Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/427/1
Timestamp: 2014-08-22 21:45:24
Document Index: 382139267

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1983', '§ 1343', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1343', 'art, 411', '§ 1343', '§ 1983', '§ 1343', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1343', '§ 1343', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1', '§ 1983', '§ 6', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1331']

Monica ALDINGER, Petitioner, v. Merton L. HOWARD, etc., et al. | LII / Legal Information Institute
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427 U.S. 1 (96 S.Ct. 2413, 49 L.Ed.2d 276)
Monica ALDINGER, Petitioner, v. Merton L. HOWARD, etc., et al.
Argued: March 24, 1976.
After petitioner had been discharged without a hearing by respondent county treasurer from her job in his office, she brought suit against the treasurer, the respondent county, and other county officers in Federal District Court under 42 U.S.C. 1983, claiming that her discharge violated her federal constitutional rights and seeking injunctive relief and damages. Jurisdiction over the federal claim was asserted under 28 U.S.C. 1343(3), which gives federal district courts jurisdiction over "any civil action authorized by law to be commenced by any person" to redress the deprivation, under color of state law, of federal constitutional rights, and pendent jurisdiction was alleged to lie over a state-law claim against the county. The District Court dismissed the action as to the county on the ground that since the county was not suable as a "person" under § 1983, there was no independent basis of jurisdiction over it, and that thus the court had no power to exercise pendent jurisdiction over the claim against the county. On an appeal from this dismissal the Court of Appeals affirmed. Held: A fair reading of the language used in § 1343(3), together with the scope of § 1983, under which counties are excluded from the "person(s)" answerable to the plaintiff "in an action at law (or) suit in equity" to redress the enumerated deprivations, requires a holding that the joinder of a municipal corporation, like the county here, for purposes of asserting a state-law claim not within federal jurisdiction, is without the District Court's statutory jurisdiction. While with respect to litigation where nonfederal questions or claims were bound up with the federal claim upon which the parties were already in federal court, there is nothing in Art. III's grant of judicial power that prevents adjudication of the nonfederal portions of the parties' dispute, it is quite another thing to permit a nonfederal claim in turn to be the basis for joining a party over whom no independent federal jurisdiction exists, simply because that claim derives from the "common nucleus of operative fact," giving rise to the dispute between the parties to the federal claim. Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 86 S.Ct. 1130, 16 L.Ed.2d 218, distinguished. The addition of a completely new party under such circumstances would run counter to the well-established principle that federal courts, as opposed to state trial courts of general jurisdiction, are courts of limited jurisdiction marked out by Congress. Pp. 6-19.
This case presents the "subtle and complex question with far-reaching implications," alluded to but not answered in Moor v. County of Alameda, 411 U.S. 693, 715, 93 S.Ct. 1785, 1799, 36 L.Ed.2d 596 (1973), and Philbrook v. Glodgett, 421 U.S. 707, 720, 95 S.Ct. 1893, 1901, 44 L.Ed.2d 525 (1975): whether the doctrine of pendent jurisdiction extends to confer jurisdiction over a party as to whom no independent basis of federal jurisdiction exists. In this action, where jurisdiction over the main, federal claim against various officials of Spokane County, Wash., was grounded in 28 U.S.C. 1343(3), the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that pendent jurisdiction was not available to adjudicate petitioner's state-law claims against Spokane County, over which party federal jurisdiction was otherwise nonexistent. While noting that its previous holdings to this effect were left undisturbed by Moor, which arose from that Circuit, the Court of Appeals was "not unaware of the widespread rejection" of its position in almost all other Federal Circuits. 513 F.2d 1257, 1261 (1975). We granted certiorari to resolve the conflict on this important question. 423 U.S. 823, 96 S.Ct. 36, 46 L.Ed.2d 39 (1975). We affirm.
* This case arises at the pleading stage, and the allegations in petitioner's complaint are straightforward. Petitioner was hired in 1971 by respondent Howard, the Spokane County treasurer, for clerical work in that office. Two months later Howard informed petitioner by letter that although her job performance was "excellent," she would be dismissed, effective two weeks hence, because she was allegedly "living with (her) boy friend." Howard's action, petitioner alleged, was taken pursuant to a state statute which provides that the appointing county officer "may revoke each appointment at pleasure."
