Opinion ID: 393163
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The District Court's Position

Text: 22 The district court determined that standing in this case depended on satisfaction of four criteria and that plaintiffs satisfied none of them. First, the court said, plaintiffs asserted no distinct, palpable, and concrete injury. 480 F.Supp. at 793. Nor could plaintiffs establish such an injury, according to the district court, for they were in a dilemma: 23 If plaintiffs can prove that a private school is discriminating in direct contravention of the Constitution and federal law, such discrimination is redressable through an ordinary lawsuit in an adversary context filed directly against the offending school. If, on the other hand, plaintiffs cannot prove such discrimination, they have failed to assert a distinct, palpable, and concrete injury and thus lack the requisite standing to assert their claims. 24 Id. at 794. Plaintiffs urge that this analysis fits a complaint they did not bring. They maintain they have no interest whatever in enrolling their children in a private school. They assail only government action. The sole injury they claim is the denigration they suffer as black parents and schoolchildren when their government graces with tax-exempt status educational institutions in their communities that treat members of their race as persons of lesser worth. Plaintiffs point out that the district court cited, but did not purport to distinguish, Supreme Court decisions recognizing the standing of black citizens, parents, and schoolchildren to challenge government action on that basis: Coit v. Green, 404 U.S. 997, 92 S.Ct. 564, 30 L.Ed.2d 550 (1971), aff'g mem. Green v. Connally, 330 F.Supp. 1150 (D.D.C.); Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455, 93 S.Ct. 2804, 37 L.Ed.2d 723 (1973); and Gilmore v. City of Montgomery, 417 U.S. 556, 94 S.Ct. 2416, 41 L.Ed.2d 304 (1974). 25 Second, assuming the injury plaintiffs complained of was inflicted by private schools that practiced race discrimination, the court concluded that such an injury was not fairly traceable to IRS action. For this conclusion, the court relied dominantly on Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U.S. 26, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976). Again, plaintiffs insist, the court misidentified their grievance. Eastern Kentucky might well control, they concede, were they endeavoring to gain access to the private schools. But that is not what they want. Rather, plaintiffs repeat, they seek to stop government from bestowing any advantage on an educational facility that contributes to the perpetuation of racial discrimination in the localities in which they reside. 26 Third, the district court stated that it was purely speculative whether the relief requested would redress plaintiffs' injury. 480 F.Supp. at 795-96. The loss of tax exemption might not produce any net change in the public school population; schools might forego exemption rather than end any discriminatory conduct; the procedures plaintiffs proposed might not yield fewer tax exemptions than the system the IRS now employs. Regarding the first two points, once more, plaintiffs say, the injury they assert is not the one the district court describes. The very act by the IRS of according tax exemption to a school that discriminates in their vicinity causes immediate injury to them, plaintiffs maintain, and that is the only injury for which they seek redress. 27 Concerning the likelihood that invigorated IRS procedures would yield fewer tax exemptions, plaintiffs point out that the district court's dismissal of the case at the threshold precluded any evidentiary submission. They further note that the Commissioner of Internal Revenue had told Congress that existing procedures were ineffective in identifying schools which in actual operation discriminate against minority students. Hearings, supra note 1, at 5. Finally, they suggest that the court's action in Green contradicts its conclusion in Wright about the speculativeness of the relief requested. If tighter IRS procedures are not likely to yield fewer tax exemptions, plaintiffs note, it is hard to imagine why the court ordered the Service to adopt such procedures in Green. 28 As a final point, the district court expressed the view that no genuine article III case or controversy existed because the defendant IRS seems to have nothing to lose if it were forced to grant less tax exemptions to private schools. 