Nat'l Org. for Women v. Scheidler - 510 U.S. 249, 114 S. Ct. 798 (1994)

Rule:

The Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) broadly defines "enterprise" in § 1961(4) to "include any individual, partnership, corporation, association, or other legal entity, and any union or group of individuals associated in fact although not a legal entity." Nowhere in either § 1962(c) or the RICO definitions in § 1961 is there any indication that an economic motive is required.

Facts:

Petitioners, health care clinics and a nonprofit organization supporting abortion rights, sued respondent antiabortion groups, alleging that the antiabortion groups violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), 18 U.S.C.S. § 1962 by engaging in a nationwide conspiracy to shut down abortion clinics through a pattern of racketeering activity, including extortion. Petitioners alleged that the protesters conspired to use threatened or actual force, violence, or fear to induce clinic employees to give up their jobs, doctors to give up their economic right to practice medicine, and patients to give up their right to obtain medical services at the clinics, and that this conspiracy had injured the business and property interests of the clinics. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois dismissed the case and held that petitioners, by failing to allege that the enterprise had a profit-generating purpose, had failed to state a claim under 1962(c), and therefore, the claim under 1962(d) could not stand. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, expressing the view that noneconomic crimes committed in furtherance of noneconomic motives were not within the ambit of RICO, affirmed the dismissal. Petitioners challenged the decision.

Issue:

Did RICO require that a racketeering enterprise be motivated by an economic purpose? 

Answer:

No.

Conclusion:

The Court held that RICO did not require proof that either the racketeering enterprise or the predicate acts of racketeering were motivated by an economic purpose, and therefore, if the protesters had conspired by conducting the coalition through a pattern of racketeering activity to shut down the clinics, then the clinics could maintain a RICO action against the protesters for violating 1962(c) and 1962(d), because nowhere in either 18 USCS 1961's RICO definitions or in 1962(c) was there required an economic motive.