Court Opinion

ID: 9444772
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:11:23.748333+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:59.776816
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
A court of competent jurisdiction has found that Gold’s affidavit of August 30, 1950, was false. The critical date as to compliance with § 9(h) of the National Labor Relations Act as amended was the date of issuance of the Board’s complaint. N. L. R. B. v. Dant, 344 U.S. 375, 73 S.Ct. 375, 97 L.Ed. 407. If the complaint had issued during the twelve month period while this false affidavit was in effect, the question before us would be clear cut. That, however, is not the case.
In August of 1951 Gold filed a new non-Communist affidavit, and it was during the effective period of that affidavit that the complaint in this case issued. No .court has found that affidavit to be false. It is true that the Board found in 1954 that the Union was not at that time in compliance with § 9(h). Assuming the Board had power to make such a finding, and assuming further that it be considered a finding that the 1951 affidavit was false, it must, I should think, be supported, like any Board finding, by substantial evidence, considering the record as a whole. We have no such record before us. Indeed, it appears that the question of the truth or falsity of the 1951 affidavit has never been heard on the merits.1
In American Communications Ass’n, C. I. O. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 414, 70 S.Ct. 674, 692, 94 L.Ed. 925, the opinion in chief, rejecting the claim that § 9(h) was a bill of attainder, emphasized that *200“members of those groups identified in § 9(h) are free to serve as union officers if at any time they renounce the allegiances which constituted a bar to signing the affidavit in the past. Past .conduct, actual or threatened by their previous adherence to affiliations and beliefs mentioned in § 9(h), is not a bar to resumption of the position.” The conclusion reached in the prevailing opinion seems to me to impose an improper limitation upon Chief Justice Vinson’s language.
A jury has found that in 1950 Gold was both a Communist and a liar, to put it bluntly. Yet to indulge in the presumption that he was therefore guilty of committing a criminal offense a year later in filing the 1951 affidavit is further than I can go on the record before us.
For the reasons outlined, I am unable ,to concur in the views of my colleagues, • ably expressed by Judge Miller.

. The Board has in effect been enjoined from holding such a hearing.