Court Opinion

ID: 9426049
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:35.687499+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:24.363079
License: Public Domain

*805Mr. Justice White,
concurring in the result.
The Court-holds that dismissing a suit on Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971), grounds is not an order denying an injunction for the purposes of 28 U. S. C. § 1253 and is therefore not appealable directly to this Court, even assuming that the order could be issued only by a three-judge court. I agree with the result but not with this mode of achieving it.
If only a three-judge court may order such a dismissal, I have great difficulty in excluding such an order from the reach of the plain terms of § 1253. The sole justification for so manhandling the language of the section is to avoid our hearing a direct appeal on a nonconstitutional issue of federal law that has little if any connection with the reasons for requiring either three-judge courts or direct review of their decisions. That procedure was adopted to protect state statutes from improvident injunctions issued by a single federal judge on federal constitutional grounds. The more straightforward approach to this case would be to hold that decisions on issues other than requests for injunctive relief challenging the constitutionality of state statutes need not be made by three judges but rather are to be made or deemed to be made by single-judge courts whose decisions are appealable only to the courts of appeals. Proceeding in this manner would require no more than construing 28 U. S. C. §§ 2281 and 2284 (3) and (4), in the light of their original purpose, as applying only to orders granting or denying interlocutory or permanent injunctions where the constitutionality of state statutes is involved.
This approach may appear to be at odds with Idlewild Liquor Corp. v. Epstein, 370 U. S. 713 (1962). There the Court held that a three-judge court is required where a statute was challenged on constitutional grounds but where a single judge ordered abstention pending presen*806tation of the issues to a state court. The court ruled that as long as the constitutional issue was substantial, a basis for equitable relief was at least alleged in the complaint, and the other requirements for three-judge-court juristiction were satisfied, a three-judge court must be convened. But even within this holding, if it appears on the face of the complaint that there is no ground for equitable relief, there would be no necessity for convening a three-judge court. A single judge should be able to dismiss such a case, therefore, if the pleadings show that there is litigation pending in the state court in which the constitutional challenge could be presented and nothing is alleged to excuse federal intervention.1
Even if grounds for equitable relief are alleged in a complaint, a single judge should be able to rule on a motion to dismiss based on Younger v. Harris grounds. Much water has gone over the dam since Idlewild was decided. For one thing, in Swift & Co. v. Wickham, 382 U. S. 111 (1965), the Court made very plain that the three-judge-court requirement applied only to injunction suits depending entirely upon a substantive provision of the Constitution; injunctions by a single judge could be granted or denied where the claim of invalidity rested on a conflict with a federal statute. In Swift, the “statutory” claim was joined with the constitutional issue, but *807the latter was deemed frivolous, leaving only the statutory issue for which three judges were not required. But in Hagans v. Lavine, 415 U. S. 528, 543-545 (1974), we held that even where the statutory claim is joined with a substantial constitutional claim, the former could be, and should be, decided first by a single judge.
The plain import of these cases is that three judges are not required merely because a complaint states a cause of action for an injunction based on a constitutional challenge to a state statute. All non-three-judge-court issues may be sorted out and tried by a single judge. Cases like Idlewild are derelicts and should be expressly cleared from the scene.2
Gonzalez v. Employees Credit Union, 419 U. S. 90 (1974), has shown the way and I would follow its lead. This is especially desirable in this case; for the result of the Court’s holding is to require a three-judge court to pass on Younger v. Harris issues and to direct appeals from those orders to the court of appeals, where they would normally be heard again by three judges. This is an exorbitant expenditure of judicial manpower, and without reason in light of our cases.

 Even on the Court’s own terms, Idlewild is not a strong reason for its reluctance to say that a three-judge court was not required here. Idlewild concerned abstention under Railroad Comm’n v. Pullman Co., 312 U. S. 496 (1941). Under Pullman abstention, the federal court retains jurisdiction while the state-law issues are adjudicated in state court, and therefore no relief has been finally denied in federal court. In contrast to that deferral of relief, Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971), abstention mandates dismissal of the federal action. It is straining the ordinary meaning of words to say that requested injunctive relief has not been denied in such a situation,

 To the extent that Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U. S. 452, 457 n. 7 (1974), suggests the contrary in dictum, it should not be followed.