Court Opinion

ID: 9456091
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:41:38.369708+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:50.632550
License: Public Domain

O’SULLIVAN, Senior Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Respectfully I dissent.
The question involved, as I view it, is whether § 1983 U.S.C. 42 is an exception to the command of § 2283 U.S.C. 28. Two decisions given by three-judge District Courts convened in this Circuit have held that it is not. In Brooks v. Briley, 274 F.Supp. 538 (M.D.Tenn.) the Court said in an opinion written by Judge William E. Miller, now a member of this Court,
“The weight of authority and the better reasoned approach require a decision that Sec. 2283 prohibits the enjoining of these state proceedings and that Sec. 1983 is not an ‘expressly authorized’ exception to Sec. 2283.” 274 F.Supp. 553.
Chief Judge Phillips of this Circuit concurred. The decision of the ease was affirmed in the United States Supreme Court in Brooks, et al. v. Briley, Mayor of Nashville, et al., 391 U.S. 361, 88 S.Ct. 1671, 20 L.Ed.2d 647.
In Atlantic Coast Line Railroad v. Bhd. of Locomotive Engineers, 398 U.S. 281, 90 S.Ct. 1739, 26 L.Ed.2d 234 (1970), the Supreme Court made clear that § 2283 does not express a rule of comity usable depending upon the apparent equity of the federal suit to enjoin state prosecution. The Supreme Court said:
“On its face the present Act is an absolute prohibition against enjoining state court proceedings, unless the injunction falls within one of three specifically defined exceptions. * * * In 1955 when this Court interpreted this statute, it stated: ‘This is not a statute conveying a broad general policy for appropriate ad hoc application. Legislative policy is here expressed in a clear-cut prohibition qualified only by specifically defined exceptions.’ Amalgamated Clothing Workers v. Richman Bros., 348 U.S. 511, 515-516, [75 S.Ct. 452, 99 L.Ed. 600] (1955). Since that time Congress has not seen fit to amend the statute and we therefore adhere to that position and hold that any injunction against state court proceedings otherwise proper under general equitable principles must be based on one of the specific statutory exceptions to § 2283 if it is to be upheld. Moreover since the statutory prohibition against such injunctions in part rests on the fundamental constitutional independence of the States and their courts, the exceptions should not be enlarged by loose statutory construction. Proceedings in state courts should normally be allowed to continue unimpaired by intervention of the lower federal courts, with relief from error, if any, through the state appellate courts and ultimately this Court.” 398 U.S. at 286, 287, 90 S.Ct. at 1743.
I would affirm.