Court Opinion

ID: 9428674
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:25.017524+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:14.632545
License: Public Domain

Justice Powell,
concurring.
In claiming standing based on a deprivation of the benefits of an integrated community, the individual respondents alleged generally that they lived in the city of Richmond or in Henrico County. This is an area of roughly 269 square miles, inhabited in 1978 by about 390,000 persons. Accordingly, as the Court holds, it is at best implausible that discrimination within two adjacent apartment complexes could give rise to “distinct and palpable injury,” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U. S. 490, 501 (1975), throughout this vast area. See ante, at 377. This, to me, is the constitutional core of the Court’s decision. “Distinct and palpable” injury remains the minimal constitutional requirement for standing in a federal court.
Although I join the opinion of the Court, I write separately to emphasize my concern that the Art. Ill requirement of a genuine case or controversy not be deprived of all substance by meaningless pleading. Our prior cases have upheld standing, in cases of this kind, where the effects of discrimination were alleged to have occurred only within “a relatively compact neighborhood.” Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U. S., 91, 114 (1979). By implication *383we today reaffirm that limitation. See ante, at 377. I therefore am troubled, not by the opinion of the Court, but by the record on which that opinion is based. After nearly four years of litigation we know only what the individual respondents chose to plead in their complaint — that they live or lived within a territory of 269 square miles, within which petitioners allegedly committed discrete acts of housing discrimination. The allegation would have been equally informative if the area assigned had been the Commonwealth of Virginia.
In Warth, supra, at 501-502, we noted that a district court properly could deal with a vague averment as to standing by requiring amendment:
“[I]t is within the trial court’s power to allow or require the plaintiff to supply, by amendment to the complaint or by affidavits, further particularized allegations of fact deemed supportive of plaintiffs standing. If, after this opportunity, the plaintiffs standing does not adequately appear from all materials of record, the complaint must be dismissed.”
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure also permit a defendant to move for a more definite statement of the claims against him:
“If a pleading to which a responsive pleading is permitted is so vague or ambiguous that a party cannot reasonably be required to frame a responsive pleading, he may move for a more definite statement before interposing his responsive pleading. The motion shall point out the defects complained of and the details desired. If the motion is granted and the order of the court is not obeyed within 10-days after notice of the order or within such other time as the court may fix, the court may strike the pleading to which the motion was directed or make such order as it deems just.” Fed. Rule. Civ. Proc. 12(e).
*384See United States v. SCRAP, 412 U. S. 669, 689-690, n. 15 (1973) (Rule 12(e) motion would have been appropriate for defendants confronted with standing allegations “wholly barren of specifics”).
In this case neither the District Court nor apparently counsel for the parties took appropriate action to prevent the case from reaching an appellate court with only meaningless aver-ments concerning the disputed question of standing. One can well understand the impatience of the District Court that dismissed the complaint. Yet our cases have established the preconditions to dismissal because of excessive vagueness, e. g., Gladstone, Realtors, swpra, at 112-115, with regard to standing, and those conditions were not observed. The result is more than a little absurd: Both the Court of Appeals and this Court have been called upon to parse pleadings devoid of any hint of support or nonsupport for an allegation essential to jurisdiction.
Liberal pleading rules have both their merit and their price. This is a textbook case of a high price — in terms of a severe imposition on already overburdened federal courts as well as unjustified expense to the litigants. This also is a particularly disturbing example of lax pleading, for it threatens to trivialize what we repeatedly have recognized as a constitutional requirement of Art. Ill standing. See, e. g., Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U. S. 464, 472-473, 475-476 (1982); Warth, supra, at 498.
In any event, in the context of this case, as it reaches us after some four years of confusing and profitless litigation, it is not within our province to order a dismissal. I therefore join the opinion of the Court.