Court Opinion

ID: 9449803
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:23:43.510891+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:59.826113
License: Public Domain

JONES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
With some of the Court’s opinion I am in disagreement. Some of the Court’s opinion I do not understand.
The Court’s opinion, as I read it, decides that the refusal to give Mrs. Horns-by a liquor license is not legislative, but adjudicative and therefore judicial. These statements are not essential to the decision and may be misleading in the consideration of some future case.
I see no necessity of extending federal civil rights jurisdiction to the review of state administrative decisions where it is asserted that irreparable injury has resulted from arbitrary action of a state administrative agency in violation of due process and declaratory and injunctive relief is sought. In such cases federal jurisdiction seems to be established without any civil rights controversy. 3 Davis, Administrative Law Treatise 310 et seq. § 23.05.
The Court directs the district court, upon finding that the allegations of the complaint are true, to “enjoin the denial of licenses under the prevailing system and until a legal standard is established and procedural due process provided.” This is not a class action, and if the Court is going to prescribe the remedy that the district court shall grant, might it not be just as well to confine the relief to the appellant who seems to be the only person now complaining?
It is not clear to me why the Court does not direct the district court, if it must give directions, to enjoin the issuance or renewal of licenses until standards are established and procedures provided. This sort of a directive would, so I think, be better than the one which the Court has adopted. The order directed by the Court will, I fear, open the door to a flood of applications for licenses, none of which the appellees, under this decision, will be permitted to deny.