Petitioner's action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, as embodied in her second amended complaint, claimed principally under the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 42 U.S.C. 1983,
that the discharge violated her substantive constitutional rights under the First, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments, and was procedurally defective under the latter's Due Process Clause. An injunction restraining the dismissal and damages for salary loss were sought against Howard, his wife, the named county commissioners, and the county. Jurisdiction over the federal claim was asserted under 28 U.S.C. 1343(3),
and pendent jurisdiction was alleged to lie over the "state law claims against the parties." As to the county, the state-law claim was said to rest on state statutes waiving the county's sovereign immunity and providing for vicarious liability arising out of tortious conduct of its officials. 513 F.2d, at 1358. The District Court dismissed the action as to the county on the ground that since it was not suable as a "person" under § 1983, there was no independent basis of jurisdiction over the county, and thus "this court (has no) power to exercise pendent jurisdiction over the claims against Spokane County." From this final judgment, see Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 54(b), petitioner appealed.
The Court of Appeals first rejected petitioner's claim that her § 1983 action against the county fell within the District Court's § 1343(3) jurisdiction, as obviously foreclosed by this Court's decisions in Moor, supra, and City of Kenosha v. Bruno, 412 U.S. 507, 93 S.Ct. 2222, 37 L.Ed.2d 109 (1973). Turning to petitioner's pendent-jurisdiction argument, the Court of Appeals noted, 513 F.2d, at 1260, that the District Court had made no alternative ruling on the "suitability of this case for the discretionary exercise of pendent jurisdiction" under the second part of the rule enunciated in Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 726-727, 86 S.Ct. 1130, 1139, 16 L.Ed.2d 218 (1966). But since this Court in Moor had expressly left undisturbed the Ninth Circuit's refusal to apply pendent jurisdiction over a nonfederal party, the instant panel felt free to apply that rule as set out in Hymer v. Chai, 407 F.2d 136 (CA9 1969), and Moor v. Madigan, 458 F.2d 1217 (CA9 1972), aff'd in part, rev'd in part, 411 U.S. 693, 93 S.Ct. 1785, 36 L.Ed.2d 596 (1973). This kind of case, the Court of Appeals reasoned, presented the "weakest rationale" for extension of Gibbs to pendent parties: (1) The state claims are pressed against a party who would otherwise not be in federal court;
(2) diversity cases generally present more attractive opportunities for exercise of pendent-party jurisdiction, since all claims therein by definition arise from state law; (3) federal courts should be wary of extending court-created doctrines of jurisdiction to reach parties who are expressly excluded by Congress from liability, and hence federal jurisdiction, in the federal statute sought to be applied to the defendant in the main claim; (4) pendent state-law claims arising in a civil rights context will "almost inevitably" involve the federal court in difficult and unsettled questions of state law, with the accompanying potential for jury confusion. 513 F.2d, at 1261-1262.
The doctrine of ancillary jurisdiction developed in the foregoing cases is bottomed on the notion that since federal jurisdiction in the principal suit effectively controls the property or fund under dispute, other claimants thereto should be allowed to intervene in order to protect their interests, without regard to jurisdiction.
As this Court stated in Fulton Bank v. Hozier, 267 U.S. 276, 280, 45 S.Ct. 261, 262, 69 L.Ed. 609 (1925):
The decisional bridge between these two relatively discrete lines of cases appears to be this Court's decision in Moore. Since the defendant's nonfederal counterclaim in Moore arose out of the same transaction giving rise to the antitrust dispute between the parties, and federal jurisdiction was sustained over the former, the Court in Hurn, though faced with a plaintiff's assertion of pendent jurisdiction over an additional nonfederal claim, thought the two cases, "in principle, cannot be distinguished." Hurn, 289 U.S., at 242, 53 S.Ct., at 588. It was Hurn's "unnecessarily grudging" test of pendent jurisdiction, of course, which the Court expanded in Gibbs. On the other hand, because Moore was a suit in equity, the jurisdiction sustained there has been rationalized as falling under the umbrella of ancillary jurisdiction,
though Moore neither used that term nor cited to Fulton Bank, supra. Petitioner thus suggests that since Moore, read as an "ancillary" case, adopted a "transactional" test of jurisdiction quite similar to that set out in Gibbs, there is presently no "principled" distinction between the two doctrines. Since under the Federal Rules "joinder of claims, parties and remedies is strongly encouraged," Gibbs, 383 U.S., at 724, 86 S.Ct., at 1138, her use of the Rules here is as a matter of jurisdictional power assertedly limited only by whether the claim against the county "derive(s) from a common nucleus of operative fact." Id., at 725, 86 S.Ct., at 1138. Hence, petitioner concludes, based on Gibbs' treatment of pendent claims, and the use of ancillary jurisdiction to bring in additional parties, that her nonfederal claim against a nonfederal defendant falls within pendent jurisdiction since it satisfies Gibbs' test on its face.
