Comfort v. Lynn School Committee

• Citation: 560 F.3d 22
• Decision Date: 12 March 2009
• Docket Number: No. 08-1735.,08-1735.
• Parties: Samantha J. COMFORT, etc., et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. LYNN SCHOOL COMMITTEE et al., Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)

560 F.3d 22

Samantha J. COMFORT, etc., et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. LYNN SCHOOL COMMITTEE et al., Defendants, Appellees.

No. 08-1735.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard January 7, 2009.

Decided March 12, 2009.

Chester Darling, with whom Michael Williams, Robert J. Roughsedge, and Citizens for the Preservation of Constitutional Rights, Inc. were on brief, for appellants.

Maura T. Healey, Assistant Attorney General, with whom Martha Coakley, Attorney General, Jeffrey D. Clements and Adam J. Hollingsworth, Assistant Attorneys General, and John C. Mihos, City Solicitor, were on consolidated brief, for appellees.

Before TORRUELLA, SELYA and LIPEZ, Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

We are called upon today to revisit a case that we thought had gone to its eternal rest. The tale follows.

Nearly six years ago the district court entered judgment for the defendants in a civil action seeking to strike down, on constitutional grounds, a school transfer/student assignment policy (the Policy) that explicitly considers race as a determining factor in student placement. Comfort v. Lynn Sch. Comm. (Comfort I), 283 F.Supp.2d 328, 386-87 (D.Mass.2003). This court, sitting en banc, upheld that judgment (and, thus, upheld the Policy) by a one-vote margin. Comfort v. Lynn Sch. Comm. (Comfort III), 418 F.3d 1 (1st Cir.2005) (en banc).¹ The Supreme Court denied the plaintiffs' ensuing petition for a writ of certiorari, 546 U.S. 1061, 126 S.Ct. 798, 163 L.Ed.2d 627 (2005), and the judgment became final. That apparently ended the matter.

But appearances can be deceiving, see Aesop, The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing (circa 550 B.C.), and that axiom proved to be applicable here. Following the Supreme Court's decision in a different case, see Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch. v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701, 127 S.Ct. 2738, 168 L.Ed.2d 508 (2007), the Comfort plaintiffs invoked Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(5) and asked the district court for relief from the final judgment. The court denied that motion. Comfort v. Lynn Sch. Comm. (Comfort IV), 541 F.Supp.2d 429, 433 (D.Mass.2008). The plaintiffs now appeal. We affirm.

We briefly chronicle the events leading up to this appeal. The underlying litigation began in 1999, when the Comfort family and other similarly situated families sued the Lynn School Committee and a number of allied defendants for, among other things, an injunction to end further use of the Policy (which articulated one aspect of the City of Lynn's method of effecting student placements in the public schools). The plaintiffs alleged that the Policy was discriminatory because it explicitly relied on race as a criterion for student placement.

After extensive proceedings, the district court upheld the Policy and entered judgment for the defendants. Comfort I, 283 F.Supp.2d at 400. On appeal, a panel of this court disagreed; it declared the Policy unconstitutional and reversed the judgment. Comfort v. Lynn Sch. Comm. (Comfort II), No. 03-2415, 2004 WL 2348505 (1st Cir. Oct.20, 2004). The defendants moved successfully for rehearing en banc, and the en banc court withdrew the panel opinion. See Comfort v. Lynn Sch. Comm., No. 03-2415 (Nov. 24, 2004) (unpublished order). After further briefing and oral argument, a divided en banc court reinstated the original district court judgment. Comfort III, 418 F.3d at 23.

Even though the Supreme Court denied the plaintiffs' petition for certiorari, 546 U.S. 1061, 126 S.Ct. 798, 163 L.Ed.2d 627 (2005), the Court later granted certiorari in Parents Involved, 547 U.S. 1177, 126 S.Ct. 2351, 165 L.Ed.2d 277 (2006). The Court decided that case adversely to the respondent school district, striking down a school transfer/student assignment policy that bore a distinct resemblance to the Policy. See Parents Involved, 127 S.Ct. at 2768. In the process, the Court significantly restricted a school district's ability to assign students based on racial factors. Id. at 2787-88. The Court mentioned the Comfort case several times, including a flat statement that the decision in Comfort III was "inimical to the Constitution." Id. at 2774 (Thomas, J., concurring).

Buoyed by the holding, rationale, and language of Parents Involved, the Comfort plaintiffs moved for relief from judgment in the district court. They maintained that Parents Involved had uprooted the legal foundation on which the decision in Comfort III rested and that, therefore, allowing the judgment to stand would be grossly inequitable. The district court denied the motion. See Comfort IV, 541 F.Supp.2d at 433. This timely appeal followed.

