Opinions
Opinions
Supreme Court
Sandra Day O'Connor served as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1981 to 2006. This page lists the opinions she wrote during her time on the court.
Post Retirement Opinions
After her retirement from the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor continued to hear cases in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as a designated judge.
Arizona Appellate Court Opinions
Sandra Day O'Connor served as a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals from 1980 to 1981. This page lists the opinions she wrote during her time on the state bench.
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JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court. Alabama law vests capital sentencing authority in the trial judge, but requires the judge to consider an advisory jury verdict. We granted certiorari to consider petitioner’s argument that Alabama’s capital sentencing statute is unconstitutional because it does not specify the weight the judge must give to the jury’s recommendation and thus permits arbitrary imposition of the death penalty.
JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring.
I concur in the Court’s judgment and opinion. The Court properly holds that, when a court is faced with a case involving multiple tortfeasors, some of whom may not be maritime actors, if one of the putative tortfeasors was engaged in traditional maritime activity alleged to have proximately caused the incident, then the supposedly wrongful activity “involves” traditional maritime activity. The possible involvement of other, nonmaritime parties does not affect the jurisdictional inquiry as to the maritime party. Ante, at 541. I do not, however, understand the Court’s opinion to suggest that, having found admiralty jurisdiction over a particular claim against a particular party, a court must then exercise admiralty jurisdiction over all the claims and parties involved in the case. Rather, the court should engage in the usual supplemental jurisdiction and impleader inquiries. See 28 U. S. C. § 1367 (1988 ed., Supp. V); Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 14; see also ante, at 531. I find nothing in the Court’s opinion to the contrary.
JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom JUSTICE SOUTER and JUSTICE BREYER join, concurring.
The evidence in this case strongly suggests that it was a court employee’s departure from established recordkeeping procedures that caused the record of respondent’s arrest warrant to remain in the computer system after the warrant had been quashed. Prudently, then, the Court limits itself to the question whether a court employee’s departure from such established procedures is the kind of error to which the exclusionary rule should apply. The Court holds that it is not such an error, and I agree with that conclusion and join the Court’s opinion. The Court’s holding reaffirms that the exclusionary rule imposes significant costs on society’s law enforcement interests and thus should apply only where its deterrence purposes are “most efficaciously served,” ante, at 11.
In limiting itself to that single question, however, the Court does not hold that the court employee’s mistake in this case was necessarily the only error that may have occurred and to which the exclusionary rule might apply. While the police were innocent of the court employee’s mistake, they mayor may not have acted reasonably in their reliance on the recordkeeping system itself Surely it would not be reasonable for the police to rely, say, on a recordkeeping system, their own or some other agency’s, that has no mechanism to ensure its accuracy over time and that routinely leads to false arrests, even years after the probable cause
JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court. Section 402(b)(3) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 88 Stat. 875, 29 U. S. C. § l102(b)(3), requires that every employee benefit plan provide “a procedure for amending such plan, and for identifying the persons who have authority to amend the plan.” This case presents the question whether the standard provision in many employer-provided benefit plans stating that “The Company reserves the right at any time to amend the plan” sets forth an amendment procedure that satisfies § 402(b)(3). We hold that it does.
I
For many years, petitioner Curtiss-Wright voluntarily maintained a postretirement health plan for employees who had worked at certain Curtiss-Wright facilities; respondents are retirees who had worked at one such facility in WoodRidge, New Jersey. The specific terms of the plan, the District Court determined, could be principally found in two plan documents: the plan constitution and the Summary Plan Description (SPD), both of which primarily covered active employee health benefits.
In early 1983, presumably due to the rising cost of health care, a revised SPD was issued with the following new provision: “TERMINATION OF HEALTH CARE BENEFITS…. Coverage under this Plan will cease for retirees and their dependents upon the termination of business operations of the facility from which they retired.” App. 49. The two main authors of the new SPD provision, CurtissWright’s director of benefits
JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom JUSTICE SCALIA, JUSTICE SOUTER, and JUSTICE THOMAS join, dissenting.
