Court Opinion

ID: 9477083
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:13:13.261331+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:40.714645
License: Public Domain

CAMPBELL, Chief Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the result reached by the court in part V of the majority opinion, to wit, that appellant did not establish a First Amendment claim against DACO. I join in the reasoning of parts II and III to the extent the court emphasizes its concern in keeping the interjurisdictional certification procedure as widely available as possible. However, I am more cheerful than my colleagues that the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico’s opinion does not presage a significant narrowing of the certification device. Respecting part IV, I agree with the specific analysis but am not inclined to view this case as having suffered grievously as a result of Pennhurst State School & Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 104 S.Ct. 900, 79 L.Ed.2d 67 (1984).
I.
As Judge Coffin fully recognizes in his opinion for the court, the decision whether to answer certified questions is completely within the discretion of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico. Rule 27(a) of the Rules of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico, P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 4, App. I-A; Pan American Computer Corp. v. Data General, 112 P.R.R. 987, 993 (1982) (official translation). See Uniform Certification of Question of Law Act, 12 U.L.A. § 1 (1975). A corollary to this is that the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico’s treatment of Commonwealth law for the purpose of deciding whether to answer a certified question is within its exclusive domain, and for that reason, I should hesitate to comment at all. But perhaps I can be forgiven the following comments:
Although I share my colleagues’ concern that the plurality’s reasoning, pushed to its extreme, could strangle the benefits of certification, I remain hopeful that this will not be a necessary result of the Puerto Rico Supreme Court’s determination in this case.
First, the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico did not, as a court, adopt any single rationale on the subject at hand. The judgment declining to answer the certified questions was joined by four justices. However, of those four justices, only three agreed on a common rationale for declining to answer. We have no indication as to the fourth justice’s reason for joining the judgment. Two other justices dissented from the majority’s judgment. The Chief Justice filed a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. These several opinions evidence considerable thought and discussion among the members of that court. It is evident that the plurality was not able to persuade the majority of the court to join it in its rationale. This fact by itself should limit the effects of the plurality’s reasoning.
Second, the peculiar facts of this case suggest a separate, albeit unstated, reason for the Puerto Rico Court’s declining to answer — namely, that where, as here, a federal court lacks the authority, under Pennhurst, to grant meaningful relief on the separate state cause, the state court may believe that any response would be tantamount to a forbidden “advisory opin*1504ion.” Under Pan American, 112 P.R.Off. Trans, at 991, the “answer [to a certified question] must be binding on all the parties,” both in the Puerto Rico court and in the federal court. Id. Arguably, an answer that the agency here had acted outside statutory authority, being unenforceable by the federal court (which alone has jurisdiction over the parties), would be a mere “advisory” opinion, hence improper for the Puerto Rico court to render under the Puerto Rico Constitution.1 Com-mwealth v. Aguayo, 80 P.R.R. 534 (1958). While we cannot know for sure whether this reason influenced the Puerto Rico justices, it is quite possible that the prece-dential effect of their judgment, if any, will be limited to cases of such a nature.
Given the above, I am less fearful of intolerable negative consequences upon the future use of certification. This is not to say that I do not join my colleagues in their comments about the importance to Puerto Rico of certification — merely- that I do not believe that our colleagues on the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico intended to set a precedent significantly reducing the availability of certification.2
II.
The Pennhurst decision was, of course, one of the complicating factors of this case, as noted above and as my colleagues strenuously point out. I question, however, whether Pennhurst deserves the opprobrium this court implies in part IV. The principle underlying Pennhurst, that federal courts should not tell state agencies how to interpret state law, is a basic element of our system. How to accommodate this with other competing principles in a way that pleases is not easy. The Supreme Court has struck a particular balance and, without suggesting that respectful criticism from a lower court is always inappropriate, I think our court’s implied criticism here is overdone.
Moreover, even acknowledging that the Pennhurst rule may sometimes be troublesome, the present case seems to me a poor one to select as an example of its vices. In hindsight, I think we overestimated the force of the First Amendment claim. This is shown by the ease with which we have today dispatched that claim. -Underlying Ashwander and Pullman is the principle that courts should not adjudicate complicated constitutional issues if avoidable. See Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229, 236, 104 S.Ct. 2321, 2327, 81 L.Ed.2d 186 (1984) (“unsettled questions of state law must be resolved before a substantial federal constitutional question can be decided”) (emphasis supplied). As the constitutional question resolved here appears not to have been complicated, the fact that Pennhurst may have deprived us of a prior adjudication in the Commonwealth courts hardly seems a cause for serious alarm.

. Compare this with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which is entitled to issue advisory opinions.

. Since the Cuesnongle opinion was issued, we have received a response to a certified question from the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico. Silva Wiscovich v. Weber Dental Manufacturing Co., No. CE-86-606, slip op. (P.R. Nov. 10, 1987).