Evans v. Lynn

• Decision Date: 22 May 1974
• Docket Number: No. 73 Civ. 3475 (MP).,73 Civ. 3475 (MP).
• Citation: 376 F. Supp. 327
• Parties: Rachel EVANS et al., Plaintiffs, v. James T. LYNN, in his capacity as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

376 F. Supp. 327

Rachel EVANS et al., Plaintiffs, v. James T. LYNN, in his capacity as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, et al., Defendants.

No. 73 Civ. 3475 (MP).

United States District Court, S. D. New York.

May 22, 1974.

Suburban Action Institute, for plaintiff, by Lois D. Thompson, Richard F. Bellman, J. Christopher Jensen, Tarrytown, N.Y.

Paul J. Curran, U. S. Atty. S.D. New York, for defendants Lynn, Green, Monticciolo, Morton, Watt, Dept. of Housing and Urban Development and Dept. of the Interior by V. Pamela Davis, New York City.

Wikler, Gottlieb, Taylor & Howard, for defendants Carroll and Tri-State Regional Planning Commission by Jeremiah T. Spires, New York City.

Golenbock & Barell, for intervenor Town of New Castle by Arthur M. Handler, Andrea Hyde, New York City.

POLLACK, District Judge.

Plaintiffs, low-income minority residents of Westchester County, have moved for a declaration of class action status, Fed.R.Civ.P. 23, and for a preliminary injunction, Rule 65, to restrain two federal agencies¹ from supplying funds under grants that have been approved to the Town of New Castle for the construction of sewer facilities and the clearance of a swamp area for recreational use. In connection therewith, plaintiffs challenge the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission's tacit approval of the grants in question.

Plaintiffs contend that all three agencies abdicated their responsibilities under the Civil Rights Acts² and the regulations promulgated thereunder in granting federal funds to New Castle.

All defendants oppose the motion for class declaration and have cross-moved to dismiss the suit. The Town of New Castle has applied for leave to intervene herein and to support the cross-application for dismissal.

Disbursement of the funds granted has been withheld pending determination of the claims presented herein.

Since it is the decision of the Court that the plaintiffs lack standing to bring this suit the plaintiffs' motions must be denied and the defendants' and the intervenor's motions must be granted and the complaint dismissed for the reasons which follow.

The History of the Grants.

In 1969, New Castle requested federal aid from HUD for the installation of a sewer system in Chappaqua, New York, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 3102. That section authorized the agency to make matching grants to local communities for the development of, inter alia, basic public sewer facilities. Similar federal funds were requested pursuant to 16 U. S.C. § 460l-8 from the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Outdoor Recreation ("BOR") in 1972 to aid the development of a public park and recreation area in what is known now as Turner Swamp.³ Both agencies, after due consideration and investigation into the proposals, agreed to provide the requested funds. Subsequently, the Suburban Action Institute (counsel for plaintiffs herein) filed informal complaints with both agencies protesting the respective grants. These complaints in effect raised the same objections which plaintiffs have now brought before this Court, namely, that the approval of the grants would deny members of racial minorities and low-income persons equal opportunity to benefit from the grants, and were thus violative of federal civil rights laws due to New Castle's exclusionary and discriminatory policies. In both instances, agency counsel replied that the matter had been reviewed and that there was no legal basis for halting the grants.

Sometime after New Castle's applications were filed with them, both HUD and BOR forwarded the applications to the regional planning commission (defendant Tri-State) for comment, pursuant to federal regulations. Tri-State replied to both agencies that it would not review the applications as they were "non-regional" in significance and thus outside its jurisdiction.

Urging that the grants are violative of the "civil rights laws and policies", plaintiffs then brought the instant action for injunctive and other relief to prevent the flow of the federal funds to New Castle.

On the return of the motions before the Court a preliminary discussion with counsel indicated that it would aid any evidentiary hearing that might be required if the government were to file and serve copies of the administrative records of these grants and permit the plaintiffs to take depositions of officials and others involved in the consideration of the grants. At a later date the intervenor also requested an opportunity to examine the plaintiffs. Discovery to both sides was granted accordingly.

The plaintiffs have thus been accorded a wide opportunity to make a factual investigation of the New Castle applications and the civil rights enforcement procedures utilized by the federal defendants and the defendants have had an opportunity to elicit the facts concerning the interest of the plaintiffs. The legal issue of standing raised by the motions is now cast in sharp relief against this well-developed factual background.

The Town of New Castle.

