Court Opinion

ID: 9498598
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:22:05.055007+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:56.029651
License: Public Domain

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Today, the panel majority holds that executive conduct alleged to have violated the Establishment Clause may be challenged by federal taxpayers so long as that conduct was financed in some manner by a congressional appropriation. Because I do not believe that the applicable Supreme Court precedent permits such a dramatic expansion of current standing doctrine, I respectfully dissent.
The modern doctrine of constitutional standing was hardborn and has endured a difficult adolescence. It has now reached a stage of maturity, however, where several milestones in its growth have become important and well-established doctrine firmly ingrained in the Nation’s jurisprudence. As an intermediate appellate court, we cannot ignore or treat as malleable what the Supreme Court has mandated.
The first of these principles is the Court’s insistence that the core factors in the doctrine of standing are not simply prudential matters of judicial restraint but constitutional requirements rooted firmly in the Case and Controversy Clause of the Third Article of the Constitution. “[A]t an irreducible minimum, Art. Ill requires the party who invokes the court’s authority to show that he personally has suffered actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant, and that the injury can be traced to the challenged action and is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision.” Valley Forge Coll. v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, 454 U.S. 464, 472, 102 S.Ct. 752, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982) (internal quotations and citations omitted); see also Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984). It is the first of these requirements — the need for a concrete injury — that must be the focus of our inquiry in this case. This “irreducible constitutional minimum” has required that the traditional formula for taxpayer standing, articulated by Chief Justice Warren in Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 102-03, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968), be construed with “rigor.” Valley Forge Coll., 454 U.S. at 481, 102 S.Ct. 752. That formula requires that the federal taxpayer establish a logical link between his status as a taxpayer and the type of legislative enactment attacked, which for taxpayers can be only an exercise of the congressional power under the Taxing and Spending Clause of Article I, § 8 of the Constitution. It also requires that the taxpayer establish a nexus between his status as a taxpayer and the precise nature of the constitutional infringement alleged. Flast at 102, 88 S.Ct. 1942. It is undisputed that the question before us requires that we focus on the first of these requirements and ask whether the plaintiffs have, in the allegations of their complaint, set forth with sufficient rigor a nexus between their status as taxpayers and an exercise of the congressional power under the Taxing and Spending Clause.
Before turning to a definitive answer to that question, we should pause for a moment and reflect on why the Supreme Court requires that we examine this assertion of nexus so rigorously. Taxpayer standing “pushes the envelop” on traditional notions of constitutional standing. Ever since Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 43 S.Ct. 597, 67 L.Ed. 1078 (1923), the specter of a citizen bringing a *998lawsuit in a federal court to rectify an undifferentiated injury has loomed prominently over the development of our standing jurisprudence. Any assertion of taxpayer standing comes close, dangerously close, to becoming such a case. A lawsuit based on such undifferentiated injury — a mere disagreement with the government policy — is hardly the case and controversy within the jurisdiction of the federal courts.
When the Supreme Court has been called upon to examine this first prong of the Flast analysis, its decisions so far have been grounded on the fact that the complaint really did not present a grievance linked to the Taxing' and Spending Clause, but instead based on another constitutional provision. Therefore, in United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 94 S.Ct. 2940, 41 L.Ed.2d 678 (1974), the Court rejected the assertion of taxpayer standing over a suit based on the Accounts Clause. Again in Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 94 S.Ct. 2925, 41 L.Ed.2d 706 (1974), the Court refused taxpayer standing to an individual who asserted a violation of the Incompatibility Clause. In Valley Forge, the Court similarly decided that a taxpayer suit that implicated the Property Clause, not the Taxing and Spending Clause, could not be maintained.
In this ease, the gravamen of the plaintiffs’ complaint is of course based on the Establishment Clause, a specific restriction on Congress’ power to spend. But is it based on an exercise of the Taxing and Spending Clause? The plaintiffs ask that we answer that question in the affirmative because organizing and conducting the meetings in question involved the expenditure of government funds; the Government replies that the only funds involved are those made available to the President for the operation of his executive office. In its view, specific legislative expenditure under the taxing and spending power is simply not at stake. Rather, the object of the plaintiffs’ complaint is the decision of the President to use the funds to conduct these meetings.
