Scott v. Rosenberg

• Decision Date: 22 April 1983
• Docket Number: No. 81-5387,81-5387
• Citation: 702 F.2d 1263
• Parties: Reverend W. Eugene SCOTT, PhD., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Joel ROSENBERG, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 1263

702 F.2d 1263

Reverend W. Eugene SCOTT, PhD., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Joel ROSENBERG, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 81-5387.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted March 3, 1982.

Decided Jan. 21, 1983.

Rehearing Denied April 22, 1983.

Bruce Henderson, Henderson and Esser, Glendale, Cal., for plaintiff-appellant.

Peter R. Osinoff, Asst. U.S. Atty., Los Angeles, Cal., for defendants-appellees.

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

Before WALLACE, SCHROEDER and CANBY, Circuit Judges.

WALLACE, Circuit Judge:

Scott, the president and pastor of Faith Center Church (the church), brought this action for injunctive relief and for actual and punitive damages against five present and former officers and employees (the government employees) of the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC), alleging that they violated his first amendment rights during an investigation of the church's television and radio stations. The district court granted summary judgment for the government employees. We affirm.

I

Diederich, a former employee of one of the church's television stations, sent a letter to the FCC in which he alleged that Scott had solicited during broadcasts and subsequently received funds for projects which were never undertaken. He also stated his belief that Scott was using the stations for his personal gain. In response to that letter, the FCC instituted an investigation of the church's California television and radio stations. The FCC conducted a number of interviews during which further allegations were made: that the stations had failed to log paid religious programming as commercial broadcasting, that Scott had misstated the amount of his personal remuneration during broadcast solicitations, and that Scott had made personal pledges during the broadcasts which he had never fulfilled.

Subsequently, two FCC employees made an unannounced visit to the television station located in the main church building to interview employees and investigate records. There is some dispute with respect to how clearly they identified the purpose of their visit and with respect to the scope of their request for access to church and station records. In any event, the church subsequently made available some, but not all, of the materials requested, and thereafter the FCC issued an order designating for hearing the station's application for license renewal and a notice of apparent liability for forfeiture for violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1343, the statute governing fraud by use of radio and television. The record does not indicate the status of the proceedings pertaining to that order. The church has apparently sought relief both before the FCC and in the courts. Those claims of the church, however, are not before us. Scott brought this action not in any representative capacity, but to vindicate his individual rights. He apparently does not, in his personal capacity, contest the FCC's request for station logs and for his salary records. He does, however, allege that the FCC's inquiry into his personal donations violates his free exercise rights under the first amendment. ¹ Scott's claim that his religion requires donations to be made confidentially if they are to be received by God as sacrifices is not disputed.

The questions presented by this appeal are whether Scott has standing to bring this action; whether Scott has a legal basis for his claim under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1985(3) or directly under the first amendment; whether the FCC employees violated Scott's first amendment rights; and, if so, whether the FCC employees are entitled to immunity. Summary judgment was appropriate because there is no genuine issue as to any material fact.

II

The government employees argue that Scott lacks standing to bring this action because the FCC investigation was directed towards the station and not Scott, and because the FCC requested only church records and none of Scott's personal records. We hold, however, that Scott has standing to assert his claim.

Article III of the Constitution limits the judicial power of the United States to the resolution of actual cases and controversies. Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 471, 102 S.Ct. 752, 757, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982) (Valley Forge ). A part of this article III requirement is the doctrine of standing. Id. at 471, 102 S.Ct. at 758. The "gist of the question of standing" is whether the plaintiff has "alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions." Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204, 82 S.Ct. 691, 703, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962). At a minimum,

Article III requires the party who invokes the court's authority to "show that he personally has suffered some actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant," Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 99, 99 S.Ct. 1601, 1608, 60 L.Ed.2d 66 (1979), and that the injury "fairly can be traced to the challenged action" and "is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision," Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S. 26, 38, 41, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 1924, 1925, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976).

Valley Forge, supra, 454 U.S. at 471, 102 S.Ct. at 758 (footnote omitted); see Larson v. Valente, 456 U.S. 228, 238-43, 102 S.Ct. 1673, 1680-83, 72 L.Ed.2d 33 (1982) (church, as well as its individual followers, had standing under article III to challenge state law requiring religious organizations that received more than half their total contributions from nonmembers to register and report to the state).

But even meeting this article III threshold for standing may be insufficient to gain access to the federal court for redress of certain claims. The Court has also articulated several prudential requirements which limit the category of persons who may invoke the powers of the federal judiciary. When the plaintiff's "asserted harm is a 'generalized grievance' shared in substantially equal measure by all or a large class of citizens, that harm alone normally does not warrant exercise of jurisdiction." Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 499, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2205, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975); accord Schlesinger v. Reservists Committee to Stop the War, 418 U.S. 208, 216-27, 94 S.Ct. 2925, 2929-2930, 41 L.Ed.2d 706 (1974). In addition, the "Court has held that the 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, supra, 422 U.S. at 499, 95 S.Ct. at 2205; Tileston v. Ullman, 318 U.S. 44, 63 S.Ct. 493, 87 L.Ed. 603 (1943) (per curiam). ² Under these prudential principles, the judiciary seeks "to limit access to the federal courts to those litigants best suited to assert ... particular claim[s]" and "to avoid deciding questions of broad social import where no individual rights would be vindicated." Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 99-100, 99 S.Ct. 1601, 1607-1608, 60 L.Ed.2d 66 (1979).

We conclude that Scott meets the constitutional requirement for standing. The FCC requested church records of Scott's donations. Scott alleges that his religious beliefs require that his giving be secret if it is to be efficacious. The government employees do not deny that this is a tenet of Scott's faith. Scott, therefore, may properly allege injury from disclosure of his donations. If the FCC has already procured the requested records, the alleged injury may be actual. If the FCC has not yet received the documents, but continues to threaten the church with a loss of its license for failure to produce them, the alleged injury is at least threatened. Therefore, the injury aspect of article III standing is met.

The second constitutional standing requirement is that the injury be traceable to the government employees' action. Here, it is. The church has not and apparently will not release the records voluntarily. But for the FCC's actions, no injury or threat of injury could have occurred. The government employees argue that if they have interfered with any first amendment rights, they are the rights of the church, for no request has been made of Scott personally. Superficially, the argument is plausible, but the law is otherwise. When a governmental demand "imposed on one party causes specific harm to a third party, harm that a constitutional provision or statute was intended to prevent, the indirectness of the injury does not ... deprive the person harmed of standing to vindicate his rights" if he can establish that "the asserted injury was the consequence of the defendants' actions, or that prospective relief will remove the harm." Warth v. Seldin, supra, 422 U.S. at 505, 95 S.Ct. at 2208; see United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S. 669, 93 S.Ct. 2405, 37 L.Ed.2d 254 (1973); Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 124, 93 S.Ct. 705, 712, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973).

The final requirement for article III standing is that a favorable decision would prevent or redress the injury. Scott alleges and we assume, see Part V, infra, that he may be entitled to damages if he has suffered a violation of his first amendment rights. Furthermore, if the action of the government employees threatens future violation of his first amendment rights, he is entitled to injunctive relief prohibiting their demands on the church for his donation records. A favorable decision would prevent or redress Scott's injury.

Scott therefore meets the constitutional requirements for standing. We turn now to the prudential requirements. His asserted harm is a particularized grievance, namely, the threatened or actual dissemination of his personal donation records, and he asserts his own legal...