SBC Communications, Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission

Revised September 23, 1998
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
_____________________
No. 98-10140
_____________________
SBC COMMUNICATIONS, INC.; SOUTHWESTERN
BELL TELEPHONE COMPANY; SOUTHWESTERN
BELL COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES, INC.;
SOUTHWESTERN BELL COMMUNICATIONS
SERVICES-TEXAS, INC.; SOUTHWESTERN
BELL INTERNET SERVICES, INC.; PACIFIC
BELL; PACIFIC BELL COMMUNICATIONS;
NEVADA BELL,
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
US WEST COMMUNICATIONS, INC.; BELL
ATLANTIC CORPORATION,
Intervenor Plaintiffs-Appellees,
versus
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION;
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Defendants - Appellees - Appellants,
MCI TELECOMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION;
AMERICAN TELEPHONE & TELEGRAPH
CORPORATION; ASSOCIATION FOR LOCAL
TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES;
COMPETITIVE TELECOMMUNICATIONS
ASSOCIATION; NATIONAL CABLE TELEVISION
ASSOCIATION; SPRINT COMMUNICATIONS
COMPANY L P; TELECOMMUNICATIONS
RESELLERS ASSOCIATION,
Intervenor Defendants - Appellees - Appellants,
versus
KEITH MAYDAK,
Movant-Appellant.
2
_________________________________________________________________
Appeals from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Texas
_________________________________________________________________
September 4, 1998
Before JOLLY, SMITH, and BARKSDALE, Circuit Judges.
E. GRADY JOLLY, Circuit Judge:
This appeal challenges the constitutionality of a significant
part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The FCC, the United
States, and numerous interested intervenors appeal the district
court’s determination that §§ 271-75 of the Act, 47 U.S.C.
§§ 271-75, are an unconstitutional bill of attainder. Finding the
provisions at issue to be nonpunitive in character, we hold that
they are not, in fact, a bill of attainder as that term has been
defined by the Supreme Court. Because we further hold that the
provisions are also consistent with the constitutional requirements
of separation of powers, equal protection, and free speech, we
reverse the judgment of the district court.
I
As every antitrust law student learns these days, in 1974 the
Department of Justice brought a massive, precedent-setting Sherman
Act1 suit against AT&T. See United States v. AT&T, 461 F. Supp.
1314 (D.D.C. 1978). For many years before the suit, most
1
15 U.S.C. § 1 et seq.
3
telecommunications equipment and telephone service in the United
States--both local and “long distance”--had been provided by AT&T
and its corporate affiliates, collectively known as the Bell
System. See United States v. AT&T, 552 F. Supp. 131, 222 (D.D.C.
1982). Although certain isolated aspects of the Bell System had
become the subject of intermittent antitrust actions, consent
decrees, and federal legislative intervention dating back to 1949,
see generally United States v. AT&T, 552 F. Supp. at 135-38, no
broad-based attack on the system itself had ever been launched. In
1974, however, the government changed all that. It alleged, among
other things, that the way AT&T used its various state-granted
local service monopolies to also monopolize the markets in long
distance service and telecommunications equipment was in
contravention of § 2 of the Sherman Act. See United States v.
AT&T, 461 F. Supp. at 1317-18. AT&T ultimately conceded this
assessment, for, after some initial procedural wrangling, it
eventually settled with the government in what became known as the
AT&T Consent Decree or Modified Final Judgment (“MFJ”). See United
States v. AT&T, 552 F. Supp. at 222-234, aff’d sub nom. Maryland v.
United States, 460 U.S. 1001 (1983). Under the MFJ, AT&T was
required to divest itself of its twenty-two local exchange
subsidiaries, which became known as the Bell Operating Companies or
4
“BOCs.” 552 F. Supp. at 223.2 The BOCs were then grouped into
2
As District Judge Greene explained the divestiture:
The key to the Bell System’s power to impede
competition has been its control of local telephone
service. The local telephone network functions as the
gateway to individual telephone subscribers. It must be
used by long-distance carriers seeking to connect one
caller to another. Customers will only purchase
equipment which can readily be connected to the local
network through the telephone outlets in their homes and
offices. The enormous cost of the wires, cables,
switches, and other transmission facilities which
comprise that network has completely insulated it from
competition. Thus, access to AT&T’s local network is
crucial if long distance carriers and equipment
manufacturers are to be viable competitors.
AT&T has allegedly used its control of this local
monopoly to disadvantage these competitors in two
principal ways. First, it has attempted to prevent
competing long distance carriers and competing equipment
manufacturers from gaining access to the local network,
or to delay that access, thus placing them in an inferior
position vis-a-vis AT&T’s own services. Second, it has
supposedly used profits earned from the monopoly local
telephone operations to subsidize its long distance and
equipment businesses in which it was competing with
others.
For a great many years, the Federal Communications
Commission has struggled, largely without success, to
stop practices of this type through the regulatory tools
at its command. A lawsuit the Department of Justice
brought in 1949 to curb similar practices ended in an
ineffectual consent decree. Some other remedy is plainly
required; hence the divestiture of the local Operating
Companies from the Bell System. This divestiture will
sever the relationship between this local monopoly and
the other, competitive segments of AT&T, and it will thus
ensure--certainly better than could any other type of
relief--that the practices which allegedly have lain
heavy on the telecommunications industry will not recur.
552 F. Supp. at 223.
5
seven “regional Operating Companies” or “RBOCs.” 552 F. Supp. at
142 n.41. In addition, because the BOCs were allowed to retain
their state-regulated local service monopolies under the terms of
the MFJ, they became subject to various restrictions on their own
lines of business. In particular, the BOCs were barred from
competing in the markets for long distance,3 telecommunications
equipment, and information services (including electronic
publishing and alarm monitoring). 552 F. Supp. at 224.4 The
3
By “long distance,” we refer to what is technically known as
“interLATA” service. In implementing the MFJ, the district court
established numerous local access and transport areas or “LATAs”
within which the BOCs were permitted to operate and provide
telephone service. See United States v. West. Elec. Co., 569
F. Supp. 990, 993-94 (D.D.C. 1983). The way the long distance line-
of-business restriction played out, each BOC was allowed to
transmit telecommunications information only between points within
a single LATA, providing what is, basically, the traditional local
telephone service, even though every BOC encompassed several LATA’s
as a geographical matter. When a person in one LATA called a
person in another, the BOC serving the caller’s LATA was required
to transmit the call to an interexchange carrier, such as AT&T or
MCI, which then carried the call on its own network across the LATA
boundaries, whereupon it was picked up by the BOC (possibly the
same one) that served the called party’s LATA. See United States
v. West. Elec. Co., 969 F.2d 1231, 1233 (D.C. Cir. 1992). This is
“long distance” service. Local, or “intraLATA” service, on the
other hand, is the making of calls entirely within a single LATA,
even though such calls are sometimes subject to per-minute tolls.
4
Again, as Judge Greene explained:
After the divestiture, the Operating Companies will
possess a monopoly over local telephone service.
According to the Department of Justice, the Operating
Companies must be barred from entering all competitive
markets to ensure that they will not misuse their
monopoly power. The Court will not impose restrictions
6
restriction on information services was subsequently lifted, see
United States v. West. Elec. Co., 767 F. Supp. 308 (D.D.C. 1991),
aff’d, 993 F.2d 1572 (D.C. Cir. 1993), but the BOCs then became
subject to detailed FCC regulations governing the provision of
information and other “enhanced” services. See generally In re
Computer III Further Remand Provisions: Bell Operating Company
Provision of Enhanced Services, 10 F.C.C.R. 8360 (1995).
As the very existence of the numerous and ponderous post-1982
decisions of the D.C. courts should make clear, however, the MFJ was
far from a final resolution of the nation’s telecommunications
dilemma. Its enforcement and alteration in the light of
technological progress and changing market circumstances ultimately
required substantial monitoring on the part of the district court,
and the extensive judicial tinkering that resulted prompted many
simply for the sake of theoretical consistency.
Restrictions must be based on an assessment of the
realistic circumstances of the relevant markets,
including the Operating Companies’ ability to engage in
anticompetitive behavior, their potential contribution to
the market as an added competitor for AT&T, as well as
upon the effects of the restrictions on the rates for
local telephone service. This standard requires that the
Operating Companies be prohibited from providing long
distance services and information services, and from
manufacturing equipment used in the telecommunications
industry. Participation in these fields carries with it
a substantial risk that the Operating Companies will use
the same anticompetitive techniques used by AT&T in order
to thwart the growth of their own competitors.
552 F. Supp. at 224.
7
pundits to dub District Judge Greene the country’s
“telecommunication’s czar.”5 Unsurprisingly, Congress soon became
skeptical of this unusual title of judicial nobility,6 and
ultimately spent many long and contentious years in drafting a
system of comprehensive telecommunications regulation to replace and
supplement the MFJ. See SBC Communications, Inc. v. FCC, 138 F.3d
5
See Fred H. Cate, The National Information Infrastructure:
Policymaking and Policymakers, 6 Stan. L. & Pol’y Rev. 43, 50
(1994) (noting that, although “Judge Greene rendered his decision
approving the Modified Final Judgment in 1982,” he “retained
jurisdiction under the consent decree to control the operations of
both AT&T and the [RBOCs]” and “the breadth of that decree and the
substantial discretion given judges to interpret antitrust laws,
‘probably makes him the single most powerful decisionmaker in U.S.
communications policy today,’” a veritable “‘telecom czar’”)
(quoting Mark S. Nadel, U.S. Communications Policymaking: Who &
Where, 13 Hastings Comm. & Ent. L. J. 273, 289 (1991) and Telcom
Showdown: Battle Lines Harden as Baby Bells Fight to Kill
Restrictions, Wall St. J., July 22, 1994, at A1, respectively); see
also Michael Schrage, Is There a Shade of Greene In the Microsoft
Decision?, Wash. Post, Feb. 17, 1995, at B3 (“Judge Greene has been
alternately praised and excoriated as a ‘telecommunications czar’
whose impact on telecommunications is still more forceful than that
of AT&T Chairman Robert Allen or Tele-Communications Inc. boss John
Malone.”); Editorial, Review & Outlook: State of the Presidency,
Wall St. J., Feb. 2, 1990, at A14 (“Judge Greene made himself
Telecommunications Czar as part of the AT&T breakup; maybe he’d now
like to take over running Lebanon.”); Paula Dwyer, The Baby Bells:
Ready, Get Set, Diversify, 2962 Bus. Wk. 29 (1986) (noting that a
1986 D.C. Circuit ruling was “the latest blow to Judge Greene, who,
as czar of the breakup of AT&T, is the ‘dominant influence on the
industry,’ according to William L. Weiss, chairman and chief
executive of Ameritech,” and remarking, presciently, that “Greene’s
clout and influence are already under attack on Capitol Hill, where
lawmakers are pushing legislation to return supervision of the Baby
Bells to the FCC”).
6
Cf. U.S. Const., Art. I, sec 9, cl.8.
8
410, 412-13 (D.C. Cir. 1998). On February 8, 1996, President
Clinton executed these legislative labors into law as the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 (the “Act”).
As has been widely recognized, the core function of the Act is
to “‘provide for a pro-competitive, deregulatory national policy
framework . . . by opening all telecommunications markets to
competition.’” SBC Communications, 138 F.3d at 413 (quoting H.R.
