Court Opinion

ID: 9499577
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:51:55.382207+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:35.475733
License: Public Domain

SYKES, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the plaintiff taxpayers lack standing to challenge the Boy Scout Jamboree statute, 10 U.S.C. § 2554. I do not agree, however, with several aspects of the majority’s standing analysis. My primary objection is to the assertion, made by this court in Freedom from Religion Found., Pic. v. Chao, 433 F.3d 989, 991 (7th Cir.2006), cert. granted sub nom. Hein v. Freedom from Religion Found., Inc., — U.S. -, 127 S.Ct. 722, 166 L.Ed.2d 559 (2006), and repeated here, maj. op. at 980, 982, that taxpayer standing doctrine is merely prudential; it is not. The Froth-ingham rule against taxpayer suits enforces the standing requirements of Article Ill’s case-or-controversy limitation on federal judicial power, a fundamental feature in the Constitution’s separation of powers. DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, — U.S. -, ---, 126 S.Ct. 1854, 1861-63, 164 L.Ed.2d 589 (2006); Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U.S. 589, 618-20, 108 S.Ct. 2562, 101 L.Ed.2d 520 (1988); Valley Forge Christian Coll. v. Americans United for Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 477-80, 102 S.Ct. 752, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982); United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 171-73, 94 S.Ct. 2940, 41 L.Ed.2d 678 (1974); Schlesinger v. Reservists Comm. to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 215, 94 S.Ct. 2925, 41 L.Ed.2d 706 (1974); Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 101-06, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968); Doremus v. Bd. of Educ., 342 U.S. 429, 433-34, 72 S.Ct. 394, 96 L.Ed. 475 (1952); Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 486-89, 43 S.Ct. 597, 67 L.Ed. 1078 (1923).
Frothingham involved a taxpayer’s due process challenge to the Maternity Act of 1921, which provided federal funding to the states for maternal and infant health. The Court held the taxpayer could not bring the claim, noting that a “party who invokes the power [of judicial review] 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 the result of its enforcement, and not merely that he suffers in some indefinite way in common with people generally.” Frothingham, 262 U.S. at 488, 43 S.Ct. 597. A taxpayer’s “interest in the moneys of the treasury ... is shared with millions of others, is comparatively minute and indeterminable, and the effect upon future taxation, of any payment out of the funds, so remote, fluctuating and uncertain, that no basis is afforded for an appeal to the preventive powers of a court of equity.” Id. at 487, 43 S.Ct. 597. The Court noted that if a single taxpayer may challenge a statute, “then every other taxpayer may do the same, not only in respect of the statute here under review, but also in respect of every other appropriation act and statute whose administration requires the outlay of public money, and whose validity may be questioned.” Id. To entertain such a suit, the Court held, would be “not to decide a judicial controversy, but to *989assume a position of authority over the governmental acts of another and coequal department, an authority which plainly we do not possess.” Id. at 489, 43 S.Ct. 597.
The Flast exception to the Frothingham rule — invoked by the plaintiff taxpayers here — likewise addresses constitutional standing requirements in the context of Establishment Clause challenges to exercises of the congressional taxing and spending power. Flast, 392 U.S. at 101-06, 88 S.Ct. 1942. Any question about the constitutional or prudential status of the Supreme Court’s taxpayer standing doctrine was resolved in Flast itself. Along the way to announcing a narrow exception to the Frothingham bar against taxpayer standing, the Supreme Court in Flast undertook a “fresh examination of the limitations upon standing to sue in a federal court and the application of those limitations to taxpayer suits” and grounded its “fresh examination” in Article III. Id. at 94, 88 S.Ct. 1942.
