Opinion ID: 2641089
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: houston’s standing to seek injunctive relief

Text: As noted earlier, Plaintiff Houston’s “standing to seek the injunction requested depend[s] on whether he [i]s likely to suffer future injury.” Lyons, 461 U.S. at 105, 103 S. Ct. at 1667. Houston “must show a sufficient likelihood that he will be affected by the allegedly unlawful conduct in the future.” Wooden , 247 F.3d at 1283. That requires “a real and immediate—as opposed to a merely conjectural or hypothetical—threat of future injury.” Shotz, 256 F.3d at 1082; Wooden , 247 F.3d at 1283. This Court has addressed the requirement of a real and immediate threat of future injury in two prior ADA cases. See Shotz, 256 F.3d at 1081; Stevens v. Premier Cruises, Inc., 215 F.3d 1237 (11th Cir. 2000). Both cases involved motions to dismiss where we addressed standing based on facts alleged in the complaint taken as true for purposes of the motions. We examine both cases below.
In Shotz, this Court held that the plaintiffs lacked standing to pursue their disability discrimination claims under § 12132 of the ADA’s Title II. 256 F.3d at 1082. The Shotz plaintiffs alleged that they had encountered architectural barriers when they visited a Levy County, Florida courthouse in July of 1999. Id. at 107879. The plaintiffs sought “injunctive relief compelling [Levy] County to comply 23 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 24 of 43 with the ADA.” Id. at 1079. The district court in Shotz dismissed the plaintiffs’ complaint because, inter alia, plaintiffs had failed to sufficiently allege their standing to pursue injunctive relief. On appeal, this Court explained that “a plaintiff lacks standing to seek injunctive relief unless he alleges facts giving rise to an inference that he will suffer future discrimination by the defendant.” Id. at 1081(emphasis added). We concluded that the Shotz plaintiffs failed to “allege a real and immediate threat of future discrimination” because their “complaint contain[ed] only past incidents of discrimination.” Id. at 1082. We observed that “since their July 1999 visit to the Levy County Courthouse, the plaintiffs have not attempted to return, nor have they alleged that they intend to do so in the future.” Id. We explained that “[a]bsent such an allegation, the likelihood of future discrimination remains conjectural, hypothetical, or contingent, and not real and immediate.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted) We, therefore, concluded that the Shotz plaintiffs lacked Article III standing to sue for injunctive relief. Id. In contrast, in Stevens, this Court concluded that the plaintiff had standing to seek an injunction under ADA’s Title III. 215 F.3d at 1239. The Stevens plaintiff took a trip aboard defendant’s cruise ship and allegedly discovered multiple ADA violations, including a lack of wheelchair accessible cabins and paths to public areas. Id. at 1238-39. 24 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 25 of 43 The district court in Stevens dismissed the plaintiff’s complaint on two grounds. Id. First, because the plaintiff sought only injunctive relief but did not allege a threat of future injury, the district court concluded that the “[p]laintiff had not pleaded properly her standing to pursue the ADA claim.” Id. Second, the district court concluded that the ADA did not apply to the defendant’s foreign-flag cruise ship as a matter of law. Id. The plaintiff moved for reconsideration and sought leave to amend her complaint so that she could “cure the failure to plead standing to pursue injunctive relief.” Id. The plaintiff attached a proposed amended complaint to her motion in which she alleged that “in the near future, she would take another cruise aboard Defendant’s ship.” Id. The district court denied leave to amend, reasoning that the amendment would be futile given the inapplicability of the ADA to the defendant’s foreign-flag ship. Id. On appeal, this Court concluded that the defendant’s foreign-flag ship was covered by Title III of the ADA. Id. at 1242-43. Amending the complaint to cure the standing deficiency was, therefore, not a futile exercise. This Court thus reversed the district court’s denial of leave to amend. Id. We noted that a plaintiff pursuing “injunctive relief in federal court must plead a genuine threat of imminent injury.” Id. This Court was “satisfied” that the Stevens plaintiff’s allegation that she would take another cruise aboard defendant’s ship “in the near future” was sufficient to properly allege standing for injunctive relief under Title III of the 25 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 26 of 43 ADA. Id. 5 We now turn to Houston’s case.
