Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-94-07044/USCOURTS-caDC-94-07044-1/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued In Banc May 8, 1996 Decided July 9, 1996

No. 94-7044

LASHAWN A., ET AL.,

APPELLEES

v.

MARION S. BARRY, JR., ET AL.,

APPELLANTS

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(89cv01754)

Donna M. Murasky, Assistant Corporation Counsel, argued the cause for appellants. With her on

the briefs were Charles F. Ruff, Corporation Counsel, and Charles L. Reischel, DeputyCorporation

Counsel. Garland Pinkston, Jr., Principal Deputy Corporation Counsel at the time the briefs were

filed, and Vanessa Ruiz, Assistant Corporation Counsel, entered appearances.

Marcia R. Lowry argued the cause for appellees. With her on the brief were Craig R. Levine and

Arthur B. Spitzer. Christopher T. Dunn entered an appearance.

A. Duncan Whitaker and Suzan J. Aramaki were on the brief for amicus curiae Jerome G. Miller, as

General Receiver.

Before: EDWARDS, Chief Judge, WALD, SILBERMAN, BUCKLEY, WILLIAMS, GINSBURG,

SENTELLE, HENDERSON, RANDOLPH, ROGERS, and TATEL, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge RANDOLPH. 

Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge SILBERMAN.

Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge WILLIAMS, in which Circuit Judge HENDERSON

joins.

RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge: In this ongoing litigation over the District of Columbia's foster

care system, we granted rehearing in banc to decide whether one panel of this court may reconsider

a prior panel's decision directing the district court to exercise pendent jurisdiction in the case. The

answer is no.

I

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1 Specifically, the court found the District in violation of the following requirements imposed

upon recipients of federal funding for child welfare programs: 42 U.S.C. § 5106a(b)(2) (requiring

prompt investigations into reports of abuse or neglect and necessary action to protect welfare of

abused or neglected children), 762 F. Supp. at 968-70; 42 U.S.C. § 5106a(b)(3) (requiring

demonstration of program to ensure effective treatment of child abuse and neglect cases), 762 F.

Supp. at 970; 42 U.S.C. § 671(a)(15) (requiring provision of services to enable a child for whom

a report has been made to remain in the home or, if removal is necessary, to enable the child to

return home as quickly as possible), 762 F. Supp. at 970; 42 U.S.C. § 672(e) (mandating that a

child return home within 180 days unless a judicial determination has been made that foster care

placement is in the child's best interests), 762 F. Supp. at 971; 42 U.S.C. § 675(5)(A) (requiring

procedures to assure children are placed in least restrictive settings), 762 F. Supp. at 971; 42

U.S.C. § 675(1) (requiring timely preparation of case plans containing specific information), 762

F. Supp. at 972-73; 42 U.S.C. § 675(5)(B) (requiring review of child's status at least every six

months), 762 F. Supp. at 974; and 42 U.S.C. § 627(a)(2)(A) (requiring operation of information

system from which status, location and goals for placement of all foster care children may be

readily determined), 762 F. Supp. at 976-77. 

In 1989, plaintiffs brought this class action on behalf ofthe abused and neglected childrenwho

rely on the District of Columbia's foster care system. They alleged that the defendantsthe mayor

and other high-level District officialswere responsible for widespread violations of their rights

under the United States Constitution, various federal statutes, and a long list of local laws. Two

weeks of trial testimony revealed the District of Columbia's deficient and inept administration of its

foster care system. The testimony, and more than a thousand admissions of fact by the District,

showed that District officials had consistently failed to carry out responsibilitiesimposed on them by

federal and local laws. LaShawn A. v. Dixon, 762 F. Supp. 959, 960, 986-87 (D.D.C. 1991).

The district court reached the "inescapable conclusion" that the District's foster care system

complied with neither "federal law, District law, [n]or, for those plaintiffsin the District'sfoster care,

the United States Constitution." Id. at 960-61. The District's administration of its foster care system

violated numerous provisions of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980, 42 U.S.C.

§§ 620-627 and §§ 670-679, and the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 5101-

5106.1 The Adoption Assistance Act, the court held, conferred upon the children rights that were

privately enforceable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which the District had violated by depriving the

children of those rights. 762 F. Supp. at 988-90. The district court also found that the District's

operation of its foster care system violated numerous provisions of the District's own Prevention of

Child Abuse and Neglect Act of 1977, D.C. Law 2-22 (Sept. 23, 1977) (codified as amended at D.C.

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CODEANN. §§ 2-1351 to -1357, §§ 6-2101 to -2107, §§ 6-2121 to -2127, and §§ 16-2351 to -2365);

the Youth Residential Facilities Licensure Act of 1986, D.C. Law 6-139 (Aug. 13, 1986) (codified

as amended at D.C. CODE ANN. §§ 3-801 to -808); and the Child and Family Services Division

Manual of Operations (Sept. 1985). The District's obligations under its own laws parallel the

requirements of federal law; indeed the District law requirements are, in many respects, more

stringent than those in the corresponding federalstatutes. Analogizing the rights of children in foster

care to rights ofthose involuntarilycommitted, LaShawn, 762 F. Supp. at 992, the district court ruled

that the District'slaws conferred libertyand propertyinterests, protected under the FifthAmendment,

on the children in the custody of the District's foster care system, id. at 994, and that the District had

violated § 1983 by depriving the children in foster care of these constitutionally protected interests.

762 F. Supp. at 998.

The parties worked out a remedial order to correct deficienciesin the District's administration

of its foster care system, and the district court entered it.

In the remedial order, the District specifically reserved the right to appeal the district court's

liability ruling. The District invoked that right almost immediately, contending before this court (1)

that the district court erred in finding that the administration of the District's foster care system

violated the Fifth Amendment, and (2) that the intervening decision in Suter v. Artist M., 503 U.S.

347 (1992), precluded any private cause of action under § 1983 or federal child welfare statutes. A

unanimous panel of this court held, however, that it was unnecessary to reach those "complex

constitutional and federalstatutory issues." LaShawn A. ex rel. Moore v. Kelly, 990 F.2d 1319, 1324

(D.C. Cir. 1993) ("LaShawn I"), cert. denied, 114 S. Ct. 691 (1994). Under District law, children

reported to have been abused or neglected had a private right of action to enforce the District's

Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect Act. Turner v. District of Columbia, 532 A.2d 662 (D.C.

1987). Because a government owes greater duties toward those in its custody, the panel concluded

that the children in the District's foster care system also had a private right of action under the Act.

LaShawn I, 990 F.2d at 1325. In addition, the panel noted that the other District statute relied on

by the children, the YouthResidential Facilities Licensure Act, explicitly providesthese children with

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a private cause of action to sue under the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect Act. Id. at 1325-

26. These statutes, the panel held, "provide[d] an independent basis for supporting the district court's

judgment." Id. at 1326.

Accordingly, rather than reach the difficult constitutional and federalstatutory questions, the

LaShawn I panel remanded the case to the district court "with instructions to fashion an equally

comprehensive order based entirely on District of Columbia law, if possible." Id. The panel

explained that the District's statutory and regulatory scheme was "appropriately before us under our

pendent jurisdiction," id. at 1324, and that federal judicial authority to decide the case on pendent

grounds was "incontrovertible," id. at 1326.

