Court Opinion

ID: 9486164
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:39:41.417179+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:33.517023
License: Public Domain

FLAUM, Circuit Judge,
with whom KANNE, Circuit Judge, joins, dissenting.
I dissent. Although I share the majority’s wariness of federal involvement in matters of local governance, I cannot discern any change in legal or factual circumstance since the entry of the consent decree in this case that justifies setting it aside in toto.
The original litigation and subsequent decree were bottomed on separate legal theories, equal protection and due process. This Court repudiated the equal protection theory in Evans II, but the due process theory was left intact. Perhaps the majority is correct in speculating that the Evans II court was in no mood to sustain the due process claim had it the opportunity to pass on it. However, I think it is a wiser practice to limit what we take from a case to what it in fact says, and not to attribute to cases penumbral holdings about wholly distinct and undecided legal theories.
In my opinion a colorable due process theory supported at least part of this decree when it was entered in 1984, and nothing in Evans II or any other case since alters that conclusion. The district court, intimately familiar with the decree and its foundations, understood the precise import of Evans II and acted well within its discretion in modifying the decree accordingly. I also see no inequity at this time in continued enforcement of the decree. Chicago does not complain that compliance has now become onerous and, indeed, even indicates its intention, with or without the decree, to continue to pay tort judgments promptly.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.