1946, when Justice Hugo Black participated in deciding the Jewell Ridge Coal case, although a former law partner of Black argued for the prevailing side. The losing party in the 5–4 decision sought reargument on the ground that Black should have been disqualified; Black declined to recuse himself and the decision stood, but Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote a short opinion suggesting that the decision that Black should sit in the case was Black's alone and the Court did not endorse it. The dispute aggravated infighting between Black and Jackson, and it has been suggested that this was one of the reasons that, when Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone died, President Harry S. Truman appointed Fred M. Vinson to succeed Stone rather than promote a sitting Associate Justice to Chief Justice. In 1973, then-Associate Justice Rehnquist wrote a lengthy in-chambers opinion declining to recuse himself in Laird v. Tatum, a case challenging the validity of certain arrests, even though Rehnquist had previously served as a White House lawyer and opined that the arrest program was valid. In 2004, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote an opinion declining to recuse himself in a case to which Vice President Dick Cheney was a party in his official capacity, despite the contention of several environmental groups that Scalia's participation created an appearance of impropriety because Scalia had recently participated in a widely publicized hunting trip with the Vice President. The same year, however, Scalia recused himself without explanation in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, a First Amendment case challenging inclusion of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, after giving a public speech in which Scalia stated his view that Newdow's claims were meritless. Other federal cases In 1974, federal judge Leon Higginbotham issued his decision in Comm. of Pa. v. Local 542, Int'l Union of Operating Engineers, explaining why he as an African American judge with a history of active involvement in the civil rights struggle was not obligated to recuse himself from presiding over litigation concerning claims of racial discrimination. He held, in an opinion that was followed by later judges, including a series of black judges who faced recusal requests, that a judge should not be forced to recuse solely because of their membership in a minority group. Jewish federal Judge Paul Borman relied on the Higginbotham opinion in part in his 2014 decision not to recuse himself