Court Opinion

ID: 9474351
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:55:24.066105+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:02.596858
License: Public Domain

*54BORK, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part:
Appellants Robbins and others appeal from a district court order dismissing their complaint. Appellants, plaintiffs below, sued to enforce a promise by Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler to convert a federally-owned building at Second and D Streets into a “model shelter” for the homeless of the District of Columbia. The federal appellees cross appeal from the district court’s order conditioning the dismissal and the closing of the Second and D Streets shelter upon the finding of alternative shelter arrangements.
My colleagues have decided a case that was not presented to us. The obtrusive truth is that the district court lacked jurisdiction to decide this case and hence lacked jurisdiction to issue its order. We, in turn, lack jurisdiction over the appeal, other than jurisdiction to vacate the order. For that reason, the per curiam opinion is in reality little more than a compendium of controversial dicta.
Given the majority opinion’s extensive recitation of the facts, I need restate only a few crucial ones. The Community for Creative Non-Violence (“CCNV”) has been operating a shelter for homeless people in a building owned by the federal government located at Second and D Streets in the District of Columbia. After disputes about the shelter, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (“HHS”), in November, 1984, informed CCNV that the President had requested that HHS make the building “into a model physical shelter to house the homeless in the District of Columbia.” The Secretary specified seven types of renovation that would be undertaken, and, on May 30, 1985, HHS formally authorized the expenditure of $2.7 million from funds appropriated for the Community Services Block
Grant Act. CCNV found that amount inadequate, refused to let the renovation proceed, and, with other plaintiffs, filed this suit to compel the federal government to create a “model shelter.” HHS rescinded its decision to spend $2.7 million on renovations, giving the reasons recited in the majority opinion. Maj. op. at 24-28.
I.
It is important to note that appellants did not sue to force the government to spend the $2.7 million on renovations. CCNV had explicitly rejected those renovations. Appellants did not challenge the withdrawal of the $2.7 million commitment. They sued to enforce the November, 1984, promise to create a “model shelter,” which, on anybody’s calculations, would cost much more. Yet the majority inexplicably addresses the commitment CCNV is not seeking to enforce and ignores the commitment it does seek to enforce.
The majority struggles to make the $2.7 million commitment the subject of this lawsuit but that struggle is unavailing. The majority opinion attempts to justify what is done here by saying “[t]he District Court’s decision itself focused on the agency’s decision to allocate the monies elsewhere and close the shelter and it is that decision we are reviewing.” At 46 n. 15. That is precisely right. And since it is-absolutely clear that the district court focused on an issue not presented by the plaintiffs, and, indeed, rejected by the plaintiffs, the way to review the district court’s decision is to declare that the district court lacked jurisdiction over the issue the plaintiffs actually presented and to vacate the district court’s order. The fact that the district court reached out for an issue nobody was litigating 1 provides no excuse for our doing the same thing.
*55The majority attempts to find support for its assumption of power by then noting that “appellees have themselves maintained throughout that the $2.7 million commitment was sufficient to redeem their original pledge [of a model shelter], and it was only after CCNV refused its help that the government moved to close the shelter. Thus, a realistic view of what the parties argued, and the district court decided over the course of this litigation leads us to focus on the government’s rescission of the $2.7 million commitment and the resultant decision to close the shelter as the critical decisions on review.” At 46 n. 15. Far from being “realistic,” this view of what is presented to us is a piece of judicial fiction. The appellees did assert that the $2.7 million commitment was sufficient to redeem the pledge of a “model shelter.” But appellants utterly rejected that view and sued for an order that a “model shelter” be built. Since appellants, plaintiffs below, never once challenged the rescission of the $2.7 million commitment, it is impossible to understand what empowered the district court, or now empowers this court, to review that rescission.
The amended complaint does not once complain of HHS’s rescission of the $2.7 million commitment. Instead, that complaint makes it as clear as language can that only the “model shelter” commitment is sought to be enforced. First Amended Complaint at para. 1, J.A. at 249 (“This suit asks the Court to compel the Defendants to honor their commitment to transform a federally-owned shelter for the homeless into a ‘model’ facility.”); para. 29, J.A. at 259 (“[T]his suit was filed to require defendants to honor their commitment to renovate the shelter into a ‘model.’ ”).2
If all this is not enough to prove that the district court had before it only a suit to compel the creation of a “model shelter” and not to prevent the rescission of the $2.7 million commitment, the latter relief, which the majority chooses to view as the issue before us, is explicitly rejected by the complaint. Paragraph 31 alleges that “[t]he GSA plan [designed to implement the $2.7 million commitment] does not satisfy the specific conditions of the commitment made by President Reagan and Secretary Heckler, and it does not satisfy the overall commitment to renovate the shelter to be a ‘model physical shelter ... with special attention to preserving dignity of the homeless ____' ... What defendants propose to do would be unacceptable to any respon*56sible shelter provider. In no sense could the defendants’ proposal be considered a ‘model.’ ” J.A. at 260-61.3
