Educational Services, Inc. v. Maryland State Bd. for Higher Educ.
| Decision Date | 23 June 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. 82-1098,82-1098 |
| Citation | 710 F.2d 170 |
| Parties | EDUCATIONAL SERVICES, INC., A Maryland Corporation doing business as International Montessori Society and Lee Havis, Appellants, v. MARYLAND STATE BOARD FOR HIGHER EDUCATION; Seven (7) Members of the Maryland State Board for Higher Education, in their official capacities: Richard R. Kline; J. Harrison Ager; Lucy Keker; Thomas Maddux; Mary L. Nock; Louis Randall; Gertrude Crist; Sheldon Knorr, Commissioner, Maryland State Board for Higher Education, Joseph Durham, Staff Member, Maryland State Board for Higher Education, Robert Rogers, Staff Member, Maryland State Board for Higher Education, Clarence Baseman, Staff Member, Maryland State Board for Higher Education, Maryland State Board of Education, David Hornbeck, Superintendent of Schools--Maryland State Board of Education, Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Lee Havis, Silver Spring, Md., for appellants.
Ellen M. Heller, Asst. Atty. Gen., Baltimore, Md. , for appellees.
Before WINTER, Chief Judge, ERVIN, Circuit Judge, and ALDRICH, * Senior Circuit Judge.
Faced with a broad-ranging and intricate constitutional challenge to Maryland's certification process governing the operation of a private teacher training school, the district court abstained, dismissing the suit. Plaintiffs appeal, contending principally that this suit is not among the various situations in which abstention is warranted. We agree. Plaintiffs also contend that they were entitled to a default judgment. Although we affirm the district court's denial of plaintiffs' motion for default judgment, we reverse the judgment of dismissal and remand to the district court to allow the case to proceed. We do not pass upon plaintiffs' contention that they are entitled to interim injunctive relief.
This suit stems from efforts by Lee Havis, the owner and executive director of co-plaintiff Educational Services, Inc., to obtain a certificate of approval from the Maryland State Board for Higher Education (Board) for the operation of a post-secondary teacher training school under the name International Montessori Society (IMS). 1 Havis, who also owns a private tutoring school named Capital Tutoring, Inc., first applied for the Board's certificate in February, 1980. After extensive administrative review, the Board, on July 2, 1981, affirmed as final the consistent denial of a certificate of approval for operation of the school. Havis thus unsuccessfully exhausted all administrative remedies.
On September 28, 1981, Havis pro se brought this action seeking declaratory and injunctive relief under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, alleging the denial of First and Fourteenth Amendment rights in the Board's 2 refusal to certify the IMS. Although couched in language invoking a variety of constitutional provisions, at bottom Havis alleges two principal theories of unconstitutional action. His principal claim is that the certification powers delegated to the Board under Secs. 12-201 et seq., Ann. Code of Maryland, Education (1982 Cum.Supp.), permit the Board unconstrained discretion to deny certification to unconventional or controversial applicants. 3 Havis's second major contention is that the statutory exemption for religious non-public "noncollegiate educational" institutions found in Sec. 2-206(e)(4) of the Education Article violates the Establishment Clause because secular non-public schools such as Capital Tutoring remain fully subject to Board certification. 4
On the basis of these allegations and supporting affidavits, Havis moved for a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the certifications laws against him. The Board in turn moved the district court to abstain from the exercise of federal question jurisdiction and to dismiss the suit.
Granting the Board's motion, the district court first concluded that the federal constitutional questions raised by Havis could be avoided by state court interpretation of the statutes and regulations called into question, and that the interpretation of those statutes and regulations was unsettled. As a consequence, the district court held the abstention doctrine enunciated in Railroad Commission of Texas v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 496, 61 S.Ct. 643, 85 L.Ed. 971 (1941) to be applicable. The district court further concluded that any ruling on Havis's claims would amount to federal interference with a complex state regulatory scheme, and therefore invoked the Burford doctrine. 5 Because it had deemed both Burford and Pullman abstention appropriate, the district court applied the harsher of the two, and dismissed the suit. See 17 Wright, Miller & Cooper, Federal Practice & Procedure: Jurisdiction Sec. 4245 (1978). Havis now appeals from that dismissal and from the denial of his earlier motion for default judgment.
