Court backs businesses challenging California labor law
By Jessica Gresko
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with California agriculture businesses that objected to a state regulation giving unions access to farm property in order to organize workers.
As a result of the ruling, the businesses' attorney said, California will have to modify or abandon the regulation put in place in 1975 after the efforts of labor leader Cesar Chavez.
The justices ruled 6-3 along ideological lines for the agriculture businesses. It's another potential setback for unions as a result of a high court decision.
"The access regulation amounts to simple appropriation of private property," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the conservative members of the court. Roberts said the regulation "grants labor organizations a right to invade the growers' property."
At issue was a California regulation that allows unions access to farms and other agriculture businesses for up to three hours per day, 120 days per year, in order to organize workers. Businesses are supposed to be notified before organizers arrive, and organizers are supposed to come during nonwork times such as lunch and before and after work.
Two agriculture businesses had challenged the regulation saying it had the effect of taking their property without compensation in violation of the Constitution. The businesses also said the regulation was outdated and unnecessary given that unions can now reach workers many ways, including via smartphone and radio.
Writing for the majority, Roberts rejected the suggestion that the ruling would "endanger a host of state and federal government activities involving entry onto private property."
But writing for the three-justice liberal minority, Justice Stephen Breyer said "the majority's conclusion threatens to make many ordinary forms of regulation unusually complex or impractical."
Breyer wrote that he would have concluded that California's regulation did not take anything but instead "regulates the employers' right to exclude others."
Breyer noted the "large numbers of ordinary regulations" that permit the temporary entry onto a property owner's land. That includes entry for inspections ranging from food product safety like meat and dairy facility inspections to the inspections of nursing homes, preschools and foster care facilities.
"I suspect that the majority has substituted a new, complex legal scheme for a comparatively simpler old one," he wrote.
The ruling is the latest hit to unions by the court under Roberts. In 2018, the court's conservative majority overturned a 41-year-old pro-union decision that had allowed states to require that public employees pay some fees to unions that represent them, even if the workers choose not to join.
Still, it's unclear how much will change as a result of the court's ruling.
The access regulation in particular is unique to California. And the state had said that union organizers use the regulation "sparingly" — only five times in the 2019-2020 budget year and 24 times in 2018-2019. Still, the United Farmworkers of America told the justices that the regulation is more necessary now than ever. The union said farmworkers are increasingly indigenous workers from Mexico and the only effective way to communicate with them is in person at their job sites.
In court documents filed before President Joe Biden took office, the Trump administration had urged the justices to side with the businesses. The Biden administration later changed the government's position.
The case the justices ruled in involved Fowler Packing Company in Fresno, which ships grapes and citrus, and Cedar Point Nursery in Dorris, which grows strawberry plants for commercial growers.
Union organizers used California's regulation to go on to Cedar Point's property in 2015. That same year, union organizers complained Fowler Packing Company interfered with their ability to access company property for three days. That complaint was later withdrawn.
In a statement, Joshua Thompson of the Pacific Legal Foundation, who argued the case for the businesses at the high court, called the ruling a "huge victory for property rights."
"Today's decision affirms that one of the most fundamental aspects of property is the right to decide who can and can't access your property," he said.
The case is Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, 20-107.
Justices rule mortgage overseer structure unconstitutional
By Jessica Gresko
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave the president greater power to fire the head of the agency that oversees mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, ruling that the agency's structure violates separation of powers principles in the Constitution.
Writing for a majority of the court, Justice Samuel Alito said that as the justices explained in a case last year, "the Constitution prohibits even 'modest restrictions' on the President's power to remove the head of an agency with a single top officer."
The ruling paves the way for President Joe Biden to remove Mark Calabria, who was nominated to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters after the Supreme Court decision that the president would nominate a new head of the FHFA, but she did not give a timeline.
The justices sent the case involving FHFA, which was created during the 2008 financial crisis, back to a lower court for additional proceedings.
Shareholders of the two companies had argued that the FHFA's structure was unconstitutional and that the justices should set aside a 2012 agreement under which the companies have paid the government billions. That money is compensation for the taxpayer bailout that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac received following the 2008 financial crisis. The 2012 agreement has since been replaced by a new one.
