Court Opinion

ID: 9601319
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:41:42.123683+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:53:22.522495
License: Public Domain

BERNSTEIN, Justice
(dissenting).
In my concurring opinion in the original decision in this case I stated that the statute would be constitutional only if it provided for a hearing which complied with the requirements of procedural due process and at which the State had the burden of proving the disloyalty of those excluded from public employment. My analysis of Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360, 84 S.Ct. 360, 84 S.Ct. 1316, 12 L.Ed.2d 377, now convinces me that such a hearing could not save the constitutionality of the Arizona statute.
The majority ignores the troublesome clauses of A.R.S. § 38-231, subd. E. These are the provisions of the Act which prohibit one from becoming or remaining a member of certain organizations. One of its provisions prohibits membership in “ * * * any other organization having for one of its purposes the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the state of Arizona or any of its political subdivisions * * * » (Emphasis supplied) Let us consider a scientist, a teacher in one of our universities. He could not know whether membership is prohibited in an international scientific organization which includes members from neutralist nations and Communist bloc nations — the latter admittedly dedicated to the overthrow of our government and which control the organization — even though access to the scientific information of the organization is available only to its members.
“Is it subversive activity, for example, to attend and participate in international conventions of mathematicians and exchange views with scholars from Communist countries?” Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. at 369, 84 S.Ct. at 1321.
*148Though all might agree that the principal purpose of such an organization is’scientific, the statute makes his membership a crime if any subordinate purpose is the overthrow of the state government. The vice of vagueness here is that the scientist cannot know whether membership in the organization will result in prosecution for a violation of § 38-231, subd. E or in honors from his university for the encyclopedic knowledge acquired in his field in part through his membership.
“It will not do to say that a prosecutor’s sense of fairness and the Constitution would prevent a successful perjury prosecution for some of the activities seemingly embraced within the sweeping statutory definitions. The hazard of being prosecuted for knowing but guiltless behavior nevertheless remains. ‘It would be blinking reality not to acknowledge that there are some among us always ready to affix a Communist label upon those whose ideas they violently oppose. And experience teaches us that prosecutors too are human.’ ” Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. at 373, 84 S.Ct. at 1323.
In such a case even approval of his membership in the organization by the United States State Department could not assure him that he would not be prosecuted, as this is a state criminal statute.
“Those with a conscientious regard for what they solemnly swear or affirm, sensitive' to the perils posed by the oath’s indefinite langimge, avoid the risk of loss of employment, and perhaps profession, only by restricting their conduct to that which is unquestionably safe.” Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. at 372, 84 S.Ct. at 1323.
Free association may not be so inhibited.
In view of the direction of the United States Supreme Court that we reconsider this case in the light of what was said in Baggett, I do not discuss the violence done by this statute in hampering the right of free association guaranteed by the First Amendment.
I respectfully dissent.