In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 00-1225

ROBERT PLOTKIN and BETTER GOVERNMENT

ASSOCIATION,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

GEORGE H. RYAN, CITIZENS FOR GEORGE RYAN

CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE, JESSE WHITE, in his official

capacity as Illinois Secretary of State, et

al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 99-C-53--James B. Zagel, Judge.

Argued November 28, 2000--Decided February 6, 2001

 Before HARLINGTON WOOD, JR., DIANE P. WOOD, and EVANS,

Circuit Judges.

 HARLINGTON WOOD, JR., Circuit Judge. This civil

case arises in the midst of an ongoing federal

criminal investigation, commonly referred to as

"Operation Safe Road." Being investigated are

alleged fraudulent activities during the 1990s in

the Illinois Commercial Drivers’ License Program

as administered by the Illinois Secretary of

State’s Office while George H. Ryan was Secretary

of State. Ryan is now Governor of Illinois and

has not been charged in the investigation. Press

reports indicate that so far at least thirty-five

people have been convicted in connection with the

three-year-old investigation. See, e.g., Matt

O’Connor, Bauer Takes Plea Deal; Ryan pal admits

to ending probes, agrees to 6-month prison

sentence, Chi. Trib., Jan. 18, 2001, at 1. Eighteen

of these individuals were former state employees.

Id. The former head of corruption investigations

in the Secretary of State’s Office at the time in

question recently pleaded guilty to obstructing

a federal investigation. Id./1

 The present case was filed in 1999 by the

Better Government Association ("BGA") and Robert

Plotkin, an Illinois citizen. It is alleged that
Secretary of State employees had been taking

bribes to issue commercial drivers’ licenses to

unqualified applicants in order to meet campaign

fundraising requirements imposed on them by some

employees of the Secretary of State’s Office in

connection with Ryan’s gubernatorial campaign.

The complaint further asserts that Secretary of

State employees were forced to engage in work for

Ryan’s campaign, often during regular work hours.

Plaintiffs argue that those patronage practices

violated their First and Fourteenth Amendment

rights as protected by 42 U.S.C. sec. 1983 and

further were in violation of the Shakman

decree./2 The relief sought varies from

injunctive and declaratory relief, to fines, the

issuance of a rule to show cause, damages, and

other appropriate relief. As to the Citizens for

George Ryan Campaign Committee, plaintiffs seek

the return of all money not shown to have been

lawfully raised./3

 Defendants filed motions to dismiss principally

asserting a lack of standing on the part of

plaintiffs. Standing was claimed by plaintiffs on

the basis of Plotkin’s status as an Illinois

voter or, alternatively, as a user of Illinois

highways. The BGA claimed standing on the basis

of its members’ status as Illinois voters/4 and

also based on the fact that the organization

itself expended time and money monitoring and

investigating the alleged campaign fraud in the

Secretary of State’s Office. All the standing

claims advanced by plaintiffs were rejected by

the district court, which labeled plaintiffs as

no more than "concerned bystanders." The district

court considered other grounds it found to

support dismissal, but we need only consider

standing, not any alternative basis.

DISCUSSION 

 Article III standing is reviewed de novo, but

we accept any factual findings made by the

district court in resolving the standing question

unless clearly erroneous. Perry v. Village of

Arlington Heights, 186 F.3d 826, 828 (7th Cir.

1999).

 The plaintiffs look to Shakman v. Democratic

Organization of Cook County, 435 F.2d 267 (7th

Cir. 1970) ("Shakman I"), for standing support;

however, since our decision in Shakman I, the

Supreme Court has reexamined justiciability and

its limitations under the case-and-controversy

provision of Article III. See Shakman v. Dunne,

829 F.2d 1387, 1393 (7th Cir. 1987) ("Shakman

II"). We therefore must analyze plaintiffs’

claims of standing under the latest criteria set

out by the Supreme Court. Given the thorough

examination of standing by this court in Shakman
II, we began with it. The court in Shakman II

found the most comprehensive summary of the

applicable standing criteria to be set forth in

Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751 (1984), as

follows: "A plaintiff must allege personal injury

fairly traceable to the defendant’s allegedly

unlawful conduct and likely to be redressed by

the requested relief."/5 The Court expanded on

this concept in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife,

504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992). Under Lujan, a party

invoking federal jurisdiction must show (1)

