Court Opinion

ID: 9763831
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:56:56.33773+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:49.945220
License: Public Domain

J. JOSEPH SMITH, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
I agree with Judge Clarie that a three judge court has jurisdiction, for the case sufficiently calls into question the constitutionality of the statutes relied upon by the Executive to sustain the regulations embodying area restrictions on the issuance of passports. If § 211a of the Passport Act of 1926, 22 U.S.C. § 211a (1958), the sole statute citea in the regulations as a statutory basis, is construed at face value as a delegation of discretionary power to the Executive to impose restrictions on the issuance of passports to American citizens, it poses a problem of invalid delegation, for there are no standards in the statutory language legislative history, or administrative practice. Comment, Passport Refusals for Political Reasons: Constitutional Issues and Judicial Review, 61 Yale L.J. 171, 192 (1952).
However, I am unable to find in either § 211a of the Passport Act of 1926 or in § 215 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 8 U.S.C. § 1185 (1958), any basis for the area restrictions in the regulations proclaimed by the State Department. Neither act was designed to meet the present problem. Section 211a is nearly identical with the original passport act, 11 Stat. 60 (1856), which was intended to preserve proper respect for American passports by centralizing their issuance in the Federal Government. A number of foreign governments had refused to recognize American passports that were being issued by local magistrates and officials. At that time no passport was necessary to travel abroad, and Congress hardly intended this Statute to authorize the Executive to restrict travel. See Boudin, The Constitutional Right to Travel, 56 Colum.L.Rev. 47, 52-53 (1956); Comment, Passport Refusals for Political Reasons, supra; Note, 41 Corn.L.Q. 282 (1956). See also, Assoc, of the Bar of the City of N. Y., Freedom to Travel 6-7 (1958). Section 215 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 was designed to control entry and exit over our borders in time of national emergency by preventing arrival or departure without a valid passport.
Since the right to travel is constitutionally protected, some clear grant of power to curtail it must exist before any infringement of the right to travel is upheld. As the Supreme Court put it in Kent v. Dulles, 357 U.S. 116, 129, 78 S. Ct. 1113, 1119-1120, 2 L.Ed.2d 1204 (1957):
“Since we start with an exercise by an American citizen of an activity included in constitutional protection, we will not readily infer that Congress gave the Secretary of State unbridled discretion to grant or withhold it. If we were dealing with political questions entrusted to the Chief Executive by the Constitution we would have a different case. But there is more involved here. In part, of course, the issuance of the passport carries some implication of intention to extend the bearer diplomatic protection, though it does no more than ‘request all whom it may concern to permit safely and freely to pass, and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection’ to this citizen of the United States. But that function of the passport is subordinate. Its crucial function today is control over exit. * * * [T]he right of exit is a personal right included within the word ‘liberty’ as used in the Fifth Amendment if that ‘liberty’ is to be regulated, it must *83be pursuant to the law-making functions of the Congress. * * * And if that power is [to be] delegated, the standards must be adequate to pass scrutiny by the accepted tests.”
Where constitutional rights are restrained, Kent v. Dulles requires that we be reluctant to imply a broad grant of power by implication from statutes not clearly designed for the purpose. Hence the Supreme Court construed § 211a and § 215 narrowly to grant the Executive the power to deny a passport on only two grounds: (1) lack of proof of citizenship and allegiance to the United States and (2) the participation in illegal conduct. “We can say*with assurance that whatever may have been the practice after 1926, at the time the Act of July 3, 1926 [211a], was adopted, the administrative practice, so far as relevant here, had jelled only around the two categories mentioned. We, therefore, hesitate to impute to Congress, when in 1952 it made a passport necessary for foreign travel and left its issuance to the discretion of the Secretary of State, a purpose to give him unbridled discretion to grant or withhold a passport from a citizen for any substantive reason he may choose.” 357 U.S. at 128, 78 S.Ct. at 1119, 2 L.Ed.2d 1204. If the statutes are to be construed narrowly to preserve individual. rights and to avoid constitutional doubts, they cannot be read as the majority read them as granting to the Secretary of State the power to restrict travel to certain foreign areas for any substantive reason he may choose.
Even if one adopts the view of the four dissenters in Kent v. Dulles — that the legislative history of the predecessors of § 215 and the administrative practice indicated Congressional intent to permit the Secretary of State to exercise his discretion to deny passports to those whose travel might endanger the internal security of the United States — there is no finding that travel to Cuba by Zemel or those similarly situated would endanger the internal security of the United States. Moreover, the language of § 215 says nothing about empowering the Secretary of State to restrict travel to certain foreign areas. Rather it says that no citizen shall attempt to enter or leave the United States in time of national emergency without a valid passport. It requires a truly remarkable feat of judicial gymnastics to construe this statute narrowly as a grant of power to invalidate passports for travel to certain countries. The regulations themselves did not purport to be based on § 215.
