Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc. v. U.S. Dept. of Health, Ed. and Welfare, 79-1221

• Citation: 619 F.2d 252
• Decision Date: 08 April 1980
• Docket Number: No. 79-1221,79-1221
• Parties: AMERICANS UNITED FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, INC., Gunn, Andrew, Leigh, Doerr, Edward D., Settembrini, Gioele, Binns, E. Mallary, Appellants, v. The UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE, the United States of America, Northeast Bible College, a/k/a Valley Forge Christian College.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (3rd Circuit)

Page 252

619 F.2d 252

AMERICANS UNITED FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, INC., Gunn, Andrew, Leigh, Doerr, Edward D., Settembrini, Gioele, Binns, E. Mallary, Appellants, v. The UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELFARE, the United States of America, Northeast

Bible College, a/k/a Valley Forge

Christian College.

No. 79-1221.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Argued Oct. 12, 1979.

Reassigned Feb. 7, 1980.

Decided April 8, 1980.

Lee Boothby (argued), Berrien Springs, Mich., John T. Acton, Willow Grove, Pa., for appellants.

Frank A. Rosenfeld (argued), Leonard Schaitman, Attys., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., Barbara Allen Babcock, Asst. Atty. Gen., Washington, D. C., Peter F. Vaira, Jr., U. S. Atty., Philadelphia, Pa., for Federal appellees.

C. Clark Hodgson, Jr. (argued), Georganne Daher Terrill, Stradley, Ronon, Stevens & Young, Philadelphia, Pa., for Valley Forge Christian College.

Before ADAMS, ROSENN and WEIS, Circuit Judges.

OPINION OF THE COURT

ADAMS, Circuit Judge.

The question presented in this appeal is whether an organization devoted to the separation of church and state, and several of its members suing as individual citizens, have standing to challenge the transfer of government property to a concededly religious organization.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

In August 1976, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) conveyed 77 acres of surplus government property located in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, as well as buildings, fixtures, and equipment situated thereon, to the Valley Forge Christian College. The property was transferred pursuant to the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949, which authorizes HEW to sell or to lease surplus government property to tax-exempt institutions for health and educational purposes. ¹ In setting the sale or lease value of the property to be transferred, the Act requires the Secretary of HEW to consider any benefit that may accrue to the United States from the designated use of such property, and to grant discounts, known as "public benefit allowances," to transferees. ² In exchange for its agreement to use the property in conformance with specified educational purposes for a period of thirty years, HEW granted to the college a 100% public benefit allowance. As a result, the property was transferred without any financial payment by the college. The total fair value of the property, acquired by the government at an estimated cost of $10,374,386.00, was stated to be $1,303,730.00 at the time of transfer.

The Valley Forge Christian College is admittedly sectarian. Operated under the supervision of the Assemblies of God, the college's primary purpose is to train leaders for church-related activities. Its curriculum is devoted to bible study, Christian service, and theology. Attendance at daily chapel service and regular participation in Christian activities is mandatory for all students.

Numerous transfers of government property to hundreds of church-denominated institutions have been authorized under the Act. As a matter of practice, HEW nearly always grants these organizations a public benefit allowance ranging from 95% to 100% of the property's estimated fair value. In this manner, HEW has in most cases relieved the benefitted religious organizations of the obligation to make financial payment for property received. Since the passage of this Act, HEW has authorized more than 650 separate transfers of surplus government property to various religious institutions. The total fair market value of government property transferred to denominationally sponsored organizations during this period amounted to more than $25,700,000.00. The initial cost of acquiring this property was over $64,494,000.00.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization claiming a membership of 90,000, and four of its individual directors, citizens and taxpayers of the United States, challenged HEW's transfer of government property to the Valley Forge Christian College. As defined by its Articles of Corporation, American United's purpose is "to defend, maintain and promote religious liberty and the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state." The plaintiffs alleged that this property transfer constituted a violation of their individual rights protected by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and sought declaratory and injunctive relief to void the transfer. On the defendants' motion, the district court dismissed the suit on the ground that plaintiffs lacked standing as taxpayers to challenge a transfer of property pursuant to the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act. This appeal is from that judgment.

