420 U.S. 592 (1975)

HUFFMAN ET AL.
v.
PURSUE, LTD.

No. 73-296.

Supreme Court of United States.

Argued December 10, 1974. Decided March 18, 1975. APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO.

*593 James J. Clancy argued the cause for appellants. With him on the brief were Lawrence S. Huffman pro se, Richard M. Bertsch, and Albert S. Johnston III.

*594 Gilbert H. Deitch argued the cause for appellee. With him on the brief was Robert Eugene Smith.^[*]

MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case requires that we decide whether our decision in Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971), bars a federal district court from intervening in a state civil proceeding such as this, when the proceeding is based on a state statute believed by the district court to be unconstitutional. A similar issue was raised in Gibson v. Berryhill, 411 U. S. 564 (1973), but we were not required to decide it because there the enjoined state proceedings were before a biased administrative body which could not provide a necessary predicate for a Younger dismissal, that is, "the opportunity to raise and have timely decided by a competent state tribunal the federal issues involved." Id., at 577. Similarly, in Speight v. Slaton, 415 U. S. 333 (1974), we noted probable jurisdiction to consider the applicability of Younger to noncriminal cases, but remanded for reconsideration in light of a subsequent decision of the Georgia Supreme Court which struck down the challenged statute on similar facts. Today we do reach the issue, and conclude that in the circumstances presented here the principles of Younger are applicable even though the state proceeding is civil in nature.^[1]

*595 I

Appellants are the sheriff and prosecuting attorney of Allen County, Ohio. This case arises from their efforts to close the Cinema I Theatre, in Lima, Ohio. Under the management of both its current tenant, appellee Pursue, Ltd., and appellee's predecessor, William Dakota, the Cinema I has specialized in the display of films which may fairly be characterized as pornographic,^[2] and which in numerous instances have been adjudged obscene after adversary hearings.

Appellants sought to invoke the Ohio public nuisance statute, Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 3767.01 et seq. (1971), against appellee. Section 3767.01 (C)^[3] provides that *596 a place which exhibits obscene^[4] films is a nuisance, while § 3767.06^[5] requires closure for up to a year of any place determined to be a nuisance. The statute also *597 provides for preliminary injunctions pending final determination of status as a nuisance,^[6] for sale of all personal property used in conducting the nuisance,^[7] and for release from a closure order upon satisfaction of certain conditions (including a showing that the nuisance will not be re-established).^[8]

*598 Appellants instituted a nuisance proceeding in the Court of Common Pleas of Allen County against appellee's predecessor, William Dakota. During the course of the somewhat involved legal proceedings which followed, the Court of Common Pleas reviewed 16 movies which had been shown at the theater. The court rendered a judgment that Dakota had engaged in a course of conduct of displaying obscene movies at the Cinema I, and that the theater was therefore to be closed, pursuant to Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 3767.06 (1971), "for any purpose for a period of one year unless sooner released by Order of [the] Court pursuant to defendant-owners fulfilling the requirements provided in Section 3767.04 of the Revised Code of Ohio." The judgment also provided for the seizure and sale of personal property used in the theater's operations.^[9]

Appellee, Pursue, Ltd., had succeeded to William Dakota's leasehold interest in the Cinema I prior to entry of the state-court judgment. Rather than appealing that judgment within the Ohio court system, it immediately filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. The complaint was based on 42 U. S. C. § 1983 and alleged that appellants' use of Ohio's nuisance statute constituted a deprivation of constitutional rights under the color of state law. It sought injunctive relief and a declaratory judgment that the statute was unconstitutional and unenforceable.^[10] Since *599 the complaint was directed against the constitutionality of a state statute, a three-judge court was convened.^[11] The District Court concluded that while the statute was not vague, it did constitute an overly broad prior restraint on First Amendment rights insofar as it permanently or temporarily prevented the showing of films which had not been adjudged obscene in prior adversary hearings. Cf. Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U. S. 697 (1931). Fashioning its remedy to match the perceived constitutional defect, the court permanently enjoined the execution of that portion of the state court's judgment that closed the Cinema I to films which had not been adjudged obscene.^[12] The judgment and opinion of the District Court give no indication that it considered whether it should have stayed its hand in deference to the principles of federalism which find expression in Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971).

