Court Opinion

ID: 9425261
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:14.07384+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:54.412340
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
with whom Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Marshall join,
dissenting.
The question presented by this case is one that I, like the Court of Appeals, had thought already resolved by our decision last Term in Wilwording v. Swenson, 404 U. S. 249 (1971). We held there that the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871,1 42 U. S. C. § 1983; 28 U. S. C. § 1343 (3), confers jurisdiction on the United States District Courts to entertain a state prisoner’s application for injunctive relief against allegedly unconstitutional conditions of confinement. See also Humphrey v. Cady, 405 U. S. 504, 516-517, n. 18 (1972); Houghton v. Shafer, 392 U. S. 639 (1968). At the same time, we held that “[t]he remedy provided by these Acts is supplementary to the state remedy, and the latter need not be first sought and refused before the federal one is invoked.’ Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167, 183 (1961); McNeese v. Board of Education, 373 U. S. 668 (1963); Damico v. California, *501389 U. S. 416 (1967). State prisoners are not held to any stricter standard of exhaustion than other civil rights plaintiffs.” Wilwording v. Swenson, supra, at 251.
Regrettably, the Court today eviscerates that proposition by drawing a distinction that is both analytically unsound and, I fear, unworkable in practice. The net effect of the distinction is to preclude respondents from maintaining these actions under § 1983, leaving a petition for writ of habeas corpus the only available federal remedy. As a result, respondents must exhaust state remedies before their claims can be heard in a federal district court. I remain committed to the principles set forth in Wilwording v. Swenson, and I therefore respectfully dissent.
Respondents are three New York state prisoners who were placed in segregation and deprived of good-conduct-time credits as a result of prison disciplinary proceedings.2 Each of the respondents commenced a pro se *502action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York by filing a combined civil rights complaint and petition for habeas corpus. In each case the District Court concluded that since the action was properly brought under § 1983, the prisoner was not bound by the exhaustion-of-state-remedies requirement of the federal habeas corpus statute.3 On the merits of the three cases, the District Court held that state correctional authorities had deprived each respondent of rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, and directed petitioner, the Commissioner of Correction, to restore the good-conduct-time credits that each of the respondents had lost.
By divided vote, two separate panels of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the judgments of the District Court with respect to respondents Rodriguez and Katzoff. Prior to decision in the case of respondent Kritsky, the Court of Appeals vacated the two earlier decisions and set all three cases for rehearing en banc. By a vote of 9-3, the Court affirmed the judgments of the District Court “upon consideration of the merits and upon the authority of Wilwording v. Swenson,” decided by this Court while rehearing en banc was pending in the Court of Appeals. 456 F. 2d 79, 80 (1972). Although several of the judges who concurred in the decision candidly stated their mis*503givings about our holding in Wilwording, they felt “constrained,” nonetheless, “to concur in affirming the orders of the district court.” 456 F. 2d, at 81 (Friendly, C. J., concurring) .4
The Court’s conclusion that Wilwording is not controlling is assertedly justified by invocation of a concept, newly invented by the Court today, variously termed the “core of habeas corpus,” the “heart of habeas corpus,” and the “essence of habeas corpus.” Ante, at 489, 498, and 484. In the Court’s view, an action lying at the “core of habeas corpus” is one that “goes directly to the constitutionality of [the prisoner’s] physical confinement itself and seeks either immediate release from that confinement or the shortening of its duration.” Id., at 489. With regard to such actions, habeas corpus is now considered the prisoner’s exclusive remedy. In short, the Court does not graft the habeas corpus exhaustion requirement onto prisoner actions under the Ku Klux Klan Act, but it reaches what is functionally the same result by holding that the District Court’s jurisdiction under the Act is in some instances displaced by the habeas corpus remedy. Henceforth, in such cases a prisoner brings an action in the nature of habeas corpus— or he brings no federal court action at all.
At bottom, the Court’s holding today rests on an understandable apprehension that the no-exhaustion rule of § 1983 might, in the absence of some limitation, devour the exhaustion rule of the habeas corpus statute. The problem arises because the two statutes necessarily *504overlap. Indeed, every application by a state prisoner for federal habeas corpus relief against his jailers could, as a matter of logic and semantics, be viewed as an action under the Ku Klux Klan Act to obtain injunctive relief against “the deprivation,” by one acting under color of state law, “of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws” of the United States. 42 U. S. C. § 1983. To prevent state prisoners from nullifying the habeas corpus exhaustion requirement by invariably styling their petitions as pleas for relief under § 1983, the Court today devises an ungainly and irrational scheme that permits some prisoners to sue under § 1983, while others may proceed only by way of petition for habeas corpus. And the entire scheme operates in defiance of the purposes underlying both the exhaustion requirement of habeas corpus and the absence of a comparable requirement under § 1983.
I
At the outset, it is important to consider the nature of the line that the Court has drawn. The Court holds today that “when a state prisoner is challenging the very fact or duration of his physical imprisonment, and the relief he seeks is a determination that he is entitled to immediate release or a speedier release from that imprisonment, his sole federal remedy is a writ of habeas corpus.” Ante, at 500. But, even under the Court’s approach, there are undoubtedly some instances where a prisoner has the option of proceeding either by petition for habeas corpus or by suit under § 1983.
