Opinion ID: 754566
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: State Officials' Interpretation--Displacement of Courts'

Text: Equitable Powers 32 Under the state officials' construction of the PLRA automatic stay provision, the federal courts do not retain the authority in equity to suspend the automatic stay beyond sixty days as provided in § 3626(e)(3). The prisoners argue that 18 U.S.C. § 3626(e)(2), as amended, violates the separation-ofpowers doctrine by unconstitutionally prescribing a rule of decision without changing the underlying substantive law. See United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 128, 20 L.Ed. 519 (1871). 12 Prior to the enactment of the 1997 amendments, the Department of Justice identified two other aspects of the operation of the automatic stay which affect the balance of power between the Legislature and the Judiciary--that the PLRA automatic stay directly suspends existing court orders, and places mandatory time restrictions on judicial decisionmaking which preclude the effective functioning of the Judiciary. The amendment of the PLRA automatic stay provision to permit the courts to postpone the effective date of the automatic stay for up to sixty days does not dispel these concerns. 33 Although we do not believe that the state officials' construction of § 3626(e)(2), as amended, prescribes a rule of decision, we conclude that under the state officials' interpretation the automatic stay provision violates the separation-of-powers doctrine because it amounts to a direct legislative suspension of a judicial order. Alternatively, under certain circumstances, the automatic stay as construed by the state officials impermissibly intrudes into the effective functioning of the Judiciary. We therefore conclude that the automatic stay as interpreted by the state officials results in an unconstitutional incursion by Congress into the powers reserved for the Judiciary, and we decline to adopt that interpretation of the automatic stay provision. 34
35 The inmates insist that through the PLRA's automatic stay provision, as construed by the state officials, Congress prescribed a rule of decision in a pending judicial case without changing the underlying law in contravention of United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 128, 20 L.Ed. 519 (1871). In Klein, the Supreme Court held that legislation dictating that acceptance of a presidential pardon constituted conclusive evidence of a person's disloyalty to the United States and directing the Court to dismiss actions pending on appeal in which property had been recovered based on a pardon was impermissibly founded solely on the application of a rule of decision, in causes pending, prescribed by Congress. Id. at 146. Although Congress remains free to amend governing law and thereby affect the outcome of pending cases, see Robertson v. Seattle Audubon Soc'y, 503 U.S. 429, 438, 112 S.Ct. 1407, 118 L.Ed.2d 73 (1992) (upholding statute against separation-of-powers challenge where new statute compelled changes in law, not findings or results under old law), the Legislature may not impose a rule of decision for pending judicial cases without changing the applicable law. Ultimately, the Judiciary must remain free to say what the law is in any given case or controversy. See Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177, 2 L.Ed. 60 (1803). 36 By contrast, the PLRA automatic stay provision does not mandate a rule of decision. The automatic stay will not take effect if the court within the prescribed time period finds that the relief is no greater than that necessary to correct a current or ongoing violation of a federal right. 18 U.S.C. § 3626(e)(2)-(3) (as amended in 1997). Although Congress has specified that certain timely findings are necessary to override the stay, the legislation does not direct any particular evidentiary findings nor dictate a result in a specific case. Courts are not restrained from giving the effect to evidence which, in its own judgment, such evidence should have. Klein, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) at 147. Aside from its self-executing feature and its stringent time constraints, the interpretation and application of law to fact and the ultimate resolution of prison conditions cases at all times remains with the Judiciary. See Gavin, 122 F.3d at 1089 (The PLRA leaves the judging to judges.); cf. Hadix v. Johnson, 133 F.3d 940, 943 (6th Cir.1998) ([T]he termination provision ... does not dictate the result a court must reach in determining whether relief is warranted. The interpretation and application of law to fact and the ultimate resolution of prison condition cases remain at all times with the judiciary.) The PLRA automatic stay therefore technically withstands a separation-of-powers challenge based on Klein. 37
