Wednesday Writs: Frothingham v. Mellon Sets Legal Precedent For Karens

This statue of Jeannette Rankin was given to the National Statuary Hall Collection by Montana in 1985. Rankin was born in 1880 and died in 1973. She was the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. She was the sponsor of the Maternity Bill of 1921.

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Karens are not a new thing, despite the recent co-opting of a perfectly good name as a stand-in for a certain breed of entitled, demanding, busybody. They’ve been with us for years, asking to speak with the manager, calling the police to report a lack of Western Bacon Cheeseburgers at the Burger King drive through, or suing the government over tax money being used for the health and welfare of mothers and babies.

At issue in our case of the week, Frothingham v. Mellon, was the Maternity Act of 1921, which created a program to provide money to states for the benefit of mothers and children, with the intent of improving health and reducing infant mortality rates. The case was decided in combination with Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Mellon. Mellon, of course, was Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon of the Pittsburgh Mellon family, serving under President Warren G. Harding.

The crux of the cases is not unlike that which is often heard about taxes which benefit public schools: I don’t have kids, so why should I subsidize the education of the children of others? The named plaintiff was a Ms. Frothingham; her first name is lost to history so I will assume it is in fact Karen. But she was not alone in her grievance, as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts likewise filed suit.

Massachusetts complained that the Act was an unconstitutional usurpation of state power, but the Court, in an opinion written by Justice George Sutherland, pointed out the Act merely extended an offer, which states were free to accept or reject. But the Court also contemplated whether it had jurisdiction to hear Massachusett’s complaint at all. The Court wrote that it was purely a political question, since the state was not required to do anything under the statute, and such questions were out of the Court’s purview (a doctrine that fell apart in 1961’s Baker v Carr.)

The Court moves on to Ms. Frothingham’s complaint, summed up as an allegation of taking of property without due process. The Court conceded that it had, in the past, permitted suits by private citizens challenging the use of taxes levied by municipalities, reasoning that the effects of such upon the citizen are immediate and direct. Not so in the relationship between the federal government and its citizens, wrote the Court:

“But the relation of a taxpayer of the United States to the Federal Government is very different. His interest in the moneys of the Treasury — partly realized from taxation and partly from other sources — is shared with millions of others; is comparatively minute and indeterminable, and the effect upon future taxation, of any payment out of the funds, so remote, fluctuating and uncertain, that no basis is afforded for an appeal to the preventive powers of a court of equity.”

Taxation by the federal government affects the masses, the Court reasons, and “is not a matter of individual concern.” Furthermore, granting one taxpayer standing to sue over the use of tax dollars for causes he or she does not support can lead to literally millions of such suits. If Ms. Frothingham sues, we’ll all sue; it’ll be anarchy!

If one taxpayer may champion and litigate such a cause, then every other taxpayer may do the same, not only in respect of the statute here under review, but also in respect of every other appropriation act and statute whose administration requires the outlay of public money and whose validity may be questioned. The bare suggestion of such a result, with its attendant inconveniences, goes far to sustain the conclusion which we have reached, that a suit of this character cannot be maintained.

Justice Sutherland went on to write that it was not the Court’s place, per se, to declare a statute enacted by Congress unconstitutional. Rather, it could do so only when a litigant could show a particularized injury, at which point the Court could only enjoin the acts of federal officials to prevent the carrying out of the statute at issue in Frothingham v. Mellon.

The party who invokes the power must be able to show not only that the statute is invalid, but that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury as the result of its enforcement, and not merely that he suffers in some indefinite way in common with people generally.

The Frothingham and Massachusetts v. Mellon cases are known as the cases in which the Supreme Court definitively decided that there will be no general taxpayer standing to sue over federal statutes. The ruling was somewhat tempered by the Warren Court in 1968 in Flast v Cohen. In Flast, the plaintiff took issue with the use of federal money to purchase secular textbooks. In this case, the Court agreed that Flast had a direct injury: the violation of Flast’s religious liberty by financially supporting or favoring one religion over another.

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The gunman in last week’s FedEx shooting was a known threat, but authorities were unable to use Indiana’s “red flag law” to prevent his purchase of the guns he used to kill 8 people. The killer had a weapon seized a year ago for threatening “suicide by cop”, but the 14 days the prosecution is given to prove the man was a danger was insufficient to investigate, according to the Marion County prosecutor.

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Cal-Poly freshman Kristen Smart disappeared 25 years ago. Police last week announced the arrest of a suspect in her murder, and his identity surprised no one.

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Conservative group Americans for Prosperity threw their support and money behind Justice Amy Coney Barrett last fall. The group has a case pending before the Court, and some are renewing a call for Barrett’s recusal.

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In Colorado, Arapahoe County District Court Judge Natalie T. Chase resigned after being censored by that state’s Supreme Court. Repeated use of racial slurs and other insensitive racial comments on multiple occasions was enough to get the judge run off.

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In St. Paul, because there isn’t enough going on in that part of the country as of late, U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson granted an injunction to stop city council’s new “tenant protection” ordinance:

The ordinance, which was adopted unanimously by the St. Paul City Council in July, implemented new tenant screening guidelines that limit how landlords use an individual’s prior evictions, credit scores or criminal history records to vet potential renters.

“While we are disappointed that this means the status quo will persist as this process plays out, the city will continue our efforts to respond to the many impacts of this enduring housing crisis in our community,” St. Paul City Attorney Lyndsey Olson said in a statement Monday.

The city and tenant rights advocates championed the policy as a means of helping prospective renters find housing, even if they have had trouble in the past. Landlords argued the measure could put other tenants in harm’s way and increase their risk of having to deal with property damage, unpaid rent and court fees.

Agreeing with attorneys for the landlords, Magnuson wrote that the ordinance violates the Fifth Amendment, which prevents the government from taking property without fair compensation. The policy “comes at a heavy cost” to landlords by limiting screening criteria and requiring landlords to renew leases in perpetuity unless they can prove a tenant has violated his or her rental agreement, the judge wrote.

Attorneys for the landlords also said that the policy violated their Fourteenth Amendment right to exclude others from their property without due process. Magnuson wrote there is no “compelling governmental interest” to deny them this right since the ordinance does not clearly state how it will accomplish St. Paul’s housing goals.

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The Supreme Court declined to hear three different cases involving individuals seeking to have their gun ownership rights restored after those individuals had been convicted of non-violent crimes.