Opinion ID: 4348947
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Standing and Zone of Interests

Text: The Government contends that the Organizations do not have Article III standing to sue and that their claims do not fall within the zone of interests protected by the INA. We have an obligation to ensure that jurisdiction exists before proceeding to the merits. See Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 93–95 (1998). We likewise must determine whether a plaintiff’s claim falls within the statute’s zone of interests before we can consider the merits of the claim. See Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 572 U.S. 118, 129 (2014). We conclude that, at this preliminary stage of the proceedings, the 24 Organizations have sufficiently alleged grounds for Article III standing and that their claims fall within the INA’s zone of interests.6
Article III of the Constitution limits the federal judicial power to the adjudication of “Cases” and “Controversies.” U.S. CONST. art. III, § 2, cl. 1. This fundamental limitation “is founded in concern about the proper—and properly limited—role of the courts in a democratic society.” Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 492–93 (2009) (quoting Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 498 (1975)). “One of the essential elements of a legal case or controversy is that the plaintiff have standing to sue.” Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. at 2416. “[B]uilt on separationof-powers principles,” standing ensures that litigants have “a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to justify the exercise of the court’s remedial powers on their behalf.” Town of Chester v. Laroe Estates, Inc., 137 S. Ct. 1645, 1650 (2017) (citations and internal alterations omitted). 6 We have a continuing obligation to assure our jurisdiction. Ruhrgas AG v. Marathon Oil Co., 526 U.S. 574, 583–84 (1999); Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(h)(3) (“Whenever it appears . . . that the court lacks jurisdiction of the subject matter, the court shall dismiss the action.”). Should facts develop in the district court that cast doubt on the Organizations’ standing, the district court is, of course, free to revisit this question. 25 To demonstrate Article III standing, a plaintiff must show a “concrete and particularized” injury that is “fairly traceable” to the defendant’s conduct and “that is likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision.” Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 136 S. Ct. 1540, 1547–48 (2016) (quoting Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992)). “At least one plaintiff must have standing to seek each form of relief requested,” Town of Chester, 137 S. Ct. at 1651, and that party “bears the burden of establishing” the elements of standing “with the manner and degree of evidence required at the successive stages of the litigation,” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561. “At this very preliminary stage,” the Organizations “may rely on the allegations in their Complaint and whatever other evidence they submitted in support of their TRO motion to meet their burden.” Washington, 847 F.3d at 1159. And they “need only establish a risk or threat of injury to satisfy the actual injury requirement.” Harris v. Bd. of Supervisors, L.A. Cty., 366 F.3d 754, 762 (9th Cir. 2004); see Spokeo, 136 S. Ct. at 1548 (noting that the injury must be “actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical” (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560)). The district court concluded that the Organizations have both third-party standing to sue on their clients’ behalf as well as organizational standing to sue based on their direct injuries. 26
According to the district court, the Organizations “have third-party standing to assert the legal rights of their clients ‘who are seeking to enter the country to apply for asylum but are being blocked by the new asylum ban.’” We disagree. “Ordinarily, a party ‘must assert his own legal rights’ and ‘cannot rest his claim to relief on the legal rights of third parties.’” Sessions v. Morales–Santana, 137 S. Ct. 1678, 1689 (2017) (quoting Warth, 422 U.S. at 499). There is an exception to this rule if (1) “the party asserting the right has a close relationship with the person who possesses the right” and (2) “there is a hindrance to the possessor’s ability to protect his own interests.” Id. (quoting Kowalski v. Tesmer, 543 U.S. 125, 130 (2004)). But as a predicate to either of those two inquiries, we must identify the “right” that the Organizations are purportedly asserting on their clients’ behalf. The district court relied on evidence