Smith v. City of Cleveland Heights, 84-3099

• Citation: 760 F.2d 720
• Decision Date: 03 May 1985
• Docket Number: No. 84-3099,84-3099
• Parties: William H. SMITH, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (6th Circuit)

Page 720

760 F.2d 720

53 USLW 2564

William H. SMITH, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CITY OF CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 84-3099.

United States Court of Appeals,

Sixth Circuit.

Argued Jan. 25, 1985.

Decided May 3, 1985.

John H. Burtch, argued, Baker & Hostetler, David R. Kelleher, Columbus, Ohio, for plaintiff-appellant.

Donald K. Barclay, Jules N. Koach, argued, Kathryn Gonser Eloff, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Avery S. Friedman, Edward G. Kramer, Vincent T. Lombardo, Kenneth J. Kowalski, argued, Cleveland, Ohio, for defendants-appellees.

Before MERRITT and WELLFORD, Circuit Judges, and HILLMAN, District Judge. ^*

MERRITT, Circuit Judge.

The plaintiff in this housing discrimination action alleges that the racial steering practices of defendants, city of Cleveland Heights and non-profit neighborhood association, Heights Community Congress, violate both his statutory and constitutional rights under the Fair Housing Act, Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 3604, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, and Secs. 1981, 1982, 1983, 42 U.S.C. The issue on appeal is whether plaintiff Smith, a black resident of the integrated Cleveland Heights community who was not himself steered from the City, has standing to pursue the action. The District Court held that Smith had demonstrated no "actual injury" sufficient to satisfy the requisites of standing, both because Smith had not been steered and because his rights to associate freely with other blacks had not been impaired; the court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment and dismissed the action. Dist.Ct.Op. at 6-7. We hold that plaintiff satisfied the standing requirements reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Allen v. Wright, --- U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984). We, therefore, reverse the judgment of the District Court and remand for further proceedings on the merits.

Cleveland Heights is a racially integrated community covering 8.2 square miles contiguous to and east of Cleveland, Ohio, with a population of approximately 60,000 persons. The racial composition of this population is approximately 75% white and 25% black. Since 1976 the City, allegedly, has developed municipal policies to control the City's racial composition and to maintain the racial percentages at 75% white and 25% black. The City's programs, designed to freeze existing integration by steering white home buyers to the Cleveland Heights housing market and black home buyers away from the area, ¹ are incorporated in Resolution 26-1976, which outlines specific means to create incentives for real estate agents to perform the desired steering. Plaintiff Smith alleges that these official municipal programs violate both his statutory rights under the Fair Housing Act and his constitutional rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments and 42 U.S.C. Secs. 1981, 1982, and 1983.

In order to establish his standing to bring this action, Smith must satisfy a three part test. He must show that (1) he has suffered a personal injury, (2) the injury is fairly traceable to the defendant's challenged conduct, and (3) the injury is likely to be redressed by the judicial relief sought. Allen v. Wright, 104 S.C. at 3325 (quoting Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 472, 102 S.Ct. 752, 758, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982)). These three elements comprise the "core constitutional" standing requirements which the Supreme Court has determined are mandated by the "case and controversy" language of Art. III of the Constitution. Id.

Smith alleges injury for standing purposes on two bases. First, Smith argues that the steering policies stigmatize him as an inferior member of the community in which he lives: that by effectively limiting other blacks' access to Cleveland Heights, the municipal policies brand black residents as less desirable than whites. Smith moved into Cleveland Heights in 1974, two years before the City's governing body first passed Resolution 26-1976, and was not himself subject to any steering practices when he purchased his home. Nevertheless, he asserts that he is forced to interact on a daily basis within the Cleveland Heights community under the weight of this imposed badge of inferiority.

Second, Smith asserts that the City's official programs effectively have denied his associational rights. He does not deny that the integrated nature of his community affords him opportunity to associate with other blacks who live there now. He alleges that his associational rights have been impaired, however, by the official manipulation of Cleveland Heights' housing market in the sense that he has been denied the chance to associate freely with other black residents who would have purchased homes in Cleveland Heights but for the steering policies.

