Opinion ID: 3046880
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Plaintiff V itali’s standing

Text: “‘[L]egislators, like other litigants in federal court, m ust satisfy the jurisdictional prerequisites of A rticle III standing.’” Goode, 539 F.3d at 317 (quoting Russell v. DeJongh, 491 F.3d 130, 133 (3d Cir. 2007) (alteration omitted)). Concerns for separation of powers and the limited role of the judiciary are at the core of A rticle III standing doctrine and the requirement that a plaintiff allege an injury in fact. Those concerns are particularly acute in legislator standing cases, and they inform the analysis of whether a legislator plaintiff has asserted an injury in fact sufficient to confer standing to sue. Russell, 491 F.3d at 133. On appeal, Plaintiffs suggest that D efendants deprived Vitali of equal protection of the law by denying him, and other legislators, the ability to discuss, debate and perhaps amend A ct 44 before having to vote on that legislation. As Plaintiffs point out in their brief, state legislators have, under different circumstances, sued based upon a direct injury suffered by that particular legislator. For instance, in Bond v. Floyd, state representative Julian Bond sued the Georgia legislature, seeking declaratory and 7 (...continued) that it w as not adequately raised below. 36 injunctive relief that would permit him to take his seat in the Georgia legislature, after that body excluded him for comments Bond m ade against the Vietnam W ar, among other things. See 385 U.S. 116, 118, 125-26 (1966). Similarly, in A m m ond v. M cGahn, a N ew Jersey state senator, Alene Ammond, a D emocrat, sued the Democratic senate caucus after the caucus excluded her for making negative remarks about the caucus. See 390 F. Supp. 655, 657 (D. N.J. 1975), rev’d on other grounds, 532 F.2d 325, 329 (3d. C ir. 1976); see also Parker v. M erlino, 646 F.2d 848, 849, 851-52 (3d Cir. 1981) (concluding, without addressing standing, that there was no merit to the claim asserted by several state legislators that other legislators violated their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights by terminating the opportunity for further debate before the legislature voted on two pending bills); G ewertz v. Jackman, 467 F. Supp. 1047, 1050, 1055-56 (D. N.J. 1979) (holding federal court had authority to consider state legislator’s claim challenging the D emocratic caucus’s decision to rem ove him from the Appropriations Com m ittee; noting that, although the legislator’s claim implicated operations of the state’s legislative body, the federal court was “require[d]” to consider this individual legislator’s claim “that his constitutional rights have been violated by the legislature or its leaders”); see Davids v. Akers, 549 F.2d 120, 122-23 (9th Cir. 1977) (considering merits of claims brought by state legislators challenging the committee appointments made by the state house speaker). In each of these cases, the courts addressed the 37 merits of these claims brought by individual state legislators without specifically discussing whether those legislators had standing to assert those claims. However, the Supreme Court has “repeatedly held that the existence of unaddressed jurisdictional defects has no precedential effect.” Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 352 n.2 (1996); see also Fed. Election Comm’n v. NRA Political Victory Fund, 513 U.S. 88, 97 (1994); U nited States v. L.A. Tucker Truck Lines, Inc., 344 U.S. 33, 37-38 (1952). See generally Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, 523 U.S. 83, 91 (1998) (noting that Supreme Court has “often said that drive-by jurisdictional rulings . . . have no precedential effect”). In this case, in any event, Vitali does not allege that he has suffered a direct and concrete injury specific to him, as a result of D efendants’ challenged conduct. Rather, he challenges a procedure that excluded most of the Pennsylvania legislators. Other cases, also relied upon by Plaintiffs, have concluded that a legislator has standing to challenge the nullification of his particular vote. [L]egislators have a legally protected interest in their right to vote on legislation and other matters committed to the legislature, which is som etimes phrased as an in terest in “maintaining the effectiveness of their votes.” Not every affront to a legislator’s interest in the effectiveness of his vote, however, is an injury in fact sufficient to confer standing to 38 sue. Russell, 491 F.3d at 134 (citing cases). For example, courts have drawn a distinction . . . between a public official’s mere disobedience of a law for which a legislator voted–which is not an injury in fact–and an official’s “distortion of the process by which a bill becomes law” by nullifying a legislator’s vote or depriving a legislator of an opportunity to vote–which is an injury in fact. Id. at 135. Cases w here a