Court Opinion

ID: 9595700
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:42:43.285885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:30.209452
License: Public Domain

ROGERS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Because plaintiffs are without standing to assert a claim under the Establishment Clause, I would affirm the judgment below. Plaintiffs as employees have not shown that they suffered an injury protected by the Establishment Clause; as municipal taxpayers, they have not shown an injury-in-fact. It is therefore not necessary for us to reach a difficult Establishment Clause issue, and not proper in this case for us to constitute the district court as a supervisory board to review the local school’s policies in that regard. While the majority properly resolves the due process and immunity issues presented on this appeal, I respectfully disagree with Part II.B dealing with the Establishment Clause.
A. Standing as Employees
First, although plaintiffs as employees appear to meet the minimum Article III requirement of injury in fact, they do not have prudential standing to bring an Establishment Clause claim. This is because the injuries that they suffered when their positions were eliminated are not of the type that the Establishment Clause protects. Plaintiffs must establish that the rights or interests that they assert are theirs and not those of others not party to the proceedings. Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 499-500, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975); see also Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 410, 111 S.Ct. 1364, 113 L.Ed.2d 411, (1991); U.S. Dep’t. of Labor v. Triplett, 494 U.S. 715, 720, 110 S.Ct. 1428, 108 L.Ed.2d 701 (1990); Sec’y of State of Md. v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. 947, 954-55, 104 S.Ct. 2839, 81 L.Ed.2d 786 (1984); Valley Forge Christian Coll. v. Ams. United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 474, 102 S.Ct. 752, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982); Gladstone Realtors v. Vill. of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 100, 99 S.Ct. 1601, 60 L.Ed.2d 66 (1979); Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249, 255, 73 S.Ct. 1031, 97 L.Ed. 1586 (1953). This prudential rule was recently applied by the Supreme Court in Kowalski v. Tesmer, 543 U.S. 125, 125 S.Ct. 564, 160 L.Ed.2d 519 (2004):
We have adhered to the rule that a party “generally must assert his own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest his claim to relief on the legal rights or interests of third parties.” This rule ... represents a “healthy concern that if the claim is brought by someone other than one at whom the constitutional protection is aimed,” the courts might be *662“called upon to decide abstract questions of wide public significance even though other governmental institutions may be more competent to address the questions and even though judicial intervention may be unnecessary to protect individual rights.”
Id. at 129, 125 S.Ct. 564 (citations omitted).
Plaintiffs doubtless were injured when the Board decided to eliminate the alternative school for budgetary reasons. Because of that decision, plaintiffs lost their positions and were forced to either accept different positions within the Jefferson County school district or to look elsewhere for employment. Even if we assume that this injury satisfies Article III requirements, see Ruhrgas AG v. Marathon Oil Co., 526 U.S., 574, 585, 119 S.Ct. 1563, 143 L.Ed.2d 760 (1999), the parties do not have prudential standing because these injuries simply do not fall within the protection of the Establishment Clause. Kowalski, 543 U.S. at 129 & n. 2, 125 S.Ct. 564.
The Establishment Clause protects citizens from injuries resulting from government endorsement of religion. See Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 587, 107 S.Ct. 2573, 96 L.Ed.2d 510 (1987). In the present context, the persons at whom the constitutional protection is aimed are clearly teachers, students, or parents who are forced by the state to interact with a religion at their schools. Plaintiffs as employees in this case have not alleged such harm, or anything like it. They do not, for instance, claim that they were forced into contact with religion as a result of their positions being eliminated. See Doe v. Porter, 370 F.3d 558, 561 (6th Cir.2004) (parents of children attending public school where Bible Education Ministry was being conducted had standing to bring an Establishment Clause claim). Indeed, plaintiffs’ primary complaint is that they are no longer associated with the administration of the alternative program. Their Establishment Clause claim patently asserts the injury of others, stating that “[t]he placement of students into such a religiously oriented school with teachers who are employed and solely answerable to Kingswood cannot be said to be generated by some secular purpose.”1 This is exactly the type of claim that the third-party standing doctrine does not allow plaintiffs to bring.