As demonstrated in Shotz, in a motion to dismiss, we usually “evaluate standing based on the facts alleged in the complaint.” 256 F.3d at 1081. Here, however, Defendant Marod in his Rule 12(b)(1) motion attacked Plaintiff Houston’s standing in a factual challenge—as opposed to a facial challenge. Facial attacks to subject matter jurisdiction require the court merely to look and see if the plaintiff’s complaint has sufficiently alleged a basis of subject matter jurisdiction, and the allegations in his complaint are taken as true for the purposes of the motion. Carmichael v. Kellogg, Brown & Root Servs., Inc., 572 F.3d 1271, 1279 (11th Cir. 2009). However, in a factual challenge to subject matter jurisdiction, a district court can “consider extrinsic evidence such as deposition testimony and affidavits.” Id. In so doing, a district court is “free to weigh the facts” and is “not constrained to view them in the light most favorable” to the plaintiff. Id. Here, both Marod and Houston filed and argued evidence outside the complaint. But the relevant facts contained in their evidence were not disputed, 5 Defendant Marod argues that our decision in Stevens conflicts with the Supreme Court’s holding in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 112 S. Ct. 2130 (1992), that “some day intentions” are not enough. Id. at 564, 112 S. Ct. at 1238. We need not address that issue because, as explained in our Lujan discussion later, the facts in Houston’s case establish more than the plaintiff did in Stevens and satisfy Lujan. 26 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 27 of 43 such as (1) Houston’s two prior visits to the Presidente Supermarket, (2) his proximity to the store, (3) his averments as to future visits, and (4) that Houston is an ADA tester who has filed many similar lawsuits. Indeed, the district court acknowledged that Houston plans to return to the supermarket. Having concluded that Houston’s undisputed tester motive behind his plan to return does not defeat standing, we now conclude that the other undisputed facts are sufficient to establish Houston’s standing. Plaintiff Houston had two undisputed past encounters of the alleged architectural barriers in the Presidente Supermarket. While “past wrongs do not in themselves amount to that real and immediate threat of injury necessary to make out a case or controversy,” Lyons, 461 U.S. at 103, 103 S. Ct. at 1666, the plaintiff’s exposure to illegal conduct in the past is nonetheless “evidence bearing on whether there is a real and immediate threat of repeated injury,” O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 496, 94 S. Ct. 669, 676 (1974). As this Court stated in Shotz, a plaintiff seeking an injunction under Title III either must “have attempted to return” to the non-compliant building or at least “intend to do so in the future.” 256 F.3d at 1081. Plaintiff Houston has visited this particular supermarket twice and encountered the alleged architectural barriers during each visit. He submitted a receipt from the second visit. We therefore note that Houston did, in fact, return to 27 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 28 of 43 the Presidente Supermarket before filing this lawsuit, even after he had faced the alleged barriers during his first visit. Turning to the 30.5 mile distance between Plaintiff Houston’s residence and the Presidente Supermarket, we understand that this particular store is not the closest supermarket to Houston’s home. But Houston explained his reason to go to this store: he travels to Miami-Dade County, where the Presidente Supermarket is located, “on a regular basis,” and Houston expects to be there in the future. Houston takes these trips to Miami-Dade County because his lawyer’s offices are located there—less than two miles from the Presidente Supermarket. And because of his many ADA lawsuits, Plaintiff Houston “definitely” anticipates going to his lawyer’s offices “in the near future.” Houston passes the Presidente Supermarket on his way to and from his lawyer’s office. According to his affidavit, Houston therefore “would return to the Defendant’s store to shop if [he] were able to park in the parking spaces, have accessible restrooms, and be able to avail [him]self of the store’s other facilities.” Under these particular, undisputed facts, we cannot say that a distance of 30.5 miles makes the threat of future injury conjectural. Of course, different facts may demand a different conclusion. Plaintiff Houston lives in the next county. He does not live hundreds of miles away from the store with no particular reason to return. 