Michael Patrick GAVIN, in his own behalf and on behalf of all others similarly situated; Ed Clark, in his own behalf and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Terry BRANSTAD; Charles Palmer; Walter Kautzky; Herb Maschner; John Emmett; Larry Moline; Charles Naugling; Steven Korb; Mike Foehring; John Fullenkamp; Eldon Degrange; Fred Cole; Ron Meyers; Charles Free; Randy Martin, Defendants-Appellants, United States of America, Intervenor Defendant.
Michael Patrick GAVIN, in his own behalf and on behalf of all others similarly situated; Ed Clark, in his own behalf and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Terry BRANSTAD; Charles Palmer; Walter Kautzky; Herb Maschner; John Emmett; Larry Moline; Charles Naugling; Steven Korb; Mike Foehring; John Fullenkamp; Eldon Degrange; Fred Cole; Ron Meyers; Charles Free; Randy Martin, Defendants, United States of America, Intervenor Defendant-Appellant.
Nos. 96-3746, 96-3748
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit
Decided Aug. 5, 1997
Rehearing and Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc Denied Oct. 7, 1997.
122 F.3d 1081
v.
Terry BRANSTAD; Charles Palmer; Walter Kautzky; Herb Maschner; John Emmett; Larry Moline; Charles Naugling; Steven Korb; Mike Foehring; John Fullenkamp; Eldon Degrange; Fred Cole; Ron Meyers; Charles Free; Randy Martin, Defendants-Appellants,
United States of America, Intervenor Defendant.
Michael Patrick GAVIN, in his own behalf and on behalf of all others similarly situated; Ed Clark, in his own behalf and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellees,
v.
Terry BRANSTAD; Charles Palmer; Walter Kautzky; Herb Maschner; John Emmett; Larry Moline; Charles Naugling; Steven Korb; Mike Foehring; John Fullenkamp; Eldon Degrange; Fred Cole; Ron Meyers; Charles Free; Randy Martin, Defendants,
United States of America, Intervenor Defendant-Appellant.
Nos. 96-3746, 96-3748.
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Submitted May 21, 1997.
Decided Aug. 5, 1997.
Rehearing and Suggestion for Rehearing En Banc Denied Oct. 7, 1997.
John C. Hoyle, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Division, Washington, DC, argued, for appellant in No. 96-3748.
Barbara A. Schwartz, Iowa City, IA, argued, for appellee.
Before BOWMAN, WOLLMAN and MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judges.
BOWMAN, Circuit Judge.
In this long-running prison lawsuit, the District Court declared the “immediate termination” provisions of the Prison Litigation Reform Act,
I.
In 1978, inmates in disciplinary segregation at the Iowa State Prison in Fort Madison, Iowa brought this class action to challenge the constitutionality of the conditions of their confinement. They named as defendants a number of Iowa state officials,1 to whom we will refer collectively as “the State.”
On April 26, 1996, the President signed into law the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), Pub.L. No. 104-134, tit. VIII, 110 Stat. 1321-66 to -77 (1996). Section 802(a) of the PLRA, codified at
(2) Immediate termination of prospective relief. —In any civil action with respect to prison conditions, a defendant or intervener shall be entitled to the immediate termination of any prospective relief if the relief was approved or granted in the absence of a finding by the court that the relief is narrowly drawn, extends no further than necessary to correct the violation of the Federal right [of a particular plaintiff or plaintiffs], and is the least intrusive means necessary to correct the violation of the Federal right.
(3) Limitation. —Prospective relief shall not terminate if the court makes written findings based on the record that prospective relief remains necessary to correct a current or ongoing violation of the Federal right, extends no further than necessary to correct the violation of the Federal right, and that the prospective relief is narrowly drawn and the least intrusive means to correct the violation.
Three weeks after the PLRA was enacted, the State filed a motion to terminate prospective relief in this case. The prisoners responded by challenging the constitutionality of the PLRA, arguing that the immediate termination provisions violate principles of separation of powers, equal protection, and due process. The United States intervened, pursuant to
The District Court did not reach the question whether relief remains necessary to correct ongoing violations of federal rights and is narrowly drawn. Instead, the court denied the State‘s motion to terminate relief, holding that the immediate termination provisions of the PLRA violate the principle of separation of powers by requiring federal courts to reopen final judgments. See Gavin v. Ray, No. 4-78-CV70062, 1996 WL 622556, at *4 (S.D.Iowa Sept. 18, 1996).3 The court
II.
