“At will it throws away our lives”

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was a complete skeptic of American law. But what does it mean to say this? Holmes’s February 4, 1901 speech in memorial of John Marshall provides some clues. It is widely acknowledged that Holmes’s  Civil War wounds and battlefield experiences profoundly shaped his understanding of law. But only in reflecting on this memorial have I recently begun to appreciate just how much these wounds and battlefield experiences distorted that understanding.

On the 100th anniversary of the day on which John Marshall took his seat as Chief Justice of the United States, Holmes–presiding as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court–delivered an answer to a motion that the court adjourn. On paper, his words are brutal. I wonder what impression they conveyed to his live audience.

Holmes’s speech included words of apparent praise for Marshall: “[W]hen I consider his might, his justice, and his wisdom, I do fully believe that if American law were to represented by a single figure, sceptic and worshipper alike would agree without dispute that the figure could be one alone, and that one, John Marshall.” But a close reading reveals that Holmes praised power, not  John Marshall. For Holmes was no worshipper of law. Marshall was a representative figure of American law; but to Holmes the sceptic of American law, Marshall represented the ability of an idea to “shoot across the world the electric despotism of an unresisted power.”

Holmes insisted that it “most idle” and “futile” to consider a man apart from his circumstances, for a man is part of a larger organism made up of surrounding circumstances. The man is equivalent to an inch of mucous membrane or a cube from the brain, not a tenor speaking or an orator speaking. Shifting from physiological to martial imagery, Holmes analogized the “great man” to one who happens to find himself at “a strategic point in the campaign of history”: “A great man represents a great ganglion in the nerves of society, or to vary the figure, a strategic point in the campaign of history, and part of his greatness consists in his being there.”

Linking Marshall more specifically to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (who would have been familiar with Holmes’s Boston audience for leading the black soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th regiment in their hopeless death charge on Fort Wagner), Holmes continued:

I no more can separate John Marshall from the fortunate circumstance that the appointment of Chief Justice fell to John Adams, instead of to Jefferson a month later, and so gave it to a Federalist and loose constructionist to start the working of the Constitution, than I can separate the black line through which he sent his electric fire at Fort Wagner from Colonel Shaw. When we celebrate Marshall we celebrate at the same time and indivisibly the inevitable fact that the oneness of the nation and the supremacy of the Constitution were declared to govern the dealings of man with man by the judgments and degrees of the most august of courts.

What does it mean to celebrate “the oneness of the nation and the supremacy of the Constitution”? It depends. For setting aside a day in honor of this “great judge” is a symbol. “[A]nd what shall be symbolized by any image of the sight depends upon the mind of him who sees it.”

To a Virginian, the setting aside symbolizes “the glory of his glorious state.”

To a patriot, it symbolizes “the fact that time has been on Marshall’s side, and that the theory for which Hamilton argued, and he decided, and Webster spoke, and Grant fought, and Lincoln died, is now our cornerstone.”

And to the lawyer, “it stands for the rise of a new body of jurisprudence, by which guiding principles are raised above the reach of statute and State, and judges are entrusted with a solemn and hitherto unheard-of authority and duty.”

To Holmes, the setting aside of this day on honor of Marshall marks something powerful and dark:

To one who lives in what may seem to him a solitude of thought, this day–as it marks the triumph of a man whom some Presidents of his time bade carry on his judgments as he could–this day marks the fact that all thought is social, is on its way to action; that, to borrow the expression of a French writer, every idea tends to become first a catechism and then a code; and that according to its worth his unhelped meditation may one day mount a throne, and without armies, or even with them, may shoot across the world the electric despotism of an unresisted power.

We see here an earlier version of Holmes’s more famous statement, delivered in dissent more than twenty years later, that “[e]very idea is an incitement.” Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 673 (1925). But unlike the “redundant discourse” before the Court in Gitlow–discourse that “had no chance of starting a present conflagration”–the discourse of Marshall and “the men of his generation” successfully invested an iconic American symbol with death-dealing power. This setting aside of a day in honor of Marshall, Holmes concluded, “is all a symbol, if you like, but so is the flag”:

The flag is but a bit of bunting to one who insists on prose. Yet, thanks to Marshall and to the men of his generation–and for this above all we celebrate him and them–its red is our lifeblood, its stars our world, its blue our heaven. It owns our land. At will it throws away our lives.

And thus concludes Holmes’s memorial words for Marshall: “The motion of the bar is granted, and the court is adjourned.”

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Madison on the difference between a Council of Revision and judicial review as refusal to execute

James Madison was a strong proponent at the Constitutional Convention of a Council of Revision. This “joint executive-judicial council of revision” would be “armed with a limited negative over congressional acts, including congressional exercise of its power to negative state laws.” Jack N. Rakove, Judicial Power in the Constitutional Theory of James Madison, 43 William & Mary L. Rev. 1513, 1521 (2002). The Convention rejected this proposal. Later, in his Observations on the “Draught of a Constitution for Virginia,” Madison contrasted how a Council of Revision would work in contrast with the mechanism that we now call “judicial review” (a name not given it until the early 20th century):

A revisionary power is meant as a check to precipitate, to unjust, and to unconstitutional laws. These important ends would it is conceived be more effectually secured, without disarming the Legislature of its requisite authority, by requiring bills to be separately communicated to the Exec: & Judicy. depts. If either of these object, let 2/3, if both 3/4, of each House be necessary to overrule the objection; and if either or botii protest agst. a bill as violating the Constitution, let it moreover be suspended, notwithstanding the overruling proportion of the Assembly, until tiiere shall have been a subsequent election of the H. of Ds. and a repassage of the bill by 2/3 or 3/4 of both Houses, as the case may be. It sd. not be allowed the Judges or the Ex to pronounce a law thus enacted, unconstitul. & invalid.

In the State Constitutions & indeed in the Fedl. one also, no provision is made for the case of a disagreement in expounding them; and as the Courts are generally the last in making their decision, it results to them, by refusing or not refusing to execute a law, to stamp it with its final character. This makes the Judiciary Dept paramount in fact to the Legislature, which was never intended, and can never be proper.

Putting aside the reasons for and against the various proposals, it is worth noting Madison’s description of what “judicial review.” It consists of a court’s decision to refuse or not to refuse to execute a law. Nothing more. But also nothing less. For while this description of “judicial review” may seem somewhat weaker than the ability to “strike down” or “negative” laws, it is still an awesome power. In Madison’s view, this arrangement “makes the Judiciary Dept paramount in fact to the Legislature, which was never intended, and can never be proper.”

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A Fourth Circuit anti-exhaustion ruling

John Coleman filed a FOIA request seeking some information from the DEA. The DEA eventually denied the request. But it took a really long time to do so. And when the DEA finally responded, they blamed Coleman because he did not prepay a certain fee. When Coleman sued the DEA in federal court to get the information he requested under FOIA, the DEA said he should lose because he had not exhausted his administrative remedies. The district court agreed with the DEA. Today, the Fourth Circuit decided Coleman’s appeal. The first sentence of the second paragraph of Judge Wilkinson’s opinion for the court in Coleman v. DEA states: “Having exhausted the litigant, the DEA proceeded to argue that it was Coleman who had failed to pay its fee request for a preliminary search of the documents and to exhaust his administrative remedies.” Who do you think won the appeal?

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Justice Story on the office of the Chief Justice of the United States

The Chief Justiceship of the United States is a station full of perplexing duties, and delicate responsibilities, and requiring qualities so various, as well as so high, that no man, conscious of human infirmity, can fail to approach it with extreme diffidence and distrust of his own competency. It is the very post, where weakness, and ignorance, and timidity must instantly betray themselves, and sink to their natural level. It is difficult even for the profession at large fully to appreciate the extent of the labors, the various attainments, the consummate learning, and the exquisite combination of moral qualities, which are demanded to fill it worthily.