in the record indicating that “the government [is] preventing asylum-seekers from presenting themselves at ports of entry to begin the asylum process.” This harm, however, is not traceable to the challenged Rule, which has no effect on the ability of aliens to apply for asylum at ports of entry. Indeed, the Rule purports to encourage aliens to apply for asylum at ports of entry and addresses only the asylum eligibility of aliens who illegally enter 27 the United States outside of designated ports of entry. See 83 Fed. Reg. at 55,941. The Organizations’ clients, of course, would not have standing to assert a right to cross the border illegally, to seek asylum or otherwise. See Initiative & Referendum Inst. v. Walker, 450 F.3d 1082, 1093 (10th Cir. 2006) (“[A] person complaining that government action will make his criminal activity more difficult lacks standing because his interest is not ‘legally protected.’”). And although the Organizations describe significant hindrances their clients have experienced in applying for asylum at ports of entry, as well as significant risks their clients may face in towns lining the country’s southern border, neither of those concerns is at issue in this lawsuit. Because the Organizations have not identified any cognizable right that they are asserting on behalf of their clients, they do not have third-party standing to sue.7
We agree, however, with the district court’s conclusion that the Organizations have organizational standing. First, the Organizations can demonstrate organizational standing by showing that the challenged “practices 7 Presumably because the Organizations filed this suit on the day the Rule became effective, the Organizations do not assert third-party standing on behalf of any client who entered the country after November 9. If they now have these clients, they may seek leave to amend on remand. 28 have perceptibly impaired [their] ability to provide the services [they were] formed to provide.” El Rescate Legal Servs., Inc. v. Exec. Office of Immigration Review, 959 F.2d 742, 748 (9th Cir. 1991) (quoting Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 379 (1982)). This theory of standing has its roots in Havens Realty. There, a fair housing organization alleged that its mission was to “assist equal access to housing through counseling and other referral services.” Havens Realty, 455 U.S. at 379. The organization claimed that the defendant’s discriminatory housing practices “frustrated” the organization’s ability to “provide counseling and referral services for low- and moderate-income homeseekers,” and that it forced the plaintiff “to devote significant resources to identify and counteract” the alleged discriminatory practices. Id. (citation omitted). The Supreme Court held that, based on this allegation, “there can be no question that the organization has suffered injury in fact” because it established a “concrete and demonstrable injury to the organization’s activities—with the consequent drain on the organization’s resources—[that] constitute[d] far more than simply a setback to the organization’s abstract social interests.” Id. We have thus held that, under Havens Realty, “a diversion-of-resources injury is sufficient to establish organizational standing” for purposes of Article III, Nat’l Council of La Raza v. Cegavske, 800 F.3d 1032, 1040 (9th Cir. 2015), if the 29 organization shows that, independent of the litigation, the challenged “policy frustrates the organization’s goals and requires the organization ‘to expend resources in representing clients they otherwise would spend in other ways,’” Comite de Jornaleros de Redondo Beach v. City of Redondo Beach, 657 F.3d 936, 943 (9th Cir. 2011) (en banc) (quoting El Rescate Legal Servs., 959 F.2d at 748). In Comite de Jornaleros, for example, we concluded that advocacy groups had organizational standing to challenge an anti-solicitation ordinance that targeted day laborers based on the resources spent by the groups “in assisting day laborers during their arrests and meetings with workers about the status of the ordinance.” Id. In National Council of La Raza, we found that civil rights groups had organizational standing to challenge alleged voter registration violations where the groups had to “expend additional resources” to counteract those violations that “they would have spent on some other aspect of their organizational purpose.” 