Martin Tractor Co. v. Federal Election Commission

Decision Date23 June 1980
Docket Number79-1027,Nos. 78-2080,s. 78-2080
PartiesMARTIN TRACTOR COMPANY et al., Appellants, v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION et al. NATIONAL CHAMBER ALLIANCE FOR POLITICS et al., Appellants, v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION et al.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Appeals from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (D.C. Civil Action Nos. 78-1259 and 78-1333).

Stanley T. Kaleczyc, Jr., Washington, D. C., with whom Stephen A. Bokat, Washington, D. C., was on the brief, for appellants in No. 79-1027.

Mark Sullivan, III, Washington, D. C., with whom Edward A. McCabe, John G. Degooyer and Louise A. Sunderland, Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellants in No. 78-2080.

Kathleen Imig Perkins, Atty., Federal Election Commission, Washington, D. C., with whom William C. Oldaker, Gen. Counsel and Charles N. Steele, Associate Gen. Counsel, Federal Election Commission, Washington, D. C., were on the brief, for appellees.

Before McGOWAN, LEVENTHAL * and WALD, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge WALD.

WALD, Circuit Judge:

Appellants in these consolidated appeals brought actions in district court seeking declaratory and injunctive relief from certain of the provisions of section 321 of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended, 2 U.S.C. § 441b, 1 ("FECA" or the "Act"). Their complaints alleged that these provisions violate rights guaranteed them by the first and fifth amendments of the United States Constitution, insofar as they restrict "solicitation" of contributions to, and by, certain corporate and trade association political action committees ("PACs" or "separate segregated funds"). 2 Appellants sought to have these claims determined under the special expedited judicial review provision of the FECA, 2 U.S.C. § 437h (1976), 3 which requires en banc consideration by the circuit courts of those questions of the Act's constitutionality which are certified by the district court where the complaint is filed.

The district court here certified no questions. Instead, on motion of appellees, the complaints were dismissed, 4 the court holding that the facts of neither case presented a "case or controversy sufficiently ripe for declaratory action." The court also concluded that appellants were not among the individuals eligible to seek review under § 437h. Several were deemed not eligible because they did not fall into any of the statutorily-specified categories of eligible complainants; and others because the merits of their claims bore little or no relation to the characteristic which rendered them arguably eligible to proceed under § 437h.

For reasons that vary only slightly from those given by the district court, we find the cases nonjusticiable as a constitutional matter and inappropriate for adjudication as a prudential matter. 5 We therefore affirm the dismissals of the complaints and in view of this disposition we do not confront the issue of the scope or applicability to this case of § 437h. 6

I. SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES
A. Principles of Justiciability

The congeries of doctrines which together comprise the requirements of justiciability interpose an obstacle in each case between the complainant and any decision on the merits of his or her complaint. Although the "case or controversy" requirements of Article III are the foundation of the body of law from which the criteria of justiciability have been fashioned, the prudent exercise of the judicial function, especially in reviewing the constitutionality of legislative acts, has been responsible for the development of much of the edifice of the doctrine. 7

To establish a justiciable claim under Article III, a plaintiff must allege "such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure . . . concrete adverseness . . . ." Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 204, 82 S.Ct. 691, 703, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962). Further, the plaintiff must allege an actual injury 8 or the certainty of future injury. "A hypothetical threat is not enough." United Public Workers v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75, 90, 67 S.Ct. 556, 564, 91 L.Ed. 754 (1947). If the injury be a future one, the occurrence of the injury must be reasonably certain and clearly describable for the action to be deemed "ripe" for adjudication. The mere possibility of prosecution or the possibility that sanctions authorized under a general regulatory regime may be imposed when the regulatory agency is confronted with specific facts developed in some future agency proceeding is insufficient. 9

Ripeness enters the Article III "case or controversy" picture in the determination whether the requisite injury is in sharp enough focus and the adverseness of the parties concrete enough to permit a court to decide a real controversy and not a set of hypothetical possibilities.

