Rachel Evans v. James T. Lynn v. The Town of New Castle, Appellee-Intervenor

537 F.2d 571
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit
DecidedJune 4, 1976
Docket157, Docket 74-1793
StatusPublished
Cited by70 cases

This text of 537 F.2d 571 (Rachel Evans v. James T. Lynn v. The Town of New Castle, Appellee-Intervenor) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Rachel Evans v. James T. Lynn v. The Town of New Castle, Appellee-Intervenor, 537 F.2d 571 (2d Cir. 1976).

Opinions

[573]*573OPINION OF THE PANEL

Before MOORE, OAKES and GURFEIN, Circuit Judges.

OAKES, Circuit Judge:

This appeal involves a legal challenge against policies of federal agencies said to flout the requirements of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq., and Title VIII (Fair Housing) of the 1968 Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3601 et seq. Title VI requires federal agencies affirmatively to effectuate its anti-discrimination policy in programs receiving federal financial assistance, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000d, 2000d-l.1 Title VIII requires similar effectuation of its fair housing policies, 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601, 3608(c), (d)(5).2 The federal agencies are the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation of the Department of the Interior (BOR), whose respective grants to a municipal sewer district within the Town of New Castle, Westchester County, New York, for construction of a sanitary sewer, and to the Town itself for acquisition of “Turner Swamp” for recreational purposes3 are challenged here as being made to a town that allegedly maintains a racially and economically discriminatory housing and community development program. Suit has also been brought against the regional planning agency, TriState Regional Planning Commission (TriState), which is the designated clearing[574]*574house which reviews and coordinates applications for federal grants-in-aid in certain counties of New York and New Jersey and certain planning regions of Connecticut, 42 U.S.C. § 3334(a)(1), and which declined to review the grants in question on the grounds that they lacked regional significance.

Appellants assert that they are minority residents of Westchester County who reside in racially concentrated areas of the county and are constrained to do so because the failure of the federal agencies to perform their affirmative duties permits the maintenance of a growing pattern of racial residential segregation both in New Castle and elsewhere in the county. Thus, the case is another in the series of cases in this court and others4 raising one phase or another in the complex of legal, social, economic and moral problems engendered both by the emergence of the suburbs as increasingly important units of the metropolitan area, significant to the achievement of national goals, and by the realization that housing “does not mean shelter alone — it means a collection of services and opportunities based on locations.”5 The court below granted the Town of New Castle leave to intervene but denied appellants standing to sue on the basis that they assert no “injury in fact” since enjoining the grants in question would not alleviate their injury (in the form of “ghetto living conditions”); Judge Pollack added that their status as “potential residents” of New Castle did not change this result. (This ruling applied to the federal defendants and to Tri-State.) We disagree, expressing, however, no opinion on the question whether appellants have stated a claim for relief.

On the question of standing as to the federal agencies there are three facts which have to be assumed, as they were below, in the present posture of the case. First, appellants are low-income minority residents of Westchester County who live in “ghetto” conditions, that is, racially-concentrated low-income neighborhoods.6 Second, a matter entirely overlooked in Judge Moore’s dissent, the Town of New Castle, to or for whose benefit the challenged grants were made, is, in the words of the district court, “predominantly white [98.7 per cent] and a well-to-do enclave,” 90 per cent of which is zoned for single-family, residential development on parcels of more than one acre, with a median value of single-family homes in 1970 in excess of $50,000; the Town has, not coincidentally, thwarted the New York State Urban Development Corporation’s attempt to construct within its borders a small 100-unit low cost housing facility and thus in the words of the court below “continues to be resistant to attempts to alter its present housing character.”7 Third, the [575]*575challenged federal agencies, in approving the grants in question, did very little by way of evaluating the Town’s development policies or otherwise,8 to perform any allegedly affirmative duties required of them by Title VI and Title VIII respectively;9 the approval of each grant in question was based solely on its internal merits (as to which there is no dispute, that is, no claim that either the sewer system or recreation area will be administered discriminatorily).

Assuming these underlying facts, we first face the question whether appellants are arguably within the zone of interests protected by the statutes, that is, whether there is a viable claim that affirmative duties are imposed upon these federal agencies by Titles VI and VIII which would require them to take some action, not taken here, on behalf of county residents such as withholding otherwise proper grants. Absent such an arguable claim of affirmative duties owed to appellants, they are not within any zone of statutory protection. Association of Data Processing Service Organizations, Inc. v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 90 S.Ct. 827, 25 L.Ed.2d 184 (1970). Put another way, we must consider whether either of these agencies is alleged to have “consciously and expressly adopted a general policy [576]*576[of nonenforcement] which [is] in effect an abdication of its statutory duty.” Adams v. Richardson, 156 U.S.App.D.C. 267, 480 F.2d 1159, 1162 (1973) (en banc, per curiam) (ordering HEW to take affirmative action to end segregation in ten states’ public educational institutions receiving federal funds, at suit of black “students, citizens and taxpayers”). We think such a viable claim is clearly made out under the express language of the Acts, nn. 1 and 2 supra, the legislative history and the case law.

Title VI requires effectuation of § 2000d by agencies “empowered to extend Federal financial assistance to any program or activity, by way of grant . . . .” 42 U.S.C. § 2000d-l. Title VIII requires administration of housing and urban development programs and activities in all agencies “affirmatively to further the purposes” of the Act, as expressed in 42 U.S.C. § 3601, n.2 supra.10

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
537 F.2d 571, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/rachel-evans-v-james-t-lynn-v-the-town-of-new-castle-ca2-1976.