Congress has in specific terms conferred Art. III jurisdiction on the district courts to decide actions brought to redress deprivations of civil rights. Under the opening language of § 1343,
those courts "shall have original jurisdiction of any Civil action authorized by law to be commenced by any person . . . " (emphasis added). The civil rights action set out in § 1983
is, of course, included within the jurisdictional grant of subsection (3) of § 1343. Yet petitioner does not, and indeed could not, contest the fact that as to § 1983, counties are excluded from the "person(s)" answerable to the plaintiff "in an action at law (or) suit in equity" to redress the enumerated deprivations.
Petitioner must necessarily argue that in spite of the language emphasized above Congress left it open for the federal courts to fashion a jurisdictional doctrine under the general language of Art. III enabling them to circumvent this exclusion, as long as the civil rights action and the state-law claim arise from a "common nucleus of operative fact." But the question whether jurisdiction over the instant lawsuit extends not only to a related state-law claim, but to the defendant against whom that claim is made, turns initially, not on the general contours of the language in Art. III, i. e., "Cases . . . arising under," but upon the deductions which may be drawn from congressional statutes as to whether Congress wanted to grant this sort of jurisdiction to federal courts. Parties such as counties, whom Congress excluded from liability in § 1983, and therefore by reference in the grant of jurisdiction under § 1343(3), can argue with a great deal of force that the scope of that "civil action" over which the district courts have been given statutory jurisdiction should not be broadly read as to bring them Back within that power merely because the facts also give rise to an ordinary civil action against them under state law. In short, as against a plaintiff's claim of Additional power over a "pendent party," the reach of the statute conferring jurisdiction should be construed in light of the scope of the cause of action as to which federal judicial power has been extended by Congress.
There are, of course, many variations in the language which Congress has employed to confer jurisdiction upon the federal courts, and we decide here only the issue of so-called "pendent party" jurisdiction with respect to a claim brought under §§ 1343(3) and 1983. Other statutory grants and other alignments of parties and claims might call for a different result. When the grant of jurisdiction to a federal court is exclusive, for example, as in the prosecution of tort claims against the United States under 28 U.S.C. 1346, the argument of judicial economy and convenience can be coupled with the additional argument that Only in a federal court may all of the claims be tried together.
As we indicated at the outset of this opinion, the question of pendent-party jurisdiction is "subtle and complex," and we believe that it would be as unwise as it would be unnecessary to lay down any sweeping pronouncement upon the existence or exercise of such jurisdiction. Two observations suffice for the disposition of the type of case before us. If the new party sought to be joined is not otherwise subject to federal jurisdiction, there is a more serious obstacle to the exercise of pendent jurisdiction that if parties already before the court are required to litigate a state-law claim. Before it can be concluded that such jurisdiction exists, a federal court must satisfy itself not only that Art. III permits it, but that Congress in the statutes conferring jurisdiction has not expressly or by implication negated its existence.
* Gibbs concerned a state-law claim jurisdictionally pendent to one of federal law, but no reason appears why the identical principles should not equally apply to pendent state-law claims involving the joinder of additional parties. In either case the Art. III question concerns only the subject-matter and not the In personam jurisdiction of the federal courts. In either case the question of Art. III power in the federal judiciary to exercise subject matter jurisdiction concerns whether the claims asserted are such as "would ordinarily be expected to (be tried) in one judicial proceeding," and the question of discretion addresses "considerations of judicial economy, convenience and fairness to litigants."
The Court today does not disclaim the applicability of Gibbs to the question of federal pendent-party jurisdiction. Rather, recognizing sub silentio e absurd results it would create by a disclaimer of the possibility of federal pendent-party jurisdiction whether under the label of "ancillary" jurisdiction or that of "pendent party," see Moor v. County of Alameda, 411 U.S. 693, 714-715, 93 S.Ct. 1785, 1798, 36 L.Ed.2d 596 (1973) in a variety of possible contexts under various jurisdictional statutes and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure,
the Court declines "to lay down any sweeping pronouncement upon the existence or exercise of such jurisdiction." Ante, at 19. The Court instead reaches its result the proclamation of a Per se rule forbidding pendent jurisdiction over claims arising under state law against local governmental units when joined with a § 1983 claim even where such claims "derive from a common nucleus of operative fact" by purporting to find that "in this case Congress has by implication" expressed its disapproval of federal pendent-party jurisdiction "over a party such as Spokane County." Ante, at 19. That result is demonstrably untenable.