In Johnson v. Avery, 393 U. S. 483 (1969), we held that the writ of habeas corpus could be used to challenge allegedly unconstitutional conditions of confinement. Cf. Ex parte Hull, 312 U. S. 546, 549 (1941). And in Wilwording v. Swenson, supra, where the petitioners challenged “only their living conditions and disciplinary *505measures while confined in maximum security at Missouri State Penitentiary,” id., at 249, we held explicitly that their claims were cognizable in habeas corpus. These holdings illustrate the general proposition that “[a]ny unlawful restraint of personal liberty may be inquired into on habeas corpus. . . . This rule applies although a person is in lawful custody. His conviction and incarceration deprive him only of such liberties as the law has ordained he shall suffer for his transgressions.” Coffin v. Reichard, 143 F. 2d 443, 445 (CA6 1944); cf. In re Bonner, 151 U. S. 242 (1894).5
Yet even though a prisoner may challenge the conditions of his confinement by petition for writ of habeas corpus, he is not precluded by today's opinion from raising the same or similar claim, without exhaustion of state remedies, by suit under the Ku Klux Klan Act, provided he attacks only the conditions of his confinement and not its fact or duration. To that extent, at least, the Court leaves unimpaired our holdings in Wilwording v. Swenson, supra, and the other cases in which we have upheld the right of prisoners to sue their jailers under § 1983 without exhaustion of state remedies.6 Humphrey v. Cady, 405 U. S., at 516-517, n. 18; Houghton v. Shafer, 392 U. S. 639 (1968).7 Nor do I read today's *506opinion as rejecting, or even questioning, the rationale of numerous lower court decisions authorizing challenges to prison conditions by suit under § 1983.8 Accordingly, one can only conclude that some instances remain where habeas corpus provides a supplementary but not an exclusive remedy — or, to put it another way, where an action may properly be brought in habeas corpus, even though it is somehow sufficiently distant from the “core of habeas corpus” to avoid displacing concurrent jurisdiction under the Ku Klux Klan Act. In such a case, a state prisoner retains the option of forgoing the habeas corpus remedy in favor of suit under § 1983.
II
Putting momentarily to one side the grave analytic shortcomings of the Court’s approach, it seems clear that the scheme’s unmanageability is sufficient reason to condemn it. For the unfortunate but inevitable legacy of today’s opinion is a perplexing set of uncertainties and anomalies. And the nub of the problem is the definition of the Court’s new-found and essentially ethereal concept, the “core of habeas corpus.” 9
*507A prisoner is unlucky enough to have his action fall within the core of habeas corpus whenever he challenges the fact or duration of his confinement. For example, an attack on the validity of conviction or sentence is plainly directed at the fact or duration of confinement, and the prisoner can therefore proceed only by petition for habeas corpus. Similarly, where prisoners allege, as here, that “the deprivation of their good-conduct-time credits [is] causing or [will] cause them to be in illegal physical confinement, i. e., that once their conditional-release date [has] passed, any further detention of them in prison [will be] unlawful,” their claim falls within the core. And “[e]ven if the restoration of the respondents’ credits would not have resulted in their immediate release, but only in shortening the length of their actual confinement in prison,” jurisdiction under § 1983 is displaced by the habeas corpus remedy. Ante, at 487.
At the opposite end of the spectrum from an attack on the conviction itself or on the deprivation of good-time credits is a prisoner’s action for monetary damages against his jailers. “If a state prisoner is seeking damages,” the Court makes clear, he is seeking “something other than immediate or more speedy release — the traditional purpose of habeas corpus. In the case of a damages claim, habeas corpus is not an appropriate or available federal remedy. Accordingly, as petitioners themselves concede, a damages action by a state prisoner could be brought under [§ 1983] in federal court without any requirement of prior exhaustion of state remedies.” Ante, at 494 (emphasis in original).
Between a suit for damages and an attack on the conviction itself or on the deprivation of good-time credits *508are cases where habeas corpus is an appropriate and available remedy, but where the action falls outside the “core of habeas corpus” because the attack is directed at the conditions of confinement, not at its fact or duration. Notwithstanding today’s decision, a prisoner may challenge, by suit under § 1983, prison living conditions and disciplinary measures,10 or confiscation of legal materials,11 or impairment of the right to free exercise of religion,12 even though federal habeas corpus is available as an alternative remedy. It should be plain enough that serious difficulties will arise whenever a prisoner seeks to attack in a single proceeding both the conditions of his confinement and the deprivation of good-time credits. And the addition of a plea for monetary damages exacerbates the problem.
If a prisoner’s sole claim is that he was placed in solitary confinement pursuant to an unconstitutional disciplinary procedure,13 he can obtain federal injunctive relief and monetary damages in an action under § 1983. The unanswered question is whether he loses the right to proceed under § 1983 if, as punishment for his alleged misconduct, his jailers have not only subjected him to unlawful segregation and thereby inflicted an injury that is compensable in damages, but have compounded the wrong by improperly depriving him of good-time credits. Three different approaches are possible.
First, we might conclude that jurisdiction under § 1983 is lost whenever good-time credits are involved, even where the action is based primarily on the need for monetary relief or an injunction against continued segregation. If that is the logic of the Court’s opinion, then the scheme creates an undeniable, and in all likelihood *509irresistible, incentive for state prison officials to defeat the jurisdiction of the federal courts by adding the deprivation of good-time credits to whatever other punishment is imposed. And if all of the federal claims must be held in abeyance pending exhaustion of state remedies, a prisoner's subsequent effort to assert a damages claim under § 1983 might arguably be barred by principles of res judicata.14 To avoid the loss of his damages claim, a prisoner might conclude that he should make no mention of the good-time issue and instead seek only damages in a § 1983 action. That approach (assuming it would not be disallowed as a subterfuge to circumvent the exhaustion requirement) creates its own distressing possibilities. For, having obtained decision in federal court on the issue of damages, the prisoner would presumably be required to repair to state court in search of his lost good-time credits, returning once again to federal court if his state court efforts should prove unavailing.
