UNITED STATES v. ENMONS

MR. JUSTICE STEWART delivered the opinion of the Court.

A one-count indictment was returned in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana charging the appellees with a violation of the Hobbs Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1951. In pertinent part, that Act provides:

"Extortion" is defined in the Act, as "the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear . . . ." 18 U. S. C. § 1951 (b) (2).

At the time of the alleged conspiracy, the employees of the Gulf States Utilities Company were out on strike. The appellees are members and officials of labor unions that were seeking a new collective-bargaining agreement with that company. The indictment charged that the appellees and two named coconspirators conspired to obstruct commerce, and that as part of that conspiracy, they

Five specific acts of violence were charged to have been committed in furtherance of the conspiracy—firing highpowered rifles at three Company transformers, draining the oil from a Company transformer, and blowing up a transformer substation owned by the Company. In short, the indictment charged that the appellees had conspired to use and did in fact use violence to obtain for the striking employees higher wages and other employment benefits from the Company.

The District Court granted the appellees' motion to dismiss the indictment for failure to state an offense under the Hobbs Act. 335 F.Supp. 641. The court noted that the appellees were union members on strike against their employer, Gulf States, and that both the strike and its objective of higher wages were legal. The court expressed the view that if "the wages sought by violent acts are wages to be paid for unneeded or unwanted services, or for no services at all," then that violence would constitute extortion within the meaning of the Hobbs Act. Id., at 645. But in this case, by contrast, the court noted that the indictment alleged the use of force to obtain legitimate union objectives: "The union had a right to disrupt the business of the employer by lawfully striking for higher wages. Acts of violence occurring during a lawful strike and resulting in damage to persons or property are undoubtedly punishable under State law. To punish persons for such acts of violence was not the purpose of the Hobbs Act." Id., at 646. The court found "no case where a court has gone so far as to hold the type of activity involved here to be a violation of the Hobbs Act." Id., at 645.

We noted probable jurisdiction of the Government's appeal, 406 U.S. 916,1 to determine whether the Hobbs Act proscribes violence committed during a lawful strike for the purpose of inducing an employer's agreement to legitimate collective-bargaining demands.

I

The Government contends that the statutory language unambiguously and without qualification proscribes interference with commerce by "extortion," and that in terms of the statute, "extortion" is "the obtaining of property from another, with his consent, induced by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear . . . ." Wages are the "property" of the employer, the argument continues, and strike violence to obtain such "property" thus falls within the literal proscription of the Act. But the language of the statute is hardly as clear as the Government would make it out to be. Its interpretation of the Act slights the wording of the statute that proscribes obtaining property only by the "wrongful" use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear. The term "wrongful," which on the face of the statute modifies the use of each of the enumerated means of obtaining property—actual or threatened force, violence, or fear2—would be superfluous if it only served to describe the means used. For it would be redundant to speak of "wrongful violence" or "wrongful force" since, as the Government acknowledges, any violence or force to obtain property is "wrongful."3 Rather, "wrongful" has meaning in the Act only if it limits the statute's coverage to those instances where the obtaining of the property would itself be "wrongful" because the alleged extortionist has no lawful claim to that property.

Construed in this fashion, the Hobbs Act has properly been held to reach instances where union officials threatened force or violence against an employer in order to obtain personal payoffs,4 and where unions used the proscribed means to exact "wage" payments from employers in return for "imposed, unwanted, superfluous and fictitious services" of workers.5 For in those situations, the employer's property has been misappropriated. But the literal language of the statute will not bear the Government's semantic argument that the Hobbs Act reaches the use of violence to achieve legitimate union objectives, such as higher wages in return for genuine services which the employer seeks. In that type of case, there has been no "wrongful" taking of the employer's property; he has paid for the services he bargained for, and the workers receive the wages to which they are entitled in compensation for their services.

II

The legislative framework of the Hobbs Act dispels any ambiguity in the wording of the statute and makes it clear that the Act does not apply to the use of force to achieve legitimate labor ends. The predecessor of the Hobbs Act, § 2 of the Anti-Racketeering Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 979,6 proscribed, in connection with interstate commerce, the exaction of valuable consideration by force, violence, or coercion, "not including, however, the payment of wages by a bona-fide employer to a bona-fide employee . . . ."7 In United States v. Local 807, 315 U.S. 521, the Court held that this exception covered the members of a New York City truck drivers union who, by violence or threats, exacted payments for themselves from out-of-town truckers in return for the unwanted and superfluous service of driving out-of-town trucks to and from the city. The New York City teamsters would lie in wait for the out-of-town trucks, and then demand payment from the owners and drivers in return for allowing the trucks to proceed into the city. The teamsters sometimes drove the arriving trucks into the city, but in other instances, the out-of-town truckers paid the fees but rejected the teamsters' services and drove the trucks themselves. In several cases there was evidence that, having exacted their fees, the city drivers disappeared without offering to perform any services at all. Id., at 526. See also id., at 539 (Stone, C. J., dissenting). The Court held that the activities of the city teamsters were included within the wage exception to the Anti-Racketeering Act although what work they performed was unneeded and unwanted, and although in some cases their work was rejected.

