Court Opinion

ID: 9464792
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:42:35.653782+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:49.055956
License: Public Domain

McGOWAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring separately:
I concur in affirming the District Court’s dismissal of the complaint, and I am in agreement with Judge Tamm’s conclusions as to the lack of appellants’ standing except as they extend to appellant Kaplan. As Judge Tamm’s opinion correctly asserts, the allegations by appellants Kaplan and Watkins are critical to the further maintenance of this suit, which involves essentially the question of whether the United States Government can continue a program in which'some of our citizens can readily obtain permission from Saudi Arabia to enter that country for employment under that program, and some cannot. But the answer to that question turns upon the faithfulness and efficacy with which the Executive Branch enforces the Presidential directive of 1975; and the ultimate crunch in that enforcement comes when and if the Saudi government denies a visa and the State Department undertakes, as it is enjoined to do by the Presidential command, to reverse that action.
Watkins alleges only that he chose to forego applying for an advertised job because of the query contained in the application form with respect to his religion. This failure to pursue the matter of employment at all seems to me to leave Watkins with none of the elements necessary to standing to complain in court of the actions of these appellees. His wholly negative course of action gave the Presidential directive no chance whatever to be operative.
Kaplan, howéver, asserts that he did in fact seek a job from the Mid-Western University Consortium for International Activities, and believes that his failure to get one was based solely on his religion. To this extent he is alleging a federal contractor’s violation of the Presidential directive short of the visa stage, and that is an injury in fact imposed contrary to the terms of the directive. But a precondition of his resort to judicial relief based on that allegation would be the prior invocation of aid from the proper authorities in the Executive Branch charged with the enforcement of the directive. Without notice and some opportunity for administrative redress having been provided in the first instance to those authorities, certainly the District Court cannot be called upon to provide the extraordinary remedies of declaratory judgment, injunction, and mandamus against high-ranking officers of the Government engaged in the conduct of our foreign relations. See Henkin, Is There a “Political Question’’ Doctrine? 85 Yale L.J. 597, 617-23 (1976).
*948Thus, if Kaplan’s allegations are assumed to be capable of being proved in full, the relief he seeks based upon that proof could not properly be given. In these circumstances it is enough for us to note that the complaint is, as to Kaplan, wanting in equity, and to sustain its dismissal on that ground.