The complaint thus makes clear beyond quibble that the $2.7 million commitment is not in any way the subject of this lawsuit. The creation of a “model shelter” is the subject of this lawsuit, and the $2.7 million commitment is rejected as not in any way related to the commitment sued upon.
Given the majority’s remark that the “complicated scenario” of these proceedings cannot be “so easily characterized as a case only about a model shelter,” it may be thought that perhaps the case has somehow changed since the complaint. Whatever the issue originally raised, perhaps this case had metamorphosed into a challenge to the rescission of the $2.7 million commitment by the time the appeal reached us. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Statement of the Issues in appellants’ brief lists as questions for this court’s review the decision to close the Second and D Streets shelter and appellees’ failure to renovate the shelter as a “model shelter.” No issue about the rescission of the $2.7 million commitment is listed as presented to us. Appellants’ Statement of the Case says, “CCNV took the position that the government’s $2.7 million renovation plan utterly failed to meet the President’s November, 1984 commitment to establish a model shelter and, on June 17, 1985, filed this suit to compel appellees to live up to their commitment.” Brief for Appellants at 5 (footnote omitted). The brief argues that none of the reasons the government gave for deciding to close the shelter “provides a basis for walking away from [the ‘model shelter’] commitment made in November, 1984 by the President and the Secretary of HHS.” Id. at 13. “Because appellees have made no progress toward implementing the commitment made in November, 1984 to develop the Second Street shelter as a model shelter, and because they have spent the last several months attempting to escape that commitment, the proper remedy” is an order requiring “appellees to renovate the Second Street shelter as a model shelter for the homeless.” Id.4
At oral argument, counsel for appellants made it clear that a “model shelter” was sought, not the renovations possible with $2.7 million. In fact, only reluctantly, and upon being pressed by the court, did counsel say that CCNV would continue to operate the shelter if only $2.7 million was provided. But it was very clear that this sum was not what this lawsuit was about.
I have gone into this matter at length in order to show that the one issue that was never raised by the complaint and that was never brought to us for review was the government’s rescission of its commitment to spend $2.7 million on the Second and D Streets shelter. That is not now and never has been the issue in this case. Yet it is the one issue that the majority absolutely insists upon deciding. I cannot imagine a legitimate reason for doing so.
*57Much might be said of the majority’s reasoning, and in particular of its attempt to confine Heckler v. Chaney, — U.S. -, 105 S.Ct. 1649, 84 L.Ed.2d 714 (1985), to a narrow rationale, but, since the majority’s opinion is an essay on a non-issue, there is no need to do so. In any event, the majority concludes that the appeal should be dismissed, and with that I agree. I turn next to what seems to me the correct reason for dismissing the appeal and the complaint.
II.
The only controversy actually before this court is whether appellants may maintain a suit to require appellees to create a “model physical shelter structure” and, because of that asserted obligation, may prevent the closing of the Second and D Streets shelter. It is clear that no such suit will lie.
The district court did not have subject matter jurisdiction to hear this lawsuit. Jurisdiction is rested by the majority on 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (1982), which gives district courts jurisdiction over “all civil actions arising under the Constitution, laws or treaties of the United States.” This action cannot arise under the laws of the United States because there is no federal law to apply. Appellants challenge the government’s action under the Administrative Procedure Act, see 5 U.S.C. § 501 et seq. (1982), but review is precluded if the challenged action is committed to agency discretion by law, see 5 U.S.C. § 701(a)(2) (1982). If the action is so committed, that precludes federal jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 (1982). See Califano v. Sanders, 430 U.S. 99, 105, 97 S.Ct. 980, 984, 51 L.Ed.2d 192 (1977) (holding that federal question jurisdiction of the federal courts under section 1331 is “subject ... to preclusion-of-review statutes created or retained by Congress”). Under Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, 401 U.S. 402, 410, 91 S.Ct. 814, 820, 28 L.Ed.2d 136 (1971), the preclusion of judicial review under section 701(a)(2) depends on the question whether the breadth of discretion conferred upon an agency by statute provides a court with no law to apply in a given case. Recently, in Heckler v. Chaney, — U.S.-, 105 S.Ct. 1649, 1655, 84 L.Ed.2d 714 (1985), the Supreme Court noted that a court can interfere with an agency’s exercise of discretion only where “judicially manageable standards” exist to constrain that discretion. Thus, in any particular instance, a statute that offers no standards to constrain the specific exercise of an agency’s discretionary power provides no law for a reviewing court to apply and deprives that court of jurisdiction.
