Court Opinion

ID: 9430636
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:15.289999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:25.397349
License: Public Domain

Justice Stevens,
with whom Justice Brennan, Justice Marshall, and Justice Blackmun join, concurring in the judgment.
Appellee Dayton Christian Schools, Inc. (School), employed Mrs. Linda Hoskinson as a teacher. Shortly after *630learning that she was pregnant, the School refused to renew Mrs. Hoskinson’s teaching contract for the next academic year. The two reasons for this decision, according to the School, were (1) the School’s belief that Mrs. Hoskinson should remain at home to supervise and care for her forthcoming child; and (2) the School’s belief that Mrs. Hoskinson had violated the “Biblical chain of command” by consulting an attorney regarding her disagreement with the School’s conviction that she remain at home. App. 115 (complaint of Dayton Christian Schools, Inc., et al.).
After her termination, Mrs. Hoskinson filed a sex discrimination charge against the School with appellant Ohio Civil Rights Commission. The Commission investigated her charge and, upon finding probable cause to believe that the School had violated §4112.02 of the Ohio Revised Code,1 scheduled a hearing. The School thereupon filed this action in Federal District Court seeking declaratory and injunctive relief.
In the District Court, the School argued that the Ohio anti-discrimination .statute violates the First Amendment Religion Clauses as applied to sectarian schools.2 The District Court determined that “[t]he only conduct on the part of the Commission that is presently being threatened with suffi*631cient immediacy and reality to present a justiciable controversy is the investigation, which has already taken place, and the pending hearing on the complaint filed by the [Commission] concerning the discharge of Mrs. Hoskinson.” 578 F. Supp. 1004, 1029 (SD Ohio 1984). Accord, id., at 1039. On the merits, the District Court concluded that the Commission’s investigation and adjudication of sex discrimination charges was constitutional. The court recognized that “the statute could be applied in any number of ways that could im-permissibly interfere with” appellees’ religious freedom, but it concluded that these concerns — which relate to the possible remedies that might or might not be ordered if a violation is found — were “hypothetical or speculative” and therefore not ripe on the current state of the record. Id., at 1028.3
The Court of Appeals reversed. 766 F. 2d 932 (CA6 1985). It recognized that the School “challenge^] only the [Commission’s] exercise of jurisdiction and its issuance of the complaint in this case.” Id., at 950, n. 31. It further acknowledged that “an order of reinstatement or backpay is not at issue in this case.” Ibid. It nevertheless determined that the “chilling knowledge” that the School’s selection criteria for teachers “will be reevaluated, and, perhaps, adjusted by the state applying secular criteria” placed an impermissible burden on appellees’ religious freedoms. Ibid. Looking into the future, the Court of Appeals also concluded that the *632“highly intrusive nature” of backpay and reinstatement, as well as the “continuing surveillance implicated by the conciliation agreement proposed by the Commission” and rejected by the School, “reveal the ‘significant risk that the First Amendment will be infringed.’” Id., at 942-943 (quoting NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 440 U. S. 490, 502 (1979)). Accord, 766 F. 2d, at 951.
Like the majority, I agree with the District Court that neither the investigation of certain charges nor the conduct of a hearing on those charges is prohibited by the First Amendment: “the Commission violates no constitutional rights by merely investigating the circumstances of Hoskinson’s discharge in this case, if only to ascertain whether the ascribed religious-based reason was in fact the reason for the discharge.” Ante, at 628.
I further agree with the District Court that any challenge to a possibly intrusive remedy is premature at this juncture. As the majority points out, ante, at 629, the Commission recognizes religious justifications for conduct that might otherwise be illegal. Thus, although §4112.02 forbids discrimination on the basis of religion, the Commission has dismissed complaints alleging religious discrimination by religious educational institutions, see Menz v. St. Pius School, No. 3823 (1983), and in particular has dismissed complaints by teachers against sectarian schools for limiting employment to instructors who subscribe to the appropriate faith, see In re St. Michael’s School, No. 2726 (1976); In re St. Mary of the Falls, No. 948 (1975). It bears emphasis that the Commission dismissed these complaints only after investigating charges of discrimination, finding probable cause that the statute had been violated, and holding a hearing on the complaint. It therefore follows that the Commission’s finding of probable cause and decision to schedule a hearing in this case does not also mean that the Commission intends to impose any sanction, let alone a sanction in derogation of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses. In view of this fact, the District *633Court was entirely correct in concluding that appellees’ constitutional challenge to the remedial provisions of the Ohio statute is not ripe for review.4 Accordingly, I concur in the judgment.5

 That section provides, in part:
“§ 4112.02 Unlawful discriminatory practices.
“It shall be an unlawful discriminatory practice:
“(A) For any employer, because of the race, color, religion, sex, national origin, handicap, age, or ancestry of any person, to discharge without just cause, to refuse to hire, or otherwise to discriminate against that person with respect to hire, tenure, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, or any matter directly or indirectly related to employment.” Ohio Rev. Code Ann. §4112.02 (Supp. 1985).

