Opinion ID: 779503
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Trappers' Appeal Against the State Parties and the Sponsors

Text: 62 Unlike the Audubon plaintiffs, the trappers challenge § 3003.1 in its entirety, not merely subsection 3003.1(c). As indicated in our Eleventh Amendment discussion, we have jurisdiction over the trappers' claims against the Director of California's Department of Fish and Game, but not against the Governor, state Secretary of Resources, or state agencies. See supra Part II.A. 63 We review de novo the trial court's dismissal of the trappers' claims under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). See Zimmerman v. City of Oakland, 255 F.3d 734, 737(9th Cir.2001). We accept all allegations of material fact stated in the complaint as true and construe the allegations in favor of the non-moving party. See Love v. United States, 915 F.2d 1242, 1245 (9th Cir.1989). A complaint will not be dismissed unless the non-moving party can prove no facts in support of its claim to relief. See id. De novo review applies to questions of standing, ripeness, and preemption. See supra Part II. 64
65 As in our analysis of Audubon's claims, we first address the justiciability of the trappers' claims.
66 The district court concluded that the trappers lacked standing under Article III because they failed to demonstrate injury-in-fact. The district court conducted its standing analysis under the framework described in San Diego County Gun Rights Committee v. Reno, 98 F.3d 1121, 1126-28(9th Cir.1996), and Thomas v. Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, 220 F.3d 1134, 1139 (9th Cir.2000) (en banc), to determine whether the trappers faced a genuine threat of imminent prosecution sufficient to establish injury in fact for a pre-enforcement challenge. Accordingly, the district court examined three factors: (1) the trappers' plans to violate the law; (2) the state's specific plans or threats to enforce the law; and (3) the history of actual enforcement of the law. 67 The district court appropriately took San Diego Guns and Thomas into account, but those cases do not compel the conclusion that the trappers lack standing under Article III. The three-factor test applied in both San Diego Guns and Thomas was premised on the plaintiffs' assertion that a risk of prosecution was the injury. The three factors of San Diego Guns and Thomas adequately ensure that courts will not decide cases in which a risk of prosecution is so remote that no case or controversy exists. For example, in Thomas, two landlords alleged risk-of-prosecution injury under Alaska housing laws based on their refusal to rent to unmarried couples. We held that the landlords lacked standing because they did not face a genuine threat of prosecution, given that they could not specify any past or planned refusals to rent to unmarried couples, that no complaint had ever been filed against them, and that the 25 year old laws had never resulted in a criminal prosecution. See Thomas, 220 F.3d at 1138-40. 68 In this case, however, the core of the trappers' injuries is not a hypothetical risk of prosecution but rather actual, ongoing economic harm resulting from their cessation of trapping. That is, the trappers allege direct financial loss caused by 14935 Proposition 4. When such tangible economic injury is alleged, we need not rely on the three-factor test applied in Thomas and San Diego Guns, for the gravamen of the suit is economic injury rather than threatened prosecution. Indeed, in San Diego Guns itself, we explicitly analyzed plaintiffs' assertion of standing based on an economic injury separately from our analysis of standing based on injury from threat of prosecution. We stated there, [e]conomic injury is clearly a sufficient basis for standing. Nonetheless, plaintiffs' asserted financial injury here fails the second prong of the Lujan test; plaintiffs fail to demonstrate that their alleged economic injury is fairly traceable to the Crime Control Act. San Diego Guns, 98 F.3d at 1130 (citation omitted). 8 Here, by contrast, the trappers' economic injury is directly traceable to the fact that Proposition 4 explicitly forbids the trapping they would otherwise do. 69 In this case, the trappers satisfy all three requirements of Article III standing. First, the trappers suffered actual, discrete, and direct injury in fact in the form of financial losses incurred from the prohibition on trapping contained in Proposition 4. The trappers allege that several of the named trapper plaintiffs earned a living through trapping-related activities, and that cessation of trapping caused them economic harm. 70 Second, the trappers' economic injury is fairly traceable to the enactment of Proposition 4. Several factors support the trappers' expectation that Proposition 4 might be enforced against them and thus make their forbearance from trapping reasonable and fairly traceable to Proposition 4: (1) the newness of the statute; (2) the explicit prohibition against trapping contained in the text of Proposition 4; (3) the state's unambiguous press release mandating the removal of all traps banned under Proposition 4; (4) the amendment of state regulations to incorporate the provisions of Proposition 4; and (5) the prosecution of one private trapper under Proposition 4. The trappers' claims are notably different from those of the plaintiff in Shields v. Norton, 289 F.3d 832 (5th Cir.2002), where the Fifth Circuit found no actual controversy under Article III in a challenge to an asserted prohibition on pumping water in violation of the ESA. In the words of that court, [Plaintiff's] claim that he stopped pumping water from the aquifer in response to [threats of litigation] might establish a controversy, if not for their emptiness exposed by years of inactivity since the alleged `threats' were made and the lack of evidence that a threat was in fact made[.] Id. at 837. 71 Third, the trappers' injury is redressable. The trappers' uncontested history of using the now-prohibited traps before the passage of Proposition 4, and their statements that they would continue trapping if not constrained by the proposition, are enough to show that they would resume trapping if Proposition 4's ban were declared invalid. 72 We therefore conclude that the trappers have Article III standing to bring their claims. We note that this conclusion avoids the anomalous result that would otherwise be reached (and was reached by the district court), whereby the Audubon plaintiffs' injury to their aesthetic interest from Proposition 4 could demonstrate injury in fact, but the trappers' concrete economic injury from the same law could not.
