Opinion ID: 407612
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Causal Connection and Redressability

Text: 28 Standing to sue, however, also depends on the existence of a fairly traceable causal connection between the defendant's allegedly illegal conduct and the plaintiff's purported injuries. Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Corp., 429 U.S. 252, 261, 92 S.Ct. 555, 561, 50 L.Ed.2d 450 (1977). In a brief, conclusory fashion the plaintiffs alleged that allocating Section 8 funding to the project caused their injury. Implicit in the allegation is the contention that HUD's promise of funding induced construction of the structure whose inhabitation created the congestion. The defendants argue that this connection between HUD's funding decision and the congestion causing the plaintiffs' injuries is too tenuous to support standing. Though standing is not necessarily lost because of the weakness of the causal connection, Warth, 422 U.S. at 505, 95 S.Ct. at 2208, a nexus sufficiently strong must be present to assure the district court that granting relief will personally benefit the plaintiffs. Duke Power, 438 U.S. at 74, 98 S.Ct. at 2630. The district court found it could not provide effective relief with construction nearly completed and the building in place. The court reasoned that occupation of the building was inevitable and the requested relief, the permanent injunction of federal funding, could not alter that result. The court concluded that should the plaintiffs' injuries occur, judicial relief would not redress them. Warth and Simon, two cases pertinent to but not dispositive of this issue, represent the major analyses by the Supreme Court of the causation element in the standing doctrine. 29 In Simon the Court held the plaintiffs, a group of indigents, lacked standing to challenge a change in Internal Revenue Service treatment of hospitals which did not provide free non-emergency medical services to the poor. The plaintiffs alleged the change, which gave the hospitals non-profit tax status, seriously impaired their ability to find medical treatment. The Court held an insufficient causal connection existed between the injury and the new IRS rule because changes in hospital policy toward the treatment of indigents could result from business rather than tax considerations. The Court reasoned the change was equally likely to result from business considerations because free treatment of the poor seriously drained hospital resources. In contrast, the Court noted statistics that private donors, to whom a hospital's tax status would be extremely important, accounted for a minor percentage of hospital revenues. The Court held that as the contention that hospitals would treat fewer indigents because of the changed tax rules was unsupported and purely speculative, the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue. In Warth the plaintiffs, also of low income status, lacked standing to challenge a municipal zoning ordinance which they alleged unconstitutionally prevented them from living in Penfield, New York. The Court also held the causal connection between the injury and the illegal ordinance was too speculative to support standing. The Court found the exclusion of the plaintiffs was as likely to have resulted from the economics of the area housing market, which prevented low income people from finding and purchasing houses in Penfield, as from the zoning ordinance. 30 Unlike Warth and Simon, there is not a competing cause of the plaintiffs' injuries here. If the injuries occur, they will result from a single cause, the increased congestion in the neighborhood created by the construction and inhabitation of the Broadway-Diversey building. 7 However, this does not leave Warth and Simon irrelevant to the present case. Those cases articulate the fundamental principle behind the standing doctrine and the principle on which this case rests. 31 (W)hen a plaintiff's standing is brought into issue the relevant inquiry is whether, assuming justiciability of the claim, the plaintiff has shown an injury to himself that is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision. 32 The necessity that the plaintiff who seeks to invoke judicial power stands to profit in some personal interest remains an Art. III requirement. A federal court cannot ignore this requirement without overstepping its assigned role in our system of adjudicating only actual cases and controversies. 33 Simon, 426 U.S. at 38-39, 96 S.Ct. at 1924-1925. 34 The relief plaintiffs seek is valueless at this late stage of proceedings. The plaintiffs requested the permanent injunction of federal assistance to the project. They asked the district court to enjoin payment of Section 8 funds, guarantees on advances on the mortgage, and the purchase of the mortgage. Though the complaint was filed soon after construction began, the building is now almost complete. We agree with the district court's conclusion that the plaintiffs' injuries are inevitable because the building will be occupied regardless of the outcome of this lawsuit. 