Opinion ID: 737406
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The First Amendment Challenge to Juvenile Court Closure Provision

Text: 53 Pennsylvania's Juvenile Act provides in relevant part: 54 Except in hearings to declare a person in contempt of court and in [delinquency] hearings as specified in subsection (e), the general public shall be excluded from hearings under this chapter. Only the parties, their counsel, witnesses, the victim and counsel for the victim, other persons accompanying a party or a victim for his or her assistance, and any other person as the court finds have [sic] a proper interest in the proceedings or in the work of the court shall be admitted by the court.... 55 42 Pa.C.S.A. § 6336(d). The Official Comment to the section states that [t]he section as drawn permits the court in its discretion to admit news reporters. This is frequently done with the understanding that the identity of the cases observed will not be published, a procedure generally satisfactory to the news media. 56 Ernst argued before the district court that this closure provision violated the First Amendment right of access to judicial proceedings enjoyed by the public and press. The district court declined to address Ernst's First Amendment claim because it found that Ernst lacked standing to raise the constitutional rights of the public and press. On appeal, Ernst argues that the district court erred in refusing to permit her to raise the right of access of the public because she is a member of the public entitled to raise the right on her own behalf. 57 Although we agree that Ernst shares the public's right of access to the courts, we nonetheless hold that the district court was correct in concluding that Ernst lacked standing to bring her First Amendment claim. We reach this conclusion because even though Ernst, along with the rest of the public, possesses a general right of access to the courts, she has not alleged or shown that she suffered the injury-in-fact necessary to create a justiciable case or controversy under Article III of the Constitution. 58 The doctrine of standing is an essential and unchanging part of the case-or-controversy requirement of Article III of the Constitution. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 2136, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992). To satisfy the standing requirement, a plaintiff must demonstrate (1) an injury in fact which is both concrete and particularized and actual or imminent; (2) a causal connection between the injury and the challenged conduct; and (3) a likelihood that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision. Id. at 560-61, 112 S.Ct. at 2136-37. The injury in fact component requires that the plaintiff allege a distinct and palpable injury to himself. Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 501, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2206, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975). The injury must affect the plaintiff in a personal and individual way. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560 n. 1, 112 S.Ct. at 2136 n. 1. 59 A generalized injury shared by the plaintiff with the public at large is insufficient to create a concrete case or controversy over which a federal court may exercise its jurisdiction. Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 219-20, 94 S.Ct. 2925, 2931-32, 41 L.Ed.2d 706 (1974). As the Court explained in Schlesinger, 60 [S]tanding to sue may not be predicated upon an interest of the kind ... which is held in common by all members of the public, because of the necessarily abstract nature of the injury all citizens share. Concrete injury, whether actual or threatened, is that indispensable element of a dispute which serves in part to cast it in a form traditionally capable of judicial resolution. It adds the essential dimension of specificity to the dispute by requiring that the complaining party have suffered a particular injury caused by the action challenged as unlawful. This personal stake is what the Court has consistently held enables a complainant authoritatively to present to a court a complete perspective upon the adverse consequences flowing from the specific set of facts undergirding the grievance.... Only concrete injury presents the factual context within which a court, aided by parties who argue within the context, is capable of making decisions.... [T]he requirement of concrete injury further serves the function of insuring that [constitutional] adjudication does not take place unnecessarily. 61 Id. at 220-21, 94 S.Ct. at 2932. 62 Here, Ernst failed to allege the kind of concrete and particularized injury necessary to establish standing to assert a First Amendment challenge to Pennsylvania's juvenile court closure provision. She has not alleged that she has ever been excluded under the closure provision from a proceeding to which she sought access. The only First Amendment allegation in her Third Amended Complaint asserts that Sylvia Ernst's first amendment rights are being violated by not opening up the record of this case; courts are closed to press. Compl. p 64. During argument before the district court on the First Amendment issue, Ernst's counsel agreed with the court that Ernst was not complaining about her exclusion from a particular hearing but ... about the unconstitutionality of the statute because all the proceedings are closed to the press and public. App. at 872a (emphasis added). 63 Because Ernst has alleged only a generalized harm to the public at large from the closure provision, we hold that she lacks standing to assert a First Amendment challenge to the provision.