Frances J. v. Wright

• Decision Date: 03 May 1994
• Docket Number: No. 93-1099,93-1099
• Citation: 19 F.3d 337
• Parties: FRANCES J., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Robert WRIGHT, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 337

19 F.3d 337

FRANCES J., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Robert WRIGHT, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 93-1099.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued Nov. 9, 1993.

Decided March 21, 1994.

Rehearing and Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc Denied May 3, 1994.

Patrick T. Murphy, Miriam H. Soloveichik, Office of Cook County Public Guardian, Chicago, IL, Kathleen G. Kennedy, Therese Schafer (argued), Office of Public Guardian, Chicago, IL, for Frances J. and Willa B.

John E. Huston, Karen Elaine Konieczny (argued), Office of Atty. Gen., Chicago, IL, for Philip Bradley.

Jennifer A. Keller, Asst. Atty. Gen. (argued), Office of Atty. Gen., Civ. Appeals Div., Chicago, IL, for Nancy Nelson.

Before GIBSON, ^* CUMMINGS, and FLAUM, Circuit Judges.

FLAUM, Circuit Judge.

In this case Frances J. and Willa B. represent a class of mentally impaired adults over the age of 60 who have been or will be adjudicated disabled in the probate court of Cook County. On the plaintiffs' behalf, the Cook County Public Guardian filed suit, in state court, against two state officers in their official capacity ("Defendants"), alleging that they violated the plaintiffs' constitutional rights and misapplied state law. Defendants removed the case to federal court and subsequently moved to dismiss the plaintiffs' complaint. The district court granted Defendant's motion. Plaintiffs here appeal. Because the federal courts lack subject matter jurisdiction over this case, we vacate the judgment of the district court and remand this case with the instructions that the district court remand it back to the state courts.

I. Background

The named plaintiffs, Frances J. and Willa B., represent a class of elderly persons, most of whom suffer from Alzheimer, dementia or organic brain syndrome dysfunctions. At the time this suit was filed, Frances, at 75 years old, suffered from an organic brain syndrome dysfunction, while Willa, at 100, suffered from dementia of the Alzheimer type. Both are so severely disabled that the probate court appointed Patrick T. Murphy, the Cook County Public Guardian ("Guardian"), to direct their legal affairs. Defendants, Phil Bradley as the director of Illinois Department of Public Aid ("IDPA"), and Nancy Nelson as the acting director of the Illinois Department of Aging ("IDOA"), were sued in their official capacities only. Since the filing of this suit both Mr. Bradley and Ms. Nelson have been succeeded in their official duties by Robert Wright and Maralee Lindley respectively, and thus, pursuant to F.R.A.P. 43(c), Mr. Wright and Ms. Lindley have been substituted in the caption.

On the plaintiffs' behalf, the Guardian is attempting to obtain certain home health-care benefits for the plaintiffs that are provided by the state though IDOA. ¹ In Illinois, the IDOA administers these health-care benefits through its Community Care Program ("Program"). As part of the Program, the IDOA has established the "Determination of Needs Analysis" ("DONA") test to assess the requisite level of home health-care services needed by an applicant. Depending on an applicant's DONA score, the state will reimburse the Guardian for the allowed level of home health-care services. In this case, after the IDOA found the plaintiffs eligible for less than the maximum number of Program benefit dollars, ² the Guardian filed suit in state court for damages, a declaratory judgment, and injunctive relief. In their state-court complaint, the plaintiffs alleged violations of substantive due process, procedural due process and equal protection rights, along with violations of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Defendants removed the case to federal court, where the district court dismissed the suit for failure to state a claim. Here, the plaintiffs have appealed. We do not reach the merits of the plaintiffs' contentions because this case is beyond the removal jurisdiction of the federal courts. Accordingly, we must vacate the district court's judgment and remand this suit with instructions to remand it to state court.

II. Analysis

The procedural path of this case highlights a peculiar sequence of decisions by Defendants. Initially this case was filed by the plaintiffs in the state courts of general jurisdiction. But Defendants, after removing this case to federal court on their own motion, now argue that this same federal forum lacks any subject matter jurisdiction, by the Hans doctrine, ³ to hear all but the prospective claims of this case. We are curious why Defendants would engage in such a paradoxical jurisdictional maneuver, unless they merely had hoped to split the prospective relief claims from those that are retrospective in nature. Whatever their reason, stratagem, or lack thereof, for our part we can only send this whole matter back from whence it came. Under the federal removal statute, this case should not have been removed without Defendants first producing an authoritative waiver of the state's sovereign immunity.

