standing, is no defense to an unconstitutional practice. "[N]o one acquires a vested or protected right in violation of the Constitution by long use, even when that span of time covers our entire national existence and indeed predates it." Walz v. Tax Comm'n, 397 U.S. 664, 678 (1970). See also Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S. 266 (1973); Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973); Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972); Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964). 10 Our function in constitutional cases is weightier than the Court today suggests: where reasoned analysis shows a practice to be constitutionally deficient, our obligation is to the Constitution, not the Congress. </s> In sum, the Court's opinion is without foundation. It relies on precedents that are not precedents. It relies on history that offers no clear rule to impose, but only conflicting interests to balance. It relies on statutes that constitute, at best, no more than an aid to construction. The Court never grapples with the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment and the cases construing it. It simply announces, by ipse dixit, a rule squarely rejecting the warrant requirement we have favored for so long. </s> III </s> My Brother POWELL concludes: "Logic . . . would seem to dictate that arrests be subject to the warrant [423 U.S. 411, 444] requirement at least to the same extent as searches." Ante, at 429 (concurring). I agree. </s> One of the few absolutes of our law is the requirement that, absent the presence of one of a few "jealously and carefully drawn" exceptions, Jones v. United States, 357 U.S. 493, 499 (1958), a warrant be obtained prior to any search. 11 "[E]xcept in certain carefully defined classes of cases, a search of private property without proper consent is `unreasonable' [within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment] unless it has been authorized by a valid search warrant." Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 528 -529 (1967). See Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 439 (1973); United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297, 315 -316, 318 (1972); Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S., at 454 -455; Chimel v. California, 395 U.S., at 762 ; Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968); Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357 (1967). </s> The rule the Court announces today for arrests is the reverse of this approach. It is, in essence, the Rabinowitz rule: "The relevant test is not whether it is reasonable to procure [an arrest] warrant, but whether the [arrest] was reasonable." United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 66 (1950). In the search context, Rabinowitz has been overruled, Chimel v. California, supra, at 764-768, and thoroughly discredited, see, e. g., United States v. United States District Court, supra, at 315, and n. 16. The Rabinowitz approach simply does not provide adequate protection for the important personal privacy interests codified in the [423 U.S. 411, 445] Fourth Amendment. Given "[t]he history of the use, and not infrequent abuse, of the power to arrest," Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 479 (1963), and the fact that arrests are, in terms, as fully governed by the Fourth Amendment as searches, the logical presumption is that arrests and searches should be treated equally under the Fourth Amendment. Analysis of the interests involved confirms this supposition. </s> The Court has typically engaged in a two-part analysis in deciding whether the presumption favoring a warrant should be given effect in situations where a warrant has not previously been clearly required. Utilizing that approach we must now consider (1) whether the privacy of our citizens will be better protected by ordinarily requiring a warrant to be issued before they may be arrested; and (2) whether a warrant requirement would unduly burden legitimate governmental interests. United States v. United States District Court, supra, at 315; Camara v. Municipal Court, supra, at 533. </s> The first question is easily answered. Of course, the privacy of our citizens will be better protected by a warrant requirement. We have recognized that "the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places." Katz v. United States, supra, at 351. Indeed, the privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment is quintessentially personal. Cf. Roe v. Wade, supra; Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 (1973); Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965). Thus a warrant is required in search situations not because of some high regard for property, but because of our regard for the individual, and his interest in his possessions and person. </s> "It is not the breaking of his doors, and the rummaging of his drawers, that constitutes the essence of the offense; but it is the invasion of his indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty and [423 U.S. 411, 446] private property, where that right has never been forfeited by his conviction of some public offense, - it is the invasion of this sacred right which underlies and constitutes the essence of Lord Camden's judgment [in the classic English warrant case of Entick v. Carrington, 19 How. St. Tr. 1029, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (1765)]." Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 630 (1886). </s> Not only is the Fourth Amendment directly addressed to the privacy of our citizens, but it speaks in indistinguishable terms about the freedom of both persons and property from unreasonable seizures. A warrant is required in the search situation to protect the privacy of the individual, but there can be no less invasion of privacy when the individual himself, rather than his property, is searched and seized. Indeed, an unjustified arrest that forces the individual temporarily to forfeit his right to control his person and movements and interrupts the course of his daily business may be more intrusive than an unjustified search. </s> "Being arrested and held by the police, even if for a few hours, is, for most persons, awesome and frightening. Unlike other occasions on which one may be authoritatively required to be somewhere or do something, an arrest abruptly subjects a person to constraint, and removes him to unfamiliar and threatening surroundings. Moreover, this exercise of control over the person depends not just on his willingness to comply with an impersonal directive, such as a summons or subpoena, but on an order which a policeman issues on the spot and stands ready then and there to back up with force. The security of the individual requires that so abrupt and intrusive an authority be granted to public officials only on a guarded basis." ALI, Model Code [423 U.S. 411, 447] of Pre-arraignment Procedure, Commentary 290-291 (1975). </s> A warrant requirement for arrests would, of course, minimize the possibility that such an intrusion into the individual's sacred sphere of personal privacy would occur on less than probable cause. Primarily for this reason, a warrant is required for searches. Surely there is no reason to place greater trust in the partisan assessment of a police officer that there is probable cause for an arrest than in his determination that probable cause exists for a search. 12 Last Term the Court unanimously recognized [423 U.S. 411, 448] that detention of a person cannot be prolonged without judicial oversight of the probable-cause determination. Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103 (1975). But while Gerstein may provide the best protection possible against less-than-probable-cause warrantless arrests based on exigent circumstances, it does not fully protect the Fourth Amendment rights at stake here. A less-than-probable-cause arrest followed by a Gerstein release is as offensive to the Fourth Amendment as a less-than-probable-cause search that fails to uncover the evidence sought, and the requirement of a warrant is as instrumental in protecting against the one as the other. Indeed, the Court's opinion in Gerstein expressly recognizes that maximum protection of individual rights can only be realized "by requiring a magistrate's review of the factual justification prior to any arrest . . . ." Id., at 113. </s> We come then to the second part of the warrant test: whether a warrant requirement would unduly burden legitimate law enforcement interests. Dicta in Gerstein answer this question in the affirmative, and these concerns are somewhat amplified in the concurrence of my Brother POWELL. Ante, at 431-432. I believe, however, that the suggested concerns are wholly illusory. Indeed, the argument that a warrant requirement for arrests would be an onerous chore for the police seems somewhat anomalous in light of the Government's concession that "it is the standard practice of the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] to present its evidence to the United States Attorney, and to obtain a warrant, before making an arrest." Brief for United States 26 n. 15. In the past, the practice and experience of the FBI have been taken as a substantial indication that no intolerable burden would be presented by a proposed rule of procedure. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 483 -486 (1966). [423 U.S. 411, 449] There is no reason to accord less deference to the FBI practice here. 13 </s> The Government's assertion that a warrant requirement would impose an intolerable burden stems, in large part, from the specious supposition that procurement of an arrest warrant would be necessary as soon as probable cause ripens. Brief for United States 22-24. There is no requirement that a search warrant be obtained the moment police have probable cause to search. The rule is only that present probable cause be shown and a warrant obtained before a search is undertaken. 14 Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 41. Cf. Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41, 59 (1967). The same rule should obtain for arrest warrants, where it may even make more sense. Certainly, there is less need for prompt procurement of a warrant in the arrest situation. Unlike probable cause to search, probable cause to arrest, once formed, will continue to exist for the indefinite future, at least if no intervening exculpatory facts come to light. See Wilson v. United States, 117 U.S. App. D.C. 28, 325 F.2d 224 (1963), cert. denied, 377 U.S. 1005 (1964), and [423 U.S. 411, 450] United States v. Wilson, 342 F.2d 782 (CA2 1965) (both upholding delay of 16 months between formation of probable cause and issuance of arrest warrant). Cf. Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 310 (1966). </s> This sensible approach obviates most of the difficulties that have been suggested with an arrest warrant rule. Police would not have to cut their investigation short the moment they obtain probable cause to arrest, nor would undercover agents be forced suddenly to terminate their work and forfeit their covers. Godfrey v. United States, 123 U.S. App. D.C. 219, 358 F.2d 850 (1966). Moreover, if in the course of the continued police investigation exigent circumstances develop that demand an immediate arrest, the arrest may be made without fear of unconstitutionality, so long as the exigency was unanticipated and not used to avoid the arrest warrant requirement. Cf. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S., at 469 -471 (evidence may be seized if in plain view only if its discovery is inadvertent). Likewise, if in the course of the continued investigation police uncover evidence tying the suspect to another crime, they may immediately arrest him for that crime if exigency demands it, and still be in full conformity with the warrant rule. This is why the arrest in this case was not improper. 15 Other than where police attempt to evade the warrant requirement, the rule would invalidate an arrest only in the obvious situation: where police, with probable cause but without exigent circumstances, set out to arrest a suspect. Such an arrest must be void, even if exigency develops in the course of the arrest that [423 U.S. 411, 451] would ordinarily validate it; otherwise the warrant requirement would be reduced to a toothless prescription. </s> In sum, the requirement that officers about to arrest a suspect ordinarily obtain a warrant before they do so does not seem unduly burdensome, at least no more burdensome than any other requirement that law enforcement officials undertake a new procedure in order to comply with the dictates of the Constitution. Cf. Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S. 103 (1975); United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218 (1967); Gilbert v. California, 388 U.S. 263 (1967); Miranda v. Arizona, supra; Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963). </s> It is suggested, however, that even if application of this rule does not require police to secure a warrant as soon as they obtain probable cause, the confused officer would nonetheless be prone to do so. If so, police "would risk a court decision that the warrant had grown stale by the time it was used." Ante, at 432 (POWELL, J., concurring) (footnote omitted). This fear is groundless. First, as suggested above, the requirement that police procure a warrant before an arrest is made is rather simple of application. Thus, there is no need for the police to find themselves in this "squeeze." Second, the "squeeze" is nonexistent. Just as it is virtually impossible for probable cause for an arrest to grow stale between the time of formation and the time a warrant is procured, it is virtually impossible for probable cause to become stale between procurement and arrest. 16 Delay by law enforcement officers in executing an arrest warrant does not ordinarily affect the legality of the arrest. 17 </s> [423 U.S. 411, 452] United States v. Wilson, supra; Wilson v. United States, supra; Carlo v. United States, 286 F.2d 841, 846 (CA2), cert. denied, 366 U.S. 944 (1961); United States v. Joines, 258 F.2d 471 (CA3), cert. denied, 358 U.S. 880 (1958); Giordenello v. United States, 241 F.2d 575 (CA5 1957), rev'd on other grounds, 357 U.S. 480 (1958). In short, staleness should be the least of an arresting officer's worries. 18 </s> Thus, the practical reasons marshaled against an arrest warrant requirement are unimpressive. 19 If anything, the virtual nonexistence of a staleness problem suggests that such a requirement would be less burdensome for police than the search warrant rule. And given the significant protection our citizens will gain from a warrant requirement, accepted Fourth Amendment [423 U.S. 411, 453] analysis dictates that a warrant rule be imposed. This conclusion, then, answers the questions posed by analysis of the common-law rule on arrest. In choosing between the common law's prescription that a warrant ordinarily be obtained for the arrest of persons suspected of committing less serious crimes, and the common-law exception allowing warrantless arrests of suspects in more serious offenses, the intervention of our Fourth Amendment and the cases developing its application necessarily favor the former approach. Thus, I believe the proper result is application of the warrant requirement, as it has developed in the search context, to all arrests. </s> IV </s> Accordingly, I dissent from the Court's contrary holding. It is always disheartening when the Court ignores a relevant body of precedent and eschews any considered analysis. It is more so when the result of such an approach is a rule that "leave[s] law-abiding citizens at the mercy of the officers' whim or caprice," Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176 (1949), and renders the constitutional protection of our "persons" a nullity. The consequences of the Court's casually adopted rationale are clear. </s> First, the opinion all but answers the question raised in Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S., at 480 -481, namely, "whether and under what circumstances an officer may enter a suspect's home to make a warrantless arrest." Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S., at 113 n. 13. 20 </s> [423 U.S. 411, 454] Admittedly, my Brothers STEWART and POWELL do not read the opinion to resolve that issue and, indeed, the Court purports to leave it open. Ante, at 418 n. 6. But the mode of analysis utilized here - reliance on the common law and federal and state statutes - provides a ready answer, as indeed the Court hints by its extended discussion of 120.6 of the ALI Model Code of Prearraignment Procedure and its relevant commentary. Ante, at 418 n. 6. See also Wilgus, 22 Mich. L. Rev., at 800 ("For a felony . . . one may break into the dwelling house to take the felon . . ."); id., at 558, 803; 9 Halsbury's Laws of England 307 (1909); 1 J. Chitty, Criminal Law *23; 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *292. Unless the approach of this opinion is to be fundamentally rejected, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to follow these sources to any but one conclusion - that entry to effect a warrantless arrest is permissible. </s> Second, by paying no attention whatever to the substance of the offense, and considering only whether it is labeled "felony," the Court, in the guise of "constitutionalizing" the common-law rule, actually does away with it altogether, replacing it with the rule that the police may, consistent with the Constitution, arrest on probable cause anyone who they believe has committed any sort of crime at all. Certainly this rule would follow [423 U.S. 411, 455] if the legislatures redenominated all crimes as "felonies." As a matter of substance, it would seem to follow in any event from the holding of this case, for the Court surely does not intend to accord constitutional status to a distinction that can be readily changed by legislative fiat. 21 </s> Lastly, the Court surrenders the opportunity to put teeth in our oft-expressed preference for the use of arrest warrants. Beck v. Ohio, 379 U.S., at 96 ; Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S., at 479 -482. While some incentives for police to obtain arrest warrants remain, 22 </s> [423 U.S. 411, 456] they are only indirect and have proved ineffective in the past in assuring routine application for arrest warrants when the circumstances permit it. By our holding today, the preference for an arrest warrant, which the Court has conceded is the optimal method to protect our citizens from the affront of an unlawful arrest, will remain only an ideal, one that the Court will espouse but not enforce. </s> V </s> Having disposed of the suggestion that the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant of arrest before the police may seize our persons, the Court turns its attention, briefly, to whether Watson voluntarily consented to the search of his automobile. I have suggested above that because this issue is of some complexity and has not been thoroughly briefed for us I would remand this case for initial consideration of the question by the Court of Appeals. The Court, however, finds the question simplicity itself. It applies the "totality of the circumstances" test established in Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218 (1973), and treats the question as merely requiring the application of settled law to the facts before us. </s> That is not the case. Watson was in custody when his consent was obtained. The lack of custody was of decisional importance in Schneckloth, which repeatedly distinguished the case before it from one involving a suspect in custody. Id., at 232, 240-241, and n. 29, 246-248, and n. 36. The Court held: </s> "Our decision today is a narrow one. We hold only that when the subject of a search is not in custody and the State attempts to justify a search on the basis of his consent, the Fourth and Fourteenth [423 U.S. 411, 457] Amendments require that it demonstrate that the consent was in fact voluntarily given, and not the result of duress or coercion, express or implied." Id., at 248 (emphasis added). </s> Not once, but twice, the question the Court today treats as settled was expressly reserved: </s> "[T]he present case does not require a determination of the proper standard to be applied in assessing the validity of a search authorized solely by an alleged consent that is obtained from a person after he has been placed in custody." Id., at 241 n. 29. </s> See also id., at 247 n. 36. </s> I adhere to the views expressed in my dissent in Schneckloth, id., at 277, and therefore believe that the Government must always show that a person who consented to a search did so knowing he had the right to refuse. But even short of this position, there are valid reasons for application of such a rule to consents procured from suspects held in custody. It was, apparently, the force of those reasons that prompted the Court in Schneckloth to reserve the question. Most significantly, we have previously accorded constitutional recognition to the distinction between custodial and noncustodial police contacts. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S., at 477 -478. Indeed, Schneckloth directly relied on Miranda's articulation of that distinction to reach its conclusion. 412 U.S., at 232 . Thus, while custodial interrogation is inherently coercive, and any consent thereby obtained necessarily suspect, Miranda (and Schneckloth) expressly reject the notion that there is anything inherently coercive about general noncustodial interrogation. 384 U.S., at 477 -478; 412 U.S., at 247 . For this reason it is entirely appropriate to place a substantially greater burden on the Government [423 U.S. 411, 458] to validate a consent obtained from a suspect following custodial interrogation, however brief. Indeed, it is difficult, if not impossible, to square a contrary conclusion with Miranda. A substantially greater burden on the Government means, quite obviously, that the fact of custody is not merely another factor to be considered in the "totality of the circumstances." 23 And, in my view, it means that the Government must show that the suspect knew he was not obligated to consent to the search. </s> Whether after due consideration the Court would accept this view or not, it is a surrender of our judicial task altogether to ignore the question. And, equally disturbing, it is a distortion of our precedent to pretend that what seemed a difficult and complex problem three years ago is no problem at all today. </s> I respectfully dissent. </s> [Footnote 1 The Court of Appeals did not recognize this independent probable cause to arrest petitioner, perhaps because one of the arresting officers testified that the arrest was made for the earlier, rather than the contemporaneous, offense. App. 23-24. That testimony should not limit the inquiry into contemporaneous probable cause. Where the good faith of the arresting officers is not at issue, and where the crime for which a suspect is arrested and that for which the officers have probable cause are closely related, courts typically use an objective rather than subjective measure of probable cause. Ramirez v. Rodriguez, 467 F.2d 822 (CA10 1972); United States v. Martinez, 465 F.2d 79 (CA2 1972); United States v. Atkinson, 450 F.2d 835, 838 (CA5 1971). Since the objective facts demonstrably show probable cause as to the contemporaneous offense as well as the earlier offense, Watson's arrest is properly justified by reference to those facts. </s> [Footnote 2 W. Shakespeare, Hamlet, act iii, sc. 1, line 142. </s> [Footnote 3 Nunnery was Elizabethan slang for house of prostitution. 7 Oxford English Dictionary 264 (1933). </s> [Footnote 4 Professor Wilgus has defined felonies at common law as "those bootless crimes, prosecuted by an appeal with an offer of trial by battle, the felon's lands to go to his lord or the king, his chattels confiscated, and life and members forfeited, if guilty, and if he fled he became an outlaw . . . ." Wilgus, Arrest Without a Warrant, 22 Mich. L. Rev. 541, 569 (1924). </s> [Footnote 5 In the States the most common rule is that any crime punishable by death or imprisonment in the state prison is a felony. See id., at 571. See also, e. g., Ark. Stat. Ann. 41-103 (1964); 22 Fla. Stat. Ann. 775.08 (Supp. 1975); Ill. Ann. Stat. 2-7 (Supp. 1975); Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. 431.060 (1970); Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., c. 274, 1 (1970); Okla. Stat. Ann., Tit. 21, 5 (1958); Wash. Rev. Code 9.01.020 (1974). </s> [Footnote 6 "In England at the common law the difference in punishment between felonies and misdemeanors was very great. Under our present federal statutes, it is much less important and Congress may exercise a relatively wide discretion in classing particular offenses as felonies or misdemeanors." Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S., at 158 . </s> [Footnote 7 Indeed, by statute, it was no more than a high misdemeanor wilfully to discharge or attempt to discharge a pistol at or near the King of England. 9 Halsbury's Laws of England 459 (1909). Cf. 18 U.S.C. 871 (felony to make threats against President of United States); 1751 (felony to assault President of United States). </s> [Footnote 8 This exception was essentially a narrowly drawn exigent-circumstances exception. See Carroll v. United States, supra, at 157. </s> [Footnote 9 For example, under federal law these are some of the commonlaw misdemeanors, or their modern equivalents, now considered felonies: assault, 18 U.S.C. 111-112; assault with intent to commit murder, rape or any other felony, 113; forging securities of the United States, 471; bribing voters, 597; escape, 751; kidnaping, 1201; obstruction of congressional or executive investigations, [423 U.S. 411, 441] 1505; obstruction of criminal investigations, 1510; perjury, 1621; riots, 2101; interception of wire or oral communications, 2511. See also, e. g., Ark. Stat. Ann. 41-606 (1964) (assault with intent to kill); 41-607 (assault with intent to rape); 41-1805 (forgery); 41-3005 (perjury); 41-2308 (Supp. 1973) (kidnaping). Fla. Stat. Ann. 787.02 (Supp. 1975) (false imprisonment); 831.01 (Supp. 1975) (forgery); 837.012 (Supp. 1975) (perjury); 843.14 (Supp. 1975) (compounding felonies); 870.03 (Supp. 1975) (riots and routs). Ill. Ann. Stat. 10-1 (Supp. 1975) (kidnaping); 14-4 (eavesdropping); 33-1 (Supp. 1975) (bribery); 32-2 (Supp. 1975) (perjury). Ky. Rev. Stat. 520.020 (1975) (escape); 516.020 (1975) (forgery); 509.020 (1975) (kidnaping); 515.020 (1975) (assault with intent to rob); 523.020 (1975) (perjury). Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., c. 265, 29 (1970) (assault with intent to commit a felony); c. 268, 36 (compounding felonies); c. 268, 13B (obstructing justice); c. 267, 1 (Supp. 1975) (forgery); c. 272, 99 (interception of wire and oral communications); c. 268, 16 (Supp. 1975) (escape); c. 265, 26 (Supp. 1975) (kidnaping). Okla. Stat. Ann., Tit. 21, 443 (Supp. 1975) (escape); 499 (1958) (perjury); 653 (Supp. 1975) (assault with intent to kill); 1312 (1958) (riot); 1621 (1958) (forgery). Wash. Rev. Code 9.11.010 (1974) (assault with intent to commit a felony); 9.27.050 (riot); 9.31.010 (escape); 9.44.020 (forgery); 9.52.010 (kidnaping); 9.72.010 (perjury). </s> [Footnote 10 "It is clear, of course, that no Act of Congress can authorize a violation of the Constitution." Almeida-Sanchez v. United States, 413 U.S., at 272 . </s> [Footnote 11 "[S]earches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment - subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions." Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357 (1967). </s> [Footnote 12 In fact, the reasons relating to personal privacy so often itemized by the Court in requiring a warrant to search appear to apply with equal force to arrests. In Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10 (1948), Mr. Justice Jackson laid down the reasons for a search warrant in these classic lines: "The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime. Any assumption that evidence sufficient to support a magistrate's disinterested determination to issue a search warrant will justify the officers in making a search without a warrant would reduce the Amendment to a nullity and leave the people's homes secure only in the discretion of police officers. Crime, even in the privacy of one's own quarters, is, of course, of grave concern to society, and the law allows such crime to be reached on proper showing. The right of officers to thrust themselves into a home is also a grave concern, not only to the individual but to a society which chooses to dwell in reasonable security and freedom from surveillance. When the right of privacy must reasonably yield to the right of search is, as a rule, to be decided by a judicial officer, not by a policeman or government enforcement agent." Id., at 13-14. Substitute "arrest" for "search" and replace references to the home with references to the person, and the justification for an arrest warrant compellingly emerges. </s> [Footnote 13 The Miranda Court rejected as irrelevant the argument that the FBI deals with crimes different from those dealt with by state authorities. 384 U.S., at 486 . </s> [Footnote 14 The police will, however, encounter problems of "staleness" of their information if they delay too long in seeking a search warrant. E. g., Sgro v. United States, 287 U.S. 206 (1932); United States v. Sawyer, 213 F. Supp. 38, 40 (ED Pa. 1963). See generally Annot., 100 A. L. R. 2d 525 (1965). But see People v. Wright, 367 Mich. 611, 116 N. W. 2d 786 (1962). This problem relates, however, to the existence at the time the warrant is applied for of probable cause to believe the object to be seized remains where it was, not to whether the earlier probable cause mandated immediate application for a warrant. Mascolo, The Staleness of Probable Cause in Affidavits for Search Warrants: Resolving the Issue of Timeliness, 43 Conn. B. J. 189 (1969). This problem has no bearing, of course, in connection with a warrant to arrest. </s> [Footnote 15 Although the postal inspectors here anticipated the occurrence of the second crime, they could not have obtained a warrant for Watson's arrest for that crime until probable cause formed, just moments before the arrest. A warrant based on anticipated facts is premature and void. United States v. Roberts, 333 F. Supp. 786 (ED Tenn. 1971). </s> [Footnote 16 Thus, unlike a search warrant, an arrest warrant typically does not require execution within a specified time period or "forthwith." Compare Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 41 (c) with Rules 4 and 9. </s> [Footnote 17 Pre-arrest delay may violate a defendant's due process rights and cause dismissal of the charges if the delay is such as to impair the defendant's ability to defend himself or is deliberate and [423 U.S. 411, 452] unjustified. United States v. Feinberg, 383 F.2d 60, 65 (CA2 1967), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 1044 (1968); United States, v. Harbin, 377 F.2d 78 (CA4 1967); Godfrey v. United States, 123 U.S. App. D.C. 219, 358 F.2d 850 (1966); Powell v. United States, 122 U.S. App. D.C. 229, 231, 352 F.2d 705, 707 (1965). The effect of such delay, however, is completely unrelated to the warrant question. </s> [Footnote 18 It is suggested that staleness would be most serious in situations where the original probable cause justifying a warrant is undercut by exculpatory evidence, only to be reaffirmed by further inculpatory evidence. Why this should be a problem baffles me. It should be obvious that when the probable cause supporting a warrant no longer exists, the warrant is void and the suspect cannot be arrested. That probable cause is thereafter again found only tells us that, absent exigency, a subsequent warrant should be obtained, not that the void warrant should somehow be resurrected. Cf. Sgro v. United States, 287 U.S. 206 (1932). </s> [Footnote 19 The fear that "endless litigation" will result from a warrant rule cannot be credited as an additional practical reason against such a rule. Cf. ante, at 423-424. Recognition of a constitutional right inevitably results in litigation to enforce that right. We would quickly lose all protection from our Constitution if it could successfully be argued that its guarantees should be ignored because if they were recognized our citizens would begin to assert them. </s> [Footnote 20 The Court of Appeals relied on language from Coolidge v. New Hampshire, to support its conclusion that a warrant was required to arrest Watson: "Indeed, if MR. JUSTICE WHITE is correct that it has generally been assumed that the Fourth Amendment is not violated by the [423 U.S. 411, 454] warrantless entry of a man's house for purposes of arrest, it might be wise to re-examine the assumption. . . . ". . . The case of Warden v. Hayden, [387 U.S. 294 (1967),] where the Court elaborated a `hot pursuit' justification for the police entry into the defendant's house without a warrant for his arrest, certainly stands by negative implication for the proposition that an arrest warrant is required in the absence of exigent circumstances." 403 U.S., at 480 -481. The Court is correct that this language relates only to the question reserved both in Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U.S., at 113 n. 13, and in this case. </s> [Footnote 21 Thus the Court calls into question the line of state cases holding unconstitutional statutes authorizing warrantless arrests for misdemeanors not committed in the presence of the arresting officer. In re Kellam, 55 Kan. 700, 41 P. 960 (1895); Robison v. Miner, 68 Mich. 549, 37 N. W. 21 (1888); Pinkerton v. Verberg, 78 Mich. 573, 44 N. W. 579 (1889); Gunderson v. Struebing, 125 Wis. 173, 104 N. W. 149 (1905); Ex parte Rhodes, 79 So. 462 (Ala. 1918). Of course, such a result (or, indeed, the result I espouse herein) may still be sustained under the pertinent provisions of the state constitution. Cf. Oregon v. Hass, 420 U.S. 714, 726 (1975) (MARSHALL, J., dissenting). </s> [Footnote 22 After today there are two primary incentives for the police to obtain an arrest warrant. First, the Court has suggested, but never held, that a stronger showing of probable cause may be needed to justify a warrantless arrest than would be required if a warrant had been obtained. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 479 -480 (1963). Cf. United States v. Ventresca, 380 U.S. 102, 106 (1965) (searches). This two-tier standard of probable cause may prove too slippery for ready application, however, especially given the already imprecise definition of probable cause itself, Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S., at 161 . What the Court intends, I suspect, is simply that the evidence of probable cause supporting a warrantless arrest will be subjected to closer scrutiny than that underlying a warrant-supported arrest. The second incentive for police to obtain a warrant is that they may desire to present their evidence to a magistrate so as to be sure that they have probable cause. If probable cause is lacking, the police will then have an opportunity to gather more evidence [423 U.S. 411, 456] rather than make an illegal arrest that would result in suppression of any evidence seized. </s> [Footnote 23 Many Courts of Appeals have recognized that a custodial consent is different in kind from one obtained from a person not in custody, and have placed a stiff burden on the Government to validate the consent. United States v. Rothman, 492 F.2d 1260, 1265 (CA9 1973); United States v. Nikrasch, 367 F.2d 740, 744 (CA7 1966); Judd v. United States, 89 U.S. App. D.C. 64, 66, 190 F.2d 649, 651 (1951). </s> [423 U.S. 411, 1]

United States Supreme Court BARBER v. GONZALES(1954) No. 431 Argued: March 10, 1954Decided: June 7, 1954 </s> Respondent was born a national of the United States in the Philippine Islands, came to the continental United States from the Philippine Islands as a national prior to the Philippine Independence Act of 1934, has remained within this country ever since his arrival, and was sentenced to imprisonment in 1941 and 1950 for terms of one year or more for crimes involving moral turpitude. Held: He may not now be deported under 19 (a) of the Immigration Act of 1917 as an alien who had been so sentenced "after entry." Pp. 638-643. </s> (a) Respondent is not deportable under 19 (a) of the Immigration Act of 1917 unless he made an "entry" within the meaning of that provision, notwithstanding 8 (a) (1) of the Philippine Independence Act which provides that citizens of the Philippine Islands who are not citizens of the United States shall be considered aliens for immigration purposes. Pp. 639-640. </s> (b) When respondent came to the United States from the Philippine Islands as a national prior to enactment of the Philippine Independence Act of 1934, he did not make an "entry" into the United States within the meaning of 19 (a) of the Immigration Act of 1917, since he did not come from some "foreign port or place." Pp. 640-643. </s> 207 F.2d 398, affirmed. </s> Robert W. Ginnane argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the brief were Robert L. Stern, then Acting Solicitor General, Assistant Attorney General Olney and Beatrice Rosenberg. </s> Blanch Freedman argued the cause for respondent. With her on the brief was Lloyd E. McMurray. [347 U.S. 637, 638] </s> MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> Respondent was born in the Philippine Islands in 1913 and came therefrom to the continental United States in 1930. He has lived here ever since. In 1941, he was convicted in the State of California of assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to imprisonment for one year in the Alameda County jail. In 1950, he was convicted in the State of Washington of second degree burglary and was sentenced under the indeterminate sentence law of that State to a minimum term of two years in the state penitentiary. In 1951, after an administrative hearing, he was ordered deported to the Philippine Islands under 19 (a) of the Immigration Act of 1917 as an alien who "after entry" had been sentenced more than once to imprisonment for terms of one year or more for crimes involving moral turpitude. 39 Stat. 889, as amended, formerly 8 U.S.C. 155 (a). </s> After respondent was taken into custody, he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The petition attacked the validity of the deportation order on the ground, among others, that he was not subject to deportation under 19 (a) since he had not made an "entry" within the meaning of that section. The District Court dismissed the petition. On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, with one judge dissenting, reversed the District Court's judgment and remanded the case with directions to order respondent's release from custody. 207 F.2d 398. We granted certiorari. 346 U.S. 914 . </s> The sole question presented is whether respondent - who was born a national of the United States in the Philippine Islands, who came to the continental United States as a national prior to the Philippine Independence Act of 1934, and who was sentenced to imprisonment in 1941 [347 U.S. 637, 639] and 1950 for crimes involving moral turpitude - may now be deported under 19 (a) of the Immigration Act of 1917. </s> It is conceded that respondent was born a national of the United States; that as such he owed permanent allegiance to the United States, including the obligation of military service; that he retained this status when he came to the continental United States in 1930 and hence was not then subject to the Immigration Act of 1917 or any other federal statute relating to the exclusion or deportation of aliens. 1 The Government, however, contends that respondent's status as a national was changed by the Philippine Independence Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 456, which provided for the eventual independence of the Philippines, subsequently achieved in 1946, 60 Stat. 1352. Section 8 (a) (1) of the 1934 Act provides: </s> "For the purposes of the Immigration Act of 1917, . . . this section, and all other laws of the United States relating to the immigration, exclusion, or expulsion of aliens, citizens of the Philippine Islands who are not citizens of the United States shall be considered as if they were aliens. For such purposes the Philippine Islands shall be considered as a separate country and shall have for each fiscal year a quota of fifty." [347 U.S. 637, 640] </s> The Government urges that the reference in 8 (a) (1) to "citizens of the Philippine Islands" includes Filipinos then residing in the United States; that by virtue of this provision the respondent was assimilated to the status of an alien for purposes of "immigration, exclusion, or expulsion"; and that, having been twice convicted thereafter of crimes involving moral turpitude, he is deportable under 19 (a) of the Immigration Act of 1917. </s> The Government's argument is premised on the assumption that respondent made an "entry" within the meaning of 19 (a). If he did not make such an "entry," then he is not deportable under that section, even assuming that the Government is correct in its broad construction of the 1934 Philippine Independence Act. Section 19 (a) provides: </s> ". . . except as hereinafter provided, any alien who is hereafter sentenced to imprisonment for a term of one year or more because of conviction in this country of a crime involving moral turpitude, committed within five years after the entry of the alien to the United States, or who is hereafter sentenced more than once to such a term of imprisonment because of conviction in this country of any crime involving moral turpitude, committed at any time after entry . . . shall, upon the warrant of the Attorney General, be taken into custody and deported. . . ." (Italics added.) </s> The Court of Appeals sustained respondent's contention that he had never made the requisite "entry." With this conclusion, we agree. </s> The Government would have us interpret "entry" in 19 (a) in its "ordinary, everyday sense" of a "coming into the United States." Under this view, respondent's "coming into the United States" from the Philippine [347 U.S. 637, 641] Islands in 1930 would satisfy the "entry" requirement. While it is true that statutory language should be interpreted whenever possible according to common usage, some terms acquire a special technical meaning by a process of judicial construction. So it is with the word "entry" in 19 (a). E. g., Delgadillo v. Carmichael, 332 U.S. 388 ; United States ex rel. Claussen v. Day, 279 U.S. 398 ; Di Pasquale v. Karnuth, 158 F.2d 878; Del Guercio v. Gabot, 161 F.2d 559. Cf. United States ex rel. Volpe v. Smith, 289 U.S. 422, 425 . 2 In United States ex rel. Claussen v. Day, supra, at 401, this Court stated the applicable rule: </s> "The word `entry' [in 19 (a)] by its own force implies a coming from outside. The context shows that in order that there be an entry within the meaning of the Act there must be an arrival from some foreign port or place. There is no such entry where one goes to sea on board an American vessel from a [347 U.S. 637, 642] port of the United States and returns to the same or another port of this country without having been in any foreign port or place." (Italics added.) </s> See also United States ex rel. Stapf v. Corsi, 287 U.S. 129, 132 ; Carmichael v. Delaney, 170 F.2d 239, 242-243. This concept of "entry" was codified by Congress in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. 3 </s> At the time respondent came to the continental United States, he was not arriving "from some foreign port or place." On the contrary, he was a United States national moving from one of our insular possessions to the mainland. It was not until the 1934 Philippine Independence Act that the Philippines could be regarded as "foreign" for immigration purposes. Having made no "entry," respondent is not deportable under 19 (a) as an alien who "after entry" committed crimes involving moral turpitude. The Government warns that this conclusion is inconsistent with a broad congressional purpose to terminate the United States residence of alien criminals. But we believe a different conclusion would not be permissible in view of the well-settled meaning of "entry" in 19 (a). Although not penal in character, deportation statutes as a practical matter may inflict "the equivalent of banishment or exile," Fong Haw Tan v. Phelan, 333 U.S. 6, 10 , [347 U.S. 637, 643] and should be strictly construed. See Delgadillo v. Carmichael, 332 U.S. 388, 391 . In the absence of explicit language showing a contrary congressional intent, we must give technical words in deportation statutes their usual technical meaning. 4 </s> The judgment of the Court of Appeals is </s> Affirmed. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 From the Spanish cession in 1898 until final independence in 1946, the Philippine Islands were American territory subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. See Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, 324 U.S. 652, 674 -676. Persons born in the Philippines during this period were American nationals entitled to the protection of the United States and conversely owing permanent allegiance to the United States. They could not be excluded from this country under a general statute relating to the exclusion of "aliens." See Gonzales v. Williams, 192 U.S. 1, 12 -13; Toyota v. United States, 268 U.S. 402, 411 . But, until 1946, neither could they become United States citizens. See Toyota v. United States, supra; 60 Stat. 416. </s> [Footnote 2 In the Volpe case, the Court stated: "We accept the view that the word `entry' . . . [in 19 (a)] . . . includes any coming of an alien from a foreign country into the United States whether such coming be the first or any subsequent one. And this requires affirmance of the challenged judgment. . . . That the second coming of an alien from a foreign country into the United States is an entry within the usual acceptation of that word is clear enough from Lewis v. Frick, 233 U.S. 291 ; Claussen v. Day, 279 U.S. 398 . An examination of the Immigration Act of 1917, we think, reveals nothing sufficient to indicate that Congress did not intend the word `entry' in 19 should have its ordinary meaning." (Italics added.) The context of the latter sentence makes it clear that the Court regarded the word's "ordinary meaning" as being "any coming of an alien from a foreign country." In the Delgadillo case, supra, the Court narrowed this definition even further by holding that a resident alien does not make an "entry" from a foreign country if his arrival in the foreign country was unintentional. </s> [Footnote 3 Section 101 (a) (13) of the 1952 Act, 66 Stat. 167, 8 U.S.C. 1101 (a) (13), provides in pertinent part: "The term `entry' means any coming of an alien into the United States, from a foreign port or place or from an outlying possession . . . ." Section 101 (a) (29), 66 Stat. 170, 8 U.S.C. 1101 (a) (29), defines "outlying possessions" as American Samoa and Swains Island. By a special provision in the 1952 Act, the exclusion process is made applicable to any alien coming to the continental United States from Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, Puerto Rico, or the Virgin Islands. 66 Stat. 188, 8 U.S.C. 1182 (d) (7). </s> [Footnote 4 The respondent also attacks the validity of the deportation order on the grounds: (1) that he made no "entry" because he was not an alien when he came to this country; (2) that 8 (a) (1) of the 1934 Philippine Independence Act did not apply to Filipinos already residing here and that hence he was not an alien in 1941 when he was sentenced for one of the two crimes involved in this proceeding; (3) that he is not an alien today because Congress lacked the power to deprive him of his status as a national. Our disposition of the case makes it unnecessary to consider these contentions. </s> MR. JUSTICE MINTON, with whom MR. JUSTICE REED and MR. JUSTICE BURTON join, dissenting. </s> But for this Court's holding that 19 (a) of the Immigration Act of 1917 must be construed strictly and the word "entry" given a special meaning, I would be content with the excellent dissent of Judge Bone in the court below. 207 F.2d 398, 402. </s> The effect of the Court's opinion is to construe the Act strictly in favor of the convicted criminal sought to be deported for his criminal acts, rather than in favor of the United States in protection of its citizens. I know of no good reason why we should by strained construction of an Act compel the United States to cling onto alien criminals. It is not the public policy of this country to construe its statutes strictly in favor of alien criminals whose convictions have already been established of record. Why should we give a strained construction to the word "entry" in the instant case? The least we should do is to give the word "entry" its ordinary meaning. [347 U.S. 637, 644] </s> In construing this very statute, this Court said in United States ex rel. Volpe v. Smith, 289 U.S. 422, 425 : </s> "An examination of the Immigration Act of 1917, we think, reveals nothing sufficient to indicate that Congress did not intend the word `entry' in 19 should have its ordinary meaning." </s> Cf. Eichenlaub v. Shaughnessy, 338 U.S. 521 . </s> The case of Delgadillo v. Carmichael, 332 U.S. 388 , lends no authority to this case. In that case, the alien had never voluntarily left the United States for foreign land. His ship was torpedoed. He was blown into the sea. He was rescued and taken to Cuba, from whence he came back to the United States by way of Miami, Florida. This Court said: </s> "In this case petitioner, of course, chose to return to this country, knowing he was in a foreign place. But the exigencies of war, not his voluntary act, put him on foreign soil. It would indeed be harsh to read the statute so as to add the peril of deportation to such perils of the sea. We might as well hold that if he had been kidnapped and taken to Cuba, he made a statutory `entry' on his voluntary return. Respect for law does not thrive on captious interpretations." P. 391. </s> There is nothing captious or fortuitous about this petitioner's "entry" into the United States. He came to this country from outside, as all aliens do. No case by this Court supports the special construction given by the Court to the word "entry." </s> Because of the Court's strict construction of this statute, which has the effect of putting a liberal construction on the statute in favor of the alien criminal, which I believe to be contrary to the public policy of this country, I dissent. </s> [347 U.S. 637, 645]

United States Supreme Court CALIFORNIA v. SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA(1987) No. 86-381 Argued: April 22, 1987Decided: June 9, 1987 </s> The Extradition Act, which implements the Extradition Clause of Article IV, requires an asylum State to give up to a demanding State a fugitive against whom a properly certified indictment has been lodged. After a California custody decree was modified to give Richard Smolin sole custody of his minor children and he secured a California warrant to obtain custody, he and his father picked up the children in Louisiana, where they were living with their mother. The mother then swore out an affidavit charging the Smolins with kidnaping, on the basis of which an information was filed charging them with violating a Louisiana statute prohibiting a parent's intentional taking of his own child from any person to whom custody has been awarded by any state court of competent jurisdiction. After the Governor of Louisiana formally notified the Governor of California of the charges and demanded that the Smolins be delivered up for trial, the California Superior Court granted them a writ of habeas corpus to block the extradition warrants against them. Taking judicial notice of the California custody orders, the court concluded that the Smolins were not substantially charged with crime under Louisiana law. Although the California Court of Appeal then issued a writ of mandate on the ground that the Superior Court had abused its discretion, the State Supreme Court reversed, finding that the California custody decrees were properly considered by the Superior Court, and that, under the full faith and credit provisions of the federal Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act of 1980, those decrees conclusively established that Richard Smolin was the childrens' lawful custodian at the time he took them. The court ruled that the Smolins had not been substantially charged with a crime, since, under Louisiana law, the lawful custodian of children cannot be guilty of kidnaping them. </s> Held: </s> The Extradition Act prohibits the California Supreme Court from refusing to permit extradition. The language, history, and subsequent construction of the Act establish that extradition is meant to be a summary procedure, and that the asylum State's courts may do no more than ascertain whether (a) the extradition documents on their face are in order; (b) the petitioner has been charged with a crime in the demanding [482 U.S. 400, 401] State; (c) the petitioner is the person named in the request for extradition; and (d) the petitioner is a fugitive. Here, the only such inquiry in doubt is whether the Smolins have been charged with a crime in Louisiana, which question must be answered in the affirmative since the information charging them is in proper form, and they do not dispute that the wife's affidavit, and documents incorporated by reference therein, set forth facts that clearly satisfy each element of the crime defined in the state parental kidnaping statute. Their contention that the requirement of Roberts v. Reilly, 116 U.S. 80, 95 , that the person demanded be "substantially charged" permits an inquiry by the asylum State into whether the charging instrument is sufficient to withstand a generalized motion to dismiss or common-law demurrer is without merit. To the contrary, the asylum State may do no more than ascertain whether the requisites of the Extradition Act have been met, and may not entertain defenses or determine the guilt or innocence of the charged party. Thus, it is for the Louisiana courts to determine whether the wife's affidavit is fraudulent, whether the California custody decrees establish Richard Smolin as the children's lawful custodian under the full faith and credit provision of the federal Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act, and whether the Smolins were, accordingly, not guilty of violating the Louisiana statute. Pp. 405-412. </s> 41 Cal. 3d 758, 716 P.2d 991, reversed. </s> O'CONNOR, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C. J., and WHITE, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and SCALIA, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN J., joined, post, p. 412. </s> J. Robert Jibson, Supervising Deputy Attorney General of California, argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the brief were John K. Van de Kamp, Attorney General, and Steve White, Chief Assistant Attorney General. </s> Dennis P. Riordan argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief was Karen L. Snell. * </s> [Footnote * A brief of amici curiae urging reversal was filed for the State of Alaska et al. by James E. Tierney, Attorney General of Maine, William R. Stokes, Assistant Attorney General, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Harold M. Brown of Alaska, Corinne K. A. Watanabe of Hawaii, Jim Jones of Idaho, Linley E. Pearson of Indiana, Robert T. Stephan of Kansas, David L. Armstrong of Kentucky, William J. Guste, Jr., of Louisiana, Mike Greely of Montana, Brian McKay of Nevada, Stephen E. Merrill of New Hampshire, Michael Turpen of Oklahoma, [482 U.S. 400, 402] LeRoy S. Zimmerman of Pennsylvania, Hector Rivera Cruz of Puerto Rico, Mark V. Meierhenry of South Dakota, J. Michael Cody of Tennessee, Jim Mattox of Texas, David L. Wilkinson of Utah, Leroy A. Mercer of The Virgin Islands, and Archie G. McClintock of Wyoming. </s> Ephraim Margolin filed a brief for California Attorneys for Criminal Justice et al. as amici curiae urging affirmance. [482 U.S. 400, 402] </s> JUSTICE O'CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> At issue in this case are the limits imposed by federal law upon state court habeas corpus proceedings challenging an extradition warrant. </s> I </s> Richard and Judith Smolin were divorced in California in 1978. Sole custody of their two children, Jennifer and Jamie, was awarded to Judith Smolin, subject to reasonable visitation rights for Richard. Until November 1979, all the parties remained in San Bernardino County, California, and Richard apparently paid his child support and exercised his visitation rights without serious incident. In August 1979, however, Judith married James Pope, and in November, Mr. Pope's work required that the family relocate to Oregon. When the Popes moved without informing Richard, the battle over the custody of the minor children began in earnest. </s> It is unnecessary to recite in detail all that ensued. Richard alleged, and the California courts later found, that the Popes deliberately attempted to defeat Richard's visitation rights and to preclude him from forming a meaningful relationship with his children in the course of their succeeding relocations from Oregon to Texas to Louisiana. On February 13, 1981, the Popes obtained a decree from a Texas court granting full faith and credit to the original California order awarding sole custody to Judith. Richard was served but did not appear in the Texas proceeding. Before the Texas decree was issued, however, Richard sought and obtained in California Superior Court modification of the underlying California decree, awarding joint custody to Richard and Judith. Though properly served, the Popes did not appear in these [482 U.S. 400, 403] California proceedings; and, though served with the modification order, the Popes neither complied with its terms, nor notified the Texas court of its existence. On January 9, 1981, Richard instituted an action in California Superior Court to find Judith in contempt and to again modify the custody decree to give him sole custody. In February 1981, sole custody was granted to Richard by the California court, subject to reasonable visitation rights for Judith. </s> This order also was ignored by the Popes, apparently acting on the advice of counsel that the California courts no longer had jurisdiction over the matter. Richard did not in fact obtain physical custody for over two years. When he finally located the Popes in Louisiana, they began an adoption proceeding, later described by the California courts as "verging on the fraudulent," to sever Richard's legal tie to Jennifer and Jamie. App. 51. After securing a California warrant to obtain custody of the children on February 27, 1984, Richard and his father, Gerard Smolin, resorted to self-help. On March 9, 1984, they picked up Jennifer and Jamie as they were waiting for their school bus in Slidell, Louisiana, and brought them back to California. On April 11, 1984, the Popes submitted to the jurisdiction of the California Superior Court and instituted an action to modify the 1981 order granting Richard sole custody. 41 Cal. 3d 758, 764, n. 4, 716 P.2d 991, 994, n. 4 (1986). Those proceedings are apparently still pending before the California courts. </s> Meanwhile, the Popes raised the stakes by instituting a criminal action against Richard and Gerard Smolin in Louisiana. On April 30, 1984, after the Popes instituted modification proceedings in California, Judith Pope swore out an affidavit charging Richard and Gerard Smolin with kidnaping Jennifer and Jamie from her custody and asserting that they had acted "without authority to remove children from [her] custody." App. B to Pet. for Cert. 6. On the basis of this affidavit, the Assistant District Attorney for the 22d Judicial District of Louisiana, William Alford, Jr., filed an information [482 U.S. 400, 404] charging Richard and Gerard Smolin each with two counts of violating La. Rev. Stat. Ann. 14:45 (West 1986), the Louisiana kidnaping statute. On June 14, 1984, the Governor of Louisiana formally notified the Governor of California that Richard and Gerard Smolin were charged with "simple kidnaping" in Louisiana and demanded that they be delivered up for trial. 41 Cal. 3d, at 763, 716 P.2d, at 993-994. </s> In early August 1984, the Smolins petitioned in the California Superior Court for a writ of habeas corpus to block the anticipated extradition warrants. On August 17, 1984, the anticipated warrants issued and on August 24, 1984, the Superior Court orally granted a writ of habeas corpus after taking judicial notice of the various custody orders that had been issued. The court concluded "that the findings in the family law case adequately demonstrate that, in fact, the process initiated by Mrs. Pope in Louisiana and her declarations and affidavits were totally insufficient to establish any basis for rights of either herself personally or for the State . . . of Louisiana." App. C to Pet. for Cert. 5. California then sought a writ of mandate in the California Court of Appeal on the ground that the Superior Court had abused its discretion in blocking extradition. The Court of Appeal reluctantly issued the writ: </s> "Although we abhor Judy's apparent willingness to take advantage of our federal system to further this custody battle, and are sympathetic to [the Smolins'] position, we must conclude that their arguments are irrelevant to the only issue a court in the asylum state may properly address: are the documents on their face in order." App. B to Pet. for Cert. 16. </s> A divided California Supreme Court reversed. The majority interpreted the Superior Court's finding to be that the Smolins were not substantially charged with a crime. It found that the California custody decrees were properly considered [482 U.S. 400, 405] by the Superior Court, and that its conclusion that the Smolins were not substantially charged was correct. Under the full faith and credit provisions of the federal Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act of 1980, 28 U.S.C. 1738A, the majority determined that those decrees conclusively established that Richard Smolin was the lawful custodian of the children at the time that they were taken from Louisiana to California. * Finally, the court found that, under Louisiana law, the lawful custodian cannot be guilty of kidnaping children in his custody. State v. Elliott, 171 La. 306, 311, 131 So. 28, 30 (1930). We granted certiorari, 479 U.S. 982 (1986), to consider whether the Extradition Clause, Art. IV, 2, cl. 2, and the Extradition Act, 18 U.S.C. 3182, prevent the California Supreme Court from refusing to permit extradition on these grounds. </s> II </s> The Federal Constitution places certain limits on the sovereign powers of the States, limits that are an essential part of the Framers' conception of national identity and Union. One such limit is found in Art. IV, 2, cl. 2, the Extradition Clause: </s> "A person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority [482 U.S. 400, 406] of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime." </s> The obvious objective of the Extradition Clause is that no State should become a safe haven for the fugitives from a sister State's criminal justice system. As this Court noted in its first opportunity to construe the Extradition Clause: </s> "[T]he statesmen who framed the Constitution were fully sensible, that from the complex character of the Government, it must fail unless the States mutually supported each other and the General Government; and that nothing would be more likely to disturb its peace, and end in discord, than permitting an offender against the laws of a State, by passing over a mathematical line which divides it from another, to defy its process, and stand ready, under the protection of the State, to repeat the offense as soon as another opportunity offered." Kentucky v. Dennison, 24 How. 66, 100 (1861). </s> The Extradition Clause, however, does not specifically establish a procedure by which interstate extradition is to take place, and, accordingly, has never been considered to be self-executing. See, e. g., Hyatt v. People ex rel. Corkran, 188 U.S. 691, 708 -709 (1903); Kentucky v. Dennison, supra, at 104. Early in our history, the lack of an established procedure led to a bitter dispute between the States of Virginia and Pennsylvania. J. Scott, Law of Interstate Rendition 5-7 (1917). In 1791, Pennsylvania demanded the extradition of three men charged with kidnaping a free black man and selling him into slavery. Virginia refused to comply with Pennsylvania's demand. The controversy was finally submitted to President Washington who, relying upon the advice of Attorney General Randolph, 9 National State Papers of the United States 1789-1817, pt. II, pp. 144-145 (E. Carzo ed. 1985), personally appeared before the Congress to obtain the enactment of a law to regulate the extradition process. Congress [482 U.S. 400, 407] responded by enacting the Extradition Act of 1793, which provides in its current form: </s> "Whenever the executive authority of any State or Territory demands any person as a fugitive from justice, of the executive authority of any State, District or Territory to which such person has fled, and produces a copy of an indictment found or an affidavit made before a magistrate of any State or Territory, charging the person demanded with having committed treason, felony or other crime, certified as authentic by the governor or chief magistrate of the State or Territory from whence the person so charged has fled, the executive authority of the State, District or Territory to which such person has fled shall cause him to be arrested and secured, and notify the executive authority making such demand, or the agent of such authority appointed to receive the fugitive, and shall cause the fugitive to be delivered to such agent when he shall appear." 18 U.S.C. 3182. </s> This Court has held the Extradition Act of 1793 to be a proper exercise of Congress' powers under the Extradition Clause and Art. IV, 1, to "prescribe the manner in which acts, records and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof." Kentucky v. Dennison, supra, at 105; Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 16 Pet. 539, 618-622 (1842). By the express terms of federal law, therefore, the asylum State is bound to deliver up to the demanding State's agent a fugitive against whom a properly certified indictment or affidavit charging a crime is lodged. </s> The language, history, and subsequent construction of the Extradition Act make clear that Congress intended extradition to be a summary procedure. As we have repeatedly held, extradition proceedings are "to be kept within narrow bounds"; they are "emphatically" not the appropriate time or place for entertaining defenses or determining the guilt or innocence of the charged party. Biddinger v. Commissioner [482 U.S. 400, 408] of Police, 245 U.S. 128, 135 (1917); see also, e. g., Michigan v. Doran, 439 U.S. 282, 288 (1978); Drew v. Thaw, 235 U.S. 432, 440 (1914); Pierce v. Creecy, 210 U.S. 387, 405 (1908); In re Strauss, 197 U.S. 324, 332 -333 (1905). Those inquiries are left to the professorial authorities and courts of the demanding State, whose duty it is to justly enforce the demanding State's criminal law - subject, of course, to the limitations imposed by the Constitution and laws of the United States. Biddinger v. Commissioner of Police, supra, at 135; Drew v. Thaw, supra, at 440. The courts of asylum States may do no more than ascertain whether the requisites of the Extradition Act have been met. As the Court held in Michigan v. Doran, supra, the Act leaves only four issues open for consideration before the fugitive is delivered up: </s> "(a) whether the extradition documents on their face are in order; (b) whether the petitioner has been charged with a crime in the demanding state; (c) whether the petitioner is the person named in the request for extradition; and (d) whether the petitioner is a fugitive." 439 U.S., at 289 . </s> The parties argue at length about the propriety of the California courts taking judicial notice of their prior child custody decrees in this extradition proceeding. But even if taking judicial notice of the decrees is otherwise proper, the question remains whether the decrees noticed were relevant to one of these four inquiries. The Smolins do not dispute that the extradition documents are in order, that they are the persons named in the documents and that they meet the technical definition of a "fugitive." Their sole contention is that, in light of the earlier California custody decrees and the federal Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act of 1980, 28 U.S.C. 1738A, they have not been properly charged with a violation of Louisiana's kidnaping statute, La. Rev. Stat. Ann. 14:45 (West 1986). [482 U.S. 400, 409] </s> Section 14:45A(4) prohibits the </s> "intentional taking, enticing or decoying away and removing from the state, by any parent, of his or her child, from the custody of any person to whom custody has been awarded by any court of competent jurisdiction of any state, without the consent of the legal custodian, with intent to defeat the jurisdiction of the said court over the custody of the child." </s> A properly certified Louisiana information charges the Smolins with violating this statute by kidnaping Jennifer and Jamie Smolin. The information is based on the sworn affidavit of Judith Pope which asserts: </s> "`On March 9, 1984, at approximately 7:20 a. m., Richard Smolin and Gerard Smolin, kidnapped Jennifer Smolin, aged 10, and James C. Smolin, aged 9, from the affiant's custody while said children were at a bus stop in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. </s> "The affiant has custody of the said children by virtue of a Texas court order dated February 5, 1981, a copy of said order attached hereto and made part hereof. The information regarding the actual kidnapping was told to the affiant by witnesses Mason Galatas and Cheryl Galatas of 2028 Mallard Street, Slidell, Louisiana, and Jimmie Huessler of 2015 Dridle Street, Slidell, Louisiana. Richard Smolin and Gerard Smolin were without authority to remove children from affiant's custody.'" App. B to Pet. for Cert. 5-6. </s> The information is in proper form, and the Smolins do not dispute that the affidavit, and documents incorporated by reference therein, set forth facts that clearly satisfy each element of the crime of kidnaping as it is defined in La. Rev. Stat. Ann. 14:45A(4) (West 1986). If we accept as true every fact alleged, the Smolins are properly charged with kidnaping under Louisiana law. In our view, this ends the inquiry into the issue whether or not a crime is charged for purposes of the Extradition Act. [482 U.S. 400, 410] </s> The Smolins argue, however, that more than a formal charge is required, citing the following language from Roberts v. Reilly, 116 U.S. 80, 95 (1885): </s> "It must appear, therefore, to the governor of the State to whom such a demand is presented, before he can lawfully comply with it, first, that the person demanded is substantially charged with a crime against the laws of the State from whose justice he is alleged to have fled, by an indictment or an affidavit, certified as authentic by the governor of the State making the demand. . . . </s> "[This] is a question of law, and is always open upon the face of the papers to judicial inquiry, on an application for a discharge under a writ of habeas corpus." </s> The Smolins claim that this language in Roberts spawned a widespread practice of permitting the fugitive, upon a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the asylum State's courts, to show that the demanding State's charging instrument is so insufficient that it cannot withstand some generalized version of a motion to dismiss or common-law demurrer. Tr. of Oral Arg. 29-36. The cases the Smolins principally rely upon as support for this asserted practice are People ex rel. Lewis v. Commissioner of Correction of City of New York, 100 Misc. 2d 48, 417 N. Y. S. 2d 377 (1979), aff'd, 75 App. Div. 2d 526, 426 N. Y. S. 2d 969 (1980), and Application of Varona, 38 Wash. 2d 833, 232 P.2d 923 (1951). See Brief for Respondent 15-17. In Lewis, however, the New York trial court actually granted extradition despite its apparent misgivings about the substantiality of the criminal charge. Lewis, supra, at 56, 417 N. Y. S. 2d, at 382. And, in Varona, the Washington Supreme Court relied on the fact that the indictment, on its face, did not charge a crime under California law. Application of Varona, supra, at 833-834, 232 P.2d, at 923-924. Neither case, in our view, supports the broad proposition that the asylum State's courts may entertain motions to dismiss or demurrers to the indictment or information from the demanding State. [482 U.S. 400, 411] </s> To the contrary, our cases make clear that no such inquiry is permitted. For example, in Pierce v. Creecy, decided after Roberts, supra, this Court refused to grant relief from extradition over multiple objections to the sufficiency of the indictment. The Pierce Court concluded that it was enough that "the indictment, whether good or bad, as a pleading, unmistakably describes every element of the crime of false swearing, as it is defined in the Texas Penal Code . . . ." 210 U.S., at 404 . It reasoned: </s> "If more were required it would impose upon courts, in the trial of writs of habeas corpus, the duty of a critical examination of the laws of States with whose jurisprudence and criminal procedure they can have only a general acquaintance. Such a duty would be an intolerable burden, certain to lead to errors in decision, irritable to the just pride of the States and fruitful of miscarriages of justice. The duty ought not be assumed unless it is plainly required by the Constitution, and, in our opinion, there is nothing in the letter or the spirit of that instrument which requires or permits its performance." Id., at 405. </s> Similarly, in Biddinger v. Commissioner of Police, 245 U.S. 128 (1917), the appellant argued that he had a seemingly valid statute of limitations defense based on the fact that more than three years, the limitations period, had elapsed since the date of the crime recited in the indictment and that he had been publicly and openly resident in the demanding State for that entire period. The Court found that the question of limitations was properly considered only in the demanding State's courts. Id., at 135; see also Drew v. Thaw, 235 U.S., at 439 -440 (whether the escape of a person committed to a mental institution is a crime "is a question as to the law of New York which the New York courts must decide"). </s> This proceeding is neither the time nor place for the Smolins' arguments that Judith Pope's affidavit is fraudulent [482 U.S. 400, 412] and that the California custody decrees establish Richard as the lawful custodian under the full faith and credit provision of the federal Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act of 1980. There is nothing in the record to suggest that the Smolins are not entirely correct in all of this: that California had exclusive modification jurisdiction over the custody of Jennifer and Jamie; that, under the California decrees, Richard Smolin had lawful custody of the children when he brought them to California; and, that, accordingly, the Smolins did not violate La. Rev. Stat. Ann. 14:45A(4) (West 1986) as is charged. Of course, the Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act of 1980 creates a uniform federal rule governing custody determinations, a rule to which the courts of Louisiana must adhere when they consider the Smolins' case on the merits. We are not informed by the record why it is that the States of California and Louisiana are so eager to force the Smolins halfway across the continent to face criminal charges that, at least to a majority of the California Supreme Court, appear meritless. If the Smolins are correct, they are not only innocent of the charges made against them, but also victims of a possible abuse of the criminal process. But, under the Extradition Act, it is for the Louisiana courts to do justice in this case, not the California courts: "surrender is not to be interfered with by the summary process of habeas corpus upon speculations as to what ought to be the result of a trial in the place where the Constitution provides for its taking place." Drew v. Thaw, supra, at 440. The judgment of the California Supreme Court is </s> Reversed. </s> [Footnote * The California Supreme Court found that under the Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act, California had exclusive modification jurisdiction over the original custody decree. 41 Cal. 3d 758, 770, 716 P.2d 991, 999 (1986). See 28 U.S.C. 1738A(d) ("The jurisdiction of a court of a State which has made a child custody determination consistently with the provisions of this section continues as long as [such court has jurisdiction under the law of such State] and such State remains the residence of the child or any contestant"); 28 U.S.C. 1738A(f) ("A court of a State may modify a determination of the custody of the same child made by a court of another State, if - . . . (2) the court of the other State no longer has jurisdiction, or it has declined to exercise such jurisdiction to modify such determination"). </s> JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE BRENNAN joins, dissenting. </s> There is no constitutional or statutory reason why the scope of an asylum State's judicial inquiry need be so narrow that it precludes the grant of habeas corpus in this case. It has been settled for over a century that before the Governor of an asylum State can lawfully comply with a requesting [482 U.S. 400, 413] State's demand for extradition, it must appear that the person sought is "substantially charged with a crime" and is also a fugitive from justice. Roberts v. Reilly, 116 U.S. 80, 95 (1885). 1 "The first of these prerequisites is a question of law, and is always open upon the face of the papers to judicial inquiry, on an application for a discharge under a writ of habeas corpus." Ibid. Because there is no reasonable possibility that the charges of simple kidnaping filed against Richard and Gerard Smolin in Louisiana are valid, I agree with the California Supreme Court's conclusion that they have not been substantially charged with a crime. In addition, the Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act of 1980, 28 U.S.C. 1738A, makes clear that Richard had custody of his daughters and thus there is no reasonable possibility that his travel from Louisiana to California with them made him a fugitive from justice. </s> I </s> The scope of the legal inquiry preceding extradition is extremely restricted because the courts of the asylum State cannot be expected to make "a critical examination of the laws of States with whose jurisprudence and criminal procedure they can have only a general acquaintance." Pierce v. Creecy, 210 U.S. 387, 405 (1908). Nevertheless, our precedents make clear that if a critical allegation of fact in the indictment is "impossible in law," see Roberts, 116 U.S., at 96 , the asylum State must refuse the extradition demand because the person has not been substantially charged with a crime. Munsey v. Clough, 196 U.S. 364, 373 (1905). In Drew v. Thaw, 235 U.S. 432 (1914), the habeas corpus petitioner was under a New York indictment for conspiracy to obstruct the due administration of laws; he was charged with plotting to effect his own escape from an insane asylum to which he had been committed. Justice Holmes' opinion for [482 U.S. 400, 414] the Court held that the indictment charged a crime because New York courts could decide that the conspiracy charged "did tend to obstruct the due administration of the law." Id., at 439. Even though the habeas court could not inquire "upon the facts or the law of the matter to be tried," Justice Holmes made it clear that there nevertheless must be a "reasonable possibility" that the crime charged "may be such." Id., at 439-440. 2 </s> In Pierce v. Creecy, the Court acknowledged that "an objection which, if well founded, would destroy the sufficiency of the indictment, as a criminal pleading, might conceivably go far enough to destroy also its sufficiency as a charge of crime." 210 U.S., at 404 . The Court concluded that the objections to the indictment in that case were not of that nature. Likewise, in In re Strauss, 197 U.S. 324 (1905), Ohio sought a fugitive who had been charged by affidavit before a justice of the peace for a felony which was subject to trial only upon an indictment. This Court found no constitutional barrier to extradition on those facts, but observed that the availability of extradition must be balanced against the duty of courts to avoid injustice: </s> "It may be true, as counsel urge, that persons are sometimes wrongfully extradited, particularly in cases like the present; that a creditor may wantonly swear to an affidavit charging a debtor with obtaining goods under false pretences. . . . While courts will always endeavor to see that no such attempted wrong is successful, on the other hand care must be taken that the [482 U.S. 400, 415] process of extradition be not so burdened as to make it practically valueless." Id., at 332-333. </s> The inquiry undertaken by the California courts in this case established the "impossibility in law" of convicting the Smolins and therefore the injustice of their extradition. The crime charged was two counts of simple kidnaping in violation of Louisiana law, which defines the crime, in relevant part, as: </s> "The intentional taking, enticing or decoying away and removing from the state, by any parent of his or her child, from the custody of any person to whom custody has been awarded by any court of competent jurisdiction of any state, without the consent of the legal custodian, with intent to defeat the jurisdiction of the said court over the custody of the child." La. Rev. Stat. Ann. 14:45A(4) (West 1986). </s> In my opinion the limited scope of the inquiry open to the California courts in this case did not preclude an examination of either federal law or California's own judicial decrees. This summary examination was permissible because it had a direct bearing on whether the information "substantially charged" the Smolins with a crime or whether there was no reasonable possibility that the crime of simple kidnaping charged "may be such." Drew v. Thaw, 235 U.S., at 440 . </s> The Smolins' conviction for this crime was an impossibility for three reasons. First, a California court, the court of competent jurisdiction under the federal Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act, 3 had awarded sole custody of Jennifer and Jamie to Richard Smolin more than three years before he took them to California; he plainly could not be convicted of removing the children from his own custody. Second, regardless of whether Richard or Judith Smolin had custody of the children, he clearly believed that custody had been [482 U.S. 400, 416] awarded to him by a California Court which retained jurisdiction. His act of taking the children to California therefore could not have been accomplished with the intent to defeat the jurisdiction of that court. Third, because he did not believe that a Louisiana court had jurisdiction over the custody determination, he could not logically be convicted under the kidnaping statute for departing from Louisiana with the intent to defeat the jurisdiction of the courts of that State. There is, in short, no possibility - and certainly no "reasonable possibility" - that his conduct violated the Louisiana statute cited in the extradition papers. 4 A sensible application of the requirement that a fugitive must be "substantially charged" with a crime, informed by the twin necessities of avoiding a trial-like inquiry into the law of sister States and preventing the injustice of extradition to face a legally impossible charge, leads me to conclude that the judgment of the California Supreme Court should be affirmed. </s> The Court's heavy reliance on the dicta in Michigan v. Doran, 439 U.S. 282, 288 (1978), and Biddinger v. Commissioner of Police, 245 U.S. 128, 135 (1917), is misplaced. The issue in Doran was whether a court in the asylum State could review the demanding State's judicial determination that there was probable cause for the fugitive's arrest - an issue that is entirely unrelated to the substantiality of the criminal charge. The fact that the Court omitted the word "substantial" [482 U.S. 400, 417] in its summary description of the proper inquiry in the asylum State surely was not intended to modify or eliminate a requirement that this Court had recognized for decades. See, e. g., McNichols v. Pease, 207 U.S. 100, 108 -109 (1907) (accused must be "substantially charged with crime against the laws of the demanding State"); Ex parte Reggel, 114 U.S. 642, 651 (1885) (indictment accompanying the requisition was valid because it substantially charged the crime). In recognition of this longstanding requirement, the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act, which both Louisiana and California have adopted, specifies that the "indictment, information, or affidavit made before the magistrate must substantially charge the person demanded with having committed a crime under the law of that state." 11 U. L. A. 92 (1974); La. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 263 (West 1967); Cal. Penal Code Ann. 1548.2 (West 1982). </s> The Biddinger case relied upon by the Court is also inapposite because the validity of the fugitive's statute of limitations defense in that case depended on the law of the demanding State; the fact that the limitations period had expired between the date of the offense and the charge did not foreclose the possibility that the statute had been tolled. 245 U.S., at 131 -132, 135. The common thread in Doran and Biddinger, as in Drew v. Thaw, supra, is that an asylum state court's inquiry may not reach the merits of issues that could be fully litigated in the charging State; such examinations entangle the asylum State's judicial system in laws with which it is unfamiliar and endanger the summary nature of extradition proceedings. To obtain habeas relief, "[t]here must be objections which reach deeper into the indictment that those which would be good against it in the court where it is pending." Pierce v. Creecy, 210 U.S., at 401 ; cf. Pacileo v. Walker, 449 U.S. 86, 87 -88 (1980) (per curiam) (California Supreme Court erred in granting habeas relief to fugitive by directing its Superior Court to determine whether prison conditions in demanding State violated Eighth Amendment). [482 U.S. 400, 418] Neither of those dangers is posed by the respondent California Superior Court's conclusion that the Smolins had legal custody and thus were not "substantially charged" with kidnaping. 5 </s> II </s> Prima facie proof that the accused be "a fugitive from the justice of the demanding State" is a "condition precedent to the surrender of the accused." Ex parte Reggel, 114 U.S., at 652 -653. Deeming Richard Smolin a "fugitive from justice" would not serve the purpose of the Extradition Clause. The Framers' provision for extradition was designed to prevent state boundaries from becoming impermeable walls within which "the fugitives from a sister State's criminal justice system" may find "safe haven." Ante, at 406 (quoting Kentucky v. Dennison, 24 How. 66, 100 (1861)); cf. Jones v. Helms, 452 U.S. 412, 419 (1981) (State's right to obtain extradition of criminal necessarily qualifies that citizen's right to interstate travel). The requirement that fugitivity be established nevertheless has some teeth to it; 6 otherwise state boundaries would become mere markings in an atlas, and the demanding State could exercise criminal jurisdiction over a person anywhere in the Union regardless of the extent [482 U.S. 400, 419] of that person's culpable connection with the State. 7 Thus, to be a fugitive from justice it is necessary "that having within a State committed that which by its laws constitutes a crime, when he is sought to be subjected to its criminal process to answer for his offense, he has left its jurisdiction and is found within the territory of another." Roberts v. Reilly, 116 U.S., at 97 (emphasis added). "For all that is necessary to convert a criminal under the laws of a State into a fugitive from justice is that he should have left the State after having incurred guilt there." Strassheim v. Daily, 221 U.S. 280, 285 (1911) (citing Roberts v. Reilly, supra). See also Appleyard v. Massachusetts, 203 U.S. 222, 227 (1906). </s> Despite this seemingly sweeping language, we have previously rejected the claim that a person could be considered a fugitive if he could establish that he was outside of the demanding State at the time of the alleged offense, even if "constructive presence" would be a sufficient basis for criminal liability. In Munsey v. Clough, we wrote: </s> "When it is conceded, or when it is so conclusively proved, that no question can be made that the person was not within the demanding State when the crime is said to have been committed, and his arrest is sought on the ground only of a constructive presence at that time, in the demanding State, then the court will discharge the defendant. Hyatt v. Corkran, 188 U.S. 691 [(1903)], affirming the judgment of the New York Court of Appeals, 172 N. Y. 176 1902.." 196 U.S., at 374 -375. </s> See also South Carolina v. Bailey, 289 U.S. 412, 421 -422 (1933); McNichols v. Pease, 207 U.S., at 109 -110 (1907); Ex parte Reggel, 114 U.S., at 651 . [482 U.S. 400, 420] </s> Similarly, I believe that we should today reject the notion that a parent who holds custody as determined by the Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act of 1980, 28 U.S.C. 1738A, must be extradited as a charged kidnaper. Three reasons compel this conclusion. First, when the fleeing parent lacks child custody under federal law, it is proper to subject him or her to extradition in order to face criminal prosecution. But when the parent acts consistently with the federal law that governs interstate custody disputes, he should not be deemed to have fled from the judicial process of the demanding State. By allowing the custodial parent under federal law to be branded as a fugitive, the Court implicitly approves non-adherence to the uniform federal rule governing custody determinations. </s> Second, requiring the extradition of Richard Smolin is at cross-purposes with Congress' intent to "discourage continuing interstate controversies over child custody" and to "deter interstate abductions and other unilateral removals of children undertaken to obtain custody and visitation awards." See 28 U.S.C. 1738A note. 8 Compelling extradition to face a criminal charge which cannot lead to a conviction, no less than "child snatching," is the coerced transportation of a party to a custodial dispute to another forum in order to serve a private interest. It is anomalous that the Act, which [482 U.S. 400, 421] was clearly intended to deter the former type of coercion, should not also be interpreted to discourage the latter. 9 </s> Third, the Extradition Clause should be construed consistently with the Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act because both are expressions of the constitutional command of full faith and credit that governs relations among the several States. The Extradition Clause "articulated, in mandatory language, the concepts of comity and full faith and credit, found in the immediately preceding clause of Art. IV." Michigan v. Doran, 439 U.S., at 287 -288. The courts of every State best adhere to this principle, when considering an extradition request for alleged parental kidnaping, by giving full faith and credit to custody judgments rendered by other States as commanded by the Act. It is clear to a court performing this task that the Smolins are not fugitives within the meaning of the extradition request; as the custodial parent under the federal statute, Richard Smolin did not commit while in Louisiana "an act which by the law of the State constitutes a crime." Hogan v. O'Neill, 255 U.S. 52, 56 (1921). [482 U.S. 400, 422] </s> III </s> The Court is scrupulously fair in its recital of the facts and frank in its acknowledgement that the criminal process may have been abused in this case. The reasoning the Court follows nevertheless adopts an overly restrictive view of the questions that the habeas courts of a rendering State must pose. The law governing interstate rendition for criminal proceedings does not foreclose a summary inquiry into whether the crime charged is legally impossible. Moreover, in an area in which Congress has seen fit to enact nationwide legislation, I cannot agree that respect for the criminal laws of other States requires the State of California indiscriminately to render as fugitives those citizens who are conclusorily charged with simple kidnaping for their exercise of a right conferred upon them by a valid custody decree issued by a California court. The Court's contrary conclusion will, I fear, produce unnecessary inconvenience and injustice in this case and provide estranged parents with an inappropriate weapon to use against each other as they wage custody disputes throughout this land. </s> I respectfully dissent. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 See also Hyatt v. Corkran, 188 U.S. 691, 709 -710 (1903); Munsey v. Clough, 196 U.S. 364, 372 -373 (1905); Pierce v. Creecy, 210 U.S. 387, 401 , 405 (1908). </s> [Footnote 2 "When, as here, the identity of the person, the fact that he is a fugitive from justice, the demand in due form, the indictment by a grand jury for what it and the Governor of New York allege to be a crime in that State and the reasonable possibility that it may be such, all appear, the constitutionally required surrender is not to be interfered with by the summary process of habeas corpus upon speculations as to what ought to be the result of a trial in the place where the Constitution provides for its taking place." Drew v. Thaw, 235 U.S. 432, 440 (1914) (emphasis supplied). </s> [Footnote 3 See ante, at 405, n. </s> [Footnote 4 The Louisiana Assistant District Attorney who filed the information against the Smolins was aware of the California custody orders at the time he filed the information. He believed, however, that a crime had been committed because "`he viewed the California judgment as being void, having been obtained by fraudulent misrepresentations, and the valid order having been that issued by Texas on February 13, 1981.'" 41 Cal. 3d 758, 763, n. 1, 716 P.2d 991, 993, n. 1 (1986). In my opinion that speculation on the part of the Assistant District Attorney is inadequate to overcome the fact that Richard Smolin, as the holder of a custody determination that was valid on its face, could not be substantially charged with a crime for his exercise of the parental rights conferred upon him by that custody determination. </s> [Footnote 5 An asylum State's review of a determination by a magistrate in the requesting State that probable cause exists to arrest the fugitive may cause "friction and delay," but nothing indicates that "routine and basic inquiry" into the existence of a charge "has led to frustration of the extradition process." Michigan v. Doran, 439 U.S. 282, 296 -297, n. 7 (1978) (BLACKMUN, J., concurring in result). </s> [Footnote 6 "Any other interpretation would lead to the conclusion that the mere requisition by the executive of the demanding State, accompanied by the copy of an indictment, or an affidavit before a magistrate, certified by him to be authentic, charging the accused with crime committed within her limits, imposes upon the executive of the State or Territory where the accused is found, the duty of surrendering him, although he may be satisfied, from incontestable proof, that the accused had, in fact, never been in the demanding State, and, therefore, could not be said to have fled from its justice." Ex parte Reggel, 114 U.S. 642, 652 (1885). </s> [Footnote 7 In the context of extradition - a form of recognition of sister-state indictments - no less than in the context of recognition of judgments or of laws, "[s]tate boundaries are neither irrelevancies nor licenses to disengage." Brilmayer, Credit Due Judgments and Credit Due Laws: The Respective Roles of Due Process and Full Faith and Credit in the Interstate Context, 70 Iowa L. Rev. 95, 112 (1984). </s> [Footnote 8 A uniform rule establishing which parent has custody deters "child snatching." See Field, Sources of Law: The Scope of Federal Common Law, 99 Harv. L. Rev. 881, 959, n. 340 (1986). The Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act achieves a uniform rule in practice by establishing the circumstances under which a State may render or modify a child custody determination and requiring that other States give full faith and credit to judgments that conform to these standards. See 28 U.S.C. 1738A(a), (c)-(g). If States were free not to give full faith and credit to the custody judgments of other States, a forum-shopping parent would have an incentive to remove the child to a State which was more likely to render a custodial decree in favor of that parent. See Brilmayer, supra, at 103. </s> [Footnote 9 Of course, persons who remove a child from a State in violation of the Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act should be brought to justice. Indeed, Congress has explicitly pointed out that the Fugitive Felon Act, 18 U.S.C. 1073, which makes it a federal crime for a person to move or travel "in interstate or foreign commerce with intent . . . to avoid prosecution . . . under the laws of the place from which he flees, for a crime . . . which is a felony under the laws of the place from which the fugitive flees" applies to parental kidnaping. 28 U.S.C. 1738A note. The Act also makes available, in certain limited instances, the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in apprehending interstate abductors. See generally Donigan, Child Custody Jurisdiction: New Legislation Reflects Public Policy Against Parental Abduction, 19 Gonz. L. Rev. 1, 64-66 (1983-1984) (Department of Justice does not interpret Act to require routine federal involvement in parental abductions). Congress' assertions of the federal interest in regulating parental abduction require habeas courts to exercise particular vigilance that a custodial parent not be extradited as a fugitive from justice. </s> [482 U.S. 400, 423]

United States Supreme Court HAWAII v. GORDON(1963) No. 12 Argued: April 15, 1963Decided: April 29, 1963 </s> The State of Hawaii filed this original action against the Director of the Bureau of the Budget under Art. III, 2, of the Constitution, seeking to obtain an order requiring him to (1) withdraw his advice to federal agencies that 5 (e) of the Hawaii Statehood Act, which provides for the conveyance to the State of land "no longer needed by the United States," does not apply to lands obtained by the United States through purchase, condemnation or gift; (2) determine whether a certain tract of land in Hawaii acquired by the United States through condemnation was "needed by the United States"; and (3) convey this land, if not needed, to Hawaii. Held: The complaint is dismissed, because this is a suit against the United States which has not consented to the maintenance of such a suit against it. Pp. 57-58. </s> Complaint dismissed. </s> Bert T. Kobayashi, Attorney General of Hawaii, and Dennis G. Lyons argued the cause for plaintiff. Also on the briefs were Shiro Kashiwa, former Attorney General of Hawaii, Wilbur K. Watkins, Jr., former Deputy Attorney General of Hawaii, Thurman Arnold, Abe Fortas and Paul A. Porter. </s> Wayne G. Barnett argued the cause for defendant. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Cox, David R. Warner and Thos. L. McKevitt. </s> PER CURIAM. </s> Section 5 (e) of the Hawaii Statehood Act, 73 Stat. 4, 48 U.S.C. (Supp. II, 1960), pp. 1257-1261, provides that within five years from the date Hawaii is admitted to the Union federal agencies having control over land or properties retained by the United States under 5 (c) and (d) of the Act shall report to the President as to the "continued need for such land or property, and if the President [373 U.S. 57, 58] determines that the land or property is no longer needed by the United States it shall be conveyed to the State of Hawaii." The President designated the Director of the Bureau of the Budget to perform his functions thereunder. The Director thereafter, pursuant to an opinion of the Attorney General, 42 Op. Atty. Gen. (No. 4), concluded, and so advised federal agencies, that the lands referred to in 5 (e) do not include lands obtained by the United States through purchase, condemnation or gift but are limited to lands which at one time belonged to Hawaii and were ceded to the United States or acquired in exchange therefor. </s> Hawaii filed this original action against the Director, under Art. III, 2, of the Constitution of the United States, seeking to obtain an order requiring him to withdraw this advice to the federal agencies, determine whether a certain 203 acres of land in Hawaii acquired by the United States through condemnation was land or properties "needed by the United States" and, if not needed, to convey this land to Hawaii. We have concluded that this is a suit against the United States and, absent its consent, cannot be maintained by the State. The general rule is that relief sought nominally against an officer is in fact against the sovereign if the decree would operate against the latter. E. g., Dugan v. Rank, 372 U.S. 609 (1963); Malone v. Bowdoin, 369 U.S. 643 (1962); Larson v. Domestic & Foreign Corp., 337 U.S. 682 (1949). Here the order requested would require the Director's official affirmative action, affect the public administration of government agencies and cause as well the disposition of property admittedly belonging to the United States. The complaint is therefore dismissed. Oregon v. Hitchcock, 202 U.S. 60 (1906). </s> Dismissed. </s> MR. JUSTICE WHITE took no part in the consideration or decision of this case. </s> [373 U.S. 57, 59]

United States Supreme Court CHAPMAN v. MEIER(1975) No. 73-1406 Argued: November 13, 1974Decided: January 27, 1975 </s> This case involves the issue of the constitutionality of a federal-court-ordered reapportionment of the North Dakota Legislative Assembly. Following protracted state and federal litigation challenging various apportionment plans, statutes, and state constitutional provisions, including a federal action in which a three-judge District Court in 1965 approved a reapportionment plan that included five multimember senatorial districts, appellants brought the present federal action against appellee, the Secretary of State, alleging that substantial population shifts had occurred and that the 1965 plan no longer met equal protection requirements, and requesting the court to order apportionment based on the 1970 census figures, to provide for single-member districts, to declare the 1965 plan invalid, and to restrain appellee from administering the election laws under that plan. A three-judge District Court, holding that such plan failed to meet constitutional standards, approved another plan that called for five multimember senatorial districts and that contained a 20% population variance between the largest and smallest senatorial districts. Held: </s> 1. This Court has jurisdiction of the appeal under 28 U.S.C. 1253. Although the challenged reapportionment plan was court [420 U.S. 1, 2] ordered, its enforcement is based on the State's Constitution and statutes, its effectuation directly depends on the state election law machinery, and the plan itself is a court-imposed replacement of state constitutional provisions and reapportionment statutes. Pp. 13-14. </s> 2. Absent persuasive justification, a federal district court in ordering state legislative reapportionment should refrain from imposing multimember districts upon a State. Here the District Court has failed to articulate a significant state interest supporting its departure from the general preference for single-member districts in court-ordered reapportionment plans that this Court recognized in Connor v. Johnson, 402 U.S. 690 , and unless the District Court can articulate such a "singular combination of unique factors" as was found to exist in Mahan v. Howell, 410 U.S. 315, 333 , or unless the 1975 Legislative Assembly appropriately acts, the court should proceed expeditiously to reinstate single-member senatorial districts. Pp. 14-21. </s> 3. A population deviation of such magnitude in a court-ordered reapportionment plan as the 20% variance involved here is constitutionally impermissible absent significant state policies or other acceptable considerations requiring its adoption. The burden is on the District Court to elucidate the reasons necessitating any departure from approximate population equality and to articulate clearly the relationship between the variance and the state policy furthered. Here the District Court's allowance of the 20% variance is not justified, as the court claimed, by the absence of "electorally victimized minorities," by the sparseness of North Dakota's population, by the division of the State caused by the Missouri River, or by the asserted state policy of observing geographical boundaries and existing political subdivisions, especially when it appears that other, less statistically offensive, reapportionment plans already devised are feasible. Pp. 21-26. </s> 372 F. Supp. 371, reversed and remanded. </s> BLACKMUN, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. </s> John D. Kelly argued the cause and filed a brief for appellants. </s> Paul M. Sand, First Assistant Attorney General of North Dakota, argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief was Allen I. Olson, Attorney General. [420 U.S. 1, 3] </s> MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> This case presents the issue of the constitutionality of a federal-court-ordered reapportionment of the North Dakota Legislature, called in that State the Legislative Assembly. That State, like many others, has struggled to satisfy constitutional requirements for legislative apportionment delineated in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962); Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964); WMCA, Inc. v. Lomenzo, 377 U.S. 633 (1964); Maryland Committee v. Tawes, 377 U.S. 656 (1964); Davis v. Mann, 377 U.S. 678 (1964); Roman v. Sincock, 377 U.S. 695 (1964); Lucas v. Colorado General Assembly, 377 U.S. 713 (1964), and other cases. This litigation is the culmination of that struggle, totally ineffectual on the legislative side, during the past decade. </s> I </s> The State's Constitution and Its Statutes </s> North Dakota's original Constitution, adopted at the State's admission into the Union in 1889, is still in effect. It has been amended, of course, from time to time. Since 1918, 25 thereof has read: "The legislative power of this state shall be vested in a legislature consisting of a senate and a house of representatives." N. D. Const. Art. II, 25. That legislative power for 70 years has been subject to the initiative and the referendum. Ibid. The Constitution has further provided that the State's senate "shall be composed of forty-nine members," 26, elected for a four-year term, 27, with one-half thereof elected every two years, 30, and that no one shall be a senator unless he is a qualified elector of the senatorial district, has attained the age of 25 years, and has been a [420 U.S. 1, 4] resident of the State for the two years next preceding the election, 28. Since 1960, 29 has read: </s> "Each existing senatorial district as provided by law at the effective date of this amendment shall permanently constitute a senatorial district. Each senatorial district shall be represented by one senator and no more." 1 Laws 1959, c. 438; Laws 1961, c. 405. </s> The document also states that the house of representatives "shall be composed of not less than sixty, nor more than one hundred forty members," 32, elected for a two-year term, 33, and that no one shall be a representative unless he is a qualified elector of the district, has attained the age of 21 years, and has been a resident of the State for the two years next preceding the election, 34. Section 35 provides for at least one representative for each senatorial district and for as many representatives as there are counties in the district; states that the Legislative Assembly, after each federal decennial census, shall apportion "the balance of the members of the House of Representatives," and, if the Legislative Assembly fails in its apportionment duty, places the task of apportioning the house in a designated group of officials of the State. 2 </s> [420 U.S. 1, 5] </s> There have been complementary statutory provisions. An apportionment effected by Laws 1931, c. 7, N. D. Cent. Code 54-03-01 (1960), was in effect for over 30 years despite the mandate of 35 of the Constitution that apportionment be effected after each federal census. </s> II </s> Prior Litigation </s> A. Things began to stir in North Dakota even prior to this Court's decision in Baker v. Carr in 1962. The State's Legislative Assembly of 1961 had failed to apportion the house following the 1960 census. After Baker [420 U.S. 1, 6] had been decided at the District Court level, 179 F. Supp. 824 (MD Tenn. 1959), and between the argument and reargument of the case here, the Supreme Court of North Dakota dismissed an original action for a prerogative writ to enjoin its Chief Justice from issuing the apportionment proclamation which would have announced the conclusions of the statutorily designated "apportionment group" that were then anticipated. The petition asserted that the group's plan would apportion the house in an unconstitutional manner and not according to population. The Supreme Court ruled that the function of the group was legislative; that it had not yet completed its work; that it was performing a function the Legislative Assembly should have performed; and that, until the proclamation was issued, the group's action was not subject to challenge in the courts. State ex rel. Aamoth v. Sathre, 110 N. W. 2d 228 (1961). </s> B. Citizens of North Dakota then sought declaratory and injunctive relief in federal court under the Civil Rights Acts, 42 U.S.C. 1983 and 1988. By this time the State's Chief Justice had issued the proclamation. A three-judge District Court held that the presence of the proclamation eliminated the aspect of prematurity that had characterized the earlier challenge in the state court. But the "basic issues," the court concluded with one dissent, had not been presented to the Supreme Court of North Dakota. "We believe that court should have the opportunity of passing on all questions herein." The court, accordingly, abstained from passing upon those issues; it stayed further proceedings before it, but did not dismiss the action. Lein v. Sathre, 201 F. Supp. 535, 542 (ND 1962). </s> C. The plaintiffs in the federal case promptly took to the Supreme Court of North Dakota their attack upon the plan adopted by the apportionment group. That [420 U.S. 1, 7] court assumed jurisdiction. State ex rel. Lein v. Sathre, 113 N. W. 2d 679, 681 (1962). It noted that no question arising under the United States Constitution was presented, id., at 681-682, and that it was not concerned with the validity of the allotment of one representative to each senatorial district, as prescribed by the first sentence of 35 of the Constitution, id., at 683. The court recognized that there was inherent in a constitutional direction to apportion according to population "a limited discretion to make the apportionment that will approach, as nearly as is reasonably possible, a mathematical equality." Id., at 685. It then went on to hold that the apportionment made by the group "violates the constitutional mandate of apportionment according to the population of the several districts and is void," id., at 687, and that the apportionment effected by the 1931 statute continued to be the law until superseded by an apportionment valid under 35 or under a further amendment of the Constitution. Id., at 687-688. </s> D. The same plaintiffs then turned again to the federal court. The three-judge court, with one judge dissenting, denied the request for injunctive relief on the ground that the only challenge before it was to the apportionment group's plan, and that the 1931 apportionment was not challenged. Lein v. Sathre, 205 F. Supp. 536 (ND 1962). It noted that the Legislative Assembly would meet the following January, that it had "the mandatory duty" to apportion the house, and that the court would not presume that it would not perform that duty. Jurisdiction was retained, with the observation that if the Legislative Assembly failed to act, the plaintiffs, upon appropriate amendment of their complaint, might further petition the court for relief. Id., at 540. </s> E. The 1963 Legislative Assembly did reapportion. Laws 1963, c. 345. [420 U.S. 1, 8] </s> F. Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 , and its companion cases were decided in June 1964. A new suit then was instituted in federal court to invalidate North Dakota's entire apportionment system on federal constitutional grounds. Sections 26, 29, and 35 of the Constitution and the 1963 statute were challenged. The three-judge court held that these constitutional and statutory provisions were violative of the Equal Protection Clause. Paulson v. Meier, 232 F. Supp. 183 (ND 1964). It went on to hold that the 1931 apportionment, being "the last valid apportionment," as described by the North Dakota Supreme Court, and by which the 1963 legislators had been elected, was also invalid. Thus, "there is no constitutionally valid legislative apportionment law in existence in the State of North Dakota at this time." Id., at 187. The court encountered difficulty as to an appropriate remedy. It concluded, one judge dissenting, that adequate time was not available within which to formulate a proper plan for the then forthcoming 1964 elections, id., at 188; that the 1965 Legislative Assembly would have a de facto status; and that that Assembly should promptly devise a constitutional system. Injunctive relief was denied. Id., at 190. </s> G. The 1965 Legislative Assembly produced a reapportionment act although it was not approved or disapproved by the Governor. Laws 1965, c. 338. </s> H. The North Dakota Secretary of State, defendant in the federal court, then moved to dismiss the federal action on the ground that the 1965 act met constitutional requirements. The three-judge court, however, ruled otherwise. Paulson v. Meier, 246 F. Supp. 36, 43 (ND 1965). It turned to the question of remedy and concluded that the Legislative Assembly had had its opportunity and that the court now had the duty itself to take affirmative action. Id., at 43-44. It considered [420 U.S. 1, 9] several plans that had been introduced in the Assembly and centered its attention on the Smith plan. Although the court found the plan "not perfect" (five multimember senatorial districts, 3 and county lines violated in 12 instances), it concluded that the plan, if "slightly" modified, would meet constitutional standards ("impressive mathematical exactness," namely, 25 of 39 districts within 5% of the average population, four slightly over 5%, and only two exceeding 9%). Id., at 44-45. The "slight" modification was made and reapportionment, really the first to be finally effected since 1931, was therefore accomplished in North Dakota by federal-court intervention. </s> I. Still another original proceeding in the State's Supreme Court was instituted. This one challenged the right of senators from the multimember districts to hold office. It was claimed that this multiple membership violated 29 of the North Dakota Constitution which provided that each senatorial district "shall be represented by one senator and no more." The state court held that the 1965 judgment of the federal court was not res judicata as to the then plaintiffs; that the initial or "freezing" portion of 29 was clearly invalid; that the concluding portion, restricting representation of a district to one senator, would not have been desired by the people without the "balance" of the freezing portion; and that 29 as a unit must fall as violative of equal protection. State ex rel. Stockman v. Anderson, 184 N. W. 2d 53 (1971). The result was that multimember senatorial districts were not held illegal by the state court. [420 U.S. 1, 10] </s> III </s> The Present Litigation </s> The 1970 federal census was taken in due course. The 1971 Legislative Assembly failed to reapportion. The present federal action was instituted the following November. The plaintiffs alleged that substantial shifts in population had taken place, and that the court-ordered plan of 1965 no longer complied with the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause. The relief requested was that the court order apportionment upon the 1970 census figures and also provide for single-member districts; that the 1965 plan be declared invalid; and that the Secretary of State be restrained from administering the election laws under that plan. </s> On May 22, 1972, the three-judge court entered an order to the effect that the existing North Dakota apportionment failed to meet federal constitutional standards and that the court would attempt to reapportion. Jurisdictional Statement A-54. It appointed a commission to formulate and present a plan within 30 days, and it submitted guidelines to the commission. With respect to multimember districts, the order provided: </s> "We have considered the matter of `multi-member' districts and conclude there is insufficient time prior to the 1972 elections to fully explore and resolve the issues involved. The matter of `multi-member' districts will be studied in depth by the Commission, and the results of that study be made available to us." Id., at A-55. </s> An opinion was filed on June 30. 372 F. Supp. 363 (ND). This recited that the commission had presented eight separate plans to the court; that shifts in population since 1960 had resulted in constitutionally impermissible population variations among existing districts; [420 U.S. 1, 11] that a plan submitted by Commissioner Dobson substantially reduced the disproportionate representation, although it decreased the number of districts by one and increased the number of senators by two and the number of representatives by four. 4 "[C]ertain weaknesses" in the plan were recognized, including "some variance in population . . . which, in a few instances, seems substantial," and a continuation of multimember districts. Id., at 366. These districts included the State's five largest cities. The court noted that the districts had been created, not by enactment of the Legislative Assembly, but by the federal court in the 1965 Paulson decision, and observed, ibid.: "In light of subsequent [United States] Supreme Court pronouncements, we believe it would be improper for this Court to permit their continuation in a court-fashioned plan." Connor v. Johnson, 402 U.S. 690 (1971), and Connor v. Williams, 404 U.S. 549, 551 (1972), were cited. The court, however, felt </s> "constrained to permit multi-member districts to continue during the 1972 elections . . . to avoid extreme disruptions in the elective processes. . . . We feel that the electorate will be better served by minimizing the confusion surrounding the impending elections, than it would be by the abolition of multi-member districts at this eleventh hour." 372 F. Supp., at 366. </s> The Dobson plan was therefore approved "for the 1972 election only." Id., at 367. An alternative, the Ostenson plan, was commended to the commission for "further study," with a direction to modify it "so as to eliminate the existing multi-member senate districts." Id., at 367-368. Chief District Judge Benson dissented as to the limitation of the Dobson plan to the 1972 election; for [420 U.S. 1, 12] him, the Connor litigation was distinguishable on racial grounds and the desirability of multimember districts was a question for the Legislative Assembly and not for the court. Id., at 368-369. Jurisdiction was retained. </s> On November 8, 1972, immediately after the election that year, the three-judge court suspended its June 30 order until further notice and directed the State's Attorney General promptly to report any action taken by the 1973 Legislative Assembly. </s> That Assembly not only passed an apportionment Act but overrode its veto by the Governor. 5 Laws 1973, c. 411, and Note, at 1178. The Act provided for 37 legislative districts, each having one senator and two representatives, except for five multimember senatorial districts. Section 3 thereof specifically recited the population of each district and the population variance (plus 3.3% to minus 3.5%, a total of 6.8%; or plus 408 persons to minus 432 persons, a total of 840 persons) from the average of 12,355 per senator. </s> The effectiveness of the legislative plan, however, promptly was suspended by a referendum petition. See Laws 1973, p. 1549. By a companion initiative petition, an amendment to the State's Constitution was proposed; this would have created a commission to reapportion the State and, in addition, would have mandated single-member senatorial districts. A special election on these took place December 4, 1973. Both were defeated. The Legislative Assembly's work to reapportion was thus nullified by the people. It could be suggested, and apparently was, that the people also reacted against the elimination of the five multimember districts. In any [420 U.S. 1, 13] event, the defendant thereupon moved the federal court to readopt the plan temporarily approved by its order of June 1972. The plaintiffs resisted. </s> The three-judge District Court, with Circuit Judge Bright dissenting, then made "permanent" the 1972 Dobson plan, with its five multimember districts providing 18 senators out of a statewide total of 51. 372 F. Supp. 371, 379 (ND 1974). We noted probable jurisdiction. 416 U.S. 966 (1974). </s> IV </s> Jurisdiction </s> We are met at the threshold with a mild question of jurisdiction not pressed by the parties. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1253 6 only if a three-judge court was required by 28 U.S.C. 2281. 7 </s> It might be suggested that the three-judge court here did not restrain the enforcement of a statute but, instead, the enforcement of the court-ordered plan of 1965 which had become unconstitutional in the circumstances of 1972, and, hence, that the provisions of 2281 were not satisfied. The argument is less than persuasive and we [420 U.S. 1, 14] conclude that it is without merit. Although the reapportionment now under attack was indeed court ordered, its enforcement is doubly based on the State's Constitution and statutes. Its effectuation directly depends on the state election law machinery and, in addition, the plan itself is a court-imposed replacement of the North Dakota constitutional provisions and the 1931, 1963, and 1965 reapportionment statutes. It is these that are, and have been, the primary objects of attack. It would be highly anomalous if jurisdiction were not here, for then it would follow that a single judge could invalidate a reapportionment plan that had been evolved or approved, and was required so to be, by a three-judge court some time before. Subject matter of this kind is regular grist for the three-judge court, and that route typically has been employed under conditions similar to those present here. See, e. g., Skolnick v. State Electoral Board of Illinois, 336 F. Supp. 839 (ND Ill. 1971). We think this is correct procedure and we conclude that we have jurisdiction. </s> V </s> The Multimember Districts </s> From the above review of the North Dakota constitutional and statutory provisions and of the litigation of the past 12 years, two significant facts emerge: The first is that some multimembership on the house side of the Legislative Assembly traditionally has existed. This plainly qualifies as established state policy. 8 The second is that, in contrast, multimembership on the senate side, even as to the five districts, has never existed except as imposed (a) by the three-judge federal court by its 1965 Paulson decision; (b) by a majority of the three-judge [420 U.S. 1, 15] court as a temporary expedient for the 1972 election only; (c) by the provisions of the 1973 act immediately nullified by referendum; and (d) by a different majority of the three-judge court as a "permanent" solution in the judgment under review. Thus only once has the Legislative Assembly provided for multimember senate representation and that effort was promptly aborted. Every other such provision in North Dakota's history has been court imposed. Multimember senate representation, therefore, obviously does not qualify as established state policy. </s> This Court has refrained from holding that multimember districts in apportionment plans adopted by States for their legislatures are per se unconstitutional. White v. Regester, 412 U.S. 755, 765 (1973), and cases cited therein. On the contrary, the Court has upheld numerous state-initiated apportionment schemes utilizing multimember districts. See, e. g., Kilgarlin v. Hill, 386 U.S. 120 (1967); Burns v. Richardson, 384 U.S. 73 (1966); Fortson v. Dorsey, 379 U.S. 433 (1965). And, beginning with Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S., at 577 , the Court has indicated that a State might devise an apportionment plan for a bicameral legislature with one body composed of at least some multimember districts, as long as substantial equality of population per representative is maintained. </s> Notwithstanding this past acceptance of multimember districting plans, we recognize that there are practical weaknesses inherent in such schemes. First, as the number of legislative seats within the district increases, the difficulty for the voter in making intelligent choices among candidates also increases. See Lucas v. Colorado General Assembly, 377 U.S., at 731 . Ballots tend to become unwieldy, confusing, and too lengthy to allow thoughtful consideration. Second, when candidates are [420 U.S. 1, 16] elected at large, residents of particular areas within the district may feel that they have no representative specially responsible to them. Ibid. 9 Third, it is possible that bloc voting by delegates from a multimember district may result in undue representation of residents of these districts relative to voters in single-member districts. This possibility, however, was rejected, absent concrete proof, in Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U.S. 124, 147 (1971). Criticism of multimember districts has been frequent and widespread. Id., at 157-160, 10 and articles cited therein. See generally Carpeneti, Legislative Apportionment: Multimember Districts and Fair Representation, 120 U. Pa. L. Rev. 666 (1972); Banzhaf, Multi-Member Electoral Districts - Do They Violate the "One Man, One Vote" Principle, 75 Yale L. J. 1309 (1966). [420 U.S. 1, 17] </s> In Fortson v. Dorsey, supra, we held that the mere assertion of such possible weaknesses in a legislature's multimember districting plan was insufficient to establish a denial of equal protection. Rather, it must be shown that </s> "designedly or otherwise, a multi-member constituency apportionment scheme, under the circumstances of a particular case, would operate to minimize or cancel out the voting strength of racial or political elements of the voting population." 379 U.S., at 439 . </s> Further, there must be more evidence than a simple disproportionality between the voting potential and the legislative seats won by a racial or political group. There must be evidence that the group has been denied access to the political process equal to the access of other groups. White v. Regester, 412 U.S., at 765 -766. Such evidence may be more easily developed where the multi-member districts compose a large part of the legislature, where both bodies in a bicameral legislature utilize multi-member districts, or where the members' residences are concentrated in one part of the district. Burns v. Richardson, 384 U.S., at 88 . 11 Whether such factors are present or not, proof of lessening or cancellation of voting strength must be offered. </s> This requirement that one challenging a multimember districting plan must prove that the plan minimizes or cancels out the voting power of a racial or political group has been applied in cases involving apportionment schemes adopted by state legislatures. In Connor v. Johnson, 402 U.S. 690 (1971), however, which came to [420 U.S. 1, 18] us on an application for a stay, we were presented with a court-ordered reapportionment scheme having some multimember districts in both bodies of the state legislature. We stated explicitly that "when district courts are forced to fashion apportionment plans, single-member districts are preferable to large multi-member districts as a general matter." Id., at 692. Exercising our supervisory power, we directed the District Court to devise a single-member districting plan, "absent insurmountable difficulties." Ibid. This preference for and emphasis upon single-member districts in court-ordered plans was reaffirmed in Connor v. Williams, 404 U.S., at 551 , and again in Mahan v. Howell, 410 U.S. 315, 333 (1973). In the latter case a District Court was held to have acted within its discretion in forming a multimember district as an interim remedy in order to alleviate substantial underrepresentation of military personnel in an impending election. 12 </s> The standards for evaluating the use of multimember districts thus clearly differ depending on whether a federal court or a state legislature has initiated the use. The [420 U.S. 1, 19] practical simultaneity of decision in Connor v. Johnson and in Whitcomb v. Chavis, supra, so demonstrates. When the plan is court ordered, there often is no state policy of multimember districting which might deserve respect or deference. Indeed, if the court is imposing multimember districts upon a State which always has employed single-member districts, there is special reason to follow the Connor rule favoring the latter type of districting. </s> Appellants do not contend that any racial or political group 13 has been discriminated against by the multimember districting ordered by the District Court. They only suggest that the District Court has not followed our mandate in Connor v. Johnson, and that the court has failed to articulate any reasons for this departure. We agree. Absent particularly pressing features calling for multimember districts, a United States district court should refrain from imposing them upon a State. </s> The District Court cannot avoid the multimember issue by labeling it, see 372 F. Supp., at 377, a political issue to be resolved by the State. The District Court itself created multimember districting in North Dakota, and it might be said to be disingenuous to suggest that the judicial creation became a political question simply by the passage of nine years. The District Court's treatment of this issue directly conflicts with its prior opinion in this case, where it allowed continuation of the multimember districts first established in the Paulson decision in 1965 only as an interim remedy. 372 F. Supp., at 367. The court there noted that in the largest multimember district, a voter would be asked to evaluate the qualifications of at least 30 candidates for the state [420 U.S. 1, 20] legislature, a "most formidable" task. Id., at 366. Taking note of Connor v. Johnson, the court held in 1972 that it would be improper to permit multimember districts to remain permanently, and allowed continued use only for the impending election because of the great confusion that otherwise would result. The court appears now to have abandoned that position, with no suggestion of reasons for the abrupt change. It is especially anomalous that the court would continue with the multimember districting plan, when the Special Master who initially proposed it has disavowed use of permanent multimember districts. Dobson, Reapportionment Problems, 48 N. D. L. Rev. 281, 289 (1972). </s> In contrast, the dissent in the District Court suggests a wide range of attributes of single-member districts. 372 F. Supp., at 391. One advantage is obvious: confusion engendered by multiple offices will be removed. Other advantages perhaps are more speculative: single-member districts may prevent domination of an entire slate by a narrow majority, may ease direct communication with one's senator, may reduce campaign costs, and may avoid bloc voting. Of course, these are general virtues of single-member districts, and there is no guarantee that any particular feature will be found in a specific plan. Neither the District Court majority nor appellee, however, has provided us with any suggestion of a legitimate state interest supporting the abandonment of the general preference for single-member districts in court-ordered plans which we recognized in Connor v. Johnson. 14 The fact that no allegation of minority group discrimination is raised by appellants here does not make Connor inapplicable. [420 U.S. 1, 21] </s> It is true that in 1973 the voters of North Dakota voted down a proposed constitutional amendment which would have re-established the State's tradition of single-member senatorial districts. At the same time the voters also rejected by referendum the Legislative Assembly's 1973 Act which would have continued the multimember format for five districts. We are unable to infer from these simultaneous actions of the electorate any particular attitude toward multimember districts. It simply appears that North Dakota's voters have not been satisfied with any reapportionment proposal, and that they are frustrated by the years of confusion since the obviously impermissible apportionment provisions of the State's Constitution were invalidated. </s> We are confident that the District Court, with perhaps the aid of its Special Masters, will be able to reinstitute the use of single-member districts while also attaining the necessary goal of substantial population equality. Special Master Ostenson had indicated that it "`would not be terribly difficult to adopt single-member districts.'" See 372 F. Supp., at 392. 15 Unless the District Court can articulate such a "singular combination of unique factors" as was found to exist in Mahan v. Howell, 410 U.S., at 333 , or unless the 1975 Legislative Assembly appropriately acts, the court should proceed expeditiously to reinstate single-member senatorial districts in North Dakota. </s> VI </s> The Population Variance </s> The second aspect of the court-ordered reapportionment plan that is challenged by the appellants is the population divergence in the various senatorial districts. Since the population of the State under the 1970 census [420 U.S. 1, 22] was 617,761, and the number of senators provided for by the court's plan was 51, each senatorial district would contain 12,112 persons if population equality were achieved. In fact, however, one district under the plan has 13,176 persons, and thus is underrepresented by 8.71%, while another district has 10,728 persons, and is overrepresented by 11.43%. The total variance between the largest and smallest districts consequently is 20.14%, and the ratio of the population of the largest to the smallest is 1.23 to 1. </s> Reynolds v. Sims, supra, established that both houses of a state legislature must be apportioned so that districts are "as nearly of equal population as is practicable." 377 U.S., at 577 . While "[m]athematical exactness or precision" is not required, there must be substantial compliance with the goal of population equality. Ibid. Reynolds v. Sims, of course, involved gross population disparity among districts. </s> Since Reynolds, we have had the opportunity to observe attempts in many state legislative reapportionment plans to achieve the goal of population equality. Although each case must be evaluated on its own facts, and a particular population deviation from the ideal may be permissible in some cases but not in others, Swann v. Adams, 385 U.S. 440, 445 (1967), certain guidelines have been developed for determining compliance with the basic goal of one person, one vote. In Swann we held that a variance of 25.65% in one house and 33.55% in the other was impermissible absent "a satisfactory explanation grounded on acceptable state policy." Id., at 444. See also Kilgarlin v. Hill, 386 U.S., at 123 -124. In Swann, no justification of the divergences had been attempted. Possible justifications, each requiring adequate proof, were suggested by the Court. Among these were "such state policy considerations as the integrity [420 U.S. 1, 23] of political subdivisions, the maintenance of compactness and contiguity in legislative districts or the recognition of natural or historical boundary lines." 385 U.S., at 444 . See also Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S., at 578 -581. </s> On the other hand, we have acknowledged that some leeway in the equal-population requirement should be afforded States in devising their legislative reapportionment plans. As contrasted with congressional districting, where population equality appears now to be the pre-eminent, if not the sole, criterion on which to adjudge constitutionality, Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964); Kirkpatrick v. Preisler, 394 U.S. 526 (1969); Wells v. Rockefeller, 394 U.S. 542 (1969); White v. Weiser, 412 U.S. 783 (1973), when state legislative districts are at issue we have held that minor population deviations do not establish a prima facie constitutional violation. For example, in Gaffney v. Cummings, 412 U.S. 735 (1973), we permitted a deviation of 7.83% with no showing of invidious discrimination. In White v. Regester, supra, a variation of 9.9% was likewise permitted. </s> The treatment of the reapportionment plan in Mahan v. Howell, supra, is illustrative of our approach in this area. There the Virginia Legislature had fashioned a plan providing a total population variance of 16.4% among house districts. This disparity was of sufficient magnitude to require an analysis of the state policies asserted in justification. We found that the deviations from the average were caused by the attempt of the legislature to fulfill the rational state policy of refraining from splitting political subdivisions between house districts, and we accepted the policy as legitimate notwithstanding the fact that subdivision splits were permitted in senatorial districts. Since the population divergences [420 U.S. 1, 24] in the Virginia plan were "based on legitimate considerations incident to the effectuation of a rational state policy," Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S., at 579 , we held that the plan met constitutional standards. </s> It is to be observed that this measure of acceptable deviation from population equality has been developed in cases that concerned apportionment plans enacted by state legislatures. In the present North Dakota case, however, the 20% variance is in the plan formulated by the federal court. We believe that a population deviation of that magnitude in a court-ordered plan is constitutionally impermissible in the absence of significant state policies or other acceptable considerations that require adoption of a plan with so great a variance. The burden is on the District Court to elucidate the reasons necessitating any departure from the goal of population equality, and to articulate clearly the relationship between the variance and the state policy furthered. </s> The basis for the District Court's allowance of the 20% variance is claimed to lie in the absence of "electorally victimized minorities," in the fact that North Dakota is sparsely populated, in the division of the State caused by the Missouri River, and in the goal of observing geographical boundaries and existing political subdivisions. We find none of these factors persuasive here, and none of them has been explicitly shown to necessitate the substantial population deviation embraced by the plan. </s> First, a variance of this degree cannot be justified simply because there is no particular racial or political group whose voting power is minimized or canceled. All citizens are affected when an apportionment plan provides disproportionate voting strength, and citizens in districts that are underrepresented lose something even if they do not belong to a specific minority group. </s> Second, sparse population is not a legitimate basis for a departure from the goal of equality. A State with a [420 U.S. 1, 25] sparse population may face problems different from those faced by one with a concentrated population, but that, without more, does not permit a substantial deviation from the average. Indeed, in a State with a small population, each individual vote may be more important to the result of an election than in a highly populated State. Thus, particular emphasis should be placed on establishing districts with as exact population equality as possible. The District Court's bare statement that North Dakota's sparse population permitted or perhaps caused the 20% deviation is inadequate justification. 16 </s> Third, the suggestion that the division of the State caused by the Missouri River and the asserted state policy of observing existing geographical and political subdivision boundaries warrant departure from population equality is also not persuasive. It is far from apparent that North Dakota policy currently requires or favors strict adherence to political lines. As the dissenting judge in this case noted, appellee's counsel acknowledged that reapportionment proposed by the Legislative Assembly broke county lines, 372 F. Supp., at 393 n. 22, and the District Court indicated as long as a decade ago that the legislature had abandoned the strict policy. Paulson v. Meier, 246 F. Supp., at 42-43. Furthermore, a plan devised by Special Master Ostenson demonstrates that neither the Missouri River nor the policy of maintaining township lines prevents attaining a significantly lower population variance. 17 We do not imply that the [420 U.S. 1, 26] Ostenson plan should be adopted by the District Court, or that its 5.95% population variance necessarily would be permissible in a court-ordered plan. What we intend by our reference to the Ostenson plan is to show that the factors cited by the District Court cannot be viewed as controlling and persuasive when other, less statistically offensive, plans already devised are feasible. 18 The District Court has provided no rationale for its rejection of the Ostenson plan. </s> Examination of the asserted justifications of the court-ordered plan thus plainly demonstrates that it fails to meet the standards established for evaluating variances in plans formulated by state legislatures or other state bodies. The plan, hence, would fail even under the criteria enunciated in Mahan v. Howell and Swann v. Adams. A court-ordered plan, however, must be held to higher standards than a State's own plan. With a court plan, any deviation from approximate population equality must be supported by enunciation of historically significant state policy or unique features. We have felt it necessary in this case to clarify the greater responsibility of the District Court, when devising its own reapportionment plan, because of the severe problems occasioned for the citizens of North Dakota during the several years of redistricting confusion. </s> VII </s> We hold today that unless there are persuasive justifications, a court-ordered reapportionment plan of a state [420 U.S. 1, 27] legislature must avoid use of multimember districts, and, as well, must ordinarily achieve the goal of population equality with little more than de minimis variation. 19 Where important and significant state considerations rationally mandate departure from these standards, it is the reapportioning court's responsibility to articulate precisely why a plan of single-member districts with minimal population variance cannot be adopted. </s> We say once again what has been said on many occasions: reapportionment is primarily the duty and responsibility of the State through its legislature or other body, rather than of a federal court. Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S., at 586 ; Maryland Committee v. Tawes, 377 U.S., at 676 . It is to be hoped that the 1975 North Dakota Legislative Assembly will perform that duty and enact a constitutionally acceptable plan. If it fails in that task, the responsibility falls on the District Court and it should proceed with dispatch to resolve this seemingly interminable problem. </s> The judgment of the District Court is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. </s> It is so ordered. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 Prior to the 1960 amendment, 29 read: </s> "The legislative assembly shall fix the number of senators, and divide the state into as many senatorial districts as there are senators, which districts, as nearly as may be, shall be equal to each other in the number of inhabitants entitled to representation. Each district shall be entitled to one senator and no more, and shall be composed of compact and contiguous territory; and no portion of any county shall be attached to any other county, or part thereof, so as to form a district. The districts as thus ascertained and determined shall continue until changed by law." </s> [Footnote 2 Section 35 reads in full as follows: </s> "Each senatorial district shall be represented in the House of Representatives by at least one representative except that any [420 U.S. 1, 5] senatorial district comprised of more than one county shall be represented in the House of Representatives by at least as many representatives as there are counties in such senatorial district. In addition the Legislative Assembly shall, at the first regular session after each federal decennial census, proceed to apportion the balance of the members of the House of Representatives to be elected from the several senatorial districts, within the limits prescribed by this Constitution, according to the population of the several senatorial districts. If any Legislative Assembly whose duty it is to make an apportionment shall fail to make the same as herein provided it shall be the duty of the chief justice of the supreme court, attorney general, secretary of state, and the majority and minority leaders of the House of Representatives within ninety days after the adjournment of the legislature to make such apportionment and when so made a proclamation shall be issued by the chief justice announcing such apportionment which shall have the same force and effect as though made by the Legislative Assembly." </s> Prior to the 1960 amendment, 35 called for the Legislative Assembly (seemingly at least every 10 years) "to fix by law" the number of senators and the number of representatives "within the limits prescribed by this constitution" and to "proceed to reapportion the state into senatorial districts as prescribed by this constitution, and to fix the number of members of the house of representatives to be elected from the several senatorial districts," with the proviso that at any regular session "the legislative assembly may . . . redistrict the state into senatorial districts, and apportion the senators and representatives respectively." </s> [Footnote 3 This feature was later described as "a radical departure from state precedent." Chapman v. Meier, 372 F. Supp. 371, 382 (ND 1974) (dissenting opinion). </s> [Footnote 4 Cf. Minnesota State Senate v. Beens, 406 U.S. 187 (1972). </s> [Footnote 5 The Governor's principal objection, as announced in his veto message, was the failure of the Legislative Assembly to eliminate the multimember senatorial districts. Return to and Compliance with Order, filed March 30, 1973. </s> [Footnote 6 28 U.S.C. 1253: </s> "Except as otherwise provided by law, any party may appeal to the Supreme Court from an order granting or denying, after notice and hearing, an interlocutory or permanent injunction in any civil action, suit or proceeding required by any Act of Congress to be heard and determined by a district court of three judges." </s> [Footnote 7 28 U.S.C. 2281: </s> "An interlocutory or permanent injunction restraining the enforcement, operation or execution of any State statute by restraining the action of any officer of such State in the enforcement or execution of such statute . . . shall not be granted by any district court or judge thereof upon the ground of the unconstitutionality of such statute unless the application thereof is heard and determined by a district court of three judges under section 2284 of this title." </s> [Footnote 8 Indeed, at oral argument, the appellants did not oppose the allocation of two house members to each senatorial district. Tr. of Oral Arg. 16-17. </s> [Footnote 9 Cf., however, Fortson v. Dorsey, 379 U.S. 433, 438 (1965), for the suggestion that the at-large representative serves all residents in the subdistricts. Furthermore, while we mentioned these potential weaknesses of multimember districts in Lucas v. Colorado General Assembly, 377 U.S., at 731 n. 21, we noted that we "do not intimate that apportionment schemes which provide for the at-large election of a number of legislators from a county, or any political subdivision, are constitutionally defective. Rather, we merely point out that there are certain aspects . . . that might well make the adoption of such a scheme undesirable to many voters residing in multimember counties." </s> [Footnote 10 In Whitcomb v. Chavis, 403 U.S., at 158 -159, we acknowledged that </s> "[c]riticism [of multimember districts] is rooted in their winner-take-all aspects, their tendency to submerge minorities and to over-represent the winning party as compared with the party's statewide electoral position, a general preference for legislatures reflecting community interests as closely as possible and disenchantment with political parties and elections as devices to settle policy differences between contending interests." </s> Such criticism did not amount to a showing that the use of multi-member districts was "inherently invidious" or violative of the Fourteenth Amendment. Id., at 160. </s> [Footnote 11 These factors have been criticized as not being particularly helpful. See Carpeneti, Legislative Apportionment: Multimember Districts and Fair Representation, 120 U. Pa. L. Rev. 666, 694-695 (1972). </s> [Footnote 12 In Mahan v. Howell, 410 U.S., at 333 , we stated that the District Court "was confronted with plausible evidence of substantial malapportionment with respect to military personnel, the mandate of this Court that voting discrimination against military personnel is constitutionally impermissible, Davis v. Mann, [377 U.S. 678 ,] 691-692 [(1964)], and the fear that too much delay would have seriously disrupted the fall 1971 elections. Facing as it did this singular combination of unique factors, we cannot say that the District Court abused its discretion in fashioning the interim remedy of combining the three districts into one multimember district." </s> North Dakota, too, has its military personnel apportionment problem with respect to the bases near Grand Forks and Minot. The appellants recognize the existence of that problem and acknowledge that, conceivably, it could result in some type of multimember districting. Tr. of Oral Arg. 10. </s> [Footnote 13 The only minority group of significant size in North Dakota is Indians, and the court-ordered reapportionment plan affects them no differently from any other group. </s> [Footnote 14 For an example of a conceivable rationale supporting multimember districts, see Carpeneti, supra, n. 11, at 695-696, where it is suggested that multimember districts may insure that certain interests such as city-or region-wide views are represented. </s> [Footnote 15 See also the views of the late Special Master Smith, 372 F. Supp., at 392. </s> [Footnote 16 As early as Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), the Court indicated that suggestions that population deviation was necessary "to insure effective representation for sparsely settled areas and to prevent legislative districts from becoming so large [geographically] that the availability of access of citizens to their representatives is impaired" were unconvincing. Id., at 580. </s> [Footnote 17 See Appendix B to memorandum opinion and order of June 30, 1972, by Judges Bright and Van Sickle (the Ostenson plan), [420 U.S. 1, 26] App. 12-22. The Ostenson plan would allow a total population deviation of only 5.95%. </s> [Footnote 18 Another plan appearing to be more acceptable with respect to population variance than that adopted by the District Court is the one suggested by the State's Special Committee on Reapportionment, referred to in Judge Bright's dissenting opinion, 372 F. Supp., at 394 n. 23. </s> [Footnote 19 This is not to say, however, that court-ordered reapportionment of a state legislature must attain the mathematical preciseness required for congressional redistricting under Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964); Kirkpatrick v. Preisler, 394 U.S. 526 (1969); Wells v. Rockefeller, 394 U.S. 542 (1969); and White v. Weiser, 412 U.S. 783 (1973). </s> [420 U.S. 1, 28]

United States Supreme Court WILSON et al. v. LAYNE, DEPUTY UNITED STATES MARSHAL, et al.(1999) No. 98-83 Argued: March 24, 1999Decided: May 24, 1999 </s> While executing a warrant to arrest petitioners' son in their home, respondents, deputy federal marshals and local sheriff's deputies, invited a newspaper reporter and a photographer to accompany them. The warrant made no mention of such a media "ride-along." The officers' early morning entry into the home prompted a confrontation with petitioners, and a protective sweep revealed that the son was not in the house. The reporters observed and photographed the incident but were not involved in the execution of the warrant. Their newspaper never published the photographs they took of the incident. Petitioners sued the officers in their personal capacities for money damages under Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (the federal marshals) and 42 U. S. C. §1983 (the sheriff's deputies), contending that the officers' actions in bringing the media to observe and record the attempted execution of the arrest warrant violated their Fourth Amendment rights. The District Court denied respondents' motion for summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity. In reversing, the Court of Appeals declined to decide whether the officers' actions violated the Fourth Amendment, but concluded that because no court had held at the time of the search that media presence during a police entry into a residence constituted such a violation, the right allegedly violated was not "clearly established" and thus respondents were entitled to qualified immunity. </s> Held: A media "ride-along" in a home violates the Fourth Amendment, but because the state of the law was not clearly established at the time the entry in this case took place, respondent officers are entitled to qualified immunity. Pp. 4-10. </s> (a) The qualified immunity analysis is identical in suits under §1983 and Bivens. See, e.g. , Graham v. Connor , 490 U.S. 386, 394 , n.9. A court evaluating a qualified immunity claim must first determine whether the plaintiff has alleged the deprivation of a constitutional right, and, if so, proceed to determine whether that right was clearly established at the time of the violation. Conn v. Gabbert , 526 U.S. ___, ___. Pp. 4-5. </s> (b) It violates the Fourth Amendment rights of homeowners for police to bring members of the media or other third parties into their home during the execution of a warrant when the presence of the third parties in the home was not in aid of the warrant's execution. The Amendment embodies centuries-old principles of respect for the privacy of the home, which apply where, as here, police enter a home under the authority of an arrest warrant in order to take into custody the suspect named in the warrant, Payton v. New York , 445 U.S. 573 , 602-604. It does not necessarily follow from the fact that the officers were entitled to enter petitioners' home that they were entitled to bring a reporter and a photographer with them. The Fourth Amendment requires that police actions in execution of a warrant be related to the objectives of the authorized intrusion. See, e.g., </s> Arizona v. Hicks , 480 U.S. 321, 325 . Certainly the presence of the reporters, who did not engage in the execution of the warrant or assist the police in their task, was not related to the objective of the authorized intrusion, the apprehension of petitioners' son. Taken in their entirety, the reasons advanced by respondents to support the reporters' presence--publicizing the government's efforts to combat crime, facilitating accurate reporting on law enforcement activities, minimizing police abuses, and protecting suspects and the officers--fall short of justifying media ride-alongs. Although the presence of third parties during the execution of a warrant may in some circumstances be constitutionally permissible, the presence of these third parties was not. Pp.5-10. </s> (c) Petitioners' Fourth Amendment right was not clearly established at the time of the search. "Clearly established" for qualified immunity purposes means that the contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. His very action need not previously have been held unlawful, but in the light of pre-existing law its unlawfulness must be apparent. E.g., Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 . It was not unreasonable for a police officer at the time at issue to have believed that bringing media observers along during the execution of an arrest warrant (even in a home) was lawful. First, the constitutional question presented by this case is by no means open and shut. Accurate media coverage of police activities serves an important public purpose, and it is not obvious from the Fourth Amendment's general principles that the officers' conduct in this case violated the Amendment. Second, petitioners have not cited any cases of controlling authority in their jurisdiction at the time in question which clearly established the rule on which they seek to rely, nor have they identified a consensus of cases of persuasive authority such that a reasonable officer could not have believed that his actions were lawful. Finally, the federal marshals in this case relied on a Marshal's Service ride-along policy which explicitly contemplated media entry into private homes, and the sheriff's deputies had a ride-along program that did not expressly prohibit such entries. The state of the law was at best undeveloped at the relevant time, and the officers cannot have been expected to predict the future course of constitutional law. E.g., Procunier v. Navarette , 434 U.S. 555, 561 . Pp. 10-14. </s> 141 F.3d 111, affirmed. </s> Rehnquist, C.J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court with respect to Parts I and II, and the opinion of the Court with respect to Part III, in which O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Stevens, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. </s> CHARLES H. WILSON, etux., etal. , PETITIONERS v. HARRY LAYNE, DEPUTY UNITED STATES MARSHAL, etc., etal. </s> on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the fourth circuit </s> [May 24, 1999] </s> Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> While executing an arrest warrant in a private home, police officers invited representatives of the media to accompany them. We hold that such a "media ride along" does violate the Fourth Amendment, but that because the state of the law was not clearly established at the time the search in this case took place, the officers are entitled to the defense of qualified immunity. </s> I </s> In early 1992, the Attorney General of the United States approved "Operation Gunsmoke," a special national fugitive apprehension program in which United States Marshals worked with state and local police to apprehend dangerous criminals. The "Operation Gunsmoke" policy statement explained that the operation was to concentrate on "armed individuals wanted on federal and/or state and local warrants for serious drug and other violent felonies." App. 15. This effective program ultimately resulted in over 3,000 arrests in 40 metropolitan areas. Brief for Federal Respondents Layne etal. 2. </s> One of the dangerous fugitives identified as a target of "Operation Gunsmoke" was Dominic Wilson, the son of petitioners Charles and Geraldine Wilson. Dominic Wilson had violated his probation on previous felony charges of robbery, theft, and assault with intent to rob, and the police computer listed "caution indicators" that he was likely to be armed, to resist arrest, and to "assaul[t] police." App. 40. The computer also listed his address as 909 North StoneStreet Avenue in Rockville, Maryland. Unknown to the police, this was actually the home of petitioners, Dominic Wilson's parents. Thus, in April 1992, the Circuit Court for Montgomery County issued three arrest warrants for Dominic Wilson, one for each of his probation violations. The warrants were each addressed to "any duly authorized peace officer," and commanded such officers to arrest him and bring him "immediately" before the Circuit Court to answer an indictment as to his probation violation. The warrants made no mention of media presence or assistance. </s> 1 </s> In the early morning hours of April 16, 1992, a Gunsmoke team of Deputy United States Marshals and Montgomery County Police officers assembled to execute the Dominic Wilson warrants. The team was accompanied by a reporter and a photographer from the Washington Post, who had been invited by the Marshals to accompany them on their mission as part of a Marshal's Service ride-along policy. </s> At around 6:45 a.m., the officers, with media representatives in tow, entered the dwelling at 909 North StoneStreet Avenue in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Rockville. Petitioners Charles and Geraldine Wilson were still in bed when they heard the officers enter the home. Petitioner Charles Wilson, dressed only in a pair of briefs, ran into the living room to investigate. Discovering at least five men in street clothes with guns in his living room, he angrily demanded that they state their business, and repeatedly cursed the officers. Believing him to be an angry Dominic Wilson, the officers quickly subdued him on the floor. Geraldine Wilson next entered the living room to investigate, wearing only a nightgown. She observed her husband being restrained by the armed officers. </s> When their protective sweep was completed, the officers learned that Dominic Wilson was not in the house, and they departed. During the time that the officers were in the home, the Washington Post </s> photographer took numerous pictures. The print reporter was also apparently in the living room observing the confrontation between the police and Charles Wilson. At no time, however, were the reporters involved in the execution of the arrest war- rant. Brief for Federal Respondents Layne etal. 4. The Washington Post </s> never published its photographs of the incident. </s> Petitioners sued the law enforcement officials in their personal capacities for money damages under Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents , 403 U.S. 388 (1971) (the U.S. Marshals Service respondents) and, Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C. §1983 (the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department respondents). They contended that the officers' actions in bringing members of the media to observe and record the attempted execution of the arrest warrant violated their Fourth Amendment rights. The District Court denied respondents' motion for summary judgment on the basis of qualified immunity. </s> On interlocutory appeal to the Court of Appeals, a divided panel reversed and held that respondents were entitled to qualified immunity. The case was twice reheard en banc, where a divided Court of Appeals again upheld the defense of qualified immunity. The Court of Appeals declined to decide whether the actions of the police violated the Fourth Amendment. It concluded instead that because no court had held (at the time of the search) that media presence during a police entry into a residence violated the Fourth Amendment, the right allegedly violated by petitioners was not "clearly established" and thus qualified immunity was proper. 141 F.3d 111 (CA4 1998). Five judges dissented, arguing that the officers' actions did violate the Fourth Amendment, and that the clearly established protections of the Fourth Amendment were violated in this case. Id. , at 119 (opinion of Murnaghan, J.) </s> Recognizing a split among the Circuits on this issue, we granted certiorari in this case and another raising the same question, Hanlon v. Berger , 525 U.S. ___ (1998), and now affirm the Court of Appeals, although by different reasoning. </s> II </s> The petitioners sued the federal officials under Bivens and the state officials under §1983. Both Bivens and §1983 allow a plaintiff to seek money damages from government officials who have violated his Fourth Amendment rights. See §1983; Bivens , supra , at 397. But government officials performing discretionary functions generally are granted a qualified immunity and are "shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow v. Fitzgerald , 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). </s> Although this case involves suits under both §1983 and Bivens , the qualified immunity analysis is identical under either cause of action. See, e.g. , Graham v. Connor , 490 U.S. 386, 394 , n.9 (1989); Malley v. Briggs , 475 U.S. 335, 340 , n.2 (1986). A court evaluating a claim of qualified immunity "must first determine whether the plaintiff has alleged the deprivation of an actual constitutional right at all, and if so, proceed to determine whether that right was clearly established at the time of the alleged violation." Conn v. Gabbert , 526 U.S. ___, ___ (1999) (slip op., at 4). This order of procedure is designed to "spare a defendant not only unwarranted liability, but unwarranted demands customarily imposed upon those defending a long drawn-out lawsuit." Siegert v. Gilley , 500 U.S. 226, 232 (1991). Deciding the constitutional question before addressing the qualified immunity question also promotes clarity in the legal standards for official conduct, to the benefit of both the officers and the general public. See County of Sacramento v. Lewis , 523 U.S. 833, 840-842 , n.5 (1998). We now turn to the Fourth Amendment question. </s> In 1604, an English court made the now-famous observation that "the house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence, as for his repose." Semayne's Case , 77 Eng. Rep. 194, 5 Co. Rep. 91a, 91b, 195 (K. B.). In his Commentaries on the Laws of England , William Blackstone noted that </s> "the law of England has so particular and tender a regard to the immunity of a man's house, that it stiles it his castle, and will never suffer it to be violated with impunity: agreeing herein with the sentiments of antient Rome. ... For this reason no doors can in general be broken open to execute any civil process; though, in criminal causes, the public safety supersedes the private." William Blackstone, 4 Commentaries on the Laws of England 223 (1765-1769). </s> The Fourth Amendment embodies this centuries-old principle of respect for the privacy of the home: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses , papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." U.S. Const. Amd. IV (Emphasis added.) See also United States v. United States District Court 407 U.S. 297, 313 (1972) ("[P]hysical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed"). </s> Our decisions have applied these basic principles of the Fourth Amendment to situations, like those in this case, in which police enter a home under the authority of an arrest warrant in order to take into custody the suspect named in the warrant. In Payton v. New York , 445 U.S. 573, 602 (1980), we noted that although clear in its protection of the home, the common-law tradition at the time of the drafting of the Fourth Amendment was ambivalent on the question of whether police could enter a home without a warrant. We were ultimately persuaded that the "overriding respect for the sanctity of the home that has been embedded in our traditions since the origins of the Republic" meant that absent a warrant or exigent circumstances, police could not enter a home to make an arrest. Id., at 603-604. We decided that "an arrest warrant founded on probable cause implicitly carries with it the limited authority to enter a dwelling in which the suspect lives when there is reason to believe the suspect is within." Ibid. </s> Here, of course, the officers had such a warrant, and they were undoubtedly entitled to enter the Wilson home in order to execute the arrest warrant for Dominic Wilson. But it does not necessarily follow that they were entitled to bring a newspaper reporter and a photographer with them. In Horton v. California , 496 U.S. 128, 140 (1990), we held "[i]f the scope of the search exceeds that permitted by the terms of a validly issued warrant or the character of the relevant exception from the warrant requirement, the subsequent seizure is unconstitutional without more." While this does not mean that every police action while inside a home must be explicitly authorized by the text of the warrant, see Michigan v. Summers , 452 U.S. 692, 705 (1981) (Fourth Amendment allows temporary detainer of homeowner while police search the home pursuant to warrant), the Fourth Amendment does require that police actions in execution of a warrant be related to the objectives of the authorized intrusion, see Arizona v. Hicks , 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987). See also Maryland v. Garrison , 480 U.S. 79, 87 (1987) ("[T]he purposes justifying a police search strictly limit the permissible extent of the search"). </s> Certainly the presence of reporters inside the home was not related to the objectives of the authorized intrusion. Respondents concede that the reporters did not engage in the execution of the warrant, and did not assist the police in their task. The reporters therefore were not present for any reason related to the justification for police entry into the home--the apprehension of Dominic Wilson. </s> This is not a case in which the presence of the third parties directly aided in the execution of the warrant. Where the police enter a home under the authority of a warrant to search for stolen property, the presence of third parties for the purpose of identifying the stolen property has long been approved by this Court and our common-law tradition. See, e.g., </s> Entick v. Carrington , 19 How. St. Tr. 1029, 1067 (K. B. 1765) (in search for stolen goods case, "`[t]he owner must swear that the goods are lodged in such a place. He must attend at the execution of the warrant to shew them to the officer, who must see that they answer the description") (quoted with approval in Boyd v. United States , 116 U.S. 616, 628 (1886)). </s> Respondents argue that the presence of the Washington Post reporters in the Wilsons' home nonetheless served a number of legitimate law enforcement purposes. They first assert that officers should be able to exercise reasonable discretion about when it would "further their law enforcement mission to permit members of the news media to accompany them in executing a warrant." Brief for Respondents Layne etal. 15. But this claim ignores the importance of the right of residential privacy at the core of the Fourth Amendment. It may well be that media ride-alongs further the law enforcement objectives of the police in a general sense, but that is not the same as furthering the purposes of the search. Were such generalized "law enforcement objectives" themselves sufficient to trump the Fourth Amendment, the protections guaranteed by that Amendment's text would be significantly watered down. </s> Respondents next argue that the presence of third parties could serve the law enforcement purpose of publicizing the government's efforts to combat crime, and facilitate accurate reporting on law enforcement activities. There is certainly language in our opinions interpreting the First Amendment which points to the importance of "the press" in informing the general public about the administration of criminal justice. In Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn , 420 U.S. 469, 491-492 (1975), for example, we said "in a society in which each individual has but limited time and resources with which to observe at first hand the operations of his government, he relies necessarily upon the press to bring to him in convenient form the facts of those operations." See also Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia , 448 U.S. 555, 572-573 (1980). No one could gainsay the truth of these observations, or the importance of the First Amendment in protecting press freedom from abridgement by the government. But the Fourth Amendment also protects a very important right, and in the present case it is in terms of that right that the media ride-alongs must be judged. </s> Surely the possibility of good public relations for the police is simply not enough, standing alone, to justify the ride-along intrusion into a private home. And even the need for accurate reporting on police issues in general bears no direct relation to the constitutional justification for the police intrusion into a home in order to execute a felony arrest warrant. </s> Finally, respondents argue that the presence of third parties could serve in some situations to minimize police abuses and protect suspects, and also to protect the safety of the officers. While it might be reasonable for police officers to themselves videotape home entries as part of a "quality control" effort to ensure that the rights of homeowners are being respected, or even to preserve evidence, cf . Ohio v. Robinette , 519 U.S. 33, 35 (1996) (noting the use of a "mounted video camera" to record the details of a routine traffic stop), such a situation is significantly different from the media presence in this case. The Washington Post </s> reporters in the Wilsons' home were working on a story for their own purposes. They were not present for the purpose of protecting the officers, much less the Wilsons. A private photographer was acting for private purposes, as evidenced in part by the fact that the newspaper and not the police retained the photographs. Thus, although the presence of third parties during the execution of a warrant may in some circumstances be constitutionally permissible, see supra . at 7-8, the presence of these third parties was not. </s> The reasons advanced by respondents, taken in their entirety, fall short of justifying the presence of media inside a home. We hold that it is a violation of the Fourth Amendment for police to bring members of the media or other third parties into a home during the execution of a warrant when the presence of the third parties in the home was not in aid of the execution of the warrant. </s> 2 </s> III </s> Since the police action in this case violated the petitioners' Fourth Amendment right, we now must decide whether this right was clearly established at the time of the search. See Siegert , 500 U.S., at 232 -233. As noted above, Part-II supra, government officials performing discretionary functions generally are granted a qualified immunity and are "shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known." Harlow v. Fitzgerald , 457 U.S., at 818 . What this means in practice is that "whether an official protected by qualified immunity may be held personally liable for an allegedly unlawful official action generally turns on the `objective legal reasonableness' of the action, assessed in light of the legal rules that were `clearly established' at the time it was taken." Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 639 (1987) (citing Harlow, supra, at 819); see also Graham v. Connor , 490 U.S., at 397 . </s> In Anderson , we explained that what "clearly established" means in this context depends largely "upon the level of generality at which the relevant `legal rule' is to be established." 483 U.S., at 639 . "Clearly established" for purposes of qualified immunity means that "[t]he contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent." Id., at 640 (internal citations omitted); see also United States v. Lanier , 520 U.S. 259, 270 (1997). </s> It could plausibly be asserted that any violation of the Fourth Amendment is "clearly established," since it is clearly established that the protections of the Fourth Amendment apply to the actions of police. Some variation of this theory of qualified immunity is urged upon us by the petitioners, Brief for Petitioner 37, and seems to have been at the core of the dissenting opinion in the Court of Appeals, see 141 F.3d, at 123. However, as we explained in Anderson , the right allegedly violated must be defined at the appropriate level of specificity before a court can determine if it was clearly established. Anderson, </s> 483 U.S., at 641 . In this case, the appropriate question is the objective inquiry of whether a reasonable officer could have believed that bringing members of the media into a home during the execution of an arrest warrant was lawful, in light of clearly established law and the information the officers possessed. Cf. ibid. </s> We hold that it was not unreasonable for a police officer in April 1992 to have believed that bringing media observers along during the execution of an arrest warrant (even in a home) was lawful. First, the constitutional question presented by this case is by no means open and shut. The Fourth Amendment protects the rights of homeowners from entry without a warrant, but there was a warrant here. The question is whether the invitation to the media exceeded the scope of the search authorized by the warrant. Accurate media coverage of police activities serves an important public purpose, and it is not obvious from the general principles of the Fourth Amendment that the conduct of the officers in this case violated the Amendment. </s> Second, although media ride-alongs of one sort or another had apparently become a common police practice, </s> 3 </s> in 1992 there were no judicial opinions holding that this practice became unlawful when it entered a home. The only published decision directly on point was a state intermediate court decision which, though it did not engage in an extensive Fourth Amendment analysis, nonetheless held that such conduct was not unreasonable. Prahl v. Brosamle , 98 Wis. 2d 130, 154-155, 295 N.W. 2d 768, 782 (App. 1980). From the federal courts, the parties have only identified two unpublished District Court decisions dealing with media entry into homes, each of which upheld the search on unorthodox non-Fourth Amendment right to privacy theories. Moncrief v. Hanton, 10 Media L. Rptr. 1620 (ND Ohio 1984); Higbee v. Times-Advocate , 5 Media L. Rptr. 2372 (SD Cal. 1980). These cases, of course, can not "clearly establish" that media entry into homes during a police ride-along violates the Fourth Amendment. </s> At a slightly higher level of generality, petitioners point to Bills v. Aseltine , 958 F.2d 697 (CA6 1992), in which the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that there were material issues of fact precluding summary judgment on the question of whether police exceeded the scope of a search warrant by allowing a private security guard to participate in the search to identify stolen property other than that described in the warrant. Id., at 709. Bills , which was decided a mere five weeks before the events of this case, did anticipate today's holding that police may not bring along third parties during an entry into a private home pursuant to a warrant for purposes unrelated to those justifying the warrant. Id., at 706. However, we cannot say that even in light of Bills , the law on third-party entry into homes was clearly established in April 1992. Petitioners have not brought to our attention any cases of controlling authority in their jurisdiction at the time of the incident which clearly established the rule on which they seek to rely, nor have they identified a consensus of cases of persuasive authority such that a reasonable officer could not have believed that his actions were lawful. </s> Finally, important to our conclusion was the reliance by the UnitedStates marshals in this case on a Marshal's Service ride-along policy which explicitly contemplated that media who engaged in ride-alongs might enter private homes with their cameras as part of fugitive apprehension arrests. </s> 4 </s> The Montgomery County Sheriff's Department also at this time had a ride-along program that did not expressly prohibit media entry into private homes. Deposition of Sheriff Raymond M. Kight, in No. PJM-94-1718, p. 8. Such a policy, of course, could not make reasonable a belief that was contrary to a decided body of case law. But here the state of the law as to third parties accompanying police on home entries was at best undeveloped, and it was not unreasonable for law enforcement officers to look and rely on their formal ride-along policies. </s> Given such an undeveloped state of the law, the officers in this case cannot have been "expected to predict the future course of constitutional law." Procunier v. Navarette , 434 U.S. 555, 562 (1978). See also Wood v. Strickland , 420 U.S. 308, 321 (1975); Pierson v. Ray , 386 U.S. 547, 557 (1967). Between the time of the events of this case and today's decision, a split among the Federal Circuits in fact developed on the question whether media ride-alongs that enter homes subject the police to money damages. See 141 F.3d, at 118-119; Ayeni v. Mottola , 35 F.3d 680 (CA2 1994), cert. denied, 514 U.S. 1062 (1995); Parker v. Boyer , 93 F.3d 445 (CA8 1996), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 1148 (1997); Berger v. Hanlon , 129 F.3d 505 (CA9 1997), cert. granted, 525 U.S. ___ (1998). If judges thus disagree on a constitutional question, it is unfair to subject police to money damages for picking the losing side of the controversy. </s> For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed. </s> It is so ordered. </s> CHARLES H. WILSON, etux., etal. , PETITIONERS v. HARRY LAYNE, DEPUTY UNITED STATES MARSHAL, etc., etal. </s> on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the fourth circuit </s> [May 24, 1999] </s> Justice Stevens , concurring in part and dissenting in part. </s> Like every other federal appellate judge who has addressed the question, I share the Court's opinion that it violates the Fourth Amendment for police to bring members of the media or other third parties into a private dwelling during the execution of a warrant unless the homeowner has consented or the presence of the third parties is in aid of the execution of the warrant. I therefore join Parts I and II of the Court's opinion. </s> In my view, however, the homeowner's right to protection against this type of trespass was clearly established long before April 16, 1992. My sincere respect for the competence of the typical member of the law enforcement profession precludes my assent to the suggestion that "a reasonable officer could have believed that bringing members of the media into a home during the execution of an arrest warrant was lawful." Ante , at 11. I therefore disagree with the Court's resolution of the conflict in the Circuits on the qualified immunity issue. </s> 1 </s> The clarity of the constitutional rule, a federal statute (18 U.S.C. §3105), common-law decisions, and the testimony of the senior law enforcement officer all support my position that it has long been clearly established that officers may not bring third parties into private homes to witness the execution of a warrant. By contrast, the Court's opposing view finds support in the following sources: its bare assertion that the constitutional question "is by no means open and shut," ante , at 11; three judicial opinions that did not directly address the constitutional question, ante, at 12; and a public relations booklet prepared by someone in the United States Marshals Service that never mentions allowing representatives of the media to enter private property without the owner's consent, ante , at 13-14. </s> I </s> In its decision today the Court has not announced a new rule of constitutional law. Rather, it has refused to recognize an entirely unprecedented request for an exception to a well-established principle. Police action in the execution of a warrant must be strictly limited to the objectives of the authorized intrusion. That principle, like the broader protection provided by the Fourth Amendment itself, represents the confluence of two important sources: our English forefathers' traditional respect for the sanctity of the private home and the American colonists' hatred of the general warrant. </s> The contours of the rule are fairly described by the Court, ante, at 5-8 of its opinion, and in the cases that it cites on those pages. All of those cases were decided before 1992. None of those cases--nor, indeed, any other of which I am aware--identified any exception to the rule of law that the Court repeats today. In fact, the Court's opinion fails to identify a colorable rationale for any such exception. Respondents' position on the merits consisted entirely of their unpersuasive factual submission that the presence of representatives of the news media served various legitimate--albeit nebulous--law enforcement purposes. The Court's cogent rejection of those post hoc rationalizations cannot be characterized as the announcement of a new rule of law. </s> During my service on the Court, I have heard lawyers argue scores of cases raising Fourth Amendment issues. Generally speaking, the Members of the Court have been sensitive to the needs of the law enforcement community. In virtually all of them at least one Justice thought that the police conduct was reasonable. In fact, in only a handful did the Court unanimously find a Fourth Amendment violation. That the Court today speaks with a single voice on the merits of the constitutional question is unusual and certainly lends support to the notion that the question is indeed "open and shut." Ante, at 11. </s> But the more important basis for my opinion is that it should have been perfectly obvious to the officers that their "invitation to the media exceeded the scope of the search authorized by the warrant." Ibid. Despite reaffirming that clear rule, the Court nonetheless finds that the mere presence of a warrant rendered the officers' conduct reasonable. The Court fails to cite a single case that even arguably supports the proposition that using official power to enable news photographers and reporters to enter a private home for purposes unrelated to the execution of a warrant could be regarded as a "reasonable" invasion of either property or privacy. </s> II </s> The absence of judicial opinions expressly holding that police violate the Fourth Amendment if they bring media representatives into private homes provides scant support for the conclusion that in 1992 a competent officer could reasonably believe that it would be lawful to do so. Prior to our decision in United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259 (1997), no judicial opinion specifically held that it was unconstitutional for a state judge to use his official power to extort sexual favors from a potential litigant. Yet, we unanimously concluded that the defendant had fair warning that he was violating his victim's constitutional rights. Id ., at 271 ("The easiest cases don't even arise" (citations and internal quotation marks omitted)). </s> Nor am I persuaded that the absence of rulings on the precise Fourth Amendment issue presented in this case can plausibly be explained by the assumption that the police practice was common. I assume that the practice of allowing media personnel to "ride along" with police officers was common, but that does not mean that the officers routinely allowed the media to enter homes without the consent of the owners. As the Florida Supreme Court noted in Florida Publishing Co. v. Fletcher , 340 So.2d 914, 918 (1976), there has long been a widespread practice for firefighters to allow photographers to enter disaster areas to take pictures, for example, of the interior of buildings severely damaged by fire. But its conclusion that such media personnel were not trespassers rested on a doctrine of implied consent </s> 2 </s> --a theory wholly inapplicable to forcible entries in connection with the execution of a warrant. </s> 3 </s> In addition to this case, the Court points to three lower court opinions--none of which addresses the Fourth Amendment--as the ostensible basis for a reasonable officer's belief that the rule in Semayne's Case was ripe for reevalution. </s> 4 </s> See ante , at 12. Two of the cases were decided in 1980 and the third in 1984. In view of the clear restatement of the rule in the later opinions of this Court, cited ante , at 7, those three earlier decisions could not possibly provide a basis for a claim by the police that they reasonably relied on judicial recognition of an exception to the basic rule that the purposes of the police intrusion strictly limit its scope. </s> That the two federal decisions were not officially reported makes such theoretical reliance especially anomalous. </s> 5 </s> Moreover, as the Court acknowledges, the claim rejected in each of those cases was predicated on the media's alleged violation of the plaintiffs' "unorthodox non-Fourth Amendment right to privacy theories," ante, at 12, rather than a claim that the officers violated the Fourth Amendment by allowing the press to observe the execution of the warrant. Moncrief v. Hanton , 10 Media L. Rptr. 1620 (ND Ohio 1984); Higbee v. Times-Advocate , 5 Media L. Rptr. 2372 (SD Cal. 1980). As for the other case, Prahl v. Brosamle , 98 Wis. 2d 130, 295 N.W. 2d 768 (App. 1980)--cited by the Court, ante, at 12, for the proposition that the officer's conduct was "not unreasonable"--it actually held that the defendants' motion to dismiss should have been denied because the allegations supported the conclusion that the officer committed a trespass when he allowed a third party to enter the plaintiff's property. </s> 6 </s> Since that conclusion was fully consistent with a number of common-law cases holding that similar conduct constituted a trespass, </s> 7 </s> it surely does not provide any support for an officer's assumption that a similar trespass would be lawful. </s> Far better evidence of an officer's reasonable understanding of the relevant law is provided by the testimony of the Sheriff of Montgomery County, the commanding officer of three of the respondents: "`We would never let a civilian into a home.... That's just not allowed.'" Brief for Petitioner 41. </s> III </s> The most disturbing aspect of the Court's ruling on the qualified immunity issue is its reliance on a document discussing "ride-alongs" apparently prepared by an employee in the public relations office of the United States Marshals Service. The text of the document, portions of which are set out in an appendix, makes it quite clear that its author was not a lawyer, but rather a person concerned with developing the proper public image of the Service, </s> with a special interest in creating a favorable impression with the Congress. Although the document occupies 14 pages in the joint appendix and suggests handing out free Marshals Service T-Shirts and caps to "grease the skids," it contains no discussion of the conditions which must be satisfied before a newsperson may be authorized to enter private property during the execution of a warrant. App. 12. There are guidelines about how officers should act and speak in front of the camera, and the document does indicate that "the camera" should not enter a private home until a "signal" is given. Id., at 7. It does not, however, purport to give any guidance to the marshals regarding when such a signal should be given, whether it should ever be given without the consent of the homeowner, or indeed on how to carry out any part of their law enforcement mission. The notion that any member of that well-trained cadre of professionals would rely on such a document for guidance in the performance of dangerous law enforcement assignments is too farfetched to merit serious consideration. </s> * * * </s> The defense of qualified immunity exists to protect reasonable officers from personal liability for official actions later found to be in violation of constitutional rights that were not clearly established. The conduct in this case, as the Court itself reminds us, contravened the Fourth Amendment's core protection of the home. In shielding this conduct as if it implicated only the unsettled margins of our jurisprudence, the Court today authorizes one free violation of the well-established rule it reaffirms. </s> I respectfully dissent. </s> APPENDIX TO OPINION OF S TEVENS, J. </s> "MEDIA RIDE-ALONGS </s> "The U.S. Marshals Service, like all federal agencies, ultimately serves the needs and interests of the American public when it accomplishes its designated duties. Keeping the public adequately informed of what the Service does can be viewed as a duty in its own right, and we depend on the news media to accomplish that. </s> "Media `ride-alongs' are one effective method to promote an accurate picture of Deputy Marshals at work. Ride-alongs, as the name implies, are simply opportunities for reporters and camera crews to go along with Deputies on operational missions so they can see, and record, what actually happens. The result is usually a very graphic and dynamic look at the operational activities of the Marshals Service, which is subsequently aired on TV or printed in a newspaper, magazine, or book. </s> "However, successful ride-alongs don't just `happen' in a spontaneous fashion. They require careful planning and attention to detail to ensure that all goes smoothly and that the media receive an accurate picture of how the Marshals Service operates. This booklet describes considerations that are important in nearly every ride-along." App. 4. </s> "Establish Ground Rules </s> "Another good idea--actually, it's an essential one--is to establish ground rules at the start and convey them to the reporter and camera person. Address such things as what can be covered with cameras and when, any privacy restrictions that may be encountered, and interview guidelines. </s> "Emphasize the need for safety considerations and explain any dangers that might be involved. Make the ground rules realistic but balanced--remember, the media will want good action footage, not just a mop-up scene. If the arrest is planned to take place inside a house or building, agree ahead of time on when the camera can enter and who will give the signal." Id., at 7. </s> "The very best planning won't result in a good ride-along if the Marshals Service personnel involved do not do their part. It's a case of actions speaking as loudly as words, and both are important in getting the best media exposure possible." Id., at 9. </s> "`Waving the Flag' </s> "One action of special consequence is `waving the flag' of the Marshals Service. This is accomplished when Deputies can easily be recognized as USMS Deputies because they are wearing raid jackets, prominently displaying their badges, or exhibiting other easily identifiable marks of the Service. We want the public to know who you are and what kind of job you do. That is one of the goals of the ride-along. So having Deputy Marshals easily identified as such on camera is not just a whim--it's important to the overall success of the ride-along. </s> "Of course, how the Deputies act and what they say is also crucial. During the ride-along virtually any statement made by Deputies just might end up as a quote, attributed to the person who made it. Sometimes that could prove embarrassing. A Deputy must try to visualize what his or her words will look like in a newspaper or sound like on TV. Being pleasant and professional at all times is key, and that includes not being drawn into statements of personal opinion or inappropriate comments. Using common sense is the rule." Id., at 9-10. </s> "You also need to find out when the coverage will air or end up in print. Ask the reporter if he or she can keep you informed on that matter. You might `grease the skids' for this by offering the reporter, camera person, or other media representatives involved a memento of the Marshals Service. Marshals Service caps, mugs, T-shirts, and the like can help establish a rapport with a reporter that can benefit you in the future." Id., at 12. </s> "Getting to the final Product </s> "Naturally, it's important to see the final product of the ride-along when it airs on TV or appears in the newspaper. You should arrange to videotape any TV news coverage or clip the resulting newspaper stories and send a copy of the videotape or news clipping to the Office of Congressional and Public Affairs." Id., at 13. </s> FOOTNOTES </s> Footnote 1 </s> The warrants were identical in all relevant respects. By way of example, one of them read as follows: </s> "The State of Maryland, to any duly authorized peace officer, greeting: you are hereby commanded to take Dominic Jerome Wilson if he/she shall be found in your bailiwick, and have him immediately before the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, now in session, at the Judicial Center, in Rockville, to answer an indictment, or information, or criminal appeals unto the State of Maryland, of and concerning a certain charge of Robbery [Violation of Probation] by him committed, as hath been presented, and so forth. Hereof fail not at your peril, and have you then and there this writ. Witness." App. 36-37. </s> Footnote 2 </s> Even though such actions might violate the Fourth Amendment, if the police are lawfully present, the violation of the Fourth Amendment is the presence of the media and not the presence of the police in the home. We have no occasion here to decide whether the exclusionary rule would apply to any evidence discovered or developed by the media representatives. </s> Footnote 3 </s> See, e.g., </s> Florida Publishing Co. v. Fletcher , 340 So.2d 914, 918 (1976) (it "`is a widespread practice of long-standing'" for media to accompany officers into homes), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 930 (1977); Zoglin, Live on the Vice Beat, Time, Dec. 22, 1986, p. 60 (noting "the increasingly common practice of letting TV crews tag along on drug raids"). </s> Footnote 4 </s> A booklet distributed to Marshals recommended that "fugitive apprehension cases ... normally offer the best possibilities for ride-alongs." App. 4-5. In its discussion of the best way to make ride-alongs useful to the media and portray the Marshal's Service in a favorable light, the booklet noted that reporters were likely to want to be able to shoot "good action footage, not just a mop-up scene." It advised agents that "[i]f the arrest is planned to take place inside a house or building, agree ahead of time on when the camera can enter and who will give the signal." Id., at 7. </s> FOOTNOTES </s> Footnote 1 </s> It is important to emphasize that there is no split in Circuit authority on the merits of the constitutional issue. Nor, as I explain infra , at 6, do I believe that any District Court had reached a conclusion at odds with the Court's Fourth Amendment holding. Any conflict was limited to the qualified immunity issue. Three Circuits rejected the defense whereas the Fourth and the Eighth accepted it. See Ayeni v. Mottola , 35 F.3d 680, 686 (CA2 1994); Bills v. Aseltine , 958 F.2d 697 (CA6 1992); Berger v. Hanlon , 129 F.3d 505 (CA9 1997); 141 F.3d 111 (CA4 1998) (en banc); Parker v. Boyer , 93 F.3d 445 (CA8 1996). </s> Footnote 2 </s> The Florida Supreme Court held: </s> "The trial court properly determined from the record before it that there was no genuine issue of material fact insofar as the entry into respondent's home by petitioner's employees became lawful and non-actionable pursuant to the doctrine of common custom, usage, and practice and since it had been shown that it was common usage, custom and practice for news media to enter private premises and homes under the circumstances present here. </s> . . . . . </s> "`The fire was a disaster of great public interest .... [I]t has been a longstanding custom and practice throughout the country for representatives of the news media to enter upon private property where disaster of great public interest has occurred.'" 340 So.2d, at 917-918. </s> The Court's reference to this case, ante, at 12, n.3, misleadingly suggests that the "widespread practice" referred to in the Florida court's opinion was police practice; it was not. </s> Footnote 3 </s> Indeed, the Wisconsin state-court decision, cited by the Court as contrary authority, took pains to distinguish this case: </s> "We will not imply a consent as a matter of law. It is of course well known that news representatives want to enter a private building after or even during a newsworthy event within the building. That knowledge is no basis for an implied consent by the possessor of the building to the entry .... We conclude that custom and usage have not been shown in fact or law to confer an implied consent upon news representatives to enter a building under the circumstances presented by this case." Prahl v. Brosamle, 98 Wis. 2d 130, 149-150, 295 N.W. 2d 768, 710 (App. 1980). </s> Footnote 4 </s> As the Court notes, the only Federal Court of Appeals authority on the subject, Bills v. Aseltine , 958 F.2d 697 (CA6 1992), "anticipate[d] today's holding that police may not bring along third parties during an entry into a private home pursuant to a warrant for purposes unrelated to those justifying the warrant." Ante, at 13. </s> Footnote 5 </s> In the Fourth Circuit, unreported opinions may not be considered in the course of determining qualified immunity. Hogan v. Carter , 85 F. 3d 1113, 1118 (1996). </s> Footnote 6 </s> Prahl v. Bronsamle , 98 Wis. 2d, at 154-155, 295, 295 N.W. 2d, at 782 ("A new trial must be had with respect to the plaintiffs' claims for trespass against Lieutenant Kuenning and Dane Country .... Lieutenant Kuenning had no authority to extend a consent to [the press] to enter the land of another. Although entry by Lieutenant Kuenning was privileged, he committed a trespass by participating in the trespass by [the press]"). </s> The Court is correct that the Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld dismissal of the plaintiff's 42 U.S.C. §1983 claim against the newscaster because he was not acting under color of state law. As the basis for rejecting the §1983 action "for invasion of privacy based on disclosure of the incident," the court further held that "[w]e are unwilling to </s> accept the proposition that the filming and television broadcast of a reasonable search and seizure, without more, result in unreasonableness." 98 Wis. 2d, at 138, 295 N.W. 2d, at 774. Important to its conclusion was its observation that, unlike the unnecessary male participation in body searches of schoolgirls in Doe v. Duter , 407 F. Supp. 922 (WD Wis. 1976), "[n]either the search of Dr. Prahl and his premises nor the film or its broadcast has been shown to include intimate, offensive or vulgar aspects." Ibid . The reporter in question was stationed in the entryway of the building and was able to film into the plaintiff's office during the police interview. </s> Footnote 7 </s> See, e.g., </s> Daingerfield v. Thompson , 74 Va. 136, 151 (1880) ("There seems, indeed, to be no principle of law better settled, and for which numerous authorities may be cited if necessary, than this: that all persons who wrongfully contribute in any manner to the commission of a trespass, are responsible as principals, and each one is liable to the extent of the injury done"); see also W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Law of Torts §13, p. 72 (5th ed. 1984).