Joseph Story, Life, Character, and Services of Chief Justice Marshall: A Discourse Pronounced on the 15th of October, 1835, at the Request of the Suffolk Bar, The Miscellaneous Writings of Joseph Story (William W. Story, ed., 1852) 639.

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Must the Little Sisters of the Poor implement the HHS Mandate?

Today is the deadline to file comments on the HHS Mandate Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Among the many groups commenting today are the Little Sisters of the Poor. Their comments filed today are available here, and their prior statements on the HHS Mandate are available here and here.

As this 2005 Wall Street Journal article explains, the Little Sisters of the Poor have “an odd business plan” for their homes for the elderly poor: “Beg for help, lavish it on residents.” But more confounding than the Little Sisters’ business plan is the idea that the federal government would force them to arrange their health coverage for their homes’ employees to ensure coverage of female sterilization and the free flow of all FDA-approved contraceptives, including abortifacient drugs and devices.

President Obama is a college sports fan, but he should know better than to think that the Little Sisters of the Poor are simply “a euphemism in college sports to describe a weak opponent.” The Little Sisters are real; the HHS Mandate burdens their religious exercise; and the Obama Administration has the power to lift that burden. Lifting that burden is also the President’s duty under federal law.

Some excerpts from the comments:

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A Lawrence quotation prompted by Buzzfeed’s pick-up of MacDonald v. Moose

With Buzzfeed having picked up Virginia’s petition for rehearing en banc in MacDonald v. Moose (previously discussed here and here), I am prompted to post a quotation from the Court’s opinion in Lawrence v. Texas that recently jumped out at me.

First, some background. I argued in my first post on the case that the panel majority misread Lawrence v. Texas as requiring facial invalidation of the “anti-sodomy provision” in Virginia’s “crimes against nature” statute. One basis for my argument was the claim that “reasoning throughout [Lawrence] is all about the petitioners’ personal interests in liberty and privacy.” One commenter on that post criticized its reasoning by asserting that “bending over backwards to say that the facts here are slightly different and that should be sufficient is not a reasonable position to take because it is based on narrowing Justice Kennedy’s entire due-process analysis to one case and one case only.” That is not the position I meant to adopt. Rather, the force of Lawrence as a precedent rests on its ratio decidendi, which is an understanding of the constitutionally protected personal liberty interests of two adults to engage in certain private, consensual conduct.

Apart from what I have previously posted on the subject, support for my reading of the case can be seen in Justice Kennedy’s description of how the case ought to be decided: “We conclude the case should be resolved by determining whether the petitioners were free as adults to engage in the private conduct in the exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution” (emphasis added). If one reads Lawrence in this way, then the Virginia court’s disposition of the petitioner’s challenge to his conviction was plainly not contrary to or an unreasonable application of clearly established law.

 

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Woollard, MacDonald, and Standing to Raise a “Facial Challenge”

1. In a previous post, I criticized the Fourth Circuit’s habeas grant in MacDonald v. Moose. The Fourth Circuit held in that case that one textual provision of Virginia’s more encompassing “crimes against nature” statute was facially unconstitutional under Lawrence v. Texas. As my post indicated, and as some comments to the post discussed in detail, the Fourth Circuit was not making this determination de novo but rather under AEDPA’s deferential standard of review for claims adjudicated on the merits in state court proceedings.  The relevant state court determinations in MacDonald were that the statute was constitutional as applied to petitioner’s conduct and that he lacked standing to bring his facial challenge. Here is the reasoning with respect to the facial challenge:

MacDonald contends the sodomy statute, Code § 18.2-361(A), is facially unconstitutional because it violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In accord with our previous decisions, we hold that MacDonald lacks standing to assert this claim. See McDonald v. Commonwealth, 48 Va. App. 325, 329, 630 S.E.2d 754, 756 (2006) (“[W]e will only consider the constitutionality of Code § 18.2-361(A) as applied to appellant’s conduct.”); Singson v. Commonwealth, 46 Va. App. 724, 734, 621 S.E.2d 682, 686 (2005) (defendant lacks standing to challenge statute generally); Tjan v. Commonwealth, 46 Va. App. 698, 706, 621 S.E.2d 669, 673 (2005) (same); see also Grosso v. Commonwealth, 177 Va. 830, 839, 13 S.E.2d 285, 288 (1941) (“It is well settled that one challenging the constitutionality of a provision in a statute has the burden of showing that he himself has been injured thereby.”); Coleman v. City of Richmond, 5 Va. App. 459, 463, 364 S.E.2d 239, 241 (1988) (“generally, a litigant may challenge the constitutionality of a law only as it applies to him or her”).

According to the Fourth Circuit panel opinion, however, one discrete textual provision of Virginia’s statute was facially unconstitutional, and “the state court’s standing determination, as endorsed by the district court, was contrary to and involved an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States” (emphasis added).

2. Nine days after the Fourth Circuit issued its opinion in MacDonald v. Moose, the court issued an opinion in Woollard v. Gallagher. Woollard was a Second Amendment challenge to Maryland’s “good and substantial reason” permitting requirement for gun possession outside one’s home. The district court in Woollard had held that this requirement was facially unconstitutional. In addition to rejecting Woollard’s claim that the permitting requirement was unconstitutional as applied to him, the panel opinion held that Woollard lacked standing to bring his facial challenge:

Because we conclude that the good-and-substantial-reason requirement is constitutional under the Second Amendment as applied to Appellee Woollard, we also must reject the Appellees’ facial challenge. See Masciandaro, 638 F.3d at 474. As the Supreme Court has explained, “a person to whom a statute may constitutionally be applied will not be heard to challenge that statute on the ground that it may conceivably be applied unconstitutionally to others, in other situations not before the Court.” Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 610 (1973); see also Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124, 168 (2007) (“It is neither our obligation nor within our traditional institutional role to resolve questions of constitutionality with respect to each potential situation that might develop.”).

On its face, this reasoning looks just like the reasoning that the Fourth Circuit held was “contrary to and involved and unreasonable application of clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States” when that reasoning was used by Virginia’s Court of Appeals in MacDonald.

3. The tension between the two cases cannot be explained on the grounds that the Woollard panel was unaware of the recent MacDonald decision. According to the date listed on the opinions, the two appeals were argued on the same day and two out of the three judges were the same in both cases (Judge King and Judge Diaz). And most importantly, Judge King authored both opinions.

4. The doctrine surrounding facial and as-applied challenges is notoriously murky. Some may view it as complex; others may view it as simply confused. In my view, the labels “facial” and “as-applied” hurt more than they help insofar as each lacks a stable meaning across cases. But to the extent that MacDonald’s facial challenge was an overbreadth-type (“bottom-up”) challenge, in which facial unconstitutionality depends on the proportion of unconstitutional applications to constitutional applications, then the reasoning used by the Virginia Court of Appeals in refusing to adjudicate the challenge seems unimpeachable (as the Fourth Circuit’s use of that reasoning in Woollard would seem to indicate). (For a discussion of the distinction between valid-rule  (or “top-down”) facial challenges and overbreadth-type (or “bottom-up”) facial challenges, see Richard H. Fallon, Jr., Fact and Fiction about Facial Challenges, 99 Cal. L. Rev. 915, 931 (2011), a law review article cited by Judge King’s majority opinion in MacDonald.)

5. According to the portion of the appellant’s brief quoted by the panel opinion in MacDonald, the facial challenge in that case was an overbreadth-type challenge:

MacDonald maintains that he possesses standing to pursue his facial challenge under the Due Process Clause because the anti-sodomy provision was rendered unconstitutional by Lawrence. He relies on established Supreme Court authority for the proposition that standing exists: “where the statute in question has already been declared unconstitutional in the vast majority of its intended applications, and it can fairly be said that it was not intended to stand as valid, on the basis of fortuitous circumstances, only in a fraction of cases it was originally designed to cover.” Br. of Appellant 14 (quoting United States v. Raines, 362 U.S. 17, 23 (1960)).

