Los Angeles County Bar Ass'n v. Eu

• Decision Date: 30 October 1992
• Docket Number: No. 91-55876,91-55876
• Parties: LOS ANGELES COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION, a Non-profit Mutual Benefit Corporation, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. March Fong EU, Secretary of State of the State of California, in her official capacity; Pete Wilson, Governor of the State of California; Willie Brown, Junior, Speaker of the Assembly of the State of California; David Roberti, President Pro Tem of the Senate of the State of California, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 697

979 F.2d 697

61 USLW 2287

LOS ANGELES COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION, a Non-profit Mutual

Benefit Corporation, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. March Fong EU, Secretary of State of the State of

California, in her official capacity; Pete Wilson, Governor

of the State of California; Willie Brown, Junior, Speaker

of the Assembly of the State of California; David Roberti,

President Pro Tem of the Senate of the State of California,

Defendants-Appellees.

No. 91-55876.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted July 8, 1992.

Decided Oct. 30, 1992.

Richard Chernick, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Los Angeles, Cal., for plaintiff-appellant.

Henry G. Ullerich, Interim Asst. Atty. Gen., Los Angeles, Cal., for defendants-appellees.

Bion M. Gregory, Legislative Counsel of the State of Cal., and David B. Judson, Deputy Legislative Counsel, Sacramento, Cal., for defendants-appellees, William L. Brown, Jr., Speaker of Assembly of State of Cal., and David Roberti, President Pro Tem of Senate of State of Cal.

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

Before: FLETCHER, O'SCANNLAIN, and KLEINFELD, Circuit Judges.

O'SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge:

The Los Angeles County Bar Association challenges the constitutionality of a California statute which prescribes the number of judges on the Superior Court for Los Angeles County. The Bar Association asserts that a shortage of state court judges causes inordinate delays in civil litigation, depriving litigants of access to the courts. The Bar Association also claims the statute denies local litigants equal protection of the laws because it forces them to suffer longer delays than litigants in neighboring counties. The federal district court granted summary judgment in favor of the Secretary of State and Governor of California, the Speaker of the California Assembly, and the President Pro Tem of the California Senate ("state officers") and the Bar Association appeals.

I

The Superior Court is California's court of general jurisdiction. Cal. Const. art. 6 § 10. The legislature determines the number of judges assigned to the Superior Court of each county. California Government Code section 69586 currently authorizes 224 superior court judges for Los Angeles County, and allows the appointment of up to 14 more at the option of the county. ¹

The parties agree that the Superior Court for Los Angeles County is badly overburdened. Because criminal, juvenile, and certain family law actions are given priority, most civil actions proceed at a less-than-rapid pace. The record indicates that for civil jury trials held in June 1988, the median time from filing to trial was fifty-nine months. In 1989, only 50% of all civil cases in Los Angeles County were resolved in less than two years, 90% were resolved in 4.2 years, and 98% in 6.3 years.

Although at first glance these statistics are discouraging, closer scrutiny reveals that the situation has improved considerably in the last decade. As of June 30, 1980, there were 72,072 civil cases awaiting trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Eight years later, that backlog had been reduced to 32,803. During the same period, the average time from filing of an at-issue memorandum to jury trial decreased from thirty-six months to twenty-six months. The number of cases filed per judicial position (1034) in Los Angeles County is not unusually high; for fiscal year 1987-88, the Superior Court for thirty-six of California's fifty-eight counties experienced higher numbers of filings per judge.

In November 1987, the Bar Association filed a complaint commencing this action against state officers in federal district court, seeking a declaration that Government Code section 69586 violates federal and state constitutional guarantees. ² The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment. In June 1991, the district court granted the state officers' motions and denied the Bar Association's. This timely appeal followed.

II

The state officers do not question the Bar Association's standing to pursue this action. Nonetheless, standing is a threshold question which we must resolve before proceeding to the merits. Associated General Contractors v. Coalition for Economic Equity, 950 F.2d 1401, 1405 (9th Cir.1991), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 1670, 118 L.Ed.2d 390 (1992); see also Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 518, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2215, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975); McMichael v. County of Napa, 709 F.2d 1268, 1269 (9th Cir.1983).

