Court Opinion

ID: 9464201
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:27:31.796357+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:30.725908
License: Public Domain

PELL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Being of the opinion that the constitutionally designated “inferior courts” who have vested in them the “judicial Power of the United States,” should, in the orderly exercise of that vested power, refrain from attempting, no matter how artfully done, to accomplish by indirection that which has been specifically prohibited, particularly in the very litigation in which the prohibition was proclaimed, I respectfully dissent. The fact that the result may appear desirable from a societal point of view should play no part in the decision.
The case before the panel of this court, reported at 551 F.2d 152, involved, in my opinion, such an effort at indirection. The en banc majority opinion agrees that the panel properly struck down as violative of the Eleventh Amendment the order of the district court. The validity of that order was all that was presented to the panel for decision. The en banc majority opinion then proceeds to attempt to prescribe a constitutionally inoffensive form which the state authorities would be required to send to those persons precluded by the Supreme Court decision from collecting by direct judgment the very amounts which would be involved in the notices to be sent.
The Supreme Court in reversing the first order of the district court as affirmed by this court did so on the basis that the order would result in a situation which “is measured in terms of a monetary loss resulting from a past breach of a legal duty on the part of the defendant state officials,” 415 U.S. at 668, 94 S.Ct. at 1358.
Now, notwithstanding laundering efforts in this court, the refined order outlined in the en banc majority opinion will still upon any realistic analysis, result in a situation which “is measured in terms of a monetary loss resulting from a past breach of a legal duty on the part of the defendant state officials.”
This court, in my respectful opinion, should not lend its hand to such subterfuge.
TONE, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
Judge Wood’s opinion for the court presents an appealing solution to the Eleventh Amendment problem. In my view, however, the Supreme Court’s decision that a federal court may not retroactively enforce the plaintiffs’ rights against the state, Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 658 et seq., 94 S.Ct. 1347, 39 L.Ed.2d 662, (1974), precludes us from entering an order aimed solely at retroactive enforcement, albeit in another form.
BAUER, Circuit Judge, dissenting.
I join in the dissents of Judges Pell and Tone.