6. Virginia’s petition for en banc review is pending at the court. Its principal focus is the application of 2254(d) with respect to the state court’s as-applied understanding of Lawrence v. Texas. If the Fourth Circuit does grant en banc review, perhaps it will also take the opportunity to clarify the law surrounding facial and as-applied challenges more generally.

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Fourth Circuit holds failure to timely assert precludes preclusion defenses

The Fourth Circuit today ordered the district court to reinstate a jury verdict that had been set aside in response to a renewed post-trial motion for judgment as a matter of law on the basis of claim preclusion and issue preclusion. The appeals court held that trademark infringement defendant von Drehle Corporation had failed to timely assert these affirmative defenses against plaintiff Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products, LP. Judge Keenan wrote the opinion for the court in Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products, LP v. von Drehle Corporation, in which Judge Gregory and Judge Payne (senior judge, EDVA) joined. After seven years of litigation and two trips to the Fourth Circuit, Georgia-Pacific stands to collect a judgment of $791,431 from von Drehle.

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The Fourth Circuit’s obviously (and profoundly) mistaken habeas grant premised on the alleged facial unconstitutionality of Virginia’s “anti-sodomy provision”

[UPDATE: Additional discussion at Woollard, MacDonald, and Standing to Raise a "Facial Challenge" and here.]

A split panel of the Fourth Circuit yesterday granted habeas relief to a forty-seven year-old Virginia man convicted of criminally soliciting oral sex from a seventeen year-old girl. (HT and with link to AP coverage: Howard Bashman at How Appealing) The court held that the conviction was invalid because the predicate felony of sodomy was based on an unconstitutional provision of state law. Judge King wrote the opinion for the court in MacDonald v. Moose, in which Judge Motz joined. Judge Diaz dissented.

The panel majority reasons that the Virginia “anti-sodomy provision” is facially unconstitutional under Lawrence v. Texas because of Lawrence’s reasoning about Bowers v. Hardwick, which the Fourth Circuit describes as having involved a facial challenge to a materially indistinguishable Georgia statute. According to the panel opinion, “the invalid Georgia statute in Bowers is materially indistinguishable from the [Virginia] anti-sodomy provision being challenged here.” And although the Supreme Court upheld the materially indistinguishable Georgia statute against a facial constitutional challenge in Bowers, the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas “recognized that the facial due process challenge in Bowers was wrongly decided.”  In other words (as Judge Diaz fairly reconstructs the majority’s argument in his dissent), “the majority reasons that MacDonald’s facial challenge must succeed just as–according to Lawrence–the facial challenge in Bowers should have.”

This decision is obviously mistaken about Bowers and Lawrence, and profoundly mistaken about the nature of constitutional adjudication.

To begin with, Bowers did not involve a “facial due process challenge.” The opinion for the Court in Bowers explicitly states: “The only claim properly before the Court . . . is Hardwick’s challenge to the Georgia statute as applied to consensual homosexual sodomy. We express no opinion on the constitutionality of the Georgia statute as applied to other acts of sodomy.” This mistake alone renders the Fourth Circuit’s reasoning unsustainable on its own terms. The panel opinion reasons that the Virginia statute is facially unconstitutional because the Georgia statute is facially unconstitutional, but Bowers simply did not deal with the alleged facial unconstitutionality of Georgia’s statute.

The Fourth Circuit’s majority opinion is also wrong to describe Lawrence as resolving a claim of facial unconstitutionality. The panel majority’s misapprehension of this decision can be seen in the way the panel describes the three questions presented in Lawrence:

(1) whether the criminalization of strictly homosexual sodomy violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; (2) more broadly, whether criminalization of sodomy per se between consenting adults contravened the fundamental liberty and privacy interests protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause; and (3) whether Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), which upheld against facial challenge a Georgia statute criminalizing all sodomy, should be overruled.

The panel opinion’s paraphrase of the first two questions presented materially changes both of those questions (and I have already explained what is wrong with the description of the third question). The Supreme Court actually undertook to address the narrower questions “[w]hether petitioners’ criminal convictions” violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirements of equal protection or due process. Under the Supreme Court’s formulation, the alleged violations of the Constitution inhere in petitioners’ convictions, not in the state’s legislation. And the Court’s supporting reasoning throughout the opinion is all about the petitioners’ personal interests in liberty and privacy.

As if to underscore the personal nature of the rights at issue and the importance of this as-applied understanding to its framing of the analysis, the portion of the Lawrence opinion for the Court that describes the questions presented concludes: “The petitioners were adults at the time of the alleged offense. Their conduct was in private and consensual.” And in concluding the opinion as a whole, Justice Kennedy highlights again that “[t]he present case does not involve minors. It does not involve persons who might be injured or coerced or who are situated in relationships where consent might not easily be refused.” Instead, the case involved “two adults” who engaged in sexual practices “with full and mutual consent from each other.”

Mr. MacDonald’s criminal solicitation did not involve two adults, but did involve a minor in a relationship “where consent might not easily be refused.” Yet the Fourth Circuit’s misreading of Bowers and Lawrence as involving facial invalidation permits what Virginia law has forbidden.

In light of the panel majority’s mistaken characterizations of both Bowers and Lawrence, the panel majority should not have been “confident” that Virginia’s “anti-sodomy provision, prohibiting sodomy between two persons without any qualification, is facially unconstitutional.” And at the very least, the panel majority should not have dismissed Judge Diaz’s conclusion that the Virginia courts had not made a decision that was contrary to or involved an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law. The panel majority’s reasoning would not have been sufficient to reverse a federal district court on direct appeal, much less displace a state appellate ruling under AEDPA’s standard of review.

There is more that could be said in criticism of the panel majority’s opinion (such as with respect to its misapplication of Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood). But I hope such criticisms will be rendered unnecessary by the grant of en banc rehearing.

The odds of such rehearing are never good, of course, and Virginia has an even steeper uphill climb given the panel composition and the composition of the en banc court. Yet it is no small thing for the Fourth Circuit panel to do what it did here, and the defects in analysis are not difficult to see. Moreover, there are both narrower ways (like Judge Diaz’s) and also broader ways of affirming the district court’s denial of habeas relief.

Whether or not the Fourth Circuit grants rehearing, however, it is worth mentioning a more fundamental problem with the panel majority’s conception of constitutional adjudication, a problem that will remain even if this opinion’s particular manifestation of the problem is deprived of legal effect by the grant of en banc rehearing. That problem is the legislative conception of judicial review inherent in its description of the effect of constitutional adjudication.

In the panel majority’s view, the so-called anti-sodomy provision in Virginia law “does not survive the Lawrence decision.” The panel reasons that– because Lawrence killed this provision–the underlying prosecution was not for solicitation of a felony but rather for solicitation of “an act that is not, at the moment, a crime in Virginia.” Indeed, the panel majority states, ” [t]he Commonwealth may as well have charged MacDonald for telephoning Ms. Johnson on the night in question, or for persuading her to meet him at the Home Depot parking lot.” But this is all wrong. Supreme Court decisions about constitutional matters do not decriminalize acts or change state legal codes. Supreme Court decisions may render certain state actions unconstitutional. But such judicial decisions (whether by the Supreme Court or any other federal court for that matter) cannot and do not change what is and is not criminal under state law. Yet that is precisely the effect attributed by the panel opinion to the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence.

The panel opinion is right that “the Commonwealth cannot simply wave a magic wand and decree by fiat conduct as criminal . . .” But the Commonwealth did no such thing. It declared conduct criminal through ordinary legislation, and the Fourth Circuit has now erroneously set aside a conviction for violation of that ordinary state legislation through an extraordinary exercise of the federal judicial power.

