Opinion ID: 171635
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: The Ongoing Proceeding Prong and Right of Judicial Review in State Courts

Text: Neither the Supreme Court nor our circuit has yet addressed the exact issue of whether an administrative proceeding should be considered ongoing after an administrative agency issues a final order that is appealable, but not yet appealed, to state courts. But the Supreme Court's treatment of Younger abstention in the context of civil cases, although not administrative cases, at least strongly suggests that such administrative proceedings should be considered ongoing. Younger applies with equal force to criminal, civil, and administrative proceedings. See Amanatullah v. Colo. Bd. of Med. Exam'rs, 187 F.3d 1160, 1163 (10th Cir.1999) (explaining that Younger abstention is proper when there is an ongoing state criminal, civil, or administrative proceeding). The Supreme Court's explanation of the doctrine in the context of civil proceedings should thus be followed in the administrative context, unless good reasons exist for treating Younger abstention in these two contexts differently. For Younger abstention in the context of state civil proceedings, the Supreme Court unambiguously stated that a natural break between trial and appellate stages of a proceeding does not destroy its ongoing nature. Huffman, 420 U.S. at 608, 95 S.Ct. 1200. In Huffman, a civil nuisance lawsuit was brought in Ohio state court to close a movie theater screening pornographic films. Id. at 598, 95 S.Ct. 1200. The movie theater lost the case in trial court but, instead of appealing the judgment within the state court system, filed a § 1983 lawsuit challenging Ohio's public nuisance statute as a violation of the First Amendment and requested declaratory and injunctive relief. Id. A three-judge panel of the federal district court reached the merits and agreed with the movie theater. The Supreme Court reversed, holding unequivocally that a party seeking relief in a federal court must [first] exhaust his state appellate remedies. Id. at 608, 95 S.Ct. 1200. For the purposes of Younger abstention, then, trial and appellate stages of state court litigation should be treated as one continuous process that a litigant cannot truncate by filing a federal action halfway through state proceedings. Otherwise, all of the evils at which Younger is directed would inhere in federal intervention prior to completion of state appellate proceedings, just as surely as they would if such intervention occurred at or before trial. Id. The Court identified three such evils. First, [i]ntervention at the later stage is if anything more highly duplicative, since an entire trial has already taken place. Id. Whether or not state courts have had a chance to address the federal issue raised in subsequent federal litigation, the possible duplication of proceedings is a valid concern. The parties have already once assembled for a full trial in the state system. A second trial in federal court, even if it raises new issues, is sure to overlap to a significant extent with state proceedings. Second, the Court in Huffman drew on Younger 's central theme: comity between federal and state courts. The Court explained a federal court's [i]ntervention... [represents] a direct aspersion on the capabilities and good faith of state appellate courts. Id. When a federal court steps into the middle of the state judicial process after trial but before appeal, it is likely to be even more disruptive and offensive because the State has already won below. Id. at 608-09, 95 S.Ct. 1200. By prohibiting litigants from sidestepping state appellate process, the result in Huffman promotes Younger 's central goal. Third, [f]ederal post-trial intervention, in a fashion designed to annul the results of a state trial, also deprives the States of a function which quite legitimately is left to them, that of overseeing trial court dispositions of [federal] issues which arise in civil litigation over which they have jurisdiction. Id. at 609, 95 S.Ct. 1200. Federal law is supreme in our constitutional design, and state judges are bound to enforce it. U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2 (This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.); Testa v. Katt, 330 U.S. 386, 393, 67 S.Ct. 810, 91 L.Ed. 967 (1947) (holding that state courts with jurisdiction to hear federal issues are not free to refuse enforcement of litigants' rights under federal law). The Huffman Court pointedly refused to base a rule on the assumption that state judges will not be faithful to their constitutional responsibilities. 