Chancery Clerk of Chickasaw Cty., Miss. v. Wallace

• Decision Date: 26 March 1981
• Docket Number: No. 79-2323,79-2323
• Citation: 646 F.2d 151
• Parties: CHANCERY CLERK OF CHICKASAW COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI, et al., Defendants-Appellants, v. Robert WALLACE et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees. . Unit A
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 151

646 F.2d 151

CHANCERY CLERK OF CHICKASAW COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI, et al., Defendants-Appellants, v. Robert WALLACE et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees.

No. 79-2323.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

Unit A

March 26, 1981.

Timmie Hancock, Jackson, Miss., for defendants-appellants.

Paul R. Friedman, Joseph F. Vargyas, Robert Plotkin, Mental Health Law Project, Washington, D. C., for plaintiffs-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING

Before COLEMAN, RUBIN and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

JERRE S. WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge:

The motion for rehearing is denied. The opinion for the Court in this case, slip opinion 3507, is withdrawn and the following opinion is substituted.

This case presents an interlocutory appeal from significant pretrial rulings in a class action challenging the constitutionality of Mississippi's procedures for the involuntary commitment of adults to state mental institutions. ¹ The plaintiffs assert a § 1983 claim ² for a declaratory judgment finding the civil commitment procedures violative of their fourteenth amendment due process rights.

At issue here is the trial court's denial of the defendant's motion to stay or to dismiss the suit. The defendants had urged the district court to terminate this suit on abstention grounds or, alternatively, taking the relief requested to entail the release of persons from unconstitutional state confinement, on grounds that the plaintiffs failed to exhaust state remedies as § 2254(b) requires of habeas corpus petitioners. ³ This appeal raises for the first time the additional question whether plaintiffs chose "the real parties in interest" in suing as the defendants' class the chancery judges and clerks of the State of Mississippi. We affirm the trial judge's rulings on the abstention question and on the propriety of including confined persons among the plaintiff class bringing this § 1983 action, but remand for reconsideration of his decision to certify both plaintiff and defendant classes.

Proceedings Below

In 1975, Robert Wallace, a Chickasaw County, Mississippi resident involuntarily confined at the time in the Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield, brought suit purporting to represent all persons confined under Mississippi's allegedly unconstitutional civil commitment procedures. ⁴ He sued the Mississippi county judicial officials responsible for processing civil commitments. ⁵ By order dated March 11, 1976, District Judge Smith certified a plaintiff class consisting of three subclasses:

1. All persons who have been committed to Mississippi's state mental institutions in accordance with Mississippi's statutory procedure as set forth in Sections 41-21-5, -7, -9, -11, -13, and -15, Miss.Code 2. All persons who have been committed to Mississippi's state mental institutions in accordance with Section 41-21-23, Miss.Code Ann. (1972) and remain confined in Mississippi's state mental institutions,

Ann. (1972), and remain confined in Mississippi's state mental institutions,

3. All persons who have been or may in the future be committed to Mississippi's state mental institutions in accordance with the new Mississippi statutory procedure as set forth in Sections 41-21-65 et seq., Miss.Code Ann. (1975).

In early 1976, the defendants petitioned the trial court to abstain from proceeding with this action in light of other law suits pending in state and federal court challenging individual commitments on theories similar to those asserted by Wallace. ⁶ Alternatively, defendants moved to dismiss on the theory that, although the pleadings characterize the suit as a § 1983 declaratory judgment action, a habeas corpus action with its attendant, unfulfilled exhaustion of remedies requirement is the exclusive means of attacking the constitutionality of Mississippi's civil commitment scheme available to these plaintiffs. After rudimentary discovery and preliminary motions, Judge Smith held a hearing on the defendants' motions to dismiss on March 20, 1979. In a thoughtful bench opinion, he denied the defendants' motion and certified his rulings for review here under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b) (1976).

I. The Abstention Issue

Defendants question the correctness of the trial court's refusal to abstain. We review this contention by inquiring whether the trial court abused its discretion in declining to abstain. See Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 528, 534, 85 S.Ct. 1177, 1181, 14 L.Ed.2d 50 (1965); High Ol' Times, Inc. v. Busbee, 621 F.2d 135, 138-39 (5th Cir. 1980).