On this appeal, appellants raise the Younger problem, as well as a variety of constitutional and statutory issues. We need consider only the applicability of Younger.

II

Younger and its companion cases^[13] considered the propriety of federal-court intervention in pending state *600 criminal prosecutions. The issue was not a novel one, and the Court relied heavily on Fenner v. Boykin, 271 U. S. 240 (1926), and subsequent cases^[14] which endorsed its holding that federal injunctions against the state criminal law enforcement process could be issued only "under extraordinary circumstances where the danger of irreparable loss is both great and immediate." Id., at 243. Younger itself involved a challenge to a prosecution under the California Criminal Syndicalism Act, which allegedly was unconstitutional on its face. In an opinion for the Court by Mr. Justice Black, we observed that "it has been perfectly natural for our cases to repeat time and time again that the normal thing to do when federal courts are asked to enjoin pending proceedings in state courts is not to issue such injunctions." 401 U. S., at 45. We noted that not only had a congressional statute manifested an interest in permitting state courts to try state cases,^[15] but that there had also long existed a strong judicial policy against federal interference with state criminal proceedings. We recognized that this judicial policy is based in part on the traditional doctrine that a court of equity should stay its hand when a movant *601 has an adequate remedy at law, and that it "particularly should not act to restrain a criminal prosecution." Id., at 43. But we went on to explain that this doctrine "is reinforced by an even more vital consideration," an aspect of federalism which we described as

"the notion of `comity,' that is, a proper respect for state functions, a recognition of the fact that the entire country is made up of a Union of separate state governments, and a continuance of the belief that the National Government will fare best if the States and their institutions are left free to perform their separate functions in their separate ways." Id., at 44.

Central to Younger was the recognition that ours is a system in which

"the National Government, anxious though it may be to vindicate and protect federal rights and federal interests, always endeavors to do so in ways that will not unduly interfere with the legitimate activities of the States." Ibid.

We reaffirmed the requirement of Fenner v. Boykin that extraordinary circumstances must be present to justify federal injunctive relief against state criminal prosecutions. Echoing Fenner, we stated that a movant must show not merely the "irreparable injury" which is a normal prerequisite for an injunction, but also must show that the injury would be " `great and immediate.' " 401 U. S., at 46. The opinion also suggested that only in extraordinary situations could the necessary injury be shown if the prosecution was conducted in good faith and without an intent to harass. Id., at 54. It was particularly noted that the "cost, anxiety, and inconvenience of having to defend against *602 a single criminal prosecution" was not the type of injury that could justify federal interference. Id., at 46.^[16]

In Younger we also considered whether the policy of noninterference had been modified by our decision in Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U. S. 479 (1965), at least insofar as First Amendment attacks on statutes thought to be facially invalid are concerned. We observed that the arrests and threatened prosecutions in Dombrowski were alleged to have been in bad faith and employed as a means of harassing the federal-court plaintiffs. That case was thus within the traditional narrow exceptions to the doctrine that federal courts should not interfere with state prosecutions. We acknowledged in Younger that it is " `of course conceivable that a statute might be flagrantly and patently violative of express constitutional prohibitions in every clause, sentence and paragraph, and in whatever manner and against whomever an effort might be made to apply it,' " and that such a situation might justify federal intervention, 401 U. S., at 53-54. But we unequivocally held that facial invalidity of a statute is not itself an exceptional circumstance justifying federal interference with state criminal proceedings.

In Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U. S. 452 (1974), we considered whether Younger required exceptional circumstances to justify federal declaratory relief against state criminal statutes when a prosecution was not pending. In concluding that it did not, we had occasion to identify more specifically some of the means by which federal interference with state proceedings might violate the principles of comity and federalism on which Younger is based. We noted that "the relevant principles of equity, *603 comity, and federalism `have little force in the absence of a pending state proceeding.' " Id., at 462. We explained:

"When no state criminal proceeding is pending at the time the federal complaint is filed, federal intervention does not result in duplicative legal proceedings or disruption of the state criminal justice system; nor can federal intervention, in that circumstance, be interpreted as reflecting negatively upon the state court's ability to enforce constitutional principles." Ibid.

It is against this background that we consider the propriety of federal-court intervention with the Ohio nuisance proceeding at issue in this case.

