Court Opinion

ID: 9462836
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:51:26.029557+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:48.645689
License: Public Domain

OAKES, Circuit Judge,
dissenting, with whom IRVING R. KAUFMAN, Chief Judge, and FEINBERG and GURFEIN, Circuit Judges, concur:
In this suit, residents of lower-income, predominantly black housing areas in Westchester County, New York, have alleged that federal grants have been improperly awarded to the Town of New Castle, a wealthy, predominantly white community also located in Westchester County. The challenged awards were made to the Town of New Castle by the United States Department of the Interior and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. The purpose of the awards was to assist New Castle in the development of Town parkland and the construction of a sewer system. The appellants claim that the two federal departments have statutory obligations, under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968,1 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000d et seq., 3601 et seq., to refuse to make grants which are inconsistent in design or effect with nondiscriminatory, fair housing objectives. Their claim is that the two grants to New Castle are inconsistent with fair housing goals because the grants tend to support and perpetuate patterns of economically and racially discriminatory housing in Westchester County. The complaint is that the federal courts have the responsibility under the Civil Rights Acts to review and strike down grants made by federal departments which have failed to consider the implications of the grants in respect to attainment of the goal of nondiscriminatory, fair housing.2
*600The majority of the court, however, has held that appellants are not sufficiently “aggrieved” or “injured in fact” by the grant of federal funds to New Castle to have “standing” to attack the awards. This holding is made despite the fact that appellants are the very persons who, by their own allegations, will continue to suffer from the racially restricted housing environment in Westchester County which is allegedly perpetuated by the challenged federal action. Since it is exactly this sort of third-party injury for which Congress, in 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-2,3 must have meant to provide relief when it established judicial review of federal grants, and in view of the precedents in both this and other courts upholding standing for challenges to federal grants in similar cases, see Jones v. Tully, 378 F.Supp. 286, 287 & n. 1 (E.D.N.Y.1974), aff’d per curiam sub nom. Jones v. Meade, 510 F.2d 961 (2d Cir. 1975); Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Inc. v. Connolly, 331 F.Supp. 940, 942-44 (E.D.Mich.1971). I must respectfully dissent.
Appellants’ complaint, briefly recapitulated, states that appellants are low-income minority (black) residents of Westchester County who live in what the district court called “ghetto living conditions,” that is, in racially concentrated low-income neighborhoods, which the district court postulated “are a very real and very serious ‘injury’. . . . ” Evans v. Lynn, 376 F.Supp. 327, 332 (S.D.N.Y.1974). The complaint alleges that the Town of New Castle, to or for whose benefit the challenged grants were made, is, in the words of the district court, “predominantly white [98.7 per cent] and a well-to-do enclave.” Id. at 330. It is further alleged that 90 per cent of New Castle’s land is zoned for single-family, residential development on parcels of more than one acre, that there are currently 7,000 vacant acres and that the median value of single-family homes in 1970 was in excess of $50,000.4 Appellants quite directly complain that New Castle’s zoning ordinance has the purpose and effect of excluding blacks and other racial minorities from living in the Town. Finally, it is alleged that the federal agencies in question approved the grants5 without performing the affirmative duties required of them by Title VI *601and Title VIII.6 A consideration of the law of standing as it relates to this case must assume that all of these facts as alleged are true.7 It at least has to take them into *602account which, I regret to say, the majority opinion does not.
Fundamental to analysis under the law of standing, in view of the vague generalities oftentimes employed to decide particular cases,8 is a differentiation between the two important functions the doctrine performs: the first is determining whether the plaintiff is a proper party to request an adjudication of the particular issue, see Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 99-100, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968); the second is determining whether as a matter of policymaking responsibility the particular issue is suitable for determination by the courts, Barlow v. Collins, 397 U.S. 159, 169 n. 2, 90 S.Ct. 832, 25 L.Ed.2d 192 (1970) (Brennan, J., concurring in the result). The first of these has been called “access standing” and the second can best be called “decision standing,” although the latter often goes by the broad terms “justiciability” or “reviewability” and although it often subsumes a number of other doctrines or techniques which are used by the courts when as a matter of policy it is thought desirable to avoid decisions on the merits.9 See Scott, Standing in the Supreme Court — A Functional Analysis, 86 Harv.L.Rev. 645 (1973), cited by Mr. Justice Powell in Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 500 n. 11, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975). Cf. P. Bator, P. Mishkin, D. Shapiro & H. Wechsler, Hart and Wechsler’s The Federal Courts and the Federal System 156 (2d ed. 1973). The Court’s present analysis directs us first to examine the question “whether the plaintiff has ‘alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy’ as to warrant his invocation of federal-court jurisdiction and to justify exercise of the court’s remedial powers on his behalf. Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204, 82 S.Ct. 691, 703, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962).” Warth v. Seldin, supra, 422 U.S. at 498-99, 95 S.Ct. at 2205. This is in essence the question of access standing.
Have the appellants alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of this controversy? In this connection it must be remembered that the controversy sought to be determined is not, as in Warth v. Seldin, supra, whether a town in which the plaintiffs are not resident may exclude persons of low and moderate income by its zoning laws. Rather, on the allegations, the question brought in this case is whether federal agencies administering grants-in-aid may approve grants to “activities” (the Town of *603New Castle) whose practices (exclusionary zoning) have the purpose and effect of subjecting blacks and other racial minorities to discrimination by excluding them from residence within the Town’s borders, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d; see also 42 U.S.C. § 3608.10 If minorities are “denied the benefits” of such grants because of the discriminatory access limitations of Town zoning policies, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d indicates that the grants should not be made, and 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-2 provides for judicial review to enforce that law. Accordingly, Warth v. Seldin, so heavily relied on by the majority opinion, is sharply distinguishable from the present case. Indeed, it is helpful to appellants. In Warth the Court was extremely careful to point out not only that “[t]he actual or threatened injury required by Art. Ill may exist solely by virtue of ‘statutes creating legal rights, the invasion of which creates standing . . . 11 but also that “Congress may grant an express right of action to persons who otherwise would be barred by prudential standing rules.”12 Warth itself involved no such statutes; here the statutory claim is the essence of appellants’ case. In Warth, the parties denied standing had failed to show how the specific town practices which they challenged (zoning laws) had resulted in the type of particularized injury required to obtain standing to litigate a generalized constitutional challenge to government action. 422 U.S. at 508, 95 S.Ct. 2197. See Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 221-22, 94 S.Ct. 2425, 41 L.Ed.2d 706 (1974); United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 177, 179-80, 94 S.Ct. 2940, 41 L.Ed.2d 678 (1974). In the *604instant case, as shall be shown below, the connection between the challenged action (federal grant) and the injury claimed (perpetuation of racially restricted housing environment in Westchester County) is amply direct, under the controlling cases, to supply standing for appellants to seek statutory review of the government action. See, e. g., United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S. 669, 93 S.Ct. 2405, 37 L.Ed.2d 254 (1973); Barlow v. Collins, 397 U.S. 159, 90 S.Ct. 832, 25 L.Ed.2d 192 (1970); Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 90 S.Ct. 827, 25 L.Ed.2d 184 (1970).
