Court Opinion

ID: 9476550
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:58:39.186883+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:22.723319
License: Public Domain

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge.
This is an appeal from a district court order (reported at 620 F.Supp. 783) in which Chief Judge Carl Rubin dismissed an action that Plaintiff Mary Kate Leaman, a former probationary employee of the Ohio Department of Mental Retardation, had brought against the department and certain of its officials for terminating her employment. The complaint alleged that the discharge violated 42 U.S.C. § 1983, 29 U.S.C. § 794 (the Rehabilitation Act of 1973), and the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
After suing the defendants in federal court, Ms. Leaman elected to file a virtually identical complaint in the Ohio Court of Claims against the Department of Mental Retardation alone. Judge Rubin then dismissed the federal action. As to the Department of Mental Retardation, the dismissal was based on sovereign immunity grounds. As to the individual defendants, Judge Rubin applied a provision of the Ohio Court of Claims Act that reads (in pertinent part) as follows:
“Except in the case of a civil action filed by the state, filing a civil action in the court of claims results in a complete waiver of any cause of action, based on . the same act or omission, which the filing party has against any state officer or employee.”
Ohio Revised Code § 2743.02(A)(1).
The judgment in favor of the department is not challenged here; what is contested is the district court’s holding that by electing to sue the department in the Ohio Court of Claims, the plaintiff voluntarily waived her cause of action against the individual defendants.
By divided vote, a three-judge panel of this court reversed the order dismissing the case against the individual employees. On petition for rehearing, eight of the fifteen active judges of the full court voted to rehear the case en banc, as authorized by 28 U.S.C. § 46(c), and an order was entered vacating the panel decision. After reargument, but before issuance of any final decision, one of the judges who had voted for the rehearing en banc recused himself from further participation. A question was then raised at an administrative meeting of the court as to whether the recusal ought to be deemed to relate back to the vote on the petition for rehearing. Chief Judge Lively ruled that the recusal was not retroactive. After discussion, and on motion duly made and seconded, the court voted, as the minutes of the meeting reflect, to “sustain the ruling of the chair and to ratify the action of the court in voting for en banc rehearing.” Only three of the remaining fourteen judges voted against the motion.
This chain of procedural events has caused two members of the court serious concern. Before addressing the merits of the appeal and explaining why we believe the judgment of the trial court must be affirmed, therefore, we shall set forth the reasons why we do not consider it inappropriate for the full court to be deciding this case at this time.
I
The ruling of the Chief Judge on the retroactivity question, and the vote sustaining the ruling and ratifying the decision to *949rehear the appeal en banc, are consistent with the way in which at least one other circuit has dealt with the question of the retroactivity of recusals under 28 U.S.C. § 455(a). See United States v. Widgery, 778 F.2d 325, 328 (7th Cir.1985), and United States v. Murphy, 768 F.2d 1518, 1541 (7th Cir.1985), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 106 S.Ct. 1188, 89 L.Ed.2d 304 (1986), which teach that such recusals are prospective only and do not invalidate prior judicial actions. Our decision to go forward with this proceeding en banc is also consonant with the Supreme Court’s concept that voting on whether to rehear a case en banc “is essentially a policy decision of judicial administration,” Moody v. Albemarle Paper Co., 417 U.S. 622, 627, 94 S.Ct. 2513, 2516, 41 L.Ed.2d 358 (1974), and a policy decision as to which “each Court of Appeals is vested with a wide latitude of discretion to decide for itself just how that power shall be exercised.” Western Pacific R. Corp. v. Western Pacific R. Co., 345 U.S. 247, 259, 73 S.Ct. 656, 662, 97 L.Ed. 986 (1953). The end to be served by such decisions “ ‘is to enable the court to maintain its integrity as an institution by making it possible for a majority of its judges always to control and thereby to secure uniformity and continuity in its decisions....’” United States v. American-Foreign Steamship Corp., 363 U.S. 685, 689-90, 80 S.Ct. 1336, 1339, 4 L.Ed.2d 1491 (1960) (quoting Maris, “Hearing and Rehearing Cases in Banc,” 14 F.R.D. 91, 96 (1954)).
