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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
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No. 14–990
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STEPHEN M. SHAPIRO, et al., PETITIONERS
v.DAVID J. McMANUS, JR., CHAIRMAN, MARYLAND STATE BOARD OF
ELECTIONS, et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the fourth circuit
[December 8, 2015]
Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the
Court.
We consider under what circumstances, if any, a
district judge is free to “determin[e] that three judges are not
required” for an action “challenging the constitutionality of the
apportionment of congressional districts.” 28 U. S. C.
§§2284(a), (b)(1).
I
A
Rare today, three-judge district courts were
more common in the decades before 1976, when they were required for
various adjudications, including the grant of an “interlocutory or
permanent injunction restraining the enforcement, operation or
execution of any State statute . . . upon the ground of
the unconstitutionality of such statute.” 28 U. S. C.
§2281 (1970 ed.), repealed, Pub. L. 94–381, §1, 90Stat. 1119. See
Currie, The Three-Judge District Courtin Constitutional Litigation,
32 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1, 3–12 (1964). Decisions of three-judge
courts could, then as now, be appealed as of right directly to this
Court. 28 U. S. C. §1253.
In 1976, Congress substantially curtailed the
circumstances under which a three-judge court is required. It was
no longer required for the grant of an injunction against state
statutes, see Pub. L. 94–381, §1, 90Stat. 1119 (repealing 28
U. S. C. §2281), but was mandated for “an action
. . . challenging the constitutionality of the
apportionment of congressional districts or the apportionment of
any statewide legislative body.” Id., §3, now codified at 28
U. S. C. §2284(a).
Simultaneously, Congress amended the procedures
governing three-judge district courts. The prior statute had
provided: “The district judge to whom the application for
injunction or other relief is presented shall constitute one member
of [the three-judge] court. On the filing of the application, he
shall immediately notify the chief judge of the circuit, who shall
designate two other judges” to serve. 28 U. S. C.
§2284(1) (1970 ed.). The amended statute provides: “Upon the filing
of a request for three judges, the judge to whom the request is
presented shall, unless he determines that three judges are not
required, immediately notify the chief judge of the circuit,
who shall designate two other judges” to serve. 28
U. S. C. §2284(b)(1) (2012 ed.) (emphasis added). The
dispute here concerns the scope of the italicized text.
B
In response to the 2010 Census, Maryland
enacted a statute in October 2011 establishing—or, more
pejora-tively, gerrymandering—the districts for the State’s eight
congressional seats. Dissatisfied with the crazy-quilt results, see
App. to Pet. for Cert. 23a, petitioners, a bipartisan group of
citizens, filed suit pro se in Federal District Court.
Their amended complaint alleges, inter alia, that Maryland’s
redistricting plan burdens their First Amendment right of political
association. Petitioners also requested that a three-judge court be
convened to hear the case.
The District Judge, however, thought the claim
“not one for which relief can be granted.” Benisek v.
Mack, 11 F. Supp. 3d 516, 526 (Md. 2014).
“[N]othing about the congressional districts at issue in this case
affects in any proscribed way [petitioners’] ability to participate
in the political debate in any of the Maryland congressional
districts in which they might find themselves. They are free to
join preexisting political committees, form new ones, or use
whatever other means are at their disposal to influence the
opinions of their congressional representatives.” Ibid.
(brackets, ellipsis, and internal quotation marks omitted).
For that reason, instead of notifying the Chief
Judge of the Circuit of the need for a three-judge court, the
District Judge dismissed the action. The Fourth Circuit summar-ily
affirmed in an unpublished disposition. Benisek v.
Mack, 584 Fed. Appx. 140 (CA4 2014). Seeking review in this
Court, petitioners pointed out that at least two other Circuits
consider it reversible error for a district judge to dismiss a case
under §2284 for failure to state a claim for relief rather than
refer it for transfer to a three-judge court. See LaRouche
v. Fowler, 152 F. 3d 974, 981–983 (CADC 1998);
LULAC v. Texas, 113 F. 3d 53, 55–56 (CA5 1997)
(per curiam). We granted certiorari. Shapiro v.
