Minton v. St. Bernard Parish School Bd.
| Citation | 803 F.2d 129 |
| Decision Date | 22 October 1986 |
| Docket Number | No. 85-3688,85-3688 |
| Parties | 35 Ed. Law Rep. 634 Isaac D. MINTON, Administrator of Estate of Minor, Connie Minton, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. ST. BERNARD PARISH SCHOOL BOARD, et al., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit) |
Walter F. Gemeinhardt, New Orleans, La., for defendants-appellees.
Wm. P. Schuler, Asst. Dist. Atty., Chalmette, La., Eavelyn T. Brooks, Lisa F. Keegan, Asst. Attys. Gen., Dept. of Justice, New Orleans, La., for plaintiffs-appellants.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
Before BROWN, RUBIN, and GARWOOD, Circuit Judges.
A Mississippi resident in whose favor a final tort judgment has been rendered by a Louisiana court against a Louisiana parish school district has been unable to collect her damages because the parish school board refuses to appropriate the funds necessary to satisfy her claim. Alleging that the School Board and its individual members are depriving her of equal protection of the law because they pay all judgments in favor of residents of the Parish and--as she elaborates upon her charges in her brief--in favor of Louisiana residents but do not pay her because she is a nonresident of either the Parish or the State, she and the administrator of her estate filed suit in federal court seeking declaratory and monetary relief under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983. The District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana dismissed appellants' action for failure to state a claim for which relief can be granted. Assessing her charge of discrimination on its face, as we must, we find that it is sufficient to state a claim for denial of that equality with residents that state agencies must accord nonresidents. Even discretion may not be exercised on a discriminatory basis.
In 1974, Connie Minton, a resident of Mississippi and a minor, was struck and injured by a school bus operated under the supervision of the St. Bernard Parish School Board. Shortly thereafter, she and the administrator of her estate, Isaac D. Minton, brought an action to recover for her injuries in a Louisiana state court, and obtained judgment in her favor. On appeal, the judgment was affirmed although the amount of damages was reduced. 1 That judgment is now final.
Since then Minton and her administrator have tried unsuccessfully to obtain from the Saint Bernard Parish School Board an appropriation of funds to satisfy the judgment. The Board has articulated no reasons for its refusal other than its assertion that the judgment is unjust and that it is immune from suits requiring it to make such appropriations. State law forbids payment of a judgment against a state agency or political subdivision of the state without such an appropriation. 2
The plaintiffs allege in this Sec. 1983 action that the School Board and its individual members are depriving Connie Minton of her property without due process of the law and, by refusing to pay judgments in favor of nonresidents of St. Bernard Parish while satisfying claims raised by residents of the parish, are denying her equal protection of the law as guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment. In their prayer for relief, the Mintons asked the district court for damages, including the unpaid portion of the judgment plus interest, attorney's fees, punitive damages, and any equitable relief the court deems appropriate.
The Saint Bernard Parish School Board relies first on the defense that the Mintons' suit constitutes a suit against the state that is prohibited by the eleventh amendment to the United States Constitution. We must therefore determine whether the Saint Bernard Parish School Board is an arm of the state enjoying eleventh amendment immunity or whether it possesses an identity sufficiently distinct from that of the State of Louisiana to place it beyond that shield.
