Court Opinion

ID: 9462922
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:53:27.603921+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:50.952918
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Chief Judge
(concurring):
I concur fully in Judge Roney’s opinion for the Court and all of the views so ably expressed by Judge Goldberg.
I would add only two things.
First, the term “pro tanto repeal” of the Eleventh by the Fourteenth seems unduly harsh. One constitutional provision can in its application be modified without imputing to the great electorate an undisclosed purpose to “repeal” an earlier provision. Responding to our earnest supplication does not present to the High Court the awesome prospect of repeal.
Second, this is in no sense merely an intriguing question to constitutionalists. It is presented in raw form. On today’s holding appellants lose all monetary recovery for money which Mississippi now wrongfully retains. Except by the luck of unpredictable timing Rabinovitch (or others) may or not afford any realistic relief. Nor will the issue down, as witness our own experience these past two years as we struggle with the Eleventh’s restriction on meaningful recompense for often flagrant violations of the Fourteenth. Gates v. Collier, 5 Cir., 1973, 489 F.2d 298 (panel), 1975, 522 F.2d 81 (en banc); Newman v. Alabama, 5 Cir., 1974, 503 F.2d 1320 (panel), 1975, 522 F.2d 71 (en banc).
GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge, with whom BROWN, Chief Judge joins (concurring).
I concur fully in the excellent opinion authored by my brother Roney. I write separately to voice concerns which render concurrence uneasy, and to emphasize considerations which render concurrence necessary.
The fourteenth amendment exercises a benign and ubiquitous influence on our jurisprudence, and occupies a central position in our society’s notions about basic justice. The first section of the fourteenth amendment provides that:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or. property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
That language affords clear and unequivocal protection of individual rights against actions of a state. It seems fair to assume that the supporters and ratifiers of the amendment intended that an individual have remedies against a state’s abrogation of fourteenth amendment rights sufficient-to give those rights meaning as more than a declaration “of the moral duty of the State.” Cf. Ex parte Virginia, 100 U.S. (10 Otto) 339, 347, 25 L.Ed. 676, 679 (1880). That the Civil War amendments were meant “to serve as a sword, rather than merely as a shield, for those whom they were designed to protect” was confirmed in Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 28 S.Ct. 441, 52 L.Ed. 714 (1908). Edelman v. Jordan, 415 U.S. 651, 664, 94 S.Ct. 1347, 1356, 39 L.Ed.2d 662, 673 (1974).
In this case the eleventh amendment is presented as a limit on the full panoply of individual remedies against a state that the *1187fourteenth amendment might otherwise provide. The eleventh amendment reads:
The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit at law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.1
This amendment was adopted to reverse the Supreme Court’s 1793 holding in Chisolm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dal.) 419, 1 L.Ed. 440, that a state was liable to suit in federal court by a citizen of another state. Principal concerns in the ratification of the eleventh amendment included the desire to permit states to retire outstanding Revolutionary War debt without the intervention of federal courts, and the wish to avoid litigation seeking restitution of confiscated Loyalist property or restoration of lands that arguably had been improperly condemned by the states.2
That there might be conflict between the vindication of rights protected against the states by the fourteenth amendment and the immunity from suit established for the states by the eleventh amendment is apparent. Situations are easily imaginable (the case at bar is a good illustration) in which the policies embodied in the fourteenth amendment’s protection of individual rights against the states must be substantially frustrated if the eleventh amendment is read to provide immunity for the states in regard to any recovery of wrongfully taken money. Appellants in this case have presented arguments based largely on legislative history that the later enacted fourteenth amendment must be seen as a pro tanto repeal of the eleventh amendment’s strictures on suits against the state. I find these arguments persuasive.
The Supreme Court has clearly recognized that the fourteenth amendment acts as a limit on the eleventh in some contexts. Ex parte Young, supra, relying on the fiction discussed by Judge Roney, found that the fourteenth amendment authorized prospective injunctive relief in a suit effectively against the state. Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, - U.S. -, 96 S.Ct. 2666, 49 L.Ed.2d - (1976) demonstrates that the fourteenth amendment has in at least one other significant way carved an exception into the protection that the eleventh amendment would otherwise provide for state fiscs. Fitzpatrick holds that proper congressional exercise of its legislative powers under section 5 of the fourteenth amendment can serve to abrogate the states’ eleventh amendment immunity.3 Section 5, then, represents a license for the Congress, in the context of enforcing fourteenth amendment rights of individuals against the states, effectively to repeal the eleventh amendment pro tanto.
As Judge Roney indicated, no congressional legislation under section 5 is a factor in this case. The district court nevertheless found that the fourteenth amendment rights of these plaintiffs had been violated by the state. That finding is unchallenged on appeal. The question thus arises whether the fourteenth amendment of its own force acts to modify the eleventh amendment in the context of an individual’s suit against a state for money taken from him by the state in violation of the fourteenth amendment.4 If no self-executing pro tan-*1188to repeal can be found, then the full vindication of fourteenth amendment rights must be contingent upon affirmative congressional legislation under section 5.
