Court Opinion

ID: 9636550
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:32:59.898741+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:15:41.110808
License: Public Domain

JONES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
As I read the bill of complaint, the plaintiffs fail to plead a case cognizable in a District Court. I should, therefore, reverse the decree below and remand with directions to the District Court to dismiss the complaint for want of jurisdiction.
That a District Court has jurisdiction under Sec. 24(14)1 of the Judicial Code of a cause of action under R.S. § 19792 is, of course, not disputed. See Hague v. Committee for Ind. Org., 307 U.S. 496, 508, 529, 530, 59 S.Ct. 954, 83 L.Ed. 1423. The question here in limine is whether the bill of complaint alleges a cause within the jurisdiction conferred by Sec. 24(14). Plainly enough, it is not all state deprivation of liberty which the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution inhibits but only such as is effected without due process of law. Not liberty, but security against undue state deprivation thereof is the right which the Fourteenth Amendment secures in material regard. . What R.S. § 1979 in turn confers is a right of action for the redress of the deprivation of a right secured by the Constitution and laws.
Certain it is that a District Court exercises only such jurisdiction as has been expressly conferred upon it by an Act of Congress. Kline v. Burke Construction *660Company, 260 U.S. 226, 234, 43 S.Ct. 79, 67 L.Ed. 226, 24 A.L.R. 1077. Consequently, it is incumbent upon one who seeks the aid of a District Court to make out a case for jurisdiction. This should be made affirmatively to appear by the allegations of the bill. Mosher v. City of Phoenix, 287 U.S. 29, 30, 53 S.Ct. 67, 77 L.Ed. 148; Norton v. Larney, 266 U.S. 511, 515, 45 S.Ct. 145, 69 L.Ed. 413; McCain v. Des Moines, 174 U.S. 168, 181, 19 S.Ct. 644, 43 L.Ed. 936. Unless that be done, jurisdiction must be deemed not to exist. Cf. Norton v. Larney, supra, 266 U.S. pages 515, 516, 45 S.Ct. 145, 69 L.Ed. 413. As the right to strike down state action through invocation of federal jurisdiction is a high privilege and one which necessarily involves the relation between the national and local governments, the specified requirements for a District Court’s exercise of jurisdiction should no less be met in such instance. The plaintiffs should, therefore, be required to aver facts which show, or at least tend to show, what amounts to the state’s denial of their liberty without due process of law before they may assert a right of action under R'.S. § 1979 or invoke the court’s jurisdiction under Sec. 24(14).
Substantially, all that the bill of complaint in this case avers is the plaintiffs’ membership in the sect known as Jehovah’s Witnesses, their canvassing and soliciting' in the Borough of Jeannette for the distribution of books and pamphlets for a specified contribution without procuring a vendor’s license as required by a borough ordinance, their arrest for violating the ordinance, hearings on the charges, convictions and appeals to the courts of the state. Not once throughout their lengthy bill of complaint do the plaintiffs aver a fact from which it can even be inferred, as a matter of law, that they were denied due process either substantively or procedurally. They make no assault upon the validity of the ordinance as being either arbitrary, discriminatory or capricious.3 Specifically, the bill contains no averment that the ordinance, either upon its face or as administered, prohibited all canvassing or soliciting within the municipality. Cf. Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 58 S.Ct. 666, 82 L.Ed. 949. It is not even averred that the ordinance was ever enforced with respect to more than house to house canvassing. There is no averment that the ordinance either creates or was utilized to create a discretionary censorship in anyone. Cf. Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147, 60 S.Ct. 146, 84 L.Ed. 155. Nor is there any averment that the ordinance, by its terms or as administered, discriminates against any group of applicants for licenses. In addition to this, there was open to the plaintiffs and they exercised, as the bill discloses, a right of appeal to courts of record in the state; and there is no suggestion that the plaintiffs were ever proceeded against for violating the ordinance except by means' of legal process or that a hearing before a judicial tribunal on charges of violating the ordinance was ever denied them. Cf. Hague v. Committee for Ind. Org. supra. In one instance, they do refer to their hearings, in the Mayor’s court as “mock” but do not hint at a fact to support the characterization.
Having thus failed to aver facts showing any want of due process, the plaintiffs contented themselves with a bald conclusion of law to the effect that the defendants’ enforcement of the ordinance as to them deprived them of freedom of worship, speech and press “contrary to the Federal Constitution, Fourteenth Amendment, Section l”.4 The majority say that this general allegation, taken in conjunction with the recitals as to enforcement of the ordinance and the plaintiffs’ desire to distribute books and pamphlets without municipal license, is sufficient to spell out a case of unconstitutional state deprivation of liberty and hold in substance that the presence or absence of due process of law, where civil rights are said to be involved, depends upon the philosophical concept thereof on the part of the judges to whom the matter is addressed.
True enough, the term “due process of law” cannot, in the abstract, be defined with nicety or precision. It is also true that the very indefiniteness of the term renders it adaptable to changed conceptions which have received general acceptance. That views may change as human experiences widen and knowledge accumulates with the passing of time is but natural. And it is equally natural that such changes *661should reflect themselves in the law when a word so relative as the word “due” is the subject for recurring interpretation in different circumstances. But that does not mean that there is never a present standard by which the dueness of legal process may be adjudged. The decided cases contemporaneously sketch out a pattern of its instant measure. It is at all times a shield against arbitrary, discriminatory or capricious legislative or other governmental action. By that standard, it was the duty of the plaintiffs to show by the allegations of their bill a case of the state’s wrongful deprivation of their freedom of worship, speech or press. This they failed to do.
No case has been cited which appears to hold that, in order to invoke federal jurisdiction to restrain a state’s alleged deprivation of life, liberty or property, all that is necessary is an allegation that the Fourteenth Amendment is being violated. Furthermore, the general language of decided cases is to be read in the light of what was actually before the courts. In Columbus Railway, Power & Light Company v. City of Columbus, 249 U.S. 399, 39 S.Ct. 349, 351, 63 L.Ed. 669, 6 A.L.R. 1648, cited by the majority, the bill of complaint which, as the Supreme Court said, “presented questions arising under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution not so wholly lacking in merit as to afford no basis of jurisdiction” was replete with detailed specifications of pecuniary loss to the complainant railway through the defendant municipality’s insistence upon continued transit service under local franchise ordinances for inadequate and confiscatory rates of fare according to the facts averred in the bill. Of course, there was jurisdiction there. The bill showed, prima facie, a deprivation of property without due process of law.
