Court Opinion

ID: 9489490
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:17:07.627938+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:33.729262
License: Public Domain

ROGERS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
Because I find no novel question of law as would pose an obstacle to the district court’s exercise of supplemental jurisdiction over the prisoners’ request for injunctive relief from violations of D.C.Code § 24^442, I dissent from Part II A of the court’s opinion. Further, because I conclude that the court’s equal protection analysis is flawed, I would affirm the district court’s ruling that the prisoners were denied their Fifth Amendment right to due process by the District of Columbia’s giving them unequal access to a variety of programs on the basis of their sex, and therefore dissent from Part II B of the court’s opinion.1 In other respects I concur in the court’s opinion.
I.
On the basis of its identification of a novel question of District of Columbia law, the court concludes that the district court abused its discretion in rejecting the District’s invitation to decline jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c) over the prisoners’ claims arising under D.C.Code § 24-224. While I join the court’s account of the general structure of the law of supplemental jurisdiction, Op. at 920-21, and I agree that the district court “clearly had the power” to hear the prisoners’ claims arising under D.C.Code § 24-442, Op. at 921, I do not agree that an intolerable novel issue posed an obstacle to the court’s exercise of jurisdiction. In the terms of the supplemental jurisdiction statute, the prisoners’ local-law claims did not raise novel or complex issues of local law; nor did this case present exceptional circumstances in which there were compelling rea*947sons to decline jurisdiction. 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c) (1, 4) (1994).
Of course, there is some degree of novelty in applying even the hoariest of legal rules to the facts presented in each new case; there is obviously a greater degree of novelty in construing an ambiguous phrase in a newly enacted statute. The question a district court must ask about a local-law claim under § 1367(c)(1), therefore, is not, “Is it novel?” but, “How novel is it?” The reason for asking this question is obvious: the more novel a local-law issue is, the more likely the federal court is to get it wrong, in the sense of deciding the issue differently from how a local court would have decided it. See United Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 726, 86 S.Ct. 1130, 1139, 16 L.Ed.2d 218 (1966) (endorsing discretionary dismissal of pendent state-law claims in order to “proeur[e] for [the parties] a surer-footed reading of applicable law”). The question of “novelty” is really a question of uncertainty; the issue is how predictable the decision of the local courts would be in light of existing local-law authorities.2 Thus, the appropriate framework for deciding the instant appeal is the standard described in Financial Gen. Bankshares, Inc. v. Metzger, 680 F.2d 768, 776 (D.C.Cir.1982): “the degree of uncertainty in state law is one of several factors that should guide the District Court’s discretion,” albeit a factor that “should be given considerable weight.”
In light of the appropriate standard, this case differs from those relied on by the court. The local-law issues raised by the prisoners’ claims are simply not novel. The sole local-law issue cited by the court as “novel” — whether local trial court has the power to impose injunctions when ongoing and systemic violations of a statutorily imposed duty of care have been proved and all of the usual conditions for granting injunctive relief have been met, Op. at 923 — is considerably further toward the “certain” end of the continuum than are issues presented by cases such as Financial General and Doe v. Board on Prof. Resp. of the D.C. Ct. of Appeals, 717 F.2d 1424 (D.C.Cir.1983) (per curiam). The issue in the instant case is whether the familiar general power of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia to award equitable relief, D.C.Code § 11-921(a), can be applied to a statute whose substantive content has been explicated by several authoritative decisions of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. See Op. at 921 (collecting local eases). By contrast to this question of institutional power, the courts in Financial General and Doe were faced with questions concerning regulations and causes of action that had never been addressed by the local courts at all.3 In Financial General, the district court was faulted for deciding a number of difficult questions involving an attorney’s duties in complex corporate transactions when “[n]o court of the District of Columbia has provided any guidance regarding the standards defining an attorney’s fiduciary duties, the construction of the conflict of interest provisions of the Code of Professional Responsibility, or the remedies for breach.” 680 F.2d at 769. Moreover, the district court abused its discretion by reaching out to decide these questions when all of the federal claims on which original jurisdiction was founded had been dismissed, a factor that is not present in the instant case. Id. at 769, 776. As for Doe, this court characterized the local-law issues as “[w]hether the Board on Professional Responsibility may subpoena records necessary to performance of its regulatory mandate and what construction to give to Court of Appeals *948regulations governing the Board’s exercise of its asserted subpoena power-” 717 F.2d at 1428. Doe thus involved the construction of the grant of authority to a particular local entity, a question that could not be answered with any certainty without a local decision on the subject. Both Financial General and Doe stand in contrast to the purportedly “novel” issue raised by the prisoners, which is whether well-settled remedies rules of general applicability should be applied to then-case.
Nor can there be any doubt that the law of remedies is well-settled in the District of Columbia. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has repeatedly held that the local trial court enjoys broad equitable jurisdiction pursuant to D.C.Code § ll-921(a). Hessey v. Burden, 615 A.2d 562, 571 (D.C.1992) (collecting cases); McIntosh v. Washington, 395 A.2d 744, 748-49 (D.C.1978). The standards governing the exercise of equitable powers are also well-defined. Ifill v. District of Columbia, 665 A.2d 185, 187-88 (D.C.1995). Finally, the use of those powers to effect institutional change in a variety of local governmental departments and agencies is almost a commonplace in this jurisdiction,4 as it is in state courts5 throughout the Nation. See DAN B. Dobbs, Law of Remedies § 7.4(4) (2d ed.1993) (describing prevalence of structural injunctions in civil rights cases, including prison reform litigation). Whatever other objections might be raised to the district court’s enforcement of local law in this case, therefore, it cannot be said that the court’s action was novel. See Campbell v. McGruder, 416 F.Supp. 100, 105 (D.D.C.1975) (for constitutional violation, imposing mandatory injunction that in part required local agencies to remedy violations of local fire, building, housing, health, and food regulations at D.C. Jail); Campbell v. McGruder, 580 F.2d 521, 544 n. 47 (D.C.Cir.1978) (noting that no appeal had been taken from that portion of the injunction).6
