Martin v. Stewart

OPINION

DIANA GRIBBON MOTZ, Circuit Judge:

In this case, the district court dismissed federal constitutional challenges to two South Carolina statutes regulating video poker, on the ground that Burford v. Sun Oil Co., 319 U.S. 315, 63 S.Ct. 1098, 87 L.Ed. 1424 (1943), mandated abstention. Because resolution of these challenges neither requires a court to adjudicate difficult questions of state law, nor disrupts state efforts to establish through a complex regulatory process a coherent policy on a matter of substantial public concern, this case falls well outside the narrow category of cases to…