Mack, 576 U. S. ___ (2015).
II
Petitioners’ sole contention is that the
District Judge had no authority to dismiss the case rather than
initiate the procedures to convene a three-judge court. Not so,
argue respondents; the 1976 addition to §2284(b)(1) of the clause
“unless he determines that three judges are not required” is
precisely such a grant of authority. Moreover, say respondents,
Congress declined to specify a standard to constrain the exercise
of this authority. Choosing, as the District Judge did, the
familiar standard for dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 12(b)(6) best serves the purposes of a three-judge court,
which (in respondents’ view) is to protect States from “hasty,
imprudent invalidation” of their statutes by rogue district judges
acting alone. Brief for Respondents 27.
Whatever the purposes of a three-judge court may
be, respondents’ argument needlessly produces a contradiction in
the statutory text. That text’s initial prescription could not be
clearer: “A district court of three judges shall be convened
. . . when an action is filed challenging the
constitutionality of the apportionment of congressional districts
. . . .” 28 U. S. C. §2284(a) (emphasis
added). Nobody disputes that the present suit is “an action
. . . challenging the constitutionality of the
apportionment of congressional districts.” It follows that the
district judge was required to refer the case to a
three-judge court, for §2284(a) admits of no exception, and “the
mandatory ‘shall’ . . . normally creates an obligation
impervious to judicial discretion.” Lexecon Inc. v.
Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, 523 U. S. 26,
35 (1998) ; see also National Assn. of Home Builders v.
Defenders of Wildlife, 551 U. S. 644 –662 (2007)
(same).
The subsequent provision of §2284(b)(1), that
the district judge shall commence the process for appointment of a
three-judge panel “unless he determines that three judges are not
required,” need not and therefore should not be read as a grant of
discretion to the district judge to ignore §2284(a). It is not even
framed as a proviso, or an exception from that provision, but
rather as an administrative detail that is entirely compatible with
§2284(a). The old §2284(1) triggered the district judge’s duty to
refer the matter for the convening of a three-judge court “[o]n the
filing of the application” to enjoin an unconstitutional state law.
By contrast, the current §2284(b)(1) triggers the district judge’s
duty “[u]pon the filing of a request for three judges”
(emphasis added). But of course a party may—whether in good faith
or bad, through ignorance or hope or malice—file a request
for a three-judge court even if the case does not merit one under
§2284(a). Section 2284(b)(1) merely clarifies that a district judge
need not unthinkingly initiate the procedures to convene a
three-judge court without first examining the allegations in the
complaint. In short, all the district judge must “determin[e]” is
whether the “request for three judges” is made in a case covered by
§2284(a)—no more, no less.
That conclusion is bolstered by §2284(b)(3)’s
explicit command that “[a] single judge shall not . . .
enter judgment on the merits.” It would be an odd interpretation
that allowed a district judge to do under §2284(b)(1) what he is
forbidden to do under §2284(b)(3). More likely that Congress
intended a three-judge court, and not a single district judge, to
enter all final judgments in cases satisfying the criteria of
§2284(a).
III
Respondents argue in the alternative that a
district judge is not required to refer a case for the convening of
a three-judge court if the constitutional claim is (as they assert
petitioners’ claim to be) “insubstantial.” In Goosby v.
Osser, 409 U. S. 512 (1973) , we stated that the filing
of a “constitutionally insubstantial” claim did not trigger the
three-judge-court requirement under the pre-1976 statu-tory regime.
Id., at 518. Goosby rested not on an interpretation
of statutory text, but on the familiar proposition that “[i]n the
absence of diversity of citizenship, it is essential to
jurisdiction that a substantial federal question should be
presented.” Ex parte Poresky, 290 U. S. 30, 31 (1933)
(per curiam) (emphasis added). Absent a substantial federal
question, even a single-judge district court lacks jurisdiction,
and “[a] three-judge court is not required where the district court
itself lacks jurisdiction of the complaint or the complaint is not
justiciable in the federal courts.” Gonzalez v. Automatic
Employees Credit Union, 419 U. S. 90, 100 (1974) .
