Court Opinion

ID: 9841932
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:11:38.897418+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:23.949598
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Sutherland,
dissenting.
Mr. Justice Van Devanter, Mr. Justice McReynolds, Mr. Justice Butler and I think the judgment below should be reversed.
One of the points made in the court below, and assigned as error here is that the statute involved, as applied, *134abridges the freedom of the press in violation of the First Amendment.
The Associated Press is engaged in collecting, editing and distributing news to its members, publishers of some 1300 newspapers throughout the United States. These newspapers represent many diverse policies and many differences in point of view. It, obviously, is essential that the news furnished should not only be without suppression but that it should be, as far as possible, free from color, bias or distortion. Such is the long-established policy of the Associated Press. If the Congressional act here involved, upon its face or in its present application, abridges the freedom of petitioner to carry its policy into effect, the act to that extent falls under the condemnation of the First Amendment. We shall confine ourselves to that question, the gravity of which is evident; but we do not mean thereby to record our assent to all that has been said with regard to other questions in the case.
The first ten amendments to the Constitution safeguard the fundamental rights therein mentioned from every form of unpermitted federal legislation. The due process clause of the Fifth Amendment protects the person against deprivation of life, liberty or property except by due process of law. “Liberty” is a word of wide meaning, and, without more, would have included the various liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment. De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U. S. 353, 364, and cases cited; Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U. S. 233, 243-245; Near v. Minnesota, 283 U. S. 697, 707; Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510, 534-535.
But the framers of the Bill of Rights, regarding certain liberties as so vital that legislative denial of them should be specifically foreclosed, provided by the First Amendment:
*135“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The difference between the two amendments is an emphatic one and readily apparent. Deprivation of a liberty not embraced by the First Amendment, as for example the liberty of contract, is qualified by the phrase “without due process of law”; but those liberties enumerated in the First Amendment are guaranteed without qualification, the object and effect of which is to put them in a category apart and make them incapable of abridgment by any process of law. That this is inflexibly true of the clause in respect of religion and religious liberty cannot be doubted; and it is true of the other clauses save as they may be subject in some degree to rare and extreme exigencies such as, for example, a state of war. Legislation which contravenes the liberties of the First Amendment might not contravene liberties of another kind falling only within the terms of the Fifth Amendment. Thus, we have held that the governmental power of taxation, one of the least limitable of the powers, may not be exerted so as to abridge the freedom of the press (Grosjean v. American Press Co., supra), albeit the same tax might be entirely valid if challenged under the “liberty” guaranty of the Fifth Amendment, apart from those liberties embraced by the First. Compare Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Mottley, 219 U. S. 467, 482-483.
No one can read the long history which records the stern and often bloody struggles by which these cardinal rights were secured, without realizing how necessary it is to preserve them against any infringement, however slight. For, as Mr. Justice Bradley said in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 635, “illegitimate and unconstitutional practices get their first footing in that way, namely, *136by silent approaches and slight deviations from legal modes of procedure. . . . It is the duty of courts to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon. Their motto should be obsta principiis.” “Experience should teach us,” it was said in another case, “to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men bom to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” Olmstead v. United States, (dissent), 277 U. S. 471, 479. A little water, trickling here and there through a dam, is a small matter in itself; but it may be a sinister menace to the security of the dam, which those living in the valley below will do well to heed.
The destruction or abridgment of a free press — which constitutes one of the most dependable avenues through which information of public and governmental activities may be transmitted to the people — would be an event so evil in its consequences that the least approach toward that end should be halted at the threshold.
The grants of the Constitution always are to be read in the light of the restrictions. Thus, the exercise of the power to make laws on the subject of bankruptcies, the exercise of the war powers, of the power to tax, of the power to exclude aliens, or of the power to regulate commerce, is each subject to the qualified restrictions of the Fifth Amendment (Louisville Bank v. Radford, 295 U. S. 555, 589); as each, also, is subject, so far as appropriate, to the unqualified restrictions of the First. Congress has no power to regulate the relations of private employer and employee as an end in itself, but only if that be an appropriate and legitimate means to a constitutional end, which here is the regulation of interstate commerce. Assuming that the statute upon its face satisfies this test, does the *137present application of it satisfy the requirement that the freedom of the press shall not be abridged?1
Freedom is not a mere intellectual abstraction; and it is not merely a word to adorn an oration upon occasions of patriotic rejoicing. It is an intensely practical reality, capable of concrete enjoyment in a multitude of ways day by day. When applied to the press, the term freedom is not to be narrowly confined; and it obviously means more than publication and circulation. If freedom of the press does not include the right to adopt and pursue a policy without governmental restriction, it is a misnomer to call it freedom. And we may as well deny at once the right of the press freely to adopt a policy and pursue it, as to concede that right and deny the liberty to exercise an uncensored judgment in respect of the employment and discharge of the agents through whom the policy is to be effectuated.
In a matter of such concern, the judgment of Congress — or, still less, the judgment of an administrative censor — cannot, under the Constitution, be substituted for that of the press management in respect of the employment or discharge of employees engaged in editorial work. The good which might come to interstate commerce or the benefit which might result to a special group, however large, must give way to that higher good of all the people so plainly contemplated by the imperative requirement that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom ... of the press.”
