Court Opinion

ID: 9634084
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 12:23:36.398957+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:37:35.394793
License: Public Domain

KAREN NELSON MOORE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I believe that the majority, in its rush to avoid addressing the complex substantive questions that this case raises, is too quick to invoke Tennessee’s sovereign immunity as a bar to this suit. The majority claims that S & M Brands and ITP seek redress for a “one-time act that occurred in the past.” Maj. Op. at 509. Thus, the majority claims that the injunction that the plaintiffs-appellees seek is not for prospective relief but “[rjather, they seek a declaration that the Attorney General’s prior determination was in error and had an impermissible retroactive effect, the correction of which, incidentally, would entitle them to monetary relief.” Maj. Op. at 510. Because state sovereign immunity would bar retroactive relief, by framing the plaintiffs’ prayer for relief as retroactive and not prospective, the majority has quickly circumscribed the plaintiffs’ case. I conclude, however, that both Supreme Court and our own precedent make it clear that S & M Brands and ITP seek only prospective relief. Because the relief that the plaintiffs seek is not of the kind barred by sovereign immunity, I must disagree with the majority’s application of the doctrine of sovereign immunity.
Although the Eleventh Amendment protects states from suits brought by citizens, the Supreme Court recognized an exeeption to that protection in Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 28 S.Ct. 441, 52 L.Ed. 714 (1908). In that case, the Court held that “[i]f the act which the state attorney general seeks to enforce be a violation of the Federal Constitution, the officer, in proceeding under such enactment, comes into conflict with the superior authority of that Constitution, and he is in that case stripped of his official or representative character and is subjected in his person to the consequences of his individual conduct.” Id. at 159-60, 28 S.Ct. 441. According to the Ex parte Young Court, the official whose actions would violate the constitution “may be enjoined by a Federal court of equity from such action” despite claims of sovereign immunity. Id. at 155-56, 28 S.Ct. 441.
S & M Brands and ITP assert that the Ex parte Young exception to the Eleventh Amendment allows their suit against Tennessee to proceed over sovereign-immunity objections. Not all forms of requested relief, however, trigger the Ex parte Young exception. The Supreme Court, in Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 668, 94 S.Ct. 1347, 39 L.Ed.2d 662 (1974), limited the Ex parte Young exception to prospective injunctive relief and declined to interpret the exception “to encompass retroactive relief, for to do so would effectively eliminate the constitutional immunity of the States.” Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp. v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 105, 104 S.Ct. 900, 79 L.Ed.2d 67 (1984).
Thus, the majority in the instant case is correct when it states that “ ‘[t]he distinction between that relief permissible under the doctrine of Ex parte Young and that found barred in Edelman was the difference between prospective relief on the one *515hand and retrospective relief on the other.’ ” Maj. Op. at 509-10 (quoting Quern v. Jordan, 440 U.S. 332, 337, 99 S.Ct. 1139, 59 L.Ed.2d 358 (1979)). Where the majority errs, however, is in its understanding of retrospective relief. Edelman was a damages action where potential recipients of assistance from the Illinois Aid to the Aged, Blind, or Disabled program sought “a form of compensation to those whose applications were processed on the slower time schedule.” Edelman, 415 U.S. at 668, 94 S.Ct. 1347. What the plaintiffs were seeking in Edelman was a “reparation for the past,” id. at 665, 94 S.Ct. 1347, which would be “measured in terms of a monetary loss resulting from a past breach of a legal duty on the part of the defendant state officials,” id. at 668, 94 S.Ct. 1347. The retroactive award that so concerned the Edelman Court was compensation intended to repair harm caused by past acts. Such an award is nothing like the one sought in the case before us.
The instant case is much closer in fact and law to Rossborough Manufacturing Co. v. Trimble, 301 F.3d 482, 489 (6th Cir.2002), than it is to Edelman. Rossborough dealt with the Ohio Legislature’s dissolution of the state’s Intentional Tort Disbursement Fund following the Ohio Supreme Court’s holding that the fund violated the Ohio Constitution. Following an explosion at one of its factories, an injured employee and the estates of two dead employees of Rossborough sued the company for damages. Prior to the Ohio Supreme Court’s and Senate’s actions, the fund, into which employers were required to pay, would have covered the employees’ suit, prompting Rossborough to seek an injunction requiring payment of the employees’ claims from the fund.
Although we ultimately held for the state of Ohio on other grounds in Rossbor-ough, we also held that the state could not assert sovereign immunity:
Were we to find that the actions of those officials are unconstitutional, and to issue an injunction preventing the continued unconstitutional administration of the Fund, the plaintiffs would not need a judgment against the state awarding them money damages because the injunction would lead to the lawful administration of the Fund and reimbursement for the plaintiffs. Accordingly, we hold that the Treasurer and Administrator are not entitled to Eleventh Amendment immunity.
