7 The district court's analysis finds firm support in Kennedy v. Sampson, 511 F.2d 430 (D.C. Cir. 1974). In that case, Senator Edward Kennedy challenged President Nixon's exercise of a "pocket veto"-a refusal to sign a bill while Congress was adjourned for the Christmas holidays. The Government urged us to decline to hear the case on the ground that Congress was free to re-enact the bill. We rejected the argument because such a measure "would not change the fact that the pocket veto power will have been used as an obstacle-however temporary-to the implementation of the will of Congress." 511 F.2d at 436 n.17. The parallel here is selfevident. The District next contends that appellants have failed to state a cause of action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The District insists that the Act establishes a comprehensive remedial scheme that evidences a congressional intent to foreclose judicial remedies. See Wilder v. Virginia Hospital Ass'n, 496 U.S. 498, 508 (1990). This argument lacks merit. As the Supreme Court noted in Wilder, the District has the burden "to show by express provision or other specific evidence from the statute itself that Congress intended to foreclose" resort to enforcement under section 1983. Id. at 520-21. The District has made no such showing; and it cannot because the statutory scheme confers a right of participation on Congress that is not beyond the competence of the judiciary to enforce, as we recognize above in our discussion of equitable discretion. The District further argues that the Council's legislative immunity precludes appellants' suit. It is true that section 1983 does not permit suits against legislators acting in their legislative capacity. Gross v. Winter, 876 F.2d 165, 169 (D.C. Cir. 1989). This immunity, however, "protects legislators only in the exercise of legislative functions, not administrative functions." Id. at 169-70. Here, the Council's duty to transmit its acts to Congress is purely ministerial. B. The Merits The central issue in this appeal concerns the interplay between the Emergency and Temporary Repealers on the one hand and the Home Rule Act on the other. Appellants 83-009 09529 8 argue, in effect, that because both of the Repealers used the word "repeal," the legislation that had been submitted to Congress had ceased to exist; therefore, there was nothing before Congress to be reviewed during the period that ended on March 6, 1991. This argument, however, does not explain the limited terms of these "repeals" or the need for the Permanent Repealer. As the District of Columbia Court of Appeals noted, in discussing the effect of the Emergency Repealer: It would seem a tortured distortion of ordinary language to construe an emergency repeal act, which by its own terms is effective for only 90 days, to have the effect of nullifying on a permanent basis a Council Act itself intended to be permanent. Atkinson v. Bd. of Elections & Ethics, 597 A.2d 863, 867 (D.C. 1991). That interpretation of the effect of legislative action by the D.C. Council dealing with matters within its jurisdiction is, of course, binding on this court. In legal effect, then, these measures did nothing more than to suspend the Liability Act (the first for ninety days and the second for 225) to allow time for a permanent repealer to be enacted and become law. It is the effect of this suspension on the statutory layover period mandated by the Home Rule Act that lies at the heart of this appeal. The Home Rule Act does not address a situation where the Council itself initiates the repeal of legislation while it is awaiting congressional review. The District argues that because there are no provisions in the Act to the contrary, the thirty-day period runs uninterrupted despite the intervening enactment of legislation designed to suspend and then repeal the legislation that has been submitted for review. Under this reasoning, the Liability Act would have become law on March 6, 1991, thirty statutory days after it had been submitted to Congress We note at the outset that the District of Columbia Court of Appeals reached this conclusion in Atkinson 597 A.2d at 869. But while we must defer to that court on its interpretation of purely local law, Hall v. Ford, 856 F.2d 255, 267 (D.C. Cr. 1988), we owe it no such deference on matters of federal 9 law. The Home Rule Act is a "hybrid statute" that contains elements of both federal and local law. Thomas v. Barry, 729 F.2d 1469, 1471 (D.C. Cir. 1984). It is self-evident, however, that questions regarding Congress's reserved right to review District legislation before it becomes law concerns an exclusively federal aspect of the Act. We therefore owe this ruling of the D.C. Court of Appeals no more than the deference that is always due the decisions of a sister court. In Atkinson the D.C. Court of Appeals addressed the argument that the Repealers had tolled the thirty-day review period and found it wanting. The most fundamental difficulty with appellant's argument is that it is based on a faulty premise that the 1991 repeater acts have legally affected the process of congressional layover for the Liability) Act. Appellant offers no statutory or case foundation for this assertion. and we find none in the statutory scheme. Atkinson 597 A.28 at 868. The court then concluded that