Court Opinion

ID: 9426807
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:00.042593+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:03.326353
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
with whom Mr. Justice Marshall joins, dissenting.
The Court continues on, to me, the wholly improper course of extending Younger principles to deny a federal forum to plaintiffs invoking 42 U. S. C. § 1983 for the decision of meritorious federal constitutional claims when a civil action that might entertain such claims is pending in a state court. Because I am of the view that the decision patently disregards Congress’ purpose in enacting § 1983 — to open federal courts to the decision of such claims without regard to the pendency of such state civil actions — and because the decision indefensibly departs from prior decisions of this Court, I respectfully dissent.
I
An attachment proceeding against appellees’ credit union savings was instituted by the Illinois Department of Public Aid (IDPA) under the Illinois Attachment Act simultaneously with the filing of a civil lawsuit in state court for the recovery of public welfare funds allegedly fraudulently obtained. The attachment was initiated when IDPÁ filled in the blanks on a standard-form “Affidavit for Attachment” stating:
“The defendants Juan and Maria Hernandez within two years preceding the filing of this affidavit fraudu*451lently concealed or disposed of property so as to hinder or delay their creditors.” (Italics indicate matter inserted in blanks by IDPA.) App. 18.
The wording of the affidavit repeats almost verbatim the language of the Illinois Act,1 and provides no underlying factual allegations upon which a determination can be made whether the conclusion of fraudulent concealment or disposition of property is justified.2 The writ of attachment was issued as a matter of course by the clerk of the court upon receipt of the affidavit, and the writ was executed on November 5, 1974.
Appellees appeared in state court on the return date, November 18, 1974, and were informed that the hearing on *452the validity of the attachment was continued until December 19, 1974. In the meantime appellees — deprived of the use of their savings — faced pending rent and car repair bills, and past due electricity, gas, and telephone bills. On December 2, appellees filed a complaint under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 in Federal District Court seeking a declaratory judgment and an injunction against enforcement of the Illinois Attachment Act. On December 5, two weeks before the continued state-court hearing, appellees sought a temporary restraining order to release their credit union savings from the custody of the sheriff. The District Court effected an agreement between the parties whereby IDPA agreed to the release of one-half of the attached funds, and accordingly did not act on the motion for the temporary restraining order.3
A three-judge District Court was convened. The District Court found that it was not required to abstain from deciding the constitutional merits of appellees’ challenge, and enjoined the enforcement of the Act on the ground that the Act was' “patently and flagrantly violative of the constitution.” Hernandez v. Danaher, 405 F. Supp. 757, 760 (ND Ill. 1975). This Court reverses and holds that the District Court should have dismissed the suit, thus continuing the course initiated in Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd., 420 U. S. 592 (1975), and furthered this Term in Juidice v. Vail, 430 U. S. 327 (1977), of extending Younger principles to pending civil actions.
*453II
I have already set out at some length the reasons for my disagreement with the Court’s extension of Younger abstention principles to civil cases, particularly actions under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd., supra, at 613 (dissenting opinion), Juidice v. Vail, supra, at 341 (dissenting opinion), and will not repeat them here. The Court suggests that this case, like Huffman, involves a statute enacted in aid of the criminal law. In Huffman, the State of Ohio brought a statutory nuisance suit in state court to close a theater that had previously been adjudged to have shown obscene films. Huffman stated, in words quoted by the Court today, that the nuisance proceeding “was ‘in aid of and closely related to criminal statutes.’ ” Ante, at 443. The Court states the precise question in this case to be:
“[Sjhould the federal court proceed to judgment when it appears that the State has already instituted proceedings in the state court to enforce the challenged statute against the federal plaintiff and the latter could tender and have his federal claims decided in the state court?” Ante, at 440.
Emphasizing that the State sued in state court to “vindicate important state policies,” the Court concludes that “the principles of Younger and Huffman are broad enough to apply to interference by a federal court with an ongoing civil enforcement action such as this, brought by the State in its sovereign capacity.” Ante, at 444.
