Court Opinion

ID: 9428468
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:23:54.794749+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:13.612474
License: Public Domain

Justice Stewart,
with whom The Chief Justice, Justice Powell, and Justice Rehnquist join, dissenting.
In § 313 of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, 2 U. S. C. § 437g (1976 ed., Supp. III), Congress created an elaborate system for the enforcement of the Act. That system may be summarized as follows:
If the Commission becomes aware of a possible violation of the Act, it must notify the person responsible for the violation (who is referred to in the Act as the respondent). 2 U. S. C. § 437g (a)(2) (1976 ed., Supp. III). After investigating the possible violation, the Commission must notify the respondent of any recommendation made by the Commission’s General Counsel that the Commission decide whether there is probable cause to believe that the respondent has violated, or is about to violate, the Act. If the Commission determines that there is probable cause, it must attempt, for at least 30 but not more than 90 days, “to correct or prevent such violation by informal methods of conference, conciliation, and persuasion . . . .” § 437g (a) (4) (A) (i). (If the probable-cause determination is made within 45 days before an election, the Commission need seek conciliation for only 15 days. § 437g (a) (4) (A) (ii).) If conciliation fails, the Commission may institute a civil action for relief in an appropriate United States district court. § 437g (a) (6) (A) (1976 ed. and Supp. III). Any judgment of that court may be appealed to the appropriate court of appeals, and the judgment of the court of appeals is subject to review by this Court upon certiorari or certification. § 437g (a)(9). Section 437g (a)(10) provides that “[a]ny action brought under this subsection shall be advanced on the docket of the court in which filed, and put ahead of all other actions (other than other actions brought under this subsection or under section 437h of this title).”
*205A number of Members of Congress believed that the Act raised significant constitutional issues, and Congress concluded that such issues ought to be expeditiously resolved. Consequently, Congress authorized “such actions in the appropriate district court of the United States, including actions for declaratory judgment, as may be appropriate to construe the constitutionality of any provision of this Act.” 2 U. S. C. § 437h (a) (1976 ed., Supp. III). To assure quick and authoritative resolution of these constitutional issues, Congress established two extraordinary procedures. First, “[t]he district court immediately shall certify all questions of constitutionality of this Act to the United States court of appeals for the circuit involved, which shall hear the matter sitting en banc.” Ibid. Second, “any decision on a matter certified under subsection (a) of this section shall be reviewable by appeal directly to the Supreme Court of the United States.” § 437h (b). These procedures are to be accomplished with special promptness: “It shall be the duty of the court of appeals and of the Supreme Court of the United States to advance on the docket and to expedite to the greatest possible extent the disposition of any matter certified under subsection (a) of this section.” § 437h (c).
The Court today holds that a person who has received formal notification of an impending § 437g enforcement proceeding may nevertheless bring an action under § 437h raising precisely the same constitutional issues presented in the § 437g proceeding. This holding interferes, I think, with the proper enforcement of the Act and with the sound functioning of the federal courts in ways that Congress cannot have intended.
Although neither the language of the Act nor its legislative history directly addresses the issue resolved by the Court’s holding, the structure of the Act itself expresses Congress’ intent that § 437h is not to be available as a means of thwarting a § 437g enforcement proceeding. The Act provides for two separate kinds of proceedings with two separate pur*206poses. The first proceeding serves to prevent violations of the Act. The second makes possible prompt challenges to the constitutionality of the Act, more or less in the abstract.
Because the proceedings serve different purposes, Congress instituted separate sets of procedures tailored to the purposes of each proceeding. Thus Representative Hays — the chairman of the House Committee responsible for the bill — stated during debate: “The delicately balanced scheme of procedures and remedies set out in the act is intended to be the exclusive means for vindicating the rights and declaring the duties stated therein.” 120 Cong. Rec. 35134 (1974). In particular, in § 437g Congress balanced in extensive detail the public’s interest in an expeditious resolution of any § 437g question against the respondent’s interest in fair procedures. Congress accordingly (1) specified the periods of time in which § 437g proceedings must be accomplished, (2) directed that § 437g cases need only be heard by ordinarily constituted panels in the courts of appeals, and (3) limited access to this Court to those cases certified to the Court and those cases which the Court chooses to review.
