Abortion, Colorado River, and Interpleader
A short excerpt from today’s long Braid v. Stilley, written by Seventh Circuit Judge Michael Scudder and joined by Chief Judge Diane Sykes and Judge Thomas Kirsch:
In September 2021 Dr. Alan Braid, a Texas OB/GYN, wrote an editorial in the Washington Post admitting he performed an abortion in violation of the Texas Heartbeat Act. Three individuals from three different states reacted by each invoking the citizen-suit enforcement provision of the Texas Heartbeat Act and seeking to recover at least $10,000 in statutory damages.
Now facing the prospect of duplicative liability, Dr. Braid made use of the federal interpleader statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1335, to join the claimants in a single suit. But, in an odd twist, he did not do so by going to any Texas federal court but instead by filing suit in federal court in Chicago. In addition to his interpleader claim, Dr. Braid sought declaratory relief, urging the district court to declare the Texas Heartbeat Act unconstitutional.
The district court dismissed Dr. Braid’s entire suit, concluding that the existence of parallel state-court proceedings justified abstention under the Supreme Court’s Wilton–Brillhart doctrine. Though we chart a different course of reasoning, we ultimately reach the same end point and therefore affirm the dismissal of Dr. Braid’s federal case….
Like the district court, the parties, too, recognize that this case is far from an ordinary interpleader case which follows a similar and well-known pattern: “a neutral stakeholder, usually an insurance company or a bank,” sues in federal court to force “all the claimants” to the policy or fund “to litigate their claims in a single action brought by the stakeholder.” Congress originally limited our jurisdiction to this narrow set of claims, specifying that statutory interpleader applied only to actions brought by “any insurance company or fraternal beneficiary society.”
But over time Congress expanded the remedy’s availability, amending t
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