Conf. Rep. No. 104-458, at 1 (1996), reprinted in 1996 U.S.C.C.A.N.
at 124). To effectuate this goal, the Act prohibits states and
localities from sanctioning local service monopolies or
“‘prohibiting the ability of any entity to provide . . . intrastate
telecommunications service.’” Id. (quoting 47 U.S.C. § 253(a)).
It also places numerous and onerous duties and restrictions on all
local telephone service providers (“Local Exchange Carriers,” or
“LECs”)7 that are designed to prevent a recurrence of the
uncompetitive use of local service market power that occurred under
the Bell System. See id.; 47 U.S.C. §§ 251-52.
In addition to these generally applicable local competition
provisions, however, the Act also contains a number of provisions
directed specifically at the BOCs. First, the uncodified
§ 601(a)(1) provides that the restrictions imposed by the MFJ are
7
Of which there are now many hundreds of independent examples
(e.g., GTE Corp., Sprint Communications Company, Southern New
England Telephone Company, etc.) in addition to the BOCs.
9
lifted and replaced by the restrictions of the Act. See Pub. L. No.
104-104, § 601(a)(1), 110 Stat. 143 (1996); cf. United States v.
West. Elec. Co., 1996 WL 255904 (D.D.C. Apr. 11, 1996) (terminating
the MFJ in accordance with § 601(a)(1)). Second, §§ 271-76,
entitled “Special Provisions Concerning Bell Operating Companies,”
impose renewed line-of-business restrictions on the activities of
the twenty remaining BOCs; § 153(4) of the Act makes quite clear
that the additional restrictions are only applicable to these twenty
specific, named corporations. See 47 U.S.C. §§ 153(4) & 271-76.
It is these latter “Special Provisions” that are at the heart of
this case, and they must accordingly be examined in some detail.8
Inconvenient to that purpose, the Special Provisions are
drafted in that rather soulless bureaucratese that is an all too
familiar sight on the American legal landscape. We have attempted
to pierce the statutory fog, however, and would summarize the
Special Provisions’ effect essentially as follows.
First, under § 271, each BOC must obtain prior authorization
from the FCC before providing non-incidental long distance service
to customers within the states in which the BOC was allowed to
provide local service prior to the enactment of the Act (“in-region
long distance service”). 47 U.S.C. § 271(a) & (b). The FCC is to
8
With the exception of § 276, relating to payphone service,
which has not been challenged.
10
grant authorization only after a number of complex criteria
evidencing free competition in the particular local service market
have been established. 47 U.S.C. § 271(d)(3); see generally SBC
Communications, 138 F.3d at 413-14. Even then, however, the BOC in
question may initially only provide long distance service through
a separate affiliate. 47 U.S.C. §§ 271(d)(3)(B) & 272(f)(1). The
BOCs are permitted to provide incidental long distance service and
long distance service to customers located outside of their regions
of former monopoly (“out-of-region long distance service”) without
significant limitation or prior authorization. 47 U.S.C.
§ 271(b)(2) & (3).
Second, under § 273, the BOCs may not manufacture or provide
telecommunications equipment until they have met the requirements
for non-incidental, in-region long distance service in § 271(d),
and, once again, even then only through a separate affiliate for an
interim period. 47 U.S.C. §§ 272(f)(1) & 273(a).
Finally, under §§ 274 & 275, the BOCs may not provide
electronic publishing or alarm monitoring services until February 8,
2001, unless they do so by way of a separate affiliate or joint
venture and, in the case of alarm monitoring, only if they were
engaged in the business prior to November 30, 1995. 47 U.S.C. §§
274(a), 274(g)(2), & 275(a).
11
Essentially, the Special Provisions recreate most of the
original line-of-business prohibitions of the MFJ, with some
tweaking. In the case of information services, the recreation
represents a reimposition of restrictions that had already been
lifted under the regime of the MFJ. In the case of in-region long
distance service and telecommunications equipment, however, the Act
simply changes the administrator and specifies the rules by which
Judge Greene’s long-running restrictions can be lifted.
II
On April 11, 1997, plaintiff SBC Communications, which is of
course one of the RBOCs,9 applied to the FCC pursuant to § 271 to
have the long distance line-of-business restriction lifted for its
local service area of Oklahoma. The FCC determined that the
statutory criteria had not been met, and therefore denied the
application on June 26, 1997. SBC appealed that ruling to the D.C.
Circuit, where it was affirmed on March 20, 1998. See SBC
Communications, 138 F.3d at 410.
Without waiting for the outcome of that appeal, however, on
July 2, 1997, SBC and its subsidiaries filed suit against the United
9
SBC is currently parent to BOCs Southwestern Bell, Pacific
Bell, and Nevada Bell, and will become parent to Illinois Bell,
Indiana Bell, Wisconsin Bell, Michigan Bell, and Ohio Bell upon
completion of its planned merger with Ameritech, another RBOC.
Southwestern Bell provides local service to customers in Texas,
Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kansas. Pacific Bell serves
California.
12
States and the FCC in the Federal District Court for the Northern
District of Texas, alleging that all of the Special Provisions were
facially unconstitutional under the Bill of Attainder and Equal
Protection Clauses, and that § 274 violated the Free Speech Clause
as well. Several long distance companies, including MCI
Telecommunications Corp., Sprint Communications Company, and AT&T,
the BOCs’ erstwhile parent, intervened on the government’s side in
the dispute, and two other RBOCs, US West Communications and Bell
Atlantic Corp., intervened on SBC’s. Bell Atlantic added a slightly
more nuanced separation of powers challenge to SBC’s other
constitutional complaints.
On December 31, 1997, ruling on cross-motions for summary
judgment, District Judge Kendall held that the Special Provisions
constituted an unconstitutional bill of attainder and that they were
severable from the rest of the Act. He therefore granted SBC’s
motion and declared the challenged sections void. From this final
judgment the United States, the FCC, and the defendant-intervenors
timely appeal.
III
This court reviews the constitutionality of a federal statute
de novo. United States v. Bailey, 115 F.3d 1222, 1225 (5th Cir.
1997).
13
IV
On appeal, SBC and the other appellees urge all of the
arguments offered below as potential bases for affirming some or all
of the decision of the district court. We consider each contention
in turn, beginning with SBC’s primary and most substantial complaint
that the Special Provisions constitute a bill of attainder.
A
Article I, sec. 9, cl. 3 of the United States Constitution
provides that “[n]o Bill of Attainder or ex post facto law shall be
passed [by Congress].”10 As the Supreme Court has often clarified,
“[i]n forbidding bills of attainder, the draftsmen of the
Constitution sought to prohibit the ancient practice of the
Parliament in England of punishing without trial ‘specifically
designated persons or groups.’” Selective Service System v.
Minnesota Public Interest Research Group, 468 U.S. 841, 847 (1984)
(quoting United States v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437, 447 (1965)).
Consistent with this characterization, the Court has generally
defined a bill of attainder as “‘a law that legislatively determines
guilt and inflicts punishment upon an identified individual without
provision of the protections of a judicial trial.’” Id. (quoting
Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425, 468
10
Art. I, sec. 10, cl. 1 contains a parallel provision
applicable to the states.
14
(1977)). Where, as here, the liability in question clearly attaches
by operation of the legislative act alone, the constitutional test
may be summarized in the following two-pronged test: First, has the
legislature acted with specificity? Second, has it imposed
punishment?
In this case, SBC argues that the Special Provisions constitute
a bill of attainder because they impose line-of-business
restrictions on named corporations. As SBC portrays the Special
Provisions, they represent Congress’s unconstitutional legislative
determination that the BOCs are the guilty spawn of AT&T, who
deserve to be deprived of their current ability to enter the long
distance, information services, and telecommunications equipment
markets as punishment for the immutable past antitrust violations
of their former parent. The district court essentially agreed with
this analysis.
Notwithstanding beguiling arguments that support the district
court’s holding, at bottom, we simply cannot find a constitutional
violation in this case. Even assuming that the Bill of Attainder
Clause applies to corporations,11 and even assuming that the Special
11
Which does seem likely. Although the Court has yet to reach
the question directly, it has suggested as much in dictum. See
Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U.S. 211, 239 n.9 (1995)
(indicating that the Clause applies to laws that punish “a single
individual or firm”) (emphasis added). Furthermore, it has been
established that a number of very similar constitutional rights do
apply in the corporate setting. See, e.g., Virginia Pharmacy Bd.
15
Provisions are sufficient to meet the specificity prong of the
test,12 there simply cannot be a bill of attainder unless it is also
v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U.S. 748 (1976)
(freedom of speech); United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430
U.S. 564 (1977) (double jeopardy); Penn Central Transportation Co.
v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104 (1978) (takings); Marshall v.
Barlow’s, Inc., 436 U.S. 307 (1978) (searches and seizures);
Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia v. Hall, 466 U.S. 408 (1984)
(due process); Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Ward, 470 U.S. 869
(1985) (equal protection).
12
Again, probably a safe assumption in this case, as the
Special Provisions identify the burdened parties by name. In the
entirety of the Supreme Court’s attainder jurisprudence, the only
case to suggest that a statute naming individuals might not satisfy
the specificity prong of the test was the very unusual Nixon.
There, the Court indicated that a law requiring Richard M. Nixon by
name to turn over his presidential papers to the Administrator of
General Services might not be specific enough to constitute a bill
of attainder, because, as the only former president whose papers
were not protected in a presidential library, Nixon represented a
“legitimate class of one” for purposes of such legislation. Id.,
433 U.S. at 472. That unusual case seems inapposite to the one at
hand, particularly in the light of the fact that the rest of the
Court’s attainder jurisprudence, both subsequent and prior, has
consistently applied a broad interpretation of specificity. See,
e.g., Selected Service, 468 U.S. at 847 (noting that “‘[t]he
singling out of an individual for legislatively imposed punishment
constitutes an attainder whether the individual is called by name
or described in terms of conduct which, because it is past conduct,
operates only as a designation of particular persons’”) (quoting
Communist Party v. Subversive Activities Control Board, 367 U.S. 1,
86 (1961)); United States v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437 (1965) (finding
law applicable to past members of the Communist Party specific
enough to constitute an attainder); Cummings v. Missouri, 71 U.S.
(4 Wall.) 277 (1866) (noting that, although “bills [of attainder]
are generally directed against individuals by name,” they “may also
be directed against a whole class,” as “[t]he bill against the Earl
of Kildare and others, passed in the reign of Henry VIII,” which
“enacted that ‘all such persons which be or heretofore have been
comforters, abettors, partakers, confederates, or adherents unto
the said’ late earl, and certain other parties, who were named, ‘in
his or their false and traitorous acts and purposes, shall in
16
the case that the Special Provisions impose punishment on the BOCs.
As Justice Scalia recently reiterated in Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm,
Inc., 514 U.S. 211 (1995):
The premise that there is something wrong with
particularized legislation is of course questionable.
While legislatures usually act through laws of general
applicability, that is by no means their only legitimate
mode of action. Private bills in Congress are still
common, and were even more so in the days before
establishment of the Claims Court. Even laws that impose
a duty or liability upon a single individual or firm are
not on that account invalid--or else we would not have
the extensive jurisprudence that we do concerning the
Bill of Attainder Clause, including cases which say that
it requires not merely “singling out” but also
punishment, and a case which says that Congress may
legislate “a legitimate class of one.”