As Judge Garwood has recently stated in Clark v. Tarrant County, Texas, 3 to draw that distinction "we 'must examine the particular entity in question and its powers and characteristics as created by state law ....' " 4 The relevant factors include: (1) whether state statutes and case law characterize the agency as an arm of the state; (2) the source of funds for the entity; (3) the degree of local autonomy the entity enjoys; (4) whether the entity is concerned primarily with local, as opposed to statewide, problems; (5) whether the entity has authority to sue and be sued in its own name; and (6) whether the entity has the right to hold and use property. 5
These tests identify parish school boards as local independent agents not shielded by the state's eleventh amendment immunity. Although Louisiana courts have referred to school boards as "agencies" of the state, 6 this characterization does not amount to an assertion that the boards are arms of the state within the meaning of the eleventh amendment. School boards generate funds for the operation of parish school districts through local ad valorem taxation, 7 exercise a great deal of discretion in performing their functions and addressing their innately local concerns, 8 have authority to sue or be sued in their own name, 9 and can hold, use, or sell property as each local board determines necessary to fulfill its obligation to the public. 10 In view of the inherently local nature of the interests of Louisiana school boards, the wide degree of local autonomy they are granted under state law, and the predominately local source of their funding, it cannot be said either that these entities are mere arms of the state or that monetary judgments against them would represent indirect impositions on the state treasury interfering with the state's fiscal autonomy. 11 Louisiana school boards, therefore, are not entitled to eleventh amendment immunity to Section 1983 claims.
In a separate brief the state argues that this court should abstain even if we have jurisdiction because the issue is a matter of serious state concern with "potentially far-reaching impact on the public fisc and on state regulation of public property." The argument has no foundation in Louisiana law. For the reasons we have given, a suit against a parish school board is not a suit against the state and poses no immediate threat to the state fisc or state regulation of public property. What relief, if any, the Mintons may obtain from the School Board and what relief is barred by the eleventh amendment are separate questions that do not require abstention.
The Board's failure to pay the Mintons' judgment is not a denial of due process. The Supreme Court determined long ago in Louisiana ex rel. Folsom v. Mayor of New Orleans 12 that the property right created by a judgment against a government entity is not a right to payment at a particular time but merely the recognition of a continuing debt of that government entity. 13
In an effort to avoid the impact of Folsom, the Mintons refer to Evans v. City of Chicago, 14 a more recent case in which the Seventh Circuit held that a city's practice of delaying payment of judgments of over $1,000 constituted a deprivation of property under the fourteenth amendment due process clause. 15 The court in Evans, however, distinguished Folsom because Illinois law creates a specific property right in a judgment entitling a judgment creditor to immediate payment if the judgment is not satisfied within the fiscal year following the year in which the judgment was rendered and the debtor city fails to invoke prescribed procedures for delaying payment. 16 Because no such right to immediate payment is created by Louisiana law, the principle set forth in Folsom continues to control this case and the School Board's failure to appropriate funds to pay the debt to the Mintons does not constitute a taking in violation of the due process clause.
The constitutional right to equal protection, however, is not predicated upon the existence of a property right. Due process safeguards only against the deprivation of life, liberty, or property, but every person is entitled to equal protection, even with regard to interests that do not constitute life, liberty, or property in the constitutional sense. If the Mintons can prove their allegation that the School Board illegally discriminates between residents and nonresidents of St. Bernard Parish, as they say in their complaint, or between residents of Louisiana and nonresidents, as they state in their brief, in determining whether to satisfy tort judgments, they are entitled at least to declaratory relief.
This is not a situation in which a local or state government is patently justified in providing greater or more immediate benefits for its citizens than for noncitizens, and the School Board has offered no specific rationale for making such distinctions if, in fact, such distinctions are made. The state's reliance on Starns v. Malkerson, 17 therefore, is misplaced. In Starns, new residents of Minnesota challenged the state's policy of charging new or out-of-state residents higher tuition for enrollment in state colleges than it charges residents who have lived in the state for over one year. The state justified its policy as a rational attempt "to achieve partial cost equalization between those who have and those who have not recently contributed to the state's economy through employment, tax payments and expenditures therein." 18 As a condition precedent to allowing a person to reap the fullest benefit of a program not providing basic necessities of life, it is reasonable for a state to favor those who have previously contributed to the program's maintenance. The nonresident victim of a tort injury for which a government entity is responsible, however, generally would not be situated differently from his resident counterpart. Both the nonresident and the resident personal injury victim suffer disproportionately as a result of the government's activities, and each would...
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