United States Supreme Court PENNHURST STATE SCHOOL v. HALDERMAN(1981) No. 79-1404 Argued: December 8, 1980Decided: April 20, 1981 </s> The Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act (Act) established a federal-state grant program whereby the Federal Government provides financial assistance to participating States to aid them in creating programs to care for and treat the developmentally disabled. The Act is voluntary, and the States are given the choice of complying with the conditions set forth in the Act or forgoing the benefits of federal funding. The "bill of rights" provision of the Act, 42 U.S.C. 6010 (1) and (2), states that mentally retarded persons "have a right to appropriate treatment, services, and habilitation" in "the setting that is least restrictive of . . . personal liberty." Pennsylvania, a participating State, owns and operates Pennhurst State School and Hospital, a facility for the care and treatment of the mentally retarded. Respondent [451 U.S. 1, 2] Halderman, a retarded resident of Pennhurst, brought a class action in Federal District Court on behalf of herself and all other Pennhurst residents against Pennhurst and various officials responsible for its operation. It was alleged, inter alia, that conditions at Pennhurst were unsanitary, inhumane, and dangerous, and that such conditions denied the class members various specified constitutional and statutory rights, including rights under the Act, and, in addition to seeking injunctive and monetary relief, it was urged that Pennhurst be closed and that "community living arrangements" be established for its residents. The District Court found that certain of the claimed rights were violated, and granted the relief sought. The Court of Appeals substantially affirmed, but avoided the constitutional claims and instead held that 6010 created substantive rights in favor of the mentally retarded, that mentally retarded persons have an implied cause of action to enforce those rights, and that the conditions at Pennhurst violated those rights. The court further found that Congress enacted the Act pursuant to both 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment and the spending power. </s> Held: </s> Section 6010 does not create in favor of the mentally retarded any substantive rights to "appropriate treatment" in the "least restrictive" environment. Pp. 11-32. </s> (a) The case for inferring congressional intent to create, pursuant to Congress' enacting power under 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, enforceable rights and obligations is at its weakest where, as here, the rights asserted imposed affirmative obligations on the States to fund certain services, since it may be assumed that Congress will not implicitly attempt to impose massive financial obligations on the States. Unlike legislation enacted under 5, however, legislation enacted pursuant to the spending power is much in the nature of a contract; in return for federal funds, the States agree to comply with federally imposed conditions. The legitimacy of Congress' power to legislate under the spending power thus rests on whether the State voluntarily and knowingly accepts the terms of the "contract," but if Congress intends to impose a condition on the grant of federal moneys, it must do so unambiguously. Pp. 15-18. </s> (b) Applying the above principles to these cases, this Court finds nothing in the Act or its legislative history to suggest that Congress intended to require the States to assume the high cost of providing "appropriate treatment" in the "least restrictive" environment to their mentally retarded citizens. There is virtually no support for the Court of Appeals' conclusion that Congress created rights and obligations pursuant to its power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. The Act nowhere states that is its purpose, but to the contrary the [451 U.S. 1, 3] Act's language and structure demonstrate that it is a mere federal-state funding statute. Section 6010, when read in the context of other more specific provisions of the Act, does no more than express a congressional preference for certain kinds of treatment. Far from requiring the States to fund newly declared individual rights, the Act has a systematic focus, seeking to improve care to individuals by encouraging better state planning, coordination, and demonstration projects. Pp. 18-22. </s> (c) There is no merit to the contention that Congress, acting pursuant to its spending power, conditioned the grant of federal funds on the State's agreeing to underwrite the obligations the Court of Appeals read into 6010. As noted, the "findings" of 6010, when viewed in the context of the more specific provisions of the Act, represent general statements of federal policy, not newly created legal duties. Moreover, the "plain language" of 6010, as well as the administrative interpretation of the provision, also refutes such contention. Section 6010, in contrast to other provisions of the Act that clearly impose conditions, in no way suggests that the grant of federal funds is "conditioned" on a State's funding the rights described therein. Pp. 22-24. </s> (d) The rule of statutory construction that Congress must express clearly its intent to impose conditions on the grant of federal funds so that the States can knowingly decide whether or not to accept those funds, applies with greatest force where, as here, a State's potential obligations under the Act are largely indeterminate. The crucial inquiry here is not whether a State would knowingly undertake the obligation to provide "appropriate treatment" in the "least restrictive" setting, but whether Congress spoke so clearly that it can fairly be said that the State could make an informed choice. In this case, Congress fell well short of providing clear notice to the States that by accepting funds under the Act they would be obligated to comply with 6010. Pp. 24-25. </s> (e) A comparison of the general language of 6010 with the conditions Congress explicitly imposed on the States under the Act demonstrates that Congress did not intend to place either absolute or conditional obligations on the States under 6010. Pp. 25-27. </s> (f) Questions not addressed by the Court of Appeals - as to whether individual mentally retarded persons may bring suit to compel compliance with those conditions that are contained in the Act, the federal constitutional claims, and claims under another federal statute - and issues as to whether state law imposed an obligation on Pennsylvania to provide treatment, are remanded for consideration or reconsideration, respectively, in light of the instant decision. Pp. 27-31. </s> 612 F.2d 84, reversed and remanded. [451 U.S. 1, 4] </s> REHNQUIST, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and STEWART, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ., joined. BLACKMUN, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, post, p. 32. WHITE, J., filed an opinion dissenting in part, in which BRENNAN and MARSHALL, JJ., joined, post, p. 33. </s> [Footnote * Together with No. 79-1408, Mayor of Philadelphia et al. v. Halderman et al.; No. 79-1414, Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Citizens et al. v. Pennhurst State School and Hospital et al.; No. 79-1415, Commissioners and Mental Health/Mental Retardation Administrator for Bucks County et al. v. Halderman et al.; and No 79-1489, Pennhurst Parents-Staff Assn. v. Halderman et al., also on certiorari to the same court. </s> Allen C. Warshaw, argued the cause for petitioners in No. 79-1404. Thomas Kittredge argued the cause for petitioners in Nos. 79-1408 and 79-1415. Joel I. Klein argued the cause for petitioner in No. 79-1489. With them on the briefs were Harvey Bartle III, Robert B. Hoffman, Norman J. Watkins, Alan J. Davis, Carl E. Singley, and H. Bartow Farr III. </s> David Ferleger argued the cause and filed a brief for respondents Halderman et al. Thomas K. Gilhool argued the cause for the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Citizens et al., petitioners in No. 79-1414 and respondents in Nos. 79-1404, 79-1408, 79-1415, and 79-1489. With him on the brief were Frank J. Laski and Michael Churchill. Assistant Attorney General Days argued the cause for the United States. With him on the brief were Solicitor General McCree, Harriet S. Shapiro, Brian K. Landsberg, Frank D. Allen, Jr., and Joan Magagna. </s> [ [451 U.S. 1, 4 HREF=#T] </s> [451 u.s. 1, 4>Footnote ] </s> [451 U.S. 1, 4 </s> Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed by Carl R. Ajello, Attorney General, and Hugh Barber and Francis J. MacGregor, Assistant Attorneys General, for the State of Connecticut; and by Michael H. Gottesman and Robert M. Weinberg for Congress of Advocates for the Retarded, Inc., et al. </s> Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed by Wm. Reece Smith, Jr., for the American Bar Association; by Margaret F. Ewing and Paul R. Friedman for the American Orthopsychiatric Association et al.; by Clifford D. Stromberg for the American Psychiatric Association; by David S. Tatel for the International League of Societies for the Mentally Handicapped et al.; by Robert L. Burgdorf, Jr., for the National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems et al.; by James D. Crawford for the National Association for Retarded Citizens et al.; by Ronald M. Soskin for the National Center for Law and the Handicapped et al.; by Deborah Kaplan and Steven M. Fleisher for People First International, Inc., et al.; by David C. Shaw for the Connecticut Association for Retarded Citizens, Inc., et al.; and by Steven J. Schwartz and Robert D. Fleischner for Plaintiffs in Brewster v. Dukakis (D. Mass.), et al. </s> A brief for the State of Illinois et al. as amici curiae was filed by Alan E. Grischke and Christine A. Bremer, Special Assistant Attorneys General of Illinois; Gregorey H. Smith, Acting Attorney General of New Hampshire, and Wilbur A. Glahn III and Anne R. Clarke, Assistant Attorneys General; William J. Guste, Jr., Attorney General of Louisiana, and Carmack M. Blackmon, Assistant Attorney General; William J. Brown, Attorney General of Ohio, and George Striker, Assistant Attorney General; Mark V. Meierhenry, Attorney General of South Dakota, and Janice Godtland, Assistant Attorney General; Slade Gorton, Attorney General of Washington, and David R. Minikel, Assistant Attorney General; Chauncey H. Browning, Attorney General of West Virginia, and David R. Brisell, Assistant Attorney General; Paul L. Douglas, Attorney General of Nebraska; John J. Degnan, Attorney General of New Jersey, and Steven Wallach, Deputy Attorney General; William M. Leech, Jr., Attorney General of Tennessee, and Lee Breckenridge, Assistant Attorney General; and Warren A. Spannaus, Attorney General of Minnesota, and Alan A. Held, Special Assistant Attorney General. [451 U.S. 1, 5] </s> JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> At issue in these cases is the scope and meaning of the Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act of 1975, 89 Stat. 486, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 6000 et seq. (1976 ed. and Supp. III). The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that the Act created substantive rights in favor of the mentally retarded, that those rights were judicially enforceable, and that conditions at the Pennhurst State School and Hospital (Pennhurst), a facility for the care and treatment of the mentally retarded, violated those rights. For the reasons stated below, we reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals and remand the cases for further proceedings. </s> I </s> The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania owns and operates Pennhurst. Pennhurst is a large institution, housing approximately 1,200 residents. Seventy-five percent of the residents are either "severely" or "profoundly" retarded - that is, with an IQ of less than 35 - and a number of the residents [451 U.S. 1, 6] are also physically handicapped. About half of its residents were committed there by court order and half by a parent or other guardian. </s> In 1974, respondent Terri Lee Halderman, a minor retarded resident of Pennhurst, filed suit in the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on behalf of herself and all other Pennhurst residents against Pennhurst, its superintendent, and various officials of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania responsible for the operation of Pennhurst (hereafter petitioners). The additional respondents (hereinafter, with respondent Halderman, referred to as respondents) in these cases - other mentally retarded persons, the United States, and the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Citizens (PARC) - subsequently intervened as plaintiffs. PARC added several surrounding counties as defendants, alleging that they were responsible for the commitment of persons to Pennhurst. </s> As amended in 1975, the complaint alleged, inter alia. that conditions at Pennhurst were unsanitary, inhumane, and dangerous. Specifically, the complaint averred that these conditions denied the class members due process and equal protection of the law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, inflicted on them cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, and denied them certain rights conferred by the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 87 Stat. 355, as amended, 29 U.S.C. 701 et seq. (1976 ed. and Supp. III), the Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. 6001 et seq. (1976 ed. and Supp. III), and the Pennsylvania Mental Health and Mental Retardation Act of 1966, Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 50, 4101-4704 (Purdon 1969). In addition to seeking injunctive and monetary relief, the complaint urged that Pennhurst be closed and that "community living arrangements" 1 be established for its residents. [451 U.S. 1, 7] </s> The District Court certified a class consisting of all persons who have been or may become residents of Pennhurst. After a 32-day trial, it issued an opinion, reported at 446 F. Supp. 1295 (1977), making findings of fact and conclusions of law with respect to the conditions at Pennhurst. Its findings of fact are undisputed: Conditions at Pennhurst are not only dangerous, with the residents often physically abused or drugged by staff members, but also inadequate for the "habilitation" of the retarded. 2 Indeed, the court found that the physical, intellectual, and emotional skills of some residents have deteriorated at Pennhurst. Id., at 1308-1310. </s> The District Court went on to hold that the mentally retarded have a federal constitutional right to be provided with "minimally adequate habilitation" in the "least restrictive environment," regardless of whether they were voluntarily or involuntarily committed. Id., at 1314-1320. The court also held that there existed a constitutional right to "be free from harm" under the Eighth Amendment, and to be provided with "nondiscriminatory habilitation" under the Equal Protection Clause. Id., at 1320-1322. In addition, it found that 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. 794, and 201 of the Pennsylvania Mental Health and Mental Retardation Act of 1966, Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 50, 4201 (Purdon 1969), provided a right to minimally adequate habilitation in the least restrictive environment. </s> Each of these rights was found to have been violated by the conditions existing at Pennhurst. Indeed, the court held that a large institution such as Pennhurst could not provide adequate habilitation. 446 F. Supp., at 1318. It thus ordered [451 U.S. 1, 8] that Pennhurst eventually be closed, that suitable "community living arrangements" be provided for all Pennhurst residents, that plans for the removal of residents from Pennhurst be submitted to the court, that individual treatment plans be developed for each resident with the participation of his or her family, and that conditions at Pennhurst be improved in the interim. The court appointed a Special Master to supervise the implementation of this order. Id., at 1326-1329. </s> The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit substantially affirmed the District Court's remedial order. 612 F.2d 84 (1979) (en banc). Unlike the District Court, however, the Court of Appeals sought to avoid the constitutional claims raised by respondents and instead rested its order on a construction of the Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. 6000 et seq. (1976 ed. and Supp. III). 3 It found that 111 (1) and (2) of the Act, 89 Stat. 502, 42 U.S.C. 6010 (1) and (2), the "bill of rights" provision, grant to mentally retarded persons a right to "appropriate treatment, services, and habilitation" in "the setting that is least restrictive of . . . personal liberty." The [451 U.S. 1, 9] court further held that under the test articulated in Cort v. Ash, 422 U.S. 66, 78 (1975), mentally retarded persons have an implied cause of action to enforce that right. 612 F.2d, at 97. Because the court found that Congress enacted the statute pursuant to both 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment 4 and the spending power, 5 it declined to consider whether a statute enacted pursuant to the spending power alone "could ever provide the predicate for private substantive rights." Id., at 98. As an alternative ground, the court affirmed the District Court's holding that Pennhurst residents have a state statutory right to adequate "habilitation." </s> The court concluded that the conditions at Pennhurst violated these federal and state statutory rights. As to relief, it affirmed the order of the District Court except insofar as it ordered Pennhurst to be closed. Although the court concluded that "deinstitutionalization is the favored approach to habilitation" in the least restrictive environment, it did not construe the Act to require the closing of large institutions like Pennhurst. Id., at 115. The court thus remanded the case to the District Court for "individual determinations by the court, or by the Special Master, as to the appropriateness of an improved Pennhurst for each such patient" and instructed the District Court or the Master to "engage in a presumption in favor of placing individuals in [community living arrangements]." Id., at 114-115. 6 </s> [451 U.S. 1, 10] </s> Three judges dissented. Although they assumed that the majority was correct in holding that Pennhurst residents have a right to treatment under the Act and an implied cause of action under the Act to enforce that right, they disagreed that the Act imposed a duty on the defendants to provide the "least restrictive treatment" possible. The dissent stated that "the language and structure of the Act, the relevant regulations, and the legislative history all indicate that the States may consider their own resources in providing less restrictive treatment." Id., at 119. It did not believe that the general findings and declarations contained in a funding statute designed to encourage a course of conduct could be used by the federal courts to create absolute obligations on the States. 7 </s> We granted certiorari to consider petitioners' several challenges to the decision below. 447 U.S. 904 . Petitioners first contend that 42 U.S.C. 6010 does not create in favor of the mentally retarded any substantive rights to "appropriate treatment" in the "least restrictive" environment. Assuming that Congress did intend to create such a right, petitioners question the authority of Congress to impose these affirmative obligations on the States under either its spending power or 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Petitioners next assert that any rights created by the Act are enforceable in federal court only by the Federal Government, not by private parties. [451 U.S. 1, 11] Finally, petitioners argue that the court below read the scope of any rights created by the Act too broadly and far exceeded its remedial powers in requiring the Commonwealth to move its residents to less restrictive environments and create individual habilitation plans for the mentally retarded. Because we agree with petitioners' first contention - that 6010 simply does not create substantive rights - we find it unnecessary to address the remaining issues. </s> II </s> We turn first to a brief review of the general structure of the Act. It is a federal-state grant program whereby the Federal Government provides financial assistance to participating States to aid them in creating programs to care for and treat the developmentally disabled. Like other federal-state cooperative programs, the Act is voluntary and the States are given the choice of complying with the conditions set forth in the Act or forgoing the benefits of federal funding. See generally King v. Smith, 392 U.S. 309 (1968); Rosado v. Wyman, 397 U.S. 397 (1970); Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297 (1980). The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has elected to participate in the program. The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency responsible for administering the Act, has approved Pennsylvania's state plan and in 1976 disbursed to Pennsylvania approximately $1.6 million. Pennhurst itself receives no federal funds from Pennsylvania's allotment under the Act, though it does receive approximately $6 million per year in Medicaid funds. </s> The Act begins with an exhaustive statement of purposes. 42 U.S.C. 6000 (b) (1) (1976 ed., Supp. III). The "overall purpose" of the Act, as amended in 1978, is: </s> "[T]o assist [the] states to assure that persons with developmental disabilities receive the care, treatment, and other services necessary to enable them to achieve their [451 U.S. 1, 12] maximum potential through a system which coordinates, monitors, plans, and evaluates those services and which ensures the protection of the legal and human rights of persons with developmental disabilities." (Emphasis supplied.) </s> As set forth in the margin, the "specific purposes" of the Act are to "assist" and financially "support" various activities necessary to the provision of comprehensive services to the developmentally disabled. 6000 (b) (2) (1976 ed., Supp. III). 8 </s> The Act next lists a variety of conditions for the receipt of federal funds. Under 6005, for example, the Secretary "as a condition of providing assistance" shall require that "each recipient of such assistance take affirmative action" to hire qualified handicapped individuals. Each State, in turn, shall "as a condition" of receiving assistance submit to the Secretary a plan to evaluate the services provided under the Act. 6009. Each State shall also "as a condition" of receiving assistance "provide the Secretary satisfactory assurances [451 U.S. 1, 13] that each program . . . which receives funds from the State's allotment . . . has in effect for each developmentally disabled person who receives services from or under the program a habilitation plan." 6011 (a) (1976 ed., Supp. III). And 6012 (a) (1976 ed., Supp. III) conditions aid on a State's promise to "have in effect a system to protect and advocate the rights of persons with developmental disabilities." </s> At issue here, of course, is 6010, the "bill of rights" provision. It states in relevant part: </s> "Congress makes the following findings respecting the rights of persons with developmental disabilities: </s> "(1) Persons with developmental disabilities have a right to appropriate treatment, services, and habilitation for such disabilities. </s> "(2) The treatment, services, and habilitation for a person with developmental disabilities should be designed to maximize the developmental potential of the person and should be provided in the setting that is least restrictive of the person's personal liberty. </s> "(3) The Federal Government and the States both have an obligation to assure that public funds are not provided to any institutio[n] . . . that - (A) does not provide treatment, services, and habilitation which is appropriate to the needs of such person; or (B) does not meet the following minimum standards . . . ." </s> Noticeably absent from 6010 is any language suggesting that 6010 is a "condition" for the receipt of federal funding under the Act. Section 6010 thus stands in sharp contrast to 6005, 6009, 6011, and 6012. </s> The enabling parts of the Act are the funding sections. 42 U.S.C. 6061-6063 (1976 ed. and Supp. III). 9 Those sections describe how funds are to be allotted to the States, require [451 U.S. 1, 14] that any State desiring financial assistance submit an overall plan satisfactory to the Secretary of HHS, and require that funds disbursed under the Act be used in accordance with the approved state plan. To be approved by the Secretary, the state plan must comply with several specific conditions set forth in 6063. It, inter alia, must provide for the establishment of a State Planning Council, 6063 (b) (1), and set out specific objectives to be achieved under the plan, 6063 (b) (2) (A) (1976 ed., Supp. III). Services furnished under the plan must be consistent with standards prescribed by the Secretary, 6063 (b) (5) (A) (i) (1976 ed., Supp. III), and be provided in an individual manner consistent with 6011, 6063 (b) (5) (B) (1976 ed., Supp. III). The plan must also be supported by assurances that any program receiving assistance is protecting the human rights of the disabled consistent with 6010, 6063 (b) (5) (C) (1976 ed., Supp. III). 10 Each State must also require its State Planning Council to serve as an advocate of persons with developmental disabilities. 6067 (1976 ed. and Supp. III). </s> The Act further provides procedures and sanctions to ensure state compliance with its requirements. The Secretary may, of course, disapprove a state plan, 6063 (c). If a State fails to satisfy the requirements of 6063, the Secretary may terminate or reduce the federal grant. 6065 (1976 ed., Supp. III). Any State dissatisfied with the Secretary's disapproval of the plan, or his decision to terminate funding, may appeal to the federal courts of appeals. 6068. No other cause of action is recognized in the Act. [451 U.S. 1, 15] </s> III </s> As support for its broad remedial order, the Court of Appeals found that 42 U.S.C. 6010 created substantive rights in favor of the disabled and imposed an obligation on the States to provide, at their own expense, certain kinds of treatment. The initial question before us, then, is one of statutory construction: Did Congress intend in 6010 to create enforceable rights and obligations? </s> A </s> In discerning congressional intent, we necessarily turn to the possible sources of Congress' power to legislate, namely, Congress' power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment and its power under the Spending Clause to place conditions on the grant of federal funds. Although the court below held that Congress acted under both powers, the respondents themselves disagree on this point. The Halderman respondents argue that 6010 was enacted pursuant to 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Accordingly, they assert that 6010 is mandatory on the States, regardless of their receipt of federal funds. The Solicitor General, in contrast, concedes that Congress acted pursuant to its spending power alone. Tr. of Oral Arg. 54. Thus, in his view, 6010 only applies to those States which accept federal funds. 11 </s> Although this Court has previously addressed issues going to Congress' power to secure the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment, Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641, 651 (1966); Oregon v. Mitchell, 400 U.S. 112 (1970); Fitzpatrick [451 U.S. 1, 16] v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 (1975), 12 we have had little occasion to consider the appropriate test for determining when Congress intends to enforce those guarantees. Because such legislation imposes congressional policy on a State involuntarily, and because it often intrudes on traditional state authority, we should not quickly attribute to Congress an unstated intent to act under its authority to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. Our previous cases are wholly consistent with that view, since Congress in those cases expressly articulated its intent to legislate pursuant to 5. See Katzenbach v. Morgan, supra (intent expressly stated in the Voting Rights Act of 1965); Oregon v. Mitchell, supra (intent expressly stated in the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970); Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, supra (intent expressly stated in both the House and Senate Reports of the 1972 Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1964); cf. South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301 (1966) (intent to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment expressly stated in the Voting Rights Act of 1965). Those cases, moreover, involved statutes which simply prohibited certain kinds of state conduct. The case for inferring intent is at its weakest where, as here, the rights asserted impose affirmative obligations on the States to fund certain [451 U.S. 1, 17] services, since we may assume that Congress will not implicitly attempt to impose massive financial obligations on the States. </s> Turning to Congress' power to legislate pursuant to the spending power, our cases have long recognized that Congress may fix the terms on which it shall disburse federal money to the States. See, e. g., Oklahoma v. CSC, 330 U.S. 127 (1947); King v. Smith, 392 U.S. 309 (1968); Rosado v. Wyman, 397 U.S. 397 (1970). Unlike legislation enacted under 5, however, legislation enacted pursuant to the spending power is much in the nature of a contract: in return for federal funds, the States agree to comply with federally imposed conditions. The legitimacy of Congress' power to legislate under the spending power thus rests on whether the State voluntarily and knowingly accepts the terms of the "contract." See Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548, 585 -598 (1937); Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297 (1980). There can, of course, be no knowing acceptance if a State is unaware of the conditions or is unable to ascertain what is expected of it. Accordingly, if Congress intends to impose a condition on the grant of federal moneys, it must do so unambiguously. 13 Cf. Employees v. Department of Public Health and Welfare, 411 U.S. 279, 285 (1973); Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974). By insisting that Congress speak with a clear voice, we enable the States to exercise their choice knowingly, cognizant of the consequences of their participation. </s> Indeed, in those instances where Congress has intended the States to fund certain entitlements as a condition of receiving [451 U.S. 1, 18] federal funds, it has proved capable of saying so explicitly. See, e. g., King v. Smith, supra, at 333 (Social Security Act creates a "federally imposed obligation [on the States] to furnish `aid to families with dependent children . . . with reasonable promptness to all eligible individuals,'" quoting the Act). We must carefully inquire, then, whether Congress in 6010 imposed an obligation on the States to spend state money to fund certain rights as a condition of receiving federal moneys under the Act or whether it spoke merely in precatory terms. </s> B </s> Applying those principles to these cases, we find nothing in the Act or its legislative history to suggest that Congress intended to require the States to assume the high cost of providing "appropriate treatment" in the "least restrictive environment" to their mentally retarded citizens. </s> There is virtually no support for the lower court's conclusion that Congress created rights and obligations pursuant to its power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment. The Act nowhere states that is its purpose. Quite the contrary, the Act's language and structure demonstrate that it is a mere federal-state funding statute. The explicit purposes of the Act are simply "to assist" the States through the use of federal grants to improve the care and treatment of the mentally retarded. 6000 (b) (1976 ed., Supp. III). Nothing in either the "overall" or "specific" purposes of the Act reveals an intent to require the States to fund new, substantive rights. Surely Congress would not have established such elaborate funding incentives had it simply intended to impose absolute obligations on the States. </s> Respondents nonetheless insist that the fact that 6010 speaks in terms of "rights" supports their view. Their reliance is misplaced. "`In expounding a statute, we must not be guided by a single sentence or member of a sentence, but look to the provisions of the whole law, and to its object and policy.'" Philbrook v. Glodgett, 421 U.S. 707, 713 (1975), [451 U.S. 1, 19] quoting United States v. Heirs of Boisdore, 8 How. 113, 122 (1849). See District of Columbia v. Carter, 409 U.S. 418, 420 (1973). Contrary to respondents' assertion, the specific language and the legislative history of 6010 are ambiguous. We are persuaded that 6010, when read in the context of other more specific provisions of the Act, does no more than express a congressional preference for certain kinds of treatment. It is simply a general statement of "findings" and, as such, is too thin a reed to support the rights and obligations read into it by the court below. The closest one can come in giving 6010 meaning is that it justifies and supports Congress' appropriation of money under the Act and guides the Secretary in his review of state applications for federal funds. See United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152 (1938). 14 As this Court recognized in Rosado v. Wyman, supra, at 413, "Congress sometimes legislates by innuendo, making declarations of policy and indicating a preference while requiring measures that, though falling short of legislating its goal, serve as a nudge in the preferred directions." This is such a case. [451 U.S. 1, 20] </s> The legislative history buttresses our conclusion that Congress intended to encourage, rather than mandate, the provision of better services to the developmentally disabled. The House Committee believed the purpose of the Act was simply to continue an existing federal grant program, designed to promote "effective planning by the states of their programs, initiation of new, needed programs, and filling of gaps among existing efforts." H. R. Rep. No. 94-58, pp. 6, 8-9 (1975). Indeed, as passed by the House, the Act contained no "bill of rights" provision whatsoever. The Committee instead merely "applauded" the efforts of others to secure rights for the developmentally disabled. Id., at 7. </s> Respondents, however, argue vigorously that the legislative history of the bill as passed by the Senate evinces Congress' intent to impose absolute obligations on the States to fund certain levels of treatment. Respondents rely most heavily on Title II of the Senate bill which adopted a "Bill of Rights" for the mentally retarded and contained over 400 pages of detailed standards "designed to assist in the protection of the human rights guaranteed under the Constitution." S. Rep. No. 94-160, p. 34 (1975). The Report also noted that the "Federal Government has a responsibility to provide equal protection under the law to all citizens." Id., at 32. And Senator Stafford stated on the Senate floor that "Title II was added to the bill to assist in the protection of the rights guaranteed under our Constitution for those individuals that will require institutionalization." 121 Cong. Rec. 16516 (1975). </s> Respondents read too much into these scattered bits of legislative history. In the first place, it is by no means clear that even the Senate bill created new substantive rights in favor of the disabled. 15 Despite the general discussion of [451 U.S. 1, 21] equal protection guarantees in the Senate Report, the Committee's view of the Act was quite modest. It explained that the purpose of Title II was simply "to stimulate the States to develop alternative programs of care for mentally retarded." S. Rep. No. 94-160, supra, at 1. It viewed Title II as satisfying the "need for a clear exposition of the purposes for which support should be provided under the authorities of the Act." Id., at 3. Nor are the remarks of various Senators to the contrary. Senator Stafford spoke merely in terms of "assisting" the States. Senator Randolph, in introducing the bill on the floor of the Senate, confirmed the Senate's limited purpose. He said: </s> "[W]e have developed a bill whose thrust, like the 1970 act, is to assist States in developing a comprehensive plan to bring together available resources in a coordinated way so developmentally disabled individuals are appropriately served. Our goal is more thorough and careful planning and more effective evaluation." 121 Cong. Rec. 16514 (1975) (emphasis supplied). </s> Even Senator Javits, the principal proponent of Title II, did not read the Act as establishing new substantive rights to enforce those guaranteed by the Constitution. He explained that Title II "represents a reaffirmation of the basic human and civil rights of all citizens. It offers the direction to provide a valid and realistic framework for improving the overall situation of this country's mentally retarded and other developmentally disabled individuals." Id., at 16519 (emphasis supplied). </s> In any event, whatever the Senate's view of its bill, Congress declined to adopt it. The Conference Committee rejected the explicit standards of Title II and instead compromised [451 U.S. 1, 22] on the more general statement of "findings" in what later became 6010. H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 94-473, pp. 41, 43 (1975). As Senator Javits noted with respect to the compromise, "Title II of the Conference agreement establishes a clear Federal policy that the mentally retarded have a right to appropriate treatment, services, and habilitation." 121 Cong. Rec. 29820 (1975) (emphasis supplied). </s> In sum, nothing suggests that Congress intended the Act to be something other than a typical funding statute. 16 Far from requiring the States to fund newly declared individual rights, the Act has a systematic focus, seeking to improve care to individuals by encouraging better state planning, coordination, and demonstration projects. Much like the Medicaid statute considered in Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297 (1980), the Act at issue here "was designed as a cooperative program of shared responsibilit[ies], not as a device for the Federal Government to compel a State to provide services that Congress itself is unwilling to fund." Id., at 309. </s> There remains the contention of the Solicitor General that Congress, acting pursuant to its spending power, conditioned the grant of federal money on the State's agreeing to underwrite the obligations the Court of Appeals read into 6010. We find that contention wholly without merit. As amply demonstrated above, the "findings" in 6010, when viewed [451 U.S. 1, 23] in the context of the more specific provisions of the Act, represent general statements of federal policy, not newly created legal duties. </s> The "plain language" of 6010 also refutes the Solicitor General's contention. When Congress intended to impose conditions on the grant of federal funds, as in 6005, 6009, 6011, 6012, 6063, and 6067, it proved capable of doing so in clear terms. Section 6010, in marked contrast, in no way suggests that the grant of federal funds is "conditioned" on a State's funding the rights described therein. The existence of explicit conditions throughout the Act, and the absence of conditional language in 6010, manifest the limited meaning of 6010. </s> Equally telling is the fact that the Secretary has specifically rejected the position of the Solicitor General. The purpose of the Act, according to the Secretary, is merely "to improve and coordinate the provision of services to persons with developmental disabilities." 45 CFR 1385.1 (1979). The Secretary acknowledges that "[n]o authority was included in [the 1975] Act to allow the Department to withhold funds from States on the basis of failure to meet the findings [of 6010]." 45 Fed. Reg. 31006 (1980). If funds cannot be terminated for a State's failure to comply with 6010, 6010 can hardly be considered a "condition" of the grant of federal funds. 17 The Secretary's interpretation of 6010, moreover, is well supported by the legislative history. In reaching [451 U.S. 1, 24] the compromise on 6010, the Conference Committee rejected the Senate's proposal to terminate federal funding of States which failed to comply with the standards enumerated in Title II of the Senate's bill, see n. 15, supra. By eliminating that sanction, Congress made clear that the provisions of 6010 were intended to be hortatory, not mandatory. 18 </s> The fact that Congress granted to Pennsylvania only $1.6 million in 1976, a sum woefully inadequate to meet the enormous financial burden of providing "appropriate" treatment in the "least restrictive" setting, confirms that Congress must have had a limited purpose in enacting 6010. When Congress does impose affirmative obligations on the States, it usually makes a far more substantial contribution to defray costs. Harris v. McRae, supra. It defies common sense, in short, to suppose that Congress implicitly imposed this massive obligation on participating States. </s> Our conclusion is also buttressed by the rule of statutory construction established above, that Congress must express clearly its intent to impose conditions on the grant of federal funds so that the States can knowingly decide whether or not to accept those funds. That canon applies with greatest force where, as here, a State's potential obligations under the Act are largely indeterminate. It is difficult to know what [451 U.S. 1, 25] is meant by providing "appropriate treatment" in the "least restrictive" setting, and it is unlikely that a State would have accepted federal funds had it known it would be bound to provide such treatment. The crucial inquiry, however, is not whether a State would knowingly undertake that obligation, but whether Congress spoke so clearly that we can fairly say that the State could make an informed choice. In this case, Congress fell well short of providing clear notice to the States that they, by accepting funds under the Act, would indeed be obligated to comply with 6010. Not only does 6010 lack conditional language, but it strains credulity to argue that participating States should have known of their "obligations" under 6010 when the Secretary of HHS, the governmental agency responsible for the administration of the Act and the agency with which the participating States have the most contact, has never understood 6010 to impose conditions on participating States. Though Congress' power to legislate under the spending power is broad, it does not include surprising participating States with postacceptance or "retroactive" conditions. </s> Finally, a brief comparison of the general language of 6010 with the conditions Congress explicitly imposed on the States demonstrates that Congress did not intend to place either absolute or conditional obligations on the States. The Court of Appeals, for example, read 6010 to impose an obligation to provide habilitation plans for all developmentally disabled persons. But Congress required habilitation plans under 6011 "only when the Federal assistance under the Act contributes a portion of the cost of the habilitation services to the developmentally disabled person." H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 94-473, p. 43 (1975). If the Court of Appeals were correct, of course, there would be no purpose for Congress to have required habilitation plans at all, or to have limited the requirement to certain programs, since such plans automatically would have been mandated in all programs by the more inclusive requirements of 6010. [451 U.S. 1, 26] </s> Second, the specific condition imposed in 6063 (b) (5) (C) (1976 ed., Supp. III) requires each state plan to </s> "contain or be supported by assurances satisfactory to the Secretary that the human rights of all persons with developmental disabilities . . . who are receiving treatment, services, or habilitation, under programs assisted under this chapter will be protected consistent with section 6010 of this title (relating to rights of the developmentally disabled)." </s> Once again, these limitations - both as to programs assisted under the Act and as to affording protection in a manner that is "consistent with 6010" - would be unnecessary if, as the court below ruled, all state programs were required to fund the rights described in 6010. </s> And third, the court below held that 6010 mandated deinstitutionalization for most, if not all, mentally retarded persons. As originally enacted in 1975, however, the Act required only that each State use not less than 30 percent of its allotment "for the purpose of assisting it in developing and implementing plans designed to eliminate inappropriate placement in institutions of persons with developmental disabilities." 6062 (a) (4). 19 Three years later, Congress relieved the States of even that modest duty. Instead of requiring the States to use a certain portion of their allotment to support deinstitutionalization, Congress required the States to concentrate their efforts in at least one of four areas, only one of which was "community living arrangements." 6063 (b) (4) (A) (ii) (1976 ed., Supp. III). Had 6010 created a right to deinstitutionalization, the policy choices contemplated [451 U.S. 1, 27] by both the 1975 and 1978 provisions would be meaningless. </s> In sum, the court below failed to recognize the well-settled distinction between congressional "encouragement" of state programs and the imposition of binding obligations on the States. Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297 (1980). Relying on that distinction, this Court in Southeastern Community College v. Davis, 442 U.S. 397 (1979), rejected a claim that 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which bars discrimination against handicapped persons in federally funded programs, obligates schools to take affirmative steps to eliminate problems raised by an applicant's hearing disability. Finding that "state agencies such as Southeastern are only `encourage[d] . . . to adopt and implement such policies and procedures,'" id., at 410 (quoting the Act), we stressed that "Congress understood [that] accommodation of the needs of handicapped individuals may require affirmative action and knew how to provide for it in those instances where it wished to do so." Id., at 411. Likewise in this case, Congress was aware of the need of developmentally disabled persons and plainly understood the difference, financial and otherwise, between encouraging a specified type of treatment and mandating it. </s> IV </s> Respondents also suggest that they may bring suit to compel compliance with those conditions which are contained in the Act. Of particular relevance to these cases are 6011 (a) (1976 ed., Supp. III) and 6063 (b) (5) (C) (1976 ed., Supp. III), which are quoted supra, at 12-13, 26. 20 </s> That claim raises several issues. First, it must be determined whether respondents have a private cause of action [451 U.S. 1, 28] to compel state compliance with those conditions. 21 In legislation enacted pursuant to the spending power, the typical remedy for state noncompliance with federally imposed conditions is not a private cause of action for noncompliance but rather action by the Federal Government to terminate funds to the State. See 6065 (1976 ed., Supp. III). Just last Term, however, in Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U.S. 1 (1980), we held that 42 U.S.C. 1983 provides a cause of action for state deprivations of "rights secured" by "the laws" of the United States. See 448 U.S., at 4 . Whether Thiboutot controls these cases depends on two factors. First, respondents here, unlike the plaintiffs in Thiboutot, who alleged that state law prevented them from receiving federal funds to which they were entitled, can only claim that the state plan has not provided adequate "assurances" to the Secretary. It is at least an open question whether an individual's interest in having a State provide those "assurances" is a "right secured" by the laws of the United States within the meaning of 1983. Second, JUSTICE POWELL in dissent in Thiboutot suggested that 1983 would not be available where the "governing statute provides an exclusive remedy for violations of its terms." Id., at 22, n. 11. It is unclear whether the express remedy contained in this Act is exclusive. </s> Second, it is not at all clear that the Pennhurst petitioners have violated 6011 and 6063 (b) (5) (C) (1976 ed. and Supp. III). Those sections, by their terms, only refer to "programs assisted" under the Act. Because Pennhurst does not receive federal funds under the Act, it is arguably not a "program assisted." Thus, there may be no obligation on the State under 6011 to assure the Secretary that each resident of Pennhurst have a habilitation plan, or assure the Secretary [451 U.S. 1, 29] under 6063 (b) (5) (C) that Pennhurst residents are being provided services consistent with 6010. 22 </s> Third, there is the question of remedy. Respondents' relief may well be limited to enjoining the Federal Government from providing funds to the Commonwealth. As we stated in Rosado v. Wyman, 397 U.S., at 420 , welfare claimants were "entitled to declaratory relief and an appropriate injunction by the District Court against the payment of federal monies . . . should the State not develop a conforming plan within a reasonable period of time." (Emphasis in original.) There, we rejected the suggestion that the courts could require the State to pay the additional sums demanded by compliance with federal standards. Relying on King v. Smith, 392 U.S. 309 (1968), we explained that "the State had alternative choices of assuming the additional cost" of complying with the federal standard "or not using federal funds." 397 U.S., at 420 -421. Accordingly, we remanded the case so that the State could exercise that choice. </s> In other instances, however, we have implicitly departed from that rule and have affirmed lower court decisions enjoining a State from enforcing any provisions which conflict with federal law in violation of the Supremacy Clause, e. g., Carleson v. Remillard, 406 U.S. 598 (1972). In still other cases, we have struck down state laws without addressing the form of relief, e. g., Townsend v. Swank, 404 U.S. 282 (1971). In no case, however, have we required a State to provide money to plaintiffs, much less required a State to take on such open-ended and potentially burdensome obligations as providing "appropriate" treatment in the "least restrictive" environment. And because this is a suit in federal court, anything [451 U.S. 1, 30] but prospective relief would pose serious questions under the Eleventh Amendment. Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974). 23 </s> These are all difficult questions. Because the Court of Appeals has not addressed these issues, however, we remand the issues for consideration in light of our decision here. </s> V </s> After finding that federal law imposed an obligation on the States to provide treatment, the court below examined state law and found that it too imposed such a requirement. 612 F.2d, at 100-103. The court looked to 4201 of the Pennsylvania Mental Health and Mental Retardation Act of 1966, which provides in pertinent part: </s> "The department of [Public Welfare] shall have power, and its duty shall be: </s> "(1) To assure within the State the availability and equitable provision of adequate mental health and mental retardation services for all persons who need them, regardless of religion, race, color, national origin, settlement, residence, or economic or social status." Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 50, 4201 (Purdon 1969). </s> Respondents contend that, even if we conclude that relief is unavailable under federal law, state law adequately supports the relief ordered by the Court of Appeals. There are, [451 U.S. 1, 31] however, two difficulties with that argument. First, the lower court's finding that state law provides a right to treatment may well have been colored by its holding with respect to 6010. Second, the court held only that there is a right to "treatment," not that there is a state right to treatment in the "least restrictive" environment. As such, it is unclear whether state law provides an independent and adequate ground which can support the court's remedial order. Accordingly, we remand the state-law issue for reconsideration in light of our decision here. 24 </s> For similar reasons, we also remand to the Court of Appeals those issues it did not address, namely, respondents' federal constitutional claims and their claims under 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. </s> VI </s> Congress in recent years has enacted several laws designed to improve the way in which this Nation treats the mentally retarded. 25 The Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act is one such law. It establishes a national policy to provide better care and treatment to the retarded and creates funding incentives to induce the States to do so. But the Act does no more than that. We would be attributing [451 U.S. 1, 32] far too much to Congress if we held that it required the States, at their own expense, to provide certain kinds of treatment. Accordingly, we reverse the principal holding of the Court of Appeals and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. </s> Reversed and remanded. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 "Community living arrangements" are smaller, less isolated residences where retarded persons are treated as much as possible like nonretarded persons. </s> [Footnote 2 There is a technical difference between "treatment," which applies to curable mental illness, and "habilitation," which consists of education and training for those, such as the mentally retarded, who are not ill. This opinion, like the opinions of the courts below, will use the terms interchangeably. </s> [Footnote 3 As originally enacted in 1975, the definition of "developmentally disabled" included mental retardation. 6001 (7) (A) (i). As amended in 1978, however, a mentally retarded individual is considered developmentally disabled only if he satisfies various criteria set forth in the Act. </s> It is perhaps suggestive of the novelty of the Court of Appeals' decision that none of the respondents briefed the Act before the District Court, nor raised it in the Court of Appeals. Rather, the court itself suggested the applicability of the Act and requested supplemental briefs on the issue for the purpose of rehearing en banc. Even then the United States, which raised only constitutional claims before the District Court, contended merely that the "most significant implication of the Developmentally Disabled Act is the important light which it sheds upon congressional intent about the nature of the rights of institutionalized mentally retarded persons, and the guidance which it may give in discerning a violation of Section 504 [of the Rehabilitation Act]." Supplemental Brief for United States in No. 78-1490 (CA3), p. 2. </s> [Footnote 4 Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that "[t]he Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article." </s> [Footnote 5 The spending power is encompassed in Art. I, 8, cl. 1, of the Constitution, which states that the "Congress shall have the Power To . . . provide for the . . . general Welfare of the United States." </s> [Footnote 6 The decisions below are somewhat unclear concerning to whom petitioners owe this right of treatment. The District Court certified a class of all persons who may become residents of Pennhurst, and the Court of Appeals directed relief for all plaintiffs in the case, including those on Pennhurst's waiting list. Thus, the decisions arguably entitle even those mentally [451 U.S. 1, 11] retarded citizens who are not institutionalized or currently receiving services to a "right to treatment." </s> [Footnote 7 The dissent went on to conclude that neither the Federal Constitution, 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, nor state law required a State to provide treatment in the "least restrictive setting." The dissent would have thus reversed those portions of the District Court's order that contemplated a court order closing Pennhurst and the creation of new less restrictive facilities. It would also have remanded the case to the District Court for it to decide "how best to bring Pennhurst in compliance with statutory and constitutional requirements" and left open "the possibility that certain individuals in the future may be able to show that their particular mode of treatment is not rationally related to the State's purpose in confining them." 612 F.2d, at 131. </s> [Footnote 8 Section 6000 (b) (2) provides: </s> "The specific purposes of this chapter are - </s> "(A) to assist in the provision of comprehensive services to persons with developmental disabilities, with priority to those persons whose needs cannot be covered or otherwise met under the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 . . ., or other health, education, or welfare programs; </s> "(B) to assist States in appropriate planning activities; </s> "(C) to make grants to States and public and private, nonprofit agencies to establish model programs, to demonstrate innovative habilitation techniques, and to train professional and paraprofessional personnel with respect to providing services to persons with developmental disabilities; </s> "(D) to make grants to university affiliated facilities to assist them in administering and operating demonstration facilities for the provision of services to persons with developmental disabilities, and interdisciplinary training programs for personnel needed to provide specialized services for these persons; and </s> "(E) to make grants to support a system in each State to protect the legal and human rights of all persons with developmental disabilities." </s> [Footnote 9 Sections 6031-6043 authorize separate funding to university-affiliated facilities for the operation of demonstration and training programs and are not pertinent here. </s> [Footnote 10 The provisions of 6063 were reworded and recodified in 1978. Section 6063 (b) (5) (C) (1976 ed., Supp. III) replaced 133 (b) (24) of the Act, as added and renumbered, 89 Stat. 491, 506, 42 U.S.C. 6063 (b) (24), which required a somewhat similar "assurance." The only significant difference between the two provisions is that 6063 (b) (5) (C) contains a specific reference to 6010. </s> [Footnote 11 The PARC respondents take a somewhat different view. Although they argue that Congress enacted 6010 under both 5 and the spending power, they suggest that 6010 applies only to programs which receive federal money. The PARC respondents are also cross-petitioners in this litigation, arguing that the Act requires Pennhurst to be closed. In their view, the individual placement decisions required by the court below are not authorized by the Act and, in any event, are an improper exercise of judicial authority. </s> [Footnote 12 There is of course a question whether Congress would have the power to create the rights and obligations found by the court below. Although the court below held that "section 6010 does not go beyond what has been judicially declared to be the limits of the [F]ourteenth [A]mendment," 612 F.2d, at 98, this Court has never found that the involuntarily committed have a constitutional "right to treatment," much less the voluntarily committed. See Sanchez v. New Mexico, 396 U.S. 276 (1970), dismissing for want of substantial federal question, 80 N. M. 438, 457 P.2d 370 (1968); O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563, 587 -589 (1975) (BURGER, C. J., concurring). Thus, the Pennhurst petitioners and several amici argue that legislation which purports to create against the States not only a right to treatment, but one in the least restrictive setting, is not "appropriate" legislation within the meaning of 5. Because we conclude that 6010 creates no rights whatsoever, we find it unnecessary to consider that question. </s> [Footnote 13 There are limits on the power of Congress to impose conditions on the States pursuant to its spending power, Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S., at 585 ; Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563, 569 (1974); Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448 (1980) (BURGER, C. J.); see National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833 (1976). Even the Halderman respondents, like the court below, recognize the "constitutional difficulties" with imposing affirmative obligations on the States pursuant to the spending power, Tr. of Oral Arg. 45. That issue, however, is not now before us. </s> [Footnote 14 Respondents also contend that the title of the Act as passed, rather than as codified, reveals an intent to create rights in favor of the disabled. Pub. L. 94-103, 89 Stat. 486. As passed, the Act contained three Titles. Title I provided for services and facilities to the developmentally disabled and Title II, entitled "The Establishment and Protection of the Rights of Persons with Developmental Disabilities," contained 6010. Respondents' reliance on this title is misplaced. It has long been established that the title of an Act "cannot enlarge or confer powers." United States v. Oregon & California R. Co., 164 U.S. 526, 541 (1896); Cornell v. Coyne, 192 U.S. 418, 430 (1904). See United States v. Fisher, 2 Cranch 358, 386 (1805); Yazoo & Mississippi Valley R. Co. v. Thomas, 132 U.S. 174, 188 (1889). In addition, the location of 6010 in the Act as passed confirms 6010's limited meaning. Section 6010 was the preamble of Title II followed by provisions later codified as 6009, 6011, 6012. The congressional findings in 6010 thus seem to have been designed simply to serve as the rationale for the conditions imposed in the remaining sections of Title II. </s> [Footnote 15 As originally passed by the Senate, for example, the bill provided that a State which failed to comply with the detailed standards of care enumerated in Title II would lose all federal funding, including that provided [451 U.S. 1, 21] under such programs as Medicaid. S. 462, Tit. II, 206. See S. Rep. No. 94-160, p. 35 (1975). The fact that the Senate would include a funding sanction is, of course, wholly inconsistent with respondents' argument that Congress was acting pursuant to 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. </s> [Footnote 16 Nor is the contrary proved by a 1978 amendment to 6010 which provides: </s> "The rights of persons with developmental disabilities described in findings made in this section are in addition to any constitutional or other rights otherwise afforded to all persons." 92 Stat. 3007. </s> This provision, adopted in Conference Committee without any legislative history, merely expresses Congress' view that persons with developmental disabilities have rights in addition to those generally available to "all persons." The section recognizes that Congress only "described" rights, not created them. Nothing in the language supports an inference of substantive duties from a statement of congressional policy. </s> [Footnote 17 To be sure, the Secretary has read the 1978 recodification of 6063 (b) (5) (C) (1976 ed., Supp. III) to require a participating State to assure the Secretary that services in funded programs are being provided consistent with 6010. 45 Fed. Reg. 31006 (1980). But, as will be discussed infra, even if the Secretary's interpretation of the 1978 recodification is correct, a participating State's obligations under 6063 (b) (5) (C) are far more modest than the obligations read into 6010 by the court below and urged by the Solicitor General here. It is also important to note that the Secretary, despite his apparent authority to do so, has not terminated funds to Pennsylvania for noncompliance with 6063 (b) (5) (C). </s> [Footnote 18 The Solicitor General also relies heavily on 6010 (3), quoted supra, at 13. He apparently contends that Congress in 6010 (3) conditioned the grant of all federal funds, including Medicaid, on the participating State's agreement to provide adequate treatment to individuals. Although 6010 (3), unlike 6010 (1) and (2), at least speaks in terms of "obligations," we find the Solicitor General's argument ultimately without merit. First, like the other "findings" in 6010, 6010 (3) is merely an expression of federal policy. As even the Secretary concedes, Congress did not give the Secretary authority to withdraw federal funds on the basis of a State's failure to comply with 6010 (3). Second, by its terms, 6010 (3) states that both the Federal Government and the States should not spend public money for substandard institutions. Nothing reveals an intent to condition the grant of federal funds under the Act on the State's promise to provide appropriate habilitation to individuals. </s> [Footnote 19 The House Report, for example, explained that States were required only to plan "for as much deinstitutionalization as is feasible," recognizing that this requirement would "prompt some movement of patients from State institutions back into their communities." H. R. Rep. No. 94-58, p. 10 (1975). </s> [Footnote 20 The Court of Appeals was apparently aware of these conditions since it referred expressly to 6063 (b) (5) (C) in concluding that 6010 creates a right to treatment. Its error was in bypassing these specific conditions and resting its decision on the more general language of 6010. </s> [Footnote 21 Because we conclude that 6010 confers no substantive rights, we need not reach the question whether there is a private cause of action under that section or under 42 U.S.C. 1983 to enforce those rights. See Southeastern Community College v. Davis, 442 U.S. 397, 404 , n. 5 (1979). </s> [Footnote 22 JUSTICE WHITE concedes that Pennsylvania may not have violated 6011, since Pennhurst may not be a "program assisted" under the Act. Post, at 41-42, n. 7. Curiously, however, he simultaneously assumes that 6063 (b) (5) (C) applies to Pennhurst. Post, at 41. Because both 6011 and 6063 (b) (5) (C) apply only to "programs assisted," I do not understand why 6063 (b) (5) (C), but not 6011, is applicable. </s> [Footnote 23 We do not significantly differ with our Brother WHITE on the remedy for failure to comply with federally imposed conditions. Relying on Rosado v. Wyman, he argues that Pennsylvania should be given the option of rejecting federal funds under the Act or complying with 6010. If we agreed that 6010 was a condition on the grant of federal funds, we would have little difficulty subscribing to that view. We differ only in that he believes that 6010 imposes conditions on participating States while we believe that the relevant conditions to these cases are 6011 and 6063 (b) (5) (C). If the court on remand determines that there has been a violation of those conditions, it may well be appropriate to apply the principles announced in Rosado, as JUSTICE WHITE suggests. </s> [Footnote 24 Respondents have submitted to the Court 10 photocopies of a recent decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court which they characterize as holding that Pennsylvania state law provides a right to "state-funded individualized habilitation services." In re Schmidt, 494 Pa. 86, 429 A. 2d 631 (1981). The late submission not only fails to comply with Supreme Court Rule 35.5, it does not affect our decision here. On remand following our reversal, the Court of Appeals will be in a position to consider the state-law issues in light of the Pennsylvania's Supreme Court's recent decision. </s> [Footnote 25 E. g., The Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended in 1974 and 1978, 29 U.S.C. 701 et seq. (1976 ed. and Supp. III); The Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, 20 U.S.C. 1401-1420; Social Security Amendments of 1974, 42 U.S.C. 1396d (d) and 1397; Community Mental Health Centers Act, 42 U.S.C. 2689 et seq. </s> JUSTICE BLACKMUN, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. </s> Although I agree that the judgment of the Court of Appeals must be reversed, and although I am in accord with much of what the Court says about the meaning of this confused and confusing legislation, see ante, at 11-27, I do not join the Court's advisory discussion in Part IV of its opinion. In that Part, the Court properly and correctly notes, ante, at 30, that it leaves open for consideration on remand whether, and in what form, 6011 and 6063 create rights that are enforceable by private parties like those that make up these plaintiff classes. The Court, however, seems to me strongly to intimate that it will not view kindly any future positive holding in that direction. I agree that this specific question was not presented and is not today decided, but I decline to join what appears to be a negative attitude on the part of the Court to what is a possible construction of the Act. </s> It seems plain to me that Congress, in enacting 6010, intended to do more than merely set out politically self-serving but essentially meaningless language about what the developmentally disabled deserve at the hands of state and federal authorities. A perfectly reasonable judicial interpretation of 6010, which would avoid the odd and perhaps dangerous precedent of ascribing no meaning to a congressional enactment, would observe and give effect to the linkage between 6010 and 6063. As the Court points out, ante, at 12, a State that accepts funds under the Act becomes legally obligated to submit a state plan containing "assurances [451 U.S. 1, 33] satisfactory to the Secretary that the human rights of all persons with developmental disabilities . . . who are receiving treatment, services, or habilitation under programs assisted under this chapter will be protected consistent with section 6010 . . . ." 42 U.S.C. 6063 (b) (5) (C) (1976 ed., Supp. III). </s> That private parties, the intended beneficiaries of the Act, should have the power to enforce the modest legal content of 6063 would not be an unusual application of our precedents, even for a legislative scheme that involves federal regulatory supervision of state operations See, e. g., Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U.S. 677 (1979); Rosado v. Wyman, 397 U.S. 397 (1970). See also Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U.S. 1 (1980). </s> Finally, I have difficulty with the Court's suggestion, ante, at 28-29, that Pennhurst should be free of the Act's requirements because it does not directly receive funds under the Act. The Commonwealth's program for the institutionalized developmentally disabled is unified in one administration. To restrict the definition of "program assisted" in 6063 to specific institutions within a unified program would allow a State to insulate substandard institutions from federal requirements merely by allocating federal funds to acceptable premises and state funds to substandard ones. </s> JUSTICE WHITE, with whom JUSTICE BRENNAN and JUSTICE MARSHALL join, dissenting in part. </s> Pennhurst is a residential institution for the retarded operated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and serving a five-county area. Roughly half of its 1,200 residents were admitted upon application of their parents or guardians while the remainder were committed pursuant to court order. After extensive discovery and a lengthy trial, the District Court held that the conditions of confinement at Pennhurst violated the rights of its residents under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution, state [451 U.S. 1, 34] law, 1 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. 794, and entered a detailed remedial order requiring the eventual closing of Pennhurst in favor of community living arrangements for Pennhurst's displaced residents. 446 F. Supp. 1295 (ED Pa. 1978). On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit determined that the result reached by the District Court was proper under the Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. 6000 et seq. (1976 ed. and Supp. III) (Act), although relief under that statute had not initially been raised in that court. 612 F.2d 84 (1979) (en banc). The Court of Appeals determined that the Act created judicially cognizable rights to treatment and to receipt of care in the least restrictive environment, and that the right to treatment was also supported by state law. The court essentially affirmed the remedial order entered by the District Court with one significant exception. 2 Finding that the legislative history did not require the abandonment of large institutional facilities, the Court of Appeals held that the District Court erred in ordering Pennhurst to be closed. Rather, the Court of Appeals required that each resident of Pennhurst be afforded an individual hearing before a Special Master to determine the appropriate level of institutionalization with a presumption established that community-based living arrangements were proper. </s> In essence, the Court concludes that the so-called "Bill of Rights" section of the Act, 42 U.S.C. 6010, merely serves to establish guidelines which States should endeavor to fulfill, but which have no real effect except to the extent that the Secretary of Health and Human Services chooses to use the criteria established by 6010 in determining funding under the Act. In my view, this reading misconceives the important [451 U.S. 1, 35] purposes Congress intended 6010 to serve. That section, as confirmed by its legislative history, was intended by Congress to establish requirements which participating States had to meet in providing care to the developmentally disabled. The fact that Congress spoke in generalized terms rather than the language of regulatory minutia cannot make nugatory actions so carefully undertaken. </s> I </s> As an initial matter, I agree that 6010 was enacted pursuant to Congress' spending power, and not pursuant to its power under 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Accordingly, I agree that the Act was not intended to place duties on States independent of their participation in the program established by the Act. The Court of Appeals, in the section of its opinion concerning the exercise of a private cause of action, determined that 6010 was passed pursuant to 5, reasoning that since the Fourteenth Amendment included a right "`to be free from, and to obtain judicial relief for, unjustified intrusions on personal security,'" 612 F.2d, at 98, quoting Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 673 (1977), congressional passage of 6010 indicated its desire to enforce this interest. 3 Congressional action under the Enforcement Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, however, has very significant consequences, see Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445 (1976), and given these ramifications, it should not be lightly assumed that Congress acted pursuant to its power under 5 in passing the Act. [451 U.S. 1, 36] </s> Here, there is no conclusive basis for determining that Congress acted pursuant to 5. Nothing in the statutory language refers to the Fourteenth Amendment. Section 6010 was but one part of a bill whose underlying purpose was to extend and modify an existing federal-state grant program. The initial program was unquestionably passed pursuant to Congress' spending power. Moreover, 6010 (3) is by its express terms a limitation on federal and state spending. The rights articulated in 6010 are also cross-referenced in 6063 (1976 ed. and Supp. III), which details the operation of the grant program. 4 Thus, all objective considerations connected with 6010 and its operation suggest that Congress enacted it pursuant to its Spending Clause powers. </s> Of course, resolution of the 5 issue does not determine the issue whether 6010 was intended by Congress to have substantive consequences as part of a statute enacted under Art. I, 8, cl. 1, and in my view, the majority makes far too much of the fact that 6010 was not passed pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment. While this conclusion has significant ramifications for the appropriate remedy for violations of the Act, it does not follow that 6010 was to have no impact or effect besides the mere "encouragement" of state action and created no obligations on participating States and no rights in those being served by programs maintained by a State in cooperation with the Federal Government. </s> II </s> The language and scheme of the Act make it plain enough to me that Congress intended 6010, although couched in [451 U.S. 1, 37] terms of rights, to serve as requirements that the participating States must observe in receiving federal funds under the provisions of the Act. That Congress was deadly serious in stating that the developmentally disabled had entitlements which a State must respect if it were to participate in a program can hardly be doubted. </s> Federal involvement in state provision of health care to those persons with developmental disabilities began in 1963 with the passage of the Mental Retardation Facilities Construction Act, Pub. L. 88-164, 77 Stat. 282. That statute provided funds for the construction of health care facilities and specifically encouraged the development of community-based programs. 5 The Developmentally Disabled Act, technically an amendment to the Mental Retardation Facilities Construction Act, was passed in light of Congress' continued concern about the quality of health care being provided to the developmentally disabled and that federal support for improved care should be increased. A central expression of this concern was 6010, which declares by way of four congressional "findings" that: </s> 1. Persons with developmental disabilities have a "right to appropriate treatment, services, and habilitation." </s> 2. Treatment should be designed to maximize an individual's potential and should be provided "in the setting that is least restrictive of the person's personal liberty." </s> 3. The State and Federal Governments have an obligation to assure that public funds are not provided to institutions or programs that do not provide "appropriate treatment, [451 U.S. 1, 38] services and habilitation" or do not meet minimum standards of care in six specific respects such as diet, dental care, and the use of force or chemical restraints. </s> 4. Rehabilitative programs should meet standards designed to assure the most favorable possible outcome for patients, and these standards should be appropriate to the needs of those being served, depending on the type of institution involved. 6 </s> [451 U.S. 1, 39] </s> As clearly as words can, 6010 (1) declares that the developmentally disabled have the right to appropriate treatment, services, and habilitation. The ensuing parts of 6010 implement this basic declaration. Section 6010 (3), for example, obligates the Federal and State Governments not to spend the public funds on programs that do not carry out the basic requirement of 6010 (1) and, more specifically, do not meet minimum standards with respect to certain aspects of treatment and custody. Sections 6010 (2) and (4) are phrased in less mandatory terms, but the former unmistakably states a preference for treatment in the least restrictive environment and the latter for establishing standards for assuring the appropriate care of the developmentally disabled in relation to the type of institution involved. Both sections, by delineating in some respects the meaning of "appropriate" [451 U.S. 1, 40] treatment, services, and habilitation, implement the basic rights that the developmentally disabled must be afforded for the purpose of the programs envisioned by the Act. Hence, neither section could be ignored by the Secretary in carrying out his duties under the statute. </s> Standing on its own bottom, therefore, 6010 cannot be treated as only wishful thinking on the part of Congress or as playing some fanciful role in the implementation of the Act. The section clearly states rights which the developmentally disabled are to be provided as against a participating State. But 6010 does not stand in isolation. Other provisions of the Act confirm the view that participating States must take account of 6010 and that the section is an integral part of an Act cast in the pattern of extending aid conditioned on state compliance with specified conditions. Section 6063 (a) requires that for a State to take advantage of the Act, it must have a "plan submitted to and approved by the Secretary. . . ." Section 6063 (b) (1976 ed., Supp. III), which is entitled "Conditions for Approval," states that "[i]n order to be approved by the Secretary under this section, a State plan for the provision of services and facilities for persons with developmental disabilities must" be filed; and in its original form, 6063 required the plan to satisfy the conditions stated in some 30 numbered paragraphs. The 24th specification was that the plan must "contain or be supported by assurances satisfactory to the Secretary that the human rights of all persons with developmental disabilities . . . who are receiving treatment, services, or habilitation under programs assisted under this chapter will be protected." Any doubts that the human rights referred to in 6063 (b) (24) corresponded to those specified in 6010 were removed in 1978 when 6063 (b) was amended to restate the conditions which a plan must satisfy. Section 6063 (b) (5) (C) (1976 ed., Supp. III) now provides: </s> "The plan must contain or be supported by assurances satisfactory to the Secretary that the human rights of [451 U.S. 1, 41] all persons with developmental disabilities (especially those persons without familial protection) who are receiving treatment, services, or habilitation under programs assisted under this chapter will be protected consistent with section 6010 of this title (relating to the rights of the developmentally disabled)." </s> Pennsylvania has submitted a plan under 6063, that is, a plan providing services for the developmentally disabled in Pennsylvania. The Court states that the plan has been approved and that funds have been allocated to the State. These funds will necessarily be supporting Pennsylvania's "programs" for providing treatment, services, or habilitation within the meaning of 6063 (b) (5) (C); and under the express terms of that section, Pennsylvania is required to respect the 6010 rights of the developmentally disabled in its state institutions, including Pennhurst, and to give the Secretary adequate assurances in this respect. This is true whether or not Pennhurst itself directly receives any share of the State's allocation. It should also be noted that 6063 (b) (3) (A) (1976 ed., Supp. III) provides that "the funds paid to the state under 6062 of this title will be used to make a significant contribution toward strengthening services for persons with developmental disabilities through agencies in the various political subdivisions of the State." Thus, funds received under the Act were intended to result in the improvement of care at institutions like Pennhurst. 7 </s> [451 U.S. 1, 42] </s> III </s> The legislative history of 6010 confirms the view that Congress intended 6010 to have substantive significance. Both the initial House of Representatives and Senate versions of the Act contained provisions indicating congressional concern with the character and quality of care for the developmentally disabled. The House bill, H. R. 4005, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. (1975), did not have a bill of rights section akin to 6010. It did, however, have a provision that required States to spend at least 10% of their respective allotments "for the purpose of assisting . . . in developing and implementing plans designed to eliminate inappropriate placement in institutions of persons with developmental disabilities." 5 (b) (4). Debate in the House of Representatives indicated that the spending restriction was designed to promote community-based facilities to counteract the unfortunate practice of widespread institutionalization of developmentally disabled persons. 8 </s> [451 U.S. 1, 43] </s> The Senate version of the Act, S. 462, 94th Cong., 1st Sess. (1975), contained a separate Title II, called the "Bill of Rights for Mentally Retarded and Other Persons with Developmental Disabilities." setting forth in extensive detail specific standards which state programs and facilities were required to meet. The impetus behind the Senate's "Bill of Rights" was the recognition by several Senators of the tragic conditions of confinement faced by many residents of large institutions. 9 An often repeated purpose of the Bill of Rights was to foster the development of community-based facilities as well as to encourage overall better care and treatment for the mentally disabled. 10 At the same time, there was the realization [451 U.S. 1, 44] that institutions still had a significant role to play in the treatment of the mentally disabled. 11 </s> The Senate's version of Title II provided two methods for the States to comply with the requirements of the Act. First, a State wishing to participate could opt to follow guidelines to be established by the Secretary under Part B of Title II. 210 (a). Alternatively, a State could decide to meet the extensive standards specified in Parts C and D relating to residential and community facilities respectively. Under the Senate bill, it was clear that the standards encompassed by the alternative procedures were not merely hortatory. That bill provided that within one year after the enactment, a State desiring funding must provide assurances to the Secretary that "each such facility or agency has established a plan for achieving compliance no later than 5 years after the date of enactment . . . ." 203 (a). After the 5-year [451 U.S. 1, 45] period, "no residential facility or program of community care for individuals with developmental disabilities shall be eligible to receive payments either directly or indirectly under any Federal law, unless such residential facility meets the standards promulgated under parts C or D of this title or has demonstrated to the Secretary for a reasonable period of time that it has actively implemented the requirements of part B." 206 (a). </s> Following Senate and House passage, the different bills came to a Conference Committee. The resulting compromise kept the House 10% spending restriction which the Conference Report noted was "designed to eliminate inappropriate placement in institutions of persons with developmental disabilities . . . ." H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 94-473, p. 33 (1975). The Senate's detailed Bill of Rights was replaced by 6010, a comparatively brief statement of the developmentally disabled's rights expressed in general terms. The specific mechanism of alternative compliance standards was omitted. The Conference Report set forth the following as the statement of purpose of the Conference version of the Senate's Title II. </s> "The conference substitute contains a compromise which enumerates Congressional findings respecting the rights of persons with developmental disabilities. These include findings that the developmentally disabled have a right to appropriate treatment, services and habilitation; that such treatment, services and habilitation should be designed to maximize the developmental potential of the person and be provided in the setting that is least restrictive to his personal liberty; that the Federal government and the States have an obligation to assure that public funds are not provided in programs which do not provide appropriate treatment, services and habilitation or do not meet minimum standards respecting diet, medical and dental services, use of restraints, visiting hours and compliance with fire and safety codes; [451 U.S. 1, 46] and that programs for the developmentally disabled should meet appropriate standards including standards adjusted for the size of the institutions . . . . </s> "These rights are generally included in the conference substitute in recognition by the conferees that the developmentally disabled, particularly those who have the misfortune to require institutionalization, have a right to receive appropriate treatment for the conditions for which they are institutionalized, and that this right should be protected and assured by the Congress and the courts." H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 94-473, supra, at 41-42. </s> Following the Conference Report, the Act was passed with minimal debate. 12 </s> The Senate's version of the Bill of Rights was hundreds of pages long and constituted an attempt to define the standards and conditions of state participation with precision and in great detail. The Conference Report makes clear that the detailed version was rejected, not to substitute a merely advisory section for an extended statement of conditions, but [451 U.S. 1, 47] rather to substitute a generalized statement of entitlements that a participating State must respect and that would adequately meet congressional concerns without encountering the inflexibility of legislatively prescribed conditions of treatment and care. There is no basis for considering the shortened statement as intended to play a qualitatively lesser role in the scheme of the Act. Rather, the compromise is best understood as a rejection of either the need or the ability of Congress to specify the required standards in a manner resembling administrative regulations. 13 </s> IV </s> As previously stated, 6010 should be understood to require a State receiving funds under the Act to observe the rights established by the provision. None of the concerns expressed by the Court present sufficient reason to avoid or overcome the statutory mandate. </s> It is true that the terms "treatment, services and habilitation" to which 6010 declares an entitlement are not self-defining. But it does not follow that the participating States are free to ignore them. Under 6010 (3) (A), as already indicated, the State has an "obligation" not to spend public funds on any institutional or other residential facility that "does not provide treatment, services and habilitation which is appropriate to the needs of such persons." If federal [451 U.S. 1, 48] funds are to be used to support a program, the program must (1) provide for the 6010 rights to appropriate treatment, services, and habilitation; (2) observe the direction in 6010 (2) that treatment, services, and habilitation be furnished in the least restrictive setting; (3) satisfy the minimum standards referred to in 6010 (3) (B); and (4) follow the provisions of 6010 (4), which offers further guidance for the participating State in furnishing the treatment, services, and habilitation to which the developmentally disabled are entitled. </s> Furthermore, before approving a state plan, the Secretary must assure himself that the rights identified under 6010 will be adequately protected by the participating State. Why the language of an express "condition," which 6010 lacks, should be the only touchstone for identifying a State's obligation is difficult to fathom. 14 Indeed, identifying "rights" and requiring the participating State to observe them seems a far stronger indicia of congressional intent than a mere statement of "conditions." </s> To argue that Congress could not have intended to obligate the States under 6010 because those obligations would [451 U.S. 1, 49] be large and for the most part unknown is also unpersuasive. Section 6010 calls for appropriate treatment, services, and habilitation; and, as already detailed, the remaining sections spell out, some in more detail than others, the scope of that requirement. Beyond this, however, the content and reach of the federal requirements will, as a practical matter, emerge from the process of preparing a state plan and securing its approval by the Secretary. The state plan must undertake to provide services and facilities pursuant to "standards" prescribed by the Secretary; and, as will become evident, the State's option to terminate its statutory duties must be respected by the courts. In any event, there is no indication in the record before us that the cost of compliance with 6010 would be "massive." The District Court found that noninstitutional facilities located in the communities would be significantly less expensive to operate than facilities like Pennhurst. 446 F. Supp., at 1312. At best, the cost of compliance with 6010 is indeterminate. </s> It is apparently suggested that 6010 is reduced to a mere statement of hope by the absence of an express provision requiring the Secretary to cut off funds in the event he determines that a State is not observing the rights set out in 6010. But it is clear that the Secretary may not approve a plan in the first place without being assured that those rights will be protected, and it is difficult to believe that the Secretary must continue to fund a program that is failing to live up to the assurances that the State has given the Secretary. </s> It is also a matter of substantial moment that 6012 (1976 ed., Supp. III) expressly conditions the approval of a plan on the State's providing "a system to protect and advocate the rights of persons with developmental disabilities," and that the system must "have the authority to pursue legal, administrative, and other appropriate remedies to insure the protection of rights of such persons." 6012 (a) (2) (A). Section 6012 goes on to provide federal aid in establishing such systems, [451 U.S. 1, 50] and it seems rather plain that the Act contemplates not only ongoing oversight by the Secretary but also enforcement of the rights of persons receiving treatment through judicial action or otherwise. </s> It is thus not of determinative significance that the Secretary was once of the view that noncompliance with 6010 did not provide sufficient reason to cut off funds under the Act. As the Court recognizes, the 1978 amendments have convinced him that 6010 rights must be respected; 15 but if the Secretary's original view was correct, and I do not think it was, this would not foreclose judicial remedies sought by or on behalf of developmentally disabled persons injured by the State's failure to observe 6010 rights. Moreover, the Solicitor General, who is the legal representative of the United States, is of the view that the Act does create enforceable rights. In any event, this Court, as it is permitted to do, has disagreed on occasion with the administrative determination of the Secretary. See, e. g., Philbrook v. Glodgett, [451 U.S. 1, 51] 421 U.S. 707, 715 and n. 11 (1975); Carleson v. Remillard, 406 U.S. 598, 602 (1972); Townsend v. Swank, 404 U.S. 282, 286 , and n. 3 (1971). See also General Electric Co. v. Gilbert, 429 U.S. 125, 140 -146 (1976). </s> V </s> Given my view that Congress intended 6010 to do more than suggest that the States act in a particular manner, I find it necessary to reach the question whether these rights can be enforced in federal courts in a suit brought by the developmentally disabled. This action was brought under 42 U.S.C. 1983, and directly under the Developmentally Disabled Act. The Court of Appeals determined that under the factors enunciated in Cort v. Ash, 422 U.S. 66 (1975), an implied private cause of action existed under the Act. Subsequently, however, we held that "the 1983 remedy broadly encompasses violations of federal statutory as well as constitutional law." Maine v. Thiboutot, 448 U.S. 1, 4 (1980). It is acknowledged by all parties that it is appropriate to consider the cause-of-action question in light of the intervening decision in Thiboutot. </s> We have often found federal-court jurisdiction to enforce statutory safeguards in grant programs in suits brought by injured recipients. See, e. g., Rosado v. Wyman, 397 U.S. 397 (1970); Shea v. Vialpando, 416 U.S. 251 (1974); Carleson v. Remillard, supra. In essence, Thiboutot creates a presumption that a federal statute creating federal rights may be enforced in a 1983 action. To be sure, Congress may explicitly direct otherwise, such as if the "governing statute provides an exclusive remedy for violations of its terms." Thiboutot, supra, at 22, n. 11 (POWELL, J., dissenting). See generally Chapman v. Houston Welfare Rights Organization, 441 U.S. 600, 672 (1979) ( 1983 protections apply to all rights secured by federal statutes "unless there is clear indication in a particular statute that its remedial provisions are exclusive or that for various other reasons a 1983 action is [451 U.S. 1, 52] inconsistent with congressional intention") (WHITE, J., concurring in judgment). Thus, in Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475 (1973), we held that 1983 did not provide a basis for relief since federal habeas corpus proceedings constituted the sole remedy for challenging the fact or duration of confinement. See Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 150 , n. 5 (1970). Attempting to fit within the exception, the Pennhurst petitioners suggest that Congress intended the sole remedy for violations of the terms of the Act to be the power of the Secretary to disapprove a State's plan. See 42 U.S.C. 6063 (c). According to these petitioners, imposition of a private remedy would be incompatible with the overall scheme of the Act, especially given the amorphous quality of the asserted rights. </s> As a general matter, it is clear that the fact that a federal administrative agency has the power to oversee a cooperative state-federal venture does not mean that Congress intended such oversight to be the exclusive remedy for enforcing statutory rights. This Court is "most reluctant to assume Congress has closed the avenue of effective judicial review to those individuals most directly affected by the administration of its program[s]" even if the agency has the statutory power to cut off federal funds for noncompliance. Rosado v. Wyman, supra, at 420. In part, this reluctance is founded on the perception that a funds cutoff is a drastic remedy with injurious consequences to the supposed beneficiaries of the Act. Cf. Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U.S. 677, 708 , n. 42 (1979). In this litigation, there is no indication that Congress intended the funds cutoff, which, as the Court notes, the Secretary believed was not within the power of the agency, to be the sole remedy for correcting violations of 6010. Indeed, 6012 and the legislative history of the Act reveal that Congress intended judicial enforcement of 6010. See supra, at 46; H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 94-473, p. 42 (1975) (the statutory rights established by 6010 "should be protected and assured by the Congress and the courts"). Accordingly, [451 U.S. 1, 53] I would hold that jurisdiction under 1983 was properly invoked in these cases under Thiboutot. </s> VI </s> I would vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the cases for further proceedings. This litigation does not involve the exercise of congressional power to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment as the Court of Appeals held, but is an exercise of the spending power. What an appropriate remedy might be where state officials fail to observe the limits of their power under the United States Constitution or fail to perform an ongoing statutory duty imposed by a federal statute enacted under the commerce power or the Fourteenth Amendment is not necessarily the measure of a federal court's authority where it is found that a State has failed to perform its obligations undertaken pursuant to a statute enacted under the spending power. The State's duties in the latter situation do not arise until and unless the State chooses to receive federal funds. Furthermore, the State may terminate such statutory obligations, except those already accrued, by withdrawing from the program and terminating its receipt of federal funds. It is settled that administrative oversight and termination of federal funding in the event of a State's failure to perform its statutory duties is not the sole remedy in Spending Clause cases. "It is . . . peculiarly part of the duty of this tribunal, no less in the welfare field than in other areas of the law, to resolve disputes as to whether federal funds allocated to the States are being expended in consonance with the conditions that Congress has attached to their use." Rosado v. Wyman, supra, at 422-423. It is equally clear, however, that the courts in such cases must take account of the State's privilege to withdraw and terminate its duties under the federal law. Although the court may enjoin the enforcement of a discrete state statutory provision or regulation or may order state officials prospectively to perform their duties incident to the [451 U.S. 1, 54] receipt of federal funds, the prospective force of such injunctions cannot survive the State's decision to terminate its participation in the program. Furthermore, there are cases in which there is no identifiable statutory provision whose enforcement can be prohibited. Rosado v. Wyman was such a case, and there, after finding that the State was not complying with the provisions of the Social Security Act, we remanded the case to the District Court to "afford [the State] an opportunity to revise its program in accordance with [federal requirements]" as we had construed them to be, but to retain jurisdiction "to review . . . any revised program adopted by the State, or, should [the State] choose not to submit a revamped program by the determined date, issue its order restraining the further use of federal monies . . . ." 397 U.S., at 421 -422. See Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974). </s> It is my view that the Court of Appeals should have adopted the Rosado approach in these cases. It found the State to be in noncompliance with the federal statute in major respects and proceeded to impose a far-reaching remedy, approving the appointment of a Special Master to decide which of the Pennhurst inmates should remain and which should be moved to community-based facilities. More properly, the court should have announced what it thought was necessary to comply with the Act and then permitted an appropriate period for the State to decide whether it preferred to give up federal funds and go its own route. If it did not, it should propose a plan for achieving compliance, in which event, if it satisfied the court, a decree incorporating the plan could be entered and if the plan was unsatisfactory, the further use of federal funds could be enjoined. In any event, however, the court should not have assumed the task of managing Pennhurst or deciding in the first instance which patients should remain and which should be removed. As we recently recognized in Parham v. J. R., 442 U.S. 584 (1979): "The mode and procedure of medical diagnostic procedures is not the business of judges. What is best for a [451 U.S. 1, 55] child is an individual medical decision that must be left to the judgment of physicians in each case. We do no more than emphasize that the decision should represent an independent judgment of what the child requires and that all sources of information that are traditionally relied on by physicians and behavioral specialists should be consulted." Id., at 607-608. Cf. Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 418, 429 (1979) (commitment depends "on the meaning of the facts which must be interpreted by expert psychiatrists and psychologists"). In enacting 6010, Congress eschewed creating any specific guidelines on the proper level of institutionalization, leaving the question to the States to determine in the first instance. A court-appointed Special Master is inconsistent with this approach. </s> Accordingly, I would vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the cases for further proceedings. </s> [Footnote 1 See Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 50, 4201 et seq. (Purdon 1969). </s> [Footnote 2 The Court of Appeals also overturned the District Court's decision to require the State to find suitable alternative employment for those Pennhurst employees displaced by the order. This order is not an issue before this Court. </s> [Footnote 3 Respondents Halderman and PARC suggest a number of other Fourteenth Amendment "interests" allegedly served by 6010. See, e. g., San Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973) (right to receive something more than no education); Jackson v. Indiana, 406 U.S. 715 (1972) (right to be institutionalized only when the nature and duration of such treatment bears a reasonable relation to its purpose); O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563 (1975) (right of nondangerous persons capable of living without institutionalization to be free). </s> [Footnote 4 The Act as passed in 1975 required that the state plan "contain or be supported by assurances satisfactory to the Secretary that the human rights of all persons with developmental disabilities . . . be protected." 6063 (b) (24). This measure was amended in 1978 to make it explicit that a State's plan must provide assurances of its compliance with 6010. See text, infra. </s> [Footnote 5 An amendment was passed in 1967 which added a program to train professionals in community programs, as well as providing funds to support institutions, Pub. L. 90-170, 81 Stat. 527. In 1970, Congress passed a second amendment adopting a formula grant system essentially similar to the present system. The 1970 amendment also broadened the number of potential beneficiaries to include persons afflicted with various disabilities not previously covered. Pub. L. 91-517, 84 Stat. 1316. </s> [Footnote 6 The pertinent text of 6010 provides: </s> "Congress makes the following findings respecting the rights of persons with developmental disabilities: </s> "(1) Persons with developmental disabilities have a right to appropriate treatment, services, and habilitation for such disabilities. </s> "(2) The treatment, services, and habilitation for a person with developmental disabilities should be designed to maximize the developmental potential of the person and should be provided in the setting that is least restrictive of the person's personal liberty. </s> "(3) The Federal Government and the States both have an obligation to assure that public funds are not provided to any institutional or other residential program for persons with developmental disabilities that - </s> "(A) does not provide treatment, services, and habilitation which is appropriate to the needs of such persons; or </s> "(B) does not meet the following minimum standards: </s> "(i) Provision of a nourishing, well-balanced daily diet to the persons with developmental disabilities being served by the program. </s> "(ii) Provision to such persons of appropriate and sufficient medical and dental services. </s> "(iii) Prohibition of the use of physical restraint on such persons unless absolutely necessary and prohibition of the use of such restraint as a punishment or as a substitute for a habilitation program. </s> "(iv) Prohibition on the excessive use of chemical restraints on such persons and the use of such restraints as punishment or as a substitute for a habilitation program or in quantities that interfere with services, treatment, or habilitation for such persons. </s> "(v) Permission for close relatives of such persons to visit them at reasonable hours without prior notice. </s> "(vi) Compliance with adequate fire and safety standards as may be promulgated by the Secretary. </s> "(4) All programs for persons with developmental disabilities should [451 U.S. 1, 39] meet standards which are designed to assure the most favorable possible outcome for those served, and - </s> "(A) in the case of residential programs serving persons in need of comprehensive health-related, habilitative, or rehabilitative services, which are at least equivalent to those standards applicable to intermediate care facilities for the mentally retarded promulgated in regulations of the Secretary . . . as appropriate when taking into account the size of the institutions and the service delivery arrangements of the facilities of the programs; </s> "(B) in the case of other residential programs for persons with developmental disabilities, which assure that care is appropriate to the needs of the persons being served by such programs, assure that the persons admitted to facilities of such programs are persons whose needs can be met through services provided by such facilities, and assure that the facilities under such programs provided for the humane care of the residents of the facilities, are sanitary, and protect their rights; and </s> "(C) in the case of nonresidential programs, which assure the care provided by such programs is appropriate to the persons served by the programs." </s> Section 6010 was amended in 1978 to add the following concluding paragraph: </s> "The rights of persons with developmental disabilities described in findings made in this section are in addition to any constitutional or other rights otherwise afforded to all persons." Pub. L. 95-602, 507, 92 Stat. 3007. </s> [Footnote 7 There is nothing "curious" as the Court suggests about coming to a different conclusion about the applicability of 6011 to Pennhurst. Section 6063 (b) (5) (B) requires that the plan must provide that services are provided in an individualized manner consistent with the requirements of 6011 relating to habilitation plans. Section 6011 requires that when any specific program in a State, including any program of an agency, facility or project, receives funds from the State's allotment, it will have in effect individualized plans for habilitation of each individual receiving services under that program. The section goes on to specify in detail how such individualized plans shall be formulated and how they are to be carried [451 U.S. 1, 42] out and monitored. The Court asserts that Pennhurst has not been receiving federal funds under the Act, which means, I take it, that Pennhurst has not received funds from the State's allocation under the Act. In that event, I would not think that 6011 would apply to Pennhurst residents. But Pennhurst is part of the State's overall program, and the State has presented a plan and received federal funds to support its developmentally disabled program throughout the State. It must, therefore, observe the 6010 rights of the developmentally disabled in state institutions, including Pennhurst. </s> [Footnote 8 See, e. g., 121 Cong. Rec. 9976 (1975) (remarks of Cong. Rogers) (percentage requirement would assist in overcoming misuse of facilities caused by tendency of States to resort to institutionalization); ibid. (remarks of Cong. Carter) (treatment "should be conducted in that person's community without unnecessarily institutionalizing him"). </s> It is clear that the House was concerned with many of the same factors which informed the Senate's detailed provision which ultimately lead to the genesis of 6010. The Court's narrow reading of the House bill is not convincing. To the extent that the House bill did not have an analogue to 6010, comments on the bill are necessarily irrelevant to the question of the intended effect of 6010. </s> [Footnote 9 See, e. g., 121 Cong. Rec. 16518 (1975) (remarks of Sen. Javits) ("The shocking conditions at Willowbrook in New York, and many other institutions for the mentally retarded throughout the Nation which inspired the bill of rights have not ended"); id., at 16521 (remarks of Sen. Schweiker) ("The last 5 years have seen a dramatic increase in public awareness of the needs of institutionalized mentally retarded and developmentally disabled persons. This has been highlighted by scandals in many institutions, by court cases, and by the efforts of the communications media"); id., at 16516 (remarks of Sen. Williams) ("Over the past few years, the horrifying conditions which exist in most of the public residential institutions for the mentally retarded . . . have provided shocking testimony to the inhuman way we care for such persons. The conditions at . . . [the] institutions have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that the treatment of these individuals is worse then [sic] all of us would like to admit"). </s> [Footnote 10 For example, Senator Javits stated that the Bill of Rights section, an integral part of the legislation, would "establish minimum standards for residential and community facilities and agencies for the protection of the rights of those individuals needing services, while at the same time, encouraging deinstitutionalization and normalization." Id., at 16518. In conclusion, Senator Javits identified a number of concerns shared by many of the legislators speaking on the Senate bill: </s> "Progress toward recognition of the basic human and civil rights of the mentally retarded and other developmentally disabled persons has been slow. The Federal Government has largely abrogated its responsibility in this regard and recently the greatest initiatives have come from our courts. . . . </s> "Congress should reaffirm its belief in equal rights for all citizens [451 U.S. 1, 44] - including the developmentally disabled. Congress should provide the leadership to change the tragic warehousing of human beings that has been the product of insensitive Federal support of facilities providing inhumane care and treatment of the mentally retarded. The bill of rights of S. 462 represents this new direction, and begins this reaffirmation." Id., at 16519. </s> See id., at 16520 (remarks of Sen. Cranston) (Senate bill enunciated basic goal of moving away from "long-term institutionalization of individuals with developmental disabilities to the development of community-based programs utilizing all community resources related to treatment or habilitation of such individuals to provide comprehensive services in the home community"). </s> [Footnote 11 See, e. g., id., at 16522 (remarks of Sen. Schweiker) ("It is now time to provide alternatives to locking persons up in institutions"); id., at 16520 (remarks of Sen. Cranston) ("[I]n encouraging the movement to community-based programs, I recognize that the need for some long-term residential programs will remain. The bill specifically provides that where institutional programs are appropriate, adequate support should be planned for them so that necessary treatment and habilitation programs can be given residential patients to develop their full potential"); id., at 16516 (remarks of Sen. Stafford) (the Bill of Rights will "assist in the protection of the rights guaranteed under our Constitution for those individuals that will require institutionalization . . ."). </s> [Footnote 12 Prior to final passage, Congressman Rogers stated that the revised Title II included a "brief statement of the rights of the developmentally disabled to appropriate treatment and care," which constituted "modest requirements." Id., at 29309 (emphasis added). Senator Javits was more dramatic in announcing the purpose of Title II as creating a clear federal policy in favor of a right to treatment. "This `Bill of Rights' explicitly recognizes that the Federal Government and the States have an obligation to assure that public funds are not provided to institutions or other residential programs" that do not provide adequate treatment. Id., at 29820. See also id., at 29818 (remarks of Sen. Randolph) (compromise reorganized Title II of the Senate bill "in order to reflect the essential elements which are necessary for continued improvement in the quality of care and habilitation of developmentally disabled persons in residential and community facilities"); id., at 29821 (remarks of Sen. Williams) (the compromise establishes for the first time in federal law a "basic statement" of the rights of the developmentally disabled and the Act "will assure that funds under the act will be used by the States to assist them in the deinstitutionalization process"). </s> [Footnote 13 The Act also required the Secretary to review and evaluate the quality standards under various statutes and to report to the Congress on any proposed changes. See Pub. L. 94-103, 204, 89 Stat. 504. When the Secretary's recommendations were presented, the House took no steps to enact them into law, again demonstrating legislative unwillingness to adopt detailed uniform standards. See Developmental Disabilities Act Amendments of 1978: Hearings on H. R. 11764 before the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 95th Cong., 2d Sess., 471-475 (1978). Congress did determine, however, to amend 6063 to expressly require a State to provide assurance to the Secretary of its plan to comply with 6010. See 42 U.S.C. 6063 (b) (5) (C) (1976 ed., Supp. III). </s> [Footnote 14 None of the cases cited by the Court suggest, much less hold, that Congress is required to condition its grant of funds with contract-like exactitude. In Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297 (1980), the Court held that there was no evidence in the statute or in the legislative history, that Congress intended the States to assume the full costs of funding abortions once the federal funds were withheld under the Hyde Amendment. Here, there is explicit recognition in the statute and in the legislative history that Congress intended the States to provide the developmentally disabled with adequate treatment in the least restrictive environment consistent with their medical needs. The other cases cited by the Court involved situations where the Court held that Congress must indicate that it intended the States to have waived fundamental constitutional rights merely by participating in a federal program. See Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651 (1974) (Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity); Employees v. Department of Public Health, 411 U.S. 279, 285 (1973) (same). The Eleventh Amendment concerns are not implicated in these cases, and the citation of Edelman and Employees is thus unpersuasive. </s> [Footnote 15 The Secretary has recently announced the Department's view that the rights enunciated by 6010 must now be addressed by participating state plans as a result of the 1978 amendments. The explanation of the proposed rulemaking provided as follows: </s> "No authority was included in that Act to allow the Department to withhold funds from States on the basis of failure to meet the findings. </s> "The 1978 amendments, however, added a requirement to the basic State grant program that the State assure the Secretary that the rights of developmentally disabled people are to be protected consistent with [ 6010]. The Department has decided to require that all programs authorized under the Act, except for the protection and advocacy systems, comply with [ 6010] of the Act. The protection and advocacy systems are exempted because they are an extension of the `Rights' provisions and the systems do not provide services, treatment or habilitation. The Department believes that applying this policy to the other programs is within the intent of Congress. Recipients of funds under the Act are to assure the State and the Commissioner that they will provide services which comply with the requirements of [ 6010]. Failure to comply with the assurance may result in the loss of Federal funds." 45 Fed. Reg. 31006 (1980). </s> [451 U.S. 1, 56]

United States Supreme Court PATTON v. YOUNT(1984) No. 83-95 Argued: February 28, 1984Decided: June 26, 1984 </s> After a jury trial in a Pennsylvania state court in 1966, respondent was convicted of first-degree murder and rape, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. However, on direct appeal the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that the police had violated respondent's constitutional rights in securing confessions that had been admitted in evidence, and remanded the case for a new trial. Before and during an extensive voir dire examination of potential jurors at the second trial in 1970, respondent moved for a change of venue, arguing that publicity concerning the case had resulted in dissemination of prejudicial information that could not be eradicated from the potential jurors' minds. The trial court denied the motions, and respondent was convicted again of first-degree murder. He was resentenced to life imprisonment, and the trial court denied a motion for a new trial, finding that practically no publicity had been given to the case between the two trials, that little public interest was shown during the second trial, and that the jury was without bias. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and the trial court's findings. Respondent then sought habeas corpus relief in Federal District Court, claiming that his conviction had been obtained in violation of his right under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to a fair trial by an impartial jury. Upholding the state trial court's view that the jury was impartial, the District Court denied relief, but the Court of Appeals reversed. Relying primarily on Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717 , the court found that pretrial publicity had made a fair trial impossible in the county. </s> Held: </s> 1. The voir dire testimony and the record of publicity do not reveal the kind of "wave of public passion" that would have made a fair trial unlikely by the empaneled jury as a whole. Although Irvin v. Dowd, supra, held that adverse publicity can create such a presumption of prejudice in a community that the jurors' claims that they can be impartial should not be believed, it also recognized that the trial court's findings of impartiality may be overturned only for "manifest error." In this case, the extensive adverse publicity and the community's sense of outrage were at their height prior to respondent's first trial. The record shows that prejudicial publicity was greatly diminished and community sentiment [467 U.S. 1025, 1026] had softened when the jury for the second trial was selected four years later. Thus the trial court did not commit manifest error in finding that the jury as a whole was impartial. Potential jurors who had retained fixed opinions as to respondent's guilt were disqualified, and the fact that the great majority of veniremen "remembered the case," without more, is essentially irrelevant. The relevant question is whether the jurors at respondent's second trial had such fixed opinions that they could not judge impartially respondent's guilt. The passage of time between the first and second trials clearly rebutted any presumption of partiality or prejudice that existed at the time of the initial trial. Pp. 1031-1035. </s> 2. There is no merit in respondent's argument that one of the selected jurors, as well as the two alternates, had been erroneously seated over his challenges for cause. The ambiguity in the testimony of the cited jurors was insufficient to overcome the presumption of correctness, under 28 U.S.C. 2254(d), owed to the trial court's findings. The question of an individual juror's partiality is plainly one of historical fact, and there is fair support in the record for the state courts' conclusion that the jurors here would be impartial. Pp. 1036-1040. </s> 710 F.2d 956, reversed. </s> POWELL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and WHITE, BLACKMUN, REHNQUIST, and O'CONNOR, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN, J., joined, post, p. 1040. MARSHALL, J., took no part in the decision of the case. </s> F. Cortez Bell III argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the brief was Thomas F. Morgan. </s> George E. Schumacher, by appointment of the Court, 464 U.S. 980 , argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Thomas S. White and James V. Wade. </s> JUSTICE POWELL delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> This case brings before us a claim that pretrial publicity so infected a state criminal trial as to deny the defendant his Sixth Amendment right to an "impartial jury." </s> I </s> On April 28, 1966, the body of Pamela Rimer, an 18-year-old high school student, was found in a wooded area near her home in Luthersburg, Clearfield County, Pa. There were [467 U.S. 1025, 1027] numerous wounds about her head and cuts on her throat and neck. An autopsy revealed that she died of strangulation when blood from her wounds was drawn into her lungs. The autopsy showed no indication that she had been sexually assaulted. </s> At about 5:45 the following morning, respondent Yount appeared at the State Police Substation in nearby DuBois. Yount, who had been the victim's high school mathematics teacher, proceeded to give the police oral and written confessions to the murder. The police refused to release the confession to the press, and it was not published until after it was read at Yount's arraignment three days later. Record, Ex. P-1-a, P-1-d. At his trial in 1966, the confessions were admitted into evidence. Yount took the stand and claimed temporary insanity. The jury convicted him of first-degree murder and rape, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. On direct appeal the Pennsylvania Supreme Court determined that under Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), police had given Yount inadequate notice of his right to an attorney prior to his confession. The court remanded for a new trial. Commonwealth v. Yount, 435 Pa. 276, 256 A. 2d 464 (1969), cert. denied, 397 U.S. 925 (1970). </s> Prior to the second trial in 1970, the trial court ordered suppression of Yount's written confessions and that portion of the oral confession that was obtained after he was legally in custody. The prosecution dismissed the rape charge. There followed an extensive voir dire that is now at the heart of this case. Jury selection began on November 4, 1970, and took 10 days, 7 jury panels, 292 veniremen, and 1,186 pages of testimony. Yount moved for a change of venue before, and several times during, the voir dire. He argued that the widespread dissemination of prejudicial information could not be eradicated from the minds of potential jurors, and cited in support the difficulty of the voir dire and numerous newspaper and other articles about the case. The motions were denied. The trial court noted that the articles merely reported [467 U.S. 1025, 1028] events without editorial comment; that the length of the voir dire resulted in part from the court's leniency in allowing examinations and challenges of the jurors; that "almost all, if not all," the jurors seated had "no prior or present fixed opinion"; and that there had been "little, if any, talk in public" between the two trials. The court also observed that the voir dire of the second trial had been sparsely attended. </s> Ultimately, 12 jurors and 2 alternates were seated. At the second trial, Yount did not take the stand and did not claim temporary insanity. Instead he relied upon cross-examination and character witnesses in an attempt to undermine the State's proof of his intent. The jury convicted him again of first-degree murder, and he was resentenced to life imprisonment. The trial court denied a motion for a new trial, finding that practically no publicity had been given to the case between the two trials, and that little public interest was shown during the second trial. App. 268a. In addition, the court concluded that the jury was without bias. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and the trial court's findings. Commonwealth v. Yount, 455 Pa. 303, 311-314, 314 A. 2d 242, 247-248 (1974). </s> In January 1981, Yount filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in United States District Court. He claimed, inter alia, that his conviction had been obtained in violation of his Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment right to a fair trial by an impartial jury. The case was assigned to a Magistrate, who conducted a hearing and recommended that the petition be granted. The District Court rejected the Magistrate's recommendation. 537 F. Supp. 873 (WD Pa. 1982). It held that the pretrial publicity was not vicious, excessive, nor officially sponsored, and that the jurors were able to set aside any preconceived notions of guilt. It noted that the percentage of jurors excused for cause was "not remarkable to anyone familiar with the difficulty in selecting a homicide jury in Pennsylvania." Id., at 882. In addition, the court reviewed [467 U.S. 1025, 1029] the instances in which the state trial court had denied a challenge for cause, and upheld the trial court's view that the jury was impartial. </s> The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed. 710 F.2d 956 (1983). The court relied primarily on the analysis set out in Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717 (1961), and found that pretrial publicity had made a fair trial impossible in Clearfield County. It independently examined the nature of the publicity surrounding the second trial, the testimony at voir dire of the venire as a whole, and the voir dire testimony of the jurors eventually seated. The publicity revealed Yount's prior conviction for murder, his confession, and his prior plea of temporary insanity, information not admitted into evidence at trial. 1 The voir dire showed that all but 2 of 163 veniremen questioned about the case 2 had heard of it, and that, 126, or 77%, admitted they would carry an opinion into the jury box. This was a higher percentage than in Irvin, where 62% of the 430 veniremen were dismissed for cause because they had fixed opinions concerning the petitioner's guilt. Finally, the Court of Appeals found that 8 of the 14 jurors and alternates actually seated admitted that at [467 U.S. 1025, 1030] some time they had formed an opinion as to Yount's guilt. 3 The court thought that many of the jurors had given equivocal responses when asked whether they could set aside these opinions, and that one juror, a Mr. Hrin, and both alternates would have required evidence to overcome their beliefs. The court concluded that "despite their assurances of impartiality, the jurors could not set aside their opinions and render a verdict based solely on the evidence presented." 710 F.2d, at 972. 4 </s> Judge Garth concurred in the judgment. He declined to join the court's view that actual prejudice on the part of the jury might be inferred from pretrial publicity and the answers at voir dire of veniremen not selected for the jury. He wrote that "[a] thorough and skillfully conducted voir dire should be adequate to identify juror bias, even in a community saturated with publicity adverse to the defendant." Id., at 979. 5 Judge Garth nevertheless concurred because in his view juror Hrin stated at voir dire that he would have required evidence to change his mind about Yount's [467 U.S. 1025, 1031] guilt. This stripped the defendant of the presumption of innocence. 6 </s> We granted certiorari, 464 U.S. 913 (1983), to consider, in the context of this case, the problem of pervasive media publicity that now arises so frequently in the trial of sensational criminal cases. We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals. </s> II </s> As noted, the Court of Appeals rested its decision that the jury was not impartial on this Court's decision in Irvin v. Dowd, supra. That decision, a leading one at the time, held that adverse pretrial publicity can create such a presumption of prejudice in a community that the jurors' claims that they can be impartial should not be believed. The Court in Irvin reviewed a number of factors in determining whether the totality of the circumstances raised such a presumption. The Court noted, however, that the trial court's findings of impartiality might be overturned only for "manifest error." 366 U.S., at 723 . The Court of Appeals in this case did not address this aspect of the Irvin decision. 7 Moreover, the [467 U.S. 1025, 1032] court below, in concentrating on the factors discussed at length in Irvin, failed to give adequate weight to other significant circumstances in this case. In Irvin, the Court observed that it was during the six or seven months immediately preceding trial that "a barrage of newspaper headlines, articles, cartoons and pictures was unleashed against [the defendant]." Id., at 725. In this case, the extensive adverse publicity and the community's sense of outrage were at their height prior to Yount's first trial in 1966. The jury selection for Yount's second trial, at issue here, did not occur until four years later, at a time when prejudicial publicity was greatly diminished and community sentiment had softened. In these circumstances, we hold that the trial court did not commit manifest error in finding that the jury as a whole was impartial. </s> The record reveals that in the year and a half from the reversal of the first conviction to the start of the second voir dire each of the two Clearfield County daily newspapers published an average of less than one article per month. App. 642a-657a; Record, Ex. P-1-v to P-1-kk, P-2. More important, many of these were extremely brief announcements of the trial dates and scheduling such as are common in rural newspapers. E. g., App. 653a-656a; Record, Ex. P-1-ff, P-1-ii, P-1-jj. The transcript of the voir dire contains numerous references to the sparse publicity and minimal public interest prior to the second trial. E. g., App. 43a, 98a, 100a; Tr. (Nov. 4, 1970) 27-28, 90, 191, 384, 771, 829, 1142. It is true that during the voir dire the newspapers published articles on an almost daily basis, but these too were purely factual articles generally discussing not the crime or prior prosecution, but the prolonged process of jury selection. App. 658a-671a. In short, the record of publicity in the [467 U.S. 1025, 1033] months preceding, and at the time of, the second trial does not reveal the "barrage of inflammatory publicity immediately prior to trial," Murphy v. Florida, 421 U.S. 794, 798 (1975), amounting to a "huge . . . wave of public passion," Irvin, 366 U.S., at 728 , that the Court found in Irvin. </s> The voir dire testimony revealed that this lapse in time had a profound effect on the community and, more important, on the jury, in softening or effacing opinion. Many veniremen, of course, simply had let the details of the case slip from their minds. E. g., App. 194a; Tr. 33, 284, 541-544, 991. In addition, while it is true that a number of jurors and veniremen testified that at one time they had held opinions, for many, time had weakened or eliminated any conviction they had had. See, e. g., App. 98a-100a (juror number 7), 128a (juror number 8); Tr. 384-385, 398-399, 831, 897 (semble), 1075-1076, 1144; see also App. 164a-166a (juror number 10). 8 </s> [467 U.S. 1025, 1034] The same is true of the testimony of the jurors and veniremen who were seated late in the process and therefore were subjected to some of the articles and broadcasts disseminated daily during the voir dire: 9 the record suggests that their passions had not been inflamed nor their thoughts biased by the publicity. E. g., id., at 176a-177a, 150a-151a; Tr. 771, 959, 1027. </s> That time soothes and erases is a perfectly natural phenomenon, familiar to all. See Irvin v. Dowd, 271 F.2d 552, 561 (CA7 1959) (Duffy, J., dissenting) (A continuance should have been granted because "[t]he passage of time is a great healer," and public prejudice might have "subsid[ed]"), rev'd, 366 U.S. 717 (1961); see also Murphy, supra, at 802; Beck v. Washington, 369 U.S. 541, 556 (1962). Not all members of the venire had put aside earlier prejudice, as the voir dire disclosed. They retained their fixed opinions, and were disqualified. But the testimony suggests that the voir dire resulted in selecting those who had forgotten or would need to be persuaded again. 10 </s> [467 U.S. 1025, 1035] </s> The Court of Appeals below thought that the fact that the great majority of veniremen "remembered the case" showed that time had not served "to erase highly unfavorable publicity from the memory of [the] community." 710 F.2d, at 969. This conclusion, without more, is essentially irrelevant. The relevant question is not whether the community remembered the case, but whether the jurors at Yount's trial had such fixed opinions that they could not judge impartially the guilt of the defendant. Irvin, 366 U.S., at 723 . It is not unusual that one's recollection of the fact that a notorious crime was committed lingers long after the feelings of revulsion that create prejudice have passed. It would be fruitless to attempt to identify any particular lapse of time that in itself would distinguish the situation that existed in Irvin. 11 But it is clear that the passage of time between a first and a second trial can be a highly relevant fact. In the circumstances of this case, we hold that it clearly rebuts any presumption of partiality or prejudice that existed at the time of the initial trial. There was fair, even abundant, support for the trial court's findings that between the two trials of this case there had been "practically no publicity given to this matter through the news media," and that there had not been "any great effect created by any publicity." App. 268a, 265a. [467 U.S. 1025, 1036] </s> III </s> Yount briefly argues here that juror Hrin, as well as the two alternates, were erroneously seated over his challenges for cause. Brief for Respondent 32. There is substantial doubt whether Yount properly raised in his petition for habeas corpus the claim that the trial court erroneously denied his challenge for cause to juror Hrin. Compare 710 F.2d, at 966, n. 18, with id., at 977, and n. 4 (Garth, J., concurring). And there is no evidence that the alternate jurors, who did not sit in judgment, actually talked with the other jurors during the 4-day trial. But Judge Garth in the court below based his concurrence on the view that Hrin would have required Yount to produce evidence to overcome his inclination to think the accused was guilty, and the majority of the panel thought that the 4-day association between the alternates and the other jurors "operate[d] to subvert the requirement that the jury's verdict be based on evidence developed from the witness stand," id., at 971, n. 25. Therefore, we will consider briefly the claims as to all three jurors. </s> It was the view of all three Court of Appeals judges that the question whether jurors have opinions that disqualify them is a mixed question of law and fact. See id., at 968, n. 20, 981. Thus, they concluded that the presumption of correctness due a state court's factual findings under 28 U.S.C. 2254(d) does not apply. The opinions below relied for this proposition on Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S., at 723 . Irvin addressed the partiality of the trial jury as a whole, a question we discuss in Part II, supra. We do not think its analysis can be extended to a federal habeas corpus case in which the partiality of an individual juror is placed in issue. That question is not one of mixed law and fact. Rather it is plainly one of historical fact: did a juror swear that he could set aside any opinion he might hold and decide the case on the evidence, and should the juror's protestation of impartiality have been believed. Cf. Rushen v. Spain, 464 U.S. 114 , [467 U.S. 1025, 1037] 120 (1983) (state-court determination that juror's deliberations were not biased by ex parte communications is a finding of fact). 12 </s> [467 U.S. 1025, 1038] </s> There are good reasons to apply the statutory presumption of correctness to the trial court's resolution of these questions. First, the determination has been made only after an often extended voir dire proceeding designed specifically to identify biased veniremen. It is fair to assume that the method we have relied on since the beginning, e. g., United States v. Burr, 25 F. Cas. 49, 51 (No. 14,692g) (CC Va. 1807) (Marshall, C. J.), usually identifies bias. 13 Second, the determination is essentially one of credibility, and therefore largely one of demeanor. As we have said on numerous occasions, the trial court's resolution of such questions is entitled, even on direct appeal, to "special deference." E. g., Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of U.S., Inc., 466 U.S. 485, 500 (1984). The respect paid such findings in a habeas proceeding certainly should be no less. See Marshall v. Lonberger, 459 U.S. 422, 434 -435 (1983). 14 </s> Thus the question is whether there is fair support in the record for the state courts' conclusion that the jurors here would be impartial. See 28 U.S.C. 2254(d)(8). The testimony [467 U.S. 1025, 1039] of each of the three challenged jurors is ambiguous and at times contradictory. This is not unusual on voir dire examination, particularly in a highly publicized criminal case. It is well to remember that the lay persons on the panel may never have been subjected to the type of leading questions and cross-examination tactics that frequently are employed, and that were evident in this case. Prospective jurors represent a cross section of the community, and their education and experience vary widely. Also, unlike witnesses, prospective jurors have had no briefing by lawyers prior to taking the stand. Jurors thus cannot be expected invariably to express themselves carefully or even consistently. Every trial judge understands this, and under our system it is that judge who is best situated to determine competency to serve impartially. The trial judge properly may choose to believe those statements that were the most fully articulated or that appeared to have been least influenced by leading. </s> The voir dire examination of juror Hrin was carefully scrutinized by the state courts and the Federal District Court, as he was challenged for cause and was a member of the jury that convicted the defendant. We think that the trial judge's decision to seat Hrin, despite early ambiguity in his testimony, was confirmed after he initially denied the challenge. Defense counsel sought and obtained permission to resume cross-examination. In response to a question whether Hrin could set his opinion aside before entering the jury box or would need evidence to change his mind, the juror clearly and forthrightly stated: "I think I could enter it [the jury box] with a very open mind. I think I could . . . very easily. To say this is a requirement for some of the things you have to do every day." App. 89a. After this categorical answer, defense counsel did not renew their challenge for cause. Similarly, in the case of alternate juror Pyott, we cannot fault the trial judge for crediting her earliest testimony, in which she said that she could put her opinion aside "[i]f [she] had to," rather than the later testimony in [467 U.S. 1025, 1040] which defense counsel persuaded her that logically she would need evidence to discard any opinion she might have. Id., at 246a, 250a-252a. Alternate juror Chincharick's testimony is the most ambiguous, as he appears simply to have answered "yes" to almost any question put to him. It is here that the federal court's deference must operate, for while the cold record arouses some concern, only the trial judge could tell which of these answers was said with the greatest comprehension and certainty. </s> IV </s> We conclude that the voir dire testimony and the record of publicity do not reveal the kind of "wave of public passion" that would have made a fair trial unlikely by the jury that was empaneled as a whole. We also conclude that the ambiguity in the testimony of the cited jurors who were challenged for cause is insufficient to overcome the presumption of correctness owed to the trial court's findings. We therefore reverse. </s> It is so ordered. </s> JUSTICE MARSHALL took no part in the decision of this case. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 The Court of Appeals rejected as without fair support in the record the trial court's conclusion that there was practically no publicity given to the case between the first and second trials. See 710 F.2d 956, 969, n. 21 (1983). The federal court suggested that the record on habeas of the publicity after the first trial and during the second was more complete than the record considered by the trial court. Ibid. </s> The Court of Appeals also suggested that the trial court's view that there was little talk in public concerning the second trial was undermined by the voir dire testimony that there had been public discussion of the case, particularly in the last weeks before retrial. Id., at 969, n. 22. The court discounted, as of limited significance, the trial court's point that few spectators had attended the trial, since Yount did not allege prejudice arising from the "circus atmosphere'" in the courtroom. Ibid. </s> [Footnote 2 One hundred twenty-five of the original 292 veniremen were excused because they had not been chosen properly. Four others were dismissed for cause before they were questioned on the case. </s> [Footnote 3 The Court of Appeals noted that in Irvin 8 of 12 jurors had formed opinions of guilt. </s> [Footnote 4 Judge Stern wrote a separate concurring opinion in which he suggested that the "constitutional standard which for 175 years has guided the lower courts" in this area be rejected. 710 F.2d, at 972. Rather than hinge disqualification of a juror on whether he has a fixed opinion of guilt that he cannot lay aside, Judge Stern would bar any juror who admitted any opinion as to guilt. Moreover, no jury could be empaneled where more than 25% of the veniremen state that they held an opinion concerning the defendant's guilt. This would raise such doubts as to the sincerity of those who claimed no opinion as to suggest concealed bias, Judge Stern wrote. </s> [Footnote 5 Judge Garth thought Irvin was distinguishable, because there "the trial court (which itself questioned the jurors challenged for cause) did not engage in a searching and thorough voir dire." 710 F.2d, at 979. Rather, it merely credited the jurors' subjective opinions that each could render an impartial verdict notwithstanding his or her opinion. Judge Garth also noted that Yount challenged for cause only three of the actual jurors. In Irvin, the defendant challenged each of his 12 jurors for cause. Irvin v. Dowd, 359 U.S. 394, 398 (1959). </s> [Footnote 6 Judge Garth stated that whether juror Hrin was unconstitutionally biased was a mixed question of law and fact under Irvin. 710 F.2d, at 981. He therefore did not apply the presumption of correctness that is applicable to the factual findings of a state court in a federal habeas corpus proceeding, 28 U.S.C. 2254(d). </s> [Footnote 7 The Court of Appeals appears to have thought that two statements in Irvin - that a federal court must "independently evaluate" the voir dire testimony, and that the question of juror partiality is a mixed question of law and fact, 366 U.S., at 723 - meant that there is no presumption of correctness owed to the trial court's finding that a jury as a whole is impartial. We note that Irvin was decided five years before Congress added to the habeas corpus statute an explicit presumption of correctness for state-court factual findings, see Pub. L. 89-711, 80 Stat. 1105-1106, and two years before this Court's opinion in Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293 (1963), provided the guidelines that were later codified. It may be that there is little practical difference between the Irvin "manifest error" standard and the "fairly supported by the record" standard of the amended habeas statute. See 28 U.S.C. 2254(d). In any case, we do not think the [467 U.S. 1025, 1032] habeas standard is any less stringent. Since we uphold the state court's findings in this case under Irvin "manifest error" standard, we do not need to determine whether the subsequent development of the law of habeas corpus might have required a different analysis or result in that case. </s> [Footnote 8 The testimony of juror number 7, Martin Karetski, during examination by defense counsel is illustrative: </s> "Q. You have heard the matter discussed over the years? </s> "A. In the past few years I haven't heard too much about it. </s> "Q. In 1966 when the matter came up before you knew about it then? </s> "A. Yes sir. </s> "Q. And just recently when this matter was coming up again, I presume? </s> "A. What I have read in the paper again. </s> "Q. And you have heard other people discuss it? </s> "A. Not too many so far. </s> "Q. You have heard other people express opinions about it? </s> "A. Not too many of those so far too. </s> "Q. Back around '66, did you? </s> "A. Yes in '66. </s> . . . . . [467 U.S. 1025, 1034] </s> "Q. . . . I assume you had an opinion as to [Mr. Yount's] guilt or innocence [in 1966]? </s> "A. I had an opinion yes. </s> "Q. Do you have a opinion today as to his guilt or innocence? </s> "A. It's been a long time ago and I'm not sure now. It was in the paper he plead [sic] not guilty. </s> . . . . . </s> "Q. Let me ask you this then. In case you do have an opinion, could you wipe it out of your mind - erase it out of your mind before you would take a seat in the jury box and hear whatever evidence you might hear? </s> "A. As it is right now I have no opinion now - four or five years ago I probably did but right now I don't. </s> . . . . . </s> "Q. What happened Mr. Karetski, between then and now to eliminate that opinion if you can tell me? </s> "A. Well, as far as I'm concerned there wasn't much in the paper about it and it sort of slipped away from thought." App. 98a-100a. </s> [Footnote 9 Jurors were sequestered as they were chosen. </s> [Footnote 10 As noted, the voir dire in this case was particularly extensive. It took 10 days to pick 14 jurors from 292 veniremen. In Irvin it took 8 days to pick 14 jurors from 430 veniremen. </s> Contrary to Judge Garth's surmise, 710 F.2d, at 979, however, the voir dire interviews quoted in the petitioner's brief in Irvin do not appear to be significantly less probing than those here. See Brief for Petitioner in Irvin v. Dowd, O. T. 1960, No. 41, pp. 18-59. It should also be noted that the voir dire in Irvin, like that here, was conducted largely by counsel for [467 U.S. 1025, 1035] each side, rather than the judge. The only significant difference in the procedures followed here and in Irvin is that the veniremen here were brought into the courtroom alone for questioning, while it appears that those in Irvin were questioned in front of all those remaining in the panel. This is not an insubstantial distinction, as the Court suggested in Irvin, 366 U.S., at 728 , but we do not find it controlling. </s> [Footnote 11 In Murphy v. Florida, 421 U.S. 794 (1975), the defendant - widely known as "Murph the Surf" - relied heavily on Irvin. The record of damaging publicity preceding his trial was at least as extreme as that in this case. Nevertheless, we found the record there distinguishable from Irvin. We noted that the extensive publication of news articles about Murphy largely had ceased some seven months before the jury was selected. 421 U.S., at 802 . Murphy involved a lapse in publicity prior to the defendant's first trial; there was no second trial in that case. </s> [Footnote 12 There are, of course, factual and legal questions to be considered in deciding whether a juror is qualified. The constitutional standard that a juror is impartial only if he can lay aside his opinion and render a verdict based on the evidence presented in court is a question of federal law, see Irvin, 366 U.S., at 723 ; whether a juror can in fact do that is a determination to which habeas courts owe special deference, see Rushen, 464 U.S., at 120 . Cf. Marshall v. Lonberger, 459 U.S. 422, 431 -432 (1983) (similar analysis as to whether a guilty plea was voluntary). See also Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 156 (1879) (whether a juror should be disqualified is a question involving both a legal standard and findings of fact; the latter may be set aside only for manifest error). </s> The dissent misreads the Court's opinion in Reynolds v. United States. Post, at 1050-1052, and nn. 6 and 7. Reynolds was decided some 87 years before the presumption of correctness for factual findings was added to 28 U.S.C. 2254. The Court clearly did not attach the same significance to the phrase "a question of mixed law and fact" that we do today under modern habeas law. It recognized that juror-disqualification questions may raise both a question of law - whether the correct standard was applied - and a question of fact. Whether an opinion expressed by a juror was such as to meet the legal standard for disqualification was viewed as a question of fact as to which deference was due to the trial court's determination. This is apparent from the language quoted by the dissent, which notes that while the question is one of "mixed law and fact," it is "to be tried, as far as the facts are concerned, like any other issue of that character, upon the evidence. The finding of the trial court upon that issue ought not to be set aside by a reviewing court, unless the error is manifest." 98 U.S., at 156 . Plainly, factual findings were to be considered separately from the legal standard applied, and deference was due to those findings. This is also apparent from the following passage: </s> "[T]he manner of the juror while testifying is oftentimes more indicative of the real character of his opinion than his words. That is seen below, but cannot always be spread upon the record. Care should, therefore, be taken in the reviewing court not to reverse the ruling below upon such a question of fact, except in a clear case." Id., at 156-157 (emphasis added). </s> Taken together, these passages plainly show that the "character of [a juror's] opinion" was considered a question of fact. Contrary to the suggestion of the dissent, post, at 1050, n. 6, the factual question was not limited [467 U.S. 1025, 1038] to whether the juror was telling the truth, but included discovering the "real character" of any opinion held. Deference was due to the trial court's conclusions on that question. </s> [Footnote 13 Accord, In re Application of National Broadcasting Co., 209 U.S. App. D.C. 354, 362, 653 F.2d 609, 617 (1981) ("[V]oir dire has long been recognized as an effective method of rooting out such bias, especially when conducted in a careful and thoroughgoing manner"); United States v. Duncan, 598 F.2d 839, 865 (CA4), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 871 (1979); Calley v. Callaway, 519 F.2d 184, 209, n. 45 (CA5 1975) (en banc) (citing cases), cert. denied sub nom. Calley v. Hoffman, 425 U.S. 911 (1976). But cf. Smith v. Phillips, 455 U.S. 209, 222 , and n. (1982) (O'CONNOR, J., concurring) (describing situations in which state procedures are inadequate to uncover bias); Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723 (1963) (same). </s> [Footnote 14 Demeanor plays a fundamental role not only in determining juror credibility, but also in simply understanding what a potential juror is saying. Any complicated voir dire calls upon lay persons to think and express themselves in unfamiliar terms, as a reading of any transcript of such a proceeding will reveal. Demeanor, inflection, the flow of the questions and answers can make confused and conflicting utterances comprehensible. </s> JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE BRENNAN joins, dissenting. </s> On page 1 of its opinion the Court carefully states certain facts that give the reader a strong feeling about how this case should be decided. In 1966, Jon Yount confessed that he was responsible for the brutal killing of an 18-year-old high school student. At his first trial in 1966 he testified that he had been temporarily insane at the time, but the jury did not believe him. He was found guilty of rape, as well as murder. These facts were not admissible in evidence at his second trial. What impact, if any, did these inadmissible facts have upon 12 jurors, the 2 alternate jurors, and indeed the trial judge, who listened to the evidence at Yount's second trial in 1970? The Court is satisfied that "community sentiment had [467 U.S. 1025, 1041] softened," ante, at 1032, and that the trial judge "did not commit manifest error in finding that the jury as a whole was impartial," ibid., because of the passage of time between 1966 and 1970, and because we all know that "time soothes and erases," ante, at 1034. </s> In order to explain why I disagree with the Court's assessment of the case, it is necessary to enlarge upon its summary of the news coverage of the crime and its aftermath, to supplement its discussion of the examination of the jurors, and to explain why the Court of Appeals properly rejected the trial judge's conclusion that the jury as a whole was impartial. Next, I will discuss my disagreement with the Court's conclusion regarding juror Hrin. Finally, I shall add a word about the more profound issue that a case of this kind raises. </s> I </s> Because the Court places such great emphasis on the fact that "this lapse in time had a profound effect on the community and, more important, on the jury, in softening or effacting opinion," ante, at 1033, it is important to note that there were, in effect, three chapters in the relevant news coverage: the stories about the crime itself and the first trial in 1966; the stories and events surrounding the State Supreme Court's reversal of the first conviction in 1969; and the stories that were published in 1970 immediately before the second trial began and while the jury was being selected. </s> The relevant events all occurred in Clearfield County, Pa., where both Yount and the victim lived. It is a rural county, with a population of about 70,000, served by two newspapers with a combined circulation of about 25,000. Not surprisingly, both newspapers gave front-page coverage to the homicide, the pretrial proceedings, and the trial itself. In numerous editions of the DuBois Courier Express, the newspaper carried banner headlines on the front page, news stories and feature articles. App. 520a-641a; Record, Ex. P-1-a, P-1-b, P-1-d, P-1-f to P-1-t. The Clearfield Progress evaluated the trial as the "Top News Story of [467 U.S. 1025, 1042] 1966." Record, Ex. P-2, p. 2. Both papers reported that public interest in the proceedings was "unprecedented." 710 F.2d 956, 962 (CA3 1983). Moreover, the case also received radio and television coverage, see, e. g., Tr. (Nov. 4, 1970) 64 (juror number 1), 142, 220, 277, and, according to the Court of Appeals, was publicized in out-of-state and national publications. 710 F.2d, at 962, n. 6. </s> The articles were extremely detailed. 1 As the Court of Appeals noted, they "related in full [Yount's] detailed written confessions as well as his testimony at trial retelling the homicide. They also detailed [Yount's] defense of temporary insanity, the charge and evidence of rape, and finally [Yount's] conviction on October 7, 1966, of both rape and first-degree murder." Id., at 963; see, e. g., App. 538a-540a, 603a-606a. As this Court notes, "the extensive adverse publicity and the community's sense of outrage were at their height prior to Yount's first trial in 1966," ante, at 1032. </s> In 1969, a divided Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reversed Yount's conviction and ordered a new trial. Commonwealth v. Yount, 435 Pa. 276, 256 A. 2d 464 (1969), cert. denied, 397 U.S. 925 (1970). This event did not pass unnoticed in Clearfield County. To the contrary, banner headlines announced the reversal. App. 642a; Record, Ex. P-1-v. The local press reprinted the entire dissenting opinion. App. 644a; Record, Ex. P-1-x. And, as the Court of Appeals stated, "a local radio program became a forum in [467 U.S. 1025, 1043] which callers expressed their hostility to [Yount]." 710 F.2d, at 963. This evidence contradicts the easy assumption that "community sentiment had softened," ante, at 1032. </s> In 1970, Yount was returned to Clearfield County for a retrial in the same courtroom before the same judge who had presided at the first trial - the judge whose erroneous rulings had made the second trial necessary. Yount moved for a change of venue on the ground that the continuing discussion of the case among local residents made it impossible for him to receive a fair trial in Clearfield County. In response the prosecutor argued that a change of venue would be pointless because the case had been so widely publicized throughout the State. The trial court denied the motion, explaining that the recent newspaper items had consisted of purely factual reporting "without editorial comment of any kin[d]." App. 260a. This venue ruling generated a front-page article. Id., at 654a; Record, Ex. P-1-gg. Additionally, during the subsequent voir dire, the selection of jurors merited numerous articles and sometimes merited a profile on the juror selected. App. 658a-659a, 661a-663a, 664a-671a; Record, Ex. P-1-II, P-1-nn to P-1-vv; P-2. </s> The voir dire testimony of one prospective juror, the wife of a minister, sheds a revelatory light on the character of local sentiment on the eve of the second trial. After acknowledging that she had heard many opinions about the case, she was asked: </s> "Q. Would your presence in serving as a juror create a difficulty in your parish? </s> "A. Why yes - when people heard my name on for this - countless people of the church have come to me and said they hoped I would take - the stand I would take in case I was called. I have had a prejudice built up from the people in the church. </s> "Q. Is this prejudice, has it been adverse to Mr. Yount? [467 U.S. 1025, 1044] </s> "A. Yes it was. They all say he had a fair trial and he got a fair sentence. He's lucky he didn't get the chair. </s> . . . . . </s> "[T]he church people - I haven't asked for any of this but they discuss it in every group - but they say now since you are chosen and you will be there we expect you to follow through. </s> "Q. Notwithstanding what the Court would tell you, you feel you would be subject to the retributions or retaliation of these people - </s> "A. I think I would hear about it." App. 25a-27a. </s> The minister's wife was excused. Her testimony, as well as that of other veniremen who were excused, not only repudiates the notion that the community had all but forgotten the Yount case, but also suggests that some veniremen might have been tempted to understate their recollection of the case because they felt they had a duty to their neighbors "to follow through." 2 In all events, the record clearly establishes that the case was still a "cause celebre" in Clearfield County in 1970. </s> II </s> Even if all the voir dire testimony is accepted at face value, it is difficult to understand how a neutral observer could conclude that the jury as a whole was impartial. Before referring to the 12 jurors and 2 alternates who were selected, it is useful to describe the attitude that pervaded the entire venire. </s> The jury selection took 10 days. Id., at 745a; 710 F.2d, at 963, 975. Out of an original total of 292 veniremen, the court dismissed 129 because they had been chosen improperly, Tr. 685-686, or had a valid reason for not serving. Id., at 117-118, 492, 1039, 1060-1061. Of the remaining 163 who [467 U.S. 1025, 1045] were questioned, all but 2 had read or heard about the case, id., at 127a-128a, 370a-371a (juror number 4); all but 42 were dismissed for cause. 710 F.2d, at 963. Of the 121 dismissed for cause, 96 testified that they had firm opinions that could not be changed regardless of what evidence might be presented. Twenty-one others testified that they could only change their opinion if Yount could convince them to do so. In addition, there were nine veniremen who were unsuccessfully challenged for cause who also testified that they had opinions that they could change only if Yount could convince them to do so. 3 Id., at 963-964. Thus, as Judge Hunter summarized for the Court of Appeals: </s> "When we combine those nine with the 117 veniremen dismissed for cause, we find that a total of 126 out of the 163 veniremen questioned on the case were willing to admit on voir dire that they would carry their opinion[s] into the jury box." 4 Id., at 964. </s> Turning to the jurors who were actually selected, Judge Hunter accurately noted that "the publicity had reached all but one of the twelve jurors and two alternates finally empanelled." Ibid. (footnote omitted); App. 32a, 43a, 71a, 83a, 98a, 120a, 149a, 163a, 176a, 193a, 210a, 235a, 250a. Juror number 1 noted that "it was pretty hard to be here in Clearfield County and not read something in the paper" about the case; that she had read newspaper stories and listened [467 U.S. 1025, 1046] to radio and television stories about the case; and that she had heard the case being discussed by other people. Id., at 32a. Juror number 2 testified that he had read about the case in the newspapers; that "[y]ou could hardly miss it on [radio and television] news"; and that he had formed an opinion about the case. Id., at 43a-44a. The person seated as juror number 3 5 stated that he had read about the case in the newspapers years before the voir dire but that he had not formed an opinion. Id., at 210a-211a. Juror number 4, a newcomer to the area, had never heard of the case. Id., at 57a-58a. Juror number 5 "remembered that they had said he was guilty before" and wondered why they were having another trial. Id., at 73a. James F. Hrin, juror number 6, testified that he had an opinion about the case and that he would require the presentation of evidence to change it. Id., at 83a, 85a. He noted that "[i]t's rather difficult to live in DuBois and get the paper and find out what people are talking about - at least the local . . . people without having some opinion or at least reserving some opinion." Id., at 88a. Juror number 7 stated that he had read about the case; that he had formed an opinion; and that he was not sure whether he still had an opinion. Id., at 98a-99a. Juror number 8 testified that she had heard others express opinions concerning the case and she only had an opinion "on just what he said himself - that he was guilty." Id., at 120a, 125a. Juror number 9 stated that she had felt that petitioner was guilty but that presently she would have to hear both sides before forming an opinion. Id., at 150a. Juror number 10 had heard people express their opinions and had on occasion expressed his own opinion about the case. He also stated that he would listen to both sides before forming a present opinion. Id., at 164a-165a. Juror number 11 testified that he had read newspaper accounts of the case but that he had [467 U.S. 1025, 1047] formed no opinion. Id., at 177a. Juror number 12 had read about the case but she had formed no opinion. Id., at 193a-194a. Two alternates were seated over Yount's challenges for cause. Alternate number 1 stated that he had heard people express opinions and ideas about the case; that he had expressed an opinion; that he still had a firm and fixed opinion based on what he read in the newspapers; and that he would require evidence to be presented before he could put his opinion out of his mind. Id., at 235a-240a. Alternate number 2 stated that she had formed a definite opinion and that she would require the production of evidence to change her mind. Id., at 251a-252a. </s> The totality of these circumstances convinces me that the trial judge committed manifest error in determining that the jury as a whole was impartial. The trial judge's comment that there was little talk in public about the second trial, id., at 264a, is plainly inconsistent with the evidence adduced during the voir dire. Similarly, the trial court's statement that "there was practically no publicity given to this matter through the news media . . . except to report that a new trial had been granted by the Supreme Court," id., at 268a, simply ignores at least 55 front-page articles that are in the record. Record, Ex. P-1, P-2. Further, the trial judge's statement that "almost all, if not all, [of the first 12] jurors . . . had no prior or present fixed opinion," App. 264a, is manifestly erroneous; a review of the record reveals that 5 of the 12 had acknowledged either a prior or a present opinion. Id., at 43a-44a, 83a, 98a-99a, 150a, 164a-165a. The trial judge's "practically no publicity" statement also ignores the first-trial details within the news stories. These included Yount's confessions, testimony, and conviction of rape - all of which were outside of the evidence presented at the second trial. See id., at 643a-644a, 650a, 655a; Record, Ex. P-1-w, P-1-x, P-1-z, P-1-cc, P-1-hh. Under these circumstances, I do not believe that the jury was capable of deciding the case solely on the evidence before it. Smith v. Phillips, [467 U.S. 1025, 1048] 455 U.S. 209, 217 (1982) ("Due process means a jury capable and willing to decide the case solely on the evidence before it"). </s> III </s> The Court today also rejects Yount's claim that juror Hrin was erroneously seated over his challenge for cause. Before explaining why I disagree with this conclusion, it is necessary to set forth a more complete version of Hrin's voir dire testimony than is set forth by the Court. </s> Hrin, in response to the prosecution's questioning, gave the following testimony: </s> "Q. Have you formed any opinion as to the guilt or innocence of Mr. Yount? </s> "A. To the degree that it was written up in the papers, yes. </s> "Q. Is this a fixed opinion on your part? </s> "A. This is sort of difficult to answer. Fixed? </s> "Q. Let me ask - if you were to be selected as a juror in this case and take the jury box, could you erase or remove the opinion you now hold and render a verdict based solely on the evidence and law produced at this trial? </s> "A. It is very possible. I wouldn't say for sure. </s> "Q. Do you think you could? </s> "A. I think I possibly could. </s> "Q. Then the opinion you hold is not necessarily a fixed and immobile opinion? </s> "A. I would say not, because I work at a job where I have to change my mind constantly. </s> "Q. Would you be able to change your mind regarding your opinion before becoming a juror in this case. </s> "A. If the facts were so presented I definitely could change my mind. </s> "Q. Would you say you could enter the jury box presuming him to be innocent? [467 U.S. 1025, 1049] </s> "A. It would be rather difficult for me to answer. </s> "Q. Can you enter the jury box with an open mind prepared to find your verdict on the evidence as presented at trial and the law . . . presented by the Judge? </s> "A. That I could do." App. 83a-84a. </s> Yount's counsel elicited further testimony through cross-examination: </s> "Q. Did I understand Mr. Hrin you would require some - you would . . . require evidence or something before you could change your opinion you now have? </s> "A. Definitely. If the facts show a difference from what I had originally - had been led to believe, I would definitely change my mind. </s> "Q. But until you're shown those facts, you would not change your mind - is that your position? </s> "A. Well - I have nothing else to go on. </s> "Q. I understand. Then the answer is yes - you would not change your mind until you were presented facts? </s> "A. Right, but I would enter it with an open mind. </s> "Q. In other words, you're saying that while facts were presented you would keep an open mind and after that you would feel free to change your mind? </s> "A. Definitely. </s> "Q. But you would not change your mind until the facts were presented? </s> "A. Right." Id., at 85a-86a. </s> Yount's counsel subsequently challenged for cause; the court denied the challenge because Hrin "said he could go in with an open mind." Id., at 86a. </s> First, even if we regard the relevant rulings as findings of fact, Hrin's testimony clearly is sufficient to overcome the presumption of correctness due a state court's factual findings under 28 U.S.C. 2254(d). The state court's determination is not fairly supported by the record. Hrin not only [467 U.S. 1025, 1050] indicated that he had a previous opinion as to Yount's guilt or innocence, but also that he required evidence produced at trial to dispel that opinion. Further, he stated - pursuant to the prosecution's questioning - that "[i]t would be rather difficult . . . to answer" whether he could enter the jury box presuming Yount's innocence. Under these circumstances, I am convinced that the trial court improperly empaneled Hrin. </s> More important, however, I believe the Court's analysis regarding whether a juror has a disqualifying opinion is flawed. The Court begins by stating that such a question is one of historical fact, ante, at 1036. It then concludes, simply, that this factual finding is entitled to 28 U.S.C. 2254(d)'s presumption of correctness. Finally, it acknowledges that "[t]here are, of course, factual and legal questions to be considered in deciding whether a juror is qualified," ante, at 1037, n. 12, and cites as one authority Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1879). 6 </s> [467 U.S. 1025, 1051] </s> Contrary to the Court, I believe that whether a juror has a disqualifying opinion is a mixed question of law and fact. The proper starting point of analysis is Reynolds v. United States, supra. In that case, the defendant excepted to the trial court's decision to reject several challenges for cause that were based on juror testimony during voir dire. Id., at 146-147. This Court upheld the trial court's decision. Id., at 157. Before reaching its ultimate conclusion, the Court stated: </s> "The theory of law is that a juror who has formed an opinion cannot be impartial. Every opinion which he may entertain need not necessarily have this effect. In these days of newspaper enterprise and universal education, every case of public interest is almost, as a matter of necessity, brought to the attention of all the intelligent people in the vicinity, and scarcely any one can be found among the best fitted for jurors who has not read or heard of it, and who has not some impression or some opinion in respect to its merits. It is clear, therefore, that upon the trial of the issue of fact raised by a challenge for such cause the court will practically be called upon to determine whether the nature and strength of the opinion formed are such as in law necessarily to raise the presumption of partiality. The question thus presented is one of mixed law and fact, and to be tried, as far as the facts are concerned, like any other issue of that [467 U.S. 1025, 1052] character, upon the evidence. The finding of the trial court upon that issue ought not to be set aside by a reviewing court, unless the error is manifest." Id., at 155-156. </s> Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717 (1961), extended Reynolds to habeas corpus proceedings. Initially, Irvin noted that a presumption of a prospective juror's impartiality is not rebutted "if the juror can lay aside his impression or opinion and render a verdict based on the evidence presented in court." 366 U.S., at 723 . Next, the Court affirmed that a proper inquiry may demonstrate "`whether the nature and strength of the opinion formed are such as in law necessarily . . . raise the presumption of partiality,'" ibid. (quoting Reynolds v. United States, supra, at 156), and that this inquiry is "`one of mixed law and fact.'" 366 U.S., at 723 . </s> Thus, Reynolds and Irvin teach that the question whether a juror has an opinion that disqualifies is a mixed one of law and fact. Therefore, one cannot apply the presumption of correctness found in 28 U.S.C. 2254(d) because the statutory language by definition applies only to the factual determinations of state courts. Applying the proper analytical framework, I believe that Hrin's testimony clearly raised a presumption of partiality. Therefore, the trial judge committed manifest error by improperly empaneling Hrin. 7 </s> There is a special reason to require independent review in a case that arouses the passions of the local community in which an elected judge is required to preside. Unlike an appointed federal judge with life tenure, an elected judge has reason to be concerned about the community's reaction to his [467 U.S. 1025, 1053] disposition of highly publicized cases. Even in the federal judiciary, some Circuits have determined that it is sound practice to have the retrial of a case assigned to a different judge than the one whose erroneous ruling made another trial necessary; for though the risk that a judge will subconsciously strive to vindicate the result reached at the first trial may be remote, as long as human beings preside at trials, that possibility cannot be ignored entirely. </s> IV </s> Two additional and somewhat disturbing questions merit comment: (1) why did this Court exercise its discretionary jurisdiction to review this case; and (2) even if the Court of Appeals' analysis of the case is entirely correct, why should those federal judges order the great writ of habeas corpus to issue for the benefit of a prisoner like Yount, who, it would seem, is guilty of a heinous offense? </s> The answer to the question why the Court grants certiorari in any given case usually involves considerations of both fact and law. It appears that the facts motivated the Court to select this case for plenary review. The facts that had such a motivating impact on this Court - that the conviction of a confessed murderer of a high school student had been set aside by an appellate court - also, I believe, must have had an emotional and unforgettable impact on the residents of Clearfield County. The desire to "follow through" - to do something about such an apparent miscarriage of justice - is difficult for judges as well as laymen to resist. 8 </s> It should not be forgotten that Yount has already been incarcerated for 18 years. If, as the Court of Appeals held, he [467 U.S. 1025, 1054] has not yet been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a fair trial, the possibility remains that he has already received a greater punishment than is warranted. Of much greater importance is our dedication to the principle that guilt or innocence of a criminal offense in our society is not to be decided by executive fiat or by popular vote. This is a principle that affords protection for every citizen in the United States. Justice Frankfurter stated this point in his concurrence in Irvin v. Dowd: </s> "More than one student of society has expressed the view that not the least significant test of the quality of a civilization is its treatment of those charged with crime, particularly with offenses which arouse the passions of a community. One of the rightful boasts of Western civilization is that the State has the burden of establishing guilt solely on the basis of evidence produced in court and under circumstances assuring an accused all the safeguards of a fair procedure. These rudimentary conditions for determining guilt are inevitably wanting if the jury which is to sit in judgment on a fellow human being comes to its task with its mind ineradicably poisoned against him." 366 U.S., at 729 . </s> I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. </s> [Footnote 1 The "details" of the articles prompted two citizens to write letters to the Courier Express. One letter complained that the paper had "fanned the already poisoned atmosphere of malicious gossip" by putting a picture of the corpse on the front page and by the "repetitive use of gory details." The author added that he thought he "was looking at the National Enquirer." The second letter noted: "Emotional editorializing most certainly has it's [sic] place in reporting, but I strenuously object to such when it appears in headline stories. . . . [D]escriptive words that do much to sell newspapers and stir emotions discredit headline reporting and tend to prejudice the suspect regardless of degree of guilt." Record, Ex. P-1-e. </s> [Footnote 2 As the Court of Appeals pointed out, another prospective juror testified that his opinion had been erased by the passage of time, but his daughter-in-law testified that he had left for jury duty voicing great animosity toward Yount. 710 F.2d, at 964; App. 766a. </s> [Footnote 3 The Court of Appeals added: </s> "Petitioner peremptorily challenged six of those nine veniremen, one was seated as a juror, and the remaining two were seated as alternates after petitioner had exhausted his peremptory challenges." 710 F.2d, at 964, n. 13. </s> [Footnote 4 At this point, the Court of Appeals added the following footnote: </s> "In addition, we note that twelve other veniremen stated that they had had an opinion at one time but claimed they would not carry it into the jury box. One of the twelve veniremen was dismissed for cause, six were peremptorily challenged by petitioner, and five were seated as jurors." Id., at 964, n. 14. </s> [Footnote 5 The person initially selected as juror number 3 was not able to sit because of personal reasons. Tr. 1060-1061. </s> [Footnote 6 The Court attempts to justify its treatment of Reynolds by quoting from a passage in that case that begins with: "[T]he manner of the juror while testifying is oftentimes more indicative of the real character of his opinion than his words." Ante, at 1037, n. 12 (quoting 98 U.S., at 156 -157). The excerpt from Reynolds quoted by the Court dealt with the question whether a juror's testimony was truthful - specifically whether a prospective juror was falsely seeking to disqualify himself. In this case the question is whether Hrin's testimony, including his acknowledged opinion about Yount's guilt, raised a presumption of partiality. Whether the testimony of a witness is true or false is a question of fact; whether his statement raises a presumption of partiality is a mixed question of law and fact. The fully quoted relevant passage of Reynolds demonstrates the former point: </s> "The reading of the evidence leaves the impression that the juror had some hypothetical opinion about the case, but it falls far short of raising a manifest presumption of partiality. In considering such questions in a reviewing court, we ought not to be unmindful of the fact we have so often observed in our experience, that jurors not unfrequently seek to excuse themselves on the ground of having formed an opinion, when on examination, it turns out that no real disqualification exists. In such cases the manner of the juror while testifying is oftentimes more indicative of the [467 U.S. 1025, 1051] real character of his opinion than his words. That is seen below, but cannot always be spread upon the record. Care should, therefore, be taken in the reviewing court not to reverse the ruling below upon such a question of fact except in a clear case." Id., at 156-157 (emphasis added). </s> The Court also cites as authority Rushen v. Spain, 464 U.S. 114 (1983) (per curiam), and Marshall v. Lonberger, 459 U.S. 422 (1983). Neither of those cases was correctly decided. Moreover, the latter case is plainly inapplicable because it involved the voluntariness of guilty pleas, not juror partiality. The former involved an allegation of juror partiality that arose after the trial began. </s> [Footnote 7 The Court states that it "do[es] not think [Irvin's] analysis can be extended to a federal habeas corpus case in which the partiality of an individual juror is placed in issue." Ante, at 1036. The validity of Irvin (habeas corpus case) and of Reynolds (individual jurors), and the inapplicability of 28 U.S.C. 2254(d), dispose of any meaningful reason not to "extend" these cases to federal habeas corpus cases in which the partiality of individual jurors is placed in issue. </s> [Footnote 8 As I recently noted, in 19 consecutive cases in which the Court exercised its discretion to decide a criminal case summarily, the Court made sure that an apparently guilty defendant was not given too much protection by the law. See Florida v. Meyers, 466 U.S. 380, 385 -387, and n. 3 (1984). The string of consecutive summary victories for the prosecution now stands at 20. See Massachusetts v. Upton, 466 U.S. 727 (1984) (per curiam). </s> [467 U.S. 1025, 1]

