Case Information
*1 OCTOBER TERM, 2013 (Slip Opinion)
Syllabus NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is
being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.
The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been
prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
See
United States
v.
Detroit Timber & Lumber Co.,
Syllabus v . JACOBS ET AL .
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR
THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
No. 12–815. Argued November 5, 2013—Decided December 10, 2013
Sprint Communications, Inc. (Sprint), a national telecommunications
service provider, withheld payment of intercarrier access fees im- posed by Windstream Iowa Communications, Inc. (Windstream), a lo- cal telecommunications carrier, for long distance Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls, after concluding that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 preempted intrastate regulation of VoIP traffic. Wind- stream responded by threatening to block all Sprint customer calls, which led Sprint to ask the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) to enjoin Windstream from discontinuing service to Sprint. Windstream re- tracted its threаt, and Sprint moved to withdraw its complaint. Con- cerned that the dispute would recur, the IUB continued the proceed- ings in order to resolve the question whether VoIP calls are subject to intrastate regulation. Rejecting Sprint’s argument that this question was governed by federal law, the IUB ruled that intrastate fees ap- plied to VoIP calls.
Sprint sued respondents, IUB members (collectively IUB), in Fed- eral District Court, seeking a declaration that the Telecommunica- tions Act of 1996 preempted the IUB’s decision. As relief, Sprint sought an injunction against enforcement of the IUB’s order. Sprint also sought review of the IUB’s order in Iowa state court, reiterating the preemption argument made in Sprint’s federal-court complaint and asserting several other claims. Invoking Harris , 401 U. S. 37, the Federal District Court abstained from adjudicating Sprint’s complaint in deference to the parallel state-court proceeding. The Eighth Circuit affirmed the District Court’s abstention decision, concluding that abstention was required because the ongo- ing state-court review concerned Iowa’s important interest in regulat- ing and enforcing state utility rates.
Syllabus
Held: This case does not fall within any of the three classes of excep-
tional cases for which Younger abstention is appropriate. Pp. 6–12.
(a) The District Court had jurisdiction to decide whether federal
law preempted the IUB’s decision, see
Verizon Md. Inc.
v.
Public
Serv. Comm’n of Md.
, 535 U. S. 635, 642, and thus had a “virtually
unflagging obligation” to hear and decide the case,
Colorado River
Water Conservation Dist.
v.
United States
, 424 U. S. 800, 817. In
Younger
, this Court recognized an exception to that obligation for
cases in which there is a parallel, pеnding state criminal proceeding.
This Court has extended abstention to particular state civil
proceedings that are akin to criminal prosecutions, see
Huffman
v.
Pursue, Ltd.
,
(b) The initial IUB proceeding does not fall within any of ’s
three exceptional categories and therefore does not trigger
Younger
abstention. The first and third categories plainly do not accommo-
date the IUB’s proceeding, which was civil, not criminal in character,
and which did not touch on a state court’s ability to perform its judi-
cial function. Nor is the IUB’s order an act of civil enforcement of the
kind to which
Younger
has been extended
.
The IUB proceeding is not
“akin to a criminal prosecution.”
Huffman
, 420 U. S., at 604. Nor
was it initiated by “the State in its sovereign capacity,”
Trainor
v.
Hernandez
,
Once Sprint withdrew the complaint that commenced administra- tive proceedings, the IUB argues, those proceedings became, essen- tially, a civil enforcement action. However, the IUB’s adjudicative
Syllabus
authority was invoked to settle a civil dispute between two private parties, not to sanсtion Sprint for a wrongful act.
