England v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners/Opinion of the Court

Appellants are graduates of schools of chiropractice who seek to practice in Louisiana without complying with the educational requirements of the Louisiana Medical Practice Act, Title 37, LSA Rev.Stat. §§ 1261-1290. They brought this action against respondent Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, seeking an injunction and a declaration that, as applied to them, he Act violated the Fourteenth Amendment. A statutory three-judge court invoked, sua sponte, the doctrine of abstention, on the ground that 'The state court might effectively end this controversy by a determination that chiropractors are not governed by the statute,' and entered an order 'staying further proceedings in this Court until the courts of the State of Louisiana shall have been afforded an opportunity to determine the issues here presented, and retaining jurisdiction to take such steps as may be necessary for the just disposition of the litigation should anything prevent a prompt state court determination.' D.C., 180 F.Supp. 121, 124.

Appellants thereupon brought proceedings in the Louisiana courts. They did not restrict those proceedings to the question whether the Medical Practice Act applied to chiropractors. They unreservedly submitted for decision, and briefed and argued, their contention that the Act, if applicable to chiropractors, violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The state proceedings terminated with a decision by the Louisiana Supreme Court declining to review an intermediate appellate court's holding both that the Medical Practice Act applied to chiropractors and that, as so applied, it did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. La.App., 126 So.2d 51.

Appellants then returned to the District Court, where they were met with a motion by appellees to dismiss the federal action. This motion was granted, on the ground that 'since the courts of Louisiana have passed on all issues raised, including the claims of deprivation under the Federal Constitution, this court, having no power to review those proceedings, must dismiss the complaint. The proper remedy was by appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States.' The court saw the case as illustrating 'the dilemma of a litigant who has invoked the jurisdiction of a federal court to assert a claimed constitutional right and finds himself remitted to the state tribunals.' The dilemma, said the court, was that 'On the one hand, in view of Government & Civic Employees Organizing Committee (C.I.O.) v. Windsor, 353 U.S. 364, 77 S.Ct. 838, 1 L.Ed.2d 894, he dare not restrict his state court case to local law issues. On the other, if, as required by Windsor, he raises the federal questions there, well established principles will bar a relitigation of those issues in the United States District Court. * *  * Since, in the usual case, no question not already passed on by the state courts will remain, he is thereby effectively deprived of a federal forum for the adjudication of his federal claims.' 194 F.Supp. 521, 522. Appellants appealed directly to this Court under 28 U.S.C. § 1253, and we noted probable jurisdiction. 372 U.S. 904, 83 S.Ct. 714, 9 L.Ed.2d 715. We reverse and remand to the District Court for decision on the merits of appellants' Fourteenth Amendment claims.

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 by 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, 29 S.Ct. 192, 195, 53 L.Ed. 382. Nor does anything in the abstention doctrine require or support such a result. Abstention is a judge-fashioned vehicle for according appropriate deference to the 'respective competence of the state and federal court systems.' Louisiana P. & L. Co. v. Thibodaux, 360 U.S. 25, 29, 79 S.Ct. 1070, 1073, 3 L.Ed.2d 1058. Its recognition of the role of state courts as the final expositors of state law implies no disregard for the primacy of the federal judiciary in deciding questions of federal law. Accordingly, we have on several occasions explicitly recognized that abstention 'does not, of course, involve the abdication of federal jurisdiction, but only the postponement of its exercise.' Harrison v. NAACP, 360 U.S. 167, 177, 79 S.Ct. 1025, 1030, 3 L.Ed.2d 1152; accord, Louisiana P. & L. Co. v. Thibodaux, supra, 360 U.S., at 29, 79 S.Ct. at 1073, 3 L.Ed.2d 1058.

It is true that, after a postabstention determination and rejection of his federal claims by the state courts, a litigant could seek direct review in this Court. NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 83 S.Ct. 328, 9 L.Ed.2d 405; Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Elections, 360 U.S. 45, 79 S.Ct. 985, 3 L.Ed.2d 1072. But such review, even when available by appeal rather than only by discretionary with of certiorari, is an inadequate substitute for the initial District Court determination-often by three judges, 28 U.S.C. § 2281-to which the litigant is entitled in the federal courts. This is true as to issues of law; it is especially true as to issues of fact. Limiting the litigant to review here would deny him the benefit of a federal trial court's role in constructing a record and making fact findings. How the facts are found will often dictate the decision of federal claims. 'It is the typical, not the rare, case in which constitutional claims turn upon the resolution of contested factual issues.' Townsend v. Sain, 372 U.S. 293, 312, 83 S.Ct. 745, 756, 9 L.Ed.2d 770. 'There is always in litigation a margin of error, representing error in factfinding * *  * .' Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 525, 78 S.Ct. 1332, 1342, 2 L.Ed.2d 1460. Thus in cases where, but for the application of the abstention doctrine, the primary fact determination would have been by the District Court, a litigant may not be unwillingly deprived of that determination. The possibility of appellate review by this Court of a state court determination may not be substituted, against a party's wishes, for his right to litigate his federal claims fully in the federal courts. We made this clear only last Term in NAACP v. Button, supra, 371 U.S., at 427, 83 S.Ct., at 335, 9 L.Ed.2d 405, when we said that 'a party has the right to return to the District Court, after obtaining the authoritative state court construction for which the court abstained, for a final determination of his claim.'