While prudential, third-party standing analysis requires an understanding of the claims raised by the plaintiffs, it is not a merits determination. For instance, in this case, I take no position on whether there has been a First Amendment violation. The point is that even if there has been such a violation, the persons whose interests are protected by the First Amendment are not the persons suing. As we explained in Dismas Charities, Inc. v. United States Department of Justice, 401 F.3d 666, 674 (6th Cir.2005), “the prudential standing inquiry requires a clear identification of the relevant provision that is the basis for the lawsuit.” The analysis is no more a merits analysis than the Supreme Court’s analysis in Kowalski. In that case criminal appeals attorneys as party plaintiffs challenged a Michigan law that infringed on the procedural rights of criminal defendants to the appointment of an attorney on appeal. Kowalski, 543 U.S. at 127-29, 125 S.Ct. 564. To resolve whether the plaintiff attorneys lacked prudential standing, the Court of course had to understand the nature of the constitutional challenge so as to determine whether the constitutional provision protected *663the plaintiffs. See, e.g., id. at 132, 125 S.Ct. 564. But the merits issue (whether the Michigan law violated due process) was not decided at that time. Id. at 134., 125 S.Ct. 564 In short, reasoning that the employees in this case are not protected by the Establishment Clause no more touches the merits than the Supreme Court’s reasoning in third-party standing cases such as Kowalski
Furthermore, no arguable exception to the prohibition against third-party standing applies here. The third parties injured by this alleged Constitutional violation are not unable or unlikely to assert their rights themselves. E.g., Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249, 257, 73 S.Ct. 1031, 97 L.Ed. 1586 (1953); see also Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 446, 92 S.Ct. 1029, 31 L.Ed.2d 349 (1972). The students who attend the Kingswood school and their parents are able to sue should they desire. Nor is there a close relationship between the advocate and the third party. See, e.g., Pierce v. Soc’y of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070 (1925). These teachers no longer work at this school and have no connection to the students whose rights they are asserting. Finally, this is not a case that involves an allegedly over-broad statute.
Moreover, cases applying the “zone of interest” test are not applicable. The zone of interest test results from a statutory loosening of prudential third-party standing rules, a statutory loosening that is not present here.
Of course, prudential standing requirements by their very prudential nature can be loosened or done away with by Congress. E.g., Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 162-66, 117 S.Ct. 1154, 137 L.Ed.2d 281 (1997). It was such a statutory loosening that the Supreme Court inferred in Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 90 S.Ct. 827, 25 L.Ed.2d 184 (1970), the case in which the zone of interest test was born. The Supreme Court held that Congress in passing the Administrative Procedure Act loosened third-party standing so as to permit judicial review of federal agency action when the plaintiff was “arguably” within the “zone of interest” of the federal statute that was the basis for claiming that the agency had erred. Id. at 153-54, 90 S.Ct. 827; see also Lujan v. Nat’l Wildlife Fed’n, 497 U.S. 871, 883, 110 S.Ct. 3177, 111 L.Ed.2d 695 (1990) (“We have long since rejected [the] interpretation ... which would have made the judicial review provision of the APA no more than a restatement of pre-existing law. Rather we have said that to be ‘adversely affected or aggrieved ... within the meaning’ of a statute, the plaintiff must establish that the injury he complains of ... falls within the ‘zone of interests’ sought to be protected by the statutory provision whose violation forms the legal basis of his complaint.” (citation omitted)); Dismas Charities, Inc., 401 F.3d at 674. This case is of course not an APA case, and the zone of interest test is not applicable.2
*664B. Standing as Taxpayers
Plaintiffs also do not have standing to bring an Establishment Clause challenge as taxpayers of Jefferson County. Although standing requirements for municipal taxpayers are less demanding than those for state or federal taxpayers, see Taub v. Kentucky, 842 F.2d 912, 918 (6th Cir.1988), they are not so lax as to allow taxpayers to challenge every decision that a municipality makes. A taxpayer must still show that the challenged municipal action depleted the municipal fisc such that he could at least in theory be subject to increased taxation. It is true that the Supreme Court stated in Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 486, 43 S.Ct. 597, 67 L.Ed. 1078 (1923), that a “remedy by injunction to prevent the[ ] misuse [of municipal funds] is not inappropriate.” Subsequent decisions of the Supreme Court and this court — in Establishment Clause cases at that — make clear that the Frothingham language refers to misuse that results in a loss to the public fisc that might affect how much taxpayers pay. In a case involving Bible-reading in the public schools, the Supreme Court quoted the Frothingham language but still required at least a diminution of public funds:
[Frothingham] recognized ... that “[t]he interest of a taxpayer of a municipality in the application of its moneys is direct and immediate and the remedy by injunction to prevent their misuse is not inappropriate.” Indeed, a number of states provide for it by statute or deci-sional law and such causes have been entertained in federal courts. Without disparaging the availability of the remedy by taxpayer’s action to restrain unconstitutional acts which result in direct pecuniary injury, we reiterate what the Court said of a federal statute as equally true when a state Act is assailed: “The party who invokes the power must be able to show not only that the statute is invalid but that he has sustained or is immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury as a result of its enforcement, and not merely that he suffers in some indefinite way in common with people generally.”
