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2000 Press Releases
Statement by ACLU Attorneys Bruce Rogow and Beverly Pohl
"Today's Supreme Court Burma Ruling Effectively Guarantees Success in ACLU Challenge to Cuba Ordinance"
June 19, 2000
On June 19, 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States decided a Massachusetts case that effectively guarantees success for the ACLU Plaintiffs, Miami Light Project, GableStage, and others, in their pending Florida federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Miami-Dade County "Cuba Affidavit."
In Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council, the Supreme Court held that Massachusetts' refusal to do business with those who do business with Burma ? a state legislative policy enacted to protest human rights violations in Burma ? was unconstitutional under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which leaves matters of foreign policy to the federal government.
The Court discussed the reach of federal legislation with regard to economic sanctions against Burma, including broad Presidential power to act for the United States and to suspend the sanctions in the interest of national security, and found that local laws on the same subject would be incompatible with the federal scheme: "It is simply implausible that Congress would have gone to such lengths to empower the President if it had been willing to compromise his effectiveness by deference to every provision of state statute or local ordinance that might, if enforced, blunt the consequences of discretionary Presidential action."
Similarly, Congress has enacted extensive legislation and there exist extensive Presidential powers and administrative regulations governing transactions and commercial interactions with Cuba and Cuban nationals. The ACLU Plaintiffs, cultural groups who may present artists and works involving Cuban nationals, in compliance with the those federal laws, complained to the federal district court in Miami that the County's "Restrictions on Travel and Transaction of Business with Firms Doing Business with Cuba" were invalid because they conflicted with federal law.
Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council sets out the applicable legal standards and supports the ACLU position. Writing about the Massachusetts' Burma restrictions, the Court wrote, "The state statute penalizes some private action that the federal Act (as administered by the President) may allow, and pulls levers of influence that the federal Act does not reach."
