Court Opinion

ID: 9663238
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:32:57.623402+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:47.040247
License: Public Domain

Coleman, C.J.
(dissenting). I respectfully dissent. The majority opinion fails to address a focal and decisive point: the impact of the United States Supreme Court’s summary affirmance in Hudler v Austin, aff’d sub nom Allen v Austin, 430 US 924; 97 S Ct 1541; 51 L Ed 2d 769 (1977), upon the ability of this Court to undertake an independent *601examination of the merits of the present case and to arrive at a contrary conclusion on the federal constitutional question necessarily decided by Allen.
On the authority of Hicks v Miranda, 422 US 332; 95 S Ct 2281; 45 L Ed 2d 223 (1975) and Mandel v Bradley, 432 US 173; 97 S Ct 2238; 53 L Ed 2d 199 (1977), I would hold that Allen is precedent binding upon this Court, and thus forecloses this Court’s review of the federal constitutional issue so extensively entertained by the majority.
I
An overview of the development of this seemingly esoteric area concerning the precedential value of summary dispositions by the United States Supreme Court is helpful to an understanding of the posture taken by this dissent. In the mid-1970’s, the United States Supreme Court in several decisions adverted to the proposition that its summary affirmances or dismissals for want of a substantial federal question are to be accepted as decisions on the merits of the case and accordingly are to be given weight as precedent. See, e.g., Edelman v Jordan, 415 US 651; 94 S Ct 1347; 39 L Ed 2d 662 (1974); Richardson v Ramirez, 418 US 24; 94 S Ct 2655; 41 L Ed 2d 551 (1974).1
This is so, despite the fact that these types of summary actions are undertaken by the Supreme Court without its having afforded the case plenary consideration (i.e., without conducting oral argument or obtaining exhaustive briefing of the perti*602nent issues).2 The principle that summary actions are decisions on the merits and of precedential value was fully acknowledged in Hicks, supra. In Hicks, a three-judge federal district court refused to accord a prior United States Supreme Court summary dismissal for want of a substantial federal question status as controlling precedent. The United States Supreme Court chastised the lower court for ignoring its previous summary action, and in doing so, set forth some basic rules governing this area:
"A federal constitutional issue was properly presented [in the former case which was disposed of summarily], it was within our appellate jurisdiction under 28 USC 1257(2), and we had no discretion to refuse adjudication of the case on its merits as would have been true had the case been brought here under our certiorari jurisdiction. We were not obligated to grant the case plenary consideration, and we did not; but we were required to deal with its merits. We did so by concluding that the appeal should be dismissed because the constitutional challenge to the California statute was not a substantial one. The three-judge court was not free to disregard this pronouncement. As Mr. Justice Brennan once observed, '[vjotes to afRrm summarily, and to dismiss for want of a substantial federal question, it hardly needs comment, are votes on the merits of a case * * *,' Ohio ex rel Eaton v Price, 360 US 246, 247 (1959); cf. R. Stern & E. Gressman, Su*603preme Court Practice 197 (4th ed, 1969) ('The Court is, however, deciding a case on the merits, when it dismisses for want of a substantial question * * *’); C. Wright, Law of Federal Courts 495 (2d ed, 1970) ('Summary disposition of an appeal, however, either by affirmance or by dismissal for want of a substantial federal question, is a disposition on the merits’). The District Court should have followed the Second Circuit’s advice, first, in Port Authority Bondholders Protective Committee v Port of New York Authority, 387 F2d 259, 263, fn 3 (1967), that 'unless and until the Supreme Court should instruct otherwise, inferior federal courts had best adhere to the view that if the Court has branded a question as unsubstantial, it remains so except when doctrinal developments indicate otherwise’; and, later, in Doe v Hodgson, 478 F2d 537, 539, cert den sub nom Doe v Brennan, 414 US 1096 (1973), that the lower courts are bound by summary decisions by this Court ' "until such time as the Court informs [them] that [they] are not.’”” Hicks, supra, 344-345. (Emphasis added.)
While some criticism has been levelled at Hicks for not providing the lower courts with guidance with regard to their application of summary dispositions as precedent,3 footnote 14 of Justice White’s opinion in Hicks is instructive: the issues in the case treated summarily by the United States Supreme Court must be "sufficiently the same” as the issues presented in the case before the lower court, and the lower court is obliged "to ascertain what issues had been properly presented in [the case summarily affirmed or dismissed] and declared by this Court to be without substance”. Hicks, supra, 345, fn 14.
Mandel, supra, further refines what was said by the Hicks Court and exists as an important state*604ment on how lower courts are to apply Hicks.4 Mandel is notable on several counts: it not only reaffirms Hicks, but also provides explicit commentary of its own which is particularly significant to the instant case:
"Summary affirmances and dismissals for want of a substantial federal question without doubt reject the specific challenges presented in the statement of jurisdiction and do leave undisturbed the judgment appealed from. They do prevent lower courts from coming to opposite conclusions on the precise issues presented and necessarily decided by those actions.” Mandel, supra, 176.
Further, Mandel instructs that in evaluating the precedential import of a summary action, other courts must conscientiously examine the facts of the case before them and compare them to the facts of the case affirmed or dismissed in summary fashion by the United States Supreme Court.
Some judicial speculation has arisen that Mandel disavowed Hicks, and that more recent developments, viz., Illinois State Board of Elections v Socialist Workers Party, 440 US 173; 99 S Ct 983; 59 L Ed 2d 230 (1979), have eroded the utility of Hicks, see, e.g., Lecates v Justice of Peace Court No 4, 637 F2d 898, 902-903 (CA 3, 1980).5
*605To the contrary, Hicks continues to be good law, and Illinois Board of Elections does not operate to give this Court latitude to reconsider fully the federal constitutional issue before us. Significantly, the Supreme Court itself has continued to cite Hicks authoritatively, see, e.g., Metromedia, Inc v San Diego, 453 US 490, 499; 101 S Ct 2882; 69 L Ed 2d 800 (1981); see, also, Justice White’s concurrence in a dismissal for want of a substantial federal question in McKeesport Area School Dist v Pennsylvania Dep’t of Education, 446 US 970, 971; 100 S Ct 2953; 64 L Ed 2d 831 (1980); Rome v United States, 446 US 156, 212, fn 4; 100 S Ct 1548; 64 L Ed 2d 119 (1980) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting).
