Engblom v. Carey, 677 F.2d 957 (2d Cir. 1982), is a landmark decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit interpreting the Third Amendment to the United States Constitution for the first time. It is notable for being one of the few significant court decisions to interpret the Third Amendment prohibition of quartering soldiers in homes during peacetime without the owner's consent.[1] The dispute covered the housing of the National Guard in worker dorms while they were acting as prison workers during a strike.
In a 2–1 decision by a three-judge panel, Engblom articulated three principles that apply to challenges under the Third Amendment. First: national guardsmen are considered soldiers for the purposes of a Third Amendment claim. This holding extends Third Amendment protections beyond federal armed forces, such as the army, to include the state-regulated militia. Second: the Third Amendment is incorporated and thus applies to individual states as well as the federal government. This holding extends Third Amendment protections beyond federal use of the National Guard to include state use of the National Guard. Third: the protections of the Third Amendment apply beyond fee simple homeownership. This holding interprets the Third Amendment as protecting those who have general control over access to a property. The panel determined that the correctional officers were tenants (having such general control) and remanded the case back to the district court. However, the lower court ultimately ruled in the defendants' favor based on qualified immunity.
The Third Amendment remains one of the least cited sections of the Constitution in United States case law, and it has never provided the primary basis for a Supreme Court decision.[2][3] As a decision of the Second Circuit, Engblom v. Carey is only binding precedent in New York, Vermont, and Connecticut, but its general implications have been considered by legal scholars.
Legal background
No Freeman shall be compelled to receive any Mariners or Soldiers into his house and there suffer them to Sojourner, against their wills provided. Always it be not in time of Actual War within this province.
The Third Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the quartering of soldiers in homes. While the relevance of the Third Amendment in modern times is limited, at the time the Constitution was ratified, quartering of soldiers was a major issue. In the colonial period, whenever Britain would launch a military operation in North America, their soldiers needed to be housed. This burden fell to the American colonies, and often soldiers would be quartered in private homes. This caused tension as early as 1676, and in 1683 the New York Assembly's Charter of Liberties and Privileges responded by prohibiting the quartering of soldiers in private homes during peacetime. The problem continued during the French and Indian War, and after its conclusion, the British parliament passed the Quartering Acts which shifted onto the colonies the burden of quartering a standing army in peacetime. Ultimately, the quartering of troops proved too onerous, and in the Declaration of Independence, the revolutionaries cited the quartering of troops as a reason for independence. By the end of the Revolutionary War, three states had passed declarations of rights that prohibited the quartering of troops like New York's 1683 resolution.[4]
During the ratification of the Constitution, the lack of a bill of rights—including the right to be free from quartering soldiers—was a point of contention between federalists and anti-federalists. Federalists favored the quartering prohibitions in state constitutions, while anti-federalists proposed a stronger, nation-wide prohibition. From this debate, three versions of the third amendment were proposed. The first—proposed by the Maryland and New Hampshire delegations—prohibited quartering in homes during times of peace. The Virginia delegation proposed a second version which included language which clarified the right in times of war: soldiers would only be quartered "as the law directs".[5] This posed an interpretive issue, as peace and war may not cover times of unrest when the military is active but no declaration of war has been made. The version proposed by James Madison forbade forced quartering during times of peace but addressed the interpretive issues of the Virginia amendment by forbidding quartering in homes when not at peace, except as provided by law. However Madison's proposal was rejected, and with minor alterations, Virginia's proposal was ratified as the text of the Third Amendment:[6]
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Since its ratification, the Third Amendment has rarely been litigated, and no Supreme Court case has relied on the Third Amendment as the basis for a decision. As such, the Third Amendment has not been found to apply to the state—a principle known as the incorporation doctrine. Before the 1920s, the Bill of Rights was considered to only apply to the federal government, not actions by state governments. However, in the 1920s, the federal judiciary began to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment as preventing individual states from violating federally protected rights.[7] Under the incorporation doctrine, Supreme Court cases found that individual amendments applied to the states. The few times the Supreme Court has cited the Third Amendment in decisions, it was in consideration of general constitutional principles—particularly privacy rights. Chief among them is the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) which articulated a constitutionally protected right to privacy. Griswold found this right in multiple amendments, but included the Third Amendment among its examples of rights which imply overarching privacy right.[8] However the Supreme Court has not taken up the question of whether the Third Amendment is incorporated. Because the National Guard is a state-run militia, if the Third Amendment were not incorporated, then its protections would not apply to quartering of state-controlled National Guard troops.[9][10]
Prior history
Original dispute
Following the September 1971 Attica prison uprising, New York State instituted several reforms to address due process rights of prisoners, increase racial integration of prison staff, and improve training and address racism among corrections officers.[11] As a result of these reforms, discontent grew among New York State corrections officers who felt their status and authority diminished.[12] In December 1978, the union representing the officers began negotiating a new contract with the state. Having recently negotiated a seven-percent wage increase with the civil servant union, the state offered a seven-percent wage increase to the officers. The state also sought to reduce the seniority rights of officers[lower-alpha 1] and change the structure of the officers' workers' compensation leave.[13] To counter the loss of status and authority, the union rejected the changes in seniority and leave policy and pushed for an increase of more than seven percent.[13] After four months of negotiation, the union and state declared an impasse in March 1979. After mediation with the Public Employees Relation Board, the state offered a contract with a seven-percent pay increase and a clause to reopen the negotiation of these points in the second year. The union negotiating team accepted these terms, but it was not ratified by the union membership.[14] On April 18, 1979, nearly all of the 7,000 officers of the New York State Department of Corrections went on strike.[15]
