Lynch v. Household Finance Corporation/Opinion of the Court

MR. JUSTICE STEWART delivered the opinion of the Court.

In 1968, the appellant, Mrs. Dorothy Lynch, a resident of New Haven, Connecticut, directed her employer to deposit $10 of her $69 weekly wage in a credit union savings account. In 1969, appellee Household Finance Corp. sued Mrs. Lynch for $525 in a state court, alleging nonpayment of a promissory note. Before she was served with process, the appellee corporation garnished her savings account under the provisions of Connecticut law that authorize summary pre-judicial garnishment at the behest of attorneys for alleged creditors.

The appellant then brought this class action in a federal district court against Connecticut sheriffs who levy on bank accounts and against creditors who [p540] invoke the garnishment statute. Mrs. Lynch alleged that she had no prior notice of the garnishment and no opportunity to be heard. She claimed that the state statutes were invalid under the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, and sought declaratory and injunctive relief pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and its jurisdictional counterpart, 28 U.S.C. § 1343 (3). A district court of three judges was convened to hear the claim under 28 U.S.C. §§ 2281 and 2284.

[p541] The District Court did not reach the merits of the case. It dismissed the complaint without an evidentiary hearing on the grounds that it lacked jurisdiction under § 1343 (3) and that relief was barred by the statute prohibiting injunctions against state court proceedings, 28 U.S.C. § 2283. 318 F. Supp. 1111. We noted probable jurisdiction, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1253, to consider the jurisdictional issues presented. 401 U.S. 935.

[p542] We hold, for the reasons that follow, that neither § 1343 (3) nor § 2283 warranted dismissal of the appellant's complaint. Accordingly, we remand the case to the District Court for consideration of the remaining issues in this litigation.

I
In dismissing the appellant's complaint, the District Court held that § 1343 (3) applies only if "personal" rights, as opposed to "property" rights, are allegedly impaired. The court relied on the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Eisen v. Eastman, 421 F. 2d 560, 563, which rested, in turn, on Mr. Justice Stone's well-known opinion a generation ago in Hague v. CIO, 307 U.S. 496, 531. See also, e.g., Weddle v. Director, 436 F. 2d 342; Bussie v. Long, 383 F. 2d 766; Howard v. Higgins, 379 F. 2d 227.

This Court has never adopted the distinction between personal liberties and proprietary rights as a guide to the contours of § 1343 (3) jurisdiction. Today we expressly reject that distinction.

A
[p543] Neither the words of § 1343 (3) nor the legislative history of that provision distinguishes between personal and property rights. In fact, the Congress that enacted the predecessor of §§ 1983 and 1343 (3) seems clearly to have intended to provide a federal judicial forum for the redress of wrongful deprivations of property by persons acting under color of state law.

This Court has traced the origin of § 1983 and its jurisdictional counterpart to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27. Adickes v. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 162-163; Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 171, 183-185. That Act guaranteed "broad and sweeping... [p544] protection" to basic civil rights. Sullivan v. Little Hunting Park, 396 U.S. 229, 237. Acquisition, enjoyment, and alienation of property were among those rights. Jones v. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409, 432.

The Fourteenth Amendment vindicated for all persons the rights established by the Act of 1866. Monroe, supra, at 171; Hague, supra, at 509-510. "It cannot be doubted that among the civil rights intended to be protected from discriminatory state action by the Fourteenth Amendment are the rights to acquire, enjoy, own, and dispose of property. Equality in the enjoyment of property rights was regarded by the framers of that Amendment as an essential pre-condition to the realization of other basic civil rights and liberties which the Amendment was intended to guarantee." Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1, 10. See also, Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60, 74-79; H. Flack, The Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment 75-78, 81, 90-97 (1908); J. tenBroek, The Antislavery Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment (1951).

[p545] The broad concept of civil rights embodied in the 1866 Act and in the Fourteenth Amendment is unmistakably evident in the legislative history of § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 17 Stat. 13, the direct lineal ancestor of §§ 1983 and 1343 (3). Not only was § 1 of the 1871 Act derived from § 2 of the 1866 Act, but the 1871 Act was passed for the express purpose of "enforc[ing] the Provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment." 17 Stat. 13. And the rights that Congress sought to protect in the Act of 1871 were described by the chairman of the House Select Committee that drafted the legislation as "the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the right to acquire and possess property of every kind, and to pursue and obtain happiness and safety." Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., App. 69 (1871) (Rep. Shellabarger, quoting from Corfield v. Coryell, 6 F. Cas. 546, 551-552 (No. 3230) (CCED Pa.)). [p546] That the protection of property as well as personal rights was intended is also confirmed by President Grant's message to Congress urging passage of the legislation, and by the remarks of many members of Congress during the legislative debates.

