Court Opinion

ID: 9426808
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:00.047207+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:03.333124
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stevens,
dissenting.
Today the Court adds four new complexities to a doctrine that has bewildered other federal courts for several years.1 First, the Court finds a meaningful difference between a state procedure which is “patently and flagrantly violative of the Constitution” and one that is “flagrantly and patently violative of express constitutional prohibitions in every clause, sentence and paragraph, and in whatever manner and against whomever an effort might be made to apply it.” 2 Second, the Court holds that an unconstitutional collection procedure may be used by a state agency, though not by others, because there is “a distinction between the State’s status as creditor and the status of private parties using the same procedures.” 3 Third, the Court’s application of the abstention doctrine in this case provides even greater protection to a State when it is proceeding as an ordinary creditor than the statutory protection mandated by Congress for the State in its capacity as a tax collector. Fourth, without disagreeing with the District Court’s conclusion that the Illinois attachment procedure is unconstitutional, the Court remands in order to enable the District Court to decide whether that invalid procedure provides an adequate remedy for the vindication of appellees’ federal rights. A comment on each of these complexities may shed light on the character of the abstention doctrine as now viewed by the Court.
*461I
The District Court found the Illinois attachment procedure “patently and flagrantly violative of the constitution.” Hernandez v. Danaher, 405 F. Supp. 757, 760 (ND Ill. 1975). This Court, on the other hand, writes:
“It is urged that this case comes within the exception that we said in Younger might exist where a state statute is ‘flagrantly and patently violative of express constitutional prohibitions in every clause, sentence and paragraph, and in whatever manner and against whomever an effort might be made to apply it.’ 401 U. S., at 53-54, quoting Watson v. Buck, 313 U. S. 387, 402 (1941). Even if such a finding was made below, which we doubt . . . , it would not have been warranted in light of our cases.” Ante, at 446-447 (emphasis added).4
Since there is no doubt whatsoever as to what the District Court actually said, this Court’s expression of doubt can only refer to its uncertainty as to whether a finding that the crux of the statute is patently and flagrantly unconstitutional is sufficient to satisfy the requirement that the statute be patently and flagrantly unconstitutional “in every clause, sentence and paragraph . . . .” It is, therefore, appropriate to consider what is left of this exception to the Younger doctrine after today’s decision.
The source of this exception is the passage Mr. Justice Black had written some years earlier in Watson v. Buck, 313 U. S. 387, 402, a case which involved a complicated state antitrust Act. On the basis of its conclusion that certain sections were unconstitutional, a three-judge District Court had en*462joined enforcement of the entire Act.5 This Court reversed, holding: first, that the invalidity of a part of a statute would not justify an injunction against the entire Act; and second, that in any event the eight sections in question were valid.
In his explanation of the first branch of the Court’s holding, Mr. Justice Black pointed out that there are few, if any, statutes that are totally unconstitutional in every part.6 Since Watson involved a new statute which had not been construed by any state court, and since such construction might have affected its constitutionality, Mr. Justice Black’s comment emphasized the point that an untried state statute should not be invalidated by a federal court before the state court has an opportunity to construe it. This consideration is not present in a case involving an' attack on a state statute that has been in use for more than a century. Nothing in Watson implies that a limited injunction against an invalid portion of a statute of long standing would be improper.
When he wrote the Court’s opinion in Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37, Mr. Justice Black quoted the foregoing excerpt from the Watson case as an example of a situation in which it would be appropriate for a federal court to enjoin a pending *463state criminal prosecution.7 He did not, however, imply that his earlier language rigidly defined the boundaries of one kind of exception from the equitable rationale underlying the Younger decision itself.
Today the Court seems to be saying that the “patently and flagrantly unconstitutional” exception to Fowler-type abstention is unavailable whenever a statute has a legitimate title, or a legitimate severability clause, or some other equally innocuous provision. If this is a fair reading of the Court's opinion, the Court has given Mr. Justice Black's illustrative language definitional significance. In effect, this treatment preserves an illusion of flexibility in the application of a Founger-type abstention, but it actually eliminates one of the exceptions from the doctrine. For the typical constitutional attack on a statute focuses on one, or a few, objectionable features. Although, as Mr. Justice Black indicated in Watson, it is conceivable that there are some totally unconstitutional statutes, the possibility is quite remote. More importantly, the Court has never explained why all sections of any statute must be considered invalid in order to justify an injunction against a portion that is itself flagrantly unconstitutional. Even if this Court finds the constitutional issue less clear than did the District Court, I do not understand what governmental *464interest is served by refusing to address the merits at this stage of the proceedings.