"injury in fact;" (2) a causal connection between

the injury and the challenged conduct, i.e.,

"traceability;" and (3) that it is "’likely,’ as

opposed to merely ’speculative,’ that the injury

will be ’redressed by a favorable decision.’" Id.

at 560-61 (citations omitted). Plaintiffs and

defendants disagree as to whether the present

case satisfies those easily-stated criteria,

which can generate different views in their

application. In resolving this dispute, we are

also guided by the teaching of Simon v. Eastern

Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U.S.

26, 44 (1976), which states that "unadorned

speculation will not suffice to invoke the

federal judicial power." These principles are not

confined to the facts of any particular case, but

are broadly relevant to standing in any Article

III controversy.

 It is obvious to us as we review the claims

alleged by plaintiffs that, in spite of

plaintiffs’ good intentions, the federal standing

requirements cannot be met. First, plaintiffs’

claims of standing based on their status as

voters fail based on a lack of redressability.

The alleged injury-in-fact for these claims is

that defendants’ illegal conduct skewed the

election results in favor of George Ryan and, in

the process, diluted the impact of their votes.

Plaintiffs concede that they cannot have the

results of the 1998 gubernatorial election set

aside by this suit, but ask for injunctive

relief, findings of contempt, and the imposition

of fines. In their reply brief, plaintiffs argue

that they have voter standing based on the

Supreme Court’s recent decision in Friends of the

Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services,

Inc., 120 S. Ct. 693 (2000)./6 However, while

the Court in Laidlaw, 120 S. Ct. at 707,

recognized that the deterrent effect of civil

penalties "afford[s] redress to citizen

plaintiffs who are injured or threatened with

injury as a consequence of ongoing unlawful

conduct," it expressly acknowledged the continued

validity of Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better

Environment, 523 U.S. 83 (1998), which

"established that citizen suitors lack standing

to seek civil penalties for violations that have

abated by the time of suit." Laidlaw, 120 S. Ct.
at 707 (citing Steel Co., 523 U.S. at 106-07)./7

At the time this suit was filed, on January 7,

1999, the election had concluded, and Ryan, a

Republican, was the Governor-elect. Jesse White,

the Democratic candidate, had been elected

Secretary of State. Plaintiffs make no

allegations that the bribes-for-commercialdrivers’-licenses scheme is continuing under

Secretary White’s administration, contending only

that "[t]here exists in the Secretary of State’s

office a deep-seated culture and policy or custom

of intertwining and requiring coerced partisan

political work together with the official duties

of the office," and as a result, "[t]here is a

substantial likelihood that without remedial

steps being taken that such or similar unlawful

conduct will continue." These allegations are

purely speculative. 

 Furthermore, plaintiffs ask that Ryan’s campaign

committee be forced to return any funds not shown

to be lawfully raised. Upon questioning at oral

argument, counsel for plaintiffs suggested that

the money be returned to either the employees or

the individuals who gave the bribes in order to

send a message to Ryan and the committee that

they cannot profit from their alleged wrongdoing.

It is unclear how such action would redress the

alleged injury-in-fact. That a plaintiff may

derive satisfaction from the fact that a

wrongdoer gets his just desserts does not

constitute an acceptable Article III remedy.

Steel Co., 523 U.S. at 107. No case has gone so

far as we are asked to go by plaintiffs in this

case, and we are not free to do so. Plaintiffs

bear the burden of establishing standing, and

each element, including redressability, must be

supported by more than unadorned speculation.

Because none of the relief sought would likely

remedy the alleged injury-in-fact, plaintiffs

fail to demonstrate redressability, a necessary

element for Article III standing. Therefore, we

need not address the other two required factors.

Plaintiffs’ claims based on voter standing fail.

