William H. Smith v. City of Cleveland Heights

760 F.2d 720, 1985 U.S. App. LEXIS 31067, 53 U.S.L.W. 2564

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
• Decided: May 3, 1985
• Docket: 84-3099
• Status: Published

Opinions

MERRITT, Circuit Judge.

The plaintiff in this housing discrimination action alleges that the racial steering practices of defendants, city of Cleveland Heights and non-profit neighborhood association, Heights Community Congress, violate both his statutory and constitutional rights under the Fair Housing Act, Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, 42 U.S.C. § 3604, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, and §§ 1981, 1982, 1983, 42 U.S.C. The issue on appeal is whether plaintiff Smith, a black resident of the integrated Cleveland Heights community who was not himself steered from the City, has standing to pursue the action. The District Court held that Smith had demonstrated no “actual injury” sufficient to satisfy the requisites of standing, both because Smith had not been steered and because his rights to associate freely with other blacks had not been impaired; the court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment and dismissed the action. Dist.Ct.Op. at 6-7. We hold that plaintiff satisfied the standing requirements reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Allen v. Wright, — U.S. -, 104 S.Ct. 3315, 82 L.Ed.2d 556 (1984). We, therefore, reverse the judgment of the District Court and remand for further proceedings on the merits.

Cleveland Heights is a racially integrated community covering 8.2 square miles contiguous to and east of Cleveland, Ohio, with a population of approximately 60,000 persons. The racial composition of this population is approximately 75% white and 25% black. Since 1976 the City, allegedly, has developed municipal policies to control the City’s racial composition and to maintain the racial percentages at 75% white and 25% black. The City’s programs, designed to freeze existing integration by steering white home buyers to the Cleveland Heights housing market and black home buyers away from the area,¹ are incorporated in Resolution 26-1976, which outlines specific means to create incentives for real estate agents to perform the desired steering. Plaintiff Smith alleges that these official municipal programs violate both his statutory rights under the Fair Housing Act and his constitutional rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments and 42 U.S.C. §§ 1981, 1982, and 1983.

In order to establish his standing to bring this action, Smith must satisfy a three part test. He must show that (1) he has suffered a personal injury, (2) the injury is fairly traceable to the defendant’s challenged conduct, and (3) the injury is likely to be redressed by the judicial relief sought. Allen v. Wright, 104 S.C. at 3325 (quoting Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 472, 102 S.Ct. 752, 758, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982)). These three elements comprise the “core constitutional” standing requirements which the Supreme Court has determined are mandated by the “case and controversy” language of Art. Ill of the Constitution. Id.

Smith alleges injury for standing purposes on two bases. First, Smith argues that the steering policies stigmatize him as an inferior member of the community in which he lives: that by effectively limiting other blacks’ access to Cleveland Heights, the municipal policies brand black residents as less desirable than whites. Smith moved into Cleveland Heights in 1974, two years before the City’s governing body first passed Resolution 26-1976, and was not himself subject to any steering practices when he purchased his home. Nevertheless, he asserts that he is forced to interact on a daily basis within the Cleveland Heights community under the weight of this imposed badge of inferiority.

Second, Smith asserts that the City’s official programs effectively have denied his associational rights. He does not deny that the integrated nature of his community affords him opportunity to associate with other blacks who live there now. He alleges that his associational rights have been impaired, however, by the official manipulation of Cleveland Heights’ housing market in the sense that he has been denied the chance to associate freely with other black residents who would have purchased homes in Cleveland Heights but for the steering policies.

We accept Smith’s first argument. Smith correctly argues that noneconomic “stigmatic” injury supports standing. See Heckler v. Mathews, 465 U.S. -, 104 S.Ct. 1387, 1395, 79 L.Ed.2d 646 (1984); Trafficante v. Metropolitan Life Ins., 409 U.S. 205, 208, 93 S.Ct. 364, 366, 34 L.Ed.2d 415 (1972). See also Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 734-35, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 1366, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972) (noneconomic aesthetic and environmental injuries can support standing). He argues further that his stigmatic injury is linked directly to the racial steering policies of Cleveland Heights and Heights Community Congress, and that the injunction which he seeks would fairly redress his injuries. Under the Supreme Court’s interpretation of “core constitutional” standing requirements recently restated as a three-prong test in Allen v. Wright, supra, the above allegations, documented in plaintiff’s complaint and the depositions, demonstrate Smith’s standing to pursue this action.

We note at the outset of this analysis that standing has been a peculiarly malleable doctrine through the years, expanding or contracting to fit the temper of prevailing judicial philosophy. See K. Davis, Administrative Law Treatise § 24:1 at 208-11 (1983). The significant fluctuations in the doctrine’s boundaries have been the source of criticism. Id.