Unlike the Court, I believe that general Medicare reporting and reimbursement regulations require provider costs to be treated according to “generally accepted accounting principles.” As a result, I would hold that contrary guidelines issued by the Secretary of Health and Human Services in an informal policy manual and applied to determine the timing of reimbursement in this case are invalid for failure to comply with the notice and comment procedures established by the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U. S. C. § 553. Because the Court holds to the contrary, I respectfully dissent.
I
It is undisputed, as the Court notes, ante, at 90, that respondent, Guernsey Memorial Hospital (Hospital), is entitled to reimbursement for the reasonable advance refunding costs it incurred when it refinanced its capital improvement bonds in 1985. The only issue here is one of timing: whether reimbursement is to be made in a lump sum in the year of the refinancing, in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (known in the accounting world as GAAP), or in a series of payments over the remaining life of the original bonds, as the Secretary ultimately concluded after applying § 233 of the Medicare Provider Reimbursement Manual (PRM). The Hospital challenged the Secretary’s reimbursement decision under the Medicare Act, 42 U. S. C. § 139500(f), which incorporates the Administrative Procedure
JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom JUSTICE BREYER joins, concurring.
Margaret Whitecotton was born in 1975 with a condition known as microcephaly, defined commonly (but not universally) as a head size smaller than two standard deviations below the norm. At the age of four months, she received a diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus (DPT) vaccination. Prior to receiving her vaccine, Margaret had never had a seizure. The day after receiving her vaccine, she suffered a series of seizures that required three days of hospitalization. Over the next five years, Margaret had intermittent seizures. She now has cerebral palsy and hip and joint problems and cannot communicate verbally. In 1990, Margaret’s parents applied for compensation for her injuries under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. The Special Master denied compensation, and the Court of Federal Claims agreed. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed, 17 F.3d 374 (1994), finding that the Whitecottons had made out a prima facie case for compensation.
Although I join the Court’s opinion rejecting the Court of Appeals’ reading of the pertinent statutory provision, I write separately to make two points. First, I wish to indicate an additional factor supporting my conclusion that the Court of Appeals’ reading of 42 U. S. C. § 300aa-ll(c)(1)(C)(i) is inconsistent with congressional intent. Second, I wish to underscore the limited nature of the question the Court decides. Examining the language of § 300aa-ll(c)(1)(C)(i
JUSTICE O’CONNOR announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion with respect to Parts I, II, III-A, III-B, III-D, and IV, which is for the Court except insofar as it might be inconsistent with the views expressed in JUSTICE SCALIA’S concurrence, and an opinion with respect to Part III-C in which JUSTICE KENNEDY joins.
Petitioner Adarand Constructors, Inc., claims that the Federal Government’s practice of giving general contractors on Government projects a financial incentive to hire subcontractors controlled by “socially and economically disadvantaged individuals,” and in particular, the Government’s use of race-based presumptions in identifying such individuals, violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The Court of Appeals rejected Adarand’s claim. We conclude, however, that courts should analyze cases of this kind under a different standard of review than the one the Court of Appeals applied. We there
Black Caucus by H. Russell Frisby, Jr., and Thomas J. Madden; for the Equality in Enterprise Opportunities Association, Inc., by Kenneth A. Martin; for the Latin American Management Association by Pamela J. Mazza; for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law et al. by John Payton, John H. Pickering, Michael A. Cooper, Herbert J. Hansell, Thomas J. Henderson, Richard T. Seymour, Sharon R. Vinick, Steven R. Shapiro, Donna R. Lenhoff, and Marcia D. Greenberger; for the Minority Business Enterprise Legal Defense
JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court. This case asks whether the discretionary standard set forth inBrillhartv.Excess Ins. Co. of America,316 U. S. 491(1942), or the “exceptional circumstances” test developed inColorado River Water Conservation Dist.v.United States,424 U. S. 800(1976), andMoses H. Cone Memorial Hospitalv.Mercury Constr. Corp.,460 U. S. 1(1983), governs a district court’s decision to stay a declaratory judgment action during the pendency of parallel state court proceedings, and under what standard of review a court of appeals should evaluate the district court’s decision to do so.
I
In early 1992, a dispute between respondents (the Hill Group) and other parties over the ownership and operation of oil and gas properties in Winkler County, Texas, appeared likely to culminate in litigation. The Hill Group asked petitioners (London Underwriters) 1 to provide them with coverage under several commercial liability insurance policies. London Underwriters refused to defend or indemnify the Hill Group in a letter dated July 31, 1992. In September 1992, after a 3-week trial, a Winkler County jury entered a verdict in excess of $100 million against the Hill Group on various state law claims.
