Gibson v. Florida Legislative Investigation Committee

Decision Date25 March 1963
Docket NumberNo. 6,6
Citation9 L.Ed.2d 929,372 U.S. 539,83 S.Ct. 889
PartiesTheodore R. GIBSON, Petitioner, v. FLORIDA LEGISLATIVE INVESTIGATION COMMITTEE. Re
CourtU.S. Supreme Court

Robert L. Carter, New York City, for petitioner.

Mark R. Hawes, St. Petersburg, Fla., for respondent.

Mr. Justice GOLDBERG, delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case is the culmination of protracted litigation involving legislative investigating committees of the State of Florida and the Miami branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The origins of the controversy date from 1956, when a committee of the Florida Legislature commenced an investigation of the N.A.A.C.P. Upon expiration of this committee's authority, a new committee was established to pursue the inquiry. The new committee, created in 1957, held hearings and sought by subpoena to obtain the entire membership list of the Miami branch of the N.A.A.C.P.; production was refused and the committee obtained a court order requiring that the list be submitted. On appeal, the Florida Supreme Court held that the committee could not require production and disclosure of the entire membership list of the organization, but that it could compel the custodian of the records to bring them to the hearings and to refer to them to determine whether specific individuals, otherwise identified as, or 'suspected of being,' Communists, were N.A.A.C.P. members. 108 So.2d 729, cert. denied, 360 U.S. 919, 79 S.Ct. 1433, 3 L.Ed.2d 1535.

Because of the impending expiration of the authority of the 1957 committee, the Florida Legislature in 1959 established the respondent Legislative Investigation Committee to resume the investigation of the N.A.A.C.P. The authorizing statute, c. 59 207, Fla.Laws 1959, defining the purpose and operations of the respondent, declared:

'It shall be the duty of the committee to make as complete an investigation as time permits of all organizations whose principles or activities include a course of conduct on the part of any person or group which would constitute violence, or a violation of the laws of the state, or would be inimical to the well-being and orderly pursuit of their personal and business activities by the majority of the citizens of this state. * * *'1 The petitioner, then president of the Miami branch of the N.A.A.C.P., was ordered to appear before the respondent Committee on November 4, 1959, and, in accordance with the prior decision of the Florida Supreme Court, to bring with him records of the association which were in his possession or custody and which pertained to the identity of members of, and contributors to, the Miami and state N.A.A.C.P. organizations. Prior to interrogation of any witnesses the Committee chairman read the text of the statute creating the Committee and declared that the hearings would be 'concerned with the activities of various organizations which have been or are presently operating in this State in the fields of, first, race relations; second, the coercive reform of social and educational practices and mores by litigation and pressured administrative action; third, of labor; fourth, of education; fifth, and other vital phases of life in this State.' The chairman also stated that the inquiry would be directed to Communists and Communist activities, including infiltration of Communists into organizations operating in the described fields.

Upon being called to the stand, the petitioner admitted that he was custodian of his organization's membership records and testified that the local group had about 1,000 members, that individual membership was renewed annually, and that the only membership lists maintained were those for the then current year.

The petitioner told the Committee that he had not brought these records with him to the hearing and announced that he would not produce them for the purpose of answering questions concerning membership in the N.A.A.C.P. He did, however, volunteer to answer such questions on the basis of his own personal knowledge; when given the names and shown photographs of 14 persons previously identified as Communists or members of Communist front or affiliated organizations, the petitioner said that he could associate none of them with the N.A.A.C.P.

The petitioner's refusal to produce his organization's membership lists was based on the ground that to bring the lists to the hearing and to utilize them as the basis of his testimony would interfere with the free exercise of Fourteenth Amendment associational rights of members and prospective members of the N.A.A.C.P.

In accordance with Florida procedure, the petitioner was brought before a state court and, after a hearing, was adjudged in contempt, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment and fined $1,200, or, in default in payment thereof, sentenced to an additional six months' imprisonment. The Florida Supreme Court sustained the judgment below, 126 So.2d 129, and this Court granted certiorari, 366 U.S. 917, 81 S.Ct. 1093, 6 L.Ed.2d 240; the case was argued last Term and restored to the calendar for reargument this Term, 369 U.S. 834, 82 S.Ct. 863, 7 L.Ed.2d 841.

