Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123 (1951), was a United States Supreme Court case that held that groups could sue to challenge their inclusion on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations. The decision was fractured on its reasoning, with each of the Justices in the majority writing separate opinions.
Background
The Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee was formed by Lincoln Battalion veterans of the Spanish Civil War to provide aid to the Spanish Loyalists who were refugees from Francoist Spain. In 1942, it was licensed to do so in Vichy France by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's wartime administration and was then granted tax-exempt status. Dorothy Parker took charge of fundraising for the committee, which soon attracted the support of Leonard Bernstein, Albert Einstein, Lillian Hellman, Langston Hughes, and Orson Welles.
In 1946, Dr. Edward K. Barsky and the rest of the leadership of the committee were held in contempt of Congress after they on principle refused to comply with subpoenas from the House Un-American Activities Committee. On March 21, 1947, President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9835, which led Attorney General Tom C. Clark to publish the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations. Circuit Judge James McPherson Proctor, joined by Judge Bennett Champ Clark, affirmed the district court, while held that the Anti-Fascists had not been injured by being included on the list of subversives. In a lengthy dissent, Circuit Judge Henry White Edgerton wrote that the listing was "contrary to fact, unauthorized and unconstitutional."
Supreme Court
Oral argument and consideration
In May 1950, a divided Supreme Court upheld the contempt convictions of the anti-fascists' leadership. The Supreme Court then granted the listed subversive organizations' petitions for writs of certiorari. Even after review had been granted, the Justices ignored arguments from their clerks to avoid hearing the case on the basis of the newly passed McCarran Internal Security Act. Justice Tom C. Clark, who had initiated the list of subversives when he was the Attorney General, recused himself from the case. The Court failed to produce a majority opinion and instead offered six different opinions totaling 70 pages. After a heavily publicized trial, the New York State Insurance Department ordered the IWO liquidated in 1954 and cited "political hazard."
In April 1954, U.S. District Judge James Ward Morris dismissed the anti-fascists lawsuit again and now found that the new Executive Order 10450 had made the controversy moot. In August 1954, the D.C. Circuit reversed that judgment and gave the groups the opportunity to pursue administrative review. In November 1955, District Judge Luther Youngdahl dismissed the group's lawsuit again. In February 1957, the D.C. Circuit affirmed by reasoning the group had failed to adequately seek administrative review.
After the Court's second decision in Communist Party v. Subversive Activities Control Board (1961), the Soviet Friendship Council continued pursuing its challenge to the Attorney General's listing. In May 1963, it ultimately succeeded, when the D.C. Circuit concluded that the evidence proffered against the council had been "negligible."