Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath

Infobox SCOTUS case
Litigants=Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath
ArgueDate=October 11
ArgueYear=1950
DecideDate=April 30
DecideYear=1951
FullName=Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. James Howard McGrath, Attorney General, et al.
USVol=341
USPage=123
Citation=
Prior=
Subsequent=
Holding=The judgments are reversed and the cases are remanded to the District Court with instructions to deny the motions that the complaints be dismissed for failure to state claims upon which relief could be granted.
SCOTUS=1949-1953
Plurality=Burton
JoinPlurality=Douglas
Concurrence=Black
Concurrence2=Frankfurter
Concurrence3=Jackson
Dissent=Reed
JoinDissent=Vinson, Minton
NotParticipating=Clark
LawsApplied=

"Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath", 341 U.S. 123 (1951), was a United States Supreme Court opinion revolving around the right of association.

Facts

The United States Attorney General, James Howard McGrath, acting under part three of Executive Order 9835, submitted information on several organizations to the Loyalty Review Board which then declared the organizations to be supporting subversive causes or movements. Under section 9A of the Hatch Act, this information was disseminated among the agencies of the government. The Anti-Fascist Refugee committee was collecting money to distribute among members of the struggle against Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War and World War II. The district courts and appeals courts had ruled that the organizations could not sue because there was no specified way to redress their grievances in the case.

Result

Justice Hugo Black offered a concurring opinion in which he compares government blacklists to bills of attainder. He appends a passage from the footnotes of the historian Thomas Macaulay's "History of England from the Accession of James the Second" describing the evils of the great Act of Attainder enacted at the behest of James II.

ee also

*List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 341

Further reading

*cite journal |last=Goldstein |first=Robert J. |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=2008 |month= |title=The Grapes of "McGrath": The Supreme Court and the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations in "Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath" |journal=Journal of Supreme Court History |volume=33 |issue=1 |pages=68–88 |doi=10.1111/j.1540-5818.2008.00179.x |url= |accessdate= |quote=
*cite journal |last=Harris |first=Robert J. |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=1956 |month= |title=The Impact of the Cold War Upon Civil Liberties |journal=Journal of Politics |volume=18 |issue=1 |pages=3–16 |doi=10.2307/2126673 |url= |accessdate= |quote=

External links

ussc|341|123|1951 Link to full text of case on Findlaw.com