Carrigan v. N.H. Dep't of Health & Human Servs.
| Decision Date | 20 July 2021 |
| Docket Number | No. 2020-0518,2020-0518 |
| Citation | 262 A.3d 388,174 N.H. 362 |
| Parties | Anna CARRIGAN v. NEW HAMPSHIRE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES & a. |
| Court | New Hampshire Supreme Court |
Rath, Young and Pignatelli, P.C., of Concord (Michael S. Lewis on the brief and orally), for the plaintiff.
Office of the Attorney General (Samuel R.V. Garland and Jennifer S. Ramsey, assistant attorneys general, on the brief, and Mr. Garland orally), for the defendants.
The plaintiff, Anna Carrigan, filed suit against the defendants, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services and the Department's commissioner, alleging that they are failing to meet their statutory and constitutional duties as a result of their "irresponsible" spending decisions.1 She asserted standing under Part I, Article 8 of the New Hampshire Constitution, which provides New Hampshire taxpayers who are eligible to vote with standing to seek a declaration that the State or a local government "has spent, or has approved spending, public funds" in violation of the law. N.H. CONST. pt. I, art. 8. The Superior Court (Schulman, J.) granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss for want of standing, and the plaintiff appeals. We affirm because the plaintiff fails to challenge any specific spending action or spending approval, by the Department, as necessary to maintain standing under Part I, Article 8.
The following facts are drawn from the plaintiff's complaint. The plaintiff is a taxpaying resident of Farmington, an eligible New Hampshire voter, and Department employee. In February 2020, she filed a complaint against the defendants alleging, in essence, "that the State has failed to abide by its mandatory, substantive, and procedural obligations to respond to and protect children who are subject to ... child abuse and neglect." She seeks a ruling that the Department's "response to the child abuse and neglect crisis is illegal and unconstitutional." According to the plaintiff, the Department has a backlog of thousands of abuse and neglect cases, the State's child welfare agency is understaffed, and its existing staff is undertrained.
Her complaint ties these, and other, alleged shortcomings to the Department's "poor allocation of resources, ... which relate to a series of spending decisions [the Department] has made and continues to make" and its "unconstitutional budgetary decision-making in the face of uncontroverted evidence regarding the connection between the absence of resources and the inability of New Hampshire to abide by its mandated legal obligations." She further alleged that the Department has not: "invested sufficient resources to address its documented shortfalls in regard to child protective services"; "funded the agencies with responsibility for abiding by the legal requirements enacted by the legislature at levels that facilitate legal functioning"; or "spent substantial sums of state allocated funds available to address the needs of abused and neglected children, though such funds are available." In light of these allegations, the plaintiff sought a declaration to the effect that the defendants, as a "product" or "result" of their spending policies, are failing to comply with various child welfare statutory provisions and are violating the constitutional rights of abused and neglected children.
The defendants moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of standing, asserting that, to have standing under Part I, Article 8, the plaintiff must challenge "the lawfulness of a particular, identifiable expenditure or the approval of a particular, identifiable expenditure." (Emphases omitted.) Because the plaintiff merely challenged the defendants’ failure to spend public money in the manner she believes is required, the defendants argued that she lacked standing under Part I, Article 8.
The trial court agreed with the defendants, concluding that "[n]othing in the text of Article 8 suggests that it grants every taxpayer the right to seek a judicial determination of whether the government has sufficiently funded the programs that it runs." Accordingly, the trial court dismissed the plaintiff's complaint. This appeal followed.
When a motion to dismiss does not contest the sufficiency of the plaintiff's claim, but instead challenges the plaintiff's standing to sue, the trial court must look beyond the allegations and determine, based upon the facts alleged, whether the plaintiff has demonstrated a right to claim relief. See Avery v. N.H. Dep't of Educ., 162 N.H. 604, 606-07, 34 A.3d 712 (2011). When the relevant facts are not in dispute — here, that the plaintiff is a New Hampshire taxpayer and eligible voter — we review the trial court's standing determination de novo. See id. at 607, 34 A.3d 712.
