Court Opinion

ID: 9789689
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 01:40:06.330121+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:34:07.609405
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Associate Chief Justice,
dissenting:
I dissent. This case is here on an original petition for an extraordinary writ. The Court holds that the Utah Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (Society) has standing to attack the district court’s order closing Ronald Lafferty’s pretrial competency hearings and sealing the transcripts of those hearings. The Court also holds that the Society may assert a right of access to transcripts of Ronald Lafferty’s criminal competency proceedings when the case goes back to the trial court and that the closure of the hearings and the sealing of the transcripts was unlawful because the trial court failed to hold a hearing and to make findings of fact supporting the closure and the sealing.
I submit the Society has no standing in this Court and that the majority opinion is contrary to our case law. Furthermore, I believe that this Court errs in addressing the substantive issue of access since neither the State nor Ronald Lafferty, the real parties in interest, has been made a party to the proceedings in this Court.1 Moreover, the Society has not even brought before this Court the trial court’s memorandum opinion which was filed in support of its rulings on closure and confidentiality. We do not know, therefore, what the reasons were for the ruling of a very seasoned and able trial judge.2
I.
Standing is a jurisprudential doctrine, intended to focus judicial analysis on concrete disputes by requiring that those who seek to litigate a dispute have a direct connection with the dispute to be resolved. Standing doctrine ensures that real, not hypothetical, disputes are adjudicated by parties who have been injuriously affected by the allegedly illegal acts of others. As an academic matter, the substantive issue presented in this case is important; but it is not within judicial power to adjudicate an issue when the petitioner suffers no injury and complains only of an abstract injury. In my view, the conclusion is irresistible that the Society asserts only an abstract, not a real, injury to the rights of access claimed under the First Amendment.
Nothing in the record establishes that any of the individual newsmen who have sought to intervene even attempted to attend the competency hearings or to obtain access to the transcripts of the hearings.3 *1181Appropriately, the majority recognizes that the newsmen do not have standing. The right of access the newsmen assert is wholly hypothetical, and plainly not justiciable. Nor did KUTV, Inc., assert any right of access of its own to the transcripts or to the hearings. It, too, lacks standing.
The majority explains in footnote 11 that KUTV has standing as a result of the fact that the Society’s motion in the trial court to release the transcript was made “on behalf of [the Society], KSL Television, KTVX Television, KUTV Television, ... and other members of the Society_” But the majority disregards the facts that at the time of the motion none of these entities, including KUTV, was a party to the motion and that the motion was brought solely by the Society. That the Society was the only real party to the motion is indicated by the language of the motion: “[T]he Society of Professional Journalists, Utah Chapter, hereby petitions the Court to issue an extraordinary writ....”
Earlier in its opinion, the majority also states, apparently in support of this same conclusion, that “[i]n addition to the Society, the attorney [representing the Society] also represented KUTV and other parties not present here in moving for the release of the transcripts.” In fact, the motion to release the transcripts is signed by Patrick Shea, as “Attorney for Utah Society of Professional Journalists.” There is no indication in the motion or elsewhere that Mr. Shea represented KUTV or any of the Society’s other members individually. In short, KUTV did nothing on its own to assert whatever rights it may have had.
The fact that the Society was acting “on behalf’ of its members did not create standing for the Society or for its individual members. Furthermore, if KUTV has standing simply because the Society’s motion stated that it was acting “on behalf” of KUTV and other members of the Society, the three individual newsmen who sought to intervene must also have standing for the same reason; yet the majority holds that they do not.
Jenkins v. Swan, 675 P.2d 1145 (Utah 1983), and Kennecott Corp. v. Salt Lake County, 702 P.2d 451 (Utah 1985), provide no basis for justifying the Society’s standing to bring this lawsuit. Since no news-person sought access to, or was excluded from, the hearing or was denied access to the transcript, none had a right violated. In Jenkins, we stated, “In the absence of [a] ... personal adverse impact, [the plaintiff] lack[ed] standing to raise the issue of the constitutionality of the statute.” Jenkins, 675 P.2d at 1151. The broader “public issue” standing doctrine established by Jenkins and Kennecott is not applicable here. Jenkins and Kennecott contemplate that the “public issue” doctrine should be available when no one is able to show a direct adverse impact on herself or himself and no other plaintiff exists who would be more directly affected by the alleged unlawful act. In Jenkins, the Court declared: “The Court will deny standing when a plaintiff does not satisfy the first requirement of the analysis” (i.e., “being adversely affected by government actions”) if the issue can be raised by someone with a more direct interest in the issue. Id. at 1150. See also Terracor v. Utah Board of State Lands, 716 P.2d 796, 799 (Utah 1986). We also stated in Jenkins that “despite our recognition of this Court’s power to ‘grant standing where matters of great public interest and societal impact are concerned,’ [we] will not readily relieve a plaintiff of the salutory requirement of showing a real and personal interest in the dispute.” Jenkins, 675 P.2d at 1150.
