Schaffer v. Clinton

• Decision Date: 13 February 2001
• Docket Number: No. 99-1385,99-1385
• Citation: 240 F.3d 878
• Parties: (10th Cir. 2001) THE HONORABLE BOB SCHAFFER, in his official capacity as a member of the United States House of Representatives; WALT MUELLER, a Missouri State Senator; JOHN R. STOEFFLER, a United States taxpayer; GREGORY D. WATSON, a United States taxpayer and National Coordinator of the Political Movement to Ratify the 27th Amendment, Plaintiffs - Appellants, v. WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON, President of the United States of America, in his official capacity; ROBERT E. RUBIN, Secretary of the Treasury, in his official capacity; GARY SISCO, Secretary of the United States Senate, in his official capacity; JEFF TRANDAHL, Clerk of the United States House of Representatives, in his official capacity, Defendants - Appellees
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

Page 878

240 F.3d 878 (10th Cir. 2001)

THE HONORABLE BOB SCHAFFER, in his official capacity as a member of the United States House of Representatives; WALT MUELLER, a Missouri State Senator; JOHN R. STOEFFLER, a United States taxpayer; GREGORY D. WATSON, a United States taxpayer and National Coordinator of the Political Movement to Ratify the 27th Amendment, Plaintiffs - Appellants, v. WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON, President of the United States of America, in his official capacity; ROBERT E. RUBIN, Secretary of the Treasury, in his official capacity; GARY SISCO, Secretary of the United States Senate, in his official capacity; JEFF TRANDAHL, Clerk of the United States House of Representatives, in his official capacity, Defendants - Appellees.

No. 99-1385

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS TENTH CIRCUIT

February 13, 2001

Corrected March 29, 2001.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. (D.C. No. 99-K-201)

William Perry Pendley (D. Andrew Wight with him on the briefs), Mountain States Legal Foundation, Denver, Colorado, for the Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Kerry W. Kircher, Deputy General Counsel (Geraldine R. Gennet, General

Counsel, with him on the brief), Office of the General Counsel U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., for Defendant-Appellee Jeff Trandahl.

Douglas N. Letter, Appellate Litigation Counsel, United States Department of Justice (David W. Ogden, Acting Assistant Attorney General, United States Department of Justice, Patricia M. Bryan, Senate Legal Counsel, Morgan J. Frankel, Deputy Senate Legal Counsel, Steven F. Huefner, Assistant Senate Legal Counsel, and Allison Moore, Assistant Senate Legal Counsel, with him on the brief), Washington, D.C., for Defendants-Appellees William Jefferson Clinton, Robert E. Rubin and Gary Sisco.

Before LUCERO, McKAY and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.

LUCERO, Circuit Judge.

Bob Schaffer, a United States Congressman, appeals¹ the district court's dismissal of a challenge, on Twenty-Seventh Amendment grounds, to the Cost of Living Adjustment ("COLA") provision of the Ethics Reform Act of 1989. Because we determine that appellant does not have standing to sue, we do not reach the merits of the appeal, namely, whether the district court erred in holding that the COLA provision of the Ethics Reform Act does not violate the Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the Constitution and that the COLA provision is not an unconstitutional delegation of Congress's legislative authority. Exercising jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1291, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

I

The Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "[n]o law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened." The so-called "compensation amendment" was originally proposed in the First Congress on June 8, 1789, by James Madison. See Richard B. Bernstein, The Sleeper Wakes: The History and Legacy of the Twenty-Seventh Amendment, 61 Fordham L. Rev. 497, 498 (1992). It was one of twelve proposed constitutional amendments, ten of which became the Bill of Rights. See id. at 530-23. Between 1789 and 1791, the amendment was ratified by six states and rejected by five and thus was not adopted. See id. In response to the "Salary Grab" Act of 1873, however, Ohio ratified the amendment in that year; after a congressional pay increase, Wyoming followed suit in 1978. See id. at 534, 537. Finally, as the result of the efforts of a self-financed campaign by one of the named parties in this case, Gregory D. Watson,² thirty-three additional states ratified the amendment between 1983 and 1992, after which Congress on May 20, 1992, approved the amendment as the Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the Constitution. See id. at 53738, 542.³

The Ethics Reform Act of 1989, Pub. L. No. 101-194, 103 Stat. 1716, established automatic annual COLAs pegged to the rate of change in the Employment Cost Index minus one-half of a percent.⁴ The Act's COLA provision became effective on January 1, 1991, following an intervening election of Representatives.

