Court Opinion

ID: 9474403
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:56:20.803205+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:03.739769
License: Public Domain

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge,
with whom Judges GARWOOD and ROBERT MADDEN HILL join, specially concurring:
I join the majority opinion but emphasize that the decision of the Supreme Court in Scanlon is but a specific application of a broader principle — one essential to the implementation of its concept that states must fight for their sovereignty in the political arena, as found in its Garcia holding.
The posed question is whether a seaman employed by the State of Texas is covered by the Jones Act. Its answer challenges our ability to write clear rules for deciding which federal statutory regulatory schemes include states. Ironically, our challenge is best met by passing it to the Congress through the familiar principle that we will not infer that legislation applies to the states. So the Court teaches, if in a subtle way, in Garcia, Employees and Edelman and now, more pointedly, in Scanlon.
The first inquiry, not addressed by the majority, is whether the federal statute applies to state operations at all. The concepts of federalism upon which Garcia as-sertedly rests require that we construe federal statutes to exclude states from their coverage unless Congress expressly indicates otherwise. If a federal statute does not recite its applicability to states, the inquiry should end. Only if a federal law explicitly governs state behavior do we reach the question of whether the Eleventh Amendment bars a private citizen from suing under the federal statute in federal court.
I
The core holding of Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, — U.S.-, 105 S.Ct. 1005, 83 L.Ed.2d 1016 (1985) is that Congress’s power to impose its will upon the states is limited by the structural arrangement of our federal system, rather than by ad hoc judicial line calls as to when federal legislation infringes upon “traditional” or “fundamental” state powers. The protections of state power built into the federal system, such as equal state representation in the Senate, are said to find their expression in the outcomes of political struggles, of political not judicial process. As the Court observed in Garcia, many federal statutes expressly exempt states from coverage, reflecting state success in the federal political arena. See 105 S.Ct. at 1019. Others, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act at issue in Garcia, expressly include states in their sweep. See 105 S.Ct. at 1008-09.
The more difficult question is when the courts should infer that Congress meant to subject states to federal regulation if a federal statute is by its terms applicable to a broad group such as “any seaman” or “any person,” but makes no reference to states. In rejecting judicial refereeing and measures of the level of intrusion into state affairs by a federal statute, Garcia necessarily holds that the answer cannot be “sometimes.” Being forced to deduce whether states have been brought within a federal statutory scheme based on the peculiar attributes of the scheme “inevitably invites an unelected federal judiciary to make decisions about which ... policies it favors and which ones it dislikes.” 105 S.Ct. at 1015.
But there is a more direct corollary of Garcia: federal statutes not expressly applicable to states are not. Although Garcia’s specific holding extended FLSA coverage to public transit systems, the Court reaffirmed that “the States occupy a special and specific position in our constitutional system,” 105 S.Ct. at 1020, and that there are “undoubtedly” limits on the federal power “to interfere with state functions ...,’’ 105 S.Ct. at 1016. Garcia concludes that the primary limit on this power *1276is the political process of state participation in federal decisionmaking. If this process is to have its force, legislation that is meant to affect states must say so; states will then be aware of proposed federal legislation perceived to intrude into their operations, and will be able to draw their political weapons. But if legislation is silent or half-heartedly ambiguous as to its effect on states, and a court later declares that it applies to states, the process will have been skewed and the states will have been effectively sandbagged. The result would be a sidestepping of the structural protections outlined in Garcia and a return of the judges from the sidelines.
Insistence on express articulation of congressional purpose is not only internal to Garcia, but is a long-recognized safeguard of federalism. In Parker v. Brown, 317 U.S. 341, 351, 63 S.Ct. 307, 313, 87 L.Ed. 315 (1943), the Supreme Court said:
In a dual system of government in which, under the Constitution, the states are sovereign, save only as Congress may constitutionally subtract from their authority, an unexpressed purpose to nullify a state’s control over its officers and agents is not lightly to be attributed to Congress.