because the Liability Act had remained in effect)... the Congressional review period had passed" Id at 869 ingr nal quotation marks omitted. We are not persuaded. It seems obvious to us that the reason there is no provision the statutory scheme for the contingency now before us is that Congress simply did not antimpate that the Council might change te mind and attempt to repeal an act so soon after it has been enacted and transmitted to Congress. other words, we are faced with a legislative gap. In such circumstances. it is our duty to determine, as best we can how Congress would have fled that gap nas i antimpated the circumstances creating it As the Nim Circut poserved in Come & DeruT_SEL We may, as a matter of legislative interpretation. place a 987 F 28 €11. €2 h Or. 1993 en bour ratior omitted.. We believe the answer is clear when one examines the provisions of the Home Hue Act for dealing wID the situ 10 tion where legislation enacted by the Council is made the subject of a referendum. Section 1-282 of the D.C. Code provides that upon the presentation of a petition for a referendum to the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, the Board must notify Congress of the fact and Congress, in turn, must return the challenged legislation to the Council. Section 1-233(c)(1) provides that if the challenged legislation is approved by the District's voters, the Chairman of the Council must resubmit it to Congress, and the legislation "shall take effect upon the expiration of the [statutory thirty-day period] beginning on the day such [legislation] is transmitted by the Chairman to the [Congress]." Thus, in the circumstances where the legislation awaiting congressional review is placed in jeopardy as a result of a referendum petition, the Home Rule Act withdraws it from congressional consideration until its fate is known. If the legislation survives the referendum, the Act ensures that Congress will have a new thirty-day period within which to consider it. These provisions reflect the practical difficulty of expecting the two Houses of Congress to focus the attention required to assess the merits of legislation submitted by the Council if there is a possibility that it will be rejected by the District's voters. The Act therefore defers congressional review until after the result of the referendum is known. Here, we are faced with comparable circumstances, the difference being that the Council itself, rather than the sponsors of a referendum petition, had initiated the action to rescind legislation that had been referred to Congress. Furthermore, as in the case of the filing of a referendum petition, the enactment of the Emergency and Temporary Repealers relieved Congress of the need to review legislation that the Council itself was in the process of repealing. We conclude, therefore, that as in the case of the filing of a referendum petition, the enactment of the Emergency and Temporary Repealers resulted in the suspension of the review period pending final action on the Liability Act by the District. The remaining question, then, is the effect of the Repealers and the subsequent referendum vote on the thirty-day review 11 period required by the Home Rule Act as a precondition to the Liability Act's taking effect. Did Congress only have the time remaining at the date of the suspension within which to decide whether to disapprove the measure, or was it entitled to a new period of thirty consecutive days within which to review the Act, as would have been the case had the Liability Act, rather than the Permanent Repealer, been the subject of the referendum? We again look for guidance to the procedures instituted by Congress when legislation awaiting congressional review is challenged in a referendum petition. As noted earlier, section 1-233(c)(1) of the D.C. Code provides that if the District's electors vote their approval of an act that is subject to a referendum, the Council will resubmit it to Congress, and the thirty-day statutory review period will begin to run anew as of the date of the resubmission. In the case before us, of course, the Liability Act has remained in the hands of Congress as there is no provision for its return to the Council in the absence of a referendum. Appellants nevertheless insist that after the Temporary Repealer had expired, the D.C. Council had a duty to resubmit the Liability Act to Congress for review; and because the Council failed to do so, they argue that the statutory review period has yet to begin. We disagree. A new submission by the Council to Congress was not necessary because the bill remained in Congress's hands; nor do we believe such a formal act was required to effectuate the Home Rule Act's goals. Congress retained possession of the Liability Act, and it knew precisely when the Temporary Repealer was due to expire. In light of the critical role of the layover period in Congress's plan for a "type of veto of Council actions [that] will ensure to the Congress the continued ultimate control of the affairs of the District," S. Rep. No. 219, 93d Cong., 1st Sess. 6 (1973), and because Congress made it apparent, in section 1-233(c)(1), that that period must be uninterrupted if it is to be effective, we hold that a new thirty-day period for congressional review of the Liability Act began the day after the |