Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade v. The Attorney General of the United States

409 F.2d 1139

• Court: Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
• Decided: March 14, 1969
• Docket: 21549_1
• Status: Published

Opinions

PRETTYMAN, Senior Circuit Judge:

Appellants sought by court order to be’ removed from the Attorney General’s list kept by him pursuant to Executive Order No. 10450. The District Court on cross-motions for summary judgment granted the appellees’ motion and denied that of appellants. This appeal followed. We recently had a similar problem in Industrial Workers of the World v. Clark.¹ There we remanded for hearing on certain phases of the case. We think the same reasoning applies here; we apply the same rule and will enter a similar order.

In the IWW opinion we pointed out that in Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. Brownell² the court held an extended time to be due an organization which had timely made plain its opposition to being put on the Attorney General’s list. The point is acutely applicable here. Records ³ show that the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade struggled constantly and vigorously for years against classification as a Communist-front organization. That its efforts were cast in proceedings concerning registration under a statutory board rather than listing under an executive order seems signally unimportant in the present posture of the controversy. The questions were basically the same, the purposes were the same, and the effects were substantially the same. First Amendment rights were involved. Moreover it seems clear that the abandonment by mutual agreement of the effort to achieve registration was a material development in the liability to listing under the Executive Order. It should be so treated under the current regulations.

Order vacated and cause remanded.

1 . 128 U.S.App.D.C. 165, 385 F.2d 687 (1967), cert. denied 390 U.S. 948, 88 S.Ct. 1036, 19 L.Ed.2d 1138 (1968).

2 . 94 U.S.App.D.C. 341, 215 F.2d 870 (1954).

3 . The Veterans first appeared before the Subversive Activities Control Board on November 16, 1953, to contest a registration petition by the Attorney General. Attorney General v. Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, SACB, Docket 108-53, Dec. 21, 1965. The Veterans were continuously before the Board or the courts until April 20, 1966, when, on joint motion of the Veterans and the Attorney General, the petition was vacated. See Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade v. S. A. C. B., 380 U.S. 513, 85 S.Ct. 1153, 14 L.Ed.2d 46 (1965), vacating 117 U.S.App.D.C. 404, 331 F.2d 64 (1963).

2 . Compare Executive Order No. 10450, discussed in Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. Brownell, 94 U.S.App.D.C. 341, 215 F.2d 870 (1954).