Opinion ID: 201381
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the petitions for mandamus

Text: We begin with the two Emergency Petitions for Writ of Mandamus that request we exercise our power of mandamus and instruct the District Court to remand the Suárez action to the 23 We agree with the District Court that the Supreme Court's judgment was void. The governing statute provides that the filing of a copy of the notice [of removal] with the clerk of [the] State court . . . effect[s] the removal and the State court shall proceed no further unless and until the case is remanded. 28 U.S.C. § 1446(d) (emphasis added). The Supreme Court received notice of the removal at 11:48 a.m. on November 20, 2004 but did not issue judgment until that evening. The judgment is thus, as the District Court found, a nullity. -12- Puerto Rico courts. These mandamus petitions contest the validity of removal on two principal grounds: (1) the absence of federal question jurisdiction over the Suárez action, and (2) the failure of the removing parties to obtain the consent of all Suárez action defendants (including Petitioners) to removal. Since both petitions are substantially the same, they will be discussed as one. We note at the outset that we have given the District Court ample opportunity to decide whether removal of the Suárez action was proper, and despite the time-sensitive nature of this case, and three weeks of hearings on the merits of the Rosselló action which has been consolidated with this case for appeal, we are now faced with the extreme decision of whether we should compel remand through a Writ of Mandamus. In order to stave off the need for mandamus, we invited the District Court to address these mandamus petitions. In response, the court appended a footnote to the opinion of November 30, 2004 in which the District Court asserted jurisdiction over the parallel federal case. Pedro Rosselló, et al. v. Sila M. Calderón, et al., No. 04-2251, slip op. at 3, n.2 (D.P.R. Nov. 30, 2004). The footnote indicated that a hearing was needed to properly evaluate the jurisdictional issues raised in the pending motions to remand. Specifically, the District Court indicated: (1) that the Suárez Plaintiffs' complaint had alleged violations of -13- due process and equal protection without specifying whether the source of these protections was the Commonwealth or Federal Constitution; (2) that federal jurisdiction might be required under Franchise Tax Board v. Construction Laborers Vacation Trust, 463 U.S. 1, 22 (1983); and finally, (3) that the legal interests of some Suárez Defendants might require their realignment with the plaintiffs in that action. Following a hearing on December 8, 2004, the District Court issued an opinion resolving various challenges to the removal jurisdiction. Manuel R. Suárez, et al. v. Comisión Estatal de Elecciones, et al., No. 04-2288, slip op. (D.P.R. Dec. 10, 2004)(hereinafter Remand Opinion). In that opinion, the District Court held that examining the evidence in the light most favorable to the defendants . . . an overvote issue may exist[] in violation of Due Process and Equal Protection principles under the case of Bonas v. Town of North Smithfield, 265 F.3d 69 (1st Cir. 2001). Remand Opinion at 12-13; see also Bonas, 265 F.3d at 73-74.24 Although it evaluated and rejected the majority of the arguments against removal before it, the District Court still has not made a final decision on the ultimate question of whether to remand the case to the Puerto Rico courts. Nevertheless, the District Court determined in its December 10 opinion that a federal question had 24 We address the applicability of Bonas below in our discussion of the Rosselló action. -14- been presented in the Suárez complaint. That determination was plainly erroneous, and our resolution of the Rosselló action today is decisive of the motion to remand. Because the District Court plainly erred, and because every additional day spent adjudicating this issue before the District Court or on appeal before this court increases the risk of irreparable harm, our intervention by Writ of Mandamus would be appropriate.
Although it is an extraordinary remedy, mandamus can be appropriate in those rare cases in which the issuance (or nonissuance) of an order (1) raises a question about the limits of judicial power, (2) poses a risk of irreparable harm to the appellant, and (3) is plainly erroneous. See Christopher v. Stanley-Bostich, Inc., 240 F.3d 95, 99 (1st Cir. 2001). Moreover, the case for mandamus is particularly compelling where the order poses an elemental question of judicial authority. Id. at 99-100. The instant petitions clearly meet the first requirement, as they concern the boundaries of the District Court's power to remove cases from Commonwealth courts. See, e.g., Hernández-Agosto v. Romero-Barceló, 748 F.2d 1, 4-5 (1st Cir. 1984) (issuing mandamus to remand improperly removed action to Puerto Rico court). Second, the risk of irreparable harm from the continued pendency of removal jurisdiction is acute: there are now fewer than three weeks remaining before inauguration day on January 2, 2005. Third, as -15- elucidated below, we find that the District Court's failure to remand is plainly erroneous because the Suárez Plaintiffs presented no claim of right arising under federal law. See 28 U.S.C. § 1441.
We find that the exercise of removal jurisdiction is plainly erroneous in this case because no federal question was presented in the Suárez action either procedurally (because the four corners of the complaint do not plead a federal question) or substantively (because we have decided in the Rosselló action that the federal courts will not intervene in a local electoral dispute). Because we find that remand to the Puerto Rico Supreme Court is necessary due to the absence of a federal question, we do not address the petitioners' second argument, that removal was improper because it did not receive the consent of all defendants to the Suárez action.
