Court Opinion

ID: 9702349
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:07:41.39149+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:36.879445
License: Public Domain

ROBERT W. HANSEN, J.
(dissenting). In the small claims branch of the county court, plaintiff brings this civil action for damages, alleging deprivation of a constitutional right “under color of law.” Such cause of action is authorized by a federal statute.1 Can such *499action be brought in a state court? The answer is that it can unless Congress, as to the statute involved, has provided for exclusive jurisdiction in the federal court.2
While this cause of action for deprivation of rights “under color of law” is set forth in the United States Code,3 it is necessary to go to the federal statutes establishing such civil cause of action to resolve the issue as to exclusivity of jurisdiction. This cause of action was first established by Congress by statute in 1866,4 revised in 1870,5 revised again in 1871,6 and revised again in 18747 While set forth in the United States Code, it has not been enacted or reenacted as part of the code.8
*500Thus, where federal statutes are included in the United States Code, but have not been enacted as part of such code, they are only prima facie evidence of the wording of the statutes referred to and the language of the statutes controls.9 In facing the question of whether the statute now before us gave a right to sue a municipal corporation, the United States Supreme Court went to the statutes — not the code — to determine the intent of Congress and the purpose of such enactments.10 (The high court held that the statutes involved did not authorize such suit against a municipality.)
Likewise, the United States Supreme Court went to the statutes — not the code — in holding that prior resort to an administrative proceeding before a school superintendent was not a prerequisite to bringing this cause of action in the federal court.11 Just so, on the question *501of exclusivity of federal court jurisdiction, it is the 100-year-old federal statutes that are to resolve the issue of jurisdiction presented, rather than the reference to them in the code.
The statutes involved in the instant case are these:
Act of 1866. This Act of Congress created the civil cause of action for damages for deprivation of rights “under color of law,” and specifically provided for the exclusive jurisdiction of federal district and circuit courts as to the cause of action created.12
Revised Act of 1870. This initial revision of the Act of 1866 repeated both the right involved and the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal district and circuit courts to try such cause of action.'13
Revised Act of 1871. This revised act, known as the Ku Klux Act,14 repeated the right to bring this cause of action, providing: “. . . such proceeding to be prosecuted *502in the several district or circuit courts of the United States.”13 [Emphasis supplied.]
Revised Aet of 187'J. This revised act abbreviated the provisions for civil cause of action for deprivation of rights, repeating the right to sue for deprivations “under color of law,” with a reference to sec. 563, providing for jurisdiction of federal district courts, and to sec. 629, providing for original jurisdiction of federal circuit courts in certain instances.16
When the cause of action which plaintiff here seeks to assert in a state court was originally established in the Act of 1866, it is clear that jurisdiction was limited to the federal courts. It is as clear that exclusive jurisdiction in the federal courts was continued in the first revision, the Act of 1870. In the second revision, the Act of 1871, the substitution of the phrase “to be prosecuted in the several district or circuit courts” does not indicate any congressional intent to replace exclusivity with concurrent jurisdiction.
One state supreme court — California—found to the contrary, holding that the revision of 1871 “expresses an intent to confer original, not exclusive, jurisdiction on the federal courts.”17 [Emphasis in original.] But *503that approach reckons without the language in the 1871 revision following the words “to be prosecuted in the several district or circuit courts,” to wit: “with and subject to the same rights of appeal, review upon error, and other remedies provided in like cases in such courts, under the provisions of the act of the ninth of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-six.”18 The incorporation of the 1871 revision as to “rights of appeal, review upon error, and other remedies” makes sense only if the action is required to be commenced in a federal court.