73 We hold that the trappers' suit satisfies both Article III and prudential ripeness concerns. From the foregoing discussion of injury in fact, it is clear not only that the trappers have suffered sufficient injury to satisfy Article III standing requirements, but also that the passage of Proposition 4, and the parties' positions with respect to its validity, have resulted in the creation of a sufficiently crystallized dispute that is ripe for purposes of Article III. 74 With respect to prudential ripeness, the first Abbott Labs factor — fitness for judicial resolution — favors adjudication now because more specific facts surrounding possible actions to enforce the statute will not aid resolution of the trappers' constitutional and statutory challenges to Proposition 4. The trappers' injury is established, and the legal arguments are as clear as they are likely to become. The second Abbott Labs factor—potential hardship to the parties—also favors adjudication. The trappers are refraining from trapping due to Proposition 4, and will continue to do so unless and until it is declared invalid. For so long as they refrain from trapping, they will suffer continuing economic injury. We therefore conclude that the trappers' claims are sufficiently ripe under a prudential ripeness analysis as well.
75 Despite the district court's dismissal of the trappers' claims for lack of standing, it nonetheless reached, and rejected, their two constitutional claims. We agree with the district court that these two claims fail on the merits.
76 The trappers argue under two theories that Proposition 4 violates the Commerce Clause: (1) Proposition 4 directly regulates and discriminates against interstate commerce (a per se violation of the clause), and (2) Proposition 4 places an undue burden on interstate commerce in comparison to the law's putative benefits. The district court rejected the first theory on the ground that Proposition 4 had neither the purpose nor the effect of discriminating against interstate commerce within the meaning of the Supreme Court's Commerce Clause jurisprudence. We agree. A plain reading of § 3003.1(b) limits its application to furs from animals trapped inside California; it does not apply to furs from animals trapped outside the state. To the extent that Proposition 4 has any discriminatory effect, it would be in favor of interstate commercial activities undertaken by out-of-state actors. That is, trappers acquiring furs outside of California by means of leghold traps face no restriction on selling such furs in California. See Reynolds v. Buchholzer, 87 F.3d 827, 830 (6th Cir.1996) (recognizing that a ban on walleye fishing in Ohio would likely act as a boon to out-of-state fisherman who could sell their walleye in Ohio without local competition). 77 The district court rejected the second theory because it found that, if it reached the merits, Proposition 4 would not impose an undue burden on commerce. We agree with the district court on the merits. In order to establish a claim under the so-called dormant Commerce Clause, the trappers must show that the state law or regulation in question penalizes interstate commerce, and does so without sufficient economic justification. See Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc., 397 U.S. 137, 142, 90 S.Ct. 844, 25 L.Ed.2d 174 (1970) (Where the statute regulates even-handedly to effectuate a legitimate local public interest, and its effects on interstate commerce are only incidental, it will be upheld unless the burden imposed on such commerce is clearly excessive in relation to the putative local benefits.). There is unconstitutional discrimination against interstate commerce where the asserted benefits of the [state] statute are in fact illusory or relate to goals that evidence an impermissible favoritism of in-state industry over out-of-state industry. Alaska Airlines, Inc. v. City of Long Beach, 951 F.2d 977, 983 (9th Cir.1991). That is not the case here. First, it is unclear that Proposition 4 penalizes interstate commerce in the sense that the costs imposed by the proposition favor in-state producers over out-of-state producers. Second, even if those costs were thought to be discriminatory in the sense required under dormant Commerce Clause jurisprudence, those costs must be real or, at a minimum, realistically threatened. The trappers contend that Proposition 4 will impose increased costs in two ways: there will be increased flood damage because of river levees that will have been weakened by animals (primarily muskrats) that would have been trapped in the absence of Proposition 4, and there will be increased costs of livestock production due to predation by untrapped animals. The district court found, and we agree, that such costs are highly speculative. We therefore conclude that the trappers have failed to make out a claim on their second theory.
78 The trappers allege a violation of substantive due process, based on an argument that the trappers' and the public's right to vote was diluted because the ballot material accompanying Proposition 4 was materially misleading. Specifically, the trappers object to the following language contained in a section of the ballot materials entitled Argument in Favor of Proposition 4: 79 Proposition 4 WILL ALLOW the use of traps and other Wildlife management techniques: 80 —to protect human health and safety 81 —to protect property, levees and canals 82 —to protect endangered wildlife 83 —to protect crops and livestock 84 This statement, the trappers argue, is misleading. Proposition 4 contains two separate bans on traps. Section 3003.1(a) bans trapping with any body-gripping trap (including leghold traps) for purposes of recreation or commerce in fur. Section 3003.1(c) bans the use of leghold traps to capture listed animals, irrespective of the trapper's purpose. Therefore, according to the trappers, while the ballot material's description of exceptions may apply to the ban on body-gripping traps under § 3003.1(a), it understates the scope of the broader ban on leghold traps under § 3003.1(c). 85 The parties do not dispute the legal standard, as set forth in Burton v. State of Georgia, 953 F.2d 1266 (11th Cir.1992): 86 For such extraordinary relief to be justified, it must be demonstrated that the state's choice of ballot language so upset the evenhandedness of the referendum that it worked a patent and fundamental unfairness on the voters. Such an exceptional case can arise . . . only when the ballot language is so misleading that voters cannot recognize the subject of the amendment at issue. 87