Abortion, Colorado River, and Interpleader
The true superpower of the lawyer is to turn all questions into questions about procedure—often, about procedure about procedure.
A short excerpt from today's long Braid v. Stilley, written by Seventh Circuit Judge Michael Scudder and joined by Chief Judge Diane Sykes and Judge Thomas Kirsch:
In September 2021 Dr. Alan Braid, a Texas OB/GYN, wrote an editorial in the Washington Post admitting he performed an abortion in violation of the Texas Heartbeat Act. Three individuals from three different states reacted by each invoking the citizen-suit enforcement provision of the Texas Heartbeat Act and seeking to recover at least $10,000 in statutory damages.
Now facing the prospect of duplicative liability, Dr. Braid made use of the federal interpleader statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1335, to join the claimants in a single suit. But, in an odd twist, he did not do so by going to any Texas federal court but instead by filing suit in federal court in Chicago. In addition to his interpleader claim, Dr. Braid sought declaratory relief, urging the district court to declare the Texas Heartbeat Act unconstitutional.
The district court dismissed Dr. Braid's entire suit, concluding that the existence of parallel state-court proceedings justified abstention under the Supreme Court's Wilton-Brillhart doctrine. Though we chart a different course of reasoning, we ultimately reach the same end point and therefore affirm the dismissal of Dr. Braid's federal case….
Like the district court, the parties, too, recognize that this case is far from an ordinary interpleader case which follows a similar and well-known pattern: "a neutral stakeholder, usually an insurance company or a bank," sues in federal court to force "all the claimants" to the policy or fund "to litigate their claims in a single action brought by the stakeholder." Congress originally limited our jurisdiction to this narrow set of claims, specifying that statutory interpleader applied only to actions brought by "any insurance company or fraternal beneficiary society."
But over time Congress expanded the remedy's availability, amending the statute in 1936 to make interpleader available to "any person, firm, corporation, association, or society … under any obligation written or unwritten to the amount of $500 or more" to which two or more adverse and diverse claimants assert entitlement. This amendment also extended the jurisdiction of the federal courts to actions "in the nature of interpleader," thereby "relax[ing]" some of the remedy's common-law requirements, including "that the stakeholder be neutral and that the conflicting claims have the same origin." …
The Seventh Circuit concluded that federal courts should apply so-called "Colorado River abstention" to leave the matter to state courts:
Colorado River authorizes federal courts to defer to parallel state-court proceedings in "exceptional" cases "where abstention would promote 'wise judicial administration.'" … We see several considerations weighing … heavily in favor of abstention …. Foremost, not only are the Texas courts capable of resolving Dr. Braid's claims, but they are also better suited, making the federal forum inconvenient. A fundamental problem with Dr. Braid's federal interpleader claim becomes readily apparent upon considering a question at its epicenter: how is a federal court to apportion damages among multiple competing S.B. 8 claimants? As the district court underscored, the Texas legislature provided no guidance on this issue, so any decision on this important question of state law would be little more than a shot in the dark given S.B. 8's deliberate uniqueness.
Taking a closer look at Dr. Braid's claims for declaratory relief, much the same problem persists …. [H]is constitutional challenges would require us to interpret S.B. 8 in the first instance, defining its contours and giving shape to the limitations it imposes on civil defendants—a question governed wholly by Texas law—before we can proceed to the second step and determine whether a particular dimension of the Act violates Dr. Braid's constitutional rights. To engage in this type of detailed analysis would require a federal court to answer novel state-law questions without a fulsome understanding of Texas procedure—including, for example, Texas's application of the constitutional avoidance and severability doctrines, to name a few issues—leaving us to reason on our back foot.
Against this backdrop, the risk of intrusion on federal-state comity is substantial, and we see no sufficient countervailing concern to justify federal court intervention. To the contrary, the state courts were the first to obtain jurisdiction over this controversy when the three plaintiffs sued Dr. Braid in Texas state court. And we are confident that the state courts, and perhaps ultimately the Texas Supreme Court, are much better positioned to resolve the full range of complex questions before us about S.B. 8's permissible application in circumstances like those pressed by Dr. Braid's multi-faceted constitutional challenge to the enactment. It strikes us as inevitable that the Texas courts in time will all but have to supply answers given the many suits filed by non-parties challenging the constitutionality of S.B. 8 as Dr. Braid does here.
Abstention also avoids the danger of piecemeal litigation and conflicting judgments, the very problem Dr. Braid seeks to avoid…. Abstaining is also appropriate considering that resolution of an issue of state law may moot Dr. Braid's federal suit, thereby providing for a cleaner and more efficient resolution of this litigation. While these federal proceedings have been ongoing, a Texas trial court dismissed plaintiff Gomez's state suit against Dr. Braid because it found he lacked standing under the Texas Constitution. The Texas Court of Appeals affirmed, stopping short of examining the merits of that conclusion. It stands to reason, then, that if a Texas court concludes that S.B. 8's citizen-suit provision falters under the Texas Constitution, there would be no need for any court, state or federal, to supply answers under the U.S. Constitution.
The court then concluded:
As a final note, and to state the obvious, this lawsuit reflects an element of forum-shopping. Dr. Braid, a Texas physician, has asked a federal court in Illinois to adjudicate his liability and pass upon the constitutionality of a Texas law, in part, to avoid resolving those same issues in the state-court system, which he characterizes as rigged against him.
We offer this observation not as a criticism, for there is no question S.B. 8 has put Dr. Braid in a difficult predicament. Our more limited observation is only to underscore that abstention is particularly appropriate in a case like this one where we see no connection between the subject matter of the controversy and the federal venue sought.
In the end, because Dr. Braid's federal claim would require the district court to wade into complex and unsettled questions of state law (with difficult federal constitutional claims waiting in the wings), and thereby disregard the existence of parallel state proceedings capable of providing the answers, we find that exceptional circumstances exist which warrant abstention under Colorado River.