The justices declined to do what shareholders asked and set aside the entire 2012 agreement.
The "FHFA's structure violates the separation of powers, and we remand for further proceedings to determine what remedy, if any, the shareholders are entitled to receive on their constitutional claim," Alito wrote.
The justices noted that the agreement the shareholders complained about was entered into by an acting director of the agency, who was removable by the president for any reason. The justices said that conclusion "defeats the shareholders' argument for setting aside" the agreement in its entirety.
The case is in many ways similar to one the justices decided last year involving the FHFA's companion agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is the government's consumer watchdog agency. It was created by Congress in response to the same financial crisis.
In the case involving the bureau, the court struck down restrictions Congress imposed that said the president could only fire the bureau's director for "inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office."
Just as the bureau's leader was, the director of the FHFA is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate to a five-year term. In the FHFA's case, the director was only removable by the president "for cause."
In a statement issued after the ruling Calabria, the current FHFA director, called the job the honor of a lifetime and said he respected the decision and the authority of the president. He added that while the FHFA acted "quickly and effectively to provide relief to homeowners and renters impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic" problems remained and he wished his successor "all the best in fixing the remaining flaws of the housing finance system in order to preserve homeownership opportunities for all Americans."
Shares of Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.) fell 33.6% to $1.48. Shares of Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) dropped 32.1% to $1.52.
The two consolidated cases the court ruled in are Collins v. Yellen, 19-422, and Yellen v. Collins, 19-563.
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Associated Press writer Josh Boak and business editor Paul Harloff contributed to this report.
Court rules for student in 'cursing cheerleader' case
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — In the case of the cursing cheerleader, the Supreme Court notched a victory for the free speech rights of students Wednesday, siding with a high school student whose vulgar social media post got her kicked off the junior varsity squad.
The court voted 8-1 in favor of Brandi Levy, who was a 14-year-old freshman when she expressed her disappointment over not making the varsity cheerleading team with a string of curse words and a raised middle finger on Snapchat.
Levy, of Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, was not at school when she made her post, but she was suspended from cheerleading activities for a year anyway. In an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, the high court ruled that the suspension violated Levy's First Amendment freedom of speech rights. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, noting he would have upheld the suspension.
The justices did not foreclose schools from disciplining students for what they say off campus, though they did not spell out when
schools could act. An earlier federal appeals court ruling in this case would have barred public schools from punishing off-campus speech.
Despite ruling in Levy's favor, Breyer wrote that "we do not believe the special characteristics that give schools additional license to regulate student speech always disappear when a school regulates speech that takes place off campus. The school's regulatory interests remain significant in some off-campus circumstances."
The case drew extra interest at a time of remote learning — because of the coronavirus pandemic — and a rising awareness of the harmful effects of online bullying.
The decision was a strong endorsement of students' right to speak freely, which the court first expressed more than a half century ago in defending armbands worn by high school students in protest of the Vietnam War, said Abner Greene, a constitutional law professor at the Fordham University School of Law in Manhattan.
"Students can engage in all kinds of critical or dissenting commentary, whether about the Vietnam War or the student cheerleading team, without losing their free speech rights. And it doesn't matter where they say it," Greene said.
The case arose from Levy's posts, one of which pictured her and a friend with raised middle fingers and included the repeated use of a vulgarity to complain that she had been left off the varsity cheerleading squad.
"F——— school f——— softball f——— cheer f——— everything," she wrote near the end of her freshman year, from a local convenience store, on a Saturday. Now 18, Levy recently finished her first year of college.
Levy's parents filed a federal lawsuit after the cheerleading coach learned of the posts and suspended her from the junior varsity team for a year. Lower courts ruled in Levy's favor, and she was reinstated.
The school district appealed to the Supreme Court after the broad appellate ruling that said off-campus student speech was beyond schools' authority to punish.
The dispute is the latest in a line of a cases that began with Tinker v. Des Moines, the Vietnam-era case of a high school in Des Moines, Iowa, that suspended armband-wearing students. In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court sided with the students, declaring they don't "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."