Unless one understands the “no law to apply” standard as relating to the specific allegation at stake in a given challenge, a court could always find some law in the general area of the controversy, and section 701(a)(2) of the Administrative Procedure Act would become a nullity. The inquiry “can be made coherent only by measuring the plaintiff’s allegation against the governing substantive statute.” See Sunstein, Reviewing Agency Inaction After Heckler v. Chaney, 52 U.Chi.L.Rev. 653, 659 (1985).
In this case, the substantive statute provides no standards to govern appellants’ challenge. The statutory standards to which the majority refers do not apply to the particular allegations made by appellants. The majority relies upon 42 U.S.C. § 9910(a)(2) (1982), which constrains the discretion of the Secretary by limiting the acceptable purposes upon which the Secretary can expend Community Services Block Grant Act funds.5 The majority’s reliance is misplaced. While section 9910(a)(2) does limit the Secretary’s descretion in spending the statutory funds, it does so in ways wholly irrelevant to this lawsuit, and appellants have not alleged that the Secretary abused that discretion or transgressed any limits set out in the statute. The provision cited by the majority imposes no substan*58tive constraint on the action actually at issue here, and appellants have nowhere asserted that the refusal to build a “model shelter” violated this provision. The provision cited by the majority cannot make this action reviewable because no one has asked this court to see if it has been transgressed.6
If there is law to apply simply because a statute contains criteria that are in no way relevant to the complaint made, the subject matter jurisdiction of federal courts is greatly expanded. That has happened here, and the majority improperly assumes jurisdiction to review the rationality of the Under Secretary’s decision to close the shelter. It seems to me clear that, since the statute contains no standards relevant to the case appellants brought, there is no law to apply and that this court lacks “arising under” jurisdiction over the Administrative Procedure Act claims.7
III.
Since the district court had no jurisdiction over this case, it is clear that the order not to close the Second and D Streets shelter must be vacated. But there is an additional reason for that conclusion. That order, as affirmed by this court, is unsupported by any citation of any legal obligation appellees owe to appellants.
After the government announced that it intended to close the Second and D Streets shelter, appellants, on June 26, 1985, filed the amended complaint to enjoin the closing. The amended complaint alleged that the proposed closing was unlawful because inconsistent with the promise to create a model shelter. Just over a month later, an Under Secretary of HHS approved recommendations in a memorandum dated July 31, 1985, from another government official. One recommendation approved was that the shelter closing be postponed to August 31, 1985, to allow time to make all reasonable efforts to find alternative shelter arrangements. The closing was not conditioned upon finding alternative shelter arrangements. The Under Secretary decided that the $2.7 million previously committed to renovations at Second and D Streets should be used in the relocation effort.
Thus, it is clear that appellants did not sue to enforce the Under Secretary’s adoption of the recommendations set out in the memorandum. They could hardly have done so since the complaint was filed a month before the memorandum existed. The complaint relied entirely upon the 1984 “model shelter” statement. The complaint is explicit about this: the closing was opposed “because it violated the word of a cabinet officer and the President,” not because it violated the later policy decision made by the Under Secretary. See First Amended Complaint at para. 32, J.A. at 261. Indeed, in paragraph 34 of the First Amended Complaint, CCNY stated that “[djefendants’ proposal to close the shelter and evict the residents is patently violative of the commitment to transform the shelter *59into a ‘model physical shelter structure." J.A. at 262.
Yet the majority again addresses an issue not presented and this time upholds the district court’s order requiring that alternatives to the Second and D Streets shelter be developed before that shelter could be closed. The majority does so on the notion that the district court could enforce compliance with the agency’s own commitments, as formulated in the recommendations the Under Secretary adopted. But the Under Secretary made no commitment to appellants; the appellants did not sue to enforce anything the Under Secretary decided; and the Under Secretary did not, as the district court did, make the closing conditional on the provision of alternative shelter. Each of these defects is fatal to the district court’s order. The last mentioned perhaps deserves emphasis. The district court did more than simply enforce the policy adopted by the Under Secretary. That policy did not condition the closing on the provision of an alternative. The lower court, therefore, has by its order added a new term to the policy it purports to enforce. The majority now endorses the district court’s action. This constitutes an impermissible judicial intrusion into the administrative process.8
From this aspect of today’s decision, I dissent.
IV.
To summarize, I concur in the affirmance of the lower court’s dismissal of appellants’ complaint but do so on the ground that the district court lacked “arising under” jurisdiction; I dissent from the affirmance of the trial judge’s order requiring the government to provide alternative shelter arrangements before closing down the Second and D Streets shelter because there was neither jurisdiction nor any legal basis for that order.

