Planned Parenthood of Dutchess-Ulster, Inc. v. Steinhaus

• Decision Date: 14 July 1995
• Docket Number: DUTCHESS-ULSTE,No. 1304,INC,D,1304
• Citation: 60 F.3d 122
• Parties: PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. William STEINHAUS, County Executive, individually and in his official capacity and County of Dutchess, New York, Defendants-Appellees. ocket 94-9016.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

Page 122

60 F.3d 122

PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF DUTCHESS-ULSTER, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. William STEINHAUS, County Executive, individually and in his official capacity and County of Dutchess, New York, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 1304, Docket 94-9016.

United States Court of Appeals Second Circuit.

Argued March 31, 1995.

Decided July 14, 1995.

Dara Klassel, Legal Action for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., New York City (Roger K. Evans, Legal Action for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., New York City, Noel Tepper, Poughkeepsie, NY, on the brief), for plaintiff-appellant.

David D. Hagstrom, Van DeWater & Van DeWater, Poughkeepsie, NY, for defendants-appellees.

Before MINER, ALTIMARI and CABRANES, Circuit Judges.

ALTIMARI, Circuit Judge:

Plaintiff-appellant Planned Parenthood of Dutchess-Ulster, Inc. ("plaintiff" or "Planned Parenthood") appeals from the sua sponte decision of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Brieant, J.) to abstain from adjudicating its complaint. Planned Parenthood, a provider of family planning services, alleged that defendant-appellee William Steinhaus ("Steinhaus"), the County Executive of Dutchess County, New York, and defendant-appellee Dutchess County ("the County"), refused to contract with it in reprisal for its advocacy in favor of the right to legal abortion, and for its provision of abortion services. According to plaintiff, defendants' refusal to consider it for a contract violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and the Equal Protection Clause; further, insofar as Planned Parenthood believed itself barred from providing in the future any county-funded services plaintiff asserted that the County's actions "constituted" a Bill of Attainder in violation of Article I, Sec. 9, cl. 3 of the United States Constitution. The complaint also asserted several pendent state law claims, detailed below.

Because we conclude that abstention was improper, we vacate the district court's Order dated September 8, 1994, and remand.

Background

Planned Parenthood is a non-profit organization that provides reproductive health services at seven clinics in Dutchess and Ulster Counties. It provides services and counselling to patients, among others, who are ineligible for governmental medical assistance by charging them according to their respective abilities to pay. Planned Parenthood also promotes in legislative and public policy arenas the right to an abortion, a procedure which plaintiff makes available with different monies than those at issue in this appeal. At the time this suit was filed, Steinhaus was the elected County Executive of Dutchess County. The instant dispute concerns the defendants' alleged unwillingness to consider renewing a longstanding contract with plaintiff for a family planning program aimed at teenagers (generally "the contract").

According to the complaint and other submitted documents, Planned Parenthood was under contract to the County from 1980 to 1992 to provide medical and social family planning services to low income women within Dutchess County. In November 1991, Steinhaus was elected to office, having purportedly promised supporters that, once he took office in January 1992, he would ensure that the County did not award the 1993 family planning contract to Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood also asserted that Steinhaus directed the Department of Social Services ("DSS") to find another provider to which to award the contract. A DSS representative advised plaintiff, in response to Planned Parenthood's expressions of interest in continuing to perform the contract in March and April 1993, that DSS had been instructed to identify new providers.

The County published a request for proposals ("RFP") to provide the contract services in the January 28, 1993 edition of several weekly newspapers, shortly after representatives of Planned Parenthood testified at a public budget hearing that it stood ready and willing to renew the contract. Planned Parenthood was not aware that the RFP had issued until more than a month after the February 9, 1993 deadline for proposals.

Although there were no timely responses to the RFP, DSS resisted plaintiff's informal expressions of interest in renewal. At the same time, DSS was reportedly soliciting other area providers positioned to perform the contract. A local health maintenance organization reportedly rejected DSS's offer to sign a contract, prompting Planned Parenthood to make a written offer to perform the contract pursuant to the terms and conditions of the 1992 contract. On May 11, 1993, DSS responded by advising plaintiff that the 1993 contract had been awarded to the Mid-Hudson Health Services Institute, Inc. ("Mid-Hudson"). Plaintiff contends that the terms of the contract awarded to Mid-Hudson were much less favorable to both the County and the contract beneficiaries than the terms of the previous contracts performed by Planned Parenthood. The 1993 contract was not signed until September 27, 1993; no services were rendered in 1993; and the contract was allowed to expire on December 31, 1993.