As to the revision in 1874, we are faced with an abbreviation rather than a change of phraseology. Much is deleted, nothing is added. What is left is a repetition of the right — as stated in the 1866 Act — with no mention of forum, right of appeal or review upon error. By reference to other statutes, jurisdiction to entertain the action remains with the federal courts, with right of appeal or review upon error under federal law in the federal system.
The general rule as to congressional revisions of statutes is that, “. . . it will not be inferred that Congress, in revising and consolidating the laws, intended to change ■their effect unless such intention is clearly expressed.”19 A revised statute is “primarily a codification of the general statutes then in force and is not lightly to be read *504as making a change.”20 The United States Supreme Court has also held, “. . . upon a revision of statutes, a different interpretation is not to be given to them without some substantial change of phraseology — some change other than what may have been necessary to abbreviate the form of the law.”21
In the 1874 revision there is no change of phraseology at all. There is no more than an abbreviation, as is often a primary purpose of recodification and revision.22 Since no change in language or phraseology is involved, the abbreviation of the statute in the 1874 revision is here not sufficient to indicate or establish a congressional intent to change the thrice-repeated insistence on exclusivity of federal court jurisdiction found in the original enactment and two earlier revisions.
Even a change of phraseology in a revision, the United States Supreme Court has held “ ‘. . . will not be regarded as altering the law where it had been well settled by plain language in the statutes, or by judicial construction thereof, unless it is clear that such was the intent.’ ”23 That was not the intent of Congress, either in the 1871 or 1874 revisions.
*505We need only go to the United States Supreme Court case of Monroe v. Pape,24 and the legislative history therein set forth to find such lack of intent on the part of Congress to substitute concurrent jurisdiction for exclusive jurisdiction. One state supreme court— Tennessee — has done just that,25 relying heavily on the Monroe Case for its holding that Congress did not intend, and R.S. sec. 1979, Laws of 1874, does not provide for concurrent jurisdiction of state courts as to civil actions brought pursuant to R.S. sec. 1979.26
In the Monroe Case, the United States Supreme Court quoted extensively from the Congressional Record as to arguments, pro and con, made at the time of the revision of 1871, with speakers terming the revision: “ ‘. . . a civil action for damages against the wrongdoer in the Federal courts,’ ”27 which “ ‘. . . authorizes any person ... to bring an action against the wrongdoer in the Federal courts, . . .”28 and as “modeled upon the second section of the Act of April 9, 1866, 14 Stat. 27, the two sections were intended to cover the same cases. . . .”29
*506From the debates the majority in Monroe concluded that, “It is abundantly clear that one reason the legislation was passed was to afford a federal right in federal courts. . . .”30° While the legislative history set forth in Monroe is relevant in determining congressional intent as to exclusivity of federal court jurisdiction — as the Tennessee court held it to be — more relevant is the United States Supreme Court’s emphasis on the Act of 1871 in determining the purpose of sec. 1979, the 1874 revision.
The high court makes evident that the language and purpose of the 1871 revision controls, not the abbreviation of such language in the 1874 revision. This takes us back to the 1871 revision which requires:
“. . . such proceeding to be prosecuted in the several district or circuit courts of the United States, with and subject to the same rights of appeal, review upon error, and other remedies provided in like cases in such courts, under the provisions of the act of the ninth of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-six.”31
Since this is the only change from the provision in the original Act of 1866 that provided for exclusive jurisdiction in the federal district and circuit courts, there is here lacking that “clearly expressed” congressional intent to change by revision the requirement of exclusive *507federal jurisdiction contained both in the Act of 1866 and the 1870 revision. Plaintiff cannot thus bring this action in state court under R.S. sec. 1979, for the reason that such act, and its predecessors, as one court phrased it, “. . . created an entirely new right, federal in origin, and cognizable only in a court of the United States.”32