800 F.3d at 1039–40. And in El Rescate Legal Services, we found that legal services groups had organizational standing to challenge a policy of providing only partial interpretation of immigration court proceedings, noting that the policy “frustrate[d]” the group’s “efforts to obtain asylum and withholding of deportation in immigration court proceedings” and required them “to expend resources in representing clients they otherwise would spend in other ways.” 959 F.2d at 748; 30 see also Valle del Sol Inc. v. Whiting, 732 F.3d 1006, 1018 (9th Cir. 2013) (finding organizational standing where the plaintiffs “had to divert resources to educational programs to address its members’ and volunteers’ concerns about the [challenged] law’s effect”); Fair Hous. Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommate.com, LLC, 666 F.3d 1216, 1219 (9th Cir. 2012) (finding organizational standing where the plaintiff responded to allegations of discrimination by “start[ing] new education and outreach campaigns targeted at discriminatory roommate advertising”); 13A Charles Alan Wright et al., Federal Practice & Procedure § 3531.9.5 (3d ed. Sept. 2018) (collecting cases). Under Havens Realty and our cases applying it, the Organizations have met their burden to establish organizational standing. The Organizations’ declarations state that enforcement of the Rule has frustrated their mission of providing legal aid “to affirmative asylum applicants who have entered” the United States between ports of entry, because the Rule significantly discourages a large number of those individuals from seeking asylum given their ineligibility. The Organizations have also offered uncontradicted evidence that enforcement of the Rule has required, and will continue to require, a diversion of resources, independent of expenses for this litigation, from their other initiatives. For example, an official from East Bay affirmed that the Rule will require East Bay to partially convert their affirmative 31 asylum practice into a removal defense program, an overhaul that would require “developing new training materials” and “significant training of existing staff.” He also stated that East Bay would be forced at the client intake stage to “conduct detailed screenings for alternative forms of relief to facilitate referrals or other forms of assistance.” Moreover, several of the Organizations explained that because other forms of relief from removal—such as withholding of removal and relief under the Convention Against Torture—do not allow a principal applicant to file a derivative application for family members, the Organizations will have to submit a greater number of applications for family-unit clients who would have otherwise been eligible for asylum. Increasing the resources required to pursue relief for family-unit clients will divert resources away from providing aid to other clients. Finally, the Organizations have each undertaken, and will continue to undertake, education and outreach initiatives regarding the new rule, efforts that require the diversion of resources away from other efforts to provide legal services to their local immigrant communities. To be sure, as the district court noted, several of our colleagues have criticized certain applications of the Havens Realty organizational standing test as impermissibly diluting Article III’s standing requirement. See Fair Hous. Council, 666 F.3d at 1225–26 (Ikuta, J., dissenting); People for the Ethical Treatment of 32 Animals v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric. (“PETA”), 797 F.3d 1087, 1100–01 (D.C. Cir. 2015) (Millett, J., dubitante). Whatever the force of these criticisms, they are not directly applicable here, because they involve efforts by advocacy groups to show standing by pointing to the expenses of advocacy—the very mission of the group itself, see Fair Hous. Council, 666 F.3d at 1226 (Ikuta, J., dissenting); or by identifying a defendant’s failure to take action against a third party, see PETA, 797 F.3d at 1101 (Millett, J., dubitante). And in any event, we are not free to ignore “the holdings of our prior cases” or “their explications of the governing rules of law.” Miller v. Gammie, 335 F.3d 889, 900 (9th Cir. 2003) (en banc) (citation omitted). Second, the Organizations can demonstrate organizational standing by showing that the Rule will cause them to lose a substantial amount of funding. “For standing purposes, a loss of even a small amount of money is ordinarily an ‘injury.’” Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp., 137 S. Ct. 973, 983 (2017). We have held that an organization that suffers a decreased “amount of business” and “lost revenues” due to a government policy “easily satisf[ies] the ‘injury in fact’ standing requirement.” Constr. Indus. Ass’n of Sonoma Cty. v. City of Petaluma, 522 F.2d 897, 903 (9th Cir. 1975); cf. City & Cty. of S.F. v. Trump, 897 F.3d 1225, 1236 (9th Cir. 2018) (holding that “a likely ‘loss of funds promised under federal 33 law’” satisfies Article III’s standing requirement (quoting Organized Vill. of Kake v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 795 F.3d 956, 965 (9th Cir. 2015))). According to the Organizations’ declarations, a large portion of their funding from the California state government is tied to the number of asylum applications they pursue. Many of the applications filed by the Organizations are brought on behalf of applicants who, under the Rule, would be categorically ineligible for asylum. For example, East Bay has a robust affirmative asylum program in which they file their clients’ asylum applications with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services rather than in immigration court. See generally Dhakal v. Sessions, 895 F.3d 532, 536–37 (7th Cir. 2018) (describing affirmative and defensive asylum processes). East Bay receives funding from the California Department of Social Services for each asylum case handled, and, historically, approximately 80% of East Bay’s affirmative asylum clients have entered the United States outside of designated ports of entry. If these individuals became categorically ineligible for asylum, East Bay would lose a significant amount of business and suffer a concomitant loss of funding. Thus, based on the available evidence at this early stage of the proceedings, we conclude that the Organizations have shown that they have suffered and will 34 suffer direct injuries traceable to the Rule and thus have standing to challenge its validity.8
We next consider whether the Organizations’ claims fall within the INA’s “zone of interests.” Bank of Am. Corp. v. City of Miami, 137 S. Ct. 1296, 1302 (2017). This is a “prudential” inquiry that asks “whether the statute grants the plaintiff the cause of action that he asserts.” Id. “[W]e presume that a statute ordinarily provides a cause of action ‘only to plaintiffs whose interests fall within the zone of interests protected by the law invoked.’” Id. (quoting Lexmark, 572 U.S. at 126). We determine “[w]hether a plaintiff comes within ‘the zone of interests’” using “traditional tools of statutory interpretation.” Id. at 1307 (quoting Lexmark, 572 U.S. at 127). 8 Consequently, the Organizations also have Article III standing to challenge the procedure by which the Rule was adopted. Although a “deprivation of a procedural right without some concrete interest that is affected by the deprivation—a procedural right in vacuo—is insufficient to create Article III standing,” Summers, 555 U.S. at 496, a plaintiff does have standing to assert a violation of “a procedural requirement the disregard of which could impair a separate concrete interest,” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 572. As explained above, the Organizations have adequately identified concrete interests impaired by the Rule and thus have standing to challenge the absence of notice-and-comment procedures in promulgating it. 35 The Organizations bring their claims under the APA. Because the APA provides a cause of action only to those “suffering legal wrong because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute,” 5 U.S.C. § 702, the relevant zone of interests is not that of the APA itself, but rather “‘the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the statute’ that [the plaintiff] says was violated.” Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians v. Patchak, 567 U.S. 209, 224 (2012) (quoting Assoc. of Data Processing Serv. Orgs., Inc. v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 153 (1970)). Here, the Organizations claim that the Rule “is flatly contrary to the INA.” Thus, we must determine whether the Organizations’ interests fall within the zone of interests protected by the INA. The Government argues that the INA’s asylum provisions do not “even arguably . . . protect[] the interests of nonprofit organizations that provide assistance to asylum seekers” because the provisions “neither regulate [the Organizations’] conduct nor create any benefits for which these organizations themselves might be eligible.” Although the Organizations are neither directly regulated nor benefitted by the INA, we nevertheless conclude that their interest in “provid[ing] the [asylum] services [they were] formed to provide” falls within the 36 zone of interests protected by the INA. El Rescate Legal Servs., 959 F.2d at 748 (internal alterations omitted) (quoting Havens Realty, 455 U.S. at 379). The Supreme Court has emphasized that the zone of interests test, under the APA’s “generous review provisions,” “is not meant to be especially demanding; in particular, there need be no indication of congressional purpose to benefit the would-be plaintiff.” Clarke v. Sec. Indus. Ass’n, 