Court Opinion

ID: 9482523
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:52:46.971754+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:02.808118
License: Public Domain

SENTELLE, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Though I join in affirming the dismissal of the present action, I do not hold Judge Henderson’s view that the Court of International Trade (“CIT”) has exclusive jurisdiction. On this issue I share the view of the District Court. I also share the District Court’s belief that this case is not justiciable, but on the ground that the “human rights” organizations and the labor unions lack standing.
I. DISTRICT COURT’S JURISDICTION
The argument for exclusive jurisdiction in the CIT rests on 28 U.S.C. § 1581(i)(2), which grants that court “exclusive jurisdiction of any civil action commenced against the United States, its agencies, or its officers that arises out of any law of the United States providing for ... (2) tariffs, duties, fees, or other taxes on the importation of merchandise for reasons other than the raising of revenue.” Id. (emphasis added). As the District Court noted, “this action does not appear to arise out of a law of the United States ‘providing for ’ ” the charges enumerated in § 1581(i)(2). International Labor Rights Educ. & Research Fund v. Bush, 752 F.Supp. 490, 491 (D.D.C.1990). The General System of Preferences (“GSP”), out of which this action arises, authorizes the grant of duty-free status to goods of certain countries; but, it does not “provide for" such duty or any of the other related payments listed in 28 *749U.S.C. § 1581(i)(2). As the District Court noted, “these duties are ‘provided for’ ... not by the GSP but by other statutes.” 752 F.Supp. at 492.
I do not read K Mart Corp. v. Cartier, Inc., 485 U.S. 176, 108 S.Ct. 950, 99 L.Ed.2d 151 (1988), as compelling any other than a literal reading of the words of § 1581(i)(2). True, in that case the Supreme Court did state that § 1581(i)(2) granted the CIT “exclusive jurisdiction over suits relating to ‘tariffs, duties, fees, or other taxes ... Id. at 188, 108 S.Ct. at 959 (emphasis added; quoting 28 U.S.C. § 1581(i)(2)). However, that statement is literally correct whether we apply to the statute the District Court’s plain meaning interpretation or a broader construction. The Supreme Court, in the quoted dicta, does not appear to have been setting limitations on the meaning of the phrase “providing for,” nor furnishing synonyms. Instead, the Supreme Court’s concern in K Mart was whether a Treasury Department regulation permitting importation of certain “gray market goods” fell within the jurisdiction of the CIT under 28 U.S.C. § 1581(i)(3), or of a District Court under either general federal question jurisdiction, 28 U.S.C. § 1331, or trademark jurisdiction, 28 U.S.C. § 1338(a). K Mart, 485 U.S. at 182-84, 108 S.Ct. at 956-57. The side reference to suits “relating to” tariffs and so forth under § 1581(i)(2) was offered by the Court simply by way of an example of the CIT’s exclusive jurisdiction. Clearly, the Court did not purport to be delimiting that jurisdiction. Here we must, and I do not think the words “providing for” can bear the interpretation that Congress intended to grant exclusive jurisdiction over all cases “relating to” the object of that grammatical phrase.
I do not read the decisions of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit as being to the contrary. In North American Foreign Trading Corp. v. United States, 783 F.2d 1031 (Fed.Cir.1986), that circuit reviewed a decision of the CIT upholding the imposition of tariffs against a defense based on the GSP. Such a case, indeed, arises out of a “law of the United States providing for ...” tariffs and duties, or certainly out of “administration and enforcement with respect to the matters referred to in [§ 1581(i) ].” 28 U.S.C. § 1581(i)(4). Likewise, in Madison Galleries, Ltd. v. United States, 870 F.2d 627 (Fed.Cir.1989), the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision of the CIT, Madison Galleries, Ltd. v. United States, 12 C.I.T. 485, 688 F.Supp. 1544 (1988), which had upheld a Customs Service classification of imported goods as not being the product of a beneficiary developing country within the meaning of the GSP. Again, that action did arise out of the law that imposed (provided for) the duty; it was only the defense that arose out of the GSP. Madison Galleries, 870 F.2d at 629-31. See also Azteca Milling Co. v. United States, 890 F.2d 1150, 1150-51 (Fed.Cir.1989) (as in Madison Galleries, defense based on GSP). In each of those cases, therefore, the underlying action did in fact arise out of the statute imposing (providing for) the tariff or duty. It was only the defense that arguably arose out of the GSP. In the present case, the asserted action arises, if at all, out of the GSP, not out of the law providing for the duty.
In short, though I do not think the issue free from doubt, I would conclude that the District Court did not err in its determination that the present action was outside the exclusive jurisdiction of the CIT. I would affirm the action of the District Court, but on a different basis. Regardless of whether the District Court is correct in its decision that the complaint states no justiciable claim (and it may well be correct), appellants have no standing under Article III of the Constitution to assert such a claim.
II. STANDING
Appellants fall into two groups: labor unions and “human rights” organizations. To invoke the Article III powers of the District Court, and derivatively succeed in this appeal, at least one of those groups must demonstrate standing in a constitutional sense. To do so, such group must allege and prove three elements: (1) personal injury; (2) fairly traceable to the defendants’ allegedly unlawful conduct; *750and (3) likely to be redressed by the requested relief. Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 3324, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984). For the reasons more fully set forth below, neither group succeeds.

