THE LAW: Due Process

Since 1953, the 1,250,000 tenants of federal housing projects have been required to sign oaths of nonmembership in subversive organizations. The Congress attached this requirement to a federal housing appropriations bill, on the ground that taxpayers’ dollars should not provide roofs for Communists or their friends. Some tenants, in Washington, Baltimore and New York, refused to sign the oath and were threatened with eviction. Among them were Doris and John Rudder, who occupy a two-bedroom apartment in Washington’s Lincoln Heights project.

Last week, reversing a lower-court decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington halted eviction of Cab Driver Rudder and his wife. Said the court’s opinion, written by Chief Judge Henry W. Edgerton: “It [the Government] must not act arbitrarily, for, unlike private landlords, it is subject to the requirements of due process of law . . . The U.S. acted arbitrarily in undertaking to evict the Rudders. Their refusal to deny that they were members of any organizations on the [Attorney General’s] consolidated list was not proof that they were members. Even proof that they were members of a ‘totalitarian’ organization, knowing nothing of its character, would be an arbitrary ground [for eviction].”