IV. State Court Jurisdiction

• Library: Sword and Shield: A Practical Approach to Section 1983 Litigation (ABA) (2015 Ed.)

IV. STATE COURT JURISDICTION

A. Concurrent Jurisdiction

Unlike § 1983, which is only a cause of action, section 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871 contained both a cause of action and a jurisdictional provision.⁴⁵ The latter was necessary because in 1871 there was no general federal question jurisdictional provision for the federal courts.⁴⁶ In the 1874 codification of the U.S. statutes, however, Congress separated the jurisdictional provision from the cause of action,⁴⁷ and this division continues today. Thus, it is necessary to look someplace other than § 1983 to determine whether state or federal courts have jurisdiction over § 1983 actions.

Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction, and there must be an affirmative grant of subject-matter jurisdiction before a federal court may entertain a civil action.⁴⁸ State courts, however, are courts of general jurisdiction,⁴⁹ and the Supreme Court has relied on the presumption of concurrent jurisdiction⁵⁰ that characterizes our system of judicial federalism to hold that state courts have concurrent jurisdiction over § 1983 actions.⁵¹

B. The Nondiscrimination Principle, Valid Excuses, and the Affirmative Duty to Entertain Section 1983 Suits

The Supreme Court has provided some guidance as to whether state courts are obligated to exercise concurrent jurisdiction over § 1983 suits. The Court has treated the nondiscrimination principle as preventing state courts from excluding § 1983 claims on a discriminatory basis, though it has not decided whether federal law requires states to create forums that can entertain § 1983 claims⁵² or whether state courts are under an affirmative obligation to treat § 1983 suits more favorably than analogous state-law claims. On the other hand, the Court has left states with an ability, albeit only a limited ability, to exclude § 1983 and other federal claims through the use rules of judicial administration.

The nondiscrimination principle has its roots in litigation in the early part of the 20th century involving the refusal of state courts to entertain suits under the Federal Employers' Liability Act (FELA). Some state courts were reluctant to entertain FELA claims, but the Court relied upon the nondis-crimination principle to impose an obligation on state courts to entertain FELA and ultimately other federal causes of action.

In Mondou v. New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad,⁵³ the Court held that the state courts of Connecticut could not refuse to exercise jurisdiction over FELA cases. Building on cases establishing the principle of concurrent jurisdiction, the Court stated that "[t]he existence of the jurisdiction creates an implication of duty to exercise it, and that its exercise may be onerous does not militate against that implication."⁵⁴

In McKnett v. St. Louis and San Francisco Railway,⁵⁵ the Court elevated the principle of nondiscrimination from a rule of statutory construction to a constitutional principle in holding that Alabama could not refuse to hear transitory FELA actions between nonresidents on out-of-state accidents when it heard similar transitory actions under state law as well as nontransitory FELA actions. Thus, state courts of general jurisdiction may not refuse to hear claims solely because they are brought under federal law.

In Testa v. Katt,⁵⁶ the Rhode Island state courts refused to hear actions under the federal Emergency Price Control Act because the actions included claims for treble damages. Previously, the Court had upheld nondiscrimina-tory refusals to entertain a subclass of federal causes of action when states had "valid excuses" for such partial exclusions.⁵⁷ The Testa Court, however, held that the failure to enforce "penal" statutes of other jurisdictions, including those of the United States, was not a valid excuse when the state court entertained the "same type" of state-law claims as well as double-damage claims under other federal statutes.

The Supreme Court has applied this nondiscrimination principle to state court § 1983 litigation. In Martinez v. California,⁵⁸ the Court reserved the question of whether state courts are obligated to entertain § 1983 actions, but it observed that "where the same type of claim, if arising under state law, would be enforced in the state courts, the state courts are generally not free to refuse enforcement of the federal claim."⁵⁹

In Howlett v. Rose,⁶⁰ the Court unanimously rejected an argument that sovereign immunity represented a jurisdictional limitation on the power of the Florida courts. Comparing § 1983 actions to the tort claims against state entities that Florida entertained in its courts of general jurisdiction, and looking at the exercise of jurisdiction by Florida courts over § 1983 actions against individuals, the Howlett Court held that federal law required the Florida courts to entertain § 1983 actions against local school boards.⁶¹ In taking this position, the Court defined broadly the comparison to be made under the nondiscrimination principle and made clear that states that opened their courts to § 1983 actions may not pick and choose among the § 1983 actions they wished to entertain by classifying state policies as jurisdictional.⁶²

Given the breadth of the nondiscrimination principle, state courts are, in effect, required to hear § 1983 actions. To exclude § 1983 cases, a state would have to close its courts to similar actions authorized by state and federal law against state and local governmental bodies and their employees. Although such wholesale exclusions of legal challenges to governmental action are theoretically possible, they are so implausible that one commentator has concluded that the nondiscrimination principle imposes a "de facto obligatory jurisdiction" on state courts.⁶³

Although the Court has not squarely decided whether state courts are under an affirmative duty to hear § 1983 causes of action when they exclude analogous state causes of action, the Court in Howlett noted that "[v]irtu-ally every state has expressly or by implication opened its courts to § 1983 actions and there are no state court systems that refuse to hear § 1983 cases."⁶⁴ This willingness of state courts to open their doors voluntarily to § 1983 claims has made it unlikely that the Court will have to address the ultimate question of whether a state may simply refuse to hear all § 1983 actions.

Nonetheless, the Court has given state courts the theoretical option of refusing to entertain § 1983 and other federal causes of action when they "have valid excuses."⁶⁵ The Howlett Court alluded to this possibility when it noted that "[a] state court may not deny a federal right, when the parties and controversy are properly before it, in the absence of 'valid excuse.'"⁶⁶Although acknowledging that in some circumstances state courts may rely on neutral state policies to refuse to exercise jurisdiction over federal cases, the Court defined narrowly the type of jurisdictional and other rules that it would accept as "valid excuses":

The fact that a rule is denominated jurisdictional does not provide a court an excuse to avoid the obligation to enforce federal law if the rule does not reflect the concerns of power over the person and competence over the subject matter that jurisdictional rules are designed to protect.⁶⁷

The Howlett Court also noted that the cases in which it had found valid excuses for state court refusals to entertain federal causes of action involved the application of neutral rules of judicial administration, including state policies involving forum non conveniens, the jurisdiction of state courts of limited jurisdiction, and access to state courts by nonresidents.⁶⁸ Finally, the Court concluded that it "is quite inadmissible" for states to decline jurisdiction over federally created causes of action because of disagreements with federal policy.⁶⁹

In National Private Truck Council, Inc. v. Oklahoma Tax Commission,⁷⁰a state court § 1983 challenge to state tax policies, the...