If it makes any difference whether recusal was mandatory in this case, it bears emphasis that the mere fact of recu-sal does not mean that the recusing judge had concluded that his recusal was mandatory. Section 455(a) of Title 28 requires disqualification only where a judge’s impartiality “might reasonably be questioned.” Here the recusing judge, who as a member of the lower house of the Ohio legislature was a sponsor of the Ohio Court of Claims Act, has never believed that his role as a legislator could reasonably draw into question his ability to participate impartially as a judge in this case. We are not required to decide whether he is correct in this, but we note that his view is consistent with the practice of the late Chief Justice Fred Vinson and the late Justices Harold Burton and Hugo Black, who as members of the United States Supreme Court routinely sat on cases involving legislation passed while they were members of Congress.1 The re-cusal statute has embodied an “objective” standard only since 1974, to be sure, and views on judicial mores do sometimes change over time — see, e.g., Philip Elman’s oral reminiscences on “The Solicitor General’s Office, Justice Frankfurter, and Civil Rights Litigation, 1946-1960,” 100 Harv.L. *950Rev. 817 (1987) — but aside from Limeco, Inc. v. Division of Lime, 571 F.Supp. 710 (N.D.Miss.1983), where a senior district judge recused himself from a case involving a bill for which he had voted as a legislator more than four decades earlier, we know of no published decision holding that the practice followed by Chief Justice Vinson and Justices Burton and Black is no longer permissible.
The plaintiff in this case did not move for recusal, moreover, notwithstanding that the judge who ultimately recused himself was on the bench throughout the oral argument and notwithstanding that his sponsorship of the Ohio Court of Claims Act was a matter of public record. The plaintiff’s failure to move for recusal could be considered to have some marginal significance, perhaps, insofar as it may suggest that the plaintiff herself did not consider recusal mandatory. Mandatory or not, however, the question is now academic; acting on his own motion, the judge did in fact recuse himself.
Hardly less academic, in our view, is the question of retroactivity. There was no reason to ask the parties to brief the question of whether the recusal ought to have been deemed retroactive, because, by a large majority, the post-recusal court expressly ratified the vote for an en banc rehearing. What was ratified was not the ruling of the Chief Judge on the retroactivity question — that ruling was “sustained”— but the original action of the court in deciding that the case would be reheard en banc. Ratification, according to the common understanding, “is equivalent to a previous authorization and relates back to [the] time when [the] act ratified was done, except where intervening rights of third persons are concerned." Black's Law Dictionary (5th Ed.1979). When an absolute majority of the full court, acting without the recus-ing judge, voted “to ratify the action of the court in voting for an en banc rehearing,” it was voting nunc pro tunc to rehear the case en banc.
If there had been no such ratification, if the recusal had been deemed retroactive, and if the panel decision had been reinstated without the full court having decided whether the panel decision was correct, any victory the plaintiff might have won in the district court on remand would almost certainly have proved Pyrrhic. Without counting the recused judge, there are eight active judges of this court who now believe that the district court ruled correctly in dismissing the action. Barring a change in the composition of the court, there is no reason to suppose that on a second appeal the court would not again have voted to hear the case en banc. This would put us exactly where we are now, except that the litigants and their counsel and the trial court would all have wasted a fair amount of time after the remand, and the litigants would have spent additional money, in order to get to a point where the full court of appeals would be prepared to say whether the district court reached the right result in dismissing the plaintiffs suit in the first place. We think the district court did reach the right result, and we see no common sense reason for postponing our decision on that question.
And so we ■ turn to the merits of the appeal.
II
The Ohio Department of Mental Retardation hired Plaintiff Leaman as a case management specialist on December 12, 1983. Ms. Leaman was hired as a probationary employee whose appointment was not to become final, under Ohio Revised Code § 124.27, until she had satisfactorily served a probationary period fixed by regulation at 120 calendar days. Ms. Leaman’s superiors did not consider her service satisfactory, and two of them signed a letter dated April 4, 1984, informing her that she was being removed from her position. The letter gave a number of reasons why it had been concluded that she could not meet the requirements of the job.