420 U.S. at 611, 95 S.Ct. 1200. To protect against Younger 's three evils, the Court effectively introduced a new requirement into the Younger line of cases, the exhaustion of state appellate remedies. Owen M. Fiss, Dombrowski, 86 Yale L.J. 1103, 1139 (1977). A litigant who has initiated state judicial proceedings must therefore exhaust any available state appellate remedies before filing a related federal action. [2] These remedies must be actively pursued, for the litigant may not avoid the standards of Younger by simply failing to comply with the procedures of perfecting its appeal within the [state] judicial system. Huffman, 420 U.S. at 611, 95 S.Ct. 1200 n.22. After Huffman, at least regarding state civil trials, a necessary concomitant of Younger  is that state trial and appellate stages are to be viewed as one ongoing judicial process. Id. at 608, 95 S.Ct. 1200. Brown's case is admittedly different in that rather than dealing with state civil trial, it concerns state administrative proceedings, appealable upon their conclusion to state courts. The Supreme Court expressly left open the question whether the rationale in Huffman would apply to cases where a § 1983 claimant seeks federal court intervention after completion of the administrative hearing but before state court review of the agency's final order. See New Orleans Pub. Serv., Inc. v. Council of the City of New Orleans, 491 U.S. 350, 369 & n. 4, 109 S.Ct. 2506, 105 L.Ed.2d 298 (1989) ( NOPSI ) (assuming, without deciding, that the litigation, from agency through courts, is to be viewed as a unitary process that should not be disrupted, so that federal intervention is no more permitted at the conclusion of the administrative stage than during it). Notably, one of the concurring opinions in NOPSI raised the possibility that the rationale of Huffman, as applied to administrative agency proceedings, might no longer be an open question. Id. at 374-75, 109 S.Ct. 2506 (Blackmun, J., concurring in the judgment). Because the Court since Huffman has extended Younger into administrative proceedings that are judicial in nature, see Dayton, 477 U.S. at 627, 106 S.Ct. 2718; Amanatullah, 187 F.3d at 1163, the question whether abstention must continue through the judicial review process may no longer exist. NOPSI, 491 U.S. at 375, 109 S.Ct. 2506 (Blackmun, J., concurring in the judgment). The concurrence clearly suggested the question was no longer open. I agree with this assessment of the Younger doctrine. In light of the Court's extension of Younger to state administrative proceedings, there is no principled reason for not applying Huffman to these proceedings, which are also judicial in nature, and treating them as ongoing through the completion of available state court judicial review. For a federal court to intervene before a state court has had a chance to review and possibly correct the challenged administrative order would give rise to the same concerns Huffman identified. The intervention would (1) result in some duplicative proceedings, (2) undermine state courts' capability of reviewing the challenged administrative decision's compliance with federal law, and (3) deprive state courts of their legitimate power of judicial review. These concerns are no less meaningful in the administrative context than they are with respect to civil proceedings. A majority of other circuits agree. Of the six circuit courts to address this issue, all but one apply the Huffman rationale to administrative proceedings, demanding a party exhaust available state court judicial review before filing a lawsuit in federal court. See Laurel, 519 F.3d at 166 (relying on Huffman to explain that a would-be federal court litigant must exhaust his state administrative and judicial remedies and may not bypass them in favor of [a] federal court proceeding in which he seeks effectively to annul the results of a state administrative body (quotation marks omitted)); Maymo-Melendez v. Alvarez-Ramirez, 364 F.3d 27, 35 (1st Cir.2004) (noting that after Huffman,  Younger now has to be read as treating the state processwhere the administrative proceeding is judicial in characteras a continuum from start to finish. There ... cannot at any point on the continuum be an automatic right to detour into federal court because unhappy [sic] with an initial answer.); Majors, 149 F.3d at 713 & n. 3; O'Neill, 32 F.3d at 790-91 & n. 13; Alleghany Corp. v. McCartney, 896 F.2d 1138, 1143-44 (8th Cir.1990). I would agree with these authorities. The Fifth Circuit is alone in rejecting the application of Huffman reasoning in the context of administrative proceedings. See Thomas v. Tex. State Bd. of Med. Exam'rs, 807 F.2d 453, 456 (5th Cir.1987). That court said, without an explanation, The mere availability of state judicial review of state administrative proceedings does not amount to the pendency of state judicial proceedings within the meaning of Huffman.  Id. One has to wonder, though, why not? As explained above and consistent with the other circuits to have addressed this question, once the Supreme Court has extended Younger to state administrative proceedings, no principled reason exists against applying the Huffman reasoning to sequential state appellate proceedingsespecially when, like here, the administrative proceedings themselves were judicial in nature. In Majors, the Seventh Circuit succinctly identified why the Fifth Circuit's approach should be avoided:  Thomas is unpersuasive because it was based on the distinction between administrative enforcement proceedings and civil enforcement proceedings of the Huffman variety, a distinction that is immaterial. 149 F.3d at 713 n. 3. I agree and would not make the doctrine turn on such an immaterial distinction. Accordingly, I believe that declining to apply Huffman to administrative proceedings would be erroneous. Like five of our sister circuits, I would hold that state court judicial review of administrative proceedings represents an integral part of state administrative processwhich Younger says cannot be cut off at a midpoint in favor of federal court litigation.