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, Washington,
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 v.
ELIZABETH S. JACOBS et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the eighth circuit
[December 10, 2013]
Justice Ginsburg
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
Communications, 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 Younger v. Harris, 401
U. S. 37 (1971) , the U. S. District Court for the
Southern District of Iowa abstained from adjudicating Sprint’s
complaint in deference 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 judgment
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 proceedings 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 Younger 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, see 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
deference to the States.” NOPSI, 491 U. S., at 368.
Circumstances fitting
within the Younger doctrine, we have stressed, are “exceptional”;
they include, as catalogued in NOPSI, “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
circumstances 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 v.
Carland, 217 U. S. 268, 282 (1910) ).
I
Sprint, a national
telecommunications service provider, has long paid intercarrier
access fees to the Iowa communications 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 response, 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 discontinuing service to Sprint. In Sprint’s
view, Iowa law entitled 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 Sprint and Windstream 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 Communications
Co. v. 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 the intrastate fees applied to VoIP calls. [
2 ]
Seeking to overturn the
Board’s ruling, Sprint commenced 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
Telecommunications 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 exhaust 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. [
4 ]
As Sprint anticipated,
the IUB filed a motion asking the Federal District Court to abstain
in light of the state suit, citing Younger v. Harris, 401
U. S. 37 (1971) . The District Court granted the IUB’s motion
and dismissed the suit. 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, Younger 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 Younger abstention is appropriate only when the
parallel state proceedings are “coercive,” rather than “remedial,”
in nature. 690 F. 3d 864, 868 (2012); cf. Guillemard-Ginorio
v. Contreras-Gómez, 585 F. 3d 508, 522 (CA1 2009)
(“[P]roceedings must be coercive, and in most cases,
state-initiated, in order to warrant abstention.”). Instead, the
Eighth Circuit read this Court’s precedent to require Younger
abstention whenever “an ongoing state judicial proceeding
. . . implicates important state interests, and
. . . the state proceedings provide adequate opportunity
to raise [federal] challenges.” 690 F. 3d, at 867 (citing
Middlesex County Ethics Comm. v. Garden State Bar Assn., 457
U. S. 423, 432 (1982) ). Those criteria were satisfied here,
the appeals court held, because the ongoing state-court review of
the IUB’s decision concerned Iowa’s “important state interest in
regulating and enforcing its intrastate utility rates.” 690
F. 3d, at 868. Recognizing the “possibility that the parties
[might] return to federal court,” however, the Court of Appeals
vacated the judgment dismissing Sprint’s complaint. In lieu of
dismissal, the Eighth Circuit remanded the case, instructing the
District Court to enter a stay during the pendency of the
state-court action. Id., at 869.
We granted certiorari
to decide whether, consistent with our delineation of cases
encompassed by the Younger doctrine, abstention was appropriate
here. 569 U. S. ___ (2013). [
5 ]
II
A
Neither party has
questioned the District Court’s jurisdiction to decide whether
federal law preempted the IUB’s decision, and rightly so. In
Verizon Md. Inc. v. Public Serv. Comm’n of Md., 535 U. S. 635
(2002) , we reviewed a similar federal-court challenge to a state
administrative adjudication. In that case, as here, the party
seeking federal-court review of a state agency’s decision urged
that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 preempted the state action.
We had “no doubt that federal courts ha[d federal question]
jurisdiction under [28 U. S. C.] §1331 to entertain such
a suit,” id., at 642, and nothing in the Telecommunications Act
detracted from that conclusion, see id., at 643.
Federal courts, it was
early and famously said, have “no more right to decline the
exercise of jurisdiction which is given, than to usurp that which
is not given.” Cohens v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 404 (1821).
Jurisdiction existing, this Court has cautioned, a federal court’s
“obligation” to hear and decide a case is “virtually unflagging.”
Colorado River Water Conservation Dist. v. United States, 424
U. S. 800, 817 (1976) . Parallel state-court proceedings do
not detract from that obligation. See ibid.
In Younger, we
recognized a “far-from-novel” exception to this general rule. New
Orleans Public Service, Inc. v. Council of City of New Orleans, 491
U. S. 350, 364 (1989) (NOPSI). The plaintiff in Younger sought
federal-court adjudication of the constitutionality of the
California 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 prosecution, absent bad faith,
harassment, or a patently invalid state statute. See 401
U. S., at 53–54. Abstention was in order, we explained, under
“the basic doctrine of equity jurisprudence that courts of equity
should not act . . . to restrain a criminal prosecution,
when the moving party has an adequate remedy at law and will not
suffer irreparably injury if denied equitable relief.” Id., at
43–44. “[R]estraining equity jurisdiction within narrow limits,”
the Court observed, would “prevent erosion of the role of the jury
and avoid a duplication of legal proceedings and legal sanctions.”
