Constitutional Law

High Court Issues Opinions Touching On First Amendment, Gun Control Law

The Supreme Court resuming its latest term yesterday has issued a string of decisions, but unlike a batch of decisions released earlier this term, none were unanimous.

In U.S. v. Hayes, the court in a 7-2 decision upheld the conviction of West Virginia man for violating a federal law that prohibits domestic violence offenders from possessing firearms. The decision overturned a federal appeals court ruling that dismissed the federal conviction of Randy Edward Hayes. The federal Gun Control Act bars persons convicted of felonies and misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence from owning firearms. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, dismissed Hayes’ conviction under the federal gun control law, saying that his state conviction was pursuant to a generic battery law, where his domestic relationship was not taken into account.

Writing for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that interpreting the federal gun control law “to exclude the domestic abuser convicted under a generic use-of-force statute (one that does not designate a domestic relationship as an element of the offense) would frustrate Congress’ manifest purpose.” Ginsburg continued that, “Given the paucity of state and federal statutes targeting domestic violence, we find it highly improbable that Congress meant to extend [the gun control law’s] firearm possession ban only to the relatively few domestic abusers prosecuted under laws rendering a domestic relationship an element of the offense.”  

In another decision issued today, the high court voted 6-3 to curtail the federal government’s power to hold and manage land owned by Indians. The Associated Press reported that the decision in Carcieri v. Salazar amounts to a “victory for states seeking to impose local laws and control over development on Indian lands.” Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas concluded that the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) only applies to Indian tribes that were organized before the federal law’s enactment. The law, Thomas wrote, “limits the Secretary’s [of Interior] authority to taking land into trust for the purpose of providing land to members of a tribe that was under federal jurisdiction when IRA was enacted in June 1934. Because the record in this case establishes that he Narragansett Tribe was not under federal jurisdiction when the IRA was enacted, the Secretary does not have the authority to take the parcel at issue into trust.” The Narragansett Indian Tribe asserts that it should have sovereignty over a tract of land in purchased in Charlestown, R.I. Rhode Island officials say they have the right to regulate use of the land.

The justices also ruled, as noted by SCOTUSblog, that the “Constitution allows a state government to ban payroll deductions for labor union political activities, when the ban applies to paychecks of local government workers.” The 6-3 ruling in Ysura v. Pocatello Education Association centered on an Idaho law that allows state workers to withhold a portion of their wages to pay union dues, but not allow the wages to support political activities of the union. A group of Idaho public employees challenged the law as a violation of their First Amendment free expression rights. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts found that the state law did not subvert the First Amendment. The First Amendment, Roberts wrote, “does not confer an affirmative right to use government payroll mechanisms for the purpose of obtaining funds for expression. Idaho’s law does not restrict political speech, but rather declines to promote that speech by allowing public employee checkoffs for political activities.”

Yesterday, the high court dismissed a case challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s refusal during the Bush administration to regulate certain emissions from coal-fired power plants. The lawsuit, brought by environmental groups, charged the Bush administration with trying to avoid regulating emissions of mercury, lead and other pollutants from coal power plants. Earlier this month, the Obama administration asked the high court to dismiss EPA v. New Jersey, saying it would “develop appropriate standards to regulate power-plant emissions.”

Full post as published by ACS Blog on February 24, 2009 (boomark / email).