Free Exercise cases and jurisprudence and Martin v City of Struthers and City of Jeanneette and distribution of religious literature and Jehovah's Witnesses

These two cases complete the "quartad" of same-day Jehovah's Witnesses cases handed down by the US Supreme Court. To summarize these May 3, 1943 cases in a few sentences: (1) In the one paragraph Opelika II case (319 US 103), the Court vacated Jones v. Opelika from 1942 on the basis of the principles articulated in (2) Murdock. In Murdock (319 US 105), the Court struck down a City of Jeannette PA ordinance requiring a licensing fee in order to distribute literature for sale from door to door. In (3) Martin (319 US 141), the Court invalidated a city ordinance from Struthers, OH forbidding knocking on doors/ringing bells to distribute "handbills, circulars or other advertisements." Finally in (4) Douglas, the Court upheld the jurisdiction of the District Court to proceed with criminal prosecutions of 21 Jehovah's Witnesses arrested in Jeannette, PA during a Witness "Watch Tower Campaign" in 1939 in Jeannette despite the fact that another case (Murdock) was already in progress and could invalidate all the arrests in Douglas.

Thus we see that Murdock and Douglas are related in that both deal with arrests of Jehovah's Witnesses (8 in Murdock and 21 in Douglas) as a result of their campaign in Jeannette, PA in 1939 and 1940. This helps explain why Justice Jackson's helpful recitation of the facts in his concurring and dissenting opinion (319 US 166-182), which is appended after the Douglas case, relates both to Murdock (where he dissents) and to Douglas (where he concurs).

Factsand Procedure in a Nutshell

The Struthers, OH ordinance forbade individuals from disturbing people at their homes through knocking/ringing at doors for distribution of handbills or advertisements. Struthers was a "company town," and many of the people worked swing and graveyard shifts in steel mills. By launching a door to door campaign in that town, the Witnesses incurred enmity from people who were trying to get some sleep. The question before the Court was, among other constitutional rights, whether this ordinance violated the Witnesses free exercise of religion.

The Jeannette case was more of an exploration of procedural than substantive law. In 1939-1940, the Witnesses conducted a massive literature distribution/sales campaign in this PA town of 16,000. The defendants here were arrested at a different time than the Murdock defendants, and so their cases proceeded on a different timetable, but their violation was the same as in Murdock. The defendants were convicted in state court. The legal question at issue here was whether the federal courts had authority to say that the cases should not have gone forward in state courts, and criminal prosecutions and convictions entered, in view of the fact that Murdock would ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court. If convictions were reversed in Murdock, they definitely would be reversed in Douglas.

Legal Issues and Decision

Thus, the legal issues in Douglas were two: (1) did the District Court have jurisdiction over the cases when no federal statute was seemingly implicated and the amount in controversy was below the amount that would trigger diversity jurisdiction; (2) if the District Court had jurisdiction, could it through some principle of law or equity reverse the verdicts in the trials pending the settlement of the other matter (Murdock)? The Supreme Court held that jurisdiction was proper because the case was actually brought properly under another federal statute (the Civil Rights Act of 1871), and that no principle of equity would allow for the federal intervention in these state court criminal proceedings.

The big legal issue, of course, emerged from the Martin case: did the ordinance violate the Witnesses First Amendment right to free expression of religion? Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Hugo Black recognized that the issue was "weighing the conflicting interests of the appellant in the civil rights she claims (religion, press, speech) ...against the interest of the community which by this ordinance offers to protect the interests of all of its citizens, whether particular citizens want that protection or not." The City claimed that the ordinance protected its citizens not only from nuisance when they were trying to sleep but also from the possiblity of "staking out" their homes by burglars.

In language similar to that of Justice Douglas in Murdock, Justice Black emphasized the "widespread use" of this method of communication (door to door solicitation) not only by religious groups but by political candidates and labor unioins as well. Door to door distribution of circulars "is essential to the poorly financed causes of little people." This kind of activity is "so clearly vital to the preservation of a free socity that, putting aside reasonable police and health regulations of time and manner of distribution, it must be fully preserved." The complete elmination of this possibility through the Jeannette ordinance can "serve no purpose but that forbidden by the Constitution." Thus, in striking down the law, the Court also held that reasonable time, place and manner restrictions might be imposed by the City. In addition, it left open the possiblity that citizens who did not want to be disturbed could indicate that to prospective solicitors/literature distributors.

Dissenters

Though three of the four dissenters (Reed, Frankfurter and Jackson) wrote opinions in one or the other case, the burden of the dissent was twofold: that deference ought to be accorded to the rational law-making processs of deliberative bodies and that the regulation was narrowly enough drawn to avoid constitutional problems. With respect to the later point, Justice Jackson argued that the rights of citizens to be left in peace in their homes was a legitimate enough interest to be protected by a community through a narrowly articulated ordinance. The ordinance only prohibited actual bell ringing/knocking on doors. It did not prohibit distribution of literature or free expression of religion. He saw the majority attempt to defend these practices under general terms of freedom to preach as disposing of the question by a "vague but fervent transcendentalism." If every religious sect was to act like the Witnesses in this case, Justice Jackson argued, civic chaos would ensue. Therefore, he, along with the other dissenters, would hold that the 'do not disturb' ordinance did not offend the US Constitution.