Williams v. Reed - Post-Decision SCOTUScast

of the Federalist Society. We are here today to discuss Williams versus Reed, which was decided by the Supreme Court in a five to four decision on February twenty first, twenty twenty five. Is my honor to introduce our guest today, Professor Tyler Linley. Professor Linley is an Associate professor of law at the J. Rubin Clark Law School at Brigham Young University. His research centers on the judicial, rural, and

historical evolution of the judiciary in America. He has extensively examined published on judicial remedies, federal courts, constitutional law, and administrative law. And with that, I'd like to hand things, or to President Lee to get us started by talking about how the case got to the Supreme Court.

unemployment benefits. One was in the primary one was that the Department of Labor, the Alabama departm of Labor, was not even processing their claims, that many of these sat for more than a year. Others argued that the notice that the Department of Labor provided them about the ear preliminary decisions that could be appealed within the Department of Labor or insufficient. The Alabama Department of Labor has a

process that claimants need to go through. They submit an initial claim that has an initial determination and the statute requires that determination to be made promptly but doesn't provide a deadline. Then once that determination is made, then the claimant can appeal an adverse determination within the Department and then eventually up to the Board of Appeals, which is composed of members appointed by the governor. So this is

an intricate process. Now, Alabama also allows for eventual appeals into courts of these determinations or challenges to the process, but an Alabama statute limits the judicial jurisdiction of those

types of appeals. The statute essentially says that no circuit court, the state Circuit Court, shall permit an appeal unless that appeal has been exhausted through all of the administrative remedies, so has to go through all of the appeal process within the Department of Labor and then can come before state court. So these plaintiffs are stuck in the administrative process and they sue the Secretary of Labor, the Alabama Secretary of Labor in state court under section nineteen eighty three,

which is a federal law. So this federal law, Section nineteen eighty three is generally understood to provide a federal cause of action for any violation by state officials of an individual's constitutional or federal statutory rights. So these plaintiffs say that the delays in the process or the sufficient notice violate both the due process clause of the Constitution and the Social Security Act, which kind of sets forth the procedures that states have to follow in administering these benefits.

And so they go to state court saying, we want the state court to issue an injunction against the Secretary of Labor and the employees of the Secretary of Labor ordering them to process these applications or, in the event of the improper notice at the insufficient notice, to fix

the notice and allow an appeal. And so they want an injunctive remedy, and the Alabama courts say, well, we have an Alabama law that says all claims that come out of this out of the Secretary of Labor at kind of any benefits claims need to be exhausted before we have jurisdiction. So we don't have jurisdiction. That goes to the Alabama Supreme Court. The Supreme Court says we don't have jurisdiction, and the petitioner's appeal saying no, No, No.

Section nineteen eighty three. This federal law that we're suing under requires the states to hear this case preempts the exhaustion jurisdiction rule. And we'll get into exactly whether it's an exhaustion rule or whether it's a jurisdictional rule, but preempts that and doesn't allow its application when it comes to Section nineteen eighty three claims specifically.

if it's framed in jurisdictional terms. And so you have a couple of cases that come beforehand that maybe kind of give a little bit of color to this. One is a case called Patsy that in which a federal court had imposed an exhaustion requirement. Often exhaustion requirements are kind of unlogged common law, may you know, judge made

And the Supreme Court says in Patsy, No. Section nineteen eighty three does not have an exhaustion requirement, and an exhaustion requirement is inconsistent with this scheme where plaintiffs get to go directly to federal court and get damages or equitable relief for violations of their federal rights, whether it be constitutional or statutory. So we have that case, and then we have a case called Felder that comes out of Wisconsin. This is out of a state court and

the or at least out of a state law. And in Felder, what happened was there's a state law requiring a notice of the claim. Plaint just had to give a notice of the claim to the defendants and then let it sit for a certain amount of time before they could bring a suit. And the question was, cant does this law apply to a Section nineteen eighty three claim. And there was some dispute about whether that's truly an exhaustion requirement or kind of or what it might be.

