Opinion ID: 1400623
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Freedom From Religion's Challenge to the Clinical Chaplaincy

Text: Freedom From Religion asserts that it has federal taxpayer standing to challenge certain aspects of the VA's Chaplain Service. It contends that Hein only requires that taxpayers challenge the use of congressional appropriations that are authorized to fund a congressionally-established program. If such funds are administered in a manner that allegedly violates the Establishment Clause, then, in Freedom From Religion's view, taxpayers have standing to sue. In the present case, Congress statutorily has directed the VA and, more specifically, the VHA, to provide medical care to eligible veterans as part of a congressionally-mandated spending program. VHA's funding comes from annual congressional appropriations, and Freedom From Religion emphasizes that these appropriations are different from the lump sum, petty cash or general account appropriations at issue in Hein. Appellant's Br. at 21. As a result, Freedom From Religion claims that it has established a link between its taxpayer status and the legislative enactment that it seeks to challenge. The VA, in response, claims that Freedom From Religion can point to no specific congressional authorization of, or funding for, the challenged aspects of the Chaplain Service. Because the VA's authorization statute does not specifically mention chaplains or their services and because it was the VA's decision  not Congress'  to integrate chaplain care into the VA's holistic approach to patient care, Freedom From Religion cannot link the challenged aspects of the Chaplain Service to a specific congressional mandate or particular congressional appropriations, as Hein requires. We must observe, as a preliminary matter, that Freedom From Religion is not challenging the overall existence of the Chaplain Service, nor does it contend that the VA's employment of chaplains generally is violative of the Establishment Clause. Indeed, it concedes that chaplains obviously perform religious activities, which they can do to a limited extent to accommodate the constitutional Free Exercise rights of hospitalized patients. Appellant's Br. at 15. Its suit is limited to, what Freedom From Religion terms, the clinical chaplaincy and the VHA's provision of pastoral care. Id. at 16. In particular, Freedom From Religion challenges (1) the clinical focus of the chaplaincy; (2) the spiritual assessments that the VA gives to its patients; (3) the provision of pastoral care to VA outpatients; and (4) the integration of spirituality/ religion into VA treatment programs. Viewed in this light, we nevertheless believe that Freedom From Religion's suit does not fit within Flast 's narrow exception to the Frothingham principle. Although Congress has mandated that the VHA provide medical care to veterans and, at least in a broad sense, it has contemplated that the VA generally will provide chaplain services, see 38 U.S.C. § 7306(e)(1) (authorizing that a member of the Chaplain Service be designated as Director, Chaplain Service), no specific congressional action mandates, requires or even intimates that chaplains be used in any particular way to accomplish this goal. In its most recent appropriation for the VHA, Congress provided approximately $29 billion for necessary expenses for furnishing, as authorized by law, inpatient and outpatient care and treatment to beneficiaries of the Department of Veterans affairs. Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008, Div. I, Title II, Pub.L. No. 110-161, 121 Stat. 1844, 2264 (2007). [13] Freedom From Religion has not shown that these appropriations to the VHA expressly authorize or direct the specific expenditures about which it complains. See Hein, 127 S.Ct. at 2566; Hinrichs, 506 F.3d at 599 (noting that there was a lack of specific direction by the state legislature to establish the Minister of the Day program and a lack of specific appropriations dedicated to the program); cf. Am. United for Separation of Church & State v. Prison Fellowship Ministries, Inc., 509 F.3d 406, 420 (8th Cir.2007) (In this case, the Iowa legislature made specific appropriations from public funds `for a values-based treatment program at the Newton correctional facility....' Therefore, Americans United and the individual taxpayer satisfy the narrow exception for taxpayer standing. (internal citation omitted)). Those expenditures that Freedom From Religion seeks to challenge  funds used to develop a chaplaincy with a clinical focus, to create spiritual assessments, to provide pastoral care to outpatients, and generally to integrate spirituality/religion into VHA treatment programs  were not made pursuant to any express congressional action but rather resulted from executive discretion. Hein, 127 S.Ct. at 2566, 2568 (declining to extend Flast to encompass discretionary Executive Branch expenditures); Dist. of Columbia Common Cause v. Dist. of Columbia, 858 F.2d 1, 3-4 (D.C.Cir.1988) [hereinafter Common Cause ] (The [Supreme] Court has ... refused to extend Flast to exercises of executive power....). Indeed, just as the challenged congressional appropriations in Hein and Hinrichs made no mention of the expenditures at issue in those cases, the appropriations here also do not mention chaplains generally or the role