Under the Court’s holding today, Congress’ assessment of each of the cautiously limited rights contained in § 437g can easily be upset, to the detriment of the strong interest in a prompt resolution of a § 437g proceeding. First, Congress’ requirement of a timely resolution of an enforcement proceeding can be disrupted by a respondent’s decision to engraft a § 437h proceeding onto a § 437g action. If, in response to such a graft, the § 437g action is stayed pending the outcome of the § 437h proceeding, delay will obviously result. If the § 437g action is not stayed, delay may often be caused by the necessity of redoing work in light of the decision reached by the § 437h courts. Nor will the fact that an appeal has already been had on the abstract constitutional principle make up for some of that lost time, since an appeal on the question of whether the constitutional principle was correctly applied will still be available under § 437g.
*207Second, by invoking § 437h, a § 437g respondent will be able to arrogate to himself the extraordinary — perhaps unique — right to an immediate hearing by a court of appeals sitting en banc. (Under Rule 35 of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure, a case is ordinarily heard en bane only after a three-judge panel has heard it and after a majority of the circuit judges in active service have decided that consideration by the full court is necessary to assure the uniformity of the circuit’s decisions or that the proceeding involves a question of exceptional importance.) Third, by invoking § 437h, the § 437g respondent can similarly arrogate to himself the unusual right of direct appeal to this Court.
Not only will Congress’ careful balancing of interests thus be undone by today’s holding, but what Representative Hays referred to as the Act’s “comprehensive system of civil enforcement,” 120 Cong. Rec. 35134 (1974), is likely to be impaired by the strain placed on the Federal Election Commission by the necessity of carrying on two lines of litigation where the Act envisions but one. I see no indication that by adopting § 437h — which its author, Senator Buckley, said “merely provides for the expeditious review of the constitutional questions I have raised,” 120 Cong. Rec. 10562 (1974)— Congress intended either to expand the rights of § 437g respondents or to contract the Government’s ability to stop violations of the Act promptly.*
*208In addition, I think the Court errs in construing with such liberality the jurisdictional scope of an Act that places uncommonly heavy burdens on the federal court system. Litigants who can invoke both § 437g and § 437h can impose on the courts piecemeal adjudication, with all its dangers and disadvantages: Section 437h litigation will often occur without the firm basis in a specific controversy and without the fully developed record which should characterize all litigation and which will generally characterize § 437g proceedings. And § 437h litigation is all too likely to decide questions of constitutional law which might have been avoided by a decision on a narrower ground in a § 437g proceeding.
I cannot believe that Congress intended to require every federal court of appeals to hear en banc every constitutional issue arising in a § 437g proceeding. En banc hearings drain large amounts of judicial time, and since they require the summoning together in the larger federal appellate courts of some two dozen circuit judges, they are cumbersome as well. As the Court of Appeals said in the instant case, “if mandatory en banc hearings were multiplied, the effect on the calendars of this court as to such matters and as to all other business might be severe and disruptive.” 641 F. 2d 619, 632. I would hold that, where a respondent has been formally notified of a § 437g enforcement proceeding, the respondent may not use the issues raised in that enforcement proceeding as a basis for an action under § 437h. I would also hold that the individual members of the respondent associations in the instant case fall within the same bar, given the identity of the interests of the associations and their *209members. Consequently, I would hold that the District Court should not have certified this case to the Court of Appeals, and that the Court of Appeals was without jurisdiction to decide it.
Accordingly, I would dismiss this appeal for want of jurisdiction.

The Court’s opinion suggests that any approach other than its own would “remove a whole category of constitutional challenges from the purview of § 437h, thereby significantly limiting the usefulness of that provision.” Ante, at 191. However, that “whole category” consists only of those few challenges raised by § 437g respondents who did not raise the challenge before the § 437g proceeding began. Any such challenge, of course, will not go unresolved, but will be promptly handled according to the method Congress provided under § 437g for Federal Election Campaign Act issues raised after proceedings have begun.
The Court’s opinion also suggests that the fact that § 437g proceedings are to be put ahead of all other actions except “other actions brought *208under this subsection or under section 437h” somehow supports its holding. There is no evidence that this provision of the statute contemplates more than that a court might have a wholly separate § 437h case on its docket at the time that a § 437g action is filed, and there is no evidence that Congress intended “other actions brought . . . under section 437h” to include a § 437h action which is in practical effect the same case as the § 437g action.