Court Opinion

ID: 9456901
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:05:17.836921+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:08.193366
License: Public Domain

TAMM, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I would deny appellant’s motion for summary reversal and grant appellee’s motion for summary affirmance. In my view, no purpose is served by further delaying a disposition of this cause, albeit it nominally permits the filing of additional briefs which in actuality can only contain material which is repetitious of *882what is now before us. I see no purpose in now cautiously walking around the quicksand of a separation-of-powers question by delaying a head-on confrontation of the problem. No number of additional briefs or arguments can erase or hide the nature of the problem already briefed and argued before us.
Challenged herein is the publication by the House Committee on the District of Columbia of a report on the school system of the District of Columbia which was issued on December 8, 1970, as “Investigation and Study of the Public School System of the District of Columbia, Report of the Committee on the District of Columbia, House of Representatives, H.R. Rep. No. 91,1681, 91st Cong., 2d Sess.” The District Judge properly found that this report had a valid legislative purpose growing out of the legislative power of Congress over the District of Columbia. U.S.Const, art. I, § 8, cl. 17. The self-stated object of the report is “to give a realistic view of this troubled school, and the lack of administrative efforts to rectify the multitudinous problems there.” Certainly a conscientious Congress, called upon to authorize the expenditure of more than $150,000,000 a year 1 of the taxpayers’ money for the operation of a public school system, is justified and required to determine if the school population is receiving full value from this investment.
The challenged report does set out attendance lists, history test papers, and correspondence on disciplinary problems all of which contain the names of students. Certainly these documents constitute the best available evidence of the facts which they portray. Also contained in the report are the oral answers of witnesses before the committee who furnished the names of students participating in and creating disciplinary problems (see page 212 of the report), and yet there appears to be no question raised as to the legality or propriety of this testimony. As a matter of eviden-tiary appraisal I see no difference in the status of documents containing names of individuals and oral testimony of the same type.
Of major concern to me, however, is the question of what, if any, authority this court has to pass upon, the action of Congress in this situation. While I may doubt both the necessity and wisdom of the inclusion of data identifying individual students, I am required by time-tested law to recognize the legality, if not the virginity, of congressional power. My judicial responsibility requires me to validate, when called upon to do so, the legality of congressional action which is within the legislative power as defined by the Constitution and case law. This recognition of the limitations upon judicial interference with the legal actions of the legislative branch has been recognized since 1805, when Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for the Court in United States v. Fisher, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch) 358, 395, 2 L.Ed. 304 (1805), stated: “Congress must possess the choice of means, and must be empowered to use any means which are in fact conducive to the exercise of a power granted by the Constitution.” It is my view that the majority opinion ignores the mandate expressed by Marshall that “to undertake here to inquire into the decree of its necessity would be to pass the line which circumscribes the judicial department and to tread on legislative ground. This Court disclaims all pretensions to such a power.” McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 422, 4 L.Ed. 579 (1819). I recognize that “[t]he Government which has the right to do an act, and has imposed on it, the duty of performing that act, must, according to the dictates of reason, be allowed to select the means; and those who contend that it may not select any appropriate means, that one particular mode of effecting the object is excepted, take upon themselves the burden of establishing that exception.” McCulloch v. Maryland, supra at 409. (Em*883phasis added.) I do not believe the majority opinion establishes any exception applicable to this case. The line of cases supporting this doctrine is too well established to require lengthy citation.
I am, in addition, concerned that the majority predicates its action on an appellant’s claimed “right of privacy.” It does seem to me that the vagaries created in this area since New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S.Ct. 710, 11 L.Ed.2d 686 (1964), establish an emblem of identity as the legal measure of not only the breadth and depth of this “right” but even of its existence in individual cases. A licensed physician and the medical director of a Planned Parenthood League have a right to privacy (Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965), but an elected county official has no such right. New York Times v. Sullivan, supra. I am unable by any amount of legal engineering to perform such a task of constitutional alchemy as to find a legal “right to privacy” in truant school children, but no such right in a United States Senator. Pearson v. Dodd, 133 U.S.App.D.C. 279, 410 F.2d 701, cert. denied, 395 U.S. 947, 89 S.Ct. 2021, 23 L.Ed.2d 465 (1969).
I respectfully dissent.

. The current press indicates the requested budget for the next fiscal year’s operation of the public school system of the District of Columbia exceeds $150,000,000.