The court raises three arguments in support of its conclusion that the district court abused its discretion by entertaining local-law claims that were within its jurisdiction. First, the court notes that injunctions were “never regarded as relief of first resort,” cites the ancient rule that equitable relief will not lie if plaintiff has an adequate remedy at law, and points out that “a variety of factors, including the public interest, may weigh against the award of an injunction.” Op. at 922. With respect, none of this has anything *949to do with novelty. Quite the opposite, in fact: the rules cited by the court were formulated by the Chancellor long before the District of Columbia even existed. See Dobbs, supra, at § 2.5 (reviewing history of equitable requirement of no adequate remedy at law). If the district court was too hasty in awarding equitable relief, that would be an error on the merits of the prisoners’ claims having nothing to do with the question whether the claims should have been entertained in the first place. The mistake would be a misapplication of well-settled law, rather than a failure to predict the future development of an unsettled issue in the local courts.
The court’s second point is that “we can find no case in which a D.C. court has awarded injunctive relief under section 24-442.”7 Op. at 922. The theory is that the local courts might classify § 24-442 among causes of action that apply “ordinary tort principles,” rather than among those that permit equitable relief. Id. at 921. There is no reason, however, to suppose that the local courts would embrace the dichotomy invented by this court, because the availability of equitable relief is an ordinary principle of tort law, assuming that the conditions for such relief have been met. Restatement (second) of ToRTS § 936 (1979). This is no less true simply because the prisoners’ cause of action arises from a statute.8
[Although we examine the text and history of a statute to determine whether Congress intended to create a right of action ... we presume the availability of all appropriate remedies unless Congress has expressly indicated otherwise. This principle has deep roots in our jurisprudence.
Franklin v. Gwinnett County Pub. Schools, 503 U.S. 60, 66, 112 S.Ct. 1028, 1032, 117 L.Ed.2d 208 (1992). Ordinarily, of course, the remedy for an isolated violation of a duty of care is money damages. Here, however, the plaintiffs alleged persistent violations that threatened ongoing harm to them and prayed for injunctive relief pursuant to local law, cf. Grano, 733 F.2d at 169. An injunction is the “appropriate” remedy when such claims are proven.9
*950The court’s holding thus resolves to this: it is intolerably novel for a district court to assume that remedies generally applicable to persistent institutional violations of duties of care will apply to such violations of a particular duty of care until the local courts so apply it — even when there is no local authority remotely suggesting that the general rule would not apply. That cannot be the law. As noted, the application of a well-settled general rule to a current case always presents some degree of novelty. It is the exception, however, for the district court to decline to exercise supplemental jurisdiction, see 13B ChaRles Alan Wright et al„ Federal Practice AND Procedure § 3567.3 & n.17 (Supp. 1996), and therefore the application of a general rule in the context of a particular case must be fairly uncertain before a local-law claim may be dismissed. To say that the local-law claims in this case not only may but must be dismissed is to suggest that it is the exercise of supplemental jurisdiction that is the exception.
The court turns finally to another paragraph of § 1367, asserting that the “intrusiveness” of the remedy is “[anjother compelling reason[ ] for declining jurisdiction.” Op. at 923 (citing 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(4)). Again, the court confuses the question whether the district court was correct on the merits with the question whether the claims should have been heard at all. If the remedy is too intrusive, contains overly “detailed marching orders,” Op. at 923, or is not sufficiently connected to proven violations of the District’s duties, then this court should vacate erroneous portions of the order, rather than permitting the District to continue illegally inflicting injuries on the prisoners by dismissing the claims altogether.10
The court expands the scope of § 1367(c)(4) to cover ground that is already treated by other doctrines. Section 1367(c)(4) is a catch-all provision; it permits the district court to recognize situations unforeseen by the drafters in which it is appropriate to decline jurisdiction. By using such words as “exceptional” and “compelling,” however, Congress indicated that invocations of § 1367(c)(4) should be rare. Executive Software N. Amer., Inc. v. United States Dist. Ct., 24 F.3d 1545, 1558 (9th Cir.1994). In particular, there is no “compelling” reason to decline jurisdiction where other doctrines exist to protect the interests purportedly supporting dismissal. The Supreme Court cases cited by the court that require caution in deciding when to impose a structural injunction and further caution in fashioning such an injunction, for example, create a doctrine of remedies that protects states and localities from overly intrusive and far-reaching federal oversight of local institutions. Op. at 919-20 (citing, inter alia, Lewis v. Casey, — U.S. -, 116 S.Ct. 2174, 135 L.Ed.2d 606 (1996)). Abstention doctrines also recognize the important interests of states in retaining control of complex matters of local administration. E.g., Burford v. Sun Oil Co., 319 U.S. 315, 317-18, 63 S.Ct. 1098, 1098-1100, 87 L.Ed. 1424 (1943); Louisiana Power & Light Co. v. Thibodaux, 360 U.S. 25, 29, 79 S.Ct. 1070, 1073, 3 L.Ed.2d 1058 (1959). There is no occasion to depart from the carefully delineated boundaries of these doctrines by invoking the very general language of § 1367(e)(4).
