NAACP v. Button

NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415 (1963), is a ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that the reservation of jurisdiction by a federal district court did not bar the U.S. Supreme Court from reviewing a state court's ruling, and also overturned certain laws enacted by the state of Virginia in 1956 as part of the Stanley Plan and massive resistance, as violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The statutes struck down by the Supreme Court (and one overturned by the Virginia Supreme Court after the 1959 remand in Harrison v. NAACP) had expanded the definitions of the traditional common law crimes of champerty and maintenance, as well as barratry, and had been targeted at the NAACP and its civil rights litigation.

After the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education, especially the 1955 decision known as Brown II, which ordered federal courts to enforce the 1954 decision "with all deliberate speed", U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd declared a policy of Massive Resistance to desegregation of Virginia's schools. Meanwhile, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was filing legal challenges to segregation in various Virginia schools. Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County had been filed in 1951, and became a companion case decided along with Brown. In January 1956, Virginia voters called for a limited state constitutional convention to allow tuition grants, which could be used at segregation academies and thus undercut the desegregation required by Brown. That constitutional convention was held in March 1956.

On September 29, 1956, the Virginia General Assembly met in a special session and passed more than two dozen statutes concerning segregation and the schools, which Governor Thomas B. Stanley soon signed into law and which became known as the "Stanley Plan." Some concerned tuition grants. Seven of the new statutes concerned NAACP practices in Virginia, and of those, five regulated lawyers: expanding the definitions of the common law legal ethical violations called barratry, champerty, maintenance, running and capping. Barratry is the "stirring up" of litigation by inducing individuals or organizations to sue when they otherwise would not. Champerty occurs when a third party (not the plaintiff or nor their legal counsel) assumes the risks and financial costs of a lawsuit in return for a portion of the monetary award. Maintenance occurs when a third party supports or promotes a litigant's suit to prolong litigation when the parties would otherwise have brought an end to litigation or settled the suit. The bills were specifically aimed at curbing the NAACP, which many segregationists believed was "stirring up" integration lawsuits against the Commonwealth. By 1956, the NAACP had filed fifteen desegregation petitions with local school boards.

The new laws also collectively required annual filing of financial reports and membership lists for any group that promotes or opposes state legislation aimed at (1) any race, (2) any organization attempting to influence public opinion on behalf of any race, or (3) any group raising funds to employ legal counsel in connection with racial litigation. Virginia's legislature also established two new legislative committees composed of lawyer members of both houses, which investigated NAACP practices both in light of and using the new statutes. One chaired by John B. Boatwright became known as the "Boatwright Committee"; another chaired by Byrd's son-in-law James M. Thomson became known as the "Thomson Committee". This was similar to the approach taken by several other southern states, decided as Sheldon v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479 (1958) (overturning Arkansas laws requiring public schoolteachers to disclose every organization to which they belonged or made donations to during the previous five years; and prohibiting NAACP members from holding any state job), NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449 (1958) (overturning an Alabama attorney general Patterson's attempt to enjoin all NAACP activities in the state) and Louisiana ex rel. Gremillion v. NAACP, 366 U.S. 293 (1961) (overturning Louisiana's attempt to prevent NAACP from doing business in the state).

The Virginia NAACP soon filed suit in federal court in 1956 against the five new legal ethics laws, and also supported Quaker printer David Scull when he was subjected to aggressive testimony by the Thomson Committee. Both cases reached the U.S. Supreme Court around the same time, and were argued after January 19, 1959 (Robert E. Lee's birthday, a holiday in Virginia), when both a three-judge federal panel in James v. Almond and the Virginia Supreme Court in Harrison v. Day invalidated many other provisions of the Stanley Plan. Then on May 4, 1959, the Supreme Court unanimously threw out the contempt conviction the Thomson Committee had obtained in Scull v. Virginia ex rel. Committee on Law Reform and Racial Activities.

The case that ultimately became this one had been filed by the NAACP against the Attorney General of Virginia (first J. Lindsay Almond then when he resigned to run for governor his interim successor Kenneth Cartwright Patty, and later other successors), to have the five barratry, champerty, maintenance, running and capping laws thrown out as an unconstitutional infringement of its members' rights under the 1st Amendment to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. The district court overturned three of the laws on constitutional grounds, and remanded the remaining two to state courts. The newly elected Attorney General, Albertis S. Harrison, Jr., appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, although he delegated the case to outside counsel David J. Mays who argued it on March 23 and 24, 1959, with future justice Thurgood Marshall arguing on behalf of the NAACP.

In Harrison v. NAACP, 360 U.S. 167 (June 8, 1959), the U.S. Supreme Court accepted Mays' arguments and held that the federal district court should have abstained from deciding the laws' constitutionality until state courts had had a reasonable chance to construe them.

The NAACP then pursued its suit in state court, suing Harrison and later substituting his successors as Virginia Attorney General (initially Frederick Gray then Robert Button, since Harrison resigned to run for governor, and was elected on the Democratic ticket with Button), in the Circuit Court of the City of Richmond to have the two remaining statutes overturned on constitutional grounds. During the three day trial, the NAACP (represented by Robert L. Carter of New York and Oliver W. Hill of Richmond) called its Executive Secretary W. Lester Banks to establish the harms the new provisions had caused, as membership dropped significantly even though the NAACP refused to disclose its membership lists as required by the new laws. Attorneys representing Virginia's attorney general questioned several Virginia attorneys who handled NAACP cases, as well as more than a dozen plaintiffs in such actions.