III

The seriousness of federal judicial interference with state civil functions has long been recognized by this Court. We have consistently required that when federal courts are confronted with requests for such relief, they should abide by standards of restraint that go well beyond those of private equity jurisprudence. For example, Massachusetts State Grange v. Benton, 272 U. S. 525 (1926), involved an effort to enjoin the operation of a state daylight savings act. Writing for the Court, Mr. Justice Holmes cited Fenner v. Boykin, supra, and emphasized a rule that "should be very strictly observed," 272 U. S., at 529, "that no injunction ought to issue against officers of a State clothed with authority to enforce the law in question, unless in a case reasonably free from doubt and when necessary to prevent great and irreparable injury." Id., at 527.

Although Mr. Justice Holmes was confronted with a bill seeking an injunction against state executive officers, rather than against state judicial proceedings, *604 we think that the relevant considerations of federalism are of no less weight in the latter setting. If anything, they counsel more heavily toward federal restraint, since interference with a state judicial proceeding prevents the state not only from effectuating its substantive policies, but also from continuing to perform the separate function of providing a forum competent to vindicate any constitutional objections interposed against those policies. Such interference also results in duplicative legal proceedings, and can readily be interpreted "as reflecting negatively upon the state court's ability to enforce constitutional principles." Cf. Steffel v. Thompson, supra, at 462.

The component of Younger which rests upon the threat to our federal system is thus applicable to a civil proceeding such as this quite as much as it is to a criminal proceeding. Younger, however, also rests upon the traditional reluctance of courts of equity, even within a unitary system, to interfere with a criminal prosecution. Strictly speaking, this element of Younger is not available to mandate federal restraint in civil cases. But whatever may be the weight attached to this factor in civil litigation involving private parties, we deal here with a state proceeding which in important respects is more akin to a criminal prosecution than are most civil cases. The State is a party to the Court of Common Pleas proceeding, and the proceeding is both in aid of and closely related to criminal statutes which prohibit the dissemination of obscene materials. Thus, an offense to the State's interest in the nuisance litigation is likely to be every bit as great as it would be were this a criminal proceeding. Cf. Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S., at 55 n. 2 (STEWART, J., concurring). Similarly, while in this case the District Court's injunction has not directly disrupted Ohio's criminal justice *605 system, it has disrupted that State's efforts to protect the very interests which underlie its criminal laws and to obtain compliance with precisely the standards which are embodied in its criminal laws.^[17]

IV

In spite of the critical similarities between a criminal prosecution and Ohio nuisance proceedings, appellee nonetheless urges that there is also a critical difference between the two which should cause us to limit Younger to criminal proceedings. This difference, says appellee, is that whereas a state-court criminal defendant may, after exhaustion of his state remedies, present his constitutional claims to the federal courts through habeas corpus, no analogous remedy is available to one, like appellee, whose constitutional rights may have been infringed in a state proceeding which cannot result in custodial detention or other criminal sanction.

A civil litigant may, of course, seek review in this Court of any federal claim properly asserted in and rejected by state courts. Moreover, where a final decision of a state court has sustained the validity of a state statute challenged on federal constitutional grounds, an appeal to this Court lies as a matter of right. 28 U. S. C. § 1257 (2). Thus, appellee in this case was assured of eventual consideration of its claim by this Court. But quite apart from appellee's right to appeal had it remained in state court, we conclude that it should not be permitted the luxury of federal litigation of issues presented by ongoing state proceedings, a luxury which, *606 as we have already explained, is quite costly in terms of the interests which Younger seeks to protect.

Appellee's argument, that because there may be no civil counterpart to federal habeas it should have contemporaneous access to a federal forum for its federal claim, apparently depends on the unarticulated major premise that every litigant who asserts a federal claim is entitled to have it decided on the merits by a federal, rather than a state, court. We need not consider the validity of this premise in order to reject the result which appellee seeks. Even assuming, arguendo, that litigants are entitled to a federal forum for the resolution of all federal issues, that entitlement is most appropriately asserted by a state litigant when he seeks to relitigate a federal issue adversely determined in completed state court proceedings.^[18] We do not understand why the federal forum must be available prior to completion of the state proceedings in which the federal issue arises, and the considerations canvassed in Younger militate against such a result.

