State Standing for Equality

• Author: Seth Davis
• Position: Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Email: sethdavis@berkeley.edu.
• Pages: 147-188

State Standing for Equality Seth Davis * TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction .................................................................................. 147! I. Snapp and Equality Law .............................................................. 152! A.! Snapp as a Standing Law Case .............................................. 153! 1. Judicially Cognizable State Interests ............................... 154! a. Proprietary Interests .................................................. 154! b. Sovereign Interests.................................................... 154! c. Quasi-Sovereign Interests ......................................... 155! 2. A State’s Interest in Combatting Discrimination ............ 156! B. Snapp as an Equality Law Case ............................................. 159! II. State Standing for Equality Today ............................................... 167! A. State Standing for Equality on the Same Terms as Private Standing ................................................................ 168! 1. First-Party Standing ........................................................ 168! 2. Third-Party Standing ....................................................... 171! B. Sovereign Standing to Enforce Equality Law ........................ 174! C. Quasi-Sovereign Standing for Equality ................................. 176! III. The Future of State Standing for Equality .................................... 178! A. Doctrinal Headwinds ............................................................. 179! 1. The Shift from Antisubordination to Anticlassification ............................................................. 180! 2.! The Unsettled Law of Quasi-Sovereign Standing........................................................................... 183! B.! The Importance of Framing ................................................... 185! Conclusion .................................................................................... 188! INTRODUCTION The United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Alfred L. Snapp & Son, Inc. v. Puerto Rico ex rel. Barez is not generally considered an equality * Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley School of Law. E-mail: sethdavis@berkeley.edu. 148 LOUISIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 79 law decision. 1 Rather, Snapp is known as a seminal case on state standing to sue in federal court, one cited in support of state standing in litigation about climate change, 2 federal immigration policy, 3 and government ethics, 4 to name a few high profile examples. At its heart, however , Snapp is a case about equality. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico sued Virginia apple growers, alleging that they had violated two federal laws by discriminating against Puerto Rican workers. 5 The Court reasoned that a state has a judicially cognizable interest “in securing residents from the harmful effects of discrimination,” and treated the Commonwealth like a state, holding that it had parens patriae standing to sue to protect its residents. 6 State standing for equality complicates two typical stories about the relationship between constitutional structure and individual rights. The first is about equality law. In a typical telling, state sovereignty is a barrier to achieving equal protection. 7 The structure of federalism is opposed to the realization of civil rights. This tale is well-founded. 8 Slavery and Jim Crow segregation may be the most familiar examples, 9 but they are not the only, or the most recent, examples of opposition between state sovereignty and equality law. 10 Even so, state standing for equality suggests that the 1. Alfred L. Snapp & Son, Inc. v. Puerto Rico ex rel. Barez, 458 U.S. 592 (1982). 2. Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007). 3. Texas v. United States, 809 F.3d 134, 153 n.36 (5th Cir. 2015), aff’d by an equally divided Court , United States v. Texas, 136 S. Ct. 2271 (2016). 4. See District of Columbia v. Trump, 291 F. Supp. 3d 725, 737 (D. Md. 2018). 5. Snapp , 458 U.S. at 597–98. 6. Id. at 609. 7. See, e.g. , Heather K. Gerken, Federalism 3.0 , 105 CALIF. L. REV. 1695, 1708 (2017) (“Unsurprisingly given the treatment of civil rights protestors, religious minorities, and other dissenters in the Deep South, racism isn’t the only ‘ism’ linked to federalism and localism.”); Ernest A. Young, Welcome to the Dark Side: Liberals Rediscover Federalism in the Wake of the War on Terror , 69 BROOK. L. REV. 1277, 1277 (2004) (discussing concern that “the story of state-based racial oppression reveals a fundamental truth about the dynamics of federalism”). 8. See Gerken, supra note 7; Young, supra note 7. 9. See Young, supra note 7, at 1277. 10. A more recent example is the Supreme Court’s holding that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which provided a formula to determine which jurisdictions had to preclear changes to their voting laws with the federal government, violated the “equal sovereignty” of the states. See Shelby Cty. v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013); Seth Davis, Equal Sovereignty as a Right Against a Remedy , 76 LA. L. REV. 83 (2015). 