The federal courts have an obligation to resolve claims falling within their jurisdiction.11 Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co., — U.S. -, -, 116 S.Ct. 1712, 1720, 135 L.Ed.2d 1 (1996). In a few cases, there are good reasons for declining to do so. Id. at -, 116 S.Ct. at 1720-21. This is *951not one of them. The prisoners’ claims present a garden-variety prayer for injunctive relief that raises only limited uncertainty in the application of local law. Further, the district court’s power to grant broad relief for local-law violations is adequately circumscribed — as it is with respect to federal violations — by the doctrines governing equitable relief in institutional reform litigation. Accordingly, as the court has done with other portions of the order, I would remand ¶¶ 20-34, 36-62,131-32, and 133-36 of the order so that the district court might consider the effect of any changed factual circumstances and the intervening passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Pub.L. No. 104-134, §§ 801-02 (1996).
II.
The court’s equal protection analysis is also flawed. Two people commit the same crime. Each is similarly convicted by a District of Columbia court. In all respects— criminal history, family circumstances, education, drug use, favorite baseball team— they are identical. All save one, that is: they are of different sexes. Solely because of that difference, they are sent to different facilities at which the man enjoys superior programming options. Rather than examine whether the District can justify its separate and unequal treatment of the sexes, however, the court concludes that concludes that equal protection principles do not even apply: these two identical prisoners are not “similarly situated.” Op. at 923-25.
Not surprisingly, there are flaws in an analysis that concludes that identical people are not similar. The court errs because it starts in the middle, rather than at the beginning. The District consigns similarly situated men and women to separate facilities having different characteristics, acting expressly on the basis of their sex. The court relies on the different characteristics of the facilities to conclude that the otherwise identical men and women incarcerated therein are not similarly situated, and on that basis holds that there can be no judicial eompari-son of the differences in the treatment accorded to them. The anomalous result is that the more unequal the men’s and women’s prisons are, the less likely it is that this court will consider differences in the prison experiences of men and women unconstitutional. Indeed, by maintaining drastically unequal prisons for the two sexes, the government could foreclose any comparison of the rehabilitative programs it provides for the benefit of men and women. This analysis stands the concept of equal protection on its head. The District may not treat men and women dissimilarly and then rely on the very dissimilarity it has created to justify discrimination in the provision of benefits. I therefore dissent from Part II B of the court’s opinion.
A.
Proper analysis starts from a feature of the District’s prisons that has not been challenged: the physical separation of male and female prisoners.. Because the prisoners have not challenged sex segregation, the court must assume that such segregation is lawful: in other words, that this facial sex-based classification “serves important governmental objectives and ... the discriminatory means employed are substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.” United States v. Virginia, — U.S. -, -, 116 S.Ct. 2264, 2271, 135 L.Ed.2d 735 (1996) (“VMF) (quoting Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718, 724, 102 S.Ct. 3331, 3336, 73 L.Ed.2d 1090 (1982)).12 What should not be assumed, however, is the propriety of the very practice challenged by the prisoners. Even if the District may properly segregate prisoners by sex, it does not follow that it may segregate them by sex into unequal facilities. Put in doctrinal terms, the “important governmental objectives” served by the physical separation of the sexes are not necessarily served by providing different benefits to the segregated populations. Thus, to justify depriving women of the programming choices available to men, the District must explain how the depri*952vation substantially relates to the achievement of an important governmental objective.13 Pitts v. Thornburgh, 866 F.2d 1450, 1453-55 (D.C.Cir.1989); West v. Virginia Dep’t of Corrections, 847 F.Supp. 402, 406 (W.D.Va.1994).
The court relieves the District of its constitutional obligation by ignoring how the prisoners came to be segregated. Referring instead to the size, location, and other “physical limitations” of the women’s prison facilities, the court concludes that women who inhabit those facilities are not similarly situated to otherwise identical men who are incarcerated elsewhere. Because the District places men and women into physically different facilities on the basis of sex, however, the court’s argument that differences in the facilities justify the inferior treatment accorded to women is “notably circular.” VMI, — U.S. at-, 116 S.Ct. at 2281.
[T]he State avoids the fact that all State female felons are sent to Huron Valley while all male felons are not confined in a facility of comparable limitations. In this context, “institutional size” is, frankly, not a justification but an excuse for the kind of treatment afforded women prisoners.
Glover v. Johnson, 478 F.Supp. 1075, 1078 (E.D.Mich.1979). Under the court’s rationale, it would almost seem that the District could send men to a country club and women to the Black Hole of Calcutta; a difference in treatment the women received there would be ascribed to their dissimilar situation and would require no further justification. Less fancifully perhaps, the District could provide only stereotypically feminine programming at the women’s prisons, such as cooking and sewing classes, while providing men with training in stereotypically masculine pursuits such as construction and carpentry.14 Or the District could simply cease providing any programming at all at the women’s prisons. See West, 847 F.Supp. at 407. In any of these cases, the court apparently would not examine the differences in treatment accorded to men and women. The court’s holding that male and female prisoners are dissimi-larly situated would preclude constitutional comparison of programming no matter how vast the differences in programming were.
This is not to suggest that population size is completely irrelevant to equal protection analysis. Because women comprise a fairly small (but rising) percentage of felons, it is not reasonable to expect that the menu of programs at a women’s prison will be exactly the same as that at a men’s prison. This, however, is properly accounted for in determining whether the benefits afforded to women are substantially equivalent to those afforded to men. The court errs by using different population sizes to avoid making a comparison at all. Nor does a “per inmate” numerical comparison suffice. See Op. at 925. As the district court recognized, the programs available to men are often different in kind, not only in number, from those available to women.15
