Opinion ID: 18042
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Voter Registration Costs

Text: According to ACORN’s third category of summary judgment evidence, ACORN engages in significant voter registration activities. In particular, the affidavits, interrogatory responses, and studies concerning the implementation of the NVRA presented by ACORN to the district court indicate that ACORN engages in voter registration drives in Louisiana, that it provides voter registration applications to unregistered potential members, and that it makes voter registration applications available at housing fairs that it attends throughout the year. In addition, according to the Hess affidavit, Hess hired staff to train ACORN members on how to conduct voter registration drives and to research voter 15 registration rates, coordinated voter registration drives at “various” ACORN offices, supervised ACORN field staff as they recruited volunteers and ran a voter registration drive, maintained reports received from “some of the larger” ACORN offices regarding the number of people registered through its voter registration drives, and “did presentations to the organizations” on how to conduct effective voter registration drives. ACORN claims on appeal, as it did before the district court, that its efforts registering voters in Louisiana counteract the appellees’ failure to properly implement the NVRA. Under Havens Realty, an organization has standing to sue on its own behalf where it devotes resources to counteract a defendant’s allegedly unlawful practices. See 455 U.S. at 379; Spann, 899 F.2d at 28; Cleburne Living Ctr., Inc. v. City of Cleburne, 726 F.2d 191, 202-03 (5th Cir. 1984), affirmed in part and vacated in part on other grounds, 473 U.S. 432 (1985). In Cleburne Living Center, we considered whether an association that promoted the general welfare of the mentally disabled had standing to challenge the validity of a zoning ordinance that excluded certain forms of group homes from an apartment house district. See 726 F.2d at 202-03. We determined that the association lacked standing because it failed to prove a drain on its resources resulting from the defendant’s action. See id. However, we noted that the association would have had standing to sue if it had proved (1) that it provided counseling services to the mentally disabled 16 affected by the defendant’s act, and (2) that it had to devote resources to combating the defendant’s alleged discrimination. See id. at 203. Thus, we concluded that the association would have been entitled to sue on its own behalf had it proven a “drain on its resources” resulting from counteracting the effects of the purportedly illegal zoning ordinance. Id. Much of ACORN’s summary judgment evidence regarding its laudable work registering voters, however, suffers from the same malady as its evidence regarding monitoring costs. ACORN has not made a sufficient showing that it engaged in any of the activities mentioned in the Hess affidavit as a direct result of Louisiana’s alleged failure to properly implement the NVRA. Indeed, none of the evidence presented in the Hess affidavit is even Louisiana-specific. We therefore conclude that the Hess affidavit fails to raise a genuine issue of material fact that ACORN has expended any resources registering voters that are fairly traceable to any particular action by the appellees. See Bennett, 520 U.S. at 162. In addition, we have grave doubts that ACORN’s allegations of injury due to including voter registration applications with its membership applications or “set[ting] up” a voter registration table at housing fairs that it already attends suffice to confer standing on ACORN to sue on its own behalf. We fail to see any concrete or identifiable resources that ACORN could reallocate to other uses, if Louisiana were to properly implement the NVRA, that it now spends engaging in these 17 activities. We conclude that ACORN’s evidence concerning these activities raises no genuine issue of material fact that ACORN has been “perceptibly impaired” by the appellees’ purported failure to implement the NVRA. Havens Realty, 455 U.S. at 379 (stating that organization alleged sufficient injury where defendant’s actions had “perceptibly impaired” organization); see SCRAP, 412 U.S. at 688-89 (stating that plaintiff must show that he or she “has been or will in fact be perceptibly harmed” by defendant’s action to confer standing); see also Cramer, 931 F.2d at 1026-27 (stating that “speculative and hypothetical” injury is insufficient to confer standing on plaintiff). Nevertheless, we conclude that ACORN has standing at this stage of the litigation to raise one of the claims it brought before the district court. After carefully reviewing ACORN’s summary judgment evidence, we are convinced that ACORN has raised a genuine issue of material fact that it has expended definite resources counteracting the effects of Louisiana’s alleged failure to implement 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg-5(a)(4)(A), which requires states to facilitate voter registration at voter registration agencies, including public aid offices. According to its summary judgment evidence, ACORN conducts at least one voter registration drive a year in Louisiana, and its registration drives focus on registering people at “welfare waiting rooms, unemployment offices, and on Food Stamp lines.” In particular, ACORN alleges that it conducted one such voter registration drive in late 1995 through early 1996 that 18 registered approximately 400 new voters in New Orleans, Lafayette, and Lake Charles, Louisiana. Significantly, ACORN presents evidence that it concentrated this voter registration campaign in areas where the percentages of all food stamp participant households registered to vote, a population directly affected by one of the NVRA requirements that ACORN claims Louisiana has failed to implement,6 are among the lowest in Louisiana. This summary judgment evidence is sufficient to raise a genuine issue of material fact that ACORN has expended resources counteracting one of the areas in which ACORN alleges that the appellees fail to implement the NVRA. Simply put, ACORN has presented evidence that it has expended resources registering voters in low registration areas who would have already been registered if the appellees had complied with the requirement under the NVRA that Louisiana must make voter registration material available at public aid offices. Thus, a portion of the resources ACORN has spent and currently spends on voter registration drives counteracts Louisiana’s alleged failure to 6 As discussed supra, the NVRA requires states to designate as voter registration agencies “all offices in the State that provide public assistance” and “all offices in the State that provide State-funded programs primarily engaged in providing services to persons with disabilities.” 