Court Opinion

ID: 9492315
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:37:52.973828+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:14.488686
License: Public Domain

MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
dissents from failure to en banc but does not join all of Judge Keith’s reasons.
BOGGS, Circuit Judge, separate statement on denial of rehearing en banc.
I write separately to make two points. First, despite the implication in the separate writing of a member of the panel, the fact that a panel member who is not an active member of the court (regardless of whether that panel member is a senior judge of our court, a senior judge of another court, or a district judge) is unable to vote on a petition for rehearing en banc is not due to a local rule of our court. That result is commanded by 28 U.S.C. § 46(c), which states that a rehearing en banc shall be granted on the vote of the majority of “the circuit judges of the circuit who are in regular active service.” Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 35(a), in conformity with the statute as the Advisory Committee notes declare, states: “A majority of the circuit judges who are in regular active service may order that an appeal or other proceeding be heard or reheard by the court of appeals en banc.”
Our local rule does no more than follow these commands. Were it not to exist, the result would be the same, and were it to command to the contrary, by allowing anyone else in the world other than active members of the court to have their votes counted in determining whether a petition should be granted, it would be invalid as contravening the statute.
Second, I write to note, with regret, the breach of the long-standing custom of this court that actions by a member of the court with respect to petitions for rehearing of en banc are matters of internal court procedure and are not made public by other judges. Upon my perusal of the standard databases, the only instances that I was able to observe of any such information being divulged were when some controversy arose as to the mechanics of a vote on a petition for rehearing en banc and how that vote should be calculated. See, e.g., Leaman v. Ohio Dep’t of Mental Retardation & Development Disabilities, 825 F.2d 946 (6th Cir.1987). Excepting such controversies, this court has adhered to its custom of nondisclosure in petitions for rehearing en banc just as it has treated votes to affirm by an equally divided court *606as an internal court matter, and just as the Supreme Court only by custom has never publicized the votes of judges on a petition for certiorari.
It is, of course, the privilege of each judge who does take a position on a petition for rehearing or rehearing en banc to make reference to that judge’s own position, by filing a statement concurring in or dissenting from the ultimate result, although this happens rarely. A diligent reader is free to make the assumption (which may or may not be correct) that all those who have not gone on record as favoring a rehearing in fact opposed it. If the number of those favoring a rehearing is one less than the number required for a majority of active members of the court (as, for example, in Coles v. Cleveland Board of Education, 183 F.3d 538 (6th Cir.1999)), the assumption has the force of mathematical logic.
However, exactly because the treatment of a petition for rehearing en banc does not generally come with the expectation or obligation to state reasons, contrary to the situation with an opinion of the court, it is regrettable that a writer has chosen to make assertions with respect to such matters. And, since a court speaks only through its orders, see Goldman v. C.I.R., 388 F.2d 476, 478 (6th Cir.1967) (Peck, McCree and Combs, JJ); cf. Transcontinental Leasing, Inc. v. Michigan Nat’l Bank, Detroit, 943 F.2d 52 (table), 1991 WL 170904, at *3 (6th Cir.1991) (Keith, Boggs and Norris, JJ), our court, of course, makes no warranties as to the accuracy of the assertions made in statements by judges (including, of course, this one).
In this regard, it may be instructive to review, based on our court’s rules and procedures and long-standing practice, the varieties of ways in which each member of the court has the opportunity to act on a petition for rehearing en banc, all of which matters have been, up to now, treated as matters internal to the court, just as much as the discussions at conference.
1. Any member of the court may ask for a response to a petition for rehearing en banc, which response is requested by the clerk in the name of the court.
2. If no request for a vote is received, the petition for rehearing en banc is automatically denied, by a form order stating that after circulation “to all ... active judges,” “no judge of this court [has] requested a vote,” which could perhaps be taken as declaring that each member of the court voted to deny the petition.
3. According to Sixth Circuit IOP 35(c), any active member of the court, or member of the original panel, may request a poll of the entire court, though the name of the requestor has never been publically announced.
4. Consistent with 28 U.S.C. § 46(c), and implemented by IOP 35(c), a voting ballot is distributed to each member of the court in regular active service. If a majority of the members in regular active service do not support such a petition, it is denied by a form order stating that “less than a majority of the judges ... favored the suggestion” supported the petition, as was indeed the case with the current petition.
5. Members are not required to take any affirmative action to vote on a petition (contrary to the situation for decisions on cases), but by necessary implication of the logic of 28 U.S.C. § 46(c), any failure to vote has the effect of opposing the petition.
Each of the actions at each step of the process — asking for a response, asking for a vote, voting for, voting against, or not voting on a petition — may be taken for any of a large variety of reasons, and such actions have never been thought subject to public explanation, unless a judge chooses to do so with respect to that judge’s own position.