Id. at 489. I believe that Rossborough controls our decision in the instant case, and we should hold that sovereign immunity does not protect Tennessee. The majority, however, distinguishes Rossborough by claiming that “[t]he injunction sought in Rossborough did not simply demand money that should have been paid at one time in the past, but rather would require that the fund be constitutionally administered for all additional requests for reimbursement by any claimant in the future.” Maj. Op. at 511.
The majority’s attempt to distinguish these cases, in my view, fails. In both Rossborough and the instant case, the companies paid into state-run funds as required by law. In both Rossborough and the instant case, the companies allege that the unconstitutional administration of the funds is preventing the companies from gaining access to the monies held in the funds. And in both Rossborough and the instant case, the companies seek an injunction that would force the state to administer the fund in a constitutional manner. Although it is true that in both cases the effect of the injunction would ultimately transfer money from the state for the benefit of those opposing sovereign immunity, in Rossborough we did not hold that such a *516gain was retrospective compensation in the mode of Edelman, and such a gain would be no more retrospective in the instant case.
The Supreme Court’s holding in Verizon Maryland, Inc. v. Public Service Commission of Maryland, 535 U.S. 635, 122 S.Ct. 1753, 152 L.Ed.2d 871 (2002), makes clear the majority’s error in classifying Rossbor-ough as prospective but the instant case as retroactive. In Verizon Maryland, the Court held that sovereign immunity did not bar Verizon’s suit seeking injunctive relief that would stop the Maryland Public Service Commission’s order that Verizon pay WorldCom reciprocal compensation. “The prayer for injunctive relief — that state officials be restrained from enforcing an order in contravention of controlling federal law — clearly satisfies our ‘straightforward inquiry [into whether the relief is prospective].’ ” Id. at 645, 122 S.Ct. 1753 (quoting Idaho v. Coeur d’Alene Tribe of Idaho, 521 U.S. 261, 296, 117 S.Ct. 2028, 138 L.Ed.2d 438 (1997)). In that case, the injunction did not impose ever-lasting obligations, which the majority today seems to believe are required, see Maj. Op. at 511-12 (claiming that Rossborough’s holding was prospective only because it “require[d] that the fund be constitutionally administered for all additional requests for reimbursement by any claimant in the future ” (emphasis added)), but instead the injunction sought in Verizon Maryland simply enjoined future application of an unconstitutional rule. The plaintiffs here ask for no more than Verizon: an injunction that would bar the Tennessee Attorney General from applying his allegedly unconstitutional decision. I, therefore, disagree with the majority’s assertion that “the substance of [S & M’s] claim is completely focused on the past.” Maj. Op. at 511. This case is about whether the Tennessee Attorney General may continue to enforce a rule in violation of federal law; this case presents no more of an issue involving a “one-time act that occurred in the past,” Maj. Op. at 509, than Verizon Maryland. In both cases, the question before the court is whether the agent of the state may continue to act in defiance of the law, and whether that has a monetary effect upon the state is irrelevant. Thus, S & M Brands and ITP seek prospective relief, and to hold otherwise is to go against clear precedent.
In reading the majority’s opinion, it seems to me that the majority is concerned that the injunction S & M Brands and ITP seek would not apply to “any claimant in the future,” Maj. Op. at 510-11, because the class of Non-Participating Manufacturers (“NPMs”) who filed their refund claims for 2003 cigarette sales after April 20, 2004, or who seek to have the original Allocable Share Release provision applied to sales between January 1 and April 19, 2004, is fixed and presumably small. According to the majority’s logic, an injunction would be prospective only if the Attorney General would make similar rulings against NPMs in the future, and that “would require the Tennessee General Assembly to pass another amendment changing the calculation of the refund.” Maj. Op. at 509. However, the majority is mistaken when it focuses on the repeatability of the Attorney General’s mistake. The Attorney General of Tennessee need not be in a position to make his mistake over and over before an injunction constitutes appropriate prospective relief, just as the Maryland Public Service Commission need not be prepared continually to rule against Verizon before an injunction becomes necessary, and just as Rossborough need not be in a position to be sued again. In all three cases, including the case at hand, the injunction was requested to prevent a future unconstitutional act.
*517“As in most areas of the law, the difference between the type of relief barred by the Eleventh Amendment and that permitted under Ex parte Young will not in many instances be that between day and night.” Edelman, 415 U.S. at 667, 94 S.Ct. 1347. In this case, however, our precedent, as well as that of the Supreme Court, makes it clear that the relief requested is prospective relief that would come within the exception to sovereign immunity in Ex parte Young. For that reason, I dissent. Because the majority did not reach the merits of the case, I decline to do so as well.
I believe the majority in this case errs when it concludes that the plaintiffs seek retrospective relief. Because I believe that the plaintiffs seek relief that is consistent with the Supreme Court’s exceptions to the doctrine of sovereign immunity, I would hold that sovereign immunity does not bar this suit. Therefore, I respectfully dissent.