Opinion ID: 495033
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Standing Requirement: The Appellees' Case and Causality

Text: 39 The Supreme Court of the United States has stressed that the links in the chain of causation between the challenged Government conduct and the asserted injury, Allen, 468 U.S. at 759, 104 S.Ct. at 3328, are especially weak when the causal connection depends on many independent decisions of third parties. In Simon, the Court held that standing to challenge a government grant of tax exemption to hospitals could not be founded on the asserted connection between the grant of tax-exempt status and the hospital's policy concerning the provision of medical services to indigents. In that case, noted the Court, the causal connection depended on the decisions hospitals would make in response to withdrawal of tax-exempt status. 426 U.S. at 40-43, 96 S.Ct. at 1925-1927. Those decisions--made by many independent institutions for reasons tailored to the circumstances of the individual institution--were sufficiently uncertain to break the chain of causation between the plaintiffs' injury and the challenged Government action. Allen, 468 U.S. at 759, 104 S.Ct. at 3329. Speculative inferences, Simon, 426 U.S. at 45, 96 S.Ct. at 1928, were necessary to connect the injury to the challenged action. Similarly, in Allen, the court found that there was insufficient causation in the claim of parents that their children's opportunity for a racially integrated public education was diminished by the federal tax exemptions granted to some racially discriminatory private schools which accommodate white students avoiding attendance in desegregating public school districts. Allen, 468 U.S. at 746, 104 S.Ct. at 3322. Such a theory of causation: 40 involves numerous third parties (officials of racially discriminatory schools receiving tax exemptions and the parents of children attending such schools) who may not even exist in respondents' communities and whose independent decisions may not collectively have a significant effect on the ability of public school students to receive a desegregated education. 41 Id. at 759, 104 S.Ct. at 3329. 42 In this case, we find the line of causation between the appellants' activity and the appellees' asserted injury to be particularly attenuated. As in the foregoing cases, the line of causation depends upon countless individual decisions. Moreover, those countless individual decisions must depend upon, according to the appellees' own theory of the case, countless individual political assessments that those who are in power will stay in power. It is not the hiring policy itself which creates any advantage for the incumbents. Any other candidate is entirely free to assert that, if elected, he will follow the same policy. Any advantage obtained by the incumbent is obtained only if potential workers make an independent evaluation that the incumbent, and not the opposition, will win. The plaintiffs will be at a disadvantage if--and only if--a significant number of individuals seeking political job opportunities determines the ins will remain the ins. 43 Here, the appellants admit that one of the purposes of the patronage hiring policy was to help[ ] elect candidates supported by the various members of the Democratic County Central Committee. R. 89 at 4. This admission simply states the obvious that some of the hundreds of office seekers in Cook County will undoubtedly decide that the incumbents are likely to remain the incumbents and, for that reason alone, will work for the incumbents during the campaign. Others--no one knows how many--while interested in a political job will consider such a factor as simply one of many motivating their decision to be politically active. For others, it may not be a factor in the decision to be politically active but may influence the character or intensity of their contribution. However, others who desire to obtain a political job may read the political signs quite differently and decide, either as a matter of principle or expediency, that they ought to commit their energy to the political efforts of non-incumbents. 44 For each citizen, many factors, many not capable of articulation, will determine the nature and extent of that person's political activity. For those recruiting such political workers, political incumbency has advantages and disadvantages. In some political environments, a patronage hiring policy by the incumbents may enjoy a good deal of credibility with potential workers. Not only may the incumbents be able to point to a successful political track record, but they may also be able to demonstrate their determination to implement such a policy by their present actions. Moreover, in many instances, although not always, the incumbent enjoys certain natural advantages in communicating with the citizenry. However, in other political environments, incumbency may well be a ball and chain on the leg of the candidate and the announcement of such a patronage policy may, far from being an advantage, seal his political doom. Indeed, it may be the challenger who can attract workers with the promise that, once elected, he will continue to seek the help of those who have supported him. We do not believe, therefore, that the plaintiffs can assert, with the certainty required by the case-and-controversy requirement, that the injury they assert is fairly traceable to the actions of the defendants that form the basis of their complaint. 45 In reaching this conclusion, we have found instructive the thoughtful discussion of our colleagues on the District of Columbia Circuit in Winpisinger v. Watson, 628 F.2d 133 (D.C.Cir.), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 929, 100 S.Ct. 1867, 64 L.Ed.2d 282 (1980). 11 There, the court was faced with a claim of injury allegedly caused by the abuse of the power of incumbency. In that case, the plaintiffs, supporters of Senator Edward M. Kennedy in his quest for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, claimed that the abuse of the power of incumbency by members of President Carter's administration, including the power to hire federal employees on the basis of political affiliation, id. at 136, injured plaintiffs' constitutional rights under the First and Fifth Amendments, as voters, contributors and participants in the process of Presidential nomination, id. at 135. The court, relying on both constitutional and prudential considerations, held that the plaintiffs lacked standing. With respect to constitutional concerns, the court determined that the plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate the requisite causal connection between the actions of the defendants and their alleged injury: 46 In the case before us, whether an appellant is viewed in the character of a voter, contributor, a noncontributing supporter or a candidate for a delegate post, a court would have to accept a number of very speculative inferences and assumptions in any endeavor to connect his alleged injury with activities attributed to appellees. 47 Id. at 139. 48 There are, of course, factual differences between this case and Winpisinger. As the Winpisinger court indicated (albeit in its discussion of prudential rather than constitutional concerns), this case deals with a single activity--political hiring--rather than a wide-range of actions by the incumbents. It also involves a single county, not a coordinate branch of the federal government. Id. at 141. But these differences, whatever their relevance with respect to prudential concerns, 12 have little pertinence when assessing whether the plaintiffs have demonstrated the requisite causality between their alleged injury and the actions of a political incumbent. It is no easier to measure the effect of an incumbent's promises on the ebb and flow of the political tide in Cook County, Illinois than it is in any other political context. 13 49 A plaintiff cannot assert injury to his viability as a candidate or his influence as a voter simply on the basis of the advantage--real or imagined--of incumbency. Such a course would require that we resolve profound questions of political science that exceed judicial competence to answer.... LaFalce v. Houston, 712 F.2d 292, 294 (7th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 1044, 104 S.Ct. 712, 79 L.Ed.2d 175 (1984). 14 Tracing the appellees' asserted injury to the appellants' activity, see Simon, 426 U.S. at 41-42, 96 S.Ct. at 1925-26, must depend on more than the attempt of a federal court to take the political temperature of the body politic. 50 Finally, a word of caution is necessary. Our holding today deals only with the plaintiffs' standing to attack the constitutionality of the defendants' hiring practices. Our holding does not address the substantially different question of whether the plaintiffs would have standing to attack the constitutionality of the coerced political work demanded of those already employed by the government as a condition of continued employment. This latter question obviously raises substantially different considerations. Therefore, we explicitly note that nothing in our holding today can be construed as affecting the continued validity of the Shakman decree.