*953The constitutional guarantee as well as Supreme Court doctrine require that when the government confines people and segregates them by sex, it has a duty to justify not only the fact of segregation but also any differences in the facilities into which men and women are segregated.16 Therefore, even if the District may constitutionally segregate prisoners by sex, it does not thereby gain the right to treat men and women differently in other respects. Rather, differences in post-segregation treatment — like any other sex-based provision of governmental benefits and burdens — must meet the heightened scrutiny test outlined in VMI. If a difference in programming were inherent in the fact of sex-segregated prisons, for example, then the same governmental interest that supports sex segregation might support the programming difference.17 If it were reasonably feasible to have identical programming in sex-segregated facilities, however, then any differences would not be substantially related to the objectives justifying segregation, and the District would have to justify the difference on some other ground.
The Supreme Court’s sex discrimination cases make it clear that the government may not rely on generalizations — even somewhat accurate ones — about women to justify different treatment of the sexes. VMI, — U.S. at -, 116 S.Ct. at 2280; J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 U.S. 127,-n. 11, 114 S.Ct. 1419, 1427 n. 11, 128 L.Ed.2d 89 (1994). Yet that is what the court permits the District to do, in the guise of requiring the district court to consider “special characteristics” of the male and female prison populations as a whole. For an idea of what “special characteristics” might be, the district court should presumably have consulted the opinion in Pargo v. Elliott, 894 F.Supp. 1243 (S.D.Iowa 1995), cited with evident approval by this court. Op. at 924. Pargo noted the following programs devoted to the “special characteristics” of the female prison population in Iowa: “[pjrograms about domestic violence, prostitution, and incest survivors”; “a family preservation program” apparently devoted to the needs of prisoners who had been custodial parents; “counseling for postpartum depression”; “classes in anger management and self-esteem”; and unspecified programs for inmates with eating disorders. 894 F.Supp. at 1261. Assuming that the “special characteristics” identified by Pargo are more common among women than men, it is unclear why that fact should prohibit a particular woman from choosing to work on a carpentry detail over receiving counseling for post-partum depression.18 “[Ejstimates of what is appropriate for most women[] no longer justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description.” VMI, — U.S. at -, 116 S.Ct. at 2284.
What the Constitution commands, rather, is that the District address directly the differences among individuals that pertain to the purposes of its prison programs, rather than using sex as a proxy for such differences. If, for example, the purposes of prison programs would be served by providing special programs for prisoners with substance abuse problems, the District could offer such programs to drug-addicted prisoners of both sexes. It would not be permissible, however, for the District to presume that women as a group were more likely to have such problems and therefore offer drug-related programming only at women’s facili*954ties.19 The court’s similarly-situated analysis encourages the District to take such impermissible actions. ' By immunizing the District from any comparison of programming at men’s and women’s prisons, the court’s decision may result in having more “woman-appropriate” programming at the women’s facilities. Subjecting programming choices to appropriate equal protection analysis ensures that the District meets its constitutional obligation to give equal opportunities to male and female individuals. The court errs by exempting from comparison the benefits the District provides to men and women prisoners, and thus exempting the District from having to justify its different treatment of the sexes.
B.
Aside from treating the government-imposed segregation of the sexes into different facilities as if were sui generis and of no constitutional importance, the court also misconceives what it means for persons to be “similarly situated” for purposes of equal protection analysis. Whether two people (or classes of people) treated differently by the government are similarly situated depends on the purpose for which the government is acting. Cf. Klinger v. Department of Corrections, 31 F.3d 727, 734-35 (8th Cir.1994) (McMillian, J., dissenting) (noting that men and women are imprisoned for the same purpose and are similarly situated “with respect to the goal of rehabilitation”); Glover, 478 F.Supp. at 1081-83 (considering goals.of incarceration and programming). In Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57, 101 S.Ct. 2646, 69 L.Ed.2d 478 (1981), for example, the Supreme Court concluded that men and women were not similarly situated with respect to the purpose of Selective Service registration.
The purpose of registration was to prepare for a draft of combat troops.... [Wjomen are excluded from combat.... Men and women, because of the combat restrictions on women, are simply not similarly situated for purposes of a draft or a registration for a draft.... The exemption of women from registration is not only sufficiently but also closely related to Congress’ purpose in authorizing registration.
Id. at 77-79, 101 S.Ct. at 2658-59 (emphasis added). In contrast, the court repeatedly states that men and women prisoners are not similarly situated without ever mentioning the purpose with respect to which they are dissimilarly situated.20 It is thus unsurprising that the court fixates on such irrelevancies as the size of the various facilities, which have everything to do with the cost of administering programs and nothing to do with determining which inmates are similarly capable of benefiting from them.21 Notably, this was not an error into which the district court fell. See, e.g., Women Prisoners I, 877 F.Supp. at 675 (finding women at the Annex similarly situated to men at Minimum with respect to the purposes of programming because “[b]oth of these populations are preparing for release into the community and therefore[ ] have the same need to fully prepare themselves for this stage of their lives”). See also Klinger, 31 F.3d at 735 (McMillian, J., dissenting) (noting that men and women are equally capable of benefiting from programs).
