Also known as: seats of government · seat of the government · government seat · capital city
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A location designated as the principal site for the offices and functions of a government.
Serena Soto operates a business inside the boundaries of the federal district created for national governance. When a state attempts to enforce its tax laws on her property, a court holds that only Congress may legislate there. The ruling rests on the district's status as the seat of government.
Stephen Shaw serves as an elector in his state after a presidential election. He must prepare and send the certified vote list to the designated national location for counting. Failure to direct the documents to the seat of government would invalidate proper tabulation by Congress.
Santiago Sanchez travels to the federal capital to present a claim against the United States. State officials attempt to block his access under local law. The court recognizes his protected right to reach the seat of government for official business.
In 2008, the Supreme Court decided District of Columbia v. Heller. The Court held that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. It struck down a District of Columbia law that banned handgun possession in the home. Chicago and the village of Oak Park maintained laws effectively banning handgun possession by almost all private citizens. Chicago's Municipal Code required a valid registration certificate for any firearm. It prohibited registration of most handguns. Oak Park made it unlawful to possess any firearm, including pistols, revolvers, and other handguns. Otis McDonald, Adam Orlov, Colleen Lawson, and David Lawson were Chicago residents. Along with the National Rifle Association and two Oak Park residents, they filed federal suits challenging these ordinances after the Heller decision. Chicago enacted its handgun ban in 1982 to protect residents from loss of property and injury or death from firearms. The petitioners argued that the bans left them vulnerable to criminals. They pointed to Chicago Police Department statistics showing that the city's handgun murder rate had increased since the ban. Chicago residents faced one of the highest murder rates in the country along with elevated rates of other violent crimes. Several petitioners had personal experiences with threats and violence. Otis McDonald, in his late seventies and living in a high-crime neighborhood, faced violent threats from drug dealers because of his community activism with alternative policing strategies. Colleen Lawson's home had been targeted by burglars. She believed possessing a handgun would decrease her chances of serious injury or death if threatened again. The Chicago petitioners and two groups filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. They sought a declaration that the handgun ban and related ordinances violated the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. A separate action challenged the Oak Park law. A third action also challenged the Chicago ordinances. All three cases were assigned to the same district judge. The District Court rejected the claims. It noted that the Seventh Circuit had upheld a handgun ban a quarter century earlier. It also noted that Heller had refrained from addressing whether the Second Amendment applied to the States. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. It relied on three nineteenth-century cases—United States v. Cruikshank, Presser v. Illinois, and Miller v. Texas—that had been decided after the Slaughter-House Cases. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseSarah Sullivan challenges the placement of a new federal lending bureau outside the capital. The statute requires the bureau to operate at the seat of government within the Treasury Department. The court enforces the location requirement to maintain centralized federal administration.
A bill was filed in the United States District Court for the Western Division of the Western District of Missouri by a shareholder in the Kansas City Title & Trust Company to enjoin the Company, its officers, agents and employees from investing the funds of the Company in farm loan bonds issued by Federal Land Banks or Joint Stock Land Banks under authority of the Federal Farm Loan Act of July 17, 1916, c. 245, 39 Stat. 360, as amended January 18, 1918, c. 9, 40 Stat. 431. The bill avers that the Board of Directors of the Company are about to invest its funds in the bonds to the amount of $10,000 in each of the classes described, and will do so unless enjoined by the court in this action. The bill avers the formation of twelve Federal Land Banks, and twenty-one Joint Stock Land Banks under the provisions of the act. As to the Federal Land Banks, it is averred that each of them has loaned upon farm lands large amounts secured by mortgage, and, after depositing the same with the Farm Loan Registrar, has executed and issued collateral trust obligations called Farm Loan Bonds, secured by the depositing of an equivalent amount of farm mortgages and notes; and that each of said Federal Land Banks has sold, and is continuing to offer for sale, large amounts of said Farm Loan Bonds. The bill also avers that private persons in different parts of the United States have organized twenty-one Joint Stock Land Banks, the capital stock of which is subscribed for and owned by private persons. The Joint Stock Land Banks have deposited notes and mortgages with the Farm Loan Registrar and issued an equivalent amount of collateral trust obligations called Farm Loan Bonds. These bonds have been sold and will be continued to be offered for sale to investors in large amounts in the markets of the country. The bill provides specific amounts including that up to September 30, 1919, bonds have been issued under the act by the Federal Land Banks to the amount of $285,600,000, of which about $135,000,000 are held in the Treasury of the United States, and that bonds have been issued by Joint Stock Land Banks to the amount of $41,000,000, which are now in the hands of the public. The First Joint Stock Land Bank of Chicago and the Federal Land Bank of Wichita, Kansas, were allowed to intervene and became parties defendant to the suit. The Kansas City Title & Trust Company filed a motion to dismiss in the nature of a general demurrer, and upon hearing the District Court entered a decree dismissing the bill. From this decree appeal was taken to this court.