The District sought rehearing from that decision. The panel denied the petition. LaShawn

A. v. Dixon, No. 91-7159 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 9, 1993). The District suggested rehearing in banc. It did

not get the votes. LaShawn A. v. Dixon, No. 91-7159 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 9, 1993). The District asked

the Supreme Court to review the decision. Its petition for writ of certiorari was denied. Kelly v.

LaShawn A. ex rel. Moore, 114 S. Ct. 691 (1994).

On remand, the district court sought to comply with the direction of LaShawn I by entering

a modified remedial order based on local law. LaShawn A. v. Kelly, Civ. No. 89-1754 (D.D.C. Jan.

27, 1994). The District of Columbia appealed again, this time arguing that (1) under both the terms

of the parties' agreement and general principles of contract law, the original remedial order should

have been vacated because LaShawn I had "not affirmed" the district court'sfinding of liability under

federal law, and (2) the modified remedialorder was not "based on" local law asrequired by LaShawn

I.

Rather than confront those issues, a divided panel of this court remanded the case to the

district court to "re-examine" its exercise of pendent jurisdiction over the claims arising under local

law. LaShawn A. v. Barry, 69 F.3d 556, 570 (D.C. Cir. 1995) ("LaShawn II"), vacated and reh'g

in banc granted, 74 F.3d 303 (D.C. Cir. 1996). The LaShawn II majority acknowledged that

LaShawn I explicitly decided that the district court had the "power" to exercise pendent jurisdiction

under the first step of United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715 (1966). 69 F.3d at 560. The

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2 Ward v. James, [1966] 1 Q.B. 273, 294 (C.A.) (quoting Lord Mansfield in John Wilkes' case,

Rex v. Wilkes, 98 Eng. Rep. 327, 335 (1770)). See Henry J. Friendly, Indiscretion About

Discretion, 31 EMORY L. J. 747, 758 (1982). 

3 Of course, the law-of-the-case doctrine reaches beyond the court that made the first decision. 

It applies just as strongly to coordinate courts, see Christianson v. Colt Indus. Operating Corp.,

486 U.S. 800, 816 (1988), and an even more powerful version of the doctrinesometimes called

the "mandate rule"requires a lower court to honor the decisions of a superior court in the same

judicial system. See Sibbald v. United States, 37 U.S. (12 Pet.) 488, 492 (1838). 

LaShawn II majority also acknowledged that the LaShawn I panel had decidedby necessary

implicationthat an exercise of pendent jurisdiction was appropriate under Gibbs step two. Id.

Nonetheless, the LaShawn II majority concluded that it was free to revisit LaShawn I 's Gibbs step

two decision because, it said, the law-of-the-case doctrine does not preclude reconsideration of

"jurisdictional" questions decided but "not explicitly addressed" in a prior appeal. Id. at 562.

Upon the plaintiffs'suggestion, we granted rehearing in banc and vacated the judgment ofthe

LaShawn II majority. LaShawn A. v. Barry, 74 F.3d 303 (D.C. Cir. 1996). We then directed the

parties to brief the following question:

Under either the law-of-the-case doctrine or law-of- the-circuit doctrine, did

the decision in LaShawn I, 990 F.2d 1319 (D.C. Cir. 1993), preclude the panel in

LaShawn II, 69 F.3d 556 (D.C. Cir. 1995), from considering whether the district

court could properly exercise its jurisdiction under United Mine Workers v. Gibbs,

383 U.S. 715 (1966)? 

LaShawn A. v. Barry, No. 94-7044 (D.C. Cir. Feb. 9, 1996). We now answer that question in the

affirmative.

II 

Inconsistency is the antithesis of the rule of law. For judges, the most basic principle of

jurisprudence is that " "we must act alike in all cases of like nature.' "

2 Two time-honored doctrines

help put that principle into practice. The first is the law-of-the-case doctrine: the same issue

presented a second time in the same case in the same court should lead to the same result.3 The

second is the law-of-the-circuit doctrine: the same issue presented in a later case in the same court

should lead to the same result. Both doctrines play a role in this case.

"When there are multiple appeals taken in the course of a single piece of litigation,

law-of-the-case doctrine holds that decisions rendered on the first appeal should not be revisited on

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4 The District now argues that the LaShawn I decision was fundamentally flawed because it

analyzed pendent jurisdiction under Gibbs rather than Pennhurst State School & Hospital v.

Halderman, 465 U.S. 89 (1984) ("Pennhurst II"). But Pennhurst II dealt with the Eleventh

Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits federal courts from entertaining "suit[s] in law or

equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States." U.S. CONST. amend. XI

(emphasis added). The District of Columbia is not a state. It is the seat of our national

government, subjectas has become increasingly clear of lateto the plenary authority of

Congress under Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 of the Constitution. Thus, Pennhurst II has no

application here. Perhaps that is why the District failed even to mention Pennhurst II in its

petition for rehearing, suggestion for rehearing in banc, and petition for certiorari from LaShawn

I.

later trips to the appellate court." Crocker v. Piedmont Aviation, Inc., 49 F.3d 735, 739 (D.C. Cir.),

cert. denied, 116 S. Ct. 180 (1995); see also Northwestern Ind. Tel. Co. v. FCC, 872 F.2d 465, 471

(D.C. Cir. 1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1035 (1990). The Supreme Court has instructed the lower

courts to be "loathe" to reconsider issues already decided "in the absence of extraordinary

circumstances such as where the initial decision was "clearly erroneous and would work a manifest

injustice.' " Christianson v. ColtIndus. OperatingCorp., 486 U.S. 800, 817 (1988) (quoting Arizona

v. California, 460 U.S. 605, 618 n.8 (1983)).

The LaShawn II majority identified no such "extraordinary circumstance" to justify

reconsideration of LaShawn I's pendent jurisdiction decision, and we are aware of none. There had

been no intervening change in controlling legal authority, see McKesson Corp. v. Islamic Republic

of Iran, 52 F.3d 346, 350 (D.C. Cir. 1995), cert. denied, 116 S. Ct. 704 (1996), and the LaShawn

I decision was not "clearly erroneous." See Christianson, 486 U.S. at 817.4 Nonetheless, the

LaShawn II majority thought itself free to revisit LaShawn I's Gibbsstep two decision on the ground

that the law-of-the-case doctrine contains an exception allowing a panel to reexamine any

"jurisdictional" question decided, but not extensively discussed, byan earlier panelin an earlier appeal

of the same case. 

No such exception exists. In Christianson v. Colt Industries Operating Corp.a case

involving one circuit's attempt to revisit the transfer decision of another circuitthe Supreme Court

specifically rejected any "jurisdictional question" exception to the law-of-the-case doctrine. The

Court said:

There is no reason to apply law-of-the-case principles less rigorously to transfer

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5 The Tenth Circuit recently cited Potomac Passengers as support for the argument that the

"always-open character of jurisdictional questions" should be "a consideration weighing against"

the application of the law-of-the-case doctrine to such questions. Wilmer v. Board of County

Comm'rs, 69 F.3d 406, 410 n.3 (10th Cir. 1995). The Wilmer court did not adopt that view,

however; it held only that the law-of-the-case doctrine does not preclude consideration of

questionsjurisdictional or otherwisethat were not decided in a prior appeal. Id. at 409-10. 

