Bradfield v. Roberts

175 U.S. 291

Case Year: 1899

Case Ruling: 9-0, Affirmed

Opinion Justice: Peckham

FACTS

Under the authority of a law passed by Congress, in 1897 the Commissioners of the District of Columbia entered into an agreement with Providence Hospital in Washington, D.C., to fund the construction of a new building or ward on the hospital grounds. The new facility would treat patients with communicable diseases. Two-thirds of its beds would be reserved for indigent patients sent to the hospital by the city, and the city would subsidize the care given to these patients, subject to congressional appropriations.

Providence Hospital was owned and operated by the Sisters of Mercy, an order of Roman Catholic nuns. Bradfield and other District of Columbia taxpayers and residents challenged the constitutionality of the agreement on the grounds that it violated the Establishment Clause and asked that the District be enjoined from transferring any federal funds to the hospital. The district court ruled in favor of the challengers, but the court of appeals reversed.

MR. JUSTICE PECKHAM, AFTER STATING THE FACTS, DELIVERED THE OPINION OF THE COURT.

...[W]e come to the main question as to the validity of the agreement between the commissioners of the District and the directors of the hospital, founded upon the appropriation contained in the act of Congress, the contention being that the agreement if carried out would result in an appropriation by Congress of money to a religious society, thereby violating the constitutional provision which forbids Congress from passing any law respecting an establishment of religion. Art. 1 of the Amendments to Constitution....

The above-mentioned allegations in the complainant's bill do not change the legal character of the corporation or render it on that account a religious or sectarian body. Assuming that the hospital is a private eleemosynary corporation, the fact that its members, according to the belief of the complainant, are members of a monastic order or sisterhood of the Roman Catholic, and the further fact that the hospital is conducted under the auspices of said church, are wholly immaterial, as is also the allegation regarding the title to its property. The statute provides as to its property and makes no provision for its being held by anyone other than itself. The facts above stated do not in the least change the legal character of the hospital, or make a religious corporation out of a purely secular one as constituted by the law of its being. Whether the individuals who compose the corporation under its charter happen to be all Roman Catholics, or all Methodists, or Presbyterians, or Unitarians, or members of any other religious organization, or of no organization at all, is of not the slightest consequence with reference to the law of its incorporation, nor can the individual beliefs upon religious matters of the various incorporators be inquired into. Nor is it material that the hospital may be conducted under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Church. To be conducted under the auspices is to be conducted under the influence or patronage of that church. The meaning of the allegation is that the church exercises great and perhaps controlling influence over the management of the hospital. It must, however, be managed pursuant to the law of its being. That the influence of any particular church may be powerful over the members of a nonsectarian and secular corporation, incorporated for a certain defined purpose and with clearly stated powers, is surely not sufficient to convert such a corporation into a religious or sectarian body. That fact does not alter the legal character of the corporation, which is incorporated under an act of Congress, and its powers, duties, and character are to be solely measured by the charter under which it alone has any legal existence. There is no allegation that its hospital work is confined to members of that church or that in its management the hospital has been conducted so as to violate its charter in the smallest degree. It is simply the case of a secular corporation being managed by people who hold to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, but who nevertheless are managing the corporation according to the law under which it exists. The charter itself does not limit the exercise of its corporate powers to the members of any particular religious denomination, but, on the contrary, those powers are to be exercised in favor of anyone seeking the ministrations of that kind of an institution. All that can be said of the corporation itself is that it has been incorporated by an act of Congress, and for its legal powers and duties that act must be exclusively referred to. As stated in the opinion of the court of appeals, this corporation 'is not declared the trustee of any church or religious society. Its property is to be acquired in its own name and for its own purposes; that property and its business are to be managed in its own way, subject to no visitation, supervision, or control by any ecclesiastical authority whatever, but only to that of the government which created it. In respect, then, of its creation, organization, management, and ownership of property it is an ordinary private corporation whose rights are determinable by the law of the land, and the religious opinions of whose members are not subjects of inquiry.'

It is not contended that Congress has no power in the District to appropriate money for the purpose expressed in the appropriation, and it is not doubted that it has power to authorize the commissioners of the District of Columbia to enter into a contract with the trustees of an incorporated hospital for the purposes mentioned in the agreement in this case, and the only objection set up is the alleged 'sectarian character of the hospital and the specific and limited object of its creation.'...

The act of Congress, however, shows there is nothing sectarian in the corporation, and 'the specific and limited object of its creation' is the opening and keeping a hospital in the city of Washington for the care of such sick and invalid persons as may place themselves under the treatment and care of the corporation. To make the agreement was within the discretion of the commissioners, and was a fair exercise thereof.

The right reserved in the third section of the charter to amend, alter, or repeal the act leaves full power in Congress to remedy any abuse of the charter privileges.

Without adverting to any other objections to the maintenance of this suit, it is plain that complainant wholly fails to set forth a cause of action, and the bill was properly dismissed by the Court of Appeals, and its decree will therefore be affirmed.