Supreme Court Opinions

Byron White, Due Process, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Lewis Powell, Majority, Warren Burger, William Brennan, William Rehnquist

Hawaii Housing Auth. v. Midkiff

Byron White, Due Process, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Lewis Powell, Majority, Warren Burger, William Brennan, William Rehnquist / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution provides, in pertinent part, that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.” These cases present the question whether the Public Use Clause of that Amendment, made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibits the State of Hawaii from taking, with just compensation, title in real property from lessors and transferring it to lessees in order to reduce the concentration of ownership of fees simple in the State. We conclude that it does not.

I

A

The Hawaiian Islands were originally settled by Polynesian immigrants from the western Pacific. These settlers developed an economy around a feudal land tenure system in which one island high chief, the ali’i nui, controlled the land and assigned it for development to certain subchiefs. The subchiefs would then reassign the land to other lower ranking chiefs, who would administer the land and govern the farmers and other tenants working it. All land was held at the will of the ali’i nui and eventually had to be returned to his trust. There was no private ownership of land. See generally Brief for Office of Hawaiian Affairs as Amicus Curiae 3-5.

Beginning in the early 1800’s, Hawaiian leaders and American settlers repeatedly attempted to divide the lands of the kingdom among the crown, the chiefs, and the common people. These efforts proved largely unsuccessful, however,

Antonin Scalia, Dissent, Federal Taxation

Hernandez v. Commissioner

Antonin Scalia, Dissent, Federal Taxation / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom JUSTICE SCALIA joins, dissenting.

The Court today acquiesces in the decision of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to manufacture a singular exception to its 70-year practice of allowing fixed payments indistinguishable from those made by petitioners to be deducted as charitable contributions. Because the IRS cannot constitutionally be allowed to select which religions will receive the benefit of its past rulings, I respectfully dissent.

The cases before the Court have an air of artificiality about them that is due to the IRS’ dual litigation strategy against the Church of Scientology (Church). As the Court notes, ante at 490 U. S. 686 -687, n. 4, the IRS has successfully argued that the mother Church of Scientology was not a tax-exempt organization from 1970 to 1972 because it had diverted profits to the founder of Scientology and others, conspired to impede collection of its taxes, and conducted almost all of its activities for a commercial purpose. See Church of Scientology of California v. Commissioner, 83 T.C. 381 (1984), aff’d, 823 F.2d 1310 (CA9 1987), cert. denied, 486 U. S. 1015 (1988). In the cases before the Court today, however, the IRS decided to contest the payments made to Scientology under 26 U.S.C. § 170 rather than challenge the tax-exempt status of the various branches of the Church to which the payments were made. According to the Deputy Solicitor General, the IRS challenged the payments themselves in order to expedite matters.

Civil Rights, Concurrence

Holder v. Hall

Civil Rights, Concurrence / By

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

I agree with JUSTICES KENNEDY and THOMAS that a plaintiff cannot maintain a § 2 vote dilution challenge to the size of a governing authority, though I reach that conclusion by a somewhat different rationale. JUSTICE THOMAS rejects the notion that § 2 covers any dilution challenges, and would hold that § 2 is limited to “state enactments that regulate citizens’ access to the ballot or the processes for counting a ballot.” Post, at 945. As JUSTICE STEVENS points out, however, stare decisis concerns weigh heavily here. Post, at 963-966 (opinion of STEVENS, J.); see also Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 84 (1986) (O’CONNOR, J., concurring in judgment) (“We know that Congress intended to allow vote dilution claims to be brought under § 2”); id., at 87 (“I agree with the Court that proof of vote dilution can establish a violation of § 2”). These concerns require me to reject JUSTICE THOMAS’ suggestion that we overhaul our established reading of §2.

I also agree with JUSTICE BLACKMUN, see post, at 946950, that our precedents compel the conclusion that the size of the Bleckley County Commission is both a “standard, practice, or procedure” under § 2 and a “standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting” under § 5. See, e. g., Presley v. Etowah County Comm’n, 502 U. S. 491, 503 (1992) (change in size is a change in a “standard, practice, or procedure” because the change “increase[s] or diminish[es] the number

Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Dissent, Economic Activity, William Rehnquist

Hess v. Port Authority Trans-Hudson Corporation

Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Dissent, Economic Activity, William Rehnquist / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE SCALIA, and JUSTICE THOMAS join, dissenting.

