holding that where “the State Board of Optometry was incompetent by reason of bias to adjudicate the issues pending before it [due to prejudgment of the facts and personal pecuniary interest] .... the District Court[ ] ... need not defer to the Board”
How later courts described this case
- holding that where “the State Board of Optometry was incompetent by reason of bias to adjudicate the issues pending before it [due to prejudgment of the facts and personal pecuniary interest] .... the District Court[ ] ... need not defer to the Board”
- concluding that a plaintiff lacked an adequate opportunity to 6 No. 23-5296, Formosa v. Lee present his claim for Younger purposes when a state administrative tribunal “was incompetent by reason of bias to adjudicate the issues pending before it”
- holding that, in evaluating the licensure decision of a state administrative board, “[i]t is sufficiently clear from our cases that those with substantial pecuniary interest in legal proceedings should not adjudicate these disputes”
- recognizing that under Younger, “a federal court may not enjoin a pending state criminal proceeding in the absence of special circumstances suggesting bad faith, harassment or irreparable injury that is both serious and immediate.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Declined to follow by Parker v. Children's Hospital of Phila., 483 Pa. 106 (1978)
The Gibson case is distinguishable from the instant case in these very salient respects: 1) the arbitration panel is composed of a minority of health care providers; 2) the appellants challenge is to the facial validity of the entire arbitration scheme insofar as it invokes health care providers rather than to a particular abuse of quasi-judicial regulatory authority
Distinguished
Distinguished by Earle A. Partington v. Joseph M. Gedan Howard T. Chang, 880 F.2d 116 (1989)
But more important, Gibson is distinguishable from the instant case.
Distinguished by Standard Alaska Production Co. v. Schaible, 874 F.2d 624 (1989)
We distinguished Gibson on the ground that the failure of the appellant to utilize Nevada’s disqualification procedures makes it impossible for us to determine whether the factual allegations of pervasive bias were true.
Distinguished by State of Texas v. United States of America, and Interstate Commerce Commission, 866 F.2d 1546 (1989)
Gibson is easily distinguishable from this case.
Distinguished by Hammond v. Baldwin, 866 F.2d 172 (1989)
Thus, Gibson simply is inapposite.
The opinion
Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
concurring.
I concur, although in my view the three-judge District Court would have been better advised, as a matter of sound judicial discretion, to have refrained from acting until the outcome of the Lee Optical appeal. See my dissenting opinion in Wisconsin v. Constantineau, 400 U. S. 433, 443 (1971).