A case may be removed to federal court if it presents a claim or right arising under the Constitution, treaties or laws of the United States. 28 U.S.C. § 1441(b). The Supreme Court of the United States has made clear that, in deciding (for removal purposes) whether a case presents a federal 'claim or right,' a court is to ask whether the plaintiff's claim to relief rests upon a federal right, and the court is to look only to plaintiff's complaint to find the answer. Hernández-Agosto v. Romero-Barceló, -16- 748 F.2d 1, 2 (1st Cir. 1984) (emphasis in original). The existence of a federal defense is not sufficient for removal jurisdiction. Franchise Tax Bd., 463 U.S. at 10-11. Thus, we must turn to the Suárez complaint to ascertain whether, within its four corners, a federal claim or right has been presented. Our evaluation centers on the complaint's allegations of violations of due process and equal protection.25 These claims do not explicitly state whether the source of these constitutional protections is the Commonwealth or the Federal Constitution.26 25 Respondents also note that the Suárez complaint attached and made reference to the complaint filed four days earlier in federal court by Rosselló. No federal claim can be inferred from this reference to the federal action; rather, it was included in the Suárez complaint as factual background. See Suárez complaint at para. 8. Further, even assuming it is proper for us to look outside the four corners of the Suárez complaint to the previouslyfiled federal action, as we discuss below, the Rosselló complaint does not state a claim warranting federal intervention into this local electoral dispute, and therefore cannot be considered sufficiently substantial to give rise to removal jurisdiction under Franchise Tax Board. See Almond v. Capital Props., Inc., 212 F.3d 20, 23 (1st Cir. 2003). 26 We are aware of only one other case dealing with federal removal jurisdiction over a claim filed in state court with ambiguous references to constitutional provisions. In Dardeau v. West Orange-Grove Consolidated I.S.D., 43 F. Supp. 2d 722 (E.D. Tex. 1999), a federal district court evaluated a situation very much like the one we face here. In Dardeau, a complaint was filed in state court that made explicit reference only to state law, but also claimed a violation of due process. Ambiguity with regard to the source of this right was heightened relative to our case because, while those words appear in the United States Constitution, the Texas Constitution uses the phrase due course of law. Id. at 732. For reasons substantially similar to those we set out below, the district court nevertheless interpreted the complaint narrowly to find no federal cause of action to sustain removal jurisdiction. Id. at 730-34. -17- Read as a whole, we cannot say that this complaint presents a claim under the Federal Constitution. No explicit reference to the United States Constitution or any other federal law is contained in the complaint; instead, all references are to Puerto Rico state laws, regulations, and the Commonwealth Constitution. Specifically, paragraph 11 of the complaint bases the Suárez Plaintiffs' claims in the right to vote guaranteed in Article II, Section 2, of the Commonwealth Constitution. The complaint's subsequent references to the plaintiffs' rights to vote and to have their votes counted in accordance with equal protection and due process, while not expressly premised on the Puerto Rico Constitution, logically refer back to the antecedent citation to Article II, Section 2 of the Commonwealth Constitution. Moreover, it is well-settled that the plaintiff [is] the master of the claim; he or she may avoid federal jurisdiction by exclusive reliance on state law. Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams, 482 U.S. 386, 392 (1987). Thus, the burden to prove that a federal question has been pled lies with the party seeking removal. BIW Deceived v. Local S6, Indus. Union of Marine & Shipbuilding Workers, 132 F.3d 824, 831 (1st Cir. 1997). In light of this burden, and of the important federalism concerns at play in considering removal jurisdiction, see, e.g., Franchise Tax Bd., 463 U.S. at 8, we find that any ambiguity as to the source of law relied upon by the Suárez plaintiffs ought to be resolved against -18- removal. See Shamrock Oil & Gas Corp. v. Sheets, 313 U.S. 100, 108-09 (1941) (removal statute should be strictly construed against removal).
The Respondents invite this court to consider the possibility that the Suárez Plaintiffs engaged in artful pleading, a corollary of the well-pleaded complaint rule that a plaintiff may not defeat removal by omitting to plead necessary federal questions in a complaint. Franchise Tax Bd., 463 U.S. at 22. As discussed below with regard to federal ingredient jurisdiction, no federal question is necessary to the resolution of the state claims raised in the Suárez complaint. Furthermore, we are skeptical of the applicability of the artful pleading doctrine outside of complete federal preemption of a state cause of action. See, e.g., id. at 23 (stating that the necessary ground for the creation of the artful pleading doctrine was that the preemptive force of [a federal statute was] so powerful as to displace entirely any state cause of action); Rivet v. Regions Bank, 522 U.S. 470, 475-76 (1998) (The artful pleading doctrine allows removal where federal law completely preempts a plaintiff's state-law claim.). And surely, the United States Constitution cannot be said to wholly preempt the Commonwealth's grant of similar rights under its own Constitution. See PruneYard Shopping Ctr. v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74, 81 (1980) (state constitution may afford more, but not less, -19- protection than Federal Constitution); see also Nieves v. Univ. of Puerto Rico, 7 F.3d 270, 275 (1st Cir. 1993) (noting that 'poverty' is considered a suspect classification under the Commonwealth constitution, triggering 'strict scrutiny' analysis unobtainable under the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution). Thus, the artful pleading doctrine has no application to this dispute.