II
The Court explicitly does not decide “whether Younger principles apply to all civil litigation.” Ante, at 445 n. 8. Its holding in this case therefore rests squarely on the fact that the State, rather than some other litigant, is the creditor that invoked the Illinois attachment procedure. This rationale cannot be tenable unless principles of federalism require greater deference to the State’s interest in collecting its own claims than to its interest in providing a forum for other creditors in the community. It would seem rather obvious to me that the amount of money involved in any particular dispute is a matter of° far less concern to the sovereign than the integrity of its own procedures. Consequently, the fact that a State is a party to a pending proceeding should make it less objectionable to have the constitutional issue adjudicated in a federal forum than if only private litigants were involved. I therefore find it hard to accept the Court’s contrary evaluation as a principled application of the majestic language in Mr. Justice Black’s Younger opinion.
III
The State has a valid interest in collecting taxes or other obligations. In recognition of that need and in a desire to minimize federal interference with state matters, Congress has provided that a federal court may not enjoin the collection of state taxes if the taxpayer has a “plain, speedy and efficient remedy” under state law.8 Congress has not, however, placed any restriction on the power of a federal court to decide whether the taxpayer’s remedy is, in fact, plain, speedy, and efficient.9 Quite the contrary, by qualifying the prohibition *465against enjoining the collection of state taxes, Congress has actually directed the federal courts to review the adequacy of a taxpayer’s remedies.
Moreover, the Court has repeatedly held that when a state remedy is uncertain, the federal court must provide relief. As Mr. Justice Holmes put it, “we ought not to leave the plaintiffs to a speculation upon what the State Court might say if an action at law were brought.” Wallace v. Hines, 253 U. S. 66, 68.10
The doctrine in Younger developed from the same equitable principles that have been applied to interpret 28 U. S. C. § 1341.11 In cases in which this Court has been confronted *466with that statutory restriction, it has not been reluctant to decide in the first instance whether a state remedy is adequate. Congress has provided no special protection from federal interference for a state agency suing to collect nontax obligations. Equitable considerations (as well as considerations of comity arid federalism) do preclude unwarranted interference with litigation brought by such an agency, but surely the agency is entitled to no greater protection than the state tax collector. Nevertheless, the Court is now fashioning a nonstatutory abstention doctrine which requires even greater deference to the State as an ordinary litigant than Congress regarded as appropriate for the State’s more basic fiscal needs.
IV
The Court’s decision to remand this litigation to the District Court to decide whether the Illinois attachment pro*467cedure provides a debtor with an appropriate forum in which to challenge the constitutionality of the Illinois attachment procedure is ironic. For that procedure includes among its undesirable features a set of rules which effectively foreclose any challenge to its constitutionality in the Illinois courts.
Although it is true that § 27 of the Illinois Attachment Act, Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 11, § 27 (1973), allows the defendant to file a motion to quash the attachment, the purpose of such a motion is to test the sufficiency and truth of the facts alleged in the affidavit or the adequacy of the attachment bond. Section 28 of the Act precludes consideration of any other issues.12 Even if — contrary to a fair reading — the statute might be construed to allow consideration of a constitutional challenge on a motion to quash, a trial judge may summarily reject such a challenge without fear of reversal; for an order denying such a motion is interlocutory and nonappealable.13 The ruling on the validity of an attachment does not become final until the underlying tort or contract claim is resolved. At that time the attachment issue will, of course, be moot because the prevailing party will then be entitled to the property regardless of the validity of the attachment.
Because it is so clear that the proceeding pending in the state court did not afford the appellees in this case an ade*468quate remedy for the violation of their federal constitutional rights,14 the Court’s disposition points up the larger problem confronting litigants who seek to challenge any state pro*469cedure as violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
As I suggested in my separate opinion in Juidice v. Vail, 430 U. S. 327, 339, a principled application of the rationale of Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37, forecloses abstention in cases in which the federal challenge is to the constitutionality of the state procedure itself.15 Since this federal plaintiff raised *470a serious question about the fairness of the Illinois attachment procedure, and since that procedure does not afford a plain, speedy, and efficient remedy for his federal claim, it necessarily follows that Younger abstention is inappropriate.
Thirty years ago Mr. Justice Rutledge characterized a series of Illinois procedures which effectively foreclosed consideration of the merits of federal constitutional claims as a “procedural labyrinth . . . made up entirely of blind alleys.” Marino v. Ragen, 332 U. S. 561, 567. Today Illinois litigants may appropriately apply that characterization to the Court’s increasingly Daedalian doctrine of abstention.
I respectfully dissent.