Because the LaShawn I panel in fact necessarily decided the Gibbs step two question (dissent at

3), the Wilmer holding has no application here. 

decisions that implicate the transferee's jurisdiction. Perpetual litigation of any

issuejurisdictional or nonjurisdictionaldelays, and therefore threatens to deny,

justice.

Id. at 816-17 n.5. In reaching that conclusion, the Court rejected Potomac Passengers Ass'n v.

Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, 520 F.2d 91, 95 n.22 (D.C. Cir. 1975), in which this court first

suggested that the law-of-the-case doctrine might not preclude reconsideration of jurisdictional

questions. Id. Before the Supreme Court decided Christianson, the lower federal courts frequently

cited Potomac Passengers for the notion that jurisdictional questions are relatively unrestrained by

law-of-the-case considerations. In the eight years since Christianson, however, references to

Potomac Passengers have been few and far between. Only two federal courts have relied on

Potomac Passengers, and then only to bolster the unremarkable conclusion that a district court isfree

to reconsider its own non-final jurisdictional decisions. Matek v. Murat, 862 F.2d 720, 724 n.1 (9th

Cir. 1988); Travelers Indem. Co. v. Household Int'l, Inc., 775 F. Supp. 518, 530 (D. Conn. 1991).5

That the jurisdictional question exception of Potomac Passengers is no longer good law

should come as no particular surprise. Today, this court and other courts of appeals routinely apply

law-of-the-case preclusion to questions of jurisdiction, see, e.g., McKesson Corp., 52 F.3d at 350;

Oneida Indian Nation v. New York, 860 F.2d 1145, 1151 (2d Cir. 1988), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 871

(1989), and do so even when the first decision regarding jurisdiction is less than explicit. See, e.g.,

In re Memorial Estates, Inc., 950 F.2d 1364, 1367 (7th Cir. 1991), cert. denied, 504 U.S. 986

(1992). The dissent complains that the LaShawn I panel did not explicitly discussthe Gibbsstep two

question, except to say that pendent jurisdiction was "incontrovertible." 990 F.2d at 1326. But the

Supreme Court's holding in Christianson renders the dissent's complaint irrelevant. The

law-of-the-case doctrine, the Supreme Court said, turns "on whether a court previously decide[d]

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6 As the dissent notes (dissent at 3), the Supreme Court said in Pennhurst II that it does not

consider itself bound by decisions on questions of jurisdiction made sub silentio in previous cases

"when a subsequent case finally brings the jurisdictional issue" to the Court. 465 U.S. at 119

(internal quotation marks and citation omitted). But that plainly has nothing to do with this

appeal. The quoted portion of Pennhurst II dealt with the stare decisis effect of decisions in

other cases, not the effect of earlier decisions by the same appellate court in the same case. 

7 There are situations in which the law-of-the-case doctrine but not the law-of-the-circuit

doctrine applies. If a party fails to raise a point he could have raised in the first appeal, the

upon a rule of law ... not whether, or how well, it explained the decision." 486 U.S. at 817 (internal

quotation marks omitted). We said the same in Crocker, 49 F.3d at 739: the law-of-the-case

doctrine applies to questions decided "explicitly or by necessary implication." As the dissent

acknowledges, the LaShawn I panel decided the Gibbsstep two question "by necessary implication."

Dissent at 3. Under Christianson, nothing more is required.6

The procedural setting of this case calls for an even stronger than usual version of the

law-of-the-case doctrine. While law-of-the-case doctrine is a prudential creation of the courts, the

law-of-the-circuit doctrine is derived from legislation and from the structure of the federal courts of

appeals. Courts of appeals sit in panels, or divisions, of "not more than three judges" pursuant to the

authority granted in 28 U.S.C. § 46(c). The "decision of a division" is "the decision of the court."

Revision Notes to 28 U.S.C. § 46 (citing Textile Mills Sec. Corp. v. Commissioner, 314 U.S. 326

(1941)); see Critical Mass Energy Project v. Nuclear Regulatory Comm'n, 975 F.2d 871, 876 (D.C.

Cir. 1992) (in banc), cert. denied, 507 U.S. 984 (1993). Were matters otherwise, the finality of our

appellate decisions would yield to constant conflicts within the circuit. Textile Mills Sec. Corp., 314

U.S. at 335. One three-judge panel, therefore, does not have the authority to overrule another

three-judge panel of the court. E.g., United States v. Caldwell, 543 F.2d 1333, 1370 n.19 (D.C. Cir.

1974), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1087 (1976). That power may be exercised only by the full court,

either through an in banc decision, id., or pursuant to the more informal practice adopted in Irons

v. Diamond, 670 F.2d 265, 268 n.11 (D.C. Cir. 1981).

Because the law-of-the-case doctrine alone precluded the LaShawn II panel from revisiting

the Gibbs decision of LaShawn I, we need not delve deeply into the interplay between the

law-of-the-case and the law-of-the-circuit doctrines.7 Suffice it to say that, when both doctrines are

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"waiver variant" of the law-of-the-case doctrine generally precludes the court from considering

the point in the next appeal of the same case. See Crocker, 49 F.3d at 739-40. The

law-of-the-circuit doctrine would not, however, bind another panel. Without a holding on the

point, the first panel's decision would have no precedential effect. "Questions which merely lurk

in the record, neither brought to the attention of the court nor ruled upon, are not to be

considered as having been so decided as to constitute precedents." Webster v. Fall, 266 U.S.

507, 511 (1925). 

at work, the law-of-the-circuit doctrine should increase a panel's reluctance to reconsider a decision

made in an earlier appeal in the same case. See, e.g., United States v. 162.20 Acres of Land, 733 F.2d

377, 379 (5th Cir. 1984) (explaining that when a prior panel in the same circuit has decided an issue,

law-of-the-circuit doctrine supplants law-of-the-case doctrine and precludes reconsideration of that

decision in a subsequent appeal, even if the second panel believes the first was wrong), cert. denied,

469 U.S. 1158 (1985); cf. Laffey v. Northwest Airlines, Inc., 740 F.2d 1071, 1077 (D.C. Cir. 1984)

(holding that both the law of the case and the law of the circuit precluded a panelfrom reconsidering

issues resolved in a prior appeal in the same case), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1181 (1985). While the

law-of-the-case doctrine offers several exceptionsalthough not, as we have explained, a

"jurisdictional question" onethe law-of-the-circuit doctrine is much more exacting. Whether the

law-of-the-circuit doctrine allows reconsideration of a prior decision that was " "clearly erroneous

and would work a manifest injustice,' " see Christianson, 486 U.S. at 817 (quoting Arizona v.

California, 460 U.S. at 618 n.8), is a question we can leave for another day: in revisiting LaShawn

I, the LaShawn II majority did not identify any "clear error," and, as we said in discussing the

law-of-the-case doctrine, see supra p. 7, we do not believe that the LaShawn I panel committed one.

