SUPREME COURT ROUNDUP

Justices Revisit Anonymity In Door-To-Door Canvassing

WASHINGTON -- Six years after ruling that the Constitution protects the
right to distribute anonymous campaign literature, the Supreme Court today
agreed to decide whether that right extends to anonymous door-to-door
advocacy for a political or religious cause.

The new case is an appeal by the Jehovah's Witnesses, whose victories in a
series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1930's and 1940's helped to define
the modern contours of the First Amendment. The group is challenging a
Stratton, Ohio, ordinance that requires anyone seeking to engage in
door-to-door advocacy -- which the Witnesses regard as an essential part of
their public ministry -- to obtain and display a permit that includes the
advocate's name.

In upholding the ordinance earlier this year, the federal appeals court in
Cincinnati ruled that a 1995 Supreme Court decision that protected
anonymous political leafleting was not applicable to door-to-door advocates
or canvassers because "the very act of going door-to-door requires the
canvassers to reveal a portion of their identities."

Although Jehovah's Witnesses try to get people to discuss the Bible, the
issue before the court applies beyond religion to all cause-related speech.
In fact, the justices turned down a portion of the appeal that specifically
raised the issue of which constitutional standard to apply to government
restrictions on religious speech.

The court granted review only on the anonymity issue.

In their appeal, the Witnesses quoted from the majority opinion by Justice
John Paul Stevens in the earlier anonymous leaflet case: "Anonymity is a
shield from the tyranny of the majority."

That decision, McIntyre v. Ohio, struck down a state law that made it a
crime to distribute any "political communication" that did not include the
responsible person's name and address. While also from Ohio, the new case,
Watchtower Bible and Tract Society v. Stratton, Ohio, No. 00-1737, concerns
an ordinance adopted in 1998 by a village with a population of under 300,
on Ohio's border with West Virginia. Stratton had a history of uneasiness
toward Jehovah's Witnesses, who came from their nearby congregation in
Wellsville to conduct their ministry on the village's doorsteps.

According to trial testimony, Mayor John M. Abdalla told a group of
Jehovah's Witnesses shortly before the ordinance was adopted that they were
not permitted in Stratton and that people had moved to Stratton to avoid them.

The ordinance requires anyone who wants to go to a private residence for
the "purposes of advertising, promoting, selling and/or explaining any
product, service, organization or cause" to register and obtain a permit
from the mayor's office. In its original form, later changed, the ordinance
gave residents a line to check to indicate explicitly that they did not
want to be visited by Jehovah's Witnesses.

Jehovah's Witnesses, members of a Christian denomination that dates to the
late 19th century, have brought more than two dozen Supreme Court cases
over the years, winning the right for their children not to have to salute
the American flag and for their adherents to conduct their in-person
religious mission. The court's rulings in these cases have established
broad constitutional protection for political dissenters and religious
minorities.

These were among other developments at the court today:

State Immunity

The justices agreed to review a federal appeals court's decision that
states were constitutionally immune from suit by private parties before
federal administrative agencies. The case raises a federalism issue from
which the Bush administration tried to deflect the court's attention.

Building on the Supreme Court's recent rulings that have greatly expanded
the scope of state constitutional immunity, the United States Court of
Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ruled earlier this year
that the Federal Maritime Commission could not adjudicate a cruise line's
dispute with the South Carolina State Ports Authority, a state agency that
operates the Port of Charleston.

The Fourth Circuit's opinion effectively nullified the maritime
commission's authority over state ports. The appeals court based its
decision loosely on the 11th Amendment, which the Supreme Court has
interpreted to protect states from being sued in federal court. In a 1999
Supreme Court case, Alden v. Maine, the justices ruled that the broader
principle of sovereign immunity also shielded states from suit in their own
courts.

At issue in the new case, Federal Maritime Commission v. South Carolina
State Ports Authority, No. 01-46, is the validity of the Fourth Circuit's
conclusion that state immunity extends beyond any court, shielding states
from being called before federal administrative agencies. "A state's
sovereign immunity is not so fleeting as to depend upon the forum in which
the state is sued," the appeals court said. The Fourth Circuit was the
first federal appeals court to adopt this theory, although cases raising
the same question are now pending in courts nationwide.

While authorizing the maritime commission to file its own appeal to the
Supreme Court, the Bush administration did not support that appeal.

In a brief filed last month, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson told the
court that while the Fourth Circuit's decision was "incorrect" and an undue
departure from the text of the 11th Amendment, the court should not review
the case because the Fourth Circuit had stopped short of declaring
unambiguously that the Shipping Act of 1984 was unconstitutional. It is
this law that gives the maritime commission authority to adjudicate private
complaints against state-operated ports.

The complaint against the Charleston port was brought by South Carolina
Maritime Services Inc. after the port authority refused it permission to
berth its ships there. The company conducts gambling cruises in
international waters.

Arrest Warrant

Four justices agreed that an arrest warrant that authorized the police in
Toledo, Ohio, to break into the home of a woman suspected of selling drugs
was unconstitutional because it had been issued on the basis of a complaint
that lacked any detail about how the police knew of any crime.

Although it takes the votes of only four justices to grant a case, the
court did not grant the appeal brought by the woman, Desarie Overton, of a
decision by the Ohio Court of Appeals. Instead, the four justices, Stephen
G. Breyer, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor and David H. Souter, said
the state court's decision upholding the arrest warrant was so clearly
wrong that the Supreme Court should simply overturn it summarily rather
than setting the case for a full hearing.

To overturn the decision would have taken five votes, however, and a fifth
vote was evidently not forthcoming. So the four justices had to content
themselves with a statement by Justice Breyer calling attention to the
lower court's error. The case was Overton v. Ohio, No. 00-9769.