Opinion ID: 613553
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Private Citizens Lack Executive Powers

Text: Intervenors nonetheless assert that the state mandamus actions, though initiated by private citizen groups rather than by the state, qualify equally as enforcement proceedings for Younger purposes. We find no support in the law for this argument. The California Constitution reserves to the people certain legislative powers, see Cal. Const. art. II, §§ 8-11; id. art. IV, § 1, and the California Supreme Court is currently considering whether the official proponents of initiative measures possess legal interests in upholding the constitutionality of such measures when the executive officials vested with the authority to do so refuse to exercise their authority. See Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 628 F.3d 1191, 1193 (9th Cir.2011); Perry v. Brown, No. S189476 (Cal. Feb. 16, 2011) (granting our request for certification). But Intervenors do not claim to be the official proponents of Measure E, and private citizens as a general matter lack executive authority to enforce state laws, whether enacted by initiative or by the legislature. See, e.g., Cal. Const. art. V, § 1 (The supreme executive power of this State is vested in the Governor.). Private parties who are aggrieved by the Executive's failure to enforce a legislative initiative or any other state law may be able to bring a mandamus action against the Executive in state court, but such actions are neither sovereign in nature nor the exercise of the executive authority of the state. Intervenors cite no authority that instructs us to treat their mandamus actions as the equivalent of a state-initiated enforcement proceeding. At the time Potrero Hills filed this suit, it was not the subject of any past or pending state-initiated enforcement proceeding; rather, Intervenors' state mandamus actions made it the subject merely of prospective enforcement, where Younger does not apply. See Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U.S. 705, 711-12, 97 S.Ct. 1428, 51 L.Ed.2d 752 (1977) (no Younger bar to federal injunctive relief in the face of threatened repeated prospective state prosecution); Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 452, 462, 94 S.Ct. 1209, 39 L.Ed.2d 505 (1974) (no Younger bar to federal declaratory relief when state proceedings are not pending but only threatened); Wiener v. Cnty. of San Diego, 23 F.3d 263, 267 (9th Cir.1994); Exec. Arts Studio, 391 F.3d at 791-92. Where a federal plaintiff seeks relief not from past state actions but merely from prospective enforcement of state law, federal court adjudication would not interfere with the state's basic executive functions in a way Younger disapproves. See Wooley, 430 U.S. at 709-11, 97 S.Ct. 1428; Wiener, 23 F.3d at 267. While a state's executive interest in enforcing a local waste management ordinance would no doubt qualify as abstention-worthy, private citizens generally lack executive authority, and thus their efforts to enforce a local waste management ordinance do not implicate the comity and federalism concerns that justify a federal court's extraordinary act of abstaining from hearing a case over which it has jurisdiction. To hold otherwise would threaten to permit the exception to consume the rule. Miofsky, 703 F.2d 332.