But the Court characterizes it as an exhaustion requirement. Saying you have to kind of try an attempt to make peace with the defendant by giving a notice of claim and giving them an opportunity to settle and have discussions, and said, no, that exhaustion requirement doesn't work. It's again inconsistent with Section nineteen eighty three, therefore preempted, the state laws preempted, and courts can't apply that state law in

section nineteen eighty three cases. And the petitioners here say this is even though it's up in jurisdictional garb, this is an exhaustion requirement. So it just falls within this Patsy Felder line of cases that just say Section nineteen

eighty three can't have an exhaustion requirement. Their narrower argument is, well, this particular exhaustion requirement, even if maybe it can apply in some instances, maybe we can at least force them to go to the administrative body, the state administrative body, in some cases, it can't apply to these types of claims because these claims are challenging the process that they have to exhaust, and so it doesn't really work, and so we should just carve out these types of claims

if we were actually claiming that they had made a wrong decision. We got all the way through the appeals and they'd made a wrong decision that violates the Social Security as Act or some other federal provision, then maybe we have to exhaust right, Maybe we can't just say that in the initial determination before we appeal violates my federal rights. But here we're just challenging the process. We just want an order telling them to process our applications

or give up me sufficient notice. We're not actually challenging the ultimate determinations. And so in that instance, this exhaustion requirement has to be preempted. Now, the state is arguing argues kind of against both of those arguments on a somewhat broad broad argument, but it kind of defeats both of those arguments, which they say, hey, this is different

than an exhaustion than a typical exhaustion requirement. Although it hinges on whether you've exhausted, it deprives the court of jurisdiction, it doesn't mean that you lose. So the state says, in a normal exhaustion case, a plaintiff sues hasn't exhausted and if the time has run by which they can't exhaust or or depending on the exact exhaustion rule. Then they lose on the merits, they get a dismissal with prejudice.

They can't come back. It's over that they're done. Sometimes, you know, courts will stay the case so that they can go back and exhaust But that's but the point is is that it operates on the merits. The court has chosen to hear the case and decides the case on exhaustion grounds. They say, here this is different the Alabama Supreme Court. The Alabama courts just rejected this at the jurisdictional stage, and the plaintiffs can still go to federal court or at least arguably can maybe with some

statute of limitations complications. But they're saying that this is not us adjudicating the claim and imposing an exhaustion requirement. This is just the state deciding what's the scope of state court jurisdiction. And state courts always have jurisdictional rules, right, they say, small claims court can only handle these types of quick cases, you know, maybe circuit court or trial court or whatever it might be. We can always define

our jurisdiction. And so that defeats both the petitioners broad argument that this is an exhaustion requirement and therefore falls with an Patsy and Felder and also the narrow argument, which says, maybe this is a bad idea, but it just leaves you to go to the federal court and

that's just fine. We're just defining our jurisdiction. And so these are the types of arguments that are going on, which is do we properly view this as kind of an exhaustion requirement or is this just a run of the mill jurisdictional requirement that we generally think state courts can define their jurisdiction And it's it's not. It's it's not a matter of federal concern. If a state court just doesn't have as much jurisdiction as they might otherwise.

does not reach the broader argument. I think he says a couple of times that it's the ground that they reach is narrow, tries to emphasize the narrowness of the decision, drops a footnote saying we're not addressing the Patsy Felder argument.

So this is really it's really narrow. And so there's a line, you know, in the opening paragraph that kind of summarizes exactly where Justice Kavanaugh gets, which says, because the claimants cannot sue until they complete the administrative process, they can never sue under section nineteen eighty three to obtain an order expediting the administrative process. Okay, so the

major opinions somewhat sets aside the insufficient notice question. I didn't see the majority of picion separating that out, but at the very least it's enough to reverse the Supreme Court of Alabama saying when when a plaintiff in this type of instance is trying to challenge the delays in

the process. It's kind of a never ending loop that they can never actually come to state court because they aren't getting a decision, so they cannot exhaust and the whole and what their claim is is not this decision was wrong, but we were in permissively being denied a decision. And so that is kind of where the court where the court falls and addresses this what it claims to be a narrow a narrow holding. And yet but yet some of the reasoning might might extend a little bit

further than the majority might imagine. And that's something that the scent says. Great.