Instead, the LaShawn II majority claimed that it was free to revisit LaShawn I under a

"jurisdictional question" exception to the law-of-the-case doctrine. To repeat, no such exception

exists. But even if it did, LaShawn I 's decision on Gibbs step two would not fall within it. As the

Supreme Court explained in Mayor of Philadelphia v. Educational Equality League, 415 U.S. 605,

627 (1974), the view of "pendent jurisdiction assomething akin to subject matter jurisdiction that may

be raised sua sponte at any stage and that is capable of aborting prior federal court proceedings is a

misreading of the law."

The concept of pendent jurisdiction entails a jurisdictional element, but that is comprised in

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the first step of the Gibbs analysis. See Wal-Juice Bar, Inc. v. Elliott, 899 F.2d 1502, 1503 (6th Cir.

1990); District of Columbia Common Cause v. District of Columbia, 858 F.2d 1, 10 (D.C. Cir.

1988); Dimond v. District of Columbia, 792 F.2d 179, 188 (D.C. Cir. 1986); Financial Gen.

Bankshares, Inc. v. Metzger, 680 F.2d 768, 772 (D.C. Cir. 1982). Step one of Gibbs deals with the

court's "power" to hear pendent local law claimsits jurisdictionwhen the case raises a

"substantial" federal issue and the federal and local law claims "derive from a common nucleus of

operative fact" and "are such that [the plaintiff] would ordinarily be expected to try them all in one

proceeding." Gibbs, 383 U.S. at 725. The federal courts' subject matter jurisdiction, to the extent

Congress authorizes it, is derived directly from Article III, Section 2, extending the judicial "Power"

to "all Cases in Law and Equity arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States...."

U.S. CONST. art. III, § 2; see also Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. Thompson, 478 U.S. 804,

807 (1986); United States Parole Comm'n v. Geraghty, 445 U.S. 388, 395-96 (1980). The doctrine

of pendent jurisdiction rests on the idea that the court'sjurisdiction over the underlying federal claim

brings the related pendent claims under the scope of Article III because they are part of the same

"case" or "controversy." See Gibbs, 383 U.S. at 725; Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 22 U.S.

(9 Wheat.) 738, 821-23 (1824). Gibbs's requirements of a substantial federal claim, a common

nucleus of operative fact, and the expectation of one trial, 383 U.S. at 725, "serve[ ] as an operational

definition of the "one constitutional "case" ' language." Richard A. Matasar, Rediscovering "One

Constitutional Case": Procedural Rules and the Rejection of the Gibbs Test for Supplemental

Jurisdiction, 71 CAL. L. REV. 1399, 1416 (1983).

There can be not the slightest doubt here that the children's claims under federalstatutorylaw,

the Constitution, and District of Columbia law all arise from a common set of facts. The district

court'sjurisdictionits powerto decide the local law claimsthusturned on the substantiality ofthe

underlying federal claims. Whether a court may decide pendent claims is determined on the face of

the pleadings. The ultimate disposition of the federal claim is "immaterial on the question of power."

13B CHARLES A. WRIGHT ET AL., FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 3567.1, at 114-15 (1995).

Once a district court finds a substantial federal claim, it has jurisdiction over the entire case.

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8 While it is true that the Supreme Court in Gibbs explained that the step two question remains

open through "the litigation," see dissent at 11, the Court meant only that the question need not

be decided forever on the pleadings, but could be reconsidered during pretrial proceedings or

even the trial itself. See Gibbs, 383 U.S. at 727. 

9 Congress has also explicitly recognized the discretionary nature of the second step of the

Gibbs inquiry. The Judicial Improvements Act, enacted in 1990 and codified in part at 28 U.S.C.

§ 1367, states:

... in any civil action of which the district courts have original jurisdiction, the

district courts shall have supplemental jurisdiction over all other claims that are so

related to claims in the action within such original jurisdiction that they form part

of the same case or controversy under Article III of the United States Constitution.

28 U.S.C. § 1367(a) (italics added). When the federal claim drops out, the district court has

discretion to retain or dismiss the pendent local law claims: "The district courts may decline to

exercise supplemental jurisdiction over a claim in subsection (a)" for any of the reasons listed in §

1367(c)(1)-(4). 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c) (italics added).

Section 1367 does not apply in this particular case because the children's complaint was

filed before the statute's effective date. Still, § 1367's language is instructive in that the provision,

inter alia, "codified the doctrine of pendent jurisdiction developed by the Supreme Court in the

case of United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715 (1966), and its progeny." Shanaghan v.

Cahill, 58 F.3d 106, 109 (4th Cir. 1995); see also Edmondson & Gallagher v. Alban Towers

Tenants Ass'n, 48 F.3d 1260, 1266 (D.C. Cir. 1995). 

10 The dissent suggests that Minker v. Baltimore Annual Conference of United Methodist

Church, 894 F.2d 1354 (D.C. Cir. 1990), and Maguire v. Marquette University, 814 F.2d 1213

(7th Cir. 1987), imply that the Gibbs step two is jurisdictional. Dissent at 11-12. They do not. 

Those cases treated as "jurisdictional" only the Gibbs "rule" that "if the federal claims are

dismissed before trial ... the state claims should be dismissed as well." See Gibbs, 383 U.S. at

726; Minker, 894 F.2d at 1361; Maguire, 814 F.2d at 1218 n.4. 

The court then must engage in the second step of the Gibbs analysis and decide whether to exercise

that jurisdiction over the local or state law claims. This aspect of Gibbs is not a jurisdictional

determination, which is why Gibbs held that "pendent jurisdiction is a doctrine of discretion...." 383

U.S. at 726.8 There is no other way to explain Schmidt v. Oakland Unified School District, 457 U.S.

594, 595 (1982), in which the Supreme Court held that a federal court's decision whether to resolve

pendent local law claims was to be reviewed for abuse of discretion.9 Clearly, a question cannot be

both discretionary and jurisdictional: the federal courts have no "discretion" to hear cases outside

their jurisdiction. The Gibbsstep two question isthus not "jurisdictional" and would not come under

a "jurisdictional" question exception to the law-of-the-case doctrine if such an exception existed.10

* * *

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Our analysis resolves the question we posed: the law-of-the-case and law-of-the-circuit

doctrines precluded the panel in LaShawn II from revisiting the Gibbs step two decision reached in

LaShawn I. It does not, however, resolve the issues the District raised in its appeal. See supra p. 5.

Because the LaShawn II panel remanded the case to the district court to reexamine the pendent

jurisdiction question, it did not addressthose arguments when the appeal was before it. We remit the

appeal to the panel so it may do so now.

So ordered.

SILBERMAN, Circuit Judge, concurring: I join the majority opinion; I do not think it was

clear error for the original panel to have pretermitted the federal statutory and constitutional

questions and directed the district judge "to fashion an equally comprehensive order based entirely

on District of Columbia law, if possible." The law of the case exception for clear error is only

awkwardly applied to a decision of a roughly contemporaneous panel of the same appellate court,

which is why the majority is quite right that in this sort of situation we have law of the case plus

elements of law of the circuit. Whatever the boundary between clear error and error, however, it

surely cannot be clear error for the panel to have not accepted an argumentbased on an analogy

to Pennhurst IIwhich the District did not make.

Still, I do believe the original panel's disposition was dubious. I think that the implication of

Gibbs ' observation that a federal court should not exercise pendent jurisdiction if the federal claims

are dismissed, see 383 U.S. at 726, is that the federal claims should be considered first. Ordinarily,

of course, federal courts seek to avoid deciding federal constitutional questions, see Ashwander v.