In my 13 years on the court, I have been presented with about 3000 petitions for rehearing en banc. With respect to each I took some action that had legal effect, even *607if that action was simply to do nothing. In about 200 cases, some member of the court asked for a poll on the petition and, again, I took some action that had legal effect: I voted yes, no, or did not vote. With variations in the numbers involved, the above is true for every active and senior member of this court.
Over those 13 years, and for time before that in which “the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” no indication of such matters has been released by official court document, and no individual judge has chosen to make assertions about his colleagues’ actions.
Until now, those customs have never been characterized by anyone as “compromising the public interest,” “reprehensible practices of secrecy and concealment,” denying “information of such vital public concern” or any of the other colorful phrases by which the writer refers to them in his statement.
There may be a legitimate argument as to what the court’s practices should be. Indeed, the Fourth Circuit, though it appears to stand alone in that regard, declares by rule that votes on a petition en banc should be made public. See 4th Cir. Rule 35(b). A number of other circuits by rule explicitly indicate the procedures to be followed, all of which provide for. the publication of votes on rehearing petitions only by the choice of individual judges with regard to their own actions. See, e.g. D.C.Cir.I.O.P. XIII, B.2; 7th Cir.I.O.P. 5(e); 9th Cir.Rule 35-3, note 4; Fed.Cir. I.O.P. 14.1(f), 14.2(f).
Insofar as can be determined from a search of data bases, all other circuits by practice do not reveal such votes. A legitimate case can be made that we should change our practice, which can be done by adopting a local rule or Internal Operating Procedure to that effect.
However, I continue to find it regrettable that a judge, whose access to the relevant information arises only by the same custom of the court, as he is not a member of the voting body, chose to make assertions with respect to such information.
Finally, since the assertions as to what “spurred [my] concern” to write on this matter are unwarranted and unprofessional, it need not be added that they are untrue as well.
BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge, separate statement on denial of rehearing en banc, in which Ryan, Circuit Judge, joined.
• I agree entirely with Judge Boggs’s separate statement on denial of rehearing en banc in this case. I write separately because I believe some additional points must be made with regard to the dissent to the original panel’s denial of rehearing, because the substance of that dissent deals entirely with the full court’s denial of rehearing en banc.
First, as Judge Boggs has capably explained, under the provisions of 28 U.S.C. § 46(c), Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 35(a) (Advisory Committee note), and the rules of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, senior judges are not entitled to vote on petitions for rehearing en banc. Our dissenting colleague, having elected to take senior status, was therefore not entitled to vote and did not vote on the question of whether to rehear this case en banc. It follows, then, that he would lack standing to write in dissent from the court’s decision not to rehear it. There is no doubt that he has every right to dissent from the original panel’s denial of rehearing; it is regrettable that he has chosen to thus clothe what is in fact the dissent which he does not have standing to write.
Second, it is regrettable that our colleague has elected to use the court as a forum to express his personal views about the desirability of striking down the Tennessee Parental Consent for Abortions by Minors Act, and in so doing to flout the spirit of the statute and the long-standing customs and procedures of the court; even *608more regrettable is that he has chosen to augment the expression of those views with an ad hominem attack on specifically named members of this court. Our dissenting colleague has pronounced judgment on the characters of those on the court who, he thinks, disagree with him: the majority members of the original panel — who expressed a view of the law contrary to his — and those of us who did not vote to hear the case en banc, have, he asserts, violated our solemn oath “to uphold the law.” (In fact, by that oath, each of us undertook to “faithfully and impartially discharge and perform the duties incumbent upon me ... under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.”) And Judge Boggs, in writing to explain the traditions of this court with regard to the en banc procedures, was, our colleague says, “spurred by his concern that his position on the abortion issue not be made known to the public.”
If collegiality is necessary to the functioning of the court, and this court has certainly taken the position over many years that it is, how are we to maintain it if we permit our disagreements over the law to take the form of personal attacks on character? Whatever the motivation of any member of this court in making any particular decision, from whence does any other member derive the authority to judge that motivation? And at what cost to the work of the court are those judgments made? Our dissenting colleague’s own purposes may be furthered by publicly impugning the integrity of his colleagues. Collegiality, cooperation and the court’s decision-making process clearly are not. And public confidence in the judicial system and in this court clearly are not.
Finally, I would note that, our dissenting colleague to the contrary notwithstanding, it is just possible that in any given case, the written word may be susceptible to more than one interpretation. Ironically, the dissent’s own words urging the plaintiffs to persist in their efforts to overturn the Tennessee statute prove the point: [ijt is only through perseverance in what appears to be adversity that ... the smallest voice is heard.” Indeed.
CLAY, Circuit Judge, agrees with Judge Keith’s comments.