Opinion ID: 496641
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Rights of the Amtrak Policemen

Text: 6 AFRP alleges four types of injury to its members: (1) risk of physical injury to those who attempt to enforce Amtrak's policy of ejecting the homeless, (2) emotional injury, pain, and suffering, (3) exposure to civil liability for enforcing the policy, and (4) risk of discipline or loss of employment for failing to enforce it. The first two are insufficient to invoke the jurisdiction of the federal court; the third is premature and speculative; and the fourth, to the extent that it is not within the exclusive jurisdiction of the NRAB, is insufficient to state a claim.
7 AFRP's claim that Amtrak's policy exposes its members to physical injury is based on the premise that the persons Amtrak policemen seek to eject from Penn Station will respond with violence. The premise is insufficient to support a claim on which relief can be granted. Violent resistance to police orders would of course be unlawful, and no basis has been presented for believing that the routine response of a homeless person to an ejectment order would be violence. The Supreme Court has ruled that a claim based on speculation that a given class of persons will engage in unlawful conduct must be dismissed. See City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 103, 105-06, 103 S.Ct. 1660, 1665-67, 75 L.Ed.2d 675 (1983) (holding that plaintiff would have had standing to request injunction against police use of chokeholds only if complaint asserted the incredible hypothesis that strangleholds are applied by the Los Angeles police to every citizen who is stopped or arrested regardless of the conduct of the person stopped, id. at 108, 103 S.Ct. at 1668). 8 To the extent that AFRP is seeking damages for actual past physical injuries, the complaint is insufficient for at least two reasons. First, there are no allegations of any specific act of violence. More importantly, where, as here, any injury would have been peculiar to the individual policeman, the union has no standing to seek damages on behalf of its members. Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 515-16, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2213-14, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975).
9 AFRP also alleges that Amtrak's policy is unreasonably causing AFRP member AMTRAK police employees emotional injury, pain and suffering. Such a claim is too abstract to give AFRP standing to invoke the jurisdiction of the federal court. See Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United For Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 482-83, 485-86, 102 S.Ct. 752, 763-66, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982).
10 The principal impetus for this lawsuit, termed the Amtrak policemen's greatest fear (Declaration of AFRP President Kenneth Anderson, dated December 31, 1986 (Anderson Declaration), p 35, submitted in support of AFRP's motion for a preliminary injunction), is the apprehension that the policemen may be exposed to liability for violating the civil rights of the persons ejected from the station. The district court properly dismissed this claim on grounds of prematurity. The complaint does not allege that any AFRP member has been sued or threatened with suit. In the circumstances, this claim is based on a series of speculations, including the hypothesis that an ejected person will bring suit; that all defenses, including that of qualified immunity, will fail; and that Amtrak would fail to honor its bylaw-undertaking to indemnify an officer for legal expenses and liability incurred as a result of his good faith compliance with Amtrak instructions. Reliance on such a series of speculative premises reveals a lack of the concreteness necessary to present a genuine case or controversy. See O'Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 497-98, 94 S.Ct. 669, 676-77, 38 L.Ed.2d 674 (1974); Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U.S. 452, 458-60, 94 S.Ct. 1209, 1215-16, 39 L.Ed.2d 505 (1974). 11
12 The least speculative claim asserted by AFRP is that its members risk discipline if they fail to enforce Amtrak's policy. An Amtrak document submitted to the court in support of AFRP's preliminary injunction motion revealed that at least one disciplinary charge had been grounded in part on the officer's failure to implement the policy. This claim is ripe and reveals a genuine case or controversy, and AFRP has standing to assert it. Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236, 241 & n. 5, 88 S.Ct. 1923, 1925 & n. 5, 20 L.Ed.2d 1060 (1968). It has other flaws, however, that made dismissal appropriate. 13 To begin with, we note that AFRP members have no substantive constitutional right not to be disciplined or dismissed from their jobs. See, e.g., Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill, 470 U.S. 532, 538, 105 S.Ct. 1487, 1491, 84 L.Ed.2d 494 (1985); Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 577, 92 S.Ct. 2701, 2709, 33 L.Ed.2d 548 (1972). The complaint does not assert either a state-law property interest in employment, though there may well be one, or any denial by Amtrak of constitutionally required procedural protections in connection with disciplinary or dismissal proceedings. 14 AFRP's complaint also states that the Amtrak policy provides the policemen with no definition of the terms homeless and undesirable, and no guidelines or instructions as to standards or expected procedures. The district court properly construed this as an attack on a work rule promulgated by Amtrak. Since the terms and conditions of employment for Amtrak police personnel are governed by a collective bargaining agreement, resolution of AFRP's challenge to this work rule is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the NRAB. See 45 U.S.C. Sec. 153 First (i). 15 Finally, AFRP asserts in its brief on appeal that the Amtrak policy mandates false arrest and excessive force, arguing in both its written and its oral presentations to this Court that Amtrak has instructed its policemen to beat homeless and undesirable persons. While such a policy would no doubt provide grounds for a suit by the victims of the false arrest or the excessive force, AFRP's assertions that this is in fact the nature of the policy--rather than simply AFRP's interpretation of it--lack support in the present record. The assertions that Amtrak has ordered beatings and excessive force are to an extent contradicted by AFRP's own complaint, which alleges that Amtrak has told AFRP members that Amtrak has authority to use necessary physical force to remove or eject homeless and undesirable persons. Moreover, though AFRP has repeatedly purported to quote Amtrak as ordering its policemen to beat indigents found in the station, no such instruction appears in any of the documents submitted by AFRP. When questioned at oral argument, AFRP counsel eventually conceded that his only support for the representations that Amtrak had instructed its policemen to administer beatings was a statement in one Amtrak memorandum that ejectment from Penn Station should begin during the warm weather months so that homeless and other undesirable persons would be educated that they could not remain in the station when the weather turned cold. The Amtrak policemen's unsubstantiated assumption that an instruction to educate[ ] is an instruction to use excessive force or administer a beat[ing] is an unacceptable basis for a federal claim.