Civil Procedure: Justiciability

Justiciability

• Determines if a specific plaintiff can sue and if the court has the power to hear the case under Article III.
• Includes standing, mootness, ripeness, and absence of collusive suits.

Declaratory Judgment

• Plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial controversy with the government.
• They must essentially prove they possess adequate standing in the case.

Ripeness

• Federal courts do not hear cases without existing harm to the plaintiff.
• An immediate or demonstrably imminent threat of harm must be established.

Mootness

• The controversy must be likely to repeat and also evade review.
• Issues like pregnancy, elections, and divorce are common case exceptions.
• The requested version of relief is already achieved for the plaintiff

Standing

• Requires the plaintiff to have a personal stake in the outcome of the case
• This stake can be established by showing individual, third-party, and / or organizational harm.

Individual Standing

• Individual standing involves suing for one's own injury and requires:
  • A concrete and particularized injury
  • A causal connection between the injury and the defendant's conduct
  • Reasonable elimination of harm to the plaintiff through a favorable court ruling

Standing in Criminal Cases

• It's not necessary to demonstrate standing or raise consitutional issues in criminal cases

State Standing

• States lack authority to challenge how other states count election votes

Taxpayer Standing

• Taxpayers generally can't challenge government spending, unless based on the Establishment Clause
  • As in, suing to say money is being used to endorse a religion

Third-Party Standing

• The plaintiff has some other kind of injury, but there are parties connected to the case that cannot assert their own suit
• It also arises where the plaintiff personally suffered some injury, and either third parties can't assert their own rights, or the injury affects their relationship with third parties

Organizational Standing

• When an individual action challenges government action that directly injures its members, it requires
  • Individual members to have sufficient injury to grant standing
  • The injury to relate to the organization's purpose
  • Neither the claim nor relief requires participation by individual members in the lawsuit

Eleventh Amendment

• Generally, bars suing a state in federal court
• Applies to state governments, and their officials, but not to cities or local governments

Cases Barred by 11th Amendment

• Lawsuits against state governments for damages
• Lawsuits against state governments seeking injunctive or declaratory relief where the state is named as a party
• Suits against state government officers, retroactively paying damages from the state treasury or when state land would be taken away
• Cases against state government officers for violating state law
• Cases contesting immunity of a sister state under that state's law

Lawsuit Against State

• When a suit is brought in federal court against a state or officer, the Eleventh Amendment mandates acknowledgment of another state's sovereign immunity

Fourteenth Amendment Exception

• Under § 5 of the 14th Amendment, the 11th Amendment doesn't block congruent and proportional remedies against states / employees involving Due Process or Equal Protection violations

Commerce Clause

• Article I, Section 8, grants powers to Congress
• This grants Congress complete power over interstate commerce
• It is constitutional power for congressional enactment

Interstate Commerce Regulatory Laws

• The federal law regulates channels of interstate commerce like roads, rivers, and highways
• The federal law regulates instrumentalities of interstate commerce like trucks, boats, cars, telephone wires, the Internet, etc
• Regulated activities have a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce
  • The regulated activity must be economic in nature
  • Inactivity cannot be regulated under the Commerce Clause
  • Activity may be local if it aggregates to interstate effect

Economic Activity Regulation

• The Court will invalidate federal regulation that is beyond Congress's enumerated powers
• The activity is not economic, and the states have traditionally regulated it

Tenth Amendment Limits

• Congress cannot require states to act a certain way or indirectly coerce them by using substantial over-penalization for refusal
  • If it seeks to regulate state government or officials
  • Power not given to the federal government remains with the states

Coercion

• Requires states to act in a certain way
• Imposes substantial penalties for failing to act

Commandeering

• Requiring state officials to act in aid of federal laws, without funding it.

Spending Clause

• A plenary power of congress, if it is for the general welfare.

Spending Clause and the 10th Amendment

• Congress cannot force state governments to act by cutting off significant spending UNLESS it is an entirely federal program
• In South Dakota v. Dole, penalizing states without a 55-mph speed limit by cutting 5% of highway funds was ruled not coercive.

Dormant Commerce Clause

• State or local economic/business regulation either:
  • Discriminates against out-of-state competition to benefit local economic interests; or
  • Is unduly burdensome because the legitimate local benefits don't outweigh the incidental burden on interstate commerce
• Absent discrimination, regulation with extraterritorial effects must significantly burden out-of-state commerce to violate DCC under National Park case
• Absent discrimination, regulation with extraterritorial effects must significantly burden out-of-state commerce to violate DCC under National Park case

Dormant Commerce Clause Exceptions

• Only discussed after discussing the previous points
• A discriminatory state or local law may be upheld if it furthers an important non-economic state interest and has no reasonable, non-discriminatory alternatives
• If the state/local body is a market participant, it can favor its citizens through higher fees without outright banning interstate commerce
  • External and downstream effects

Privileges and Immunities Clause

• Relevant whenever a Dormant Commerce Clause issue is active
• Prohibits state discrimination against non-citizens regarding fundamental rights
• Concerns civil liberties and the 1st-6th Amendment rights to earning a living
• Corporations and aliens are not protected
  • Discrimination requires substantial justification
  • Non-residents create the problem
  • No less restrictive means available to solving the problem
• A state law discriminating against non-residents exercising a fundamental right is valid only with substantial justification for the disparate treatment

Delegation Power

• Congress can delegate authority to administrative agencies or executive officers
  • Applies to any enumerated power
  • Requires intelligible standards
  • Cannot be unconstitutionally confined to Congress, for example impeachment

Taxing Power

• Plenary Power of congress has
• Congress has power to tax any activity it can regulate
• Congress can tax activities where there’s a revenue raising purpose
• Indirect taxes must be imposed the same way everywhere

Direct Tax

• Only has it directly on a person, wealth, or proeprty
• Under federal law it is unconstitutional, because constitutional amendment is needed

Geographic Uniformity

• Standard that taxes should be uniform throughout the states

Taxing Power (Affordable Care Act)

• Individual penalty on people without health insurance was a tax to fund healthcare

Thirteenth Amendment

• Grants congress power to pass laws prohibiting badges of slavery, slavery, and involuntary servitude
• • Authorizes Congress to remedy private racial discrimination
• • Congress can enact laws banning racial discrimination in public and private commercial activities & transactions (including housing sales)
• Has not been held to apply to non-racial discrimination or to other forms of involuntary servitude

Contracts Clause

• Applies to state and local law
• State or local government law cannot substantially impair obligations under private contracts unless
  • Is serves a legitimate and important state interest
  • Is reasonably and narrowly tailored to promote that interest
• Public contract review is stricter if the government entity impairs its own contract with private property

Legislative Veto

• Congress might not be able to overturn executive agency action without presentment and bicameralism. These cases must be made by both houses and to the president

Supremacy Clause

• Any state law in conflict with a federal law renders the state law void
• A valid Congressional act or a federal regulation overrides any state or local action that is in conflict with the act or regulation

Preemption

• State law conflicts when the federal law does. It can be express or implied

Express Preemption

• Congress states that the new law preempts state & local regulations

Implied Preemption

• If the federal and state law are conflicting
• If the state law prevents a valid federal objective from happening

Article II

• Is it a Executive power
• Is it a domestic matter
• Is it commander in chief