Id. at 239 n.9 (citing United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303, 315-18
(1946), and Nixon, 433 U.S. at 472, for the two final propositions);
see also Selective Service, 468 U.S. at 851 (stating expressly that
“[e]ven if the specificity element were deemed satisfied,” the
provision at issue “would not necessarily implicate the Bill of
Attainder Clause,” because “[t]he proscription against bills of
attainder reaches only statutes that inflict punishment on the
specified individual or group”).13 Because punishment is a
likewise stand, and be attainted, adjudged, and convicted of high
treason’”) (quoting 28 Hen. VIII, c. 3 (1536)).
13
See also BellSouth Corp. v. FCC, 144 F.3d 58, 63-64 (D.C.
Cir. 1998) (finding punishment a necessary condition of a bill of
attainder, regardless of specificity, in rejecting an attack on
§ 274 of the Special Provisions at issue in this case); Dehainaut
v. Peña, 32 F.3d 1066, 1071 (7th Cir. 1994) (same with regard to a
17
necessary element of an unconstitutional bill of attainder, and
because we can find in the Special Provisions no punishment--as that
term must be defined in the context of this case--our resolution of
that question is dispositive of the attainder claim.
1
As an initial matter, however, we must acknowledge that just
what constitutes “punishment” for purposes of the Bill of Attainder
Clause is a question of some historical and doctrinal complexity.
In particular, the distinction between the punitive and the
prophylactically regulatory, which is of course at the root of this
case, is admittedly a fine one.
Under the common law, there were no such nuances: the very
concept of “attainder” was clearly limited to criminal cases of a
capital nature. As Blackstone described it:
When sentence of death, the most terrible and highest
judgment in the laws of England, is pronounced, the
immediate inseparable consequence by the common law is
attainder. For when it is now clear beyond all dispute,
that the criminal is no longer fit to live upon the
earth, but is to be exterminated as a monster and a bane
to human society, the law sets a note of infamy upon him,
puts him out of it’s [sic] protection, and takes no
provision imposing a perpetual employment bar on the air traffic
controllers fired by President Reagan); Fresno Rifle and Pistol
Club, Inc. v. Van de Kamp, 965 F.2d 723, 727 (9th Cir. 1992) (same
with regard to a law affecting certain named firearms (and thus
their manufacturers)); but see BellSouth, 144 F.3d at 72 (Sentelle,
J., dissenting) (noting that, although “mere specificity may not
make an act a bill of attainder,” in “most cases the Court has
required little more”).
18
farther care of him than barely to see him executed. He
is then called attaint, attinctus, stained, or blackened.
He is no longer of any credit or reputation; he cannot be
a witness in any court; neither is he capable of
performing the functions of another man: for, by an
anticipation of his punishment, he is already dead in
law. . . . The consequences of attainder are
forfeiture, and corruption of blood.
4 William Blackstone, Commentaries *373-74 (citing 3 Inst. 213).14
Tough stuff. Nevertheless, and consistent with this definition,
common law bills of attainder were “such special acts of the
legislature, as inflict[ed] capital punishments upon persons
supposed to be guilty of high offences, such as treason and felony,
without any conviction in the ordinary course of judicial
proceedings.”15 3 Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of
14
As Blackstone further clarified:
[W]hen judgment is once pronounced, both law and fact
conspire to prove [the attainted person] completely
guilty; and there is not the remotest possibility left of
any thing to be said in his favour. Upon judgment
therefore of death, and not before, the attainder of a
criminal commences: or upon such circumstances as are
equivalent to judgment of death; as judgment of outlawry
on a capital crime, pronounced for absconding or fleeing
from justice, which tacitly confesses the guilt. And
therefore either upon judgment of outlawry, or of death,
for treason or felony, a man shall be said to be
attainted.
Id.
15
For example, the 1685 attainder of James, Duke of Monmouth:
WHEREAS James duke of Monmouth has in an hostile manner
invaded this kingdom and is now in open rebellion,
levying war against the king, contrary to the duty of
19
the United States § 1338 at 209 (Boston 1833). A similar act that
inflicted “a milder degree of punishment than death” was termed a
“bill of pains and penalties.” Id. at 209-10.
Although some of the Supreme Court’s earliest opinions appeared
to recognize that attainder was technically confined to capital
cases,16 its subsequent jurisprudence has uniformly supported a
broader sweep for the constitutional prohibition. See, e.g.,
Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. (6 Cranch) 87, 138 (1810) (Marshall, J.)
(“A bill of attainder may affect the life of an individual, or may
confiscate his property, or may do both.”); Cummings, 71 U.S. at 323
(“Within the meaning of the Constitution, bills of attainder include
allegiance; Be by and with the advice and consent of the
lords spiritual and temporal, and commons in this
parliament assembled, and by the authority of same, That
the said James duke of Monmouth stand and be convicted
and attainted of high treason, and that he suffer pains
of death, and incur all forfeitures as a traitor
convicted and attainted of high treason.
1 Jac. II, c. 2 (1685), quoted in Nixon, 433 U.S. at 473 n.35.
16
See, e.g., Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 386, 389 (1798)
(noting that “the Parliament of Great Britain claimed and exercised
a power to pass [ex post facto] laws, under the denomination of
bills of attainder, or bills of pains and penalties; the first
inflicting capital, and the other less, punishment”); Marbury v.
Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 179 (1803) (Marshall, J.) (“The
constitution declares that ‘no bill of attainder or ex post facto
law shall be passed.’ If, however, such a bill should be passed
and a person should be prosecuted under it, must the court condemn
to death those victims whom the constitution endeavours to
preserve?”).
20
bills of pains and penalties.”); Lovett, 328 U.S. at 314 (“‘A bill
of attainder is a legislative act which inflicts punishment without
a judicial trial.’”) (quoting Cummings, 71 U.S. at 323); Brown, 381
U.S. at 447 (noting that “the Bill of Attainder Clause [i]s not to
be given a narrow historical reading (which would exclude bills of
pains and penalties), but [i]s instead to be read in light of the
evil the Framers . . . sought to bar: legislative punishment, of any
form or severity, of specifically designated persons or groups”);
cf. 3 Story, Commentaries § 1338 at 210 (“But in the sense of the
constitution, it seems, that bills of attainder include bills of
pains and penalties.”) (citing Fletcher).17 Apart from making clear
17
Although our information is somewhat limited, see Note,
Beyond Process: A Substantive Rationale for the Bill of Attainder
Clause, 70 Va. L. Rev. 475, 477 (1984) (stating that “[t]here is no
record of any debate about including a ban on the bills in the
Constitution,” and that the provision “is scarcely mentioned by
contemporary commentators”), this broad construction of the
Clause’s reach would appear to be consistent with the contemporary
views of the Framers. In addressing Congress shortly after the
Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, President Washington opined that
“certain self-created societies” had been responsible for
encouraging the insurrection. 4 Annals of Cong. 788 (1794). As it
turned out, certain members of Congress were none too fond of these
“Democratic Societies” or “Jacobin Clubs” either, and when the
House considered its ceremonial reply to the President’s speech,
Rep. Fitzsimons of Pennsylvania moved to insert a paragraph
expressing “reprobation” of the societies. 4 Annals of Cong. 899.
As Professor Currie has described it, “the friends of France
exploded in wrath” at the suggestion. See generally David P.
Currie, The Constitution in Congress: The Federalist Period 1789-
1801 190-91 (Chicago 1997). More to the present point, however,
James Madison was of the specific opinion that including the
paragraph would constitute a bill of attainder, because
“denunciation” was punishment for purposes of that provision of the
21
that the Clause reaches punishment of a lesser severity than the
death penalty, however, these general statements provide little
assistance to our present inquiry.
More guidance is found by considering the details of the
Court’s development of the punishment prong. In Cummings v.
Missouri, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 277 (1866), and its companion case, Ex
Parte Garland, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 333 (1866), Justice Field
considered whether laws requiring that persons swear an oath under
penalty of perjury disclaiming any past sympathy for the Confederacy
before engaging in certain professions18 constituted punishment for
attainder purposes. Noting that “[t]he deprivation of any rights,
civil or political, previously enjoyed, may be punishment, the
circumstances attending and the causes of the deprivation
determining this fact,” 71 U.S. at 320, and that “[d]isqualification
from the pursuits of a lawful avocation . . . may also[ be], and
often has been, imposed as punishment” under the English law, id.
(citing 4 Blackstone, Commentaries at *44), he held that the oath
requirements acted to exclude the burdened individuals from lawful
employment on the basis of past conduct, and were therefore
Constitution. 4 Annals of Cong. 934.
18
Ministry under a provision of Missouri’s post-war
constitution in Cummings, and the practice of law in federal court
under a congressional enactment in Garland.
22
punishment for attainder purposes. See Cummings, 71 U.S. at 325;
Garland, 71 U.S. at 380.
Although Cummings and Garland might be viewed as establishing
that any exclusion from a profession on the basis of past conduct
is punishment for attainder purposes,19 a closer examination reveals
a more subtle analysis. In both cases, a four-vote dissent written
by Justice Miller was premised on the belief that the laws in
question were enacted not to punish the burdened individuals but
instead as a prophylactic measure to protect the public from their
probable future bad acts. See Garland, 71 U.S. at 393-96 (Miller,
J., joined by Chase, CJ., and Swayne & Davis, JJ., dissenting)
(arguing that, in the light of recent historic events, the oath
requirement was merely a legitimate “qualification, exacted in self-
defence, of all who took part in administering the government . . .
and . . . was not passed for the purpose of inflicting punishment,
however merited, for past offences”). Although obviously taking a
different view of the ultimate outcome, Justice Field appeared to
19
See, e.g., Cummings, 71 U.S. at 321-22:
The theory upon which our political institutions rest is,
that all men have certain inalienable rights--that among
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and
that in the pursuit of happiness all avocations, all
honors, all positions, are alike open to every one, and
that in the protection of these rights all are equal
before the law. Any deprivation or suspension of any of
these rights for past conduct is punishment, and can be
in no otherwise defined.
23
agree with Justice Miller’s core proposition that a properly crafted
prophylactic measure could survive attainder analysis, even where
the finding of a propensity for future conduct was based solely on
past acts, and the result was a bar from future employment. See
Cummings, 71 U.S. at 319-20 (noting that “[i]t is evident from the
nature of the pursuits and professions of the parties . . . that
many of the acts, from the taint of which they must purge
themselves, have no possible relation to their fitness for those
pursuits and professions” and that the oath requirement, therefore,
“was exacted, not from any notion that the several acts designated
indicated unfitness for the callings, but because it was thought
that the several acts deserved punishment”); Garland, 71 U.S. at 379
(“The legislature may undoubtedly prescribe qualifications for the
office, to which [the burdened individual] must conform, as it may,
where it has exclusive jurisdiction, prescribe qualifications for
the pursuit of any of the ordinary avocations of life. The
question, in the case, is not as to the power of Congress to
prescribe qualifications, but whether that power has been exercised
as a means for the infliction of punishment, against the prohibition
of the Constitution.”).
This relevance of applicational context and the proper
existence of a “prophylactic” exception to the Bill of Attainder
24
Clause20 was developed further in Dent v. West Virginia, 129 U.S.