Respondents also argue that even in the absence of a claim arising under federal law on the face of plaintiffs' wellpleaded complaint, federal removal jurisdiction is still proper under the Supreme Court's statement in Franchise Tax Board that removal would be appropriate if a well-pleaded complaint established that [the plaintiff's] right to relief under state law requires resolution of a substantial question of federal law. 463 U.S. at 13. Under this federal ingredient doctrine, a case arises under federal law for purposes of removal when the plaintiff's right to relief necessarily depends on resolution of a substantial question of federal law. Id. at 27-28. Federal ingredient jurisdiction remains controversial, Almond, 212 F.3d at 23, because [t]he Supreme Court has periodically affirmed this basis for jurisdiction in the abstract . . ., occasionally cast doubt upon it, rarely applied it in practice, and left the very scope of the concept unclear. Perhaps the best one can say is that this basis endures in -20- principle but should be applied with caution and various qualifications. Id. (internal citations and footnote omitted); see also Metheny v. Becker, 352 F.3d 458, 460 (1st Cir. 2003) (noting that federal ingredient doctrine remains vibrant in this circuit but 'should be applied with caution' (quoting Almond, 212 F.3d at 23)). With this caution in mind, we turn to the respondents' argument. Respondents hang their jurisdictional hat on two doctrines that they allege exist in the caselaw of the Puerto Rico Supreme Court. The first stems from the Puerto Rico Supreme Court's statements in a 1964 case that, in accepting the Commonwealth's Bill of Rights, the United States Congress was to presume -- and in fact it is so and ought to be -- that the public powers and the courts of the Commonwealth shall render effective and construe the provisions of the [Puerto Rico] Bill of Rights in a manner consistent with the protection afforded . . . by the same or similar provisions of the Constitution of the United States. R.C.A. Communications, Inc. v. Gov't of the Capital, 91 P.R.R. 404, 414-15 (P.R. 1964). The second comes into play when a federal court certifies a question of state law to the Puerto Rico Supreme Court. According to the Supreme Court: [W]hen the question before us refers to the validity of a state law under a clause of the state constitution that is similar to a clause in the federal Constitution . . . the issue is a mixed question of federal and state rights that must be resolved by the federal court, because the validity of the statute under the -21- federal Constitution necessarily disposes of the question under state law. . . . In these circumstances we must refuse certification, since our decision would be only advisory. Pan Am. Computer Corp. v. Data Gen. Corp., 112 D.P.R. 780, 793-94 (1982) (translation supplied by this court). According to Respondents, these two provisions mean that the Supreme Court's evaluation of the Suárez Plaintiffs' claims under the due process and equal protection doctrines of the Commonwealth Constitution will require the resolution of a federal question: whether the parallel provisions of the United States Constitution would be violated by the acts in question. Accordingly, Respondents argue, the District Court has removal jurisdiction under the federal ingredient doctrine. These arguments fundamentally misconstrue the federal ingredient doctrine. Whether a state court will adopt as the meaning of the state's constitution the federal courts' interpretation of parallel language in the United States Constitution is a matter of state law. See, e.g., Nieves, 7 F.3d at 274. Federal law does not compel such an outcome. Thus, a determination of whether a violation of the Puerto Rican Constitution's guarantees of due process and equal protection has occurred does not require resolution of whether the conduct complained of would violate the Federal Constitution. Franchise Tax Bd., 463 U.S. at 13 (emphasis added); see also Gully v. First Nat'l Bank, 299 U.S. 109, 112-13 (1936) (To bring a case within -22- the [removal] statute, a right or immunity created by the Constitution . . . must be an element, and an essential one, of the plaintiff's cause of action.) (emphasis added). To decide otherwise would mean that any case brought under a provision of the Puerto Rico Constitution that mirrors the language of the United States Constitution could be removed into federal court. Accordingly, we find that removal jurisdiction over the Suárez action is lacking, and it must be remanded to the Commonwealth court from which it was removed. 28 U.S.C. § 1447.
Lastly, and perhaps most significantly, the Suárez complaint cannot be said to state a federal question, because, as we will discuss now, the federal courts will not intervene in a local electoral dispute such as this. Although we find that it was plain error for the District Court not to remand the Suárez action back to the Puerto Rico courts on the basis of the well-pleaded complaint rule, and therefore we could issue a Writ of Mandamus compelling remand, we realize that the District Court now has the benefit of both our above discussion and our decision in the Rosselló action. Therefore, we are confident that the District Court will immediately remand the Suárez action back to the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico without the need for mandamus. -23-