Opinion ID: 201338
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Relationship between interlocutory review and Gibson

Text: 39 Esso contends that judicial review of an interlocutory agency decision is also insufficient to ameliorate the constitutional injury of appearing before a biased adjudicator. We believe that this claim misreads Gibson and is inconsistent with the principles of comity underlying our abstention doctrine. 40 As we have discussed, the Supreme Court held in Gibson that a federal injunction was appropriate where the state proceedings were administered by an agency incompetent by reason of bias to adjudicate the issues pending before it.... Nor, in these circumstances, would a different result be required simply because judicial review, de novo or otherwise, would be forthcoming at the conclusion of the administrative proceedings. 411 U.S. at 577, 93 S.Ct. 1689. Esso notes that the Court reached this decision without addressing the defendant's argument that the petitioner could obtain interlocutory relief through a state mandamus procedure for challenging biased adjudicators. Esso reasons that in permitting an injunction, the Court implicitly ruled that the federal courts may intervene despite the availability of interlocutory relief. 41 Such a broad reading of Gibson is unwarranted. The Court may have rejected the defendant's argument because of factors specific to the case or the nature of the interlocutory review available. In fact, the Court's explicit statement that federal intervention was proper regardless of the availability of judicial review at the conclusion of the administrative proceedings, 411 U.S. at 577, 93 S.Ct. 1689, without referring to interlocutory review, arguably means that the availability of interlocutory review would be grounds for Younger abstention in some cases. 42 Also, the rule that Esso urges would run directly counter to the respect for state judicial systems at the heart of Younger abstention. There is no reason to assume that, given the opportunity to review an interlocutory decision by the EQB, the courts of Puerto Rico will not protect Esso's due process right to an unbiased adjudicator as vigorously and expeditiously as would a federal court. See Middlesex County Ethics Comm., 457 U.S. at 431, 102 S.Ct. 2515 ([R]espect for the state processes, of course, precludes any presumption that the state courts will not safeguard federal constitutional rights.). Thus, we see no reason to intervene here if Esso has access to timely interlocutory state judicial review of its constitutional claim. 43