Schneider v. Colegio de Abogados de Puerto Rico, Civ. No. 82-1459

• Decision Date: 30 June 1983
• Docket Number: 82-1514 and 82-1532.,Civ. No. 82-1459,82-1513
• Parties: Robert E. SCHNEIDER, Jr. et als., Plaintiffs, v. COLEGIO DE ABOGADOS DE PUERTO RICO et als., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Puerto Rico

572 F. Supp. 957

Robert E. SCHNEIDER, Jr. et als., Plaintiffs, v. COLEGIO DE ABOGADOS DE PUERTO RICO et als., Defendants.

Civ. Nos. 82-1459, 82-1513, 82-1514 and 82-1532.

United States District Court, D. Puerto Rico.

June 24, 1983.

As Amended June 30, 1983.

Robert Schneider, Jr., Santurce, P.R., pro se, and for Héctor Ramos Diaz.

Héctor L. Márquez, Hato Rey, P.R., for Jorge F. Romany, Jorge Souss Schidrewa and Oreste Ramos Díaz.

Miriam Naveira de Rodón, Santurce, P.R., José Julián Alvarez, University of Puerto Rico Law School, Río Piedras, P.R., Jay A. García Gregory, San Juan, P.R., for Justices.

Harry Anduze Montano, Santurce, P.R., for Colegio de Abogados and Fundación.

Eduardo Castillo Blanco, Pedro A. Del Valle Ferrer, Carmen S. Curet Salion, Federal Litigation Div., Dept. of Justice, San Juan, P.R., for Secretaries of Justice and Treasury.

OPINION AND ORDER

TORRUELLO, Chief Judge.

Defendant Colegio de Abogados de Puerto Rico (Colegio) has requested that we stay the judgment, 565 F.Supp. 963,¹ entered in this case on June 16, 1983. In this judgment we declared that certain sections of Laws No. 43 of May 14, 1932 (Law 43) (4 L.P.R.A. 771, et seq.), No. 99 of June 27, 1956 (Law 99) (4 L.P.R.A. 1001 et seq.), and No. 115 of May 16, 1941 (Law 115) (4 L.P. R.A. 785), are unconstitutional as interpreted, enforced and applied, and are violative of Plaintiffs' rights under the First and Fifth or Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States and that said violations stated a cause of action within the purview of 42 U.S.C. 1983. The Court then enjoined enforcement of certain sections of said statutes by the Defendants,² and granted nominal damages to three of the Plaintiffs.

The Colegio's request raises four points in support of its position. These may be summarized as follows: (1) that the Colegio is likely to succeed on the merits of the appeal because the Court committed various errors of law; (2) that the "status quo should be preserved during the pendency of the appeal" to allow the Colegio to continue its "highly important public functions" and to prevent a jeopardizing of "the orderly administration of justice at the peril of litigants who are not even remotely connected to these actions"; (3) that the balance of the "overwhelming and immediate irreparable injury ... to the Colegio ... together with other public institutions," as opposed to the harm caused to Plaintiffs, favors the Colegio in equity; and (4) that the "public interest would not be harmed" by the stay because, in fact, there is a "compelling state interest which the Colegio protects by legislative and judicial mandate."

Defendant Colegio thus tailors its request for a stay pursuant to the standards generally accepted for the consideration of such a motion namely, (1) that the applicant make a strong showing that he is likely to succeed on the merits of the appeal, (2) that the applicant establish that unless a stay is granted he will suffer irreparable injury, (3) that no substantial harm will come to other interested parties, and (4) that a stay will not harm the public interest. See Wright and Miller, 11 Federal Practice and Procedure: Civil Sec. 2904 (text and cases at note 37). We shall examine Defendant Colegio's contentions applying this litmus test.

We commence this endeavor by taking notice of what defendant Colegio fails to challenge in any fashion. Interestingly enough, although the Colegio claims several reversible errors in three areas of the law, there is "deafening silence" regarding the overwhelming litany of ideological and/or political activities which the Court found to have been carried out, by the Colegio. And in retrospect, the Colegio has probably acted wisely. At this late date it can hardly deny its own documents and admissions, or for that matter, what is practically the subject-matter of judicial notice in Puerto Rico by reason of its notoriety. It is difficult to consider a motion to stay in this case without weighing the pervasiveness of the ideological and/or political activities in which the Colegio has engaged, and continues to engage. We would not, of course, question this viewpoint were it not for the fact that, in so acting, the Colegio expects to use the coercive powers and facilities of the State to force citizens who do not agree with such ideological and/or political activities to support the same.