28 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 29 of 43 In light of the totality of the undisputed facts here, we conclude that Plaintiff Houston has standing to seek injunctive relief for violations of 42 U.S.C. §§ 12182(a) and 12182(b)(2)(A)(iv) of the ADA’s Title III. See Shotz, 256 F.3d at 1081. There is no indication in the record that the alleged architectural barriers in the Presidente Supermarket have been remedied. As a result, there is a 100 percent likelihood that Plaintiff Houston will suffer the alleged injury again when he returns to the store. Cf. 31 Foster Children v. Bush, 329 F.3d 1255, 1266 (11th Cir. 2003) (holding that “when the threatened acts that will cause injury are authorized or part of a policy, it is significantly more likely that the injury will occur again”). The likelihood of Houston suffering future injury thus is not contingent upon events that are speculative or beyond his control. Cf. Lyons, 461 U.S. at 107-09, 103 S. Ct. at 1668-69 (holding that the plaintiff lacked standing for injunctive relief because it was speculative that police officers would arrest him again and that those police officers would then apply an allegedly unconstitutional chokehold again). Rather, the cause of the injury continues to exist, and the likelihood of Houston encountering that cause in the future depends only on Houston’s own volition. Houston has been to the store in the past, he wants to return, and his frequent trips directly past the store render it likely that he would do so were it not for the alleged ADA violations in the Presidente Supermarket. Under the totality 29 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 30 of 43 of the facts here, the threat of future injury to Houston is not merely “conjectural” or “hypothetical.” Instead, it is “real and immediate.” See Church v. City of Huntsville, 30 F.3d 1332, 1337-39 (11th Cir. 1994) (finding standing for homeless plaintiffs to seek injunctive relief to stop certain police practices). 6
We reject Defendant Marod’s argument that recognizing Houston’s standing conflicts with the Supreme Court’s decision in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 112 S. Ct. 2130 (1992). We explain why. In Lujan, the Supreme Court considered the standing of two plaintiffs under the Endangered Species Act. 504 U.S at 562-64, 112 S. Ct. 2137-38. The first plaintiff sued to enjoin the rehabilitation of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt because of endangered Nile crocodiles. Id. at 563; 112 S. Ct. at 2138. In a 1988 affidavit, this first plaintiff stated that she had traveled to Egypt in 1986 and “‘observed the traditional habitat of the endangered [N]ile crocodile there and intends to do so again, and hopes to observe the crocodile directly.’” Id. (alterations adopted). She also swore that she intended to return and at that time would “‘suffer harm in fact 6 As noted earlier, the district court applied a four-factor test to determine whether Houston faces a real and immediate threat of future injury. Those four factors are (1) the proximity of the defendant’s business to the plaintiff’s residence; (2) the plaintiff’s past patronage of the defendant’s business; (3) the definiteness of the plaintiff’s plan to return; and (4) the frequency of the plaintiff’s travel near the defendant’s business. While we considered each of the four factors in reaching our decision today, we note that these factors are not exclusive and that no single factor is dispositive. District courts must consider the totality of all relevant facts to determine whether a plaintiff faces a real and immediate threat of future injury. 30 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 31 of 43 as the result of the American role in overseeing the rehabilitation of the Aswan High Dam on the Nile and in developing Egypt’s Master Water Plan.’” Id. (alterations adopted). The second plaintiff in Lujan sought to protect various endangered species in Sri Lanka, after having traveled there only once, in 1981. Id. When questioned about her intent to return to Sri Lanka during her deposition, the second plaintiff confessed that she had no current plans: “‘I don’t know [when]. There is a civil war going on right now. I don’t know. Not next year, I will say. In the future.’” Id. at 564; 112 S. Ct. at 2138 (alterations adopted). Indeed, except for a generalized wish to return to Egypt and Sri Lanka “in the future,” neither plaintiff offered any indication as to when they would next visit the environmental treasures they hoped to rescue. Id. at 563-64, 112 S. Ct. at 2138. The Supreme Court held that “such ‘some day’ intentions—without any description of concrete plans, or indeed even any specification of when the some day will be—do not support a finding of the ‘actual or imminent’ injury that our cases require.” Id. at 564, 112 S. Ct. at 2138. In Elend v. Basham, 471 F.3d 1199 (11th Cir. 2006), this Court relied on Lujan in affirming the district court’s dismissal for lack of standing. Elend, 471 F.3d at 1209. In Elend, the plaintiffs protested outside of the Sun Dome in Tampa when President George W. Bush attended a political rally there in 2002. Id. at 31 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 32 of 43 1202. The Secret Service ordered the plaintiffs to move to a “protest zone,” which was further away from the venue than the plaintiffs wished to be. Id. at 1202-03. The plaintiffs sought to enjoin the Secret Service from taking similar action in the future, and they claimed