35 First, only sixty percent of the building's occupants will receive Section 8 assistance. The remaining forty percent will pay free market rents which the plaintiffs estimated at the temporary injunction hearing could exceed $600 monthly. That the free market rents have reached this height indicates many people are willing to pay enormous rents to live in a building similar to the Broadway-Diversey. In addition, the developers claimed at oral argument to have received private commitments of financing if the district court enjoins federal assistance to the project. It therefore appears that with or without federal financing, the completed building will be occupied and the attendant congestion inevitable. 36 The plaintiffs contend that the district court can redress their injuries by enjoining funding. Their argument, that the building, though near completion, will stand vacant and unfinished if funding is withdrawn, is unfounded. As the single ground supporting this contention, the plaintiffs rely on the developers' statement in their petition to intervene that the building could not be constructed without federal assistance. Since the developers intervened soon after the lawsuit began, the statement is of little relevance to their present financial ability to withstand the withdrawal of federal financial assistance. The plaintiffs' reliance on Welton v. Forty East Oak Street Building Corp., 70 F.2d 377 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 293 U.S. 590, 55 S.Ct. 105, 79 L.Ed. 685 (1934) and J. Weingarten, Inc. v. Northgate Mall, 390 So.2d 527 (La.App.1980), two cases holding that equity courts will halt construction on or order removal of illegally constructed buildings, is also misplaced. Neither case addresses the issue of whether the relief the plaintiffs requested, the injunction of federal funding, will provide the tangible personal benefits necessary to give them standing to continue this lawsuit. Thus, despite the plaintiffs' burden of proving standing through the pleadings and, if necessary, through affidavits or at an evidentiary hearing, Simon, 426 U.S. at 52-53, 96 S.Ct. at 1930-1931 (Brennan, J., concurring), the record is barren of any evidence contradicting the district court's very sensible conclusion that a nearly completed apartment building will be finished and occupied. 37 The plaintiffs' standing under the National Environmental Policy Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 4321 et seq., deserves brief but separate attention. 8 The National Environmental Policy Act, while providing significant substantive goals for the nation, Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 435 U.S. 519, 558, 98 S.Ct. 1197, 1219, 55 L.Ed.2d 460 (1978), created only procedural rights for individuals living in an area affected by federal action, Aberdeen & Rockfish Railroad Co. v. SCRAP, 422 U.S. 289, 315, 95 S.Ct. 2336, 2353, 45 L.Ed.2d 191 (1975). The Act required agencies to file an environmental impact statement before undertaking major federal actions. 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(C). The environmental impact statement is the outward sign that environmental values and consequences have been considered during the planning stage of agency actions. Weinberger v. Catholic Action of Hawaii, 454 U.S. 138, ----, 102 S.Ct. 197, 201, 70 L.Ed.2d 298 (1981). The Act, however, did not confer a right on individuals to be free of environmental damage. Strycker's Bay Neighborhood Council, Inc. v. Karlen, 444 U.S. 223, 227, 100 S.Ct. 497, 499, 62 L.Ed.2d 433 (1980). Affected residents have only a procedural right to have their interests considered in the agency decision-making process before a final decision is reached. Alleging that HUD failed to file an environmental impact statement, plaintiffs sought to enjoin funding to the project. 38 However, the Ninth Circuit held in City of Davis v. Coleman, 521 F.2d 661 (9th Cir. 1975), that the failure to file an environmental impact statement is an injury in fact giving standing to all threatened with potential environmental injury from an agency's unresearched activities. At its broadest, City of Davis could be read to confer standing on all local residents suing under the National Environmental Policy Act to vindicate the deprivation of procedural rights, regardless of the progress in construction on a federal project, cf. Richland Park Homeowners Association, Inc. v. Pierce, 671 F.2d 935 (5th Cir. 1982), or the probability that the plaintiffs will actually suffer from an unidentified environmental injury. 39 In City of Davis the Ninth Circuit held that the Department of Transportation's failure to file an environmental impact statement gave a municipality standing to seek the injunction of funding on a partially constructed highway passing near the city. The court implicitly assumed that enjoining federal funding until an impact statement was filed could prevent the occurrence of serious yet undiscovered environmental damage. City of Davis, therefore, does not hold that failing to file an impact statement itself produces an injury in fact. The injury occurred with the creation of a risk that potential environmental damage would go undiscovered. 