Ms. Leaman appealed her discharge to the State Personnel Board of Review, which dismissed the appeal. She then brought her federal court action, naming as defendants the Ohio Department of Mental Retardation and four of her superiors in *951the department. The complaint alleged that Ms. Leaman had been discharged, in violation of her rights under the United States Constitution and the federal Rehabilitation Act, because she had expressed disagreement with controversial departmental policies regarding mildly retarded juveniles. The complaint sought reinstatement with backpay, an award of costs and attorney fees, injunctive relief, and punitive damages of $25,000 against each individual defendant.
An essentially identical complaint, stripped of claims against the individual defendants, was later filed against the department in the Ohio Court of Claims. That court dismissed the complaint, holding in a final appealable decision that Ms. Lea-man’s discharge was in accordance with state law. The Court of Claims also held that a probationary state job does not constitute “property” protected under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court of Claims was unmoved by Ms. Leaman’s First Amendment and Rehabilitation Act claims, which in that court’s view confused the real issue:
“By what ever name the claims are made, this court construes it as an appeal challenging the judgment and decision of the state agency. The court could visualize situations where every person terminated during a probationary period could claim that his First Amendment Right of ‘free speech’ has been violated. This court highly questions whether that is the intent of the First Amendment. As to the 29 U.S.C. 794 and 794(A) [sic], these deal with the rights of handicapped persons. To permit a probationary worker who has worked in her probationary position for less than 120 days, and who obviously disagreed with her superiors to state a cause of action ... would, [in] this court’s opinion, represent an entirely untenable position.”
The Court of Claims commented, in conclusion, that a Section 1988 action appeared to have been brought in federal court “virtually contemporaneously,” and the court confessed that it had “difficulty understanding why the case is pending in the Court of Claims involving the same issues and the same party, namely the State of Ohio,” when the issues “apparently are being determined in federal court.”
Under Ohio Revised Code § 2743.20 and Rule 4 of the Ohio Rules of Appellate Procedure, the decision of the Court of Claims could have been appealed to the Ohio Court of Appeals for the Tenth Appellate District by the filing of a notice of appeal on or before June 7, 1985. Judge Rubin dismissed the federal action on May 14, 1985, some three weeks before the deadline for appealing the decision of the Court of Claims. Ms. Leaman did not appeal the Court of Claims decision, but did perfect an appeal to this court from the dismissal of her federal case.
Ms. Leaman contends that her filing of' the Court of Claims suit could have had no adverse impact on her federal court action against the individual state employees, because the Ohio statute limited any waiver to claims arising under state law and because the statute itself made the waiver void in any event. In the alternative Ms. Leaman argues that the waiver provision is inconsistent with 42 U.S.C. § 1983, and may not be given effect because of the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution. We do not find either argument persuasive.
Ill
The Ohio Court of Claims Act waives the state’s sovereign immunity and declares that the state consents to be sued in the Court of Claims. Like most laws that embody compromises among conflicting interests, the statute does not represent a total victory for the class of people who gained the most from its enactment. Under the statute, as we have seen, claimants who might wish to take advantage of the state’s waiver of its sovereign immunity are put on notice that the waiver will be effective as to them only if they themselves waive any cognate claims they might have against the state’s employees. And the statute tells prospective suitors in the Court of Claims that the waiver of cognate claims will be “a complete waiver of any *952cause of action ... which the filing party has against any state officer or employee.” Ohio Revised Code § 2743.02(A)(1) (emphasis supplied).
The word “any,” as used in the statute, is unambiguous. See United States v. Winson, 793 F.2d 754 (6th Cir.1986), holding that even under the strict construction accorded criminal statutes, the words “any court,” as used in 18 U.S.C. § 922(h)(1), are “patently unambiguous” and do not exclude foreign courts. In providing that an election to sue the state in the Court of Claims results in a complete waiver of any cognate cause of action against individual state officers or employees, the Ohio legislature clearly provided for waiver of federal causes of action, as well as causes of action based upon state law. United States District Courts for both the Northern and Southern districts of Ohio have so held (Ferrari v. Woodside Receiving Hospital, 624 F.Supp. 899, 902 (N.D.Ohio 1985); Leaman v. Ohio Department of Mental Retardation & Developmental Disabilities, 620 F.Supp. 783 (S.D.Ohio 1985)), and their interpretation is correct, in our view, assuming it does not result in a conflict with federal law. For reasons explained in the next section of this opinion, we see no such conflict.
