Court Opinion

ID: 9473381
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:28:31.051493+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:30.030865
License: Public Domain

WELLFORD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I would affirm the order granting defendants’ motion for summary judgment for the reasons stated by District Judge Bell, holding that plaintiff Smith has “not shown an actual injury as required” to establish standing.
Applying the standing criteria set forth above it is clear that Smith has not shown an actual injury as required by Gladstone Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, supra. Smith’s own statements demonstrate that he was not personally steered away from Cleveland Heights when he purchased housing. In addition, he admits that he has not lost any of the social benefits of interracial living in his neighborhood. Hence, he is prevented from establishing standing from some claimed injury which may or may not occur to other individuals living in the Cleveland Heights area. Therefore, the court concludes that the plaintiff lacks the requisite standing to bring this action.
The allegation of racial steering in Cleveland Heights was also the subject of a suit brought before the Honorable William K. Thomas. Heights Community Congress v. Hilltop Realty, Inc., C79422 (N.D.Ohio, December 31, 1980). In that action, Judge Thomas had to determine the standing of several individual plaintiffs. The court found that several individual plaintiffs lacked standing because they failed to demonstrate any actual injury. As with Smith, the individual plaintiffs which lacked standing in Heights Community Congress v. Hilltop Realty, Inc., supra, at 24-29, lived in an integrated neighborhood and were not personally deprived of the ability to interact with members of various racial backgrounds.
Order, Jt.App. 36, 37.
This court recently had occasion to consider a similar standing issue in Jaimes v. Toledo Metropolitan Housing Authority, 758 F.2d 1086 (6th Cir.1985), a case also involving claims under like provisions of the Fair Housing Act and the Civil Rights Act as here asserted. Because plaintiffs in Jaimes had failed to show personal injury in fact (failed to assert a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy), and failed to establish that the injury claimed could be directly attributed to the defendants’ actions or that the relief requested would likely redress the general injury claimed, they lacked standing to pursue certain alleged claims of racial discrimination. These same standing requirements apply to plaintiff Smith. See generally Allstate Insurance Co. v. Wayne County, 760 F.2d 689 (6th Cir.1985).
The majority first made reference to Allen v. Wright, — U.S. -, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556, reh’g denied, — U.S. -, 105 S.Ct. 51, 82 L.Ed.2d 942 (1984), as a basis for holding that plaintiff has standing. That case, however, held that parents of black school children in a broad class action alleging racially discriminatory action by the Internal Revenue Service did not have standing to challenge the procedures in question. The complaint in Allen was that the actions of the I.R.S. encouraged and supported the expansion of racially segregated private schools at the expense of desegregated public schools and barred their children’s opportunity for desegregated education in violation of the Constitution and civil rights laws. The Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals’ holding in Allen that plaintiffs’ had standing to pursue a claim of injury of *726“denigration they suffer as black parents and school children when their government graces with tax-exempt status educational institutions ... that treat members of their race as persons of lesser worth.” 656 F.2d 820, 827. It seems to me that Smith’s claims here of a stigma by reason of alleged governmental racial steering, which does not directly affect him or his neighborhood, is akin to the plaintiffs’ claim in Allen of denigration by reason of alleged governmental favoritism of nonsegregated education which did not directly impact upon plaintiffs' public schools.1 Allen is authority for affirmance, then, rather than for reversal.
“[Assertion of a right to a particular kind of Government conduct, which the Government has violated by acting differently, cannot alone satisfy the requirements of Article III without draining those requirements of meaning.”
104 S.Ct. at 3327 (quoting Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 483, 102 S.Ct. 752, 764, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982)).
The majority opinion cites Heckler v. Mathews, — U.S. -, 104 S.Ct. 1387, 79 L.Ed.2d 646 (1984), as holding that noneconomic “stigmatic” injury supports standing. It fails to note, however, that the later Allen decision makes it clear that such “noneconomic stigmatic” injury provides a basis for standing “only to those persons who are personally denied equal treatment by the challenged discriminatory conduct.” 104 S.Ct. at 3327 (emphasis added). Unlike the plaintiff in Heckler,2 Smith here admits that he was not the subject of the alleged discriminatory steering; he was not personally denied equal treatment insofar as housing is concerned. His claimed stigmatic injury pertains to ‘vindication of the value interests of [a] concerned bystander.” See United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S. 669, 687, 93 S.Ct. 2405, 2415, 37 L.Ed.2d 254 (1973). He suffers from an indirect, abstract type of injury caused by reason of the fact that other blacks allegedly were steered away from his city of residence. His deposition testimony indicated that he enjoyed on his block and on his street good “socialization” and interracial “communication.” He admitted, in effect, that he personally had not been deprived of this “socialization” between blacks and whites in the City of Cleveland Heights. He has not alleged such a personal stake in respect to the alleged steering controversy to satisfy standing under the Warth v. Seldin analysis, which was reiterated in Allen.
Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 409 U.S. 205, 93 S.Ct. 364, 34 L.Ed.2d 415 (1972), cited also by the majority, involved a Civil Rights Act of 1968, 42 U.S.C. § 3604, claim by two tenants that the owner of a single apartment unit had discriminated against nonwhite rental applicants resulting in a stigmatic type of injury to the plaintiffs as residents. This case seems distinguishable as bearing upon discriminatory acts in one apartment complex; the Court held that plaintiffs had standing “as tenants of the same housing unit that is charged with discrimination,” 409 U.S. at 209, 93 S.Ct. at 366 (emphasis added), who claimed the personal loss of “interracial associations.” 409 U.S. at 210, 93 S.Ct. at 367. Standing in Trafficante came only from the plaintiffs’ roles as tenants in the same housing unit where alleged racial discrimination existed. The case is therefore not authority to provide standing for Smith who admitted there was no problem with interracial association in his block and on his street in Cleveland Heights.
In addition, the majority cites Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972), as supporting *727its holding. Again, I see no valid basis in that decision for support of the majority view. That case held that plaintiffs had no standing to complain about governmental action which allegedly would “destroy or adversely affect the scenery, natural and historic objects and wildlife” of a given area, which action would “impair the enjoyment of the park.” 405 U.S. at 734, 92 S.Ct. at 1366. Despite the allegation of this “injury in fact,” which the court conceded may exist, it held:
But the “injury in fact” test requires more than an injury to a cognizable interest. It requires that the party seeking review be himself among the injured.
405 U.S. at 735, 92 S.Ct. at 1366. (emphasis added). Thus, despite the allegation of harm to its vital environmental interests in the area allegedly harmed, the Supreme Court denied the Sierra Club standing to sue.3 The Court cited Sierra Club as a basis for its “personal stake” standing requirement in Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. at 500, 95 S.Ct. at 2206.
Warth v. Seldin involved a claim of exclusion from a town of a discrete group based on alleged discrimination; but the complaint there, like that of Smith here, involved an allegation that “they [the plaintiffs] have been harmed indirectly by the exclusion of others.” 422 U.S. at 514, 95 S.Ct. at 2213. The attempt in this case to “raise putative rights of third parties,” allegedly steered from Cleveland Heights, should fail just as the efforts of the plaintiffs in Warth failed to meet well-settled standing criteria. Id.; See also HOPE, Inc. v. County of DuPage, 738 F.2d 797 (7th Cir.1984) (en banc).
Gladstone Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 99 S.Ct. 1601, 60 L.Ed.2d 66 (1979), also involved a claim under Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601-3631. There, two real estate firms and their employees were charged with racial steering in Bellwood, a suburb of Chicago. Four of the individual plaintiffs lived in the “target area” alleged to be the scene of the racial steering, and they claimed that the challenged practices deprived them of “benefits of living in an integrated society.” 441 U.S. at 111, 99 S.Ct. at 1613. Reading the complaint to apply only to the “carefully described neighborhood in Bellwood in which four of the individual [plaintiffs] reside,” it was held that this was sufficiently close to the situation in Trafficante to establish standing, 441 U.S. at 113, 99 S.Ct. at 1615, because it was a “relatively compact neighborhood.” Id. at 114, 99 S.Ct. at 1615. At the same time, the Court in Bellwood recognized that a “neighborhood” may be so “extensive,” or “lacking in shared social and commercial intercourse,” that there would be no “actual injury to a particular resident.”4 Id. Here again, I find that the facts as developed in this case are not comparable to Trafficante or Bellwood as to confer standing on Smith, who has admitted that the number of blacks with whom he seeks association has increased since the date of the alleged discriminatory actions of Cleveland Heights. Unlike the case in Bellwood, plaintiff could not identify any particular act of alleged steering whereby anyone he knew or with whom he wished to associate was directed away even from Cleveland Heights, much less from his block or his street or any compact neighborhood. He did not, furthermore, assert denial of the benefits of interracial association; he complained about alleged interference with his association with more *728black persons. This claim is different from the one made in Trafficante or Bellwood.5 See Munoz-Mendoza v. Pierce, 711 F.2d 421, 428 (1st Cir.1983).
As in Allstate Insurance Co. v. Wayne County, I also find Smith’s claim, under the circumstances, to fail for prudential reasons. It is simply too remote and too speculative. For the additional reasons stated, I respectfully dissent from the decision to reverse the judgment of the district court.

. Justice O'Connor characterizes the plaintiffs claim in Allen as a claim of "stigmatic injury." 104 S.Ct. at 3326. She held, however,
Neither do they have standing to litigate their claims based on the stigmatizing injury often caused by racial discrimination.
104 S.Ct. at 3327.

. Justice Brennan, author of the unanimous decision in Heckler v. Mathews, dissented in Allen.

. It should be noted that Justice Brennan, the author of Heckler v. Mathews, also dissented in Sierra Club.

. In Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 377, 102 S.Ct. 1114, 1123, 71 L.Ed.2d 214 (1982), Justice Brennan observed:
Our cases have upheld standing based on the effects of discrimination only within a relatively compact neighborhood. Bellwood, 441 U.S. at 114, 99 S.Ct. at 1615. We have not suggested that discrimination within a single housing complex might give rise to ‘distinct and palpable injury', Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. at 501, 95 S.Ct. at 2206, throughout a metropolitan area. (Emphasis added.)
Cleveland Heights clearly is a metropolitan area in which a party in plaintiffs position would not have standing to assert a claim regarding the city’s alleged practices.

. In Bellwood, the complaint was that defendants’ actions were segregating a neighborhood, bringing in more blacks.