Opinion ID: 6978959
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Separation of Powers Challenges

Text: There is no need now to revisit ease law upholding the constitutionality of the FCA’s qui tam provisions in suits against private parties. See, e.g., United States ex rel. Kreindler & Kreindler v. United Technologies Corp., 985 F.2d 1148, 1154 (2d Cir.1993), cert. denied, 508 U.S. 973, 113 S.Ct. 2962, 125 L.Ed.2d 663 (1993) (qui tam relators have standing to sue on the government’s behalf even though they personally have not suffered actual or threatened injury); United States ex rel. Kelly v. Boeing Co., 9 F.3d 743 (9th Cir.1993), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 1140, 114 S.Ct. 1125, 127 L.Ed.2d 433 (1994) (FCA qui tam provisions do not violate Article Ill’s standing requirements, the Appointments Clause, or separation of powers principles). Nevertheless, it should be noted that FCA qui tam suits stand on shaky constitutional ground with respect to the principle of separation of powers as embodied in Article II’s Appointments and Take Care Clauses and Article Ill’s standing requirements. Policy considerations militating in favor of qui tam suits against non-state defendants may outweigh the serious separation of powers concerns these suits raise. A practical and flexible approach to modifying the lines separating powers of the three parts of federal government is necessary. The. precise contours of the legislative, executive and judicial powers are not firmly fixed. The need for a workable and efficient system of government has created many areas of overlap between the governmental branches, a result which fully accords with the design of the framers, “practical statesmen, experienced in politics, who.... saw that a hermetic sealing off of the three branches of Government from one another would preclude the establishment of a Nation capable of governing itself effectively.” Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 121, 96 S.Ct. 612, 46 L.Ed.2d 659 (1976); see also, e.g., Mistretta v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 381, 109 S.Ct. 647, 102 L.Ed.2d 714 (1989) (“[T]he Framers did not require — and indeed rejected — the notion that the three Branches must be entirely separate and distinct.”); Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 635, 72 S.Ct. 863, 96 L.Ed. 1153 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring) (“While the Constitution diffuses power the better to secure liberty, it also contemplates that practice will integrate the dispersed powers into a workable government.”); Hippocrates G. Apostle & Lloyd P. Gerson, [Commentaries to] Aristotle’s Politics 324 (1986) (“There were, however, properly judicial functions which were in the hands of the Assembly, and also deliberative matters which were in the hands of officials. The three parts — deliberative, judicial and official — are to be understood broadly.”); Jack B. Weinstein, Reform of Court Rule-Making Procedures 53-54 (1977) (“There has never been a fully compartmentalized separation of powers.... The rule-making power is one of the most important examples of practical necessity dictating that a twilight area be created where activities of the branches merge.”). Policy considerations cannot, however override the Eleventh Amendment’s flat prohibition of suits by private individuals against a state. In this context, the line between what is constitutionally permissible and what is not, is fairly clearly demarcated. The Eleventh Amendment prohibition is more analogous to the sharp age requirement of the presidency than it is to the vague standards of due process. Conflict with the constitutional principles embodied in the clear Eleventh Amendment doctrine as well as adverse practical federalism implications, provide a particularly powerful argument for declaring the False Claims Act’s qui tam provisions as applied to states unconstitutional.
By authorizing private individuals to conduct litigation on the government’s behalf the FCA’s qui tam procedures may violate the Appointments Clause of Article II of the Constitution, and may interfere with the President’s explicitly stated constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. In Freytag v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue Service, 501 U.S. 868, 111 S.Ct. 2631, 115 L.Ed.2d 764 (1991), the Supreme Court stated that “[its] separation-of-powers jurisprudence generally focuses on the danger of one branch’s aggrandizing its power at the expense of another branch.” Id. at 878, 111 S.Ct. 2631. The Court explained: “The Appointments Clause not only guards against this encroachment but also preserves another aspect of the Constitution’s structural integrity by preventing the diffusion of the appointment power.” Id. (emphasis added). The FCA arguably creates just such a diffusion of power by inviting private parties to prosecute suits on behalf of the national government to enforce United States policy, a function which may only constitutionally be performed by properly appointed officers of the United States under Article II. Moreover, FCA suits by qui tam relators may well “interfere impermissibly with [the President’s] constitutional obligation to ensure the faithful execution of the laws,” Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 693, 108 S.Ct. 2597, 101 L.Ed.2d 569 (1988), by permitting relators’ suits to go forward even where the government determines that the case merits neither a civil proceeding nor a criminal prosecution and by giving relators too much control over the conduct of the litigation in cases where the government declines to intervene. See generally, James T. Blanch, The Constitutionality of the False Claims Act’s Qui Tam Provisions, 16 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 701 (1993).
Notwithstanding Second Circuit case law holding that a private relator has standing sufficient to comply with Article III in an action against a private party, see United States ex rel. Kreindler & Kreindler v. United Technologies Corp., 985 F.2d 1148, 1154 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 508 U.S. 973, 113 S.Ct. 2962, 125 L.Ed.2d 663 (1993), there remains some doubt whether a relator, who has no claim other than for a legal fee and compensation for bringing the action, has suffered the pre-suit “injury in fact” constitutionally required by Article III. Such an “injury in fact” must be to a pre-existing legally protected interest of the plaintiff “which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.” Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Particularized “mean[s] that the injury must affect the plaintiff in a personal and individual way.” Id. at 560 n. 1, 112 S.Ct. at 2136 n. 1. Before a qui tam suit is started a relator’s injury is no greater than that of any taxpayer. Commencing the suit arguably should not be deemed a substitute for the already choate personalized “injury in fact” that is required for standing. See James T. Blanch, Note, The Constitutionality of the False Claims Act’s Qui Tam Provisions, 16 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 701, 714 (1993) (taxpayer injury insufficient for standing “is virtually indistinguishable from that suffered by FCA qui tam relators when their tax dollars go to fraudulent defense contractors”); see also Diamond v. Charles, 476 U.S. 54, 69-70, 106 S.Ct. 1697, 90 L.Ed.2d 48 (1986) (attorney’s fees do not provide a sufficient stake in the litigation to confer standing). Compare United States ex rel. Riley v. St. Luke’s Episcopal Hosp., 982 F.Supp. 1261, 1268 (S.D.Tex.1997) (qui tam plaintiff suffered no injury-in-faet as required by Article III and thus lacked standing) with United States ex rel. Kelly v. Boeing Co., 9 F.3d 743, 748 (9th Cir.1993), cert. denied, 510 U.S. 1140, 114 S.Ct. 1125, 127 L.Ed.2d 433 (1994) (standing justified on the theory that FCA’s qui tam provisions operate “as an enforceable unilateral contract”).