Ms. Leaman’s principal argument that the waiver provision does not bar her federal action rests upon the final sentence of Ohio Revised Code § 2743.02(A)(1):
“The waiver [of claims against individual state employees] shall be void if the court determines that the act or omission was manifestly outside the scope of the officer’s or employee’s office or employment or that the officer or employee acted with malicious purpose, in bad faith, or in a wanton or reckless manner.”
Ms. Leaman’s federal complaint does not allege that the individual defendants who discharged her acted maliciously or outside the scope of their employment. Nonetheless, citing Van Hoene v. State, 20 Ohio App.3d 363, 486 N.E.2d 868 (Hamilton 1985) (where, despite the pendency of a suit in the Court of Claims, a complaint alleging that individual defendant employees had acted “with malicious purpose, in bad faith, or in a wanton or reckless manner” was held not to be demurrable), Ms. Leaman maintains that her allegation that the discharge was unconstitutional necessarily implies that the discharge was ultra vires and malicious.
Even if the complaint is construed as alleging what Ms. Leaman now says it implies, however, the statute voids the waiver only if “the court” determines that the individual defendants acted outside the scope of their employment or maliciously. The words “the court” mean the Court of Claims. Van Hoene, supra, 486 N.E.2d at 872; Smith v. Stempel, 65 Ohio App.2d 36, 414 N.E.2d 445 (Franklin 1979), 3d Syl. In deciding, as it did, that the termination of Ms. Leaman’s employment “was in accordance with the law,” the Court of Claims can hardly be said to have determined that it was ultra vires or malicious.2 This is dis-*953positive of Ms. Leaman’s claim that the waiver is void under the terms of the statute, and so we come to the question whether the waiver may be given effect under federal law.
IV
Ms. Leaman argues that application of the waiver provision of the Ohio Court of Claims Act “thwarted the broad remedial purpose underlying 42 U.S.C. Section 1983,” and must therefore be invalidated under the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution. The argument relies heavily upon Rosa v. Cantrell, 705 F.2d 1208 (10th Cir.1982), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 821, 104 S.Ct. 85, 78 L.Ed.2d 94 (1983), which involved a Wyoming workers’ compensation act that said that the rights and remedies provided in the act “are in lieu of all other rights and remedies_” Wyo. Stat. § 27-12-103(a) (1977). Insofar as the Wyoming statute purported to bar recovery against a municipal employer under § 1983, Rosa v. Cantrell held that it was in conflict with § 1983 and had to yield to the federal statute under the Supremacy Clause.
Rosa v. Cantrell and comparable workers’ compensation act cases are not controlling here, in our judgment, precisely because the workers’ compensation acts purport to bar actions brought in another forum under another statute, while the Ohio Court of Claims Act does not. In no way does the Ohio statute shut the doors of the federal courts on claimants who are unwilling to forego suit there. It does not deprive claimants of their federal forum. The Ohio statute simply offers to make available an otherwise unavailable deep-pocket defendant, and an alternative forum, if prospective plaintiffs who think they have claims against individual state employees voluntarily elect to waive suit against the employees in favor of suit against the employer.
