Thompson v. Thompson, 86-964

• Court: U.S. Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: MARSHALL
• Citation: Thompson v. Thompson, 484 U.S. 174, 108 S.Ct. 513, 98 L.Ed.2d 512 (1988)
• Decision Date: 12 January 1988
• Docket Number: No. 86-964,86-964
• Parties: David A. THOMPSON, Petitioner v. Susan A. THOMPSON, aka Susan A. Clay

484 U.S. 174

108 S.Ct. 513

98 L.Ed.2d 512

David A. THOMPSON, Petitioner

v Susan A. THOMPSON, aka Susan A. Clay.

No. 86-964.

Argued Oct. 6, 1987.

Decided Jan. 12, 1988.

Syllabus

Under the Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act of 1980 (PKPA or Act), States are required to afford full faith and credit to valid child custody determinations entered by a sister State's courts. When a California state court's award of joint custody to respondent and petitioner over their son became infeasible because of respondent's decision to move to Louisiana, the court granted respondent sole custody pending an investigator's report, whereupon the court intended to make a more studied custody determination. After respondent obtained a Louisiana court order enforcing the California decree and awarding her sole custody, the California court, having received and reviewed the investigator's report, entered an order granting sole custody to petitioner. Without first attempting to enforce the California decree in Louisiana, petitioner filed suit in Federal District Court seeking an order declaring the Louisiana decree invalid and the California decree valid, and enjoining the enforcement of the Louisiana decree. The court dismissed the complaint and the Court of Appeals affirmed on the ground that petitioner had failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.

Held: The PKPA does not provide an implied cause of action in federal court to determine which of two conflicting state custody decisions is valid. The context in which the PKPA was enacted—the existence of jurisdictional deadlocks among the States in custody cases and a nationwide problem of interstate parental kidnaping—suggests that Congress' principal aim was to extend the requirements of the Full Faith and Credit Clause to custody determinations, and not to create an entirely new cause of action. The language and placement of the Act reinforce this conclusion, in that the Act is an addendum to, and is therefore clearly intended to have the same operative effect as, the federal full faith and credit statute, the Act's heading is "Full faith and credit given to child custody determinations," and, unlike statutes that explicitly confer a right on a specified class of persons, the Act is addressed to States and to state courts. Moreover, in discussing the congressional rejection of a competing legislative proposal that would have extended the district courts' diversity jurisdiction to custody decree enforcement actions, the PKPA's legislative history provides an unusually clear indication that Congress did not intend the federal courts to play the enforcement role.

The fact that the cause of action petitioner seeks to infer is narrower than the congressionally rejected alternative is not controlling, since the federal courts would still be entangled in traditional state-law questions that they have little expertise to resolve. The argument that failure to infer a cause of action would render the PKPA nugatory is also not persuasive, since it is based on the unacceptable presumption that the States are either unable or unwilling to enforce the Act's provisions, and since ultimate review remains available in this Court for truly intractable deadlocks. Pp. 179-187.

798 F.2d 1547 (CA9 1986), affirmed.

MARSHALL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which REHNQUIST, C.J., and BRENNAN, WHITE, BLACKMUN, and STEVENS, JJ., joined. O'CONNOR, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, post, p. ----. SCALIA, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. ----.

Ronald W. Weiss, Peoria, Ill., for petitioner.

Kenneth Rigby, Shreveport, La., for respondent.

Justice MARSHALL delivered the Opinion of the Court.

We granted certiorari in this case to determine whether the Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act of 1980, 28 U.S.C. § 1738A, furnishes an implied cause of action in federal court to determine which of two conflicting state custody decisions is valid.

I

The Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act (PKPA or Act) imposes a duty on the States to enforce a child custody determination entered by a court of a sister State if the determina- tion is consistent with the provisions of the Act.¹ In order for a state court's custody decree to be consistent with the provisions of the Act, the State must have jurisdiction under its own local law and one of five conditions set out in § 1738A(c)(2) must be met. Briefly put, these conditions authorize the state court to enter a custody decree if the child's home is or recently has been in the State, if the child has no home State and it would be in the child's best interest for the State to assume jurisdiction, or if the child is present in the State and has been abandoned or abused. Once a State exercises jurisdiction consistently with the provisions of the Act, no other State may exercise concurrent jurisdiction over the custody dispute, § 1738A(g), even if it would have been empowered to take jurisdiction in the first instance,² and all States must accord full faith and credit to the first State's ensuing custody decree.