My colleagues take the view that, if a taxpayer can challenge the expenditure of government funds under a specific appropriation, they ought to be able to question an expenditure under a general appropriation as well. In my view, this approach, while possessing an initial appeal, simply cuts the concept of taxpayer standing loose from its moorings. The Court’s post-Flast holdings make it clear that taxpayer standing survives as a narrow exception to Schlesinger, Richardson and Wright’s ban on generalized grievances. It has survived, even on those narrow terms, only because of the inherent difficulty in enforcing the specific prohibition of the Establishment Clause against the expenditure of government funds for the establishment of religion. See Flast, 392 U.S. at 103, 88 S.Ct. 1942. Beneficiaries of such spending have no incentive to sue, and non-beneficiary outsiders cannot show a direct injury. Flast allows standing in these cases so that tax— and expenditure-based violations of the Establishment Clause do not go unremedied. The Supreme Court has made the judgment that the values embodied in the Case and Controversy Clause— separation of powers and the adversary process1 — are sufficiently protected when *999a taxpayer makes a specific objection linked to a specific exercise of the taxing and spending power on the ground that it violates the Establishment Clause.
Indeed, a good illustration of Flast's limited purpose is the part of this case, no longer part of this appeal, in which Freedom from Religion challenged specific grants that it alleged were distributed preferentially to religious organizations under the government’s faith-based programs. One of these grant programs was “Mentoring Children of Prisoners,” established by Congress in the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Amendments of 2001, Pub.L. No. 107-133, 115 Stat. 2414 (2002). The program’s purpose was to provide support for children with incarcerated parents, and it expressly made eligible for funding faith— and community-based organizations. An organization called MentorKids USA applied for and received a grant under the congressional program. With its stated mission to “exalt the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God,” MentorKids hired only Christians as mentors, and required its mentors to give monthly reports on the progression of their mentee’s “relationship with God.” R.53 at 9-10. On the allegation that Congress had made public funds available to MentorKids, the district court, quite properly, allowed taxpayer standing to challenge the grant.
Without the Flast exception, it is unlikely that anyone would have had standing to sue in such a situation. Certainly, MentorKids was not going to challenge the grant it received. Similarly, non-sectarian community groups who applied for, but were denied a grant under the same program, would not have been able to satisfy the injury-in-fact and redressibility requirements of conventional standing doctrine; their injury would have been indirect and their allegations that they would have received funding but for the preferential treatment of religious groups would have been too speculative.2 Finally, an individual plaintiff who came into direct contact with MentorKids and was offended by the group’s religious message could not sue for violation of the Establishment Clause because MentorKids is not a state actor. Flast, therefore, remains necessary to allow challenges to situations in which Congress makes no public endorsement of religion but nevertheless supports a sectarian cause through the transfer of public funds. See Flast, 392 U.S. at 103, 88 S.Ct. 1942 (“Our history vividly illustrates that one of the specific evils feared by those who drafted the Establishment Clause and fought for its adoption was that the taxing and spending power would be used to favor one religion over another or to support religion in general.”); see also, e.g., Pulido v. Bennett, 860 F.2d 296, 297 (8th Cir.1988) (allowing taxpayer standing to bring an establishment clause challenge against a spending program that channeled funding to parochial schools).
*1000Because the Flast exception serves such a narrow purpose, its application has been confined to its express terras. After Schlesinger, Richardson and Valley Forge, to earn taxpayer standing a plaintiff must bring an attack against a disbursement of public funds made in the exercise of Congress’ taxing and spending power; focus on a program originating in the executive branch will not suffice. See Valley Forge, 454 U.S. at 479, 102 S.Ct. 752 (Flast limited taxpayer standing to challenges directed only at exercises of congressional power”) (internal quotation marks and alterations omitted); Schlesinger, 418 U.S. at 228, 94 S.Ct. 2925 (denying standing because the taxpayer plaintiffs “did not challenge an enactment under Art. I, § 8, but rather the action of the Executive Branch”).
Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U.S. 589, 108 S.Ct. 2562, 101 L.Ed.2d 520 (1988), did not alter the strictures on taxpayer standing. In Bowen, the Court upheld taxpayer standing to lodge an Establishment Clause challenge against the Adolescent Family Life Act (“AFLA”), a congressional spending program whose administration was delegated to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Rejecting the Secretary’s argument that funds were distributed by an executive branch agency rather than by Congress, the Court observed that “[t]he AFLA is at heart a program of disbursement of funds pursuant to Congress’ taxing and spending powers, and appellees’ claims call into question how the funds authorized by Congress are being disbursed pursuant to the AFLA’s statutory mandate.” Id. at 619-20, 108 S.Ct. 2562. That executive officials had been delegated the actual authority to write the checks did not matter. Id. at 619, 108 S.Ct. 2562 (“We do not think ... that appellees’ claim that AFLA funds are being used improperly by individual grantees is any less a challenge to congressional taxing and spending power simply because the funding authorized by Congress has flowed through and been administered by the Secretary.”). The touchstone of the Flast inquiry, according to Bowen, was whether the Secretary had been “given authority under the challenged statute to administer the spending program that Congress had created.” Id. (emphasis added).
