back there the law firm ogletree deacons and if i may your honors just introduce you to which element by the name of august in martinez who is our law clerk with summer he's a student at wake forest we're happy to have him and he's here to observe today's the supreme court has held repeatedly that once a federal court acquires jurisdiction of over a case its duty to decide the key is virtually unflagging in this case the district court heard as a matter of law by dismissing the case based on his reading of the supreme court's decision in younger versus hairs in middlesex in doing so it failed to give due credit however to the supreme court's more recent case in sprint communications versus jacobs in the prior case of new orleans public service incorporated versus the council of the city of new orleans which will refer to as not the district court failed to properly analyze the nature of the state proceeding which is not judicial in character for purposes of younger abstention this case presents none of the exclusive exceptional brought by the state to sanction the federal plaintiff or three a state civil proceeding uniquely in furtherance of the state courts ability to perform their judicial functions contrary to the district court's ruling none of those circumstances exist and indeed this court this case is very much like the circumstances in sprint and upsy b would seeks to have a declaration that the federal fairly were standards act supersedes or prehaps the minnesota fair labor standards act as to certain employees of b would during the period two thousand and twelve to twenty fourteen those individuals were employed as companions they enjoyed a complete exemption under the fair labor standards act from the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the law but not the similar exemption from the state law the difficulty here for the state that we seek declaration on is that excuse me the minnesota fairly responder's act fails to meet the criteria of the savings clause of the fair labor standards act section two eight hundred eight which says that the state law can also apply if its minimum wage  maximum hours provisions are better then the federal statute minnesota stands alone in the states as having at that time both the minimum wage that was lower than the federal minimum wage in a maximum workweek that was higher than the federal maximum workweek of forty hours we believe the district court proceeded on a flawed analysis when it first declared that the proceeding below state administrative agency proceeding was the type of judicial proceeding that could not from which the federal courts must abstain and then proceeded to analyze the case under the middlesex spector's without giving due regard to the the eighth circuit cases appear to state the formulation as one of abuse of discretion however as we've discussed in our in the blue brief and i think maybe in the gray brief as well we do have the case of proof versus l no actually your honor i was a you are the author of that opinion it was to call it in had the concurrence they grabbed his grandparents talked about the issue you're talking about and i think that at the end of the day well it won't matter much whether it is abuse of discretion or nonetheless they have conducted a detailed review of the district court's analysis and reasoning to that point it is clear under our precedents in the circuit that with a district court commits an error of law that is an abuse of discretion and that is our point in this case is that the district judge heard it and when it went to scrape from the newer analysis required by sprint  and relying on the middlesex factors in not first analyzing carefully whether the any one of the exceptional circumstances in younger existed let me ask you you're familiar with the first circuit servant case i afraid i can't really answer that question for you judge what i can say is that it's important when looking at all of these cases first of all to ensure that when the we're talking about courts that ruled for abstention that they were talking about the same it seems to me upon a review of the cases and particularly the eighth circuit cases that sometimes the abstention doctrines get a little bit muddled or combine some of our cases that refer to you know the abuse of discretion abstention are talking about a different it's tension doctrine there's about six or seven of them so i think we need to be clear but i think what's important is that that changed after sprint and i think it would be inconsistent with the supreme court's decision in sprint to continue to say that it's an abuse of discretion the the language of the opinion strongly suggests that the court is marking a different path and instructing the courts  younger in your brief you concede that there are potentially criminal penalties associated with this correct no not in this case your there was no that under the minnesota statute potentially yes that's my question yes but there but they're never what this was not a criminal proceeding and in this case there was a liquidated damage that was equal to the yes a significant number was equal to the wages the unpaid wages rise so why doesn't that sort of look like a fine and having reason for that would be twofold number one because the only civil proceeding case where the supreme court found the civil proceeding to be a kin to a criminal proceeding  was the the religious school case of i believe ohio in their particular situation the only penalty at the time was a criminal penalty and we discussed that in our brief but there's a more fundamental reason why none of that really matters and that is that in nazi the supreme excuse me in sprint the supreme court was quite clear that it had never and was not extending younger abstention to either legislative or  administrative proceedings it makes no difference in my view what the state might have sought what the state actually saw this was in a state civil administrative agency proceeding it simply is not entitled to younger reviewing legislative or executive action in more versus sims we do not remotely suggest that every pending proceeding between a state and federal plaintiff justifies abstention then there's been a long debate i think in the cases about extending younger to administrative agency proceedings well to the extent you're familiar with it in service of