Opinion ID: 2787964
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Bjorlin

Text: Bjorlin does not allege he has already been injured. Rather, he seeks prospective relief for an injury that might occur to him in the future. He bases his threat of injury on the experience of his former colleagues who were captured and killed in Iraq, allegedly as a result of CPA Order 17 and the State Department policies that impeded their family members from seeking their release. The Supreme Court has “repeatedly reiterated that ‘threatened injury must be certainly impending to constitute injury in fact,’ and that ‘[a]llegations of possible future injury’ are not sufficient.” Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 133 S. Ct. 1138, 1147 (2013) (alterations in original) (quoting Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U.S. 149, 158 (1990)). Rather than requiring literal certainty, the Court has sometimes framed the injury requirement as a “substantial risk” that the harm will occur. Id. at 1150 n.5 (citing, inter alia, Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, 561 U.S. 139, 153 (2010)). As the district court concluded, the threat of injury to Bjorlin from CPA Order 17 is too speculative to constitute MUNNS V. KERRY 11 injury in fact. Even assuming that CPA Order 17 granted blanket immunity to contractors and contributed to a lawless atmosphere for security contractors in Iraq, Bjorlin acknowledges that the order is no longer in effect, although he speculates that it or a similar order could be reinstated in the future.5 Moreover, even if he seeks such employment in the future, Bjorlin may or may not be hired to provide private security in Iraq. For Bjorlin to be injured in the future, therefore, he would have to be hired and sent to Iraq to perform security services again, the State Department would have to reinstate CPA Order 17 or a similar policy, and that policy would have to cause injury to Bjorlin in one of the ways he fears: by creating a lawless atmosphere that encourages his contractor employer to improperly provide for his safety, which then leads to his kidnapping, or by motivating an individual to kidnap him. The chain of events that must occur for Bjorlin to be injured by the nowinoperative Order 17 is on its face much too attenuated for the threatened injury to be certainly impending or to present a substantial risk of its occurrence. See City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 108–09 (1983) (holding that a plaintiff who had been subjected to an illegal chokehold by police did not have standing to pursue a prospective injunction against the use of chokeholds because it was too speculative that he would be stopped and illegally choked again). Moreover, Bjorlin has not alleged facts supporting his speculation that CPA Order 17 (or its equivalent) would likely be reinstated. 5 As noted earlier, supra n.2, the government disputes that the order granted blanket immunity. Because the plaintiffs’ lack of standing deprives this court of jurisdiction to adjudicate their claims regarding the order, we do not resolve the parties’ dispute over the effect of the order. 12 MUNNS V. KERRY Bjorlin alternatively argues that the government’s earlier implementation of CPA Order 17, coupled with the government’s ongoing assertion that the policy was legal, make him uncertain as to what policies the government will implement if he returns to Iraq as a security contractor. This uncertainty, he contends, constitutes an injury in fact because it deters him from seeking work in a field of employment that may subject him to a policy he believes is illegal. The Supreme Court rejected an analogous theory of injury in Clapper, in which the plaintiffs argued that their subjective fear of future violations of their rights deterred them from certain activities in the present. See 133 S. Ct. at 1151–53. Acknowledging that, in some circumstances, a similar “chilling effect” can constitute a cognizable injury, the Court nonetheless drew the line at situations in which the chilling effect was based on a plaintiff’s fear of future injury that itself was too speculative to confer standing. See id. at 1152. The Court reasoned, “allowing [the plaintiffs] to bring this action based on costs they incurred in response to a speculative threat would be tantamount to accepting a repackaged version of [their] first failed theory of standing.” Id. at 1151. Here too, Bjorlin’s alternative theory of injury fails because his deterrence from seeking employment is ultimately based on his fear of an injury that we have already determined is too speculative to confer standing. Cf. Drake v. Obama, 664 F.3d 774, 780 (9th Cir. 2011) (holding a military service member’s injury was “entirely speculative” when it was based on his fear of being penalized for obeying an order from the President that he believed would be unconstitutional). Like his allegations regarding CPA Order 17, Bjorlin’s allegations of the threat of injury from the government’s hostage response policies are too speculative and abstract to MUNNS V. KERRY 13 constitute injury in fact. Bjorlin alleges only that he will “likely be employed as a contractor in the region in the immediate future,” and that he “may be kidnapped” and thereafter injured by the U.S. government’s policies that impede the efforts of private citizens to secure the release of their captured relatives. First, he alleges no concrete plans to return, only an abstract “wish[]” to do so. Even if he seeks a position in private security in Iraq, he may not obtain one. His “some day” hope to return to Iraq is not the sort of specific planning that the Supreme Court has held is required to demonstrate that a future injury is sufficiently imminent for a federal court to address it prospectively. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 564 (1992). Second, even if Bjorlin’s plans to return to Iraq were otherwise sufficiently concrete, his likelihood of being kidnapped would still be speculative. His supposed risks of injury are at least as speculative as Lyons’ claim that he was likely to experience an illegal police chokehold again. See Lyons, 461 U.S. at 108 (“We cannot agree that the ‘odds’ that Lyons would not only again be stopped for a traffic violation but would also be subjected to a chokehold without any provocation whatsoever are sufficient to make out a federal case for equitable relief.” (citation omitted)). The same is true of Bjorlin’s likelihood of being injured by the government’s hostage response policies. The chain of events leading to injury from these policies is simply too hypothetical and attenuated to constitute injury in fact. As the district court summed up: What Mr. Bjorlin really seeks, then, is a declaration of his rights, if he elects to serve again, if he is hired by a contractor, if he is shipped overseas, if CPA Order 17 is still in effect or if another similar order instead 14 MUNNS V. KERRY governs, and, with respect to the kidnapping declaration, if he is kidnapped, and if he is then held hostage. Based on this logic, almost any American even contemplating serving overseas could make roughly the same argument. As with his claims regarding CPA Order 17, Bjorlin alternatively argues that his uncertainty about how the government will respond if he were to be taken hostage is itself an injury because that uncertainty deters him from seeking employment as a contractor. Because Bjorlin’s feeling of deterrence is based on a fear of speculative future injury, this theory of injury fails. See Clapper, 133 S. Ct. at 1152–53.6 In sum, Bjorlin does not allege a sufficient likelihood of injury resulting from CPA Order 17 or the government’s hostage response policy, nor is there any probability he could, given the many inherent contingencies. Therefore, he does not have standing to seek prospective declaratory and injunctive relief regarding those policies.