NATIONAL ASS'N FOR ADV. OF COLORED PEOPLE v. Bennett

• Decision Date: 08 October 1959
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 3664.
• Citation: 178 F. Supp. 191
• Parties: NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE, Plaintiff v. Bruce BENNETT, Attorney General of State of Arkansas, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Arkansas

178 F. Supp. 191

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE, Plaintiff v. Bruce BENNETT, Attorney General of State of Arkansas, Defendant.

Civ. No. 3664.

United States District Court E. D. Arkansas, W. D.

October 8, 1959.

Robert L. Carter, New York City, and George Howard, Jr., Pine Bluff, Ark., for plaintiff.

Bruce Bennett, Atty. Gen., pro se, J. Frank Holt, Little Rock, Ark., E. W. Brockman, Jr., N. J. Gantt, Jr., of Coleman, Gantt & Ramsay, Pine Bluff, Ark., for defendant.

Before SANBORN, Circuit Judge, and MILLER and HENLEY, District Judges.

PER CURIAM.

This is an action brought by the National Association For The Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) against the Attorney General of the State of Arkansas and the County Judges and Prosecuting Attorneys of Pulaski and Jefferson Counties in that State for a declaratory judgment to the effect that Acts 12, 13, 14 and 16 of the Second Extraordinary Session of the 61st General Assembly of the State of Arkansas, 1958, are violative of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and to restrain the enforcement of those statutes. Subsequent to the filing of the complaint, the defendants filed motions to stay proceedings in this Court until said statutes had been authoritatively construed by the Supreme Court of Arkansas, which motions were resisted by the plaintiff.

On January 17, 1959, the motions were heard by this statutory three-judge court (28 U.S.C.A. § 2281 et seq.) and were granted.¹ In the course of the argument plaintiff placed heavy reliance upon the decision of the district court in N.A.A.C.P. v. Patty, D.C.Va., 159 F. Supp. 503, holding that where State statutes challenged upon federal constitutional grounds are clear and unambiguous, the federal courts should proceed to pass upon the constitutional questions presented without awaiting prior action by the State courts. It was the position of the plaintiff that the statutes were clear and unambiguous, that they presented no problems of construction, and that the court should proceed to determine their validity under the federal constitutional provision above mentioned.

In rejecting the argument of the plaintiff this court relied upon the "general doctrine established by the Supreme Court in many cases * * * that where the constitutionality of an unconstrued state statute is challenged in a federal trial court as violative of the Federal Constitution, the court should stay its hand, but retain jurisdiction of the case until all doubts as to the meaning and scope of the statute have been resolved in the courts of the State". 178 F. Supp. 189. And we cited Railroad Commission of Texas v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 496, 61 S.Ct. 643, 85 L.Ed. 971; Spector Motor Service, Inc. v. McLaughlin, 323 U.S. 101, 65 S.Ct. 152, 89 L.Ed. 101; Albertson v. Millard, 345 U.S. 242, 73 S.Ct. 600, 97 L.Ed. 983; and Government and Civic Employees Organizing Committee, C.I.O. v. Windsor, 353 U.S. 364, 77 S.Ct. 838, 1 L.Ed.2d 894.

While this court recognized that there is "respectable authority for the proposition that where the unconstitutionality of a statute is clear, it is unnecessary for the court to await state court adjudication", and cited Patty, supra, we went on to say:

"Assuming, without deciding, that the unconstitutionality of the Arkansas statutes in suit is obvious, as the plaintiffs claim, it reasonably can be believed that it would be more wholesome and more logical to permit the courts of Arkansas to rule upon their validity in the first instance than to have this court do so, and that it would be more in harmony with the philosophy underlying the doctrine established by the Supreme Court relative to the federal courts affording the state courts an opportunity to pass upon the construction and effect of local statutes.

"We think that under circumstances such as this court is confronted with, it has discretion as to whether it will proceed to an adjudication or whether it will require the plaintiff to seek its remedy in the courts of the State.

"We, therefore, grant the defendants' motions, and will `retain jurisdiction until efforts to obtain an appropriate adjudication in the state courts have been exhausted'".

