Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Byron White, Criminal Procedure, David Souter, Majority, William Rehnquist

Florida v. Bostick

Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Byron White, Criminal Procedure, David Souter, Majority, William Rehnquist / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

We have held that the Fourth Amendment permits police officers to approach individuals at random in airport lobbies and other public places to ask them questions and to request consent to search their luggage, so long as a reasonable person would understand that he or she could refuse to cooperate. This case requires us to determine whether the same rule applies to police encounters that take place on a bus.

I

Drug interdiction efforts have led to the use of police surveillance at airports, train stations, and bus depots. Law enforcement officers stationed at such locations routinely approach individuals, either randomly or because they suspect in some vague way that the individuals may be engaged in criminal activity, and ask them potentially incriminating questions. Broward County has adopted such a program. County Sheriff’s Department officers routinely board buses at scheduled stops and ask passengers for permission to search their luggage.

In this case, two officers discovered cocaine when they searched a suitcase belonging to Terrance Bostick. The underlying facts of the search are in dispute, but the Florida Supreme Court, whose decision we review here, stated explicitly the factual premise for its decision:

‘Two officers, complete with badges, insignia and one of them holding a recognizable zipper pouch, containing a pistol, boarded a bus bound from Miami to Atlanta during a stopover in Fort Lauderdale. Eyeing

Antonin Scalia, Attorneys, Clarence Thomas, Majority, Stephen Breyer, William Rehnquist

Florida Bar v. Went For It Inc

Antonin Scalia, Attorneys, Clarence Thomas, Majority, Stephen Breyer, William Rehnquist / By

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.”

Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Civil Rights, Clarence Thomas, David Souter, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Majority, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, William Rehnquist

Florence County School Dist. Four v. Carter

Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Civil Rights, Clarence Thomas, David Souter, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Majority, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, William Rehnquist / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA or Act), 84 Stat. 175, as amended, 20 U. S. C. § 1400et seq. (1988ed. and Supp. IV), requires States to provide disabled children with a “free appropriate public education,” § 1401(a)(18). This case presents the question whether a court may order reimbursement for parents who unilaterally withdraw their child from a public school that provides an inappropriate education under IDEA and put the child in a private school that provides an education that is otherwise proper under IDEA, but does not meet all the requirements of § 1401(a)(18). We

*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the State of Arizona et al. by J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Attorney General of Maryland, and Andrew H. Baida and Joann Goedert, Assistant Attorneys General, and by the Attorneys General for their respective jurisdictions as follows:

Grant Woods of Arizona, Michael J. Bowers of Georgia, Richard Ieyoub of Louisiana, Michael E. Carpenter of Maine, Joseph P. Mazurek of Montana, Robert J. Del Tufo of New Jersey, Tom Udall of New Mexico, Michael F. Easley of North Carolina, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Theodore R. Kulongoski of Oregon, T. Travis Medlock of South Carolina, Mark Barnett of South Dakota, Charles Burson of Tennessee, R. Paul Van Dam of Utah, Stephen D. Rosenthal of Virginia, and Joseph B. Meyer of Wyoming; for the National League of Cities et al. by Richard Ruda; and for the

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

Flanagan v. United States

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

JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

In Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Risjord, 449 U. S. 368 (1981), the Court held that a pretrial denial of a motion to disqualify counsel in a civil case is not appealable prior to trial under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 as a final collateral order. The Court reserved the questions of the immediate appealability of pretrial denials of disqualification motions in criminal cases and of pretrial grants of disqualification motions in both criminal and civil cases. Id. at 372, n. 8. We decide today that a District Court’s pretrial disqualification of defense counsel in a criminal prosecution is not immediately appealable under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

I

Petitioners are four police officers who formed a “grandpop” decoy squad in the Philadelphia Police Department. Petitioner Flanagan would pose as an aged derelict, a likely target for street criminals. When Flanagan gave the standard alarm, the other members of the decoy team would move in to make an arrest.