“The law is clear that ... under the eleventh amendment, [states] are immune from [§ 1983] action[s] for damages or in-junctive relief in federal court,” Abick v. State of Michigan, 803 F.2d 874, 876 (6th Cir.1986), and the Constitution does not require the State of Ohio to offer any waiver of its sovereign immunity. Cf. Pennhurst State School & Hospital v. Halderman, 465 U.S. 89, 104 S.Ct. 900, 79 L.Ed.2d 67 (1984). We see nothing inconsistent with § 1983 in the offer the state has made in its Court of Claims Act. The Ohio statute gives claimants an option not otherwise available to them, and any claimant who does not like the statutory option is perfectly free to reject it and prosecute a § 1983 action against the state’s officials just as if the Court of Claims Act had never been passed. Such an action may be maintained either in federal court or in an Ohio court of common pleas, without any necessity of filing an action in the Court of Claims. It is settled under Ohio law, moreover, that the Court of Claims Act would not prevent such a claimant from seeking declaratory or injunctive relief against the Department of Mental Retardation itself, again without any necessity of suing in the Court of Claims. Friedman v. Johnson, 18 Ohio St.3d 85, 87, 480 N.E.2d 82, 84 (1985); Racing Guild of Ohio v. Ohio State Racing Commission, 28 Ohio St.3d 317, 503 N.E.2d 1025 (1986), 1st Syl.
If in the case at bar the defendant officials had pleaded and proved an accord and satisfaction — if they had shown that Ms. Leaman had given them a written release of all claims in exchange for a monetary consideration — the defendants would surely have been entitled to a dismissal, and surely the dismissal could not be thought to frustrate the policy underlying § 1983. In practical effect the Ohio Court of Claims Act is a standing offer for a settlement of claims against state employees in exchange for an otherwise non-existent opportunity to sue the state itself for damages.
*954The constitutionality of such an offer can hardly be doubted in light of Town of Newton v. Rumery, 480 U.S. -, 107 S.Ct. 1187, 94 L.Ed.2d 405 (1987), where the Supreme Court, applying “traditional common-law principles” incorporated in federal law, 480 U.S. at -, 107 S.Ct. at 1192, 94 L.Ed.2d at 415, held that a man who accepted a municipality’s offer to dismiss criminal charges against him in exchange for a waiver of any claims he might have against the town and its officers could not repudiate the waiver and sue the town and its officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The Supreme Court flatly rejected the argument that agreements such as that accepted by Mr. Rumery are “inherently coercive,” and thus invalid per se; Mr. Rumery’s voluntary decision to accept the town’s offer, the Court said, reflected “a highly rational judgment” that the obvious and certain benefits offered by the agreement would “exceed the speculative benefits of prevailing in a civil action [under § 1983].” 480 U.S. at-, 107 S.Ct. at 1193, 94 L.Ed.2d at 417.
The inducement offered for Ms. Lea-man’s waiver (an opportunity to bring a direct action for damages against the State of Ohio) obviously lacked the potential for coercion inherent in the inducement (dismissal of criminal charges) offered for the waiver in Rumery. That being so, the benefits offered in the Ohio Court of Claims Act being no less “obvious” than those offered Mr. Rumery, and Ms. Lea-man’s election to accept Ohio’s offer being no less “rational” than the election made by Mr. Rumery, we think the district court’s decision to dismiss Ms. Leaman’s case was even more clearly correct than the corresponding decision in Mr. Rumery’s case.
In holding Ms. Leaman to her bargain, the district court clearly did not labor under the misapprehension that the voluntary waiver of a federal civil rights claim somehow amounts to a waiver of federal court jurisdiction. Under the terms of the Ohio statute, acceptance of the statutory offer results not in a waiver of federal jurisdiction to entertain suits against state employees, but in a waiver of “any cause of action” the waiving party may have against such employees. Where a claimant elects to sue the state in the Court of Claims, in other words, the state’s employees are given an affirmative defense which the federal court has both the jurisdiction and the duty to recognize. This case did not present a situation in which the federal courts had been deprived of jurisdiction, any more than Rumery did; here, as in Rumery, the defendants were entitled to judgment not because the court had no jurisdiction, but because the plaintiff had no case.
Judge Rubin explicitly declared that the dismissal of Ms. Leaman’s action was for failure to state a claim, as opposed to any want of jurisdiction:
“In exchange for [waiver of her claims against officers and employees of the state], Plaintiff received a solvent Defendant. There being no statutory or constitutional impediment to such an arrangement, this Court will hold Plaintiff to her quid pro quo and dismiss the individual Defendants for failure to state a claim against them.” Leaman, 620 F.Supp. at 786.
