Opinion ID: 613270
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Hugo

Text: I part ways with my colleagues on how to read Branson. The majority reads Branson as allowing a political subdivision to sue its parent state when it claims that a federal statute preempts state law. I read Branson as allowing a political subdivision to sue its state for a dormant Commerce Clause violation. [1] The majority and dissenting opinions in this case share much common ground. We agree that courts, including Branson, have shied away from erecting an absolute bar to political subdivisions asserting rights against their parent states in federal court. Maj. Op. at 1256. We also agree that Branson recognizes an exception to the political subdivision standing doctrine for certain preemption claims. We further agree that Branson allows standing for claims that seek to protect a structural right. My basic disagreement with the majority is its failure to recognize that Branson set the terms for future consideration of political subdivision standing in this circuit. Branson canvassed the early Supreme Court cases that prohibited standing and found them to establish only the limited proposition that political subdivisions lack standing when a claim is based on a constitutional provision ... written to protect individual rights. 161 F.3d at 628. Branson allows standing when the claim is based on a constitutional provision ... written to protect ... structural rights. Id. The majority is correct that Branson did not resolve the exceedingly important issue of whether a dormant Commerce Clause claim can support political subdivision standing. See Maj. Op. at 1261. And although the majority correctly reminds us that Branson allowed standing for a preemption claim, it incorrectly denies that Branson set the stage to decide the question presented here: whether the dormant Commerce Clause was written to protect an individual right or a structural right. Branson anticipated this question and foreshadowed the answer. The answer is that the dormant Commerce Clause protects a structural right and thereby supports political subdivision standing. The rationale for my position will be presented by (1) describing how broad language in early Supreme Court cases that prevented political subdivision suits has been interpreted more narrowly over time; (2) explaining the Branson court's analysis of the scope of political subdivision standing; (3) addressing whether the constitutional claim in this case is a structural or an individual right claim; and (4) having concluded that Hugo is alleging a structural claim, showing that Hugo is sufficiently independent of its parent state to litigate that claim.
Branson should be read in the context of the modern trend to limit the scope of the political subdivision standing doctrine. Branson interpreted two early Supreme Court decisions, Trenton v. New Jersey, 262 U.S. 182, 43 S.Ct. 534, 67 L.Ed. 937 (1923), and Williams v. Mayor of Baltimore, 289 U.S. 36, 53 S.Ct. 431, 77 L.Ed. 1015 (1933). These cases contain broad dicta suggesting that a municipality can never sue its parent state. In Trenton, the city claimed that a New Jersey statute imposing a fee on the city for withdrawing water from the Delaware River violated the Contract Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. See 262 U.S. at 183, 43 S.Ct. 534. The Court ruled for New Jersey, holding that [a] municipality is merely a department of the State, and the State may withhold, grant or withdraw powers and privileges as it sees fit. Id. at 187, 43 S.Ct. 534. Trenton relied on an earlier precedent, Hunter v. City of Pittsburgh, 207 U.S. 161, 28 S.Ct. 40, 52 L.Ed. 151 (1907). In Hunter the Court approved Pennsylvania's right to annex the City of Allegheny into the City of Pittsburgh over Allegheny's objections based on the Contract Clause and the Due Process Clause. Id. at 179, 28 S.Ct. 40. After listing the powers of a state over its municipalities, the Court concluded that [i]n all these respects the State is supreme, and its legislative body, conforming its action to the state constitution, may do as it will, unrestrained by any provision of the constitution of the United States. Id. In Williams, the Court rejected an equal protection challenge to a Maryland statute exempting a railroad from local taxes. 289 U.S. at 40, 53 S.Ct. 431. Justice Cardozo explained that [a] municipal corporation ... has no privileges or immunities under the Federal Constitution which it may invoke in opposition to the will of its creator. Id. It would be difficult to square Branson's allowing a political subdivision to sue its parent state with the sweeping dicta of these cases. But the legal landscape changed between 1933 and 1998, and Branson was decided after the Supreme Court had taken a narrower view of these earlier decisions. The Supreme Court did not address political subdivision standing after Williams until Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 81 S.Ct. 125, 5 L.Ed.2d 110 (1960). In Gomillion, African-American citizens of Alabama sought to enjoin the mayor of Tuskegee and other local officials from enforcing a redistricting plan that, they argued, violated the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Fifteenth Amendment. Id. at 340, 81 S.Ct. 125. The defendants, relying on Hunter, invoke[d] generalities