Is It Constitutional?

IMMEDIATELY after President Nixon froze wages and I prices last August, 135 union lawyers met in Washington to decide whether organized labor should unite in urging federal courts to declare the freeze unconstitutional. Most felt that that would be useless, but at least six unions later decided to sue on their own. Although the freeze has ended, the court arguments have not. Last week the Amalgamated Meat Cutters asked the Supreme Court to review a lower court's decision that the freeze was indeed constitutional and that the butchers therefore could not collect retroactively a raise of 250 an hour that had been due from meat packers on Sept. 6. The union's legal plea could have profound consequences for Phase II.

Like other challengers, the Meat Cutters contend that the 1970 law on which the freeze was based vested "unbridled legislative power" in the President and amounted to a "naked grant of authority" for him to do what he pleased with the economy. Just such a "blank check" caused the Supreme Court to kill the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1935, the union argues. The butchers claim that a clause in the Constitution that prohibits states from passing laws "impairing the obligation of contracts" applies to Congress too. House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills has also stated his belief that Congress has "no authority to abrogate contracts."

A federal district court in Washington ruled in October that Congress had written enough restraints on the President's power into the freeze law to make it constitutional. For example, Congress directed that the President could not stabilize wages and prices at levels lower than those prevailing on May 25, 1970. The court also thought it "plain beyond any doubt" that the constitutional clause on contracts limits only the states, not Congress.

Even union lawyers generally doubt that the Supreme Court will overrule that decision. If the Justices should do so, however, the constitutionality of Phase II would be in doubt because it is based on the same law that empowered Nixon to declare the freeze.

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