Court Opinion

ID: 9476552
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:58:39.193326+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:22.728775
License: Public Domain

KEITH, Circuit Judge,
dissenting, joined by NATHANIEL R. JONES, Circuit Judge.
In this case, the majority exalts a state waiver provision above a plaintiff’s right to seek relief for unconstitutional acts, rewards a litigant’s diligent pursuit of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 remedies with total exclusion from a state or federal forum and characterizes the effect of its holding in terms of a simple contractual metaphor, as if Constitutional rights are bushels of wheat and the Constitution itself the Restatement (Second) of Contracts. I dissent.
Section 1983 permits an aggrieved citizen to seek relief in court for the unconstitutional acts of state or local government officials acting under color of state law. A cause of action under § 1983 is therefore not like a breach of contract action. The *959latter seeks a remedy for the violation of a contract between two discrete parties. The former, however, is predicated on a compact that does nothing less than allocate power between the government and the governed. Limitations by the government on a citizen’s access to § 1983 relief must therefore be carefully scrutinized, since, by the very nature of a § 1983 action, the government is an interested party and the interests affected are of constitutional magnitude. The majority opinion fails to recognize this point. It subordinates the exercise of § 1983 relief for the “deprivation of any right, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws” to the operation of a state claims waiver provision. In so doing, the majority deprives Ms. Leaman of any forum for her claims and does violence to the supremacy of federal law.
When courts are faced with the resolution of an inconsistency between state and federal law, the policies behind the federal law must be taken into account. The crucial question “is whether the application of state law would be inconsistent with the federal policy.” Robertson v. Wegmann, 436 U.S. 584, 590, 98 S.Ct. 1991, 1995, 56 L.Ed.2d 554 (1978) (emphasis added) (quoting Johnson v. Railway Express Agency, Inc., 421 U.S. 454, 95 S.Ct. 1716, 44 L.Ed.2d 295 (1975)). Such an analysis is particularly important when the application involves the waiver of federal rights, i.e., the right to file suit under § 1983. Town of Newton v. Rumery, — U.S. -, -, 107 S.Ct. 1187, 1192, 94 L.Ed.2d 405 (1987) reversing and remanding 778 F.2d 66 (1st Cir.1985); Robertson v. Wegmann; McGautha v. California, 402 U.S. 183, 91 S.Ct. 1454, 28 L.Ed.2d 711 (1971); Rosa v. Cantrell, 705 F.2d 1208 (10th Cir.1982).
In our analysis, therefore, the “purport” of the Ohio statute should not be at issue. We should not be concerned with the reasonableness of the waiver provision or the appropriateness of the Ohio state legislature’s judgment on waiver of sovereign immunity. Rather, we should focus on the provision’s “application in the face of a claim of civil rights guaranteed [the plaintiff] by federal law” Robertson, 436 U.S. at 600, 98 S.Ct. at 2000 (Blackmun, J. dissenting). Our analysis should balance the policies behind the federal law against the application, in this specific case, of the waiver provision.
With regard to Ms. Leaman, the most important policies underlying § 1983 include compensation of persons injured by deprivation of federal rights and prevention of abuses of power by those acting under color of state law. Robertson, 436 U.S. at 591, 98 S.Ct. at 1995. Neither is furthered by the operation of Ohio’s waiver provision. Ms. Leaman cannot be compensated because she no longer has a forum to pursue her constitutional claims, as a result of the district court’s dismissal. She is being whipsawed, in effect, between the district court’s dismissal and the Ohio waiver provision. Nor are Ohio state officials prevented or deterred from abusing state authority in violation of the Constitution. The operation of the waiver provision, as construed by the majority, effectively insulates those officials from the reach of any § 1983 claim, including Ms. Leaman’s, whenever a suit is filed in the Ohio Court of Claims.
These results cannot be those envisioned by Congress when it constructed the “broad sweep” of § 1983 and its companion civil rights statutues. See Griffin v. Breckenridge, 403 U.S. 88, 91 S.Ct. 1790, 29 L.Ed.2d 338 (1971). The majority’s analysis invites such mistaken outcomes, however, when it justifies the denial of the § 1983 remedy on the ground that Ms. Leaman “exchanged” the remedy for the right to sue the State of Ohio in its Court of. Claims. Constitutional rights and their federal law remedies cannot be bartered or “exchanged”, like so many bushels of wheat for so many dollars. Rather, they must be carefully scrutinized on a case-by-case basis. Such close scrutiny will insure that the fundamental values which the rights and remedies protect are not harmed by the unwise operation of a state’s law. Most importantly, our highest function as judges is to uphold the Constitution. I cannot comprehend how that function is fulfilled when the very statute which per*960mits the enforcement of Constitutional rights rises and falls on the contractual principle of accord and satisfaction.
The majority’s opinion is part and parcel of an unwise tendency on this Court to narrow the § 1983 remedy to the point of nullity. We have held that § 1983 relief is not available for the deprivation of liberty or of property. See Wilson v. Beebe, 770 F.2d 578 (6th Cir.1985) (Keith, J. dissenting in part, concurring in part). Now we find § 1983 relief to be conditioned on the operation of a state waiver provision. If this Circuit continues to follow the path it has started upon, there will be nothing left to § 1983. We will have stripped § 1983 of its basic fibre and meaning. That outcome may be comforting to some, but it is anathema to anyone who holds Constitutional rights dear. Hopefully, a higher and wiser court will correct the majority's decision.