The Court said in Flast that the question whether plaintiffs may sue in federal court solely in their capacity as taxpayers “turns on whether they can demonstrate the necessary stake as taxpayers in the outcome of the litigation to satisfy Article III requirements.” Id. at 102, 88 S.Ct. 1942 (emphasis added). The Court held that “a taxpayer will have standing consistent with Article III to invoke federal judicial power when he alleges that congressional action under the taxing and spending clause is in derogation of those constitutional provisions which operate to restrict the exercise of the taxing and spending power.” Id. at 105-06, 88 S.Ct. 1942 (emphasis added). Because “the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment ... specifically limit[s] the taxing and spending power conferred by Art. I, § 8,” the Court held that taxpayers will have standing to assert Establishment Clause challenges “only [to] exercises of congressional power under the taxing and spending clause.” Id. at 102, 105, 88 S.Ct. 1942. The Flast plaintiffs sued to enjoin federal appropriations made to religious schools pursuant to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965; the Court found a “logical nexus” between their status as taxpayers and the claim that the Education Act was an unconstitutional exercise of the taxing and spending power in violation of the Establishment Clause and permitted the claim to proceed. Id. at 102-03, 88 S.Ct. 1942. But Flast left the Frothingham rule in place: The Court said the case-or-controversy requirements of Article III will not be satisfied “where a taxpayer seeks to employ a federal court as a forum in which to air his generalized grievances about the conduct of government or the allocation of power in the Federal System.” Id. at 106, 88 S.Ct. 1942.
In Richardson, the Court observed that Flast had clarified the question whether the Frothingham prohibition against taxpayer standing derived from the requirements of Article III or was merely a prudential policy judgment. Richardson, 418 U.S. at 172-73, 94 S.Ct. 2940. “When the Court addressed the question of standing in Flast, Mr. Chief Justice Warren traced what he described as the ‘confusion’ following Frothingham as to whether the Court had announced a constitutional doctrine barring suits by taxpayers challenging federal expenditures as unconstitutional or simply a policy rule of judicial self-restraint.” Richardson, 418 U.S. at 172, 94 S.Ct. 2940. The Richardson Court noted that Chief Justice Warren’s “fresh examination” of standing doctrine in Flast led to a constitutional holding on the question of taxpayer standing. Id. at 173, 94 S.Ct. 2940 (“[T]he [Flast ] Court emphasized that Art. Ill requirements are the threshold inquiry.”).
*990To the extent any ambiguity remained after Richardson, Valley Forge surely cleared it up. There, as the majority notes, the Court declined to expand Flast, holding that taxpayers did not have standing to challenge a federal agency’s decision to transfer an unused Army hospital to Valley Forge Christian College. The Court reasoned that the taxpayers’ claim did not fall within the narrow exception announced in Flast because they challenged an executive — not congressional — ■ action, and because the authorizing legislation, the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, was an exercise of the Property Clause power under Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2, not an exercise of the taxing and spending power under Article I, Section 8. Valley Forge, 454 U.S. at 479-80, 102 S.Ct. 752.
Valley Forge could not have been clearer about the foundations of the Court’s taxpayer standing doctrine. The Court held that although “[t]he term ‘standing’ subsumes a blend of constitutional requirements and prudential considerations,” the “irreducible minimum” of Article III standing “requires the party who invokes the court’s authority to show that he personally has suffered some actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant, ... and that the injury fairly can be traced to the challenged action and is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision.” Id. at 471-72, 102 S.Ct. 752 (citations and quotations omitted). Quoting Frothingham, the Court reaffirmed that taxpayers generally cannot establish these mínimums because “[a]ny tangible effect of the challenged statute on the plaintiffs tax burden [is] ‘remote, fluctuating and uncertain,’ ” and the asserted injury is not distinct and particularized but instead is shared “ ‘in common with people generally.’ ” Id. at 477, 102 S.Ct. 752 (quoting Frothingham, 262 U.S. at 487-88, 43 S.Ct. 597). Taxpayers seeking to establish standing under Flast must assert an injury from a specific congressional exercise of the Article I, Section 8 taxing and spending power alleged to be in violation of the Establishment Clause.