To establish standing, a plaintiff must demonstrate a sufficient personal stake in the outcome to justify invocation of the judicial process. Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204, 82 S.Ct. 691, 703, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962). The "case or controversy" requirement of Article III precludes the exercise of jurisdiction by a federal court unless the plaintiff has suffered some actual injury or faces a threatened injury fairly traceable to the action challenged and likely to be redressed by a favorable decision. Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, 454 U.S. 464, 472, 102 S.Ct. 752, 758, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982). At the summary judgment stage, the plaintiff must set forth specific facts, rather than mere allegations, that if true would suffice to establish standing. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, --- U.S. ----, ----, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 2137, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992).

In its complaint, the Bar Association alleges that it is, in its own right, a civil litigant in the Los Angeles County courts and as such has suffered delays. ³ Complaint at p 38. We conclude that this status as a litigant gives the Bar Association standing. Because the Bar Association has standing in its own right, we need not determine whether it also has standing as the representative of its members.

Article III mandates that the injury alleged, in addition to being actual and personal, be caused by the challenged action and be "likely to be redressed by a favorable decision." Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S. 26, 38, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 1924, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976). The party seeking to invoke the court's powers must carry the burden of showing that more than "speculative inferences" connect the injury to the challenged action. Id. at 45, 96 S.Ct. at 1927. If causation and redressability depend upon "unfettered choices made by independent actors not before the courts," ASARCO Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605, 615, 109 S.Ct. 2037, 2044, 104 L.Ed.2d 696 (1989), the plaintiff bears the burden of "adduc[ing] facts showing that those choices have been or will be made in such manner as to produce causation and permit redressability of injury." Defenders of Wildlife, --- U.S. at ----, 112 S.Ct. at 2137.

The chain of causation leading from a determination by this court that the dearth of judges in Los Angeles County is unconstitutional to correction of civil litigation delays may appear tenuous. However, it does not at any point depend upon the "unfettered discretion" of third parties. Were this court to issue the requested declaration, we must assume that it is substantially likely that the California legislature, although its members are not all parties to this action, would abide by our authoritative determination. See Franklin v. Massachusetts, --- U.S. ----, ----, 112 S.Ct. 2767, 2777, 120 L.Ed.2d 636 (1992) (plurality). Once the legislature authorized more judicial positions for Los Angeles County, Governor Wilson would, according to the Bar Association, have a legal duty to fill those positions. Complaint at pp 29-30. Even if the new judges were assigned only to criminal and other high-priority cases, the speeding of those cases would inevitably reduce the delay in general civil litigation. We therefore conclude that the Bar Association has adequately demonstrated that, were this court to rule in its favor, it is likely that the alleged injury would be to some extent ameliorated.

III

The state officers contend that this case presents a non-justiciable political question. They argue that the determination of the appropriate number of judges to be assigned to each county's courts must be left to the state legislature because it requires a delicate balancing of competing interests. Further, they contend that no judicially determinable standards exist for resolving the Bar Association's claims.

In the seminal case of Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 210, 82 S.Ct. 691, 706, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962), Justice Brennan, writing for the Court, explained that the political question doctrine arises from "the relationship between the judiciary and the coordinate branches of the Federal Government, and not the federal judiciary's relationship to the States." The Court reiterated in Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 517, 89 S.Ct. 1944, 1961, 23 L.Ed.2d 491 (1969), that the political question doctrine arises primarily from concerns about the separation of powers within the federal government. See also Japan Whaling Ass'n v. American Cetacean Soc'y, 478 U.S. 221, 230, 106 S.Ct. 2860, 2866, 92 L.Ed.2d 166 (1986) ("The political question doctrine excludes from judicial review those controversies which revolve around policy choices and value determinations constitutionally committed for resolution to the halls of Congress or the confines of the Executive Branch."). Accordingly, the doctrine has at best limited applicability to actions challenging state statutes as violative of the federal Constitution. Davids v. Akers, 549 F.2d 120, 126 (9th Cir.1977).

Baker identified six factors which may render an issue non-justiciable:

a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; or the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion; or the impossibility of a court's undertaking independent resolution...