Supporting its conclusion that the United States Supreme Court has “implicitly,” although not expressly, decided that actions under the 1874 revised statute33 can be brought in state courts, the majority finds support in a footnote to a dissenting opinion by Justice BRENNAN.34 The Justice may have had second thoughts for, more recently, in another dissent, he wrote:
“When it enacted §1983, Congress weighed the competing demands of ‘Our Federalism* and consciously decided to protect federal rights in the federal forum. As we have previously recognized, §1983 was enacted for the express purpose of altering the federal-state judicial balance that had theretofore existed, and of ‘offering a uniquely federal remedy against incursions under claimed authority of state law upon rights secured by *508the Constitution and the laws of the Nation.’ Mitchum v. Foster, 407 U.S. 225, 239 (1972). State courts are, of course, bound to follow the Federal Constitution equally with federal courts, but Congress has clearly ordained, as constitutionally it may, that the federal courts are to be the ‘primary and powerful reliances’ for vindicating federal rights under §1983. Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 452, 464 (1974) (emphasis in original) . If federal courts are to be flatly prohibited, regardless of the circumstances of the individual claim of violation of federal rights, from implementing this ‘uniquely federal remedy’ because of deference to purported state interests in the maintenance of state civil suits, the Court has ‘effectively cripple [d] the congressional scheme enacted in Section 1983.’ Juidice v. Vail, supra, at -, 51 L Ed2d 376, 97 S Ct 1211. (BRENNAN, J., dissenting) .”35
The case in which this statement, in dissent, was made, the Trainor v. Hernandez Case, was a sec. 1983 action in federal court to restrain an attachment proceeding in an Illinois state court on the ground the attachment violated due process. The high court ruled that “basic concerns of federalism” counseled against interference by federal courts with legitimate state functions. The writer sees no authority “implicit” in this decision for bringing sec. 1983 actions in state courts. Justice STEVENS dissented, asserting that the relief sought could not be secured in the state courts until after the attachment proceedings were concluded. If a sec. 1983-based action had been available in the state courts to restrain the attachment proceedings, the high court majority surely would have pointed out to their colleague that the basis for his argument was incorrect.
The trouble with this search for the “implicit” in high court decisions is that it too easily leads to locating what is not there. The Revised Act of 1874 (restated in sec. 1983, United States Code) has been on the statute books *509for over 100 years. It would be strange that the United States Supreme Court would not have, somewhere along the way, in a single sentence stated that actions under the statute, and its revisions, could be brought in state, as well as federal courts if that was, by a majority of the high court, found to be the Congressional intent back in 1866 or 1874.
It is to be hoped that, by appeal of this 4-to-3 decision as to what is “implicit,” but not expressed in United States Supreme Court decisions, or otherwise, the nation’s highest tribunal soon will be respectfully requested to open or close the door to sec. 1983 actions being brought in the courts of the various states. In the meantime, the conclusion that state courts are not available for bringing actions under this 100-year-old federal statute in the state courts ought not be termed a “copping out.” One can only “cop out” where one has a choice. Under the writer’s analysis of the statutes, and high court decisions relating thereto, there is here no matter of choice. If Congress intended over 100 years ago exclusivity of jurisdiction in the federal courts, we may not entertain this case. If Congress did then intend concurrency of jurisdiction, federal and state, we must entertain this case. Unless and until the United States Supreme Court finds to the contrary, the writer would hold that, over 100 years ago Congress created a federal right, intending and providing for exclusive jurisdiction in the federal courts. The writer would affirm.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice LEO B. HANLEY and Mr. Justice CONNOR T. HANSEN join in this dissent.