114 (1889), and Hawker v. New York, 170 U.S. 189 (1898). First, in
Dent, Justice Field made a major interpretation of his own majority
opinions in Cummings and Garland in the context of a bill of
attainder challenge to a state law requiring certain educational
qualifications in order to practice medicine. He held:
The cases of Cummings v. State of Missouri, 4 Wall. 277,
and of Ex parte Garland, id. 333, upon which much
reliance is placed, do not, in our judgment, support the
contention of the plaintiff in error. . . . They only
determine that one who is in the enjoyment of a right to
preach and teach the Christian religion as a priest of a
regular church, and one who has been admitted to practice
the profession of the law, cannot be deprived of the
right to continue in the exercise of their respective
professions by the exaction from them of an oath as to
their past conduct, respecting matters which have no
connection with such professions. Between this doctrine
and that for which the plaintiff in error contends there
is no analogy or resemblance. The constitution of
Missouri and the act of Congress in question in those
cases were designed to deprive parties of their right to
continue in their professions for past acts, or past
expressions of desires and sympathies, many of which had
no bearing upon their fitness to continue in their
professions. The law of West Virginia was intended to
secure such skill and learning in the profession of
medicine that the community might trust with confidence
those receiving a license under authority of the state.
129 U.S. at 125-28 (emphasis added). In Hawker, the Court took the
Dent analysis one step farther and upheld a state ban on medical
20
The dissent erroneously credits us instead of Justices Miller
and Field with the “discovery” of this exception. We have only
supplied its moniker.
25
practice by convicted felons as also not constituting punishment for
purposes of the Bill of Attainder or Ex Post Facto Clauses. Relying
expressly on the above quoted language in Dent, the Court held that
the law was not unconstitutional because it did not “seek[] to
further punish a criminal, but only to protect . . . citizens from
physicians of bad character.” Id. at 196.
Further development of the prophylactic exception emerged under
Justice Frankfurter’s tutelage. In United States v. Lovett, 328
U.S. 303 (1946), the Court examined a federal law that cut off
salary payments to certain named federal employees, allegedly due
to their “subversive” activities. Finding that the law “‘operate[d]
as a legislative decree of perpetual exclusion’ from a chosen
vocation,” and thus “accomplishe[d] punishment of named individuals
without judicial trial,” Justice Black struck it down as an
unconstitutional bill of attainder. 328 U.S. at 316 (quoting
Cummings and Garland). Justice Frankfurter took a slightly
different view, however. Taking his cue from Hawker and the
historical foundations of the Clause in the English law, he
reiterated that “punishment is a prerequisite” for a bill of
attainder, and that:
Punishment presupposes an offense, not necessarily an act
previously declared criminal, but an act for which
retribution is exacted. The fact that harm is inflicted
by governmental authority does not make it punishment.
Figuratively speaking all discomfiting action may be
deemed punishment because it deprives of what otherwise
26
would be enjoyed. But there may be reasons other than
punitive for such deprivation. A man may be forbidden to
practice medicine because he has been convicted of a
felony, or because he is no longer qualified. “The
deprivation of any rights, civil or political, previously
enjoyed, may be punishment, the circumstances attending
and the causes of deprivation determining this fact.”
328 U.S. at 324 (Frankfurter, J., joined by Reed, J., concurring [in
the judgment]) (citing Hawker and Dent, and quoting Cummings, 71
U.S. at 320, respectively) (emphasis added). Because he found no
indication in the text of the statute or the circumstances of its
passage that Congress intended it as a punitive measure, Justice
Frankfurter concluded that it was not a bill of attainder. Id. at
324-27.21
Following Lovett, Justice Frankfurter’s views on the Bill of
Attainder Clause commanded a majority for a number of cases in which
the Court rejected every attainder challenge that it considered.
See American Communications Ass’n v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 413-14
(1950) (Vinson, CJ.) (rejecting attainder challenge to federal law
conditioning recognition of a labor organization on the filing of
affidavits by its officers that they did not belong to the Communist
Party and did not believe in overthrow of the government by force);
21
The dissent dismisses our reference to Justice Frankfurter’s
concurrence in Lovett because it did not reflect the majority view
in that case. Such a back-of-the-hand to the alleged “cornerstone
of the majority’s theory” (see Dissent, p. __) ignores the
influence of the Frankfurtian view in many subsequent cases cited
herein.
27
Garner v. Board of Pub. Works, 341 U.S. 716, 722-23 (1951) (Clark,
J.) (same as to municipal ordinance requiring employees to take oath
that they had not advocated, or belonged to organization advocating,
overthrow of government by force and violence in the preceding five
years); DeVeau v. Braisted, 363 U.S. 144, 160 (1960) (Frankfurter,
J.) (same as to state law prohibiting felons from soliciting or
receiving dues on behalf of any waterfront union); Flemming v.
Nestor, 363 U.S. 603, 617 (1960) (Harlan, J.) (same as to federal
law providing for the termination of Social Security benefits of
aliens who were deported on certain grounds); Communist Party v.
Subversive Activities Control Board, 367 U.S. 1, 86-88 (1961)
(Frankfurter, J.) (same as to federal law imposing registration and
other burdens on “Communist-action” organizations). Although some
of these decisions were premised in part on a strict historical
reading22 of the Clause23 as requiring that a bill specify the
22
Since expressly abandoned. See Brown, 381 U.S. at 447.
23
Based on Justice Frankfurter’s general model of bifurcated
constitutional adjudication:
Broadly speaking two types of constitutional claims come
before this Court. Most constitutional issues derive
from the broad standards of fairness written into the
Constitution (e.g. “due process,” “equal protection of
the laws,” “just compensation”), and the division of
power as between States and Nation. Such questions, by
their very nature, allow a relatively wide play for
individual legal judgment. The other class gives no such
scope. For this second class of constitutional issues
derives from very specific provisions of the
28
offense and clearly declare the guilt of the burdened individual or
class to be unconstitutional,24 they also maintained the
prophylactic exception developed in Hawker and Dent. See, e.g.,
Douds, 339 U.S. at 413-14 (finding Lovett, Garland, and Cummings
distinguishable because “in the previous decisions the individuals
involved were in fact being punished for past actions; whereas in
this case they are subject to possible loss of position only because
there is substantial ground for the congressional judgment that
their beliefs and loyalties will be transformed into future
conduct,” and noting that, even though “the history of the [burdened
Constitution. These had their source in definite
grievances and led the Fathers to proscribe against
recurrence of their experience. These specific
grievances and the safeguards against their recurrence
were not defined by the Constitution. They were defined
by history. Their meaning was so settled by history that
definition was superfluous. Judicial enforcement of the
Constitution must respect these historic limits. The
prohibition of bills of attainder falls of course among
these very specific constitutional provisions.
Lovett, 328 U.S. at 321 (Frankfurter, J., joined by Reed, J.,
concurring [in the judgment]).
24
See Lovett, 328 U.S. at 321-23 (Frankfurter, J., joined by
Reed, J., concurring [in the judgment]) (“The distinguishing
characteristic of a bill of attainder is the substitution of
legislative determination of guilt and legislative imposition of
punishment for judicial finding and sentence. . . . All bills of
attainder specify the offense for which the attainted person was
deemed guilty and for which the punishment was imposed. There was
always a declaration of guilt either of the individual or the class
to which he belonged. The offense might be a pre-existing crime or
an act made punishable ex post facto.”).
29
individuals’] past conduct was the foundation for the judgment as
to what the future conduct is likely to be,” that fact “does not
alter the conclusion that [the statute] is intended to prevent
future action rather than to punish past action”); DeVeau, 363 U.S.
at 160 (finding that the state “sought not to punish ex-felons, but
to devise what was felt to be a much-needed scheme of regulation of
the waterfront, and for the effectuation of that scheme it became
important whether individuals had previously been convicted of a
felony”); Flemming, 363 U.S. at 617 (noting, with respect to the
statute before the Court, that “it cannot be said, as was said of
the statute in Cummings, that [the disability imposed] bears no
rational connection to the purposes of the legislation of which it
is a part, and must without more therefore be taken as evidencing
a Congressional desire to punish”) (citing Cummings, 71 U.S. at 319,
and Dent, 129 U.S. at 126).
After this Frankfurtian phase, however, the Court appeared to
pointedly reassess the essential nature of the Clause, and the scope
of the punishment requirement. In United States v. Brown, 381 U.S.
437 (1965), after surveying the above described cases, Chief Justice
Warren viewed the Bill of Attainder Clause as expressive of some of
the most fundamental ideals of separation of powers, in addition to
its more specific prohibition:
[T]he Bill of Attainder Clause not only was intended as
one implementation of the general principle of
30
fractionalized power, but also reflected the Framers’
belief that the Legislative Branch is not so well suited
as politically independent judges and juries to the task
of ruling upon the blameworthiness of, and levying
appropriate punishment upon, specific persons. “Every
one must concede that a legislative body, from its
numbers and organization, and from the very intimate
dependence of its members upon the people, which renders
them liable to be peculiarly susceptible to popular
clamor, is not properly constituted to try with coolness,
caution, and impartiality a criminal charge, especially
in those cases in which the popular feeling is strongly
excited,--the very class of cases most likely to be
prosecuted by this mode.” By banning bills of attainder,
the Framers of the Constitution sought to guard against
such dangers by limiting legislatures to the task of
rulemaking. “It is the peculiar province of the
legislature to describe general rules for the government
of society; the application of those rules to individuals
in society would seem to be the duty of other
departments.”
381 U.S. at 445-46 (quoting 1 Cooley, Constitutional Limitations
536-37 (8th ed. 1927), and Fletcher, 10 U.S. at 136,
respectively).25 Acting on this broad view of the Clause’s role in
25
See also Landgraf v. USI Film Prod., 511 U.S. 244, 267 n.20
(1994) (quoting Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469, 513-14
(1989) (Stevens, J., concurring in part and concurring in the
judgment)):
Legislatures are primarily policymaking bodies that
promulgate rules to govern future conduct. The
constitutional prohibitions against the enactment of ex
post facto laws and bills of attainder reflect a valid
concern about the use of the political process to punish
or characterize past conduct of private citizens. It is
the judicial system, rather than the legislative process,
that is best equipped to identify past wrongdoers and to
fashion remedies that will create the conditions that
presumably would have existed had no wrong been
committed.
31
the constitutional structure, Chief Justice Warren held that the law
in question--making it a crime for a past or current member of the
Communist Party to hold certain union positions with a potential to
disrupt interstate commerce--was an unconstitutional bill of
attainder:
The statute does not set forth a generally applicable
rule decreeing that any person who . . . possesses
certain characteristics . . . shall not hold union
office, and leave to courts and juries the job of
determining what persons . . . possess the specified
characteristics. Instead, it designates in no uncertain
terms the persons who possess the feared characteristics
and therefore cannot hold union office without incurring
criminal liability--members of the Communist Party.
Id. at 450.
The broad holding in Brown was not without its caveats,
however, and to these we must turn in order to assess the precise
role of punishment in the case. In distinguishing § 32 of the
Banking Act of 1933--providing that the officers, directors, and
and The Federalist No. 44, at 301 (James Madison) (J. Cooke ed.
1961):
Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws
impairing the obligation of contracts are contrary to the
first principles of the social compact, and to every
principle of sound legislation. . . . The sober people
of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has
directed the public councils. They have seen with regret
and with indignation, that sudden changes and legislative
interferences in cases affecting personal rights, become
jobs in the hands of enterprizing and influential
spectators; and snares to the more industrious and less
informed part of the community.