Id., at 44. We explained as well that this doctrine was
“reinforced” by the notion of “ ‘comity,’ that is, a proper
respect for state functions.” Ibid.
We have since applied
Younger to bar federal relief in certain civil actions. Huffman v.
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 jurisprudence. NOPSI 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, Younger 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 interfering 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 v. Vail, 430 U. S. 327 ,
n. 12 (1977), and Pennzoil Co. v. Texaco Inc., 481 U. S.
1, 13 (1987) ). We have not applied Younger outside these three
“exceptional” categories, and today hold, in accord with NOPSI,
that they define Younger’s scope.
B
The IUB does not
assert that the Iowa state court’s review of the Board decision,
considered alone, implicates Younger. Rather, the initial
administrative proceeding justifies staying any action in federal
court, the IUB contends, 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 NOPSI,
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
Younger 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
Younger 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,
481 U. S., at 13 (requirement for posting bond pending
appeal).
Nor does the IUB’s
order rank as an act of civil enforcement of the kind to which
Younger has been extended. Our decisions applying Younger to
instances of civil enforcement have generally concerned state
proceedings “akin to a criminal prosecution” in “important
respects.” Huffman, 420 U. S., at 604. See also Middlesex, 457
U. S., at 432 (Younger abstention appropriate where
“noncriminal proceedings bear a close relationship to proceedings
criminal in nature”). Such enforcement actions are
characteristically initiated to sanction the federal plaintiff,
i.e., the party challenging the state action, for some wrongful
act. See, e.g., Middlesex, 457 U. S., at 433–434
(state-initiated disciplinary proceedings against lawyer for
violation of state ethics rules). In cases of this genre, a state
actor is routinely a party to the state proceeding and often
initiates the action. See, e.g., Ohio Civil Rights Comm’n v. Dayton
Christian Schools, Inc., 477 U. S. 619 (1986) (state-initiated
administrative proceedings to enforce state civil rights laws);
Moore v. Sims, 442 U. S. 415 –420 (1979) (state-initiated
proceeding to gain custody of children allegedly abused by their
parents); Trainor v. Hernandez, 431 U. S. 434, 444 (1977)
(civil proceeding “brought by the State in its sovereign capacity”
to recover welfare payments defendants had allegedly obtained by
fraud); Huffman, 420 U. S., at 598 (state-initiated proceeding
to enforce obscenity laws). Investigations are commonly involved,
often culminating in the filing of a formal complaint or charges.
See, e.g., Dayton, 477 U. S., at 624 (noting preliminary
investigation and complaint); Middlesex, 457 U. S., at 433
(same).
The IUB proceeding does
not resemble the state enforcement actions this Court has found
appropriate for Younger abstention. It 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, 431 U. S.,
at 444. A private corporation, Sprint, initiated the action. No
state authority conducted an investigation into Sprint’s
activities, and no state actor lodged a formal complaint against
Sprint.
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 adjudicative 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 question. By
determining the intercarrier compensation regime applicable to VoIP
calls, the IUB sought to avoid renewed litigation of the parties’
dispute. Because the underlying legal question remained unsettled,
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,
420 U. S., at 604.
In holding that
abstention was the proper course, the Eighth Circuit relied heavily
on this Court’s decision in Middlesex. Younger abstention was
warranted, the Court of Appeals read Middlesex to say, whenever
three conditions are met: There is (1) “an ongoing state judicial
proceeding, which (2) implicates important state interests, and (3)
. . . provide[s] an adequate opportunity to raise
[federal] challenges.” 690 F. 3d, at 867 (citing Middlesex,
457 U. S., at 432). Before this Court, the IUB has endorsed
the Eighth Circuit’s approach. Brief for Respondents 13.
The Court of Appeals
and the IUB attribute to this Court’s decision in Middlesex
extraordinary breadth. We invoked Younger 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
committee’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 proceedings”). The three Middlesex conditions recited
above were not dispositive; they were, instead, additional factors
appropriately considered by the federal court before invoking
Younger.
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 v. 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 Younger extends to
the three “exceptional circumstances” identified in NOPSI, but no
further.
* * *
For the reasons
stated, the judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the
Eighth Circuit is
Reversed.