Additionally, the argument that Illinois State Board confers upon lower courts unfettered discretion to discard what the Supreme Court has dictated through its summary affirmances and dismissals rests upon a misunderstanding of what the Supreme Court means when it says that its summary dispositions do not carry the same weight as do full opinions issued after plenary consideration. Quite simply, the Supreme Court says that it need not accord full precedential value to its own summary actions, not that lower courts are free to do the same.
In so stating, the Supreme Court merely recog*606nizes its place in the judicial hierarchy. This interpretation is fully substantiated by the Supreme Court’s own statements. For example, in Illinois State Board, the case relied upon so heavily by the majority in its assessment of the constitutionality of 1976 PA 94, the Court’s pronouncement that "summary affirmances have considerably less precedential value than an opinion on the merits” is immediately followed by a statement indicating that "the Court” itself has not been constrained to follow a rule which may appear to have been established by summary affirmances.6
Another example of the Supreme Court’s intent to confine the "less-than-full-precedent” rule to its own bench is contained in a footnote in Washington v Confederated Bands and Tribes of the Yakima Indian Nation, 439 US 463, 476-477, fn 20; 99 S Ct 740; 58 L Ed 2d 740 (1979): "They [summary dismissals] do not, however, have the same precedential value here as does an opinion of this Court after briefing and oral argument on the merits.” (Emphasis supplied.) Finally, in Metromedia, supra, p 500, the Court acknowledged the propriety of the California Supreme Court’s reliance on one of its summary decisions, but added (I might point out, with citation to Illinois State Board) that "summary actions do not have the same authority in this Court as do decisions rendered after plenary consideration”. (Emphasis supplied.) See, also, Stern & Gressman, Supreme Court Practice (5th ed, 1978), p 330; 12 Moore’s Federal Practice (2d ed), ¶ 400.05-1.
*607II
To recapitulate briefly the foregoing, summary affirmances or dismissals by the United States Supreme Court are decisions on the merits which are binding on other courts as precedent. The Supreme Court itself is not required to adhere strictly to that which seems to be established by one or many of its summary actions. However, lower state and federal courts are not given the same leeway. If the lower court is confronted with "precise issues presented and necessarily decided” by a United States Supreme Court summary disposition, it must treat the summary action as binding precedent. A primary task, then, for another court considering the effect of a Supreme Court summary disposition is to determine the reach of that disposition.
In the instant case, this Court is obliged to ascertain whether the Supreme Court "necessarily decided” by summarily affirming in Allen, supra, the "precise issue” before us here. I conclude that it did and therefore, that the majority errs in proceeding to decide the federal constitutional issue in a manner contrary to that which is dictated by Allen.
In Hudler v Austin, 419 F Supp 1002 (ED Mich, 1976), a three-judge district court (one judge dissenting) considered plaintiffs’ challenge to 1976 PA 94 on First and Fourteenth Amendment (association and franchise) and equal protection grounds and concluded that the statute did not abridge these federal constitutional rights. However, the court did award plaintiffs limited relief by allowing them ballot access for the then-imminent November, 1976 election. Plaintiffs directly appealed *608this judgment to the United States Supreme Court. The jurisdictional statement7 supplied by plaintiffs delineated a single issue for consideration on appeal:
"Whether the Michigan Election Code, on its face and as applied, invidiously discriminates among political parties in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and unnecessarily burdens political activity in violation of the First Amendment, by requiring new political parties who have qualified for the general election ballot by submitting the required number of petitions, to further qualify for the general election ballot by additionally receiving 0.3% of the votes cast at the primary election.” 9085 Records and Briefs of the United States Supreme Court, No 76-1038, p 8.
The jurisdictional statement appears to state accurately the constitutional issue treated by the district court in Hudler. Rule 15.1(a) of the Supreme Court Rules specifies that "[o]nly the questions set forth in the jurisdictional statement or fairly included therein will be considered by the Court.” It is therefore eminently clear that, in affirming Hudler, the Supreme Court necessarily considered the sole issue before it — the constitutionality of 1976 PA 94 — and necessarily decided that the lower court’s judgment with respect to that issue was correct.
Ill
The case at bar involves the identical statute and substantially the same parties as were before *609the United States Supreme Court in Allen. The federal constitutional issue "necessarily decided” by the summary affirmance in Allen is identical to that addressed by the majority here.
Appellants contend that a hew constitutional issue — an "as applied” attack — is being raised here. This appears to mean that appellants claim the procedures used to implement 1976 PA 94 in a given election year were "unconstitutional in their impact upon the legislative scheme”, Dean v Austin, 602 F2d 121, 123 (CA 6, 1979). However, the majority opinion is decidedly a "facial” analysis, and indeed, because of the procedural posture of this case, there is no evidence before the Court on just how 1976 PA 94 might be found unconstitutional "as applied”.
Moreover, I note that the jurisdictional statement in Allen challenged the statute on both "facial” and "as applied” grounds.
IV
Therefore, I would affirm the trial court’s judgment with regard to the question of the constitutionality of 1976 PA 94 under the provisions of the United States Constitution, although for a different reason. Because the trial court has not been given the opportunity to develop a record on the question of how this legislation might abridge various provisions of the Michigan Constitution, I would remand the remaining issues to the trial court for its consideration.
Williams, J., concurred with Coleman, C.J.