32
employees of certain securities firms could not serve as officers,
directors, or employees of member banks in the Federal Reserve
System--from the statute at issue, the Court noted that:
[The union law], unlike § 32 of the Banking Act, inflicts
its deprivation upon the members of a political group
thought to present a threat to national security. As we
noted above, such groups were the targets of the
overwhelming majority of English and early American bills
of attainder. Second, § 32 incorporates no judgment
censuring or condemning any man or group of men. In
enacting it, Congress relied upon its general knowledge
of human psychology, and concluded that the concurrent
holding of the two designated positions would present a
temptation to any man--not just certain men or members of
a certain political party. Thus insofar as § 32
incorporates a condemnation, it condemns all men. . . .
In designating bank officers . . . Congress merely
expressed the [general] characteristics it was trying to
reach in an alternative, shorthand way.
Id. at 453-54.
Thus, although Brown began with a fairly broad construction of
the Clause, and thereby supplied SBC with a large portion of its
argument in the instant case, it did not purport fully to abandon
the prior development of the punitive element. As the above
discussion makes clear, one of the key reasons that the Court found
§ 32 distinguishable was that it did not incorporate a “judgment
censuring or condemning any man or group of men.” Further, the
Court explicitly left open the possibility of accomplishing non-
punitive, prophylactic economic legislation by way of “shorthand”
designations.
33
This latter theme was picked up one last time in Nixon v.
Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425 (1977), where the
Court summarized and rationalized its extensive attainder
jurisprudence and developed the most comprehensive analysis of the
punishment prong that has been offered to date. In that case, the
Court upheld a law that, as noted, directed Richard M. Nixon by name
to turn over his presidential papers to the Administrator of General
Services. After discussing why Nixon “constituted a legitimate
class of one,” see supra, note 12, the Court went on to explain
that, even if the specificity element were deemed to be satisfied,
it would still have to inquire whether Congress “‘inflict[ed]
punishment’ within the constitutional proscription.” 433 U.S. at
472-73 (quoting Lovett, 328 U.S. at 315). After examining the
historical underpinnings of the Clause and noting that the statute
at issue did not involve any of the traditional examples of
“punishment” which had been held to implicate attainder analysis in
the past--including death, imprisonment, banishment, punitive
confiscation of property, and employment bars (as evidenced by
Cummings)--the Court launched into a three-stage examination of
general punitive character. See id. at 473-75. First, the Court
noted that it “often has looked beyond mere historical experience
and has applied a functional test of the existence of punishment,
analyzing whether the law under challenge, viewed in terms of the
34
type and severity of burdens imposed, reasonably can be said to
further nonpunitive legislative purposes.” See id. at 475 (citing
Cummings, 71 U.S. at 319-320, Hawker, 170 U.S. at 193-194, and Dent,
129 U.S. at 128, among other cases). Because the protection of
Nixon’s presidential papers was unquestionably a legitimate,
nonpunitive legislative purpose that the burdens imposed by the
statute were well designed to further, the Court concluded that the
law was nonpunitive under the functional approach. See id. at 476-
78. Next, the Court looked to legislative purpose. Because there
was no indication in the legislative history of a specific intent
to punish--unlike in past cases like Lovett, where the House Report
characterized the named individuals as “‘subversive . . . and . . .
unfit . . . to continue in Government employment’”--the Court
concluded that this test also came out in favor of a nonpunitive
finding. See id. at 478-80 (quoting Lovett, 328 U.S. at 312).
Finally, the Court turned to the structure of the statutory
provisions. Because it also evinced a nonpunitive quality to the
legislation, by protecting, for example, Nixon’s ability to access
the papers himself and to raise claims of privilege with regard to
them in court proceedings, the Court concluded that this test also
indicated a nonpunitive character. See id. at 481-82. Because the
statute did not “impose criminal penalties or other punishment,” the
35
Court concluded that it was not a bill of attainder, regardless of
its specificity. Id. at 482 (quotations omitted).
2
In the light of the 400 years of case law and history that we
have considered, we believe that Nixon stands, ultimately and
concisely, for the following proposition: if legislation has a
legitimately nonpunitive function, purpose, and structure, it does
not constitute punishment for purposes of the Bill of Attainder
Clause, even where it imposes the historically punitive sanction of
barring designated individuals from engaging in certain professions.
This statement is consistent with the older, traditional lines of
analysis in the Court’s attainder jurisprudence, including
particularly the prophylactic exception developed in Cummings,
Garland, Dent, Hawker, and Justice Frankfurter’s concurrence in
Lovett. It is also not inconsistent with the more sweeping
separation of powers theory espoused by Chief Justice Warren in his
somewhat aberrant Brown opinion, at least to the extent that that
case left open the possibility of using “shorthand” designations in
otherwise proper categorical legislation. Although some portions
of Nixon might be read to suggest that historical punishments are
“inherently suspect,”26 we find this suggestion inapposite to the
26
See id., 433 U.S. at 473 (noting that “the substantial
experience of both England and the United States with such abuses
of parliamentary and legislative power offers a ready checklist of
36
particular area of employment bars. As Nixon makes clear, this type
of liability is only an “historical” punishment to the extent that
certain examples have been declared punitive in past cases like
Cummings and Lovett. See Nixon, 433 U.S. at 474. Because these
building blocks for the historical characterization themselves
contain the very seeds of the prophylactic exception, and because
Nixon’s “functional test” is rooted in that very exception as
developed in the employment bar cases of Hawker, Dent, and Cummings,
see Nixon, 433 U.S. at 475, it simply cannot be convincingly
maintained that employment bars are inherently historically punitive
without reference to Nixon’s other considerations.
More importantly, however, such a reading would contradict the
Supreme Court’s own most recent recapitulation of the punishment
prong. In Selective Service, the Court stated that:
In deciding whether a statute inflicts forbidden
punishment, we have recognized three necessary inquiries:
(1) whether the challenged statute falls within the
historical meaning of legislative punishment; (2) whether
the statute, “viewed in terms of the type and severity of
burdens imposed, reasonably can be said to further
nonpunitive legislative purposes”; and (3) whether the
legislative record “evinces a congressional intent to
punish.”
deprivations and disabilities so disproportionately severe and so
inappropriate to nonpunitive ends that they unquestionably have
been held to fall within the proscription of Art. I, § 9” and that
“[a] statutory enactment that imposes any of those sanctions on
named or identifiable individuals would be immediately
constitutionally suspect”).
37
468 U.S. at 852 (quoting Nixon, 433 U.S. at 473, 475-76, & 478,
respectively). Nothing in Selective Service suggests that the
historical punishment test is ever dispositive on its own, or that
it should be conducted without reference to the actual history
underlying the sanction at issue, and we decline to read such a
ritualistic and unsensible formulation into the Clause. See also
BellSouth, 144 F.3d at 65 (stating that “[e]ven measures
historically associated with punishment--such as permanent exclusion
from an occupation--have been otherwise regarded when the
nonpunitive aims of an apparently prophylactic measure have seemed
sufficiently clear and convincing”) (internal quotations omitted);
Dehainaut, 32 F.3d at 1071 (stating that, “[e]ven where a fixed
identifiable group . . . is singled out and a burden traditionally
associated with punishment--such as permanent exclusion from an
occupation--is imposed, the enactment may pass scrutiny under bill
of attainder analysis if it seeks to achieve legitimate and
nonpunitive ends and was not clearly the product of punitive
intent”).
3
Adapting the Selective Service formulation to this case in the
light of our inquiries, the question becomes whether the Special
Provisions, viewed in terms of the type and severity of burdens
imposed and the expressed intent of Congress, reasonably can be said
38
to further nonpunitive legislative purposes such that the sanction
at issue, a bar from participation in certain businesses, is neither
historically nor functionally nor motivationally punitive. We can
only conclude that they can, and therefore find that the Special
Provisions are constitutionally sound.
First and perhaps foremost, we think that the Special
Provisions are not punitive because they do not impose a perpetual
bar on the BOCs’ entry into any of life’s avocations. In Cummings,
Garland, and Lovett, the burdened individuals were barred from all
future employment in certain professions based on immutable past
acts. Under the Special Provisions, on the other hand, the BOCs
will be allowed to enter each of the affected areas as soon as the
statutory criteria regarding competition in their local service
markets are met, and, in the case of information services, in 2001
regardless. As the Supreme Court expressly stated in Selective
Service, “[a] statute that leaves open perpetually the possibility
of [qualifying for some specifically denied benefit] does not fall
within the historical meaning of forbidden legislative punishment.”
468 U.S. at 853.27
27
We recognize that meeting the competition criteria may not
be an easy matter for the BOCs. Still, nothing in the statute or
SBC’s recent experiences with the FCC and the D.C. Circuit leads us
to suspect that it will be impossible, and we are satisfied that
the BOCs will be able to emerge from the restrictions when it is in
their economic and business interest to meet the stiff criteria.
39
Second, we conclude that the Special Provisions are not
punishment because they serve a nonpunitive purpose: attempting to
ensure fair competition in the markets for local service, long
distance, telecommunications equipment, and information services.
Indeed, even under the MFJ, we do not understand that the line-of-
business restrictions imposed on the BOCs were intended to have a
punitive function. As Judge Greene stated, the restrictions were
imposed because “[p]articipation in these fields carries with it a
substantial risk that the Operating Companies will use the same
anticompetitive techniques used by AT&T in order to thwart the
growth of their own competitors.” United States v. AT&T, 552
F. Supp. at 224. This rationale seems much more like a judgment
“condemning all men” in certain inherently conflicted positions than
an impermissible “judgment censuring or condemning any man or group
of men” for their personal conduct, see Brown, 381 U.S. at 453-54,
so to the extent that Congress was merely reimposing the MFJ, it did
not engage in action derivatively punitive. Furthermore, the actual
terms of the Special Provisions stay close to their legitimate ends.
By clearly linking a lifting of the long distance and
telecommunications equipment restrictions to competition in the
BOCs’ local markets, and by making the structural separation
condition for entry into the nascent and vulnerable information
services market temporary, Congress has tailored the burdens imposed
40
to an appropriate end of promoting competition. Finally, and
although SBC has argued fervently to the contrary, the mere fact
that the Special Provisions are limited in application to the BOCs
(and thus do not cover other LECs with substantial local market
power, like GTE) does not cast substantial doubt on the fit of this
tailoring. As the D.C. Circuit has expressly recognized, “[b]ecause
the BOCs’ facilities are generally less dispersed than GTE’s, they
can exercise bottleneck control over both ends of a [long distance]
telephone call in a higher fraction of cases than GTE” (or any of
the other LECs, for that matter), and it is thus rational to subject
them to additional burdens in order to achieve the overall goal of
competitive local and long distance service. BellSouth, 144 F.3d
at 67.