Congressional disapproval of this decision was swift. Several bills8 were introduced with the narrow purpose of correcting the result in the Local 807 case.9 H. R. 32, which became the Hobbs Act, 60 Stat. 420, eliminated the wage exception that had been the basis for the Local 807 decision.10 But, as frequently emphasized on the floor of the House, the limited effect of the bill was to shut off the possibility opened up by the Local 807 case, that union members could use their protected status to exact payments from employers for imposed, unwanted, and superfluous services. As Congressman Hancock explained:

Congressman Hancock proceeded to read approvingly from an editorial which characterized the teamsters' action in the Local 807 case as "compelling the truckers to pay day's wages to local union drivers whose services were neither wanted nor needed." Ibid. Congressman Fellows stressed the fact that the facts of the Local 807 case showed that "these stick-up men disappeared as soon as the money was paid without rendering or offering to render any service." Id., at 11907. And Congressman Rivers characterized the facts of the Local 807 case as "nothing short of hijacking, intimidation, extortion, and out-and-out highway robbery." Id., at 11917.11

But by eliminating the wage exception to the Anti-Racketeering Act, the Hobbs Act did not sweep within its reach violence during a strike to achieve legitimate collective-bargaining objectives. It was repeatedly emphasized in the debates that the bill did not "interfere in any way with any legitimate labor objective or activity";12 "there is not a thing in it to interfere in the slightest degree with any legitimate activity on the part of labor people or labor unions . . . ."13 And Congressman Jennings, in responding to a question concerning the Act's coverage, made it clear that the Act "does not have a thing in the world to do with strikes." Id., at 11912.

Indeed, in introducing his original bill, Congressman Hobbs14 explicitly refuted the suggestion that strike violence to achieve a union's legitimate objectives was encompassed by the Act:15

The Government would derive a different lesson from the legislative history. It points to statements made during the floor debates that the Act was meant to have "broad coverage" and, unlike its predecessor, to encompass the "employer-employee" relationship. But that proves no more than that the achievement of illegitimate objectives by employees or their representatives, such as the exaction of personal payoffs, or the pursuit of "wages" for unwanted or fictitious services, would not be exempted from the Act solely because the extortionist was an employee or union official and the victim an employer.17 The Government would also find support for its expansive interpretation of the statute in the rejection of two amendments, one proposed by Congressman Celler, the other by Congressman LaFollette, which would have inserted in the Act an exception for cases where violence was used to obtain the payment of wages by a bona-fide employer to a bona-fide employee. See 91 Cong. Rec. 11913, 11917, and 11919, 11922. But both amendments were rejected solely because they would have operated to continue the effect of the Local 807 case.18 Their rejection thus proves nothing more than that Congress was intent on undoing the restrictive impact of that case.

III

In the nearly three decades that have passed since the enactment of the Hobbs Act, no reported case has upheld the theory that the Act proscribes the use of force to achieve legitimate collective-bargaining demands.

The only previous case in this Court relevant to the issue, United States v. Green, 350 U.S. 415, held no more than that the Hobbs Act had accomplished its objective of overruling the Local 807 case. The alleged extortions in that case, as in Local 807, consisted of attempts to obtain so-called wages for "imposed, unwanted, superfluous and fictitious services of laborers . . . ." Id., at 417. The indictment charged that the employer's consent was obtained "by the wrongful use, to wit, the use for the purposes aforesaid, of actual and threatened force, violence and fear . . . ." Ibid. The Government thus did not rely, as it does in the present case, solely on the use of force in an employer-employee relationship; it alleged a wrongful purpose—to obtain money from the employer that the union officials had no legitimate right to demand. We concluded that the Hobbs Act could reach extortion in an employer-employee relationship and that personal profit to the extortionist was not required, but our holding was carefully limited to the charges in that case: "We rule only on the allegations of the indictment and hold that the acts charged against appellees fall within the terms of the Act." Id., at 421.