In framing the question and its answer this narrowly, the Court apparently desires once more to leave “for another day” the question of the applicability of Younger abstention principles to civil suits generally. Ante, at 445 n. 8; Juidice, supra, at 345 n. (Brennan, J., dissenting); see Huffman, supra, at 607. But the Court’s insistence that “the interests of comity and federalism on which Younger and Samuels v. Mackell *454primarily rest apply in full force here,” ante, at 446, is the signal that “merely the formal announcement is being postponed,” Juidice, supra, at 345 n. (Brennan, J., dissenting). Younger and Samuels v. Mackell, 401 U. S. 66 (1971), dismissed federal-court suits because the plaintiffs sought injunctions against pending criminal prosecutions. I agreed with those results because “[p] ending state criminal proceedings have always been viewed as paradigm cases involving paramount state interests.” Juidice, supra, at 345 (Brennan, J., dissenting). But abstention principles developed to avoid interfering with state criminal prosecutions are manifestly inapplicable here.
In this case the federal plaintiffs seek an injunction only against the use of statutory attachment proceedings which, properly speaking, are not part of the pending civil suit at all. The relief granted here in no way interfered with or prevented the State from proceeding with its suit in state court. It merely enjoined the use of an unconstitutional mechanism for attaching assets from which the State hoped to satisfy its judgment if it prevailed on the merits of the underlying lawsuit. To say that the interest of the State in continuing to use an unconstitutional attachment mechanism to insure payment of a liability not yet established brings into play “in full force” “all the interests of comity and federalism” present in a state criminal prosecution is simply wrong. Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U. S. 67 (1972), a § 1983 suit challenging a prejudgment replevin statute, addressed precisely this point. Since the plaintiffs had not sought “an injunction against any pending or future court proceeding as such . . . [but rather] challenged only the summary extrajudicial process of prejudgment seizure of property,” Fuentes concluded that Younger principles posed no bar to a federal court’s granting the relief sought. 407 U. S., at 71 n. 3. See also Lynch v. Household Finance Corp., 405 U. S. 538, 554-555 (1972), and Gerstein v. Pugh, 420 U. S. 103 (1975).
*455The application of Younger principles here is also inappropriate because even in the underlying lawsuit the State seeks only a civil recovery of money allegedly fraudulently received. The Court relies on the State’s fortuitous presence as a plaintiff in the state-court suit to conclude that the suit is closely related to a criminal suit, but I am hard pressed to understand why the “mere happenstance,” 405 F. Supp., at 760, that the State of Illinois rather than a private party invoked the Attachment Act makes this so. The Court’s reliance on the presence of the State here may suggest that it might view differently an attachment under the same Act at the instance of a private party, but no reason is advanced why the State as plaintiff should enjoy such an advantage in its own courts over the ordinary citizen plaintiff.4 Under any analysis, it seems to me that this solicitousness for the State’s use of an unconstitutional ancillary proceeding to a civil lawsuit is hardly compelled by the great principles of federalism, comity, and mutual respect between federal and state courts that account for Younger and its progeny.
The principles that give strength to Younger simply do not support an inflexible rule against federal courts’ enjoining state civil proceedings. Younger was justified primarily on the basis of the longstanding rule that “courts of equity . . . particularly should not act to restrain a criminal prosecution.” 401 U. S., at 43. A comparably rigid rule against enjoining civil proceedings was never suggested until Huffman, for in *456civil proceedings it cannot be assumed that state interests of compelling importance outweigh the interests of litigants seeking vindication of federal rights in federal court, particularly under a statute expressly enacted by Congress to provide a federal forum for that purpose. Even assuming that federal abstention might conceivably be appropriate in some civil cases, the transformation of what I must think can only be an exception into an absolute rule crosses the line between abstention and abdication.
