Glennborough Homeowners Ass'n v. U.S. Postal Serv.

• Decision Date: 22 December 2021
• Docket Number: No. 21-1340,21-1340
• Parties: GLENNBOROUGH HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

21 F.4th 410

GLENNBOROUGH HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION, Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 21-1340

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Decided and Filed: December 22, 2021

ON BRIEF: Thomas P. Bruetsch, SCHENK & BRUETSCH, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellant.

James J. Carty, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY'S OFFICE, Detroit, Michigan, for Appellee.

Before: BOGGS, WHITE, and READLER, Circuit Judges.

READLER, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which BOGGS, J., joined. WHITE, J. (pp. 412–18), delivered a separate opinion concurring only in the judgment.

CHAD A. READLER, Circuit Judge.

Who among us has not been disappointed with the Postal Service when our mail was not delivered? But leave it to the good people of Glennborough, a neighborhood located in Washtenaw County, Michigan to bring a federal lawsuit challenging the successful delivery of their mail.

By way of background, for more than two decades, Glennborough's developers and homeowners have sought to change the subdivision's Zone Improvement Plan Code, better known as a "ZIP Code." This effort included various pleas to the United States Postal Service, two rounds of litigation, and one settlement. In today's installment of this long-running endeavor, the Glennborough Homeowners Association contends that the Postal Service breached a consent judgment entered as part of the earlier settlement by allowing mail addressed to "Ypsilanti" (rather than "Superior Township" or "Ann Arbor," two other communities in Washtenaw County) to be delivered to Glennborough. The relief the Association seeks is to alter Glennborough's ZIP Code. But the consent judgment did not address that issue. Because the Association's complaint fails to allege why it has standing to pursue a claim for that manner of relief, we affirm the district court's dismissal of the complaint.

I.

No matter where one lives in our country, be it at a Big House or otherwise, or whether one favors living in the East or champions the West—there is symmetry in our respective postal addresses. In Washtenaw County (as elsewhere in the United States), a postal address typically consists of three lines: (1) the recipient's name (e.g., Victor S. Valiant); (2) the recipient's street address (e.g., 1201 South Main Street); and (3) the name of the recipient's municipality, state, and ZIP Code (e.g., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104). Translated into official Postal Service nomenclature, a standardized postal address consists of the (1) recipient line, (2) delivery address line, and (3) last line. See USPS, 2 Postal Addressing Standards , https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_001.htm (last visited Dec. 21, 2021). The latter provision—the last line—is at the heart of this appeal.

In 1997, Glennborough's builders, apparently dissatisfied that the development was located within an Ypsilanti ZIP Code (48198), sought a federal court order requiring the Postal Service to recognize a ZIP Code for neighboring Ann Arbor (48105) in the last line of the development's postal addresses. Two years later, the parties agreed to a "compromise settlement" enshrined in a consent order. The consent order did not change Glennborough's ZIP Code. Instead, the Postal Service agreed to "recognize ‘Superior Township, Michigan 48198’ as an authorized last line" for Glennborough "in place of its current last line of address, ‘Ypsilanti, Michigan 48198.’ "

The settlement, however, would not be the last word over Glennborough's last line. In 2015, the Association again asked the Postal Service to change Glennborough's ZIP Code to 48105, a neighboring code in Ann Arbor. The Postal Service declined. The Association made the same request the next year. That request, however, fared no better. And it came with the admonition that the Postal Service would not consider more than one request per decade to amend a ZIP Code boundary.

Following a seemingly fruitless effort to obtain agency records from the Postal Service, the Association sued the agency, asserting three claims: one statutory (alleging violations of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)), one constitutional (alleging violations of the First Amendment), and one contractual (alleging breach of the 1999 consent judgment). In addition to relief associated with its FOIA request, the Association sought an order requiring a change in the neighborhood ZIP Code from "48198" (Ypsilanti) to "48105" (Ann Arbor) as well as a declaratory judgment allowing the Association to continue to petition the Postal Service for a ZIP Code change. The Postal Service moved to dismiss the complaint for want of subject-matter jurisdiction and failure to state a claim. The district court granted the motion in full, and a timely appeal followed. In its appeal, the Association has abandoned its FOIA and First Amendment claims, leaving only its claims regarding the 1999 consent judgment.

II.

