Court Opinion

ID: 9419574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:50:13.824541+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:19.021374
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Jackson,
concurring.
As frequently is the case, this controversy is determined as soon as it is decided which of two well-established, but at times overlapping, constitutional principles will be applied to it. The State of Texas stands on its well-settled right reasonably to regulate the pursuit of a vocation, including — we may assume — the occupation of labor organizer. Thomas, on the other hand, stands on the equally clear proposition that Texas may not interfere with the right of any person peaceably and freely to address a lawful assemblage of workmen intent on considering labor grievances.
Though the one may shade into the other, a rough distinction always exists, I think, which is more shortly illustrated than explained. A state may forbid one without its license to practice law as a vocation, but I think it could not stop an unlicensed person from making a speech about the rights of man or the rights of labor, or any other kind of right, including recommending that his hearers organize to support his views. Likewise, the state may prohibit the pursuit of medicine as an occupation without its license, but I do not think it could make it a crime publicly or privately to speak urging persons to follow or reject any school of medical thought. So the state to an extent not necessary now to determine may regulate one who makes a business or a livelihood of soliciting funds or memberships for unions. But I do not think it can prohibit one, *545even if he is a salaried labor leader, from making an address to a public meeting of workmen, telling them their rights as he sees them and urging them to unite in general or to join a specific union.
This wider range of power over pursuit of a calling than over speech-making is due to the different effects which the two have on interests which the state is empowered to protect. The modern state owes and attempts to perform a duty to protect the public from those who seek for one purpose or another to obtain its money. When one does so through the practice of a calling, the state may have an interest in shielding the public against the untrustworthy, the incompetent, or the irresponsible, or against unauthorized representation of agency. A usual method of performing this function is through a licensing system.
But it cannot be the duty, because it is not the right, of the state to protect the public against false doctrine. The very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion. In this field every person must be his own watchman for truth, because the forefathers did not trust any government to separate the true from the false for us. West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624. Nor would I. Very many are the interests which the state may protect against the practice of an occupation, very few are those it may assume to protect against the practice of propagandizing by speech or press. These are thereby left great range of freedom.
This liberty was not protected because the forefathers expected its use would always be agreeable to those in authority or that its exercise always would be wise, temperate, or useful to society. As I read their intentions, this liberty was protected because they knew of no other *546way by which free men could conduct representative democracy.1
The necessity for choosing collective bargaining representatives brings the same nature of problem to groups of organizing workmen that our representative democratic processes bring to the nation. Their smaller society, too, must choose between rival leaders and competing policies. This should not be an underground process. The union of which Thomas is the head was one of the choices offered to these workers, and to me it was in the best American tradition that they hired a hall and advertised a meeting, and that Thomas went there and publicly faced his labor constituents. How better could these men learn what they might be getting into? By his public appearance and speech he would disclose himself as a temperate man or a violent one, a reasonable leader that well-disposed workmen could follow or an irresponsible one from whom they might expect disappointment, an earnest and understanding leader or a self-seeker. If free speech anywhere serves a useful social purpose, to be jealously guarded, I should think it would be in such a relationship.
But it is said that Thomas urged and invited one and all to join his union, and so he did. This, it is said, makes the speech something else than a speech; it has been found *547by the Texas courts to be a “solicitation” and therefore its immunity from state regulation is held to be lost. It is not often in this country that we now meet with direct and candid efforts to stop speaking or publication as such. Modern inroads on these rights come from associating the speaking with some other factor which the state may regulate so as to bring the whole within official control. Here, speech admittedly otherwise beyond the reach of the states is attempted to be brought within its licensing system by associating it with “solicitation.” Speech of employers otherwise beyond reach of the Federal Government is brought within the Labor Board’s power to suppress by associating it with “coercion” or “domination.” Speech of political malcontents is sought to be reached by associating it with some variety of “sedition.” Whether in a particular case the association or characterization is a proven and valid one often is difficult to resolve. If this Court may not or does not in proper cases' inquire whether speech or publication is properly condemned by association, its claim to guardianship of free speech and press is but a hollow one.
Free speech on both sides and for every faction on any side of the labor relation is to me a constitutional and useful right. Labor is free to turn its publicity on any labor oppression, substandard wages, employer unfairness, or objectionable working conditions. The employer, too, should be free to answer, and to turn publicity on the records of the leaders or the unions which seek the confidence of his men. And if the employees or organizers associate violence or other offense against the laws with labor’s free speech, or if the employer’s speech is associated with discriminatory discharges or intimidation, the constitutional remedy would be to stop the evil, but permit the speech, if the two are separable; and only rarely and when they are inseparable to stop or punish speech or publication.