The Society of Professional Journalists has an even weaker position than the newsmen and KUTV for asserting standing. The Society is not a newsgathering organization. Nevertheless, an association may assert the rights of its members if a two-pronged test is met: “(i) the individual members of the association have standing to sue; and (ii) ‘the nature of the claim and of the relief sought does not make the individual participation of each injured party indispensable to the proper resolution of the cause....’” Utah Restaurant Association v. Davis County Board of Health, 709 P.2d 1159, 1163 (Utah 1985) (emphasis *1182added) (quoting Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 511, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2211, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975)). Thus, an association may have standing to represent the rights of its individual members if “the individual members have standing to sue.” Since the Society’s members, including KUTV, did nothing to assert those rights, neither the Society nor KUTV has standing to challenge the trial court’s orders. Curiously, the majority specifically holds to that effect with regard to the three newsmen who sought to intervene.
Nevertheless, the majority seeks to avoid the hurdle posed by Utah Restaurant by asserting:
Under Utah Restaurant, then, we begin by analyzing the standing of the members of the Society. Here, any member of the Society, like any member of the public, had the right to appear before the district court and assert a claim of access to the court proceedings, to the transcripts, and to the memorandum decision. Had any individual done so, he or she would have had standing to challenge the closure and sealing.
(Emphasis added.)
The majority’s argument is that the Society’s standing is predicated on the hypothetical proposition of what its members could have done to obtain standing, even though they did nothing in that regard. The contention that KUTV attempted to assert its rights is just plainly not supported by the record, as indicated above. The majority’s argument simply turns standing doctrine on its head and gives the association greater standing than its members.
Utah Restaurant Association was based on the United States Supreme Court case of Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975), which held that for an association to assert the rights of its individual members, “[t]he association must allege that its members, or any one of them, are suffering immediate or threatened injury as a result of the challenged action of the sort that would make out a justiciable case had the members themselves brought suit,” id. at 511, 95 S.Ct. at 2211 (citations omitted), and the association must show “that one or more of its members are injured.” Id. at 515, 95 S.Ct. at 2213. The Court emphasized that the legal basis for standing is real injury to one’s legal rights. An association called Home Builders sought prospective relief against a zoning ordinance that allegedly deprived “some of its members of ‘substantial business opportunities and profits.’ ” Seldin, 422 U.S. at 515, 95 S.Ct. at 2213 (citations omitted). The Supreme Court denied standing. “The complaint refer[red] to no specific project of any of its members that is currently precluded either by the ordinance or by respondents’ action in enforcing it.” Id. at 516, 95 S.Ct. at 2214. In other words, an association must assert actual specific injuries to one or more of its members, rather than the mere possibility of injury to “some of its members.” That has not been done in the instant case.
Nor can I agree that the second prong of Utah Restaurant has been met here. Not only must an association allege specific injuries to its individual members in order to satisfy the first requirement of Utah Restaurant, but an evaluation of those injuries is necessary for a court to determine if “individual participation of each injured party is indispensible to proper resolution of the cause,” under the second associational standing requirement. For example, individual participation may be required if conflicts of interest exist between the members of an association. See 13 Wright, Miller & Cooper, Federal Practice and Procedure: Jurisdiction 2d § 3531.9, at 617 (1984). Because the Society has asserted no specific injury to any of its members, no such determination can even be attempted in this case.
II.
Furthermore, I submit that the majority errs in adjudicating the rights of other parties who are not even before this Court. The Court holds that there is a public right of access to Lafferty’s competency hearings without either Lafferty or the State having been made a party to this adjudica*1183tion. It is not a valid answer to say that Lafferty and the State can enter the case when the district court takes this matter up again, if in fact it does. That is a classic case of locking the bam door too late. Petitioners’ failure to name State and Laf-ferty as parties defendant should be enough by itself to prevent this Court from adjudicating petitioners’ claim of a public right of access to the competency hearing and the transcripts. Both Lafferty and the State have undeniable interests in this case, yet they are strangers to the adjudication. Lafferty’s Sixth Amendment interest may, perhaps, be overborne by the First Amendment interest of the press, but the antecedent question, whether there is a First Amendment right of access in a competency hearing in the first place, is an issue to which he has a basic right to be heard. It is not just the right of the press that is at stake here; it is also the fundamental right of Lafferty and the State to be heard on a matter of great consequence to them, to the courts, and to society. The majority simply sweeps aside the interests of these parties and decides a fundamental constitutional issue as if their absence were wholly immaterial.
III.
I believe that the majority opinion bends the mies on standing to the breaking point and adjudicates a critical constitutional issue without having before the Court either of the central parties to the case and without bothering to inform itself why an able and experienced trial judge did what he did in full light of Kearns-Tribune v. Lewis, 685 P.2d 515 (Utah 1984).
I would dismiss the petition for an extraordinary writ.
HALL, C.J., concurs in the dissenting opinion of STEWART, J.

. The Attorney General represented the respondent trial judge in the proceedings before this Court. Although the Attorney General also represents the State in its capacity as a party to the proceedings in the trial court, he should have been made a party to the independent proceedings in this Court because the State has a direct stake in the outcome.

. Clearly, petitioners should have provided for the transmission of that document to this Court.

. There is no substantial issue of mootness in this case, as the majority holds. See generally Wickham v. Fisher, 629 P.2d 896 (Utah 1981).