Courthouse News Serv. v. Gilmer

48 F.4th 908

COURTHOUSE NEWS SERVICE, Plaintiff - Appellant

v.Joan M. GILMER, in her official capacity as the Clerk of the Circuit Court of St. Louis County, Missouri; Kathy Lloyd, in her official capacity as State Courts Administrator for the Missouri Office of State Courts Administrator, Defendants - Appellees

No. 21-2632

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: April 14, 2022

Filed: September 19, 2022

Counsel who presented argument on behalf of the appellant was Barbara A. Smith, of Saint Louis, MO. The following attorneys appeared on the appellant brief; James Bennett Clark, of Saint Louis, MO., Katherine Keating, of San Francisco, CA., Jonathan G. Fetterly, of San Francisco, CA., and Roger R. Myers, of San Francisco, CA.

Counsel who presented argument on behalf of the appellees and appeared on the appellees’ brief was Jeff P. Johnson, AAG, of Jefferson City, MO.

Before SHEPHERD, ERICKSON, and STRAS, Circuit Judges.

STRAS, Circuit Judge.

This case presents two questions. First, does sovereign immunity protect state-court officials who run an e-filing system that delays public access to newly filed civil petitions? Second, should federal courts abstain from hearing this type of case anyway? We conclude that the answer to both questions is no, so we reverse and remand for further proceedings.

I.

Courthouse News is a national "news service that reports on civil litigation in state and federal courts throughout the country." Courthouse News Serv. v. Schaefer , 2 F.4th 318, 322 (4th Cir. 2021). For years, it has published staff-written summaries on newly filed complaints (called "petitions" in Missouri). In St. Louis County, access used to be easy. Reporters could go to a bin at the intake counter in the clerk's office and review them.

When Missouri switched to an e-filing system, same-day access became the exception, not the rule. Newly filed petitions remain unavailable until court staff processes them, which can sometimes take "a week or more." According to Courthouse News, only five percent of petitions are now available on the day of filing.

Courthouse News wants same-day access again. It made its views known in a letter to Joan Gilmer, the Circuit Clerk for St. Louis County, and Kathy Lloyd, the Missouri State Courts Administrator. But Lloyd denied the request because the new system does not have "the ability ... to give access to new cases filed prior to clerk acceptance."

Now Courthouse News has sued them both in federal court. It alleges in its complaint that the delays violate the First Amendment. See Flynt v. Lombardi , 885 F.3d 508, 512 (8th Cir. 2018) (discussing the First Amendment right-of-public-access theory). And it seeks declaratory and injunctive relief to remedy the injury.

In their motion to dismiss, Gilmer and Lloyd asked the district court to either abstain under Younger v. Harris , 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971), or rule that Courthouse News's complaint failed to state a First Amendment claim. The district court decided to abstain and never ruled on the merits. Our focus is the same, except Gilmer and Lloyd have raised one new jurisdictional issue that we have to address first: sovereign immunity. See Edelman v. Jordan , 415 U.S. 651, 677–78, 94 S.Ct. 1347, 39 L.Ed.2d 662 (1974) (explaining that appellate courts must decide whether state sovereign immunity exists even if the argument was never "raised in the trial court").

II.

Under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, "[s]tates are immune from suit." Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson , ––– U.S. ––––, 142 S. Ct. 522, 532, 211 L.Ed.2d 316 (2021). One "narrow exception," however, is "grounded in traditional equity practice": "preventing state executive officials from enforcing state laws that are contrary to federal law." Id. (discussing the Ex parte Young exception). It "rests on the premise—less delicately called a ‘fiction’—that when a federal court commands a state official to do nothing more than refrain from violating federal law," the state is no longer the real "party in interest." Va. Off. for Prot. & Advoc. v. Stewart , 563 U.S. 247, 255, 131 S.Ct. 1632, 179 L.Ed.2d 675 (2011) (citations omitted). "In determining whether the doctrine of Ex parte Young avoids an Eleventh Amendment bar to suit, a court need only conduct a straightforward inquiry into whether the complaint alleges an ongoing violation of federal law and seeks relief properly characterized as prospective." Id. (brackets and quotation marks omitted).

Analyzing the issue de novo, see Fryberger v. Univ. of Ark. , 889 F.3d 471, 473 (8th Cir. 2018), we conclude this case checks all the Ex parte Young boxes. Courthouse News alleges that the delays give rise to ongoing violations of the First Amendment.¹ And it seeks only prospective relief, not damages: declaratory and injunctive relief from two state officials who have a "connection" to the e-filing system. Reprod. Health Servs. of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, Inc. v. Nixon , 428 F.3d 1139, 1145 (8th Cir. 2005) ; see also Mahn v. Jefferson Cnty. , 891 F.3d 1093, 1099 (8th Cir. 2018) (concluding that Ex parte Young permitted an official-capacity suit against a Missouri state-court clerk by an ex-employee seeking reinstatement).

