Wisconsin v. Constantineau ( 1971 )

Mr. Justice Douglas

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Appellee is an adult resident of Hartford) Wis. She brought suit in a federal district court in Wisconsin to have a Wisconsin statute declared unconstitutional.¹ • A three-judge court was convened, 28 U. S. C. § 2281. That court, by a divided vote, held the Act unconstitutional, 302 F. Supp. 861, and we noted probable jurisdiction. 397 U. S. 985.

The Act, Wis. Stat. § 176.26 (1967), provides that designated persons may in writing forbid the sale or gift of intoxicating liquors to one who “by excessive drinking” produces described conditions or exhibits speci-’ fied traits, such as exposing himself or family “to want” or becoming “dangerous to the peace” of the community.²

The chief of police of Hartford, without notice or hearing to appellee, caused to be posted a notice in all retail liquor outlets in Hartford that sales, or gifts of liquors to appellee were forbidden for one year. Thereupon this suit was brought against the chief of police claiming damages and asking for injunctive relief. The State of Wisconsin intervened as a defendant on the injunctive phase of the case and that was the only issue tried and decided, the three-judge court holding the Act unconstitutional on its face and enjoining its enforcement, The court said:

“In ‘posting’ an individual, the particular city official or spouse is doing more than denying him the ability to purchase alcoholic beverages within the city limits. In essence, he is giving notice to the public that he has found the particular individual’s behavior to fall within one of the categories., enumerated in the statutes. It would be naive not-to recognize that such ‘posting’ or characterization of an individual will expose him to public embarrassment and ridicule, and it is our opinion that procedural due process requires that before one acting pursuant to State statute can make such a quasi-judicial determination, the individual involved must be given notice of the intent to post and an opportunity to present his side of the matter.” 302 F. Supp., at 864.

We have no doubt as to the power of a State to deal. with the evils described in the Act. The police power of the States over intoxicating liquors was extremely broad even prior to the Twenty-first Amendment. Crane v. Campbell, 245 U. S. 304. The only issue present here is whether the label or characterization given a person by “posting,” though a mark of serious illness to some, is to others such a stigma or badge of disgrace that procedural due process requires notice and an opportunity to be heard. We agree with the District Court that the private interest is such that those requirements of procedural due process must be met.

It is significant that most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights are procedural, for it is procedure that marks much of the difference between rule by law and rule by fiat.

We reviewed in Cafeteria Workers v. McElroy, 367 U. S. 886, 896, the nature of the various “private interest^]” that have fallen on one side or the other of the line. See also Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp., 395 U. S. 337, 339-342. Generalizations are hazardous as some state and federal administrative procedures are summary by reason of necessity or history. Yet certainly where the State attaches “a badge of infamy” to the citizen, due process comes into play. Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U. S. 183, 191. “[T]he right to be heard before being condemned to suffer grievous loss of any kind, even though it may not involve the stigma and hardships of a criminal .conviction, is a principle basic to our society.” Anti-Fascist Committee v. McGrath, 341 U. S. 123, 168 (Frankfurter, J., concurring).

Where a person’s good name, reputation, honor, or integrity is at stake because of what the government is doing to him, notice and an opportunity to be heard are essential. “Posting” under the Wisconsin Act may to some be merely the mark of illness, to others it is a stigma, an official branding of a person. The label is a degrading one. Under the Wisconsin Act, a resident of Hartford is given no process at all. This appellee was not afforded a chance to defend herself. She may have been the victim of an official’s caprice. Only when the whole proceedings leading to the pinning of an unsavory label on a person are aired can oppressive results be prevented.

It is suggested that the three-judge court should have stayed its hand while the aggrieved person repaired to the state courts to obtain a construction of the Act or relief from it. The fact that Wisconsin does not raise the point does not, of course, mean that it lacks merit. Yet the suggestion is not in keeping with the precedents.

