Opinion ID: 792900
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Comity and the repugnance of unconstitutional injunctions

Text: 191 We do not agree with the majority's professed uncertainties as to whether a California court, under principles of comity, would be inclined to enforce a foreign court order that infringes upon a U.S. corporation's First Amendment rights. The repugnancy standard the majority invokes is easily satisfied here. California's case law and its federal underpinnings tell us to honor foreign court judgments unless they prejudice the rights of United States citizens or violate domestic public policy. In re Stephanie M., 7 Cal.4th 295, 27 Cal.Rptr.2d 595, 867 P.2d 706, 716 (1994) (citing Hilton v. Guyot, 159 U.S. 113, 202-03, 16 S.Ct. 139, 40 L.Ed. 95 (1895); and Victrix S.S. Co. v. Salen Dry Cargo A.B., 825 F.2d 709, 713 (2d Cir.1987)). The French orders on their face — and by putting Yahoo! at risk of substantial penalties — violate the First Amendment and are plainly contrary to one of America's, and by extension California's, most cherished public policies. 4 In short, they constitute a foreign judgment that is repugnant to public policy. (Op. at 1215.) 192 The district court considered the role of comity but ultimately found that it was outweighed by U.S. constitutional freedoms. Although France has the sovereign right to regulate what speech is permissible in France, this Court may not enforce a foreign order that violates the protections of the United States Constitution by chilling protected speech that occurs simultaneously within our borders. Yahoo II, 169 F.Supp.2d at 1192. This finding does not mean that every foreign court judgment implicating speech in the United States would be deemed repugnant to American public policy and therefore unenforceable, but this particular judgment is so vague and overbroad that it fails the repugnancy analysis. Significantly, the defendants do not argue to us that the French injunction comports with the First Amendment. Indeed, they did not even appeal the district court's ultimate finding that the orders are unconstitutional. 193 The majority goes to great lengths to avoid labeling a prior restraint on speech — overbroad and vague by its terms — as repugnant to public policy and is content to leave in place foreign court orders that so obviously violate the First Amendment. (Op. at 1215.) In reaching this result, the majority has succumbed to an error of logic. It has conflated foreign orders that are somewhat inconsistent with U.S. law with those that violate U.S. law. It is one thing for U.S. courts to pass on foreign attorney's fees larger than what domestic laws would award, see In re Hashim, 213 F.3d 1169, 1172 (9th Cir.2000), or to recognize a judgment pursuant to a foreign statute of limitations longer than that of its domestic analogue, see Milhoux v. Linder, 902 P.2d 856, 861-62 (Colo.Ct.App.1995). It is quite another to imply, as the majority does, that a violation of the U.S. Constitution is no different from any other [i]nconsistency with American law, which the majority claims is not necessarily enough to prevent recognition and enforcement of a foreign judgment in the United States. (Op. at 1215.) 194 Neither In re Hashim nor Milhoux implicated federal or state constitutional rights. Indeed, both cases held that the foreign judgments being challenged were not repugnant to the public policy of either Arizona or Colorado, respectively. Where a foreign judgment was held to be repugnant to California's public policy, the repugnancy was based on the violation of California's Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act that would have resulted had the foreign order been enforced. See In re Stephanie M., 27 Cal.Rptr.2d 595, 867 P.2d at 716. The majority provides no explanation why the California courts would refuse to enforce a foreign judgment that violated a state statute, yet be willing to enforce a foreign judgment that violates the federal (and perhaps the state) Constitution. 195 The majority's dictum implying that foreign judgments that would be unconstitutional if entered by a U.S. court may nonetheless be enforceable is troubling. Under the principles articulated today, a foreign party can use a foreign court decree to censor free speech here in the United States on any range of subjects it finds objectionable — religion, democracy, gender equality — in the name of enforcing its own country's laws. The good intentions of even sympathetic foreign parties such as LICRA and UEJF in this case are not the standard. How could a California court honor the French defendants' good intentions in proscribing pro-Nazi speech when the City of St. Paul's good intentions did not cure its anti-hate speech code of viewpoint discrimination and constitutional infirmity even when directed at cross-burnings? See R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377, 392, 112 S.Ct. 2538, 120 L.Ed.2d 305 (1992) (St. Paul has no such authority to license one side of a debate to fight freestyle, while requiring the other to follow Marquis of Queensberry rules.); see also Collin v. Smith, 578 F.2d 1197, 1201 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 916, 99 S.Ct. 291, 58 L.Ed.2d 264 (1978) (striking down on First Amendment grounds several Skokie, Illinois ordinances prohibiting the National Socialist Party of America from marching through the town: First Amendment rights are truly precious and fundamental to our national life. . . . It is, after all, in part the fact that our constitutional system protects minorities unpopular at a particular time or place from governmental harassment and intimidation, that distinguishes life in this country from life under the Third Reich.) 196 People in the United States and France should abhor anti-Semitism and the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi Party. Nonetheless, our constitutional law differs from French jurisprudence in our approach to hate speech. Our law reflects deeply held political beliefs about freedom of expression in this country. Borrowing Justice Brandeis's formulation, the remedy to be applied [to expose falsehood and fallacies] is more speech, not enforced silence. Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 377, 47 S.Ct. 641, 71 L.Ed. 1095 (1927) (Brandeis, J., concurring).