Opinion ID: 2451
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Special Factors As a Standard

Text: The majority is not altogether clear in conveying its understanding of the legal significance of a finding that special factors counseling hesitation, sternly or otherwise, are present. The majority acknowledges that [h]esitation is a pause, not a full stop, or an abstention; and to counsel is not to require, supra at 574, but it also states that countervailing factors are not considered, and that no such factors have ever been cited by the Supreme Court as a reason for affording a Bivens remedy where it would not otherwise exist, id. What we are left with is an implication that the presence of special factors counseling hesitation in fact does require a full stop, or an abstention. We disagree. It seems to us that the existence of such special factors alone does not compel a conclusion that a Bivens action is unavailable. When the words special factors counseling hesitation were first uttered by the Supreme Court, in Bivens itself, the Court asserted that there is a general rule that where legal rights have been invaded, and a federal statute provides for a general right to sue for such invasion, federal courts may use any available remedy to make good the wrong done. Bivens, 403 U.S. at 396, 91 S.Ct. 1999 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court then said: The present case involves no special factors counseling hesitation in the absence of affirmative action by Congress, citing cases in which the general rule had not been applied. [26] Id. The Bivens Court's observation that there was no cause for hesitation, and its simultaneous recognition in the case before it of a private right of action did not imply, however  as the majority seems to  that if there had been reason to hesitate, then the Court, ipso facto, would not have recognized a right of action. [27] The Supreme Court has not told us that special factors counseling hesitation are to be understood to prohibit a private right of action. In Wilkie, for example, the Court noted that deciding whether to recognize a Bivens remedy may require two steps, the second of which asks that the court pay[] particular heed ... to any special factors counselling hesitation, id., 127 S.Ct. at 2598 (emphasis added). And the Court, in Bush v. Lucas, 462 U.S. 367, 103 S.Ct. 2404, 76 L.Ed.2d 648 (1983), relied upon by the Wilkie Court in this regard, similarly observed that [i]n the absence of ... a congressional directive [that a right of action lies], the federal courts must make the kind of remedial determination that is appropriate for a common-law tribunal, paying particular heed, however, to any special factors counseling hesitation before authorizing a new kind of federal litigation. Id. at 378, 103 S.Ct. 2404 (emphasis added). [H]eed means [c]lose attention or notice. American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 813 (4th ed. 2000). To pay heed, then, means to notice, it does not mean to be governed by. The majority tells us that `[h]esitation' is `counseled' whenever thoughtful discretion would pause even to consider. Supra at 574. If the existence of special factors counseling hesitation were determinative of the existence of a right of action, the bar to declining to allow a new Bivens claim would be less than remarkably low. Id. It would be chimerical. It is difficult to deny the existence of special factors counseling hesitation in this case. We have been hesitating  in order to deliberate in light of those factors  for nearly two years. While the time we have taken to consider special factors strongly indicates that they counsel hesitation, it cannot follow that having hesitated, we must therefore halt, and dismiss the Bivens complaint. [28]