Moreover, a determination that no federal claim can be raised where good-time credits are at stake would give rise to a further anomaly. If the prisoner is confined in an institution that does not offer good-time credits, and therefore cannot withdraw them,15 his prison-*510conditions claims could always be raised in a suit under § 1983. On the other hand, an inmate in an institution that uses good-time credits as reward and punishment, who seeks a federal hearing on the identical legal and factual claims, would normally be required to exhaust state remedies and then proceed by way of federal habeas corpus. The rationality of that difference in treatment is certainly obscure. Yet that is the price of permitting the availability of a federal forum to be controlled by the happenstance (or stratagem) that good-time credits are at stake.
As an alternative, we might reject outright the premises of the first approach and conclude that a plea for money damages or for an injunction against continued segregation is sufficient to bring all related claims, including the question of good-time credits, under the umbrella of § 1983. That approach would, of course, simplify matters considerably. And it would make unnecessary the fractionation of the prisoner’s claims into a number of different issues to be resolved in duplicative proceedings in state and federal courts. Nevertheless, the approach would seem to afford a convenient means of sidestepping the basic thrust of the Court’s opinion, and we could surely expect state prisoners routinely to add to their other claims a plea for monetary relief. So long as the prisoner could formulate at least a colorable damages claim, he would be entitled to litigate all issues in federal court without first exhausting state remedies.
In any event, the Court today rejects, perhaps for the reasons suggested above, both of the foregoing positions. Instead, it holds that insofar as a prisoner’s claim relates to good-time credits, he is required to exhaust state remedies; but he is not precluded from simultaneously litigating in federal court, under § 1983, his claim for monetary damages or an injunction against continued segregation. Ante, at 499 n. 14. Under that approach, *511state correctional authorities have no added incentive to withdraw good-time credits, since that action cannot, standing alone, keep the prisoner out of federal court. And, at the same time, it does not encourage a prisoner to assert an unnecessary claim for damages or injunctive relief as a means of bringing his good-time claim under the purview of § 1983. Nevertheless, this approach entails substantial difficulties — perhaps the greatest difficulties of the three. In the first place, its extreme inefficiency is readily apparent. For in many instances a prisoner’s claims will be under simultaneous consideration in two distinct forums, even though the identical legal and factual questions are involved in both proceedings. Thus, if a prisoner’s punishment for some alleged misconduct is both a term in solitary and the deprivation of good-time credits, and if he believes that the punishment was imposed pursuant to unconstitutional disciplinary procedures, he can now litigate the legality of those procedures simultaneously in state court (where he seeks restoration of good-time credits) and in federal court (where he seeks damages or an injunction against continued segregation). Moreover, if the federal court is the first to reach decision, and if that court concludes that the procedures are, in fact, unlawful, then the entire state proceeding must be immediately aborted, even though the state court may have devoted substantial time and effort to its consideration of the case. By the same token, if traditional principles of res judicata are applicable to suits under § 1983, see supra, at 509 n. 14, the prior conclusion of the state court suit would effectively set at naught the entire federal court proceeding. This is plainly a curious prescription for improving relations between state and federal courts.
Since some of the ramifications of this new approach are still unclear, the unfortunate outcome of today’s decision — an outcome that might not be immediately *512surmised from the seeming simplicity of the basic concept, the “core of habeas corpus” — is almost certain to be the further complication of prison-conditions litigation. In itself that is disquieting enough. But it is especially distressing that the remaining questions will have to be resolved on the basis of pleadings, whether in habeas corpus or suit under § 1983, submitted by state prisoners, who will often have to cope with these questions without even minimal assistance of counsel.
III
The Court’s conclusion that respondents must proceed by petition for habeas corpus is unfortunate, not only because of the uncertainties and practical difficulties to which the conclusion necessarily gives rise, but also because it derives from a faulty analytic foundation. The text of § 1983 carries no explanation for today’s decision; prisoners are still, I assume, “persons” within the meaning of the statute. Moreover, prior to our recent decisions expanding the definition of “custody,”16 and abandoning the “prematurity” doctrine,17 it is doubtful that habeas corpus would even have provided them a remedy. Since their claims could not, in all likelihood, have been heard on habeas corpus at the time the present habeas corpus statute was enacted in 1867,18 or at the *513time the exhaustion doctrine was first announced in Ex parte Roy all, 117 U. S. 241 (1886), or at the time the requirement was codified in 1948,19 it is surely hard to view these acts as a determination to preclude suit under § 1983 and leave habeas corpus the prisoner’s only remedy. Nevertheless, to prevent state prisoners from invoking the jurisdictional grant of § 1983 as a means of circumventing the exhaustion requirement of the habeas corpus statute, the Court finds it necessary to hold today that in this one instance jurisdiction under § 1983 is displaced by the habeas corpus remedy.
The concern that § 1983 not be used to nullify the habeas corpus exhaustion doctrine is, of course, legitimate. But our effort to preserve the integrity of the doctrine must rest on an understanding of the purposes that underlie it. In my view, the Court misapprehends these fundamental purposes and compounds the problem by paying insufficient attention to the reasons why exhaustion of state remedies is not required in suits under § 1983. As a result, the Court mistakenly concludes that allowing suit under § 1983 would jeopardize the purposes of the exhaustion rule.