The majority opinion, with all due respect, misses the point of this law suit when it emphasizes that appellants “do not claim” that they unsuccessfully sought housing in the Town of New Castle or “that the Town arbitrarily rejected housing proposals of benefit to them.”13 The opinion also misapprehends their claim when it states it as saying that “had the grants not been approved, the monies could conceivably have gone to some other, as yet totally imaginary project in the County which might have had the result of making more housing available to them.” [At 595.] Rather, appellants’ claim is that the federal departments violated affirmative action requirements of the Civil Rights Acts by making grants to municipalities without evaluating the economic and racial consequence of their housing and development practices, with the effect of maintaining racial residential segregation in Westchester County, further constraining them to continued residence in the county’s ghettos.
In cases decided in several circuits, including our own, courts have found that persons who live in concentrated, segregated, low-income housing areas have standing under 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-2 to challenge federal grants which have the effect of increasing the concentration of low-income housing in their portion of the regional housing market. In Jones v. Meade, supra, this court, in a per curiam opinion, upheld standing for “several individuals who reside in Spinney Hill” (a low-income predominantly black portion of the Town of North Hempstead, New York) to challenge a federal grant for a low-income housing project in the Spinney Hill area because the grant would tend to “perpetuate racial concentration in the Spinney Hill area in violation of § 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d . . . .” Jones v. Tully, supra, 378 F.Supp. at 287, aff’d per curiam sub nom. Jones v. Meade, supra. See also Banks v. Perk, 341 F.Supp. 1175 (N.D.Ohio 1972), aff’d in part, rev’d in part on other grounds, 473 F.2d 910 (6th Cir. 1973); Gautreaux v. Chicago Housing Authority, 296 F.Supp. 907 (N.D.Ill.1969), aff’d, 436 F.2d 306 (7th Cir. 1970), cert. denied, 402 U.S. 922, 91 S.Ct. 980, 28 L.Ed.2d 236 (1971). Cf. Shannon v. United States Department of Housing & Urban Development, 436 F.2d 809, 812, 817-18 (3d Cir. 1970). The claim that the federal grants will have the effect of perpetuating racially segregated housing conditions in the plaintiffs’ housing market is precisely the argument made against these federal awards by the appellants in this case. The reasoning which supports their claim may be traced as follows:
1. Patterns of racially segregated housing are perpetuated either by building low-income housing in low-income areas (as in Jones v. Tully) or by building high-income housing in high-income areas of the same housing market.14 This is *605because, in either case, the construction decision forecloses opportunities for integration of housing facilities throughout the regional housing market.15
2. A federal grant to a high-income area which is consistent with increased development of high-income housing but which is inconsistent with development of low-income housing in that area tends to perpetuate patterns of racially segregated housing.
3. The federal parkland and sewer grants challenged in this case are consistent with and promote development of high-income housing in New Castle, but are inconsistent with and negate development of low-cost, high-density housing in that area.
4. The sewer grant is inconsistent with construction of high-density, low-cost housing in New Castle because, as is stated in an affidavit attached to the complaint, the sewer system planned by New Castle “will have the capacity to handle the needs of the area only if the area is developed at low densities. . . ” Affidavit of Paul Davidoff, Director of Suburban Action Institute, formerly Associate Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Davidoff’s affidavit charged that HUD review of the sewer grant had wholly ignored the role which sewer systems play in shaping the parameters of future community development, and the impact of that development on low and moderate income housing opportunities within the region.
5. The parkland grant may also be inconsistent with development of low-income housing in New Castle because different park facilities (including sizes of open areas and walkways, numbers of, and therefore location of, playing fields, landscaping design, etc.) would be demanded for a high-density housing area than for a low-density area.16
The claim of the pleadings that the appellants are “injured in fact” because the federal grants tend to perpetuate economically and racially discriminatory housing in Westchester County, I must insist, represents “something more than an ingenious academic exercise in the conceivable.” United States v. SCRAP, supra, 412 U.S. at 688, 93 S.Ct. at 2416. The fair sense of appellant’s claim is that they have been or “will in fact be perceptibly harmed by the *606challenged agency action.” Id. As the findings of- the district court indicate, the harm appellants will suffer from a perpetuation of the conditions of segregative housing in which they presently live constitutes a “very real and very serious ‘injury.’ ” 376 F.Supp. at 332. Government actions which allegedly perpetuate (if not exacerbate) the injurious condition of segregative housing seem quite plainly to effect an injury-in-fact to the precise type of interest which Congress intended to protect when it enacted Titles VI and VIII of the Civil Rights Act. The apparent thrust of those Titles is to assure that federal grants are consistent with the objectives of nondiscriminatory, fair housing. However, the two federal departments, charged by Congress with the duty of affirmative action to encourage fair housing, economically viable communities, and the breakdown of segregated residential housing, are, if appellants’ supporting evidence is to be believed,17 giving priority to parks and sewers for the privileged communities without regard to the needs for regional development and integration of low-cost housing opportunities.
I think it important, in evaluating the sufficiency of appellants’ claims of injury, to note that the plaint of appellants in their county, which is part of Greater New York, finds its echo in many other American localities, many of which are cities and have, to say the least, vast problems in the way of finances, municipal services and quality of life. If federal grant procedures are as appellants allege, they are exacerbating these problems, to appellants’ individual disadvantage (and that of many American cities) by enhancing the quality of life in already privileged communities wholly without consideration of the housing needs of those trapped in low-income, segregated housing areas only a few miles away.18
Appellants are what Norman Williams has aptly called the “third party non-beneficiaries” of exclusionary land use controls and policies.19 Their challenge to federal policies or practices which can be said to perpetuate “power to the people who got there first” 20 in their specific area is based on federal statutes. The appellants allege that the grants were made for the sole benefit of a discriminatory grantee, the Town. They have alleged that the effect of the grants is to injure appellants by perpetuating the racially restrictive housing conditions in which they currently live. Accordingly, appellants have stated both a cause for relief and standing under 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-2. Only at trial will it become necessary for appellants to prove the truth of the facts alleged. United States v. SCRAP, supra, 412 U.S. at 689, 93 S.Ct. 2405. In short, under the controlling precedents in this area, appellants have access standing. See Investment Company Institute v. Camp, 401 U.S. 617, 91 S.Ct. 1091, 28 L.Ed.2d 367 (1971); Arnold Tours, Inc. v. Camp, 400 U.S. 45, 91 S.Ct. 158, 27 L.Ed.2d 179 (1970) (per curiam); Barlow v. Collins, supra; Association of Data Processing v. Camp, supra.21