The Court seeks to justify its Per se rule by analysis of the congressional will as expressed in the federal statutes involved 28 U.S.C. 1343(3) and 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
The test the Court announces is "whether by virtue of the statutory grant of subject-matter jurisdiction, upon which petitioner's principal claim . . . rests, Congress has addressed itself to the Party as to whom jurisdiction pendent to the principal claim is sought." Ante, at 16. At one level of analysis, this test is of course meaningless, being capable of application to All cases, because all instances of asserted pendent-party jurisdiction will by definition involve a party as to whom Congress has impliedly "addressed itself" by not expressly conferring subject-matter jurisdiction on the federal courts. But, the Court says, it is drawing "deductions . . . from (the) congressional statutes as to whether Congress wanted to grant this sort of jurisdiction to federal courts," Ante, at 17, and it "conclude(s) that in this case Congress has by implication declined." Ante, at 19. It is apparent, however, that analysis of the statutory enactments involved, their legislative history, and the congressional policies embodied therein belies the Court's assertion that its purported test for determining the propriety of pendent-party jurisdiction yields the result reached today.
The purely jurisdictional statute involved in this case, 28 U.S.C. 1343(3), in no way speaks to the issue of pendent-party jurisdiction in respect to joinder of defendants under pendent state-law claims. On its face that statute speaks only to jurisdiction over civil actions "authorized by law to be commenced by any person," and plainly does not address the question of what parties shall be joined as defendants. Accordingly, the Court necessarily argues its proposition from "the scope of the cause of action," ante, at 17, created by § 1983. But the legislative history of that enactment plainly gives no support to the Court's argument that Congress by implication intended to preclude the exercise of federal jurisdiction over state-law claims against local governmental units where such jurisdiction would otherwise lie under application of standard principles.
Our precedents, Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961), and Moor v. County of Alameda, supra, 93 S.Ct. 1785, 36 L.Ed.2d 596, firmly establish that the sole rationale for construing the "persons" susceptible of liability under § 1983 as excluding local units of government lies in the legislative history of the so-called Sherman Amendment to the Act of April 20, 1871, § 1 of which enacted into law the first version of the present § 1983.
The Senate approved one version of the Amendment proposed by Senator Sherman which would have expressly provided for local governmental liability,
and the House rejected it.
The Conference Committee reported another version
and the House rejected the Conference Report.
Thereafter, the Senate acceded to the House rejection of the Sherman Amendment and both Houses substituted in its place § 6 of the 1871 Act, the first version of the present 42 U.S.C. 1986.
The rejection of the Sherman Amendment, and nothing more, has been the basis upon which we have construed § 1983 liability as not encompassing local governmental units. Monroe v. Pape, supra, 365 U.S., at 188-191, 81 S.Ct., at 484-486; Moor v. County of Alameda, 411 U.S., at 707-710, 93 S.Ct., at 1794-1796. But as those cases recognize, the reason for the House rejection of the Amendment, as stated by Mr. Poland, House Manager of the Conference Committee Report, was that "the House had solemnly decided that in their judgment Congress had no constitutional power to Impose any obligation upon county and town organizations, the mere instrumentality for the administration of State law." Cong.Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., 804 (1871) (emphasis supplied). See Monroe v. Pape, supra, 365 U.S., at 190, 81 S.Ct., at 485; Moor v. County of Alameda, supra, 411 U.S., at 708, 93 S.Ct., at 1795. This judgment of the House respecting its lack of constitutional power to "impose . . . liability" "As a matter of federal law," id., at 710 n. 27, 93 S.Ct., at 1796 (emphasis in original), on local governmental units pervades the legislative history of the aborted Sherman Amendment.
In marked contrast in the legislative history of that proposed Amendment, however, is the absence of expression of hostility to federal judicial forums entertaining claims arising under state law. The opponents of the Sherman Amendment were, as the legislative history reveals, fully aware of several existing state laws respecting local government tort liability.
Moreover, the opponents of the proposed Amendment, who consistently objected to the imposition of liability upon local governmental units as a matter of substantive federal law, also consistently expressed their views respecting the entertainment in federal forums of state-law claims against local governmental units.