By enactment of the Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871, and again by the grant in 1875 of original federal-question jurisdiction to the federal courts,20 Congress recognized important interests in permitting a plaintiff to choose a federal forum in cases arising under *514federal law. “In thus expanding federal judicial power, Congress imposed the duty upon all levels of the federal judiciary to give due respect to a suitor’s choice of a federal forum for the hearing and decision of his federal constitutional claims. Plainly, escape from that duty is not permissible merely because state courts also have the solemn responsibility, equally with the federal courts, . . to guard, enforce, and protect every right granted or secured by the Constitution of the United States . . . ,’ Robb v. Connolly, 111 U. S. 624, 637.” Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U. S. 241, 248 (1967).
This grant of jurisdiction was designed to preserve and enhance the expertise of federal courts in applying federal law; to achieve greater uniformity of results, cf. Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 1 Wheat. 304, 347-348 (1816); and, since federal courts are “more likely to apply federal law sympathetically and understanding^ than are state courts,” ALI, Study of the Division of Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts 166 (1969), to minimize misapplications of federal law. See generally id., at 165-167.
In the service of the same interests, we have taken care to emphasize that there are
“fundamental objections to any conclusion that a litigant who has properly invoked the jurisdiction of a Federal District Court to consider federal constitutional claims can be compelled, without his consent and through no fault of his own, to accept instead a state court’s determination of those claims. Such a result would be at war with the unqualified terms in which Congress, pursuant to constitutional authorization, has conferred specific categories of jurisdiction upon the federal courts, and with the principle that When a Federal court is properly appealed to in a case over which it has *515by law jurisdiction, it is its duty to take such jurisdiction .... The right of a party plaintiff to choose a Federal court where there is a choice cannot be properly denied.’ Willcox v. Consolidated Gas Co., 212 U. S. 19, 40.” England v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, 375 U. S. 411, 415 (1964).
We have also recognized that review by this Court of state decisions, “even when available by appeal rather than only by discretionary writ of certiorari, is an inadequate substitute for the initial District Court determination ... to which the litigant is entitled in the federal courts.” Id., at 416. The federal courts are, in short, the “primary and powerful reliances for vindicating every right given by the Constitution, the laws, and treaties of the United States.” F. Frankfurter & J. Landis, The Business of the Supreme Court: A Study in the Federal Judicial System 65 (1928). See England v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, supra, at 415.
These considerations, applicable generally in cases arising under federal law, have special force in the context of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. In a suit to enforce fundamental constitutional rights, the plaintiff’s choice of a federal forum has singular urgency.21 The statutory predecessor to § 1983 was, after all, designed “to afford a federal right in federal courts because, by reason of prejudice, passion, neglect, intolerance or otherwise, state laws might not be enforced and the claims of citizens to the rights, privileges, and immunities guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment might be denied by the state agencies.” Monroe v. Pape, 365
*516U. S. 167, 180 (1961). And the statute's legislative history
“makes evident that Congress clearly conceived that it was altering the relationship between the States and the Nation with respect to the protection of federally created rights; it was concerned that state instrumentalities could not protect those rights; it realized that state officers might, in fact, be antipathetic to the vindication of those rights; and it believed that these failings extended to the state courts. . . . The very purpose of § 1983 was to interpose the federal courts between the States and the people, as guardians of the people's federal rights — to protect the people from unconstitutional action under color of state law, 'whether that action be executive, legislative or judicial.’ Ex parte Virginia [100 U. S. 339, 346 (1880)].” Mitchum v. Foster, 407 U. S. 225, 242 (1972).
See also District of Columbia v. Carter, 409 U. S. 418, 426-428 (1973).22
*517It is against this background that we have refused to require exhaustion of state remedies by civil rights plaintiffs.23 Plainly, “[w]e would defeat [the purposes of § 1983] if we held that assertion of a federal claim in a federal court must await an attempt to vindicate the same claim in a state court.” McNeese v. Board of Education, 373 U. S. 668, 672 (1963). “We yet like to believe that wherever the Federal courts sit, human rights under the Federal Constitution are always a proper subject for adjudication, and that we have not the right to decline the exercise of that jurisdiction simply because the rights asserted may be adjudicated in some other forum.” Stapleton v. Mitchell, 60 F. Supp. 51, 55 (Kan. 1945); quoted with approval in Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U. S., at 248; and McNeese v. Board of Education, supra, at 674 n. 6. See also Monroe v. Pape, supra, at 183; Moreno v. Henckel, 431 F. 2d 1299, 1303-1307 (CA5 1970); H. Friendly, Federal Jurisdiction: A General View 102-103 (1973).
Our determination that principles of federalism do not require the exhaustion of state remedies in cases brought under the Ku Klux Klan Act holds true even where the state agency or process under constitutional attack is intimately tied to the state judicial machinery. Cf. Lynch v. Household Finance Corp., 405 U. S. 538. (1972). Indeed, only last Term we held in Mitchum v. Foster, supra, that § 1983 operates as an exception to the federal anti-injunction statute, 28 U. S. C. § 2283, which prohibits federal court injunctions against ongoing state judicial proceedings and which is designed to prevent *518“needless friction between state and federal courts.” Oklahoma Packing Co. v. Gas Co., 309 U. S. 4, 9 (1940). Although the anti-injunction statute rests in part on considerations as fundamental as the “constitutional independence of the States and their courts,” Atlantic C. L. R. Co. v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 398 U. S. 281, 287 (1970), and although exceptions will “not be enlarged by loose statutory construction,” ibid., we nevertheless unanimously concluded that § 1983 is excepted from the statute’s prohibition — that the anti-injunction statute does not, in other words, displace federal jurisdiction under the Ku Klux Kla-n Act.