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Judge Friendly and the Oddball Doctrine

Courts make decisions on the basis of the facts in front of them, but those facts may be atypical. The resulting rule might not make much sense as applied to more typical cases. This is the idea behind the Oddball Doctrine, as discussed by Illinois law professor Suja Thomas in this forthcoming paper. The abstract of the paper brought to mind Judge Henry Friendly’s observations from 35 years ago:

[C]ourts can act on questions of social policy only at the call of litigants; then, they generally must act although postponement might be the wiser course. While courts are, or should be, aware of the effects of their decisions beyond the case sub judice, their response is often triggered by outrageous facts that may not be at all representative. Professor Morris R. Cohen considered the judicial system to be “intellectually the weakest part of our government,” having “the least opportunity to get information on the issues which it has to decide.”

Henry J. Friendly, The Courts and Social Policy: Substance and Procedure, 33 U. Miami L. Rev. 21, 22-23 (1978).

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Another argument against the anti-DOMA “federalism brief”

A federalism-focused anti-DOMA brief has now been the subject of a flurry of posts on Volokh Conspiracy and NRO’s Bench Memos. (Jonathan Adler’s recent post includes direct links to the posts.) These posts line up Jonathan Adler, Randy Barnett, Dale Carpenter, and Ernie Young against Nick Rosenkranz and Ed Whelan.

In my view, Rosenkranz and Whelan have the better of the exchange. But there is still an important element missing from the discussion, for both sides of this debate assume that the Supreme Court should inquire whether Congress had power to pass the law containing DOMA § 3′s definitions. That’s the wrong question. The Court in Windsor has no good reason to consider the constitutionality of DOMA’s definitions except insofar as that definition is plugged into the estate tax. And when the Court considers the constitutionality of DOMA’s definitions of “marriage” and “spouse” in connection with the estate tax, the “necessary and proper” analysis has a straightforward answer.

DOMA § 3 has the kind of legal effect that the federal courts have business dealing with in Windsor only by virtue of that provision’s application in conjunction with the estate tax. By its terms, DOMA § 3 is nothing more than a directive about how to determine ”the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States.” The “Act of Congress” in this case is codified at 26 U.S.C. 2056, a spousal exemption from the federal estate tax. Ms. Windsor would have avoided paying a significant amount of money in estate taxes if she had qualified under federal law as Ms. Spyer’s “spouse.” Because Ms. Windsor did not qualify as a “spouse” for purposes of the federal estate tax, she had to pay.

Ms. Windsor’s challenge to the limited reach of the estate tax’s spousal exemption takes the form of a refund action. The “judicial review” question is whether a court may give legal effect to DOMA’s definitions in the course of deciding this refund action.

The federalism-based anti-DOMA brief answers this question “no” on the grounds that a court may not give legal effect to DOMA’s definitions in any case–the provision as a whole (DOMA § 3, but not all of DOMA) exceeds Congress’s powers. The federalism-based anti-DOMA brief attacks DOMA’s definitions on their own and in conjunction with every other provision of federal law in which DOMA’s definitions of “marriage” and of “spouse” might apply. But the brief does not attack DOMA’s definitions insofar as they are plugged into the estate tax exemption at issue in the case.

The brief argues that “[a] federal definition of marriage that indiscriminately applies to more than 1100 federal statutes and programs can be ‘plainly adapted’ to none of them.” But that is not right. DOMA’s round peg fits into all the round holes, and there are many of them in federal law.

If the spousal exemption in the estate tax is a round hole, such that DOMA’s definitions are “plainly adapted” to it, that is the end of the no-power argument for this case. Congress has power to tax and concomitant power to define the scope of the federal estate tax in a way that declines to exempt Ms. Windsor and others similarly situated.

To escape this move, the anti-DOMA federalism briefers might try to argue that the court should entertain a kind of overbreadth challenge to DOMA: Even though DOMA’s definitions are plainly adapted to the estate tax, the definitional provision is invalid in its entirety because it is not plainly adapted to some other areas of federal law (like, for example, bribery rules). This argument would probably fail on its own terms, as DOMA’s definitional provisions have a plainly legitimate sweep. But the more fundamental problem is to explain why this form of challenge should be entertained at all.

My analysis is closest to the portion of Whelan’s in which he writes that “section 3 of DOMA is merely definitional and … section 3 plugs into other congressional enactments. If those other enactments are within Congress’s power, then it is plainly within Congress’s power to define the terms it uses in those enactments.” And it is similar to Rosenkranz’s, which describes DOMA § 3 as a “cut-and-paste function”:

DOMA Sec 3, like all definitional provisions, is essentially a cut-and-paste function. Where you see X, you should read Y. Obviously Congress could simply have erased X throughout the US Code and replaced it with Y. Likewise, presumably, Congress could have added an “X shall mean Y” definitional section at the end of every single statute. And so, I can’t see any objection to a global definition at the beginning of the U.S. Code.

But one objection raised by the anti-DOMA federalism brief is to the use of a “global definition.” Because it is global, the argument goes, it is not “plainly adapted” to any particular exercise of an enumerated power. My analysis provides a response to this form-based objection.

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Fourth Circuit distinguishes Concepcion and holds arbitration provision unenforceable for lack of mutual consideration

A dispute arising out of an inability to obtain a mortgage for the construction of a new million-dollar home in Maryland has resulted in a Fourth Circuit decision holding an arbitration provision unenforceable for lack of consideration. Judge Davis wrote the opinion for the court in Noohi v. Toll Bros, Inc., in which Judge King and Judge Shedd joined. Among other things, the opinion contains a discussion of appellate jurisdiction under the Federal Arbitration Act, issues of contract interpretation under Maryland law, and the Supreme Court’s decision in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 131 S.Ct. 1740 (2011).

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Fourth Circuit rejects copyright infringement claim arising out of similar residential architecture designs

The Fourth Circuit affirmed the grant of summary judgment to the defendant in a copyright infringement claim brought by a Charlotte, NC architecture firm (Building Graphics, Inc.) against a multi-state building company (Lennar Corp.) and an architecture firm hired by that company (Drafting & Design, Inc.). The appellate court concluded that the plaintiff firm had not “marshaled sufficient evidence to support a finding that there exists a reasonable possibility that [the defendants] had access to its copyrighted plans.” Judge Davis wrote the opinion for the court in Building Graphis v. Lennar Corp., in which Judge Keenan and Judge Gibney (EDVA) joined. (For those who are interested in the potential similarities, an appendix to the opinion includes floor plans and pictures of the houses.)

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Fourth Circuit rejects psychic’s free speech and free exercise challenges to Chesterfield County (VA) regulatory scheme

The Fourth Circuit today affirmed the grant of summary judgment to Chesterfield County (VA) on free speech, free exercise, RLUIPA, and equal protection challenges brought by Patricia Moore-King. Ms. Moore-King, who practices spiritual counseling as Psychic Sophie, had challenged various Chesterfield County licensing and zoning restrictions that apply to her because she fits within the County Code’s definition of a “fortune-teller.” (For news coverage of the oral argument, see here.) Judge Duncan wrote the opinion for the court, in which Chief Judge Traxler and Judge Wilkinson joined.

From a doctrinal perspective, two noteworthy aspects of  Moore-King v. County of Chesterfield are its discussion of the professional speech doctrine and its analysis of the difference between “religion” and a “way of life.”

With respect to professional speech, Judge Duncan writes that “the relevant inquiry to determine whether to apply the professional speech doctrine is whether the speaker is providing personalized advice in a private setting to a paying client or instead engages in public discussion and commentary.”