Defendants stress the fact that Mississippi's statutory scheme for involuntary civil commitments has never been authoritatively construed by Mississippi courts. Although the suits pending in federal and state courts when the motion to dismiss this suit was filed have subsequently withered, see n.6 supra, defendants point out that the named representatives of the plaintiff class and any other persons subjected to commitment proceedings could challenge the scheme in state court. Thus, extracting language favorable to their position from distinguishable prior decisions, defendants insist the trial court erred in refusing to invoke Pullman abstention. Railroad Commission of Texas v. Pullman, 312 U.S. 496, 61 S.Ct. 643, 85 L.Ed. 971 (1941).

We disagree. Pullman abstention presupposes two conditions: "(1) there must be an unsettled issue of state law; and (2) there must be a possibility that the state law determination will moot or present in a different posture the federal constitutional question raised." Palmer v. Jackson, 617 F.2d 424, 428 (5th Cir. 1980). We doubt that either condition exists here. The defendants do not particularize their claim that state court construction of an unsettled statutory provision may obviate the need for federal constitutional adjudication. They do not point to any ambiguous aspect of the civil commitment scheme that, by a narrowing judicial construction, might be saved from possible invalidation. Instead, they urge abstention in consideration of the prospect that Mississippi courts may find all or part of the commitment scheme violative of the Mississippi constitution. ⁷

There appears to be neither ambiguity in the challenged statutory provisions nor doubt about how they operate in practice. The only uncertainty surrounding the scheme is whether it violates the due process rights of persons facing commitment proceedings. Federal courts should abstain when state courts can, by definitive construction, confine the statute within constitutional limits. But that opportunity does not appear to present itself in this case. The federalism interest underlying Pullman abstention the reluctance to interject an unnecessary constitutional ruling into an ambiguous state law question is absent here.

Further, Pullman abstention is required only when an alternative state forum is available for resolution of the complaint. See Texas Railroad Commission v. Pullman, 312 U.S. at 501, 61 S.Ct. at 645. The pending state court suits cited in defendants' motion to dismiss as alternative state vehicles for resolving this controversy have since become moot. See n.6 supra. Moreover, while we perceive some defects in the definition of the certified classes, see Part III, infra, we understand that, given the reluctance of Mississippi courts to countenance class actions at all, ⁸ the mounting of a similar challenge offering the promise of comparable relief from a state court may be unworkable. Therefore, we doubt the feasibility of resolving the issues presented by this lawsuit in a Mississippi court.

Even assuming the availability of an alternative forum for resolution of these issues in a state court, we see no basis for requiring Pullman abstention. Further, the lack of an ongoing state proceeding renders Younger abstention likewise inapplicable. ⁹ We certainly cannot say that the trial court abused its discretion in declining to abstain.

II. Habeas Corpus versus Section 1983 Relief

Two of the three plaintiff subclasses certified by the trial court are composed of persons involuntarily confined in Mississippi mental institutions. These confinements are the product of state court judgments reached through procedures here asserted to be unconstitutional. Specific challenges to the constitutionality of confinement in state institutions fall within the ambit of habeas corpus procedures, 28 U.S.C. § 2254(a). This statutory provision requires that state remedies must be exhausted before release from confinement can be considered by the federal court.

There has been no exhaustion of state remedies by the plaintiffs in this case. An essential inquiry, therefore, is whether this challenge to the procedures for commitment of individuals to state mental institutions is a challenge to the legality of the In resolving this issue, we start with Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 475, 93 S.Ct. 1827, 36 L.Ed.2d 439 (1973). There prisoners challenged the procedures under which good-conduct-time credits had been denied, and asked that certain good-conduct-time credits be restored. The Supreme Court held that a § 1983 suit would not lie because the additional good-conduct-time credits sought would automatically have resulted in the immediate release of some prisoners and the accelerated release of others. The Court concluded that such a precise effect on the "duration" of confinement requires proceeding by the habeas corpus route. In the same case, however, the Court recognized that a § 1983 proceeding would lie, without the exhaustion of state remedies, if civil rights violations were claimed against the conditions under which confinement was maintained rather than the duration of confinement itself.

confinements as such. If so, a § 1983 suit claiming civil rights violations does not lie. Such suits must be brought under § 2254(a), and without the exhaustion of state remedies there is no standing to bring suit by those who...