Court Opinion

ID: 9475685
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:35:45.541941+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:52.670575
License: Public Domain

ESCHBACH, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The federal courts should abstain from deciding this case to provide the state courts of Illinois an opportunity to construe the state statute at issue, thus potentially significantly altering or entirely mooting the constitutional inquiry. Thus, while I have no particular objection to the constitutional jurisprudence set forth in the majority opinion, I must dissent.
The challenged searches in the instant case were authorized by the Illinois Racing *608Board (the “Board”) under Thoroughbred Rules 322 and 25.19 (the “Rules”), and were purportedly issued under the authority of the Horse Racing Act of 1975, as amended (the “Act”), Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 8, § 37-9 (Smith-Hurd Supp.1986). After undergoing searches of their persons and rooms at a racetrack pursuant to these Rules, the plaintiffs filed an action in federal district court, claiming a violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1982), and requesting damages as well as declaratory and injunctive relief.1 The district court denied damages but issued a permanent injunction prohibiting defendants from enforcing the Rules via searches like those challenged. The trial court also declared the Rules invalid under the Fourth Amendment, a determination entirely unnecessary on the record in this case. Only the decisions on injunctive and declaratory relief have been challenged on appeal.
This court has a duty under the narrow strictures of Pullman abstention, Railroad Commission of Texas v. Pullman, 312 U.S. 496, 61 S.Ct. 643, 85 L.Ed. 971 (1941), to maintain the comity and federalism fundamental to the Constitution by avoiding unnecessary friction with the state courts. See, e.g., Harrison v. NAACP, 360 U.S. 167, 176, 79 S.Ct. 1025, 1030, 3 L.Ed.2d 1152 (1959) (Harlan, J.). We also have a duty to avoid unnecessary constitutional adjudication. See, e.g., Ash-wander v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 297 U.S. 288, 345-48, 56 S.Ct. 466, 482-83, 80 L.Ed. 688 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring).
The “paradigm of the ‘special circumstances’ ” that must exist before invoking Pullman’s narrow exception to the exercise of federal jurisdiction is “a case where the challenged statute is susceptible of a construction by the state judiciary that would avoid or modify the necessity of reaching a constitutional question.” Babbitt v. United Farm Workers National Union, 442 U.S. 289, 306, 99 S.Ct. 2301, 2313, 60 L.Ed.2d 895 (1979) (quoting with approval Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U.S. 51, 54, 94 S.Ct. 303, 306, 38 L.Ed.2d 260 (1973)); see also Waldron v. McAtee, 723 F.2d 1348, 1352 (7th Cir.1983); City Investing Co. v. Simcox, 633 F.2d 56, 60 (7th Cir.1980).
This is such a case. No Illinois court has yet addressed the question of whether the challenged searches and Rules under which they were made were beyond the authority of the Act. The majority here and the district court below both appear to believe the Rules invalid for precisely that reason. If the Rules are invalid, the challenged searches, which exclusively relied upon the Rules, are all also invalid, and the case is concluded without constitutional adjudication. Every personal and residential search in this action was performed by agents of the Illinois Department of Law Enforcement (“IDLE”), to whom the Board had delegated the authority to enforce the Rules. On the record in this case, the agents of IDLE claimed only the authority of the Rules for every search challenged. No other authority is claimed in the record to justify these searches. Even the occupational licenses required of each worker to gain employment were conditioned upon signing a consent to searches under the authority of the Rules. While the attorneys argued other authority to this court in their briefs, those arguments are merely legal arguments constructed after the institution of litigation. The crux of the matter is that the facts established by the record do not support a plea to any authority except the Rules to justify these searches, and the litigants cannot inject extraneous issues into the case via the briefs. Given the exclusive reliance by the IDLE agents on the Rules, the validity of the Rules is *609the only issue properly before this court, and it may well be decided by state law.
Thus this case calls for abstention because the statute leaves “reasonable room for a construction by the [state] courts which might avoid in whole or in part the necessity for federal constitutional adjudication, or at least materially alter the problem.” Harrison, 360 U.S. at 176, 79 S.Ct. at 1030; see also Boehning v. Indiana State Employees Association, 423 U.S. 6, 6-8, 96 S.Ct. 168, 168-70, 46 L.Ed.2d 148 (1975) (per curiam); Lynk v. LaPorte Superior Court No. 2, 789 F.2d 554, 568 (7th Cir.1986).
In this case, the Illinois courts obviously might provide a limiting construction that would place the challenged searches beyond the Act, see Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff 467 U.S. 229, 104 S.Ct. 2321, 2327, 81 L.Ed.2d 186 (1984) (significant possibility of a limiting construction justifies abstention); Harrison, 360 U.S. at 176, 79 S.Ct. at 1030, 46 L.Ed.2d 148 (abstaining because of significant possibility of limiting construction); see also Lynk, 789 F.2d at 568, for the Act does not specifically or explicitly authorize either personal or residential searches. Such an interpretation of the Act would significantly alter, if not entirely moot, the constitutional question. The strong possibility of such a limiting construction should deter us from declaring the issue so clear that we will not first defer to a state court’s interpretation of its own law. Cf. Kusper v. Pontikes, 414 U.S. 51, 94 S.Ct. 303, 38 L.Ed.2d 260 (1973) (abstention improper because state law not susceptible of an interpretation that might avoid constitutional adjudication); Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 528, 534-35, 85 S.Ct. 1177, 1182, 14 L.Ed.2d 50 (1965) (same); Board of Education v. Bisworth, 713 F.2d 1316, 1321 (7th Cir.1983) (same).
