Opinion ID: 768572
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: ACORN's Standing

Text: 27 LeBlanc also appeals the jury's compensatory damages award to ACORN and the court's attorney's fees award to ACORN. ACORN also appeals its attorney's fees award. Before we reach the merits of these awards, we must determine sua sponte whether ACORN has standing to bring this suit against LeBlanc. 28 The Supreme Court, in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992), stated the minimum requirements that an organization must establish to have constitutional standing: 29 First, the plaintiff must have suffered an injury in fact - an invasion of a legally-protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical. Second, there must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of - the injury has to be fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant, and not the result of the independent action of some third party not before the court. Third, it must be likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed in a favorable decision. Lujan, 555 U.S. at 560-61 (internal quotes, parentheses and citations omitted). 30 We must focus on the injury in fact requirement. Under the Federal Fair Housing Act, the Supreme Court has held that an organization has suffered injury in fact if the defendant's actions impaired the organization's ability to provide counseling and referral services. The Court said, [s]uch concrete and demonstrable injury to the organization's activities - with the consequent drain on the organization's resources - constitutes far more than simply a setback to the organization's abstract social interests. Havens Realty Corp., v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 379 (1982). Although theCourt in Havens dealt with standing at the pleadings stage, the Court noted that the organization will have to demonstrate at trial that it has indeed suffered impairment in its role of facilitating open housing before it will be entitled to judicial relief. Id. at 379 n.21. 31 Based on these two cases, the Fifth Circuit has described what types of organizational activities do not meet the Supreme Court's injury in fact requirement. For example, [t]he mere fact that an organization redirects some of its resources to litigation and legal counseling in response to actions or inactions of another party is insufficient to impart standing upon the organization. Association for Retarded Citizens of Dallas v. Dallas County Mental Health & Mental Retardation Ctr. Bd. of Trustees, 19 F.3d 241, 244 (5th Cir. 1994) (Federal Fair Housing Act case); see also Association of Community Orgs. for Reform Now v. Fowler, 178 F.3d 350, 358-59 (5th Cir. 1999). 32 In contrast, we noted that an organization could have standing if it had proven a drain on its resources resulting from counteracting the effects of the defendant's actions. Id. at 360. Likewise, the Third Circuit concluded that a housing organization had standing where its staff stopped everything else and devoted all attention to the litigation in question and diverted resources to counter the defendant's conduct. Alexander, 280 F.3d at 427 n.4. We reiterate that the Supreme Court in Havens noted that an organization must demonstrate at trial that it suffered some sort of impairment in facilitating open housing before receiving judicial relief. 33 We conclude that ACORN did not demonstrate at trial any impairment in facilitating open housing. At best ACORN proved the resources it expended defending Lewis (although ACORN never kept time sheets to record its work for Lewis); but it did not prove a drain on its resources. ACORN's executive director, Jeffrey Karlson, testified at length at the trial. However, Karlson neither mentioned any specific projects ACORN had to put on hold while working on Lewis' case nor did he describe in any detail how ACORN had to re-double efforts in the community to combat discrimination. 34 One excerpt in particular demonstrates the conjectural and hypothetical nature of Karlson's testimony. When asked to describe how LeBlanc's discrimination frustrated ACORN's mission, Karlson said: 35 Again, all I can do is base this on the mission of the organization being frustrated over two and a half years in trying to resolve this particular complaint to the extent that this one complaint started to take over an inordinate amount of our work time and staff time of our normal activities, really takes away from our activities in other areas, being able to do outreach and education, research and monitoring, intakes and investigations of complaints. It takes away from our normal activities - and this particular case has. My estimate is 96 and a half hours of our staff time, over two and a half years, and that's conservative. If I kept time sheets, probably much larger than that, but we did not. 36 But in terms of frustration of mission, our mission after we resolved the complaint, we have to make up for all that lost ground and all that lost time. And I can't sit here and give you and exact amount for what that is, but we have to go back out and repair the damage that's been done, because the discrimination in this case is continuing and ongoing. That's why we're in court, trying to seek relief to get that to stop and to stop it from happening in the future. So, to the extent that we can do that through frustration of mission, we have to go back and redouble our efforts in the community to make up for that lost ground that was taken away from us during the course of this particular complaint and to help heal some of the damage in the community. I don't know if I can really explain it much more than that. (Tr. at 88-89). 37 None of ACORN's testimony at trial demonstrates a concrete and particularized injury as required by Lujan; instead, as the Supreme Court cautioned in Lujan, ACORN's injury based on the testimony at trial is only conjectural, hypothetical and speculative. Therefore, we find that ACORN lacks standing to bring suit and reverse and vacate the jury's compensatory award to ACORN. In addition, because ACORN lacks standing, we conclude that ACORN is not longer a prevailing party pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 3613(c) of the Federal Fair Housing Act. We also reverse and vacate the district court's award of $10,000 in attorney's fees to ACORN.