2018] STATE STANDING FOR EQUALITY 149 story of states standing for discrimination is incomplete. Before Snapp , some states sought to stand for equality in the lower courts. 11 And since Snapp , states have continued to secure their residents from discrimination by suing in federal court. 12 These cases are also part of the story of equality law. The second incomplete story is about standing law. In this story, questions about standing are questions about Article III and the separation of powers. 13 Questions about state standing law also implicate federalism. 14 Questions about state standing, in other words, are questions about constitutional structure, not questions about individual rights. But this is not the whole story. 15 As Snapp and its progeny reveal, questions about state standing may also be questions about individual rights and the values they represent. The Snapp Court justified its recognition of a state’s “substantial interest” in standing for equality by reference to the “evils” of discrimination based upon ethnicity, not by discussing Article III, the separation of powers, or federalism. 16 This history, too, is a part of the story of state standing and Snapp ’s prominent place within it. This Article reads Snapp as an equality law case in order to take stock of state standing for equality. 17 Its principal argument is that state standing 11. See, e.g. , Pennsylvania v. Porter, 659 F.2d 306, 317 (3d Cir. 1981) (collecting cases and explaining that “[c]ourts in this circuit have long recognized that [a state] may bring a parens patriae action in the United States district courts to enforce the fourteenth amendment”). 12. See, e.g. , Massachusetts v. Bull HN Inf. Sys., Inc., 16 F. Supp. 2d 90, 97 (D. Mass. 1998) (“It seems indisputable that a state has a quasi-sovereign interest in preventing racial discrimination of its citizens. . . . Similarly, courts have found a quasi-sovereign interest in preventing discrimination against other protected or disadvantaged groups . . . .”) (citing People v. 11 Cornwell Co., 695 F.2d 34, 39 (2d Cir. 1982); People v. Peter & John’s Pump House, Inc., 914 F. Supp. 809, 812 (N.D.N.Y. 1996); Support Ministries for Persons with AIDS, Inc. v. Waterford, 799 F. Supp. 272, 277 (N.D.N.Y. 1992)). 13. See, e.g. , Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 750 (1984). 14. See, e.g. , Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497, 516–22 (2007). 15. Scholars are increasingly recognizing that more than the familiar structural principles are at stake in government standing cases. See, e.g. , Tara Leigh Grove, When Can a State Sue the United States? , 101 CORNELL L. REV. 851, 858 (2016); Seth Davis, Standi ng Doctrine’s State Action Problem , 91 NOTRE DAME L. REV. 585, 589 (2015). 16. Alfred L. Snapp & Son, Inc. v. Puerto Rico ex rel. Barez, 458 U.S. 592, 609 (1982). 17. This Article does not discuss a state’s standing to vindicate its “equal sovereignty” under the Constitution. See Shelby Cty. v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013); Davis, supra note 10, at 83. In light of the recent proliferation of state 150 LOUISIANA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 79 for equality reflects a substantive vision of federalism in which states have a substantial interest in protecting their residents from discriminatory subordination. 18 The law of state standing has embraced Snapp ’s restatement of judicially cognizable state interests, but the law of equality has moved away from Snapp ’s understanding of equality as antisubordination. 19 This divergence creates a challenge for the future of state standing for equality. litigation in federal court, there is growing literature on state standing, much of it focused on a state’s standing to litigate its sovereign interests. See, e.g. , Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Federalism All the Way Up: State Standing and “The New Process Federalism” , 105 CALIF. L. REV. 1739 (2017); Jonathan Remy Nash, Sovereign Preemption State Standing , 112 NW. U. L. REV. 201 (2017); Shannon M. Roesler, State Standing to Challenge Federal Authority in the Modern Administrative State , 91 WASH. L. REV. 637 (2016); Grove, supra note 15, at 851; Davis, supra note 15, at 585; Ann Woolhandler, Governmental Sovereignty Actions , 23 WM. & MARY BILL RTS. J. 209 (2014); Seth Davis, Implied Public Rights of Action , 114 COLUM. L. REV. 1, 72–83 (2014); Aziz Huq, Standing for the Structural Constitution , 99 VA. L. REV. 1435 (2013); Stephen I. Vladeck, States’ Rights and State Standing , 46 U. RICH. L. REV. 845 (2012); Katherine Mims Crocker, Note, Securing Sovereign State Standing , 97 VA. L. REV. 2051 (2011); Calvin Massey, State Standing After Massachusetts v. EPA, 61 FLA. L. REV. 249 (2009); Bradford Mank, Should States Have Greater Standing Rights than Ordinary Citizens?: Massachusetts v. EPA ’s New Standing Test for States , 49 WM. & MARY L. REV. 1701 (2008); Ann Woolhandler & Michael G. Collins, State Standing , 81 VA. L. REV. 387 (1995)...