the first circuit held the massachusetts discrimination statute to be akin to a criminal proceeding and  some criminal penalties there seldom you has done as as does this so i would have to say that the first circuit got it wrong in doing that because again what the supreme court is saying i think even younger n in sprint is that the proceeding below that we're talking about the so called parallel proceeding in this case are not even parallel because there's a different issue this case doesn't involve any issue of the state law other than whether or not it's preempted this is purely a federal question that's not raised in the state but also the supreme court was quite clear that we do not extend younger abstention to administrative agency proceedings on that basis unless there are further questions i will reserve my time and stop at this point very well thank you thank you n judge correctly applied the younger doctor into this case and abstain from exercising jurisdiction because the department of labor has an ongoing civil enforcement proceeding and state court was a similar routine decision i first want to touch on the nature of the proceeding and first bay would waive this argument by not raising at the district court level and i believe this is where the abuse of discretion standard might come in because judge dodie on page three of his decision noted that it was undisputed that the proceeding below was or the proceeding in state court was judicial in nature second bay would argue bay was argument the contest case isn't judicial in nature seems fired on a lack of understanding of administrative law in minnesota and even this court has declared contested cases in minnesota judicial in nature for the purposes of younger and fuller vu and this court found that a contested case initiated by the commissioner of commerce was clearly clearly judicial in nature the parties are used at them in a sort of court of appeals exactly we could actually and at no point did they would challenge the commissioner's authority to decide a contested case based on a lack of authority to make the final decision they would also didn't bring up its preemption argument and further just with regard to the actual nature the nobs the court found that younger section was not appropriate in that case because the case wasn't nature and it wasn't judicial in nature because it was a forward looking case it was a right making case whereas here and he said what's properly judicial nature is an administrative perceiving that investigates declares and enforces liabilities as they stand on present or past facts and that's exactly the case here that department conducted invest investigation looked at bay wood's payment practices and said if you didn't pay overtime wages required under minnesota law getting to an issue that actually was argued at the district court the civil enforcement the department's state case was undoubtedly a civil import enforcement proceeding and the supreme court sprint took a detailed look at what a civil enforcement proceeding is and in that case it noted underlying a civil unfortunate proceeding it must be initiated by the state and its sovereign capacity to sanction federal plaintiff after an investigation which resulted in a formal complaint or charges of sanctioning the federal  wrongful act and all those are present here the department initiated contest case following an investigation that revealed bay would have paid its employees overtime wages and it assessed back wages liquidated damages and ordered  younger abstention was appropriate and in both of those cases the state law had a private right of action the prevailing wage law in the rhode island case and nondiscrimination law in the massachusetts case do you know whether there was a certain partition in declined to address preemption case it declined to do so because it said even though even a substantial allegation of preemption doesn't require a court to  overlook the younger doctrine  and that is possibly tied to the abuse of discretion and standard for declaratory judgment cases  we didn't even say that an allegation of preemption would be substantial it said officially conclusive preemption claim and that's been they didn't elaborate on that in because the court said it's clearly not political here what discretion does the district were to have the district court has discretion to state the case or to  dismiss it without prejudice so that the federal plaintiffs can have the issue heard in the already ongoing state court proceeding so that's why one of the of middlesex is that there's an opportunity for the constitutional challenge to be out of the federal issue to be heard let me ask you this we have for a younger extension in sprint and the supreme court wrongly reversed us so why is this case different than sprint this case is different than sprint because the sprint case as i mentioned before wasn't initiated by the state  it wasn't akin to a criminal prosecution because it wasn't initiated by the state this supreme court i think what stressed that at least ten different times they said sprint rocked this case against a third party about a dispute in telephone rates and it only it only at that point did the new orleans or not new  against bay what's about that whole issue and sprint isn't isn't a political here if anything sprint  accentuates why this is a traditional and appropriate exercise of younger abstention possibility of criminal misdemeanor liability so it's a very different from from sprint and that way getting back to the facial preemption issue we've talked about that other other courts have had it opportunity to figure out what facial preemption might look like and there's been a consensus that facial preemption might be conclusive where the supreme court has already said yes preemption exists here but that's not the case no circuit has held that the f l asay preempt state regulation of weight in our law it simply isn't something that's happened getting to the preemption issue the court doesn't need to reach it because obstruction was pretty appropriate but even if this court were to reach b which preemption arguments they they fail  d wasn't clear whether bail was arguing expressed or conflict preemption there's a consensus among the circuits that express preemption doesn't exist and there's also no conflict preemption they would could easily