In the present case, however, the District Judge
dismissed petitioners’ complaint not because he thought he lacked
jurisdiction, but because he concluded that the allegations failed
to state a claim for relief on the merits, citing Ashcroft
v. Iqbal, 556 U. S. 662 (2009) , and Bell Atlantic
Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U. S. 544 (2007) . See 11
F. Supp. 3d, at 520. That was in accord with Fourth
Circuit precedent, which holds that where the “pleadings do not
state a claim, then by definition they are insubstantial and
so properly are subject to dismissal by the district court without
convening a three-judge court.” Duckworth v. State Admin.
Bd. of Election Laws, 332 F. 3d 769, 772–773 (CA4 2003)
(emphasis added).
We think this standard both too demanding and
inconsistent with our precedents. “[C]onstitutional claims will not
lightly be found insubstantial for purposes of” the
three-judge-court statute. Washington v. Confederated
Tribes of Colville Reservation, 447 U. S. 134 –148 (1980).
We have long distinguished between failing to raise a substantial
federal question for jurisdictional purposes—which is what
Goosby addressed—and failing to state a claim for relief on
the merits; only “wholly insubstantial and frivolous” claims
implicate the former. Bell v. Hood, 327 U. S.
678 –683 (1946); see also Hannis Distilling Co. v. Mayor
and City Council of Baltimore, 216 U. S. 285, 288 (1910)
(“obviously frivolous or plainly insubstantial”); Bailey v.
Patterson, 369 U. S. 31, 33 (1962) (per curiam)
(“wholly insubstantial,” “legally speaking non-existent,”
“essentially fictitious”); Steel Co. v. Citizens for
Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83, 89 (1998) (“frivolous or
immaterial”). Absent such frivolity, “the failure to state a proper
cause of action calls for a judgment on the merits and not for a
dismissal for want of jurisdiction.” Bell, supra, at
682. Consistent with this principle, Goosby clarified that
“ ‘[c]onstitutional insubstantiality’ for this purpose has
been equated with such concepts as ‘essen-tially fictitious,’
‘wholly insubstantial,’ ‘obviously frivolous,’ and ‘obviously
without merit.’ ” 409 U. S., at 518 (citations omitted).
And the adverbs were no mere throwaways; “[t]he limiting words
‘wholly’ and ‘obviously’ have cogent legal significance.”
Ibid.
Without expressing any view on the merits of
petitioners’ claim, we believe it easily clears Goosby’s low
bar; after all, the amended complaint specifically challenges
Maryland’s apportionment “along the lines suggested by Justice
Kennedy in his concurrence in Vieth [v. Jubelirer,
541 U. S. 267 (2004) ].” App. to Brief in Opposition 44.
Although the Vieth plurality thought all political
gerrymandering claims nonjusticiable, Justice Kennedy, concurring
in the judgment, surmised that if “a State did impose burdens and
restrictions on groups or persons by reason of their views, there
would likely be a First Amendment violation, unless the State shows
some compelling interest. . . . Where it is alleged that
a gerrymander had the purpose and effect of imposing burdens on a
disfavored party and its voters, the First Amendment may offer a
sounder and more prudential basis for intervention than does the
Equal Protection Clause.” Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541
U. S. 267, 315 (2004) . Whatever “wholly insubstantial,”
“obviously frivolous,” etc., mean, at a minimum they cannot include
a plea for relief based on a legal theory put forward by a Justice
of this Court and uncontradicted by the majority in any of our
cases. Accordingly, the District Judge should not have dismissed
the claim as “constitutionally insubstantial” under Goosby.
Perhaps petitioners will ultimately fail on the merits of their
suit, but §2284 entitles them to make their case before a
three-judge district court.
* * *
The judgment of the Fourth Circuit is
reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings
consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
