Court Opinion

ID: 9425987
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:23.081288+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.403836
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
dissenting.
The principle of abstention — judicially created by Railroad Comm’n v. Pullman Co., 312 U. S. 496 (1941)— promises to become a serious barrier to the assertion by federal courts of the jurisdiction Congress has bestowed on them. In the present case, suit was started in 1973 in the District Court, which rendered its judgment January 30, 1974. The term of office of the three justices of the peace who were ousted expired December 31, 1974; that of the two constables will expire December 31,1976. After being brought all the way here by the State that ousted them from office, they are now told that their federal suit is dismissed and that they must start litigation anew in the state courts. They would necessarily have to be very rich officeholders — or else be financed by some foundation — to be able to pay the expense of this long, drawn-out litigation.
The three judges who made up the District Court in *90this case were Thomas G. Gee, John V. Singleton, Jr., and Carl O. Bue, Jr., all named from Texas, all versed in the idiosyncrasies of Texas law. A state agency, acting with full authority of state law,* has ousted these elected officials. By remitting them to a state court we now leave them without an effective remedy in view of the short terms of office that are involved. I said in Harrison v. NAACP, 360 U. S. 167, 184 (1959) (dissenting opinion):
“We need not — we should not — give deference to a state policy that seeks to undermine paramount federal law. We fail to perform the duty expressly enjoined by Congress on the federal judiciary in the Civil Rights Acts when we do so.”
We have a like situation here.
Here, as in cases in a federal court by reason of diversity of citizenship, ordinarily a federal court must not decline to exercise the jurisdiction Congress has conferred upon it “merely because the answers to the questions of state law are difficult or uncertain or have not yet been given by the highest court of the state,” Meredith v. Winter Haven, 320 U. S. 228, 234-235 (1943). The alternative course, we held, “would thwart the purpose of the jurisdictional act,” id., at 235.
*91The teaching of Pullman is greatly exaggerated here. No special circumstances warranting abdication of federal jurisdiction have been shown. Where the judges making up the panel of the three-judge court are from the State whose local law is at issue, I would leave it to them to decide whether the policy of Pullman should be applied in a given case. They know about Pullman as well as most of us. It was a new doctrine when announced. It is word that has long been part of the warp and woof of federal law.
The three judges, seasoned in Texas law, saw no ambiguities, no exotic question of law remaining unresolved, and rendered a forthright decision that was eminently correct on federal law. I would leave to our district judges the question whether the local-law problem counseled abstention.
We do a great disservice when we send these tired and exhausted litigants into the desert in search of this Holy Grail that is already in the keeping of the federal court.

Texas Rev. Civ. Stat. Ann., Art. 2351% (o) (1971), provides:
“When boundaries of justice of the peace precincts are changed, so that existing precincts are altered, new precincts are formed, or former precincts are abolished, if only one previously elected or appointed justice of the peace or constable resides within a precinct as so changed, he shall continue in office as justice or constable of that precinct for the remainder of the term to which he was elected or appointed. If more than one justice or constable resides within a precinct as so changed, or if none resides therein, the office shall become vacant and the vacancy shall be filled as other vacancies; provided, however, that in precincts having two justices, if two reside therein, both shall continue in office, and if more than two reside therein, both offices shall become vacant.”