The cases recognize several doctrines of abstention. 6 In considering the propriety of abstention in this case, we note initially that it lacks one predicate common to at least two varieties of that doctrine, the pendency of state judicial proceedings concerning the same matters. Thus, many of the cases relied upon by the district court or cited to us by the Board are inapposite. See, e.g., Cox v. Planning District I Community Mental Health and Mental Retardation Services Board, 669 F.2d 940 (4 Cir.1982); Harris County Commissioners Court v. Moore, 420 U.S. 77, 80, 95 S.Ct. 870, 873, 43 L.Ed.2d 32 (1975) (); Kelser v. Anne Arundel County Dept. of Social Services, 679 F.2d 1092, 1093 (4 Cir.1982) (); see also Fruchtman v. N.Y. State Bd. of Law Examiners, 534 F.Supp. 692, 694-96 (S.D.N.Y.1982) (). As a consequence, we have only to consider Burford and Pullman abstention, and we turn to them in that order.
The Board urges us to adopt the proposition that, because regulation of non-public schools furthers important state educational policies, any case arising from such regulation must be considered as involving the kind of complex state regulatory scheme which merits Burford-type abstention. While we acknowledge the important and sensitive nature of state educational regulation, we do not see abstention as its logical entailment. The Board's position sweeps too broadly; if followed it would displace federal jurisdiction over all challenges to state educational regulation. As then Chief Judge Swygert of the Seventh Circuit noted in an analogous vein, "The fact that the alleged denial of constitutional rights is set in the context of the public education system cannot be determinative." 7 Burford abstention rests on additional concerns beyond the mere presence of an important state administrative regime, concerns not present here.
The salient feature in Burford was that, in addition to extensive state regulation of a field, "the State had established its own elaborate review system for dealing with the geological complexities of oil and gas fields" by concentrating judicial oversight in specially authorized state courts. Colorado River Water Conservation District, supra, 424 U.S. at 815, 96 S.Ct. at 1245. Review by a federal court--or, indeed, by any unspecialized state court--of the administrative actions questioned in Burford "would have had an impermissibly disruptive effect on state policy for the management of those fields." Id. The premise underlying the Burford doctrine is that the very act of review by a court other than the one purposely made familiar with the particularly complex resource regulation issues involved would upset a carefully crafted and integrated state system. See Alabama Pub. Serv. Comm. v. Southern Railway, 341 U.S. 341, 71 S.Ct. 762, 95 L.Ed. 1002 (1951); Colorado River Water Conservation District, supra, 424 U.S. at 814-16, 96 S.Ct. at 1244-45; Knudsen Corp. v. Nevada State Dairy Commission, 676 F.2d 374, 376-77 (9 Cir.1982).
Here, by contrast, the Maryland state courts do not stand in any special relationship of technical oversight or concentrated review to the educational certification process the way the Texas or Alabama resource review courts did in Burford and Alabama PSC. Once having completed the administrative process, Havis had the opportunity to bring his constitutional challenges in state court under Maryland's Administrative Procedure Act 8; he chose instead to file his complaint in federal court. An adjudication that the Board's actions were unconstitutional in any of the ways claimed by Havis will be equally disruptive of the regulatory scheme challenged whether the decision emanates from a federal or a state court. Cf. Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 374, 379 n. 5, 98 S.Ct. 673, 677 n. 5, 54 L.Ed.2d 618 (1978). Federal court adjudication cannot intrusively displace that by a state court acting as "an integral part of the regulatory process", Alabama PSC, supra, 341 U.S. at 348, 71 S.Ct. at 767, because no such court exists in Maryland. See Field, Abstention in Constitutional Cases: The Scope of the Pullman Abstention Doctrine, 122 U.Pa.L.Rev. 1071, 1156 (1974). Dismissal of Havis's suit under the Burford rationale was therefore improper. 9
The Board also suggests that in addition to the Burford doctrine, abstention follows here on the strength of our decision in AFA Distributing Co., Inc. v. Pearl Brewing Co., 470 F.2d 1210 (4 Cir.1973). Unlike the case before us, however, Pearl Brewing involved an "exceedingly difficult and incredibly ambiguous statute" regulating the distribution and sale of alcoholic beverages. Id. at...
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