NCJ Number
141363
Journal
Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy Volume: 13 Issue: 3 Dated: (Summer 1990) Pages: 1049-1061
Date Published
1990
Length
13 pages
Annotation
In Spallone v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a district court abused its discretion when it imposed personal contempt sanctions on city council members who failed to comply with a consent decree without first imposing a fine on the city alone.
Abstract
The Spallone case grew out of a housing desegregation suit involving the city of Yonkers, New York. Council members refused to honor a lower court decree requiring implementation of a remedy. The narrow, fact-specific holding of the Supreme Court did not deny the propriety of imposing contempt sanctions on individual council members in all circumstances. Rather, the holding simply maintained that such fines were clearly improper unless and until prior fines on the city proved ineffective. The Supreme Court did not offer clear guidance to future litigants about either the extent of a court's pwoers to enforce prior orders or the immunity of local legislators who defy them. Because the Supreme Court found that the district court's order imposing individual fines represented an abuse of discretion under traditional equitable principles, it never reached the larger issue of whether legislative immunity applies to local legislators in general or the free speech issue raised by one council member. In the face of a valid court order entered against a city to desegregate its public housing, the Spallone case recognized little room for legislative discretion and implicitly even less for the doctrine of immunity. 72 footnotes