to have standing because they “fully intend to peacefully express their viewpoints in the future in a manner similar to their activities on November 2, 2002 in concert with presidential appearances at the . . . Sun Dome and at other locations around the country.” Id. at 1204. In Elend, this Court affirmed the district court’s dismissal for lack of standing. We explained that “the [p]laintiffs’ avowed intention to protest in a similar manner in the future is akin to the plaintiff in Lujan who declared, ‘I intend to go back to Sri Lanka [to observe endangered species], but confessed that she had no current plans: I don’t know [when].’” Elend, 471 F.3d at 1209 (quoting Lujan, 504 U.S. at 564, 112 S. Ct. at 2138). In four additional cases, this Court applied Lujan’s holding that “some day intentions” are not enough. See Nat. Parks Conservation Ass’n v. Norton, 324 F.3d 1229 (11th Cir. 2003); Fla. State Conf. of the NAACP v. Browning, 522 F.3d 1153 (11th Cir. 2008); ACLU of Fla., Inc. v. Miami-Dade Cnty. Sch. Bd., 557 F.3d 1177 (11th Cir. 2009); Harrell v. The Florida Bar, 608 F.3d 1241 (11th Cir. 2010). In all four cases, we concluded that the plaintiffs had Article III standing, given the particular facts in each case. 32 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 33 of 43 First, in Norton, two environmental organizations sued the National Park Service for violating the equal protection rights of their members by failing to evict the occupants of the Stiltsville properties (buildings on stilts in the middle of Biscayne National Park) following the expiration of the lease agreement between the occupants and the National Park Service. 324 F.3d at 1231. The plaintiffs claimed that this failure was “tantamount to the grant of an exclusive lease to the occupants.” Id. at 1234. This Court reversed the district court’s dismissal for lack of standing in Norton because the plaintiffs had visited the Biscayne Bay National Park frequently in the past and “indicated an intent to maintain the frequency of these visits in the future.” Id. at 1242. We emphasized that unlike the plaintiffs in Lujan, the plaintiffs in Norton “state with particularity that they have definite plans to continue visiting Stiltsville with precisely the same frequency that they have to date, and that in the absence of remedial action they will continue to experience the aesthetic and recreational harms described.” Id. at 1243. In Browning, we also concluded that the plaintiffs satisfied Lujan’s immediacy requirement. 522 F.3d at 1161. There, a group of voting rights organizations sued the State of Florida in September 2007, alleging that the state violated a number of their members’ constitutional and statutory rights to vote. Id. at 1158. The state required that all voter registration applicants provide 33 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 34 of 43 information, such as an address and a driver’s license number. Id. at 1156. The state would not register an applicant if the information provided by the applicant did not match the state’s own information database. Id. at 1156-57. The plaintiffs alleged that this procedure, in many cases, would leave applicants with too little time to fix the database-matching error before voter rolls closed in advance of an upcoming election. Id. In Browning, this Court affirmed the district court’s denial of the state’s motion to dismiss for lack of standing. After explaining that “[a]n imminent injury is one that is likely to occur immediately,” Browning, 522 F.3d at 1161, we noted that the plaintiffs had alleged the “denial of voter registration and hence the right to have one’s vote counted,” which would occur “before the scheduled elections in November 2008.” Id. The plaintiffs also alleged that “they intend to increase voter registration efforts and anticipate increased registration applications ahead of the upcoming presidential election.” Id. We held that these allegations satisfied Lujan’s immediacy requirement. Id. This Court reached the same conclusion in ACLU of Florida. In that case, the parent of a student sought to enjoin the school board after that board removed a certain book from the school’s library. ACLU of Fla., 557 F.3d at 1182-83. The school board argued that the parent lacked standing because she failed to present the imminent injury that Lujan requires. Id. at 1190. 