The prisoners ask us to strike down the immediate termination provisions of the PLRA on constitutional grounds only.4 We turn first to the separation-of-powers arguments. The prisoners make the same two related arguments under the rubric of the separation of powers that have been considered by other courts in similar cases: (1) the PLRA represents a congressional effort to reopen final judgments of Article III courts, and (2) Congress has impermissibly attempted to prescribe a rule of decision in pending cases.
A.
The first of these arguments is definitely the meatier, and it is framed by two Supreme Court decisions from different centuries: Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U.S. 211, 115 S.Ct. 1447, 131 L.Ed.2d 328 (1995), and Pennsylvania v. Wheeling & Belmont Bridge Co., 59 U.S. (18 How.) 421, 15 L.Ed. 435 (1856) (Wheeling II).
Plaut involved Congress‘s reaction to the Supreme Court‘s earlier decision in Lampf, Pleva, Lipkind, Prupis & Petigrow v. Gilbertson, 501 U.S. 350, 111 S.Ct. 2773, 115 L.Ed.2d 321 (1991), in which the Court adopted a uniform national limitations period for civil actions under § 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. After Lampf was decided, a number of § 10(b) actions were dismissed as untimely, and Plaut‘s case was among them. Plaut did not appeal the dismissal. Some months later, Congress enacted a complicated statute that rejected the Lampf holding for cases filed before Lampf was decided and effectively required a court to reinstate a § 10(b) action on the motion of the plaintiff if the action would have been considered timely under the applicable law as of the day before Lampf was decided. The Supreme Court distilled from prior cases the principle that Article III grants the federal courts “the power, not merely to rule on cases, but to decide them, subject to review only by superior courts in the Article III hierarchy.” Plaut, 514 U.S. at 218-19, 115 S.Ct. at 1452-53. The Court concluded that “[b]y retroactively commanding the federal courts to reopen final judgments, Congress has violated this fundamental principle.” Id. at 219, 115 S.Ct. at 1453. The Court was careful to distinguish the situation in which Congress enacts a law with retroactive effect while a case is still on appeal, recognizing that, in that instance, the appellate court must apply the new law.
Within that hierarchy [of Article III courts], the decision of an inferior court is not (unless the time for appeal has expired) the final word of the [judicial] department as a whole. It is the obligation of the last court in the hierarchy that rules on the ease to give effect to Congress‘s latest enactment, even when that has the effect of overturning the judgment of an inferior court, since each court, at every level, must “decide according to existing laws.” Having achieved finality, however, a judicial decision becomes the last word of the judicial department with regard to a particular case or controversy, and Con-
gress may not declare by retroactive legislation that the law applicable to that very case was something other than what the courts said it was.
Id. at 227, 115 S.Ct. at 1457 (citation omitted).
Wheeling II was the second installment in an original action brought by Pennsylvania in the Supreme Court to enjoin the defendant‘s bridge across the Ohio River as an obstruction of navigation on the river. In the earlier decision, the Court had issued a decree declaring that the bridge obstructed navigation and ordering that it be elevated or removed. See 54 U.S. (13 How.) 518, 626, 14 L.Ed. 249 (1852). Following the Court‘s first decision, Congress passed a statute declaring the bridge to be a lawful structure, establishing it as a post road, and requiring vessels using the river to avoid interfering with the bridge. The parties subsequently returned to the Court when the bridge company sought to rebuild after a storm destroyed the original bridge. Because of the intervening congressional action, the Court dissolved its injunction. The Court recognized that Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce, including “intercourse and navigation, and, of course, the power to determine what shall or shall not be deemed in judgment of law an obstruction to navigation; and that power, as we have seen, has been exercised consistent with the continuance of the bridge.” Wheeling II, 59 U.S. at 431. The Court then considered Pennsylvania‘s argument that Congress was attempting to override the Court‘s earlier decision.
Now, we agree, if the remedy in this case had been an action at law, and a judgment rendered in favor of the plaintiff for damages, the right to these would have passed beyond the reach of the power of congress. It would have depended, not upon the public right of the free navigation of the river, but upon the judgment of the court. The decree before us, so far as it respect [sic] the costs adjudged, stands upon the same principles, and is unaffected by the subsequent law. But that part of the decree, directing the abatement of the obstruction, is executory, a continuing decree, which requires not only the removal of the bridge, but enjoins the defendants against any reconstruction or continuance. Now, whether it is a future existing or continuing obstruction depends upon the question whether or not it interferes with the right of navigation. If, in the mean time, since the decree, this right has been modified by the competent authority, so that the bridge is no longer an unlawful obstruction, it is quite plain the decree of the court cannot be enforced.
