Civil Rights, David Souter, John Paul Stevens, Majority, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer

Davis v. Monroe County Bd. of Ed

Civil Rights, David Souter, John Paul Stevens, Majority, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court. Petitioner brought suit against the Monroe County Board of Education and other defendants, alleging that her fifthgrade daughter had been the victim of sexual harassment by another student in her class. Among petitioner’s claims was a claim for monetary and injunctive relief under Title IX of

*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the American Civil Liberties Union et al. by Sara L. Mandelbaum and Steven R. Shapiro; for the National Education Association et al. by Judith L. Lichtman and Donna R. Lenhoff; for the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund et al. by Martha F. Davis, Julie Goldscheid, Yolanda S. Wu, David S. Ettinger, and Mary-Christine Sungaila; and for the Rutherford Institute by John W Whitehead and Steven H. Aden.

Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the National School Boards Association et al. by Lisa A. Brown, Jennifer Jacobs, and Julie Underwood; and for Students for Individual Liberty et al. by James A. Moody.

Richard P. Ward and Anita K. Blair filed a brief for the Independent Women’s Forum as amicus curiae. the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX), 86 Stat. 373, as amended, 20 U. S. C. § 1681 et seq. The District Court dismissed petitioner’s Title IX claim on the ground that “student-on-student,” or peer, harassment provides no ground for a private cause of action under the statute. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed. We consider

Civil Rights, Concurrence, Warren Burger, William Rehnquist

Davis v. Bandemer

Civil Rights, Concurrence, Warren Burger, William Rehnquist / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and JUSTICE REHNQUIST join, concurring in the judgment.

Today the Court holds that claims of political gerrymandering lodged by members of one of the political parties that make up our two-party system are justiciable under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nothing in our precedents compels us to take this step, and there is every reason not to do so. I would hold that the partisan gerrymandering claims of major political parties raise a nonjusticiable political question that the judiciary should leave to the legislative branch, as the Framers of the Constitution unquestionably intended. Accordingly, I would reverse the District Court’s judgment on the grounds that appellees’ claim is nonjusticiable.

There can be little doubt that the emergence of a strong and stable two-party system in this country has contributed enormously to sound and effective government. The preservation and health of our political institutions, state and federal, depends to no small extent on the continued vitality of our two-party system, which permits both stability and measured change. The opportunity to control the drawing of electoral boundaries through the legislative process of apportionment is a critical and traditional part of politics in the United States, and one that plays no small role in fostering active participation in the political parties at every level. Thus, the legislative business of apportionment is fundamentally

Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, David Souter, Economic Activity, John Paul Stevens, Majority, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, William Rehnquist

Curtiss-Wright Corp. v. Schoonejongen

Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, David Souter, Economic Activity, John Paul Stevens, Majority, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, William Rehnquist / By

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

Byron White, Criminal Procedure, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Lewis Powell, Majority, Thurgood Marshall, Warren Burger, William Brennan, William Rehnquist

Crane v. Kentucky

Byron White, Criminal Procedure, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Lewis Powell, Majority, Thurgood Marshall, Warren Burger, William Brennan, William Rehnquist / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

Prior to his trial for murder, petitioner moved to suppress his confession. The trial judge conducted a hearing, determined that the confession was voluntary, and denied the motion. At trial, petitioner sought to introduce testimony about the physical and psychological environment in which the confession was obtained. His objective in so doing was to suggest that the statement was unworthy of belief. The trial court ruled that the testimony pertained solely to the issue of voluntariness, and was therefore inadmissible. The question presented is whether this ruling deprived petitioner of his rights under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution.

I

On August 7, 1981, a clerk at the Keg Liquor Store in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot to death, apparently during the course of a robbery. A complete absence of identifying physical evidence hampered the initial investigation of the crime. A week later, however, the police arrested petitioner, then 16 years old, for his suspected participation in an unrelated service station holdup. According to police testimony at the suppression hearing, “just out of the clear blue sky,” petitioner began to confess to a host of local crimes, including shooting a police officer, robbing a hardware store, and robbing several individuals at a bowling alley. App. 4. Their curiosity understandably aroused, the police transferred petitioner to a juvenile detention center to continue

Byron White, Concurrence, Criminal Procedure

Coy v. Iowa

Byron White, Concurrence, Criminal Procedure / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom JUSTICE WHITE joins, concurring.