that chaplains should play in the medical care that the VHA furnishes to veterans. See id.; Hinrichs, 506 F.3d at 598-99 & n. 8; compare Am. United, 509 F.3d at 420 (noting that the legislature appropriated funds expressly for a values-based treatment program). Freedom From Religion's lawsuit thus is not predicated, as Hein requires, on the notion that Congress appropriated money from federal taxpayers expressly for the creation of a clinical chaplaincy. [14] Instead, Freedom From Religion simply is challenging the executive branch's approach to veterans' healthcare and the manner in which the executive, in its discretion, uses the services of its chaplain personnel. [15] Allowing taxpayer standing under these circumstances would subvert the delicate equilibrium and separation of powers that the Founders envisioned and that the Supreme Court has found to inform the standing inquiry. See Hein, 127 S.Ct. at 2570 (cautioning that courts must not be deputize[d] into serving as continuing monitors of the wisdom and soundness of Executive action because such is most emphatically ... not the role of the judiciary) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); Id. at 2573 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (The courts must be reluctant to expand their authority by requiring intrusive and unremitting judicial management of the way the Executive Branch performs its duties.). For instance, the remedy that Freedom From Religion has requested for the VA's alleged violation of the Establishment Clause is an order requiring the defendants [five high-level employees of the VA and members of the executive branch] to establishes rules, regulations, prohibitions, standards and oversight to ensure that future disbursements are not made and/or used to provide pastoral care. R.2 ¶ b. We cannot authorize the constant intrusion upon the executive realm that would result from granting taxpayer standing in the instant case. See Hein, 127 S.Ct. at 2573 (Kennedy, J., concurring). We also cannot accept Freedom From Religion's argument that Hein allows taxpayer standing any time that funds appropriated for a congressionally established program are administered in a way that allegedly violates the Establishment Clause, even when the alleged maladministration bears no relationship to congressional action. This reading of Hein creates a chasm between the taxpayer's status and the type of legislative enactment attacked, Hein, 127 S.Ct. at 2568; the Court declined to permit such a chasm in Hein, and we rejected the same sort of chasm, in reliance on Hein, when we decided Hinrichs. The plaintiffs there could not establish the requisite nexus between their taxpayer status and the challenged expenditures  those used for the administration of the Minister of the Day program  simply by pointing to the legislature's enactment of House Rule 10.2, which provided that each session would open with a prayer, and to its passing of a budget for the general operations of the legislature. We explained that the plaintiffs do not challenge Rule 10.2; indeed, they acknowledge the constitutionality of some form of legislative prayer. Instead, it is the present practice of employing a minister of the day, and the resulting sectarian prayers, that the plaintiffs seek to enjoin. However... there is no specific appropriation either for Rule 10.2 or for the Minister of the Day program. Absent such an appropriation, the necessary link between the taxpayer and the expenditure for the allegedly unconstitutional practice has not been established. Hinrichs, 506 F.3d at 599 n. 8. Freedom From Religion, like the plaintiffs in Hinrichs, concedes the constitutionality of the VA's employment of chaplains as a general matter. It only contests the VA's decision to use its chaplains to provide pastoral care. But, as we already have explained, Congress does not require, and has made no express appropriations for, the provision of pastoral care or the integration of chaplains in medical care generally. As a result, Freedom From Religion has not established the logical nexus required by Flast  it has not shown that Congress has extracted from it tax dollars for the establishment and implementation of a clinical chaplaincy. In a similar vein, Freedom From Religion attempts to characterize its action as a challenge under Bowen v. Kendrick . The plurality in Hein explained that the key to Kendrick 's conclusion that Flast 's requirements had been met was that the plaintiffs in Kendrick were challenging both a program of disbursement of funds pursuant to Congress' taxing and spending powers and how the funds authorized by Congress [were] being disbursed pursuant to the AFLA's statutory mandate.  Hein, 127 S.Ct. at 2567 (quoting Kendrick, 487 U.S. at 619-20, 108 S.Ct. 2562) (emphasis in original). AFLA not only expressly authorized and appropriated specific funds for grant-making, the Justices explained, it also expressly contemplated that some of those moneys might go to projects involving religious groups. Id. (citing Kendrick, 487 U.S. at 595-96, 108 S.Ct. 2562, and id. at 623, 108 S.Ct. 2562 (O'Connor, J., concurring) (noting the partnership between governmental and religious institutions contemplated by the AFLA)); see also In re U.S. Catholic Conference, 885 F.2d 1020, 1027 (2d Cir.1989) [hereinafter Catholic Conference] (In Kendrick, it was Congress that decided how the AFLA funds were to be spent, and the executive branch, in administering the statute, was merely carrying out Congress' scheme.). The plurality further explained that the statute in Kendrick had noted that the problems of adolescent premarital sex and pregnancy are best approached through a variety of integrated and essential services provided to adolescents and their families by religious and charitable organizations, among other groups. 