New Castle is predominantly white and a well-to-do enclave. Almost 90% of New Castle is zoned for single-family, residential development on parcels of more than one acre; the median value of single-family homes in New Castle in 1970 was in excess of $50,000. Median family income in New Castle in 1970 was $22,005 compared with $11,349 in Westchester as a whole. Westchester County's population is approximately ten percent non-white. The Town of New Castle is only 1.3% non-white. New Castle has been involved in a recent, well-publicized skirmish with the New York State Urban Development Corporation. In that contest, New Castle successfully thwarted the state agency's attempt to construct a small 100-unit low-cost housing facility in the town. It is thus clear that New Castle continues to be resistant to attempts to alter its present housing character.

The Motion of New Castle to Intervene.

On March 9, 1974—some seven months after the commencement of this action—the Town of New Castle applied for leave to intervene pursuant to Rule 24, Fed.R.Civ.P. Plaintiffs objected on the grounds of untimeliness of the application and because "delay" might be occasioned by an intervention.

Whether or not the motion to intervene was "timely" brought is a question of circumstances, and is not to be judged merely by the calendar. The lack of demonstrable prejudice to the plaintiffs from the allowance of the requested intervention is decisive here on the question of timeliness. See, e. g., McCausland v. Shareholders Management Co., 52 F.R.D. 521 (S.D.N.Y.1971). See also Diaz v. Southern Drilling Corp., 427 F.2d 1118 (5th Cir.), cert. denied sub. nom Trefina v. United States, 400 U.S. 878, 91 S.Ct. 118, 27 L.Ed. 115 (1971) (intervention allowed one year after commencement of suit; no showing of prejudice). New Castle has a primary interest in the grants involved herein and reason and equity indicate that its application for leave to intervene should be granted and it is so ordered pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 24(a)(2).

Standing of Plaintiffs.

The threshold, and decisive, issue in this case is whether plaintiffs have standing to bring this suit.

The law of standing is no mere arcane, procedural punctilio; the requirement that plaintiffs must have standing to sue goes to the very essence of the guarantee that "questions will be framed with the necessary specificity, that the issues will be contested with the necessary adverseness and that the litigation will be pursued with the necessary vigor to assure that the constitutional challenge will be made in a form traditionally thought to be capable of judicial resolution." Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 106, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 1955, 20 L. Ed.2d 947 (1968). See also O'Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 94 S.Ct. 669, 38 L.Ed.2d 674 (1974); Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204, 82 S.Ct. 691, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962). Consequently, Courts are vigilant in requiring that litigants maintain a personal stake in the outcome of the controversies they present. DeFunis v. Odegaard, ___ U.S. ___, 94 S.Ct. 1704, 40 L.Ed.2d 164 (1974) (Brennan, J., dissenting).

Justice Frankfurter referred to "standing" as a "complicated specialty of federal jurisdiction." United States ex rel. Chapman v. Federal Power Commission, 345 U.S. 153, 156, 73 S.Ct. 609, 97 L.Ed. 918 (1953). The federal courts have long struggled to define the proper outer limits of this obscure, elusive and amorphous concept.⁴ The law is now clear that standing exists where plaintiffs can satisfy the two-pronged test that they have suffered — or will suffer —an injury in fact, and that they are at least arguably within the zone of interests protected by the relevant statute. Barlow v. Collins, 397 U.S. 159, 90 S.Ct. 832, 25 L.Ed.2d 192 (1970); Association of Data Processing Service Organizations v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 90 S.Ct. 827, 25 L.Ed.2d 184 (1970); Warth v. Seldin, 495 F.2d 1187 (2d Cir., 1974).

Preliminary, the statutes involved herein are not, as defendants contend, the community development grant statutes, 42 U.S.C. § 3102 and 16 U.S.C. § 460l-8. The statutes here involved are the 1964 and 1968 Civil Rights Acts (referred to sometimes as Title VI and Title VIII), and the regulations promulgated thereunder, which are claimed to prohibit federal agencies from granting funds to suburban areas which have discriminatory zoning and land-use regulations. The plaintiffs, undoubtedly as a result of the opportunity to make a factual investigation of the processing of the New Castle applications, have enlarged the charges in their earlier papers and the relief initially sought— they seek a finding from the Court that the existing HUD and Interior procedures fail to conform with the law in respect to community development grant applications; that those agencies should be compelled to adopt meaningful civil rights review procedures; that they have abdicated their responsibilities under the civil rights laws by alleged...