With respect to the definition of religion, Judge Duncan distinguishes between “personal and philosophical choices consistent with a way of life,” on one hand, and “deep religious convictions shared by an organized group deserving of constitutional solicitude,” on the other hand. The court determined that Moore-King’s practices fit in the philosophical-not-religious category: “That a wide variety of sources–the New Age movement, the teachings of Jesus, natural healing, the study of metaphysics, etc.–inform and shape Moore-King’s ‘inner flow’ does not transform her personal philosophical beliefs into a religion any more than did Thoreau’s commitment to Transcendentalism and idealist philosophy render his views religious.”

From a practice perspective, it may be worth noting that Chesterfield County prevailed even though the court knocked down its lead defense to the free-speech claim. That defense rested on two premises, both of which the panel rejected: “(1) fortune telling is inherently deceptive; and (2) inherently deceptive speech warrants no protection under the First Amendment.”

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Some JHW III for AMK and others re: same-sex marriage and indulging “the impulse to constitutionalize”

Times were different in 2006 when Judge Wilkinson wrote the Duke Law Journal piece excerpted below, Gay Rights and American Constitutionalism: What’s a Constitution For?

The California Supreme Court had not yet construed that State’s constitution to provide a right to same-sex marriage. But the citizens of Virginia were considering an amendment to that State’s constitution (an amendment that ultimately passed).

Judge Wilkinson argued against using a constitutional amendment as a “ preemptive strike against what some hypothetical court in some hypothetical jurisdiction might some day say.” He thought that “it would be astonishing for a court applying the rational basis scrutiny used in Romer and arguably in Lawrence to hold that a state lacks a rational basis to define marriage in its public policy, resting as that policy does on centuries of tradition and experience.” And  ”[i]t would be particularly astonishing for courts to make such a pronouncement in the domestic relations sphere that lies at the heart of states’ competence.” Because “Lawrence and Romer are a far cry from this momentous step,” he argued, a constitutional amendment “would simply indulge the worst suspicions about the Supreme Court, preempting a decision that may never come.”

Some additional excerpts:

A tragedy is befalling American constitutional law. Both left and right in the gay rights struggle have indiscriminately indulged the impulse to constitutionalize.

* * *

Lawrence has been taken to task for overblown rhetoric, its overruling of precedent, its repudiation of traditional moral values, its reliance on unenumerated rights, and its resort to foreign law, most especially a decision of the European Court of Human Rights. Still, the result in Lawrence is eminently just and humane; the real flaw of the decision was to set the struggle over gay rights on a constitutional course. The Court’s lack of faith and trust in democracy was endemic. * * * [D]emocracy itself was on a decent and humane path, and the Court’s decision to preempt it with a problematic constitutional pronouncement was dangerously shortsighted.

* * *

It would be astonishing for a court applying the rational basis scrutiny used in Romer and arguably in Lawrence to hold that a state lacks a rational basis to define marriage in its public policy, resting as that policy does on centuries of tradition and experience. It would be particularly astonishing for courts to make such a pronouncement in the domestic relations sphere that lies at the heart of states’ competence.

* * *

The marriage amendment phenomenon then can only be viewed as a preemptive strike against what some hypothetical court in some hypothetical jurisdiction might some day say. This is an insufficient basis on which to amend foundational texts like state constitutions. A constitutional amendment is not by nature a preemptive device. It is instead an extraordinary mechanism–a tool of last resort properly reserved for situations which present no other choice. To amend a constitution preemptively, in anticipation of the proverbial rainy day, is, simply put, gratuitous. Such needless use of the amendment process is antithetical to the very essence of constitutional lawmaking and to the notion of a fundamental, guiding, and multigenerational charter. * * * Although a state with no other recourse is surely justified in responding to an activist constitutional interpretation, gratuitous amendments to our most basic documents of governance are hurtful and alienating in a way all their own.

* * *

It is the job of legislatures, not constitutions, to reflect evolving standards and to register change from whatever direction it may arrive. Statutes are more amenable to adjustment and modification than constitutional provisions are. And American constitutional tradition has always preserved for majorities the right to overrule courts on policy matters through statutory amendment rather than through the cumbersome process of constitutional change.

* * *

This difference between constitutional and statutory law bears quite directly on the question of gay rights. No constitution should ever assign its citizens pariah status. No constitution should relegate its citizens so symbolically and semipermanently to the shadows of national life. As a matter of statute, however, the balance changes. Statutes exist for the expression of values central to the imperative of social cohesion. Statutes legitimately articulate within limits a community’s aspirations for marriage, the raising of children, and the conduct of family life. It is in this difference between constitutional and statutory law that America strikes the balance between claims of personal rights and assertions of community prerogative.

* * *

[T]he chief casualty of the same-sex marriage debate has been the American constitutional tradition. Although electorates understandably are more concerned with results than with process, the Framers were concerned supremely with process, and that process has made possible our civility, self-governance, and greatness as a democratic nation. * * * It is not wrong for gay citizens to wish to share fully in the life of this country, to partake of its most basic and sacred institution, and to experience the intimacy, bonding, and devotion to another that only an institution such as marriage can bring. To embrace this view one need not believe that sexual infidelities will disappear, but only that many gay couples will make good on their vows and lead fuller, richer, and more productive lives as a result.

 That, however, is hardly the end of the matter. Marriage between male and female is more than a matter of biological complementarity–the union of the two has been thought through the ages more mystical and profound than the separate identities of each alone. Without strong family structures, there will be no stable and healthy social order, and alternative marriage structures may weaken the sanction of law and custom necessary for human families to flourish and children to grow. These are no small risks, and present trends are not often more sound than the cumulative wisdom of the centuries.

Is it too much to ask that judges and legislatures acknowledge the difficulty of this debate by leaving it to normal democratic processes? The dangers of doing otherwise are clear. When we  politicize our basic documents of governance, we deepen exponentially the wounds of civic life.

 The more passionate an issue, the less justification there often is for constitutionalizing it. Constitutions tempt those who are much too sure they are right. Certainty is, to be sure, a constant feature of our politics–some certainties endure; others are fated to be supplanted by the certainties of a succeeding age. Neither we nor the Framers can be sure which is which, but the Framers were sure that we should debate our differences in this day’s time and arena. Their message is as clear today as it was at the Founding: Leave Constitutions alone!

Excerpts from: J. Harvie Wilkinson III, Gay Rights and American Constitutionalism: What’s A Constitution for?, 56 Duke L.J. 545 (2006).

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Proceed with caution = Orval Faubus?

Defenders of Proposition 8 argue that it is reasonable for California to proceed with caution when changing such a basic social institution as marriage. (p. 48) In my view, a desire to proceed with caution is one good reason, among others, that many Californians had in mind when voting to repeal the judicial construction of California’s constitution to create a right to same-sex marriage.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers in Hollingsworth v. Perry reject this reason. They assert, among other things, that “[i]t cannot be the law that public concern about equal treatment itself can justify a denial of equal treatment.” Their authority for this exceedingly general proposition is Cooper v. Aaron. If the law allowed concern for equal treatment to justify denial of equal treatment, they argue, “then in Little Rock in 1958, the ‘drastic opposing action on the part of the Governor of Arkansas who dispatched units of the Arkansas National Guard to the Central High School grounds and placed the school “off limits” to colored students’ itself could have been enough to justify the continuation of segregation. Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, 9 (1958).” (p. 48)

That’s one way of looking at things, I suppose. Asserting that society should proceed with caution before rejecting the idea that marriage requires a man and a woman is just like calling out the troops to prevent black kids from attending school with white kids. I’ve never made that connection before. But the argument is just one step removed from equating (a) the claim that marriage requires a man and a woman, with (b) the claim that a “Negro woman” should not marry a “white man.” Loving v. Virginia. And that equation has been a staple of arguments for “marriage equality” for a long time.

I hope that the Supreme Court of the United States can appreciate distinctions that plaintiffs’ lawyers apparently cannot.