 The School also argued that § 4112.02 of the Ohio Revised Code is unconstitutional on its face. The District Court held the section to be neither overbroad nor void for vagueness. Because the Court of Appeals invalidated the section as applied to the School, it did not address appellees’ facial attack. The School no longer presses the argument that the statute is unconstitutional on its face.

 “In permitting the [Commission] to exercise jurisdiction over the instant controversy, the Court has in no way determined either that the full force of [the Commission’s] jurisdiction under [Ohio Revised Code] Chapter 4112 can be brought to bear on [Dayton Christian Schools] without imper-missibly burdening [appellees’] first amendment rights or, even with respect to the present controversy, that any remedy deemed appropriate by the [Commission] should they find [Dayton Christian Schools] liable, would necessarily present no further first amendment problems. However, because many of the concerns voiced by [appellees] about state encroachment on their religious freedoms remain as yet only possibilities, they cannot serve as the basis for the issuing of a permanent injunction against the [Commission].” 578 F. Supp., at 1041.

 1 fully agree with the majority’s general statement that “a reasonable threat of prosecution for conduct allegedly protected by the Constitution gives rise to a sufficiently ripe controversy.” Ante, at 626, n. 1 (citation omitted). Thus, when the constitutional challenge is to the arrest and initiation of criminal proceedings — as was the case with the pamphleteer in Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U. S. 452, 458-460 (1974), and the operators of the bars in Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc., 422 U. S. 922, 930-931 (1975) — a “reasonable threat” of arrest and prosecution is sufficient to make the controversy ripe for judicial review. For purposes of this ease, it follows from Steffel and Doran that appellees’ First Amendment challenge to the Commission’s decision to investigate and adjudicate a charge of sex discrimination against the School is ripe, because the investigation has been completed and the matter set for hearing.
However, it does not follow that a challenge to whatever remedy might ultimately be fashioned (should liability be established and relief ordered) is ripe merely upon a showing of a “reasonable threat” that proceedings will commence. Doran and Steffel do not suggest this result, for they did not address the constitutionality of possible remedies for the conduct prosecuted in those eases. In view of the absence of any finding of liability in this case, and the Commission’s demonstrated willingness to tailor remedies to accommodate the exercise of religious freedoms, there is plainly no “reasonable threat” that an overly intrusive remedy will trench on appel-lees’ First Amendment rights. To hold otherwise would require the District Court to detail the constitutionally permissible range of the Commission’s sentencing discretion in advance of any facts regarding the School’s discriminatory conduct or any explanation by the Commission justifying the relief it might fashion. Either or both of these items of information would inform the First Amendment analysis and might prove decisive in determining the constitutionality of the Commission’s hypothesized remedy.

 1 do not agree with the majority that the doctrine of abstention associated with Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971), required the District Court to dismiss appellees’ complaint. That disposition would presumably deny the School a federal forum to adjudicate the constitutionality of a provisional administrative remedy, such as reinstatement pending resolution of the complainant’s charges, even though the constitutional issues have become ripe for review by the Commission’s entry of a coercive order and *634the Commission refuses to address the merits of the constitutional claims. Younger abstention has never been applied to subject a federal-court plaintiff to an allegedly unconstitutional state administrative order when the constitutional challenge to that order can be asserted, if at all, only in state-court judicial review of the administrative proceeding. See Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U. S., at 462 (holding that Younger abstention is inappropriate when no state-court proceeding “is pending at the time the federal complaint is filed,” because in that circumstance “federal intervention does not result in duplicative legal proceedings or disruption of the state criminal justice system”; it cannot “be interpreted as reflecting negatively upon [a] state court’s ability to enforce constitutional principles”; and the absence of a pending state-court proceeding deprives “the federal plaintiff [of] a concrete opportunity to vindicate his constitutional rights”). See also Middlesex County Ethics Committee v. Garden State Bar Assn., 457 U. S. 423, 437 (1982) (requiring abstention where “an adequate state forum for all relevant issues has clearly been demonstrated to be available prior to any proceedings on the merits in federal court” (citation omitted)).