Court Opinion

ID: 9476750
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:04:27.638061+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:29.349810
License: Public Domain

PATRICK E. HIGGINBOTHAM, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I add this explanation of my resolution of what for me is the most difficult issue in this case — whether we are being faithful to our obligation as an inferior court to obey decisions of the United States Supreme Court.
Obedience by inferior courts to the command of the Supreme Court is essential to the administration of our complex court structure. For the Supreme Court to fulfill its unique role set by Article III, the federal system simultaneously must encourage candid expression by inferior courts while demanding acceptance of the Supreme Court’s role as the final arbiter. This inherent tension now is increased because the Supreme Court’s annual capacity for written opinions is approximately 150, an apparent constant, while inferior courts are producing a rapidly increasing number of decisions. This reality reinforces the traditional values of stare decisis. As an inferi- or court we must not allow our version of a “correct” result to deceive us into semantic games of reformulation and hair splitting in order to escape the force of a fairly resolved issue.
The notion that as an inferior court we are free to strip content from principle by confining the Supreme Court’s holding to the precise facts before it is a heady assertion indeed; that notion ignores our role. Our duty to the Supreme Court precedent is broader than our duty to abide our own precedent and that of courts on our level. When the duty of obedience flows horizontally and not vertically, a later court may appropriately after due regard for our necessary dependence upon panel harmony in a multi-panel court and to the values of stare decisis such as predictability and settlement of expectation, confine the first case to its facts by concluding, in the words of Karl N. Llewellyn, that: “This rule holds only to redheaded Walpoles in pale magenta Buick cars.” Our duty is different when the reach of precedent is vertical.
We are about words and ideas, not mechanics, and defining the margin of our duty is a slippery undertaking. That Justices Harlan and White detailed the statutory interpretation that we repeat today is not enough. It is true that at least five members of the court (before Justice Powell’s retirement) have been persuaded that the earlier readings of history were wrong, but at least two of the five Justices would adhere to the holdings of Jones and Runyon, though they rested on a view of history the Justices no longer credit. Accepting these holdings our result admittedly is awkward. While it is awkward to conclude that identical statutory language reaches *1353private discrimination on the basis of race but not alienage, the awkwardness is not conclusive. Justice Stevens has pointed out, the awkwardness arises because “[t]he Court has broadened the coverage of § 1981 far beyond the scope actually intended by its authors.”
The difficulty of two meanings in identical language is also mitigated by the circumstance that the Court, although abiding the holdings of Jones and Runyon, has been willing to make § 1981 fit with principles of the fourteenth amendment, even where § 1981’s text might indicate otherwise. The Court did so in General Building Contractors Ass’n v. Pennsylvania, 458 U.S. 375,102 S.Ct. 3141, 73 L.Ed.2d 835 (1982), holding that § 1981 prohibits only wilful racial discrimination. Justice Stevens explained that because in his reading the 39th Congress never intended for § 1981 to reach employment discrimination, the legislative history was an improbable source for answering the question of whether the statute should be read to forbid only intentional conduct. Because the statute itself did not require proof of intent “a logician would be comfortable in concluding that no such proof should ever be required.” Id. 458 U.S. at 406,102 S.Ct. at 3158.
Justice Stevens then concluded:
Nevertheless, since that requirement tends to define the entire coverage of § 1981 in a way that better reflects the basic intent of Congress than would a contrary holding, I concur in the conclusion [that intent must be shown] ... insofar as it relates to the statutory protection of equal opportunity but, perhaps illogically, would reach a different conclusion in a case challenging a denial of a citizen’s civil rights.
Id. at 406, 102 S.Ct. at 3158.
This suggests that the Court could accommodate Jones and Runyon with the conclusion that § 1981, in parallel with the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments, reaches private racial discrimination but requires state action for discrimination against aliens, in spite of the absence of supporting statutory language and the seeming incongruity that results. The vertical command of precedent in Jones and Runyon, then, although not completely clear, is not much more than the ratio decidendi: § 1981 reaches private racial discrimination. In these unique circumstances where the Justices themselves have peeled cases to their holdings, we are justified in declining an extension that in other circumstances we might properly be duty bound to make.
The matter is further complicated because we are asked to interpret a congressional enactment. Courts must be particularly circumspect in reconsidering decisions interpreting statutes. Just as a working federal judiciary demands vertical adherence to precedent, there is a point at which the orderly accommodation of law-making and law-interpreting demands that we resist reconsideration because Congress may well have acquiesced in prior statutory interpretations. Yet I see little reason to believe that Congress has assumed the extension of § 1981 that we today reject, especially given that, as Judge Gee notes, Congress has acted in a way inconsistent with the view that private discrimination against aliens is prohibited. Congress, however, has not signaled its disagreement with the Court’s construction of § 1981 reach of private racial discrimination. See Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U.S. 160, 174 n. 11, 96 S.Ct. 2586, 2596 n. 11, 49 L.Ed.2d 415 (1976).
As made plain by this separate writing, I find the issue of precedent to be difficult, and it is only after pause that I have found the side of the line on which this case falls. While this is a close case, this is not a seldom encountered task. Only recently we confronted a similar problem in dealing with border searches. There, Judge Reavley, Judge Garwood and I concluded that United States v. Ortiz, 422 U.S. 891, 95 S.Ct. 2585, 45 L.Ed.2d 623 (1975), could not be given the restrictive reading that others would give it and we followed its command. See United States v. Jackson, 825 F.2d 853, 873, 874 (5th Cir.1987). Persuaded that today we are adhering to a principled line, I agree that having ex*1354plained our position we ought to stand in place pending further direction from our superiors.