Shoo on the Other Foot

In 1965, Adam Clayton Powell voted to exclude from the House of Representatives five members-elect from Mis sissippi--even though the delegation met all constitutional requirements for admission. All were over 25, U.S. citizens and residents of the state they sought to represent.*Now that the shoo is on the other foot, Powell contends that Congress has no constitutional right to deny him his own seat in Congress. Last week his suit based on this argument was thrown out of Federal District Court in Washington.

Judge George Hart Jr. refused to rule on the merits of Powell's case. Declaring that the historic separation of judicial and legislative powers deprived the court of jurisdiction, Hart added to a dictum of Justice Felix Frankfurter's with the observation: "For this court to order any member of the House of Representatives, any officer of the House or any employee of the House to do or not to do any act related to the organization of membership of that House would be for the court to crash through a political thicket into political quicksand."

This week Powell faced another test, an election in New York's 18th Congressional District to fill the vacancy caused by his exclusion. There was no doubt that Powell would win at the polls, but his victory could well be meaningless, since the House has already voted, 307 to 116, to bar him from the 90th Congress. There remains, however, the possibility that the House will relent. Brooklyn Democrat Emanuel Celler, chairman of the select committee that recommended that Powell be seated but penalized, predicts that the House will now admit the prodigal.

As if Powell did not have enough litigation already, his third wife, Yvette Diago Powell, filed suit against him last week in Puerto Rico. She charged non-support of herself and their four-year-old son, asked $1,500 a month.

*The issue was racial discrimination in Mississippi's election procedures. The motion to seat the quintet was passed, 276-149.

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