The quid pro quo received by Ms. Lea-man was not illusory, and the bargain she accepted was not unfair. As this court has heretofore recognized, the Ohio Court of Claims Act does not constitute a waiver by the state of its sovereign immunity “with respect to actions pending in federal or other state courts.” Ohio Inns, Inc. v. Nye, 542 F.2d 673, 681 (6th Cir.1976), cert. denied, 430 U.S. 946, 97 S.Ct. 1583, 51 L.Ed.2d 794 (1977). Ohio was under no constitutional duty to let itself be sued at all, and it was not unreasonable for the state to tell prospective plaintiffs — in words not unlike those used by the United States itself in the Federal Tort Claims Act — “we will agree to let you sue the sovereign if you will agree to surrender your claims against the sovereign’s servants.” When one considers the depth of the sovereign’s pockets in comparison to the depth of the servants’, and when one remembers that Ms. Leaman was not required to give up her right to seek reinstatement through an injunction suit *955against the Department of Mental Retardation, it is hard for us to see how the state could possibly be thought to have been guilty of overreaching.
It is the reasonableness of the choice offered prospective plaintiffs like Ms. Lea-man that prevents the Ohio Court of Claims Act from running afoul of the “unconstitutional condition” doctrine to which Mr. Justice Sutherland gave eloquent expression in Frost & Frost Trucking Co. v. Railroad Commission of California, 271 U.S. 583, 46 S.Ct. 605, 70 L.Ed. 1101 (1926). There the State of California had told private truckers operating under private contracts of carriage that they could not use the public highways of the state unless they agreed to become common carriers. “In reality,” the Court said, “the carrier is given no choice, except a choice between the rock and the whirlpool, — an option to forego a privilege which may be vital to his livelihood or submit to a requirement which may constitute an intolerable burden.” Id. at 593, 46 S.Ct. at 607.
However one may assess the contrast between Frost & Frost Trucking and Rumery, bearing in mind that the choice offered Mr. Rumery was a choice between waiving his § 1983 claim and risking jail, the contrast between Frost & Frost Trucking and the case at bar is a striking one. Here Ms. Leaman was told that she could reject the offer made in the Court of Claims Act, suing the individual state employees for damages under § 1983 just as if the Court of Claims Act had never been passed at all, or she could choose to avail herself of an opportunity not available before the Court of Claims Act was passed— the opportunity to exchange her damage claim against the state’s employees for a damage claim against the State itself. That, it seems to us, is a reasonable and meaningful choice; it is not a choice between “the rock and the whirlpool,” and it bears no resemblance to the choice offered customers of the late Mr. Hobson or the offer that associates of Mr. Puzo’s Godfather could not refuse.
The mere fact that the Ohio Court of Claims Act offered Ms. Leaman a choice not available to her before its enactment does not ipso facto make the Act unconstitutional, of course, and Ohio Revised Code § 2743.02(A)(1) no more puts justice on the auction block than does its counterpart in the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2676. Under federal law a tort claimant who wishes to sue the United States for damages under 28 U.S.C. § 1346(b) is put on notice by 28 U.S.C. § 2676 that any judgment in such an action will constitute “a complete bar to any action by the claimant, by reason of the same subject matter, against the employee of the government whose act or omission gave rise to the claim.” If that provision of federal law does not sully the skirts of justice with the detritus of the marketplace, neither does the waiver provision of the Ohio Court of Claims Act.