expressing the State's unrestricted power  unlimited, that is, by the United States Constitution  to establish, destroy, or reorganize by contraction or expansion its political subdivisions, to wit, cities, counties, and other local units. Id. at 342, 81 S.Ct. 125. The Court, commenting on Hunter and Trenton, explained that the cases that have come before this Court regarding legislation by States dealing with their political subdivisions fall into two classes: (1) those in which it is claimed that the State, by virtue of the prohibition against impairment of the obligation of contract (Art. I, s 10) and of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, is without power to extinguish, or alter the boundaries of, an existing municipality; and (2) in which it is claimed that the State has no power to change the identity of a municipality whereby citizens of a pre-existing municipality suffer serious economic disadvantage. Id. at 343, 81 S.Ct. 125. [2] The Court determined that the earlier cases' precedent should be limited to the specific constitutional provisions that those cases addressed. See id. at 344, 81 S.Ct. 125. Justice Frankfurter stated for the Court that a correct reading of the seemingly unconfined dicta of Hunter and kindred cases is not that the State has plenary power to manipulate in every conceivable way, for every conceivable purpose, the affairs of its municipal corporations, but rather that the State's authority is unrestrained by the particular prohibitions of the Constitution considered in those cases. Id. The Court summarized its position: This line of authority conclusively shows that the Court has never acknowledged that the States have power to do as they will with municipal corporations regardless of consequences. Legislative control of municipalities, no less than other state power, lies within the scope of relevant limitations imposed by the United States Constitution. Id. at 344-45, 81 S.Ct. 125. [3] Gomillion was not a suit between a municipality and its parent state. But its interpretation of the cases that created the political subdivision standing doctrine is telling. The Court said that state legislative control of municipalities is subject to constitutional limitations. Under the Gomillion analysis, Hunter, Trenton, and Williams prevent political subdivision standing only when a municipality attempts to sue its parent state under the Fourteenth Amendment or the Contract Clause. Some of the circuits also have limited the broad dicta of the earlier cases. [4] The majority argues that the Supreme Court's language in Gomillion expressing skepticism about the political subdivision standing doctrine is dicta. But so is much of the language from Hunter, Trenton and Williams that created the political subdivision standing doctrine. With their dicta stripped, those cases hold that a municipality cannot bring suits against its parent state on Contract Clause, Due Process Clause, or Equal Protection Clause grounds. In determining whether a municipality may bring a dormant Commerce Clause claim, it is at least as helpful to examine the Supreme Court's dicta from 1960 as its dicta from 1907, 1923, and 1933, particularly because Gomillion spoke directly to the scope of the doctrine. Consistent with the trend reflected in Gomillion, in Board of Education of Central School District v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236, 88 S.Ct. 1923, 20 L.Ed.2d 1060 (1968), the Court reached the merits of an Establishment Clause challenge to a New York education statute brought by two local school boards against the state education commissioner of their parent state. The majority points to Allen 's reference to individual board members' personal stake in the case, Maj. Op. at 1260 (quoting Allen, 392 U.S. at 241 n. 5, 88 S.Ct. 1923), but the school boards, not their individual members, were the plaintiffs. What the Court did not do in Allen  and in any other case since 1933  is follow Trenton and Williams and deny political subdivision standing to a political subdivision. As Justices Marshall and White later said, Allen cannot be squared with a bar against political subdivisions' raising constitutional claims against their parent states. See City of S. Lake Tahoe v. Cal. Tahoe Reg'l Planning Agency, 449 U.S. 1039, 1042, 101 S.Ct. 619, 66 L.Ed.2d 502 (1980) (White, J., joined by Marshall, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari). [5] The foregoing cases inform the different readings of Branson in this case. The majority reads Branson as a narrow exception to a broad prohibition of political subdivision standing. The dicta in early Supreme Court cases support this reading. But, as the majority acknowledges, courts have retreated from the absolutist gloss of the early cases. [6] Maj. Op. at 1259. Taken together, Gomillion and Allen suggest that courts should read the earlier political subdivision standing cases more narrowly than the broad dicta of the earlier cases. That is precisely what Branson did. [7]