B
In 1875, Congress granted the federal courts jurisdiction of "all suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity... arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States." 18 Stat. 470. Unlike § 1343 (3), this general federal-question provision, the forerunner of 28 U.S.C. § 1331, required that a minimum amount in controversy be alleged and proved. Mr. Justice Stone's opinion in Hague, supra, as well as the federal court decisions that followed it, e.g., Eisen v. Eastman, 421 F. 2d 560, reflect the view that there is an apparent [p547] conflict between §§ 1343 (3) and 1331,, i.e., that a broad reading of § 1343 (3) to include all rights secured by the Constitution would render § 1331, and its amount-in-controversy requirement, superfluous. These opinions sought to harmonize the two jurisdictional provisions by construing § 1343 (3) as conferring federal jurisdiction of suits brought under § 1983 only when the right asserted is personal, not proprietary.

The initial failure of this reasoning is that the supposed conflict between §§ 1343 (3) and 1331 simply does not exist. Section 1343 (3) applies only to alleged infringements of rights under "color of... State law," whereas § 1331 contains no such requirement. Thus, for example, in suits against federal officials for alleged deprivations of constitutional rights, it is necessary to satisfy the amount-in-controversy requirement for federal jurisdiction. See Oestereich v. Selective Service Board, 393 U.S. 233; Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388.

But the more fundamental point to be made is that any such contraction of § 1343 (3) jurisdiction is not [p548] supported by the legislative history of § 1331. The 1875 Act giving the federal courts power to hear suits arising under Art. III, § 2, of the Constitution was, like the Act of 1871, an expansion of national authority over matters that, before the Civil War, had been left to the States. F. Frankfurter & J. Landis, The Business of the Supreme Court 65 (1928); Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U.S. 241, 245-248; Chadbourn & Levin, Original Jurisdiction of Federal Questions, 90 U. Pa. L. Rev. 639, 645 (1942). The Act, therefore, is "clearly... part of, rather than an exception to, the trend of legislation which preceded it." Chadbourn & Levin, supra, at 645; Zwickler, supra. There was very little discussion of the measure before its enactment, in contrast to the extensive congressional debate that attended the passage of the Act of 1871. And there is, as a result, no indiction whatsoever that Congress, in a rather hastily passed measure, intended to narrow the scope of a provision passed four years earlier as part of major civil rights legislation.

[p549] The "cardinal rule... that repeals by implication are not favored," Posadas v. National City Bank, 296 U.S. 497, 503; Jones v. Mayer Co., 392 U.S., at 437, thus counsels a refusal to pare down § 1343 (3) jurisdiction—and the substantive scope of § 1983—by means of the distinction between personal liberties and property rights, or in any other way. The statutory descendants of § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 must be given the meaning and sweep that their origins and their language dictate.

Moreover, although the purpose of the amount-in-controversy requirement is to reduce congestion in the federal courts, S. Rep. No. 1830, 85th Cong., 2d Sess. (1958), Congress has substantially lessened its importance with respect to § 1331 by passing many statutes that confer federal-question jurisdiction without an amount-in-controversy requirement. So it was that [p550] when Congress increased the jurisdictional amount from $3,000 to $10,000, Act of July 25, 1958, 72 Stat. 415, it made clear that its primary concern was to reduce the federal judiciary's workload with regard to cases arising under federal diversity jurisdiction, 28 U.S.C. § 1332, not under § 1331.

A final, compelling reason for rejecting a "personal liberties" limitation upon § 1343 (3) is the virtual [p551] impossibility of applying it. The federal courts have been particularly bedeviled by "mixed" cases in which both personal and property rights are implicated, and the line between them has been difficult to draw with any consistency or principled objectivity. The case [p552] before us presents a good example of the conceptual difficulties created by the test.

Such difficulties indicate that the dichotomy between personal liberties and property rights is a false one. Property does not have rights. People have rights. The right to enjoy property without unlawful deprivation, no less than the right to speak or the right to travel, is in truth a "personal" right, whether the "property" in question be a welfare check, a home, or a savings account. In fact, a fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property. Neither could have meaning without the other. That rights in property are basic civil rights has long been recognized. J. Locke, Of Civil Government 82-85 (1924); J. Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, in F. Coker, Democracy, Liberty, and Property 121-132 (1942); 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *138-140. Congress recognized these rights in 1871 when it enacted the predecessor of §§ 1983 and 1343 (3). We do no more than reaffirm the judgment of Congress today.