The Parker Court applied this principle by holding that the Sherman Act did not apply to state conduct, even though that act purports to govern the behavior of all “persons.” See also Wilson v. Omaha Indian Tribe, 442 U.S. 653, 666-68, 99 S.Ct. 2529, 2537-38, 61 L.Ed.2d 153 (1979) (“white persons” referred to in 25 U.S.C. § 194 includes most artificial entities, but not states); Weber v. Board of Harbor Commissioners, 85 U.S. (18 Wall.) 57, 70, 21 L.Ed. 798 (1873) (“Statutes of limitation are not ... held to embrace the State, unless she is expressly designated, or necessarily included by the nature of the mischiefs to be remedied”). In addition, in Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U.S. 1, 24, 101 S.Ct. 1531, 1543, 67 L.Ed.2d 694 (1981), the Court, construing the Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, demanded that Congress “express clearly its intent to impose conditions on the grant of federal funds so that the States can knowingly decide whether or not to accept those funds.”
The requirement of explicit statement has also long governed the applicability of federal statutes to the federal government. In United States v. United Mine Workers, 330 U.S. 258, 67 S.Ct. 677, 91 L.Ed. 884 (1947), the Court held that the Clayton and Norris-LaGuardia Acts’ prohibition of suits by “employers” to enjoin strikes did not restrain the United States. The Court noted the “old and well-known rule that statutes which in general terms divest preexisting rights or privileges will not be applied to the sovereign without express words to that effect.” Id. at 272, 67 S.Ct. at 686; see also United States v. Wittek, 337 U.S. 346, 358-59, 69 S.Ct. 1108, 1114, 93 L.Ed. 1406 (1949); United States v. Stevenson, 215 U.S. 190, 197, 30 S.Ct. 35, 54 L.Ed. 153 (1909); Dollar Savings Bank v. United States, 86 U.S. (19 Wall.) 227, 239, 22 L.Ed. 80 (1873). Even when concerns of sovereignty are absent, the courts have insisted upon plain expressions of congressional purpose to highlight the line between congressional and judicial roles in other contexts, such as with the expressed reluctance to imply private rights of action according to needs perceived by courts. See, e.g., Touche Ross & Co. v. Redington, 442 U.S. 560, 575-76, 99 S.Ct. 2479, 2489, 61 L.Ed.2d 82 (1979).
In short, were we writing on a clean slate, we ought unhesitatingly to apply the principle of express congressional articulation to the Jones Act. That act covers “[a]ny seaman who shall suffer personal injury in the course of his employ-ment____” 46 U.S.C. § 688. If we insisted upon explicit Congressional statement the Jones Act would not apply to state employees.
Yet the slate is not clean. Most relevant here, it is marked by Petty v. Tennessee-Missouri Bridge Commission, 359 U.S. 275, 79 S.Ct. 785, 3 L.Ed.2d 804 (1959). Like this case, Petty was a Jones Act suit by an injured employee of a state-operated *1277ferry. The Petty court held that because Congress did not expressly exempt states from the operation of the Jones Act, states were Jones Act “employers.” 359 U.S. at 282-83, 79 S.Ct. at 790-791.
While Garcia must ultimately lead to the rejection of Petty’s construing presumption, Garcia itself did not do so, because it construed a statute that expressly governs state workers. Petty’s substantive reading of the Jones Act as covering state-employed seamen remains unquestioned in any other later Supreme Court case; the Court, rather, has chosen to distinguish Petty on its facts. See Edelman, 415 U.S. at 672, 94 S.Ct. at 1360. We cannot do the same here because our case involves the same statute and, indeed, virtually identical facts. Until the Court reconsiders the Jones Act holding of Petty, I concede, as I must, that it binds.
If a federal statute does not expressly include state operations, it is, under my view, properly read as inapplicable to states and no question of waiver of Eleventh Amendment immunity would be present. As far as the states are concerned, such a statute is identical to one that expressly exempts states. There is no federal right for state employees to lay claim to, and the state’s invocation of its Eleventh Amendment immunity is not reached. Waiver of state immunity under the Eleventh Amendment would arise then only when the statute was expressly applicable to the states but silent or inexact with regard to the state’s right to be free of suits by private citizens in federal court.
I concur in the majority’s conclusion that Congress did not abrogate the immunity enjoyed by Texas under the Eleventh Amendment. In doing so, I reluctantly concur in its implicit conclusion that Jones Act seamen include employees of the state.