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What is Harvard Law Review’s new gender-based affirmative-action membership policy?

The Harvard Crimson reports that the Harvard Law Review “has expanded its affirmative action policy to include gender as a criteria in its editor selection process.” (HT: How Appealing) I hope that the editors know what they are doing, but I fear that they do not. In fact, the new policy may not be a “policy” at all, in that it apparently specifies only that gender ought to be taken into account in some unspecified way in making membership decisions. 

I hesitate to write because there may have been changes since I served as an editor on Volumes 114 and 115. But the affirmative action policy described in the Crimson Article now seems very much like the one in place then. According to the article, the prior policy was to set aside a certain number of slots to be filled by a “discretionary committee,” with the committee members taking into account “applicants’ grades, writing test scores, race, and any physical disabilities.” The way that these were to be taken into account was unspecified. And it appears that this remains unspecified. The new policy appears simply to charge the discretionary committee to “consider gender in addition to its existing criteria.”

I was a member of the discretionary committee for Volume 115. Our direction was just to take the various factors into account and then exercise our discretion. That is it. There were some very easy calls, such as applicants who missed the cut-off by a hair’s breadth mathematically. But there was no guidance at all for the tougher calls. The “policy” was nothing more than a list of factors.

At least as of Volume 115, the only people who knew what role various factors played in membership decisions for any given year were the members of that year’s discretionary committee (and even they did not know the identities of individuals selected through that process because everything was done through an anonymous numbering system). As far as the rest of the review was concerned, the committee was a black-box mechanism whose only inputs were a small number of editors and a list of factors for them to “consider” in some unspecified way. The trade-offs made each year were unknown, even to the incoming members of the discretionary committee.  If that structure remains the same, then there is no way to track what effect the existing affirmative action policies are having. And if there is no way to track that, there is no way to know what effect a change to the policies would have. Nor is there any way to know when the policies should end.

The Crimson quotes the incoming HLR President as saying that “it’s too soon to tell what impact the policy will have.” Unless the law review has some mechanism in place to provide accountability for how the discretionary committee exercises its discretion, however, the passage of time will not reveal too much about the effect of the policy. It’s a safe prediction that the number of female editors will drift upward and that some kind of mushy quota will result. But nobody will know what trade-offs the discretionary committee is making with the discretion it is charged with exercising. That is why I fear the editors do not know what “policy” they are adopting in adding gender to the discretionary committee’s list of factors to consider.

As Orin Kerr writes at Volokh Conspiracy, a policy like this has long been debated. The inability to know how the policy would function and the lack of a clearly articulated goal to be achieved by the policy have always seemed to me like good arguments against adopting such a policy. Apparently this year’s editors have found some way of overcoming those arguments.

(It should go without saying, but I should probably add that I would welcome factual corrections about the nature of the policies now in effect. In particular, if there is some kind of assessment or accountability mechanism in place, I would love to hear about it.)

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RFRA Sponsors’ Amici Curiae Brief in Hobby Lobby case

Several federal legislators who voted for the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and continue to serve in the Senate or the House of Representatives filed an amici curiae brief in the Tenth Circuit earlier today. The lead amicus curiae is Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the principal Republican co-sponsor of RFRA.

I was pleased to have had the opportunity to work on the brief with superb lawyers not only here in Virginia (Matthew Fitzgerald and John Adams of McGuireWoods), but also in New Jersey (Brendan Walsh of PashmanStein) and Oklahoma (Andy Lester and Carrie Williams Vaughan of Lester, Loving & Davies). I will highlight various aspects of the brief in later posts, but for now I’ve posted the Statement of Interest and Summary of Argument below the fold.

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Conscience, con science, and coverage of contraceptives: Misuse of the IOM Report

A common claim made by supporters of the HHS Mandate is that the mandate is rooted in science: Congress and the HHS tasked an objective scientific organization, the Institute of Medicine, with developing coverage recommendations; that group met, considered the evidence, and conveyed their coverage recommendations.

Except that’s not what happened . . . at least according to the IOM itself.

The IOM Report that forms the basis of the HHS Mandate for employers of 50 or more employees to provide no-copay coverage of all FDA-approved contraceptives explicitly disclaims having considered most of the factors that go into intelligent insurance coverage recommendations. The committee that wrote the report understood its charge to focus on clinical efficacy; its assessments of what preventive services should be considered by HHS were rooted in guidance provided for primary caregivers and patients. The committee explicitly noted, by contrast, that “[c]overage decisions often consider a host of other issues, such as established practices; patient and clinician preferences; availability; ethical, legal, and social issues; and availability of alternatives.” [pp. 6-7, emphases added] In developing the IOM recommendations, “cost-effectiveness was explicitly excluded as a factor that the committee could use in developing recommendations, and so the committee process could not evaluate preventive services on this basis.” [7]

The 250-page report issued by the IOM not only explicitly disclaims coverage recommendations, but also chides the dissenting member of the committee for suggesting that the committee failed to consider how its report would be misused in formulating coverage recommendations. Rather than counter the dissent’s statement that the IOM report’s recommendations were based in large part on task force recommendations that “were never intended to provide a basis for insurance coverage determinations” [233, App. D], the majority of the committee noted that “cost considerations were outside the scope of the [committee's] charge,” and that “HHS . . . may consider other factors including cost in its development of coverage decisions.” [235, App. D.]

All of this matters a great deal when evaluating claims about the government’s interest in forcing employers of 50 or more full-time employees to provide no-copay coverage of all FDA-approved contraceptives. The IOM report does not purport to address the relationship between no-copay insurance coverage of contraceptives and unintended pregnancy. The report cites some studies about related issues. But the report contains no evidence about the effect that the required coverage would have on the health outcomes of the relevant population.

To the contrary, the dissenting opinion notes–without contravention–that the extent to which “coverage of preventive service leads to a reduction in healthcare expenditure depends on the fraction of enrollees using the service before the service becomes covered and the magnitude of the response among enrollees who experience the reduction in out-of-pocket price.” [234 App. D.] This is common sense. If employees are using contraception because the benefits outweigh the costs regardless of insurance coverage, then their usage will not change once no-copay employer coverage is added. Instead, usage will remain constant and the mandate will only shift costs. The IOM report contains no discussion of cost-benefit considerations specific to mandated contraceptives coverage for women with full-time employment and benefits provided by an employer of fifty or more FTEs.

The problem for the government is even more acute in the cases brought by employers who offer group health plans that include no-copay coverage for most contraceptives and exclude only abortion-causing drugs and devices. The magnitude of any change in contraceptive use with and without those coverage must be really low. I have not seen any evidence (is there any?), but it is hard to believe that a woman with full-time employment and health benefits who has no-copay access to all other contraceptives will access emergency contraception (available over the counter for $40-$50) at a significantly lower rate than other women due to her employer’s lack of no-copay coverage for that back-up method of birth control.

None of this is to deny that the IOM Report is based in science. But that science is limited to clinical efficacy. And nobody disputes that FDA-approved contraceptives are clinically efficacious in reducing unintended pregnancy. That is not what the dispute is about. The dispute, rather, is about an insurance mandate. And the IOM Report simply does not speak to issues of cost and coverage. To invoke the IOM Report in response to conscience claims against the IOM-derived insurance mandate is not to fight fire with fire, but to drown conscience in con science.

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JOTWELL review of Crowe, Building the Judiciary

JOTWELL has posted my short book review of a fantastic book on the growth of the federal judiciary as an institution of American government: Justin Crowe, Building the Judiciary: Law, Courts, and the Politics of Institutional Development (Princeton Univ. Press 2012).

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If RFRA protects for-profit corporations, what’s to stop Jehovah’s Witnesses’ companies from refusing coverage for blood transfusions?