Recognizing Flast’s potential to imper-missibly enlarge the judicial role if extended beyond its terms, the Court in Valley Forge cautioned that Flast should not be understood to have relaxed the injury-in-fact and redressability requirements of constitutional standing in Establishment Clause cases and insisted that the exception it created be applied with “rigor.” Id. at 481, 488-90, 102 S.Ct. 752. Indeed, the Court has strictly limited the reach of Flast, confining it to Establishment Clause claims, see DaimlerChrysler, 126 S.Ct. at 1864, and actions to enjoin a direct disbursement of public funds pursuant to a specific congressional appropriation, see Bowen, 487 U.S. at 618, 108 S.Ct. 2562 (“[W]e have consistently adhered to Flast and the narrow exception it created to the general rule against taxpayer standing in Frothingham.”)-, see also Freedom from Religion, 433 F.3d at 998 (Ripple, J., dissenting) (Flast “survives as a narrow exception to ... [the] ban on generalized grievances”; expanding Flast to allow taxpayers to challenge an executive branch activity conducted with general appropriation funds “cuts the concept of taxpayer standing loose from its moorings.”); Laskowski v. Spellings, 443 F.3d 930, 939 (7th Cir.2006) (Sykes, J., dissenting) (“The Supreme Court has steadfastly refused to expand Flast and has never recognized private party repayment to the Treasury as an appropriate remedy for an Establishment Clause violation in a suit based on taxpayer standing.”).
If the rule against taxpayer standing derives from the requirements of Article III (and it does), its exception cannot be mere prudential judicial policy:
*991[NJeither the counsels of prudence nor the policies implicit in the “case or controversy” requirement should be mistaken for the rigorous Art. Ill requirements themselves. Satisfaction of the former cannot substitute for a demonstration of “ ‘distinct and palpable injury1 ... that is likely to be redressed if the requested relief is granted.” That requirement states a limitation on judicial power, not merely a factor to be balanced in the weighing of so-called “prudential” considerations.
Valley Forge, 454 U.S. at 475, 102 S.Ct. 752 (citations omitted).
Curiously, my colleagues cite but do not discuss the Supreme Court’s most recent statement on taxpayer standing, last term’s unanimous opinion in Daimler-Chrysler. There, the Court reaffirmed the Frothingham bar against taxpayer standing and declined to extend Flast to Commerce Clause claims. DaimlerChrysler, 126 S.Ct. at 1864-65. Nothing in Daimler-Chrysler even remotely hints that the Court now considers taxpayer standing doctrine to be rooted in prudential policy considerations; to the contrary, the Court’s opinion focused on the requirements of Article III and the ease-or-controversy limitation on federal judicial power. Indeed, the Court referred to the Frothingham rule as “the Article III prohibition on taxpayer suits.” Id. at 1865.
So this court was simply wrong to assert in Freedom from Religion that Frothing-ham and Flast “rested not on Article III ... but rather on what have come to be called the ‘prudential’ principles of standing,” which “like other common law principles, are protean and mutable.” Freedom from Religion, 433 F.3d at 991-92. This mischaracterization of taxpayer standing doctrine permitted the Freedom from Religion majority to avoid a “rigorous” adherence to the limits of Flast, to dispense with the requirement of a specific congressional disbursement under the taxing and spending power, and to allow taxpayers to challenge a wholly executive-branch activity supported by general appropriations. Id. at 996-97. As Judge Ripple noted in dissent, this was a “dramatic expansion of current standing doctrine,” encompassing an activity of government not at all like the congressional-grant programs at issue in Flast and Bowen — the only category of taxpayer “injury” that the Supreme Court has recognized as sufficient to allow a taxpayer Establishment Clause claim to proceed. Id. at 997.
It is true that the logic of Flast is difficult to reconcile with the basic requirements of Article III, see Freedom From Religion Found., Inc. v. Chao, 447 F.3d 988, 988-90 (Flaum, C.J., concurring in denial of rehearing en banc) (Easterbrook, J., concurring in denial of rehearing en banc); as the majority notes, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Freedom from Religion and may bring greater clarity to this area of justiciability law. But we are not at liberty to recast a constitutional doctrine as a prudential one. We should not perpetuate the underlying doctrinal error of Freedom from Religion here.
Relatedly, I cannot agree with the majority’s assertion that “no party” in Freedom from Religion “is asking the Supreme Court to expand taxpayer standing.” Maj. op. at 981 n. 1. To the contrary, because Freedom from Religion moved the boundaries of current taxpayer standing doctrine, the plaintiffs there, in defending this court’s decision, are necessarily asking the Supreme Court to expand taxpayer standing.