480 F.Supp. at 796. The real losers, the court said, would be parties the plaintiffs had not sued, schools (p)laintiffs would deprive ... of their valuable tax exempt status. Id. Plaintiffs and the Service, the court added, seem closely allied in terms of the need to promulgate future guidelines. Id. But it was the IRS that defended successfully against this action in the district court. Nor did the Service exhibit any lack of adversary zeal in the briefs and oral argument it presented to this court. Moreover, a strong advocate of the private schools that resist more stringent guidelines is participating in this action as intervenor. We therefore find that the case has the earmarks of a fully adversary contest. 29 On this point too, Green stands in jarring contrast. The posture of the IRS is not different in the two cases. While intervenors originally participated in Green and indeed pursued that case in the Supreme Court, no intervenor appears to have participated actively in the reopened Green proceeding as intervenor Allen did in Wright. Nevertheless, the district court treated Green as a genuine case or controversy and, as we recounted earlier, required the Service to tighten its procedures in dealing with Mississippi schools. 30 B. Divergent Supreme Court Precedent : Eastern Kentucky on the one hand ; Green, Norwood, and Gilmore on the other 31 The law of standing has been described as extraordinarily uneven. 22 In the welter and confusion of case law and commentary, there is one point of clear agreement: (L)ower courts and practitioners especially need Supreme Court guidance. 23 The guidance the High Court has supplied relevant to the case at hand points in opposite directions. Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization, relied upon by the district court, suggests that litigation concerning tax liability is a matter between taxpayer and IRS, with the door barely ajar for third party challenges. Green, Norwood, and Gilmore, on the other hand, indicate that black citizens have standing to complain against government action alleged to give aid or comfort to private schools practicing race discrimination in their communities. 32 In this opinion, we do not search for a grand solution that will unclutter this area of the law and lead to secure, evenhanded adjudication. Instead, as an intermediate court of review, we select from two divergent lines of Supreme Court decision the one we believe best fits the case before us. 33 We turn first to Eastern Kentucky. There indigents and organizations of indigents challenged a Revenue Ruling discontinuing a requirement that a hospital, to be classified as charitable under section 501(c)(3), must provide free or below cost service to indigents to the extent of its financial ability. After the new Ruling, some of the plaintiffs had been denied hospital services on account of their indigency. The Supreme Court held that plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the suit. 34 Plaintiffs' injury, the Court said, was the denial of hospital service. But plaintiffs could not show that the hospitals' refusal to serve them resulted from the Ruling. It is purely speculative, the Court declared, whether the denials of service specified in the complaint fairly can be traced to (the Ruling) or instead result from decisions made by the hospitals without regard to the tax implications. 426 U.S. at 42-43, 96 S.Ct. at 1926-1927. Justice Stewart, concurring, commented: I cannot now imagine a case, at least outside the First Amendment area, where a person whose own tax liability was not affected ever could have standing to litigate the federal tax liability of someone else. Id. at 46, 96 S.Ct. at 1928. 24 35 Plaintiffs do not dispute that it is speculative, within the Eastern Kentucky frame, whether any private school would welcome blacks in order to retain tax exemption 25 or would relinquish exemption to retain current practices. 26 They claim indifference as to the course private schools would take. Plaintiffs strenuously argue, however, that Eastern Kentucky is the wrong frame for their case. They assert, in essence, that there is at least one domain outside the First Amendment area where a person whose own tax liability is not affected has the requisite standing to challenge the administration of tax law, and that this lawsuit occupies that domain. We agree that Eastern Kentucky is not the line appropriately followed in the matter before us. 36 We turn next to the three adjudications that appear to us determinative of the standing issue in this case: the companion Green litigation; Norwood v. Harrison ; and Gilmore v. City of Montgomery. All three involved, in common with the matter before us, charges of government conduct alleged to be inconsistent with an overriding, constitutionally rooted national policy against racial discrimination in United States educational facilities. Again in line with the instant case, none involved a claim for relief against private actors. 