 R.S. see. 1979, 42 U.S.C.A., sec 1983 at 250, providing: “Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory, subjects, or causes to *499be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.”

 See: Dowd Box Co. v. Courtney, 368 U.S. 502, 507, 508 (1962), the high court holding: “We start -with the premise that nothing in the concept of our federal system prevents state courts from enforcing rights created by federal law. Concurrent jurisdiction has been a common phenomenon in our judicial history, and exclusive federal court jurisdiction over cases arising under federal law has been the exception rather than the rule.” See also: Vogt v. Nelson, 69 Wis.2d 125, 128, 230 N.W.2d 123 (1975), this court holding: “State courts are bound to entertain actions to enforce liabilities created by federal law unless prohibited by an act of Congress.”

 42 U.S.C.A., sec. 1983.

 Act of April 9,1866,14 Stat. 27.

 Act of May 31, 1870,16 Stat. 140.

 Act of April 20, 1871, 17 Stat. 13.

 R.S. sec. 1979, Laws of 1874, Title XXIV.

See: Uniform System of Citations, see. 12:3:l(d) (12th ed. 1976), page 54, stating: “U.S.C. does not always accurately reprint the language of a statute passed by Congress. Some titles of U.S.C., however, have been enacted into positive law. ... As of January 20, 1974, the titles so enacted were 1, 3-6, 9, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18, 23, 28, 32, 35, 37-39, and 44. For all other titles, the *500language of Statutes at Large is authoritative. . . See also: Preface, Supp. V, U.S.C. (1970), page vii, Speaker Carl Albert noting: “This supplement together with the 1970 edition establishes prima facie those laws in effect on January 18, 1976, except that titles 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18, 23, 28, 32, 35, 37, 38, 39 and 44, having been enacted into law, establish legal evidence of the law contained in those titles.” R.S. sec. 1979, Title XXIV, Laws of 1874, has not been enacted into positive law in the United States Code.

 Uniform System of Citations, supra, n. 8. We must therefore look to the language of Statutes at Large which is authoritative as to this title. See also: Preface, U.S.C. (1964 ed.), page ix, Emanuel Celler, Chairman of the H.R. Committee on the Judiciary, stating at page IX: “It is hoped that the program of enacting the entire Code, title by title, to improve its present status as merely prima facie evidence of the law, will meet with early success.”

 ° Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 171 (1961), the high court noting: “Section 1979 [Laws of 1874] came onto the books as see. 1 of the Ku Klux Act of April 20, 1871.”

 McNeese v. Board of Education, 373 U.S. 668, 671 (1963), the high court noting: “The cause of action alleged here is pleaded in terms of R.S. §1979, 42 U.S.C. §1983. . . .
*501“That is the statute that was involved in Monroe v. Pape, supra; and we reviewed its history at length in that case. 365 U.S., at 171 et seq.”

 Act of April 9,1866, 14 Stat. 27, sec. 3, specifically providing: “That the district courts of the United States, within their respective districts, shall have, exclusively of the courts of the several States, cognizance of all crimes and offences committed against the provisions of this act, and also, concurrently with the circuit courts of the United States, of all causes, civil and criminal, affecting persons who are denied or cannot enforce in the courts or judicial tribunals of the State or locality where they may be any of the rights secured to them by the first section of this act. . . .”

 Act of May 31, 1870, 16 Stat. 140, 144. See: Monroe v. Pape, supra, n. 10, Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, in dissenting opinion, noting: “The 1866 Act had been reenacted substantially and in form, by the 17th and 18th sections of the Act of May 31, 1870, 16 Stat. 140.”

 See: Monroe v. Pape, supra, n. 10, at 171.

 Act of April 20, 1871, 17 Stat. 14. The requirement of proceedings being prosecuted in the federal courts was followed with this provision: “. . . with and subject to the same rights of appeal, review upon error and other remedies provided in like cases in such courts, under the provisions of the act of the ninth of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-six.”

 ICS. sec. 1979, Act of April 9, 1874, with reference to sec. 568, ch. 3, District Courts — Jurisdiction, and sec. 629, Title XIII, The Judicia/ry.

 Brown v. Pitchess, 119 Cal. Rptr. 204, 531 P.2d 772, 774 (1975), the court, on this point, stating: “The amicus brief of the Attorney General points out that section 1983 as originally enacted provided that proceedings under it were to be prosecuted ‘in the several district or circuit courts of the United States.’ (Civil Rights Aet of 1871, Act of 20 April 1871, §1, 17 Stat. 13.) *503However, the language expresses an intent to confer original, not exclusive, jurisdiction on the federal courts, there being no general federal-question jurisdiction in the lower federal courts at that time.” Cited and followed in: Backus v. Chilivis, 236 Ga. 500, 224 S.E.2d 370, 374, n. 1 (1976).