Id. at 431-32. Wheeling II therefore stands for the proposition that when Congress alters the substantive law on which an injunction is based, the injunction may be enforced only insofar as it conforms to the changed law. This principle extends to injunctive relief that is based on a consent decree. See System Fed‘n No. 91 v. Wright, 364 U.S. 642, 650-53, 81 S.Ct. 368, 372-73, 5 L.Ed.2d 349 (1961) (holding that district court abused its discretion by failing to revise injunction to permit labor practice that had been unlawful when consent decree was entered but subsequently had been legalized).
The Court in Plaut distinguished Wheeling II as a case in which Congress altered the “prospective effect” of an injunction entered by an Article III court. Plaut, 514 U.S. at 232, 115 S.Ct. at 1459. The case we now consider is not quite like either Plaut or Wheeling II, for Congress has not attempted to tinker with the results in damage actions that have become final, nor has Congress amended the law on which the prisoners’ cause of action is based. Indeed, the underlying action in this case is based on the Eighth Amendment, which Congress has no power to alter. Cf. City of Boerne v. Flores, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 2157, 2168-70, 138 L.Ed.2d 624 (1997) (rejecting congressional attempt to make “a substantive change in constitutional protections” of First Amendment). Congress instead has limited the power of the courts to enforce relief that is greater than that required by the Eighth Amendment. The question we must resolve, then, is whether Congress may alter the remedial powers of the federal courts so that the courts may not enforce equitable relief previously awarded in pending cases.5
The Supreme Court has made it clear that “a consent decree is a final judgment that may be reopened only to the extent that equity requires.” Rufo v. Inmates of the Suffolk County Jail, 502 U.S. 367, 391, 112 S.Ct. 748, 763, 116 L.Ed.2d 867 (1992). The prisoners urge that Rufo places consent decrees beyond the reach of subsequent congressional action, for Plaut holds that final judgments are immune from retroactive legislative alteration. We think the prisoners misread both Rufo and Plaut. In Rufo, the Supreme Court corrected the district court‘s overly restrictive view of its power to revise a consent decree, adopting instead a “flexible standard” requiring the party seeking modification to show “that a significant change in facts or law warrants revision of the decree and that the proposed modification is suitably tailored to the changed circumstance.” Id. at 393, 112 S.Ct. at 764. In other words, although a consent decree may be reopened only when “equity requires,” id. at 391, 112 S.Ct. at 763 equity may require consent decrees to be reopened with more frequency than many litigants had previously thought. This principle is important because Plaut does not hold that final judgments are invariably immune to congressional tinkering; instead, what Plaut protects is “the last word of the judicial department with regard to a particular case or controversy.” Plaut, 514 U.S. at 227, 115 S.Ct. at 1457. In a continuing case, a consent decree is not the “last word” of the courts in the case, even after the decree itself has become final for purposes of appeal. Rather, a consent decree is an executory form of relief that remains subject to later developments.
The prisoners argue that it is not enough to say that consent decrees remain subject to alteration pursuant to Rule 60(b), the mechanism at issue in Rufo, for the Court in Plaut
To be sure, a court‘s approval of a consent decree is the court‘s “last word” on some issues. In particular, a court that approves a consent decree expresses its opinion that the settlement is fair and equitable and that the terms of the consent decree constitute an appropriate remedy for the defendants’ allegedly unlawful actions at that point in time. Importantly, however, the court‘s opinion on the appropriateness of the remedy is a temporal one; the District Court in this case, for example, ruled in 1984 that the consent decree it approved was an appropriate remedy for the then-existing situation. But the District Court did not, and could not, determine in 1984 whether the consent decree would be appropriate in 1996. This specific issue, the nature of the remedy to be applied in the future, is not established in perpetuity upon the approval of the consent decree, and it is this issue to which Congress has spoken in the PLRA. We cannot conclude that the Constitution forbids Congress to do so.