An argument against recognizing RFRA coverage of for-profit corporations that seems to be popping up with some regularity goes like this: Once courts recognize the right of evangelical employers to buy insurance coverage that excludes abortion-causing drugs and devices, or the right of Catholic employers to buy insurance coverage that excludes contraceptives, there is nothing to stop Jehovah’s Witness employers from buying insurance coverage that excludes coverage for blood transfusions. See, e.g., Matthew Boudway at dotCommonweal (“Should an overzealous Jehovah’s Witness be able to get a group plan that excludes coverage for emergency blood transfusions, even if none of his employees are coreligionists?”); Americans United for Separation of Church and State (“The logic of Plaintiffs’ argument would transcend the provision of coverage for contraception. A Jehovah’s Witness could choose to exclude blood transfusions from his company’s health-insurance coverage.”).

This argument obviously appeals to some, or they would not bother making it. But there are several reasons that the argument is weak. And the fact that some advance this argument seriously in reasoned public debate may work against improving mutual understanding of religious liberty. Consider:

(1) Has any Jehovah’s Witness employer ever made such a claim? I’m not aware of any. Yet all of the legal tools available to make such a claim have been available for years. It is hard to see how the roll down the slippery slope to this location would get started by rulings about the contraceptives mandate if it has not yet started in some other way.

(2) RFRA prohibits the government from substantially burdening the exercise of religion. The religiously objecting employer under RFRA seeks protection from a government mandate. I’m not aware of any blood transfusion coverage mandate by the government–probably because there is no problem out there of employers limiting coverage in this particular way. If Jehovah’s Witness employers have not sought to limit coverage even when there is no mandate preventing them from doing so, figuring out the scope of their religious freedom in this regard seems like an idle exercise.

(3) The people putting this argument forward may not even understand what Jehovah’s Witnesses actually believe. While the religion teaches its adherents to avoid blood transfusions, it is not at all clear (at least to me, anyway) that the religion teaches this as a matter of the moral law binding on all, rather than a form of divine positive law that is not binding on those outside the community of religious adherents. (For an articulation of this distinction, see this discussion by Mark Shea.)

(4) RFRA is not a free pass for a religious exemption, but its application does trigger the requirement for the government to satisfy strict scrutiny, and the government can sometimes satisfy that test. The application of strict scrutiny should stop the roll down the slippery slope from reaching the point where the government cannot use certain regulatory tools to achieve a compelling government interest. Even assuming that a substantial burden analysis comes out the same, the compelling interest is easier to identify in with respect to emergency blood transfusions. The need for an emergency blood transfusion is unpredictable. And in comparison with emergency contraception, which is available over the counter at most pharmacies (for around $40 for a generic or $50 for a brand name), emergency blood transfusions are much more expensive.

(5) The casual deployment of this Jehovah’s Witness example is sometimes coupled with related arguments that reveal a misunderstanding of the religious beliefs of other groups. For example, the same amicus curiae brief in which Americans United for Separation of Church and State advanced the Jehovah’s Witness argument also argued that “Catholic owners could deprive their companies’ employees of coverage for end-of-life hospice care and for medically necessary hysterectomies.” With statements like this, it is difficult to believe that this brief was reviewed before filing by someone familiar with Catholic moral teaching. Catholics object neither to end-of-life hospice care nor to medically necessary hysterectomies.

(6) A casual approach to religiously based moral beliefs that differ in some ways from majority-held moral beliefs can easily lead to harm through a failure to appreciate and offer reasonable accommodations. While my research into this issue did not uncover an example of a Jehovah’s Witness employer denying insurance coverage for a blood transfusion, it did reveal a case in which a state denied to a Jehovah’s Witness on public aid coverage for a bloodless liver transplant that was available out-of-state at lower cost than an in-state transplant requiring a transfusion. Mary Stinemetz eventually prevailed on her Free Exercise challenge to this denial, but by the time the case was over, her condition had apparently deteriorated too far for her to any longer be eligible for a transplant.

(7) Most of the people who are advancing this particular slippery-slope argument probably have no idea of the contributions that Jehovah’s Witnesses have made to the law of religious liberty in the United States. See, e.g.,Thomas v. Review Bd.; West Virginia Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette.

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The Third Circuit is wrong: RFRA protects corporations, without any carve-out of for-profit corporations from its protections

A split panel of the Third Circuit recently joined the minority of federal courts that have denied preliminary injunctive relief to for-profit corporations and their owners in RFRA and Free Exercise challenges to the HHS Mandate. Both judges in the majority (Judge Rendell and Judge Garth) endorse the district court’s conclusions that “a secular, for-profit corporation . . . has no free exercise rights under the First Amendment, and is not a “person” under RFRA.” Writing in dissent, Judge Jordan contends (powerfully) that these conclusions rest on erroneous premises and merit further consideration by the court. If anything, Judge Jordan’s dissent understates the problems with the majority’s adoption of these conclusions because the standard of review did not require him to reach definitive conclusions. There is no legal basis for a judicial carve-out of “secular, for profit corporations” from RFRA’s protections.

RFRA provides that “[g]overnment shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless the government satisfies strict scrutiny. 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1(a) (emphasis added). In the U.S. Code, “person” ordinarily encompasses “corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.” 1 U.S.C. § 1. Nothing in RFRA excludes corporations generally. To the contrary, it is plain that corporations can assert claims under RFRA. The only Supreme Court case applying RFRA against the federal government involved a claim asserted by a corporation, O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal.

Rather than adopt the obviously incorrect interpretation of “person” to exclude corporations, courts have carved up the category of corporations into “religious corporations” and “secular, for-profit corporations.” But there is no textual basis for this distinction in the statutory term “person.”

When one analyzes the claim, it turns out that the argument is not really about the meaning of the word “person” (even though the conclusion of the argument purports to be a claim about the meaning of this word). Rather, the argument pivots on “exercise of religion.” In the words of the district court opinion adopted by the Third Circuit, “a for-profit, secular corporation cannot exercise religion.”

Again, the claim is not that corporations cannot engage in exercise of religion. After all, corporations can, and do, exercise religion. Consider, for example, Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. or Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The claim, rather, is limited to “secular, for-profit corporations.” But the claim rests on a mistake about “exercise of religion” under federal law and a mistake about corporate action.

As to “exercise of religion,” it is plain that a religiously based refusal to do something otherwise required by law is an “exercise of religion.” Indeed, two of the leading cases on the meaning of the Free Exercise Clause involved individuals who refused, in the course of their employment (profit-seeking employment!) to do something. Because of their religious beliefs, Eddie Thomas refused to fabricate tank turrets and Adele Sherbert refused to work on Saturdays. These religion-based refusals were their protected exercises of religion.

A corporation’s religion-based refusal to engage in a particular action is also an “exercise of religion.” A corporation’s religion-based refusal to open its stores on Sundays, for example, is as much an exercise of religion as an individual’s refusal to  work on Saturdays. The involvement of a profit motive makes no difference. People work for money, and some choose not to work on certain days for religious reasons. Similarly, for-profit corporations operate for money, and some choose not to operate on certain days for religious reasons.

Some judges seem to think that a for-profit corporation can do nothing but seek profits. In the Third Circuit decision mentioned above, for example, Judge Garth insists that “the purpose–and only purpose–of the plaintiff Conestoga is to make money!” There is no reason to characterize corporate purpose so narrowly, and certainly no basis in corporate law to do so. Even a publicly traded corporation with an obligation to act in the best interests of shareholders can be “socially responsible” and incur various costs in pursuit of long-term value and goodwill.

