| Venue: | SCOTUS |
| Facts: | Thompson, et al., are handing out anti-Vietnam involvement at some shopping mall. He gets told to scram, declines, cops are called. Cops threaten arrest for trespass, so they leave. But then they come back. Again with the cops and the leaving. Except that one person stays and gets arrested. |
| Posture: | Suit in federal court under § 1983 for declaratory judgment that the trespass statute is being applied in violation of 1A and 14A rights; also wanting an injunction restraining the enforcement of the statutes in this way. |
| Issue: | Two:
|
| Holding: | Yes and No. |
| Rule: | Regardless of whether injunctive relief is appropriate, declaratory relief is not precluded when no state prosecution is pending, and a federal plaintiff demonstrates a genuine threat of enforcement of a disputed state criminal statute. |
| Reasoning: | Clearly these are not imaginary or speculative threats of prosecution.
And ordinarily federal courts should refrain from issuing injunctive
relief. State courts, after all, have the solemn and equal
responsibility for enforcing federal rights.
But when there's no pending prosecution, the concerns of equity, comity and federalism don't loom so large. Congress plainly intended declaratory relief to act as an alternative to the "strong medicine" of the injunction, and to be used to test the constitutionality of state criminal statutes in cases where injunctive relief would be unavailable. |
| Dicta: | Stewart (concurring): This doesn't mean that anyone who thinks a state
law might be unconstitutional can sue for federal injunctive relief:
a genuine threat is required.
White (concurring): The Declaratory Judgment Act provides that a declaration shall have the same effect as a final judgment, so there are res judicata issues here that have yet to be resolved. Still, a declaratory judgment isn't a binding order supplemented by continuing sanctions-- it's simply a statement of rights. |