Supreme Court Affirms Ban on Aiding Groups Tied to Terror

Supreme Court Affirms Ban on Aiding Groups Tied to Terror
By ADAM LIPTAK
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/us/politics/22scotus.html?ref=global-home


WASHINGTON — Rejecting a First Amendment challenge, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld a federal law that bans providing “material support” to terrorist organizations.

The decision was the court’s first ruling on the free speech and association rights of American citizens in the context of terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority in the 6-to-3 decision, said the law’s prohibition on providing some forms of intangible assistance to groups said by the State Department to engage in terrorism did not violate the First Amendment.

“At bottom, plaintiffs simply disagree with the considered judgment of Congress and the executive that providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization — even seemingly benign support — bolsters the terrorist activities of that organization,” the chief justice wrote. He was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

“Given the sensitive interests in national security and foreign affairs at stake,” Chief Justice Roberts continued, “the political branches have adequately substantiated their determination that, to serve the government’s interest in preventing terrorism, it was necessary to prohibit providing material support in the form of training, expert advice, personnel, and services to foreign terrorist groups, even if the supporters meant to promote only the groups’ nonviolent ends.”

Justice Stephen G. Breyer took the unusual step of summarizing his dissent from the bench. He wrote that the majority had been too credulous in accepting the government’s argument that national security concerns required restrictions on the challengers’ speech, and “failed to insist upon specific evidence, rather than general assertion.”

In his dissent, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Breyer concluded that the majority “deprives the individuals before us of the protection the First Amendment demands.”

The law was challenged by Ralph D. Fertig, a civil rights activist who said he wanted to help a militant Kurdish group in Turkey find peaceful ways to achieve its goals.

In 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright designated some 30 groups under the law, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Khmer Rouge and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. The United States says the Kurdish group, sometimes called the P.K.K., has engaged in widespread terrorist activities, including bombings and kidnappings, and “has waged a violent insurgency that has claimed over 22,000 lives.”

Since 2001, the government says, it has prosecuted about 150 defendants for violating the material-support law, obtaining roughly 75 convictions.

The federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled in 2007 that bans on training, service and some kinds of expert advice were unconstitutionally vague. But it upheld the bans on personnel and expert advice derived from scientific or technical knowledge.

The cases are Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, No. 08-1498, and Humanitarian Law Project v. Holder, No. 09-89.