Osediacz v. City of Cranston, 04-2673.

• Decision Date: 06 July 2005
• Docket Number: No. 04-2673.,04-2673.
• Citation: 414 F.3d 136
• Parties: Grace C. OSEDIACZ, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. CITY OF CRANSTON, etc., et al., Defendants, Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 136

414 F.3d 136

Grace C. OSEDIACZ, Plaintiff, Appellee, v. CITY OF CRANSTON, etc., et al., Defendants, Appellants.

No. 04-2673.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard May 2, 2005.

Decided July 6, 2005.

Tom Marcelle, with whom Steven Frias and Michael Glucksman, City Solicitor, were on brief, for appellants.

Michael T. Eskey, with whom Amato A. DeLuca, Miriam Weizenbaum and DeLuca & Weizenbaum Ltd. were on brief, for appellee.

Before SELYA, Circuit Judge, COFFIN, Senior Circuit Judge, and HOWARD, Circuit Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

This appeal has its genesis in a decision by Cranston, Rhode Island (the City) to institute a policy (the Policy) that allowed private parties to erect holiday displays on a prime piece of public property, subject to certain administrative requirements and the approval of the mayor. A number of individuals and groups seized the opportunity. Collectively, they erected a myrioramic array of exhibits, some of which (such as a nativity scene) were overtly religious. A citizen of Cranston took umbrage and sued for declaratory and injunctive relief.

The district court rebuffed the plaintiff's Establishment Clause challenge but found her Free Speech Clause claim meritorious and enjoined continued use of the Policy on the ground that it gave the mayor unconstrained authority to approve (and, by extension, to disapprove) proposed displays. Osediacz v. City of Cranston, 344 F.Supp.2d 799, 814 (D.R.I.2004). The City appeals. Concluding, as we do, that the plaintiff lacks standing to mount a challenge under the Free Speech Clause, we reverse.

I. Background

The facts are straightforward. As the 2003 holiday season approached, the City issued the Policy, which designated the south lawn of City Hall as a limited public forum for the display of holiday-themed and seasonal decorations. The Policy was designed to continue in force from year to year. It permitted the public to erect "appropriate" displays between December 5 and January 1, defined "appropriate" as "being suitable and proper for the holiday occasion," and explicitly prohibited any display that would "shock the consciousness [sic] of the community." The Policy required any person wishing to erect an exhibit to provide his or her name, address, and telephone number, a brief written description of the exhibit, and a signed release absolving the City of any liability for damage to the exhibit. Of particular pertinence here, the Policy proclaimed that the mayor or his designee "must approve" all displays.

In short order, several exhibits appeared on the south lawn. These included a large menorah accompanied by a sign conveying wishes for "a Happy Chanukah"; a near-life-size nativity scene; an inflatable seven-foot-tall snowman and a similarly sized Santa Claus; a huge holographic angel; a train of fifteen pink flamingos with Santa Claus hats; and a sign that read "Happy Holidays from the Teamsters Union." Faced with this embarrassment of riches, the City determined on December 21, 2003 that the south lawn could contain nothing more and barred further entries.

On December 22, 2003, plaintiff-appellee Grace Osediacz filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island. She asserted that the display of religious symbols on the City Hall lawn violated the Establishment Clause. She also challenged the Policy as contravening the Constitution's Establishment, Free Speech, and Due Process Clauses.

After a brief period of discovery, the City moved for summary judgment with respect to the Establishment Clause claims. The plaintiff opposed the motion. The district court expanded the summary judgment battleground to include the free speech claim and solicited additional affidavits and briefs. See Berkovitz v. Home Box Office, Inc., 89 F.3d 24, 29 (1st Cir.1996) (discussing a district court's authority to grant sua sponte summary judgment).

In her main affidavit, the plaintiff portrayed herself as a Cranston resident and taxpayer who regularly conducts business at City Hall. She stated that she found the spectacle of a menorah and creche on municipal property an inappropriate governmental endorsement of religion. She did not aver, however, that she herself harbored any interest in erecting a display.

The district court ruled that the tableau on the south lawn of City Hall, though it included religious symbols, was nothing more than "a celebration of the holiday in both its religious and secular senses." Osediacz, 344 F.Supp.2d at 807 (citing Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 680-81, 104 S.Ct. 1355, 79 L.Ed.2d 604 (1984)). The court further ruled that the displays had no religious purpose and that they did not have the effect of endorsing religion. Id. at 807-10 (citing County of Allegheny v. ACLU, 492 U.S. 573, 579-82, 109 S.Ct. 3086, 106 L.Ed.2d 472 (1989)). Consequently, the court granted partial summary judgment in the City's favor on the plaintiff's flagship Establishment Clause claim.¹ See id. at 815.

