Opinion ID: 171635
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Dayton Christian Schools' Modification of Patsy

Text: As noted above, Younger originally sought to prevent federal courts, sitting in equity, from enjoining state prosecution of criminal defendants. See Younger, 401 U.S. at 46, 91 S.Ct. 746; see also Huffman, 420 U.S. at 602, 95 S.Ct. 1200. Through a series of cases, the Court expanded the Younger abstention doctrine to state civil enforcement cases ( Huffman ) and administrative agency proceedings ( Dayton Christian Schools ). However, in extending the Younger doctrine to state administrative proceedings, the Supreme Court had to explain why Patsy (which did not require deferral to state proceedings) did not apply. Accordingly, in Dayton Christian Schools, the Court asserted: The application of the Younger principle to pending state administrative proceedings is fully consistent with Patsy v. Florida Board of Regents , which holds that litigants need not exhaust their administrative remedies prior to bringing a § 1983 suit in federal court. Unlike Patsy, the administrative proceedings here are coercive rather than remedial, began before any substantial advancement in the federal action took place, and involve an important state interest. 477 U.S. at 627 n. 2, 106 S.Ct. 2718 (emphasis added) (citations omitted). Seizing on this language, the lower courts have required that federal plaintiffs perfect their § 1983 claims by exhausting state administrative remedies only where the state administrative proceedings are coercive. See Moore, 396 F.3d at 388 ([W]e hold that a defendant to a coercive state administrative proceeding must exhaust his state administrative and judicial remedies and may not bypass them in favor of a federal court proceeding. ...); Majors, 149 F.3d at 712 (For purposes of Younger abstention, administrative proceedings are `judicial in nature' when they are coercive  i.e., state enforcement proceedings.); O'Neill, 32 F.3d at 791 (We therefore hold that state proceedings remain `pending,' within the meaning of Younger abstention, in cases ... where a coercive administrative proceeding has been initiated by the State in a state forum...); id. at 791 n. 13 (noting the critical distinction between Dayton Christian Schools and Patsy is the coercive/remedial distinction); cf. Maymo-Melendez, 364 F.3d at 36 ( Huffman is a reliable guide only where full-fledged state administrative proceedings of a judicial character and, arguably, of a coercive nature, are directed against the federal plaintiff.). [6] The essence of each of these opinions is that a state's enforcement of its laws or regulations in an administrative proceeding constitutes a coercive action, exempt from Patsy and entitled to Younger deference. Other administrative proceedings fill the remedial category and remain subject to Patsy 's holding that a federal § 1983 plaintiff need not exhaust state administrative remedies.
The First Circuit has provided the clearest guidance as to how to decide whether a state administrative proceeding is coercive or remedial. In Kercado-Melendez v. Aponte-Roque, 829 F.2d 255 (1st Cir.1987), the court analyzed a § 1983 action initiated by a Puerto Rican school superintendent claiming that she had been fired because of her political beliefs. Id. at 257-58. After receiving notice that she had been fired, Kercado opted not to file an administrative appeal and, instead, proceeded with her § 1983 action in federal court. The defendant, the Secretary of Puerto Rico's Department of Public Instruction, contended that Kercado's failure to avail herself of the administrative appeal process required Younger abstention. Id. at 258. A divided panel of the First Circuit rejected this argument. In the process, it highlighted two critical distinctions between Dayton Christian Schools and Patsy. The panel focused first on the crucial distinction ... that in Patsy the state proceeding was an option available to the federal plaintiff on her own initiative to redress a wrong inflicted by the state whereas in other abstention cases the participation of the federal plaintiff in the state administrative proceeding was mandatory. Id. at 260. Second, the panel noted that [i]n Dayton Christian Schools and similar cases, the state proceeding is itself the wrong which the federal plaintiff seeks to correct via injunctive relief under section 1983. Id. These two considerations provide a starting point for analyzing whether a state proceeding is coercive (and therefore entitled to Younger deference) or remedial. [7] A third factor emerges from a review of the proceedings at issue in the cases where our sister circuits have held that state administrative and judicial proceedings are ongoing proceedings entitled to Younger deference. In these cases, the federal plaintiff sought to thwart a state administrative proceeding initiated to punish the federal plaintiff for a bad act. Thus, a common thread appears to be that if the federal plaintiff has committed an alleged bad act, then the state proceeding initiated to punish the plaintiff is coercive. In Maymo-Melendez, the First Circuit held that the district court should have abstained from hearing a federal claim brought by a horse trainer whose license had been suspended because he had administered performance-enhancing drugs to his horses. See 364 F.3d at 34-37. The trainer had failed to pursue administrative remedies available within the Puerto Rican Racing Board. See id. at 34. Thus, unlike in Kercado-Melendez, in Maymo-Melendez there was an underlying bad act by the federal plaintiff being punished by Puerto Rico. Similarly, in Laurel Sand & Gravel, Inc. v. Wilson , the Fourth Circuit held that abstention was appropriate where the plaintiff had committed an alleged bad act. 519 F.3d 156, 166-67 (4th Cir.2008). The case arose after the Maryland Department of Environment concluded that Laurel Sand & Gravel (Laurel), the federal plaintiff, had violated Maryland's Dewatering Act. 519 F.3d at 160-61. Pursuant to the Act, Maryland had compelled Laurel, a mining company, to replace a well that had run dry in Laurel's zone of influence. Id. at 161. In holding abstention appropriate, the Fourth Circuit relied on its 2005 decision in Moore. Id. at 165-67 (citing Moore, 396 F.3d at 388). In Moore, a federal plaintiff sought to challenge the City of Asheville's noise ordinance, after he had been cited for violating the ordinance twice (the pertinent bad acts). 