37 As we set out earlier, see pp. 822, 823, 825, 826, 827 supra, the plaintiffs in Green, like those in Wright, are black parents and their minor schoolchildren attending public schools in desegregating areas; in both cases, the plaintiffs charged that the Internal Revenue Service has failed, through the inadequacy of its monitoring procedures, to confine tax-exempt status to private schools that do not practice racial discrimination. The remedy sought in the two cases, except for its geographical scope, is the same the institution of procedures adequate to the task. That remedy, plaintiffs in both cases assert, matches precisely the injury they allege. 38 Norwood, like Green and Wright, was brought by parents of black schoolchildren against a government actor. Plaintiffs sought to enjoin in part the enforcement of Mississippi's long-established textbook lending program. The Mississippi Textbook Purchasing Board provided free textbooks to all schools in the state, including a number of all-white, nonsectarian private schools which (had) been formed throughout the state since the inception of public school desegregation. Norwood v. Harrison, 340 F.Supp. 1003, 1011 (N.D.Miss.1972), vacated and remanded, 413 U.S. 455, 93 S.Ct. 2804, 37 L.Ed.2d 723 (1973). Despite the origin of the program in the days before school desegregation, and even if the textbook loans were motivated by ... a sincere interest in the educational welfare of all Mississippi children, 413 U.S. at 466, 93 S.Ct. at 2811, the Supreme Court held the scheme unconstitutional to the extent that it did not steer clear ... of giving significant aid to institutions that practice racial ... discrimination. Id. at 467, 93 S.Ct. at 2812. 39 Of prime relevance to the case at hand, the Court in Norwood plainly stated that it was not critical to the plaintiffs' claim for relief whether any child enrolled in private school, if deprived of free textbooks, would withdraw from private school and subsequently enroll in the public schools. Id. at 465, 93 S.Ct. at 2811 (quoting from 340 F.Supp. at 1013). Chief Justice Burger, writing for the Court, explained: 40 We do not agree with the District Court in its analysis of the legal consequences of (the) uncertainty (whether the relief requested would result in student transfers from private to public schools), for the Constitution does not permit the State to aid discrimination even when there is no precise causal relationship between state financial aid to a private school and the continued well-being of that school. A State may not grant the type of tangible financial aid here involved if that aid has a significant tendency to facilitate, reinforce, and support private discrimination. 41 Id. at 465-66, 93 S.Ct. at 2810-11. 42 Plaintiffs in Norwood, like the plaintiffs here, indicated no interest in attending the private schools that received textbooks at state expense, nor did they show that the textbook subsidy kept those schools afloat. The gravamen of plaintiffs' complaint was that the state had aided private racial discrimination when the Constitution commanded that government steer clear of such action. That complaint was enough, the Court's disposition clarifies, to entitle plaintiffs to relief. Without departing radically from Norwood, therefore, we cannot accept the district court's apparent view that plaintiffs here must either pursue relief they do not want admission of their children to private schools or allege and prove that withdrawal of tax-exempt status would cause those schools to suffer enrollment declines and, correspondingly, quicken the pace of public school desegregation. 43 Finally, in Gilmore v. City of Montgomery, black citizens who had brought a successful action in 1958 to desegregate public parks in Montgomery, Alabama, reopened the litigation in 1970 and sought supplemental relief in 1971. They complained that the city was allowing racially segregated schools and other segregated private groups and clubs to use city parks and recreational facilities. 417 U.S. at 562, 94 S.Ct. at 2421. The Court sustained a lower court injunction to the extent that it barred exclusive temporary use of public recreation facilities by segregated private schools. Citing Norwood, the Court repeated in Gilmore that 44 any tangible state assistance, outside the generalized services government might provide to private segregated schools in common with other schools, and with all citizens, is constitutionally prohibited if it has a significant tendency to facilitate, reinforce, and support private discrimination.417 U.S. at 568-69, 94 S.Ct. at 2423-24 (quoting from 413 U.S. at 466, 93 S.Ct. at 2811). While Gilmore suggested that the plaintiffs might not have standing to claim relief against certain nonexclusive uses by private school groups, id. at 570 n.10, 94 S.Ct. at 2425 n.10, the Court had little difficulty concluding that plaintiffs were entitled to challenge special reservation of playing fields for such groups. 