So before Heywood, we had a had a rule, or at least people understood there to be a rule that as long as the state law that prohibited state courts from a duiccating a federal claim, as long as it was a neutral rule of judicial administration, then it was okay. And we understood judicial administration to be mean. It needs to be jurisdictional, meaning we're not actually reaching the merits, we're not hearing the claim, and then saying no federal

law applies to this claim. It's it's it's jurisdictional is about administration and neutral means it needs to divide. It needs to kind of coverable state and federal claims. Not it can't target the federal claim. It can't say our

jurisdiction just doesn't extend any federal claims. Justice Thomas in Heywood and argues that actually, this discrimination rule, the idea of neutral doesn't isn't rooted in the Constitution, right, So he makes the argument that Article three, by allowing Congress to create lower federal courts, was recognizing that state courts might not hear all federal claims and that we might

need lower federal courts. Also says that the supremacy clause just talks about laws that conflict, but a law that just restricts jurisdiction doesn't actually conflict with a substantive law that governs kind of what the rights and obligations of the parties are. So he also was alone and a sole dissenter. Heywood v. Drown was also a five to four decision at the time. It was Justice Galia, Chief Justice Roberts, and Justice Alito who joined Justice Thomas on

the other part. But he was alone there, and he reiterates his argument in part one that actually there's no discrimination nondiscrimination requirement at all when it comes to state courts hearing federal claims. And then so then I'll get back to kind of what Haywood did. And this is where the dissenters in williams Our case today come back

into the play. But Justice Thomas reiterates this and says, as long as it's jurisdictional, and he defines jurisdictional by meaning it's dismissed without prejudice, meaning the state courts just won't hear the claim. You can always go to federal court later, but just you can't hear it. He says, as long as it's it's actually jurisdictional. And I agree, He says, I agree that you know it can't just be nominally jurisdictional, it actually has to be jurisdictional. Then

we shouldn't care about this. And because the Alabama law here about exhaustion is jurisdictional, we shouldn't care. Then, as you mentioned, he drops a footnote because that goes even further and says, well, we should actually reconsider two of our additional line of cases, at least might need to reconsider them. One is that there's even a due process

problem here. So the reason why there's a due process problem is that we have a case named Gold v. Kelly, and then a line of cases including Matthews v. Eldridge and others, that say, sometimes government benefits or entitlements are property within the meaning of the due process clause. It says no state shell or in the or in the Fifth Amendment, that you know, the government shall not deprive any person of life, liberty, and property withou due process

of law. And just as Thomas says, I think historically kind of government that ifits in entitlements were probably not property, you didn't have a right to them until you actually kind of received them and took a property interest in the money. And so in this case that would obviously

defeat kind of the Section nineteen eighty three claim. And then he says, we also might need to reconsider whether Section nineteen eighty three is kind of a standalone cause of action or whether it gives federal courts jurisdiction over certain state law causes of action that implicate federal rights. And this is where he cites one of my papers.

I argue that, as originally understood, section nineteen eighty three was not a standalone federal cause of action that gave kind of a new and unique individual right to come to federal court. What it did was it codified these the federal rights, which was needed to establish out a question jurisdiction. But then it allowed plaintiffs to bring whatever their state law claims were into federal court if those state law claims were seeking to vindicate a federal right.

And that's mostly you know, most of that understanding is done by the backdrop, where before nineteen thirty eight, the causes of action and actions at law were derived from from state law. As a matter of statute, Congress required federal courts to look to state law to know which causes of action or in that case the forms of

action historically would be used. But also kind of the fact that this section is very simple just says you can sue the defendants shall be liable in an action at law, and what action of law we don't know, but Justice Thomas says we should reconsider that, in which case, again section nineteen eighty three, there is no kind of standalone claim. You'd have to go to state law. And if state lawer card is exhaustion, then state law RECRD

is exhaustion a state law cause of action. So you can't bring it in federal court or in state court because Section nine ten ey three doesn't provide that independent cause of action. So now we get back to part two, where the dissenters join right, And now we have Haywood. So what does Haywood say. Haywood is is not it is, it's a it's a clear opinion, but it's unclear kind

of which line of reasoning is doing the work. So Haywood is a case from New York where New York says state courts no longer have jurisdiction over any claim for damages again by prisoners against prison officials. That includes state law claims, that includes federal law claims. So the four justice descent in in Haywood says, now, again, this is a narrower view than just Thomas's broader view that this is as long as it's purely jurisdictional. But they say, well,

