Court Opinion

ID: 9475890
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:41:45.826802+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:00.635806
License: Public Domain

TERRENCE WILLIAM BOYLE, District Judge, concurring:
Acting upon the assumption that this court has subject matter jurisdiction to en*1479tertain this child custody action, the majority has carefully analyzed the powers and obligations of state courts under the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act (“PKPA”). The majority’s discussion of the PKPA’s influence on state court jurisdiction over interstate child custody disputes is substantively correct. If the proper conduct of the North Carolina and Virginia state courts were the only issue present in this action, I would willingly join in the well-reasoned conclusions of the majority. However, another more fundamental issue requires scrutiny: that is, whether a federal district court may assert subject matter jurisdiction on the basis of 28 U.S.C. § 1738A.
This case does not mark the first occasion on which this court has asserted jurisdiction under the PKPA. As noted by the majority, the case of Hickey v. Baxter, 800 F.2d 430 (4th Cir.1986) touched on this point. In observance of the rule in this court that a subsequent panel may not contravene the holding of a prior panel, without intervening authority from the court en banc, I cast my vote with the majority. However, the duty of a federal court to examine at all times whether it has subject matter jurisdiction compels me to write separately. Although the issue has been treated neither by the parties nor the court below, I find persuasive authority that because Congress did not intend to create a substantive federal cause of action in enacting the PKPA, it did not create federal question subject matter jurisdiction in the lower federal courts either pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331 or the “arising under” provisions of Article III of the Constitution.
I.
Emphatically, the federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. Either their adjudicative powers derive from an identifiable source, or they do not exist. In this case federal subject matter jurisdiction may be founded upon either of two bases: diversity of citizenship or a federal question. Diversity jurisdiction is not pled; in fact, the parties expressly reject diversity as a basis for subject matter jurisdiction. Therefore, a discussion of it and the kind of abstention analysis that is relevant to diversity is not germane. If this court has jurisdiction at all over this case, it must be due to the existence of a federal question.
The Constitution provides that Article III courts shall have jurisdiction over cases “arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority.” U.S. Const. Art. Ill § 2. Accordingly, Congress enacted 28 U.S.C. § 1331, which states that “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States.” The appellant contends that the case before us “arises under” a law of the United States, namely 28 U.S.C. § 1738A.
The meaning of “arising under” has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Wright, Miller & Cooper, Federal Practice & Procedure: Jurisdiction 2d § 3562. However, the definition of “arising under” clearly does not embrace every case in which a federal statute plays a role. Not every question of federal law emerging in a suit is proof that the controversy arises under federal law. Gully v. First National Bank in Meridian, 299 U.S. 109, 115, 57 S.Ct. 96, 99, 81 L.Ed. 70 (1936). A suit arises under the law that creates the action. American Well Works Co. v. Layne & Bowler Co., 241 U.S. 257, 260, 36 S.Ct. 585, 586, 60 L.Ed. 987 (1916). The custody decrees in this case were imposed under the authority of the statutes of Virginia and North Carolina. The PKPA did not give rise to the custody proceedings, nor did it confer on the parents any substantive right which , did not exist on an independent basis through state law. See Krauskopf, Remedies for Parental Kidnapping in Federal Court: A Comment Applying the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act in Support of Judge Edwards, 45 Ohio St.L.J. 429, 441 (1984). State law, not federal, creates the right to custody, which is the relief sought here. It is true that state custody orders possess legal authority only insofar as they are consistent with the PKPA. However, the existence of a federal law favoring one custody decree over another does not *1480change the basis of the action here. Gully, 299 U.S. at 115, 57 S.Ct. at 98.
In effect, the federal PKPA is a choice of law rule. Instead of creating substantive rights, it simply produces a mechanical formula for the resolution of a conflict of laws problem. It is a natural outgrowth of the express language in the U.S. Constitution that “full faith and credit should be given in each state to the ... judicial proceedings of every other state.” Article IV, Sec. 1. It has long been recognized by the Supreme Court that the language of Article IV, Sec. 1, of the U.S. Constitution is not a substantive basis for a federal question which would tolerate federal question subject matter jurisdiction in the district court.