When Branson granted political subdivision standing on a federal preemption claim, it never declared that a political subdivision could sue its parent state only for a preemption claim. [8] The majority would freeze this circuit's exception to the political subdivision standing doctrine to certain preemption claims. But Branson recognized a broader exception that would allow future consideration of claims based on constitutional provisions written to protect structural rights. Branson did not list which constitutional provisions might qualify because the immediate issue was whether the plaintiffs had standing for their preemption claim. The court left open whether a constitutional provision such as the dormant Commerce Clause would fit its structural rights category. In Branson, school districts brought a preemption challenge against a voter-approved amendment to the Colorado Constitution, alleging that the amendment violated a federal land trust established by Congress in the Colorado Enabling Act. See 161 F.3d at 625. The defendant state officials argued that the school districts, as political subdivisions, could not sue their parent state. Id. at 628. We recognized the political subdivision standing doctrine stemming from Trenton and Williams: It is well-settled that a political subdivision may not bring a federal suit against its parent state based on rights secured through the Fourteenth Amendment. Id. (citations omitted). We upheld the school districts' right to sue. Id. at 629-30. Addressing the scope of political subdivision standing, we held that, [d]espite the sweeping breadth of [their] language, the earlier cases rejecting standing for municipalities raising constitutional challenges against their parent states stand only for the limited proposition that a municipality may not bring a constitutional challenge against its creating state when the constitutional provision that supplies the basis for the complaint was written to protect individual rights, as opposed to collective or structural rights. Id. We concluded that a political subdivision has standing to bring a constitutional claim against its creating state when the substance of its claim relies on the Supremacy Clause and a putatively controlling federal law. Id. Branson did not carve out from Trenton and its progeny an exception to political subdivision standing doctrine just to allow judicial review of preemption claims. Instead, Branson read Trenton as establishing a limited proposition that blocks judicial review only when the constitutional provision that supplies the basis for the complaint was written to protect individual rights, as opposed to collective or structural rights. Id. In this case, the City of Hugo, an Oklahoma political subdivision, sued members of the OWRB, an Oklahoma state agency, in their official capacities. [9] The difference between this case and Branson is that Hugo asserts a dormant Commerce Clause claim and the Branson plaintiffs alleged a preemption claim. This court has not previously addressed whether a political subdivision can sue a state for a dormant Commerce Clause violation, but Branson clearly opened the door for a claim based on a constitutional provision ... written to protect ... structural rights. Id. at 628. The question in this case, clearly within the Branson ambit, is whether Hugo's dormant Commerce Clause claim is based on a structural or an individual right. [10] Branson explains that a political subdivision has standing to bring a constitutional claim against its creating state when the substance of its claim relies on the Supremacy Clause and a putatively controlling federal law.  Id. (emphasis added). Federal law includes, of course, not only statutes but also constitutional provisions. And Branson did not say that a political subdivision may only sue a parent state when its claim relies on the Supremacy Clause and a federal statute. Applying Branson to Hugo, the relevant comparison is not between a Supremacy Clause claim and a dormant Commerce Clause claim. It is between a preemption claim based on a federal statute and a dormant Commerce Clause claim. When either is the basis for a challenge to a state law, the Supremacy Clause is essential to the challenge. The majority is correct that a plaintiff alleging a Supremacy Clause claim is actually alleging a right under some other federal law, which trumps a contrary state law by operation of the Supremacy Clause. Maj. Op. at 1256 (emphasis in original). But that is exactly what Hugo is doing  alleging a claim under the dormant Commerce Clause, which is the other federal law [that] trumps a contrary state law by operation of the Supremacy Clause. The Supremacy Clause plays the same role in either case because it requires that the federal law, whether a federal statute or the dormant Commerce Clause, will prevail if it conflicts with state law. All claims alleging a conflict between state law and federal law rely upon the Supremacy Clause priority rule that the Constitution, and Laws of the United States ... and all Treaties ... shall be ... supreme. U.S. CONST. ART. VI, cl. 2. If Branson meant to restrict political subdivision standing to certain preemption claims, its distinction between individual and structural rights would be superfluous. Under the majority's reading, only preemption claims count as a structural right. But Branson did not distinguish between claims based on a constitutional provision and a federal statute. It distinguished between claims based on individual and structural rights. We should therefore decide whether a dormant Commerce Clause claim is based on an individual or structural right.
