Taxpayers for the Animas-La Plata Referendum v. Animas-La Plata Water Conservancy Dist.

• Decision Date: 11 July 1984
• Docket Number: No. 83-2218,ANIMAS-LA,83-2218
• Parties: TAXPAYERS FOR THEPLATA REFERENDUM, Jean McCulloch, Thomas McCulloch and Helen Robinson, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. PLATA WATER CONSERVANCY DISTRICT; and Bob K. Taylor, Arthur Isgar, Victor A. Paulek, Lawrence Huntington, Brice F. Lee, Frank Campana, Edward T. Searle, Frederick Kroeger, Allen J. Murdock, John E. Schmitt, Gilbert Slade, F. Sheldon Slade, Richard M. Dossey, and their Successors, in their official capacities as Directors of the Animas-La Plata Water Conservancy District, Defendants-Appellees, State of Colorado, Defendant-in Intervention, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

Page 1472

739 F.2d 1472

TAXPAYERS FOR THE ANIMAS-LA PLATA REFERENDUM, Jean

McCulloch, Thomas McCulloch and Helen Robinson, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. ANIMAS-LA PLATA WATER CONSERVANCY DISTRICT; and Bob K.

Taylor, Arthur Isgar, Victor A. Paulek, Lawrence Huntington,

Brice F. Lee, Frank Campana, Edward T. Searle, Frederick

Kroeger, Allen J. Murdock, John E. Schmitt, Gilbert Slade,

F. Sheldon Slade, Richard M. Dossey, and their Successors,

in their official capacities as Directors of the Animas-La

Plata Water Conservancy District, Defendants-Appellees,

State of Colorado, Defendant-in Intervention, Appellee.

No. 83-2218.

United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.

July 11, 1984.

Jeffrey G. Pearson, Denver, Colo., for plaintiffs-appellants.

Wendy C. Weiss, Asst. Atty. Gen., Denver, Colo. (Duane Woodard, Atty. Gen., Charles B. Howe, Deputy Atty. Gen. and Richard H. Forman, Sol. Gen., Denver, Colo., with her on the briefs), for defendant-in-intervention, appellee.

Thomas H. Shipps, Durango, Colo. (McDaniel & McDaniel, Durango, Colo with him on brief) of Maynes, Bradford & Shipps, Durango, Colo., for defendants-appellees.

Richard B. Collins and Don B. Miller, Native American Rights Fund, Boulder, Colo., filed an amicus curiae brief for the Ute Mountain Ute and South Ute Indian Tribes.

John M. Sayre, Gregory J. Hobbs, Jr., and Zach C. Miller, Davis, Graham & Stubbs, Denver, Colo., filed an amicus curiae brief for the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy Dist. and Municipal Subdistrict, Northern Colorado Water Conservancy Dist., Loveland, Colorado.

Before BARRETT, BREITENSTEIN and McKAY, Circuit Judges.

BARRETT, Circuit Judge.

Taxpayers For the Animas La-Plata Referendum, a non-profit citizen's organization, appeals from the district court's dismissal of its cause of action pursuant to a motion by defendant Animas-La Plata Water Conservancy District. This important and unusual appeal involves several constitutional issues which require that the background and facts be set out in some detail to facilitate our review.

In 1937, the Colorado Legislature enacted its Water Conservancy Act, C.R.S. Secs. 37-45-101 et seq., which according to the Colorado Supreme Court, was designed to assist communities in financing water projects for irrigation, conservation, and other public purposes. See People ex rel. Rogers v. Letford, 102 Colo. 284, 79 P.2d 274, 281 (1938). The major tools created by the Act to serve this end were water conservancy districts armed with the power to levy general ad valorem taxes.

In order to establish a water conservancy district, the Act requires 1) a petition signed by twenty-five percent of the owners of irrigated lands and five percent of the owners of nonirrigated lands to be included within the proposed district and 2) the district court's review of the accuracy of the petition. C.R.S. Secs. 37-45-109 and 112. Those opposed to the creation of a particular district have a right to a general election on the issue if they successfully gather a petition of opposition bearing the names of twenty-five percent of the owners of irrigated lands and five percent of the owners of nonirrigated lands to be included within the proposed district. C.R.S. Sec. 3-45-112(2)(b).

On June 21, 1979, the proponents of the Animas-La Plata Conservancy District filed an initiating petition with the state district court of La Plata County. This petition was ultimately reviewed and deemed satisfactory by the state district court. Concerned primarily with potentially adverse environmental impacts of the project, various citizens within the proposed district organized an association to seek a general election on the district formation issue. This association, Taxpayers for the Animas-La Plata Referendum ("TAR"), raised and spent some $10,000 in its petition drive, but the state district court ultimately found that TAR's petition was insufficient to force an election pursuant to C.R.S. Sec. 37-45-112(5)(b). Hence, the district court decreed the Animas-La Plata Water Conservancy District officially organized in compliance with the Act.