38 That the automatic stay provision does not manifestly prescribe a rule of decision in a pending case does not end our separation-of-powers inquiry. We also must closely examine the operation of the automatic stay provision, as construed by the state officials, in terms of the respective roles of Congress and the Judiciary in the suspension of existing court orders. We conclude that under the state officials' statutory construction the automatic stay provision is tantamount to direct legislative suspension of an existing court order, and we decline to embrace the state officials' construction of the statute because of this constitutional infirmity. 39 As has often been expressed, the central judgment of the Framers of the Constitution [was] that, within our political scheme, the separation of governmental powers into three coordinate Branches is essential to the preservation of liberty. Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 380, 109 S.Ct. 647, 102 L.Ed.2d 714 (1989). The Framers intended that, as nearly as possible, each branch of government should confine itself to its assigned powers, and that the powers properly belonging to one of the departments ought not to be directly and completely administered by either of the other departments, THE FEDERALIST NO. 48, at 146 (James Madison) (Roy Fairfield 2d ed., 1981) (emphasis added); see also INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 951, 103 S.Ct. 2764, 77 L.Ed.2d 317 (1983). Thus, each of the three general departments of government [must remain] entirely free from the control or coercive influence, direct or indirect, of either of the others. Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602, 629, 55 S.Ct. 869, 79 L.Ed. 1611 (1935) (quoted in Mistretta, 488 U.S. at 380, 109 S.Ct. 647) (alteration in Mistretta ). Actions of one branch which undertake directly a role reserved exclusively to another branch disrupt this constitutional balance of power. 40 The constitutional principle drawn from Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall. 409 (1792), as articulated in Plaut, is that Congress cannot vest review of the decisions of Article III courts in officials of the Executive Branch. Plaut, 514 U.S. at 218, 115 S.Ct. 1447. We make no impermissible leap to suggest that this principle carries weight as well in a legislative suspension of a judicial order. Review of decisions of Article III courts, whether final judgments or orders implementing consent decrees, must be confined within the judicial branch. Because the suspension of a judicial order is a judicial act not to be undertaken directly by the Legislature, the Judiciary must play some role in the suspension of its own orders. Automatic legislative suspension of existing and presumptively valid judicial decrees violates this principle. 41 The PLRA automatic stay provision, as construed by the state officials, runs afoul of the separation of constitutional powers because it makes the stay self-executing, taking effect without judicial action. 13 Under the state officials' interpretation, courts may not postpone the effective date of the stay beyond sixty days, and the sixty-day extension is limited to situations involving good cause (not including general congestion of the court's calendar). See 18 U.S.C. § 3626(e)(3) (as amended in 1997). Should the court fail to enter a final order ruling on the motion to modify or terminate prospective relief before the expiration of the sixty-day postponement, the automatic stay takes effect without judicial action. 18 U.S.C. § 3626(e)(2) (as amended in 1997). Thus, under the state officials' statutory construction, even if the court postpones the effective date of the automatic stay by the full sixty days allowed, on the ninety-first day after filing its motion, the state officials could simply refuse to comply with existing court orders implementing the consent decrees because the state could claim that pursuant to a congressional mandate those orders automatically have no force. Thus, if we applied the statute in the manner urged by the state officials, the practical consequences of the PLRA automatic stay would result, quite simply, in a temporary legislative veto over court-ordered relief in an ongoing case before the court. Such direct legislative suspension of orders of Article III courts simply cannot be harmonized with our tripartite system of governance. 42 It is of course true that at any time Congress can alter the outcome of pending cases, or those involving ongoing supervisory court jurisdiction, by changing the substantive law that courts use in rendering decisions. Cf. Plaut, 514 U.S. at 226, 115 S.Ct. 1447 (Congress can always revise the judgments of Article III courts in one sense: When a new law makes clear that it is retroactive and thus is applied in pending cases). When that happens, however, the new law must still be applied in the particular case. The litigating parties are not entitled to act simply on Congress's command; they must go back to the court that issued the order to have the new law applied to their situation. Were Congress able to stay judicial orders directly, then any party subjected to a continuing court order might be able to bypass the issuing and reviewing courts entirely. The PLRA automatic stay, as construed by the state prison officials, impermissibly circumvents the judicial process. 