In holding that abstention was the proper course, the Eighth Cir- cuit misinterpreted this Court’s decision in Middlesex to mean that abstention is warranted whenever there is (1) “an ongoing state judicial proceeding, which (2) implicates important state inter- ests, and (3) . . . provide[s] an adequate opportunity to raise [federal] challenges.” In Middlesex , the Court invoked to bar a feder- al court from entertaining a lawyer’s challenge to a state ethics com- mittee’s pending investigation оf the lawyer. Unlike the IUB’s pro- ceeding, however, the state ethics committee’s hearing in Middlesex was plainly “akin to a criminal proceeding”: An investigation and formal complaint preceded the hearing, an agency of the State’s Su- preme Court initiated the hearing, and the hearing’s purpose was to determine whether the lawyer should be disciplined for failing to meet the State’s professional conduct standards. 457 U. S., at 433– 435. The three Middlesex conditions invoked by the Court of Appeals were therefore not dispositive; they were, instead, additional factors appropriately considered by the federal court before invoking Young- er . extends to the three “exceptional circumstances” identi- fied in , but no further. Pp. 8–11.
G INSBURG , J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash ingtоn, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________ No. 12–815 _________________ SPRINT COMMUNICATIONS, INC., PETITIONER
ELIZABETH S. JACOBS ET AL .
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT [December 10, 2013] J USTICE G INSBURG delivered the opinion of the Court. This case involves two proceedings, one pending in state court, the other in federal court. Each seeks review of an Iowa Utilities Board (IUB or Board) order. And each presents the question whether Windstream Iowa Commu nications, Inc. (Windstream), a local telecommunications carrier, may impose on Sprint Communications, Inc. (Sprint), intrastate access charges for telephone calls transported via the Internet. Federal-court jurisdiction over controversies of this kind was confirmed in Verizon Md. Inc. v. Public Serv. Comm’n of Md. , 535 U. S. 635 (2002). Invoking Harris , 401 U. S. 37 (1971), the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa abstained from adjudicating Sprint’s complaint in defer ence to the parallel state-court proceeding, and the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the District Court’s abstention decision.
We reverse the judgmеnt of the Court of Appeals. In the main, federal courts are obliged to decide cases within the scope of federal jurisdiction. Abstention is not in order simply because a pending state-court proceeding involves the same subject matter. New Orleans Public Service, Inc. v. Council of City of New Orleans , 491 U. S. 350, 373 (1989) ( NOPSI ) (“[T]here is no doctrine that . . . pendency of state judicial proceedings excludes the federal courts.”). This Court has recognized, however, certain instances in which the prospect of undue interference with state pro сeedings counsels against federal relief. See id., at 368.
Younger
exemplifies one class of cases in which federal
court abstention is required: When there is a parallel,
pending state criminal proceeding, federal courts must
refrain from enjoining the state prosecution. This Court
has extended abstention to particular state civil
proceedings that are akin to criminal prosecutions, see
Huffman
v.
Pursue, Ltd.
, 420 U. S. 592 (1975), or that
implicate a State’s interest in enforcing the orders and
judgments of its courts, sеe
Pennzoil Co.
v.
Texaco Inc.
,
481 U. S. 1 (1987). We have cautioned, however, that
federal courts ordinarily should entertain and resolve on
the merits an action within the scope of a jurisdictional
grant, and should not “refus[e] to decide a case in defer
ence to the States.”
NOPSI
,
Circumstances fitting within the doctrine, we have stressed, are “exceptional”; they include, as cata logued in , “state criminal prosecutions,” “civil enforcement proceedings,” and “civil proceedings involving certain orders that are uniquely in furtherance of the state courts’ ability to perform their judicial functions.” Id., at 367–368. Because this case presents none of the circum stances the Court has ranked as “exceptional,” the general rule governs: “[T]he pendency of an action in [a] state court is no bar to proceedings concerning the same matter in the Federal court having jurisdiction.” Colorado River Water Conservation Dist. v. United States , 424 U. S. 800, 817 (1976) (quoting McClellan Carland , 217 U. S. 268, 282 (1910)).
Opinion of the Court I Sprint, a national telecommunications service provider, has long paid intercаrrier access fees to the Iowa commu nications company Windstream (formerly Iowa Telecom) for certain long distance calls placed by Sprint customers to Windstream’s in-state customers. In 2009, however, Sprint decided to withhold payment for a subset of those calls, classified as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), after concluding that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 preempted intrastate regulation of VoIP traffic. 1 In re sponse, Windstream threatened to block all calls to and from Sprint customers.