In sum, the absence of an exhaustion requirement in § 1983 is not an accident of history or the result of careless oversight by Congress or this Court. On the contrary, the no-exhaustion rule is an integral feature of the statutory scheme. Exhaustion of state remedies is not required precisely because such a requirement would jeopardize the purposes of the Act. For that reason, the imposition of such a requirement, even if done indirectly by means of a determination that jurisdiction under § 1983 is displaced by an alternative remedial device, must be justified by a clear statement of congressional intent, or, at the very least, by the presence of the most persuasive considerations of policy. In my view, no such justification can be found.
Crucial to the Court’s analysis of the case before us is its understanding of the purposes that underlie the habeas corpus exhaustion requirement. But just as the Court pays too little attention to the reasons for a no-exhaustion rule in actions under § 1983, it also misconceives the purposes of the exhaustion requirement in habeas corpus. As a result, the Court reaches what seems to me the erroneous conclusion that the purposes of the exhaustion requirement are fully implicated in *519respondents’ actions, even though respondents sought to bring these actions under § 1983.
“The rule of exhaustion in federal habeas corpus actions is,” according to today’s opinion, “rooted in considerations of federal-state comity. That principle was defined in Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37, 44 (1971), as ‘a proper respect for state functions,’ and it has as much relevance in areas of particular state administrative concern as it does where state judicial action is being attacked.” Ante, at 491. Moreover, the Court reasons that since the relationship between state prisoners and state officers is especially intimate, and since prison issues are peculiarly within state authority and expertise, “the States have an important interest in not being bypassed in the correction of those problems.” Ante, at 492. With all respect, I cannot accept either the premises or the reasoning that lead to the Court’s conclusion.
Although codified in the habeas corpus statute in 1948, 28 U. S. C. § 2254 (b), the exhaustion requirement is a “judicially crafted instrument which reflects a careful balance between important interests of federalism and the need to preserve the writ of habeas corpus as a ‘swift and imperative remedy in all cases of illegal restraint or confinement.’ Secretary of State for Home Affairs v. O’Brien, [1923] A. C. 603, 609 (H. L.).” Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit, 410 U. S. 484, 490 (1973). The indisputable concern of all our decisions concerning the doctrine has been the relationship “between the judicial tribunals of the Union and of the States .... [T]he public good requires that those relations be not disturbed by unnecessary conflict between courts equally bound to guard and protect rights secured by the Constitution.” Ex parte Royall, 117 U. S., at 251 (emphasis added). Ex parte Royall is, of course, the germinal case, and its concern with the relations between state *520and federal courts is mirrored in our subsequent decisions. See, e. g., Braden v. 30th Judicial Circuit, supra, at 489-490; Baker v. Grice, 169 U. S. 284, 291 (1898); Ex parte Hawk, 321 U. S. 114, 116-117 (1944); cf. Sostre v. McGinnis, 442 F. 2d 178, 182 (CA2 1971); Edwards v. Schmidt, 321 F. Supp. 68, 74-75 (WD Wis. 1971). We have grounded the doctrine squarely on the view that “it would be unseemly in our dual system of government for a federal district court to upset a state court conviction without an opportunity to the state courts to correct a constitutional violation.” Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391, 419-420 (1963) (emphasis added), quoting from Darr v. Burford, 339 U. S. 200, 204 (1950). See Parker, Limiting the Abuse of Habeas Corpus, 8 F. R. D. 171, 172-173 (1948).
That is not to say, however, that the purposes of the doctrine are implicated only where an attack is directed at a state court conviction or sentence. Ex parte Royall itself did not involve a challenge to a state conviction, but rather an effort to secure a prisoner’s release on habeas corpus “in advance of his trial in the [state] court in which he [was] indicted.” Id., at 253. But there, too, the focus was on relations between the state and federal judiciaries. It is a fundamental purpose of the exhaustion doctrine to preserve the “orderly administration of state judicial business, preventing the interruption of state adjudication by federal habeas proceedings. It is important that petitioners reach state appellate courts, which can develop and correct errors of state and federal law and most effectively supervise and impose uniformity on trial courts.” Note, Developments in the Law — Federal Habeas Corpus, 83 Harv. L. Rev. 1038, 1094 (1970). Significantly, the identical interest in preserving the integrity and orderliness of judicial proceedings gives rise to the application of the exhaustion doctrine even where a federal prisoner attacks the action of *521a federal court. Id., at 1094-1095. See, e. g., Bowen v. Johnston, 306 U. S. 19, 26-27 (1939). In such a case, considerations of federalism obviously do not come into play. Yet the exhaustion requirement is nevertheless applied in order to prevent the disruption of the orderly conduct of judicial administration.
With these considerations in mind, it becomes clear that the Court's decision does not serve the fundamental purposes behind the exhaustion doctrine. For although respondents were confined pursuant to the judgment of a state judicial tribunal, their claims do not relate to their convictions or sentences, but only to the administrative action of prison officials who subjected them to allegedly unconstitutional treatment, including the deprivation of good-time credits. This is not a case, in other words, where federal intervention would interrupt a state proceeding or jeopardize the orderly administration of state judicial business. Nor is it a case where an action in federal court might imperil the relationship between state and federal courts. The “regularity of proceedings had in courts of coordinate jurisdiction,” Parker, supra, at 172-173, is not in any sense at issue.
