Opinion ID: 779470
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Stipulation of Viewpoint Neutrality

Text: 13 Following remand from the Supreme Court, we remanded this case to the district court to consider the plaintiffs' request to void their stipulation that [t]he process for reviewing and approving allocations for funding is administered in a viewpoint-neutral fashion. Southworth, 2000 WL 831585 at . A stipulation is binding unless relief from the stipulation is necessary to prevent a `manifest injustice' or the stipulation was entered into through inadvertence or based on an erroneous view of the facts or law. Graefenhain v. Pabst Brewing Co., 870 F.2d 1198, 1206 (7th Cir.1989). As with other matters of trial management, the district court has `broad discretion' to decide whether to hold a party to its stipulation; the district court's decision will be overturned on appeal only where the court has clearly and unmistakably abused its discretion. Id. at 1206. 14 In this case, the district court concluded that voiding the stipulation was appropriate because [p]rior to the Supreme Court's decision in Southworth, lower courts analyzed this compelled speech question using the `germaneness' analysis in Abood and Keller.  Thus, as the district court recognized, the plaintiffs' stipulation took on a new significance after the Supreme Court's decision in Southworth . . . . The district court further noted that [a]t the time plaintiffs entered into the stipulation they could not have foreseen that they were stipulating to a conclusion that would eventually be dispositive of the case. The district court then reasoned that [u]nder the circumstances, it is apparent that the stipulation was entered into through inadvertence and a mistake of law. Were the Court to conclude otherwise it could be envisioned that parties would refrain from entering into stipulations for fear of inadvertently stipulating away their case on appeal. 15 This court's earlier decision also followed the compelled-speech cases of Abood and Keller, Southworth, 151 F.3d at 732, rather than the viewpoint-neutrality analysis subsequently adopted by the Supreme Court in Southworth, 529 U.S. at 233, 120 S.Ct. 1346. In voiding the plaintiffs' stipulation, the district court properly considered this development. Moreover, in the final analysis the University is not harmed by the district court's decision to void the plaintiffs' stipulation because that stipulation, at most, bound only the named plaintiffs. 3 Had the district court refused to void the plaintiffs' stipulation, other University of Wisconsin-Madison students (such as Benjamin Thompson, who was added as a plaintiff only upon remand) could have immediately filed a new lawsuit against the University. That would likely result in repetitive filings, motions and discovery. Under these circumstances and given the district court's fully reasoned explanation, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the plaintiffs to void their stipulation. 16 The limited case law in this circuit analyzing a district court's decision to void a stipulation supports this conclusion. In Cates v. Morgan Portable Building Corp., 780 F.2d 683 (7th Cir.1985), we held that the district court was acting within its broad discretion in voiding the parties' stipulation that on remand the case would be tried based on the record of a previous trial. Id. at 690-91. In that case, [i]t turned out that the record of the previous trial did not fully illuminate the issue of mitigation of damages, which became a focus of concern in the case only after [the appellate court] reversed the second judgment. Id. at 690. Similarly, in this case, the issue of viewpoint neutrality did not become a focus of concern until the Supreme Court rejected this court's reliance on the compelled-speech cases of Abood and Keller. 17 This court also considered the propriety of voiding a stipulation in Graefenhain, 870 F.2d 1198 (7th Cir.1989). In that case, the plaintiff stipulated that the court, rather than the jury, could decide the issue of damages in his age discrimination case. Id. at 1205. However, after it became apparent that the damages trial would involve a much more complex factual issue concerning whether or not the plaintiff would have been terminated in a RIF, the plaintiff moved to void his stipulation and to try the question of damages to the jury. Id. at 1206. The district court refused to void the stipulation. Id. 18 Graefenhain is factually distinguishable from this case because in that case there was no indication that [the plaintiff] misunderstood the law of damages for wrongful discharge.... Id. Conversely, here, the plaintiffs (as well as the district court and this court), applied a line of case law that the Supreme Court rejected. Also, in Graefenhain, while we affirmed the district court's refusal to void the stipulation, we also noted that the changed circumstances may have empowered the district court to exercise its discretion to void the prior agreement. . . . Id. But we concluded that the court's failure to do so was not an abuse of discretion. Id. at 1206. Changed circumstances which alter the focus of a case or the importance of an issue may justify the voiding of a stipulation. Had the district court in Graefenhain voided the stipulation, that too would likely not have been an abuse of discretion. See United States v. Williams, 81 F.3d 1434, 1437 (7th Cir.1996) (It is possible for two judges, confronted with the identical record, to come to opposite conclusions and for the appellate court to affirm both. That possibility is implicit in the concept of a discretionary judgment.). As explained above, see supra at 572, the district court acted within its broad discretion. Therefore, we affirm the district court's decision voiding the plaintiffs' stipulation of viewpoint neutrality.