A prospective federal tort claimant may choose not to sue the United States itself, just as Ms. Leaman might have chosen not to sue the State of Ohio, and one who does not pursue his remedies against the federal government is not required to give up any claim he may have against the federal government’s servants; but one who pursues his statutory remedies against the United States to the point of judgment-even an adverse judgment or a judgment for only a small part of the amount claimed — bars himself from any recovery against federal employees. Such a result has not struck this court or other federal courts as anomalous, even where the claim thus barred arises under the Constitution itself. Serra v. Pichardo, 786 F.2d 237 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 107 S.Ct. 103, 93 L.Ed.2d 53 (1986); Arevalo v. Woods, 811 F.2d 487 (9th Cir.1987). It is fair to say, moreover, that the Supreme Court of the United States has not always gone out of its way to interpret the Federal Tort Claims Act in favor of giving claimants a right to sue the government, even where the language of the Act itself might seem to provide a reasonably clear right of suit. Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135, 71 S.Ct. 153, 95 L.Ed. 152 (1950); United States v. Johnson, — U.S. -, 107 S.Ct. 2063, 95 L.Ed.2d 648 (1987). Where the language of a governmental claims act ap*956pears to bar recovery against the government’s servants, therefore, it seems unlikely that the Supreme Court would go out of its way to interpret the statutory language otherwise, as long as the right to sue the government itself is clear. As the Supreme Court recently had occasion to remind us, “□Judicial perception that a particular result would be unreasonable may enter into the construction of ambiguous provisions, but cannot justify disregard of what [the legislature] has plainly and intentionally provided.” Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Asphalt Products Co., Inc., — U.S. -, 107 S.Ct. 2275, 96 L.Ed.2d 97 (1987).
Under any interpretation, the Federal Tort Claims Act, like the Ohio Court of Claims Act, offers claimants a better deal than they would have without it. Neither statute forces any claimant to accept the government’s statutory offer, and both statutes, far from requiring that any claimant's constitutional rights be bartered away, afford claimants a superior mechanism for vindicating their rights. Constitutional rights may not be extinguished by any statute, state or federal, but this truism does not mean that suits or potential suits for alleged violations of such rights may not be compromised or waived. See Home Insurance Company of New York v. Morse, 87 U.S. (20 Wall.) 445, 451, 22 L.Ed. 365 (1874) (“... any citizen may no doubt waive the rights to which he may be entitled”). And the long line of cases holding that a state may not require foreign corporations to surrender their right to remove actions against them to federal court as a condition of doing business within the state — a line that includes Harrison v. St. Louis & San Francisco R.R. Co., 232 U.S. 318, 34 S.Ct. 333, 58 L.Ed. 621 (1914)— teaches nothing to the contrary, as the decision in Rumery, supra, confirms.
It remains to be considered, however, whether the district court erred, in the case at bar, in finding that “[b]y filing in the Ohio Court of Claims, Plaintiff has made a knowing, intelligent, and voluntary waiver of her right to bring claims against officers and employees of the state.” Leaman, 620 F.Supp. at 786. The finding that the waiver was “knowing, intelligent, and voluntary” presumably rests upon the fact that Ms. Leaman was represented by competent counsel when she filed her action in the Court of Claims, and counsel must be presumed to have known what the Court of Claims Act said. Under the circumstances of this case, we consider this an adequate foundation for the finding of voluntariness.
Ms. Leaman was not pleading guilty to criminal charges, or waiving her right to counsel in a criminal case, and it was not incumbent upon the court to make sure that her lawyer had adequately explained the effect of her action. Ms. Leaman was trying to recover a favorable judgment as a plaintiff. It was perfectly reasonable, in our view, to rely on Ms. Leaman’s counsel for strategic advice on how best to accomplish that objective. See Estelle v. Williams, 425 U.S. 501, 512, 96 S.Ct. 1691, 1697, 48 L.Ed.2d 126 (1976), where, notwithstanding that the party whose constitutional rights were waived was the defendant in a criminal trial, the Supreme Court declared, in holding habeas relief unavailable, that
“[u]nder our adversary system, once a defendant has the assistance of counsel the vast array of trial decisions, strategic and tactical, which must be made before and during trial rests with the accused and his attorney. Any other approach would rewrite the duties of trial judges and counsel in our legal system.”