As we take up the Association's appeal, it bears emphasizing that its breach-of-the-consent-judgment claim does not assert that mail has been mishandled or delayed, or has not been delivered to Glennborough residents. Instead, the Association takes issue with the wording on envelopes successfully delivered to those homeowners. As the successor-in-interest to the developers who signed the consent order, the Association asserts that the Postal Service breached the order by allowing "Ypsilanti"—as opposed to "Superior Township" or even "Ann Arbor"—in the last line for mail delivery to Glennborough.

Before considering the merits of the Association's argument, however, we must "check both our own jurisdiction and the district court's." Taylor v. Owens , 990 F.3d 493, 496 (6th Cir. 2021). Article III of the Constitution confines federal-court jurisdiction to "Cases" and "Controversies." U.S. CONST. art. III, § 2, cl. 1. To give "meaning to these constitutional limits," Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus , 573 U.S. 149, 157, 134 S.Ct. 2334, 189 L.Ed.2d 246 (2014), we require that a plaintiff allege (1) a concrete and particularized injury (2) fairly traceable to the defendant's unlawful conduct that is (3) likely to be redressed by the requested relief, TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez , ––– U.S. ––––, 141 S. Ct. 2190, 2203, 210 L.Ed.2d 568 (2021). A plaintiff must demonstrate standing for each claim she seeks to press and for each form of relief she seeks. Id. at 2208. At the pleading stage, that burden requires a "plaintiff[ ] to clearly allege facts that demonstrate each element of standing." Memphis A. Philip Randolph Inst. v. Hargett , 978 F.3d 378, 386 (6th Cir. 2020) (citing Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins , 578 U.S. 330, 338, 136 S.Ct. 1540, 194 L.Ed.2d 635 (2016) ); see also Ward v. Nat'l Patient Acct. Servs. Sols., Inc. , 9 F.4th 357, 363 (6th Cir. 2021) (requiring the plaintiff to "clearly assert in his complaint" the harm he suffered from an underlying legal violation). This standard aligns with the one governing motions to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), meaning the Association cannot rely on general or conclusory allegations in support of its standing, but instead must assert a plausible claim for why it has standing to pursue its remaining claim. Ass'n of Am. Physicians & Surgeons v. FDA , 13 F.4th 531, 544 (6th Cir. 2021).

From the Association's pleadings, we fail to see how it has standing to pursue its breach-of-the-consent-judgment claim. Start with a potential procedural shortcoming: the Association may have forfeited in this Court any argument for why it has standing. In granting the Postal Service's motion to dismiss, the district court held that the Association failed to assert a viable claim on the merits and lacked an injury in fact necessary for standing. Yet in its opening brief on appeal, the Association addressed only the merits question, ignoring the standing issue. That omission typically constitutes a forfeiture. See Island Creek Coal Co. v. Wilkerson , 910 F.3d 254, 256 (6th Cir. 2018) ("Time, time, and time again, we have reminded litigants that we will treat an argument as forfeited when it was not raised in the opening brief." (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)); Hanner v. City of Dearborn Heights , 450 F. App'x 440, 444 (6th Cir. 2011) ("[W]here a district court grants a motion to dismiss on the basis of two, alternative holdings, an appellant who challenges only one of the holdings [forfeits] both issues on appeal." (citing White Oak Prop. Dev., LLC v. Washington Twp. , 606 F.3d 842, 854 (6th Cir. 2010) ). True, whether a party lacks " Article III standing is jurisdictional and not subject to waiver." LPP Mortg., Ltd. v. Brinley , 547 F.3d 643, 647 (6th Cir. 2008) (cleaned up). But a party can forfeit its argument for why it has standing to sue. See California v. Texas , ––– U.S. ––––, 141 S. Ct. 2104, 2116, 210 L.Ed.2d 230 (2021) ; see also id. at 2122 (Thomas, J., concurring); Idaho Conservation League v. U.S. Forest Serv. , 2021 WL 3758320, at *3 (9th Cir. Aug. 25, 2021) (Bea, J., dissenting) ("[E]ven arguments for standing[ ] are generally forfeited ... when presented this late in the proceedings."). And that is what arguably seems to have occurred here, where the Association failed to address in its opening brief the standing aspect of the district court's holding.

In the Association's defense, the district court's discussion on standing for the breach-of-consent-judgment claim was relatively sparse and imprecise; it amounted to one line specifically referencing the phrase "injury in fact" amidst a five-page discussion of whether the Association adequately alleged a breach of contract and associated damages under Michigan law.

Under these circumstances, we can at least understand why the Association did not discuss the standing issue in its opening appellate brief. Absent a passing reference to an injury in fact, the district court's entire discussion about the breach-of-consent-order claim was on the merits, making forfeiture a somewhat bitter pill for...