"But there is no duty imposed by the Constitution of the United States, or usually by State laws, upon a county to protect the people of that county against the commission of the offenses herein enumerated, such as the burning of buildings or any other injury to property or injury to person. Police powers are not conferred upon counties as corporations; they are conferred upon cities that have qualified legislative power. AND SO FAR AS CITIES ARE CONCERNED, WHERE THE EQUAL PROTECTION REQUIRED TO BE AFFORDED BY A STATE IS IMPOSED UPON A CITY BY STATE LAWS, PERHAPS THE UNITED STATES COURTS COULD ENFORCE ITS PERFORMANCE." Ibid. (remarks of Mr. Burchard) (emphasis supplied).
Although there has been disagreement among us upon the question of the precise scope of § 1983, none of us has heretofore denied "the fact that a powerful impulse behind the creation of (§ 1983) Was the purpose that it be available in, and be shaped through, original federal tribunals," or has forgotten "How important providing a federal trial court was among the several purposes of the Ku Klux Act." Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S., at 252, 251, 81 S.Ct., at 519, 518 (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) (emphasis supplied).
Review of that same legislative history in Mitchum v. Foster, supra, 407 U.S., at 238-242, 92 S.Ct., at 2159-2161,
led us to proclaim it evident that Congress clearly conceived that it was altering the relationship between the States and the Nation with respect to the protection of federally created rights; it was concerned that state instrumentalities could not protect those rights; it realized that state officers might, in fact, be antipathetic to the vindication of those rights; and it believed that these failings extended to the state courts.
But by the announcement of its Per se rule today, the Court undermines past teachings that the availability of a federal forum for claims brought pursuant to § 1983 is crucially important, and in one fell swoop erases the legislative intent that those teachings reflect.
After today, a suitor seeking redress in a federal forum under § 1983 and redress for the same wrongs under state law must split his case, and he is remitted to duplicative litigation no matter how expensive, wasteful, and needless. Regardless of the balance of the discretionary factors enunciated in Gibbs; regardless of the clarity of state law respecting the pendent claim against the local governmental unit, cf. Wechsler, Federal Jurisdiction and the Revision of the Judicial Code, 13 Law & Contemp.Prob. 216, 232-233 (1948);
regardless of the absolute identity of factual issues between the two claims, see Kages & Kouba, Liability of Public Entities Under Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act, 45 S.Cal.L.Rev. 131, 162-163 (1972); regardless of the monetary expense and other disadvantages of duplicate litigation, see Fortune, Pendent Jurisdiction The Problem of "Pendenting Parties," 34 U.Pitt.L.Rev. 1, 8-9 (1972); regardless of the waste of judicial time and the "travesty on sound judicial administration," Supra, at 21, the Court by its Per se rule forces upon a litigant the indefensible choice of either suffering the costs of duplicate litigation or forgoing his right, a right emphatically emphasized in the congressional policy, to a federal forum in which to be heard on his federal claim. To say that the suitor has available a state forum in which conveniently to litigate both his claims, Ante, at 15,
is patently to ignore the real issue, for it is painfully obvious that this does not result in a neutral choice by the suitor among available forums; rather it imparts a fundamental bias against utilization of the federal forum owing to the deterrent effect imposed by the needless requirement of duplicate litigation if the federal forum is chosen. P. Bator, P. Mishkin, D. Shapiro & H. Wechsler, Hart and Wechsler's The Federal Courts and the Federal System 922-923 (2d ed. 1973). Accordingly, rather than paying "due respect to a suitor's choice of a federal forum for the hearing and decision of his federal constitutional claims," Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U.S., at 248, 88 S.Ct., at 395, the Court today rides roughshod over this congressionally imposed duty and reaches a result that flies in the face of the expressed congressional intent. I dissent.
The Court of Appeals also noted that petitioner's complaint alleged that jurisdiction lay under 28 U.S.C. 1331, and that the amount in controversy exceeded $10,000. This was apparently an attempt to plead a cause of action directly under the Fourteenth Amendment, irrespective of the implementing civil rights legislation. The Court of Appeals, however, stated that petitioner had "consistently chosen to rely upon" 42 U.S.C. 1983, together with 28 U.S.C. 1343(3), and pendent jurisdiction as the bases for her action against Spokane County. Thus, neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals reached the question whether the complaint stated a cause of action over which § 1331 jurisdiction would lie. Petitioner did not raise the question in her petition for certiorari, and it is therefore not before us.
There is no diversity of citizenship under 28 U.S.C. 1332 among the parties here, since all are citizens of the State of Washington.