Court Opinion

ID: 9488809
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:55:55.821949+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:06.545711
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
This case and other recent litigation in this circuit involving Younger v. Harris, (e.g., Nelson v. Murphy, 44 F.3d 497 (7th Cir.1955)) seem to be pressing against the outer limits of the Younger doctrine. In Nelson, we said that “[Younger ] applies to plaintiffs’ claim for damages only if the state forum could have entertained a request for damages.” 44 F.3d at 505. In the present ease, we are moving beyond that limitation. See op. at 138-39, n. 8. Perhaps this is a function of the effort to bring some sort of order out of the proliferation of lawsuits that has taken place almost everywhere.
In the present case, we are really addressing a potential for parallel proceedings and giving priority to the state criminal case. The possibility of preclusion of determinations in the state forum seems to be the underlying concern. But we have ordered only postponement of the damages case— recognizing that it is wholly different in character from the state proceeding. This result serves important considerations of comity and of orderly procedure and may be sustained on those bases. The character of the problems we address here, however, seems to me to have taken us a long way both in theory and in practice, from a federal injunction against a state criminal prosecution — the original concern of Younger.