The doctrine of standing "limits the judicial role, consistent with a system of separated powers, to addressing those matters that are traditionally thought to be capable of resolution through the judicial process." Duncan v. State, 166 N.H. 630, 643, 102 A.3d 913 (2014) (quotation omitted); see Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 573 U.S. 149, 157, 134 S.Ct. 2334, 189 L.Ed.2d 246 (2014). In New Hampshire, standing in the traditional sense is grounded in Part II, Article 74 of the State Constitution, which provides: "Each branch of the legislature as well as the governor and council shall have authority to require the opinions of the justices of the supreme court upon important questions of law and upon solemn occasions." N.H. CONST. pt. II, art. 74 ; see Duncan, 166 N.H. at 642-43, 102 A.3d 913. Thus, while the respective branches of the legislature, the governor, and the executive council may request our advisory opinion on important questions of law, other parties may not. See Duncan, 166 N.H. at 640, 102 A.3d 913 ; Piper v. Meredith, 109 N.H. 328, 330, 251 A.2d 328 (1969). Rather, we have held that those other parties must present claims for judicial resolution through an adversarial process in which their actual interests are at stake. See Teeboom v. City of Nashua, 172 N.H. 301, 307, 213 A.3d 877 (2019) ; Duncan, 166 N.H. at 642-43, 102 A.3d 913.
In a typical case, determining whether a party has standing to sue requires that we focus on whether the party has alleged a legal injury against which the law was designed to protect. See Teeboom, 172 N.H. at 307, 213 A.3d 877. A party must allege a concrete, personal injury, implicating legal or equitable rights, with regard to an actual, not hypothetical, dispute, which is capable of judicial redress by a favorable decision. See id. at 307, 309, 213 A.3d 877 ; Duncan, 166 N.H. at 642-43, 102 A.3d 913. Requiring that a party claim a personal injury to a legal or equitable right "capable of being redressed by the court tends to assure that the legal questions presented to the court will be resolved, not in the rarified atmosphere of a debating society, but in a concrete factual context conducive to a realistic appreciation of the consequences of judicial action." Duncan, 166 N.H. at 643, 647-48, 102 A.3d 913 (quotation omitted).
This is not, however, a typical case for standing purposes; it involves a unique type of standing, the history of which we briefly recount. Prior to our decision in Baer v. New Hampshire Department of Education, we had decided two conflicting lines of cases determining whether certain plaintiffs, who did not allege a personal injury in the traditional sense, had standing based upon their status as taxpayers, a doctrine known as taxpayer standing. See Baer v. N.H. Dep't of Educ., 160 N.H. 727, 730, 8 A.3d 48 (2010), superseded by statute as stated in Duncan, 166 N.H. at 638, 102 A.3d 913. Under the earlier line of cases, taxpayers could bring a declaratory judgment action — which allows parties to establish their rights or question the validity of a law — to seek "redress for the unlawful acts of their public officials." Id. In those cases, taxpayers had standing because we "reasoned that every taxpayer has a vital interest in and a right to the preservation of an orderly and lawful government regardless of whether his purse is immediately touched." Id. (quotation omitted).
In tension with the first line of cases, the second, more recent line of cases, "required taxpayers to demonstrate that their rights are impaired or prejudiced in order to maintain a declaratory judgment action." Id. In Baer, we concluded that "our more recent analysis of taxpayer standing [was] more consistent with the language of RSA 491:22," our declaratory judgment statute. Id. ; see RSA 491:22 (Supp. 2020). Under this standard, a party was required to allege the impairment or prejudice of a present legal or equitable right which was personal to the party; a party's mere status as a taxpayer was insufficient to confer standing. See Baer, 160 N.H. at 730-31, 8 A.3d 48. Our prior cases concluding otherwise were, therefore, overruled. Id. at 731, 8 A.3d 48.
The legislature responded to Baer by amending RSA 491:22 to provide taxpayer standing to petitioners seeking declaratory judgment "when it is alleged that the taxing district ... has engaged, or proposes to engage, in conduct that is unlawful or unauthorized, and in such a case the taxpayer shall not have to demonstrate that his or her personal rights were impaired or prejudiced." Duncan, 166 N.H. at 637-38, 102 A.3d 913 (quotation and emphasis omitted). In Duncan, we analyzed the constitutionality of RSA 491:22 as amended. Id. at 643-45, 102 A.3d 913. We explained that "[t]he standing required by our constitution is not satisfied by the abstract interest in ensuring that the State Constitution is observed." Id. at 643, 102 A.3d 913. By allowing parties to bring declaratory judgment actions without having to claim a concrete, personal injury, the amended statute permitted courts "to render to private individuals advisory opinions, outside the context of concrete, fully-developed factual...
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