# John D. MacDonald and Patricia MacDonald v. The Village of Northport, Michigan

> Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit · January 11, 1999 · 164 F.3d 964

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9491778

## Case

- **Full name:** John D. MACDONALD and Patricia MacDonald, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. the VILLAGE OF NORTHPORT, MICHIGAN, Et Al., Defendants-Appellees
- **Court:** Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
- **Decided:** January 11, 1999
- **Citations:** 164 F.3d 964; 1999 U.S. App. LEXIS 268; 1999 WL 6427
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Ryan
- **Judges:** Ryan, Clay, Oakes
- **Cited by:** 59 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9491778

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that a state's "great interest in maintaining access to the Great Lakes" was a "special sovereignty interest" that precluded an Ex parte Young suit
- applying Coeur d'Alene and concluding the Eleventh Amendment barred a federal lawsuit against the Michigan State Treasurer seeking a declaration that the plaintiffs owned a right-of-way which provided access to navigable waterway
- finding that a challenge to public use of a right of way that provided public access to a navigable waterway implicated special sovereignty interests

## Opinion text

RYAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
While I concur in my brothers’ view that the district court correctly abstained from exercising its jurisdiction in this case, I decline to go further and join my brothers in affirming the judgment on Eleventh Amendment grounds.
The majority opinion posits, and indeed rather persuasively so, that the Eleventh Amendment bars the plaintiffs’ federal claims against the state despite the doctrine announced in Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 , 28 S.Ct. 441 , 52 L.Ed. 714 (1908), that the Eleventh Amendment does not mean precisely what it says.
The scope of Ex parte Young was narrowed, the majority opinion explains, by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Idaho v. Coeur d’Alene Tribe, 521 U.S. 261 , 117 S.Ct. 2028 , 138 L.Ed.2d 438 (1997). That may be so, but I am not entirely convinced. Whether the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s claim of entitlement to quiet enjoyment of the submerged lands of Lake Coeur d’Alene is, for purposes of Eleventh Amendment constitutional doctrine, the essential equivalent of the Mac-Donalds’ claim to the portion of 7th Street next to their home, is a question that needs more thorough vetting than it has been given on this appeal. Indeed, the district court did not address the question in its opinion, and as the majority here observes, the question was not discussed in the parties’ briefs.
I am content, therefore, to rest my view that the judgment below should be affirmed solely on my brothers’ reasoning that the district court properly invoked the abstention doctrine.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9491778. Public record. Not legal advice.