post-factum

In May 1930 the Van Sweringen Corporation issued $30,000,000 in notes under an indenture naming Guaranty Trust Co. of New York as trustee with power to enforce noteholders' rights. In October 1930 Guaranty and other banks advanced large sums to companies affiliated with the Corporation and controlled by the Van Sweringens. When the Corporation could not meet its obligations, Guaranty participated in an exchange plan under which noteholders could surrender their notes for cash equal to 50 percent of face value plus twenty shares of Van Sweringen stock per $1,000 note; the offer remained open until December 15, 1931. In 1934 respondent York received $6,000 of the notes as a gift from a donor who had not accepted the exchange offer. In April 1940 three accepting noteholders filed the Hackner suit in federal court charging Guaranty with fraud and misrepresentation in connection with the exchange. York's motion to intervene was denied, and summary judgment for Guaranty was affirmed on appeal. On January 22, 1942, after her exclusion from the Hackner litigation, York filed the present class action in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of non-accepting noteholders. The complaint, resting exclusively on diversity of citizenship, alleged that Guaranty had breached its trust by failing to protect noteholders' interests when it assented to the exchange offer and by failing to disclose its own self-interest. The district court granted Guaranty's motion for summary judgment on the authority of the Hackner decision. The Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, holding that a federal court sitting in equity is not required to apply the New York statute of limitations that would govern an identical suit in the New York state courts. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Appellants, welfare recipients residing in the State of Connecticut, brought this action in the Federal District Court for the District of Connecticut on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated. The action concerned state procedures for the commencement of litigation, including requirements for payment of court fees and costs for service of process, in connection with efforts to bring divorce actions. The average cost to a litigant for bringing an action for divorce is sixty dollars. Section 52-259 of the Connecticut General Statutes provides that there shall be paid to the clerks of the supreme court or the superior court, for entering each civil cause, forty-five dollars. An additional fifteen dollars is usually required for the service of process by the sheriff. There is no dispute as to the inability of the named appellants to pay either the court fees required by statute or the cost incurred for the service of process. The affidavits in the record establish that appellants' welfare income in each instance barely suffices to meet the costs of the daily essentials of life. It includes no allotment that could be budgeted for the expense to gain access to the courts. The clerk of the Superior Court returned their papers on the ground that he could not accept them until an entry fee had been paid. Subsequent efforts to obtain a judicial waiver of the fee requirement and to have the court effect service of process were to no avail. Appellants sought a judgment declaring that the fee requirements were unconstitutional as applied to them and an injunction ordering the appropriate officials to permit them to proceed with their divorce actions without payment of fees and costs. A three-judge court was convened pursuant to twenty-eight United States Code section 2281. On July sixteen, nineteen sixty-eight, that court issued its decision. The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction in nineteen sixty-nine. The case was heard at the nineteen sixty-nine term and thereafter was set for reargument at the present term.

Congress enacted the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. That statute authorized federal grants under Titles I and II to state and local educational agencies. Seven individuals who paid federal income taxes filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. They sued the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and the Commissioner of Education in their official capacities. The complaint alleged that federal funds appropriated under the Act were being disbursed with the consent and approval of the defendants. Those funds were being used to finance instruction in reading, arithmetic, and other subjects in religious schools and to purchase textbooks and instructional materials for use in such schools. The complaint attacked the specific criterion of 20 U.S.C. § 241e(a)(2) that to the extent consistent with the number of educationally deprived children in the school district of the local educational agency who are enrolled in private elementary and secondary schools, such agency has made provision for including special educational services and arrangements in which such children can participate. The plaintiffs alleged that these expenditures constituted compulsory taxation for religious purposes in violation of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment. They requested a declaratory judgment that the expenditures were unauthorized or alternatively that the Act was unconstitutional to that extent together with an injunction restraining approval of further expenditures for the challenged purposes. The defendants moved to dismiss the complaint on the ground that the plaintiffs lacked standing. A three-judge district court granted the motion and dismissed the complaint. The plaintiffs appealed directly to the Supreme Court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1253 and the Court noted probable jurisdiction.