By Ben Solis
Gongwer News Service
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan did not err when it held a plaintiff lacked standing to challenge the constitutionality of Michigan's Court of Claims under the 14th Amendment, a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled unanimously last Thursday.
In a published opinion written by Judge Eric Murphy, joined by Judge Jane Branstetter Stranch and Judge Amul Thapar, the panel in Bowles v. Whitmer (USCOA Docket No. 24-1013) ruled
that the plaintiff failed to invoke subject matter jurisdiction in a challenge the Court of Claims' practice of having Court of Appeals colleagues review their decisions.
Although the panel ruled that the plaintiff lacked standing, Bowles' merits hinge on a debate nearly as old as the United States.
The Judiciary Act of 1798 required U.S. Supreme Court justices to "ride circuit" and travel long distances to resolve cases on the newly created circuit courts. The losing litigants in those cases could then appeal directly to the Supreme Court. At that time, Murphy wrote, some justices object to the circuit-riding duty on constitutional and practical terms. With bias as their chief concern, those justices wrote to President George Washington to compel him to agree that observers could see the court has having a mutual interest in injuring key rights.
Murphy wrote that the court decades later upheld the constitutionality of circuit riding, with then-justices reasoning that the practice had "'fixed' the Constitution's 'construction.'"
Bowles sought to reopen the centuries-old debate in the context of the Court of Claims.
The plaintiff argued that the Legislature waived Michigan's sovereign immunity by creating the Court of Claims to exclusively handle lawsuits against the state, but now consists of judges from the Court of Appeals. When parties appeal decisions from the Court of Claims, their colleagues on the Court of Appeals hear those challenges – which the plaintiff alleged was a violation of the 14th Amendment.
The Eastern District threw out the challenge asserting that the plaintiff lacked standing to bring the claim.
Upon appeal, Murphy and his 6th Circuit colleagues affirmed that decision.
"The district court held that the complaint failed to invoke its subject-matter jurisdiction, because the plaintiffs lacked standing, and that the complaint failed to state a claim, because their constitutional theories failed on the merits," Murphy wrote. "The court thus seemingly dismissed the suit both without prejudice on jurisdictional grounds, and with prejudice on the merits. Because we agree with the district court's jurisdictional ruling, we proceed no further. We thus limit the court's judgment to a jurisdictional – without prejudice – dismissal."
Murphy said the 6th Circuit's resolution hinged not so much on those early SCOTUS justices' letter to Washington on circuit riding, but rather a different letter justices sent Washington during his presidency.
"When he asked for their legal guidance on a foreign-affairs matter, they responded that they could 'not issue advisory opinions' outside an actual case," Murphy wrote. "Because the plaintiffs here seek such an opinion about the constitutionality of the Court of Claims, we agree with the district court that they lack Article III standing."
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