II
Under 28 U.S.C. § 2283, a federal court may not "grant an injunction to stay proceedings in a State court except as expressly authorized by Act of Congress, or where necessary in aid of its jurisdiction, or to protect or effectuate its judgments." The District Court relied upon this statute as an alternative ground for the [p553] dismissal of the appellant's complaint. The appellant contends that § 2283 is inapplicable to this case because prejudgment garnishment under Conn. Gen. Stat. Rev. § 52-329 is not a proceeding in state court. We agree.

In Connecticut, garnishment is instituted without judicial order. Ibid.; 1 E. Stephenson, Connecticut Civil Procedure 151 (2d ed. 1970). The levy of garnishment—usually effected by a deputy sheriff—does not confer jurisdiction on state courts and may, in fact, [p554] occur prior to commencement of an alleged creditor's suit. Young v. Margiotta, 136 Conn. 429, 433, 71 A. 2d 924, 926. Despite the state court's control over the plaintiff's docketed case, garnishment is "distinct from and independent of that action." Potter v. Appleby, 136 Conn. 641, 643, 73 A. 2d 819, 820. The garnished property is secured, not under authority of the court, but merely in the hands of the garnishee. Conn. Gen. Stat. Rev. § 52-329. Prejudgment garnishment is thus levied and maintained without the participation of the state courts.

In this case, the appellant sought to enjoin garnishment proceedings, not the finance company's suit on the promissory note. The District Court noted that "garnishment may be separated from the underlying in personam action," but held that § 2283 was a bar because the interference with existing creditors' suits caused by such an injunction "probably would be substantial." 318 F. Supp., at 1115. According to the appellees, interference would occur because garnishment is necessary to make any eventual judgment in the pending state suit effective. Hill v. Martin, 296 U.S. 393, 403.

This argument is not persuasive in the context of the Connecticut prejudgment garnishment scheme. Garnishment might serve to make a subsequent judgment effective. Cf. Hill, supra; Manufacturers Record Publishing Co. v. Lauer, 268 F. 2d 187, cert. denied, 361 U.S. 913; Furnish v. Board of Medical Examiners of California, 257 F. 2d 520, cert. denied, 358 U.S. 882. But the garnishment was, in this case, an action taken by private parties who were not proceeding under a court's supervision and who were using, as agents, [p555] state officials who were themselves not acting pursuant to a court order or under a court's authority.

In Hill, supra, we said that the "proceeding" that a federal court is forbidden to enjoin "includes all steps taken or which may be taken in the state court or by its officers from the institution to the close of the final process." Id., at 403 (emphasis supplied). In this case, the garnishment occurred before the appellee corporation had served the appellant with process.

More important, the state court and its officers are insulated from control over the garnishment. Connecticut appears to be one of the few States authorizing an attorney for an alleged creditor to garnish or attach property without any participation by a judge or clerk of the court. Stephenson, supra, at 230. A person whose account has been seized can get only minimal relief at best. The state courts have held that they cannot enjoin a garnishment on the ground that it was levied unconstitutionally. Michael's Jewelers v. Handy, 6 Conn. Cit. 103, 266 A. 2d 904; Harris v. Barone, 147 Conn. 233, 158 A. 2d 855. One assumption underlying § 2283 is that state courts will vindicate constitutional claims as fairly and efficiently as federal courts. But this assumption cannot obtain when the doors of the [p556] state courts are effectively closed to a person seeking to enjoin a garnishment on constitutional grounds.

Because of the extrajudicial nature of Connecticut garnishment, an injunction against its maintenance is not, therefore, barred by the terms of § 2283. In light of this conclusion, we need not decide whether § 1983 is an exception to § 2283 "expressly authorized by Act of Congress." We have explicitly left that question open in other decisions. And we may put it to one side in this case because the state act that the federal court was asked to enjoin was not a proceeding "in a State court" within the meaning of § 2283.

We conclude, therefore, that the District Court had jurisdiction to entertain the appellant's suit for an injunction under § 1983. Accordingly, the judgment before us is reversed, and the case remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

MR. JUSTICE POWELL and MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.