Soules v. Kauaians for Nukolii Campaign Committee
| Decision Date | 14 June 1988 |
| Docket Number | 86-2233,Nos. 85-1906,s. 85-1906 |
| Citation | 849 F.2d 1176 |
| Parties | , 12 Fed.R.Serv.3d 460 Lani SOULES; Lafrance Kapaka; Paul Lemkey; Carol Lemkey; Clara G. Rapozo; Alice Souza; Deane B. Abben; Lois A. Birnbaum; Margaret Littman; Masao Mixumo, Registered Voters of the County of Kauai, on behalf of themselves and all other voters of the County of Kauai; Committee to Save Nukolii, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. KAUAIANS FOR NUKOLII CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE; Jerome Y.K. Hew; in his official capacity as Clerk of the County of Kauai; County of Kauai; Kauai County Council, Defendants-Appellees, and Graham Beach Partners, et al., Intervenors Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Sidney Wolinsky, Anita P. Arriola, Public Advocates, Inc., San Francisco, Cal., Robert Harris, Harris & Smith, Honolulu, Hawaii, for plaintiffs-appellants.
Warren C.R. Perry, Second Deputy Co. Atty., Lihue, Hawaii, Henry I. Kuba, Honolulu, Hawaii, for defendants-appellees.
Edward A. Jaffe and Milton M. Yasunaga, Cades, Schutte, Fleming & Wright, Honolulu, Hawaii, Walton D.Y. Hong, Masuoka & Hong, Lihue, Hawaii, Wallace S. Fujiyama and Paul H. Sato, Fujiyama, Duffy & Fujiyama, Honolulu, Hawaii, for intervenors defendants-appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii.
Before POOLE, NORRIS and BRUNETTI, Circuit Judges.
This case involves several constitutional challenges to a special election held on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. We affirm the district court's award of summary judgment rejecting these constitutional claims, but reverse the sanctions imposed on the appellants during the course of the litigation.
In 1974, Pacific Standard Life Insurance Company and Graham Beach Partners (the Developers) purchased a 60-acre parcel on Kauai. At the time, the property, known as "Nukolii," was zoned for open or agricultural use only. The County of Kauai (the County) thereafter re-zoned the land for resort use. A coalition of local citizens, the Committee to Save Nukolii (the Committee), organized to oppose the rezoning and to propose an initiative vote to repeal the zoning change.
In January 1980, the County Clerk certified the Committee's petition for an initiative for the November general election. At first, the Committee did not request a special election, but later it requested that the initiative be placed on the ballot for the primary election which was being held 46 days earlier than the general election. In May, the Kauai County Council (the Council) voted against the rescheduling of the The Committee initiative passed by a 2-1 margin, and the County immediately sued in Hawaii Circuit Court for a declaratory judgment as to the initiative's effect. The trial court held that the County was equitably estopped from enforcing the new zoning law because of its prior approval of building permits. The Hawaii Supreme Court reversed, holding that the Developers were barred from further building under the new law. County of Kauai v. Pacific Standard Life Ins. Co., 65 Haw. 318, 653 P.2d 766 (1982), appeal dismissed, 460 U.S. 1077, 103 S.Ct. 1762, 76 L.Ed.2d 338 (1983).
initiative and arranged for its inclusion on the November 1980 general election ballot.
Having lost in court, the pro-development forces shifted the battle back to the political arena. In June or July 1983, a group called Kauaians for Nukolii (KFN) began organizing for the purpose of overturning the 1980 initiative. 1 KFN sponsored a petition drive to have the zoning issue resubmitted as an initiative in a special election. On September 20, 1983, their petition to place an initiative on the ballot was certified by the County Clerk. Thereafter, a new campaign committee, Kauaians for Nukolii Campaign Committee (KFNCC), was formed by KFN to support the initiative. Rather than wait for the general election, KFN offered to pay the County for all the costs incurred in holding the special election. 2 On October 13, 1983, the Council approved a special election on the issue of re-zoning and also "voted to accept a gift of $40,000 from the Kauaians for Nukolii to be placed in the general fund and to make an appropriation of $50,000 from the general fund to finance the special election." Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Intervenor's and Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment and Denying Plaintiffs' Motion for Preliminary Injunction (Final Order) at 3. KFN also pledged an additional $10,000 for election financing in the event of a cost overrun. Substantially all the $50,000 cost of the special election was paid by one of the Developers, Hasegawa Komuten, who evidently was later repaid by other contributors to KFN. See Appellees' Brief at 14 n. 8.