The issue of whether federal courts should be able to interfere with ongoing state proceedings is quite distinct and separate from the issue of whether litigants are entitled to subsequent federal review of state-court dispositions of federal questions. Younger turned on considerations of comity and federalism peculiar to the fact that state proceedings were pending; it did not turn on the fact that in any event a criminal defendant *607 could eventually have obtained federal habeas consideration of his federal claims. The propriety of federal-court interference with an Ohio nuisance proceeding must likewise be controlled by application of those same considerations of comity and federalism.

Informed by the relevant principles of comity and federalism, at least three Courts of Appeals have applied Younger when the pending state proceedings were civil in nature. See Duke v. Texas, 477 F. 2d 244 (CA5 1973); Lynch v. Snepp, 472 F. 2d 769 (CA4 1973); Cousins v. Wigoda, 463 F. 2d 603 (CA7 1972). For the purposes of the case before us, however, we need make no general pronouncements upon the applicability of Younger to all civil litigation. It suffices to say that for the reasons heretofore set out, we conclude that the District Court should have applied the tests laid down in Younger in determining whether to proceed to the merits of appellee's prayer for relief against this Ohio civil nuisance proceeding.

V

Appellee contends that even if Younger is applicable to civil proceedings of this sort, it nonetheless does not govern this case because at the time the District Court acted there was no longer a "pending state court proceeding" as that term is used in Younger. Younger and subsequent cases such as Steffel have used the term "pending proceeding" to distinguish state proceedings which have already commenced from those which are merely incipient or threatened. Here, of course, the state proceeding had begun long before appellee sought intervention by the District Court. But appellee's point, we take it, is not that the state proceeding had not begun, but that it had ended by the time its District Court complaint was filed.^[19]

*608 Appellee apparently relies on the facts that the Allen County Court of Common Pleas had already issued its judgment and permanent injunction when this action was filed, and that no appeal from that judgment has ever been taken to Ohio's appellate courts. As a matter of state procedure, the judgment presumably became final, in the sense of being nonappealable, at some point after the District Court filing, possibly prior to entry of the District Court's own judgment, but surely after the single judge stayed the state court's judgment. We need not, however, engage in such inquiry. For regardless of when the Court of Common Pleas' judgment became final, we believe that a necessary concomitant of Younger is that a party in appellee's posture must exhaust his state appellate remedies before seeking relief in the District Court, unless he can bring himself within one of the exceptions specified in Younger.

Virtually all of the evils at which Younger is directed would inhere in federal intervention prior to completion of state appellate proceedings, just as surely as they would if such intervention occurred at or before trial. Intervention at the later stage is if anything more highly duplicative, since an entire trial has already taken place, and it is also a direct aspersion on the capabilities and good faith of state appellate courts. Nor, in these state-initiated nuisance proceedings, is federal intervention at the appellate stage any the less a disruption of the State's efforts to protect interests which it deems important. Indeed, it is likely to be even more disruptive and offensive because the State has already won a nisi *609 prius determination that its valid policies are being violated in a fashion which justifies judicial abatement.

Federal post-trial intervention, in a fashion designed to annul the results of a state trial, also deprives the States of a function which quite legitimately is left to them, that of overseeing trial court dispositions of constitutional issues which arise in civil litigation over which they have jurisdiction.^[20] We think this consideration to be of some importance because it is typically a judicial system's appellate courts which are by their nature a litigant's most appropriate forum for the resolution of constitutional contentions. Especially is this true when, as here, the constitutional issue involves a statute which is capable of judicial narrowing. In short, we do not believe that a State's judicial system would be fairly accorded the opportunity to resolve federal issues arising in its courts if a federal district court were permitted to substitute itself for the State's appellate courts. We therefore hold that Younger standards must be met to justify federal intervention in a state judicial proceeding as to which a losing litigant has not exhausted his state appellate remedies.^[21]

*610 At the time appellee filed its action in the United States District Court, it had available the remedy of appeal to the Ohio appellate courts. Appellee nonetheless contends that exhaustion of state appellate remedies should not be required because an appeal would have been "futile." This claim is based on the decision of the Supreme Court of Ohio in State ex rel. Keating v. A Motion Picture Film Entitled "Vixen," 27 Ohio St. 2d 278, 272 N. E. 2d 137 (1971), which had been rendered at the time of the proceedings in the Court of Common Pleas. While Keating did uphold the use of a nuisance statute against a film which ran afoul of Ohio's statutory definition of obscenity, it had absolutely nothing to say with respect to appellee's principal contention here, that of whether the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit a blanket injunction against a showing of all films, including those which have not been adjudged obscene in adversary proceedings. We therefore have difficulty understanding appellee's belief that an appeal was doomed to failure.

