West Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. v. City of Martinsburg

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 11-2231
WEST VIRGINIA CITIZENS DEFENSE LEAGUE, INC., a West
Virginia nonprofit corporation,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
v.
CITY OF MARTINSBURG, a West Virginia municipal corporation;
GEORGE KAROS, personally and in his official capacity as the
Mayor of the City of Martinsburg; MARK S. BALDWIN,
personally and in his official capacity as the City Manager
of the City of Martinsburg; KEVIN MILLER, personally and in
his official capacity as the Chief of Police of the City of
Martinsburg,
Defendants - Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern
District of West Virginia, at Martinsburg. John Preston Bailey,
Chief District Judge. (3:11-cv-00005-JPB)
Submitted: June 7, 2012 Decided: June 19, 2012
Before AGEE, DAVIS, and KEENAN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
James M. Mullins, Jr., THE LAW OFFICES OF JAMES M. MULLINS, JR.
PLLC, Beckley, West Virginia, for Appellant. Floyd M. Sayre,
III, BOWLES RICE McDAVID GRAFF & LOVE, LLP, Martinsburg, West
Virginia, for Appellees.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:
In January 2011, the West Virginia Citizens Defense
League, Inc. (“WVCDL”) filed in the district court a
preenforcement challenge to § 545.14 of the Code of the City of
Martinsburg, West Virginia, which imposes certain restrictions
on the ability to possess a firearm within public buildings.
The district court stayed the case, invoking the abstention
doctrine first recognized in Railroad Comm’n of Tex. v. Pullman
Co., 312 U.S. 496 (1941). WVCDL appealed, and the parties’
dispute now centers upon two issues: (1) whether WVCDL has
standing to press its current claims, and (2) whether the
district court abused its discretion in staying the case under
the Pullman abstention doctrine. Because we conclude, on a
review of the record, that WVCDL has standing and that the
district court did not abuse its discretion in abstaining under
Pullman, we affirm the judgment of the district court.
The Defendants to the suit (collectively,
“Martinsburg”) argue that WVCDL lacks standing to challenge
§ 545.14 on behalf of its members. We review questions of
standing de novo, and the burden of establishing standing “lies
squarely on the party claiming subject-matter jurisdiction.”
Frank Krasner Enters., Ltd. v. Montgomery County, 401 F.3d 230,
234 (4th Cir. 2005).
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An organization bringing suit on behalf of its members
must satisfy three requirements in order to secure
organizational standing: (1) that its members would have
standing to sue as individuals; (2) that the interests it seeks
to protect are germane to the organization’s purpose; and
(3) that the suit does not require the participation of
individual members. Equity In Athletics, Inc. v. Dep’t of
Educ., 639 F.3d 91, 99 (4th Cir. 2011), cert. denied, 132 S. Ct.
1004 (2012). With respect to the first of these requirements,
individual members must show that they suffered “an actual or
threatened injury that is concrete, particularized, and not
conjectural,” and that is fairly traceable to the challenged
conduct and likely to be redressed by a favorable decision. Id.“When a party brings a preenforcement challenge to a
statute or regulation, it must allege ‘an intention to engage in
a course of conduct arguably affected with a constitutional
interest,’ and there must exist ‘a credible threat of
prosecution’ under the statute or regulation.” Va. Soc’y for
Human Life, Inc. v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 263 F.3d 379, 386 (4th
Cir. 2001) (quoting Babbitt v. United Farm Workers Nat’l Union,
442 U.S. 289, 298 (1979)). Nevertheless, a plaintiff contesting
the constitutionality of a criminal statute need not “first
expose himself to actual arrest or prosecution to be entitled to
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challenge the statute that he claims deters the exercise of his
constitutional rights.” Babbitt, 442 U.S. at 298; Mobil Oil
Corp. v. Att’y Gen. of Va., 940 F.2d 73, 76 (4th Cir. 1991).
Our review of the record convinces us that WVCDL has
sufficiently alleged that at least one of its members intends to
engage in conduct for which the prospect of prosecution is not
merely “imaginary” or “speculative.” Va. Soc’y for Human Life,
263 F.3d at 386; Equity in Athletics, 639 F.3d at 99. WVCDL
therefore has standing to pursue the claims it pressed before
the district court.
We conclude nevertheless that the district court did
not abuse its discretion when it determined to stay the case
under the Pullman abstention doctrine. See Hennis v. Hemlick,
666 F.3d 270, 274 (4th Cir. 2012) (review of a district court’s
decision to abstain is for abuse of discretion). Because a
district court abuses its discretion whenever “its decision is
guided by erroneous legal principles,” there is “little or no
discretion to abstain in a case which does not meet traditional
abstention requirements.” Martin v. Stewart, 499 F.3d 360, 363
(4th Cir. 2007).
Federal courts “should abstain” under Pullman where a
case involves an open question of state law that is potentially
dispositive inasmuch as its resolution may moot the federal
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constitutional issue. Va. Office for Prot. & Advocacy v.
Stewart, 131 S. Ct. 1632, 1644 (2011) (Kennedy, J., concurring);
Educational Servs., Inc. v. Md. State Bd. for Higher Educ., 710
F.2d 170, 174 (4th Cir. 1983). The doctrine thus both avoids
impinging upon state sovereignty and forestalls premature
consideration of sensitive federal controversies. Stewart, 131
S. Ct. at 1644 (Kennedy, J., concurring); Nivens v. Gilchrist,
444 F.3d 237, 246 n.6 (4th Cir. 2006).
In this case, WVCDL’s assertion that the record is
bereft of evidence demonstrating the presence of thorny and
potentially dispositive state law questions is without merit,
given that WVCDL’s complaint squarely demonstrates the presence
of numerous such issues. Nor do we countenance WVCDL’s
contention that Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520
U.S. 43, 75-80 (1997), renders the district court’s reliance on
Pullman improper. In our view, the circumstances of this case
would have supported either certifying a question of state law
to the West Virginia state courts or invoking the Pullman
abstention doctrine. Because both options were equally
available to the district court, it was not an abuse of
discretion for the court to choose the latter over the former.
Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the district
court. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and
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legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials
before the court and argument would not aid the decisional
process.
AFFIRMED
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