The Hill Group gave London Underwriters notice of the verdict in late November 1992. On December 9, 1992, Lon
* Laura A. Foggan, Daniel E. Troy, and Thomas W Brunner filed a brief for the Insurance Environmental Litigation Association as amicus curiae urging reversal.
Edwar
JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring.
Because “[t]he mere fact that one question must be answered before another does not insulate the former from Rule 14.1(a),” Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, 513 U. S. 374, 404 (1995) (O’CONNOR, J., dissenting), I reject the State’s contention that the propriety of the District Court’s remedy is fairly included in the question whether student achievement is a valid measure of partial unitary status as to the quality education program, Brief for Petitioners 18.
The State, however, also challenges the District Court’s order setting salaries for all but 3 of the 5,000 persons employed by the Kansas City, Missouri, School District (KCMSD). In that order, the court stated: “[T]he basis for this Court’s ruling is grounded in remedying the vestiges of segregation by improving the de segregative attractiveness of the KCMSD. In order to improve the de segregative attractiveness of the KCMSD, the District must hire and retain high quality teachers, administrators and staff.” App. to Pet. for Cert. A-90. The question presented in the petition for certiorari asks whether the order comports with our cases requiring that remedies “address and relate to the constitutional violation and be tailored to cure the condition that offends the Constitution,” Pet. for Cert. i. Thus, the State asks not only whether salary increases are an appropriate means to achieve the District Court’s goal of de segregative attractiveness, but also whether that goal
JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.t The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits successive prosecution or multiple punishment for “the same offence.” This case, which involves application of the United States Sentencing Guidelines, asks us to consider whether a court violates that proscription by convicting and sentencing a defendant for a crime when the conduct underlying that offense has been considered in determining the defendant’s sentence for a previous conviction.
I
In June 1990, petitioner Steven Kurt Witte and several co-conspirators, including Dennis Mason and Tom Pokorny, arranged with Roger Norman, an undercover agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration, to import large amounts of marijuana from Mexico and cocaine from Guatemala. Norman had the task offiying the contraband into the United States, with Witte providing the ground transportation for the drugs once they had been brought into the country. The following month, the Mexican marijuana source advised the conspiracy participants that cocaine might be added to the
*Peter Goldberger and Scott A. Srebnick filed a brief for the National Association of Legal Defense Lawyers as amicus curiae urging reversal. tTHE CHIEF JUSTICE and JUSTICE KENNEDY join all but Part III of this opinion, and JUSTICE STEVENS joins only Part III. first shipment if there was room on the plane or if an insufficient quantity of marijuana was available. Norman was informed
JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS joins, and with whom JUSTICE SOUTER joins with respect to Part II, dissenting.
Age discrimination inflicts a personal injury. Even under the principles set forth in United States v. Burke, 504 U. S. 229 (1992), the damages received from a claim of such discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) are received “on account of” that personal injury and therefore excludable from taxable income under 26 U. S. C. § 104(a)(2). Unless the Court reads § 104(a)(2) to permit exclusion only of damages received for tangible injuries (i. e., physical and mental injuries)-a reading rejected by eight Members of the Court in Burke and contradicted by an agency’s reasonable interpretation of the statute it administers-the inescapable conclusion is that ADEA damages awards, are excludable.
I
It is not disputed that the damages received by respondents constitute gross income under 26 U. S. C. § 61(a) unless excluded elsewhere; the question is whether such damages fall within § 104(a)(2), which excludes from taxable income “the amount of any damages received (whether by suit or agreement and whether as lump sums or periodic payments) on account of personal injuries or sickness…. ” What constitutes “damages received on account of personal injuries” is not obvious from the text or history of the statute, and since 1960 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations have defined the phrase with reference to traditional tort
JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court. This case asks us to clarify what “employment-related connection to a vessel in navigation,”McDermott Int’Z, Inc.v.