*548But I must admit that in overriding the findings of the Texas court we are applying to Thomas a rule the benefit of which in all its breadth and vigor this Court denies to employers in National Labor Relations Board cases. Cf. Labor Board v. Virginia Electric & Power Co., 314 U. S. 469, 479; Virginia Electric & Power Co. v. Labor Board, 319 U. S. 533; Trojan Powder Co. v. Labor Board, 135 F. 2d 337, cert. denied, 320 U. S. 768; Labor Board v. American Tube Bending Co., 134 F. 2d 993, cert. denied, 320 U. S. 768; Elastic Stop Nut Corp. v. Labor Board, 142 F. 2d 371, cert. denied, post, p. 722. However, the remedy is not to allow Texas improperly to deny the right of free speech but to apply the same rule and spirit to free speech cases whoever the speaker.
I concur in the opinion of Mr. Justice Rutledge that this case falls in the category of a public speech, rather than that of practicing a vocation as solicitor. Texas did not wait to see what Thomas would say or do. I cannot escape the impression that the injunction sought before he had reached the state was an effort to forestall him from speaking at all and that the contempt is based in part at least on the fact that he did make a public labor speech.
I concur in reversing the judgment.
Mr. Justice Roberts.
The right to express thoughts freely and to disseminate ideas fully is secured by the Constitution as basic to the conception of our government. A long series of cases has applied these fundamental rights in a great variety of circumstances.1 Not until today, however, has it been ques*549tioned that there was any clash between this right to think one’s thoughts and to express them and the right of people to be protected in their dealings with those who hold themselves out in some professional capacity by requiring registration of those who profess to pursue such callings. Doctors and nurses, lawyers and notaries, bankers and accountants, insurance agents and solicitors of every kind in every State of this Union have traditionally been under duty to make some identification of themselves as practitioners of their calling. The question before us is as to the power of Texas to call for such registration within limits precisely defined by the Supreme Court of that State in sustaining the statute now challenged. The most accurate way to state the issue is to quote the construction which that Court placed upon the Texas statute and the exact limits of its requirement:
“A careful reading of the section of the law here under consideration will disclose that it does not interfere with the right of the individual lay members of unions to solicit others to join their organization. It does not affect them at all. It applies only to those organizers who for a pecuniary or financial consideration solicit such membership. It affects only the right of one to engage in the business as a paid organizer, and not the mere right of an individual to express his views on the merits of the union. Furthermore, it will be noted that the Act does not require a paid organizer to secure a license, but merely requires him to register and identify himself and the union for which he proposes to operate before being permitted *550to solicit members for such union. The Act confers no unbridled discretion on the Secretary of State to grant or withhold a registration card at his will, but makes it his mandatory duty to accept the registration and issue the card to all who come within the provisions of the Act upon their good-faith compliance therewith.”
The record discloses that Texas, in the exercise of her police power, has adopted a statute regulating labor unions. With many of its provisions we are not presently concerned. The constitutional validity of but a single section is drawn in question. That section requires every “labor union organizer” (defined by the Act as a person “who for a pecuniary or financial consideration solicits memberships in a labor union or members for a labor union”) to request, in writing, of the Secretary of State, or personally to apply to the Secretary for an “organizer’s card,” before soliciting members for his organization, and to give his name, his union affiliation, and his union credentials.2 The Secretary is then to- issue to him a card showing his name and affiliation, which is to be signed by him and also signed and sealed by the Secretary of State, and is to bear the designation “labor organizer.” It is made the duty of the organizer to carry the card and, on request, to exhibit it to any person he solicits.
The Act makes violation the basis of criminal prosecution and authorizes injunctions to prevent threatened disregard of its provisions. In this instance both procedures were followed, but there is before us only the validity of an injunction and the sanction imposed for refusal to obey it.
*551As always, it is important to reach the precise question presented. One path to this end is to note what is not involved.
First, no point is made of the circumstance that the appellant’s proposed activity was enjoined in advance. Counsel at our bar asserted the constitutional vice lay in the prohibition of the statute and that vice would preclude arrest and conviction for violation, no less than injunction against the denounced activity.
Secondly, the appellant does not contend that he was other than a “labor organizer” within the meaning of the Act. In fact he is an officer of a union and not employed specifically as an organizer or solicitor of memberships. He might well have questioned the application of the law to him, or to a public address made by him in his official capacity, but he refrained, obviously because he wished to test the Act’s validity and so, in effect, stipulated that its sweep included him, and his conduct on the occasion in question.
Thirdly, the appellant does not contend that, in attempting to identify solicitors and preclude solicitation without identification, the statute either in terms, or as construed and applied, reaches over into the realm of public assembly, of public, speaking, of argument or persuasion. Aware that the State proposed to invoke the statute against him, he made sure that the bare right he asserted to solicit without compliance with its requirement should not be clouded by confusion of that right with the others mentioned. In his address, therefore, he was at pains to state that he then and there solicited members of the audience to join a named union; and to make assurance of violation doubly sure, he solicited a man by name and offered him a membership application, which the man then and there signed.