Claiming the congressional COLA provisions of the Ethics Reform Act violate the Twenty-Seventh Amendment, four plaintiffs initiated this challenge: (1) Congressman Bob Schaffer, who represents a Colorado district in the House of Representatives; (2) Walt Mueller, who as "a Missouri State Senator . . . voted to adopt the 27th Amendment"; (3) Watson, a "United States taxpayer and National Coordinator of the Political Movement to Ratify the 27th Amendment"; and (4) John Stoeffler, "a United States taxpayer." (Appellants' App. at 10.) Congressman Schaffer, who has served in Congress since 1997, received a COLA in 1998 and 2000. He claims that these COLAs, as well as the 1992 and 1993 COLAs, are unconstitutional.

In a memorandum opinion and order, the district court held that except for Congressman Schaffer the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the congressional COLA provisions of the Ethics Reform Act. Watson, Stoeffler, and Mueller did not have standing to sue as taxpayers because their case did not involve "acts of Congress under its taxing and spending authority when those acts implicate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution." Schaffer v. Clinton, 54 F. Supp.2d 1014, 1017 (D. Colo. July 2, 1999) (citing United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166 (1974); Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83 (1968)). Furthermore, Mueller could not sue as a voter in congressional elections because his claim amounted to a "non-particularized constitutional violation." Id. at 1017. With respect to Congressman Schaffer, the district court noted that his salary was directly affected by the COLAs, but it did not expressly hold he had standing to sue. Id. at 1018.

In addition, the district court held that all of the defendants were improper parties because Congressman Schaffer's injury was not caused, and could not be resolved, by them. Id. at 1019-20. The court also determined that it lacked personal jurisdiction over the legislative branch defendants and that Colorado was not the proper venue. See id. at 1020-22.

On the merits, the court held that the COLAs did not violate the Twenty-Seventh Amendment because they went into effect after an intervening election of Representatives and that the COLAs were not independent laws under the Amendment because they are not discretionary acts of Congress. See id. at 1023-24. According to the court, the COLAs "accomplish[] the goal of the Founding Fathers manifested in the Twenty-seventh Amendment" because they "eliminate[] the possibility that Congress will grant itself a new pay raise during its current session." Id. at 1024.

On appeal, appellants challenge only the district court's determination on the merits. We cannot proceed to the merits, however, without first deciding whether Congressman Schaffer had standing to sue.

II

The judicial power of federal courts extends only to actual cases and controversies. See U.S. Const. art. III, 2; Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 750 (1984).

[T]he "case or controversy" requirement defines with respect to the Judicial Branch the idea of separation of powers on which the Federal Government is founded. The several doctrines that have grown up to elaborate that requirement are "founded in concern about the proper--and properly limited--role of the courts in democratic society."

Allen, 468 U.S. at 750. Perhaps the most important of the several jurisdictional doctrines is that of standing. FW/PBS, Inc. v. City of Dallas, 493 U.S. 215, 230 (1990) ("The federal courts are under an independent obligation to examine their own jurisdiction, and standing 'is perhaps the most important of [the jurisdictional] doctrines.'" (quoting Allen, 468 U.S. at 750)).⁵

As is now well-settled, the elements of standing are three:

"First, the plaintiff must have suffered an 'injury in fact'--an invasion of a legally protected interest that is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical. Second, there must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of. . . . Third, it must be likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision."

United States v. Hays, 515 U.S. 737, 74243 (1995) (quoting Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 56061 (1992) (footnote, citations, and internal quotations omitted)) (further citations omitted). The standing inquiry must be "especially rigorous when reaching the merits of the dispute would force us to decide whether an action taken by one of the other two branches of the Federal Government was unconstitutional." Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811, 81920 (1997).

[T]he law of Art. III standing is built on a single basic idea--the idea of separation of powers. In the light of this overriding and time-honored concern about keeping the Judiciary's power within its proper constitutional sphere, we must put aside the natural urge to proceed directly to the merits of this important dispute and to "settle" it for the sake of convenience and efficiency. Instead, we must carefully inquire as to whether [plaintiffs] have met their burden of establishing that their claimed injury is personal, particularized, concrete, and otherwise judicially cognizable.

Id. at 820 (internal quotation, citations, and footnote omitted).

In its starkest terms, the standing inquiry requires the Court to ask not only whether an injury has occurred, but whether the injury that has occurred may serve as the basis for a legal remedy in the federal courts.

A federal court cannot pronounce any statute, either of a state or of the United States, void, because irreconcilable with the constitution, except as it is called upon to adjudge the legal rights of litigants in actual controversies. Have the appellants alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the...