Bible v. Colombani

• Decision Date: 01 April 2013
• Docket Number: No. 12–1370.,12–1370.
• Citation: 712 F.3d 6
• Parties: WATCHTOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY OF NEW YORK, INC. et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. Guillermo Somoza COLOMBANI et al., Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

712 F.3d 6

WATCHTOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY OF NEW YORK, INC. et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants,

v.Guillermo Somoza COLOMBANI et al., Defendants, Appellees.

No. 12–1370.

United States Court of Appeals,First Circuit.

April 1, 2013.

Paul D. Polidoro, with whom Gregory Allen, Associate General Counsel, Legal Department, and Nora Vargas Acosta, were on brief for appellants.

Susana I. Peñagarícano–Brown, Assistant Solicitor General, Department of Justice, with whom Luis R. Román–Negrón, Solicitor General, was on brief for appellees.

Before LYNCH, Chief Judge, TORRUELLA and SELYA, Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

With only limited exceptions, the federal judicial system bans piecemeal review of trial court decisions. This policy is grounded in considerations of efficiency and the proper allocation of overtaxed judicial resources. Courts of appeals must police these boundaries with vigilance. This is such an occasion.

This appeal arises out of an order dismissing officials of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (collectively, the Commonwealth defendants) as parties in a nuanced First Amendment case. Concluding, as we do, that the appeal has been brought prematurely, we dismiss it for want of appellate jurisdiction. The tale follows.

I. BACKGROUND

This is our second intervention in this tangled matter. The architecture of the case is delineated in our earlier opinion in Watchtower Bible & Tract Society of New York, Inc. v. Sagardía de Jesús ( Watchtower I ), 634 F.3d 3, 6–8 (1st Cir.2011), and we assume the reader's familiarity with that opinion. We rehearse here only those events that are necessary to place this appeal into perspective.

Puerto Rico has taken a unique approach to the creation of gated communities. Its Controlled Access Law (CAL), P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 23, §§ 64–64h, authorizes gated communities, called “urbanizations,” which—unlike gated communities elsewhere—may control access to public streets within their confines. See Watchtower I, 634 F.3d at 6. Once created, urbanizations are run by homeowners' associations. A homeowners' association may regulate access by erecting fences or barriers with gates (manned or unmanned) for entry and egress. See id.

Although the framework for creating urbanizations derives from the CAL, the affected municipalities—not the Commonwealth—are the source of permission to establish and operate particular urbanizations: “each municipality after a public hearing makes the decision whether to approve a permit application” for a specific urbanization. Id. at 7. The Commonwealth “does not direct the municipalities or urbanizations in their implementation of permits.” Id. at 7 n. 4.

In a sense, the CAL is a contradiction in terms. The streets within urbanizations remain public, and any restrictions imposed by a homeowners' association “shall not prevent or hinder residents from outside the community to use and enjoy sports, recreational and other community installations, nor from obtaining the services of private institutions such as schools, churches, hospitals, civic clubs and others, located in the community.” P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 23, § 64b(e).

In 2004, the appellants Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. and Congregación Cristiana de los Testigos de Jehová de Puerto Rico, Inc. brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that the controlled access regime unconstitutionally impeded their ability to pursue “a religious duty to share the Bible's message publicly and to proselytize from house to house.” Watchtower I, 634 F.3d at 6. The suit, originally brought against the Commonwealth defendants,¹ was soon expanded to include thirty-three municipalities and urbanizations as additional defendants.

In Watchtower I, we determined that the CAL was constitutional on its face. Id. at 12. We also determined, however, that some municipalities and urbanizations were applying the law in ways that bore “unreasonably on Jehovah's Witnesses' access to public streets.” Id. at 13. Consequently, we remanded the case to the district court “to take prompt action to bring the municipalities and urbanizations into compliance.” Id. at 17.

Some municipal defendants sought rehearing. We rejected those requests and, in so doing, clarified the import of Watchtower I. See Watchtower Bible & Tract Soc'y of N.Y., Inc. v. Sagardía de Jesús, 638 F.3d 81 (1st Cir.2011) (order denying rehearing). Pertinently, we explained:

Without resolving claims against any specific municipality or urbanization, this court held [in Watchtower I ] that further proceedings were required and outlined in skeleton form the principles that should guide the district court in structuring injunctive relief if and where it turned out to be appropriate.

....