Sprint filed a complaint against Windstream with the IUB asking the Board to enjoin Windstream from discon tinuing service to Sprint. In Sprint’s view, Iowa law enti tled it to withhold payment while it contested the access charges and prohibited Windstream from carrying out its disconnection threat. In answer to Sprint’s complaint, Windstream retracted its threat to discontinue serving Sprint, and Sprint moved, successfully, to withdraw its complaint. Because the conflict between Sрrint and Wind stream over VoIP calls was “likely to recur,” however, the IUB decided to continue the proceedings to resolve the underlying legal question, i.e., whether VoIP calls are subject to intrastate regulation. Order in Sprint Commu nications Co. Iowa Telecommunications Servs., Inc. , No. FCU–2010–0001 (IUB, Feb. 1, 2010), p. 6 (IUB Order). The question retained by the IUB, Sprint argued, was governed by federal law, and was not within the IUB’s adjudicative jurisdiction. The IUB disagreed, ruling that ——————
[1] The Federal Communications Commission has yet to provide its view on whether thе Telecommunications Act categorically preempts intrastate access charges for VoIP calls. See In re Connect America Fund , 26 FCC Rcd. 17663, 18002, ¶934 (2011) (reserving the ques tion whether all VoIP calls “must be subject exclusively to federal regulation”).
4
the intrastate fees applied to VoIP calls. 2
Seeking to overturn the Board’s ruling, Sprint com menced two lawsuits. First, Sprint sued the members of the IUB (respondents here) 3 in their official capacities in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. In its federal-court complaint, Sprint sought a declaration that the Tеlecommunications Act of 1996 preempted the IUB’s decision; as relief, Sprint requested an injunction against enforcement of the IUB’s order. Second, Sprint petitioned for review of the IUB’s order in Iowa state court. The state petition reiterated the preemption argument Sprint made in its federal-court complaint; in addition, Sprint asserted state law and procedural due process claims. Because Eighth Circuit precedent effectively required a plaintiff to еxhaust state remedies before proceeding to federal court, see Alleghany Corp. v. McCartney , 896 F. 2d 1138 (1990), Sprint urges that it filed the state suit as a protective measure. Failing to do so, Sprint explains, risked losing the opportunity to obtain any review, federal or state, should the federal court decide to abstain after the expiration of the Iowa statute of limitations. See Brief for Petitioner 7–8.
As Sprint anticipated, the IUB filed a motion asking the
Federal District Court to abstain in light of the state suit,
citing
Harris
,
[2] At the conclusion of the IUB proceedings, Sprint paid Windstream all contested fees.
[3] For convenience, we refer to respondents collectively as the IUB.
[4]
Since we granted certiorari, the Iowa state court issued an opinion
rejecting Sprint’s preemption claim on the merits.
Sprint Communica
tions Co.
v.
Iowa Utils. Bd.
, No. CV–8638, App. to Joint Supp. Brief
20a–36a (Iowa Dist. Ct., Sept. 16, 2013). The Iowa court decision does
not, in the parties’ view, moot this case, see Joint Supp. Brief 1, and we
аgree. Because Sprint intends to appeal the state-court decision, the
“controversy . . . remains live.”
Exxon Mobil Corp. Saudi Basic
Industries Corp.
,
The IUB’s decision, and the pending state-court review of it, the District Court said, composed one “uninterruptible process” implicating important state interests. On that ground, the court ruled, abstention was in order. Sprint Communications Co. v. Berntsen , No. 4:11–cv– 00183–JAJ (SD Iowa, Aug. 1, 2011), App. to Pet. for Cert. 24a.
