THE BATTALION Page 5
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13, 1979
the state
ourt overturns abuse decisions
United Press International
WASHINGTON —The Supreme
, closing federal courthouse
ors a little tighter, ruled 5-4
icsday that federal judges should
ve abstained from reviewing a
uple’s challenge to parts of Texas’
ild abuse law.
■ The majority said a three-judge
t federal panel should have thrown
fo it the lawsuit in light of pending
| ate proceedings — despite the
rents’ claim they could not get
prompt and meaningful review of
their rights under Texas proce
dures.
The high court’s opinion over
turned the lower-court’s decision
finding sections of the Texas statute
unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court, in a 1971
decision criticized by civil liberties
groups, held that federal courts
should abstain from interfering with
pending state criminal prosecutions
except in extraordinary circum
stances or when a statute flagrantly
violates constitutional provisions.
In 1975, that principle was ex
tended to civil proceedings that are
closely related to enforcement of
criminal statutes in which the state
is a party and has a strong interest.
In Tuesday’s case, Justice William
Rehnquist noted Texas law appears
to raise no procedural barriers for
the parents to raise their constitu-
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nelons, wiu
and transpoij,
lements reluctantly signs
ar bill despite veto threat
on a coma
United Press International
AUSTIN — Gov. Bill Clements
Jgned a bill Tuesday continuing the
existence of the State Bar as well as
its present spending methods, re
versing his earlier position that he
would veto the measure if it did not
make the Bar accountable to the
state treasury.
The governor said he was disap-
inted the Legislature did not re
rite the Bar bill to require the
fewyer agency to place its funds in
the state treasury and account for its
ending as required of other state
encies.
Clements said he decided to back
wn from his earlier position be-
use vetoing the bill would have
ade the state Supreme Court as
sume responsibility for policing the
legal profession or would have
forced him to call a special session of
the Legislature this summer.
“I certainly never advocated that
we would do away with the Bar per
se,” Clements said.
"If I vetoed it and I did accept the
fact that we must have and should
have a Bar I would have had to call a
special session of the Legislature be
tween now and Sept. 1 and I do not
want to do that,” Clements said.
“I don’t know of anything as such
that makes the Bar different from
other agencies,” Clements said.
The Bar bill was the most con
troversial agency on lawmakers’
1979 agenda for sunset review
primarily because of sharp criticism
the lawyers have received for bor
rowing money to build a lavish
Texas Law Center and then impos
ing a mandatory assessment on the
state’s 32,000 attorneys to pay off
the debt when donations did not
come in as predicted.
Critics said the Bar, as a state
agency, had no legal authority to
mortgage state property but Bar of
ficials said the Texas Law Center be
longed to the Bar rather than the
state.
The governor said he discussed
the situation several times for sev
eral hours with the chief justice of
the State Supreme Court, Joe
Greenhill.
“He has made it very clear that he
does not want this hot potato on his
plate,” Clements said.
Clements said Greenhill indi
cated he favored — and believed 35
to 40 percent of the state’s 32,000
attorneys favor — major revisions in
the Bar bill such as requiring the
agency to account to the Legislature
for its spending.
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Nuisance case to go before Court
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The Supreme
lourt Tuesday agreed to consider
whether Texas statutes permitting
Vie closing of public nuisances for
I: pne year are constitutional when
melons applied to obscenity cases.
K The justices will hear arguments
tu In the'‘■ ex t term on appeals by Texas law
jnforcement officials claiming a fed-
inej;.®jral appeals court erred in holding
ne nuisance law unconstitutional
ecause it amounted to a prior re-
traint on materials a court has not
leclared obscene.
p The case was one of 20 involving
__^obscenity taken before before a
three-judge federal trial court in
classifieds I4973. The panel selected three rep-
5-2611 resentative cases to consider.
This case began in San Angelo,
here King Arts Theater Inc. was
erating an adult motion picture
eater showing sexually explicit
llms.
The county attorney, George
L-ity, an
elon,
>y 7 inches,
en. So will’d
■Ion when anj
n at the samtj
?
McCrea, told the building’s land
lord he intended to have the theater
declared a public nuisance and ob
tain an injunction to bar showing of
any possibly obscene films.
When the landlord notified King
Arts its lease would be terminated
on Nov. 15 because of McCrea’s
statement, King Arts sued to bar
McCrea from taking any action.
The suit was transferred to the
three-judge court, which in July
1975 held the nuisance statutes
amounted to an unconstitutional
prior restraint on distribution of ma
terials not yet determined obscene
by a judge.
Reviewing the case, the 5th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept.
28, 1977, reversed the lower court
and found the nuisance laws con
stitutional, saying they permitted an
injunction only after a judicial de
termination that obscene material
had been shown.
When the full 5th Circuit reheard
the case, it split 8-6 and reversed
the panel on the nuisance laws,
holding they “clearly create a prior
restraint” because they allow the
state to close — for up to one year
— a theater that has exhibited
obscene films.
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tional claims in state court.
The lower court “inverts tra
ditional abstention logic when it
states that because the interests in
volved are important, abstention is
appropriate,’ he said.
“Family relations is a traditional
area of state concern,” he agreed,
but said “we are unwilling to con
clude that state processes are un
equal to the task of accommodating
the various interests and deciding
the constitutional questions that
may arise in child welfare litiga
tion.”
Dissenters, led by Justice John
Paul Stevens, charged Tuesday’s
ruling extends the abstention doc
trine “beyond its logical bounds.”
Stevens said the court majority
was “implicitly sanctioning a depri
vation of parental rights without
procedural protections which, as the
state itself agrees, are constitution
ally required.”
“If there is no requirement that
federal plaintiffs initiate constitu
tional litigation in state rather than
federal court in the first instance —
and this court has repeatedly held
that there is not — then the coinci
dence of an unrelated state proceed
ing provides no justification for im
posing such a requirement,” he
said.
Sections of the Texas child abuse
law were challenged by John and
Mary Sims of Montgomery County,
whose son, Paul, and two daughters
were taken into state custody March
25, 1976, after authorities at a Hous
ton elementary school reported the
boy apparently had been beaten.
After efforts to be heard in state
court, they finally went to federal
court in Houston, where 42 days
later their children were returned to
them. Later, the federal court ruled
on provisions, including failure of
the state law to always provide par
ents a prompt hearing after a child is
seized.
The district court concluded it
could assert jurisdiction over the
case because the litigation was
“multi-faceted, ” involved custody of
children, and was the product of
procedural confusion in the state
courts.
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