45 Like the tax-exempt status at issue here, the exclusive temporary use of park facilities in Gilmore was a government benefit not available to the public generally. Government must steer clear of providing such benefits to racially discriminatory local groups. Norwood, 413 U.S. at 467, 93 S.Ct. at 2812. The Gilmore plaintiffs, black citizens of the community, were considered appropriate enforcers of that obligation although they made no showing that the segregated schools would change their policies or close up shop were they denied specially reserved access to park football fields and baseball diamonds. All that could be said with security was that the special arrangements made life easier for such schools. 46 Green, Norwood, and Gilmore presented plaintiffs whose standing seems to us indistinguishable on any principled ground from the standing of the plaintiffs in this action. If the plaintiffs before us are not entitled to question the IRS practices at issue here, it is difficult to comprehend why the Green, Norwood, and Gilmore plaintiffs were entitled to challenge the tax exemptions, textbook loans, and specially reserved park facilities at issue in those cases. 27 We therefore inquire next whether those precedents remain vital, or whether they have been overruled, sub silentio, by Eastern Kentucky. 47 The Supreme Court's decisions in Green, Norwood, and Gilmore did not focus on standing as Eastern Kentucky did. But as Eastern Kentucky emphasized, (t)he necessity that the plaintiff who seeks to invoke judicial power stand to profit in some personal interest remains an Art. III requirement. A federal court cannot ignore this requirement without overstepping its assigned role in our system of adjudicating only actual cases and controversies. 426 U.S. at 39, 96 S.Ct. at 1925. Absent explicit Supreme Court direction to do so, we resist impugning High Court precedent by indulging the assumption that the Court reached the merits in Green, Norwood, and Gilmore in disregard of the standing requirement. Accord, Moton v. Lambert, 508 F.Supp. 367, 369-70 (N.D.Miss.1981). Such an assumption appears all the more unwarranted in view of the indications in all three cases that the Court's attention was drawn to the issue. 48 In Green, standing was addressed summarily in the lower court. 309 F.Supp. at 1132. 28 More significantly, the Jurisdictional Statement in Green spotlighted the question. Filed by intervenor Coit, as representative of a class of parents and children who supported or attended all-white private schools, the Jurisdictional Statement listed plaintiffs' standing first among Questions Presented by the Appeal. Jurisdictional Statement at 11, Coit v. Green, 404 U.S. 997, 92 S.Ct. 564, 30 L.Ed.2d 550 (1971). As Coit framed the issue: Was the lower court in error in holding that plaintiffs had constitutional standing to restrain federal recognition of educational exemptions for private segregated schools? Id. While we do not ascribe to the Supreme Court's summary affirmance in Green wholesale endorsement of the district court's views, 29 the High Court's disposition is binding upon us until such time as the Court informs us otherwise. Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332, 344-45, 95 S.Ct. 2281, 2289-90, 45 L.Ed.2d 223 (1975). As already observed, we do not believe a lower court should cast aside the Supreme Court's judgment in Green by ascribing to that tribunal a rush to decision, heedless of core justiciability requirements. 49 In Norwood, as in Green, plaintiffs' standing was challenged in the lower court. 340 F.Supp. at 1007. However, the issue was not pursued on appeal. But, of course, the question could have been raised by the Supreme Court sua sponte if it entertained doubt as to plaintiffs' satisfaction of a core Article III requirement. Finally, in Gilmore, the Court adverted specifically to the requirement that plaintiffs have standing to pursue the relief requested. 417 U.S. at 570 n.10, 94 S.Ct. at 2424 n.10. 50 In Eastern Kentucky, the Supreme Court viewed plaintiffs' sole injury as inflicted by the hospitals that declined to serve indigents, and not by the Internal Revenue Service. 426 U.S. at 40-41, 96 S.Ct. at 1925-26. In contrast, the Court did not approach Green, Norwood, and Gilmore as assaults mounted against government action in an indirect effort to gain access to a nongovernmental facility. Rather, the Court recognized the right of black citizens to insist that their government steer clear of aiding schools in their communities that practice race discrimination. In view of the centrality of that right in our contemporary (post-Civil War) constitutional order, we are unable to conclude that Eastern Kentucky speaks to the issue before us. We therefore follow Green, Norwood, and Gilmore, unless and until the Supreme Court instructs us otherwise, and accordingly find no standing impediment to plaintiffs' claim. 51