For the most part, the Eighth Circuit agreed with the
District Court’s judgment. The Court of Appeals rejected
the argument, accepted by several of its sister courts, that
abstention is appropriate only when the parallel
state proceedings are “coercive,” rather than “remedial,” in
nature.
We granted certiorari to decide whether, consistent with our delineation of cases encompassed by the Younger doctrine, abstention was appropriate here. 569 U. S. ___ *9 6
(2013).
II A Neither party has questioned the District Court’s juris
diction to decide whether federal law preempted the IUB’s
decision, and rightly so. In
Verizon Md. Inc. Public
Serv. Comm’n of Md.
,
Federal courts, it was early and famously said, have “no
more right to decline the еxercise of jurisdiction which is
given, than to usurp that which is not given.”
Cohens
v.
Virginia
,
In , we recognized a “far-from-novel” exception
to this general rule.
New Orleans Public Service, Inc.
v.
Council of City of New Orleans
,
[5] The IUB agrees with Sprint that our decision in Burford v. Sun Oil Co. , 319 U. S. 315 (1943), cannot independently sustain the Eighth Circuit’s abstention analysis. See Brief for Respondents 9; cf. New Orleans Public Service, Inc. Council of City of New Orleans , 491 U. S. 350, 359 (1989).
Criminal Syndicalism Act. Requesting an injunction
against the Act’s enforcement, the federal-court plaintiff
was at the time the defendant in a pending state criminal
prosecution under the Act. In those circumstances, we
said, the federal court should decline to enjoin the prose
cution, absent bad faith, harassment, or a patently invalid
state statute. See
We have since applied to bar federal relief in certain civil actions. Huffman Pursue, Ltd. , 420 U. S. 592 (1975), is the pathmarking decision. There, Ohio officials brought a civil action in state court to abate the showing of obscene movies in Pursue’s theater. Because the State was a party and the proceeding was “in aid of and closely related to [the State’s] criminal statutes,” the Court held Younger abstention appropriate. Id., at 604.
More recently, in
NOPSI
, 491 U. S., at 368, the Court
had occasion to review and restate our
Younger
jurispru
dence. addressed and rejected an argument that
a federal court should refuse to exercise jurisdiction to
review a state council’s ratemaking decision. “[O]nly ex
ceptional circumstances,” we reaffirmed, “justify a fed
eral court’s refusal to decide a case in deference to the
States.”
Ibid.
Those “exceptional circumstances” exist,
the Court determined after surveying prior decisions,
in three types of proceedings. First, precluded
federal intrusion into ongoing state criminal prosecutions.
See
ibid.
Second, certain “civil enforcement proceedings”
warranted abstention.
Ibid.
(citing,
e.g., Huffman
, 420
U. S., at 604). Finally, federal courts refrained from inter
fering with pending “civil proceedings involving certain
orders . . . uniquely in furtherance of the state courts’
ability to perform their judicial functions.” 491 U. S., at
368 (citing
Juidice Vail
,
B
The IUB does not assert that the Iowa state court’s review of the Board deсision, considered alone, implicates . Rather, the initial administrative proceeding justifies staying any action in federal court, the IUB con tends, until the state review process has concluded. The same argument was advanced in NOPSI . 491 U. S., at 368 . We will assume without deciding, as the Court did in , that an administrative adjudication and the subsequent state court’s review of it count as a “unitary process” for Younger purposes. Id., at 369. The question remains, however, whether the initial IUB proceeding is of the “sort . . . entitled to treatment.” Ibid.
The IUB proceeding, we conclude, does not fall within
any of the three exceptional categories described in
NOPSI
and therefore does not trigger abstention. The
first and third categories plainly do not accommodate the
IUB’s proceeding. That proceeding was civil, not criminal
in character, and it did not touch on a state court’s ability
to perform its judicial function. Cf.
Juidice
, 430 U. S., at
336, n. 12 (civil contempt order);
Pennzoil
,
Nor does the IUB’s order rank as an act of civil enforce
ment of the kind to which
Younger
has been extended
.