 See, for example, Judge Pell's search for a synthesizing principle in his article, Abstention — A Primrose Path by Any Other Name, 21 DePaul L. Rev. 926 (1972).

 The Court, ante, at 447, quotes this excerpt from Watson v. Buck, 313 U. S. 387, 402, which in turn was quoted in Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37, 53-54.

 See Mr. Justice Blackmun’s concurring opinion, ante, at 450.

 The cavalier statement that a finding of obvious unconstitutionally would not have been warranted by prior eases simply ignores the careful analysis of the serious defects in the Illinois statute identified in the opinion of the District Court, 405 F. Supp., at 760-762, and in Mr. Justice Brennan’s dissenting opinion.

 The Florida legislation involved in Watson v. Buck regulated the business of persons holding music copyrights and declared certain combinations of such persons illegal as in restraint of trade. A three-judge District Court held that 8 sections of that statute conflicted with the federal copyright laws and, without considering the validity of the remaining 13 sections, enjoined enforcement of all 21 sections.

 “Passing upon the possible significance of the manifold provisions of a broad statute in advance of efforts to apply the separate provisions is analogous to rendering an advisory opinion upon a statute or a declaratory judgment upon a hypothetical case. It is of course conceivable that a statute might be flagrantly and patently violative of express constitutional prohibitions in every clause, sentence and paragraph, and in whatever manner and against whomever an effort might be made to apply it.” 313 U. S., at 402.

 “There may, of course, be extraordinary circumstances in which the necessary irreparable injury can be shown even in the absence of the usual prerequisites of bad faith and harassment. For example, as long ago as the Buck case, supra, we indicated:
“ 'It is of course conceivable that a statute might be flagrantly and patently violative of express constitutional prohibitions in every clause, sentence and paragraph, and in whatever manner and against whomever an effort might be made to apply it.’ 313 U. S., at 402.
“Other unusual situations calling for federal intervention might also arise, but there is no point in our attempting now to specify what they might be.” 401 U. S., at 53-54.

 28 U. S. C. § 1341.

 Indeed, that kind of determination is routine business in a federal court. See, e. g., Tully v. Griffin, Inc., 429 U. S. 68.

 See Hopkins v. Southern Cal. Tel. Co., 275 U. S. 393, 400; Mountain States Power Co. v. Public Service Comm’n of Montana, 299 U. S. 167, 170 (“A 'plain, speedy, and efficient remedy’ cannot be predicated upon a problematical outcome of future consideration”); Spector Motor Service, Inc. v. McLaughlin, 323 U. S. 101, 106. As Mr. Justice Douglas wrote: '‘[T]here is such uncertainty concerning the [state] remedy as to make it speculative . . . whether the State affords full protection to the federal rights." Hillsborough v. Cromwell, 326 U. S. 620, 625 (emphasis added), cited with approval just this Term in Tully v. Griffin, Inc., supra, at 76. In Hillsborough, this Court decided in the first instance that the state remedies were uncertain to the extent of being inadequate. Finally, in Shaffer v. Carter, 252 U. S. 37, 48, this Court held that even though state procedures might be adequate to remedy the federal question as to the validity of the tax, there were no procedures to remedy the federal wrong in connection with the tax-collection procedures. “Hence, on this ground at least, resort was properly had to equity for relief; and since a court of equity does not 'do justice by halves,’ and will prevent, if possible, a multiplicity of suits, the jurisdiction extends to the disposition of all questions raised by the bill.” Ibid.

 The equitable principles relied upon in Younger are of ancient vintage. In the first Judiciary Act of 1789 Congress directed that equity be withheld if a “plain, adequate and complete remedy may be had at law.” In Scott v. Neely, 140 U. S. 106, 110, this Court noted that Congress’ prohibition was
“declaratory of the rule obtaining and controlling in equity proceedings from the earliest period in England, and always in this country. And so *466it has been often adjudged that whenever, respecting any right violated, a court of law is competent to render a judgment affording a plain, adequate and complete remedy, the party aggrieved must seek his remedy in such court, not only because the defendant has a constitutional right to a trial by jury, but because of the prohibition, of the act of Congress to pursue his remedy in such cases in a court of equity.”
One of the major eases relied upon by the Court, Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. v. Huffman, 319 U. S. 293, 299, held that although Congress in § 1341 had not specifically prohibited declaratory judgments concerning the validity of state statutes, nonetheless, equitable principles required the same result.
“[W]e find it unnecessary to inquire whether the words of the statute may be so construed as to prohibit a declaration by federal courts concerning the invalidity of a state tax. For we are of the opinion that those considerations which have led federal courts of equity to refuse to enjoin the collection of state taxes, save in exceptional cases, require a like restraint in the use of the declaratory judgment procedure.” 319 U. S., at 299.
This pronouncement has been read as prohibiting declaratory judgments to the same extent as injunctive suits under § 1341. Illinois Central R. Co. v. Howlett, 525 F. 2d 178 (CA7 1975) (Sprecher, J.).