The court also held then that schools retained the authority to restrict speech that would disrupt the school environment.
Wednesday's ruling basically adopted the reasoning of Judge Thomas Ambro of the 3rd U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Philadelphia. Ambro agreed with the other two judges who decided Levy's case that the suspension was unwarranted, but only because what she did was not disruptive either to the cheerleading team or school.
Breyer wrote that Levy's case seemed less serious than its Vietnam-era predecessor.
"It might be tempting to dismiss B. L.'s words as unworthy of the robust First Amendment protections discussed herein. But sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary," he wrote, using Levy's initials because that was how she was identified in the original lawsuit. Levy has granted numerous interviews allowing her name to be used.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a concurring opinion that school officials in Mahanoy got "carried away" in seeking to discipline Levy. "If today's decision teaches any lesson, it must be that the regulation of many types of off-premises student speech raises serious First Amendment concerns, and school officials should proceed cautiously before venturing into this territory," Alito wrote.
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Associated Press writer Jessica Gresko contributed to this report.
Court limits when police can enter home without warrant
By Jessica Gresko
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Adding to the country's ongoing discussion of the extent of police powers, the Supreme Court on Wednesday put limits on when police officers pursuing a fleeing suspect can enter a home without a warrant.
The high court ruled that when officers are pursuing someone suspected of a misdemeanor, a less serious crime, they cannot always enter a home without a warrant if a suspect enters.
The court had previously given police greater freedom to enter homes in cases involving more serious crimes. In a 1976 case, the justices said that police in "hot pursuit" of a suspect believed to have committed a felony can enter a home without a warrant.
The case the justices decided Wednesday is important both to law enforcement and to groups concerned about privacy. But it doesn't give police a bright line for when they can and cannot enter a home to pursue someone suspected of committing a misdemeanor.
"The flight of a suspected misdemeanant does not always justify a warrantless entry into a home. An officer must consider all the
circumstances in a pursuit case to determine whether there is a law enforcement emergency. On many occasions, the officer will have good reason to enter — to prevent imminent harms of violence, destruction of evidence, or escape from the home. But when the officer has time to get a warrant, he must do so — even though the misdemeanant fled," Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a majority opinion for seven members of the court that included both liberals and conservatives.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito said that, in their view, a suspect's choice to flee alone should give police the ability to pursue that person into a home. They suggested the majority's opinion leaves too much for officers in the field to consider in the midst of a chase, providing "no guidance at all."
"The Constitution does not demand this absurd and dangerous result," Roberts wrote.
Elizabeth Wydra, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, said it remains to be seen how the decision will play out in the real world. The decision does not bar police from homes when they are chasing a misdemeanor suspect, but it does not give them free reign to enter either.
"As our country continues to grapple with the limits and problems associated with law enforcement's powers, the Court's refusal to allow police unfettered entry into the home is welcome," she wrote in a statement.
Larry H. James, general counsel for the National Fraternal Order of Police, which filed a brief in the case, said he does not see much changing for police as a result of the ruling. The decision tells police to do what they always do, he said, which is "use your common sense, use your training." He said the guidance for police from the ruling is: "When the situation warrants immediate action, take it.
When it doesn't, get a warrant."
The case before the justices involved California resident Arthur Lange. One evening in 2016, an officer saw Lange driving his station wagon in Sonoma County, playing music loudly and honking his horn several times. The officer believed those were noise violations punishable by small fines and followed Lange. The officer later turned on his car's lights to get Lange to stop. But Lange continued driving for about four seconds, turned into his driveway and entered his garage without stopping.
The officer got out of his car and, as Lange's garage door was closing, stuck his foot under the door so it would re-open. Lange was ultimately arrested after the officer smelled alcohol on his breath, and he was charged with driving under the influence as well as an excessive noise offense.
Lange argued that the officer's entry into the garage without a warrant violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free of "unreasonable searches and seizures." The justices sent his case back to lower courts to be reevaluated in light of their decision.
The case is Lange v. California, 20-18.