United States Supreme Court REID v. COVERT(1956) No. 701 Argued: May 3, 1956Decided: June 11, 1956 </s> Pursuant to Article 2(11) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the dependent wife of a United States Air Force sergeant was tried and convicted by a military court-martial in England for the murder of her husband there. She was sentenced to life imprisonment and brought to a federal prison in the United States. On appeal, her conviction was set aside, and she was transferred to the District of Columbia jail to await retrial by court-martial at an air base in Washington, D.C. While there, she petitioned the local federal district court for a writ of habeas corpus, claiming that she was not subject to military jurisdiction because Article 2 (11) was unconstitutional. The court ordered the writ to issue, directed to the Superintendent of the jail, and he appealed directly to this Court. Held: </s> 1. Article 2 (11) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice is constitutional. Kinsella v. Krueger, ante, p. 470. P. 488. </s> 2. As custodian of a federal prisoner, the Superintendent of the jail is an officer or employee of the United States for purposes of 28 U.S.C. 1252, and this Court has jurisdiction of his direct appeal under that section. Pp. 489-490. </s> 3. Military jurisdiction, once validly attached, continues until final disposition of the case. Therefore, jurisdiction of the Air Force to try appellee by court-martial under Article 2 (11) was not lost by her return to the United States and delivery to the custody of civilian authorities. Toth v. Quarles, 350 U.S. 11 , distinguished. Pp. 490-492. </s> Reversed. </s> Marvin E. Frankel argued the cause for appellant. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Sobeloff, Assistant Attorney General Olney, Beatrice Rosenberg and Richard J. Blanchard. </s> Frederick Bernays Wiener argued the cause and filed a brief for appellee. [351 U.S. 487, 488] </s> MR. JUSTICE CLARK delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> Mrs. Clarice Covert was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by a military court-martial which tried her at a United States Air Force base in England for the murder of her husband, an Air Force sergeant. She was brought to the United States and confined in the Federal Reformatory for Women, Alderson, West Virginia. On appeal, the United States Court of Military Appeals set aside her conviction on grounds not material here, and she was transferred to the District of Columbia jail to await a rehearing by court-martial at Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C. While there she filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging that she was not subject to court-martial jurisdiction because Article 2 (11) of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 50 U.S.C. 552, was unconstitutional. The District Court ordered the writ to issue, and the Government appealed directly to this Court. Postponing the question of jurisdiction until a hearing on the merits, 350 U.S. 985 , we scheduled this case for argument with Kinsella v. Krueger, ante, p. 470, decided this day. </s> At the outset, appellee questions the jurisdiction of this Court to hear the case on direct appeal from the District Court. For reasons hereafter stated, we conclude that we have jurisdiction. </s> Appellee's principal argument on the merits is answered by our decision in Kinsella v. Krueger, ante, p. 470. It is also contended, however, that whatever jurisdiction the military may have had to try Mrs. Covert by court-martial under Article 2 (11) was lost by her return to the United States and delivery to the custody of civilian authorities. We conclude that in the circumstances of this case this argument is without merit. [351 U.S. 487, 489] </s> I. </s> The question of our jurisdiction involves an interpretation of 28 U.S.C. 1252: </s> "Any party may appeal to the Supreme Court from an interlocutory or final judgment, decree or order of any court of the United States . . . holding an Act of Congress unconstitutional in any civil action, suit, or proceeding to which the United States or any of its agencies, or any officer or employee thereof, as such officer or employee, is a party." </s> It is conceded that, in issuing the writ of habeas corpus, the District Court held an Act of Congress unconstitutional. Appellee's sole contention is that appellant, the Superintendent of the District of Columbia jail, does not come within the requirement of 1252 that "the United States, or any of its agencies, or any officer or employee thereof, as such officer or employee," be a party. </s> The Superintendent is responsible to the Director of the Department of Corrections of the District of Columbia, who in turn is selected by the Board of Commissioners of the District. Reorganization Order No. 34, D.C. Code, 1951, App. to Title 1, Supp. III, p. 34. The Commissioners are appointed by the President and are officers of the United States under Art. II, 2, of the Constitution. The Superintendent has a statutory duty to "receive and keep in the Washington Asylum and Jail all prisoners committed thereto for offenses against the United States." D.C. Code, 1951, 24-410. Mrs. Covert was placed in the District jail on orders of the Air Force, because there are no accommodations for women prisoners at Bolling Air Force Base, where the rehearing of her trial by court-martial is scheduled. </s> It has long been settled that an officer, while holding prisoners for the United States, is the "keeper of the [351 U.S. 487, 490] United States," Randolph v. Donaldson, 9 Cranch 76, 86, and, as such, is an officer of the United States. Since appellant was required to "receive and keep" prisoners of the United States, he is, to that extent, an officer of the United States. It is not necessary to say, and we do not say, that the District of Columbia in these circumstances is an "agency" of the United States. For, whether the Government should maintain its own jail in the District of Columbia, or utilize the local facilities, is simply a matter of administrative convenience, and it would do violence to the purpose of Congress to provide a "prompt review of the constitutionality of federal acts," Fleming v. Rhodes, 331 U.S. 100, 104 , to interpret 1252 restrictively. For all practical purposes, the District of Columbia jail is, in this case, the "jail of the United States," Randolph v. Donaldson, supra, and the Superintendent is its keeper. As the custodian of Mrs. Covert, a federal prisoner, appellant is an officer or employee of the United States for purposes of 1252. </s> II. </s> On the merits, Mrs. Covert contends that Article 2 (11) should be restricted geographically, and therefore military jurisdiction over her expired upon her return to the United States. She also contends that, as a civilian, she is no longer subject to the Code, since she is not in "custody of the armed forces" under Article 2 (7). </s> An entirely different case might be presented if Mrs. Covert had terminated her status as a person "accompanying the armed forces without the continental limits of the United States" by returning to this country voluntarily. But that is not this case. The issue here is whether we should create an exception to the general rule that jurisdiction of a tribunal, once acquired, continues until final disposition. At the time of her court-martial [351 U.S. 487, 491] in England, Mrs. Covert was subject to military jurisdiction under Article 2 (11), Kinsella v. Krueger, ante, p. 470. Her transfer under orders of the Air Force was in furtherance of that jurisdiction. To accept Mrs. Covert's argument would result in the anomalous situation that military jurisdiction, validly exercised under Article 2 (11), would be defeated by the imposition of a sentence under Article 58, 50 U.S.C. 639, which provides for confinement "in any penal or correctional institution under the control of the United States, or which the United States may be allowed to use." It would be unreasonable to hold that the services retained jurisdiction of military prisoners that they kept in foreign countries but lost jurisdiction of prisoners confined in penal institutions in the United States. </s> Nor is jurisdiction defeated by reversal of Mrs. Covert's conviction and the ordering of a rehearing. The military courts have recognized rehearings to be but continuations of the original proceedings, United States v. Padilla, 5 C. M. R. 31, 42; United States v. Moore, 5 C. M. R. 438, 444; United States v. Milbourne, 15 C. M. R. 527, 528; and the legislative history of Article 63 of the Code bears out the fact that they were so intended by Congress. H. R. Rep. No. 491, 81st Cong., 1st Sess. 30; S. Rep. No. 486, 81st Cong., 1st Sess. 27. </s> We also note that this case is clearly distinguishable from Toth v. Quarles, 350 U.S. 11 . Toth had returned to the United States and been honorably discharged months before the specifications were filed charging him with an offense committed while a soldier in Korea. The Air Force had relinquished all jurisdiction over Toth before any charge was filed against him. But here, Mrs. Covert was charged, tried, convicted, sentenced and imprisoned pursuant to a valid exercise of court-martial jurisdiction while she was concededly within the [351 U.S. 487, 492] provisions of Article 2 (11). We are not deciding here when, in other circumstances, Article 2 (11) jurisdiction may terminate. In this case we hold only that military jurisdiction, once validly attached, continues until final disposition of the case. </s> Reversed. </s> [For reservation of MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, see ante, p. 481.] </s> [For dissent of MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN, MR. JUSTICE BLACK, and MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, see ante, p. 485.] </s> [351 U.S. 487, 493]

United States Supreme Court U.S. v. CENTRAL EUREKA MINING CO.(1958) No. 29 Argued: January 7, 1958Decided: June 16, 1958 </s> In 1942, the War Production Board issued an order requiring non-essential gold mines, including those of respondents, to cease operating; but the Government did not occupy, use or take physical possession of the gold mines or the equipment connected with them. The purpose of the order was to conserve equipment and manpower for essential war uses. Claiming that the order amounted to a taking of their right to mine gold during the life of the order, respondents sued the Government in the Court of Claims for compensation. Held: </s> 1. The Special Jurisdictional Act of July 14, 1952, granting the Court of Claims jurisdiction to hear and determine actions brought within a year from that date on the claims of owners or operators of gold mines for losses allegedly resulting from the War Production Board's order, "notwithstanding any statute of limitations, laches, or lapse of time," was no more than a waiver of defenses based on the passage of time. It was not a congressional mandate to award compensation for losses resulting from the order. Pp. 162-165. </s> 2. The Board's order did not constitute a taking of private property for public use within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment, and respondents are not entitled to compensation. Pp. 165-169. </s> 134 Ct. Cl. 1, 130, 138 F. Supp. 281, 146 F. Supp. 476, reversed. </s> Assistant Attorney General Doub argued the cause for the United States. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Rankin, Melvin Richter, Paul A. Sweeney and John G. Laughlin, Jr. </s> Edward W. Bourne argued the cause for respondents. On the brief were Mr. Bourne, Eugene Z. Du Bose, [357 U.S. 155, 156] Edward E. Rigney and J. Kenneth Campbell for the Homestake Mining Co., Phillip Barnett, Ralph D. Pittman and Rodney H. Robertson for the Central Eureka Mining Co. O. R. McGuire, Jr. and V. A. Montgomery for the Alaska-Pacific Consolidated Mining Co., George Herrington and William H. Orrick, Jr. for the Idaho Maryland Mines Corporation, and John Ward Cutler for the Bald Mountain Mining Co. et al., respondents. </s> MR. JUSTICE BURTON delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> In the interest of national defense, the War Production Board, in 1942, issued its Limitation Order L-208 1 ordering nonessential gold mines to close down. This litigation was instituted in the Court of Claims to recover compensation from the United States for its alleged taking, under such order, of respondents' rights to operate their respective gold mines. Two issues are now presented. First, whether the Act of July 14, 1952, 2 granting jurisdiction to the Court of Claims to entertain the claims arising out of L-208, was a mandate to that court to award compensation for whatever losses were suffered as a result of L-208, or whether it amounted merely to a waiver by the United States of defenses based on the passage of time. For the reasons hereafter stated, we hold that it was the latter. We, therefore, reach the second question - whether L-208 constituted a taking of private property for public use within the meaning of the Fifth [357 U.S. 155, 157] Amendment. 3 For the reasons hereafter stated, we hold that it did not. </s> Early in 1941, it became apparent to those in charge of the Nation's defense mobilization that we faced a critical shortage of nonferrous metals, notably copper, and a comparable shortage of machinery and supplies to produce them. Responsive to this situation, the Office of Production Management (OPM) and its successor, the War Production Board (WPB), issued a series of Preference Orders. These gave the producers of mining machinery and supplies relatively high priorities for the acquisition of needed materials. They also gave to those mines, which were deemed important from the standpoint of defense or essential civilian needs, a high priority in the acquisition of such machinery. Gold mines were classified as nonessential and eventually were relegated to the lowest priority rating. These orders prevented the mines operated by respondents from acquiring new machinery or supplies so that, by March of 1942, respondents were reduced to using only the machinery and supplies which they had on hand. </s> Soon thereafter, a severe shortage of skilled labor developed in the nonferrous metal mines. This was due in part to the expanding need for nonferrous metals, and in part to a depletion of mining manpower as a result of the military draft and the attraction of higher wages paid by other industries. It became apparent that the only reservoir of skilled mining labor was that which remained in the gold mines. Pressure was brought to bear on the WPB to close down the gold mines with the expectation that many gold miners would thus be attracted to the nonferrous mines. [357 U.S. 155, 158] </s> As a part of this conservation program, WPB, on October 8, 1942, issued Limitation Order L-208 4 now before us. That order was addressed exclusively to the gold mining industry which it classified as nonessential. It directed each operator of a gold mine to take steps immediately to close down its operations and, after seven [357 U.S. 155, 159] days, not to acquire, use or consume any material or equipment in development work. The order directed that, within 60 days, all operations should cease, excepting only the minimum activity necessary to maintain mine buildings, machinery and equipment, and to keep the workings safe and accessible. Applications to the [357 U.S. 155, 160] WPB were permitted to meet special needs and several exceptions were made under that authority. Small mines were defined and exempted from the order. The WPB did not take physical possession of the gold mines. It did not require the mine owners to dispose of any of their machinery or equipment. </s> On November 19, 1942, Order L-208 was amended to prohibit the disposition of certain types of machinery or [357 U.S. 155, 161] supplies without the permission of an officer of the WPB. Each mine operator was required to submit an itemized list of all such equipment held in inventory and to indicate which items he would be willing to sell or rent. 5 On August 31, 1943, L-208 was further amended to permit disposition of equipment, without approval of the WPB, to persons holding certain preference ratings. 6 The order, thus amended, remained in effect until revoked on June 30, 1945. 7 </s> The first legal action against the Government arising out of L-208 was brought in the Court of Claims in 1950. It was there alleged that the order had amounted to a taking of the complainant's right to mine gold during the life of the order. The Government demurred, taking its present position that the order was merely a lawful regulation of short supplies relevant to the war effort. The court sustained the demurrer, holding that the damages were not compensable. Oro Fino Consolidated Mines, Inc., v. United States, 118 Ct. Cl. 18, 92 F. Supp. 1016. Accord, Alaska-Pacific Consolidated Mining Co. v. United States, [357 U.S. 155, 162] 120 Ct. Cl. 307. Somewhat later, the instant action was brought in the Court of Claims by the Idaho Maryland Mines Corporation. Relying on the Oro Fino decision, the Government again demurred. This time, however, the court overruled the demurrer on the ground that this complaint contained detailed allegations which, if true, in its opinion demonstrated that L-208 was an arbitrary order without rational connection with the war effort. On that basis, the court authorized a commissioner to hear this case and several similar ones, solely to determine the Government's liability, leaving determination of the amount of recovery, if any, to further proceedings. 122 Ct. Cl. 670, 104 F. Supp. 576. 8 The commissioner heard the cases and filed his report. The Court of Claims, with two judges dissenting, held that the six respondents now before us were entitled to just compensation. 134 Ct. Cl. 1, 53, 56, 138 F. Supp. 281, 310, 312. 9 A new trial was denied. 134 Ct. Cl. 130, 146 F. Supp. 476. We granted the Government's petition for certiorari in order to consider the important constitutional issue presented. 352 U.S. 964 . </s> Before reaching the merits, we face the suggestion of respondents that the Special Jurisdictional Act of July 14, 1952, 66 Stat. 605, did more than waive the statute [357 U.S. 155, 163] of limitations and the defense of laches. Respondents contend that this Act was a congressional mandate to the Court of Claims to award compensation to such of the respondents as established any loss which was, in fact, caused by L-208. We conclude that the language of the Act and its legislative history demonstrate that it was no more than a waiver of defenses based on the passage of time. </s> The entire Act reads as follows: </s> "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the United States Court of Claims be, and hereby is, given jurisdiction to hear, determine, and render judgment, notwithstanding any statute of limitations, laches, or lapse of time, on the claim of any owner or operator of a gold mine or gold placer operation for losses incurred allegedly because of the closing or curtailment or prevention of operations of such mine or placer operation as a result of the restrictions imposed by War Production Board Limitation Order L-208 during the effective life thereof: Provided, That actions on such claims shall be brought within one year from the date this Act becomes effective." </s> The Act thus contains no language prejudging the validity of the claims on their merits. On the other hand, it expressly permits the filing of actions, based on L-208, within one year from the taking effect of the Act, "notwithstanding any statute of limitations, laches, or lapse of time . . . ." (Emphasis supplied.) That this was the motivating purpose of Congress is further indicated by the fact that the statute of limitations had recently run against many of these claims by the time the Court of Claims, in the instant case, upheld the claim on the pleadings [357 U.S. 155, 164] of the Idaho Maryland Mines Corporation. 122 Ct. Cl. 670, 104 F. Supp. 576. This was explained to Congress as follows in the House Report recommending passage of the bill: </s> "At the present time many other claimants who may have as good a right for an adjudication of their claims as does the Idaho Maryland Mines Corp. may not prosecute such claims due to the running of the statute of limitations. Many of the claimants after the ruling in the Oro Fina case undoubtedly felt that to file in the Court of Claims would be useless and, therefore, allowed the statute to run against them." H. R. Rep. No. 2220, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. 2. See also, S. Rep. No. 1605, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. 2. </s> The legislative history also discloses repeated failures to induce Congress to act upon the merits of the claims. 10 </s> [357 U.S. 155, 165] In view of such history, it is hard to believe that the successful passage of this Act of July 14, 1952, would have taken place, as it did, without opposition 11 had it included a concession of liability. On the other hand, as explained in the above-quoted House Committee Report, its passage is readily understood if it merely granted an extension, for one year, of the time within which to file an action to recover a claim, the merits of which would be determined by the Court of Claims. For these reasons, we hold that this Jurisdictional Act is fairly interpreted as amounting only to a waiver of defenses based on the passage of time. </s> Turning to the merits, it is clear from the record that the Government did not occupy, use, or in any manner [357 U.S. 155, 166] take physical possession of the gold mines or of the equipment connected with them. Cf. United States v. Pewee Coal Co., 341 U.S. 114 . All that the Government sought was the cessation of the consumption of mining equipment and manpower in the gold mines and the conservation of such equipment and manpower for more essential war uses. The Government had no need for the gold or the gold mines. The mere fact that L-208 was in the form of an express prohibition of the operation of the mines, rather than a prohibition of the use of the scarce equipment in the mines, did not convert the order into a "taking" of a right to operate the mines. Obviously, if the use of equipment were prohibited, the mines would close and it did not make that order a "taking" merely because the order was, in form, a direction to close down the mines. The record shows that the WPB expected that L-208 would release substantial amounts of scarce mining equipment for use in essential industries, and also that experienced gold miners would transfer to other mines whose product was in gravely short supply. The purpose of L-208 was to encourage voluntary reallocation of scarce resources from the unessential to the essential. </s> Respondents contend that L-208 was arbitrary and without rational connection with the war effort. 12 They contend that, if it were arbitrary, there is no distinction in law between this case and one where the Government consciously exercises its power to take for public use. Respondents base their assertion of arbitrariness on several circumstances. For example, they urge that the preamble to L-208 recited as its sole purpose the conservation of scarce materials. If that alone were the purpose, they contend, it had already been achieved by priority [357 U.S. 155, 167] orders which prevented the gold mines from obtaining any scarce equipment. Order L-208 did more than merely prohibit the acquisition of scarce equipment - it also prohibited the use of equipment previously acquired. The fact that L-208 did not require the mine owners to sell their inventory of scarce equipment to essential users was a reasonable course of action. The WPB could properly rely on the profit motive to induce the mine owners to liquidate their inventories, and it was thought that the people who would be interested in purchasing used mining equipment probably would be the owners of essential mines. In any event, L-208 was soon amended to prohibit sales to nonessential users. 13 </s> Respondents also urge that the record shows that the shortage of experienced miners was the dominant, if not the sole, consideration for the issuance of L-208. They contend that the WPB had no authority to compel gold miners to transfer to other mines. The record shows that a dominating consideration in the issuance of L-208 was the expectation that it would release experienced miners for work in the nonferrous mines, but the record does not support a finding that such was the sole purpose of the order. It was lawful for the WPB to consider the impact of its material orders on the manpower situation. Order L-208 did not draft gold miners into government service as copper miners. It sought only to make the gold miners available for more essential work if they chose to move. Although the record indicates that the number of gold miners who transferred to nonferrous mines was disappointingly small, yet there were some who did, and others moved to other essential wartime services. The record shows a careful official consideration of the subject and a well-considered decision to accomplish a proper result. There is no suggestion that any of the officials [357 U.S. 155, 168] who were responsible for the order were motivated by anything other than appropriate concern for the war effort. </s> Thus the WPB made a reasoned decision that, under existing circumstances, the Nation's need was such that the unrestricted use of mining equipment and manpower in gold mines was so wasteful of wartime resources that it must be temporarily suspended. Traditionally, we have treated the issue as to whether a particular governmental restriction amounted to a constitutional taking as being a question properly turning upon the particular circumstances of each case. See Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 416 . In doing so, we have recognized that action in the form of regulation can so diminish the value of property as to constitute a taking. E. g., United States v. Kansas City Ins. Co., 339 U.S. 799 ; United States v. Causby, 328 U.S. 256 . However, the mere fact that the regulation deprives the property owner of the most profitable use of his property is not necessarily enough to establish the owner's right to compensation. See Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623, 664 , 668, 669. In the context of war, we have been reluctant to find that degree of regulation which, without saying so, requires compensation to be paid for resulting losses of income. E. g., Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries Co., 251 U.S. 146 ; Jacob Ruppert v. Caffey, 251 U.S. 264 ; Bowles v. Willingham, 321 U.S. 503 ; and see United States v. Caltex, Inc., 344 U.S. 149 . The reasons are plain. War, particularly in modern times, demands the strict regulation of nearly all resources. It makes demands which otherwise would be insufferable. But wartime economic restrictions, temporary in character, are insignificant when compared to the widespread uncompensated loss of life and freedom of action which war traditionally demands. </s> We do not find in the temporary restrictions here placed on the operation of gold mines a taking of private property [357 U.S. 155, 169] that would justify a departure from the trend of the above decisions. The WPB here sought, by reasonable regulation, to conserve the limited supply of equipment used by the mines and it hoped that its order would divert available miners to more essential work. Both purposes were proper objectives; both matters were subject to regulation to the extent of the order. L-208 did not order any disposal of property or transfer of men. Accordingly, since the damage to the mine owners was incidental to the Government's lawful regulation of matters reasonably deemed essential to the war effort, the judgment is </s> Reversed. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 Issued October 8, 1942, 7 Fed. Reg. 7992-7993. Amended, November 19, 1942, 7 Fed. Reg. 9613-9614; November 25, 1942, 7 Fed. Reg. 9810-9811; and August 31, 1943, 8 Fed. Reg. 12007-12008. Revoked, June 30, 1945, 10 Fed. Reg. 8110. For text of the order as issued October 8, 1942, see note 4, infra. </s> [Footnote 2 The Act is set forth in the text of this opinion at p. 163, infra. </s> [Footnote 3 "No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." U.S. Const., Amend. V. </s> [Footnote 4 War Production Board Limitation Order L-208, 7 Fed. Reg. 7992-7993, provided as follows: "The fulfillment of requirements for the defense of the United States has created a shortage in the supply of critical materials for defense, for private account and for export which are used in the maintenance and operation of gold mines; and the following order is deemed necessary and appropriate in the public interest and to promote the national defense. " 3093.1 Limitation Order L-208 - (a) Definitions. For the purposes of this order, `nonessential mine' means any mining enterprise in which gold is produced, whether lode or placer, located in the United States, its territories or possessions, unless the operator of such mining enterprise is the holder of a serial number for such enterprise which has been issued under Preference Rating Order P-56. "(b) Restrictions upon production. (1) On and after the issuance date of this order, each operator of a nonessential mine shall immediately take all such steps as may be necessary to close down, and shall close down, in the shortest possible time, the operations of such mine. "(2) In no event on or after 7 days from the issuance date of this order shall any operator of a nonessential mine acquire, consume, or use any material, facility, or equipment to break any new ore or to proceed with any development work or any new operations in or about such mine. "(3) In no event on or after 60 days from the issuance date of this order shall any operator of a nonessential mine acquire, consume, or use any material, facility, or equipment to remove any ore or waste from such mine, either above or below ground, or to conduct any other operations in or about such mine, except to the minimum amount necessary to maintain its buildings, machinery, and equipment in repair, and its access and development workings safe and accessible. "(4) The provisions of this order shall not apply to any lode mine [357 U.S. 155, 159] which produced 1200 tons or less of commercial ore in the year 1941, provided the rate of production of such mine, after the issuance date of this order, shall not exceed 100 tons per month, nor to any placer mine which treated less than 1000 cubic yards of material in the year 1941, provided that the rate of treatment of such placer mine, after the issuance date of this order, shall not exceed 100 cubic yards per month. "(5) Nothing contained in this order shall limit or prohibit the use or operation of the mill, machine shop, or other facilities of a nonessential mine in the manufacture of articles to be delivered pursuant to orders bearing a preference rating of A-1-k or higher, or in milling ores for the holder of a serial number under Preference Rating Order P-56. "(c) Restrictions on application of preference ratings. No person shall apply any preference rating, whether heretofore or hereafter assigned, to acquire any material or equipment for consumption or use in the operation, maintenance, or repair of a nonessential mine, except with the express permission of the Director General for Operations issued after application made to the Mining Branch, War Production Board. "(d) Assignment of preference ratings. The Director General for Operations, upon receiving an application in accordance with paragraph (c) above, may assign such preference ratings as may be required to obtain the minimum amount of material necessary to maintain such nonessential mine on the basis set forth in paragraph (b) (3) above. "(e) Records. All persons affected by this order shall keep and preserve, for not less than two years, accurate and complete records concerning inventory, acquisition, consumption, and use of materials, and production of ore. "(f) Reports. All persons affected by this order shall execute and file with the War Production Board such reports and questionnaires as said Board shall from time to time prescribe. "(g) Audit and inspection. All records required to be kept by [357 U.S. 155, 160] this order shall, upon request, be submitted to audit and inspection by duly authorized representatives of the War Production Board. "(h) Communications. All reports to be filed, appeals, and other communications concerning this order should be addressed to: War Production Board, Mining Branch, Washington, D.C., Ref.: L-208. "(i) Violations. Any person who wilfully violates any provision of this order, or who, in connection with this order, wilfully conceals a material fact or furnishes false information to any department or agency of the United States, is guilty of a crime, and upon conviction may be punished by fine or imprisonment. In addition, any such person may be prohibited from making or obtaining further deliveries of, or from processing or using, material under priority control and may be deprived of priorities assistance. "(j) Appeal. Any person affected by this order who considers that compliance therewith would work an exceptional and unreasonable hardship upon him may appeal to the War Production Board, by letter, in triplicate, setting forth the pertinent facts and the reason he considers he is entitled to relief. The Director General for Operations may thereupon take such action as he deems appropriate. "(k) Applicability of priorities regulations. This order and all transactions affected thereby are subject to all applicable provisions of the priorities regulations of the War Production Board, as amended from time to time. "(P. D. Reg. 1, as amended, 6 F. R. 6680; W. P. B. Reg. 1, 7 F. R. 561; E. O. 9024, 7 F. R. 329; E. O. 9040, 7 F. R. 527; E. O. 9125, 7 F. R. 2719; sec. 2 (a), Pub. Law 671, 76th Cong., as amended by Pub. Laws 89 and 507, 77th Cong.) "Issued this 8th day of October 1942. "ERNEST KANZLER, "Director General for Operations." </s> [Footnote 5 Section 6 (e), added to the original order on November 19, 1942, 7 Fed. Reg. 9613, provided: "(e) Restrictions on disposition of machinery and equipment. No person shall sell or otherwise dispose of any machinery or equipment of the types listed in Schedule A to Preference Rating Order P-56, which has been used in a nonessential mine, and no person shall accept delivery thereof, except with specific permission of the Director General for Operations. On or before November 19, 1942, or within sixty days after the effective date, whichever is later, each operator of a nonessential mine shall file with the War Production Board, Washington, D.C., Reference: L-208, an itemized list of such machinery and equipment, signed by such operator or an authorized official, indicating each item available for sale or rental. Upon receipt of such itemized list, the War Production Board will furnish to the operator appropriate forms to be filled out for each item which the operator desires to dispose of." </s> [Footnote 6 8 Fed. Reg. 12007-12008. </s> [Footnote 7 10 Fed. Reg. 8110. </s> [Footnote 8 See also, Homestake Mining Co. v. United States, 122 Ct. Cl. 690, and Central Eureka Mining Co. v. United States, 122 Ct. Cl. 691. </s> [Footnote 9 The Court of Claims concluded that respondents had shown not only that L-208 was arbitrary, but also that they had a sufficient inventory of machinery and supplies so that they would have been able to operate had it not been for the order. However, as to the following companies, it ordered their petitions dismissed on the ground that they had not shown that they would have been able to continue operations, thus failing to show that L-208 was the proximate cause of their loss: Alabama-California Gold Mines Co., Consolidated Chollar Gould & Savage Mining Co., and Oro Fino Consolidated Mines, Inc. 134 Ct. Cl., at 53, 138 F. Supp., at 310. </s> [Footnote 10 Bills were first introduced in the 78th Congress, 1st Session (1943), for the relief of the owners and operators of gold mines. Early efforts were directed at decision of L-208. H. R. 3009, 89 Cong. Rec. 6181, was referred to the House Committee on Banking and Currency and never reported out; H. R. 3682, 89 Cong. Rec. 9653, was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary and never reported out. At the same session of Congress, Senator McCarran introduced a bill, S. 27, 89 Cong. Rec. 34, which provided legislative relief to the mine owners vis-a-vis their creditors. This bill, referred to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, was favorably reported, 89 Cong. Rec. 5187, S. Rep. No. 271, 78th Cong., 1st Sess., and, after amendment, it passed the Senate, 89 Cong. Rec. 6094-6095. In the House, S. 27 was referred to the House Committee on Mines and Mining, 89 Cong. Rec. 6180, and was never reported out. In the following session of Congress, a similar bill was introduced in the House by Representative Engle. H. R. 5093, 90 Cong. Rec. 6587. It too was referred to the House Committee on Banking and Currency and was never reported out. In the 79th Congress, 1st Session (1945), Representative Engle introduced the first bill calling for compensation for losses arising out [357 U.S. 155, 165] of L-208. H. R. 4393, 91 Cong. Rec. 9726. This bill was referred to the House Committee on War Claims which, in turn, referred the matter to a Subcommittee. The Subcommittee held hearings over several days and issued a report to the full Committee recommending approval. (This report was quoted at length in the Reports to both Houses favoring passage of the Jurisdictional Act.) The bill was never reported out of the full Committee. In the 81st Congress, 1st Session (1949), Senator McCarran introduced S. 45, 95 Cong. Rec. 39, substantively similar to H. R. 4393 introduced by Representative Engle. The bill was referred to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary which reported it favorably. S. Rep. No. 79, 81st Cong., 1st Sess. It was objected to however, by Senator Donnell, 95 Cong. Rec. 2764; Senator Hendrickson, by request, id., at 13297; Senator Schoeppel, id., at 14722; Senator Williams, 96 Cong. Rec. 1278; Senator Hendrickson, id., at 14691; and Senators Hendrickson and Williams, id., at 16592, and consequently never came to a vote. In the same Congress, Representative White introduced H. R. 7851, 96 Cong. Rec. 4066, a bill of the same type, which was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary and never reported out. </s> [Footnote 11 The Special Jurisdictional Act was passed on the Consent Calendar. 98 Cong. Rec. 6322-6323, 8931. The seriousness of a concession of liability is evidenced by the Government's recent estimate that its potential liability, if respondents prevail, can be measured in "terms of thirty to sixty million dollars." </s> [Footnote 12 Ordinarily the remedy for arbitrary governmental action is an injunction, rather than an action for just compensation. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 . Our view of the case makes it unnecessary to reach that question. </s> [Footnote 13 See pp. 160-161, supra. </s> MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, dissenting. </s> For losses alleged to have resulted from a wartime order of the War Production Board, various of the respondents sought monetary relief in the Court of Claims. These suits had a checkered career in that court, and, as a consequence, Congress passed remedial legislation that has served as a ground for respondents' continued assertion of their right to recover. A consideration of the history of this controversy is necessary for due appreciation of this legislation, and an understanding of the legislation, its background and its meaning, is essential to a proper disposition of the suit before us. </s> From a time shortly before our entry into the Second World War, gold mines in this country were subjected by the United States Government to increasingly stringent limitations on their operations. Because they were regarded as a non-essential industry, they were first restricted in, and then virtually excluded from, the acquisition of required machinery, spare parts and supplies that were needed in mines producing critical materials. Finally, on October 8, 1942, apparently more in an attempt to divert gold miners into copper mines than [357 U.S. 155, 170] (as its preamble recited) to conserve critical materials, the War Production Board issued Limitation Order L-208, 7 Fed. Reg. 7992-7993, as amended, 7 id., at 9613-9614, 8 id., at 12007-12008, which ordered operators of gold mines that did not also produce substantial quantities of strategic materials to cease mining operations within sixty days. This order was revoked on June 30, 1945. 10 id., at 8110. </s> Early in 1950, one of the mine operators allegedly affected by the shutdown order brought suit against the United States in the Court of Claims, asserting that Order L-208 was issued "arbitrarily and without authority of law" and was therefore a taking of property within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment for which the claimant sought just compensation. The court, while holding that the six-year statute of limitations (28 U.S.C. 2501) did not begin to run against the claimant until the order was rescinded, dismissed the petition for failure to state a claim under the Fifth Amendment. Oro Fino Consol. Mines, Inc., v. United States, 118 Ct. Cl. 18, 92 F. Supp. 1016 (1950). Approximately a month before the end of the statutory period, three other mine operators filed suits in the Court of Claims, also contending that, by virtue of the WPB order, their property had been taken without just compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment. In their complaints (as amended after the statute had run) they laid a considerably more extensive factual basis for their contentions of arbitrary and unauthorized action. The Court of Claims, in Idaho Maryland Mines Corp. v. United States, 122 Ct. Cl. 670, 104 F. Supp. 576 (1952), 1 denied the Government's motion [357 U.S. 155, 171] to dismiss the suits. It distinguished Oro Fino on the ground that the facts there alleged in support of the contentions of unconstitutionality, by contrast with those in Idaho Maryland, had not been sufficient to rebut the presumption of constitutionality attaching to governmental action. A motion by the Government for rehearing was overruled two months later. Ibid. </s> Within two weeks after the Idaho Maryland decision Senator McCarran of Nevada introduced a bill (S. 3195, 82d Cong., 2d Sess.) to grant the Court of Claims jurisdiction, notwithstanding the statute of limitations, to hear claims of gold mine operators for losses resulting from the issuance of Order L-208. 98 Cong. Rec. 5394. After consideration of the bill, the Committee on the Judiciary on May 28, 1952, recommended "favorable consideration of the measure by the Senate" in a report, S. Rep. No. 1605, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. The report, "[i]n order that the background of this situation can be fully understood and appreciated," id., at p. 2, set forth large portions of an earlier report (on H. R. 4393 of the 79th Congress) setting forth in great detail a factual basis for the following contentions: </s> "1. WPB Order L-208 was unique in that it was the only Government order closing a productive industry. </s> "2. Issuance of the order was an administrative error, based upon a statistical misconception, and may, furthermore, have been illegal. </s> "3. The net results of the order in accomplishing its avowed primary purpose of channeling manpower to `essential' mines were negligible. </s> "4. The economic loss to the gold-mining industry has been great and in some cases the damage may be irreparable." Id., at p. 3. [357 U.S. 155, 172] </s> In the conclusion of the report, it was stated (id., at p. 7) that </s> "The committee has carefully studied the facts relating to the situation that arose as a result of the proclamation of the War Production Board Limitation Order L-208 and is convinced that the gold mining industry was dealt with in a fashion which merits the consideration of the court in the adjudication of the losses which may have been occasioned by this order. The Idaho Maryland Mines Corp. decision is ample evidence of the fact that the least that can be done is to allow those persons affected by Order L-208 their day in court for such recompense as may seem justified." </s> The Senate passed the bill without debate on June 2. 98 Cong. Rec. 6322. In the House of Representatives, the bill was referred to and considered by the Committee on the Judiciary, which recommended its passage in a report (H. R. Rep. No. 2220, 82d Cong., 2d Sess.) substantially identical with the Senate report. The House passed the bill on July 2, 98 Cong. Rec. 8931, and it was signed by the President on July 14, 1952. It provides as follows: </s> "That the United States Court of Claims be, and hereby is, given jurisdiction to hear, determine, and render judgment, notwithstanding any statute of limitations, laches, or lapse of time, on the claim of any owner or operator of a gold mine or gold placer operation for losses incurred allegedly because of the closing or curtailment or prevention of operations of such mine or placer operation as a result of the restrictions imposed by War Production Board Limitation Order L-208 during the effective life thereof: Provided, That actions on such claims shall be brought within one year from the date this Act becomes effective." 66 Stat. 605. [357 U.S. 155, 173] </s> Thereupon a number of gold mine operators brought suit in the Court of Claims, and their claims were consolidated with those involved in Idaho Maryland for trial on the issue of liability. These plaintiffs proceeded under alternative claims against the United States: first, that the action of the Government in ordering them to close their gold mines constituted a taking of their property that entitled them to just compensation; and, second, that the Act of July 14, 1952, created liability on the part of the Government for their provable losses resulting from the closing. The Court of Claims (two judges dissenting) decided that the closing of the mines constituted a compensable "taking" of the plaintiffs' right to operate their mines within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. The court dealt with the statutory claim in the following terms: "In view of our decision in these cases it is unnecessary to discuss the various contentions relative to the special jurisdictional act of July 14, 1952, 66 Stat. 605." 134 Ct. Cl. 1, 53, 138 F. Supp. 281, 310 (1956). </s> Since a court of the United States may properly decide a constitutional question only if the case cannot fairly be disposed of on a non-constitutional basis, any statutory question that is not frivolous should be met and disposed of before questions requiring construction of the Constitution are reached. The reason for the Court of Claims' failure to heed this fundamental rule can only be surmised. This litigation was initiated before the Act of July 14, 1952, had been passed by Congress and was framed exclusively in constitutional terms. The statutory claim was injected into the litigation at a time when the court, having already handed down several decisions on the question of whether or not a claim under the Fifth Amendment had been stated, had become preoccupied with, and, therefore, oriented toward, the constitutional aspects of the claims. Understandable though this approach may be, it should not be permitted to govern [357 U.S. 155, 174] the ultimate disposition of the cases before us. In the interest of responsible administration of our constitutional system, the scope and meaning of the Act of July 14, 1952, call for determination before any decision is made as to whether or not the Government's action amounted to a "taking" within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. </s> The critical question is, of course, whether the Act merely eliminates the bar of the statute of limitations or substantively establishes a congressionally acknowledged basis for recovery. On its face, the Act is readily susceptible of either interpretation. The action authorized by the statute - i. e., the filing of a certain type of suit in the Court of Claims within one year - is consistent with either of these alternative legislative ends. In order to waive the Government's then existing defense of the statute of limitations, it was necessary for Congress to authorize the assertion of claims notwithstanding the availability of that defense. And recognition by Congress of what it may regard as a just claim against the Government is not necessarily to be met by an outright appropriation to the claimants: there often remain questions (such as may be involved here, whether or not the alleged losses were caused by the Government's liability-creating action) that Congress quite properly wishes to have judicially determined before funds are to be withdrawn from the Treasury for the benefit of claimants. </s> Since the statutory language alone sheds little light on the congressional purpose, it is appropriate to canvass the legislative background of the Act. At the outset it should be noted that the legislative manner attending the passage of the Act has no relevance as to its interpretation. It is no more admissible that a statute's passage virtually without debate and from a bill on the consent calendar should reflect on its weight than that a decision of this Court should be given less weight because it was argued [357 U.S. 155, 175] on the summary docket. There is no reason to suppose that this legislation did not receive the careful study that the committees in their reports claim to have given it. Here one need not even draw on the indisputable fact that much legislation is passed solely on the basis of committee recommendations; the grievances of the gold mining industry had been continually pressed on Congress since shortly after the issuance of L-208, 2 so that the problem to which the Act was directed was one with which many members of Congress were undoubtedly thoroughly conversant. </s> Nothing is clearer from a reading of the committees' reports than that their members regarded the gold mine operators to have been unjustly treated by the Government. It is, of course, no concern of ours whether or not they were justified in thinking so. The reports quote extensively from an earlier report casting serious doubt on the propriety and even the legality of the government order and detailing the seriousness of the industry's resulting losses. To be sure, support may be drawn from this condemnation for either of the competing interpretations of the statute. It may imply a conviction that the Government should pay for whatever losses resulted from the issuance of the order; but it may also serve as nothing more than a justification for making an exception to the statute of limitations. Specific statements in the reports only compound this ambiguity. The committees make clear their concern that prospective claimants, discouraged by the Oro Fino decision, may have failed to assert their claims within the statutory period, discovering too late (through the Idaho Maryland decision) that they might have recovered. See S. Rep. [357 U.S. 155, 176] No. 1605, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. 2; H. R. Rep. No. 2220, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. 2. On the other hand, the committees' conclusions that "the gold mining industry was dealt with in a fashion which merits the consideration of the court in the adjudication of the losses which may have been occasioned by this order" and that "the least that can be done is to allow those persons affected by Order L-208 their day in court for such recompense as may seem justified," S. Rep. No. 1605, supra, at p. 7; H. R. Rep. No. 2220, supra, at p. 7, provide ground for inferring that Congress intended to establish a right of recovery if one did not already exist. The most, then, that can be said concerning the background of the Act is that it is inconclusive. </s> Although the language of the statute is equivocal and its legislative history ambiguous, another relevant line of inquiry must be pursued. The Act of July 14, 1952, is but one of many special jurisdictional statutes passed from time to time by Congress, and a number of these have been construed by the Court of Claims. An examination of these cases tends to corroborate the conclusion that the wording of the statute provides little clue to its judicially ascertainable meaning. The phrase "to hear, determine, and render judgment . . . on the claim," or an approximate equivalent, is common to most special jurisdictional statutes, including many that have been held to do no more than waive limited defenses. See, e. g., Act of Sept. 25, 1950, 64 Stat. 1032, involved in California v. United States, 127 Ct. Cl. 624, 628, 119 F. Supp. 174, 177; Act of June 15, 1946, 60 Stat. 1227, involved in Zephyr Aircraft Corp. v. United States, 122 Ct. Cl. 523, 551, 104 F. Supp. 990, 997; cf. United States v. Mille Lac Chippewas, 229 U.S. 498, 500 . Again, statutes similar in significant respects to the Act of July 14, 1952, have been construed in some cases to create a legal basis for recovery where none had existed before, see, e. g., Act of June 14, [357 U.S. 155, 177] 1935, 49 Stat. 2078, involved in Stubbs v. United States, 86 Ct. Cl. 152; Act of June 25, 1938, 52 Stat. 1399, involved in Creech v. United States, 102 Ct. Cl. 301, 60 F. Supp. 885, while in other cases to do no more than provide a forum for the adjudication of a claim on the basis of existing legal principles, see, e. g., Act of May 11, 1948, 62 Stat. 1350, involved in Hempstead Warehouse Corp. v. United States, 120 Ct. Cl. 291, 98 F. Supp. 572. </s> In many of these special jurisdictional statutes, Congress has clarified its purpose by employing various qualifying phrases and clauses. The absence of such qualifications may be found to have some relevance in the interpretation of the statute before us. For example, where a specific defense is waived (as the statute of limitations is waived in the Act of July 14, 1952), Congress has on occasion been at pains to emphasize that the effect of the statute should extend no further than that limited waiver. See, e. g., Act of Aug. 24, 1949, 63 Stat. 1169, involved in Breinig Bros., Inc. v. United States, 124 Ct. Cl. 645, 110 F. Supp. 269; Act of Oct. 18, 1951, 65 Stat. A124, involved in Watson v. United States, 135 Ct. Cl. 145, 146 F. Supp. 425. Moreover, it has not been uncommon for Congress in these statutes specifically to provide that the passage of the act should not be constructed as "an inference of liability" on the part of the United States Government. See, e. g., Act of July 16, 1952, 66 Stat. A206, A207, involved in Griffith v. United States, 135 Ct. Cl. 278; and Act of Aug. 25, 1950, 64 Stat. A191, involved in Booth v. United States, 140 Ct. Cl. 145, 155 F. Supp. 235. </s> Of course, if there is any significance to Congress' failure expressly to limit the application of the statute, it must also be recognized that Congress failed to employ techniques that would have made clear any intention to create a new right of action. Congress might, for example, have made a virtual confession of liability as [357 U.S. 155, 178] it did in the Act of March 1, 1929, 45 Stat. 2345, involved in Garrett v. United States, 70 Ct. Cl. 304. Congress might have waived other defenses than the statute of limitations. See, e. g., the Act of May 28, 1928, 45 Stat. 2001, involved in Alcock v. United States, 74 Ct. Cl. 308. Or Congress might, as it has often done, spell out in detail precisely what the task of the Court of Claims is to be under the statute, making clear what issues remain to be litigated. See, e. g., Act of July 2, 1956, 70 Stat. A103, involved in Kramer v. United States, 137 Ct. Cl. 537, 149 F. Supp. 152; Act of July 16, 1952, 66 Stat. A206, involved in Griffith v. United States, 135 Ct. Cl. 278; Act of March 19, 1951, 65 Stat. 5, involved in Board of County Comm'rs v. United States, 123 Ct. Cl. 304, 105 F. Supp. 995. </s> The Court of Claims, in seeking to determine the meaning of these statutes, has had occasion to turn to their legislative backgrounds. The court has, for example, been more readily able to find an intention on the part of Congress to admit liability where the claim in question arose out of a national emergency that had necessitated hasty and experimental governmental action resulting in disproportionate hardships, see Nolan Bros. v. United States, 98 Ct. Cl. 41, 89 (Act of July 23, 1937, 50 Stat. 533); cf. Mansfield v. United States, 89 Ct. Cl. 12 (Act of Aug. 19, 1935, 49 Stat. 2148). Significance has also been attached to the fact that Congress regarded the governmental action to have been wrongful. See Hawkins v. United States, 96 Ct. Cl. 357, 369-370 (Act of Feb. 11, 1936, 49 Stat. 2217) (statement in committee report to effect that action was "unmoral, inequitable, and unjust"). Contrariwise, however, where Congress has not made its intention quite clear, the court has approached its task with caution, see Hempstead Warehouse Corp. v. United States, supra, 120 Ct. Cl., at 305, 98 F. Supp., at 573; and it has often asserted that special jurisdictional statutes [357 U.S. 155, 179] should be strictly construed. See, e. g., California v. United States, supra, 127 Ct. Cl., at 629-630, 119 F. Supp., at 178-179; cf. United States v. Cumming, 130 U.S. 452, 455 . </s> Thus, even this limited examination of relevant materials leaves one very much in balance. But the fact that the answer to this question is not easy is no excuse for passing over it and deciding constitutional questions. It is startling doctrine to construe the Constitution in order to avoid difficult questions of statutory interpretation. It may well be that the Court of Claims, experienced as it obviously is in interpreting such statutes as these, may find the purpose of the Act of July 14, 1952, more readily susceptible of determination than could a court not possessed of that specialized competence. When the alternatives are initial and yet final decision by this Court and decision by an experienced court with the possibility of review in this Court, the choice seems clear. I would send the case back to the Court of Claims for an authoritative construction of the Special Jurisdictional Act. </s> [Footnote 1 That decision also governed the companion cases of Homestake Mining Co. v. United States, 122 Ct. Cl. 690, and Central Eureka Mining Co. v. United States, 122 Ct. Cl. 691. </s> [Footnote 2 E. g., S. 27, 78th Cong.; S. 344, 78th Cong.; H. R. 3009, 78th Cong.; H. R. 3682, 78th Cong.; H. R. 5093, 78th Cong.; H. R. 4393, 79th Cong.; H. R. 950, 80th Cong.; S. 45, 81st Cong.; H. R. 7851, 81st Cong. </s> MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, dissenting. </s> I dissent because I believe that the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution requires the Government to pay just compensation to the respondents for the temporary "taking" of their property accomplished by WPB Order L-208. </s> The Court views L-208 as a normal regulatory measure of the WPB, which had authority to allocate critical materials during the late war. It holds that this was the character of the administrative Order even though the Court of Claims found that L-208 was actually designed to cause a shift of gold miners to other nonferrous metal mines, rather than to control the allocation of mining equipment in short supply, as the Order on its face purported to do. In so holding, the Court emphasizes that [357 U.S. 155, 180] the "manpower" objective was simply one of the purposes of L-208. I am unable to reconcile the Court's conclusions with the findings of the Court of Claims. Finding 46 of the Court of Claims states that reallocation of gold miners by forced closure of the gold mines was "The dominant consideration . . . in the issuance of . . . L-208." (Italics supplied.) That this finding reflected the conclusion that the "manpower" purpose was the sole objective of the Order seems clear from the fact that the Court of Claims struck from this finding, as submitted to it by the hearing officer, the following two sentences: </s> "Another consideration in the issuance of the order was as stated in the preamble that the fulfillment of requirements for the defense of the United States had created a shortage in the supply of critical materials which had been used in the maintenance and operation of gold mines. </s> "Both objectives [the other being "manpower"] were in some measure accomplished with the closing of the plaintiffs' gold mines pursuant to the order." </s> On the basis of its findings, the Court of Claims concluded in its opinion: </s> "From the language of the order itself [L-208] and from the circumstances surrounding its promulgation, it is apparent that its only purpose was to deprive the gold mine owners and operators of their right to make use of their mining properties." </s> These conclusions, which seem to me to be convincingly supported by the evidence in the record, require that L-208 be regarded as having no other purpose than to effect the closing of respondents' mines in order to free gold mine labor for essential war work. The Government acknowledges that during the war it lacked any legal authority to order the transfer of civilian manpower. [357 U.S. 155, 181] </s> Viewing L-208 in this light, I cannot agree with the Court's conclusion that the Order was simply a "regulation" incident to which respondents happened to suffer financial loss. Instead, I believe that L-208 effected a temporary "taking" of the respondents' right to mine gold which is compensable under the Fifth Amendment. </s> L-208 was the only order promulgated during World War II which by its terms required a lawful and productive industry to shut down at a severe economic cost. See S. Rep. No. 1605, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. 3. As a result of the Order the respondents were totally deprived of the beneficial use of their property. Any suggestion that the mines could have been used in such a way (that is, other than to mine gold) so as to remove them from the scope of the Order would be chimerical. Not only were the respondents completely prevented from making profitable use of their property, but the Government acquired all that it wanted from the mines - their complete immobilization and the resulting discharge of the hardrock miners. It is plain that as a practical matter the Order led to consequences no different from those that would have followed the temporary acquisition of physical possession of these mines by the United States. </s> In these circumstances making the respondents' right to compensation turn on whether the Government took the ceremonial step of planting the American flag on the mining premises, cf. United States v. Pewee Coal Co., 341 U.S. 114, 116 , is surely to permit technicalities of form to dictate consequences of substance. In my judgment the present case should be viewed precisely as if the United States, in order to accomplish its purpose of freeing gold miners for essential work, had taken possession of the gold mines and allowed them to lie fallow for the duration of the war. Had the Government adopted the latter course it is hardly debatable that respondents [357 U.S. 155, 182] would have been entitled to compensation. See United States v. Pewee Coal Co., supra. </s> As the Court recognizes, governmental action in the form of regulation which severely diminishes the value of property may constitute a "taking." See United States v. Kansas City Life Ins. Co., 339 U.S. 799 ; United States v. Causby, 328 U.S. 256 ; Richards v. Washington Terminal Co., 233 U.S. 546 . "The general rule at least is, that while property may be regulated to a certain extent, if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking." Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393, 415 . In my opinion application of this principle calls here for the conclusion that there was a "taking," for it is difficult to conceive of a greater impairment of the use of property by a regulatory measure than that suffered by the respondents as a result of L-208. </s> None of the cases relied on by the Government precludes our acknowledging the confiscatory nature of L-208 and according respondents just compensation. Except in the extraordinary situation where private property is destroyed by American armed forces to meet the exigencies of the military situation in a theatre of war, see United States v. Caltex, Inc., 344 U.S. 149 , no case in this Court has held that the Government is excused from providing compensation when property has been "taken" from its owners during wartime in the interest of the common good. Cases such as Yakus v. United States, 321 U.S. 414 ; Bowles v. Willingham, 321 U.S. 503 ; Lichter v. United States, 334 U.S. 742 , involving the wartime regulation of prices, rents, and profits, are wide of the mark. In all of them the Government was administering a nationwide regulatory system rather than a narrowly confined order directed to a small, singled-out category of individual concerns. Furthermore, none of the regulations involved in those cases prohibited the profitable exploitation of a legal business. And in none of them [357 U.S. 155, 183] did the Government, following issuance of its edict, stand virtually in the position of one in physical possession of the property. </s> Also beside the point are the wartime prohibition cases. Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries & Warehouse Co., 251 U.S. 146 , dealt with the consequences of the Act of November 21, 1918, 40 Stat. 1045, 1046, which placed upon the property owners a burden not nearly so onerous as the one imposed on respondents by L-208. That Act permitted unrestricted sale of liquor for more than seven months from the date of its passage, and even after that time there was no restriction on sale for export or on local sale for other than beverage purposes. Moreover, the prohibition cases arose only after congressional action dealing specifically with the sale of liquor, and the Court in Hamilton particularly adverted to the fact that Congress might properly conclude that such sale should be halted "in order to guard and promote the efficiency" of the armed forces and defense workers. Hamilton v. Kentucky Distilleries & Warehouse Co., supra, at 155. This latter factor was also the premise of Jacob Ruppert v. Caffey, 251 U.S. 264 . Not only has there been no comparable congressional finding that gold mining was injurious, but the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which conducted a thorough analysis of the operation of L-208, recognized that "Issuance of the order was an administrative error . . . and may, furthermore, have been illegal." S. Rep. No. 1605, 82d Cong., 2d Sess. 3. </s> The question whether there has been a taking cannot of course be resolved by general formulae, but must turn on the circumstances of each particular case. As I have shown, the present case is plainly outside the run of past decisions. In those cases the Court was rightfully reluctant to sanction compensation for losses resulting from wartime regulatory measures which, under conditions of total mobilization, have ramifications touching everyone [357 U.S. 155, 184] in one degree or another. But where the Government proceeds by indirection, and accomplishes by regulation what is the equivalent of outright physical seizure of private property, courts should guard themselves against permitting formalities to obscure actualities. As Mr. Justice Holmes observed in Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, supra, at 416: "We are in danger of forgetting that a strong public desire to improve the public condition is not enough to warrant achieving the desire by a shorter cut than the constitutional way of paying for the change." </s> We should treat L-208 as being what in every realistic sense it was, a temporary confiscation of respondents' property. The Government is not absolved from providing just compensation here because the WPB may have lacked authority to "take" respondents' mines in order to free the miners for essential work in other mines. See International Paper Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 399, 406 ; cf. Hatahley v. United States, 351 U.S. 173 . I need hardly add that we should not be deterred from according respondents their due because their claims and those of others similarly situated may run into sizable amounts. The Court of Claims, certainly not given to the easy allowance of demands upon the public treasury, faced up to what the Constitution plainly requires in this instance. We should affirm its judgment. </s> [357 U.S. 155, 185]

United States Supreme Court GRAY v. SANDERS(1963) No. 112 Argued: January 17, 1963Decided: March 18, 1963 </s> Appellee, a qualified voter in primary and general elections in Fulton county, Georgia, sued in a Federal District Court to restrain appellants, the Secretary of State and officials of the State Democratic Executive Committee, from using Georgia's county-unit system as a basis for counting votes in a Democratic primary election for the nomination of a United States Senator and statewide officers - which was practically equivalent to election. Such primary elections are governed by a Georgia statute, which was amended in 1962 so as to allocate unit votes to counties as follows: Counties with populations not exceeding 15,000, two units; an additional unit for the next 5,000 persons; an additional unit for the next 10,000; an additional unit for each of the next two brackets of 15,000; and, thereafter, two more units for each increase of 30,000. All candidates for statewide office were required to receive a majority of the county-unit votes to be entitled to nomination in the first primary. The practical effect of this system is that the vote of each citizen counts for less and less as the population of his county increases, and a combination of the units from the counties having the smallest population gives counties having one-third of the total population of the State a clear majority of county votes. Held: </s> 1. Since the constitutionality of a state statute was involved and the question was a substantial one, a three-judge court was properly convened to hear this case, as required under 28 U.S.C. 2281. P. 370. </s> 2. State regulation of these primary elections makes the election process state action within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 374-375. </s> 3. Appellee, like any person whose right to vote is impaired, had standing to sue. P. 375. [372 U.S. 368, 369] </s> 4. The case is not moot by reason of the fact that the Democratic Committee voted to hold the 1962 primary election on a popular-vote basis, since the 1962 Act remains in force and it would govern future elections if the complaint were dismissed. Pp. 375-376. </s> 5. The use of this election system in a statewide election violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 376-381. </s> (a) The District Court correctly held that the county-unit system, as applied in a statewide election, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; but it erred in framing its injunction so that a county-unit system might be used in weighting the votes in a statewide election, if the system showed no greater disparity against a county than exists against any State in the conduct of national elections. Pp. 373-374, 376-379. </s> (b) The Equal Protection Clause requires that, once a geographical unit for which a representative is to be chosen is designated, all who participate in the election must have an equal vote - whatever their race; whatever their sex; whatever their occupation; whatever their income and wherever their home may be in that geographical unit. Pp. 379-380. </s> (c) The only weighting of votes sanctioned by the Constitution concerns matters of representation, such as an allocation of Senators irrespective of population and the use of the electoral college in the choice of a President. Pp. 380-381. </s> (d) The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing - one person, one vote. P. 381. </s> 203 F. Supp. 158, judgment vacated and case remanded. </s> B. D. Murphy and E. Freeman Leverett, Deputy Assistant Attorneys General of Georgia, argued the cause for appellants. With them on the brief were Eugene Cook, Attorney General, and Lamar W. Sizemore. </s> Morris B. Abram argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Herman Heyman and Robert E. Hicks. [372 U.S. 368, 370] </s> Attorney General Kennedy, by special leave of Court, argued the cause for the United States, as amicus curiae, urging affirmance. On the brief were Solicitor General Cox, Assistant Attorney General Marshall, Bruce J. Terris, Harold H. Greene, David Rubin and Howard A. Glickstein. </s> MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> I. </s> This suit was instituted by appellee, who is qualified to vote in primary and general elections in Fulton County, Georgia, to restrain appellants from using Georgia's county unit system as a basis for counting votes in a Democratic primary for the nomination of a United States Senator and statewide officers, and for declaratory relief. Appellants are the Chairman and Secretary of the Georgia State Democratic Executive Committee, and the Secretary of State of Georgia. Appellee alleges that the use of the county unit system in counting, tabulating, consolidating, and certifying votes cast in primary elections for statewide offices violates the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Seventeenth Amendment. As the constitutionality of state statute was involved and the question was a substantial one, a three-judge court was properly convened. See 28 U.S.C. 2281; United States v. Georgia Public Service Comm'n, 371 U.S. 285 . </s> Appellants moved to dismiss; and they also filed an answer denying that the county unit system was unconstitutional and alleging that it was designed "to achieve a reasonable balance as between urban and rural electoral power." </s> Under Georgia law each county is given a specified number of representatives in the lower House of the General [372 U.S. 368, 371] Assembly. 1 This county unit system at the time this suit was filed was employed as follows in statewide primaries: 2 (1) Candidates for nominations who received the highest number of popular votes in a county were considered to have carried the county and to be entitled to two votes for each representative to which the county is entitled in the lower House of the General Assembly; (2) the majority of the county unit vote nominated a United States Senator and Governor; the plurality of the county unit vote nominated the others. </s> Appellee asserted that the total population of Georgia in 1960 was 3,943, 116; that the population of Fulton County, where he resides, was 556,326; that the residents of Fulton County comprised 14.11% of Georgia's total population; but that, under the county unit system, the six unit votes of Fulton County constituted 1.46% of the total of 410 unit votes, or one-tenth of Fulton County's percentage of statewide population. The complaint further alleged that Echols County, the least populous county in Georgia, had a population in 1960 of 1,876, or .05% of the State's population, but the unit vote of Echols County was .48% of the total unit vote of all counties in Georgia, or 10 times Echols County's statewide percentage of population. One unit vote in Echols County represented 938 residents, whereas one unit vote in Fulton County represented 92,721 residents. Thus, one resident in Echols County had an influence in the nomination of candidates equivalent to 99 residents of Fulton County. [372 U.S. 368, 372] </s> On the same day as the hearing in the District Court, Georgia amended the statutes challenged in the complaint. This amendment 3 modified the county unit system by allocating units to counties in accordance with a "bracket system" instead of doubling the number of representatives of each county in the lower House of the Georgia Assembly. Counties with from 0 to 15,000 people were allotted two units; an additional one unit was allotted for the next 5,000 persons; an additional unit for the next 10,000 persons; another unit for each of the next two brackets of 15,000 persons; and, thereafter, two more units for each increase of 30,000 persons. Under the amended Act, all candidates for statewide office (not merely for Senator and Governor as under the earlier Act) are required to receive a majority of the county unit votes to be entitled to nominated in the first primary. In addition, in order to be nominated in the first primary, a candidate has to receive a majority of the popular votes unless there are only two candidates for the nomination and each receives an equal number of unit votes, in which event the candidate with the popular majority wins. If no candidate receives both a majority of the unit votes and a majority of the popular votes, a second run-off primary is required between the candidate receiving the highest number of unit votes and the candidate receiving the highest number of popular votes. In the second primary, the candidate receiving the highest number of unit votes is to prevail. But again, if there is a tie in unit votes, the candidate with the popular majority wins. </s> Appellee was allowed to amend his complaint so as to challenge the amended Act. The District Court held that the amended Act had some of the vices of the prior Act. It stated that under the amended Act "the vote of [372 U.S. 368, 373] each citizen counts for less and less as the population of the county of his residence increases." 203 F. Supp. 158, 170, n. 10. It went on to say: </s> "There are 97 two-unit counties, totalling 194 unit votes, and 22 counties totalling 66 unit votes, altogether 260 unit votes, within 14 of a majority; but no county in the above has as much as 20,000 population. The remaining 40 counties range in population from 20,481 to 556,326, but they control altogether only 287 county unit votes. Combination of the units from the counties having the smallest population gives counties having population of one-third of the total in the state a clear majority of county units." Ibid. </s> The District Court held that as a result of Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 , it had jurisdiction, that a justiciable case was stated, that appellee had standing, and that the Democratic primary in Georgia is "state" action within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. It held that the county unit system as applied violates the Equal Protection Clause, and it issued an injunction, 4 not against conducting any party primary election under the county unit system, but against conducting such an election under a county unit system that does not meet the requirements specified by the court. 5 203 F. Supp. [372 U.S. 368, 374] 158. In other words, the District Court did not proceed on the basis that in a statewide election every qualified person was entitled to one vote and that all weighted voting was outlawed. Rather, it allowed a county unit system to be used in weighting the votes if the system showed no greater disparity against a county than exists against any State in the conduct of national elections. 6 Thereafter the Democratic Committee voted to hold the 1962 primary election for the statewide offices mentioned on a popular vote basis. We noted probable jurisdiction. 370 U.S. 921 . </s> II. </s> We agree with the District Court that the action of this party in the conduct of its primary constitutes state action within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Judge Sibley, writing for the court in Chapman v. King, 154 F.2d 460, showed with meticulous detail the manner in which Georgia regulates the conduct of party primaries (id., pp. 463-464) and he concluded: </s> "We think these provisions show that the State, through the managers it requires, collaborates in the conduct of the primary, and puts its power behind the rules of the party. It adopts the primary as a part of the public election machinery. The exclusions of voters made by the party by the primary rules become exclusions enforced by the State." Id., p. 464. </s> We agree with that result and conclude that state regulation of this preliminary phase of the election process [372 U.S. 368, 375] makes it state action. See United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299 ; Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 . </s> We also agree that appellee, like any person whose right to vote is impaired (Smith v. Allwright, supra; Baker v. Carr, supra, pp. 204-208), has standing to sue. 7 </s> Moreover, we think the case is not moot by reason of the fact that the Democratic Committee voted to hold [372 U.S. 368, 376] the 1962 primary on a popular vote basis. But for the injunction issued below, the 1962 Act remains in force; and if the complaint were dismissed it would govern future elections. In addition, the voluntary abandonment of a practice does not relieve a court of adjudicating its legality, particularly where the practice is deeply rooted and long standing. For if the case were dismissed as moot appellants would be "free to return to . . . [their] old ways." United States v. W. T. Grant Co., 345 U.S. 629, 632 . </s> III. </s> On the merits we take a different view of the nature of the problem than did the District Court. </s> This case, unlike Baker v. Carr, supra, does not involve a question of the degree to which the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment limits the authority of a State Legislature in designing the geographical districts from which representatives are chosen either for the State Legislature or for the Federal House of Representatives. Nor does it include the related problems of Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 , where "gerrymandering" was used to exclude a minority group from participation in municipal affairs. Nor does it present the question, inherent in the bicameral form of our Federal Government, whether a State may have one house chosen without regard to population. The District Court, however, analogized Georgia's use of the county unit system in determining the results of a statewide election to phases of our federal system. It pointed out that under the electoral college, 8 required by Art. II, 1, of the Constitution [372 U.S. 368, 377] and the Twelfth Amendment in the election of the President, voting strength "is not in exact proportion to population . . . . Recognizing that the electoral college was set up as a compromise to enable the formation of the Union among the several sovereign states, it still could hardly be said that such a system used in a state among its counties, assuming rationality and absence of arbitrariness in end result, could be termed invidious." 203 F. Supp., at 169. </s> Accordingly the District Court as already noted 9 held that use of the county unit system in counting the votes [372 U.S. 368, 378] in a statewide election was permissible "if the disparity against any county is not in excess of the disparity that exists against any state in the most recent electoral college allocation." 203 F. Supp., at 170. Moreover the District Court held that use of the county unit system in counting the votes in a statewide election was permissible "if the disparity against any county is not in excess of the disparity that exists . . . under the equal proportions formula for representation of the several states in the Congress." Ibid. The assumption implicit in these conclusions is that since equality is not inherent in the electoral college and since precise equality among blocs of votes in one State or in the several States when it comes to the election of members of the House of Representatives is never possible, precise equality is not necessary in statewide elections. </s> We think the analogies to the electoral college, to districting and redistricting, and to other phases of the problems of representation in state or federal legislatures or conventions 10 are inapposite. The inclusion of the electoral college in the Constitution, as the result of specific historical concerns, 11 validated the collegiate principle despite its inherent numerical inequality, but implied nothing about the use of an analogous system by a State in a statewide election. No such specific accommodation of the latter was ever undertaken, and therefore no validation of its numerical inequality ensued. Nor does the question here have anything to do with the composition of the state or federal legislature. And we intimate no opinion on the constitutional phases of that problem beyond what we said in Baker v. Carr, supra. The present case is only a voting case. Cf. Nixon v. Herndon, [372 U.S. 368, 379] 273 U.S. 536 ; Nixon v. Condon, 286 U.S. 73 ; Smith v. Allwright, supra. Georgia gives every qualified voter one vote in a statewide election; but in counting those votes she employs the county unit system which in end result weights the rural vote more heavily than the urban vote and weights some small rural counties heavier than other larger rural counties. </s> States can within limits specify the qualifications of voters in both state and federal elections; the Constitution indeed makes voters' qualifications rest on state law even in federal elections. Art. I, 2. As we held in Lassiter v. Northampton Election Board, 360 U.S. 45 , a State may if it chooses require voters to pass literacy tests, provided of course that literacy is not used as a cloak to discriminate against one class or group. But we need not determine all the limitations that are placed on this power of a State to determine the qualifications of voters, for appellee is a qualified voter. </s> The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits a State from denying or abridging a Negro's right to vote. The Nineteenth Amendment does the same for women. If a State in a statewide election weighted the male vote more heavily than the female vote or the white vote more heavily than the Negro vote; none could successfully contend that that discrimination was allowable. See Terry v. Adams, 345 U.S. 461 . How then can one person be given twice or ten times the voting power of another person in a state-wide election merely because he lives in a rural area or because he lives in the smallest rural county? Once the geographical unit for which a representative is to be chosen is designated, all who participate in the election are to have an equal vote - whatever their race, whatever their sex, whatever their occupation, whatever their income, and wherever their home may be in that geographical unit. This is required by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The concept of [372 U.S. 368, 380] "we the people" under the Constitution visualizes no preferred class of voters but equality among those who meet the basic qualifications. The idea that every voter is equal to every other voter in his State, when he casts his ballot in favor of one of several competing candidates, underlies many of our decisions. </s> The Court has consistently recognized that all qualified voters have a constitutionally protected right "to cast their ballots and have them counted at Congressional elections." United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 315 ; see Ex parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651 ; Wiley v. Sinkler, 179 U.S. 58 ; Swafford v. Templeton, 185 U.S. 487 . Every voter's vote is entitled to be counted once. It must be correctly counted and reported. As stated in United States v. Mosley, 238 U.S. 383, 386 , "the right to have one's vote counted" has the same dignity as "the right to put a ballot in a box." It can be protected from the diluting effect of illegal ballots. Ex parte Siebold, 100 U.S. 371 ; United States v. Saylor, 322 U.S. 385 . And these rights must be recognized in any preliminary election that in fact determines the true weight a vote will have. See United States v. Classic, supra; Smith v. Allwright, supra. The concept of political equality in the voting booth contained in the Fifteenth Amendment extends to all phases of state elections, see Terry v. Adams, supra; and, as previously noted, there is no indication in the Constitution that homesite or occupation affords a permissible basis for distinguishing between qualified voters within the State. </s> The only weighting of votes sanctioned by the Constitution concerns matters of representation, such as the allocation of Senators irrespective of population and the use of the electoral college in the choice of a President. Yet when Senators are chosen, the Seventeenth Amendment states the choice must be made "by the people." Minors, felons, and other classes may be excluded. See [372 U.S. 368, 381] Lassiter v. Northampton Election Board, supra, p. 51. But once the class of voters is chosen and their qualifications specified, we see no constitutional way by which equality of voting power may be evaded. As we stated in Gomillion v. Lightfoot, supra, p. 347: </s> "When a State exercises power wholly within the domain of state interest, it is insulated from federal judicial review. But such insulation is not carried over when state power is used as an instrument for circumventing a federally protected right." </s> The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing - one person, one vote. </s> While we agree with the District Court on most phases of the case and think it was right in enjoining the use of the county unit system 12 in tabulating the votes, we vacate its judgment and remand the case so that a decree in conformity with our opinion may be entered. </s> It is so ordered. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 Ga. Const., 1945, Art. III, III, § I: </s> "The House of Representatives shall consist of representatives apportioned among the several counties of the State as follows: To the eight counties having the largest population, three representatives each; to the thirty counties having the next largest population, two representatives each; and to the remaining counties, one representative each." </s> [Footnote 2 Ga. Code Ann., 34-3212, 34-3213 (1936). </s> [Footnote 3 Ga. Laws 1962, Ex. Sess., No. 1, p. 1217; Ga. Code Ann., 34-3212, 34-3213 (1962). </s> [Footnote 4 The order, dated April 28, 1962, was not restricted to the party primary of September 12, 1962; nor was the relief asked so restricted. </s> [Footnote 5 The District Court in its order defined the type of county unit system which violated the Equal Protection Clause as follows: </s> "A county unit system for use in a party primary is invidiously discriminatory if any unit has less than its share to the nearest whole number proportionate to population, or to the whole of the vote in a recent party gubernatorial primary, or to the vote for electors of the party in the most recent presidential election; provided, no discrimination is deemed to be invidious under such system if the disparity against any county is not in excess of the disparity [372 U.S. 368, 374] that exists as against any state in the most recent electoral college allocation, or under the equal proportions formula for representation of the several states in the Congress of the United States, and, provided provision is made for allocations to be adjusted to accord with changes in the basis at least once each ten years." </s> [Footnote 6 See note 5, supra. </s> [Footnote 7 Chief Justice Holt stated over 250 years ago: </s> "A right that a man has to give his vote at the election of a person to represent him in parliament, there to concur to the making of laws, which are to bind his liberty and property, is a most transcendent thing, and of an high nature . . . . [I]t is a great injury to deprive . . . [him] of it. . . . </s> ". . . It would look very strange, when the commons of England are so fond of their right of sending representatives to parliament, that it should be in the power of a sheriff, or other officer, to deprive them of that right, and yet that they should have no remedy . . . . This right of voting is a right in the plaintiff by the common law, and consequently he shall maintain an action for the obstruction of it. . . . </s> . . . . . </s> "But in the principal case my brother says, we cannot judge of this matter, because it is a parliamentary thing. O! by all means be very tender of that. Besides it is intricate, and there may be contrariety of opinions. . . . To allow this action will make publick officers more careful to observe the constitution of cities and boroughs, and not to be so partial as they commonly are in all elections, which is indeed a great and growing mischief, and tends to the prejudice of the peace of the nation. But they say, that this is a matter out of our jurisdiction, and we ought not to inlarge it. I agree we ought not to incroach or inlarge our jurisdiction; . . . but sure we may determine on a charter granted by the king, or on a matter of custom or prescription, when it comes before us without incroaching on the parliament. And if it be a matter within our jurisdiction, we are bound by our oaths to judge of it. This is a matter of property determinable before us. Was ever such a petition heard of in parliament, as that a man was hindered of giving his vote, and praying them to give him remedy? The parliament undoubtedly would say, take your remedy at law. It is not like the case of determining the right of election between the candidates." Ashby v. White, 2 Ld. Raym. 938, 953, 954, 956 (1702). </s> [Footnote 8 The electoral college was designed by men who did not want the election of the President to be left to the people. See S. Doc. No. 97, Survey of the Electoral College in the Political System of the United States, 79th Cong., 1st Sess. "George Washington was elected to the office of Chief Magistrate of the Nation, by 69 votes - the total number [372 U.S. 368, 377] cast by the electors. At that time, three States did not vote. New York had not yet passed an electoral law, and North Carolina and Rhode Island had not yet ratified the Constitution. Therefore, of an estimated population of 4,000,000 people, a President was chosen by 69 voters, who had not been selected by the people, but appointed by State legislatures, save in the instances of Maryland and Virginia." Id., p. 4. </s> Hamilton expressed the philosophy behind the electoral college in The Federalist No. 68. "This process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of president, will seldom fall to the lot of any man, who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. Talents for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single state; but it will require other talents and a different kind of merit to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of president of the United States. It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters preeminent for ability and virtue. And this will be thought no inconsiderable recommendation of the constitution, by those, who are able to estimate the share, which the executive in every government must necessarily have in its good or ill administration." </s> Passage of the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments shows that this conception of political equality belongs to a bygone day, and should not be considered in determining what the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires in statewide elections. </s> [Footnote 9 See note 5, supra. </s> [Footnote 10 We do not reach here the questions that would be presented were the convention system used for nominating candidates in lieu of the primary system. </s> [Footnote 11 See note 8, supra. </s> [Footnote 12 The county unit system, even in its amended form (see note 3, supra) would allow the candidate winning the popular vote in the county to have the entire unit vote of that county. Hence the weighting of votes would continue, even if unit votes were allocated strictly in proportion to population. Thus if a candidate won 6,000 of 10,000 votes in a particular county, he would get the entire unit vote, the 4,000 other votes for a different candidate being worth nothing and being counted only for the purpose of being discarded. </s> MR. JUSTICE STEWART, whom MR. JUSTICE CLARK joins, concurring. </s> In joining the opinion and judgment of the Court, I emphasize what - but for my Brother HARLAN'S dissent - I should have thought would be apparent to all who read the Court's opinion. This case does not involve the [372 U.S. 368, 382] validity of a State's apportionment of geographic constituencies from which representatives to the State's legislative assembly are chosen, nor any of the problems under the Equal Protection Clause which such litigation would present. We do not deal here with "the basic ground rules implementing Baker v. Carr." This case, on the contrary, involves statewide elections of a United States Senator and of state executive and judicial officers responsible to a statewide constituency. Within a given constituency, there can be room for but a single constitutional rule - one voter, one vote. United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299 . </s> MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, dissenting. </s> When Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 , was argued at the last Term we were assured that if this Court would only remove the roadblocks of Colegrove v. Green, 328 U.S. 549 , and its predecessors to judicial review in "electoral" cases, this Court in all likelihood would never have to get deeper into such matters. State legislatures, it was predicted, would be prodded into taking satisfactory action by the mere prospect of legal proceedings. </s> These predictions have not proved true. As of November 1, 1962, the apportionment of seats in at least 30 state legislatures had been challenged in state and federal courts, 1 and, besides this one, 10 electoral cases of one kind or another are already on this Court's docket. 2 The present case is the first of these to reach plenary consideration. [372 U.S. 368, 383] </s> Preliminarily, it is symptomatic of the swift pace of current constitutional adjudication that the majority opinion should have failed to mention any of the four occasions on which Georgia's County Unit System has previously been unsuccessfully challenged in this Court, Cook v. Fortson, decided with Turman v. Duckworth, 329 U.S. 675 (1946); South v. Peters, 339 U.S. 276 (1950); Cox v. Peters, 342 U.S. 936 (1952); and Hartsfield v. Sloan, 357 U.S. 916 (1958). </s> It is true that none of these cases reached the stage of full plenary consideration but, in light of the judicial history recounted by Mr. Justice Frankfurter in his dissenting opinion in Baker v. Carr, supra, at 266, 278 et seq., only the guileless could fail to recognize that the prevailing view then was that the validity of this County Unit System was not open to serious constitutional doubt. 3 This estimate of the earlier situation is highlighted by the dissenting opinion of JUSTICE BLACK and DOUGLAS in South v. Peters, supra, at 277, in which they unsuccessfully espoused the very views which now become the law. Presumably my two Brothers also reflected these same views in noting their dissents in the Cox and Hartsfield cases. See also Cook v. Fortson, etc., supra, in which MR. JUSTICE BLACK also noted his dissent. </s> But even if the Court's present silence about these cases can be deemed justified on the premise that their summary disposition can be satisfactorily accounted for on grounds not involving the merits, I consider today's decision not supportable. [372 U.S. 368, 384] </s> In the context of a nominating primary respecting candidates for statewide office, the Court construes the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as requiring that each person's vote be given equal weight. The majority says: "The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments can mean only one thing - one person, one vote." Ante, p. 381. The Court then strikes down Georgia's County Unit System as such, a holding which the District Court declined to make. 203 F. Supp., at 170. </s> The Court's holding surely flies in the face of history. For, as impressively shown by the opinion of Frankfurter, J., in Baker v. Carr ( 369 U.S., at 301 -324), "one person, one vote" has never been the universally accepted political philosophy in England, the American Colonies, or in the United States. The significance of this historical fact seems indeed to be recognized by the Court, for it implies that its new-found formula might not obtain in a case involving the apportionment of seats in the "State Legislature or for the Federal House of Representatives." Ante, p. 376. </s> But, independently of other reasons that will be discussed in a moment, any such distinction finds persuasive refutation in the Federal Electoral College whereby the President of the United States is chosen on principles wholly opposed to those now held constitutionally required in the electoral process for statewide office. One need not close his eyes to the circumstance that the Electoral College was born in compromise, nor take sides in the various attempts that have been made to change the system, 4 in order to agree with the court below that it "could [372 U.S. 368, 385] hardly be said that such a system used in a state among its counties, assuming rationality and absence of arbitrariness in end result, could be termed invidious." 203 F. Supp., at 169. </s> Indeed this Court itself some 15 years ago rejected, in a comparable situation, the notion of political equality now pronounced. In MacDougall v. Green, 335 U.S. 281 , challenge was made to an Illinois law requiring that nominating petitions of a new political party be signed by at least 25,000 voters, including a minimum of 200 voters from each of at least 50 of the 102 counties in the State. The claim was that the "200 requirement" made it possible for "the voters of the less populous counties . . . to block the nomination of candidates whose support is confined to geographically limited areas." Id., at 283. In disallowing this claim, the Court said (id., at 283-284): </s> "To assume that political power is a function exclusively of numbers is to disregard the practicalities of government. Thus, the Constitution protects the interests of the smaller against the greater by giving in the Senate entirely unequal representation to populations. It would be strange indeed, and doctrinaire, for this Court, applying such broad constitutional concepts as due process and equal protection of the laws, to deny a State the power to assure a proper diffusion of political initiative as between its thinly populated counties and those having concentrated masses, in view of the fact that the latter have practical opportunities for exerting their political weight at the polls not available to the former. The Constitution - a practical instrument of government - makes no such demands on the States." </s> Certainly no support for this equal protection doctrine can be drawn from the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, or [372 U.S. 368, 386] Nineteenth Amendment. The Fifteenth Amendment simply assures that the right to vote shall not be impaired "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The Seventeenth Amendment provides that Senators shall be "elected by the people," with no indication that all people must be accorded a vote of equal weight. The Nineteenth Amendment merely gives the vote to women. And it is hard to take seriously the argument that "dilution" of a vote in consequence of a legislatively sanctioned electoral system can, without more, be analogized to an impairment of the political franchise by ballot box stuffing or other criminal activity, e. g., United States v. Mosley, 238 U.S. 383 , United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299 , United States v. Saylor, 322 U.S. 385 , or to the disenfranchisement of qualified voters on purely racial grounds, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 . </s> A violation of the Equal Protection Clause thus cannot be found in the mere circumstance that the Georgia County Unit System results in disproportionate vote weighting. It "is important for this court to avoid extracting from the very general language of the Fourteenth Amendment a system of delusive exactness . . . ." Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Barber Asphalt Co., 197 U.S. 430, 434 (Holmes, J.). What then remains of the equal protection claim in this case? </s> At the core of Georgia's diffusion of voting strength which favors the small as against the large counties is the urban-rural problem, so familiar in the American political scene. In my dissent in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S., at 336 , I expressed the view that a State might rationally conclude that its general welfare was best served by apportioning more seats in the legislature to agricultural communities than to urban centers, lest the legitimate interests of the former be submerged in the stronger electoral voice of the latter. In my opinion, recognition of the same factor cannot be deemed irrational in the present situation, [372 U.S. 368, 387] even though all of the considerations supporting its use in a legislative apportionment case are not present here. </s> Given the undeniably powerful influence of a state governor on law and policy making, 5 I do not see how it can be deemed irrational for a State to conclude that a candidate for such office should not be one whose choice lies with the numerically superior electoral strength of urban voters. By like token, I cannot consider it irrational for Georgia to apply its County Unit System to the selection of candidates for other statewide offices 6 in order to assure against a predominantly "city point of view" in the administration of the State's affairs. </s> On the existing record, this leaves the question of "irrationality" in this case to be judged on the basis of pure arithmetic. The Court by its "one person, one vote" theory in effect avoids facing up to that problem, but the District Court did face it, holding that the disparities in voting strength between the largest county (Fulton) and the four smallest counties (Webster, Glascock, Quitman, and Echols), running respectively 8 to 1, 10 to 1, 11 to 1, [372 U.S. 368, 388] and 14 to 1 in favor of the latter, 7 were invidiously discriminatory. But it did not tell us why. I do not understand how, on the basis of these mere numbers, unilluminated as they are by any of the complex and subtle political factors involved, a court of law can say, except by judicial fiat, that these disparities are in themselves constitutionally invidious. </s> The disproportions in the Georgia County Unit System are indeed not greatly out of line with those existing under the Electoral College count for the Presidency. The disparity in population per Electoral College vote between New York (the largest State in the 1960 census) and Alaska (the smallest) was about 5 to 1. 8 There are only 15 Georgia counties, out of a total of 159, which have a greater disparity per unit vote, and of these 15 counties 4 have disparity of less than 6 to 1. It is thus apparent that a slight modification of the Georgia plan could bring it within the tolerance permitted in the federal scheme. </s> It was of course imponderables like these that lay at the root of the Court's steadfast pre-Baker v. Carr refusal "to enter [the] political thicket." Colegrove v. Green, supra, at 556. Having turned its back on this wise chapter in its history, the Court, in my view, can no longer escape the necessity of coming to grips with the thorny problems it so studiously strove to avoid in Baker v. Carr [372 U.S. 368, 389] (see concurring opinion of STEWART, J., 369 U.S., at 265 , and dissenting opinion of HARLAN, J., id., at 339) and in two subsequent cases, Scholle v. Hare, 369 U.S. 429, 430 (concurring opinion of CLARK, J., and STEWART, J.), 430-435 (dissenting opinion of HARLAN, J.); W. M. C. A., Inc., v. Simon, 370 U.S. 190, 191 -194 (dissenting opinion of HARLAN, J.). To regard this case as being outside the general stream of electoral cases because only two other States, Maryland and Mississippi, have county unit systems, is to hide one's head in the sand. </s> What then should be the test of "rationality" in this judicially unfamiliar field? My Brother CLARK has perhaps given us a clue in the legislative inactivity - absence of any other remedy - crazy quilt approach contained in his concurring opinion in Baker v. Carr, supra, at 253-262. But I think a formulation of the basic ground rules in this untrod area of judicial competence should await a fully developed record. This case is here at an interlocutory stage. The temporary injunction before us issued upon a record consisting only of the pleadings, answers to interrogatories, affidavits, statistical material, and what the lower court described as a "liberal use of our right to take judicial notice of matters of common knowledge and public concern." 203 F. Supp., at 160, n. 1. No full-dress exploration of any of the many intricate questions involved in establishing criteria for judging "rationality" took place, the opinion and decree below issued the day following the hearing, and the District Court observed that, while its standards of equal protection (which this Court now puts aside) "may appear doctrinaire to some extent," it was constrained to act as it did because of the then (but no longer existing) 9 urgency of the situation. 203 F. Supp., at 170. [372 U.S. 368, 390] </s> Surely, if the Court's "one person, one vote" ideology is constitutionally untenable, as I think it clearly is, the basic ground rules implementing Baker v. Carr should await the trial of this or some other case in which we have before us a fully developed record. Only then can we know what we are doing. Cf. White Motor Co. v. United States, ante, p. 253. A matter which so profoundly touches the barriers between federal judicial and state legislative authority demands nothing less. </s> I would vacate the judgment of the District Court and remand the case for trial. </s> [Footnote 1 Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Report on Apportionment of State Legislatures, December 1962, p. A-21. I have been informed by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts that, by December 31, 1962, over 25 suits had been filed in the federal courts alone. </s> [Footnote 2 No. 460, WMCA, Inc., v. Simon; No. 507, Wesberry v. Sanders; No. 508, Reynolds v. Sims; No. 517, Beadle v. Scholle; No. 540, Vann v. Frink; No. 554, Maryland Comm. for Fair Representation [372 U.S. 368, 383] v. Tawes; No. 610, McConnell v. Frink; No. 688, Price v. Moss; No. 689, Oklahoma Farm Bureau v. Moss; No. 797, Davis v. Mann. </s> [Footnote 3 Although the Solicitor General, as amicus, suggests that the Court's action in South v. Peters rested simply on a refusal to exercise federal equity power, it should be noted that the first case cited in the Court's per curiam affirmance is MacDougall v. Green, 335 U.S. 281 . See infra, p. 385. </s> [Footnote 4 See Wechsler, Presidential Elections and the Constitution: A Comment on Proposed Amendment, 35 A. B. A. J. 181 (1949). </s> [Footnote 5 The Georgia Constitution vests in the Governor the State's "executive power," and authorizes him to recommend legislation, make reports to and call extraordinary sessions of the State General Assembly, issue writs of election to fill vacancies in the General Assembly, veto or approve bills and resolutions, and require reports from the various departments of the State. Ga. Const. of 1945, Art. V, 2-3001 to 2-3017. Also, by statute, payments cannot be made from the state treasury without a warrant issued by the Governor, Ga. Code Ann., 40-204, and in the event of a public emergency the Governor is authorized to promulgate and enforce such rules and regulations as are necessary to prevent, control, or quell violence, threatened or actual, Ga. Code Ann., 40-213. </s> [Footnote 6 Those involved in this case, besides Governor, are United States Senator, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Justice of the Supreme Court, Judge of the Court of Appeals, Attorney General, Comptroller General, Commissioner of Labor, and Treasurer. The Governor has a general power to fill vacancies in such offices, unless otherwise provided by law. Ga. Const. of 1945, Art. V, 2-3013. </s> [Footnote 7 Population Ratio to per Fulton County Population Unit Vote Unit Vote County </s> Fulton .......... 556,326 40 13,908 DeKalb .......... 256,782 20 12,839 Chatham ......... 188,299 16 11,760 Muscogee ........ 158,623 14 11,330 Webster ......... 3,247 2 1,623 8 to 1 Glascock ........ 2,672 2 1,336 10 to 1 Quitman ......... 2,432 2 1,216 11 to 1 Echols .......... 1,876 2 938 14 to 1 </s> [Footnote 8 Statistical Abstract of the United States 10, 366 (1962). </s> [Footnote 9 Following the District Court's injunction, a statewide direct primary was held. </s> [372 U.S. 368, 391]

United States Supreme Court PLAINS COMMERCE BANK v. LONG FAMILY LAND & CATTLE CO., INC., ET AL.(2008) No. 07-411 Argued: April 14, 2008Decided: June 25, 2008 </s> Petitioner Plains Commerce Bank (Bank), a non-Indian bank, sold land it owned in fee simple on a tribal reservation to non-Indians. Respondents the Longs, an Indian couple who had been leasing the land with an option to purchase, claim the Bank discriminated against them by selling the parcel to nonmembers of the Tribe on terms more favorable than the Bank offered to sell it to them. The couple sued in Tribal Court, asserting, inter alia, discrimination, breach-of-contract, and bad-faith claims. Over the Bank's objection, the Tribal Court concluded that it had jurisdiction and proceeded to trial, where a jury ruled against the Bank on three claims, including the discrimination claim. The court awarded the Longs damages plus interest. In a supplemental judgment, the court also gave the Longs an option to purchase that portion of the fee land they still occupied, nullifying the Bank's sale of the land to non-Indians. After the Tribal Court of Appeals affirmed, the Bank filed suit in Federal District Court, contending that the tribal judgment was null and void because, as relevant here, the Tribal Court lacked jurisdiction over the Longs' discrimination claim. The District Court granted the Longs summary judgment, finding tribal court jurisdiction proper because the Bank's consensual relationship with the Longs and their company (also a respondent here) brought the Bank within the first category of tribal civil jurisdiction over nonmembers outlined in Montana v. United States, 450 U.S. 544. The Eighth Circuit affirmed, concluding that the Tribe had authority to regulate the business conduct of persons voluntarily dealing with tribal members, including a nonmember's sale of fee land. Held: 1.The Bank has Article III standing to pursue this challenge. Both with respect to damages and the option to purchase, the Bank was "injured in fact," see Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560, by the Tribal Court's exercise of jurisdiction over the discrimination claim. This Court is unpersuaded by the Longs' claim that the damages award was premised entirely on their breach-of-contract verdict, which the Bank has not challenged, rather than on their discrimination claim. Because the verdict form allowed the jury to make a damages award after finding liability as to any of the individual claims, the jury could have based its damages award, in whole or in part, on the discrimination finding. The Bank was also injured by the option to purchase. Only the Longs' discrimination claim sought deed to the land as relief. The fact that the remedial purchase option applied only to a portion of the total parcel does not eliminate the injury to the Bank, which had no obligation to sell any of the land to the Longs before the Tribal Court's judgment. That judgment effectively nullified a portion of the sale to a third party. These injuries can be remedied by a ruling that the Tribal Court lacked jurisdiction and that its judgment on the discrimination claim is null and void. Pp.5-8. </s> 2.The Tribal Court did not have jurisdiction to adjudicate a discrimination claim concerning the non-Indian Bank's sale of its fee land. Pp.8-24. </s> (a)The general rule that tribes do not possess authority over non-Indians who come within their borders, Montana v. United States, 450 U.S. 564, 565, restricts tribal authority over nonmember activities taking place on the reservation, and is particularly strong when the nonmember's activity occurs on land owned in fee simple by non-Indians, Strate v. A-1 Contractors, 520 U.S. 438, 446. Once tribal land is converted into fee simple, the tribe loses plenary jurisdiction over it. See County of Yakima v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, 502 U.S. 251, 267-268. Moreover, when the tribe or its members convey fee land to third parties, the tribe "loses any former right of absolute and exclusive use and occupation of the conveyed lands." South Dakota v. Bourland, 508 U.S. 679, 689. Thus, "the tribe has no authority itself ... to regulate the use of fee land." Brendale v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, 492 U.S. 408, 430. Montana provides two exceptions under which tribes may exercise "civil jurisdiction over non-Indians on their reservations, even on non-Indian fee lands," 450 U.S., at 565: (1) "A tribe may regulate, through taxation, licensing, or other means, the activities of nonmembers who enter consensual relationships with the tribe or its members, through commercial dealing, contracts, leases, or other arrangements," ibid.; and (2) a tribe may exercise "civil authority over the conduct of non-Indians on fee lands within the reservation when that conduct threatens or has some direct effect on the political integrity, the economic security, or the health or welfare of the tribe," id., at 566. Neither exception authorizes tribal courts to exercise jurisdiction over the Longs' discrimination claim. Pp.8-11. </s> (b)The Tribal Court lacks jurisdiction to hear that claim because the Tribe lacks the civil authority to regulate the Bank's sale of its fee land, and "a tribe's adjudicative jurisdiction does not exceed its legislative jurisdiction," Strate, supra, at 453. Montana does not permit tribes to regulate the sale of non-Indian fee land. Rather, it permits tribal regulation of nonmember conduct inside the reservation that implicates the tribe's sovereign interests. 450 U.S., at 564-565. With only one exception, see Brendale, supra, this Court has never "upheld under Montana the extension of tribal civil authority over nonmembers on non-Indian land," Nevada v. Hicks, 533 U.S. 353, 360. Nor has the Court found that Montana authorized a tribe to regulate the sale of such land. This makes good sense, given the limited nature of tribal sovereignty and the liberty interests of nonmembers. Tribal sovereign interests are confined to managing tribal land, see Worcester v. Georgia, 6 Pet. 515, 561, protecting tribal self-government, and controlling internal relations, see Montana, supra, at 564. Regulations approved under Montana all flow from these limited interests. See, e.g., Duro v. Reina, 495 U.S. 676, 696. None of these interests justified tribal regulation of a nonmember's sale of fee land. The Tribe cannot justify regulation of the sale of non-Indian fee land by reference to its power to superintend tribal land because non-Indian fee parcels have ceased to be tribal land. Nor can regulation of fee land sales be justified by the Tribe's interest in protecting internal relations and self-government. Any direct harm sustained because of a fee land sale is sustained at the point the land passes from Indian to non-Indian hands. Resale, by itself, causes no additional damage. Regulating fee land sales also runs the risk of subjecting nonmembers to tribal regulatory authority without their consent. Because the Bill of Rights does not apply to tribes and because nonmembers have no say in the laws and regulations governing tribal territory, tribal laws and regulations may be applied only to nonmembers who have consented to tribal authority, expressly or by action. Even then the regulation must stem from the tribe's inherent sovereign authority to set conditions on entry, preserve self-government, or control internal relations. There is no reason the Bank should have anticipated that its general business dealings with the Longs would permit the Tribe to regulate the Bank's sale of land it owned in fee simple. The Longs' attempt to salvage their position by arguing that the discrimination claim should be read to challenge the Bank's whole course of commercial dealings with them is unavailing. Their breach-of-contract and bad-faith claims involve the Bank's general dealings; the discrimination claim does not. The discrimination claim is tied specifically to the fee land sale. And only the discrimination claim is before the Court. Pp.11-22. </s> (c)Because the second Montana exception stems from the same sovereign interests giving rise to the first, it is also inapplicable here. The "conduct" covered by that exception must do more than injure a tribe; it must "imperil the subsistence" of the tribal community. Montana, 450 U.S., at 566. The land at issue has been owned by a non-Indian party for at least 50 years. Its resale to another non-Indian hardly "imperil[s] the subsistence or welfare of the tribe." Ibid. Pp. 22-23. </s> (d)Contrary to the Longs' argument, when the Bank sought the Tribal Court's aid in serving process on the Longs for the Bank's pending state-court eviction action, the Bank did not consent to tribal court jurisdiction over the discrimination claim. The Bank has consistently contended that the Tribal Court lacked jurisdiction. P.23. 491 F.3d 878, reversed. Roberts, C.J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, JJ., joined, and in which Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined as to Part II. Ginsburg, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, concurring in the judgment in part, and dissenting in part, in which Stevens, Souter, and Breyer, JJ., joined. </s> PLAINS COMMERCE BANK, PETITIONER v. LONGFAMILY LAND AND CATTLE COMPANY,INC., etal. on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the eighth circuit [June 25, 2008] </s> Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> This case concerns the sale of fee land on a tribal reservation by a non-Indian bank to non-Indian individuals. Following the sale, an Indian couple, customers of the bank who had defaulted on their loans, claimed the bank discriminated against them by offering the land to non-Indians on terms more favorable than those the bank offered to them. The couple sued on that claim in tribal court; the bank contested the court's jurisdiction. The tribal court concluded that it had jurisdiction and proceeded to hear the case. It ultimately ruled against the bank and awarded the Indian couple damages and the right to purchase a portion of the fee land. The question presented is whether the tribal court had jurisdiction to adjudicate a discrimination claim concerning the non-Indian bank's sale of fee land it owned. We hold that it did not. I </s> The Long Family Land and Cattle Company, Inc. (Long Company or Company), is a family-run ranching and farming operation incorporated under the laws of South Dakota. Its lands are located on the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation. Once a massive, 60-million acre affair, the reservation was appreciably diminished by Congress in the 1880s and at present consists of roughly 11 million acres located in Dewey and Ziebach Counties in north-central South Dakota. The Long Company is a respondent here, along with Ronnie and Lila Long, husband and wife, who together own at least 51 percent of the Company's shares. Ronnie and Lila Long are both enrolled members of the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Tribe. The Longs and their Company have been customers for many years at Plains Commerce Bank (Bank), located some 25 miles off the reservation as the crow flies in Hoven, South Dakota. The Bank, like the Long Company, is a South Dakota corporation, but has no ties to the reservation other than its business dealings with tribal members. The Bank made its first commercial loan to the Long Company in 1989, and a series of agreements followed. As part of those agreements, Kenneth Long--Ronnie Long's father and a non-Indian--mortgaged to the Bank 2,230 acres of fee land he owned inside the reservation. At the time of Kenneth Long's death in the summer of 1995, Kenneth and the Long Company owed the Bank $750,000. </s> In the spring of 1996, Ronnie and Lila Long began negotiating a new loan contract with the Bank in an effort to shore up their Company's flagging financial fortunes and come to terms with their outstanding debts. After several months of back-and-forth, the parties finally reached an agreement in December of that year--two agreements, to be precise. The Company and the Bank signed a fresh loan contract, according to which Kenneth Long's estate deeded over the previously mortgaged fee acreage to the Bank in lieu of foreclosure. App. 104. In return, the Bank agreed to cancel some of the Company's debt and to make additional operating loans. The parties also agreed to a lease arrangement: The Company received a two-year lease on the 2,230 acres, deeded over to the Bank, with an option to purchase the land at the end of the term for $468,000. Id., at 96-103. </s> It is at this point, the Longs claim, that the Bank began treating them badly. The Longs say the Bank initially offered more favorable purchase terms in the lease agreement, allegedly proposing to sell the land back to the Longs with a 20-year contract for deed. The Bank eventually rescinded that offer, the Longs claim, citing "'possible jurisdictional problems'" that might have been caused by the Bank financing an "'Indian owned entity on the reservation.'" 491 F. 3d 878, 882 (CA8 2007) (case below). </s> Then came the punishing winter of 1996-1997. The Longs lost over 500 head of cattle in the blizzards that season, with the result that the Long Company was unable to exercise its option to purchase the leased acreage when the lease contract expired in 1998. Nevertheless, the Longs refused to vacate the property, prompting the Bank to initiate eviction proceedings in state court and to petition the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Court to serve the Longs with a notice to quit. In the meantime, the Bank sold 320 acres of the fee land it owned to a non-Indian couple. In June 1999, while the Longs continued to occupy a 960-acre parcel of the land, the Bank sold the remaining 1,910 acres to two other nonmembers. </s> In July 1999, the Longs and the Long Company filed suit against the Bank in the Tribal Court, seeking an injunction to prevent their eviction from the property and to reverse the sale of the land. They asserted a variety of claims, including breach of contract, bad faith, violation of tribal-law self-help remedies, and discrimination. The discrimination claim alleged that the Bank sold the land to nonmembers on terms more favorable than those offered the Company. The Bank asserted in its answer that the court lacked jurisdiction and also stated a counterclaim. The Tribal Court found that it had jurisdiction, denied the Bank's motion for summary judgment on its counterclaim, and proceeded to trial. Four causes of action were submitted to the seven-member jury: breach of contract, bad faith, violation of self-help remedies, and discrimination. </s> The jury found for the Longs on three of the four causes, including the discrimination claim, and awarded a $750,000 general verdict. After denying the Bank's post-trial motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict by finding again that it had jurisdiction to adjudicate the Longs' claims, the Tribal Court entered judgment awarding the Longs $750,000 plus interest. A later supplemental judgment further awarded the Longs an option to purchase the 960 acres of the land they still occupied on the terms offered in the original purchase option, effectively nullifying the Bank's previous sale of that land to non-Indians. </s> The Bank appealed to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Court of Appeals, which affirmed the judgment of the trial court. The Bank then filed the instant action in the United States District Court for the District of South Dakota, seeking a declaration that the tribal judgment was null and void because, as relevant here, the Tribal Court lacked jurisdiction over the Longs' discrimination claim. The District Court granted summary judgment to the Longs. The court found tribal court jurisdiction proper because the Bank had entered into a consensual relationship with the Longs and the Long Company. 440 F. Supp. 2d 1070, 1077-1078, 1080-1081 (SD 2006). According to the District Court, this relationship brought the Bank within the first category of tribal civil jurisdiction over nonmembers outlined in Montana v. United States, 450 U.S. 544 (1981). See 440 F. Supp. 2d, at 1077-1078. </s> The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed. 491 F.3d 878. The Longs' discrimination claim, the court held, "arose directly from their preexisting commercial relationship with the bank." Id., at 887. When the Bank chose to deal with the Longs, it effectively consented to substantive regulation by the tribe: An antidiscrimination tort claim was just another way of regulating the commercial transactions between the parties. See ibid. In sum, the Tribe had authority to regulate the business conduct of persons who "voluntarily deal with tribal members," including, here, a nonmember's sale of fee land. Ibid. </s> We granted certiorari, 552 U.S. ___ (2008), and now reverse. II </s> Before considering the Tribal Court's authority to adjudicate the discrimination claim, we must first address the Longs' contention that the Bank lacks standing to raise this jurisdictional challenge in the first place. Though the Longs raised their standing argument for the first time before this Court, we bear an independent obligation to assure ourselves that jurisdiction is proper before proceeding to the merits. See Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U.S. 83, 94-95 (1998). We begin by noting that whether a tribal court has adjudicative authority over nonmembers is a federal question. See Iowa Mut. Ins. Co. v. LaPlante, 480 U.S. 9, 15 (1987); National Farmers Union Ins. Cos. v. Crow Tribe, 471 U.S. 845, 852-853 (1985). If the tribal court is found to lack such jurisdiction, any judgment as to the nonmember is necessarily null and void. The Longs do not contest this settled principle but argue instead that the Bank has suffered no "injury in fact" as required by Article III's case-or-controversy provision. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992). </s> The Longs appear to recognize their argument is somewhat counterintuitive. They concede the jury found the Bank guilty of discrimination and awarded them $750,000 plus interest. But the Longs contend the jury's damages award was in fact premised entirely on their breach-of-contract rather than on their discrimination claim. The Bank does not presently challenge the breach-of-contract verdict. </s> In support of their argument, the Longs point to their amended complaint in the Tribal Court. The complaint comprised nine counts. Several of the counts sought damages; the discrimination count did not. As relief for the discrimination claim, the Longs asked to be granted "possession and title to their land." App. 173. The Longs contend that the damage award therefore had nothing to do with the discrimination claim. As a result, a decision from this Court finding no jurisdiction with respect to that claim--the only claim the Bank appeals--would not change anything. </s> We are not persuaded. The jury verdict form consisted of six special interrogatories, covering each claim asserted against the Bank, with another one covering the amount of damages to be awarded. Id., at 190-192. The damages interrogatory specifically allowed the jury to make an award after finding liability as to any of the individual claims: "If you answered yes to Numbers 1, 3, 4, or 5 what amount of damages should be awarded to the Plaintiffs?" Id., at 192 (emphasis added). The jury found against the Bank on three of the special interrogatories, including number 4, the discrimination claim. The Bank, the jurors found, "intentionally discriminate[d] against the Plaintiffs Ronnie and Lila Long." Id., at 191. The jury then entered an award of $750,000. Id., at 192. These facts establish that the jury could have based its damages award, in whole or in part, on the finding of discrimination. </s> There is, in addition, the option to purchase. The Longs argue that requiring the Bank to void the sale to nonmembers of a 960-acre parcel and sell that parcel to them instead does not constitute injury-in-fact, because the Tribal Court actually denied the relief the Longs sought for the Bank's discrimination. In its supplemental judgment, the Tribal Court refused to permit the Longs (or the Long Company) to purchase all the land--as they had requested--instead granting an option to purchase only the 960 acres the Longs occupied at the time. See Supplemental Judgment in No. R-120-99, Long Family Land & Cattle Co. v. Maciejewski, (Feb. 18, 2003), App. to Pet. for Cert. A-69 to A-70. Even this partial relief, the Longs insist, was crafted as an equitable remedy for their breach-of-contract claim, see Brief for Respondents 32-34, and in any event the Bank really suffered no harm, because it would gain as much income selling to the Longs as it did selling to the nonmembers, see id., at 34-35. </s> These arguments do not defeat the Bank's standing. The Longs requested, as a remedy for the alleged discrimination, "possession and title" to the subject land. App. 173. They received an option to acquire a portion of exactly that. See App. to Pet. for Cert. A-69 to A-70. The Tribal Court's silence in its supplemental judgment as to which claim, exactly, the option to purchase was meant to remedy is immaterial. See ibid. Of the four claims presented to the jury, only the discrimination claim sought deed to the land as relief. See Amended Complaint (Jan. 3, 2000), App. 158, 173. Nor does the fact that the remedial purchase option applied only to a portion of the total parcel eliminate the Bank's injury. The Bank had no obligation to sell the land to the Longs before the Tribal Court's judgment--indeed, the Bank had already sold the acreage to third parties. The Tribal Court judgment effectively nullified a portion of that sale. This judicially imposed burden certainly qualifies as an injury for standing purposes. As for the Longs' speculation that the Bank would make as much money selling the land to them as it did selling the parcel to nonmembers, the argument is entirely beside the point. There is more than adequate injury in being compelled to undo one deed and enter into another--particularly with individuals who had previously defaulted on loans. </s> Both with respect to damages and the option to purchase, the Bank was injured by the Tribal Court's exercise of jurisdiction over the discrimination claim. Those injuries can be remedied by a ruling in favor of the Bank that the Tribal Court lacked jurisdiction and that its judgment on the discrimination claim is null and void. The ultimate collateral consequence of such a determination, whatever it may be--vacatur of the general damages award, vacatur of the option to purchase, a new trial on the other claims--does not alter the fact that the Bank has shown injury traceable to the challenged action and likely to be redressed by a favorable ruling. Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751 (1984). The Bank has Article III standing to pursue this challenge. III A </s> For nearly two centuries now, we have recognized Indian tribes as "distinct, independent political communities," Worcester v. Georgia, 6 Pet. 515, 559 (1832), qualified to exercise many of the powers and prerogatives of self-government, see United States v. Wheeler, 435 U.S. 313, 322-323 (1978). We have frequently noted, however, that the "sovereignty that the Indian tribes retain is of a unique and limited character." Id., at 323. It centers on the land held by the tribe and on tribal members within the reservation. See United States v. Mazurie, 419 U.S. 544, 557 (1975) (tribes retain authority to govern "both their members and their territory," subject ultimately to Congress); see also Nevada v. Hicks, 533 U.S. 353, 392 (2001) ("[T]ribes retain sovereign interests in activities that occur on land owned and controlled by the tribe") (O'Connor, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). As part of their residual sovereignty, tribes retain power to legislate and to tax activities on the reservation, including certain activities by nonmembers, see Kerr-McGee Corp. v. Navajo Tribe, 471 U.S. 195, 201 (1985), to determine tribal membership, see Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U.S. 49, 55 (1978), and to regulate domestic relations among members, see Fisher v. District Court of Sixteenth Judicial Dist. of Mont., 424 U.S. 382, 387-389 (1976) (per curiam). They may also exclude outsiders from entering tribal land. See Duro v. Reina, 495 U.S. 676, 696-697 (1990). But tribes do not, as a general matter, possess authority over non-Indians who come within their borders: "[T]he inherent sovereign powers of an Indian tribe do not extend to the activities of nonmembers of the tribe." Montana, at 450 U.S., at 565. As we explained in Oliphant v. Suquamish Tribe, 435 U.S. 191 (1978), the tribes have, by virtue of their incorporation into the American republic, lost "the right of governing . . . person[s] within their limits except themselves." Id., at 209 (emphasis and internal quotation marks omitted). </s> This general rule restricts tribal authority over nonmember activities taking place on the reservation, and is particularly strong when the nonmember's activity occurs on land owned in fee simple by non-Indians--what we have called "non-Indian fee land." Strate v. A-1 Contractors, 520 U.S. 438, 446 (1997) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thanks to the Indian General Allotment Act of 1887, 24 Stat. 388, as amended, 25 U.S.C. §331 et seq., there are millions of acres of non-Indian fee land located within the contiguous borders of Indian tribes. See Atkinson Trading Co. v. Shirley, 532 U.S. 645, 648, 651, n.1 (2001). The history of the General Allotment Act and its successor statutes has been well rehearsed in our precedents. See, e.g., Montana, supra, at 558-563; County of Yakima v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, 502 U.S. 251, 254-255 (1992). Suffice it to say here that the effect of the Act was to convert millions of acres of formerly tribal land into fee simple parcels, "fully alienable," id., at 264, and "free of all charge or encumbrance whatsoever," 25 U.S.C. §348 (2000 ed., Supp. V). See F. Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law §16.03[2][b], pp. 1041-1042 (2005 ed.) (hereinafter Cohen). </s> Our cases have made clear that once tribal land is converted into fee simple, the tribe loses plenary jurisdiction over it. See County of Yakima, supra, at 267-268 (General Allotment Act permits Yakima County to impose advalorem tax on fee land located within the reservation); Goudy v. Meath, 203 U.S. 146, 140-150 (1906) (by rendering allotted lands alienable, General Allotment Act exposed them to state assessment and forced sale for taxes); In re Heff, 197 U.S. 488, 502-503 (1905) (fee land subject to plenary state jurisdiction upon issuance of trust patent (superseded by the Burke Act, 34 Stat. 182, 25 U.S.C. §349) (2000 ed.)). Among the powers lost is the authority to prevent the land's sale, see County of Yakima, supra, at 263 (General Allotment Act granted fee holders power of voluntary sale)--not surprisingly, as "free alienability" by the holder is a core attribute of the fee simple, C. Moynihan, Introduction to Law of Real Property §3, p. 32 (2d ed. 1988). Moreover, when the tribe or tribal members convey a parcel of fee land "to non-Indians, [the tribe] loses any former right of absolute and exclusive use and occupation of the conveyed lands." South Dakota v. Bourland, 508 U.S. 679, 689 (1993) (emphasis added). This necessarily entails the "the loss of regulatory jurisdiction over the use of the land by others." Ibid. As a general rule, then, "the tribe has no authority itself, by way of tribal ordinance or actions in the tribal courts, to regulate the use of fee land." Brendale v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, 492 U.S. 408, 430 (1989) (opinion of White, J.). </s> We have recognized two exceptions to this principle, circumstances in which tribes may exercise "civil jurisdiction over non-Indians on their reservations, even on non-Indian fee lands." Montana, 450 U.S., at 565. First, "[a] tribe may regulate, through taxation, licensing, or other means, the activities of nonmembers who enter consensual relationships with the tribe or its members, through commercial dealing, contracts, leases, or other arrangements." Ibid. Second, a tribe may exercise "civil authority over the conduct of non-Indians on fee lands within the reservation when that conduct threatens or has some direct effect on the political integrity, the economic security, or the health or welfare of the tribe." Id., at 566. These rules have become known as the Montana exceptions, after the case that elaborated them. By their terms, the exceptions concern regulation of "the activities of nonmembers" or "the conduct of non-Indians on fee land." </s> Given Montana's "'general proposition that the inherent sovereign powers of an Indian tribe do not extend to the activities of nonmembers of the tribe,'" Atkinson, supra, at 651 (quoting Montana, supra, at 565), efforts by a tribe to regulate nonmembers, especially on non-Indian fee land, are "presumptively invalid," Atkinson, supra, at 659. The burden rests on the tribe to establish one of the exceptions to Montana's general rule that would allow an extension of tribal authority to regulate nonmembers on non-Indian fee land. Atkinson, 532 U.S., at 654. These exceptions are "limited" ones, id., at 647, and cannot be construed in a manner that would "swallow the rule," id., at 655, or "severely shrink" it, Strate, 520 U.S., at 458. The Bank contends that neither exception authorizes tribal courts to exercise jurisdiction over the Longs' discrimination claim at issue in this case. We agree. B </s> According to our precedents, "a tribe's adjudicative jurisdiction does not exceed its legislative jurisdiction." Id., at 453. We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the Tribal Court lacks jurisdiction to hear the Longs' discrimination claim because the Tribe lacks the civil authority to regulate the Bank's sale of its fee land. The Longs' discrimination claim challenges a non-Indian's sale of non-Indian fee land. Despite the Longs' attempt to recharacterize their claim as turning on the Bank's alleged "failure to pay to respondents loans promised for cattle-raising on tribal trust land," Brief for Respondents 47, in fact the Longs brought their discrimination claim "seeking to have the land sales set aside on the ground that the sale to nonmembers 'on terms more favorable' than the bank had extended to the Longs" violated tribal tort law, 491 F.3d, at 882 (quoting Plaintiffs' Amended Complaint, App. 173). See also Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 7. That discrimination claim thus concerned the sale of a 2,230-acre fee parcel that the Bank had acquired from the estate of a non-Indian. </s> The status of the land is relevant "insofar as it bears on the application of . . . Montana's exceptions to [this] case." Hicks, 533 U.S., at 376 (Souter, J., concurring). The acres at issue here were alienated from the Cheyenne River Sioux's tribal trust and converted into fee simple parcels as part of the Act of May 27, 1908, 35 Stat. 312, commonly called the 1908 Allotment Act. See Brief for Respondents 4, n.2. While the General Allotment Act provided for the division of tribal land into fee simple parcels owned by individual tribal members, that Act also mandated that such allotments would be held in trust for their owners by the United States for a period of 25 years--or longer, at the President's discretion--during which time the parcel owners had no authority to sell or convey the land. See 25 U.S.C. §348 (2000 ed., and Supp. V). The 1908 Act released particular Indian owners from these restrictions ahead of schedule, vesting in them full fee ownership. See §1, 35 Stat. 312. In 1934, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act, 48 Stat. 984, 25 U.S.C. §461 et seq., which "pu[t] an end to further allotment of reservation land," but did not "return allotted land to pre-General Allotment status, leaving it fully alienable by the allottees, their heirs, and assigns." County of Yakima, 502 U.S., at 264. </s> The tribal tort law the Longs are attempting to enforce, however, operates as a restraint on alienation. It "set[s] limits on how nonmembers may engage in commercial transactions," 491 F.3d, at 887--and not just any transactions, but specifically nonmembers' sale of fee lands they own. It regulates the substantive terms on which the Bank is able to offer its fee land for sale. Respondents and their principal amicus, the United States, acknowledge that the tribal tort at issue here is a form of regulation. See Brief for Respondents 52; Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 25-26; see also Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc., 552 U.S. ___, ___ (2008) (slip op., at 11). They argue the regulation is fully authorized by the first Montana exception. They are mistaken. </s> Montana does not permit Indian tribes to regulate the sale of non-Indian fee land. Montana and its progeny permit tribal regulation of nonmember conduct inside the reservation that implicates the tribe's sovereign interests. Montana expressly limits its first exception to the "activities of nonmembers," 450 U.S., at 565, allowing these to be regulated to the extent necessary "to protect tribal self-government [and] to control internal relations," id., at 564. See Big Horn Cty. Elect. Cooperative, Inc. v. Adams, 219 F.3d 944, 951 (CA9 2000) ("Montana does not grant a tribe unlimited regulatory or adjudicative authority over a nonmember. Rather, Montana limits tribal jurisdiction under the first exception to the regulation of the activities of nonmembers" (internal quotations omitted; emphasis added)). </s> We cited four cases in explanation of Montana's first exception. Each involved regulation of non-Indian activities on the reservation that had a discernable effect on the tribe or its members. The first concerned a tribal court's jurisdiction over a contract dispute arising from the sale of merchandise by a non-Indian to an Indian on the reservation. See Williams v. Lee, 358 U.S. 217 (1959). The other three involved taxes on economic activity by nonmembers. See Washington v. Confederated Tribes of Colville Reservation, 447 U.S. 134, 152-153 (1980) (in cases where "the tribe has a significant interest in the subject matter," tribes retain "authority to tax the activities or property of non-Indians taking place or situated on Indian lands"); Morris v. Hitchcock, 194 U.S. 384, 393 (1904) (upholding tribal taxes on nonmembers grazing cattle on Indian-owned fee land within tribal territory); Buster v. Wright, 135 F. 947, 950 (CA8 1905) (Creek Nation possessed power to levy a permit tax on nonmembers for the privilege of doing business within the reservation). </s> Our cases since Montana have followed the same pattern, permitting regulation of certain forms of nonmember conduct on tribal land. We have upheld as within the tribe's sovereign authority the imposition of a severance tax on natural resources removed by nonmembers from tribal land. See Merrion v. Jicarilla Apache Tribe, 455 U.S. 130 (1982). We have approved tribal taxes imposed on leasehold interests held in tribal lands, as well as sales taxes imposed on nonmember businesses within the reservation. See Kerr-McGee, 471 U.S., at 196-197. We have similarly approved licensing requirements for hunting and fishing on tribal land. See New Mexico v. Mescalero Apache Tribe, 462 U.S. 324, 337 (1983). </s> Tellingly, with only "one minor exception, we have never upheld under Montana the extension of tribal civil authority over nonmembers on non-Indian land." Hicks, supra, at 360 (emphasis added). See Atkinson, 532 U.S., at 659 (Tribe may not tax nonmember activity on non-Indian fee land); Strate, 520 U.S., at 454, 457 (tribal court lacks jurisdiction over tort suit involving an accident on non-tribal land); Montana, supra, at 566 (Tribe has no authority to regulate nonmember hunting and fishing on non-Indian fee land). The exception is Brendale v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, 492 U.S. 408, and even it fits the general rubric noted above: In that case, we permitted a tribe to restrain particular uses of non-Indian fee land through zoning regulations. While a six-Justice majority held that Montana did not authorize the Yakima Nation to impose zoning regulations on non-Indian fee land located in an area of the reservation where nearly half the acreage was owned by nonmembers, 492 U.S., at 430-431 (opinion of White, J.); id., at 444-447 (opinion of Stevens, J.), five Justices concluded that Montana did permit the Tribe to impose different zoning restrictions on nonmember fee land isolated in "the heart of [a] closed portion of the reservation," 492 U.S., at 440 (opinion of Stevens, J.), though the Court could not agree on a rationale, see id., at 443-444 (same); id., at 458-459 (opinion of Blackmun, J.). </s> But again, whether or not we have permitted regulation of nonmember activity on non-Indian fee land in a given case, in no case have we found that Montana authorized a tribe to regulate the sale of such land. Rather, our Montana cases have always concerned nonmember conduct on the land. See, e.g., Hicks, 533 U.S., at 359 (Montana and Strate concern "tribal authority to regulate nonmembers' activities on [fee] land" (emphasis added)); Atkinson, 532 U.S., at 647 ("conduct of nonmembers on non-Indian fee land"); id., at 660 (Souter, J., concurring) ("the activities of nonmembers); Bourland, 508 U.S., at 689 ("use of the land"); Brendale, supra, at 430 ("use of fee land"); Montana, supra, at 565 (first exception covers "activities of nonmembers").1 </s> The distinction between sale of the land and conduct on it is well-established in our precedent, as the foregoing cases demonstrate, and entirely logical given the limited nature of tribal sovereignty and the liberty interests of nonmembers. By virtue of their incorporation into the United States, the tribe's sovereign interests are now confined to managing tribal land, see Worcester, 6 Pet., at 561 (persons are allowed to enter Indian land only "with the assent of the [tribal members] themselves"), "protect[ing] tribal self-government," and "control[ling] internal relations," see Montana, supra, at 564. The logic of Montana is that certain activities on non-Indian fee land (say, a business enterprise employing tribal members) or certain uses (say, commercial development) may intrude on the internal relations of the tribe or threaten tribal self-rule. To the extent they do, such activities or land uses may be regulated. See Hicks, supra, at 361 ("Tribal assertion of regulatory authority over nonmembers must be connected to that right of the Indians to make their own laws and be governed by them"). Put another way, certain forms of nonmember behavior, even on non-Indian fee land, may sufficiently affect the tribe as to justify tribal oversight. While tribes generally have no interest in regulating the conduct of nonmembers, then, they may regulate nonmember behavior that implicates tribal governance and internal relations. </s> The regulations we have approved under Montana all flow directly from these limited sovereign interests. The tribe's "traditional and undisputed power to exclude persons" from tribal land, Duro, 495 U.S., at 696, for example, gives it the power to set conditions on entry to that land via licensing requirements and hunting regulations. See Bourland, supra, at 691, n. 11 ("Regulatory authority goes hand in hand with the power to exclude"). Much taxation can be justified on a similar basis. See Colville, 447 U.S., at 153 (taxing power "may be exercised over . . . nonmembers, so far as such nonmembers may accept privileges of trade, residence, etc., to which taxes may be attached as conditions" (quoting Powers of Indian Tribes, 55 I.D. 14, 46 (1934; emphasis added). The power to tax certain nonmember activity can also be justified as "a necessary instrument of self-government and territorial management," Merrion, 455 U.S., at 137, insofar as taxation "enables a tribal government to raise revenues for its essential services," to pay its employees, to provide police protection, and in general to carry out the functions that keep peace and order, ibid. </s> Justice Ginsburg wonders why these sorts of regulations are permissible under Montana but regulating the sale of fee land is not. See post, at 6-7. The reason is that regulation of the sale of non-Indian fee land, unlike the above, cannot be justified by reference to the tribe's sovereign interests. By definition, fee land owned by nonmembers has already been removed from the tribe's immediate control. See Strate, 520 U.S., at 456 (tribes lack power to "assert [over non-Indian fee land] a landowner's right to occupy and exclude"). It has already been alienated from the tribal trust. The tribe cannot justify regulation of such land's sale by reference to its power to superintend tribal land, then, because non-Indian fee parcels have ceased to be tribal land. </s> Nor can regulation of fee land sales be justified by the tribe's interests in protecting internal relations and self-government. Any direct harm to its political integrity that the tribe sustains as a result of fee land sale is sustained at the point the land passes from Indian to non-Indian hands. It is at that point the tribe and its members lose the ability to use the land for their purposes. Once the land has been sold in fee simple to non-Indians and passed beyond the tribe's immediate control, the mere resale of that land works no additional intrusion on tribal relations or self-government. Resale, by itself, causes no additional damage. </s> This is not to suggest that the sale of the land will have no impact on the tribe. The uses to which the land is put may very well change from owner to owner, and those uses may well affect the tribe and its members. As our cases bear out, see supra, at 14-16, the tribe may quite legitimately seek to protect its members from noxious uses that threaten tribal welfare or security, or from nonmember conduct on the land that does the same. But the key point is that any threat to the tribe's sovereign interests flows from changed uses or nonmember activities, rather than from the mere fact of resale. The tribe is able fully to vindicate its sovereign interests in protecting its members and preserving tribal self-government by regulating nonmember activity on the land, within the limits set forth in our cases. The tribe has no independent interest in restraining alienation of the land itself, and thus, no authority to do so. </s> Not only is regulation of fee land sale beyond the tribe's sovereign powers, it runs the risk of subjecting nonmembers to tribal regulatory authority without commensurate consent. Tribal sovereignty, it should be remembered, is "a sovereignty outside the basic structure of the Constitution." United States v. Lara, 541 U.S. 193, 212 (2004) (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment). The Bill of Rights does not apply to Indian tribes. See Talton v. Mayes, 163 U.S. 376, 382-385 (1896). Indian courts "differ from traditional American courts in a number of significant respects." Hicks, 533 U.S., at 383 (Souter, J., concurring). And nonmembers have no part in tribal government--they have no say in the laws and regulations that govern tribal territory. Consequently, those laws and regulations may be fairly imposed on nonmembers only if the nonmember has consented, either expressly or by his actions. Even then, the regulation must stem from the tribe's inherent sovereign authority to set conditions on entry, preserve tribal self-government, or control internal relations. See Montana, 450 U.S., at 564. </s> In commenting on the policy goals Congress adopted with the General Allotment Act, we noted that "[t]here is simply no suggestion" in the history of the Act "that Congress intended that the non-Indians who would settle upon alienated allotted lands would be subject to tribal regulatory authority." Id., at 560, n.9. In fact, we said it "defies common sense to suppose" that Congress meant to subject non-Indians to tribal jurisdiction simply by virtue of the nonmember's purchase of land in fee simple. Ibid. If Congress did not anticipate tribal jurisdiction would run with the land, we see no reason why a nonmember would think so either. </s> The Longs point out that the Bank in this case could hardly have been surprised by the Tribe's assertion of regulatory power over the parties' business dealings. The Bank, after all, had "lengthy on-reservation commercial relationships with the Long Company." Brief for Respondents 40. Justice Ginsburg echoes this point. See post, at 4. But as we have emphasized repeatedly in this context, when it comes to tribal regulatory authority, it is not "in for a penny, in for a Pound." Atkinson, 532 U.S., at 656 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Bank may reasonably have anticipated that its various commercial dealings with the Longs could trigger tribal authority to regulate those transactions--a question we need not and do not decide. But there is no reason the Bank should have anticipated that its general business dealings with respondents would permit the Tribe to regulate the Bank's sale of land it owned in fee simple. </s> Even the courts below recognized that the Longs' discrimination claim was a "novel" one. 491 F.3d, at 892. It arose "directly from Lakota tradition as embedded in Cheyenne River Sioux tradition and custom," including the Lakota "sense of justice, fair play and decency to others." 440 F.Supp. 2d, at 1082 (internal quotation marks omitted). The upshot was to require the Bank to offer the same terms of sale to a prospective buyer who had defaulted in several previous transactions with the Bank as it offered to a different buyer without such a history of default. This is surely not a typical regulation. But whatever the Bank anticipated, whatever "consensual relationship" may have been established through the Bank's dealing with the Longs, the jurisdictional consequences of that relationship cannot extend to the Bank's subsequent sale of its fee land. </s> The Longs acknowledge, if obliquely, the critical importance of land status. They emphasize that the Long Company "operated on reservation fee and trust lands," Brief for Respondents 40, and n. 24, 41, and note that "the fee land at issue in the lease-repurchase agreement" had previously belonged to a tribal member, id., at 47. These facts, however, do not change the status of the land at the time of the challenged sale. Regardless of where the Long Company operated, the fee land whose sale the Longs seek to restrain was owned by the Bank at the relevant time. And indeed, before that, it was owned by Kenneth Long, a non-Indian. See Hicks, supra, at 382, n.4 (Souter,J., concurring) ("Land status . . . might well have an impact under one (or perhaps both) of the Montana exceptions"), Atkinson, supra, at 659 (Souter,J., concurring) (status of territory as "tribal or fee land may have much to do (as it does here) with the likelihood (or not) that facts will exist that are relevant under the [Montana] exceptions"). </s> The Longs attempt to salvage their position by arguing that the discrimination claim is best read to challenge the Bank's whole course of commercial dealings with the Longs stretching back over a decade--not just the sale of the fee land. Brief for Respondents 44. That argument is unavailing. The Longs are the first to point out that their breach-of-contract and bad-faith claims, which do involve the Bank's course of dealings, are not before this Court. Ibid. Only the discrimination claim is before us and that claim is tied specifically to the sale of the fee land.2 Ibid. Count six of the Longs' amended complaint in the Tribal Court alleges that "[i]n selling the Longs' land, [Plains Commerce Bank] unfairly discriminated against the Company and the Longs." App. 172-173 (emphasis added). As relief, the Longs claimed they "should get possession and title to their land back." Id., at 173. The Longs' discrimination claim, in short, is an attempt to regulate the terms on which the Bank may sell the land it owns.3 </s> Such regulation is outside the scope of a tribe's sovereign authority. Justice Ginsburg asserts that if "[t]he Federal Government and every State, county, and municipality can make nondiscrimination the law governing . . . real property transactions," tribes should be able to do so as well. Post, at 8. This argument completely overlooks the very reason cases like Montana and this one arise: Tribal jurisdiction, unlike the jurisdiction of the other governmental entities cited by Justice Ginsburg, generally does not extend to nonmembers. See Montana, supra, at 565. The sovereign authority of Indian tribes is limited in ways state and federal authority is not. Contrary to Justice Ginsburg's suggestion, that bedrock principle does not vary depending on the desirability of a particular regulation. </s> Montana provides that, in certain circumstances, tribes may exercise authority over the conduct of nonmembers, even if that conduct takes place on non-Indian fee land. But conduct taking place on the land and the sale of the land are two very different things. The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe lost the authority to restrain the sale of fee simple parcels inside their borders when the land was sold as part of the 1908 Allotment Act. Nothing in Montana gives it back. C </s> Neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals relied for its decision on the second Montana exception. The Eighth Circuit declined to address the exception's applicability, see 491 F. 3d, at 888, n.7, while the District Court strongly suggested in passing that the second exception would not apply here, see 440 F. Supp. 2d, at 1077. The District Court is correct, for the same reasons we explained above. The second Montana exception stems from the same sovereign interests that give rise to the first, interests that do not reach to regulating the sale of non-Indian fee land. The second exception authorizes the tribe to exercise civil jurisdiction when non-Indians' "conduct" menaces the "political integrity, the economic security, or the health or welfare of the tribe." Montana, 450 U.S., at 566. The conduct must do more than injure the tribe, it must "imperil the subsistence" of the tribal community. Ibid. One commentator has noted that "th[e] elevated threshold for application of the second Montana exception suggests that tribal power must be necessary to avert catastrophic consequences." Cohen §4.02[3][c], at 232, n. 220. </s> The sale of formerly Indian-owned fee land to a third party is quite possibly disappointing to the tribe, but cannot fairly be called "catastrophic" for tribal self-government. See Strate, 520 U.S., at 459. The land in question here has been owned by a non-Indian party for at least 50 years, Brief for Respondents 4, during which time the project of tribal self-government has proceeded without interruption. The land's resale to another non-Indian hardly "imperil[s] the subsistence or welfare of the tribe." Montana, supra, at 566. Accordingly, we hold the second Montana exception inapplicable in this case. D </s> Finally, we address the Longs' argument that the Bank consented to tribal court jurisdiction over the discrimination claim by seeking the assistance of tribal courts in serving a notice to quit. Brief for Respondents 44-46. When the Longs refused to vacate the land, the Bank initiated eviction proceedings in South Dakota state court. The Bank then asked the Tribal Court to appoint a process server able to reach the Longs. Seeking the Tribal Court's aid in serving process on tribal members for a pending state-court action does not, we think, constitute consent to future litigation in the Tribal Court. Notably, when the Longs did file their complaint against the Bank in Tribal Court, the Bank promptly contended in its answer that the court lacked jurisdiction. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 7. Under these circumstances, we find that the Bank did not consent by its litigation conduct to tribal court jurisdiction over the Longs' discrimination claim. *  *  * </s> The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered. </s> PLAINS COMMERCE BANK, PETITIONER v. LONG FAMILY LAND AND CATTLE COMPANY, INC., etal. on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the eighth circuit [June 25, 2008] </s> Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, and Justice Breyer join, concurring in part, concurring in the judgment in part, and dissenting in part. </s> I agree with the Court that petitioner Plains Commerce Bank (Bank) has Article III standing to contest the jurisdiction of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Court, and therefore join Part II of the Court's opinion. Further, I take no issue with the Court's jurisdictional ruling insofar as it relates to the Tribal Court's supplemental judgment. In that judgment, the Tribal Court ordered the Bank to give Ronnie and Lila Long an option to repurchase fee land the Bank had already contracted to sell to non-Indian individuals. See App. to Pet. for Cert. A-69 to A-71. </s> I dissent from the Court's decision, however, to the extent that it overturns the Tribal Court's principal judgment awarding the Longs damages in the amount of $750,000 plus interest. See App. 194-196. That judgment did not disturb the Bank's sale of fee land to non-Indians. It simply responded to the claim that the Bank, in its on-reservation commercial dealings with the Longs, treated them disadvantageously because of their tribal affiliation and racial identity. A claim of that genre, I would hold, is one the Tribal Court is competent to adjudicate. As the Court of Appeals correctly understood, the Longs' case, at heart, is not about "the sale of fee land on a tribal reservation by a non-Indian bank to non-Indian individuals," ante, at 1. "Rather, this case is about the power of the Tribe to hold nonmembers like the bank to a minimum standard of fairness when they voluntarily deal with tribal members." 491 F.3d 878, 887 (CA8 2007) (case below). </s> As the basis for their discrimination claim, the Longs essentially asserted that the Bank offered them terms and conditions on land-financing transactions less favorable than the terms and conditions offered to non-Indians. Although the Tribal Court could not reinstate the Longs as owners of the ranch lands that had been in their family for decades, that court could hold the Bank answerable in damages, the law's traditional remedy for the tortious injury the Longs experienced. I </s> In the pathmarking case, Montana v. United States, 450 U.S. 544, 564-565 (1981), this Court restated that, absent a treaty or statute, Indian tribes generally lack authority to regulate the activities of nonmembers. While stating the general rule, Montana also identified two exceptions: "A tribe may regulate, through taxation, licensing, or other means, the activities of nonmembers who enter consensual relationships with the tribe or its members, through commercial dealing, contracts, leases, or other arrangements. A tribe may also retain inherent power to exercise civil authority over the conduct of non-Indians on fee lands within its reservation when that conduct threatens or has some direct effect on the political integrity, the economic security, or the health or welfare of the tribe." Id., at 565-566 (citations omitted). </s> These two exceptions, Montana explained, recognize that "Indian tribes retain inherent sovereign power to exercise some forms of civil jurisdiction over non-Indians on their reservations, even on non-Indian fee lands." Id., at 565 (emphasis added). </s> Montana specifically addressed the regulatory jurisdiction of tribes. See id., at 557. This Court has since clarified that when a tribe has authority to regulate the activity of nonmembers, tribal courts presumably have adjudicatory authority over disputes arising out of that activity. See Strate v. A-1 Contractors, 520 U.S. 438, 453 (1997) (as to nonmembers, a tribe's adjudicative jurisdiction coincides with its legislative jurisdiction). In my view, this is a clear case for application of Montana's first or "consensual relationships" exception. I therefore do not reach the Longs' alternative argument that their complaint also fits within Montana's second exception. </s> Ronnie and Lila Long, husband and wife and owners of the Long Family Land and Cattle Company (Long Company), are enrolled members of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Although the Long Company was incorporated in South Dakota, the enterprise "was overwhelmingly tribal in character, as were its interactions with the bank." 491 F.3d, at 886. All Long Company property was situated--and all operations of the enterprise occurred--within the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation. The Long Company's articles of incorporation required Indian ownership of a majority of the corporation's shares. This requirement reflected the Long Company's status as an Indian-owned business entity eligible for Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) loan guarantees. See 25 CFR §103.25 (2007) (requiring at least 51% Indian ownership). Loan guarantees are among the incentives the BIA offers to promote the development of on-reservation Indian enterprises. The Long Company "was formed to take advantage of [the] BIA incentives." 491 F.3d, at 886. </s> The history of the Bank's commercial dealings with the Long Company and the Long family is lengthy and complex. The business relationship dates from 1988, when Ronnie Long's parents--one of them a member of the Tribe--mortgaged some 2,230 acres of land to the Bank to gain working capital for the ranch. As security for the Bank's loans over the years, the Longs mortgaged both their land and their personal property. The Bank benefited significantly from the Long Company's status as an Indian-owned business entity, for the BIA loan guarantees "allowed [it] to greatly reduce its lending risk." Ibid. Eventually, the Bank collected from the BIA almost $400,000, more than 80% of the net losses resulting from its loans to the Longs. See 440 F. Supp. 2d 1070, 1078 (SD 2007) (case below); App. 135-138. </s> The discrimination claim here at issue rests on the allegedly unfair conditions the Bank exacted from the Longs when they sought loans to sustain the operation of their ranch. Following the death of Ronnie's father, the Bank and the Longs entered into an agreement under which the mortgaged land would be deeded over to the Bank in exchange for the Bank's canceling some debt and making additional loans to keep the ranch in business. The Longs were given a two-year lease on the property with an option to buy the land back when the lease term expired. Negotiating sessions for these arrangements were held at the Tribe's on-reservation offices and were facilitated by tribal officers and BIA employees. 491 F.3d, at 881. </s> Viewing the deal they were given in comparative light, the Longs charged that the Bank offered to resell ranch land to them on terms less advantageous than those the Bank offered in similar dealings with non-Indians. Their claim, all courts prior to this one found, fit within the Montana exception for "activities of nonmembers who enter [into] ... commercial dealing, contracts, leases, or other arrangements" with tribal members. 450 U.S., at 565. Cf. Strate, 520 U.S., at 457 (citing Williams v. Lee, 358 U.S. 217, 223 (1959)) (Montana's consensual-relationships exception justifies tribal-court adjudication of claims "arising out of on-reservation sales transaction between nonmember plaintiff and member defendants"). I am convinced that the courts below got it right. </s> This case, it bears emphasis, involves no unwitting outsider forced to litigate under unfamiliar rules and procedures in tribal court. Cf. Nevada v. Hicks, 533 U. S. 353, 382-385 (2001) (Souter, J., concurring). Hardly a stranger to the tribal court system, the Bank regularly filed suit in that forum. See Brief for Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe as Amicus Curiae 29-31. The Bank enlisted tribal-court aid to serve notice to quit on the Longs in connection with state-court eviction proceedings. The Bank later filed a counterclaim for eviction and motion for summary judgment in the case the Longs commenced in the Tribal Court. In its summary judgment motion, the Bank stated, without qualification, that the Tribal Court "ha[d] jurisdiction over the subject matter of this action." App. 187-188. Had the Bank wanted to avoid responding in tribal court or the application of tribal law, the means were readily at hand: The Bank could have included forum selection, choice-of-law, or arbitration clauses in its agreements with the Longs, which the Bank drafted. See Brief for Respondents 42. II </s> Resolving this case on a ground neither argued nor addressed below, the Court holds that a tribe may not impose any regulation--not even a nondiscrimination requirement--on a bank's dealings with tribal members regarding on-reservation fee lands. See ante, at 1, 21-22. I do not read Montana or any other case so to instruct, and find the Court's position perplexing. First, I question the Court's separation of land sales tied to lending activities from other "activities of nonmembers who enter consensual relationships with the tribe or its members," Montana, 450 U.S., at 565. Sales of land--and related conduct--are surely "activities" within the ordinary sense of the word. See, e.g., County of Yakima v. Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakima Nation, 502 U.S. 251, 269 (1992) ("The excise tax remains a tax upon the Indian's activity of selling the land ...." (emphasis added)). Cf. 14 Oxford English Dictionary 388 (2d ed. 1989) (defining "sale" as "[t]he action or an act of selling" (def. 1(a))). </s> Second, the Court notes the absence of any case "f[i]nd[ing] that Montana authorized a tribe to regulate the sale of [non-Indian fee] land." Ante, at 15. But neither have we held that Montana prohibits all such regulation. If the Court in Montana, or later cases, had intended to remove land sales resulting from loan transactions entirely from tribal governance, it could have spoken plainly to that effect. Instead, Montana listed as examples of consensual relationships that tribes might have authority to regulate "commercial dealing, contracts, [and] leases." 450 U.S., at 565. Presumably, the reference to "leases" includes leases of fee land. But why should a nonmember's lease of fee land to a member be differentiated, for Montana exception purposes, from a sale of the same land? And why would the enforcement of an antidiscrimination command be less important to tribal self-rule and dignity, cf. ante, at 16-18, when the command relates to land sales than when it relates to other commercial relationships between nonmembers and members? III </s> As earlier observed, see supra, at 1, I agree that the Tribal Court had no authority to grant the Longs an option to purchase the 960-acre parcel the Bank had contracted to sell to individuals unaffiliated with the Tribe. The third parties' contracts with the Bank cannot be disturbed based on Montana's exception for "the activities of nonmembers who enter consensual relationships with the tribe or its members." 450 U.S., at 565. Although the Tribal Court overstepped in its supplemental judgment ordering the Bank to give the Longs an option to purchase land third parties had contracted to buy, see App. to Pet. for Cert. A-69 to A-71, it scarcely follows that the Tribal Court lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate the Longs' discrimination claim, and to order in its principal judgment, see App. 194-196, monetary relief.1 The Court recognizes that "[t]he Bank may reasonably have anticipated that its various commercial dealings with the Longs could trigger tribal authority to regulate those transactions." Ante, at 19. Today's decision, furthermore, purports to leave the Longs' breach-of-contract and bad-faith claims untouched. Ante, at 21, n.2. Noting that the Bank "does not presently challenge the breach-of-contract verdict," ante, at 6, the Court emphasizes that "[o]nly the discrimination claim is before us and that claim is tied specifically to the sale of the fee land," ante, at 21. But if the Tribal Court is a proper forum for the Longs' claim that the Bank has broken its promise or acted deceptively in the land-financing transactions at issue, one is hard put to understand why the Tribe could not likewise enforce in its courts a law that commands: Thou shall not discriminate against tribal members in the terms and conditions you offer them in those same transactions. The Federal Government and every State, county, and municipality can make nondiscrimination the law governing contracts generally, and real property transactions in particular. See, e.g., 42 U.S.C. §§1981, 1982. Why should the Tribe lack comparable authority to shield its members against discrimination by those engaging in on-reservation commercial relationships--including land-secured lending-- with them? A </s> The "fighting issue" in the tribal trial court, the Eighth Circuit underscored, "was whether the bank denied the Longs favorable terms on a deal solely on the basis of their race or tribal affiliation." 491 F.3d, at 891. The Longs maintained that the Bank initially offered them more favorable terms, proposing to sell the mortgaged land back to them with a 20-year contract for deed. Thereafter, the Bank sent a letter to Ronnie Long withdrawing its initial offer, "citing'possible jurisdictional problems' posed by the Long Company's status as an 'Indian owned entity on the reservation.'" Id., at 882 (quoting Letter from Charles Simon, Vice President, Bank of Hoven, to Ronnie Long (Apr. 26, 1996), App. 91). In the final agreement, the Bank promised no long-term financing; instead, it gave the Longs only a two-year lease with an option to purchase that required a large balloon payment within 60 days of the lease's expiration. When the Longs were unable to make the required payment within the specified deadline, the Bank sold the land to nonmembers on more favorable terms. In their complaint, the Longs alleged that the Bank allowed the non-Indians "ten years to pay for the land, but the bank would not permit [the] Longs even 60 days to pay for their land," and that "[s]uch unfair discrimination by the bank prevented the Longs and the [Long] Company from buying back their land from the bank." App. 173. Although the allegations about the Bank's contracts to sell to nonmembers were central to the Longs' lawsuit, those transactions with third parties were not the wrong about which the Longs complained. Rather, as the tribal trial court observed, the contracts with nonmembers simply supplied "evidence that the Bank denied the Longs the privilege of contracting for a deed because of their status as tribal members." App. to Pet. for Cert. A-78 to A-79 (emphasis added). </s> The Tribal Court instructed the jury to hold the Bank liable on the discrimination claim only if the less favorable terms given to the Longs rested "solely" upon the Longs' "race or tribal identity." 491 F.3d, at 883 (internal quotation marks omitted). In response to a special interrogatory, the jury found that "the Defendant Bank intentionally discriminate[d] against the Plaintiffs Ronnie and Lila Long [in the lease with option to purchase] based solely upon their status as Indians or tribal members." App. 191. Neither the instruction nor the special finding necessitated regulation of, or interference with, the Bank's fee-land sales to non-Indian individuals. See ante, at 1.2 </s> Tellingly, the Bank's principal jurisdictional argument below bore no relationship to the position the Court embraces. The Bank recognized that the Longs were indeed complaining about discriminatory conduct of a familiar sort. Cf. Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409, 413 (1968) (42 U.S.C. §1982 "bars all racial discrimination ... in the sale or rental of property"). In Hicks, 533 U.S. 353, this Court held that tribal courts could not exercise jurisdiction over a claim arising under federal law, in that case, 42 U.S.C. §1983. Relying on Hicks, the Bank insisted that the Longs' discrimination claim could not be heard in tribal court because it arose under well-known federal antidiscrimination law, specifically, 42 U.S.C. §1981 or §2000d. 491 F.3d, at 882-883. The Tribal Court of Appeals, however, held that the claim arose under Lakota common law, which resembled federal and state antidiscrimination measures. See App. to Pet. for Cert. A-54 to A-55, and n. 5.3 B </s> The Longs requested a remedy the Tribal Court did not have authority to grant--namely, an option to repurchase land the Bank had already contracted to sell to nonmember third parties. See supra, at 6-7. That limitation, however, does not affect the court's jurisdiction to hear the Longs' discrimination claim and to award damages on that claim. "The nature of the relief available after jurisdiction attaches is, of course, different from the question whether there is jurisdiction to adjudicate the controversy." Avco Corp. v. Machinists, 390 U.S. 557, 561 (1968). See also Davis v. Passman, 442 U.S. 228, 239-240, n. 18 (1979) ("[J]urisdiction is a question of whether a federal court has the power ... to hear a case"; "relief is a question of the various remedies a federal court may make available."). Under the procedural rules applicable in Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Courts, as under the Federal Rules, demand for one form of relief does not confine a trial court's remedial authority. See Law and Order Code of Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, Rule Civ. Proc. 25(c)(1) ("[E]very final judgment shall grant the relief to which the party in whose favor it is rendered is entitled, even if such relief is not demanded in the pleadings."); Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 54(c) (materially identical). A court does not lose jurisdiction over a claim merely because it lacks authority to provide the form of relief a party primarily demands. See Avco, 390 U.S., at560-561; 10 C. Wright, A. Miller, & M. Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure §2664, pp. 181-182 (3d ed. 1998) ("[I]t is not ... the type of relief requested in the demand that determines whether the court has jurisdiction.").4 In such a case, authority to provide another remedy suffices to permit the court to adjudicate the merits of the claim. See Avco, 390 U.S., at560-561. *  *  * </s> For the reasons stated, I would leave undisturbed the Tribal Court's initial judgment, see App. 194-196, awarding the Longs damages, prejudgment interest, and costs as redress for the Bank's breach of contract, bad faith, and discrimination. Accordingly, I would affirm in large part the judgment of the Court of Appeals. </s> FOOTNOTESFootnote 1Justice Ginsburg questions this distinction between sales and activities on the ground that "[s]ales of land--and related conduct--are surely 'activities' within the ordinary sense of the word." Post, at 6. We think the distinction is readily understandable. In any event, the question is not whether a sale is, in some generic sense, an action. The question is whether land ownership and sale are "activities" within the meaning of Montana and the other cited precedents. Footnote 2Justice Ginsburg contends that if the Tribal Court has jurisdiction over the Longs' other claims, it is hard to understand why jurisdiction would not also extend to the discrimination claim. Post, at 8. First, we have not said the Tribal Court has jurisdiction over the other claims: That question is not before us and we decline to speculate as to its answer. Moreover, the claims on which the Longs prevailed concern breach of a loan agreement, see App. 190, and bad faith in connection with Bureau of Indian Affairs loan guarantees, see id., at 192. The present claim involves substantive regulation of the sale of fee land. Footnote 3We point to the relief requested by the Longs--and partially granted by the Tribal Court--to rebut the Longs' contention that their claim did not focus on the sale of the fee land. Contrary to Justice Ginsburg's assertion, however, the nature of this remedy does not drive our jurisdictional ruling. See post, at 11-12. The remedy is invalid because there is no jurisdiction, not the other way around. FOOTNOTESFootnote 1The Longs joined their discrimination claim with claims of breach of contract and bad-faith dealings. The jury found in favor of the Longs on all three claims. App. 190-192. The latter claims alleged that the Bank "never provided the ... operating loans" promised during the parties' negotiations. 491 F.3d 878, 882 (CA8 2007). "[A]s a result," the Longs asserted, "the company was not able [to] sustain its ranching operation through the particularly harsh winter of 1996-97." Ibid. Nothing in the Court's opinion precludes decision of those claims by the Tribal Court. See ante, at 6, 8, 21, n. 2. Footnote 2The Court criticizes the Tribal Court for "requir[ing] the Bank to offer the same terms of sale to a prospective buyer who had defaulted in several previous transactions with the Bank as it offered to a different buyer without such a history of default." Ante, at 20. That criticism is unfair. First, the record does not confirm that the Longs were riskier buyers than the nonmembers to whom the Bank eventually sold the land. Overlooked by the Court, the Bank's loans to the Longs were sheltered by BIA loan guarantees. See supra, at 3-4. Further, a determination that the Longs had encountered intentional discrimination based solely on their status as tribal members in no way inhibited the Bank from differentiating evenhandedly among borrowers based on their creditworthiness. The proscription of discrimination simply required the Bank to offer the Longs the same terms it would have offered similarly situated non-Indians. Footnote 3The Court types the Longs' discrimination claim as "'novel,'" ante, at 20 (quoting 491 F. 3d, at 892), because the Tribal Court of Appeals derived the applicable law "'directly from Lakota tradition,'" ante, at 20 (quoting 440 F. Supp. 2d 1070, 1082 (SD 2007) (case below)). Concerning the content of the Tribe's law, however, the appeals court drew not only from "Tribal tradition and custom," it also looked to federal and state law. See App. to Pet. for Cert. A-55. Just as state courts may draw upon federal law when appropriate, see, e.g., Dawson v. Birenbaum, 968 S.W. 2d 663, 666-667 (Ky. 1998), and federal courts may look to state law to fill gaps, see, e.g., United States v. Kimbell Foods, Inc., 440 U.S. 715, 728-730 (1979), so too may tribal courts "borrow from the law of ... the federal government," see F. Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law §4.05[1], p. 275 (2005 ed.). With regard to checks against discrimination, as the Tribal Court of Appeals observed, "there is a direct and laudable convergence of federal, state, and tribal concern." App. to Pet. for Cert. A-55 to A-56. Footnote 4As in this case, see App. 177-179, the complaint in Avco sought injunctive relief, but also included a residual clause asking for other relief, see Avco Corp. v. Aero Lodge No. 735, Int'l Assn. of Mach. and Aerospace Workers, 376 F.2d 337, 339 (CA6 1967).

