United States v. Five Gambling Devices/Opinion of the Court

These cases present unsuccessful attempts, by two different procedures, to enforce the view of the Department of Justice as to construction of the Act of January 2, 1951, which prohibits shipment of gambling machines in interstate commerce but includes incidental registration and reporting provisions. Two indictments charge Denmark and Braun severally with engaging in the business of dealing in gambling devices without registering with the Attorney General and reporting sales and deliveries. Both indictments were dismissed. The other proceeding is a libel to forfeit five gambling machines seized by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents from a country club in Tennessee. It also was dismissed.

The three cases, here on Government appeals, are similar in features which led to their dismissal and which raise constitutional issues. The indictments do not allege that the accused dealers, since the effective date of the Act or for that matter at any other time, have bought, sold or moved gambling devices in interstate commerce, or that the devices involved in their unreported sales have, since the effective date of the Act or at any other time, moved in interstate commerce or ever would do so. The libel does not show that the country club's machines were at any time transported in or in any way affect interestate commerce.

Section 2 of the Act prohibits transportation of gambling devices in interstate commerce except to any state which exempts itself or its subdivision by state law. Section 3 requires every manufacturer and dealer in gambling devices annually to register his business and name and monthly to file detailed information as to each device sold and delivered during the preceding month. Section 6 provides criminal penalties for failure to register or for violation of the transportation section, and § 7 authorizes forfeiture of devices sold in violation of the Act.

The information requirements are not expressly limited to persons engaged or transactions occurring in interstate commerce or conditioned on any connection therewith. Neither does the Act by any specific terms direct its application to transactions such as we have here.

Appellees contend, first, that the Act should not be construed to reach dealers, transactions or machines unless shown to have some relation to interestate commerce; second, construed, otherwise, the Act exceeds the power delegated to Congress under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution; third, the statute is unconstitutionally vague.

The Government answers, first, that the statute, literally read, reaches all dealers and transactions and the possession of all unreported devices without reference to interstate commerce; second, to make effective the prohibition of transportation in interstate commerce, Congress may constitutionally require reporting of all intrastate transactions; and, third, while Congress, by oversight, left an inappropriate and confusing phrase in the Act, the defect is not fatal inasmuch as the Attorney General has power to supplement the Act by regulations which will cure its indefiniteness.

We do not intimate any ultimate answer to the appellees' constitutional questions other than the observe that they cannot be dismissed as frivolous, nor as unimportant to the nature of our federation. No precedent of this Court sustains the power of Congress to enact legislation penalizing failure to report information concerning acts not shown to be in, or mingled with, or found to affect commerce. The course of decision relied on by the Government on analysis falls short of the holding asked of us here. Indeed, we find no instance where Congress has attempted under the commerce power to impose reporting duties under penal sanction which would raise the question posed by these proceedings. It is apparent that the Government's pleadings raise, and no doubt were intended to raise, a far-reaching question as to the extent of congressional power over matters internal to the individual states.

Of course, Congress possesses not only power to regulate commerce among the several states but also an inexact power 'To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution' its enumerated powers. In some instances Congress has left to an administrative body, such as the Interstate Commerce Commission or the National Labor Relations Board, the power to decide on a case-to-case basis whether the particular intrastate activity affects interstate commerce so as to warrant exercise of the power to reach into intrastate affairs. Decisions under this type of legislation give the Government no support, for no such determination is required by this Act, and the Government asserts no such finding by anyone is necessary. In other statutes Congress has set up economic regulations which lay hold of activities in interstate commerce but also include intrastate activities so intermingled therewith that separation is impractical or impossible. Of course, decisions upholding legislation requiring information in aid of the taxing power afford no support here, because the taxing power penetrates and permeates every activity, intrastate or interstate, within the Nation. While general statements, out of these different contexts, might bear upon the subject one way or another, it is apparent that the precise question tendered to us now is not settled by any prior decision.

The principle is old and deeply imbedded in our jurisprudence that this Court will construe a state in a manner that requires decision of serious constitutional questions only if the statutory language leaves no reasonable alternative. United States v. Rumely, 345 U.S. 41, 73 S.Ct. 543. This is not because we would avoid or postpone difficult decisions. The predominant consideration is that we should be sure Congress has intentionally put its power in issue by the legislation in question before we undertake a pronouncement which may have far-reaching consequences upon the powers of the Congress or the powers reserved to the several states. To withhold passing upon an issue of power until we are certain it is knowingly precipitated will do not great injury, for Congress, once we have recognized the question, can make its purpose explicit and thereby necessitate or avoid decision of the question. Judicial abstention is especially wholesome where we are considering a penal statute. Our policy in constitutional cases is reinforced by the long tradition and sound reasons which admonish against enlargement of criminal statutes by interpretation.

This Court does and should accord a strong presumption of constitutionality to Acts of Congress. This is not a mere polite gesture. It is a deference due to deliberate judgment by constitutional majorities of the two Houses of Congress that an Act is within their delegated power or is necessary and proper to execution of that power. The rational and practical force of the presumption is at its maximum only when it appears that the precise point in issue here has been considered by Congress and has been explicitly and deliberately resolved. But the presumption can have little realism when responsible congressional committees and leaders, in managing a bill, have told Congress that the bill will not reach that which the Act is invoked in this Court to cover.