When it enacted § 1983, Congress weighed the competing demands of “Our Federalism,” and consciously decided to protect federal rights in the federal forum. As we have previously recognized, § 1983 was enacted for the express purpose of altering the federal-state judicial balance that had theretofore existed, and of “offering a uniquely federal remedy against incursions under the claimed authority of state law upon rights secured by the Constitution and the laws of the Nation.” Mitchum v. Foster, 407 U. S. 225, 239 (1972). State courts are, of course, bound to follow the Federal Constitution equally with federal courts, but Congress has clearly ordained, as constitutionally it may, that the federal courts are to be the “primary and powerful reliances” for vindicating federal rights under § 1983. Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U. S. 452, 464 (1974) (emphasis in original). If federal courts are to be flatly prohibited, regardless of the circumstances of the individual claim of violation of federal rights, from implementing this “uniquely federal remedy” because of deference to purported state interests in the maintenance of state civil suits, the Court has “effectively cripple[d] the congressional scheme enacted in § 1983.” Juidice v. Vail, 430 U. S., at 343 (Brennan, J., dissenting).
Ill
Even assuming, arguendo, the applicability of Younger principles, I agree with the District Court that the Illinois *457Attachment Act falls within one of the established exceptions to those principles. As an example of an “extraordinary circumstance” that might justify federal-court intervention, Younger referred to a statute that “ ‘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.’ ” 401 U. S., at 53-54, quoting Watson v. Buck, 313 U. S. 387, 402 (1941). Explicitly relying on this exception to Younger, the District Court held that the Illinois Act is “patently and flagrantly violative of the constitution.” 405 F. Supp., at 760. The Court holds that this finding is insufficient to bring this case within the Younger exception because that exception “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. I disagree.
Obviously, a requirement that the Watson v. Buck formulation must be literally satisfied renders the exception meaningless, and, as my Brother Stevens demonstrates, post, at 461-464, elevates to a literalistic definitional status what was obviously meant only to be illustrative and nonexhaustive. The human mind does not possess a clairvoyance that can foresee whether “every clause, sentence and paragraph” of a statute will be unconstitutional “in whatever manner and against whomever an effort might be made to apply it.” The only sensible construction of the test is to treat the “every clause, etc.,” wording as redundant, at least when decisions of this Court make clear that the challenged statute is “patently and flagrantly violative of the Constitution.” I thought that *458the Court had decided as much in Kugler v. Helfant, 421 U. S. 117, 124 (1975), in stating that “Younger left room for federal equitable intervention in a state criminal trial . . . where the state law to be applied in the criminal proceeding is ‘flagrantly and patently violative of express constitutional prohibitions.’ ” (Emphasis supplied.) 5
Clearly the Illinois Attachment Act is “patently and flagrantly violative of express constitutional prohibitions” under the relevant decisions of this Court. North Georgia Finishing, Inc. v. Di-Chem, Inc., 419 U. S. 601 (1975), struck down a Georgia garnishment statute that permitted the issuance of a writ of garnishment by the court clerk upon the filing of an affidavit containing only conclusory allegations, and under which there was “no provision for an early hearing at which the creditor would be required to demonstrate at least probable cause for the garnishment.” Id., at 607. The Illinois Attachment Act is constitutionally indistinguishable from the Georgia statute struck down in North Georgia Finishing. As in that case, the affidavit filed here contained only conclusory allegations, which in this case were taken from a preprinted form requiring only that the affiant fill-in the names of the persons whose property he wished to attach. Upon the filing of this form affidavit, the court clerk issued the writ of attachment as a matter of course. Far from requiring an “early hearing” at which to challenge the validity of the attachment, the Illinois Act provided that the party seeking the attachment could unilaterally set the return date of the writ at any time from 10 to 60 days from the date of its execution. *459Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 11, §6 (1973). And, as this case demonstrates, the 60-day interval does not necessarily represent the outer limit for the actual hearing date, for the Illinois court here was willing to grant a 30-day continuance beyond the date provided in the writ of attachment, even though appellees appeared in court on the proper date and wished to go forward with the hearing at that time.