United States Supreme Court SIMON v. EASTERN KY. WELFARE RIGHTS ORG.(1976) No. 74-1124 Argued: December 10, 1975Decided: June 1, 1976 </s> [Footnote * Together with No. 74-1110, Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization et al. v. Simon, Secretary of the Treasury, et al., also on certiorari to the same court. </s> Respondents in No. 74-1124 (hereinafter respondents), several low-income individuals and organizations representing such individuals, brought this class action in District Court on behalf of all persons unable to afford hospital services, against the Secretary of the Treasury and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. They claimed that Revenue Ruling 69-545, which announced an Internal Revenue Service policy of extending favorable tax treatment under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (Code) to hospitals that did not serve indigents to the extent of the hospitals' financial ability, "encouraged" hospitals to deny services to indigents, and was invalid because it was an erroneous interpretation of the Code and because it had been issued in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The complaint described instances in which the individual respondents had been refused treatment, because of their indigency, at hospitals enjoying favorable tax treatment under the policy announced in the challenged Revenue Ruling and alleged to be receiving substantial contributions as a result of that treatment. The District Court overruled the motion to dismiss of petitioners in No. 74-1124 (hereinafter petitioners), which included a challenge to respondents' standing, and, on cross-motions for summary judgment, held Revenue Ruling 69-545 void as contrary to the Code. The Court of Appeals also found standing in respondents, but upheld Revenue Ruling 69-545. Held: The District Court should have granted petitioners' motion to dismiss because respondents failed to establish their standing to bring this suit. Pp. 37-46. </s> (a) When a plaintiff's standing is challenged the relevant inquiry is whether, assuming justiciability of the claim, the plaintiff [426 U.S. 26, 27] has shown an injury to himself that is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision, and unless such a showing is made a federal court cannot exercise its power consistent with the "case or controversy" limitation of Art. III of the Constitution. Pp. 37-39. </s> (b) The respondent organizations, which alleged no injury to themselves qua organizations, cannot establish standing simply on the basis that they are dedicated to promoting access of the poor to health services. An organization's abstract concern with a subject that could be affected by an adjudication does not substitute for the concrete injury required by Art. III. Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 . Pp. 39-40. </s> (c) Allegations that the individual respondents and members of respondent organizations were denied hospital services because of indigency do not establish a case or controversy in this suit, which is not brought against any hospital but against Treasury officials. The Art. III "case or controversy" limitation requires that a federal court act only to redress injury that fairly can be traced to the challenged action of a defendant, and not solely to some third party. Pp. 40-42. </s> (d) Though petitioners alleged that the adoption of Revenue Ruling 69-545 "encouraged" hospitals to deny services to indigents, it is purely speculative (1) whether the alleged denials of service are ascribable to petitioners' "encouragement" or resulted from the hospitals' decisions apart from tax considerations, and (2) whether the exercise of the District Court's remedial powers would make such services available to respondents. Respondents' allegation that the hospitals that denied them service receive substantial contributions, without more, does not establish that those hospitals are dependent upon such contributions. It thus appears that respondents relied "on little more than the remote possibility, unsubstantiated by allegations of fact, that their situation might have been better had [petitioners] acted otherwise, and might improve were the [District Court] to afford relief." Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 507 . Consequently, respondents failed to carry their burden of showing that their injury is the consequence of petitioners' action or that prospective relief will remove the harm. Warth v. Seldin, supra; Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614 , followed. Pp. 42-46. </s> 165 U.S. App. D.C. 239, 506 F.2d 1278, vacated and remanded. </s> POWELL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and STEWART, WHITE, BLACKMUN, and REHNQUIST, JJ., [426 U.S. 26, 28] joined. STEWART, J., filed a concurring statement, post, p. 46. BRENNAN, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which MARSHALL, J., joined, post, p. 46. STEVENS, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the cases. </s> Stuart A. Smith argued the cause for petitioners in No. 74-1124 and respondents in No. 74-1110. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Bork, Assistant Attorney General Crampton, Ernest J. Brown, Leonard J. Henzke, Jr., and Robert A. Bernstein. </s> Marilyn G. Rose argued the cause for respondents in No. 74-1124 and petitioners in No. 74-1110. With her on the briefs was Joseph N. Onek.Fn </s> Fn [426 U.S. 26, 28] Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed by Stanton J. Price for the American Public Health Assn., and by Stanley Christopher and Russell D. Jacobson for Jackson County, Mo. </s> Robert S. Bromberg filed a brief for the American Hospital Assn. as amicus curiae urging affirmance. </s> MR. JUSTICE POWELL delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> Several indigents and organizations composed of indigents brought this suit against the Secretary of the Treasury and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. They asserted that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) violated the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (Code) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by issuing a Revenue Ruling allowing favorable tax treatment to a nonprofit hospital that offered only emergency-room services to indigents. We conclude that these plaintiffs lack standing to bring this suit. </s> I </s> The Code, in its original version and by subsequent amendment, accords advantageous treatment to several types of nonprofit corporations, including exemption of [426 U.S. 26, 29] their income from taxation and deductibility by benefactors of the amounts of their donations. Nonprofit hospitals have never received these benefits as a favored general category, but an individual nonprofit hospital has been able to claim them if it could qualify as a corporation "organized and operated exclusively for . . . charitable . . . purposes" within the meaning of 501 (c) (3) of the Code, 26 U.S.C. 501 (c) (3). 1 As the Code does not define the term "charitable," the status of each nonprofit hospital is determined on a case-by-case basis by the IRS. </s> In recognition of the need of nonprofit hospitals for some guidelines on qualification as "charitable" corporations, the IRS in 1956 issued Revenue Ruling 56-185. 2 This Ruling established the position of the IRS to be "that the term `charitable' in its legal sense and as it is used in section 501 (c) (3) of the Code contemplates an implied public trust constituted for some public benefit . . . ." In addition, the Ruling set out four "general requirements" that a hospital had to meet, "among other [426 U.S. 26, 30] things," to be considered a charitable organization by the IRS. Only one of those requirements is important here, and it reads as follows: </s> "It must be operated to the extent of its financial ability for those not able to pay for the services rendered and not exclusively for those who are able and expected to pay. It is normal for hospitals to charge those able to pay for services rendered in order to meet the operating expenses of the institution, without denying medical care or treatment to others unable to pay. The fact that its charity record is relatively low is not conclusive that a hospital is not operated for charitable purposes to the full extent of its financial ability. It may furnish services at reduced rates which are below cost, and thereby render charity in that manner. It may also set aside earnings which it uses for improvements and additions to hospital facilities. It must not, however, refuse to accept patients in need of hospital care who cannot pay for such services. Furthermore, if it operates with the expectation of full payment from all those to whom it renders services, it does not dispense charity merely because some of its patients fail to pay for the services rendered." </s> Revenue Ruling 56-185 remained the announced policy with respect to a nonprofit hospital's "charitable" status for 13 years, until the IRS issued Revenue Ruling 69-545 on November 3, 1969. 3 This new Ruling described two unidentified hospitals, referred to simply as Hospital A and Hospital B, which differed significantly in both [426 U.S. 26, 31] corporate structure and operating policies. 4 The description of Hospital A included the following paragraph: </s> "The hospital operates a full time emergency room and no one requiring emergency care is denied treatment. The hospital otherwise ordinarily limits admissions to those who can pay the cost of their hospitalization, either themselves, or through private health insurance, or with the aid of public programs such as Medicare. Patients who cannot meet the financial requirements for admission are ordinarily referred to another hospital in the community that does serve indigent patients." </s> Despite Hospital A's apparent failure to operate "to the extent of its financial ability for those not able to pay for the services rendered," as required by Revenue Ruling 56-185, the IRS in this new Ruling held Hospital A exempt as a charitable corporation under 501 (c) (3). 5 Noting that Revenue Ruling 56-185 had set out requirements [426 U.S. 26, 32] for serving indigents "more restrictive" than those applied to Hospital A, the IRS stated that "Revenue Ruling 56-185 is hereby modified to remove therefrom the requirements relating to caring for patients without charge or at rates below cost." </s> II </s> Issuance of Revenue Ruling 69-545 led to the filing of this suit in July 1971 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, by a group of organizations and individuals. The plaintiff organizations described themselves as an unincorporated association 6 and several nonprofit corporations 7 each of which included low-income persons among its members and represented the interests of all such persons in obtaining hospital care and services. The 12 individual plaintiffs 8 described themselves as subsisting below the poverty income levels established by the Federal Government and suffering from medical conditions requiring hospital services. The organizations sued on behalf of their members, and each individual sued on his own behalf and as representative of all other persons similarly situated. </s> Each of the individuals described an occasion on which he or a member of his family had been disadvantaged in seeking needed hospital services because of indigency. Most involved the refusal of a hospital to admit the person because of his inability to pay a deposit or an advance fee, even though in some instances the [426 U.S. 26, 33] person was enrolled in the Medicare program. At least one plaintiff was denied emergency-room treatment because of his inability to pay immediately. And another was treated in the emergency room but then billed and threatened with suit although his indigency had been known at the time of treatment. </s> According to the complaint, each of the hospitals involved in these incidents had been determined by the Secretary and the Commissioner to be a tax-exempt charitable corporation, and each received substantial private contributions. The Secretary and the Commissioner were the only defendants. The complaint alleged that by extending tax benefits to such hospitals despite their refusals fully to serve the indigent, the defendants were "encouraging" the hospitals to deny services to the individual plaintiffs and to the members and clients of the plaintiff organizations. Those persons were alleged to be suffering "injury in their opportunity and ability to receive hospital services in nonprofit hospitals which receive . . . benefits . . . as `charitable' organizations" under the Code. They also were alleged to be among the intended beneficiaries of the Code sections that grant favorable tax treatment to "charitable" organizations. </s> Plaintiffs made two principal claims. The first was that in issuing Revenue Ruling 69-545 the defendants had violated the Code, and that in granting charitable-corporation treatment to nonprofit hospitals that refused fully to serve indigents the defendants continued the violation. Their theory was that the legislative history of the Code, regulations of the IRS, and judicial precedent had established the term "charitable" in the Code to mean "relief of the poor," and that the challenged Ruling and current practice of the IRS departed from that interpretation. Plaintiffs' second claim was that the issuance of Revenue Ruling 69-545 without a [426 U.S. 26, 34] public hearing and an opportunity for submission of views had violated the rulemaking procedures of the APA, 5 U.S.C. 553. The theory of this claim was that the Ruling should be considered a "substantive" rule as opposed to the "interpretative" type of rule that is exempted from the requirements of 553. 9 Plaintiffs sought various forms of declaratory and injunctive relief. 10 </s> By a motion to dismiss, defendants challenged plaintiffs' standing, suggested the nonjusticiability of the subject matter of the suit, and asserted that in any event the action was barred by the Anti-Injunction Act, 11 the tax limitation in the Declaratory Judgment Act, 12 and the [426 U.S. 26, 35] doctrine of sovereign immunity. The District Court denied this motion without opinion. On subsequent cross-motions for summary judgment the court considered but rejected each of defendants' arguments against its reaching the merits. The court then held that Revenue Ruling 69-545 was "improperly promulgated" and "without effect" insofar as it permitted nonprofit hospitals to qualify for tax treatment as charities without their offering "special financial consideration to persons unable to pay." 370 F. Supp. 325, 338 (1973). 13 </s> The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed. 165 U.S. App. D.C. 239, 506 F.2d 1278 (1974). It agreed with the District Court's rejection of defendants' jurisdictional contentions, but held on the merits that Revenue Ruling 69-545 was founded upon a permissible definition of "charitable" and was not contrary to congressional intent in the Code. As to the plaintiffs' APA claim, which the District Court had not reached, the Court of Appeals held that Revenue Ruling 69-545 was an "interpretative" ruling and thus exempt from the APA's rulemaking requirements. </s> Plaintiffs sought a writ of certiorari in No. 74-1110 to review the Court of Appeals' judgment on the merits. Defendants filed a cross-petition in No. 74-1124 seeking review of that court's decision on the jurisdictional issues if plaintiffs' petition should be granted. We granted both petitions and consolidated them. [426 U.S. 26, 36] 421 U.S. 975 (1975). Since we deal with defendants' contentions in No. 74-1124 first, and find it unnecessary to reach the issues raised by plaintiffs in No. 74-1110, we shall refer to defendants below as petitioners and to plaintiffs below as respondents. </s> III </s> In this Court petitioners have argued that a policy of the IRS to tax or not to tax certain individuals or organizations, whether embodied in a Revenue Ruling or otherwise developed, cannot be challenged by third parties whose own tax liabilities are not affected. Their theory is that the entire history of this country's revenue system, including but not limited to the evolution of the Code, manifests a consistent congressional intent to vest exclusive authority for the administration of the tax laws in the Secretary and his duly authorized delegates, subject to oversight by the appropriate committees of Congress itself. It is argued that allowing third-party suits questioning the tax treatment accorded other taxpayers would transfer determination of general revenue policy away from those to whom Congress has entrusted it and vest it in the federal courts. 14 </s> [426 U.S. 26, 37] </s> In addition, petitioners analogize the discretion vested in the IRS with respect to administration of the tax laws to the discretion of a public prosecutor as to when and whom to prosecute. They thus invoke the settled doctrine that the exercise of prosecutorial discretion cannot be challenged by one who is himself neither prosecuted nor threatened with prosecution. See Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614, 619 (1973). Petitioners also renew their jurisdictional contentions that this action is barred by the Anti-Injunction Act, the Declaratory Judgment Act, and the doctrine of sovereign immunity. </s> We do not reach either the question of whether a third party ever may challenge IRS treatment of another, or the question of whether there is a statutory or an immunity bar to this suit. We conclude that the District Court should have granted petitioners' motion to dismiss on the ground that respondents' complaint failed to establish their standing to sue. 15 </s> IV </s> No principle is more fundamental to the judiciary's proper role in our system of government than the constitutional limitation of federal-court jurisdiction to actual cases or controversies. See Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 95 (1968). The concept of standing is part of this limitation. Unlike other associated doctrines, for example, that which restrains federal courts from deciding [426 U.S. 26, 38] political questions, standing "focuses on the party seeking to get his complaint before a federal court and not on the issues he wishes to have adjudicated." Id., at 99. As we reiterated last Term, the standing question in its Art. III aspect "is whether the plaintiff has `alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy' as to warrant his invocation of federal-court jurisdiction and to justify exercise of the court's remedial powers on his behalf." Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498 -499 (1975) (emphasis in original). In sum, when a plaintiff's standing is brought into issue the relevant inquiry is whether, assuming justiciability of the claim, the plaintiff has shown an injury to himself that is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision. Absent such a showing, exercise of its power by a federal court would be gratuitous and thus inconsistent with the Art. III limitation. 16 </s> Respondents brought this action under 10 of the APA, 5 U.S.C. 702, which gives a right to judicial review to any person "adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute." 17 In Data Processing Service v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150 (1969), this Court held the constitutional standing requirement under this section to be allegations which, if true, would establish that the plaintiff had been injured in fact by [426 U.S. 26, 39] the action he sought to have reviewed. Reduction of the threshold requirement to actual injury redressable by the court represented a substantial broadening of access to the federal courts over that previously thought to be the constitutional minimum under this statute. 18 But, as this Court emphasized in Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 738 (1972), "broadening the categories of injury that may be alleged in support of standing is a different matter from abandoning the requirement that the party seeking review must himself have suffered an injury." See also United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 194 (1974) (POWELL, J., concurring). The necessity that the plaintiff who seeks to invoke judicial power stand to profit in some personal interest remains an Art. III requirement. A federal court cannot ignore this requirement without overstepping its assigned role in our system of adjudicating only actual cases and controversies. 19 It is according to this settled principle that the allegations of both the individual respondents and the respondent organizations must be tested for sufficiency. </s> A </s> We note at the outset that the five respondent organizations, which described themselves as dedicated to [426 U.S. 26, 40] promoting access of the poor to health services, could not establish their standing simply on the basis of that goal. Our decisions make clear that an organization's abstract concern with a subject that could be affected by an adjudication does not substitute for the concrete injury required by Art. III. Sierra Club v. Morton, supra; see Warth v. Seldin, supra. Insofar as these organizations seek standing based on their special interest in the health problems of the poor their complaint must fail. Since they allege no injury to themselves as organizations, and indeed could not in the context of this suit, they can establish standing only as representatives of those of their members who have been injured in fact, and thus could have brought suit in their own right. Warth v. Seldin, supra, at 511. The standing question in this suit therefore turns upon whether any individual respondent has established an actual injury, 20 or whether the respondent organizations have established actual injury to any of their indigent members. </s> B </s> The obvious interest of all respondents, to which they claim actual injury, is that of access to hospital services. In one sense, of course, they have suffered injury to that interest. The complaint alleges specific occasions on which each of the individual respondents sought but was denied hospital services solely due to his indigency, 21 and [426 U.S. 26, 41] in at least some of the cases it is clear that the needed treatment was unavailable, as a practical matter, anywhere else. The complaint also alleges that members of the respondent organizations need hospital services but live in communities in which the private hospitals do not serve indigents. We thus assume, for purpose of analysis, that some members have been denied service. But injury at the hands of a hospital is insufficient by itself to establish a case or controversy in the context of this suit, for no hospital is a defendant. The only defendants are officials of the Department of the Treasury, and the only claims of illegal action respondents desire the courts to adjudicate are charged to those officials. "Although the law of standing has been greatly changed in [recent] years, we have steadfastly adhered to the requirement that, at least in the absence of a statute expressly conferring standing, federal plaintiffs 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., at 617 . 22 In other words, the "case or controversy" limitation of Art. III still requires that a federal court act only to redress injury that fairly can be traced to the challenged action of the defendant, and not injury [426 U.S. 26, 42] that results from the independent action of some third party not before the court. </s> The complaint here alleged only that petitioners, by the adoption of Revenue Ruling 69-545, had "encouraged" hospitals to deny services to indigents. 23 The implicit corollary of this allegation is that a grant of respondents' requested relief, resulting in a requirement that all hospitals serve indigents as a condition to favorable tax treatment, would "discourage" hospitals from denying their services to respondents. But it does not follow from the allegation and its corollary that the denial of access to hospital services in fact results from petitioners' new Ruling, or that a court-ordered return by petitioners to their previous policy would result in these respondents' receiving the hospital services they desire. It is purely speculative whether the denials of service [426 U.S. 26, 43] specified in the complaint fairly can be traced to petitioners' "encouragement" or instead result from decisions made by the hospitals without regard to the tax implications. </s> It is equally speculative whether the desired exercise of the court's remedial powers in this suit would result in the availability to respondents of such services. So far as the complaint sheds light, it is just as plausible that the hospitals to which respondents may apply for service would elect to forgo favorable tax treatment to avoid the undetermined financial drain of an increase in the level of uncompensated services. It is true that the individual respondents have alleged, upon information and belief, that the hospitals that denied them service receive substantial donations deductible by the donors. This allegation could support an inference that these hospitals, or some of them, are so financially dependent upon the favorable tax treatment afforded charitable organizations that they would admit respondents if a court required such admission as a condition to receipt of that treatment. But this inference is speculative at best. 24 The Solicitor General states in his brief that, nationwide, private philanthropy accounts for only 4% of private hospital revenues. Respondents introduced in the District Court a statement to Congress by an official of a hospital association describing the importance to nonprofit hospitals of the favorable tax treatment they receive as charitable corporations. Such conflicting evidence supports the commonsense proposition that the dependence upon special tax benefits may vary from hospital to hospital. Thus, respondents' allegation that [426 U.S. 26, 44] certain hospitals receive substantial charitable contributions, without more, does not establish the further proposition that those hospitals are dependent upon such contributions. </s> Prior decisions of this Court establish that unadorned speculation will not suffice to invoke the federal judicial power. In Linda R. S. v. Richard D., the mother of an illegitimate child averred that state-court interpretation of a criminal child support statute as applying only to fathers of legitimate children violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. She sought an injunction requiring the district attorney to enforce the statute against the father of her child. We held that the mother lacked standing, because she had "made no showing that her failure to secure support payments results from the nonenforcement, as to her child's father, of [the statute]." 410 U.S., at 618 . The prospect that the requested prosecution in fact would result in the payment of child support - instead of jailing the father - was "only speculative." Ibid. Similarly, last Term in Warth v. Seldin we held that low-income persons seeking the invalidation of a town's restrictive zoning ordinance lacked standing because they had failed to show that the alleged injury, inability to obtain adequate housing within their means, was fairly attributable to the challenged ordinance instead of to other factors. In language directly applicable to this litigation, we there noted that plaintiffs relied "on little more than the remote possibility, unsubstantiated by allegations of fact, that their situation might have been better had [defendants] acted otherwise, and might improve were the court to afford relief." 422 U.S., at 507 . </s> The principle of Linda R. S. and Warth controls this case. As stated in Warth, that principle is that indirectness of injury, while not necessarily fatal to standing, [426 U.S. 26, 45] "may make it substantially more difficult to meet the minimum requirement of Art. III: to establish that, in fact, the asserted injury was the consequence of the defendants' actions, or that prospective relief will remove the harm." 422 U.S., at 505 . Respondents have failed to carry this burden. Speculative inferences are necessary to connect their injury to the challenged actions of petitioners. 25 Moreover, the complaint suggests no substantial likelihood that victory in this suit would result [426 U.S. 26, 46] in respondents' receiving the hospital treatment they desire. A federal court, properly cognizant of the Art. III limitation upon its jurisdiction, must require more than respondents have shown before proceeding to the merits. </s> Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated, and the cause is remanded to the District Court with instructions to dismiss the complaint. </s> It is so ordered. </s> MR. JUSTICE STEVENS took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 Section 501 is the linchpin of the statutory benefit system. Subsection (a) states that organizations described in subsection (c) "shall be exempt from taxation under this subtitle . . . ." Among the organizations described in current subsection (c) (3) are nonprofit corporations "organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals." (Emphasis added.) Deduction by either an individual or a corporate taxpayer of a contribution to a nonprofit charitable corporation is allowed by 170 (a), (c) (2). 26 U.S.C. 170 (a), (c) (2). Other indirect benefits to such a corporation, similar in nature to the benefit it derives from third-party deducibility of contributions, are provided by various other sections of the Code. See 26 U.S.C. 642 (c), 2055 (a) (2), 2106 (a) (2) (A) (ii), 2522 (a) (2) and (b) (2). </s> [Footnote 2 1956-1 Cum. Bull. 202. </s> [Footnote 3 1969-2 Cum. Bull. 117. The substance of this Ruling had been issued as a policy pronouncement approximately one month earlier. Technical Info. Rel. 1022 (Oct. 8, 1969). </s> [Footnote 4 The descriptions fit, in whole or in part, actual hospitals as to whose tax status either a taxpayer or an IRS field office had requested advice. The anonymous reference to the hospitals in Revenue Ruling 69-545 conformed to the IRS practice of deleting "identifying details and confidential information" contained in such requests, which are dealt with privately before the underlying fact situation is used in a published Revenue Ruling. See 1969-2 Cum. Bull. xxii. </s> [Footnote 5 In reaching this conclusion the IRS cited the law of trusts for the premise that promotion of health was a "charitable" purpose provided only that the class of direct beneficiaries was sufficiently large that its receipt of health services could be said to benefit the community as a whole. See Restatement (Second) of Trusts 368, 372 (1959); 4 A. Scott, Law of Trusts 368, 372 (3d ed. 1967). The IRS then applied that premise to Hospital A and concluded that by maintaining an open emergency room and providing hospital care to all persons able to pay, either directly or through insurance, the hospital served a large enough class to qualify as charitable. </s> [Footnote 6 California Welfare Rights Organization. </s> [Footnote 7 Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization; National Tenants Organization; Association of Disabled Miners and Widows, Inc.; Health, Education, Advisory Team, Inc. </s> [Footnote 8 One of the 12, a minor, sued by and through his parents, who also were named plaintiffs. </s> [Footnote 9 Section 553 (b) states that "[e]xcept when notice or hearing is required by statute, this subsection does not apply - (A) to interpretative rules . . . ." </s> Plaintiffs also claimed that issuance of Revenue Ruling 69-545 amounted to an abuse of discretion and denied them due process of law. These claims were treated summarily or not at all by the courts below, and plaintiffs have not pressed them in this Court. </s> [Footnote 10 Plaintiffs requested judicial declarations that defendants had violated the Code and the APA, and that a hospital's charitable status required provision of full services to persons unable to pay and those on Medicaid. In addition, they sought to enjoin defendants to suspend charitable-organization treatment of, and to refrain from extending such treatment to, any hospital that failed to submit proof, on forms to be approved by the District Court, that it served indigents and those on Medicaid without either requiring advance deposits or attempting to collect, once service had been rendered. Plaintiffs also asked the District Court to order collection of all taxes "due and owing" because of the allegedly "illegal" extension of charitable status to hospitals that refused to serve indigents. </s> [Footnote 11 "[N]o suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed." 26 U.S.C. 7421 (a). </s> [Footnote 12 "In a case of actual controversy within its jurisdiction, except with respect to Federal taxes, any court of the United States, upon the filing of an appropriate pleading, may declare the rights and [426 U.S. 26, 35] other legal relations of any interested party seeking such declaration, whether or not further relief is or could be sought." 28 U.S.C. 2201 (emphasis added). </s> [Footnote 13 The court entered a declaratory judgment to that effect and enjoined defendants from extending tax-exempt status to a nonprofit hospital, or allowing deductions for contributions to it, until the hospital had satisfied the requirements of previous Revenue Ruling 56-185 regarding service to indigents and had posted in its public areas a court-approved notice reciting those requirements. </s> [Footnote 14 Petitioners rely in part upon this Court's decision in Louisiana v. McAdoo, 234 U.S. 627 (1914), as precedent for their position. In that case the State of Louisiana, as a producer of sugar, brought suit challenging the tariff rates applied by the Secretary of the Treasury to sugar imported from Cuba. This Court ordered the suit dismissed. Petitioners rely particularly upon statements in the opinion that maintenance of such actions "would operate to disturb the whole revenue system of the Government," and that "[i]nterference [by the courts] in such a case would be to interfere with the ordinary functions of government." Id., at 632, 633. In view of our disposition, we express no opinion on the application of McAdoo to this kind of case. </s> [Footnote 15 As noted, supra, at 34-35, the District Court considered petitioners' jurisdictional arguments, including their challenge to respondents' standing, when it ruled on cross-motions for summary judgment. The affidavits submitted by respondents merely supported the allegations of the complaint relative to establishing standing, rather than going beyond them. Thus, the standing analysis is no different, as a result of the case having proceeded to summary judgment, than it would have been at the pleading stage. Cf. Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 501 -502 (1975). </s> [Footnote 16 This Court often has noted that the focus upon the plaintiff's stake in the outcome of the issue he seeks to have adjudicated serves a separate and equally important function bearing upon the nature of the judicial process. As stated in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204 (1962), a significant personal stake serves "to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult . . . questions." </s> [Footnote 17 "A person suffering legal wrong because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute, is entitled to judicial review thereof." 5 U.S.C. 702. </s> [Footnote 18 The previous view can be found in Kansas City Power & Light Co. v. McKay, 96 U.S. App. D.C. 273, 281, 225 F.2d 924, 932 (1955). See Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 733 (1972). </s> [Footnote 19 The Data Processing decision established a second, nonconstitutional standing requirement that the interest of the plaintiff, regardless of its nature in the absolute, at least be "arguably within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated" by the statutory framework within which his claim arises. See 397 U.S., at 153 . As noted earlier, respondents in this case claim that they, and of course their particular interests involved in this suit, are the intended beneficiaries of the charitable organization provisions of the Code. In view of our disposition of this case, we need not consider this "zone of interests" test. </s> [Footnote 20 The individual respondents sought to maintain this suit as a class action on behalf of all persons similarly situated. That a suit may be a class action, however, adds nothing to the question of standing, for even named plaintiffs who represent a class "must allege and show that they personally have been injured, not that injury has been suffered by other, unidentified members of the class to which they belong and which they purport to represent." Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S., at 502 . </s> [Footnote 21 One of the individual respondents complains, not that he was [426 U.S. 26, 41] denied service, but that he was treated and then billed despite the hospital's knowledge of his indigency. This variation of the injury does not change the standing analysis. </s> [Footnote 22 The reference in Linda R. S. to "a statute expressly conferring standing" was in recognition of Congress' power to create new interests the invasion of which will confer standing. See 410 U.S., at 617 n. 3; Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 409 U.S. 205 (1972). When Congress has so acted, the requirements of Art. III remain: "[T]he plaintiff still must allege a distinct and palpable injury to himself, even if it is an injury shared by a large class of other possible litigants." Warth v. Seldin, supra, at 501. See also United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S. 669 (1973); cf. Sierra Club v. Morton, supra, at 732 n. 3. </s> [Footnote 23 The Court of Appeals, in sustaining Revenue Ruling 69-545 on the merits, relied in part upon its conclusion that the new IRS policy, which apparently requires a hospital to provide free emergency care to indigents, may result in as much or more relief to the poor than the policy of the previous Ruling. Much of respondents' argument, and that of several of the amici, have been directed against that conclusion. As we do not reach the merits, we need not consider this question. But we accept for purposes of the standing inquiry respondents' averment that the IRS's new policy encourages a hospital to provide fewer services to indigents than it might have under the previous policy. </s> We do note, however, that it is entirely speculative whether even the earlier Ruling would have assured the medical care they desire. It required a hospital to provide care for the indigent only "to the extent of its financial ability," and stated that a low charity record was not conclusive that a hospital had failed to meet that duty. See supra, at 30. Thus, a hospital could not maintain, consistently with Revenue Ruling 56-185, a general policy of refusing care to all patients unable to pay. But the number of such patients accepted, and whether any particular applicant would be admitted, would depend upon the financial ability of the hospital to which admittance was sought. </s> [Footnote 24 The complaint reveals nothing at all about the dependence upon charitable contributions of any hospitals that might have denied services to members of respondent organizations. See supra, at 40-41. </s> [Footnote 25 The courts below erroneously believed that United States v. SCRAP supported respondents' standing. In SCRAP, although the injury was indirect and "the Court was asked to follow [an] attenuated line of causation," 412 U.S., at 688 , the complaint nevertheless "alleged a specific and perceptible harm" flowing from the agency action. Id., at 689. Such a complaint withstood a motion to dismiss, although it might not have survived challenge on a motion for summary judgment. Id., at 689, and n. 15. But in this case the complaint is insufficient even to survive a motion to dismiss, for it fails to allege an injury that fairly can be traced to petitioners' challenged action. See supra, at 40-43. Nor did the affidavits before the District Court at the summary judgment stage supply the missing link. </s> Our decision is also consistent with Data Processing Service v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150 (1969). The Court there stated: "The first question is whether the plaintiff alleges that the challenged action has caused him injury in fact, economic or otherwise." Id., at 152. The complaint in Data Processing alleged injury that was directly traceable to the action of the defendant federal official, for it complained of injurious competition that would have been illegal without that action. Accord, Arnold Tours, Inc. v. Camp, 400 U.S. 45 (1970); Investment Co. Institute v. Camp, 401 U.S. 617, 620 -621 (1971). Similarly, the complaint in Data Processing's companion case of Barlow v. Collins, 397 U.S. 159 (1970), was sufficient because it alleged extortionate demands by plaintiffs' landlord made possible only by the challenged action of the defendant federal official. See id., at 162-163. In the instant case respondents' injuries might have occurred even in the absence of the IRS Ruling that they challenge; whether the injuries fairly can be traced to that Ruling depends upon unalleged and unknown facts about the relevant hospitals. </s> MR. JUSTICE STEWART, concurring. </s> I join the opinion of the Court holding that the plaintiffs in this case did not have standing to sue. I add only that I cannot now imagine a case, at least outside the First Amendment area, where a person whose own tax liability was not affected ever could have standing to litigate the federal tax liability of someone else. </s> MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL joins, concurring in the judgment. </s> I agree that in this litigation as it is presently postured, respondents (herein used to refer to plaintiffs below) have not met their burden of establishing a concrete and reviewable controversy between themselves and the Government with respect to the disputed Revenue Ruling. That is, however, the full extent of my agreement with the Court in this case. I must dissent from the Court's reasoning on the standing issue, reasoning that is unjustifiable under any proper theory of standing and clearly contrary to the relevant precedents. The Court's further obfuscation of the law of standing is particularly unnecessary when there are obvious and reasonable alternative grounds upon which to decide this litigation. [426 U.S. 26, 47] </s> I </s> Respondents brought this action for declaratory and injunctive relief, seeking, inter alia, a declaration that Revenue Ruling 69-545 is inconsistent with the relevant provisions of the Internal Revenue Code and promulgated in violation of the rulemaking provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 553. Respondents claimed to be indigents, to be in need of free or below-cost medical care provided by private, nonprofit hospitals accorded tax-exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code, and to be protected by and beneficiaries of the provisions of the Code providing for tax-exempt status for nonprofit organizations engaging in "charitable" activities. Respondents alleged that they had in specified instances been denied provision of free or below-cost medical services by nonprofit hospitals accorded tax-exempt status under the Code, and that by issuing the disputed Revenue Ruling the Internal Revenue Service was "encouraging" tax-exempt hospitals to deny them such services. Accordingly, respondents alleged, the IRS was injuring them in their "opportunity and ability" to receive medical services and doing so illegally, in derogation of the results intended by the "charitable" provisions of the Code. </s> However, as noted by the Court, the disputed Ruling on its face applies only to a narrow category of nonprofit hospitals - those fairly characterized by the factual and legal circumstances described in the Ruling as pertaining to "Hospital A." The Ruling does not indicate what treatment will be accorded hospitals not within the situation described in the hypothesis. 1 The most hotly [426 U.S. 26, 48] contested portion of the disputed ruling, that modifying the earlier Revenue Ruling 56-185 by "remov[ing] therefrom the requirements relating to caring for patients [426 U.S. 26, 49] without charge or at rates below cost," is at best ambiguous regarding its application or effect respecting nonprofit hospitals not within the factual and legal situation [426 U.S. 26, 50] of Hospital A. Accordingly, there is simply no ripe controversy with respect to a claim that the disputed ruling illegally "encourages" all nonprofit hospitals to withdraw the provision of indigent services by removing from all hospitals the requirement of such services as a prerequisite to tax-exempt status. </s> This was the position of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue with respect to the disputed Ruling at oral argument, 2 and no representation [426 U.S. 26, 51] to the contrary appears in the record. Moreover, no facts were alleged or introduced in the District Court that any way indicated with more specificity that the disputed Ruling had or was intended to have application to all nonprofit hospitals. Respondents apparently made no attempt to clarify the meaning of the Ruling in this regard, as, for example, by filing with the IRS a petition for clarification of the Ruling pursuant to the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 555 (e), see, e. g., Dunlop v. Bachowski, 421 U.S. 560, 573 (1975), or by petitioning for a revision of the Ruling pursuant to that Act, 5 U.S.C. 553 (e), cf. Oljato Chapter of Navajo Tribe v. Train, 169 U.S. App. D.C. 195, 207, 515 F.2d 654, 666-667 (1975), or by seeking clarification by means of discovery or an informal request. Accordingly, with respect to any claim that the Ruling illegally withdraws the requirement of the provision of indigent services from all hospitals seeking tax-exempt status under the "charitable" provisions of the Code, a "lack of ripeness inhere[s] in the fact that the need for some further procedure, some further contingency of application [426 U.S. 26, 52] or interpretation . . . serve[s] to make remote the issue which was sought to be presented to the Court." Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 528 (1961) (Harlan, J., dissenting). Cf. Toilet Goods Assn. v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 158, 163 -164 (1967). 3 "It is clear beyond question . . . that [the disputed Ruling] on [its] face raise[s] questions which should not be adjudicated in the abstract and in the general, but which require a `concrete setting' for determination." Gardner v. Toilet Goods Assn., 387 U.S. 167, 197 (1967) (opinion of Fortas, J.). </s> Further, if respondents wished to challenge the legality of the Ruling in respect to the unambiguous aspects of its application - its application to hospitals fairly coming within the situation described as pertaining to Hospital A - it was incumbent upon them to allege, and, at the appropriate stage of the litigation, to offer evidence to show that the hospitals whose conduct affected them were hospitals whose operations could fairly be characterized as implicated by the terms of the Ruling. Such allegations and showings were necessary to demonstrate some logical connection or nexus between the wrongful action alleged, the issuance of the disputed Ruling, and the harm of which respondents complain, injury to their "opportunity and ability" to secure medical services. This is required, of course, by the only constitutional, "case or controversy," policy affecting the law of standing - to ensure that the party seeking relief has "alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the [C]ourt so largely [426 U.S. 26, 53] depends for illumination of difficult . . . questions." Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204 (1962). </s> The allegations of the complaint are probably sufficient to state this claim with respect to certain of the respondents. 4 In any event, however, the petitioners (used herein to refer to defendants below) later moved for summary judgment on the standing issue, specifically arguing that "[t]he plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that the alleged injuries complained of herein were incurred as a result of any actions on the part of the defendants." App. 154. At this point in the litigation, it was clearly incumbent upon the respondents to make a showing sufficient to create a material issue of fact whether there was any connection between the hospitals affecting them and the Ruling alleged to be illegally "encouraging" tax-exempt hospitals to withdraw the provision of indigents' services, thereby injuring respondents' "opportunity and ability" for such services. [426 U.S. 26, 54] See Barlow v. Collins, 397 U.S. 159, 175 , and n. 10 (1970) (opinion of BRENNAN, J.). 5 No such showing was made. There is absolutely no indication in the record that the contested Ruling altered the operation of these hospitals in any way, or that the tax-exempt status of these hospitals was in any way related to the Ruling. Accordingly, the petitioners were entitled to judgment in their favor on their motion for summary judgment. </s> II </s> The Court today, however, wholly ignores the foregoing aspects of this case. Rather, it assumes that the governmental action complained of is encouraging the hospitals affecting respondents to provide fewer medical services to indigents. Ante, at 42, and n. 23. This is done in order to make the gratuitous and erroneous point that respondents, as a prerequisite to pursuing any legal claims regarding the Revenue Ruling, must allege and later prove that the hospitals affecting respondents [426 U.S. 26, 55] "are dependent upon" their tax-exempt status, ante, at 44, that they would not in the absence of the Ruling's assumed "encouragement" "elect to forgo favorable tax treatment," and that the absence of the allegedly illegal inducement would "result in the availability to respondents of such services," ante, at 43. In reaching this conclusion, the Court abjures analysis either of the Art. III policies heretofore assumed to inhere in the constitutional dimension of the standing doctrine, or of the relevant precedents of this Court. 6 </s> A </s> First, the Court's treatment of the injury-in-fact standing requirement is simply unsupportable in the context of this case. The wrong of which respondents complain is that the disputed Ruling gives erroneous economic signals to nonprofit hospitals whose subsequent responses affect respondents; they claim the IRS is offering the economic inducement of tax-exempt status to such hospitals under terms illegal under the Internal [426 U.S. 26, 56] Revenue Code. Respondents' claim is not, and by its very nature could not be, that they have been and will be illegally denied the provision of indigent medical services by the hospitals. Rather, if respondents have a claim cognizable under the law, it is that the Internal Revenue Code requires the Government to offer economic inducements to the relevant hospitals only under conditions which are likely to benefit respondents. The relevant injury in light of this claim is, then, injury to this beneficial interest - as respondents alleged, injury to their "opportunity and ability" to receive medical services. Respondents sufficiently alleged this injury and if, as the Court so readily assumes, they had made a showing sufficient to create an issue of material fact that the Government was injuring this interest, they would continue to possess standing to press the claim on the merits. </s> Clearly such conditions if met would provide the essence of the only constitutionally mandated element of standing - a personal stake sufficient to create concrete adverseness meeting minimal conditions for Art. III justiciability. Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S., at 204 ; Barlow v. Collins, supra, at 164. See also United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 196 n. 18 (1974) (POWELL, J., concurring). Nothing in the logic or policy of constitutionally required standing is added by the further injury-in-fact dimension required by the Court today - that respondents allege that the hospitals affecting them would not have elected to forgo the favorable tax treatment and that this would "result in the availability to respondents of" free or below-cost medical services. </s> Furthermore, the injury of which respondents complain is of a continuing and continuous nature, and the additional allegations and showings that the Court requires would not be determinative of the hospitals' future conduct. Even if a given hospital affecting respondents had in the past made its determination regarding indigent [426 U.S. 26, 57] services without regard to the tax consequences of that determination - would have elected to forgo favorable tax treatment in the absence of the allegedly illegal "encouragement" - such a choice presumably would be subject to continuous re-evaluation in the future, as the hospital's circumstances, the economic climate, and expectations regarding donor contributions changed over time. Respondents complain of and seek relief from the threat of future policy determinations by the hospitals based on the allegedly illegal tax Ruling, not redress for past "encouragement." We have often found standing in plaintiffs to complain of such future harm irrespective of any showing of the realization of such threatened injuries in the past. E. g., Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179, 188 (1973); Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 101 -102 (1968). </s> Indeed, to the extent that there is Art. III substance to the concerns addressed by the Court today, it is not a question of standing - of identifying the proper party to bring the action - but rather whether the threat of the more ultimate future harm is of sufficient immediacy to meet the minimum requirements of Art. III justiciability. The task is one of distinguishing between a "justiciable controversy" and a "difference or dispute of a hypothetical or abstract character," Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Haworth, 300 U.S. 227, 240 (1937), and the question is "necessarily one of degree." Maryland Cas. Co. v. Pacific Coal & Oil Co., 312 U.S. 270, 273 (1941); Golden v. Zwickler, 394 U.S. 103, 108 (1969). </s> "[I]t would be difficult, if it would be possible, to fashion a precise test for determining in every case whether there is such a controversy. Basically, the question in each case is whether the facts alleged, under all the circumstances, show that there is a substantial controversy, between parties having adverse legal interests, of sufficient immediacy and reality [426 U.S. 26, 58] to warrant the issuance of a declaratory judgment." Ibid. </s> If, as the Court assumes, respondents had demonstrated that the disputed Ruling had application to the hospitals affecting them, I would have no doubt that this standard had been met. In such a case I would readily conclude: </s> "[T]he challenged governmental activity . . . is not contingent, . . . and, by its continuing and brooding presence, casts what may well be a substantial adverse effect on the interests of the [responding] parties. </s> . . . . . </s> "Where such state action or its imminence adversely affects the status of private parties, the courts should be available to render appropriate relief and judgments affecting the parties' rights and interests." Super Tire Engineering Co. v. McCorkle, 416 U.S. 115, 122 , 125 (1974). </s> B </s> Second, the Court's treatment of the injury-in-fact requirement directly conflicts with past decisions. Respondents brought this action seeking general statutory review of administrative action under the provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act. Hence, the governing precedents respecting standing are those developed in Data Processing Service v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150 (1970); Barlow v. Collins, 397 U.S. 159 (1970); Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972); and United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S. 669 (1973). See also Hardin v. Kentucky Utilities Co., 390 U.S. 1 (1968). Any prudential, nonconstitutional considerations that underlay the Court's disposition of the injury-in-fact standing requirement in cases such as Linda R. S. v. Richard D., [426 U.S. 26, 59] 410 U.S. 614 (1973), 7 and Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490 (1975), are simply inapposite when review is sought under a congressionally enacted statute conferring standing and providing for judicial review. 8 In such a case considerations respecting "the allocation of power at the national level [and] a shift away from a democratic form of government," United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S., at 188 (POWELL, J., concurring), are largely ameliorated, and such prudential limitations as remain are supposedly [426 U.S. 26, 60] subsumed under the "zone of interests" test developed in Data Processing Service v. Camp, supra. 9 See United States v. Richardson, supra, at 196 n. 18 (POWELL, J., concurring). </s> Our previous decisions concerning standing to sue under the Administrative Procedure Act conclusively show that the injury in fact demanded is the constitutional minimum identified in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S., at 204 - the allegation of such a "personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure" concrete adverseness. Sierra Club v. Morton, supra, at 732-733; Data Processing Service v. Camp, supra, at 151-152. True, the Court has required that the person seeking review allege that he personally has suffered or will suffer the injury sought to be avoided, Sierra Club, supra, at 740. But there can be no doubt that respondents here, by demonstrating a connection between the disputed Ruling and the hospitals affecting them, could have adequately served the policy implicated by the pleading requirement of Sierra Club - putting "the decision as to whether review will be sought in the hands of those who have a direct stake in the outcome." Ibid. In such a case respondents would not be attempting merely to "vindicate their own value preferences through the judicial process." Ibid. See Albert, supra, n. 8, at 485-489. If such a showing were made, a real and recognizable harm to tangible interest would have been alleged, indeed more so than we have required in other circumstances. United States v. SCRAP, supra; Sierra Club v. Morton, supra; [426 U.S. 26, 61] cf. Barlow v. Collins, supra, at 163. 10 Moreover, the injury alleged would be a "`distinctive or discriminating' . . . harm," id., at 172 n. 5 (opinion of BRENNAN, J.), clearly a "particularized injury [setting respondents] apart from the man on the street." United States v. Richardson, supra, at 194 (POWELL, J., concurring). </s> Furthermore, our decisions regarding standing to sue in actions brought under the Administrative Procedure Act make plain that standing is not to be denied merely because the ultimate harm alleged is a threatened future one rather than an accomplished fact. United States v. SCRAP, supra; Sierra Club v. Morton, supra. Nor has the fact that the administrative action ultimately [426 U.S. 26, 62] affects the complaining party only through responses to incentives by third parties been fatal to the standing of those who would challenge that action. United States v. SCRAP, supra; Barlow v. Collins, supra. And the ultimate harm to respondents threatened here is obviously much more "direct and perceptible" and the "line of causation" less "attenuated" than that found sufficient for standing in United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S., at 688 . </s> Certainly the Court's attempted distinction of SCRAP will not "wash." The Court states that in SCRAP, "although the injury was indirect and `the Court was asked to follow an attenuated line of causation,' . . . the complaint nevertheless `alleged a specific and perceptible harm' flowing from the agency action." Ante, at 45 n. 25. The instant case is different, the Court says, because the complaint "fails to allege an injury that fairly can be traced" to the allegedly wrongful action. I find it simply impossible fairly and meaningfully to differentiate between the allegations of the two sets of pleadings. Compare App. 13-25 in this case with App. 8-12 in No. 72-562, O. T. 1972, Aberdeen & Rockfish R. Co. v. SCRAP. The Court complains that "whether the injuries fairly can be traced to [the disputed] Ruling depends upon unalleged and unknown facts about the relevant hospitals." Ante, at 45 n. 25. It is obvious that the complaint in SCRAP lacked precisely the same specific factual allegations; there, however, the Court's response was much more in keeping with modern notions of civil procedure. 412 U.S., at 689 -690, and n. 15. </s> Moreover, apart from the specificity required of the pleadings, it is not apparent why these "unalleged and unknown facts about the relevant hospitals" are required to establish injury in fact at all. As the Court notes, ante, at 42 n. 23, the earlier Revenue Ruling requires a hospital only to provide medical care "to the extent [426 U.S. 26, 63] of its financial ability" and stated that a low charitable record was not conclusive on the point. Accordingly, in the absence of some showing to the contrary by the petitioners, it readily can be inferred that a hospital under the earlier Ruling would provide some indigent services, the maximum extent being the point at which the benefits received from the favorable tax status were exactly offset by the cost of the services conferred. If respondents had demonstrated at the summary judgment stage a connection between the disputed Ruling withdrawing this incentive and the hospitals affecting them, they would have certainly made a showing of injury to their "opportunity and ability" to receive medical care sufficient under SCRAP for standing to challenge the governmental action. </s> We may properly wonder where the Court, armed with its "fatally speculative pleadings" tool, will strike next. To pick only the most obvious examples, Will minority schoolchildren now have to plead and show that in the absence of illegal governmental "encouragement" of private segregated schools, such schools would not "elect to forgo" their favorable tax treatment, and that this will "result in the availability" to complainants of an integrated educational system? See Green v. Kennedy, 309 F. Supp. 1127 (DC 1970), later decision reported sub nom. Green v. Connally, 330 F. Supp. 1150, summarily aff'd sub nom. Coit v. Green, 404 U.S. 997 (1971). 11 Or will black Americans be required to plead and show that in the absence of illegal governmental encouragement, private institutions would not "elect to [426 U.S. 26, 64] forgo" favorable tax treatment, and that this will "result in the availability" to complainants of services previously denied? See McGlotten v. Connally, 338 F. Supp. 448 (DC 1972); Pitts v. Wisconsin Dept. of Revenue, 333 F. Supp. 662 (ED Wis. 1971). As perusal of these reported decisions reveals, the lower courts have not assumed that such allegations and proofs were somehow required by Art. III. </s> C </s> Of course, the most disturbing aspect of today's opinion is the Court's insistence on resting its decision regarding standing squarely on the irreducible Art. III minimum of injury in fact, thereby effectively placing its holding beyond congressional power to rectify. Thus, any time Congress chooses to legislate in favor of certain interests by setting up a scheme of incentives for third parties, judicial review of administrative action that allegedly frustrates the congressionally intended objective will be denied, because any complainant will be required to make an almost impossible showing. Clearly the Legislative Branch of the Government cannot supply injured individuals with the means to make the factual showing in a specific context that the Court today requires. More specific indications of a congressional desire to confer standing upon such individuals would be germane, not to the Art. III injury-in-fact requirement, but only to the Court's "zone of interests" test for standing, that branch of standing lore which the Court assiduously avoids reaching. Ante, at 39 n. 19. 12 </s> [426 U.S. 26, 65] </s> In our modern-day society, dominated by complex legislative programs and large-scale governmental involvement in the everyday lives of all of us, judicial review of administrative action is essential both for protection of individuals illegally harmed by that action, Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 111 (1968) (Douglas, J., concurring), and to ensure that the attainment of congressionally mandated goals is not frustrated by illegal action, Barlow v. Collins, 397 U.S., at 173 -175, and n. 9 (opinion of BRENNAN, J.). See Albert, 83 Yale L. J., supra, n. 8, at 451-456. In dissenting from the Court's earlier creation of the "zone of interests" test applicable to standing for review under the Administrative Procedure Act, an inquiry that confuses standing with aspects of reviewability and the merits, I said: </s> "[I]n my view alleged injury in fact, reviewability, and the merits pose questions that are largely distinct from one another, each governed by its own considerations. To fail to isolate and treat each inquiry independently of the other two, so far as possible, is to risk obscuring what is at issue in a given case, and thus to risk uninformed, poorly reasoned decisions that may result in injustice. Too often these various questions have been merged into one confused inquiry, lumped under the general rubric of `standing.' The books are full of opinions that dismiss a plaintiff for lack of `standing' when dismissal, if proper at all, actually rested either upon the plaintiff's failure to prove on the merits the existence of the legally protected interest that he claimed, or on his failure to prove that the challenged agency action [426 U.S. 26, 66] was reviewable at his instance." Barlow v. Collins, supra, at 176. 13 </s> Today, however, the Court achieves an even worse result through its manipulation of injury in fact, stretching that conception for beyond the narrow bounds within which it usefully measures a dimension of Art. III justiciability. The Court's treatment of injury in fact without any "particularization" in light of either the policies properly implicated or our relevant precedents threatens that it shall "become a catchall for an unarticulated discretion on the part of this Court" to insist that the federal courts "decline to adjudicate" claims that it prefers they not hear. Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S., at 530 (Harlan, J., dissenting). </s> [Footnote 1 Revenue Ruling 69-545, 1969-2 Cum. Bull. 117, provides in pertinent part: </s> "Advice has been requested whether the two nonprofit hospitals described below qualify for exemption from Federal income tax [426 U.S. 26, 48] under section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 . . . . </s> "Situation 1. Hospital A is a 250-bed community hospital. Its board of trustees is composed of prominent citizens in the community. Medical staff privileges in the hospital are available to all qualified physicians in the area, consistent with the size and nature of its facilities. The hospital has 150 doctors on its active staff and 200 doctors on its courtesy staff. It also owns a medical office building on its premises with space for 60 doctors. Any member of its active medical staff has the privilege of leasing available office space. Rents are set at rates comparable to those of other commercial buildings in the area. </s> "The hospital operates a full time emergency room and no one requiring emergency care is denied treatment. The hospital otherwise ordinarily limits admissions to those who can pay the cost of their hospitalization, either themselves, or through private health insurance, or with the aid of public programs such as Medicare. Patients who cannot meet the financial requirements for admission are ordinarily referred to another hospital in the community that does serve indigent patients. </s> "The hospital usually ends each year with an excess of operating receipts over operating disbursements from its hospital operations. Excess funds are generally applied to expansion and replacement of existing facilities and equipment, amortization of indebtedness, improvement in patient care, and medical training, education, and research. </s> . . . . . </s> "To qualify for exemption from Federal income tax under section 501 (c) (3) of the Code, a nonprofit hospital must be organized and operated exclusively in furtherance of some purpose considered `charitable' in the generally accepted legal sense of that term, and the hospital may not be operated, directly or indirectly, for the benefit of private interests. </s> "In the general law of charity, the promotion of health is considered to be a charitable purpose. Restatement (Second), Trusts, sec. 368 and sec. 372; IV Scott on Trusts (3rd ed. 1967), sec. 368 and sec. 372. A nonprofit organization whose purpose and activity are providing hospital care is promoting health and may, therefore, qualify as organized and operated in furtherance of a charitable [426 U.S. 26, 49] purpose. If it meets the other requirements of section 501 (c) (3) of the Code, it will qualify for exemption from Federal income tax under section 501 (a). </s> "Since the purpose and activity of Hospital A, apart from its related educational and research activities and purposes, are providing hospital care on a nonprofit basis for members of its community, it is organized and operated in furtherance of a purpose considered `charitable' in the generally accepted legal sense of that term. The promotion of health, like the relief of poverty and the advancement of education and religion, is one of the purposes in the general law of charity that is deemed beneficial to the community as a whole even though the class of beneficiaries eligible to receive a direct benefit from its activities does not include all members of the community, such as indigent members of the community, provided that the class is not so small that its relief is not of benefit to the community. Restatement (Second), Trusts, sec. 368, comment (b) and sec. 372, comments (b) and (c); IV Scott on Trusts (3rd ed. 1967), sec. 368 and sec. 372.2. By operating an emergency room open to all persons and by providing hospital care for all those persons in the community able to pay the cost thereof either directly or through third party reimbursement, Hospital A is promoting the health of a class of persons that is broad enough to benefit the community. </s> "The fact that Hospital A operates at an annual surplus of receipts over disbursements does not preclude its exemptions. By using its surplus funds to improve the quality of patient care, expand its facilities, and advance its medical training, education, and research programs, the hospital is operating in furtherance of its exempt purposes. </s> . . . . . </s> "Accordingly, it is held that Hospital A is exempt from Federal income tax under section 501 (c) (3) of the Code. </s> . . . . . </s> "Even though an organization considers itself within the scope of Situation 1 of this Revenue Ruling, it must file an application on Form 1023, Exemption Application, in order to be recognized by the Service as exempt under section 501 (c) (3) of the Code. </s> "Revenue Ruling 56-185, C.B. 1956-1, 202 sets forth requirements [426 U.S. 26, 50] for exemption of hospitals under section 501 (c) (3) more restrictive than those contained in this Revenue Ruling with respect to caring for patients without charge or at rates below cost . . . . </s> "Revenue Ruling 56-185 is hereby modified to remove therefrom the requirements relating to caring for patients without charge or at rates below cost." </s> [Footnote 2 E. g., "Now, this ruling itself demonstrates the hypothetical quality of what the plaintiffs are seeking, the hypothetical quality of the relief they are seeking, because as the Court can readily see in [perusing] this Revenue Ruling, it sets forth two polar situations, situation 1 and situation 2, dealing with two hospitals, Hospital A and Hospital B. In Hospital A, there are a variety of facts in connection with Hospital A, it has an open board of trustees, it gives open staff privileges, it is involved in research and educational activities, it maintains a full-time emergency room, and no one requiring emergency care is denied treatment. To the contrary, [H]ospital B is almost proprietary in nature, it's owned by a small group of doctors, they limit the staff privileges to people they know, and they comprise the medical committee generally to keep out qualified physicians, et cetera, et cetera, and it maintains an emergency room, but basically to treat the patients of its own doctors. </s> "Now, these two polar examples were designed to educate the public generally and hospital administrators as to clear-cut situations. Hospital A is a situation, if you are like Hospital A, you will be fairly certain of exemption, but, of course, the ruling does conclude that you can't be certain of that itself. You have got to yourself submit an application for exemption to the Internal Revenue Service. </s> "If you are like [H]ospital B, which is a polar example of a hospital that doesn't seem to provide any community benefit, it seems to be [426 U.S. 26, 51] run pretty much strictly for the private inurement of its owner-doctors. In that situation you are not going to get a tax-exempt status. </s> "Now, the important thing which we emphasize is that the ruling doesn't even begin to attempt to deal with the hundreds of gradations in between Hospital A and Hospital B. Hospital A, assuming for a moment that it doesn't give free care to indigents on a broad scale, let's say it dropped its emergency room completely for, let's say, the particular example that it might be engaged in treating cancer patients or a particular kind of disease. Under those circumstances an emergency room would be superfluous because such a hospital would rarely have need for an emergency room. Or, for example, a consortium of hospitals in a particular community could get together and one could say, `We will have the emergency room, you have the nursing school, and a third - '" Tr. of Oral Arg. 23-25. </s> [Footnote 3 Of course, the ripeness determination has as an integral component the question of whether the agency action is sufficiently "final" for judicial review within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 704. See Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 149 (1967). </s> [Footnote 4 With respect to certain of the respondents, the allegations of the complaint would seem to controvert a connection between the hospitals whose past conduct affected them and the disputed Revenue Ruling. For example, certain of the respondents alleged they were enrolled in the Medicaid program, but were denied treatment in the absence of a further cash deposit by the hospitals to which they applied for admission. This would appear to refute an inference that the hospitals involved came within the terms of the disputed Ruling and were granted tax-exempt status on that basis. No further allegations or, at summary judgment, showings were made to clarify this aspect of the case. </s> In fairness to respondents, it is noted that the wrongs alleged in the complaint and the relief sought went beyond simply challenging the disputed Ruling; respondents further sought to declare illegal and enjoin the IRS from granting tax-exempt status to hospitals whose operations, apart from the disputed Ruling, did not properly fall within the definition of "charitable" as required by the Internal Revenue Code. However, only issues concerning the disputed Revenue Ruling are before us on the petition for certiorari. </s> [Footnote 5 Such a showing was required to demonstrate standing in respect to respondents' claim that the Revenue Ruling was promulgated in violation of the rulemaking provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act as well as for purposes of their other claims. It is true that the rulemaking section of the Act provides for notice and opportunity to comment for "interested persons," 5 U.S.C. 553 (c). However, it is unnecessary to decide in this case whether Congress by so providing has created a cognizable interest in such participation and standing to complain of its wrongful deprivation apart from any other injury in fact flowing from the agency action. Cf. Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 409 U.S. 205 (1972). Respondents in this litigation made no allegation or showing that they desired an opportunity to participate, or that they would have availed themselves of such an opportunity had it been presented. Therefore, in regard to this procedural claim no less than the other claims raised, respondents were required to demonstrate some connection between the disputed Ruling and the hospitals affecting them in order to make out some injury in fact resulting from the challenged action. </s> [Footnote 6 Moreover, by requiring that this "`line of causation,'" ante, at 45 n. 25, be precisely and intricately elaborated in the complaint, the Court continues its recent policy of "reverting to the form of fact pleading long abjured in the federal courts." Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 528 (1975) (BRENNAN, J., dissenting). One waits in vain for an explanation for this selectively imposed pleading requirement; a requirement so at odds with our usual view that under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure "a complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief." Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45 -46 (1957). The want of an explanation is even more striking when considered in light of our reaffirmation of Conley only this Term, Hospital Bldg. Co. v. Trustees of Rex Hospital, 425 U.S. 738, 746 (1976), and our observation therein that the same standard is applicable to testing the sufficiency of the complaint for subject-matter jurisdiction, id., at 742 n. 1. </s> [Footnote 7 We were originally told in Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S., at 617 , 619, that the treatment of the injury-in-fact standing requirement, and the consequent dismissal of the case owing to the lack of a "direct nexus" between the injury incurred and the wrongful action alleged, was a consequence of the "unique context of a challenge to a criminal statute," and the "special status of criminal prosecutions in our system." Although this conclusion was arguable even in its specific context, see id., at 621 (WHITE, J., dissenting), last Term's Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490 (1975), taught that the raising of the threshold requirement for pleading injury in fact in Linda R. S. was not "unique" after all. But whatever the merits of the treatment of the injury-in-fact requirement in those cases, it is distressing that the Court should mechanically apply the approach developed therein to a case brought under the Administrative Procedure Act without any analysis, see ante, at 37-39, and n. 16, of the only constitutional dimension of standing - the requirement of concrete adverseness flowing from a personal stake in the outcome. See United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 181 (1974) (POWELL, J., concurring). </s> [Footnote 8 The Court has read the standing provision of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 702, which provides for review for any "person . . . adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute," as conferring standing upon any person whose interest is adversely affected in fact, so long as that interest comes within the purposes and policies of the statute or statutes authorizing the agency action in question ("within the meaning of a relevant statute"). See Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S., at 732 -733; Albert, Standing to Challenge Administrative Action: An Inadequate Surrogate for Claim for Relief, 83 Yale L. J. 425, 451-452, n. 105 (1974). </s> [Footnote 9 It is my view, however, that such considerations go only to other questions of justiciability or to questions of the review-ability of the administrative action, and not properly to the question of standing. Barlow v. Collins, 397 U.S., at 168 -170, 171 n. 3, 173-175 (opinion of BRENNAN, J.). </s> [Footnote 10 It clearly cannot be determinative for purposes of constitutionally required standing that there is only a probabilistic connection between the immediate interest, to which injury is alleged, and some more ultimate injury to the complaining party. United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S., at 689 n. 14, specifically rejected the argument that for standing purposes "significant" injury must be alleged. Rather, the Court held that Art. III policies were adequately fulfilled even though the ultimate injury is very small indeed. Ibid. Clearly there is no difference for purposes of Art. III standing - personal interest sufficient for concrete adverseness - between a small but certain injury and a harm of a larger magnitude discounted by some probability of its nonoccurrence. If the probability of the more ultimate harm is so small as to make the claim clearly frivolous, "the plaintiff can be hastened from the court by summary judgment." Barlow v. Collins, supra, at 175 n. 10 (opinion of BRENNAN, J.); United States v. SCRAP, supra, at 689, and n. 15. See, e. g., Granite Falls State Bank v. Schneider, 319 F. Supp. 1346 (WD Wash. 1970), summarily aff'd, 402 U.S. 1006 (1971). Obviously, however, if the respondents had demonstrated that the IRS was "encouraging" the hospitals affecting them to withdraw provision of medical services for indigents, the probability of the occurrence of the more ultimate injury would be sufficient to confer standing upon the respondents to challenge the action. </s> [Footnote 11 I note that this Court summarily affirmed in Coit v. Green, a case in which the standing issue was expressly raised on appeal. See Jurisdictional Statement 11 in No. 71-425, O. T. 1971. The court below in that case found standing without any such gratuitous allegations or showings respecting injury in fact. 309 F. Supp., at 1132. </s> [Footnote 12 This is apparently the point the Court wishes to drive home by means of the following statement, ante, at 41 n. 22: </s> "The reference in Linda R. S. to `a statute expressly conferring standing' was in recognition of Congress' power to create new interests the invasion of which will confer standing. . . . When [426 U.S. 26, 65] Congress has so acted, the requirements of Art. III remain: `the plaintiff still must allege a distinct and palpable injury to himself, even if it is an injury shared by a large class of other possible litigants.'" </s> [Footnote 13 See also Davis, The Liberalized Law of Standing, 37 U. Chi. L. Rev. 450, 469 (1970). After today's decision the lower courts will understandably continue to lament the intellectual confusion created by this Court under the rubric of the law of standing. E. g., Scanwell Laboratories v. Shaffer, 137 U.S. App. D.C. 371, 373, 424 F.2d 859, 861 (1970): "The law of standing as developed by the Supreme Court has become an area of incredible complexity. Much that the Court has written appears to have been designed to supply retrospective satisfaction rather than future guidance. The Court has itself characterized its law of standing as a `complicated specialty of federal jurisdiction.' . . . One cannot help asking why this should be true." </s> [426 U.S. 26, 67]

United States Supreme Court DENNIS v. UNITED STATES(1950) No. 14 Argued: November 7, 1949Decided: March 27, 1950 </s> Petitioner, who is General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States, was convicted in the District of Columbia of violating R. S. 102, 2 U.S.C. 192, by willfully failing to appear before the Committee on Un-American Activities of the House of Representatives in compliance with a subpoena duly served upon him. On voir dire examination, government employees on the jury panel were interrogated individually by petitioner's counsel as to whether the fact that petitioner was a Communist, the attitude of the Committee on Un-American Activities toward Communists, or the recently issued Executive Order 9835 providing standards for the discharge of government employees upon reasonable grounds for belief that they are disloyal to the Government, would prevent them from rendering a fair and impartial verdict. Seven government employees who gave negative answers to these questions and testified that they could render a fair and impartial verdict were permitted to serve on the jury. There was no proof of actual bias, and petitioner's challenged of these government employees for cause was denied. Held: In the circumstances of this case, petitioner was not denied the trial "by an impartial jury" guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. Pp. 164-172. </s> (a) The enactment of D.C. Code (1940) 11-1420, which removed (with specified exceptions) the previously existing disqualification of government employees for jury service in the District of Columbia in criminal and other cases to which the Government is a party, was within the power of Congress and, therefore, employees of the Federal Government are not challengeable solely by reason of their employment. United States v. Wood, 299 U.S. 123 ; Frazier v. United States, 335 U.S. 497 . Pp. 165-167, 172. </s> (b) While impaneling a jury, the trial court has a serious duty to determine the question of actual bias and a broad discretion in its rulings on the challenges therefor; and it must be zealous to protect the rights of an accused, irrespective of his political or religious beliefs. P. 168. </s> (c) One of an unpopular minority group must be accorded that solicitude which properly accompanies an accused person; but he is not entitled to unusual protection or exception. P. 168. [339 U.S. 162, 163] </s> (d) In order to secure the constitutional guarantee of trial by an impartial jury in the circumstances of this case, it is not necessary that all government employees be held to be biased as a matter of law. Pp. 168, 172. </s> (e) The way is open in every case to raise a contention of bias from the realm of speculation to the realm of fact; and preservation of the opportunity to prove actual bias is a guarantee of a defendant's right to an impartial jury. Pp. 168, 171-172. </s> (f) Judicial notice may be taken of Executive Order 9835; but that does not justify an assumption by this Court that government employees could not serve fairly and impartially as jurors in the circumstances of this case - especially when they stated under oath that they could do so. Pp. 169-171. </s> (g) Nor, in the circumstance of this case, can an exception in favor of a Communist be carved out of the rule laid down in the statute and construed in Wood v. United States and Frazier v. United States that there is no implied bias by reason of government employment. P. 171. </s> (h) Nor can this Court, any more than the trial court, take judicial notice of a "miasma of fear" to which government employees are claimed to be peculiarly vulnerable and from which other citizens are by implication immune. P. 172. </s> 84 U.S. App. D.C. 31, 171 F.2d 986, affirmed. </s> Petitioner was convicted in the District of Columbia of violating R. S. 102, 2 U.S.C. 192. The Court of Appeals affirmed. 84 U.S. App. D.C. 31, 171 F.2d 986. This Court granted certiorari. 337 U.S. 954 . Affirmed, p. 172. </s> George W. Crockett, Jr. argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the brief were Earl Dickerson, David M. Freedman and Harry Sacher. </s> Solicitor General Perlman argued the cause for the United States. With him on the brief were Assistant Attorney General Campbell, Robert S. Erdahl and Harold D. Cohen. </s> Robert J. Silberstein filed a brief for the National Lawyers Guild, as amicus curiae, urging reversal. [339 U.S. 162, 164] </s> MR. JUSTICE MINTON delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> The question we have for determination here is whether a challenge for cause to jurors on voir dire because of employment by the Federal Government should have been sustained under the circumstances of this case. </s> Petitioner was convicted of violating R. S. 102, 2 U.S.C. 192, for willfully failing to appear before the Committee on Un-American Activities of the House of Representatives in compliance with a subpoena duly served upon him. The Court of Appeals affirmed, 84 U.S. App. D.C. 31, 171 F.2d 986. We granted certiorari limited to the question whether Government employees could properly serve on the jury which tried petitioner. 337 U.S. 954 . </s> Petitioner voluntarily appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities which had under consideration two bills to outlaw the Communist Party. Petitioner was an is General Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States. On his voluntary appearance before the Committee, petitioner refused to answer questions as to his name and the date and place of his birth. The Chairman of the Committee directed that a subpoena be served forthwith upon petitioner, requiring him to appear before the Committee on April 9, 1947. On the appointed date petitioner sent a representative but did not appear in accordance with the subpoena. The Committee reported his refusal to appear to the House of Representatives, and the House adopted a resolution certifying the report of the Committee to the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. Petitioner was subsequently indicted. </s> When the case was called for trial, petitioner made a motion for transfer upon the ground that he could not obtain a fair and impartial trial in the District of Columbia. In his affidavit supporting the motion, he posited [339 U.S. 162, 165] this contention mainly on the ground that Government employees, who comprise a large part of the District's population, are subject to Executive Order 9835, 12 Fed. Reg. 1935, providing standards for their discharge upon reasonable grounds for belief that they are disloyal to the Government of the United States. He argued that Government employees would be afraid to risk the charge of disloyalty or possible termination of employment which would allegedly flow from a vote for acquittal. The motion for a transfer was denied. </s> Both sides conducted further voir dire examination at the conclusion of the court's questioning of the panel. Attorney for petitioner questioned individually each member of the panel who indicated that he was employed by the Government. He then challenged for cause all Government employees. The court denied the challenge. Petitioner exercised two of his three peremptory challenges against Government employees. He exhausted all his peremptory challenges. Seven of the twelve finally selected were Government employees. Each of the seven expressed the belief that he could render a fair and impartial verdict. </s> Is petitioner entitled to a new trial because his challenge to the Government employees for cause was not sustained? The question of the presence of Government employees on District of Columbia juries is not a new controversy. It has been before this Court on three previous occasions. Crawford v. United States, 212 U.S. 183 ; United States v. Wood, 299 U.S. 123 ; Frazier v. United States, 335 U.S. 497 . In the Crawford case the defendants were charged with a conspiracy to defraud the United States. The Court held that the statute prescribing the eligibility of jurors in the District of Columbia did not control the subject. The Court turned to the common law in force in Maryland when the District was formed, and found that a servant was subject to challenge [339 U.S. 162, 166] for cause at common law where the master was party to the case on trial. In such a case, bias would be implied as a matter of law. The Court concluded that it was error to deny a challenge for cause to a Government employee in a case to which the Government was a party. </s> In 1935 Congress, prompted by the paucity of qualified jurors which resulted from the Crawford decision, passed an Act redefining eligibility for jury service in the District of Columbia. After exempting certain classes, the Act provided: "All other persons, otherwise qualified according to law whether employed in the service of the Government of the United States or of the District of Columbia . . . shall be qualified to serve as jurors in the District of Columbia and shall not be exempt from such service . . . ." 49 Stat. 682, D.C. Code, 11-1420 (1940). </s> The constitutionality of this Act was sustained in United States v. Wood, 299 U.S. 123 , where the defendant was charged with petty larceny from a private corporation. The defendant contended that the presence of Government employees on the jury denied the right of trial by an impartial jury within the meaning of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. He pointed out that under the common law as expounded by Blackstone, a King's servant and therefore a Government employee could not serve on a jury, and he argued that this view was carried into the Sixth Amendment. </s> Chief Justice Hughes, speaking for the Court, meticulously examined the problem. He found that Blackstone's statement of disqualification had reference only to servants of private parties, and that there was no established practice with respect to the King's servants at common law. The Court was of the view that even if such a common law disqualification existed, Congress had power to remove it. Unlike the statute in the Crawford case, the 1935 Act left no doubt that Congress intended [339 U.S. 162, 167] to qualify Government employees as jurors. The constitutionality of such a declaration was presented for the first time. The opinion carefully emphasized that the Act left accused persons free to show the existence of actual bias. Only the question of implied bias was presented. The Court concluded that the guarantee of an impartial jury was not impaired, stating: </s> "It is manifest that the Act was passed to meet a public need and that no interference with the actual impartiality of the jury was contemplated. The enactment itself is tantamount to a legislative declaration that the prior disqualification was artificial and not necessary to secure impartiality. . . . To impute bias as matter of law to the jurors in question here would be no more sensible than to impute bias to all storeowners and householders in cases of larceny or burglary." United States v. Wood, supra, 148-149, 150. </s> Only last term in Frazier v. United States, 335 U.S. 497 , the problem of jury service by Government employees was reexamined. There the defendant was tried and convicted of violating the Narcotics Act by a jury of the District of Columbia composed entirely, due to circumstances fortuitous or otherwise, of Federal Government employees. Mr. Justice Rutledge, speaking for the Court, reexamined the rule of the Wood case that Government employees are not disqualified as a matter of law from serving on a jury in a case to which the Government is a party. Government employees were again held to be subject to challenge only for "actual bias." </s> It would be a work of supererogation to attempt to clarify the statement of the law after the Wood and Frazier cases. Some may doubt the wisdom of the Court's decision in laying down the rule, but there can be no doubt that this Court has spoken very clearly, not only once, but twice. [339 U.S. 162, 168] </s> No question of actual bias is before us. The way is open in every case to raise a contention of bias from the realm of speculation to the realm of fact. In both the Wood and Frazier cases this Court stressed that while impaneling a jury the trial court has a serious duty to determine the question of actual bias, and a broad discretion in its rulings on challenges therefor. United States v. Wood, supra, 133-134, 150; Frazier v. United States, supra, 511-512. We reaffirm those principles. In exercising its discretion, the trial court must be zealous to protect the rights of an accused. And we agree that this the court must do without reference to an accused's political or religious beliefs, however such beliefs may be received by a predominant segment of our population. Ideological status is not an appropriate gauge of the high standard of justice toward which our courts may not be content only to strive. But while one of an unpopular minority group must be accorded that solicitude which properly accompanies an accused person, he is not entitled to unusual protection or exception. </s> Petitioner asserts that in order to secure the constitutional guarantee of trial by an impartial jury all Government employees must be held, in the special circumstances of this case, to be biased as a matter of law. It is not contended that bias appears as a fact from the record. As far as it appears, the court was willing to consider any evidence which would indicate that investigatory agencies of the Government had recognized in the past or would take cognizance in the future of a vote of acquittal, but no such proof was made. Nor was there evidence with respect to the existence of a climate of opinion among Government employees that they would jeopardize their tenure or provoke investigation by such a verdict. Rather petitioner asks that bias be implied from the recitation of the following circumstances: He [339 U.S. 162, 169] is a Communist; the instigator of the charges is the Un-American Activities Committee which allegedly would take notice of a vote for acquittal; the issue in the case is contempt of Congress; in contempt cases the Government's interest is the vindication of a direct affront, as distinguished from its role in an ordinary prosecution. But petitioner primarily bases his case on a request, in effect, that judicial notice be taken of an aura of surveillance and intimidation which is said to exist in the District because of Executive Order 9835, outstanding at the time of the trial. </s> The "Loyalty Order," as it is popularly known, requires the investigation of all persons entering civilian employment with the United States; as to those already in service, heads of departments and agencies are charged with the duty of making certain that disloyal persons are not retained. Petitioner maintains that because of this Order, Government employees would be hesitant to vote for acquittal because such action might be interpreted as "sympathetic association" with Communism. </s> Of course, the Loyalty Order could be the subject of judicial notice. Such notice, however, would give only limited illumination. It is proper to observe that the Loyalty Order is not directed solely against Communists, and that the crime of which petitioner was convicted is not a crime peculiar to Communists. Further, the Loyalty Order preceded the instant trial only by about three months. It was promulgated by the President on March 21, 1947. This trial began on June 23, 1947, and was concluded on June 26, 1947. On May 9, 1947, the President submitted to Congress a request for an appropriation to carry out the Loyalty Order, 1 which was not [339 U.S. 162, 170] enacted into law until July 31, 1947. 2 It was not until August 18, 1947, that Standard Form 84, requesting certain pertinent information from each federal employee, was made available. 3 </s> The administrative implementation of Executive Order 9835, which was yet to come, was apparently not the subject of anticipatory fear by these jurors. Their answers to interrogatories on the influence of the Loyalty Order were categorically to the contrary. 4 We must credit these representations, and this is particularly so in the absence of any evidence which would indicate an opposite [339 U.S. 162, 171] opinion among Government employees. One may not know or altogether understand the imponderables which cause one to think what he thinks, but surely one who is trying as an honest man to live up to the sanctity of his oath is well qualified to say whether he has an unbiased mind in a certain matter. </s> Ultimately, petitioner's contentions amount to this: Since he is a Communist, in view of all the surrounding circumstances an exception must be carved out of the rule laid down in the statute, and construed in Wood and Frazier, that there is no implied bias by reason of Government employment. Thus the rule would apply to anyone but a Communist tried for contempt of a congressional committee, but not to a Communist. We think the rule in Wood and Frazier should be uniformly applied. A holding of implied bias to disqualify jurors because of their relationship with the Government is no longer permissible. The Act makes no exception for distinctive circumstances. It states that: "All . . . persons . . . whether employed in the service of the Government of the United States or of the District of Columbia . . . shall be qualified to serve as jurors in the District of Columbia and shall not be exempt from such service . . . ." Preservation of the opportunity to prove [339 U.S. 162, 172] actual bias is a guarantee of a defendant's right to an impartial jury. We adhere to our holding that the enactment of the statute is within the power of Congress, and that therefore employees of the Federal Government are not challengeable solely by reason of their employment. </s> It follows that we are unable to conclude that the failure to sustain the challenge for cause denied petitioner an "impartial jury." "Impartiality is not a technical conception. It is a state of mind. For the ascertainment of this mental attitude of appropriate indifference, the Constitution lays down no particular tests and procedure is not chained to any ancient and artificial formula." United States v. Wood, supra, 145-146. In this case, no more than the trial court can we without injustice take judicial notice of a miasma of fear to which Government employees are claimed to be peculiarly vulnerable - and from which other citizens are by implication immune. Vague conjecture does not convince that Government employees are so intimidated that they cringe before their Government in fear of investigation and loss of employment if they do their duty as jurors, which duty this same Government has imposed upon them. There is no disclosure in this record that these jurors did not bring to bear, as is particularly the custom when personal liberty hinges on the determination, the sense of responsibility and the individual integrity by which men judge men. </s> The judgment is </s> Affirmed. </s> MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS and MR. JUSTICE CLARK took no part in the consideration or decision of this case. </s> MR. JUSTICE REED concurs in the opinion and judgment of the Court. He reads the Court's decision to mean that Government employees may be barred for implied [339 U.S. 162, 173] bias when circumstances are properly brought to the court's attention which convince the court that Government employees would not be suitable jurors in a particular case. Absent such a showing, however, Government employees may not be barred from jury service merely because they are Government employees. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 H. R. Doc. No. 242, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. (1947); 93 Cong. Rec. 4977 (1947). </s> [Footnote 2 61 Stat. 696, 700. See Investigations Subcommittee on Expenditures, Investigation of Federal Employees Loyalty Program, S. Rep. No. 1775, 80th Cong., 2d Sess. (1948). </s> [Footnote 3 Federal Personnel Manual I2-4. In a press release dated November 7, 1947, the Civil Service Commission announced the appointment of the Loyalty Review Board. A statement of the Board with respect to its regulations was published on January 20, 1948. 13 Fed. Reg. 253. </s> [Footnote 4 "Mr. McCABE: You are familiar with the Government loyalty oath investigation? "Juror HOLFORD: I believe I am. I have heard something of it. "Mr. McCABE: Do you feel that rendering a verdict of not guilty in this case, if you come to that conclusion, it would stop you, any criticism or embarrassment among your fellow employees? "Juror HOLFORD: None whatsoever. "Mr. McCABE: Or by your superiors? "Juror HOLFORD: No. "Mr. McCABE: You would not have any thought that would be taken as evidence of friendliness to communism? "Juror HOLFORD: No; I am not worried about my job that way." . . . . . "Mr. McCABE: Now, Mr. Jones, you have heard, have you, of the loyalty test or loyalty investigation which is going on to test the loyalty of Government employees? Have you heard of that? "Mr. JONES: Yes, I have. "Mr. McCABE: Are you aware of the fact that one of the tests that might disqualify or prevent you from Government employment [339 U.S. 162, 171] is friendly association with any Communist person or any Communist organizations? "Mr. JONES: That would not. I am a Civil Service employee. I have taken an examination for my job. "Mr. McCABE: Yes. Are you aware of the fact that, despite any Civil Service protection, still a finding that you were in friendly association with any Communist or Communist organization would render you ineligible to continue in your Government position? "Mr. JONES: It would not. "Mr. McCABE: What? "Mr. JONES: It would not." The replies of the other jurors were in a similar vein. </s> MR. JUSTICE JACKSON, concurring in the result. </s> In but two ways could the Court avoid affirming the conviction of Dennis. One is to rescind the general rule established in Frazier v. United States, 335 U.S. 497 , that a jury is, in contemplation of law "impartial," even when entirely composed of government employees. The other is to retain, and thereby strengthen, that general rule but create a special exemption for Communists. </s> I adhere with increasing conviction to my dissent in Frazier v. United States, supra at 514. The Court there dug a pit dangerous for civil liberties. The right to fair trial is the right that stands guardian over all other rights. Reference to the reports will show what otherwise one would not believe: that the Court, by a bare majority, held it to be entirely fair to try a person before a jury consisting solely of government employees, plus the fact that one juror and the wife of another worked in the office of the department head responsible for enforcement of the law charged to be violated. The common instinct of men for fair dealing and the experience of trial lawyers alike reject this holding. Whenever any majority can be mustered to overrule that weird and misguided decision, I shall be one of it. </s> But the way for the Court to get out of the hole it fell into with Frazier is not to dig another and worse one. We are actually urged to hold that the kind of jury a defendant may have depends upon his political opinions or affiliations. The offense for which Dennis was tried was [339 U.S. 162, 174] contempt of a Committee of Congress. That is not an offense that touches the immediate security of the Nation. Nor does guilt or innocence depend upon defendant's political views or party membership. Of course, he is, and the jury was bound to learn that he is, a prominent figure in the Communist Party. But the same acts would be the same offense if he were an orthodox Democrat. The sole ground for creating an exemption from the Frazier rule is that the defendant is a Communist, and Communists are now exceedingly unpopular in Washington. I agree that this highlights the unfairness of the Frazier rule and provides reason for overruling it; but I do not agree that it justifies the proposed exception to that decision. </s> The Frazier doctrine was promulgated by a majority of the Court which well knew that its rule would apply to this type of case and in these times. That decision was handed down on December 20, 1948, with this present case just around the corner. Dennis had already been convicted and his conviction had been affirmed in highly publicized proceedings occurring only a few city blocks from us; and his petition for certiorari had been filed in this Court. The four of us dissenting in Frazier warned specifically that the Government in these times is using its power as never before to pry into lives and thoughts of government employees. All that is urged now is more of the same and there is nothing in this situation that should not have been within the contemplation of the Court when the Frazier case was decided the way it was. The proposal now is a partial repeal - for Communists only. </s> Courts should give to a Communist every right and advantage that they give to any defendant. But it is inconceivable that being a Communist can entitle a defendant to more. Let us picture the proposal in operation. Two defendants are brought to trial for contempt of Congress. One, a Communist, has defied the Un-American [339 U.S. 162, 175] Activities Committee. The other, a Republican, has defied the Committee investigating the State Department. Both make well-founded claims that the Executive branch of the Government is hostile to them; both ask to exclude its employees from the jury so they may be tried by persons under no obligation to their adversaries. The proposal is that the trial judge should grant the motion of the Communist and deny that of the Republican! What then becomes of equal justice under law? </s> It is true that Communists are the current phobia in Washington. But always, since I can remember, some group or other is being investigated and castigated here. At various times it has been Bundists and Germans, Japanese, lobbyists, tax evaders, oil men, utility men, bankers, brokers, labor leaders, Silver Shirts and Fascists. At times, usually after dramatic and publicized exposures, members of these groups have been brought to trial for some offense. I think that none of them at such times ever should be forced to defend themselves against the Government's accusations before the Government's employees. But so long as accused persons who are Republicans, Dixiecrats, Socialists, or Democrats must put up with such a jury, it will have to do for Communists. </s> MR. JUSTICE BLACK, dissenting. </s> The petitioner, Dennis, was convicted of wilfully refusing to give testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The evidence against him was exceptionally strong. But no matter how strong that evidence, he had a constitutional right to have it passed on by an impartial jury. 1 No juror can meet the test [339 U.S. 162, 176] of "impartiality" if he has good reason to fear that a vote for acquittal would subject him to harassing investigations and perhaps cost him his job. On this ground the government employees called for jury duty were challenged for cause by petitioner. I am convinced that denial of this challenge deprived Dennis of an impartial jury. </s> Although each juror asserted that he or she could vote for acquittal without fear of adverse consequences, that cannot be accepted as conclusive evidence of impartiality. The test of bias sufficient to exclude a juror for cause is not what the particular juror believes he could do. Long ago Chief Justice Marshall ruled that a person "may declare that he feels no prejudice in the case, and yet the law cautiously incapacitates him from serving on the jury; because it suspects prejudice; because in general, persons in a similar situation, would feel prejudice." 1 Burr's Trial 414, 415, 25 Fed. Cas. 14,692g, at p. 50. And this Court, while recognizing that persons of the "highest honor and greatest self-sacrifice" would not be influenced by fear of financial losses, has said that "every procedure which would offer a possible temptation to the average man as a judge . . . not to hold the balance nice, clear and true between the State and the accused, denies the latter due process of law." Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 532 . 2 </s> We did not depart from the "average man" test in United States v. Wood, 299 U.S. 123 , or Frazier v. United States, 335 U.S. 497 . Those cases involved convictions [339 U.S. 162, 177] for theft and dope-peddling. They did hold that proof of mere governmental employment was not enough, standing alone, automatically to impute disqualifying bias in every criminal proceeding brought by the Federal Government. But both opinions clearly indicated that "particular issues or circumstances" might require exclusion of government employees in order to assure an impartial jury. 3 In complete harmony with the principle declared in the Burr and Tumey cases, our Wood opinion cautioned that a government employee could be disqualified if "in view of the nature or circumstances of his employment, or of the relation of the particular governmental activity to the matters involved in the prosecution, or otherwise, he had actual bias . . . ." 4 299 U.S. at 134. And the Frazier opinion emphasized that these factors would support disqualification of government employees for "actual bias" without proof of "prejudice in the subjective sense." 335 U.S. at 510-11, n. 19. </s> Special circumstances of the type supporting disqualification under these decisions are, in my judgment, clearly shown by this record. The difficulty of securing an impartial jury at all is revealed by the number of potential jurors who felt that Dennis's position as Secretary of the Communist Party in this country would alone prevent [339 U.S. 162, 178] their giving him a fair trial. 5 And the prevailing pattern of loyalty investigations and threatened purges makes it wholly unrealistic to expect government employees to enter the jury box with that quality of disinterestedness essential to complete impartiality. </s> The reasons urged for disqualifying government employees were first presented to the trial court in an affidavit supporting petitioner's motion for change of venue. The sworn allegations of that affidavit were never denied by the Government. In essence, the affidavit pointed out that all federal employees were under constant scrutiny by various agencies and congressional committees for possible sympathy with Communists or with affiliated organizations; that under Executive Order 9835, issued following vigorous demands by the congressional committee which had initiated the prosecution of Dennis, any of these employees would lose his job if a "loyalty test" revealed "reasonable grounds" for belief that he was disloyal; that members of the same committee had stated that anything less than imposition of maximum punishment on Dennis would expose the persons responsible therefor to charges of disloyal sympathy with Communism; 6 </s> [339 U.S. 162, 179] and that consequently a vote for acquittal would jeopardize the job of any government employee so voting. 7 Petitioner again cited the "loyalty test" in challenging for cause all governmental employees called as jurors, although he did not bother to reargue the facts because his reasons were "clear to us all." Thus petitioner called the trial judge's attention to substantial facts in support of his challenges. [339 U.S. 162, 180] </s> To say that employees of the United States could meet objective tests of complete impartiality in the trial of cases like this is to disregard human nature. Probably at no period of the nation's history has the "loyalty" of government employees been subjected to such constant scrutiny and investigation by so many government agents and secret informers. And for the past few years press and radio have been crowded with charges by responsible officials and others that the writings, friendships, or associations of some government employee have branded him "disloyal." Government employees have good reason to fear that an honest vote to acquit a Communist or anyone else accused of "subversive" beliefs, however flimsy the prosecution's evidence, might be considered a "disloyal" act which could easily cost them their job. That vote alone would in all probability evoke clamorous demands that he be publicly investigated or discharged outright; at the very least it would result in whisperings, suspicions, and a blemished reputation. </s> In the Wood case this Court regarded as "far-fetched and chimerical" the suggestion that no government employee could have voted for acquittal of theft without endangering his job. I agree. But under the circumstances here it seems equally "far-fetched and chimerical" to suggest that government employees, however convinced of innocence, would feel completely free to acquit a defendant charged with disobeying a command of the Committee on Un-American Activities. My belief is that no defendant charged with such an offense, whatever his political affiliation, should be forced to accept a government employee as a juror. Nor should the Government want such an unfair advantage. Of course this advantage makes convictions easier. That is precisely what the Sixth Amendment was designed to prevent. It commands [339 U.S. 162, 181] impartiality in the jury-box. Impartiality cannot survive in the shadow of threats to a juror's reputation and livelihood. </s> [Footnote 1 The Sixth Amendment provides that defendants charged with crimes in federal courts "shall enjoy the right to . . . trial, by an impartial jury." And see Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 535 : "No [339 U.S. 162, 176] matter what the evidence was against him, he had the right to have an impartial judge." This case related to financial interests of a mayor trying defendants, but the principles there declared are equally applicable to jurors who must judge the guilt or innocence of a defendant. </s> [Footnote 2 See note 1, supra. </s> [Footnote 3 In the Frazier case one juror and the wife of another were employed in the Department of Treasury, which was charged with enforcing the anti-narcotic laws. This Court did not decide whether such employment would distinguish these jurors from other government employees sufficiently to support a timely challenge, because the only special challenge raising this ground was belatedly made in a motion for new trial. </s> [Footnote 4 The Court also stated that bias could not be imputed "simply by virtue of governmental employment, without regard to any actual partiality growing out of the nature and circumstances of particular cases." 299 U.S. at 149. </s> [Footnote 5 The difficulty of obtaining an impartial jury in cases where popular indignation is aroused became manifest during World War I. Judge Amidon, a veteran trier of Espionage Act cases, described his experiences as follows: "For the first six months after June 15, 1917, I tried was cases before jurymen who were candid, sober, intelligent business men, whom I had known for thirty years, and who under ordinary circumstances would have had the highest respect for my declarations of law, but during that period they looked back into my eyes with the savagery of wild animals, saying by their manner, `Away with this twiddling, let us get at him.' Men believed during that period that the only verdict in a war case, which could show loyalty, was a verdict of guilty." Quoted in Chafee, Free Speech in the United States 70 (1941 ed.). </s> [Footnote 6 In this connection the affidavit asserted that committee members "have stated openly on the floor of the House of Representatives that they demand a prosecution and conviction of, and the imposition of the maximum punishment on this defendant. They have charged that anything less would open the persons responsible therefor to a charge of disloyalty, and sympathy to Communism." In oral argument on the motion for change of venue and an accompanying motion for continuances, counsel elaborated on one facet of this charge by reading from the Congressional Record a colloquy between a member of the committee and other congressmen. The substance of the colloquy was that the Attorney General should be impeached unless he obtained quick trials of Dennis and others charged with contempt by the committee. 93 Cong. Rec. 3815-3816. </s> [Footnote 7 The affidavit read in part: "The enormous consequences of the Executive Order referred to above make it absolutely impossible to secure a fair and impartial trial in the District of Columbia for a leader of the Communist Party, particularly when the charge against him is laid by the Committee on Un-American Activities. The finding of disloyalty involves not only discharge from employment but a permanent branding as a disloyal and undesirable person, endangering the possibility of earning a livelihood in the future. No individual can be expected lightly to take the risk of incurring such consequences to himself, his family and his associates. The meaning of `sympathetic association' is undefined in the Executive Order and there is no assurance that it may not be construed by the Attorney General to include a recognition of the rights of a member of the Communist Party. And even if the Attorney General himself would not so construe it, it is impossible to assume that persons selected for jury duty will run the risk of a charge of sympathy with Communism flowing from voting for an acquittal of so prominent a leader of the Communist Party." </s> MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, dissenting. </s> Acquiescence in a precedent does not require approval of its extension. Although I adhere to the views expressed by MR. JUSTICE JACKSON for the minority in Frazier v. United States, 335 U.S. 497, 514 , I do not urge that it be overruled. But in abiding by it I need not assent to enlarging the areas of its undesirability. The constitutional command for trial by an "impartial jury" casts upon the judiciary the exercise of judgment in determining the circumstances which preclude that free, fearless and disinterested capacity in analyzing evidence which is indispensable if jurymen are to deal impartially with an accusation. The judgment that a court must thus exercise in finding "disqualification for bias" of persons who belong to a particular class is a psychological judgment. It is a judgment founded on human experience and not on technical learning. And so it does not follow that merely because government employees are not automatically disqualified as jurors in every prosecution in the District of Columbia they should not be disqualified in prosecutions that are deemed to concern the security of the nation. </s> The reason for disqualifying a whole class on the ground of bias is the law's recognition that if the circumstances of that class in the run of instances are likely to generate bias, consciously or unconsciously, it would be a hopeless endeavor to search out the impact of these circumstances on the mind and judgment of a particular individual. That is the reason why the influences of consanguinity or of financial interest are not individually canvassed. Law as a response to life recognizes the operation of such [339 U.S. 162, 182] influences even though not consciously or clearly entertained. The appearance of impartiality is an essential manifestation of its reality. This is the basic psychological reason why the Founders of this country gave the judiciary an unlimited tenure. Impartiality requires independence, and independence, the Framers realized, requires freedom from the effect of those "occasional ill-humors in the society," which as Alexander Hamilton put it in The Federalist are "the influence of particular conjunctures." The Federalist, No. 78 at 400 (Beloff ed. 1948). </s> One of the greatest of judges has assured us that "Judges are apt to be naif, simple-minded men." Holmes, Collected Legal Papers 295. Only naivete could be unmindful of the force of the considerations set forth by MR. JUSTICE BLACK, and known of all men. There is a pervasiveness of atmosphere in Washington whereby forces are released in relation to jurors who may be deemed supporters of an accused under a cloud of disloyalty that are emotionally different from those which come into play in relation to jurors dealing with offenses which in their implications do not touch the security of the nation. Considering the situation in which men of power and influence find themselves through such alleged associations, it is asking more of human nature in ordinary government employees than history warrants to ask them to exercise that "uncommon portion of fortitude" which the Founders of this nation thought judges could exercise only if given a life tenure. The Federalist, supra. </s> A government employee ought not to be asked whether he would feel free to decide against the Government in cases that to the common understanding involve disloyalty to this country. Questions ought not to be put to prospective jurors that offer no fair choice for answer. [339 U.S. 162, 183] Men ought not to be asked in effect whether they are brave or wholly indifferent to the enveloping atmosphere. They should not be asked to confess that they are weaklings nor should it be assumed that they are fully conscious of all the pressures that may move them. They may not know what judges of considerable forensic experience know, that one cannot have confident knowledge of influences that may play and prey unconsciously upon judgment. See, e. g., Mr. Justice Oliver in Rex v. Davies, 1945. 1 K. B. 435, 445. The well-known observations of Mr. Justice Holmes on these psychological influences are here pertinent: "This is not a matter for polite presumptions; we must look facts in the face. Any judge who has sat with juries knows that in spite of forms they are extremely likely to be impregnated by the environing atmosphere." Frank v. Mangum, 237 U.S. 309, 345 , 349. Nor is it irrelevant to note that we are living in a time when inroads have been made on the secrecy of the jury room so that, upon failure to agree, jurors are subjected to harassment to disclose their position in the jury room. Ought we to expose our administration of criminal justice to situations whereby federal employees must contemplate inquisitions into the manner in which they discharged their juror's oath? </s> To conclude that government employees are not disqualified in prosecutions inherently touching the security of the Government, at a time when public feeling on these matters is notoriously running high, because they are not ipso facto disqualified from sitting in a prosecution against a drug addict or a petty thief, is to say that things that are very different are the same. The doctrine of the Frazier case does not require such disregard of the relevant. To recognize the existence of what is characterized as a phobia against a particular group is not to discriminate in its favor. If a particular group, no matter what its beliefs, [339 U.S. 162, 184] is under pressure of popular hostility, exclusion of potential jurors peculiarly susceptible to such pressure is not an expression of regard for political opinions but recognition by law of the facts of life. It does not follow that because members of different but respected political parties can sit in judgment upon one another where punishment is involved, all members of such parties, no matter what their relation to an operating bias, can freely and fairly sit in judgment upon those belonging to an ostracized group. </s> Let there be no misunderstanding. To recognize the existence of a group whose views are feared and despised by the community at large does not even remotely imply any support of that group. To take appropriate measures in order to avert injustice even towards a member of a despised group is to enforce justice. It is not to play favorites. The boast of our criminal procedure is that it protects an accused, so far as legal procedure can, from a bias operating against such a group to which he belongs. This principle should be enforced whatever the tenets of the group - whether the old Locofocos or the Know-Nothings, the Ku Klux Klan or the Communists. This is not to coddle Communists but to respect our professions of equal justice to all. It was a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals. </s> We are concerned with something far more important than sustaining a particular conviction. Many and conflicting are the criteria by which a society is to be deemed good, but perhaps no test is more revealing than the characteristics of its punitive justice. No single aspect of our society is more precious and more distinctive than that we seek to administer criminal justice according to morally fastidious standards. These reveal confidence in our institutions, respect for reason, and loyalty to our professions [339 U.S. 162, 185] of fairness. The powerful claim in behalf of our civilization represented by our system of criminal justice will be vindicated and strengthened if those who in the popular mind appear to threaten the very existence of the Government are tried by citizens other than those in the immediate employ of the Government at the seat of Government. </s> [339 U.S. 162, 186]

United States Supreme Court THOMPSON v. COASTAL OIL CO.(1956) No. 20 Argued: Decided: October 15, 1956 </s> Messrs. Charles A. Ellis and Silas Blake Axtell, for petitioner. Mr. Michael E. Hanrahan, for respondent. On writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. </s> PER CURIAM. </s> The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is reversed and the judgment of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey is reinstated. Mr. Justice HARLAN concurs in the result, but would have preferred to remand the case to the Court of Appeals for determination as to whether the District Court properly found the vessel unseaworthy. Mr. Justice REED, Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, Mr. Justice BURTON, and Mr. Justice MINTON dissent.[ Thompson v. Coastal Oil Co. 352 U.S. 862 (1956) ]

United States Supreme Court BROWN v. WESTERN R. OF ALABAMA(1949) No. 43 Argued: October 19, 1949Decided: November 21, 1949 </s> In an action in a state court for damages under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, the trial court sustained a general demurrer to the complaint and dismissed the action. Under the state law, such a dismissal was a final adjudication barring recovery in any future state proceeding. The State Court of Appeals affirmed on the basis of a state rule of practice to construe pleadings "most strongly against the pleader." Held: </s> 1. The construction of the complaint by the state court in accordance with state practice is not binding on this Court, which will itself construe the allegations of the complaint in order to determine whether petitioner has been denied a right of trial granted him by Congress. Pp. 295-296. </s> 2. The complaint did set forth a cause of action and should not have been dismissed. Pp. 297-299. </s> 77 Ga. App. 780, 49 S. E. 2d 833, reversed. </s> A state court sustained a general demurrer to a complaint claiming damages under the Federal Employers' Liability Act and dismissed the action. The Court of Appeals of Georgia affirmed. 77 Ga. App. 780, 49 S. E. 2d 833. The Supreme Court of Georgia denied certiorari. This Court granted certiorari. 336 U.S. 965 . Reversed and remanded, p. 299. </s> Richard M. Maxwell argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the brief was Thomas J. Lewis. </s> Herman Heyman argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Arthur Heyman and Hugh Howell, Sr. </s> MR. JUSTICE BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> Petitioner brought this action in a Georgia state court claiming damages from the respondent railroad under the Federal Employers' Liability Act. 45 U.S.C. 51 et seq. [338 U.S. 294, 295] Respondent filed a general demurrer to the complaint on the ground that it failed to "set forth a cause of action and is otherwise insufficient in law." The trial court sustained the demurrer and dismissed the cause of action. The Court of Appeals affirmed, 77 Ga. App. 780, 49 S. E. 2d 833, and the Supreme Court of Georgia denied certiorari. It is agreed that under Georgia law the dismissal is a final adjudication barring recovery in any future state proceeding. The petition for certiorari here presented the question of whether the complaint did set forth a cause of action sufficient to survive a general demurrer resulting in final dismissal. Certiorari was granted because the implications of the dismissal were considered important to a correct and uniform application of the federal act in the state and federal courts. See Brady v. Southern R. Co., 320 U.S. 476 . </s> First. The Georgia Court of Appeals held that "Stripped of its details, the petition shows that the plaintiff was injured while in the performance of his duties when he stepped on a large clinker lying alongside the track in the railroad yards. . . . The mere presence of a large clinker in a railroad yard can not be said to constitute an act of negligence. . . . In so far as the allegations of the petition show, the sole cause of the accident was the act of the plaintiff in stepping on this large clinker, which he was able to see and could have avoided." 77 Ga. App. 783, 49 S. E. 2d 835. The court reached the foregoing conclusions by following a Georgia rule of practice to construe pleading allegations "most strongly against the pleader." Following this local rule of construction the court said that "In the absence of allegations to the contrary, the inference arises that the plaintiff's vision was unobscured and that he could have seen and avoided the clinker." 77 Ga. App. 783, 49 S. E. 2d 835. Under the same local rule the court found no precise allegation that the particular clinker on which petitioner [338 U.S. 294, 296] stumbled was beside the tracks due to respondent's negligence. </s> It is contended that this construction of the complaint is binding on us. The argument is that while state courts are without power to detract from "substantive rights" granted by Congress in FELA cases, they are free to follow their own rules of "practice." and "procedure." To what extent rules of practice and procedure may themselves dig into "substantive rights" is a troublesome question at best as is shown in the very case on which respondent relies. Central Vermont R. Co. v. White, 238 U.S. 507 . Other cases in this Court 1 point up the impossibility of laying down a precise rule to distinguish "substance" from "procedure." Fortunately, we need not attempt to do so. A long series of cases previously decided, from which we see no reason to depart, makes it our duty to construe the allegations of this complaint ourselves in order to determine whether petitioner has been denied a right of trial granted him by Congress. This federal right cannot be defeated by the forms of local practice. See American Ry. Exp. Co. v. Levee, 263 U.S. 19, 21 . And we cannot accept as final a state court's interpretation of allegations in a complaint asserting it. First National Bank v. Anderson, 269 U.S. 341, 346 ; Davis v. Wechsler, 263 U.S. 22, 24 ; Covington Turnpike Co. v. Sandford, 164 U.S. 578, 595 -596. This rule applies to FELA cases no less than to other types. Reynolds v. Atlantic C. L. R. Co., 336 U.S. 207 ; Anderson v. A., T. & [338 U.S. 294, 297] S. F. R. Co., 333 U.S. 821 ; cf. Lillie v. Thompson, 332 U.S. 459 . </s> Second. We hold that the allegations of the complaint do set forth a cause of action which should not have been dismissed. It charged that respondent had allowed "clinkers" and other debris "to collect in said yards along the side of the tracks"; that such debris made the "yards unsafe"; that respondent thus failed to supply him a reasonably safe place to work, but directed him to work in said yards "under the conditions above described"; that it was necessary for petitioner "to cross over all such material and debris"; that in performing his duties he "ran around" an engine and "stepped on a large clinker lying beside the tracks as aforesaid which caused petitioner to fall and be injured"; that petitioner's injuries were "directly and proximately caused in whole or in part by the negligence of the defendant . . . (a) In failing to furnish plaintiff with a reasonably safe place in which to work as herein alleged. (b) In leaving clinkers . . . and other debris along the side of track in its yards as aforesaid, well knowing that said yards in such condition were dangerous for use by brakemen, working therein and that petitioner would have to perform his duties with said yards in such condition." </s> Other allegations need not be set out since the foregoing if proven would show an injury of the precise kind for which Congress has provided a recovery. These allegations, fairly construed, are much more than a charge that petitioner "stepped on a large clinker lying alongside the track in the railroad yards." They also charge that the railroad permitted clinkers and other debris to be left along the tracks, "well knowing" that this was dangerous to workers; that petitioner was compelled to "cross over" the clinkers and debris; that in doing so he fell and was injured; and that all of this was in violation of the railroad's [338 U.S. 294, 298] duty to furnish petitioner a reasonably safe place to work. Certainly these allegations are sufficient to permit introduction of evidence from which a jury might infer that petitioner's injuries were due to the railroad's negligence in failing to supply a reasonably safe place to work. Bailey v. Central Vermont R. Co., 319 U.S. 350, 353 . And we have already refused to set aside a judgment coming from the Georgia courts where the jury was permitted to infer negligence from the presence of clinkers along the tracks in the railroad yard. Southern R. Co. v. Puckett, 244 U.S. 571, 574 , affirming 16 Ga. App. 551, 554, 85 S. E. 809, 811. </s> Here the Georgia court has decided as a matter of law that no inference of railroad negligence could be drawn from the facts alleged in this case. Rather the court itself has drawn from the pleadings the reverse inference that the sole proximate cause of petitioner's injury was his own negligence. Throughout its opinion the appellate court clearly reveals a preoccupation with what it deemed to be petitioner's failure to take proper precautions. 2 But as that court necessarily admits, contributory negligence does not preclude recovery under the FELA. </s> Strict local rules of pleading cannot be used to impose unnecessary burdens upon rights of recovery authorized by federal laws. "Whatever springes the State may set for those who are endeavoring to assert rights that the [338 U.S. 294, 299] State confers, the assertion of federal rights, when plainly and reasonably made, is not to be defeated under the name of local practice." Davis v. Wechsler, supra, at 24. Cf. Maty v. Grasselli Chemical Co., 303 U.S. 197 . Should this Court fail to protect federally created rights from dismissal because of over-exacting local requirements for meticulous pleadings, desirable uniformity in adjudication of federally created rights could not be achieved. See Brady v. Southern R. Co., 320 U.S. 476, 479 . </s> Upon trial of this case the evidence offered may or may not support inferences of negligence. We simply hold that under the facts alleged it was error to dismiss the complaint and that petitioner should be allowed to try his case. Covington Turnpike Co. v. Sandford, supra, at 596; Anderson v. A., T. & S. F. R. Co., 333 U.S. 821 . </s> The cause is reversed and remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. </s> Reversed and remanded. </s> MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS took no part in the consideration or decision of this case. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 Angel v. Bullington, 330 U.S. 183 ; Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, 326 U.S. 99 ; Garrett v. Moore-McCormack Co., 317 U.S. 239 ; St. Louis, S. F. & T. R. Co. v. Seale, 229 U.S. 156, 157 ; and see same case 148 S. W. 1099; Toledo, St. L. & W. R. Co. v. Slavin, 236 U.S. 454, 457 -458; and see same case 88 Ohio St. 536, 106 N. E. 1077. Compare Brinkmeier v. Missouri P. R. Co., 224 U.S. 268 , with Seaboard Air Line R. Co. v. Renn, 241 U.S. 290 . </s> [Footnote 2 That court among other things said: "In the absence of allegations to the contrary, the inference arises that the plaintiff's vision was unobscured and that he could have seen and avoided the clinker. . . . In so far as the allegations of the petition show, the sole cause of the accident was the act of the plaintiff in stepping on this large clinker, which he was able to see and could have avoided. It was he who, without any outside intervention, failed to look, stepped on the clinker, and fell." 77 Ga. App. 783, 49 S. E. 2d 835. </s> MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, whom MR. JUSTICE JACKSON joins, dissenting. </s> Insignificant as this case appears on the surface, its disposition depends on the adjustment made between two judicial systems charged with the enforcement of a law binding on both. This, it bears recalling, is an important factor in the working of our federalism without needless friction. </s> Have the Georgia courts disrespected the law of the land in the judgment under review? Since Congress empowers State courts to entertain suits under the Federal Employers' Liability Act, a State cannot wilfully shut its courts to such cases. Second Employers' Liability [338 U.S. 294, 300] Cases, 223 U.S. 1 . But the courts so empowered are creatures of the States, with such structures and functions as the States are free to devise and define. Congress has not imposed jurisdiction on State courts for claims under the Act "as against an otherwise valid excuse." Douglas v. New York, New Haven & H. R. Co., 279 U.S. 377, 388 . Again, if a State has dispensed with the jury in civil suits or has modified the common-law requirements for trial by jury, a plaintiff must take the jury system as he finds it if he chooses to bring his suit under the Federal Employers' Liability Act in a court of that State. Minneapolis & St. L. R. Co. v. Bombolis, 241 U.S. 211 . After all, the Federal courts are always available. </s> So also, States have varying systems of pleading and practice. One State may cherish formalities more than another, one State may be more responsive than another to procedural reforms. If a litigant chooses to enforce a Federal right in a State court, he cannot be heard to object if he is treated exactly as are plaintiffs who press like claims arising under State law with regard to the form in which the claim must be stated - the particularity, for instance, with which a cause of action must be described. Federal law, though invoked in a State court, delimits the Federal claim - defines what gives a right to recovery and what goes to prove it. But the form in which the claim must be stated need not be different from what the State exacts in the enforcement of like obligations created by it, so long as such a requirement does not add to, or diminish, the right as defined by Federal law, nor burden the realization of this right in the actualities of litigation. </s> Of course "this Court is not concluded" by the view of a State court regarding the sufficiency of allegations of a Federal right of action or defense. This merely means that a State court cannot defeat the substance of a Federal [338 U.S. 294, 301] claim by denial of it. Nor can a State do so under the guise of professing merely to prescribe how the claim should be formulated. American R. Express Co. v. Levee, 263 U.S. 19, 21 . </s> The crucial question for this Court is whether the Georgia courts have merely enforced a local requirement of pleading, however finicky, applicable to all such litigation in Georgia without qualifying the basis of recovery under the Federal Employers' Liability Act or weighting the scales against the plaintiff. Compare Norfolk Southern R. Co. v. Ferebee, 238 U.S. 269 , with Central Vermont R. Co. v. White, 238 U.S. 507 . Georgia may adhere to its requirements of pleading, but it may not put "unreasonable obstacles in the way" of a plaintiff who seeks its courts to obtain what the Federal Act gives him. Davis v. Wechsler, 263 U.S. 22, 25 . </s> These decisive differences are usually conveyed by the terms "procedure" and "substance." The terms are not meaningless even though they do not have fixed undeviating meanings. They derive content from the functions they serve here in precisely the same way in which we have applied them in reverse situations - when confronted with the problem whether the Federal courts respected the substance of State-created rights, as required by the rule in Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 , or impaired them by professing merely to enforce them by the mode in which the Federal courts do business. Review on this aspect of State court judgments in Federal Employers' Liability cases presents essentially the same kind of problem as that with which this Court dealt in Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, 326 U.S. 99 , applied at the last Term in Ragan v. Merchants Transfer & Warehouse Co., 337 U.S. 530 , and Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 555 . Congress has authorized State courts to enforce Federal rights, and Federal courts State-created [338 U.S. 294, 302] rights. Neither system of courts can impair these respective rights, but both may have their own requirements for stating claims (pleading) and conducting litigation (practice). </s> In the light of these controlling considerations, I cannot find that the Court of Appeals of Georgia has either sought to evade the law of the United States or did so unwittingly. That court showed full awareness of the nature and scope of the rights and obligations arising under the Federal Employers' Liability Act as laid down in this Court's decisions. 1 It fully recognized that the right under the Act is founded on negligence by the carrier in whole or in part, that "assumption of risk" must rigorously be excluded, that contributory negligence does not defeat the action but merely bears on damages. Nor is it claimed that by the use of presumptions or otherwise the State court placed on the plaintiff a burden of proof exceeding that of the Act. All that the Georgia court did was conscientiously to apply its understanding of what is necessary to set forth a claim of negligence according to the local requirement of particularity. Concretely it ruled that "The mere presence of a large clinker in a railroad yard can not be said to constitute an act of negligence." For all that appears, the Georgia court said in effect, the clinker had been placed there under such circumstances that responsibility could not be charged against the defendant. On this and other assumptions not met by plaintiff's complaint, the court did not find in the phraseology used in the complaint that the defendant [338 U.S. 294, 303] was chargeable with neglect for the presence of the offending clinker in a yard operated by itself as well as another carrier. I would not so read the complaint. But this does not preclude the Georgia court from taking a more constrained view. By so doing it has not contracted rights under the Federal Act nor hobbled the plaintiff in getting a judgment to which he may be entitled. </s> It is not credible that the Georgia court would be found wanting had it stated that under Georgia rules, as a matter of pleading, it was necessary to state in so many words that the presence of the particular clinker was due to the defendant's negligence, and to set forth the detailed circumstances that made the defendant responsible, although the range of inference open to a jury was not thereby affected. This is what that court's decision says in effect in applying the stiff Georgia doctrine of construing a complaint most strongly against the pleader. It is not a denial of a Federal right for Georgia to reflect something of the pernicketiness with which seventeenth-century common law read a pleading. Had the Georgia court given leave to amend in order to satisfy elegancies of pleading, the case would of course not be here. With full knowledge of the niceties of pleading required by Georgia the plaintiff had that opportunity. Georgia Code 81-1301 (1933). 2 He chose to stand on his complaint against a general demurrer. If Georgia thereafter authorizes dismissal of the complaint, the State does not thereby collide with Federal law. </s> I would affirm the judgment. </s> [Footnote 1 Indeed, the history of Georgia legislation and adjudication indicates that long before there was a Federal Employers' Liability Act that State was humane and not harsh in allowing recovery to railroad employees for injuries caused by the negligence of the carrier. Ga. Laws 1855, p. 155; Augusta & S. R. Co. v. McElmurry, 24 Ga. 75; Dodd, Administration of Workmen's Compensation 13-14 (1936). </s> [Footnote 2 See also Wells v. Butler's Builders' Supply Co., 128 Ga. 37, 40, 57 S. E. 55, 57; Cahoon v. Wills, 179 Ga. 195, 175 S. E. 563; Note, 106 A. L. R. 570, 574 (1937); Davis and Shulman, Georgia Practice and Procedure 96 (1948). </s> [338 U.S. 294, 304]