TVA, 297 U.S. 288, 347 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring), but when the alternative is the unseemly

prospect oftaking over a state institution to force compliance with state law, the Ashwander doctrine

should yield. By deciding Pennhurst II on Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity grounds, the

Supreme Court put paid to the prospect of federal courts being used in that fashion against a state.

But there still remains the District of Columbia, which, of course, is not a state and therefore not

entitled to EleventhAmendment protection. The District is correct, however, in arguing that whether

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the panel erred or not depends on whether one is to regard the District as akin to a state under the

Gibbs-Pennhurst II line. We have traditionally so treated the District, and I think the panel should

have done soat least by deciding the federal questions first so that if they were decided against the

plaintiffs, the case could be dismissed.

To be sure, our tradition of treating the District jurisprudentially like a state may be

outmoded: the District's "home rule" itself might well be thought a sad failure. Surely those

organizations who, as plaintiffs, seek federal judicial control of more and more of the District's

governmental functions feed that perception. If home rule is to be abolished, however, it should be

done by Congress, not incrementally by federal judges. 

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge, with whom HENDERSON, Circuit Judge, joins, dissenting: A

federal district judgean exceptionally fine one, it so happenshas taken full command of a major

chunk ofDistrict ofColumbia government, the Child and Family Services Division ofthe Department

of Human Services. Although the law in whose name he runs the department is local, not federal, no

opinion of the district court or this court has ever performed the balancing required by United Mine

Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 726-27 (1966), for the exercise of pendent jurisdiction. The

majority tells us that because of "law of the case," this substitution of judges for elected government

must continue into the indefinite future, without any court ever engaging in the balancing required

by Gibbs. I think not. To me it appears that (1) law of the case does not bar one panel of the court

from addressing a jurisdictional issue that a prior panel resolved only implicitlywithout one word

of discussion; and (2) the balancing required for pendent jurisdiction under Gibbs's "second step" is

in fact jurisdictional.

* * *

The majority's statement of the history of the litigation prior to the now-vacated panel

opinion, Maj. Op. at 2-6, is not inaccurate. But neither is it complete. First, the consent decree

negotiated between the parties consists of a 90-page single-spaced code of operations. Thus the

degree of federal judicial control is remarkable in its sweep and detail. The District negotiated the

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decree after and under the pressure of a district court decision on the merits, LaShawn A. v. Dixon,

762 F. Supp. 959 (D.D.C. 1991), but before the Supreme Court's decision in Suter v. Artist M., 503

U.S. 347 (1992). As Suter rejected two of the holdings of the district courtthat §§ 671(a)(9) &

(a)(15) of the Adoption Assistance Act created rights enforceable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983with

implications for the rest of the court's statutory analysis, the judicial reasoning that compelled the

District to embrace the consent decree was obviously vulnerable. Indeed, on the two specific

provisions addressed in Suter, it was plainly unsustainable. Thus the District had, under pressure that

was at least in part ill-founded, agreed to the most detailed imaginable federal judicialsupervision of

a major portion of its governance.

Second, the majority does not conveyindeed, it is hard to conveyhow absent from the

first panel opinion, LaShawn A. ex rel. Moore v. Kelly, 990 F.2d 1319 (D.C. Cir. 1993) ("LaShawn

I"), is any reference to or hint ofthe balancing required for pendent jurisdiction under the second step

of Gibbs. The following is its entire discussion of pendent jurisdiction:

Our authority to decide the case entirely on pendent state groundsisincontrovertible.

The Supreme Court has held that "where two distinct grounds in support of a single

cause of action are alleged, one only of which presents a federal question ... the

federal court, even though the federal ground be not established, may nevertheless

retain and dispose of the case upon the nonfederal ground." United Mine Workers

of America v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 722, 86 S.Ct. 1130, 1137, 16 L.Ed.2d 218 (1966)

(quoting Hurn v. Oursler, 289 U.S. 238, 246, 53 S.Ct. 586, 589, 77 L.Ed. 1148

(1933)).

990 F.2d at 1326. The only language quoted from Gibbsrelates exclusively to the first step required

by that case; that quotation frames the panel's own language (i.e., the non-quoted part), referring to

the court's "authority" to decide the case, which echoes Gibbs's observation that there is "power" in

the court to hear the case if the first test is metthe common nucleus of operative facts. See Gibbs,

383 U.S. at 725. Accordingly, we are not in any way here dealing with a question "not extensively

discussed," see Maj. Op. at 8, but, so far as the balancing required by Gibbs's second step is

concerned, a question not discussed at all.

* * *

The status of jurisdictional issues under law of the case. There is, of course, no dispute that

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law of the case traditionally bars reconsideration even of an issue merely decided "by necessary

implication," subject to equally traditional exceptions for decisions found clearly erroneous or

working manifest injustice, or, at least in some cases, undermined by an intervening change in

controlling authority. Nor can it be doubted that LaShawn I's instruction to the district court to go

full speed ahead on the basis of District law resolved the Gibbs second step "by necessary

implication." After all, as jurisdiction is a necessary predicate to judicial action, regardless of whether

any party has attacked jurisdiction, see, e.g., FW/PBS, Inc. v. City of Dallas, 493 U.S. 215, 230-31

(1990) ("federal courts are under an independent obligation to examine their own jurisdiction,"

regardless ofwhether anypartyhasraised the issue), any decision to reach the meritsimplicitlyrejects

any attacks on the court's jurisdiction. Thus, despite the complete omission of any reference in the

briefs in LaShawn I to Gibbs (or, so far as appears, to pendent jurisdiction at all), and the court's

complete non-discussion of Gibbs's second step, by standard reasoning LaShawn I is properly said

to have found, by necessary implication, that Gibbs's second step was satisfied.

Jurisdictional issues are, of course, special in a number of regards. First, as already noted, a

court is not only free but affirmatively obliged to raise the issue of its jurisdiction where it might be

in question, even though the parties never dreamed ofthe issue. Second, judicial decisions implicitly

rejecting attacks on a court's jurisdiction (or that of a lower court), i.e., ones that proceed to the

merits without discussion of jurisdiction, have no precedential force on the jurisdictional point.

"When questions of jurisdiction have been passed on in prior decisions sub silentio, this Court has

never considered itself bound when a subsequent case finallybringsthe jurisdictional issue before us."

Pennhurst State School & Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 119 (1984) ("Pennhurst II").

The first question before the court, then, is whether the special characteristics ofjurisdictional

issues require any special treatment for purposes of law of the case. This court once took a firm

position that they did soto the point of removing such questions from law-of-the-case analysis,

Potomac Passengers Ass'n v. Chesapeake &Ohio R. Co., 520 F.2d 91, 95 n.22 (D.C. Cir. 1975), and

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1See, e.g., Green v. Dept. of Commerce, 618 F.2d 836, 839 & n.9 (D.C. Cir. 1980); 

Amusement & Music Operators Ass'n v. Copyright Royalty Tribunal, 636 F.2d 531, 532-33 &

nn.2-4 (D.C. Cir. 1980); Acton Corp. v. Borden, 670 F.2d 377, 379 n.2 (1st Cir. 1982); Crane

Co. v. American Standard, 603 F.2d 244, 247 (2d Cir. 1979); EEOC v. Neches Butane Products

Co., 704 F.2d 144, 147 n.2 (5th Cir. 1983); Amen v. City of Dearborn, 718 F.2d 789, 794 (6th

Cir. 1983); Christianson v. Colt Industries Operating Corp., 798 F.2d 1051, 1056 (7th Cir.