396 F.3d at 388. Mr. Moore opted not to appeal either citation to the North Carolina courts. Id. at 388-89. In essence, of course, Mr. Moore sought to protest his noise citations  and thereby challenge the state-initiated enforcement proceedings against him. In the same vein, the Third Circuit, in O'Neill, upheld abstention where the federal plaintiffs sought to challenge Philadelphia's parking ticket procedures in federal court, but had not exhausted state judicial remedies. 32 F.3d at 787-88. The plaintiffs had amassed a slew of parking tickets over the years and sought to avoid paying them. Id. at 788-89. Finally, the apposite Seventh Circuit case dealt with a decision by the Indiana State Board of Nursing to suspend the license of a nurse who had allegedly euthanized elderly patients. Majors, 149 F.3d at 711-12. The nurse sought to bar the suspension proceedings. Id. Each of these cases addressed state administrative enforcement proceedings; that is, each originated with the state's proactive enforcement of its laws (horse training regulations, noise ordinances, parking ticket procedures, and licensing laws for the nursing profession). As such, each federal case arose out of situation where the federal plaintiff had engaged in misconduct and sought to block proceedings that would ultimately impose punishment for that misconduct. [8]
Even assuming the unity of the administrative proceeding and the possibility of a subsequent petition for state court judicial review (a proposition we decline to establish), the district court properly abstained in the instant case only if the proceeding before HPF was coercive rather than remedial. In the district court's original decision to abstain, it did not address the distinction between remedial and coercive proceedings. Instead, the court simply cited Huffman for the proposition that  Younger 's exhaustion requirement is well established. Only after Brown sought to have the district court alter or amend its judgment did the court analyze the issue raised by Patsy. Looking to O'Neill, the court recognized that remedial administrative proceedings [are] those brought `to vindicate a wrong which ha[s] been inflicted by the State.' (Citing O'Neill, 32 F.3d at 791 n. 13). Despite this guidance, the court found that the defendant claimed that plaintiff was violating state law by collecting Medicaid benefits for which she was ineligible.... Under Kansas law, the termination of benefits to ineligible recipients is an enforcement mechanism designed to address violations of state Medicaid law. As such, the court held the HPF administrative proceeding was coercive for purposes of Younger because plaintiff initiated her administrative hearing as part of the state's overall law enforcement scheme. The court cautioned that it was a difficult question, and noted that the court's conclusion still left room for some administrative proceedings that would be categorized as remedial. The district court thereby implied that Brown had violated Kansas's Medicaid eligibility law and that the state had, as a consequence, terminated her benefits. The administrative proceedings that followed this decision were, according to the district court, necessarily coercive because they stemmed from Kansas's decision to terminate Brown's benefits. We disagree with this characterization of the HPF proceedings. The district court's standard for distinguishing coercive from remedial proceedings would divorce Younger abstention from its traditional roots. See Huffman, 420 U.S. at 604, 95 S.Ct. 1200 ([W]e deal here with a state proceeding which in important respects is more akin to a criminal prosecution than are most civil cases.). [9] That is, Younger originated in situations where federal involvement would block a state's efforts to enforce its laws. See Kercado-Melendez, 829 F.2d at 260 (Those cases [ Dayton Christian Schools and similar cases] involved claims by plaintiffs that constitutional rights would be violated by virtue of the operation of the state proceedings.). In those situations, [c]omity and federalism concerns are at their highest. Id. Here, however, Brown initiated a challenge to Kansas state action by requesting a hearing before the HPF. Kansas did not mandate that she participate in any such proceedings. Rather, HPF had summarily terminated her benefits, in accordance with Kansas's new law. Brown alleged that the application of this new law to her violates federal law because it contravenes certain terms of the federal-state Medicaid pact. The state proceedings themselves are not the challenged state conduct. Moreover, Brown committed no cognizable bad act that would have precipitated state coercive proceedings. This critical distinction is highlighted by HPF's threat  after Brown had already secured a preliminary injunction from the federal court  to enforce Kansas's new eligibility law against Brown by seeking to recover all Medical Assistance provided to [Brown] from July 1, 2004 to the present. This threatened petition, which HPF claimed it would file in Kansas state court, was styled a Petition for Civil Enforcement. See Kan. Stat. § 77-624(a) (authorizing a Kansas state agency to seek enforcement of its rule and regulation or order by filing a petition for civil enforcement in the district court). Aside from being a transparent attempt to secure a dismissal on Younger grounds and aside from the fact that the record does not reflect that the petition was ever filed, the threat merely highlights the remedial nature of Brown's challenge to HPF's decision to terminate her benefits. Because the type of ongoing proceeding at issue would be remedial, not coercive, we hold that the district court improperly abstained in this case.