Were I writing on a clean slate, I would hold that section 5 of the fourteenth amendment is insufficient to insure the full potency of the rights sought to be protected by section 1 of the fourteenth amendment. I have no doubt that the framers and ratifiers of the fourteenth amendment had great faith in the inclination and ability of the federal Congress to enforce the rights guaranteed against the states by the fourteenth amendment. In view of the subsequent interpretations of the fourteenth amendment, however, it would be ironic indeed were the full vindication of the rights guaranteed against the states to be seen as contingent upon affirmative legislative action of “The State.”
The fourteenth amendment, through the constitutional history of our country, has demonstrated great absorptive powers. That amendment is properly read today as having incorporated, for the protection of the individual against the state, the fundamental rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Thus, the fourteenth amendment protects individuals against, inter alia, the same types of arbitrary and unfair acts on the part of state government that originally prompted the Bill of Rights’ protection for individuals against the federal government. The Congress cannot realistically be expected to provide fully' adequate remedies for every fourteenth amendment violation, because such violations often reflect the type of overreaching that tempts all governments. Accordingly, the fourteenth amendment’s promise of full protection of individual rights might remain unfulfilled in many cases were section 5 the only path around the limitations of the eleventh.
The conflict between the fourteenth and the eleventh amendments should not be understood only as a question of allocation of powers between the state and federal sovereigns. Although it is clearly appropriate for the federal sovereign to muscularize the potency of the fourteenth amendment through selective repeal of the eleventh amendment, see Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, supra, primacy of individual rights requires more than, section 5 for full and lasting effectuation. Absent strong countervailing indications from Supreme Court cases, I would hold that in situations like the one before us, the fourteenth amendment of its own force has acted to repeal the eleventh amendment pro tanto.
As Judge Roney has demonstrated, however, such countervailing indications are not absent. The emanations from Eldeman and Fitzpatrick make it seem very unlikely that a majority of the present Supreme Court would sustain a holding that the fourteenth amendment, of its own force, represents a pro tanto repeal of the eleventh amendment. Edelman's discussion of Shapiro v. Thompson 5 and prior summary affirmances must be seen as weighing heavily against the likelihood of such a holding.6 Further, *1189the concern in Fitzpatrick with the “threshold fact of congressional authorization,” —_ U.S. at -, 96 S.Ct. at 2670, 49 L.Ed.2d at -, quoting Edelman v. Jordan, supra, lends strong implicit support to the view that without that threshold fact, the strictures of the eleventh amendment are likely to be interpreted as absolute, under Edelman.7
When the Supreme Court’s recent opinions have so firmly, if implicitly, indicated how a majority of the Justices would answer this important constitutional question, a court at this level is not free simply to note that the question is formally open and then to decide it contrary to those indications on the grounds of policy and the legislative history of the fourteenth amendment. Obeisant and submissive, then, as I must be to these emanations from the Supreme Court, I must join with Judge Roney in holding that, absent Congressional authorization, the current state of the jurisprudence precludes retroactive recovery of damages from the state treasury by an individual, even when that individual has proven that the state, to his damage, has violated his fourteenth amendment rights.
Having said all this, I also wish to emphasize that it is open for the Supreme Court to reverse our holding today without overruling any of its prior cases. As Mr. Justice Marshall noted, in dissent, in Edelman:
. [Tjhere has been no determination in this case that state action is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, the Court necessarily does not decide whether the States’ Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity may have been limited by the later enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment to the extent that such a limitation is necessary to effectuate the purposes of that Amendment
415 U.S. at 694 n. 2, 94 S.Ct. at 1371 n. 2, 39 L.Ed.2d at 690 n. 2. Indeed, the Court conceivably could find in the instant case, in which the “equitable restitution” argument seems strong, a narrow and most compelling situation in which the accommodation between the policies of the fourteenth amendment and the eleventh amendment must lie on the side of full potency of the fourteenth amendment.
Again, however, I must agree with Judge Roney that by far the strongest indications are that the ultimate accommodation reached by the present Supreme Court will not include any exceptions for situations in which the fourteenth amendment acts as a self-executing pro tanto repeal of the eleventh amendment’s proscription on retroactive money recoveries from the states. Until the Supreme Court advises us otherwise, we must hold that the full remedies which might be implied under the fourteenth amendment require activation by Congress through section 5 legislation, or by a state herself through express waiver.
This most important issue may be frontally addressed and authoritatively resolved in Rabinovitch or in some other ease in the near future. The question certainly merits direct and definitive Supreme Court attention. Through this concurring opinion, I sound a note of supplication that the Court might consider the wisdom of rejecting the implications of Edelman that we have *1190found controlling, and of holding that the eleventh amendment has been modified to the extent necessary fully to effectuate the sweeping mandate of the fourteenth amendment.