43 The defendants argue that legislative authority to enact an automatic stay of judicial proceedings has long been established, as evidenced by the time-honored automatic stay in the bankruptcy arena. Upon the filing of a bankruptcy petition, § 362(a) of Title 11 requires a stay of civil litigation against a debtor unless the bankruptcy court determines otherwise. In upholding the constitutionality of this bankruptcy automatic stay, the Supreme Court explained that although [i]t is generally true that a judgment by a court of competent jurisdiction bears a presumption of regularity and is not thereafter subject to collateral attack, Congress, pursuant to its plenary constitutional power over bankruptcy, see U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 4, may by specific bankruptcy legislation create an exception to that principle and render judicial acts taken with respect to the person or property of a debtor whom the bankruptcy law protects nullities and vulnerable collaterally. Kalb v. Feuerstein, 308 U.S. 433, 438-39, 60 S.Ct. 343, 84 L.Ed. 370 (1940) (footnotes omitted). Thus, under the exclusive constitutional grant of power to Congress to regulate bankruptcy, Congress can limit the jurisdiction which courts, State or Federal, can exercise over the person and property of a debtor who duly invokes the bankruptcy law. Id. at 439, 60 S.Ct. 343. In contrast, once Congress establishes jurisdiction of the lower federal courts in an area outside Congress's enumerated Article I plenary powers, the courts are vested with judicial powers pursuant to Article III. Eash v. Riggins Trucking Inc., 757 F.2d 557, 562 (3d Cir.1985) (en banc). Having conferred jurisdiction upon the lower courts in this area, the Legislature cannot then displace the courts and itself exercise judicial power, save through impeachment. See Gary Lawson & Christopher D. Moore, The Executive Power of Constitutional Interpretation, 81 IOWA L.REV. 1267, 1317 (1996) ([N]o decision of any court of the United States can, under any circumstances ... agreeable to the constitution, be liable to a revision, or even suspension, by the legislature itself, in whom no judicial power of any kind appears to be vested, but the important one relative to impeachments.). As articulated by Madison, [t]he entire legislature can perform no judiciary act, and [w]ere the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. THE FEDERALIST NO. 47, at 141 (James Madison) (Roy Fairfield 2d ed., 1981) (quoting Montesquieu). 44 Our analysis convinces us that were we to interpret the PLRA's automatic stay provision as automatically suspending judicial orders without allowing for the exercise of the courts' equitable authority to stay the automatic stay, the PLRA automatic stay provision would be constitutionally deficient and could not stand. 14 45
46 The state officials argue that the PLRA automatic stay, as they have construed it, amounts to no more than a legislative enactment in keeping with Congress's constitutional authority to control the jurisdiction of the federal courts. The express language of our Constitution confers in Congress the power to constitute inferior federal courts in which may be vested some or all of the judicial power of the United States. See U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 9; U.S. CONST. art. III, § 1. Nevertheless, having granted the courts jurisdiction to entertain a particular case or controversy, Congress cannot then diminish the power of the courts to an extent which renders the courts unable to meet their obligation of providing adequate remedies. See Benjamin, 124 F.3d at 170; see also Theodore Eisenberg, Congressional Authority to Restrict Lower Federal Court Jurisdiction, 83 YALE L.J. 498, 527 (1974) (Congress ... may enact any jurisdictional statute that does not prevent vindication of a constitutional right.). We must therefore carefully consider whether in enacting the PLRA's automatic stay provision, 18 U.S.C. § 3626(e)(2), the Legislature impermissibly conditioned the exercise of judicial power so as to render it ineffective. 47 To achieve separate yet balanced power among the branches, certain inherent powers issue by necessity to each of the three branches: 48 [I]f there is one maxim which necessarily rides over all others, in the practical application of government, it is, that the public functionaries must be left at liberty to exercise the powers which the people have intrusted to them. The interests and dignity of those who created them, require the exertion of the powers indispensable to the attainment of the ends of their creation. 49 Anderson v. Dunn, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 204, 226, 5 L.Ed. 242 (1821). Recognizing this maxim, the Supreme Court has cautioned that the constitutional structure requires that the independence of the Judiciary be jealously guarded. Northern Pipeline Constr. Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U.S. 50, 60, 102 S.Ct. 2858, 73 L.Ed.2d 598 (1982); see also THE FEDERALIST NO. 78, at 228 (Alexander Hamilton) (Roy P. Fairfield 2d ed., 1981) (The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution.). Thus, we will only uphold a statute challenged as an impermissible legislative incursion into the workings of the judicial branch where it cannot be construed as preventing the judicial branch 'from accomplishing its constitutionally assigned functions.'  Mistretta, 488 U.S. at 396, 109 S.Ct. 647 (quoting Nixon v. Administrator of General Servs., 433 U.S. 425, 443, 97 S.Ct. 2777, 53 L.Ed.2d 867 (1977)). A statutory scheme that poses a serious danger of encroachment or threatens the ability of the Judiciary to carry out its constitutional duties, however, so impinges upon the autonomy of the Judiciary as to run afoul of the separation-of-powers doctrine. Cf. Dean Alfange, Jr., The Supreme Court and the Separation of Powers: A Welcome Return to Normalcy?, 58 GEO. WASH. L.REV. 668, 712 (1990) (The measure of the constitutionality of a government action challenged as violating the principle of separation of powers ... [is whether] it so hamstring[s] the ability of any of the branches independently to exercise its powers or to perform its functions that it is prevented from effectively carrying out its constitutional responsibilities....). 