Court Opinion

ID: 9425180
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:13:59.817527+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:48.000119
License: Public Domain

*413Mr. Justice Douglas,
with whom The Chief Justice, Mr. Justice Powell, and Mr. Justice Rehnquist concur, dissenting.
The Court today achieves by interpretation what those who were opposed to the Hobbs Act were unable to get Congress to do. The Court considers primarily the legislative history of a predecessor bill considered by the 78th Congress. The bill before us was considered and enacted by the 79th Congress;, and, as I read the debates, the opposition lost in the 79th Congress what they win today. All of which makes pertinent Mr. Justice Holmes’ admonition in Missouri, K. & T. R. Co. v. May, 194 U. S. 267, 270, that “it must be remembered that legislatures are ultimate guardians of the liberties and welfare of the people in quite as great a degree as the courts.”
In United States v. Local 807, 315 U. S. 521, we had before us the Anti-Racketeering Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 979, which made it a crime to use violence respecting interstate trade or commerce to obtain the “payment of money or other valuable considerations,” excluding “the payment of wages by a bona-fide employer to a bona-fide employee.” We held that the exception included demands for unwanted or superfluous services and covered those who wanted jobs, not only those who presently had them.
Congress in the Hobbs Act changed the law. The critical change was the exclusion of the employer-employee clause. The Court said in United States v. Green, 350 U. S. 415, 419: “In the Hobbs Act, 60 Stat. 420, carried forward as 18 U. S. C. § 1951, which amended the Anti-Racketeering Act, the exclusion clause involved in the Local 807 decision was dropped. The legislative history makes clear that the new Act was meant to eliminate any grounds for future judicial conclusions that *414Congress did not intend to cover the employer-employee relationship. The words were defined to avoid any misunderstanding.”
In Green, the Court held that it was an extortion within the meaning of the Act to use force to obtain payment of wages for unwanted and superfluous services. Id., at 417.
Here, the services were not unwanted or superfluous; they were services being negotiated under a collective-bargaining agreement.
The Court relies mostly on the legislative history of a measure covering the same topic which was passed by the previous House but on which the Senate did not act. Two years later, the bill in its present form was enacted. It was a differently constituted House that debated it and the year was 1945 rather than 1943. So the most relevant legislative history, in my view, concerns the 79th Congress, not the 78th.
The fear was expressed in the House that the elimination of the Exception Clause would open up the prospect of labor’s being prosecuted.1 As a consequence, Congressman Celler sought to amend the measure so as to exempt the use of violence to exact “wages paid by a bona fide employer to a bona fide employee.” 2 His precise amendment in that regard would define “property” in the Act as not including “wages paid by a bona fide employer to a bona fide employee.” 3 Those who objected said that it would substantially restore the 1934 Act.4
Congressman Biemiller, in speaking for the Celler Amendment said:
“We fear, for example, under the bill as it now *415stands, that a simple, unfortunate altercation on a picket line — and we all know that human beings are frail and when tempers are hot some trouble may develop — under such a situation you may send a man to jail for 20 years or fine him $10,000.” 5
The Celler Amendment was rejected.6
As I read the Congressional Record, Congressman Baldwin spoke for the consensus when he said:
“This bill would not have been presented to the House if organized labor had recognized law and order in striking and in establishing their rights, as they have a right to do. Everyone can remember the taxicab strike in the city of Baltimore, which does not pertain to this bill, where cabs were overthrown, bricks thrown through the windows endangering the lives of people, innocent victims. Those were the tactics of organized labor which you people support outright and which organized labor sanctioned. The leaders were locked up and put in jail for participating in those activities. Yet you stand here on the floor of this House and say they did not do it or they did not know anything about it.
“Mr. Chairman, labor has a right to strike, but when labor perpetrates that sort of thing, they are going far beyond the bounds of reason. Certainly, I do not take the position that labor has not the right to organize or to strike, but when they do so they should abide by the laws of the land and the laws of decency. If they had done that, we would not have this legislation before the House today.” 7
*416Congressman Whittington voiced the same sentiments:
“The pending bill will provide for punishing racketeers who rob or extort. There is no justification for labor unions opposing the bill as it constitutes no invasion of the legitimate rights of labor. Robbery and extortion by members of labor unions must be punished. Labor unions owe that much to the public. In demanding the protection of laws, labor unions should urge that those engaged in legitimate interstate commerce be protected from robbery and extortion.” 8
Congressman Celler offered another amendment which would give as a defense to a charge under the Hobbs Act that the employee “did not violate the provisions of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, the Clayton Act, or the Railway Labor Act, or the National Labor Relations Act.” 9 But that amendment was also voted down;10 the only provision of the Hobbs Act which touched on that problem was 18 U. S. C. § 1951 (c), which stated that this section “shall not be construed to repeal, modify or affect” those laws. References were made in the House debates to the trucking problem in New York, where farmers bringing their produce to market in trucks were held up and money was extorted “from the drivers in order that the shipments might enter the Holland Tunnel and be delivered to their respective destinations in New York.” 11
Congressman LaFollette offered an amendment which would keep the 1934 Act intact but would bar the use of violence by a person not a bona fide employee to obtain *417property from a bona fide employer.12 That, too, was defeated.13
In the present case, violence was used during the bargaining — five acts of violence involving the shooting and sabotage of the employer’s transformers and the blowing up of a company transformer substation. The violence was used to obtain higher wages and other benefits for union members. The acts literally fit the definition of extortion used in the Hobbs Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1951. The term “extortion” means the use of violence to obtain “property” from another. §1951 (b)(2). The crime is the use of “extortion” in furtherance of a plan to do anything in violation of the section. § 1951 (a). The prior exception covering those who seek “the payment of wages by a bona-fide employer to a bona-fide employee” was taken out of the Act by Congress. Hence, the use of violence to obtain higher wages is plainly a method of obtaining “property from another” within the meaning of § 1951 (b)(2).
*418Seeking higher wages is certainly not unlawful. But using violence to obtain them seems plainly within the scope of “extortion” as used in the Act, just as is the use of violence to exact payment for no work or the use of violence to get a sham substitution for no work. The regime of violence, whatever its precise objective, is a common device of extortion and is condemned by the Act.
Congressman Lemke said in the House debates on the Hobbs Act, which he opposed, “The minority is generally right.” 14
Whatever may be thought of the policy which the Court today embroiders into the Act, it was the minority view in the House and clearly did not represent the consensus of the House. No light is thrown on the matter by the Senate, for it summarily approved the House version of the bill.15
It is easy in these insulated chambers to put an attractive gloss on an Act of Congress if five votes can be obtained. At times, the legislative history of a measure is so clouded or obscure that we must perforce give some meaning to vague words.16 But where, as here, the consensus of the House is so clear, we should carry out its purpose no matter how distasteful or undesirable that policy may be to us,17 unless of course the Act oversteps *419constitutional boundaries. But none has been so hardy as even to suggest that.
While we said in Kirschbaum Co. v. Walling, 316 U. S. 517, 522, that it is “retrospective expansion of meaning which properly deserves the stigma of judicial legislation,” the same is true of retrospective contraction of meaning.
I would reverse.

