The NY Attorney General and the plaintiffs in Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman have filed a joint motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit asking the court to vacate the district court’s final judgment in the case, remand with an order to the district court to dismiss the complaint with prejudice, and dismiss the plaintiffs’ appeal as moot.
The complaint in Expressions Hair Design was filed by five merchants and their principals who alleged that New York’s “no credit card surcharge” law was an unconstitutional restriction on speech because it did not allow merchants to tell customers that they are paying more for using credit than for using cash or another payment method. The district court had entered a judgment declaring the New York law unconstitutional and enjoining its enforcement against the plaintiffs but the Second Circuit reversed, ruling that the law did not implicate the First Amendment because it regulated a pricing practice, not speech.
The U.S. Supreme Court granted the plaintiffs’ petition for certiorari and ruled that the New York law did regulate speech, thereby making it subject to First Amendment scrutiny. Because the Second Circuit had not considered whether, as a speech regulation, the law survived such scrutiny, the Supreme Court vacated the Second Circuit’s decision and remanded for the Second Circuit to consider that issue.
On remand, the Second Circuit certified to the New York Court of Appeals the question whether a merchant would comply with the New York law if it posted the total dollars-and-cents price charged to credit card customers (rather than posting a single cash price and indicating that an additional amount is added for credit card customers). The New York court concluded that if a merchant posts its prices and charges lower prices to cash customers, it must post the price charged to credit card customers. However, while concluding that the law did not allow a merchant to post a single cash price, the New York court determined that it did not prohibit a merchant from using the word “surcharge” or any other words to communicate to customers that the credit card price is higher than the cash price.
The next step in the case would have been for the Second Circuit to decide whether the New York law, as interpreted by the state’s Court of Appeals, was a valid restriction on commercial speech under U.S. Supreme Court precedent. According to the NY Attorney General’s affirmations accompanying the joint motion, while further briefing was pending, the plaintiffs informed the NY Attorney General that they no longer wished to pursue any of their claims and wanted to dismiss their complaint, with prejudice. The parties assert that the plaintiffs’ decision to withdraw their complaint moots the case. Accordingly, they ask the Second Circuit to vacate the district court’s final judgment, instruct the district court to dismiss the complaint with prejudice, and dismiss the plaintiff’s appeal as moot.
The NY Attorney General’s affirmations also state that another factor weighing in favor of vacatur is that the plaintiffs’ decision to withdraw their complaint “should not leave intact a final judgment that declares a duly enacted state statute unconstitutional and enjoins the State and several District Attorneys from enforcing the statute against plaintiffs.” As this statement suggests, once the district court’s decision is vacated, the NY Attorney General would be free to enforce the New York law against the plaintiffs–and other merchants–as interpreted by the New York Court of Appeals. In other words, while a New York merchant can lawfully charge more to credit card than cash customers and label the differential amount a “surcharge,” the merchant would violate New York law if it only posted the cash price without also posting the higher price charged to credit card customers.
