Opinion ID: 18042
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Monitoring Costs

Text: 13 In addition, ACORN’s summary judgment evidence that it has expended resources monitoring Louisiana’s implementation of the NVRA is insufficient to raise a genuine issue of material fact on the standing issue. ACORN’s summary judgment evidence on this issue consists of the following: (1) that it “has performed studies of voter registration and implementation of the National Voter Registration Act, on its own, and in conjunction with other organizations. These studies include reviews of Louisiana,” (2) that Hess, the Project Director of ACORN’s NVRA Implementation Project, attended an “NVRA implementation conference” in late 1994, (3) that Hess conducted “research includ[ing] work aimed at persuading states to pass legislation and implement procedures which would most effectively carry out the mandates of the NVRA,” and (4) that Hess recalls “filing at least one letter of objection with the Department of Justice on proposed legislation submitted pursuant to the Voting Rights Act which [he] believed did not meet” NVRA requirements. The problem with ACORN’s allegation that it has suffered a sufficient injury in fact due to its allocation of resources to these activities is that ACORN has made no showing that these monitoring costs are fairly traceable to any of the conduct by Louisiana that ACORN claims in its complaint is illegal. See Fair Housing Council, 141 F.3d at 78 & n.5. In Fair Housing Council, the Third Circuit considered a similar claim under the Fair Housing Act in which an organization claimed to have standing to sue on its own behalf because it had spent money 14 reviewing classified ads on an ongoing basis for evidence of discrimination. See id. The court held that the organization’s allocation of resources to reviewing ads was insufficient to confer standing in light of the organization’s failure to show that it would not have undertaken the same efforts in the absence of the alleged illegal act by the defendants. See id. In this case, ACORN has failed to show that any of its purported injuries relating to monitoring costs were in any way caused by any action by Louisiana that ACORN now claims is illegal, as opposed to part of the normal, day-to-day operations of the group. These general allegations of activities related to monitoring the implementation of the NVRA fail to confer standing on ACORN to bring this lawsuit on its own behalf.