Ms. Leaman’s counsel must be deemed to have known that the price of suing the state in the Court of Claims would be the surrender of Ms. Leaman’s punitive damage claims against her superiors in the Department of Mental Retardation, unless the Court of Claims could be persuaded that those individuals acted outside the scope of their employment or maliciously.3 It was not the duty of any court to explore *957the adequacy of communication between client and counsel before permitting the complaint in the Court of Claims suit to be accepted for filing. And where a claimant represented by competent counsel has elected to accept Ohio’s statutory offer to subject itself to suit in the Court of Claims in exchange for a waiver of claims against individual state officials, nothing in the Constitution entitles the claimant to repudiate the waiver if she or he loses the suit in the Court of Claims and does not even appeal the decision.
The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

. See also In the Matter of Thomas W. Sullivan, 283 Ala. 514, 219 So.2d 346, 353, cert. denied, 396 U.S. 826, 90 S.Ct. 70, 24 L.Ed.2d 76 (1969), (“A judge is not disqualified to try a case because he had been a member of the legislature enacting a statute involved in litigation before him, Norton v. Lyon Van and Storage Co., 9 Cal.App.2d 199, 49 P.2d 311 [(1935), cert. denied, 298 U.S. 662, 56 S.Ct. 746, 80 L.Ed. 1387 (1936) ]"); Williams v. Mayor & Council of the City of Athens, 122 Ga.App. 465, 177 S.E.2d 581 (1970), (affirming denial of a motion to disqualify a judge on the ground that as city attorney he had drafted an ordinance the constitutionality of which was under attack in his court); and Newburyport Redevelopment Authority v. Commonwealth, 9 Mass.App. 206, 401 N.E.2d 118, 144 (1980) ("There is no merit to the committee’s contention that the judge should have disqualified himself because he had been a member of the House of Representatives when St. 1967, c. 702, was enacted_ [T]he validity of that statute was and is a pure question of law_”).
Assuming that the recusing judge’s sponsorship of the Ohio Court of Claims Act constituted a public expression of opinion on the constitutionality of the particular section of the law involved in this case, such an expression of opinion on a pure question of law in a context involving none of the parties to this case is comparable to a similar expression of opinion by a judge who has had occasion to address a particular question of law in a prior judicial opinion. Such expressions of opinion on legal issues are not disqualifying, any more than expressions of opinion on the merits of a case heard by a three-judge panel are disqualifying when the case is reheard en banc. Insofar as the case at bar may be thought to present a question of legislative intent, the recusing judge might well have considered the subjective intent of any individual legislator irrelevant, particularly in the absence of any legislative history illuminating that intent.

. It is true that the Court of Claims noted, merely "[b]y way of comment,” that the department had been sued in a Section 1983 action the issues in which "apparently are being determined in a federal court.” The Court of Claims had not seen the federal court complaint, was obviously unaware of the motion to dismiss the department on sovereign immunity grounds, and obviously did not intend to express any view on whether Ms. Leaman had waived her claims against individual state employees. The Court of Claims had no power to suspend the operation of the statute in any event.
Just as the Court of Claims did not address the waiver issue, neither does that court seem to have focused on the question whether its final decision that the Department had terminated Ms. Leaman’s employment "in accordance with the law” would collaterally estop Ms. Leaman from asking another court to decide that the agents through whom the Department acted “in accordance with the law” somehow acted illegally as individuals.
Judge Merritt suggests, in his dissent, that "no meritorious § 1983 claim should ever be subject to the waiver," because, under Ohio law, conduct violative of § 1983 would always be ultra vires and thus could never subject the state to liability in a Court of Claims suit. We do not know whether the Supreme Court of Ohio would accept the premise of Judge Merritt’s argument, but if the Court of Claims had accepted it in Ms. Leaman’s case, and had held that the Department was not liable because its employees had acted against the law and thus outside the scope of their authority, under the *953express terms of the Ohio statute Ms. Leaman’s waiver of her claims against the individual employees would have been "void." In fact, the Court of Claims held just the opposite; it held that the discharge was "in accordance" with the law, not against the law. Ms. Leaman did not choose to appeal that decision, and she might well have had to live with it even if there had been no waiver provision in the Ohio statute.

. The price seems small enough when one recalls that a finding of malice by the Court of Claims would have enabled Ms. Leaman to proceed with her punitive damage claims against the individuals — and absent malice, the claims had no merit anyway.