- Introduction
This past term, the Supreme Court considered the boundaries between a state’s jurisdictional power to structure its courts and the requirements of 42 U.S.C. § 1983 as a supplemental remedy.[i] In a narrow opinion, the Court circumscribed state authority in favor of keeping the options of forums available to plaintiffs seeking to vindicate their constitutional claims against states.[ii] While a plaintiff’s power to seek redress for such constitutional harms within the state’s own court system is by no means absolute, the Supreme Court has shown willingness to intervene in structuring state court systems when necessary to defend constitutionally protected rights.[iii] The narrow grounds and margin of this opinion, however, tells court watchers and practitioners that the Court’s willingness to meddle in a state’s structuring of its judicial power is not absolute, and in fact may reach a terminus in anything broader than a legal Catch-22.[iv]
- 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and Enforcing Constitutional Rights against the States
Since the conception of a federalist structured American government, proponents of the state and federal governments respectively have engaged in a long and undying struggle to determine the balance of power and mechanisms of enforcement between the federal government, state governments, and the people. No single chapter in American history realigned that balance more than the Civil War. In the aftermath of the Civil War, three amendments to the United States Constitution were passed which aimed to secure for posterity the victories won by the Union. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution have thus served as both sword and shield for federal power over the last 150 years.[v]
Among the Reconstruction Amendments, the 14th Amendment, with its guarantees of individual liberties and withdrawal of state powers, has most frequently served as the battlefield in which modern struggles of federalism have taken place.[vi] Of the many areas in which the 14th Amendment restructured federal power, two Clauses are most relevant to this term’s Williams case. First, the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly extended the Due Process protections citizens had been granted against the federal government in the 5th Amendment to apply to state governments as well.[vii] And, second, Section 5 adds to Congress’ enumerated powers the ability to craft legislation which enforces the 14th Amendment.[viii]
Perhaps the most notorious exercise of legislative enforcement of the 14th Amendment is 42 U.S.C. § 1983.[ix] Originally called the Civil Rights Act, the language that would become § 1983 creates a right of action against those who deprive plaintiffs of federally protected rights ‘under color of’ state law. This method of enforcing the 14th Amendment was designed to thwart malicious state officials from failing to uphold constitutionally protected liberties and the unchecked actions of lawless organizations like the Klu Klux Klan.[x]
Thus, Article III courts are tasked with construing and applying the statutory language of § 1983, as well as constitutional interpretation and application of the individual liberties conferred by the 14th Amendment. Judicial attention to § 1983 was in many ways delayed until the mid-twentieth century.[xi] However, judicial use and exploration of § 1983 served as a foundational legal tool for modern civil rights activism in a period sometimes referred to as the Second Reconstruction. Serving as a direct check on state power and a shield of many individual liberties, it is a profound example of the federalist power struggle against the backdrop of the liberties held by the people.
One hallmark that has remained consistent throughout the courts’ interpretation of § 1983 is its supplemental nature. It is clear that the remedy presented by such action does not negate or exclude any remedies a state may offer, such as under its own state constitution or common law tort actions.[xii] And, under the Supremacy Clause, states must hear federal claims in state court unless it has a ‘valid excuse’.[xiii] The Court has held that states which entertain similar types of claims to § 1983 claims under state law do not exercise a valid excuse to refuse to entertain the federal claims by limiting their own jurisdiction to exclude the federal claims but not the analogous state claims.[xiv] If a state opens itself up as a forum for § 1983 litigation, the choice of whether to litigate their claim in federal or state court lies with the plaintiff.
- The Parameters of Williams v. Reed
It is here that this term’s Williams v. Reed case steps in. If a state does choose to open its own courts up as a forum for § 1983 claims, how meaningfully ‘open’ must that forum be for a given claim? Where does a state’s power to structure its own judicial system as it will (deemed plenary) yield to the plaintiff’s interest in a truly open forum? The Court offered narrow guidance on these questions under the facts below.
During the Covid-19 pandemic many states, such as the state of Alabama, were overwhelmed by the sudden spike in claims on unemployment benefits. In an effort to expedite serious delay in the processing of their unemployment benefits, the class of plaintiffs in this case brought suit in Alabama state court at which point the Alabama Secretary of Labor raised a section of its state code which prohibits state courts from hearing administrative claims until the plaintiff has exhausted all of the available administrative appeals available for the claim as a defense.[xv]
However, this class of Alabama plaintiffs sought to bring a § 1983 claim asserting that their Due Process rights were violated as a result of Alabama’s delay in processing their unemployment benefits. Crucially, the class was not seeking a court determination that they were entitled to their unemployment benefits as a matter of law, rather they simply sought a court order requiring state officials to expedite the processing of their benefits.[xvi] But, citing the Alabama statute, the state courts refused to hear the claim, holding that it lacked jurisdiction.[xvii] Thus for a claim asserting delay, Alabama’s statute created an impossible Catch-22 for the plaintiff in which they must wait and continue to suffer the delay until all administrative remedies are exhausted at which point a resolution of the matter will have been reached and the plaintiff will no longer have a live claim to bring in court.