A. The “Human Rights” Organizations

Twelve of the appellant organizations describe themselves as “human rights” organizations.1 These organizations fail to cross even the first threshold of standing. They have alleged no personal injury. To meet this requirement of Article III standing, an organization would have to allege an injury that is distinct, palpable and personal to the plaintiff. Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 100, 99 S.Ct. 1601, 1608, 60 L.Ed.2d 66 (1979). The “human rights” appellants alleged low living standards and poor working conditions among foreign workers abroad as injury resulting from the allegedly unlawful implementation of the GSP by the appellee officials. While I do not doubt the sincerity of the organizations in asserting their interest in these alleged problems, such an interest is insufficient to afford Article III standing. As we have noted before, a “sincere, vigorous interest in the action challenged, or in provisions of law allegedly violated, will not do to establish standing if the party’s interest is purely ideological, uncoupled from any injury in fact.” Capital Legal Foundation v. Commodity Credit Corp., 711 F.2d 253, 258 (D.C.Cir.1983). The alleged injury here simply did not happen to the appellant organizations or their members; it happened, if at all, to someone else. To have standing to bring any claim, a party must sustain injury in fact. See, e.g., DKT Memorial Fund, Ltd., Inc. v. Agency for International Development, 887 F.2d 275, 297 (D.C.Cir.1989).
I do not, of course, mean to imply that the allegations of injury stated by these organizations meet the causation and re-dressability tests. It certainly is not plain from the face of the complaint that the alleged failure of the agencies to enforce the GSP caused poverty and poor working conditions in “developing countries,” or that those conditions would be alleviated by the enforcement of the GSP. However, I do not address those questions as the “human rights” organizations do not even meet the first criterion for bringing them before us.