No one could seriously contend that the Illinois Act even remotely resembles that sustained in Mitchell v. W. T. Grant Co., 416 U. S. 600 (1974), and thus falls within the exception to Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp., 395 U. S. 337 (1969), Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U. S. 67 (1972), and North Georgia Finishing, supra, carved out by that case. W. T. Grant upheld a Louisiana sequestration statute under which a writ of sequestration was issued only after the filing of an affidavit in which “ 'the grounds relied upon for the issuance of the writ clearly appear[ed] from specific facts,’ ” 416 U. S., at 605. The showing of grounds for the issuance of the writ was made before a judge rather than a court clerk, id., at 606, and the debtor was entitled “immediately [to] have a full hearing on the matter of possession following the execution of the writ,” id., at 610. None of those procedural safeguards is provided by the Illinois Act. The three-judge District Court unanimously and correctly concluded that the Act “is on its face patently violative of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” 405 F. Supp., at 762.
The Court gives only bare citations to North Georgia Finishing and W. T. Grant, ante, at 447, and declines to discuss or analyze them in even the most cursory manner. These decisions so clearly support the District Court’s holding under any sensible construction of the Younger exception that the Court’s silence, and its insistence upon compliance with the literal wording of Watson v. Buck, only confirms my conviction that the Court is determined to extend to “state civil proceedings generally the holding of Younger,” Huffman v. *460Pursue, Ltd., 420 U. S., at 613, and to give its exceptions the narrowest possible reach. I respectfully dissent.

 Illinois Rev. Stat., c. 11, § 1 (1973), provides:
“In any court of competent jurisdiction, a creditor having a money claim . . . may have an attachment against the property of his debtor . . . either at the time of instituting suit or thereafter ... in any one of the following cases:
“Seventh: Where the debtor has, within 2 years prior to the filing of such affidavit, fraudulently concealed or disposed of his property so as to hinder or delay his creditors.”

 In fact, it appears that appellees had not “concealed or disposed of property so as to hinder or delay their creditors” even if the allegations of the unsworn attachment complaint are taken as true. The complaint only alleges that they fraudulently concealed personal property in order to obtain public assistance, not that this concealment was undertaken to avoid payment to creditors. If any part of the form affidavit is applicable to appellees, it appears to be § 1 (i), which tracks Ill. Rev. Stat., c. 11, §1 (Ninth) (1973):
“The debt sued for was fraudulently contracted on the part of the defendant-and statements of-agent-or attorney, which constitute the fraud, have been reduced to writing and - signature - attached thereto, by - sel[f] -agent-or attorney-.” App. 18.
However, IDPA did not fill in the blanks of this portion of the form, and did not rely on it in seeking the writ of attachment.

 The precise date of the agreement to release half of the attached funds does not appear in the record.
The Court points out that the District Court did not issue its opinion in this case until about one year after the date on which appellees could have had their continued hearing in state court to challenge the validity of the attachment. Ante, at 438-439. This is irrelevant since the motion for a temporary restraining order, filed two weeks before the continued hearing in state court, resulted in the agreement to release half of appellees' savings. Thus, as a practical matter, appellees received important relief in the Federal District Court at a time when any relief in state court was highly speculative.

 Even if the presence of the State as a plaintiff in the state-court proceeding is held to be of some significance, I fail to see why the federal courts should accord greater deference to the State’s fiscal interest here than to the far more basic function of collecting state taxes. As my Brother Stevens conclusively demonstrates, post, at 464-466, the standard applied by the Court today goes well beyond the statutory standard for a federal court’s enjoining the collection of taxes, which is predicated only upon a finding of no “plain, speedy and efficient remedy” under state law. 28 U. S. C. § 1341.

 The quotation, in 421 U. S., at 125 n. 4, of the complete Buck sentence was carefully identified in Kugler as merely “one example of the type of circumstances that could justify federal intervention. . . Curiously, the Court, ante, at 442 n. 7, quotes Kugler’s abridged formulation, but makes no attempt to explain this reference when it finally applies the “every clause, sentence and paragraph” test as the basis for its decision. Ante, at 446-447.