40 The procedural injury implicit in agency failure to prepare an EIS-the creation of a risk that serious environmental impacts will be overlooked-is itself a sufficient injury in fact to support standing, provided this injury is alleged by a plaintiff having a sufficient geographical nexus to the site of the challenged project that he may be expected to suffer whatever environmental consequences the project may have. This is a broad test, but because the nature and scope of environmental consequences are often highly uncertain before study we think it an appropriate test. 41 521 F.2d at 671. 42 Unlike City of Davis, where construction on the highway was only halfway complete and a new environmental study could reveal unanticipated environmental effects from the projects, forcing HUD to reassess its participation in the project cannot achieve this result. The building is in the final stages of construction. The plaintiffs have not alleged the existence of the risk of a new environmental injury, whose appearance could be averted through a careful investigation of the environmental effects of the funding decision. While this is not a burden which plaintiffs suing under the National Environmental Policy Act normally bear, id., it does not appear that if a risk of a new environmental injury was discovered, the injury could be avoided by withdrawing federal financial support to the project. Thus, requiring HUD to file an impact statement, an action which possibly could lead to withdrawal of federal assistance, will not benefit the plaintiffs. An impact statement is unlikely to reveal an additional risk beyond plaintiffs' alleged injuries. Since belatedly placing the plaintiffs' views before HUD will achieve no other noticeable benefit, this case is far different from City of Davis. 9 43 With their alleged injuries unable to be remedied, the only other interest the plaintiffs could plausibly assert is in the efficient and legal administration of a federal administrative agency. The plaintiffs share an interest with all other citizens in HUD's allocation of federal monies in compliance with federal law. However, this interest does not alone give the plaintiffs standing to sue. The Court recently stated: 44 This Court repeatedly has rejected claims of standing predicated on  'the right, possessed by every citizen, to require that the Government be administered according to law....' Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U.S. 126, 129 (42 S.Ct. 274, 275, 66 L.Ed. 499) (1922). Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 208, 82 S.Ct. 691, 705, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962). Such claims amount to little more than attempts to employ a federal court as a forum in which to air ... generalized grievances about the conduct of government. Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. (83), at 106 (88 S.Ct. 1942 at 1956, 20 L.Ed.2d 947). 45 Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., --- U.S. ----, 102 S.Ct. 752, 764, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982) (citations omitted). In Valley Forge, the Court held a citizens group challenging the donation of surplus federal lands to a religious college did not have standing to sue. The plaintiffs alleged only that their personal right that the government adhere to the Establishment Clause had been offended. The plaintiffs' right here to the allocation of federal funds in accordance with the law is indistinguishable. Both are attempts to employ a federal court as a forum in which to air ... generalized grievances about the conduct of government, id. (quoting Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 106, 88 S.Ct. 1942 at 1956, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968)), an action plainly forbidden by Schlesinger, 418 U.S. at 208, 94 S.Ct. at 2925 and United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 94 S.Ct. 2940, 41 L.Ed.2d 678 (1974), and now reaffirmed by Valley Forge. 46 The standing doctrine in its constitutional sense represents the fundamental authority of the district court to adjudicate a controversy under Article III. Like questions of subject matter jurisdiction, questions of standing should be decided early in the lawsuit, lest the plaintiff's standing to sue dissolve, in some circumstances, into mootness, and deprive plaintiffs of a hearing on the merits of their complaint. Cf. Sierra Club, 405 U.S. at 756, 92 S.Ct. at 1376 (Blackmun, J., dissenting). 47 Art. III, which is every bit as important in its circumscription of the judicial power of the United States as in its granting of that power, is not merely a troublesome hurdle to be overcome if possible so as to reach the merits of a lawsuit which a party desires to have adjudicated; it is a part of the basic charter promulgated by the framers of the Constitution at Philadelphia in 1787.... 48 Valley Forge, --- U.S. at ----, 102 S.Ct. at 760. We can restore the plaintiffs' opportunity to adjudicate their claim only by holding this lawsuit still presents a case and controversy under Article III. It does not and we therefore cannot. 49 Affirmed.