United States Supreme Court CAMARA v. MUNICIPAL COURT(1967) No. 92 Argued: February 15, 1967Decided: June 5, 1967 </s> Appellant was charged with violating the San Francisco Housing Code for refusing, after three efforts by city housing inspectors to secure his consent, to allow a warrantless inspection of the ground-floor quarters which he leased and residential use of which allegedly violated the apartment building's occupancy permit. Claiming the inspection ordinance unconstitutional for failure to require a warrant for inspections, appellant while awaiting trial sued in a State Superior Court for a writ of prohibition, which the court denied. Relying on Frank v. Maryland, 359 U.S. 360 , and similar cases, the District Court of Appeal affirmed, holding that the ordinance did not violate the Fourth Amendment. The State Supreme Court denied a petition for hearing. Held: </s> 1. The Fourth Amendment bars prosecution of a person who has refused to permit a warrantless code-enforcement inspection of his personal residence. Frank v. Maryland, supra, pro tanto overruled. Pp. 528-534. </s> (a) The basic purpose of the Fourth Amendment, which is enforceable against the States through the Fourteenth, through its prohibition of "unreasonable" searches and seizures is to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by governmental officials. P. 528. </s> (b) With certain carefully defined exceptions, an unconsented warrantless search of private property is "unreasonable." Pp. 528-529. </s> (c) Contrary to the assumption of Frank v. Maryland, supra, Fourth Amendment interests are not merely "peripheral" where municipal fire, health, and housing inspection programs are involved whose purpose is to determine the existence of physical conditions not complying with local ordinances. Those programs, moreover, are enforceable by criminal process, as is refusal to allow an inspection. Pp. 529-531. </s> (d) Warrantless administrative searches cannot be justified on the grounds that they make minimal demands on occupants; [387 U.S. 523, 524] that warrants in such cases are unfeasible; or that area inspection programs could not function under reasonable search-warrant requirements. Pp. 531-533. </s> 2. Probable cause upon the basis of which warrants are to be issued for area code-enforcement inspections is not dependent on the inspector's belief that a particular dwelling violates the code but on the reasonableness of the enforcement agency's appraisal of conditions in the area as a whole. The standards to guide the magistrate in the issuance of such search warrants will necessarily vary with the municipal program being enforced. Pp. 534-539. </s> 3. Search warrants which are required in nonemergency situations should normally be sought only after entry is refused. Pp. 539-540. </s> 4. In the nonemergency situation here, appellant had a right to insist that the inspectors obtain a search warrant. P. 540. </s> 237 Cal. App. 2d 128, 46 Cal. Rptr. 585, vacated and remanded. </s> Marshall W. Krause argued the cause for appellant. With him on the briefs was Donald M. Cahen. </s> Albert W. Harris, Jr., Assistant Attorney General of California, argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief were Thomas C. Lynch, Attorney General, and Gloria F. DeHart, Deputy Attorney General. </s> Leonard J. Kerpelman filed a brief for Homeowners in Opposition to Housing Authoritarianism, as amicus curiae, urging reversal. </s> Briefs of amici curiae, urging affirmance, were filed by Thomas M. O'Connor, John W. Sholenberger, Roger Arnebergh, Barnett I. Shur, Alexander G. Brown, David Stahl and Robert E. Michalski for the Member Municipalities of the National Institute of Municipal Law Officers, and by Elliot L. Richardson, Attorney General, Willie J. Davis, Assistant Attorney General, Edward T. Martin, Deputy Attorney General, Max Rosenblatt, Lewis H. Weinstein and Loyd M. Starrett for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts et al. [387 U.S. 523, 525] </s> MR. JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> In Frank v. Maryland, 359 U.S. 360 , this Court upheld, by a five-to-four vote, a state court conviction of a home-owner who refused to permit a municipal health inspector to enter and inspect his premises without a search warrant. In Eaton v. Price, 364 U.S. 263 , a similar conviction was affirmed by an equally divided Court. Since those closely divided decisions, more intensive efforts at all levels of government to contain and eliminate urban blight have led to increasing use of such inspection techniques, while numerous decisions of this Court have more fully defined the Fourth Amendment's effect on state and municipal action. E. g., Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 ; Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23 . In view of the growing nationwide importance of the problem, we noted probable jurisdiction in this case and in See v. City of Seattle, post, p. 541, to re-examine whether administrative inspection programs, as presently authorized and conducted, violate Fourth Amendment rights as those rights are enforced against the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. 385 U.S. 808 . </s> Appellant brought this action in a California Superior Court alleging that he was awaiting trial on a criminal charge of violating the San Francisco Housing Code by refusing to permit a warrantless inspection of his residence, and that a writ of prohibition should issue to the criminal court because the ordinance authorizing such inspections is unconstitutional on its face. The Superior Court denied the writ, the District Court of Appeal affirmed, and the Supreme Court of California denied a petition for hearing. Appellant properly raised and had considered by the California courts the federal constitutional questions he now presents to this Court. </s> Though there were no judicial findings of fact in this prohibition proceeding, we shall set forth the parties' factual allegations. On November 6, 1963, an inspector [387 U.S. 523, 526] of the Division of Housing Inspection of the San Francisco Department of Public Health entered an apartment building to make a routine annual inspection for possible violations of the city's Housing Code. 1 The building's manager informed the inspector that appellant, lessee of the ground floor, was using the rear of his leasehold as a personal residence. Claiming that the building's occupancy permit did not allow residential use of the ground floor, the inspector confronted appellant and demanded that he permit an inspection of the premises. Appellant refused to allow the inspection because the inspector lacked a search warrant. </s> The inspector returned on November 8, again without a warrant, and appellant again refused to allow an inspection. A citation was then mailed ordering appellant to appear at the district attorney's office. When appellant failed to appear, two inspectors returned to his apartment on November 22. They informed appellant that he was required by law to permit an inspection under 503 of the Housing Code: </s> "Sec. 503 RIGHT TO ENTER BUILDING. Authorized employees of the City departments or City agencies, so far as may be necessary for the performance of their duties, shall, upon presentation of proper credentials, have the right to enter, at reasonable times, any building, structure, or premises in the City to perform any duty imposed upon them by the Municipal Code." [387 U.S. 523, 527] </s> Appellant nevertheless refused the inspectors access to his apartment without a search warrant. Thereafter, a complaint was filed charging him with refusing to permit a lawful inspection in violation of 507 of the Code. 2 Appellant was arrested on December 2 and released on bail. When his demurrer to the criminal complaint was denied, appellant filed this petition for a writ of prohibition. </s> Appellant has argued throughout this litigation that 503 is contrary to the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments in that it authorizes municipal officials to enter a private dwelling without a search warrant and without probable cause to believe that a violation of the Housing Code exists therein. Consequently, appellant contends, he may not be prosecuted under 507 for refusing to permit an inspection unconstitutionally authorized by 503. Relying on Frank v. Maryland, Eaton v. Price, and decisions in other States, 3 the District [387 U.S. 523, 528] Court of Appeal held that 503 does not violate Fourth Amendment rights because it "is part of a regulatory scheme which is essentially civil rather than criminal in nature, inasmuch as that section creates a right of inspection which is limited in scope and may not be exercised under unreasonable conditions." Having concluded that Frank v. Maryland, to the extent that it sanctioned such warrantless inspections, must be overruled, we reverse. </s> I. </s> The Fourth Amendment provides that, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." The basic purpose of this Amendment, as recognized in countless decisions of this Court, is to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by governmental officials. The Fourth Amendment thus gives concrete expression to a right of the people which "is basic to a free society." Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 27 . As such, the Fourth Amendment is enforceable against the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 30 . </s> Though there has been general agreement as to the fundamental purpose of the Fourth Amendment, translation of the abstract prohibition against "unreasonable searches and seizures" into workable guidelines for the decision of particular cases is a difficult task which has for many years divided the members of this Court. Nevertheless, one governing principle, justified by history and by current experience, has consistently been followed: except in certain carefully defined classes of cases, a search of private property without proper consent [387 U.S. 523, 529] is "unreasonable" unless it has been authorized by a valid search warrant. See, e. g., Stoner v. California, 376 U.S. 483 ; United States v. Jeffers, 342 U.S. 48 ; McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451 ; Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20 . As the Court explained in Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14 : </s> "The right of officers to thrust themselves into a home is also a grave concern, not only to the individual but to a society which chooses to dwell in reasonable security and freedom from surveillance. When the right of privacy must reasonably yield to the right of search is, as a rule, to be decided by a judicial officer, not by a policeman or government enforcement agent." </s> In Frank v. Maryland, this Court upheld the conviction of one who refused to permit a warrantless inspection of private premises for the purposes of locating and abating a suspected public nuisance. Although Frank can arguably be distinguished from this case on its facts, 4 the Frank opinion has generally been interpreted as carving out an additional exception to the rule that warrantless searches are unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. See Eaton v. Price, supra. The District Court of Appeal so interpreted Frank in this case, and that ruling is the core of appellant's challenge here. We proceed to a re-examination of the factors which [387 U.S. 523, 530] persuaded the Frank majority to adopt this construction of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches. </s> To the Frank majority, municipal fire, health, and housing inspection programs "touch at most upon the periphery of the important interests safeguarded by the Fourteenth Amendment's protection against official intrusion," 359 U.S., at 367 , because the inspections are merely to determine whether physical conditions exist which do not comply with minimum standards prescribed in local regulatory ordinances. Since the inspector does not ask that the property owner open his doors to a search for "evidence of criminal action" which may be used to secure the owner's criminal conviction, historic interests of "self-protection" jointly protected by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments 5 are said not to be involved, but only the less intense "right to be secure from intrusion into personal privacy." Id., at 365. </s> We may agree that a routine inspection of the physical condition of private property is a less hostile intrusion than the typical policeman's search for the fruits and instrumentalities of crime. For this reason alone, Frank differed from the great bulk of Fourth Amendment cases which have been considered by this Court. But we cannot agree that the Fourth Amendment interests at stake in these inspection cases are merely "peripheral." It is surely anomalous to say that the individual and his private property are fully protected by the Fourth Amendment only when the individual is suspected of criminal behavior. 6 For instance, even the most law-abiding citizen [387 U.S. 523, 531] has a very tangible interest in limiting the circumstances under which the sanctity of his home may be broken by official authority, for the possibility of criminal entry under the guise of official sanction is a serious threat to personal and family security. And even accepting Frank's rather remarkable premise, inspections of the kind we are here considering do in fact jeopardize "self-protection" interests of the property owner. Like most regulatory laws, fire, health, and housing codes are enforced by criminal processes. In some cities, discovery of a violation by the inspector leads to a criminal complaint. 7 Even in cities where discovery of a violation produces only an administrative compliance order, 8 refusal to comply is a criminal offense, and the fact of compliance is verified by a second inspection, again without a warrant. 9 Finally, as this case demonstrates, refusal to permit an inspection is itself a crime, punishable by fine or even by jail sentence. </s> The Frank majority suggested, and appellee reasserts, two other justifications for permitting administrative health and safety inspections without a warrant. First, it is argued that these inspections are "designed to make the least possible demand on the individual occupant." 359 U.S., at 367 . The ordinances authorizing inspections are hedged with safeguards, and at any rate the inspector's particular decision to enter must comply with the constitutional standard of reasonableness even if he may enter without a warrant. 10 In addition, the argument [387 U.S. 523, 532] proceeds, the warrant process could not function effectively in this field. The decision to inspect an entire municipal area is based upon legislative or administrative assessment of broad factors such as the area's age and condition. Unless the magistrate is to review such policy matters, he must issue a "rubber stamp" warrant which provides no protection at all to the property owner. </s> In our opinion, these arguments unduly discount the purposes behind the warrant machinery contemplated by the Fourth Amendment. Under the present system, when the inspector demands entry, the occupant has no way of knowing whether enforcement of the municipal code involved requires inspection of his premises, no way of knowing the lawful limits of the inspector's power to search, and no way of knowing whether the inspector himself is acting under proper authorization. These are questions which may be reviewed by a neutral magistrate without any reassessment of the basic agency decision to canvass an area. Yet, only by refusing entry and risking a criminal conviction can the occupant at present challenge the inspector's decision to search. And even if the occupant possesses sufficient fortitude to take this risk, as appellant did here, he may never learn any more about the reason for the inspection than that the law generally allows housing inspectors to gain entry. The practical effect of this system is to leave the occupant subject to the discretion of the official in the field. This is precisely the discretion to invade private property which we have consistently circumscribed by a requirement that a disinterested party warrant the need to [387 U.S. 523, 533] search. See cases cited, p. 529, supra. We simply cannot say that the protections provided by the warrant procedure are not needed in this context; broad statutory safeguards are no substitute for individualized review, particularly when those safeguards may only be invoked at the risk of a criminal penalty. </s> The final justification suggested for warrantless administrative searches is that the public interest demands such a rule: it is vigorously argued that the health and safety of entire urban populations is dependent upon enforcement of minimum fire, housing, and sanitation standards, and that the only effective means of enforcing such codes is by routine systematized inspection of all physical structures. Of course, in applying any reasonableness standard, including one of constitutional dimension, an argument that the public interest demands a particular rule must receive careful consideration. But we think this argument misses the mark. The question is not, at this stage at least, whether these inspections may be made, but whether they may be made without a warrant. For example, to say that gambling raids may not be made at the discretion of the police without a warrant is not necessarily to say that gambling raids may never be made. In assessing whether the public interest demands creation of a general exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement, the question is not whether the public interest justifies the type of search in question, but whether the authority to search should be evidenced by a warrant, which in turn depends in part upon whether the burden of obtaining a warrant is likely to frustrate the governmental purpose behind the search. See Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 770 -771. It has nowhere been urged that fire, health, and housing code inspection programs could not achieve their goals within the confines of a reasonable search warrant requirement. Thus, we do not find the public need argument dispositive. [387 U.S. 523, 534] </s> In summary, we hold that administrative searches of the kind at issue here are significant intrusions upon the interests protected by the Fourth Amendment, that such searches when authorized and conducted without a warrant procedure lack the traditional safeguards which the Fourth Amendment guarantees to the individual, and that the reasons put forth in Frank v. Maryland and in other cases for upholding these warrantless searches are insufficient to justify so substantial a weakening of the Fourth Amendment's protections. Because of the nature of the municipal programs under consideration, however, these conclusions must be the beginning, not the end, of our inquiry. The Frank majority gave recognition to the unique character of these inspection programs by refusing to require search warrants; to reject that disposition does not justify ignoring the question whether some other accommodation between public need and individual rights is essential. </s> II. </s> The Fourth Amendment provides that, "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause." Borrowing from more typical Fourth Amendment cases, appellant argues not only that code enforcement inspection programs must be circumscribed by a warrant procedure, but also that warrants should issue only when the inspector possesses probable cause to believe that a particular dwelling contains violations of the minimum standards prescribed by the code being enforced. We disagree. </s> In cases in which the Fourth Amendment requires that a warrant to search be obtained, "probable cause" is the standard by which a particular decision to search is tested against the constitutional mandate of reasonableness. To apply this standard, it is obviously necessary first to focus upon the governmental interest which allegedly justifies official intrusion upon the constitutionally protected [387 U.S. 523, 535] interests of the private citizen. For example, in a criminal investigation, the police may undertake to recover specific stolen or contraband goods. But that public interest would hardly justify a sweeping search of an entire city conducted in the hope that these goods might be found. Consequently, a search for these goods, even with a warrant, is "reasonable" only when there is "probable cause" to believe that they will be uncovered in a particular dwelling. </s> Unlike the search pursuant to a criminal investigation, the inspection programs at issue here are aimed at securing city-wide compliance with minimum physical standards for private property. The primary governmental interest at stake is to prevent even the unintentional development of conditions which are hazardous to public health and safety. Because fires and epidemics may ravage large urban areas, because unsightly conditions adversely affect the economic values of neighboring structures, numerous courts have upheld the police power of municipalities to impose and enforce such minimum standards even upon existing structures. 11 In determining whether a particular inspection is reasonable - and thus in determining whether there is probable cause to issue a warrant for that inspection - the need for the inspection must be weighed in terms of these reasonable goals of code enforcement. </s> There is unanimous agreement among those most familiar with this field that the only effective way to seek universal compliance with the minimum standards required by municipal codes is through routine periodic [387 U.S. 523, 536] inspections of all structures. 12 It is here that the probable cause debate is focused, for the agency's decision to conduct an area inspection is unavoidably based on its appraisal of conditions in the area as a whole, not on its knowledge of conditions in each particular building. Appellee contends that, if the probable cause standard urged by appellant is adopted, the area inspection will be eliminated as a means of seeking compliance with code standards and the reasonable goals of code enforcement will be dealt a crushing blow. </s> In meeting this contention, appellant argues first, that his probable cause standard would not jeopardize area inspection programs because only a minute portion of the population will refuse to consent to such inspections, and second, that individual privacy in any event should be given preference to the public interest in conducting such inspections. The first argument, even if true, is irrelevant to the question whether the area inspection is reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The second argument is in effect an assertion that the area inspection is an unreasonable search. Unfortunately, there can be no ready test for determining reasonableness [387 U.S. 523, 537] other than by balancing the need to search against the invasion which the search entails. But we think that a number of persuasive factors combine to support the reasonableness of area code-enforcement inspections. First, such programs have a long history of judicial and public acceptance. See Frank v. Maryland, 359 U.S., at 367 -371. Second, the public interest demands that all dangerous conditions be prevented or abated, yet it is doubtful that any other canvassing technique would achieve acceptable results. Many such conditions - faulty wiring is an obvious example - are not observable from outside the building and indeed may not be apparent to the inexpert occupant himself. Finally, because the inspections are neither personal in nature nor aimed at the discovery of evidence of crime, they involve a relatively limited invasion of the urban citizen's privacy. Both the majority and the dissent in Frank emphatically supported this conclusion: </s> "Time and experience have forcefully taught that the power to inspect dwelling places, either as a matter of systematic area-by-area search or, as here. to treat a specific problem, is of indispensable importance to the maintenance of community health; a power that would be greatly hobbled by the blanket requirement of the safeguards necessary for a search of evidence of criminal acts. The need for preventive action is great, and city after city has seen this need and granted the power of inspection to its health officials; and these inspections are apparently welcomed by all but an insignificant few. Certainly, the nature of our society has not vitiated the need for inspections first thought necessary 158 years ago, nor has experience revealed any abuse or inroad on freedom in meeting this need by means that history and dominant public opinion have sanctioned." 359 U.S., at 372 . [387 U.S. 523, 538] </s> ". . . This is not to suggest that a health official need show the same kind of proof to a magistrate to obtain a warrant as one must who would search for the fruits or instrumentalities of crime. Where considerations of health and safety are involved, the facts that would justify an inference of `probable cause' to make an inspection are clearly different from those that would justify such an inference where a criminal investigation has been undertaken. Experience may show the need for periodic inspections of certain facilities without a further showing of cause to believe that substandard conditions dangerous to the public are being maintained. The passage of a certain period without inspection might of itself be sufficient in a given situation to justify the issuance of a warrant. The test of `probable cause' required by the Fourth Amendment can take into account the nature of the search that is being sought." 359 U.S., at 383 (MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, dissenting). </s> Having concluded that the area inspection is a "reasonable" search of private property within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, it is obvious that "probable cause" to issue a warrant to inspect must exist if reasonable legislative or administrative standards for conducting an area inspection are satisfied with respect to a particular dwelling. Such standards, which will vary with the municipal program being enforced, may be based upon the passage of time, the nature of the building (e. g., a multi-family apartment house), or the condition of the entire area, but they will not necessarily depend upon specific knowledge of the condition of the particular dwelling. It has been suggested that so to vary the probable cause test from the standard applied in criminal cases would be to authorize a "synthetic search warrant" and thereby to lessen the overall protections of the Fourth Amendment. Frank v. Maryland, 359 Page 539 U.S., at 373 . But we do not agree. The warrant procedure is designed to guarantee that a decision to search private property is justified by a reasonable governmental interest. But reasonableness is still the ultimate standard. If a valid public interest justifies the intrusion contemplated, then there is probable cause to issue a suitably restricted search warrant. Cf. Oklahoma Press Pub. Co. v. Walling, 327 U.S. 186 . Such an approach neither endangers time-honored doctrines applicable to criminal investigations nor makes a nullity of the probable cause requirement in this area. It merely gives full recognition to the competing public and private interests here at stake and, in so doing, best fulfills the historic purpose behind the constitutional right to be free from unreasonable government invasions of privacy. See Eaton v. Price, 364 U.S., at 273 -274 (opinion of MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN). </s> III. </s> Since our holding emphasizes the controlling standard of reasonableness, nothing we say today is intended to foreclose prompt inspections, even without a warrant, that the law has traditionally upheld in emergency situations. See North American Cold Storage Co. v. City of Chicago, 211 U.S. 306 (seizure of unwholesome food); Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (compulsory smallpox vaccination); Compagnie Francaise v. Board of Health, 186 U.S. 380 (health quarantine); Kroplin v. Truax, 119 Ohio St. 610, 165 N. E. 498 (summary destruction of tubercular cattle). On the other hand, in the case of most routine area inspections, there is no compelling urgency to inspect at a particular time or on a particular day. Moreover, most citizens allow inspections of their property without a warrant. Thus, as a practical matter and in light of the Fourth Amendment's requirement that a warrant specify the property to be searched, it seems likely that warrants should normally be sought only after entry is refused unless [387 U.S. 523, 540] there has been a citizen complaint or there is other satisfactory reason for securing immediate entry. Similarly, the requirement of a warrant procedure does not suggest any change in what seems to be the prevailing local policy, in most situations, of authorizing entry, but not entry by force, to inspect. </s> IV. </s> In this case, appellant has been charged with a crime for his refusal to permit housing inspectors to enter his leasehold without a warrant. There was no emergency demanding immediate access; in fact, the inspectors made three trips to the building in an attempt to obtain appellant's consent to search. Yet no warrant was obtained and thus appellant was unable to verify either the need for or the appropriate limits of the inspection. No doubt, the inspectors entered the public portion of the building with the consent of the landlord, through the building's manager, but appellee does not contend that such consent was sufficient to authorize inspection of appellant's premises. Cf. Stoner v. California, 376 U.S. 483 ; Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610 ; McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451 . Assuming the facts to be as the parties have alleged, we therefore conclude that appellant had a constitutional right to insist that the inspectors obtain a warrant to search and that appellant may not constitutionally be convicted for refusing to consent to the inspection. It appears from the opinion of the District Court of Appeal that under these circumstances a writ of prohibition will issue to the criminal court under California law. </s> The judgment is vacated and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. </s> It is so ordered. </s> [For dissenting opinion of MR. JUSTICE CLARK, see post, p. 546.] </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 The inspection was conducted pursuant to 86 (3) of the San Francisco Municipal Code, which provides that apartment house operators shall pay an annual license fee in part to defray the cost of periodic inspections of their buildings. The inspections are to be made by the Bureau of Housing Inspection "at least once a year and as often thereafter as may be deemed necessary." The permit of occupancy, which prescribes the apartment units which a building may contain, is not issued until the license is obtained. </s> [Footnote 2 "Sec. 507 PENALTY FOR VIOLATION. Any person, the owner or his authorized agent who violates, disobeys, omits, neglects, or refuses to comply with, or who resists or opposes the execution of any of the provisions of this Code, or any order of the Superintendent, the Director of Public Works, or the Director of Public Health made pursuant to this Code, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars ($500.00), or by imprisonment, not exceeding six (6) months or by both such fine and imprisonment, unless otherwise provided in this Code, and shall be deemed guilty of a separate offense for every day such violation, disobedience, omission, neglect or refusal shall continue." </s> [Footnote 3 Givner v. State, 210 Md. 484, 124 A. 2d 764 (1956); City of St. Louis v. Evans, 337 S. W. 2d 948 (Mo. 1960); State ex rel. Eaton v. Price, 168 Ohio St. 123, 151 N. E. 2d 523 (1958), aff'd by an equally divided Court, 364 U.S. 263 (1960). See also State v. Rees, 258 Iowa 813, 139 N. W. 2d 406 (1966); Commonwealth v. Hadley, 351 Mass. 439, 222 N. E. 2d 681 (1966), appeal docketed Jan. 5, 1967, No. 1179, Misc., O. T. 1966; People v. Laverne, 14 N. Y. 2d 304, 200 N. E. 2d 441 (1964). </s> [Footnote 4 In Frank, the Baltimore ordinance required that the health inspector "have cause to suspect that a nuisance exists in any house, cellar or enclosure" before he could demand entry without a warrant, a requirement obviously met in Frank because the inspector observed extreme structural decay and a pile of rodent feces on the appellant's premises. Section 503 of the San Francisco Housing Code has no such "cause" requirement, but neither did the Ohio ordinance at issue in Eaton v. Price, a case which four Justices thought was controlled by Frank. 364 U.S., at 264 , 265, n. 2 (opinion of MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN). </s> [Footnote 5 See Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 . Compare Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 766 -772. </s> [Footnote 6 See Abel v. United States, 362 U.S. 217, 254 -256 (MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, dissenting); District of Columbia v. Little, 85 U.S. App. D.C. 242, 178 F.2d 13, aff'd, 339 U.S. 1 . </s> [Footnote 7 See New York, N. Y., Administrative Code D26-8.0 (1964). </s> [Footnote 8 See Washington, D.C., Housing Regulations 2104. </s> [Footnote 9 This is the more prevalent enforcement procedure. See Note, Enforcement of Municipal Housing Codes, 78 Harv. L. Rev. 801, 813-816. </s> [Footnote 10 The San Francisco Code requires that the inspector display proper credentials, that he inspect "at reasonable times," and that [387 U.S. 523, 532] he not obtain entry by force, at least when there is no emergency. The Baltimore ordinance in Frank required that the inspector "have cause to suspect that a nuisance exists." Some cities notify residents in advance, by mail or posted notice, of impending area inspections. State courts upholding these inspections without warrants have imposed a general reasonableness requirement. See cases cited, n. 3, supra. </s> [Footnote 11 See Abbate Bros. v. City of Chicago, 11 Ill. 2d 337, 142 N. E. 2d 691; City of Louisville v. Thompson, 339 S. W. 2d 869 (Ky.); Adamec v. Post, 273 N. Y. 250, 7 N. E. 2d 120; Paquette v. City of Fall River, 338 Mass. 368, 155 N. E. 2d 775; Richards v. City of Columbia, 227 S. C. 538, 88 S. E. 2d 683; Boden v. City of Milwaukee, 8 Wis. 2d 318, 99 N. W. 2d 156. </s> [Footnote 12 See Osgood & Zwerner, Rehabilitation and Conservation, 25 Law & Contemp. Prob. 705, 718 and n. 43; Schwartz, Crucial Areas in Administrative Law, 34 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 401, 423 and n. 93; Comment, Rent Withholding and the Improvement of Substandard Housing, 53 Calif. L. Rev. 304, 316-317; Note, Enforcement of Municipal Housing Codes, 78 Harv. L. Rev. 801, 807, 851; Note, Municipal Housing Codes, 69 Harv. L. Rev. 1115, 1124-1125. Section 311 (a) of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965, 79 Stat. 478, 42 U.S.C. 1468 (1964 ed., Supp. I), authorizes grants of federal funds "to cities, other municipalities, and counties for the purpose of assisting such localities in carrying out programs of concentrated code enforcement in deteriorated or deteriorating areas in which such enforcement, together with those public improvements to be provided by the locality, may be expected to arrest the decline of the area." </s> [387 U.S. 523, 541]

United States Supreme Court WEBB v. TEXAS(1972) No. 71-6647 Argued: Decided: December 4, 1972 </s> Trial court's extended admonition to petitioner's only witness to refrain from lying, coupled with threats of dire consequences if witness did lie, effectively discouraged the witness from testifying at all and deprived petitioner of due process of law by denying him the opportunity to present witnesses in his own defense. </s> Certiorari granted; 480 S. W. 2d 398, reversed. </s> PER CURIAM. </s> The petitioner was convicted of burglary in the Criminal District Court of Dallas County, Texas, and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for 12 years. He appealed, raising several claims of error, among them an allegation that the trial court had violated his constitutional rights by "threatening and harassing" the sole witness for his defense, so that the witness refused to testify. The Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas affirmed his conviction, 480 S. W. 2d 398 (1972). We grant the motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and the petition for a writ of certiorari and reverse the petitioner's conviction. </s> The record shows that, after the prosecution had rested its case, the jury was temporarily excused. During this recess, the petitioner called his only witness, Leslie Max Mills, who had a prior criminal record and was then serving a prison sentence. At this point, the trial judge, on his own initiative, undertook to admonish the witness as follows: </s> "Now you have been called down as a witness in this case by the Defendant. It is the Court's duty to admonish you that you don't have to testify, that anything you say can and will be used against you. [409 U.S. 95, 96] If you take the witness stand and lie under oath, the Court will personally see that your case goes to the grand jury and you will be indicted for perjury and the liklihood [sic] is that you would get convicted of perjury and that it would be stacked onto what you have already got, so that is the matter you have got to make up your mind on. If you get on the witness stand and lie, it is probably going to mean several years and at least more time that you are going to have to serve. It will also be held against you in the penitentiary when you're up for parole and the Court wants you to thoroughly understand the chances you're taking by getting on that witness stand under oath. You may tell the truth and if you do, that is all right, but if you lie you can get into real trouble. The court wants you to know that. You don't owe anybody anything to testify and it must be done freely and voluntarily and with the thorough understanding that you know the hazard you are taking." </s> The petitioner's counsel objected to these comments, on the ground that the judge was exerting on the mind of the witness such duress that the witness could not freely and voluntarily decide whether or not to testify in the petitioner's behalf, and was thereby depriving the petitioner of his defense by coercing the only defense witness into refusing to testify. Counsel pointed out that none of the witnesses for the State had been so admonished. When the petitioner's counsel then indicated that he was nonetheless going to ask the witness to take the stand, the judge interrupted: "Counsel, you can state the facts, nobody is going to dispute it. Let him decline to testify." The witness then refused to testify for any purpose and was excused by the court. The petitioner's subsequent motion for a mistrial was overruled. [409 U.S. 95, 97] </s> On appeal, the petitioner argued that the judge's conduct indicated a bias against the petitioner and deprived him of due process of law by driving his sole witness off the witness stand. The Court of Criminal Appeals rejected this contention, stating that, while it did not condone the manner of the admonition, the petitioner had made no objection until the admonition was completed, and there was no showing that the witness had been intimidated by the admonition or had refused to testify because of it. </s> We cannot agree. The suggestion that the petitioner or his counsel should have interrupted the judge in the middle of his remarks to object is, on this record, not a basis to ground a waiver of the petitioner's rights. The fact that Mills was willing to come to court to testify in the petitioner's behalf, refusing to do so only after the judge's lengthy and intimidating warning, strongly suggests that the judge's comments were the cause of Mills' refusal to testify. </s> The trial judge gratuitously singled out this one witness for a lengthy admonition on the dangers of perjury. But the judge did not stop at warning the witness of his right to refuse to testify and of the necessity to tell the truth. * Instead, the judge implied that he expected Mills to lie, and went on to assure him that if he lied, he would be prosecuted and probably convicted for perjury, that the sentence for that conviction would be added on to his present sentence, and that the result would be to impair his chances for parole. At least some of these threats may have been beyond the power of this judge to [409 U.S. 95, 98] carry out. Yet, in light of the great disparity between the posture of the presiding judge and that of a witness in these circumstances, the unnecessarily strong terms used by the judge could well have exerted such duress on the witness' mind as to preclude him from making a free and voluntary choice whether or not to testify. </s> In Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14, 19 (1967), we stated: </s> "The right to offer the testimony of witnesses, and to compel their attendance, if necessary, is in plain terms the right to present a defense, the right to present the defendant's version of the facts as well as the prosecution's to the jury so it may decide where the truth lies. Just as an accused has the right to confront the prosecution's witnesses for the purpose of challenging their testimony, he has the right to present his own witnesses to establish a defense. This right is a fundamental element of due process of law." </s> In the circumstances of this case, we conclude that the judge's threatening remarks, directed only at the single witness for the defense, effectively drove that witness off the stand, and thus deprived the petitioner of due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment. The admonition by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals might well have given the trial judge guidance for future cases, but it did not serve to repair the infringement of the petitioner's due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. </s> Accordingly, the judgment is </s> Reversed. </s> [Footnote * Cf. United States v. Winter, 348 F.2d 204, 210 (1965), where Judge Weinfeld, writing for the Second Circuit, stated: </s> "Once a witness swears to give truthful answers, there is no requirement to `warn him not to commit perjury or, conversely to direct him to tell the truth.' It would render the sanctity of the oath quite meaningless to require admonition to adhere to it." </s> MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, with whom MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST joins, dissenting. </s> The facts before us do not, in my opinion, justify the Court's summary disposition. Petitioner Webb (who, on a prior occasion, had been convicted on still another [409 U.S. 95, 99] burglary charge) was apprehended by the owner of a lumber business. The owner, armed with his shotgun, had driven to his office at three o'clock in the morning upon the activation of a burglar alarm. When he entered the building, the owner observed a broken window and an assortment of what he regarded as burglary tools on his desk. When men emerged from an adjacent room, a gun fight ensued. Two intruders escaped, but the owner, despite his having been shot twice, succeeded in holding the petitioner at gunpoint until police arrived. </s> Although the admonition given by the state trial judge to the sole witness proffered by the defense was obviously improper, sufficient facts have not been presented to this Court to demonstrate the depth of prejudice that requires a summary reversal. The admonition might prove far less offensive, and the conduct of the trial judge understandable, if, for example, as is indicated in petitioner's brief, p. 8, prepared by counsel and filed with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the witness were known to have been called for the purpose of presenting an alibi defense. Against the backdrop of being caught on the premises and of apparently overwhelming evidence of guilt, offset only by a bare allegation of prejudice, I would deny the petition for certiorari and, as the Court so often has done, I would remit the petitioner to the relief available to him by way of a post-conviction proceeding with a full evidentiary hearing. * </s> [Footnote * Petitioner's counsel assured the Court of Criminal Appeals that the witness would not have been called "unless he had been previously interviewed and found to be helpful to the appellant's cause." Brief for Appellant on First Motion for Rehearing 7, Webb v. Texas, 480 S. W. 2d 398 (Ct. Crim. App. Tex. 1972). An evidentiary hearing would allow petitioner's trial counsel to outline the testimony that was expected from the witness. </s> A prior trial is mentioned in the record. An evidentiary hearing might reveal events at the prior trial that justified the trial judge's unusual concern about possible perjury. </s> [409 U.S. 95, 100]

United States Supreme Court COMMISSIONER v. TUFTS(1983) No. 81-1536 Argued: November 29, 1982Decided: May 2, 1983 </s> Section 752(d) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (IRC) provides that liabilities involved in the sale or exchange of a partnership interest are to be treated "in the same manner as liabilities in connection with the sale or exchange of property not associated with partnerships." Under 1001(a) of the IRC, the gain or loss from a sale or other disposition of property is defined as the difference between "the amount realized" on the disposition and the property's adjusted basis. Section 1001(b) defines the "amount realized" as "the sum of any money received plus the fair market value of the property (other than money) received." A general partnership formed by respondents in 1970 to construct an apartment complex entered into a $1,851,500 nonrecourse mortgage loan with a savings association. The complex was completed in 1971. Due to the partners' capital contributions to the partnership and income tax deductions for their allocable shares of ordinary losses and depreciation, the partnership's claimed adjusted basis in the property in 1972 was $1,455,740. Because of an unanticipated reduction in rental income, the partnership was unable to make the payments due on the mortgage. Each partner thereupon sold his interest to a third party, who assumed the mortgage. The fair market value on the date of transfer did not exceed $1,400,000. Each partner reported the sale on his income tax return and indicated a partnership loss of $55,740. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue, however, determined that the sale resulted in a partnership gain of approximately $400,000 on the theory that the partnership had realized the full amount of the nonrecourse obligation. The United States Tax Court upheld the deficiencies, but the Court of Appeals reversed. </s> Held: </s> When a taxpayer sells or disposes of property encumbered by a nonrecourse obligation exceeding the fair market value of the property sold, as in this case, the Commissioner may require him to include in the "amount realized" the outstanding amount of the obligation; the fair market value of the property is irrelevant to this calculation. Cf. Crane v. Commissioner, 331 U.S. 1 . Pp. 304-317. [461 U.S. 300, 301] </s> (a) When the mortgagor's obligation to repay the mortgage loan is canceled, he is relieved of his responsibility to repay the sum he originally received and thus realizes value to that extent within the meaning of 1001(b). To permit the taxpayer to limit his realization to the fair market value of the property would be to recognize a tax loss for which he has suffered no corresponding economic loss. A taxpayer must account for the proceeds of obligations he has received tax-free and has included in basis. Nothing in either 1001(b) or in this Court's prior decisions requires the Commissioner to permit a taxpayer to treat a sale of encumbered property asymmetrically, by including the proceeds of the nonrecourse obligation in basis but not accounting for the proceeds upon transfer of the property. Pp. 304-314. </s> (b) Section 752(c) of the IRC - which provides that for purposes of 752 "a liability to which property is subject shall, to the extent of the fair market value of such property, be considered as a liability of the owner of the property" - does not authorize this type of asymmetrical treatment in the sale or disposition of partnership property. Rather, the legislative history indicates that the fair market value limitation of 752(c) was intended to apply only to transactions between a partner and his partnership under 752(a) and (b), and was not intended to limit the amount realized in a sale or exchange of a partnership interest under 752(d). Pp. 314-317. </s> 651 F.2d 1058, reversed. </s> BLACKMUN, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. O'CONNOR, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 317. </s> Stuart A. Smith argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Lee, Assistant Attorney General Archer, Michael L. Paup, and Gilbert S. Rothenberg. </s> Ronald M. Mankoff argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief was Charles D. Pulman. * </s> [Footnote * Brief of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed by Louis Regenstein for the Empire Real Estate Board, Inc.; and by Wayne G. Barnett, pro se. </s> JUSTICE BLACKMUN delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> Over 35 years ago, in Crane v. Commissioner, 331 U.S. 1 (1947), this Court ruled that a taxpayer, who sold property encumbered by a nonrecourse mortgage (the amount of the [461 U.S. 300, 302] mortgage being less than the property's value), must include the unpaid balance of the mortgage in the computation of the amount the taxpayer realized on the sale. The case now before us presents the question whether the same rule applies when the unpaid amount of the nonrecourse mortgage exceeds the fair market value of the property sold. </s> I </s> On August 1, 1970, respondent Clark Pelt, a builder, and his wholly owned corporation, respondent Clark, Inc., formed a general partnership. The purpose of the partnership was to construct a 120-unit apartment complex in Duncanville, Tex., a Dallas suburb. Neither Pelt nor Clark, Inc., made any capital contribution to the partnership. Six days later, the partnership entered into a mortgage loan agreement with the Farm & Home Savings Association (F & H). Under the agreement, F & H was committed for a $1,851,500 loan for the complex. In return, the partnership executed a note and a deed of trust in favor of F & H. The partnership obtained the loan on a nonrecourse basis: neither the partnership nor its partners assumed any personal liability for repayment of the loan. Pelt later admitted four friends and relatives, respondents Tufts, Steger, Stephens, and Austin, as general partners. None of them contributed capital upon entering the partnership. </s> The construction of the complex was completed in August 1971. During 1971, each partner made small capital contributions to the partnership; in 1972, however, only Pelt made a contribution. The total of the partners' capital contributions was $44,212. In each tax year, all partners claimed as income tax deductions their allocable shares of ordinary losses and depreciation. The deductions taken by the partners in 1971 and 1972 totalled $439,972. Due to these contributions and deductions, the partnership's adjusted basis in the property in August 1972 was $1,455,740. [461 U.S. 300, 303] </s> In 1971 and 1972, major employers in the Duncanville area laid off significant numbers of workers. As a result, the partnership's rental income was less than expected, and it was unable to make the payments due on the mortgage. Each partner, on August 28, 1972, sold his partnership interest to an unrelated third party, Fred Bayles. As consideration, Bayles agreed to reimburse each partner's sale expenses up to $250; he also assumed the nonrecourse mortgage. </s> On the date of transfer, the fair market value of the property did not exceed $1,400,000. Each partner reported the sale on his federal income tax return and indicated that a partnership loss of $55,740 had been sustained. 1 The Commissioner of Internal Revenue, on audit, determined that the sale resulted in a partnership capital gain of approximately $400,000. His theory was that the partnership had realized the full amount of the nonrecourse obligation. 2 </s> Relying on Millar v. Commissioner, 577 F.2d 212, 215 (CA3), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 1046 (1978), the United States Tax Court, in an unreviewed decision, upheld the asserted deficiencies. 70 T. C. 756 (1978). The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed. 651 F.2d 1058 (1981). That court expressly disagreed with the Millar analysis, and, in limiting Crane v. Commissioner, supra, to its facts, questioned the theoretical underpinnings of the Crane [461 U.S. 300, 304] decision. We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict. 456 U.S. 960 (1982). </s> II </s> Section 752(d) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, 26 U.S.C. 752(d), specifically provides that liabilities involved in the sale or exchange of a partnership interest are to "be treated in the same manner as liabilities in connection with the sale or exchange of property not associated with partnerships." Section 1001 governs the determination of gains and losses on the disposition of property. Under 1001(a), the gain or loss from a sale or other disposition of property is defined as the difference between "the amount realized" on the disposition and the property's adjusted basis. Subsection (b) of 1001 defines "amount realized": "The amount realized from the sale or other disposition of property shall be the sum of any money received plus the fair market value of the property (other than money) received." At issue is the application of the latter provision to the disposition of property encumbered by a nonrecourse mortgage of an amount in excess of the property's fair market value. </s> A </s> In Crane v. Commissioner, supra, this Court took the first and controlling step toward the resolution of this issue. Beulah B. Crane was the sole beneficiary under the will of her deceased husband. At his death in January 1932, he owned an apartment building that was then mortgaged for an amount which proved to be equal to its fair market value, as determined for federal estate tax purposes. The widow, of course, was not personally liable on the mortgage. She operated the building for nearly seven years, hoping to turn it into a profitable venture; during that period, she claimed income tax deductions for depreciation, property taxes, interest, and operating expenses, but did not make payments upon the mortgage principal. In computing her basis for the depreciation deductions, she included the full amount of the [461 U.S. 300, 305] mortgage debt. In November 1938, with her hopes unfulfilled and the mortgage threatening foreclosure, Mrs. Crane sold the building. The purchaser took the property subject to the mortgage and paid Crane $3,000; of that amount, $500 went for the expenses of the sale. </s> Crane reported a gain of $2,500 on the transaction. She reasoned that her basis in the property was zero (despite her earlier depreciation deductions based on including the amount of the mortgage) and that the amount she realized from the sale was simply the cash she received. The Commissioner disputed this claim. He asserted that Crane's basis in the property, under 113(a)(5) of the Revenue Act of 1938, 52 Stat. 490 (the current version is 1014 of the 1954 Code, as amended, 26 U.S.C. 1014 (1976 ed. and Supp. V)), was the property's fair market value at the time of her husband's death, adjusted for depreciation in the interim, and that the amount realized was the net cash received plus the amount of the outstanding mortgage assumed by the purchaser. </s> In upholding the Commissioner's interpretation of 113 (a)(5) of the 1938 Act, 3 the Court observed that to regard merely the taxpayer's equity in the property as her basis would lead to depreciation deductions less than the actual physical deterioration of the property, and would require the basis to be recomputed with each payment on the mortgage. 331 U.S., at 9 -10. The Court rejected Crane's claim that any loss due to depreciation belonged to the mortgagee. The effect of the Court's ruling was that the taxpayer's basis was the value of the property undiminished by the mortgage. Id., at 11. [461 U.S. 300, 306] </s> The Court next proceeded to determine the amount realized under 111(b) of the 1938 Act, 52 Stat. 484 (the current version is 1001(b) of the 1954 Code, 26 U.S.C. 1001(b)). In order to avoid the "absurdity," see 331 U.S., at 13 , of Crane's realizing only $2,500 on the sale of property worth over a quarter of a million dollars, the Court treated the amount realized as it had treated basis, that is, by including the outstanding value of the mortgage. To do otherwise would have permitted Crane to recognize a tax loss unconnected with any actual economic loss. The Court refused to construe one section of the Revenue Act so as "to frustrate the Act as a whole." Ibid. </s> Crane, however, insisted that the nonrecourse nature of the mortgage required different treatment. The Court, for two reasons, disagreed. First, excluding the nonrecourse debt from the amount realized would result in the same absurdity and frustration of the Code. Id., at 13-14. Second, the Court concluded that Crane obtained an economic benefit from the purchaser's assumption of the mortgage identical to the benefit conferred by the cancellation of personal debt. Because the value of the property in that case exceeded the amount of the mortgage, it was in Crane's economic interest to treat the mortgage as a personal obligation; only by so doing could she realize upon sale the appreciation in her equity represented by the $2,500 boot. The purchaser's assumption of the liability thus resulted in a taxable economic benefit to her, just as if she had been given, in addition to the boot, a sum of cash sufficient to satisfy the mortgage. 4 </s> [461 U.S. 300, 307] </s> In a footnote, pertinent to the present case, the Court observed: </s> "Obviously, if the value of the property is less than the amount of the mortgage, a mortgagor who is not personally liable cannot realize a benefit equal to the mortgage. Consequently, a different problem might be encountered where a mortgagor abandoned the property or transferred it subject to the mortgage without receiving boot. That is not this case." Id., at 14, n. 37. </s> B </s> This case presents that unresolved issue. We are disinclined to overrule Crane, and we conclude that the same rule applies when the unpaid amount of the nonrecourse mortgage exceeds the value of the property transferred. Crane ultimately does not rest on its limited theory of economic benefit; instead, we read Crane to have approved the Commissioner's decision to treat a nonrecourse mortgage in this context as a true loan. This approval underlies Crane's holdings that the amount of the nonrecourse liability is to be included in calculating both the basis and the amount realized on disposition. That the amount of the loan exceeds the fair market value of the property thus becomes irrelevant. </s> When a taxpayer receives a loan, he incurs an obligation to repay that loan at some future date. Because of this obligation, the loan proceeds do not qualify as income to the taxpayer. When he fulfills the obligation, the repayment of the loan likewise has no effect on his tax liability. </s> Another consequence to the taxpayer from this obligation occurs when the taxpayer applies the loan proceeds to the purchase price of property used to secure the loan. Because of the obligation to repay, the taxpayer is entitled to include the amount of the loan in computing his basis in the property; the loan, under 1012, is part of the taxpayer's cost of the [461 U.S. 300, 308] property. Although a different approach might have been taken with respect to a nonrecourse mortgage loan, 5 the Commissioner has chosen to accord it the same treatment he gives to a recourse mortgage loan. The Court approved that choice in Crane, and the respondents do not challenge it here. The choice and its resultant benefits to the taxpayer are predicated on the assumption that the mortgage will be repaid in full. </s> When encumbered property is sold or otherwise disposed of and the purchaser assumes the mortgage, the associated [461 U.S. 300, 309] extinguishment of the mortgagor's obligation to repay is accounted for in the computation of the amount realized. 6 See United States v. Hendler, 303 U.S. 564, 566 -567 (1938). Because no difference between recourse and nonrecourse obligations is recognized in calculating basis, 7 Crane teaches that the Commissioner may ignore the nonrecourse nature of the obligation in determining the amount realized upon disposition of the encumbered property. He thus may include in the amount realized the amount of the nonrecourse mortgage assumed by the purchaser. The rationale for this treatment is that the original inclusion of the amount of the mortgage in basis rested on the assumption that the mortgagor incurred an obligation to repay. Moreover, this treatment balances the fact that the mortgagor originally received the proceeds of the nonrecourse loan tax-free on the same assumption. [461 U.S. 300, 310] Unless the outstanding amount of the mortgage is deemed to be realized, the mortgagor effectively will have received untaxed income at the time the loan was extended and will have received an unwarranted increase in the basis of his property. 8 The Commissioner's interpretation of 1001(b) in this fashion cannot be said to be unreasonable. </s> C </s> The Commissioner in fact has applied this rule even when the fair market value of the property falls below the amount of the nonrecourse obligation. Treas. Reg. 1.1001-2(b), 26 CFR 1.1001-2(b) (1982); 9 Rev. Rul. 76-111, 1976-1 Cum. Bull. 214. Because the theory on which the rule is based applies equally in this situation, see Millar v. Commissioner, 67 T. C. 656, 660 (1977), aff'd on this issue, 577 F.2d 212, 215-216 (CA3), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 1046 (1978); 10 Mendham Corp. v. Commissioner, 9 T. C. 320, 323-324 (1947); Lutz & Schramm Co. v. Commissioner, 1 T. C. 682, 688-689 (1943), we have no reason, after Crane, to question this treatment. 11 </s> [461 U.S. 300, 311] </s> Respondents received a mortgage loan with the concomitant obligation to repay by the year 2012. The only difference between that mortgage and one on which the borrower [461 U.S. 300, 312] is personally liable is that the mortgagee's remedy is limited to foreclosing on the securing property. This difference does not alter the nature of the obligation; its only effect is to shift from the borrower to the lender any potential loss caused by devaluation of the property. 12 If the fair market value of the property falls below the amount of the outstanding obligation, the mortgagee's ability to protect its interests is impaired, for the mortgagor is free to abandon the property to the mortgagee and be relieved of his obligation. </s> This, however, does not erase the fact that the mortgagor received the loan proceeds tax-free and included them in his basis on the understanding that he had an obligation to repay the full amount. See Woodsam Associates, Inc. v. Commissioner, 198 F.2d 357, 359 (CA2 1952); Bittker, supra n. 7, at 284. When the obligation is canceled, the mortgagor is relieved of his responsibility to repay the sum he originally received and thus realizes value to that extent within the meaning of 1001(b). From the mortgagor's point of view, when his obligation is assumed by a third party who purchases the encumbered property, it is as if the mortgagor first had been paid with cash borrowed by the third party from the mortgagee on a nonrecourse basis, and then had used the cash to satisfy his obligation to the mortgagee. </s> Moreover, this approach avoids the absurdity the Court recognized in Crane. Because of the remedy accompanying the mortgage in the nonrecourse situation, the depreciation [461 U.S. 300, 313] in the fair market value of the property is relevant economically only to the mortgagee, who by lending on a nonrecourse basis remains at risk. To permit the taxpayer to limit his realization to the fair market value of the property would be to recognize a tax loss for which he has suffered no corresponding economic loss. 13 Such a result would be to construe "one section of the Act . . . so as . . . to defeat the intention of another or to frustrate the Act as a whole." 331 U.S., at 13 . </s> In the specific circumstances of Crane, the economic benefit theory did support the Commissioner's treatment of the nonrecourse mortgage as a personal obligation. The footnote in Crane acknowledged the limitations of that theory when applied to a different set of facts. Crane also stands for the broader proposition, however, that a nonrecourse loan should be treated as a true loan. We therefore hold that a taxpayer must account for the proceeds of obligations he has received tax-free and included in basis. Nothing in either 1001(b) or in the Court's prior decisions requires the Commissioner to permit a taxpayer to treat a sale of encumbered property asymmetrically, by including the proceeds of the nonrecourse obligation in basis but not accounting for the proceeds upon transfer of the encumbered property. See [461 U.S. 300, 314] Estate of Levine v. Commissioner, 634 F.2d 12, 15 (CA2 1980). </s> III </s> Relying on the Code's 752(c), 26 U.S.C. 752(c), however, respondents argue that Congress has provided for precisely this type of asymmetrical treatment in the sale or disposition of partnership property. Section 752 prescribes the tax treatment of certain partnership transactions, 14 and 752(c) provides that "[f]or purposes of this section, a liability to which property is subject shall, to the extent of the fair market value of such property, be considered as a liability of the owner of the property." Section 752(c) could be read to apply to a sale or disposition of partnership property, and thus to limit the amount realized to the fair market value of the property transferred. Inconsistent with this interpretation, however, is the language of 752(d), which specifically mandates that partnership liabilities be treated "in the same manner as liabilities in connection with the sale or exchange [461 U.S. 300, 315] of property not associated with partnerships." The apparent conflict of these subsections renders the facial meaning of the statute ambiguous, and therefore we must look to the statute's structure and legislative history. </s> Subsections (a) and (b) of 752 prescribe rules for the treatment of liabilities in transactions between a partner and his partnership, and thus for determining the partner's adjusted basis in his partnership interest. Under 704(d), a partner's distributive share of partnership losses is limited to the adjusted basis of his partnership interest. 26 U.S.C. 704(d) (1976 ed., Supp. V); see Perry, Limited Partnerships and Tax Shelters: The Crane Rule Goes Public, 27 Tax L. Rev. 525, 543 (1972). When partnership liabilities are increased or when a partner takes on the liabilities of the partnership, 752(a) treats the amount of the increase or the amount assumed as a contribution by the partner to the partnership. This treatment results in an increase in the adjusted basis of the partner's interest and a concomitant increase in the 704(d) limit on his distributive share of any partnership loss. Conversely, under 752(b), a decrease in partnership liabilities or the assumption of a partner's liabilities by the partnership has the effect of a distribution, thereby reducing the limit on the partner's distributive share of the partnership's losses. When property encumbered by liabilities is contributed to or distributed from the partnership, 752(c) prescribes that the liability shall be considered to be assumed by the transferee only to the extent of the property's fair market value. Treas. Reg. 1.752-1(c), 26 CFR 1.752-1(c) (1982). </s> The legislative history indicates that Congress contemplated this application of 752(c). Mention of the fair market value limitation occurs only in the context of transactions under subsections (a) and (b). 15 The sole reference to subsection [461 U.S. 300, 316] (d) does not discuss the limitation. 16 While the legislative history is certainly not conclusive, it indicates that the fair market value limitation of 752(c) was directed to transactions between a partner and his partnership. 17 1 A. Willis, J. Pennell, & P. Postlewaite, Partnership Taxation 44.03, p. 44-3 (3d ed. 1981); Simmons, Tufts v. Commissioner: Amount Realized Limited to Fair Market Value, 15 U. C. D. L. Rev. 577, 611-613 (1982). </s> By placing a fair market value limitation on liabilities connected with property contributions to and distributions from partnerships under subsections (a) and (b), Congress apparently intended 752(c) to prevent a partner from inflating the basis of his partnership interest. Otherwise, a partner with no additional capital at risk in the partnership could raise the 704(d) limit on his distributive share of partnership losses or could reduce his taxable gain upon disposition of his partnership [461 U.S. 300, 317] interest. See Newman, The Resurgence of Footnote 37: Tufts v. Commissioner, 18 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1, 16, n. 116 (1982). There is no potential for similar abuse in the context of 752(d) sales of partnership interests to unrelated third parties. In light of the above, we interpret subsection (c) to apply only to 752(a) and (b) transactions, and not to limit the amount realized in a sale or exchange of a partnership interest under 752(d). </s> IV </s> When a taxpayer sells or disposes of property encumbered by a nonrecourse obligation, the Commissioner properly requires him to include among the assets realized the outstanding amount of the obligation. The fair market value of the property is irrelevant to this calculation. We find this interpretation to be consistent with Crane v. Commissioner, 331 U.S. 1 (1947), and to implement the statutory mandate in a reasonable manner. National Muffler Dealers Assn. v. United States, 440 U.S. 472, 476 (1979). </s> The judgment of the Court of Appeals is therefore reversed. </s> It is so ordered. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 The loss was the difference between the adjusted basis, $1,455,740, and the fair market value of the property, $1,400,000. On their individual tax returns, the partners did not claim deductions for their respective shares of this loss. In their petitions to the Tax Court, however, the partners did claim the loss. </s> [Footnote 2 The Commissioner determined the partnership's gain on the sale by subtracting the adjusted basis, $1,455,740, from the liability assumed by Bayles, $1,851,500. Of the resulting figure, $395,760, the Commissioner treated $348,661 as capital gain, pursuant to 741 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, 26 U.S.C. 741, and $47,099 as ordinary gain under the recapture provisions of 1250 of the Code. The application of 1250 in determining the character of the gain is not at issue here. </s> [Footnote 3 Section 113(a)(5) defined the basis of "property . . . acquired by . . . devise . . . or by the decedent's estate from the decedent" as "the fair market value of such property at the time of such acquisition." The Court interpreted the term "property" to refer to the physical land and buildings owned by Crane or the aggregate of her rights to control and dispose of them. 331 U.S., at 6 . </s> [Footnote 4 Crane also argued that even if the statute required the inclusion of the amount of the nonrecourse debt, that amount was not Sixteenth Amendment income because the overall transaction had been "by all dictates of common sense . . . a ruinous disaster." Brief for Petitioner in Crane v. Commissioner, O. T. 1946, No. 68, p. 51. The Court noted, however, that Crane had been entitled to and actually took depreciation deductions for nearly seven years. To allow her to exclude sums on which those deductions were based from the calculation of her taxable gain would permit her [461 U.S. 300, 307] "a double deduction . . . on the same loss of assets." The Sixteenth Amendment, it was said, did not require that result. 331 U.S., at 15 -16. </s> [Footnote 5 The Commissioner might have adopted the theory, implicit in Crane's contentions, that a nonrecourse mortgage is not true debt, but, instead, is a form of joint investment by the mortgagor and the mortgagee. On this approach, nonrecourse debt would be considered a contingent liability, under which the mortgagor's payments on the debt gradually increase his interest in the property while decreasing that of the mortgagee. Note, Federal Income Tax Treatment of Nonrecourse Debt, 82 Colum. L. Rev. 1498, 1514 (1982); Lurie, Mortgagor's Gain on Mortgaging Property for More than Cost Without Personal Liability, 6 Tax L. Rev. 319, 323 (1951); cf. Brief for Respondents 16 (nonrecourse debt resembles preferred stock). Because the taxpayer's investment in the property would not include the nonrecourse debt, the taxpayer would not be permitted to include that debt in basis. Note, 82 Colum. L. Rev., at 1515; cf. Gibson Products Co. v. United States, 637 F.2d 1041, 1047-1048 (CA5 1981) (contingent nature of obligation prevents inclusion in basis of oil and gas leases of nonrecourse debt secured by leases, drilling equipment, and percentage of future production). We express no view as to whether such an approach would be consistent with the statutory structure and, if so, and Crane were not on the books, whether that approach would be preferred over Crane's analysis. We note only that the Crane Court's resolution of the basis issue presumed that when property is purchased with proceeds from a nonrecourse mortgage, the purchaser becomes the sole owner of the property. 331 U.S., at 6 . Under the Crane approach, the mortgagee is entitled to no portion of the basis. Id., at 10, n. 28. The nonrecourse mortgage is part of the mortgagor's investment in the property, and does not constitute a coinvestment by the mortgagee. But see Note, 82 Colum. L. Rev., at 1513 (treating nonrecourse mortgage as coinvestment by mortgagee and critically concluding that Crane departed from traditional analysis that basis is taxpayer's investment in property). </s> [Footnote 6 In this case, respondents received the face value of their note as loan proceeds. If respondents initially had given their note at a discount, the amount realized on the sale of the securing property might be limited to the funds actually received. See Commissioner v. Rail Joint Co., 61 F.2d 751, 752 (CA2 1932) (cancellation of indebtedness); Fashion Park, Inc. v. Commissioner, 21 T. C. 600, 606 (1954) (same). See generally J. Sneed, The Configurations of Gross Income 319 (1967) ("[I]t appears settled that the reacquisition of bonds at a discount by the obligor results in gain only to the extent the issue price, where this is less than par, exceeds the cost of reacquisition"). </s> [Footnote 7 The Commissioner's choice in Crane "laid the foundation stone of most tax shelters," Bittker, Tax Shelters, Nonrecourse Debt, and the Crane Case, 33 Tax L. Rev. 277, 283 (1978), by permitting taxpayers who bear no risk to take deductions on depreciable property. Congress recently has acted to curb this avoidance device by forbidding a taxpayer to take depreciation deductions in excess of amounts he has at risk in the investment. Pub. L. 94-455, 204(a), 90 Stat. 1531 (1976), 26 U.S.C. 465; Pub. L. 95-600, 201-204, 92 Stat. 2814-2817 (1978), 26 U.S.C. 465(a) (1976 ed., Supp. V). Real estate investments, however, are exempt from this prohibition. 465(c)(3)(D) (1976 ed., Supp. V). Although this congressional action may foreshadow a day when nonrecourse and recourse debts will be treated differently, neither Congress nor the Commissioner has sought to alter Crane's rule of including nonrecourse liability in both basis and the amount realized. </s> [Footnote 8 Although the Crane rule has some affinity with the tax benefit rule, see Bittker, supra, at 282; Del Cotto, Sales and Other Dispositions of Property Under Section 1001: The Taxable Event, Amount Realized and Related Problems of Basis, 26 Buffalo L. Rev. 219, 323-324 (1977), the analysis we adopt is different. Our analysis applies even in the situation in which no deductions are taken. It focuses on the obligation to repay and its subsequent extinguishment, not on the taking and recovery of deductions. See generally Note, 82 Colum. L. Rev., at 1526-1529. </s> [Footnote 9 The regulation was promulgated while this case was pending before the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. T. D. 7741, 45 Fed. Reg. 81743, 1981-1 Cum. Bull. 430 (1980). It merely formalized the Commissioner's prior interpretation, however. </s> [Footnote 10 The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Millar affirmed the Tax Court on the theory that inclusion of nonrecourse liability in the amount realized was necessary to prevent the taxpayer from enjoying a double deduction. 577 F.2d, at 215; cf. n. 4, supra. Because we resolve the question on another ground, we do not address the validity of the double deduction rationale. </s> [Footnote 11 Professor Wayne G. Barnett, as amicus in the present case, argues that the liability and property portions of the transaction should be [461 U.S. 300, 311] accounted for separately. Under his view, there was a transfer of the property for $1.4 million, and there was a cancellation of the $1.85 million obligation for a payment of $1.4 million. The former resulted in a capital loss of $50,000, and the latter in the realization of $450,000 of ordinary income. Taxation of the ordinary income might be deferred under 108 by a reduction of respondents' bases in their partnership interests. Although this indeed could be a justifiable mode of analysis, it has not been adopted by the Commissioner. Nor is there anything to indicate that the Code requires the Commissioner to adopt it. We note that Professor Barnett's approach does assume that recourse and nonrecourse debt may be treated identically. The Commissioner also has chosen not to characterize the transaction as cancellation of indebtedness. We are not presented with and do not decide the contours of the cancellation-of-indebtedness doctrine. We note only that our approach does not fall within certain prior interpretations of that doctrine. In one view, the doctrine rests on the same initial premise as our analysis here - an obligation to repay - but the doctrine relies on a freeing-of-assets theory to attribute ordinary income to the debtor upon cancellation. See Commissioner v. Jacobson, 336 U.S. 28, 38 -40 (1949); United States v. Kirby Lumber Co., 284 U.S. 1, 3 (1931). According to that view, when nonrecourse debt is forgiven, the debtor's basis in the securing property is reduced by the amount of debt canceled, and realization of income is deferred until the sale of the property. See Fulton Gold Corp. v. Commissioner, 31 B. T. A. 519, 520 (1934). Because that interpretation attributes income only when assets are freed, however, an insolvent debtor realizes income just to the extent his assets exceed his liabilities after the cancellation. Lakeland Grocery Co. v. Commissioner, 36 B. T. A. 289, 292 (1937). Similarly, if the nonrecourse indebtedness exceeds the value of the securing property, the taxpayer never realizes the full amount of the obligation canceled because the tax law has not recognized negative basis. Although the economic benefit prong of Crane also relies on a freeing-of-assets theory, that theory is irrelevant to our broader approach. In the context of a sale or disposition of property under 1001, the extinguishment of the obligation to repay is not ordinary income; instead, the amount of the canceled debt is included in the amount realized, and enters into the computation of gain or loss on the disposition of property. According to Crane, this treatment is no different when the obligation is nonrecourse: the basis is not reduced as in the cancellation-of-indebtedness context, and [461 U.S. 300, 312] the full value of the outstanding liability is included in the amount realized. Thus, the problem of negative basis is avoided. </s> [Footnote 12 In his opinion for the Court of Appeals in Crane, Judge Learned Hand observed: "[The mortgagor] has all the income from the property; he manages it; he may sell it; any increase in its value goes to him; any decrease falls on him, until the value goes below the amount of the lien. . . . When therefore upon a sale the mortgagor makes an allowance to the vendee of the amount of the lien, he secures a release from a charge upon his property quite as though the vendee had paid him the full price on condition that before he took title the lien should be cleared. . . ." 153 F.2d 504, 506 (CA2 1945). </s> [Footnote 13 In the present case, the Government bore the ultimate loss. The nonrecourse mortgage was extended to respondents only after the planned complex was endorsed for mortgage insurance under 221(b) and (d)(4) of the National Housing Act, 12 U.S.C. 1715l(b) and (d)(4) (1976 ed. and Supp. V). After acquiring the complex from respondents, Bayles operated it for a few years, but was unable to make it profitable. In 1974, F & H foreclosed, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development paid off the lender to obtain title. In 1976, the Department sold the complex to another developer for $1,502,000. The sale was financed by the Department's taking back a note for $1,314,800 and a nonrecourse mortgage. To fail to recognize the value of the nonrecourse loan in the amount realized, therefore, would permit respondents to compound the Government's loss by claiming the tax benefits of that loss for themselves. </s> [Footnote 14 Section 752 provides: "(a) Increase in partner's liabilities "Any increase in a partner's share of the liabilities of a partnership, or any increase in a partner's individual liabilities by reason of the assumption by such partner of partnership liabilities, shall be considered as a contribution of money by such partner to the partnership. "(b) Decrease in partner's liabilities "Any decrease in a partner's share of the liabilities of a partnership, or any decrease in a partner's individual liabilities by reason of the assumption by the partnership of such individual liabilities, shall be considered as a distribution of money to the partner by the partnership. "(c) Liability to which property is subject "For purposes of this section, a liability to which property is subject shall, to the extent of the fair market value of such property, be considered as a liability of the owner of the property. "(d) Sale or exchange of an interest "In the case of a sale or exchange of an interest in a partnership, liabilities shall be treated in the same manner as liabilities in connection with the sale or exchange of property not associated with partnerships." </s> [Footnote 15 "The transfer of property subject to a liability by a partner to a partnership, or by the partnership to a partner, shall, to the extent of the fair market value of such property, be considered a transfer of the amount of [461 U.S. 300, 316] the liability along with the property." H. R. Rep. No. 1337, 83d Cong., 2d Sess., A236 (1954); S. Rep. No. 1622, 83d Cong., 2d Sess., 405 (1954). </s> [Footnote 16 "When a partnership interest is sold or exchanged, the general rule for the treatment of the sale or exchange of property subject to liabilities will be applied." H. R. Rep. No. 1337, at A236-A237; S. Rep. No. 1622, at 405. These Reports then set out an example of subsection (d)'s application, which does not indicate whether the debt is recourse or nonrecourse. </s> [Footnote 17 The Treasury Regulations support this view. The Regulations interpreting 752(c) state: "Where property subject to a liability is contributed by a partner to a partnership, or distributed by a partnership to a partner, the amount of the liability, to an extent not exceeding the fair market value of the property at the time of the contribution or distribution, shall be considered as a liability assumed by the transferee." 1.752-1(c), 26 CFR 1.752-1(c) (1982). The Regulations also contain an example applying the fair market limitation to a contribution of encumbered property by a partner to a partnership. Ibid. The Regulations interpreting 752(d) make no mention of the fair market limitation. 752-1(d). Both Regulations were issued contemporaneously with the passage of the statute, T. D. 6175, 1956-1 Cum. Bull. 211, and are entitled to deference as an administrative interpretation of the statute. See Commissioner v. South Texas Lumber Co., 333 U.S. 496, 501 (1948). </s> JUSTICE O'CONNOR, concurring. </s> I concur in the opinion of the Court, accepting the view of the Commissioner. I do not, however, endorse the Commissioner's view. Indeed, were we writing on a slate clean except for the decision in Crane v. Commissioner, 331 U.S. 1 (1947), I would take quite a different approach - that urged upon us by Professor Barnett as amicus. </s> Crane established that a taxpayer could treat property as entirely his own, in spite of the "coinvestment" provided by his mortgagee in the form of a nonrecourse loan. That is, the full basis of the property, with all its tax consequences, belongs to the mortgagor. That rule alone, though, does not in any way tie nonrecourse debt to the cost of property or to the proceeds upon disposition. I see no reason to treat the [461 U.S. 300, 318] purchase, ownership, and eventual disposition of property differently because the taxpayer also takes out a mortgage, an independent transaction. In this case, the taxpayer purchased property, using nonrecourse financing, and sold it after it declined in value to a buyer who assumed the mortgage. There is no economic difference between the events in this case and a case in which the taxpayer buys property with cash; later obtains a nonrecourse loan by pledging the property as security; still later, using cash on hand, buys off the mortgage for the market value of the devalued property; and finally sells the property to a third party for its market value. </s> The logical way to treat both this case and the hypothesized case is to separate the two aspects of these events and to consider, first, the ownership and sale of the property, and, second, the arrangement and retirement of the loan. Under Crane, the fair market value of the property on the date of acquisition - the purchase price - represents the taxpayer's basis in the property, and the fair market value on the date of disposition represents the proceeds on sale. The benefit received by the taxpayer in return for the property is the cancellation of a mortgage that is worth no more than the fair market value of the property, for that is all the mortgagee can expect to collect on the mortgage. His gain or loss on the disposition of the property equals the difference between the proceeds and the cost of acquisition. Thus, the taxation of the transaction in property reflects the economic fate of the property. If the property has declined in value, as was the case here, the taxpayer recognizes a loss on the disposition of the property. The new purchaser then takes as his basis the fair market value as of the date of the sale. See, e. g., United States v. Davis, 370 U.S. 65, 72 (1962); Gibson Products Co. v. United States, 637 F.2d 1041, 1045, n. 8 (CA5 1981) (dictum); see generally Treas. Reg. 1.1001-2(a)(3), 26 CFR 1.1001-2(a)(3) (1982); 2 B. Bittker, Federal Taxation of Income, Estates and Gifts § 41.2.2., pp. 41-10 - 41-11 (1981). [461 U.S. 300, 319] </s> In the separate borrowing transaction, the taxpayer acquires cash from the mortgagee. He need not recognize income at that time, of course, because he also incurs an obligation to repay the money. Later, though, when he is able to satisfy the debt by surrendering property that is worth less than the face amount of the debt, we have a classic situation of cancellation of indebtedness, requiring the taxpayer to recognize income in the amount of the difference between the proceeds of the loan and the amount for which he is able to satisfy his creditor. 26 U.S.C. 61(a)(12). The taxation of the financing transaction then reflects the economic fate of the loan. </s> The reason that separation of the two aspects of the events in this case is important is, of course, that the Code treats different sorts of income differently. A gain on the sale of the property may qualify for capital gains treatment, 1202, 1221 (1976 ed. and Supp. V), while the cancellation of indebtedness is ordinary income, but income that the taxpayer may be able to defer. 108, 1017 (1976 ed., Supp. V). Not only does Professor Barnett's theory permit us to accord appropriate treatment to each of the two types of income or loss present in these sorts of transactions, it also restores continuity to the system by making the taxpayer-seller's proceeds on the disposition of property equal to the purchaser's basis in the property. Further, and most important, it allows us to tax the events in this case in the same way that we tax the economically identical hypothesized transaction. </s> Persuaded though I am by the logical coherence and internal consistency of this approach, I agree with the Court's decision not to adopt it judicially. We do not write on a slate marked only by Crane. The Commissioner's longstanding position, Rev. Rul. 76-111, 1976-1 Cum. Bull. 214, is now reflected in the regulations. Treas. Reg. 1.1001-2, 26 CFR 1.1001-2 (1982). In the light of the numerous cases in the lower courts including the amount of the unrepaid proceeds of the mortgage in the proceeds on sale or disposition, see, [461 U.S. 300, 320] e. g., Estate of Levine v. Commissioner, 634 F.2d 12, 15 (CA2 1980); Millar v. Commissioner, 577 F.2d 212 (CA3), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 1046 (1978); Estate of Delman v. Commissioner, 73 T. C. 15, 28-30 (1979); Peninsula Properties Co., Ltd. v. Commissioner, 47 B. T. A. 84, 92 (1942), it is difficult to conclude that the Commissioner's interpretation of the statute exceeds the bounds of his discretion. As the Court's opinion demonstrates, his interpretation is defensible. One can reasonably read 1001(b)'s reference to "the amount realized from the sale or other disposition of property" (emphasis added) to permit the Commissioner to collapse the two aspects of the transaction. As long as his view is a reasonable reading of 1001(b), we should defer to the regulations promulgated by the agency charged with interpretation of the statute. National Muffler Dealers Assn. v. United States, 440 U.S. 472, 488 -489 (1979); United States v. Correll, 389 U.S. 299, 307 (1967); see also Fulman v. United States, 434 U.S. 528, 534 (1978). Accordingly, I concur. </s> [461 U.S. 300, 321]

United States Supreme Court BOARD OF EDUCATION v. ALLEN(1968) No. 660 Argued: April 22, 1968Decided: June 10, 1968 </s> New York's Education Law requires local public school authorities to lend textbooks free of charge to all students in grades seven to 12, including those in private schools. Appellant school boards sought a declaration that the statutory requirement was invalid as violative of the State and Federal Constitutions, an order barring appellee Commissioner of Education from removing appellants' members from office for failing to comply with it, and an order preventing the use of state funds for the purchase of textbooks to be lent to parochial students. The trial court held the law unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and entered summary judgment for appellants on the pleadings; the Appellate Division reversed and ordered the complaint dismissed since appellant school boards had no standing to attack the statute; and the New York Court of Appeals held that appellants did have standing but that the statute did not violate the State or Federal Constitution. The Court of Appeals said that the law was to benefit all school children, without regard to the type of school attended, that only textbooks approved by school authorities could be loaned, and therefore the statute was "completely neutral with respect to religion." Held: The statute does not violate the Establishment or the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Pp. 241-249. </s> (1) The express purpose of the statute was the furtherance of educational opportunities for the young, and the law merely makes available to all children the benefits of a general program to lend school books free of charge, and the financial benefit is to parents and children, not to schools. Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 . Pp. 243-244. </s> (2) There is no evidence that religious books have been loaned, and it cannot be assumed that school authorities are unable to distinguish between secular and religious books or that they will not honestly discharge their duties to approve only secular books. Pp. 244-245. [392 U.S. 236, 237] </s> (3) Parochial schools, in addition to their sectarian function, perform the task of secular education, and, on the basis of this meager record, the Court cannot agree with appellants that all teaching in a sectarian school is religious or that the intertwining of secular and religious training is such that secular textbooks furnished to students are in fact instrumental in teaching religion. Pp. 245-248. </s> (4) In the absence of specific evidence, and based solely on judicial notice, it cannot be concluded that the statute results in unconstitutional state involvement with religious instruction or violates the Establishment Clause. P. 248. </s> (5) Since appellants have not shown that the law coerces them in any way in the practice of religion, there is no violation of the Free Exercise Clause. Pp. 248-249. </s> 20 N. Y. 2d 109, 228 N. E. 2d 791, affirmed. </s> Marvin E. Pollock argued the cause for appellants. With him on the brief was Alan H. Levine. </s> Jean M. Coon, Assistant Attorney General of New York, argued the cause for appellee Allen. With her on the brief were Louis J. Lefkowitz, Attorney General, and Ruth Kessler Toch, Solicitor General. Porter R. Chandler argued the cause for appellees Rock et al. With him on the brief were William B. Ball, Richard E. Nolan, and James J. MacKrell. </s> Briefs of amici curiae, urging reversal, were filed by Leo Pfeffer, Arnold Forster, Edwin J. Lukas, Paul Hartman, Sol Rabkin, and Joseph B. Robison for the American Jewish Committee et al., and by Franklin C. Salisbury for Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State. </s> Briefs of amici curiae, urging affirmance, were filed by Solicitor General Griswold, Assistant Attorney General Weisl, Lawrence G. Wallace, Alan S. Rosenthal, and Robert V. Zener for the United States; by Herbert F. DeSimone, Attorney General of Rhode Island, Charles G. Edwards, Assistant Attorney General, William C. Sennett, [392 U.S. 236, 238] Attorney General of Pennsylvania, James L. Oakes, Attorney General of Vermont, Robert C. Londerholm, Attorney General of Kansas, William B. Saxbe, Attorney General of Ohio, and Joe T. Patterson, Attorney General of Mississippi; by Jack P. F. Gremillion, Attorney General, for the State of Louisiana; by Boston E. Witt, Attorney General, and Myles E. Flint, Assistant Attorney General, for the State of New Mexico; by Ethan A. Hitchcock for the National Association of Independent Schools, Inc.; by R. Raber Taylor, Stuart D. Hubbell, and Herman Cahn for Citizens for Educational Freedom; by Edward C. Maguire for the New York State AFL-CIO; by Thomas J. Ford, Edward J. Walsh, Jr., and George S. Eaton for the Long Island Conference of Religious Elementary and Secondary School Administrators; by Charles M. Whelan, W. R. Consedine, Alfred L. Scanlan, and Harmon Burns for the National Catholic Educational Association et al.; by Julius Berman for the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs, and by James P. Brown for the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. </s> MR. JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> A law of the State of New York requires local public school authorities to lend textbooks free of charge to all students in grades seven through 12; students attending private schools are included. This case presents the question whether this statute is a "law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," and so in conflict with the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, because it authorizes the loan of textbooks to students attending parochial schools. We hold that the law is not in violation of the Constitution. </s> Until 1965, 701 of the Education Law of the State of New York authorized public school boards to designate [392 U.S. 236, 239] textbooks for use in the public schools, to purchase such books with public funds, and to rent or sell the books to public school students. 1 In 1965 the Legislature amended 701, basing the amendments on findings that the "public welfare and safety require that the state and local communities give assistance to educational programs which are important to our national defense and the general welfare of the state." 2 Beginning with the 1966-1967 school year, local school boards were required to purchase textbooks and lend them without charge "to all children residing in such district who are enrolled in grades seven to twelve of a public or private school which complies with the compulsory education law." The books now loaned are "text-books which are designated for use in any public, elementary or secondary schools of the state or are approved by any boards of education," and which - according to a 1966 amendment - "a pupil is required to use as a text for a semester or more in a particular class in the school he legally attends." 3 </s> [392 U.S. 236, 240] </s> Appellant Board of Education of Central School District No. 1 in Rensselaer and Columbia Counties, brought suit in the New York courts against appellee James Allen. 4 The complaint alleged that 701 violated both the State and Federal Constitutions; that if appellants, in reliance on their interpretation of the Constitution, failed to lend books to parochial school students within their counties appellee Allen would remove appellants from office; and that to prevent this, appellants were complying with the law and submitting to their constituents a school budget including funds for books to be lent to parochial school pupils. Appellants therefore sought a declaration that 701 was invalid, an order barring appellee Allen from removing appellants from office for failing to comply with it, and another order restraining him from apportioning state funds to school districts for the purchase of textbooks to be lent to parochial students. After answer, and upon cross-motions for summary judgment, the trial court held the law unconstitutional [392 U.S. 236, 241] under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and entered judgment for appellants. 51 Misc. 2d 297, 273 N. Y. S. 2d 239 (1966). The Appellate Division reversed, ordering the complaint dismissed on the ground that appellant school boards had no standing to attack the validity of a state statute. 27 App. Div. 2d 69, 276 N. Y. S. 2d 234 (1966). On appeal, the New York Court of Appeals concluded by a 4-3 vote that appellants did have standing 5 but by a different 4-3 vote held that 701 was not in violation of either the State or the Federal Constitution. 20 N. Y. 2d 109, 228 N. E. 2d 791, 281 N. Y. S. 2d 799 (1967). The Court of Appeals said that the law's purpose was to benefit all school children, regardless of the type of school they attended, and that only textbooks approved by public school authorities could be loaned. It therefore considered 701 "completely neutral with respect to religion, merely making available secular textbooks at the request of the individual student and asking no question about what school he attends." Section 701, the Court of Appeals concluded, is not a law which "establishes a religion or constitutes the use of public funds to aid religious schools." 20 N. Y. 2d, at 117; 228 N. E. 2d, at 794, 795; 281 N. Y. S. 2d, at 805. We noted probable jurisdiction. 389 U.S. 1031 (1968). </s> Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), is the case decided by this Court that is most nearly in [392 U.S. 236, 242] point for today's problem. New Jersey reimbursed parents for expenses incurred in busing their children to parochial schools. The Court stated that the Establishment Clause bars a State from passing "laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another," and bars too any "tax in any amount, large or small . . . levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion." 330 U.S., at 15 -16. Nevertheless, said the Court, the Establishment Clause does not prevent a State from extending the benefits of state laws to all citizens without regard for their religious affiliation and does not prohibit "New Jersey from spending tax-raised funds to pay the bus fares of parochial school pupils as a part of a general program under which it pays the fares of pupils attending public and other schools." The statute was held to be valid even though one of its results was that "children are helped to get to church schools" and "some of the children might not be sent to the church schools if the parents were compelled to pay their children's bus fares out of their own pockets." 330 U.S., at 17 . As with public provision of police and fire protection, sewage facilities, and streets and sidewalks, payment of bus fares was of some value to the religious school, but was nevertheless not such support of a religious institution as to be a prohibited establishment of religion within the meaning of the First Amendment. </s> Everson and later cases have shown that the line between state neutrality to religion and state support of religion is not easy to locate. "The constitutional standard is the separation of Church and State. The problem, like many problems in constitutional law, is one of degree." Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 314 (1952). See McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961). Based [392 U.S. 236, 243] on Everson, Zorach, McGowan, and other cases, Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963), fashioned a test subscribed to by eight Justices for distinguishing between forbidden involvements of the State with religion and those contacts which the Establishment Clause permits: </s> "The test may be stated as follows: what are the purpose and the primary effect of the enactment? If either is the advancement or inhibition of religion then the enactment exceeds the scope of legislative power as circumscribed by the Constitution. That is to say that to withstand the strictures of the Establishment Clause there must be a secular legislative purpose and a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion. Everson v. Board of Education. . . ." 374 U.S., at 222 . </s> This test is not easy to apply, but the citation of Everson by the Schempp Court to support its general standard made clear how the Schempp rule would be applied to the facts of Everson. The statute upheld in Everson would be considered a law having "a secular legislative purpose and a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion." We reach the same result with respect to the New York law requiring school books to be loaned free of charge to all students in specified grades. The express purpose of 701 was stated by the New York Legislature to be furtherance of the educational opportunities available to the young. Appellants have shown us nothing about the necessary effects of the statute that is contrary to its stated purpose. The law merely makes available to all children the benefits of a general program to lend school books free of charge. Books are furnished at the request of the pupil and ownership remains, at least technically, in the State. Thus no funds or books are furnished [392 U.S. 236, 244] to parochial schools, and the financial benefit is to parents and children, not to schools. 6 Perhaps free books make it more likely that some children choose to attend a sectarian school, but that was true of the state-paid bus fares in Everson and does not alone demonstrate an unconstitutional degree of support for a religious institution. </s> Of course books are different from buses. Most bus rides have no inherent religious significance, while religious books are common. However, the language of 701 does not authorize the loan of religious books, and the State claims no right to distribute religious literature. Although the books loaned are those required by the parochial school for use in specific courses, each book [392 U.S. 236, 245] loaned must be approved by the public school authorities; only secular books may receive approval. The law was construed by the Court of Appeals of New York as "merely making available secular textbooks at the request of the individual student," supra, and the record contains no suggestion that religious books have been loaned. Absent evidence, we cannot assume that school authorities, who constantly face the same problem in selecting textbooks for use in the public schools, are unable to distinguish between secular and religious books or that they will not honestly discharge their duties under the law. In judging the validity of the statute on this record we must proceed on the assumption that books loaned to students are books that are not unsuitable for use in the public schools because of religious content. </s> The major reason offered by appellants for distinguishing free textbooks from free bus fares is that books, but not buses, are critical to the teaching process, and in a sectarian school that process is employed to teach religion. However this Court has long recognized that religious schools pursue two goals, religious instruction and secular education. In the leading case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), the Court held that although it would not question Oregon's power to compel school attendance or require that the attendance be at an institution meeting State-imposed requirements as to quality and nature of curriculum, Oregon had not shown that its interest in secular education required that all children attend publicly operated schools. A premise of this holding was the view that the State's interest in education would be served sufficiently by reliance on the secular teaching that accompanied religious training in the schools maintained by the Society of Sisters. Since Pierce, a substantial body of case law has confirmed the power of the States to insist that attendance at private schools, if it is to satisfy state compulsory-attendance [392 U.S. 236, 246] laws, be at institutions which provide minimum hours of instruction, employ teachers of specified training, and cover prescribed subjects of instruction. 7 Indeed, the State's interest in assuring that these standards are being met has been considered a sufficient reason for refusing to accept instruction at home as compliance with compulsory [392 U.S. 236, 247] education statutes. 8 These cases were a sensible corollary of Pierce v. Society of Sisters: if the State must satisfy its interest in secular education through the instrument of private schools, it has a proper interest in the manner in which those schools perform their secular educational function. Another corollary was Cochran v. Louisiana State Board of Education, 281 U.S. 370 (1930), where appellants said that a statute requiring school books to be furnished without charge to all students, whether they attended public or private schools, did not serve a "public purpose," and so offended the Fourteenth Amendment. Speaking through Chief Justice Hughes, the Court summarized as follows its conclusion that Louisiana's interest in the secular education being provided by private schools made provision of textbooks to students in those schools a properly public concern: "[The State's] interest is education, broadly; its method, comprehensive. Individual interests are aided only as the common interest is safeguarded." 281 U.S., at 375 . </s> Underlying these cases, and underlying also the legislative judgments that have preceded the court decisions, has been a recognition that private education has played and is playing a significant and valuable role in raising national levels of knowledge, competence, and experience. Americans care about the quality of the secular education available to their children. They have considered high quality education to be an indispensable ingredient for achieving the kind of nation, and the kind of citizenry, that they have desired to create. Considering this attitude, the continued willingness to rely on private school systems, including parochial systems, strongly suggests [392 U.S. 236, 248] that a wide segment of informed opinion, legislative and otherwise, has found that those schools do an acceptable job of providing secular education to their students. 9 This judgment is further evidence that parochial schools are performing, in addition to their sectarian function, the task of secular education. </s> Against this background of judgment and experience, unchallenged in the meager record before us in this case, we cannot agree with appellants either that all teaching in a sectarian school is religious or that the processes of secular and religious training are so intertwined that secular textbooks furnished to students by the public are in fact instrumental in the teaching of religion. This case comes to us after summary judgment entered on the pleadings. Nothing in this record supports the proposition that all textbooks, whether they deal with mathematics, physics, foreign languages, history, or literature, are used by the parochial schools to teach religion. No evidence has been offered about particular schools, particular courses, particular teachers, or particular books. We are unable to hold, based solely on judicial notice, that this statute results in unconstitutional involvement of the State with religious instruction or that 701, for this or the other reasons urged, is a law respecting the establishment of religion within the meaning of the First Amendment. </s> Appellants also contend that 701 offends the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. However, "it is necessary in a free exercise case for one to show the [392 U.S. 236, 249] coercive effect of the enactment as it operates against him in the practice of his religion," Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 223 (1963), and appellants have not contended that the New York law in any way coerces them as individuals in the practice of their religion. </s> The judgment is affirmed. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 New York Sess. Laws 1950, c. 239, 1. New York Education Law 703, New York Sess. Laws 1950, c. 239, 3, permitted the qualified voters of any school district to authorize a special tax for the purpose of making available free textbooks. The 1965 amendments that required free textbooks to be provided for grades seven through 12 amended 703 so that it now permits local voters to approve free books for grades one through six. </s> [Footnote 2 New York Sess. Laws 1965, c. 320, 1. </s> [Footnote 3 New York Education Law 701 (1967 Supp.): </s> "1. In the several cities and school districts of the state, boards of education, trustees or such body or officer as perform the functions of such boards, shall designate text-books to be used in the schools under their charge. </s> "2. A text-book, for the purposes of this section shall mean a book which a pupil is required to use as a text for a semester or more in a particular class in the school he legally attends. </s> "3. In the several cities and school districts of the state, boards of education, trustees or such body or officers as perform the function of such boards shall have the power and duty to purchase and [392 U.S. 236, 240] to loan upon individual request, to all children residing in such district who are enrolled in grades seven to twelve of a public or private school which complies with the compulsory education law, text-books. Text-books loaned to children enrolled in grades seven to twelve of said private schools shall be text-books which are designated for use in any public, elementary or secondary schools of the state or are approved by any boards of education, trustees or other school authorities. Such text-books are to be loaned free to such children subject to such rules and regulations as are or may be prescribed by the board of regents and such boards of education, trustees or other school authorities." </s> The present subdivision 2 was added by amendment in 1966, New York Sess. Laws 1966, c. 795. This suit was filed, and the trial court opinion was rendered, prior to the 1966 amendment. </s> [Footnote 4 Intervention was permitted on plaintiffs' side by the Board of Education of Union Free School District No. 3 in Nassau County, which appears here as co-appellant, and on defendants' side by parents of certain students attending private schools, who appear here as co-appellees. </s> [Footnote 5 Appellees do not challenge the standing of appellants to press their claim in this Court. Appellants have taken an oath to support the United States Constitution. Believing 701 to be unconstitutional, they are in the position of having to choose between violating their oath and taking a step - refusal to comply with 701 - that would be likely to bring their expulsion from office and also a reduction in state funds for their school districts. There can be no doubt that appellants thus have a "personal stake in the outcome" of this litigation. Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204 (1962). </s> [Footnote 6 While the record and the state court opinions in this case contained no information about how the books are in fact transferred from the Boards of Education to individual students, both parties suggested in their briefs and on oral argument before this Court that New York permits private schools to submit to boards of education summaries of the requests for textbooks filed by individual students, and also permits private schools to store on their premises the textbooks being loaned by the Board of Education to the students. This interpretation of the State's administrative procedure is supported by an "Opinion of Counsel" made available by the Board of Regents and the State Department of Education to local school superintendents. For purposes of this case we consider the New York statute to permit these procedures. So construing the statute, we find it in conformity with the Constitution, for the books are furnished for the use of individual students and at their request. </s> It should be noted that the record contains no evidence that any of the private schools in appellants' districts previously provided textbooks for their students. There is some evidence that at least some of the schools did not: intervenor defendants asserted that they had previously purchased all their children's textbooks. And see statement of then Commissioner of Education Keppel: "Non-public schools rarely provide free textbooks." Hearings on Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 before General Subcommittee on Education of House Committee on Education and Labor, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., Pt. 1, 93 (1965). </s> [Footnote 7 This Court has twice suggested the constitutionality of these state regulations. "[T]he State may `require teaching by instruction and study of all in our history and in the structure and organization of our government, including the guaranties of civil liberty, which tend to inspire patriotism and love of country.'" West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 631 (1943), quoting Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 604 (1940) (Stone, J., dissenting). "This Court has said that parents may, in the discharge of their duty under state compulsory education laws, send their children to a religious rather than a public school if the school meets the secular educational requirements which the state has power to impose." Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 18 (1947) (citing Pierce v. Society of Sisters). A great many state cases have upheld a wide range of private school regulation. E. g., Meyerkorth v. State, 173 Neb. 889, 115 N. W. 2d 585 (1962), appeal dismissed for want of a substantial federal question, 372 U.S. 705 (1963); State v. Hoyt, 84 N. H. 38, 146 A. 170 (1929); People v. Donner, 199 Misc. 643, 99 N. Y. S. 2d 830 (Dom. Rel. Ct. 1950), aff'd mem., 278 App. Div. 705, 103 N. Y. S. 2d 757, aff'd mem., 302 N. Y. 857, 100 N. E. 2d 48, appeal dismissed for want of a substantial federal question, 342 U.S. 884 (1951). </s> New York State regulates private schools extensively, especially as to attendance and curriculum. New York Education Law 3201-3229 (1953). Regents examinations are given to private school students. Id., 209. The basic requirement is that the instruction given in private schools satisfying the compulsory attendance law be "at least substantially equivalent to the instruction given to minors of like age and attainments at the public schools of the city or district where the minor resides." Id., 3204 subd. 2. </s> New York requires school attendance of "each minor from seven to sixteen years of age" unless he has completed high school. Id., 3205. </s> [Footnote 8 E. g., People v. Turner, 121 Cal. App. 2d 861, 263 P.2d 685 (1953), appeal dismissed for want of a substantial federal question, 347 U.S. 972 (1954). </s> [Footnote 9 In 1965-1966 in New York State, over 900,000 students, or 22.2% of total state enrollment, attended nonpublic schools. University of State of New York, Education Statistics Estimates 1966-67, Table I (1966). The comparable statistic for the Nation was at least 10%. United States Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1967, at 111 (1967). </s> MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, concurring. </s> Although I join the opinion and judgment of the Court, I wish to emphasize certain of the principles which I believe to be central to the determination of this case, and which I think are implicit in the Court's decision. </s> The attitude of government toward religion must, as this Court has frequently observed, be one of neutrality. Neutrality is, however, a coat of many colors. It requires that "government neither engage in nor compel religious practices, that it effect no favoritism among sects or between religion and nonreligion, and that it work deterrence of no religious belief." Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 305 (concurring opinion of Goldberg, J.). Realization of these objectives entails "no simple and clear measure," id., at 306, by which this or any case may readily be decided, but these objectives do suggest the principles which I believe to be applicable in the present circumstances. I would hold that where the contested governmental activity is calculated to achieve nonreligious purposes otherwise within the competence of the State, and where the activity does not involve the State "so significantly and directly in the realm of the sectarian as to give rise to . . . divisive influences and inhibitions of freedom," id., at 307, it is not forbidden by the religious clauses of the First Amendment. [392 U.S. 236, 250] </s> In my opinion, 701 of the Education Law of New York does not employ religion as its standard for action or inaction, and is not otherwise inconsistent with these principles. </s> MR. JUSTICE BLACK, dissenting. </s> The Court here affirms a judgment of the New York Court of Appeals which sustained the constitutionality of a New York law providing state tax-raised funds to supply school books for use by pupils in schools owned and operated by religious sects. I believe the New York law held valid is a flat, flagrant, open violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments which together forbid Congress or state legislatures to enact any law "respecting an establishment of religion." For that reason I would reverse the New York Court of Appeals' judgment. This, I am confident, would be in keeping with the deliberate statement we made in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 15 -16 (1947), and repeated in McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203, 210 -211 (1948), that: </s> "Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious [392 U.S. 236, 251] organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect `a wall of separation between church and State.'" </s> The Everson and McCollum cases plainly interpret the First and Fourteenth Amendments as protecting the taxpayers of a State from being compelled to pay taxes to their government to support the agencies of private religious organizations the taxpayers oppose. To authorize a State to tax its residents for such church purposes is to put the State squarely in the religious activities of certain religious groups that happen to be strong enough politically to write their own religious preferences and prejudices into the laws. This links state and churches together in controlling the lives and destinies of our citizenship - a citizenship composed of people of myriad religious faiths, some of them bitterly hostile to and completely intolerant of the others. It was to escape laws precisely like this that a large part of the Nation's early immigrants fled to this country. It was also to escape such laws and such consequences that the First Amendment was written in language strong and clear barring passage of any law "respecting an establishment of religion." </s> It is true, of course, that the New York law does not as yet formally adopt or establish a state religion. But it takes a great stride in that direction and coming events cast their shadows before them. The same powerful sectarian religious propagandists who have succeeded in securing passage of the present law to help religious schools carry on their sectarian religious purposes can and doubtless will continue their propaganda, looking toward complete domination and supremacy of their particular brand of religion. 1 And it nearly always is [392 U.S. 236, 252] by insidious approaches that the citadels of liberty are most successfully attacked. 2 </s> I know of no prior opinion of this Court upon which the majority here can rightfully rely to support its holding this New York law constitutional. In saying this, I am not unmindful of the fact that the New York Court of Appeals purported to follow Everson v. Board of Education, supra, in which this Court, in an opinion written by me, upheld a New Jersey law authorizing reimbursement to parents for the transportation of children attending sectarian schools. That law did not attempt to deny the benefit of its general terms to children of any faith going to any legally authorized school. Thus, it was treated in the same way as a general law paying the streetcar fare of all school children, or a law providing midday lunches for all children or all school children, or a law to provide police protection for children going to and from school, or general laws to provide police and fire protection for buildings, including, of course, churches and church school buildings as well as others. </s> As my Brother DOUGLAS so forcefully shows, in an argument with which I fully agree, upholding a State's power to pay bus or streetcar fares for school children cannot provide support for the validity of a state law using tax-raised funds to buy school books for a religious school. The First Amendment's bar to establishment of religion must preclude a State from using funds levied from all of its citizens to purchase books for use by sectarian schools, which, although "secular," realistically will in some way inevitably tend to propagate the religious views of the favored sect. Books are the most essential tool of education since they contain the resources of knowledge which the educational process is designed to exploit. In this sense it is not difficult [392 U.S. 236, 253] to distinguish books, which are the heart of any school, from bus fares, which provide a convenient and helpful general public transportation service. With respect to the former, state financial support actively and directly assists the teaching and propagation of sectarian religious viewpoints in clear conflict with the First Amendment's establishment bar; with respect to the latter, the State merely provides a general and nondiscriminatory transportation service in no way related to substantive religious views and beliefs. </s> This New York law, it may be said by some, makes but a small inroad and does not amount to complete state establishment of religion. But that is no excuse for upholding it. It requires no prophet to foresee that on the argument used to support this law others could be upheld providing for state or federal government funds to buy property on which to erect religious school buildings or to erect the buildings themselves, to pay the salaries of the religious school teachers, and finally to have the sectarian religious groups cease to rely on voluntary contributions of members of their sects while waiting for the Government to pick up all the bills for the religious schools. Arguments made in favor of this New York law point squarely in this direction, namely, that the fact that government has not heretofore aided religious schools with tax-raised funds amounts to a discrimination against those schools and against religion. And that there are already efforts to have government supply the money to erect buildings for sectarian religious schools is shown by a recent Act of Congress which apparently allows for precisely that. See Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963, 77 Stat. 363, 20 U.S.C. 701 et seq. </s> I still subscribe to the belief that tax-raised funds cannot constitutionally be used to support religious schools, buy their school books, erect their buildings, pay their [392 U.S. 236, 254] teachers, or pay any other of their maintenance expenses, even to the extent of one penny. The First Amendment's prohibition against governmental establishment of religion was written on the assumption that state aid to religion and religious schools generates discord, disharmony, hatred, and strife among our people, and that any government that supplies such aids is to that extent a tyranny. And I still believe that the only way to protect minority religious groups from majority groups in this country is to keep the wall of separation between church and state high and impregnable as the First and Fourteenth Amendments provide. The Court's affirmance here bodes nothing but evil to religious peace in this country. </s> [Footnote 1 See dissenting opinion of MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, post, p. 254. </s> [Footnote 2 See Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 . </s> MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, dissenting. </s> We have for review a statute which authorizes New York State to supply textbooks to students in parochial as well as in public schools. The New York Court of Appeals sustained the law on the grounds that it involves only "secular textbooks" and that that type of aid falls within Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 , 1 where a divided Court upheld a state law which made bus service available to students in parochial schools as well as to students in public schools. 20 N. Y. 2d 109, 228 N. E. 2d 791, 281 N. Y. S. 2d 799. </s> The statute on its face empowers each parochial school to determine for itself which textbooks will be eligible for loans to its students, for the Act provides that the [392 U.S. 236, 255] only text which the State may provide is "a book which a pupil is required to use as a text for a semester or more in a particular class in the school he legally attends." New York Education Law 701, subd. 2. This initial and crucial selection is undoubtedly made by the parochial school's principal or its individual instructors, who are, in the case of Roman Catholic schools, normally priests or nuns. </s> The next step under the Act is an "individual request" for an eligible textbook ( 701, subd. 3), but the State Education Department has ruled that a pupil may make his request to the local public board of education through a "private school official." 2 Local boards have accordingly provided for those requests to be made by the individual or "by groups or classes." 3 And forms for textbook requisitions to be filled out by the head of the private school are provided. 4 </s> The role of the local public school board is to decide whether to veto the selection made by the parochial school. This is done by determining first whether the text has been or should be "approved" for use in public schools and second whether the text is "secular," "nonreligious," or "non-sectarian." 5 The local boards apparently [392 U.S. 236, 256] have broad discretion in exercising this veto power. 6 </s> Thus the statutory system provides that the parochial school will ask for the books that it wants. Can there be the slightest doubt that the head of the parochial school will select the book or books that best promote its sectarian creed? </s> If the board of education supinely submits by approving and supplying the sectarian or sectarian-oriented textbooks, the struggle to keep church and state separate has been lost. If the board resists, then the battle line between church and state will have been drawn and the contest will be on to keep the school board independent or to put it under church domination and control. [392 U.S. 236, 257] </s> Whatever may be said of Everson, there is nothing ideological about a bus. There is nothing ideological about a school lunch, or a public nurse, or a scholarship. The constitutionality of such public aid to students in parochial schools turns on considerations not present in this textbook case. The textbook goes to the very heart of education in a parochial school. It is the chief, although not solitary, instrumentality for propagating a particular religious creed or faith. How can we possibly approve such state aid to a religion? A parochial school textbook may contain many, many more seeds of creed and dogma than a prayer. Yet we struck down in Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 , an official New York prayer for its public schools, even though it was not plainly denominational. For we emphasized the violence done the Establishment Clause when the power was given religious-political groups "to write their own prayers into law." Id., at 427. That risk is compounded here by giving parochial schools the initiative in selecting the textbooks they desire to be furnished at public expense. </s> Judge Van Voorhis, joined by Chief Judge Fuld and Judge Breitel, dissenting below, said that the difficulty with the textbook loan program "is that there is no reliable standard by which secular and religious textbooks [392 U.S. 236, 258] can be distinguished from each other." 20 N. Y. 2d, at 122, 228 N. E. 2d, at 798, 281 N. Y. S. 2d, at 809. The New York Legislature felt that science was a nonsectarian subject (see n. 5, supra). Does this mean that any general science textbook intended for use in grades 7-12 may be provided by the State to parochial school students? May John M. Scott's Adventures in Science (1963) be supplied under the textbook loan program? This book teaches embryology in the following manner: </s> "To you an animal usually means a mammal, such as a cat, dog, squirrel, or guinea pig. The new animal or embryo develops inside the body of the mother until birth. The fertilized egg becomes an embryo or developing animal. Many cell divisions take place. In time some cells become muscle cells, others nerve cells or blood cells, and organs such as eyes, stomach, and intestine are formed. </s> "The body of a human being grows in the same way, but it is much more remarkable than that of any animal, for the embryo has a human soul infused into the body by God. Human parents are partners with God in creation. They have very great powers and great responsibilities, for through their cooperation with God souls are born for heaven." (At 618-619.) 7 </s> Comparative economics would seem to be a nonsectarian subject. Will New York, then, provide Arthur J. Hughes' general history text, Man in Time (1964), to [392 U.S. 236, 259] parochial school students? It treats that topic in this manner: </s> "Capitalism is an economic system based on man's right to private property and on his freedom to use that property in producing goods which will earn him a just profit on his investment. Man's right to private property stems from the Natural Law implanted in him by God. It is as much a part of man's nature as the will to self-preservation." (At 560.) </s> "The broadest definition of socialism is government ownership of all the means of production and distribution in a country. . . . Many, but by no means all, Socialists in the nineteenth century believed that crime and vice existed because poverty existed, and if poverty were eliminated, then crime and vice would disappear. While it is true that poor surroundings are usually unhealthy climates for high moral training, still, man has the free will to check himself. Many Socialists, however, denied free will and said that man was a creation of his environment. . . . If Socialists do not deny Christ's message, they often ignore it. Christ showed us by His life that this earth is a testing ground to prepare man for eternal happiness. Man's interests should be in this direction at least part of the time and not always directed toward a futile quest for material goods." (At 561-564.) 8 </s> Mr. Justice Jackson said, ". . . I should suppose it is a proper, if not an indispensable, part of preparation for a [392 U.S. 236, 260] worldly life to know the roles that religion and religions have played in the tragic story of mankind." McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203, 236 (concurring opinion). Yet, as he inquired, what emphasis should one give who teaches the Reformation, the Inquisition, or the early effort in New England to establish "`a Church without a Bishop and a State without a King?'" Ibid. What books should be chosen for those subjects? </s> Even where the treatment given to a particular topic in a school textbook is not blatantly sectarian, it will necessarily have certain shadings that will lead a parochial school to prefer one text over another. 9 </s> The Crusades, for example, may be taught as a Christian undertaking to "save the Holy Land" from the Moslem Turks who "became a threat to Christianity and its holy places," which "they did not treat . . . with respect" [392 U.S. 236, 261] (H. Wilson, F. Wilson, B. Erb & E. Clucas, Out of the Past 284 (1954)), or as essentially a series of wars born out of political and materialistic motives (see G. Leinwand, The Pageant of World History 136-137 (1965)). </s> Is the dawn of man to be explained in the words, "God created man and made man master of the earth" (P. Furlong, The Old World and America 5 (1937)), or in the language of evolution (see T. Wallbank, Man's Story 32-35 (1961))? </s> Is the slaughter of the Aztecs by Cortes and his entourage to be lamented for its destruction of a New World culture (see J. Caughey, J. Franklin, & E. May, Land of the Free 27-28 (1965)), or forgiven because the Spaniards "carried the true Faith" to a barbaric people who practiced human sacrifice (see P. Furlong, Sr. Margaret, & D. Sharkey, America Yesterday 17, 34 (1963))? </s> Is Franco's revolution in Spain to be taught as a crusade against anti-Catholic forces (see R. Hoffman, G. Vincitorio, & M. Swift, Man and His History 666-667 (1958)) 10 or as an effort by reactionary elements to regain control of that country (see G. Leinwand, The Pageant of World History, supra, at 512)? 11 Is the expansion of [392 U.S. 236, 262] communism in select areas of the world a manifestation of the forces of Evil campaigning against the forces of Good? See A. Hughes, Man in Time, supra, at 565-568, 666-669, 735-748. </s> It will be often difficult, as Mr. Justice Jackson said, to say "where the secular ends and the sectarian begins in education." McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S., at 237 -238. But certain it is that once the so-called "secular" textbook is the prize to be won by that religious faith which selects the book, the battle will be on for those positions of control. Judge Van Voorhis expressed the fear that in the end the state might dominate the church. Others fear that one sectarian group, gaining control of the state agencies which approve the "secular" textbooks, will use their control to disseminate ideas most congenial to their faith. It must be remembered that the very existence of the religious school - whether Catholic or Mormon, Presbyterian or Episcopalian - is to provide an education oriented to the dogma of the particular faith. 12 </s> [392 U.S. 236, 263] </s> Father Peter O'Reilly put the matter succinctly when he disclosed what was happening in one Catholic school: 13 "On February 24, 1954, Rev. Cyril F. Meyer, C. M., then Vice President of the University, sent the following letter to all the faculty, both Catholics and non-Catholics, even those teaching law, science, and mathematics: </s> "`Dear Faculty Member: </s> "`As a result of several spirited discussions in the Academic Senate, a resolution was passed by that body that a self-evaluation be made of the effectiveness with which we are achieving in our classrooms the stated objectives of the University. . . . The primacy of the spiritual is the reason for a Christian university. Our goal is not merely to equip students with marketable skills. It is far above this - to educate man, the whole man, the theocentric man. As you are well aware, we strive to educate not only for personal and social success in secular society, but far more for leadership toward a theocentric society. . . . [392 U.S. 236, 264] </s> "`May I, therefore, respectfully request that you submit answers as specific as possible to the following questions: </s> "`1. What do you do to make your particular courses theocentric? </s> "`2. Do you believe there is anything the Administration or your colleagues can do to assist you in presenting your particular courses more "according to the philosophical and theological traditions of the Roman Catholic Church"? Do not hesitate to let us know. There is no objective of our University more fundamental than this. We must all be aware that "the classroom that is not a temple is a den." </s> "`Please try to have your answers, using this size paper, returned to me by March 10.'" </s> This tendency is no Catholic monopoly: </s> "The Presbyterian-affiliated Lewis and Clark College seems to have a similar interest in appearances of autonomy, with a view to avoiding possible legal bars to both federal funds and gifts from some foundations. The change, which legitimizes the college as an autonomous educational institution, removes the requirement that each presbytery in Oregon have at least one representative on the board, but it was made clear `The college wishes to change only its legal relationship to the synod and not its purposes,' and promised that it still will elect a minister from each presbytery to the board on nomination of the synod, and will consult the synod before making any change in its statement of purpose, which defines it as a Presbyterian-related college." 14 </s> The challenged New York law leaves to the Board of Regents, local boards of education, trustees, and other school authorities the supervision of the textbook program. [392 U.S. 236, 265] </s> The Board of Regents (together with the Commissioner of Education) has powers of censorship over all textbooks that contain statements seditious in character, or evince disloyalty to the United States or are favorable to any nation with which we are at war. New York Education Law 704. Those powers can cut a wide swath in many areas of education that involve the ideological element. 15 </s> In general textbooks are approved for distribution by "boards of education, trustees or such body or officer as perform the functions of such boards . . . ." New York Education Law 701, subd. 1. These school boards are generally elected, 2013, 2502, subd. 2, though in a few cities they are appointed. 2553. Where there are trustees, they are elected. 1523, 1602, 1702. And superintendents who advise on textbook selection are appointed by the board of education or the trustees. 1711, 2503, subd. 5, 2507. </s> The initiative to select and requisition "the books desired" is with the parochial school. Powerful religious-political pressures will therefore be on the state agencies to provide the books that are desired. </s> These then are the battlegrounds where control of textbook distribution will be won or lost. Now that "secular" textbooks will pour into religious schools, we can rest assured that a contest will be on 16 to provide those books for religious schools which the dominant religious group concludes best reflect the theocentric or other philosophy of the particular church. [392 U.S. 236, 266] </s> The stakes are now extremely high - just as they were in the school prayer cases (see Engel v. Vitale, supra) - to obtain approval of what is "proper." For the "proper" books will radiate the "correct" religious view not only in the parochial school but in the public school as well. </s> Even if I am wrong in that basic premise, we still should not affirm the judgment below. Judge Van Voorhis, dissenting in the New York Court of Appeals, thought that the result of tying parochial school textbooks to public funds would be to put nonsectarian books into religious schools, which in the long view would tend towards state domination of the church. 20 N. Y. 2d, at 123, 228 N. E. 2d, at 798, 281 N. Y. S. 2d, at 810. That would, indeed, be the result if the school boards did not succumb to "sectarian" pressure or control. So, however the case be viewed - whether sectarian groups win control of school boards or do not gain such control - the principle of separation of church and state, inherent in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, is violated by what we today approve. </s> What Madison wrote in his famous Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments is highly pertinent here: 17 </s> "Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, 18 may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?" [392 U.S. 236, 267] </s> APPENDIX A TO OPINION OF DOUGLAS, J., DISSENTING. </s> CODE - 220-399-2-NYSTL REQ. NUMBER . . . . . . . . </s> TEXTBOOK REQUISITION </s> PUBLISHERS NAME ............. </s> STREET ADDRESS ............. </s> CITY AND STATE ............. </s> SHIP TO - EDISON WAREHOUSE </s> STREET - VAN GUYSLING AVE. </s> CITY & STATE - SCHENECTADY, N. Y. </s> ______________________________________________________ </s> NO. COPIES ... NAME OF BOOK ......... TOTAL ... </s> EDITION .......... </s> GRADE LEVEL ........ </s> PRICE PER BOOK ...... ............ Total Amount </s> I certify that the following number of children residing in your school district have individually requested the loan of the textbook indicated above for the school year 1967-68 in accordance with Section 701, subdivision 2, of the Education Law. Form 1 requests have been submitted to you for each child. I also certify that the textbook requested is a non-sectarian edition and approved for use by a New York State Public School District. </s> ................................ .......................... Name of Parochial/Private School Official of Private School [392 U.S. 236, 268] </s> APPENDIX B TO OPINION OF DOUGLAS, J., DISSENTING. </s> LETTER OF FRANCIS CARDINAL SPELLMAN, NOVEMBER 1, 1967. </s> One of the most precious rights which we have in our civil society is the right to vote. This right should be exercised with reverence and with understanding - particularly when emotional feelings run high. </s> An important opportunity to exercise this right will be provided on next Tuesday, November 7th. On that day we are asked to choose between the old State Constitution and the proposed new State Constitution. We will decide whether the provisions of the New Constitution will better serve the changing needs of our families, our neighbors, and our institutions, both public and private. </s> We are faced with a grave responsibility to weigh this choice carefully and to vote conscientiously. I have viewed with concern the tone of the past month's discussion with regard to the proposed new Constitution. I am disappointed that so much of the opposition to the Constitution comes from those forces in our pluralistic society who would deny equal educational opportunities to children attending parochial schools. As a citizen I am dismayed to think that they would have overwhelmingly supported the new Constitution were it not for the fact that it repeals the Blaine Amendment. </s> The proposed new Constitution, as a whole, is so closely related to our lives that it must command our careful consideration. This document addresses itself to values basic to the fulfillment of our lives as citizens. We must be aware that this Constitution contains new provisions designed to facilitate the rebuilding of our communities, new provisions committing the State to the [392 U.S. 236, 269] maximum development of the educational potential of every citizen, new provisions enabling government, in a responsible way, to mobilize all the forces of society to meet the changing needs of all our people, to enhance their environment and to promote their social well-being. </s> At the close of the Constitutional Convention I expressed my opinion that the Convention had produced a document worthy of support by the people of New York State. Nothing in the public debate since then has caused me to alter my judgment. </s> I know that you will conscientiously fulfill your civic duty and that you will give serious consideration to this proposed new Constitution. * </s> [Footnote 1 Everson, relied on by the Court of Appeals of New York, did not involve textbooks and did not present the serious problems raised by a form of aid to parochial students which injects religious issues into the choice of curriculum. In the only decision of this Court upholding a state grant of textbooks to sectarian school students, Cochran v. Board of Education, 281 U.S. 370 , the First Amendment issue was not raised. See id., at 370-373; Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 29 , n. 3 (dissenting opinion). </s> [Footnote 2 Letter from Herbert F. Johnson, State Education Department, to City, Village and District Superintendents & Supervising Principals, § 5, Jan. 10, 1966, reproduced in Brief for American Jewish Committee et al. as Amici Curiae, at 43, 44. </s> [Footnote 3 Manual of Instructions on Recordkeeping Procedures for Textbooks Loaned in Conformance With Provisions of the New York State Textbook Law § 2.3 (1967), reproduced in Brief for National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs as Amicus Curiae, at 24, 25. </s> [Footnote 4 See Appendix A to this opinion. </s> [Footnote 5 The State Court of Appeals used the phrases "secular textbooks" and "nonreligious textbooks" without any elaboration as to what was meant. 20 N. Y. 2d, at 117, 228 N. E. 2d, at 794-795, 281 N. Y. S. 2d, at 805. The legislature, in its "statement of policy" to the Act (Laws of 1965, c. 320, 1), speaks of aiding instruction [392 U.S. 236, 256] in "non-sectarian subjects," and gives as examples "science, mathematics, [and] foreign languages." The State Department of Education has stated that "it is necessary that . . . [t]he textbooks be non-sectarian (this eliminates denominational editions and those carrying the `imprimatur' or `nihil obstat' of a religious authority) . . . ." Opinion of Counsel No. 181. There are no other definitions to be found. </s> The Court was advised at oral argument by the Assistant Attorney General that Opinion of Counsel No. 181 is advisory only and not binding. It would state the policy of the New York Department of Education in event of an appeal to it by a taxpayer of a local board's decision that a certain text was "non-sectarian" or should be "approved." The Regents of the University of the State of New York, who have the last word on such matters and are specifically authorized by 701, subd. 3, to promulgate regulations respecting the textbook loan program, have not done so, and their position on what is "non-sectarian" is unknown. </s> [Footnote 6 For example the regulations of the Board of Education of the City of New York respecting approval of textbooks for public schools contain no limitations directly relevant to the question of sectarianism. The material is to "promote the objectives of the educational program," "treat the subject competently and accurately," "be in good taste," "have a wholesome tone that is consonant with right conduct and civic values," "be in harmony with American democratic ideals and moral values," "be free of any reflection on the dignity and status of any group, race, or religion, [392 U.S. 236, 257] whether expressed or implied, by statement or omission," and "be free of objectionable features of over-dramatization, violence, or crime." Guiding Principles for Schools in the Selection and Use of "Non-Listed" Instructional Materials (1952). Opinion of Counsel No. 181 (see n. 5, supra) simply states that the local board, if it finds that no other board has approved the text in question, should "decide if it wishes to approve the same itself." This opinion of counsel also states that if the board is in doubt as to whether a text is "non-sectarian," that is whether it carries an imprimatur or nihil obstat or is a denominational edition, it "must make the appropriate determination." </s> [Footnote 7 Although the author of this textbook is a priest, the text contains no imprimatur and no nihil obstat. Although published by a Catholic press, the Loyola University Press, Chicago, it is not marked in any manner as a "denominational edition," but is simply the general edition of the book. Accordingly, under Opinion of Counsel No. 181, the only document approaching a "regulation" on the issue involved here, Adventures in Science would qualify as "non-sectarian." See nn. 5, 6, supra. </s> [Footnote 8 Man In Time contains a nihil obstat and an imprimatur. Thus, if Opinion of Counsel No. 181 (see nn. 5, 6, supra) is applicable, this book may not be provided by the State. The Opinion of Counsel, however, is only "advisory," we are told; moreover, the religious endorsements could easily be removed by the author and publisher at the next printing. </s> [Footnote 9 Some parochial schools may prefer those texts which are liberally sprinkled with religious vignettes. This creeping sectarianism avoids the direct teaching of religious doctrine but keeps the student continually reminded of the sectarian orientation of his education. In P. Furlong, Sr. Margaret, & D. Sharkey's American history text, America Yesterday (1963), for example, the student is informed that the first mass to be said in what is now the United States was in 1526 near Chesapeake Bay, that eight French missionaries to Canada in the early 1600's were canonized in 1930, that one of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence and two who attended the Constitutional Convention were Catholic, and that the superintendent of the Hudson Bay Company's outpost in the Oregon country converted to Catholicism in 1842. At 26, 73-74, 102, 140, 235. And J. Scott's Adventures in Science (1963), in teaching the atmospheric conditions prevailing at the top of Mount Everest, informs the student that when Sir Edmund Hillary first scaled this peak he placed there a "tiny crucifix" which a Benedictine monk had supplied. At 72. </s> America Yesterday, supra, is another example of a text written by the clergy (here a priest and nun together with one layman) that contains no imprimatur and no nihil obstat and is not a denominational edition. See nn. 5-7. </s> [Footnote 10 "In Spain early in 1936 a popular-front organization won a victory in the national elections. The result was a government made up of discordant political elements that failed to preserve civil order in the country. Violent anti-Catholics attacked and burned churches and monasteries, and the government did not even try to prevent these crimes. As a result, Spaniards who loved their country and were loyal to their religion revolted against the popular-front government of the republic. An able general, Francisco Franco, put himself at the head of the revolt, which began in July 1936." </s> [Footnote 11 "Spain, at the end of World War I, was a backward, poverty-stricken monarchy. In 1931, the king resigned and the people established a republic. The Spanish tried many reforms, but there were many who wanted to go back to the old ways and old privileges of the monarchy. Those who were rich wanted to hold on to [392 U.S. 236, 262] their property. These people thought that Francisco Franco, a Fascist, could help them. </s> "In 1936, a civil war started which soon came to be called a `dress rehearsal' for World War II because the Fascist countries of Italy and Germany supported Franco and his rebels. On the other hand, Russia supported the loyalists (as the armies of the republic were called). The democratic countries might have supported the loyalists, too, but fear of communism prevented them from doing so. Franco defeated the loyalists and, in 1938, became dictator of Spain and today as El Caudillo (`The Leader') still rules Spain with an iron hand." </s> [Footnote 12 The purpose of the parochial school in the beginning is clear beyond peradventure. The generally held Roman Catholic position in the matter of education in public and parochial schools has been well summarized by the late Monsignor John A. Ryan (1869-1945): </s> "`As a matter of fact, the State maintains a system of schools which is not completely satisfactory to Catholics, inasmuch as no [392 U.S. 236, 263] place is given to morality and religion. Since the Church realizes that the teaching of religion and instruction in the secular branches cannot rightfully or successfully be separated one from the other, she is compelled to maintain her own system of schools for general education as well as for religious instruction. . . .'" 2 A. Stokes, Church and State in the United States 654 (1950). </s> "The education in the parochial schools follows in general the curriculum in the public schools, the main differences being that about 15 per cent of the time is given to religious instruction, and that the Catholic point of view is brought out in the treatment of historical and other subjects, just as the Protestant point of view might be emphasized in a Protestant school." Ibid. </s> Some, however, think that some parochial schools are changing their character under practical pressures of educational competition. See, e. g., Fleming, Fordham Is Trying to be catholic With a Small "c," N. Y. Times Magazine, Dec. 10, 1967, p. 32. </s> [Footnote 13 St. John's I: A Chronicle of Folly, 4 Continuum 223, 233-234 (1966). </s> [Footnote 14 Id., 234 (emphasis in original). </s> [Footnote 15 Cf. Adler v. Board of Education, 342 U.S. 485 ; Barsky v. Board of Regents, 347 U.S. 442 . </s> [Footnote 16 The proportions of the contest are suggested in the letter dated November 1, 1967, that the late Cardinal Spellman directed to be read at all the masses on Sunday, November 5, 1967, just before the vote on a proposed Constitution that would have opened wide the door to state aid to parochial schools. I have attached the letter as Appendix B to this opinion. </s> [Footnote 17 2 Writings of James Madison 186 (Hunt ed. 1901). </s> [Footnote 18 For a recent account of the extent to which public funds are being poured into sectarian schools see S. Rep. No. 473, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 9-10 (1967). </s> [Footnote * One parochial school lobbyist group has urged Congress that in order to avoid an establishment of secularism in education, federal monies must be distributed to all the various sects which operate parochial schools. </s> "[T]here is no valueless or neutral school," it is argued, and education and religion cannot be separated from each other. Hearings on S. 3 and H. R. 1198 before Subcommittee No. 3 of the House Committee on the Judiciary, 90th Cong., 2d Sess., at ___ (1968) (statement of Dr. Francis J. Brown, chairman, National Association for Personal Rights in Education). </s> The views expressed by my Brother HARLAN in his concurring opinion are somewhat similar. His approval, on a constitutional basis, of government aid to our country's churches "calculated to achieve nonreligious purposes otherwise within the competence of the State" and not involving the state "`significantly and directly in the realm of the sectarian'" would seem to permit considerable diversion of public funds to the various sects. The state's "competence" in the areas of health, safety, and welfare of the people would under that view permit it to fund a church's charity programs, [392 U.S. 236, 270] pay for renovating dilapidated church buildings, and pay for the services and upkeep, such as janitors' salaries and utility bills, necessary to maintain church buildings in safe and healthful condition. Indeed, short of state-provided prayer books, sacramental wine, and the like, churches could, apparently, become virtual state dependencies. </s> Should that, unhappily, come to pass, then perhaps the church would in time become an administrative arm of the state, a goal predicted by J. Galbraith for "the mature corporation." The New Industrial State 393 (1967). </s> Then the circle would be completed and we would return to the point where the long struggle to keep church and state separate first started. </s> Such a constitutional form of government is conceivable. But proposals for putting each of the Nation's religious sects on the public payroll should be addressed to a federal constitutional convention, since, as my Brother BLACK shows, such a scheme was thoroughly rejected in 1791 with the adoption of the First Amendment. </s> MR. JUSTICE FORTAS, dissenting. </s> The majority opinion of the Court upholds the New York statute by ignoring a vital aspect of it. Public funds are used to buy, for students in sectarian schools, textbooks which are selected and prescribed by the sectarian [392 U.S. 236, 270] schools themselves. As my Brother DOUGLAS points out, despite the transparent camouflage that the books are furnished to students, the reality is that they are selected and their use is prescribed by the sectarian authorities. The child must use the prescribed book. He cannot use a different book prescribed for use in the public schools. The State cannot choose the book to be used. It is true that the public school boards must "approve" the book selected by the sectarian authorities; but this has no real significance. The purpose of these provisions is to hold out promise that the books will be "secular" (but cf. DOUGLAS, J., dissenting, ante, at 256, n. 6); but the fact remains that the books are chosen by and for the sectarian schools. </s> It is misleading to say, as the majority opinion does, that the New York "law merely makes available to all children the benefits of a general program to lend school books free of charge." (Ante, at 243.) This is not a "general" program. It is a specific program to use state [392 U.S. 236, 271] funds to buy books prescribed by sectarian schools which, in New York, are primarily Catholic, Jewish, and Lutheran sponsored schools. It could be called a "general" program only if the school books made available to all children were precisely the same - the books selected for and used in the public schools. But this program is not one in which all children are treated alike, regardless of where they go to school. This program, in its unconstitutional features, is hand-tailored to satisfy the specific needs of sectarian schools. Children attending such schools are given special books - books selected by the sectarian authorities. How can this be other than the use of public money to aid those sectarian establishments? </s> It is also beside the point, in my opinion, to "assume," as the majority opinion does, that "books loaned to students are books that are not unsuitable for use in the public schools because of religious content." (Ante, at 245.) The point is that the books furnished to students of sectarian schools are selected by the religious authorities and are prescribed by them. </s> This case is not within the principle of Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947). Apart from the differences between textbooks and bus rides, the present statute does not call for extending to children attending sectarian schools the same service or facility extended to children in public schools. This statute calls for furnishing special, separate, and particular books, specially, separately, and particularly chosen by religious sects or their representatives for use in their sectarian schools. This is the infirmity, in my opinion. This is the feature that makes it impossible, in my view, to reach any conclusion other than that this statute is an unconstitutional use of public funds to support an establishment of religion. </s> This is the feature of the present statute that makes it totally inaccurate to suggest, as the majority does [392 U.S. 236, 272] here, that furnishing these specially selected books for use in sectarian schools is like "public provision of police and fire protection, sewage facilities, and streets and sidewalks." (Ante, at 242.) These are furnished to all alike. They are not selected on the basis of specification by a religious sect. And patrons of any one sect do not receive services or facilities different from those accorded members of other religions or agnostics or even atheists. </s> I would reverse the judgment below. </s> [392 U.S. 236, 273]

United States Supreme Court RICHARDSON v. MORRIS(1973) No. 72-603 Argued: Decided: January 15, 1973 </s> District Court, which granted appellees an injunction against enforcement of 203 (a) of the Social Security Act, erred in assuming jurisdiction under Tucker Act, which does not authorize suits for equitable relief. </s> 346 F. Supp. 494, vacated and remanded. </s> PER CURIAM. </s> Appellees are illegitimate children on whose behalf a class action was commenced seeking to enjoin enforcement of 203 (a) of the Social Security Act, 49 Stat. 623, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 403 (a), on the ground that the provision was unconstitutional under this Court's decisions in Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 406 U.S. 164 (1972), and Levy v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 68 (1968). The District Court granted appellees' request for declaratory and injunctive relief. </s> On the merits, this appeal involves the same issues that were raised in Davis v. Richardson, 342 F. Supp. 588 (Conn.), aff'd, post, p. 1069, and Griffin v. Richardson, 346 F. Supp. 1226 (Md.), aff'd, post, p. 1069. Unlike those cases, however, the District Court here purported to predicate its jurisdiction on the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. 1346 (a) (2). Assuming, arguendo, that exhaustion of the administrative remedies provided by the Social Security Act was not a prerequisite to appellees' attack on the facial constitutionality of 203 (a), see Public Utilities Comm'n of California v. United States, 355 U.S. 534 (1958), we nonetheless conclude that it was error for [409 U.S. 464, 465] the District Court to assume jurisdiction under the Tucker Act. </s> The Tucker Act plainly gives district courts jurisdiction over claims against the United States for money damages of less than $10,000 that are "founded . . . upon the Constitution." * But the Act has long been contrued as authorizing only actions for money judgments and not suits for equitable relief against the United States. See United States v. Jones, 131 U.S. 1 (1889). The reason for the distinction flows from the fact that the Court of Claims has no power to grant equitable relief, see Glidden Co. v. Zdanok, 370 U.S. 530, 557 (1962) (Harlan, J., announcing the judgment of the Court), and the jurisdiction of the district courts under the Act was expressly made "concurrent with the Court [409 U.S. 464, 466] of Claims." See United States v. Sherwood, 312 U.S. 584, 589 -591 (1941); Bates Mfg. Co. v. United States, 303 U.S. 567, 570 (1938). What was said in Sherwood, supra, at 591, applies here: </s> "[T]he Tucker Act did no more than authorize the District Court to sit as a court of claims and . . . the authority thus given to adjudicate claims against the United States does not extend to any suit which could not be maintained in the Court of Claims." </s> Although appellees contend that jurisdiction was properly asserted under various alternative provisions of the Judicial Code, the District Court did not pass upon the applicability of those other provisions. Accordingly, appellees' motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted, the judgment is vacated, and the case remanded to the District Court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. </s> It is so ordered. </s> [Footnote * The Act, in pertinent part, reads as follows: </s> "(a) The district courts shall have original jurisdiction, concurrent with the Court of Claims, of: </s> . . . . . </s> "(2) Any other [excepting certain tax cases] civil action or claim against the United States, not exceeding $10,000 in amount, founded either upon the Constitution, or any Act of Congress, or any regulation of an executive department, or upon any express or implied contract with the United States, or for liquidated or unliquidated damages in cases not sounding in tort." </s> The Act was passed in 1887. 24 Stat. 505. As enacted, the Act read in terms of "[a]ll claims" rather than "[a]ny other civil action or claim." Appellees suggest that the added phrase was intended to broaden the scope of district court jurisdiction to include "actions" for injunctions as well as "claims" for monetary damages. The phrase, however, did not appear in the 1940 edition of the Judicial Code, 28 U.S.C. 41 (20), and appears to have been inserted during the revision in 1948, without any suggestion that the change was to affect the section's substance. In any event, the corresponding section dealing with the concurrent jurisdiction of the Court of Claims contains no such addition. See 28 U.S.C. 1491. </s> [409 U.S. 464, 467]

United States Supreme Court LINER v. JAFCO, INC.(1964) No. 43 Argued: November 21, 1963Decided: January 6, 1964 </s> The Chattanooga Building Trades Council comprises numerous building trades unions, including the Hod-Carriers Union and its Local 846, two of the petitioners. Respondent Rea Construction Co., a large North Carolina building contractor, was engaged by respondent Jafco, Inc., as general contractor to erect a shopping center on a site in Tennessee. Rea operated an open shop, and workers on the project were paid lower wages than the union scale. The Council authorized the Hod-Carriers to place a picket at the site in protest, and petitioner Liner began peaceful picketing, whereupon construction workers on the job promptly ceased work. On the same day, Jafco sought an ex parte injunction from a Tennessee state court, which ordered the injunction to issue upon the execution and filing of an injunction bond. The next day Jafco filed a bond to indemnify petitioners in damages if the injunction was "wrongfully" sued out. Petitioners' motion in the state court to dissolve the injunction was denied; the injunction was made permanent by a final decree; and on appeal the decree was affirmed. Pending decision on the appeal, construction at the site was completed. The State Supreme Court denied certiorari. Held: The issuance of the injunction was beyond the power of the Tennessee courts, and the judgment is reversed. Pp. 304-310. </s> (a) This Court is not bound by the state appellate court's holding that this case was rendered moot by the completion of construction, since in this case the question of mootness is itself a question of federal law upon which this Court must pronounce final judgment. P. 304. </s> (b) The petitioners plainly have a substantial stake in the judgment, deriving from the respondent's undertaking in the injunction bond, which survives the completion of construction. P. 305. </s> (c) Since a holding of mootness would frustrate national labor policy and encourage interference with the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board, the Court should be astute to avoid hindrances in the way of reviewing the state court's adverse decision on the claim of federal preemption. Pp. 306-308. </s> (d) Whether the facts showed a "labor dispute" within the meaning of 29 U.S.C. 152 (9) is at least arguable, wherefore the [375 U.S. 301, 302] state courts had no jurisdiction to issue an injunction or to adjudicate the controversy, which lay within the exclusive powers of the National Labor Relations Board. Pp. 309-310. </s> Reversed and remanded. </s> S. Del Fuston argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the brief was H. G. B. King. </s> John A. Chambliss, Jr. argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief was James F. Corn. </s> MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> The Chattanooga Building Trades Council, AFL, is composed of 17 building trades unions, including Hod-Carriers Building and Common Laborers' Union of America and its Local 846, two of the petitioners. Respondent Rea Construction Company, a large North Carolina building contractor, was engaged by respondent Jafco, Inc., as general contractor to erect a shopping center on a site in Cleveland, Tennessee. Rea operated an open shop, and workers on the project were paid lower wages than the union scale. The Council authorized the Hod-Carriers to place a single picket at the site in protest. The petitioner Liner, carrying a sign which read "Rea Construction Co., not under contract with Chattanooga Building Trades Council, A. F. of L.," began peaceful picketing on August 8, 1960. Construction workers on the job promptly ceased work. On the same day respondent Jafco, Inc., sought an ex parte injunction against the picketing from the Tennessee Chancery Court, which ordered the injunction to issue upon the execution and filing of an injunction bond. See 5 Tenn. Code Ann., 1955, 23-1901. The next day, August 9, Jafco filed a bond providing that, if the injunction action failed, Jafco "shall well and truly pay and satisfy the said [petitioners] all such costs, damages, interest, and other sums [375 U.S. 301, 303] as may be awarded and recovered against the said Jafco, Inc. in any suit or suits which may be hereafter broyght [sic] for wrongfully suing out said Injunction . . . ." Thereupon the ex parte injunction issued, 1 the picketing ceased in compliance with it, and work on the project was resumed. </s> The petitioners moved promptly in the Chancery Court to dissolve the injunction on the ground that the state court was without jurisdiction to adjudicate the controversy because the subject matter of the picketing was exclusively within the cognizance of the National Labor Relations Board. The motion was denied on September 29 by an order which recited, "There is no bona fide labor dispute between the parties in this litigation and therefore the state court has jurisdiction of the matter and the same has not [been] preempted by the National Labor Relations Board." 2 Following a hearing, the injunction was made permanent by a final decree entered on June 16, 1961. Petitioners appealed to the Court of Appeals of Tennessee, Eastern Section, which affirmed on January 12, 1962. The opinion, not officially reported, is reported in 49 L. R. R. M. 2585. Pending decision on the appeal, construction at the site had been completed. Noting this fact, the court stated, "In the first [375 U.S. 301, 304] place the questions in this case have become moot." However, the court went on to say, "Further, we concur with the Chancellor's finding that a bona fide labor dispute did not exist." 49 L. R. R. M., at 2587. The Supreme Court of Tennessee, by an unreported order, denied certiorari. We brought the case here, 371 U.S. 961 , to consider the validity of the injunction in light of our decision in Local 438, Construction Laborers v. Curry, 371 U.S. 542 . We hold that the issuance of the injunction was beyond the power of the Tennessee courts and therefore reverse the judgment. </s> We must first consider respondents' challenge to our jurisdiction to review the Tennessee courts' rejection of the petitioners' federal preemption claim. The argument is that we are bound by the state appellate court's holding that this case was rendered moot by the completion of construction. We think, however, that in this case the question of mootness is itself a question of federal law upon which we must pronounce final judgment. Love v. Griffith, 266 U.S. 32 . In that case a Texas trial court dismissed a suit to enjoin the enforcement of an allegedly unconstitutional rule which barred Negroes from voting in a single Houston Democratic primary election. An appeal from the dismissal was in turn dismissed by the Texas Court of Civil Appeals on the ground that, since the election was, at that time, long since passed, the cause of action had ceased to exist. This Court, speaking through Mr. Justice Holmes, implicitly denied that the state court's finding of mootness precluded our independent determination of that question, saying, </s> "When as here there is a plain assertion of federal rights in the lower court, local rules as to how far it shall be reviewed on appeal do not necessarily prevail. Davis v. Wechsler, 263 U.S. 22, 24 . Whether the right was denied or not given due recognition by the Court of Civil Appeals is a question as to which [375 U.S. 301, 305] the plaintiffs are entitled to invoke our judgment. Ward v. Love County, 253 U.S. 17, 22 ." 266 U.S., at 33 -34. </s> The Court did not, however, think that the action of the Texas Court of Civil Appeals prejudiced the appellants' constitutional rights. Since the election had been held, any order reversing the trial court and ordering the injunction to issue would have been futile; an injunction could not at that date redress the alleged constitutional injury. The Court said: </s> "If the case stood here as it stood before the court of first instance it would present a grave question of constitutional law and we should be astute to avoid hindrances in the way of taking it up. But that is not the situation. The rule promulgated by the Democratic Executive Committee was for a single election only that had taken place long before the decision of the Appellate Court. No constitutional rights of the plaintiffs in error were infringed by holding that the cause of action had ceased to exist. The bill was for an injunction that could not be granted at that time. There was no constitutional obligation to extend the remedy beyond what was prayed." 266 U.S., at 34 . </s> In contrast, the prejudice to the petitioners from the action of the Tennessee Court of Appeals in affirming the injunction which did issue in the instant case is clear. The petitioners plainly have "a substantial stake in the judgment . . .," Fiswick v. United States, 329 U.S. 211, 222 , which exists apart from and is unaffected by the completion of construction. Their interest derives from the undertaking of respondent Jafco, Inc., in the injunction bond to indemnify them in damages if the injunction was "wrongfully" sued out. Whether the injunction was wrongfully sued out turns solely upon [375 U.S. 301, 306] the answer to the federal question which the petitioners have pressed from the beginning. If the answer of the Tennessee Court of Appeals to that question may not be challenged here, the petitioners have no recourse against Jafco on the bond. Thus, unlike Love v. Griffith, supra the federal issues remain of operative importance to the parties as they come to this Court; here it may be said that the Tennessee courts have in substance and effect denied a federal right, and the completion of construction cannot be deemed a hindrance to our review of the federal question. This is not a case where this Court's decision on the merits of that question "cannot affect the rights of the litigants in the case before it." St. Pierre v. United States, 319 U.S. 41, 42 . 3 </s> Moreover, this is particularly a case in which "we should be astute to avoid hindrances in the way of taking" up that question. Despite the completion of construction, our superintendence of a state court injunction against conduct alleged to be cognizable exclusively by the National Labor Relations Board is desirable "if the danger of state interference with national policy is to be averted," San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U.S. 236, 245 . This controversy involves the fundamental question of whether the Tennessee courts had any power whatever to adjudicate the dispute between the parties. Congress has invested the National Labor Relations Board with the exclusive power to adjudicate conduct arguably protected or prohibited by the National Labor Relations Act. San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, supra. If the peaceful picketing complained [375 U.S. 301, 307] of in this case is such conduct, Congress has ordained - to further uniform regulation and to avoid the inconsistencies which would result from the application of disparate state remedies - that only the federal agency shall deal with it. Weber v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc., 348 U.S. 468 . The issuance of the state injunction in this case tended to frustrate this federal policy. This would be true even if the picketing were prohibited conduct. For although the National Labor Relations Board is not barred from granting appropriate remedies by the fact that the challenged conduct has ceased, Labor Board v. Mexia Textile Mills, Inc., 339 U.S. 563 , or that the construction has been completed, Local 74, Carpenters Union v. Labor Board, 341 U.S. 707 , charges of unfair labor practices must be filed within six months of their occurrence, 4 and an employer armed with a state injunction would have no incentive to initiate Board proceedings. It would encourage such interference with the federal agency's exclusive jurisdiction if a state court's holding of mootness based on the chance event of completion of construction barred this Court's review of the state court's adverse decision on the claim of federal preemption. 5 We have given significant weight to the vital importance of preventing state injunctions from frustrating federal [375 U.S. 301, 308] labor policy in situations which the Congress has ordained shall be dealt with exclusively by the Board. In Construction Laborers v. Curry, supra, we considered whether a state court temporary injunction in a labor dispute should be considered to be final judgment for purposes of our review under 28 U.S.C. 1257. We held that the temporary injunction should be deemed a final judgment "particularly when postponing review would seriously erode the national labor policy requiring the subject matter of respondents' cause to be heard by the National Labor Relations Board, not by the state courts," and said further, "The truth is that authorizing the issuance of a temporary injunction, as is frequently true of temporary injunctions in labor disputes, may effectively dispose of petitioner's rights and render entirely illusory his right to review here as well as his right to a hearing before the Labor Board." 371 U.S., at 550 . </s> In Sola Electric Co. v. Jefferson Electric Co., 317 U.S. 173 , a patent licensee defended against a suit for unpaid royalties by attacking the validity under the Sherman Act of a price-fixing stipulation in his license. The lower courts held that having accepted the license with the price-fixing stipulation, the licensee was estopped to deny the validity of the stipulation. This Court reversed. The question presented was "whether the doctrine of estoppel as invoked below is so in conflict with the Sherman Act's prohibition of price-fixing that this Court may resolve the question even though its conclusion be contrary to that of a state court." 317 U.S., at 175 . We held that local rules of estoppel would not be permitted to thwart the purposes of statutes of the United States. We said, 317 U.S., at 176 : </s> "It is familiar doctrine that the prohibition of a federal statute may not be set at naught, or its benefits denied, by state statutes or state common law rules. In such a case our decision is not controlled [375 U.S. 301, 309] by Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 . There we followed state law because it was the law to be applied in the federal courts. But the doctrine of that case is inapplicable to those areas of judicial decision within which the policy of the law is so dominated by the sweep of federal statutes that legal relations which they affect must be deemed governed by federal law having its source in those statutes, rather than by local law. . . . When a federal statute condemns an act as unlawful, the extent and nature of the legal consequences of the condemnation, though left by the statute to judicial determination, are nevertheless federal questions, the answers to which are to be derived from the statute and the federal policy which it has adopted. To the federal statute and policy, conflicting state law and policy must yield. Constitution, Art. VI, cl. 2; . . ." </s> If in Sola a state substantive rule of law had to yield to the federal statute and policy, even more so here - where the claim is that the federal statute and policy oust state courts of any power whatever to deal with the conduct in question - local rules which purport to preclude state appellate court adjudication of the federal preemption claim cannot conclusively render the case moot for the purposes of this Court's review. </s> We turn then to the merits. Our discussion need not be extended, for in our view the case is squarely governed by our decision in Construction Laborers v. Curry, supra. Whether or not the facts showed a "labor dispute" within the meaning of 29 U.S.C. 152 (9) 6 is certainly at least [375 U.S. 301, 310] arguable. Consequently, as we said in Curry, "the state court had no jurisdiction to issue an injunction or to adjudicate this controversy, which lay within the exclusive powers of the National Labor Relations Board." 371 U.S., at 546 -547. </s> The judgment is reversed and the case remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. </s> It is so ordered. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 The respondent Rea Construction Company was added as a party complainant by an amended and supplemental bill filed August 10, 1960. </s> [Footnote 2 In its opinion on making the injunction perpetual, the trial court also found "that the erection of the shopping center does not involve Interstate Commerce. It is a localized action and by no definition of the term can it be said that this operation amounts to Interstate Commerce." The respondents do not support this finding in this Court. The proof was that, before the hearing, Rea Construction Company purchased outside Tennessee and brought to the site materials costing $147,099.67. This meets the direct inflow standards set by the National Labor Relations Board for the exercise of its jurisdiction. See 23 N. L. R. B. Ann. Rep. 8 (1958). </s> [Footnote 3 Our lack of jurisdiction to review moot cases derives from the requirement of Article III of the Constitution under which the exercise of judicial power depends upon the existence of a case or controversy. See Diamond, Federal Jurisdiction to Decide Moot Cases, 94 U. of Pa. L. Rev. 125 (1946); Note, 103 U. of Pa. L. Rev. 772 (1955). </s> [Footnote 4 29 U.S.C. 160 (b). </s> [Footnote 5 The petitioners sought to advance the hearing and decision of their appeal to the Tennessee Court of Appeals. The court said, 49 L. R. R. M., at 2587: "The [petitioners] in brief filed June 22nd, 1961, in which they were seeking to advance the cause for hearing, stated: "`In the instant case, the right of picketing will become moot by August 1, 1961, as the construction will be completed and the building ready for occupancy. Appellants know that they desire to picket one of the complainants, Rea Construction Company, this coming fall on a project which will require approximately six or eight months of construction. Without judicial review of this case they can only expect the same Trial Court to act the same, and again they cannot possibly get the case to the appellate court for a decision within that time.'" </s> [Footnote 6 "The term `labor dispute' includes any controversy concerning terms, tenure or conditions of employment, or concerning the association or representation of persons in negotiating, fixing, maintaining, changing, or seeking to arrange terms or conditions of employment, regardless of whether the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee." </s> [375 U.S. 301, 311]

United States Supreme Court WHELCHEL v. McDONALD(1950) No. 109 Argued: November 10, 1950Decided: December 4, 1950 </s> Petitioner, while on active duty with the United States Army in Germany, was convicted of rape by a general court-martial. He applied to the Federal District Court for a writ of habeas corpus, challenging the legality of his detention under the sentence, on the ground that he was insane at the time of the offense. Held: The military tribunal that tried petitioner was not deprived of jurisdiction by the manner in which the insanity issue was dealt with, and habeas corpus was therefore not an available remedy. Pp. 123-127. </s> 1. Under the law governing court-martial procedure, there must be afforded a defendant at some point of time an opportunity to tender the issue of insanity, and petitioner was afforded that opportunity. P. 124. </s> 2. Any error that may be committed by the military authorities in evaluating the evidence tendered is beyond the reach of review by the civil courts. P. 124. </s> 3. The fact that the law member of the court-martial was not named from the Judge Advocate General's Department does not establish a gross abuse of discretion in the absence of a showing of the availability of an officer of the Department. P. 126. </s> 4. The provision of Article 4 of the revised Articles of War, whereby an accused may request that enlisted men be included on the court-martial, was not yet in effect when petitioner was tried, and the fact that he was tried by a court-martial composed wholly of officers does not raise a question which goes to jurisdiction. Pp. 126-127. </s> 5. The right to trial by jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment is not applicable to trials by courts-martial or military commissions. P. 127. </s> 178 F.2d 760, affirmed. </s> In a habeas corpus proceeding to secure petitioner's release from imprisonment under a sentence of a general court-martial, the District Court dismissed the petition [340 U.S. 122, 123] and remanded petitioner to custody. The Court of Appeals affirmed. 176 F.2d 260, 178 F.2d 760. This Court granted certiorari. 339 U.S. 977 . Affirmed, p. 127. </s> Hugh Carney argued the cause and filed a brief for petitioner. </s> John F. Davis argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Solicitor General Perlman, Assistant Attorney General McInerney and Robert S. Erdahl. </s> MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> Petitioner, while on active duty with the Army in Germany, was convicted by a general court-martial of rape on a German girl. The sentence of death, originally imposed, was reduced to a term of years. This case arises on a petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed in the District Court, challenging the legality of petitioner's detention under that sentence. That court denied the petition and the Court of Appeals affirmed. 178 F.2d 760. The main point presented by the petition for certiorari is whether the military tribunal that tried petitioner was deprived of jurisdiction by reason of the treatment of the insanity issue tendered by petitioner. We hold that it was not. </s> The charges against petitioner were referred to an investigating officer in accordance with Article 70 of the Articles of War, 10 U.S.C. (1946 ed.) 1542. The investigating officer reported that he had no reasonable ground for believing petitioner was deranged. A neuropsychiatrist attached to petitioner's division reported, after examining petitioner, that he was legally sane. The Division Staff Judge Advocate recommended a general court-martial trial, stating there was no reason to believe petitioner to be temporarily or permanently deranged. The defense of insanity was not raised, however, either at the pretrial investigation or the trial itself. After the trial [340 U.S. 122, 124] petitioner's trial counsel wrote the Division Commanding General requesting that the case be reopened and petitioner be given a neuropsychiatric examination on the ground that counsel had received information that petitioner might have been in an epileptic fit at the time of the offense. This request received the concurrence of five of the six members of the court-martial and was accompanied by similar letters from two officers and a sergeant of petitioner's division. The record was in this condition when it was reviewed by General Eisenhower of the European Theatre of Operations, by the Board of Review of that Theatre, and by the Assistant Judge Advocate General. </s> There was evidence in the hearing before the District Court that petitioner may have been either insane or drunk at the time of the crime. </s> We put to one side the due process issue which respondent presses, for we think it plain from the law governing court-martial procedure that there must be afforded a defendant at some point of time an opportunity to tender the issue of insanity. It is only a denial of that opportunity which goes to the question of jurisdiction. That opportunity was afforded here. Any error that may be committed in evaluating the evidence tendered is beyond the reach of review by the civil courts. </s> The Manual prescribes the ordinary test of criminal responsibility, viz., whether the accused was able to tell right from wrong. 1 Insanity is a defense. 2 The pretrial [340 U.S. 122, 125] procedure prescribed in Article 70 offers the accused an opportunity to present the defense of insanity. Petitioner had that opportunity. The Manual provides that the reviewing authority (here the Commanding General of the Division) "will take appropriate action where it appears from the record or otherwise that the accused may have been insane" at the time of the crime, whether or not such question was raised at the trial. 3 That is also a provision which is applicable to the confirming authority 4 (here the General in charge of the European Theatre of Operations). The confirming authority had before it the request of the defense counsel and the other letters and recommendations submitted to it. The Manual does not require either the reviewing authority or the confirming authority to halt the proceedings, make a further investigation, or start over again. It entrusts the matter to the discretion of those authorities. </s> Petitioner had a further consideration by the military authority of the insanity issue which he tenders. By Article 53 of the revised Articles of War, Act of June 24, 1948, 62 Stat. 639, 642, 10 U.S.C. (Supp. III) 1525, which was effective February 1, 1949, the Judge Advocate General is authorized "upon application of an accused person, and upon good cause shown, in his discretion to grant [340 U.S. 122, 126] a new trial" in any court-martial case on application within the prescribed time limits. That Article became effective after the petition for habeas corpus was filed. But while the case was pending on appeal the Court of Appeals delayed final action while petitioner made application under Article 53. The Judge Advocate General reviewed all the evidence on the insanity issue which petitioner had tendered both to the military authorities and to the District Court in the habeas corpus proceeding and concluded "I entertain no doubt that Whelchel was so far free from mental defect, disease, and derangement as to be able concerning the particular acts charged both to distinguish right from wrong and to adhere to the right . . . ." </s> Any error by the military in evaluating the evidence on the question of insanity would not go to jurisdiction, the only issue before the court in habeas corpus proceedings. </s> The law member of the court-martial was not named from the Judge Advocate General's Department. But since no showing was made of the availability of such a member, a case of gross abuse of discretion has not been established. See Hiatt v. Brown, 339 U.S. 103, 109 -110. </s> Under Article 4 of the revised Articles of War an accused may now request that enlisted men be included on the court-martial that tries him. 5 There was no such provision of the law when petitioner was tried. 6 But the fact that he was tried by a court-martial composed wholly of officers does not raise a question which goes to jurisdiction. Petitioner can gain no support from the analogy [340 U.S. 122, 127] of trial by jury in the civil courts. The right to trial by jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment is not applicable to trials by courts-martial or military commissions. See Kahn v. Anderson, 255 U.S. 1, 8 ; Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 40 -41. Courts-martial have been composed of officers both before and after the adoption of the Constitution. 7 The constitution of courts-martial, like other matters relating to their organization and administration (see Kahn v. Anderson, supra, 6-7; Swaim v. United States, 165 U.S. 553, 556 -559; Mullan v. United States, 140 U.S. 240, 244 -245; Martin v. Mott, 12 Wheat. 19, 34-35), is a matter appropriate for congressional action. </s> Affirmed. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 Paragraph 78a Manual for Courts-Martial (1928 ed.) provides: "A person is not mentally responsible for an offense unless he was at the time so far free from mental defect, disease, or derangement as to be able concerning the particular acts charged both to distinguish right from wrong and to adhere to the right." </s> [Footnote 2 Paragraph 63 of the Manual provides: "The court will inquire into the existing mental condition of the accused whenever at any time while the case is before the court it appears to the court for any reason [340 U.S. 122, 125] that such inquiry ought to be made in the interest of justice. Reasons for such action may include anything that would cause a reasonable man to question the accused's mental capacity either to understand the nature of the proceedings or intelligently to conduct or to cooperate in his defense." </s> Paragraph 75a provides: "If the court determines that the accused was not mentally responsible, it will forthwith enter a finding of not guilty as to the proper specification." </s> Paragraph 78a provides: "Where a reasonable doubt exists as to the mental responsibility of an accused for an offense charged, the accused can not legally be convicted of that offense." </s> [Footnote 3 Id. § 87b. </s> [Footnote 4 Id. § 88. </s> [Footnote 5 10 U.S.C. (Supp. III) 1475. </s> [Footnote 6 At the time of petitioner's trial Article 4, 10 U.S.C. (1946 ed.) 1475, provided in pertinent part as follows: "All officers in the military service of the United States, and officers of the Marine Corps when detached for service with the Army by order of the President, shall be competent to serve on courts-martial for the trial of any persons who may lawfully be brought before such courts for trial." </s> [Footnote 7 See collection of precedents in Winthrop's Military Law and Precedents (2d ed., Reprint 1920): British Articles of War of 1765, p. 942; American Articles of War of 1776, p. 967; American Articles of War of 1806, pp. 981-982. </s> [340 U.S. 122, 128]