 Earlier pronouncements on this subject exist, see, e.g., Ohio ex rel Eaton v Price, 360 US 246, 247; 79 S Ct 978; 3 L Ed 2d 1200 (1959).

 The absence of plenary consideration has been stated as a reason why the Supreme Court need not accord full precedential weight to its own summary dispositions, see Justice Brennan’s dissent to the denial of certiorari in Colorado Springs Amusements, Ltd v Rizzo, 428 US 913, 916-917; 96 S Ct 3228; 49 L Ed 2d 1222 (1976). However, "[t]his description of disposition after cursory discussion is difficult to reconcile with the theory that each summary affirmance or dismissal for insubstantiality is a decision on the merits worthy of the deference of all lower courts.” The Precedential Effect of Summary Affirmances and Dismissals for Want of a Substantial Federal Question by the Supreme Court After Hicks v Miranda and Mandel v Bradley, 64 Va L Rev 117, 127 (1978) (hereinafter cited as Precedential Effect).

 Precedential Effect, supra, 122.

 In Mandel, a three-judge federal district court faced with the question of the constitutionality of early filing deadlines for independent candidates in Maryland relied on the Supreme Court’s summary affirmance in a case which had dealt with a similar Pennsylvania statute, and declined to reach the merits of the case. The Supreme Court remanded to the district court for consideration of the merits, largely because the facts of the Pennsylvania case were radically different from those presented in Mandel; moreover, critical dissimilarities between the pertinent election statutes worked to prevent the lower court from regarding the Pennsylvania case as controlling precedent.

 Justice Marshall, writing for the Court in Illinois State Board, supra, 180-181, stated:
"Appellant argues here, as it did below, that this Court’s summary *605aflirmance of Jackson v Ogilvie, supra [325 F Supp 864 (ND Ill, 1971), aff'd 403 US 925 (1971)], is dispositive of the equal protection challenge here. In analyzing this contention, we note at the outset that summary affirmances have considerably less precedential value than an opinion on the merits. See Edelman v Jordan, 415 US 651, 671 [94 S Ct 1347; 39 L Ed 2d 662] (1974). As Mr. Chief Justice Burger observed in Fusari v Steinberg, 419 US 379, 392 [95 S Ct 533; 42 L Ed 2d 521] (1975) (concurring opinion), 'upon fuller consideration of an issue under plenary review, the Court has not hesitated to discard a rule which a line of summary affirmances may appear to have established.’ See Usery v Turner Elkhorn Mining Co, 428 US 1, 14 [96 S Ct 2882; 49 L Ed 2d 752] (1976).”

 Cases in which the Supreme Court has decided not to follow a line of past summary actions include: Massachusetts Board of Retirement v Murgia, 427 US 307; 96 S Ct 2562; 49 L Ed 2d 520 (1976); Usery v Turner Elkhorn Mining Co, 428 US 1; 96 S Ct 2882; 49 L Ed 2d 752 (1976).

 Required by Supreme Court Rule 12. See Supreme Court Rule 15.1 for a listing of the material to be included in a jurisdictional statement.