Unfortunately, the misunderstandings involved run even deeper. Judge Garth approvingly adopts Judge Heaton’s reasoning in the Hobby Lobby case that “[g]eneral business corporations . . . do not pray, worship, observe sacraments or take other religiously-motivated actions separate and apart from the intention and direction of their individual actors.” But this reasoning applies as well, of course, to religious corporations. All corporations act through “the intention and direction of their individual actors.” When performed under certain circumstances, however, the actions of individuals count as the action of the corporation. We have no problem understanding this concept in the context of discrimination. If a for-profit corporation were to announce a policy to refuse to hire Muslims, or adherents of some other religion, there would be no difficulty in attributing that religion-based discrimination to the corporation. The law recognizes corporate intention and corporate motivation all over the place. If a for-profit corporation can discriminate on the basis of religion, why can’t a for-profit corporation perform some other act on the basis of religion? When Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., for example, decides to honor the Sabbath by staying closed on Sundays (and thereby forgoing profits the corporation would otherwise earn), that is a corporate act on the basis of religion–a corporate “exercise of religion.” And just as a corporate refusal, for religious reasons, to operate on a particular day is a corporate “exercise of religion” under federal law, so too is a corporate refusal, for religious reasons, to include particular drugs and devices in the group health plan offered by the corporation to its employees.

Statutory law does sometimes distinguish between for-profit and not-for-profit corporations. Under Title VII, for example, for-profit corporations may not limit hiring to co-religionists, while some not-for-profit corporations can. But this only shows that Congress knows how to make that distinction when it wishes to do so. Congress made no such distinction in RFRA.

If people think that, as a matter of good public policy, there should be such a difference, then Congress can amend RFRA. Or Congress can amend the PPACA to explicitly exclude the application of RFRA’s protections from the statutory scheme. These exclusions might raise some constitutional questions, but we are not even close to that right now. Instead, some courts are incorrectly carving out certain corporations from RFRA’s blanket coverage. These judicial carve-outs are based on mistaken statutory interpretation, a mistaken understanding of the meaning of “exercise of religion,” and a mistaken understanding of corporate action.

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How should a TSO respond to an individual’s bizarre state of dishabille?

In Tobey v. Jones, the Fourth Circuit needed to decide whether Aaron Tobey’s First-Amendment-based Bivens claim for money damages against two TSA officers (Jones and Smith, their real last names) survived the federal government’s 12(b)(6) motion. These officers (TSOs) radioed for police assistance after Tobey, having been selected for “enhanced secondary screening” at a Richmond (VA) International Airport security screening checkpoint, stripped down to his running shorts and socks to reveal portions of the Fourth Amendment written on his bare chest. When the airport police arrived, they arrested Tobey. They then questioned him and ultimately released him after about an hour. Tobey boarded his plane without any further difficulty. A few months later he sued the TSOs (Jones and Smith), the airport police, the airport commission, and some higher-level officials at the commission, the Department of Homeland Security, and the TSA.

The district court (Judge Hudson, EDVA) dismissed all of the claims except for a First Amendment-based claim that Smith and Jones “caused [Tobey's] seizure . . . because of the message conveyed by [his] silent, nonviolent expression of objection to the TSA’s screening policies . . . and thereby engaged in content and/or viewpoint discrimination.” The government appealed this denial.

A split panel of the Fourth Circuit affirmed. Judge Gregory, joined by Judge Duncan, held that Tobey’s complaint “plausibly set forth a claim that the TSA agents violated his clearly established First Amendment rights.” Judge Wilkinson authored an empassioned dissent.

Eugene Volokh and most commenters at Volokh Conspiracy have expressed agreement with the panel majority’s analysis. Are they  wrong about what “sounds right”? I think so. Not because of disagreement with Volokh’s take on the First Amendment, but because he focuses on First Amendment principles apart from the appropriate pleading rules and the particular facts of the case.

Viewed through the lens of Twombly and Iqbal, Tobey needed to plead facts rendering it plausible that the TSOs called the police because of disagreement with his message rather than because he stripped off his shirt and pants in the screening area. He did no such thing. Indeed, according to the district court, Tobey’s counsel conceded at oral argument that his behavior was bizarre, “and that the TSOs were justified in summoning the RIC Police for further inquiry.” It seems to me that should be the end of it, for that is all the TSOs are alleged to have done–summon the police. When people act in a concededly “bizarre” fashion in an airport screening area, the TSOs should call the police and let them handle the bizarreness. Whether the police should have handcuffed and arrested Tobey is a separate question from whether the TSOs should have called the police to deal with Tobey. And it is only that latter question that was at issue in the Fourth Circuit appeal.

I should also add that Judge Wilkinson’s take on the effect of taking off one’s shirt and pants in an airport screening area seems better grounded in the reality of modern air travel than Judge Gregory’s. Judge Wilkinson wrote that “[o]utside a few limited contexts, such as public swimming pools, removing one’s shirt and pants will always attract other people’s attention and distract them from whatever they happen to be doing.” Judge Gregory responds that “[p]assengers routinely remove clothing at an airport screening station, and in fact are required to do so by TSA regulations.” But this misses the point. Passengers do not routinely go bare-chested, nor are they are required to do so by TSA regulations. Judge Wilkinson may have overstated the case slightly in asserting that “[i]t is sheer fancy to think that defendants had anything on their minds other than eliminating the distraction that Tobey’s state of dishabille was causing.” But if so, only slightly. And in any event it was Tobey’s burden to allege facts making the alternative retaliation-for-protest explanation plausible.

Judge Gregory’s appeal to “autonomy and the celebration of difference” seems misplaced at an airport screening point. And he surely overstates the case when he writes that “[f]or us to hold today that it is reasonable to cause an arrest due to bizarre behavior and nothing more would violate the most basic [tenets] of our Constitution.” For that redescribes what the TSOs were alleged to have done (call the police) with what followed from that call through the decisions and actions of the police (Tobey’s arrest). Judge Gregory writes that “[i]t is an undoubtedly natural consequence of reporting a person to the police that the person will be arrested; especially in the scenario we have here, where TSA and RIC police act in close concert.” Yes, here, an arrest was a consequence. But to call it an “undoubtedly natural consequence” is to let the adverb and the adjective do too much work, depriving the police of any independent agency. Or so it seems to me.

 

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Roe at 40, Casey at 20

January 22 remains a day worth remembering. On this day in 1973, the Supreme Court promulgated its profoundly wrong decision in Roe v. Wade. At Mirror of Justice, Rick Garnett has some sober but hopeful reflections on Roe at 40.

Another date worth recalling is June 29. On that day in 1992, the Supreme Court issued Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. I share the view–most forcefully expressed by Michael Stokes Paulsen–that Casey is the worst constitutional decision of all time. (For Paulsen’s explanation, see Michael Stokes Paulsen, The Worst Constitutional Decision of All Time, 78 Notre Dame L. Rev. 995 (2002); summarized more recently in two columns at Public Discourse, available here and here.)

One axiom of some academic theories of constitutional law in recent decades has been that, for a theory to be right, it cannot yield the result that Brown v. Board of Education is wrong. I hope for the broad acceptance of a different axiom: Any theory of constitutional law is wrong if it yields the result that Casey is right.

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About Justice Scalia’s headgear

The twitterverse is alive with tweets about Justice Scalia’s headgear for today’s inauguration. At the risk of putting all the fun speculation to an end . . . The hat is a custom-made replica of the hat depicted in Holbein’s famous portrait of St. Thomas More. It was a gift from the St. Thomas More Society of Richmond, Virginia. We presented it to him in November 2010 as a memento of his participation in our 27th annual Red Mass and dinner.

[UPDATE: Many have asked for more details about Justice Scalia's hat. It was made in Richmond, Virginia by milliner Camille Parham. Richmond lawyer and St. Thomas More Society executive committee member Stephen Reardon spearheaded our search for a "St. Thomas More hat" and presented the hat to Justice Scalia at the dinner after our Red Mass. A picture from the presentation and one from Justice Scalia's visit earlier in the day to the University of Richmond School of Law are below.]

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