Congress could, of course, have routed all federal constitutional questions through the state court systems, saving to this Court the final say when it came to .review of the state court judgments. But our First Congress³ resolved differently and created the federal court system and in time granted the federal courts various heads of jurisdiction,⁴ which today involve most federal constitutional rights. Once that jurisdiction was granted, the federal courts resolved those questions even when they were enmeshed with state law questions. In 1941 we gave vigor to the so-called abstention doctrine in Railroad Commission v. Pullman Co., 312 U. S. 496. In that ease an authoritative resolution of a knotty state law question might end the litigation and not give rise to any federal constitutional claim. Id., at 501. We, therefore, directed the District Court to retain the suit pending a determination by a state court of the underlying state law question. We applied the abstention doctriné most recently in Fornaris v. Ridge Tool Co., ante, p. 41, where a relatively new Puerto Rican statute, which had not been authoritatively construed by the Commonwealth’s courts, “might be judicially confined to a more narrow ambit which would avoid all constitutional questions.” We ordered the federal courts to stay their hands until the Puerto Rican courts had spoken. Speaking of Reetz v. Bozanich, 397 U. S. 82, we noted that the “three-judge federal court should not have proceeded to strike down ah Alaská law which, if construed by the Alaska Supreme Court, might be so confined as not to have any constitutional infirmity.” Ante, at 43. But the abstention rule only applies where “the issue of state law is uncertain.” Harman v. Forssenius, 380 U. S. 528, 534. Thus our abstention cases have dealt with unresolved questions of state law which only a state tribunal could authoritatively construe. Reetz v. Bozanich, supra; City of Meridian v. Southern Bell Tel. & Tel. Co., 358 U. S. 639.

. In the present case the Wisconsin Act does not contain any provision whatsoever for notice and hearing. There is no ambiguity in' the state statute. There are no provisions which could fairly be taken to mean that notice and hearing might be given under some circumstances or under some construction but not under others. The Act on its face gives the chief of police the power to do what he did to the appellee. Hence the naked question, uncomplicated by an unresolved state law, is whether that Act on its face is unconstitutional. As we said in Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U. S. 241, 251, abstention should not be ordered merely to await an attempt to vindicate the claim in a state court. Where there is no ambiguity in thé state statute, the federal court should not abstain but should proceed to decide the federal constitutional claim, id., at 250-251. We would negate the history of the enlargement of the jurisdiction of the federal district courts,⁵ if we held the federal court should stay its hand and not decide the question before the state courts decided it.

Affirmed.

1 28 U. S. C. § 1343 provides: “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action authorized by law to be commenced by any person .... (3) To redress; the deprivation, under color of any State law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage, of any right, privilege or immunity secured by the Constitution of the United States or by any Act of Congress providing for equal rights of citizens or of all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States.” '

2 Section 176.26 reads as follows:

“(1) When any person shall by excessive drinking of intoxicating liquors, or fermented malt beverages misspend, waste or lessen his estate so as to expose himself or family to want, or the town, city, village or county to which he belongs to liability'for the support of himself- or family, or so as thereby to injure his health, endanger the loss thereof, or to endanger the personal safety and comfort of his family or any member thereof, or the safety of any other person, or the security of the property of any other person, or when any person shall, on account of the use of intoxicating liquors or fermented malt beverages, become dangerous to the peace of any community, the wife of such person, the supervisors of such town, the mayor, chief of police or aldermen of such city, the trustees of such village, the county superintendent of the-poor of such county, the chairman of the county board of supervisors of such eounty, the district attorney of such county or any of them, may, in writing signed by her, him or them, forbid all persons knowingly to sell or give away to such person any intoxicating liquors or fermented malt beverages, for the space of one year and in like manner may forbid the selling, furnishing, or giving away of any such liquors or fermented malt beverages, knowingly to such person by any person in any town, city or village to which such person may resort for the same. A copy of said writing so signed shall be personally served upon the person so intended to be prohibited from obtaining .any such liquor or beverage.

“(2) And the wife of such person, the supervisors of any town, the aldermen of any city, the trustees of any village, the county superintendent of the poor of such county, the mayor of any city, the chairman of the county board of supervisors of such county, the district attorney or sheriff of such county, may, by a notice made and signed as aforesaid, in like manner forbid all persons in such town, city or village, to sell or give away intoxicating liquors or drinks or fermented malt beverages to any person given to the excessive- use of such liquors, drinks or beverages, specifying such person, and such notice shall have the same force and effect when such specified person is a nonresident as is herein provided when such specified person is a resident of said town, city or village.”

Section 176.28 makes the sale or gift of liquor to such a person a misdemeanor.

3 The first Judiciary Act is in 1 Stat. 73.

4 28 U. ,S. C. § 1343 (3) involved in the present case came into the statutes in ,1871., 17 Stat. 13. In 1875 Congress enlarged federal jurisdiction by authorizing the “federal question” jurisdiction presently contained 5n ,28 U. S. C. § 1331. See 18 Stat. 470. We recently reviewed this history in Zwickler v. Koota, 389 U. S. 241, 245-248.

5 See n. 4, supra.