. The mood in which the district court approached the question of what issues were before it, and its own powers, is sufficiently indicated by the following passage, by no means the only one of similar tone, from its opinion:
[T]he Court will entertain written applications ... for the appointment of a Special Master for the purpose of ensuring that the federal government assists in locating proper health care and shelter providers and does what it has now promised, (as a result of this lawsuit). In this regard, the Court will use every power which it may have at its disposal in order that the residents of the Second and D Street, N.W., building are provided in other facilities with the resources they need to live *55as decent human beings so that they may receive treatment for their various problems, such as alcohol and drug addiction, and other mental health problems. The Court also realizes that these people need food and assistance to care for their nutritional deficiencies.
The Court recognizes that many of these people require counselling, job training, and have a myriad of other needs____
This effort will require governmental leadership from top to bottom, starting at the White House, in a multitude of disciplines that are involved. But the Court expects that the captains of industry, commerce, banking, hospitals, skilled nursing homes, and other health care providers, and the medical, psychiatric, and legal professions will all be asked and urged in the strongest possible terms to find and implement a solution to this disgraceful problem. No more delay can be tolerated in the face of this human misery. Thus, the Court will be watching and waiting to see what the President of the United Stales and his associates in the government, as well as the leaders of the private sector, do. The court believes it will be enough, but, if not, the Court stands ready to consider the appointment of a Special Master, who will be a nationally recognized expert in this multi-dis-ciplinary problem. As currently envisioned, the Special Master would report on the conduct of those with the resources and expertise to solve and eliminate this problem — not to exacerbate it through press conferences and the hurling of recriminations, all at the expense of the truly needy. Only our nation’s conscience and the residents of this building, who might otherwise be on the grates and in the parks of the nation’s capital, will be harmed further if a solution is not achieved.
J.A. at 13-14 (footnotes omitted).

