Opinion ID: 355205
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the problem of standing

Text: 51 SMHA has presumably brought this action because it believes that it has sustained a judicially redressable injury as a result of HEW's withdrawal of support. However, I am unable to discern from SMHA's original and amended complaints in the District Court, from its briefs in this court, or from its counsel's statements at oral argument just what redressable injury SMHA purports to have sustained. Because I agree with Judge Tamm that the subject of grantee rights is a slumbering giant that should be awakened cautiously, I do not think it is too much to ask that the complaining party specifically identify for this court the precise interests and rights that it is attempting to vindicate. 52 The real interest at stake in this case can best be identified by tracing the flow of grant money as it funnels down from the Congress through various levels of administration, to the ultimate beneficiaries the migrant workers and their families. That real interest is a public interest, the welfare of the ultimate beneficiaries, not the private interest of SMHA attempted to be asserted here. 53 At the highest level of grant administration is the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which each year receives from Congress funds specifically appropriated for the improvement of migrant worker health care. The Secretary of HEW is authorized to use these funds in making grants to public agencies or private non-profit organizations which, in turn, are to establish and operate health care facilities for migrant workers. These grants are made expressly on the condition that the grantee provide persons broadly representative of the target population an opportunity to participate in developing and implementing the funded health care programs. 54 At the next level of grant administration are the grantees themselves the public agencies or private non-profit organizations. As far as I am able to tell from the record, these entities are essentially conduits for the funds. The employees of the public agencies and the board members of the non-profit organizations do not derive salaries or otherwise profit from grant money; they have no economic stake in it. Rather, these organizations perform a managerial function with respect to the funds. They plan and implement health care services, ensuring that grant monies are properly applied in their provision. Congress' specification of public agencies and non-profit organizations was purposeful, the theory being that, because such entities have no interest in the grant money and are motivated solely by altruism, they will encourage the target populations' participation in the administration of the funds. This participation, in turn, is supposed to assure program responsiveness. Thus, the very reason organizations such as SMHA receive grant money is their supposed economic disinterest and self-abnegating spirit. 55 At the final level of grant administration are the health delivery systems the clinics themselves. It is at this level that grant money is expended for capital construction, equipment, and salaries for medical personnel and other staff. These clinics are the line entities, providing health care services directly to the migrant workers and their families. 56 As I read the record in this case, all that has happened is that one group of non-salaried volunteer welfare workers (SMHA) has been replaced in its management role by another group of non-salaried volunteer welfare workers (TAB). It is just as if HEW shifted a grant award from one state agency to another state agency. When SMHA's grant was not renewed for a fourth year, HEW simply granted the available money to TAB, another qualified non-profit organization, which then replaced SMHA in its managerial role over the health care clinic. The grant money is now being funneled through that organization to the clinic. Thus the basic health care structure and staff established by SMHA at the outset of the grant is still intact and, although now under the management of TAB, still serves the same area. The migrants the beneficiaries of the program have lost nothing, the people who staff the clinics have lost nothing, and it appears to me that SMHA has lost nothing except perhaps the opportunity to help others by administering federal monies. 57 Nevertheless, SMHA has brought this action in the belief that it has sustained some injury in fact which this court is capable of remedying. It is evident from the complaint that SMHA is not in court to represent and assert the personal rights of its members. 1 It does not therefore have standing as an association in a representative capacity. Nor is SMHA here on the behalf of the migrant workers to represent public interests and vindicate public rights. Therefore, it does not have standing as a private attorney general. Rather, it appears from the pleadings that SMHA has brought this action to redress its own private claims, to protect its own organizational rights. There is no question that an association may have standing in its own right to seek judicial relief from injury to itself and to vindicate whatever rights the association itself may enjoy. 58 In order to establish such standing in its own right, however, an association must allege that it has suffered an injury in fact, economic or otherwise. The injury must be alleged with particularity; the association must plead specific and concrete facts indicating that it has sustained an injury. The existence of an injury cannot be left to the imagination of the court. 2 Moreover, the injury alleged must be distinct and palpable; it cannot be abstract, remote, or speculative. 3 Finally, the association must allege that the injury was caused by the challenged agency action and is likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision. 