Fourthly, the Act and the injunction which he disobeyed say nothing of speech; they are aimed at a trans*552action, — that of solicitation of members for a union. This, and this only, is the statutory object which is said to render it unconstitutional.
We are now in a position accurately to state the appellant’s contention. He asserts that, under the Constitutional guarantees, there is a sharp distinction between business rights and civil rights; that in discussion of labor problems, and equally in solicitation of union membership, civil rights are exercised; that labor organizations are the only effective means whereby employes may exercise the guaranteed civil rights, and that, consequently, any interference with the right to solicit membership in such organizations is a prohibited abridgment of these rights, even though the Act applies only to paid organizers.
The argument then seeks to draw a distinction between this case and those in which we have sustained registration of persons who desire to use the streets or to solicit funds; urges that the burden the Act lays on labor organizations is substantial and seriously hampering and is not intended to prevent any “clear and present danger” to the State.
Stripped to its bare bones, this argument is that labor organizations are beneficial and lawful; that solicitation of members by and for them is a necessary incident of their progress; that freedom to solicit for them is a liberty of speech protected against state action by the Fourteenth Amendment and the National Labor Relations Act, and hence Texas cannot require a paid solicitor to identify himself. I think this is the issue and the only issue presented to the courts below and decided by them, and the only one raised here. The opinion of the court imports into the case elements on which counsel for appellant did not rely; elements which in fact counsel strove to eliminate in order to come at the fundamental challenge to any requirement of identification of a labor organizer.
*553The position taken in the court’s opinion that in some way the statute interferes with the right to address a meeting, to speak in favor of a labor union, to persuade one’s fellows to join a union, or that at least its application in this case does, or may, accomplish that end is, in my judgment, without support in the record.
We must bear in mind that the appellant himself was persuaded that merely to make the speech he had come to Texas to deliver would not violate the Act, and that he, therefore, determined, in order to preclude all doubt as to violation, to solicit those present to join the union. And, for the same purpose, he further specifically solicited an individual.
He had not been enjoined from making a speech, nor from advocating union affiliation. The injunction, in terms, forbade “soliciting membership in Local Union No. 1002 . . .” or “memberships in any other labor union” without first obtaining a card. The information on which the citation for contempt was based charged (1) that he solicited Pat O’Sullivan to join a local union on September 23; (2) that on the same day he openly and publicly solicited an audience of some three hundred persons to join the Oil Workers International Union. The uncontradicted evidence is that, with application blanks in his hand, he said: “I earnestly urge and solicit all of you that are not members of your local union to join your local unions. I do that in the capacity of Vice-President of C. I. O.”
The text of the speech put in evidence by the appellant does not differ materially. It runs: “as Vice-President of the C. I. O. and as a union man, I earnestly ask those of you who are not now members of the Oil Workers International Union to join now. I solicit you to become a member of the union of your fellow workers . . .”
The judgment in the contempt proceeding states only that the court “finds that the defendant . . . did . . . *554violate this court’s temporary restraining order heretofore issued injoining and restraining him, the said R. J. Thomas, from soliciting members to join the Oil Workers International Union . . .”
In his petition to the State Supreme Court for habeas corpus, the appellant did not suggest that, under the guise of preventing him from soliciting, he was held in contempt for making an address. The opinion of that court states that the complaint charged appellant with engaging “in soliciting members for a certain labor union”; with violating the injunction issued “by soliciting members for said union”; and adds: “Relator’s counsel in his argument before this Court conceded the existence of necessary factual basis for the judgment in the contempt proceedings.” (Italics supplied.) Thus it appears that below, as here, the challenge was not against the form or content of the pleadings or the order; not that Texas was trying to enjoin appellant from making a speech, but that it could not regulate solicitation.
In construing the statute, the court below said: “It applies only to those organizers who for a pecuniary or financial consideration solicit such membership.” Thus it excluded all questions as to the right of speech and assembly as such.
In his motion for a rehearing below, the appellant advanced no contention that the judgment was directed at his speech as such.
In his statement as to jurisdiction filed in this court he said: “Appellant delivered his speech to the meeting attended largely by workers of the Humble Oil Company and solicited the audience in general and one Pat O’Sullivan in particular to join the Oil Workers International Union.” (Italics supplied.)
In his statement of points to be relied on in this court, he stated he would urge that the Act is unconstitutional because it “imposes a previous general restraint upon the *555exercise of appellant’s right of free speech by prohibiting appellant from soliciting workers to join a union,” without obtaining an organizer’s card. And again that it violated other Constitutional provisions “in requiring appellant to obtain a license (organizer’s card) before soliciting workers to join a union” (Italics supplied.)
