Opinion ID: 171635
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Coercive-Remedial Distinction

Text: The majority errs in holding that Brown's administrative proceedings were remedial rather than coercive. As I understand the distinction, these proceedings properly characterized as aimed at enforcing state Medicaid laws against Brownwere coercive. Our court has yet to address the coercive-remedial distinction in applying Younger to administrative proceedings. Does the distinction even apply? The Supreme Court mentioned the distinction for the first and only time in a footnote in Ohio Civil Rights Commission v. Dayton Christian Schools, Inc., 477 U.S. 619, 627 n. 2, 106 S.Ct. 2718, 91 L.Ed.2d 512 (1986) ( Dayton ). There, the Court sought to reconcile the application of the Younger principle to pending state administrative proceedings with Patsy v. Florida Board of Regents, 457 U.S. 496, 102 S.Ct. 2557, 73 L.Ed.2d 172 (1982), which holds that litigants need not exhaust their administrative remedies prior to bringing a § 1983 suit in federal court. Dayton, 477 U.S. at 627 n. 2, 106 S.Ct. 2718. The Court noted that, [u]nlike Patsy, the administrative proceedings here are coercive rather than remedial, began before any substantial advancement in the federal action took place, and involve an important state interest. Id. (emphasis added). The Court did not say what it meant by coercive and remedial. Patsy dealt with a state's denial of employment opportunities to a teacher, 457 U.S. at 498, 102 S.Ct. 2557, while Dayton dealt with a state's civil rights commission seeking to enforce state laws against a school district's decision to fire a teacher, 477 U.S. at 621-22, 106 S.Ct. 2718. In other words, only in Dayton was the government enforcing state laws. In Patsy, the state merely acted as an employer choosing not to do something, in this case promote an employee. The Dayton Court did not specifically say that Younger could apply only to coercive administrative proceedings, and the very distinction has been criticized. See, e.g., Harry T. Edwards, The Changing Notion of Our Federalism,  33 Wayne L.Rev. 1015, 1029 n. 42 (1987) (I find the Court's distinction between `coercive' and `remedial' administrative proceedings to be unpersuasive. If anything, the purposes behind § 1983 argue more strongly for allowing the federal plaintiff to avail herself of the federal forum in `coercive' cases. (citation omitted)). The Supreme Court nonetheless must have thought the distinction important, because otherwise no need for differentiating between coercive and remedial proceedings exists. The Court could have simply reasoned that because a federal plaintiff in Dayton had already initiated state administrative proceedings, the non-exhaustion principle of Patsy and Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961), did not apply. See Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd., 420 U.S. 592, 609 n. 21, 95 S.Ct. 1200, 43 L.Ed.2d 482 (1975) (making this very point). But the Court went further and distinguished Patsy along the coercive-remedial criterion. The distinction thus carries some meaning, and we, like several other circuits have done, must flesh it out. See Laurel Sand & Gravel, Inc. v. Wilson, 519 F.3d 156, 166 (4th Cir.2008); Stroman Realty, Inc. v. Martinez, 505 F.3d 658, 662 (7th Cir.2007) (citing Majors v. Engelbrecht, 149 F.3d 709, 712 (7th Cir.1998)); Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa, Inc. v. Atchison, 126 F.3d 1042, 1047 (8th Cir.1997); O'Neill v. City of Philadelphia, 32 F.3d 785, 791 n. 13 (3d Cir. 1994); Kercado-Melendez v. Aponte-Roque, 829 F.2d 255, 260 (1st Cir. 1987).