Martinez v. Wilson

Citation32 F.3d 1415
Decision Date22 August 1994
Docket Number92-56468 and 93-56655,92-56464,Nos. 92-56458,s. 92-56458
PartiesLinda MARTINEZ; Gilbert Acosta; Aurora Acosta; City of Los Angeles Area Agency on Aging; International Institute of Los Angeles; Altamed; Watts Labor Community Action Committee; Associacion Nacional Pro Personas Mayores; National Caucus and Center on Black Aged; National Pacific/Asian Resource Center on Aging; National Indian Counsel of Aging, Inc.; City of San Francisco; County of San Francisco, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Pete WILSON, Governor of the State of California; California Department of Aging; Chris Arnold, Director California Department of Aging, Defendants, and Ramona Dario; Manuel Avila, Intervenors-Appellants, and Jovenes De Antano, Inc.; Mary Maderos; PSA 1 Area Agency on Aging; PSA 2 Area Agency on Aging, et al.; Maria Blanco, et al., Intervenors. Linda MARTINEZ; Gilbert Acosta; Aurora Acosta; City of Los Angeles Area Agency on Aging; International Institute of Los Angeles; Altamed; Watts Labor Community Action Committee; Associacion Nacional Pro Personas Mayores; National Caucus and Center on Black Aged; National Pacific/Asian Resource Center on Aging; National Indian Counsel of Aging, Inc.; City of San Francisco; County of San Francisco, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Pete WILSON, Governor of the State of California; California Department of Aging; Chris Arnold, Director California Department of Aging, Defendants, and PSA 3 Area Agency on Aging; PSA 15 Area Agency on Aging; PSA 16 Area Agency on Aging; PSA 24 Area Agency on Aging; PSA 1 Area Agency on Aging; PSA 26 North Coast Opportunities, Inc.; PSA 2 Area Agency on Aging, et al., Intervenors-Appellants, and Jovenes De Antano, Inc., et al.; Maria Blanco, et al., Intervenors. Linda MARTINEZ; Gilbert Acosta; Aurora Acosta; City of Los Angeles Area Agency on Aging; International Institute of Los Angeles; Altamed; Watts Labor Community Action Committee; Associacion Nacional Pro Personas Mayores; National Caucus and Center on Black Aged; National Pacific/Asian Resource Center on Aging; National Indian Counsel
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (9th Circuit)

Charlton G. Holland, III, Asst. Atty. Gen., San Francisco, CA, attorney for State appellants and State appellees.

Eugenie Denise Mitchell, Legal Services of Northern California, Sacramento, CA, attorney for plaintiffs in intervention and intervenors-appellees Blanco, et al.

Neal S. Dudovitz, National Senior Citizens Law Center, and John K. Van de Kamp, Dewey Ballantine, Los Angeles, CA, attorneys for plaintiffs-appellees and appellants Martinez, et al.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

Before: FLETCHER, CANBY, and HALL, Circuit Judges.

CANBY, Circuit Judge:

The City of Los Angeles Area Agency on Aging and the City and County of San Francisco, along with several other individual and organizational plaintiffs, ("the Cities") brought this action challenging California's formula for distributing funds under the Older Americans Act, 42 U.S.C. Secs. 3001 et seq. The district court entered an injunction prohibiting the State from using certain factors in its formula, requiring the State to add other factors, and approving a new formula. On appeal, we conclude that much of Cities' complaint is moot, and that the remainder does not state a claim for which relief can be granted. We also conclude that the intervenors' complaints are moot. We therefore vacate the injunction and remand to the district court with instructions to dismiss the complaints. We also reverse the district court's awards of attorney's fees against the State.

BACKGROUND

The Older Americans Act (OAA) authorizes federal grants to fund state-created programs designed to help older individuals meet their daily needs. To receive these funds, a state must develop a plan delineating the types of programs it intends to create and the methods it will use to target particular groups of older individuals. See 42 U.S.C. Sec. 3027. The state also must divide itself into one or more local planning and service areas (PSAs), which implement the programs, and develop an intrastate funding formula (IFF) for determining how funds are to be distributed among the PSAs. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 3025(a)(1)(E) & (2)(C).

All of the plaintiffs that we refer to collectively as the Cities have interests in the distribution of OAA funds in the metropolitan areas of California. In June 1991, they sued the State of California and the California Department of Aging, alleging that the formula California used to distribute OAA funds violated the Older Americans Act, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and various provisions of California law and of the state constitution.

At that time, the State's IFF distributed funds to each of the State's thirty-three PSAs according to a variety of factors, four of which the Cities maintained caused OAA funds to be misdirected. According to the Cities, those factors improperly diverted funds from PSAs that provide services in urban areas (which the Cities contended have the highest populations of needy and minority older persons), and overfunded PSAs that In response to that injunction, the State, which in the form of the California Department of Aging was a most willingly compliant defendant, submitted to the court a proposed IFF omitting the four challenged factors. Under the new IFF, each PSA's share of OAA funds depends on the size of its population that is over age 60 in each of four categories: (1) non-minority, (2) low-income, (3) geographically isolated, and (4) minority.

                provide services in rural areas (which the Cities contended have lower populations of needy and minority older persons).  Thus, the Cities argued, the IFF violated the OAA's mandate that the formula take into account "the distribution ... of older individuals with greatest economic ... and ... social need, with particular attention to low-income minority older individuals." 1  The Cities asked the district court to enjoin the use of the four challenged factors, and to order the state to develop a new, valid, formula.  On June 27, 1991, the court granted the Cities' motion for a preliminary injunction
                

Four groups--all representing predominantly rural PSAs--sought and were granted leave to intervene. Area 1 Agency on Aging, et al. (Area 1), Jovenes de Antano, Inc., et al. (Antano), and Ramona Dario and Manuel Avila (Dario) intervened as defendants, arguing that no permanent injunction should issue because the enjoined factors all were valid. Maria Blanco, et al. (Blanco) intervened as a plaintiff, requesting that the court modify its preliminary injunction to require the State's new formula to include a factor for geographic isolation. At the time Blanco moved to intervene, however, the State's proposed formula already included a geographic isolation factor. Kern County also intervened, but is not a participant in any of these appeals.

After additional briefing and hearings, the district court entered a permanent injunction enjoining the State from using the four factors challenged by the Cities and requiring the State to "give preference" to geographic isolation in its IFF, the factor urged by the Blanco intervenors. The order also contained a finding that the formula proposed by the State was valid under the Act.

The Cities and virtually all of the intervenors appealed.

DISCUSSION
I

Events have largely overtaken this litigation. After the district court issued its injunction, Congress amended the Older Americans Act and for the first time explicitly conditioned a state's receipt of federal funds on the approval of its IFF by the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Aging (the Secretary). See 42 U.S.C. Secs. 3024(c) & 3027(b)(1) (1992). The State is currently operating under an IFF that is subject to that amendment. The four factors to which the Cities objected are not part of the present plan, have never been approved by the Secretary, and are most unlikely ever to be so approved. If the four factors are illegal, as the Cities contend, and the State were to attempt to add any of them to the formula, it would first have to obtain the Secretary's approval. See 45 C.F.R. Sec. 1321.19; 42 U.S.C. Secs. 3024(c) & 3025(a)(2)(D). No doubt the Secretary could mistakenly approve an IFF containing illegal factors. However, in determining whether there is a continuing threat to the Cities' interests, we must assume that the Secretary will interpret the law correctly and obey it. Cf. E.P.A. v. Nat'l Crushed Stone Ass'n, 449 U.S. 64, 83, 101 S.Ct. 295, 307,...

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