More importantly, we are of the opinion that the considerations of comity and federalism which underlie Younger permit no truncation of the exhaustion requirement merely because the losing party in the state court of general jurisdiction believes that his chances of success on appeal are not auspicious. Appellee obviously believes *611 itself possessed of a viable federal claim, else it would not so assiduously seek to litigate in the District Court. Yet, Art. VI of the United States Constitution declares that "the Judges in every State shall be bound" by the Federal Constitution, laws, and treaties. Appellee is in truth urging us to base a rule on the assumption that state judges will not be faithful to their constitutional responsibilities. This we refuse to do. The District Court should not have entertained this action, seeking preappeal interference with a state judicial proceeding, unless appellee established that early intervention was justified under one of the exceptions recognized in Younger.^[22]

VI

Younger, and its civil counterpart which we apply today, do of course allow intervention in those cases where the District Court properly finds that the state proceeding is motivated by a desire to harass or is conducted in bad faith, or where the challenged statute is " `flagrantly and patently violative of express constitutional prohibitions in every clause, sentence and paragraph, and in whatever manner and against whomever an effort might be made to apply it.' " As we have noted, the District Court in this case did not rule on the Younger issue, and thus apparently has not considered whether its intervention was justified by one of these narrow exceptions. Even if the District Court's opinion can be interpreted as a sub silentio determination *612 that the case fits within the exception for statutes which are " `flagrantly and patently violative of express constitutional prohibitions,' " such a characterization of the statute is not possible after the subsequent decision of the Supreme Court of Ohio in State ex rel. Ewing v. A Motion Picture Film Entitled "Without a Stitch," 37 Ohio St. 2d 95, 307 N. E. 2d 911 (1974). That case narrowly construed the Ohio nuisance statute, with a view to avoiding the constitutional difficulties which concerned the District Court.^[23]

We therefore think that this case is appropriate for remand so that the District Court may consider whether irreparable injury can be shown in light of "Without a Stitch," and if so, whether that injury is of such a nature that the District Court may assume jurisdiction under an exception to the policy against federal judicial interference with state court proceedings of this kind. The judgment of the District Court is vacated and the cause is *613 remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS and MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL join, dissenting.

I dissent. The treatment of the state civil proceeding as one "in aid of and closely related to criminal statutes" is obviously only the first step toward extending to state civil proceedings generally the holding of Younger v. Harris, 401 U. S. 37 (1971), that federal courts should not interfere with pending state criminal proceedings except under extraordinary circumstances.^[1] Similarly, today's holding that the plaintiff in an action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 may not maintain it without first exhausting state appellate procedures for review of an adverse state trial court decision is but an obvious first step toward discard of heretofore settled law that such actions may be maintained without first exhausting state judicial remedies.

Younger v. Harris was basically an application, in the context of the relation of federal courts to pending state criminal prosecutions, of "the basic doctrine of equity jurisprudence that courts of equity . . . particularly should not act to restrain a criminal prosecution." 401 U. S., at 43. "The maxim that equity will not enjoin a criminal prosecution summarizes centuries of weighty experience in Anglo-American law." Stefanelli v. Minard, 342 U. S. 117, 120 (1951). But Younger v. Harris was *614 also a decision enforcing "the national policy forbidding federal courts to stay or enjoin pending state court [criminal] proceedings except under special circumstances." 401 U. S., at 41. See also id., at 44. For in decisions long antedating Younger v. Harris, the Court had invested the basic maxim with particular significance as a restraint upon federal equitable interference with pending state prosecutions. Not a showing of irreparable injury alone but of irreparable injury "both great and immediate" is required to justify federal injunctive relief against a pending state prosecution. Fenner v. Boykin, 271 U. S. 240, 243 (1926); Spielman Motor Sales Co. v. Dodge, 295 U. S. 89, 95 (1935). Injury merely "incidental to every criminal proceeding brought lawfully and in good faith" is not irreparable injury that justifies an injunction. Douglas v. City of Jeannette, 319 U. S. 157, 164 (1943). See also Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U. S. 479, 485 (1965). The line of decisions culminating in Younger v. Harris reflects this Court's longstanding recognition that equitable interference by federal courts with pending state prosecutions is incompatible in our federal system with the paramount role of the States in the definition of crimes and the enforcement of criminal laws. Federal-court noninterference with state prosecution of crimes protects against "the most sensitive source of friction between States and Nation." Stefanelli v. Minard, supra, at 120.