1986). 

2Commentators have apparently not seen Christianson as wiping the slate clean. Wright and

Miller said in 1981 that "[q]uestions of subject matter jurisdiction are particularly apt to be free of

law of the case principles," citing Potomac Passengers. Wright & Miller, Federal Practice and

Procedure § 4478 at 799 n.32 (1981) (under the heading "Suitable to Reconsider"). "In addition

to the great importance that is generally attributed to jurisdictional limits, such questions may at

times involve matters of discretion that inherently require reexamination as a case progresses,"

id. (emphasis added), the latter phrase being apparently an allusion to step two of Gibbs. The

1996 Supplement to Wright & Miller does not modify that passage, 1996 Supplement at 704

n.32, and cites Christianson under the separate category of "Propriety of Transfer: Transferor

reconsideration," id. at 694-95 n.26. 

3The lone exception seems to be a case involving personal, not subject matter, jurisdiction. In

the Matter of Oil Spill by the Amoco Cadiz Off the Coast of France on March 16, 1978, 954

F.2d 1279, 1292 (7th Cir. 1992). 

the case was widely cited for that proposition.1 As the majority rightly observes, however, the

Supreme Court expressed at least a degree of disapproval in a dictum:

There is no reason to apply law-of-the-case principles less rigorously to transfer

decisions that implicate the transferee's jurisdiction. Perpetual litigation of any

issuejurisdictional or nonjurisdictionaldelays, and therefore threatens to deny,

justice. But cf. Potomac Passengers Assn. v. Chesapeake &Ohio R. Co., ... 520 F.2d

91, 95 n.22 [(D.C. Cir. 1975)].

Christianson v. Colt Industries Operating Corp., 486 U.S. 800, 816 n.5 (1988).

Since Christianson, the cases have been more mixed,2and are certainly consistent with the

view, which I share, that Potomac Passengers overdid it. Christianson's direct impact appears to

have been slight, with courts applying its discussion of law-of-the-case doctrine relating to

jurisdictional questions onlyin the precise context at issue thereapplication of a transferring court's

jurisdictional analysis in a coordinate court to which the case has been transferred.3 See, e.g., Ukiah

Adventist Hospital v. FTC, 981 F.2d 543, 546 n.4 (D.C. Cir. 1992) ("Review of a transfer order

[including jurisdictional grounds] in a transferee court is exceedingly limited.") (dictum citing

Christianson); Wang Laboratories v. Applied Computer Sciences, 958 F.2d 355, 358 (Fed. Cir.

1992) (accepting case transferred by First Circuit, the court reasoned that "ifthe transferee court can

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find the transfer decision plausible, its jurisdictional inquiry is at an end"); Moses v. Business Card

Express, 929 F.2d 1131, 1137 (6th Cir. 1991) (upholding, under Christianson, district court's

decision to apply law-of-the-case principles to transfer decision made pursuant to forum selection

clause; technically venue rather than jurisdictional issue). While post-Christianson decisions have

sometimes applied law of the case to jurisdictional questions outside the transfer context, in doing

so they have neither relied on the Christianson dictum nor even expressly considered whether

jurisdictional issues called for special treatment. See McKesson Corp. v. Islamic Republic of Iran,

52 F.3d 346, 351 (D.C. Cir. 1995); In the Matter of Memorial Estates, 950 F.2d 1364, 1367 (7th

Cir. 1991); Oneida Indian Nation of New York v. State of New York, 860 F.2d 1145, 1151 (2d Cir.

1988).

Moreover, at least one circuit that once applied law of the case to a jurisdictional issue

without discussion later acknowledged the special character of such issues. In DiLaura v. Power

Authority, 982 F.2d 73, 77 (2d Cir. 1992), the court held that a district court was not barred by law

of the case from reconsidering its own non-final orders, noting that "subject matter jurisdiction is

particularly suited for reconsideration." (As Judge Winter noted in a separate opinion, however, the

issue was in fact moot because what might have been law of the case for the district court could not

have prevented review by the court of appeals, see id. at 81.) See also Matek v. Murat, 862 F.2d

720, 724 n.1 (9th Cir. 1988) (apparent dictum citing Potomac Passengers for the proposition that

"[s]ubject matter jurisdiction, because of its intrinsic importance to the judicial power of the federal

courts, is particularly suitable for reconsideration").

One post-Christianson case, Wilmer v. Board of County Comm'rs of Leavenworth County,

69 F.3d 406 (10th Cir. 1995), confronted a problem closely akin to ours. In a prior pass at the case,

the majority had disregarded a jurisdictional issue that the dissent had "tentatively" raised. Id. at 410.

Did this bar the panel from considering it? The court noted that since any merits decision implicitly

rejects all jurisdictional attacks, application oflaw ofthe case as conventionally articulated would bar

all consideration ofsuch issues at any time after an initial final judgment, thereby conflicting with the

directive of Rule 60(b)(4) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to provide relief where the

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judgment is void, as well as the decisions that have applied that rule to overturn jurisdictionally

defective final judgments. Id. at 409-10. Wilmer concluded, therefore, that a jurisdictional issue

could be examined where there had been no "actual determination" of the issue, id. at 409, and

obviously did not regard the dissent's raising the issue as satisfying that test, id. at 410, even though,

under normal assumptions as to how courts work, that necessarily meant that the majority was fully

aware of, and had rejected, the contention.

The line drawn in Wilmer seems to me sound. Indeed, I do not understand the majority to

say that the "necessary implication" aspect of law of the case means that a court's issuance of a final

judgment, logically but not expressly based on a positive jurisdictional finding, precludes any later

consideration ofthe issue. Its ruling, insofar as it proceeds under the assumption that Gibbs'ssecond

step is jurisdictional (an assumption it ultimately rejects), must rest on the idea that LaShawn I

"actually" decided that that step was satisfied. But this seems necessarily to rest on a very loose

notion of "actual" decision, far looser than that applied by the court in Wilmer. The only evidence

of actual decision of the issue in LaShawn I is what one might infer from its reference to Gibbs,

coupled with our knowledge that Gibbs involves two steps, not one. But that amounts to no more

than silent action, in the face of presumptive awareness of an issue, which Wilmer clearly regarded

as being less than an "actual" determination.

Alternatively, perhaps the majority means that Gibbs is a unitary proposition. On this view,

a citation to the case and a quote from one of the operative passages articulating step one ipso facto

constitute an "actual" determination of step two. The theory seems to me a bit metaphysical. If

Wilmerisright, i.e., more isrequired to trigger law of the case than action on the merits coupled with

a sign ofjudicial awareness ofthe jurisdictional issue, it must be because some more serious evidence

of a mental connection with the issues is necessary. If so, then the idea that the steps of Gibbs are

unitary seems to be simply a fiction to avoid the requirement that there be evidence ofsuch a mental

connection.