The Court’s opinion, as I read it, makes two different points. First, an interstate compact entity is presumptively not entitled to immunity under the Eleventh Amendment, because the States surrendered any such entitlement “[a]s part of the federal plan prescribed by the Constitution.” Ante, at 41. When States act in concert under the Interstate Compact Clause, they cede power to each other and to the Federal Government, which, by consenting to the state compact, becomes one of the compact entity’s creators. As such, each individual State lacks meaningful control over the entity, and suits against the entity in federal court pose no affront to a State’s “dignity.” Ibid. Second, in place of the various factors recognized in Lake Country Estates, Inc. v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, 440 U. S. 391 (1979), for determining arm-of-the-state status, we may now substitute a single overriding criterion, vulnerability of the state treasury. If a State does not fund judgments against an entity, that entity is not within the ambit of the Eleventh Amendment, and suits in federal court may proceed unimpeded. By the Court’s reckoning, the state treasury is not implicated on these facts. Neither, it follows, is the Eleventh Amendment.

I disagree with both of these propositions and with the ultimate conclusion the Court draws from them. The Eleventh Amendment, in my view, clothes this interstate

Anthony Kennedy, Concurrence, Criminal Procedure

Herrera v. Collins

Anthony Kennedy, Concurrence, Criminal Procedure / By

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

I cannot disagree with the fundamental legal principle that executing the innocent is inconsistent with the Constitution. Regardless of the verbal formula employed-“contrary to contemporary standards of decency,” post, at 430 (dissenting opinion) (relying on Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U. S. 399, 406 (1986)), “shocking to the conscience,” post, at 430 (relying on Rochin v. California, 342 U. S. 165, 172 (1952)), or offensive to a ‘” “principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental,”‘” ante, at 407-408 (opinion of the Court) (quoting Medina v. California, 505 U. S. 437, 445-446 (1992), in turn quoting Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S. 197,202 (1977))-the execution of a legally and factually innocent person would be a constitutionally intolerable event. Dispositive to this case, however, is an equally fundamental fact: Petitioner is not innocent, in any sense of the word.

As the Court explains, ante, at 398-400, petitioner is not innocent in the eyes of the law because, in our system of justice, “the trial is the paramount event for determining the guilt or innocence of the defendant,” ante, at 416. Accord, post, at 441 (dissenting opinion). In petitioner’s case, that paramount event occurred 10 years ago. He was tried before a jury of his peers, with the full panoply of protections that our Constitution affords criminal defendants. At the conclusion of that

Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Concurrence, Federalism

Idaho v. Coeur d’Alene Tribe of Idaho

Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Concurrence, Federalism / By

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

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe of Idaho seeks declaratory and injunctive relief precluding Idaho officials from regulating or interfering with its possession of submerged lands beneath Lake Coeur d’Alene. Invoking the doctrine of Ex parte Young, 209 U. S. 123 (1908), the Tribe argues that the Eleventh Amendment does not bar it from pursuing its claims against state officials in federal court. I agree with the Court that the Tribe’s claim cannot go forward in federal court.

In Young, the Court held that a federal court has jurisdiction over a suit against a state officer to enjoin official actions that violate federal law, even if the State itself is immune from suit under the Eleventh Amendment. The Young doctrine recognizes that if a state official violates federal law, he is stripped of his official or representative character and may be personally liable for his conduct; the State cannot cloak the officer in its sovereign immunity. Id., at 159-160. Where a plaintiff seeks prospective relief to end a state officer’s ongoing violation of federal law, such a claim can ordinarily proceed in federal court. Milliken v. Bradley, 433 U. S. 267, 289-290 (1977). The doctrine is not, however, without limitations. A federal court cannot award retrospective relief, designed to remedy past violations of federallaw. See Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U. S. 651, 668 (1974); Green v. Mansour,

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

Heath v. Alabama

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

JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question before the Court is whether the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment bars Alabama from trying petitioner for the capital offense of murder during a kidnaping after Georgia has convicted him of murder based on the same homicide. In particular, this case presents the issue of the applicability of the dual sovereignty doctrine to successive prosecutions by two States.

I

In August, 1981, petitioner, Larry Gene Heath, hired Charles Owens and Gregory Lumpkin to kill his wife, Rebecca Heath, who was then nine months pregnant, for a sum of $2,000. On the morning of August 31, 1981, petitioner left the Heath residence in Russell County, Alabama, to meet with Owens and Lumpkin in Georgia, just over the Alabama border from the Heath home. Petitioner led them back to the Heath residence, gave them the keys to the Heaths’ car and house, and left the premises in his girlfriend’s truck. Owens and Lumpkin then kidnaped Rebecca Heath from her home. The Heath car, with Rebecca Heath’s body inside, was later found on the side of a road in Troup County, Georgia. The cause of death was a gunshot wound in the head. The estimated time of death and the distance from the Heath residence to the spot where Rebecca Heath’s body was found are consistent with the theory that the murder took place in Georgia, and respondent does not contend otherwise.

