Opinion ID: 3046880
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The state judiciary’s invo lvem ent in the

Text: legislative process deprived Plaintiffs of due process In their second amended complaint, Plaintiffs alleged only that Defendants deprived Plaintiffs of due process w hen D efendants “engaged in private conversations on legislative matters w ith one or more justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that might com e before the court.” A pp. at 69. The district court held that Plaintiffs lacked standing to assert this claim. See Common Cause, 447 F. Supp. 2d at 426-30. W e agree. Clearly these allegations, w hich challenge the legislative process, are insufficient to allege more than a generalized, abstract grievance, shared by all Pennsylvania citizens. The complaint does not attempt to identify an actual, concrete injury that this conduct caused any of the named Plaintiffs. Cf. Goode, 539 F.3d at 315, 320-22 (dismissing taxpayers’ access-to-court claim because their alleged “injuries are no different in nature from the general interest in enforcing compliance with the law which the public shares”). For the first time on appeal, Plaintiffs attempt to focus on the potential state judicial process, arguing that Defendants’ actions deprived Plaintiffs of due process, and 5 (...continued) any challenge to the non-severability clause itself on appeal. Therefore, we also deem that specific claim abandoned. See Kost, 1 F.3d at 182. 29 specifically an impartial decisionmaker, because (1) Act 44 gave the judiciary a pecuniary interest in any litigation challenging that Act; (2) the judiciary participated in creating the challenged legislation; and (3) the Pennsylvania Chief Justice 6 negotiated with the legislature for the predetermined result of any later court challenges to Act 44 brought before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. A litigant generally cannot create standing through new allegations asserted for the first time on appeal. See Storino v. Borough of Point Pleasant Beach, 322 F.3d 293, 297 (3d Cir. 2003); see also In re M ystic Tank Lines Corp., 544 F.3d 524, 528 (3d Cir. 2008) (noting “[t]his court has consistently held that it will not consider issues that are raised for the first tim e on appeal,” absent “exceptional circumstances”). Even considering these new allegations, however, Plaintiffs have still failed to establish that they suffered an actual injury from this challenged conduct sufficient to give them standing. For example, Plaintiffs do not allege that they ever challenged Act 44 in state court and that, in doing so, they w ere deprived of an impartial decisionmaker. Instead, they allege, in the abstract, that if Plaintiffs had brought suit in Pennsylvania courts challenging Act 44, they would not have had an impartial decisionmaker: “The Appellants 6 Plaintiffs, on appeal, make this allegation against a named defendant, Chief Justice Cappy, as well as against unnamed “other Justices” of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. See Aplt. Br. at 35 n.7, 36-37. 30 here, w ho have challenged such enactments before and could be expected to do so again, were thereby denied any chance of the constitutionally required access to an impartial tribunal, and thus due process of law , in state court.” Aplt. Br. at 16. That is not sufficient to state the actual or imm inent injury necessary for constitutional standing. See M assachusetts v. E.P.A., 549 U.S. at 517; Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560-61. Further, Plaintiffs go on to articulate this claim as follow s: The Appellants—in fact, all P ennsylvanians— started w ith sta te constitutional righ ts to an open and deliberative legislative process guaranteed them by Article III of the state constitution; these rights . . . have consistently been found to be justiciable and defensible in the Pennsylvania courts, and thus the plaintiffs here also possessed a legal right to bring suit in state court to challenge the deprivation of their Article III rights by the passage of Act 44 and other legislation challenged in the past or potentially challengeable at the time of these events. Aplt. Br. at 40 (emphasis added); see also id. at 24 (arguing Defendants, w ho are “leading figures of the Pennsylvania state government[,] attempted systematically to deny [a neutral and disinterested decision maker] to the people of their Commonwealth”); id. at 37-38 (asserting 31 “the Chief Justice and potentially other Justices agreed before the pay-raise legislation was even enacted that the state courts would uphold it . . . against legal challenge by any citizens”) (emphasis added). These argum ents highlight the fact that Plaintiffs are asserting only a generalized, abstract grievance held by “all Pennsylvanians.” Plaintiffs have, thus, failed to allege that they have directly suffered a personalized, actual or imminent injury, as Article III requires. For all of these reasons, we conclude the district court did not err in dismissing Plaintiffs’ due process claim because they lacked standing to assert it.