Opinion ID: 166896
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Mr. Larsen

Text: 22 We agree with the district court that Mr. Larsen cannot show an injury sufficient to give him standing. Mr. Larsen openly engaged in conduct he believes was in violation of the Utah flag-abuse statute, and suffered no consequences. He was not cited, prosecuted, or even threatened with citation or prosecution. District Attorney David Yocom has filed an affidavit stating that [u]nless and until the constitutional doubts about the Utah statute are eliminated through a constitutional amendment or a new decision of the United States Supreme Court, I have no intention of prosecuting Ken Larsen or anyone else under the statute. App. 52. Mr. Larsen alleges that he suffers a concrete injury because he is fearful that if he violates the statute again he will be prosecuted, and that this has a chilling effect on his freedom of expression. But this is insufficient to support standing unless there is a credible threat of prosecution or other consequences following from the statute's enforcement. D.L.S., 374 F.3d at 975 (citing Ward, 321 F.3d at 1267). 23 In D.L.S., the plaintiff, an unmarried adult heterosexual who alleged that he had engaged in, and hoped and intended again to engage in, acts prohibited by Utah's sodomy statute, filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of that statute. Id. at 973. He had never been prosecuted, though he identified one person who had been arrested for the crime in the past, under different circumstances (conduct involving a minor). Id. at 974-75. One local prosecutor filed an affidavit that it was doubtful that the county would bring sodomy charges against the plaintiff for his past or future sexual activities as described in the complaint. Id. at 974. A second local prosecutor filed an affidavit stating that he will not file charges against D.L.S. for the kind of sexual activity D.L.S. intends to practice. Id. This Court held that D.L.S. lacked standing to sue: a plaintiff cannot show a real threat of prosecution in the face of assurances of non-prosecution from the government merely by pointing to a single past prosecution of a different person for different conduct. Id. at 975. Moreover, the Supreme Court in the meantime had decided Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 123 S.Ct. 2472, 156 L.Ed.2d 508 (2003), holding that a similar statute in another state was unconstitutional. Prosecutors who swore that they would not, or were unlikely to, prosecute D.L.S. for private consensual activity before the issuance of Lawrence,  this Court said, are of course exceedingly unlikely to launch sodomy prosecutions after that decision. D.L.S., 374 F.3d at 975. 24 The district court correctly held that the reasoning of D.L.S. is wholly applicable here. Order Granting Defendants' Motion to Dismiss 8, App. 175. Like the plaintiff in D.L.S., Mr. Larsen has not been prosecuted. On the contrary, he has received assurances from the District Attorney that the flag-abuse statute will not be enforced against him or anyone else. Moreover, like the plaintiff in D.L.S., Mr. Larsen's rights are protected by a recent Supreme Court decision holding unconstitutional a similar statute from another state. Under these circumstances, there is no credible threat that he will be prosecuted in the future, and he thus has no objectively reasonable basis for his assertion that the flag-abuse statute injures him by inhibiting his expressive conduct. 25 To be sure, the prosecutorial disavowals were provided only after Mr. Larsen filed his lawsuit. Mr. Larsen complains that prior to filing suit his attorney wrote District Attorney Yocom and Attorney General Shurtleff to request assurances of non-prosecution, and that Yocom and Shurtleff declined or failed to respond. That is of no moment. There is no federal right to obtain advisory opinions from local prosecutors. Lawson v. Hill, 368 F.3d 955, 959 (7th Cir.2004). The important fact is that Mr. Larsen never suffered any injury from the flag-abuse statute; the prosecutorial disavowals simply confirmed that fact. See id. ([S]uch disavowals are important only in cases in which, without a disavowal, the plaintiff seeking to enjoin enforcement would have a reasonable basis for concern that he might be prosecuted.). 26 Mr. Larsen argues, in effect, that the possibility that he could be arrested or prosecuted for flag abuse has not been reduced to zero. Mr. Yocom's political successors might repudiate Mr. Yocom's policy, or Mr. Larsen might be arrested elsewhere in the state, or police officers who have not been informed of Mr. Yocom's policy and have not been instructed not to enforce the statute might do so. In part, the answer to these arguments is that the relief Mr. Larsen seeks would not eliminate these risks. Prosecutors in other parts of the state would not be bound by injunctive relief against these defendants, and Mr. Larsen has not sought injunctive relief requiring that police officers be instructed not to enforce the statute. More fundamentally, however, it is not necessary for defendants in such cases to refute and eliminate all possible risk that the statute might be enforced. It is the plaintiff's burden to demonstrate an actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical threat that the statute will be enforced against him, such that he suffers a constitutionally cognizable injury from the ensuing chilling effect on his conduct. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130 (internal quotation marks omitted). That Mr. Larsen has not done. 27 Finally, Mr. Larsen appears to argue that we should dispense with the requirement that he suffer an injury-in-fact because he is bringing a facial challenge on First Amendment grounds under the overbreadth doctrine. Appellants' Br. 35-37. This is a misunderstanding. Overbreadth is an exception to the prudential standing doctrine requiring plaintiffs to show that their own First Amendment rights (as opposed to the rights of third parties) have been violated, but it does not exempt plaintiffs — even plaintiffs bringing facial challenges on overbreadth grounds — from the bedrock Article III standing requirements of injury-in-fact, causation, and redressability. D.L.S., 374 F.3d at 976; Ward, 321 F.3d at 1267; Phelps, 122 F.3d at 1326; Am. Library Ass'n v. Barr, 956 F.2d 1178, 1194 (D.C.Cir.1992). A plaintiff who himself is not injured cannot sue to enjoin enforcement of a statute on the ground that it violates someone else's rights.