It might be argued that it is inappropriate to order abstention at the appellate level when the issue was not raised below or suggested by the parties on appeal.2 But we have recently held otherwise. In Waldron v. McAtee, 723 F.2d 1348 (7th Cir.1983), we held that “the court has the power and in an appropriate case the duty to order abstention, if necessary for the first time at the appellate level, even though no party is asking for it.” Id. at 1351. Our duty is to the federalism inherent in the Constitution, and we are thereby bound to respect the sovereignty of the states and to avoid unnecessary constitutional adjudication.3
Procedural concerns bolster the argument for abstention in this case. The purpose of legal procedure is to expedite the full and frank consideration of substantive legal disputes. If the appellate courts do not order abstention where it is appropriate simply because it was not raised below, litigants will be encouraged to avoid abstention by excluding crucial state issues from their pleadings. Such a practice would place abstention largely in the hands of the litigants, and in many cases the individual goals of each litigant may counsel avoidance of abstention, thus obscuring and perhaps emasculating the interests of the sovereign states in the regulation of their own affairs. When a case presents issues meeting the threshold requirements necessary to invoke the narrow doctrine of Pullman abstention, the court may be the lone guardian of the state’s sovereign place under the Constitution. We should not shirk that duty.
*610The majority suggests in a footnote that even if the Act does not authorize the challenged searches, we would still be required to reach the defendants’ constitutional arguments based on the plaintiffs’ consents to the searches. I do not agree. The Board conditioned the granting of employment licenses upon consent to the Rules, and the district court found that the employees’ individual consents at the time of each search were given under the threat of dismissal based upon the authority of the Rules. The invalidation of the Rules would preclude any future search based upon consent to the Rules, and would prevent the use of consent forms requiring consent to such searches under the authority of the Rules. If the Rules no longer exist, searches may not be based on their authority.
It should also be noted that even with the Rules and consents invalidated, the plaintiffs would still have to show the trial court that they continued to meet the threshold requirements necessary to support an injunction. While the district court found that “in the absence of permanent injunction, they [the plaintiffs] will continue to have their houses and persons searched without a warrant,” it apparently did not consider the effect invalidating the Rules would have on police behavior. It is pure speculation to posit that the agents of IDLE would continue these searches subsequent to the invalidation of the Rules; indeed, the agents conducted the personal and residential searches in the backstretch area only in reliance upon the validity of the Rules, as the record shows. There are no findings regarding this crucial point in the district court’s opinion, and this silence highlights the fundamental weakness in the majority’s opinion: the validity of the searches absent the Rules was not presented to the district court under the record in this case, and should not be at issue before this court.
The majority also contends that the invalidity of the Rules would not dispose of the defendants' constitutional argument based upon a reduced expectation of privacy due to pervasive government regulation of the horse racing industry. I disagree. The pleadings do not place this defense in issue except in reference to the validity of the Rules. Throughout this action, neither party has raised the argument that the searches were authorized in the absence of the Rules.4 While the parties may have intended or hoped to put such a theory into this case by their briefs to this court, the record here does not do so, and this court is not at liberty to resolve issues not presented by the record on appeal. In re Peter Bear, 789 F.2d 577, 579 (7th Cir.1986); Johnson v. Levy Organization Development Co., 789 F.2d 601, 611 (7th Cir.1986).
*611Nevertheless, the majority today has gone beyond state law unnecessarily and has decided a constitutional issue not presented to the court. With all due respect, such a decision is ill-advised. My concern is not merely technical; while the parties have addressed themselves to the constitutional requirements necessary to authorize a search under a particular legislative scheme detailing requirements for such searches, the parties have not directly confronted the constitutionality of such searches made without explicit statutory guidelines, probable cause, or reasonable suspicion in a pervasively regulated industry. This court should not rule upon the issue until a case presents it and does so without also presenting a potentially dis-positive and uncertain issue of state law. Otherwise, the court suffers the absence of the sharp definition of issues and exhaustive consideration of legal argument such a case would provide. The case presented to us turns on an unclear issue of state law whose resolution may obviate and would almost certainly significantly alter the need for constitutional adjudication. I would abstain.

