Court Opinion

ID: 9428101
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:47.72392+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:11.327859
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
concurring in the result.
For me, the Court’s opinion is somewhat opaque. Perhaps it is intentionally so.
I agree with Justice Brennan that respondents were— and were necessarily determined by the Court of Appeals to be — “strangers to the state court proceeding,” post, at 62, who were not bound by the state-court litigation. No principle of res judicata evoked by the California litigation applies to them.
I join the Court in vacating the Court of Appeals’ judgment and remanding the case, however, for I am troubled by that court’s apparent misreading of Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Locomotive Engineers, 398 U. S. 281 (1970), and by its analysis of the effect of the Anti-Injunction Act, 28 U. S. C. § 2283, upon the particular facts of this case.
At the same time, I am disturbed by what seems to me to be the implication of this Court’s opinion, namely, that the Anti-Injunction Act does not apply when the state litigation involves different parties. If I am correct that this is the premise, I believe that the Court is indulging in a new exposition of the meaning of Hale v. Bimco Trading, Inc., 306 U. S. 375 (1939). The Anti-Injunction Act imposes a flat and positive prohibition. It then allows three exceptions. None of those exceptions is applicable to the situation before us, which involves a single-use restriction on a single parcel of land. The precedent of Hill v. Martin, 296 U. S. 393, 403 (1935), Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., supra, and Vendo Co. v. Lektro-Vend Corp., 433 U. S. 623, 630 (1977), supports a conclusion that the Anti-Injunction Act bars the federal court from issuing an injunction against enforcement of this use restriction. Yet, a holding to that effect would not oust the federal court of jurisdiction to order other forms of relief, such as a declaratory judgment. It is worth noting, or so it *62appears to me, that the state court has made clear, by its stay of the contempt order, that it will abide by the federal resolution of the constitutional issue.*
The situation presented by this case is an inevitable result of our having two independent judicial systems. The Anti-Injunction Act cannot eliminate all conflicts, and was not so intended. It precludes federal injunctions that interfere with state proceedings. Heretofore, this Court has applied the Act’s restrictions strictly. I would expect that approach to be continued.

Hale v. Bimco Trading, Inc., 306 U. S. 375 (1939), is distinguishable, for that ease involved an attack on a state statute and a complete legislative scheme that was being applied to many parties in many different circumstances. That situation differs significantly from the particularized use restriction with which the present litigation is concerned.