A prior decision in the Third Circuit, United States v. Kemble, 198 F.2d 889, on which the Government relied in Green, also concerned the exaction, by threats and violence, of wages for superfluous services. In affirming a conviction under the Hobbs Act of a union business agent for using actual and threatened violence against an out-of-town driver in an attempt to force him to hire a local union member, the Court of Appeals carefully limited its holding:

Most recently, in United States v. Caldes, 457 F.2d 74, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit was squarely presented with the question at issue in this case. Two union officials were convicted of Hobbs Act violations in that they damaged property of a company with which they were negotiating for a collective-bargaining agreement, in an attempt to pressure the company into agreeing to the union contract. Concluding that the Act was not intended to reach militant activity in the pursuit of legitimate unions ends, the court reversed the convictions and ordered the indictment dismissed.

Indeed, not until the indictments were returned in 1970 in this and several other cases has the Government even sought to prosecute under the Hobbs Act actual or threatened violence employed to secure a union contract "calling for higher wages and other monetary benefits."19 Yet, throughout this period, the Nation has witnessed countless economic strikes, often unfortunately punctuated by violence. It is unlikely that if Congress had indeed wrought such a major expansion of federal criminal jurisdiction in enacting the Hobbs Act, its action would have so long passed unobserved. See United States v. Laub, 385 U.S. 475, 485.

IV

The Government's broad concept of extortion—the "wrongful" use of force to obtain even the legitimate union demands of higher wages—is not easily restricted. It would cover all overtly coercive conduct in the course of an economic strike, obstructing, delaying, or affecting commerce. The worker who threw a punch on a picket line, or the striker who deflated the tires on his employer's truck would be subject to a Hobbs Act prosecution and the possibility of 20 years' imprisonment and a $10,000 fine.20

Even if the language and history of the Act were less clear than we have found them to be, the Act could not properly be expanded as the Government suggests— for two related reasons. First, this being a criminal statute, it must be strictly construed, and any ambiguity must be resolved in favor of lenity. United States v. Wiltberger, 5 Wheat. 76, 95; United States v. Halseth, 342 U.S. 277, 280; Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 81, 83; Arroyo v. United States, 359 U.S. 419, 424; Rewis v. United States, 401 U.S. 808, 812. Secondly, it would require statutory language much more explicit than that before us here to lead to the conclusion that Congress intended to put the Federal Government in the business of policing the orderly conduct of strikes. Neither the language of the Hobbs Act nor its legislative history can justify the conclusion that Congress intended to work such an extraordinary change in federal labor law or such an unprecedented incursion into the criminal jurisdiction of the States. See San Diego Bldg. Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U.S. 236, 247-248; United Constr. Workers v. Laburnum Constr. Corp., 347 U.S. 656, 665; Garner v. Teamsters Local 776, 346 U.S. 485, 488; UAW Local 232 v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Bd., 336 U.S. 245, 253.

As we said last Term:

The District Court was correct in dismissing the indictment. Its judgment is affirmed.

It is so ordered.

MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, concurring.

I join the Court's opinion. I readily concede that my visceral reaction to immaturely conceived acts of violence of the kind charged in this indictment is that such acts deserve to be dignified as federal crimes. That reaction on my part, however, is legislative in nature rather than judicial. If Congress wishes acts of that kind to be encompassed by a federal statute, it has the constitutional power in the interstate context to effect that result. The appellees so concede. Tr. of Oral Arg. 18-19. But MR. JUSTICE STEWART has gathered the pertinent and persuasive legislative history demonstrating that Congress did not intend to exercise its power to reach these acts of violence.

The Government's posture, with its concession that certain strike violence (which it would downgrade as "incidental" and the dissent as "low level," post, at 418 n. 17), although aimed at achieving a legitimate end, is not covered by the Act, necessarily means that the legislation would be enforced selectively or, at the least, would embroil all concerned with drawing the distinction between major and minor violence. That, for me, is neither an appealing prospect nor solid support for the position taken.

This type of violence, as the Court points out, is subject to state criminal prosecution. That is where it must remain until the Congress acts otherwise in a manner far more clear than the language of the Hobbs Act.

MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE, MR. JUSTICE POWELL, and MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST concur, dissenting.

The Court today achieves by interpretation what those who were opposed to the Hobbs Act were unable to get Congress to do. The Court considers primarily the legislative history of a predecessor bill considered by the 78th Congress. The bill before us was considered and enacted by the 79th Congress; and, as I read the debates, the opposition lost in the 79th Congress what they win today. All of which makes pertinent Mr. Justice Holmes' admonition in Missouri, K. & T. R. Co. v. May, 194 U.S. 267, 270, that "it must be remembered that legislatures are ultimate guardians of the liberties and welfare of the people in quite as great a degree as the courts."

In United States v. Local 807, 315 U.S. 521, we had before us the Anti-Racketeering Act of 1934, 48 Stat. 979, which made it a crime to use violence respecting interstate trade or commerce to obtain the "payment of money or other valuable considerations," excluding "the payment of wages by a bona-fide employer to a bona-fide employee." We held that the exception included demands for unwanted or superfluous services and covered those who wanted jobs, not only those who presently had them.