*607The second or “reviewability” aspect of the standing question involves additional judge-made policymaking considerations. They are what Mr. Justice Powell has referred to as “essentially matters of judicial self-governance.” Warth v. Seldin, supra, 422 U.S. at 500, 95 S.Ct. at 2206. Even assuming there is access standing on the part of appellants, is the issue of the propriety of the HUD or Interior Department grants to New Castle an “abstract questio[n] of wide public significance . . . [which] other governmental institutions may be more competent to address”? Id. Should the court decline standing as a matter of policy?22 A powerful argument can be made that the court should not act as a “planning agency”23 or as a “congressional inquiry” to correct an Executive Department which has refused to carry out a congressional mandate, especially where the suit might be unmanageable.24 The Supreme Court decision in Train v. City of New York, 420 U.S. 35, 95 S.Ct. 839, 43 L.Ed.2d 1 (1975) (agency may not impound water pollution control act appropriations), indicates quite plainly, however, that the courts should not fail in their duty to assure that the Executive has faithfully executed the laws merely because a complex regulatory scheme is involved. See also National Treasury Employees Union v. Nixon, 160 U.S.App.D.C. 321, 492 F.2d 587 (1974) (federal court may grant declaratory relief ordering Executive to implement federal employees’ pay adjustment). Other courts, including our own, have corrected errors in the Executive’s administration of congressionally established programs in a multiplicity of cases where, arguably, the alleged damage to the plaintiff has been less or no more direct, where their alleged material interests have been less or no more affected, and where the alleged agency action or inaction has been less or no more egregious than here.25
*608The courts have taken the view that agency disregard of congressional mandate is challengeable by persons affected adversely because it involves, it does not negate, deference to another branch of the Government. As Mr. Justice Powell, concurring in United States v. Richardson, supra, pointed out:
The doctrine of standing has always reflected prudential as well as constitutional limitations. . . . Whatever may have been the Court’s initial perception of the intent of the Framers . it is now settled that such rules of self-restraint are not required by Art. Ill but are “judicially created overlays that Congress may strip away. . . .” . But where Congress does so, my objections to public actions are ameliorated by the congressional mandate. Specific statutory grants of standing in such cases alleviate the conditions that make “judicial forbearance the part of wisdom.”
418 U.S. at 196, n. 18, 94 S.Ct. at 2956.26 If there were any doubt that this concept is the law of the Court,27 that doubt was removed by Warth v. Seldin. There, speaking through Mr. Justice Powell, the Court held:
Moreover, Congress may grant an express right of action to persons who otherwise would be barred by prudential standing rules. Of course, Art. Ill’s requirement remains: the plaintiff still must allege a distinct and palpable injury to himself, even if it is an injury shared by a large class of other possible litigants. E. g., United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S. 669 [93 S.Ct. 2405, 37 L.Ed.2d 254] (1973). But so long as this requirement is satisfied, persons to whom Congress has granted a right of action, either expressly or by clear implication, may have standing to seek relief on the basis of the legal rights and interests of others, and, indeed, may invoke the general public interest in support of their claim. E. g., Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. [727] at 737 [92 S.Ct. 1361, at 1367, 31 L.Ed.2d 636] (1972); FCC v. Sanders Radio Station, 309 U.S. 470, 477 [60 S.Ct. 693, 698, 84 L.Ed. 869] (1940).
422 U.S. at 501, 95 S.Ct. at 2206
. Congress may create a statutory right or entitlement the alleged deprivation of which can confer standing to sue even where the plaintiff would have suffered no judicially cognizable injury in the absence of statute. Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. at [614], 617 n. 3 [93 S.Ct. 1146, at 1148, 35 L.Ed.2d 536 (1973)], citing Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. [409 U.S. 205, at 212, 93 S.Ct. 364, at 368, 34 L.Ed.2d 415 (1972)] (White J., concurring).
422 U.S. at 514, 95 S.Ct. at 2213.
The question remains, of course, whether in this case “Congress has granted a right of action.” As discussed above, the plain intendment of Title VI if not Title VIII is to provide for review of federal grants to assure their consistency with federal anti-discrimination and fair housing objectives. See, e. g., Jones v. Tully, supra; note 3 supra. Since it is unlikely that either the federal departments or the grant recipients would have any interest in challenging the grants themselves, Congress must have meant to provide for review at the instance of persons “adversely affected” or “aggrieved by” improper grants. The implied right of review for these persons is at least as clear and as significant as in cases such as Data Processing, Barlow, Arnold Tours and Investment Company Institute. Cf. Warth v. Seldin, supra, 421 U.S. at 501, 95 S.Ct. 2197.28
*609What the courts are asked to do here, to require the agencies to reevaluate the grant approvals in the light of the nondiscriminatory, fair-housing mandate,29 is well within the traditional role of judicial review of agency action. No better authority may be referred to than our own Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. FPC, 354 F.2d 608 (2d Cir. 1965), cert. denied, 384 U.S. 941, 86 S.Ct. 1462, 16 L.Ed.2d 540 (1966), the landmark case that ultimately furnished the basis for National Environmental Protection Act30 review of project alternatives. It is too obvious to require citation that it is well within the traditional model of judicial review that an agency be required to review an action, involving an expenditure of public funds for purely private or local advantage, to assure that statutory guidelines have been adhered to.
This is not an issue of constitutional involvement as in Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War, supra (Article I, § 6 prohibition by members of Congress asserted), or in United States v. Richardson, supra (Article I, § 9 violation through CIA appropriation asserted). See The Supreme Court, 1973 Term, 88 Harv.L. Rev. 41, 240-43 (1974). In such a case, to resolve the matter judicially may,- as has been pointed out,31 remove the particular issue altogether from the political process, a danger which Mr. Justice Frankfurter and others before and after him have warned against in the course of treating the overall subject of judicial review. Here, however, the Congress has spoken, and judicial resolution of the controversy forecloses neither congressional nor executive action. The political processes would not be imposed upon, much less invaded, by the exercise of Article III power here concerned. In any case, assuming that our system of representative democracy makes the legislature the primary as well as the initial forum for resolving conflicting social and economic interests, if the Congress has spoken and the Executive has not heard the message, the judiciary’s role in resolving the controversy is hardly a usurpation of power or an infringement of prerogatives.
One can hardly quarrel with the majority statement of abstract propositions, as they well set forth the rubric of the law of standing. One may regret the majority’s application of those rules to this case, one very different, as I see it, from that which the majority perceives.

