Cox v. Planning Dist. I Community Mental Health and Mental Retardation Services Bd.
| Decision Date | 04 February 1982 |
| Docket Number | No. 81-1317,81-1317 |
| Parties | Wilma Jean COX; Sheila Gilliam; Barbara S. Starnes; Nancy Barger; Jackie Davis; Rhonda Sue Cox; Appellants, v. PLANNING DISTRICT I COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH AND MENTAL RETARDATION SERVICES BOARD, Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Janet H. Thurston, Abingdon, Va. (Copeland & Thurston, P.C., Abingdon, Va., on brief), for appellants.
Clifford P. Johnson, Kingsport, Tenn. (Edwin O. Norris, James W. Bradford, Jr., Hunter, Smith & Davis, Kingsport, Tenn., on brief), for appellees.
Before BUTZNER, Circuit Judge, FIELD, Senior Circuit Judge, and SPROUSE, Circuit Judge.
Wilma Jean Cox, Sheila Gilliam, Barbara Starnes, Nancy Barger, Jackie Davis and Rhonda Sue Cox (appellants) appeal an order of the district court abstaining from exercising its jurisdiction and dismissing their action, brought pursuant to the provisions of 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985, against the Planning District I, Community Mental Health and Mental Retardation Services Board (Board).
While we agree that the district court properly abstained from exercising its jurisdiction, the appellants' action should have been retained on the district court's docket until the involved state-law issues were resolved in the state courts and, accordingly, we remand.
All six appellants are former employees of the Board. They were discharged when they absented themselves from work and met with a program supervisor to air their concerns regarding the operation of the Board's programs. After the appellants were terminated, they were advised by the Executive Director of the Board of their right to have the propriety of the discharge reviewed in a grievance arbitration proceeding. Each appellant, upon the commencement of her employment, had received a personnel manual which, among other things, specified the grievance procedure to be followed. The panel which heard the final step of their grievance ordered all six appellants reinstated with full back pay and benefits. The Board then refused to recognize the panel order contending that it was contrary to the constitution and statutes of Virginia. Ten days after the grievance arbitration award, the Board petitioned a state trial court to stay its enforcement and for a writ of certiorari to review and vacate the award. On that same day, the appellants filed this action in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, arguing that the Commonwealth of Virginia, acting through the Board, granted them a right to arbitration of their grievances, and that by refusing to implement the arbitration award, the Board deprived them of property rights in violation of the fourteenth amendment. Since the Board, on the other hand, contended that the laws of Virginia do not authorize grievance arbitration for Board employees and that the arbitration procedure in this case was violative of Virginia's statutory and constitutional law, it argued in the district court and on appeal that the appellants have no federally-protected property rights.
The abdication or postponement of federal court jurisdiction to accommodate state court adjudication, as expressed by the abstention doctrine, "is the exception, not the rule," Colorado River Water Conservation District v. United States, 424 U.S. 800, 813, 96 S.Ct. 1236, 1244, 47 L.Ed.2d 483 (1976). Not completely unitary in concept, this doctrine traditionally has been utilized in three circumstances. 1 Abstention is appropriate in those cases presenting a federal constitutional question which may be mooted or presented in a different posture by a state court determination of relevant state law. Railroad Commission of Texas v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 496, 61 S.Ct. 643, 85 L.Ed. 971 (1941); North v. Budig, 637 F.2d 246, 249 (4th Cir. 1981). Second, abstention also is appropriate where there are presented difficult and complex questions of state law which directly affect important state policy concerns, and whose importance extends beyond the case at bar. In these situations, the exercise of federal jurisdiction would exert a disruptive influence on state efforts to establish a consistent policy with respect to matters of significant public concern. Burford v. Sun Oil Co., 319 U.S. 315, 63 S.Ct. 1098, 87 L.Ed. 1424 (1943). Finally, abstention is mandated where, absent harassment, bad faith or a patently invalid state statute, litigants seek to invoke federal jurisdiction to restrain state criminal proceedings. Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971). In recent years a fourth and more general principle has been recognized, one in which a concern for judicial economy justifies the exercise of a district court's discretion to abstain where there is on-going state-court litigation of the same issues of "extraordinary importance" implicated by the proposed federal suit. See Colorado River Water Conservation District, supra; C. Wright, A. Miller & E. Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure, § 4247 (1979).
The procedural consequence of abstention-stay or dismissal of the action-is dependent upon the ultimate path of the litigation. A federal court abstaining due to the presence of an unsettled question of state law contemplates that the case may return to federal court for the resolution of federal issues in light of the state court's determination. Pullman, supra. In this situation, the district court should merely stay the proceeding, and retain it on its docket. On the other hand, if federal abstention is justified by the belief that the exercise of jurisdiction would impermissibly affect a complex state administrative scheme or implicate federalism concerns, as in Burford and Younger, or that the determinative issues will unfailingly be resolved within the parameters of the state-court litigation, Colorado River Water Conservation District, supra, then dismissal is proper, as no further action by the district court is anticipated. See generally, C. Wright,...
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