The majority observes that the Jamboree statute, together with the other statutory sources of the military’s authority to lend property and provide logistical support to the Jamboree, “do not establish the kind of ‘classic’ taxing and spending pro*992gram that the Court evaluated in Flast or Bowen.” Maj. op. at 985. I agree. But the same can be said about the presidential conferences at issue in Freedom from Religion. That case, like this one, challenges executive branch activity supported by general appropriations.
The majority rejects the argument that taxpayers will have standing under Flast only where the challenged statute “authorize[s] either a grant or direct subsidy” of the type at issue in Bowen and in Flast itself. Maj. op. at 985. “[T]he fact that the support given to the BSA is ‘in kind’ rather than by cash or check,” the majority states, “cannot be the dividing line. Building a church and providing all of its supplies must be equally offensive to the Establishment Clause as giving the church the money to do the construction and purchase of supplies itself.” Id. at 985. Yet the majority relies on this distinction to support the conclusion that the plaintiffs here do not have standing: “Although some support of the organization does occur, the [Jamboree] statute does not turn money or services over to BSA to handle any way it wants.” Id. at 986. Again, this logical tension may be inherent in Flast’s exception to Frothingham’s rule, see Freedom From Religion, 447 F.3d at 990 (Easterbrook, J., concurring in denial of rehearing en banc); the Supreme Court will provide guidance soon.
In the meantime, the better course is to follow the admonition in Valley Forge, apply the Flast exception to the Froth-ingham rule with “rigor,” and limit Flast’s reach to factually similar claims until the Supreme Court tells us otherwise. That means no standing here, but for a threshold reason rejected by the majority: because the Jamboree statute does not establish a congressional grant or direct appropriation program of the type at issue in Flast and Bowen. It is, as the majority notes, a statute about the military’s use and disposition of its land and equipment, and the assignment, training, and recruitment of soldiers. Maj. op. at 986. I fully agree with the majority’s conclusion that the Jamboree statute rests primarily on the Military Clauses, Article I, Section 8, Clauses 12-14, and the Property Clause, Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2, and for this (additional) reason, the case resembles Valley Forge rather than Flast and Bowen.
I would also note that redressability is missing here. On appeal, the plaintiffs have focused their arguments on defending the district court’s decision on standing and its injunction against the operation of the Jamboree statute. The district court rejected the plaintiffs’ challenge to certain other statutes authorizing the military to lend property and provide logistical support to the Jamboree, and they have apparently accepted that ruling. But the fact that the military has other statutory authority to assist the Jamboree, see 10 U.S.C. §§ 2012, 2667, maj. op. at 984-85, and was doing so for thirty-five years prior to the enactment of the Jamboree statute, undermines any argument that the “injury” from the statute is redressable. An injunction against § 2554 would not prevent the military from opening Fort A.P. Hill to the Boy Scouts and providing equipment and logistical support to the Jamboree under statutory authority upheld by the district court and not at issue here.
This brings me to my final point. The district court held that § 2554 violated the Establishment Clause and enjoined “the U.S. Secretary of Defense and his officers, agents, servants, employees and attorneys ... from providing any aid to the Boy Scouts of America pursuant to 10 U.S.C. § 2554, with the sole exception of aid provided or to be provided in support of the 2005 Jamboree that will take place from *993July 25 through August S, 2005.” (Emphasis added.) This order was dated June 22, 2005, and it notes that “[t]he injunction the plaintiffs are seeking specifically excludes the upcoming 2005 Jamboree.” Whether the plaintiffs’ forbearance in this regard was the product of generosity, the spirit of compromise, or a desire to avoid the public relations fallout that would have attended their eleventh-hour scuttling of the 2005 Jamboree (if that’s what would have occurred), their conduct undermines any claim that they were suffering a grave constitutional injury. Constitutional litigation is legitimate only where there is a real injury and a legal remedy available to redress it. A willingness to postpone the remedy suggests that the plaintiffs’ injury was not real but only a legal fiction to get their Establishment Clause claim before the court. But “Article III ... is not merely a troublesome hurdle to be overcome if possible so as to reach the ‘merits’ of a lawsuit which a party desires to have adjudicated; it is a part of the basic charter promulgated by the Framers.” Valley Forge, 454 U.S. at 476, 102 S.Ct. 752.
With these points of departure, I respectfully concur.