Opinion ID: 684083
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Implementation of This Court's Mandate

Text: 13 Appellants contend that the judgment entered by the district court fails to comport with our mandate in Carroll I in four distinct ways. We note that, [u]nder the doctrine of law of the case, a district court generally may not deviate from a mandate issued by an appellate court, and the appellate court retains the right to control the actions of the district court where the mandate has been misconstrued or has not been given full effect. In re Ivan F. Boesky Sec. Litig., 957 F.2d 65, 69 (2d Cir.1992) (citations omitted). Appellate courts therefore retain the authority to determine whether the terms of the mandate have been 'scrupulously and fully carried out.'  Id. (quoting United States v. E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co., 366 U.S. 316, 325, 81 S.Ct. 1243, 1249, 6 L.Ed.2d 318 (1961)). Accordingly, we review de novo whether the judgment comports with our mandate in Carroll I, considering each of appellants' objections in turn.
14 First, appellants contend that the judgment improperly permits Albany students' activity fees to be used to fund activities that take place away from the SUNY Albany campus. Specifically, appellants argue that by permitting the student activity fees to be used to fund not only ... activities and projects which occur on ... the SUNY Albany campus, but also all activities and expenses which benefit and/or involve SUNY-Albany students, the district court has upset the balance between the constitutionally permissible funding of activities that have a close nexus with the campus and the impermissible funding of off-campus activities that lack this nexus. Relying on our opinion in Carroll I, appellants contend that the interests that justify curtailment of their First Amendment rights vanish when their money is spent off-campus by NYPIRG in the halls of the state legislature or at the main offices in New York City. See Carroll I, 957 F.2d at 1002. 15 On the other hand, appellees NYPIRG and SUNY Albany argue that our repeated use of the phrases on campus and at SUNY Albany in Carroll I were not intended to impose a geographic limitation on the use of activity fee contributions. Rather, appellees contend that this language was intended to broadly refer to all NYPIRG activities that involve or benefit SUNY Albany students, regardless of where the activities physically take place. In support of this, appellees note that several of NYPIRG's activities that we characterized as occurring at SUNY Albany actually took place off campus. For example, surveys on local supermarket pricing, local pharmacy compliance with the generic drug laws, and area bank policies on student credit cards, which were conducted by students in the Albany area using NYPIRG funds, were considered to take place at the SUNY Albany campus. See Carroll I, 957 F.2d at 994. Appellees distinguish this type of activity from the examples of off-campus activities described in Carroll I--the financing of other NYPIRG chapters, statewide administrative expenses, and the salaries of non-student lobbyists, see id. at 994, 1002-03--which do not involve or directly benefit SUNY Albany students. 16 We agree with the district court and appellees NYPIRG and SUNY Albany that our mandate in Carroll I was not intended to impose strict geographic limits on the expenditure of NYPIRG funds. Rather, the decision whether a particular NYPIRG expenditure can be allocated to the Albany students must be informed by the substantial interests of the university and its community that justify the curtailment of the students' First Amendment rights in the first instance. After all, the infringement of appellants' First Amendment right against compelled speech that occurs when SUNY Albany transfers a portion of the activity fee to NYPIRG is only permissible because of the university's strong countervailing interests in the promotion of extracurricular life, the transmission of skills and civic duty, and the stimulation of energetic campus debate. Carroll I, 957 F.2d at 1001. When viewed in this light, it is apparent that the phrases on campus and at SUNY Albany used in our prior opinion are merely a convenient shorthand for referring to expenditures that further the substantial interests of SUNY Albany that were identified in Carroll I. See id. at 1002 ([W]e are mindful of our duty to ensure that even incidental burdens on speech be narrowly drawn. Hence we are unwilling to go farther than necessary to fulfill SUNY Albany's substantial interests. (citation and quotation omitted)). 17 Applying this principle, it is clear that appellants' attempt to draw a line at the campus gate must fail. Such a restriction would be unduly narrow and interfere with the fulfillment of the university's educational objectives. For example, SUNY Albany's strong interest in providing additional educational opportunities for its students through NYPIRG clearly transcends the geographic boundaries of the SUNY Albany campus. Albany students can receive academic credits for interning at NYPIRG's legislative office in Albany, an office located outside the university campus. Similarly, SUNY Albany students benefited from their involvement in surveying compliance by local businesses with various consumer protection laws. While SUNY Albany's interests in promoting vigorous campus debate and making a wide range of extracurricular activities available to its students will ordinarily be furthered through activities that take place physically on the campus, we do not foreclose the possibility that off-campus activities may, in some instances, further these interests as well. Accordingly, the district court did not err in refusing to impose a strict geographic limitation on NYPIRG's activities and expenditures. 18 On the other hand, we agree with appellants that this portion of the judgment is overbroad in certain respects. The judgment permits NYPIRG to use activity fee monies for any activities that benefit or involve the Albany students. Some activities, however, may benefit or involve SUNY Albany students without furthering any of the substantial interests that justify the curtailment of the students' First Amendment rights. For example, although NYPIRG's professional lobbying efforts may result in legislation that benefits SUNY students generally, we held in Carroll I that this stretches the nexus between the extracted fee and SUNY Albany's educational interests too far. Id. at 1002. Similarly, it is possible to imagine a NYPIRG activity that would involve Albany students without furthering any of the substantial interests that justify the mandatory funding. 