Justice Kavanaugh, writing for a narrow majority of the court in this case found these circumstances to be intolerable. Citing the Court’s precedent holding that states may not immunize state officials from § 1983 claims in their own court systems, Haywood v. Drown, Justice Kavanaugh and the majority found Alabama’s statute practically, if not explicitly, immunized state officials from federal claims of undue delay in Alabama courts.[xviii] Justice Kavanaugh wrote: “In essence, Alabama has said that to challenge delays … you first have to exhaust the administrative process. Of course, that means that you can never challenge delays in the administrative process. That Catch-22 prevents the claimants here from obtaining a merits resolution of their §1983 claims in state court and in effect immunizes state officials”.[xix] But, the Court clarified that this was a narrow holding on the specific set of circumstances presented here and refused to make a broader ruling on the constitutionality of state administrative-exhaustion requirements.[xx]
While it is true that states do have the power, incident to their broad powers to structure their court systems as they wish, to impose neutral procedural rules which do not discriminate against federal claims, the state of Alabama attempted to argue that the rule at issue here was just such a rule, and even if it was not, the state still has broad power to structure the jurisdiction of its court system as it wishes.[xxi] However, the Court found both arguments unconvincing because the statute has the effect of discriminating against federal claims brought against state officials, and simply labeling the rule as jurisdictional does not serve to cure such discrimination; otherwise, states could easily escape the force of the Supremacy Clause by limiting their court ‘jurisdiction’ to exclude undesirable federal claims.
On this point, Justice Thomas writing for the four dissenters, including Justices Alito, Barrett, and Gorsuch, disagreed. Justice Thomas would have held Alabama’s jurisdictional argument to comport with a traditional understanding of states’ broad and plenary powers to structure their court systems as they wish.[xxii] They also took issue with the failure of the plaintiffs to assert a futility exception to the statute in state court.[xxiii] And, writing only for himself, Justice Thomas questioned whether the Supremacy Clause really constrains states’ ability to structure jurisdictional limits for their court systems, questioning a line of Supreme Court precedent going back to Haywood and reminding readers that plaintiffs always have an open forum in federal courts to bring federal claims states would refuse to entertain.[xxiv]
- The Future of § 1983 and State Power
Given the narrow majority and ruling in this case, it seems that the Court may be reaching the outer limits of its jurisprudence constraining state court jurisdiction and procedures via the Supremacy Clause and § 1983. It is notable that while the plaintiffs in this case sought a ruling that exhaustion requirements of this kind are per se invalid and in violation of Supreme Court precedent, the majority refused to grant a ruling that broad. Rather, the Court’s ruling was tailored to respond to the uniquely frustrating cycle in which these plaintiffs found themselves.[xxv]
It is possible that, going forward, more state attempts at legislative innovation which incidentally preclude federal claims from state courts will be legitimately procedural and/or jurisdictional. It seems Justice Thomas still stands alone in attempts to narrowly construe the Supremacy Clause with regard to compelling states to hear federal claims. However, both the majority and the dissenters made clear that federal power over state court systems is by no means unlimited, and in some cases is quite suspect. As states continue to evolve and restructure their courts’ interplay with federal claims, Williams v. Reed may be seen as a point in the Supreme Court’s precedent in which it began to cabin the Supremacy Clause exceptions to states’ power to structure their judiciary.
Finally, a vitally important player in this struggle between state courts and federal courts is Congress. State legislatures are not the only bodies which can innovate in these federalist power struggles. As the authors of § 1983, Congress has the power to enforce the 14th Amendment and all its guarantees of personal liberty against the states, up to and including via an abrogation of state sovereign immunity.[xxvi] Federal courts are not the sole defenders of federally protected rights against the states, and states have the power to influence the federal legislative process; intervention and instruction from Congress could remarkably realign not just the federal-state balance of power but also governmental protections for the individual liberties of all citizens.
Citaitons
[i] See 42 U.S.C. § 1983; see also Williams v. Reed, 2025 U.S. LEXIS 550.
[ii] Williams, 2025 U.S LEXIS at *14.
[iii] See, e.g., Haywood v. Drown, 556 U.S. 729 (2009); Felder v. Casey, 487 U.S. 131 (1988).
[iv] Williams, 2025 U.S LEXIS at *14.
[v] Id. at *8-*9.
[vi] See, e.g., Katzenbach v. Morgan, 384 U.S. 641 (1966).
[vii] U.S. Const. Amend. XIV, § 1.
[viii] U.S. Const. Amend. XIV, § 5.
[ix] See 42 U.S.C. § 1983: “Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.”
[x] See Robert J. Kaczorowski, The Ku Klux Klan Act and the Civil Rights Revolution, 7 Scholar: St. Mary’s Law Review on Race and Social Justice 151, 154 (2005).
[xi] See generally, David H. Gans, Repairing Our System of Judicial Accountability: Reflections on the 150th Anniversary of Section 1983, Cardozo Law Review De Novo 90 (2022).
[xii] See Patsy v. Board of Regents, 457 U.S. 496, 533 (1982).
[xiii] Testa v. Katt, 330 U.S. 386 (1947).
[xiv] See Haywood v. Drown, 556 U.S. 729, 739-42 (2009).
[xv] Williams, 2025 U.S LEXIS at *4-*7.
[xvi] Id. at *7.
[xvii] Id. at *8.
[xviii] Id. at *9.
[xix] Id. at *11.
[xx] Id. at fn. 2.
[xxi] Id. at *12-*13.
[xxii] Id. at *15-*16.
[xxiii] Id. at *25-*26.
[xxiv] Id. at *16-*20.
[xxv] Id. at fn. 2.
[xxvi] Fitzpatrick v. Bitzer, 427 U.S. 445, 456 (1976).
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