TAR, displeased with the procedures utilized in forming the district, filed a complaint in federal district court alleging various violations of 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983 by the water district and its directors. Specifically, TAR alleged that the provisions of the Colorado Water Conservancy Act violated the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, and also deprived its members of their First Amendment rights. TAR originally sought declaratory and injunctive relief, and a refund of any taxes paid to the district by TAR members.

At this point, TAR's lawsuit ballooned into a matter of great consequence to the entire State of Colorado. The issues presented by the case cast some degree of doubt upon the validity of every conservancy district formed pursuant to the Act's procedures. This doubt apparently hindered the existing districts' efforts to finance and refinance their projects, and thus created widespread fears that Colorado would lose substantial control over its water resources.

Such uncertainty was unacceptable to the Colorado Legislature. It quickly considered and passed House Bill 1272 (now codified at C.R.S. Sec. 37-45-153), which "validated" and "recreated" every conservancy district originally organized pursuant to the Act's procedures. The bill did not affect or change, however, the Water Conservancy Act's existing procedures for establishing conservancy districts. Although TAR argues that the motive behind House Bill 1272 was to destroy their pending lawsuit, the purpose expressed in the statute was "to provide financial security and stability" for water development and "to ensure that obligations and projects undertaken ... are honored and carried out." C.R.S. 37-45-153(5). (Significantly, the legislature rejected an amendment to the bill which would have excluded the Animas-La Plata district from its coverage.)

In response to House Bill 1272, TAR amended its original Sec. 1983 complaint to include claims challenging the constitutionality of the bill, and also claims for special and general damages relating to the district's formation. The district court accepted TAR's amended complaint, but after hearing oral arguments, granted the defendant's Motion to Dismiss. In reaching this conclusion, the court first upheld the constitutionality of House Bill 1272 and dismissed TAR's four claims challenging the validity of the bill. Having so found, the court next dismissed as moot eight of TAR's other nine claims seeking declaratory and injunctive relief in regard to the formation of the Animas La-Plata District. The court declined to dismiss the ninth claim (which represented TAR's amended claim for damages stemming from the district's formation) on the basis of mootness; rather, the court found that the alleged damages were not "causally connected with anything that these defendants did." (R. Vol. V, Exhibit D, at 6.) On appeal, TAR challenges each of the court's conclusions. We will discuss each of TAR's contentions, beginning with an analysis of the constitutionality of House Bill 1272.

House Bill 1272

TAR advances two separate arguments supporting the unconstitutionality of House Bill 1272. First, it maintains that the bill violates the supremacy clause of Article VI of the United States Constitution by "ousting" the federal court of jurisdiction to entertain this lawsuit. Second, it argues that the bill constitutes retrospective legislation and thus violates Article II, Section 11 of the Colorado Constitution (which prohibits laws "retrospective in operation"), and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Supremacy Argument: TAR seeks to fit the present case into a line of prior authority holding that states may not assert their sovereignty in a manner which defeats the jurisdiction of federal courts to hear controversies arising from the laws of the United States. Among others, TAR cites the cases of General Atomic Co. v. Felter, 434 U.S. 12, 98 S.Ct. 76, 54 L.Ed.2d 199 (1977), Harrison v. St. Louis & San Francisco R.R., 232 U.S. 318, 34 S.Ct. 333, 58 L.Ed. 621 (1914), Sterling v. Constantin, 287 U.S. 378, 53 S.Ct. 190, 77 L.Ed. 375 (1932), Donovan v. City of Dallas, 377 U.S. 408, 84 S.Ct. 1579, 12 L.Ed.2d 409 (1964), and United States v. Peters, 9 U.S. 115, 5 Cranch 115, 3 L.Ed. 53 (1809). We have reviewed these cases and agree that they support the aforementioned principle, yet we disagree with TAR's contention that such authority is relevant to the present case.

In the cases cited by TAR, various states directly intervened in ongoing federal controversies by attempting, in one form or another, to prevent the assertion of federal jurisdiction. For example, in General Atomic and Donovan, supra, state courts attempted to enjoin litigants from invoking federal in personam jurisdiction; in Peters, the Pennsylvania Legislature attempted to prohibit the execution of a federal court's decree by denying the court's jurisdiction; in Harrison, the state legislature attempted to defeat the federal court's removal jurisdiction through sophistic definitions of "domicile"; and in Constantin the Governor of Texas sought to take away the federal court's jurisdiction in a pending matter by declaring that martial law existed. In each of these cases, the Supreme Court prohibited the attempts of the states to interfere with the federal court's clearly-established power to hear and decide federal matters.

To equate the actions of the Colorado Legislature in enacting House Bill 1272 with the state action in the above cases requires a most superficial analysis of the law and the facts. It is true that House Bill 1272 undercut the validity of TAR's challenge to the formation of the Animas-La Plata District. It is not true, however, that this result stemmed from state interference with the federal court's power to hear the matter. Rather, the ...