As I read the opinion of Justice Stone in the Hague case, it seems implicit that a showing of a want of due process is essential to an invocation of the jurisdiction under Sec. 24(14) of an action under R.S. § 1979 for the redress of the deprivation of a right secured by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The bill of complaint in the Hague case, whereby the jurisdiction was to be adjudged, fairly bristled with allegations of fact showing an arbitrary, discriminatory and even violent deprivation of the complainants’ freedom of speech, press and assembly, all done by municipal officers of Jersey City under color of enforcing a city ordinance. Certainly, Justice Stone’s opinion in the Hague case provides no implication that all that is necessary to jurisdiction under Sec. 24(14) to redress an alleged deprivation of liberty is an allegation that the defendants are acting contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment. If that were so, then the case involving a local ordinance or state statute that could not be taken directly to a District Court for attempted invalidation would, indeed, be difficult to imagine, for the security of the due process clause extends also to life and property. The necessary consequence would be an unwarranted extension of federal jurisdiction over local matters. Yet, a “serious apprehension for the rightful independence of local government” was a reason ascribed by Justice Stone for his dissent from the majority’s extension of “privileges and immunities” in Colgate v. Harvey, 296 U.S. 404, 436, 445, 56 S.Ct. 252, 266, 80 L.Ed. 299, 102 A.L.R. 54, which, incidentally, was later expressly overruled in Madden v. Kentucky, 309 U.S. 83, 93, 60 S.Ct. 406, 84 L.Ed. 590, 125 A.L.R. 1383. A like apprehension suggests no less that, where an ordinance does not, on its face or as administered, deprive of life, liberty or property either arbitrarily, discriminatorily, or capriciously, and there has been no denial of procedural due process, the interpretation of the ordinance and the manner of its administration should, in the first instance, be left to the courts of the state.5
The opinion of Justice Roberts in the Hague case cannot be said to furnish the plaintiffs any support for federal jurisdiction under the averments of their bill. The right of action under R.S. § 1979, which Justice Roberts perceived under the bill in the Hague case, was for the redress of state abridgment of the complainants’ privileges and immunities as citizens, contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment. What it is necessary to aver in order to plead jurisdiction of a case under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, was, *662therefore, neither germane nor considered. A want of due process is not a condition of the security against state abridgment which the Fourteenth Amendment gives to citizens in respect of their privileges and immunities. Moreover, even though the present plaintiffs are citizens, the redress which they seek is not for the abridgment of privileges or immunities attending their national citizenship. The rights which they assert are attributes of the liberty incident to all persons subject to the jurisdiction of the United States regardless of their citizenship.
In Minersville District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 60 S.Ct. 1010, 84 L.Ed. 1375, 127 A.L.R. 1493, the matter of jurisdiction was not passed upon by the Supreme Court. The District Court had expressly found that jurisdiction of that case did not exist under Sec. 24(14) 28 U.S.C.A. § 41(14) but did exist under Sec. 24(1), 28 U.S.C.A. § 41(1). Gobitis v. Minersville School District, D.C.E.D.Pa., 21 F.Supp. 581, 586, 587. In so far as the security afforded by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was considered by the District Court in the Gobitis case, it was only to the extent of perceiving a right in the plaintiffs arising under the Constitution. It was upon that right and an amount in controversy in excess of $3,000, as found by the court, that jurisdiction of the Gobitis case was deliberately laid under Sec. 24(1) ; and the Court of Appeals affirmed without mentioning jurisdiction. Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 3 Cir., 108 F.2d 683. In these circumstances it is hard to see how the Gobitis case can be thought to imply that, where one invokes jurisdiction under Sec. 24(14) of a cause of action under R.S. § 1979 for alleged state deprivation of liberty, he is under no duty to aver facts showing that the deprivation resulted from a want of due process.
Neither the case of Oney v. Oklahoma City, 10 Cir., 120 F.2d 861, 866, nor the case of City of Manchester v. Leiby, 1 Cir., 117 F.2d 661, 664, certiorari denied 313 U.S. 562, 61 S.Ct. 838, 85 L.Ed. 1522, seems to have been intended as a definitive ruling as to the scope of the pleading necessary to make out a case for jurisdiction under Sec. 24(14) of an action under R.S. § 1979. In the Oney case the District Court had dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, and the Court of Appeals, in reversing and remanding for further proceeding, did so in the expressed belief that the matter could “best be determined after issues have been made up and a full hearing had.” Yet, it has been held (Mosher v. City of Phoenix, supra, 287 U.S. at page 30, 53 S.Ct. at page 67, 77 L.Ed. 148) that jurisdiction is not to be determined “by the way the facts turn out or by a decision of the merits.” In the Leiby case the Court of Appeals held (page 664 of 117 F.2d) that “freedom of speech, of the press, and of religion are rights ‘secured by the Constitution of the United States’ within the meaning of Section 24(14) ; and that under Section 24(14) the District Court had jurisdiction of the * * * suit, which is of the sort described in the Civil Rights Act * * J3ut that does not conclude what it is necessary for a plaintiff to aver in order to invoke the jurisdiction. As indicated at the outset of this opinion, there can be no doubt that jurisdiction under Sec. 24(14) is both appropriate and available for a right of action under R.S. § 1979 where a cause is shown to exist.
In no event should federal jurisdiction be assumed merely because of its supposed greater convenience for the determination of a constitutional question, as the learned court below apparently conceived (see reference to Reid v. Brookville, D.C.W.D.Pa., 39 F.Supp. 30, 32). Actual experience shows that the convenience of obtaining a final decision of a constitutional question is equally as great where the litigation is instituted in and proceeded with through the state courts. Except for the Hague case, the cases upon which the Supreme Court has passed in recent years (of a nature somewhat similar to the present) went there by appeal from final judgments of state courts.6 While nothing *663is to be deduced from that fact by way of an argument against the existence of jurisdiction in the District Courts, it at least indicates that proceeding through the state courts in local matters with ultimate appeal to the Supreme Court on any constitutional questions arising therein is both an expeditious and efficacious means for obtaining a final decision by the highest federal court. As the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction in such regard exists by virtue of Sec. 237 of the Judicial Code, 28 U.S. C.A. § 344, it is unaffected by the limitations attending the jurisdiction of federal ■courts of first instance.
The conclusion herein reached with respect to the question of jurisdiction renders inappropriate a consideration of the merits. I, therefore, refrain from expressing any opinion as to the law relating thereto.