. At the time this suit was filed, the Jagnandans were citizens of Guyana, and thus the eleventh amendment was applicable to this suit in its literal terms. Cf. Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, - U.S. -, -, 96 S.Ct. 2666, 2672, 49 L.Ed.2d-,-(Brennan, J., concurring in the judgment).

. See C. Jacobs, The Eleventh Amendment and Sovereign Immunity 64-67 (1972); Note, “The Supreme Court, 1973 Term,” 88 Harv.L.Rev. 43, 243, 246-47 (1974).

. Section 5 provides: “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

. As Judge Roney has ably demonstrated, once it is determined that the monetary relief sought here is in effect sought to be recovered from the state, cf. Mississippi Gay Alliance v. Goudelock, 536 F.2d 1073, 1084-85 (1976) (Goldberg, J., dissenting), the eleventh amendment strictures reaffirmed in Edelman are not avoidable on any ground short of pro tanto repeal of the eleventh amendment by the fourteenth amendment. As to waiver, there has been no “clear *1188declaration of the state’s intention to submit its fiscal problems to other courts than those of its own creation,” Great Northern Insurance Co. v. Read, supra, 322 U.S. at 54, 64 S.Ct. at 877, quoted with approval in Edelman v. Jordan, supra, 415 U.S. at 673, 94 S.Ct. 1347. The “equitable restitution” argument is foreclosed by Ford Motor Company v. Department of Treasury, 323 U.S. 459, 65 S.Ct. 347, 89 L.Ed. 389 (1945), as interpreted in Edelman and cited in Fitzpatrick.

. 394 U.S. 618, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969).

. The concerns about Edelman expressed by Mr. Justice Stevens, concurring in the judgment in Fitzpatrick, seem apposite to my dilemma here:
Although I have great difficulty with a construction of the Eleventh Amendment which acknowledges the federal court’s jurisdiction of a case and merely restricts the kind of relief the federal court may grant, I must recognize that it has been so construed in Edelman v. Jordan, . . . and that the language of that opinion would seem to cover this case.
-U.S. at-, 96 S.Ct. at 2673, 49 L.Ed.2d at - (footnote and citations omitted). Once I have acknowledged, with Judge Roney, that the language of Edelman “would seem to cover this case,” I am not so free as Justice Stevens, to argue that the language of Edelman should be read only in light of its narrow holding.

. The following language from Fitzpatrick, also quoted by Judge Roney, suggests that the case was decided on the assumption that without section 5 legislation a state’s eleventh amendment immunity under Edelman is impenetrable:
. . . We think that Congress may, in determining what is “appropriate legislation” for the purpose of enforcing the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, provide for private suits against States or state officials which are constitutionally impermissible in other contexts. See Edelman v. Jordan, supra; Ford Motor Co. v. Department of Treasury, supra.
-U.S. at-, 96 S.Ct. at 2671, 49 L.Ed.2d at
A Supreme Court decision that the fourteenth amendment acted as a self-executing pro tanto repeal of the eleventh would not necessarily render the Fitzpatrick section 5 holding superfluous, but would certainly diminish the importance of that holding. Fitzpatrick would remain significant in situations when the violation of Congressional Section 5 legislation did not necessarily constitute a violation of the fourteenth amendment itself. Cf. Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641, 86 S.Ct. 1717, 16 L.Ed.2d 828 (1966).