The actions of the Supreme Court suggest that mere implicit resolution of a jurisdictional

issue should not be binding under law of the case. In Pennhurst State School & Hospital v.

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4When the majority in Pennhurst II overturned the Third Circuit's adjudication of the state law

claims, the dissenters made the same point about Pennhurst I, saying that the majority was

reversing "the Court of Appeals because it did precisely what this Court ordered it to

do"reinstate its prior judgment if state law provided an adequate and independent ground to

support the remedial order. Pennhurst II, 465 U.S. at 126 (Stevens, J., with whom Brennan,

Marshall, & Blackmun, JJ., joined, dissenting). 

Halderman, 451 U.S. 1 (1981) ("Pennhurst I"), the Court had cast doubt on the federal basis for a

consent decree enforced against state officials, see id. at 18-27, and remanded the case to the court

of appeals to determine the validity of the federal claims. The Court also remanded state law claims

to determine "whetherstate law provides an independent and adequate ground which can support the

court's remedial order," without significant discussion of the issue. Id. at 31.

On remand, the court of appeals recognized that the remand order necessarily implied that it

would have jurisdiction to enter the order on state law grounds alone. "Implicit in that direction is

a holding that the plaintiffs' federal law claims are of sufficient substance to support the exercise of

pendent jurisdiction over that Pennsylvania law claim." Halderman v. Pennhurst State School &

Hospital, 673 F.2d 647, 650 (3d Cir. 1982).4 The court of appeals then acted on the implied

permissionPennhurstI had given and found that the Pennsylvania statute provided "adequate support

for [the order] independent of federal law." 673 F.2d at 656.

Again the Supreme Court reversed, holding that the Eleventh Amendment denies federal

courtsjurisdiction to order state officialsto conform their conduct to state law. 465 U.S. at 117-21.

It brushed aside several earlier implicit rulings to the contrary in other cases, explaining that stare

decisis principles did not bar its reconsideration of the jurisdictional issue. Id. at 119. The decision

thus overrode law of the case in the interest of getting the jurisdictional issue right. While the

majority did not explicitly address the problem of law of the case, the dissenters did, saying that in

reversing the Third Circuit on the second round, "the Court casts aside [the] well-respected doctrine

... of law of the case." 465 U.S. at 165 (Stevens, J., with whom Brennan, Marshall, & Blackmun, JJ.,

joined, dissenting).

Despite the obviousness of the law-of-the-case issue and the dissent's explicit discussion, the

majority disregarded it. It may thus seem inconsistent for me to attach any importance to the Court's

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5Because this litigation was commenced before December 1, 1990, the new supplemental

jurisdiction statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1367 (Supp. V 1993), does not apply. 

action, in view of what I have said, in agreement with Wilmer, on the application of law of the case

to undiscussed jurisdictional issues. But law of the case is not a jurisdictional issue; it merely

"expressesthe practice of courts," Christianson, 486 U.S. at 817 (quotation omitted). Since implicit

treatments of non-jurisdictional issues are precedents, see, e.g., Elcon Enterprises, Inc. v. WMATA,

977 F.2d 1472, 1484 (D.C. Cir. 1992); King v. U.S. Dep't of Justice, 830 F.2d 210, 224 (D.C. Cir.

1987), it is appropriate to look to Pennhurst II as such. Given the merely "prudential" character of

law-of-the-case restrictions, and the doctrine's grounding in concerns of judicial economy, see, e.g.,

Crocker v. Piedmont Aviation, Inc., 49 F.3d 735, 739-40 (D.C. Cir. 1995), the Court's action

strongly suggests that law-of-the-case considerations, like those of stare decisis, give way to

jurisdictional concerns where the initial decision has failed to address the issue explicitly.

The majority alludes briefly to law of the circuit, Maj. Op. at 10-12, but I think its role here

is necessarily marginal. While for non-jurisdictional issues a court's unspoken but necessary premise

will often be taken as precedent, see Elcon Enterprises and King, supra, I do not read the majority

as saying that should be true for jurisdictional decisions. Such a view would run squarely into

Pennhurst II and kindred cases. Insofar as the majority is saying that the panel-to-circuit relationship

calls for extra caution in re-examining once-resolved issues, I agree. It is more unseemly for one

group of three members of a court to overturn another group of three than for a single judge, or

group of judges, to reject his or their former position. The catch is in the phrase "once-resolved."

For the reasons already given, I do not believe that LaShawn I can be said ever to have resolved the

issue of how Gibbs's second step should apply to the present litigation.

Whether Gibbs's second step is jurisdictional. When a federal court is presented with a

combination offederal and state claims, it can adjudicate the state law claims only if that is consistent

with the two-step analysis outlined in Gibbs. 383 U.S. at 725-27.5 The first step requires the court

to evaluate the substantiality of the federal claim and whether the state and federal claims "derive

from a common nucleus of operative fact." Id. at 725. If these requirements are met, then "there is

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power in the federal courts to hear the whole." Id. Thenand the analysis may vary at different

stages of the litigationthe court is to balance several variables, such as the desirability of a

"surer-footed reading of applicable law," the possible predominance of the state-law issues, the

degree to which they are tied to matters of federal policy, possible issues of federal preemption and

chances of jury confusion. Id. at 726-27.

The majority concludes that if the first step is taken and there is "power" in the court, no

jurisdictional issue remains. See Maj. Op. at 12-14. This of course encounters a non-trivial linguistic

problem: Gibbs's second step is expressly part of the determination of whether there is "pendent

jurisdiction," so one might think it followed, as a matter of ordinary language, that it was

jurisdictional. It could, however, be a non-merits, non-jurisdictional inquiry, comparable to

abstention and related doctrines. See, e.g., Burford v. Sun Oil Co., 319 U.S. 315, 317-18 (1943);

Colorado River WaterConservation Dist. v. United States, 424 U.S. 800, 817-819 (1976); Brillhart

v. Excess Ins. Co. of America, 316 U.S. 491, 494-95 (1942).

A natural place to start is with the origin, the way the Court spoke of Gibbsstep two in Gibbs

itself:

That power need not be exercised in every case in which it isfound to exist....

Needless decisions of state law should be avoided both as a matter of comity and to

promote justice between the parties, by procuring for them a surer-footed reading of

applicable law....

The question of power will ordinarily be resolved on the pleadings. But the

issue whether pendent jurisdiction has properly been assumed is one which remains

open throughout the litigation. Pretrial procedures or even the trial itself may reveal

a substantial hegemony of state law claims, or likelihood of jury confusion, which

could not have been anticipated at the pleading stage. Although it will of course be

appropriate to take account in this circumstance of the already completed course of

the litigation, dismissal of the state claim might even then be merited.

383 U.S. at 726-27 (emphasis added). And more recently the Court stated in Carnegie-Mellon

University v. Cohill, 484 U.S. 343 (1988):

Under Gibbs, a federal court should consider and weigh in each case, and at

every stage of the litigation, the values of judicial economy, convenience, fairness,

and comity in order to decide whether to exercise jurisdiction over a case brought in

that court involving pendent state-law claims. When the balance of these factors

indicates that a case properly belongs in state court, as when the federal-law claims

have dropped out of the lawsuit in its early stages and only state-law claims remain,

the federal court should decline the exercise of jurisdiction by dismissing the case

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6Cf. Evans v. City of Chicago, 10 F.3d 474, 479 (7th Cir. 1993) (en banc) (holding that mere

consent of local officials, without a viable federal claim, could not justify continued enforcement

of decree against city) ("[T]he court must ensure that there is a substantial federal claim, not only

when the decree is entered but also when it is enforced, and that the obligations imposed by the

decree rest on this rule of federal law rather than the bare consent of the officeholder.") (emphasis

added). 

without prejudice.