From the order granting the defendants' motions the plaintiff appealed to the Supreme Court, and while the appeal was pending, the Court reversed the decision of the district court in the Patty case, supra, holding that the latter court should not have passed upon the validity of the Virginia statutes there involved until they had been construed by the courts of that State. Harrison v. N.A.A. C.P., 360 U.S. 167, 79 S.Ct. 1025, 3 L.Ed. 2d 1152.

Subsequently, however, on June 22 of the current year the Supreme Court also reversed the decision of this court, using the following language:

"When the validity of a state statute, challenged under the United States Constitution, is properly for adjudication before a United States District Court, reference to the state courts for construction of the statute should not automatically be made. The judgment is vacated and the case is remanded to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas for consideration in light of Harrison v. N.A.A. C.P. * * *." N.A.A.C.P. v. Bennett, 360 U.S. 471, 79 S.Ct. 1192, 3 L.Ed.2d 1375.

The mandate of the Supreme Court having been filed in due course, this Court called for further briefs from the parties and again heard oral argument.

In its brief and argument the plaintiff concedes that Acts 14 and 16² are reasonably susceptible of a construction by the courts of Arkansas "which might avoid in whole or in part the necessity for federal constitutional adjudication, or at least materially change the nature of the problem". It is insisted, however, that Act 12 is similar to other Arkansas enactments that have been construed and upheld by the Arkansas Supreme Court, so that no substantial problem of construction is presented with respect to it; and it is urged that Act 13 is free from ambiguity and that "there is no construction to be placed on it to avoid the constitutional issue". Upon these premises, plaintiff prays that this court now proceed to pass upon the constitutionality of those two statutes.

It is clear from a reading of the opinion in Harrison that a reference to the State courts should be made where the challenged statute is fairly open to construction. The following language from that opinion is pertinent:

"According every consideration to the opinion of the majority below, we are nevertheless of the view that the District Court should have abstained from deciding the merits of the issues tendered it, so as to afford the Virginia courts a reasonable opportunity to construe the statutes in question. * * *

"This now well-established procedure is aimed at the avoidance of unnecessary interference by the federal courts with proper and validly administered state concerns, a course so essential to the balanced working of our federal system. To minimize the possibility of such interference a `scrupulous regard for the rightful independence of state governments * * * should at all times actuate the federal courts', Matthews v. Rodgers, 284 U.S. 521, 525, 52 S.Ct. 217, 219, 76 L.Ed. 447, as their `contribution * * * in furthering the harmonious relation between state and federal authority * * *.' Railroad Comm. of Texas v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 496, 501, 61 S.Ct. 643, 645, 85 L.Ed. 971. In the service of this doctrine, which this Court has applied in many different contexts, no principle has found more consistent or clear expression than that the federal courts should not adjudicate the constitutionality of state enactments fairly open to interpretation until the state courts have been afforded a reasonable opportunity to pass upon them * * *. This principle does not, of course, involve the abdication of federal jurisdiction, but only the postponement of its exercise; it serves the policy of comity inherent in the doctrine of abstention; and it spares the federal courts of unnecessary constitutional adjudication. * * *

"The present case, in our view, is one which calls for the application of this principle, since we are unable to agree that the terms of these three statutes leave no reasonable room for a construction by the Virginia courts which might avoid in whole or in part the necessity for federal constitutional adjudication, or at least materially change the nature of the problem.

"* * * All we hold is that these enactments should be exposed to state construction or limiting interpretation before the federal courts are asked to decide upon their constitutionality, so that federal judgment will be based on something that is a complete product of the State, the enactment as phrased by its legislature and as construed by its highest court * * *". 360 U.S. at pages 176-177 and 178, 79 S.Ct. at page 1030.

When the motions for a stay of proceedings were before this Court originally, each side appeared to be willing to concede, for its own particular reasons, that the Arkansas statutes under consideration were free from ambiguity.³ In view of this apparent attitude on the part of both sides, we were willing to assume without deciding "that the unconstitutionality of the * * * statutes in suit is obvious * * *", and to base our decision on what we supposed to be our discretion in a case of this kind. That the Court was willing to indulge that assumption did not imply that its members in fact felt that said statutes do not involve questions of interpretation, or that they are not susceptible to any construction that would render them constitutional, or that they are obviously unconstitutional. On the contrary, the Court was convinced then and is convinced now that these enactments, including Acts 12 and 13, do require construction by the Arkansas courts, and that following such construction the federal constitutional questions either may not survive at all or may be...