Branson divides political subdivision constitutional claims into two categories: structural rights claims, which support standing, and individual rights claims, which do not. [11] We know from Branson 's reading of Hunter, Trenton, and Williams that the Contract Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause fall into the individual rights claims category. Dormant Commerce Clause claims, properly understood, fall into the structural rights category. Branson does not elaborate on its distinction between structural and individual rights. But Branson 's allowing a political subdivision to bring a preemption claim provides a clue to understanding the distinction. A preemption claim alleges that a federal statute is supreme relative to conflicting state law. Such a claim is structural because it concerns the relative authority of federal and state government. An individual right claim, by contrast, concerns the limits of government authority over the individual. Dormant Commerce Clause claims are more like preemption than individual rights claims because they concern the relative power of federal and state government. They ask whether state law improperly interferes with an area of federal concern  interstate commerce. [12] An additional clue to understanding Branson 's distinction between individual and structural rights are the words written to protect in Branson 's key passage that political subdivision standing is forbidden only when the constitutional provision that supplies the basis for the complaint was written to protect individual rights, as opposed to collective or structural rights. 161 F.3d at 628. The Bill of Rights, the Contract Clause (at issue in Hunter and Trenton ), the Due Process Clause (at issue in Hunter and Trenton ), and the Equal Protection Clause (at issue in Williams ) were written to protect individual rights. By contrast, the enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8 both authorize and limit what Congress can do, and, from the standpoint of limiting power, were written to protect states' rights. The Commerce Clause, therefore, was written to protect the allocation of power between the federal government and the states. See Akhil Reed Amar, America's Constitution: A Biography 105-08 (2005); The Federalist No. 45 (James Madison). The implied dormant Commerce Clause protects that structural allocation. Hugo's dormant Commerce Clause claim, like the preemption claim in Branson, addresses structural issues. [T]here is widespread acceptance of our authority to enforce the dormant Commerce Clause, which we have but inferred from the constitutional structure as a limitation on the power of the States. United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 579, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 131 L.Ed.2d 626 (1995) (Kennedy, J., concurring). The dormant Commerce Clause doctrine provides that, unless authorized by Congress, states lack power to regulate in certain matters reserved for national legislation. Both dormant Commerce Clause claims and preemption claims based on federal laws enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause concern the relationship between federal and state governments and the relative scope of federal and state power. These claims represent the two situations where Article I of the Constitution restrains state regulation of commerce. See Kathleen M. Sullivan & Gerald Gunther, Constitutional Law 175 (17th ed.2010). Congressional intent on the relation between state and federal law is a critical issue when a preemption claim is based on Congress's exercise of its Commerce Clause power and also when a dormant Commerce Clause claim may be resolved based on whether Congress authorized state regulation. These are techniques Congress may employ in the ordering [of] relations between the nation and the states. Id. at 243. One leading commentator understood the dormant Commerce Clause to be exactly the sort of structural right that Branson meant to allow political subdivision standing: The Fifth and Tenth Circuits, for example, have limited cities' standing to cases that involve claims under the Supremacy Clause and other structural restrictions on state power, such as the Dormant Commerce Clause.  