Opinion ID: 502245
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Function and Rigor of the Germaneness Test

Text: 40 In appraising the rigor of the germaneness requirement, we venture onto virgin territory. Unlike the injury-in-fact prong of the Hunt test, probed in numerous Supreme Court and appellate cases, 11 and unlike the individual-participation prong, directly addressed by this and other courts on several occasions, 12 the parameters of germaneness have never been explored in meaningful detail by either the Supreme Court or by any federal circuit court. Such an inquiry is dispositive here because if the germaneness requirement is meant to perform the considerable screening function suggested by the Wildlife Service and the intervenors, the Humane Society's complaint founders. 13 41 Our inquiry naturally begins with Hunt itself. In introducing the associational standing test, Chief Justice Burger's opinion suggested that the Court had not developed the three prongs of injury-in-fact, germaneness, and individual participation sui generis, but rather that it had distilled each requirement from past cases. 14 Accordingly, it did not labor to elaborate the principles underlying any of the three parts of the doctrine. Yet while the five cases cited in Hunt as the basis of this synthesis, see 432 U.S. at 343, 97 S.Ct. at 2441, shed considerable light on the first prong of the associational standing test, and elucidate somewhat the third prong, they offer scant guidance on the second prong. None address the issue, critical here, of the relationship a representative group's organic purpose must bear to the types of cases it may bring on behalf of its membership. 15 42 Nor do the Court's actions in these five cases amplify its thinking. The three cases denying standing--Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U.S. 26, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976); Sierra Club; and Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975)--do so on grounds wholly unrelated to organizational purpose. See note 15, supra. The two that find standing--Meek v. Pittenger, 421 U.S. 349, 95 S.Ct. 1753, 44 L.Ed.2d 217 (1975), and National Motor Freight Traffic Association, Inc. v. United States, 372 U.S. 246, 83 S.Ct. 688, 9 L.Ed.2d 709 (1963)--involved membership organizations whose litigation postures were not only germane, but involved the very core of their avowed purposes. Meek involved an establishment clause challenge by four civil libertarian groups to a parochial-school aid program, and National Motor Traffic involved a challenge by an association of motor carriers to an Interstate Commerce Commission ruling imposing direct burdens on motor carriers. The Court's silence in these two cases about organizational germaneness apparently reflects the Justices' belief that it was an easy issue, or even a nonissue. 43 Nor do the facts of Hunt itself shed any more light on the function or formidability of the germaneness requirement. In Hunt, the Court held that a state agency established to promote the state's apple industry had standing to represent the interests of apple dealers and growers in challenging as an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce the highly restrictive regulations on apple marketing imposed by another state. In these circumstances, the Court understandably appeared to regard the germaneness inquiry as a mere formality. Disposing of the issue in a sentence, the Court wrote that the apple commission's attempt to remedy its members' injuries through litigation was not only germane, but central to the Commission's purpose of protecting and enhancing the market for Washington apples. 432 U.S. at 344, 97 S.Ct. at 2442. 44 UAW v. Brock provides much more guidance. In UAW, the Court turned away a specific request that it reject the existing test for associational standing. That challenge was premised on the theory that the associational standing requirements set forth in Hunt inadequately guaranteed proper representation to the interests of association members, particularly when compared to the more stringent requirements guaranteeing adequate representation encoded in Fed.R.Civ.P. 23, governing class action certification. Justice Marshall's opinion for the Court responded by strongly endorsing associational standing. It noted three special features, advantageous to both the individuals represented and to the judicial system as a whole ... distinguish[ing] suits by associations on behalf of their members from class actions. 106 S.Ct. at 2532. Such organizations (1) can draw upon a pre-existing reservoir of expertise and capital, ... [possessing] specialized expertise and research resources relating to the subject matter of the lawsuit that individual plaintiffs lack; (2) attract members whose primary reason for joining is often to create an effective vehicle for vindicating interests that they share with others; and (3) possess a self-policing mechanism guaranteeing a modicum of fair representation: [t]he very forces that cause individuals to band together in an association will thus provide some guarantee that the association will work to promote their interests. Id. at 2532-33. 45 The Supreme Court's recognition in UAW of these special advantages offered by association suits signals to us the importance of a reading of the germaneness requirement that does not unduly confine the occasions on which associations may bring legal actions on behalf of members and thus significantly restrict the opportunities of associations to utilize their specialized expertise and research resources relating to the subject matter of the lawsuit. Id. at 2533. Too restrictive a reading of the requirement would undercut the interest of members who join an organization in order to effectuate an effective vehicle for vindicating interests that they share with others. Id. The third special feature of associations cited in UAW, their self-policing character, would seem to carry particular force on the germaneness issue. If the forces that cause individuals to band together guarantee some degree of fair representation, they surely guarantee as well that associational policymakers will not run roughshod over the strongly held views of association members in fashioning litigation goals. 16 Thus, in its rationale, UAW suggests that it is highly unlikely the second prong of germaneness was meant to set the narrow perimeter of centrality of purpose urged here. Rather, it would seem to require only that an organization's litigation goals be pertinent to its special expertise and the grounds that bring its membership together. 17 46 This modest functional interpretation of the germaneness requirement is in obvious accord with commonsense and legal understandings of the concept. Black's Law Dictionary, for example, defines germane as in close relationship, appropriate, relative, pertinent. Id. at 618. 