Ivy Club v. Edwards
| Decision Date | 16 September 1991 |
| Docket Number | No. 90-6027,90-6027 |
| Citation | 943 F.2d 270 |
| Parties | 70 Ed. Law Rep. 292 The IVY CLUB v. W. Cary EDWARDS; Pamela S. Poff, Appellants, Sally Frank, Intervenor-Defendant. Sally FRANK, Counter-Claimant, v. The IVY CLUB, Counter-Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit |
Robert J. Del Tufo, Atty. Gen. of New Jersey, Andrea M. Silkowitz, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jeffrey C. Burstein (argued), William H. Lorentz, Deputy Attys. Gen., Div. of Law, Newark, N.J., for appellants.
Barbara Strapp Nelson (argued), McCarthy and Schatzman, P.A., Princeton, N.J., for appellee, The Ivy Club.
Nadine Taub (argued), Rutgers Women's Rights Litigation Clinic, Newark, N.J., for appellee, Sally Frank.
Sally Frank, pro se.
Before MANSMANN, NYGAARD and ROSENN, Circuit Judges.
This appeal, the procedural posture of which has all of the trappings of a law school examination question, requires us to explore the boundaries of the several theories under which the federal courts abstain from exercising their jurisdiction in deference to comity with the state courts. Specifically, the question presented is whether a party, who files a claim in federal court following a state administrative agency's determination that the federal constitution does not preclude the agency's exercise of jurisdiction, may return to federal court to litigate its federal claims after the completion of the state court proceedings in which it specifically refrains from raising its federal claims.
The Ivy Club ("Ivy" or "Club"), a social eating organization whose membership is drawn primarily from the student body of Princeton University, filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey alleging that the exercise of jurisdiction by the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights, Department of Law and Public Safety (the "Division") violated its first amendment rights to freedom of association and its constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy. Following the federal court's stay of the federal suit, Ivy returned to the state court proceedings, but thereafter refrained from litigating its federal claims.
Upon termination of the state court proceedings, the district court reopened this case and, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b), certified to this court the order granting Ivy's motion to reopen its section 1983 action. We affirm the district court's order permitting Ivy to reopen the case because we hold that Ivy, in the unique circumstances we have here, sufficiently reserved its right to litigate its federal claims in federal court.
Ivy, founded more than a century ago, is a social eating club with an active membership of less than eighty undergraduate students at Princeton University and approximately fifteen hundred inactive graduate members who formerly attended the University. The Club is one of thirteen eating clubs which provide meals to a portion of upper class Princeton students. Until recently, Ivy's membership was all male.
This litigation commenced in 1979 when Sally Frank, then a student at Princeton University, filed a complaint with the Division 1 against Ivy, as well as two other eating clubs, the Tiger Inn and the University Cottage Club ("the Clubs"), and Princeton University. Frank alleged that the Clubs and Princeton University discriminated on the basis of sex in places of public accommodation in violation of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination ("LAD"), N.J.S.A. 10:5-1 et seq.
The Division initially refused to process Frank's complaint, stating that it had determined that the Clubs were exempt from LAD because the Clubs were not places of public accommodation. LAD does not apply to "any institution, bona fide club, or place of accommodation, which is in its nature distinctly private." N.J.S.A. 10:5-5(1).
In December of 1979, Frank filed another complaint with the Division, this time alleging that the Clubs were places of public accommodations because they functioned as an arm of Princeton University. Ivy's answer to the complaint stated as a separate defense that Ivy "has the right to freedom of association pursuant to the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution." The Division dismissed Frank's complaint, holding that it lacked jurisdiction over the Clubs because of their distinctly private nature.
Frank appealed the dismissal of her complaint to the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey. Once again, the Clubs raised the defense of freedom of association guaranteed by the United States Constitution. The appellate division, taking no position on the merits of the complaint, vacated the decision by the Division and remanded the case for further investigation, holding that a hearing and factual findings were necessary to determine whether the Division had jurisdiction.