Third, we reason that the Special Provisions are not punitive
because neither their terms nor their legislative history
demonstrates the “smoking gun” evidence of punitive intent necessary
to establish a bill of attainder. As the Supreme Court clarified
in Selective Service, “‘unmistakable evidence of punitive
intent . . . is required before a Congressional enactment of this
kind may be struck down’” on attainder grounds. Id., 468 U.S. at
856 n.15 (quoting Flemming, 363 U.S. at 619); cf. Lovett, 328 U.S.
at 315 (for an example of such evidence). To be sure, there were
some isolated references in congressional debate to the Bell
41
System’s questionable business practices prior to the MFJ, which
were offered as evidence of the general potential for abuse of local
market power. But, still, SBC has pointed us towards no indication
that the Special Provisions were themselves enacted to punish the
BOCs for past antitrust violations. Instead, the legislative record
is really quite clear that Congress--certainly as a whole--
considered the Special Provisions to be just what they appeared to
be: a prophylactic, compromise regulation of the BOCs’ local market
power to ensure greater competition in all of the nation’s
telecommunications markets.
Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, we conclude that the
Special Provisions are not punitive because they were part of a
larger quid pro quo. Combined with § 601(a)(1), the Special
Provisions represent a hard-fought compromise on a massive issue of
public policy which, in the end, contained both good and bad
elements for the BOCs.28 For example, although the information
28
See SBC Communications, 138 F.3d at 412:
The question of how best to achieve [the goals of the
Act] . . . was the subject of great debate. Some thought
that the local and long-distance markets should be open
to all competitors immediately. Others believed that the
BOCs should have to wait until actual competition was
introduced in their local markets before providing
interLATA service, since it was claimed that the
long-distance market is already competitive. As might be
expected for an issue of this economic significance, an
extended lobbying struggle ensued. The end product was
a compromise between the competing factions.
42
services restriction lifted under the MFJ was partially reimposed
under § 274, the BOCs were immediately freed, by operation of
§ 601(a)(1) and the other Special Provisions, from existing MFJ
restrictions on their ability to offer incidental and out-of-region
long distance service. More importantly, the Special Provisions
gave the BOCs a clear delineation of what they needed to do to
achieve a lifting of all the old MFJ restrictions in the future--
certainly a step up, from the BOCs’ perspective, from being under
Judge Greene’s perpetual supervision. It is perhaps for this reason
that the BOCs have apparently consistently represented, outside of
litigation, that they were pleased with the Act. Indeed, in a
public news release, SBC’s Chairman lauded the Act as “landmark
legislation” that would allow SBC “immediately [to] provide long-
distance service outside [its] . . . region and to [its] cellular
customers everywhere,” and that created “clear and reasonable
pathways” for SBC to obtain permission to provide in-region long
distance service in the future--“pathways that [SBC was] happy
with.” The other BOCs made similar comments, and they clearly were
effective in persuading Congress of their support for the Act. See
142 Cong. Rec. S393 (daily ed. Jan. 26, 1996) (remarks of Sen.
Pressler) (“We now have the regional Bell companies supporting the
bill and we have the long-distance companies supporting the bill.
That is an unusual, rare moment in American history when the
43
regional Bells and long-distance companies are temporarily at peace,
so to speak.”); id. at S696 (daily ed. Feb. 1, 1996) (statement of
Sen. Kerrey) (noting that the Act was “a very unusual piece of
legislation in that the demand for it [wa]s coming from . . . the
whole range of corporations; . . . RBOC’s, long-distance, cable,
broadcast; all of them”); id. at S699 (daily ed. Feb. 1, 1996)
(statement of Sen. Lott) (“The telephone companies are supporting
this legislation. The long-distance companies are supporting this
legislation--both of them would like to have a little more in their
sections, but basically they know this is good
legislation . . . .”). Be that as it may, it is at any rate clear
that a legislative quid pro quo on this level simply cannot be
punitive for attainder purposes.
For all of the foregoing reasons, we find that the Special
Provisions ultimately are nonpunitive as an historical, functional,
and motivational matter. They are therefore not an unconstitutional
and odious bill of attainder as that term has been defined by the
Supreme Court. To the extent that the district court concluded
otherwise, it was in error, and its decision on that point is
accordingly reversed.
B
As noted above, however, SBC and the other appellees also urge
three additional constitutional arguments as alternate bases for
44
affirming the judgment of the district court. Having found the
Special Provisions not to constitute a bill of attainder, we must
obviously consider these alternate theories. We do so only briefly,
however, as they are far less substantial.
1
The appellees first make two interrelated arguments that the
Special Provisions violate the constitutional requirement of
separation of powers--i.e., that the Special Provisions represent
an arrogation to the legislative branch of powers functionally
vested in the judicial branch by the very firmament of the
Constitution. See generally Plaut, 514 U.S. at 218-25 (noting,
among other things, that “[t]he Framers of our Constitution lived
among the ruins of a system of intermingled legislative and judicial
powers” and felt a “sense of a sharp necessity to separate the
legislative from the judicial” in designing their new system).
Despite their strong institutional pedigree, neither argument has
significant merit.
First, the appellees contend that the Special Provisions
violate separation of powers because they address themselves to a
particular judicial consent decree--the MFJ--in such a way as to
alter the result. They rely on the well accepted rule that it
violates separation-of-powers principles for Congress to reopen any
adjudication that represents the “final word of the judicial
45
department” on a case. See Plaut, 514 U.S. at 225-27. Yet under
Pennsylvania v. Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Co., 59 U.S. (18 How.)
421 (1855), it has long been clear that Congress may change the law
underlying ongoing equitable relief, even if, as in Wheeling itself,
the change is specifically targeted at and limited in applicability
to a particular injunction, and even if the change results in the
necessary lifting of that injunction. See id. at 429. The only
real question on this point would seem to be whether Wheeling
survives the Court’s more recent separation of powers jurisprudence,
as recently recited in Plaut. In that case, however, Justice Scalia
could hardly have been more clear that “nothing in our holding today
calls [Wheeling] into question.” Id., 514 U.S. at 232.
Obviously, Wheeling survives, as all of the circuit courts to
consider separation-of-powers challenges to the Prison Litigation
Reform Act of 1995 recently concluded. In those cases the courts
dealt with a statute, 18 U.S.C. § 3626(b)(2), that mandated the
termination of certain existing consent decrees if they were not
based upon a newly announced standard of factual findings. In
upholding this provision in the face of a separation-of-powers
attack, five courts expressly held that Congress could interfere
with ongoing consent decrees, because such decrees were not “final
46
judgments” for separation-of-powers purposes.29 Indeed, even the
one court to strike down § 3626(b)(2) was forced to concede that
“Wheeling established the principle that the state of the law at the
time a final judgment embodying a permanent injunction is entered
is not part of what is ‘final’ about the judgment.” Taylor v.
United States, 143 F.3d 1178, 1182 (9th Cir. 1998) (Ristani, J.).
29
See Dougan v. Singletary, 129 F.3d 1424, 1426 (11th Cir.
1997) (per curiam) (“As the Court explained in Plaut v. Spendthrift
Farm, Inc., a true ‘final judgment’ here means not an appealable
judgment, but one that represents the ‘last word of the judicial
department with regard to a particular case or controversy.’
Consent decrees are final judgments, but not the ‘last word of the
judicial department.’”); Inmates of Suffolk County Jail v. Rouse,
129 F.3d 649, 657 (1st Cir. 1997) (Selya, J.) (“Plaut and Wheeling
Bridge, read together, teach that equity requires, and the
separation of powers principle permits, legislatures to direct that
courts respond to changes in substantive law by revisiting forward-
looking injunctions.”); Benjamin v. Jacobsen, 124 F.3d 162, 171 (2d
Cir. 1997) (Calabresi, J.) (“In distinguishing Wheeling Bridge, the
Plaut Court implicitly drew a similar distinction between two kinds
of final judgments for separation of powers purposes--final
judgments without prospective effects, which could not be
constitutionally revised through legislation, and final judgments
with prospective effects, whose effects could be constitutionally
so revised.”); Gavin v. Branstad, 122 F.3d 1081, 1087 (8th Cir.
1997) (Bowman, J.) (“Plaut does not hold that final judgments are
invariably immune to congressional tinkering; what Plaut protects
is ‘the last word of the judicial department with regard to a
particular case or controversy.’ In a continuing case, a consent
decree is not the last word of the courts in the case, even after
the decree itself has become final for purposes of appeal.”);
Plyler v. Moore, 100 F.3d 365, 371 (4th Cir. 1996) (Wilkins, J.)
(“[A]s made clear by the Court in Plaut, an attempt to alter
legislatively a legal judgment violates the separation-of-powers
doctrine. A judgment providing for injunctive relief, however,
remains subject to changes in the law. These principles apply
equally to consent decrees and litigated judgments.”) (citations to
Wheeling and other cases omitted).
47
Despite this great weight of authority, the appellees counter
that the congressional interference in this case is more suspect,
because it is so specific. Yet, as noted, the legislation in
Wheeling was rife with specificity: the change effected by Congress
was specifically directed at altering the legal status of a single,
named bridge in order to change the result of a particular
injunction. See id., 59 U.S. at 429. Specificity was also
manifestly evident in the more recent related case of Robertson v.
Seattle Audubon Society, 503 U.S. 429, 434-35, 437-40 (1992), where
Justice Thomas, writing for a unanimous Court, found no separation-
of-powers problem in a statute that changed the law with respect to
two pending lawsuits identified by name and caption number. In the
light of all these precedents, we simply cannot see a separation-of-
powers problem based on the Special Provisions’ interference with
the MFJ in this case.
That leaves the second line of attack, which, as we understand
it, is a not-too-well-defined argument that all of the problematic
aspects of the Special Provisions--including particularly their
specificity, their interference with the MFJ, and the near-punitive
nature of the liability they impose--when added together somehow
amount to a separation-of-powers violation that is greater than the
sum of its parts. Although this argument finds appealing rhetorical
support in the more sweeping statements of some of the Court’s older
48
cases, including particularly the admonition offered by Justice
Marshall in Fletcher and seconded by Chief Justice Warren in Brown
that “[i]t is the peculiar province of the legislature to describe
general rules for the government of society; the application of
those rules to individuals in society would seem to be the duty of
other departments,” see Brown, 381 U.S. at 446, it is squarely and
specifically contradicted by Plaut. In that case, Justice Breyer
raised a very similar argument in his one-vote concurrence. See
id., 514 U.S. at 241-46. Justice Scalia’s six-vote majority opinion
soundly rejected it, however, noting (in addition to the above-
quoted statement from footnote nine) that:
The nub of th[e] infringement consists not of the
Legislature’s acting in a particularized and hence
according to the concurrence) nonlegislative fashion; but
rather of the Legislature’s nullifying prior,
authoritative judicial action. It makes no difference
whatever to that separation-of-powers violation that it
is in gross rather than particularized . . . or that it
is not accompanied by an “almost” violation of the Bill
of Attainder Clause, or an “almost” violation of any
other constitutional provision.
See id. at 239 & n.9. In the light of Plaut, there is thus no
viability to the “amorphous” theory either, and the appellees’
separation-of-powers challenge in this case must fail.
2
The appellees next argue that the Special Provisions violate
the Equal Protection Clause by discriminating against the BOCs by
name. Under City of New Orleans v. Dukes, 427 U.S. 297 (1976),
49
however, specification of named parties in economic regulation is
clearly permissible for equal protection purposes so long as the
regulation is rationally related to a legitimate governmental
interest and does not trammel fundamental personal rights or draw
upon inherently suspect distinctions such as race, religion, or
alienage. Id. at 304-06. As should be manifest from the entire
history of this area of the law, regulation of an LEC’s conduct in
the local telephone service market neither restricts fundamental
individual rights nor lacks rational relation to the government’s
legitimate interest in ensuring greater competition in all
telecommunications markets. Furthermore, the specification of the
BOCs in the Special Provisions at issue here was not based on
invidious criteria like race, religion, or alienage. As such, the
Special Provisions are not inconsistent with the Equal Protection
Clause.
