McRedmond v. Wilson

• Decision Date: 02 February 1976
• Docket Number: No. 314,D,314
• Citation: 533 F.2d 757
• Parties: Patricia McREDMOND et al., by their attorney and next friend, Charles Schinitsky, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Malcolm WILSON, Individually and as Governor of the State of New York, et al., Defendants-Appellees. ocket 75-7389.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 757

533 F.2d 757

Patricia McREDMOND et al., by their attorney and next

friend, Charles Schinitsky, on behalf of

themselves and all others similarly

situated, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Malcolm WILSON, Individually and as Governor of the State of

New York, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 314, Docket 75-7389.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued Dec. 15, 1975.

Decided Feb. 2, 1976.

Gene B. Mechanic, Brooklyn, N. Y. (Charles Schinitsky, Michael J. Dale, The Legal Aid Society, Brooklyn, N. Y., of counsel), for plaintiffs-appellants.

Margery Evans Reifler, Asst. Atty. Gen., New York City (Louis J. Lefkowitz, Atty. Gen. of the State of New York, Samuel A. Hirshowitz, First Asst. Atty. Gen., New York City, of counsel), for defendants-appellees.

Before MANSFIELD, OAKES and VAN GRAAFEILAND, Circuit Judges.

MANSFIELD, Circuit Judge:

This appeal concerns the interplay of the doctrines of abstention and exhaustion of state remedies in the context of a 42 U.S.C. § 1983 civil rights action in which a variety of constitutional and statutory issues are raised. The Southern District of New York, Lee P. Gagliardi, Judge, decided that abstention from exercise of jurisdiction was warranted. We disagree, concluding that the case does not present the narrowly limited circumstances permitting invocation of the doctrine which was established by the Supreme Court in Railroad Commission v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 496, 61 S.Ct. 643, 85 L.Ed. 971 (1941). ¹ However, we affirm the court's sub silentio refusal to convene a three-judge court for consideration of several of the adjoined constitutional questions.

Plaintiffs-appellants are children who have been adjudicated as Persons in Need of Supervision (PINS) by the New York State Family Court. This group encompasses males younger than 16 and females younger than 18 who, while guilty of no criminal offense, are found to be truant from school or who are incorrigible, ungovernable, habitually disobedient, or beyond the control of their lawful guardian. N.Y.Fam.Ct. Act § 712(b). Appellants do not challenge per se the legitimacy of the Family Court's adjudication of them as PINS. However, seeking relief under the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and its jurisdictional counterpart, 28 U.S.C. § 1343, they raise several constitutional challenges to the state's policy, after adjudicating persons as PINS and committing them to state authorities, that has resulted in placing approximately 450 of them, including some of the named plaintiffs, in four rural training schools located so far from their home and communities that visits by family members and friends are rendered difficult and costly. As acknowledged at oral argument, the core of their contention is that these schools do not comply with the developing requirements of a constitutionally guaranteed "right to treatment" for those involuntarily confined in state institutions or facilities. See, e. g., O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563, 95 S.Ct. 2486, 45 L.Ed.2d 396 (1975). The schools, it is alleged, are inadequately manned and do not provide the educational, recreational, medical and psychiatric services essential to training, care and rehabilitation. In addition, plaintiffs present a variety of constitutional claims, including violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, and denial of equal protection, of freedom of association, and of the right to travel. They seek both declaratory and injunctive relief forbidding state officials from detaining PINS in constitutionally inadequate facilities.

The United States District Court, Southern District of New York, considered a variety of motions relating to the litigation, including plaintiffs' request for class-action certification and for preliminary injunctive relief, and defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint pursuant to Rule 12(b), F.R.Civ.P. While noting that the "allegations contained in the complaint (are) . . .of

a sufficiently serious nature as to warrant reasonably prompt consideration by an appropriate court," Judge Gagliardi ruled that the federal court properly should abstain from consideration of the case. Citing two recent New York Court of Appeals cases, In re Lavette, 35 N.Y.2d 136, 359 N.Y.S.2d 20, 316 N.E.2d 314 (1974), and In re Ellery C., 32 N.Y.2d 588, 347 N.Y.S.2d 51, 300 N.E.2d 424 (1973), the district court found that the state courts are in the process of defining a right to treatment, yet unclear, that might be construed to obviate the need for federal constitutional determination. Moreover, the court abstained across-the-board from considering the plaintiffs' constitutional claims, thereby implicitly denying their request for the convening of a three-judge statutory court to hear various constitutional contentions. See Idlewild Liquor Corp. v. Epstein, 370 U.S. 713, 82 S.Ct. 1294, 8 L.Ed.2d 794 (1962).