have complied with both the f s a and the minnesota act there's no prohibition on paying overtime to two employees they could have paid overtime and it wouldn't they wouldn't be in violation of of the federal act and the savings clause also says that no provision of this chapter shall rebuttal thank you your honor let me begin by first of all getting hit on the issue of waiver there's been no waiver of the argument that this the state civil administrator proceeding was not the type of proceeding you invision younger for and stanch and that's precisely the argument we made in the district court it was incumbent upon judge doty to analyze the case to determine whether it was the type of judicial proceeding that qualifie make the argument that it wasn't a judicial type proceeding we did not make the argument i believe that have been showing that argument if he didn't make that argument to the district court we made the argument that it did not qualify as the type of proceeding that to which the courts should extend younger stench and the precise argument that it lacks a judicial character because of the lack of authority by the state agency to  cases that's a that's a that's a different argument perhaps but the the burden was really the job of the district court was to determine whether or not it was the type of judicial proceeding job you know your life a job of the lawyers is to bring the issue to a head so that the district court knows that that's a contested issue and we did we argue that it didn't fit into any one of the three exceptional circumstances it was not a state criminal proceeding it was not a state proceeding a kin to one involving criminal prosecution and it did not interfere with a state courts unique functions to enforce its own orders those arguments were made to the district court the district court simply assumed that it was the type of proceeding to which younger abstention should be extended i think that's contrary to the supreme court's decision in sprint where it says the courts have said specifically both in sprint and up see that the unger extension doctrine should not be a part extended to administrative perceive things mr miller argues that sprint's different because brant involved a situation where the state wasn't the the actor i don't think that that makes any difference whatsoever in fact in that case what happened sprint commenced two lawsuits one in state court one in federal that ultimately withdrew one of the lawsuits in state court in the state became the party i don't think that the whether or not the state or a private party commenced this particular action makes any difference because it's still a state administrative agency proceeding it did not come into the judicial forum until after the order was issued and then it goes up through the court of appeals well isn't all the hallmarks of a criminal proceeding in fact it's commenced by the state in its name seeking some penalty and isn't something that would be a candidate to a criminal proceeding something that's commenced in the states named that seek some remedy that is beyond  merely in this case the award of backpay and once they file the complaint they conduct the investigation and they seek a penalty isn't it a kin to a criminal case and if not why not i would say it's not because  the supreme court has said it's not in sprint it page if we look at page five ninety two to five ninety three the supreme court said specifically that the u b proceeding was not the type of proceeding that is akin to a criminal proceeding or civil and foresman sanctions proceeding what the supreme court is limited that to the kind of sanctions proceeding or the attorney discipline cases that type of thing that's the only kind of case that they have limited that to the only other one was the ohio civil rights case but in that case  civil rights commission versus the dayton christian schools what's important is that at that time the only remedy available the only penalty available under the statute at that time was a criminal sanction be the one other point that i'd like to emphasize  and the did not gotten a cease and desist order what they've gotten is an order directing the wood to pay a certain amount of money and that's on appeal on that issue to the state court of appeals this part is criminal misdemeanor liability while that theoretically exists under the minnesota parents labor standards act i think one has to look to the nature of the case at hand there's been no allegation of prosecution under this case last but not least i'd like to you know want to says yes you know what the statute of limitations on that criminal proceeding would be i mean this is obviously been kicking around for a while i mean it seems to be that general statue of patients it may have run but most my recollection is and i'll go on memory my recollection is a three year statute for most criminal cases i don't think it falls under the six year statute but i'm sure that i'm pretty sure that the statute passed for that even by the time they brought that plus the state agency isn't empowered to bring any criminal proceedings they would have had to report that to a county attorney and you know go up the chain the last point i would like to make and i thank you for your your patience there was a statement made about the savings clause section two eighteen a fairly responder and we addressed this point in our brief both the blue brief and the gray brief it is not the case with respect to minimum wage and maximum hours that the statute says you can the states can regulate as long as they're better than this entire chapter that's absolutely not what it says there are two very long sentences there's two provisions as to minimum wages and over time it has to be bet it has to be either a lower wage or a shorter work week the reference the council made to better than this chapter refers to the second part of section two eight hundred eighty which deals with child labor laws that's not involved in this case we said we submit to the court that the district court should be reversed that the court committed an error of law which can be reviewed ennoble the decision was not in compliance with sprint and if the court wishes to take up the preemption argument i think it is clear on the face of the two statutes why the minnesota statute is preempted in or will be in recess until