As the legislative scheme suggests, and as Congress explicitly specified, one of the chief purposes of the PKPA is to "avoid jurisdictional competition and conflict between State courts." Pub.L. 96-611, 94 Stat. 3569, § 7(c)(5), note following 28 U.S.C. § 1738A. This case arises out of a jurisdictional stalemate that came to pass notwithstanding the strictures of the Act. In July 1978, respondent Susan Clay (then Susan Thompson) filed a petition in Los Angeles Superior Court asking the court to dissolve her marriage to petitioner David Thompson and seeking custody of the couple's infant son, Matthew. The court initially awarded the parents joint custody of Matthew, but that arrangement became infeasible when respondent decided to move from California to Louisiana to take a job. The court then entered an order providing that respondent would have sole custody of Matthew once she left for Louisiana. This state of affairs was to remain in effect until the court investigator submitted a report on custody, after which the court intended to make a more studied custody determination. See App. 6.

Respondent and Matthew moved to Louisiana in December 1980. Three months later, respondent filed a petition in Louisiana state court for enforcement of the California custody decree, judgment of custody, and modification of petitioner's visitation privileges. By order dated April 7, 1981, the Louisiana court granted the petition and awarded sole custody of Matthew to respondent. Two months later, however, the California court, having received and reviewed its investigator's report, entered an order awarding sole custody of Matthew to petitioner. Thus arose the current impasse.

In August 1983, petitioner brought this action in the District Court for the Central District of California. Petitioner requested an order declaring the Louisiana decree invalid and the California decree valid, and enjoining the enforcement of the Louisiana decree. Petitioner did not attempt to enforce the California decree in a Louisiana state court before he filed suit in federal court. The District Court granted respondent's motion to dismiss the complaint for lack of subject-matter and personal jurisdiction. Civ. Action No. 83-5221 (Apr. 10, 1984). The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed. Although it disagreed with the District Court's jurisdictional analyses, the Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of the complaint on the ground that petitioner had failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. 798 F.2d 1547 (1986). Canvassing the background, language, and legislative history of the PKPA, the Court of Appeals held that the Act does not cre- ate a private right of action in federal court to determine the validity of two conflicting custody decrees. Id., at 1552-1559. We granted certiorari, 479 U.S. 1063, 107 S.Ct. 946, 93 L.Ed.2d 996 (1987), and we now affirm.

II

In determining whether to infer a private cause of action from a federal statute, our focal point is Congress' intent in enacting the statute. As guides to discerning that intent, we have relied on the four factors set out in Cort v. Ash, 422 U.S. 66, 78, 95 S.Ct. 2080, 2088, 45 L.Ed.2d 26 (1975), along with other tools of statutory construction. See Daily Income Fund, Inc. v. Fox, 464 U.S. 523, 535-536, 104 S.Ct. 831, 838, 78 L.Ed.2d 645 (1984); California v. Sierra Club, 451 U.S. 287, 293, 101 S.Ct. 1775, 1779, 68 L.Ed.2d 101 (1981); Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, 442 U.S. 560, 575-576, 99 S.Ct. 2479, 2488-2489, 61 L.Ed.2d 82 (1979). Our focus on congressional intent does not mean that we require evidence that Members of Congress, in enacting the statute, actually had in mind the creation of a private cause of action. The implied cause of action doctrine would be a virtual dead letter were it limited to correcting drafting errors when Congress simply forgot to codify its evident intention to provide a cause of action. Rather, as an implied cause of action doctrine suggests, "the legislative history of a statute that does not expressly create or deny a private remedy will typically be equally silent or ambiguous on the question." Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U.S. 677, 694, 99 S.Ct. 1946, 1956, 60 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). We therefore have recognized that Congress' "intent may appear implicitly in the language or structure of the statute, or in the circumstances of its enactment." Transamerica Mortgage Advisors, Inc. v. Lewis, 444 U.S. 11, 18, 100 S.Ct. 242, 246, 62 L.Ed.2d 146 (1979). The intent of Congress remains the ultimate issue, however, and "unless this congressional intent can be inferred from the language of the statute, the statutory structure, or some other source, the essential predicate for implication of a private remedy simply does not exist." Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. Transport Workers, 451 U.S. 77, 94, ...