High court rules on web-shooters and raisins, waits on more weighty cases
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Version 0 of 1. The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a Depression-era government program that requires farmers to turn over part of their raisin crops to boost market prices is an unconstitutional taking of private property. The court ruled 8 to 1 that the government could not take the raisins without providing adequate compensation. The court issued decisions in several lower-profile cases out of the 11 remaining cases Monday, but did not announce highly anticipated rulings on whether the Constitution requires that same-sex couples be allowed to marry nationwide and on the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act. The justices will issue more opinions Thursday and Friday, and end their work for the term next week. Instead of releasing decisions on lethal injection or the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency, the court ruled on a case from the inventor of a Spider-Man toy and the right of police to inspect registers at motels in Los Angeles. In the raisin case, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said it was not an adequate response from the government to say that if farmers don’t want to follow the rules of the raisin market, they can grow something else or find an alternative use for their grapes. “ ‘Let them sell wine’ is probably not much more comforting to the raisin growers than similar retorts have been to others throughout history,” Roberts wrote. [One grower’s grapes of wrath] Congress enacted the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act in 1937 to regulate markets and thereby stabilize prices, and the Raisin Administrative Committee was established in 1949 to govern California raisins, which make up 99.5 percent of the domestic market. Raisin producers send their crops to raisin “handlers” — packagers — who are instructed by the committee to set aside a portion that will not make it to the open market. That portion is sold through other channels, such as on the international market or to school lunch programs, and any profits are distributed to the producers. Sometimes there are no profits. The case was brought by Marvin and Laura Horne, who were fined nearly $700,000 for trying to get around the program in 2002. The Hornes, growers in Fresno, set themselves up as handlers and bought raisins for others. But they declined to set aside the specified portions and were fined. Backed by conservative groups, the Hornes sued, arguing that the Constitution requires that when the government takes someone’s property, there must be just compensation, whether what is taken is land or personal property. Roberts agreed. “Nothing in the text or history of the Takings Clause, or our precedents, suggests that the rule is any different when it comes to appropriation of personal property,” he wrote. “The Government has a categorical duty to pay just compensation when it takes your car, just as when it takes your home.” The case couldn’t be compared to a previous ruling that said a pesticide company must comply with a government licensing program in order to sell its product, Roberts said: “Raisins are not dangerous pesticides; they are a healthy snack.” Seven other members of the court endorsed Roberts’s basic view of the case. But three broke off when it came to the matter of how to calculate the compensation. Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the case should be returned to a lower court to determine exactly how much the Hornes were owed for their raisins. The government’s marketing efforts “may afford just compensation for the takings of the raisins that it imposes,” Breyer wrote. He was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. But Roberts said the government already determined the worth of the raisins by the price it set at the time and the fines it imposed. “The Hornes should simply be relieved of the obligation to pay the fine and associated civil penalty they were assessed when they resisted the Government’s effort to take their raisins,” he said. “This case, in litigation for more than a decade, has gone on long enough.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the lone dissenter. She said that the specifics of the program did not amount to a physical taking of the raisins and that the farmers benefited from the higher prices that came with holding some of their product out of the market. The case is Horne v. Department of Agriculture. The justices split 6 to 3 in a case asking the court to overturn one of its precedents; it was made more lively by the fact that, as Kagan said in announcing the decision, “it’s a story that happens to begin with Spider-Man.” Stephen Kimble, who made millions from his idea for a glove that shoots pressurized foam string to approximate the abilities of the comic-book web-slinger, said there was no time limit in his contract for royalties from Marvel Entertainment. [The time the court quoted a comic book] But Marvel discovered a 1964 Supreme Court decision, Brulotte v. Thys Co., which said that a patent holder cannot charge royalties for the use of his invention after its patent term has ended. Marvel stopped paying Kimble. Under the court’s principle of stare decisis — meaning it lets settled law remain settled absent an extraordinary reason for change — Kimble had not shown such a reason, Kagan said. The Brulotte decision has been around for decades, she said, and if it is to be changed, Congress should do it. “Patents endow their holders with certain superpowers, but only for a limited time,” Kagan wrote, adding: “The parties set no end date for royalties, apparently contemplating that they would continue for as long as kids want to imitate Spider-Man (by doing whatever a spider can).” Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented and said Brulotte should be overturned. The case is Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment. By a 5-to-4 vote, the court overturned a Los Angeles law that allowed police to demand a hotel’s register at any time for inspection and imposed criminal penalties for those who failed to comply. Sotomayor wrote for the majority that the law had to allow an objecting motel owner “an opportunity to have a neutral decisionmaker review an officer’s demand to search the registry before he or she faces penalties for failing to comply.” Police say inspection on demand is needed to make sure motel owners comply with the recordkeeping law, which is intended to deter criminal conduct in motel rooms. Justice Antonin Scalia said the majority opinion was “wrongheaded.” The majority’s proposal that police could guard the registry while seeking a warrant was “equal parts 1984 and Alice in Wonderland.” The case is Los Angeles v. Patel. |