... [T]he panel made no determination as to the accuracy or typicality of obstructions to access alleged against any particular municipality or urbanization, and any municipality or urbanization is free on remand to urge that it did not improperly bar access or discriminate.

... [T]he panel decision made no determination as to how far municipalities themselves—by virtue of their permitting activities, possible involvement with exclusionary acts, or other entanglements—might properly be subject to injunctive relief or any other remedy.

Id. at 83.

On January 31, 2012, the district court held a remand hearing. The Commonwealth defendants noted that the constitutionality of the CAL had been upheld in Watchtower I and, on that basis, insisted that they should play no role in further proceedings. The district court expressed agreement with this view, concluding that it would serve no useful purpose for the Commonwealth defendants to remain as parties “at this time” and that the action against them should be dismissed. The next day, the court issued a declaratory judgment order (the Order) in which it formulated a plan for relief involving the municipal defendants and memorialized the dismissal of the Commonwealth defendants.²

The appellants filed a notice of appeal. They also requested reconsideration of that portion of the Order that dismissed the Commonwealth defendants. After receiving briefs, the district court reaffirmed its original decision to dismiss the Commonwealth defendants. It explained that the case “only involve [d] as defendants several municipalities and their controlled access urbanizations,” so that “the remedy this district court can issue ... is not island-wide, but rather limited to the parties to this case.” It added, however, that the dismissal was without prejudice and that “if circumstances should change requiring the presence of the Commonwealth, the court in the future will revisit the issue.”

II. DISCUSSION

“Federal courts, as courts of limited jurisdiction, may not presume the existence of subject matter jurisdiction, but, rather, must appraise their own authority to hear and determine particular cases.” Cusumano v. Microsoft Corp., 162 F.3d 708, 712 (1st Cir.1998). “When a colorable question exists, an appellate court has an unflagging obligation to inquire sua sponte into its own jurisdiction.” Charlesbank Equity Fund II v. Blinds to Go, Inc., 370 F.3d 151, 155–56 (1st Cir.2004). As such, “we have jurisdiction to determine the existence and extent of our own subject-matter jurisdiction.” Subsalve USA Corp. v. Watson Mfg., Inc., 462 F.3d 41, 44 (1st Cir.2006).

In the appellants' opening brief, they asserted that appellate jurisdiction existed because the Order was “final” within the purview of 28 U.S.C. § 1291. Doubting this premise, we issued a pre-argument order requiring supplemental briefing on the jurisdictional point. By the time of oral argument, the appellants had proposed three jurisdictional theories: first, that the Order was appealable as a final judgment; second, that it was appealable as a declaratory judgment; and third, that it had the practical effect of denying injunctive relief and was, therefore, interlocutory but immediately appealable. The Commonwealth defendants, who had not previously questioned appellate jurisdiction, contended in their supplemental brief that no jurisdiction existed.³

We consider each of the appellants' jurisdictional theories in turn.

A. Final Judgment.

28 U.S.C. § 1291 vests courts of appeals with jurisdiction over “appeals from all final decisions of the district courts.” “Ordinarily, a judgment is final (and, thus, appealable under [section 1291] ) only if it conclusively determines all claims of all parties to the action.” Nichols v. Cadle Co., 101 F.3d 1448, 1449 n. 1 (1st Cir.1996) (per curiam).

In this instance, the Order plainly did not resolve all claims against all parties. The district court, after issuing the Order, is continuing to engage in the complicated task of custom-tailoring remedies for particular urbanizations in particular municipalities. This is intricate work: the municipal defendants have not displayed a uniform approach to the permitting of urbanizations, and the urbanizations themselves have disparate features. The very existence of these ongoing proceedings in the district court is a clear indication that the Order cannot realistically be regarded as final.

This view of the Order makes sense. Were we to hold otherwise, we would trigger the unseemly spectacle of two courts competing simultaneously for the parties' attention. This would offend basic tenets of judicial administration: “[t]he filing of a notice of appeal is an event of jurisdictional significance—it confers jurisdiction on the court of appeals and divests the district court of its control over those aspects of the case involved in the appeal.” Griggs v. Provident Consumer Discount Co., 459 U.S. 56, 58, 103 S.Ct. 400, 74 L.Ed.2d 225 (1982) (per curiam). Consequently, in the ordinary course “a federal district court and a federal court of appeals should not attempt to assert jurisdiction over a case simultaneously.” Id. This paradigm “derives from the notion that shared jurisdiction almost...