Hutchinson v. Proxmire

443 U.S. 111

Case Year: 1979

Case Ruling: 8-1, Reversed and Remanded

Opinion Justice: Burger

FACTS

In this case, the Court examined a dispute that arose in 1975 when Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., on the floor of the U.S. Senate and later in a newsletter and on television, labeled behavioral scientist Ronald R. Hutchinson’s federally funded research virtually worthless and a waste of taxpayer money. Indeed, the senator bestowed on Hutchinson his “Golden Fleece of the Month Award,” which he used to publicize examples of wasteful government spending.

Hutchinson brought a libel suit against Proxmire, and, when the case reached the Court, the justices addressed the issue of whether the Speech or Debate Clause immunized the senator from a libel proceeding on the ground that he had first made the remarks on the Senate chamber’s floor.

 

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER DELIVERED THE OPINION OF THE COURT.

Ronald Hutchinson, a research behavioral scientist, sued respondents, William Proxmire, a United States Senator, and his legislative assistant, Morton Schwartz, for defamation arising out of Proxmire’s giving what he called his “Golden Fleece” award. The “award” went to federal agencies that had sponsored Hutchinson’s research. Hutchinson alleged that in making the award and publicizing it nationwide, respondents had libeled him, damaging him in his professional and academic standing, and had interfered with his contractual relations. The District Court granted summary judgment for respondents and the Court of Appeals affirmed.

We reverse and remand to the Court of Appeals for further proceedings consistent with this opinion....

The purpose of the Speech or Debate Clause is to protect Members of Congress “not only from the consequences of litigation’s results but also from the burden of defending themselves.” If the respondents have immunity under the Clause, no other questions need be considered for they may “not be questioned in any other Place.”...

In support of the Court of Appeals holding that newsletters and press releases are protected by the Speech or Debate Clause, respondents rely upon both historical precedent and present-day congressional practices. They contend that impetus for the Speech or Debate Clause privilege in our Constitution came from the history of parliamentary efforts to protect the right of members to criticize the spending of the Crown and from the prosecution of a Speaker of the House of Commons for publication of a report outside of Parliament. Respondents also contend that in the modern day very little speech or debate occurs on the floor of either House; from this they argue that press releases and newsletters are necessary for Members of Congress to communicate with other Members....

Respondents also argue that an essential part of the duties of a Member of Congress is to inform constituents, as well as other Members, of the issues being considered.

The Speech or Debate Clause has been directly passed on by this Court relatively few times in 190 years. Literal reading of the Clause would, of course, confine its protection narrowly to a “Speech or Debate in either House.” But the Court has given the Clause a practical rather than a strictly literal reading which would limit the protection to utterances made within the four walls of either Chamber. Thus, we have held that committee hearings are protected, even if held outside the Chambers; committee reports are also protected....

Nearly a century ago, in Kilbourn v. Thompson, this Court held that the Clause extended “to things generally done in a session of the House by one of its members in relation to the business before it.” (Emphasis added.) More recently we expressed a similar definition of the scope of the Clause:

“Legislative acts are not all-encompassing. The heart of the Clause is speech or debate in either House. Insofar as the Clause is construed to reach other matters, they must be an integral part of the deliberative and communicative processes by which Members participate in committee and House proceedings with respect to the consideration and passage or rejection of proposed legislation or with respect to other matters which the Constitution places within the jurisdiction of either House. As the Court of Appeals put it, the courts have extended the privilege to matters beyond pure speech or debate in either House, but ‘only when necessary to prevent indirect impairment of such deliberations.’”

Whatever imprecision there may be in the term “legislative activities,” it is clear that nothing in history or in the explicit language of the Clause suggests any intention to create an absolute privilege from liability or suit for defamatory statements made outside the Chamber....

Claims under the Clause going beyond what is needed to protect legislative independence are to be closely scrutinized....

Indeed, the precedents abundantly support the conclusion that a Member may be held liable for republishing defamatory statements originally made in either House. We perceive no basis for departing from that long-established rule.

Mr. Justice Story in his Commentaries, for example, explained that there was no immunity for republication of a speech first delivered in Congress:

“Therefore, although a speech delivered in the house of commons is privileged, and the member cannot be questioned respecting it elsewhere; yet, if he publishes his speech, and it contains libellous matter, he is liable to an action and prosecution therefor, as in common cases of libel. And the same principles seem applicable to the privilege of debate and speech in congress. No man ought to have a right to defame others under colour of a performance of the duties of his office. And if he does so in the actual discharge of his duties in congress, that furnishes no reason, why he should be enabled through the medium of the press to destroy the reputation, and invade the repose of other citizens. It is neither within the scope of his duty, nor in furtherance of public rights, or public policy. Every citizen has as good a right to be protected by the laws from malignant scandal, and false charges, and defamatory imputations, as a member of congress has to utter them in his seat.”