public official has directly injured a particular legislator by nullifying his vote, however, involve circumstances m uch different than those alleged here. See id. at 135-36 & 135 n.4 (citing cases); cf. Bender v. W illiamsport Area Sch. Dist., 475 U.S. 534, 544 & n.7 (1986) (noting, in dicta, that a lone dissenting school board member might have standing to assert a claim seeking to maintain the effectiveness of his vote, if state law required a unanim ous board vote and the rest of the board, nevertheless, acted without the dissenting member’s consent). The Third Circuit addressed several such cases in Russell, 491 F.3d at 135-36. There, this court noted, for example, that Coleman v. M iller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939), “‘stands, at most, for the proposition that legislators whose votes would have been sufficient to defeat (or enact) a specific legislative Act have standing to sue if that 39 legislative action goes into effect (or does not go into effect) on the ground that their votes have been completely nullified.’” Russell, 491 F.3d at 135 n.4 (quoting Raines, 521 U.S. at 823) (emphasis added); see also Baird v. Norton, 266 F.3d 408, 411-13 (6th Cir. 2001). And in D ennis v. Luis, 741 F.2d 628 (3d Cir. 1984), the Third Circuit held that a group of legislators had standing to challenge the appointment by the Governor of the Virgin Islands of an “acting” C ommissioner of Comm erce w ithout consulting them, where § 16(c) of the Organic Act, 48 U .S.C. § 1597(c), provided that the appointment of a Commissioner of Commerce was subject to the advice and consent of the Legislature. The plaintiffs in Dennis thus alleged that they possessed a specific right under § 16(c) of the Organic Act that the Governor had violated, and they had no clear recourse through the political process. Russell, 491 F.3d at 135 n.4. Further, in Silver v. Pataki, 755 N.E.2d 842 (N.Y. App. 2001), the New York Court of Appeals recognized an injury in fact when a state assembly member alleged that the governor made illegal use of his line item veto power by 40 using it on bills that were not lawfully subject to the line item veto. The state assembly member had voted in favor of the bills in question, and the New York Court of Appeals held that the plaintiff had standing. . . . In Silver, the Governor’s veto nullified the pending bills and forced the assembly m em ber to try [to] persuade a supermajority of his colleagues to override the governor’s veto if he wished to restore the status of the bills as law . Russell, 491 F.3d at 135 n.4. The circumstances alleged in this case are much different. Here, Representative Vitali was not precluded from voting on Act 44. C f. id. at 135-36 (concluding legislator, asserting claim that Governor violated applicable deadlines in nominating justices of the Virgin Islands Supreme Court, did not allege that his ability to vote had been nullified where the legislator was still able to “confirm, reject, or defer voting on the Governor’s nominees”). Nor has V itali alleged that his vote w as in any other way nullified. At most, Vitali merely alleges he was denied full input on the drafting and consideration of Act 44. But the denial w as not specific to him; rather, its impact was felt by all legislators other than the select leadership. However, the legislative process inevitably involves a division of responsibilities, and leadership necessarily will have greater input in legislation being considered. 41 For these reasons, we conclude that Vitali has failed to allege that the manner in which the General A ssembly enacted Act 44 actually and concretely injured him in particular. Even if Vitali had alleged such an injury (which we conclude he has not), Vitali has also failed to satisfy prudential standing concerns. Vitali’s challenge to the manner in which the General Assembly enacted Act 44 is a clear example of one of those “‘abstract questions of wide public significance’ which amount to ‘generalized grievances,’ pervasively shared and m ost appropriately addressed in the representative branches” which the Supreme Court counsels federal courts to avoid adjudicating. Valley Forge Christian Coll., 454 U.S. at 474-75 (quoting W arth, 422 U.S. at 499-500); see also 13B Charles Alan W right, Arthur M iller & Edward H. Cooper, Federal Practice & Procedure § 3531.11.3 (3d ed. 2008) (noting that “m ost disagreements among state legislators will involve matters of state law, or issues of federal law that cannot be disentangled from the political functions of the legislature. Standing should be denied as to the federal questions, for reasons of federalistic deference to state legislatures that mirror the separation-of-powers deference to Congress”). For these reasons, the district court did not err in concluding Plaintiff V itali lacked standing to challenge the manner in which the General Assembly enacted Act 44.