W.C.M. Window Co., Inc. v. Bernardi

• Decision Date: 11 May 1984
• Docket Number: No. 83-1984,83-1984
• Citation: 730 F.2d 486
• Parties: 100 Lab.Cas. P 55,457 W.C.M. WINDOW CO., INC., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. E. Allen BERNARDI, Director of the Department of Labor, State of Illinois, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 486

730 F.2d 486

100 Lab.Cas. P 55,457

W.C.M. WINDOW CO., INC., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. E. Allen BERNARDI, Director of the Department of Labor State of Illinois, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 83-1984.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued Jan. 10, 1984.

Decided March 16, 1984.

As Amended on Denial of Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc May 11, 1984.

Patricia Rosen, Asst. Atty. Gen., Chicago, Ill., for defendant-appellant.

M. Barry Forman, St. Louis, Mo., for plaintiffs-appellees.

Before PELL, CUDAHY and POSNER, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

E. Allen Bernardi, the director of the Illinois Department of Labor, appeals from a decision enjoining him from enforcing Illinois' Preference to Citizens on Public Works Projects Act, Ill.Rev.Stat.1981, ch. 48, paragraphs 269-274. The Act (in paragraph 271) provides that the contractor on "any public works project or improvement for the State of Illinois or any political subdivision, municipal corporation or other governmental unit thereof shall employ only Illinois laborers on such project or improvement," unless the contractor certifies, and the contracting officer finds, that Illinois laborers either "are not available, or are incapable of performing the particular type of work involved ...." Violation of the preference law (as it is called) is a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum jail sentence of 30 days and a maximum fine of $500. See Ill.Rev.Stat.1981, ch. 48, p 274; ch. 38, paragraphs 1005-8-3(a)(3), 1005-9-1(a)(3). The district court held that the law violates both the privileges and immunities clause of Article IV, section 2 of the Constitution ("The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States"), and the commerce clause of Article I, section 8 ("The Congress shall have Power ... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes").

The public school board of Decatur, Illinois hired the W.C.M. Window Company, an Illinois corporation, to replace some windows. W.C.M. subcontracted the work to Custom Contracting Company, an unincorporated association of Missouri residents. On April 12, 1983, Bernardi brought suit in state court against W.C.M. and Custom, asking that they be enjoined from violating the preference law. On the same day, W.C.M., its president, and three individuals who are members of Custom Contracting brought this suit (under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983) against Bernardi, and asked the district court to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent Bernardi from proceeding with his state court action. The district court issued the order and later converted it into a permanent injunction.

The first question we consider is whether the district court should have abstained, under the doctrine of Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971), in favor of the state court in which Bernardi had filed his action. (The other grounds for abstention urged by the state clearly have no merit.) Younger held that a federal district court may not enjoin a state criminal prosecution in a civil rights suit, provided that the plaintiff in that suit can raise his federal claims in state court by way of defense to the prosecution. Its doctrine has since been expanded to cases where a state civil proceeding sought to be enjoined involved "important state interests." See, e.g., Middlesex County Ethics Comm. v. Garden State Bar Ass'n, 457 U.S. 423, 432, 102 S.Ct. 2515, 2521-22, 73 L.Ed.2d 116 (1982) (state proceeding to discipline a lawyer for unethical conduct); see also Ciotti v. County of Cook, 712 F.2d 312, 313 (7th Cir.1983); Cate v. Oldham, 707 F.2d 1176, 1183 (11th Cir.1983); Coruzzi v. State of New Jersey, 705 F.2d 688, 690-91 (3d Cir.1983). We must consider whether "important state interests" are involved here, and also the significance of the facts that (1) the plaintiffs in the federal court action and the defendants in the state court action are not identical and (2) the Illinois Supreme Court in People ex rel. Holland v. Bleigh Construction Co., 61 Ill.2d 258, 335 N.E.2d 469 (1975), upheld the preference law against a challenge based on the same grounds urged by these plaintiffs.

The Younger doctrine is based on, and its contours established by, two principles of equity jurisprudence. The first is that an injunction is an extraordinary remedy, rarely available as a matter of right and never more extraordinary than when, if granted, it would prevent government officials from proceeding under a statute founded on important state interests against a violator of the statute; such an injunction would offend comity and federalism. The second principle is that an injunction will not be issued when the plaintiff has an adequate remedy at law, which he does if he can assert the ground on which he seeks an injunction as a defense to the very proceeding that the injunction would put a stop to.

