Opinion ID: 71212
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: McKUSICK'S AS-APPLIED CHALLENGE AND THE PROPRIETY OF

Text: FEDERAL INJUNCTIVE RELIEF 41 Because the injunction neither purports to bind the world at large nor authorizes arrests without probable cause, McKusick's arguments that the injunction is unconstitutional on its face must fail. However, because McKusick also makes an as-applied challenge to the injunction, the question remains as to whether she is entitled to federal court injunctive relief against application of the state court injunction to her. The crux of McKusick's as-applied challenge is that, regardless of how the injunction should be interpreted, the City has adopted an administrative construction of the injunction that applies it against the world and authorizes arrests without probable cause. She further alleges that she has been threatened with such an arrest. 42 McKusick is not a named party to the injunction and claims not to be acting in concert with any named party. Taking the allegations in her complaint as true, she did nothing but enter the 36-foot buffer zone to read her Bible and pray. Shortly after doing so, she was asked to leave the buffer zone on pain of arrest. So far as the complaint's averments go, the officer did nothing to determine whether McKusick was a named party or acting in concert with a named party; the officer simply stated to McKusick, You are in violation of a court-ordered injunction signed by Judge Robert McGregor by demonstrating within the thirty-six foot buffer zone. Please return to the area outside the thirty-six foot zone. The officer then told McKusick he would arrest her if she did not leave the zone. 43 McKusick fears that, unless she obtains an injunction, she will be arrested and prosecuted if she attempts to read her Bible and pray within the buffer zone. This fear appears to have some foundation, as the City's self-described methodology for enforcing the injunction evidences, see supra Part IV. Moreover, the Appendix to Justice Scalia's dissenting opinion in Madsen indicates that others have been arrested who vigorously disclaim any association with the named parties. See Madsen, 512 U.S. at ---- - ----, 114 S.Ct. at 2550-52 (Scalia, J., dissenting). At oral argument in this Court, counsel for the City indicated that more than 150 people have been arrested for violating the buffer zone. However, counsel further stated that none of those people were later found to be acting independently from the named parties to the injunction. 44 Taking as true the allegations in McKusick's complaint, the City of Melbourne police have arrested or threatened to arrest at least some antiabortion protestors who violate the buffer zone without making much, if any, inquiry into whether the protestors are named parties to the injunction, or acting in concert with named parties, other than examining the content of the protestors' speech. McKusick seeks an order from the federal district court telling the Melbourne police that they must not merely look to the content of a person's buffer zone speech when determining whether probable cause exists to support an arrest. She wants a federal court to instruct the City that its inquiry must, on pain of federal contempt, be more probing than that. In other words, McKusick wants a federal judge to order the City to do its job properly, and to refrain from over-enforcing the injunction against her or anyone else. 45 There are important principles that counsel against issuance of the sort of injunction McKusick seeks. Recently, these principles were ably discussed by the Seventh Circuit in Hoover v. Wagner, 47 F.3d 845 (7th Cir.1995), which involved facts remarkably similar to those in this case. In Hoover, antiabortion activists who were not named parties to a state court injunction brought a federal § 1983 action against a state court judge and a chief of police to challenge the injunction. Like McKusick, the Hoover plaintiffs sought a declaration that the injunction was overbroad. Also like McKusick, the Hoover plaintiffs wanted to enjoin the police from over-enforcing the injunction. Relying on principles of federalism and comity, the Seventh Circuit held that the district court properly refused to issue an injunction and dismissed the case. Writing for the Court, Chief Judge Posner explained: 46 Equitable remedies are powerful, and with power comes responsibility for its careful exercise. These remedies can affect nonparties to the litigation in which they are sought; and when, as in this case, they are sought to be applied to officials of one sovereign by the courts of another, they can impair comity, the mutual respect of sovereigns--a legitimate interest even of such constrained sovereigns as the states and the federal government.... [T]here is not an absolute right to an injunction in a case in which it would impair or affront the sovereign powers or dignity of a state or a foreign nation. 47 ... The relief that the plaintiffs seek is at once an insult to the judicial and law enforcement officials of Wisconsin ... and an empty but potentially mischievous command to these officials to avoid committing any errors in the enforcement of the injunction--and if a plaintiff were erroneously convicted for violating the state court injunction, would that put the prosecutor, the judge, and, if there were a jury, the jury in contempt of the federal injunction? 