American Communications Association v. Douds 339 U.S. 382 (1950)
AMERICAN COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION v. DOUDS 339 U.S. 382 (1950)
In one of the first cases in which the Supreme Court gave constitutional approval to the anticommunist crusade, Chief Justice fred vinson upheld provisions of the taft-hartley act denying National Labor Relations Board services to unions whose officers had not filed affidavits stating they were not members of the Communist party and that they did "not believe in … the overthrow of the … Government by force or by any illegal or unconstitutional methods." The opinion of the Court became a model for denying first amendment protections to alleged subversives through the use of a balancing technique. The Court argued that the statute touched only a few persons and that the only effect even upon them was that they must relinquish their union offices, not their beliefs. It argued that banning communists from NLRB-supported labor negotiations was reasonably related to the legitimate congressional end of protecting interstate commerce, given the nature of the Communist party and the threat of political strikes. The Court concluded that "Considering the circumstances … the statute … did not unduly infringe freedoms protected by the First Amendment."
Martin Shapiro
(1986)