B. The Labor Organizations

The labor organizations2 come one step closer to achieving standing, but only one step. So far as alleging injury is concerned, these organizations do so. They allege that their members have suffered injury in fact from international competition in textiles and manufacturing goods. When an organization’s members have suffered injury in an organizationally related matter, then the organization derivatively has met the element of standing, and generally in its own right. Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 379, 102 S.Ct. 1114, 1124, 71 L.Ed.2d 214 (1982).
However, the unions do not make it past the other standing thresholds. Any causal connection between the grant of beneficiary developing country status to the countries in question and the loss of jobs is at best a tenuous one. And there is no possibility that the unions have crossed the *751third step. That is, they have not established the redressability of the alleged injury in the current lawsuit.
The alleged injury is that union members have lost jobs. The relief prayed is that the appellees be compelled to apply the GSP statute in a manner “consistent with the intent of Congress.” Brief for Appellants at 43. Should the appellees apply the statute in some manner dictated precisely by appellants, there is still no guarantee, nor even strong reason to believe, that the members of the unions will regain their prior employment. Indeed, it may be that the working conditions in the foreign countries will improve as prayed by the “human rights” organizations. It may be that such improvement will be sufficiently costly that some of the members of the labor groups regain jobs as a result of less threatening competition from overseas, or it may not. It may be that no one will benefit, as the foreign competition will not make any changes and yet domestic producers will still not rehire union labor. These are simply a few of the limitless possibilities.
The attenuation of the injury alleged and the official action challenged by labor appellants is closely analogous to that of the petitioners in Allen v. Wright itself. In that case, the petitioners were parents of black public school children who alleged that the IRS unconstitutionally granted tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory private schools. Neither the petitioners nor their children had applied for admission to the schools whose exemptions they sought to end. Their alleged injury was that the children’s ability to receive education in a racially integrated school had been diminished in that without the tax exemption of the private schools, it was less likely that white persons would have taken their children out of the public schools. In rejecting that theory of standing, the Supreme Court treated the problem in terms of causation rather than re-dressability, holding that “the line of causation between that conduct and desegregation of respondents’ schools is attenuated at best.” 468 U.S. at 757, 104 S.Ct. at 3328. The Court went on to note that “from the perspective of the IRS, the injury to respondents is highly indirect and ‘results from the independent action of some third party not before the court.’ ” Id. (quoting Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U.S. 26, 42, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 1926, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976)).
As we noted in Fulani v. Brady, 935 F.2d 1324 (D.C.Cir.1991), Article III standing is absent where “the presence of intervening factors” interrupts the chain of traceability and redressability. Id. at 1330. That is, there is generally no standing “where ‘the plaintiff seeks to change the defendant’s behavior only as a means to alter the conduct of a third party, not before the court, who is the direct cause of the plaintiff’s injury.’ ” Id. (quoting Common Cause v. Department of Energy, 702 F.2d 245, 251 (D.C.Cir.1983)). In Fulani, the appellant sought to have the Court order the Secretary of the Treasury to remove the tax-exempt status of the Commission for the Presidential Debates, in the hope that that would influence the Commission to permit her participation in its presentations. In Common Cause, a consumer organization sought an injunction directing the government to develop an energy conservation plan in the hope of leveraging third-party fuel suppliers into making pricing and allocation decisions more consistent with the organization’s view of the public interest. Neither of these attempts to influence third-party action was within Article III concepts of causation and redressa-bility. Neither is the attempt in the present case. Appellants in Fulani and Common Cause lacked standing — so do the labor organizations now before the Court.
Chief Judge Mikva’s arguments to the contrary are well worded, but hardly convincing. He may well be correct that “Congress’s intentions about causation and re-dressability must be deferred to unless they are plainly irrational.” Dissent at 756. However, since Congress has expressed no such intention about causation and redressability relevant to the question before us, the statement does not affect my resolution. Congress has expressed its *752intention that beneficiary developing countries should not receive the statutory preferences under certain circumstances. This does not compel, or even suggest, a congressional expression of intention that labor unions have standing to sue the officials responsible for the GSP to compel a particular line of action, or for any other relief. Chief Judge Mikva to the contrary notwithstanding, any connection between the actions of appellees in this case and wage concessions, real or potential, by the labor unions remains, in my view, tenuous, and I have read no congressional pronouncement to the contrary.
It would be as accurate to say that the Supreme Court, in Allen v. Wright, ignored the dictates of the Constitution by not affording standing to the petitioners there as it is to charge that I have ignored congressional intent in not finding standing here.
III. CONCLUSION
For the reasons set forth above, I conclude that the organizations lack standing. For that reason, I join in the conclusion that the District Court’s dismissal must be affirmed.

. International Labor Rights Education and Research Fund; Human Rights Watch; North American Coalition for Human Rights in Korea; Lawyers Committee for Human Rights; Council on Hemispheric Affairs; Institute for Policy Studies; Asia Resource Center; Washington Office on Haiti; Massachusetts Labor Committee in Support of Democracy, Human Rights and Non-Intervention in Central America; American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; Co-lumban Fathers Justice and Peace Office; and Bread for the World.

. American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations; International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine, and Furniture Workers; International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers; United Steelworkers of America; International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen's Union; International Ladies Garment Workers Union; Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union; Communication Workers of America; International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers; and United Electrical Workers.