48 Hoover, 47 F.3d at 850-51 (citations omitted). 49 Like the remedy sought by the Hoover plaintiffs, the remedy McKusick seeks here is potentially mischievous. It is difficult to imagine how the injunction McKusick seeks might usefully be framed. A general injunction against the City to refrain from arresting without probable cause would add nothing to what the law already commands, unless the district court improperly indulged in an advisory opinion instructing the City about what can and cannot constitute a showing of probable cause in such a circumstance. 50 Even if the district court were able to frame the injunction McKusick seeks in a meaningful way, it would be ill-advised to do so, because the federal injunction would pave the way for virtually every individual held in contempt of the state court injunction to argue, on a case-by-case basis in federal court, that the City had violated the federal injunction by failing to make a sufficient probable cause determination prior to arrest, or had simply reached the wrong conclusion about it. This arrangement would thrust the federal court into an unseemly, repetitive, quasi-systematic, supervisory role over administration of the state court injunction, and it would disrupt the normal course of proceedings in the state courts via resort to the federal suit for determination of the claim ab initio, O'Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 501, 94 S.Ct. 669, 679, 38 L.Ed.2d 674 (1974). A federal court injunction in this case would be of the intrusive and unworkable variety condemned by the Supreme Court in O'Shea, 414 U.S. at 500, 94 S.Ct. at 678. In such a circumstance, principles of federalism and comity dictate that the federal court stay its hand. See Growe v. Emison, 507 U.S. 25, 32, 113 S.Ct. 1075, 1080, 122 L.Ed.2d 388 (1993) (noting that, in some circumstances, principles of federalism and comity dictate abstention). Under these circumstances, the district court certainly did not abuse its discretion by declining to arrogate to itself the role of overseer of the enforcement of a state court injunction. 51 Although principles of federalism and comity counsel otherwise, McKusick contends that she was nonetheless entitled to an injunction. She points to Machesky v. Bizzell, 414 F.2d 283 (5th Cir.1969), in support of that contention. In Machesky, persons who desired to picket in certain public areas of Greenwood, Mississippi brought an action in federal court to challenge a state court injunction that prohibited all such picketing. The plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief against enforcement of the state court injunction. Id. at 284. The district court denied relief and dismissed the complaint, holding that the action was barred by the Anti-Injunction Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2283. Id. On appeal, this Court reversed. We held that although the Anti-Injunction Act is grounded in principles of comity, [w]here ... the institutional interests in comity collide[ ] with the paramount institutional interests protected by the First Amendment, comity must yield. Id. at 291. Because the state court injunction at issue was facially overbroad, we remanded for the district court to consider granting injunctive relief. Id. 52 Assuming for present purposes that it has survived O'Shea, the Machesky decision is distinguishable from this case. The propriety of federal equitable relief in Machesky was premised on the presence of a facially overbroad injunction. As we explained in that case: 53 The right to [demonstrate] is not absolute. It must be asserted within the limits of not unreasonably interfering with the rights of others to use the sidewalks and streets, to have access to store entrances, and where conducted in such manner as not to deprive the public of police and fire protection. These interests can, of course, be protected by state injunctions narrowly drawn. The injunction here, however, has not struck such a balance. It prohibits all picketing in the designated business areas of Greenwood, for whatever purpose and in whatever manner carried out. This overshoots the mark.... 54 .... 55 We hold that the state court injunction here is unconstitutionally overbroad in that it lumps the protected with the unprotected in such a way as to abridge important public interests in the full dissemination of public expression on public issues. 56 Id. at 290-91 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Here, as we have explained in Part V of this opinion, we are not faced with a facially overbroad injunction. Instead, we are faced with a facially valid injunction and a plaintiff who seeks a federal court order prohibiting its over-enforcement. 6 In such a circumstance, private interests in obtaining a preemptive strike against overenthusiastic enforcement of a facially valid injunctive order must yield to the institutional interests of federalism and comity. We note that if McKusick should ever be wrongfully arrested or punished for the exercise of her First Amendment rights, she will have remedies through which to vindicate those rights. For example, any future claims for damages that McKusick might bring for an arrest without probable cause would not be subject to dismissal under the abstention principles governing her present claim for equitable relief. See, e.g., Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co., --- U.S. ----, ---- - ----, 116 S.Ct. 1712, 1720-23, 135 L.Ed.2d 1 (1996).