A. Removal

The linchpin of this court's jurisdiction is the case's removal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1441(a). ⁴ The text of Sec. 1441(a) specifies when a federal court may hear a case removed from state court. Notably, the language of this statute only authorizes the removal of actions that are within the original jurisdiction of the federal courts:

Except as otherwise expressly provided by Act of Congress, any civil action brought in a State court of which the district courts of the United States have original jurisdiction, may be removed by the defendant or defendants, to the district court of the United States for the district and division embracing the place where such action is pending.

28 U.S.C. Sec. 1441(a) (1948) (our emphasis). Thus, federal courts are straightaway restricted from removing actions where the action could not have been originally filed in federal court. See Metcalf v. Watertown, 128 U.S. 586, 589, 9 S.Ct. 173, 174, 32 L.Ed. 543 (1888). As we have opined recently in Crosetto, a state's sovereign immunity, whether rooted in the Hans doctrine or the Eleventh Amendment, limits the original subject matter jurisdiction of the federal courts. See generally Crosetto, 12 F.3d at 1400 ("In developing the Hans doctrine, the Eleventh Amendment has served as a historical framework for the Supreme Court's teaching that the Constitution never granted federal courts any judicial power over suits by a citizen against his own state.") (footnote omitted). By the plain meaning of Sec. 1441(a), an action that contains claims barred by sovereign immunity, cannot, in whole or in part, be removed from the state courts to a federal forum because it is not an action within the original jurisdiction of the district courts.

We are not alone in our reading of Sec. 1441(a). See McKay v. Boyd, 769 F.2d 1084, 1086-87 (5th Cir.1985). In McKay, the Fifth Circuit faced circumstances strikingly similar to those here before our court. Mr. McKay, an adjudicated incompetent, through his guardian, sued the state of Mississippi among other defendants. The defendants successfully removed the entire case from state to federal court where the district court entered summary judgement in their favor. On appeal the Fifth Circuit vacated that judgment and remanded the entire case to the state court. The court reasoned that since some claims within Mr. McKay's original state action would be jurisdictionally barred from federal court, the plain language of Sec. 1441(a), which requires the removing court to have jurisdiction over the entire action as if it were originally filed in that court, did not permit removal. The court concluded that "[the defendant's] motion for removal should not have been granted in the first place" without the defendant first obtaining an authoritative waiver of the state's sovereign immunity. Id. at 1087. Since McKay, three district courts in the Ninth Circuit have followed its reasoning to remand similarly removed sovereign-immunity cases, in their entirety, to state courts. In each of these cases the action contained at least one claim that would be barred by sovereign immunity. See Simmons v. State of California, 740 F.Supp. 781, 785 (E.D.Cal.1990); Kelly v. California, 687 F.Supp. 1494 (D.Nev.1988), affd., 880 F.2d 416 (9th Cir.1989); Stephans v. State of Nevada, 685 F.Supp. 217, 220 (D.Nev.1988).

In reaching our decision, we disagree, as some have asserted, that McKay and similar decisions must erroneously read Hans to bar federal jurisdiction over actions rather than single claims. See Henry v. Metropolitan Sewer District, 922 F.2d 332, 339 (6th Cir.1990) (chiding McKay ); see also Brewer v. Purvis, 816 F.Supp. 1560, 1570 (M.D.Ga.1993). ⁵ We agree such a reading of Hans would contravene Pennhurst, a case plainly teaching that Hans only bars claims and not entire cases from federal court. See Henry, 922 F.2d at 337, citing Pennhurst v. Halderman, 465 U.S 89, 98, 104 S.Ct. 900, 906, 79 L.Ed.2d 67 (1984) ("A federal court must examine each claim in a case to see if the court's jurisdiction over that claim is barred by the Eleventh Amendment."). The supposed criticism, such as raised in Henry, misses the mark. The question here, as in McKay, concerns not the jurisdictional scope of the Hans doctrine or the Eleventh Amendment, but rather, the scope of a federal court's removal jurisdiction as allowed under Sec. 1441(a). From our reading of the removal statute, we agree with McKay --if even one claim in an action is jurisdictionally barred from federal court by a state's sovereign immunity, or does not otherwise fit within the original or supplemental (see 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1367) jurisdiction of the federal courts, then, as a consequence of Sec. 1441(a), the whole action cannot be removed to federal court.

We note that while our holding today is compelled by the text of Sec. 1441(a), it is not without policy support. As the Supreme Court has taught from early in this Nation's history--state courts...