United States Supreme Court E. I. DU PONT DE NEMOURS & CO. v. TRAIN(1977) No. 75-978 Argued: December 8, 1976Decided: February 23, 1977 </s> [Footnote * Together with No. 75-1473, E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. et al. v. Train, Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency, and No. 75-1705, Train, Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency v. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. et al., also on certiorari to the same court. </s> The Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 (Amendments) authorized a series of steps to be taken to eliminate all discharges of pollutants into the Nation's waters by 1985. The first steps are described in 304 of the Act (as added by the Amendments), which directs the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (the agency charged under 101 with administering the Amendments) to develop and publish various kinds of technical data as guidelines for carrying out responsibilities under the Amendments. Section 301 (a) proscribes the discharge of any pollutant unless the discharge complies with certain sections, including 301 itself, 306, and 402. Section 301 (b) defines the effluent limitations that must be achieved for existing "point sources" (conveyances from which pollutants are discharged) in two stages: (1) No later than July 1, 1977, such limitations for point sources must require the application of the "best practicable control technology currently available," and (2) by July 1, 1983, the limitations for "categories and classes of point sources" must require application of the "best available technology economically achievable." Section 301 (c) authorizes the EPA Administrator to grant variances for the 1983 limitations for any point source for which a permit application is filed after July 1, 1977. Section 306 (b) directs the Administrator to publish regulations establishing national standards for new sources within each category of sources discharging pollutants, and 306 (e) makes it unlawful to operate a new source in violation of the applicable standard. Section 402 authorizes the Administrator to issue permits for individual point sources, and also to review and approve the plan of any State desiring to administer its own permit program. Section 509 (b) (1) (E) provides that review of the Administrator's action in approving or promulgating [430 U.S. 112, 113] any effluent limitation under 301 or 306 may be had in the courts of appeals. The EPA, which is empowered under 501 (a) to make "such regulations as are necessary to carry out" its functions, promulgated industrywide regulations imposing three sets of limitations on petitioner inorganic chemical manufacturers' discharges of pollutants into waters. The first two impose progressively higher levels of pollutant control on existing point sources (a) after July 1, 1977, and (b) after July 1, 1983, and the third set imposes limits on "new sources" that may be constructed in the future. Petitioner manufacturers filed both a suit in the District Court to set aside the regulations and a petition for review of the regulations in the Court of Appeals, contending that 301 is not an independent source of authority for setting effluent limitations by regulation but is merely a description of such limitations which are set for each plant on an individual basis during the permit-issuance process, and that 402 provides the only authority for issuance of enforceable limitations on the discharge of pollutants by existing plants. The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's dismissal of the suit to set aside the regulations on the ground that the Court of Appeals had exclusive jurisdiction to consider the validity of the regulations, and held on the petition for review that the EPA was authorized to issue "presumptively applicable" effluent limitations and new source standards, and was required to provide a variance procedure for new sources. Held: </s> 1. The EPA has authority under 301 to limit discharges by existing plants through industrywide regulations setting forth uniform effluent limitations for both 1977 and 1983, provided some allowance is made for variations in individual plants. Pp. 126-136. </s> (a) Both the language of 301 and the legislative history of the Amendments support the view that 301 limitations are to be adopted by the Administrator, that they are to be based primarily on classes and categories, and that they are to take the form of regulations. Pp. 126-130. </s> (b) The legislative history also makes it clear that 304 guidelines are not merely aimed at guiding the discretion of permit issuers in setting limitations for individual plants, but 304 requires that the guidelines survey the practicable or available pollution control technology for an industry and assess its effectiveness, and then describe the methodology the EPA intends to use in the 301 regulations to determine the effluent limitations for particular plants. Pp. 130-132. </s> (c) The above construction of the Amendments is also supported by 101 (d) and 501 (a). Pp. 132-133. </s> 2. Section 509 (b) (1) (E) unambiguously authorizes court of appeals review of EPA action promulgating an effluent limitation for existing [430 U.S. 112, 114] point sources under 301, and the reference in 509 (b) (1) (E) to 301 was not intended only to provide for review of the grant or denial of an individual variance under 301 (c). Since effluent limitations are typically promulgated in the same proceeding as the new-source standards under 306, there is no doubt that Congress intended review of the two sets of regulations to be had in the same forum. Pp. 136-137. </s> 3. Variances for individual plants unable to comply with the new-source standards issued under 306 are not authorized. Congress clearly intended regulations under 306 to be absolute prohibitions, as is indicated by the use of the word "standards" in 306, as well as by the description of the preferred standard as one "permitting no discharge of pollutants." Pp. 137-139. </s> No. 75-978, 528 F.2d 1136, affirmed; Nos. 75-1473 and 75-1705, 541 F.2d 1018, affirmed in part and reversed in part. </s> STEVENS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which all Members joined, except POWELL, J., who took no part in the consideration or decision of the cases. </s> Robert C. Barnard argued the cause for petitioners in Nos. 75-978 and 75-1473 and for respondents in No. 75-1705. With him on the briefs was Charles F. Lettow. </s> Deputy Solicitor General Friedman argued the cause for respondents in Nos. 75-978 and 75-1473 and for petitioner in No. 75-1705. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Bork, Assistant Attorney General Taft, Howard E. Shapiro, Edmund B. Clark, Kathryn A. Oberly, and Alan W. Eckert.Fn </s> Fn [430 U.S. 112, 114] Frederick M. Rowe, Edward W. Warren, and Stark Ritchie filed a brief for the American Petroleum Institute as amicus curiae in Nos. 75-1473 and 75-1705 urging reversal. George C. Freeman, Jr., and Henry V. Nickel filed a brief for the Appalachian Power Co. et al. as amici curiae in Nos. 75-1473 and 75-1705 urging affirmance. Briefs of amici curiae in No. 75-978 were filed by Thomas H. Truitt for the American Paper Institute, and by Edward L. Strohbehn, Jr., for the Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. </s> MR. JUSTICE STEVENS delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> Inorganic chemical manufacturing plants operated by the eight petitioners in Nos. 75-978 and 75-1473 discharge various [430 U.S. 112, 115] pollutants into the Nation's waters and therefore are "point sources" within the meaning of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Act), as added and amended by 2 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, 86 Stat. 816, 33 U.S.C. 1251 et seq. (1970 ed., Supp. V). 1 The Environmental Protection Agency 2 has promulgated industrywide regulations imposing three sets of precise limitations on petitioners' discharges. The first two impose progressively higher levels of pollution control on existing point sources after July 1, 1977, and after July 1, 1983, respectively. The third set imposes limits on "new sources" that may be constructed in the future. 3 </s> These cases present three important questions of statutory construction: (1) whether EPA has the authority under 301 of the Act to issue industrywide regulations limiting discharges by existing plants; (2) whether the Court of Appeals, which admittedly is authorized to review the standards for new sources, also has jurisdiction under 509 to review the regulations concerning existing plants; and (3) whether the new-source standards issued under 306 must allow variances for individual plants. [430 U.S. 112, 116] </s> As a preface to our discussion of these three questions, we summarize relevant portions of the statute and then describe the procedure which EPA followed in promulgating the challenged regulations. </s> The Statute </s> The statute, enacted on October 18, 1972, authorized a series of steps to be taken to achieve the goal of eliminating all discharges of pollutants into the Nation's waters by 1985, 101 (a) (1). </s> The first steps required by the Act are described in 304, which directs the Administrator to develop and publish various kinds of technical data to provide guidance in carrying out responsibilities imposed by other sections of the Act. Thus, within 60 days, 120 days, and 180 days after the date of enactment, the Administrator was to promulgate a series of guidelines to assist the States in developing and carrying out permit programs pursuant to 402. 304 (h), (f), (g). Within 270 days, he was to develop the information to be used in formulating standards for new plants pursuant to 306. 304 (c). And within one year he was to publish regulations providing guidance for effluent limitations on existing point sources. Section 304 (b) 4 goes into great detail concerning [430 U.S. 112, 117] the contents of these regulations. They must identify the degree of effluent reduction attainable through use of the best practicable or best available technology for a class of plants. The guidelines must also "specify factors to be taken into account" in determining the control measures applicable to point sources within these classes. A list of factors to be considered then follows. The Administrator [430 U.S. 112, 118] was also directed to develop and publish, within one year, elaborate criteria for water quality accurately reflecting the most current scientific knowledge, and also technical information on factors necessary to restore and maintain water quality. 304 (a). The title of 304 describes it as the "information and guidelines" portion of the statute. </s> Section 301 is captioned "effluent limitations." 5 Section [430 U.S. 112, 119] 301 (a) makes the discharge of any pollutant unlawful unless the discharge is in compliance with certain enumerated sections of the Act. The enumerated sections which are relevant to this case are 301 itself, 306, and 402. 6 A brief word about each of these sections is necessary. </s> Section 402 7 authorizes the Administrator to issue permits for individual point sources, and also authorizes him to review and approve the plan of any State desiring to administer its own permit program. These permits serve "to transform generally applicable effluent limitations . . . into the obligations (including a timetable for compliance) of the individual discharger[s] . . . ." EPA v. California ex rel. State [430 U.S. 112, 120] Water Resources Control Board, 426 U.S. 200, 205 . Petitioner chemical companies' position in this litigation is that 402 provides the only statutory authority for the issuance of enforceable limitations on the discharge of pollutants by existing plants. It is noteworthy, however, that although this section authorizes the imposition of limitations in individual permits, the section itself does not mandate either the Administrator or the States to use permits as the method of prescribing effluent limitations. </s> Section 306 8 directs the Administrator to publish within 90 days a list of categories of sources discharging pollutants and, [430 U.S. 112, 121] within one year thereafter, to publish regulations establishing national standards of performance for new sources within each category. Section 306 contains no provision for exceptions from the standards for individual plants; on the contrary, subsection (e) expressly makes it unlawful to operate a new source in violation of the applicable standard of performance after its effective date. The statute provides that the new-source standards shall reflect the greatest degree of effluent reduction achievable through application of the best available demonstrated control technology. </s> Section 301 (b) defines the effluent limitations that shall be achieved by existing point sources in two stages. By July 1, 1977, the effluent limitations shall require the application of the best practicable control technology currently available; by July 1, 1983, the limitations shall require application of the best available technology economically achievable. The statute expressly provides that the limitations which are to become effective in 1983 are applicable to "categories and classes of point sources"; this phrase is omitted from the description of the 1977 limitations. While 301 states that these limitations "shall be achieved," it fails to state who will establish the limitations. </s> Section 301 (c) authorizes the Administrator to grant variances from the 1983 limitations. Section 301 (e) states that effluent limitations established pursuant to 301 shall be applied to all point sources. </s> To summarize, 301 (b) requires the achievement of effluent limitations requiring use of the "best practicable" or "best available" technology. It refers to 304 for a definition of these terms. Section 304 requires the publication of "regulations, providing guidelines for effluent limitations." Finally, permits issued under 402 must require compliance with 301 effluent limitations. Nowhere are we told who sets the 301 effluent limitations, or precisely how they relate to 304 guidelines and 402 permits. [430 U.S. 112, 122] </s> The Regulations </s> The various deadlines imposed on the Administrator were too ambitious for him to meet. For that reason, the procedure which he followed in adopting the regulations applicable to the inorganic chemical industry and to other classes of point sources is somewhat different from that apparently contemplated by the statute. Specifically, as will appear, he did not adopt guidelines pursuant to 304 before defining the effluent limitations for existing sources described in 301 (b) or the national standards for new sources described in 306. This case illustrates the approach the Administrator followed in implementing the Act. </s> EPA began by engaging a private contractor to prepare a Development Document. This document provided a detailed technical study of pollution control in the industry. The study first divided the industry into categories. For each category, present levels of pollution were measured and plants with exemplary pollution control were investigated. Based on this information, other technical data, and economic studies, a determination was made of the degree of pollution control which could be achieved by the various levels of technology mandated by the statute. The study was made available to the public and circulated to interested persons. It formed the basis of "effluent limitation guideline" regulations issued by EPA after receiving public comment on proposed regulations. These regulations divide the industry into 22 subcategories. Within each subcategory, precise numerical limits are set for various pollutants. 9 The regulations for [430 U.S. 112, 123] each subcategory contain a variance clause, applicable only to the 1977 limitations. 10 </s> Eight chemical companies filed petitions in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for review of these regulations. 11 The Court of Appeals rejected their challenge to EPA's authority to issue precise, single-number limitations for discharges of pollutants from existing sources. It held, however, that these limitations and the new plant standards were only "presumptively applicable" to individual plants. 12 We granted the chemical companies' petitions for certiorari in order to consider the scope of EPA's authority to issue existing-source regulations. 425 U.S. 933 ; 426 U.S. 947 . We also granted the Government's cross-petition for review of the ruling that new-source standards are only presumptively [430 U.S. 112, 124] applicable. Ibid. For convenience, we will refer to the chemical companies as the "petitioners." </s> The Issues </s> The broad outlines of the parties' respective theories may be stated briefly. EPA contends that 301 (b) authorizes it to issue regulations establishing effluent limitations for classes of plants. The permits granted under 402, in EPA's view, simply incorporate these across-the-board limitations, except for the limited variances allowed by the regulations themselves and by 301 (c). The 304 (b) guidelines, according to EPA, were intended to guide it in later establishing 301 effluent-limitation regulations. Because the process proved more time consuming than Congress assumed when it established this two-stage process, EPA condensed the two stages into a single regulation. 13 </s> In contrast, petitioners contend that 301 is not an independent source of authority for setting effluent limitations by regulation. Instead, 301 is seen as merely a description of the effluent limitations which are set for each plant on an individual basis during the permit-issuance process. Under the industry view, the 304 guidelines serve the function of guiding the permit issuer in setting the effluent limitations. </s> The jurisdictional issue is subsidiary to the critical question whether EPA has the power to issue effluent limitations by regulation. Section 509 (b) (1), 86 Stat. 892, 33 U.S.C. 1369 (b) (1), provides that "[r]eview of the Administrator's action . . . (E) in approving or promulgating any effluent limitation . . . under section 301" may be had in the courts of appeals. On the other hand, the Act does not provide for judicial review of 304 guidelines. If [430 U.S. 112, 125] EPA is correct that its regulations are "effluent limitation[s] under section 301," the regulations are directly reviewable in the Court of Appeals. If industry is correct that the regulations can only be considered 304 guidelines, suit to review the regulations could probably be brought only in the District Court, if anywhere. 14 Thus, the issue of jurisdiction to review the regulations is intertwined with the issue of EPA's power to issue the regulations. 15 </s> [430 U.S. 112, 126] </s> I </s> We think 301 itself is the key to the problem. The statutory language concerning the 1983 limitations, in particular, leaves no doubt that these limitations are to be set by regulation. Subsection (b) (2) (A) of 301 states that by 1983 "effluent limitations for categories and classes of point sources" are to be achieved which will require "application of the best available technology economically achievable for such category or class." (Emphasis added.) These effluent limitations are to require elimination of all discharges if "such elimination is technologically and economically achievable for a category or class of point sources." (Emphasis added.) This is "language difficult to reconcile with the view that individual [430 U.S. 112, 127] effluent limitations are to be set when each permit is issued." American Meat Institute v. EPA, 526 F.2d 442, 450 (CA7 1975). The statute thus focuses expressly on the characteristics of the "category or class" rather than the characteristics of individual point sources. 16 Normally, such classwide determinations would be made by regulation, not in the course of issuing a permit to one member of the class. 17 </s> Thus, we find that 301 unambiguously provides for the use of regulations to establish the 1983 effluent limitations. Different language is used in 301 with respect to the 1977 limitations. Here, the statute speaks of "effluent limitations for point sources," rather than "effluent limitations for categories and classes of point sources." Nothing elsewhere in the Act, however, suggests any radical difference in the mechanism used to impose limitations for the 1977 and 1983 deadlines. See American Iron & Steel Institute v. EPA, 526 F.2d 1027, 1042 n. 32 (CA3 1975). For instance, there is no indication in either 301 or 304 that the 304 guidelines play a different role in setting 1977 limitations. Moreover, it would be highly anomalous if the 1983 regulations and the new-source standards 18 were directly reviewable in the Court of [430 U.S. 112, 128] Appeals, while the 1977 regulations based on the same administrative record were reviewable only in the District Court. The magnitude and highly technical character of the administrative record involved with these regulations makes it almost inconceivable that Congress would have required duplicate review in the first instance by different courts. We conclude that the statute authorizes the 1977 limitations as well as the 1983 limitations to be set by regulation, so long as some allowance is made for variations in individual plants, as EPA has done by including a variance clause in its 1977 limitations. 19 </s> The question of the form of 301 limitations is tied to the question whether the Act requires the Administrator or the permit issuer to establish the limitations. Section 301 does not itself answer this question, for it speaks only in the passive voice of the achievement and establishment of the limitations. But other parts of the statute leave little doubt on this score. Section 304 (b) states that "[f]or the purpose of adopting or revising effluent limitations . . . the Administrator shall" issue guideline regulations; while the judicial-review section, 509 (b) (1), speaks of "the Administrator's action . . . in approving or promulgating any effluent limitation or other limitation under section 301 . . . ." See infra, at 136-137. And 101 (d) requires us to resolve any ambiguity on this score in favor of the Administrator. It provides that "[e]xcept as otherwise expressly provided in this Act, the [430 U.S. 112, 129] Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency . . . shall administer this Act." (Emphasis added.) In sum, the language of the statute supports the view that 301 limitations are to be adopted by the Administrator, that they are to be based primarily on classes and categories, and that they are to take the form of regulations. </s> The legislative history supports this reading of 301. The Senate Report states that "pursuant to subsection 301 (b) (1) (A), and Section 304 (b)" the Administrator is to set a base level for all plants in a given category, and "[i]n no case . . . should any plant be allowed to discharge more pollutants per unit of production than is defined by that base level." S. Rep. No. 92-414, p. 50 (1971), Leg. Hist. 1468. 20 The Conference Report on 301 states that "the determination of the economic impact of an effluent limitation [will be made] on the basis of classes and categories of point sources, as distinguished from a plant by plant determination." Sen. Conf. Rep. No. 92-1236, p. 121 (1972), Leg. Hist. 304. In presenting the Conference Report to the Senate, Senator Muskie, perhaps the Act's primary author, emphasized the importance of uniformity in setting 301 limitations. He explained that this goal of uniformity required that EPA focus on classes or categories of sources in formulating effluent limitations. Regarding the requirement contained in 301 that plants use the "best practicable control technology" by 1977, he stated: </s> "The modification of subsection 304 (b) (1) is intended to clarify what is meant by the term `practicable.' The balancing test between total cost and effluent reduction [430 U.S. 112, 130] benefits is intended to limit the application of technology only where the additional degree of effluent reduction is wholly out of proportion to the costs of achieving such marginal level of reduction for any class or category of sources. </s> "The Conferees agreed upon this limited cost-benefit analysis in order to maintain uniformity within a class and category of point sources subject to effluent limitations, and to avoid imposing on the Administrator any requirement to consider the location of sources within a category or to ascertain water quality impact of effluent controls, or to determine the economic impact of controls on any individual plant in a single community." 118 Cong. Rec. 33696 (1972), Leg. Hist. 170 (emphasis added). </s> He added that: </s> "The Conferees intend that the factors described in section 304 (b) be considered only within classes or categories of point sources and that such factors not be considered at the time of the application of an effluent limitation to an individual point source within such a category or class." 118 Cong. Rec. 33697 (1972), Leg. Hist. 172. </s> This legislative history supports our reading of 301 and makes it clear that the 304 guidelines are not merely aimed at guiding the discretion of permit issuers in setting limitations for individual plants. </s> What, then, is the function of the 304 (b) guidelines? As we noted earlier, 304 (b) requires EPA to identify the amount of effluent reduction attainable through use of the best practicable or available technology and to "specify factors to be taken into account" in determining the pollution control methods "to be applicable to point sources . . . within such categories or classes." These guidelines are to be issued "[f]or the purpose of adopting or revising effluent limitations [430 U.S. 112, 131] under this Act." 21 As we read it, 304 requires that the guidelines survey the practicable or available pollution-control technology for an industry and assess its effectiveness. The guidelines are then to describe the methodology EPA intends to use in the 301 regulations to determine the effluent limitations for particular plants. If the technical complexity of the task had not prevented EPA from issuing the guidelines within the statutory deadline, 22 they could have provided valuable [430 U.S. 112, 132] guidance to permit issuers, industry, and the public, prior to the issuance of the 301 regulations. 23 </s> Our construction of the Act is supported by 501 (a), which gives EPA the power to make "such regulations as are necessary to carry out" its functions, and by 101 (d), which charges the agency with the duty of administering the Act. In construing this grant of authority, as Mr. Justice Harlan wrote in connection with a somewhat similar problem: </s> "`[C]onsiderations of feasibility and practicality are certainly germane' to the issues before us. Bowles v. Willingham, [321 U.S. 503 ,] 517. We cannot, in these circumstances, conclude that Congress has given authority inadequate to achieve with reasonable effectiveness the purposes for which it has acted." Permian Basin Area Rate Cases, 390 U.S. 747, 777 . </s> The petitioners' view of the Act would place an impossible burden on EPA. It would require EPA to give individual consideration to the circumstances of each of the more than 42,000 dischargers who have applied for permits, Brief for Respondents [430 U.S. 112, 133] in No. 75-978, p. 30 n. 22, and to issue or approve all these permits well in advance of the 1977 deadline in order to give industry time to install the necessary pollution-control equipment. We do not believe that Congress would have failed so conspicuously to provide EPA with the authority needed to achieve the statutory goals. </s> Both EPA and petitioners refer to numerous other provisions of the Act and fragments of legislative history in support of their positions. We do not find these conclusive, and little point would be served by discussing them in detail. We are satisfied that our reading of 301 is consistent with the rest of the legislative scheme. 24 </s> [430 U.S. 112, 134] </s> Language we recently employed in another case involving the validity of EPA regulations applies equally to this case: </s> "We therefore conclude that the Agency's interpretation . . . was `correct,' to the extent that it can be said with complete assurance that any particular interpretation of a complex statute such as this is the `correct' one. Given this conclusion, as well as the facts that the Agency is charged with administration of the Act, and that there has undoubtedly been reliance upon its interpretation [430 U.S. 112, 135] by the States and other parties affected by the Act, we have no doubt whatever that its construction was sufficiently reasonable to preclude the Court of Appeals from substituting its judgment for that of the Agency." Train v. Natural Resources Def. Council, 421 U.S. 60, 87 . 25 </s> When, as in this litigation, the Agency's interpretation is also supported by thorough, scholarly opinions written by some of our finest judges, and has received the overwhelming support of the Courts of Appeals, we would be reluctant indeed to upset the Agency's judgment. Here, on the contrary, our independent examination confirms the correctness of the Agency's construction of the statute. 26 </s> [430 U.S. 112, 136] </s> Consequently, we hold that EPA has the authority to issue regulations setting forth uniform effluent limitations for categories of plants. </s> II </s> Our holding that 301 does authorize the Administrator to promulgate effluent limitations for classes and categories of existing point sources necessarily resolves the jurisdictional issue as well. For, as we have already pointed out, 509 (b) (1) provides that "[r]eview of the Administrator's action . . . in approving or promulgating any effluent limitation or other limitation under section 301, 302, or 306, . . . may be had by any interested person in the Circuit Court of Appeals of the United States for the Federal judicial district in which such person resides or transacts such business . . . ." </s> Petitioners have argued that the reference to 301 was intended only to provide for review of the grant or denial of an individual variance pursuant to 301 (c). We find this argument unpersuasive for two reasons in addition to those discussed in Part I of this opinion. First, in other portions of 509, Congress referred to specific subsections of the Act and presumably would have specifically mentioned 301 (c) if only action pursuant to that subsection were intended to be reviewable in the court of appeals. More importantly, petitioners' construction would produce the truly perverse situation in which the court of appeals would review numerous individual actions issuing or denying permits pursuant to 402 but would have no power of direct review of the basic regulations governing those individual actions. See American Meat Institute v. EPA, 526 F.2d, at 452. </s> We regard 509 (b) (1) (E) as unambiguously authorizing court of appeals review of EPA action promulgating an effluent limitation for existing point sources under 301. Since those limitations are typically promulgated in the same proceeding as the new-source standards under 306, we have no [430 U.S. 112, 137] doubt that Congress intended review of the two sets of regulations to be had in the same forum. 27 </s> III </s> The remaining issue in this case concerns new plants. Under 306, EPA is to promulgate "regulations establishing Federal standards of performance for new sources . . . ." 306 (b) (1) (B). A "standard of performance" is a "standard for the control of the discharge of pollutants which reflects the greatest degree of effluent reduction which the Administrator determines to be achievable through application of the best available demonstrated control technology, . . . including, where practicable, a standard permitting no discharge of pollutants." 306 (a) (1). In setting the standard, "[t]he Administrator may distinguish among classes, types, and sizes within categories of new sources . . . and shall consider the type of process employed (including whether batch or continuous)." 306 (b) (2). As the House Report states, the standard must reflect the best technology for "that category of sources, and for class, types, and sizes within categories." H. R. Rep. No. 92-911, p. 111 (1972), Leg. Hist. 798. </s> The Court of Appeals held: </s> "Neither the Act nor the regulations contain any variance provision for new sources. The rule of presumptive applicability applies to new sources as well [430 U.S. 112, 138] as existing sources. On remand EPA should come forward with some limited escape mechanism for new sources." Du Pont II, 541 F.2d, at 1028. </s> The court's rationale was that "[p]rovisions for variances, modifications, and exceptions are appropriate to the regulatory process." Ibid. </s> The question, however, is not what a court thinks is generally appropriate to the regulatory process; it is what Congress intended for these regulations. It is clear that Congress intended these regulations to be absolute prohibitions. The use of the word "standards" implies as much. So does the description of the preferred standard as one "permitting no discharge of pollutants." (Emphasis added.) It is "unlawful for any owner or operator of any new source to operate such source in violation of any standard of performance applicable to such source." 306 (e) (emphasis added). In striking contrast to 301 (c), there is no statutory provision for variances, and a variance provision would be inappropriate in a standard that was intended to insure national uniformity and "maximum feasible control of new sources." S. Rep. No. 92-414, p. 58 (1971), Leg. Hist. 1476. 28 </s> [430 U.S. 112, 139] </s> That portion of the judgment of the Court of Appeals in 541 F.2d 1018 requiring EPA to provide a variance procedure for new sources is reversed. In all other aspects, the judgments of the Court of Appeals are affirmed. </s> It is so ordered. </s> MR. JUSTICE POWELL took no part in the consideration or decision of these cases. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 A "point source" is "any discernible, confined and discrete conveyance, . . . from which pollutants are or may be discharged." 502 (14), 33 U.S.C. 1362 (14) (1970 ed., Supp. V). </s> [Footnote 2 Throughout this opinion we will refer interchangeably to the Administrator of the EPA and to the Agency itself. </s> [Footnote 3 The reasons for the statutory scheme have been described as follows: "Such direct restrictions on discharges facilitate enforcement by making it unnecessary to work backward from an overpolluted body of water to determine which point sources are responsible and which must be abated. In addition, a discharger's performance is now measured against strict technology-based effluent limitations - specified levels of treatment - to which it must conform, rather than against limitations derived from water quality standards to which it and other polluters must collectively conform." EPA v. California ex rel. State Water Resources Control Board, 426 U.S. 200, 204 -205 (footnotes omitted). </s> [Footnote 4 Section 304 (b) provides: "(b) For the purpose of adopting or revising effluent limitations under this Act the Administrator shall, after consultation with appropriate Federal and State agencies and other interested persons, publish within one year of enactment of this title, regulations, providing guidelines for effluent limitations, and, at least annually thereafter, revise, if appropriate, such regulations. Such regulations shall - "(1) (A) identify, in terms of amounts of constituents and chemical, physical, and biological characteristics of pollutants, the degree of effluent reduction attainable through the application of the best practicable control technology currently available for classes and categories of point sources (other than publicly owned treatment works); and "(B) specify factors to be taken into account in determining the control measures and practices to be applicable to point sources (other than [430 U.S. 112, 117] publicly owned treatment works) within such categories or classes. Factors relating to the assessment of best practicable control technology currently available to comply with subsection (b) (1) of section 301 of this Act shall include consideration of the total cost of application of technology in relation to the effluent reduction benefits to be achieved from such application, and shall also take into account the age of equipment and facilities involved, the process employed, the engineering aspects of the application of various types of control techniques, process changes, non-water quality environmental impact (including energy requirements), and such other factors as the Administrator deems appropriate; "(2) (A) identify, in terms of amounts of constituents and chemical, physical, and biological characteristics of pollutants, the degree of effluent reduction attainable through the application of the best control measures and practices achievable including treatment techniques, process and procedure innovations, operating methods, and other alternatives for classes and categories of point sources (other than publicly owned treatment works); and "(B) specify factors to be taken into account in determining the best measures and practices available to comply with subsection (b) (2) of section 301 of this Act to be applicable to any point source (other than publicly owned treatment works) within such categories or classes. Factors relating to the assessment of best available technology shall take into account the age of equipment and facilities involved, the process employed, the engineering aspects of the application of various types of control techniques, process changes, the cost of achieving such effluent reduction, non-water quality environmental impact (including energy requirements), and such other factors as the Administrator deems appropriate; and "(3) identify control measures and practices available to eliminate the discharge of pollutants from categories and classes of point sources, taking into account the cost of achieving such elimination of the discharge of pollutants." 86 Stat. 851, 33 U.S.C. 1314 (b) (1970 ed., Supp. V). </s> [Footnote 5 Section 301 provides in pertinent part: "SEC. 301. (a) Except as in compliance with this section and sections 302, 306, 307, 318, 402, and 404 of this Act, the discharge of any pollutant by any person shall be unlawful. "(b) In order to carry out the objective of this Act there shall be achieved - "(1) (A) not later than July 1, 1977, effluent limitations for point sources, other than publicly owned treatment works, (i) which shall require the application of the best practicable control technology currently available as defined by the Administrator pursuant to section 304 (b) of this Act . . . . . . . . . "(2) (A) not later than July 1, 1983, effluent limitations for categories and classes of point sources, other than publicly owned treatment works, which (i) shall require application of the best available technology economically achievable for such category or class, which will result in reasonable further progress toward the national goal of eliminating the discharge of all pollutants, as determined in accordance with regulations issued by the Administrator pursuant to section 304 (b) (2) of this Act, which such effluent limitations shall require the elimination of discharges of all pollutants if the Administrator finds, on the basis of information available to him (including information developed pursuant to section 315), that such elimination is technologically and economically achievable for a category or class of point sources as determined in accordance with regulations issued by the Administrator pursuant to section 304 (b) (2) of this Act . . . . </s> . . . . . </s> "(c) The Administrator may modify the requirements of subsection (b) (2) (A) of this section with respect to any point source for which a permit application is filed after July 1, 1977, upon a showing by the owner or operator of such point source satisfactory to the Administrator that such modified requirements (1) will represent the maximum use of technology within the economic capability of the owner or [430 U.S. 112, 119] operator; and (2) will result in reasonable further progress toward the elimination of the discharge of pollutants. "(d) Any effluent limitation required by paragraph (2) of subsection (b) of this section shall be reviewed at least every five years and, if appropriate, revised pursuant to the procedure established under such paragraph. "(e) Effluent limitations established pursuant to this section or section 302 of this Act shall be applied to all point sources of discharge of pollutants in accordance with the provisions of this Act." 86 Stat. 844, 33 U.S.C. 1311 (1970 ed., Supp. V). </s> [Footnote 6 There is no provision for compliance with 304, the guideline section. </s> [Footnote 7 Section 402 (a) (1) provides: "Except as provided in sections 318 and 404 of this Act, the Administrator may, after opportunity for public hearing, issue a permit for the discharge of any pollutant, or combination of pollutants, notwithstanding section 301 (a), upon condition that such discharge will meet either all applicable requirements under sections 301, 302, 306, 307, 308, and 403 of this Act, or prior to the taking of necessary implementing actions relating to all such requirements, such conditions as the Administrator determines are necessary to carry out the provisions of this Act." 86 Stat. 880, 33 U.S.C. 1342 (a) (1) (1970 ed., Supp. V). Under 402 (b), the Administrator may delegate this authority to the States, but retains the power to withdraw approval of the state program, 402 (c) (3), and to veto individual state permits, 402 (d). Finally, under 402 (k), compliance with the permit is generally deemed compliance with 301. Twenty-seven States now administer their own permit programs. </s> [Footnote 8 The pertinent provisions of 306, 86 Stat. 854, 33 U.S.C. 1316 (1970 ed., Supp. V), are as follows: "(a) For purposes of this section: "(1) The term `standard of performance' means a standard for the control of the discharge of pollutants which reflects the greatest degree of effluent reduction which the Administrator determines to be achievable through application of the best available demonstrated control technology, processes, operating methods, or other alternatives, including, where practicable, a standard permitting no discharge of pollutants. . . . . . "(b) (1) . . . "(B) As soon as practicable, but in no case more than one year, after a category of sources is included in a list under subparagraph (A) of this paragraph, the Administrator shall propose and publish regulations establishing Federal standards of performance for new sources within such category. . . . "(2) The Administrator may distinguish among classes, types, and sizes within categories of new sources for the purpose of establishing such standards and shall consider the type of process employed (including whether batch or continuous). "(3) The provisions of this section shall apply to any new source owned or operated by the United States. . . . . . "(e) After the effective date of standards of performance promulgated under this section, it shall be unlawful for any owner or operator of any new source to operate such source in violation of any standard of performance applicable to such source." </s> [Footnote 9 Some subcategories are required to eliminate all discharges by 1977. E. g., 40 CFR 415.70-415.76 (1976). Other subcategories are subject to less stringent restrictions. For instance, by 1977 plants producing titanium dioxide by the chloride process must reduce average daily discharges of dissolved iron to 0.72 pounds per thousand pounds of product. This limit is cut in half for existing plants in 1983 and for all new plants. 40 CFR 415.220-415.225 (1976). </s> [Footnote 10 These limitations may be made "either more or less stringent" to the extent that "factors relating to the equipment or facilities involved, the process applied, or other such factors related to such discharger are fundamentally different from the factors considered" in establishing the limitations. See, e. g., for the two subcategories discussed in n. 9, supra, 40 CFR 415.72 and 415.222 (1976), respectively. </s> [Footnote 11 Because EPA's authority to issue the regulations is closely tied to the question whether the regulations are directly reviewable in the Court of Appeals, see infra, at 124-125, some of the companies also filed suit in District Court challenging the regulations. The District Court held that EPA had the authority to issue the regulations and that exclusive jurisdiction was therefore in the Court of Appeals. 383 F. Supp. 1244 (WD Va. 1974), aff'd, 528 F.2d 1136 (CA4 1975) (Du Pont I). </s> [Footnote 12 The Court of Appeals issued two separate opinions. In Du Pont I, supra, the court held that it had exclusive jurisdiction to consider the validity of the regulations. It therefore affirmed the District Court's dismissal of a suit to set aside the regulations. See n. 11, supra. In Du Pont II, 541 F.2d 1018 (1976), the court held that EPA was authorized to issue "presumptively applicable" effluent limitations and new-source standards. No. 75-978 is the companies' petition for certiorari in Du Pont I, which we granted last Term, 425 U.S. 933 . No. 75-1473 is their petition in Du Pont II. We granted that petition, consolidated it with EPA's cross-petition, No. 75-1705, and ordered that they be argued in tandem with the companies' petition in Du Pont I. 426 U.S. 947 . </s> [Footnote 13 Section 304 (b) calls for publication of guideline regulations within one year of the Act's passage. EPA failed to meet this deadline and was ordered to issue the regulations on a judicially imposed timetable. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. v. Train, 166 U.S. App. D.C. 312, 510 F.2d 692 (1975). </s> [Footnote 14 Although the Act itself does not provide for review of guidelines, the Eighth Circuit has held that they are reviewable in the district court, apparently under the Administrative Procedure Act. CPC Int'l, Inc. v. Train, 515 F.2d 1032, 1038 (1975) (CPC I). It has been suggested, however, that even if the EPA regulations are considered to be only 304 guidelines, the Court of Appeals might still have ancillary jurisdiction to review them because of their close relationship with the 301 effluent limitations, and because they were developed on the same record as the 306 standards of performance for new plants, which are directly reviewable in the Court of Appeals. </s> [Footnote 15 The Courts of Appeals have resolved these issues in various ways. Only the Eighth Circuit, the first to consider the issues, has accepted the industry position. In CPC I, supra, it held the EPA lacked the authority to issue effluent-limitation regulations and that jurisdiction to review the regulations as 304 guidelines was in the District Court. The Fourth Circuit, in Du Pont II, supra, and the Tenth Circuit, in American Petroleum Institute v. EPA, 540 F.2d 1023 (1976), held that EPA has the authority to issue effluent-limitation regulations, but that these regulations are only presumptively applicable to individual sources. The majority position, adopted by the Third Circuit, American Iron & Steel Institute v. EPA, 526 F.2d 1027 (1975); the Seventh Circuit, American Meat Institute v. EPA, 526 F.2d 442 (1975); the District of Columbia Circuit, American Frozen Food Institute v. Train, 176 U.S. App. D.C. 105, 539 F.2d 107 (1976); and the Second Circuit, Hooker Chemicals & Plastics Corp. v. Train, 537 F.2d 620 (1976), is that EPA has the authority to issue regulations setting forth effluent limitations which individual plants may not exceed. Even these courts are not in complete agreement about the form the regulations should take. The commentators have also divided on these problems. See Parenteau & Tauman, The Effluent Limitations Controversy, 6 Ecology L. Q. 1 (1976); Note, Judicial Maelstrom in Federal Waters, 45 Ford. L. Rev. 625 (1976); Comment, [430 U.S. 112, 126] The Application of Effluent Limitations and Effluent Guidelines to Industrial Polluters, 13 Houst. L. Rev. 348 (1976); Note, Effective National Regulation of Point Sources Under the 1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Act, 10 Ga. L. Rev. 983 (1976). The difference in opinion among the Circuits may be less significant than might appear. The Eighth Circuit has concluded: "Under our ruling, the limitations written into individual permits for existing point sources should be substantially similar to those written into permits if the EPA's theory of the Act were to be adopted. "The only practical difference resulting from this Court's interpretation of the statute is that the 304 (b) guidelines for existing sources must be reviewed first in the District Court, while the 306 (b) standards of performance for new plants - often based on the same scientific research and conclusions - must be reviewed first in the Court of Appeals." CPC Int'l, Inc. v. Train, 540 F.2d 1329, 1331-1332, n. 1 (1976) (CPC II). See also American Meat Institute, supra, at 449 n. 14. While this Court has not had occasion to rule directly on this question, our discussion of the Act in a case decided last Term is suggestive of the answer. We then described 402 permits as "serv[ing] to transform generally applicable effluent limitations . . . into the obligations (including a timetable for compliance) of the individual discharger . . . ." EPA v. California ex rel. State Water Resources Control Board, 426 U.S., at 205 (emphasis added). This description clearly implied that effluent limitations of general application are to be established before individual permits are issued. </s> [Footnote 16 The Court of Appeals noted that "[t]he 1983 and new source requirements are on the basis of categories." Du Pont II, 541 F.2d, at 1029. </s> [Footnote 17 Furthermore, 301 (c) provides that the 1983 limitations may be modified if the owner of a plant shows that "such modified requirements (1) will represent the maximum use of technology within the economic capability of the owner or operator; and (2) will result in reasonable further progress toward the elimination of the discharge of pollutants." This provision shows that the 301 (b) limitations for 1983 are to be established prior to consideration of the characteristics of the individual plant. American Iron & Steel Institute v. EPA, supra, at 1037 n. 15. Moreover, it shows that the term "best technology economically achievable" does not refer to any individual plant. Otherwise, it would be impossible for this "economically achievable" technology to be beyond the individual owner's "economic capability." </s> [Footnote 18 Section 509 (b) (1) (A) makes new-source standards directly reviewable in the court of appeals. The Court of Appeals in this litigation did not believe that Congress "intended for review to be bifurcated," with the [430 U.S. 112, 128] new-source standards reviewable in a different forum than regulations governing existing sources. 528 F.2d, at 1141. The Eighth Circuit has acknowledged the practical problems and potential for inconsistent rulings created by bifurcated review. CPC II, supra, at 1332 n. 1. We consider it unlikely that Congress intended such bifurcated review, and even less likely that Congress intended regulations governing existing sources to be reviewable in two different forums, depending on whether the regulations require compliance in 1977 or 1983. </s> [Footnote 19 We agree with the Court of Appeals, 541 F.2d, at 1028, that consideration of whether EPA's variance provision has the proper scope would be premature. </s> [Footnote 20 All citations to the legislative history are to Senate Committee on Public Works, A Legislative History of the Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, prepared by the Environmental Policy Division of the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress (Comm. Print 1973). </s> [Footnote 21 Petitioners rely heavily on selected portions of the following passage from the Senate Report to support their view of 301: "It is the Committee's intention that pursuant to subsection 301 (b) (1) (A), and Section 304 (b) the Administrator will interpret the term `best practicable' when applied to various categories of industries as a basis for specifying clear and precise effluent limitations to be implemented by January 1, 1976 [now July 1, 1977]. In defining best practicable for any given industrial category, the Committee expects the Administrator to take a number of factors into account. These factors should include the age of the plants, their size and the unit processes involved and the cost of applying such controls. In effect, for any industrial category, the Committee expects the Administrator to define a range of discharge levels, above a certain base level applicable to all plants within that category. In applying effluent limitations to any individual plant, the factors cited above should be applied to that specific plant. In no case, however, should any plant be allowed to discharge more pollutants per unit of production than is defined by that base level. "The Administrator should establish the range of best practicable levels based upon the average of the best existing performance by plants of various sizes, ages, and unit processes within each industrial category." S. Rep. No. 92-414, p. 50 (1971), Leg. Hist. 1468. If construed to be consistent with the legislative history we have already discussed, and with what we have found to be the clear statutory language, this language can be fairly read to allow the use of subcategories based on factors such as size, age, and unit processes, with effluent limitations for each subcategory normally based on the performance of the best plants in that subcategory. </s> [Footnote 22 As the Court of Appeals held, 541 F.2d, at 1027, EPA's response to this problem was within its discretion. Accord, American Frozen Food Institute v. Train, 176 U.S. App. D.C., at 128-129, 539 F.2d, at 130-131. Even if we considered this course to constitute a procedural error, [430 U.S. 112, 132] it would not invalidate the 301 regulations themselves since the purposes for issuing the guidelines were substantially achieved, see n. 23, infra, and no prejudice has been shown. </s> [Footnote 23 The guidelines could have served at least three functions. First, they would have provided guidance to permit issuers prior to promulgation of the 301 effluent limitation regulations. Second, they would have given industry more time to prepare to meet the 301 regulations. Third, they would have afforded a greater opportunity for public input into the final 301 regulations, by giving notice of the general outlines of those regulations. These functions were substantially served by EPA's practice of obtaining public comment on the development document and proposed regulations. In addition, the guidelines could furnish technical guidance to companies lacking expertise in pollution control by informing them of appropriate control methods. See S. Rep. No. 92-414, p. 45 (1971), Leg. Hist. 1463. This function is served by the Development Document and supporting materials. </s> [Footnote 24 See American Iron & Steel Institute v. EPA, 526 F.2d, at 1037-1041; American Meat Institute v. EPA, 526 F.2d, at 450-452; American Frozen Food Institute v. Train, 176 U.S. App. D.C., at 114-129, 539 F.2d, at 116-131. As these courts have noted, a number of provisions of the Act seem to assume that 301 effluent limitations have some existence apart from 402 permits. Section 301 (a) makes any discharge unlawful "[e]xcept as in compliance with this section and sectio[n] . . . 402 . . . of this Act." Similarly, 509 (b), the judicial-review provision, refers separately to the Administrator's action "(E) in approving or promulgating any effluent limitation or other limitation under section 301 . . . and (F) in issuing or denying any permit under section 402." Likewise, 505 (f) defines "effluent standard or limitation" for purposes of the citizen-enforcement provision of the Act, to include "(2) an effluent limitation or other limitation under section 301 or 302 of this Act," and "(6) a permit or condition thereof issued under section 402 of this Act." The legislative history also recognizes a distinction between permit conditions and 301 limitations. For instance: "The [House] Committee further recognizes that the requirements under sectio[n] 301 . . . will not all be promulgated immediately upon enactment of this bill. Nevertheless, it would be unreasonable to delay issuing of permits until all the implementing steps are necessary." H. R. Rep. No. 92-911, p. 126 (1972), Leg. Hist. 813. These Court of Appeals decisions have also thoroughly considered the arguments the Eighth Circuit found to be persuasive. The most important contrary arguments are these: (1) The Eighth Circuit was impressed by the differences between 301 and sections explicitly authorizing EPA to issue regulations. These [430 U.S. 112, 134] differences are less than the Eighth Circuit believed. For instance, the Eighth Circuit stressed that the explicitly authorized regulations were referred to as "standards," and that this term is not used in 301. CPC I, 515 F.2d, at 1038. But 316 (b) refers to "[a]ny standard established pursuant to section 301." Other differences between 301 and sections providing explicitly for enforceable regulations, such as the lack of any statutory timetable for 301 limitations, can be explained on the basis of the greater difficulty of drafting 301 regulations. (2) There was heated debate in Congress concerning whether EPA should be able to veto individual state permits, as the Act now provides. The Eighth Circuit believed that "creation of the veto power would make no sense if the EPA was already empowered to promulgate regulations under 301." CPC I, supra, at 1040-1041. We disagree. "[A] veto power could have been considered just as necessary to ensure compliance by the permit grantors with section 301 limitations as with section 304 guidelines." American Iron & Steel Institute, supra, at 1041. The veto power would be especially important because large numbers of permits could be issued before the 301 regulations were promulgated. During this interim period, inconsistency with the 304 (b) guidelines could be a ground for vetoing a permit. (Moreover, we disagree with the Eighth Circuit's contention that EPA's power to object to "the issuance of such permit as being outside the guidelines and requirements of this Act," 402 (d) (2), can only refer to 304 (b) guidelines. CPC I, supra, at 1038-1039. Section 304 (h) provides for guidelines governing the procedure for issuance of permits; EPA can veto a permit if "the issuance of such permit" violated these guidelines.) We are also unconvinced by the argument that our view of the Act violates the congressional intent to leave the States a major role in controlling water pollution. See American Meat Institute, supra, at 452. </s> [Footnote 25 Petitioners contend that the administrative construction should not receive deference because it was not contemporaneous with the passage of the Act. They base this argument primarily on the fact that EPA's initial notices of its proposed rulemaking refer to 304 (b), rather than 301, as the source of authority. But this is merely evidence that the Administrator originally intended to issue guidelines prior to issuing effluent limitation regulations. American Frozen Food Institute v. Train, supra, at 128 n. 6, 539 F.2d, at 130 n. 6. In fact, in a letter urging the President to sign the Act, the Administrator stated that "[t]he Conference bill fully incorporates as its central regulatory point the Administration's proposal concerning effluent limitations in terms of industrial categories and groups ultimately applicable to individual dischargers through a permit system." 118 Cong. Rec. 36777 (1972), Leg. Hist. 149 (emphasis added). Finally, the EPA interpretation would be entitled to some deference even if it was not contemporaneous, "having in mind the complexity and technical nature of the statutes and the subjects they regulate, the obscurity of the statutory language, and EPA's unique experience and expertise in dealing with the problems created by these conditions." American Meat Institute v. EPA, supra, at 450 n. 16. </s> [Footnote 26 This litigation exemplifies the wisdom of allowing difficult issues to mature through full consideration by the courts of appeals. By eliminating the many subsidiary, but still troubling, arguments raised by industry, these courts have vastly simplified our task, as well as having underscored the reasonableness of the agency view. </s> [Footnote 27 It should be noted that petitioners' principal arguments are directed to the proposition that 301 did not mandate the promulgation of industrywide regulations for existing point sources. But that ultimate proposition is not necessarily inconsistent with EPA's position that it was authorized to proceed by regulation if the aggregate effect of thousands of individual permit proceedings would not achieve the required effluent limitations by the 1977 and 1983 deadlines. Even with respect to the permit programs authorized by 402, it is clear that EPA can delegate responsibilities to the States without surrendering its ultimate authority over such programs as well as over individual permit actions. </s> [Footnote 28 Petitioners attach some significance to the fact that compliance with a 402 permit is "deemed compliance, for purposes of sections 309 [the federal enforcement section] and 505 [the citizen suit section], with sectio[n] . . . 306 . . . ." 402 (k). This provision plainly cannot allow deviations from 306 standards in issuing the permit. For, after standards of performance are promulgated, the permit can only be issued "upon condition that such discharge will meet . . . all applicable requirements under sectio[n] . . . 306 . . ." 402 (a) (1); and one of the requirements of 306 is that no new source may operate in violation of any standard of performance. 306 (e). The purpose of 402 (k) seems to be to insulate permit holders from changes in various regulations during the period of a permit and to relieve them of having to litigate in an enforcement action the question whether their permits are sufficiently strict. In short, 402 (k) serves the purpose of giving permits finality. </s> [430 U.S. 112, 140]

United States Supreme Court HILLS v. GAUTREAUX(1976) No. 74-1047 Argued: January 20, 1976Decided: April 20, 1976 </s> Respondents, Negro tenants in or applicants for public housing in Chicago, brought separate class actions against the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), alleging that CHA had deliberately selected family public housing sites in Chicago to "avoid the placement of Negro families in white neighborhoods" in violation of federal statutes and the Fourteenth Amendment, and that HUD had assisted in that policy by providing financial assistance and other support for CHA's discriminatory housing projects. The District Court on the basis of the evidence entered summary judgment against CHA, which was ordered to take remedial action. The court then granted a motion to dismiss the HUD action, which meanwhile had been held in abeyance. The Court of Appeals reversed, having found that HUD had committed constitutional and statutory violations by sanctioning and assisting CHA's discriminatory program. The District Court thereafter consolidated the CHA and HUD cases and, having rejected respondents' motion to consider metropolitan area relief, adopted petitioner's proposed order for corrective action in Chicago. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the case "for additional evidence and for further consideration of the issue of metropolitan area relief." Held: A metropolitan area remedy in this case is not impermissible as a matter of law. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 , distinguished. Pp. 296-306. </s> (a) A remedial order against HUD affecting its conduct in the area beyond Chicago's geographic boundaries but within the housing market relevant to the respondents' housing options is warranted here because HUD, in contrast to the suburban school districts in Milliken, committed violations of the Constitution and federal statutes. Milliken imposes no per se rule that federal courts lack authority to order corrective action beyond the municipal boundaries where the violations occurred. Pp. 297-300. [425 U.S. 284, 285] </s> (b) The order affecting HUD's conduct beyond Chicago's boundaries would not impermissibly interfere with local governments and suburban housing authorities that were not implicated in HUD's unconstitutional conduct. Under the 8 Lower-Income Housing Assistance program of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 HUD may contract directly with private owners and developers to make leased housing units available to eligible lower income persons, with local governmental units retaining the right to comment on specific proposals, to reject certain programs that are inconsistent with their approved housing assistance plans, and to require that zoning and other land use restrictions be observed by builders. Pp. 300-306. </s> 503 F.2d 930, affirmed. </s> STEWART, J., delivered the opinion of the Court in which all Members joined, except STEVENS, J., who took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. MARSHALL, J., filed a concurring statement, in which BRENNAN and WHITE, JJ., joined, post, p. 306. </s> Solicitor General Bork argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the brief were Assistant Attorney General Lee, Deputy Solicitor General Jones, Harriet S. Shapiro, William Kanter, and Anthony J. Steinmeyer. </s> Alexander Polikoff argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief were Milton I. Shadur, Bernard Weisberg, Merrill A. Freed, and Robert J. Vollen. * </s> [Footnote * James M. P. D'Amico filed a brief for the city of Joliet, Ill., as amicus curiae urging reversal. </s> Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed by Martin E. Sloane and Arthur D. Wolf for the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing, Inc.; and by Howard A. Glickstein, William L. Taylor, and Richard F. Bellman for the Notre Dame Center for Civil Rights et al. </s> Briefs of amici curiae were filed by J. Harold Flannery, Paul R. Dimond, William E. Caldwell, Norman J. Chachkin, and Nathaniel R. Jones for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law et al.; and by Stephen J. Pollak, Richard M. Sharp, and David Rubin for the National Education Association. [425 U.S. 284, 286] </s> MR. JUSTICE STEWART delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has been judicially found to have violated the Fifth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in connection with the selection of sites for public housing in the city of Chicago. The issue before us is whether the remedial order of the federal trial court may extend beyond Chicago's territorial boundaries. </s> I </s> This extended litigation began in 1966 when the respondents, six Negro tenants in or applicants for public housing in Chicago, brought separate actions on behalf of themselves and all other Negro tenants and applicants similarly situated against the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and HUD. 1 The complaint filed against CHA in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois alleged that between 1950 and 1965 substantially all of the sites for family public housing selected by CHA and approved by the Chicago City Council were "at the time of such selection, and are now," located "within the areas known as the Negro Ghetto." The respondents further alleged that CHA deliberately selected the sites to "avoid the placement of Negro families in white neighborhoods" in violation of federal statutes and the Fourteenth Amendment. In a companion suit against HUD the respondents claimed that it had "assisted in the carrying on and continues to assist in the carrying on of a racially discriminatory public housing system within the City of Chicago" by providing [425 U.S. 284, 287] financial assistance and other support for CHA's discriminatory housing projects. 2 </s> The District Court stayed the action against HUD pending resolution of the CHA suit. 3 In February 1969, the court entered summary judgment against CHA on the ground that it had violated the respondents' constitutional rights by selecting public housing sites and assigning tenants on the basis of race. 4 Gautreaux v. Chicago Housing Authority, 296 F. Supp. 907. Uncontradicted [425 U.S. 284, 288] evidence submitted to the District Court established that the public housing system operated by CHA was racially segregated, with four overwhelmingly white projects located in white neighborhoods and with 99 1/2% of the remaining family units located in Negro neighborhoods and 99% of those units occupied by Negro tenants. Id., at 910. 5 In order to prohibit future violations and to remedy the effects of past unconstitutional practices, the court directed CHA to build its next 700 family units in predominantly white areas of Chicago and thereafter to locate at least 75% of its new family public housing in predominantly white areas inside Chicago or in Cook County. Gautreaux v. Chicago Housing Authority, 304 F. Supp. 736, 738-739. 6 In addition, CHA was ordered to modify its tenant-assignment and site-selection procedures and to use its best efforts to increase the supply of dwelling units as rapidly as possible in conformity with the judgment. Id., at 739-741. [425 U.S. 284, 289] </s> The District Court then turned to the action against HUD. In September 1970, it granted HUD's motion to dismiss the complaint for lack of jurisdiction and failure to state a claim on which relief could be granted. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed and ordered the District Court to enter summary judgment for the respondents, holding that HUD had violated both the Fifth Amendment and 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 78 Stat. 252, 42 U.S.C. 2000d, by knowingly sanctioning and assisting CHA's racially discriminatory public housing program. Gautreaux v. Romney, 448 F.2d 731, 739-740. 7 </s> On remand, the trial court addressed the difficult problem of providing an effective remedy for the racially segregated public housing system that had been created by the unconstitutional conduct of CHA and HUD. 8 </s> [425 U.S. 284, 290] The court granted the respondents' motion to consolidate the CHA and HUD cases and ordered the parties to formulate "a comprehensive plan to remedy the past effects of unconstitutional site selection procedures." The order directed the parties to "provide the Court with as broad a range of alternatives as seem . . . feasible" including "alternatives which are not confined in their scope to the geographic boundary of the City of Chicago." After consideration of the plans submitted by the parties and the evidence adduced in their support, the court denied the respondents' motion to consider metropolitan area relief and adopted the petitioner's [425 U.S. 284, 291] proposed order requiring HUD to use its best efforts to assist CHA in increasing the supply of dwelling units and enjoining HUD from funding family public housing programs in Chicago that were inconsistent with the previous judgment entered against CHA. The court found that metropolitan area relief was unwarranted because "the wrongs were committed within the limits of Chicago and solely against residents of the City" and there were no allegations that "CHA and HUD discriminated or fostered racial discrimination in the suburbs." </s> On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, with one judge dissenting, reversed and remanded the case for "the adoption of a comprehensive metropolitan area plan that will not only disestablish the segregated public housing system in the City of Chicago . . . but will increase the supply of dwelling units as rapidly as possible." 503 F.2d 930, 939. Shortly before the Court of Appeals announced its decision, this Court in Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 , had reversed a judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that had approved a plan requiring the consolidation of 54 school districts in the Detroit metropolitan area to remedy racial discrimination in the operation of the Detroit public schools. Understanding Milliken "to hold that the relief sought there would be an impractical and unreasonable overresponse to a violation limited to one school district," the Court of Appeals concluded that the Milliken decision did not bar a remedy extending beyond the limits of Chicago in the present case because of the equitable and administrative distinctions between a metropolitan public housing plan and the consolidation of numerous local school districts. 503 F.2d, at 935-936. In addition, the appellate court found that, in contrast to Milliken, there was evidence of suburban discrimination and [425 U.S. 284, 292] of the likelihood that there had been an "extra-city impact" of the petitioner's "intra-city discrimination." Id., at 936-937, 939-940. The appellate court's determination that a remedy extending beyond the city limits was both "necessary and equitable" rested in part on the agreement of the parties and the expert witnesses that "the metropolitan area is a single relevant locality for low rent housing purposes and that a city-only remedy will not work." Id., at 936-937. HUD subsequently sought review in this Court of the permissibility in light of Milliken of "inter-district relief for discrimination in public housing in the absence of a finding of an inter-district violation." 9 We granted certiorari to consider this important question. 421 U.S. 962 . </s> II </s> In Milliken v. Bradley, supra, this Court considered the proper scope of a federal court's equity decree in the context of a school desegregation case. The respondents in that case had brought an action alleging that the Detroit public school system was segregated on the basis of race as the result of official conduct and sought an order establishing "`a unitary, nonracial school system.'" 418 U.S., at 723 . After finding that constitutional violations committed by the Detroit School Board and state officials had contributed to racial segregation in the Detroit schools, the trial court had proceeded to the formulation of a remedy. Although there had been neither proof of unconstitutional actions on the part of neighboring school districts nor a demonstration that the Detroit violations had produced significant segregative effects in those districts, the court established [425 U.S. 284, 293] a desegregation panel and ordered it to prepare a remedial plan consolidating the Detroit school system and 53 independent suburban school districts. Id., at 733-734. 10 The Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the desegregation order on the ground that, in view of the racial composition of the Detroit school system, the only feasible remedy required "the crossing of the boundary lines between the Detroit School District and adjacent or nearby school districts." 484 F.2d 215, 249. This Court reversed the Court of Appeals, holding that the multidistrict remedy contemplated by the desegregation order was an erroneous exercise of the equitable authority of the federal courts. </s> Although the Milliken opinion discussed the many practical problems that would be encountered in the consolidation of numerous school districts by judicial decree, the Court's decision rejecting the metropolitan area desegregation order was actually based on fundamental limitations on the remedial powers of the federal courts to restructure the operation of local and state governmental entities. That power is not plenary. It "may be exercised `only on the basis of a constitutional violation.'" 418 U.S., at 738 , quoting Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, 16 . See Rizzo v. Goode, 423 U.S. 362, 377 . Once a constitutional violation is found, a federal court is required to [425 U.S. 284, 294] tailor "the scope of the remedy" to fit "the nature and extent of the constitutional violation." 418 U.S., at 744 ; Swann, supra, at 16. In Milliken, there was no finding of unconstitutional action on the part of the suburban school officials and no demonstration that the violations committed in the operation of the Detroit school system had had any significant segregative effects in the suburbs. See 418 U.S., at 745 , 748. The desegregation order in Milliken requiring the consolidation of local school districts in the Detroit metropolitan area thus constituted direct federal judicial interference with local governmental entities without the necessary predicate of a constitutional violation by those entities or of the identification within them of any significant segregative effects resulting from the Detroit school officials' unconstitutional conduct. Under these circumstances, the Court held that the interdistrict decree was impermissible because it was not commensurate with the constitutional violation to be repaired. </s> Since the Milliken decision was based on basic limitations on the exercise of the equity power of the federal courts and not on a balancing of particular considerations presented by school desegregation cases, it is apparent that the Court of Appeals erred in finding Milliken inapplicable on that ground to this public housing case. 11 </s> [425 U.S. 284, 295] The school desegregation context of the Milliken case is nonetheless important to an understanding of its discussion of the limitations on the exercise of federal judicial power. As the Court noted, school district lines cannot be "casually ignored or treated as a mere administrative convenience" because they separate independent governmental entities responsible for the operation of autonomous [425 U.S. 284, 296] public school systems. 418 U.S., at 741 -743. The Court's holding that there had to be an interdistrict violation or effect before a federal court could order the crossing of district boundary lines reflected the substantive impact of a consolidation remedy on separate and independent school districts. 12 The District Court's desegregation order in Milliken was held to be an impermissible remedy not because it envisioned relief against a wrongdoer extending beyond the city in which the violation occurred but because it contemplated a judicial decree restructuring the operation of local governmental entities that were not implicated in any constitutional violation. </s> III </s> The question presented in this case concerns only the authority of the District Court to order HUD to take remedial action outside the city limits of Chicago. HUD does not dispute the Court of Appeals' determination that it violated the Fifth Amendment and 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by knowingly funding CHA's racially discriminatory family public housing program, nor does it question the appropriateness of a remedial order designed to alleviate the effects of past segregative practices by requiring that public housing be developed in areas that will afford respondents an opportunity to reside in desegregated neighborhoods. But HUD contends that the Milliken decision bars a remedy affecting [425 U.S. 284, 297] its conduct beyond the boundaries of Chicago for two reasons. First, it asserts that such a remedial order would constitute the grant of relief incommensurate with the constitutional violation to be repaired. And, second, it claims that a decree regulating HUD's conduct beyond Chicago's boundaries would inevitably have the effect of "consolidat[ing] for remedial purposes" governmental units not implicated in HUD's and CHA's violations. We address each of these arguments in turn. </s> A </s> We reject the contention that, since HUD's constitutional and statutory violations were committed in Chicago, Milliken precludes an order against HUD that will affect its conduct in the greater metropolitan area. The critical distinction between HUD and the suburban school districts in Milliken is that HUD has been found to have violated the Constitution. That violation provided the necessary predicate for the entry of a remedial order against HUD and, indeed, imposed a duty on the District Court to grant appropriate relief. See 418 U.S., at 744 . Our prior decisions counsel that in the event of a constitutional violation "all reasonable methods be available to formulate an effective remedy," North Carolina State Board of Education v. Swann, 402 U.S. 43, 46 , and that every effort should be made by a federal court to employ those methods "to achieve the greatest possible degree of [relief], taking into account the practicalities of the situation." Davis v. School Comm'rs of Mobile County, 402 U.S. 33, 37 . As the Court observed in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education: "Once a right and a violation have been shown, the scope of a district court's equitable powers to remedy past wrongs is broad, for breadth and flexibility are inherent in equitable remedies." 402 U.S., at 15 . [425 U.S. 284, 298] </s> Nothing in the Milliken decision suggests a per se rule that federal courts lack authority to order parties found to have violated the Constitution to undertake remedial efforts beyond the municipal boundaries of the city where the violation occurred. 13 As we noted in Part II, supra, the District Court's proposed remedy in Milliken was impermissible because of the limits on the federal judicial power to interfere with the operation of state political entities that were not implicated in unconstitutional conduct. Here, unlike the desegregation remedy found erroneous in Milliken, a judicial order directing relief beyond the boundary lines of Chicago will not necessarily entail coercion of uninvolved governmental units, because both CHA and HUD have the authority to operate outside the Chicago city limits. 14 </s> [425 U.S. 284, 299] </s> In this case, it is entirely appropriate and consistent with Milliken to order CHA and HUD to attempt to create housing alternatives for the respondents in the Chicago suburbs. Here the wrong committed by HUD confined the respondents to segregated public housing. The relevant geographic area for purposes of the respondents' housing options is the Chicago housing market, not the Chicago city limits. That HUD recognizes this reality is evident in its administration of federal housing assistance programs through "housing market areas" encompassing "the geographic area `within which all dwelling units . . .' are in competition with one another as alternatives for the users of housing." Department of Housing and Urban Development, FHA Techniques of Housing Market Analysis 8 (Jan. 1970), quoting the Institute for Urban Land Use and Housing Studies, Housing Market Analysis: A Study of Theory and Methods, c. 2 (1953). The housing market area "usually extends beyond the city limits" and in the larger markets "may extend into several adjoining counties." FHA Techniques of Housing Market Analysis, supra, at 12. 15 An order against HUD and CHA regulating their conduct in the greater metropolitan area will [425 U.S. 284, 300] do no more than take into account HUD's expert determination of the area relevant to the respondents' housing opportunities and will thus be wholly commensurate with the "nature and extent of the constitutional violation." 418 U.S., at 744 . To foreclose such relief solely because HUD's constitutional violation took place within the city limits of Chicago would transform Milliken's principled limitation on the exercise of federal judicial authority into an arbitrary and mechanical shield for those found to have engaged in unconstitutional conduct. </s> B </s> The more substantial question under Milliken is whether an order against HUD affecting its conduct beyond Chicago's boundaries would impermissibly interfere with local governments and suburban housing authorities that have not been implicated in HUD's unconstitutional conduct. In examining this issue, it is important to note that the Court of Appeals' decision did not endorse or even discuss "any specific metropolitan plan" but instead left the formulation of the remedial plan to the District Court on remand. 503 F.2d, at 936. On rehearing, the Court of Appeals characterized its remand order as one calling "for additional evidence and for further consideration of the issue of metropolitan area relief in light of this opinion and that of the Supreme Court in Milliken v. Bradley." Id., at 940. In the current posture of the case, HUD's contention that any remand for consideration of a metropolitan area order would be impermissible as a matter of law must necessarily be based on its claim at oral argument "that court-ordered metropolitan relief in this case, no matter how gently it's gone about, no matter how it's framed, is bound to require HUD to ignore the safeguards of local autonomy and local political processes" and therefore to violate the limitations on federal judicial power [425 U.S. 284, 301] established in Milliken. In addressing this contention we are not called upon, in other words, to evaluate the validity of any specific order, since no such order has yet been formulated. </s> HUD's position, we think, underestimates the ability of a federal court to formulate a decree that will grant the respondents the constitutional relief to which they may be entitled without overstepping the limits of judicial power established in the Milliken case. HUD's discretion regarding the selection of housing proposals to assist with funding as well as its authority under a recent statute to contract for low-income housing directly with private owners and developers can clearly be directed toward providing relief to the respondents in the greater Chicago metropolitan area without preempting the power of local governments by undercutting the role of those governments in the federal housing assistance scheme. </s> An order directing HUD to use its discretion under the various federal housing programs to foster projects located in white areas of the Chicago housing market would be consistent with and supportive of well-established federal housing policy. 16 Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits racial discrimination in federally assisted programs including, of course, public housing programs. 17 Based upon this statutory prohibition, HUD in 1967 issued site-approval rules for low-rent [425 U.S. 284, 302] housing designed to avoid racial segregation and expand the opportunities of minority group members "to locate outside areas of [minority] concentration." Department of Housing and Urban Development, Low-Rent Housing Manual, 205.1, § 4g (Feb. 1967 rev.). Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 expressly directed the Secretary of HUD to "administer the programs and activities relating to housing and urban development in a manner affirmatively to further" the Act's fair housing policy. 82 Stat. 85, 42 U.S.C. 3608 (d) (5). </s> Among the steps taken by HUD to discharge its statutory duty to promote fair housing was the adoption of project-selection criteria for use in "eliminating clearly unacceptable proposals and assigning priorities in funding to assure that the best proposals are funded first." HUD Evaluation of Rent Supplement Projects and Low-Rent Housing Assistance Applications, 37 Fed. Reg. 203 (1972). In structuring the minority housing opportunity component of the project-selection criteria, HUD attempted "to assure that building in minority areas goes forward only after there truly exist housing opportunities for minorities elsewhere" in the housing market and to avoid encouraging projects located in substantially racially mixed areas. Id., at 204. See 24 CFR 200.710 (1975). See generally Maxwell, HUD's Project Selection Criteria - A Cure for "Impermissible Color Blindness"?, 48 Notre Dame Law. 92 (1972). 18 More recently, in [425 U.S. 284, 303] the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, Congress emphasized the importance of locating housing so as to promote greater choice of housing opportunities and to avoid undue concentrations of lower income persons. See 88 Stat. 633, 42 U.S.C. 5301 (c) (6), 5304 (a) (4) (A), (C) (ii) (1970 ed., Supp. IV); H. R. Rep. No. 93-1114, p. 8 (1974). </s> A remedial plan designed to insure that HUD will utilize its funding and administrative powers in a manner consistent with affording relief to the respondents need not abrogate the role of local governmental units in the federal housing-assistance programs. Under the major housing programs in existence at the time the District Court entered its remedial order pertaining to HUD, local housing authorities and municipal governments had to make application for funds or approve the use of funds in the locality before HUD could make housing-assistance money available. See 42 U.S.C. 1415 (7) (b), 1421b (a) (2). An order directed solely to HUD would not force unwilling localities to apply for assistance under these programs but would merely reinforce the regulations guiding HUD's determination of which of the locally authorized projects to assist with federal funds. </s> The Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, amending the United States Housing Act of 1937, 88 Stat. 653, 42 U.S.C. 1437 et seq. (1970 ed., Supp. IV), significantly enlarged HUD's role in the creation of housing opportunities. Under the 8 Lower-Income Housing Assistance program, which has largely replaced the older federal low-income housing programs, 19 HUD [425 U.S. 284, 304] may contract directly with private owners to make leased housing units available to eligible lower income persons. 20 As HUD has acknowledged in this case, "local governmental approval is no longer explicitly required as a condition of the program's applicability to a locality." Brief for Petitioner 33-34. Regulations governing the 8 program permit HUD to select "the geographic area or areas in which the housing is to be constructed," 24 CFR 880.203 (b) (1975), and direct that sites be chosen to "promote greater choice of housing opportunities and avoid undue concentration of assisted persons in areas containing a high proportion of low-income persons." 880.112 (d), 883.209 (a) (3). See 880.112 (b), (c), 883.209 (a) (2), (b) (2). In most cases the Act grants the unit of local government in which the assistance is to be provided the right to comment on the application and, in certain specified circumstances, to preclude the Secretary of HUD from approving the application. See 42 U.S.C. 1439 (a)-(c) (1970 ed., Supp. IV). 21 </s> [425 U.S. 284, 305] Use of the 8 program to expand low-income housing opportunities outside areas of minority concentration would not have a coercive effect on suburban municipalities. For under the program, the local governmental units retain the right to comment on specific assistance proposals, to reject certain proposals that are inconsistent with their approved housing-assistance plans, and to require that zoning and other land-use restrictions be adhered to by builders. </s> In sum, there is no basis for the petitioner's claim that court-ordered metropolitan area relief in this case would be impermissible as a matter of law under the Milliken decision. In contrast to the desegregation order in that case, a metropolitan area relief order directed to HUD would not consolidate or in any way restructure local [425 U.S. 284, 306] governmental units. The remedial decree would neither force suburban governments to submit public housing proposals to HUD nor displace the rights and powers accorded local government entities under federal or state housing statutes or existing land-use laws. The order would have the same effect on the suburban governments as a discretionary decision by HUD to use its statutory powers to provide the respondents with alternatives to the racially segregated Chicago public housing system created by CHA and HUD. </s> Since we conclude that a metropolitan area remedy in this case is not impermissible as a matter of law, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals remanding the case to the District Court "for additional evidence and for further consideration of the issue of metropolitan area relief." 503 F.2d, at 940. Our determination that the District Court has the authority to direct HUD to engage in remedial efforts in the metropolitan area outside the city limits of Chicago should not be interpreted as requiring a metropolitan area order. The nature and scope of the remedial decree to be entered on remand is a matter for the District Court in the exercise of its equitable discretion, after affording the parties an opportunity to present their views. </s> The judgment of the Court of Appeals remanding this case to the District Court is affirmed, but further proceedings in the District Court are to be consistent with this opinion. </s> It is so ordered. </s> MR. JUSTICE STEVENS took no part in the consideration or decision of this case. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 The original complaint named the Housing Assistance Administration, then a corporate agency of HUD, as the defendant. Although the petitioner in this case is the current Secretary of HUD, this opinion uses the terms "petitioner" and "HUD" interchangeably. </s> [Footnote 2 The complaint sought to enjoin HUD from providing funds for 17 projects that had been proposed by CHA in 1965 and 1966 and from making available to CHA any other financial assistance to be used in connection with the racially discriminatory aspects of the Chicago public housing system. In addition, the respondents requested that they be granted "such other and further relief as the Court may deem just and equitable." </s> [Footnote 3 Before the stay of the action against HUD, the District Court had certified the plaintiff class in the CHA action and had rejected CHA's motion to dismiss or for summary judgment on the counts of the complaint alleging that CHA had intentionally selected public housing sites to avoid desegregating housing patterns. 265 F. Supp. 582. </s> [Footnote 4 CHA admitted that it had followed a policy of informally clearing proposed family public housing sites with the alderman in whose ward the proposed site was located and of eliminating each site opposed by the alderman. 296 F. Supp. 907, 910, 913. This procedure had resulted in the rejection of 99 1/2% of the units proposed for sites in white areas which had been initially selected as suitable for public housing by CHA. Id., at 912. </s> With regard to tenant assignments, the court found that CHA had established a racial quota to restrict the number of Negro families residing in the four CHA family public housing projects located in white areas in Chicago. The projects, all built prior to 1944, had Negro tenant populations of 7%, 6%, 4%, and 1% despite the fact that Negroes composed about 90% of the tenants of CHA family housing units and a similar percentage of the waiting list. A CHA official testified that until 1968 the four projects located in white areas were listed on the Authority's tenant-selection form as suitable for white families only. Id., at 909. </s> [Footnote 5 In July 1968, CHA had in operation or development 54 family housing projects with a total of 30,848 units. Statistics submitted to the District Court established that, aside from the four overwhelmingly white projects discussed in n. 4, supra, 92% of all of CHA's family housing units were located in neighborhoods that were at least 75% Negro and that two-thirds of the units were situated in areas with more than 95% Negro residents. Id., at 910. </s> [Footnote 6 The District Court's remedial decree divided Cook County into a "General Public Housing Area" and a "Limited Public Housing Area." The "Limited Public Housing Area" consisted of the area within census tracts having a 30% or more nonwhite population or within one mile of the boundary of any such census tract. The remainder of Cook County was included in the "General Public Housing Area." 304 F. Supp., at 737. Following the commencement of construction of at least 700 family units in the General Public Housing Area of the city of Chicago, CHA was permitted by the terms of the order to locate up to one-third of its General Public Housing Area units in the portion of Cook County outside of Chicago. See id., at 738-739. </s> [Footnote 7 The Court of Appeals found that "HUD retained a large amount of discretion to approve or reject both site selection and tenant assignment procedures of the local housing authority" and that the Secretary had exercised those powers "in a manner which perpetuated a racially discriminatory housing system in Chicago." 448 F.2d, at 739. Although the appellate court stated that it was "fully sympathetic" with the "very real `dilemma'" presented by the need for public housing in Chicago, it ruled that the demand for housing did not justify "the Secretary's past actions [which] constituted racially discriminatory conduct in their own right." Ibid. </s> [Footnote 8 The court's July 1969 order directing CHA to use its best efforts to increase public housing opportunities in white areas as rapidly as possible had not resulted in the submission of a single housing site to the Chicago City Council. A subsequent order directing the submission of sites for 1,500 units by September 20, 1970, had eventually prompted CHA to submit proposed sites in the spring of 1971, but inaction by the City Council had held up the approval of the sites required for their development. See Gautreaux v. Romney, 332 F. Supp. 366, 368. </s> The District Court subsequently took additional measures in an [425 U.S. 284, 290] attempt to implement the remedial orders entered against CHA. In May 1971, the city of Chicago and HUD agreed to a letter of intent that provided that the city would process sites suitable for use by CHA to permit the Authority to commence acquisition of sites for 1,700 units in accordance with a specified timetable. HUD then released certain Model Cities funds on the condition that the City Council and CHA continue to show progress toward meeting the goals set forth in the May letter. After the city fell far behind schedule, the District Court granted the respondents' request for an injunction directing HUD to withhold $26 million in Model Cities funds until the city remedied its existing deficit under the timetable. See id., at 368-370. The Court of Appeals reversed the injunction, holding that the District Court had abused its discretion in ordering funding cut off. 457 F.2d 124. </s> Between July 1971 and April 1972, the City Council failed to conduct any hearings with respect to acquisition of property for housing sites and did not approve land acquisition for any sites. Gautreaux v. Chicago Housing Authority, 342 F. Supp. 827, 829. Following the filing of a supplemental complaint naming the mayor and the members of the City Council as defendants, the District Court found that their inaction had prevented CHA from providing relief in conformity with the court's prior orders. In a further effort to effectuate relief, the court ruled that the provision of Illinois law requiring City Council approval of land acquisition by CHA "shall not be applicable to CHA's actions . . . taken for the purpose of providing Dwelling Units." Id., at 830. The Court of Appeals upheld this decision. Gautreaux v. City of Chicago, 480 F.2d 210. </s> [Footnote 9 Although CHA participated in the proceeding before the Court of Appeals, it did not seek review of that court's decision and has not participated in the proceedings in this Court. </s> [Footnote 10 Although the trial court's desegregation order in Milliken did not direct the adoption of a specific metropolitan area plan, it did contain detailed guidelines for the panel appointed to draft the desegregation plan. 345 F. Supp. 914 (ED Mich.). The framework for the plan called for the division of the designated 54-school-district desegregation area into 15 clusters, each containing a part of the Detroit school system and two or more suburban districts. Within this framework, the court charged the panel with the responsibility for devising a plan that would produce the maximum actual desegregation. Id., at 918, 928-929. See 418 U.S., at 733 -734. </s> [Footnote 11 The Court of Appeals interpreted the Milliken opinion as limited to a determination that, in view of the administrative complexities of school district consolidation and the deeply rooted tradition of local control of public schools, the balance of equitable factors weighed against metropolitan area school desegregation remedies. See 503 F.2d, at 935-936. But the Court's decision in Milliken was premised on a controlling principle governing the permissible scope of federal judicial power, a principle not limited to a school desegregation context. See 418 U.S., at 744 . </s> In addition, the Court of Appeals surmised that either an interdistrict violation or an interdistrict segregative effect may have been present in this case. There is no support provided for either conclusion. [425 U.S. 284, 295] The sole basis of the appellate court's discussion of alleged suburban discrimination was the respondents' Exhibit 11 illustrating the location of 12 public housing projects within the portion of the Chicago Urbanized Area outside the city limits of Chicago. That exhibit showed that 11 of the 12 projects were located in areas that, at the time of the hearing in November 1972, were within one mile of the boundary of a census tract with less than a 70% white population. The exhibit was offered to illustrate the scarcity of integrated public housing opportunities for the plaintiff class and for lower income white families and to indicate why the respondents did not "expect cooperation from the suburban areas" in providing housing alternatives in predominately white areas. In discussing the data underlying the exhibit, counsel for the respondents in the trial court expressly attempted to avoid the "possible misconception" that he was then asserting that the suburban municipalities and housing authorities were "guilty of any discrimination or wrong-doing." In view of the purpose for which the exhibit was offered and the District Court's determination that "the wrongs were committed within the limits of Chicago," it is apparent that the Court of Appeals was mistaken in supposing that the exhibit constitutes evidence of suburban discrimination justifying metropolitan area relief. </s> In its brief opinion on rehearing, the Court of Appeals asserted that "it is reasonable to conclude from the record" that the intracity violation "may well have fostered racial paranoia and encouraged the `white flight' phenomenon which has exacerbated the problems of achieving integration." 503 F.2d, at 939-940. The Court of Appeals' speculation about the effects of the discriminatory site selection in Chicago is contrary both to expert testimony in the record and the conclusions of the District Court. Such unsupported speculation falls far short of the demonstration of a "significant segregative effect in another district" discussed in the Milliken opinion. See 418 U.S., at 745 . </s> [Footnote 12 The Court in Milliken required either a showing of an interdistrict violation or a significant segregative effect "[b]efore the boundaries of separate and autonomous school districts may be set aside by consolidating the separate units for remedial purposes." Id., at 744. In its amicus memorandum in Milliken, the United States argued that an interdistrict remedy in that case would require "the restructuring of state or local government entities" and result in "judicial interference with state prerogatives concerning the organization of local governments." </s> [Footnote 13 Although the State of Michigan had been found to have committed constitutional violations contributing to racial segregation in the Detroit schools, 418 U.S., at 734 -735, n. 16, the Court in Milliken concluded that the interdistrict order was a wrongful exercise of judicial power because prior cases had established that such violations are to be dealt with in terms of "an established geographic and administrative school system," id., at 746, and because the State's educational structure vested substantial independent control over school affairs in the local school districts. See id., at 742-744. In Milliken, a consolidation order directed against the State would of necessity have abrogated the rights and powers of the suburban school districts under Michigan law. See id., at 742 n. 20. Here, by contrast, a metropolitan area remedy involving HUD need not displace the rights and powers accorded suburban governmental entities under federal or state law. See Part III-B, infra. </s> [Footnote 14 Illinois statutes permit a city housing authority to exercise its powers within an "area of operation" defined to include the territorial boundary of the city and all of the area within three miles beyond the city boundary that is not located within the boundaries of another city, village, or incorporated town. In addition, the housing authority may act outside its area of operation by contract with another housing authority or with a state public body [425 U.S. 284, 299] not within the area of operation of another housing authority. Ill. Rev. Stat. c. 67 1/2, 17 (b), 27c (1973). </s> Although the state officials in Milliken had the authority to operate across school district lines, the exercise of that authority to effectuate the court's desegregation order would have eliminated numerous independent school districts or at least have displaced important powers granted those uninvolved governmental entities under state law. See n. 13, supra. </s> [Footnote 15 In principal markets such as Chicago, the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area is coterminous with the housing market area. See Department of Housing and Urban Development, FHA Techniques of Housing Market Analysis 13 (Jan. 1970); Department of Housing and Urban Development, Urban Housing Market Analysis 5 (1966). </s> [Footnote 16 In the District Court, HUD filed an appendix detailing the various federal programs designed to secure better housing opportunities for low-income families and represented that "the Department will continue to use its best efforts in review and approval of housing programs for Chicago which address the needs of low income families." </s> [Footnote 17 It was this statutory prohibition that HUD was held to have violated by its funding of CHA's housing projects. See 448 F.2d, at 740. </s> [Footnote 18 A HUD study of the implementation of the project-selection criteria revealed that the actual operation of the minority housing opportunity criterion depends on the definition of "area of minority concentration" and "racially mixed" area employed by each field office. The meaning of those terms, which are not defined in the applicable regulations, 24 CFR 200.710 (1975), varied among field offices and within the jurisdiction of particular field offices. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Implementation of HUD Project Selection Criteria for Subsidized Housing: An Evaluation 116-117 (Dec. 1972). </s> [Footnote 19 In fiscal year 1975, new contract commitments under the 8 program were approximately $10.7 billion, as compared to total estimated new contract commitments of approximately $16.35 billion for all federally subsidized housing programs. The comparable figures for fiscal year 1976 indicate that $22.725 billion of a total [425 U.S. 284, 304] of $24.8 billion in new contract commitments are to be made under the 8 program. See Hearings on Department of Housing and Urban Development - Independent Agencies Appropriations for 1976, before a Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 5, pp. 85-86 (1975). See also id., at 119 (testimony of HUD Secretary Hills). </s> [Footnote 20 Under the 8 program, HUD contracts to make payments to local public housing agencies or to private owners of housing units to make up the difference between a fair market rent for the area and the amount contributed by the low-income tenant. The eligible tenant family pays between 15% and 25% of its gross income for rent. See 42 U.S.C. 1437f (1970 ed., Supp. IV). </s> [Footnote 21 If the local unit of government in which the proposed assistance is to be provided does not have an approved housing-assistance plan, the Secretary of HUD is directed by statute to give the local governmental entity 30 days to comment on the proposal, after which time the Secretary may approve the project unless he determines that there is not a need for the assistance. 42 U.S.C. 1439 (c) (1970 ed., Supp. IV). In areas covered by an approved [425 U.S. 284, 305] plan, the local governmental entity is afforded a 30-day period in which to object to the project on the ground that it is inconsistent with the municipality's approved housing-assistance plan. If such an objection is filed, the Secretary may nonetheless approve the application if he determines that the proposal is consistent with the housing-assistance plan. 1439 (a). The local comment and objection procedures do not apply to applications for assistance involving 12 or fewer units in a single project or development. 1439 (b). </s> The ability of local governments to block proposed 8 projects thus depends on the size of the proposed project and the provisions of the approved housing-assistance plans. Under the 1974 Act, the housing-assistance plan must assess the needs of lower income persons residing in or expected to reside in the community and must indicate the general locations of proposed housing for lower income persons selected in accordance with the statutory objective of "promoting greater choice of housing opportunities and avoiding undue concentrations of assisted persons." 42 U.S.C. 5304 (a) (4) (A), (C) (ii) (1970 ed., Supp. IV). See H. R. Rep. No. 93-1114, p. 8 (1974). See also City of Hartford v. Hills, 408 F. Supp. 889 (Conn. 1976). In view of these requirements of the Act, the location of subsidized housing in predominantly white areas of suburban municipalities may well be consistent with the communities' housing-assistance plans. </s> MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, with whom MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN and MR. JUSTICE WHITE join, concurring. </s> I dissented in Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 </s> [425 U.S. 284, 307] (1974), and I continue to believe that the Court's decision in that case unduly limited the federal courts' broad equitable power to provide effective remedies for official segregation. In this case the Court distinguishes Milliken and paves the way for a remedial decree directing the Department of Housing and Urban Development to utilize its full statutory power to foster housing projects in white areas of the greater Chicago metropolitan area. I join the Court's opinion except insofar as it appears to reaffirm the decision in Milliken. </s> [425 U.S. 284, 308]

United States Supreme Court KANSAS v. MARSH(2006) No. 04-1170 Argued: December 7, 2005Decided: June 26, 2006 </s> Finding three aggravating circumstances that were not outweighed by mitigating circumstances, a Kansas jury convicted respondent Marsh of, inter alia, capital murder and sentenced him to death. Marsh claimed on direct appeal that Kan. Stat. Ann. §21-4624(e) establishes an unconstitutional presumption in favor of death by directing imposition of the death penalty when aggravating and mitigating circumstances are in equipoise. Agreeing, the Kansas Supreme Court concluded that §21-4624(e)'s weighing equation violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments and remanded for a new trial. Held: 1.This Court has jurisdiction to review the Kansas Supreme Court's judgment under 28 U.S.C. §1257. That provision authorizes review of a State's final judgment when a state statute's validity is questioned on federal constitutional grounds, and it permits review even when the state-court proceedings are not complete where the federal claim has been finally decided and later review of the federal issue cannot be had, whatever the case's outcome, Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469, 481. Although Marsh will be retried, the State Supreme Court's determination that the death penalty statute is unconstitutional is final and binding on the lower state courts. Thus, the State will be unable to obtain further review of its law in this case. This Court has deemed lower court decisions final for §1257 purposes in like circumstances, see, e.g., Florida v. Meyers, 466 U.S. 380 (per curiam). Pp.3-4. </s> 2.The State Supreme Court's judgment is not supported by adequate and independent state grounds. Marsh maintains that the judgment was based on state law, the State Supreme Court having previously reviewed the statute in State v. Kleypas. However, Kleypas itself rested on federal law. In this case, the State Supreme Court chastised the Kleypas court for avoiding the constitutional issue, squarely found §21-4624(e) unconstitutional on its face, and overruled Kleypas in relevant part. Pp.4-5. </s> 3.Kansas' capital sentencing statute is constitutional. Pp.5-19. </s> (a)Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639, requires approval of the Kansas statute. There, the Court held that a state death penalty statute may give the defendant the burden to prove that mitigating circumstances outweigh aggravating circumstances. A fortiori, Kansas' death penalty statute, consistent with the Constitution, may direct imposition of the death penalty when the State has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that mitigators do not outweigh aggravators, including where the two are in equipoise. Pp.5-9. </s> (b)Even if, as Marsh contends, Walton does not directly control here, general principles in this Court's death penalty jurisprudence lead to the same conclusion. So long as a state system satisfies the requirements of Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, and Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153--that a system must rationally narrow the class of death-eligible defendants and must permit a jury to render a reasonable, individualized sentencing determination--a State has a range of discretion in imposing the death penalty, including the manner in which aggravating and mitigating circumstances are weighed. The use of mitigation evidence is a product of the individual-sentencing requirement. Defendants have the right to present sentencers with information relevant to the sentencing decision and sentencers are obliged to consider that information in determining the appropriate sentence. The thrust of this Court's mitigation jurisprudence ends here, for the Court has never held that the Constitution requires a specific method for balancing aggravating and mitigating factors. Pp.9-11. </s> (c)Kansas' death penalty statute satisfies the constitutional mandates of Furman and its progeny because it rationally narrows the class of death-eligible defendants and permits a jury to consider any mitigating evidence relevant to its sentencing determination. The State's weighing equation merely channels a jury's discretion by providing criteria by which the jury may determine whether life or death is appropriate. Its system provides the kind of guided discretion sanctioned in, e.g., Walton, supra. Contrary to Marsh's argument, §21-4624(e) does not create a general presumption in favor of the death penalty. A life sentence must be imposed if the State fails to demonstrate the existence of an aggravating circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt, if the State cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that aggravating circumstances are not outweighed by mitigating circumstances, or if the jury is unable to reach a unanimous decision in any respect. Marsh's contentions that an equipoise determination reflects juror confusion or inability to decide between life and death or that the jury may use equipoise as a loophole to shirk its constitutional duty to render a reasoned, moral sentencing decision rest on an implausible characterization of the Kansas statute--that a jury's determination that aggravators and mitigators are in equipoise is not a decision, much less a decision for death. Weighing is not an end, but a means to reaching a decision. Kansas' instructions clearly inform the jury that a determination that the evidence is in equipoise is a decision for death. Pp.11-16. 278 Kan. 520, 102 P.3d 445, reversed and remanded. Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C.J., and Scalia, Kennedy, and Alito, JJ., joined. Scalia, J., filed a concurring opinion. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Souter, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. </s> KANSAS, PETITIONER v. MICHAEL LEE MARSH, II on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of kansas [June 26, 2006] </s> Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> Kansas law provides that if a unanimous jury finds that aggravating circumstances are not outweighed by mitigating circumstances, the death penalty shall be imposed. Kan. Stat. Ann. §21-4624(e) (1995). We must decide whether this statute, which requires the imposition of the death penalty when the sentencing jury determines that aggravating evidence and mitigating evidence are in equipoise, violates the Constitution. We hold that it does not. I </s> Respondent Michael Lee Marsh II broke into the home of Marry Ane Pusch and lay in wait for her to return. When Marry Ane entered her home with her 19-month-old daughter, M.P., Marsh repeatedly shot Marry Ane, stabbed her, and slashed her throat. The home was set on fire with the toddler inside, and M.P. burned to death. The jury convicted Marsh of the capital murder of M.P., the first-degree premeditated murder of Marry Ane, aggravated arson, and aggravated burglary. The jury found beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of three aggravating circumstances, and that those circumstances were not outweighed by any mitigating circumstances. On the basis of those findings, the jury sentenced Marsh to death for the capital murder of M.P. The jury also sentenced Marsh to life imprisonment without possibility of parole for 40 years for the first-degree murder of Marry Ane, and consecutive sentences of 51 months' imprisonment for aggravated arson and 34 months' imprisonment for aggravated burglary. </s> On direct appeal, Marsh challenged §21-4624(e), which reads: "If, by unanimous vote, the jury finds beyond a reasonable doubt that one or more of the aggravating circumstances enumerated in K.S.A. 21-4625 ... exist and, further, that the existence of such aggravating circumstances is not outweighed by any mitigating circumstances which are found to exist, the defendant shall be sentenced to death; otherwise the defendant shall be sentenced as provided by law." </s> Focusing on the phrase "shall be sentenced to death," Marsh argued that §21-4624(e) establishes an unconstitutional presumption in favor of death because it directs imposition of the death penalty when aggravating and mitigating circumstances are in equipoise. </s> The Kansas Supreme Court agreed, and held that the Kansas death penalty statute, §21-4624(e), is facially unconstitutional. 278 Kan. 520, 534-535, 102 P.3d 445, 458 (2004). The court concluded that the statute's weighing equation violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution because, "[i]n the event of equipoise, i.e., the jury's determination that the balance of any aggravating circumstances and any mitigating circumstances weighed equal, the death penalty would be required." Id., at 534, 102 P.3d, at 457. The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed Marsh's conviction and sentence for aggravated burglary and premeditated murder of Marry Ane, and reversed and remanded for new trial Marsh's convictions for capital murder of M.P. and aggravated arson.1 We granted certiorari, 544 U.S. 1060 (2005), and now reverse the Kansas Supreme Court's judgment that Kansas' capital sentencing statute, Kan. Stat. Ann. §21-4624(e), is facially unconstitutional. II </s> In addition to granting certiorari to review the constitutionality of Kansas' capital sentencing statute, we also directed the parties to brief and argue: (1) whether we have jurisdiction to review the judgment of the Kansas Supreme Court under 28 U.S.C. §1257, as construed by Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469 (1975); and (2) whether the Kansas Supreme Court's judgment is supported by adequate state grounds independent of federal law. 544 U.S. 1060. Having considered the parties' arguments, we conclude that we have jurisdiction in this case and that the constitutional issue is properly before the Court. A </s> Title 28 U.S.C. §1257 authorizes this Court to review, by writ of certiorari, the final judgment of the highest court of a State when the validity of a state statute is questioned on federal constitutional grounds. This Court has determined that the foregoing authorization permits review of the judgment of the highest court of a State, even though the state-court proceedings are not yet complete, "where the federal claim has been finally decided, with further proceedings on the merits in the state courts to come, but in which later review of the federal issue cannot be had, whatever the ultimate outcome of the case." Cox Broadcasting, supra, at 481. Here, although Marsh will be retried on the capital murder and aggravated arson charges, the Kansas Supreme Court's determination that Kansas' death penalty statute is facially unconstitutional is final and binding on the lower state courts. Thus, the State will be unable to obtain further review of its death penalty law later in this case. If Marsh is acquitted of capital murder, double jeopardy and state law will preclude the State from appealing. If he is reconvicted, the State will be prohibited under the Kansas Supreme Court's decision from seeking the death penalty, and there would be no opportunity for the State to seek further review of that prohibition. Although Marsh argues that a provision of the Kansas criminal appeals statute, Kan. Stat. Ann. §22-3602(b) (2003 Cum. Supp.), would permit the State to appeal the invalidation of Kansas' death penalty statute, that contention is meritless. That statute provides for limited appeal in only four enumerated circumstances, none of which apply here. We have deemed lower court decisions final for 28 U.S.C. §1257 purposes in like circumstances, see Florida v. Meyers, 466 U.S. 380 (1984) (per curiam); South Dakota v. Neville, 459 U.S. 553 (1983); New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649 (1984), and do so again here. B </s> Nor is the Kansas Supreme Court's decision supported by adequate and independent state grounds. Marsh maintains that the Kansas Supreme Court's decision was based on the severability of §21-4624(e) under state law, and not the constitutionality of that provision under federal law, the latter issue having been resolved by the Kansas Supreme Court in State v. Kleypas, 272 Kan. 894, 40 P. 3d 139 (2001). Marsh's argument fails. Kleypas, itself, rested on federal law. See id., at 899-903, 40 P.3d, at 166-167. In rendering its determination here, the Kansas Supreme Court observed that Kleypas, "held that the weighing equation in K.S.A. 21-4624(e) as written was unconstitutional under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments" as applied to cases in which aggravating evidence and mitigating evidence are equally balanced. 278 Kan., at 534, 102 P. 3d, at 457. In this case, the Kansas Supreme Court chastised the Kleypas court for avoiding the constitutional issue of the statute's facial validity, squarely held that §21-4624(e) is unconstitutional on its face, and overruled the portion of Kleypas upholding the statute through the constitutional avoidance doctrine and judicial revision. 278 Kan., at 534-535, 539-542, 102 P.3d, at 458, 462. As in Kleypas, the Kansas Supreme Court clearly rested its decision here on the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. We, therefore, have jurisdiction to review its decision. See Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1040-1041 (1983). III </s> This case is controlled by Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639 (1990), overruled on other grounds, Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002). In that case, a jury had convicted Walton of a capital offense. At sentencing, the trial judge found the existence of two aggravating circumstances and that the mitigating circumstances did not call for leniency, and sentenced Walton to death. 497 U.S., at 645. The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed, and this Court granted certiorari to resolve the conflict between the Arizona Supreme Court's decision in State v. Walton, 159 Ariz. 571, 769 P.2d 1017 (1989) (en banc) (holding the Arizona death penalty statute constitutional), and the Ninth Circuit's decision in Adamson v. Ricketts, 865 F.2d 1011, 1043-1044 (1988) (en banc) (finding the Arizona death penalty statute unconstitutional because, "in situations where the mitigating and aggravating circumstances are in balance, or, where the mitigating circumstances give the court reservation but still fall below the weight of the aggravating circumstances, the statute bars the court from imposing a sentence less than death"). See Walton, 497 U.S., at 647. Consistent with the Ninth Circuit's conclusion in Adamson, Walton argued to this Court that the Arizona capital sentencing system created an unconstitutional presumption in favor of death because it "tells an Arizona sentencing judge who finds even a single aggravating factor, that death must be imposed, unless--as the Arizona Supreme Court put it in Petitioner's case--there are 'outweighing mitigating factors.'" Brief for Petitioner in Walton v. Arizona, O. T. 1989, No. 88-7351, p. 33; see also id., at 34 (arguing that the statute is unconstitutional because the defendant "'must ... bear the risk of nonpersuasion that any mitigating circumstance will not outweigh the aggravating circumstance'" (alteration omitted)). Rejecting Walton's argument, see 497 U.S., at 650, 651, this Court stated: "So long as a State's method of allocating the burdens of proof does not lessen the State's burden to prove every element of the offense charged, or in this case to prove the existence of aggravating circumstances, a defendant's constitutional rights are not violated by placing on him the burden of proving mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leniency." Id., at 650. </s> This Court noted that, as a requirement of individualized sentencing, a jury must have the opportunity to consider all evidence relevant to mitigation, and that a state statute that permits a jury to consider any mitigating evidence comports with that requirement. Id., at 652 (citing Blystone v. Pennsylvania, 494 U.S. 299, 307 (1990)). The Court also pointedly observed that while the Constitution requires that a sentencing jury have discretion, it does not mandate that discretion be unfettered; the States are free to determine the manner in which a jury may consider mitigating evidence. 494 U.S. 370, 374 (1990)). So long as the sentencer is not precluded from considering relevant mitigating evidence, a capital sentencing statute cannot be said to impermissibly, much less automatically, impose death. 428 U.S. 280 (1976) (plurality opinion), and Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 325 (1976) (plurality opinion)). Indeed, Walton suggested that the only capital sentencing systems that would be impermissibly mandatory were those that would "automatically impose death upon conviction for certain types of murder." 497 U.S., at 652. </s> Contrary to Marsh's contentions and the Kansas Supreme Court's conclusions, see 278 Kan., at 536-538, 102 P.3d, at 459, the question presented in the instant case was squarely before this Court in Walton. Though, as Marsh notes, the Walton Court did not employ the term "equipoise," that issue undeniably gave rise to the question this Court sought to resolve, and it was necessarily included in Walton's argument that the Arizona system was unconstitutional because it required the death penalty unless the mitigating circumstances outweighed the aggravating circumstances. See supra, at 5. Moreover, the dissent in Walton reinforces what is evident from the opinion and the judgment of the Court--that the equipoise issue was before the Court, and that the Court resolved the issue in favor of the State. Indeed, the "equipoise" issue was, in large measure, the basis of the Walton dissent. See 497 U.S., at 687-688 (opinion of Blackmun, J.) ("If the mitigating and aggravating circumstances are in equipoise, the [Arizona] statute requires that the trial judge impose capital punishment. The assertion that a sentence of death may be imposed in such a case runs directly counter to the Eighth Amendment requirement that a capital sentence must rest upon a 'determination that death is the appropriate punishment in a specific case'"). Thus, although Walton did not discuss the equipoise issue explicitly, that issue was resolved by itsholding. Cf. post, at 2 (Stevens, J., dissenting); cf. also post, at 2, n.1 (Souter, J., dissenting). </s> Our conclusion that Walton controls here is reinforced by the fact that the Arizona and Kansas statutes are comparable in important respects. Similar to the express language of the Kansas statute, the Arizona statute at issue in Walton has been consistently construed to mean that the death penalty will be imposed upon a finding that aggravating circumstances are not outweighed by mitigating circumstances.2 See State v. Ysea, 191 Ariz. 372, 375, 956 P. 2d 499, 502 (1998) (en banc); State v. Gretzler, 135 Ariz. 42, 55, 659 P.2d 1, 14 (1983) (in banc); Adamson, 865 F.2d, at 1041-1043. Like the Kansas statute, the Arizona statute places the burden of proving the existence of aggravating circumstances on the State, and both statutes require the defendant to proffer mitigating evidence. </s> The statutes are distinct in one respect. The Arizona statute, once the State has met its burden, tasks the defendant with the burden of proving sufficient mitigating circumstances to overcome the aggravating circumstances and that a sentence less than death is therefore warranted. In contrast, the Kansas statute requires the State to bear the burden of proving to the jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, that aggravators are not outweighed by mitigators and that a sentence of death is therefore appropriate; it places no additional evidentiary burden on the capital defendant. This distinction operates in favor of Kansas capital defendants. Otherwise the statutes function in substantially the same manner and are sufficiently analogous for our purposes. Thus, Walton is not distinguishable from the instant case. </s> Accordingly, the reasoning of Walton requires approval of the Kansas death penalty statute. At bottom, in Walton, the Court held that a state death penalty statute may place the burden on the defendant to prove that mitigating circumstances outweigh aggravating circumstances. A fortiori, Kansas' death penalty statute, consistent with the Constitution, may direct imposition of the death penalty when the State has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that mitigators do not outweigh aggravators, including where the aggravating circumstances and mitigating circumstances are in equipoise. IV A </s> Even if, as Marsh contends, Walton does not directly control, the general principles set forth in our death penalty jurisprudence would lead us to conclude that the Kansas capital sentencing system is constitutionally permissible. Together, our decisions in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972) (per curiam), and Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.), establish that a state capital sentencing system must: (1) rationally narrow the class of death-eligible defendants; and (2) permit a jury to render a reasoned, individualized sentencing determination based on a death-eligible defendant's record, personal characteristics, and the circumstances of his crime. See id., at 189. So long as a state system satisfies these requirements, our precedents establish that a State enjoys a range of discretion in imposing the death penalty, including the manner in which aggravating and mitigating circumstances are to be weighed. See Franklin v. Lynaugh, 487 U.S. 164, 179 (1988) (plurality opinion) (citing Zant v. Stephens, 462 U.S. 862, 875-876, n. 13 (1983)). The use of mitigation evidence is a product of the requirement of individualized sentencing. See Graham v. Collins, 506 U.S. 461, 484-489 (1993) (Thomas, J., concurring) (discussing the development of mitigation precedent). In Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 604 (1978), a plurality of this Court held that "the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments require that the sentencer ... not be precluded from considering, as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death." (Emphasis in original.) The Court has held that the sentencer must have full access to this "'highly relevant'" information. Id., at 603 (alteration omitted) (quoting Williams v. New York, 337 U.S. 241, 247 (1949)). Thus, in Lockett, the Court struck down the Ohio death penalty statute as unconstitutional because, by limiting a jury's consideration of mitigation to three factors specified in the statute, it prevented sentencers in capital cases from giving independent weight to mitigating evidence militating in favor of a sentence other than death. 455 U.S. 104 (1982), a majority of the Court held that a sentencer may not categorically refuse to consider any relevant mitigating evidence. Id., at 114; see also Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U.S. 1, 3-4 (1986) (discussing Eddings). </s> In aggregate, our precedents confer upon defendants the right to present sentencers with information relevant to the sentencing decision and oblige sentencers to consider that information in determining the appropriate sentence. The thrust of our mitigation jurisprudence ends here. "[W]e have never held that a specific method for balancing mitigating and aggravating factors in a capital sentencing proceeding is constitutionally required." Franklin, supra, at 179 (citing Zant, supra, at 875-876, n. 13). Rather, this Court has held that the States enjoy "'a constitutionally permissible range of discretion in imposing the death penalty.'" Blystone, 481 U.S. 279, 305-306 (1987)). See also 494 U.S., at 307 (stating that "[t]he requirement of individualized sentencing in capital cases is satisfied by allowing the jury to consider all relevant mitigating evidence"); Graham, supra, at 490 (Thomas, J., concurring) (stating that "[o]ur early mitigating cases may thus be read as doing little more than safeguarding the adversary process in sentencing proceedings by conferring on the defendant an affirmative right to place his relevant evidence before the sentencer"). B </s> The Kansas death penalty statute satisfies the constitutional mandates of Furman and its progeny because it rationally narrows the class of death-eligible defendants and permits a jury to consider any mitigating evidence relevant to its sentencing determination. It does not interfere, in a constitutionally significant way, with a jury's ability to give independent weight to evidence offered in mitigation. Kansas' procedure narrows the universe of death-eligible defendants consistent with Eighth Amendment requirements. Under Kansas law, imposition of the death penalty is an option only after a defendant is convicted of capital murder, which requires that one or more specific elements beyond intentional premeditated murder be found. See Kan. Stat. Ann. §21-3439. Once convicted of capital murder, a defendant becomes eligible for the death penalty only if the State seeks a separate sentencing hearing, §§21-4706(c) (2003 Cum. Supp.), 21-4624(a); App. 23 (Instruction No. 2), and proves beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of one or more statutorily enumerated aggravating circumstances. Kan. Stat. Ann. §§21-4624(c), (e), and 21-4625; App. 24 (Instruction No. 3). </s> Consonant with the individualized sentencing requirement, a Kansas jury is permitted to consider any evidence relating to any mitigating circumstance in determining the appropriate sentence for a capital defendant, so long as that evidence is relevant. §21-4624(c). Specifically, jurors are instructed: "A mitigating circumstance is that which in fairness or mercy may be considered as extenuating or reducing the degree of moral culpability or blame or which justify a sentence of less than death, although it does not justify or excuse the offense. The determination of what are mitigating circumstances is for you as jurors to resolve under the facts and circumstances of this case. </s> "The appropriateness of the exercise of mercy can itself be a mitigating factor you may consider in determining whether the State has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the death penalty is warranted." Id., at 24 (Instruction No. 4).3 </s> Jurors are then apprised of, but not limited to, the factors that the defendant contends are mitigating. Id., at 25-26. They are then instructed that "[e]ach juror must consider every mitigating factor that he or she individually finds to exist." Id., at 26. </s> Kansas' weighing equation, ibid. (Instruction No. 5), merely channels a jury's discretion by providing it with criteria by which it may determine whether a sentence of life or death is appropriate. The system in Kansas provides the type of "'guided discretion,'" Walton, 497 U.S., at 659 (citing Gregg, 428 U.S., at 189), we have sanctioned in Walton, Boyde, and Blystone. </s> Indeed, in Boyde, this Court sanctioned a weighing jury instruction that is analytically indistinguishable from the Kansas jury instruction under review today. The Boyde jury instruction read: "'If you conclude that the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances, you shall impose a sentence of death. However, if you determine that the mitigating circumstances outweigh the aggravating circumstances, you shall impose a sentence of confinement in the state prison for life without the possibility of parole.'" 494 U.S., at 374 (emphasis in original). </s> Boyde argued that the mandatory language of the instruction prevented the jury from rendering an individualized sentencing determination. This Court rejected that argument, concluding that it was foreclosed by Blystone, where the Court rejected a nearly identical challenge to the Pennsylvania death penalty statute. 494 U.S., at 307.4 In so holding, this Court noted that the mandatory language of the statute did not prevent the jury from considering all relevant mitigating evidence. Boyde, 494 U.S., at 374. Similarly here, §21-4624(e) does not prevent a Kansas jury from considering mitigating evidence. Marsh's argument that the Kansas provision is impermissibly mandatory is likewise foreclosed.5 </s> Contrary to Marsh's argument, §21-4624(e) does not create a general presumption in favor of the death penalty in the State of Kansas. Rather, the Kansas capital sentencing system is dominated by the presumption that life imprisonment is the appropriate sentence for a capital conviction. If the State fails to meet its burden to demonstrate the existence of an aggravating circumstance(s) beyond a reasonable doubt, a sentence of life imprisonment must be imposed. §21-4624(e); App. 27 (Instruction No. 10). If the State overcomes this hurdle, then it bears the additional burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that aggravating circumstances are not outweighed by mitigating circumstances. Ibid. (Instruction No. 10); id., at 26 (Instruction No. 5). Significantly, although the defendant appropriately bears the burden of proffering mitigating circumstances--a burden of production--he never bears the burden of demonstrating that mitigating circumstances outweigh aggravating circumstances. Instead, the State always has the burden of demonstrating that mitigating evidence does not outweigh aggravating evidence. Absent the State's ability to meet that burden, the default is life imprisonment. Moreover, if the jury is unable to reach a unanimous decision--in any respect--a sentence of life must be imposed. §21-4624(c); App. 28 (Instruction No. 12). This system does not create a presumption that death is the appropriate sentence for capital murder.6 </s> Nor is there any force behind Marsh's contention that an equipoise determination reflects juror confusion or inability to decide between life and death, or that a jury may use equipoise as a loophole to shirk its constitutional duty to render a reasoned, moral decision, see California v. Brown, 479 U.S. 538, 545 (1987) (O'Connor, J., concurring), regarding whether death is an appropriate sentence for a particular defendant. Such an argument rests on an implausible characterization of the Kansas statute--that a jury's determination that aggravators and mitigators are in equipoise is not a decision, much less a decision for death--and thus misses the mark. Cf. post, at 4-5 (Souter, J., dissenting) (arguing that Kansas' weighing equation undermines individualized sentencing). Weighing is not an end; it is merely a means to reaching a decision. The decision the jury must reach is whether life or death is the appropriate punishment. The Kansas jury instructions clearly inform the jury that a determination that the evidence is in equipoise is a decision for--not a presumption in favor of--death. Kansas jurors, presumed to follow their instructions, are made aware that: a determination that mitigators outweigh aggravators is a decision that a life sentence is appropriate; a determination that aggravators outweigh mitigators or a determination that mitigators do not outweigh aggravators--including a finding that aggravators and mitigators are in balance--is a decision that death is the appropriate sentence; and an inability to reach a unanimous decision will result in a sentence of life imprisonment. So informed, far from the abdication of duty or the inability to select an appropriate sentence depicted by Marsh and Justice Souter, a jury's conclusion that aggravating evidence and mitigating evidence are in equipoise is a decision for death and is indicative of the type of measured, normative process in which a jury is constitutionally tasked to engage when deciding the appropriate sentence for a capital defendant. V </s> Justice Souter argues (hereinafter the dissent) that the advent of DNA testing has resulted in the "exoneratio[n]" of "innocent" persons "in numbers never imagined before the development of DNA tests." Post, at 5-6. Based upon this "new empirical demonstration of how 'death is different,'" post, at 8, the dissent concludes that Kansas' sentencing system permits the imposition of the death penalty in the absence of reasoned moral judgment. But the availability of DNA testing, and the questions it might raise about the accuracy of guilt-phase determinations in capital cases, is simply irrelevant to the question before the Court today, namely, the constitutionality of Kansas' capital sentencing system. Accordingly, the accuracy of the dissent's factual claim that DNA testing has established the "innocence" of numerous convicted persons under death sentences--and the incendiary debate it invokes--is beyond the scope of this opinion.7 </s> The dissent's general criticisms against the death penalty are ultimately a call for resolving all legal disputes in capital cases by adopting the outcome that makes the death penalty more difficult to impose. While such a bright-line rule may be easily applied, it has no basis in law. Indeed, the logical consequence of the dissent's argument is that the death penalty can only be just in a system that does not permit error. Because the criminal justice system does not operate perfectly, abolition of the death penalty is the only answer to the moral dilemma the dissent poses. This Court, however, does not sit as a moral authority. Our precedents do not prohibit the States from authorizing the death penalty, even in our imperfect system. And those precedents do not empower this Court to chip away at the States' prerogatives to do so on the grounds the dissent invokes today. *  *  * </s> We hold that the Kansas capital sentencing system, which directs imposition of the death penalty when a jury finds that aggravating and mitigating circumstances are in equipoise, is constitutional. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Kansas Supreme Court, and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. </s> KANSAS, PETITIONER v. MICHAEL LEE MARSH, II on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of kansas [June 26, 2006] </s> Justice Scalia, concurring. </s> I join the opinion of the Court. I write separately to clarify briefly the import of my joinder, and to respond at somewhat greater length first to Justice Stevens' contention that this case, and cases like it, do not merit our attention, and second to Justice Souter's claims about risks inherent in capital punishment. I </s> Part III of the Court's opinion--which makes plain why Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639 (1990), controls this case--would be sufficient to reverse the judgment below. I nonetheless join Part IV as well, which describes why Kansas's death penalty statute easily satisfies even a capital jurisprudence as incoherent as ours has become. In doing so, I do not endorse that incoherence, but adhere to my previous statement that "I will not ... vote to uphold an Eighth Amendment claim that the sentencer's discretion has been unlawfully restricted." Id., at 673 (concurring in part and concurring in judgment). II </s> Justice Stevens' dissent gives several reasons why this case, and any criminal case in which the State is the petitioner, does not deserve our attention. "'[N]o rule of law,'" he says, "'commanded the Court to grant certiorari.'" Post, at 3 (quoting California v. Ramos, 463 U.S. 992, 1031 (1983) (Stevens, J., dissenting)). But that is true, of course, of almost our entire docket; it is in the very nature of certiorari jurisdiction. Also self-evident, since the jurisdiction of the Kansas Supreme Court ends at the borders of that State, is the fact that "'[n]o other State would have been required to follow the [Kansas] precedent if it had been permitted to stand.'" Post, at 3 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (quoting Ramos, supra, at 1031 (Stevens, J., dissenting)). But if this signaled the impropriety of granting certiorari, we would never review state-court determinations of federal law, even though they patently contradict (as the determination below does) the holdings of other state courts and Federal Courts of Appeals, compare 278 Kan. 520, 534-537, 102 P.3d 445, 457-459 (2004) (case below), and State v. Kleypas, 272 Kan. 894, 1005-1007, 40 P.3d 139, 225-226 (2001), with, e.g., State v. Hoffman, 123 Idaho 638, 646-647, 851 P.2d 934, 942-943 (1993), and Jones v. Dugger, 928 F.2d 1020, 1029 (CA11 1991)--and indeed, even when they patently contradict our own decisions. Our principal responsibility under current practice, however, and a primary basis for the Constitution's allowing us to be accorded jurisdiction to review state-court decisions, see Art.III, §2, cls. 1 and 2, is to ensure the integrity and uniformity of federal law.1 See this Court's Rule 10(b), (c). Fulfillment of this responsibility is, to put it mildly, an adequate answer to the charge that "'[n]othing more than an interest in facilitating the imposition of the death penalty in [Kansas] justified this Court's exercise of its discretion to review the judgment of the [Kansas] Supreme Court.'" Post, at 3 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (quoting Ramos, supra, at 1031 (Stevens, J., dissenting)). The dissent's assertion that our holding in Ramos was "ironi[c]," post, at 2 (opinion of Stevens, J.), rests on a misguided view of federalism and, worse still, of a republican form of government. Only that can explain the dissent's suggestion that Ramos's reversal of a state-court determination somehow undermined state authority. The California Supreme Court had ruled that a jury instruction inserted into the state penal code by voter initiative, see 463 U.S., at 995, n.4, was invalid as a matter of federal constitutional law. See id., at 996, 997, n.7. When state courts erroneously invalidate actions taken by the people of a State (through initiative or through normal operation of the political branches of their state government) on state-law grounds, it is generally none of our business; and our displacing of those judgments would indeed be an intrusion upon state autonomy. But when state courts erroneously invalidate such actions because they believe federal law requires it--and especially when they do so because they believe the Federal Constitution requires it--review by this Court, far from undermining state autonomy, is the only possible way to vindicate it. When a federal constitutional interdict against the duly expressed will of the people of a State is erroneously pronounced by a State's highest court, no authority in the State--not even a referendum agreed to by all its citizens--can undo the error. Thus, a general presumption against such review displays not respect for the States, but a complacent willingness to allow judges to strip the people of the power to govern themselves. When we correct a state court's federal errors, we return power to the State, and to its people. </s> That is why our decision in Ramos was necessary. Our solemn responsibility is not merely to determine whether a State Supreme Court "ha[s] adequately protected [a defendant's] rights under the Federal Constitution," post, at 2 (Stevens, J., dissenting). It is to ensure that when courts speak in the name of the Federal Constitution, they disregard none of its guarantees--neither those that assure the rights of criminal defendants, nor those that assure what Justice Black, in his famous dissent in In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 385 (1970), called "the most fundamental individual liberty of our people--the right of each man to participate in the self-government of his society." Turning a blind eye to federal constitutional error that benefits criminal defendants, allowing it to permeate in varying fashion each state Supreme Court's jurisprudence, would change the uniform "law of the land" into a crazy quilt. And on top of it all, of course, what the dissent proposes avowedly favors one party to the case: When a criminal defendant loses a questionable constitutional point, we may grant review; when the State loses, we must deny it. While it might be appropriate for Congress to place such a thumb upon the scales of our power to review, it seems to me a peculiar mode of decisionmaking for judges sworn to "impartially discharge ... all the duties" of their office, 28 U.S.C. §453. </s> Our decision to grant certiorari is guided by the considerations set forth in Rule 10. None of them turns on the identity of the party that the asserted misapplication of federal law has harmed. When state legislation is thwarted--not on the basis of state law, but on the basis of a questionable application of the Federal Constitution or laws--I shall continue to vote to grant the resulting petition for certiorari. III </s> Finally, I must say a few words (indeed, more than a few) in response to Part III of Justice Souter's dissent. This contains the disclaimer that the dissenters are not (yet) ready to "generaliz[e] about the soundness of capital sentencing across the country," post, at 9; but that is in fact precisely what they do. The dissent essentially argues that capital punishment is such an undesirable institution--it results in the condemnation of such a large number of innocents--that any legal rule which eliminates its pronouncement, including the one favored by the dissenters in the present case, should be embraced. See ibid. As a general rule, I do not think it appropriate for judges to heap either praise or censure upon a legislative measure that comes before them, lest it be thought that their validation, invalidation, or interpretation of it is driven by their desire to expand or constrict what they personally approve or disapprove as a matter of policy. In the present case, for example, people might leap to the conclusion that the dissenters' views on whether Kansas's equipoise rule is constitutional are determined by their personal disapproval of an institution that has been democratically adopted by 38 States and the United States. But of course that requires no leap; just a willingness to take the dissenters at their word. For as I have described, the dissenters' very argument is that imposition of the death penalty should be minimized by invalidation of the equipoise rule because it is a bad, "risk[y]," and "hazard[ous]" idea, ibid. A broader conclusion that people should derive, however (and I would not consider this much of a leap either), is that the dissenters' encumbering of the death penalty in other cases, with unwarranted restrictions neither contained in the text of the Constitution nor reflected in two centuries of practice under it, will be the product of their policy views--views not shared by the vast majority of the American people. The dissenters' proclamation of their policy agenda in the present case is especially striking because it is nailed to the door of the wrong church--that is, set forth in a case litigating a rule that has nothing to do with the evaluation of guilt or innocence. There are, of course, many cases in which the rule at issue does serve that function, see, e.g., House v. Bell, 547 U.S. ___ (2006). (Marsh himself has earned a remand by application of one such rule, see ante, at 2-3.) But as the Court observes, see ante, at 16-17, guilt or innocence is logically disconnected to the challenge in this case to sentencing standards. The only time the equipoise provision is relevant is when the State has proved a defendant guilty of a capital crime.2 </s> There exists in some parts of the world sanctimonious criticism of America's death penalty, as somehow unworthy of a civilized society. (I say sanctimonious, because most of the countries to which these finger-waggers belong had the death penalty themselves until recently--and indeed, many of them would still have it if the democratic will prevailed.3) It is a certainty that the opinion of a near-majority of the United States Supreme Court to the effect that our system condemns many innocent defendants to death will be trumpeted abroad as vindication of these criticisms. For that reason, I take the trouble to point out that the dissenting opinion has nothing substantial to support it. </s> It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not discuss a single case--not one--in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby. The dissent makes much of the new-found capacity of DNA testing to establish innocence. But in every case of an executed defendant of which I am aware, that technology has confirmed guilt. </s> This happened, for instance, only a few months ago in the case of Roger Coleman. Coleman was convicted of the gruesome rape and murder of his sister-in-law, but he persuaded many that he was actually innocent and became the poster-child for the abolitionist lobby. See Glod & Shear, DNA Tests Confirm Guilt of Man Executed by Va., Washington Post, Jan. 13, 2006, p. A1; Dao, DNA Ties Man Executed in '92 to the Murder He Denied, N.Y. Times, Jan. 13, 2006, p. A14. Around the time of his eventual execution, "his picture was on the cover of Time magazine ('This Man Might Be Innocent. This Man Is Due to Die'). He was interviewed from death row on 'Larry King Live,' the 'Today' show, 'Primetime Live,' 'Good Morning America' and 'The Phil Donahue Show.'" Frankel, Burden of Proof, Washington Post, May 14, 2006, pp. W8, W11. Even one Justice of this Court, in an opinion filed shortly before the execution, cautioned that "Coleman has now produced substantial evidence that he may be innocent of the crime for which he was sentenced to die." Coleman v. Thompson, 504 U.S. 188, 189 (1992) (Blackmun, J., dissenting). Coleman ultimately failed a lie-detector test offered by the Governor of Virginia as a condition of a possible stay; he was executed on May 20, 1992. Frankel, supra, at W23; Glod & Shear, Warner Orders DNA Testing in Case of Man Executed in '92, Washington Post, Jan. 6, 2006, pp. A1, A6. </s> In the years since then, Coleman's case became a rallying point for abolitionists, who hoped it would offer what they consider the "Holy Grail: proof from a test tube that an innocent person had been executed." Frankel, supra, at W24. But earlier this year, a DNA test ordered by a later Governor of Virginia proved that Coleman was guilty, see, e.g., Glod & Shear, DNA Tests Confirm Guilt of Man Executed by Va., supra, at A1; Dao, supra, at A14, even though his defense team had "proved" his innocence and had even identified "the real killer" (with whom they eventually settled a defamation suit). See Frankel, supra, at W23. And Coleman's case is not unique. See Truth and Consequences: The Penalty of Death, in Debating the Death Penalty: Should America Have Capital Punishment? The Experts on Both Sides Make Their Best Case, 128-129 (H. Bedau & P. Cassell eds. 2004) (discussing the cases of supposed innocents Rick McGinn and Derek Barnabei, whose guilt was also confirmed by DNA tests). </s> Instead of identifying and discussing any particular case or cases of mistaken execution, the dissent simply cites a handful of studies that bemoan the alleged prevalence of wrongful death sentences. One study (by Lanier and Acker) is quoted by the dissent as claiming that "'more than 110' death row prisoners have been released since 1973 upon findings that they were innocent of the crimes charged, and 'hundreds of additional wrongful convictions in potentially capital cases have been documented over the past century.'" Post, at 8 (opinion of Souter, J.). For the first point, Lanier and Acker cite the work of the Death Penalty Information Center (more about that below) and an article in a law review jointly authored by Radelet, Lofquist, and Bedau (two professors of sociology and a professor of philosophy). For the second point, they cite only a 1987 article by Bedau and Radelet. See Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases, 40 Stan. L.Rev. 21. In the very same paragraph which the dissent quotes, Lanier and Acker also refer to that 1987 article as "hav[ing] identified 23 individuals who, in their judgment, were convicted and executed in this country during the 20th century notwithstanding their innocence." Lanier & Acker, Capital Punishment, the Moratorium Movement, and Empirical Questions, 10 Psychology, Public Policy & Law 577, 593 (2004). This 1987 article has been highly influential in the abolitionist world. Hundreds of academic articles, including those relied on by today's dissent, have cited it. It also makes its appearance in judicial decisions--cited recently in a six-judge dissent in House v. Bell, 386 F.3d 668, 708 (CA6 2004) (en banc) (Merritt, J., dissenting), for the proposition that "the system is allowing some innocent defendants to be executed." The article therefore warrants some further observations. </s> The 1987 article's obsolescence began at the moment of publication. The most recent executions it considered were in 1984, 1964, and 1951; the rest predate the Allied victory in World War II. (Two of the supposed innocents are Sacco and Vanzetti.) Bedau & Radelet, supra, at 73. Even if the innocence claims made in this study were true, all except (perhaps) the 1984 example would cast no light upon the functioning of our current system of capital adjudication. The legal community's general attitude toward criminal defendants, the legal protections States afford, the constitutional guarantees this Court enforces, and the scope of federal habeas review, are all vastly different from what they were in 1961. So are the scientific means of establishing guilt, and hence innocence--which are now so striking in their operation and effect that they are the subject of more than one popular TV series. (One of these new means, of course, is DNA testing--which the dissent seems to think is primarily a way to identify defendants erroneously convicted, rather than a highly effective way to avoid conviction of the innocent.) </s> But their current relevance aside, this study's conclusions are unverified. And if the support for its most significant conclusion--the execution of 23 innocents in the 20th century--is any indication of its accuracy, neither it, nor any study so careless as to rely upon it, is worthy of credence. The only execution of an innocent man it alleges to have occurred after the restoration of the death penalty in 1976--the Florida execution of James Adams in 1984--is the easiest case to verify. As evidence of Adams' innocence, it describes a hair that could not have been his as being "clutched in the victim's hand," Bedau & Radelet, supra, at 91. The hair was not in the victim's hand; "[i]t was a remnant of a sweeping of the ambulance and so could have come from another source." Markman & Cassell, Protecting the Innocent: A Response to the Bedau-Radelet Study, 41 Stan. L.Rev. 121, 131 (1988). The study also claims that a witness who "heard a voice inside the victim's home at the time of the crime" testified that the "voice was a woman's," Bedau & Radelet, supra, at 91. The witness's actual testimony was that the voice, which said "'"In the name of God, don't do it"'" (and was hence unlikely to have been the voice of anyone but the male victim), "'sounded "kind of like a woman's voice, kind of like strangling or something ...."'" Markman & Cassell, Protecting the Innocent, at 130. Bedau and Radelet failed to mention that upon arrest on the afternoon of the murder Adams was found with some $200 in his pocket--one bill of which "was stained with type O blood. When Adams was asked about the blood on the money, he said that it came from a cut on his finger. His blood was type AB, however, while the victim's was type O." Id., at 132. Among the other unmentioned, incriminating details: that the victim's eyeglasses were found in Adams' car, along with jewelry belonging to the victim, and clothing of Adams' stained with type O blood. Ibid. This is just a sample of the evidence arrayed against this "innocent." See id., at 128-133, 148-150. </s> Critics have questioned the study's findings with regard to all its other cases of execution of alleged innocents for which "appellate opinions ... set forth the facts proved at trial in detail sufficient to permit a neutral observer to assess the validity of the authors' conclusions." Id., at 134. (For the rest, there was not "a reasonably complete account of the facts ... readily available," id., at 145.) As to those cases, the only readily verifiable ones, the authors of the 1987 study later acknowledged, "We agree with our critics that we have not 'proved' these executed defendants to be innocent; we never claimed that we had." Bedau & Radelet, The Myth of Infallibility: A Reply to Markman and Cassell, 41 Stan. L.Rev. 161, 164 (1988). One would have hoped that this disclaimer of the study's most striking conclusion, if not the study's dubious methodology, would have prevented it from being cited as authority in the pages of the UnitedStates Reports. But alas, it is too late for that. Although today's dissent relies on the study only indirectly, the two dissenters who were on the Court in January 1993 have already embraced it. "One impressive study," they noted (referring to the 1987 study), "has concluded that 23 innocent people have been executed in the United States in this century, including one as recently as 1984." Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390, 430, n. 1 (1993) (Blackmun, J., joined by Stevens and Souter, JJ., dissenting).4 </s> Remarkably avoiding any claim of erroneous executions, the dissent focuses on the large numbers of non-executed "exonerees" paraded by various professors. It speaks as though exoneration came about through the operation of some outside force to correct the mistakes of our legal system, rather than as a consequence of the functioning of our legal system. Reversal of an erroneous conviction on appeal or on habeas, or the pardoning of an innocent condemnee through executive clemency, demonstrates not the failure of the system but its success. Those devices are part and parcel of the multiple assurances that are applied before a death sentence is carried out. </s> Of course even in identifying exonerees, the dissent is willing to accept anybody's say-so. It engages in no critical review, but merely parrots articles or reports that support its attack on the American criminal justice system. The dissent places significant weight, for instance, on the Illinois Report (compiled by the appointees of an Illinois Governor who had declared a moratorium upon the death penalty and who eventually commuted all death sentences in the State, see Warden, Illinois Death Penalty Reform: How It Happened, What It Promises, 95 J. Crim. L. & C. 381, 406-407, 410 (2006)), which it claims shows that "false verdicts" are "remarkable in number." Post, at 9 (opinion of Souter, J.). The dissent claims that this Report identifies 13 inmates released from death row after they were determined to be innocent. To take one of these cases, discussed by the dissent as an example of a judgment "as close to innocence as any judgments courts normally render," post, at 7, n.2: In People v. Smith, 185 Ill. 2d 532, 708 N. E. 2d 365 (1999) the defendant was twice convicted of murder. After his first trial, the Supreme Court of Illinois "reversed [his] conviction based upon certain evidentiary errors" and remanded his case for a new trial. Id., at 534, 708 N. E. 2d, at 366. The second jury convicted Smith again. The Supreme Court of Illinois again reversed the conviction because it found that the evidence was insufficient to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Id., at 542-543, 708 N. E. 2d, at 370-371. The court explained: "While a not guilty finding is sometimes equated with a finding of innocence, that conclusion is erroneous. Courts do not find people guilty or innocent. . . . A not guilty verdict expresses no view as to a defendant's innocence. Rather, [a reversal of conviction] indicates simply that the prosecution has failed to meet its burden of proof." Id., at 545, 708 N. E. 2d, at 371. </s> This case alone suffices to refute the dissent's claim that the Illinois Report distinguishes between "exoneration of a convict because of actual innocence, and reversal of a judgment because of legal error affecting conviction or sentence but not inconsistent with guilt in fact," post, at 7, n.2. The broader point, however, is that it is utterly impossible to regard "exoneration"--however casually defined--as a failure of the capital justice system, rather than as a vindication of its effectiveness in releasing not only defendants who are innocent, but those whose guilt has not been established beyond a reasonable doubt. </s> Another of the dissent's leading authorities on exoneration of the innocent is Gross, Jacoby, Matheson, Montgomery, & Patil, Exonerations in the United States 1989 Through 2003, 95 J. Crim. L. & C. 523 (2006) (hereinafter Gross). The dissent quotes that study's self-congratulatory "criteria" of exoneration--seemingly so rigorous that no one could doubt the study's reliability. See post, at 8, n.3 (opinion of Souter, J.). But in fact that article, like the others cited, is notable not for its rigorous investigation and analysis, but for the fervor of its belief that the American justice system is condemning the innocent "in numbers," as the dissent puts it, "never imagined before the development of DNA tests." Post, at 6 (opinion of Souter, J.). Among the article's list of 74 "exonerees," Gross 529, is Jay Smith of Pennsylvania. Smith--a school principal--earned three death sentences for slaying one of his teachers and her two young children. See Smith v. Holtz, 210 F.3d 186, 188 (CA3 2000). His retrial for triple murder was barred on double jeopardy grounds because of prosecutorial misconduct during the first trial. Id., at 194. But Smith could not leave well enough alone. He had the gall to sue, under 42 U.S.C. §1983, for false imprisonment. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed the jury verdict for the defendants, observing along the way that "our confidence in Smith's convictions is not diminished in the least. We remain firmly convinced of the integrity of those guilty verdicts." 210 F.3d, at 198. </s> Another "exonerated" murderer in the Gross study is Jeremy Sheets, convicted in Nebraska. His accomplice in the rape and murder of a girl had been secretly tape recorded; he "admitted that he drove the car used in the murder ... , and implicated Sheets in the murder." Sheets v. Butera, 389 F.3d 772, 775 (CA8 2004). The accomplice was arrested and eventually described the murder in greater detail, after which a plea agreement was arranged, conditioned on the accomplice's full cooperation. Ibid. The resulting taped confession, which implicated Sheets, was "[t]he crucial portion of the State's case," State v. Sheets, 260 Neb. 325, 327, 618 N.W. 2d 117, 122 (2000). But the accomplice committed suicide in jail, depriving Sheets of the opportunity to cross-examine him. This, the Nebraska Supreme Court held, rendered the evidence inadmissible under the Sixth Amendment. Id., at 328, 335-351, 618 N.W. 2d, at 123, 127-136. After the central evidence was excluded, the State did not retry Sheets. Sheets v. Butera, 389 F.3d, at 776. Sheets brought a §1983 claim; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the District Court's grant of summary judgment against him. Id., at 780. Sheets also sought the $1,000 he had been required to pay to the Nebraska Victim's Compensation Fund; the State Attorney General--far from concluding that Sheets had been "exonerated" and was entitled to the money--refused to return it. The court action left open the possibility that Sheets could be retried, and the Attorney General did "not believe the reversal on the ground of improper admission of evidence ... is a favorable disposition of charges," Neb. Op. Atty. Gen. No. 01036 (Nov. 9), 2001 WL 1503144, *3. </s> In its inflation of the word "exoneration," the Gross article hardly stands alone; mischaracterization ofreversible error as actual innocence is endemic inabolitionist rhetoric, and other prominent catalogues of "innocence" in the death-penalty context suffer fromthe same defect. Perhaps the best-known of them isthe List of Those Freed From Death Row, maintained by the Death Penalty Information Center. See http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=6&did=110. This includes the cases from the Gross article described above, but also enters some dubious candidates of its own. Delbert Tibbs is one of them. We considered his case in Tibbs v. Florida, 457 U.S. 31 (1982), concluding that the Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar a retrial when a conviction is "revers[ed] based on the weight, rather than the sufficiency, of the evidence," id., at 32. The case involved a man and a woman hitchhiking together in Florida. A driver who picked them up sodomized and raped the woman, and killed her boyfriend. She eventually escaped and positively identified Tibbs. See id., at 32-33. The Florida Supreme Court reversed the conviction on a 4-to-3 vote. 337 So.2d 788 (1976). The Florida courts then grappled with whether Tibbs could be retried without violating the Double Jeopardy Clause. The Florida Supreme Court determined not only that there was no double-jeopardy problem, 397 So.2d 1120, 1127 (1981) (per curiam), but that the very basis on which it had reversed the conviction was no longer valid law, id., at 1125, and that its action in "reweigh[ing] the evidence" in Tibbs' case had been "clearly improper," id., at 1126. After we affirmed the Florida Supreme Court, however, the State felt compelled to drop the charges. The State Attorney explained this to the Florida Commission on Capital Cases: "'By the time of the retrial, [the] witness/victim ... had progressed from a marijuana smoker to a crack user and I could not put her up on the stand, so I declined to prosecute. Tibbs, in my opinion, was never an innocent man wrongfully accused. He was a lucky human being. He was guilty, he was lucky and now he is free. His 1974 conviction was not a miscarriage of justice.'" Florida Commission on Capital Cases, Case Histories: A Review of 24 Individuals Released From Death Row 136-137 (rev. Sept. 10, 2002) http://www.floridacapitalcases.state.fl.us/Publications/innocentsproject.pdf. Other state officials involved made similar points. Id., at 137. </s> Of course, even with its distorted concept of what constitutes "exoneration," the claims of the Gross article are fairly modest: Between 1989 and 2003, the authors identify 340 "exonerations" nationwide--not just for capital cases, mind you, nor even just for murder convictions, but for various felonies. Gross 529. Joshua Marquis, a district attorney in Oregon, recently responded to this article as follows: "[L]et's give the professor the benefit of the doubt: let's assume that he understated the number of innocents by roughly a factor of 10, that instead of 340 there were 4,000 people in prison who weren't involved in the crime in any way. During that same 15 years, there were more than 15 million felony convictions across the country. That would make the error rate .027 percent--or, to put it another way, a success rate of 99.973 percent." The Innocent and the Shammed, N.Y. Times, Jan. 26, 2006, p. A23. </s> The dissent's suggestion that capital defendants are especially liable to suffer from the lack of 100% perfection in our criminal justice system is implausible. Capital cases are given especially close scrutiny at every level, which is why in most cases many years elapse before the sentence is executed. And of course capital cases receive special attention in the application of executive clemency. Indeed, one of the arguments made by abolitionists is that the process of finally completing all the appeals and reexaminations of capital sentences is so lengthy, and thus so expensive for the State, that the game is not worth the candle. The proof of the pudding, of course, is that as far as anyone can determine (and many are looking), none of cases included in the .027% error rate for American verdicts involved a capital defendant erroneously executed. </s> Since 1976 there have been approximately a half million murders in the United States. In that time, 7,000 murderers have been sentenced to death; about 950 of them have been executed; and about 3,700 inmates are currently on death row. See Marquis, The Myth of Innocence, 95 J. Crim. L. & C. 501, 518 (2006). As a consequence of the sensitivity of the criminal justice system to the due-process rights of defendants sentenced to death, almost two-thirds of all death sentences are overturned. See ibid. "Virtually none" of these reversals, however, are attributable to a defendant's "'actual innocence.'" Ibid. Most are based on legal errors that have little or nothing to do with guilt. See id., at 519-520. The studies cited by the dissent demonstrate nothing more. </s> Like other human institutions, courts and juries are not perfect. One cannot have a system of criminal punishment without accepting the possibility that someone will be punished mistakenly. That is a truism, not a revelation. But with regard to the punishment of death in the current American system, that possibility has been reduced to an insignificant minimum. This explains why those ideologically driven to ferret out and proclaim a mistaken modern execution have not a single verifiable case to point to, whereas it is easy as pie to identify plainly guilty murderers who have been set free. The American people have determined that the good to be derived from capital punishment--in deterrence, and perhaps most of all in the meting out of condign justice for horrible crimes--outweighs the risk of error. It is no proper part of the business of this Court, or of its Justices, to second-guess that judgment, much less to impugn it before the world, and less still to frustrate it by imposing judicially invented obstacles to its execution. </s> KANSAS, PETITIONER v. MICHAEL LEE MARSH, II on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of kansas [June 26, 2006] </s> Justice Stevens, dissenting. </s> Having joined Justice Blackmun's dissent from the plurality's opinion in Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639, 649-652 (1990), I necessarily also subscribe to the views expressed by Justice Souter today. I write separately for two reasons: to explain why agreement with Justice Blackmun's dissent is fully consistent with refusing to read Walton as "control[ling]," but see ante, at 5 (opinion of the Court), and to explain why the grant of certiorari in this case was a misuse of our discretion. </s> Under Justice Blackmun's understanding of Arizona law, Walton did present exactly the same issue before us today. The Arizona statute at issue required the judge to impose death upon finding aggravating factors if "'there are no mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leniency.'" 497 U.S., at 644 (quoting Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §13-703(E) (West 1989)). In Justice Blackmun's view, Arizona case law indicated "that a defendant's mitigating evidence will be deemed 'sufficiently substantial to call for leniency' only if the mitigating factors 'outweigh' those in aggravation." 497 U.S., at 687. Accordingly, Justice Blackmun believed that we confronted the constitutionality of a statute that mandated death when the scales were evenly balanced. Ibid. </s> But Justice Blackmun never concluded that the plurality similarly read Arizona case law as "requir[ing] a capital sentence in a case where aggravating and mitigating circumstances are evenly balanced." Id., at 688. To the contrary, he observed that "the plurality does not even acknowledge that this is the dispositive question." Ibid. Because Justice Blackmun did not read the plurality opinion as confronting the problem of equipoise that he believed Arizona law to present, my join of his dissent is consistent with my conclusion that stare decisis does not bind us today. As Justice Souter explains, post, at 2, n. 1, the Walton plurality painstakingly avoided an express endorsement of a rule that allows a prosecutor to argue, and allows a judge to instruct the jury, that if the scales are evenly balanced when the choice is between life and death, the law requires the more severe penalty. </s> There is a further difference between this case and Walton--one that should have kept us from granting certiorari in the first place. In Walton, the defendant petitioned for certiorari, and our grant enabled us to consider whether the Arizona Supreme Court had adequately protected his rights under the Federal Constitution. In this case, by contrast, the State of Kansas petitioned us to review a ruling of its own Supreme Court on the grounds that the Kansas court had granted more protection to a Kansas litigant than the Federal Constitution required. A policy of judicial restraint would allow the highest court of the State to be the final decisionmaker in a case of this kind. See Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. __, __ (2006) (Stevens, J., concurring) (slip op., at 3). </s> There is a remarkable similarity between the decision to grant certiorari in this case and our comparable decision in California v. Ramos, 463 U.S. 992 (1983). In Ramos, we reviewed a decision of the California Supreme Court that had invalidated a standard jury instruction concerning the Governor's power to commute life without parole sentences--an instruction that was unique to California. By a vote of 5 to 4, the Court reversed the judgment of the state court, concluding--somewhat ironically--that "the wisdom of the decision to permit juror consideration of possible commutation is best left to the States." Id., at 1014. </s> In response I asked, as I do again today, "what harm would have been done to the administration of justice by state courts if the [Kansas] court had been left undisturbed in its determination[?]" Id., at 1030. "If it were true that this instruction may make the difference between life and death in a case in which the scales are otherwise evenly balanced, that is a reason why the instruction should not be given--not a reason for giving it." Ibid. "No matter how trivial the impact of the instruction may be, it is fundamentally wrong for the presiding judge at the trial--who should personify the evenhanded administration of justice--to tell the jury, indirectly to be sure, that doubt concerning the proper penalty should be resolved in favor of [death]." Ibid. </s> As in Ramos, in this case "no rule of law commanded the Court to grant certiorari." Id., at 1031. Furthermore, "[n]o other State would have been required to follow the [Kansas] precedent if it had been permitted to stand. Nothing more than an interest in facilitating the imposition of the death penalty in [Kansas] justified this Court's exercise of its discretion to review the judgment of the [Kansas] Supreme Court." Ibid. And "[t]hat interest, in my opinion, is not sufficient to warrant this Court's review of the validity of a jury instruction when the wisdom of giving that instruction is plainly a matter that is best left to the States." Ibid.** </s> We decided Ramos on the same day as Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032 (1983). Prior to that time, "we had virtually no interest" in criminal cases where States sought to set aside the rulings of their own courts. Id., at 1069 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Although in recent years the trend has been otherwise, I continue to hope "that a future Court will recognize the error of this allocation of resources," id., at 1070, and return to our older and better practice of restraint. </s> KANSAS, PETITIONER v. MICHAEL LEE MARSH, II on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of kansas [June 26, 2006] </s> Justice Souter, with whom Justice Stevens, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer join, dissenting. I </s> Kansas's capital sentencing statute provides that a defendant "shall be sentenced to death" if, by unanimous vote, "the jury finds beyond a reasonable doubt that one or more aggravating circumstances ... exist and ... that the existence of such aggravating circumstances is not outweighed by any mitigating circumstances which are found to exist." Kan. Stat. Ann. §21-4624(e) (1995). The Supreme Court of Kansas has read this provision to require imposition of the death penalty "[i]n the event of equipoise, [that is,] the jury's determination that the balance of any aggravating circumstances and any mitigating circumstances weighed equal." 278 Kan. 520, 534, 102 P.3d 445, 457 (2004) (case below); see also State v. Kleypas, 272 Kan. 894, 1016, 40 P.3d 139, 232 (2001) (stating that the language of §21-4624(e) "provides that in doubtful cases the jury must return a sentence of death"). Given this construction, the state court held the law unconstitutional on the ground that the Eighth Amendment requires that a "'tie g[o] to the defendant' when life or death is at issue." Ibid. Because I agree with the Kansas judges that the Constitution forbids a mandatory death penalty in what they describe as "doubtful cases," when aggravating and mitigating factors are of equal weight, I respectfully dissent.1 II </s> More than 30 years ago, this Court explained that the Eighth Amendment's guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment barred imposition of the death penalty under statutory schemes so inarticulate that sentencing discretion produced wanton and freakish results. See Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 309-310 (1972) (per curiam) (Stewart, J., concurring) ("[T]he Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit this unique penalty to be ... wantonly and ... freakishly imposed" on a "capriciously selected random handful" of individuals). The Constitution was held to require, instead, a system structured to produce reliable, Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 305 (1976) (plurality opinion), rational, Jurek v. Texas, 428 U.S. 262, 276 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.), and rationally reviewable, Woodson, supra, at 303, determinations of sentence. Decades of back-and-forth between legislative experiment and judicial review have made it plain that the constitutional demand for rationality goes beyond the minimal requirement to replace unbounded discretion with a sentencing structure; a State has much leeway in devising such a structure and in selecting the terms for measuring relative culpability, but a system must meet an ultimate test of constitutional reliability in producing "'a reasoned moral response to the defendant's background, character, and crime,'" Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302, 319 (1989) (quoting California v. Brown, 479 U.S. 538, 545 (1987) (O'Connor, J., concurring); emphasis deleted); cf. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 206 (1976) (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.) (sanctioning sentencing procedures that "focus the jury's attention on the particularized nature of the crime and the particularized characteristics of the individual defendant"). The Eighth Amendment, that is, demands both form and substance, both a system for decision and one geared to produce morally justifiable results. </s> The State thinks its scheme is beyond questioning, whether as to form or substance, for it sees the tie-breaker law as equivalent to the provisions examined in Blystone v. Pennsylvania, 494 U.S. 299 (1990), and Boyde v. California, 494 U.S. 370 (1990), where we approved statutes that required a death sentence upon a jury finding that aggravating circumstances outweighed mitigating ones. But the crucial fact in those systems was the predominance of the aggravators, and our recognition of the moral rationality of a mandatory capital sentence based on that finding is no authority for giving States free rein to select a different conclusion that will dictate death. </s> Instead, the constitutional demand for a reasoned moral response requires the state statute to satisfy two criteria that speak to the issue before us now, one governing the character of sentencing evidence, and one going to the substantive justification needed for a death sentence. As to the first, there is an obligation in each case to inform the jury's choice of sentence with evidence about the crime as actually committed and about the specific individual who committed it. See Spaziano v. Florida, 468 U.S. 447, 460, and n. 7 (1984). Since the sentencing choice is, by definition, the attribution of particular culpability to a criminal act and defendant, as distinct from the general culpability necessarily implicated by committing a given offense, see Penry, supra, at 327-328; Spaziano, supra, at 460; Zant v. Stephens, 462 U.S. 862, 879 (1983), the sentencing decision must turn on the uniqueness of the individual defendant and on the details of the crime, to which any resulting choice of death must be "directly" related. Penry, supra, at 319. </s> Second, there is the point to which the particulars of crime and criminal are relevant: within the category of capital crimes, the death penalty must be reserved for "the worst of the worst." See, e.g., Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 568 (2005) ("Capital punishment must be limited to those offenders who commit 'a narrow category of the most serious crimes' and whose extreme culpability makes them 'the most deserving of execution'" (quoting Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 319 (2002))). One object of the structured sentencing proceeding required in the aftermath of Furman is to eliminate the risk that a death sentence will be imposed in spite of facts calling for a lesser penalty, Penry, supra, at 328-329, and the essence of the sentencing authority's responsibility is to determine whether the response to the crime and defendant "must be death," Spaziano, supra, at 461; cf. Gregg, supra, at 184 (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.). Of course, in the moral world of those who reject capital punishment in principle, a death sentence can never be a moral imperative. The point, however, is that within our legal and moral system, which allows a place for the death penalty, "must be death" does not mean "may be death." </s> Since a valid capital sentence thus requires a choice based upon unique particulars identifying the crime and its perpetrator as heinous to the point of demanding death even within the class of potentially capital offenses, the State's provision for a tie breaker in favor of death fails on both counts. The dispositive fact under the tie breaker is not the details of the crime or the unique identity of the individual defendant. The determining fact is not directly linked to a particular crime or particular criminal at all; the law operates merely on a jury's finding of equipoise in the State's own selected considerations for and against death. Nor does the tie breaker identify the worst of the worst, or even purport to reflect any evidentiary showing that death must be the reasoned moral response; it does the opposite. The statute produces a death sentence exactly when a sentencing impasse demonstrates as a matter of law that the jury does not see the evidence as showing the worst sort of crime committed by the worst sort of criminal, in a combination heinous enough to demand death. It operates, that is, when a jury has applied the State's chosen standards of culpability and mitigation and reached nothing more than what the Supreme Court of Kansas calls a "tie," Kleypas, 272 Kan., at 1016, 40 P.3d, at 232 (internal quotation marks omitted). It mandates death in what that court identifies as "doubtful cases," ibid. The statute thus addresses the risk of a morally unjustifiable death sentence, not by minimizing it as precedent unmistakably requires, but by guaranteeing that in equipoise cases the risk will be realized, by "placing a 'thumb [on] death's side of the scale,'" Sochor v. Florida, 504 U.S. 527, 532 (1992) (quoting Stringer v. Black, 503 U.S. 222, 232 (1992); alteration in original). </s> In Kansas, when a jury applies the State's own standards of relative culpability and cannot decide that a defendant is among the most culpable, the state law says that equivocal evidence is good enough and the defendant must die. A law that requires execution when the case for aggravation has failed to convince the sentencing jury is morally absurd, and the Court's holding that the Constitution tolerates this moral irrationality defies decades of precedent aimed at eliminating freakish capital sentencing in the United States. III </s> That precedent, demanding reasoned moral judgment, developed in response to facts that could not be ignored, the kaleidoscope of life and death verdicts that made no sense in fact or morality in the random sentencing before Furman was decided in 1972. See 408 U.S., at 309-310 (Stewart, J., concurring). Today, a new body of fact must be accounted for in deciding what, in practical terms, the Eighth Amendment guarantees should tolerate, for the period starting in 1989 has seen repeated exonerations of convicts under death sentences, in numbers never imagined before the development of DNA tests. We cannot face up to these facts and still hold that the guarantee of morally justifiable sentencing is hollow enough to allow maximizing death sentences, by requiring them when juries fail to find the worst degree of culpability: when, by a State's own standards and a State's own characterization, the case for death is "doubtful." A few numbers from a growing literature will give a sense of the reality that must be addressed. When the Governor of Illinois imposed a moratorium on executions in 2000, 13 prisoners under death sentences had been released since 1977 after a number of them were shown to be innocent, as described in a report which used their examples to illustrate a theme common to all 13, of "relatively little solid evidence connecting the charged defendants to the crimes." State of Illinois, G. Ryan, Governor, Report of the Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment: Recommendations Only 7 (Apr. 2002) (hereinafter Report); see also id., at 5-6, 7-9. During the same period, 12 condemned convicts had been executed. Subsequently the Governor determined that 4 more death row inmates were innocent. See id., at 5-6; Warden, Illinois Death Penalty Reform, 95 J. Crim. L. & C. 381, 382, and n. 6 (2005).2 Illinois had thus wrongly convicted and condemned even more capital defendants than it had executed, but it may well not have been otherwise unique; one recent study reports that between 1989 and 2003, 74 American prisoners condemned to death were exonerated, Gross, Jacoby, Matheson, Montgomery, & Patil, Exonerations in the United States 1989 Through 2003, 95 J. Crim. L. & C. 523, 531 (2006) (hereinafter Gross), many of them cleared by DNA evidence, ibid.3 Another report states that "more than 110" death row prisoners have been released since 1973 upon findings that they were innocent of the crimes charged, and "[h]undreds of additional wrongful convictions in potentially capital cases have been documented over the past century." Lanier & Acker, Capital Punishment, the Moratorium Movement, and Empirical Questions, 10 Psychology, Public Policy & Law 577, 593 (2004). Most of these wrongful convictions and sentences resulted from eyewitness misidentification, false confession, and (most frequently) perjury, Gross 544, 551-552, and the total shows that among all prosecutions homicide cases suffer an unusually high incidence of false conviction, id., at 532, 552, probably owing to the combined difficulty of investigating without help from the victim, intense pressure to get convictions in homicide cases, and the corresponding incentive for the guilty to frame the innocent, id., at 532. </s> We are thus in a period of new empirical argument about how "death is different," Gregg, 428 U.S., at 188 (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and Stevens, JJ.): not only would these false verdicts defy correction after the fatal moment, the Illinois experience shows them to be remarkable in number, and they are probably disproportionately high in capital cases. While it is far too soon for any generalization about the soundness of capital sentencing across the country, the cautionary lesson of recent experience addresses the tie-breaking potential of the Kansas statute: the same risks of falsity that infect proof of guilt raise questions about sentences, when the circumstances of the crime are aggravating factors and bear on predictions of future dangerousness. </s> In the face of evidence of the hazards of capital prosecution, maintaining a sentencing system mandating death when the sentencer finds the evidence pro and con to be in equipoise is obtuse by any moral or social measure. And unless application of the Eighth Amendment no longer calls for reasoned moral judgment in substance as well as form, the Kansas law is unconstitutional. </s> FOOTNOTESFootnote 1The Kansas Supreme Court found that the trial court committed reversible error by excluding circumstantial evidence of third-party guilt connecting Eric Pusch, Marry Ane's husband, to the crimes, and, accordingly ordered a new trial on this ground. 278 Kan., at 528-533, 102 P.3d, at 454-457. Footnote 2Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §13-703(E) (Supp. 2005) provides: </s> "In determining whether to impose a sentence of death or life imprisonment, the trier of fact shall take into account the aggravating and mitigating circumstances that have been proven. The trier of fact shall impose a sentence of death if the trier of fact finds one or more of the aggravating circumstances enumerated in subsection F of this section and then determines that there are no mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leniency." Footnote 3The "mercy" jury instruction alone forecloses the possibility of Furman-type error as it "eliminate[s] the risk that a death sentence will be imposed in spite of facts calling for a lesser penalty." Post, at 4 (Souter,J., dissenting). Footnote 4In Blystone, the Pennsylvania statute authorized imposition of a death sentence if the jury concluded "that the aggravating circumstances outweigh[ed] the mitigating circumstances present in the particular crime committed by the particular defendant, or that there [were] no such mitigating circumstances." 494 U.S., at 305. Footnote 5Contrary to Justice Souter's assertion, the Court's decisions in Boyde and Blystone did not turn on the "predominance of the aggravators" in those cases. Post, at 3 (dissenting opinion.). Rather, those decisions plainly turned on the fact that the mandatory language of the respective statutes did not prevent the sentencing jury from "consider[ing] and giv[ing] effect to all relevant mitigating evidence." Blystone, supra, at 305. See also Boyde, 428 U.S. 280 (1976)] or Roberts [v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 325 (1976)]" because "[d]eath is not automatically imposed upon conviction for certain types of murder"). Footnote 6Additionally, Marsh's argument turns on reading §21-4624(e) in isolation. Such a reading, however, is contrary to "'the well-established proposition that a single instruction to a jury may not be judged in artificial isolation, but must be viewed in the context of the overall charge.'" Boyde v. California, 494 U.S. 370, 378 (1990) (citing Boyd v. United States, 271 U.S. 104, 107 (1926)). The constitutionality of a State's death penalty system turns on review of that system in context. We thus reject his disengaged interpretation of §21-4624(e). Footnote 7But see The Penalty of Death, in Debating the Death Penalty: Should America Have Capital Punishment? The Experts on Both Sides Make Their Best Case, 117, 127-132, 134, (H. Bedau & P. Cassell eds. 2004). See also Comment, Protecting the Innocent: A Response to the Bedau-Radelet Study, 41 Stan. L. Rev. 121, 126-145 (1988) (examining accuracy in use of the term "innocent" in death penalty studies and literature); Marquis, The Myth of Innocence, 95 J. Crim. L. & C. 501, 508 (2005) ( "[w]ords like 'innocence' convey enormous moral authority and are intended to drive the public debate by appealing to a deep and universal revulsion at the idea that someone who is genuinely blameless could wrongly suffer for a crime in which he had no involvement"); People v. Smith, 185 Ill. 2d 532, 545, 708 N. E. 2d 365, 371 (1999) ("[w]hile a not guilty finding is sometimes equated with a finding of innocence, that conclusion is erroneous.... Rather, [a reversal of conviction] indicates simply that the prosecution has failed to meet its burden of proof"). FOOTNOTESFootnote 1The dissent observes that Congress did not initially grant us the full jurisdiction that the Constitution authorizes, but only allowed us to review cases rejecting the assertion of governing federal law. See post, at 3-4, n.(opinion of Stevens, J.). That is unsurprising and immaterial. The original Constitution contained few guarantees of individual rights against the States, and in clashes of governmental authority there was small risk that the state courts would erroneously side with the new Federal Government. (In 1789, when the first Judiciary Act was passed, the Bill of Rights had not yet been adopted, and once it was, it did not apply against the States, see Barron ex rel. Tiernan v. Mayor of Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243 (1833).) Congress would have been most unlikely to contemplate that state courts would erroneously invalidate state actions on federal grounds. The early history of our jurisdiction assuredly does not support the dissent's awarding of special preference to the constitutional rights of criminal defendants. Even with respect to federal defendants (who did enjoy the protections of the Bill of Rights), "during the first 100 years of the Court's existence there was no provision made by Congress for Supreme Court review of federal criminal convictions, an omission that Congress did not remedy until 1889 and beyond." R. Stern, E. Gressman, S. Shapiro, & K. Geller, Supreme Court Practice 66 (8th ed. 2002). In any case, present law is plain. The 1988 statute cited by the dissent and forming the basis of our current certiorari jurisdiction places States and defendants in precisely the same position. They are both entitled to petition for our review. Footnote 2Not only are the dissent's views on the erroneous imposition of the death penalty irrelevant to the present case, but the dissent's proposed holding on the equipoise issue will not necessarily work to defendants' advantage. The equipoise provision of the Kansas statute imposes the death penalty only when the State proves beyond a reasonable doubt that mitigating factors do not outweigh the aggravators. See ante, at 2. If we were to disallow Kansas's scheme, the State could, as Marsh freely admits, replace it with a scheme requiring the State to prove by a mere preponderance of the evidence that the aggravators outweigh the mitigators. See Tr. of Oral Rearg. 36. I doubt that any defense counsel would accept this trade. The "preponderance" rule, while it sounds better, would almost surely produce more death sentences than an "equipoise beyond a reasonable doubt" requirement. Footnote 3It is commonly recognized that "[m]any European countries ... abolished the death penalty in spite of public opinion rather than because of it." Bibas, Transparency and Participation in Criminal Procedure, 81 N.Y. U. L.Rev. 911, 931-932 (2006). See also id., at 932, n. 88. Abolishing the death penalty has been made a condition of joining the Council of Europe, which is in turn a condition of obtaining the economic benefits of joining the European Union. See Waters, Mediating Norms and Identity: The Role of Transnational Judicial Dialogue in Creating and Enforcing International Law, 93 Geo. L.J. 487, 525 (2005); Demleitner, Is There a Future for Leniency in the U.S. Criminal Justice System? 103 Mich. L.Rev. 1231, 1256, and n. 88 (2005).The European Union advocates against the death-penalty even in America; there is a separate death-penalty page on the website of the Delegation of the European Commission to the U.S.A. See http://www.eurunion.org/legislat/deathpenalty/deathpenhome.htm (as visited June 17, 2006, and available in Clerk of Court's case file). The views of the European Union have been relied upon by Justices of this Court (including all four dissenters today) in narrowing the power of the American people to impose capital punishment. See, e.g., Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 317, n. 21 (2002) (citing, for the views of "the world community," the Brief for the European Union as Amicus Curiae). Footnote 4See also Callins v. Collins, 510 U.S. 1141, 1158, n.8 (1994) (Blackmun, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) ("Innocent persons have been executed, see Bedau & Radelet, Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases, 40 Stan. L.Rev. 21, 36, 173-179 (1987), perhaps recently, see Herrera v. Collins, 506 U.S. 390 (1993), and will continue to be executed under our death penalty scheme"). FOOTNOTESFootnote **Justice Scalia takes issue with my approach, suggesting that the federal interests vindicated by our review are equally weighty whether the state court found for the defendant or for the State. Ante, at 2-5 (concurring opinion). In so doing, he overlooks the separate federal interest in ensuring that no person be convicted or sentenced in violation of the Federal Constitution--an interest entirely absent when the State is the petitioner. It is appropriate--and certainly impartial, but see ante, at 4-5--to take this difference in federal interests into account in considering whether to grant a petition for writ of certiorari. </s> Justice Scalia also fails to explain why there is such an urgent need "to ensure the integrity and uniformity of federal law." Ante, at 2. If this perceived need is a "primary basis for the Constitution's allowing us to be accorded jurisdiction to review state-court decisions," ibid. (citing Art. III, §2, cls. 1 and 2), then one would think that the First Judiciary Act would have given us jurisdiction to review all decisions based on the Federal Constitution coming out of state courts. But it did not. Unconcerned about Justice Scalia's "crazy quilt," ante, at 4, the First Congress only provided us with jurisdiction over such cases "where [there] is drawn in question the validity of a statute of, or an authority exercised under any State, on the ground of their being repugnant to the constitution, treaties or laws of the United States, and the decision is in favour of such their validity." Act of Sept. 24, 1789, §25, 1 Stat. 85 (emphasis added). Not until 1914 did we have jurisdiction over decisions from state courts which arguably overprotected federal constitutional rights at the expense of state laws. Act of Dec. 23, 1914, ch. 2, 38 Stat. 790; see also Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 694-697 (1986) (Stevens, J., dissenting). Even then, our review was only by writ of certiorari, whereas until 1988 defendants had a right to appeal to us in cases in which state courts had upheld the validity of state statutes challenged on federal constitutional grounds. See 28 U.S.C. §1257 (1982 ed.). In other words, during the entire period between 1789 and 1988, the laws enacted by Congress placed greater weight on the vindication of federal rights than on the interest in the uniformity of federal law. FOOTNOTESFootnote 1The majority views Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639 (1990), as having decided this issue. But Walton is ambiguous on this point; while the Court there approved Arizona's practice of placing the burden on capital defendants to prove, "by a preponderance of the evidence, the existence of mitigating circumstances sufficiently substantial to call for leniency," id., at 649 (plurality opinion), it did not quantify the phrase "sufficiently substantial." Justice Blackmun clearly thought otherwise, see id., at 687 (dissenting opinion), but he cried a greater foul than one can get from the majority opinion. Stare decisis does not control this case. Footnote 2The Illinois Report emphasizes the difference between exoneration of a convict because of actual innocence, and reversal of a judgment because of legal error affecting conviction or sentence but not inconsistent with guilt in fact. See Report 9 (noting that, apart from the 13 released men, a "broader review" discloses that more than half of the State's death penalty cases "were reversed at some point in the process"). More importantly, it takes only a cursory reading of the Report to recognize that it describes men released who were demonstrably innocent or convicted on grossly unreliable evidence. Of one, the Report notes "two other persons were subsequently convicted in Wisconsin of" the murders. Id., at 8. Of two others, the Report states that they were released after "DNA tests revealed that none of them were the source of the semen found in the victim. That same year, two other men confessed to the crime, pleaded guilty and were sentenced to life in prison, and a third was tried and convicted for the crime." Ibid. Of yet another, the Report says that "another man subsequently confessed to the crime for which [the released man] was convicted. He entered a plea of guilty and is currently serving a prison term for that crime." Id., at 9. </s> A number were subject to judgments as close to innocence as any judgments courts normally render. In the case of one of the released men, the Supreme Court of Illinois found the evidence insufficient to support his conviction. See People v. Smith, 185 Ill. 2d 532, 708 N.E. 2d 365 (1999). Several others obtained acquittals, and still more simply had the charges against them dropped, after receiving orders for new trials. </s> At least 2 of the 13 were released at the initiative of the executive. We can reasonably assume that a State under no obligation to do so would not release into the public a person against whom it had a valid conviction and sentence unless it were certain beyond all doubt that the person in custody was not the perpetrator of the crime. The reason that the State would forgo even a judicial forum in which defendants would demonstrate grounds for vacating their convictions is a matter of common sense: evidence going to innocence was conclusive. Footnote 3 The authors state the criteria for their study: "As we use the term, 'exoneration' is an official act declaring a defendant not guilty of a crime for which he or she had previously been convicted. The exonerations we have studied occurred in four ways: (1) In forty-two cases governors (or other appropriate executive officers) issued pardons based on evidence of the defendants' innocence. (2) In 263 cases criminal charges were dismissed by courts after new evidence of innocence emerged, such as DNA. (3) In thirty-one cases the defendants were acquitted at a retrial on the basis of evidence that they had no role in the crimes for which they were originally convicted. (4) In four cases, states posthumously acknowledged the innocence of defendants who had already died in prison . . . ." Gross 524 (footnote omitted). The authors exclude from their list of exonerations "any case in which a dismissal or an acquittal appears to have been based on a decision that while the defendant was not guilty of the charges in the original conviction, he did play a role in the crime and may be guilty of some lesser crime that is based on the same conduct. For our purposes, a defendant who is acquitted of murder on retrial, but convicted of involuntary manslaughter, has not been exonerated. We have also excluded any case in which a dismissal was entered in the absence of strong evidence of factual innocence, or in which--despite such evidence--there was unexplained physical evidence of the defendant's guilt." Ibid., n.4.

