Court Opinion

ID: 9641713
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:38:52.514227+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:39.274033
License: Public Domain

JACKSON, District Judge, dissenting.
I regret that I am unable to concur in Circuit Judge Williams’ opinion of December 23, 1992, limiting the jurisdiction of the three-judge district court to Sections 4 and 5 of the Cable Act of 1992.
The Supreme Court has instructed that “the starting point for interpreting a statute is the language of the statute itself,” and, “absent a clearly expressed legislative intention to the contrary, that language must ordinarily be regarded as conclusive.” Consumer Product Safety Comm’n v. GTE Sylvania, 447 U.S. 102, 109, 100 S.Ct. 2051, 2056, 64 L.Ed.2d 766 (1980).
Section 23 of the Cable Act of 1992 states that “any civil action challenging the constitutionality of section [4] or [5] of this Act ... shall be heard by a district court of three judges____” These cases are all civil actions challenging, albeit inter alia, the constitutionality of sections 4 and 5 of the Act. If Congress had intended to limit the jurisdiction of the three-judge court (and the concomitant direct appeal of right to the Supreme Court) to only claims challenging the constitutionality of those sections, it could have done so in several ways.1 It did not, and I do not find in Judge Williams’ generalized judicial obser*1316vations as to the wastefulness of three-judge courts, the burden imposed upon the Supreme Court by direct appeals of right, and the intricacies of supplemental jurisdiction, any evidence of a “clearly expressed” congressional intention to repudiate the language of the statute as they wrote it. Consequently, I conclude that the three-judge court is statutorily required to hear these cases in their entirety, and I respectfully dissent.

. E.g., "No interlocutory or final judgment, decree or order holding section [4] or [5] to be unconstitutional shall be entered by a district court of less than three judges ..or “[a]ny claim challenging the constitutionality of section [4] or [5] in any civil action filed under this Act shall be severed for hearing by a district court of three judges ...”