There is one wrinkle, though. Neither Gilmer nor Lloyd is an executive official. See Jackson , 142 S. Ct. at 532. Rather, under Missouri law, the offices they hold lie squarely within the judicial branch.²

And Ex parte Young suggests a special rule applies to courts. 209 U.S. 123, 163, 28 S.Ct. 441, 52 L.Ed. 714 (1908). It states, for example, that "the right to enjoin ... a state official ... does not include the power to restrain a court from acting in any case brought before it" and that "an injunction against a state court would be a violation of the whole scheme of our [g]overnment." Id.

Those same statements came into play nearly a century later in Jackson . The question there was whether a federal court could enjoin state-court clerks from docketing abortion cases under Texas's Heartbeat Abortion Ban. 142 S. Ct. at 532. In answering no, the Supreme Court made clear that Ex parte Young ’s no-injunctions rule extended to other state-court officials too. See id. Gilmer and Lloyd's position is that the same goes for them.

The problem is that Ex parte Young had a particular type of injunction in mind: one that would "restrain a [state] court from acting" or from "exercis[ing] jurisdiction" in a case. 209 U.S. at 163, 28 S.Ct. 441. The injunction here, even if Courthouse News is ultimately successful, will not prevent any Missouri court from "acting" or "exercis[ing] jurisdiction" in any case. Id. All it will do is require Gilmer to release newly filed petitions earlier than she might otherwise have. That is not the type of relief that will upset "the whole scheme of ... [g]overnment." Id.

Nothing in Jackson is to the contrary. In describing how the Ex parte Young exception works in cases seeking relief against a state-court official, the Supreme Court used important qualifiers. Far from laying out an absolute rule, the Court said that it "does not normally permit federal courts to issue injunctions against state-court judges or clerks" because "[u]sually , those individuals do not enforce state laws as executive officials might; instead, they work to resolve disputes between parties." Jackson , 142 S. Ct. at 532 (emphases added). The rule, in other words, has not changed over the last century: state sovereign immunity shields state-court judges and clerks from prospective relief that will interfere with their ability to "act[ ] in any case." Ex parte Young , 209 U.S. at 163, 28 S.Ct. 441. And a lawsuit aimed at preventing state-court clerks from docketing abortion cases is a case in point. Jackson , 142 S. Ct. at 532.

This case, by contrast, is more like a classic Ex parte Young suit brought against an executive official. Courthouse News is asking a federal court to order Gilmer and Lloyd to carry out their "administrative dut[ies]" differently. Kodiak Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. v. Burr , 932 F.3d 1125, 1131–32 (8th Cir. 2019) (stating that "clerk[s] of court" who engage in "supervisory and administrative duties" are subject to suit under Ex parte Young ). So this lawsuit is about "enjoin[ing] named defendants from taking specified unlawful actions," Jackson , 142 S. Ct. at 535, not "enjoin[ing] courts from proceeding in their own way to exercise jurisdiction," Ex parte Young , 209 U.S. at 163, 28 S.Ct. 441.

Looking deeper into Jackson ’s reasoning reveals two other meaningful differences. First, the "traditional remedy" if a "state court errs" is "some form of appeal ... not the entry of an ex ante injunction preventing the state court from hearing cases." Jackson , 142 S. Ct. at 532. Missouri's implementation of its e-filing system is not the type of decision that gets appealed, at least not in the usual way.

Second, the adversity between the parties that was missing in Jackson is present here. Id. ("Clerks serve to file cases as they arrive, not to participate as adversaries in those disputes."). Courthouse News complains about delays in the e-filing system, not the merits of any underlying lawsuit. On that point, Courthouse News is adverse to Gilmer and Lloyd: Courthouse News wants them to make newly filed petitions available more quickly and they just want to follow existing procedures, which involve making petitions available once court staff has processed them.

We understand that this lawsuit toes a fine line between directly interfering with state-court operations and potentially vindicating a litigant's constitutional rights. It also places the district court in the uncomfortable position of conceivably telling Missouri courts how to implement their own e-filing system. Although we are "wary of approving new encroachments on sovereignty," we conclude that, whatever may stand in the way of Courthouse News's lawsuit, sovereign immunity is not it. Stewart , 563...