To be sure, respondents do call into question the constitutional validity of action by state officials, and friction between those officials and the federal court is by no means an inconceivable result. But standing alone, that possibility is simply not enough to warrant application of an exhaustion requirement. First, while we spoke in Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37, 44 (1971), of the need for federal courts to maintain a “proper respect for state functions,” neither that statement nor our holding there supports the instant application of the exhaustion doctrine. Our concern in Younger v. Harris was the “longstanding public policy against federal court interference with state court proceedings,” id., at 43 (emphasis added), by means of a federal injunction *522against the continuation of those proceedings. Younger is thus an instructive illustration of the very proposition that the Court regrettably misconstrues. It does not in any sense demand, or even counsel, today’s decision.
Second, the situation that exists in the case before us — an attack on state administrative rather than judicial action — is the stereotypical situation in which relief under § 1983 is authorized. See, e. g., McNeese v. Board of Education, 373 U. S. 668 (1963) (attack on school districting scheme); Damico v. California, 389 U. S. 416 (1967) (attack on welfare requirements); Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S., at 183 (attack on police conduct). In each of these cases the exercise of federal jurisdiction was potentially offensive to the State and its officials. In each of these cases the attack was directed at an important state function in an area in which the State has wide powers of regulation. Yet in each of these cases we explicitly held that exhaustion of state remedies was not required. And in comparable cases we have taken pains to insure that the abstention doctrine is not used to defeat the plaintiff’s initial choice of a federal forum, see, e. g., Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U. S., at 249, even though the plaintiff could reserve the right to litigate the federal claim in federal court at the conclusion of the state proceeding. England v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners. 375 U. S. 411 (1964). Like Judge Kaufman, who concurred in the affirmance of the cases now before us, “I cannot believe that federal jurisdiction in cases involving prisoner rights is any more offensive to the state than federal,jurisdiction in the areas” where the exhaustion requirement has been explicitly ruled inapplicable. 456 F. 2d, at 82.
Third, if the Court is correct in assuming that the exhaustion requirement must be applied whenever federal jurisdiction might be a source of substantial friction with the State, then I simply do not understand why the *523Court stops where it does in rolling back the district courts’ jurisdiction under § 1983. Application of the exhaustion doctrine now turns on whether or not the action is directed at the fact or duration of the prisoner’s confinement. It seems highly doubtful to me that a constitutional attack on prison conditions is any less disruptive of federal-state relations than an attack on prison conditions joined with a plea for restoration of good-time credits. Chief Judge Friendly expressed the view, as did the judges in dissent below, that “petitions of state prisoners complaining of the time or conditions of their confinement have the same potentialities for exacerbating federal-state relations as petitions attacking the validity of their confinement — perhaps even more.” 456 F. 2d, at 80. Yet the Court holds today that exhaustion is required where a prisoner attacks the deprivation of good-time credits, but not where he challenges only the conditions of his confinement. It seems obvious to me that both of those propositions cannot be correct.
Finally, the Court’s decision may have the ironic effect of turning a situation where state and federal courts are not initially in conflict into a situation where precisely such conflict does result. Since respondents’ actions would neither interrupt a state judicial proceeding nor, even if successful, require the invalidation of a state judicial decision, “[t]he question is simply whether one court or another is going to decide the case.” Note, Exhaustion of State Remedies Under the Civil Rights Act, 68 Col. L. Rev. 1201, 1205-1206 (1968). If we had held, consistently with our prior cases, that the plaintiff has the right to choose a federal forum, the exercise of that right would not offend or embarrass a state court with concurrent jurisdiction. Now, however, a prisoner who seeks restoration of good-time credits must proceed first in state court, although he has the option of petitioning the federal court for relief if his state suit is unsuccessful. *524If the prisoner does resort to a federal habeas corpus action, the potential for friction with the State is certain to increase. The State is likely, after all, to derive little pleasure from the federal court’s effort to determine whether there was “either an absence of available State corrective process or the existence of circumstances rendering such process ineffective to protect the rights of the prisoner.” 28 U. S. C. § 2254 (b). And since it is the validity of the state court’s decision that is placed in issue, the State will have to endure a federal court inquiry into whether the State’s factfinding process was adequate to afford a full and fair hearing, 28 U. S. C. §2254 (d)(2), whether the petitioner was denied due process of law in the state court proceeding, id., § 2254 (d) (7), and whether the state court’s factual determinations were fairly supported by the record, id., §2254 (d)(8). Cf. Townsend v. Sain, 372 U. S. 293 (1963). Since none of these questions would even arise if the Court had held these actions properly brought under § 1983, it seems a good deal premature to proclaim today’s decision a major victory in our continuing effort to achieve a harmonious and healthy federal-state system.
IV
In short, I see no basis for concluding that jurisdiction under § 1983 is, in this instance, pre-empted by the habeas corpus remedy. Respondents’ effort to bring these suits under the provisions of the Ku Klux Klan Act should not be viewed as an attempted circumvention of the exhaustion requirement of the habeas corpus statute, for the effort does not in any sense conflict with the policies underlying that requirement.24 By means of *525these suits, they demand an immediate end to action under color of state law that has the alleged effect of violating fundamental rights guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. The Ku Klux Klan Act was designed to afford an expeditious federal hearing for the resolution of precisely such claims as these. Since I share the Court’s view that exhaustion of state judicial remedies is not required in any suit properly brought in federal court under § 1983, ante, at 477, and since I am convinced that respondents have properly invoked the jurisdictional grant of § 1983, I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