Id. at 350 (emphasis added).6 Thus the Court has imputed to the Gibbs step two inquiry a

characteristic normally possessed by jurisdictional issues and rarely if ever by non-jurisdictional

onesthe quality of being open to examination throughout the litigation.

Federal courts of appeals, including this circuit, have followed the Supreme Court's lead and

imputed to the Gibbs step two inquiry another characteristic of jurisdictional issuesthat the court

is obliged to raise it sua sponte. In Maguire v. Marquette University, 814 F.2d 1213, 1218 & n.4 (7th

Cir. 1987), the district court had dismissed plaintiff'sfederal claim before trial and then proceeded to

address a pendent state law claim on the merits. Although defendant did not raise a Gibbs step two

issue on appeal, the SeventhCircuit declared that "because the rule isjurisdictional, we are obligated

to raise it ourselves." Id. at 1218 n.4 (emphasis added). The court then vacated the district court's

dismissal of the pendent claim on the merits. This court has likewise treated Gibbs step two analysis

as jurisdictional and raised the issue sua sponte. In Minker v. Baltimore Annual Conference of

United Methodist Church, 894 F.2d 1354, 1361 (D.C. Cir. 1990), the district court had previously

dismissed both federalstatutory and state contract claims brought under the Free Exercise Clause of

the First Amendment. This court held that the district court had correctly dismissed the federal

statutoryclaims, but had incorrectlydismissed the state contract claims on First Amendment grounds.

Without prompting, the court proceeded to hold that because the district court had properly

dismissed the federal claim before trial, under Gibbs's second step it should also dismiss the pendent

state law claim unless it found diversity of citizenship. Id.

The majority dispatches Maguire and Minker by characterizing them as applications of a

newly coined Gibbs step one-and-a-halfcases where the federal claim survives step one but is

dismissed before trial. Maj. op. at 14 n.10. Thus, in its view, the Seventh Circuit's and our treatment

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of that situation as jurisdictional can't possibly mean that Gibbs step two is jurisdictional. But until

the majorityopinion, no one has perceived this circumstance asinvolving a special kind of Gibbsstep;

it is simply an instance of Gibbs step two so clear that any continued assertion of jurisdiction by the

district court would be an abuse of discretion. See Gibbs, 383 U.S. at 426.

The majority, if I read it correctly, says that Gibbs's second step cannot be jurisdictional

because it is "discretionary." Maj. Op. at 13-14. The analysis would be correct if the set of things

that are "jurisdictional" could, as a matter of logic, not intersect with the sets of things that are

"discretionary." But that's not true. Characterization of a matter as discretionary, at least in the

Gibbs context, appearsto reflect two closely related points. First, the analysis is highly case-specific,

turning on a balance ofissuesthat are typically fact-intensive and asto which the answersrange along

a spectrumrather than taking a simple yes/no form(e.g., the predominance ofthe state-law questions

posed and the likelihood of jury confusion). See Gibbs, 383 U.S. at 726-27. Second, it follows that

it will be difficult for appellate courts to articulate specific rules capable of guiding the trial courts,

so that a deferential form of appellate review is suitable. See Mars Steel Corp. v. Continental Bank,

880 F.2d 928, 932-34 (7th Cir. 1989) (en banc); Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U.S. 384,

402 (1990) (approving reasoning of Mars Steel Corp.). An issue with those characteristics can,

without logical inconsistency, be jurisdictional as well. When an appellate court finds a district court

has abused its discretion on Gibbs's second step analysis, it can stilland I think should stillbe

understood as having resolved a jurisdictional issue. As I said before, what else could it be resolving?

Professor Shapiro, analyzing a very broad range of jurisdictional issues intertwined with

discretionary choice (but not mentioning pendent jurisdiction), notes that in such cases there may be

a question "whether the Court was construing the applicable statute as not conferring jurisdiction in

the particular case, or was it relying on a discretion not to exercise jurisdiction that admittedly

existed?" David Shapiro, Jurisdiction and Discretion, 60 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 543, 561 (1985). He thus

divides the instances of jurisdiction-cum-discretion into two categories, the first jurisdictional (but

withthe decision recognized as having discretionary characteristics), the second a purely discretionary

overlay on a choice of whether to exercise jurisdiction. He goes on to point out that the distinction

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may be important for purposes of practicalmatterssuch as "the ability of the court to raise a question

sua sponte." Id. at 562. Indeed. Here, the practical actions of courtsmost specifically the Seventh

Circuit in Maguire and ourselves (less explicitly) in Minkermark Gibbs's second step as

jurisdictional.

Finally, the majority relies on language yanked out of context. It quotes Mayor of

Philadelphia v. Educational Equality League, 415 U.S. 605 (1974), for the proposition that

the view of "pendent jurisdiction assomething akin to subject matter jurisdiction that

may be raised sua sponte at any stage and that is capable of aborting prior federal

court proceedings is a misreading of the law."

Id. at 627, quoted by Maj. Op. at 12. But there the majority was objecting to the dissent's coming

up with the idea of a remand to the district court for consideration of state law claims that the

majority thought "were wholly tangential to the principal theme" of the lawsuit, id. at 624, and that

had been dropped by plaintiffs at both stages of appellate review, id. Thus the Court was saying only

that unlike issues of subject matter jurisdiction, state law claims that are susceptible of pendent

jurisdiction are not on that account capable of being resurrected at any time, regardless of

abandonment by the claimant.

Accordingly, I believe the Gibbsstep two balancing is properlyregarded asjurisdictional and,

for that reason, open to consideration in later phases of a lawsuit where it has not been mentioned

before.

* * *

There remains the possibility that, if the above analysis is incorrect, LaShawn I's silent

resolution of the Gibbs step two issue was subject to the exception in law of the case for "clearly

erroneous" prior decisions. As author of the panel opinion, I never suggested that LaShawn I's

resolution was clearly erroneous and would be most reluctant to impute any such error to my

colleagues. Compare p. 9 above (noting the unseemly character of overturning the opinion of a prior

panel). Indeed, as my opinion for the panel made clear, there are strong values on both sides of the

matteramong them two doctrines of judicial self-abnegation in favor of democratic political

processes: deferring resolution of constitutional issues where possible, on the one hand, and keeping

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life-appointed federal judges from taking over the interpretation and application of democratically

chosen local law, on the other. In any event, as LaShawn I never detectably addressed Gibbs'ssecond

step I have no idea what Gibbs step two analysis might be at issue, and thus am ill-positioned to find

error, much less clear error, in that decision.

* * *

Because I believe that law of the case does not bar later panels of a court from considering

jurisdictional issues that a prior panel has resolved implicitly but not expressly, and that the second

step required for pendent jurisdiction under Gibbs is indeed jurisdictional for purposes of that

principle, I dissent.

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