We also made clear in Button, however, that a party may elect to forgo that right. Our holding in that case was that a judgment of the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upon federal issues submitted to the state tribunals by parties remitted thereunder the abstention doctrine was 'final' for purposes of our review under 28 U.S.C. § 1257. In so determining, we held that the petitioner had elected 'to seek a complete and final adjudication of (its) rights in the state courts' and thus not to return to the District Court, and that it had manifested this election 'by seeking from the Richmond Circuit Court 'a binding adjudication' of all its claims and a permanent injunction as well as declaratory relief, by making no reservation to the disposition of the entire case by the state courts, and by coming here directly on certiorari.' 371 U.S., at 427-428, 83 S.Ct., at 335, 9 L.Ed.2d 405. We fashioned the rule recognizing such an election because we saw no inconsistency with the abstention doctrine in allowing a litigant to decide, once the federal court has abstained and compelled him to proceed in the state courts in any event, to abandon his original choice of a federal forum and submit his entire case to the state courts, relying on the opportunity to come here directly if the state decision on his federal claims should go against him. Such a choice by a litigant serves to avoid much of the delay and expense to which application of the abstention doctrine inevitably gives rise; when the choice is voluntarily made, we see no reason why it should not be given effect.

In Button, we had no need to determine what steps, if any, short of those taken by the petitioner there would suffice to manifest the election. The instant case, where appellants did not attempt to come directly to this Court but sought to return to the District Court, requires such a determination. The line drawn should be bright and clear, so that litigants shunted from federal to state courts by application of the abstention doctrine will not be exposed, not only to unusual expense and delay, but also to procedural traps operating to deprive them of their right to a District Court determination of their federal claims. It might be argued that nothing short of what was done in Button should suffice-that a litigant should retain the right to return to the District Court unless he not only litigates his federal claims in the state tribunals but seeks review of the state decision in this Court. But we see no reason why a party, after unreservedly litigating his federal claims in the state courts although not required to do so, should be allowed to ignore the adverse state decision and start all over again in the District Court. Such a rule would not only countenance an unnecessary increase in the length and cost of the litigation; it would also be a potential source of friction between the state and federal judiciaries. We implicitly rejected such a rule in Button, when we stated that a party elects to forgo his right to return to the District Court by a decision 'to seek a complete and final adjudication of his rights in the state courts.' We now explicitly hold that if a party freely and without reservation submits his federal claims for decision by the state courts, litigates them there, and has them decided there, then whether or not he seeks direct review of the state decision in this Court-he has elected to forgo his right to return to the District Court.

This rule requires clarification of our decision in Government & Civic Employees Organizing Committee, C.I.O. v. Windsor, 353 U.S. 364, 77 S.Ct. 838, 1 L.Ed.2d 894, the case referred to by the District Court. The plaintiffs in Windsor had submitted to the state courts only the question whether the state statute they challenged applied to them, and had not 'advanced' or 'presented' to those courts their contentions against the statute's constitutionality. We held that 'the bare adjudication by the Alabama Supreme Court that the (appellant) union is subject to this Act does not suffice, since that court was not asked to interpret the statute in light of the constitutional objections presented to the District Court. If appellants' freedom-of-expression and equal-protection arguments had been presented to the state court, it might have construed the statute in a different manner.' 353 U.S., at 366, 77 S.Ct., at 839, 1 L.Ed.2d 894. On oral argument in the instant case, we were advised that appellants' submission of their federal claims to the state courts had been motivated primarily by a belief that Windsor required this. The District Court likewise thought that under Windsor a party is required to litigate his federal question in the state courts and 'dare not restrict his state court case to local law issues.' 194 F.Supp., at 522. Others have read Windsor the same way. It shoul not be so read. The case does not mean that a party must litigate his federal claims in the state courts, but only that he must inform those courts what his federal claims are, so that the state statute may be construed 'in light of' those claims. See Note, 7o Harv.L.Rev. 1358, 1364-1365 (1960). Thus mere compliance with Windsor will not support a conclusion, much less create a presumption, that a litigant has freely and without reservation litigated his federal claims in the state courts and so elected not to return to the District Court.

We recognize that in the heat of litigation a party may find it difficult to avoid doing more than is required by Windsor. This would be particularly true in the typical case, such as the instant one, where the state courts are asked to construe a state statute against the backdrop of a federal constitutional challenge. The litigant denying the statute's applicability may be led not merely to state his federal constitutional claim but to argue it, for if he can persuade the state court that application of the statute to him would offend the Federal Constitution, he will ordinarily have persuaded it that the statute should not be construed as applicable to him. In addition, the parties cannot prevent the state court from rendering a decision on the federal question if it chooses to do so; and even if such a decision is not explicit, a holding that the statute is applicable may arguably imply, in view of the constitutional objections to such a construction, that the court considers the constitutional challenge to be without merit.

Despite these uncertainties arising from application of Windsor-which decision, we repeat, does not require that federal claims be actually litigated in the state courts-a party may readily forestall any conclusion that he has elected not to return to the District Court. He may accomplish this by making on the state record the 'reservation to the disposition of the entire case by the state courts' that we referred to in Button. That is, he may inform the state courts that he is exposing his federal claims there only for the purpose of complying with Windsor, and that he intends, should the state courts hold against him on the question of state law, to return to the District Court for disposition of his federal contentions. Such an explicit reservation is not indispensable; the litigant is in no event to be denied his right to return to the District Court unless it clearly appears that he voluntarily did more than Windsor required and fully litigated his federal claims in the state courts. When the reservation has been made, however, his right to return will in all events be preserved.

On the record in the instant case, the rule we announce today would call for affirmance of the District Court's judgment. But we are unwilling to apply the rule against these appellants. As we have noted, their primary reason for litigating their federal claims in the state courts was assertedly a view that Windsor required them to do so. That view was mistaken, and will not avail other litigants who rely upon it after today's decision. But we cannot say, in the face of the support given the view by respectable authorities, including the court below, that appellants were unreasonable in holding it or acting upon it. We therefore hold that the District Court should not have dismissed their action. The judgment is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Reversed and remanded.