this is neutral in that sense. Then it covers state law claims, and it covers federal law claims. And New York is New York. State courts are not obligated to hear a certain type of claim just because Congress wants, just because Congress has enacted a lot that effects rights and obligations. And the majority says, no, that's not enough, it's not enough just to be non discriminatory. And yet it kind of has three lines of argument at least how I read it that it's unclear which one's doing

the work. Do you need all three? Which are they all three independent? So the first one, although it says non discrimination is not enough to be neutral, it then kind of says, well, maybe this isn't really neutral because it's not about all Section nineteen eighty three claims. It's not about all defendants because it's only prison officials. And it's really not even about all types of claims against prison officials because you could bring equitable claims for injunctions

or another or other type of equitable relief. So really it's kind of jerrymandering that certain type type of claim. And yes, it includes any state law claims that happened to come within that jerrymander, but really, kind of we know what they're doing, right, The state law claims aren't

doing a lot of work there. It's really Section nineteen eighty three that allows kind of this claim to proceed and then requires state courts to apply federal law authorizes attorneys, fees, all types of benefits to bring in Section nineteen eighty three claim and the court seems to say, well, this

is two gerrymanders. But then in another analysis, the court says, well, really, this kind of just works as an immunity statute clothed in jurisdictional garb, which is kind of saying, if there's a certain type of claim that just can't be brought, then then we're we're going to be really hesitant.

and so therefore it can't be brought. And then the court also says, well, this is a unique case because New York, both in the litigation and the legislature, had said pretty explicitly, the reason why we have this rule is because we think most claims by prisoners for damages are frivolous and they waste the prison officials times and

they waste the court's times. And so the court in Heywood says, well, we don't like when this is a jurisdictional rule that is based on policy disagreement with Congress, and in that sense, it's preempted. And so we had kind of multiple lines of reasoning, and it's unclear. So let's go through those and see how the Alabama law fairs. Right, that's kind of how the dissent kind of goes about it. So on the first which says, this isn't really that neutral.

You know, maybe it's less gerrymandered than the New York law. Right, it just applies to all, you know, claims that have to do with benefits, and so it's maybe a little less jerrymandered. But the petitioners didn't make the argument that it was that it only really applied to government officials and only applied to a small subset of Section nineteen eighty three claims, so maybe it's not as neutral, right.

Heywood also said, when we're thinking about what's the purpose of jurisdictional rules that we think aren't kind of trying to be jerrymandered, we think about it as competence over the subject matter and power over the person. So, you know, the petitioners here argue, well, it's really not about either of those because they can eventually hear these claims, so they must have competence over the subject matter and the person. It's an Alabama resident and an Alabama official. There's no

concern there. The descent tries to say, well, actually, this is about concern about the subject matter. This is a specialized administrative process that courts don't know a lot about, and exhaustion helps develop the record and get to hear kind of the expertise is evaluation of the evidence before

we actually get there. Now that that rebuttal does a lot of work for why there is and it's such an exhaustion requirement, it's unclear what on a narrower argument, why that would apply to do process violations due to delay in that process. Right, Are the employees at the Department of Labor really good about knowing why there might be a delay and whether that's a due process violation? Maybe not, but it does justify why they have the

jurisdictional rule to begin with. The second one, which talks about the effects, is the one that the majority latches onto. So the majority says, as as I mentioned in the opening paragraph, because these claims can now never be broughted because you can't exhaust a claim that you're not processing

my attempts to exhaust. As a matter of an effect, it effectually prohibits these claims from ever being brought right, And it really kind of rests on a few quote out of Heywood that support that, and the Descent says that was never really a different line of reasoning if you actually understand where those quotes came from. They were really all about the purpose. They were saying New York had a policy of disagreement, and it expressed that policy

disagreement by effectually prohibiting these claims from coming. And so the Descent says, there is no evidence of purpose here, right, there's no evidence that section nineteen eighty three claims were barred. Section nineteen eighty three claims are a very very small portion of claims that are going to arise out of these benefits determinations. Most of them are going to be under state law or maybe under some kind of federal law. But those don't always have to be brought under section

nineteen eighty three. And so the descend says, well, this is all about purpose, and this is neutral, and therefore we should we should let Alabama define the scope of its courts jurisdictions, or if it's court's jurisdiction and the majority was just as Kavanaugh says, no, in a effect, this prevents a certain species of claim from being brought and that's what Heywood was really targeting, was saying, even if it's jurisdictional and truly jurisdictional, if its effect is

to prohibit a species of claim from being able to be brought in state court, then it's preempted. And that's where the majority lands.

