SCHNEIDER v. RUSK, SECRETARY OF STATE.
No. 251.
Decided February 18, 1963.
Milton V. Freeman, Robert E. Herzstein, Horst Kur-nick and Charles A. Reich for petitioner.
Solicitor General Cox, Assistant Attorney General Miller, J. William Doolittle, Beatrice Rosenberg and J. F. Bishop for respondent.
Jack Wasserman, David Carliner and Melvin L. Wulf for the American Civil Liberties Union, as amicus curiae.
Per Curiam.
Trial of this case should have been before a three-judge District Court convened pursuant to 28 U. S. C. §§ 2282, 2284, as petitioner requested. Her complaint explicitly-sought an -“injunction restraining the enforcement, operation or execution of . . . [an] Act of Congress” — § 352 (a)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 8 U. S. C. § 1484 (a)(1), which provides that a naturalized American citizen shall lose his nationality by “having a continuous residence for three years in the territory of a foreign state of which he was formerly a national or in which the place of his birth is situated . . . .” The District Court concluded that petitioner’s complaint presented no substantial constitutional issue and denied petitioner’s motion to convene a three-judge court, relying on Lapides v. Clark, 85 U. S. App. D. C. 101, 176 F. 2d 619 (1949), cert. denied, 338 U. S. 860, in which the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit had directly upheld the predecessor of a companion provision, § 352 (a)(2) of the 1952 Act, 8 U. S. C. § 1484 (a)(2), which deprived the naturalized American of his citizenship for residing for five years in any foreign state. The Court of Appeals’ per curiam affirmance was also based on Lapides. Although no view is here intimated as to the merits of the constitutional question in the present case, we disagree with the conclusion of the courts below as to the substan-tiality of that issue. The intervening decisions of this Court in Perez v. Brownell, 356 U. S. 44, and Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86, reveal that the constitutional questions involving deprivation of nationality which were presented to the district judge were not plainly insubstantial. The single-judge District Court was therefore powerless to dismiss the action on the merits, and should have convened a three-judge court. Ex parte Northern Pac. B. Co., 280 U. S. 142, 144; Stratton v. St. Louis S. W. R. Co., 282 U. S. 10, 15; Ex parte Poresky, 290 U. S. 30; Idlewild Bon Voyage Liquor Corp. v. Epstein, 370 U. S. 713. The judgments below are vacated and the case is remanded to the District Court for expeditious action consistent with the views here expressed.
So ordered.
What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine whether the decision of the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed was itself liberal or conservative. In the context of issues pertaining to criminal procedure, civil rights, First Amendment, due process, privacy, and attorneys, consider liberal to be pro-person accused or convicted of crime, or denied a jury trial, pro-civil liberties or civil rights claimant, especially those exercising less protected civil rights (e.g., homosexuality), pro-child or juvenile, pro-indigent pro-Indian, pro-affirmative action, pro-neutrality in establishment clause cases, pro-female in abortion, pro-underdog, anti-slavery, incorporation of foreign territories anti-government in the context of due process, except for takings clause cases where a pro-government, anti-owner vote is considered liberal except in criminal forfeiture cases or those where the taking is pro-business violation of due process by exercising jurisdiction over nonresident, pro-attorney or governmental official in non-liability cases, pro-accountability and/or anti-corruption in campaign spending pro-privacy vis-a-vis the 1st Amendment where the privacy invaded is that of mental incompetents, pro-disclosure in Freedom of Information Act issues except for employment and student records. In the context of issues pertaining to unions and economic activity, consider liberal to be pro-union except in union antitrust where liberal = pro-competition, pro-government, anti-business anti-employer, pro-competition, pro-injured person, pro-indigent, pro-small business vis-a-vis large business pro-state/anti-business in state tax cases, pro-debtor, pro-bankrupt, pro-Indian, pro-environmental protection, pro-economic underdog pro-consumer, pro-accountability in governmental corruption, pro-original grantee, purchaser, or occupant in state and territorial land claims anti-union member or employee vis-a-vis union, anti-union in union antitrust, anti-union in union or closed shop, pro-trial in arbitration. In the context of issues pertaining to judicial power, consider liberal to be pro-exercise of judicial power, pro-judicial "activism", pro-judicial review of administrative action. In the context of issues pertaining to federalism, consider liberal to be pro-federal power, pro-executive power in executive/congressional disputes, anti-state. In the context of issues pertaining to federal taxation, consider liberal to be pro-United States and conservative pro-taxpayer. In miscellaneous, consider conservative the incorporation of foreign territories and executive authority vis-a-vis congress or the states or judcial authority vis-a-vis state or federal legislative authority, and consider liberal legislative veto. The lower court's decision direction is unspecifiable if the manner in which the Supreme Court took jurisdiction is original or certification; or if the direction of the Supreme Court's decision is unspecifiable and the main issue pertains to private law or interstate relations