 28 U.S.C.A. § 41 (14).

 Act of April 20, 1871, c. 22, § 1, 17 Stat. 13, as modified and reenacted by R.S. § 1979, 8 U.S.C.A. § 43.

 The ordinance, which was enacted in 189S, was of the familiar hawker or vendor type widely adopted and long used by municipalities.

 gee paragraph 17 of the bill of complaint quoted in full in footnote 9 of the majority opinion, ante, p. 6.

 Railroad Commission of Texas v. Pullman Co., 312 U.S. 496, 499, 500, 61 S.Ct. 643, 85 L.Ed. 971; Thompson v. Magnolia Co., 309 U.S. 478, 484, 60 S.Ct. 628, 84 L.Ed. 876; Lindsey v. Washington, 301 U.S. 397, 400, 57 S.Ct. 797, 81 L.Ed. 1182; Bevins v. Prindable, D.C.E.D.Ill., 39 F.Supp. 708, 713, a three judge court, where Jehovah’s Witnesses assailed an Illinois statute as invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment.

 Chaplinsky v. State of New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031; Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U.S. 569, 61 S.Ct. 762, 85 L.Ed. 1049,133 A. L.R. 1396; Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 60 S.Ct. 900, 84 L.Ed. 1213, 128 A.L.R. 1352; Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147, 60 S.Ct. 146, 84 L.Ed. 155; Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 58 S.Ct. 666, 82 L.Ed. 949; Jones v. Opelika, Bowden v. Fort Smith, and Jobin v. Arizona, 62 S.Ct. 1231, 86 L.Ed. -, decided June 8, 1942. Valentine v. Chrestensen, 316 U.S. 52, 62 S.Ct. 920, 86 L.Ed. —, which went to the Supreme Court on certiorari to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, furnishes no exception. Jurisdiction in that case rested upon diversity of citizenship and the amount in controversy and not upon Sec. 24 (14) of the Judicial Code.