The Anti-Injunction Act (28 U.S.C. § 2283), is a United States federal statute that restricts a federal court's authority to issue an injunction against ongoing state court proceedings, subject to three enumerated exceptions. It states:
"A court of the United States may not grant an injunction to stay proceedings in a state court except as expressly authorized by Act of Congress, or where necessary in aid of its jurisdiction, or to protect or effectuate its judgments."
The Act was originally enacted as part of the Judiciary Act of 1793. The current Act was enacted in 1948. As interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States, the Act is a bastion of federalism and embodies the need to avoid "needless friction" between state and federal courts.
History
1793 enactment and 19th-century development Section 5 of the Judiciary Act of 1793 provided that no "writ of injunction [shall] be granted to stay proceedings of any court of a state."Act of Mar. 2, 1793, ch. 22, § 55, 1 Stat. 334.
The provision has no legislative history.John Daniel Reaves & David S. Golden, The Federal Anti-Injunction Statute in the Aftermath of Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, 5 Ga. L. Rev. 294, 296 (1971). The traditional view, as advanced by the Supreme Court, is that the statute's prohibition promoted federalism by "unconditionally" prohibiting federal courts from interfering in state court proceedings. Some modern scholars have argued for a more limited reading: that the 1793 Act merely prevented a single Supreme Court justice riding circuit from enjoining state court proceedings. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court in the 19th century interpreted the statute to prohibit any federal court from enjoining state court proceedings.
In 1874, the Act was amended to formally prohibit injunctions by both the Supreme Court and lower federal courts.Rev. Stat. of 1872, ch. 12, §720, 18 Stat. 134. Congress later inserted the provision, unchanged, into the Judicial Code of 1911.§ 265, Judicial Code of 1911, 28 U.S.C. § 379 (1940).
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Supreme Court and lower federal courts read in numerous exceptions to the Anti-Injunction Act. Some exceptions were based on statutes: the Act was held to allow injunctions to protect cases in federal court pursuant to the federal removal and interpleader statutes, legislation limiting shipowners’ liability and granting federal jurisdiction over farm mortgages, as well as federal habeas cases.
The other exceptions came from the common law. For instance, a federal court could stay state court proceedings where the federal court had previously seized the piece of property (also called a res) that was the subject of the litigation, or where a litigant who lost a federal case sought to relitigate a precluded claim or issue in state court (also known as the Relitigation Exception).
Because of all these exceptions, a prominent law review article in 1932 declared that, by that year, the statute was “long . . . dead.”
Toucey v. New York Life Insurance Co. (1941) The modern era of Anti-Injunction Act doctrine began in 1941, when the Supreme Court decided Toucey v. New York Life Insurance Co. The case began when New York Life prevailed in federal court on Toucey's claim to collect monthly disability insurance payments. Toucey then assigned his benefits to another individual, who sued New York Life in state court on functionally the same claim. On New York Life's request, the federal district court enjoined the state court proceeding. The Eighth Circuit upheld the injunction, reasoning that the Anti-Injunction Act did not apply because the injunction at issue was necessary to "effectuate and preserve" the "fruits of the decree" in the initial federal case.Toucey v. New York Life Ins. Co., 102 F.2d 16, 23 (8th Cir. 1939).
The issue before the Supreme Court was the propriety of this application of the common-law Relitigation Exception. The Supreme Court, in a majority opinion by Justice Felix Frankfurter, held that the injunction was inappropriate because the Relitigation Exception "patently violates the expressed prohibition of Congress." The Court declared its intention going forward to only recognize exceptions to the AIA where Congress had expressly authorized them or where a federal court first acquires jurisdiction over a res and seeks to exclude duplicative state litigation over the same res.
1948 Act Congress partially overruled Toucey in 1948 by revising the Anti-Injunction Act to allow injunctions, like the one in Toucey, to protect earlier federal court judgments. It also codified the two exceptions the Court had already acknowledged. The 1948 Act's legislative history states its purpose as "restor[ing] the basic law as generally understood and interpreted prior to the Toucey decision."
The Act hasn't changed since 1948. It reads: "A court of the United States may not grant an injunction to stay proceedings in a state court except as expressly authorized by Act of Congress, or where necessary in aid of its jurisdiction, or to protect or effectuate its judgments."
Current doctrine
Purposes The modern Supreme Court has affirmed Toucey’s understanding that the Act is rooted in notions of comity and federalism. Per the Court, the Anti-Injunction Act's "core message" is "respect for state courts," and it was "designed to prevent conflict between federal and state courts." Accordingly, the Court has interpreted the three statutory exceptions narrowly and prohibits lower courts from creating new exceptions.
