United States First Circuit

In a civil rights suit brought in federal court against the Massachusetts Attorney General by a business trade association asserting that a state law was pre-empted by federal law and violated the Commerce Clause, the district court's dismissal based on Younger abstention is reversed, where although three of its forty-plus members were defendants in ongoing state civil proceedings brought by private parties alleging violation of the statute, the trade association was not a party to those proceedings, and adjudication of the federal suit would not interfere with the ongoing state proceedings.

Appellate Information

• Decided 01/20/2012
• Published 01/20/2012

Judges

• Lynch

Court

• United States First Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• David C. Casey, Douglas S. Martland