The prisoners also draw from Wheeling II a theory of “public rights” and “private rights,” arguing that Congress may intervene to alter the former but not the latter. We agree with the United States that any such distinction is irrelevant. “[T]he doctrine of separation of powers is a structural safeguard [,] ... a prophylactic device, establishing high walls and clear distinctions because low walls and vague distinctions will not be judicially defensible in the heat of interbranch conflict.” Plaut, 514 U.S. at 239, 115 S.Ct. at 1463. The character of the right involved has nothing to do with the separation-of-powers issue that we have in this case. See id. at 230, 115 S.Ct. at 1458 (“The issue here is not the validity or even the source of the legal rule that produced the Article III judgments, but rather the immunity from legislative abrogation of those judgments themselves.“); Benjamin v. Jacobson, 935 F.Supp. 332, 348 (S.D.N.Y.1996) (“Only the character of the relief awarded in a final judgment is relevant to the separation-of-powers inquiry because only that factor, and not the source of the underlying right, implicates the power and jurisdiction of the courts.“), appeal docketed, No. 96-7957 (2d Cir. argued Nov. 15, 1996); cf. Commodity Futures Trading Comm‘n v. Schor, 478 U.S. 833, 853-54, 106 S.Ct. 3245, 3258-59, 92 L.Ed.2d 675 (1986) (discussing public rights
We hold that the immediate termination provisions of the PLRA do not amount to an attempt by Congress to reopen final judgments of Article III courts.
B.
We next consider the prisoners’ argument that the PLRA impermissibly prescribes a rule of decision in pending cases, in violation of United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 128, 20 L.Ed. 519 (1872). In that case, Klein, the administrator of the estate of one V.F. Wilson, brought suit to recover property confiscated by the United States during the Civil War. Wilson had aided the Confederacy during the war, but he subsequently received a pardon from the President. Klein sued in the Court of Claims pursuant to a statute that required a claimant to prove that he or she had not aided or comforted the South, and the Court of Claims ruled in Klein‘s favor, holding that the pardon had cured Wilson‘s aid to the Confederacy. Congress then passed a statute requiring the courts to consider the acceptance of a pardon as conclusive proof of disloyalty and to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction any case in which the claimant had accepted a pardon. When the government moved the Supreme Court to dismiss Klein‘s ease, the Court refused. “The court is required to ascertain the existence of certain facts and thereupon to declare that its jurisdiction on appeal has ceased, by dismissing the bill. What is this but to prescribe a rule for the decision of a cause in a particular way?” Id. at 146. The Court concluded that Congress had “inadvertently passed the limit which separates the legislative from the judicial power,” carefully distinguishing Wheeling II as a case in which Congress had created a new law but had left it to the Court “to apply its ordinary rules to the new circumstances created by the act.” Id. at 147.
The rule of Klein does not apply here because this is not a case in which Congress has prescribed a rule of decision and has “left the court no adjudicatory function to perform.” United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians, 448 U.S. 371, 392, 100 S.Ct. 2716, 2729, 65 L.Ed.2d 844 (1980); see also Gutierrez de Martinez v. Lamagno, 515 U.S. 417, 429-30, 115 S.Ct. 2227, 2234, 132 L.Ed.2d 375 (1995) (avoiding construction of statute that would be equivalent to “instructing a court automatically to enter a judgment pursuant to a decision the court has no authority to evaluate“). Congress has left the judicial functions of interpreting the law and applying the law to the facts entirely in the hands of the courts. The PLRA leaves the judging to judges, and therefore it does not violate the Klein doctrine.7
III.
We now turn to the prisoners’ equal protection arguments. Because the PLRA is a federal enactment, we are concerned here with the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment‘s Due Process Clause. We generally presume legislation to be valid, and we will uphold it against an equal protection challenge if its classifications are rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest. See City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., Inc., 473 U.S. 432, 440, 105 S.Ct. 3249, 3254, 87 L.Ed.2d 313 (1985). Legislation that employs a suspect classification or impinges on a fundamental constitutional right merits stricter scrutiny and will survive only if it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest. See id. The prisoners argue that the PLRA should be subjected to strict scrutiny because it burdens their fundamental right of access to the courts.8 We disagree.
Because neither a fundamental right nor a suspect classification is at issue here, we apply rational basis review and accord the immediate termination provisions “a strong presumption of validity.” Heller v. Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 319, 113 S.Ct. 2637, 2642, 125 L.Ed.2d 257 (1993). The prisoners do not seriously deny that the interests proffered by the United States—promoting “principles of federalism, security, and fiscal restraint in the unique context of detentional and correctional institutions,” Br. of United States at 35—are legitimate governmental interests. Phrased another way, “Congress has a legitimate interest in preserving state sovereignty by protecting states from overzealous supervision by the federal courts in the area of prison conditions litigation.” Plyler, 100 F.3d at 374. Limiting relief to what is required to enforce the constitutional rights of prisoners is an “eminently rational” means of furthering these interests. Id.