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg- 5(a)(2). The Act mandates that states make the following services available at all voter registration agencies: (1) distribution of mail voter registration application forms, (2) assistance in completing voter registration application forms, and (3) acceptance of completed voter registration application forms. See id. § 1973gg-5(a)(4)(A). ACORN’s third claim in its complaint alleges that Louisiana has failed to implement this provision. 19 implement the Act. It is these wasted resources, which ACORN could have put to use registering voters that the NVRA, even properly implemented, would not have reached (or which ACORN could have put toward any other use it wished), that provide ACORN with standing to pursue its third claim in its complaint, that Louisiana has failed to comply with 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg- 5(a)(4)(A), on its own behalf. We note that the D.C. Circuit, in National Treasury Employees Union v. United States, 101 F.3d 1423, 1429-30 (D.C. Cir. 1996), stated that, in addition to an allegation that “a defendant’s conduct has made the organization’s activities more difficult, the presence of a direct conflict between the defendant’s conduct and the organization’s mission is necessary-- though not alone sufficient--to establish standing.” The court noted in that case that unless it was clear that an organization’s stated goals were “at loggerheads” with a defendant’s conduct, “it is entirely speculative whether the defendant’s conduct is impeding the organization’s activities.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). ACORN has met this burden. Its purpose, according to its summary judgment evidence, is to increase the political power of low- and moderate-income people in the political process. We have no trouble concluding that ACORN has raised a genuine issue of material fact that this purpose is in direct conflict with Louisiana’s alleged failure to 20 facilitate voter registration in voter registration agencies.7 Therefore, based on ACORN’s summary judgment evidence outlining its expenditure of resources counteracting the effects of the appellees’ alleged failure to implement § 1973gg-5(a)(4)(A), we conclude that ACORN has met the constitutional standing requirements for purposes of defeating the appellees’ summary judgment motion with respect to its claim that Louisiana has failed to provide voter registration materials in public aid offices. However, the summary judgment evidence that ACORN has presented regarding its efforts registering voters does not raise a genuine issue of material fact that it has standing to pursue its other claims on its own behalf. In addition to its claim that Louisiana has failed to make voter registration materials available at public aid offices, ACORN also alleges that Louisiana has failed to implement the NVRA by refusing to include voter registration materials with its mail-in driver’s license renewal applications, in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg-3, and by improperly purging voters from its voter rolls, in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 1973gg-6. While we can reasonably infer from ACORN’s summary judgment evidence that it has spent resources 7 Of course, a showing that an organization’s mission is in direct conflict with a defendant’s conduct is insufficient, in and of itself, to confer standing on the organization to sue on its own behalf. See Havens Realty, 455 U.S. at 379 (citing Sierra Club, 405 U.S. at 739). As we have made clear, an organization must also show that it has suffered a concrete and demonstrable, and redressable, injury as a direct result of the defendant’s allegedly illegal conduct. 21 registering voters that would have been registered had Louisiana made registration material available at public aid offices, as we discussed supra, ACORN has included no evidence in the record allowing us to make such an inference with respect to these two claims. ACORN and its amici allege in their briefs that the mere fact that ACORN has spent, and continues to spend, resources registering voters in Louisiana is sufficient to create a genuine issue of material fact that it has spent discrete resources counteracting the effects of Louisiana’s alleged failure to comply with § 1973gg-3 and § 1973gg-6. We disagree. There is simply no suggestion in the record that anyone it has registered through its voter registration drives would already have been registered to vote if Louisiana implemented the NVRA requirements that form the basis of its first two claims. While ACORN is “entitled to have reasonable inferences drawn in [its] favor, the inferences to be drawn must be rational and reasonable, not idle, speculative, or conjectural.” Unida v. Levi Strauss & Co., 986 F.2d 970, 980 (5th Cir. 1993) (internal quotation marks omitted); see Engstrom v. First Nat’l Bank, 47 F.3d 1459, 1462 (5th Cir. 1995). To infer that ACORN has spent resources combating Louisiana’s alleged failure to provide voter registration forms with mail-in driver’s license applications and to properly maintain its voter rolls simply from evidence that ACORN conducts at least one voter registration drive a year in Louisiana is, in 22 our view, speculative. Thus, we must conclude that ACORN, as an organization, lacks standing to pursue these two claims. In sum, we hold that ACORN’s summary judgment evidence is sufficient to raise a factual question as to whether it has suffered a concrete and demonstrable injury with respect to its claim that Louisiana refuses to make voter registration materials available in public aid offices. However, the record is devoid of any evidence from which we can reasonably infer that ACORN has suffered an actual injury directly resulting from its claims that Louisiana has violated § 1973gg-3 or § 1973gg-6. Thus, we conclude that ACORN has made a sufficient showing of Article III standing to defeat the appellees’ summary judgment motion with respect to its third claim in its complaint, but not with respect to its other two claims. We therefore proceed to consider first whether ACORN can hurdle any prudential standing requirements imposed by the NVRA with respect to its third claim, and, thereafter, we will consider whether ACORN has standing to bring its first two claims as a representative of its individual members.