On March 5, 1970 a criminal complaint for violation of Sec. 4 of the Anti-Subversion Act was filed against the respondent Feliciano Co in the CFI of Tarlac. Respondent was an officer and/or ranking leader of the Communists Party of the Philippines (CPP), an outlawed and illegal organization aimed to overthrow the Government of the Philippines by means of illegal means for the purpose of establisihing a totalitarian regime. He is an instructor in the Mao Tse Tung University, the training school of recruits of the NPA, the military arm of the CPP. Judge Jose C. de Guzman conducted a preliminary investigation and, finding a prima facie case against Co, directed the Government prosecutors to file the corresponding information. Co moved to quash thee information on the ground that the Anti-Subversion Acts is a bill of attainder.
Anther criminal complaint was filed with the same court, charging the respondent Nilo Tayag and five others with subversion. The above accused were officers and/or ranking leaders of the Kabatasang Makabayan (KM), a subversive organization as defined in RA 1700. Tayag moved to quash on the ground that the statute is a bill of attainder.
ISSUE: WON the Acts violates the right to freedom of speech and association?
HELD: Article III, section 1 (11) of the Constitution states that "No bill of attainder or ex port facto law shall be enacted." A bill of attainder is a legislative act which inflicts punishment without trial. Its essence is the substitution of a legislative for a judicial determination of guilt. The constitutional ban against bills of attainder serves to implement the principle of separation of powers by confining legislatures to rule-making and thereby forestalling legislative usurpation of the judicial function. History in perspective, bills of attainder were employed to suppress unpopular causes and political minorities, and it is against this evil that the constitutional prohibition is directed. The singling out of a definite class, the imposition of a burden on it, and a legislative intent, suffice to stigmatize a statute as a bill of attainder.
Even assuming, however, that the Act specifies individuals and not activities, this feature is not enough to render it a bill of attainder. A statute prohibiting partners or employees of securities underwriting firms from serving as officers or employees of national banks on the basis of a legislative finding that the persons mentioned would be subject to the temptation to commit acts deemed inimical to the national economy, has been declared not to be a bill of attainder. Similarly, a statute requiring every secret, oath-bound society having a membership of at least twenty to register, and punishing any person who becomes a member of such society which fails to register or remains a member thereof, was declared valid even if in its operation it was shown to apply only to the members of the Ku Klux Klan.
the Act is aimed against conspiracies to overthrow the Government by force, violence or other illegal means. Whatever interest in freedom of speech and freedom of association is infringed by the prohibition against knowing membership in the Communist Party of the Philippines, is so indirect and so insubstantial as to be clearly and heavily outweighed by the overriding considerations of national security and the preservation of democratic institutions in his country.
The membership clause of the U.S. Federal Smith Act is similar in many respects to the membership provision of the Anti-Subversion Act. The former provides:
Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliated with, any such society, group or assembly of persons, knowing the purpose thereof —
Shall be fined not more than $20,000 or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction....
In sustaining the validity of this provision, the "Court said in Scales vs. United States:
It was settled in Dennis that advocacy with which we are here concerned is not constitutionally protected speech, and it was further established that a combination to promote such advocacy, albeit under the aegis of what purports to be a political party, is not such association as is protected by the first Amendment. We can discern no reason why membership, when it constitutes a purposeful form of complicity in a group engaging in this same forbidden advocacy, should receive any greater degree of protection from the guarantees of that Amendment.
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