Landmark 1952 Youngstown case returns to national prominence

By Joe Gorman and Peter H. Milliken | news@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

History often repeats when you’re in a courtroom. There, legal arguments are often made using past cases to buttress your argument or shoot down your opponent.

That was true in a federal court hearing in Seattle on President Donald Trump’s seven-nation travel ban, where an attorney representing Trump used a decision from a 1952 U.S. Supreme Court case about Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. to back up her claim the ban should stand.

The 6-3 decision in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. et al. v. (Charles) Sawyer, U.S. secretary of commerce, blocked President Harry Truman’s bid to take over the nation’s steel mills during the Korean War.

The case involved Sheet & Tube and six other companies.

The court ruled Truman did not have the authority to seize the mills.

Justice Robert H. Jackson then wrote a concurring opinion, saying the president’s power when a particular action is forbidden by Congress is at its lowest point.

Justice Jackson wrote that a president’s authority is at its highest when he is acting in concert with Congress.

If Congress is silent on the issue, presidential power is at an intermediate level, Justice Jackson said.

Almost 65 years later, however, during last week’s Seattle hearing that generated a stay of the travel ban, Atty. Michelle Bennett of the Department of Justice said that, under the Youngstown case, the ban should be allowed to remain in effect because Trump was acting under congressional authority.

Dr. Paul A. Sracic, professor and chairman of Youngstown State University’s Department of Politics and International Relations, said the 1952 Youngstown steel decision is one of the landmark court decisions pertaining to presidential authority.

“It’s not at all surprising” the Justice Department is citing the 1952 case in the context of the travel ban, he said.

If arguments concerning stays proceed to arguments on the merits of the travel ban in federal appellate courts and in the U.S. Supreme Court, that 65-year-old case will be mentioned many more times, he said.

“Any time you have a case where a president has acted, and there’s a question about whether the president had the power to do what the president has done, you’re going to see Youngstown Sheet & Tube vs. Sawyer” being cited in legal arguments, Sracic said.

“The discussion of Justice Jackson’s concurring opinion is also what always takes place,” he added.

The congressional authority Bennett cited was a 1950s immigration law giving the president broad authority to indefinitely suspend or restrict the entry of aliens he finds detrimental to the United States.

A 1965 immigration law forbids discrimination because of race, sex, nationality or place of birth or residence in visa issuance.

That possible conflict of law may be played out in the courts as travel-ban arguments proceed, Sracic said.

As for the issue of religious discrimination that may pertain to Muslims, which has been raised in response to Trump’s campaign statements, Sracic said another legal question arises: “Does the protection against religious discrimination [in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] extend to people that aren’t on U.S. soil?”

He added, however, “There’s pretty good law that, once you’re here on our soil, you have First Amendment protections.”

Atty. David Betras, who also is Mahoning County Democratic Party chairman, said Trump is at the “apex of his authority” as he has congressional backing on his immigration ban.

“Putting all of my politics aside, if they tried this case, a majority of the executive order would stand judicial scrutiny,” he said. “He would be allowed to prohibit immigration of individuals because they don’t have standing, and Congress gave him that authority. The court would defer that decision to the commander in chief.”

Some changes to the executive order probably would not be upheld in court, such as prohibiting people with green cards from entering the country, Betras said.

“From a legal standpoint, the Trump administration should just fix what’s wrong with [the executive order] and enact it,” thus avoiding this legal challenge, he said.

The seeds of the nationwide steel strike were planted in 1951, when the United Steelworkers of America decided that during negotiations for a raise, instead of striking at one steelmaker, they would strike nationwide.

Negotiations failed to produce a settlement, and Truman worried that a strike would hamper military efforts in Korea, where American and other United Nations forces were engaged against China and North Korea.

On April 9, 1952, just before the strike was to take effect, Truman announced he was taking over the mills.

The Vindicator reported steel workers rejoiced over that announcement because it meant they would enjoy a pleasant Easter celebration as they remained on the job collecting wages and wouldn’t have to endure the financial hardships of being on strike.

Truman had said neither Congress, nor the Supreme Court, could stop him from seizing the mills, but he said that if the Supreme Court ruled against him, he would abide by the ruling.

About 10 minutes after his order, attorneys for Republic Steel and Sheet & Tube filed their appeal. The court heard the case and issued its ruling in June 1952.

Immediately after the court’s ruling denying Truman the power to seize the mills, the steel workers walked out nationwide.

Locally, 55,000 workers were off the job. The strike lasted until July 25, 1952, when the United Steelworkers reached an agreement with the companies.

Sam Camens, USW Local 1330 president at the time, was quoted in the June 2, 1952, Vindicator as saying that pickets would be set up at the U.S. Steel Works “as soon as they can get here.”

U.S. Steel’s McDonald and Ohio Works were set to close, as were all branches of Sheet & Tube, Truscon Steel and Republic Steel. The paper reported local union officials were acting on their own to get their workers on the picket line after the order without any direction from national labor leaders.

Sracic noted the Truman administration’s action followed the wartime administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected to four terms in office and accumulated “more powers to the president than we had ever seen before.”

Those powers were inherited by Truman when took office, Sracic said.

“The question in 1952 was: How far is presidential power going to extend?” Sracic said.

“What happens in 1952 is the courts push back, and they say: ‘This far, but no further,’” he said.

Contributor: politics writer David Skolnick