50 It is beyond dispute that there are certain inherent powers of the Judiciary that are untouchable by legislative act, see United States v. Hudson & Goodwin, 11 U.S. (7 Cranch) 32, 34, 3 L.Ed. 259 (1812) (Certain implied powers must necessarily result to our Courts of justice from the nature of their institution.); see also Eash v. Riggins Trucking Inc., 757 F.2d 557, 561 (3d Cir.1985) (en banc) (That courts have inherent powers--powers vested in the courts upon their creation, and not derived from any statute--is not disputed. (citations omitted)). Although the exact boundaries of the courts' inherent powers thus far has eluded complete categorization, at a minimum those boundaries encompass activity so fundamental to the essence of a court as a constitutional tribunal that to divest the court of absolute command within this sphere is really to render practically meaningless the terms 'court' and 'judicial power.'  Eash, 757 F.2d at 562. Because the denial of these fundamental powers renders courts practically inoperative, courts must be allowed to exercise those inherent powers essential to their constitutionally assigned role notwithstanding contrary legislative direction. Id. 51 The Judiciary's fulfillment of its Article III responsibilities requires, at its core, meaningful judicial decisionmaking. See United States v. Rojas, 53 F.3d 1212, 1214 (11th Cir.) ([S]eparation of powers would be implicated when the actions of another Branch threaten an Article III court's independence and impartiality in the execution of its decisionmaking function.), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 976, 116 S.Ct. 478, 133 L.Ed.2d 407 (1995). The preservation of this inherent power, so fundamental to the bestowal of evenhanded justice, requires that all federal courts be permitted to analyze relevant facts and the applicable substantive law untethered by the legislative branch. Otherwise, were the Legislature permitted to tie the deliberative hands of the Judiciary by erecting procedural hurdles that render thorough and thoughtful deliberation an impossibility, the will of the majority could effectively take control of the judicial process by sufficiently elevating the procedural hurdles in select areas of especially unpopular litigation. See J. Richard Doidge, Note, Is Purely Retroactive Legislation Limited by the Separation Powers?: Rethinking United States v. Klein, 79 CORNELL L. REV. 910, 924 (1994) (The legislature cannot do indirectly that which it cannot do directly.). Moreover, unconstrained deliberation by the Judiciary not only is necessary to preserve the independence of the Judiciary but also to protect due process rights of individual parties who come before the courts. Accordingly, Congress cannot restrict the independent and unconstrained judicial decisionmaking of the courts any more than it can directly stay the judicial order itself. 15 52 We fear that in many prisoner cases, the application of the PLRA automatic stay, as construed by the state officials, implicates the integrity and fairness of judicial decisionmaking by substantially impeding the courts' capability for thorough and thoughtful consideration. As interpreted by the state officials, the PLRA automatic stay requires nondiscretionary suspension of court-ordered prospective relief thirty days following the filing of a termination motion, or ninety days following the filing of the termination motion should the court postpone the effective date of the automatic stay by sixty days for good cause. This grace period is the only qualification on the otherwise compulsory suspension; beyond this grace period, under the state's view courts retain no discretion to defer the operation of, or dissolve, the automatic stay. In many cases, including those now before us on this appeal, the district courts' statutory task of ascertaining the presence of a current or ongoing violation of a federal right requires delving into complex factual or legal intricacies and a court record spanning many years. See, e.g., Hadix I, 933 F.Supp. at 1361; Hadix II, 933 F.Supp. at 1364. Consequently, thirty or ninety days before onset of the automatic stay may prove an inadequate period of time in which to find a constitutional violation where one has never before been explicitly recognized. By not allowing for judicial discretion in those cases where a court simply cannot exercise meaningful review within the prescribed time period, the PLRA automatic stay, as construed by the state officials, impedes the courts' substantive decisional role and can result in deleterious and distorting effects upon the outcome of the legal determination. Accordingly, in cases where the provision's deadline proves impossible to meet, if we were limited to the state officials' interpretation we would be obligated to declare that the automatic stay provision's time restriction unconstitutionally denigrates the Judiciary's status as a coequal branch in violation of the separation-of-powers doctrine. 16