Georgia and Alabama authorities pursued dual investigations in which they cooperated

Anthony Kennedy, Dissent, Federalism, William Rehnquist

James M. Beam Distilling Co. v. Georgia

Anthony Kennedy, Dissent, Federalism, William Rehnquist / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR, with whom CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST and JUSTICE KENNEDY join, dissenting.

The Court extends application of the new rule announced in Bacchus Imports, Ltd. v. Dias, 468 U. S. 263 (1984), retroactively to all parties, without consideration of the analysis described in Chevron Oil Co. v. Huson, 404 U. S. 97 (1971). JUSTICE SOUTER bases this determination on “principles of equality and stare decisis. ” Ante at 501 U. S. 540. To my mind, both of these factors lead to precisely the opposite result.

JUSTICE BLACKMUN and JUSTICE SCALIA concur in the judgment of the Court, but would abrogate completely the Chevron Oil inquiry and hold that all decisions must be applied retroactively in all cases. I explained last Term that such a rule ignores well-settled precedent in which this Court has refused repeatedly to apply new rules retroactively in civil cases. See American Trucking Assns. v. Smith, 496 U. S. 167, 496 U. S. 188 -200 (opinion of O’CONNOR, J.). There is no need to repeat that discussion here. I reiterate, however, that precisely because this Court has “the power to say what the law is,’ Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 5 U. S. 177 (1803),” ante at 501 U. S. 549 (SCALIA, J., concurring), when the Court changes its mind, the law changes with it. If the Court decides, in the context of a civil case or controversy, to change the law, it must make the subsequent determination whether the new law or the old is to apply to conduct occurring before the law-changing

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

Inter-Modal Rail Employees Assn. v. Atchison T. & S. F. R. Co

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 510 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 88 Stat. 895, makes it unlawful to

*Mary Ellen Signorille, Melvin Radowitz, and Ronald Dean filed a brief for the American Association of Retired Persons et al. as amici curiae urging reversal.

Robert N. Eccles, Karen M. Wahle, Jan S. Amundson, Quentin Riegel, Robert W Blanchette, and Kenneth P. Kolson filed a brief for the Employers Group et al. as amici curiae urging affirmance. “discharge, fine, suspend, expel, discipline, or discriminate against a participant or beneficiary [of an employee benefit plan] for the purpose of interfering with the attainment of any right to which such participant may become entitled under the plan.” 29 U. S. C. § 1140. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that § 510 only prohibits interference with the attainment of rights that are capable of “vesting,” as that term is defined in ERISA. We disagree.

I

The individual petitioners are former employees of respondent Santa Fe Terminal Services, Inc. (SFTS), a wholly owned subsidiary of respondent The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Co. (ATSF), which was responsible for transferring cargo between railcars and trucks at ATSF’s Hobart Yard in Los Angeles, California. While petitioners were employed by SFTS, they were entitled to retirement benefits under the Railroad Retirement Act of 1974, 88 Stat. 1312, as amended, 45 U. S. C. § 231 et seq., and to pension,

Byron White, Civil Rights, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, Majority, Warren Burger, William Rehnquist

INS v. Phinpathya

Byron White, Civil Rights, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, Majority, Warren Burger, William Rehnquist / By

JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court.

In § 244(a)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (Act), 66 Stat. 214, as amended, 8 U.S.C. § 1254(a)(1), Congress provided that the Attorney General, in his discretion, may suspend deportation and adjust the status of an otherwise deportable alien who (1) “has been physically present in the United States for a continuous period of not less than seven years”; (2) “is a person of good moral character”; and (3) is “a person whose deportation would, in the opinion of the Attorney General, result in extreme hardship to the alien or to his spouse, parent, or child….” In this case, we must decide the meaning of § 244(a)(1)’s “continuous physical presence” requirement.

I

Respondent, a native and citizen of Thailand, first entered the United States as a nonimmigrant student in October, 1969. Respondent’s husband, also a native and citizen of Thailand, entered the country in August, 1968. Respondent and her husband were authorized to remain in the United States until July, 1971. However, when their visas expired, they chose to stay without securing permission from the immigration authorities.

In January, 1977, petitioner, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), [ Footnote 1 ] commenced deportation proceedings against respondent and her husband pursuant to § 241(a)(2) of the Act. See 8 U.S.C. § 1251(a)(2). Respondent and her husband conceded deportability and applied for suspension pursuant to § 244(a)(1). 8 U.S.C.