Petitioner
Frank Hague
Respondent
Committee for Industrial Organization
Petitioner's Claim
That city officials' use of ordinances requiring permits for public meetingsand public distribution of literature intentionally and unconstitutionally interfered with union activities.
Chief Lawyers for Petitioner
Charles Hershenstein, Edward J. O'Mara, James A. Hamill
Chief Lawyers for Respondent
Morris L. Earnst, Spaulding Frazer
Justices for the Court
Hugo Lafayette Black, Charles Evans Hughes, Stanley Forman Reed, Owen Josephus Roberts (writing for the Court), Harlan Fiske Stone
Justices Dissenting
Pierce Butler, James Clark McReynolds (Felix Frankfurter and William O. Douglas did not participate)
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
5 June 1939
Decision
By a vote of 5-2, the Supreme Court struck down the ordinances as violative of the rights of free speech and peaceable assembly.
Significance
Hague marked the first time that the First Amendment was used to prevent government suppression of expressive activity. It served to open public areas like parks and streets to free discussion.
In the 1930s, Jersey City, New Jersey, passed a city ordinance requiring groups advocating civil disobedience or overthrow of the government to obtain a permit from the chief of police before they could publicly meet or distributeliterature in public places. In 1937, when representatives from the Congressof Industrial Organizations (the CIO) arrived in Jersey City to urge workersto exercise their right to organize--newly granted by the National Labor Relations Act (1935)--the ordinance was used as an excuse to arrest the labor leaders and run them out of town. Various groups representing organized labor were also repeatedly denied permits to hold meetings or hand out printed information on grounds that their members were Communists.
Then, with the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), these groups, collectively called the Committee for Industrial Organization, sued Mayor Frank Hague and other Jersey City officials in federal district court. Alleging that their First Amendment rights of free speech and free assembly had beenviolated, the groups won an injunction preventing enforcement of the ordinances. After the injunction was upheld by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Hague and other Jersey City executives petitioned the U.S. Supreme Courtfor review of this finding.
Justices Uphold a Right of Access to Public Places
The seven justices who participated in deciding Hague agreed that theordinance was unconstitutional and the injunction should be upheld, althoughthey disagreed about the reasons for doing so. After Justice Butler announcedthe decision of the Court, Justices Roberts and Stone delivered the two mainconcurring opinions. Justice Roberts saw the public areas where the committee members wished to gather as public forums protected by the First Amendment.The right to assemble there and freely discuss whatever they wished was, hereasoned, among the privileges extended to citizens by the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:
Justice Stone, while agreeing that the ordinance violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association, located those guarantees elsewhere in the Fourteenth Amendment:
Justice Stone's broader view of freedom of speech and assembly as extending to all, regardless of citizenship status, would later be adopted by the Courtas a whole. Hague also had the effect of providing organized labor with constitutional protection for the first time. It served as a deterrent to public officials accustomed to exercising their power arbitrarily or in a deliberately discriminatory fashion. Perhaps most importantly, this decision marked the first time that the First Amendment was used to prevent government suppression of expressive activity rather than merely to prevent criminal prosecution for such activity after the fact. In the aftermath of the decision, public areas such as streets and parks were universally recognized as arenas forthe free exchange of ideas, regardless of the political content of those ideas.
Related Cases
Frank Hague
Respondent
Committee for Industrial Organization
Petitioner's Claim
That city officials' use of ordinances requiring permits for public meetingsand public distribution of literature intentionally and unconstitutionally interfered with union activities.
Chief Lawyers for Petitioner
Charles Hershenstein, Edward J. O'Mara, James A. Hamill
Chief Lawyers for Respondent
Morris L. Earnst, Spaulding Frazer
Justices for the Court
Hugo Lafayette Black, Charles Evans Hughes, Stanley Forman Reed, Owen Josephus Roberts (writing for the Court), Harlan Fiske Stone
Justices Dissenting
Pierce Butler, James Clark McReynolds (Felix Frankfurter and William O. Douglas did not participate)
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
5 June 1939
Decision
By a vote of 5-2, the Supreme Court struck down the ordinances as violative of the rights of free speech and peaceable assembly.
Significance
Hague marked the first time that the First Amendment was used to prevent government suppression of expressive activity. It served to open public areas like parks and streets to free discussion.
In the 1930s, Jersey City, New Jersey, passed a city ordinance requiring groups advocating civil disobedience or overthrow of the government to obtain a permit from the chief of police before they could publicly meet or distributeliterature in public places. In 1937, when representatives from the Congressof Industrial Organizations (the CIO) arrived in Jersey City to urge workersto exercise their right to organize--newly granted by the National Labor Relations Act (1935)--the ordinance was used as an excuse to arrest the labor leaders and run them out of town. Various groups representing organized labor were also repeatedly denied permits to hold meetings or hand out printed information on grounds that their members were Communists.
Then, with the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), these groups, collectively called the Committee for Industrial Organization, sued Mayor Frank Hague and other Jersey City officials in federal district court. Alleging that their First Amendment rights of free speech and free assembly had beenviolated, the groups won an injunction preventing enforcement of the ordinances. After the injunction was upheld by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Hague and other Jersey City executives petitioned the U.S. Supreme Courtfor review of this finding.
Justices Uphold a Right of Access to Public Places
The seven justices who participated in deciding Hague agreed that theordinance was unconstitutional and the injunction should be upheld, althoughthey disagreed about the reasons for doing so. After Justice Butler announcedthe decision of the Court, Justices Roberts and Stone delivered the two mainconcurring opinions. Justice Roberts saw the public areas where the committee members wished to gather as public forums protected by the First Amendment.The right to assemble there and freely discuss whatever they wished was, hereasoned, among the privileges extended to citizens by the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:
Although it has been held that the Fourteenth Amendment created no rights in citizens of the UnitedStates, but merely secured existing rights against state abridgment, it is clear that the right to peaceably assemble and discuss these topics, and to communicate respecting them, whether orally or in writing, is a privilege inherent in citizenship of the United States which the Amendment protects.
Justice Stone, while agreeing that the ordinance violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association, located those guarantees elsewhere in the Fourteenth Amendment:
It has been explicitly and repeatedly affirmed by this Court, without a dissenting voice, that freedom of speech and of assembly for any lawful purpose are rights of personal liberty secured to all persons, without regard to citizenship, by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Justice Stone's broader view of freedom of speech and assembly as extending to all, regardless of citizenship status, would later be adopted by the Courtas a whole. Hague also had the effect of providing organized labor with constitutional protection for the first time. It served as a deterrent to public officials accustomed to exercising their power arbitrarily or in a deliberately discriminatory fashion. Perhaps most importantly, this decision marked the first time that the First Amendment was used to prevent government suppression of expressive activity rather than merely to prevent criminal prosecution for such activity after the fact. In the aftermath of the decision, public areas such as streets and parks were universally recognized as arenas forthe free exchange of ideas, regardless of the political content of those ideas.
Related Cases
- United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875).
- Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569 (1941).
Further Readings
- Abernathy, M. Glenn. The Right of Assembly and Association, 2nd ed. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1981.
- Forbath, William E. Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
- Tomlins, Christopher L. The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880-1960. New York, NY:Cambridge University Press, 1985.
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