Although the plaintiffs apparently did violate the Illinois preference law, the state was not sufficiently exercised about the violation to bring a criminal proceeding, or even a quasi-criminal proceeding as in Middlesex. It was content to seek an injunction against continuing the violation. This is some evidence that an injunction against Bernardi's state court action would not impair "important state interests," though not much evidence; the state may simply have believed that, in the circumstances, an injunctive remedy would be cheaper, swifter, and more efficacious. An additional point, however, is that the policy underlying the preference law is less central to the goals of state government than protecting the health, safety, and morals of its population--the types of interest involved in cases where abstention under the Younger doctrine has been ordered. Thus, both the nature of the remedy sought by, and more important the underlying right asserted by, the state in its suit make the remedy that these plaintiffs are seeking less invasive of state sovereignty than in the usual Younger case.

Moreover, the plaintiffs may not have "an adequate opportunity in the state proceedings to raise [their] constitutional challenges." Middlesex County Ethics Comm. v. Garden State Bar Ass'n, supra, 457 U.S. at 432, 102 S.Ct. at 2521-22. Although this quotation could be taken to refer just to procedural obstacles to raising a federal claim in state court, rather than also to any substantive obstacle created by adverse precedent, we know from Gibson v. Berryhill, 411 U.S. 564, 577-79, 93 S.Ct. 1689, 1697-98, 36 L.Ed.2d 488 (1973) (cited approvingly in Middlesex ), that the Younger doctrine is inapplicable when the state tribunal is deemed to have prejudged the federal claim because the tribunal has a pecuniary interest in the outcome (see also United Church of the Medical Center v. Medical Center Comm'n, 689 F.2d 693, 699-700 (7th Cir.1982)); and maybe other types of prejudgment also make the doctrine inapplicable. The analogous requirements of exhaustion of remedies in administrative and in habeas corpus cases are satisfied when adverse precedent makes the remedies futile as a practical matter to pursue. See Layton v. Carson, 479 F.2d 1275, 1276-77 (5th Cir.1973) (per curiam); see also Carter v. Estelle, 677 F.2d 427, 446 (5th Cir.1982); West v. Bergland, 611 F.2d 710, 717 (8th Cir.1979).

If the Illinois courts were certain to adhere to Bleigh in Bernardi's suit against the contractors, the contractors would have no practical remedy in the state courts, so that their only federal remedy (if we abstained) would be to ask the United States Supreme Court to review the inevitable judgment against them in the state courts. The Supreme Court's heavy workload, which prevents it from accepting more than a tiny fraction of the requests for review that it gets, would make this route a chancy one. And we doubt that the Court would want us to add to its workload by expanding the Younger doctrine. But the Illinois Supreme Court might be willing to reexamine Bleigh in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's subsequent decisions in Hicklin v. Orbeck, 437 U.S. 518, 98 S.Ct. 2482, 57 L.Ed.2d 397 (1978), and United Bldg. & Construction Trades Council v. Mayor & Council of Camden, --- U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 1020, 79 L.Ed.2d 249 (1984) the latter decided after argument in this case. The discussion of the privileges and immunities issue in Bleigh has been termed "cursory" in a decision which states that Hicklin "presumptively overruled" Bleigh. Neshaminy Constructors, Inc. v. Krause, 181 N.J.Super. 376, 384 n. 6, 437 A.2d 733, 737 n. 6 (Ch.1981), modified (on unrelated grounds) and affirmed, 187 N.J.Super. 174, 453 A.2d 1359 (App.Div.1982) (per curiam). And we are told that the Illinois Supreme Court has recently heard argument in a case in which it is being asked to overrule Bleigh.

Hicklin invalidated under the privileges and immunities clause an Alaska statute that required all employment, whether public or private, that was connected with oil and gas leases to which the state was a party to be offered first to Alaska residents. The Supreme Court's opinion is narrowly written, however, and emphasizes facts that have no exact counterparts in the present case. One such fact is that "the major cause of Alaska's high unemployment was not the influx of nonresidents seeking employment, but rather the fact that a substantial number of Alaska's jobless residents--especially the unemployed Eskimo and Indian residents--were unable to secure employment either because of their lack of education and job training or because of their geographical remoteness from job opportunities." 437 U.S. at 526-27, 98 S.Ct. at 2487-88. Another is that "a highly skilled and educated resident who has never been unemployed is entitled to precisely the same preferential treatment as the unskilled, habitually unemployed Arctic Eskimo enrolled in a job-training program." Id. at...