A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania indicted petitioners in September, 1981. The indictment alleged that petitioners had conspired to make arrests without probable cause and had unlawfully arrested and abused eight people. One count of the indictment charged petitioners with conspiring to deprive citizens of their civil rights in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241. The remaining 12 counts charged petitioners, in various combinations, with committing substantive civil rights

Anthony Kennedy, Byron White, Economic Activity, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Majority, Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan, William Rehnquist

Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. v. Bruch

Anthony Kennedy, Byron White, Economic Activity, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Majority, Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan, William Rehnquist / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents two questions concerning the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 88 Stat. 829, as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 1001 et seq. First, we address the appropriate standard of judicial review of benefit determinations by fiduciaries or plan administrators under ERISA. Second, we determine which persons are “participants” entitled to obtain information about benefit plans covered by ERISA.

I

Late in 1980, petitioner Firestone Tire and Rubber Company (Firestone) sold, as going concerns, the five plants composing its Plastics Division to Occidental Petroleum Company (Occidental). Most of the approximately 500 salaried employees at the five plants were rehired by Occidental and continued in their same positions without interruption and at the same rates of pay. At the time of the sale, Firestone maintained three pension and welfare benefit plans for its employees: a termination pay plan, a retirement plan, and a stock purchase plan. Firestone was the sole source of funding for the plans, and had not established separate trust funds out of which to pay the benefits from the plans. All three of the plans were either “employee welfare benefit plans” or “employee pension benefit plans” governed (albeit in different ways) by ERISA. By operation of law, Firestone itself was the administrator, 29 U.S.C. § 1002(16)(A)(ii), and fiduciary, § 1002(21)(A), of each of these “unfunded” plans. At the time of the sale

Civil Rights, Concurrence

Firefighters v. Stotts

Civil Rights, Concurrence / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring.

The various views presented in the opinions in these cases reflect the unusual procedural posture of the cases and the difficulties inherent in allocating the burdens of recession and fiscal austerity. I concur in the Court’s treatment of these difficult issues, and write separately to reflect my understanding of what the Court holds today.

I

To appreciate the Court’s disposition of the mootness issue, it is necessary to place these cases in their complete procedural perspective. The parties agree that the District Court and the Court of Appeals were presented with a “case or controversy” in every sense contemplated by Art. III of the Constitution. Respondents, as trial plaintiffs, initiated the dispute, asking the District Court preliminarily to enjoin the City from reducing the percentage of minority employees in various job classifications within the Fire Department. Petitioners actively opposed that motion, arguing that respondents had waived any right to such relief in the consent decree itself and, in any event, that the reductions in force were bona fide applications of the city-wide seniority system. When the District Court held against them, petitioners followed the usual course of obeying the injunction and prosecuting an appeal. They were, however, unsuccessful on that appeal.

Respondents now claim that the cases have become moot on certiorari to this Court. The recession is over, the employees who were laid off or demoted have been

Civil Rights, Concurrence

Firefighters v. City of Cleveland

Civil Rights, Concurrence / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring.

I join the Court’s opinion. I write separately to emphasize that the Court’s holding is a narrow one. The Court holds that the relief provided in a consent decree need not conform to the limits on court-ordered relief imposed by § 706(g), whatever those limits may be. Rather, the validity of race-conscious relief provided in a consent decree is to be assessed for consistency with the provisions of § 703, such as § 703(a) and § 703(d), which were at issue in Steelworkers v. Weber, 443 U. S. 193 (1979), and, in the case of a public employer, for consistency with the Fourteenth Amendment. As the Court explains, nonminority employees therefore remain free to challenge the race-conscious measures contemplated by a proposed consent decree as violative of their rights under § 703 or the Fourteenth Amendment. Even if nonminority employees do not object to the consent decree, a court should not approve a consent decree that, on its face, provides for racially preferential treatment that would clearly violate § 703 or the Fourteenth Amendment. Finally, the Court refrains from deciding

what showing [an] employer would be required to make concerning prior discrimination on its part against minorities in order to defeat a challenge by nonminority employees based on § 703.

