Texas Peace Officers Ass'n v. City of Galveston

944 F. Supp. 562, 1996 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16535
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Texas
DecidedOctober 31, 1996
DocketCivil Action No. G-96-341
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 944 F. Supp. 562 (Texas Peace Officers Ass'n v. City of Galveston) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Texas Peace Officers Ass'n v. City of Galveston, 944 F. Supp. 562, 1996 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16535 (S.D. Tex. 1996).

Opinion

ORDER

KENT, District Judge.

Plaintiffs commenced this action under Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, alleging discrimination in the employment setting by Defendant, City of Galveston, Texas. Now before the Court is Defendant’s Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings of October 1, 1996 in which Defendant requests that the Court dismiss this cause of action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(c). For the reasons set forth below, Defendant’s Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART.

In its Motion, Defendant argues that this cause of action should be dismissed in its entirety because both individual Plaintiffs and the organizational Plaintiff lack standing to bring this suit. As to the individual Plaintiffs, Defendant contends that they lack standing because they have suffered no individualized harm as a result of the alleged [563]*563discriminatory conduct by Defendant. To support this contention, Defendant points to the fact that both African American Plaintiffs were hired by Defendant and attained the ranks of Captain and Sergeant. Moreover, Defendant argues that the Complaint lacks allegations as to these specific Plaintiffs regarding discrimination in the discipline and promotion process and disparate treatment in the terms and conditions of employment. The Court disagrees. The Complaint contains sufficient allegations of discrimination in the employment setting against these individual Plaintiffs to invest them with standing to pursue this action. Therefore, the Court DENIES IN PART Defendant’s Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings.

The Court does agree, however, with Defendant that Plaintiff Texas Peace Officers Association (“TPOA”) lacks standing to bring this suit. The Court recognizes that, in the abstract, organizations have standing to sue, either on their own behalf or on behalf of their members. Worth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 511, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2211-12, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975); Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 739, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 1368, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972). The Original Complaint is not clear as to whether TPOA is suing on behalf of its members or on its own behalf for injury to its own rights and interests. Thus, for the sake of completeness, the Court will address both types of standing.

In certain circumstances, associations and organizations may sue on behalf of their members for injury to their members. The Court recognizes this type of representational standing as a beneficial and effective device for certain kinds of expensive litigation, which individuals would not be able to pursue on their own. However, the Court finds that when Congress has created a remedy for individuals and provided for the awarding of attorneys fees to litigants as it has under Title VII, this type of representational litigation is neither necessary nor appropriate. Beyond these considerations, however, the Court is not convinced that TPOA would meet the specific requirements to bring suit on behalf of the individual Plaintiffs in this case even if this were a case appropriate for representational litigation.

The Supreme Court has developed a three-part test for determining when an association has standing to bring suit on behalf of its members. An association has “associational standing” when: “(a) its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests it seeks to protect are germane to the organization’s purpose; and (e) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit.” Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Comm’n, 432 U.S. 333, 343, 97 S.Ct. 2434, 2441, 53 L.Ed.2d 383 (1977). The Court finds that Plaintiff TPOA fails to meet this test for several reasons. Nowhere in their Complaint do Plaintiffs assert that the two individual police officers that were allegedly discriminated against are members of TPOA. Plaintiffs do allege in their Response to Defendant’s Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings that individual Plaintiff Ernest Boyd, Jr. was president of TPOA at the time this suit was filed. Plaintiffs further assert that “Ernest Lemon” was also a member of TPOA at the time this suit was filed. Ernest Lemon is not a named plaintiff in this suit, so the Court fails to see the relevance of this person being a member of TPOA. Plaintiffs request leave to “amend their pleadings to clearly state the authority by which the organization addresses their complaints” in the case. With some genuine irritation, the Court DENIES Plaintiffs’ request to amend their pleadings to develop their claim of associational standing. The requirements of associational standing are clearly set out in voluminous case law and were recently discussed at length in an opinion of this Court addressing an unrelated action brought by instant counsel. If Plaintiffs’ counsel made even a cursory perusal of this law, he could easily craft suitable pleadings to make an allegation of assoeiational standing that would pass muster with this Court.1 As it is, Plaintiffs fail to plead the most basic requirement of associa[564]*564tional standing — that individual Plaintiffs are members of the organization.

Under the most basic logic, an organization cannot sue under an assoeiational standing theory if the aggrieved parties are not members of the organization. Moreover, the Court finds that under the third prong of the Hunt test, the participation of the individual Plaintiffs is required in this lawsuit because of the individualized nature of discrimination cases and because of the nature of the relief sought in the case. Thus, for the aforementioned reasons, the Court finds that Plaintiff TPOA does not have standing in this case on an assoeiational standing theory.

Because TPOA lacks representational standing, it must demonstrate that it has standing on its own behalf. To establish standing, a plaintiff must show that he has suffered an injury in fact that is concrete and particularized, that such injury is traceable to the conduct of the defendant, and that such injury is redressable by the Court. Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 2136, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992); Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 3324, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984). Plaintiff TPOA has failed to satisfy the most basic requirement of this test, namely that it suffered an injury at all. Nowhere in the Complaint is there an allegation of injury to TPOA nor is there any indication of how TPOA is even related to the individual Plaintiffs. The factual recitation in the Complaint describes alleged discrimination against the two individual Plaintiffs and other individuals but makes no mention whatsoever of TPOA. Indeed, the only time TPOA is mentioned in the Complaint, except in the case caption, is in the section identifying and describing the Plaintiff.

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Bluebook (online)
944 F. Supp. 562, 1996 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16535, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/texas-peace-officers-assn-v-city-of-galveston-txsd-1996.