I agree with the Court that appellant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause were violated in this case. I write separately only to note my view that those rights are not absolute, but rather may give way in an appropriate case to other competing interests so as to permit the use of certain procedural devices designed to shield a child witness from the trauma of courtroom testimony.

Child abuse is a problem of disturbing proportions in today’s society. Just last Term, we recognized that

[c]hild abuse is one of the most difficult problems to detect and prosecute, in large part because there often are no witnesses except the victim.

Pennsylvania v. Ritchie, 480 U. S. 39, 480 U. S. 60 (1987). Once an instance of abuse is identified and prosecution undertaken, new difficulties arise. Many States have determined that a child victim may suffer trauma from exposure to the harsh atmosphere of the typical courtroom, and have undertaken to shield the child through a variety of ameliorative measures. We deal today with the constitutional ramifications of only one such measure, but we do so against a broader backdrop. Iowa appears to be the only State authorizing the type of screen used in this case. See generally App. to Brief for American Bar Association as Amicus Curiae 1a-9a (collecting statutes). A full half of the States, however, have authorized the use of oneor twoway closed-circuit television. Statutes sanctioning

Concurrence, First Amendment

Corp. of Presiding Bishop v. Amos

Concurrence, First Amendment / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring in the judgment.

Although I agree with the judgment of the Court, I write separately to note that this action once again illustrates certain difficulties inherent in the Court’s use of the test articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602, 403 U. S. 612 -613 (1971). See Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 472 U. S. 67 (1985) (O’CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment); Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U. S. 668, 465 U. S. 687 (1984) (O’CONNOR, J., concurring). As a result of this problematic analysis, while the holding of the opinion for the Court extends only to nonprofit organizations, its reasoning fails to acknowledge that the amended § 702, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-1, raises different questions as it is applied to profit and nonprofit organizations.

In Wallace v. Jaffree, supra, I noted a tension in the Court’s use of the Lemon test to evaluate an Establishment Clause challenge to government efforts to accommodate the free exercise of religion:

On the one hand, a rigid application of the Lemon test would invalidate legislation exempting religious observers from generally applicable government obligations. By definition, such legislation has a religious purpose and effect in promoting the free exercise of religion. On the other hand, judicial deference to all legislation that purports to facilitate the free exercise of religion would completely vitiate the Establishment Clause. Any statute pertaining to religion can be viewed as an ‘accommodation’ of free exercise

Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Byron White, Harry Blackmun, Judicial Power, Majority, Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan, William Rehnquist

Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx

Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Byron White, Harry Blackmun, Judicial Power, Majority, Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan, William Rehnquist / By

Justice O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents three issues related to the application of Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure: whether a district court may impose Rule 11 sanctions on a plaintiff who has voluntarily dismissed his complaint pursuant to Rule 41(a)(1)(i) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; what constitutes the appropriate standard of appellate review of a district court’s imposition of Rule 11 sanctions; and whether Rule 11 authorizes awards of attorney’s fees incurred on appeal of a Rule 11 sanction. *

I

In 1983, Danik, Inc., owned and operated a number of discount men’s clothing stores in the Washington, D.C., area. In June, 1983, Intercontinental Apparel, a subsidiary of respondent Hartmarx Corp., brought a breach-of-contract action against Danik in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Danik, represented by the law firm of Cooter & Gell (petitioner), responded to the suit by filing a counterclaim against Intercontinental, alleging violations of the Robinson-Patman Act, 49 Stat. 1526, 15 U.S.C. § 13 et seq. In March, 1984, the District Court granted summary judgment for Intercontinental in its suit against Danik, and, in February, 1985, a jury returned a verdict for Intercontinental on Danik’s counterclaim. Both judgments were affirmed on appeal. Danik, Inc. v. Intercontinental Apparel, Inc., 245 U.S.App.D.C. 233, 759 F.2d 959 (1985) (judgment order); Intercontinental Apparel, Inc. v. Danik,

Concurrence, Due Process, Lewis Powell

Connolly v. PBGC

Concurrence, Due Process, Lewis Powell / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom JUSTICE POWELL joins, concurring.