This case concerns rights and duties established by state law and fully enforceable by the state courts. This being so, it is unimportant that conformity with the PKPA is necessary to legitimate the state court’s decree. See Gully, 299 U.S. at 115-16, 57 S.Ct. at 99. The plaintiff-appellant is calling upon the federal judiciary to vindicate rights which have always been and continue to be a function of state law.
II.
Both here and in Hickey, the court concludes that the PKPA grants jurisdiction to the lower federal courts. In a single sentence, Hickey accepts without argument the proposition that § 1738A expands federal jurisdiction. Citations to opinions of three other circuits constitute the extent of Hickey’s analysis. The three cases cited were McDougald v. Jenson, 786 F.2d 1465 (11th Cir.1986); Heartfield v. Heartfield, 749 F.2d 1138 (5th Cir.1985); and Flood v. Braaten, 727 F.2d 303 (3rd Cir.1984).
The Heartfield opinion does little more than echo the Flood case and as such adds little to the debate. If Flood and McDougald can withstand careful analysis, then Hickey may be confident in its reliance on these cases as authority. However, if Flood and McDougald wince under scrutiny, then Hickey may be in need of further attention.
Flood v. Braaten, decided by the Third Circuit, was the first federal court opinion to hold that the PKPA expanded the jurisdiction of the federal courts.1 Close inspection of the Flood opinion, however, reveals the gossamer thinness of its reasoning. The Flood court acknowledges that the PKPA derives its inspiration and many of its provisions from the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA), a model law which established jurisdictional rules similar to those of § 1738A. Section 1738A, the Flood decision admits, was adopted in response to the failure of most states to adopt the UCCJA. The Flood court notes that § 1738A eliminated gaps in the UCCJA which had allowed several states to exercise concurrent jurisdiction over a single custody decree. From this fact, the Flood court concludes that the PKPA “instituted a new concept of custody jurisdiction.” 727 F.2d at 312.
If the Flood court was referring to a new concept of federal jurisdiction, this leap of logic is a spectacular non sequitur. The history relied upon in Flood does not suggest that the PKPA has anything to do with federal jurisdiction. Rather, the Flood court’s argument reveals the actual truth of the matter: that the PKPA merely sought to evolve uniform standards for state courts to follow. Even the remarks of the legislators cited by Flood in footnotes 24 through 26 offer no suggestion that the federal courts were to supervise the state courts in their application of those standards. 727 F.2d at 311-12.
*1481In my opinion, § 1738A contemplates the following procedural scenario: Where different states have entered incompatible custody orders, the aggrieved parties must seek redress in their respective state courts. If the issue has not been resolved upon the exhaustion of state remedies, an appeal as of right would lie in the United States Supreme Court. The Flood court rejected this possibility on the grounds that the Supreme Court might not possess sufficient resources to handle these cases. This argument is not terribly clever. The Supreme Court, under 28 U.S.C. § 1257, is forced to hear numerous appeals which it may well be inconvenient to hear. Where an appeal is concerned, as opposed to certiorari, convenience is beside the point. The whole idea behind the system of appeal is that the high court is compelled to resolve certain conflicts between sovereigns (e.g., when a state court holds a federal law unconstitutional or upholds one of its own laws against a constitutional challenge). The proposition in Flood that a U.S. District Court can usurp a portion of the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction on the ground of convenience is remarkable.
The Flood opinion concedes that the language of § 1738A makes no reference to federal jurisdiction and further admits that the legislative history does not conclusively indicate that such jurisdiction should exist. The core of the Third Circuit’s argument seems to be the belief that the absence of federal jurisdiction would render § 1738A nugatory. This belief reflects a manifest distrust in the ability of the state courts to interpret and obey federal law. Had Congress meant to create federal jurisdiction, the PKPA could easily have said so on its face.
