Miranda B. v. Kitzhaber
| Decision Date | 14 May 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. 01-35950.,01-35950. |
| Citation | 328 F.3d 1181 |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
| Parties | MIRANDA B.; Hannah C.; Jamie G.; Jong K.; Joanne K.; James R.; James R.; George P.; Anthony G.; Juan S.; Leonard P., individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellees, United States of America, Intervenor, v. John KITZHABER, Governor of the State of Oregon; Oregon Department of Human Services; Bob Mink, Director of the Oregon Department of Human Services, Defendants-Appellants. |
Janet A. Metcalf, Assistant Attorney General, Salem, Oregon, argued the cause for the defendant-appellant and filed briefs; Hardy Myers, Attorney General, Mary H. Williams, Solicitor General, were on the briefs.
Kathleen L. Wilde, Oregon Advocacy Center, Portland, Oregon, argued the cause for the plaintiffs-appellees; Stephen J. Mathieu, Oregon Advocacy Center, and Kent B. Thurber, Davis, Wright Tremaine, L.L.P., Portland, Oregon, filed a brief.
Kevin Russell, Attorney, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., argued the cause for the United States as Intervenor and filed a brief; Ralph F. Boyd, Jr., Assistant Attorney General, Jessica Dunsay Silver, Seth M. Galanter, Attorneys, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice, were on the brief.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Oregon; Anna J. Brown, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-00-01753-AJB.
Before O'SCANNLAIN, FERNANDEZ, and FISHER, Circuit Judges.
OPINION
We must decide whether the Eleventh Amendment bars claims against the State of Oregon under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, and whether these statutes, in turn, bar claims against state officials.
The Plaintiffs are ten individuals with mental illness (collectively or individually "Miranda B.") who are institutionalized in state psychiatric hospitals in Oregon. Miranda B. brought claims under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"), 42 U.S.C. §§ 12131-65 ("Title II"), for failing to provide community-based treatment and for unnecessary institutionalization, and under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 794 ("Section 504") for failing to provide services in the most integrated setting. Miranda B. named the Oregon Department of Human Services ("DHS"), its director, Bob Mink, and Oregon's Governor, John Kitzhaber (collectively "the State") as defendants. In her complaint, Miranda B. alleges that she has been assessed by the State's treating professionals as being ready for discharge to a community placement for a period of months, but has remained institutionalized due to a lack of a sufficient number of community-based programs. Miranda B. also brought a claim under Ex parte Young against Mink and Kitzhaber in their official capacities, seeking prospective injunctive relief for less restrictive confinement, and claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against DHS and against Mink and capacities, for money damages based on violations of her due process right to less restrictive confinement.
The State filed a motion to dismiss Miranda B.'s first amended complaint, arguing that Congress did not validly abrogate its Eleventh Amendment immunity under Title II or Section 504, and, therefore, Miranda B.'s claims could not be brought in federal court. The State also claimed that Title II and Section 504 evidenced congressional intent to supersede Ex parte Young and § 1983 suits against state officials.
The district court agreed with the State that Miranda B. could not proceed under § 1983 against DHS, but otherwise denied the State's motion. Specifically, the district court concluded that Miranda B.'s Title II and Section 504 claims are not barred by the Eleventh Amendment, that Miranda B.'s claims against the state officials in their official capacity are permissible under Ex Parte Young, and that Miranda B.'s § 1983 claims against the individual defendants are permissible because they were based on cognizable due process violations.
The State now appeals the district court's denial of its motion to dismiss.
The State acknowledges that under our current precedent, the Eleventh Amendment does not bar Miranda B. from bringing her suit against Oregon in federal court.1 See, e.g., Dare v. California, 191 F.3d 1167, 1175 (9th Cir.1999); Clark, 123 F.3d at 1270. Not deterred, the State contends that the Supreme Court's decision in Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356, 121 S.Ct. 955, 148 L.Ed.2d 866 (2001), has fundamentally undercut the reasoning of our precedent, and, therefore, must be readdressed.2 Although we have revisited our precedent following Garrett, the State asks us to distinguish our holdings in these cases because we failed to address the specific arguments it makes. As the State candidly admits, its arguments are an "uphill, if not vertical, challenge." We do not disagree.