I cannot accept my colleagues’ contention that Bowen broadens taxpayer standing so that it is sufficient for plaintiffs to show merely that a congressional appropriations statute enabled the executive branch to violate the Establishment Clause. Such a standard makes virtually any executive action subject to taxpayer suit. The executive can do nothing without general budget appropriations from Congress and the approach of my colleagues will permit an individual citizen to challenge any action of the executive with which he disagrees, as violative of the Establishment Clause. Bowen simply did not sanction such a judicial intrusion into the affairs of the executive at the request of an individual who can assert no specific connection between his status as a taxpayer and the executive decision. See Bowen, 487 U.S. at 620, 108 S.Ct. 2562 (“In this litigation there is still a sufficient nexus between the taxpayer’s standing as taxpayer and the congressional exercise of taxing and spending power .... ”). In short, my colleagues expand the narrow concept of taxpayer standing to the point where it cannot be distinguished from the citizen standing that the Supreme Court has regarded, throughout the development of the modern standing doctrine, as destructive of the case and controversy limitation on the power of the federal courts to intrude into the decision-making prerogatives of the executive branch.
The majority’s position sets this circuit on a course different from that of the other *1001courts to have applied the Flast exception after Bowen. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, when asked by municipal taxpayers to prohibit the District of Columbia from expending public funds to oppose citizens’ initiatives, observed that the “[Supreme] Court has never recognized federal taxpayer standing outside [of Flast’s] narrow facts, and it has refused to extend Flast to exercises of executive power.” District of Columbia Common Cause v. District of Columbia, 858 F.2d 1, 3-4 (D.C.Cir.1988) (citations omitted). Similarly, in In re United States Catholic Conference, 885 F.2d 1020 (2d Cir.1989), the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied taxpayer standing to'pro-choice supporters who alleged that the IRS, by granting tax-exempt status to the Catholic church, had violated the Establishment Clause. The court reasoned:
Plaintiffs in the instant case do not challenge Congress’ exercise of its taxing and spending power as embodied in § 501(c)(3) of the [Tax] Code; they do not contend that the Code favors the Church.... Instead, they argue that the IRS, in allegedly closing its eyes to violations by the Church, is disregarding the Code’s mandate and the Constitution. The complaint centers on an alleged decision made solely by the executive branch that in plaintiffs’ view directly contravenes Congress’ aim. The instant case is therefore distinguishable from [Bowen v. Kendrick]. In that case, there was “a sufficient nexus between the taxpayer’s standing as a taxpayer and the congressional exercise of taxing and spending power, notwithstanding the role the Secretary plays in administering the statute.” Kendrick, 108 S.Ct. at 2580. Here, there is no nexus between plaintiffs’ allegations and Congress’ exercise of its taxing and spending power. Hence, Kendrick does not alter the requirements of taxpayer standing to allow the instant plaintiffs to challenge how the IRS administers the Code.
Id. at 1028. In short, the Second Circuit squarely held that the alleged executive branch misapplication of a statutory tax exemption enacted by Congress under its Taxing and Spending Power is, under prevailing Supreme Court precedent, insufficient to support taxpayer standing. Like an arguably illegal executive expenditure (like the one alleged in this case), the misapplication of a tax exemption impacts the congressional policy decision embodied in the statute. It is not, however, an attack on Congress’ exercise of the Taxing and Spending Power.
As these cases demonstrate, our sister circuits have refused to interpret Bowen as affording taxpayer standing based simply upon a showing that a statute enabled the executive branch to violate the Establishment Clause. This circuit ought to follow the same course and, in the process, adhere to the principles set forth in the Supreme Court’s case law. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

. See Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 94-95, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968) (“Embodied in the words ‘cases' and 'controversies' are two complementary but somewhat different limitations. In part those words limit the business of federal courts to questions presented in an adversary context and in a form historically viewed as capable of resolution through the judicial process. And in part those words define the role assigned to the judiciary in a tripartite allocation of power to assure that the federal courts will not intrude *999into areas committed to the other branches of government.")

. Cf. Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 757, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984) (holding that parents lacked standing to challenge tax-exempt status of discriminatory private schools because it was too "speculative ... whether withdrawal of a tax exemption from any particular school would lead the school to change its policies”); Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S. 26, 42, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976) (denying standing to challenge the tax-exempt status of hospitals who refused care to indigents because the injury to plaintiffs was highly indirect and "result[ed] from the independent action of some third party not before the court”). Likewise, as the Court pointed out in Warth v. Seldin, "the indirectness of the injury ... may make it substantially more difficult to meet the minimum requirement of Art. III.” 422 U.S. 490, 505, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975).