The tradition, however, has been quite the opposite as respects federal injunctive interference with pending state civil proceedings. Even though legislation as far back as 1793 has provided in "seemingly uncompromising language," Mitchum v. Foster, 407 U. S. 225, 233 (1972), that a federal court "may not grant an injunction to stay proceedings in a State court" with specified exceptions, see 28 U. S. C. § 2283, the Court has consistently engrafted *615 exceptions upon the prohibition. Many, if not most, of those exceptions have been engrafted under the euphemism "implied." The story appears in Mitchum v. Foster, supra, at 233-236. Indeed, when Congress became concerned that the Court's 1941 decision in Toucey v. New York Life Ins. Co., 314 U. S. 118, forecast the possibility that the 1793 Act might be enforced according to its literal terms, Congress amended the Act in 1948 "to restore `the basic law as generally understood and interpreted prior to the Toucey decision.' " Mitchum v. Foster, supra, at 236.

Thus today's extension of Younger v. Harris turns the clock back and portends once again the resuscitation of the literal command of the 1793 Anti-Injunction Act— that the state courts should be free from interference by federal injunction even in civil cases. This not only would overrule some 18 decades of this Court's jurisprudence but would heedlessly flout Congress' evident purpose in enacting the 1948 amendment to acquiesce in that jurisprudence.

The extension also threatens serious prejudice to the potential federal-court plaintiff not present when the pending state proceeding is a criminal prosecution. That prosecution does not come into existence until completion of steps designed to safeguard him against spurious prosecution —arrest, charge, information, or indictment. In contrast, the civil proceeding, as in this case, comes into existence merely upon the filing of a complaint, whether or not well founded. To deny by fiat of this Court the potential federal plaintiff a federal forum in that circumstance is obviously to arm his adversary (here the public authorities) with an easily wielded weapon to strip him of a forum and a remedy that federal statutes were enacted to assure him. The Court does not escape this consequence by characterizing the state civil proceeding involved *616 here as "in aid of and closely related to criminal statutes." The nuisance action was brought into being by the mere filing of the complaint in state court, and the untoward consequences for the federal plaintiff were thereby set in train without regard to the connection, if any, of the proceeding to the State's criminal laws.

Even if the extension of Younger v. Harris to pending state civil proceedings can be appropriate in any case, and I do not think it can be,^[2] it is plainly improper in the case of an action by a federal plaintiff, as in this case, grounded upon 42 U. S. C. § 1983.^[3] That statute serves a particular congressional objective long recognized and enforced by the Court. Today's extension will defeat that objective. After the War Between the States, "nationalism dominated political thought and brought with it congressional investiture of the federal judiciary with enormously increased powers." Zwickler v. Koota, *617 389 U. S. 241, 246 (1967). Section 1983 was enacted at that time as § 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 17 Stat. 13. 389 U. S., at 247. That Act, and the Judiciary Act of 1875, which granted the federal courts general federal-question jurisdiction, completely altered Congress' pre-Civil War policy of relying on state courts to vindicate rights arising under the Constitution and federal laws. 389 U. S., at 245-246. These statutes constituted the lower federal courts " `the primary and powerful reliances for vindicating every right given by the Constitution, the laws, and treaties of the United States.' " Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U. S. 452, 464 (1974). The fact, standing alone, that state courts also must protect federal rights can never justify a refusal of federal courts to exercise that jurisdiction. Zwickler v. Koota, supra, at 248. This is true notwithstanding the possibility of review by this Court of state decisions for, "even when available by appeal rather than only by discretionary writ of certiorari, [that possibility] is an inadequate substitute for the initial District Court determination . . . to which the litigant is entitled in the federal courts." England v. Louisiana State Board of Medical