## Facts

- Congress enacted the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 to address the lack of accessible bank records in investigations involving illegal activity and to obtain financial information useful in criminal, tax, and regulatory matters.
- Title I required financial institutions to maintain specified customer-identity and transaction records (including copies of checks and related instruments).
- Title II authorized the Treasury Secretary to require reports of certain currency and monetary-instrument transactions; regulations required banks to report large domestic currency transactions (generally those exceeding $10,000) and allowed exemptions.
- The California Bankers Association, member banks, and individual customers challenged the Act and regulations, asserting violations of the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments (among others), and sought to enjoin enforcement.
- A three-judge district court upheld most provisions but held certain domestic reporting requirements facially unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.
- The government appealed the invalidation of domestic reporting provisions; challengers appealed the portions upholding the Act. The Supreme Court consolidated the appeals.

## Issues

1. Whether the challengers had standing and whether the claims were ripe to attack the Act and potential future reporting regulations.
2. Whether compelled bank recordkeeping and reporting constitute unreasonable searches or seizures under the Fourth Amendment.
3. Whether foreign-account reporting and related record requirements violate the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination on their face.
4. Whether the Act and regulations facially burden First Amendment associational rights through compelled disclosure of financial information.
5. Whether the domestic currency reporting provisions were facially unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.

## Decision

- The Court largely upheld the Act and reversed the district court’s facial invalidation of the domestic reporting requirements.
- It held that the Bankers Association lacked standing (and/or the claims were not ripe) to challenge certain reporting requirements where no concrete, imminent enforcement injury was shown.
- It rejected a facial Fourth Amendment challenge to mandatory bank recordkeeping and reporting, treating the required materials as banks’ business records and distinguishing record-maintenance duties from any later government process to obtain the records.
- It rejected facial Fifth Amendment self-incrimination challenges to the foreign-account reporting requirement and related recordkeeping duties under the required-records doctrine and emphasized that self-incrimination questions are better assessed in concrete enforcement settings.
- It rejected the facial First Amendment associational challenge for lack of sufficient evidence of a substantial burden or deterrent effect.
- A concurrence agreed with the judgment but cautioned that constitutional problems could arise if the statute were used to seek indiscriminate access to individuals’ financial affairs without ordinary legal constraints.

## Legal Principles

- Facial challenges to regulatory reporting schemes may fail absent a concrete enforcement setting; standing and ripeness require more than speculation about future regulatory applications and penalties that attach only upon violation of implementing regulations.
- Government-mandated business recordkeeping by regulated entities does not, by itself, constitute an unreasonable search or seizure; constitutional challenges to specific government demands for records generally turn on the particular process used (e.g., subpoenas) and the facts.
- Bank transaction records required to be maintained and reported under such schemes may be treated as the bank’s business records rather than customers’ private papers for Fourth Amendment analysis.
- Under the required-records doctrine, generally applicable reporting duties with regulatory purposes can fall outside the core protection of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when assessed facially.
- Alleged burdens on associational rights from disclosure regimes require a concrete showing of substantial deterrence or interference; speculative chilling effects are insufficient for facial invalidation.

## Conclusion

The Supreme Court upheld the Bank Secrecy Act’s core recordkeeping and reporting structure and reversed the ruling striking down domestic currency reporting requirements, concluding that the challenged provisions were not facially invalid under the First, Fourth, or Fifth Amendments and that several claims were nonjusticiable absent a concrete enforcement context.


California Bankers Ass'n v. Shultz, 416 U.S. 21 (1974)