Plaintiff-appellants Marianne Engblom and Charles Palmer were corrections officers at Mid-Orange Correctional Facility in Warwick, New York. Engblom and Palmer lived in the Upper Staff Building—a residence for staff located about a quarter-mile (0.40km) from the prison. The tenancy was regulated by the Department of Corrections, and tenants were required to pay non-tax-deductible rent, provide their own furnishings, and were entitled to repairs and maintenance "following normal 'landlord-tenant responsibilities and practices".[16] During the strike, New York Governor Hugh Carey activated the National Guard to maintain the prisons. The Guard arrived at Mid-Orange on April 19, 1979, and reached a total force of 260. These Guardsmen were housed in the school and administrative buildings before April 25, at which point the striking officer-tenants were evicted and Guardsmen stationed in those rooms. Both Engblom and Palmer were evicted in this manner.[17][lower-alpha 2]
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2020)
The District Court ruled in favor of the defendants and dismissed the suit. Petitioners then appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Decision
Rendered on May 3, 1982, the decision was written for the court by Judge Walter R. Mansfield. It began by affirming the District Court's dismissal of the Due Process claim. It then turned to petitioners' Third Amendment claim.
Because of the lack of any prior Third Amendment jurisprudence, this decision established three important holdings not previously articulated: (1) that the National Guardsmen qualify as soldiers under the Third Amendment; (2) that the Third Amendment applies to state as well as federal authorities, i.e., is incorporated against the states; and (3), that the protection of the Third Amendment extends beyond homeowners, that is, those only with a fee simple arrangement, but includes anyone who, within their residence, has a legal expectation of privacy and a legal right to exclude others from entering into the premises.[19][20] The majority held that the correctional officers' occupancy in the rooms was covered under the legal rules of "tenancy" and was therefore protected under the Third Amendment.
The case was remanded to District Court where it was decided in the defendants' favor, due to the principle that, as agents of the state, the defendants were covered by a qualified immunity unless they knowingly acted illegally.[21] In the absence of any previous precedent on this issue, the standard of knowing illegality was not met.[22][23]
Concurring in part and dissenting in part, Judge Irving R. Kaufman maintained that the officers' occupancy was covered under the lesser protection of employee housing and that the special circumstances of residency in prison grounds superseded Third Amendment protection. Kaufman deemed the application of the Third Amendment to be "far-fetched".[24]
Footnotes
Notes
↑ Officers with longer tenure had a preference for less hazardous assignments, but the state wanted greater flexibility in assigning female guards and positions in frequent contact with prisoners.
↑ Plaintiffs and defendants agree that Palmer both participated in the strike and had his room quarter National Guardsmen. Engblom testifies that she did not participate in the strike and that her room was occupied by Guardsmen, but the defendants dispute both points.[17]
Congressional Research Service (2012). "Third Amendment: In General". Constitution Annotated. Archived from the original on May 21, 2021. Retrieved June 9, 2020.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
Zimmer, Lynn; Jacobs, James (1981). "Challenging the Taylor Law: Prison Guards on Strike". ILR Review. 34 (4): 531–544. doi:10.2307/2522476. JSTOR2522476.
In the United States, the Miranda warning is a type of notification customarily given by police to criminal suspects in police custody advising them of their right to silence and, in effect, protection from self-incrimination; that is, their right to refuse to answer questions or provide information to law enforcement or other officials. Named for the U.S. Supreme Court's 1966 decision Miranda v. Arizona, these rights are often referred to as Miranda rights. The purpose of such notification is to preserve the admissibility of their statements made during custodial interrogation in later criminal proceedings. The idea came from law professor Yale Kamisar, who subsequently was dubbed "the father of Miranda."
The Third Amendment to the United States Constitution places restrictions on the quartering of soldiers in private homes without the owner's consent, forbidding the practice in peacetime. The amendment is a response to the Quartering Acts passed by the Parliament of Great Britain during the buildup to the American Revolutionary War, which had allowed the British Army to lodge soldiers in public buildings.
Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and sets requirements for issuing warrants: warrants must be issued by a judge or magistrate, justified by probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and must particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects against imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishments. This amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the United States Bill of Rights. The amendment serves as a limitation upon the state or federal government to impose unduly harsh penalties on criminal defendants before and after a conviction. This limitation applies equally to the price for obtaining pretrial release and the punishment for crime after conviction. The phrases in this amendment originated in the English Bill of Rights of 1689.
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects the liberty of married couples to use contraceptives without government restriction. The case involved a Connecticut "Comstock law" that prohibited any person from using "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception". The court held that the statute was unconstitutional, and that its effect was "to deny disadvantaged citizens ... access to medical assistance and up-to-date information in respect to proper methods of birth control." By a vote of 7–2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the "right to marital privacy", establishing the basis for the right to privacy with respect to intimate practices. This and other cases view the right to privacy as "protected from governmental intrusion".