I.

We are here called upon once again to resolve a conflict between individual rights of free speech and association and governmental interest in conducting legislative investigations. Prior decisions illumine the contending principles.

This Court has repeatedly held that rights of association are within the ambit of the constitutional protections afforded by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. N.A.A.C.P. v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488; Bates v. Little Rock, 361 U.S. 516, 80 S.Ct. 412, 4 L.Ed.2d 480; Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479, 8 S.Ct. 247, 5 L.Ed.2d 231; N.A.A.C.P. v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 83 S.Ct. 328, 9 L.Ed.2d 405. The respondent Committee does not contend otherwise, nor could it, for, as was said in N.A.A.C.P. v. Alabama, supra, 'It is beyond debate that freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the 'liberty' assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces freedom of speech.' 357 U.S., at 460, 78 S.Ct., at 1171. And it is equally clear that the guarantee encompasses protection of privacy of association in organizations such as that of which the petitioner is president; indeed, in both the Bates and Alabama cases, supra, this Court held N.A.A.C.P. membership lists of the very type here in question to be beyond the States' power of discovery in the circumstances there presented.

The First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of free speech and free association are fundamental and highly prized, and 'need breathing space to survive.' N.A.A.C.P. v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 433, 83 S.Ct. 328, 338, 9 L.Ed.2d 405. 'Freedoms such as these are protected not only against heavy-handed frontal attack, but also from being stifled by more subtle governmental interference.' Bates v. Little Rock, supra, 361 U.S., at 523, 80 S.Ct., at 416. And, as declared in N.A.A.C.P. v. Alabama, supra, 357 U.S., at 462, 78 S.Ct., at 1171, 'It is hardly a novel perception that compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy may constitute (an) * * * effective * * * restraint on freedom of association * * *. This Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one's associations. * * * Inviolability of privacy in group association may in many circumstances be indispensable to preservation of freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs.' So it is here.

At the same time, however, this Court's prior holdings demonstrate that there can be no question that the State has power adequately to inform itself—through legislative investigation, if it so desires—in order to act and protect its legitimate and vital interests. As this Court said in considering the propriety of the congressonal inquiry challenged in Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178, 77 S.Ct. 1173, 1 L.Ed.2d 1273: 'The power * * * to conduct investigations is inherent in the legislative process. That power is broad. It encompasses inquiries concerning the administration of existing laws as well as proposed or possibly needed statutes. It includes surveys of defects in our social, economic or political system for the purpose of enabling the Congress to remedy them.' 354 U.S., at 187, 77 S.Ct., at 1179. And, more recently, it was declared that 'The scope of the power of inquiry, in short, is as penetrating and far-reaching as the potential power to enact and appropriate under the Constitution.' Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U.S. 109, 111, 79 S.Ct. 1081, 1085, 3 L.Ed.2d 1115. It is no less obvious, however, that the legislative power to investigate, broad as it may be, is not without limit. The fact that the general scope of the inquiry is authorized and permissible does not compel the conclusion that the investigatory body is free to inquire into or demand all forms of information. Validation of the broad subject matter under investigation does not necessarily carry with it automatic and wholesale validation of all individual questions, subpoenas, and documentary demands. See, e.g., Watkins v. United States, supra, 354 U.S., at 197—199, 77 S.Ct., at 1184. See also Barenblatt v. United States, supra, 360 U.S., at 127—130, 79 S.Ct., at 1094. When, as in this case, the claim is made that particular legislative inquiries and demands infringe substantially upon First and Fourteenth Amendment associational rights of individuals, the courts are called upon to, and must, determine the permissibility of the challenged actions, Watkins v. United States, supra, 354 U.S., at 198—199, 77 S.Ct., at 1184—1185; '(T)he delicate and difficult task falls upon the courts to weigh the circumstances and to appraise the substantiality of the reasons advanced in support of the regulation of the free enjoyment of the rights,'...

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