. The record is replete with other examples. See paras. 31-33, 37-40, J.A. at 259-61, 263-65. The prayer for relief asks that the court declare the closing of the shelter a violation of "defendants’ commitment to transform the shelter into a model” and therefore a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. Id. at para. 48, J.A. at 267. It also asks that defendants be enjoined to honor the November, 1984, commitment, which was to create a model shelter. Id. at para. 49, J.A. at 267-68.

. Indeed, the complaint’s rejection of anything but the "model physical shelter" promised in November, 1984, is pervasive. Paragraph 38 states: "What the defendants propose to do to the shelter will not 'create a model physical shelter.’ ” J.A. at 263. Paragraph 39 states: "In the face of the commitment by President Reagan and Secretary Heckler to ‘create a model physical shelter,' defendants have proposed instead to perform inadequate and insufficient work at the shelter, which work does not, under any reasonable definition, constitute compliance with the commitment." J.A. at 263-64.

. There is more in appellants’ brief that makes it abundantly clear that the Secretary's promise to build “a model physical shelter” was the only subject of the appeal. The first point under Argument states that the district court erred "in failing to compel defendants to renovate the Second Street shelter as a model shelter.” Brief for Appellants at 14. The decision to close the shelter is attacked as inconsistent with the original "model shelter” commitment. Id. at 16. CCNV represented that it was willing to continue operating the shelter “if the shelter is renovated as a 'model shelter,’ as promised.” Id. at 24. It is possible to go on and on, citing appellants’ brief and reply brief, to show that appellants never challenged on appeal the rescission of the $2.7 million commitment but demanded only that the court order the creation of a “model shelter." Brief for Appellants at 28, 29, 36; Reply Brief for Appellants at 2, 5, 6, 9, 12, 13, 14, 18.

. Significantly, the majority has gleaned these purposes in part from 42 U.S.C. § 9904(c)( 1 )(B)(IV) and (c)(1)(C) (1982), which tive majority concedes to be inapposite insofar as they apply to funds granted to states.

. Nor is it clear that the majority is correct' in asserting that the APA compels us to review the agency action to see if it is "based on factual determinations that are without adequate foundation.” If 5 U.S.C. § 701(a) (1982) precludes judicial review, that must be dispositive.

. It is argued that the "law to apply" in this case lies in the Secretary’s statement that she had been directed to build a "model shelter.” No one on this court thinks that this statement, undefined and standing alone, provides law. The majority expressly agrees that there is no law to apply to a demand for a "model shelter" costing far more than $2.7 million. At 46 n. 15. The only criteria by which the court and then this court could define the term "model shelter” would come from the Secretary’s listing of specific renovations and HHS’s commitment of $2.7 million to make those renovations. We do not, however, need to reach the question whether those criteria constitute “law to apply" in this case because appellants do not seek to enforce this “law,” if it be law. Instead, they sue upon the Secretary’s original statement promising "a model physical shelter for the homeless in the District of Columbia.” See First Amended Complaint at 17-19, J.A. at 263-65. The phrase "model shelter” does not supply what Heckler v. Chaney, — U.S.-, 105 S.Ct. 1649, 84 L.Ed.2d 714 (1985), demands: "judicially manageable standards.” Nobody knows what it means and appellants’ version, as contained in their architect’s plans, illustrates their vision but can hardly be called law.

. Because the government has provided alternative shelter facilities in Anacostia and on Florida Street, this aspect of the lower court’s decision might be moot but for the aDDellants’ contention that these alternative facilities are inadequate. See Appellants’ Motion for Emergency Relief (filed Nov. 20, 1985).