3
Finally, the appellees urge that, even if the other Special
Provisions are allowed to stand, § 274 must go as it impermissibly
infringes the BOCs’ right to free speech. The D.C. Circuit recently
rejected an identical challenge to § 274 by another RBOC, however,
see BellSouth, 143 F.3d at 67-71, and we can find no reason to
disagree with its result and analysis. Because § 274 does not in
any way differentiate speech on the basis of content, its speech
50
restricting provisions are subject only to (at most) intermediate
scrutiny review under Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512
U.S. 622, 642 (1994) (Turner I). Under that standard, a restriction
will be upheld “if it advances important governmental interests
unrelated to the suppression of free speech and does not burden
substantially more speech than necessary to further those
interests.” Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 117 S. Ct.
1174, 1186 (1997) (Turner II). Obviously, the competition-enhancing
interests discussed above are manifestly sufficient to meet the
first hurdle. Furthermore, because § 274 merely imposes a
structural separation requirement on speech activities, not an
absolute bar, its restrictions are practically de minimis in this
necessarily corporate context, and certainly do not burden
substantially more speech than necessary to accomplish its
legitimate goals. For these reasons, the contention that § 274
violates the BOCs’ right to free speech is entirely lacking in
merit.
V
In the end, the constitutional prohibition against bills of
attainder is a specific rather than a general guaranty of rights.
Cf. Lovett, 328 U.S. at 321 (Frankfurter, J., joined by Reed, J.,
concurring [in the judgment]). Nothing in the Court’s jurisprudence
should be read to allow that specific guaranty wholly to escape the
51
implications of its historical origins, and since the age of
Blackstone and before, it has been clear that for a bill to attaint,
it simply must invoke the punitive. In this case, that has not
occurred. Although the Special Provisions may well constitute a
legislative judgment that the BOCs currently have an inherent and
natural potential to restrain competition by virtue of their local
market power, the Act does not declare them monsters or otherwise
seek to punish them on the basis of past conduct, and thus does not
run afoul of the Bill of Attainder Clause. Because the
Constitution’s additional requirements of separation of powers,
equal protection of the laws, and free speech are also not even
arguably infringed by the Act, the judgment of the district court
is accordingly
R E V E R S E D.30
30
We are unable to see this case in the single-minded terms
expressed in the dissenting opinion. We have faithfully, to the
best of our ability, recounted the sinuous journey of bills of
attainder from the earliest days to the present day. Like a
Christmas pie, these cases--as a whole and indeed individually--
provide a little something for every taste, and are rich with
selective quotes to support a chosen conclusion. In arriving at
our conclusions, we have tried to synthesize these diverse
expressions and applications of the bill of attainder clause in
order to apply it in this context of business regulation--its first
such application. What we think the dissenting opinion has not
observed in its straightforward stride is that attainder requires
an element of punishment. There are employment bars and there are
employment bars--some of the same character, others of a different
character. A non-perpetual legislative bar, which forbids only a
corporation’s participating in a particular segment of the general
business in which the corporation is engaged is not punishment when
52
that bar is enacted for nonpunitive appropriate legislative
purposes under conditions to which that business effectively has
agreed. Indeed, we are not sure the dissent is otherwise convinced
given its acknowledgment that there is no real “victim” of Congress
in this case.
53
JERRY E. SMITH, Circuit Judge, dissenting:
En route to minting a “regulatory exception” to the Bill of
Attainder Clause, the majority holds that punishment is not
punishment when it is inflicted with a “prophylactic” intent. The
majority reaches this cherished goal by stitching together a
patchwork of concurrences and dissents and by brushing aside binding
Supreme Court majority opinions as “aberrant” and “unsensible.”
I respectfully dissent.
I.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 singles out twenty named
corporations for severe line-of-business restrictions characterized,
in the Act's telling language, as the “Special Provisions.” This
case hinges on whether these economic restrictions, which bar the
named firms from lucrative telecommunications markets, amount to
legislative “punishment” as historically understood.
A.
The Supreme Court has consistently held that bars to employment
constitute punishment for purposes of the Bill of Attainder Clause.
In one of the earliest bill of attainder cases, Cummings v.
Missouri, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 277, 320 (1866), the Court observed that
54
“[d]isqualification from the pursuits of a lawful avocation . . .
may also, and often has been, imposed as punishment.” The Court
struck down, as a bill of attainder, a provision in the Missouri
Constitution prohibiting Confederates or their sympathizers from
holding certain jobs. The Court recognized that “in the pursuit of
happiness all avocations, all honors, all positions, are alike open
to every one, and that in the protection of these rights all are
equal before the law. Any deprivation or suspension of any of these
rights for past conduct is punishment, and can be in no otherwise
defined.” Id. at 321-22 (emphasis added).
The law has not changed. In Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S.
(4 Wall.) 333 (1866), the Court applied Cummings's reasoning to
strike down, as a bill of attainder, a federal statute barring
Confederates from practicing in the federal courts. More recently,
in United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303 (1946), the Court
reaffirmed the principle that line-of-work restrictions are
inherently punitive, invalidating a federal statute terminating the
salaries of three named federal employees. And in United States v.
Brown, 381 U.S. 437 (1965), the Court once again held that a statute
proscribing entry into a certain line of work constituted
punishment, striking down a federal statute that forbade members of
the Communist Party from serving as labor union officials.
55
55
Any doubt that employment bars fall squarely within the
historical conception of punishment was erased by the Court's two
most recent bill of attainder cases. In Nixon v. Administrator of
Gen. Servs., 433 U.S. 425, 474 (1977), the Court canvassed the
various burdens historically deemed punitive, concluding that “[o]ur
country's own experience with bills of attainder resulted in the
addition of another sanction to the list of impermissible
legislative punishments: a legislative enactment barring designated
individuals or groups from participation in specified employments
or vocations . . . .”
The Court's latest pronouncement, in Selective Serv. Sys. v.
Minnesota PIRG, 468 U.S. 841 (1984), echoes Nixon: “In our own
country, the list of punishments forbidden by the Bill of Attainder
Clause has expanded to include legislative bars to participation by
individuals or groups in specific employments or professions.”
468 U.S. at 852. Indeed, employment bars “have constituted the most
common sort of statutes struck down by the Court as unconstitutional
bills of attainder.” BellSouth Corp. v. FCC, 144 F.3d 58, 72-73
(D.C. Cir. 1998) (Sentelle, J., dissenting) (citing Selective
Service, 468 U.S. at 852).
The majority's ancillary argument that “the Special Provisions
are not punitive because they do not impose a perpetual bar” is
meritless. The majority quotes Selective Service, 468 U.S. at 853,
56
56
which states that “[a] statute that leaves open perpetually the
possibility of [qualifying for some specifically denied benefit]
does not fall within the historical meaning of forbidden legislative
punishment” (brackets added by majority). But in Brown, the Court
had already considered and rejected the majority's escapability
argument, explaining:
We do not read [two prior cases] to have set up ines-
capability as an absolute prerequisite to a finding of
attainder. Such an absolute rule would have flown in the
face of explicit precedent, Cummings v. Missouri, 4 Wall.
277, 324, as well as the historical background of the
constitutional prohibition. A number of ante-
Constitution bills of attainder inflicted their
deprivations upon named or described persons or groups,
but offered them the option of avoiding the deprivations,
e.g., by swearing allegiance to the existing government.
381 U.S. at 457 n.32. This illustrates that the Bill of Attainder
Clause cannot be avoided simply by inserting into the statute a
means of escape. The fact that the federal government holds the key
to the Baby Bells' prison is irrelevant.
B.
Faced with the unhappy reality of well over a century of
Supreme Court cases holding that employment bars constitute
punishment, the majority announces the discovery of a heretofore
unrecognized exception to the Bill of Attainder Clause: the
“prophylactic exception.” Apparently this creature awakens only in
57
57
cases such as thisSSwhen Congress punishes, but acts with a
beneficent, regulatory intent.
The method through which the majority traces the evolution of
the “prophylactic exception” reveals its suspect pedigree. The
exception's origin is said to lie in Justice Miller's dissent in
Garland, where he suggested that the employment bar at issue was not
punitive because Congress did not intend it as such. Rather,
Justice Miller argued, the statute should properly be viewed as a
prophylactic measure, because Congress merely sought to protect the
public from the future misdeeds of the attainted individuals. See
71 U.S. (4 Wall.) at 393-96 (Miller, J., dissenting).
This theory, rejected by the Garland majority, was purportedly
adopted some decades later in Dent v. West Virginia, 129 U.S. 114
(1889), and Hawker v. New York, 170 U.S. 189 (1898). Unlike most
of the authorities the majority relies on to support the
prophylactic exception, Dent and Hawker are majority opinions. But
they have little to say about this case: The statute at issue in
Dent did not single out individuals for punishment, but concerned
a state's generally applicable licensing requirements; similarly,
the burden in Hawker was imposed on a class rather than named
individuals. In any event, no subsequent case has interpreted Dent
and Hawker the way the majority does hereSSas authorizing
58
58
congressional punishment of individuals as long as the statute can
be said to prevent future harms.
The cornerstone of the majority's theory is Justice
Frankfurter's concurrence in Lovett, 328 U.S. at 318. Although
Justice Frankfurter distinguished between “harm [that is] inflicted
by government authority” and “punishment,” id. at 324 (Frankfurter,
J., concurring), the majority of the Court refused to embrace this
view. Cf. Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44, 66
(1996) (holding that a minority opinion is “of questionable
precedential value, largely because a majority of the Court
expressly disagreed with the rationale of the plurality”). Rather
than adopt Justice Frankfurter's narrow reading of the Bill of
Attainder Clause, the Court majority held that the challenged law,
which terminated the salaries of three named federal employees,
“'operates as a legislative decree of perpetual exclusion' from a
chosen vocation” and therefore “clearly accomplishes the punishment
of named individuals without a judicial trial.” Lovett, 328 U.S.
at 316 (quoting Garland, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) at 377). The majority
quite plainly equated employment bars with punishment.
Finally, Brown and Nixon foreclose any suggestion that the full
Court subsequently adopted Justice Frankfurter's minority view.
Brown, which the panel majority cryptically claims “did not purport
fully to abandon the prior development of the punitive element,”
59
59
concluded that the employment restriction at issueSSbarring members
of the Communist Party from holding certain jobsSSamounted to
punishment. The Court surveyed its bill of attainder jurisprudence
and, relying on Garland and Lovett, held that the statute “plainly
constitutes a bill of attainder” because “it designates in no
uncertain terms the persons who possess the feared characteristics
and therefore cannot hold union office . . . .” 381 U.S. at 449,
450.
