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339 U.S. 321

70 S. Ct. 640

94 L. Ed. 877

Docket No. 689.

Shipman v. DuPre

Supreme Court of the United States

Decided April 24, 1950.

Supreme Court of the United States · decided 1950-04-24

2 counsel of record

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“"* * * This Court has never held that a district court is without jurisdiction to entertain a prayer for an injunction restraining the enforcement of a state statute on grounds of alleged repugnancy to the Federal Constitution simply because the state courts had not yet rendered a clear or definitive decision as to the meaning or federal constitutionality of the statute. "We hold that the District Court has jurisdiction of this cause. It was error to dismiss the complaint for lack of jurisdiction. The judgment of the District Court is vacated and the case is remanded to it. We do not decide what procedures the District Court should follow on remand."”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 159 F. Supp. 503 - NATIONAL ASS'N FOR ADVANCE. OF COLORED PEOPLE v. Patty

“remanded to that court with directions to retain jurisdiction of the complaint for a reasonable time, to afford appellants an opportunity to obtain, by appropriate proceedings, a construction by the state court of the statutory provisions involved.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including SHIPMAN v. DuPRE

Relies on American Federation of Labor v. Watson · 88 F. Supp. 482 - Shipman v. Dupre

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1950-04-24

How this case has been cited

Cited by 131 later decisions (23 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 1977 · most notably Zwickler v. Koota (1967), Baggett v. Bullitt (1964)

40 federal appellate · 14 district · 5 state decisions

890195019601970decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Aaron Kravitch, Phyllis Kravitch and Joseph From-berg for appellants.

¶2John M. Daniel, Attorney General of South Carolina, T. C. Callison and R. Hoke Robinson, Assistant Attorneys General, for appellees.

¶3Per Curiam.

¶4Appellants sought a declaratory judgment that certain sections of the South Carolina statute regulating the fisheries and shrimping industry were unconstitutional, and interlocutory and permanent injunctions restraining the state officials from carrying out those provisions. The *322statutory three-judge District Court assumed jurisdiction, decided the issues on the merits, and dismissed the complaint. 88 F. Supp. 482. From the papers submitted on appeal, it does not appear that the statutory sections in question have as yet been construed by the state courts. We are therefore of opinion that the District Court erred in disposing of the complaint on the merits. See American Federation of Labor v. Watson, 327 U. S. 582, 595-599.

¶5The judgment of the District Court is vacated and the cause is remanded to that court with directions to retain jurisdiction of the complaint for a reasonable time, to afford appellants an opportunity to obtain, by appropriate proceedings, a construction by the state court of the statutory provisions involved.

¶6Mr. Justice Douglas dissents.

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