Our decisions applying
Younger
to instances of civil en
fоrcement have generally concerned state proceedings
“akin to a criminal prosecution” in “important respects.”
Huffman
,
The IUB proceeding does not resemble the state en
forcement actions this Court has found appropriate for
Younger
abstention. It is not “akin to a criminal prosecu
tion.”
Huffman
,
In its brief, the IUB emphasizes Sprint’s decision to
withdraw the complaint that commenced proceedings
before the Board. At that point, the IUB argues, Sprint
was no longer a willing participant, and the proceedings
became, essentially, a civil enforcement action. See Brief
for Respondents 31. 6 The IUB’s adjudiсative authority,
however, was invoked to settle a civil dispute between two
private parties, not to sanction Sprint for commission of a
wrongful act. Although Sprint withdrew its complaint,
administrative efficiency, not misconduct by Sprint,
prompted the IUB to answer the underlying federal ques
tion. By determining the intercarrier compensation re
gime applicable to VoIP calls, the IUB sought to avoid
renewed litigation of the parties’ dispute. Because the
underlying legal question remained unsеttled, the Board
observed, the controversy was “likely to recur.” IUB Order
6. Nothing here suggests that the IUB proceeding was
“more akin to a criminal prosecution than are most civil
cases.”
Huffman
,
In holding that abstention was the proper course, the Eighth Circuit relied heavily on this Court’s decision in Middlesex . abstention was warranted, the Court of Appeals read Middlesex to say, whenever three condi tions are met: There is (1) “an ongoing state judicial proceeding, which (2) implicates important state interests, and (3) . . . рrovide[s] an adequate opportunity to raise ——————
[6] To determine whether a state proceeding is an enforcement action under , several Courts of Appeals, as noted, see supra, at 5, inquire whether the underlying state proceeding is “coercive” rather than “remedial.” See, e.g., Devlin v. Kalm , 594 F. 3d 893, 895 (CA6 2010). Though we referenced this dichotomy once in a footnote, see Ohio Civil Rights Comm’n Dayton Christian Schools, Inc. , 477 U. S. 619, 627, n. 2 (1986), we do not find the inquiry necessary or inevitably helpful, given the susceptibility of the designations to manipulation. [federal] challеnges.” 690 F. 3d, at 867 (citing Middlesex , 457 U. S., at 432). Before this Court, the IUB has en dorsed the Eighth Circuit’s approach. Brief for Respond ents 13.
The Court of Appeals and the IUB attribute to this Court’s decision in Middlesex extraordinary breadth. We invoked in Middlesex to bar a federal court from entertaining a lawyer’s challenge to a New Jersey state ethics committee’s pending investigation of the lawyer. Unlike the IUB proceeding here, the state ethics commit tee’s hearing in Middlesex was indeed “akin to a criminal proceeding.” As we noted, an investigation and formal complaint preceded the hearing, an agency of the State’s Supreme Court initiated the hearing, and the purpose of the hearing was to determine whether the lawyer should be disciplined for his failure to meet the State’s standards of professional conduct. 457 U. S., at 433–435. See also id., at 438 (Brennan, J., concurring in judgment) (noting the “quasi-criminal nature of bar disciplinary proceed ings”). The three Middlesex conditions recited above were not dispositive; they were, instead, additional factors appropriately сonsidered by the federal court before invok ing .
Divorced from their quasi-criminal context, the three Middlesex conditions would extend Younger to virtually all parallel state and federal proceedings, at least where a party could identify a plausibly important state interest. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 35–36. That result is irreconcilable with our dominant instruction that, even in the presence of parallel state proceedings, abstention from the exercise of federal jurisdiction is the “exception, not the rule.” Hawaii Housing Authority Midkiff , 467 U. S. 229, 236 (1984) (quoting Colorado River , 424 U. S., at 813). In short, to guide other federal courts, we today clarify and affirm that extends to the three “exceptional circumstances” identified in , but no further.
* * *
For the reasons stated, the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit is
Reversed.