Opinion ID: 2327680
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Standing of the Individual Plaintiffs

Text: The six individual plaintiffs claim that the trial court incorrectly concluded that they do not have standing to challenge the imposition of the mandatory PLAs for the school construction projects under article first, §§ 4 [30] and 5, [31] of the Connecticut constitution, which guarantee freedom of speech and association, and article first, §§ 1 [32] and 20, [33] of the Connecticut constitution, which guarantee equal protection under the law. They specifically claim that the PLA requirement violates their rights to freedom of speech and association because it mandates that they join a union in order to work on the projects and requires them to make payments to the union that will be used to further social and political goals that they may not support and that are unrelated to collective bargaining. They also claim that the PLA requirement violates their equal protection rights because it would severely restrict, or effectively bar, nonunion contractors such as ECI and nonunion licensed journeymen and apprentices like themselves from working on the projects, thus conferring illegal benefits, advantages and privileges on union contractors and union journeymen and apprentices. The non-state defendants respond that the trial court properly concluded that the individual plaintiffs do not have standing to pursue their state constitutional claims because they are not prequalified electrical contractors, and, therefore, they did not, and could not have, bid on the projects. [34] We agree with the nonstate defendants that the trial court properly concluded that the individual plaintiffs lacked standing. [35] A similar issue was raised in Connecticut Associated Builders & Contractors v. Anson, supra, 251 Conn. at 204, 740 A.2d 804. In that case, the plaintiffs included two subcontractors and one of their employees, who was suing in his capacity as an individual and a taxpayer. Id., at 204 and n. 1, 740 A.2d 804. The trial court concluded that the individual plaintiff lacked standing to challenge the bidding process on the ground that it impaired his federal and state constitutional rights to freedom of speech and association. See id., at 205-206, 740 A.2d 804. This court agreed, stating that the individual plaintiff and the plaintiff subcontractors had no standing to pursue a challenge to general bid specifications because, in their own capacity, they never can bid directly for government projects. Their preclusion from the bidding process has no relationship to whether they operate union shops, or whether they are opposed philosophically to union shops. Their preclusion stems from the nondiscriminatory and uncontested industry practice of limiting bidding to general contractors. If general contractors were indeed to incur higher costs because of [PLA] contract specifications. . . the possible economic consequences of increased costs attributable to potential subcontractors [and individual employees] are too speculative and too attenuated to constitute `some direct injury' for the purposes of conferring standing on such subcontractors [and individual employees]. See Maloney v. Pac, 183 Conn. 313, 320-21, 439 A.2d 349 (1981). Connecticut Associated Builders & Contractors v. Anson, supra, 251 Conn. at 208-209, 740 A.2d 804; see also id., at 208 n. 8, 740 A.2d 804. In the present case, we agree with the trial court that the six individual plaintiffs have not suffered the direct or actual injury required under Connecticut law to establish standing because they are not prequalified electrical contractors, and, accordingly, they did not bid, nor could they have bid, on the school construction projects. Moreover, due to the fact that ECI was not the winning bidder, the individual plaintiffs never were compelled to make payments to the union or directly barred from working on the projects. We therefore conclude that they lacked standing to bring their state constitutional claims because the claims were too remote and speculative. The individual plaintiffs rely on Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209, 212-13, 236-37, 97 S.Ct. 1782, 52 L.Ed.2d 261 (1977), in which the United States Supreme Court held that the general allegations in a complaint filed by a group of teachers who were unwilling to join a union, refused to pay dues and opposed collective bargaining in the public sector were, if proved, sufficient to establish a cause of action under the first and fourteenth amendments of the United States constitution. Abood is distinguishable from the present case, however, because the teachers were compelled to pay, as a condition of their employment, a service fee equal in amount to union dues even if the teacher was not a union member, and any teacher who failed to meet that obligation was subject to discharge. Id., at 212, 97 S.Ct. 1782. In the present case, the individual plaintiffs were not required to comply with a condition of employment they opposed, such as payments to the union, nor were they subject to consequences for not joining a union, such as being barred from working on the projects, because ECI was not the winning bidder, and, thus, they had no opportunity to work on the projects. Consequently, unlike the teachers in Abood, the individual plaintiffs in the present case were only indirectly affected by the city's rejection of ECI's low bid, and they did not have standing to bring their claims. C