Nowhere in the document is there any suggestion that the statute is intended, or has been applied, to restrain or restrict the freedom to speak, save only as speech is an integral part of the transaction of paid solicitation of men to join a union.
Since its requirements are not obviously burdensome, we cannot void the statute as an unnecessary or excessive exercise of the State’s police power on any a priori reasoning. The State Supreme Court has found that conditions exist in Texas which justify and require such identification of paid organizers as the law prescribes. There is not a word of evidence in the record to contradict these conclusions. In the absence of a showing against the need for the statute this court ought not incontinently to- reject the State’s considered views of policy.
The judgment of the court below that the power exists reasonably to regulate solicitation, and that the exercise of the power by the Act in question is not unnecessarily burdensome, is not to be rejected on abstract grounds. No fee is charged. The card may be obtained by mail. To comply with the law the appellant need only have furnished his name and affiliation, and his credentials. The statute nowise regulates, curtails, or bans his activities.
We are asked then, on this record, to hold, without evidence to support such a conclusion, and as a matter of judicial notice, that Texas has no bona fide interest to warrant her law makers in requiring that one who engages, for pay, in the business of soliciting persons to join unions shall identify himself as such. That is all the law requires.
*556We should face a very different question if the statute attempted to define the necessary qualifications of an organizer; purported to regulate what organizers might say; limited their movements or activities; essayed to regulate time, place or purpose of meetings; or restricted speakers in the expression of views. But it does none of these things.
It is suggested that the Act is to be distinguished from legislation regulating the use of the streets or the solicitation of money. As respects the former, I think our decision in Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U. S. 569, and that of the Circuit Court of Appeals in City of Manchester v. Leiby, 117 F. 2d 661, are indistinguishable in principle, and the court below properly so held. If one disseminating news for his own profit may rightfully be required to identify himself, so may one who, for profit, solicits persons to join an organization.
As respects the second, I see no reason to limit what was said in Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 305, to solicitation of money. The solicitation at which the Texas Act is aimed may or may not involve the payment of initiation fees or dues to the solicitor. But, in any case, it involves the assumption of business and financial liability by him who is persuaded to join a union. The transaction is in essence a business one. Labor unions are business associations; their object is generally business dealings and relationships as is manifest from the financial statements of some of the national unions. Men are persuaded to join them for business reasons, as employers are persuaded to join trade associations for like reasons. Other paid organizers, whether for business or for charity, could be required to identify themselves. There is .no reason why labor organizers should not do likewise. I think that if anyone pursues solicitation as a business for profit, of members for any organization, religious, secular or business, his calling does not bar the State from *557requiring him to identify himself as what he is, — a paid solicitor.
We may deem the statutory provision under review unnecessary or unwise, but it is not our function as judges to read our views of policy into a Constitutional guarantee, in order to overthrow a state policy we do not personally approve, by denominating that policy a violation of the liberty of speech. The judgment should be affirmed.
The Chief Justice, Me. Justice Reed and Me., Justice Feankfuetee join in this opinion.

 Woodrow Wilson put the case for free speech in this connection aptly: “I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking. It cannot be so easily discovered if you allow him to remain silent and look wise, but if you let him speak, the secret is out and the world knows that he is a fool. So it is by the exposure of folly that it is defeated; not by the seclusion of folly, and in this free air of free speech men get into that sort of communication with one another which constitutes the basis of all common achievement.” Address at the Institute of France, Paris, May 10, 1919. 2 Selected Literary and Political Papers and Addresses of Woodrow Wilson (1926) 333.

 Stromberg v. California, 283 U. S. 359; Near v. Minnesota, 283 U. S. 697; Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U. S. 233; De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U. S. 353; Herndon v. Lowry, 301 U. S. 242; Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U. S. 444; Hague v. C. I. O., 307 U. S. 496; Schneider v. Irvington, 308 U. S. 147; Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U. S. 88; Carl *549son v. California, 310 U. S. 106; Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296; American Federation of Labor v. Swing, 312 U. S. 321; Bridges v. California, 314 U. S. 252; Bakery Drivers Local v. Wohl, 315 U. S. 769; Martin v. Struthers, 319 U. S. 141; Taylor v. Mississippi, 319 U. S. 583; Cafeteria Employees Union v. Angelos, 320 U. S. 293. Compare Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105; Douglas v. Jeannette, 319 U. S. 157; Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624; Follett v. McCormick, 321 U. S. 573.

 A section of the Act forbids an alien or a convicted felon whose civil rights have not been restored to act as a labor organizer, but these provisions were not here invoked or applied and nothing in this case turns on them. There is no occasion to discuss them until they are drawn in question. And in addition, § 15 of the Act contains a sweeping severability clause.