. 42 U.S.C. § 2000d provides:
No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.
42 U.S.C. § 3601 provides:
It is the policy of the United States to provide, within constitutional limitations, for fair housing throughout the United States.

. The Tri-State Regional Planning Commission (Tri-State) was an original defendant but dismissed as such by the majority of the panel, a decision which is not sought to be reversed by the court en banc. Tri-State’s duties are relevant, however, to the question to be discussed infra regarding the scope of the federal affirmative duty to assure that federal grants are not made for discriminatory purposes or with discriminatory effects. Tri-State is an interstate body, both corporate and politic, serving as a common agency of Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. Created by compact, it has been designated under Circular A-95, promulgated by the Office of Management and Budget, as the areawide clearinghouse for review of applications for federal aid to assure conformance with regional comprehensive plans, to implement the Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Program Act, 42 U.S.C. *600§ 3301 et seq., and the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act, 42 U.S.C. § 4231. See 38 Fed. Reg. 228 (1973). The latter commands consideration of impact of the proposed program upon housing and human resources development. 42 U.S.C. § 4231(c). The A-95 Circular specifically calls for comment on the “civil rights aspect of the project,” fl 3(d), and “[t]he extent to which the project contributes to more balanced patterns of settlement and delivery of services to all sectors of the area population, including minority groups.” fl 5(d).

