Opinion ID: 409582
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Executive Orders 12036 and 12333

Text: 80 Appellants also sought declaratory and injunctive relief directed at foreign intelligence activity under Executive Order 12036, 3 C.F.R. 190 (1979). The district court rejected that claim on the basis of the fact that the plaintiffs have not alleged injury or the threat of injury by surveillance undertaken pursuant to the Executive Order, 86 and so lacked standing to attack that Order. Although that Order has been superseded by E.O. 12333 (1982), appellants suggest in their reply brief that since the more recent Order if anything permits expansion of the scope of foreign intelligence activity, their arguments should be considered notwithstanding the change in the nature of the beast they attack. 87 81 The result reached by the district court was clearly the proper one. For still more clearly than in the case of watchlisting, it is apparent that appellants here urge nothing more than a generalized grievance 88 against the intelligence-gathering methods sanctioned by the President. Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 220-21, 94 S.Ct. 2925, 2931-2932, 41 L.Ed.2d 706. There is no allegation that any intelligence has been or is about to be gathered via the means allegedly permitted under the current order, much less an allegation of an injury in fact of any immediacy to any appellant. 82 This claim is squarely controlled by Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1, 92 S.Ct. 2318, 33 L.Ed.2d 154 (1972). There, plaintiffs claimed that the mere existence of any Army program to gather intelligence on domestic civil disorders resulted in a chilling of their first amendment rights of speech, association and petition-precisely the injury asserted to arise in this case under the Executive Order. 89 Reversing a decision of this court which held the plaintiffs entitled to pursue their claim, the Supreme Court ordered the action dismissed as nonjusticiable. 83 Appellants' claim here, like those at issue in Laird, is that they disagree with the judgments made by the Executive Branch with respect to the type and amount of information (needed) ... and that the very existence of the ... data gathering system produces a constitutionally impermissible chilling effect upon the exercise of their First Amendment rights. 408 U.S. at 13, 92 S.Ct. at 2325. As the Court held there, (a)llegations of a subjective 'chill' are not an adequate substitute for a claim of specific present objective harm or a threat of specific future harm.... Id. at 13-14, 92 S.Ct. at 2325-2326. 90 See also National Student Association v. Hershey, 412 F.2d 1103 (D.C.Cir.1969). 91 The fact that appellants may have been subjected to surveillance under the policies of previous administrations cannot supply the missing causal link between that injury and the policies now under attack. 84 Since the first amendment claim asserted against the Executive Order must be dismissed as nonjusticiable, it follows a fortiori that the fourth amendment challenge to the Order must likewise be dismissed. Although the fourth amendment has been read as furnishing either a coextensive or a narrower scope of protection for private political activity compared to that provided by the first, 92 it is apparent that the fourth amendment provides no broader protection counselling a more liberal reading of the injury-in-fact requirement than is appropriate in first amendment cases. Consequently, a failure of standing for failure to allege injury to one's first amendment rights is in the present context fatal to fourth amendment standing as well.