It is true that this Court found a justiciable controversy in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 67 S.Ct. 504, 91 L.Ed. 711 [(1947), a suit by a district taxpayer against a township board of education]. But Everson showed a measurable appropriation or disbursement of school-district funds occasioned solely by the activities complained of. This complaint does not....
[B]ecause our own jurisdiction is cast in terms of “case or controversy,” we cannot accept as the basis for review, nor as the basis for conclusive disposition of an issue of federal law without review, any procedure which does not constitute such.
The taxpayer’s action can meet this test, but only when it is a good-faith pocketbook action. It is apparent that *665the grievance which it is sought to litigate here is not a direct dollars-and-cents injury but is a religious difference. If appellants established the requisite special injury necessary to a taxpayer’s case or controversy, it would not matter that their dominant inducement to action was more religious than mercenary. It is not a question of motivation but of possession of the requisite financial interest that is, or is threatened to be, injured by the unconstitutional conduct. We find no such direct and particular financial interest here. If the Act may give rise to a legal case or controversy on some behalf, the appellants cannot obtain a decision from this Court by a feigned issue of taxation.
Doremus v. Bd. of Educ., 342 U.S. 429, 433-35, 72 S.Ct. 394, 96 L.Ed. 475 (1952) (citations omitted).
This court ruled similarly in a case that even more clearly applies to municipal taxpayer standing. Hawley v. City of Cleveland, 773 F.2d 736, 737-38 (6th Cir.1985), was an action challenging a lease of airport space for use as a chapel. We held that users of the airport had standing because they would have to use different concourses or stairways to avoid “unwelcome religious exercises.” Id. at 740 (citation omitted). But the standing of Cleveland taxpayers depended on “whether the rental of the space for the chapel to the diocese at the agreed-upon price could harm Cleveland’s fisc,” and we remanded for a determination of that issue. Id. at 742. In doing so, we cited the very language of Frothingham referred to above regarding “misuse,” summarized more recent cases including Doremus, and concluded that “the Supreme Court continues to allow suits by nonfederal taxpayers to enjoin unconstitutional acts affecting public finances.” Id. (emphasis added); see also Steele v. Indus. Dev. Bd., No. 93-5350, 1994 WL 599458, at *1 (6th Cir. Nov.1, 1994) (issuance of tax-exempt bonds to a sectarian university). Here, in contrast to the situation in Hawley where the facts were not clear, it is undisputed that the elimination of the alternative school and the delegation to Kingswood was a cost-saving measure. Because the Board had an obligation under state law to provide an alternative program, the delegation was not an additional expenditure, but instead reduced the financial burden on Jefferson County and its taxpayers. There is no need to defend the public treasury because Jefferson County, and thus its taxpayers, have saved money as a result of the delegation. Notably, plaintiffs do not point to any cases where municipal taxpayers have been permitted to challenge government conduct from which they stood to experience financial gain.
In such a situation, a taxpayer asserts pothing more than a claim that the municipality must follow the law. The Supreme Court, however, has repeatedly held that “Art. Ill requirements of standing are not satisfied by ‘the abstract injury in nonobservance of the Constitution asserted by ... citizens.’ ” Valley Forge, 454 U.S. at 482, 102 S.Ct. 752 (quoting Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 223 n. 13, 94 S.Ct. 2925, 41 L.Ed.2d 706 (1974)).