Nixon is even more direct. There, the Court explained that
“legislative enactment[s] barring designated individuals or groups
from participation in specified employments or vocations” are
“impermissible” and “unquestionably have been held to fall within
the proscription of Art. I, § 9.” 433 U.S. at 473, 474. This stark
language leaves little room for the majority's “prophylactic
exception”: Impermissible is impermissible. Once a court
determines that Congress has imposed a burden historically deemed
punitive, such as the employment bar at issue here, that is the end
of the analysis. The majority protests that such a reading of Nixon
is “ritualistic and unsensible,” but it is difficult to squeeze a
prophylactic exception out of the Court's statement that “[a]
statutory enactment that imposes [an employment bar] on named or
identifiable individuals would be immediately constitutionally
suspect.” Id. at 473 (emphasis added).
60
60
Moreover, to the extent the Court considered congressional
purpose in passing the law, it did so only after it had determined
that the challenged burden did not fit the historical definition of
punishment; its consideration of legislative intent was a means of
ensuring that “new burdens and deprivations [are not] legislatively
fashioned that are inconsistent with the bill of attainder
guarantee.” Id. at 475.
The Court began its analysis by asking whether the burdenSSthe
confiscation of presidential recordsSSfell into the category of
“immediately suspect” punishments, such as a bar to employment.
After concluding that President Nixon “cannot claim to have suffered
any of these forbidden deprivations at the hands of Congress,” the
Court remarked that “our inquiry is not ended by the determination
that the [statute] imposes no punishment traditionally judged to be
prohibited by the Bill of Attainder Clause.” Id. at 475. Only then
did the Court turn to legislative purposeSSan inquiry that would not
have been necessary if President Nixon had suffered one of the
“forbidden” deprivations.
The Selective Service Court clarified this point. It
explained:
Our inquiry does not end with a determination that
[the statute] does not inflict punishment in its
historical sense. To ensure that the Legislature has not
created an impermissible penalty not previously held to
be within the proscription against bills of attainder, we
61
61
must determine whether the challenged statute can be
reasonably said to further nonpunitive goals.
468 U.S. at 853-54 (citing Nixon, 433 U.S. at 475-76).
The majority's reading of these cases is sadly ironic. In both
Nixon and Selective Service, the Court sought to expand the
protections of the Bill of Attainder Clause by looking to
legislative purpose. The Court's concern was congressional
creativity in dreaming up new burdens that fell outside the category
of burdens historically deemed punitive; by considering legislative
intent, the Court erected an additional safeguard to protect
individuals from new types of congressionally-devised punishment.
The majority's interpretation, by contrast, contracts the scope
of the clause. The majority looks to legislative intent not to
protect citizens from congressional overreaching, but as a means of
empowering Congress to pass punitive laws it could not otherwise
enactSSsimply by claiming an intent to “regulate” rather than
punish. Thanks to the prophylactic exception, Congress may now
single out individuals for punishments that were, until today,
routinely held unconstitutional.
C.
In deeming nonpunitive a burden that the Nixon Court
characterized as “unquestionably” punitive, 433 U.S. at 473, the
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majority reasons that punishment is not really punishment if it is
inflicted for preventive purposes. The majority concludes that
“[a]lthough the Special Provisions may well constitute a legislative
judgment that the BOCs currently have an inherent and natural
potential to restrain competition by virtue of their local market
power, the Act does not declare them monsters or otherwise seek to
punish them on the basis of past conduct, and thus does not run
afoul of the Bill of Attainder Clause.” The majority distinguishes
between retribution (the imposition of a burden for wrongful past
conduct) and prevention (the imposition of a burden to reduce the
likelihood of future harmsSShere, antitrust violations).
This distinction is flatly contradicted by Brown, which rejects
such a cramped view of punishment and undermines the majority's
novel interpretation of the clause. In holding that an employment
bar constituted punishment, even when imposed for prophylactic
purposes, the Court explained:
It would be archaic to limit the definition of
“punishment” to “retribution.” Punishment serves several
purposes: retributive, rehabilitative, deterrentSSand
preventive. One of the reasons society imprisons those
convicted of crimes is to keep them from inflicting
future harm, but that does not make imprisonment any the
less punishment.
Historical considerations by no means compel restriction
of the bill of attainder ban to instances of retribution.
A number of English bills of attainder were enacted for
preventive purposesSSthat is, the legislature made a
judgment, undoubtedly based largely on past acts and
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associations . . . that a given person or group was
likely to cause trouble (usually, overthrow the
government) and therefore inflicted deprivations upon
that person or group in order to keep it from bringing
about the feared event.
381 U.S. at 458-59.
Consider a statute that sentences to death a named individual
who announces that he has criminal tendenciesSSbut has yet to commit
a crime. Under the majority's theory, this law is not a bill of
attainder: It does not “seek to punish on the basis of past
conduct,” and it serves a legitimate prophylactic function. This
hypothetical illustrates the impossibility of confining the clause's
protections to retributive measures. As the Court explained, a
burden is rendered no less punitive by being based on future, rather
than past, wrongdoing.
In fact, the majority's concession that “the Act may well
constitute a legislative judgment that the BOCs currently have an
inherent and natural potential to restrain competition” falls
squarely within the Court's description of a bill of attainder:
when “the legislature [makes] a judgment . . . that a given person
or group [is] likely to cause trouble . . . and therefore [inflicts]
deprivations upon that person or group in order to keep it from
bringing about the feared event.” Id. at 458-59. Here, Congress
made a legislative judgment that the BOC's were likely to cause
troubleSSthey were likely to commit antitrust violationsSSand
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inflicted deprivations (severe line-of-business restrictions) in
order to keep the Baby Bells from bringing about the feared event.
Accordingly, under a straightforward application of Brown, the
“prophylactic exception” is a chimera, and the Special Provisions
are a bill of attainder.
D.
In sum, the unbroken line of Supreme Court precedent compels
the conclusion that the Special Provisions, because they impose an
employment bar, constitute historical punishment forbidden by the
Bill of Attainder Clause. The Court has never held that Congress
can single out named individuals for burdens historically deemed
punitive simply because legislators are animated by a well-meaning,
regulatory spirit. Yet that is precisely what the majority holds
today, sidestepping the Nixon Court's statement, 433 U.S. at 473,
that this type of law is “immediately constitutionally suspect.”
II.
The Bill of Attainder Clause has long been regarded as
protecting unpopular individuals or groups from trial-by-
legislature. As the Court explained in South Carolina v.
Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 324 (1966), the clause protects those “who
are peculiarly vulnerable to nonjudicial determinations of guilt.”
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A quick survey of the caselaw confirms this view: The clause has
been invoked to rescue Confederates and Communists from
congressional wrath.
And that is what makes the Bill of Attainder analysis so
unusual in this context: The Baby Bells, represented by armies of
lawyers and lobbyists, hardly fit anyone's notion of a helpless
victim. Moreover, there is evidence in the record that the Baby
Bells, by their own account, prevailed in the legislative process.
While their apparent consent to the Special Provisions does not
estop them from challenging the restrictions in this court, it
certainly undercuts their claim to victimhood. As the majority
notes, the Special Provisions were part of a larger quid pro quo.
But the Bill of Attainder Clause serves a dual purpose: Not
only does it rescue individuals from trial-by-legislature, it also
preserves the separation of powers. The clause is a check on
Congress's power to legislate; it forbids Congress from passing
punitive laws that target individuals. Congress may, of course,
pass laws conferring benefits on individuals, see Plaut v.
Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U.S. 211, 239 n.9 (1995), but when it
wishes to impose punishment, it must legislate in general terms and
allow the judicial branch to decide which individuals have violated
the laws and must be punished.
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The Court explained the clause's role in preserving the
separation of powers most thoroughly in BrownSSan opinion the panel
majority tars as “somewhat aberrant.” The Court began its
discussion by reviewing the history of the clause, describing it as
a barrier “to ensure that the legislature would not overstep the
bounds of its authority and perform the functions of the other
departments.” 381 U.S. at 444 (emphasis omitted). It then stated
precisely why the statute, which imposed an employment bar on
members of the Communist Party, violated the clause:
In [enacting the statute] Congress has exceeded the
authority granted it by the Constitution. The statute
does not set forth a generally applicable rule decreeing
that any person who commits certain acts or possesses
certain characteristics (acts and characteristics which,
in Congress' view, make them likely to initiate political
strikes) shall not hold union office, and leave to courts
and juries the job of deciding what persons have
committed the specified acts or possess the specified
characteristics. Instead, it designates in no uncertain
terms the persons who possess the feared characteristics
. . . .
Id. at 450.
The Court noted that Congress was free to pass laws weeding
subversives out of the labor movementSSonly it had to do so through
generally applicable legislation, otherwise it overstepped its
constitutional bounds. In language directly applicable to the
instant case, the Court explained that Congress “cannot specify the
people upon whom the sanction it prescribes is to be levied. Under
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our Constitution, Congress possesses full legislative authority, but
the task of adjudication must be left to other tribunals.” Id. at
461.
Brown stands for the idea that the Bill of Attainder Clause
protects not only individual liberty, but also the other branches
of government. The clause, in other words, helps ensure that
Congress does not encroach on the executive's or judiciary's turf.
As the Court concluded, id. at 442, “the Bill of Attainder Clause
was intended not as a narrow, technical (and therefore soon to be
outmoded) prohibition, but rather as an implementation of the
separation of powers, a general safeguard against legislative
exercise of the judicial function.”
This is hardly a novel, twentieth-century interpretation. In
one of the earliest bill-of-attainder cases, Fletcher v. Peck,
10 U.S. (6 Cranch) 87, 136 (1810), Chief Justice Marshall explained
that “[i]t is the peculiar province of the legislature, to prescribe
general rules for the government of society; the application of
those rules to individuals in society would seem to be the duty of
other departments.” In fact, this understanding predates even the
Marshall Court:
Writings contemporary with the drafting of the
Constitution express great concern lest the legislature
assume the power to implement the total policy of
government without the participation of the other
branches, and support the thesis that the bill of
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attainder clause should be viewed as a limitation on
legislatures fully as broad, and as necessary to the
effective separation of powers, as that which has been
imposed upon courts by article III.
Note, The Bounds of Legislative Specification: A Suggested Approach
to the Bill of Attainder Clause, 72 YALE L.J. 330, 343 (1962) (cited
with approval in Brown, 381 U.S. at 457 n.32). In this sense, even
if the BOC's somehow “consented” to Congress's imposing the Special
Provisions, that consent is as irrelevant as is a litigant's
“consenting” to subject-matter jurisdiction. Congress simply lacks
the power to legislate in this way.
In enacting the Special Provisions, Congress adjudicated. It
not only specified the sanction but also identified the specific
corporations upon whom the sanction was to be leviedSSnot
coincidentally, the same corporations involved in the prior AT&T
litigation. The Bill of Attainder Clause says that when Congress
wishes to impose certain burdens historically deemed punitive, it
can do so only through laws of general applicability. The actual
application of these laws to specific parties must be left to the
other branches of government. Congress runs afoul of the Bill of
Attainder Clause when it enacts punitive legislation that targets
certain entitiesSSeven where, as here, the punishment comes cloaked
in the mantle of prophylactic economic regulation.
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III.
The majority today opens a loophole in the Bill of Attainder
Clause, allowing Congress to pass legislation that historically has
been held unconstitutional. In doing so, the majority redefines our
traditional understanding of the clause's mandate: Congress cannot
single out an individual and deprive him of his life, liberty, or
freedom to work. Because the Telecommunications Act's “Special
Provisions” amount to a bill of attainder, I respectfully dissent.
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