1 Indeed, even activities that physically occur on campus may not fulfill SUNY Albany's educational objectives and therefore should not be allocated to the Albany campus. In particular, we note that the costs of the NYPIRG statewide conference, which is held on the Albany campus, should only be allocated to the Albany students to the extent that such a conference serves their educational interests. To the extent that the judgment of the district court allowed otherwise, the district court erred. 19 One NYPIRG expenditure of particular concern is the allocation of statewide administrative expenses to the Albany students. In Carroll I, we specifically held that the administrative expenses that inevitably attend a large statewide organization do not fulfill SUNY Albany's substantial interests. Id. at 994, 1002. We reasoned that the benefits received by the Albany students vanish when NYPIRG money is spent ... at the main offices in New York City. SUNY Albany's interests, however substantial, are still, after all, those of the university and its community, not that of an independent statewide organization. Id. at 1002. The district court, however, permitted NYPIRG to allocate a portion of its central office administration costs to the SUNY Albany campus. We reaffirm our prior ruling by holding that the district court erred in allocating these expenses to Albany students. Any benefit that Albany students derive from the services of NYPIRG's central administrative staff is far too remote to justify impingement on the Albany students' First Amendment rights. 20 In accordance with the foregoing, we modify so much of the district court's judgment as provides for unrestricted use of student activity fees for expenditures which benefit and/or involve SUNY-Albany students by substituting therefor a provision restricting the use of such fees to the following: (1) activities that foster a marketplace of ideas on the SUNY Albany campus; (2) activities that provide SUNY Albany students with hands-on educational experiences; and (3) extra-curricular activities for SUNY Albany students, both on and off the Albany campus, that fulfill SUNY educational objectives.
21 In Carroll I, we instructed the district court to fashion procedures that would ensure that NYPIRG spends as much at SUNY Albany as it receives from Albany students' fee. 957 F.2d at 1003. Although the precise reporting mechanism was left to the discretion of the district court, we indicated that the reporting procedures should be as unintrusive as possible. Id. at 1002-03. 22 Appellants contend that the reporting mechanism approved by the district court is deficient in two respects. First, they take issue with the NYPIRG accounting system, which is kept on a per-project basis, and suggest that NYPIRG be ordered to switch to a campus-oriented accounting system. This, appellants contend, would avoid the problems inherent in allocating the costs of NYPIRG's projects among a large number of university campuses. Although requiring NYPIRG to design a new accounting system would perhaps simplify the compliance process, at least from appellants' perspective, we specifically considered and rejected requiring any direct tracking of expenses and segregation of NYPIRG's accounts in Carroll I, id. at 1002. For this reason, the district court correctly refused appellants' invitation to immerse [itself] to this degree in NYPIRG's inner workings. See id. 23 Appellants also take issue with the allocation of various costs described in the documents referred to in the judgment, and suggest a variety of different procedures for NYPIRG to confirm its compliance with this Court's mandate. The district court's judgment requires NYPIRG to submit annual reports describing its projects and activities at SUNY Albany and the expenditures made in connection with each project. The referenced documents show how SUNY Albany's share of the expenditures was determined. The district court found that the form and substance of these reports were adequate to comply with our mandate in Carroll I, and appellants have failed to show that the district court abused the broad discretion with which it was vested. Indeed, the reports approved by the district court are similar to, but more extensive than, the reports referred to in Carroll I. See id. at 1003 n. 9. Although we are cognizant that many of the allocations made in the documents referred to in the judgment were estimates made long after the fact, we expect that as NYPIRG becomes more accustomed to the compliance procedures required by the judgment, its accounting will become more precise.
24 Appellants contend that the district court erred in refusing to include in the judgment a mechanism for objecting students to challenge NYPIRG's reports. To ensure NYPIRG's compliance with this Court's mandate, the judgment specifically requires the president of SUNY Albany to review NYPIRG's reports and certify its compliance. As we recognized in Carroll I, the university president's determinations are entitled to considerable deference, 957 F.2d at 999, and, regardless of the position taken by the SUNY Albany defendants-appellees in this litigation, we have no reason to doubt that the university's president will faithfully comply with the terms of the final judgment. This case is therefore unlike Chicago Teachers Union, Local No. 1 v. Hudson, 475 U.S. 292, 308, 106 S.Ct. 1066, 1076-77, 89 L.Ed.2d 232 (1986), where the most conspicuous feature of the [challenged funding] procedure is that from start to finish it is entirely controlled by the union, which is an interested party, since it is the recipient of the agency fees paid by the dissenting employees. The district court therefore did not abuse its discretion by refusing the more intrusive relief requested by appellants.
25 Appellants contend that the district court erred in failing to limit NYPIRG membership to those students who request it in writing. The district court was instructed on remand to order NYPIRG to redefine its membership to include only those students who consent to becoming members. Carroll I, 957 F.2d at 1003. The judgment expressly states that NYPIRG shall not define membership based solely upon the payment of a mandatory activity fee and it may provide for written notification of a desire to join. No more was required. Appellants' argument that Carroll I requires written consent to membership is without foundation.