We thus pass to consider the Colegio's claimed errors of law, the first of which is that the Court's opinion "disregards the First Amendment rights of the Colegio and the thousands of non-objecting lawyers who are members." As to the Colegio, this allegation is totally unsupported as nothing in our opinion or in the judgment issued in any way prevents the Colegio from continuing its ideological and political activities. The only limit placed is upon the use, for said purposes, of the funds of those members forced by law to belong to the Colegio or those funds raised by the use of state action. The funds raised by the Colegio through the voluntary payment of membership dues and the voluntary purchase of notarial and forensic stamps from the Colegio, may be used by the Colegio for its ideological and political activities. Lawyers may, of course, exercise their First Amendment rights in support of the Colegio's ideological and political activities by voluntarily paying dues to the Colegio and by voluntarily purchasing and using forensic and notarial stamps from the Colegio. Although we do not believe that our opinion or judgment was contrary to the above, the same shall be amended to reflect this clarification.

Two other errors of law claimed by the Colegio are interrelated: that our holding "fails to balance the competing interests (of the Plaintiffs and the Colegio), and that it misreads and misapplies the holding of Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Educ., 431 U.S. 209 97 S.Ct. 1782, 52 L.Ed.2d 261 (1977)." We have little to add on these issues that has not already been adequately covered in our Memorandum Opinion. However, the Colegio makes much ado about Plaintiffs' First Amendment rights not being absolute, a statement which is by now a constitutional truism.³ Of course, the Colegio fails to apply this same maxim to its own First Amendment allegations. In balancing the Colegio's rights with those of Plaintiffs, the Colegio has failed to show why it needs to force Plaintiffs to pay dues and buy forensic and notarial stamps in order to carry out its ideological and political activities. The Colegio has failed to show what compelling state interest is satisfied by the compulsory subsidization of its ideological activities. We question, of course, who it is that "misreads and misapplies" Abood.

The Colegio next contends, in the same breath, that the injunction is "both not specific in terms and overbroad." The overbreadth contention refers to the alleged violation of the rights of the consenting members who, it is claimed by Colegio, are prevented by the injunction from continuing their support of Colegio's ideological and political activities. We have previously covered this subject matter and need not here repeat our action in clarification of this alleged issue. The Colegio, in support of its contention of lack of specificity as to what constitutes "ideological and/or political activism," cites from the Court's opinion, out of context, and claims that it will be unable to comply with the injunction because it does not know what constitutes "ideological and/or political activism". The Colegio claims that these concepts are "not defined by the Court," are "too vague to provide defendants in this case proper notice of the conduct being prohibited", and thus contravene Rule 65(d).

It is clear that a government regulation can neither forbid nor require "the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application..." Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391, 46 S.Ct. 126, 127, 70 L.Ed. 322 (1926). Rule 65(d) embodies this concept. Schmidt v. Lessard, 414 U.S. 473, 476, 94 S.Ct. 713, 715, 38 L.Ed.2d 661 (1974). See also International Longshoremen's Assoc., Local 1291 v. Philadelphia Marine Trade Assoc., 389 U.S. 64, 76, 88 S.Ct. 201, 208, 19 L.Ed.2d 236 (1967). Acceptance of this concept, however, is a far reach from Colegio's position in the present matter. The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit decided a case which is closely in point, United States v. Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, 678 F.2d 1 (CA 1, 1982). In that case an order directed certain strikers to refrain from "picketing" within certain distance from a gate. A violation of the order was charged and the union respondents raised the vagueness argument in defense. The Court stated:

"... Neither due process nor Rule 65(d) require that an order list the components of a term whose boundaries are understood by common practice. This is particularly unnecessary in this case, when we consider the persons to whom the order is directed. Cf. Village of Hoffman Estate v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U.S. 489, 495 at n. 7, 102 S.Ct. 1186, 1191 at n. 7, 71 L.Ed.2d 362 (1982). Disclaimer by appellant of knowledge as to the meaning of the term `picket' strikes more of legalistic afterthought than of vagueness and ambiguity." (678 F.2d at p. 3)

The use of the terms "ideological" and "political" are neither nor recent invention (see footnote 5a of our Memorandum Opinion) nor unknown in the legal field. See Abood v. Detroit Board of Ed., supra; Arrow v. Dow, 636 F.2d 287 (CA 10, 1980) on remand 544 F.Supp. 458 (D.N.M., 1982); Galda v. Bloustein, 686 F.2d 159 (CA 3, 1982). We must assume that at this stage of the game the Colegio is at least "vaguely" familiar with these cases. Particularly when we consider the persons to whom the order is directed, disclaimer by the Colegio regarding the meaning of the term ...