. 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-2 provides in pertinent part:
Any department or agency action taken pursuant to section 2000d-l of this title [see note 6 infra] shall be subject to such judicial review as may otherwise be provided by law for similar action taken by such department or agency on other grounds. .

. The district court also found that “New Castle continues to be resistant to attempts to alter its present housing character.” 376 F.Supp. at 330. The town, it found, had “successfully thwarted” the attempt of the New York State Urban Development Corporation to “construct a small 100-unit low-cost housing facility in the town.” Id. The Town’s master plan sets as a goal “maintaining New Castle as a single-family residential community.” It also provides in reference to sanitary sewer development that “the provision or extension of water and sewers in low [density] residential areas shall not . . . be considered as a basis for rezoning to higher residential density.”

. The grant of matching funds for the sewer was made under the Community Facilities and Advance Land Acquisition Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3102, and the grant for the acquisition of Turner Swamp was made pursuant to the Outdoor Recreation Programs Act, 16 U.S.C. § 4601.
The sewer grant was made by HUD to the King-Greeley sewer district in the Chappaqua section of town. The Town of New Castle is, nonetheless, the effective grantee of the benefits of the grant. The recreation grant was made by the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation of the Department of the Interior directly to the Town of New Castle.
The HUD “rating sheet” for the preliminary application for the sewer grant here does carry some points for, e. g., the “Percent of housing in project area that will be accessible on a nondiscriminatory basis to families and individuals with low and moderate incomes,” but there appears to be no evaluation of the overall residential segregation policies of the community. It is a matter of defense on the merits, which are not reached, whether the agencies in *601fact performed their affirmative duties. For our purposes it is enough if a viable claim of nonperformance is made.
The BOR grant was allegedly made without any reference to civil rights enforcement procedures or any Title VIII obligations, though a Title VI compliance form was attached to the application, signed by the Town Supervisor.

. The affirmative duties, following the policies set forth in note 1 supra, are respectively imposed by 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-l (Title VI) and 42 U.S.C. §§ 3608(c), (d)(5) (Title VIII). The former provides:
Each Federal department and agency which is empowered to extend Federal financial assistance to any program or activity, by way of grant, loan, or contract other than a contract of insurance or guaranty, is authorized and directed to effectuate the provisions of section 2000d of this title with respect to such program or activity by issuing rules, regulations, or orders of general applicability which shall be consistent with achievement of the objectives of the statute authorizing the financial assistance in connection with which the action is taken. No such rule, regulation, or order shall become effective unless and until approved by the President. Compliance with any requirement adopted pursuant to this section may be effected (1) by the termination of or refusal to grant or to continue assistance under such program or activity to any recipient as to whom there has been an express finding on the record, after opportunity for hearing, of a failure to comply with such requirement, but such termination or refusal shall be limited to the particular political entity, or part thereof, or other recipient as to whom such a finding has been made and, shall be limited in its effect to the particular program, or part thereof, in which such noncompliance has been so found, or (2) by any other means authorized by law: Provided, however, That no such action shall be taken until the department or agency concerned has advised the appropriate person or persons of the failure to comply with the requirement and has determined that compliance cannot be secured by voluntary means. In the case of any action terminating, or refusing to grant or continue, assistance because of failure to comply with a requirement imposed pursuant to this section, the head of the Federal department or agency shall file with the committees of the House and Senate having legislative jurisdiction over the program or activity involved a full written report of the circumstances and the grounds for such action. No such action shall become effective until thirty days have elapsed after the filing of such report.
42 U.S.C. § 3608 provides in part:
(c) All executive departments and agencies shall administer their programs and activities relating to housing and urban development in a manner affirmatively to further the purposes of this subchapter and shall cooperate with the Secretary to further such purposes.
(d) The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall—
(5) administer the programs and activities relating to housing and urban development in a manner affirmatively to further the policies of this subchapter.
See generally as to Title VIII, the panel opinion, Evans v. Lynn, 537 F.2d 571, 576 n. 10 (2d Cir. 1975).