 Act of April 20, 1871, c. 22, § 1, 17 Stat. 13, Rev. Stat. § 1979.

 In his complaint, respondent Rodriguez alleged that correctional authorities had unlawfully canceled four months and 14 days of good-conduct-time credits, “[w]ithout affording plaintiff notice of any charges or a fair hearing at which plaintiff would have the assistance of counsel and the opportunity to confront witnesses, present evidence on his own behalf; and a specification of the grounds and underlying facts upon which the [authorities’] determination was based.” App. 12a. And, further, that the cancellation was an act of harassment and persecution against him because of his failure to provide the authorities with certain information. Id., at 13a.
Respondent Katzoff alleged that he was wrongfully placed in solitary confinement and deprived of good-conduct time as punishment for certain entries he had made in his diary. According to an affidavit he filed in District Court, the entries in question included a reference to one prison official as “a cigar-smoking S. O. B.,” and to another as a “creep.” App. 54a.
Respondent Kritsky stated in his complaint that correctional authorities had deprived him of good-time credits without notice of charges or a fair hearing, and as part of a “program of harassment *502and oppression directed at the plaintiff for having participated in a peaceful and non-violent work strike which ultimately culminated in legislation being passed . . . App. 100a.

 Title 28 U. S. C. § 2254 (b) provides:
“An application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court shall not be granted unless it appears that the applicant has exhausted the remedies available in the courts of the State, or that there is either an absence of available State corrective process or the existence of circumstances rendering such process ineffective to protect the rights of the prisoner.”

 Indeed, Chief Judge Friendly suggested that the “proper course for the in banc court [would be] to affirm the orders of the district court without writing opinions.” 456 F. 2d 79, 80. Judge Kaufman, who expressed no misgivings about our holding in Wilwording v. Swenson, 404 U. S. 249 (1971), indicated in his concurring opinion that he, too, thought the judgments of the District Court should have been summarily affirmed. Id., at 82.

 See Note, Developments in the Law — Federal Habeas Corpus, 83 Harv. L. Rev. 1038, 1079-1087 (1970).

 Indeed, the Court expressly views our prior eases as establishing “that a § 1983 action is a proper remedy for a state prisoner who is making a constitutional challenge to the conditions of his prison life, but not to the fact or length of his custody. Upon that understanding, we reaffirm those holdings.” Ante, at 499.

 In addition to the cases cited in text, in which we explicitly indicated that a prisoner might proceed under § 1983 without exhausting state remedies, we have also repeatedly upheld a prisoner’s right to challenge the conditions of his confinement under § 1983, without any suggestion that exhaustion of state remedies is a necessary precondition to the bringing of the suit. See Haines v. Kerner, 404 *506U. S. 519 (1972); Cruz v. Beto, 405 U. S. 319 (1972); Younger v. Gilmore, 404 U. S. 15 (1971); Cruz v. Hauck, 404 U. S. 59 (1971); McDonald v. Board of Election, 394 U. S. 802 (1969); Lee v. Washington, 390 U. S. 333 (1968); Cooper v. Pate, 378 U. S. 546 (1964).