Our identification of legitimate governmental interests that are rationally related to the reforms enacted by the PLRA is dispositive of the prisoners’ argument that the only purpose of the statute is to disempower a politically unpopular group, as in Romer v. Evans, --- U.S. ----, 116 S.Ct. 1620, 134 L.Ed.2d 855 (1996). Section 3626(b) is not “inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class that it affects.” Id. at 632, 116 S.Ct. at 1627. As the United States has suggested, it is explicable by Congress‘s desire to get the federal courts out of the business of administering prisons, except where court action is necessary to remedy actual violations of prisoners’ constitutional rights. Likewise, there is much more to the immediate termination provisions than “irrational prejudice” toward prisoners. Cleburne, 473 U.S. at 450, 105 S.Ct. at 3259.
We conclude that the immediate termination provisions do not violate the prisoners’ equal protection rights.
IV.
Finally, we consider two due process arguments raised by the prisoners. The prisoners first suggest that the immediate termination provisions violate the doctrine of vested rights by depriving them of a property interest without due process of law. As in Plyler, “[t]he Inmates have not troubled themselves to specify whether their due process claim is procedural or substantive in nature, but in the end it makes no difference because both tests require a showing that the Inmates cannot make—that they have a property interest in the rights conferred by the consent decree.” Plyler, 100 F.3d at 374.
The doctrine of vested rights is rather poorly explained in the case law, but it, like the separation-of-powers doctrine ex-
What we have written so far is enough to dispose of the prisoners’ argument, for a judgment that is not final for purposes of the separation of powers is also not final for purposes of due process. See Plyler, 100 F.3d at 374; Benjamin, 935 F.Supp. at 356.10 Even if we ignore the separation-of-powers parallel, however, it remains true that Congress may prevent a victorious party from enforcing in equity a valid judgment. See Fleming v. Rhodes, 331 U.S. 100, 107, 67 S.Ct. 1140, 1144, 91 L.Ed. 1368 (1947) (“Federal regulation of future action based upon rights previously acquired by the person regulated is not prohibited by the Constitution. So long as the Constitution authorizes the subsequently enacted legislation, the fact that its provisions limit or interfere with previously acquired rights does not condemn it.“). See generally Landgraf v. USI Film Prods., 511 U.S. 244, 274, 114 S.Ct. 1483, 1501, 128 L.Ed.2d 229 (1994) (noting that injunctions operate prospectively and that litigants have no vested rights in them); System Fed‘n No. 91, 364 U.S. at 651, 81 S.Ct. at 372 (“The parties cannot, by giving each other consideration, purchase from a court of equity a continuing injunction.“). We conclude that the prisoners have no vested rights in the consent decree.
The prisoners also argue that the immediate termination provisions unconstitutionally impair their contract with the State (i.e., the consent decree), in violation of the Due Process Clause. “A consent decree no doubt embodies an agreement of the parties and thus in some respects is contractual in nature.” Rufo, 502 U.S. at 378, 112 S.Ct. at 757. For purposes of this case, we will treat the parties’ consent decree as sufficiently contractual to fall within the protection of the Due Process Clause. See Benjamin, 935 F.Supp. at 356.
When we consider the validity of federal legislation that affects private contracts, our “inquiry is especially limited, and the judicial scrutiny quite minimal.” National R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. Co., 470 U.S. 451, 472, 105 S.Ct. 1441, 1454, 84 L.Ed.2d 432 (1985). We will assume that
The immediate termination provisions of the PLRA do not violate the prisoners’ due process rights.
V.
We have considered the other arguments that may be gleaned from the prisoners’ brief, and we conclude that they are without merit.
The State suggests that we reverse the District Court‘s order denying the State‘s motion to terminate prospective relief and remand the case with instructions to grant the motion. As we have remarked, the District Court has not yet applied the immediate termination provisions of the PLRA to the facts of the case, and so it is premature to conclude that the State‘s motion must be granted. The order of the District Court holding the immediate termination provisions of the PLRA unconstitutional is reversed, and the case is remanded for application of those provisions to the facts of the case.