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the City of New York by Paul A. Crotty and Leonard J. Koerner; and for TECO Transport & Trade Corp. et al. by Robert B. Acomb, Jr., and Robert T. Lemon II.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America by Stevan C. Dittman and Larry S. Stewart; and for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America by John R. Hillsman. Wilander, 498 U. S. 337, 355 (1991), is necessary for a maritime worker to qualify as a seaman under the Jones Act, 46 U. S. C. App. § 688(a). In Wi lander, we addressed the type of activities that a seaman must perform and held that, under the Jones Act, a seaman’s job need not be limited to transportation-related functions that directly aid in the vessel’s navigation. We now determine what relationship a worker must have to the vessel, regardless of the specific tasks the worker undertakes, in order to obtain seaman status.
I
In May 1989, respondent Antonios Latsis was employed by petitioner Chandris, Inc., as a salaried superintendent engineer. Latsis was responsible for maintaining and updating the electronic and communications equipment on Chandris’ fleet of vessels, which consisted of six passenger cruise ships. Each ship in the Chandris fleet carried between 12 and
JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
For the reasons given in Parts I-III of the Court’s opinion, which I join, I agree with the Court (and the Attorney General) that the Attorney General’s scope-of-employment certifications in Westfall Act cases should be judicially reviewable. I do not join Part IV of the opinion, however. That discussion all but conclusively resolves a difficult question of federal jurisdiction that, as JUSTICE GINSBURG notes, is not presented in this case. Ante, at 435. In my view, we should not resolve that question until it is necessary for us to do so.
Of course, I agree with the dissent, post, at 441, that we ordinarily should construe statutes to avoid serious constitutional questions, such as that discussed in Part IV of the Court’s opinion, when it is fairly possible to do so. See United States v. X-Citement Video, Inc., 513 U. S. 64, 78 (1994); Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U. S. 173, 223-225 (1991) (O’CONNOR, J., dissenting). And I recognize that reversing the Court of Appeals’ judgment in this case may make it impossible to avoid deciding that question in a future case. But even such an important canon of statutory construction as that favoring the avoidance of serious constitutional questions does not always carry the day. In this case, as described in detail by the Court, ante, at 423-434, several other important legal principles, including the presumption in favor of judicial review of executive action, ante, at 424,
JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring in the judgment.
I agree with what I understand to be the two basic points made in the Court’s opinion. First, I agree that the language of the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act (COGSA), 46 U. S. C. App. § 1300 et seq., and our decision in Carnival Cruise Lines, Inc. v. Shute, 499 U. S. 585 (1991), preclude a holding that the increased cost of litigating in a distant forum, without more, can lessen liability within the meaning of COGSA § 3(8). Ante, at 534-536. Second, I agree that, because the District Court has retained jurisdiction over this case while the arbitration proceeds, any claim of lessening of liability that might arise out of the arbitrators’ interpretation of the bill of lading’s choice-of-Iaw clause, or out of their application of COGSA, is premature. Ante, at 539-541. Those two points suffice to affirm the decision below.
Because the Court’s opinion appears to do more, however, I concur only in the judgment. Foreign arbitration clauses of the kind presented here do not divest domestic courts of jurisdiction, unlike true foreign forum selection clauses such as that considered in lndussa Corp. v. S. S. Ranborg, 377 F. 2d 200 (CA2 1967) (en banc). That difference is an important one-it is, after all, what leads the Court to dismiss much of petitioner’s argument as premature-and we need not decide today whether lndussa, insofar as it relied on considerations other than the increased cost of litigating in a distant forum, retains any vitality
JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court. Rules of the Florida Bar prohibit personal injury lawyers from sending targeted direct-mail solicitations to victims and their relatives for 30 days following an accident or disaster. This case asks us to consider whether such Rules violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. We hold that in the circumstances presented here, they do not.
I
In 1989, the Florida Bar (Bar) completed a 2-year study of the effects of lawyer advertising on public opinion. After conducting hearings, commissioning surveys, and reviewing extensive public commentary, the Bar determined that several changes to its advertising rules were in order. In late 1990, the Florida Supreme Court adopted the Bar’s proposed amendments with some modifications. The Florida Bar:
Petition to Amend the Rules Regulating the Florida BarAdvertising Issues, 571 So. 2d 451 (Fla. 1990). Two of these amendments are at issue in this case. Rule 4-7.4(b)(1) provides that “[a] lawyer shall not send, or knowingly permit to be sent,… a written communication to a prospective client for the purpose of obtaining professional employment if: (A) the written communication concerns an action for personal injury or wrongful death or otherwise relates to an accident or disaster involving the person to whom the communication is addressed or a relative of that person, unless the accident or disaster occurred more than 30 days prior to the mailing of the communication.”
JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom JUSTICE STEVENS and JUSTICE SOUTER join, dissenting.
The population of our Nation’s public schools, grades 7 through 12, numbers around 18 million. See U. S. Dept. of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 58 (1994) (Table 43). By the reasoning of today’s decision, the millions of these students who participate in interscholastic sports, an overwhelming majority of whom have given school officials no reason whatsoever to suspect they use drugs at school, are open to an intrusive bodily search.
In justifying this result, the Court dispenses with a requirement of individualized suspicion on considered policy grounds. First, it explains that precisely because every student athlete is being tested, there is no concern that school officials might act arbitrarily in choosing whom to test. Second, a broad-based search regime, the Court reasons, dilutes the accusatory nature of the search. In making these policy arguments, of course, the Court sidesteps powerful, countervailing privacy concerns. Blanket searches, because they can involve “thousands or millions” of searches, “pos[e] a greater threat to liberty” than do suspicion-based ones, which “affec[t] one person at a time,” Illinois v. Krull, 480 U. S. 340, 365 (1987) (O’CONNOR, J., dissenting). Searches based on individualized suspicion also afford potential targets considerable control over whether they will, in fact, be searched because a person can avoid
JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring.
My agreement with the Court is founded on two understandings. First, the challenged regulation is limited to significant habitat modification that causes actual, as opposed to hypothetical or speculative, death or injury to identifiable protected animals. Second, even setting aside difficult questions of scienter, the regulation’s application is limited by ordinary principles of proximate causation, which introduce notions of foreseeability. These limitations, in my view, call into question Palila v. Hawaii Dept. of Land and Natural Resources, 852 F.2d 1106 (CA9 1988) (Palila II), and with it, many of the applications derided by the dissent. Because there is no need to strike a regulation on a facial challenge out of concern that it is susceptible of erroneous application, however, and because there are many habitat-related circumstances in which the regulation might validly apply, I join the opinion of the Court.
In my view, the regulation is limited by its terms to actions that actually kill or injure individual animals. JusTICE SCALIA disagrees, arguing that the harm regulation “encompasses injury inflicted, not only upon individual animals, but upon populations of the protected species.” Post, at 716. At one level, I could not reasonably quarrel with this observation; death to an individual animal always reduces the size of the population in which it lives, and in that sense, “injures” that population. But by its insight, the dissent means
JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom JUSTICE SOUTER and JUSTICE BREYER join, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I join Parts I, II, and III of the Court’s opinion and concur in the judgment. Despite the messages of bigotry and racism that may be conveyed along with religious connotations by the display of a Ku Klux Klan cross, see ante, at 771 (THOMAS, J., concurring), at bottom this case must be understood as it has been presented to us-as a case about private religious expression and whether the State’s relationship to it violates the Establishment Clause. In my view, “the endorsement test asks the right question about governmental practices challenged on Establishment Clause grounds, including challenged practices involving the display of religious symbols,” County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, 492 U. S. 573, 628 (1989) (O’CONNOR, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment), even where a neutral state policy toward private religious speech in a public forum is at issue. Accordingly, I see no necessity to carve out, as the plurality opinion would today, an exception to the endorsement test for the public forum context.
For the reasons given by JUSTICE SOUTER, whose opinion I also join, I conclude on the facts of this case that there is “no realistic danger that the community would think that the [State] was endorsing religion or any particular creed,” Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School Dist., 508
JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring.