United States Supreme Court DANIELS v. WILLIAMS(1986) No. 84-5872 Argued: November 6, 1985Decided: January 21, 1986 </s> Petitioner brought an action in Federal District Court under 42 U.S.C. 1983, seeking to recover damages for injuries allegedly sustained when, while an inmate in a Richmond, Virginia, jail, he slipped on a pillow negligently left on a stairway by respondent sheriff's deputy. Petitioner contends that such negligence deprived him of his "liberty" interest in freedom from bodily injury "without due process of law" within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The District Court granted respondent's motion for summary judgment, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. </s> Held: </s> The Due Process Clause is not implicated by a state official's negligent act causing unintended loss of or injury to life, liberty, or property. Pp. 329-336. </s> (a) The Due Process Clause was intended to secure an individual from an abuse of power by government officials. Far from an abuse of power, lack of due care, such as respondent's alleged negligence here, suggests no more than a failure to measure up to the conduct of a reasonable person. To hold that injury caused by such conduct is a deprivation within the meaning of the Due Process Clause would trivialize the centuries-old principle of due process of law. Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527 , overruled to the extent that it states otherwise. Pp. 329-332. </s> (b) The Constitution does not purport to supplant traditional tort law in laying down rules of conduct to regulate liability for injuries that attend living together in society. While the Due Process Clause speaks to some facets of the relationship between jailers and inmates, its protections are not triggered by lack of due care by the jailers. Jailers may owe a special duty of care under state tort law to those in their custody, but the Due Process Clause does not embrace such a tort law concept. Pp. 332-336. </s> 748 F.2d 229, affirmed. </s> REHNQUIST, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and BRENNAN, WHITE, POWELL, and O'CONNOR, JJ., joined. MARSHALL, J., concurred in the result. BLACKMUN, J., post, p. 336, and STEVENS, J., post, p. 336, filed opinions concurring in the judgment. [474 U.S. 327, 328] </s> Stephen Allan Saltzburg argued the cause and filed briefs for petitioner. </s> James Walter Hopper argued the cause and filed a brief for respondent. </s> JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> In Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527 (1981), a state prisoner sued under 42 U.S.C. 1983, claiming that prison officials had negligently deprived him of his property without due process of law. After deciding that 1983 contains no independent state-of-mind requirement, we concluded that although petitioner had been "deprived" of property within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the State's postdeprivation tort remedy provided the process that was due. Petitioner's claim in this case, which also rests on an alleged Fourteenth Amendment "deprivation" caused by the negligent conduct of a prison official, leads us to reconsider our statement in Parratt that "the alleged loss, even though negligently caused, amounted to a deprivation." Id., at 536-537. We conclude that the Due Process Clause is simply not implicated by a negligent act of an official causing unintended loss of or injury to life, liberty, or property. </s> In this 1983 action, petitioner seeks to recover damages for back and ankle injuries allegedly sustained when he fell on a prison stairway. He claims that, while an inmate at the city jail in Richmond, Virginia, he slipped on a pillow negligently left on the stairs by respondent, a correctional deputy stationed at the jail. Respondent's negligence, the argument runs, "deprived" petitioner of his "liberty" interest in freedom from bodily injury, see Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 673 (1977); because respondent maintains that he is entitled to the defense of sovereign immunity in a state tort suit, petitioner is without an "adequate" state remedy, cf. Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 534 -536 (1984). Accordingly, the deprivation of liberty was without "due process of law." [474 U.S. 327, 329] </s> The District Court granted respondent's motion for summary judgment. A panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed, concluding that even if respondent could make out an immunity defense in state court, petitioner would not be deprived of a meaningful opportunity to present his case. 720 F.2d 792 (1983). On rehearing, the en banc Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment of the District Court, but under reasoning different from that of the panel. 748 F.2d 229 (1984). First, a 5-4 majority ruled that negligent infliction of bodily injury, unlike the negligent loss of property in Parratt, does not constitute a deprivation of any interest protected by the Due Process Clause. The majority therefore believed that the postdeprivation process mandated by Parratt for property losses was not required. Second, the en banc court unanimously decided that even if a prisoner is entitled to some remedy for personal injuries attributable to the negligence of state officials, Parratt would bar petitioner's claim if the State provided an adequate postdeprivation remedy. Finally, a 6-3 majority concluded that petitioner had an adequate remedy in state court, even though respondent asserted that he would rely on sovereign immunity as a defense in a state suit. The majority apparently believed that respondent's sovereign immunity defense would fail under Virginia law. </s> Because of the inconsistent approaches taken by lower courts in determining when tortious conduct by state officials rises to the level of a constitutional tort, see Jackson v. Joliet, 465 U.S. 1049, 1050 (1984) (WHITE, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (collecting cases), and the apparent lack of adequate guidance from this Court, we granted certiorari. 469 U.S. 1207 (1985). We now affirm. </s> In Parratt v. Taylor, we granted certiorari, as we had twice before, "to decide whether mere negligence will support a claim for relief under 1983." 451 U.S., at 532 . After examining the language, legislative history, and prior interpretations of the statute, we concluded that 1983, unlike [474 U.S. 327, 330] like its criminal counterpart, 18 U.S.C. 242, contains no state-of-mind requirement independent of that necessary to state a violation of the underlying constitutional right. Id., at 534-535. We adhere to that conclusion. But in any given 1983 suit, the plaintiff must still prove a violation of the underlying constitutional right; and depending on the right, merely negligent conduct may not be enough to state a claim. See, e. g., Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252 (1977) (invidious discriminatory purpose required for claim of racial discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause); Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 105 (1976) ("deliberate indifference" to prisoner's serious illness or injury sufficient to constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment). </s> In Parratt, before concluding that Nebraska's tort remedy provided all the process that was due, we said that the loss of the prisoner's hobby kit, "even though negligently caused, amounted to a deprivation [under the Due Process Clause]." 451 U.S., at 536 -537. JUSTICE POWELL, concurring in the result, criticized the majority for "pass[ing] over" this important question of the state of mind required to constitute a "deprivation" of property. Id., at 547. He argued that negligent acts by state officials, though causing loss of property, are not actionable under the Due Process Clause. To JUSTICE POWELL, mere negligence could not "wor[k] a deprivation in the constitutional sense." Id., at 548 (emphasis in original). Not only does the word "deprive" in the Due Process Clause connote more than a negligent act, but we should not "open the federal courts to lawsuits where there has been no affirmative abuse of power." Id., at 548-549; see also id., at 545 (Stewart, J., concurring) ("To hold that this kind of loss is a deprivation of property within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment seems not only to trivialize, but grossly to distort the meaning and intent of the Constitution"). Upon reflection, we agree and overrule Parratt to the extent that it states that mere lack of due care by a state [474 U.S. 327, 331] official may "deprive" an individual of life, liberty, or property under the Fourteenth Amendment. </s> The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides: "[N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Historically, this guarantee of due process has been applied to deliberate decisions of government officials to deprive a person of life, liberty, or property. E. g., Davidson v. New Orleans, 96 U.S. 97 (1878) (assessment of real estate); Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (1952) (stomach pumping); Bell v. Burson, 402 U.S. 535 (1971) (suspension of driver's license); Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651 (1977) (paddling student); Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517 (1984) (intentional destruction of inmate's property). No decision of this Court before Parratt supported the view that negligent conduct by a state official, even though causing injury, constitutes a deprivation under the Due Process Clause. This history reflects the traditional and common-sense notion that the Due Process Clause, like its forebear in the Magna Carta, see Corwin, The Doctrine of Due Process of Law Before the Civil War, 24 Harv. L. Rev. 366, 368 (1911), was "`intended to secure the individual from the arbitrary exercise of the powers of government,'" Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516, 527 (1884) (quoting Bank of Columbia v. Okely, 4 Wheat. 235, 244 (1819)). See also Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539, 558 (1974) ("The touchstone of due process is protection of the individual against arbitrary action of government, Dent v. West Virginia, 129 U.S. 114, 123 (1889)"); Parratt, supra, at 549 (POWELL, J., concurring in result). By requiring the government to follow appropriate procedures when its agents decide to "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property," the Due Process Clause promotes fairness in such decisions. And by barring certain government actions regardless of the fairness of the procedures used to implement them, e. g., Rochin, supra, it serves to prevent governmental power from being "used for purposes of oppression," Murray's Lessee [474 U.S. 327, 332] v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272, 277 (1856) (discussing Due Process Clause of Fifth Amendment). </s> We think that the actions of prison custodians in leaving a pillow on the prison stairs, or mislaying an inmate's property, are quite remote from the concerns just discussed. Far from an abuse of power, lack of due care suggests no more than a failure to measure up to the conduct of a reasonable person. To hold that injury caused by such conduct is a deprivation within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment would trivialize the centuries-old principle of due process of law. </s> The Fourteenth Amendment is a part of a Constitution generally designed to allocate governing authority among the Branches of the Federal Government and between that Government and the States, and to secure certain individual rights against both State and Federal Government. When dealing with a claim that such a document creates a right in prisoners to sue a government official because he negligently created an unsafe condition in the prison, we bear in mind Chief Justice Marshall's admonition that "we must never forget, that it is a constitution we are expounding," McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 407 (1819) (emphasis in original). Our Constitution deals with the large concerns of the governors and the governed, but it does not purport to supplant traditional tort law in laying down rules of conduct to regulate liability for injuries that attend living together in society. We have previously rejected reasoning that "`would make of the Fourteenth Amendment a font of tort law to be super-imposed upon whatever systems may already be administered by the States,'" Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 701 (1976), quoted in Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S., at 544 . </s> The only tie between the facts of this case and anything governmental in nature is the fact that respondent was a sheriff's deputy at the Richmond city jail and petitioner was an inmate confined in that jail. But while the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment obviously speaks to some facets of this relationship, see, e. g., Wolff v. McDonnell, [474 U.S. 327, 333] supra, we do not believe its protections are triggered by lack of due care by prison officials. "Medical malpractice does not become a constitutional violation merely because the victim is a prisoner," Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 106 (1976), and "false imprisonment does not become a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment merely because the defendant is a state official." Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 146 (1979). Where a government official's act causing injury to life, liberty, or property is merely negligent, "no procedure for compensation is constitutionally required." Parratt, supra, at 548 (POWELL, J., concurring in result) (emphasis added). 1 </s> That injuries inflicted by governmental negligence are not addressed by the United States Constitution is not to say that they may not raise significant legal concerns and lead to the creation of protectible legal interests. The enactment of tort claim statutes, for example, reflects the view that injuries caused by such negligence should generally be redressed. 2 It is no reflection on either the breadth of the United States Constitution or the importance of traditional tort law to say that they do not address the same concerns. </s> In support of his claim that negligent conduct can give rise to a due process "deprivation," petitioner makes several arguments, none of which we find persuasive. He states, for example, that "it is almost certain that some negligence claims are within 1983," and cites as an example the failure of a State to comply with the procedural requirements of Wolff v. McDonnell, supra, before depriving an inmate of good-time credit. We think the relevant action of the prison [474 U.S. 327, 334] officials in that situation is their deliberate decision to deprive the inmate of good-time credit, not their hypothetically negligent failure to accord him the procedural protections of the Due Process Clause. But we need not rule out the possibility that there are other constitutional provisions that would be violated by mere lack of care in order to hold, as we do, that such conduct does not implicate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. </s> Petitioner also suggests that artful litigants, undeterred by a requirement that they plead more than mere negligence, will often be able to allege sufficient facts to support a claim of intentional deprivation. In the instant case, for example, petitioner notes that he could have alleged that the pillow was left on the stairs with the intention of harming him. This invitation to "artful" pleading, petitioner contends, would engender sticky (and needless) disputes over what is fairly pleaded. What's more, requiring complainants to allege something more than negligence would raise serious questions about what "more" than negligence - intent, recklessness, or "gross negligence" - is required, 3 and indeed about what these elusive terms mean. See Reply Brief for Petitioner 9 ("what terms like willful, wanton, reckless or gross negligence mean" has "left the finest scholars puzzled"). But even if accurate, petitioner's observations do not carry the day. In the first place, many branches of the law abound in nice distinctions that may be troublesome but have been thought nonetheless necessary: </s> "I do not think we need trouble ourselves with the thought that my view depends upon differences of degree. The whole law does so as soon as it is civilized." [474 U.S. 327, 335] LeRoy Fibre Co. v. Chicago, M. & St. P. R. Co., 232 U.S. 340, 354 (1914) (Holmes, J., partially concurring). </s> More important, the difference between one end of the spectrum - negligence - and the other - intent - is abundantly clear. See O. Holmes, The Common Law 3 (1923). In any event, we decline to trivialize the Due Process Clause in an effort to simplify constitutional litigation. </s> Finally, citing South v. Maryland, 18 How. 396 (1856), petitioner argues that respondent's conduct, even if merely negligent, breached a sheriff's "special duty of care" for those in his custody. Reply Brief for Petitioner 14. The Due Process Clause, petitioner notes, "was intended to give Americans at least the protection against governmental power that they had enjoyed as Englishmen against the power of the crown." Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S., at 672 -673. And South v. Maryland suggests that one such protection was the right to recover against a sheriff for breach of his ministerial duty to provide for the safety of prisoners in his custody. 18 How., at 402-403. Due process demands that the State protect those whom it incarcerates by exercising reasonable care to assure their safety and by compensating them for negligently inflicted injury. </s> We disagree. We read South v. Maryland, supra, an action brought under federal diversity jurisdiction on a Maryland sheriff's bond, as stating no more than what this Court thought to be the principles of common law and Maryland law applicable to that case; it is not cast at all in terms of constitutional law, and indeed could not have been, since at the time it was rendered there was no due process clause applicable to the States. Petitioner's citation to Ingraham v. Wright does not support the notion that all common-law duties owed by government actors were somehow constitutionalized by the Fourteenth Amendment. Jailers may owe a special duty of care to those in their custody under state tort law, see Restatement (Second) of Torts 314A(4) (1965), but for the reasons previously stated we reject the contention that the [474 U.S. 327, 336] Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment embraces such a tort law concept. Petitioner alleges that he was injured by the negligence of respondent, a custodial official at the city jail. Whatever other provisions of state law or general jurisprudence he may rightly invoke, the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not afford him a remedy. </s> Affirmed. </s> JUSTICE MARSHALL concurs in the result. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 Accordingly, we need not decide whether, as petitioner contends, the possibility of a sovereign immunity defense in a Virginia tort suit would render that remedy "inadequate" under Parratt and Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517 (1984). </s> [Footnote 2 See, e. g., the Virginia Tort Claims Act, Va. Code 8.01-195.1 et seq. (1984), which applies only to actions accruing on or after July 1, 1982, and hence is inapplicable to this case. </s> [Footnote 3 Despite his claim about what he might have pleaded, petitioner concedes that respondent was at most negligent. Accordingly, this case affords us no occasion to consider whether something less than intentional conduct, such as recklessness or "gross negligence," is enough to trigger the protections of the Due Process Clause. </s> JUSTICE BLACKMUN, concurring in the judgment. </s> I concur in the judgment. See my opinion in dissent in Davidson v. Cannon, post, p. 349. </s> JUSTICE STEVENS, concurring in the judgments. * </s> Two prisoners raise similar claims in these two cases. Both seek to recover for personal injuries suffered, in part, from what they allege was negligence by state officials. Both characterize their injuries as "deprivations of liberty" and both invoke 42 U.S.C. 1983 as a basis for their claims. </s> Prisoner Roy Daniels was injured when he slipped on a newspaper and pillows left on a stairway in the Virginia jail where he is incarcerated; he alleges state negligence in the presence of the objects on the stairs. Prisoner Robert Davidson suffered injury when he was attacked by another inmate in the New Jersey prison where he is incarcerated; he alleges (and proved at trial) state negligence in the failure of prison authorities to prevent the assault after he had written a note expressing apprehension about the inmate who ultimately assaulted him. I agree with the majority that petitioners cannot prevail under 1983. I do not agree, however, that it is necessary either to redefine the meaning of "deprive" in the Fourteenth Amendment, 1 or to repudiate [474 U.S. 327, 337] the reasoning of Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527 (1981), to support this conclusion. </s> We should begin by identifying the precise constitutional claims that petitioners have advanced. It is not enough to note that they rely on the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, for that Clause is the source of three different kinds of constitutional protection. First, it incorporates specific protections defined in the Bill of Rights. Thus, the State, as well as the Federal Government, must comply with the commands in the First 2 and Eighth 3 Amendments; so too, the State must respect the guarantees in the Fourth, 4 Fifth, 5 and Sixth 6 Amendments. Second, it contains a substantive component, sometimes referred to as "substantive due process," which bars certain arbitrary government actions "regardless of the fairness of the procedures used to implement them." Ante, at 331. 7 Third, it is a guarantee of fair procedure, sometimes referred to as "procedural due process": the State may not execute, imprison, or fine a defendant without giving him a fair trial, 8 nor may it take property without providing appropriate procedural safeguards. 9 </s> The type of Fourteenth Amendment interest that is implicated has important effects on the nature of the constitutional claim and the availability of 1983 relief. If the claim is in [474 U.S. 327, 338] the first category (a violation of one of the specific constitutional guarantees of the Bill of Rights), a plaintiff may invoke 1983 regardless of the availability of a state remedy. 10 As explained in Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167 (1961), this conclusion derives from the fact that the statute - the Ku Klux Act of 1871 - was intended to provide a federal remedy for the violation of a federal constitutional right. Thus, when the Fourth Amendment is violated, as in Pape, the provision of an independent federal remedy under 1983 is necessary to satisfy the purpose of the statute. </s> Similarly, if the claim is in the second category (a violation of the substantive component of the Due Process Clause), a plaintiff may also invoke 1983 regardless of the availability of a state remedy. 11 For, in that category, no less than with the provisions of the Bill of Rights, if the Federal Constitution prohibits a State from taking certain actions "regardless of the fairness of the procedures used to implement them," the constitutional violation is complete as soon as the prohibited action is taken; the independent federal remedy is then authorized by the language and legislative history of 1983. </s> A claim in the third category - a procedural due process claim - is fundamentally different. In such a case, the deprivation may be entirely legitimate - a State may have every right to discharge a teacher or punish a student - but the State may nevertheless violate the Constitution by failing to provide appropriate procedural safeguards. The constitutional duty to provide fair procedures gives the citizen the opportunity to try to prevent the deprivation from happening, but the deprivation itself does not necessarily reflect any [474 U.S. 327, 339] "abuse" of state power. Similarly, a deprivation may be the consequence of a mistake or a negligent act, and the State may violate the Constitution by failing to provide an appropriate procedural response. In a procedural due process claim, it is not the deprivation of property or liberty that is unconstitutional; it is the deprivation of property or liberty without due process of law - without adequate procedures. </s> Thus, even though the State may have every right to deprive a person of his property or his liberty, the individual may nevertheless be able to allege a valid 1983 due process claim, perhaps because a predeprivation hearing must be held, 12 or because the state procedure itself is fundamentally flawed. 13 So too, even though a deprivation may be unauthorized, a procedural due process claim may be raised if it challenges the State's procedures for preventing or redressing the deprivation. However, a complaint does not state a valid procedural due process objection - and a valid 1983 claim - if it does not include a challenge to the fundamental fairness of the State's procedures. In consequence, when a predeprivation hearing is clearly not feasible, 14 when the regime of state tort law provides a constitutionally unobjectionable system of recovery for the deprivation of property or liberty, and when there is no other challenge to the State's procedures, a valid 1983 claim is not stated. For, unlike cases in the other two categories - those in which the alleged [474 U.S. 327, 340] deprivation violates a substantive federal right - if a procedural due process claim lacks a colorable objection to the validity of the State's procedures, no constitutional violation has been alleged. 15 </s> Petitioners' claims are not of the first kind. Neither Daniels nor Davidson argues in this Court that the prison authorities' actions violated specific constitutional guarantees incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment. Neither now claims, for instance, that his rights under the Eighth Amendment were violated. Similarly, I do not believe petitioners have raised a colorable violation of "substantive due process." 16 Rather, their claims are of the third kind: Daniels and Davidson attack the validity of the procedures that Virginia and New Jersey, respectively, provide for prisoners who seek redress for physical injury caused by the negligence of corrections officers. </s> I would not reject these claims, as the Court does, by attempting to fashion a new definition of the term "deprivation" [474 U.S. 327, 341] and excluding negligence from its scope. No serious question has been raised about the presence of "state action" in the allegations of negligence, 17 and the interest in freedom from bodily harm surely qualifies as an interest in "liberty." Thus, the only question is whether negligence by state actors can result in a deprivation. "Deprivation," it seems to me, identifies, not the actor's state of mind, but the victim's infringement or loss. The harm to a prisoner is the same whether a pillow is left on a stair negligently, recklessly, or intentionally; so too, the harm resulting to a prisoner from an attack is the same whether his request for protection is ignored negligently, recklessly, or deliberately. In each instance, the prisoner is losing - being "deprived" of - an aspect of liberty as the result, in part, of a form of state action. </s> Thus, I would characterize each loss as a "deprivation" of liberty. Because the cases raise only procedural due process claims, however, it is also necessary to examine the nature of petitioners' challenges to the state procedures. To prevail, petitioners must demonstrate that the state procedures for redressing injuries of this kind are constitutionally inadequate. Petitioners must show that they contain a defect so serious that we can characterize the procedures as fundamentally unfair, a defect so basic that we are forced to conclude that the deprivation occurred without due process. </s> Daniels' claim is essentially the same as the claim we rejected in Parratt. The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit determined that Daniels had a remedy for the claimed negligence under Virginia law. Although Daniels vigorously argues that sovereign immunity would have defeated his claim, the Fourth Circuit found to the contrary, and it is our settled practice to defer to the Courts of Appeals on questions [474 U.S. 327, 342] of state law. 18 It is true that Parratt involved an injury to "property" and that Daniels' case involves an injury to "liberty," but, in both cases, the plaintiff claimed nothing more than a "procedural due process" violation. In both cases, a predeprivation hearing was definitionally impossible. 19 And, in both cases, the plaintiff had state remedies that permitted recovery if state negligence was established. Thus, a straightforward application of Parratt defeats Daniels' claim. </s> Davidson's claim raises a question not specifically addressed in Parratt. According to the Third Circuit, no state remedy was available because a New Jersey statute prohibits prisoner recovery from state employees for injuries inflicted by other prisoners. Thus, Davidson puts the question whether a state policy of noncompensability for certain types of harm, in which state action may play a role, renders a state procedure constitutionally defective. In my judgment, a state policy that defeats recovery does not, in itself, carry that consequence. Those aspects of a State's tort regime that defeat recovery are not constitutionally invalid, so long as there is no fundamental unfairness in their operation. Thus, defenses such as contributory negligence or statutes of limitations may defeat recovery in particular cases without raising any question about the constitutionality of a State's procedures for disposing of tort litigation. Similarly, in my judgment, the mere fact that a State elects to provide some of its agents with a sovereign immunity defense in certain cases does not justify the conclusion that its remedial system is constitutionally inadequate. There is no reason to believe that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment [474 U.S. 327, 343] and the legislation enacted pursuant to 5 of that Amendment should be construed to suggest that the doctrine of sovereign immunity renders a state procedure fundamentally unfair. 20 Davidson's challenge has been only to the fact of sovereign immunity; he has not challenged the difference in treatment of a prisoner assaulted by a prisoner and a nonprisoner assaulted by a prisoner, and I express no comment on the fairness of that differentiation. </s> Thus, although I believe that the harms alleged by Daniels and proved by Davidson qualify as deprivations of liberty, I am not persuaded that either has raised a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. I therefore concur in the judgments. </s> [Footnote * [This opinion applies also to Davidson v. Cannon et al., No. 84-6470, post, p. 344.] </s> [Footnote 1 "[N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . ." U.S. Const., Amdt. 14. </s> [Footnote 2 See, e. g., Douglas v. Jeannette, 319 U.S. 157 (1943). </s> [Footnote 3 See, e. g., Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660 (1962). </s> [Footnote 4 See, e. g., Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). </s> [Footnote 5 See, e. g., Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1 (1964) (right to protection from compelled self-incrimination applies to States); Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784 (1969) (right to protection from double jeopardy applies to States). </s> [Footnote 6 See, e. g., Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145 (1968) (right to jury trial applies to States). </s> [Footnote 7 See also Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977); Youngberg v. Romeo, 457 U.S. 307 (1982). </s> [Footnote 8 See, e. g., Groppi v. Leslie, 404 U.S. 496 (1972); In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257 (1948). </s> [Footnote 9 See, e. g., Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U.S. 67 (1972). </s> [Footnote 10 See, e. g., Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167 (1961) ( 1983 action for Fourth Amendment violation); Smith v. Wade, 461 U.S. 30 (1983) ( 1983 action for Eighth Amendment violation). See generally McNeese v. Board of Education, 373 U.S. 668, 672 (1963) ( 1983 is "supplementary to any remedy any State might have"). </s> [Footnote 11 Cf. Parratt v. Taylor, 451 U.S. 527, 545 (1981) (BLACKMUN, J., concurring); Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). </s> [Footnote 12 See, e. g., Loudermill v. Cleveland Board of Education, 470 U.S. 532 (1985); Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247 (1978); Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565 (1975). Cf. Groppi, supra. </s> [Footnote 13 Cf. Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U.S. 422, 436 (1982) (postdeprivation state remedy is inadequate when challenge is to "the state system itself"); Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137, 156 (1979) (STEVENS, J., dissenting). </s> [Footnote 14 See Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 533 (1984) ("[W]hen deprivations of property are effected through random and unauthorized conduct of a state employee, predeprivation procedures are simply `impracticable' since the state cannot know when such deprivations will occur"); Parratt v. Taylor, supra. </s> [Footnote 15 See id., at 543-544. </s> [Footnote 16 Davidson explicitly disavows a substantive due process claim. See Brief for Petitioner in No. 84-6470, p. 7 ("[P]etitioner frames his claim here purely in terms of procedural due process"). At oral argument, counsel for Daniels did suggest that he was pursuing a substantive due process claim. Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 84-5872, p. 22. However, the Court of Appeals viewed Daniels' claim as a procedural due process argument, see 748 F.2d 229, 230, n. 1 (CA4 1984) ("There is no claim of any substantive due process violation"), and Daniels did not dispute this characterization in his petition for certiorari or in his brief on the merits. </s> In any event, to the extent that petitioners' arguments about the special obligations of prison officials may be read as a substantive due process claim, I agree with the Court, ante, at 335-336, that the sheriff's "special duty of care" recognized in South v. Maryland, 18 How. 396 (1856), does not have its source in the Federal Constitution. In these circumstances, it seems to me, the substantive constitutional duties of prison officials to prisoners are defined by the Eighth Amendment, not by substantive due process. Cf. United States ex rel. Miller v. Twomey, 479 F.2d 701, 719-721 (CA7 1973) (analyzing prison officials' responsibilities to prevent inmate assaults under the Eighth Amendment), cert. denied sub nom. Gutierrez v. Department of Public Safety of Illinois, 414 U.S. 1146 (1974). </s> [Footnote 17 Respondents in Davidson do raise a state-action objection in one sentence, Brief for Respondents in No. 84-6470, p. 13, n., but that bare reference is inadequate to mount a challenge to the undisturbed District Court finding of state action. </s> [Footnote 18 See Haring v. Prosise, 462 U.S. 306, 314 , n. 8 (1983); Leroy v. Great Western United Corp., 443 U.S. 173, 181 , n. 11 (1979); Bishop v. Wood, 426 U.S. 341, 345 -347 (1976); Propper v. Clark, 337 U.S. 472, 486 -487 (1949). </s> [Footnote 19 It borders on the absurd to suggest that a State must provide a hearing to determine whether or not a corrections officer should engage in negligent conduct. </s> [Footnote 20 In Martinez v. California, 444 U.S. 277 (1980), we held that California's immunity statute did not violate the Due Process Clause simply because it operated to defeat a tort claim arising under state law. The fact that an immunity statute does not give rise to a procedural due process claim does not, of course, mean that a State's doctrine of sovereign immunity can protect conduct that violates a federal constitutional guarantee; obviously it cannot, see Martinez, supra, at 284, n. 8, quoting Hampton v. Chicago, 484 F.2d 602, 607 (CA7 1973), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 917 (1974). </s> [474 U.S. 327, 344]

United States Supreme Court U.S. v. PUBLIC UTILITIES COMM'N.(1953) No. 205 Argued: January 14, 1953Decided: April 6, 1953 </s> Respondent power company produces electricity in California, partially by hydroelectric projects licensed under Part I of the Federal Power Act, as amended by Title II of the Public Utility Act of 1935, and sells a portion of it to the Navy Department and to a Nevada county for consumption in Nevada. The power is transmitted at high voltage to the company's substation in California, whence it is transmitted over lines owned by the Navy and by the County into Nevada, where it is stepped down for local distribution and consumption. The power sold to the Navy is used largely in official operations at a Navy depot, though part is distributed for private consumption at a nearby Navy housing project. The power sold to the County is practically all resold to local consumers. Held: The rates for such sales of power for resale are subject to regulation by the Federal Power Commission under Part II of the Federal Power Act. Pp. 299-318. </s> 1. The Federal Power Commission has jurisdiction under 201 (b) of the Act, which extends "to the transmission of electric energy in interstate commerce and to the sale of electric energy at wholesale in interstate commerce"; and regulation of the rates of such sales is authorized by 205 (a) and 206 (a). Pp. 299-300. </s> (a) The operations in question are in interstate commerce within the meaning of 201 (b) of the Act; and the fact that the electricity is transmitted across the state boundary over lines owned by the Navy and by the County, as purchasers, is irrelevant. Pp. 299-300. </s> (b) The limitation in Part II of the Act that federal regulation shall "extend only to those matters which are not subject to regulation by the States" does not apply to the facts of this case; and 20 of Part I of the Act does not require a different result. Pp. 300-311. [345 U.S. 295, 296] </s> (c) Federal rate jurisdiction under Part II is not excluded by the fact that some portion of the power sold originated in hydroelectric projects federally licensed under Part I. P. 302. </s> (d) By 20 of Part I, Congress did not confer on the States jurisdiction over hydroelectric energy transmitted across state lines for resale. Pp. 303-305. </s> (e) Congress in 20 of Part I did not charge the States with the responsibility of regulating rates of interstate sales of electricity through the use of the federal power over government property. P. 305. </s> (f) The limitations of 201 (a) on federal regulation cannot, and were not intended to, preserve an exclusive state regulation of wholesale hydroelectric sales across state borders. Pp. 310-311. </s> 2. The Federal Power Commission has authority over the sales to the County and to the Navy. Pp. 312-316. </s> (a) The provision of subsection (c) of 201 that "sale of electric energy at wholesale" means a sale to any "person" for resale, is not to be construed as excluding sales to a municipality or to the Navy. Pp. 312-316. </s> (b) The addition of the word "person" in the definitions in 201 (b) was not intended as a limitation on the jurisdiction of the Commission. P. 313. </s> 3. The sales here were not exempt from Commission jurisdiction under 201 (b) as sales over "local distribution" facilities, and they were "for resale" though the contracts did not so specify. P. 316. </s> 4. Whether the Federal Power Commission may exercise rate authority over the entire amount of power sold or merely that which is resold by the Navy is a question which is not ripe for consideration by this Court on the instant record. Pp. 316-318. </s> Reversed. </s> [Footnote * Together with No. 206, County of Mineral, Nevada, v. Public Utilities Commission of California et al., also on certiorari to the same court. </s> Orders of the California Public Utilities Commission asserted jurisdiction over rates for certain sales of electric power by the respondent power company. 50 Cal. P. U. C. 749; 89 P. U. R. (N. S.) 359. The State Supreme Court denied review, thus affirming the orders. This Court granted certiorari. 344 U.S. 810 . Reversed, p. 318. [345 U.S. 295, 297] </s> Solicitor General Cummings argued the cause for the United States in No. 205. With him on the brief were Assistant Attorney General Baldridge, Robert L. Stern, Paul A. Sweeney and Melvin Richter. </s> L. E. Blaisdell argued the cause and filed a brief for petitioner in No. 206. </s> Boris H. Lakusta argued the cause for respondents in No. 205. With him on the briefs were Everett C. McKeage and Wilson E. Cline for the Public Utilities Commission of California, respondent in Nos. 205 and 206. </s> Henry W. Coil argued the cause for respondents in No. 206. With him on the briefs was Donald J. Carman for the California Electric Power Co., respondent in Nos. 205 and 206. </s> MR. JUSTICE REED delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> Respondent California Electric Power Company produces electricity in California, partially by hydroelectric projects licensed under Part I of the Federal Power Act. 41 Stat. 1063, as amended by Title II of the Public Utility Act of 1935, 49 Stat. 838, 16 U.S.C. 791a et seq., and markets the greater portion of it, subject to respondent Public Utilities Commission's authority, in that State. The jurisdictional dispute which is our present concern relates only to certain power sales by the Company to the Navy Department and to Mineral County, Nevada, for consumption there. This power, following production, is transmitted at 55,000 volts to the Company's Mill Creek substation in California, about 25 miles from the border, on its own lines. There it is figuratively taken over by the Navy and by the County, and delivered on their lines at the same high voltage to Hawthorne, Nevada, where it is stepped down for local distribution [345 U.S. 295, 298] and consumption. The Navy's power is used at its ammunition depot, largely in official industrial operations; between 15% and 29%, however, is distributed for consumption in the private households and enterprises of tenants at the Navy's low-cost housing project nearby. These sales are metered individually and each purchaser is billed according to his own use. The power purchased by the County is all resold to local consumers, with the exception of minor line losses and official use. </s> The Navy's contract for purchase of the power was negotiated in 1943, and provided for termination on 60-day notice; the County's was entered into in 1945 for a stated period of three years. In 1947 the Power Company applied to the State Commission for a general rate increase which, after hearings at which the Navy was represented, was granted. Thereafter, the Company terminated its Navy contract and failed to renew that with the County, giving notice of its intention to apply the new schedule to these sales. Both purchasers demurred, and the Company reapplied to the State Commission for a ruling as to the applicability of the general schedule to these particular operations. After some early state exploratory hearings, the Federal Power Commission, on February 15, 1950, issued an order to the Company to show cause as to why the rates were not subject to exclusive federal jurisdiction. Thus joined, the issues were heard by both agencies at a joint proceeding on March 20 and 21, 1950. Both eventually decided in favor of their own asserted authority. 1 The State [345 U.S. 295, 299] Commission's supporting opinion was denied review by the California Supreme Court on January 21, 1952, thus affirming its holding, while that of the Federal Power Commission was likewise approved by the Federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, California Electric Power Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 199 F.2d 206. As a federal question concerning the applicability of Part II of the Act was raised, certiorari was granted, 344 U.S. 810 , to bring the record here from the state proceedings under 28 U.S.C. 1257 (3). </s> I. </s> Federal authority, which we think obtains, is asserted under Part II of the Federal Power Act. This applies "to the transmission of electric energy in interstate commerce and to the sale of electric energy at wholesale in interstate commerce." 201 (b). Regulation of the rates of such sales - other types of authority in connection with such interstate transmission operations are granted in other sections - rests on 205 (a) 2 and 206 (a). 3 </s> [345 U.S. 295, 300] The preliminary issue as to whether the operations in question fall within the concept of interstate commerce, on which the federal power initially depends, can be shortly disposed of, for Powell v. United States Cartridge Co., 339 U.S. 497, 509 -515, firmly established that commerce includes the transportation of public property, while the irrelevance of the fact that this electricity is transmitted across the state boundary over lines owned by the Navy and by the County, as purchasers, may be seen from Jersey Central Power & Light Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 319 U.S. 61, 69 , 71, and Illinois Gas Co. v. Public Service Co., 314 U.S. 498 . </s> The most serious contentions pressed in opposition to application of Part II, arise from the self-limiting statement therein that the Act is "to extend only to those matters which are not subject to regulation by the States." 4 So respondents contend that Power Commission [345 U.S. 295, 301] jurisdiction only begins where the local regulatory power ends, and point to Part I, 20, as supporting their contention that the limitation applies to the facts of this case. Section 20 provides that when power from projects licensed under Part I, which that energy sold to the Navy and the County includes, </s> "shall enter into interstate or foreign commerce the rates . . . and the service . . . by any . . . licensee . . . or by any person, corporation, or association purchasing power from such licensee for sale and distribution or use in public service shall be reasonable . . . to the customer . . . and whenever any of the States directly concerned has not provided a commission or other authority to enforce the requirements of this section within such State . . . or such States are unable to agree through their properly constituted authorities on the services . . . or on the rates . . . jurisdiction is hereby conferred upon the commission . . . to regulate . . . so much of the services . . . and . . . rates . . . therefor as constitute interstate or foreign commerce . . . ." 41 Stat. 1073, 16 U.S.C. 813. </s> Both Nevada and California have regulatory agencies with certain rate powers. And we may assume, though the Government asserts otherwise, that both agencies can enforce reasonable rate orders and have not disagreed. 5 </s> [345 U.S. 295, 302] Respondents point to this as satisfying 20, and thus ousting any Part II regulation. In short, they contend - what at first blush may appear anomalous - that federal rate jurisdiction under Part II may be prohibited by the fact that some portion of the power sold originated in hydroelectric projects federally licensed under Part I. We do not agree. </s> Admittedly, 20 contemplated state regulation. And it may well be, as indicated by the congressional hearings, 6 that Congress quite frankly chose the local authorities to regulate the bulk of interstate sales of electricity from licensed projects. In fact, a contrary view would have been almost astonishing as an historical proposition, for neither the large interstate operations of electric utilities that have developed during the last thirty years, nor the concomitant desirability of federal regulation, could have been foreseen in 1920. Long-range transmission was not then adequately developed, nor had the various local utilities by then undergone the integration into large centralized systems which later came about. 7 So we may assume that Congress, as a policy judgment, accepted and adapted the substantial tradition of local [345 U.S. 295, 303] utility regulation to power production licensed under the federal Act. </s> But there is no evidence that this was done with any firm intent to settle with the states a power essentially national. For whatever views of the draftsman of 20 as to the efficacy of state regulation, the jurisdictional lines between local and national authority were not finally determined until this Court's opinion in Public Utilities Commission v. Attleboro Steam & Electric Co., 273 U.S. 83 . This decision followed the Federal Water Power Act by some seven years. In short, that case established what has unquestionably become a fixed premise of our constitutional law but what was not at all clear in 1920, that the Commerce Clause forbade state regulation of some utility rates. State power was held not to extend to an interstate sale "in wholesale quantities, not to consumers, but to distributing companies for resale to consumers." 273 U.S., at 89 . Attleboro reiterated and accepted the holding of Pennsylvania Gas Co. v. Public Service Commission, 252 U.S. 23 , that sales across the state line direct to consumers is a local matter within the authority of the agency of the importing state. But it prohibited regulation of wholesale sales for resale by either interested commission. </s> Respondents seek to escape that doctrine, however, by pointing to the fact that there was not there involved sales of electricity produced at a project licensed under Part I. They admit that absent 20 of that Part, the later Part II authority would apply exclusively and determine the result. But, they say, 20 creates an exception, which the language of Attleboro did not reach, for hydroelectric energy transmitted across state lines under the aegis of coordinated state regulation. In short, it is alleged that 20 "conferred jurisdiction" on the states. [345 U.S. 295, 304] </s> We do not agree. Attleboro declared state regulation of interstate transmission of power for resale forbidden as a direct burden on commerce. The states may act as to such a subject only when Congress has specifically granted permission for the exercise of this state power over articles moving interstate which would otherwise be immune. In re Rahrer, 140 U.S. 545, 560 -562. 8 Section 20 cannot bear this interpretation; it did not establish the source of the energy as a significant factor determining whether state or federal authority applied. It is quite different from those few unique federal statutes this Court has heretofore considered, "subjecting interstate commerce . . . to present and future state prohibitions," or regulation, Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Maryland R. Co., 242 U.S. 311, 326 , in the exercise of the constitutional commerce power. Its language indicates no consideration or desire to alter the limits of state power otherwise imposed by the Commerce Clause; it merely states that the federal power shall not be invoked unless certain conditions of state inability to regulate obtain. 9 Section 20 quite obviously is not based on any recognition of the constitutional barrier, but rather assumes what Attleboro held did not exist - state authority to reach interstate sales of energy for resale; its sole concern is the application of federal regulation on the possible failure of the [345 U.S. 295, 305] states to empower their regulatory agencies or their inability to agree. </s> Nor can it soundly be said that Congress in 20 of Part I charged the states with responsibility of regulating rates of interstate sales of electricity through the use of the federal power over government property. U.S. Const., Art. 4, 3, cl. 2. As indicated in our discussion of the commerce power, there was in 1920 when 20 was enacted no full appreciation of the limits of state power over sales of electricity for export or import for resale. So the language of 20 required reasonable rates to consumers of electricity moving interstate and then added the provision that when no state commission was provided to enforce reasonable rates, or the states interested could not agree, the Federal Power Commission could act. 10 We do not think such an arrangement for water [345 U.S. 295, 306] power electricity as Part I, 20, provides can be held to block the general authority of Part II. See note 13, infra. </s> The actions of the Congress following the Attleboro decision do not reflect any different interpretation of 20. We note some interest in the application of that section in the light of the opinion, but nothing that is decisive of respondents' contentions. In 1929, Senator Couzens introduced an amendment to his then pending bill, S. 6, 71st Cong., 1st Sess., to establish federal regulation of communications. The amendment, 47 et seq., would have established a federal rate authority over all interstate power sales. "Power" was defined, 47 (a) (4), to include electric energy, "whether or not produced by a licensee under the Federal Water Power Act." The bill was referred to Committee, but Congress took no final action. 11 In the next year, the same Committee held hearings on S. Res. 80, concerning a purported breakdown in the investigative powers of the Federal Power Commission as it then was constituted. The decision of the Commission of February 28, 1929, reported F. P. C. Ninth Ann. Rep. 119, was introduced. 12 This argued that, as a result of Attleboro, the Commission had exclusive jurisdiction over rates of interstate wholesale-for-resale sales of licensed hydroelectric power, until displaced by a 20 agreement of the [345 U.S. 295, 307] interested states which received congressional approval as a compact. 13 </s> The first positive congressional action in the field, of course, was the Federal Power Act of 1935. The sweep of the statute is wholly inconsistent with any asserted state power as fixed by 20 of the 1920 Act. We have examined the legislative history; its purport is quite clear. Part II was intended to "fill the gap" - the phrase is repeated many times in the hearings, congressional debates and contemporary literature - left by Attleboro in utility [345 U.S. 295, 308] regulation. Congress interpreted that case as prohibiting state control of wholesale rates in interstate commerce for resale, and so armed the Federal Power Commission with precisely that power. 14 There is nothing to indicate that Congress' conception of the states' disability in 1935, or of the power it gave the Commission by Part II, did not include Part I electricity. In fact, the unqualified statements concerning Part II favor the opposite construction, for we find the Act explained time and again as empowering the agency with rate authority over interstate wholesale sales for resale; not once is this authority spoken of as one conditioned on the electricity concerned having been produced by steam generators or at nonlicensed dams. 15 </s> This would largely determine our interpretation of the ambiguous reference to "matters . . . subject to regulation [345 U.S. 295, 309] by the States," 201 (a), if nothing more were available to work with. However, there is other proof that Congress did not have in mind 20-type state regulation. The limiting clause is spoken of only as protecting state regulation of local affairs, including rates of intrastate and interstate-for-consumption sales: "Facilities for local distribution and for the production and transmission of energy solely for one's own use and not for resale are excluded." Hearings, House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce on H. R. 5423, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 385. 16 The phrase is not once mentioned as the distinct affirmation of state power over interstate sales for resale under 20 that respondents apparently would recognize it to be. There are indeed further reasons for rejecting respondents' construction of 201 (a). The nature of the generating facilities, in the first place, has no functional significance for rate regulation; the same considerations that lead Congress to enact federal authority over interstate electricity in general would have been similarly applicable to power generated at licensed projects. Secondly, contemporary literature was frankly divided over whether any power over interstate sales for [345 U.S. 295, 310] resale remained with the states after Attleboro. 17 We cannot assume that Congress enacted Part II with the purpose of permitting the states to regulate hydroelectric energy through 20. This is especially so in view of the dearth of legislative discussion of the matter. 18 </s> So we conclude that the limitations of 201 (a) on federal regulation cannot, and were not intended to, preserve an exclusive state regulation of wholesale hydroelectric sales across state borders. Even if we conceived of the matter as one peculiarly limited to the statutory wording of 201 (a), our statement that "[e]xceptions to the primary grant of jurisdiction in the section are to be strictly construed," Interstate Natural Gas Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 331 U.S. 682, 690 -691, would be as applicable here as to 1 (b) of the Natural Gas Act. "Production" and "distribution" are elsewhere specifically excluded from Commission jurisdiction, 201 (b); the phrase relied on in 201 (a) was originally drafted as a [345 U.S. 295, 311] declaration of "policy," and the rewording which gave it its present more succinct form was unaccompanied by any "mention [of] this change as one of substance." Jersey Central Power & Light Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 319 U.S. 61, 76 , referring to H. R. Rep. No. 1318, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 26. "It cannot nullify a clear and specific grant of jurisdiction, even if the particular grant seems inconsistent with the broadly expressed purpose." Connecticut Light & Power Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 324 U.S. 515, 527 . To conceive of it now as a bench mark of the Commission's power, or an affirmation of state authority over any interstate sales for resale, would be to speculate about a congressional purpose for which there is no support. </s> Part II is a direct result of Attleboro. They are to be read together. The latter left no power in the states to regulate licensees' sales for resale in interstate commerce, while the former established federal jurisdiction over such sales. Discussion of the constitutional problem as reflected in that statute and the Natural Gas Act in recent cases supports this conclusion. Especially in the litigation arising under the Gas Act has this Court expressed the view that the limitations established on Commission jurisdiction therein were designed to coordinate precisely with those constitutionally imposed on the states. Federal Power Commission v. Hope Natural Gas Co., 320 U.S. 591, 609 -610; Panhandle Pipe Line Co. v. Public Service Commission, 332 U.S. 507, 514 -515; Interstate Natural Gas Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 331 U.S. 682, 690 -691; Illinois Natural Gas Co. v. Public Service Co., 314 U.S. 498, 506 . 19 </s> [345 U.S. 295, 312] </s> II. </s> We turn next to a definitional problem raised by respondents, relating to the sales to Mineral County. In short, it is this: 201 extends Commission jurisdiction to "sale of electric energy at wholesale in interstate commerce." Subsection (d) of that section states: </s> "The term `sale of electric energy at wholesale' when used in this Part means a sale of electric energy to any person for resale." </s> And 3 (4) 20 equates "person" with "individual or a corporation," while 3 (3) 21 excludes municipalities defined in 3 (7) 22 from the scope of the latter term. So respondents argue that the sales to Mineral County are neatly and decisively excluded from Part II rate regulation. </s> The use of these sections in support of an indirect exception to Part II has no support in the statutory scheme as a whole. Sections 306 and 313 (a), in fact, look quite the other way. They provide for complaints and petitions for rehearing by municipalities. And 3 (7) contemplates municipalities as users and distributors of power. To accept respondents' contention as to Mineral [345 U.S. 295, 313] County would thwart the premise of these provisions: that such political subdivisions of the states can be aggrieved by the failure of a public utility selling power to them to satisfy the requirements of Part II. </s> Nor do we find any evidence of conscious coordination of 3 (3), (4) and 201 (d) from the legislative history. True, they were simultaneously enacted, and, in fact, the interpolation of the word "person" into 201 (d) occurred after the 3 (3) and 3 (4) definitions were in existence in S. 2796, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., as passed by the Senate and reported to the House, June 13, 1935. But this alteration came at the insistence of the House. The Senate had provided for jurisdiction over sales occurring before or after interstate transmission, ibid., 201 (f), and the House amendment, from which 201 (d) in its present form stemmed, covered sales during the transmission across state lines for the first time. So the House Report is, we think, significant in its redefinition of the section: "A `wholesale' transaction is defined to mean the sale of electric energy for resale." H. R. Rep. No. 1318, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 8. We conclude, therefore, that the Congress attached no significance of substance to the addition of the word "person," and in fact did not intend it as a limitation on Commission jurisdiction. Indeed quite the contrary was sought by the House amendment of 201 (d). 23 </s> [345 U.S. 295, 314] </s> A third factor, in addition to the statutory scheme and legislative history of 201 (d), is the rejection of respondents' contention by the Commission and courts. Three circuits have just recently done so, 24 and the Federal Power Commission's long assertion that it has authority over rates of sales to municipalities has probably risen to [345 U.S. 295, 315] the dignity of an agency "policy." 25 We have often stated our sympathy with established administrative interpretations such as this. Cf. United States v. American Trucking Ass'ns, 310 U.S. 534, 549 . </s> Where the language and purpose of the questioned statute is clear, courts, of course, follow the legislative direction in interpretation. Where the words are ambiguous, the judiciary may properly use the legislative history to reach a conclusion. And that method of determining congressional purpose is likewise applicable when the literal words would bring about an end completely at variance with the purpose of the statute. Texas & Pacific R. Co. v. Abilene Oil Co., 204 U.S. 426 ; Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135 ; International [345 U.S. 295, 316] Union v. Juneau Spruce Corp., 342 U.S. 237, 243 ; Johansen v. United States, 343 U.S. 427, 432 . So here, since it is our judgment that neither the legislative aim nor the realities of coordinated rate regulation compel it, we reject respondents' plea that the Federal Power Commission can exercise no authority over sales to Mineral County, and, for similar reasons, the Company's contention in No. 205 that the sales to the Navy are not sales to a "person." </s> III. </s> The claim that the sales here occurred over "local distribution" facilities, 201 (b), and were not "for resale" because the contracts did not state as much, are insubstantial. The sales were made in California but the facilities supplied "local distribution" only after the current was subdivided for individual consumers. 26 But a final question - whether the Federal Power Commission may exercise rate authority over the entire amount of power sold or merely that which is resold by the Navy and the County - requires rather more extended discussion. </s> Certainly the concrete fact of resale of some portion of the electricity transmitted from a state to a point outside thereof invokes federal jurisdiction at the outset, despite the fact that the power thus used traveled along its interstate route "commingled" with other power sold by the same seller and eventually directly consumed by the same purchaser-distributor. But the Government argues from this that all the power exchanged between the same parties over the same facilities is subject to Commission order, irrespective of whether resold or not. For this proposition it relies on an alleged similarity between [345 U.S. 295, 317] the problem as thus stated and that decided in Pennsylvania Water & Power Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 343 U.S. 414, 419 . 27 We held there that the federal rate authority must apply to all electricity sold, despite the fact that it was made up of power transmitted across state lines as well as that produced locally. The impossibility of separating interstate from intrastate electricity consumed by each purchaser is patent. In such a case, federal rate jurisdiction must attach to each distributor's negotiated agreement with the seller irrespective of occasional and unpredictable use of non-jurisdictional intrastate power. </s> There, however, the problem was whether the sales of electricity were in "interstate commerce." Here, it is a different one whether the entire sale is a "sale for resale." For purposes of this case, we need not decide the question of whether a somewhat similar "commingling" - of power resold with that consumed directly by the purchaser - requires entire federal jurisdiction. For, even assuming arguendo respondents' proposition that it may be proportionally limited, we hold that the record before us in this case does not present a set of facts or findings justifying that result. By the statute, Commission jurisdiction extends to "sales for resale," "but not to any other sale." 201 (b). The problem, then, in applying respondents' suggested interpretation, is to decide just what power transaction falls within this category of "sale for resale" - whether one involving the entire volume of electricity transmitted to the Navy or merely that which the buyer resells to others; the determinant is the delineation of "sale for resale." See Panhandle Pipe Line Co. v. Public Service Commission, 332 U.S. 507, 516 -517. Assuming respondents' theory, this would turn, of course, on [345 U.S. 295, 318] whether an essentially separate transaction covering the power directly consumed by the purchaser is identifiable. The present record will not permit such a finding. It may be that as an engineering proposition, accurate measurement of the volume resold and the volume directly consumed by the two parties is possible for each billing period. But there is no record evidence of separate rates, separate negotiations, separate contracts or separate rate regulation by official bodies, in short that the "sales" themselves were separate, and it is in these terms that the Act would require us to fix the limits of the jurisdictional grant. 28 The attention of the Commission was not directed towards this matter. The question will not be ripe for our consideration until the California Commission has had an opportunity to perfect the record and to consider the problem. </s> Reversed. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 California Electric Power Co., 50 Cal. P. U. C. 749, and California Electric Power Co., 89 P. U. R. (N. S.) 359, respectively. There was some doubt as to the effect of the apparently conflicting orders, reflecting on the wisdom of our exercise of the power to review. The respondents contend that the state order merely permitted, but did not require, application of the higher rates to the Navy and County sales. The distinction, whatever its abstract [345 U.S. 295, 299] attraction, misses the point that we are here considering whether or not the state agency had jurisdiction at the outset to consider these rates at all. That the order would have no concrete effect on the prices petitioners must pay is irrelevant and unlikely as well. The Federal Power Commission merely ordered the Company to cease charging other than filed rates and so, while constituting a determinative assertion of its jurisdiction, apparently does not foreclose the submission of a new schedule, with usual rate-making procedures before the federal body. 18 CFR 35.3, 35.5, 35.20. </s> [Footnote 2 205 (a): "All rates and charges made, demanded, or received by any public utility for or in connection with the transmission or sale of electric energy subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission, and all rules and regulations affecting or pertaining to such rates or charges shall be just and reasonable . . . ." </s> [Footnote 3 206 (a): "Whenever the Commission, after a hearing had upon its own motion or upon complaint, shall find that any rate, charge, or classification, demanded, observed, charged, or collected by any [345 U.S. 295, 300] public utility for any transmission or sale subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission, or that any rule, regulation, practice, or contract affecting such rate, charge, or classification is unjust, unreasonable, unduly discriminatory or preferential, the Commission shall determine the just and reasonable rate, charge, classification, rule, regulation, practice, or contract to be thereafter observed and in force, and shall fix the same by order." </s> [Footnote 4 201 (a): "It is hereby declared that the business of transmitting and selling electric energy . . . is affected with a public interest, and that Federal regulation of matters relating to . . . the transmission of electric energy in interstate commerce and the sale of such energy at wholesale in interstate commerce is necessary in the public interest, such Federal regulation, however, to extend only to those matters which are not subject to regulation by the States." Section 201 (b) states, in apparently similar vein, that the Act is not to "deprive a State or State commission of its lawful authority now exercised over the exportation of hydroelectric energy which is transmitted across a State line." The provision certainly does not go beyond that of 201 (a), noted in the opinion, in limiting federal [345 U.S. 295, 301] authority. This is true, not only because of the substantial similarity of the language, but also because it appears not to have been drafted with state rate regulation in mind. Rather, 79 Cong. Rec. 10527 indicates that the provision was intended to preserve the validity of certain state statutes prohibiting or regulating the volume of state power exported. Compare S. 2796, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., as introduced, 201 (b), and idem as reported in the House, Union Calendar No. 451, 201 (b). It has been so construed. Safe Harbor Water Power Corp., 5 F. P. C. 221, 235. </s> [Footnote 5 Section 20's reference to state agreement has never been wholly clear. See footnotes 13, 16 and 19, infra. Our opinion, Pennsylvania Water & Power Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 343 U.S. 414 , did not settle the issue, and it has been judicially discussed only rarely. </s> [Footnote 6 Hearings, House Committee on Water Power, 65th Cong., 2d Sess. 65. </s> [Footnote 7 It was, of course, more than historical accident that caused the simultaneous passage of the Holding Company Act and the Federal Power Act; in fact, their mutual consideration by the 79th Congress, 1st Sess., see 79 Cong. Rec. passim, strikingly indicates Congress' realization that state regulation had failed, both because of the giantism of the holding company and because of inability to reach interstate sales. See Davis, Influence of Federal Trade Commission's Investigation, 14 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 21. </s> [Footnote 8 See Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U.S. 100 ; Adams Express Co. v. Kentucky, 238 U.S. 190 ; Rosenberger v. Pacific Express Co., 241 U.S. 48 ; Clark Distilling Co. v. Western Maryland R. Co., 242 U.S. 311 ; Whitfield v. Ohio, 297 U.S. 431 ; Kentucky Whip & Collar Co. v. Illinois Central R. Co., 299 U.S. 334, 350 . </s> [Footnote 9 Compare the Wilson Act, 26 Stat. 313 (alcoholic beverages), the Webb-Kenyon Act, 37 Stat. 699, 27 U.S.C. 122 (same); 32 Stat. 193 (oleomargarine); the Reed Amendment to the National Appropriation Act of 1917, 39 Stat. 1069 (alcoholic beverages); the Hawes-Cooper Act, 45 Stat. 1084, 49 U.S.C. 60; and the Ashurst-Sumners Act, 49 Stat. 494, 18 U.S.C. 1761, 1762 (convict-made goods). </s> [Footnote 10 Hearings, House Committee on Water Power, 65th Cong., 2d Sess. 62-66, 95-97, is most illuminating in this regard. O. C. Merrill presented the views of the Secretaries of Agriculture, Interior and War. He discussed at some length the problem of sales across state lines and suggested that the proposed 20 solution was desirable. It left regulation to the interested states "if they do it; and they are doing it now." Ibid., at 97. "The intention of the draft was this: That in so far as the local authorities have the power, and exercise it, over rates and service, the Federal commission should leave it alone." Ibid., at 62. There is no suggestion that 20 was conceived as an act of federal permission; indeed Merrill explicitly states his ignorance as to whether any permission was needed: "I do not know whether the question has even come before the courts as to whether such business is or is not interstate commerce, within the meaning of the commerce clause of the Constitution, so that exclusive jurisdiction would be vested in the Federal Government, if it wished to exercise it." Mr. Doremus: "It might be a power which Congress could exercise, or, if it failed to exercise it, could be left in the jurisdiction of the State." Mr. Merrill: "It is my judgment that so long as it is satisfactorily handled by the several States it had better be left with them." Ibid., at 97. </s> [Footnote 11 See Hearings, Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce on S. 6, 71st Cong., 2d Sess. Section 47 (h) stated that the purpose of the amendments was not to "abridge the jurisdiction or authority of any State to regulate, to the same extent as if this Act had not been passed, the rates and charges for the sale to consumers within the State of any power transmitted in interstate commerce," unless a "substantial number" of those consumers sought federal regulation. </s> [Footnote 12 Hearings, Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce on S. Res. 80, 71st Cong., 2d Sess. 265. </s> [Footnote 13 "In cases of interstate and foreign commerce of the character illustrated in the Pennsylvania Gas Co. case [direct sales to consumers], supra, I [the Chief Counsel of the Commission; the Commission approved the statement as its own Decision February 28, 1929] am of the opinion that the Federal Power Commission has no jurisdiction over any matter for the regulation of which the State has already provided a commission with the requisite authority. This appears to be the very situation which Congress had in mind when it conferred a conditional jurisdiction upon the commission. If such a State commission does not exist, the jurisdiction of the Federal Power Commission applies in full. If the State has a commission with authority over a part only of the matters specified in section 20, the jurisdiction of the Federal Power Commission extends to the remainder of such matters. "In cases of interstate and foreign commerce of the character illustrated in the Attleboro case, supra, it seems clear that the States individually have no jurisdiction at all; that having no individual jurisdiction they can not acquire it jointly by agreements between themselves, except by specific authorization of Congress in the manner hereinafter discussed; and that, in absence of such authorization, the only agency with authority to regulate, in cases of this kind, the specific matters set forth in section 20 is the Federal Power Commission." F. P. C. Ninth Ann. Rep. 123-124. The Report went on to state that 20 could not be interpreted as a "permissive" statute. Ibid., 127-129. The "compact" interpretation of 20 was adopted in Safe Harbor Water Power Corp. v. Federal Power Commission, 124 F.2d 800. See footnote 16, infra. </s> [Footnote 14 The conception of the Federal Commission's new function was perhaps more revolutionary than could be gathered by merely comparing the new Act with 20. For it appears that despite the latter provision for limited rate regulation, in fact substantially nothing in that direction had been attempted, at least by 1930. Hearings, Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce on S. Res. 80, 71st Cong., 2d Sess. 79, 262. The Commission had only three accountants, all of whom were concerned with evaluation of proposed licensed hydroelectric projects. Ibid., 38. In fact, Colonel Tyler, Chief Engineer, Federal Power Commission, expressly alluded to the fact that, for federal authority to be effective, it would have to reach all interstate electricity, and not just that which is produced at licensed dams. Ibid., at 195. Here, of course, respondents theorize that a small admixture of hydroelectric power will defeat federal jurisdiction. </s> [Footnote 15 In fact, the House Report on the bill, commenting on 305 of the Act, stated that specific reference to officials of licensees had been deleted because "such licensees when interstate operating public-utility companies will be subject to the provisions of the section in any event." H. R. Rep. No. 1318, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 31. For general discussion of the scope of Part II, see Hearings, Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce on S. 1725, 74th Cong., 1st [345 U.S. 295, 309] Sess. 250-251; H. R. Rep. No. 1318, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 26-27; Hearings, House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce on H. R. 5423, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 436, 521-530, 549, 1639, 1677-1680, 2143, 2169; H. R. Rep. No. 1903, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 74; 79 Cong. Rec. 8431, 8442, 8444, 10377-10378. </s> [Footnote 16 "[T]his language [the 201 (a) proviso clause] is not pertinent in the instant controversy for it is designed to be applicable only to electric energy transmitted and sold in intrastate commerce. The control of rates referred to in the section is control by a single State and the language has no relation to possible joint control by two or more States under the compact clause of the Constitution." Safe Harbor Water Power Corp. v. Federal Power Commission, 179 F.2d 179, 187. See also Hartford Electric Light Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 131 F.2d 953; Jersey Central Power & Light Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 129 F.2d 183. </s> [Footnote 17 Scott, Control of Power Transmission, 14 Proc. of Acad. of Pol. Sci. 135, followed by Note, 32 Col. L. Rev. 1171, admit the force of Attleboro, but cite 20 as a permissive regulation statute. On the other hand, Arneson, Federal Regulation of Electric Utilities, 66 U.S. L. Rev. 133, and Updegraff, Extension of Federal Regulation of Public Utilities, 13 Iowa L. Rev. 369, hold that the states' power to regulate rates of sales for resale in interstate commerce was completely wiped out. </s> [Footnote 18 Actually, an exception to federal commission authority for power generated at licensed hydroelectric projects would have had little real significance in 1935, in terms of limiting resort to that authority. Forty percent of the Nation's electric energy was produced at hydroelectric projects. F. P. C. Electric Power Statistics, 1920-1940, pp. VIII-IX. But only 12.3% of the total production came from licensed sources, which had merely 7.8% of the total national capacity. (Letter from Leon Fuquay, Secretary, Federal Power Commission, to Edward G. Hudon, Assistant Librarian, United States Supreme Court, March 16, 1953.) It would have been curious for Congress to have approved a very special type of regulatory scheme for such a minimal fraction of the country's total power. </s> [Footnote 19 Safe Harbor Water Power Corp., 5 F. P. C. 221, 239-243. See also 18 CFR 35.3, 35.20. In view of our holding that 20 does not, of itself, confer jurisdiction on the state commission or commissions in this case, we need not discuss the much-briefed contention that its conditions have [345 U.S. 295, 312] been met. See, however, Safe Harbor Water Power Corp. v. Federal Power Commission, 124 F.2d 800, 179 F.2d 179; Pennsylvania Water & Power Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 343 U.S. 414 ; and notes 13 and 16, supra. </s> [Footnote 20 "`Person' means an individual or a corporation." 3 (4). </s> [Footnote 21 "`Corporation' means any corporation, joint-stock company, partnership, association, business trust, organized group of persons, whether incorporated or not, or a receiver or receivers, trustee or trustees of any of the foregoing. It shall not include `municipalities' as hereinafter defined." 3 (3). </s> [Footnote 22 "`Municipality' means a city, county, irrigation district, drainage district, or other political subdivision or agency of a State competent under the laws thereof to carry on the business of developing, transmitting, utilizing, or distributing power." 3 (7). </s> [Footnote 23 There is evidence, on the other hand, that the exclusion of producing municipalities from Commission jurisdiction was intended. For instance, DeVane, Solicitor of the Federal Power Commission at the time, testified as follows before the Senate Committee: "Mr. DeVANE. [The Act] does not apply to a publicly owned power plant. . . . . . "Senator HASTINGS. Why was it drawn that way? "Mr. DeVANE. We did not feel that it was within our province to prepare a bill that would undertake to regulate municipal, State, [345 U.S. 295, 314] or Government utilities." Hearings, Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce on S. 1725, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 256. And before the House Committee, Commissioner Seavey recorded a similar interpretation: "Mr. PETTENGILL. Mr. Commissioner, you just said a moment ago that as you construed the bill, a private power line could not be required to carry electric energy generated by the Tennessee Valley Authority or a municipal plant owned by a city, or a State; is that correct? "Commissioner SEAVEY. Yes; that is my understanding of the bill. "Mr. PETTENGILL. Because, as you said, the word `person' does not include a municipality or a governmental body? "Commissioner SEAVEY. I think that municipalities are particularly excluded, and it is my belief that any other Federal agency, any other governmental agency, would be excluded under the terms of the bill. "Mr. PETTENGILL. Now then, suppose that a municipality acquires, by purchase, all of the common stock of a corporation, privately organized, so that the municipality is actually the owner of the power plant, although it was organized privately, as a private corporation. After that was done, could the private power plant competing in the same locality be required to carry the electric energy generated by a plant owned by the municipality, or State, or the nation? "Commissioner SEAVEY. If it was controlled by the municipality and was subject wholly to municipal operation, I would say no, there it not be [sic]." Hearings, House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce on H. R. 5423, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 397-398. See 201 (f). </s> [Footnote 24 California Electric Power Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 199 F.2d 206; Wisconsin v. Federal Power Commission, 91 U.S. App. D.C. 307, 201 F.2d 183, and Wisconsin-Michigan Power Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 197 F.2d 472. </s> [Footnote 25 Kansas Gas & Electric Co., 1 F. P. C. 536; Otter Tail Power Co., 2 F. P. C. 134; Los Angeles v. Nevada-California Electric Corp., 2 F. P. C. 104; Connecticut Light & Power Co., 3 F. P. C. 132; Baum, The Federal Power Commission, 61-62. See the criticism of the 201 (a) phrase as meaninglessly ambiguous, Hartford Electric Light Co., 2 F. P. C. 359, and Northwestern Elec. Co., 2 F. P. C. 327. The Company has cited a brief by the Commission in another case with some force, as indicating that heretofore it has claimed that the United States is excluded from the Act by virtue of not being a "person." Respondent's brief, U.S. ex rel. Chapman v. Federal Power Commission (C. A. 4th Cir.), 191 F.2d 796. We note, though, that the contention there was made in regard to the application of 313 (a), that "no proceeding to review any order of the Commission shall be brought by any person unless such person" has applied to the Commission for a rehearing. The Court, however, chose to ignore the point, and rather held that the Secretary of the Interior could not petition for review in that case since he was not a "party aggrieved," 313 (b). 191 F.2d, at 799-800. On certiorari here, the Commission failed to press the "person" argument again, relying solely on the argument that petitioner, as a representative of federal interests, was not "aggrieved" by the Commission's order in support of its contention of lack of standing. Br. F. P. C. Nos. 28 and 29, 1952 Term, pp. 95-128. We did not consider the matter in our opinion. United States v. Federal Power Commission, 345 U.S. 153, 156 . </s> [Footnote 26 See East Ohio Gas Co. v. Tax Commission of Ohio, 283 U.S. 465 ; Federal Power Commission v. East Ohio Gas Co., 338 U.S. 464, 469 . </s> [Footnote 27 See California Electric Power Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 199 F.2d 206, 209. </s> [Footnote 28 The Ninth Circuit, in California Electric Power Co. v. Federal Power Commission, No. 495, now pending before us on a petition for certiorari, 199 F.2d 206, with the more complete record before it from the Power Commission, held that Penn Water controlled. We do not decide the question but rather note that the Commission's own view of the matter may still be in the formative stage. See Colorado Interstate Gas Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 185 F.2d 357; City of Hastings v. Kansas-Nebraska Natural Gas Co., 12 F. P. C. 3, 98 P. U. R. (N. S.) 1. </s> MR. JUSTICE BLACK, concurring. </s> The question involved in both these cases is whether the Federal Power Commission or the Public Utilities Commission of California has power to regulate certain sales of electricity. The California Supreme Court here sustained an order of the State Commission regulating the sales. The Court of Appeals has sustained an order of the Federal Commission. California Electric Power Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 199 F.2d 206. I agree [345 U.S. 295, 319] with the Ninth Circuit for the reasons it gave and consequently concur here in reversal of the Supreme Court of California's contrary holding. </s> MR. JUSTICE JACKSON, concurring. </s> I should concur in this result more readily if the Court could reach it by analysis of the statute instead of by psychoanalysis of Congress. When we decide from legislative history, including statements of witnesses at hearings, what Congress probably had in mind, we must put ourselves in the place of a majority of Congressmen and act according to the impression we think this history should have made on them. Never having been a Congressman, I am handicapped in that weird endeavor. That process seems to me not interpretation of a statute but creation of a statute. </s> I will forego repeating what I have said about this practice in Schwegmann Bros. v. Calvert Corp., 341 U.S. 384, 395 . But I do point out that this case is a dramatic demonstration of the evil of it. Neither counsel who argued the case for the State Commission nor the Supreme Court of California had access to the material used by the Court today. Counsel for the Public Utilities Commission of that State stated at the bar, and confirmed by letter, that he had tried without success over a period of four months to obtain the legislative history of 20 of Part I of the Federal Power Act. He obtained it only four days before argument, in Washington at the Library of this Court. He stated that the City and County Library of San Francisco, the Library of the University of California, and the library of the largest law office in San Francisco were unable to supply it. The City and County Library tried to obtain the material by interlibrary loan from the Library of Congress, but the request was refused. Counsel then attempted to obtain [345 U.S. 295, 320] the material from the Harvard Law School Library, but it advised that "our rules do not permit this kind of material to be sent out on loan." </s> The practice of the Federal Government relying on inaccessible law has heretofore been condemned. Some of us remember vividly the argument in Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U.S. 388 , in which the Government was obliged to admit that the Executive Orders upon which it had proceeded below had been repealed by another Executive Order deposited with the State Department. No regularized system for their publication had been established. Copies could be obtained at nominal cost by writing to the Department. Having discovered the error, the Government brought it to the attention of the Court. At the argument, however, the Court, led by Mr. Justice Brandeis, subjected government counsel to a raking fire of criticism because of the failure of the Government to make Executive Orders available in official form. The Court refused to pass on some aspects of the case, and the result was the establishment of a Federal Register. * </s> Today's decision marks a regression from this modern tendency. It pulls federal law, not only out of the dark where it has been hidden, but into a fog in which little can be seen if found. Legislative history here as usual is more vague than the statute we are called upon to interpret. </s> If this were an action to enforce a civil liability or to punish for a crime, I should protest this decision strenuously. However, the decision seems to have operation in the future only. If Congress does not like our legislation, it can repeal it - as it has done a number of times [345 U.S. 295, 321] in the past. I therefore concur in the interpretation unanimously approved by the members of the Court who have had legislative experience. </s> [Footnote * This history is set out in more detail in Jackson, Struggle for Judicial Supremacy, pp. 89-91. </s> MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER. </s> The light shed by MR. JUSTICE JACKSON on the underpinning of the Court's opinion makes me unwilling to share responsibility for a decision resting on such underpinning. It is one thing to construe a section of a comprehensive statute in the context of its general scheme, as that scheme is indicated by its terms and by the gloss of those authorized to speak for Congress, either through reports or statements on the floor. It is a very different thing to extrapolate meaning from surmises and speculation and free-wheeling utterances, especially to do so in disregard of the terms in which Congress has chosen to express its purpose. </s> Were I confined to the mere text of the legislation we have to construe, with such authoritative elucidation as obviously relevant legislative materials furnish, I would be compelled to find the considerations for fusing, as the Court does, the amended Federal Water Power Act of 1920, 41 Stat. 1063, with Part II of the Federal Power Act of 1935, 49 Stat. 838, 847, too tenuous. In saying this I am wholly mindful of the significance of the decision in Public Utilities Commission v. Attleboro Co., 273 U.S. 83 . Preoccupation with other matters pending before the Court precludes an independent pursuit by me of all the tributaries in search of legislative purpose that the Court has followed. I am therefore constrained to leave the decision of this case to those who have no doubts about the matter. </s> [345 U.S. 295, 322]

United States Supreme Court ELECTRICAL WORKERS v. ROBBINS & MYERS, INC.(1976) No. 75-1264 Argued: November 9, 1976Decided: December 20, 1976 </s> Two days after her discharge by respondent company, petitioner Guy, a Negro, caused a grievance alleging "unfair action" to be filed on her behalf pursuant to procedures in a collective-bargaining agreement between her union and respondent. On February 10, 1972, 84 days after the company under those procedures had denied the grievance, but 108 days after the discharge, petitioner Guy filed a charge of racial discrimination relating to her discharge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which in November 1973 concluded that race had not figured in the discharge. Petitioner Guy then brought this suit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the District Court, which thereafter dismissed the suit on the ground that Guy had not filed her charge with the EEOC within 90 days "after the alleged unlawful practice occurred," as required by 706 (d) (a period later extended to 180 days when, effective March 24, 1972, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 amended the limitations provision), and that Guy's resort to the contractual grievance procedure did not extend the time in which to file the Title VII charge. Section 14 of the 1972 amendments provides that the amendments "shall be applicable with respect to charges pending with the Commission on the date of the enactment of this Act and all charges filed thereafter." The Court of Appeals, which affirmed, also concluded that the extension of 180 days could not "revive" a claim that was "barred and extinguished" before the extension's effective date. Held: </s> 1. Petitioners' contention, raised explicitly for the first time in this Court, that the date of the conclusion of the grievance procedures, not the date of the discharge, was the "final" date of "the alleged unlawful practice," is without merit as being contrary to the understanding of the parties themselves in the courts below. Pp. 234-235. [429 U.S. 229, 230] </s> 2. The existence and utilization of grievance procedures does not toll the running of the limitations period that would otherwise begin on the date of the firing, Title VII remedies being independent of other pre-existing remedies available to an aggrieved employee. Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S. 36 ; Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, 421 U.S. 454 . Pp. 236-240. </s> (a) Petitioner Guy, by pursuing the grievance procedures, was asserting an independent claim based on a contract right and was in no way thereby prevented from filing her charge with the EEOC within 90 days of her discharge. Application of equitable principles to toll the 90-day period pending completion of the grievance procedures is therefore inappropriate here. Burnett v. New York Central R. Co., 380 U.S. 424 , distinguished. Pp. 237-238. </s> (b) Congress clearly intended to retain other remedies "against private employment discrimination separate from and independent of the more elaborate and time-consuming procedures of Title VII," Johnson v. Railway Express Co., supra, at 465-466. Pp. 239-240. </s> 3. The 1972 amendments and their legislative history demonstrate that Congress intended to apply the 180-day period to a charge such as that filed by Guy where the charge was filed with the EEOC before these amendments became effective, was still pending when the amendments became effective, and alleged a discriminatory occurrence within 180 days on the enactment of the amendment. Pp. 241-243. </s> 4. Lifting the bar of a statute of limitations so as to restore a remedy lost through mere lapse of time is not per se unconstitutional. Cf. Chase Securities Corp. v. Donaldson, 325 U.S. 304, 311 -312. Pp. 243-244. </s> 525 F.2d 124, reversed and remanded. </s> REHNQUIST, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and WHITE, BLACKMUN, and POWELL, JJ., joined. BRENNAN, STEWART, MARSHALL, and STEVENS, JJ., post, p. 244, filed a separate statement. </s> [Footnote * Together with No. 75-1276, Guy v. Robbins & Myers, Inc., also on certiorari to the same court. </s> Winn Newman argued the cause for petitioner in No. 75-1264. With him on the briefs were Ruth Weyand, Michael H. Gottesman, Robert M. Weinberg, J. Albert Woll, and Laurence Gold. Barry L. Goldstein argued the cause for petitioner in No. 75-1276. With him on the briefs were Jack Greenberg, James M. Nabrit III, Eric Schnapper, and Albert J. Rosenthal. [429 U.S. 229, 231] </s> Fletcher L. Hudson argued the cause for respondent Robbins & Myers, Inc., in both cases pro hac vice. With him on the brief was Charles A. Lawrence, Jr.Fn </s> Fn [429 U.S. 229, 231] Solicitor General Bork, Assistant Attorney General Pottinger, Walter W. Barnett, Abner W. Sibal, Joseph T. Eddins, Beatrice Rosenberg, and Charles S. P. Hodge filed a brief for the United States as amicus curiae urging reversal in both cases. </s> Jay S. Siegel and Douglas S. McDowell filed a brief for the Equal Employment Advisory Council as amicus curiae urging affirmance in both cases. </s> MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> Petitioners seek review of a decision of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit holding that a claim brought by petitioner Dortha Guy under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was barred by her failure to file a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) within the statutory limitations period. They present three contentions: The existence and utilization of grievance procedures postpone the date on which an allegedly discriminatory firing took place; the existence and utilization of grievance procedures toll the running of the limitations period which would otherwise begin on the date of the firing; and the 1972 amendments to Title VII, Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, 86 Stat. 103 (Mar. 24, 1972), extending the limitations period from 90 to 180 days, apply to the charge in this case. </s> I </s> Respondent Robbins & Myers, Inc. (hereinafter respondent), terminated the employment of petitioner Guy on October 25, 1971, and assigned as its reason for doing so her failure to comply with procedures contained in the collective-bargaining agreement pertaining to leaves of absence. Two days later petitioner caused a grievance alleging an "unfair action" of the company in firing her to be filed on her [429 U.S. 229, 232] behalf in accordance with the provisions of the collective-bargaining agreement then in force between petitioner Local 790 of the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (Local 790) and respondent. That agreement's dispute-resolution procedure, which is to be commenced within "five (5) working days of the commission of the act originating the grievance," consists of three grievance steps followed by one arbitration step. Guy's grievance was processed through the third step of the grievance procedure where it was denied on November 18, 1971, with the finding that her termination had been in accordance with the provisions of the collective-bargaining agreement. </s> On February 10, 1972, a date 84 days after the denial of her grievance at the third stage, but 108 days after the date of her discharge, Guy, who is black, filed a charge of racial discrimination with the EEOC directed against both respondent and Local 790. The EEOC in November 1973 issued its determination and "right to sue" letter, finding that there was "no reason to believe that race was a factor in the decision to discharge" Guy. Her suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee under 42 U.S.C. 2000e-5, was met by a motion to dismiss on the ground, inter alia, that it was barred because of her failure to file a charge with the EEOC within 90 days of her discharge, 706 (d), 42 U.S.C. 2000e-5 (d). 1 The District Court dismissed her action, 2 and the [429 U.S. 229, 233] Court of Appeals affirmed that judgment by a divided vote, 525 F.2d 124 (1975). That court felt that it would be "utterly inconsistent" with our opinions in Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, 421 U.S. 454 (1975) and in Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S. 36 (1974), to hold that the pursuit of a contractual grievance procedure operates to toll a Title VII remedy "which the employee has a right to resort to concurrently." 525 F.2d, at 126. Then, noting the question of the applicability of the 1972 amendments to Title VII raised by the EEOC as amicus curiae (also noting without more that "[s]ince this issue was not raised in the District Court by any party to the case, we are not required to consider it"), the Court of Appeals stated: </s> "Plaintiff Guy's claim was barred on January 24, 1972. She did not file her charge with EEOC until February 10, 1972. The amendments to Title VII, increasing the time within which to file her charge to 180 days, did not become effective until March 24, 1972. 42 U.S.C. 2000e-5 (e) [1970 ed., Supp. V]. The subsequent increase of time to file the charge enacted by Congress could not revive plaintiff's claim which had been previously barred and extinguished." 525 F.2d, at 128. </s> The dissenting judge disagreed on this point, believing that the case should be remanded for consideration of the effect of the 1972 amendments. </s> We granted certiorari, 425 U.S. 950 , to resolve an apparent Circuit conflict on two of these issues: tolling during the pendency of a collective-bargaining-contract's grievance mechanism, 3 and the applicability of the 1972 amendments [429 U.S. 229, 234] to charges filed more than 90 days from the date of the alleged discriminatory act but less than 180 days before the time the amendments became effective. </s> II </s> Before reaching either of those questions, however, petitioners Guy and Local 790 assert that the complaint with the EEOC was timely filed, not because of any tolling concept, but simply because the date "the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred" is the date of the conclusion of the collective-bargaining agreement's grievance-arbitration procedures. Until that time, we are told, the October 25 discharge of Guy (although itself an "occurrence" allowing immediate resort to the EEOC) was "tentative" and "non-final," and remained so until she terminated the grievance and arbitration process, at which time the "final" occurrence transpired. 4 As a consequence, according to petitioners, the unfavorable termination of the grievance procedures, making the discharge "final," constituted an "occurrence" enabling Guy to start the 90-day period running from that date. </s> While the parties could conceivably have agreed to a contract under which management's ultimate adoption of a supervisor's recommendation would be deemed the relevant statutory "occurrence," this was not such a contract. For all that appears Guy was fired as of October 25, 1971, and all parties so understood. She stopped work and ceased receiving pay and benefits as of that date. Unless the grievance [429 U.S. 229, 235] procedures resulted in her reinstatement, she would not be entitled to be paid for the period during which the grievance procedures were being implemented. 5 The grievance lodged on October 27, 1971, protests the "unfair action of Co. for discharge" (emphasis added), while the complaint filed in the District Court alleges Guy's disagreement, after learning of her discharge, "with the Company's determination that she had `voluntarily quit,'" (emphasis added). Throughout the proceedings both in the District Court and in the Court of Appeals, both sides appear to have assumed, as did the courts, that the date of discharge was October 25, 1971. There being no indication that either party viewed the October 25 discharge as anything other than "final," 6 there is certainly no reason for us to now torture this mutual understanding by accepting the bare assertions to the contrary raised by petitioners for the first time before this Court. 7 </s> [429 U.S. 229, 236] </s> III </s> We think that petitioners' arguments for tolling the statutory period for filing a claim with the EEOC during the pendency of grievance or arbitration procedures under the collective-bargaining contract are virtually foreclosed by our decisions in Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S. 36 (1974), and in Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, 421 U.S. 454 (1975). In Alexander we held that an arbitrator's decision pursuant to provisions in a collective-bargaining contract was not binding on an individual seeking to pursue his Title VII remedies in court. We reasoned that the contractual rights under a collective-bargaining agreement and the statutory right provided by Congress under Title VII "have legally independent origins and are equally available to the aggrieved employee," 415 U.S., at 52 , 8 and for that reason we concluded: </s> "[I]n instituting an action under Title VII, the employee is not seeking review of the arbitrator's decision. Rather, he is asserting a statutory right independent of the arbitration process." Id., at 54. </s> One Term later, we reaffirmed the independence of Title VII remedies from other pre-existing remedies available to an aggrieved employee. In Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, we held that the timely filing of a charge with the EEOC pursuant to 706 of Title VII did not toll the running of the statute of limitations applicable to an action, based on the same facts, brought under 42 U.S.C. 1981. In reaffirming the independence of Title VII remedies from [429 U.S. 229, 237] other remedies, we noted that such independence might occasionally be a two-edged sword, 9 but "in the face of congressional emphasis upon the existence and independence of the two remedies," we were disinclined "to infer any positive preference for one over the other, without a more definite expression in the legislation Congress has enacted," 421 U.S., at 461 . </s> Petitioners insist that notwithstanding these decisions, equitable tolling principles should be applied to this litigation, and that the application of such principles would toll the 90-day period pending completion of the grievance procedures. This is so, they say, because here the "policy of repose, designed to protect defendants," Burnett v. New York Central R. Co., 380 U.S. 424, 428 (1965), is "out-weighed [because] the interests of justice require vindication of the plaintiff's rights." </s> But this is quite a different situation from Burnett, supra. 10 There the plaintiff in a Federal Employers' Liability Act action had asserted his FELA claim in the state courts, which had concurrent jurisdiction with the federal courts, but he had [429 U.S. 229, 238] the misfortune of filing his complaint in an Ohio State court where venue did not lie under Ohio law. This Court held that such a filing was sufficient to toll the statutory limitations period, even though the state-court action was dismissed for improper venue and a new complaint ultimately filed in the United States District Court. The Court said: </s> "Petitioner here did not sleep on his rights but brought an action within the statutory period in a state court of competent jurisdiction. Service of process was made upon the respondent notifying him that petitioner was asserting his cause of action." Id., at 429. </s> Here petitioner Guy in the grievance proceedings was not asserting the same statutory claim in a different forum, nor giving notice to respondent of that statutory claim, but was asserting an independent claim based on a contract right, Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., supra, at 53-54, 56-58. Burnett cannot aid this petitioner, see Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, supra, at 467, and n. 14. 11 </s> Petitioners advance as a corollary argument for tolling the premise that substantial policy considerations, based on the central role of arbitration in labor-management relations, see Steelworkers v. American Mfg. Co., 363 U.S. 564 (1960); Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. 448 (1957), also dictate a finding that the Title VII limitations period is tolled in this situation. Similar arguments by the employer in Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., urging the superiority and pre-eminence of the arbitration process were rejected by us in that case, and we find the reasoning of that case controlling in rejecting this claim made by petitioners. [429 U.S. 229, 239] </s> Petitioners also advance a related argument that the danger of possible conflict between the concurrent pursuit of both collective-bargaining and Title VII remedies should result in tolling the limitations period for the latter while the former proceeds to conclusion. Similar arguments to these, albeit relating to 42 U.S.C. 1981 and not to private labor agreements, were however, raised and rejected in Johnson. We think the language we used in that case is sufficient to dispose of this claim: </s> "[I]t is conceivable, and perhaps almost to be expected, that failure to toll will have the effect of pressing a civil rights complainant who values his 1981 claim into court before the EEOC has completed its administrative proceeding. One answer to this, although perhaps not a highly satisfactory one, is that the plaintiff in his 1981 suit may ask the court to stay proceedings until the administrative efforts at conciliation and voluntary compliance have been completed. But the fundamental answer to petitioner's argument lies in the fact - presumably a happy one for the civil rights claimant - that Congress clearly has retained 1981 as a remedy against private employment discrimination separate from and independent of the more elaborate and time-consuming procedures of Title VII." 421 U.S., at 465-466. </s> Petitioners contend at some length that tolling would impose almost no costs, as the delays occasioned by the grievance-arbitration process would be "slight," 12 noting that the maximum delay in invoking the three-stage grievance procedure (although not including the arbitration step) under the collective-bargaining agreement in force in this [429 U.S. 229, 240] case would be 35 days. But the principal answer to this contention is that Congress has already spoken with respect to what it considers acceptable delay when it established a 90-day limitations period, and gave no indication that it considered a "slight" delay followed by 90 days equally acceptable. In defining Title VII's jurisdictional prerequisites "with precision," Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S., at 47 , Congress did not leave to courts the decision as to which delays might or might not be "slight." 13 </s> Congress did provide in 706 (b) one exception for this 90-day limitations period, when it provided that the limitations period should run for a maximum additional 120 days when there existed "a State or local law prohibiting the unlawful employment practice alleged and establishing or authorizing a State or local authority to grant or seek relief from such practice or to institute criminal proceedings with respect thereto upon receiving notice thereof." Where Congress has spoken with respect to a claim much more closely related to the Title VII claim than is the contractual claim pursued under the grievance procedure, and then firmly limited the maximum possible extension of the limitations period applicable thereto, we think that all of petitioners' arguments taken together simply do not carry sufficient weight to overcome the negative implication from the language used by Congress, cf. Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, 421 U.S., at 461 . 14 </s> [429 U.S. 229, 241] </s> IV </s> Guy filed her charge with the EEOC on February 10, 1972, 108 days after her October 25, 1971, discharge. On March 24, 1972, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, 86 Stat. 103, extended to 180 days the time within which to file a claim with the EEOC, 706 (e). Petitioners contend that this expanded limitations period should apply to Guy's charge, as the occurrence she was complaining of took place within 180 days of the enactment of the 1972 amendments. We agree. </s> Section 14 of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, 86 Stat. 113, states: </s> "The amendments made by this Act to section 706 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 shall be applicable with respect to charges pending with the Commission on the date of enactment of this Act and all charges filed thereafter." </s> Respondent asserts that 14, which was added by amendment to the bill on the floor of the House by Senator Javits, 118 Cong. Rec. 4816 (1972), was designed for the sole purpose of having the new enforcement powers given to the EEOC apply to pending charges, see letter of Feb. 14, 1972, [429 U.S. 229, 242] from David L. Norman, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, to Senator Dominick, quoted in EEOC v. Christiansburg Garment Co., 376 F. Supp. 1067, 1074 (WD Va. 1974). However, the explicit statutory language used applies to all amendments made by the Act to 706, not simply to the new enforcement provisions. As Senator Javits did not limit his remarks on the floor so as to indicate that 14's retroactivity was designed to apply only to the new enforcement provisions, 15 the legislative history does not make this one of those unusual cases in which a court may infer, contrary to the language actually used, that Congress intended to so limit the scope of 14, cf. also S. Rep. No. 91-1137, p. 31 (1970). </s> Respondent also contends that the amendment is not applicable to the charge filed by Guy with the EEOC, since, being untimely when filed, her charge could not have been "pending with the Commission on the date of enactment of this Act." This reading of "pending" - confining it to charges still before the Commission and timely when filed - is not the only possible meaning of the word, is largely rebutted by the legislative history, 16 and renders the language of 14 virtually meaningless insofar as the enlarged limitations period is concerned. Since Congress also applied the enlarged limitations period to charges, whether or not untimely on March 24, "filed thereafter," we should not presume Congress created this odd [429 U.S. 229, 243] hiatus in retroactivity suggested by respondent unless congressional intent to do so was conveyed by language more precise than "pending," cf. Love v. Pullman Co., 404 U.S. 522 (1972). "Pending" is simply not a term of art that unambiguously carries with it a meaning precisely suited for this situation; equally logical, for example, would be an interpretation that read "pending" to mean "filed and not yet rejected," cf. Leg. Hist., supra, n. 16, at 1851. We hold that Congress intended the 180-day period to be applicable to charges such as that filed by Guy, where the charge was filed with the EEOC prior to March 24, 1972, and alleged a discriminatory occurrence within 180 days of the enactment of the Act. 17 </s> Respondent contends, finally, that Congress was without constitutional power to revive, by enactment, an action which, when filed, is already barred by the running of a limitations period. This contention rests on an unwarrantedly broad reading of our opinion in William Danzer Co. v. Gulf & Ship Island R. Co., 268 U.S. 633 (1925). Danzer was given a narrow reading in the later case of Chase Securities Corp. v. Donaldson, 325 U.S. 304, 312 n. 8 (1945). The latter case states the applicable constitutional test in this language: </s> "The Fourteenth Amendment does not make an act of state legislation void merely because it has some retrospective operation. What it does forbid is taking of life, liberty or property without due process of law. . . . Assuming that statutes of limitation, like other types of legislation, could be so manipulated that their retroactive effects would offend the Constitution, certainly it cannot be said that lifting the bar of a [429 U.S. 229, 244] statute of limitation so as to restore a remedy lost through mere lapse of time is per se an offense against the Fourteenth Amendment." Id., at 315-316. </s> Applying that test to this litigation, we think that Congress might constitutionally provide for retroactive application of the extended limitations period which it enacted. </s> We thus resolve against petitioners their first two contentions, but resolve the third in their favor. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is therefore reversed, and the cases are remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. </s> Reversed and remanded. </s> MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, MR. JUSTICE STEWART, MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL, and MR. JUSTICE STEVENS agree that the expanded 180-day limitations period enacted by 86 Stat. 103 applied to Guy's charge and would reverse the Court of Appeals on that ground without addressing the questions discussed in Parts II and III of the Court's opinion. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 At the time of her discharge, and at the time the charge was filed with the EEOC, 706 (d) stated, in pertinent part: "A charge under subsection (a) of this section shall be filed within ninety days after the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred. . . ." Section 706 (d) was renumbered as 706 (e), 42 U.S.C. 2000e-5 (e) (1970 ed., Supp. V), as a result of the 1972 amendments to the Act. Whenever 706 (d) is cited in this opinion, it refers to the pre-1972 version of what is now 706 (e). </s> [Footnote 2 Guy also alleged a cause of action under 42 U.S.C. 1981. By order dated May 30, 1974, the District Court dismissed this cause of action [429 U.S. 229, 233] because of a failure to meet the applicable Tennessee statute of limitations. No appeal was taken from this decision. </s> [Footnote 3 The question of the tolling of Title VII's limitations period during the pendency of grievance proceedings was noted in our opinion in [429 U.S. 229, 234] McDonald v. Santa Fe Trail Transp. Co., 427 U.S. 273, 277 -278 (1976), but had not been decided in the lower courts, and was not presented for us to decide. </s> [Footnote 4 This assertion, which is also adopted by the EEOC as amicus curiae, is premised on the proposition that "[u]se of the grievance resolution process is not an `appeal' of a `final' decision, but is a method of obtaining the judgment of higher management on whether the employee should be retained," Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 21; Brief for Petitioner Local 790, pp. 17-18. </s> [Footnote 5 Tr. of Oral Arg. 14. Nor is there any indication that, should the grievance mechanism not be utilized, any sort of "formalized" final determination by management was required before Guy's discharge would have been considered final. As the EEOC acknowledges, "the employer's foremen usually can fire an individual employee such as Guy," Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 19. </s> [Footnote 6 Even while raising the contrary arguments in their briefs before this Court, petitioners place the October 25 discharge as the action of respondent. See, e. g., Brief for Petitioner Local 790, p. 4 ("The following day [October 25, 1971] the Company discharged her on the ground that she had not complied with procedures embodied in the collective bargaining agreement pertaining to return from leaves of absence"); Brief for Petitioner Guy 5 ("The Company discharged Guy on October 25 for having `voluntarily quit'"). </s> [Footnote 7 At oral argument, we were told that while this assertion was not articulated as a separate argument before the Court of Appeals, pertinent language in Moore v. Sunbeam Corp., 459 F.2d 811 (CA7 1972), was cited to that court, Tr. of Oral Arg. 11-12. This is hardly a precise way to get an issue before a Court of Appeals, and there is no indication that the Court of Appeals recognized any such implicit contention, assuming, arguendo, that petitioners thought they were raising it. </s> [Footnote 8 See also 415 U.S., at 48 -49: "Title VII was designed to supplement, rather than supplant, existing laws and institutions relating to employment discrimination." We felt that the legislative history was quite clear in this respect, see, e. g., 110 Cong. Rec. 7205, 13650-13652 (1964); H. R. 9247, 92d Cong., 1st Sess. (1971); H. R. Rep. No. 92-238 (1971); S. Rep. No. 92-415, p. 24 (1971). </s> [Footnote 9 "Conciliation and persuasion through the administrative process [e. g., Title VII], to be sure, often constitute a desirable approach to settlement of disputes based on sensitive and emotional charges of invidious employment discrimination. We recognize, too, that the filing of a lawsuit might tend to deter efforts at conciliation, that lack of success in the legal action could weaken the Commission's efforts to induce voluntary compliance, and that a suit is privately oriented and narrow, rather than broad, in application, as successful conciliation tends to be. But these are the natural effects of the choice Congress has made available to the claimant by its conferring upon him independent administrative and judicial remedies. The choice is a valuable one," 421 U.S., at 461 . </s> [Footnote 10 In no way is this a situation in which a party has "been prevented from asserting" his or her rights, Burnett v. New York Central R. Co., 380 U.S., at 429 . There is no assertion that Guy was "prevented" from filing a charge with the EEOC within 90 days of October 25, 1971; indeed, it is conceded and even urged that she could have filed it the following day, had she so wished. </s> [Footnote 11 We concluded in Johnson that "[o]nly where there is complete identity of the causes of action will the protections suggested by petitioner necessarily exist and will the courts have an opportunity to assess the influence of the policy of repose inherent in a limitation period," 421 U.S., at 468 n. 14. See n. 14, infra. </s> [Footnote 12 Petitioners contend that the vast majority of collective-bargaining agreements have stringent time restrictions on the resolution of disputes through the grievance stages, see, e. g., Brief for Petitioner Local 790, pp. 38-39; see also Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 23 n. 13. </s> [Footnote 13 Even taken on its own ground, this argument is not unambiguously favorable to petitioners. If the collective-bargaining dispute-settlement procedures are as speedy as suggested, no real need for tolling has been shown. In the instant case, for example, at the conclusion of stage three of the grievance procedure, Guy still had 66 days in which to file a charge with the EEOC, and no reason has been advanced as to why this was not ample time. </s> [Footnote 14 Adherence to the limitations period assures prompt notification to the employer of a charge of an alleged violation of Title VII, see 706 (b). The grievance process assures no such comparable notice. In the instant [429 U.S. 229, 241] case, the grievance alleged only an "unfair action." Even if racial discrimination is explicitly discussed, however, the grievance procedure properly involves only contractual questions, and would but fortuitously implicate the Title VII standards, Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S., at 53 -54, 56-58; see also Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, 421 U.S., at 467 -468, n. 14. Petitioners' arguments respecting the policies behind private resolution of labor disputes through collective bargaining, moreover, apply equally to the arbitration stage as they do to the grievance stage, cf. Emporium Capwell Co. v. Community Org., 420 U.S. 50, 66 -67 (1975); Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., supra, at 56, 59-60; Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks, 398 U.S. 235 (1970). Yet, at the arbitration stage the assurance of but a "slight" delay is lacking. </s> [Footnote 15 Indeed, the comment of Senator Javits implied precisely the opposite: </s> "MR. JAVITS. Mr. President, this amendment would make whatever we do enact into law applicable to pending cases. The Department of Justice has requested it in a letter to the minority leader; that is my reason for offering it." 118 Cong. Rec. 4816 (1972). </s> [Footnote 16 Section 14 was stated to be designed to cover "charges filed with the Commission prior to the effective date of the Act," Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, 92d Cong., 2d Sess., Legislative History of Equal Employment Act of 1972, p. 1851 (Comm. Print 1972); see also id., at 1777. </s> [Footnote 17 Accordingly, we need not decide whether the enlarged limitations period also redounds to the benefit of persons who filed a charge more than 90, but less than 180, days from the date of the alleged "occurrence," where the 180 days had run prior to March 24, 1972. </s> [429 U.S. 229, 245]