. It is possible, of course, that the “pinpoint provision” in 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-l may provide a defense on the merits under this section. Under that provision, compliance with nondiscrimination requirements may be obtained by agency
refusal to grant . . . assistance . to any recipient as to whom there has been an express finding . . . of a failure to comply with such requirement, but such termination or refusal shall be limited to the particular political entity . . . and, shall be limited in its effect to the particular program ... in which such noncompliance has been so found
42 U.S.C. § 2000d-l (emphasis supplied). Judge Mansfield, in his concurrence, argues that no discrimination could be “found” in the particular grants involved in this case and, therefore, the appellants have no right to overturn these grants under the review provision in 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-2. Surely the question of what findings can properly be made in this case raises issues going far into the merits of appellants’ claim and, therefore, should not be decided prematurely at the present appeal which concerns only the subject of appellants’ standing to raise the claim. Nonetheless, I feel it appropriate to indicate that the matter is far more complex than Judge Mansfield suggests On the pleadings of this case, which allege that New Castle has pursued zoning and housing policies with the purpose and effect of excluding blacks and other racial minorities from living in the town, there can be little doubt that the Town is in violation of the nondiscrimination requirements adopted pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-l by HUD, see 24 C.F.R. § 1.1 et seq., and Interior, see, 43 C.F.R. § 17.1 et seq. The question as to the applicability of the "pinpoint provisions” in this case therefore turns on whether the sewer and park grants to the Town are programs “in which such non*602compliance has been so found. . . . ” Judge Mansfield would consider “noncompliance” to have been “found” in the sewer and park grants only if the particular programs were being administered on a visibly discriminatory basis, e. g., by prohibiting minorities from using the parks and sewers of New Castle. This strikes me as an unduly restrictive reading of the limitation. Where a particular grant is used as one step in furtherance of a discriminatory scheme, the fact that the administration of the grant is facially neutral should not foreclose a finding that the grant is in implicit, if veiled, noncompliance with the nondiscrimination requirements. Here appellants claim that ostensibly neutral grants (sewer and park grants) directly assist a political entity (New Castle) to attain its discriminatory scheme (by forclosing opportunities for low-income housing development in New Castle, see text at notes 13 & 14, infra). It is totally unrealistic to suppose that federal grants in aid to local communities for sewage or recreation/wildlife areas, or for that matter water systems, do not exert a significant leverage on the location and type of housing, or, where made to communities with exclusionary policies, the perpetuation of those policies. See C. Haar & D. Iatridis, Housing the Poor un Suburbia 338 (1974). HUD’s own rating sheets relative to these grants constitute an administrative construction of the statute contrary to that espoused by Judge Mansfield. This construction is entitled to substantial weight under Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 433-34, 91 S.Ct. 849, 28 L.Ed.2d 158 (1971), and Udall v. Tallman, 380 U.S. 1, 18, 85 S.Ct. 792, 13 L.Ed.2d 616 (1965). A district court, after a full hearing, could properly “find” the grant to be discriminatory in both design and effect and therefore not in compliance with the statutory requirements.

. See 3 K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 22.18 (1958); Association of Data Processing Serv. Organizations v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 151, 90 S.Ct. 827, 25 L.Ed.2d 84 (1970).

. Compare Bickel, The Supreme Court, 1960 Term — Foreword: The Passive Virtues, 75 Harv.L.Rev. 40 (1961), with Wechsler, Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law, 73 Harv.L.Rev. 1 (1959), and Gunther, The Subtle Vices of the “Passive Virtues" — A Comment on Principle and Expediency in Judicial Review, 64 Colum.L.Rev. 1 (1964).

. See notes 1 and 6 supra. That the affirmative duties imposed were intended by Congress to be meaningful is evidenced, e. g., by the remarks of Senator Mondale in connection with the 1968 Civil Rights Act, relied upon in Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 409 U.S. 205, 211, 93 S.Ct. 364, 34 L.Ed.2d 415 (1972). He referred to the
sordid story of which all Americans should be ashamed developed by this country in the immediate post World War II era, during which the FHA, the VA, and other Federal agencies encouraged, assisted, and made easy the flight of white people from the central cities of white America, leaving behind only the Negroes and others unable to take advantage of these liberalized extensions of credit and credit guarantees.
Traditionally the American Government has been more than neutral on this issue. The record of the U.S. Government in that period is one, at best, of covert colloborator in policies which established the present outrageous and heartbreaking racial living patterns which lie at the core of the tradegy of the American city and the alienation of good people from good people because of the utter irrelevancy of color.
114 Cong.Rec. 2278 (1968). So, too, Representative Celler said: “The purpose or ‘end’ of the Federal Fair Housing Act is to remove the walls of discrimination which enclose minority groups in ghettos . . . ” 114 Cong.Rec. 9563 (1968). See U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Equal Opportunity in Suburbia 67-70 (1974).