 Act of 1871, sec. 1,17 Stat. 13.

 Anderson v. Pacific Coast S.S. Co., 225 U.S. 187, 199 (1912), citing United States v. Ryder, 110 U.S. 729, 740 (1884); United States v. Le Bris, 121 U.S. 278, 280 (1887); Logan v. United States, 144 U.S. 263, 302 (1892); United States v. Mason, 218 U.S. 517, 525 (1910).

 United States v. Sischo, 262 U.S. 165, 168, 169 (1923), the United States Supreme Court there holding: “The language under consideration was an insertion in the Revised Statutes. That volume was primarily a codification of the general statutes then in force and is not lightly to he read as making a change, although of course it may do so.”

 McDonald v. Hovey, 110 U.S. 619, 629 (1884).

 See: Preface, U.S.C. (1964 ed.), page ix, Emanuel Celler, Chairman of the H.R. Committee on the Judiciary, stating: “Inasmuch as many of the general and permanent laws which are required to be incorporated in this Code are inconsistent, redundant, and obsolete, the Committee on the Judiciary is engaged in a comprehensive project of revising and enacting the Code into law, title by title.”

 McDonald v. Hovey, supra, n. 21, at 629, quoting Sedgwick on Construction (2d ed. 229).

 Monroe v. Pape, supra, n. 10.

 Chamberlain v. Brown, 442 S.W.2d 248 (Tenn. S. Ct. 1969).

 Id. at 250, the court stating: “. . . these statutes creating this action were directed to the federal trial forum, not the respective States.”

 Monroe v. Pape, supra, n. 10, at 178, 179, quoting Mr. Kerr of Indiana, who also argued as to the section involved in the present appeal: “ ‘It is a covert attempt to transfer another large portion of jurisdiction from the State tribunals, to which it of right belongs, to those of the United States.’ ”

 Id. at 179, 180, quoting Senator Thurman of Ohio, who also stated: “ ‘The deprivation may be of the slightest conceivable character . . . and yet by this section jurisdiction of that civil action is given to the Federal courts instead of its being prosecuted as now in the courts of the States.”

 Id. at 212, 213 (n. 18), Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, in dissenting opinion, quoting Mr. Shellabarger, Chairman of the House Select Committee which authored the Act of April 20, 1871, *506whose first section is now §1979, citing Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Session.

 Id. at 180, the high court also holding at 173, 174: “. . . the present section had three main aims.
“First, it might, of course, override certain kinds of state laws.
“Second, it provided a remedy where state law was inadequate. . . .
“But the purposes were much broader. The third aim was to provide a> federal remedy where the state remedy, though adequate in theory, was not available in practice.” [Emphasis supplied.]

' R.'S. sec. 1979, Act of 1871,17 Stat. 13.

 Beauregard v. Wingard, 230 F. Supp. 167, 185 (S.D. Cal. 1964).

 See: Jones v. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409 (1968), construing sec. 1 of the Act of 1866 (not its counterparts in the Revised Statutes of 1874) as being a broad declaration of principle, not containing an enforcement provision. In Jones, the high court considered a variance between the wording of see. 1 of the Act of 1866 and subsequent revisions, holding that the 1866 ending of sec. 1 “was deleted, presumably as surplusage, in §1978 of the Revised Statutes of 1874.” Id. at 422, 423, n. 29. If the 1874 revision had the effect of superseding the earlier 1866 enactment, as the majority claims, there would have been no need to explain that the closing words of the 1866 Act were deleted as “surplusage” in the 1874 revision. They would simply have been repealed.

 AldINger v. Howard, 427 u.S. 1, 36, n. 17 (1976), BRENNAN, J. in dissenting opinion stating: “The Court today appears to decide sub silewtio a hitherto unresolved question by implying that §1983 claims are not claims exclusively cognizable in federal court. . . .”

 Trainor v. Hernandez, — U.S. —, 52 L. Ed2d 486, 97 S. Ct. 1911 (1977). BRENNAN, J. dissenting.