Today the Court upholds the withdrawal liability provisions of the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act of 1980 (MPPAA) against a facial challenge to their validity based on the Taking Clause of the Fifth Amendment. I join the Court’s opinion and agree with its reasoning and its result, but I write separately to emphasize some of the issues the Court does not decide today. Specifically, the Court does not decide today, and has left open in previous cases, whether the imposition of withdrawal liability under the MPPAA and of plan termination liability under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) may in some circumstances be so arbitrary and irrational as to violate the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. See Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation v. R. A. Gray & Co., 467 U. S. 717, 467 U. S. 728, n. 7 (1984); Nachman Corp. v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, 446 U. S. 359, 446 U. S. 67 -368 (1980). The Court also has no occasion to decide whether the MPPAA may violate the Taking Clause as applied in particular cases, or whether the pension plan in this case is a defined benefit plan, rather than a defined contribution plan within the meaning of ERISA.

As the Court indicates, the mere fact that “legislation requires one person to use his or her assets for the benefit of another,” ante at 475 U. S. 223, will not establish either a violation of the Taking Clause or the Due Process

Concurrence, Economic Activity

Concrete Pipe & Products of Cal. Inc. v. Construction Laborers Pension Trust for Southern Cal

Concurrence, Economic Activity / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring.

I join all of the Court’s opinion, except for the statement that petitioner cannot “rel[y] on ERISA’s original limitation of contingent liability to 30% of net worth.” Ante, at 646. The Court’s reasoning is generally consistent with my own views about retroactive withdrawal liability, which I explained in Connolly v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, 475 U. S. 211, 228-236 (1986) (concurring opinion), and which I need not restate at length here. In essence, my position is that the “imposition of this type of retroactive liability on employers, to be constitutional, must rest on some basis in the employer’s conduct that would make it rational to treat the employees’ expectations of benefits under the plan as the employer’s responsibility.” Id., at 229.

The Court does not hold otherwise. Rather, it reasons that, although “the withdrawal liability assessed against Concrete Pipe may amount to more… than the share of the Plan’s liability strictly attributable to employment of covered workers at Concrete Pipe,” this possibility “was exactly what Concrete Pipe accepted when it joined the Plan.” Ante, at 638. I agree that a withdrawing employer can be held responsible for its statutory “share” of unfunded vested benefits if the employer should have anticipated the prospect of withdrawal liability when it joined the plan. In such a case, the “basis in the employer’s conduct that would make it rational to treat the employees’ expectations of benefits

Clarence Thomas, Concurrence, David Souter, Federal Taxation

Commissioner v. Estate of Hubert

Clarence Thomas, Concurrence, David Souter, Federal Taxation / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom JUSTICE SOUTER and JUSTICE THOMAS join, concurring in the judgment.

Logic and taxation are not always the best of friends.

Sonneborn Brothers v. Cureton, 262 U. S. 506, 522 (1923) (McReynolds, J., concurring). In cases like the one before us today, they can be complete strangers. That our tax laws can at times be in such disarray is a discomforting thought. I can understand why the plurality attempts to extrapolate a generalized estate tax valuation theory from one regulation and then to apply that theory to resolve this case, perhaps with the hope of making sense out of the applicable law. But where the applicability-not to mention the validity-of that theory is far from clear, the temptation to make order out of chaos at any cost should be resisted, especially when the question presented can be resolved-albeit imperfectlyby reference to more directly applicable sources. While JUSTICE SCALIA, JUSTICE BREYER, and I agree on this point, we disagree on the result ultimately dictated by these sources. I therefore write separately to explain why in my view the plurality’s result, though not its reasoning, is correct.

I

When a citizen or resident of the United States dies, the Federal Government imposes a tax on “all [of his] property, real or personal, tangible or intangible, wherever situated.” 26 U. S. C. §§ 2001(a), 2031(a). Specifically excluded from taxation, however, is certain property devised to the decedent’s spouse or to charity. Such testamenta