Opinion ID: 3031277
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Right to Intervene Pursuant to Canatella

Text: Bendel argues that our prior Canatella decision, which we are bound to follow, creates a right of intervention for Bendel and all other attorneys subject or potentially subject to disciplinary proceedings before California’s State Bar Court. He relies on the following passage: It is enough that Canatella shows that he and others in his position face a credible threat of discipline under the challenged statutes, and may consequently forego their expressive rights under the First Amendment. Nor have we reason to doubt that other Cali- fornia attorneys find themselves in Canatella’s dilemma. The alleged source of the harms that Canatella and others like him may face is the arguably vague and overbroad language of the challenged provisions under which California lawyers perform their jobs and are subject to discipline. Canatella, 304 F.3d at 854. Essentially, Bendel reasons that pursuant to our holding that the federal courts must exercise jurisdiction over Canatella’s constitutional challenges to California disciplinary proceedings, the federal courts must also exercise jurisdiction over Bendel’s similar challenges. We disagree. First, Canatella cannot have created a right of intervention because it never considered that issue. We considered only standing, ripeness, and abstention — i.e., whether the federal courts have subject-matter jurisdiction, and whether they must exercise or decline to exercise that jurisdiction. Id. at 855. The quoted passage that Bendel relies on appears in a section disBENDEL v. STATE OF CALIFORNIA 4141 cussing only standing. Id. at 852-54. It stands only for the proposition that all attorneys facing a credible threat of discipline at the expense of their constitutional rights have standing to bring challenges in federal court. We were not considering either Younger abstention or any third-party right of intervention in that section, nor did we ever consider the intersection of those two issues anywhere in our opinion. Our Canatella decision therefore has no binding effect on our resolution of those issues in this case. Second, Bendel misinterprets Canatella by failing to appreciate the nature of Younger abstention. Application of Younger does not lead to the determination that the federal courts have no basis for jurisdiction in the first instance. Rather, Younger abstention is a doctrine under which the federal courts have bound themselves pursuant to principles of comity to voluntarily decline to exercise jurisdiction that they have and would otherwise exercise. See Middlesex, 457 U.S. at 431; Gilbertson, 381 F.3d at 970-71, 975. In Canatella, we determined that the district court had jurisdiction because Canatella had standing and his claims were ripe and that the district court must exercise that jurisdiction because Younger did not apply. Canatella, 304 F.3d at 855. The difference here is that Younger applies. Thus, Canatella may be dispositive in determining that Bendel’s claims are ripe, that he has standing, and that therefore the district court has jurisdiction; however, Younger still requires abstention from exercising that jurisdiction so long as there are ongoing state judicial proceedings with which Bendel’s federal action would interfere. Third, as we have already determined, Bendel and Canatella must be treated independently for purposes of Younger abstention because they are legally distinct parties without a sufficiently close relationship or sufficiently intertwined interests. See Doran, 422 U.S. at 928-29; Green, 255 F.3d at 10991100. The fact that Younger does not apply to Canatella’s action has no bearing on the applicability of Younger to Bendel’s action. 4142 BENDEL v. STATE OF CALIFORNIA [16] Moreover, even if Bendel and Canatella’s interests were so intertwined that they should be treated similarly for purposes of Younger abstention, we would require abstention as to both parties rather than permit the exercise of jurisdiction as to both. We have already held today that intervention cannot be used to circumvent Younger abstention. We have also previously recognized that “Younger may oust a district court of jurisdiction over a case where the plaintiff is not a party to an ongoing state proceeding [when the plaintiff’s] interest is so intertwined with those of the state court party that direct interference with the state court proceeding is inevitable.” Green, 255 F.3d at 1100. And we are unaware of any case in which a party independently subject to Younger abstention has avoided abstention based on having intertwined interests with another party who was not subject to Younger abstention. Indeed, allowing Bendel to intervene in order to levy constitutional challenges to and interfere with ongoing state proceedings based on a mere interest in the precedent that might be set in Canatella’s action would create an unprecedented exception to the exceedingly important principles of comity underlying Younger. See generally Gilbertson, 381 F.3d at 970-71, 975. Thus, aligning himself with Canatella cannot help Bendel avoid Younger; if anything, it raises the possibility—albeit one that we need not explore fully—that Younger could attach to Canatella through Bendel. Cf. Doran, 422 U.S. at 924-25, 928-29 (requiring abstention as to one plaintiff who faced prosecution in state court but not as to two others who did not, even though all three filed suit in federal court to enjoin enforcement of the same local ordinance); Hicks, 422 U.S. at 345, 348-49 (requiring abstention as to the owners of an adult theater who sought an injunction in federal court because their interests were “intertwined” with those of their employees who faced prosecution in state court).