In the ordinary course, we review an order granting or denying relief from judgment under Rule 60(b) for abuse of discretion. See, e.g., Honneus v. Donovan, 691 F.2d 1, 2 (1st Cir.1982). The standard is different, however, when an appeal is premised on an abstract question of law, such as a question about the meaning or interpretation of the rule itself. In that event, the appealed ruling engenders de novo review. See Harvey v. Johanns, 494 F.3d 237, 240 (1st Cir.2007). So it is here.

In order to put this appeal into perspective, we begin with a few comments about finality. We then turn to the plaintiffs' motion.

Courts long have recognized that finality is fundamental to our judicial system. See, e.g., Guerrero-Santana v. Gonzales, 499 F.3d 90, 92 (1st Cir.2007); United States v. Boch Olds., Inc., 909 F.2d 657, 660 (1st Cir.1990). Once litigation has run its course and all available avenues of appeal have been exhausted, the parties must be able to depend upon the certainty and stability of the resultant judgment. See United States v. Rodríguez, 527 F.3d 221, 225 (1st Cir.2008); Boch Olds., 909 F.2d at 660.

The importance of finality extends beyond the expectations of the parties involved in a particular case. Finality is an "institutional value[] that transcend[s] the litigants' parochial interests." Oakes v. United States, 400 F.3d 92, 97 (1st Cir. 2005). This institutional interest dictates that the principle of finality should hold sway even when newly emergent decisions materially alter the legal landscape. See James B. Beam Distilling Co. v. Georgia, 501 U.S. 529, 541, 111 S.Ct. 2439, 115 L.Ed.2d 481 (1991) (explicating the principle that changes in decisional law "cannot reopen the door already closed"). This framework is in place because, in all but the most exceptional circumstances, "the great desirability of preserving the principle of finality of judgments preponderates heavily over any claim of injustice." United States ex rel. Garibaldi v. Orleans Parish Sch. Bd., 397 F.3d 334, 340 (5th Cir. 2005).

In fine, claims once tried, decided on the merits, appealed, and closed should—with only a few exceptions—"be considered forever settled as between the parties." Feder'd Dep't Stores, Inc. v. Moitie, 452 U.S. 394, 401, 101 S.Ct. 2424, 69 L.Ed.2d 103 (1981) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). This imperative would consist of nothing more than empty rhetoric were courts compelled to re-litigate past cases whenever they glimpsed a material change in decisional law. It follows, therefore, that a case cannot be re-opened simply because some new development makes it appear, in retrospect, that a judgment on the merits long since settled was brought about by judicial error. See, e.g., Trenkler v. United States, 536 F.3d 85, 100 (1st Cir.2008), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 1363, ___ L.Ed.2d ___ (2009); Rodríguez, 527 F.3d at 225; see also Hoult v. Hoult, 57 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir.1995) (explaining that a wrongly decided point of law, without more, is not a ground for relief from a judgment that has become final and unappealable).

None of this is to say that the principle of finality is immutable. Despite the high premium that the judicial system places on finality, there are some rare circumstances under which a party may be relieved from a final judgment. Rule 60(b) addresses this point (even though it may not exclusively encompass it). The rule has six sub-parts, but only the fifth is implicated here.

Under that sub-part, a court may grant relief from a final judgment when:

[T]he judgment has been satisfied, released or discharged; it is based on an earlier judgment that has been reversed or vacated; or applying it prospectively is no longer equitable.

Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b)(5). Like each of the other sub-parts of Rule 60(b), this fifth sub-part should be carefully parsed and construed with circumspection. See Cotto v. United States, 993 F.2d 274, 277-78 (1st Cir.1993).

Giving effect to its easily discernable structure and plain language, Rule 60(b)(5) describes three sets of circumstances in which relief from a final judgment may be justified. The first category is obviously inapposite here; the plaintiffs have not argued that the judgment in Comfort III has been satisfied, released, or discharged. Rather, they assert that this case falls within either the second or third set of circumstances.

Insofar as the second set of circumstances is concerned, the plaintiffs strive to convince us that the prior judgment upon which the district court's order rested has been reversed. We are not persuaded.

The provision from which this argument derives requires a direct connection between the prior judgment and the supposedly reversing judgment. The mere emergence of controlling precedent in some other case that shows the incorrectness of the prior judgment is not sufficient. See Lubben v. Selective Serv. Sys. Local Bd. 27, 453 F.2d 645, 650 (1st Cir. 1972).

Lubben illustrates this point. There, we upheld the denial of a motion for relief from judgment even though the decisional law on which the court had relied in entering the judgment was later discredited. Id. We stated unequivocally that, in order to come within Rule 60(b)(5)'s second category, the prior judgment must be directly related to the purportedly reversing decision by, for...