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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repealed, Pub.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.