 See, e..g., Sostre v. McGinnis, 442 F. 2d 178, 182 (CA2 1971) (conditions of segregated confinement); Jackson v. Bishop, 404 F. 2d 571 (CA8 1968) (cruel and unusual punishment); Hirons v. Director, 351 F. 2d 613 (CA4 1965) (medical treatment); Pierce v. LaVallee, 293 F. 2d 233 (CA2 1961) (religious freedom); Edwards v. Schmidt, 321 F. Supp. 68 (WD Wis. 1971) (transfer of juveniles to adult facility); Hancock v. Avery, 301 F. Supp. 786 (MD Tenn. 1969) (solitary confinement).

 Indeed, one must inevitably wonder whether the “core” of habeas corpus will not prove as intractable to definition as the “core” of *507another concept that some of us have struggled to define. Cf. Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U. S. 184, 197 (1964) (Stewart, J., concurring).

 E. g., Wilwording v. Swenson, 404 U. S. 249 (1971).

 E. g., Houghton v. Shafer, 392 U. S. 639 (1968).

 E. g., Cooper v. Pate, 378 U. S. 546 (1964).

 E. g., Haines v. Kerner, 404 U. S. 519 (1972).

 That assumes, of course, that a damages claim cannot be raised on habeas corpus, ante, at 494, and that the special res judicata rules of habeas corpus would not apply. In any case, we have never held that the doctrine of res judicata applies, in whole or in part, to bar the relitigation under § 1983 of questions that might have been raised, but were not, or that, were raised and considered in state court proceedings. The Court correctly notes that a number of lower courts have assumed that the doctrine of res judicata is fully applicable to cases brought under § 1983. But in view of the purposes underlying enactment of the Act — in particular, the congressional misgivings about the ability and inclination of state courts to enforce federally protected rights, see infra, at 515-518— that conclusion may well be in error.

 Brief for Respondents 25, citing N. Y. Penal Law § 75.00 and N. Y. Correc. Law §§ 803, 804 (reformatory-sentenced prisoners).

 See, e. g., Hensley v. Municipal Court, ante, p. 345; Carafas v. LaVallee, 391 U. S. 234 (1968); Jones v. Cunningham, 371 U. S. 236 (1963). These decisions have established habeas corpus as an available and appropriate remedy in situations where the petitioner's challenge is not merely to the fact of his confinement.

 See Peyton v. Rowe, 391 U. S. 54 (1968), overruling McNally v. Hill, 293 U. S. 131 (1934). Under the prematurity doctrine, a prisoner could not have attacked the deprivation of good-conduct-time credits where restoration of the credits would shorten the length of his confinement but not bring it immediately to an end.

 Act of Feb. 5, 1867, c. 28, § 1, 14 Stat. 385, now 28 U. S. C. § 2241 (c)(3). Prior to that enactment, the writ was made available to *513special categories of state prisoners. Note, Developments in the Law — -Federal Habeas Corpus, 83 Harv. L. Rev. 1038, 1048 n. 46 (1970).

 Act of June 25, 1948, c. 646, 62 Stat. 967, now 28 U. S. C. § 2254 (b), (c). It is agreed that the purpose of the 1948 enactment was to codify the doctrine as formulated in Ex parte Hawk, 321 U. S. 114 (1944), and other decisions of this Court.

 Act of Mar. 3, 1875, c. 137, § 1, 18 Stat. 470, now 28 U. S. C. § 1331.

 See generally Chevigny, Section 1983 Jurisdiction: A Reply, 83 Harv. L. Rev. 1352, 1356-1358 (1970).

 See, e. g., remarks of Rep. Coburn:
“The United States courts are further above mere local influence than the county courts; their judges can act with more independence, cannot be put under terror, as local judges can; their sympathies are not so nearly identified with those of the vicinage; the jurors are taken from the State, and not the neighborhood; they will be able to rise above prejudices or bad passions or terror more easily.” Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., 460 (1871).
And the remarks of Sen. Pratt:
“[O]f the hundreds of outrages committed upon loyal people through the agency of this Ku Klux organization not one has been punished. This defect in the administration of the laws does not extend to other cases. Vigorously enough are the laws enforced against Union people. They only fail in efficiency when a man of known Union sentiments, white or black, invokes their aid. Then Justice closes the door of her temples.” Id., at 505.

 See, e. g., Wilwording v. Swenson, supra; King v. Smith, 392 U. S. 309, 312 n. 4 (1968); Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167 (1961); Bacon v. Rutland R. Co., 232 U. S. 134 (1914); cf. Note, Exhaustion of State Remedies Under the Civil Rights Act, 68 Col. L. Rev. 1201 (1968).

 In a case where the habeas corpus statute does provide an available and appropriate remedy, and where a prisoner’s selection of an alternative remedy would undermine and effectively nullify the habeas corpus exhaustion requirement, it would, of course, be *525possible to view the suit as an impermissible attempt to circumvent that requirement. But by the same token, if a prisoner seeks to challenge only the conditions of his confinement — -in which case the purposes underlying the exhaustion rule do not come into play— his filing should be considered a complaint under § 1983 even if the prisoner terms it a petition for habeas corpus. That result is consistent with the view that prisoner petitions should be liberally considered, Price v. Johnston, 334 U. S. 266 (1948), and it represents no threat to the integrity of the exhaustion doctrine. Nothing in today’s decision suggests that the district courts should follow any other practice.