. Some justices have on occasion taken the position that Pullman abstention ought not to apply to cases brought under the Civil Rights Act, see, e.g., Harrison v. NAACP, 360 U.S. 167, 180-81, 79 S.Ct. 1025, 1032, 3 L.Ed.2d 1152 (1959) (Douglas, J., dissenting, joined by Warren, C.J., and Brennan, J.); Boehning v. Indiana State Employees Ass’n, 423 U.S. 6, 8, 96 S.Ct. 168, 170, 46 L.Ed.2d 148 (1975) (Douglas, J., dissenting), but that position has never commanded a majority of the Court, and Pullman abstention remains applicable, see, e.g., Boehning, 423 U.S. at 6-8, 96 S.Ct. at 168-70 (per curiam).

. We raised the potential applicability of abstention at the oral argument on appeal, and the parties then filed briefs on the issue at our request.

. We recently held in Mazanec v. North Judson-San Pierre School Corp., 763 F.2d 845, 848 (7th Cir.1985), that a trial court had abused its discretion by ordering abstention subsequent to the date trial was concluded, and three years after litigation was commenced. Mazanec itself distinguished Waldron by noting that in Waldron there was a significant possibility that the statute would be held unconstitutional as it stood, but that the state might "save” it by limiting it to pass constitutional muster. Id. at 848. The facts at bar are similar to Waldron; a state court's interpretation of the Rules and the Act might avoid the necessity of striking down a state law or regulation on constitutional grounds. Thus Waldron is the appropriate precedent to apply to the case at bar.

. In their answer the defendants pleaded that sections 37-2 and 37-15 of the Act both independently authorized the Rules, even if section 37-9 did not. Defendants never again explicitly cited, argued, or relied upon the putative authority provided by these sections, and plaintiffs only cursorily argued their insufficiency in authorizing the Rules. More importantly, the district court appears to have decided that the two sections were not at issue, or that the arguments based upon them were so frivolous as to not even require comment, for the court made no mention of them in its opinion. Whatever the statutory or constitutional merits of arguments based upon these sections, they are still framed to authorize the Rules, not to directly authorize searches in the absence of the Rules. Thus their invocation does not affect the focus of this dissent, which is that the validity of the Rules under state law is a crucial question whose resolution will significantly alter or entirely moot the constitutional issues in this case.
The defendants did raise an affirmative defense that "warrantless searches and seizures and investigatory stops of occupational licensees within the race track enclosure do not violate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution since horse racing licensees have notice of the likelihood of warrantless searches by the pervasiveness of regulation and by the long history of governmental regulation of this business.” (Citations omitted.) However, defendants did not explicitly make clear whether "pervasiveness of regulation” in this defense included the challenged Rules, and the ubiquitous reliance upon the Rules throughout the rest of the defendants’ pleadings and briefs strongly suggest that this defense also relied upon the validity of the Rules. Surely defendants would have explicitly announced any claims they believed authorized the searches in the absence of the Rules.