Ante at 478 U. S. 517, n. 8.

It is clear, then, that the Court’s opinion does not hold or otherwise suggest that there is no “necessary predicate for race-conscious practices… favoring

Concurrence, Federalism

Fidelity Fed. S. & L. v. De la Cuesta

Concurrence, Federalism / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring.

I join in the Court’s opinion, but write separately to emphasize that the authority of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to preempt state laws is not limitless. * Although Congress delegated broad power to the Board to ensure that federally chartered savings and loan institutions “would remain financially sound,” ante at 458 U. S. 168, it is clear that HOLA does not permit the Board to preempt the application of all state and local laws to such institutions. Nothing in the language of § 5(a) of HOLA, which empowers the Board to “provide for the organization, incorporation, examination, operation, and regulation” of federally chartered savings and loans, remotely suggests that Congress intended to permit the Board to displace local laws, such as tax statutes and zoning ordinances, not directly related to savings and loan practices. Accordingly, in my view, nothing in the Court’s opinion should be read to the contrary.

Notes

* At one point in today’s opinion, the Court states that “we need not decide whether the HOLA or the Board’s regulations occupy… the entire field of federal savings and loan regulation.” Ante at 458 U. S. 159, n. 14.

Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Byron White, David Souter, Economic Activity, John Paul Stevens, Majority, Thurgood Marshall, William Rehnquist

Feist Pubs. Inc. v. Rural Tel. Svc. Co. Inc

Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Byron White, David Souter, Economic Activity, John Paul Stevens, Majority, Thurgood Marshall, William Rehnquist / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case requires us to clarify the extent of copyright protection available to telephone directory white pages.

I

Rural Telephone Service Company is a certified public utility that provides telephone service to several communities in northwest Kansas. It is subject to a state regulation that requires all telephone companies operating in Kansas to issue annually an updated telephone directory. Accordingly, as a condition of its monopoly franchise, Rural publishes a typical telephone directory, consisting of white pages and yellow pages. The white pages list in alphabetical order the names of Rural’s subscribers, together with their towns and telephone numbers. The yellow pages list Rural’s business subscribers alphabetically by category, and feature classified advertisements of various sizes. Rural distributes its directory free of charge to its subscribers, but earns revenue by selling yellow pages advertisements.

Feist Publications, Inc., is a publishing company that specializes in area-wide telephone directories. Unlike a typical directory, which covers only a particular calling area, Feist’s area-wide directories cover a much larger geographical range, reducing the need to call directory assistance or consult multiple directories. The Feist directory that is the subject of this litigation covers 11 different telephone service areas in 15 counties and contains 46,878 white pages listings -compared to Rural’s approximately

Concurrence, First Amendment

FEC v. Mass. Cit. for Life

Concurrence, First Amendment / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

I join Parts I, II, III-B, and III-C, and I concur in the Court’s judgment that § 316 of the Federal Election Campaign Act (Act), 2 U.S.C. § 441b, is unconstitutional as applied to the conduct of appellee Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc. (MCFL), at issue in this case. I write separately, however, because I am concerned that the Court’s discussion of the Act’s disclosure requirements may be read as moving away from the teaching of Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976); see ante at 479 U. S. 254 -255. In Buckley, the Court was concerned not only with the chilling effect of reporting and disclosure requirements on an organization’s contributors, 424 U.S. at 424 U. S. 66 -68, but also with the potential burden of disclosure requirements on a group’s own speech. Id. at 424 U. S. 74 -82. The Buckley Court concluded that disclosure of a group’s independent campaign expenditures serves the important governmental interest of “shed[ding] the light of publicity” on campaign financing, thereby helping voters to evaluate the constituencies of those who seek federal office. Id. at 424 U. S. 81. As a result, the burden of disclosing independent expenditures generally is “a reasonable and minimally restrictive method of furthering First Amendment values by opening the basic processes of our federal election system to public view.” Id. at 424 U. S. 82.

In my view, the significant burden on MCFL in this case comes not from