White v. Roughton

• Decision Date: 09 November 1982
• Docket Number: No. 81-2971,81-2971
• Citation: 689 F.2d 118
• Parties: Leon WHITE, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. C. Vaughn ROUGHTON, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 118

689 F.2d 118

Leon WHITE, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. C. Vaughn ROUGHTON, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 81-2971.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued June 14, 1982.

Decided Sept. 9, 1982.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied Nov. 9, 1982.

George Bell, Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance, Champaign, Ill., for plaintiffs-appellants.

Gregory E. Pelini, Urbana, Ill., for defendants-appellees.

Before ESCHBACH, POSNER and COFFEY, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

The township of Champaign, Illinois has a program called "General Assistance" by which it provides money to poor people out of its tax revenues. This appeal arises out of a class action that was brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against officials of the township on behalf of recipients of and applicants for General Assistance, alleging that the township's failure to promulgate written standards of eligibility, and to give applicants whose applications are denied reasons for denial, violated the rights of the class members under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The complaint sought both injunctive relief and back payment of benefits.

The district judge denied a preliminary injunction and the plaintiffs appealed to this court, which reversed, holding that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail at trial. See White v. Roughton, 530 F.2d 750 (7th Cir. 1976). The parties then negotiated a consent decree which was approved by the judge. The decree does not require the payment of any benefits retroactively but it does require the township to give applicants for General Assistance written notice of, and reasons for, denial of any application; entitles an applicant to a timely evidentiary hearing if his application is denied; and requires the township to promulgate "published, consistent standards governing eligibility." In implementation of the requirement of "published, consistent standards," paragraph 9 of the decree provides that the township, "to insure protection of these constitutional rights and to comply with Goldberg v. Kelly, (397 U.S. 254, 90 S.Ct. 1011, 25 L.Ed.2d 287 (1970),) and White v. Roughton, supra," shall be required to administer General Assistance "including but not limited to application procedures, eligibility requirements, appeal procedures, and amounts and categories of assistance in accordance with the public written standards adopted by the (township); the standards shall from this day forward be substantially in compliance with the standards adopted pursuant to this settlement and attached hereto as Exhibit 2." (Emphasis added.) Exhibit 2 includes a provision which is captioned "Emergency Assistance" and which reads in pertinent part: "Emergency assistance for basic maintenance shall be provided when necessary for an applicant's or recipient's health and well-being."

More than four years after the decree was entered the township's board of trustees repealed the ordinance under which Emergency Assistance is provided. The plaintiffs, claiming that this repeal was contrary to the clause in the decree that we have italicized, petitioned the district court for an order holding the township and its officers in civil contempt of the decree. The district court (a different judge from the one who had approved the decree) held that the repeal of emergency assistance did not violate the decree and dismissed the petition, and the plaintiffs have appealed. The dismissal of the contempt petition was a final order, appealable to this court under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and the appeal properly brings up to us the question of the meaning of the consent decree. See, e.g., Sportmart, Inc. v. Wolverine World Wide, Inc., 601 F.2d 313, 315-16 (7th Cir. 1979).

It is quite true, as the plaintiffs argue, that the italicized clause, standing alone, requires the township to adhere, at least substantially, to the standards set forth in the exhibit to the decree, and that the repeal of emergency assistance is not substantial compliance. But it is not true that we must read one clause in one paragraph of the decree in isolation from the rest of the paragraph and the rest of the decree without reference to the decree's evident purpose. We accept unreservedly the statement in United States v. Armour & Co., 402 U.S. 673, 681-82, 91 S.Ct. 1752, 1757, 29 L.Ed.2d 256 (1971) (emphasis in original), that a consent "decree itself cannot be said to have a purpose; rather the parties have purposes, generally opposed to each other, and the resultant decree embodies as much of those opposing purposes as the respective parties have the bargaining power and skill to achieve. For these reasons, the scope of a consent decree must be discerned within its four corners, and not by reference to what might satisfy the purposes of one of the parties to it." But this language must be read in context-the context of a government antitrust decree that the government was asking the court to interpret in accordance with the purpose that had moved the government to bring the suit that the decree had settled. We do not understand the Supreme Court to be saying that consent decrees should be interpreted as if their provisions were unmotivated, purposeless, and without context or that the "four corners" of the decree are really the "four corners" of each clause in the decree. The Court was saying that the relevant purposes in interpreting a consent decree (like any other contract) are the purposes embodied in the instrument rather than the maximum aspirations-which are bound to be inconsistent anyway-of the interested parties.

Any doubts about this interpretation of Armour should have been dispelled by United States v. ITT Continental Baking Co., 420 U.S. 223, 238, 95 S.Ct. 926, 935, 43 L.Ed.2d 148 (1975), which states that "a consent decree or order is to be construed for enforcement purposes basically as a contract," so that "reliance upon certain aids to construction is proper, as with any other contract." (The suggestion by the dissenting Justices in ITT Continental that the majority opinion departs from the standard of Armour, see 420 U.S. at 247-48, 95 S.Ct. at 939-40, overlooks, it seems to us, the difference between giving effect to the purpose of just one of the parties to the consent decree and giving effect to the parties' joint purpose imprecisely embodied in the language of the decree.) See also this circuit's decisions in Sportmart, Inc. v. Wolverine World Wide, Inc., supra, 601 F.2d at 316-17, and Commodities Futures Trading Comm'n v. Premex, 655 F.2d 779, 782 (7th Cir. 1981).

Nor do we agree with the plaintiffs that interpretation is permissible only if the language of the decree is ambiguous. Sportmart does not support that proposition. We said there that "the ambiguity of the decree's application to the present case is plain and resort to the circumstances surrounding the formation of the consent decree in order to construe its terms, if ambiguity be necessary at all before resort to such extrinsic aids, is proper."...