The McDougald court, although citing Flood, was apparently dissatisfied with the Third Circuit’s treatment of the problem. Instead, the Eleventh Circuit attempted its own entirely separate analysis with the same erroneous result. The Eleventh Circuit in McDougald admitted that the PKPA created no federally implied cause of action and no federal remedy. The McDougald court did not long pause to consider how a court can derive jurisdiction from a statute that creates no cause of action. Instead, it purported to read a jurisdictional grant into § 1738A by appealing to the “well-pleaded complaint” test set out in Franchise Tax Board of California v. Construction Laborers Vacation Trust, 463 U.S. 1, 9, 103 S.Ct. 2841, 2846, 77 L.Ed.2d 420 (1983). Review of Franchise Tax Board reveals, however, that the Eleventh Circuit’s citation of the case was highly selective. On the very next page after the one cited in McDougald, the Franchise Tax Board court stated the policy behind the “well-pleaded complaint” rule. The rule, the Supreme Court explained, is designed precisely to filter out “cases in which federal law becomes relevant only insofar as it sets bounds for the operation of state authority.” 463 U.S. 11, 103 S.Ct. at 2847. Furthermore, McDougald clearly misapplied the well-pleaded complaint rule. The rule is not used to decide whether a given federal statute can confer jurisdiction in any case. Rather, the rule assumes that the statute in question creates jurisdiction. It asks a different question: namely, does the complaint state a claim which “arises under” a statute which is already conceded to create jurisdiction? In seeking to prove jurisdiction under the PKPA, McDougald used a test which assumed that jurisdiction existed as a given. McDougald reaches its finding of jurisdiction by a feat of circular reasoning. If one were to accept McDougald’s interpretation of the well-pleaded complaint rule, the rule would be clearly overbroad. For example, I see no way to interpret the well-pleaded complaint rule in such a way as to let PKPA cases into federal court while keeping other full faith and credit cases out.
A careful reading shows that the McDougald court’s assertion of jurisdiction is wholly conclusory and lacking in support. Curiously, the McDougald opinion states the most applicable definition of “arising under” from Gully, only to ignore that definition a scant page later. The precedents cited by this court in Hickey do not withstand analysis.
III.
As was readily admitted by the Third Circuit in Flood, the PKPA is entirely si*1482lent as to whether it establishes any jurisdictional power in the lower federal courts. By contrast, the role of the state judiciaries is prominently featured in the PKPA: “The appropriate authorities of every State shall ..“A court of a State may modify ...;” “A court of a State shall not exercise jurisdiction....” 28 U.S.C. § 1738A(a), (f), (g). The statute, by its express terms, addresses the states and particularly the state courts. Thompson v. Thompson, 798 F.2d 1547, 1552 (9th Cir.1986). When one considers the overt emphasis of the PKPA on state court jurisdiction and procedure, the absence of any reference to the federal judiciary becomes all the more significant.
The legislative history of the PKPA is illuminating. The Thompson opinion cited above offers a highly detailed and persuasive discussion of this history, little of which need be repeated here. However, it is apparent that Congress did not ignore the possibility of conferring federal jurisdiction by the express terms of the PKPA. Rather, the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives considered versions of a parental kidnapping statute which established federal jurisdiction by their language. However, these versions were rejected in favor of the current law, which is facially silent on the issue. This silence speaks persuasively.
It is well established that certain enactments of Congress do nqt create federal jurisdiction merely because some ingredient of the cause of action is derived from federal law. Wright, Miller & Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure: Jurisdiction 2d § 3562. A salient example of a federal statute which affects the conduct of state courts but confers no jurisdiction on the federal courts is 28 U.S.C. § 1738, better known as the Full Faith and Credit Clause. As the Supreme Court has unambiguously stated, the Full Faith and Credit Clause
only prescribes a rule by which courts, Federal and state, are to be guided when a question arises in the progress of a pending suit as to the faith and credit to be given by the court to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of a state other than that in which the court is sitting. * * * [T]he clause has nothing to do with the conduct of individuals or corporations; and to invoke the rule which it prescribes does not make a case arising under the Constitution or Laws of the United States. Minnesota v. North Securities Co., 194 U.S. 48, 72, 24 S.Ct. 598, 605 [48 L.Ed. 870] (1904).