Story summarized the state of the common law at the time the Constitution was drafted, recalling that Parliament had by then succeeded in its struggle to secure freedom of debate. But the privilege did not extend to republication of libelous remarks even though first made in Parliament....

In Gravel v. United States, we recognized that the doctrine denying immunity for republication had been accepted in the United States....

We reaffirmed that principle in Doe v. McMillan:

“A Member of Congress may not with impunity publish a libel from the speaker’s stand in his home district, and clearly the Speech or Debate Clause would not protect such an act even though the libel was read from an official committee report. The reason is that republishing a libel under such circumstances is not an essential part of the legislative process and is not part of that deliberative process ‘by which Members participate in committee and House proceedings.’”

We reach a similar conclusion here. A speech by Proxmire in the Senate would be wholly immune and would be available to other Members of Congress and the public in the Congressional Record. But neither the newsletters nor the press release was “essential to the deliberations of the Senate” and neither was part of the deliberative process.

Respondents, however, argue that newsletters and press releases are essential to the functioning of the Senate; without them, they assert, a Senator cannot have a significant impact on the other Senators. We may assume that a Member’s published statements exert some influence on other votes in the Congress and therefore have a relationship to the legislative and deliberative process. But in Brewster, we rejected respondents’ expansive reading of the Clause:

“It is well known, of course, that Members of the Congress engage in many activities other than the purely legislative activities protected by the Speech or Debate Clause. These include ... preparing so-called ‘news letters’ to constituents, news releases, and speeches delivered outside the Congress.”

There we went on to note that United States v. Johnson (1966), had carefully distinguished between what is only “related to the due functioning of the legislative process,” and what constitutes the legislative process entitled to immunity under the Clause:

“In stating that those things [Johnson’s attempts to influence the Department of Justice] ‘in no wise related to the due functioning of the legislative process’ were not covered by the privilege, the Court did not in any sense imply as a corollary that everything that ‘related’ to the office of a Member was shielded by the Clause. Quite the contrary, in Johnson we held, citing Kilbourn v. Thompson, supra, that only acts generally done in the course of the process of enacting legislation were protected.... “In no case has this Court ever treated the Clause as protecting all conduct relating to the legislative process. “... In its narrowest scope, the Clause is a very large, albeit essential, grant of privilege. It has enabled reckless men to slander [by speech or debate] and even destroy others with impunity, but that was the conscious choice of the Framers.”

We are unable to discern any “conscious choice” to grant immunity for defamatory statements scattered far and wide by mail, press, and the electronic media.

Respondents also argue that newsletters and press releases are privileged as part of the “informing function” of Congress. Advocates of a broad reading of the “informing function” sometimes tend to confuse two uses of the term “informing.” In one sense, Congress informs itself collectively by way of hearings of its committees. It was in that sense that Woodrow Wilson used “informing” in a statement quoted by respondents. In reality, Wilson’s statement related to congressional efforts to learn of the activities of the Executive Branch and administrative agencies; he did not include wide ranging inquiries by individual Members on subjects of their choice. Moreover, Wilson’s statement itself clearly implies a distinction between the informing function and the legislative function:

“Unless Congress have and use every means of acquainting itself with the acts and the disposition of the administrative agents of the government, the country must be helpless to learn how it is being served; and unless Congress both scrutinize these things and sift them by every form of discussion, the country must remain in embarrassing, crippling ignorance of the very affairs which it is most important that it should understand and direct. The informing function of Congress should be preferred even to its legislative function.... [T]he only really self-governing people is that people which discusses and interrogates its administration.”

It is in this narrower Wilsonian sense that this Court has employed “informing” in previous cases holding that congressional efforts to inform itself through committee hearings are part of the legislative function.

The other sense of the term, and the one relied upon by respondents, perceives it to be the duty of Members to tell the public about their activities. Valuable and desirable as it may be in broad terms, the transmittal of such information by individual Members in order to inform the public and other Members is not a part of the legislative function or the deliberations that make up the legislative process. As a result, transmittal of such information by press releases and newsletters is not protected by the Speech or Debate Clause.

Doe v. McMillan (1973), is not to the contrary. It dealt only with reports from congressional committees, and held that Members of Congress could not be held liable for voting to publish a report. Voting and preparing committee reports are the individual and collective expressions of opinion within the legislative process. As such, they are protected by the Speech or Debate Clause. Newsletters and press releases, by contrast, are primarily means of informing those outside the legislative forum; they represent the views and will of a single Member. It does not disparage either their value or their importance to hold that they are not entitled to the protection of the Speech or Debate Clause....

We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case to the Court of Appeals for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. Reversed and remanded.