Determining the purpose of government action before embarking on a similarly-situ*955ated analysis is inherent in the individual nature of equal protection rights. For example, if the District determined that the purposes of a certain program would be better served if it were offered to prisoners who were relatively close to release,22 then to determine whether two individuals were similarly situated with respect to the program’s purpose would depend on how close each was to release. Asking whether members of that person’s sex are generally close to release would not answer the question whether the individual is being treated arbitrarily.23 It is only the rare situation in which every member of a quasi-suspect class is identically situated with respect to the governmental purpose, as in Rostker, in which a court can conclude that any individual class member’s claim can be rejected at “the threshold.” In other cases, even if general differences between most men and most women can be discerned, the government must still provide an “exceedingly persuasive” justification for categorically treating the sexes differently. VMI, — U.S. at -, 116 S.Ct. at 2275.
The court’s failure to consider the purposes of the various prison programs at issue is perhaps understandable, inasmuch as the District has not supplied any. It is the government’s burden to come forward with a justification for a sex-based classification, id., yet the District’s brief is silent on this point.24 Without an explanation of the purpose of programming, the court is in no position to decide that male and female prisoners are categorically dissimilarly situated with respect to all of the various, programs.
C.
Even assuming the government may constitutionally provide separate programs for the sexes, the programs must be substantially equivalent. VMI, — U.S. at-, 116 S.Ct. at 2285-86 (quoting Sweatt); Glover, 478 F.Supp. at 1079.25 The district court correctly applied this standard.26 This does not mean, however, that all women must have access to the programming choices that are available to any man. Rational sex-neutral criteria, applied evenhandedly to men and women, may be used to determine eligibility for programs. See J.E.B., 511 U.S. at -& n.16, 114 S.Ct. at 1429 & n.16; Op. at 925 (quoting testimony of Ms. Regina Gilmore and Dr. T.A. Ryan). If custody level is such a criterion, for example, then medium-custody women would not be entitled to programs made available only to minimum-custody men.27 However, if the District chooses *956to house minimum- and medium-custody women in the same facility, it cannot use that fact to deny the programs to minimum-custody women. That is, the District may not treat differently men and women who are identical but for sex, something it surely would do by sending minimum-custody women to a facility where they are provided inferior programming to the programming available to minimum-security men.
When the sexes are permissibly segregated, “substantial equivalence” may not require perfectly identical treatment. Some differences may be unavoidable because of the physical separation. Moreover, the peculiar circumstances of prison administration may require different programs for prisoners housed in different facilities. See Pitts, 866 F.2d at 1455. While programming decisions are to be made by the District and not by the court, cf. Jeldness v. Pearce, 30 F.3d 1220, 1229 (9th Cir.1994) (applying Title IX to prison programs), the District must show that the important penological interests implicated by the policies of its various facilities have a substantial relationship to the denial of access by a female prisoner to a program available to male prisoners.28 Cf. North Haven Bd. of Educ. v. Bell, 456 U.S. 512, 102 S.Ct. 1912, 72 L.Ed.2d 299 (1982). But as the court would have it, the mere existence of peculiar circumstances at each facility would insulate the government’s treatment of the sexes from judicial comparison and the requirement to justify differences under heightened scrutiny standards.
The district court’s analysis accounted for legitimate, sex-neutral criteria in comparing the programs available to men to those available to women. As the court notes, the district court considered “custody levels, sentence structures, and purposes of incarceration” of the prisoners. Op. at 924 (quoting Women Prisoners I, 877 F.Supp. at 675). On appeal, the District has not shown that the district court ignored any relevant criterion. In its opening brief, the District lists four criteria: number of inmates at an institution, “length of stay,” classification level, and “special characteristics.” As previously explained, the first and last of these are analytically inappropriate,29 and the district court expressly considered the other two criteria. In its reply brief, the District focuses almost entirely on the physical differences between the facilities to which it has chosen to assign otherwise identical men and women,30 yet such physical differences caused by the District itself cannot alone excuse sex-based discrimination. The court, meanwhile, faults the district court for not considering population size, other physical aspects of the sex-segregated facilities, and “special characteristics,” which are all improper bases for treating women differently from men. Op. at 924-26. Otherwise, the court cites a list of criteria culled from the testimony of two witnesses, but points to no record evidence that the populations compared by the district court differed with respect to any of them. Id. at 925. In any event, the district court did consider at least some of the cited criteria,31 and the District has not urged error based on any criterion that the district court *957may have overlooked. Thus, even if one of the criteria mentioned by the witnesses were crucial to the analysis, the proper result would be to remand for the district court to receive further evidence and consider the relevant criterion. Pargo v. Elliott, 49 F.3d 1355 (8th Cir.1995).
For these reasons, I conclude that the District has demonstrated no error in the district court’s analysis. The district court correctly found that women imprisoned at the Annex and CTF receive inferior programming because of their sex.32 None of the arguments mustered by the court can change the inescapable fact that the District’s policies would, solely on the basis of sex, send two otherwise identical people, convicted of the same crime, facing the same sentence, and imprisoned for the same purpose, to facilities offering substantially unequal programming. The court, by ignoring this fact, does not require the District to take even the most minimal steps to assure parity of access to opportunities between the sexes. Equal protection requires more. Unfortunately for the prisoners, and for the Constitution, the court has chosen to follow the example of another circuit that mistakenly believed that the government “could provide, with fidelity to the equal protection principle, separate and unequal educational programs for men and women.” VMI, — U.S. at -, 116 S.Ct. at 2286 (reversing 44 F.3d 1229 (4th Cir.1995)).
Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from Parts II A and II B of the court’s decision, and would remand the portions of the order vacated in those parts of the opinion so that the district court could consider the impact, if any, of the Prison Reform Act of 1995.