42 U.S.C. § 300z(a)(8)(B) (1982 ed.). It went on to mandate that federally provided services in that area should emphasize the provision of support by other family members, religious and charitable organizations, voluntary associations, and other groups. § 300z(a)(10)(c). And it directed that demonstration projects funded by the government  shall ... make use of support systems such as religious organizations, § 300z-2(a), and required grant applicants to describe how they would involve religious and charitable organizations in their projects, § 300z-5(a)(21)(B). Hein, 127 S.Ct. at 2568 n. 6 (emphasis supplied). [16] Turning to the case before us, the congressional action that Freedom From Religion challenges is missing these characteristics of the challenged action in Kendrick, characteristics that the plurality in Hein described as critical. Whereas in Kendrick, the challenged congressional action expressly contemplated that funds would be disbursed to religious organizations, the congressional action here  the statutory mandate that the VHA provide medical care to veterans  does not contemplate that any funds would be disbursed to support the particular aspects of the Chaplain Service that Freedom From Religion contests. See Hein, 127 S.Ct. at 2565. Further, the challenged congressional action in Kendrick directed or guided the manner in which the executive could exercise the discretionary task of awarding federal grants under the AFLA. Id. at 2567 n. 6 (noting that the statute in Kendrick directed that, in awarding grants under AFLA, the executive  shall ... make use of support systems such as religious organizations (internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis supplied)); see also Catholic Conference, 885 F.2d at 1028 (rejecting an assertion of taxpayer standing under Kendrick where the plaintiffs were not challenging Congress' exercise of taxing and spending power in enacting the Internal Revenue Code but the manner in which the executive was implementing the Code); Catholic Conference, 885 F.2d at 1027 (noting that, in Kendrick, the executive was merely carrying out Congress' scheme). In the present case, however, there is an absence of any direction, guidance or indication on the part of Congress as to how the VHA should expend the funds appropriated for medical care or, more generally, as to how the VHA should employ its chaplains. Essentially, Freedom From Religion is challenging parts of the Chaplain Service that have been established wholly at the discretion of the executive. These differences, which the Hein plurality found critical, See Hein, 127 S.Ct. at 2567-68, lead us to hold that Freedom From Religion may not characterize its lawsuit as an as-applied challenge under Kendrick. This conclusion is consistent with the Hein plurality's discussion of Kendrick as well as with the Court's distinct and consistent focus, dating back to Flast itself, on congressional action. See Hein, 127 S.Ct. at 2565-69; Valley Forge Christian Coll. v. Am. United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 479, 102 S.Ct. 752, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982); Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 228, 94 S.Ct. 2925, 41 L.Ed.2d 706 (1974); United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 175, 94 S.Ct. 2940, 41 L.Ed.2d 678 (1974); Flast, 392 U.S. at 90, 88 S.Ct. 1942. In Valley Forge, for example, the plaintiffs sought to challenge a decision by the [then-Department of Health, Education and Welfare] to transfer a parcel of federal property to a Christian college. 454 U.S. at 479, 102 S.Ct. 752. The Court explained that the transfer was arguably authorized by the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, a law that allowed federal agencies to transfer surplus property to private entities. Id. at 479 n. 15, 102 S.Ct. 752. Despite this link between the wholly discretionary executive decision that allegedly violated the Establishment Clause and an act of Congress that authorized that decision, the Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs did not have standing because Flast limited taxpayer standing to challenges directed `only [at] exercises of congressional power.' Id. at 479, 102 S.Ct. 752 (quoting Flast, 392 U.S. at 102, 88 S.Ct. 1942). Freedom From Religion's lawsuit is not predicated on the notion that Congress appropriated money from federal taxpayers expressly for the creation of a clinical chaplaincy. Moreover, given the Hein plurality's discussion of Kendrick, the aspects of the Chaplain Service being challenged here are too far removed from any congressional action to support taxpayer standing under Kendrick. Consequently, we hold that Freedom From Religion has not establish[ed] a nexus between that status and the precise nature of the constitutional infringement alleged. Flast, 392 U.S. at 102-03, 88 S.Ct. 1942.