Opinion ID: 485228
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Possible Distinctions Between Hastings and Andrade

Text: 31 Because the principles enunciated in Hastings and Andrade are at apparent odds--and would seem to compel contrary results in the instant case--the parties have attempted to distinguish the two cases on their facts. I am not persuaded, however, that the cases are easily reconciled on this basis. Undeniably, Hastings and Andrade arose in significantly different factual contexts. However, a careful examination of the factual distinctions between the two cases reveals that those distinctions--at least for present purposes--are more superficial than real. 32 One distinction between the two cases lies in the nature of the underlying constitutional challenge. In Hastings, the plaintiff directly challenged the legitimacy of the ongoing proceedings, maintaining that the judicial councils were absolutely prohibited by the Constitution from subjecting him to investigatory and disciplinary proceedings. In Andrade, by contrast, the plaintiffs argued only that certain personnel actions taken by the government were unconstitutional; they did not challenge the legitimacy of the statutory/contractual grievance procedure available to them for appealing the government's actions. This distinction, however, is one without meaning, for in each case a successful constitutional challenge would have mooted the requirement that the plaintiffs exhaust their nonconstitutional claims in the available administrative fora. Thus, in each case we were directly confronted with the question whether to interfere with an established scheme for adjudicating nonconstitutional claims in order to immediately adjudicate a constitutional challenge to government authority. 33 Andrade, however, differs from Hastings in a second respect. In Andrade, the various procedures available to the plaintiffs for challenging their dismissals or demotions were incorporated in a privately negotiated grievance provision. We recognized in Andrade that the grievance process could not be used to resolve the plaintiffs' constitutional claim, and that the plaintiffs were therefore entitled to bring that claim in the first instance in federal court. In this respect, our holding in Andrade was very similar to that in Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S. 36, 94 S.Ct. 1011, 39 L.Ed.2d 147 (1974), where the Supreme Court made clear that the availability of a private grievance process does not waive an employee's right to pursue a separate public law issue in court. 34 The difficulty with distinguishing Andrade by analogy to Alexander, however, is that Andrade implicitly seemed to reject any such analogy. In holding that the employees need not submit their nonconstitutional claims through the grievance procedure before bringing their constitutional claim in federal court, we might have relied on Alexander for the proposition that the availability of a private grievance procedure does not in any way affect an employee's right to adjudicate a public law issue in court. However, we attempted no analogy to Alexander. Instead, we reasoned that exhaustion was not required where the nonconstitutional and constitutional claims were almost entirely unrelated and where there was a significant public interest in deciding a potentially recurring question of constitutional law. Accordingly, it would be somewhat disingenuous to discount the precedential value of Andrade because we might have resolved that case on alternative grounds. 35 Finally, Hastings and Andrade differ in yet a third respect. In Hastings, we assumed that there would be value in requiring exhaustion because the constitutional issues raised by Judge Hastings would be refined for judicial review. In Andrade, by contrast, we found that we would not benefit from the postponement of judicial review because the facts upon which the employees' constitutional and nonconstitutional claims were based were largely unrelated. Again, however, an analysis of Hastings reveals that this distinction was not dispositive. 9 Although our primary concern in Hastings was to ensure that the plaintiff's claims were presented in a manner susceptible to judicial review, we also refused to decide the constitutionality of that portion of the statute that had been applied to Judge Hastings in a concrete, judicially-reviewable manner. This refusal was explicitly based on the doctrine that absent serious and irremediable injury, a court should be loath to interfere with ongoing administrative proceedings, even where plaintiffs challenge the very constitutionality of those proceedings. 770 F.2d at 1102.