34 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 35 of 43 This Court analyzed Lujan and synthesized our prior cases addressing Lujan’s immediacy requirement. We concluded that “[t]he key in all . . . of our decisions applying Lujan is that immediacy requires only that the anticipated injury occur with[in] some fixed period of time in the future.” Id. at 1193 (internal quotation marks omitted). We explained that “[i]mmediacy, in this context, means reasonably fixed and specific in time and not too far off.” Id. at 1193-94. In light of this analysis, this Court concluded in ACLU of Florida that the parent had standing. Her declaration stated that she had seen the book in question in the library with her son and “had planned to check it out and read it together [with her son] in the future.” Id. at 1194. The parent also averred that, without the requested injunction, she and her son “will not be able to [check out the book] when the school resumes on August 14, 2006.” Id. This Court noted that the parent’s declaration anticipated checking out the book on a specific date six weeks after the declaration was signed and, thus, provided “a specific intention pegged to a sufficiently fixed period of time.” Id. We concluded that “Lujan and our decisions interpreting it require no more immediacy than that.” Id. at 1195. This Court also distinguished Lujan in Harrell. The Harrell plaintiff alleged that a Florida Bar Rule prohibited the type of advertisements he wanted to run, in violation of his rights under the First Amendment. 608 F.3d at 1247. Relying on the reasoning in Lujan, the district court dismissed the case for lack of standing 35 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 36 of 43 after concluding that the plaintiff’s “claimed injury-in-fact was not sufficiently concrete or imminent because he failed to identify a date on which he proposed to run his desired advertisements.” Id. at 1260 n.7. This Court reversed because “unlike the vague, ‘some day’ intentions of the wildlife enthusiasts in Lujan to return to Egypt and observe a Nile crocodile, [the plaintiff’s] intense professional dependence on advertising makes it very likely that he will attempt to run advertisements of the kind he describes in his declaration.” Id. Applying these principles to Houston’s case before us, we conclude that our decision today is wholly consistent with the reasoning in Lujan. Plaintiff Houston’s intent to return to the Presidente Supermarket cannot be characterized as the unspecified “some day” intentions that the Supreme Court found too speculative in Lujan. 504 U.S. at 564, 112 S. Ct. at 2138. The Presidente Supermarket is neither in Egypt nor in war-torn Sri Lanka. It is located in MiamiDade County, which is next to Broward County where Houston resides. Houston shopped at the Presidente Supermarket twice in the months before filing this lawsuit, whereas the Lujan plaintiffs’ visits to Egypt or Sri-Lanka occurred several years before filing suit. Immediacy is an “elastic concept,” Lujan, 504 U.S. at 564 n.2, 112 S. Ct. at 2138 n.2, and in this context “means reasonably fixed and specific in time and not too far off,” ACLU of Fla., 557 F.3d at 1193-94. This Court held that the 36 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 37 of 43 plaintiffs in Norton, satisfied Lujan’s immediacy requirement because they had visited the Biscayne Bay Park frequently in the past and intended to do so in the future. 324 F.3d at 1243. Plaintiff Houston has traveled to Miami-Dade County on a regular basis in the past and expects to do so in the near future. Indeed, he drives right by the store on a regular basis, he entered the store on two prior occasions, and he would do so again if the store were ADA compliant. That is enough; like the plaintiffs in Norton, Houston has frequently visited the area near the store in the past and will maintain the same frequency in the future. Id. Moreover, in Harrell, this Court held that the plaintiff satisfied Lujan because his “intense professional dependence” on the activity that the defendant prohibited made it likely that he would suffer the injury again. Harrell, 608 F.3d at 1260 n.7. Given that ADA testing appears to be Houston’s avocation or at least what he does on a daily basis, the likelihood of his return for another test of the Presidente Supermarket, which is located on his routine travel route, is considerably greater than the Lujan plaintiffs’ return to far away countries with unstable political situations. See Harrell, 608 F.3d at 1260 n.7 (distinguishing Lujan by explaining that the nature of the plaintiff’s business renders the likelihood of future injury greater than the “some day” aspirations to revisit Egypt and Sri Lanka of the Lujan plaintiffs). Finally, Houston has offered the “description of concrete plans” that the 37 Case: 12-15403 Date Filed: 11/01/2013 Page: 38 of 43 Supreme Court found missing in Lujan: Plaintiff Houston visits his lawyer’s offices near the Presidente Supermarket on a frequent basis and, thus, drives by the store frequently. During these trips to his lawyer’s office in the near future, he wants to visit the store. Unlike the plaintiffs in Lujan, Houston has averred a concrete and realistic plan of when he would visit the store again. In sum, we conclude that under the specific facts in the record before us, Plaintiff Houston has standing to seek injunctive relief against Defendant Marod. We caution, however, that determining standing for injunctive relief is often a factsensitive inquiry, as it is in this case. Each plaintiff must establish standing on the facts of the case before the court. That is equally as true about a regular customer of a public accommodation as it is for a tester like Plaintiff Houston.