Federal Appeals Court Reinstates Maryland Gun Permit Requirement

[friendly_iconoclast]

31. I see you still haven't grasped that the people you don't like have the same rights you do.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0364_0479_ZS.html

Shelton v. Tucker

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bates_v._City_of_Little_Rock

Bates v. City of Little Rock

Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 18, 1959
Decided February 23, 1960
Full case name Bates et al. v. City of Little Rock et al.
Citations 361 U.S. 516 (more)
Prior history Certiorari to the Supreme Court of Arkansas
Subsequent history 229 Ark. 819, 319 S. W. 2d 37, reversed.
Holding
State governments cannot compel the disclosure of an organization's membership lists when it inhibits freedom of association.

U.S. Const. amend. I and XIV


Bates v. City of Little Rock, 361 U.S. 516 (1960)[1], was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbade state government to compel the disclosure of an organization’s membership lists via a tax-exemption regulatory scheme.

This is a companion case to NAACP v Alabama ex rel Patterson (1958), which also held that NAACP membership records are protected by First Amendment freedom of association, and Talley v California, which held that Talley, a civil rights activist, could not be fined for an anonymous flyer. These cases help establish the right to privacy under the First Amendment, expanded on in Rowe v Wade

http://www.oyez.org/cases/1950-1959/1957/1957_91/

NAACP v. ALABAMA

Term: 1950-1959
1957

Location: Alabama State Capitol
Facts of the Case

As part of its strategy to enjoin the NAACP from operating, Alabama required it to reveal to the State's Attorney General the names and addresses of all the NAACP's members and agents in the state.
Question: Did Alabama's requirement violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Decision: 9 votes for NAACP, 0 vote(s) against
Legal provision: Association

Yes. The unanimous Court held that a compelled disclosure of the NAACP's membership lists would have the effect of suppressing legal association among the group's members. Nothing short of an "overriding valid interest of the State," something not present in this case, was needed to justify Alabama's actions

http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/search/display.html?terms=first%20amendment&url=/anncon/html/amdt1bfrag8_user.html

...Freedom of association as a concept thus grew out of a series of cases in the 1950’s and 1960’s in which certain States were attempting to curb the activities of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In the first case, the Court unanimously set aside a contempt citation imposed after the organization refused to comply with a court order to produce a list of its members within the State. “Effective advocacy of both public and private points of view, particularly controversial ones, is undeniably enhanced by group association, as this Court has more than once recognized by remarking upon the close nexus between the freedoms of speech and assembly.”198 “[T]hese indispensable liberties, whether of speech, press, or association,”199 may be abridged by governmental action either directly or indirectly, wrote Justice Harlan, and the State had failed to demonstrate a need for the lists which would outweigh the harm to associational rights which disclosure would produce.

Applying the concept in subsequent cases, the Court again held in Bates v. City of Little Rock,200 that the disclosure of membership lists, because of the harm to be caused to “the right of association,” could only be compelled upon a showing of a subordinating interest; ruled in Shelton v. Tucker,201 that while a State had a broad interest to inquire into the fitness of its school teachers, that interest did not justify a regulation requiring all teachers to list all organizations to which they had belonged within the previous five years; again struck down an effort to compel membership lists from the NAACP;202 and overturned a state court order barring the NAACP from doing any business within the State because of alleged improprieties.203 Certain of the activities condemned in the latter case, the Court said, were protected by the First Amendment and, while other actions might not have been, the State could not so infringe on the “right of association” by ousting the organization altogether.204

A state order prohibiting the NAACP from urging persons to seek legal redress for alleged wrongs and from assisting and representing such persons in litigation opened up new avenues when the Court struck the order down as violating the First Amendment.205 “[A]bstract discussion is not the only species of communication which the Constitution protects; the First Amendment also protects vigorous advocacy, certainly of lawful ends, against governmental intrusion. . . . In the context of NAACP objectives, litigation is not a technique of resolving private differences; it is a means for achieving the lawful objectives of equality of treatment by all government, federal, state and local, for the members of the Negro community in this country. It is thus a form of political expression. . . .

“We need not, in order to find constitutional protection for the kind of cooperative, organizational activity disclosed by this record, whereby Negroes seek through lawful means to achieve legitimate political ends, subsume such activity under a narrow, literal conception of freedom of speech, petition or assembly. For there is no longer any doubt that the First and Fourteenth Amendments protect certain forms of orderly group activity.”206 This decision was[p.1059]followed in three subsequent cases in which the Court held that labor unions enjoyed First Amendment protection in assisting their members in pursuing their legal remedies to recover for injuries and other actions. In the first case, the union advised members to seek legal advice before settling injury claims and recommended particular attorneys;207 in the second the union retained attorneys on a salary basis to represent members;208 in the third, the union maintained a legal counsel department which recommended certain attorneys who would charge a limited portion of the recovery and which defrayed the cost of getting clients together with attorneys and of investigation of accidents.209 Wrote Justice Black: “[T]he First Amendment guarantees of free speech, petition, and assembly give railroad workers the rights to cooperate in helping and advising one another in asserting their rights. . . .”210