 91 Cong. Rec. 11914 (remarks of Rep. Marcantonio).

 Id., at 11913.

 Ibid.

 Id., at 11914; 11914-11915; 11918.

 Id., at 11916.

 Id., at 11917.

 Id., at 11918.

 Id., at 11913.

 Id., at 11919.

 Ibid.

 Id., at 11917.

 Id., at 11919. The proposed amendment read as follows:
“(a) The term 'the payment of wages by a bona fide employer to a bona fide employee’ shall not be construed so as to include the payment of money or the transfer of a thing of value by a person to another when the latter shall use or attempt to use or threaten to use force or violence against the body or to the physical property (as distinguished from intangible property) of the former or against the body of anyone having the possession, custody, or control of the physical property of the former, in attempting to obtain or obtaining such payment or transfer.
“ (b) The term 'the rights of a bona fide labor organization in lawfully carrying out the legitimate objects thereof, as such rights are expressed in existing statutes of the United States’ shall not be construed so as to ignore, void, set aside, or nullify the definitions set out or the words used in or the plain meaning of subsection (a) hereof.”

 Id., at 11922.

 Ibid.

 92 Cong. Rec. 7308.

 See, e. g., Addison v. Holly Hill Co., 322 U. S. 607, 615-616, for the use by Congress of the rather opaque phrase “area of production.”

 The fear was expressed in the House debates by opponents of the measure that a fistfight on a picket line during a strike could bring down on the offender a $10,000 fine and 20 years in jail or both. See 91 Cong. Rec. 11916; supra, at 414-415. And the Government actually argued in one case, United States v. Caldes, 457 F. 2d 74, 78, that a union and its members were guilty of extortion if they used the coercion of a strike to obtain economic benefits from the employer. That, however, is nonsense, as the court in Caldes *419ruled, id., at 79, for the Hobbs Act specifically does not touch collective bargaining of which the strike is a component part. 18 U. S. C. § 1951 (c). Moreover, the court in Caldes held that “mischievous” conduct during a strike and actions which are “the by-product of frustration engendered by a prolonged, bona fide collective bargaining negotiation,” id., at 78, are often only low-level acts of violence that may be unfair labor practices or, at best, subject to state, not federal, prosecution. That is my view.