Opinion ID: 754566
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Prisoners' and Justice Department's

Text: 53 Interpretation--Preservation of Courts' Equitable Powers 54 Disagreeing with the state officials' reading of the PLRA automatic stay provision, the prisoners and the Justice Department argue that by its terms the provision implicitly recognizes the courts' inherent power to invoke the injunctive process in order to do equity. As we explained previously, this construction of the automatic stay provision is reasonable and not contrary to clear legislative intent. In order to assess whether the prisoners' and the Justice Department's construction of the automatic stay provision avoids the serious constitutional problems posed by the state officials' statutory construction, we must first identify the contours of the equitable powers retained by the courts. 55 Because the lower courts are created by Congress, a lower court's equitable powers are conditioned by the necessities of the public interest which Congress has sought to protect in enacting the statute governing the case before the court. Hecht Co., 321 U.S. at 330, 64 S.Ct. 587. We therefore begin our analysis with the policy objectives underlying the PLRA. Concern that the life of consent decrees in prisoner litigation cases often extended beyond the time necessary to correct violations of the prisoners' federal rights, Congress sought to terminate judicial supervision of prisons where the necessity for that supervision no longer exists. See H.R. REP. NO. 104-21, at 24 n.2 (1995). To this end, Congress provided for review of all prospective relief and commanded that the federal courts terminate such relief absent proof of an ongoing violation of the prisoners' federal rights. 18 U.S.C. § 3626(b)(2). In an effort to encourage speedy resolution of motions brought under the PLRA termination provisions, Congress enacted the automatic stay provisions because it believed that [b]y providing that the prospective relief that is subject to the motion will be stayed if the motion is not decided promptly, judges will be motivated to decide the motions and avoid having the stay automatically take effect. H.R. REP. NO. 104-21, at 26 (1995). At the same time, Congress did not seek to limit the courts' authority to grant or approve relief where prisoners can prove a violation of [their] federal rights. Id. at 23. 56 Deference to Congress's intent of restricting prospective relief to only those prisoner cases where such relief is necessary to correct a proven violation of a federal right requires that courts invoke their equitable authority to suspend the automatic stay in very limited circumstances. Were district courts routinely to exercise their inherent power to suspend the automatic stay, the very tool Congress utilized in an effort to encourage expeditious review of motions to terminate prospective relief in prisoner reform cases would be rendered useless. Moreover, [b]ecause of their very potency, the inherent powers of the courts must be exercised with restraint and discretion. Chambers, 501 U.S. at 44, 111 S.Ct. 2123. At the same time, the lower courts' authority must remain flexible enough so that they may fulfill the guiding principle of equity--securing complete justice. Porter, 328 U.S. at 398, 66 S.Ct. 1086 (quotation omitted). 57 We are satisfied that the traditional standard governing the issuance of a preliminary injunction in equity properly balances these considerations, although we do not rule out the possibility that a lower court may justifiably suspend the operation of an automatic stay under other equitable standards. 17 The determination of whether to grant a preliminary injunction involves balancing the following factors: 58 (1) the likelihood that the party seeking the preliminary injunction will succeed on the merits of the claim; (2) whether the party seeking the injunction will suffer irreparable harm without the grant of the extraordinary relief; (3) the probability that granting the injunction will cause substantial harm to others; and (4) whether the public interest is advanced by the issuance of the injunction. 59 Washington v. Reno, 35 F.3d 1093, 1099 (6th Cir.1994); see also International Resources, Inc. v. New York Life Ins. Co., 950 F.2d 294, 302 (6th Cir.1991), cert. denied, 504 U.S. 973, 112 S.Ct. 2941, 119 L.Ed.2d 565 (1992). Because these factors are not prerequisites but must be balanced, the likelihood of success required to support a suspension of the automatic stay depends on the strength of the other factors considered. See Washington, 35 F.3d at 1099. 60 While we do not attempt here to identify all scenarios in which the district court may appropriately suspend the automatic stay, we pause to note the fundamental importance of the courts' ability to provide meaningful review. As explained previously, where Congress impedes the Judiciary's capacity for thorough and thoughtful consideration so as to undermine inevitably the integrity and fairness of judicial decisionmaking, the constitutional principle of separation-of-powers is severely compromised. In those complex cases where the district court simply cannot exercise meaningful review before the effective date of the automatic stay, the public interest in protecting the courts' deliberative role militates in favor of suspending the automatic stay. We emphasize that although courts often may find it difficult to provide meaningful review, constitutional concerns about an unwarranted incursion by Congress into the province retained for the Judiciary arise only where thorough and thoughtful judicial decisionmaking is virtually impossible. Where a district court retains the ability, however difficult, to probe relevant factual and legal issues and deliberate upon matters before the court, it is in a position to protect its judicial orders against direct legislative suspension and to fulfill its obligation to exercise its jurisdiction meaningfully, United States v. Michigan, 18 F.3d 348, 352 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 925, 115 S.Ct. 312, 130 L.Ed.2d 275 (1994). 61 By preserving the federal courts' ability to suspend the automatic stay where necessary to ensure meaningful review and to protect judicial orders against direct legislative suspension, the prisoners' and Justice Department's construction of the PLRA automatic stay provision avoids the constitutional infirmities which plague the state officials' construction. Our commitment to construing federal statutes not only to preserve the federal courts' inherent powers but also to avoid where fairly possible serious doubt as to their constitutionality necessitates our rejecting the state officials' construction of the automatic stay provision in favor of the prisoners' and Justice Department's construction. Accordingly, we hold that the § 3626(e), as amended, does not interfere with the traditional inherent powers of the courts and therefore as so interpreted does not give rise to an unconstitutional incursion by Congress into the powers reserved for the Judiciary. Because the time period prescribed by the automatic stay provision long ago expired in the cases before us, on remand the district courts should consider whether to exercise their inherent equitable powers to suspend the automatic stay in conformity with this opinion, to allow the automatic stay to take effect, or to terminate the decrees.