Although we accept the district court's conclusion that the plaintiffs lack taxpayer standing to contest the challenged conduct, we disagree with its conception of the legal identity assumed by the plaintiffs in this case. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit organization, is precluded by its very nature from assuming the status of taxpayer. And while the four members of this organization suing as individual plaintiffs do assert standing as taxpayers, none of them does so exclusively or as a matter of primary concern. The plaintiffs' essential contention, rather, is that the governmental conduct in question caused them individuated injury because it abridged their right protected by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to a Government that does not establish religion. Because the constitutional injury complained of by the plaintiffs gives them a sufficient "personal stake" in the present controversy to assure the court a "complete perspective" of the issues, and because the interest they seek to protect is arguably within the zone of interests protected by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, we hold that the plaintiffs possess legal standing to maintain this action. Accordingly, we will reverse the judgment of the district court.

II. THE STANDING REQUIREMENT IN GENERAL

The concept of standing to sue derives essentially from Article III of the Constitution, which extends the federal judicial power only to certain classes of "cases" and "controversies." ³ Standing differs from the other elements of justiciability in that it focuses primarily on the status of the litigant, and only secondarily on the issues he wishes to have adjudicated. ⁴ Although the case or controversy requirement provides the framework within which the question of standing in federal courts must be considered, ⁵ Article III merely delimits the jurisdiction of federal courts; it neither defines nor is it synonymous with the doctrinal limitations of standing. As the Supreme Court has asserted, "the question of standing is related only to whether the dispute sought to be adjudicated will be presented in an adversary context and in a form historically viewed as capable of judicial resolution." ⁶ Yet, the doctrine of standing reflects as well a blend of policy considerations that are "not always clearly distinguished from the constitutional limitation." ⁷

Courts and commentators have been confounded for many years by the question of standing. ⁸ To a considerable degree, the complexities and uncertainties stem from its case-by-case course of development, which has been "more or less determined by the specific circumstances of individual situations." ⁹ The rules of standing have been fashioned not in the abstract, but "with specific reference to the status asserted by the party whose standing is challenged and to the type of question he wishes to have adjudicated." ¹⁰ For this reason, the Supreme Court has declared that "(g)eneralizations about standing to sue are largely worthless as such." ¹¹ Only by distinguishing the different contexts in which the Supreme Court has attempted to give "some meaningful form . . . to the jurisdictional limitations placed on federal court power by the concept of standing," ¹² is it possible to reach some comprehension of what the requirement entails.

Early discussions by the Court regarding the question of standing were anchored in the notion of a "legally protected interest" on the part of the litigant. ¹³ Under this approach, standing to litigate was conditioned on a showing by the plaintiff that the challenged governmental action threatened one of his legally protected interests. ¹⁴ Only if the plaintiff demonstrated an invasion of such an interest would the courts respond to claims of serious harm or injury resulting from illegality. ¹⁵ As challenges to governmental conduct increased during the course of this century, however, observation of the "legal interest" test "became steadily more perfunctory, and the link with private-dispute settlement more tenuous." ¹⁶ Litigants increasingly recognized, and desired to attack, the impact of governmental conduct on these so-called "noneconomic" values. Judicial reluctance to deny standing to such individuals consequently led to the conceptualization of individual and organizational interests in noneconomic values as legally protected interests. As the "legal interest" test was increasingly expanded to include such values, however especially in the case of challenges brought under the Constitution and certain statutes that imposed rules of conduct on the government without specifying any private remedies for their enforcement the exercise began to lose its point, and eventually was abandoned. In two cases decided in 1970, Association of Data Processing Service Organizations v. Camp ¹⁷ and Barlow v. Collins, ¹⁸ the "legal interest" test for standing, which "had become symbolically definitive even as it was increasingly ignored," ¹⁹ was finally overruled explicitly and replaced by a new formulation of the standing doctrine.

A. The Modern Law of Standing: Personal Injury in Fact

The modern law of standing set forth in Data Processing and Barlow...