The uncertainty of the doctrine’s outer limits does not affect its application here, for the plaintiff alleges facts placing him within the doctrine’s confines. First, as to Smith’s allegation of stigma, the requirement of actual personal injury is met. The City’s policy directly affects Smith’s interest in his own self-respect, dignity and individuality as a person in his own town. Smith is a black resident of Cleveland Heights. His city, he claims, has adopted an official policy to deter other members of Smith’s race from residing in his community. Smith is therefore a member of a group of people whom the City, regardless of the reason, has characterized as undesirable beyond a certain percentage or number.

This process is not color blind and is perceived by Smith as a black person as imposing a badge or label of inferiority on him based purely on race. The City is essentially saying that, although Smith’s presence in the community may not be undesirable, the presence of any more members of Smith’s race is undesirable. The record supports Smith’s claims in this respect. Regardless of the City’s status quo position that Smith himself may remain because he is within the desired percentage of black residents, as a black man Smith immutably shares whatever perceived insult or indignity the City’s policies pass on to black home buyers in Cleveland Heights. He lives out daily routines and neighborhood interactions as a member of a race which his own City labels as undesirable for purposes of housing policy. Smith’s deposition demonstrates that this policy adds injury to insult, for the black citizen must live on a daily basis with a sense of disrespect officially established as law.

It is true that the City’s motive for this unequal treatment may be benign — that is, to ensure stable integration and cultural diversity for the benefit of all Cleveland Heights residents. This factor may be relevant to the merits of the action in, for example, an analysis of the goals of the Fair Housing Act or in a constitutional analysis using a balancing test of individual injury versus state interest. But it is not a relevant factor in deciding the threshold standing issue. See Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 500, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2206, 45 L.Ed.2d 343 (1975) (stating that “standing in no way depends on the merits”).

The stigma in his own community on which Smith relies is far from the “abstract stigmatic injury” or generalized insult found insufficient for standing purposes in Allen v. Wright, 104 S.Ct. at 3327. In Allen, plaintiffs were parents of black public school students who challenged IRS standards and procedures for denying tax-exempt status to private schools that discriminated on the basis of race. In this taxpayer standing case, the parents essentially charged that the federal government was not being sufficiently vigilant in enforcing denials of tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory private schools. There was not, as here, an official government policy that directly discriminated on the basis of race in a discrete community.

Justice O’Connor, writing for the Court, emphasized the generality of the plaintiffs’ injury and likened the plaintiffs’ stigma to one potentially suffered by a resident of Hawaii on the basis of government support of discriminatory schools in Maine. Recognizing standing, she wrote, would mean that it would “extend nationwide to all members of the particular racial groups against which the Government was alleged to be discriminating by its grant of a tax exemption to a racially discriminatory school, regardless of the location of that school.” Id. at 3327 (emphasis supplied).

Smith’s situation is in sharp contrast. Smith’s relationship to the source and situs of his injury is far from attenuated or generalized. The source of his injury is a local governmental policy tailored expressly to shape the racial composition of his community. The situs is the very community in which he lives. These direct and concrete connections demonstrate that Smith’s injury is “peculiar to himself or to a distinct group of which he is a part,” Gladstone, Realtors v. Village of Bellwood, 441 U.S. 91, 100, 99 S.Ct. 1601, 1608, 60 L.Ed.2d 66 (1979), and that he is “personally subject to the challenged discrimination.” Allen, 104 S.Ct. at 3327.

That the locus of Smith’s alleged harm is a city rather than an apartment complex or discrete neighborhood within the city by no means defeats Smith’s standing. In the analogous context of cases alleging infringement of associational interests under the Fair Housing Act, the Supreme Court has stated that ascertaining an affected area for purposes of defining cognizable injury is a case-by-case proposition and that “genuine injury should be ascertainable on the basis of discrete facts presented at trial.” Gladstone, 441 U.S. at 114, 99 S.Ct. at 1615. When it is a municipality’s citywide policies that are at issue, rather than those of a private realtor functioning in various areas of a municipality, and when the city is a relatively compact 8.2 square miles with 60,000 residents, the stigmatic injury suffered by its black residents is “distinct and palpable.” Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. at 501, 95 S.Ct. at 2206.