4 59 Despite these requirements, SMHA has failed to allege specifically any facts, either in its original or in its amended complaints, indicating that it has sustained a redressable injury as a result of HEW action. It alleges in its complaint that it has been deprived by HEW action of two years of funding amounting to approximately $700,000 in grant money. At oral argument SMHA's counsel was specifically asked what injury the association had sustained to support its standing. Counsel responded that SMHA had lost its property interest in two years of grant money. However, in my view, any such property loss is an illusion. SMHA was a conduit. The association itself did not profit from the grant money; it was essentially a board of directors administering the grant funds for the benefit of the migrant workers. Thus, the association had no financial or economic interest in this money. The only persons who are salaried and are being paid government money are the staff personnel actually operating the health clinics. These individuals have largely retained their jobs under the new management of TAB. The clinics are still in operation. In fact, then, SMHA has not lost anything. 60 Equally important is the fact that SMHA's loss of funding for two years is simply not redressable. The funds putatively lost by SMHA were appropriated by Congress to carry out programs for specific beneficiaries during specific fiscal years FY 1975 and FY 1976. The programs have been carried out; the funds have been spent; the true beneficiaries have already received the benefits which Congress intended that they receive. This court cannot require Congress to appropriate further funds so that appellant can have the pleasure of administering a redundant program. Nor can we require the Secretary of HEW to award to SMHA grant money appropriated by Congress in future fiscal years for future programs. 5 Thus, SMHA's claimed loss of $700,000 in grant money is not only illusory but unredressable and, hence, cannot provide a basis for the Association's standing. 61 There is another injury mentioned in SMHA's complaint which does involve genuine economic loss to the Association. SMHA claims that, as a result of HEW's withdrawal of support, it was forced to breach various contractual obligations for which it remains liable. It claims damages of $100,000. Certainly these forced breaches have resulted in an injury to SMHA; and certainly this is an injury which this court can remedy. But just as certainly these forced breaches were not caused by HEW's non-renewal of funding. SMHA simply did not have authority to obligate grant money by contract beyond a one year period. This limitation was clearly understood by SMHA. All of the contracts breached by SMHA were contracts running beyond a one year term. To the extent that these contracts purported to obligate grant monies, they were ultra vires, and were entered into solely on the responsibility of SMHA. In no proper sense, then, did HEW's withdrawal of support cause SMHA's lingering liabilities. 62 What injury has SMHA sustained then as a result of HEW's action? The majority has rested its finding of standing on the theory that SMHA has suffered an injury to its good name and reputation: 63 For an organization such as SMHA, dependent as it is upon grants for its very existence, a good reputation is perhaps its most valuable asset. Reputation, especially that established by past performance, is a key element in agency grant decisions, and an organization that acquires a bad reputation in the grant community based on poor performance will have a difficult burden to overcome in securing new grants. (footnote omitted) 64 The effect of HEW's action in this case, therefore, is to endanger SMHA's ability to obtain future grants, the very lifeblood of its existence. We believe this demonstrates that SMHA has been injured in fact, . . . . (Majority Opinion, 313 of 187 U.S.App.D.C., 524 of 574 F.2d). 65 This is an interesting notion; the problem is that it represents the court's own imaginative theory of how SMHA was actually injured. 66 There are no specific or concrete facts alleged in SMHA's complaints, its brief, or oral argument, or elsewhere in the record which support this theory. Although there is in the original and amended complaints a request for $1,000,000 in damages for injury to good name and reputation, there are no specific and concrete facts regarding this asserted injury alleged in the complaints. This cryptic reference and good round figure of One Million obviously picked out of thin air is not sufficient to support the majority's theory regarding appellant's reputational injury. 6 The majority, then, can only be speculating as to the injury sustained by SMHA, just as was SMHA itself, although rather perfunctorily. These speculations seem in large part derived from assertions made in law review articles generally advocating grantee rights. Law reviews, though helpful at times, can not replace proper pleading. 7 67 Overlooking for the moment appellant's failure to allege with particularity any remediable injury in fact, there is something else which concerns me. The words injury to reputation are becoming almost talismanic in our jurisprudence. A plaintiff utters these words once, and he has standing; the doors to federal courts fly open. He incants these words once more, and he has a liberty interest; the Due Process Clause of the Constitution descends upon him investing him with its procedural safeguards. Before we are ready to acknowledge that SMHA has sustained the injury in fact required for its standing purposes, we should consider precisely what this reputational injury amounts to in practical terms. 8 68 It seems to me that if one follows the majority's reasoning that the only redressable injury sustained by SMHA has been the tarnishing of its image within HEW and other granting agencies, then one must conclude that this so-called injury to reputation really translates into the possibility that SMHA may be given fewer opportunities to administer federal grant money in the future. In other words, the gravamen of SMHA's complaint, at least the only remaining part found tangible by the majority, is that it may have lost opportunities to help other people and have the government pay for it. This interest in being altruistic at the government's expense strikes me as somewhat ephemeral, and I question whether the invasion of an interest of the kind suggested here constitutes a palpable enough injury to establish injury in fact under the doctrine of standing.