Bulluck v. Washington

• Decision Date: 19 January 1972
• Docket Number: No. 24862,24863.,24862
• Citation: 468 F.2d 1096,152 US App. DC 39
• Parties: James BULLUCK et al., Appellants, v. Walter WASHINGTON, Commissioner of the District of Columbia, et al. Jerome and Maura FREIBAUM et al., Appellants, v. Walter WASHINGTON, Commissioner of the District of Columbia, et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

152 US App. DC 39, 468 F.2d 1096 (1972)

James BULLUCK et al., Appellants, v. Walter WASHINGTON, Commissioner of the District of Columbia, et al.

Jerome and Maura FREIBAUM et al., Appellants, v. Walter WASHINGTON, Commissioner of the District of Columbia, et al.

Nos. 24862, 24863.

United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued April 22, 1971.

Decided January 19, 1972.

As Amended February 8, 1972.

Rehearing Granted March 7, 1972.

On Rehearing July 14, 1972.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Mr. John B. Jones Jr., Washington, D. C., with whom Messrs. Rodney E. Gould and S. William Livingston, Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellants in No. 24862.

Mr. William L. Taylor, with whom Mrs. Harriett R. Taylor and Mr. Roger S. Kuhn, Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellants in No. 24863.

Mr. David P. Sutton, Asst. Corp. Counsel for the District of Columbia, with whom Messrs. C. Francis Murphy, Corp. Counsel, and Richard W. Barton, Asst. Corp. Counsel, were on the brief, for appellees.

Before ROBINSON and MacKINNON, Circuit Judges, and DAVIES,^* United States District Judge for the District of North Dakota.

Rehearing En Banc Granted March 7, 1972.

On Rehearing En Banc July 14, 1972.

MacKINNON, Circuit Judge:

Appellants instituted these suits in the United States District Court seeking a declaratory judgment that Section 401(2) of the D.C.Revenue Act of 1968¹ was unconstitutional and an injunction against its enforcement. Because they were seeking to enjoin an act of Congress, appellants requested convocation of a three-judge district court.² Holding that the constitutional question presented was insubstantial, a single district judge denied appellants' request for a three-judge court and granted appellees' motion to dismiss the complaint.³ This appeal followed and we affirm.

Accepting as true for purposes of this appeal, the factual allegations of the complaint,⁴ it appears that the Parent Teachers' Association of the Bannockburn School conceived a plan hereinafter the "Bannockburn Plan or Plan" by which school children in the predominently black Meyer Elementary School in the District could be educated in the predominently white Bannockburn School in suburban Maryland. Designed to operate on a voluntary basis, the Plan, in effect, was an invitation to parents of Meyer School students to enroll their children in the Bannockburn School.⁵ Approval for the Plan was sought and received from the Superintendent of Schools for Montgomery County and from the Montgomery County School Board.

On June 26, 1968, the District of Columbia School Board approved the Plan and agreed to provide the funds necessary for its implementation.⁶ Some time thereafter, Section 401(2) was inserted in the District's pending revenue bill by the House Committee on the District of Columbia. As enacted,⁷ the Section provides:

Sec. 401. No funds appropriated for the District of Columbia may be used —

. . . . . .

(2) for the cost of education (including the cost of transportation) of any individual in an elementary or secondary school located outside the District of Columbia except (A) any handicapped individual for whom education facilities do not exist in the public school system of the District of Columbia and (B) any individual under the care, custody or guardianship of the District of Columbia placed in a foster home or in an institution located outside the District of Columbia.⁸

Appellants claim that this Section violates the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment⁹ because it was motivated by the desire of Congress to keep black school children from the District of Columbia out of white Maryland schools, and, alternatively, because its inevitable effect is to thwart racial integration. To these contentions we now turn.¹⁰

I. Scope of Review

Preliminarily, we note two factors concerning this case. First of all, the issue before us is a quite narrow one. Since appellants' request for a three-judge court was denied, we must reverse if we conclude that the constitutional questions raised are substantial. As the Supreme Court stated in Idlewild Bon Voyage Liquor Corp. v. Epstein, 370 U.S. 713, 715, 82 S.Ct. 1294, 1296, 8 L.Ed.2d 794 (1962):

When an application for a statutory three-judge court is addressed to a district court, the court\'s inquiry is appropriately limited to determining whether the constitutional question raised is substantial, whether the complaint at least formally alleges a basis for equitable relief, and whether the case presented otherwise comes within the requirements of the three-judge statute.¹¹

To conclude that the constitutional questions are not substantial, we must conclude that they are "obviously without merit" or that their "unsoundness so clearly results from previous decisions of the Supreme Court as to foreclose the subject and leave no room for the inference that the question sought to be raised can be the subject of controversy." Ex parte Poresky, 290 U.S. 30, 32, 54 S.Ct. 3, 4, 78 L.Ed. 152 (1933).

