Court Opinion

ID: 9471312
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:28:58.941206+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:20.902636
License: Public Domain

TATE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The majority holds that it is appropriate to abstain under Pullman from ruling on the claimed facial unconstitutionality, because of vagueness and overbroadness, of Texas streetway-obstruction statutes used as a basis for arrest and conviction of sidewalk sellers of a Communist newspaper, in alleged violation of their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The plaintiffs themselves have not been prosecuted under these statutes, but their associates have. The majority finds that the district court did not abuse its discretion in so abstaining until Texas courts have ruled upon the constitutionality of these statutes — now attacked on appeals from convictions under these statutes of four of the plaintiffs’ associates, arrested on July 24, 1980, their appeal pending in the Texas Court of Appeals since 1981.
I respectfully dissent. Under the circumstances shown, abstention is improper under Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360, 84 S.Ct. 1316, 12 L.Ed.2d 377 (1964) (reversing abstention), as applied in Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U.S. 528, 85 S.Ct. 1177, 14 L.Ed.2d 50 (1965), and explained approvingly in Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 401 n. 5, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 1805 n. 5, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974), and as interpreted and applied by this court in High Ol' Times, Inc. v. Busbee, 621 F.2d 135 (5th Cir.1980) (reversing abstention). See also International Society for Krishna Consciousness v. Eaves, 601 F.2d 809, 822-23 (5th Cir.1979).
By the present action, filed in November 1980, the plaintiffs have sought declaratory and injunctive relief under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 with regard to the facial unconstitutionality of these statutes. The evidence is uncontradieted that, for fear of arrest and prosecution thereunder, they have been inhibited in the dissemination, through street sales of their periodical, of constitutionally protected expression of their views. It is important to note that the plaintiff’s attack on the constitutional validity of the Texas statutes is not that they have been selectively or improperly applied, but that the statutes are facially invalid because of their vagueness and overbroadness (i.e., that under their express terms, the statutes may attach criminal penalties to the plaintiffs’ exercise of First Amendment rights). As we stated in Krishna, supra, while abuses of application can be struck down as they arise, a vague or excessively broad statute invokes the issue “not [of] potential abuses but [of] *133the very existence of broad, sensorial power,” when First Amendment rights are at issue. 601 F.2d at 823.
In invoking Pullman abstention, the district court felt that state construction of the 1974 statute might eliminate or narrow the scope of the federal constitutional issue, a threshold requirement for such abstention. However, abstention is not appropriate where facial vagueness or overbroadness of a previously uninterpreted state statute is claimed to inhibit or prevent the exercise of rights protected by the federal constitution. Baggett v. Bullitt, supra. In Procunier, supra, 416 U.S. at 401 n. 5, 94 S.Ct. at 1805 n. 5, the Supreme Court more recently summarized the holding of Baggett:
In Baggett the Court considered the constitutionality of loyalty oaths required of certain state employees as a condition of employment. For the purpose of applying the doctrine of abstention the Court distinguished between two kinds of vagueness attacks. Where the case turns on the applicability of a state statute or regulation to a particular person or a defined course of conduct, resolution of the unsettled question of state law may eliminate any need for constitutional adjudication. 377 U.S., at 376-377, 84 S.Ct., at 1325-1326. Abstention is therefore appropriate. Where, however, as in this case, the statute or regulation is challenged as vague because individuals to whom it plainly applies simply cannot understand what is required of them and do not wish to forswear all activity arguably within the scope of the vague terms, abstention is not required. Id., at 378, 84 S.Ct., at 1326. In such a case no single adjudication by a state court could eliminate the constitutional difficulty. Rather it would require “extensive adjudications, under the impact of a variety of factual situations,” to bring the challenged statute or regulation “within the bounds of permissible constitutional certainty.” Ibid.
In High Ol' Times v. Busbee, supra, we reversed the abstention of a district court based on quite similar reasons to those the majority here affirms. In reversing, we stated:
Turning to the first factor considered in Pullman, supra, one of appellants’ challenges was that the statutes suffer the vagueness malady in that they provide no fair notice of the precise conduct proscribed. Moreover, the statutes are alleged to lack any guidance as to the intent element required in order to violate either one of them. The district court declined, however, to examine further any of appellants’ other constitutional challenges; its decision to abstain was based on the above vagueness challenge only. Considering for a moment that issue alone, we have serious doubts that a saving construction exists which would eliminate the vagaries of either of these statutes.5 Nevertheless, appellees strenuously argue that abstention was proper since the state court never had an opportunity to construe the statute. However, “[i]f the state statute in question, although never interpreted by a state tribunal, is not fairly subject to an interpretation which will render unnecessary or substantially modify the federal constitutional question, it is the duty of the federal court to exercise its properly invoked jurisdiction.” Harman v. Forssenius, supra, 380 U.S. at 534-35, 85 S.Ct. at 1182, 14 L.Ed.2d at 55, citing Baggett v. Bullitt, supra, 377 U.S. at 375-79, 84 S.Ct. at 1324-26, 12 L.Ed.2d at 387-89.
We believe that such is the case here; a state court interpretation of the statutes would neither render unnecessary nor substantially modify the federal constitutional question. * * * *134priate when a challenge is made to the state statute as applied, rather than upon its face, since the reach of an uncertain state statute might, in that circumstance, be more susceptible of a limiting or clarifying construction that would avoid the federal constitutional question.”)
621 F.2d at 140.
Without citing or distinguishing the principles enunciated by the above decisional authority, which I feel to be controlling, the majority rests its determination approving abstention upon Ziegler v. Ziegler, 632 F.2d 535 (5th Cir.1980). This decision is construed as supporting a proposition that the arguments for abstention are “compelling” where there is already pending a state court action that is likely to resolve the state law issue. The issue in Ziegler concerned an issue whether a state community-property rule denied a husband the equal protection of the laws. Prior to the husband’s institution of the federal action, the wife had filed a divorce and partition suit in state court against the husband, in which the same issue was implicated.
The district court’s abstention was based, not on Pullman, but on the Anti-Injunction Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2283 and Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 97, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971) (i.e., on unavailability of federal injunctive relief where proceedings are already pending in state court). In affirming abstention (but on a Pullman basis), we took into consideration that a new state statute, reasonably so potentially applicable in the pending state partition proceedings, might “eliminate the need to render a constitutional decision in the sometimes unpredictable area of benign, gender-based discrimination,” 632 F.2d at 539, and that “domestic relations law is a subject peculiarly within the province of the states, and abstentions could have the salutary effect of making intrusion by the federal judiciary into this sensitive area of state concern altogether unnecessary.” Id.
It was in that context, of a prior pending suit between the two parties now before the federal court, that we concluded, “where, as here, there is already pending a state action without the commencement of new proceedings in state court, the argument in favor of abstention is even more compelling.” 632 F.2d at 539. It seems obvious to me that Ziegler v. Ziegler, relating to a situation where a prior-filed state suit between the same parties might resolve the issue before the federal court on a purely state law basis, was not intended to overrule the United States Supreme Court and Fifth Circuit decisions following Baggett v. Bullitt, nor to apply to a situation where the parties before the federal court, not themselves involved in prior state proceedings, pray for declaratory and injunctive relief against enforcement of state statutes as facially unconstitutional because of vagueness and overbreadth, because these parties’ exercise of their First Amendment rights have been inhibited through threatened (but no actual) prosecution upon those statutes.
I respectfully dissent.

 Appellees offered no interpretation whatsoever and the district court’s suggestion, 449 F.Supp. [364] at 368 n. 3, appears unlikely. “We have frequently emphasized that abstention is not to be ordered unless the state statute is of an uncertain nature, and is obviously susceptible of a limiting construction.” Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U.S. 241, 251 n. 14, 88 S.Ct. 391, 397 n. 14, 19 L.Ed.2d 444, 451 n. 14 (1967) (emphasis supplied). Cf. Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 452, 474-75 n. 21, 94 S.Ct. 1209, 1223 n. 21, 39 L.Ed.2d 505, 523-24 n. 21 (1974) (“Abstention ... might be more appro-