Finally, requiring municipal taxpayers to establish at least some diminution of the public fisc does not ignore the distinction between municipal taxpayers and state and federal taxpayers. For federal and state taxpayers to have standing, they must show more than just government action that depletes the treasury and thus creates the possibility of future taxation. See, e.g., DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 345-46, 126 S.Ct. 1854, 164 L.Ed.2d 589 (2006). This is because the interests of federal and state taxpayers in their *666respective federal and state treasuries “[are] shared with millions of others; [are] comparatively minute and indeterminable; and the effect upon future taxation ... so remote, fluctuating and uncertain, that no basis is afforded for an appeal to the preventative powers of a court of equity.” Id. at 333, 126 S.Ct. 1854 (quoting Frothingham, 262 U.S. at 486-87, 43 S.Ct. 597); see also id. at 345, 126 S.Ct. 1854. Municipal taxpayers, on the other hand, have been held to possess a much more direct interest in the municipal treasury. Because municipal taxpayers are theoretically fewer in number, they have a more direct relationship with their local government such that a direct injury is presumed when the municipal fisc is depleted. Taub, 842 F.2d at 918.
Indeed, the District of Columbia Circuit reasoned — in a case relied upon by the majority here — that “[although Doremus involved only state taxpayers, the pocketbook injury requirement also applies to municipal taxpayers, as Doremus’ reference to Frothingham makes clear.” D.C. Common Cause v. District of Columbia, 858 F.2d 1, 4 (D.C.Cir.1988). The D.C. Circuit ruled in that case that even though municipal taxpayers need not “demonstrate that their taxes will be reduced as a result of a favorable judgment,” they must still show that “the challenged program involves a measurable appropriation of public funds.” 858 F.2d at 5. The D.C. Circuit cited our Hawley case, among other authorities. Id. In short, without at least a demonstration of a reduction of the public fisc from the challenged action, municipal taxpayers lack Article III standing.
The federal courts have jurisdiction only when plaintiffs will get something by winning beyond the satisfaction that the government is complying with the law, and (absent congressional grants of standing) only when the plaintiffs rely upon legal principles that protect their interests. These fundamental principles keep the courts from constituting themselves as supervising review boards to decide in the abstract the constitutionality of all government actions. Under these principles, plaintiffs lack standing either as employees or as municipal taxpayers. We therefore do not have jurisdiction to address the substantive Establishment Clause issues in this case, and I would not do so.

. Because an understanding of the nature of plaintiffs' claims is necessary to conduct a third-party standing analysis, it is of course proper to look at the merits portion of the teachers’ brief for that purpose.

. It is true that when the zone of interest test does apply, it is a prudential standing doctrine. But it is a misreading of Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1, 124 S.Ct. 2301, 159 L.Ed.2d 98 (2004), to treat the zone of interest test as the first step of a general prudential-standing three-part test. Instead Elk Grove merely lists the zone of interest test as one type of requirement "encompasse[d]” by prudential standing. 542 U.S. at 12, 124 S.Ct. 2301. Similarly, the mention of zone of interest in dictum in Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 475, 102 S.Ct. 752, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982), is part of a general preliminary overview unrelated to the issues presented in that case. Indeed, we recognized in Club Italia Soccer & Sports Organization, Inc. v. Charter Township of Shelby, Michigan, 470 F.3d 286, *664292 (6th Cir.2006), that the Supreme Court has applied the test "almost exclusively” to APA cases.
As recognized in Club Italia, however, it is true that the phrase "zone of interest” has been used in a few nonAPA contexts, such as some Dormant Commerce Clause cases. Such cases do not warrant setting up the zone of interest test as part of a generally applicable three-prong test for prudential standing. Indeed, such a construct would be incoherent, as any plaintiffs meeting the second prong, that the plaintiffs must assert their own legal rights and interests, would automatically meet the first prong, that plaintiffs be within the zone of interests. In Club Italia itself, while we termed the prudential test we applied (to a Due Process and Equal Protection challenge) a "zone of interest” test, we made clear that the test so applied was stricter than the zone of interest test that applies in an APA context. Id. at 293-94.