DISCUSSION

Abstention

It is a pillar of federal jurisdiction that one having a bona fide claim is normally entitled as a matter of right to have the claim adjudicated by a federal tribunal and that this right may not be defeated by relegating the matter to the state court or by requiring the plaintiff to exhaust state remedies. McNeese v. Board of Education for Com. Unit School District 187, 373 U.S. 668, 83 S.Ct. 1433, 10 L.Ed.2d 622 (1963); Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U.S. 241, 88 S.Ct. 391, 19 L.Ed.2d 444 (1967). The federal courts have the duty "to guard, enforce, and protect every right granted or secured by the Constitution of the United States . . .", Robb v. Connolly, 111 U.S. 624, 637, 4 S.Ct. 544, 551, 28 L.Ed. 542 (1884). This duty was summarized years ago by the late Judge Alfred P. Murrah in a statement that has been repeatedly quoted with approval by the Supreme Court:

"We yet like to believe that wherever the Federal courts sit, human rights under the Federal Constitution are always a proper subject for adjudication, and that we have not the right to decline the exercise of that jurisdiction simply because the rights asserted may be adjudicated in some other forum."

Stapleton v. Mitchell, 60 F.Supp. 51, 55 (D.Kan.1945), quoted by Supreme Court in Zwickler v. Koota, supra, 389 U.S. at 248, 88 S.Ct. 391, and McNeese v. Board of Education, supra, 373 U.S. at 674 n. 6, 83 S.Ct. 1433. This jurisdictional precept has been repeatedly recognized as carrying special force in civil rights actions under § 1983 since Congress, in adopting that statute and its jurisdictional counterpart, 28 U.S.C. § 1343, "imposed the duty upon all levels of the federal judiciary to give due respect to a suitor's choice of a federal forum for the hearing and decision of his federal constitutional claims," Zwickler v. Koota, supra, 389 U.S. at 248, 88 S.Ct. at 395; McNeese v. Board of Education, supra, 373 U.S. at 673-74, 83 S.Ct. 1433.

"It is no answer that the State has a law which if enforced would give relief. The federal remedy is supplementary to the state remedy, and the latter need not be first sought and refused before the federal one is invoked. Hence the fact that Illinois by its constitution and laws outlaws unreasonable searches and seizures is no barrier to the present suit in the federal court." Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 183, 81 S.Ct. 473, 482, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1960).

The judge-made doctrine of abstention represents a narrow exception to the foregoing principle, which was forged by the Supreme Court in Railroad Commission v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 496, 61 S.Ct. 643, 85 L.Ed. 971 (1941). There the Court held that in special circumstances, where resolution of a federal constitutional issue is controlled by the interpretation of an unclear or complex state statute that is susceptible to a construction which would avoid or modify the necessity of a constitutional adjudication, the federal court should defer to the state court's interpretation of its own statute. See, in accord, Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U.S. 51, 54, 94 S.Ct. 303, 38 L.Ed.2d 260 (1973); Lake Carriers' Assn. v. MacMullan, 406 U.S. 498, 92 S.Ct. 1749, 32 L.Ed.2d 257 (1972); Propper v. Clark, 337 U.S. 472, 492, 69 S.Ct. 1333, 93 L.Ed. 1480 (1949); Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 528, 534, 85 S.Ct. 1177, 14 L.Ed.2d 50 (1965); Zwickler v. Koota, supra, 389 U.S. at 248, 88 S.Ct. 391. In such rare cases the avoidance of federal-state friction, the recognition that regardless of a federal court's construction, the state's highest court is the final expositor of that state's law, and the possibility that the federal question may be avoided, outweigh the duplication of effort and added expense and delay heaped upon the plaintiff by shuttling him between state and federal courts. See England v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, 375 U.S. 411, 418, 84 S.Ct. 461, 11 L.Ed.2d 440 (1964). The federal court's hand is merely stayed temporarily, however, and, if the state court's interpretation of the state statute should fail to avoid the federal constitutional question, the plaintiff is then entitled to have the latter adjudicated by federal court, to which he may return as the forum selected by him in the first place. England v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, supra.

In general, the three essential conditions for invocation of the doctrine of abstention are that the state statute be unclear or the issue of state law be uncertain, Harman v. Forssenius, supra, 380 U.S. at 534, 85 S.Ct. 1177, that resolution of the federal issue depend upon the interpretation to be given to the state law, Wright v. McMann, 387 F.2d 519, 525 (2d Cir. 1967), and that the state law be susceptible of an interpretation that would avoid or modify the federal constitutional issue. In such circumstances abstention will be upheld. As we recently recognized in Reid v. Board of Education of City of New York, 453 F.2d 238 (2d Cir. 1971), although these conditions precedent do appear to be strict on their face, they offer some room for play in the joints. The...