. Like the court, I do not reach the question, which is one of first impression in this circuit, whether the challenged programs are subject to Title IX. Op. at 927-28.

. Thus, even when there is no shortage of authority on a question, the district court may dismiss a local-law claim where a conflict among the authorities leaves the issue uncertain. Edmondson & Gallagher v. Alban Towers Tenants Assn, 48 F.3d 1260, 1266 (D.C.Cir.1995).

. The same is true of Grano v. Barry, 733 F.2d 164, 169 (D.C.Cir.1984), also cited by the court, in which the local ballot initiative at issue was “new [and] its meaning ambiguous and sharply disputed.” In that case, moreover, plaintiff had not even pled a claim based on local law. The district court had entered an injunction based solely on federal law, which this court vacated. This court held that it would be inappropriate to permit the plaintiff to attempt to reinstate the injunction by adding a local-law claim on remand, now that the federal claims had been dismissed: "[E]ntertaining such a claim now would be somewhat like initially taking jurisdiction over a local law issue when there is no federal claim to which it could be pendent.” Id.

. E.g., Kelly v. Parents United for the D.C. Pub. Schools, 641 A.2d 159, 163, 165 (D.C.1994) (affirming permanent injunction and noting that trial court considered "ordering school closures and incarceration with work release for responsible District officials as possible sanctions" when District failed to comply); In re Savoy, Nos. 70-4808 & 70-4714, 98 Daily Wash. L. Rptr. 1937 (D.C.Super. Ct. Oct. 13, 1970) (imposing structural injunction on juvenile detention facility); In re Savoy, Nos. J-4808-70, etc., 101 Daily Wash. L. Rptr. 317 (D.C.Super. Ct. Feb. 20, 1973) (same); Pearson v. Kelly, No. 92-CA-14030, 122 Daily Wash. L. Rptr. 1837 & 1849 (D.C.Super. Ct. Aug. 18, 1994) (appointing receiver over Department of District government for repeated violations of federal law). See also DeNeen L. Brown & Lonnae O’Neal Parker, Schools Again Running Afoul of D.C. Fire Code, Judge Finds, Wash. Post, July 3, 1996, at Bl. Cf. In the Matter of an Inquiry into Allegations of Misconduct Against Juveniles Detained at and Committed at Cedar Knoll Institution, 430 A.2d 1087, 1093, 1101 (1981) (Ferren, J., dissenting) (noting power of branch of Superior Court to award sweeping structural injunction in properly pled class action).

. Although the District of Columbia is not a state, its local court system has enjoyed powers commensurate with those of the states for a quarter of a century. Palmore v. United States, 411 U.S. 389, 392 n. 2, 93 S.Ct. 1670, 1674 n. 2, 36 L.Ed.2d 342 (1973) ("Congress ... invested the local courts with jurisdiction equivalent to that exercised by state courts”); id. at 409, 93 S.Ct. at 1682 (noting that the functions of the District of Columbia courts are "essentially similar to those of the local courts found in the 50 States of the Union"). Cf. McIntosh, 395 A.2d at 749 n. 10 (“Congress ... intended to transfer to the new local courts all those local judicial powers previously exercised by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.”) The judges of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia would therefore be as surprised as the judges of any state court of general equitable jurisdiction to hear it suggested that they lacked the authority to impose appropriate injunctive relief in the face of ongoing institutional failure to meet a legal duty of care.

. The District did not appeal the district court's finding in the instant cases that general living conditions at the Annex and CTF and fire safety at the Annex violated the Eighth Amendment. Op. at 928.