We accept Smith's first argument. Smith correctly argues that noneconomic "stigmatic" injury supports standing. See Heckler v. Mathews, 465 U.S. ----, 104 S.Ct. 1387, 1395, 79 L.Ed.2d 646 (1984); Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Ins., 409 U.S. 205, 208, 93 S.Ct. 364, 366, 34 L.Ed.2d 415 (1972). See also Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 734-35, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 1366, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972) (noneconomic aesthetic and environmental injuries can support standing). He argues further that his stigmatic injury is linked directly to the racial steering policies of Cleveland Heights and Heights Community Congress, and that the injunction which he seeks would fairly redress his injuries. Under the Supreme Court's interpretation of "core constitutional" standing requirements recently restated as a three-prong test in Allen v. Wright, supra, the above allegations, documented in plaintiff's complaint and the depositions, demonstrate Smith's standing to pursue this action.

We note at the outset of this analysis that standing has been a peculiarly malleable doctrine through the years, expanding or contracting to fit the temper of prevailing judicial philosophy. See K. DAVIS, ADMINISTRATIVE LAW TREATISE Sec. 24:1 at 208-11 (1983). The significant fluctuations in the doctrine's boundaries have been the source of criticism. Id.

The uncertainty of the doctrine's outer limits does not affect its application here, for the plaintiff alleges facts placing him within the doctrine's confines. First, as to Smith's allegation of stigma, the requirement of actual personal injury is met. The City's policy directly affects Smith's interest in his own self-respect, dignity and individuality as a person in his own town. Smith is a black resident of Cleveland Heights. His city, he claims, has adopted an official policy to deter other members of Smith's race from residing in his community. Smith is therefore a member of a group of people whom the City, regardless of the reason, has characterized as undesirable beyond a certain percentage or number.

This process is not color blind and is perceived by Smith as a black person as imposing a badge or label of inferiority on him based purely on race. The City is essentially saying that, although Smith's presence in the community may not be undesirable, the presence of any more members of Smith's race is undesirable. The record supports Smith's claims in this respect. Regardless of the City's status quo position that Smith himself may remain because he is within the desired percentage of black residents, as a black man Smith immutably shares whatever perceived insult or indignity the City's policies pass on to black home buyers in Cleveland Heights. He lives out daily routines and neighborhood interactions as a member of a race which his own City labels as undesirable for purposes of housing policy. Smith's deposition demonstrates that this policy adds injury to insult, for the black citizen must live on a daily basis with a sense of disrespect officially established as law.

It is true that the City's motive for this unequal treatment may be benign--that is, to ensure stable integration and cultural diversity for the benefit of all Cleveland Heights residents. This factor may be relevant to the merits of the action in, for example, an analysis of the goals of the Fair Housing Act or in a constitutional analysis using a balancing test of individual injury versus state interest. But it is not a relevant factor in deciding the threshold standing issue. See Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 500, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2206, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975) (stating that "standing in no way depends on the merits").

The stigma in his own community on which Smith relies is far from the "abstract stigmatic injury" or generalized insult found insufficient for standing purposes in Allen v. Wright, 104 S.Ct. at 3327. In Allen, plaintiffs were parents of black public school students who challenged IRS standards and procedures for denying tax-exempt status to private schools that discriminated on the basis of race. In this taxpayer standing case, the parents essentially charged that the federal government was not being sufficiently vigilant in enforcing denials of tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory private schools. There was not, as here, an official government policy that directly discriminated on the basis of race in a discrete community.

Justice O'Connor, writing for the Court, emphasized the generality of the plaintiffs' injury and likened the plaintiffs' stigma to one potentially suffered by a resident of Hawaii on the basis of government support of discriminatory schools in Maine. Recognizing standing, she wrote, would mean that it would "extend nationwide to all members of the particular racial groups against which the Government was alleged to be discriminating by its grant of a tax exemption to a racially discriminatory school, regardless of the location of that school." Id. at 3327 (emphasis supplied).

Smith's situation is in sharp contrast. Smith's relationship to the source and situs of his injury is far from attenuated or...