Opinion ID: 2832681
Heading Depth: 6
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Nasser

Text: Less than a month after Havens, the Eleventh Circuit issued an opinion in Nasser, 671 F.2d 432, on which the district court and the Bank principally rely. In Nasser, property owners challenged a zoning ordinance that rezoned their property from multi-family residential to single-family residential, alleging, inter alia, that the ordinance violated the FHA. Id. at 434. In 1976, the plaintiffs entered into an agreement with a developer for the construction of a multi-family housing complex on their property. The developer had looked into the possibility of making some units of this complex available for low- and moderate-income families via rent subsidies, and had inquired with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. But the development never materialized. A detailed affidavit from a member of the county planning commission stated that the plaintiffs had never suggested that their purpose “was to build a multi-family project for the use and benefit of low income or minority groups.” Id. at 435. Instead, the affidavit 24 Case: 14-14543 Date Filed: 09/01/2015 Page: 25 of 57 claimed that the plaintiffs had represented their project as “an exclusive-high rent apartment complex.” Id. The Court found that there was no “evidence that the 1976 project was in any way affected by or related to racial or other minority interests.” Id. Three years later, the land was re-zoned. Id. at 434. The plaintiffs claimed that the re-zoning had reduced the value of their property by more than 50% (from $285,000 to $135,000). See id. at 435. A panel of this Court concluded that the plaintiffs lacked statutory standing under the FHA despite this purported economic injury. In making this determination, the Court considered Trafficante and Gladstone, and concluded: “There is no indication that the [Supreme] Court intended to extend standing, beyond the facts before it, to plaintiffs who show no more than an economic interest which is not somehow affected by a racial interest.” Id. at 437. The Nasser Court found that the property owners lacked an economic interest affected by a racial interest, and therefore lacked standing to sue under the FHA. Id. at 438. iii. Newer Supreme Court cases on statutory standing Two recent Supreme Court cases have cast some doubt on the broad interpretation of FHA statutory standing in Trafficante, Gladstone, and Havens. In Thompson v. North American Stainless, LP., 562 U.S. 170 (2011), the Court considered whether an employee had a cause of action under Title VII, which uses 25 Case: 14-14543 Date Filed: 09/01/2015 Page: 26 of 57 nearly identical statutory language to the FHA. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(f)(1) (“[A] civil action may be brought . . . by the person claiming to be aggrieved.”). The Court rejected the argument that this language expanded statutory standing to the limits of Article III. Id. at 177. Instead, it drew an analogy to the Administrative Procedure Act (which contains similar language) and held that plaintiffs must “fall[] within the ‘zone of interests’ sought to be protected by the statutory provision whose violation forms the legal basis for his complaint.” Id. at 177-78 (quoting Lujan v. Nat’l Wildlife Fed’n, 497 U.S. 871, 883 (1990)). The Court acknowledged that this analysis was in some tension with Trafficante and Gladstone. But in glossing Trafficante, the Thompson Court focused on language in the opinion that arguably limited the holding to its facts: the Trafficante Court stated that standing under the FHA was coextensive with Article III only “insofar as tenants of the same housing unit that is charged with discrimination are concerned.” Id. at 176 (quoting Trafficante, 409 U.S. at 209). The Thompson Court acknowledged that later cases (such as Gladstone) reiterated that standing under the FHA “reaches as far as Article III permits” without any limiting language, but it stated that “the holdings of those cases are compatible with the ‘zone of interests’ limitation” that the Court went on to read into Title VII. Id. at 177. 26 Case: 14-14543 Date Filed: 09/01/2015 Page: 27 of 57 Finally, the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Lexmark (interpreting the Lanham Act) discarded the labels “prudential standing” and “statutory standing,” and clarified that the inquiry was really a question of statutory interpretation, and not standing at all. 134 S. Ct. at 1386-87 & n.4. One aspect of this interpretation, the Court explained, was a zone of interests analysis, which “requires [the court] to determine, using traditional tools of statutory interpretation, whether a legislatively conferred cause of action encompasses a particular plaintiff’s claim.” Id. at 1387. The Court went on to say that this zone of interests test “applies to all statutorily created causes of action.” Id. at 1388. Lexmark did not mention the FHA or any of the Court’s FHA cases. iv. Analysis The scope and role of the zone of interests analysis in the FHA context is a difficult issue, and one that has sharply divided the courts that have considered it. Compare, e.g., Cnty. of Cook, 2015 WL 4397842, at -6 (holding that Thompson and Lexmark effectively overruled the Supreme Court’s interpretation of FHA statutory standing as being coextensive with Article III standing), with, e.g., City of Los Angeles v. JPMorgan Chase & Co., No. 2:14-CV-04168-ODW, 2014 WL 6453808, at  (C.D. Cal. Nov. 14, 2014) (finding that the Supreme Court’s original interpretation of FHA statutory standing remained good law after Thompson and Lexmark). Ultimately, we disagree with the district court, and hold 27 Case: 14-14543 Date Filed: 09/01/2015 Page: 28 of 57 that the phrase “aggrieved person” in the FHA extends as broadly as is constitutionally permissible under Article III. Simply put, Trafficante, Gladstone, and Havens have never been overruled, and the law of those cases is clear as a bell: “[statutory] standing under [the FHA] extends ‘as broadly as is permitted by Article III of the Constitution.’” Gladstone, 441 U.S. at 98 (quoting Trafficante, 409 U.S. at 209); accord Havens, 455 U.S. at 372. While Thompson has gestured in the direction of rejecting that interpretation, a gesture is not enough. The rule governing these situations is clear: “if a precedent of the Supreme Court has direct application in a case, yet appears to rest on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions, the Court of Appeals should follow the case which directly controls, leaving to the Supreme Court[] the prerogative of overruling its own decisions.” Evans v. Sec’y, Fla. Dep’t of Corr., 699 F.3d 1249, 1263 (11th Cir. 2012) (quotation omitted and alterations adopted); accord Tenet v. Doe, 544 U.S. 1, 10-11 (2005). In other words, “the Supreme Court has insisted on reserving to itself the task of burying its own decisions.” Evans, 699 F.3d at 1263 (quotation omitted). Notably, Thompson itself was a Title VII case, not a Fair Housing Act case. Thompson surveyed Trafficante and Gladstone, but did not explicitly overrule them -- nor could it, given the different statutory context in which it arose. Instead, the Court held that any suggestion drawn from the FHA cases that Title VII’s 28 Case: 14-14543 Date Filed: 09/01/2015 Page: 29 of 57 cause of action is similarly broad was “ill-considered” dictum. Thompson, 562 U.S. at 176. It’s true that Title VII contains nearly identical statutory language to the FHA, and therefore the Thompson Court’s interpretation of Title VII may signal that the Supreme Court is prepared to narrow its interpretation of the FHA in the future. (The dicta in Thompson indicating that its Title VII interpretation is “compatible” with the Court’s previous FHA holdings suggests as much. See 562 U.S. at 176-77.) But that day has not yet arrived, and until it does, our role as an inferior court is to apply the law as it stands, not to read tea leaves. The stillundisturbed holding of the Supreme Court’s FHA cases is that the definition of an “aggrieved person” under the FHA extends as broadly as permitted under Article