Like the Full Faith and Credit Clause, the PKPA merely instructs state courts in their relations with each other. It does not set up the federal courts as a referee. It is hard to understand how the PKPA can ordain federal jurisdiction when the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not. It is highly significant that, in enacting the PKPA, Congress juxtaposed the new act to § 1738. Surely it is logical to view § 1738A as merely an addendum to or a more specific elaboration upon the general policies of § 1738. I am unable to determine why this court should find § 1738 incapable of creating jurisdiction while finding § 1738A not to be so limited.
IV.
Another danger looms on the horizon beyond Hickey and the instant case. This danger arises from the majority’s decision not to require litigants to exhaust their state remedies before presenting their § 1738A claims to the federal district courts. By making the federal forum so easily available, the majority steps beyond the Third Circuit in Flood and in DiRuggerio v. Rodgers, 743 F.2d 1009 (3rd Cir.1984), which declined to consider the issue. 727 F.2d at 312, n. 28; 743 F.2d at 1015. Today’s opinion invites conflict and disharmony between all levels of the state courts and the lower federal courts. By failing to require exhaustion, the majority seemingly disregards a basic principle of federalism: that federal district courts must not substitute themselves for the state’s appellate courts, even if the appealing party believes that his chances of success in state court are not auspicious. Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd., 420 U.S. 592, 607-09, 95 S.Ct. 1200, 1209-11, 43 L.Ed.2d 482 (1975), citing Lynch v. Snepp, 472 F.2d 769 (4th Cir. *14831973). By declaring that litigants may call upon the federal courts to adjudicate claims under § 1738A without first exhausting their state remedies, the majority does precisely that which the Supreme Court in Huffman said must not be done. This court has placed in the hands of a federal district court that which properly belongs to state courts of appeal. The majority apparently assumes that state courts of appeal will not be faithful to their duties under federal law. The rulings here and in Hickey in the course of time will produce a deluge of domestic relations cases — cases which the state appellate courts are well-equipped to decide but now may never have the opportunity to hear.
V.
The majority concludes today that the lower federal courts possess jurisdiction under the PKPA to mediate jurisdictional disputes between states regarding determinations of child custody. The majority claims that this assertion of jurisdiction has been the law of this circuit since the decision in Hickey. The question of federal subject matter jurisdiction over § 1738A cases is an important one, one which merits more critical examination than it has heretofore received. It deserves either en banc consideration or a definitive pronouncement from the Supreme Court.
If this were clearly a case of first impression with this circuit, I would vote to remand the case to the district court with instructions to dismiss for want of subject matter jurisdiction. However, recognizing the constraint of the court’s opinion in Hickey, I respectfully submit this concurrence.

. The Flood court was not, however, the first federal court to address the existence or non-existence of subject matter jurisdiction under the PKPA. Indeed, both the Seventh Circuit and the District of Columbia Circuit (prior to Flood) addressed the issue in dicta, and both reached the conclusion that the PKPA did not create a federal remedy. Lloyd v. Loeffler, 694 F.2d 489, 493 (7th Cir.1982); Bennett v. Bennett, 682 F.2d 1039, 1043 (D.C.Cir.1982). In addition, a number of state appellate courts competently enforced the PKPA prior to Flood. See Thompson, supra, 798 F.2d at 1551, n. 3. It is apparent that the interventionist trend initiated in Flood did not fill a vacuum. The state courts had been handling PKPA cases before Flood, which rather than creating enforcement where there had been none, marked a clear deviation from established practice.