Key terms
"Court": The AIA only limits the power of a “court of the United States” to enjoin state proceeding. A “court of the United States” includes the United States Supreme Court and the lower federal courts, including the District Court of Puerto Rico but not the District Courts for the Canal Zone, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, or the Virgin Islands. "Injunction": The AIA's prohibition on injunctions of state court proceedings extends to declaratory judgments with the same effect as an injunction.Texas Employers’ Ins. Ass’n v. Jackson, 862 F.2d 491, 504-508 (5th Cir. 1988). Whether a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction counts as an injunction is a fact-specific question.Bennett v. Medtronic, Inc., 285 F.3d 801, 804-805 (9th Cir. 2002). "Proceeding": A “proceeding” for the purposes of the AIA include “[a]ll steps taken or which may be taken in the state court or by its officers from the institution to the close of the final process." The prohibition applies to appellate as well as to original proceedings. It does not include arbitration or other private dispute resolution mechanisms instituted by agreement between the parties,Prudential Real Estate Affiliates, Inc. v. PPR Realty, Inc., 204 F.3d 867 (9th Cir. 2000) unless the arbitration involves a judicial inquiry (for instance, to decide and enforce rights and liabilities).Prudential Real Estate Affiliates, Inc., 204 F.3d at 879-80. The Act's prohibition also does not apply to state administrative proceedings.United States Fidelity & Guar. Co. v. Lee Inv. LLC, 641 F.3d 1126, 1136 (9th Cir. 2011). "Parties bound": The Anti-Injunction Act's text applies to all parties to a federal court proceeding, but the Supreme Court has recognized a number of exceptions. In Leiter Minerals, Inc. v. United States, the Court held that the federal government may enjoin state proceedings if necessary to prevent irreparable injury to the national interest. Similarly, the Act does not apply to federal agencies that effectively function as a national sovereign and that assert a superior federal interest.
Statutory exceptions The Anti-Injunction Act contemplates three circumstances under which its bar on injunctions of state-court proceedings does not apply. Specifically, federal courts are not barred from enjoining proceedings (1) “as expressly authorized by Act of Congress,” (2) “when necessary in aid of” the federal court's jurisdiction, or (3) “to protect or effectuate federal court judgments.” These three exceptions are known as, respectively, the Expressly Authorized Exception, the Aid of Jurisdiction Exception, and the Relitigation Exception. The Supreme Court has stated that the three statutory exceptions are exclusive and “should not be enlarged by loose statutory construction.”
Expressly Authorized Exception Under the Expressly Authorized Exception, federal courts can enjoin state court proceedings "as expressly authorized by Act of Congress." The theory behind the exception is that, by expressly allowing stays of state court proceedings pursuant to certain statutes, Congress validly overrides the limitation that it imposed in the Anti-Injunction Act. To fall within the exception, the Supreme Court has held, a statute "need not expressly refer to" the AIA, but it must "clearly create a federal right or remedy enforceable in a federal court [that] could be given its intended scope only by the stay of a state court proceeding."
The major Supreme Court cases interpreting the Expressly Authorized Exception are Mitchum v. Foster and Vendo Co. v. Lektro-Vend Corp.
Mitchum v. Foster (1972): 42 U.S.C. § 1983 allows a person to sue in federal court for violations of federal constitutional rights. In Mitchum, the Supreme Court held that Section 1983 "expressly authorizes" federal injunctions of state proceedings because its purpose was to "interpose the federal courts between the States and the people" and to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment against state action, "whether that action be executive, legislative, or judicial." Thus, the federal district court in Mitchum could lawfully issue an injunction preventing a Florida state court from issuing a temporary restraining order that violated Mitchum's First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Vendo Co. v. Lektro-Vend Corp. (1977): Section 16 of the Clayton Antitrust Act allows federal suits for injunctive relief against unlawfully anticompetitive behavior. In Vendo Co., the Supreme Court held that Section 16 was not an "expressly authorized" exception to the AIA. Then-Justice William Rehnquist's plurality opinion reasoned that a federal court's power to enjoin state court proceedings was not necessary to give the Clayton Act "its intended scope" because the Act's legislative history did not convey the same distrust of state judiciaries as did Section 1983's. Justice Harry Blackmun's concurring opinion argued that Section 16 should expressly authorize injunctions, but only where a pending state court proceeding is itself part of a "'pattern of baseless repetitive claims' that are being used as an anti-competitive device."
According to a leading treatise, "[l]ower courts have struggled to reconcile" these two decisions. Statutes held to fall within the exception include the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 and the Agricultural Credit Act.Zajac v. Fed. Land Bank of St. Paul, 887 F.2d 844, 855-56 (8th Cir. 1989). Statutes held to fall outside the exception include the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act;Tex. Employers' Ins. Ass'n v. Jackson, 862 F.2d 491, 503-504 (5th Cir. 1988). the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure;In re Temple, 851 F.2d 1269, 1272 n.3 (11th Cir. 1988). the Equal Credit Opportunity Act;Bledsoe v. Fulton Bank, 940 F. Supp. 804, 807-809 (E.D. Pa. 1996). and the Americans with Disabilities Act.Lussier v. Dep't. of Hwy. Safety & Motor Vehicles, 972 F. Supp. 1412, 1418-22 (M.D. Fla. 1997).
Aid of Jurisdiction Exception