WASHINGTON -- Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist is urging Congress to keep the federal court system out of a raging partisan spending debate over the 2000 Census.
Funding for the federal judiciary and departments of Commerce, State and Justice is contained in the same appropriations bill.
But because the Commerce Department is carrying out the controversial 2000 Census, Congress gave itself until June 15 to resolve its differences and pass the appropriations bill for those departments.
After June 15, the judiciary and the three Cabinet departments will receive no federal funds unless a bill is passed.
The heated disagreement between Democrats and Republicans over how to conduct the census has made it possible that Congress will miss its deadline.
Rehnquist, citing the partisan rancor, urged lawmakers to disentangle funding for the judiciary from the Commerce Department legislation, for the good of the U.S. court system.
"The judicial branch should not, and does not, have any role in this debate, as the resolution of this issue very properly rests with the political branches of government," Rehnquist wrote in a March 17 letter to Senate Judiciary Committee leaders, which the Supreme Court released yesterday. "The judiciary's appropriations should, therefore, also be free from entanglement in this political dispute."
If Congress fails to appropriate money by June 15, Rehnquist said, every sector of the judicial branch will be harmed, including judicial officers who supervise 120,000 released criminals and those accused of crimes.
"The public will be denied the services and the protections they expect and to which they are entitled," Rehnquist wrote. "Respect for a separate and co-equal branch of government suggests that the judiciary be assured it can continue its full level of operations at the funding level already approved."
The federal judiciary includes the Supreme Court, the 13 U.S. circuit courts of appeals, the Court of International Trade and 94 district courts and their bankruptcy-court units. More than 49,000 cases were filed last fiscal year in the courts of appeals, more than 282,000 criminal and civil cases were brought in district courts and more than 1 million individuals and businesses filed for bankruptcy, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reported yesterday.
Despite Rehnquist's plea for a separation between courts and politics, it was the Supreme Court that helped fuel the dispute between Democrats and Republicans on the census issue. In a January decision, the court ruled that the census must be conducted by a traditional head count of the U.S. population.
Pub Date: 3/31/99