Opinion ID: 791778
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: issues

Text: 62 Under New York law, issue preclusion will apply only if (1) the issue in question was actually and necessarily decided in a prior proceeding, and (2) the party against whom [issue preclusion] is asserted had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the issue in the first proceeding. Moccio, 95 F.3d at 200 (internal quotation marks omitted). The issue in question in the federal suit is whether voters' federal constitutional rights are violated by the Board of Elections' refusal to count absentee ballots on the ground that those ballots, although issued to voters by the Board of Elections, were invalid under state law. The Board maintains that the New York Court of Appeals necessarily decided this constitutional question in Gross III, 3 N.Y.3d 251, 785 N.Y.S.2d 729, 819 N.E.2d 197, and points out that Judge Rosenblatt's dissent refers to a First Circuit case, Griffin v. Burns, 570 F.2d 1065 (1st Cir.1978), that decided an election dispute similar to the one in this case on federal constitutional grounds. See Gross III, 785 N.Y.S.2d 729, 819 N.E.2d at 206 n. 2 (Rosenblatt, J., dissenting). The Board also points out that the opinion dissenting in part from the New York Appellate Division's ruling in Gross II accuses the majority of depriv[ing] voters of their constitutional right to vote. . . . 781 N.Y.S.2d at 176 (Spain, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). 63 Certainly the authors of the dissenting opinions cited by the Board believed that the voters' constitutional rights were at stake. But to determine what issues were actually and necessarily decided by the New York Court of Appeals — and it is the preclusive effect of that decision alone that is in question — we look to the majority opinion. Where, as here, that opinion unambiguously relies on state law alone, we cannot say that the court decided federal constitutional questions just because a dissenting judge in the Court of Appeals (let alone dissenting judges in the Appellate Division) would have preferred that the case be decided differently on constitutional grounds. The New York Court of Appeals held that the absentee ballots collected in violation of both a federal court order and article 8 of the [New York] Election Law are invalid. . . . Gross III, 785 N.Y.S.2d 729, 819 N.E.2d at 199. It explained further that in New York, the right to vote by absentee ballot is purely a statutory right. Id. Nowhere does the Court of Appeals discuss the voters' constitutional rights, and we therefore agree with the district court that [t]he issue of whether the invalidation of the absentee ballots would violate the Fourteenth Amendment was not addressed by the Court of Appeals, Hoblock, 341 F.Supp.2d at 173, and issue preclusion thus does not bar the voters from litigating this issue in federal court. 64 The district court further held that issue preclusion does not apply because the voters were not parties in the state-court proceeding and therefore lacked the requisite full and fair opportunity to litigate the question of their constitutional rights in state court. Id. Because our finding that the voters' constitutional rights were not at issue in the state-court litigation disposes of the issue-preclusion question, we can resolve that question without deciding whether the voters were (actually or constructively) parties to that litigation.