Opinion ID: 305938
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: exhaustion of adequate prospective state administrative remedies.

Text: 16 Despite the absence of a federal constitutional requirement that a hearing be provided, Executive Order 112 provides a state hearing procedure. This is a matter of state policy, not federal constitutional law. Cf. Roth, p. 578, 579, 92 S.Ct. 2710. 17 The issue then becomes whether, under Whitner v. Davis, supra, appellants were required to avail themselves of the state administrative remedy. 18 Claims under the Civil Rights Acts are not generally subject to the requirement that state remedies be first exhausted. The remedy provided by the federal statutes is supplementary to the state remedy, and the latter need not be first sought and refused before the federal one is invoked. Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 183, 81 S.Ct. 473, 482, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961). See Wilwording v. Swenson, 404 U.S. 249, 92 S.Ct. 407, 30 L.Ed.2d 418 (1971); Houghton v. Shafer, 392 U.S. 639, 88 S.Ct. 2119, 20 L.Ed.2d 1319 (1968); Damico v. California, 389 U.S. 416, 88 S.Ct. 526, 19 L.Ed.2d 647 (1967); McNeese v. Board of Education, 373 U.S. 668, 83 S.Ct. 1433, 10 L.Ed.2d 622 (1963). 19 However, in Whitner v. Davis, 410 F.2d 24 (9th Cir. 1969), this court, citing Houghton, Damico, McNeese and Monroe, held that prospective, as distinguished from retrospective, state administrative remedies must be exhausted in order to state a claim upon which relief can be granted under the Civil Rights Acts. 20 In November 1970, when appellants were notified that they would not be reemployed in the fall of 1971, the alleged injury to their constitutional rights was not yet consummated. There was a threat that their employment would be terminated at a foreseeable time in the future. But they were not discharged. They were still assured of employment through the end of the current academic year. 21 The grievance procedures in this case would not operate to rectify a wrong which had already occurred. Rather, they were a means of forestalling a threatened deprivation of rights which was not to transpire for several months. In the event that appellants were to utilize the state hearing procedures, they might successfully reverse the decision not to reemploy them, have their contracts renewed, and suffer no break in their employment. 22 Under these circumstances, appellants were required to exhaust a state administrative procedure which would provide a fair opportunity to present [their] version of the facts and law. Whitner v. Davis, supra, 410 F.2d, at p. 29. Cf. Stevenson v. Bd. of Ed., 426 F.2d 1154, 1157 (5th Cir. 1970), cert. denied 400 U.S. 957, 91 S.Ct. 355, 27 L.Ed.2d 265 (1970). Indeed, if the administrative remedy designed to forestall the threatened discharge was adequate, then refusal to make use of it constituted an acceptance of the discharge and prevents [appellants] from establishing a claim under the Civil Rights Acts. Whitner, 410 F.2d at p. 29. 23 The district court thus was correct in ruling that the appellants were required to exhaust the procedures outlined in Executive Order 112, if those procedures were fair and adequate. 24