“We have time and again held that the government generally may not treat people differently based on the God or gods they worship, or do not worship.” Board of Ed. of Kiryas Joel Village School Dist. v. Grumet, 512 U. S. 687, 714 (1994) (O’CONNOR, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). This insistence on government neutrality toward religion explains why we have held that schools may not discriminate against religious groups by denying them equal access to facilities that the schools make available to all. See Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School Dist., 508 U. S. 384 (1993); Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U. S. 263 (1981). Withholding access would leave an impermissible perception that religious activities are disfavored: “[T]he message is one of neutrality rather than endorsement; if a State refused to let religious groups use facilities open to others, then it would demonstrate not neutrality but hostility toward religion.” Board of Ed. of Westside Community Schools (Dist. 66) v. Mergens, 496 U. S. 226, 248 (1990) (plurality opinion). “The Religion Clauses prohibit the government from favoring religion, but they provide no warrant for discriminating against religion.” Kiryas Joel, supra, at 717 (O’CONNOR, J.). Neutrality, in both form and effect, is one hallmark of the Establishment Clause.
As JUSTICE SOUTER demonstrates, however, post, at 868872 (dissenting opinion), there exists another axiom in the history and precedent
JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court. We held inShawv.Reno,509 U. S. 630(1993), that a plaintiff may state a claim for relief under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by alleging that a State “adopted a reapportionment scheme so irrational on its face that it can be understood only as an effort to segregate voters into separate voting districts because of their race,
tBriefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the American Civil Liberties Union et al. by Laughlin McDonald, Neil Bradley, and Steven R. Shapiro; for the Congressional Black Caucus by A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., and Pamela S. Karlan; for the National Bar Association et al. by Koteles Alexander and Brian J. Murphy; and for Bernadine St. Cyr et al. by Elaine R. Jones, Theodore M. Shaw, Norman J. Chachkin, Charles Stephen Ralston, Jacqueline A. Berrien, Thomas J. Henderson, Brenda Wright, J. Gerald Hebert, and Robert B. McDuff
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the Pacific Legal Foundation by Anthony T. Caso and Deborah J. La Fetra; for the South Carolina Senate et al. by Mark A. Packman and Benjamin E. Griffith; and for Ruth O. Shaw et al. by Robinson O. Everett and Clifford Dougherty.
William H. Mellor III filed a brief for the Institute for Justice as amicus curiae. and that the separation lacks sufficient justification.” Id., at 658. Appellees Ray Hays, Edward Adams, Susan Shaw Singleton, and Gary Stokley claim that the State of Louisiana’s congressiona
JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring.
I understand the threshold standard the Court adoptsthat “the legislature subordinated traditional race-neutral districting principles… to racial considerations,” ante, at 916-to be a demanding one. To invoke strict scrutiny, a plaintiff must show that the State has relied on race in substantial disregard of customary and traditional districting practices. Those practices provide a crucial frame of reference and therefore constitute a significant governing principle in cases of this kind. The standard would be no different if a legislature had drawn the boundaries to favor some other ethnic group; certainly the standard does not treat efforts to create majority-minority districts less favorably than similar efforts on behalf of other groups. Indeed, the driving force behind the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment was the desire to end legal discrimination against blacks.
Application of the Court’s standard does not throw into doubt the vast majority of the Nation’s 435 congressional districts, where presumably the States have drawn the boundaries in accordance with their customary districting principles. That is so even though race may well have been
929
Georgia Congressional Districts (1992)
930
People Per Square Mile D Oto 10
D 10to 100
1,000 to 10,000
• 10,000 to 100,000
100,000 to 1,000,000
Population Density Map
11th Congressional District of Georgia
APPENDIX B
931
considered in the redistricting process. See Shaw v. Reno,
JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.t Petitioner Joseph Libretti pleaded guilty to engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, in violation of 84 Stat. 1265, 21 U. S. C. § 848 (1988 ed. and Supp. V), and agreed to forfeit numerous items of his property to the Government. We must decide whether Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(f) requires the District Court to determine whether a factual basis exists for a stipulated asset forfeiture embodied in a plea agreement, and whether the Federal Rule of Crimi
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the Forfeiture Endangers American Rights Foundation by Brenda Grantland; and for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers by David B. Smith and Richard J. Troberman.
tJUSTICE SCALIA and JUSTICE THOMAS join all but Parts II-B and II-C of this opinion. JUSTICE SOUTER and JUSTICE GINSBURG join only Parts I and II. nal Procedure 31(e) right to a special jury verdict on forfeiture can only be waived following specific advice from the District Court as to the existence and scope of this right and an express, written waiver.
