Supreme Court Overturns 4 Yonkers Contempt Fines

A sharply divided Supreme Court today overturned contempt fines imposed against four Yonkers, N.Y., city councilmen who defied a federal judge’s order to adopt a housing desegregation plan.

By a 5-4 vote, the court said the judge who imposed the fines exceeded his authority.

Dissenting justices said today’s ruling, which follows a series of decisions last year that generally narrowed the scope of civil rights laws, could hamstring judges in dealing with officials who defy anti-discrimination court orders.

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, writing for the court, said U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand acted too hastily in holding the councilmen in contempt.

The judge should have waited to see whether a contempt order against the city that threatened to bankrupt it succeeded in forcing compliance with Sand’s desegregation order, Rehnquist said.

Only if that failed, the chief justice said, should contempt sanctions against the individual council members even have been considered.

“The imposition of sanctions on individual legislators is designed to cause them to vote, not with a view to the interest of their constituents or of the city, but with a view solely to their own personal interests,” Rehnquist said. “This sort of individual sanction effects a much greater perversion of the normal legislative process than does the imposition of sanctions on the city.”

Justice William J. Brennan, in a dissenting opinion, said the ruling may intimidate judges and give public officials more reason to defy reasonable court orders.

“I worry that the court’s message will have the unintended effect of emboldening recalcitrant officials continually to test the ultimate reach of the remedial authority of the federal courts,” he said.

The end result could be the delaying of civil rights progress, Brennan said.

He was joined by Justices Thurgood Marshall, Harry A. Blackmun and John Paul Stevens.

The Yonkers case attracted national attention in the summer of 1988 as the defiant councilmen were threatened with jail as well as fines, and the city faced possible bankruptcy for refusing to obey Sand’s orders.

Faced with massive layoffs of city workers, the City Council reversed itself and on Sept. 10, 1988, voted to comply with Sand’s order to build 1,000 low-cost homes to desegregate middle-class areas of the city just north of New York City.

But Yonkers still had to pay $819,000 in fines and the four councilmen $3,500 apiece for being in contempt of the judge’s order from the previous Aug. 2.