United States Supreme Court U.S. v. CITIZENS & SOUTHERN NATIONAL BANK(1975) No. 73-1933 Argued: March 19, 1975Decided: June 17, 1975 </s> To circumvent Georgia's longstanding stringent restrictions on city banks' opening branches in suburban areas, appellee Citizens & Southern National Bank (C&S National) formed a holding company, which then embarked on a program of forming de facto branch banks in Atlanta's suburbs. This program included the holding company's ownership of 5 percent of the stock of each of the suburban banks, ownership of much of the remaining stock by parties friendly to the C&S system of banking entities (hereafter C&S), the suburban banks' use of the C&S logogram and of all C&S's banking services, and close C&S oversight of the suburban banks' operation and governance. In 1970, Georgia amended its banking statutes so as to allow de jure branching upon a countywide basis. This meant that C&S could now absorb the 5-percent banks as true branches, because Atlanta is contained within the two counties encompassing the suburbs in which the 5-percent banks operated. Consequently C&S applied to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) under the Bank Merger Act of 1966 for permission to acquire all the stock of six of the 5-percent banks historically operated as de facto branches or "correspondent associate" banks within the C&S system. The FDIC authorized five of the proposed acquisitions. The Government then brought suit in District Court for injunctive relief, alleging that the five acquisitions would lessen competition in relevant banking markets in violation of 7 of the Clayton Act, and that the historic, de facto branch relations between C&S and the six 5-percent banks constituted unreasonable restraints of trade in violation of 1 of the Sherman Act. The court rendered judgment for C&S. Three of the 5-percent banks were formed prior to, and three after, July 1, 1966. The "grandfather" provision of the Bank Holding Company Act, 12 U.S.C. 1849 (d), as added by the 1966 amendments, provides that "[a]ny acquisition, merger, or consolidation of the kind described [422 U.S. 86, 87] in [12 U.S.C. ] 1842 (a) . . . which was consummated at any time prior or subsequent to May 9, 1956, and as to which no litigation was initiated by the Attorney General prior to July 1, 1966, shall be conclusively presumed not to have been in violation of any antitrust laws other than" 2 of the Sherman Act. Title 12 U.S.C. 1842 (a) makes it unlawful, absent the Federal Reserve Board's prior approval, for bank holding companies to engage in certain transactions, including those tending to create or enlarge holding company control of independent banks. Held: </s> 1. Since the Attorney General took no action by July 1966 against the three 5-percent banks that were formed prior to that date, the transactions by which these banks became 5-percent banks fall within the terms of the grandfather provision of the Bank Holding Company Act, and therefore the correspondent associate programs in force at these banks are immune from attack under 1 of the Sherman Act. While C&S's formation of a de facto branch was a unique type of transaction, it may fairly be characterized as an "acquisition, merger, or consolidation of the kind described in [12 U.S.C. ] 1842 (a)," and clearly falls within the class of dealings by bank holding companies that Congress intended, in the grandfather provision, to shield from retroactive challenge under the antitrust laws. Pp. 102-111. </s> 2. In the face of the stringent state restrictions on branching, C&S's program of founding new de facto branches, and maintaining them as such, did not infringe 1 of the Sherman Act. Pp. 111-120. </s> (a) Though the Government contends that the correspondent associate programs encompassed at least a tacit agreement to fix interest rates and service charges so as to make the interrelationships - to that extent at least - illegal per se, it cannot be held, in view of the mixed evidence in the record, and of the fact that such programs, as such, were permissible under the Sherman Act, that the District Court clearly erred in finding that the lack of significant price competition flowed, not from a tacit agreement, but as an indirect, unintentional, and formally discouraged result of the sharing of expertise and information that was at the heart of the correspondent associate program. Pp. 112-114. </s> (b) The Government's alternative contention that the correspondent associate programs transcending conventional "correspondent" relationships "unreasonably" restrained competition [422 U.S. 86, 88] among the 5-percent banks and between these banks and C&S National, is not persuasive, since even if the Government had proved that such programs restrained competition among the defendant banks more thoroughly or effectively than would have a conventional correspondent program (which the District Court found not to be the case), that alone would not make out a Sherman Act violation. Pp. 114-116. </s> (c) Where C&S has operated the 5-percent banks as de facto branches in direct response to Georgia's historic restrictions on de jure branching, restraints of trade integral to this particular, unusual function are not unreasonable. To characterize the relationships at issue as an unreasonable restraint of trade is to forget that their whole purpose and effect were to defeat a restraint of trade, and by providing new banking options to suburban Atlanta customers, while eliminating no existing options, C&S's de facto branching program has plainly been procompetitive. Pp. 116-120. </s> 3. The proposed acquisitions will not violate 7 of the Clayton Act. Pp. 120-122. </s> (a) Since C&S's program of founding and maintaining new de facto branches in the face of Georgia's antibranching law did not violate the Sherman Act, and since the de facto branches that C&S proposes to acquire were all founded ab initio with C&S sponsorship, it follows that the proposed acquisitions will extinguish no present competitive conduct or relationships. P. 121. </s> (b) As for future competition, there is no evidence of any realistic prospect that denial of the acquisitions would lead the defendant banks to compete against each other, the Clayton Act being concerned with "probable" effects on competition, not with "ephemeral possibilities." Pp. 121-122. </s> 372 F. Supp. 616, affirmed. </s> STEWART, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C. J., and MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and REHNQUIST, JJ., joined. BRENNAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which DOUGLAS and WHITE, JJ., joined, post, p. 130. </s> Deputy Solicitor General Friedman argued the cause for the United States. On the briefs were Solicitor General [422 U.S. 86, 89] Bork, Assistant Attorney General Kauper, Gerald P. Norton, Howard E. Shapiro, and George Edelstein. </s> Daniel B. Hodgson argued the cause for appellees. With him on the briefs were Michael A. Doyle, Walter M. Grant, Richard A. Posner, and Philip L. Roache, Jr. * </s> [Footnote * Cubbedge Snow and Charles M. Stapleton filed a brief for the Independent Bankers Association of Georgia, Inc., as amicus curiae. </s> MR. JUSTICE STEWART delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> For many years the State of Georgia restricted banks located in cities from opening branches in suburban areas. To circumvent these restrictions in the Atlanta area, the Citizens & Southern National Bank (C&S National) formed the Citizens & Southern Holding Company (C&S Holding), and the latter company embarked on a program of forming de facto branch banks in the suburbs of Atlanta. This program involved, among other features, ownership by C&S Holding of 5 percent of the stock of each of the suburban banks (the maximum allowed by state law), ownership of much of the remaining stock by parties friendly to C&S, 1 use by the suburban banks of the C&S logogram and of all of C&S's banking services, and close C&S oversight of the operation and governance of the suburban banks. The expectation on all sides - by C&S, by the suburban banks, and by state and federal bank regulators - was that C&S would acquire these "5-percent banks" outright, and convert them into de jure branches, as soon as state law, or the Atlanta city limits, [422 U.S. 86, 90] were altered so as to permit the accomplishment of this end. </s> In 1970, Georgia amended its banking statutes to allow de jure branching on a countywide basis. Because the city of Atlanta is contained within two counties, DeKalb and Fulton, which encompass the Atlanta suburbs in which the 5-percent banks operated, this change in the law meant that C&S National could now absorb the 5-percent banks as true branches. C&S consequently applied to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), under the Bank Merger Act of 1966, 80 Stat. 7, 12 U.S.C. 1828, for permission to acquire all of the stock of six of the 5-percent banks historically operated by C&S as de facto branches. The FDIC authorized all but one of the proposed acquisitions. </s> The Justice Department immediately commenced this litigation in a Federal District Court for injunctive relief, alleging that the five acquisitions authorized by the FDIC would lessen competition in relevant banking markets, and thus violate 7 of the Clayton Act, 38 Stat. 731, as amended, 64 Stat. 1125, 15 U.S.C. 18, and that the historic "de facto branch" relations between C&S and the six 5-percent banks constituted unreasonable restraints of trade in violation of 1 of the Sherman Act, 26 Stat. 209, as amended, 15 U.S.C. 1. After a trial, the court rendered judgment for C&S on all the issues. 372 F. Supp. 616. The Government appealed under 2 of the Expediting Act, 32 Stat. 823, as amended, 15 U.S.C. 29, and we noted probable jurisdiction. 2 </s> [422 U.S. 86, 91] </s> I. The Background of This Litigation </s> In applying the antitrust laws to banking, careful account must be taken of the pervasive federal and state regulation characteristic of the industry, "particularly the legal restraints on entry unique to this line of commerce." United States v. Marine Bancorporation, 418 U.S. 602, 606 . This admonition has special force in the present case, for the de facto branch arrangements and the proposed acquisitions involved here were a direct response to Georgia's historic restrictions on branch banking. </s> Before 1927 Georgia permitted statewide branching, and C&S National, then as now headquartered in Savannah, established three branches in the city of Atlanta. In 1927, state law was changed to prohibit all branching. 3 C&S therefore decided to expand through the formation of a bank holding company. C&S Holding was founded in 1928, and between 1946 and 1954 this company purchased two banks, and founded a third, in the Atlanta area. But in 1956 Georgia again altered its statutes to prohibit a bank holding company from acquiring more than 15 percent of a bank's stock. Georgia Bank Holding Company Act, 1 Ga. Laws 1956, pp. 309-312. A 1960 amendment, still in force, reduced the maximum ownership level to 5 percent. Ga. Code Ann. 13-207 (a) (2) (1967 ed. and Supp. 1974). </s> By the 1950's, C&S National was interested primarily in suburban expansion. The Atlanta city limits had been frozen since 1952, and the area's economic and population growth consequently occurred primarily outside the city's boundaries. Between 1959 and 1969, C&S Holding accordingly established in the Atlanta suburbs (in DeKalb and Fulton Counties) the six 5-percent [422 U.S. 86, 92] banks at issue in this case. Five of these banks were founded under the sponsorship of C&S; the sixth, the Tucker Bank, had long been an independent suburban bank when, in 1965, C&S converted it into a 5-percent bank. 4 </s> Each of these six banks was made a "correspondent associate" bank within the C&S system. This status involved many different relationships between the 5-percent bank and C&S: In addition to the 5-percent stock held by C&S Holding, substantial shares were also held by officers, shareholders, and friendly customers of other C&S banks, and by their family members. It was understood from the outset that the 5-percent banks would be acquired outright by C&S as soon as the law permitted. From at least 1965 on, the 5-percent banks used the C&S logogram on their buildings, papers, and correspondence. C&S filed the charter applications of the 5-percent banks [422 U.S. 86, 93] and openly assured the banks of full financial support, assurances which were often instrumental in securing regulatory approval of their creation. C&S chose the principal executive officer for each 5-percent bank. The employees of these banks were accorded the same pension and promotion rights in the C&S system as possessed by their colleagues at C&S National and its de jure affiliates. C&S selected the location of, and oversaw the selection of directors for, the suburban banks. A C&S executive served as an "advisory director" to each suburban bank. C&S conducted surprise audits and credit checks at the suburban banks. Each of the suburban banks provided the full panoply of C&S banking services, and customers of any 5-percent bank could avail themselves of these services at any of the other 5-percent banks, or at C&S National and its de jure branches. C&S supplied to each 5-percent bank, through manuals and memoranda, a large quantity of information concerning every conceivable banking procedure and problem. Included were data - stamped "for information only" - concerning interest rates and service charges employed by C&S National and its de jure branches, but each 5-percent bank was cautioned to use its own judgment in setting interest rates and service charges. In sum, it is fair to say - and the parties agree - that in almost every respect save corporate form, each of the 5-percent banks was a de facto branch of C&S National. </s> Between 1966 and 1968, the Federal Reserve Board investigated C&S's network of correspondent associate banks. The purpose of the investigation was to determine whether C&S was exerting such control over the 5-percent banks as to require special "approval" of the Federal Reserve Board pursuant to 3 of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, as amended. 12 U.S.C. 1842. The investigation ended in an "understanding" between the Board's staff and C&S that the "correspondent [422 U.S. 86, 94] associate" program, as the staff understood it, did not require formal approval. 5 The Justice Department participated in this investigation, and took no action of any kind inconsistent with this "understanding." </s> In 1970 Georgia amended its banking statutes to permit de jure branching within any county in which a bank already had an office. Ga. Code Ann. 13-203.1 (a) (Supp. 1974). This allowed C&S National to branch into those Atlanta suburbs which - like the city of Atlanta - are within the confines of DeKalb and Fulton Counties. C&S decided to convert the six 5-percent banks at issue here into de jure branches. C&S applied to the FDIC for permission to acquire all of the assets, and to assume all of the liabilities, of the 5-percent banks. 6 On October 4, 1971, after reviewing reports on the proposed acquisitions from the Federal Reserve Board, the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Justice Department, the FDIC approved C&S's acquisition of the five suburban banks which C&S had helped to found, but disapproved acquisition of the Tucker Bank. Because the Tucker Bank had enjoyed an independent existence before being converted into a 5-percent bank, the FDIC concluded that the correspondent associate affiliation there had been "anticompetitive in its origins" and should not be "ratified" by approval of outright [422 U.S. 86, 95] acquisition. 7 As for the five banks which C&S had helped to found, however, the FDIC stated: </s> "[T]he opening of these . . . de novo banks served the convenience and needs of their respective communities and enhanced competition . . . ." </s> The FDIC noted that the C&S system was the largest commercial banking institution in Fulton County and in DeKalb County. 8 For this reason, it observed, "new acquisitions of nonaffiliated banks in the same market [by C&S] would raise the most serious competitive problems under the Bank Merger Act as amended and under Section 7 of the Clayton Act." But the FDIC reasoned that the acquisitions proposed by C&S did not raise such problems because the banks involved in the proposed mergers "do not compete today and never have competed": further, there existed "no reasonable probability" that any of the 5-percent banks would break their ties with the C&S system even if the proposed acquisitions were disapproved. Thus, "[s]uch mergers would not alter the existing competitive structure . . . in any way or add to the concentration of banking resources now held by the C&S system." </s> II. The Suit in the District Court </s> On November 2, 1971, within the 30-day period prescribed for such suits, 12 U.S.C. 1828 (c) (6) and (7), [422 U.S. 86, 96] the United States filed a complaint in the District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, alleging that the five acquisitions approved by the FDIC would violate 7 of the Clayton Act and that the ongoing correspondent associate relationships between C&S and the six 5-percent banks which it had originally sought to acquire constituted unreasonable restraints of trade, in violation of 1 of the Sherman Act. The Government sought injunctive relief prohibiting the proposed acquisitions and terminating the alleged violations of the Sherman Act. On January 24, 1974, after an extensive trial, the District Court entered a judgment for the defendants. 372 F. Supp. 616, 643. </s> As to the Sherman Act allegations, the District Court based its judgment upon two separate and independent grounds. First, it held that the 1968 "understanding" between the staff of the Federal Reserve Board and C&S insulated the correspondent associate relationship between C&S and the 5-percent banks from attack under the antitrust laws. Id., at 627. The court based this conclusion on the following statement in Whitney Bank v. New Orleans Bank, 379 U.S. 411, 419 : </s> "We believe Congress intended the statutory proceedings before the [Federal Reserve] Board to be the sole means by which questions as to the organization or operation of a new bank by a bank holding company may be tested." </s> Alternatively, assuming the Sherman Act applied, the District Court found that the United States had failed to prove that the correspondent associate relationships involved "collusive price fixing" or "any agreements not to compete or for market division." 9 The court held [422 U.S. 86, 97] "that the matters complained of are subject to the `rule of reason,' [and] . . . the Government has not sustained its burden of proof as to the unreasonableness of the practices involved or with respect to any adverse impact upon competition." 372 F. Supp., at 627-628. </s> The Government had conceded that it was no violation of the Sherman Act for a large city bank to arrange a traditional "correspondent" relationship with a smaller, [422 U.S. 86, 98] outlying bank - a "`mutually beneficial arrangement whereby the smaller bank receives needed services and the larger bank obtains both the benefit of the correspondent bank balance kept with it and the income from the sale of its services to the smaller bank's customers.'" Id., at 628. Noting this concession, the District Court observed: </s> "[S]uch assistance to, or sponsorship of, a smaller bank, is desirable and necessary and not anticompetitive. The difference between a pure correspondent relationship and a correspondent associate relationship as set forth in the evidence is merely one of degree, a fine line of demarcation almost impossible for the Court to perceive. . . . </s> ". . . [T]he Court finds as a fact that the relationship between C&S National, C&S Holding, and the five percent defendant banks, and the interchange of information between them, have been reasonable under the circumstances and not in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act." Ibid. </s> Turning to the claim under 7 of the Clayton Act, the court found that the various defendant banks were each "engaged in commerce" and that the relevant "line of commerce" was "commercial banking." The court declined, however, to define the appropriate geographic markets, stating that its "disposition of the case is based upon factors which make a precise delineation of the market area unnecessary." 372 F. Supp., at 629. Simply assuming the correctness of the Government's position that the appropriate markets were DeKalb County, Fulton County, North Fulton County, or the Atlanta area generally, the court made detailed findings as to the effect of the proposed acquisitions on C&S's nominal market shares. Id., at 629-633. 10 But, just as had the FDIC [422 U.S. 86, 99] before it, the court saw these increases in nominal shares as of no competitive significance because the 5-percent banks had always been de facto branches within the C&S system. Id., at 633-638. 11 </s> [422 U.S. 86, 100] </s> III. The Issues Under the Sherman and Clayton Acts </s> It is common ground in this case that the 5-percent banks have been operated from the outset substantially as de facto branches of C&S, even though they are and have always been separate corporate entities. From these agreed-upon facts, the parties draw sharply divergent conclusions under the Sherman and Clayton Acts. </s> Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 1, provides: </s> "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States . . . is declared to be illegal. . . ." </s> The Government contends that the relationships between C&S and the six 5-percent banks constituted unreasonable restraints of trade on two alternative theories: (1) The relationships encompassed an agreement to fix interest rates and service charges among the 5-percent banks, and between these banks and C&S-owned banks, resulting in a "per se" violation of the Sherman Act (2) The programs unreasonably restrained interbank competition, as to prices and services, by extending interbank cooperation far beyond the conventional "correspondent" arrangements which large city banks traditionally make with small banks in outlying markets. C&S denies that its relationships with the 5-percent banks encompassed any agreements to fix prices and contends that the process of de facto branching was a procompetitive response to Georgia's anticompetitive ban on de jure branching, and thus legal under the Sherman [422 U.S. 86, 101] Act's "rule of reason." In the alternative, C&S contends that its relationships with the 5-percent banks were subject to the "exclusive primary jurisdiction" of the Federal Reserve Board and thus immune from attack under 1 of the Sherman Act. </s> Section 7 of the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. 18, provides: </s> "No corporation engaged in commerce shall acquire, directly or indirectly, the whole or any part of the stock or other share capital and no corporation subject to the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission shall acquire the whole or any part of the assets of another corporation engaged also in commerce, where in any line of commerce in any section of the country, the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly." 12 </s> The Government argues that the acquisitions of the five suburban banks approved by the FDIC would "lessen" competition when compared to what the situation would be if the defendant banks ceased their alleged [422 U.S. 86, 102] violations of the Sherman Act. The Government further contends that, even if the present relationships between C&S and the 5-percent banks do not offend the Sherman Act, since the relationships might nevertheless change and the whole situation become more competitive for business or state-law reasons, the proposed acquisitions violate 7 by foreclosing this possibility. C&S argues that the acquisitions would merely convert de facto into de jure branches, with no perceptible effect on competition compared with the present situation, which is asserted by C&S to be lawful under the Sherman Act. C&S urges that there is no realistic possibility of future competition among the defendant banks. In the alternative, C&S contends that each of the 5-percent banks operates in a distinct and segregable market, so that the proposed acquisitions would not lessen competition in any relevant "section of the country"; and that any anticompetitive effects of the acquisitions are "outweighed in the public interest" because the acquisitions meet "the convenience and needs" of banking customers in the Atlanta area. 13 The District Court did not reach these alternative contentions. </s> A. The Sherman Act Issues </s> 1. The Question of Immunity </s> The District Court thought the correspondent associate programs immune from Sherman Act scrutiny because they were subject to the "exclusive primary jurisdiction" of the Federal Reserve Board under the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, as amended. We do not so understand the law. The court relied on Whitney Bank v. New Orleans Bank, 379 U.S. 411 , but the question in that case was the wholly different one of whether it is the Comptroller of the Currency or the [422 U.S. 86, 103] Federal Reserve Board that has jurisdiction to determine whether transactions by a bank holding company conform with applicable state banking law. For guidance as to antitrust immunities, recourse must be had directly to the provisions of the Bank Holding Company Act, 12 U.S.C. 1841 et seq. </s> The statutory scheme requires the "prior approval" of the Federal Reserve Board for certain transactions by bank holding companies - including transactions tending to create or enlarge holding company control of independent banks. 12 U.S.C. 1842 (a). 14 The types of transactions requiring Board approval were expanded by amendments to the Act in 1966 and 1970. 15 Prior to [422 U.S. 86, 104] 1966, it appeared that Board approval of a transaction provided no immunity from antitrust action, for a note then set out under 12 U.S.C. 1841 stated that nothing in the Act was to be construed as a "defense" to an antitrust suit. The 1966 amendments to the Act formalized this provision, but also blunted its force by establishing an intricate procedure for accommodating the jurisdictions of the Board and the Justice Department. 16 Under [422 U.S. 86, 105] the Act as amended, the Board "shall not approve" an otherwise forbidden transaction unless it meets certain antitrust standards derived from, but not everywhere identical to, the standards of the Sherman Act and of 7 of the Clayton Act. 12 U.S.C. 1842 (c). The Board's [422 U.S. 86, 106] order granting or denying an application for prior approval is subject to review in the courts of appeals. 12 U.S.C. 1848. Furthermore, an approved transaction is stayed automatically for 30 days, during which time an antitrust suit challenging the transaction may be brought in the district court. 12 U.S.C. 1849 (b). Such a suit is governed by the modified antitrust standards set out in 1842 (c). If the antitrust suit is not brought within 30 days, and the transaction is consummated, </s> "the transaction may not thereafter be attacked in any judicial proceeding on the ground that it alone and of itself constituted a violation of any antitrust laws other than section 2 of Title 15 [ 2 of the Sherman Act], but nothing in this chapter shall exempt any bank holding company involved in such a transaction from complying with the antitrust laws after the consummation of such transaction." 12 U.S.C. 1849 (b). </s> C&S can draw no consolation from these provisions. It is true that the staff of the Federal Reserve Board, in 1968, came to an "understanding" with C&S that the correspondent associate programs then in effect did not offend 3 of the Bank Holding Company Act, 12 U.S.C. 1842 (a), and thus did not require formal Board "approval." 17 But this did not give rise to any [422 U.S. 86, 107] antitrust immunity. A consummated transaction acquires immunity under 1849 (b) only when no antitrust action has been commenced within 30 days after [422 U.S. 86, 108] the transaction has received the "approval" of the Board, in an order which is subject to judicial review and which reflects application by the Board of the special antitrust standards of 1842 (c). The immunity applies only to "an acquisition, merger, or consolidation transaction approved under section 1842 of this title in compliance with this chapter." 1849 (b). The obvious purpose of the complex machinery in 1849 (b) is to accord finality to formal actions of the Board not subjected to timely challenge under the antitrust laws. There is no indication that Congress wished to accord a similar finality to the informal views of the Board's staff. </s> We note, however, that the 1966 amendments also added a "grandfather" provision to the Bank Holding Company Act, 12 U.S.C. 1849 (d): </s> "Any acquisition, merger, or consolidation of the kind described in section 1842 (a) of this title which was consummated at any time prior or subsequent to May 9, 1956, and as to which no litigation was initiated by the Attorney General prior to July 1, 1966, shall be conclusively presumed not to have been in violation of any antitrust laws other than section 2 of Title 15 [ 2 of the Sherman Act]." </s> Unlike 1849 (b), this provision does not state or imply that the covered transactions must have received the formal approval of the Federal Reserve Board. This grandfather provision is not, like 1849 (b), an attempt to accommodate the competing jurisdictions of the Federal Reserve Board under 1842 and the Justice Department under the antitrust laws. Rather, the grandfather provision is a simple conferral of legislative amnesty for [422 U.S. 86, 109] theretofore unchallenged transactions completed before Congress had clarified the nature of that accommodation. </s> The transactions by which C&S created a correspondent associate relationship with three of the 5-percent banks - the Sandy Springs, Chamblee, and Tucker banks - were consummated prior to July 1966, and the Attorney General had taken no action against those transactions by that date. Those transactions thus fall within the terms of the grandfather provision, and the correspondent associate programs in force at those three banks are, therefore, immune from attack under 1 of the Sherman Act. </s> While the formation by C&S of a de facto branch was a unique type of transaction, it may fairly be characterized as an "acquisition, merger, or consolidation of the kind described in 1842 (a)." Forming a de facto branch was a multifaceted operation - involving a multiplicity of purchases of stock by a number of parties, the adoption of the C&S logogram by the de facto branch, the connection of the de facto branch with C&S personnel and information programs, the structuring of the bank to receive and administer all C&S banking services, and the establishment of formal C&S influence over the board of directors at the de facto branch. But even before its scope was expanded in 1970, 1842 (a) was concerned with more than the literal "acquisition" of stock: It took broad account of the "indirect" control of stock, and the control of boards of directors "in any manner," by bank holding companies. 18 The grandfather provision creates immunity under 1 of the Sherman Act, not simply under 7 of the Clayton Act, an indication that its protection extends not merely to literal acquisitions, mergers, and consolidations, but also to "restraints of trade" simultaneous with and functionally [422 U.S. 86, 110] integral to such transactions. Though multifaceted, the formation by C&S of a de facto branch was a unitary and cohesive undertaking in the sense that all the facets were closely coordinated, simultaneously instituted, and designed to serve the single purpose of fitting the new bank into the "C&S system." There is virtually nothing about the present correspondent associate programs that was not fully evident and in place from the moment the programs were launched. There has been no increase in C&S control, nor any change in the way it has been exercised. </s> Whether these programs violated 1842 (a) - as it applies today or as it applied when the programs began - is not relevant to our inquiry. 19 By its terms, the grandfather provision applies to transactions of the kind described in 1842 (a). We cannot believe that Congress wished to grant the benefits of the provision only to transactions that plainly transgressed 1842 (a). Such a construction would make application of the grandfather provision not only cumbersome and time consuming, 20 but also flagrantly inequitable. The formation of a de facto C&S branch involved the direct and [422 U.S. 86, 111] indirect acquisition of bank stock, and the direct and indirect assertion of control over the governance and operations of a bank, by a bank holding company. Though unusual in form, such a transaction quite clearly falls within the class of dealings by bank holding companies which Congress intended, in 1849 (d), to shield from retroactive challenge under the antitrust laws. </s> 2. De Facto Branching Under the Sherman Act </s> Three of the 5-percent banks - the Park National, South DeKalb, and North Fulton banks - were formed after July 1, 1966, and their correspondent associate relationships with C&S are therefore beyond the reach of the grandfather provision of the Bank Holding Company Act and subject to scrutiny under the Sherman Act. </s> Each of these banks was founded ab initio through the sponsorship of C&S. Except for that sponsorship, they would very probably not exist. The record shows that other banking organizations had been unsuccessful in attempting to launch new banks in the area, and C&S affiliation and financial backing were instrumental in convincing state and federal banking authorities to charter these new banks. In short, these banks represented a policy by C&S of de facto branching through the formation of new banking units, rather than through the acquisition, and consequent elimination, of pre-existing, independent banks. 21 </s> Of necessity, the Government's attack on this process [422 U.S. 86, 112] is highly technical. Had the new banks been de jure branches of C&S, the whole process would have been beyond reproach. Branching allows established banks to extend their services to new markets, thereby broadening the choices available to consumers in those markets. 22 Having access to parent-bank financial support, expert advice, and proved banking services, branches of several city banks can often enter a market not yet large or developed enough to support a variety of independent, unit banks. Branching thus offers competitive choice to markets where monopoly or oligopoly might otherwise prevail. Furthermore, the branching process gives to outlying customers the benefit of sophisticated services which local unit banks might have little ability or incentive to deliver. The Government denies none of this, nor that C&S's program of de facto branching was, until 1970, the closest substitute to de jure branching allowed under Georgia law. Yet the Government insists that this de facto branching violated the Sherman Act because the parent bank and its de facto branches were legally distinct corporate entities and were obligated, therefore, to compete vigorously against each other. </s> It is, of course, conceded that C&S's de facto branches have not behaved as active competitors with respect either to each other or to C&S National and its majority-owned affiliates. But the Government goes further and contends that the correspondent associate programs have actually encompassed at least a tacit agreement to fix interest rates and service charges, see Interstate Circuit, Inc. v. United States, 306 U.S. 208, 227 ; United States v. Masonite Corp., 316 U.S. 265, 275 -276; United States v. Bausch & Lomb Optical Co., 321 U.S. 707, 723 ; United States v. General Motors Corp., 384 U.S. 127 , [422 U.S. 86, 113] 142-143, so as to make the interrelationships - to that extent at least - illegal "per se." See United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U.S. 150, 224 -226, n. 59; United States v. Parke, Davis & Co., 362 U.S. 29, 47 . C&S vigorously denies the existence of any agreement to fix prices. The evidence in the record is mixed. </s> C&S did regularly notify the 5-percent banks - as it did its de jure branches - of the interest rates and service charges in force at C&S National and its affiliates. But the dissemination of price information is not itself a per se violation of the Sherman Act. See Maple Flooring Assn. v. United States, 268 U.S. 563 ; Cement Mfrs. Protective Assn. v. United States, 268 U.S. 588 ; United States v. Container Corp., 393 U.S. 333, 338 (concurring opinion). A few of the memoranda distributed by C&S could be construed as advocating price uniformity; on the other hand, the memoranda were almost without exception stamped "for information only," and the 5-percent banks were admonished by C&S, several times and very clearly, to use their own judgment in setting prices; indeed, the banks were warned that the antitrust laws required no less. The District Court observed that in fact prices did not often vary significantly among the 5-percent banks or between these banks and C&S National, but the court attributed this to the "natural deference of the recipient to information from one with greater expertise or better services." 372 F. Supp., at 628. And the court found as a fact that there was no "collusive price fixing." Id., at 626. </s> Were we dealing with independent competitors having no permissible reason for intimate and continuous cooperation and consultation as to almost every facet of doing business, the evidence adduced here might well preclude a finding that the parties were not engaged in a [422 U.S. 86, 114] conspiracy to affect prices. But, as we indicate below, the correspondent associate programs, as such, were permissible under the Sherman Act. In this unusual light, we cannot hold clearly erroneous the District Court's finding that the lack of significant price competition did not flow from a tacit agreement but instead was an indirect, unintentional, and formally discouraged result of the sharing of expertise and information which was at the heart of the correspondent associate programs. Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 52 (a); United States v. General Dynamics Corp., 415 U.S. 486, 508 . </s> The Government argues, alternatively, that the correspondent associate programs have gone far beyond conventional "correspondent" relationships, and that consequently these programs have "unreasonably" restrained competition among the 5-percent banks and between these banks and C&S National. The District Court was not persuaded by this theory: </s> "The difference between a pure correspondent relationship and a correspondent associate relationship as set forth in the evidence is merely one of degree, a fine line of demarcation almost impossible for the Court to perceive. . . . In either case there is the flow of information as to rates, practices, etc., which the Government apparently applauds or at least condones in a correspondent banking relationship." 372 F. Supp., at 628. </s> The court's dilemma is understandable, for in neither law nor banking custom has there developed a clear, fixed definition of the correspondent relationship: 23 </s> "Correspondent banking is an interbank practice whereby `city' correspondent banks provide a cluster [422 U.S. 86, 115] of services to smaller `country' banks in exchange for interbank deposits. Dating back to colonial times, correspondent banking originally provided an extended network of independent unit banks with a link to financial centers, and at the same time furnished substitute central banking functions. Today, as a vital component of the era of electronic banking, it enables city correspondents to provide customers with a range of services that is varied, extensive and constantly expanding; one survey lists as many as fifty different categories." </s> Among the services typically provided within a conventional correspondent arrangement are check clearing, help with bill collections, participation in large loans, legal advice, help in building securities portfolios, counselling as to personnel policies, staff training, help in site selection, auditing, and the provision of electronic data processing. Furthermore, like C&S's program, the correspondent arrangement is often established as a prelude to a formal merger between the two banks. 24 </s> Nevertheless, C&S's program does appear to have gone several steps beyond conventional correspondent arrangements. [422 U.S. 86, 116] C&S has closely advised the boards of directors of the 5-percent banks, supplied their chief executive officers, allowed full "branchlike" use of the C&S logogram, provided all the C&S services available at a de jure branch, dealt with the 5-percent banks through the C&S branch administration department, and provided constant and detailed information on prices and on all banking procedures. 25 It is conceivable that these relationships, separately or taken together, have restrained competition among the defendant banks more thoroughly or effectively than would have a conventional correspondence program. But even if the Government had proved this, which the District Court found not to be the case, that alone would not make out a Sherman Act violation. C&S has operated the 5-percent banks as de facto branches as a direct response to Georgia's historic restrictions on de jure branching, and the question therefore remains whether restraints of trade integral to this particular, unusual function are unreasonable. See Chicago Board of Trade v. United States, 246 U.S. 231, 238 . We turn directly to that question. </s> The central message of the Sherman Act is that a business entity must find new customers and higher profits through internal expansion - that is, by competing successfully rather than by arranging treaties with its competitors. This Court has held that even commonly owned firms must compete against each other, if they hold themselves out as distinct entities. "The corporate interrelationships of the conspirators . . . are not determinative of the applicability of the Sherman Act." United States v. Yellow Cab Co., 332 U.S. 218, 227 . See also Kiefer-Stewart Co. v. Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, [422 U.S. 86, 117] Inc., 340 U.S. 211, 215 ; Timken Roller Bearing Co. v. United States, 341 U.S. 593, 598 ; Perma Life Mufflers, Inc. v. International Parts Corp., 392 U.S. 134, 141 -142. A fortiori, independently owned firms cannot escape competing merely by pretending to common ownership or control, for the pretense would simply perfect the cartel. We may also assume, though the question is a new one, that a business entity generally cannot justify restraining trade between itself and an independently owned entity merely on the ground that it helped launch that entity, by providing expert advice or seed capital. Otherwise the technique of sponsorship followed by restraint might displace internal growth as the normal and legitimate technique of business expansion, with unknowable consequences. </s> But these general principles do not dispose of the present case. C&S was absolutely restrained by state law from reaching the suburban market through the preferred process of internal expansion. De facto branching was the closest available substitute. 26 Just last Term, in a brief presented to this Court, the Justice Department told us that it was desirable and procompetitive for a bank to "[enter] de novo into areas foreclosed to branching by sponsoring the organization of an affiliate bank, and later acquiring the bank. This method of expansion is legal and a well-recognized practice used by large statewide banking organizations, and recognized by the federal banking authorities." 27 The [422 U.S. 86, 118] Government acknowledged that such a sponsored bank could "be affiliated with its sponsor for purposes of correspondent relationships and other inter-bank services, including financial support," and that it could be "formed" by the parent bank's "officers, directors, or their associates" and could be "assisted" by the parent firm "until acquired and converted into a branch." 28 This is as good a curbstone description as any of precisely the relationships at issue in the present case. 29 </s> To characterize these relationships as an unreasonable restraint of trade is to forget that their whole purpose and effect were to defeat a restraint of trade. Georgia's antibranching law amounted to a compulsory market division. Accomplished through private agreement, market division is a per se offense under the Sherman Act: </s> "This Court has reiterated time and again that `[h]orizontal territorial limitations . . . are naked restraints of trade with no purpose except stifling of competition.'" United States v. Topco Associates, Inc., 405 U.S. 596, 608 , quoting White Motor Co. v. United States, 372 U.S. 253, 263 . </s> The obvious purpose and effect of a rigid antibranching law are to make the potential bank customers of suburban, small town, and rural areas a captive market for small unit banks. 30 C&S devised a strategy to circumvent [422 U.S. 86, 119] this statutory barrier. By providing new banking options to suburban Atlanta customers, while eliminating no existing options, the de facto branching program of C&S has plainly been procompetitive. </s> The Government suggests that a "conventional" correspondent relationship between C&S and the 5-percent banks would have been equally procompetitive and would have had the added virtue of facilitating competition among the 5-percent banks and between them and C&S National. This is mere speculation on the present record. Moreover, it is far from clear that a conventional correspondent relationship would have allowed C&S to put its full range of services into the suburban market which, in light of the antibranching law, was the very point of its policy and program. Putting to one side the total lack of realism in suggesting that C&S might have founded new banks that would have competed vigorously with it and with each other, cf. United States v. Penn-Olin Chemical Co., 378 U.S. 158, 169 , the Government's argument wholly disregards C&S's ultimate goal of acquiring the new banks outright as soon as legally possible, a goal which the Government last year thought wholly proper. We hold that, in the face of the stringent state restrictions on [422 U.S. 86, 120] branching, C&S's program of founding new de facto branches, and maintaining them as such, did not infringe 1 of the Sherman Act. </s> B. The Clayton Act Claim </s> In the light of the previous discussion, disposition of the Clayton Act claim becomes relatively straight-forward. The issue under 7 of the Clayton Act is whether the effect of the proposed acquisitions, approved by the FDIC, "may be substantially to lessen competition . . . in any line of commerce in any section of the country." </s> The Government established that C&S is the predominant banking institution in DeKalb County, Fulton County, North Fulton County, and the Atlanta area generally; that in these markets the commercial banking industry is quite highly concentrated in terms of market share statistics; and, of course, that the proposed acquisitions would increase C&S's nominal market shares. 31 The District Court did not decide whether the geographic markets proposed by the Government were the appropriate ones. But assuming, arguendo, that they were, the Government plainly made out a prima facie case of a violation of 7 under several decisions of this Court. See United States v. Philadelphia National Bank, 374 U.S. 321, 362 -366; United States v. Phillipsburg National Bank & Trust Co., 399 U.S. 350, 365 -367; United States v. General Dynamics Corp., 415 U.S., at 497 . It was thus incumbent upon C&S to show that the market-share statistics gave an inaccurate account of the acquisitions' probable effects on competition. United States v. General Dynamics Corp., supra, at 497-498; United States v. Marine Bancorporation, 418 U.S., at 631 . The District Court, like [422 U.S. 86, 121] the FDIC before it, concluded that C&S had made the necessary showing that these proposed acquisitions would not "lessen" competition for the simple reason that under the correspondent associate program that had been continuously in effect, no real competition had developed or was likely to develop among the 5-percent banks, or between these and C&S National. </s> As to present and past competition, the Government agrees there is and has been none. If this state of affairs were the result of violations of the Sherman Act, we agree with the Government that making the evil permanent through acquisition or merger would offend the Clayton Act. See Citizen Publishing Co. v. United States, 394 U.S. 131, 135 . But we have already concluded that C&S's program of founding and maintaining new de facto branches in the face of Georgia's antibranching law did not violate the Sherman Act, and the de facto branches which C&S proposes to acquire were all founded ab initio with C&S sponsorship. It thus indisputably follows that the proposed acquisitions will extinguish no present competitive conduct or relationships. See United States v. Trans Texas Bancorporation, 412 U.S. 946 , aff'g per curiam 1972 Trade Cas. § 74,257 (WD Tex.). </s> As for future competition, neither the District Court nor the FDIC could find any realistic prospect that denial of these acquisitions would lead the defendant banks to compete against each other. The 5-percent banks theoretically could break their ties with C&S and its correspondent associate program, for these banks are each independently owned, but the record shows that none of the shareholders, directors, or officers of the 5-percent banks expressed any inclination to do so, and there was no evidence that the program has been other than beneficial and profitable for both C&S and the 5-percent [422 U.S. 86, 122] banks. 32 The Clayton Act is concerned with "probable" effects on competition, not with "ephemeral possibilities." Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, 370 U.S. 294, 323 . </s> For the reasons set out in this opinion, the judgment of the District Court is affirmed. </s> It is so ordered. </s> APPENDIX TO OPINION OF THE COURT </s> The District Court summarized the structure of various banking markets in the Atlanta area, and the statistical effects of the proposed acquisitions, in the following way, 372 F. Supp., at 629-632: </s> DeKalb County </s> Treating C&S National, C&S Emory and C&S DeKalb as one banking organization, there are 19 commercial banking organizations operating offices in DeKalb [422 U.S. 86, 123] County. In terms of total deposits and total individual, partnership and corporation ("IPC") demand deposits held by all banking offices located in DeKalb County, the top 4 banks, respectively, are C&S (offices of C&S National in DeKalb County, C&S Emory and C&S DeKalb), First National Bank of Atlanta, Trust Company of Georgia, and Fulton National Bank. In terms of outstanding loans, the top 4 banks are C&S (offices of C&S National in DeKalb County, C&S Emory and C&S DeKalb), Trust Company of Georgia, Tucker and Fulton National Bank. The shares of total deposits, total loans and total IPC demand deposits accounted for by the four largest banks are as follows: </s> IPC </s> Total Total Demand Deposits Loans Deposits Banks (12/31/71) (12/31/71) (6/30/72) _____ __________ __________ _________ </s> Top 2 ............ 38.3% 42.7% 34.8% Top 3 ............ 51.8% 52.4% 47.3% Top 4 ............ 62.9% 61.8% 58.2% </s> C&S (offices of C&S National in DeKalb County, C&S Emory and C&S DeKalb) accounts for the following shares of total deposits, total loans and total IPC demand deposits held by all banking offices located in DeKalb County. </s> IPC </s> Total Total Demand Deposits Loans Deposits Bank (12/31/71) (12/31/71) (6/30/72) ____ __________ __________ _________ </s> C&S ............... 24.1% 28.5% 20.1% </s> Chamblee, Park National and South DeKalb, all of whose banking offices are located in DeKalb County, account for the following shares of total deposits, total loans and total IPC demand deposits held by all banking offices located in DeKalb County: [422 U.S. 86, 124] </s> IPC </s> Total Total Demand Deposits Loans Deposits Banks (12/31/71) (12/31/71) (6/30/72) _____ __________ __________ _________ </s> Chamblee ........... 5.7% 5.7% 5.9% Park National ...... 2.9% 1.5% 3.0% South DeKalb ....... 1.8% 2.5% 1.9% _____ ____ ____ 10.4% 9.7% 10.8% </s> Depending on the unit of measurement, Chamblee is the third or fourth largest bank headquartered in DeKalb County. </s> If the proposed mergers were approved, the C&S system (which would include offices of C&S National and South DeKalb) would account for 34.5% of the total deposits of all the banking offices located in DeKalb County, 38.2% of the total loans and 30.9% of the total IPC demand deposits. C&S would also be acquiring the third (or fourth) largest bank headquartered in DeKalb County. </s> If the proposed mergers were approved, the four largest banks would account for the following shares of the DeKalb County market: </s> IPC </s> Total Demand Banks Deposits Loans Deposits _____ ________ ______ _________ </s> Top 2 after mergers .. 48.7% 52.4% 45.6% Top 3 after mergers .. 62.2% 62.1% 58.1% Top 4 after mergers .. 73.3% 71.5% 69.0% </s> Thus, if the proposed mergers were approved, the C&S system's share of total deposits, for example, would increase from about 24% to 34%, or an increase of about 40%. The share of total deposits accounted for by the top 4 banks would increase from about 63% to 73%, while that of the top 2 and top 3 banks would increase from 38% to 49% and from 52% to 62%, respectively. [422 U.S. 86, 125] </s> North Fulton County </s> There are nine commercial banks operating offices in North Fulton County. In terms of total deposits and total IPC demand deposits held by all banking offices located in North Fulton County, the top 4 banks, respectively, are Sandy Springs, Roswell Bank, Fulton Exchange Bank and North Fulton. On June 30, 1970, however, there were only five banks operating offices in North Fulton County: the four banks just mentioned and Trust Company of Georgia Bank of Sandy Springs, which is now a branch of Trust Company of Georgia. The shares of total deposits and IPC demand deposits accounted for by the four largest banks are as follows: </s> IPC IPC Demand Demand Total Deposits Deposits Deposits Banks (6/30/72) (6/30/70) (6/30/70) _____ __________ __________ _________ </s> Top 2 ........... 57.8% 66.4% 64.0% Top 3 ........... 70.1% 78.9% 80.2% Top 4 ........... 80.3% 90.7% 91.9% </s> As of June 30, 1972, the North Springs Office of C&S East Point accounted for 1.7% of total IPC demand deposits held by all banking offices located in North Fulton County. </s> As of June 30, 1972, Sandy Springs and North Fulton accounted for 36.4% and 10.2%, respectively, of total IPC demand deposits held by all banking offices located in North Fulton County. As of June 30, 1970, they accounted for 34.4% and 11.7%, respectively, of total deposits held by all commercial banking offices located in North Fulton County. </s> If the proposed mergers were approved, the C&S system (which would include C&S East Point's North Springs Office. North Fulton and Sandy Springs) would [422 U.S. 86, 126] account for 48.3% of the total IPC demand deposits held by all commercial banking offices located in North Fulton County and the four largest banks would account for the following shares of IPC demand deposits in North Fulton County: </s> IPC </s> Demand Banks Deposits _____ ________ </s> Top 2 after mergers ............................... 69.7% Top 3 after mergers ............................... 82.0% Top 4 after mergers ............................... 92.0% </s> Thus, if the proposed mergers were approved, the C&S system's 1a share of total IPC demand deposits held by all banking offices located in North Fulton County would increase from 1.7% to 48.3%, and the C&S system's share in this area would be twice that of the second largest banking organization, the Roswell Bank. Two of the four largest banks in the area would become part of the Atlanta area's largest banking organization. In addition, the share of total IPC demand deposits accounted for by the top 4 banks would increase from 80.3% to 92.0%, while the shares of the top 2 and top 3 banks would increase from 57.8% to 69.7% and from 70.1% to 82.0%, respectively. </s> Fulton County </s> Treating C&S National and C&S East Point as one banking organization, there are 18 commercial banking organizations operating offices in Fulton County. In terms of total loans, deposits and IPC demand deposits held [422 U.S. 86, 127] by all banking offices located in Fulton County, the top 4 banks, respectively, are C&S (offices of C&S National in Fulton County and C&S East Point), First National Bank of Atlanta, Trust Company of Georgia and Fulton National Bank. The shares of total loans, deposits and IPC demand deposits accounted for by the four largest banks are as follows: 2a </s> IPC </s> Total Total Demand Loans Deposits Deposits Banks (12/31/71) (12/31/71) (6/30/72) _____ __________ __________ _________ </s> Top 2 ............. 63.0% 55.2% 61.3% Top 3 ............. 78.8% 73.9% 78.1% Top 4 ............. 89.4% 87.0% 88.8% </s> C&S (offices of C&S National in Fulton County and C&S East Point) accounts for the following shares of total loans, deposits and IPC demand deposits held by all banking offices located in Fulton County: </s> IPC </s> Total Total Demand Loans Deposits Deposits Bank (12/31/71) (12/31/71) (6/30/72) ____ _________ __________ _________ </s> C&S ............... 37.2% 30.8% 32.1% </s> Sandy Springs and North Fulton, both of whose banking offices are located in Fulton County, account for the following shares of total loans, deposits and IPC demand deposits held by all banking offices located in Fulton County: </s> IPC </s> Total Total Demand Loans Deposits Deposits Banks (12/31/71) (12/31/71) (6/30/72) _____ __________ __________ _________ </s> Sandy Springs ....... .7% .8% .9% North Fulton ........ .3% .3% .3% _____ _____ _____ 1.0% 1.1% 1.2% [422 U.S. 86, 128] Depending on the unit of measurement, Sandy Springs is the eighth or ninth largest banking organization in Fulton County. </s> If the proposed mergers were approved, the C&S system (which would include offices of C&S National in Fulton County, C&S East Point, Sandy Springs and North Fulton) would account for 38.2% of the total loans held by all banking offices in Fulton County, 31.9% of the total deposits and 33.3% of the total IPC demand deposits. </s> If the proposed mergers were approved, the four largest banks would account for the following shares in Fulton County: </s> IPC </s> Total Total Demand Banks Loans Deposits Deposits _____ ________ _________ _________ </s> Top 2 after mergers .. 64.0% 56.3% 62.5% Top 3 after mergers .. 79.8% 75.0% 79.3% Top 4 after mergers .. 90.4% 88.1% 90.0% </s> Atlanta Area </s> Treating C&S National, C&S Emory, C&S DeKalb and C&S East Point as one banking organization, there are 31 commercial banking organizations operating offices in the Atlanta area, six of which operate offices in both Fulton and DeKalb Counties. In terms of total loans, deposits, and IPC demand deposits held by all banking offices located in the Atlanta area, the top 4 banks, respectively, are C&S (offices of C&S National, C&S East Point, C&S Emory and C&S DeKalb), First National Bank of Atlanta, Trust Company of Georgia and Fulton National Bank. The shares of total loans, deposits and IPC demand deposits accounted for by the four largest banks are as follows: [422 U.S. 86, 129] </s> IPC </s> Total Total Demand Loans Deposits Deposits Banks (12/31/71) (12/31/71) (6/30/72) _____ __________ __________ __________ </s> Top 2 ............. 60.5% 53.2% 58.0% Top 3 ............. 76.2% 71.3% 74.3% Top 4 ............. 86.7% 84.2% 85.0% </s> C&S (offices of C&S National, C&S Emory, C&S East Point and C&S DeKalb) accounts for the following shares of total loans, deposits and IPC demand deposits held by all banking offices located in the Atlanta area: </s> IPC </s> Total Total Demand Loans Deposits Deposits Bank (12/31/71) (12/31/71) (6/30/72) ____ __________ ___________ __________ </s> C&S ................. 36.4% 30.0% 30.6% </s> Chamblee, Park National, South DeKalb, Sandy Springs and North Fulton account for the following shares of total loans deposits and IPC demand deposits held by all banking offices located in the Atlanta area: </s> IPC </s> Total Total Demand Loans Deposits Deposits Banks (12/31/71) (12/31/71) (6/30/72) _____ __________ ___________ __________ </s> Chamblee ............ .5% .6% .8% Park National ....... .1% .3% .4% South DeKalb ........ .2% .2% .3% Sandy Springs ....... .6% .7% .8% North Fulton ........ .3% .2% .2% _____ _____ _____ 1.7% 2.0% 2.5% </s> If their deposits (as of 12/31/71) were combined ($71,142,252), these five banks would be the equivalent of the sixth largest banking organization in the Atlanta area. Sandy Springs and Chamblee are, alone, the tenth and eleventh largest banking organizations in the Atlanta area, respectively. [422 U.S. 86, 130] </s> If the proposed mergers were approved, the C&S system (which would include the offices of C&S National in the Atlanta area, C&S Emory, C&S DeKalb, C&S East Point, Chamblee, Park National, South DeKalb, Sandy Springs and North Fulton) would account for 38.2% of the total loans held by all banking offices located in the Atlanta area, 32.0% of the total deposits and 33.0% of the total IPC demand deposits. C&S would also be acquiring the tenth and eleventh largest banks in the Atlanta area. </s> If the proposed mergers were approved, the four largest banks would account for the following shares in the Atlanta area: </s> IPC </s> Total Total Demand Banks Loans Deposits Deposits _____ _________ __________ _________ </s> Top 2 after mergers .. 62.2% 55.2% 60.5% Top 3 after mergers .. 77.9% 73.3% 76.8% Top 4 after mergers .. 88.4% 86.2% 87.5% </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 Unless otherwise indicated, the term "C&S" refers generically to the C&S system of banking entities, including C&S National and its majority owned affiliates and C&S Holding, but excluding the 5-percent banks. The defendants in this suit - appellees here - are C&S National, C&S Holding, six of the 5-percent banks, and two banks in the Atlanta area, C&S Emory and C&S East Point, which are subsidiaries of C&S Holding. Taken together, these will sometimes be called the "defendant banks." </s> [Footnote 2 419 U.S. 893 . Notice of appeal was filed prior to the effective date of the Antitrust Procedures and Penalties Act, Pub. L. 93-528, 7, 88 Stat. 1710. The proposed acquisitions were stayed automatically by the filing of the suit, 12 U.S.C. 1828 (c) (7) (A). The District Court continued the stay, and it has remained in force pending this decision. </s> [Footnote 3 A 1929 amendment allowed branching within the home-office city of a bank, but this was of no aid to the ambitions of C&S National outside Savannah. </s> [Footnote 4 Founded with C&S sponsorship were: (1) The Sandy Springs Bank, Fulton County (two offices). Founded in 1959 and operational in 1960 as the Citizens National Bank of Sandy Springs, it was converted in 1969 from a national to a state-chartered bank and adopted the name Citizens and Southern Bank of Sandy Springs. (2) The Chamblee Bank, DeKalb County. Founded in 1960 as the Chamblee National Bank, it was converted to a state-chartered bank in 1969 and adopted the name Citizens and Southern Bank of Chamblee. (3) The North Fulton Bank, Fulton County and North Fulton County. It was founded in 1967 as the Citizens and Southern Bank of North Fulton, a state-chartered institution. (4) The Park National Bank, DeKalb County. It was founded in 1967 as the Citizens and Southern Park National Bank. (5) The South DeKalb Bank, DeKalb County (two offices). It was founded as the Citizens and Southern South DeKalb Bank, a state-chartered institution, in 1969. </s> The Citizens and Southern Bank of Tucker (two offices), in DeKalb County, was independently founded in 1919, as the Bank of Tucker. C&S Holding acquired 5-percent ownership in 1965, and the bank then adopted its present name. This bank is involved in only the Sherman Act phase of this case. Its proposed acquisition by C&S was forbidden by the FDIC. </s> [Footnote 5 See n. 17, infra. The investigation was concerned with 3 of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, 70 Stat. 134, as amended on July 1, 1966, by Pub. L. 89-485, 7, 80 Stat. 237, and on Dec. 31, 1970, by Pub. L. 91-607, Tit. I, 102, 84 Stat. 1763. 12 U.S.C. 1842. </s> [Footnote 6 The acquisitions were to be made by bank subsidiaries of C&S Holding: C&S East Point, which proposed to acquire the Sandy Springs and North Fulton Banks, and C&S Emory, which proposed to acquire the Chamblee, Park National, South DeKalb, and Tucker Banks. The FDIC was the responsible federal agency because each of the acquiring banks is a "nonmember [of the Federal Reserve System] insured bank." 12 U.S.C. 1828 (c) (2) (C). </s> [Footnote 7 The FDIC noted that the independent Tucker Bank had not been in unsound financial condition when C&S assumed de facto control in 1965, and that it would have been better for competition if C&S had instead sponsored a new bank in the community "just as it did in other growing sections of DeKalb County prior to the recent change in Georgia's branching laws." </s> [Footnote 8 See the Appendix to this opinion for the District Court's statistical summary of the Atlanta area's banking markets, C&S's place in these markets, and the effect of the proposed acquisitions on the market-share statistics. </s> [Footnote 9 The court stated: </s> "The Government contends that the following aspects of the relationships [422 U.S. 86, 97] between the defendants have restrained interstate trade and commerce: </s> "1. The routine and systematic practice of furnishing to one another comprehensive information as to past, present and future competitive practices and policies with a purpose of achieving uniformity among the defendants; </s> "2. The provision by C&S National to the five percent defendants of various manuals and memoranda; </s> "3. The provision by C&S National to the five percent defendants of suggestions and advice on such matters as rates, hours of operation, types of loan to discourage and minimum loan rates . . . . </s> "The Government also asserts, and the record shows, that the advice and suggestions offered by C&S National are generally followed. </s> "These activities, however, do not amount to collusive price fixing. For example, there is no suggestion that any advice as to rates amounts to more than an expert appraisal of a market situation from the point of view of a lending institution - a type of opinion to which a lending institution would naturally be expected to pay great attention. . . . </s> "The practices involved here do not conform to the accepted definition or description of per se antitrust violations where no resort to context or circumstances is required (or permitted). </s> . . . . . </s> "There is no evidence of record to conclude that the utilization by the five percent defendant banks of the services or information received by them from C&S National or C&S Holding was a result of any tacit or explicit combinations rather than the natural deference of the recipient to information from one with greater expertise or better sources. In either case there is the flow of information as to rates, practices, etc., which the Government apparently applauds or at least condones in a correspondent banking relationship." 372 F. Supp., at 626, 627, and 628. </s> [Footnote 10 See Appendix to this opinion. </s> [Footnote 11 The court noted that "no witness (for either the Government or the defendants) testified that the proposed mergers would have any adverse economic or competitive implications whatever . . . ." 372 F. Supp., at 638. Competitors of the suburban 5-percent banks "expressed the view that the proposed mergers would have no effect whatsoever on competition as it relates to third parties." Ibid. The court found "as a fact that there is no presently existing substantial competition between the five percent defendant banks and C&S National, or inter sese, or with third parties, which would be affected by the proposed merger." Id., at 642. </s> In the interval between the trial and the announcement of the District Court's opinion, the Supreme Court of Georgia had ruled in a separate suit brought by a group of independent suburban banks that C&S was in technical violation of the state bank holding company law with respect to the 5-percent banks in the Atlanta suburbs. Its judgment was grounded on the fact that, in addition to the 5-percent stock interest directly owned by C&S Holding, substantial numbers of shares were owned by C&S officers and directors. The state court accordingly directed the Georgia Banking Commissioner to file suit to force divestiture of excess stock holdings by these shareholders. Independent Bankers Assn. v. Dunn, 230 Ga. 345, 197 S. E. 2d 129, modified sub nom. Citizens & Southern National Bank v. Independent Bankers Assn., 231 Ga. 421, 202 S. E. 2d 78. The District Court's opinion took notice of this state-court judgment and concluded that it would not lead to genuine competition among the 5-percent banks or between them and C&S. 372 F. Supp., at 643. After the District Court's opinion was announced, the State Banking Commissioner, acting pursuant to the state-court judgment, ordered C&S Holding to limit its direct and indirect interest in the stock of correspondent associate banks to 5 percent and ordered C&S to "terminate any direct or indirect supervision of the . . . five percent banks beyond that which is available from The Citizens and Southern National Bank or the Citizens and Southern Holding Company to any bank that wishes to enter into a correspondent relationship with such bank or holding company." On June 3, 1974, the District Court [422 U.S. 86, 100] amended its opinion nunc pro tunc to find that the Banking Commissioner's "order does not change the underlying basis of the Court's decision that the proposed mergers will not substantially lessen competition." Id., at 643 n. 8. </s> [Footnote 12 Pursuant to 12 U.S.C. 1828 (c) (7) (B), referring to 12 U.S.C. 1828 (c) (5) (B), bank mergers are made subject to Clayton Act standards unless "the anticompetitive effects of the proposed transaction are clearly outweighed in the public interest by the probable effect of the transaction in meeting the convenience and needs of the community to be served." Hence, in bank merger cases brought under the Clayton Act, there is a "`convenience and needs' defense" that "comes into play only after a district court has made a de novo determination of the status of a bank merger under the Clayton Act." United States v. Marine Bancorporation, 418 U.S. 602, 626 . See also United States v. Third National Bank in Nashville, 390 U.S. 171 ; United States v. First City National Bank of Houston, 386 U.S. 361 . Because of its disposition of the case, the District Court did not reach this additional defense which had been asserted by C&S. </s> [Footnote 13 See n. 12, supra. </s> [Footnote 14 "It shall be unlawful, except with the prior approval of the Board, (1) for any action to be taken that causes any company to become a bank holding company; (2) for any action to be taken that causes a bank to become a subsidiary of a bank holding company; (3) for any bank holding company to acquire direct or indirect ownership or control of any voting shares of any bank if, after such acquisition, such company will directly or indirectly own or control more than 5 per centum of the voting shares of such bank; (4) for any bank holding company or subsidiary thereof, other than a bank, to acquire all or substantially all of the assets of a bank; or (5) for any bank holding company to merge or consolidate with any other bank holding company. . . ." 12 U.S.C. 1842 (a). </s> [Footnote 15 Prior to the amendments of July 1, 1966, Pub. L. 89-485, 7, 80 Stat. 237, prior approval of the Board was not required for causing a bank to become a subsidiary of a bank holding company. In addition to adding this requirement, the 1966 amendments broadened the definition of a subsidiary from a company in which a bank holding company "own[s]" 25 percent of the voting shares to a company in which a bank holding company "directly or indirectly own[s] or control[s]" this percentage share. Compare 4 of the 1966 amendments, 80 Stat. 236, with 2 (d) of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, 70 Stat. 133. The provision is now codified at 12 U.S.C. 1841 (d) (1). The definition of subsidiary has also included, from the outset of the Act, "any company the election of a majority of whose directors is controlled in any manner" by [422 U.S. 86, 104] a bank holding company. 12 U.S.C. 1841 (d) (2). The amendments of December 31, 1970, Pub. L. 91-607, 101 (d), 84 Stat. 1763, further enlarged the definition of subsidiary to include "any company with respect to the management or policies of which such bank holding company has the power, directly or indirectly, to exercise a controlling influence, as determined by the Board, after notice and opportunity for hearing." 12 U.S.C. 1841 (d) (3). </s> [Footnote 16 11 of the 1966 amendments, Pub. L. 89-485, 80 Stat. 240. As presently in force, 12 U.S.C. 1849, the provision (with subsection headings omitted) reads: </s> "(a) Nothing herein contained shall be interpreted or construed as approving any act, action, or conduct which is or has been or may be in violation of existing law, nor shall anything herein contained constitute a defense to any action, suit, or proceeding pending or hereafter instituted on account of any prohibited antitrust or monopolistic act, action, or conduct, except as specifically provided in this section. </s> "(b) The Board shall immediately notify the Attorney General of any approval by it pursuant to section 1842 of this title of a proposed acquisition, merger, or consolidation transaction, and such transaction may not be consummated before the thirtieth calendar day after the date of approval by the Board. Any action brought under the antitrust laws arising out of an acquisition, merger, or consolidation transaction approved under section 1842 of this title shall be commenced within such thirty-day period. The commencement of such an action shall stay the effectiveness of the Board's approval unless the court shall otherwise specifically order. In any such action, the court shall review de novo the issues presented. In any judicial proceeding attacking any acquisition, merger, or consolidation transaction approved pursuant to section 1842 of this title on the ground that such transaction alone and of itself constituted a violation of any antitrust laws other than section [422 U.S. 86, 105] 2 of Title 15, the standards applied by the court shall be identical with those that the Board is directed to apply under section 1842 of this title. Upon the consummation of an acquisition, merger, or consolidation transaction approved under section 1842 of this title in compliance with this chapter and after the termination of any antitrust litigation commenced within the period prescribed in this section, or upon the termination of such period if no such litigation is commenced therein, the transaction may not thereafter be attacked in any judicial proceeding on the ground that it alone and of itself constituted a violation of any antitrust laws other than section 2 of Title 15, but nothing in this chapter shall exempt any bank holding company involved in such a transaction from complying with the antitrust laws after the consummation of such transaction. </s> "(c) In any action brought under the antitrust laws arising out of any acquisition, merger, or consolidation transaction approved by the Board under section 1842 of this title, the Board and any State banking supervisory agency having jurisdiction within the State involved, may appear as a party of its own motion and as of right, and be represented by its counsel. </s> "(d) Any acquisition, merger, or consolidation of the kind described in section 1842 (a) of this title which was consummated at any time prior or subsequent to May 9, 1956, and as to which no litigation was initiated by the Attorney General prior to July 1, 1966, shall be conclusively presumed not to have been in violation of any antitrust laws other than section 2 of Title 15. </s> "(e) Any court having pending before it on or after July 1, 1966, any litigation initiated under the antitrust laws by the Attorney General with respect to any acquisition, merger, or consolidation of the kind described in section 1842 (a) of this title shall apply the substantive rule of law set forth in section 1842 of this title. </s> "(f) For the purposes of this section, the term `antitrust laws' means the Act of July 2, 1890 (the Sherman Antitrust Act), the Act of October 15, 1914 (the Clayton Act), and any other Acts in pari materia." </s> [Footnote 17 The Secretary to the Federal Reserve Board described the investigation and the 1968 "understanding" in a 1972 letter to the Justice Department: </s> "The fact finding inquiry undertaken by Board staff into the relationship between Citizens & Southern and the other banking institutions referred to was begun in 1966 and continued into 1968. The principal focus of the inquiry concerned essentially two questions: (1) whether Citizens & Southern had unlawfully acquired a direct or indirect stock ownership in these banking institutions in excess of 5 per cent without first having secured the requisite prior Board approval; and (2) whether the banking institutions had unlawfully [422 U.S. 86, 107] become subsidiaries of Citizens & Southern by virtue of the election of directors without first having received the requisite prior Board approval. The inquiry arose in 1966 out of information contained in Citizens & Southern's registration statement filed with the Board and in 1968 as a result of information supplied by the Comptroller of the Currency in connection with the merger of the Citizens and Southern National Bank and the Citizens and Southern Bank of Augusta. The inquiry referred to was not initiated as a result of any application filed with the Board for approval of an acquisition, merger, or consolidation transaction under section 3 of the Bank Holding Company Act. </s> . . . . . </s> "The Board of Governors did not issue any order approving the relationships between Citizens & Southern and the other banking institutions under section 3 of the Bank Holding Company Act. </s> . . . . . </s> "There was no determination made that approval of the Board under section 3 of the Bank Holding Company Act was required for Citizens & Southern to retain an ownership interest of 5 per cent or less in the banking institutions referred to or to maintain the relationships with those banks in circumstances where Citizens & Southern did not elect a majority of the directors of any such bank. There was an understanding reached between members of the Board's staff and representatives of Citizens & Southern that in those cases where Citizens & Southern purchased 5 per cent or less of the stock of a bank, in some instances furnishing a principal operating officer for such bank, as well as other employee benefits, Citizens & Southern would not be deemed to have control of a majority of the directors of such bank on these facts alone. Further, where the foregoing circumstances existed and where control of additional shares was purchased by the bank's executive officer, control of such shares purchased would not be attributed to Citizens & Southern so long as Citizens & Southern did not finance the purchase of such shares, directly or indirectly. Finally, it was understood that even though Citizens & Southern was responsible, directly or indirectly, in placing one or two directors on the boards of such banks, if that number did not constitute a majority of directors of [422 U.S. 86, 108] such bank, the Board's staff would not consider that Citizens & Southern could reasonably be held to have control of a majority of the directors of such bank." </s> [Footnote 18 See n. 15, supra. </s> [Footnote 19 The grandfather provision creates a conclusive presumption of compliance with the antitrust laws, but not necessarily of compliance with the provisions of the Bank Holding Company Act. See 12 U.S.C. 1849 (f). </s> [Footnote 20 If the correspondent associate program had received formal Board approval, any antitrust immunity created by the machinery in 1849 (b) could, of course, have extended only to those features of the program clearly and expressly encompassed by the approval order. But 1849 (d) applies even where, as here, there has been no approval order. If the provision were construed to cover only transactions actually violative of 1842 (a), a court applying the provision would face the daunting - and quite senseless - task of dissecting a complicated, integrated transaction, such as the formation of a de facto branch, into those components which did and those which did not require prior approval of the Board. </s> [Footnote 21 The Tucker Bank, which was not founded as a new bank by C&S, comes within the coverage of the grandfather provision, as explained in the previous section. De facto branching through the de facto "acquisition" of pre-existing banks might raise questions under the Sherman Act considerably different from those presented by the C&S practice of de facto branching through founding new banks. </s> [Footnote 22 See generally M. Mayer, The Bankers 83-91 (1974). </s> [Footnote 23 Austin & Solomon, A New Antitrust Problem: Vertical Integration in Correspondent Banking, 122 U. Pa. L. Rev. 366, 367-368 (1973). </s> [Footnote 24 Id., at 367-371. On the varieties of "service packages" to be found in correspondent banking, see also Knight, Correspondent Banking, Part I: Balances and Services, Fed. Reserve Bank of Kansas City Monthly Review (Nov. 1970); Knight, Correspondent Banking, Part II: Loan Participation and Fund Flows, Fed. Reserve Bank of Kansas City Monthly Review (Dec. 1970); Subcommittee on Domestic Finance of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, 88th Cong., 2d Sess., A Report on the Correspondent Banking System (Comm. Print Dec. 1964), and Correspondent Relations: A Survey of Banker Opinion (Comm. Print Oct. 1964); Nadler, Three Score Years of Correspondent Banking, Banking 54-55 (July 1968); Correspondent Banking Survey in Am. Banker 8-71 (Dec. 18, 1970). </s> [Footnote 25 Also, of course, C&S owns 5 percent of the stock in these banks - not a common facet of correspondent banking. But the Government neither challenges C&S's 5-percent ownership, as such, nor suggests that it aggravates the alleged antitrust problems. </s> [Footnote 26 This case does not require us to explore the conceivable antitrust problems raised by correspondent banking in all circumstances and in all its many forms. We deal here solely with the founding and maintenance of new de facto branch banks in the context of a state ban on de jure branching. </s> [Footnote 27 Brief for United States 15-16, filed in No. 73-38, O. T. 1973, United States v. Marine Bancorporation (citations to record omitted). </s> [Footnote 28 Id., at 16 and 17. </s> [Footnote 29 The brief noted with approval an example where the sponsored bank had, according to state banking authorities, become a "`satellite'" of the parent bank. Id., at 16 n. 16. </s> [Footnote 30 The banking business is, of course, riddled with state and federal regulatory barriers to entry. See United States v. Marine Bancorporation, 418 U.S., at 628 -629. But most of these barriers - e. g., chartering requirements - at least arguably serve the overriding public interest in maintaining customer confidence in the industry as a whole by assuring adequate financial stability and responsible management for all banks. Antibranching laws, on [422 U.S. 86, 119] the other hand, are now widely recognized as a simple device to protect outlying unit banks from the rigors of regional competition. See Report, President's Commission on Financial Structure and Regulation 59-63, 113 (1971); Note, Bank Charter, Branching, Holding Company and Merger Laws: Competition Frustrated, 71 Yale L. J. 502, 515-516 (1962); Smith & Greenspun, Structural Limitations on Bank Competition, 32 Law & Contemp. Prob. 40, 45-46 (1967); Comment, Bank Branching in Washington: A Need for Reappraisal, 48 Wash. L. Rev. 611 (1973); Baker, State Branch Bank Barriers and Future Shock - Will the Walls Come Tumbling Down?, 91 Banking L. J. 119 (1974). See also United States v. Marine Bancorporation, supra, at 612 n. 8. </s> [Footnote 31 See Appendix to this opinion. </s> [Footnote 32 In the entire history of C&S's 5-percent program, only the Stone Mountain Bank terminated its relationship with C&S. The record shows that bank was not sponsored by C&S, that a large amount of the stock remained in the hands of a family hostile to C&S, that the bank's shareholders never intended to merge with C&S, and that the bank's board of directors resisted introduction of C&S banking methods. None of these factors exists with respect to the banks at issue in the present case. </s> It is true that C&S has recently been ordered by the State Banking Commissioner to trim back its percentage ownership of the suburban banks and to modify, in ways not yet fully clear, its "supervision" of those banks. See n. 11, supra. But the District Court considered this development and concluded that it would not lead to true competition among the defendant banks. The court explicitly found that the changes ordered would not affect the bonds of interbank consultation and cooperation which are at the heart of the correspondent associate program. 372 F. Supp., at 638, 643, and n. 8. </s> [Footnote 1a [422 U.S. 86, 126] These computations consider the 5-percent defendant banks as completely separate entities (rather than as constituting a part of the C&S system as actually is the case), and of course, do not relate to competition as such but rather to the assignment of statistical proportions to the various entities involved. </s> [Footnote 2a [422 U.S. 86, 127] See n. 1, supra. </s> MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS and MR. JUSTICE WHITE join, dissenting. </s> I agree that the District Court erred in holding that the correspondent associate programs are immune from Sherman Act scrutiny because they are subject to the "exclusive primary jurisdiction" of the Federal Reserve Board under the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, as amended. The District Court also erred, however, in holding that the United States did not prove the violations of 1 of the Sherman Act, and 7 of the Clayton Act, alleged, and I therefore dissent from the affirmance of its judgment. </s> The issues under the Clayton and Sherman Acts, while logically independent, are related; both present the question whether a large commercial bank, already possessing [422 U.S. 86, 131] a substantial share of the Atlanta market, may lawfully acquire other banks, rather than expand internally. Three banks now control more than 75% of the commercial banking business in Atlanta. Today's decision assures that their dominions will soon be extended as arrangements they have made with independent banks to operate as "de facto branches" are solidified through merger. I cannot agree with today's decision that the Government is powerless to prevent this result. </s> I. The Sherman Act </s> The "5-percent" banks in this litigation entered into a relationship with C&S far exceeding that of "correspondent banking," the provision of check clearance, investment advice, personnel training, or other specialized services in arm's-length transactions. 1 From the very inception of these relationships, it was contemplated that [422 U.S. 86, 132] the 5-percent banks would seek, and C&S would provide, advice and guidance with respect to virtually every business decision of significance. C&S provided advisory directors - treated by all parties as actual directors - made available operating manuals covering banking practices in minute detail, 2 and maintained a constant flow of bulletins whose contents ranged from admonitions about the antitrust laws to exhortations to "get the rates [on loans] up." C&S, through its Branch Supervision Department, monitored the performance of the management of the 5-percent banks and was instrumental in having replaced those who did not measure up. These arrangements had the desired effect. The elaborate fabric of "consultations," of seeking "advice and guidance," eliminated the opportunity for rivalry among the defendant banks. The District Court found "no presently existing substantial competition between the five-percent banks and C&S National, or inter sese." 372 F. Supp. 616, 642 (1974). </s> A </s> The Court concludes that antitrust scrutiny of the affiliation of three 5-percent banks is foreclosed by the grandfather provision of 11 (d) of the Bank Holding Company Act, 12 U.S.C. 1849 (d). That holding is plainly a distorted expansion of 11 (d) beyond its language and purpose. </s> The concept of an amnesty for unchallenged structural arrangements in commercial banking first appeared [422 U.S. 86, 133] in the 1966 amendments to the Bank Merger Act, 80 Stat. 7. In those amendments, Congress, responding in part to this Court's decisions in United States v. Philadelphia National Bank, 374 U.S. 321 (1963), and United States v. First National Bank & Trust Co. of Lexington, 376 U.S. 665 (1964), attempted to mesh antitrust considerations with review of proposed bank mergers by the appropriate regulatory agency. The resulting provisions, which mandate Justice Department participation in the regulatory approval process as well as consideration by the regulatory agencies of "competitive factors," and permit an antitrust suit within 30 days of regulatory approval, appear today in the Federal Deposit Insurance Act, 12 U.S.C. 1828. See United States v. First City National Bank of Houston, 386 U.S. 361 (1967); United States v. Third National Bank in Nashville, 390 U.S. 171 (1968). The 1966 amendments also included a grandfather provision, 80 Stat. 10, that conferred immunity from antitrust challenge (except under 2 of the Sherman Act) upon any "merger, consolidation, acquisition of assets, or assumption of liabilities" consummated before June 17, 1963, the date of the decision in Philadelphia National Bank. </s> A few months after enactment of the Bank Merger Act amendments, the "antitrust" provisions were written almost verbatim into the Bank Holding Company Act. Unlike their Merger Act counterparts, the 1966 amendments to the Bank Holding Company Act were not principally addressed to integrating antitrust standards with the regulatory process, but rather to expanding the Federal Reserve Board's jurisdiction and regulatory powers. The antitrust provisions of the Holding Company Act amendments received little legislative attention; the brief reference to them in the legislative history indicates that their purpose [422 U.S. 86, 134] was to "apply to bank holding company cases the same procedures as are now provided in bank merger cases . . . ." 3 Among the provisions so borrowed from the earlier Bank Merger Act amendments was the grandfather provision, 11 (d). </s> Because of congressional preoccupation with the regulatory features of the 1966 amendments to the Bank Holding Company Act, interpretation of the antitrust provisions may involve as much an attribution of congressional intent as a discernment of it. This is particularly the case with respect to 11 (d), which was transplanted from one regulatory statute to another with seemingly scant attention to the differences in the regulatory environment. Objections that grandfathering holding company acquisitions posed policy questions different from the retroactive immunization of mergers were quickly brushed aside, 4 and 11 (d) was swept into law along with the other antitrust provisions. Thus, despite whatever dissimilarity of underlying policy considerations may have been exposed, Congress indicated that it considered the grandfather provisions in both statutes to advance substantially similar purposes. Accordingly, however difficult may be the discernment of the congressional intent expressed in 11 (d), we must look for assistance to its counterpart in the Bank Merger Act, the only guidepost Congress has left us. </s> The grandfather provision of the Bank Merger Act amendments most assuredly did not provide sanctuary [422 U.S. 86, 135] for then-unchallenged price-fixing, market-division, or other cartel activity by banks. Congressional concern was much more narrowly directed. Philadelphia National Bank rejected a literal interpretation of 7 of the Clayton Act that would have limited its application to stock acquisitions by banks, an interpretation that nevertheless enjoyed some acceptance prior to the decision. Congress was concerned about the difficulty of unscrambling pre-Philadelphia National Bank mergers undertaken in reliance upon the literal interpretation of 7, which the Court ultimately rejected, and accordingly immunized them from suit under that section. 5 But a provision barring suit under 1 of the Sherman Act was also necessary to safeguard the same mergers because of our decision in Lexington Bank, supra. Thus, although the resulting grandfather provision covered both the Clayton and Sherman Acts (except Sherman Act 2), its purpose was to shield structural arrangements of the sort the Government challenged in Philadelphia National Bank and was continuing to challenge in the District Courts thereafter. 6 </s> Against the foregoing background, we confront the language of the counterpart in the Bank Holding Company Act. As enacted in 1966, 11 (d) shielded an "acquisition, merger, or consolidation of the kind described in 3 (a) of this Act." Section 3 (a) provided then, as today, that: </s> "(a) It shall be unlawful, except with the prior [422 U.S. 86, 136] approval of the Board, (1) for any action to be taken that causes any company to become a bank holding company; (2) for any action to be taken that causes a bank to become a subsidiary of a bank holding company; (3) for any bank holding company to acquire direct or indirect ownership or control of any voting shares of any bank if, after such acquisition, such company will directly or indirectly own or control more than 5 per centum of the voting shares of such bank; (4) for any bank holding company or subsidiary thereof, other than a bank, to acquire all or substantially all of the assets of a bank; or (5) for any bank holding company to merge or consolidate with any other bank holding company." 7 </s> Section 3 (a) is thus the operative provision of the statute permitting the Federal Reserve Board to regulate the events therein described. </s> By "grandfathering" an "acquisition, merger, or consolidation of the kind described in 3 (a)," Congress obviously exempted from antitrust challenge only the events for which Board approval would have been required. None of the transactions defined by 3 (a), however, includes those features of the "correspondent associate" relationship that the Government is challenging under Sherman Act 1 in this case. Clauses (4) and (5) of 3 (a) refer, respectively, to an acquisition of assets and a merger of two holding companies. Clause (3) refers to ownership of voting stock by a holding company; the stock ownership by C&S is not, however, the salient feature of the affiliative relationship and indeed is not challenged in this case. Clauses (1) and (2) address the creation of a holding company-subsidiary relationship. [422 U.S. 86, 137] The definitional provisions of 2 (d) have undergone recent expansion, but in 1966 they designated a bank as a "subsidiary" if a holding company either (1) directly or indirectly owned or controlled 25% or more of its voting stock, or (2) controlled in any manner the election of a majority of its directors. These two conditions would often be satisfied simultaneously, and indeed shortly after enactment of the forerunner of this provision in 1956 it was suggested that the second condition was redundant. See Note, The Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, 9 Stan. L. Rev. 333, 337, and n. 59 (1957). Congress, however, was apparently concerned that stock interests could be so structured that a holding company could elect a majority of directors without satisfying the 25% ownership requirement. 8 Whether or not this fear was well-founded, it is clear that satisfaction of either condition required an arrangement whereby the holding company had the power to vote stock. </s> In establishing its "correspondent associates" C&S did not engage in the transactions described by 3 (a) in 1966 and therefore sheltered by 11 (d). Indeed, because of state-law restrictions C&S could not resort to the methods described by 3 (a) of the Holding Company Act and turned instead to more informal arrangements, including "understandings." While the functional equivalent of a holding company-subsidiary relationship could perhaps be created through informal affiliation, 3 (a), at least until quite recently, has been [422 U.S. 86, 138] triggered by the formality of control of voting stock. To be sure, 2 (d) has always referred to a subsidiary as one whose stock is "directly or indirectly" owned or controlled or whose election of directors is controlled "in any manner" by the holding company. 9 But there has been no suggestion by Congress, nor by the Board, that this language would embrace the less formal arrangements by which the C&S banks operated in complete harmony with C&S. Indeed, the statutory clues suggest the contrary, that Congress was concerned with powers attached to stock, and that "indirect" ownership or control merely referred to their exercise derivatively, through an intermediary. 10 </s> [422 U.S. 86, 139] </s> In the 1970 amendments to the Holding Company Act. 84 Stat. 1760, Congress expanded the reach of 3. The Act now defines "control" to include a relationship whereby a company "directly or indirectly exercises a controlling influence over the management and policies of the bank . . . ." 2 (a) (2) (C), 12 U.S.C. 1841 (a) (2) (C). Congressional preoccupation with stock is still evident since there is a statutory presumption that "any company which directly or indirectly owns, controls, or has power to vote less than 5 per centum of any class of voting securities of a given bank or company does not have control over that bank or company." 2 (a) (3). Nevertheless the Board has by regulation established a rebuttable presumption of control where a company </s> "enters into any agreement or understanding with a bank . . . such as a management contract, pursuant to which the company or any of its subsidiaries exercises significant influence with respect to the general management or overall operations of the bank . . . ." 12 CFR 225.2 (b) (3) (1975). </s> Arguably, the Board's interpretation would now bring within 3 the affiliation of the 5-percent banks with C&S. But the Board's interpretation is based upon recent legislation expanding the reach of the Board's regulatory authority. 11 Since I do not suppose Congress intended in 1966 to immunize transactions of the kind it had not yet brought within 3, the 1970 amendment is relevant only because it demonstrates the limited character [422 U.S. 86, 140] of the transactions previously embraced by 3 and "grandfathered" under 11 (d). </s> The conclusion that Congress had traditionally not brought informal arrangements within 3 (a) was reinforced by the provisions of 4 (a) (2) of the original Act, 70 Stat. 135, which forbade a bank holding company to </s> "engage in any business other than that of banking or of managing or controlling banks or of furnishing services to or performing services for any bank of which it owns or controls 25 per centum or more of the voting shares." </s> This provision was enacted in 1956, and as early as 1960 the Board by regulation interpreted "services" to include many of the functions C&S has performed for the 5-percent banks. Included in the Board's interpretation are: "(1) [e]stablishment and supervision of loaning policies; (2) direction of the purchase and sale of investment securities; (3) selection and training of officer personnel; (4) establishment and enforcement of operating policies; and (5) general supervision over all policies and practices." 12 CFR 225.113 (1975). The differentiation of these activities from "control or management" and their inclusion in 4 of the Act rather than in 3 vividly exposes the fallacy of today's holding invoking 11 (d) to foreclose scrutiny of the "correspondent associate" relationship of three of the 5-percent banks. Since 11 (d) shielded only the events then described in 3 (a), the conclusion is compelled that all the 5-percent banks are properly before us on the Sherman Act counts. 12 Accordingly, I turn to the merits. [422 U.S. 86, 141] </s> B </s> The District Court found that there were no express agreements among the defendant banks to fix prices or divide markets that would call for application of the per se rule, United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U.S. 150 (1940); United States v. Sealy, Inc., 388 U.S. 350 (1967), but it also found that the effect of the association was to eliminate all competition among the banks involved. </s> The Court finds the restraints embodied in the "correspondent associate" relationship reasonable because of state-law restrictions that blocked, for a time, the avenue of internal expansion by C&S. If the question before us were the lawfulness of these arrangements at their inception, this solution might be satisfactory. The question would be a close one, however, calling for a delicate balancing of the immediate benefits of expanded banking services against the more distant, but nevertheless real, danger of permitting the restraints necessary to circumvent de jure barriers to expansion to continue longer than the conditions that justified them. The inquiry would, of course, have to take into account the possibility that expansion would occur under less restrictive conditions. New entry by an unaffiliated bank 13 or entry [422 U.S. 86, 142] with a more limited form of sponsorship - a period of initial assistance, followed by a withdrawal of the sponsor's influence, at least to a conventional correspondent relationship 14 - might have sufficed to provide the expansion cited here as a justification for incidental restraints. The judicial resources consumed by such an inquiry in any particular case would not be insubstantial, and the very difficulty of making such judgments has in many cases led us to prefer per se rules. United States v. Socony-Vacuum Co., supra, at 220-221; Northern Pacific R. Co. v. United States, 356 U.S. 1, 5 (1958); United States v. Sealy, Inc., supra; United States v. Topco Associates, Inc., 405 U.S. 596 (1972). See also United States v. Philadelphia National Bank, 374 U.S., at 362 . </s> The issue in this case, however, is not whether the affiliation of the 5-percent banks was lawful at its inception, but whether it could lawfully continue, for the Government sought only an injunction. By the time the Government brought suit, Georgia law permitted [422 U.S. 86, 143] C&S to branch freely in the Atlanta suburbs. Because the rule of reason requires us to assess the lawfulness of a restraint in light of all the circumstances, Chicago Board of Trade v. United States, 246 U.S. 231, 238 (1918), the lawfulness of the practices at their inception, even if assumed, could not be controlling, for changes in market conditions can deprive once-reasonable arrangements of their justification. United States v. Jerrold Electronics, 187 F. Supp. 545, 560-561 (ED Pa. 1960), aff'd, 365 U.S. 567 (1961). See also United States v. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., 353 U.S. 586, 596 -598 (1957). The claimed desirability of the challenged arrangements as a response to now-repealed restrictions of Georgia law is therefore relevant only insofar as it may also be claimed that continuation of such arrangements undisturbed by the Sherman Act would be vital to their creation were Georgia to reinstate its restrictions in the future. Put another way, we need concern ourselves with the lawfulness of "de facto branches" as a response to state-law restrictions only if appellees make a convincing showing that no bank would engage in "de facto branching" without a guarantee of perpetual noninterference from the antitrust laws. </s> Certainly it is open to C&S to argue that no rational banker would sponsor a de facto branch unless assured that the resulting relationships could continue in perpetuity. But this sort of argument has seldom carried the day in this Court, see United States v. Sealy, supra; United States v. Topco Associates, supra, and I do not find it persuasive in this case. A bank hemmed in by state antibranching restrictions will presumably find it profitable to take a small stock interest in an independent bank, to offer assistance and thereby attempt to win consumer loyalty through an expanded use of its own name. C&S presumably found these arrangements [422 U.S. 86, 144] profitable at their inception. The record does not show whether C&S actually charged the 5-percent banks for such assistance as site selection, economic surveys, equipment procurement, and other promotional services; there is no suggestion, however, that C&S provided these services at an ultimate loss, and presumably gains ultimately accrued to the provider. True, C&S hoped to cement the relationships through merger, but it is not clear that these expectations were essential to the initial undertaking. Indeed, C&S continued to provide assistance to certain banks as to which there was little prospect of ultimate acquisition by C&S. 2 App. 378-379. Our concern, in any event, lies not with protecting the expectations of C&S but with avoiding disincentives to the provision of desirable services. Sponsorship will be profitable to a sponsor bank assuming that there is a demand for the services of the sponsored bank and that the sponsor can recoup in some fashion a return for its assistance. These conditions should be sufficient to induce a profit-seeking bank, chafing under antibranching restrictions, to sponsor a new entrant even if permanent arrangements are forbidden. </s> This case, therefore, does not present an occasion for consideration whether the restraints incident to "de facto branching" are lawful when undertaken in response to a prohibition of de jure branching, a position the Court says the Government took last Term in United States v. Marine Bancorporation, 418 U.S. 602 (1974). The restraints incident to the affiliation of the 5-percent banks with C&S must be examined in light of conditions prevailing at the time of suit, which include the ability of C&S to branch freely in the Atlanta suburbs. </s> The arrangements between C&S and the 5-percent banks resemble a "common brand" marketing agreement or a franchising arrangement in which the franchisor [422 U.S. 86, 145] itself deals directly with consumers as well as providing entrepreneurial skill and other assistance to franchisees. Such combinations may, under certain circumstances, enhance competition. Common-brand marketing may permit a group of small firms to exploit promotional economies and thereby compete with larger enterprises whose business spans several geographic submarkets. Franchising may facilitate entry by allowing an entering firm to save on promotional expenses and to purchase needed entrepreneurial assistance. Restraints invariably accompany these combinations for the purpose of promoting product uniformity, for some standardization of product is indispensable to the success of the scheme. Because notwithstanding accompanying restraints such combinations may on balance enhance competition, it would be a mistake to regard them as per se or even presumptively unlawful, and lower courts have not done so. See, e. g., United States v. Topco Associates, Inc., 319 F. Supp. 1031, 1038 (ND Ill. 1970), rev'd on other grounds, 405 U.S. 596 (1972); Siegel v. Chicken Delight, Inc., 448 F.2d 43 (CA9 1971); Susser v. Carvel Corp., 332 F.2d 505 (CA2 1964). But the Sherman Act limits the scope of co-operation incident to such arrangements. The participants may not fix prices or divide markets. United States v. Topco Associates, Inc., supra; United States v. Sealy, Inc., supra; United States v. Arnold, Schwinn & Co., 388 U.S. 365 (1967). Such combinations, moreover, warrant careful scrutiny when their participants collectively possess a dominant share of a common market, as to which there are substantial barriers to entry, for these conditions enhance the profitability of price collusion among participants and thus may tempt them to standardize price as well as other product attributes. </s> Despite the acceptability generally of common-brand [422 U.S. 86, 146] or franchising arrangements, they pose particular difficulty in the commercial banking context. Many features of a commercial bank's services are set by regulation, thus inhibiting competition by restricting the number of product features that individual firms are free to vary. With interest rates on loans fixed by law, for example, competition is confined to such "non-price" features as collateral requirements or repayment policies. With competition thus already delimited, few additional restraints incident to a cooperative scheme can be tolerated before competition is extinguished entirely. Moreover, the entry barriers posed by regulation enhance the danger that incidental cooperation will be extended to abolish all rivalry. These considerations suggest that co-operative arrangements in commercial banking should be permitted only where their competitive benefits are clear, and where the combined market shares of the participants dispel the fear that price collusion will accompany them. </s> The situation here fails to satisfy the test. The combined shares of C&S and the 5-percent banks are substantial under any of the alternative definitions of the geographic market cited by the Court. Ante, at 122-130. 15 Furthermore, the cooperative arrangements involve [422 U.S. 86, 147] not a group of small firms allied to challenge a larger rival, United States v. Topco Associates, supra, but instead the dominant firm which thereby extends its hegemony. In a market so concentrated as is commercial banking in Atlanta, the most must be made of opportunity for rivalry among existing firms. Cf. United States v. Philadelphia National Bank, 374 U.S., at 372 . The 5-percent banks are now substantial, thriving enterprises, 16 inhibited from competing with C&S only by the "correspondent associate" relationship. I would hold that the Government is entitled to an injunction, specifically against the continued use by the 5-percent banks of the C&S name, the continued use of advisory directors furnished by C&S, and continued "consultations" between the management of the 5-percent banks and C&S, including the flow of memoranda for "advice and guidance." </s> II. The Clayton Act </s> The Court concedes that under our prior decisions the Government has established a prima facie case under 7. Ante, at 120. But the Court affirms the District Court's determination that the acquisitions add nothing [422 U.S. 86, 148] of anticompetitive significance to the pre-existing "correspondent associate" relationship. Since I have concluded that the relationship itself violates the Sherman Act, I also disagree with the Court's affirmance of the District Court on the Clayton Act issue. Since, in my view, appellees can no longer rely upon the affiliation to rebut the Government's prima facie case, I would remand to the District Court for consideration of the "convenience and needs" defense of 12 U.S.C. 1828 (c) (5) (B). But I also disagree with the Court's conclusion that the acquisitions add nothing of significance to the existing arrangements, and I would therefore reverse even if I accepted the Court's disposition of the Sherman Act counts. I state briefly my reasons for so concluding. </s> If not acquired, the 5-percent banks have the power to break their ties with C&S, and the likelihood that any would do so may be expected to increase as the demand for their services grows and as their managements acquire additional business experience. However risky these ventures may have been at their inception, the recent performance of the 5-percent banks attests to their present viability. 17 Because of the continuing population growth of the Atlanta area, the banks may anticipate an expanding demand for their services. These circumstances might well induce the management of a 5-percent bank to assume a more independent posture, at least to shop around among other large Atlanta banks for more conventional "correspondent" services. 18 </s> [422 U.S. 86, 149] </s> Quite apart from what the managements of the 5-percent banks might do, it is most improbable that C&S would long be happy with existing arrangements if acquisition were enjoined. The record demonstrates the aggressive, expansionist performance of C&S, having increased its Atlanta offices from three in 1946 to more than 100 by the time of trial. It is quite inconceivable that such a firm would long be content to continue operations through de facto branches in which its interest was limited to 5%. The formation of de jure branches, ultimately in competition with former "correspondent associates," would be a plausible result. </s> The foregoing are not "ephemeral possibilities," Brown Shoe Co. v. United States, 370 U.S. 294, 323 (1962), that antitrust analysis should ignore. Section 7 was intended, as we have repeatedly said, to "arrest anticompetitive tendencies in their `incipiency.'" United States v. Philadelphia National Bank, 374 U.S., at 362 . In applying the 7 standards, we are obliged to hold acquisitions unlawful if a reasonable likelihood of a substantial lessening of competition under future conditions is discernible. E. g., United States v. Continental Can Co., 378 U.S. 441, 458 (1964); FTC v. Procter & Gamble Co., 386 U.S. 568, 577 (1967); United States v. Falstaff Brewing Corp., 410 U.S. 526, 539 (1973) (DOUGLAS, J., concurring in part). While inquiry as to future market conditions and performance inevitably involves speculation, fidelity to the [422 U.S. 86, 150] congressional purpose requires us to resolve reasonable doubts in favor of the preservation of independent entities. This is perforce true where, as here, the market is highly concentrated and the acquiring firm is the dominant one. </s> My Brother WHITE reminded us in his dissent last Term in United States v. Marine Bancorporation, 418 U.S., at 653 : </s> "In the last analysis, one's view of this case, and the rules one devises for assessing whether this merger should be barred, turns on the policy of 7 of the Clayton Act to bar mergers which may contribute to further concentration in the structure of American business. . . . The dangers of concentration are particularly acute in the banking business, since `if the costs of banking services and credit are allowed to become excessive by the absence of competitive pressures, virtually all costs, in our credit economy, will be affected. . . .'" (Citations omitted.) </s> Today's decision permits C&S, the dominant commercial bank in Atlanta, further to entrench its position. Two other rivals, which together with C&S control more than 75% of the banking business in Atlanta, may now be expected to follow suit, acquiring their own "de facto branches." 19 I believe these developments exemplify the "further concentration in the structure of American business" that 7 was designed to prevent. Accordingly, I would reverse the judgment of the District Court. </s> [Footnote 1 Relationships labeled "correspondent banking" may call for careful scrutiny as the sale of specialized services by the corresponding bank shades into "consultation" by the correspondent on every business decision of significance. Correspondent banking, like other intra-industry interaction among firms or their top management, provides an opportunity both for the kind of education and sharing of expertise that ultimately enhances consumer welfare and for "understandings" that inhibit, if not foreclose, the rivalry that antitrust laws seek to promote. As one commentator on commercial banking practices has observed: </s> "[C]ommunication, especially when it comes from those at the top of a power hierarchy, tends to facilitate conflict resolution. Perhaps a great deal should not be made of this, but competition is a form of conflict and, in the present context, conflict resolution is a form of restraint on competition." Phillips, Competition, Confusion, and Commercial Banking, 19 J. of Finance 32, 42 (1964). </s> Since the relationship of C&S to the 5-percent banks goes well beyond ordinary "correspondent banking," this case does not present an occasion for further examination of the lawfulness of these more limited interconnections among firms. </s> [Footnote 2 The Consumer Credit Operating Bulletin, 7 App. E-1024 (DX-311), is illustrative. It explains what bank records should be established, the methods for arranging a repayment plan, and the procedures to be followed in perfecting a security interest. In addition, the manual sets forth C&S practice with respect to charges for late payments, extensions of repayment deadlines, and the notification of a borrower's employer about repayment delinquency. </s> [Footnote 3 As initially enacted by the House, the amendments contained no antitrust provisions. See generally H. R. Rep. No. 534, 89th Cong., 1st Sess. (1965). These were added later by the Senate Banking and Currency Committee and subsequently adopted by both Houses. See S. Rep. No. 1179, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 10 (1966). </s> [Footnote 4 See letter from Deputy Attorney General Clark to Sen. Robertson, reprinted at 112 Cong. Rec. 12385 (1966), and accompanying remarks by Sen. Robertson, ibid. </s> [Footnote 5 See S. Rep. No. 299, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 1-7 (1965); H. R. Rep. No. 1221, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 4 (1966); 111 Cong. Rec. 13304-13305 (1965) (remarks of Sen. Robertson); 112 Cong. Rec. 2454 (1966) (remarks of Rep. Celler). </s> [Footnote 6 See United States v. Crocker-Anglo National Bank, 223 F. Supp. 849 (ND Cal. 1963); United States v. Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co., 240 F. Supp. 867 (SDNY 1965), cited in Hearings on S. 1698 before a Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 446, 463 (1965). </s> [Footnote 7 Section 3 (a) had been in force since enactment of the Bank Holding Company Act in 1956. The 1966 amendment added clause (2) to its provisions. </s> [Footnote 8 See H. R. Rep. No. 609, 84th Cong., 1st Sess., 12-13 (1955); 101 Cong. Rec. 8028 (1955) (remarks of Rep. Patman). In the form initially adopted by the House, the Act would have defined as a subsidiary a bank over which another company was found by the Federal Reserve Board to "exercise a controlling influence." The Senate amendment substituted the provision ultimately enacted, the requirement of control of the election of directors. See S. Rep. No. 1095, 84th Cong., 1st Sess., 5 (1955). </s> [Footnote 9 The reference to indirect ownership, though contained in 2 (a) of the 1956 Act (defining holding company), was inadvertently omitted from 2 (d). See 70 Stat. 134. The 1966 amendments corrected the omission. See S. Rep. No. 1179, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 8 (1966). </s> [Footnote 10 Section 2 (g) of the Act defined indirect control or ownership: </s> "For the purposes of this Act - </s> "(1) shares owned or controlled by any subsidiary of a bank holding company shall be deemed to be indirectly owned or controlled by such bank holding company; </s> "(2) shares held or controlled directly or indirectly by trustees for the benefit of (A) a company, (B) the shareholders or members of a company, or (C) the employees (whether exclusively or not) of a company, shall be deemed to be controlled by such company; and </s> "(3) shares transferred after January 1, 1966, by any bank holding company (or by any company which, but for such transfer, would be a bank holding company) directly or indirectly to any transferee that is indebted to the transferor, or has one or more officers, directors, trustees, or beneficiaries in common with or subject to control by the transferor, shall be deemed to be indirectly owned or controlled by the transferor unless the Board, after opportunity for hearing, determines that the transferor is not in fact capable of controlling the transferee." </s> This provision was added by the 1966 amendments to adopt interpretations [422 U.S. 86, 139] previously made by the Board. S. Rep. No. 1179, supra, at 8. </s> [Footnote 11 Congress specifically noted the expansion. See S. Rep. No. 91-1084, p. 6 (1970); H. R. Rep. No. 91-1747, p. 12 (1970). See also Note, The Bank Holding Company Act Amendments of 1970, 39 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1200, 1213-1214 (1971). </s> [Footnote 12 My conclusion that the affiliative relationships are not within the terms of 3 (a), at least prior to the 1970 amendment, is further supported by the scope and outcome of the 1968 investigation of C&S undertaken by the Federal Reserve Board staff. The investigation was convened specifically to inquire into a possible violation [422 U.S. 86, 141] of 3. The staff was principally concerned with the pattern of ownership of the stock of the 5-percent banks, especially by C&S officers and employees. Ultimately the staff found this acceptable, so long as C&S did not finance the purchases. There is no indication, however, that the staff concerned itself with communications between C&S and the 5-percent banks with respect to such matters as interest rates, loan repayment policies, or other terms of business. </s> [Footnote 13 There is little doubt that pent-up consumer demand for additional banks would sooner or later induce efforts to organize new ones. More questionable, however, is whether regulatory authorities would respond promptly to permit new entry. In general, regulatory [422 U.S. 86, 142] policy has been thought to retard formation of new banking institutions. See Peltzman, Entry in Commercial Banking, 8 J. Law & Econ. 11 (1965). </s> [Footnote 14 The record demonstrates that such a chain of events is possible. Citizens & Southern Bank of Stone Mountain, organized in 1957 with C&S assistance, functioned as a correspondent associate from 1959 until 1970. At that time it declined an offer of acquisition by C&S and became independent of the C&S system. Appellees have argued that Stone Mountain represents a unique case because a majority of voting stock remained in the hands of a single family not intimately tied to the C&S system. This contention is not wholly supported by the record, since in his trial testimony Mr. Mills Lane, President of C&S from 1946 to 1970, referred to three other banks having a similar structure of ownership. (2 App. 378-379, referring to Pelham, Fayetteville, Hogansville). The example of Stone Mountain does, in any event, demonstrate that sponsorship can occur under conditions ultimately leading to independence of the sponsored institution. </s> [Footnote 15 The District Court made no finding as to the relevant geographic market, accepting the Government's contentions arguendo in deciding the case. The Court apparently does the same. A report prepared by the Government's expert witness concluded that while the Atlanta Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area was too large to be considered an integral geographic market, the constituent counties of DeKalb and Fulton were "reasonable geographic areas within which it is appropriate to analyze the competitive effects of the proposed mergers." 4 App. E-83. This is an approximation, of course, since the same report revealed that a number of DeKalb residents use Fulton County banks, thus suggesting that in certain respects DeKalb and Fulton County banks compete for the same business. Accordingly, it appears that defining the geographic market [422 U.S. 86, 147] to include both DeKalb and Fulton Counties would be justified under our cases. See United States v. Phillipsburg National Bank & Trust Co., 399 U.S. 350 (1970); United States v. Philadelphia National Bank, 374 U.S. 321 (1963). </s> [Footnote 16 Three of the 5-percent banks - Sandy Springs, Chamblee, and Tucker - had deposits exceeding $15 million as of January 1, 1970. North Fulton, Park National, and South DeKalb were smaller and more recently organized, but all have experienced vigorous growth. The average annual rate of deposit growth for the two years preceding January 1, 1970, was 102% for North Fulton and 50% for Park National, in contrast to a national average rate for all commercial bank deposits during the same period of slightly more than 10%. South DeKalb, organized in late 1969, had more than doubled its deposits from $1.5 to $3 million during the first half of 1970. 5 App. E-422, E-546. </s> [Footnote 17 See n. 16, supra. </s> [Footnote 18 Officers of both C&S and the 5-percent banks testified that they had not contemplated a severance of relations, but this testimony does not establish what would happen if the acquisitions were enjoined. Had the managements testified that they would not consider severance under any circumstances, such declarations of an intention to eschew a course dictated by economic self-interest would have to be viewed with skepticism. See United States v. Falstaff [422 U.S. 86, 149] Brewing Corp., 410 U.S. 526, 568 -570 (1973) (MARSHALL, J., concurring in result). </s> Whether the 5-percent banks would have been formed at all had their principals expected the Clayton Act to bar ultimate acquisition by C&S is a different question. I am not troubled by it for essentially the same reasons that have led me to conclude above that enjoining continuation of correspondent associate relationships would not deter sponsorship of de facto branches under state-law restrictions on de jure branching. See supra, at 143-144. </s> [Footnote 19 The record indicates that at the time C&S applied for regulatory approval of the acquisitions, its two largest competitors, First National Bank of Atlanta and Trust Company of Georgia, had sought and in some cases had obtained, approval for similar acquisitions of affiliated banks. 1 App. E-39. </s> [422 U.S. 86, 151]

United States Supreme Court POPE v. ILLINOIS(1987) No. 85-1973 Argued: February 24, 1987Decided: May 4, 1987 </s> Under Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 , the third or "value" prong of the tripartite test for judging whether material is obscene requires the trier of fact to determine "whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." After petitioners, both of whom were attendants at adult bookstores, sold certain magazines to police, they were separately charged with the offense of "obscenity" under Illinois law. Both trial courts instructed the respective juries that, to convict, they must find, inter alia, that the magazines were without "value." The juries were also instructed to judge whether the material was obscene by determining how it would be viewed by ordinary adults in the whole State of Illinois. The State Appellate Court affirmed both petitioners' convictions, rejecting their contention that the "value" issue must be determined solely on an objective basis and not by reference to "contemporary community standards." </s> Held: </s> 1. In a prosecution for the sale of allegedly obscene materials, the jury should not be instructed to apply community standards in deciding the value question. Only the first and second prongs of the Miller test - appeal to prurient interest and patent offensiveness - should be decided with reference to "contemporary community standards." The ideas that a work represents need not obtain majority approval to merit protection, and the value of that work does not vary from community to community based on the degree of local acceptance it has won. The proper inquiry is not whether an ordinary member of any given community would find serious value in the allegedly obscene material, but whether a reasonable person would find such value in the material, taken as a whole. The instruction at issue therefore violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Pp. 500-501. </s> 2. Whether petitioners' convictions should be reversed outright or are subject to salvage because the erroneous instruction constituted harmless error will not be decided by this Court, since the State Appellate Court has not considered the harmless-error issue. Under Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570 , in the absence of error that renders a trial fundamentally unfair, a conviction should be affirmed where the reviewing court can find that the record developed at trial established guilt beyond [481 U.S. 497, 498] a reasonable doubt. Here, since the jurors were not precluded from considering the value question, petitioners' convictions should stand despite the erroneous "community standards" instruction if the appellate court concludes that no rational juror, if properly instructed, could find "value" in the magazines petitioners sold. Pp. 501-504. </s> 138 Ill. App. 3d 726, 486 N. E. 2d 350, vacated and remanded. </s> WHITE, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C. J., and POWELL, O'CONNOR, and SCALIA, JJ., joined, and in Parts I and II of which BLACKMUN, J., joined. SCALIA, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 504. BLACKMUN, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, post, p. 505. BRENNAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, post, p. 506. STEVENS, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which MARSHALL, J., joined, in all but n. 11 of which BRENNAN, J., joined, and in Part I of which BLACKMUN, J., joined, post, p. 507. </s> Glenn A. Stanko argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs was J. Steven Beckett. </s> Sally Louise Dilgart, Assistant Attorney General of Illinois, argued the cause for respondent. On the brief were Neil F. Hartigan, Attorney General, Roma J. Stewart, Solicitor General, and Mark L. Rotert and Jack Donatelli, Assistant Attorneys General. * </s> [Footnote * Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the American Booksellers Association, Inc., et al. by Michael A. Bamberger, R. Bruce Rich, Roger L. Funk, and Maxwell J. Lillienstein; for the American Civil Liberties Union et al. by Bruce J. Ennis, Jr., David W. Ogden, Harvey Grossman, Jane M. Whicher, Jack Novik, and David Goldstein; and for Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, Inc., by Irwin Karp and I. Fred Koenigsberg. </s> Edward Cooper and James J. Clancy filed a brief for the city of Santa Ana, California, as amicus curiae. </s> JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> In Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), the Court set out a tripartite test for judging whether material is obscene. The third prong of the Miller test requires the trier of fact to determine "whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Id., at 24. The issue in this case is whether, in a prosecution for [481 U.S. 497, 499] the sale of allegedly obscene materials, the jury may be instructed to apply community standards in deciding the value question. </s> I </s> On July 21, 1983, Rockford, Illinois, police detectives purchased certain magazines from the two petitioners, each of whom was an attendant at an adult bookstore. Petitioners were subsequently charged separately with the offense of "obscenity" for the sale of these magazines. Each petitioner moved to dismiss the charges against him on the ground that the then-current version of the Illinois obscenity statute, Ill. Rev. Stat., ch. 38, § 11-20 (1983), violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Both petitioners argued, among other things, that the statute was unconstitutional in failing to require that the value question be judged "solely on an objective basis as opposed to reference [sic] to contemporary community standards." App. 8, 22. 1 Both trial courts rejected this contention and instructed the respective juries to judge whether the material was obscene by determining how it would be viewed by ordinary adults in the whole State of Illinois. 2 Both petitioners [481 U.S. 497, 500] were found guilty, and both appealed to the Illinois Appellate Court, Second District. That court also rejected petitioners' contention that the issue of value must be determined on an objective basis and not by reference to contemporary community standards. 138 Ill. App. 3d 726, 486 N. E. 2d 350 (1985); 138 Ill. App. 3d 595, 486 N. E. 2d 345 (1985). The Illinois Supreme Court denied review, and we granted certiorari, 479 U.S. 812 (1986). </s> II </s> There is no suggestion in our cases that the question of the value of an allegedly obscene work is to be determined by reference to community standards. Indeed, our cases are to the contrary. Smith v. United States, 431 U.S. 291 (1977), held that, in a federal prosecution for mailing obscene materials, the first and second prongs of the Miller test - appeal to prurient interest and patent offensiveness - are issues of fact for the jury to determine applying contemporary community standards. The Court then observed that, unlike prurient appeal and patent offensiveness, "[l]iterary, artistic, political, or scientific value . . . is not discussed in Miller in terms of contemporary community standards." Id., at 301 (citing F. Schauer, The Law of Obscenity 123-124 (1976)). This comment was not meant to point out an oversight in the Miller opinion, but to call attention to and approve a deliberate choice. </s> In Miller itself, the Court was careful to point out that "[t]he First Amendment protects works which, taken as a whole, have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value, regardless of whether the government or a majority of the people approve of the ideas these works represent." 413 U.S., at 34 . Just as the ideas a work represents need not obtain majority approval to merit protection, neither, insofar as the First Amendment is concerned, does the value of the work vary from community to community based on the degree of local acceptance it has won. The proper inquiry is not whether an ordinary member of any given community [481 U.S. 497, 501] would find serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value in allegedly obscene material, but whether a reasonable person would find such value in the material, taken as a whole. 3 The instruction at issue in this case was therefore unconstitutional. </s> III </s> The question remains whether the convictions should be reversed outright or are subject to salvage if the erroneous instruction is found to be harmless error. Petitioners contend that the statute is invalid on its face and that the convictions must necessarily be reversed because, as we understand it, the State should not be allowed to preserve any conviction under a law that poses a threat to First Amendment values. But the statute under which petitioners were convicted is no longer on the books; it has been repealed and replaced by a statute that does not call for the application of community standards to the value question. 4 Facial invalidation [481 U.S. 497, 502] of the repealed statute would not serve the purpose of preventing future prosecutions under a constitutionally defective standard. Cf., e. g., Secretary of State of Maryland v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. 947, 964 -968, and n. 13 (1984). And if we did facially invalidate the repealed statute and reverse petitioners' convictions, petitioners could still be retried under that statute, provided that the erroneous instruction was not repeated, because petitioners could not plausibly claim that the repealed statute failed to give them notice that the sale of obscene materials would be prosecuted. See Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 491 , n. 7 (1965); United States v. Thirty-seven Photographs, 402 U.S. 363, 375 , n. 3 (1971). Under these circumstances, we see no reason to require a retrial if it can be said beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury's verdict in this case was not affected by the erroneous instruction. </s> The situation here is comparable to that in Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570 (1986). In Rose, the jury in a murder trial was incorrectly instructed on the element of malice, 5 yet the Court held that a harmless-error inquiry was appropriate. The Court explained that in the absence of error that renders a trial fundamentally unfair, such as denial of the right to counsel or trial before a financially interested judge, a conviction should be affirmed "[w]here a reviewing court can find that the record developed at trial established guilt beyond a [481 U.S. 497, 503] reasonable doubt . . . ." Id., at 579. The error in Rose did not entirely preclude the jury from considering the element of malice, id., at 580, n. 8, and the fact that the jury could conceivably have had the impermissible presumption in mind when it considered the element of malice was not a reason to retry the defendant if the facts that the jury necessarily found established guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. 6 The Court said: "When a jury is instructed to presume malice from predicate facts, it still must find the existence of those facts beyond reasonable doubt. Connecticut v. Johnson, 460 U.S. 73, 96 -97 (1983) (POWELL, J., dissenting). In many cases, the predicate facts conclusively establish intent, so that no rational jury could find that the defendant committed the relevant criminal act but did not intend to cause injury." Id., at 580-581. </s> Similarly, in the present cases the jurors were not precluded from considering the question of value: they were informed that to convict they must find, among other things, that the magazines petitioners sold were utterly without redeeming social value. While it was error to instruct the juries to use a state community standard in considering the value question, if a reviewing court concludes that no rational juror, if properly instructed, could find value in the magazines, the convictions should stand. 7 </s> [481 U.S. 497, 504] </s> Although we plainly have the authority to decide whether, on the facts of a given case, a constitutional error was harmless under the standard of Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967), we do so sparingly. Rose v. Clark, supra, at 584. In this case the Illinois Appellate Court has not considered the harmless-error issue. We therefore vacate its judgment and remand so that it may do so. </s> It is so ordered. </s> Footnotes [Footnote 1 As noted in petitioners' motions to dismiss, App. 7, 21, the statute under which petitioners were prosecuted had been construed to incorporate the third prong of the tripartite test set out in the plurality opinion in Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413 (1966), viz., material is obscene only if "utterly without redeeming social value." Id., at 418. See People v. Ridens, 59 Ill. 2d 362, 321 N. E. 2d 264 (1974); People v. Thomas, 37 Ill. App. 3d 320, 346 N. E. 2d 190 (1976). In Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 22 (1973), the Court held that this test is not constitutionally mandated because it imposes a burden of proof on the State that is "virtually impossible to discharge under our criminal standards of proof." Nonetheless, at the time petitioners were prosecuted Illinois still chose to retain the higher burden of proof on the value question, which it was of course free to do. For purposes of this case, it makes no difference that the value inquiry was under the Memoirs as opposed to the Miller test. </s> [Footnote 2 The instructions stated that the obscenity determination was to be made under a statewide standard rather than by reference to the standard of any single city, town, or region within the State. App. 11, 25-26. </s> [Footnote 3 Of course, as noted above, the mere fact that only a minority of a population may believe a work has serious value does not mean the "reasonable person" standard would not be met. </s> The State contends that without an instruction to apply contemporary community standards the jury will be at a loss as to how to decide the value issue. Brief for Respondent 21. In an obscenity prosecution the trial court, in its discretion, could instruct the jury to decide the value question by considering whether a reasonable person would find serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value in the work, taken as a whole. Such an instruction would be no more likely to confuse a jury than the "reasonable man" instructions that have been given for generations in other contexts, such as tort suits. </s> The State also suggests, in attempting to justify the use of a "community standards" instruction on the value question, that such an instruction is the functional equivalent of a "reasonable man" instruction. Id., at 16. The risk, however, is that under a "community standards" instruction a jury member could consider himself bound to follow prevailing local views on value without considering whether a reasonable person would arrive at a different conclusion. </s> [Footnote 4 The new statute provides in relevant part: </s> "Any material or performance is obscene if: (1) the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards, would find that, taken as a whole, it appeals to the prurient interest: and (2) the average person, [481 U.S. 497, 501] applying contemporary adult community standards, would find that it depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, ultimate sexual acts or sadomasochistic sexual acts, whether normal or perverted, actual or simulated, or masturbation, excretory functions or lewd exhibitions of the genitals; and (3) taken as a whole, it lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." Ill. Rev. Stat., ch. 38, § 11-20(b) (1985) (effective Jan. 1, 1986). </s> [Footnote 5 The jury in Rose was instructed that "[a]ll homicides are presumed to be malicious in the absence of evidence which would rebut the implied presumption." This instruction shifted the burden of proof on an element of the crime, in violation of Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510 (1979), and Francis v. Franklin, 471 U.S. 307 (1985). </s> [Footnote 6 We do not understand Rose, as JUSTICE STEVEN'S dissent apparently does, to be based on the fiction that a reviewing court could say beyond all reasonable doubt that the jury in fact did not have the impermissible burden-shifting instruction in mind when it concluded that the defendant killed with malice. To say that the jury "would have found it unnecessary to rely on the presumption," Connecticut v. Johnson, 460 U.S. 73, 97 , n. 5 (POWELL, J., dissenting), or that the impermissible instruction was "superfluous," Rose, 478 U.S., at 581 , is not to say that the reviewing court can retrace the jury's deliberative processes but that the facts found by the jury were such that it is clear beyond a reasonable doubt that if the jury had never heard the impermissible instruction its verdict would have been the same. </s> [Footnote 7 The problem with the instructions in both cases is that the jury could have been impermissibly aided or constrained in finding the relevant element [481 U.S. 497, 504] of the crime: in Rose, by the erroneous presumption; in this case, by possible reliance on unreasonable community views on the value question. By leaving open the possibility that petitioners' convictions can be preserved despite the instructional error, we do no more than we did in Rose. To the extent that cases prior to Rose may indicate that a conviction can never stand if the instructions provided the jury do not require it to find each element of the crime under the proper standard of proof, see, e. g., Cabana v. Bullock, 474 U.S. 376, 384 (1986), after Rose, they are no longer good authority. </s> JUSTICE SCALIA, concurring. </s> I join the Court's opinion with regard to harmless error because I think it implausible that a community standard embracing the entire State of Illinois would cause any jury to convict where a "reasonable person" standard would not. At least in these circumstances, if a reviewing court concludes that no rational juror, properly instructed, could find value in the magazines, the Constitution is not offended by letting the convictions stand. </s> I join the Court's opinion with regard to an "objective" or "reasonable person" test of "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value," Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 24 (1973), because I think that the most faithful assessment of what Miller intended, and because we have not been asked to reconsider Miller in the present case. I must note, however, that in my view it is quite impossible to come to an objective assessment of (at least) literary or artistic value, there being many accomplished people who have found literature in Dada, and art in the replication of a soup can. Since [481 U.S. 497, 505] ratiocination has little to do with esthetics, the fabled "reasonable man" is of little help in the inquiry, and would have to be replaced with, perhaps, the "man of tolerably good taste" - a description that betrays the lack of an ascertainable standard. If evenhanded and accurate decisionmaking is not always impossible under such a regime, it is at least impossible in the cases that matter. I think we would be better advised to adopt as a legal maxim what has long been the wisdom of mankind: De gustibus non est disputandum. Just as there is no use arguing about taste, there is no use litigating about it. For the law courts to decide "What is Beauty" is a novelty even by today's standards. </s> The approach proposed by Part II of JUSTICE STEVENS' dissent does not eliminate this difficulty, but arguably aggravates it. It is a refined enough judgment to estimate whether a reasonable person would find literary or artistic value in a particular publication; it carries refinement to the point of meaninglessness to ask whether he could do so. Taste being, as I have said, unpredictable, the answer to the question must always be "yes" - so that there is little practical difference between that proposal and Part III of JUSTICE STEVENS' dissent, which asserts more forthrightly that "government may not constitutionally criminalize mere possession or sale of obscene literature, absent some connection to minors, or obtrusive display to unconsenting adults." Post, at 513 (footnote omitted). </s> All of today's opinions, I suggest, display the need for reexamination of Miller. </s> JUSTICE BLACKMUN, concurring in part and dissenting in part. </s> I join Part I of JUSTICE STEVENS' dissenting opinion for I agree with him that "harmless error" analysis may not appropriately be applied to this case. I join Parts I and II of JUSTICE WHITE's opinion for the Court (but not the Court's judgment remanding the case for harmless-error analysis), [481 U.S. 497, 506] however, because I believe the standard enunciated in those Parts of that opinion meets the other concerns voiced by the dissent. JUSTICE WHITE points out: "Just as the ideas a work represents need not obtain majority approval to merit protection, neither, insofar as the First Amendment is concerned, does the value of the work vary from community to community based on the degree of local acceptance it has won." Ante, at 500. JUSTICE WHITE further emphasizes: "Of course . . . the mere fact that only a minority of a population may believe a work has serious value does not mean the `reasonable person' standard would not be met." Ante, at 501, n. 3. Thus, contrary to the dissent's characterization, I do not think that "[a]juror asked to create a `reasonable person' in order to apply the standard that the Court announces today might well believe that the majority of the population who find no value in such a book are more reasonable than the minority who do find value." Post, at 512. Rather, the Court's opinion stands for the clear proposition that the First Amendment does not permit a majority to dictate to discrete segments of the population - be they composed of art critics, literary scholars, or scientists - the value that may be found in various pieces of work. That only a minority may find value in a work does not mean that a jury would not conclude that "a reasonable person would find such value in the material, taken as a whole." Ante, at 501. Reasonable people certainly may differ as to what constitutes literary or artistic merit. See ante, at 504 (SCALIA, J., concurring). As I believe JUSTICE SCALIA recognizes in his concurrence (although he may not applaud it), the Court's opinion today envisions that even a minority view among reasonable people that a work has value may protect that work from being judged "obscene." </s> JUSTICE BRENNAN, dissenting. </s> JUSTICE STEVENS persuasively demonstrates the unconstitutionality of criminalizing the possession or sale of "obscene" materials to consenting adults. I write separately [481 U.S. 497, 507] only to reiterate my view that any regulation of such material with respect to consenting adults suffers from the defect that "the concept of `obscenity' cannot be defined with sufficient specificity and clarity to provide fair notice to persons who create and distribute sexually oriented materials, to prevent substantial erosion of protected speech as a byproduct of the attempt to suppress unprotected speech, and to avoid very costly institutional harms." Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49, 103 (1973) (BRENNAN, J., dissenting). I therefore join all but footnote 11 of JUSTICE STEVENS' dissent. </s> JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE MARSHALL joins, with whom JUSTICE BRENNAN joins except as to footnote 11, and with whom JUSTICE BLACKMUN joins as to Part I, dissenting. </s> The Court correctly holds that the juries that convicted petitioners were given erroneous instructions on one of the three essential elements of an obscenity conviction. Nevertheless, I disagree with its disposition of the case for three separate reasons: (1) the error in the instructions was not harmless; (2) the Court's attempt to clarify the constitutional definition of obscenity is not faithful to the First Amendment; and (3) I do not believe Illinois may criminalize the sale of magazines to consenting adults who enjoy the constitutional right to read and possess them. </s> I </s> The distribution of magazines is presumptively protected by the First Amendment. The Court has held, however, that the constitutional protection does not apply to obscene literature. If a state prosecutor can convince the trier of fact that the three components of the obscenity standard set forth in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 24 (1973), are satisfied, it may, in the Court's view, prohibit the sale of sexually explicit magazines. In a criminal prosecution, the prosecutor [481 U.S. 497, 508] must prove each of these three elements beyond a reasonable doubt. Thus, in these cases, in addition to the first two elements of the Miller standard, the juries were required to find, on the basis of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that each of the magazines "lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value." Ibid. </s> The required finding is fundamentally different from a conclusion that a majority of the populace considers the magazines offensive or worthless. 1 As the Court correctly holds, the juries in these cases were not instructed to make the required finding; instead, they were asked to decide whether "ordinary adults in the whole State of Illinois" would view the magazines that petitioners sold as having value. App. 11, 25-26. Because of these erroneous instructions, the juries that found petitioners guilty of obscenity did not find one of the essential elements of that crime. This type of omission can never constitute harmless error. 2 </s> Just as the constitutional right to trial by jury prohibits a judge from directing a verdict for the prosecution, United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U.S. 564, 572 -573 (1977), so too, "a jury's verdict cannot stand if the instructions provided the jury do not require it to find each element of the crime under the proper standard of proof." Cabana v. Bullock, 474 U.S. 376, 384 (1986). As JUSTICE WHITE has explained: </s> "It should hardly need saying that a judgment or conviction cannot be entered against a defendant no matter [481 U.S. 497, 509] how strong the evidence is against him, unless that evidence has been presented to a jury (or a judge, if a jury is waived) and unless the jury (or judge) finds from that evidence that the defendant's guilt has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. It cannot be `harmless error' wholly to deny a defendant a jury trial on one or all elements of the offense with which he is charged." Henderson v. Morgan, 426 U.S. 637, 650 (1976) (WHITE, J., concurring) (emphasis added). </s> Yet, this is exactly what happened in these cases. Because of the constitutionally erroneous instructions, petitioners were denied a jury determination on one of the critical elements of an obscenity prosecution. </s> An application of the harmless-error doctrine under these circumstances would not only violate petitioners' constitutional right to trial by jury, but would also pervert the notion of harmless error. When a court is asked to hold that an error that occurred did not interfere with the jury's ability to legitimately reach the verdict that it reached, harmless-error analysis may often be appropriate. 3 But this principle cannot apply unless the jury found all of the elements required to support a conviction. The harmless-error doctrine may enable a court to remove a taint from proceedings in order to preserve a jury's findings, but it cannot constitutionally supplement those findings. It is fundamental that an appellate court (and for that matter, a trial court) is not free to decide in a criminal case that, if asked, a jury would have found [481 U.S. 497, 510] something that it did not find. We have consistently rejected the possibility of harmless error in these circumstances. See Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 320 , n. 14 (1979); Carpenters v. United States, 330 U.S. 395, 408 -409 (1947); Bollenbach v. United States, 326 U.S. 607, 615 (1946); see also Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 196 , n. 12 (1977). </s> The Court suggests that these cases "are no longer good authority" in light of the decision last term in Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570 (1986). See ante, at 503-504, n. 7. I emphatically disagree. In Rose v. Clark the Court held that harmless-error analysis is applicable to instructions that informed the jury of the proper elements of the crime and the proper standard of proof, but impermissibly gave the jury the option of finding one of the elements through a presumption, in violation of Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510 (1979), and Francis v. Franklin, 471 U.S. 307 (1985). In holding harmless-error analysis applicable, the Court explained that because the presumption in question "does not remove the issue of intent from the jury's consideration, it is distinguishable from other instructional errors that prevent a jury from considering an issue.'" 478 U.S., at 580 , n. 8 (emphasis added), quoting Connecticut v. Johnson, 460 U.S. 73, 95 , n. 3 (1983) (POWELL, J., dissenting). The Court reasoned that when the evidence is overwhelming on intent, the instruction allowing the jury to use a presumption can be deemed "simply superfluous," 478 U.S., at 581 , for as JUSTICE POWELL had earlier stated, in some cases the evidence may be so "dispositive of intent that a reviewing court can say beyond a reasonable doubt that the jury would have found it unnecessary to rely on the presumption." Connecticut v. Johnson, 460 U.S., at 97 , n. 5 (dissenting opinion). This case is, of course, far different. No court could ever determine that the instructions on the element were superfluous, since the error in the instructions went to the ultimate fact that the juries were required to find. Rose v. [481 U.S. 497, 511] Clark did not modify the precedents requiring that a jury find all of the elements of a crime under the proper standard, any more than it modified the Sixth Amendment's provision that "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a . . . trial by an impartial jury." </s> II </s> Aside from its error in remanding convictions which must clearly be reversed, the Court announces an obscenity standard that fails to accomplish the goal that the Court ascribes to it. After stressing the need to avoid a mere majoritarian inquiry, the Court states: </s> "The proper inquiry is not whether an ordinary member of any given community would find serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value in allegedly obscene material, but whether a reasonable person would find such value in the material, taken as a whole." Ante, at 500-501. </s> The problem with this formulation is that it assumes that all reasonable persons would resolve the value inquiry in the same way. In fact, there are many cases in which some reasonable people would find that specific sexually oriented materials have serious artistic, political, literary, or scientific value, while other reasonable people would conclude that they have no such value. The Court's formulation does not tell the jury how to decide such cases. 4 </s> [481 U.S. 497, 512] </s> In my judgment, communicative material of this sort is entitled to the protection of the First Amendment if some reasonable persons could consider it as having serious literary artistic, political, or scientific value. Over 40 years ago, the Court recognized that </s> "Under our system of government there is an accommodation for the widest varieties of tastes and ideas. What is good literature, what has educational value, what is refined public information, what is good art, varies with individuals as it does from one generation to another. . . . From the multitude of competing offerings the public will pick and choose. What seems to one to be trash may have for others fleeting or even enduring values." Hannegan v. Esquire, Inc., 327 U.S. 146, 157 -158 (1946). </s> The purpose of the third element of the Miller test is to ensure that the obscenity laws not be allowed to "`level' the available reading matter to the majority or lowest common denominator of the population. . . . It is obvious that neither Ulysses nor Lady Chatterley's Lover would have literary appeal to the majority of the population." F. Schauer, The Law of Obscenity 144 (1976). A juror asked to create "a reasonable person" in order to apply the standard that the Court announces today might well believe that the majority of the population who find no value in such a book are more reasonable than the minority who do find value. 5 First Amendment [481 U.S. 497, 513] protection surely must not be contingent on this type of subjective determination. </s> III </s> There is an even more basic reason why I believe these convictions must be reversed. The difficulties inherent in the Court's "reasonable person" standard reaffirm my conviction that government may not constitutionally criminalize mere possession or sale of obscene literature, absent some connection to minors or obtrusive display to unconsenting adults. 6 During the recent years in which the Court has struggled with the proper definition of obscenity, six Members of the Court have expressed the opinion that the First Amendment, at the very least, precludes criminal prosecutions for sales such as those involved in this case. 7 Dissenting [481 U.S. 497, 514] in Smith v. United States, 431 U.S. 291 (1977), I explained my view: </s> "The question of offensiveness to community standards, whether national or local, is not one that the average juror can be expected to answer with evenhanded consistency. The average juror may well have one reaction to sexually oriented materials in a completely private setting and an entirely different reaction in a social context. Studies have shown that an opinion held by a large majority of a group concerning a neutral and objective subject has a significant impact in distorting the perceptions of group members who would normally take a different position. Since obscenity is by no means a neutral subject, and since the ascertainment of a community standard is such a subjective task, the expression of individual jurors' sentiments will inevitably influence the perceptions of other jurors, particularly those who would normally be in the minority. Moreover, because the record never discloses the obscenity standards which the jurors actually apply, their decisions in these cases are effectively unreviewable by an appellate court. In the final analysis, the guilt or innocence of a criminal defendant in an obscenity trial is determined primarily by individual jurors' subjective reactions to the materials in question rather than by the predictable application of rules of law. </s> "The conclusion is especially troubling because the same image - whether created by words, sounds, or pictures - may produce such a wide variety of reactions. As Mr. Justice Harlan noted: `[It is] often true that one [481 U.S. 497, 515] man's vulgarity is another's lyric. Indeed, we think it is largely because government officials [or jurors] cannot make principled distinctions in this area that the Constitution leaves matters of taste and style so largely to the individual.' Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15, 25 . In my judgment, the line between communications which `offend' and those which do not is too blurred to identify criminal conduct. It is also too blurred to delimit the protections of the First Amendment." Id., at 315-316 (footnotes omitted). </s> The Court has repeatedly recognized that the Constitution "requires that a penal statute define the criminal offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited and in a manner that does not encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement." Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352, 357 (1983). 8 These two requirements serve overlapping functions. Not only do vague statutes tend to give rise to selective and arbitrary prosecution, but selective and arbitrary prosecution often lessens the degree to which an actor is on notice that his or her conduct is illegal. </s> When petitioners Pope and Morrison accepted part-time employment as clerks in the bookstores, they could hardly have been expected to examine the stores' entire inventories, and even if they had, they would have had no way of knowing which, if any, of the magazines being sold were legally "obscene." Perhaps if the enterprise were being carried out in a [481 U.S. 497, 516] clandestine manner, it might be fair to impute to them knowledge that something illegal was going on. But these stores both had large signs indicating the nature of the enterprise, one claiming that the store had "The Largest Selection of Adult Merchandise in Northern Illinois." See People's Exhibit No. 3, People v. Morrison, No. 84-cm-4114 (17th Jud. Cir. Ill. 1984). 9 The Illinois Appellate Court found that Pope had the necessary scienter because it was "difficult to believe that [he] would not be fully apprised of the type and character of the three magazines simply by looking at them." App. to Pet. for Cert. 19. It is obvious that Pope knew that the magazines were "pornographic," but that does not mean he knew, or should have known, that they were legally "obscene" under the Illinois statute and our precedents. 10 It would have been quite reasonable for him to conclude that if sale of the magazines were indeed against the law, then the police would never allow the store to remain in operation, much less publicly advertise its goods. 11 Nor [481 U.S. 497, 517] would an examination of the statute have given him much guidance. </s> Under ordinary circumstances, ignorance of the law is no excuse for committing a crime. But that principle presupposes a penal statute that adequately puts citizens on notice of what is illegal. The Constitution cannot tolerate schemes that criminalize categories of speech that the Court has conceded to be so vague and uncertain that they cannot "be defined legislatively." Smith v. United States, 431 U.S., at 303 . If a legislature cannot define the crime, Richard Pope and Michael Morrison should not be expected to. Criminal prosecution under these circumstances "may be as much of a trap for the innocent as the ancient laws of Caligula." United States v. Cardiff, 344 U.S. 174, 176 (1952). </s> Concern with the vagueness inherent in criminal obscenity statutes is not the only constitutional objection to the criminalization of the sale of sexually explicit material (not involving children) to consenting adults. In Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969), the Court held that Georgia could not criminalize the mere possession of obscene matter. The decision was grounded upon a recognition that "[o]ur whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds." Id., at 565. The only justification we could find for the law there was [481 U.S. 497, 518] Georgia's desire to "protect the individual's mind from the effects of obscenity," ibid., and we concluded that such a desire to "control the moral content of a person's thoughts . . . is wholly inconsistent with the philosophy of the First Amendment." Id., at 565-566. </s> The Court has adopted a restrictive reading of Stanley, opining that it has no implications to the criminalization of the sale or distribution of obscenity. See United States v. Reidel, 402 U.S. 351 (1971); United States v. 12 200-Ft. Reels of Film, 413 U.S. 123 (1973). But such a crabbed approach offends the overarching First Amendment principles discussed in Stanley, almost as much as it insults the citizenry by declaring its right to read and possess material which it may not legally obtain. 12 In Stanley, the Court recognized that there are legitimate reasons for the State to regulate obscenity: protecting children and protecting the sensibilities of unwilling viewers. 394 U.S., at 507 . But surely a broad criminal prohibition on all sale of obscene material cannot survive simply because the State may constitutionally restrict public display or prohibit sale of the material to minors. </s> As was the case in Smith, "I do not know whether the ugly pictures in this record have any beneficial value." 431 U.S., at 319 (STEVENS, J., dissenting). I do know though: </s> "The fact that there is a large demand for comparable materials indicates that they do provide amusement or information, or at least satisfy the curiosity of interested persons. Moreover, there are serious well-intentioned [481 U.S. 497, 519] people who are persuaded that they serve a worthwhile purpose. Others believe they arouse passions that lead to the commission of crimes; if that be true, surely there is a mountain of material just within the protected zone that is equally capable of motivating comparable conduct. Moreover, the baneful effects of these materials are disturbingly reminiscent of arguments formerly made about what are now valued as works of art. In the end, I believe we must rely on the capacity of the free marketplace of ideas to distinguish that which is useful or beautiful from that which is ugly or worthless." Id., at 320-321 (footnotes omitted). </s> I respectfully dissent. </s> [Footnote 1 "The First Amendment protects works which, taken as a whole, have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value, regardless of whether the government or a majority of the people approve of the ideas these works represent." Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 34 (1973). See ante, at 500. </s> [Footnote 2 In Section II, infra, I explain my disagreement with the Court's formulation of the obscenity standard, and in Section III, infra, I elaborate on my reasons for believing that the Constitution does not tolerate criminal prosecution in cases such as this. For purposes of the harmless-error discussion, however, those disagreements are irrelevant. </s> [Footnote 3 See, e. g., Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570 (1986) (instruction on permissive presumption may be found to have been "superfluous"); Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673 (1986) (failure to permit cross-examination on witness' bias); Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967) (improper comment on defendant's failure to testify); but see Rose, supra, at 587 (STEVENS, J., concurring) (harmless-error analysis may be inappropriate even when error does not implicate reliability and accuracy of factual findings). These cases are consistent with the theory that "the Constitution entitles a criminal defendant to a fair trial, not a perfect one." Van Arsdall, supra, at 681. </s> [Footnote 4 Notwithstanding the Court's rejection of the community values test, the Court's standard would still, in effect, require a juror to apply community values, unless the juror were to find that an ordinary member of his or her community is not "a reasonable person." While this is, of course, not an impossible conclusion, it surely conflicts with the Court's admonition that the value of works does not "vary from community to community based on the degree of local acceptance it has won," and that whether a majority of the people find value in the material is immaterial. Ante, at 500, and n. 3. Indeed, as applied in the tort context, to which the Court analogizes, ante, at 501, n. 3, the reasonable man standard is extolled as enabling the "triers of fact . . . to look to a community standard." Restatement [481 U.S. 497, 512] (Second) of Torts 283, Comment c (1965). Absent intolerable orthodoxy, First Amendment protection cannot be circumscribed by the attitudes of a "reasonable man," who has been described as an "`excellent" character who "`stands like a monument in our Courts of Justice, vainly appealing to his fellow-citizens to order their lives after his own example.'" W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts 174 (5th ed. 1984), quoting A. Herbert, Misleading Cases in the Common Law 12 (3d ed. 1928). </s> [Footnote 5 The problems with the Court's formulation are accentuated when expert evidence is adduced about the value that the material has to a discrete segment of the population - be they art scholars, scientists, or literary critics. [481 U.S. 497, 513] Certainly a jury could conclude that although those people reasonably find value in the material, the ordinary "reasonable person" would not. </s> [Footnote 6 The definitional problems the Court confronts buttress the conclusion that: </s> "none of the available formulas, including the one announced today, can reduce the vagueness to a tolerable level while at the same time striking an acceptable balance between the protections of the First and Fourteenth Amendments on the one hand, and on the other, the asserted state interest in regulating the dissemination of certain sexually oriented materials." Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49 ,84 (1973) (BRENNAN, J., dissenting). </s> [Footnote 7 See Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 508 (1957) (Douglas and Black, JJ., dissenting); Sewell v. Georgia, 435 U.S. 982, 988 (1978) (Stewart, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari); Paris Adult Theatre I, supra (BRENNAN, Stewart, and MARSHALL, JJ., dissenting); Smith v. United States, 431 U.S. 291, 311 (1977) (STEVENS, J., dissenting). It has been recognized recently that the "the bulk of scholarly commentary is of the opinion that the Supreme Court's resolution of and basic approach to the First Amendment issues" involved in obscenity laws "is incorrect," in that it fails to adequately protect First Amendment values. See Attorney General's Comm'n on Pornography, Final Report 261 (July 1986). </s> On the state level, the Oregon Supreme Court recently held that its State Constitution gives people in Oregon the right to "write, print, read, say, show, or sell anything to a consenting adult even though that expression may be generally or universally considered `obscene.'" State v. Henry, 302 Ore. 510, 525, 732 P.2d 9, 18 (1987). At least five States do [481 U.S. 497, 514] not have adult obscenity statutes, although they do criminalize certain materials harmful to minors. See Alaska Stat. Ann. 11.61.125 (1983); Me. Rev. Stat. Ann., Tit. 17, 2911 et seq. (1983); N. M. Stat. Ann. 30-37-1 et seq. (1980 and Supp. 1986); S. D. Comp. Laws Ann. 22-24-1 et seq. (1979); Vt. Stat. Ann., Tit. 13, 2801 et seq. (1974 and Supp. 1987). </s> [Footnote 8 See also Papachristou v. Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156, 162 -163, 168-169 (1972); Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U.S. 451, 453 (1939); Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 -393 (1926). We have been especially intolerant of vague statutes in the First Amendment area. See Smith v. Goguen, 415 U.S. 566, 573 (1974); Grayned v. Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108 -109 (1972); Interstate Circuit, Inc. v. Dallas, 390 U.S. 676, 684 -690 (1968); Cramp v. Board of Public Instruction of Orange County, 368 U.S. 278, 283 -284 (1961); Smith v. California, 361 U.S. 147, 151 (1959); Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507, 515 (1948). </s> [Footnote 9 In both trials, the State used the fact that the stores were open only to those over 18 years of age as proof that respondents knew the materials were obscene. See Tr. in People v. Pope, No. 83-cm-4116, pp. 317-318 (17th Jud. Cir. Ill. 1984); Tr. in People v. Morrison, No. 84-cm-4114, p. 303 (17th Jud. Cir. Ill. 1984). As I explained in Splawn v. California, 431 U.S. 595 (1977): </s> "Signs which identify the `adult' character of a motion picture theatre or a bookstore convey the message that sexually provocative entertainment is to be found within . . . . Such signs, however, also provide a warning to those who find erotic materials offensive that they should shop elsewhere for other kinds of books, magazines, or entertainment. Under any sensible regulatory scheme, truthful description of subject matter that is pleasing to some and offensive to others ought to be encouraged, not punished." Id., at 604 (dissenting opinion). </s> [Footnote 10 "The statements did make it clear that the films were `sexually provocative,' but that is hardly a confession that they were obscene." Id., at 603. </s> [Footnote 11 The insurmountable vagueness problems involved in criminalization are not, in my view, implicated with respect to civil regulation of sexually explicit material, an area in which the State retain substantial leeway. See Smith v. United States, 431 U.S., at 317 -321 (STEVENS, J., dissenting); [481 U.S. 497, 517] see generally Winters, supra, at 515 ("The standards of certainty in statutes punishing for offenses is higher than in those depending primarily upon civil sanction for enforcement"). Moreover, as long as it does not deny "access to the market," and allows "the viewing public" to "satisfy its appetite for sexually explicit fare," I believe that the State may regulate the sale and exhibition of even nonobscene material. See Young v. American Mini Theatres, Inc., 427 U.S. 50 (1976); Schad v. Mount Ephraim, 452 U.S. 61, 79 (1981) (STEVENS, J., concurring). As for prohibiting sale or exhibition of sexually explicit material to minors or material containing depiction of minors, it has long been established that the State may go beyond the constitutional definition of obscenity. See New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747 (1982); Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629 (1968); see also Ferber, supra, at 777 (STEVENS, J., concurring). </s> [Footnote 12 "After all, if a person has the right to receive information without regard to its social worth - that is, without regard to its obscenity - then it would seem to follow that a State could not constitutionally punish one who undertakes to provide that information to a willing, adult recipient." Paris Adult Theatre I, 413 U.S., at 86 , n. 9 (BRENNAN, J., dissenting); see also United States v. Reidel, 402 U.S. 351, 360 (1971) (MARSHALL, J., dissenting); United States v. 12 200-Ft. Reels of Film, 413 U.S. 123, 137 (1973) (Douglas, J., dissenting). </s> [481 U.S. 497, 520]

United States Supreme Court DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION et al. v. PUBLIC CITIZEN et al.(2004) No. 03-358 Argued: April 21, 2004Decided: June 7, 2004 </s> The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) requires federal agencies to analyze the environmental impact of their proposals and actions in an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), but Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations allow an agency to prepare a more limited Environmental Assessment (EA) if the agency's proposed action neither is categorically excluded from the EIS production requirement nor would clearly require production of an EIS. An agency that decides, pursuant to an EA, that no EIS is required must issue a "finding of no significant impact" (FONSI). The Clean Air Act (CAA) leaves States to develop "implementation plans" to comply with national air quality standards mandated by the Act, and requires federal agencies' actions to "conform" to those state plans, 42 U.S.C. §7506(c)(1). In 1982, Congress enacted a moratorium, prohibiting, inter alia, Mexican motor carriers from obtaining operating authority within the United States and authorizing the President to lift the moratorium. In 2001, the President announced his intention to lift the moratorium once new regulations were prepared to grant operating authority to Mexican motor carriers. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) published one proposed rule addressing the application form for such carriers and another addressing the establishment of a safety-inspection regime for carriers receiving operating authority. Congress subsequently provided, in §350 of a DOT appropriations Act, that no funds appropriated could be obligated or expended to review or process any Mexican motor carrier's applications until FMCSA implemented specific application and safety-monitoring requirements. Acting pursuant to NEPA, FMCSA issued an EA for its proposed rules. The EA did not consider the environmental impact that might be caused by the increased presence of Mexican trucks in the United States, concluding that any such impact would be an effect of the moratorium's modification, not the regulations' implementation. Concluding that the regulations' issuance would have no significant environmental impact, FMCSA issued a FONSI. In subsequent interim rules, FMCSA relied on the EA and FONSI to demonstrate compliance with NEPA, and determined that any emissions increase from the regulations would fall below the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) threshold levels needed to trigger a conformity review under the CAA. Before the moratorium was lifted, respondents sought judicial review of the proposed rules, arguing that their promulgation violated NEPA and the CAA. The Court of Appeals agreed, finding the EA deficient because it did not consider the environmental impact of lifting the moratorium, when that action was reasonably foreseeable at the time FMCSA prepared the EA and directing FMCSA to prepare an EIS and a full CAA conformity determination for the regulations. Held:Because FMCSA lacks discretion to prevent cross-border operations of Mexican motor carriers, neither NEPA nor the CAA requires FMCSA to evaluate the environmental effects of such operations. Pp.9-19. (a)FMCSA did not violate NEPA or the relevant CEQ regulations. Pp.9-16. </s> (1)An agency's decision not to prepare an EIS can be set aside only if it is arbitrary and capricious, see 5 U.S.C. §706(2)(A). Respondents argue that the issuance of a FONSI was arbitrary and capricious because the EA did not take into account the environmental effects of an increase in cross-border operations of Mexican motor carriers. The relevant question, under NEPA, is whether that increase, and the correlative release of emissions, is an "effect," 40 CFR §1508.8, of FMCSA's rules; if not, FMCSA's failure to address these effects in the EA did not violate NEPA, and the FONSI's issuance cannot be arbitrary and capricious. Pp.9-10. </s> (2)Respondents have forfeited any objection to the EA on the ground that it did not adequately discuss potential alternatives to the proposed action because respondents never identified in their comments to the rules any alternatives beyond those the EA evaluated. Pp.10-11. </s> (3)Respondents argue that the EA must take the increased cross-border operations' environmental effects into account because §350's expenditure bar makes it impossible for any Mexican truck to operate in the United States until the regulations are issued, and hence the trucks' entry is a "reasonably foreseeable" indirect effect of the issuance of the regulations. 40 CFR §1508.8. Critically, that argument overlooks FMCSA's inability to countermand the President's lifting of the moratorium or otherwise categorically to exclude Mexican trucks from operating in the United States. While §350 restricted FMCSA's ability to authorize such operations, FMCSA remains subject to 49 U.S.C. §13902(a)(1)'s mandate that it register any motor carrier willing and able to comply with various safety and financial responsibility rules. Only the moratorium prevented it from doing so for Mexican trucks before 2001. Respondents must rest on "but for" causation, where an agency's action is considered a cause of an environmental effect even when the agency has no authority to prevent the effect. However, "but for" causation is insufficient to make an agency responsible for a particular effect under NEPA and the relevant regulations. NEPA requires a "reasonably close causal relationship" akin to proximate cause in tort law. Metropolitan Edison Co. v. People Against Nuclear Energy, 460 U.S. 766, 774. Also, inherent in NEPA and its implementing regulations is a "rule of reason," which ensures that agencies determine whether and to what extent to prepare an EIS based on the usefulness of any new potential information to the decisionmaking process. The underlying policies behind NEPA and Congress' intent, as informed by the "rule of reason," make clear that the causal connection between the proposed regulations and the entry of Mexican trucks is insufficient to make FMCSA responsible under NEPA to consider the environmental effects of entry. Neither of the purposes of NEPA's EIS requirement--to ensure both that an agency has information to make its decision and that the public receives information so it might also play a role in the decisionmaking process--will be fulfilled by requiring FMCSA to consider the environmental impact at issue. Since FMCSA has no ability to prevent such cross-border operations, it lacks the power to act on whatever information might be contained in an EIS and could not act on whatever input the public could provide. This analysis is not changed by the CEQ regulation requiring an agency to evaluate the "cumulative impact" of its action, 40 CFR §1508.7, since that rule does not require FMCSA to treat the lifting of the moratorium itself or the consequences from that lifting as an effect of its rules promulgation. Pp.11-16. </s> (b)FMCSA did not act improperly by not performing a full conformity analysis pursuant to the CAA and relevant regulations. To ensure that its actions are consistent with 42 U.S.C. §7606, a federal agency must undertake "a conformity determination ... where the total of direct and indirect emissions in a nonattainment or maintenance area caused by [the] action would equal or exceed" certain threshold levels established by the EPA. 40 CFR §93.153(b). "Direct emissions" "are caused or initiated by the Federal action and occur at the same time and place as the action," §93.152; and "indirect emissions" are "caused by the Federal action" but may occur later in time, and may be practicably controlled or maintained by the federal agency, ibid. Some sort of "but for" causation is sufficient for evaluating causation in the conformity review process. See ibid. Because it excluded emissions attributable to the increased presence of Mexican trucks within the United States, FMCSA concluded that its regulations would not exceed EPA thresholds. Although arguably FMCSA's proposed regulations would be "but for" causes of the entry of Mexican trucks into the United States, such trucks' emissions are not "direct" because they will not occur at the same time or place as the promulgation of the regulations. And they are not "indirect" because FMCSA cannot practicably control or maintain control over the emissions: FMCSA has no ability to countermand the President's decision to lift the moratorium or to act categorically to prevent Mexican carriers from registering and Mexican trucks from entering the country; and once the regulations are promulgated, FMCSA will not be able to regulate any aspect of vehicle exhaust from those trucks. Pp.17-19. 316 F.3d 1002, reversed and remanded. Thomas, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. </s> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, etal.,PETITIONERS v. PUBLIC CITIZEN etal. on writ of certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit [June 7, 2004] </s> Justice Thomas delivered the opinion of the Court. </s> In this case, we confront the question whether the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), 83 Stat. 852 (codified, as amended, at 42 U.S.C. §§4321-4370f), and the Clean Air Act (CAA), 42 U.S.C. §§7401-7671q, require the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to evaluate the environmental effects of cross-border operations of Mexican-domiciled motor carriers, where FMCSA's promulgation of certain regulations would allow such cross-border operations to occur. Because FMCSA lacks discretion to prevent these cross-border operations, we conclude that these statutes impose no such requirement on FMCSA. I </s> Due to the complex statutory and regulatory provisions implicated in this case, we begin with a brief overview of the relevant statutes. We then turn to the factual and procedural background. A 1 </s> Signed into law on January 1, 1970, NEPA establishes a "national policy [to] encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment," and was intended to reduce or eliminate environmental damage and to promote "the understanding of the ecological systems and natural resources important to" the United States. 42 U.S.C. §4321. "NEPA itself does not mandate particular results" in order to accomplish these ends. Robertson v. Methow Valley Citizens Council, 490 U.S. 332, 350 (1989). Rather, NEPA imposes only procedural requirements on federal agencies with a particular focus on requiring agencies to undertake analyses of the environmental impact of their proposals and actions. See id., at 349-350. At the heart of NEPA is a requirement that federal agencies "include in every recommendation or report on proposals for legislation and other major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment, a detailed statement by the responsible official on--(i) the environmental impact of the proposed action, (ii) any adverse environmental effects which cannot be avoided should the proposal be implemented, (iii) alternatives to the proposed action, (iv) the relationship between local short-term uses of man's environment and the maintenance and enhancement of long-term productivity, and (v) any irreversible and irretrievable commitments of resources which would be involved in the proposed action should it be implemented." 42 U.S.C. §4332(2)(C). </s> This detailed statement is called an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ), established by NEPA with authority to issue regulations interpreting it, has promulgated regulations to guide federal agencies in determining what actions are subject to that statutory requirement. See 40 CFR §1500.3 (2003). The CEQ regulations allow an agency to prepare a more limited document, an Environmental Assessment (EA), if the agency's proposed action neither is categorically excluded from the requirement to produce an EIS nor would clearly require the production of an EIS. See §§1501.4(a)-(b). The EA is to be a "concise public document" that "[b]riefly provide[s] sufficient evidence and analysis for determining whether to prepare an [EIS]." §1508.9(a). If, pursuant to the EA, an agency determines that an EIS is not required under applicable CEQ regulations, it must issue a "finding of no significant impact" (FONSI), which briefly presents the reasons why the proposed agency action will not have a significant impact on the human environment. See §§1501.4(e), 1508.13. 2 </s> What is known as the CAA became law in 1963, 77 Stat. 393. In 1970, Congress substantially amended the CAA into roughly its current form. 84 Stat. 1713. The 1970 amendments mandated national air quality standards and deadlines for their attainment, while leaving to the States the development of "implementation plan[s]" to comply with the federal standards. Ibid. In 1977, Congress again amended the CAA, 91 Stat. 749, to prohibit the Federal Government and its agencies from "engag[ing] in, support[ing] in any way or provid[ing] financial assistance for, licens[ing] or permit[ting], or approv[ing], any activity which does not conform to [a state] implementation plan." 42 U.S.C. §7506(c)(1). The definition of "conformity" includes restrictions on, for instance, "increas[ing] the frequency or severity of any existing violation of any standard in any area," or "delay[ing] timely attainment of any standard ... in any area." §7506(c)(1)(B). These safeguards prevent the Federal Government from interfering with the States' abilities to comply with the CAA's requirements. 3 </s> FMCSA, an agency within the Department of Transportation (DOT), is responsible for motor carrier safety and registration. See 49 U.S.C. §113(f). FMCSA has a variety of statutory mandates, including "ensur[ing]" safety, §31136, establishing minimum levels of financial responsibility for motor carriers, §31139, and prescribing federal standards for safety inspections of commercial motor vehicles, §31142. Importantly, FMCSA has only limited discretion regarding motor vehicle carrier registration: It must grant registration to all domestic or foreign motor carriers that are "willing and able to comply with" the applicable safety, fitness, and financial-responsibility requirements. §13902(a)(1). FMCSA has no statutory authority to impose or enforce emissions controls or to establish environmental requirements unrelated to motor carrier safety. B </s> We now turn to the factual and procedural background of this case. Before 1982, motor carriers domiciled in Canada and Mexico could obtain certification to operate within the United States from the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC).1 In 1982, Congress, concerned about discriminatory treatment of United States motor carriers in Mexico and Canada, enacted a 2-year moratorium on new grants of operating authority. Congress authorized the President to extend the moratorium beyond the 2-year period if Canada or Mexico continued to interfere with United States motor carriers, and also authorized the President to lift or modify the moratorium if he determined that doing so was in the national interest. 49 U.S.C. §10922(l) (1982 ed.). Although the moratorium on Canadian motor carriers was quickly lifted, the moratorium on Mexican motor carriers remained, and was extended by the President. In December 1992, the leaders of Mexico, Canada, and the United States signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 32 I.L.M. 605 (1993). As part of NAFTA, the United States agreed to phase out the moratorium and permit Mexican motor carriers to obtain operating authority within the United States' interior by January 2000. On NAFTA's effective date (January 1, 1994), the President began to lift the trade moratorium by allowing the licensing of Mexican carriers to provide some bus services in the United States. The President, however, did not continue to ease the moratorium on the timetable specified by NAFTA, as concerns about the adequacy of Mexico's regulation of motor carrier safety remained. </s> The Government of Mexico challenged the United States' implementation of NAFTA's motor carrier provisions under NAFTA's dispute-resolution process, and in February 2001, an international arbitration panel determined that the United States' "blanket refusal" of Mexican motor carrier applications breached the United States' obligations under NAFTA. App. 279, ¶ ;295. Shortly thereafter, the President made clear his intention to lift the moratorium on Mexican motor carrier certification following the preparation of new regulations governing grants of operating authority to Mexican motor carriers. </s> In May 2001, FMCSA published for comment proposed rules concerning safety regulation of Mexican motor carriers. One rule (the Application Rule) addressed the establishment of a new application form for Mexican motor carriers that seek authorization to operate within the United States. Another rule (the Safety Monitoring Rule) addressed the establishment of a safety-inspection regime for all Mexican motor carriers that would receive operating authority under the Application Rule. </s> In December 2001, Congress enacted the Department of Transportation and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2002, 115 Stat. 833. Section 350 of this Act, id., at 864, provided that no funds appropriated under the Act could be obligated or expended to review or to process any application by a Mexican motor carrier for authority to operate in the interior of the United States until FMCSA implemented specific application and safety-monitoring requirements for Mexican carriers. Some of these requirements went beyond those proposed by FMCSA in the Application and Safety Monitoring Rules. Congress extended the §350 conditions to appropriations for Fiscal Years 2003 and 2004. </s> In January 2002, acting pursuant to NEPA's mandates, FMCSA issued a programmatic EA for the proposed Application and Safety Monitoring Rules. FMCSA's EA evaluated the environmental impact associated with three separate scenarios: where the President did not lift the moratorium; where the President did but where (contrary to what was legally possible) FMCSA did not issue any new regulations; and the Proposed Action Alternative, where the President would modify the moratorium and where FMCSA would adopt the proposed regulations. The EA considered the environmental impact in the categories of traffic and congestion, public safety and health, air quality, noise, socioeconomic factors, and environmental justice. Vital to the EA's analysis, however, was the assumption that there would be no change in trade volume between the United States and Mexico due to the issuance of the regulations. FMCSA did note that §350's restrictions made it impossible for Mexican motor carriers to operate in the interior of the United States before FMCSA's issuance of the regulations. But, FMCSA determined that "this and any other associated effects in trade characteristics would be the result of the modification of the moratorium" by the President, not a result of FMCSA's implementation of the proposed safety regulations. App. 60. Because FMCSA concluded that the entry of the Mexican trucks was not an "effect" of its regulations, it did not consider any environmental impact that might be caused by the increased presence of Mexican trucks within the United States. </s> The particular environmental effects on which the EA focused, then, were those likely to arise from the increase in the number of roadside inspections of Mexican trucks and buses due to the proposed regulations. The EA concluded that these effects (such as a slight increase in emissions, noise from the trucks, and possible danger to passing motorists) were minor and could be addressed and avoided in the inspections process itself. The EA also noted that the increase of inspection-related emissions would be at least partially offset by the fact that the safety requirements would reduce the number of Mexican trucks operating in the United States. Due to these calculations, the EA concluded that the issuance of the proposed regulations would have no significant impact on the environment, and hence FMCSA, on the same day as it released the EA, issued a FONSI. </s> On March 19, 2002, FMCSA issued the two interim rules, delaying their effective date until May 3, 2002, to allow public comment on provisions that FMCSA added to satisfy the requirements of §350. In the regulatory preambles, FMCSA relied on its EA and its FONSI to demonstrate compliance with NEPA. FMCSA also addressed the CAA in the preambles, determining that it did not need to perform a "conformity review" of the proposed regulations under 42 U.S.C. §7506(c)(1) because the increase in emissions from these regulations would fall below the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) threshold levels needed to trigger such a review. </s> In November 2002, the President lifted the moratorium on qualified Mexican motor carriers. Before this action, however, respondents filed petitions for judicial review of the Application and Safety Monitoring Rules, arguing that the rules were promulgated in violation of NEPA and the CAA. The Court of Appeals agreed with respondents, granted the petitions, and set aside the rules. 316 F.3d 1002 (CA9 2003). </s> The Court of Appeals concluded that the EA was deficient because it failed to give adequate consideration to the overall environmental impact of lifting the moratorium on the cross-border operation of Mexican motor carriers. According to the Court of Appeals, FMCSA was required to consider the environmental effects of the entry of Mexican trucks because "the President's rescission of the moratorium was 'reasonably foreseeable' at the time the EA was prepared and the decision not to prepare an EIS was made." Id., at 1022 (quoting 40 CFR §§1508.7, 1508.8(b) (2003)). Due to this perceived deficiency, the Court of Appeals remanded the case for preparation of a full EIS. </s> The Court of Appeals also directed FMCSA to prepare a full CAA conformity determination for the challenged regulations. It concluded that FMCSA's determination that emissions attributable to the challenged rules would be below the threshold levels was not reliable because the agency's CAA determination reflected the "illusory distinction between the effects of the regulations themselves and the effects of the presidential rescission of the moratorium on Mexican truck entry." 316 F.3d, at 1030. </s> We granted certiorari, 540 U.S. __ (2003), and now reverse. II </s> An agency's decision not to prepare an EIS can be set aside only upon a showing that it was "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law." 5 U.S.C. §706(2)(A). See also Marsh v. Oregon Natural Resources Council, 490 U.S. 360, 375-376 (1989); Kleppe v. Sierra Club, 427 U.S. 390, 412 (1976). Here, FMCSA based its FONSI upon the analysis contained within its EA; respondents argue that the issuance of the FONSI was arbitrary and capricious because the EA's analysis was flawed. In particular, respondents criticize the EA's failure to take into account the various environmental effects caused by the increase in cross-border operations of Mexican motor carriers. Under NEPA, an agency is required to provide an EIS only if it will be undertaking a "major Federal actio[n]," which "significantly affect[s] the quality of the human environment." 42 U.S.C. §4332(2)(C). Under applicable CEQ regulations, "[m]ajor Federal action" is defined to "includ[e] actions with effects that may be major and which are potentially subject to Federal control and responsibility." 40 CFR §1508.18 (2003). "Effects" is defined to "include: (a) Direct effects, which are caused by the action and occur at the same time and place," and "(b) Indirect effects, which are caused by the action and are later in time or farther removed in distance, but are still reasonably foreseeable." §1508.8. Thus, the relevant question is whether the increase in cross-border operations of Mexican motor carriers, with the correlative release of emissions by Mexican trucks, is an "effect" of FMCSA's issuance of the Application and Safety Monitoring Rules; if not, FMCSA's failure to address these effects in its EA did not violate NEPA, and so FMCSA's issuance of a FONSI cannot be arbitrary and capricious. A </s> To answer this question, we begin by explaining what this case does not involve. What is not properly before us, despite respondents' argument to the contrary, see Brief for Respondents 38-41, is any challenge to the EA due to its failure properly to consider possible alternatives to the proposed action (i.e., the issuance of the challenged rules) that would mitigate the environmental impact of the authorization of cross-border operations by Mexican motor carriers. Persons challenging an agency's compliance with NEPA must "structure their participation so that it ... alerts the agency to the [parties'] position and contentions," in order to allow the agency to give the issue meaningful consideration. Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 435 U.S. 519, 553 (1978). None of the respondents identified in their comments any rulemaking alternatives beyond those evaluated in the EA, and none urged FMCSA to consider alternatives. Because respondents did not raise these particular objections to the EA, FMCSA was not given the opportunity to examine any proposed alternatives to determine if they were reasonably available. Respondents have therefore forfeited any objection to the EA on the ground that it failed adequately to discuss potential alternatives to the proposed action. Admittedly, the agency bears the primary responsibility to ensure that it complies with NEPA, see ibid., and an EA's or an EIS' flaws might be so obvious that there is no need for a commentator to point them out specifically in order to preserve its ability to challenge a proposed action. But that situation is not before us. With respect to FMCSA's ability to mitigate, respondents can argue only that FMCSA could regulate emissions from Mexican trucks indirectly, through making the safety-registration process more onerous or by removing older, more polluting trucks through more effective enforcement of motor carrier safety standards. But respondents fail to identify any evidence that shows that any effect from these possible actions would be significant, or even noticeable, for air-quality purposes. The connection between enforcement of motor carrier safety and the environmental harms alleged in this case is also tenuous at best. Nor is it clear that FMCSA could, consistent with its limited statutory mandates, reasonably impose on Mexican carriers standards beyond those already required in its proposed regulations. B </s> With this point aside, respondents have only one complaint with respect to the EA: It did not take into account the environmental effects of increased cross-border operations of Mexican motor carriers. Respondents' argument that FMCSA was required to consider these effects is simple. Under §350, FMCSA is barred from expending any funds to process or review any applications by Mexican motor carriers until FMCSA implemented a variety of specific application and safety-monitoring requirements for Mexican carriers. This expenditure bar makes it impossible for any Mexican motor carrier to receive authorization to operate within the United States until FMCSA issued the regulations challenged here. The promulgation of the regulations, the argument goes, would "caus[e]" the entry of Mexican trucks (and hence also cause any emissions such trucks would produce), and the entry of the trucks is "reasonably foreseeable." 40 CFR §1508.8 (2003). Thus, the argument concludes, under the relevant CEQ regulations, FMCSA must take these emissions into account in its EA when evaluating whether to produce an EIS. Respondents' argument, however, overlooks a critical feature of this case: FMCSA has no ability to countermand the President's lifting of the moratorium or otherwise categorically to exclude Mexican motor carriers from operating within the United States. To be sure, §350 did restrict the ability of FMCSA to authorize cross-border operations of Mexican motor carriers, but Congress did not otherwise modify FMCSA's statutory mandates. In particular, FMCSA remains subject to the mandate of 49 U.S.C. §13902(a)(1), that FMCSA "shall register a person to provide transportation ... as a motor carrier if [it] finds that the person is willing and able to comply with" the safety and financial responsibility requirements established by the Department of Transportation. (Emphasis added.) Under FMCSA's entirely reasonable reading of this provision, it must certify any motor carrier that can show that it is willing and able to comply with the various substantive requirements for safety and financial responsibility contained in DOT regulations; only the moratorium prevented it from doing so for Mexican motor carriers before 2001. App. 51-55. Thus, upon the lifting of the moratorium, if FMCSA refused to authorize a Mexican motor carrier for cross-border services, where the Mexican motor carrier was willing and able to comply with the various substantive safety and financial responsibilities rules, it would violate §13902(a)(1). </s> If it were truly impossible for FMCSA to comply with both §350 and §13902(a)(1), then we would be presented with an irreconcilable conflict of laws. As the later enacted provision, §350 would quite possibly win out. See Posadas v. National City Bank, 296 U.S. 497, 503 (1936). But FMCSA can easily satisfy both mandates: It can issue the application and safety inspection rules required by §350, and start processing applications by Mexican motor carriers and authorize those that satisfy §13902(a)(1)'s conditions. Without a conflict, then, FMCSA must comply with all of its statutory mandates. </s> Respondents must rest, then, on a particularly unyielding variation of "but for" causation, where an agency's action is considered a cause of an environmental effect even when the agency has no authority to prevent the effect. However, a "but for" causal relationship is insufficient to make an agency responsible for a particular effect under NEPA and the relevant regulations. As this Court held in Metropolitan Edison Co. v. People Against Nuclear Energy, 460 U.S. 766, 774 (1983), NEPA requires "a reasonably close causal relationship" between the environmental effect and the alleged cause. The Court analogized this requirement to the "familiar doctrine of proximate cause from tort law." Ibid. In particular, "courts must look to the underlying policies or legislative intent in order to draw a manageable line between those causal changes that may make an actor responsible for an effect and those that do not." Id., at 774, n.7. See also W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Law of Torts 264, 274-275 (5th ed. 1984) (proximate cause analysis turns on policy considerations and considerations of the "legal responsibility" of actors). </s> Also, inherent in NEPA and its implementing regulations is a "rule of reason," which ensures that agencies determine whether and to what extent to prepare an EIS based on the usefulness of any new potential information to the decisionmaking process. See Marsh, 422 U.S. 289, 325 (1975); see also 40 CFR §§1500.1(b)-(c) (2003). </s> In these circumstances, the underlying policies behind NEPA and Congress' intent, as informed by the "rule of reason," make clear that the causal connection between FMCSA's issuance of the proposed regulations and the entry of the Mexican trucks is insufficient to make FMCSA responsible under NEPA to consider the environmental effects of the entry. The NEPA EIS requirement serves two purposes. First, "[i]t ensures that the agency, in reaching its decision, will have available, and will carefully consider, detailed information concerning significant environmental impacts." Robertson, 490 U.S., at 349. Second, it "guarantees that the relevant information will be made available to the larger audience that may also play a role in both the decisionmaking process and the implementation of that decision." Ibid. Requiring FMCSA to consider the environmental effects of the entry of Mexican trucks would fulfil neither of these statutory purposes. Since FMCSA has no ability categorically to prevent the cross-border operations of Mexican motor carriers, the environmental impact of the cross-border operations would have no effect on FMCSA's decisionmaking--FMCSA simply lacks the power to act on whatever information might be contained in the EIS. </s> Similarly, the informational purpose is not served. The "informational role" of an EIS is to "giv[e] the public the assurance that the agency 'has indeed considered environmental concerns in its decisionmaking process,' Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. [v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 462 U.S. 87, 97 (1983)], and, perhaps more significantly, provid[e] a springboard for public comment" in the agency decisionmaking process itself, ibid. The purpose here is to ensure that the "larger audience," ibid., can provide input as necessary to the agency making the relevant decisions. See 40 CFR §1500.1(c) (2003) ("NEPA's purpose is not to generate paperwork--even excellent paperwork--but to foster excellent action. The NEPA process is intended to help public officials make decisions that are based on understanding of environmental consequences, and take actions that protect, restore, and enhance the environment"); §1502.1 ("The primary purpose of an environmental impact statement is to serve as an action-forcing device to insure that the policies and goals defined in the Act are infused into the ongoing programs and actions of the Federal Government"). But here, the "larger audience" can have no impact on FMCSA's decisionmaking, since, as just noted, FMCSA simply could not act on whatever input this "larger audience" could provide.2 </s> It would not, therefore, satisfy NEPA's "rule of reason" to require an agency to prepare a full EIS due to the environmental impact of an action it could not refuse to perform. Put another way, the legally relevant cause of the entry of the Mexican trucks is not FMCSA's action, but instead the actions of the President in lifting the mora-torium and those of Congress in granting the President this authority while simultaneously limiting FMCSA's discretion. </s> Consideration of the CEQ's "cumulative impact" regulation does not change this analysis. An agency is required to evaluate the "[c]umulative impact" of its action, which is defined as "the impact on the environment which results from the incremental impact of the action when added to other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions regardless of what agency (Federal or non-Federal) or person undertakes such other actions." §1508.7. The "cumulative impact" regulation required FMCSA to consider the "incremental impact" of the safety rules themselves, in the context of the President's lifting of the moratorium and other relevant circumstances. But this is exactly what FMCSA did in its EA. FMCSA appropriately and reasonably examined the incremental impact of its safety rules assuming the President's modification of the moratorium (and, hence, assuming the increase in cross-border operations of Mexican motor carriers). The "cumulative impact" regulation does not require FMCSA to treat the lifting of the moratorium itself, or consequences from the lifting of the moratorium, as an effect of its promulgation of its Application and Safety Monitoring Rules.3 C </s> We hold that where an agency has no ability to prevent a certain effect due to its limited statutory authority over the relevant actions, the agency cannot be considered a legally relevant "cause" of the effect. Hence, under NEPA and the implementing CEQ regulations, the agency need not consider these effects in its EA when determining whether its action is a "major Federal action." Because the President, not FMCSA, could authorize (or not authorize) cross-border operations from Mexican motor carriers, and because FMCSA has no discretion to prevent the entry of Mexican trucks, its EA did not need to consider the environmental effects arising from the entry.4 III </s> Under the CAA, a federal "department, agency, or instrumentality" may not, generally, "engage in, support in any way or provide financial assistance for, license or permit, or approve, any activity" that violates an applicable State air-quality implementation plan. 42 U.S.C. §7506(c)(1); 40 CFR §93.150 (2003). Federal agencies must, in many circumstances, undertake a conformity determination with respect to a proposed action, to ensure that the action is consistent with §7606(c)(1). See 40 CFR §§93.150(b), 93.153(a)-(b). However, an agency is exempt from the general conformity determination under the CAA if its action would not cause new emissions to exceed certain threshold emission rates set forth in §93.153(b). FMCSA determined that its proposed regulations would not cause emissions to exceed the relevant threshold amounts and therefore concluded that the issuance of its regulations would comply with the CAA. App. to Pet. for Cert. 65a-66a, 155a. Critical to its calculations was its consideration of only those emissions that would occur from the increased roadside inspections of Mexican trucks; like its NEPA analysis, FMCSA's CAA analysis did not consider any emissions attributable to the increased presence of Mexican trucks within the United States. EPA's rules provide that "a conformity determination is required for each pollutant where the total of direct and indirect emissions in a nonattainment or maintenance area caused by a Federal action would equal or exceed"the threshold levels established by the EPA. 40 CFR §93.153(b). "Direct emissions" are defined as those covered emissions "that are caused or initiated by the Federal action and occur at the same time and place as the action." §93.152. The term "indirect emissions" means covered emissions that "(1) Are caused by the Federal action, but may occur later in time and/or may be further removed in distance from the action itself but are still reasonably foreseeable; and (2) The Federal agency can practicably control and will maintain control over due to a continuing program responsibility of the Federal agency." Ibid. </s> Unlike the regulations implementing NEPA, the EPA's CAA regulations have defined the term "[c]aused by." Ibid. In particular, emissions are "[c]aused by" a Federal action if the "emissions ... would not ... occur in the absence of the Federal action." Ibid. Thus, the EPA has made clear that for purposes of evaluating causation in the conformity review process, some sort of "but for" causation is sufficient. </s> Although arguably FMCSA's proposed regulations would be "but for" causes of the entry of Mexican trucks into the United States, the emissions from these trucks are neither "direct" nor "indirect" emissions. First, the emissions from the Mexican trucks are not "direct" because they will not occur at the same time or at the same place as the promulgation of the regulations. </s> Second, FMCSA cannot practicably control, nor will it maintain control, over these emissions. As discussed above, FMCSA does not have the ability to countermand the President's decision to lift the moratorium, nor could it act categorically to prevent Mexican carriers from being registered or Mexican trucks from entering the United States. Once the regulations are promulgated, FMCSA would have no ability to regulate any aspect of vehicle exhaust from these Mexican trucks. FMCSA could not refuse to register Mexican motor carriers simply on the ground that their trucks would pollute excessively. FMCSA cannot determine whether registered carriers actually will bring trucks into the United States, cannot control the routes the carriers take, and cannot determine what the trucks will emit. Any reduction in emissions that would occur at the hands of FMCSA would be mere happenstance. It cannot be said that FMCSA "practicably control[s]" or "will maintain control" over the vehicle emissions from the Mexican trucks, and it follows that the emissions from the Mexican trucks are not "indirect emissions." Ibid.; see also Determining Conformity of General Federal Actions to State or Federal Implementation Plans, 58 Fed. Reg. 63214, 63221 (1993) ("The EPA does not believe that Congress intended to extend the prohibitions and responsibilities to cases where, although licensing or approving action is a required initial step for a subsequent activity that causes emissions, the agency has no control over that subsequent activity"). </s> The emissions from the Mexican trucks are neither "direct" nor "indirect" emissions caused by the issuance of FMCSA's proposed regulations. Thus, FMCSA did not violate the CAA or the applicable regulations by failing to consider them when it evaluated whether it needed to perform a full "conformity determination." IV </s> FMCSA did not violate NEPA or the relevant CEQ regulations when it did not consider the environmental effect of the increase in cross-border operations of Mexican motor carriers in its EA. Nor did FMCSA act improperly by not performing, pursuant to the CAA and relevant regulations, a full conformity review analysis for its proposed regulations. We therefore reject respondents' challenge to the procedures used in promulgating these regulations. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. </s> FOOTNOTESFootnote 1In 1995, Congress abolished the ICC and transferred most of its responsibilities to the Secretary of Transportation. See ICC Termination Act of 1995, §101, 109 Stat. 803. In 1999, Congress transferred responsibility for motor carrier safety within DOT to the newly created FMCSA. See Motor Carrier Safety Improvement Act of 1999, 113 Stat. 1748. Footnote 2Respondents are left with arguing that an EIS would be useful for informational purposes entirely outside FMCSA's decisionmaking process. See Brief for Respondents 42. But such an argument overlooks NEPA's core focus on improving agency decisionmaking. See 40 CFR §§1500.1, 1500.2, 1502.1 (2003). Footnote 3The Court of Appeals and respondents contend that the EA contained numerous other errors, but their contentions are premised on the conclusion that FMCSA was required to take into account the increased cross-border operations of Mexican motor carriers. Footnote 4Respondents argue that Congress ratified the Court of Appeals' decision when it, after the lower court's opinion, reenacted §350 in two appropriations bills. The doctrine of ratification states that "Congress is presumed to be aware of [a] ... judicial interpretation of a statute and to adopt that interpretation when it re-enacts a statute without change." Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U.S. 575, 580 (1978). But this case involves the interpretation of NEPA and the CAA, not §350. Indeed, the precise requirements of §350 were not below, and are not here, in dispute. Hence, congressional reenactment of §350 tells us nothing about Congress' view as to the requirements of NEPA and the CAA, and so, on the legal issues involved in this case, Congress has been entirely silent.