MITCHELL ET AL. v. DONOVAN, SECRETARY OF STATE OF MINNESOTA, ET AL.
No. 726
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 21, 1970—Decided June 15, 1970
398 U.S. 427
Richard H. Kyle, Solicitor General of Minnesota, argued the cause for appellees. With him on the brief were Douglas M. Head, Attorney General, pro se, Arne L. Schoeller, Chief Deputy Attorney General, James M. Kelley, Assistant Attorney General, and John R. Kenefick, Spеcial Assistant Attorney General.
PER CURIAM.
The appellants are the 1968 Communist Party candidates for President and Vice President of the United States, various Minnesota voters who alleged a desirе
The appellants brought an action in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota seeking a declaration that the Communist Control Act was constitutionally invalid and praying for a temporary restraining order and permanent injunction requiring the Secretary to include the names of the appellant candidates on the November 1968 ballot. Because of the appellants’ request for injunctive relief based upon a claim that a federal statute was unconstitutional, a three-judge District Court was impaneled pursuant to
After the election, the appellants moved to amend the complaint, alleging that the Communist Party intended to run candidates in future elections in Minnesota and, on information and belief, that Minnesota would adhere to its position that the Communist Control Act barred placing thesе candidates on the ballot. The District Court allowed the amendment of the complaint. It held that the prayer for injunctive relief, which referred only to the 1968 election and requested no injunction as to future conduct, had been rendered moot by the passing of that election. As to the prayer for a declaratory judgment striking down the Communist Control Act, the court found nо present case or controversy. In the court‘s view it was not sufficiently certain that the Communist Party would run candidates in the future or that Minnesota would adhere to its construction of the fеderal statute, to take the case out of the realm of the hypothetical. It therefore dismissed the complaint. 300 F. Supp. 1145.
The appellants brought a direct appeal to this Court under
“Except as otherwise provided by law, any party may aрpeal to the Supreme Court from an order granting or denying, after notice and hearing, an interlocutory or permanent injunction in any civil action, suit or proceeding required by any Act of Congress to be heard and determined by a district court of three judges.”
The appellees moved to dismiss the appeal on the ground that the order complained of wаs not one “grant-
The order appealed from does no more than deny the appеllants a declaratory judgment striking down the Communist Control Act. The only injunction ever requested by the appellants was one ordering the names of the Communist Party candidates to be plaсed on the ballot for the November 1968 election. That injunction was granted, and no appeal was taken by the state officials. As is plain from the opening words of its opinion in the present proceeding, the District Court recognized that no request for injunctive relief was before it: “We concern ourselves here with the propriety of entertaining that portion of plaintiffs’ complaint seeking declaratory relief. . . .” 300 F. Supp., at 1146.
That leaves us with the question whether an order granting or denying only a declaratory judgment may be appealed to this Court undеr
We have stressed that the three-judge-court legislation is not “a measure of broad social policy to be construed with great liberality,” but is rathеr “an enactment technical in the strict sense of the term and to be applied as such.” Phillips v. United States, 312 U. S. 246, 251. Thus this Court‘s jurisdiction under that legislation is to be literally construed. It would hardly be faithful to such a construction to read the statutory term “injunction” as meaning “declaratory judgment.”3
We conclude, therefore, that this Court lacks jurisdiction of the appeal. A simple dismissal for want of jurisdiction, hоwever, would leave the appellants with no recourse to appellate review, because they brought their appeal here rather than to the Court of Appеals and the time for appealing to the Court of Appeals has long since passed. Accordingly, as in other cases where an appeal was improperly brought to this Cоurt rather than the Court of Appeals,4 we vacate the judgment below and remand the case so that the District Court may enter a
It is so ordered.
MR. JUSTICE BLACK concurs in the result.
MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, dissenting.
I agree with thе District Court that the case is too hypothetical to qualify as a “case” or “controversy” within the meaning of Article III and I would affirm. I do not, however, share the aversion to
Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U. S. 144, is not to the contrary. It merely held that in some circumstances “an action solely for declaratory relief” could be tried before a single judge where the “relief sought and the order entered affеcted an Act of Congress in a totally noncoercive fashion.” Id., at 154, 155. We indicated, however, that a different result would follow “whenever the operation of a statutory scheme mаy be immediately disrupted before a final judicial determination of the validity of the trial court‘s order can be obtained.” Id., at 155.
The Kennedy case, in other words, involved solely the question whether a thrеe-judge court need always be summoned where no injunctive relief was asked or contemplated. The answer involved an analysis of
Where, as here, the three-judge court was properly convened, I would think that any action it took, which was denying or granting an injunction or its equivalent, would be properly here under