.History suggests an explanation for the absence of local cases in which the District of Columbia courts have imposed injunctive relief upon finding a violation of D.C.Code § 24-442. Until Congress enacted the D.C. Court Reform and Criminal Procedure Act of 1970, Pub.L. 91-358 (July 29, 1970), 84 Stat. 473, the local courts were courts of limited jurisdiction. The transfer of jurisdiction from the federal to the local courts was not completed until 30 months after July 29, 1970. See id., 84 Stat. 479, citing D.C.Code § 16-2901. Litigation seeking injunctive relief in connection with District of Columbia correctional facilities predated the completed transfer and has a long history in the federal courts, premised on violations of the constitution and thus necessitating no recourse to D.C.Code § 24-442. Although the court asserts that D.C. prisoners seeking injunctive relief are no strangers to the local courts, Op. at 922, it cites no cases, and hence there is no reason to assume that D.C. prisoners have sought injunctive relief for violations of D.C.Code § 24 — 442 and the local courts have ruled that the statute will not support in-junctive relief. To suggest, moreover, that a local court would be engaged in "usurpation]” were it to find violations of D.C.Code § 24-442 and to invoke its injunctive powers under D.C.Code § 11-921, Op. at 923, goes to the merits and simply ignores the local court's own view of the breadth of its remedial authority and its invocation of them. See Hessey v. Burden, 615 A.2d at 571, and supra n. 4.

. In an argument not relied on by the court, the District contends that because the local courts have construed the substantive requirements of § 24-442 in light of the analogous federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 4042 (1994), it would also limit the remedies available under the local law to those available under federal law. See Matthews v. District of Columbia, 387 A.2d 731 (D.C.1978) (citing Jones v. United States, 534 F.2d 53, 54 (5th Cir.1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 978, 97 S.Ct. 487, 50 L.Ed.2d 586 (1976)). Whereas the federal government has waived sovereign immunity in these circumstances to permit money damages only, however, the municipal immunity of the District is of much smaller scope, and local sovereign immunity law has developed independently from federal sovereign immunity law. Wade v. District of Colum., 310 A.2d 857, 860-61 (D.C.1973) (in banc). The frequency with which local courts have ordered structural injunctions against District departments and agencies bears witness to this independence.

. See, e.g., Bear v. Iowa Dist. Ct., 540 N.W.2d 439, 441 (Iowa 1995); Riha v. FirsTier Bank, 248 Neb. 785, 539 N.W.2d 632, 637 (1995); Stern v. Delphi Internet Svcs. Corp., 165 Misc.2d 21, 626 N.Y.S.2d 694, 696 (N.Y.Sup.Ct.1995); Ducham v. Tuma, 265 Mont. 436, 877 P.2d 1002, 1006 (1994); May Dep’t Stores Co. v. State ex rel. Woodard, 863 P.2d 967, 978 (Colo.1993); Jensen v. General Elec. Co., 82 N.Y.2d 77, 603 N.Y.S.2d 420, 426, 623 N.E.2d 547, 553 (1993); Kaplan v. *950Prolife Action League of Greensboro, 111 N.C.App. 1, 431 S.E.2d 828, 838 (1993).

. The District's challenge to the portion of the district court’s remedial order addressing medical care is limited to the assertion that supplemental jurisdiction was improperly exercised. The District has not challenged the scope of the relief ordered. Because of its agreement with the District’s position on supplemental jurisdiction, the court does not reach the question whether the district court’s order was properly crafted. I also express no opinion as to the propriety of the relief ordered.

. Local-law claims falling within the district court's supplemental jurisdiction pursuant to § 1367(a) do not lose their jurisdictional character simply because they meet one of the criteria for discretionary dismissal pursuant to § 1367(c). LaShawn A. v. Barry, 87 F.3d 1389, 1396-97 (D.C.Cir.1996) (in banc).

. But cf. Rosemary Herbert, Note, Women's Prisons: An Equal Protection Evaluation, 94 Yale L.J. 1182, 1204 (1985) (considering possible justifications for sex segregated prisons and concluding that such prisons violate the Constitution).

. The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that the sex-based classification itself must further the governmental objective. Thus, it is not enough that providing programs to men furthers a governmental purpose; depriving women of equal treatment must also be substantially related to that purpose. 511 U.S. at-, 114 S.Ct. at 1425 ("the only question is whether discrimination on the basis of gender in jury selection substantially furthers the State's legitimate interest in achieving a fair and impartial trial”).

. Constitutionally, it would be equally objectionable if the District provided the women with construction and carpentry classes and the men with sewing and cooking classes.

. See, e.g., Women Prisoners I, 877 F.Supp. at 657 (noting that work details at the Annex are limited to such things as housekeeping and library work, while men at Minimum have access to work details in carpentry, plumbing, and other skilled tasks); id. at 659 (women at CTF have access to associate degree programs, while men at Central, Medium, and Occoquan can earn bachelor's degrees). “Visiting American prisons in the 1990s is like taking a time machine back to the high schools of the '50s, where the boys took Shop, and the girls learned cooking, baking, and sewing — glorified under the name of Home Economics.” Stephen J. Schulhofer, The Feminist Challenge in Criminal Law, 43 Penn. L.Rev. 2151, 2198 (1995). Another commentator has observed that differences in population do not "account for the inferior quality of the programming. Only discrimination explains why male prisoners are assigned to apprenticeships that lead to well-paying and secure jobs outside of prison while female prisoners are relegated to those which require little to no training.” Stefanie Fleischer Seldin, A Strategy for Advocacy on *953Behalf of Women Offenders, 5 Colum. J. Gender & L. 1, 3 (1995).