. 422 U.S. at 500, 95 S.Ct. at 2206, citing Linda R. S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S. 614, 617 n. 3, 93 S.Ct. 1146, 35 L.Ed.2d 536 (1973); Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 732, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972).

. 422 U.S. at 501, 95 S.Ct. 2197. The “prudential rules” to which Justice Powell refers include the rule that “a ‘generalized grievance’ shared in substantially equal measure by all or a large class of citizens . . . normally does not warrant exercise of jurisdiction.” Id. at 499, 95 S.Ct. at 2205, citing Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 94 S.Ct. 2425, 41 L.Ed.2d 706 (1974); United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 188-97, 94 S.Ct. 2940, 41 L.Ed.2d 678 (1974) (Powell, J., concurring). Similarly, a plaintiff “generally must assert his own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest his claim to relief on the legal rights or interests of third parties.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 499, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2205, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975), citing Tileston v. Ullman, 318 U.S. 44, 63 S.Ct. 493, 87 L.Ed. 603 (1943). At the same time, an attenuated injury suffered in common with many others may still be enough to establish standing. United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S. 669, 93 S.Ct. 2405, 37 L.Ed.2d 254 (1973). See also Scott, Standing in the Supreme Court — A Functional Analysis, 86 Harv.L.Rev. 645, 681 (1973); Stewart, The Reformation of American Administrative Law, 88 Harv.L.Rev. 1669, 1730 (1975). Professor Scott concludes that, by virtue of the costs of litigation, “[t]he idle and whimiscal plaintiff, a dilettante who litigates for a lark, is a specter which haunts the legal literature, not the courtroom.” 86 Harv.L.Rev. at 674. One would suppose this was all the more true in the light of Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240, 95 S.Ct. 1612, 44 L.Ed .2d 141 (1975).

. It is not precisely correct that the Town did not arbitrarily reject housing proposals that might have been of benefit to appellants. See note 4 supra. But this is not the gist of appellants’ claim. It goes without saying, as the panel opinion pointed out, p. 574 n. 6, that there is no claim that the sewer or park projects will be operated discriminatorily, but that is not what this suit concerns, either.

. An initial predicate of this argument, of course, is that New Castle and lower Westchester County are not different housing markets but are part of a larger market of which the entire Westchester County is but a sub-market. Certainly plaintiffs in a low-income black housing area in, say, Cincinnati would not have standing, under this rationale, to challenge grants made to New Castle. This requirement that the challenging parties be within the same housing market as the grantee Town, however, *605is undisputably fulfilled in the present case; Tri-State’s participation in approval of the grants, note 2 supra, is clearcut evidence of this.
The decision of the United States Supreme Court in Hills v. Gautreaux, -U.S.-, 96 S.Ct. 1538, 47 L.Ed.2d 792, 44 U.S.L.W. 4480 (1976), while dealing with the remedy for HUD’s violation of its constitutional and statutory duties in respect to the selection of public housing sites and assignment of tenants, emphasized the metropolitan area relationship in respect to housing market opportunities. As the Court there said, with the greatest of materiality to appellants’ claims here, “The relevant geographic area for purposes of the respondents’ housing options is the Chicago [substitute Westchester County] housing market, not the Chicago city limits [substitute the boundaries of the Westchester County town or city within which they reside].” -U.S. at-, 96 S.Ct. at 1547, 44 U.S.L.W. at 4485. It is interesting that in Hills v. Gautreaux, the “more substantial question” was said to be “whether an order against HUD affecting its conduct beyond Chicago’s boundaries would impermissibly interfere with local governments and suburban housing authorities that have not been implicated in HUD’s conduct.” Id. Here, the alleged improper conduct of HUD relates to grants to local authorities that have been implicated in alleged exclusionary zoning.

. It should be noted that this foreclosure effect is a direct, immediate consequence of the grant. Cf. O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 494, 94 S.Ct. 669, 38 L.Ed.2d 674 (1974). This consequence, moreover would be eliminated by a simple reversal of the decision to make the grant. Amelioration of the injury complained of is not, therefore, as in Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975), one contingent on the future economic decisions of independent third persons. See id. at 505, 95 S.Ct. 2197.

. Appellants do not claim that the parkland should, or could, be developed for housing rather than for recreation. Their complaint must, therefore, be read as alleging the inconsistency of the proposed parkland development with the type of recreational demand which high density housing would create. There is nothing in the record to permit summary judgment against appellants on this point.

. Robert Mendoza, the HUD official who prepared the rating sheet for the sewer grant, testified that he never reviewed the housing and land-use policies of an applicant community. He “reconstructed” the rating sheet since there was none in the file presented to the district court, but on the “reconstruction,” it is claimed, he gave points to New Castle improperly (because of its wealth) so that the application should never have been approved. Howard A. Glickstein, former staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, pointed out that HUD had consistently “devoted itself to processing individual complaints of housing discrimination to the exclusion of all other responsibilities under the act.” BOR has been, appellants aver, equally delinquent.