479 U.S. 388, 399–400 & n.16 (1987) (footnote omitted) (quoting Data Processing, 397 U.S. at 156). In addition, the contested provision need not directly regulate the Organizations. Even in cases “where the plaintiff is not itself the subject of the contested regulatory action,” id. at 399, the zone of interests test “forecloses suit only when a plaintiff’s interests are so marginally related to or inconsistent with the purposes implicit in the statute that it cannot reasonably be assumed that Congress authorized the plaintiff to sue.” Lexmark, 572 U.S. at 130 (quoting Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish, 567 U.S. at 225) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, it is sufficient that the Organizations’ asserted interests are consistent with and more than marginally related to the purposes of the INA.9 9 “[W]e are not limited to considering the [specific] statute under which [plaintiffs] sued, but may consider any provision that helps us to understand Congress’ overall purposes in the [INA].” Clarke, 479 U.S. at 401 (discussing Data Processing, 397 U.S. at 840 n.6). 37 Here, the Organizations’ interest in aiding immigrants seeking asylum is consistent with the INA’s purpose to “establish[] . . . [the] statutory procedure for granting asylum to refugees.” Cardoza–Fonseca, 480 U.S. at 427. Moreover, we find the Organizations’ interests to be more than marginally related to the statute’s purpose. Within the asylum statute, Congress took steps to ensure that pro bono legal services of the type that the Organizations provide are available to asylum seekers. See 8 U.S.C. § 1158(d)(4)(A)–(B) (requiring the Attorney General to provide aliens applying for asylum with a list of pro bono attorneys and to advise them of the “privilege of being represented by counsel”). In addition, other provisions in the INA give institutions like the Organizations a role in helping immigrants navigate the immigration process. See, e.g., id. § 1101(i)(1) (requiring that potential T visa applicants be referred to nongovernmental organizations for legal advice); id. § 1184(p)(3)(A) (same for U visas); id. § 1228(a)(2), (b)(4)(B) (recognizing a right to counsel for aliens subject to expedited removal proceedings); id. § 1229(a)(1), (b)(2) (requiring that aliens subject to deportation proceedings be provided a list of pro bono attorneys and advised of their right to counsel); id. § 1443(h) (requiring the Attorney General to work with “relevant organizations” to “broadly distribute information concerning” the immigration process). These statutes, which directly rely on institutions like the Organizations 38 to aid immigrants, are a sufficient “indicator that the plaintiff[s] [are] peculiarly suitable challenger[s] of administrative neglect . . . support[ing] an inference that Congress would have intended eligibility” to bring suit. Hazardous Waste Treatment Council v. EPA, 861 F.2d 277, 283 (D.C. Cir. 1988).10 And in light of the “generous review provisions” of the APA, Clarke, 479 U.S. at 400 n.16, the Organizations’ claims “are, at the least, ‘arguably within the zone of interests’” protected by the INA, Bank of Am., 137 S. Ct. at 1303 (quoting Data Processing, 397 U.S. at 153). In addition, “a party within the zone of interests of any substantive authority generally will be within the zone of interests of any procedural requirement governing exercise of that authority.” Int’l Bhd. of Teamsters v. Pena, 17 F.3d 1478, 1484 (D.C. Cir. 1994). This is particularly true for claims brought under the APA’s notice-and-comment provisions. See id.; see also Mendoza v. Perez, 754 F.3d 1002, 1016 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (looking to the “zone of interests” of the 10 We reject the Government’s invitation to rely on INS v. Legalization Assistance Project of Los Angeles County, 510 U.S. 1301, 1305 (1993) (O’Connor, J., in chambers). Not only is Justice O’Connor’s opinion non-binding and concededly “speculative,” id. at 1304, but the interest asserted by the organization in that case—conserving organizational resources to better serve nonimmigrants—is markedly different from the interest in aiding immigrants asserted here. Our opinion in Immigrant Assistance Project of Los Angeles Cty. v. INS, 306 F.3d 842, 867 (9th Cir. 2002), also relied on by the Government, is not to the contrary because that case does not discuss the zone of interests test. 39 underlying statute to determine ability to bring a notice-and-comment claim). As explained above, the Organizations are within the zone of interests protected by the INA and thus may challenge the absence of notice-and-comment procedures in addition to the Rule’s substantive validity.