. As the VMI Court emphasized, even if one assumes that sex segregation is permissible, as segregation by race once was, the government must at least meet the separate-but-equal standard: "In line with Sweatt [v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629, 70 S.Ct. 848, 94 L.Ed. 1114 (1950),] we rule here that Virginia has not shown substantial equality in the separate educational opportunities the State supports” at single-sex colleges. -U.S. at-, 116 S.Ct. at 2286.

. But cf. Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women, Prisons, and Social Control 195-207 (1990) (discussing solutions to historical "inferi- or treatment" of women prisoners that do not require integration of the sexes).

. Nor, for that matter, why a man lacking in confidence should be denied the opportunity to take classes in self-esteem just because men in general may hold themselves in higher esteem than do women.

. The District asserted that women had more acute substance abuse problems than men, but the district court rejected the assertion as unfounded in the record. Women Prisoners I, 877 F.Supp. at 676. As J.E.B. and VMI make clear, however, even if the assertion were true, it would not justify using sex as a proxy for drug addiction.

. The epitome of the court's approach is captured in the concluding paragraph of its analysis: "Given these significant differences in the situation of the women at the Annex and CTF and those of the men at the facilities with which the court compared them ... we need not examine the programs themselves ...." Op. at 927-28.

."It is well-settled that financial hardship is not a defense to sex discrimination in prisons.” Klinger, 31 F.3d at 736 (McMillian, J., dissenting) (citing Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 633, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 1330, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969)). See also Glover, 478 F.Supp. at 1078 n. 2. Cf. Pitts, 866 F.2d at 1461-63 (finding District's attempts to ameliorate burden differentially imposed on women probative of lack of invidious discriminatory intent, even though attempts had been frustrated by budgetary constraints).

. This is not to suggest that prisoners can be excluded from programs only by reference to the programs’ purpose. Other governmental interests, such as public safety in administering a work furlough program, could support an exclusion.

. See Schulhofer, supra n. 13, 143 Penn. L.Rev at 2201.

. The District did not address equal protection until its reply brief. The relevant portion of its opening brief was devoted solely to challenging the district court's findings of Title IX violations. Most of that discussion concerned whether certain programs were "educational” and thus subject to Title DC. Appellants’ brief at 35-37, consisting largely of a lengthy quotation from Klinger, added that in any event there was no Title IX violation because female prisoners were not similarly situated to male prisoners. Only in the reply brief did the District extend its argument to cover equal protection.

. But see VMI,-U.S. at-n. 7, 116 S.Ct. at 2276 n. 7 (quoting Hogan, 458 U.S. at 720 n. 1, 102 S.Ct. at 3334 n. 1) (“we are not faced with the question of whether States can provide ‘separate but equal’ undergraduate institutions for males and females”).

. See, e.g., Women Prisoners I, 877 F.Supp. at 677 (finding no violation with respect to vocational training and apprenticeships because “women at the Annex and men at Minimum have equivalent access to meager offerings”); id. • (finding that the District “fail[ed] to provide equivalent opportunity in the area of work details”); id. (finding that although the industrial programs at the Annex and Minimum differed in content, plaintiffs “have failed to prove that women prisoners ... do not receive industrial opportunities equivalent to male prisoners ....”); id. at 686 (¶ 84 of the order) (ordering the District to “provide women at CTF with a range of work opportunities that is equivalent to the range of work opportunities provided to male prisoners at the Occoquan, Central and Medium facilities”).

. In this example, medium-custody women would not be similarly situated to minimum-custody men with respect to the program, just as women who were categorically ineligible for *956combat were not similarly situated to combat-eligible men with respect to draft registration in Rostker.

.Thus, the court mischaracterizes the analysis of the dissent as tantamount to a conclusion that "if male inmates have access to a work detail that is unavailable to women,” or "[i]f men can spend an extra hour a day in a gymnasium," then there is a violation of equal protection. Op. at 926. Rather, consistent with due deference to District officials that is consistent with constitutional protections, the District must explain the governmental purpose behind such differences for similarly situated prisoners. This imposes no liability as a result of program-by-program comparisons, see Op. at 927, but only recognizes that District officials are subject to the Constitution in its treatment of prisoners.

. In addition, the district court considered and rejected as factually unfounded several of the “special characteristics” mentioned by the District. Women Prisoners I, 877 F.Supp. at 675-76.

. For example, the District contends that medium-custody women at CTF cannot receive equal treatment to medium-custody men at Occo-quan, Central, and Medium because the District has chosen to house the women in the same building as men who have physical impairments or who are undergoing substance abuse treatment.

. The criteria mentioned by the two witnesses and considered by the district court included "custody level,” "substance abuse information,” and "impending factors relating to pre-release." *957Women Prisoners I, 877 F.Supp. at 675 (“[t]he Court will compare prisoners who are similarly situated by virtue of their similar custody levels"); id. ("[a] comparison [of women at CTF] to CTF men would be inappropriate because the men reside at CTF for either short-term diagnostic attention of a voluntary 18-month intensive substance abuse program”); id. (comparing women at Minimum to men at Annex because both "are preparing for release into the community”).

. The court, Op. at 925, overlooks the district court's specific findings in regard to educational opportunities, inter alia, in support of its conclusion that “women at CFT do not have reasonable opportunities for similar studies [as men] and do not have an equal opportunity to participate in programs of comparable quality [as are available to men].” Women Prisoners I, 877 F.Supp. at 678.