The Quartering Acts were two or more Acts of British Parliament requiring local governments of Britain's North American colonies to provide the British soldiers with housing and food. Each of the Quartering Acts was an amendment to the Mutiny Act and required annual renewal by Parliament. They were originally intended as a response to issues that arose during the French and Indian War and soon became a source of tensions between the inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies and the government in London. These tensions would later lead toward the American Revolution.
In United States constitutional law, incorporation is the doctrine by which portions of the Bill of Rights have been made applicable to the states. When the Bill of Rights was ratified, the courts held that its protections extended only to the actions of the federal government and that the Bill of Rights did not place limitations on the authority of the state and local governments. However, the post–Civil War era, beginning in 1865 with the Thirteenth Amendment, which declared the abolition of slavery, gave rise to the incorporation of other amendments, applying more rights to the states and people over time. Gradually, various portions of the Bill of Rights have been held to be applicable to state and local governments by incorporation via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868.
Powell v. State of Georgia, S98A0755, 270 Ga. 327, 510 S.E. 2d 18 (1998), was a decision of the Supreme Court of Georgia in the U.S. state of Georgia that overturned its law against sodomy within the state. The Court ruled that the Georgia Constitution granted a right to privacy, and that outlawing oral or anal sex between consenting adults was a violation of the state constitution, thus deeming it "unconstitutional".
Mid-Orange Correctional Facility was an all-male, medium security prison located in the town of Warwick, New York. It closed in 2011.
Gates v. Collier, 501 F.2d 1291, was a landmark decision of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that brought an end to the trusty system as well as flagrant inmate abuse at Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm, in Sunflower County, Mississippi. It was the first case in a body of law developed in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals holding that a variety of forms of corporal punishment against prisoners constituted cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of Eighth Amendment rights. This case was also the first broad-scale intervention by a court in the supervision of prison practices.
Inevitable discovery is a doctrine in United States criminal procedure that permits admission of evidence that was obtained through illegal means if it would "inevitably" have been obtained regardless of the illegality. It is one of several exceptions to the exclusionary rule, or the related fruit-of-the-poisonous tree doctrine, which prevent evidence collected in violation of a defendant's constitutional rights from being admitted in court.
The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution creates several constitutional rights, limiting governmental powers focusing on criminal procedures. It was ratified, along with nine other articles, in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights.
United States v. White, 401 U.S. 745 (1971), was a United States Supreme Court decision which held that recording conversations using concealed radio transmitters worn by informants does not violate the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and thus does not require a warrant.
Mancusi v. DeForte, 392 U.S. 364 (1968), is a decision of the United States Supreme Court on privacy and the Fourth Amendment. It originated in the lower courts as United States ex rel. Frank DeForte, appellant v. Vincent R. Mancusi, Warden of Attica Prison, Attica, New York, appellee, a petition for a writ of habeas corpus by a prisoner who had exhausted all his state appeals. By a 6–3 margin the Court affirmed the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit's reversal of a district court denial of the petition.
United States v. Graham, 846 F. Supp. 2d 384, was a Maryland District Court case in which the Court held that historical cell site location data is not protected by the Fourth Amendment. Reacting to the precedent established by the recent Supreme Court case United States v. Jones in conjunction with the application of the third party doctrine, Judge Richard D. Bennett found that "information voluntarily disclosed to a third party ceases to enjoy Fourth Amendment protection" because that information no longer belongs to the consumer, but rather to the telecommunications company that handles the transmissions records. The historical cell site location data is then not subject to the privacy protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment standard of probable cause, but rather to the Stored Communications Act, which governs the voluntary or compelled disclosure of stored electronic communications records.
Soldal v. Cook County, 506 U.S. 56 (1992), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that a seizure of property like that which occurs during an eviction, even absent a search or an arrest, implicates the Fourth Amendment. The Court also held that the Amendment protects property as well as privacy interests, in both criminal as well as civil contexts. Finally, saying that "certain wrongs affect more than a single right", the Court left open the possibility that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections against deprivation of property without due process of law may also be implicated.
In the United States of America, prisoner law refers to litigation that determines the freedoms that a prisoner either holds or loses when they are incarcerated. This includes the end of the hands-off doctrine and the ability to be protected by the first, fourth, eighth, and fourteenth amendments. Furthermore, prisoner laws regulate the ways in which individuals experience privacy in a prison setting. Important case laws have arisen through time that have either hindered or protected prisoners from certain rights. Some include the Hudson v. Palmer case which held that prisoners were not protected against searches and seizures of their prison cells and Wolff v. McDonnell that stated that prisoners shall remain entitled to some of their constitutional rights even after being incarcerated.
Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517 (1984), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that prison inmates have no privacy rights in their cells protected by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court also held that an intentional deprivation of property by a state employee "does not violate the Fourteenth Amendment if an adequate postdeprivation state remedy exists," extending Parratt v. Taylor to intentional torts.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