The court was less sanguine about the Policy's free speech implications. After determining that the plaintiff had standing to raise a free speech claim, id. at 811-12, the court noted that the Policy, on its face, provided no meaningful standards that in any way constrained the mayor's authority to approve or disapprove displays, id. at 812-13. Nor was there a sufficient history of past practice from which such standards could be inferred. Id. at 813-14. Because the Policy vested essentially standardless discretion in the mayor to grant or withhold approval for displays at his whim, the Policy constituted a prior restraint on speech and, therefore, transgressed the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. Id. at 814 (citing City of Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publ'g Co., 486 U.S. 750, 772, 108 S.Ct. 2138, 100 L.Ed.2d 771 (1988)). The court granted partial summary judgment for the plaintiff on that claim, id., and accordingly, declined to address her due process claim, id. at 801 n. 2, 108 S.Ct. 2138.

The City appeals from the district court's resolution of the free speech claim. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. Since the district court decided this case at the summary judgment stage, we undertake de novo review. Houlton Citizens' Coalition v. Town of Houlton, 175 F.3d 178, 184 (1st Cir.1999).

II. Analysis

Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. Rhode Island v. EPA, 378 F.3d 19, 22 (1st Cir.2004). They are not empowered to offer advisory opinions. United States v. Green, 407 F.3d 434, 444 (1st Cir.2005). Thus, standing to sue is an indispensable component of federal court jurisdiction. As the Supreme Court has explained:

[T]he case or controversy requirement defines with respect to the Judicial Branch the idea of separation of powers on which the Federal Government is founded. The several doctrines that have grown up to elaborate that requirement are founded in concern about the proper — and properly limited — role of the courts in a democratic society.

Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 750, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).

In this instance, our discussion begins and ends with the standing issue. Standing doctrine comprises a mix of constitutional and prudential criteria. See Elk Grove Unified Sch. Dist. v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1, 124 S.Ct. 2301, 2308, 159 L.Ed.2d 98 (2004); N.H. Right to Life PAC v. Gardner, 99 F.3d 8, 13 (1st Cir.1996). The constitutional core of standing requires that a plaintiff make a tripartite showing: she must demonstrate that she has suffered an injury in fact, that her injury is fairly traceable to the disputed conduct, and that the relief sought promises to redress the injury sustained. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992); Gardner, 99 F.3d at 13. The party seeking to invoke the federal court's jurisdiction — normally, the plaintiff — bears the burden of pleading and proof on each step of the standing pavane. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561, 112 S.Ct. 2130.

In keeping with these important concepts, the Supreme Court has embellished the constitutional requirements attendant to standing with an array of prudential monitions. The prudential aspects of standing include "the general prohibition on a litigant's raising another person's legal rights, the rule barring adjudication of generalized grievances more appropriately addressed in the representative branches, and the requirement that a plaintiff's complaint fall within the zone of interests protected by the law invoked." Allen, 468 U.S. at 751, 104 S.Ct. 3315.

In this case, the City challenges the plaintiff's standing. It reasons that because the plaintiff never had any interest in erecting a display, there was no chance that she would be subjected to the vagaries of the approval process and, hence, she has failed to show a sufficiently personalized injury emanating from the Policy. To bolster this reasoning, the City relies heavily on Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1, 92 S.Ct. 2318, 33 L.Ed.2d 154 (1972), in which the Supreme Court wrote that if the complaining parties "themselves are not chilled, but seek only to represent those millions whom they believe are so chilled, [they] clearly lack that personal stake in the outcome of the controversy essential to standing." Id. at 13 n. 7, 92 S.Ct. 2318 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).

The plaintiff attempts to blunt the force of this reasoning by touting a line of cases holding that traditional standing requirements are relaxed in the precincts patrolled by the First Amendment. See, e.g., Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 612, 93 S.Ct. 2908, 37 L.Ed.2d 830 (1973) (holding that when First Amendment concerns are at stake, a plaintiff may "challenge a statute not because [her] own rights are violated, but because . . . the statute's very existence may cause others not before the court to refrain from constitutionally protected...