I
In May 1992, Joseph Libretti was charged in a multicount superseding indictment with violations of various federal drug, firearms, and money-laundering laws. Included in the indictment was a count alleging that Libretti engaged in a continuing criminal enterprise (CCE), in violation of 21 U. s. C. § 848, by operating a cocaine and marijuana distribution organization in Wyoming
JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court. These consolidated petitions each challenge a conviction under 18 U. S. C. § 924(c)(1). In relevant part, that section imposes a 5-year minimum term of imprisonment upon a person who “during and in relation to any crime of violence or drug trafficking crime… uses or carries a firearm.” We are asked to decide whether evidence of the proximity and accessibility of a firearm to drugs or drug proceeds is alone sufficient to support a conviction for “use” of a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking offense under 18 U. S. C. § 924(c)(1).
I
In May 1989, petitioner Roland Bailey was stopped by police officers after they noticed that his car lacked a front license plate and an inspection sticker. When Bailey failed to produce a driver’s license, the officers ordered him out of the car. As he stepped out, the officers saw Bailey push something between the seat and the front console. A search of the passenger compartment revealed one round of ammunition and 27 plastic bags containing a total of 30 grams of cocaine. After arresting Bailey, the officers searched the trunk of his car where they found, among a number of items, a large amount of cash and a bag containing a loaded 9-mm. pistol.
Bailey was charged on several counts, including using and carrying a firearm in violation of 18 U. s. C. § 924(c)(1). A prosecution expert testified at trial that drug dealers frequently carry a firearm to protect their drugs and money
JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.
In this case, we consider the “look-back” period for obtaining a refund of overpaid taxes in the United States Tax Court under 26 U. S. C. § 6512(b)(3)(B), and decide whether the Tax Court can award a refund of taxes paid more than two years prior to the date on which the Commissioner of Internal Revenue mailed the taxpayer a notice of deficiency, when, on the date the notice of deficiency was mailed, the taxpayer had not yet filed a return. We hold that in these circumstances the 2-year look-back period set forth in § 6512(b)(3)(B) applies, and the Tax Court lacks jurisdiction to award a refund.
I
During 1987, respondent Robert F. Lundy and his wife had $10,131 in federal income taxes withheld from their wages. This amount was substantially more than the $6,594 the Lundys actually owed in taxes for that year, but the Lundys did not file their 1987 tax return when it was due, nor did they file a return or claim a refund of the overpaid taxes in the succeeding 21/2 years. On September 26, 1990, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue mailed Lundy a notice of deficiency, informing him that he owed $7,672 in additional taxes and interest for 1987 and that he was liable for substantial penalties for delinquent filing and negligent underpayment of taxes. See 26 U. S. C. §§ 6651(a)(1) and 6653(1).
Lundy and his wife mailed their joint tax return for 1987 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on December 22, 1990. This return indicated
JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court. We consider whether § 7002 of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA), 42 U. S. C. § 6972, authorizes a private cause of action to recover the prior cost of cleaning up toxic waste that does not, at the time of suit, continue to pose an endangerment to health or the environment. We conclude that it does not.
I
Respondent KFC Western, Inc. (KFC), owns and operates a “Kentucky Fried Chicken” restaurant on a parcel of property in Los Angeles. In 1988, KFC discovered during the course of a construction project that the property was contaminated with petroleum. The County of Los Angeles Department of Health Services ordered KFC to attend to the problem, and KFC spent $211,000 removing and disposing of the oil-tainted soil.
Three years later, KFC brought this suit under the citizen suit provision of RCRA, 90 Stat. 2825, as amended, 42
Massachusetts, and William L. Pardee, John Beling, and Karen McGuire, Assistant Attorneys General, Jeremiah W Nixon, Attorney General of Missouri, and James Layton, Joseph P. Bindbeutel, and Douglas E. Nelson, Assistant Attorneys General, and by the Attorneys General of their respective jurisdictions as follows: Bruce M. Botelho of Alaska, Calvin E. Holloway of Guam, Chris Gorman of Kentucky, Frankie Sue Del Papa of Nevada, Tom Udall of New Mexico, Darrell V. McGraw, Jr., of West Virginia, Robert A. Butterworth of Florida, Carla Stolla of Kansas, Richard P. Ieyoub of Louisiana,