After a number of procedural skirmishes not relevant to the dispute at hand, 2 on February 6, 1986, the Division issued a Partial Summary Decision, holding that the Division had jurisdiction over the Clubs. The decision affirmed an earlier ruling of the Division in which the Director of the Division rejected the Club's argument that the exercise of jurisdiction by the Division violated their first amendment right to freedom of association. In a discussion covering six pages, the Director compared the Clubs and Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 104 S.Ct. 3244, 82 L.Ed.2d 462 (1984), and held that the application of LAD to the Clubs did not violate their constitutional right to freedom of association.
On February 13, 1986, following this final determination of jurisdiction at the administrative level, and having had its constitutional defenses against the exercise of jurisdiction rejected, Ivy and the Tiger Inn filed suit in federal court. 3 The complaint alleged that the exercise of jurisdiction by the Division of Civil Rights violated the Clubs' civil rights under the federal constitution and requested a declaratory judgment and an injunction against the state proceedings. The defendants were Attorney General W. Cary Edwards and Director of Civil Rights Pamela Poff. Tiger Inn v. Edwards, 636 F.Supp. 787 (D.N.J.1986).
The federal court chose to stay the federal action "until the New Jersey courts have clarified the application of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination to the plaintiffs." Tiger Inn, 636 F.Supp. at 792. Although the plaintiffs requested the court to exercise its equitable powers in restraining the state proceedings, the court stayed the action pursuant to the Pullman doctrine, rather than the Younger doctrine. 4 The court explicitly declined to rule whether the plaintiffs were entitled to return to federal court upon the conclusion of the state proceedings. The court cautioned Ivy and Tiger Inn "not to interpret the court's decision to grant a stay as a ruling that they have properly reserved their federal constitutional claims for federal court adjudication pursuant to England." 5 636 F.Supp. at 792.
The Ivy Club and Tiger Inn then resumed litigation at the state level. Ivy thereafter refrained from raising its federal constitutional claims in the state proceedings. It explicitly stated that it wished to reserve its right to litigate its federal claims in federal court pursuant to the England doctrine. Ivy reserved its rights under England orally before the Administrative Law Judge and again in its brief to the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court. As a part of its motion opposing certification to the Supreme Court of New Jersey, Ivy included its brief presented to the appellate division containing the England reservation. Tiger Inn, on the other hand, continued to present its federal claims in the state proceedings.
On July 3, 1990, the Supreme Court of New Jersey rendered its final decision. See Frank v. Ivy Club, 120 N.J. 73, 576 A.2d 241 (1990), cert. denied, Tiger Inn v. Frank, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 799, 112 L.Ed.2d 860 (1991). The court affirmed the Division's Order of May 26, 1987, awarded Frank humiliation damages in the amount of $5,000, but denied her club membership. It also ordered Ivy and Tiger Inn to admit women as members.
The decision, concerned primarily with the extent of hearings necessary to satisfy administrative due process, did not discuss federal constitutional claims. The only mention the New Jersey Supreme Court made of any federal constitutional claims was in its summary of the procedural history where the court noted that "[t]he Division rejected the argument that the Club members' constitutional free-association rights would be violated if the Clubs were subject to LAD." 576 A.2d at 251.
On August 24, 1990, Ivy moved to reopen its federal action based on the 1986 complaint. On October 15, 1990, the district court reopened this case and certified the question to this court under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) 6 whether Ivy had waived its right to litigate its federal rights in federal court.
On October 1, 1990, Tiger Inn filed a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari with the Supreme Court of the United States, claiming that the decision of the Supreme Court of New Jersey violated its first amendment rights. Although Ivy filed a motion for an extension of time to file its petition in the Supreme Court, Ivy never filed a petition. On January 18, 1990 the United States Supreme Court denied Tiger's petition for certiorari.
In the fall of 1990, Ivy formally inducted its first female members. The admission of women to the club raises the threshold question of whether this matter is moot. As is well established under Article III of the Constitution, federal courts may adjudicate only actual, ongoing cases or controversies. Lewis v. Continental Bank Corporation, 494 U.S. 472, 110 S.Ct. 1249, 1253, 108 L.Ed.2d 400 (1990). This case-or-controversy requirement subsists through all...
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