We do not question that literal language of this Act is capable of the broad, unlimited construction urged by the Government. Indeed, if it were enacted for a unitary system of government, no other construction would be appropriate. But we must assume that the implications and limitations of our federal system constitute a major premise of all congressional legislation, though not repeatedly recited therein. Against the background of our tradition and system of government, we cannot say that the lower courts, which have held as a matter of statutory construction that this Act does not reach purely intrastate matters, have not made a permissible interpretation. We find in the text no unmistakable intention of Congress to raise the constitutional questions implicit in the Government's effort to apply the Act in its most extreme impact upon affairs considered normally reserved to the states.

Judges differ as to the value of legislative history in statutory construction, but the Government often relies upon it to sustain its interpretation of statutes. However, in this case its reference to legislative history is conspicuously meager and unenlightening. On the other hand, for what it is worth, appellees point out much that was reported by responsible committees and said by proponents of this antigambling-device legislation to indicate that Congress did not intend to raise the issues here presented and was not aware it was doing so. For example, Senator Johnson, sponsor of the bill which eventually became this Act, declared that ' * *  * it keeps the Federal Government out of State and local police powers; no Federal official is going to become an enforcement officer in any State or locality.' The committee handling the bill reported: 'On the other hand, the committee desires to emphasize that Federal law enforcement in the field of gambling cannot and should not be considered a substitute for State and local law enforcement in this field.' But here it was the Federal Bureau of Investigation which entered a country club and seized slot machines not shown ever to have had any connection with interstate commerce in any manner whatever. If this is not substituting federal for state enforcement, it is difficult to know how it could be accomplished. A more local and detailed act of enforcement is hardly conceivable. These cases, if sustained, would substantially take unto the Federal Government the entire pursuit of the gambling device.

No committee appears to have anticipated this, for the then Attorney General informed the committee, and it reported itself in agreement with the view, that 'Actually enforcement against those people who gamble or use these machines wrongfully in the States is left with the States, and with the local officials, and there is absolutely no intention on the part of the Federal Government, express or otherwise, in this bill or anything that accompanies it, to get us into a prohibition era.' It is impossible to reconcile statements of this kind, on which the Congress may have placed reliance, with the Government's present interpretation of the Act.

As we have indicated, the present indictments and libel are so framed as to apply to extreme form the most expansive interpretation of this Act. All that we would decide at present is a question of statutory construction. We think the Act does not have the explicitness necessary to sustain the pleadings which the Government has drafted in these cases. On this ground alone, we would affirm the judgments below.

Judgments affirmed.

Mr. Justice BLACK, with whom Mr. Justice DOUGLAS joins, concurring.

I concur in the judgment, but regret my inability to agree with the reasons for affirmance expressed in the opinion of Mr. Justice JACKSON. The language of § 3 of the Act on which the charges rest requires dealers to report 'all sales and deliveries of gambling devices * *  * .' No other language in the Act, and nothing in its legislative history, indicates to me that Congress was not here hitting at 'all sales,' including purely intrastate ones. In this situation I do not feel at liberty to read intrastate sales out of the Act, even if constitutional questions could thereby be avoided.

Section 3 requires a gambling device dealer to register with the Attorney General 'his name or trade name, the address of his principal place of business, and the addresses of his places of business in such district.' (Emphasis supplied.) Thereafter dealers must make detailed monthly reports of inventories, sales and deliveries for the 'places of business' in the district. But the use of the phrase 'such district' is bound to leave a dealer bewildered. Does the phrase refer to the place where a dealer is compelled to file his papers? Or does it simply force him to tell in what 'district' he maintains 'places'? If a dealer is able to solve this puzzle, how is he to find 'such district'? The Act gives no hint as to where the 'district' is or how a person can locate it. It never describes any 'district.' Yet failure to comply with these unascertainable requirements is punishable by fine up to $5,000, imprisonment up to two years, or both. This punishment, at least, is certain. I would apply the established rule that 'a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law.' Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391, 46 S.Ct. 126, 127, 70 L.Ed. 322.

Nor can a criminal statute too vague to be constitutionally valid be saved by additions made to it by the Attorney General. Of course, Congress could have prescribed that reports should be made at reasonably accessible places designated by the Attorney General. Cf. United States v. Eaton, 144 U.S. 677, 12 S.Ct. 764, 36 L.Ed. 591. But the Act under consideration did not do this. The Attorney General did promulgate an attempted clarifying regulation under the purported authority of R.S. * s 161, 5 U.S.C. § 22, 5 U.S.C.A. § 22. That statute provides no more than a general authorization to the heads of all departments to prescribe regulations governing their departments, officers, clerks, records, papers, etc. There is certainly not sufficient specificity in this grant concerning routine departmental business to support the Attorney General's attempt to infuse life into an Act of Congress unenforceable for vagueness. The vital omission in this criminal statute can be supplied by the legislative branch of government, not by the Attorney General. I would affirm these judgments.

Mr. Justice CLARK, with whom The CHIEF JUSTICE, Mr. Justice REED and Mr. Justice BURTON concur, dissenting.