Court Opinion

ID: 9421830
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:00:04.961278+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:32.716466
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
with whom The Chief Justice joins, concurring.
A District Court’s abstention from the exercise of its properly invoked jurisdiction is justified, in my view, “only in the exceptional circumstances where the order to the parties to repair to the state court would clearly serve one of two important countervailing interests: either the avoidance of a premature and perhaps unnecessary decision of a serious federal constitutional question, or the avoidance of the hazard of unsettling some delicate balance in the .area of federal-state relationships.” Louisiana Power & Light Co. v. City of Thibodaux, ante, p. *22632 (dissenting opinion). Both of these circumstances in which abstention is justified are present in this case. If the District Court directs the parties to the Pennsylvania courts, those" courts may interpret the cutting off of access rights as a taking of property requiring the payment of compensation under Pennsylvania law. Such an interpretation would obviate any need-for determination of the serious constitutional issue, raised in the District Court.
Furthermore, the District Court’s action has halted at the threshold the carrying out of a large-scale highway program before the state courts have had an opportunity to interpret the statute creating that -program. This constitutes an unnecessary interference with state domestic policy creating undesirable friction in federal-state relationships.
Therefore, I concur in the judgment of the Court.