Security Act and the due process claim? And I want to kind of exhaust that. Well, one answer is the Department of Labor. The state Department of Labor gets that letter and says, oh, you're right, we need to process your claim. Let's process your claim. In which case everyone's good. We got what we wanted anyway, because the end all the plaintiffs were seeking was an injunction compelling a decision. We get a decision. But what if they in turn sit on that letter just like they were sitting on

the initial application. Then have they exhausted? Have they not right? The descent says, well, actually, Alabama law represent has a futility exception, so it does not prevent these from being brought at all. Once you give this Department of Labor a reasonable amount of time, then you can say exhaustion is futile. Therefore I can properly bring my claim that's not raised squarely in the case. And the majority kind

of just dismisses that. But once we get beyond that, we have The descent says, kind of, the reasoning here is going to have great ripple effects, and the majority responds. The last substance of paragraph says, the descent further says, our opinion may have ripple effects, quoting the descent, but as we have emphasized our opinion today is narrow. It resolves this dispute, but it is careful not to go

beyond this court's existing precedence. Okay, So, according to the majority, it's saying, this is just a simple application of Heywood, it's a really narrow it's just these types of these specific types of claims that are barred jurisdictionally barred by an exhaustion requirement, and there's there's nothing else. Now, the descent says, Okay, you can say that over and over again.

But if your rule is it effectively prohibits a species of claim from being brought, all the work is going to be done in defining what's the species of claim. So let's say state courts say, or the state legislature says, state courts are not very good at adjudicating civil rights claims. We just don't think that they're very good for whatever reason. Right. So, but the purpose of this hypothetical is it's a concern

about competence over the subject matter. And so we're going to take out all civil rights claims, not federal claims. Not all federal claims. It includes some federal claims can still last as long as they're not civil rights claims and all civil rights state and federal right. So it's neutral. This is about the competence of the court. It's jurisdictional. They dismissed without prejudice. You can always go to federal

court for these cases. What happens then, and let's put aside the constitutionality, because maybe they can't prohibit state courts from hearing state civil rights cases. But let's put that aside in some in this this rule, this law would categorically bar a species of federal claim from being brought any Section nineteen eighty three claim period. Now is that allowed? Now?

Is that now carve out to the idea that it's a neutral rule of judicial administration when and we're going to second guess whether it's really neutral by looking at whether it has affects the competence of the court or the court's power over the people. Maybe maybe not. That's obviously, you know, a the kind of the end of the run hypothetical. But let's move it back a little bit to what happens if it's certain types of police encounters

state and federal. Does that count? What happens if it's certain types of administrative law claims okay, where the court's just the legislature just says state courts aren't very good administrative law claims. Does this effectively? Does? Is with tho? Those types of rules effectively foreclosed a species of federal claim from being brought in state court. Maybe maybe not, but that's where all the work is going to be

going forward. And now, you know, having said that, even if the court interprets that claim very very broadly, there just aren't very many of these cases, right. I mean, we have Heywood that comes down in two thousand and nine. This is the first case the Supreme Court has gone since then. There are other ones that have floated around the server courts. But it's unclear to me whether this is a big area of litigation, right. Are there lots of state laws that don't clearly fall on one side

or the other. I'm not sure. Maybe state courts are going to be less adventurous and trying because of this decision, but I'm not sure that they were beforehand either. And so, as far as you know practical effects on a broader scale, not sure how much this does. But as far as within this narrow world of Section nineteen eighty three claims in state court. You know, depend it depends on how we interpret the majority's rule. It's clear what the majority

of saying. There are certain types of narrow claims that you know, a particular species of narrow claims that you can't a state court can't effectively prohibit from coming to state court. And yet we don't know almost anything about where that line is. We have a couple of examples

in Heywood and now Williams. So you read, but we're left with some unanswered questions that again because of the background of this, maybe we don't ever actually see answered, because this isn't really an area where state courts are pushing the boundaries. Right. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Tyler. It's always great to see great Thank you, I appreciate it.

what the law is, not what it should be. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast series, including SCO Discasts and Practice Group podcasts, on iTunes or Google Play. For an archive of past podcasts, as well as audio and video of past Federalist Society events, please visit our website at fedsoc.