 We need not reach the broader question whether

there is some kind of remedy, under state or

federal law, available to Illinois voters to

address the problem of the misuse of state worker

time when those workers are conscripted by their

supervisors into an alleged captive army of

campaign workers. Additionally, this case is

distinguishable from the Supreme Court’s decision

in Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinois, 497

U.S. 62 (1990), because in the present case no

member of the so-called "captive army" is a

plaintiff. 

 Plotkin’s claim of standing based on the use of

Illinois highways must also fail. As the Supreme
Court noted in Lujan, in order to satisfy the

injury requirement, a plaintiff must show that he

has suffered an invasion of a legally-protected

interest that is both "(a) concrete and

particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not

conjectural or hypothetical." Lujan, 504 U.S. at

560 (internal quotations and citations omitted).

Plotkin argues that he has suffered injury in the

form of an increased risk of accidents because

unqualified drivers have illegally obtained

commercial drivers’ licenses; however, this risk

is too speculative and generalized to constitute

an injury-in-fact for standing purposes. If

Plotkin allegedly suffers injury from an

increased risk of accident, then so do all people

using Illinois highways, including the judges of

this court as was mentioned at oral argument.

There are necessarily many outside unknown

influences affecting all aspects of these

standing concepts advanced by plaintiffs. 

 Finally, the BGA claims that it has standing as

an organization, apart from its members, simply

by reason of its expenditure of time and money in

pursuing the alleged fraud. However, ordinary

expenditures as part of an organization’s purpose

do not constitute the necessary injury-in-fact

required for standing. The BGA in the past has

been instrumental in advancing government reforms

in Illinois by using investigators and attorneys

along with journalistic techniques and litigation

to expose corruption./8 This decision does not

curtail those regular techniques of the BGA. It

only means good intentions are not enough for

federal standing.

 The district court characterized it well when

it said that "plaintiffs are simply no more than

concerned bystanders and do not have standing to

challenge these actions in this court." Were the

requirements of standing to be compromised as

suggested in this suit, it would no longer be a

useful jurisdictional concept.

 The parties shall bear their own costs.

AFFIRMED.

/1 None of the cases involved have so far reached

this court.

/2 See Shakman v. Democratic Org. of Cook County,

481 F. Supp. 1315 (N.D. Ill. 1979).

/3 The State of Illinois in the past has seen some

alleged corruption in high places. See, e.g.,

United States v. Ladd, 218 F.3d 701 (7th Cir.

2000); United States v. Martin, 195 F.3d 961 (7th
Cir. 1999); United States v. Isaacs, 493 F.2d

1124 (7th Cir. 1974); United States v. Downey,

195 F. Supp. 581 (S.D. Ill. 1961); Robert

Hartley, Still a Mystery Man; The death of Paul

Powell in 1970 had a big impact on public

affairs, State J. Reg. Springfield, Illinois, Oct. 8,

2000, at 17. 

/4 As the Supreme Court noted in Friends of the

Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services,

Inc., 120 S. Ct. 693 (2000),

[a]n association has standing to bring suit on

behalf of its members when its members would

otherwise have standing to sue in their own

right, the interests at stake are germane to the

organization’s purpose, and neither the claim

asserted nor the relief requested requires the

participation of individual members in the

lawsuit.

Id. at 704 (citing Hunt v. Washington State Apple

Adver. Comm’n, 432 U.S. 333, 343 (1977)).

/5 Later cases have referred to this test as the

"irreducible constitutional minimum of standing."

See, e.g., Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 162

(1997) (internal quotations and citations

omitted). The Shakman decree cannot create

standing in cases in which the requirements of

Article III are not satisfied.

/6 Plaintiffs address Laidlaw in their initial brief

in connection with Plotkin’s claim of standing

based on his use of Illinois highways.

/7 Plaintiffs argue that this position gives

politicians "carte blanche unless a suit can be

filed and brought to judgment while the election

is going on." However, the Court in Laidlaw

highlighted the difference between standing,

which must exist at the time of the commencement

of the litigation, and mootness. See Laidlaw, 120

S. Ct. at 708-10.

/8 For further information, see the BGA web site,

http://www.bettergov.org.