. See Editorial, City vs. Suburbia, N.Y. Times, Nov. 30, 1975.

. Williams, The Strategy on Exclusionary Zoning: Toward What Rationale and What Remedy ? 1972 Land Use Controls Annual 177.

. See “Housing Programs for Poor Can’t Break Into the Suburbs,” N.Y. Times News Service, Rutland (Vt.) Daily Herald, Nov. 12, 1975, at 6, quoting Herbert Franklin of Potomac Institute, Inc.

. As the Supreme Court said analogously in Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 409 U.S. 205, 211, 93 S.Ct. 364, 367, 34 L.Ed.2d 415 (1972), with respect to the legislative history of Title VIII:
*607Since HUD has no enforcement powers and since the enormity of the task of assuring fair housing makes the role of the Attorney General in the matter minimal, the main generating force must be private suits in which, the Solicitor General says, the complainants act not only on their own behalf but also “as private attorneys general in vindicating a policy that Congress considered to be of the highest priority.” The role of “private attorneys general” is not uncommon in modem legislative programs. See Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, 390 U.S. 400, 402 [88 S.Ct. 964, 966, 19 L.Ed.2d 1263]; Allen v. State Board of Elections, 393 U.S. 544, 556 [89 S.Ct. 817, 22 L.Ed.2d 1]; Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U.S. 379, 396 [91 S.Ct. 431, 440, 27 L.Ed.2d 476]; J. I. Case Co. v. Borak, 377 U.S. 426, 432 [84 S.Ct. 1555, 12 L.Ed.2d 423].

. Mr. Justice Brennan in Barlow v. Collins, 397 U.S. 159, 178, 90 S.Ct. 832, 25 L.Ed.2d 192 (1970) (concurring opinion), and Scott, supra note 12, at 684, believe standing narrowly and properly should refer to what the latter has called “access standing.” See also K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 22.00-04, at 723 (Supp.1970).

. Professor Stewart has used this term in reasoning against wholly unlimited access standing. See Stewart, supra note 12, at 1737.

. Unmanageability might exist here if the general policy of HUD grant-making, as opposed to the specific grants to New Castle, had been the subject of the appellants’ claim. But see Adams v. Richardson, 156 U.S.App.D.C. 267, 480 F.2d 1159, 1162 (1973) (en banc) (challenge to HEW school desegregation policies generally).

. E. g., Schlafly v. Volpe, 495 F.2d 273 (7th Cir. 1974) (persons complaining of cessation of highway construction funded by federal gas tax, on basis they would benefit from use of highways); Davis v. Romney, 490 F.2d 1360 (3d Cir. 1974) (buyers of FHA-insured homes challenging failure to require obedience to local housing codes; Bradley v. Weinberger, 483 F.2d 410, 413-14 n. 1 (1st Cir. 1973) (patients and doctor challenging labeling requirements as too strenuous); Adams v. Richardson, 156 U.S.App.D.C. 267, 480 F.2d 1159 (1973) (en banc) (black students, citizens and taxpayers challenging HEW failure to enforce 10 state operated and numerous other school district desegregation plans); City of Inglewood v. City of Los Angeles, 451 F.2d 948 (9th Cir. 1972) (adjacent city affected by noise from federally financed airport); Norwalk CORE v. Norwalk Redevelopment Agency, 395 F.2d 920 (2d Cir. 1968) (persons displaced by urban renewal); Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. FPC, 354 F.2d 608 (2d Cir. 1965), cert. denied, 384 U.S. 941, 86 S.Ct. 1462, 16 L.Ed.2d 540 (1966) (representatives of “aesthetic, conservation and recreation” interests not resident of the town where the project was to be located). See also Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org. v. Shultz, 370 F.Supp. 325 (D.D.C.1973) (welfare organization challenging IRS regulation *608permitting charitable exemption status to hospitals which do not provide for free care for indigents).

. See also Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 409 U.S. 205, 212, 93 S.Ct. 364, 34 L.Ed.2d 415 (1972) (White, J., concurring).

. Its logic was questioned in Monaghan, Constitutional Adjudication: The Who and When, 82 Yale L.J. 1363, 1380-83 (1973).

. As is suggested in Judge Mansfield’s concurrence, the argument may be made that Congress did not intend to give private persons the right to sue HUD for noncompliance with its duty of affirmative action, because 42 U.S.C. *609§ 3610 specifically authorizes enforcement of the Act against private persons and omits mention of § 3608, note 1 supra, which sets forth HUD’s affirmative duties. We are unconvinced, however, that this narrow reading of reviewability under the civil rights statute is appropriate. Cf. National Welfare Rights Org. v. Finch, 139 U.S.App.D.C. 46, 429 F.2d 725 (1970) (private standing exists to challenge HEW ruling that state welfare laws conform to federal standards even though only review of HEW decision by states is expressly provided for by statute). See also Section 10(a) of the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 702(a), and Stewart, supra note 12, at 1726 n. 285.

. Appellants seek injunctive relief, but this would be purely ancillary to the reevaluation sought.

. 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(C)(iii).

. See Stewart, supra note 12, at 1741.