The Eleventh Amendment prohibits a citizen from suing a state for monetary damages in federal court without its consent.3 Kimel v. Fla. Bd. of Regents, 528 U.S. 62, 72-73, 120 S.Ct. 631, 145 L.Ed.2d 522 (2000); Fla. Prepaid Postsecondary Educ. Expense Bd. v. College Savs. Bank, 527 U.S. 627, 634-35, 119 S.Ct. 2199, 144 L.Ed.2d 575 (1999). However, "Congress may abrogate the States' Eleventh Amendment immunity when it both unequivocally intends to do so and `act[s] pursuant to a valid grant of constitutional authority,'" namely its § 5 Fourteenth Amendment powers. Garrett, 531 U.S. at 363, 121 S.Ct. 955 (citations omitted), 374. Congress clearly intended to abrogate state immunity under Title II;4 the question here is whether it "act[ed] pursuant to a valid grant of constitutional authority." Id. at 363, 121 S.Ct. 955.
In Clark, 123 F.3d at 1270-71, and Dare, 191 F.3d at 1174-75, we conducted the necessary congruence and proportionality tests and determined that Title II did not exceed congressional authority under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Accordingly, we concluded that Congress validly abrogated the states' Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity under Title II. Clark, 123 F.3d at 1270; Dare, 191 F.3d at 1175.
The Supreme Court in Garrett subsequently held that Congress did not validly abrogate the states' Eleventh Amendment immunity under Title I of ADA, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12111-12117 ("Title I"), which prohibits employers, including states, from discriminating against qualified individuals with disabilities in their employment practices. See Garrett, 531 U.S. at 360-61, 374, 121 S.Ct. 955. The Court determined that Congress did not identify a sufficient pattern of state-sanctioned unconstitutional discrimination in order to justify the use of its § 5 authority, and, thus, states were entitled to immunity from suits seeking money damages under Title I in federal court. See id. at 374, 121 S.Ct. 955. The Court, however, explicitly deferred any decision regarding state immunity under Title II because it "has somewhat different remedial provisions from Title I." Garrett, 531 U.S. at 360 n. 1, 121 S.Ct. 955.
Following the Court's decision, we held without reservation that because Garrett addressed only Title I of the ADA, the Court had not overruled Clark's and Dare's essential holding that Congress had validly abrogated state immunity under Title II. Hason v. Med. Bd. of Cal., 279 F.3d 1167, 1171, reh'g en banc denied, 294 F.3d 1166 (9th Cir.2002), and cert. dismissed, ___ U.S. ___, 123 S.Ct. 1779, 155 L.Ed.2d 508, 2003 WL 1792116 (U.S. Apr. 7, 2003) (No. 02-479). And we have thereafter considered ourselves bound by our holding in Hason. See, e.g., Thomas v. Nakatani, 309 F.3d 1203, 1209 (9th Cir.2002) (); Lovell v. Chandler, 303 F.3d 1039, 1051 (9th Cir.2002) (same).
The State does not allege that intervening Supreme Court precedent has altered Hason or its progeny; rather, it merely contends that we did not give due consideration to Garrett's holding in deciding Hason. We fail to ascribe such a dim view to our previous cases. Garrett had been decided, and while we did not specifically address the State's arguments, they were readily apparent. "Once a panel resolves an issue in a precedential opinion, the matter is deemed resolved, unless overruled by the court itself sitting en banc, or by the Supreme Court." Hart v. Massanari, 266 F.3d 1155, 1171 (9th Cir.2001). We decline further review of our settled precedent.5
The State faces a similarly daunting task in challenging our Section 504 precedent. In Clark, not only did we conclude that Congress validly abrogated the states' Eleventh Amendment immunity under Section 504, but we also held that states, by accepting federal funds, waived any Eleventh Amendment immunity they might have possessed. Clark, 123 F.3d at 1271. As Miranda B. has correctly pointed out, our practice has been not to reach the ultimate issue of whether Congress validly abrogated state sovereign immunity if we conclude that the State has indeed waived its immunity. See, e.g., Douglas v. Cal. Dep't of Youth Auth., 271 F.3d 812, 820, as amended, 271 F.3d 910 (9th Cir.2001), and reh'g en banc denied, 285 F.3d 1226 (9th Cir.2002).
Although the State admits that it accepted federal funds under the Rehabilitation Act and thus, under our precedent, waived its immunity, it argues that intervening Supreme Court precedent has also altered such analysis. In College Savings Bank v. Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board, 527 U.S. 666, 675-76, 119 S.Ct. 2219, 144 L.Ed.2d 605 (1999), the Supreme Court emphasized that states could waive their Eleventh Amendment immunity by receiving federal funds when receipt of those funds was conditioned on a waiver of sovereign immunity, but that...
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