Finally, the language in Allen v. Wright that the plaintiff must allege “stigmatic injury suffered as a direct result of having personally been denied equal treatment,” 104 S.Ct. at 3327, does not dictate a different result here. That the City’s alleged policy denies equal treatment is obvious. It creates a favored class based solely on race. Because a race-conscious policy favoring prospective white residents was applied throughout the City, Smith was personally denied equal treatment within that City. White residents of Cleveland Heights were not forced to shoulder the burden of belonging to a race disfavored for purposes of their City’s housing policies; Smith was required personally and directly to bear this burden. No badge of disrespect follows white residents as they follow their daily routines. The City tells Smith it does not want his friends and relatives, even his children, to enter as homeowners. It says, as he perceives it, “we will tolerate you but want no more like you.” White residents do not have to live with that official inscription on the courthouse door. For Smith that inscription written into law over the door of his town is an injury. His sense of community is deeply offended because the doorway to his town is an extension, in a symbolic way, of his own doorway.

The second prong of the standing test is met here, since Smith’s stigmatization is “fairly traceable” to the housing policies of the defendants. Defendant City of Cleveland Heights does not deny administering the challenged programs through the Heights Housing Service, an arm of the local government. Defendant Heights Community Congress argues forcefully that none of Smith’s alleged injuries are fairly traceable to its conduct, since its contractual relationship with the City is presently limited to activities unrelated to steering and race-conscious housing programs. Smith’s complaint alleges that, regardless of any formal contractual arrangement, Heights Community Congress directly participates in steering blacks to areas outside of Cleveland Heights and whites to areas within. The complaint sufficiently establishes Smith’s standing to sue the community organization; whether the facts will later sustain the allegations is an issue to be decided on the merits.

The third standing prong is also met, since the injunctive relief sought by Smith would remove the official implementation of the race-conscious programs. Such a removal would erase the source of Smith’s stigmatic injury.

The District Court decided the standing issue relative to the Fair Housing Act; our analysis in this case similarly has related to the Article III minimum requirements of injury in fact which the Supreme Court has determined are the sole standing requirements under the Fair Housing Act. Gladstone, 441 U.S. at 109, 99 S.Ct. at 1612; Accord, Havens Realty Co. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 372, 102 S.Ct. 1114, 1120, 71 L.Ed.2d 214 (1982). Smith’s additional claims of standing relative to his constitutional claims satisfy the Court’s prudential limitations in adjudicating cases. See Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. at 499-501, 95 S.Ct. at 2205-2206. First, prudential limitations have been held to bar a plaintiff who has established constitutional injury in fact from asserting “the legal rights or interests of third parties.” Warth, 422 U.S. at 499, 95 S.Ct. at 2205 (citations omitted). Such a limitation is irrelevant here, since Smith is asserting his own rights. Second, the Supreme Court has applied prudential principles to limit suits by plaintiffs asserting a “ ‘generalized grievance’ shared in substantially equal measure by all or a large class of citizens.” Warth, 422 U.S. at 499, 95 S.Ct. at 2205. We are dealing here with a limited and identifiable set of injured citizens — the approximately 15,000 black residents of Cleveland Heights. The grievance asserted is specific and immediate to that contained group. Finally, prudential principles preclude suit unless “those litigants best suited to assert a particular claim” are asserting their rights. Gladstone, 441 U.S. at 99, 99 S.Ct. at 1607. Smith is asserting rights as a resident personally and directly stigmatized by his City’s race-conscious policies. Given the immediacy of the injury to Smith’s dignity and self-respect as a black citizen of Cleveland Heights, he is a suitable plaintiff. He has a stronger interest to sue than a black nonresident homeowner steered elsewhere or a white home buyer invited to move to Cleveland Heights.

Because Smith’s stigmatic injury is sufficient to support a finding of standing, we need not decide whether his alleged associational interests would independently support his standing. Although the merits of this case may prove difficult to resolve, the threshold standing issue before us is quite clear. Plaintiff is not constrained to prove his case on the merits in order to surmount a standing hurdle. Warth, 422 U.S. at 500, 95 S.Ct. at 2206. Meeting the three prong test articulated in Allen v. Wright suffices to prove standing. Taking the complaint and depositions together, See Gladstone, 441 U.S. at 115, 99 S.Ct. at 1615, we find that Smith has demonstrated standing sufficient to maintain the action.

Accordingly, the judgment of the District Court is reversed.

1 . Such policies are often referred to as "benign steering programs.” See Note, Benign Steering and Benign Quotas: The Validity of Race-Conscious Government Policies to Promote Residential Integration, 93 HARV.L.REV. 938 (1980). They are to combat "white flight,” which refers to white residents’ rapid migration from neighborhoods that become integrated, and “tipping,” the point at which the rising percentage of black residents in formerly all-white neighborhoods precipitates rapid and widespread white migration. These steering programs are of relatively recent origin; their constitutionality has yet to be resolved.