Secondly, appellants do not contend that the District of Columbia government is required to expend funds in support of the Plan.¹² Their sole contention is that the Due Process Clause forbids the District to refuse to expend such funds because of Section 401(2). Thus the issue of whether any substantial constitutional question would be presented by the District government's refusal to support the Plan financially for any reason other than the existence of Section 401(2) is not present in the case.

II. Congressional Motives

There can be little doubt that a valid exercise of congressional power will not be invalidated because the Congress had invalid motives when it passed the legislation in question. A long line of cases has affirmed and reaffirmed this principle in a variety of contexts.

The reason that courts will not go behind the face of legislation to hold it constitutionally void on such grounds rests on sound practical considerations regarding the nice balance between the judicial and legislative branches of Government. As the Supreme Court stated in United States v. O'Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 383-384, 88 S.Ct. 1673, 1682, 20 L. Ed.2d 672 (1968):

Inquiries into congressional motives or purposes are a hazardous matter. When the issue is simply the interpretation of legislation, the Court will look to statements by legislators for guidance as to the purpose of the legislature, because the benefit of sound decision-making in this circumstance is thought sufficient to risk the possibility of misreading Congress\' purpose. It is entirely a different matter when we are asked to void a statute that is, under well-settled criteria, constitutional on its face on the basis of what fewer than a handful of Congressmen said about it. What motivates one legislator to make a speech about a statute is not necessarily what motivates scores of others to enact it, and the stakes are sufficiently high for us to eschew guesswork.

Appellants concede the force of the principles enunciated above and seek to remove this case from their grasp by an examination of the "legislative origin, context and purpose" of Section 401(2). They allege that the provision was inserted in the District's revenue bill in 1968 "within five days after the Bannockburn Plan was approved by the Montgomery County and District of Columbia School Boards and publically announced." They further allege that Section 401(2) appears in the context of Section 401(1), an "anti-bussing" provision that D.C.Revenue Act.¹³ Finally, appellants allege that the report which accompanied Section 401(2) to the floor of the House makes it plain that the Section is aimed at eliminating the Bannockburn Plan.¹⁴

The above circumstances, claim appellants, are sufficient to show that the "purpose" of Section 401(2) was to impede racial integration in schools. They further claim that no probing of the "motives" of the Congress is necessary to reach the conclusion they would have us draw from their allegations and that this court may thus look at the relatively objective criteria they have presented to determine whether the purpose of Congress in enacting Section 401(2) was legitimate.

Distinctions between legislative purposes and motives have been recognized in a variety of contexts.¹⁵ The distinction, however, is between what the legislature has actually done and why it has done so, for,

in a legal sense, the object or purpose of legislation is to be determined by its natural and reasonable effect, whatever may have been the motives upon which legislatures acted.¹⁶

Thus, if what the legislature has done is constitutional, the reasons why it has done so are irrelevant.¹⁷

Acceptance of appellants' arguments concerning the "purpose" of Section 401(2) would require us to resort to circumstantial evidence which tended to show that the Section was not simply a prohibition of extra-territorial expenditures of funds but was a prohibition of integration of the District's black school children with those of the white suburbs. In other words, we are asked to use such evidence as the basis for a conclusion (1) that Congress did not really care about the expenditure of funds for extra-territorial education but was concerned about integration and (2) that the statute is therefore unconstitutional.

Appellants' suggested analysis does not change the fact that they are asking us to examine congressional motivations, for we are still asked to hold a statute unconstitutional because of the reason it was enacted. Whether these reasons are denominated "motives" or "purposes," they cannot provide us with a basis for invalidating an act of Congress valid on its face and in effect. A claim that they can is insubstantial.¹⁸

III. The Effect of Section 401(2)

We turn, then, to an examination of the Section's effect in an effort to determine whether there is a substantial question that that effect is to deprive appellants of a constitutional right....