As a prudential doctrine, ripeness is in part an expression of the court's inherent discretion when declaratory or injunctive relief is sought. The Court has noted the importance of this discretion when called upon to make a declaration of right, repeating its caution "against declaratory judgments on issues of public moment, even falling short of constitutionality, in speculative situations." 10

Because of the " 'great gravity and delicacy' of (the courts') function in passing upon the validity of an act of Congress," 11 the need is manifest for a "full-bodied record" 12 in such adjudication. United States v. UAW, 352 U.S. 567, 77 S.Ct. 529, 1 L.Ed.2d 563 (1957), a case which involved an alleged violation of the statutory predecessor of the provisions at issue here, emphasized the importance of a detailed factual record upon which a court might limit, frame and perhaps avoid a constitutional decision. In that case, the Court upheld the indictment of a labor organization accused of using union dues to sponsor television broadcasts supporting Congressional candidates. Finding the indictment consistent with the terms of the statute, a majority of the Court declined to consider the statute's constitutionality, observing that such challenges should not be considered "unless absolutely necessary to a decision of the case." Id. at 590, 77 S.Ct. at 541, quoting Burton v. United States, 196 U.S. 283, 295, 25 S.Ct. 243, 245, 49 L.Ed. 482 (1905). The indictment was remanded for trial so that "an adjudication on the merits (would) provide the concrete factual setting that sharpens the deliberative process especially demanded for constitutional decision." Id. at 591, 77 S.Ct. at 541. Indeed, counsel for the National Chamber appellants concede that "(c)entral to the Supreme Court's exegesis of the ripeness doctrine is the insistance (sic) on a sufficiently defined record to insure informed and appropriately narrow adjudication." Brief for National Chamber Appellants at 47.

B. Principles of Facial Adjudication

Since the constitutional challenges pressed upon us here involve assertions of first amendment freedoms in conflict with the FECA, we briefly review the special status of facial first amendment attacks on the constitutionality of statutes or regulations.

Within the first amendment arena the jurisprudential criteria for constitutional adjudication are sometimes relaxed when a facial attack is launched. In some cases reaching the merits of facial challenges, standing has been broadened. For example, in Gooding v. Wilson, 405 U.S. 518, 520, 92 S.Ct. 1103, 1105, 31 L.Ed.2d 408 (1972), the chill found by the Court to have been suffered by reason of the challenged ordinance was not limited to the injury experienced by the complaining individual. Thus, it has been suggested, the assertion of vicarious rights, otherwise not countenanced, may be permitted when a facial first amendment challenge is made. 13 In addition, in such cases the ripeness doctrine has been more loosely applied. Reasonable predictability of enforcement or threats of enforcement, without more, have sometimes been enough to ripen a claim. In one such case, National Student Association v. Hershey, 412 F.2d 1103 (D.C.Cir.1969), this court held that the chill upon first amendment freedoms induced by a selective service directive concerning participation in "illegal" antiwar protests was a sufficiently concrete harm to permit pre-enforcement examination of the merits of a constitutional challenge to the directive. 14

On the other hand, decisions reaching the merits of facial constitutional challenges first amendment and otherwise are the exception and not the rule. In his opinion for the Court in Younger v. Harris, 15 Mr. Justice Black noted:

Procedures for testing the constitutionality of a statute "on its face" in the manner apparently contemplated by Dombrowski, ( 16 and for then enjoining all action to enforce the statute until the State can obtain court approval for a modified version, are fundamentally at odds with the function of the federal courts in our constitutional plan. . . . (T)he task of analyzing a proposed statute, pinpointing its deficiencies, and requiring correction of these deficiencies before the statute is put into effect, is rarely if ever an appropriate task for the judiciary. The combination of the relative remoteness of the controversy, the impact on the legislative process of the relief sought, and above all the speculative and amorphous nature of the required line-by-line analysis of detailed statutes, . . . ordinarily results in a kind of case that is wholly unsatisfactory for deciding constitutional questions, whichever way they might be decided. In light of this fundamental conception of the Framers as to the proper place of the federal courts in the governmental processes of passing and enforcing laws, it can seldom be appropriate for these courts to exercise any such power of prior approval or veto over the legislative process.

401 U.S. at 52-53, 91 S.Ct. at 754-755...

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