18 Case law from numerous jurisdictions on various points of law that rely on the concept of germaneness also consistently regards the term as mandating pertinence or connection, but not a substantial overlap, between the two objects or ideas being compared. 19 None of these cases to the best of our knowledge has construed germane to mean central or to require more than pertinence between the object and the referent. 47 Although without more explication than that offered so far we cannot say precisely what the Supreme Court intended to accomplish by the germaneness requirement, this temperate understanding also seems coextensive with the goal the Court most likely had in mind in adding prong two. That goal, as we explain, seems to have been the modest yet important one of preventing litigious organizations from forcing the federal courts to resolve numerous issues as to which the organizations themselves enjoy little expertise and about which few of their members demonstrably care. 48 On initial analysis, one might hypothesize that the germaneness limitation exists to prevent organizations from eluding the standing requirement by manufacturing controversies where none exists. Yet such an interpretation would explain too much, for the independent injury-in-fact requirement (the first Hunt prong) already guarantees that only organizations that can identify legitimately aggrieved members can gain representational standing. Alternatively, because prong two obviously does impose limits on organizations beyond mere injury-in-fact, one might regard it as grounded in some skepticism about the capacity of organizations to engage in representative litigation. This view, however, collides in many instances with UAW 's observation that organizations are, in fact, unusually well-equipped to litigate certain issues. 49 Yet in one narrow class of cases, neither the constitutional imperative of injury-in-fact nor the ordinary reality of organizational expertise can be counted on to  'assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination,'  see Hunt, 432 U.S. at 345, 97 S.Ct. at 2442 (quoting Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204, 82 S.Ct. 691, 703, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962)). Those cases involve representational suits filed by organizations on issues on which they as a practical matter lack expertise or resources. In such cases the injury-in-fact prong may in fact prove a porous screen: an organization with a diverse membership could readily produce a sufficient number of members claiming constitutionally cognizable injuries from governmental actions, even if such actions had nothing whatsoever to do with the association's area of competence or reason for existence. An associational standing test allowing such suits could in theory permit organizational leaders to generate legal actions on issues of little concern even to injured members. 50 An inversion of Meek and UAW, two cases where the Supreme Court found standing to exist, provides a useful if perhaps extreme example of this undesirable scenario. Were the leaders of a labor union to press an establishment clause challenge to a school-aid program, or a civil libertarian organization to challenge a trade policy on commerce clause grounds, and were each association able to identify a critical mass of members claiming cognizable injuries from these policies, the injury-in-fact prong would apparently be inadequate to prevent a finding of standing--despite the wholesale mismatch between litigation topics and organizational expertise. 20 In such a situation, a litigating association would be no more than a law firm seeking to sue in its own name on behalf of a client (or a firm member) alleging injury from governmental action wholly unrelated to the firm. These were precisely the facts of McKinney v. United States Department of the Treasury, 799 F.2d 1544 (Fed.Cir.1986), one of only two cases of which we are aware in which a federal court denied standing on germaneness grounds. In McKinney, the Federal Circuit held that the Washington Legal Foundation, a self-described non-profit public interest law firm, could not sue to require the Customs Service to bar the importation of Soviet-made goods in an effort to protect the economic interests of producers and workers because these goals were not pertinent to the Foundation's purpose. Id. at 1553. 21 51 The germaneness prong serves as a backstop against such suits. It ensures a modicum of concrete adverseness by reconciling membership concerns and litigation topics by preventing associations from being merely law firms with standing. In so doing, the germaneness requirement serves the standing requirement's critical separation-of-powers goal of restricting the federal judiciary to the proper--and properly limited--role of courts in a democratic society. See Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2205, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975); see also Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. at 751-52, 104 S.Ct. at 3325 (the law of Art. III standing is built on a single basic idea--the idea of separation of powers). It of course also serves the desirable goal of preventing association leaders from abusing their offices. Although ensuring responsiveness of organization leaders to members is no Article III goal, in this case representational accountability goes hand-in-hand with the constitutional imperative 52 that federal courts may exercise power only in the last resort, and as a necessity, Chicago & Grand Trunk R. Co. v. Wellman, 143 U.S. 339, 345, [12 S.Ct. 400, 402, 36 L.Ed. 176] (1892), and only when adjudication is consistent with a system of separated powers and [the dispute is one] traditionally thought to be capable of resolution through the judicial process, Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 97, [88 S.Ct. 1942, 1951, 20 L.Ed.2d 947] (1968). 53 Allen, 468 U.S. at 752, 104 S.Ct. at 3325. 22 54 It remains only to note that in thus characterizing the germaneness requirement as mandating mere pertinence between litigation subject and organizational purpose, we join a number of other courts which, without any detailed analysis of prong two, have declared it undemanding. See, e.g., National Constructors Association v. National Electrical Contractors Association, 498 F.Supp. 510, 521 (D.Md.1980) (defining germaneness standard as allowing suits by groups whose purposes are pertinent or relevant to claim at issue); American Insurance Association v. Selby, 624 F.Supp. 267, 271 (D.D.C.1985) (stating that an association's litigation interests must be truly unrelated to its organizational interests before a court will declare that those interests are not germane); Medical Association of Alabama v. Schweiker, 554 F.Supp. 955, 965 (M.D.Ala.1983) (stating that germaneness test requires that the injury to [an association's] members has some reasonable connection with the reason the members joined the organization and with the objectives of the organization). 23 We now proceed to inquire whether the Humane Society has satisfied this modest but sensible standard. 55