The present case illustrates the necessity for the enforcement of these principles. The board found, in effect, that the actual reason for Watson’s discharge was his activity as a member of a labor organization in the furtherance of its aims. Accepting this as a true statement of the reason for the discharge, let us consider the question from the standpoint of that finding; although, as already indicated, we are of opinion that the constitutional im*138munity of the press does not permit any legislative restriction of the authority of a publisher, acting upon his own judgment, to discharge anyone engaged in the editorial service. Such a restriction of itself would be an abridgment of the freedom of the press no less than a law restricting the constitutional liberty of one to speak would be an abridgment of the freedom of speech.
For many years there has been contention between labor and capital. Labor has become highly organized in a wide effort to secure and preserve its rights. The daily news with respect to labor disputes is now of vast proportions; and clearly a considerable part of petitioner’s editorial service must be devoted to that subject. Such news is not only of great public interest; but an unbiased version of it is of the utmost public concern. To give a group of employers on the one hand, or a labor organization on the other, power of control over such a service is obviously to endanger the fairness and accuracy of the service. Strong sympathy for or strong prejudice against a given cause or the efforts made to advance it has too often led to suppression or coloration of unwelcome facts. It would seem to be an exercise of only reasonable prudence for an association engaged in part in supplying the public with fair and accurate factual information with respect to the contests between labor and capital, to see that those whose activities include that service are free from either extreme sympathy or extreme prejudice one way or the other. And it would be no answer to say that dealing with news of this character constitutes only a part of the duties of the editorial force. The interest of a juror, for example, in the result, which excludes him from sitting in a case, may be small and the adverse effect upon his verdict by no means certain. Nevertheless, the party affected cannot be called upon to assume the hazard. In the present case, by a parity of reasoning, the hope of benefit to a cherished cause which may bias the edi*139tonal employee is a contingency the risk of which the press in the exercise of its unchallengeable freedom under the Constitution may take or decline to take, without being subject to any form of legislative coercion.
What, then, are the facts here involved? Morris Watson was employed by petitioner first in 1928 as a reporter and rewrite editor in petitioner’s Chicago office. In 1930, he was transferred to the New York office, and there served as editorial employee until his discharge on October 18, 1935. One of his duties was to rewrite and supervise the news received at the New York office and determine what portion of it should be sent to points outside. As the court already has pointed out, he had authority to determine the news value of items received and was required to speedily and accurately rewrite the copy delivered to him.
In November, 1933, Watson was instrumental in organizing the Associated Press Unit of the New York Newspaper Guild, a labor organization, constituting a part of the American Newspaper Guild; and he was, from the beginning, recognized as the outstanding union representative of the press associations. He served successively as chairman of the Associated Press Unit and as treasurer and secretary of the New York Guild, and at the time of his discharge was vice-president for wiring services of the American Guild. His guild activities were immediately objected to by petitioner; and thereafter, on numerous occasions, these activities were objected to by petitioner’s executives and inducements were held out to him to abandon them. The findings of the board disclose that Watson continued in various ways to promote the interests of the guild; and there is no doubt that his sympathies were strongly enlisted in support of the guild’s policies, whether they clashed with the policies of petitioner or not. We do not question his right to assume and maintain that attitude. But, if petitioner con-*140eluded, as it well could have done, that its policy to preserve its news service free from color, bias or distortion was likely to be subverted by Watson’s retention, what power has Congress to interfere in the face of the First Amendment?
And that question may not be determined by considering Watson only; for the power to compel his continuance in the service includes the power to compel the continuance of all guild members engaged in editorial work, with the result that the application of the statute here made, if carried to the logical extreme, would give opportunity for the guild to exercise a high degree of control over the character of the news service. Due regard for the constitutional guaranty requires that the publisher or agency of the publisher of news shall be free from restraint in respect of employment in the editorial force. And we are dealing here not with guild members employed in the mechanical or purely clerical work of the press but with those engaged as Watson was in its editorial work andi having the power thereby to affect the execution of its policies.
An illustration may be helpful: The right to belong to a labor union is entitled to the shield of the law, but no more so than the right not to belong. Neither can be proscribed. So much must be true, or we do not live in a free land. Let us suppose the passage of a statute of like character with that under review, having the same objective, but to be effected by forbidding the discharge of employees on the ground not that they are but that they are not members of a labor association. Let us suppose further that a labor association is engaged in publishing an interstate-circulated journal devoted to furthering the interests of labor, and that members of its editorial staff, resigning their membership in the association, transfer their allegiance from the cause-of the workingman to that of the employer. Can it be doubted1 that an order re*141quiring the reinstatement of an editorial writer who had been discharged under these circumstances would abridge the freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment?
And if that view of the amendment may be affirmed in the case of a publication issued for the purpose of advancing a particular cause, how can it be denied in the case of a press association organized to gather and edit the news fairly and without bias or distortion for the use of all causes? To hold that the press association must await a concrete instance of misinterpretation of the news before it can act is to compel it to experiment with a doubt when it regards certainty as essential.
The conclusion that the First Amendment is here infringed does not challenge the right of employees to organize, to bargain collectively with their employers about wages and other matters respecting employment, or to refuse to work except upon conditions they are willing to accept. Nor, the First Amendment aside, does it challenge the act in so far as it is an allowable regulation of interstate commerce. All affirmations in respect of these matters may be fully conceded without prejudice to our very definite view that the application of the act here has resulted in an unconstitutional abridgment of the freedom of the press.
Do the people of this land — in the providence of God, favored, as they sometimes boast, above all others in the plenitude of their liberties — desire to preserve those so carefully protected by the First Amendment: liberty of religious worship, freedom of speech and of the press, and the right as freemen peaceably to assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievances? If so, let them withstand all beginnings of encroachment. For the saddest epitaph which can be carved) in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time.