View caseScott Summers seeks to keep a handgun in his home within the federal district. Local officials enforce a ban that applies only inside the seat of government. The challenge tests whether the district's unique status permits such restrictions.
The District of Columbia generally prohibits the possession of handguns. It is a crime to carry an unregistered firearm, and the registration of handguns is prohibited. Wholly apart from that prohibition, no person may carry a handgun without a license, but the chief of police may issue licenses for one-year periods. District of Columbia law also requires residents to keep their lawfully owned firearms unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device unless they are located in a place of business or are being used for lawful recreational activities. Respondent Dick Heller is a D.C. special police officer authorized to carry a handgun while on duty at the Federal Judicial Center. He applied for a registration certificate for a handgun that he wished to keep at home, but the District refused. He thereafter filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia seeking, on Second Amendment grounds, to enjoin the city from enforcing the bar on the registration of handguns, the licensing requirement insofar as it prohibits the carrying of a firearm in the home without a license, and the trigger-lock requirement insofar as it prohibits the use of functional firearms within the home. The District Court dismissed respondent's complaint. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed, construing his complaint as seeking the right to render a firearm operable and carry it about his home in that condition only when necessary for self-defense. The Court of Appeals directed the District Court to enter summary judgment for respondent. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseSimone Sanders is convicted in state court for conduct tied to federal operations at the national capital. She argues the state lacks authority to adjudicate issues arising at the seat of government. The Supreme Court affirms state jurisdiction over the underlying dispute.
The present case arises from proceedings in the Quarterly Session Court for the Borough of Norfolk, in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The defendants there set up a defence under an act of Congress authorizing the Corporation of Washington to conduct lotteries. The Norfolk court overruled that defence. A writ of error was brought to the Supreme Court of the United States following an earlier decision denying a motion to dismiss for want of jurisdiction. The act in question provides that the Corporation shall have full power to authorize the drawing of lotteries for effecting any important improvement in the City. The ordinary funds or revenue thereof will not accomplish the improvement. The sum to be raised in each year shall not exceed ten thousand dollars. The object shall be submitted to and approved by the President of the United States. In the course of the argument, counsel read resolutions adopted by the Virginia legislature in January 1810. Those resolutions, passed unanimously by both the Senate and the House of Delegates, disapproved a proposed amendment to the Constitution for the appointment of an impartial tribunal to decide disputes between the state and federal judiciary. The resolutions instead affirmed the Supreme Court as the proper tribunal for such disputes and requested transmission of the resolutions to Congress and other states.
View caseElectors must send the lists to the seat of government for counting by the President of the Senate in the presence of both houses of Congress.
Congress may exercise exclusive legislation over the district not exceeding ten miles square that becomes the seat of government after cession by states and acceptance by Congress.
The Supreme Court must hold a term of court at the seat of government commencing on the first Monday in October each year.
Citizens have a protected right to come to the seat of government to assert claims, transact business, seek protection, and share in its offices and functions.
…made in imitation of butter was held not to infringe the Fourteenth Amendment in Powell v. Pennsylvania , 127 U.S. 678; Capital City Dairy Co. v. Ohio , 183 U.S. 238. Compare McCray v. United States , 195 U.S. 27, 63; Purity Extract & Tonic Co. v. Lynch , 226 U.S. 192. Appellee raises no valid objection to the present…