The Supreme Court of the United States announced decisions in four cases this morning:
Southern Union Co. v. United States, No. 11-94: Petitioner was convicted by a jury in federal court on one count of violating the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA) for having knowingly stored liquid mercury without a permit at a subsidiary’s facility “on or about September 19, 2002 to October 19, 2004.” Violations of RCRA are punishable by, inter alia, a fine of not more than $50,000 for each day of violation. At sentencing, the probation office calculated a maximum fine of $38.1 million on the basis that petitioner violated RCRA for each of the 762 days from September 19, 2002, through October 19, 2004. Petitioner argued that imposing any fine greater than the 1-day penalty of $50,000 would be unconstitutional under Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U. S. 466, which held that the Sixth Amendment’s jury-trial guarantee requires that any fact (other than the fact of a prior conviction) that increases the maximum punishment authorized for a particular crime be proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Southern Union contended that, based on the jury verdict and the district court’s instructions, the only violation the jury necessarily found was for one day. The district court agreed that Apprendi applied to criminal fines, but held that the jury had necessarily found a 762-day violation. The First Circuit rejected that reading of the jury’s verdict, but affirmed the sentence because it held that Apprendi does not apply to criminal fines. Today, the Court held that the rule of Apprendi does indeed apply to criminal fines, and accordingly reversed the First Circuit and remanded for further proceedings.
The Court’s opinion is available here.
Knox v. Service Employees International Union, No. 10-1121: Respondent, a public sector union, sent out an annually-required notice stating how much of its dues for that year would be used for “chargeable expenses,” i.e., the cost of nonpolitical union services related to collective bargaining. This triggered a 30-day period within which nonmembers of the union could object to the non-chargeable portion of the full dues and thereby not be required to pay that portion. After the 30-day period had expired, respondent sent a letter saying that it was temporarily increasing dues to help achieve the union’s political objectives in a newly-announced special election. Petitioner nonunion employees filed suit, claiming violation of their First Amendment rights. The district court granted them summary judgment, but the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that a balancing test only required that all interests involved had been reasonably accommodated. Today, the Court reversed the Ninth Circuit, holding that under the First Amendment, when a union imposes a special assessment or dues increase levied to meet expenses that were not disclosed when the regular assessment was set, it must provide a fresh notice and may not exact any funds from nonmembers without their affirmative consent.
The Court’s opinion is available here.
Dorsey v. United States, No. 11-5683: The Fair Sentencing Act, which took effect on August 3, 2010, reduced the mandatory minimum sentence for certain federal drug crimes, specifically reducing the previous disparity between an offender who dealt in powder cocaine versus an offender who dealt in crack cocaine. The question presented to the Court was whether the Act’s more lenient penalty provisions apply to offenders who committed a crack cocaine crime before August 3, 2010, but were not sentenced until after August 3. The district court, affirmed by the Seventh Circuit, had held that the new Act did not apply where offenses were committed before the Act’s effective date, but today the Court vacated and reversed, holding that the new, more lenient mandatory minimum provisions do apply to those pre-Act offenders.
The Court’s opinion is available here.
Federal Communications Commission v. Fox, No. 10-1293: Federal law bans the broadcast of “any obscene, indecent, or profane language.” The Federal Communications Commission began enforcing this law in the 1970’s, and in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U. S. 726, the Court found that the Commission’s order banning George Carlin’s “Filthy Words” monologue passed First Amendment scrutiny, but did not decide whether “an occasional expletive . . . would justify any sanction.” As recently as a 2001 policy statement, the Commission indicated that one of the factors significant to its determination of what was patently offensive in violation of the law was “whether the material dwells on or repeats at length” the offending description or depiction. Against this regulatory background, three incidents at issue here took place: two concerned isolated utterances of obscene words during two live television broadcasts, and the third involved nudity shown during an episode of a broadcast television show. After these incidents, the Commission issued its so-called “Golden Globes Order,” declaring for the first time that fleeting expletives and fleeting nudity could be actionable. It then concluded that the broadcasts at issue violated this new standard. On appeal, the Second Circuit found the Commission’s indecency policy unconstitutionally vague and invalidated it in its entirety. Today, the Court decided the case on more narrow grounds. First, it held that because the Commission failed to give respondents fair notice prior to the broadcasts in question that fleeting expletives and momentary nudity could be found actionably indecent, the Commission’s standards as applied to these broadcasts were vague. Second, because it resolved the particular cases before it on fair notice grounds under the Due Process Clause, the Court noted it was not addressing the First Amendment implications of the Commission’s indecency policy, it was not reconsidering the Pacifica decision at this time, and it was not addressing the constitutionality of the current indecency policy as expressed in the Golden Globes Order. Accordingly, the Court said, its opinion leaves the Commission free to modify the current indecency policy in light of the Commission’s determination of the public interest and applicable legal requirements, and it also leaves courts free to review the current, or any modified, policy in light of its content and application.
The Court’s opinion is available here.