David J. Barron, Why (and When) Cities Have a Stake in Enforcing the Constitution, 115 Yale L.J. 2218, 2250 (2006) (emphasis in original). The conceptual affinity of the preemption doctrine and the dormant Commerce Clause is reflected in cases where both types of challenges are raised against the same statute. For example, in City of Philadelphia v. New Jersey, 437 U.S. 617, 98 S.Ct. 2531, 57 L.Ed.2d 475 (1978), a New Jersey law banning importation of solid and liquid waste from out of state to New Jersey landfills was challenged under both the preemption doctrine and the dormant Commerce Clause. The Court held that federal legislation did not preempt the state law, id. at 620, 98 S.Ct. 2531, but also held that the state law violated the dormant Commerce Clause, id. at 629, 98 S.Ct. 2531. The resemblance between preemption and dormant Commerce Clause arguments is especially clear in cases addressing whether a federal statute gives congressional consent to state regulation and therefore insulates a state law from dormant Commerce Clause challenge. In Sporhase v. Nebraska, ex rel. Douglas, 458 U.S. 941, 102 S.Ct. 3456, 73 L.Ed.2d 1254 (1982), the Court considered whether federal laws consented to a Nebraska law limiting out-of-state transfer of groundwater and thereby insulated it from dormant Commerce Clause challenge. The Court said no. Id. at 960, 102 S.Ct. 3456. The question in consent cases such as Sporhase and in preemption cases is what state legislation Congress intended to allow or disallow when it enacted a federal statute. Whether the issue is preemption (Congress has spoken in conflict with state law), dormant Commerce Clause (Congress is silent), or consent (Congress has spoken to authorize state law), all address a common question: the state's power to act. When a federal statute or the dormant Commerce Clause invalidates a state law, in both instances the Supremacy Clause requires that result, and both instances involve a federalism analysis, not an individual rights analysis. In this case, as in Branson, Congress has spoken. A central question is whether the Red River Compact authorizes the Oklahoma statutes that limit interstate commerce in water. Whether the issue is congressional preemption in Branson or congressional consent in this case, both are hinged to structural analysis and determining congressional intent. The majority correctly indicates that Hugo and Irving have their own economic interests in the outcome of the litigation. But it does not follow that their claim is correctly characterized as based on constitutional provisions ... written to protect individual rights. Branson, 161 F.3d at 628. Party interests are at stake in both preemption and dormant Commerce Clause claims, but the nature of the claim  adjudicating the power of the state relative to that of the federal government  is structural, a question of relative state and federal power. Indeed, the Commerce Clause, upon which the dormant Commerce Clause is based, authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce and, as an enumerated right, was in part written to protect the states from federal overreaching. Litigants basing claims on this Article I provision ask courts to adjudicate questions of relative federal and state power, the answers to which affect the parties' interests. In short, such cases call for constitutional interpretation of federal rights and state power  structural rights  not individual rights. Given our Article III standing requirements calling for a plaintiff to show a redressable individual injury in all federal cases, individual interests are virtually always at stake irrespective of the legal basis for the claim. It does not follow that all such claims except for preemption cases fit Branson 's category of individual rights claims. Dormant Commerce Clause claims fit Branson's structural category. [13] The scope of analysis presented here is narrow and does not envision, as the majority describes, a broad availability of suits by political subdivisions to vindicate constitutional interests. Maj. Op. at 1260. If this dissent were the holding in this case, it would stand only for the proposition that a municipality may sue the state to challenge state laws as unconstitutional under the dormant Commerce Clause because such a claim fits within our Branson analysis. Whether any other constitutional provisions would support political subdivision standing is not addressed here.
According to Branson, in addition to making a claim based on a structural right, a political subdivision must be substantially independent from its parent state to have standing. See Branson, 161 F.3d at 639 (quoting Lassen v. Arizona ex rel. Arizona Highway Dep't, 385 U.S. 458, 459 n. 1, 87 S.Ct. 584, 17 L.Ed.2d 515 (1967)). The school districts in Colorado were substantially independent because they may hold property in their own name, enter into contracts, and they have the right to sue and be sued in their own name. Id. at 629. We also noted that the districts are led by boards that are elected independently. Id. The City of Hugo is substantially independent of Oklahoma. Hugo can hold property in its own name, enter into contracts, and sue and be sued in its own name. See OKLA. STAT. tit. 11, 22-101, 22-104, 37-117. Because Hugo is raising a claim based on a constitutional provision that protects structural rights and is substantially independent from the State of Oklahoma, I would hold that Hugo has standing.