Court Opinion

ID: 9476722
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:03:31.147777+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:28.322842
License: Public Domain

BREYER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I do not disagree with the majority about the basic principles of federal law that apply to this case. On the one hand, a person who claims that someone has violated his civil rights may bring suit in federal court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 without exhausting remedies that state law makes available. See Patsy v. Board of Regents, 457 U.S. 496, 102 S.Ct. 2557, 73 L.Ed.2d 172 (1982). On the other hand, Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971), and its progeny hold that if a state has already begun a state judicial or administrative proceeding against a person, that person may not proceed in federal court, even with a § 1983 suit, if that suit risks interfering with important state interests and if the federal plaintiff can raise constitutional challenges in the state proceedings. Middlesex County Ethics Committee v. Garden State Bar Association, 457 U.S. 423, 432, 102 S.Ct. 2515, 2521, 73 L.Ed.2d 116 (1982) (setting out basic test for invoking Younger-type abstention); see Ohio Civil Rights Commission v. Dayton Christian Schools, 477 U.S. 619, 106 S.Ct. 2718, 2723, 91 L.Ed.2d 512 (1986) (extending the Younger doctrine, in the context of a § 1983 action, to state administrative proceedings).
I disagree with the majority, however, about the application of those principles to this case. I think the plaintiff was, when she brought her federal suit, very much in the midst of Commonwealth administrative proceedings. In the Commonwealth, as in many states, local authorities cannot dismiss a tenured teacher without fairly elaborate administrative proceedings that involve notice of charges, a full-blown administrative hearing, and either an administrative appeal, judicial review, or both. P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 18, §§ 274-274o; see, e.g., Cal. Educ. Code §§ 44932-44945; NJ.Stat. Ann. §§ 18A:6-10 to -27; Wash.Rev. Code §§ 28A.70.160-.170. Puerto Rico’s statute provides that to “cancel” or “suspend” a tenured teacher’s educational certificate, the “Secretary of Education ... shall serve on the teacher an order of suspension or *268cancellation ... jointly with a complaint specifying the charges.” P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 18, §§ 274, 274a. The order “shall be final” after ten days only if the teacher does not “appeal” from it. P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 18, § 274b. With a few possible exceptions not here relevant, the order (regardless of what it says) legally takes effect only after the Board of Appeals of the Public Education System holds a full public hearing on the record, at which the teacher may be represented by counsel, present evidence, and cross-examine the witnesses presented by the education authorities. P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 18, §§ 274d-274h. If the Board decides against the teacher, he may obtain judicial review in the Commonwealth courts. P.R. Laws Ann. tit. 18, § 274?.
How can the majority find that the plaintiff was not in the midst of this procedure when she brought her federal law suit? The majority seems to do so only by artificially separating the statute’s “sending-the-order” provision from the rest of the statute. The majority reads the “sending-of-the-order” provision as if it permitted the Commonwealth to dismiss a teacher without a full-blown hearing simply by sending the piece of paper called an “order”, as if the sending of that piece of paper constituted the legal wrong and all the rest provided by the statute were but a state remedy. In any contested case, however, the sending of the “order” and the hearing on “appeal” are steps within an integrated, statutory administrative scheme — a scheme similar to those often used by states to dismiss tenured teachers. Unless one viewed Puerto Rico’s law as embodying an effort to dismiss tenured teachers without a hearing (which neither the statutory language nor common sense suggest is so) this case fits squarely within the Younger doctrine. Regardless, even if one calls the hearing stage an administrative “appeal” from the sending of the “order,” relevant Supreme Court precedent would still seem to require the plaintiff to take such an appeal before bringing her § 1983 action in federal court. Pennzoil v. Texaco, — U.S. -, 107 S.Ct. 1519, 1527 & n. 13, 95 L.Ed.2d 1 (1987) (holding in the context of a § 1983 suit that the availability of a judicial appeal renders a proceeding “pending” for purposes of Younger-type abstention); Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd., 420 U.S. 592, 607-09 & n. 21, 95 S.Ct. 1200, 1211 & n. 21, 43 L.Ed.2d 482 (1975) (holding that “a necessary concomitant of Younger is that a party ... must exhaust his state appellate remedies before seeking relief in the District Court” and noting that according such deference to already-initiated state proceedings is consistent with a general no-exhaustion doctrine); see Patsy v. Board of Regents, 457 U.S. at 518-19, 102 S.Ct. at 2568-69 (White, J., concurring in part) (noting that the Court’s holding in Patsy “is also fully consistent with [the Court’s] decisions that a defendant in a civil or administrative enforcement proceeding may not enjoin and sidetrack that proceeding by resorting to a § 1983 action in federal court” (citing Huffman))-, see also Malachowski v. City of Keene, 787 F.2d 704, 708 (1st Cir.) (holding that a § 1983 plaintiff must first take available state appeals), cert, denied, — U.S. -, 107 S.Ct. 107, 93 L.Ed.2d 56 (1986); Coruzzi v. New Jersey, 705 F.2d 688, 690 (3d Cir.1983) (similar); Carter v. Maryland Commission on Medical Discipline, 639 F.Supp. 542, 546 (D.Md. 1986) (similar). For these reasons, it seems to me the majority’s view both misreads Puerto Rico’s law and, in any event, runs contrary to relevant Supreme Court authority.