Planned Parenthood's attempts to compete for the 1994 contract, for which the County legislature had allocated $10,000, were equally unsuccessful. An RFP for the program was published in one newspaper on October 22, 1993 and in several other local papers on October 28, 1993. When the deadline for proposals expired, again no applications had been filed. In late November 1993, the County legislature rejected a proposed resolution put forth by some local legislators to persuade the legislature to direct Steinhaus to carefully consider Planned Parenthood. On November 18, 1993 Planned Parenthood delivered a letter to the County seeking consideration for the 1994 contract. After being advised that bidding had closed, Planned Parenthood wrote directly to Steinhaus, making a formal proposal. Although that letter went unanswered, plaintiff nonetheless learned that DSS had solicited a local hospital to perform the contract. Subsequently, Planned Parenthood sued.

The complaint alleged that defendants violated federal law because they (1) infringed plaintiff's First Amendment rights by refusing to contract with it in reprisal for plaintiff's public position favoring the right of a woman to choose to have an abortion; (2) penalized Planned Parenthood for providing abortion-related services in violation of its rights and those of its patients protected by the Fourteenth Amendment; (3) violated the Equal Protection clause; (4) deprived plaintiff of due process; and (5) "constituted," by their actions, an illegal Bill of Attainder by barring plaintiff from "further contracting with the defendant County of Dutchess to supply family planning services."

In addition, Planned Parenthood alleged six state law claims. Planned Parenthood claimed that the defendants' actions violated Article 1, Secs. 6 (due process), 8 (freedom of speech), 9 (right to assemble) and 11 (equal protection) of the New York State Constitution, as well as New York State General Municipal Law Sec. 104-b (imposing procedures for awarding contracts to assure the prudent use of the public fisc); and Title 18 of the New York Comprehensive Rules and Regulations, Secs. 407.2, 407.10 (prescribing procedures for amending the County Comprehensive Social Services Plan).

Planned Parenthood requested the following relief: (1) a declaratory judgment stating that its rights and those of its patients were violated; (2) preliminary and permanent injunctive relief directing Steinhaus and the County to consider its application for the 1994 contract without regard to plaintiff's position on the issue of abortion; (3) preliminary and permanent injunctive relief awarding the 1994 family planning contract to Planned Parenthood; and (4) compensatory and punitive damages as well as attorneys' fees. On appeal, plaintiff concedes that its request for injunctive relief is moot: The 1994 contract has expired, and defendants apparently discontinued the teen family planning program. Plaintiff now seeks only damages.

Defendants moved to dismiss, a motion which the district court treated as a motion for summary judgment. The district court concluded that Planned Parenthood's First Amendment claim presented "a non-frivolous serious Constitutional issue which provides fair ground for litigation." Nonetheless, the court abstained because it found that "the relief sought is directed to the heart of local government and implicates basic American principles of Home Rule...." Although the parties did not brief the abstention issue, the court believed that its duty to avoid unnecessarily deciding a constitutional question trumped its obligation to adjudicate. The district judge relied on both Pullman, infra, and Burford, infra, abstention principles, on the ground that "a political question is presented in a sensitive area of social policy, implicating expenditure of municipal funds, and the state courts or the State Commissioner of Social Welfare could act to obviate a Constitutional problem." Plaintiff now appeals.

Discussion

We begin our discussion by analyzing the nature of plaintiff's claims. All of Planned Parenthood's claims are based on the same principal grievance which, we believe, the district court--abetted by the defendants, as well as by plaintiff's prayer for relief--misapprehended. Steinhaus and the County assert that "the core of this dispute is plaintiff's claim to the right to be awarded contracts under state laws and state regulations...." (emphasis added). In accord with defendants' view of the case, the district court stated in its opinion, "if [Planned Parenthood's] legal position is upheld, a federal court apparently will be directing the local taxpayers to fund this non-mandatory social program [teen family planning counselling] for eternity, when its sponsors could not...