United States v. Hays: a Winnowing of Standing to Sue in Racial Gerrymandering Claims - Jack Pritchard

• Publication year: 1996

United States v. Hays: A Winnowing of Standing to Sue in Racial Gerrymandering Claims

In United States v. Hays,¹ the United States Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether individuals who reside outside racially gerrymandered districts have standing to sue on racial gerrymandering claims. In May 1992, Louisiana passed Act 42 of its Regular Session, which redrew its district boundaries to form two majority-minority districts² —Districts 4 and 2.³ District 4 was a "Z-shaped creature"⁴ that zigzagged through twenty-eight parishes and five major cities, yet the Act was precleared by the United States Attorney General. The plaintiffs, Hays et al., were residents of Lincoln Parish, which was located in the newly formed District 4, and brought suit to challenge Act 42 under state and federal constitutions as well as under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.⁵ The State removed the case to the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.⁶ While the case was pending in the district court, the United States Supreme Court decided Shaw v. Reno,⁷ and the district court, following the Shaw rule, held Act 42 unconstitutional and enjoined its enforcement.⁸ Louisiana and the United States—intervening as a defendant—subsequently appealed to the United States Supreme Court. While the appeal was pending, the Louisiana Legislature repealed Act 42 and instituted Act 1 of the 1994 Second Extraordinary Session, which redrew District 4 to exclude Lincoln Parish.⁹ The Supreme Court vacated the district court's decision and remanded the case for further consideration in light of the new Act l.¹⁰ The district court allowed the plaintiffs to amend their complaint to challenge Act 1 and held the Act unconstitutional for largely the same reasons as its decision regarding Act 42.¹¹ The district court further enjoined Louisiana from conducting elections, substituted its own redistricting plan, and denied Louisiana's request for a stay of judgment pending appeal.¹² Louisiana and the United States again appealed to the Supreme Court, which stayed the judgment of the district court pending appeal.¹³ The Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs had no standing to sue, because

where a plaintiff does not live in [a racially gerrymandered] district, he or she does not suffer [the representational harms of racial classifications in the voting context], and any inference that the plaintiff has personally been subjected to a racial classification would not be justified absent specific evidence tending to support that inference.¹⁴

In order to fully understand the significance of the Supreme Court's holding in Hays, the reader must have a working knowledge of the "standing to sue" doctrine generally and as it applies to civil rights and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1975, the Supreme Court decided Warth v. Seldin¹⁵ and provided a comprehensive analysis of the standing doctrine and its purposes. The Court determined that the primary question of standing was "whether the litigant is entitled to have the court decide the merits of the dispute or of particular issues."¹⁶ There are two dimensions to this question—"constitutional limitations on federal-court jurisdiction and prudential limitations on its exercise"¹⁷ —both of which are founded in a concern about the proper role and proper limitation of courts in a democratic society.¹⁸ The constitutional dimension demands that a plaintiff make out a "case or controversy" within the meaning of Article III of the Constitution in order for the courts to entertain a suit.¹⁹

The courts are not warranted in exercising their remedial powers on the plaintiffs' behalf in the absence of such a claim, because the Article III powers are designed only to redress individual harms to the complaining party, even though the judgment may benefit others collaterally.²⁰ The Court, in United States v. Richardson,²¹ further explained that a "'fundamental aspect of standing' is that it focuses primarily on the party seeking to get his complaint before the federal court rather than 'on the issues he wishes to have adjudicated.'"²² In its 1992 decision in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife,²³ the United States Supreme Court outlined the requirements for standing as well as its pleading requirements at the different levels of litigation and encompassed all prior case law at the time.²⁴ The Court reduced the elements of standing to a minimum of three:

First, the plaintiff must have suffered an "injury in fact"—an invasion of a legally-protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized . . . and (b) "actual or imminent," not "conjectural" or "hypothetical . . . ." Second, there must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of—the injury has to be "fairly tracefable] to the challenged action of the defendant, and not. . . th[e] result [of] the independent action of some third party not before the court. . . ." Third, it must be "likely," as opposed to merely "speculative," that the injury will be "redressed by a favorable decision."²⁵

The Court further analyzed the "injury in fact" requirement in Schlesin-ger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War²⁶ by holding that a plaintiff did not have standing to sue for generalized damages that all citizens share as a result of governmental action.²⁷ The Court said that without the requirement that the plaintiff suffer a concrete and particularized injury, the Court would not be able to formulate a reasonable rule based on a factual context within which the parties argue.²⁸ The Court in Lujan stated that the plaintiff must meet different pleading require- merits at the different stages of litigation.²⁹ General factual allegations of injury which result from the defendant's conduct will suffice at the pleading stage.³⁰ In response to a summary judgment motion, the plaintiff must set forth specific facts which are supported by affidavit or other evidence.³¹ Finally, if the plaintiff's facts are controverted at the last stage, the evidence adduced at trial must support those facts.³² The Court, in FW/PBS v. Dallas,³³ stated further that, even if the parties did not raise the issue of standing and the lower courts had not addressed it, the Court must address the issue and the parties cannot waive it.³⁴ As all areas of the law differ, so does the standing doctrine differ in its development in different areas of law. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 added specificity to the "injury in fact" requirement of standing by requiring a plaintiff to be an "aggrieved person" instituting a proceeding under the voting guarantees of the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments.³⁵ One of the first cases in the civil rights/equal protection arena to address a standing issue was Baker v. Carr.³⁶ The plaintiffs were voters who lived within a county affected by a state apportionment statute, and they brought an action against the state claiming that their voting rights had been impaired.³⁷ The Court held that the plaintiffs had standing to sue because they were directly affected by the statute.³⁸ In 1972, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland faced a claim that a redistricting plan violated the rights of a candidate for Congress.³⁹ The candidate claimed that the plan created a racial imbalance in his district and that his campaign would be adversely affected.⁴⁰ The court found that the candidate had no standing because he was not harmed by being forced out of a racially balanced district into a racially imbalanced district, particularly because he was not a resident of the district which was affected by the plan.⁴¹ The court stated that the candidate would have conceivably had standing to challenge the whole redistricting plan, but such was not the claim before it.⁴² By this time, the courts were moving toward a concession that parties might have standing by challenging an entire redistricting plan rather than proving that they were residing in a particular district adversely affected by the plan. This concession became fully realized in Heckler v. Matthews,⁴³ a case involving an equal protection challenge to a pension offset provision. A retiree brought a class action suit challenging a pension offset exception that allowed for certain monies to flow to women rather than men and claimed that the provision subjected men to unequal treatment solely on the basis of sex.⁴⁴ The Court stated that the retiree had standing because his alleged injury in fact was a stigmatic injury which the Court has "long recognized as judicially cognizable."⁴⁵ The Court explained that the underlying reason for allowing standing in a claim where the harm is a stigmatic injury is that

[Discrimination itself, by perpetuating "archaic and stereotypic notions" or by stigmatizing members of the disfavored group as "innately inferior" and therefore as less worthy participants in the political community...