I do not understand the majority to adopt the approach of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Worthy v. Herter, 106 U.S.App.D.C. 153, 270 F.2d 905 (1959), cert, denied 361 U.S. 918, 80 S.Ct. 255, 4 L.Ed. 186 (1959), which found the power of the Secretary of State to impose area restrictions inherent in the Executive’s plenary power over foreign affairs. Kent v. Dulles implicitly rejected the notion that the Executive had inherent constitutional power to curtail individual freedom to travel abroad. If such inherent power existed, what would be its bounds ? Could travel to France be curtailed if the Executive decided that foreign policy required such curtailment to impose sanctions because of DeGaulle’s recent recognition of Red China? If so, it is easy to see how “such executive power could, by increasing the number of nations to which travel is excluded while expanding the excepted class of persons for whom travel to such nations is permitted, approach the absolute discretionary control over travel held without warrant in the Constitution by the Kent decision.” Note, 73 Harv.L.Rev. 1610,1611 (1960).
But the majority seem to suggest that passport control is so intertwined with foreign affairs that Congress must have legislated the Executive “broad laneways of authority.” Rather dubious support for this proposition is sought from 22 U.S.C. § 1732 (1958), which requires the President to take steps short of war to secure the release of Americans imprisoned abroad. Still, the entire approach flies in the teeth of the language of Kent v. Dulles — Where activities or enjoyment, natural and often necessary to the well-*84being of an American citizen, such as travel, are involved, we will construe narrowly all delegated powers that curtail or dilute them” 357 U.S. at 129, 78 S.Ct. at 1120, 2 L.Ed.2d 1204.
We do not pass here on the desirability of area restrictions on travel. I should think Congress might well be justified in this period of international tensions produced by the Cold War in authorizing curtailment of travel to an actively unfriendly nation such as Cuba. It is entirely unrealistic to pretend that there was an end to emergency because of the Korean armistice. However, it is up to Congress to determine that conditions require a dilution of the freedom to travel through area restrictions on passport. See Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 65 S.Ct. 193, 89 L.Ed. 194 (1944), where the Supreme Court upheld the use of the war power to restrict the freedom of movement of citizens of Japanese origin after a Congressional determination of “the gravest imminent danger to the public safety.” Cf. Flynn v. Rusk, 219 F.Supp. ■709 (D.C.D.C.1963); Mayer v. Rusk, 224 F.Supp. 929 (D.C.D.C.1963) (on appeal to the Supreme Court, Dkt. 746). The problem here is that as yet Congress has made no determination that there is .an overriding need for area restrictions. After the Supreme Court’s decision in Kent v. Dulles, President Eisenhower made a special request to Congress for legislation authorizing the Secretary of :State, subject to substantive and procedural safeguards, to deny passports to persons whose travel would be inimical to the security or foreign relations of the United States and to impose restrictions ■on the use of passports by Americans for travel to areas where their presence might conflict with foreign policy objectives. Special Message of July 7, 1958, 104 Cong.Rec. 11849, 3 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, p. 5465, 85th Cong., 2nd Sess. (1958). While legislation making it unlawful for members of Communist organizations to be issued passports has been passed, none of the several bills introduced in recent years to authorize area restrictions on passports has been enacted. E. g., H.R. 13318, 85th Cong., 2nd Sess.
I would hold that such legislation is necessary, for the regulations cannot be supported by the existing statutes, inherent executive power, or by any executive agreement. Even if we assumed that constitutional rights could be overridden by an executive agreement, the Managua Resolution of April 3, 1964 was not an executive agreement. The ministers of the seven nations present agreed only to recommend to their governments the adoption, “within the limitations of their respective constitutional provisions”, the restriction and discouragement of the movement of their national to Cuba. Area restrictions may be necessary and desirable, but Congress should take the responsibility for authorizing them after a full fact-finding inquiry.
Therefore, I would hold that the present statutes do not authorize area restrictions on travel and that the Executive cannot restrict the right to travel without specific statutory authority. I respectfully dissent from the denial of a declaratory judgment to that effect. I dissent not because I disapprove of the ends sought by the area restrictions imposed thus far, but because these restrictions are based on a claimed power whose limits are vague and undefined and whose source I cannot specify.
While I disagree, as indicated, with the view that the area restrictions are authorized, and would grant a declaratory judgment that they are not, I would dismiss the action as against the Attorney General as at best premature.