The Committee opposed KFN's initiative and responded with its own petition drive for a counter-initiative, the so-called "Fair Choice" initiative, that would require the Developers to put 10% of the revenues from the new projects into a community trust fund. The Committee never collected enough signatures to get the initiative on the ballot.
On November 3, 1983, a public hearing was held on the proposed special election, and on November 17, the special election was approved by the Council. The election date was then set for February 4, 1984. Neither the Committee nor any of its individual members challenged the validity of the special election at this stage. The election took place as scheduled and, although KFN actually lost at the polls, because 82% of the absentee ballots were cast in favor of the initiative, it passed 8,476 to 5,917.
Hawaiian law requires that all special election challenges be filed directly in the state Supreme Court within 20 days of the special election. Haw.Rev.Stat. Secs. 11-172, 11-174.5. The Committee and some of its members filed such an action, but the Court dismissed for failure to state a claim. Two months after the election, the Committee and some other members (appellants) filed the instant action in federal district court against the County, County officials, and KFNCC. 3 As later amended, appellants' complaint alleges several claims under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, including that portions
of the Kauai County Charter is void for vagueness, that the granting of the special election violates equal protection, and that various aspects of the conduct of the election violate due process. As relief the complaint requests (1) declaratory relief (pursuant to the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2201), (2) an order invalidating the election results of the special election, (3) general and special damages for expenditures made in opposing the initiative during the allegedly unconstitutional election, and (4) costs and attorneys' fees. In November 1984, Judge Fong granted appellees' motion for summary judgment in part, holding that equitable relief was barred by laches. In March 1985, he considered the merits of the rest of appellants' claims and granted appellees' motion for summary judgment. In addition, he granted appellees' motion for sanctions against appellants for an allegedly frivolous opposition to the Developers' intervention in the case, 623 F.Supp. 657. The Committee and its members timely appealed. We now affirm in part and reverse in part.
EQUAL PROTECTION
Appellees contend on appeal that appellants lack standing to claim that the council violated the equal protection clause by authorizing a privately funded special election. According to the appellees, appellants have no standing to press this claim because the appellants have never requested a special election that was denied by the Council for lack of private funding. We disagree.
Essentially, appellees' position is that unless appellants have been denied a special election they have not "suffered some actual or threatened injury as a result of the putatively illegal conduct of the defendant." 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) (quoting Gladstone Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 99, 99 S.Ct. 1601, 1608, 60 L.Ed.2d 66 (1979)). 4 Appellants argue, however, that the Council's decision to finance the special election with private funds was an illegal allocation of political opportunity based on wealth. Appellants claim that this arguably unconstitutional act directly resulted in a legally cognizable injury because their opposition to KFN's initiative in the special election involved extraordinary campaign expenditures that would not have been incurred had the initiative been held over until the general election. We hold that such expenditures constitute a "distinct and palpable injury" and that there is a " 'fairly traceable' causal connection between the claimed injury and the challenged conduct." Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Envt'l Study Group, Inc., 438 U.S. 59, 72, 98 S.Ct. 2620, 2630, 57 L.Ed.2d 595 (1978) (citations omitted). 5 Cf. Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714, 106 S.Ct. 3181, 3186, 92 L.Ed.2d 583 (1986) (); United States v. SCRAP, 412 U.S. 669, 687-90, 93 S.Ct. 2405, 2416-17, 37 L.Ed.2d 254 (1973) (). 6
Appellees next argue that regardless of the merits of appellants' equal protection claim, appellants' failure to sue the County prior to the 1983 special election should bar them from now seeking to invalidate that election. As noted above, in November 1984 the district court, ruling on appellees' motion for summary judgment in part, held that appellants' claims for equitable relief...
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