 Section 28, Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 11, § 28 (1973), provides that “[n]o writ of attachment shall be quashed, nor the property taken thereon restored, ... if the plaintiff . . . shall cause a legal and sufficient affidavit or attachment bond to be filed, or the writ to be amended, . . . and in that event the cause shall proceed as if such proceedings had originally been sufficient.” Thus, under § 28 the only valid question raised in a proceeding concerning the attachment is whether the facts pleaded in the affidavit or writ were true. And, of course, § 28 allows amendment of any improperly pleaded writ or affidavit.

 Smith v. Hodge, 13 Ill. 2d 197, 148 N. E. 2d 793 (1958); Brignall v. Merkle, 296 Ill. App. 250, 16 N. E. 2d 150 (1938); Rabits v. Live Oak, Perry & Gulf R. Co., 245 Ill. App. 589 (1927); American Mortgage Corp. v. First National Mortgage Corp., 345 F. 2d 527, 528 (CA7 1965).

 In the present case, the appellees appeared on the return date of the writ of attachment, November 18, 1974 (10 days after their property had been attached), and “were informed that the matter would be continued until December 19, 1974,” ante, at 437, 31 days later. As the opinion below points out, the person who sues out the writ of attachment has absolute discretion under § 6 of the Act, Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 11, § 6 (1973), to set the return date of the writ of attachment anywhere from 10 to 60 days after the property has been attached. 405 F. Supp., at 762. The return date appears to be the first chance an attachment can be challenged; and as this case points up, the proceedings on the return date can be summarily continued for at least a month if not longer. Thus, property may well be attached for three months or longer before even a § 27 motion will be entertained.
As the court below also noted, “[s]eetion 27 . . . does not give defendant an absolute right to a hearing on the attachment issue immediately after seizure.” 405 F. Supp., at 762. Indeed, the Attachment Act contains no provision for a prompt hearing on the validity of the attachment. This should be compared with § 29 of the Act, Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 11, § 29 (1973), which requires “the court [to] immediately . . . direct a jury to be impaneled to inquire into the right of the property” in cases in which a person other than the defendant claims an interest in the property being attached. This deference to the needs for prompt action in response to an interpleading claimant signifies the general lax attitude the Act takes with regard to the rights of persons whose property has been attached.
The Court states that the appellees (who appeared on the return date “and were informed that the matter would be continued” for a month) “did not seek a prompt hearing, nor did they attempt to quash the attachment on the ground that the procedures surrounding its issuance rendered it and the Act unconstitutional.” Ante, at 437-438. The State suggests that § 26 of the Act, 111. Rev. Stat., c. 11, § 26 (1973), allows appellees to make an appropriate motion that the attachment statute is unconstitutional. However, §26 provides that “provisions of the Civil Practice Act . . . shall apply to all proceedings hereunder, except as otherwise provided in this Act.’’ (Emphasis added.) As we note in our discussion of § 28, supra, the statute does not authorize raising unconstitutionality as a defense to an attachment.
The State also cites Ill. Sup. Ct. Rule 184, which provides that a party *469may “call up a motion for disposition before or after” the time for its normal disposition. This, however, does not provide a prompt hearing; it only allows appellees to ask for one. The request may or may not be granted in the discretion of the court. Neither § 26 nor Rule 184 assures appellees a prompt hearing, and neither overrides the fact that § 28 appears to foreclose any defense of unconstitutionality in attacking an attachment.

 There should be no abstention unless the state procedure affords a plain, speedy, and efficient remedy for the federal wrong; indeed, the opinion in Younger in basing its decision on basic equity principles acknowledges this as the fundamental requirement in application of the abstention doctrine. The majority opinion in this case states the question presented as whether abstention is proper when a “State has already instituted proceedings . . . and the [appellees] could tender and have [their] federal claims decided in the state court.” Ante, at 440. It then proceeds to quote from numerous cases requiring an adequate state remedy for application of the abstention doctrine. Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37, 45, quoting Fenner v. Boykin, 271 U. S. 240, 243-244 (requiring the federal plaintiff to “first set up and rely on his defense in the state courts, even though this involves a challenge of the validity of some statute, unless it plainly appears that this course would not afford adequate protection”); Gibson v. Berryhill, 411 U. S. 564, 577 (dismissal of the federal suit as “naturally presuppos[ing] the opportunity to raise and have timely decided by a competent state tribunal the federal issues involved”); Kugler v. Helfant, 421 U. S. 117, 124 (abstention founded “on the premise that ordinarily a pending state prosecution provides the accused a fair and sufficient opportunity for vindication of federal constitutional rights”). Ante, at 441. In my judgment, when a state procedure is challenged, an adequate forum must be one that is sufficiently independent of the alleged unconstitutional procedure to judge it impartially and to provide prompt relief if the procedure is found wanting. No Illinois procedure has been pointed to as providing such relief, and where the remedy is “uncertain,” federal jurisdiction exists.