Court Opinion

ID: 9497025
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:41:42.156636+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:57.602156
License: Public Domain

KING, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the view of my able colleague Judge Williams that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to address this dispute, and I agree with her conclusion that its removal to federal court was improper. I write separately to highlight and adopt the reasoning of my friend Judge Goodwin of West Virginia, who served our Court on the panel that initially considered this jurisdictional issue. As he correctly recognized, the resolution of the Dixon complaint does not depend on any question of federal law. See Dixon v. Coburg Dairy, Inc., 330 F.3d 250, 266 (4th Cir.2003) (Goodwin, District Judge, sitting by designation, concurring in part and dissenting in part) (observing that question of whether Dixon was “exercising his First Amendment rights” cannot be answered under federal law), vacated & reh’g en banc granted, (4th Cir. Sept. 16, 2003). Although Judge Williams’s analysis adheres to circuit precedent and achieves the proper result, Dixon’s complaint does not even arguably give rise to federal jurisdiction. As I see it, section 16-17-560 of the South Carolina Code seeks to create a state law claim implicating the Constitution of the United States; South Carolina, however, is powerless to mandate the application of First Amendment jurisprudence in a federal proceeding where the alleged constitutional deprivation stems solely from private action.
A right secured by the First Amendment is never exercised in the abstract; rather, it may be infringed only when a state actor has sought or seeks to suppress protected expression. See, e.g., CBS, Inc. v. Democratic Nat’l Comm., 412 U.S. 94, 114, 93 S.Ct. 2080, 36 L.Ed.2d 772 (1973) (holding that First Amendment restrains “government action, not that of private persons”). In this situation, no state actor was involved in Dixon’s discharge, and thus his First Amendment rights could not have been contravened. Given these circumstances, Dixon’s complaint cannot be read to establish federal question jurisdiction. And as Judge Goodwin explained, “one cannot determine whether a specific expressive activity is an ‘exercise of First Amendment rights’ without reference to a state actor who is trying to suppress that expressive activity.” Dixon, 330 F.3d at 266. This is therefore a state law dispute only, with no federal jurisprudential counterpart.
Pursuant to the foregoing, I am pleased to concur.