Congress in the Hobbs Act changed the law. The critical change was the exclusion of the employer-employee clause. The Court said in United States v. Green, 350 U.S. 415, 419: "In the Hobbs Act, 60 Stat. 420, carried forward as 18 U. S. C. § 1951, which amended the Anti-Racketeering Act, the exclusion clause involved in the Local 807 decision was dropped. The legislative history makes clear that the new Act was meant to eliminate any grounds for future judicial conclusions that Congress did not intend to cover the employer-employee relationship. The words were defined to avoid any misunderstanding."

In Green, the Court held that it was an extortion within the meaning of the Act to use force to obtain payment of wages for unwanted and superfluous services. Id., at 417.

Here, the services were not unwanted or superfluous; they were services being negotiated under a collective-bargaining agreement.

The Court relies mostly on the legislative history of a measure covering the same topic which was passed by the previous House but on which the Senate did not act. Two years later, the bill in its present form was enacted. It was a differently constituted House that debated it and the year was 1945 rather than 1943. So the most relevant legislative history, in my view, concerns the 79th Congress, not the 78th.

The fear was expressed in the House that the elimination of the Exception Clause would open up the prospect of labor's being prosecuted.1 As a consequence, Congressman Celler sought to amend the measure so as to exempt the use of violence to exact "wages paid by a bona fide employer to a bona fide employee."2 His precise amendment in that regard would define "property" in the Act as not including "wages paid by a bona fide employer to a bona fide employee."3 Those who objected said that it would substantially restore the 1934 Act.4

Congressman Biemiller, in speaking for the Celler Amendment said:

The Celler Amendment was rejected.6

As I read the Congressional Record, Congressman Baldwin spoke for the consensus when he said:

Congressman Whittington voiced the same sentiments:

Congressman Celler offered another amendment which would give as a defense to a charge under the Hobbs Act that the employee "did not violate the provisions of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, the Clayton Act, or the Railway Labor Act, or the National Labor Relations Act."9 But that amendment was also voted down;10 the only provision of the Hobbs Act which touched on that problem was 18 U. S. C. § 1951 (c), which stated that this section "shall not be construed to repeal, modify or affect" those laws. References were made in the House debates to the trucking problem in New York, where farmers bringing their produce to market in trucks were held up and money was extorted "from the drivers in order that the shipments might enter the Holland Tunnel and be delivered to their respective destinations in New York."11

Congressman LaFollette offered an amendment which would keep the 1934 Act intact but would bar the use of violence by a person not a bona fide employee to obtain property from a bona fide employer.12 That, too, was defeated.13

In the present case, violence was used during the bargaining —five acts of violence involving the shooting and sabotage of the employer's transformers and the blowing up of a company transformer substation. The violence was used to obtain higher wages and other benefits for union members. The acts literally fit the definition of extortion used in the Hobbs Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1951. The term "extortion" means the use of violence to obtain "property" from another. § 1951 (b) (2). The crime is the use of "extortion" in furtherance of a plan to do anything in violation of the section. § 1951 (a). The prior exception covering those who seek "the payment of wages by a bona-fide employer to a bona-fide employee" was taken out of the Act by Congress. Hence, the use of violence to obtain higher wages is plainly a method of obtaining "property from another" within the meaning of § 1951 (b) (2).

Seeking higher wages is certainly not unlawful. But using violence to obtain them seems plainly within the scope of "extortion" as used in the Act, just as is the use of violence to exact payment for no work or the use of violence to get a sham substitution for no work. The regime of violence, whatever its precise objective, is a common device of extortion and is condemned by the Act.

Congressman Lemke said in the House debates on the Hobbs Act, which he opposed, "The minority is generally right."14

Whatever may be thought of the policy which the Court today embroiders into the Act, it was the minority view in the House and clearly did not represent the consensus of the House. No light is thrown on the matter by the Senate, for it summarily approved the House version of the bill.15

It is easy in these insulated chambers to put an attractive gloss on an Act of Congress if five votes can be obtained. At times, the legislative history of a measure is so clouded or obscure that we must perforce give some meaning to vague words.16 But where, as here, the consensus of the House is so clear, we should carry out its purpose no matter how distasteful or undesirable that policy may be to us,17 unless of course the Act oversteps constitutional boundaries. But none has been so hardy as even to suggest that.

While we said in Kirschbaum Co. v. Walling, 316 U.S. 517, 522, that it is "retrospective expansion of meaning which properly deserves the stigma of judicial legislation," the same is true of retrospective contraction of meaning.

I would reverse.